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This paper investigates the relationship between individuals' attitudes towards fairness and their views about tax compliance in developing countries. It argues that individuals' attitudes regarding fairness shape their views about paying taxes and their ethical stances regarding tax evasion. Using survey data for 18 major cities in Latin America, we find that individuals who are highly sensitive to fairness are less likely to consider paying taxes as a civic duty and more likely to justify tax evasion. These attitudes toward tax compliance are not inelastic. We also find evidence that individualst argues about reciprocity and merit mediate the effect of fairness on personal views about tax compliance. Finally, this paper shows that the heuristics people use to explain their position in the income distribution make them sensitive to inequality, and it affects their tax morale. These findings help us better understand the concept of reciprocity and provide valuable lessons on the urgent task of expanding fiscal capacity to promote economic growth and inequality in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue examines environmental governance, conceptualized as environmental protections, support for sustainable development, and the regulation of large-scale development projects. Through analysis of dynamics during the commodities super-cycle of the 2000s–2010s, contributors explore the multifaceted ways that societal actors interact with the state to support, oppose, or modify environmental governance, with a focus on communities impacted by export activities and economic elites who favor their expansion. Several papers seek to understand the governance of sectors—mining, oil, and soy. Others begin with natural areas threatened by development—urban wetlands and forests. As a collection, the papers reveal three commonalities that affect the extent to which environmental governance institutions address demands of impacted communities: (1) the question of whether a policymaking process takes place in reaction to mobilizing, or whether it proactively engages environmental questions as they pertain to local populations; (2) strategies by civil society, and above all impacted residents, to ensure the implementation of environmental policies; and (3) debates over knowledge, including community efforts to harness expertise and information to counter paradigms advanced by business actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research shows that domestic unrest, and especially violent conflict, raises political risk and discourages foreign direct investment (FDI). However, prior work primarily has studied private Western multinational corporations, not authoritarian China, the second largest overseas investor, which has both state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and privately-owned enterprises (POEs). This paper investigates the effects of domestic conflict on overseas Chinese FDI. We first compare Chinese SOE and POE investments in host states facing political unrest. Next, we disaggregate political unrest, examining the effect of violent and non-violent campaigns on Chinese SOEs and POEs. We then disaggregate the sector of FDI inflows. Contrary to prior conflict studies, we find host states under political unrest, and specifically violent campaigns, attract Chinese SOEs no matter the economic sector, whereas POEs are more risk averse. Our findings show that Chinese SOEs favor higher risk investments, suggesting the need for theoretical nuance in the domestic conflict and FDI literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Donors have strongly advocated decentralization on the grounds that it broadens the participation of citizens in development processes, thereby increasing government responsiveness to their needs. Although there have been studies seeking to establish the veracity of this claim, they remain weak on two fronts. One, while wealth differentials affect citizen participation, these studies approach citizens as a homogenous group. Two, participation is mostly viewed narrowly—participation in elections. Drawing on empirical data from Ghana's decentralization reform, this paper addresses these gaps by questioning how pro-poor citizen participation in decentralized development planning has been. I argue that although Ghana's decentralization was propagated on championing pro-poor grassroots participation in governance and development, in reality, participation is elitist and has failed to reflect the voices of the poor. My findings demonstrate that the participation structures and processes used in local development planning are unfavourable to the poor in many respects. Elite and representative participation is promoted to the detriment of broad citizen participation. This exclusion is resulting in surging apathy of citizens towards the district assemblies—institutions hitherto trusted as their development champions. This paper concludes that the poor will remain voiceless despite decentralization unless the structural barriers to their participation are tackled in decentralization design and praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, agribusiness expansion in Argentina involved the exponential growth of pesticide use throughout the country. Pesticide exposure has become a widespread problem in rural areas and farming towns, but protests and conflicts about this issue are the exception rather than the norm. Why? Based on archival work, interviews, and ethnographic observations, in this paper, we scrutinize pesticide governance at the subnational scale to elucidate this puzzle, focusing on a) informal arrangements (face-to-face negotiations between pesticide users and people affected by them), b) juridical conflicts (lawsuits against farmers over exposure of people and crops to herbicides), and c) regulatory challenges (when rural populations and environmentalists push for local ordinances to curb pesticide exposure). We find that local cultural codes encourage informal agreements and that social inequalities prevent conflicts from arising in the public sphere. The interventions of social movements and civil society organizations (or lack thereof) and the mobilization of expertise also shape pesticide governance. Our analysis highlights that pesticide governance is context-dependent or situated, and informed by subtle but significant power asymmetries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To meet the growing global demand for minerals and new energy sources, governments in the Global South advance policy interventions to improve the unequal distribution of the cost and benefits of resource extraction. This paper explains the politics behind the implementation of the Closing Development Gaps (CDG) Plan, a new redistributive plan on behalf of Amazonian Indigenous peoples near the oil circuit in the Loreto region of Peru. It emphasizes the long-lasting impact of mobilizing strategies of indigenous organizations, which relayed critical information to policymakers about the claims both old and new of Indigenous peoples neighboring the oil circuit. It also draws attention to the permeability of state institutions, which allowed newer state agencies with distinct policy streams to advance new solutions to old problems. While the CDG Plan seeks to improve resource governance by focusing on infrastructure gaps (e.g., water and sanitation, electrification), it excludes the "political gaps" and the most contentious claims related to the environment that have moved Amazonian Indigenous peoples into struggle in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental governance in the mining sector, focusing on the case of CODELCO, a Chilean copper mining company. The study examines the factors that triggered changes in CSR strategies and the types of organizational changes that were introduced. The article argues that CSR strategies in the mining sector are influenced by a combination of national and subnational factors, including tightening environmental regulations, social conflicts, and reputational crises. The paper contributes to the literature on CSR and environmental governance by providing empirical evidence and proposing a three-level institutional framework to analyze the evolution of CSR. [Extracted from the article]

Under what conditions do incumbents support, tolerate, or try to rein in armed groups within their borders? The paper argues that incumbents strategize toward armed groups in ways that help them manage the ruling coalition and remain in power. I find that incumbents support armed groups in provinces where provincial politicians have defected from the ruling coalition to opposition parties, recruiting armed groups to deliver the province in national elections with fraud and violence and punish elite defectors. Where incumbents are not fighting to keep provinces in the ruling coalition, I show that they tolerate non-dissident groups that enjoy social contracts with local communities, and try to contain their dissident counterparts. Incumbents are likely to repress predatory armed groups, dissident and non-dissident alike. Doing so helps boost elite and mass support for incumbents and project central government power into the province. The argument was inductively built with comparative case studies from Nigeria and then evaluated in Kenya. The findings contribute to an important research agenda on government-armed group relationships and carry implications for security sector aid and reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some movement parties successfully institutionalize into a functioning party organization while others struggle? This paper argues that not all movement parties institutionalize in the same way. Movement parties that emanate out of a long-term social movement organization face a qualitatively different set of challenges than those that form out of a short-term movement. Routinization—the process of parties developing rules, regulation, and predictable behavior—is a particularly crucial component for short-term movement party institutionalization. When parties emanate out of long-standing social movement organizations, they are advantaged because they already have existing formal rules and regulations. Short-term parties however, are disadvantaged because they lack these organizational structures. Further, short-term movement parties not only need routinization, but must make it a priority; the sequencing of their institutionalization matters. I demonstrate the importance of routinization with the case of Taiwan's New Power Party, a movement party formed out of the 2014 Sunflower Movement. This case shows how struggles to routinize early for short-term movement parties leads to crucial causal mechanisms hindering party institutionalization instead of helping it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of institutional shifts on the strategic choices of Russian firms. It proposes and tests hypotheses of how a shift from a weak to a strong institutional context is likely to affect firms' knowledge accumulation, absorptive capacities and internalisation of operations. Using discriminant analysis, the econometric investigation demonstrates that firms tend to allocate greater resources towards improving their knowledge and absorptive capacity and make more efforts to vertically integrate—in line with improvements in the institutional environment. These investments ensure the survivability and competitiveness of firms in the long term. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that the long-term strategic orientation of firms goes hand in hand with rising resource allocations by the nation-state towards economic development. The findings align with the institutionalist political economy views that institutions are the ultimate overseers that allow the market to operate efficiently, especially in emerging market environments. The paper is also instructive to other developing economies about the need to strengthen their institutional environments, which supports the long-term orientation of firms and has a positive impact on economic development. The analysis does not take into account the impact of sanctions on Russian business and economy, post the annexation of Crimea and the armed conflict with Ukraine. Nor does it consider the impact of COVID-19 on the economy. As such, the study attempts to constitute an untainted comparison of two paths of transition on Russian firms—shock therapy, vis-à-vis, an institutional political economy approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development economics has long focused on growth patterns to explain countries' ability to catch up and forge ahead. We argue, however, that resilience to economic shrinking matters more. Using the examples of Brazil and Indonesia, we propose that a framework consisting of social capabilities—namely structural transformation, autonomy, and inclusion—can explain why Indonesia is more resilient to economic shrinking than Brazil and why the country is more likely to be successful in its catching-up process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike prevailing research methodologies in the interdisciplinary field of global health, feminist methodologies allow researchers to unsettle the premises and assumptions of the field. This paper describes how we mobilize transnational feminist ethnography in our research on HIV in India and postabortion care in Senegal. Transnational feminist perspectives enable us to re-embed HIV prevention and post-abortion care in the politics of gender and sexuality and in postcolonial histories of health governance. They consider the role of gender and sexuality not just in terms of gendered health inequalities, but also in terms of how global health problems are defined, managed, measured, and contested. We outline how our projects put this lens into practice by pushing the methodological boundaries of time, scale, and scope and through a historicized, multisited, and multiscalar approach that triangulates multiple sources of data. Feminist ethnography requires that we turn the critical gaze upon ourselves, reflecting on multiple and shifting personal and professional positionalities during and after fieldwork and our ethical commitments to our interlocutors. While acknowledging the significant personal, institutional, and professional challenges of using feminist methodologies, especially given the dominant modes of research in global health, we urge greater consideration, among both advanced and early scholars, of the possibilities they offer for studying global health problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differential access to life-saving COVID-19 vaccines reveals the inequitable distribution of wealth and power in the global system. While several countries have developed homegrown vaccines to avoid being priced out of markets dominated by transnational drug companies, Brazil—a country with a significant research and pharmaceutical base—lagged behind those of other middle-income countries. Why? This paper blends insights from dependency theory and the theory of global capitalism to demonstrate how political coalitions, leadership, and normative frameworks negatively affect state capacity and technological development. First, austerity in public investment in research, development, and innovation prior to and during the pandemic limited the amount of resources necessary to create homegrown vaccine candidates. Second, political leadership informed by science denialism did not prioritize the development of vaccines and even discouraged their use. The analysis of vaccine development in Brazil reveals that having a pharmaceutical base and strong leadership committed to scientific principles and backed by a political coalition seeking to expand social democratic rights play a vital role in developing treatments and responding to health crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The average number of hours we spend at work varies dramatically by country. Previous research focuses on tax policy, social security, and labor market regulation to explain the differences. This paper builds on previous work by focusing on politics. Specifically, it examines the relationship between democracy and the average number of hours worked per person employed. Using data on the supply of labor from the Penn World Tables 9.1, I find there is an important difference between democracies and dictatorships: as GDP/capita increases, individuals in democracies spend fewer hours at work than their counterparts in dictatorships. The results are robust to various specifications of the model that account for selection bias and data that are missing not at random (MNAR). These findings imply that the elections, civil rights, and the political liberties associated with democracy influence the amount of time people spend at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature suggests ethnic diversity has a negative effect on development. Yet, we also know that government policies—e.g., recognizing multiple languages in minority-sizable areas—can attenuate these effects. In this paper, we ask: What are the socioeconomic implications of minority language recognition? We leverage a legal stipulation in Romania as a quasi-experiment: Minority languages are recognized as official in areas where the minority constitutes more than 20% of the population. We argue the recognition of minority languages builds social trust and facilitates efficiency in economic exchanges—mollifying the otherwise detrimental consequences of diversity. Using data at the municipality level, we find that in areas where only Romanian is recognized, ethnic diversity has a negative effect on development—a result consistent with the literature. This effect, however, is absent in areas where a minority language is recognized. The implications suggest that lowering the threshold for language recognition could promote even further development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper seeks to evaluate the role of development financing institutions (DFIs) in fostering renewable energy transformations. Whereas the conventional approach to renewable energy finance emphasizes the bankability of individual projects, we advance an alternative approach for the role of DFIs in overcoming system-level constraints to enhance renewable energy transformations. We identify four constraints, namely, the incumbent entrenchment of fossil fuels, unmet energy demand of energy-intensive industries, weak production capacity of renewable energies, and lack of supporting infrastructure. We argue that DFIs can potentially address these constraints by setting a mission-driven vision, acting as honest brokers to overcome the incumbent entrenchment, scaling up renewable energy financing to make the cost of renewable energies more competitive, incubating nascent renewable energies, and financing supporting infrastructure. We then select representative DFIs to evaluate the role of DFIs in fostering renewable energy transformations. We find that most sampled DFIs have recently prioritized financing renewable energy, supported pilot projects to achieve demonstration effects, and made investments in complementary infrastructure. Yet few DFIs have achieved the economies of scale to bring down the renewable energy price or shape the policy environment in favor of renewable energy in a manner that can trigger significant transformational change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate-generated stress has been linked to multiple socio-political outcomes, many of which are violent. Scarcity is a key mechanism behind these violent outcomes. I argue that climate-induced scarcity creates conditions for organized criminal groups to capture the markets of legal commodities. Scarcity drives prices up, creating incentives for criminal groups to capture the production and distribution of these commodities with pernicious consequences. Using qualitative evidence for the abalone shellfish market in two South African provinces, I trace the process connecting climate-induced scarcity to price changes, to criminal market capture. In doing so, I make three contributions: I propose a new theory about the climate drivers behind the behavior of organized crime by bringing together scholarship on climate and conflict and criminal violence; I extend research on organized crime from markets of illicit goods into markets for licit ones; and I provide evidence suggestive of brokerage as a specific mechanism to illegally control a market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governance in China is often characterized as dualistic. On the one hand, the state invests in stable, rule-based institutions to support effective policy implementation. Yet the state also engages in sudden regulatory campaigns, overstepping its own laws to implement rapid changes in key sectors. Businesses in China have developed coping mechanisms to weather these uncertainties; they cultivate political ties or learn to accommodate unexpected disruptions. Yet in the sphere of environmental policy implementation, businesses across the spectrum are starting to complain that local environmental enforcement feels unpredictable, even arbitrary. What constitutes unpredictable enforcement in an environment already characterized by high levels of regulatory uncertainty? What changes in environmental enforcement are driving these complaints? Using original data on nine years of city-level enforcement measures, I show that both campaign-style and rule-based enforcement have been increasing in intensity and frequency since the mid-2010s. Through qualitative evidence, I show how these two approaches work at cross purposes, generating mixed signals on which strategies businesses should use to reduce pollution or to mitigate regulatory uncertainty. Data shows that this is a nationwide pattern, which explains why business—even experienced, well-connected businesses—are complaining about arbitrary state action. This study draws attention to emerging stress tests of China's dualistic governance, while delving into what these changes portend for state-business relations in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What determines the process and scale of socioeconomic reform—such as land redistribution—in a new political regime? While the existing literature on land reform has emphasized the role of coalitions and class dynamics, I argue that central-local dynamics play a prominent part in determining a regime's redistributive ambitions. Using the case of the National Land Reform Campaign (1950–1953) under the nascent Chinese Communist Regime as the empirical focus, I find that the subnational variation in redistributive outcomes was the result of central overseers tolerating policy ineffectiveness of some local agents, but intervening against others. This variation can be traced to the regime principal's discriminatory attitudes toward different types of local agents in the new revolutionary bureaucracy: centrally deployed versus locally embedded agents. Using a most similar case design involving two Chinese provinces (Zhejiang and Guangdong), I draw from primary and secondary historical sources to trace how the two provinces diverged in redistributive outcomes despite shared political and socioeconomic backgrounds. I suggest that historical contingencies such as wartime guerrilla mobilization and the post-1949 military occupation environment shaped the initial composition of regime agents, leading to the tolerance of centrally deployed agents in Zhejiang, and sanctions toward locally embedded agents in Guangdong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although scholars often portray Mexico as caught in the "middle-income trap," this description obscures important subnational variation in patterns of economic development. We leverage this variation by examining the case of Querétaro, a state with high levels of structural transformation and economic growth since the 1980s. We reconstruct the historical trajectory of its two leading industries, automotive and aerospace. We observe that while both have cumulatively delivered real developmental gains, each also exhibits a complex mix of strengths and weaknesses. We further find that these industries' advancements and hindrances over time appear closely related to the kinds of "partial" coalitions — groups of actors from the state, private firms, and civil society organizations such as labor unions — which participate in industry-level decision-making. Both industries saw periods of "upgrading" when the partial coalitions supporting them were expanding their cognitive diversity while avoiding gross imbalances in the distribution of power among their members. They likewise experienced periods of stagnation when either of those coalition conditions underwent major change. These findings suggest that debates on escaping the middle-income trap should consider how changes in partial political coalitions affect policy models and options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a novel conceptualization and dataset of post-neoliberal populism in contemporary Latin America and Eastern Europe. By drawing insights from structuralist theories, which understood populism as historically grounded in political economy developments, I critique dominant minimal definitions and propose a synthetic conceptual alternative for the analysis of multidimensional and dynamic challengers of the watershed neoliberal revolutions that both regions have undergone since the late twentieth century. To this end, I disaggregate populism's key dimensions of anti-establishment discourse, illiberal ideology, and strategic organization into functionally interactive attributes; justify post-neoliberal populism as a family resemblance category; and develop a roadmap for case selection and measurement. I then illustrate the empirical validity and theoretical relevance of my approach by assessing the magnitude of post-neoliberal populism in 198 national-level elections in 33 Latin American and Eastern European democracies and by identifying the decline of the traditional Left as its correlate in both regions. By focusing on conceptual unity and cross-regional parallels, the article demonstrates that, contrary to conventional misconceptions, a family resemblance categorization of contemporary populism not only facilitates empirically rigorous research, but also stimulates mid-range theorizing at the intersection of intra-regional specificity and more general historicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing conventional wisdom suggests that authoritarian legislatures prevent oil nationalizations in party-based regimes. However, country scholars and media outlets remain skeptical. We develop a theory aligning with the skeptics. We argue that oil expropriations and legislative closures are endogenous to the process of the consolidation of party-based autocracies. New authoritarian parties close legislatures when they seize power and do not reopen them until they can ensure their dominance of the new legislature, a process abetted by oil expropriations. We test the argument using recently developed cross-case comparative Bayesian qualitative techniques. Evidence shows support for our theory. Our findings suggest that authoritarian legislatures are less constraining in terms of oil nationalizations than new conventional wisdom suggests. Additionally, our evidence points to a different interpretation of the role legislatures play in the evolution of authoritarian regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many Latin American countries, the state is to inform communities about proposed large-scale development that affects them, often in a public hearing on the environmental impact study (estudio de impacto ambiental, EIA). This article explores the role of the EIA public hearing in environmental governance, specifically in terms of local community participation in extractives. Analysis of nine mining and hydrocarbon conflicts in Colombia and Peru reveals that sometimes the public hearing is a space for project opponents alone to participate intensively, with a focus on altering development outcomes; in other cases, activists and project supporters compete at hearings; and, finally, some communities eschew the hearing entirely. The study points to two factors to explain this variation: first, whether the public hearing is a mandatory stage in environmental licensing, and second, the cohesion of impacted communities. Running counter to existing criticisms of the structures that govern public hearings in Colombian environmental licensing, the article finds that the hurdle for Colombian communities of requesting the hearing has contributed to effective organizing by movements opposed to large-scale development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wetlands provide ecosystem services such as flood protection, improved water quality, and wildlife habitat, but are under attack in urban land-use conflicts in the Global South. This article presents two cases of local wetlands governance conflicts in Colombia (Humedal la Conejera, Bogotá, Cundinamarca) and Argentina (Laguna de Rocha, Esteban Echeverría, Gran Buenos Aires) to illustrate divergent pathways toward improved environmental governance via citizen pressures: the collaborative method (Bogotá) and the adversarial method (Buenos Aires). While existing scholarship on citizen-led regulation stresses the importance of collaboration between community organizations and the state, this article argues that adversarial tactics are also a key component of environmental governance. In both cases, citizen-led pressures led to increased enforcement of regulatory measures to restore wetlands and gain protected-area status. Citizen-led governance involved adversarial strategies such as marches, litigation, and shaming and blaming in the media, as well as collaborative strategies such as creating broad-based educational forums, working inside city government, and partnering directly with public institutions to set new policies. Against the backdrop of extensive collusion between elected officials and land developers, citizen-led subnational environmental governance has become the regulatory regime of last resort in urban Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]