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4281. Unlocking Public Entrepreneurship and Public Economies

Author:
Elinor Ostrom
Publication Date:
01-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Unlocking human potential requires a rich network of institutional arrangements in both private and public spheres. Opening the private sphere to entrepreneurship and complex market organization is well understood as a key to increasing the level and quality of private goods available to consumers. Opening the public sphere to entrepreneurship and innovation at local, regional, and international levels is also a key to increasing the level and quality of public goods – e.g., peace, safety, and health – available to citizens. This paper reviews studies of urban service delivery that have repeatedly found communities of individuals who have self-organized to provide and co-produce surprisingly good local services. In addition to unlocking individual freedom, we need to unlock the public sector from rigid, top-down, hierarchical organization.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance

4282. Monetary Power and Political Autonomy: Exchange Rate Policymaking in Follower States

Author:
Louis W. Pauly
Publication Date:
03-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
Common sense suggests that successful leaders need willing followers. Coercion can sometimes be effective, but even the most inexperienced parent soon learns the lesson that results achieved through unforced acquiescence tend to be better and more enduring than those achieved through the application of brute force. Political theorists typically focus on the concept of legitimacy when they evoke the quality that transforms raw power into something more acceptable to its target. Clearly implicated by that concept is another one, even more difficult to measure: respect for the ultimate autonomy of the target. In an era of rapid global transformation, when the exercise of great power is readily observable, research nevertheless proliferates on the meaning and nature of independence, of sovereignty, and of political autonomy (for an overview see Grande and Pauly 2005).
Topic:
Economics, Foreign Exchange, and Globalization

4283. Ethics for one world

Author:
Peter Singer
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
CONfines de Relaciones Internacionales y Ciencia Política
Abstract:
Technological advancement has made the increasing closeness among the diverse regions of the world inevitable. This article focuses on the ethical implications that this proximity entails. The author analyzes how global warming, commerce, and international law are topics that should interest and involve all nations because the decisions taken towards these matters have global consequences. He purports that there is a need to apply an ethic for one world that also goes beyond the human species.
Topic:
Economics, Environment, International Law, and Science and Technology

4284. Syria and Political Change

Author:
Mona Yacoubian and Scott Lasensky
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
This USIPeace Briefing , written by Scott Lasensky and Mona Yacoubian of the Institute's Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention, is based on discussions at a recent seminar. The views expressed do not reflect those of the Institute, which does not take policy positions. Syria is facing unprecedented pressure from the international community on issues ranging from Syrian meddling in Lebanon to its support for terrorist groups. The United Nations investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri will release its second report in mid- December 2005. The current crisis has increased speculation about prospects for political change in Syria. The opacity of Syrian politics means there are more questions than answers. Nonetheless, a number of key indicators suggest a changing political environment, in a country where political development has essentially been frozen for thirty-five years.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Politics
Political Geography:
Middle East and Syria

4285. Emergent Insecurity in Eastern Sudan

Author:
Kelly Campbell
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
The Beja people, who inhabit Eastern Sudan, have consistently been politically, socially, and economically marginalized by successive governments in Khartoum. As a consequence, the Beja have recently joined forces with other disenfranchised groups from eastern and western Sudan, and violence in the region has escalated despite the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Government of Sudan (GOS) in Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).
Topic:
Security, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
Africa and Sudan

4286. Strategies for Peace in the Niger Delta

Author:
Dorina Bekoe
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
The Niger Delta, an area of dense mangrove rainforest in the southern tip of Nigeria, comprises nine of Nigeria's thirty-six states: Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Imo, Ondo, and Rivers. The region's oil accounts for approximately 90 percent of the value of Nigeria's exports, but the Niger Delta remains one of Nigeria's least developed regions.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

4287. Bans, Tests and Alchemy: Food Safety Standards and Ugandan Fish Export

Author:
Stefano Ponte
Publication Date:
10-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Fish exports are the second largest foreign exchange earner in Uganda. When Uganda's fish export industry started to operate in the late 1980s and early 1990s, one may have thought that fish was being turned into gold. From an export value of just over one million US$ in 1990, the mighty Nile Perch had earned the country over 45 million US$ just six years later. But alchemy proved to be more than the quest of the philosophers' stone to change base metals into gold. From 1997 to 2000, the industry experienced a series of import bans, imposed by the EU on grounds of food safety. Despite claims to the contrary, the EU did not provide scientific proof that fish was actually 'unsafe'. Rather, the poor performance of Uganda's regulatory and monitoring system was used as a justification. The 'system', as the characters of an allegory, has no individual personality and is the embodiment of the moral qualities that 'the consumer' expects from 'responsible operators' in the fish sector. Only by fixing this system of regulations and inspections, and by performing the ritual of laboratory testing did the Ugandan industry regain its status as a 'safe' source of fish. Fish exports now earn almost 90 million US$ to the country. This apparent success story was achieved by a common front comprising government authorities and the processing industry, a high level of private-public collaboration not often seen in East Africa. Yet, important chunks of the regulatory and monitoring system exist only on paper. Furthermore, the system is supposed to achieve a series of contradictory objectives: to facilitate efficient logistics and ensure food safety; to match market demand and take care of sustainability; to implement a top-down food safety monitoring system and a bottom-up fisheries co-management system. This means that at least some food safety-related operations have to be carried out as 'rituals of verification'. Given the importance of microbiological tests and laboratories in the food safety compliance system, alchemic rituals are perhaps a more appropriate metaphor. While the white coats and advanced machinery of present-day alchemists reassure insecure European regulators and consumers, it leaves the Ugandan fish industry in a vulnerable position. In Uganda, fish can now be turned into gold again – but for how long?
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Human Welfare
Political Geography:
Uganda, Africa, United States, and East Africa

4288. Trade in the Small-and Micro-Enterprise Sector in Kenya and other Countries in Eastern and Southern Africa

Author:
Poul Ove Pedersen
Publication Date:
04-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Since the famous ILO report on the informal sector in Kenya was published in 1972 the smallscale enterprises have been recognised to play an important role in the Kenyan economy as in other African countries. However, although often more than half of all the small enterprises are traders. Most small enterprise policies have focussed almost entirely on the small scale producers. The small-scale traders have generally been seen as unproductive activities with no positive role to play in development, a sign of poverty, although they are responsible for a large share of the national distribution system. The paper attempts to look at this paradox and investigate the role of the small scale traders in the small enterprise sector and in the development process.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Third World
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa

4289. The Development of the Informal Small-Enterprise Sector in Eastern and Southern Africa: From Import Substitution to Structural Adjustment

Author:
Poul Ove Pedersen
Publication Date:
04-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
In spite of its growing importance in the African economies, the informal, small-enterprise sector still plays a dubious and little understood role in development. Due to lack of data it is often treated as if it was unrelated to the rest of the economy. However, a number og large surveys carried out in a number of African countries indicate that structure and development of the small-enterprise sector vary greatly both from country to country and over time, depending in a complex way on the national differences in socio-economic structures and policies.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
Africa

4290. Development of African Freight Transport - the Case of Kenya

Author:
Patrick O. Alila, Meleckidzedeck Khayesi, Walter Odhiambo, and Poul Ove Pederson
Publication Date:
02-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The Kenyan transport system is still to a large extent structured by physical infrastructure, legislation and institutions developed during the colonial period, and by import-substitution policies which during the first decades after independence to a large extent allowed the transport system to deteriorate. However, since the late 1980s the structural adjustment policies have led to a renewed interest both from the government and the donors in developing the transport infrastructure. At the same time trade liberalisation, deregulation of domestic trade and privatisation of the parastatals have since the mid-1990s led to a reshaping of both trade and transport which is still ongoing. The so-called logistical revolution, which since the early 1970s has revolutionised transport in the industrialised and industrialising world, has with a delay of two decades also reached Africa. This is resulting in much closer integration of transport into production and trade which tend to shift the focus away from the physical transport infrastructure to the institutional structures and organisations which support and exploit the infrastructures. This paper tries to describe the resulting transformation of the Kenyan transport system.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Human Welfare
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa