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341. Ethiopia: Ethnic Federalism and Its Discontents

Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
The Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), led by its chairman and prime minister, Meles Zenawi, has radically reformed Ethiopia's political system. The regime transformed the hitherto centralised state into the Federal Democratic Republic and also redefined citizenship, politics and identity on ethnic grounds. The intent was to create a more prosperous, just and representative state for all its people. Yet, despite continued economic growth and promised democratisation, there is growing discontent with the EPRDF's ethnically defined state and rigid grip on power and fears of continued inter- ethnic conflict. The international community should take Ethiopia's governance problems much more seriously and adopt a more principled position towards the government. Without genuine multi-party democracy, the tensions and pressures in Ethiopia's polities will only grow, greatly increasing the possibility of a violent eruption that would destabilise the country and region.
Topic:
Ethnic Conflict, Political Economy, Politics, and Governance
Political Geography:
Africa and Ethiopia

342. Government and Opposition in the Argentine Congress, 1989-2007: Understanding Inter-Party Dynamics through Roll Call Vote Analysis

Author:
Mark P. Jones, Wonjae Hwang, and Juan Pablo Micozzi
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
This article employs roll call vote data and Bayesian ideal point estimation to examine inter-party dynamics in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies between 1989 and 2007. It highlights the presence in the Argentine Congress of a strong government vs. opposition dimension as well as identifies the relative position on this dimension, vis-à-vis the governing party, of the most prominent non-governing parties. Special attention is paid to the evolution of inter-party legislative dynamics during Argentina\'s brief experience with coalition government (1999-2001) and to party behavior in the Chamber during the final two years of President Néstor Kirchner\'s term in office (2005-07).
Topic:
Political Economy
Political Geography:
Argentina

343. From Party Systems to Party Organizations: The Adaptation of Latin American Parties to Changing Environments

Author:
Laura Wills-Otero
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
The study of party systems and political parties is one of the largest subfields in political science. Classic studies in advanced democracies focused primarily on party systems and developed theories about the causes and consequences of different types of systems. In recent years, new academic work begun to differentiate parties within systems by understanding their organizational structure, their internal dynamics, the different ways in which they interact with their constituencies, and the strategies that they use to attract voters. Studies show that parties within the same system behave and react differently given their internal conditions. This article reviews three scholarly books that deal with this issue. The works analyze the internal dynamics of Latin American political parties and their capacity to respond and adapt their structures when environmental challenges take place.
Topic:
Political Economy
Political Geography:
Latin America

344. Increasing Migration, Diverging Communities: Changing Character of Migrant Streams in Rural Thailand

Author:
Filiz Garip
Publication Date:
02-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
This paper studies how increasing migration changes the character of migrant streams in sending communities. Cumulative causation theory posits that past mi- gration patterns determine future flows, as prior migrants provide resources, influence, or normative pressures that make individuals more likely to migrate. The theory implies uniform patterns of exponentially increasing migration flows that are decreasingly selective. Recent research identifies heterogeneity in the cumulative patterns and selectivity of migration in communities. We propose that this heterogeneity may be ex- plained by the differential accessibility of previously accumulated migration experience. Multi-level, longitudinal migration data from 22 rural Thai communities allow us to measure the distribution of past experience as a proxy for its accessibility to community members. We find that migration becomes a less-selective process as migration expe- rience accumulates, and migrants become increasingly diverse in socio-demographic characteristics. Yet, selectivity within migrant streams persists if migration experience is not uniformly distributed among, and hence not equally accessible to, all community members. The results confirm that the accumulation and distribution of prior mi- grants' experiences distinctly shape future migration flows, and may lead to diverging cumulative patterns in communities over time.
Topic:
Migration, Political Economy, and Sociology
Political Geography:
Thailand and Southeast Asia

345. The Political Economy of Heterogeneous Development: Quantile Effects of Income and Education

Author:
Marcus Alexander, Matthew Harding, and Carlos Lamarche
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Does development lead to the establishment of more democratic institutions? The key to the puzzle, we argue, is the previously unrecognized fact that based on quantitative regime scores, countries over the past 50 years have clustered into two separate, very distinct, yet equally-common stages of political development—authoritarian states with low levels of freedom on one side an d democracies with liberal institutions on the other side of a bimodal distribution of political regimes. We develop a new empirical strategy—exploiting exogenous world economic factors and introducing new panel data estimators—that allows for the first time to estimate the effects of development as well as unobserved country effects in driving democracy at these different stages of political development. We find that income and education have the least effect on democracy when authoritarian regimes are consolidated and that only country effects, possibly accounting for institutional legacies, can lead to political development. Ironically, it is in highly democratic and wealthiest of nations that income and education start to play a role; however greater wealth and better educated citizenry can both help and hurt democracy depending again on what the country's institutional legacies are. Far from accepting the notion that much of the developing world is cursed by unchanging and poor long-run institutions, policy-makers should take note that with democratization we also see country-specific factors that in turn condition the difference income and education make for democracy.
Topic:
Democratization, Development, Economics, Political Economy, and Third World
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, China, Asia, and Germany

346. Global Imbalances, National Rebalancing, and the Political Economy of Recovery

Author:
Jeffry A. Frieden
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
When the leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) major economies met in Pittsburgh at the end of September 2009, the topic of “rebalancing” the world economy was high on the agenda. The final com- muniqué's first substantive commitment was “to work together as we manage the transition to a more balanced patter n of global growth.” There were good reasons for this focus. Global macroeconomic imbalances—massive borrowing by some countries and massive lending by others—drove the financial boom and bubble that eventually burs t into the current crisis. There is now nearly universal agreement that such imbalances cannot be sustained, and that the former deficit and surplus nations need to move toward macroeconomic balance.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Markets, Political Economy, and Financial Crisis

347. Governing Khat Drugs and Democracy in Somaliland

Author:
Peter Hansen
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper examines the role of the mild stimulant khat in the economic and political transformation of the independent, yet internationally unrecognized Republic of Somaliland. Rather than seeing khat as a hindrance for nation-state formation and as a developmental problem, the paper argues that khat has been important to the economic viability of Somaliland and to the formation of political practices and identities. In this sense, khat should be seen not only as a drug contributing to violence, state failure and inadequate development, but also as underpinning economic processes, political identities and societal structures that have been crucial to the formation and political success of Somaliland. The paper adds to our understanding of the links between emerging political and economic orders in a post-conflict society.
Topic:
Economics, Peace Studies, Political Economy, Narcotics Trafficking, and Fragile/Failed State
Political Geography:
Africa and Somalia

348. Beyond Planning: Markets and Networks for Better Aid

Author:
Owen Barder
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The political economy of aid agencies is driven by incomplete information and multiple competing objectives and confounded by principal-agent and collective-action problems. Policies to improve aid rely too much on a planning paradigm that tries to ignore, rather than change, the political economy of aid. A considered combination of market mechanisms, networked collaboration, and collective regulation would be more likely to lead to significant improvements. A “collaborative market” for aid might include unbundling funding from aid management to create more explicit markets; better information gathered from the intended beneficiaries of aid; decentralized decision-making; a sharp increase in transparency and accountability of donor agencies; the publication of more information about results; pricing externalities; and new regulatory arrangements to make markets work. The aid system is in a political equilibrium, determined by deep characteristics of the aid relationship and the political economy of aid institutions. Reformers should seek to change that equilibrium rather than try to move away from it. The priority should be on reforms that put pressure on the aid system to evolve in the right direction rather than on grand designs.
Topic:
Development, Political Economy, and Foreign Aid

349. Making Markets for Merit Goods: The Political Economy of Antiretrovirals

Author:
Ethan Kapstein and Josh Busby
Publication Date:
08-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
This paper examines the role of policy entrepreneurs and global activists in shaping the international market for antiretroviral drugs to combat HIV/AIDS. When ARVs first came on the market in the 1990s they were exceedingly expensive; the cost of treatment was upwards of $10,000 per year. These drugs were thus accessible only to those patients who had high incomes. But in 2006, the “international community,” meeting at a United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS), made an astonishing pledge to those who were infected with HIV. It proclaimed that there should be universal access to ARV treatment. This UNGASS, following up on an earlier historic UN special session devoted entirely to AIDS in 2001, marked the first time in history that the international community pledged itself to chronic care for the ill, which in this case includes the approximately 30 million people around the world estimated to be HIV positive. How do we explain the transformation of ARVs from private goods, which only a few could afford, into merit goods that were (at least declaratively) to be made available to everyone? In other words, how does a norm of “universal access to treatment”—that no person should be denied these life-extending drugs—become the ethical basis for global public policy with respect to pharmaceutical allocation? What are the lessons of the ARV story for other global issues? These are the primary questions we explore in this paper. Briefly, we argue that the policy entrepreneurs and activists who promoted the creation of a universal access to treatment regime—of the transformation of ARVs into global merit goods—relied on a combination of moral arguments and ideas with favorable material circumstances. From the ethical perspective, the task of these entrepreneurs was to convince the “international community” that access to ARVs was a “human right,” or conversely to convince decision-makers that it was morally wrong to allocate these life-enhancing drugs solely on the basis of ability to pay. But from a material standpoint, these arguments were greatly facilitated by the lowering prices of ARVs caused by a combination of differential pricing (that is, lower prices for drugs in the developing world than in the advanced welfare states) and competition from generics producers, coupled with increases in foreign aid spending devoted to HIV/AIDS and other diseases.
Topic:
Health, Human Welfare, Humanitarian Aid, and Political Economy

350. Oil in Venezuela: Triggering Violence or Ensuring Stability? A Context-sensitive Analysis of the Ambivalent Impact of Resource Abundance

Author:
Annegret Mähler
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
This paper studies the causal factors that make the oil-state Venezuela, which is generally characterized by a low level of violence, an outlier among the oil countries as a whole. It applies a newly elaborated “context approach” that systematically considers domestic and international contextual factors. To test the results of the systematic analysis, two periods with a moderate increase in internal violence in Venezuela are subsequently analyzed, in the second part of the paper, from a comparative-historical perspective.
Topic:
Oil and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Latin America and Venezuela