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52. Against the Grain: Student Movement in Private Universities
- Author:
- Ismail Fayad
- Publication Date:
- 06-2016
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
- Abstract:
- Research focusing on non-formal political and social stakeholders/activists has been generally side-lined as a subject of political, sociological, and economic studies in the Arab world. This has been the case since the emergence of these sub-fields in the post-independence period of the 1960s, as Arab universities and research centres were founding their academic fields, until today. The exception that confirmed the rule was the Marxist approaches that succeeded in fostering a small but steady number of research groups interested mainly in workers’ and labor movements, and in particular unions, or in rural sociology as a reflection of the expression of class struggle within Arab societies.
- Topic:
- International Organization and Political Activism
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
53. Does Compliance Pay? Social Standards and Firm-level Trade
- Author:
- Greg Distelhorst and Richard M. Locke
- Publication Date:
- 12-2016
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
- Abstract:
- What is the relationship between trade and social institutions in the developing world? The research literature is conflicted: importing firms may demand that trading partners observe higher labor and environmental standards, or they may penalize higher standards that raise costs. This study uses new data on retailers and manufacturers to analyze how firm-level trade responds to information about social standards. Contrary to the "race to the bottom" hypothesis, it finds that retail importers reward exporters for complying with social standards. In difference-in-differences estimates from over two thousand manufacturing establishments in 36 countries, achieving compliance is associated with a 4% [1%, 7%] average increase in annual purchasing. The effect is driven largely by the apparel industry — a longterm target of anti-sweatshop social movements — suggesting that activist campaigns can shape patterns of global trade.
- Topic:
- International Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
54. Does Citizenship Abate Class? Evidence and Reflections from Bangalore, India
- Author:
- Ebony Bertorelli, Patrick Heller, Siddharth Swaminathan, and Ashutosh Varshney
- Publication Date:
- 12-2016
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
- Abstract:
- Drawing on data from a large household survey in Bangalore, this paper explores the quality of urban citizenship. Addressing theories that have tied the depth of democracy to the quality and effectiveness of citizenship, we develop an index of citizenship that includes various measures and then explore the extent to which citizenship determines the quality of services and infrastructure that households enjoy. Our findings show that citizenship and access to services in Bangalore are highly differentiated, that much of what drives these differences has to do with class, but we also find clear evidence that the urban poor are somewhat better in terms of the services they receive that they would be without citizenship. Citizenship, in other words, abates the effects of class.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
55. When Courts Plan: The Greening of Delhi's Autorickshaws
- Author:
- Atul Pokharel
- Publication Date:
- 08-2016
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
- Abstract:
- Implementing municipal-scale policies is challenging in megacities. Despite this, between 1986 and 2006, Delhi converted its entire public transportation network of nearly 100,000 vehicles to use Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) instead of diesel and petrol. The use of CNG is widely assumed to have been ordered by the Supreme Court of India. But this overlooks how autorickshaws, privately owned and making up three-fourths of these vehicles, came to use CNG even though the court did not order it. Using two new sources of data, I show that the conversion of autos was jointly led by the largest private manufacturer together with the city government. The court facilitated coordination between several other actors, allowed them to experiment, and monitored progress over two decades leading up to the auto conversion. After capping the total number of autos, it ultimately refrained from passing judgment on two consequential aspects of greening them: vehicle ownership and fuel type. As a result, auto owners were buffeted by decades of incremental policy experimentation. Eventually, these experiments reconfigured auto ownership as some sold their operating permits to become renters, while state institutions remained indifferent to this shadow conversion underfoot.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
56. Cabal City: Regime Theory and Indian Urbanization
- Author:
- Patrick Heller
- Publication Date:
- 07-2016
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
- Abstract:
- This paper explores the interaction of politics and business through the lens of the city. The power of business to influence politics in India would lead to a prediction that Indian cities are, in the classic sense of the term, growth machines. Yet we argue in this paper that fundamental problems of governance in India’s megacities have precluded the possibility of business coalitions exerting cohesive influence over investments policies in cities. The result has been the predominance of what we call cabals, that are expert at extracting rents from the city, but in the end fail to promote development in the sense of an institutionalized process of economic and social improvement in the city. Where there has been high growth, it has not been accompanied by the expansion of the cities’ infrastructure and overall coordination capacities. In the end, what is good for business and politicians had neither been good for capitalism in terms of dynamic accumulation nor for inclusion of middle and poorer social groups.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
57. Flexible Governance and Perceived Fairness: Evidence from Farmer Managed Irrigation Systems in Nepal
- Author:
- Atul Pokharel
- Publication Date:
- 07-2016
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
- Abstract:
- What is the relationship between flexible governance and fairness? I examine this question in a new longitudinal dataset of irrigation canals in Nepal that were celebrated as paradigmatic cases of successful local governance. The prevalent explanation is that users have avoided knotty collective action problems by committing to rules and mutually monitoring compliance. These rules are understood to have been iteratively crafted over decades so as to render cooperative behavior reasonable. Embedded in a local context that is assumed to be common knowledge for users but ultimately impenetrable to outsiders, it is critical that locals discursively devise the rules and uniformly enforce them. Revisiting these cases three decades later, I first illustrate a distinction between two aspects of flexible governance: flexible rules and flexible enforcement. The former refers to changing rules over time, the latter to variations in enforcement. I document the predicted flexibility of the rules in these cases. I then show that a significant number of successes are associated with flexible enforcement. Whether flexible enforcement helps or hinders sustained collective action appears to depend on how fair users perceive the rules to be. Thus, discretionary enforcement may be related to the possibilities and limits of local governance in achieving fair outcomes, and not just for merely solving collective action problems.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
58. Triggering Increased City-Level Public Finance for Pro-Poor Sanitation Improvements
- Author:
- Jameson Boex and Benjamin Edwards
- Publication Date:
- 01-2015
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Urban Institute
- Abstract:
- This paper provides a general framework for understanding the political economy and fiscal determinants of sanitation service provision by urban local governments. The paper will address several questions: what do we expect to influence spending on local sanitation? Do different fiscal instruments have an impact on expenditure levels? Do increased local revenues lead to increased expenditures over the long term? What role do different stakeholders play in determining expenditure levels? The paper first looks at the role of political factors in constraining local expenditure decisions, then turns to a review of the fiscal determinants of service delivery expenditures.
- Topic:
- Political Economy, Governance, Urban, Sanitation, Services, and Cities
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
59. A Post-2015 Local Governance Agenda
- Author:
- Jameson Boex
- Publication Date:
- 06-2015
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Urban Institute
- Abstract:
- The role of local governance within global development is approaching an important inflection point. To the extent that local governments function as effective platforms for collective local decision-making and as effective mechanisms for promoting the collective interests of their constituents, local governments are ideal partners for achieving development success. Moreover, regardless of the mechanism or type of decentralization or “localization” that is ultimately chosen, in the end, we cannot ignore the vertical governance mechanisms and multilevel service delivery mechanisms that are needed to ensure the effective delivery of public services at the local level.
- Topic:
- Governance, International Development, Services, and Decentralization
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
60. La pérennité du supranationalisme intergouvernemental, paradoxe de l’élargissement (The “Enlargement paradox”: Intergovernmental Supranationalism Survives despite the Winds of Change)
- Author:
- Tanja Mayrgündter
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
- Abstract:
- In the last decade, the EU has been challenged by major phenomena, such as the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty and the economic and financial crisis. Unlike other policy areas, where the logic of action and institutional interplays have consequently changed, enlargement constitutes a “paradox”, having largely been resistant to such impact factors. That is, “intergovernmental supranationalism” has remained the dominant feature of the enlargement polity, politics and policy. Even though the overall result has not changed, there has been change in the configuration among the intergovernmental and the supranational elements. That is, while on the one hand intergovernmental forces have increased, on the other hand, all three dimensions have primarily been hit by the “technicality turn”, consequently fostering the supranational momentum. Finally, an overall new balance has been reached under the “old” intergovernmental supranational umbrella.
- Topic:
- Politics, Regional Cooperation, European Union, and Political Science
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Global Focus, and European Union