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131. Political Budget Cycles and Intergovernmental Transfers in a Dominant Party Framework: Empirical Evidence from South Africa

Author:
Verena Kroth
Publication Date:
11-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
This paper tests the theory of context-conditional political budget cycles in South Africa's dominant party framework and demonstrates that the central government has both an incentive and the ability to implement PBCs on the subnational level. Using a unique panel dataset comprising South Africa's nine provinces over the period 1995–2010 generates two main results: First, provinces where the national ruling party faces greater electoral competition receive higher per capita transfers in the year before an election. Second, this increase is driven by the conditional grant, which is the nonformula-based component of total the intergovernmental transfer. The ability to implement political budget cycles is successfully constrained when it comes to the formula-based equitable share component of the total transfer for which no evidence of electorally-induced funding is found. Overall, the results suggest that even in a dominant party framework, political competition can function as an incentive to implement political budget cycles.
Topic:
Democratization, Economics, Government, and Governance
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

132. Building a South African Human Rights Culture in the Face of Cultural Diversity: Context and Conflict

Author:
John Cantius Mubangizi
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
African Journal of Legal Studies
Institution:
The Africa Law Institute
Abstract:
South Africa has faced enormous challenges since the advent of democracy in 1994. One of the difficulties in the post-apartheid era has been the building of a human rights culture in the context of substantial cultural diversity. In this paper, the constitutional, judicial and institutional contexts – which have consolidated and supported the expression of human rights in the face of cultural diversity – are reviewed. The focus on cultural rights in the constitution is discussed, and the relevance of several constitutional institutions in terms of ensuring human rights, is mentioned. With a clear understanding of the constitutional, judicial and institutional contexts in place, the paper discusses the potentially inherent conflict between human rights and cultural rights, using gender-related issues as a proxy. Several examples of this potential conflict are discussed, including female circumcision, virginity testing and polygamy. The importance of human rights education for informing the debate about cultural and human rights in South Africa is emphasized. The answers to the challenges associated with the clash between cultural rights and human rights are not simple, although pragmatically – in addition to the role of the available constitutional, judicial and institutional structures – they could reside in a cross-cultural debate.
Topic:
Human Rights
Political Geography:
South Africa

133. Resources, risk and resilience: scarcity and climate change in Ethiopia

Author:
Alex Evans
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on International Cooperation
Abstract:
Ethiopia's resource scarcity context presents a daunting challenge, but also a significant opportunity. The country's current scarcity context includes: Low agricultural yields and farm sizes: Even if farm productivity were to increase by a factor of three, the average farm would still not produce enough food for a family of five. With 83% of Ethiopia's people directly dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods, the country has a major food security challenge; 7.5 million people depend on food safety nets. Major exposure to drought: Ethiopia has erratic rainfall, and acutely limited water storage capacity: the country has only 43m3 of reservoir storage per person, compared to 750m3 in South Africa and 6,150m3 in North America. Levels of irrigation are also low: the World Bank estimates that only 5% of irrigable land in Ethiopia is actually irrigated. Limited access to energy: Ethiopia's total primary energy supply is less than 60% of the African average, and only just over a fifth of the global average. The country depends on waste and biomass for 90 of its energy needs – leading to consequences including deforestation, and soil degradation as a result of biomass not being returned to the soil. High dependence on imported oil and food: Ethiopia currently imports all of its liquid fuels and a significant proportion of its food. This creates major exposure to global commodity price volatility, with the attendant risk of balance of payments problems, inflation and outright supply interruptions.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, Development, Economics, Poverty, Natural Resources, and Food
Political Geography:
Africa, South Africa, North America, and Ethiopia

134. Zimbabwe: An Opportunity for Closer U.S.-South Africa Relations

Author:
John Campbell
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
As Zimbabwe moves closer to elections, the prospect for political violence, even civil war, grows. President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are wrangling over a new constitution and the timing of upcoming elections. The eighty-eight-year-old Mugabe is suffering from cancer and wants elections soon to ensure his "liberation" legacy. At the same time, Mugabe-allied military factions, flush with off-the-books cash from Marange diamonds mined in the eastern part of the country, are mobilizing to stay in power when Mugabe dies. Political murder is on the upswing and Zimbabwe is as tense and divided now as it was during the run-up to the violent 2008 elections.
Topic:
Political Violence, Corruption, Democratization, and Fragile/Failed State
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, South Africa, and Zimbabwe

135. The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade

Author:
Krisztian Simon
Publication Date:
12-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Affairs
Institution:
School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Abstract:
The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade Andrew Feinstein (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 672 pages. In Shadow World, a book on the global arms trade, author Andrew Feinstein argues that there is only a thin line between what constitutes legal and illegal. "With bribery and corruption de rigueur," he writes, "there are very few arms transactions that are entirely above board." Feinstein notes that manufacturers are often major donors to political parties and prospective employers of defeated politicians, which ensures that the beneficiaries of arms deals seldom face justice. According to the author's estimates, including the trade in conventional arms-which includes military vehicles, missiles, and ammunition-is worth $60 billion per year, accounts for more than 40 percent of the corruption in world trade, and has cost the lives of 231 million people in the last century. The money spent on arms, especially by developing countries, is desperately needed in other areas. Feinstein, who resigned from the African National Congress and South Africa's governing party after they were unwilling to launch an investigation into a major arms deal recalls that, in the late 1990s, the South African government spent £6 billion (nearly $10 billion) on guns it barely used, even while it could not afford antiretroviral drugs for the country's 6 million HIV-infected citizens. According to Feinstein, more than 355,000 of them died between 2000 and 2005. Using numerous interviews and confidential documents, Feinstein reconstructs the major arms deals of the last hundred years, describing in great detail the interactions of governments, manufacturers, and powerful arms dealers and provides an astonishing and insightful description of the world's "second-oldest profession." Although many of the stories were reported in the international press, they have rarely been described in such great detail. What is missing, however, is a more detailed analysis of the reasons for the lack of political will for reform, though Feinstein does offer some guidelines to help future policy makers deal with the arms industry. Unfortunately, Feinstein does not expect to see any changes in the near future; the first decade of the new millennium was, in his view, even more violent than the previous century.
Political Geography:
Africa, New York, and South Africa

137. Accounting for the politics of language in the sociology of IR

Author:
Anne-Marie D'Aoust
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
With its 2009 report on the state of the discipline of International Relations (IR), the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) Project of the Institute for the Theory and Practice of International Relations aimed to tackle directly Ole Wæver's claim that IR 'is and has been an American social science' (Wæver 1998: 687). Driven by the question of whether or not one could see national variations in the way scholars think about the discipline, and if one could agree on the existence of a single IR discipline, the TRIP project engaged in an ambitious ten-country survey about 'the state of the discipline' (Jordan et al. 2009). The choice of the ten countries surveyed then (Australia, Canada, Ireland, Israel, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States) reflects an obvious yet unmentioned selection criteria: these countries use English as the main language of scientific communication. If no consensus could be reached as to whether IR was an American discipline per se, there could at least be an implicit consensus that to be considered and acknowledged — and thus evaluated, measured, and assessed — the discipline(s) of IR had to be Anglophone by definition. This presumption also underpinned Stephen Walt's recent commentary on the persistent dominance of Anglo-Saxon scholarship in IR. 'I'm still struck', he admitted, 'by the relative dearth of “big thinking” on global affairs from people outside the trans-Atlantic axis, including continental Europe. And by “big thinking” I mean ideas and arguments that immediately trigger debates that cross national boundaries, and become key elements in a global conversation' (Walt 2011).
Topic:
International Relations and Sociology
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Israel, South Africa, Australia, Ireland, Singapore, New Zealand, and Hong Kong

138. Haile Selassie: Champion of Reconciliation

Author:
Thomas P. Melady and J. Cushman Laurent
Publication Date:
04-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Council of American Ambassadors
Abstract:
The late Emperor of Ethiopia, His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I (1892- 1975), may be known for his emotionally charged appeal to the League of Nations in June 1936, but his legacy goes far beyond this one speech. Among his many quotes and discourses, perhaps his most influential and compelling address occurred on May 5, 1941, after he led British, South African, Ethiopian and other African forces into the capital of Addis Ababa and declared victory over the brutal Italian Fascist occupation.
Political Geography:
South Africa and Ethiopia

139. Rising Democracies and the Arab Awakening: Implications for Global Democracy and Human Rights

Author:
Ted Piccone and Emily Alinikoff
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on International Cooperation
Abstract:
As the emerging global order takes shape, debate is growing more intense around the trajectory of the rising powers and what their ascendency to positions of regional and international influence means for the United States, its traditional allies, and global governance more broadly. Commentary about these rising powers— often referred to in a generic way as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) but actually encompassing a dozen or so countries largely represented in the G-20—ranges from alarmist to sanguine. Pessimists argue that China, with its impressive economic growth and increasingly global reach, is well-positioned to challenge the United States' role of global superpower and to weaken the commitment of other rising powers, and various international organizations, to liberal values. More optimistic analysts insist that the rise of middle powers, most of which are democracies of varying stripes, bodes well for the world: millions are being lifted out of poverty, rule of law is taking hold and the international system is bound to be a more inclusive, representative one.
Topic:
Democratization, Development, Economics, Globalization, Human Rights, International Trade and Finance, Markets, Poverty, and Governance
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, India, South Africa, Brazil, and Arabia

140. Breaking Free from Europe: Why Africa Needs Another Model of Regional Integration

Author:
Peter Draper
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The International Spectator
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
Support for regional economic integration in Africa runs high amongst the continent's international development partners and African elites. However, its expression in European forms of economic integration is not appropriate to regional capacities and in some cases may do more harm than good. This lacuna is exacerbated by technical and theoretical analyses rooted either in economics or international relations literature. This article sets out to reconceptualise the foundations of African economic integration by reviewing key debates within each literature and comparing the results across disciplinary boundaries. Overall, it is concluded that a much more limited approach is required, one that prioritises trade facilitation and regulatory cooperation in areas related primarily to the conduct of business; underpinned by a security regime emphasizing the good governance agenda at the domestic level. Care should be taken to design the ensuing schemes in such a way as to avoid contributing to major implementation and capacity challenges in establishing viable and legitimate states. In doing so, the presence of regional leaders with relatively deep pockets - South Africa in the Southern African case - points to the imperative of building such limited regional economic arrangements around key states.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Governance
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, and South Africa