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4811. The Geopolitics of Energy Development in the Caspian Region: Regional Cooperation or Conflict?

Author:
Vadim Rubin
Publication Date:
12-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University
Abstract:
The Caspian Basin has emerged in recent years as a major focus of international affairs for a combination of political, economic, and geostrategic reasons. In the immediate aftermath of the Soviet Union's dissolution in the early 1990s the region's newly independent states were overshadowed by Russia and attracted little Western and U.S. attention. But over the past several years this region has attracted growing attention from Western policymakers and scholars, as well as the media and the private sector. One of the main reasons for this new focus on the Caspian is its sizable energy reserves. In addition to its potential as a significant oil producer, however, it is also the Caspian's geostrategic location, its diverse mix of ethnic groups, and its unsettled intrastate and interstate conflicts that make it both an enticing and challenging region.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Democratization, Development, Energy Policy, and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Caspian Sea

4812. Catch-Up; Why Poor Countries Are Becoming Richer, Democratic, Increasingly Peaceable, and Sometimes More Dangerous

Author:
Henry S. Rowen
Publication Date:
08-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
It is easy to be confused about the world's prospect. On the one hand, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire, many millions of people have been freed from economic and political shackles that had long kept them under authoritarian rule and in poverty—or at least far poorer than they should be. On the other hand, several parts of the world are beset by political turmoil and conflicts, rapid population increases, and falling incomes.
Topic:
Security, Democratization, Development, Emerging Markets, and Third World
Political Geography:
Soviet Union

4813. An Economic System for Post-War South-East Europe

Author:
Daniel Gros
Publication Date:
05-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
Economic recovery in the region requires stable currencies and open markets. The best way to establish these two basic conditions quickly is for the countries concerned to immediately link their currencies to the euro via a currency board and join the customs union of the EU. The EU should support this radical approach financially in two ways: a) through compensation for lost tariff revenues (conditional on clean and efficient border controls), and, b) emergency loans to acquire the necessary backing for the currency board. The currency boards should graduate to full euroisation in 2002. The total cost for the EU would be modest: around 2 billion euro p.a. if all countries participate. A market-led approach that pays local hosts to house refugees would ensure that the expenditure on refugees benefits the local economies.
Topic:
Development, Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Migration
Political Geography:
Europe and Eastern Europe

4814. Technological Change in the Telecommunications Industry

Author:
Judith Mariscal
Publication Date:
01-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
This document examines technological change in the telecommunications industry at the international level, from the perspective which sustains that this change as the driving force behind policy reform, based on the public interest theory of regulation, argues that the emergence and diffusion of new technologies has transformed the market structure in this sector ad as a consequence the nature of government policy. The dramatic technological innovation that this industry experienced transformed the once stable role of the state in telecommunications. Until recent years telecommunications policy amounted to a rather narrow one, that of determining fair rates of basic service provided by a regulated telephone monopoly. The resulting increases in productivity of these new technologies has led to a high segmentation of this industry; to a proliferation in the number and kinds of firms providing telecommunications services which in turn transformed the role of government in this industry. This document will provide an understanding of the traditional technologies available in telecommunications and explore the mergence of new technologies. The most significant result of innovation has been declining costs along with an increased capacity of equipment unites and reliability. Because of this rapid technological change, new firms have entered the market bringing differentiated and new products and services. The objective is to identify how technological innovation decreased costs and allowed the entry of new competitors. The policy consequences were to erode the natural monopoly standing of this industry, to make it more contestable and with this to transform its traditional regulatory structure. The first section of this document will examine the prevailing literature on regulation as sustained by the public interest theory of regulation. The following sections will describe the conventional technology employed in telecommunications, the technological innovations that have occurred as well as how these technologies have transformed this industry at a worldwide level.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, Industrial Policy, and Science and Technology

4815. Regional Policy in the Process of Integration

Author:
Aleko Djildjov and Vasil Marinov
Publication Date:
01-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EastWest Institute
Abstract:
There are different possible approaches to solving this problem. Considering its extreme complexity, and especially the lack of relevant practices in market economic conditions and in a democratic decision-making process, one of the possible solutions is the study and analysis, of the experience of other countries. If relevant, these experiences in countries which have already institutionalized regional development can be promoted. Although the experience of the countries in the EU, of which Bulgaria aspires to become a member, is important, it is even more important to study the current experience of countries in which conditions are closer to those in Bulgaria.
Topic:
Development, International Cooperation, and International Organization
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, and Bulgaria

4816. State Power and the Asian Crisis

Author:
Linda Weiss
Publication Date:
11-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
The Asian financial crisis has re-opened the debate about the role of the state in the region's industrialisation. Just when there seemed to be growing acknowledgment across the economic and political disciplines that certain kinds of state involvement were vital to the rapid upgrading of the Northeast Asian economies and that understanding what made states effective or ineffective was a crucial issue, along came the financial hurricane. Profound disarray of an economic and social nature has been the most immediate and important consequence of this watershed event. Theoretical disarray has followed closely in its path. This paper seeks to inject some theoretical rigour into the discussion of the Asian crisis. State power in the Asian setting - whether and in what way the state's transformative capacity is weak or robust - and how it relates to the impact of international markets is central to the argument that follows.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
Asia and Northeast Asia

4817. Social and Economic Policies to Prevent Complex Humanitarian Emergencies

Author:
Jeni Klugman
Publication Date:
01-1999
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Complex humanitarian emergencies have caused widespread death and suffering over the last two decades. While recent tragedies in Bosnia, Rwanda and Angola have made the world more aware of the terrible human toll involved, the international community has yet to develop effective policy responses to stem such crises.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Development, Economics, Genocide, Human Rights, Migration, and Politics
Political Geography:
Bosnia, Rwanda, and Angola

4818. The Albanian Aromanians' Awakening: Identity Politics and Conflicts in Post-Communist Albania

Author:
Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers
Publication Date:
03-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)
Abstract:
Today, many thousands of Aromanians (also known as "Vlachs") live quite compactly in Northern Greece, Macedonia (FYROM) and southern Albania; and there are still traces of Vlach-Aromanian and Aromanian populations in Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Romania. In Albania, they were recently estimated at about 200,000 by the English scholar Tom Winnifrith. In Albanian communist times, Aromanians were not recognised as a separate minority group, officially considered to be almost completely assimilated. However, in the early post-communist transition period, a vivid Aromanian ethnic movement emerged in Albania and it became part of a recent global Balkan Aromanian initiative. The Albanian Aromanians' new emphasis of their ethnicity can be seen as a pragmatic strategy of adjustment to successes and failures in the Albanian political transition and to globalisation. It is exactly the re-vitalisation of the conflict between followers of a pro-Greek and a pro-Romanian Aromanian identification that serves to broaden the scope of options for potential exploitation.
Topic:
Development, Ethnic Conflict, and Politics
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe and Albania

4819. Growth, Poverty and Inequality in Latin America

Author:
William Smith and Roberto Korzeniewicz
Publication Date:
05-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Latin American and Iberian Studies at Columbia University
Abstract:
The crystallization of the so-called “Washington Consensus” in the late 1980s sparked intense debates regarding the likely social impact of macroeconomic stabilization and structural adjustment. Academic critics and political opponents argued that Washingtonian reforms, and neoclassical economics more broadly, lacked a coherent theory of growth, and were bound to result in long-term negative trends in popular welfare and social inequality. Advocates of neoliberal restructuring, in contrast, while recognizing that market-oriented reforms could lead initially to a decline in output and standards of living, were confident that these reforms eventually would lead to sustainable growth and, as a consequence, greater equality and enhanced social welfare. A decade later we revisit this debate to evaluate recent trends in economic growth, poverty and inequality, and to assess accompanying shifts in the theoretical, policy, and political terrains.
Topic:
Development and Economics
Political Geography:
Washington, South America, Latin America, Central America, and Caribbean

4820. Indonesia in Transition

Author:
Michael P. Taylor
Publication Date:
09-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Abstract:
The Schlesinger Working Group on Strategic Surprises held its first two sessions in the fall of 1999, convening practitioners and area experts to discuss Indonesia immediately before and after that country's presidential selection. Participants debated the composition of the new government, the prospect of further regional separatism, and the future role of the military, and the political and social impact of the continuing financial crisis, among other issues. Many expected that the broad coalition-style government that emerged under the leadership of Abdurrahman Wahid would offer short-term stability at the expense of a decisive policy direction. The center would hold in the short term but be weakened.
Topic:
Development, Ethnic Conflict, and International Political Economy
Political Geography:
Indonesia and Asia