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While criticisms of International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment programs date back to their inception in the early 1980s, there has been a trend in more recent literature away from critiques focused on both the underlying assumptions of the SAPs and their consequences, and toward critiques focused more on policy implementation than the theory behind the policies. This paper is a first attempt to systematically gather information on critiques of the Fund by examining the case of Ghana, a country frequently touted by the Fund as being a great success story, yet one that continues to lag in terms of human development (135/177). The past twenty-five years of Fund policy in Ghana and critiques of these policies by scholars and experts on economic development is compiled in an attempt to detail who is making critiques, the content of these critiques, and to whom the Fund is most likely to pay attention. This paper attempts to demonstrate this process quantitatively. The hope is that this data will allow us to pose some hypotheses about theoretical hegemony in the field and why the IMF is able to resist fundamental change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The restructuring of the international economy and development of global supply chains has altered the routes and manner in which goods are traded. The port infrastructure that connects economies to the system of global trade has changed significantly in response to containerization of manufactured trade. The financing of port development has also evolved as governments have transferred investment responsibilities to the private sector. This paper proposes that changes in the global economy, maritime industry, and port financing models have created barriers to port development for countries on the global periphery. While this paper recognizes that port infrastructure is not the only determinant of economic development, it stresses that these barriers have a direct influence on a country's ability participate in multinational production processes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overall objective of this paper is as such to assess the relevance and effectiveness ofSwedish environmental aid. This is evaluated by comparing how poverty-environmentlinkages are conceptualized at different levels within Sida, and by comparing theSwedish conceptualizations with how poverty-environment linkages are conceptualized"ideally", i.e using a global norm or global program logic as a baseline. In a first step, thispaper thus sets out to develop an ideal conceptualization representing the global norm orprogram logic of how the linkages between poverty and the environment ought to beconceptualized. This analytical tool then serves as a baseline against which policy coherencecan be assessed. More than evaluating this external or horizontal coherence, the paper alsocompares conceptualizations within Sida, i.e. internal or vertical coherence. This is done bycomparing policy documents with the responses from interviews with field personnel at oneof the Swedish embassies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractSince 2000, China has a major economic player in Africa. China's role in Africa has manifested not only in trade but in investments in different sectors of the African economy, and in the provision of aid. There has been a significant increase in the flow and stock of China's FDI in Africa since 2000. The increase is largely driven by expansion in China-Africa trade, the search for new energy sources and the need to elevate China's international stature in the world. This paper examines the major policy changes in China which acted as fillip to Chinese firms; the characteristics and patterns of China's FDI; and the salience of Africa. The paper also assesses whether China's FDI is a catalyst to generate industrial development or a Trojan horse that will create a dependent linkage between the African economy and China ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper responds to recent analytical and empirical demands to investigate and explain patterns of change within contemporary processes of global capitalism. More specifically, it contributes to understandings of the impact of increased global competition on the development trajectories of small island states. The paper examines how Seychelles and Mauritius, societies on the periphery of the world economy, have come to depend upon global linkages and the impact of increasing global competition on their socio-economic landscape. It focuses on their responses to these recent changes, the forms of economic restructuring that they are adopting and the consequences of these for their national political economies. More specifically, the paper demonstrates that the increasingly precarious position that small island states occupy globally have created new, and reworked existing, local inequalities. In so doing, we also seek to contribute to the literature on small island states which we argue tends to construct them as internally undifferentiated entities whose development strategies are framed primarily as a response to external global forces. This literature is also inclined to be ideologically monolithic, dominated as it is by proposals for liberalisation that further homogenise small island states and conceal their historical and political specificities. We suggest that rather than concentrating on developing generalisable accounts of their problems, detailed theoretical and empirical work into the national political economies, societies and histories of small island states can contribute to a better understanding of the specific challenges with which they are confronted, the forms of development which might be more appropriate, and the consequences of the restructuring programmes upon which they are embarked. While we do not directly address all these issues here, this paper provides an initial attempt to challenge prevailing orthodoxies in understandings of small island states and their responses to global change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that state institutions and legal mechanisms are not only mediators of citizenship. Instead, globally configured expectations and interactions may shape citizenship in ways that do not conform to rights articulated in government legislation or international institutional mandates. Adopting the concept of cultural citizenship from anthropology, the paper analyzes de facto citizenship at two intersections of international development policy and Ecuadorian indigenous identity politics: one involving national water legislation and the other entailing a local irrigation project. Based on ethnographic research, it shows how involvement of indigenous people in regimes of resource access and decision-making is contingent on their meeting Ecuadorian and global elites' perceptions of civility and progress, even though rights to such involvement are recognized in the Ecuadorian constitution and international legal instruments. While the indigenous peoples' organizations active in each scenario are part of the same national confederation and share political agendas, they fashion their citizenship differently, according to the way that they negotiate or contest the policy terms in each case. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Madagascar's independence, the Malagasy state's ability to meet its development and environmental goals has remained weak. Yet Madagascar has never suffered a shortage of foreign assistance. What explains such weak development and environmental performance despite steady inflows of foreign aid? Additionally, why has aid continually come to Madagascar despite the state's weak performance? This paper argues that the gap between foreign aid and development performance is rooted in donor competition to give aid for the purpose of advancing their foreign interests. In turn, the state exploits this donor competition to stay afloat. This process of exploiting aid creates a situation of mutual dependency between donors and the state. This is a departure from theories that attribute poor performance solely to recipient countries' aid dependency. To illustrate the dynamics of competition to aid, the paper examines state-donor relations in Madagascar's environmental sector in the past two decades. It suggests that influencing government policies (for donors) and resource capture and redistribution (for the state), rather than conservation per se, are the de facto goals of conservation politics. It then assesses the extent to which the dynamics of conservation politics apply beyond this specific arena. It concludes that what trumps conservation and the development it should enable is neither volume nor type of foreign aid but the absence of institutions that effectively align donor and state incentives with strong development performance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HIV/AIDS is considered not only as the greatest global public health disaster but also as the biggest "development challenge" of the twenty first century affecting the most economically productive population and threatening development achievements in many areas. How HIV/AIDS as a disease entered in the development discourse making it the primary agenda of development in the Third World? How neoliberal globalization as a complex socio-economic, cultural and political process has shaped the discourses of development and HIV/AIDS in the developing countries? This paper explicates some of the complex issues surrounding the above questions and suggests that part of the answer lies in the way Third World countries have been historically produced through development discourses as "underdeveloped," and the way in which HIV/AIDS was later repackaged as the disease of the poor and a direct fallout of "development." Implicit in this argument, we use the notion of "discourse" of a disease that took place in the First World through which "truth" and so "power" was produced. By producing such truths, developed countries created a field of intervention over the developing countries through which "power" could be exercised. Thus HIV/AIDS as a development agenda is primarily Eurocentric that has been universalized through neoliberal globalization. Using an international political-economic approach to the study of disease and development, this paper explicates how the discourses of development and HIV/AIDS facilitated by a process of neoliberal globalization have affected the HIV prevention and care efforts in Third World societies with special reference to India. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to dominant foreign policy thinking fragile statehood is linked to a range of threats to international security and, therefore, requires new solutions. Whole-of-government-approaches, reiterating the necessity to act coherently with regard to these new risks, have not only become the linchpin of most development and security agendas but appear to be almost indisputable. The internationalised practices of development and security not only refer to instable or stateless regions such as Somalia or Afghanistan but produce ambiguous effects in a wide range of countries in the South perceived as being strategically important. However, the material effects of the post-9/11 securitised discourse in North-South relations for the social fabric have largely remained neglected.Our paper sets out to combine the analysis of this policy shift with regard to fragile states with an investigation of its appropriation and consequences in a particular society. Assuming that state fragility is not a new phenomenon we argue in the first part that the phenomena of state fragility and non-state forms of social domination in Africa have entered the discourse of central donors mainly as a threat to regional and international security. Drawing on an analysis of key policy documents of Western donors between 1995 and today, we show that a securitisation of Africa policies has taken place, shifting the Western emphasis to the containment of risks emanating from undergoverned spaces. In the second part it will be analysed what transformations this hegemonic discourse has undergone during its translation into national and local contexts using Kenya as a case study. Based on extended fieldwork in Nairobi as well as on an array of qualitative interviews, the paper will argue that on different levels actors have the capacity to appropriate the discourse and its practices. This will be complemented by exemplary reactions of targeted groups to current security practices. Kenya is a particularly instructive case: On the one hand, after the terrorist attacks in 1998 and 9/11, Kenya was declared an anchor state for stability in East Africa by the US and receives large scale security-related support (expertise, technology, counter-terrorism and development assistance) from Western countries. Consequently, Kenyan security agencies pursued a policy of religious and ethnic profiling against certain groups. On the other hand, the pressure of Northern governments to implement an anti-terrorism bill led to a mobilisation of significant parts of the population against the proposed legislation. The paper analyses the interplay between knowledge production, its translation into security practices and reactions to them in order to come to a more comprehensive understanding of the social life of the post-9/11 security regime. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationally, it is evident how the Environment has become a fundamental part of the interdependence agenda that characterizes the current international system. This trend, implies not only new theoretical approaches to the discipline of International Relations, but also the emergence of new roles and spaces for actors such as states, multinational corporations, International Organizations and NGOs, among others. In this context, perhaps one of the major changes lies in the interaction of developing countries. Beyond the debate around the concept and its pertinence today, because of their characteristics, developing countries are called to play a specific role in Global Environmental Politics. This paper analyzes the environmental dimension of the international system current context, in order to understand the role of developing countries in the evolution of Environmental Politics and to define the main elements, interests concerns and challenges behind their participation, and how this process can contribute to its political and economic positioning on the international system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There exist a great number of measurement projects intended to benchmark the human condition as it relates to aspirations of human dignity. One thing these efforts have in common is that they are indicators of outcomes, or records of events. Measuring outcomes is methodologically appropriate and substantively useful for a great variety of purposes. Further, some data projects include measures of legal guarantees, as well, to provide some proxy indicator of a state's intentions - often to be matched with the outcomes indicators to show gaps in law and practice as well as to examine limitations in a state's capacity to enforce law. However, the current attention being paid to economic human rights, or development rights, provides a distinct measurement challenge, as prevailing international law tasks states to do the best possible given extant resources. This is part of the framework of "progressive realization" of rights. Thus, outcomes measures of economic rights, typically based on wealth, are unfair to poorer states, by definition. In this paper, we propose a measurement of state effort to respect economic rights given available resources. We feel this substantively matches the progressive realization framework and alleviates the inequity of existing measures that are almost perfectly correlated with national wealth. As a demonstration, we produce effort scores for 100+ countries for the years 1990, 1995, and 2000. We also provide a simple examination of some possible associates of government effort to respect these rights. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on transnational activism has over the last decades contributed to a better understanding of the role of non-state actors promoting democratic reforms. It has addressed, for instance, how civil society groups have created coalitions to change human rights and environmental policies in different parts of the world. More recently, transnational activism has also addressed the reform of international regimes governing global finance, intellectual property rights or the universal access to medicine. This paper analyzes institutional and ideational changes in the governance of the Bretton Woods regime over the last three decades. It portrays the institutional and ideational impacts of the transnational campaign against "structural adjustment" and it assesses the differential impact on the reform of the IMF and the World Bank. It suggests the changes should be seen as a stepping stone in the movement to "embed" the global economy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The argument that climate change is dominated by a managerial discourse has been shown and illustrated. In light of the recent Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change (December 2009), we confirm in this paper that the management discourse has become hegemonic and reflect on the political and social spheres. It has gained over other discourses, and we show that even NGOs used as an illustration of the profligacy discourse are now promoting technical solutions itself. In addition, we show that to explain this dominance, it is necessary to turn to the macro-discourse of development (a highly technical one itself) and to draw parallels between the development and the environmental fields, both of them having been linked through the sustainable development discourse. The international climate politics has indeed to be understood in the context of the global debate on development and of North-South relations. In that respect, we show that the North-South divide is now an integral component of the climate change discussions and that a contradictory double discourse has emerged, opposing the development imperative to the emissions reduction effort imperative. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infant mortality (IM), defined typically as the number of babies per 1,000 to die before their first birthday, is a global health problem of epic scope. In many developing countries, the IM rate is similar to that of the US in the 19th century and in disadvantaged regions of the U.S.—such as the rural South, urban wastelands, and Native American reservations. Almost universally, infant mortality is assessed via an abstract numeric register, and more often than not, the IM rate represents something else, such as progress toward the MDGs. Absent from the widely circulating IM rates are representations of lifeless infant bodies, grieving mothers and fathers, and vulnerable communities. Seeing IM as merely an abstract abacus, we argue, has profound implications for how we understand and respond to child death. IM as a numeric object or 'fact' prevents understanding child death within contexts of familial and social trauma, structural violence, and social justice. This paper is part of a multi-sited ethnography of the transnational biopolitics of infant mortality. Here, we first problematize prevailing conceptions of IM and then present findings from a pilot study of aid workers alongside data from global public health documents and first-person narratives. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democracy promotion has been a mainstay in the toolbox of US foreign policy over the past 30 years. The rationale for democracy promotion is largely designed to turn autocracies into democracies based on the belief that "Democracies create free markets that offer economic opportunity, make for more reliable trading partners, and are far less likely to wage war on one another." However, countries with only limited democratic processes are actually more prone intrastate and interstate violence. Therefore, pushing a country from autocracy to an autocracy with elections or a partial democracy may inadvertently cause a greater security problem. In order to avoid the unplanned creation of such hybrid regimes, a greater understanding of the factors that affect levels of democracy is required. This paper is a quantitative exploration of the effect of structural factors upon the level of democracy. While the interaction of key actors (e.g. civil society, the military, and the ruling executive) may be the final arbiters in determining a country's level of democracy, the political preferences of those actors are influenced by structural factors. From the literature, the structural factors with the most explanatory power upon both democracy and actor preferences include security, economic development, and the diffusion of norms. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is essentially a dialogue with Alfred Montero's insightful idea of approaching the generic and controversial concept of "development" through a more empirical notion of "productivity-enhancing synergy" between public and private agents at the heart of developmental outcomes, in his comparative analysis of Brazil's and Spain's subnational governments (Montero, 2002). As a way of discussing his contributions, we decided to subject it to a tentative quantitative test, based on another pair of countries, Brazil and Mexico, in a context of stabilization of the market reforms and of reasonably sustained growth that is different from his original setting. Based on preliminary data gathered, we will indicate that there is a high correlation between market-conforming institutions and developmental performance of the states of Brazil and Mexico, without taking into account how strategic actors and institutions interacted through a "productivity-enhancing synergy". Put it simply, this restricted test will allow us to bring into some questions to Montero's concept of "productivity-enhancing synergy" to possibly advance his contributions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether the governance of global trade relations by the World Trade Organization (WTO) impairs the ability of developing countries to pursue their development. It analyzes the implications of WTO rules to the policy space for devel ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between human rights and the success of microcredit lending institutions. We examine whether the existing human rights environment, and/or the rights environment for women specifically, helps or hinders the effectiveness of this grassroots development approach. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the Cold War, democratic transition tools have increasingly shaped the development discourse. This paper focuses on structural, organizational and political aspects of European aid in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It analyzes different variables that affect the European Union's (EU) foreign assistance decisions, including regional economic growth, EU enlargement factors, and EU capacity. Contrary to conventional reasoning, it argues that the EU does not pursue altruistic goals by promoting economic development in the Balkans, but seeks regional development that is beneficial to new EU members such as Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania. Also, by using conditionality, the EU pursues a double strategy. On the one hand, it puts pressure on the recipient countries to adhere to liberal trade policies, diffusing its free market ideology. On the other hand, the EU is "buying time" in order to reform its institutions and implement structural adjustments, a sine qua non not only for future enlargements, but also for its ontological survival. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pundits and scholars alike have long questioned the motivation behind foreign aid: is it given based on recipient-need or donor-interest? Even with 30 years of scholarship there is still no definitive conclusion. This paper re-invigorates the debate by ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Findings from recent surveys of public opinion and development aid show an overwhelming level of support for the principle of aid to poor countries and official development aid. Such findings have buoyed policymakers who have argued that high-levels of support are necessary for increasing aid levels, notably to the 0.7% (ODA/GNI ratio) goal for all OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) countries. In this paper, we argue that the assumed linkage between public opinion and aid is faulty on several grounds. First, there is no empirical evidence showing positive covariation between public opinion and development aid. Second, measures of public support suffer from poor validity. Third, measures of support do not control for knowledge-levels and perceptions of aid effectiveness. Fourth, there is little understanding of the factors that motivate support for development aid or concern for poverty in the first place. We conclude by arguing for survey instruments that remedy the issues raised above and for targeted development education programs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates empirically the political determinants of stock market development. Given the centrality of financial institutions in arguments about economic and political development, we extend the discussion by testing a number of competing hypotheses. First, the legal origins school, which argues common law proxies stronger investor protections than civil law; second, the electoral law school which argues proportional representation provides weaker protections than do majoritarian ones; third, the institutional economics view which argues that checks on policymaking discretion such as veto gates protect the property rights of investors and encourage investment; and fourth, a line of reasoning that looks at cleavage patterns among voters and interest groups: Left vs. right, where it is usually assumed that left governments frighten investors, versus a set of arguments which reverses the sign: workers and owners align against managers in favor of greater transparency and shareholder protection. We test the implications of the different arguments using a panel data set of 82 countries over the period 1975-2004. Our dependent variable is the level stock market capitalization. We find preliminary evidence of partisanship effects. Contrary to received wisdom, our results suggest that left-leaning governments are more likely to be associated with higher stock market capitalization than their counterparts to the right and center of the political spectrum. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how recent trends have affected the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in the context of changing motivations for foreign aid, greater integration of Canadian foreign policy instruments and new pressures on the agency from other Canadian actors. It finds that increasing budgets and interdepartmental coordination have created a sort of paradox: As resources increase and the agency gains importance, CIDA's margin to manoeuvre is decreasing. Greater policy integration and the increased politicization of aid have reduced CIDA's autonomy and capacity to fight poverty and actually promote development. This could be because as CIDA's budget grows, it wields resources that are more attractive for "capture" by parties more interested in Canada's own security, diplomatic or commercial interests than in development assistance that actually focuses on poverty reduction. Alternatively, this may be explained by that fact that CIDA's policy subordination makes the government more willing to channel resources through the agency in order to achieve non-development-related foreign policy interests. If successful from the point of view of Canadian interests, increased politicization and securitization of aid could further increase CIDA's importance and reduce its autonomy. If current initiatives fail, CIDA could see itself marginalized from the rest of government, regaining autonomy but enjoying more modest financial resources. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ireland is widely considered to be a “success story” within the field of development studies as its economy has been transformed over the past two decades. Yet in tourist literature Ireland continues to be marketed largely as a pastoral country that time forgot. This paper will investigate the politics of reimagining place within the Irish tourism model. How have government and private sector actors reinvented Ireland as a tourist attraction in the wake of the Celtic Tiger? How has economic growth and structural change have in turn changed the nature of the tourism sector today. Tourism remains one of the largest employers and sources of foreign exchange for the country. How has economic transformation affected the industry in Ireland?The findings are important not only for our understanding of tourism in Ireland, but also for larger issues of tourism and development and the IPE of tourism. Specifically, how do tourism stakeholders reinvent place in order to maintain or increase visitor flows? What are the consequences of such actions for hosts and guests? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its growing prominence among policy-makers (not to mention hundreds of millions of the world's poor), remittances is a topic much ignored among scholars. Arguably among the most important but most underappreciated phenomena in international political economy, migration and remittances involve enormous transfers of people and money. Most analysis to date is concerned with the relevance of such transfers to economic development at the household level, and early indicators seem promising. However, to spur long-term development such transfers will need to increase political responsiveness and the provision of public goods. This paper develops a theory for how such an interaction might occur and conducts preliminary tests using municipal-level data from Mexico. Using instrumental variables and a two-stage least squares estimation, I conclude that remittances have a positive though moderate effect on the provision of public infrastructure such as sanitary sewer systems. This effect is only realized, however, in municipalities that have both high poverty and high electoral contestation. In addition to calling for additional analysis, the absence of stronger impact is taken to suggest that to date remittances have done little to increase electoral participation or political responsiveness. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the many uses of the term "fair trade," perhaps the least understood is the development of alternative markets intended to reduce poverty by guaranteeing farmers or craftspeople a "fair" price for their products. Fair trade coffee is now common in upscale coffee shops and is increasingly found in large, mainstream grocery stores. But relatively little is known about how these markets actually work or how effective they are or could be in improving the lot of smallholder producers in developing countries. Currently, fair-trade products occupy a relatively small and decidedly niche market, though they are growing rapidly. Using the "market for standards" model developed by the author (with Richard B. Freeman) in Can Labor Standards Improve Under Globalization? (Washington: Institute for International Economics, 2003), this paper examines how these fair trade markets work and what the prospects are for further expansion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa has embarked on a new phase of capitalist development, powered in large part by Chinese investment. After three decades of stagnation, the continent as a whole is witnessing growth rates of five percent per year and becoming once again a focal point of geopolitical dispute. This paper will focus on the Sino-African relationship and ask two questions in particular: what is China's strategy in Africa? And what is its likely developmental impact? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many places in the Third World, microlending gives small loans to women for micro-enterprises. Measuring the efficacy of such microfinance, thus, ought to measure the change in the economic status of women in these states. This research uses simple regression to test for a correlation between increases in microlending to women, over time, and increases in household welfare in Bangladesh. Grameen Bank, which originated in Bangladesh in the mid-1970s, provides the most accessible data for measuring change from 1976-2002. In addition, microfinance that targets women is active in a variety of poor states in the world. Albania, Bolivia, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Cambodia, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Nicaragua, Peru, Philippines, and Uganda are a representative sample across regions of the world, and across the size of loans received by states as microfinance. The data for these states are for one period of time, so that the test is for a correlation between the level of microcredit and women's income relative to men's across states, rather than in one state, across time. In addition, this research looks at the impact of participation in microlending on women's reproductive health and women's sense of empowerment. Finally, this paper discusses why quantitative tests for betterment of women's lives may not be the most useful way to study changes in women's status in the Third World. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mozambique's development record has been hailed by the aid community as one of the continent's few successful stories, while Guinea-Bissau remains inextricably linked to the label of failure. The two countries are understood to represent the epitome of what is ultimately right and wrong with Africa. Praise and blame, optimism and pessimism, tolerance with deviations from the prescribed model or pure abandonment - these contrasting attitudes have characterised the western aid community's discourse regarding the two states for the past two decades. And yet, Mozambique and Guinea- Bissau have maintained a rather close position in the aid community's post-Cold War most celebrated measurements of human development and poverty reduction. Indeed, the narratives attached to both states do not seem to be driven by the donor community's own professed measurement of human development insofar as indicators do not bear a clear relation with how the states are internationally perceived. What then drives the aid community's labelling of a recipient country's development trajectory as a success or a failure and what are the implications of those labels? Adding to the existing literature accounting for the geopolitical and neoliberal explanations, this article uses a poststructuralist approach concerned with disclosing how discursively and relationally shaped identities come into play in the development aid encounter. It discusses the reasons behind the labels of success and failure as well as how they came about and have been hitherto sustained. The article argues the process of labelling creates, and temporarily freezes, subject positions within the aid system, deeply embedded in institutional and personal donor-recipient relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes within its scope the broad disciplines of Development Studies and International Relations both of which, I argue are predicated upon an implicit narrative of history that takes the state form as the locus of enunciation. That is within both broad realms of study, a narrative of history as the history of the state form, history as the history of the nation state, informs and motivates the methodologies, assumptions and categories of analysis of both disciplines. However, utilizing the arguments made within the field of postcolonial studies, this paper argues that both disciplines within the broader human sciences are also predicated upon an elision or writing out of European colonial history. Thus, from this perspective, it is the writing out of colonial history that makes each discipline and their implicit narrative of history organised around the state form possible. Recent developments within politics and sociology around the incidence of globalisation and the recent flurry of academic and popular writing around the existence of a ‘new’ form of imperialism have produced a discursive tug of war over the relevance and viability of the state form under neo-liberal globalisation. This paper argues that the confused nature of these debates stems in part from the absence of colonial history and an absence of theorisation about empire as a form of politics within the discipline of politics and IR (Hardt and NEgri notwithstanding). Subsequently, I argue that in order to yoke together within the same analytical field both European colonialism and the practice and politics of development in the Twentieth Century, a new theory of history is required, one that places colonial history and the form of empire squarely in the centre of our consideration of global politics, one that explores the connections between empire and the state form, one that theorises the history of capital together with the history of the European colonial project, one that teases out the axes of continuity between the 20th Century trajectory of development and the 19th Century colonial project. Yoking development together with colonialism in the same analytic field needs to be fore grounded by a methodology of inquiry that theorises historical continuity rather than narrative rupture. [364 words] ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that reconceptualising production within the relations of global development is an important step in overcoming what the editors of this volume term 'anachronistic approaches' in contemporary development theory. Notwithstanding the centrality of production within global capitalism, its status within critical development studies is at low ebb. This is partly a consequence of the mainstream ascendancy of neoclassical economics and its methodological autism, but also because the alternative approaches that development theory currently draws upon - institutional economics and global commodity chains - offer too narrow a perspective to fill the void. One of the weaknesses of these perspectives is the way in which labour - both as a social practice and as a productive potential embodied in human bodies - is ignored. This neglect is problematic because it is impossible to adequately conceptualise questions of identity, power, (re)distribution and socio-economic change without placing labour and the process of production - in both its material and social elements - at the forefront of critical development theory. To overcome this labour blindness, the paper argues that we should focus upon the interplay between locally embedded production relations and the abstraction of these economic activities in the form of market price and inter-firm competition. The dynamic relationship between these two processes - embedding and abstraction - provides a unifying conceptual basis on which we can examine how workers and their communities both produce and contest social reproduction across different geographic locales and social contexts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Thomas Friedman and Jeffrey Sachs have hijacked the development debate with their best-selling tomes The End of Poverty and The World is Flat. Their prominent exposure in the US media, and endorsements by superstars like Bono, has narrowed the debate into simplistic slogans of ?more aid? and ?more trade? that serve to maintain the neoliberal development paradigm. They have done so by peddling a series of myths about the poor, development, and the global economy that ignore critical insights about the central role of citizen groups, basic rights, the environment, and governments that took center stage in the late 1990s. In disentangling five key myths, this paper moves: from delineating what is wrong with the ?new? Sachs-Friedman development paradigm (and what is not-so-new about it); to assessing its impact on policy debates about poverty, trade and development; to analyzing challenges posed by the ?alter-globalization paradigm.? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will look at the spread of social marketing as a global communication technology for translating public health expertise into community practices in a post-colonial world. An interdisciplinary field based in the methods and tools of the behavioral sciences and the entertainment industry social marketing?s roots are transnational and go back to the 1960s and programs in international development. Before being adopted in the US, Europe, and Australia, many of the contemporary commercial marketing methods and techniques used in health promotion were first developed during the 1970s and 1980s for family planning and breast feeding campaigns in South and East Asia, Latin America, and Africa by US private firms and adopted by US-based foundations and international NGOs and organizations. This was often done in conjunction with the World Bank, US government agencies, and national and local governments. As its focus, this paper will look at a social marketing firms (for example, The Academy for Educational Development) and its worldwide activities in terms of claims for social marketing as a flexible, ?systems approach of universal application regardless of problem or local situation?; methods of segmenting populations and assessing consumers? ?needs? (through focus groups, etc.); the choice of communication media; and neoliberal forms of government. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a case study of Afghanistan to explore the use of human rights and gender awareness frameworks in a development context, generally, and the policies and activities aimed at addressing the needs of women and/or gender-differentiated interests, in particular. Focusing on two multi-lateral, UN development organizations (UNDP, UNIFEM) and two local, grassroots development organizations (AWN, Oruj) working in Afghanistan, this study asks the following questions: (1) When, if ever, are human rights framings and gender awareness used to inform the discourse and policies of these development agencies? (2) What are the challenges of implementing human rights and gender awareness frameworks in development work? In order to answer these questions, this research primarily draws upon interviews with employees and consultants of those agencies and organizations in Afghanistan, as well as to my field notes and an analysis of UN policy reports and material culture of AWN and Oruj. This paper proposes that human rights and gender awareness frameworks are present in these organizations' discourses, but that the applications of such frameworks have been riddled with challenges. By examining how UN and local development workers understand and justify the incorporation of human rights and gender awareness into their work, as well as the problems that accompany their presence, this paper aims to engender a greater understanding of the forces shaping development and rights work in Afghanistan. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the dynamic roles that youth play in global conflict situations and explores how they have been mobilized effectively as actors in civil violence, with an eye to applications for peacebuilding and development. Considered in historical perspective, young people are posited as key "engines" of socio-political change, but seldom its primary "engineers" (the ideational leaders and power brokers in government, civil society, militant and gang networks). Case studies drawn from around the world demonstrate how youth marginalization links with demographic stressors (such as "youth bulges") to serve as catalyst and exacerbating factor in civil conflicts usually couched in terms of class, religion, ethnicity, and/or social anarchy. Lessons from these cases ground the paper's recommendations for implementing youth-focused development policies that create incentives to empower at-risk youth for more productive civic and economic participation in their home societies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper deals with the campaign against structural adjustment programs and conditionality by the World Bank and the IMF. I argue that this campaign takes place at both the global and local level.It involves transnational networks of civil society actors, but in order to succeed, they need the suppor of local authoriites. Advocacy groups in this arena have been limited by the impermeability of IFIs to external accountability. For this reason, I suggest that the role governments play in the South should be reassessed. I take the case of Argentina as an example of the potential for a heterodox alliance between activists and state officials in the developing world. My paper discusses the case of water privatization in Buenos Aires. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper tackles the essential question of who or what shapes and drives the policy and operational behavior of the World Bank? The central argument is that we need to examine both the external (political) and internal (bureaucratic culture) environments of the Bank. The paper begins by examining the theoretical and analytical tools employed by principal-agent models and sociological organizational culture to analyze organizational behavior. I then turn to the main focus of the paper, which is a detailed historical description and empirical analysis of the Bank’s dual environments. I start with the world’s Bank, focusing primarily on the Bank’s relationship with its principal member states and NGOs. I take special note of the Bank’s relationship with the U.S.. In the second half, I focus on the “Bank’s world”, investigating the internal bureaucratic politics and culture of the Bank. Specifically, I examine the sources and evolution of the Bank’s “intellectual culture” (characterized by its economistic, apolitical and technical rationality) and its ‘operational culture’ (portrayed as driven by approval and disbursement imperatives). ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current discourses on international political economy generally contend that the decade of the 1970s generated significant shifts in economic, intellectual and political spheres that continue to shape national and global development. On the economic level, these discourses claim that the period saw the emergence of a serious global recession characterized by decline in production, high inflation, crisis of profits for the majority of firms, technological developments, rise in government deficits and massive layoffs for workers. These economic developments and major changes in the political landscape of major countries in the global North—the rise of Margaret Thatcher in the UK, Helmut Kohl in Germany and Ronald Reagan in the United States—and intellectual shifts that called for the dismantling of the global Keynesian economic framework are highlighted as core factors that ushered in a new phase of globalization underpinned by neo-liberal economic discourse. In the context of African countries, analysts argue that these global economic, political and intellectual shifts have had significant impacts on the continent’s development process. In the economic realm, for instance, the core features of neo-liberal economic globalization are said to have contributed to an economic downward spiral in most African countries. These countries, however, are not the only ones that have faced major economic crisis, for as John Rapley has argued, the crisis of capital accumulation has been a core feature of the current phase of globalization in all parts of the world. In essence, the onset of this phase of globalization marked the end of the post-1945 ‘golden age’ of global capitalism which had seen significant economic growth in the global North and various parts of the global South. In Africa, the crisis of postcolonial capitalism was characterized by a serious economic crisis, evidenced by decline in economic surplus, levels of investment and savings, inability of African states to meet their debt obligations to public and private lenders, and failure of these states to maintain what Yusuf Bangura has termed as the post-colonial social contract. The developments that emerged globally in the 1970s have, over the years, seen states institute various economic and political strategies in efforts to address the economic crises and other contradictions generated by neo-liberal globalization. This paper’s objective is to examine the ways in which African states have responded to neo-liberal globalization, with a specific focus on their New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) initiative. The underlying argument of the paper is that African states, like other states elsewhere, have not been bystanders in the evolution of the contemporary phase of globalization and other global shifts that characterize the current global conjuncture. Situating my arguments within the critical international political economy tradition, the paper argues that the launching of NEPAD demonstrates the political agency of these states but contends that their agency is mediated by local and global factors and thus challenges the dominant theoretical perspectives to studies on African states especially the neoliberal approach that tends to represent their agency as unfettered by external developments. Please contact Eunice N. Sahle at eunice@email.unc.edu for a copy of the paper. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early years of the twenty-first century developing nations face an onslaught unlike any other in their troubled past. But rather than fearing colonial powers and rapacious armies they are now being besieged by an invisible invasion of 1s and 0s proliferating through fiber optic cables buried deep in the world?s oceans and from satellites flying high above the Earth?s atmosphere. One major problem, however, exists with this global metamorphosis ? developing nations, caught in the cross-hairs, have suffered the largest casualties. This work, therefore, moves forward with the belief that abridging the digital divide is central to our common global future. Building on the macro-level approach of social shaping theory this paper uses OLS multivariate regression analysis to determine the impact of political and economic variables on the International Telecommunication Union?s (ITU) 2002 Digital Access Index (DAI). Preliminary results reveal increased levels of openness, public expenditures on education, and political and civil liberties contribute to higher levels of technology adoption in developing nations. The results, however, for the poorest nations in the world indicate these macro-level policies have no effect on technological growth. The paper concludes with possible explanations for this discrepancy. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses under what conditions we can expect ‘armed group international agreements,’ i.e. quasi-formal diplomatic relations, contracts and accords between armed groups and intergovernmental organizations or states. Through an examination of the context of ‘Memorandums of Understanding’ with Somali faction militias and warlords as well as Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) the paper will argue that it is under the conditions of state collapse into an anarchic system or the rise of a de facto state that we can expect such agreements. The paper proposes that these relations can be explained in terms of a divide between ‘juridical sovereignty’, i.e. formal recognition, and ‘empirical sovereignty’, i.e. the de facto control of territory and populations. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates the explanatory value of using Gramscian concepts to explain outer space politics. It establishes a framework for understanding periods of change within the outer space development regime in terms of three epochs. The power politics intertwined with causing these changes are linked to the ascendance of free market neoliberal dominance over time and across different epochs. U.S. law has been used by political and economic elites to commercialize and privatize space technologies in order to encourage the growth of satellite telecommunications, remote sensing, space launch and transportation services, space stations and spaceports. Historical and ideological blocs are hidden sources of power which have served to maintain a pattern of dominance and the international political economy. Institutions have ushered in the consent for these trends. There is a myriad of new space laws and policies being created in rapid succession for the encouragement of private-sector participation in a newly proposed free market approach to outer space development. This paper argues that a Gramscian analysis provides a more adequate explanatory framework than the mainstream theories of realism or neoliberal institutionalism to elucidate current outer space politics. It takes into account the dominance of free market ideology, capitalism and U.S. power, in the Post Cold War era. This analysis reveals how U.S. power and globalization processes have impacted the outer space development regime and how this will continue to shape space law and international institutions as humankind ventures into the final frontier. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When George W. Bush announced that he would be nominating former US Deputy Defense Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, as the next president of the World Bank, a collective groan of anguish rang through much of the development community. The spectre of Wolfowitz and his neo-conservative agenda induced a degree of nostalgia for Wolfensohn even before his term had formally ended. This paper examines the changes in development theory, rhetoric and policy practice within the Bank in the James Wolfensohn era at the Bank. By mapping the changes in both form (the way in which the Bank relates to client countries) and content (the policy prescriptions it promotes) of the Bank, we argue that the Wolfowitz era is unlikely mark a strong change in direction. In spite of differences of emphasis, there nonetheless remain strong continuities in both form and content between Wolfensohn's era and the 'pre-emptive development' stance of the neo-conservative US executive branch, as demonstrated in its Millennium Challenge Account. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of writing on economic zones approaches the topic pragmatically as a question of economic outcomes or as a critique of governments and companies who use the zone to hide bad labor practices and discipline populations for global capital. These all focus, reasonably, on the economic logic of the zone. The story of the zone, however, cannot be explained through the logic of economics alone, especially since zones are sometimes pursued even when their economic impact may be measurably deleterious. In this paper I want to try and tell the story of the zone in a slightly different way, as a spatial form that has achieved global prominence not only because of its ability to attract and shape investment, but also because it attracts and shapes fantasies and aspirations of modernity. In the developing countries where the majority of zones are located, modernity has long become a heavily contested concept, burdened by its pathologies and emboldened by its eternal promises, inextricably intertwined with the contradictory legacies of colonialism and development. The zone, I argue, has come to occupy a significant location in the contemporary narrative of modernity, not only as a locus for economic development but as a form of urban space that embodies and channels classically modern dreams into a new locale. What I hope to trace, then, is the way in which the zone changes from a pragmatic space for the production of exports to a place, imagined and lived, which becomes a socio-spatial formation of late modernity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After World War II, the six original members of the European Union claimed economic convergence to be one of their main goals in the Treaty of Rome. Since then, the organization has had to deal with global economics trends, membership enlargements, and other issues which have created divergence. In response to this, the EU created a regional policy in 1973, which is supported by the European Regional Development Fund. The ERDF served as the instrument where the EU was able to give grants to the underdeveloped regions of member states. However, until 1989, the ERDF was distributed via a quota based formula, supposedly going to states with economic need. After the 1989 reforms of the ERDF, when it became a part of the new Structural Funds, it was distributed via the Community Support Frameworks, which served as an organization tool where the European Commission would be able to identify those regions which need the most economic assistance as well as how these regions would spend this money. In this paper, I pose the question: in the different distributional phases of the ERDF and Structural Funds, can we witness different trends in economic growth as a result of distributional functions? I propose a theory related to multilevel governance to discuss how the distribution of the ERDF and Structural Funds in these different periods may result in various outcomes due to the distributional schemes. I expect to find that in the post revision period, the Structural Funds are better equipped via their distributional processes to achieve the goals set forth by the Treaty of Rome. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poor governance is among the most important impediments to development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Until now, studies of factors influencing governance practices have focused separately on domestic and international actors. In another issue-area, Sikkink's 'Spiral-Model' takes into account only pressures in favor of, and not against, respect of human rights. After a literature review on governance in Africa, this paper presents a model taking into account both pressures in favor of governance reform and counter-pressures, by both international and domestic actors. The model is drawn from two African cases of governance reform, and illustrated in some details with respect to the case of Madagascar. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows, by examining cross-country bilateral aid allocation at the sector level, that meeting the needs of the poor and promoting development are important objectives for aid donors. Aid meant to foster growth and development in the near-term is disproportionately given to countries that have the capacity, as measured by government policy, to use this money effectively. Aid for social sector services is more widely disbursed, while aid for emergency relief is given to meet immediate needs in the wake of a disaster, influx of refugees, or internal strife. These findings are robust across different measures of policy and different model specifications. Bilateral aid allocation is also responsive to policy changes within recipients. Similar patterns are observed for the largest bilateral donor, the United States, even when taking into account bilateral military assistance, trade, and similarity in UN voting records. These findings show that donor countries condition aid designed to promote growth on the policy environments of recipients, refuting previous studies that failed to appreciate that much aid is given for reasons other than economic growth. They also suggest that it is misleading to use growth as a dependent variable when examining the importance of policy for aggregate aid effectiveness because the likelihood of receiving aid aimed at fostering growth is itself partially determined by a country's policy environment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a look at the strategies of both the United States and the European Union to promote regionalism in Latin America between 1990 and 2005. After a decade and a half of trying, regionalism in Latin America seems to be looking very different. What lessons can be extracted from the region's past to shed some light on its turbulent present and worrisome future? What role have the United States and the European Union played in the region? Is a native, Latin American development strategy in the making that will substitute what was done in the past? Will there still be a room for either Washington or Brussels? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing countries account for 75 percent of WTO members and they now prove increasingly able to use their blocking power in negotiations traditionally dominated by developed countries. However in most instances developing countries have to act in coalitions in order to gain sufficient leverage. At the same time, competition between developing countries has increased steadily has the group has become politically and economically diverse. Developing country coalitions have received some attention in the field of political science and international relations, but the intersection between the political process and the potential legal support (or lack thereof) for coalitions in the context of the WTO has not been specifically examined. This paper argues that a number of legal instruments in the context of the WTO affect developing countries' ability to create and sustain coalitions. It focuses on two such instruments: trade preferences and regional trade agreements. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipline Project was supposed to be a "model" project for the World Bank in terms of its involvement in the natural resource extraction sector. Instead, moves by Chad to redefine the agreement it had reached with the World Bank led to months of crisis bargaining. In this paper we draw on obsolescing bargaining theory, the resource curse literature, theories of aid conditionality and the standard Rubinstein bargaining model to show why the World Bank's bargain with Chad obsolesced and the possible lasting damage to Chad's chances for political and economic development that this implies. This case study serves as a warning to international financial institutions and multinational corporations alike with regard to the ways in which obsolescing bargains can arise in the contemporary global political-economy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]