equality employment and budgetary restraint the trilemma of the service economy this article presents an analysis of the postindustrial economy from a political economy perspective it identifies a set of specific distributional trade offs associated with the new role played by the services sector as the chief source of employment growth in advanced democracies over the last three decades it is argued that three core policy objectives budgetary restraint wage equality and expansion of employment constitute a political trilemma that allows only two of the goals to be successfully pursued at the same time using a combination of statistical and case oriented analysis the authors demonstrate the political and economic salience of the trilemma the distributional tensions inherent in each strategy to cope with it and the political institutional constraints under which these strategies are chosen

the political economy of gender explaining cross national variation in the gender division of labor and the gender voting gap mainstream political economy has tended to treat the family as a unit when examining the distributional consequences of labor market institutions and of public policy in a world with high divorce rates we argue that this simplification is more likely to obscure than to instruct we find that labor market opportunities for women which vary systematically with the position of countries in the international division of labor and with the structure of the welfare state affect women s bargaining power within the family and as a result can explain much of the cross country variation in the gender division of labor as well as the gender gap in political preferences

as bad as it gets how climate damage functions affect growth and the social cost of carbon the paper analyzes the effects of varying climate impacts on the social cost of carbon and economic growth we use polynomial damage functions in a model of an endogenously growing two sector economy the framework includes nonrenewable natural resources which cause greenhouse gas emissions pollution stock harms capital and reduces economic growth we find a big effect of the selected damage function on the social cost of carbon and a significant impact on the growth rate in our calibration a quartic damage function raises the social cost of carbon by more than a factor of ten compared to the linear function in the social optimum the growth rate remains positive even when the damage function is highly convex we test the robustness of the results by adding pollution decay lowering the elasticity of intertemporal substitution and addressing uncertainty which does not alter our results we find that high marginal climate damages require stringent climate policies but do not preclude positive economic growth despite convexity provided that policies are designed in an efficient manner

centralized collective bargaining and the problem of compliance lessons from the italian experience according to the neo corporatist approach to the problem of compliance worker control over union policy is incompatible with centralized wage regulation because only associations in which national leaders are insulated from their members are capable of delivering rank and file acceptance of wage moderation this analysis of centralized collective bargaining agreements in italy in the 1980s and 1990s provides a critical re examination of the traditional neo corporatist approach the author drawing on archival research and interviews argues that centralization can be entirely compatible with decision making procedures in which rank and file workers have ultimate decision making power in fact the italian labor movement s adoption of more democratic decision making procedures he claims was instrumental in generating and sustaining centralized collective bargaining arrangements in italy in the early 1990s

the politics of liberalizing zambia s maize markets abstract this paper discusses the process of agricultural liberalization in zambia the central argument is that maize markets have been more quickly and fully liberalized than maize input markets because the perceived political risks of liberalizing input markets are greater than those of liberalizing maize markets and because economic interest groups benefited from maize liberalization while similar interests benefited from continued government interventions in input markets these finding imply that in order to understand the prospects for economic liberalization in new democracies we must disaggregate both civil society and markets

the sources of business interest in social insurance sectoral versus national differences when and why have employers supported the development of institutions of social insurance that provide benefits to workers during various employment related risks the analysis developed in this article challenges the dominant explanations of welfare state development which are premised on the assumption that business opposes social insurance the article examines the conditions under which self interested profit maximizing firms support the introduction of a new social policy and it specifies the most significant variables explaining the variation in employers social policy preferences the model is tested in three political episodes of welfare state development in france and germany using policy documents submitted by various employers associations to bureaucratic and parliamentary commissions

inequality and the politics of social policy implementation gender age and chile s 2004 health reforms summary regarding scholarship on the political determinants of inequality little attention has been paid to policy implementation we examine the 2004 chilean health reforms that sought to regulate private insurers and measure their effects on gender and age inequality we find that reforms intended to decrease these inequalities largely failed analysis of this failure demonstrates the importance of the politics of implementation when reforms threaten profits private providers may act to undermine reforms in the implementation process given the widespread emergence of private providers in social policy systems understanding their stakes in implementation is key to more effective equality enhancing reforms

higher education funding the expansion of higher education throughout the oecd and beyond is both necessary and desirable but it is costly and faces competing imperatives for public spending higher education finance is therefore salient to an extent that is not yet fully appreciated in all countries and is also immensely sensitive politically this paper sets out the core lessons for financing higher education deriving from economic theory and puts them alongside lessons from country experience the uk reforms announced in 2004 are assessed against the backdrop of those two elements a concluding section briefly maps out unfinished business

did unilateral divorce laws raise divorce rates a reconciliation and new results application of the coase theorem to marital bargaining suggests that shifting from a consent divorce regime to no fault unilateral divorce laws should not affect divorce rates each iteration of the empirical literature examining the evolution of divorce rates across us states has yielded different conclusions about the effects of divorce law liberalization i show that these results reflect a failure to jointly consider both the political endogeneity of these divorce laws and the dynamic response of divorce rates to a shock to the political regime taking explicit account of the dynamic response of divorce rates to the policy shock i find that liberalized divorce laws caused a discernible rise in divorce rates for about a decade but that this increase was substantially reversed over the next decade that said this increase explains very little of the rise in the divorce rate over the past half century both administrative data on the flow of new divorces and measures of the stock of divorcees from the census support this conclusion these results are suggestive of spouses bargaining within marriage with an eye to their partner s divorce threat

the fragmentation of the bargaining society wage setting in the nordic countries 1950 to 1992 it is commonly believed that corporatist bargaining institutions have been in general decline in the 1980s and 1990s the leading explanations of the purported universal trend toward greater decentralization of collective bargaining are the impact of technological change changes in the occupational structure and growing international economic integration decentralization should be particularly visible in the nordic countries because collective bargaining was more centralized in these countries in the 1960s and 1970s than in any others in western europe in this article the authors present data on the changes in the centralization of wage bargaining in the four nordic countries since 1950 they document that a significant decentralization of collective bargaining has occurred in sweden as is well known but not in the other three the article concludes with a review of possible explanations of swedish exceptionalism

employers and the welfare state the political economic organization of firms and social policy in contemporary capitalist democracies the authors argue that the organization of employers shapes social policy support among firms and in turn affects social policy outcomes specifically the authors argue that the centralization and cohesion of employer groups and economic cooperation across enterprises positively affects social welfare provision empirically the authors assess the impacts of business organization on social welfare effort in 15 developed democracies between the 1970s and 1990s the authors also provide analysis of the impact of employer organization on active labor market policy the authors find that the organization of employers is one of the most important determinants of overall social welfare effort the authors also find that employer organization affects the development of active labor market policies and it influences the degree to which social democratic parties pursue active labor market programs the authors conclude with a discussion of the findings implications for theories of social corporatism and the w

wage dispersion and productive efficiency evidence for sweden the swedish record of enormous compression of relative wages under centralized solidarity bargaining followed by substantial decompression of wages after central bargaining broke down supplies observations well suited to empirical evaluation of arguments about the response of productive efficiency to shifts in wage distribution we obtain no results supporting fairness morale and cohesiveness theories implying that wage leveling within workplaces and industries may enhance productivity reduction of interindustry wage differentials evidently did however contribute positively to aggregate output and productivity growth most likely for the structural reasons first emphasized by swedish trade union economists almost a half century ago

international structural adjustment and its sectoral and spatial impacts structural economic adjustment has relevance and significance in oecd countries among the countries in transition from socialism to capitalism and in the developing countries of asia africa and latin america its impacts are multi institutional being in firms government agencies non government organisations and households institutions are having to innovate to adapt and to reorganise to meet rapidly changing economic conditions in an increasingly competitive environment this article evaluates the structural adjustment process it will establish general principles for interpretation and for a newly emerging dominant political economy the new political economy npe in which adjustment is being articulated the npe is evolving being influenced by the post 1990 enhanced relevance of social and environmental issues adding to the neoliberalism characteristics of the early origins of the npe also the npe is being infused with intellectual institutionalism especially the new institutional econom

the political economy of stabilization commitment capacity and public response abstract political pressures are generally recognized as important in determining success or failure of economic stabilization and adjustment programs but there has been little comparative analysis of the politics of stabilization this study examines the factors affecting i political leaders commitment to stabilization measures often called political will ii governmental ability to implement stabilization measures and iii the responses of key interest groups and the public at large to those measures the study also discusses political implications of the design of programs and the attempted speed of stabilization and sketches the tactics available to governments to manage political risk including partial compensation persuasion diversion or obfuscation and containment of protest the discussion is based on case studies of stabilization efforts in five fairly poor small highly trade dependent countries ghana in the late 1960s and early 1970s and zambia kenya sri lanka and jamaica in the late 1970s and early 1980s a subsidiary theme within the broader discussion is the ways in which the political economy of stabilization may differ in such countries as compared to larger semi industrialized economies

agricultural policy reform in zambia the dynamics of policy formulation in the second republic abstract the agricultural policy reform process in africa during the 1980s has been slow partly because it has neglected a number of key factors analysis of zambia s experience during the second republic suggests that greater attention needs to be given to institutional heritage political acceptability the diversity of policy making organizations and the policy freedom of subsectoral organizations neglect of these issues has led to difficulties in getting policy makers to even conceptualize reform and has led to much concern over the political implications of insensitive reform proposals

effective climate policies in a dynamic north south model abstract the paper develops a two region endogenous growth model with climate change affecting the countries capital stocks negatively we compare two different policies aimed at supporting less developed countries climate mitigation by developed countries which moderates the increase in stock pollution and hence capital depreciation and income transfers in the tradition of development aid under a mild set of assumptions we find that active climate policies are more efficient for developed economies and also remarkably better for developing countries than additional development aid the main reason is the difference between the two policies with respect to their effects on economic growth the results are robust with respect to possible model extensions

distribution and redistribution the shadow of the nineteenth century the authors present an alternative to power resource theory as an approach to the study of distribution and redistribution while they agree that partisanship and union power are important they argue that both are endogenous to more fundamental differences in the organization of capitalist democracies specifically center left governments result from pr consensus political systems as opposed to majoritarian systems while strong unions have their origins in coordinated as opposed to liberal capitalism these differences in political representation and in the organization of production developed jointly in the early twentieth century and explain the cross national pattern of distribution and redistribution the clusters have their origins in two distinct political economic conditions in the second half of the nineteenth century one in which locally coordinated economies were coupled with strong guild traditions and heavy investment in cospecific assets and one in which market based economies were coupled with liberal states and more mobile assets

business against markets employer resistance to collective bargaining liberalization during the eurozone crisis employer organizations have been presented as strong promoters of the liberalization of industrial relations in europe this article in contrast argues that the preferences of employers vis a vis

globalization and taxation challenges to the swedish welfare state many have argued that the increased international mobility of both capital and labor witnessed in recent years will force advanced capitalist democracies to cut taxes and thus ultimately roll bac

scalar politics in sectoral reforms negotiating the implementation of water policies in ecuador 1990 2008 in ecuador neo liberal reforms in the 1990s transformed the water and irrigation sector at different scales we analyze how these neoliberal reforms were implemented from the top down by the world bank and the national government as well as how from the grassroots water users negotiated these policies and their implementation at local and national level we show that these sectoral reforms were politically contested as it changed roles responsibilities and authority at different scales of governance this is evidenced by the fact that locally the relationships between water users differently scaled state agencies and broader networks greatly determined how water users associations negotiated the irrigation management transfer program as well as the development of new water policies our analysis highlights how the alliances that differently positioned actors create to navigate water policy implementation shape the scalar and the political dimensions of sectoral reforms it shows that actors need multi scalar networks of support to develop political leverage overcome opposition and materialize projects in the water governance domain

public sector unions corporatism and macroeconomic performance what accounts for the apparent breakdown of the positive relationship between powerful trade union organizations and macroeconomic performance is corporatism a relic of a different age a luxury o

natural disasters in a two sector model of endogenous growth using an endogenous growth model with physical and human capital accumulation this paper considers the sustainability of economic growth when the use of a polluting input e g fossil fuels intensifies the risk of capital destruction through natural disasters we find that growth is sustainable only if the tax rate on the polluting input increases over time the long term rate of economic growth follows an inverted v shaped curve relative to the growth rate of the environmental tax and it is maximized by the least aggressive tax policy of those that asymptotically eliminate the use of polluting inputs unavailability of insurance can accelerate or decelerate the growth maximizing speed of the tax increase depending on the relative significance of the risk premium and precautionary savings effects welfare is maximized under a milder environmental tax policy especially when the pollutants accumulate gradually

managing adjustment costs political authority and the implementation of adjustment programs with special reference to african countries abstract the degree to which a government implements a program given no disruptive factors depends critically on its legitimate authority to carry out the program and the degree to which management aspects notably management costs of the program were satisfactorily dealt with at the design stage program designers should understand the nature dimensions justification and basis of legitimate authority when the government s legitimate authority is inadequate program designers must advise the government to obtain it a properly designed program should also include measures to speed up entry prevent inefficient exit and minimize unemployment and underutilization of capacity have a framework for ensuring competitive and open markets and arm the program manager with tools to alleviate social tensions arising from certain distributional consequences and to respond to predictable nationalistic preferences

reform without revolt the political economy of economic reform in the gambia abstract the gambia s economic recovery program differed from most adjustment programs in sub saharan africa because the economy quickly recovered and because the government implemented the reforms with remarkably little public opposition this paper examines the politics of reform in the gambia focusing on both government decisions regarding reform and subsequent public reactions the analysis highlights the importance of the gambia s democratic political traditions the rural political power base the relationship with neighboring senegal weak opposition groups strong leadership and lucky breaks the gambia provides an example of a democracy that successfully implemented a strong reform program preceding a national election

the structure of economic modeling of the potential impacts of climate change grafting gross underestimation of risk onto already narrow science models scientists describe the scale of the risks from unmanaged climate change as potentially immense however the scientific models because they omit key factors that are hard to capture precisely appear to substantially underestimate these risks many economic models add further gross underassessment of risk because the assumptions built into the economic modeling on growth damages and risks come close to assuming directly that the impacts and costs will be modest and close to excluding the possibility of catastrophic outcomes a new generation of models is needed in all three of climate science impact and economics with a still stronger focus on lives and livelihoods including the risks of large scale migration and conflicts

exchange rate fiscal and agricultural policies in africa does adjustment hurt the poor abstract trade exchange rate fiscal and agricultural sector policy reforms are the pillars of structural adjustment programs in africa results indicate that trade and exchange rate reforms are associated with a large decline in economic rents and a shift in relative prices that favor the rural and urban poor fiscal reforms have not brought about draconian belt tightening measures although the incidence of public spending particularly in the social sectors and in terms of public sector employment remains far from progressive reduction of export crop taxation contributes to higher incomes for the poor and domestic food crop liberalization has not led to increases in purchase prices of staple commodities for most low income households

the potential impacts of climate change on capital in the 21st century abstract an endogenous growth model with a simple climate system is used to examine the potential impacts of climate change on the capital to net income ratio and the net of depreciation share of income to capital a measure of wealth concentration and income distribution between capital and labour respectively over the next two centuries if climate change only directly affects production as usually assumed the capital to net income ratio will increase as compared to what it would be in the absence of climate change the capital to income ratio will increase even further if climate change affects labour productivity in both cases the increase in the ratio after 2100 is due to the stock of capital being depleted at a lower rate than net income is falling however the capital to net income ratio will be lower and eventually fall if damage from climate change increases the depreciation rate of capital this decline is marginally reduced if climate change impacts both capital and labour productivity in the case where climate change impacts the depreciation of capital the ratio after 2100 is falling because the stock of capital is destroyed faster than net income is falling furthermore climate change reduces the net share of income accruing to capital in all scenarios with dramatic changes in the case of climate change affecting the depreciation of capital emissions abatement almost completely mitigates these impacts on the capital to net income ratio and the net share of income to capital

social policy by popular demand why are unemployment benefits more generous in some countries this article argues that citizens trade off the redistributive and insuring effect of social insurance as a result the distribution of risk in a society has important consequences via popular demand for social policy making at the microlevel the article shows that in addition to income the risk of unemployment is a key predictor of individual level preferences for unemployment benefits based on the microlevel findings the article argues that at the macrolevel the homogeneity of the risk pool is an important determinant of benefit generosity the more equally unemployment risk is distributed the higher unemployment replacement rates are empirical testing at both levels finds support for this account of social policy by popular demand

the limit of equality projects public sector expansion sectoral conflicts and income inequality in postindustrial economies in this study we investigate how structural economic changes constrain an equality project the public sector expansion strategy first we describe a three stage process in which a growing produc

optimal taxes on fossil fuel in general equilibrium we analyze a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model with an externality through climate change from using fossil energy our central result is a simple formula for the marginal externality damage of emissions or equivalently for the optimal carbon tax this formula which holds under quite plausible assumptions reveals that the damage is proportional to current gdp with the proportion depending only on three factors i discounting ii the expected damage elasticity how many percent of the output flow is lost from an extra unit of carbon in the atmosphere and iii the structure of carbon depreciation in the atmosphere thus the stochastic values of future output consumption and the atmospheric co2 concentration as well as the paths of technology whether endogenous or exogenous and population and so on all disappear from the formula we find that the optimal tax should be a bit higher than the median or most well known estimates in the literature we also formulate a parsimonious yet comprehensive and easily solved model allowing us to compute the optimal and market paths for the use of different sources of energy and the corresponding climate change we find coal rather than oil to be the main threat to economic welfare largely due to its abundance we also find that the costs of inaction are particularly sensitive to the assumptions regarding the substitutability of different energy sources and technological progress

taking time for the environment on timing and the role of delays in environmental and resource economics ecosystem transformation and climate change evolve over long time scales the effects of the economic decisions on the natural environment are also of a long run character because they relate to investment decisions and capital stocks at the same time the economy is short sighted and subject to different kinds of market failures the time it takes to notice the changes and adequately address the associated problems affects the dynamics and inertia of the process we discuss some recent contributions and new research questions that deal with time and timing in environmental and resource economics

does leadership matter in the economic reform process liberalization and governance in sri lanka 1989 1993 abstract governance assumptions of the east asian miracle may not be a sufficient or a necessary condition for effective economic reform or for solid growth to emerge in other asian economies this paper argues that in sri lanka where the state is not strong where it is not well coordinated and is neither cohesive nor disciplined in organizational terms strong political leadership proved critical in the second wave of reform from 1989 1993 even if it was essentially illiberal in the process of implementation technical and political imperatives are seen to be interrelated and parts of a single reform package

structural adjustment as a policy process the case of tanzania abstract analyses of structural adjustment in developing countries have increasingly come to emphasize the importance of grounding reforms in the political realities of the countries concerned while this approach is a step forward from the more economistic and prescriptive analyses that prevailed in the first part of the 1980s we believe that the dynamics of structural adjustment is only fully captured by an approach that treats the policy context as an explicit and independent variable on the basis of a case study of tanzania this article uses a policy process approach in which the notions of ambiguity and conflict in policy situations help us better understand the opportunities and constraints for action on structural adjustment issues

the decentralization of collective bargaining a literature review and comparative analysis the author reviews evidence that the bargaining structure is becoming more decentralized in sweden australia the former west germany italy the united kingdom and the united states although in

the choices for scandinavian social democracy in comparative perspective scandinavian social democracy represents one of the most systematic attempts to shape economic institu tions and policies in pursuit of equality and full employment increasingly however these goals haveeluded governments and their institutional supports have eroded this paper seeks to understand this shiftthrough a comparative analysis that places particular emphasis on the interaction between macroeco nomic policies and wage bargaining institutions it is argued that the nature of this interaction and theassociated economic effects have been changed by new technology capital market integration andservice sector expansion as a result centralized wage bargaining institutions and accommodatingmacroeconomic policy regimes have been undermined and social democracy increasingly faces a choicebetween the promotion of equality and employment for all

the politics of progressive income taxation with incentive effects this paper studies majority voting over quadratic taxation and investigates under which conditions marginal progressivity emerges as a voting outcome in our model with endogenous income there is no majority condorcet winning tax schedule we then investigate less demanding political equilibrium concepts in order to see under which conditions the set of equilibria is composed only of progressive tax functions we follow three strategies i reduction of the policy space to the tax functions that are ideal for some voter ii elimination of weakly dominated strategies and the use of mixed strategies in a standard downsian two party competition game iii assumption that political parties interact repeatedly and care about the size of their majority although each approach captures a different aspect of political behavior they point to the same simulation based conclusion that progressivity is more likely to emerge for most distributions of abilities and that it is actually the only possible voting outcome if the distribution is sufficiently concentrated at the middle

the dual transformation of social protection and human capital comparing britain and germany britain and germany have been experiencing significant changes in the nature of work and welfare since the 1990s although important differences have remained there have been compelling indication

foreign aid and conditions precedent political and bureaucratic dimensions abstract international donor agencies increasingly use their influence to press for major reforms in development policies and administrative practices in third world countries reform recommendations are often conceptualized with little regard for the political and bureaucratic contexts in which they are to be adopted and pursued without greater concern for issues of political and bureaucratic feasibility however reform recommendations are likely to have only minimal impact policy space research and administrative systems research are promising approaches for acquiring and analyzing information about the political and bureaucratic aspects of government decision making such analyses can improve the potential for reform recommendations to be adopted and pursued

the political economy of policies for smallholder agriculture summary as the experience of the 20th century has shown implementing policies that increase agricultural productivity among smallholders is a particularly promising strategy to achieve pro poor growth however history also reveals major political challenges to adopting this strategy the paper compares the experience of asian countries that were able to launch a smallholder based green revolution with the experience of african countries that are still struggling with this goal it then reviews the political economy literature to identify the factors that account for these divergent experiences finally the paper develops a conceptual framework to guide empirical research to close the knowledge gaps identified by the review

small states and skill specificity austria switzerland and interemployer cleavages in coordinated capitalism the varieties of capitalism literature has put skill systems at the center of comparative politics yet its claims about skill specificity are driven by two large coordinated economies germany and

university challenges explaining institutional change in higher education higher education policy has been subject to considerable reform in oecd states over the past two decades some states have introduced tuition fees others have massively increased public funding for higher education and still others remain in stasis retaining the elitist model with which they began the postwar era this article develops the argument that higher education policy in the oecd is driven by a set of partisan choices within a trilemma between the level of enrollment the degree of subsidization and the overall public cost of higher education the author develops a formal model of the micromechanisms underlying movements within this trilemma noting the importance of partisan politics existing enrollment tax structure and access these propositions are tested statistically on a sample of twenty two oecd countries and through case histories of higher education reform in england sweden and germany

optimum growth and carbon policies with lags in the climate system we study the optimal carbon tax in an economy in which climate change stemming from polluting non renewable resource affects the economy s growth potential our main contribution is to introduce and explore the natural time lag of the climate system between emissions and damages to capital accumulation in an endogenous growth setting this allows us to investigate how optimal climate policy and its interplay with climate dynamics affect long run growth and the transition of the economy towards it without pollution decay a higher speed of emissions diffusion steepens the growth profile of the economy with pollution decay this leads to lower short run but higher long run economic growth during transition poor understanding of the emissions diffusion process leads to suboptimal carbon taxes resource extraction and growth

fossil fuels stock externalities and backstop technology the hotelling exhaustible resource model is extended to include stock pollution and nonpolluting backstop technology it is shown that an optimal energy consumption strategy typically includes a regime in which the two energy sources are consumed simultaneously along this regime fossil fuel consumption decreases and backstop consumption increases together fossil fuel and backstop consumption may form eleven optimal regime combinations a decrease in the backstop price decreases the initial level of optimal emission tax

wage setting institutions and pay inequality in advanced industrial societies the distribution of pay differs significantly across countries and over time among advanced industrial societies in this paper institutional and political determinants of pay inequality are studied in sixteen countries from 1980 to 1992 the most important factor in explaining pay dispersion is the level of wage setting i e whether wages are set at the level of the individual the plant the industry or the entire private sector the impact of centralization is the same whether centralization occurs via collective bargaining or via government involvement in private sector wage setting the concentration of unions and the share of the labor force covered by collective bargaining agreements also matter after controlling for wage setting institutions other variables such as the governing coalition the size of government international openness and the supply of highly educated workers have little impact economic political and norm based explanations for the association of centralization with egalitarian outcomes are discussed

climate change and uneven development in this paper using a theoretical model with endogenous capital depreciation we study the effects of climate change and adaptation on long run development we show that climate change affects economic growth depending on climate exposure and adaptation efficiency which are asymmetric between different countries poor countries are likely to be hurt more because of the negative effects of climate change on the rate of depreciation of the assets that represent the engine of growth these asymmetries generally induce growth deficits and unsustainability traps in less developed economies

governmental structure trustee selection and public university prices and spending multiple means to similar ends estimate the effects of multiple instruments for exercising political control over public university prices and spending i find that public universities located in states with governmental structures that enhance political control and universities whose trustees are selected by nonacademic stakeholders charge significantly lower prices than universities located in states with decentralized systems

false promise or false premise the experience of food and input market reform in eastern and southern africa abstract the literature on the effects of agricultural market reform in africa is sharply divided and inconsistent this article attempts to reconcile opposing viewpoints on the effects of food and input market policy reform in eastern and southern africa drawing from studies of ethiopia kenya malawi zambia and zimbabwe we argue that a major source of the controversy stems from assumptions that countries have actually moved to a liberalized market environment we find that many of the most fundamental elements of the reform programs either remain unimplemented were reversed within several years or were implemented in such a way as to negate private sector investment incentives a framework is developed for explaining why some countries have been able to liberalize their food and fertilizer markets while others have not these findings have implications for how donor assistance and policy oriented research can more constructively contribute to an improved policy environment

the politics of retrenchment in a social democratic welfare state reform of swedish pensions and unemployment insurance what explains the origins and pattern of retrenchment dynamics in swedish old age pensions and unemployment insurance during the 1990s although the economic crisis created pressure to scale back both programs the author argues that retrenchment only occurred when and where the social democratic party and some segments of the labor movement supported change this finding suggests that the political importance of organized labor in retrenchment politics depends on the relationship between welfare state programs and interest group structure when interest group structure is characterized by solidaristic centralized encompassing organizations the old class based power resource model has more explanatory bite than pierson s new politics of the welfare state approach

institutional change in contemporary capitalism coordinated financial systems since 1990 what happens when the unstoppable force of liberalization collides with the immovable object of national financial institutions in the advanced industrial democracies to answer this question and evaluate alternative mechanisms to explain institutional change this article examines the cases of the three large european economies with concentrated share ownership france germany and italy in the formal legal mechanism interest coalitions adopt new laws leading actors to deviate from formerly stable patterns of behavior in shareholding in the joint belief shift mechanism collective actors use a triggering event to jointly reevaluate their views of how the world works and thus how their interests can best be pursued using the metric of patient capital this article shows that institutional change took place in france but not in germany or italy despite the fact that germany and italy experienced significant regulatory change in the area of corporate governance while france did not this evidence fits joint belief shift and is inconsistent with the formal legal mechanism it is likely that the importance of the two mechanisms of institutional change depends on the degree of strategic interdependence among institutional actors where it is high the joint belief shift mechanism is likely to precipitate change and where it is low the formal legal mechanism is likely to precipitate change

the politics of adjustment lessons from the imf s extended fund facility the international debt crisis has forced painful economic adjustments on the developing world in the short run it has forced governments to seek to correct payments imbalances through stabilization programs usually undertaken with conditional assistance from the international monetary fund imf the crisis has also revealed deeper weaknesses in many third world economies weaknesses demanding more basic reforms in the structure of incentives prices and investment

equate and conflate political commitment to hunger and undernutrition reduction in five high burden countries summary as political commitment is an essential ingredient for elevating food and nutrition security onto policy agendas commitment metrics have proliferated many conflate government commitment to fight hunger with combating undernutrition we test the hypothesis that commitment to hunger reduction is empirically different from commitment to reducing undernutrition through expert surveys in five high burden countries bangladesh malawi nepal tanzania and zambia our findings confirm the hypothesis we conclude that sensitive commitment metrics are needed to guide government and donor policies and programmatic action without historically inadequate prioritization of non food aspects of malnutrition may persist to imperil achieving global nutrition targets

after the decision implementing policy reforms in developing countries abstract implicit in many reform proposals is a model of the policy process that is roughly linear a proposed reform gets on the agenda for government action a decision is made on the proposal and the new policy or institutional arangement is implemented either successfully or unsuccessfully this article presents an alternative interactive model of implementation that focuses on the conflict and reactions that are evoked by efforts to bring about changed policy or institutional contexts for development and the resources that policy makers and managers are likely to require to sustain a reform in the face of such reactions central to the analysis is the assertion that characteristics of the reform being implemented will largely determine the kind of conflict it engenders where such reaction is likely to become manifest and what resources are needed for sustainability the analysis suggests a framework for the strategic management of reform initiatives

the structure of inequality and the politics of redistribution against the current consensus among comparative political economists we argue that inequality matters for redistributive politics in advanced capitalist societies but it is the structure of inequality not the level of inequality that matters our theory posits that middle income voters will be inclined to ally with low income voters and support redistributive policies when the distance between the middle and the poor is small relative to the distance between the middle and the rich we test this proposition with data from 15 to 18 advanced democracies and find that both redistribution and nonelderly social spending increase as the dispersion of earnings in the upper half of the distribution increases relative to the dispersion of earnings in the lower half of the distribution in addition we present survey evidence on preferences for redistribution among middle income voters that is consistent with our theory and regression results indicating that the left parties are more likely to participate in government when the structure of inequality is characterized by skew

the danish miracle luck pluck or stuck the 1980s and 1990s saw employment miracles in denmark australia and the netherlands this article analyzes the dynamics and substance of danish policy responses to poor export employment and fiscal performance to see whether remediation should be attributed to pluck intentional strategic remediation of dysfunctional institutions to make them conform with the external environment luck environmental change that makes formerly dysfunctional institutions suddenly functional or just being stuck endogenous not entirely strategic change that leaves institutions in conformity with the environment it addresses these issues to remedy biases in the literature toward sweden as model toward pessimism about the welfare state s survivability and toward privileging intentional action the analysis finds that stuck endogenous dynamics probably explains as much as pluck strategic choice suggesting only limited transferability for policy lessons from the miracles

the transformation of the swedish model economic ideas distributional conflict and institutional change this article examines the transformation of the swedish model of economic regulation from an ideational perspective while the majority of arguments about the decline of the swedish model have focused on the role of structural factors this article looks to illuminate the ideational factors that made possible both the emergence and the transformation of the swedish model the article details how during the 1930s and 1940s economic ideas provided the swedish state and its trade union allies with the means to construct the institutions of the swedish model by the 1970s however swedish business suffered diminishing returns to continued participation within these institutions and responded to labor s challenges by adopting a two pronged strategy of withdrawal from and ideological contestation of labor s supporting institutions the politics of ideas was key in this regard during the 1980s swedish business marshaled alternative economic ideas to contest and thus delegitimate existing institutions and the patterns of distribution they made possible swedish business thus began the process of overturning the swedish model long before capital mobility or domestic inflation was ever a problem by highlighting these factors the article offers an explanation of the transformation of the swedish model that stresses the centrality of ideational contestation for understanding institutional change in general

the paradox of globalization labor relations in germany and beyond what is the impact of globalization on labor in the advanced industrial countries one body of work holds that globalization pushes all countries toward neoliberalism another argues that the impact of globalization will vary according to prevailing institutional arrangements and predicts continued divergence between the so called liberal and coordinated market economies in an analysis of the german case that combines case study and formal modeling methods we refute the first neoliberal convergence theory showing that globalization in some ways empowers unions by rendering employers extremely vulnerable to industrial unrest furthermore we suggest some revisions to the second varieties of capitalism perspective we show that in germany employers increased vulnerability to conflict has shored up centralized bargaining arrangements in the short run but at the same time has also set in motion feedback effects that are deeply destabilizing to the system in the longer term

measuring the commitment to reduce hunger a hunger reduction commitment index abstract can an index be constructed to assess governments commitment to reduce hunger this paper argues for the need for such an index and outlines one way of constructing it we use secondary data to construct the hunger reduction commitment index hrci for 21 developing countries we operationalise commitment around 3 themes legal frameworks policies and programmes and government expenditures to find malawi the gambia guatemala brazil and senegal heading the list with china nepal lesotho zambia and guinea bissau coming bottom rankings were robust to our choices about weighting and ranking methods the paper demonstrates a viable method to measure political commitment and highlights the analytical importance of disentangling hunger commitment from hunger outcomes cross tabulations of hrci scores with hunger wealth administrative capacity and voice and accountability scores can guide action from different stakeholders governments civil society donors finally we show how primary data collection might be used to assess areas of strength and weakness in country specific commitments to reduce hunger

unions employers associations and wage setting institutions in northern and central europe 1950 1992 the eight countries examined in this study austria belgium denmark finland germany the netherlands norway and sweden have long been viewed as exemplifying corporatist industrial relations

labor markets production strategies and wage bargaining institutions the swedish employer offensive in comparative perspective transformed patterns of labor market governance occupy a central place in the study of contemporary west european political economies here detailed analysis of the dramatic decentralization of wa

why have women become left wing the political gender gap and the decline in marriage the last three decades have witnessed the rise of a pohtical gender gap in the united states wherein more women than men favor the democratic party we trace this development to the decline in marriage which we posit has made men richer and women poorer data for the united states support this argument first there is a strong positive correlation between state divorce prevalence and the political gender gap higher divorce prevalence reduces support for the democrats among men but not women second longitudinal data show that following marriage divorce women are less more likely to support the democratic party

electoral institutions and the politics of coalitions why some democracies redistribute more than others standard political economy models of redistribution notably that of meltzer and richard 1981 fail to account for the remarkable variance in government redistribution across democracies we develop a general model of redistribution that explains why some democratic governments are more prone to redistribute than others we show that the electoral system plays a key role because it shapes the nature of political parties and the composition of governing coalitions hence redistribution our argument implies 1 that center left governments dominate under pr systems whereas center right governments dominate under majoritarian systems and 2 that pr systems redistribute more than majoritarian systems we test our argument on panel data for redistribution government partisanship and electoral system in advanced democracies w hy do some countries redistribute more than others most work on the politics of redistribution starts from the premise that democratic institutions empower those who stand to benefit from redistribution the basic logic is succinctly captured in the meltzer richard 1981 model where the voter with the median income is also the decisive voter with a typical right skewed distribution of income the median voter will push for redistributive spending up to the point where the benefit of such spending to the median voter is outweighed by the efficiency costs of distortionary taxation this argument implies that redistibution is much greater in democracies than in nondemocracies at least of the right authoritarian variety and that among the latter inegalitarian societies redistribute more than egalitarian ones there is some evidence to supportthefirstimplication althoughitisdisputed see ross 2005 but most of the variance in redistribution is probably within the same regime type according to datafromtheluxembourgincomestudy forexample the reduction in the poverty rate in united states as a result of taxation and transfers was 13 in 1994 whereas the comparable figure for sweden was 82 thepovertyrateisthepercentageofhouseholdsbelow 50 of the median income to explain this variance we have to look at political and economic differences