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1 |
ID:
180531
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Summary/Abstract |
A decade after the global financial turmoil, a new wave of crises is haunting the global South. This pattern is different from previous crisis episodes. Powerful shifts in the international order provide new policy space for emerging powers to manage their economic problems in a heterodox fashion. Key Western-led institutions no longer enjoy a monopoly in dictating the terms of financial assistance for countries in economic difficulty, as non-Western powers increasingly challenge the orthodox Washington Consensus paradigm. The present paper attempts to locate Turkey’s ongoing economic crisis in a comparative-historical context. Its central argument posits that the current crisis is the reflection of a fragile and unconsolidated presidential system and its associated mode of economic governance with state capitalist features. Turkey’s heterodox crisis allows us to draw attention to the complex interplay of global power transitions in a post-liberal international order and domestic political constellations during an era of growing authoritarian populism, generating a new equilibrium with rather unique features.
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2 |
ID:
180194
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Summary/Abstract |
In general, the human rights scholarship finds stronger states to be more humane. In particular, Englehart’s recent book and article assert that ‘petty despots’, rather than ‘exemplary villains’, are the real culprits behind the abuse of human rights. However, some exemplary villains are truly exemplary; providing them with greater powers will only intensify human rights abuses. Indeed, the idea that even dictatorships would better protect rights when stronger contradicts some of the most well-known cases of mass-murder that occurred in powerful authoritarian states. In an attempt to resolve this puzzle, this article argues that, while state capacity does matter, it matters differently for dictatorships and democracies. In both regimes, there are certain types of human rights violations that, from the government’s perspective, happen unwittingly. These unauthorized human rights violations are perpetrated by petty despots trying to benefit from the state’s principal–agent problems. Yet, unlike a democracy, a dictatorship can authorize the violation of certain types of human rights to accomplish its objectives. Whereas state capacity can reduce ‘unauthorized’ types of abuses, it would not necessarily diminish such abuses that are ‘authorized’ by the state. The net effects of state capacity, therefore, will not be as positive for autocracies as they are for democracies. To validate this argument, this article conducts 18 ordered logistic regressions with a time-series cross-sectional dataset that encompasses no less than 142 countries from the period of 1981 to 2002. The empirical analysis provides solid support for the theorized relationship among human rights, state capacity and regime type. As predicted, state capacity improves human rights in democracies but not necessarily in autocracies.
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3 |
ID:
164556
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Summary/Abstract |
Existing research argues that refugee inflows may increase the risk of domestic conflict, particularly civil war that, by definition, involves the state as an actor. However, many of the postulated mechanisms linking refugees to a higher risk of such conflict pertain to tensions with locals, which do not necessarily involve any grievances against government authorities. We contend that it is more likely to identify an association between refugees and non-state actor violence, that is, armed violence between organized non-state groups, neither of which pertains to the state. We also claim that the extent to which refugees are associated with a higher likelihood of non-state conflict depends on the capacity of governments to manage and mitigate risks. We report evidence that refugee populations can be linked to an increased risk of non-state conflict, as well as for a mitigating effect of state capacity on the risk of non-state conflicts in the presence of refugees. We do not find a clear effect of refugee populations on civil war, suggesting that the link depends on existing conflict cleavages relevant to mobilizing refugees or locals. Our research helps to shed light on the relevant security consequences of managing refugee populations. Despite the common arguments portraying refugees as security risks in developed countries, the risk of non-state conflict applies primarily to weak states that have been forced to shoulder a disproportionate burden in hosting refugees.
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4 |
ID:
186335
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Summary/Abstract |
Two prominent features in current world affairs are the unprecedented level of global economic integration and the growing incidence of intrastate violence. We develop and test a novel argument linking global integration through foreign investment to intrastate armed conflict. The presence of multinational corporations in developing countries can cause market concentration, resulting in high rents. Disputes between governments and would-be challengers over the appropriation of these rents are likely to turn violent, increasing the incidence of armed conflict. State capacity mitigates this positive association between foreign investment and intrastate war. Strong states have the capacity to deter rebellions, address citizens’ demands through institutionalized mechanisms, and credibly commit to the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Using data from developing countries for over four decades and addressing potential endogeneity and selection biases, we find strong support for our hypotheses. Our findings have important implications for understanding the link between economic interdependence and conflict.
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5 |
ID:
142598
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Summary/Abstract |
Himachal Pradesh outperforms other Indian states in implementing universal primary education. Through comparative field research, this article finds that bureaucratic norms—unwritten rules that guide public officials—influence how well state agencies deliver services for the poor. The findings call attention to the informal, everyday practices that generate state capacity.
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6 |
ID:
177617
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Summary/Abstract |
This article argues that weak local governments increase levels of taxation by “borrowing” institutional capacity from certain types of businesses. While many businesses lobby against taxation, businesses that are locally owned, nationally connected, and logistically complex build robust associations that support taxation. These types of businesses benefit from improvements in public infrastructure, so they empower their associations to monitor members’ tax compliance and to pressure officials to uphold their spending commitments. The article demonstrates the necessity of business support for taxation in the absence of state capacity by comparing two Philippine cities that differ in their ability to tax despite a number of similarities between them. The case studies show that tax increases co-varied with business support, and that business support waxed and waned depending on over-time variation in the capability of business associations to discourage tax evasion and to enforce official commitments to spend on infrastructure.
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7 |
ID:
112776
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Publication |
2012.
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Summary/Abstract |
This study examines whether the state's ability to provide social welfare services has any major effect on the probability of civil conflict onset. We argue that welfare spending contributes to sustaining peace because the provision of social services reduces grievances by offsetting the effects of poverty and inequality in society. Welfare spending serves as an indication of the commitment of the government to social services and reflects its priorities and dedication to citizens. By enacting welfare policies that improve the living standards of citizens, governments can co-opt the political opposition and decrease the incentives for organizing a rebellion. Utilizing time-series, cross-national data for the 1975-2005 period, the results indicate that as the level of the government investment in welfare policies (i.e. education, health, and social security) increases, the likelihood of civil conflict onset declines significantly, controlling for several other covariates of internal conflict. Additional data analysis shows that general public spending and military expenditures are unlikely to increase or decrease the probability of civil unrest. Overall, these findings suggest that certain types of public spending, such as welfare spending, might have a strong pacifying effect on civil conflict, and therefore the state's welfare efforts are vital for the maintenance of peace.
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8 |
ID:
186808
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Summary/Abstract |
Violent organizations are often providers of many social services in competition with the state. We provide evidence that these organizations use the provision of social services to gain support. This strategy is only effective when it fills the void left by a weak state. We show this by studying the provision of natural disaster relief by the Pakistani state and the Taliban. We first analyze the floods of 2010 that received an inadequate response from the government and show that support for the Taliban increased in the areas affected by the flood. These effects were concentrated in places where the Taliban likely provided help and where the state under-delivered. We then study the 2005 earthquake that instead received a swift government response and show that the Taliban lost support in the affected areas. Results cannot be explained by alternate mechanisms as anger against incumbents, political competition, electoral participation, and religiosity.
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9 |
ID:
179571
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Summary/Abstract |
The Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent migrant crisis has exposed and magnified the cracks in the politico-economic arrangements of our cities. Going beyond the pandemic, however, the article argues that the crisis is rooted in the manner in which our cities have been imagined, planned, and developed under the modernist paradigm and further guided by the neoliberal framework. The problems that have surfaced today have been always present but been brushed aside or given symptomatic treatment in the governance and policy sphere. Engaging with the planning and its interrelated dynamics in Delhi from a social justice perspective, the article explores the imagination of the city as formulated over the years through urban planning, how it impacts the integration of the migrant labor in the city and how the state capacity is central to these questions.
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10 |
ID:
097771
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Publication |
2010.
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Summary/Abstract |
Negotiated civil war terminations differ from their interstate war counterparts in that one side must disarm and cease to exist as a fighting entity. While termination through military victory provides a relatively more enduring peace, many civil wars end with peace agreements signed after negotiations. However, research has shown that the implementation of civil war peace agreements is difficult and prone to collapse. Often these failures are followed by recurrence of the conflict. In some cases, the agreements break down before key provisions are implemented. This article adds to this topic by focusing on the role of state capacity in peace agreement success. We argue that peace agreements and state capacity are necessary but not sufficient conditions for sustainable peace. The article employs a case study approach to explore the importance of state capacity in implementing civil war peace agreements. The role of third-party interventions is also considered. The cases (United Kingdom-Northern Ireland, Indonesia-Aceh, Burundi, Mali, and Somalia) include 14 peace agreements that vary by war type (secessionist or control over government), type of agreement (comprehensive or partial), levels of state capacity (high or low), and peace success (success, partial or failure), and each experienced third-party involvement in the peace process.
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11 |
ID:
146501
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Summary/Abstract |
We examine the role of war in retarding state fiscal capacity in developing countries, measured by tax revenue ratios to GDP. We build a simple theoretical model of a factionalized state, where patronage substitutes for common interest public goods, along with violent contestation over a rent or prize. Our dynamic panel empirical analysis applied to 79 developing countries, during 1980–2010, indicates that war, especially civil war, retards fiscal capacity, along with imperfect democracy, political repression, poor governance, and dependence on oil and macroeconomic mismanagement. High intensity conflict is particularly destructive of state capacity. In countries experiencing low intensity wars, other institutional factors may matter more than war. The diminution of fiscal capacity due to war appears less pronounced after the end of the cold war.
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12 |
ID:
119182
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Publication |
2012.
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Summary/Abstract |
Is China's public bureaucracy overstaffed? To answer this basic question objectively, one needs to define public employment in the contemporary Chinese context; survey data sources available to measure public employment; and finally, compare China's public employment size with that of other countries. Using a variety of new sources, this article performs all three tasks. It also goes further to clarify the variance between bianzhi (formally established posts) and actual staffing size, as well as other permutations of the bianzhi system, especially chaobian (exceeding the bianzhi). A key finding is that China's net public employment per capita is not as large as often perceived; quite the contrary, it is one-third below the international mean. However, it is clear that the actual number of employees in the party-state bureaucracy has grown - and is still growing - steadily since reforms, despite repeated downsizing campaigns. Such expansion has been heavily concentrated at the sub-provincial levels and among shiye danwei (extra-bureaucracies).
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13 |
ID:
158215
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Summary/Abstract |
Does violent repression strengthen the state? In this article we explore the legacies of repression by the Mexican government on subsequent patterns of state consolidation. We investigate how a particular form of state repression, forced disappearances of alleged leftist dissidents during the ‘Dirty War’, had path-dependent consequences for different dimensions of state capacity nearly 50 years later. To do so, we rely on data gathered from suppressed Mexican human rights reports of forced disappearances which, to our knowledge, have not been analyzed by social scientists before. Controlling for a rich set of pre-disappearances covariates we find that forced disappearances are positively correlated with contemporary measures of fiscal, territorial, and bureaucratic capacity. However, historical forced disappearances do not help the state to provide security, to consolidate its monopoly over the use of force, or to provide welfare-related public goods in the long run. Moreover, disappearances are negatively correlated with various measures of trust in the government. Forced disappearances committed by the state appear to have long-term yet heterogeneous effects on state consolidation.
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14 |
ID:
190809
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Summary/Abstract |
Turkey’s per capita income was nearly three times South Korea’s in 1962. Dramatic change has been observed since then. South Korea has transformed into an innovative economy approaching the global technology frontier in only a few decades. Turkey, on the other hand, has attained limited success with missed opportunities and has fallen behind. This article asks why this spectacular success was observed in South Korea, but not in Turkey. It seeks an answer by concentrating on certain variables that may explain this outcome. Assuming that primarily different types and capacities of societies and states explain the variations in economic performance, the article examines in particular, the institutional foundations of Turkish and Korean societies.
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15 |
ID:
138776
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Summary/Abstract |
This study examines the effects of a measure of country-level social disorganization on levels of terrorist attacks and fatalities in 101 countries from 1981 to 2010. We measure social disorganization as the presence of state instability: revolutionary and ethnic war, adverse regime change, and genocide. The classic social disorganization perspective posits that individuals experiencing these types of rapid social change will be freed from the institutional and informal restraints that bind them to society, and keep them conforming to social norms and laws. We examine the extent to which this reasoning applies to the number of terrorist attacks and fatalities from terrorist attacks occurring in countries. To control for the possibility that better functioning states are better able to prevent terrorist attacks, we include two measures of state capacity. We find that controlling for state capacity and a wide variety of other variables, social disorganization is consistently associated with increases in terrorist attacks and fatalities. We consider implications of the results for future research and policy.
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16 |
ID:
159403
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Summary/Abstract |
This paper argues that to understand the relevance of developmental states in East Asia and elsewhere, we need to focus on the changing development agenda in the early twenty-first century, especially how this connects with the global challenge of climate change and thereby sustainable, low-carbon development. It combines theories on state capacity and ecological modernisation to form the ‘new developmentalism’ concept. This is applied to study revitalised and refocused forms of state capacity aimed at realising the transformative economic objectives associated with sustainable development. New developmentalism helps us understand not only current state capacity practice in a climate challenged world but also how we have moved beyond original conceptions of developmental statism. It may be understood in the wider context of the sustainable development agenda and climate interventionism. As is argued, new developmentalism is most clearly evident in East Asia but can be applied in a wider geographic sense where strong forms of developmental state capacity are exercised towards meeting transformative sustainable development goals.
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17 |
ID:
180345
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Summary/Abstract |
What explains the variation in how states collectively deal with public health challenges across different regions? We tackle this puzzle by comparing the regional health governance efforts pursued within the Central American Integration System (SICA) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). We show that Central America's health governance has been driven by external actors, whereas South America's was driven by states within the region, and remained insulated from external actors’ influence. We argue that the explanation for such variation lies in the interplay of state capacity and regional leadership. In Central America, weak state capacity combined with the absence of a regional leader willing to provide governance resources. This opened up space for external actors to contribute actively to regional health governance, complementing the governance of Central American governments. In South America, Brazil's regional leadership mobilised neighbouring states’ capacities by promoting a South-South cooperation agenda based on intra-regional exchanges among national health bureaucracies, which, however, proved vulnerable to intergovernmental conflicts. Through the comparison of Central and South America, the article bridges the gap between global health governance scholarship and comparative regionalism, providing new insights on the determinants and effects of regional health governance modes in the Global South.
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18 |
ID:
134155
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
We argue that the regional threat environment a state faces plays a consequential role in its political development and the likelihood of experiencing future intrastate wars. Challenges to a state's territorial integrity lead governments to increase their military personnel, and the resources that support these increases most often come willingly from a public that seeks security. Territorial threats are unlike other types of threats because they challenge individual lives and livelihoods, which both connects the average citizen with the state and allows for easier government extraction of necessary resources. Thus, external territorial threats increase state capacity by unifying the state and by increasing the repressive power of the central government. We identify territorial threats as both latent and realized claims against state territories and find that the presence of an external threat to territory leads to an increase in the capacity of central governments to connect and extract from its citizens, as well as the capacity to repress potential regime dissidents. We also find that the presence of a claim against a state's territory from a neighbor corresponds with a substantial decrease in the likelihood of intrastate conflict at both high and low levels of intensity. The effect of territorial threat is observed even in the short term after a territorial threat has been resolved. Our tests, using standard models of state capacity and insurgency models of conflict on a sample of all states from 1946 to 2007, are robust to multiple model specifications.
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19 |
ID:
133653
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
Empirical research in the New Institutional Economics tradition has concentrated on the degree to which institutional constraints on rulers protect property rights and foster growth through private investment. This view of institutions is overly narrow, neglecting the role of state capacity in particular. Both state authority and constraints on rulers matter for economic performance, but the relative strength of these effects depends upon a country's distance from the frontier of the world economy. Tests using a panel data set that covers up to 84 countries from the period 1960 to 2005 reveal that, in countries that have low Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, constraints on rulers in the form of checks and balances affect neither the rate of productivity growth nor the growth of capital stock per worker. Basic state authority, however, has a strong, positive effect on both of these outcomes. The story is different for advanced industrial economies, where the effects of checks are positive, especially with respect to productivity growth. Institutional checks on rulers are thus not an agent of investment-based growth but support continued growth based upon innovation at the leading edge.
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20 |
ID:
142597
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Summary/Abstract |
Tracing activity in 15 Indian state assemblies from 1967 to 2007, we find that overall legislative activity declined but there was also considerable variation across states. States with large electoral constituencies and politically fragmented assemblies showed the worst performance, which suggests a link between political fragmentation and institutional performance.
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