Sustainable development and the local economy

This article sets out the divergence so far between the developing “environmental economics” and local authority “green strategies”. We propose a model of environmentally sustainable economic development. Our argument outlines “environmental efficiency” and more stringent “sustainability” objectives. It reviews current local authority activities and practices. All are within the “environmental efficiency” framework. It concludes by identifying opportunities created by recent government commitment to environmental improvement targets and argues that local authorities are well placed to take up the challenge of developing sustainable development in local economies. It suggests that this process will involve intervention in the market in a way not dissimilar to that adopted in the 1980s by local authorities concerned with developing socially progressive economic strategies and that this process might be termed “social environmentalism”.     

Is Devolution Democratization?

Recent attempts at introducing new forms of governance in forest management in India have focused on devolution to user-groups or village level “participatory committees.” Success or failure is attributed to the presence or absence of “social capital” among these groups. These groups have never existed outside the state, however, and social relations, including social capital, are continually being transformed by administrative and market forces. This paper argues that what matters is not the degree of government intervention, i.e., more or less devolution, or the degree of social capital among local communities, but state accountability. This can only be ensured through addressing questions of political reform.     

Market supplanting versus market fostering interventions: China, East Asia and other developing countries

The paper investigates the relationship between growth and different types of government intervention by distinguishing “market supplanting” regimes from “market fostering” interventions. A lesson from the East Asian miracle was not that governments necessarily intervened less, but they intervened efficiently in a relatively transparent and flexible way that kept overall distortions in check. China's reforms can be considered a transition from a “market supplanting” regime where market signals are distorted over long periods, to “market fostering” interventions in which government acts like a gardener. Alternative measures of government interventions were used to construct two composite policy indexes. Preliminary analysis suggests that “market fostering” interventions seem to have facilitated growth in productivity, although the result is inconclusive due to data limitations. Compared with the East Asian NIEs, China still has a long way to go in reforming the role of government in the economy.     

Bringing cheer to a depressed economy — economic development in N. Ireland

In this, the first of two articles, the authors examine the particularly grim problems of the local economy in N. Ireland. They argue that such problems have to be understood in the context of N. Ireland's distinctive politics and administration. Following an assessment of economic development performance in recent decades, they conclude with a critical review of government strategies for the future. In the second article they intend to examine other local suggestions for economic policy, and to outline a “popular” alternative strategy.     

The Manufacture of Popular Perceptions of Scarcity: Dams and Water-Related Narratives in Gujarat, India

This paper critically examines some narratives of water scarcity in Kutch, western India. It argues that images of dwindling rainfall and increasing drought largely serve to legitimize the controversial Sardar Sarovar dam and manufacture dominant perceptions concerning scarcity. This manufacture has naturalized scarcity in the region and largely benefits powerful actors such as politicians, industrialists and large farmers. But the needs of the poor in water-limited areas are neglected. By exploring the various connotations of scarcity, the paper argues that scarcity is both a biophysical phenomenon as well as a powerful discursive construct. By distinguishing between the “real” and “manufactured” aspects of water scarcity, the paper attempts to enhance understandings of environmental change at the local level.     

Women and political participation in Africa: Broadening the scope of research

The article argues for a more flexible and inclusive approach to research on women and the state in Africa and, in particular, women's political participation. Inter alia it suggests moving away from restricted Western definitions of politics, from overly aggregated notions both of “the state” and of “women,” and from too centralized a focus on government; and moving to include a greater appreciation of informal organizations, unusual modes of participation, uneven tradeoffs and even manipulated politics. Its concern is to ensure that we do not overlook or close off those narrow spaces of participation which may, by default, have been allowed to women, or which women may have fashioned for themselves.     

Integrating the economic and the social. Policy and institutional change in local economic strategy

Since the mid-1990s policy “integration” has become an increasingly salient theme within central government and local government policy-making. In this paper we report survey findings tracing the recent emergence of explicitly “integrated” local economic and social strategies, and the evolving position of ostensibly social themes in local economic strategies. These highlight some of the more important policy and institutional changes that have characterised local economic strategy in the post-Thatcher era. Subsequently, in the light of this initial data we outline a number of possible directions for further research.     

Are Environmental Social Movements Socially Exclusive? An Historical Study from Thailand

Environmental social movements in developing countries are often portrayed as democratizing but may contain important social divisions. This paper presents a new methodology to analyze the social composition and underlying political messages of movements. Nearly 5 000 newspaper reports during 1968–2000 in Thailand are analyzed to indicate the participation of middle and lower classes, and their association with “green” (conservationist) and “red-green” (livelihoods-oriented) environmental values. Results show middle-class “green” activism has dominated forests activism, but lower-class “red-green” activism has grown for forests and pollution. Newspapers, however, portray all environmentalism as “democratization,” suggesting that the possible exclusiveness of some environmental norms is unacknowledged.     

Holding company risk in China: a final step of state-owned enterprises reform and an emerging problem of corporate governance

Public Enterprise Reform in China has reached a plataeu, and is awaiting the last step of privatization. Most of non-regulated industries in China has improved their competitiveness thorough a hard and intense competition, particularly in the home appliance industry. However, it still happened that excellent companies with nationwide brands suddenly fall into severe difficulties and suddenly disappears in the industry, as we seen in the early 1990's. Author argues that this is caused by structure of corporate governance in China, which can facilitate to enhance the control right of the controlling shareholder, that is the government for the most of listed company in China, compared to their holding cash flow right. This corporate structure, which is called “pyramiding” allows an implicit controller of the company, the municipal government, to exploit. In the cases of listed company in China, the “holding company” is the conduit of this risk. Experiences of 2 companies from home appliance industries in China will be documented here.     

Small business service firms and the 1990s recession in the United Kingdom: Implications for local economic development

During the 1990s recession, the UK experienced a dramatic growth in employment in information-intensive business firms. This paper explores this growth with reference to small management consultancy and market research firms. Business service firms continued to be established and to grow during the recession because of three related attributes: professional expertise, an existing reputation and a network of client contacts. These attributes are related to the theoretical work of Granovetter (1973; 1982; 1985) who argues that “weak ties” operate to connect different groups of people together. The implications of these attributes for local economic development are considered. Success for all companies at the level of the local economy will be partially dependent on efficient and effective use of available business service expertise. The three attributes make it impossible to develop successful mechanisms to encourage the formation of business service companies in areas with underdeveloped service infrastructure. Mechanisms, however, may be developed at the local level to encourage the establishment of “weak ties” between local companies and regional and national providers of business service expertise.     

Health system reform in China: What role for private insurance?

The purpose of the present paper is to show that much of the literature on health economics and on the international experience with different forms of health system organization can be interpreted as supporting the idea that reliance on an unregulated market mechanism for organizing the production and financing of health services is likely to result in major problems both with respect to efficiency and equity. However, reliance on a centralized “command-and-control” model managed by government has also been shown to entail problems in practice. For this reason I argue that the best option at China's current state of development may be a compromise model in which competing private providers are given an important role, both for the production of health services and in the provision of health insurance, but in which the government intervenes (through regulation and direct provision) in such a way as to attain both a high degree of equity of access to health care, and to avoid the most significant forms of “market failure” that would arise in an unregulated private system.     

Stakeholding and the local economy

During the 1980s local economic policy became an issue of major political concern. The polarisation of the New Right market-led strategies advanced by the Thatcher governments and the New Left-inspired counter-response, typified by the last years of the GLC, reflected the tenor of national political and economic debates at the time. Arguably, in the 10 years since the abolition of the GLC, local economic development has been devoid (some might say spared) of any “big idea” arising from wider political debates. Recently, however, there have been signs that a new political direction may be emerging at the national level with significant implications for local economic policy. That direction is the notion of stakeholding.     

Rethinking the role of the service sector in local economic revitalisation

This article evaluates the role of the service sector in revitalising local economies. Using case study evidence from the Fens, the view that services are “parasitic” activities is refuted. Instead, services are shown to contribute positively to local economic rejuvenation not only as “basic” activities which bring income into local economies from outside but also, just as importantly, as locally-oriented activities which stop income from leaking out of the locality. The consequences of this reconceptualisation of services for the nature of local economic policy are addressed.     

Development from below: Local Development Associations in the Yemen Arab Republic

The Local Development Associations (LDAs) of the Yemen Arab Republic illustrate how indigenous organizations led by local élites can promote participatory, widely beneficial rural development. LDAs reflect a tradition of community based self-help efforts. Today Yemen's six million people, from urban dwellers to those living in remote mountain areas, are served by nearly 200 LDAs. These associations are active in undertaking tasks the central government is not organized to perform. Supported primarily by their immediate constituencies and led by local notables, they build roads, schools, village water systems, and clinics. Over the past decade they have achieved dramatic development results and become important, nationally recognized institutions. This article documents the LDA movement. This example of succesfull local organization is particularly important because development experts often dismiss the potential of such movements on the ground that they are likely to be élite-dominated, probably to the detriment of the poorer members of the community. In describing the LDA movement, this article also consolidates for the first time the few published, frequently unavailable papers on Yemen's complex little-studied rural sector.     

Crisis in regional economic cooperation (integration) among developing countries: A survey

The article analyses the meaning, theory and key policy instruments of economic integration among LDCs and reviews the experience of various regional cooperation efforts in the Third World.It starts from the basic premise that economic integration is not an end in itself nor are its outcomes value-free; rather its social legitimacy depends on the socio-economic and political interests which are served by regional cooperation. Power commanding local hegemonic groups as well as foreign economic and political actors (governments and the transnational enterprises) play a determining role in the orientation, content and performance of regional cooperation.The article also explores the implications for integration of certain structural economic characteristics of LDCs involving key production, technological, trade and distributional considerations. They are interpreted as calling for regional cooperation mechanisms which are non-wholistic in the sense that they are directed towards the fulfilment of specific objectives, activities and tasks which require (a) programmed yet not comprehensive harmonization policies, (b) a subordination of trade to a planned and significant expansion of economic activities in new fields, and (c) the pursuit of certain outcomes whose values are not adequately reflected by the market system and whose inducement requires more explicit government intervention.Finally the article argues that since regional cooperation is by its nature conflict-prone and subject to strong polarization forces, and since, furthermore, the above-raised considerations call for a significant role to be played by the member countries' governments, the viability of the process is subject to a continuous commitment and manifestation of political support.     

Europe and East Asia in the context of regionalization: Theory and economic policy

Much academic interest has recently centered on economic regionalism as a framework of international economic relations. The European Community (EC) has been a focal point. Other regional economic organizations (APEC, NAFTA), have been subjects of debate.This paper discusses three principal arguments: (1) the “natural”/“optimal” regional grouping, (2) transaction cost advantage in a regional model, and (3) the balancing of intraregional and extra-regional economies. Indeed, the argument is most certainly for an international regime of an “open,” not a “fortress” economic regionalism.This paper examines the subject relative to economic theory and policy.     

Microcredit in Prefamine Ireland

Hundreds of independent, local, quasi-charitable microcredit societies, or “loan funds,” were lending to as many as 20% of Irish households in the mid-19th century. Their goal was to relieve poverty by providing credit to the “industrious poor” at competitive interest rates without public funding. They successfully mitigated informational, moral hazard, and enforcement problems, and operated at a surplus in a market where intermediation by the banks seems not to have been profitable. Loan fund activity offers new insights into capital formation in the 19th-century Irish economy and challenges traditional notions regarding the economic activities of the Irish poor. They are also relevant for economists studying current microcredit initiatives.     

Globalisation versus de-coupling: German emigration and the evolution of the Atlantic labour market 1870–1913

The decline of German emigration to the United States after 1895 was precipitate to a degree not matched by other “old immigration” sources. The paper considers possible reasons for this: the effect of land availability, relative growth rates of the US and German economies, and the impact of the so-called “new immigration” from southern and eastern Europe. It concludes that German immigration was unusually affected by competition from newer migrant sources, due to skill similarities and similar patterns of settlement. However, the more rapid growth of the German economy after 1895 and the movement of the land frontier into areas less suited to German agricultural skills also played a part. It shows that the skills possessed by migrants were an important factor in migrant earnings. The arrival in the US of large numbers of immigrants with similar skill endowments and lower reservation wages made emigration to the United States a less attractive option for potential German migrants after 1895.     

From New Order to Regional Autonomy: Shifting Dynamics of “Illegal” Logging in Kalimantan, Indonesia

In recent years there has been a tendency to view the seemingly irremediable spread of “illegal” logging in Indonesia in isolation, or as a result of disassociated and premeditated criminal acts. This paper proposes a different view of the problem by discussing the changing dynamics of the “illegal” logging sector in the two districts of Berau, East Kalimantan and Kotawaringin Timur, Central Kalimantan. It suggests that “illegal” logging is not a simple case of criminality, but a complex economic and political system involving multiple stakeholders. Furthermore, “illegal” logging is not a stationary condition that can be effectively dealt with through coercive or repressive measures alone. Rather, it should be viewed as a dynamic and changing system deeply engrained in the realities of rural life in Indonesia. Regional autonomy has also created a supportive environment for the “illegal” logging trade and allowed it to gain resilience.     

IMF conditionality: Conceptual problems and policy alternatives

This paper argues that the main issue damaging relations between developing countries and the International Monetary Fund is the latter's position that external disequilibria are always a consequence of excess aggregate domestic demand, caused by excessive credit expansion. As a result, Fund sponsored stabilization programs center on demand contraction through a credit crunch and may establish stricter domestic performance criteria than necessary to attain the balance-of-payments objectives. The author suggests that the IMF establish a two-tier conditionality system, which he calls the “hands-off” approach, with one tier composed exclusively of balance-of-payments or foreign exchange denominated variables, and the other of domestic currency denominated variables. The two-tier system would allow more flexibility in compliance assessment and might reduce substantially the number of breakdowns of Fund programs.A revised “hands-on” approach for the Fund is also suggested. The author critiques the recessive biases of the currently used financial analytical exercises and makes specific proposals to introduce “growth exercises” to establish the foreign credit requirements of a growth-oriented stabilization program and thus to introduce performance criteria for creditor countries and banks — a form of “reciprocal conditionality.”