Indra De Soysa

Norwegian University of Science and Technology | NTNU · Department of Sociology and Political Science

Large segments of populations in the industrialized West believe that immigrants cause crime. Some scholars suggest that it is generous welfare that attracts so-called "welfare magnets," increasing the possibility that the worst kind of immigrant locates in strong welfare states. Empirical studies on crime, however, do not support the view that imm...

Acknowledgements: I am extremely grateful to the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their encouragement and the insightful comments and suggestions. Comments received at the weekly research meeting of CHAIN in November 2022 and the Brekstad research meeting of the VIP group (ISS/NTNU) in November 2022 are gratefully acknowledged. I owe a specia...

Several scholars across many disciplines argue that neoliberal, free-market economic conditions drive inequalities, generating poverty and misery due to unfair austerity, ultimately affecting human health. Prof Labonté’s prescription is that we jettison these policies targeting economic growth and development for generating greater fairness for the...

How has public healthcare spending prepared countries for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic? Arguably, spending is the primary policy tool of governments for providing effective health. We argue that the effectiveness of spending for reducing COVID deaths is conditional on the existence of healthcare equity and lower political corruption because the h...

Many argue that natural resource use and degradation of ecosystems reduce human health. Others prioritize economic development for increasing human health and wellbeing, acknowledging that some environmental assets are necessarily sacrificed for human development. Neo-Marxists and other critical theorists argue that extraction of natural resources...

We investigate the role of oil in economic institutions for a sample of 150 countries between 1960 and 2014. We find that higher per capita values of oil production result in weaker economic institutions in the form of lower levels of private property rights protection. This result is robust to alternative instrumental-variable approaches as well a...

Many argue that free markets drive climate change and harm environmental sustainability. They suggest that democratic controls over profligate capital and unregulated markets better secure economic wellbeing and environmental objectives. Eco‐modernists, contrarily, argue that economic freedoms generate entrepreneurial technological change for reduc...

Recent studies find that increasing ethnic diversity through immigration reduces support for welfare states. Using multilevel analysis of a wide sample of countries (≅100) and a large sampling of individuals (≅310,000), we find little evidence to suggest that the degree of diversity or antipathy towards ethnic others alone matter in explaining atti...

We investigate the role of oil in economic institutions for a sample of 150 countries between 1960 and 2014. We find that higher per capita values of oil production result in weaker economic institutions in the form of lower levels of private property rights protection. This result is robust to alternative instrumental-variable approaches as well a...

Some blame free-market capitalism for increasing income inequality, arguing that the richer classes could block access to others for maintaining their privileges. By manipulating the degree of political rights and resources available to others, the rich could reduce opportunities for others. Others argue that growth-promoting free markets raise all...

Some blame free-market capitalism for increasing income inequality, arguing that richer classes could block access to others for maintaining their privileges. By manipulating the degree of political rights and resources available to others, the rich could reduce opportunities for others. Others argue that growth-promoting free markets raise all inc...

p>Recent scholarship forcefully claims that group grievances due to political exclusion and discrimination drive civil wars. This perspective argues that socio-psychological factors allow groups to overcome collective action problems. We argue that the grievance perspective (over)focuses on the ends and not means , which are critical to explain how...

p>Recent scholarship forcefully claims that group grievances due to political exclusion and discrimination drive civil wars. This perspective argues that socio-psychological factors allow groups to overcome collective action problems. We argue that the grievance perspective (over)focuses on the ends and not means , which are critical to explain how...

Does the political empowerment of women increase human development? Using equality of access to schooling and health as indicators of pro-poor development policy and objective measures of female school completion and child mortality under the age of five as measures of human capital development, pooled ordinary least square (OLS) fixed effects regr...

Many argue that the twin problems of poverty and environmental degradation are best addressed by adopting greater egalitarian processes of governance. Greater egalitarian societies apparently contain the required social trust and consensus for making hard choices and tradeoffs for achieving environmental gains. We employ novel data on egalitarian d...

Aims The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a spate of studies showing a close connection between inequitable access to health care, welfare services and adverse outcomes from the pandemic. Others have argued that democratic governments have generally failed relative to more autocratic ones, simply because autocrats can make the hard choices required for...

We investigate the role of oil wealth in economic institutions for a sample of 150 countries between 1960 and 2014. We find that higher levels of oil wealth result in weak economic institutions in the form of low levels of private property rights protection. This result is robust to alternative instrumental-variable approaches as well as different...

Many scholars, particularly in public health, argue that neoliberal capitalist economic forces adversely affect communities by increasing inequalities, ultimately affecting health. Apparently, corporate capitalism affects health and communitarian concerns because governments place corporate profits over the publićs interests. Using unique data coll...

This article posits that free-market institutions and practices reduce economic distortions that provide rents for underground organizations, which ultimately form criminogenic environments. Rents from market distortions provide 'lootable income' that feeds 'criminal organizations', which rely on violence for enforcement of contracts. Using an inde...

The effectiveness of aid is heatedly debated in academia and policy circles. Annually, billions of dollars are transferred from industrialized countries to developing countries out of moral and practical concerns. Can aid from Norway, a country apparently with little strategic interests, a great deal of political consensus in support of aid, and mu...

Revenue from oil makes countries susceptible to the “resource curse” since rulers have ready access to finance for buying off opposition rather than reform. We explore this issue by examining whether oil price volatility affects anti-government unrest. We argue that in oil-producing countries, low price years generate anti-government protest condit...

The consequences of foreign direct investment (FDI) for human rights protection are poorly understood. We propose that the impact of FDI varies across industries. In particular, extractive firms in the oil and mining industries go where the resources are located and are bound to such investment, which creates a status quo bias among them when it co...

We empirically examine the impact of oil wealth on property rights protection for a sample of 156 countries between 1960 and 2014. We find that higher levels of oil wealth result in weaker private property rights. This result is robust to different instrumental-variable approaches and operationalizations of oil wealth and economic institutions. We...

Increasing environmental sustainability and reducing the intensity of pollution that harms the climate is intertwined in complex ways with reducing poverty and inequality, all of which are critical policy priorities. Some argue that the problem is best approached with greater egalitarian policy processes for gaining the necessary legitimacy for mak...

Many believe that the political empowerment of women is not just an objective of development but that it might be instrumentally valuable for boosting development, particularly by affecting endogenous sources of growth based in human capital. We examine the question of whether or not, and to what extent, the political empowerment of women matters f...

Many argue that free market capitalism drives climate change and prevents environmental sustainability. They suggest that democracy and state control of the profligacy of capital is the answer to environmental sustainability. Eco-modernists, contrarily, argue that free-market capitalist policies generate entrepreneurial technological change for red...

This chapter focuses on non-renewable resources and their relation to conflict and migration. It explores the argument that conflict is not brought by scarcity of these resources, but rather by resource abundance and the fact that they make looting possible. Access to valuable non-renewable resources, such as energy resources, can create crises of...

The globalized era is characterized by a high degree of interconnectedness across borders and continents and this includes human migration. Migration flows have led to new governance challenges and, at times, populist political backlashes. A key driver of migration is environmental conflict and this is only likely to increase with the effects of cl...

............................................................ Now available open access! ............................................................. https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/display/book/9781529202175/9781529202175.xml ............................................................. The current era of globalization is characterized...

How has government healthcare spending prepared countries for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic? Arguably, spending is the primary policy tool of governments in providing effective health. We argue that the effectiveness of spending in reducing COVID deaths is conditional on the existence of healthcare equity and lower political corruption, because th...

To what extent does ethno‐linguistic diversity hinder good governance? Using a variety of data measuring political and economic corruption for 150 countries over 24 years, we find positive effects between ethno‐linguistic diversity and corruption, but the substantive effects are very slight. Higher diversity also predicts higher economic freedom an...

Scholars debate the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on poor societies. Apparently, FDI could embolden governments to securitize rather than reform, an argument put forth recently by (Kishi, Roudabeh, Maggio, Guiseppe, & Raleigh, Clionadh. (2017). Foreign investment and state conflicts in Africa. Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public...

ABSTRACT Scholars debate the effects of globalisation on obesity. Using the latest data on access to ICTs and the Global Burden of Disease data on excess weight gain and obesity, we find that both social globalisation and access to ICTs lower the overweight and obese share among the global youth cohort aged 15–19. Previous studies report mixed resu...

Scholars debate the effects of globalisation on obesity. Using the latest data on access to ICTs and the Global Burden of Disease data on excess weight gain and obesity, we find that both social globalisation and access to ICTs lower the overweight and obese share among the global youth cohort aged 15–19. Previous studies report mixed results, whic...

Are majority-Muslim countries laggards when it comes to developing liberal economic institutions? Using an Index of Economic Freedom and its component parts, this study finds that Muslim-dominant countries (>50% of the population) are positively associated with free-market capitalism. Protestant dominance is also positively correlated, but the asso...

Aims: Do gender inequality and gender discrimination explain female obesity? Discrimination denies access to choose and constrains agency. Scope: Using the Global Burden of Disease data on overweight and obesity share of the adult female population for almost 160 countries over a 24-year period, we find that female empowerment has no effect on t...

Many scholars argue that diverse preferences and coordination failure stemming from high ethnic diversity results in high social frictions, leading to socio-political failure. Criminological theories suggest that crime is driven by very similar processes. The specialized literature on civil war, however, reports a diversity dividend, arguing that w...

Many scholars argue that diverse preferences and coordination failure stemming from high ethnic diversity results in high social frictions, leading to socio-political failure. Criminological theories suggest that crime is driven by very similar processes. The specialized literature on civil war, however, reports a diversity dividend, arguing that w...

Trust is important in terms of achieving economic efficiency, as it reduces the need for costly systems of supervision and control with regards to transactions in a society. Employing data from the World Values Survey and the European Values Study 1994–2014 in combination with country-year data on the degree of economic freedom, we examine the prop...

Some argue that a “good” economy, measured as productivity-enhancing, free market policies, is better than a “just” economy for promoting social harmony. Growth is needed to increase a middle class, but growth may also increase income disparity, creating political instability. We examine this conundrum by estimating the effects of income inequality...

There is a lively debate on the relative impacts of Islam, oil wealth, and Middle Eastern institutional legacies regarding democratization and the spread of liberal values. We examine this issue using religious repression. We argue that oil-wealthy rulers use religious monopoly to control dissent. Our results show that oil wealth increases religiou...

The idea that civil war has to be feasible to occur, and that feasibility is largely a function of the availability of lootable income has gained wide acceptance in the specialized literature on civil war. A parallel debate exists on whether or not liberal, capitalist economies produce a lower risk of domestic conflict. A micro logic for why capita...

Scholars of public health identify globalization as a major cause of obesity. Free markets are blamed for spreading high calorie, nutrient-poor diets and sedentary lifestyles across the globe. Global trade and investment agreements apparently curtail government action in the interest of public health. Globalization is also blamed for raising income...

The Norwegian government enthusiastically supports the protection of forests, which are important CO2 sinks. Given all the difficulty surrounding the reduction of greenhouse gases, funding the protection of forests is a sound proposition. Up to the present time, how well has Norwegian aid to forests and Norwegian bilateral aid affected the health o...

Some argue that the right kinds of institutions mitigate, or even prevent, the development of “natural resource curses.” Rulers with access to resource wealth, however, are unlikely to adopt such institutions, because doing so would undermine their discretionary power. We examine this proposition by testing whether countries with access to natural...

Critics of globalisation suggest that growing free-market conditions generate anomie, leading ultimately to what some term ‘new wars’ and new insecurities. Others argue that liberal economies dissuade violence since people gain from peace. This study argues for a micro perspective that views predatory economic policies driving higher investment in...

Open Access: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10113-014-0746-1 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This paper presents a method for the analysis of socio-ecological patterns of vulnerability of people being at risk of losing their livelihoods as a conseque...

Structural adjustment programs of the IMF are often blamed for disrupting social relations by forcing austerity on vulnerable people and introducing unpopular liberalization policies. Some suggest that such interventions harm ethnic relations in developing countries because they are insensitive to the tenuous social bargains that often preserve eth...

The thesis that natural resources cause conflict is criticized on the basis that resource dependence and conflict are caused by other underlying factors and that the relationship is endogenous. Using disaggregated resource rents on per capita basis, a measure likely to be less influenced by endogeneity, this study finds that oil, rather than other...

Motivated by an inconclusive debate over implications of resource scarcity for violent conflict, and common reliance on national data and linear models, we investigate the relationship between socio-ecological vulnerability and armed conflict in global drylands on a subnational level. Our study emanates from a global typology of smallholder farmers...

Empirical studies on the causes of civil war robustly show that poor countries are more likely to suffer civil war than rich ones. However, the interpretations of this finding differ. The literature proposes three different causal mechanisms: (1) poverty leads to grievances; (2) income proxies the opportunity-cost of rebelling; and (3) income proxi...

The global economic downturn has heightened concerns about intervention by global financial institutions and political stability. One prominently-published article purports to show that signing on to an IMF structural adjustment program (SAP) increases the risk of civil war, Hartzell et al. (International Organization 64:339–56, 2010). The authors...

de Soysa, Indra and Paul Midford. (2012) Enter The Dragon! An Empirical Analysis of Chinese versus US Arms Transfers to Autocrats and Violators of Human Rights, 1989–2006. International Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1111/isqu.12028 © 2012 International Studies Association The rise of China has led to a spate of scholarly and journalistic speculation a...

The question of globalization's effect on social harmony continues to be fiercely debated. We use a comprehensive measure of globalization (the KOF index) designed to capture the intensity of connectivity among countries along economic, social, and political dimensions. Our results suggest that globalization, particularly economic and social global...

Liberals argue that economic policy reforms will benefit most in terms of better access to goods, less inflation and better economic opportunities. Critics of market reforms, among them Marxists, critical theorists, skeptics of globalization as well as a large portion of the NGO community, see the majority as losers from such reform, expecting resi...

1 The data and DO files are available for downloading at http://www.svt.ntnu.no/iss/Indra.de.Soysa/default.htm. View all notesInformation and communications technologies (ICTs) prominently feature in the current wave of globalisation. Sceptics of globalisation suggest that the new technology will hamstring governments from acting in the interests o...

Several prominent economists have recently argued that ethnic and other forms of social diversity lead to economic failure. Apparently, serious social frictions caused by diverse preferences do not create conditions for the development of endogenous institutions that enhance good economic policies. Others, however, have shown that diversity reduces...

Liberals argue that globalization, or growing interdependence among states, will transform societies towards more liberal values reflected in better respect for human rights. Skeptics of globalization, among them Marxists, critical theorists, and a large portion of the NGO community, see globalization facilitating the exploitation of the weak by th...