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The Role of Multilateral Institutions in the Perpetuation of Climate Breakdown and Vulnerability
Abstract
Within the stated purview of the United Nations (UN), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB), and related Multilateral Institutions (MLI) is the facilitation of sustainable development and economic growth, purportedly leading to reductions in global poverty and inequalities. These goals permeate supranational institutions of global governance; their centrality emphasised through agreements such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and propagated through instruments including Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP).
This chapter argues, however, that these goals are inherently contradictory, bordering on nonsensical, and that the effect of IMF and WB policy towards the Third World is, contrary to stated aims, the perpetuation of vulnerability for some of the world’s most impoverished people, and the exacerbation of anthropogenic climate breakdown.
Third World Debt is inexorably entwined with the colonial encounter, and subsequent centuries of extraction and exploitation legitimised through globalisation. When the IMF and WB mandate SAP in exchange for loans proffered in order to service this debt, Third World states embark upon extensive trade liberalisation, and the privatisation of natural resources and land. The subsequent extractive activity of Transnational Corporations (TNC) and foreign states serves to propagate the cycle of exploitation and environmental depredation, whilst enabling wealthier states to both materially gain from the activity, and offset their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement (PA). This activity is not only sanctioned, but encouraged through a neoliberal policy platform that prioritises economic growth and Western conceptions of development and sustainability above all else.
Consequently, Third World peoples, rather than experiencing alleviation from the cycle of debt locked in since the colonial encounter, are rendered further impoverished, bereft, and dependent, severely impeding their ability to mitigate or adapt to the effects of climate breakdown.
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Mining is a vital part of the global, and many national, economies. Mining also has the potential to drive extensive land cover change, including deforestation, with impacts reaching far from the mine itself. Understanding the amount of deforestation associated with mining is important for conservationists, governments, mining companies, and consumers, yet accurate quantification is rare. We applied statistical matching, a quasi-experimental methodology, along with Bayesian hierarchical generalized linear models to assess the impact on deforestation of new mining developments in Zambia from 2000 to present. Zambia is a globally significant producer of minerals and mining contributes ~ 10% of its gross domestic product and ~ 77% of its exports. Despite extensive deforestation in mining impacted land, we found no evidence that any of the 22 mines we analysed increased deforestation compared with matched control sites. The extent forest lost was therefore no different than would likely have happened without the mines being present due to other drivers of deforestation in Zambia. This suggests previous assessments based on correlative methodologies may overestimate the deforestation impact of mining. However, mining can have a range of impacts on society, biodiversity, and the local environment that are not captured by our analysis.
In conventional economics, value creation occurs in the private sector with the state limited to correcting for “market failures”. Public management scholars have developed the term “public value” to describe how public sector managers can engage citizens in shaping effective policy. A more ambitious concept of public value rejects the “market failure” framework and puts public value at the centre of the economy. Public value is created by public sector actors creating and co-shaping markets in line with public purpose. This direction-setting role enables different sectors to collaborate to address major societal challenges, such as climate change and inequality.
Tropical deforestation is mainly driven by agricultural expansion, land grabbing, illegal logging, urbanization, cattle ranching as well as mining. However, extraction of minerals and its impacts in high biodiversity regions are still poorly known, particularly in Colombia, a tropical megadiverse hotspot. Here, using high-resolution datasets of forest cover changes and detailed geospatial mining data for Colombia, we show a growing contribution of legal mining to national deforestation: 3.4% over the 2001–2018 period, with a peak at 5.6% in 2017. During this period, around 121 819 ha have been deforested inside legal mining concessions, and an estimation of over 400 000 ha deforested by both legal and illegal. Gold and coal are the most important legally-mined materials in Colombia associated to deforestation, particularly in the recent years with 511% and 257% tree cover loss increases respectively (average over 2016–2018 compared to 2001–2015 average of mined material deforestation average). Three Colombian departments summed out ∼70% of the national deforestation occurring in legal concessions: in 2018, up to 23% of deforestation in Antioquia was taking place in legal mines (gold producer). Finally, we found that only 1% (respectively, 3%) of the concessions contribute to 60% (>90%) of the legal mining-related deforestation, mainly driven by large clearings to agriculture. Environmental law enforcement, monitoring activities and engaging the mining industry in effective forest conservation and landscape restoration strategies are urgently needed in Colombia for preserving biodiversity and ecosystem services.
This paper quantifies drain from the global South through unequal exchange since 1960. According to our primary method, which relies on exchange-rate differentials, we find that in the most recent year of data the global North (‘advanced economies’) appropriated from the South commodities worth 62 trillion (constant 2011 dollars), or $152 trillion when accounting for lost growth. Appropriation through unequal exchange represents up to 7% of Northern GDP and 9% of Southern GDP. We also test several alternative methods, for comparison: we quantify unequal exchange in terms of wage differentials instead of exchange-rate differentials, and report drain in global average prices as well as Northern prices. Regardless of the method, we find that the intensity of exploitation and the scale of unequal exchange increased significantly during the structural adjustment period of the 1980s and 1990s. This study affirms that drain from the South remains a significant feature of the world economy in the post-colonial era; rich countries continue to rely on imperial forms of appropriation to sustain their high levels of income and consumption.
This volume offers two important contributions to the literature on sovereign debt. First, it provides a unique genealogy of debt collection practices in terms of their availability, acceptability and efficacy. We argue that creditors’ tactics and methods to enforce debt repayment emerged and solidified to a large extent in relation to the threads of colonial history, from the building of empires to the decolonisation era. Second, this volume reflects critically on the relevance of neo-colonial interpretations in recent cases of sovereign debt disputes
The contributions to this special issue examine the politics of domestic and international climate policy, concentrating on the role of institutions, interests, ideas, and networks. The outcomes of the policymaking processes are assessed with regard to their proportionality, that is, the balance between the benefits and costs of a policy. The contributions show that climate politics can lead to policy under-and overreactions. This introduction sets out the common research interest of the special issue and explains how the individual contributions relate to each other. To this end, it begins by providing the rationale for adopting the analytical perspective of comparative politics. Then it presents the conceptual framework and gives an overview of the contributions to this issue. Subsequently, it develops a research agenda that highlights avenues for future research and offers a brief conclusion that reflects on the potential of the concept of (dis)proportionality to advance the cumulative knowledge on climate politics and policies.
Purpose
This paper aims to examine how the volatility of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows affects the volatility of corporate income tax revenue.
Design/methodology/approach
The study has used an unbalanced panel data set of 129 countries over the period 1981–2016 and the two-step system generalized methods of moment approach to perform the empirical analysis.
Findings
The main findings are that FDI volatility enhances the volatility of corporate income tax revenue in less advanced economies, but reduces it in relatively advanced countries. The positive corporate income tax revenue volatility effect of FDI inflows is far higher in non-tax haven countries than in tax haven countries. Additionally, FDI volatility exerts a higher positive effect on corporate income tax revenue volatility as countries experience greater dependence on natural resources. Finally, the positive effect of FDI volatility on corporate income tax revenue volatility is further amplified by higher FDI volatility.
Research limitations/implications
One important limitation of the present analysis is the use of aggregate FDI inflows because of the lack of data over a long period on greenfield FDI inflows and cross-border mergers and acquisitions FDI inflows. Therefore, an avenue for future research could be to explore separately the effect of the volatility greenfield FDI inflows and the volatility of cross-border mergers and acquisitions FDI inflows on the volatility of corporate income tax revenue, when long-time series data (covering many countries) would be available.
Practical implications
These outcomes particularly shed light on the role of FDI volatility on the volatility of corporate income tax revenue, particularly in countries that are highly dependent on natural resources. Foreign capital flows, notably FDI flows, play an essential role for countries’ economic development through, inter alia, technology transfer, jobs creation and economic growth. Policymakers should aim to attract FDI, while also reducing their volatility, by designing and implementing policies and measures (such as those in favor of business environment improvement, property rights enforcement and political stability) that would assure foreign investors of the continuous high returns of their investments.
Originality/value
To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first time this topic is being addressed empirically in the literature.
Among the many drivers of health inequities, this article focuses on important, yet insufficiently understood, international-level determinants: economic globalization and the organizations that spread market-oriented policies to the developing world. One such organization is the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which provides financial assistance to countries in economic trouble in exchange for policy reforms. Through its ‘structural adjustment programs,’ countries around the world have liberalized and deregulated their economies. We examine how policy reforms prescribed in structural adjustment programs explain variation in health equity between nations— approximated by health system access and neonatal mortality. Our empirical analysis uses an original dataset of IMF-mandated policy reforms for a panel of up to 137 developing countries between 1980 and 2014. We employ regression analysis to evaluate the relationship between these reforms and health equity, taking into account the non-random selection and design of IMF programs. We find that structural adjustment reforms lower health system access and increase neonatal mortality. Additional analyses show that labor market reforms drive these deleterious effects. Overall, our evidence suggests that structural adjustment programs endanger the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals in developing countries.
The SAGE Handbook of Media and Migration offers a comprehensive overview of media and migration through new research, as well as a review of present scholarship in this expanding and promising field. It explores key interdisciplinary concepts and methodologies, and how these are challenged by new realities and the links between contemporary migration patterns and its use of mediated processes. Although primarily grounded in media and communication studies, the Handbook builds on research in the fields of sociology, anthropology, political science, urban studies, science and technology studies, human rights, development studies, and gender and sexuality studies, to bring to the forefront key theories, concepts and methodological approaches to the study of the movement of people. In seven parts, the Handbook dissects important areas of cross-disciplinary and generational discourse for graduate students, early career researcher, migration management practitioners, and academics in the fields of media and migration studies, international development, communication studies, and the wider social science discipline.
Advance reviews:
Due to the range of its themes, approaches, voices and contexts, this volume will be an indispensable guide to all scholars working on migration and media, and will furthermore open up a new space for methodological and conceptual reflection on a world in which movement and mediation are two sides of the same coin. - Arjun Appadurai, Goddard Professor of Media, Culture and Communication, New York University
Highlighting questions of power inequalities, processes, and dynamics within the intersections of media and migration, this book is a path-breaking vital and welcome contribution to migration and media studies. This Handbook provides insights into a central question of both these fields, that of representation and mediation. With careful attention paid to definitions, methodologies, and emerging issues, this book will be invaluable to scholars and students alike. - Nina Glick Schiller, Professor Emeritus, University of Manchester, UK
This volume of over 50 chapters traverses enormous terrain in interrogating the entanglements of migration and media, highlighting the politics of encounter and the powerful combinations and permutations that shape contemporary migrant lives across the globe. What is truly excellent is the timely focus on social media, data science and digital technologies, and the impact on knowledge hierarchies and social justice in migration research. - Brenda Yeoh, National University of Singapore
ISBN: 9781526447210
November 2019
656 pages
www.sagepub.com
The administrative ability of the state to deliver effective policy is essential for economic development. While sociologists have long devoted attention to domestic forces underpinning state capacity, the authors focus on world system pressures from Western-dominated international organizations. Scrutinizing policy reforms mandated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the authors argue that “structural conditions” exert deleterious effects on bureaucratic quality by increasing the risk of bureaucrats falling prey to special interests and narrowing potential policy instruments available to them. The authors test these arguments using a new data set on IMF conditionality from 1985 to 2014. Their analysis shows that structural conditions—especially conditions on privatization, price deregulation, and public sector employment—reduce bureaucratic quality. Using instrumentation techniques, the authors also discount the possibility that the relationship is driven by the IMF imposing structural conditions precisely in countries with low bureaucratic quality. A careful reconsideration of IMF policy reforms is therefore required to avoid undermining local institutions.
This article highlights an important yet insufficiently understood international-level determinant of inequality in the developing world: structural adjustment programs by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Studying a panel of 135 countries for the period 1980 to 2014, we examine income inequality using multivariate regression analysis corrected for non-random selection into both IMF programs and associated policy reforms (known as ‘conditionality’). We find that, overall, policy reforms mandated by the IMF increase income inequality in borrowing countries. We also test specific pathways linking IMF programs to inequality by disaggregating conditionality by issue area. Our analyses indicate adverse distributional consequences for four policy areas: fiscal policy reforms that restrain government expenditure, external sector reforms stipulating trade and capital account liberalization, financial sector reforms entailing inflation-control measures, and reforms that restrict external debt. These effects occur one year after the incidence of an IMF program, and persist in the medium term. Taken together, our findings suggest that the IMF’s recent attention to inequality neglects the multiple ways through which the organization’s own policy advice has contributed to inequality in the developing world.
International financial institutions (IFIs) typically condition the provision of loans, grants, and debt relief on the implementation, by the recipient country, of policy reforms that are aimed at making the fiscal and debt situation sustainable, improving competitiveness, and boosting economic growth. These so-called ‘conditionalities’ afford IFIs substantial policy influence on governments throughout the world, thereby reducing national policy space and undermining national development agendas. The measures also have implications for the enjoyment of human rights. This chapter provides an overview of these policies, as well as their impact on the ability of the implementing governments to provide basic public services necessary for the realisation of human rights, including health, labour, and civil and political rights. The chapter begins with an examination of the mandates of the IMF and World Bank. It then discusses the lending practices of the two institutions and reviews existing debates around the effects of conditionalities on human rights. Finally, the chapter offers suggestions for reform of IMF and World Bank lending practices in ways that ensure that they respect human rights.
In 2017, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker declared the re-industrialization of the European Union (EU) a top priority. The new EU industrial policy seeks to boost industrial competitiveness and leverage investments into manufacturing, thereby increasing industry’s share of EU Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 20% by 2020. What may appear to be a Keynesian industrial policy and thus a move away from the EU’s previous neoliberal agenda, however, seeks to calibrate a further neoliberal structural adjustment in a highly authoritarian fashion. Internal devaluation through devaluing labour, intensifying competition and reducing corporate taxes takes centre-stage. As an auxiliary to the European Semester, national productivity boards have been established to monitor wage developments alongside labour productivity and to suggest policy adjustments when cost competitiveness lags behind the Eurozone average and that of the main trading partners. Not only have formal democratic institutions and organized labour been circumvented in the decision-making process regarding such boards, they will have little voice in the future, and this an area that hitherto fell largely within the scope of member states: wage bargaining. Hence, the new EU industrial policy needs to be discredited, de-legitimized and thus, politicized. A political counter-project, rooted in an alternative industrial policy geared towards fostering horizontal and democratic solidarity economy initiatives which have proliferated since 2008, is discussed in the article’s closing pages.
This article examines the emergence, objectives and dynamics of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in Africa with particular emphasis on Nigeria. It also examines the implementation strategies of this economic reform and contends that the SAP policies led to the collapse of manufacturing and agricultural industries, heightened unemployment and social insecurity. It also contends that SAP led to the collapse of Nigeria state which gave fecundity for ethno-religious manipulations and further affected the Nigeria labour sector and caused intense strain and disorganization of labour movements, this was manifest in sporadic industrial disputes and strikes which hampered economic development in Nigeria. From a neo-liberal theoretical paradigm, this paper concludes that SAP culminated to identity transformation, conflicts and economic crisis in Nigeria. Secondary source of data is employed.
The increased access of African countries to external capital markets has rekindled interest and placed debt sustainability at the forefront of the continent's policy agenda. In this paper, we discuss the conceptual link between external loans and debt challenges. In this paper, the analysis is cast in the context of new sources of loans triggered by Sino‐Africa cooperation. The paper examines the main sectors targeted for financing in Kenya, how the Chinese funded projects have been structured, the financial models adopted to deliver on the projects, and the overall gains from such projects. Ultimately, examines the external debt situation in Kenya and how the Chinese loans are likely to precipitate a crisis of sustainability. The analysis shows that although the external financial support plays a critical role in addressing the gap in Kenya's infrastructure development, the loans also poses risks of debt sustainability in the longer term, particularly Chinese loans are tied and lack transparency. The emerging debt challenges point to the need for policy reforms towards enhancing loans transparency and the beneficial impacts. This would enhance repayment capacity of borrowing countries.
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Structural adjustment programmes of international financial institutions have typically set the fiscal parameters within which health policies operate in developing countries. Yet, we currently lack a systematic understanding of the ways in which these programmes impact upon child and maternal health. The present article systematically reviews observational and quasi-experimental articles published from 2000 onward in electronic databases (PubMed/Medline, Web of Science, Cochrane Library and Google Scholar) and grey literature from websites of key organisations (IMF, World Bank and African Development Bank). Studies were considered eligible if they empirically assessed the aggregate effect of structural adjustment programmes on child or maternal health in developing countries. Of 1961 items yielded through database searches, reference lists and organisations’ websites, 13 met the inclusion criteria. Our review finds that structural adjustment programmes have a detrimental impact on child and maternal health. In particular, these programmes undermine access to quality and affordable healthcare and adversely impact upon social determinants of health, such as income and food availability. The evidence suggests that a fundamental rethinking is required by international financial institutions if developing countries are to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals on child and maternal health.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40985-017-0059-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
p> Indoor air pollution represents a global health crisis, leading to 4.3 million deaths annually. Despite widespread variation in solid fuel burning across developing nations, little is known about the large scale socio-economic causes. We draw on theories of political-economy to consider the role of economic, social, and environmental predictors on solid fuel use, with a special focus on structural adjustment, debt service, and agricultural production. Utilizing a sample of 75 developing nations, we find that these economic dependencies increase solid fuel use. Thus, current neoliberal development strategies enhance vulnerabilities to indoor air pollution for millions of people in impoverished nations. </p
In recent years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has re-emerged as a central actor in global economic governance. Its rhetoric and policies suggest that the organization has radically changed the ways in which it offers financial assistance to countries in economic trouble. We revisit two long-standing controversies: Has the policy content of IMF programmes evolved to allow for more policy space? Do these programmes now allow for the protection of labour and social policies? We collected relevant archival material on the IMF’s lending operations and identified all policy conditionality in IMF loan agreements between 1985 and 2014, extracting 55,465 individual conditions across 131 countries in total. We find little evidence of a fundamental transformation of IMF conditionality. The organization’s post-2008 programmes re-incorporated many of the mandated reforms that the organization claims to no longer advocate and the number of conditions has been increasing. We also find that policies introduced to ameliorate the social consequences of IMF macroeconomic advice have been inadequately incorporated into programme design. Drawing on this evidence, we argue that multiple layers of rhetoric and ceremonial reforms have been designed to obscure the actual practice of adjustment programmes, revealing an escalating commitment to hypocrisy.
In recent years, scholars have contested conventional narratives such as that the League of Nations was a complete ‘failure’ or that the United Nations was a novelty in comparison with the League. Scholars now offer more nuanced and archive-based analyses. However, while traditional research has emphasised the establishment of the first formally independent international civil service and the corresponding secretariat as one of the League's few big achievements, the subject has not substantially benefitted from these new historical studies. This article helps to shed some light on the secretariat's nature and how international the staff really was. After examining the prevailing image of the international civil service at the League, the data will be supplemented by an analysis of the archive material with regard to recruitment and selected personnel files. This article argues that the secretariat was international in a European understanding of the notion. The administration further built on an understanding of international affairs that implied a separation in European ‘high politics’ and non-European regional affairs.
The Berlin West Africa Conference of 1884-1885 has assumed a powerful symbolic presence in international legal accounts of
the 19th century, but for historians of the era its importance has often been doubted. This article seeks to re-interpret
the place of the Berlin General Act in late 19th-century history, suggesting that the divergence of views has arisen largely
as a consequence of an inattentiveness to the place of systemic logics in legal regimes of this kind.
In the early 1990s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estiated that Pacific Asia would absorb two-thirds of the over 1 billion in U.S. Export Enhancement Program subsidies to American exporters. A portion of this lucrative market (much of which is tinned beef and processed foods sold in South Korea and Taiwan) would involve bulk wheat and corn imports by Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.
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The nature of interdependence of nations necessitates granting of aid to needy countries. Theorists, however, vary in their approaches of the factors that contributed to the development of the underdevelopment of the Third World. While the bourgeois scholars argued that the underdevelopment and dependency situation of the Third World was due to the internal contradictions of this group of countries arising from bad leadership, mismanagement of national resources and elevation of personal aggrandisement and primordial interests over and above national interest, the neo-Marxian scholars, on the other hand, submitted and insisted that what propelled the development of the developed countries also facilitated, in the same measure, the underdevelopment of the underdeveloped countries. These are: colonialism, slave trade and unequal exchange. The interest of this paper, therefore, is to look at the two sides of the coin using dependency theory to scientifically analyse the arguments put forth by both schools of thought. It also looks at leitmotif of foreign loan and its implication on the economies of the Third World Countries (TWCs).
Large-scale acquisitions and leases are one of the key new trends that emerged out of the 2008 global food crisis. Some major food importing capital exporting countries have indeed lost confidence in global markets as a stable and reliable source of food for their national food security. The Special Rapporteur analyses how these investments could have impacts on the right to food. He highlights how international human rights law could provide guidance to ensure that these investment agreements contribute to the realization of the human right to adequate food and proposes as a minimum a set of core principles and measures for host States and investors alike.
Investigating how lending programs of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) affect poverty and inequality, we explicitly address model uncertainty. We control for endogenous selection into IMF programs using data on 86 low- and middle income countries for the 1982-2009 period and analyze program effects on various poverty and inequality measures. The results rely on averaging over 90 specifications of treatment effect models and indicate adverse short-run effects of IMF agreements on poverty and inequality for the whole sample, while for a 2000-2009 subsample the results are reversed. There is evidence that significant short-run effects might disappear in the long-run.
While existing literature points to a positive impact of FDI on host countries’ growth, little is known about how inward FDI contributes tconomic volatility in the host country. In this paper, we investigate the FDI-output growth volatility nexus focusing on manufacturing sectors of OECD cound 1990 to 2015. We document a positive and statistically significant relationship between inward FDI stock and sectoral output volatility. We also show that the impact of inward FDI stock in downstream activities on volatility is larger compared to that of inward FDI stock in upstream activities which is not significant. Additionally, we find that the positive relationship between FDI and volatility is stronger in high capital-intensive industries. These results are robust to the use of a measure of FDI targeting practices.
It is worth recalling that the struggle of indigenous peoples to be recognised as “peoples” in true sense was at the forefront of their journey from an object to subject of international law. One of the most pressing concerns in their struggle was crafting their own sovereign space. The article aims to embrace and comprehend the concept of “indigenous sovereignty.” It argues that indigenous sovereignty may not have fixed contour, but it essentially confronts the idea of “empire of uniformity.” It is a source from which right to self-determination stems out and challenges the political and moral authority of States controlling indigenous population within their territory.
“The IMF and the World Bank have integrated a large number of countries into the world economy by requiring governments to open up to global trade, investment, and capital. They have not done this out of pure economic zeal. Politics and their own rules and habits explain much of why they have presented globalization as a solution to challenges they have faced in the world economy.”—from the Introduction The greatest success of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank has been as globalizers. But at whose cost? Would borrowing countries be better off without the IMF and World Bank? This book takes readers inside these institutions and the governments they work with. Ngaire Woods brilliantly decodes what they do and why they do it, using original research, extensive interviews carried out across many countries and institutions, and scholarship from the fields of economics, law, and politics. The Globalizers focuses on both the political context of IMF and World Bank actions and their impact on the countries in which they intervene. After describing the important debates between U.S. planners and the Allies in the 1944 foundation at Bretton Woods, she analyzes understandings of their missions over the last quarter century. She traces the impact of the Bank and the Fund in the recent economic history of Mexico, of post-Soviet Russia, and in the independent states of Africa. Woods concludes by proposing a range of reforms that would make the World Bank and the IMF more effective, equitable, and just.
After a long-term decline in the frequency and lethality of famines, 2017 has witnessed resurgent international concern over the issue. This paper examines the trends in famine over the last 150 years, with particular attention to the fusion of famine with forcible mass starvation. It identifies four main historic periods of famines, namely: the zenith of European colonialism; the extended World War; post-colonial totalitarianism; and post-Cold War humanitarian emergencies; and asks whether we may be entering a fifth period in which famines return in new guises. The paper explores structural causes of famine vulnerability, the overlapping but distinct causes of food crises and excess mortality in those crises, and the proximate triggers of famine. While noting that almost all famines have multiple causes, with no individual factor either necessary or sufficient, the paper focuses on the growing significance of political decision and military tactics in creating famine.
Using a panel fixed effects model for a sample of 121 countries covering 1975-2005, we examine how financial development, financial liberalization and banking crises are related to income inequality. In contrast with most previous work, our results suggest that all finance variables increase income inequality. The level of financial development conditions the impact of financial liberalization on inequality. Also the quality of political institutions conditions the impact of financial liberalization on income inequality, in contrast to the quality of economic institutions. Our main findings are robust for using random effects, cross-country regressions and legal origin as instrument for financial development.
Based on UNCTAD's database on investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS), we find that many cases raised against developing countries are handled by fairly unbiased tribunals. As for ISDS outcomes, the overall ratio of investor wins over state wins is below one. Nevertheless, it is harder for developing countries, compared to high-income countries, to achieve state wins in international arbitration of investment disputes. Copyright
The 1980s began with many developing countries facing severe debt problems. Stabilization and structural adjustment policies were introduced by the IMF and the World Bank, as the conditions for obtaining loans. By 1985 some parts of the United Nations — notably the Economic Commission for Africa, the ILO and UNICEF — were drawing attention to the severe human costs which these policies involved, in terms of unemployment, child malnutrition and setbacks in education and health. The following piece was presented by Richard Jolly, then Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF on leave of absence from IDS, as the Barbara Ward memorial lecture at the 18th World Conference of the Society for International Development in Rome. It was an early presentation of the need for an alternative approach. Two years later, Giovanni Andrea Cornia, Frances Stewart and Richard Jolly, all at the time working for UNICEF, published their detailed analysis and country data in two volumes, also entitled Adjustment with A Human Face. Partly in response, the Bretton Woods Institutions made some changes to their policies, though far less than were necessary.
We analyze data for a sample of 61 low- and middle-income nations from 1990 to 2010 using ordinary least squares regression to test the ideas from the theory of organized hypocrisy. In doing so, we find support for the theory with the World Bank does not pursue a coherent lending agenda but rather different and contradictory agendas in terms of its structural adjustment lending. The results reveal that World Bank structural adjustment lending in the forestry and agricultural sectors is associated with higher rates of forest loss while World Bank structural adjustment lending in the environmental sector is associated with lower rates of forest loss. We conclude by talking about the theoretical implications, methodological implications, policy suggestions, and directions for future research.
The final report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) concludes that the project has been ‘the most successful anti-poverty movement in history’. Two key claims underpin this narrative: that global poverty has been cut in half, and global hunger nearly in half, since 1990. This good-news narrative has been touted by the United Nations and has been widely repeated by the media. But closer inspection reveals that the UN’s claims about poverty and hunger are misleading, and even intentionally inaccurate. The MDGs have used targeted statistical manipulation to make it seem as though the poverty and hunger trends have been improving when in fact they have worsened. In addition, the MDGs use definitions of poverty and hunger that dramatically underestimate the scale likely of these problems. In reality, around four billion people remain in poverty today, and around two billion remain hungry – more than ever before in history, and between two and four times what the UN would have us believe. The implications of this reality are profound. Worsening poverty and hunger trends indicate that our present model of development is not working and needs to be fundamentally rethought.
The diffusion of markets and democracy around the world was a defining feature of the late twentieth century. Many social scientists view this economic and political liberalization as the product of independent choices by national governments. This book argues that policy and political changes were influenced heavily by prior actions of external actors: not just other governments, but international organizations and communities of experts. Drawing together insights from economics, sociology, political science, and international relations, the contributors focus on four mechanisms by which markets and democracy have diffused through interdependent decision making: coercion and the impact of powerful countries and international actors; economic competition for markets and investment; learning from experiences of other countries; and emulation among countries. These mechanisms are tested empirically using sophisticated quantitative techniques in areas as diverse as capital account and investment policy, human rights and democratization, and government downsizing, privatization, and taxation.
This book argues that the colonial confrontation was central to the formation of international law and, in particular, its founding concept, sovereignty. Traditional histories of the discipline present colonialism and non-European peoples as peripheral concerns. By contrast, Anghie argues that international law has always been animated by the ‘civilizing mission’ - the project of governing non-European peoples, and that the economic exploitation and cultural subordination that resulted were constitutively significant for the discipline. In developing these arguments, the book examines different phases of the colonial encounter, ranging from the sixteenth century to the League of Nations period and the current ‘war on terror’. Anghie provides a new approach to the history of international law, illuminating the enduring imperial character of the discipline and its continuing importance for peoples of the Third World. This book will be of interest to students of international law and relations, history, post-colonial studies and development studies.
Introduction The debt narrative is encapsulated in the conundrum of why post-apartheid South Africa chose to cripple itself with debts that it could so easily have repudiated. Nelson Mandela described the apartheid debt as “the greatest single obstacle to progress in this country.” He explained further We are limited in South Africa because our democratic government inherited a debt, which we were servicing at the rate of 30 billion rand a year. That is 30 billion we did not have to build houses, to make sure our children go to schools and to ensure that everybody has the dignity of having a job and a decent income. (ACTSA, 2003; Malala, 2003) Given that debt accumulated by the apartheid system is an example par excellence of odious debt, the new democratic South Africa had compelling legal and ethical reasons for disowning it (Rudin, 1999, 2000). Rather than disown the odious debt, the government actively sought to undermine Jubilee South Africa, the campaign founded to repudiate the apartheid debt (BusinessReport (SA), November 8 and 22, 1998). Moreover, it is arguable that few governments or other creditors would have insisted on Mandela’s South Africa repaying odious apartheid debts at the expense of the newly liberated black majority. Additionally, South Africa is far from being a poor country. Being the dominant economic power in Africa also gave the country political influence and both considerations put South Africa in a far stronger position to resist the debt burden than most other peripheral countries.
Why is the World Bank so successful? How has it gained power even at moments in history when it seemed likely to fall? This pathbreaking book is the first close examination of the inner workings of the Bank, the foundations of its achievements, its propensity for intensifying the problems it intends to cure, and its remarkable ability to tame criticism and extend its own reach. Michael Goldman takes us inside World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C., and then to Bank project sites around the globe. He explains how projects funded by the Bank really work and why community activists struggle against the World Bank and its brand of development. Goldman looks at recent ventures in areas such as the environment, human rights, and good governance and reveals how-despite its poor track record-the World Bank has acquired greater authority and global power than ever before. The book sheds new light on the World Bank's role in increasing global inequalities and considers why it has become the central target for anti-globalization movements worldwide. For anyone concerned about globalization and social justice, Imperial Nature is essential reading.
