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Begin New Search Topic Development Content Type Working Paper

2111. Banking Reform and Development in the Middle East and Africa

Author:
Catherine Boone and Henry Clement
Publication Date:
03-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
This study underscores the strategic role —both political and economic— of banking sector reform in the overall pursuit of economic development and democratization. It compares trajectories of banking sector reform in Middle Eastern and African countries that have remained on the margins of the new global economy. A close look shows that there governments' willingness to embrace reform has differed across contexts, as has the extent and pace of reform. Meanwhile, the effects of reform have also been very uneven. We model this variation in reform trajectories and its outcomes, propose a theoretical explanation for it, and use a set of case studies to illustrate the contrasts and causal dynamics that we have identified. Our main claim is that structural features of national political economies go far in defining actual trajectories of banking sector reform and liberalization. Structural features of national political economies that we define as key are the strength of indigenous private sector, and how it is linked to the state and foreign capital. We propose a typology of banking structure and reform trajectories and use case studies from the Middle East and Africa to illustrate variation in the politics of banking sector reform.
Topic:
Development and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, Middle East, Canada, North America, and Mexico

2112. Liberalizaci ó n Commercial y Reforma Burocr á tica en El Área de Tratados Comerciales Internacionales en México.

Author:
Jorge A. Schiavon and Antonio Ortiz Mena
Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
The central trade policy priority of the last two administrations (Carlos Salinas de Gortari, 1988-1994, and Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, 1994-2000) was the negotiation and the implementation of one very important and ambitious free trade agreement each, the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Mexico-European Union Free Trade Agreement respectively. This working paper explains how and why both administrations were able to successfully deal with the delegation problems that chief-executive principals face with their bureaucratic agents, through a series of institutional reforms. The main argument is that both Salinas and Zedillo had to deal with three specific agency problems: adverse selection, moral hazard, and incomplete enforcement, and that given the characteristics of the Mexican political system prevailing at that time, they were able to successfully solve these problems. These institutional reforms in the foreign economic policy should be understood as a response to agency problems, and not as a reflection of the personal governing style of Salinas and Zedillo.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Development, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
Africa and North America

2113. Towards a Comparative Model of Press Functioning

Author:
Adam Jones
Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
While the role of the press and other media has been central to a wide variety of ideological frameworks and political prescriptions, from classical liberalism to state socialism, there has been little attempt to generate a "macro-theory" of press functioning that claims to be valid for press systems worldwide. This paper attempts to construct such an analytical framework, by isolating two key variables (a "mobilizing imperative" and a "professional imperative") that act to shape the orientation and behavior of press institutions, their sponsors, and their editorial staff. "Meta-environmental" variables, such as pre-existing press culture and level of economic development, are also considered. The paper draws on a wide variety of case-studies, mostly from the less-developed world, to depict the diverse strategies by which press workers seek to reconcile the mobilizing and professional imperatives, and to open up space for the latter. The paper concludes with a presentation of three models, each applicable to a given "type" of media system ("hard" authoritarian, "soft" authoritarian, and market-oriented liberal-democratic). It is claimed that these three models, despite certain conceptual difficulties, account for the great majority of media systems worldwide, and help to explain the institutional behaviors and professional orientations that they exhibit.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, Economics, and Politics
Political Geography:
Africa

2114. Gendercide and Genocide

Author:
Adam Jones
Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
Gender-selective atrocities have tended to attract little attention when the victims are male. The result is that gender-selective killing-"gendercide"-has tended to be examined only in the context of the female experience. This paper takes a broader and more inclusive approach to the subject. It argues that, contrary to the standard depiction, gender-selective mass killing is more likely to target men than women-especially males of a "battle age." Drawing on a wide range of historical and contemporary case studies, the paper examines the methods and underlying motivations of gendercides against both men and women. Moving beyond a state-centered framework, it also considers institutional gendercide through forced labor, military conscription, female infanticide, witch-hunts, and other phenomena. It concludes by calling for an inclusive approach to gender-selective mass killing, and for a recognition of extreme urgency of the phenomenon in the modern world.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Gender Issues, and Genocide

2115. The Interpretation of Meaning in Social Sciences

Author:
Farid Kahhat
Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
This article presents in a relatively brief but comprehensive way the constitutive elements of an interpretive approach towards social sciences. It explains why interpretive frameworks constitute unavoidable screens that sift our cognitive appropriation of the world, and how metaphors (understood as a distinctive way of achieving insight) can provide their ordering principles. It further explains in what sense social intercourse is a meaning creating process, and why the interpretation of those meanings should be the main purpose of social sciences.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, and Education

2116. Sustainable Regional Development through Institutionalised Trans-frontier Cooperation in the Sofia-Skopje-Nis Triangle--Towards the Establishment of a Euroregion

Author:
Stoyan Totev and Maria Boyadjieva
Publication Date:
04-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EastWest Institute
Abstract:
The transition process in Central and Eastern Europe was associated with increasing intra-regional disparities. It appears also that the regional inequalities in South east Europe are relatively high creating in the same time significantly higher economic and social problems. That refers to Bulgaria, Macedonia and FR Yugoslavia whereas every reform face serious difficulties due to the lower readiness for accession to the EU structures as well as for their backwardness in the economic development. In countries like Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia there exist enough resources for facing the negative effects from one or another reform as well as the necessary readiness of the population the reform s to be carried out.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Macedonia

2117. The Dialectics of Globalisation

Author:
Henri Vogt
Publication Date:
01-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
One of the central objectives of the ever-expanding entrepreneurship of globalisation literature has been to formulate a single, concise definition of the phenomenon of globalisation. Needless to say, this has usually proved a hugely difficult task, if not an impossible one. The strategy of the ensuing pages will therefore be somewhat different. I will start off with an explicit idea of the multiplicity of 'globalisation', that is, from the assumption (or fact) that globalisation covers such a wide range of different issues, attitudes, processes, policies, destinies, and people perceive it in so many different ways that any simple definition of it is doomed to be virtually useless. There is, in other words, no need to bring all these different features and views under a single totalising explication. By contrast, the best way to conceptualise the notion is to do it with the help of all those definitional problems, controversies, disputes and even paradoxes that it seems to entail – that is, with an explicit vagueness of the notion in mind, a vagueness that also implies a great deal of dynamism and continuous change.
Topic:
Development, Globalization, International Political Economy, and Nationalism

2118. Western strategies and the prospect of reforms in the Middle East

Author:
Heidi Huuhtanen
Publication Date:
07-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
Reforms in the Middle East have been on the agenda of almost all relevant international organizations and political actors during the recent years. This has been due to the concentration after 9/11 on the domestic conditions in the Muslim world as a source of radicalization. Concentration of domestic problems is a positive step as it has broadened the discussion of sources of security threats and questioned the current policies towards Middle East states and societies. In the public debate the security threat posed by Muslim terrorism to the international community is still largely analyzed out of the domestic context. Western policies and the Israel-Palestinian conflict are seen as the primary reason for radicalization. Muslim relations to the West as well as the issue of Israel surely have their part to play in the domestic setting of the Middle Eastern states and societies, but most analysts and even Islamists themselves agree, that American and Israeli politics – or indeed any other external factors – explain very little of the support for Islamism or radicalization. Instead the radicalization originates in specific political and socio-economic problems in the Muslim countries and the phenomena must be therefore seen as part of intra-Muslim political grievances. External reasons can only add to these already existing internal problems.
Topic:
Civil Society and Development
Political Geography:
Middle East and Israel

2119. Dialogue of Civilisations? The Case of Nepad

Author:
Henri Vogt
Publication Date:
07-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
This paper has two parallel aims. First of all, it seeks to present and critically discuss some central aspects of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) initiative. A programme of the African Union and officially launched in October 2001, NEPAD is a comprehensive, ambitious framework for changing the negative course of development in Africa and for ending the increasing marginalisation of the continent in the global era. In the words of its founding document, 'the Programme is anchored on the determination of Africans to extricate themselves and the continent from the malaise of underdevelopment and exclusion in a globalising world' (§1).
Topic:
Development, Government, International Cooperation, International Organization, International Political Economy, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Africa

2120. Angola's Future

Publication Date:
11-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
Angola is no longer at war except in its Cabinda province. This report summarizes the British-Angola Forum 2003 conference which focused on whether there was a peace dividend and what the post-conflict priorities for reconstruction and development should be. The opportunities and challenges are many, but many speakers emphasized how slow post-conflict democratic change is. Key issues examined in the British-Angola Forum's 2002 conference were as pertinent as ever. The confrontation between transparency and sovereignty continues to resonate especially.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution and Development
Political Geography:
Africa and Europe