Alexander Kentikelenis

Bio: Alexander Kentikelenis is an academic researcher from Bocconi University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Conditionality & Public health. The author has an hindex of 24, co-authored 54 publications receiving 2532 citations. Previous affiliations of Alexander Kentikelenis include University of Amsterdam & University of Cambridge.

IMF conditionality and development policy space, 1985–2014

Abstract: 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 reincorporated 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 intro...

The Politics of World Polity: Script-writing in International Organizations

Abstract: Sociologists have long examined how states, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), and professional groups interact in order to institutionalize their preferred norms at the transnational level. Yet, explanations of global norm-making that emphasize inter-organizational negotiations do not adequately explain the intra-organizational script-writing—that is, the codification of norms in prescriptive behavioral templates—that underpins this process. This article opens the black box of how scripts emerge and institutionalize within IGOs. Script-writing is a function of both world-cultural frames and material interests, held by different intra-organizational actors: scientific IGO staff and state representatives in governing bodies, respectively. The interplay between these frames and interests determines whether scripts will institutionalize. In this theoretical model, world-cultural and power-political explanations are pertinent to different, mutually informing, and coexisting aspects of the script-writing process. As a corollary of our approach, we present a conceptual framework for the study of intra-IGO script-writing, which is contingent on three normative struggles: among IGO staff, within an IGO’s board of directors, and between the staff and the board. To empirically substantiate our arguments, we examine scripts on taxation and capital controls by the International Monetary Fund. We conclude by discussing the broader implications of our model for the study of international organizations and the engines of global norm-making.

The European commission

Abstract: 2 1 The innovative transport systems and the CityMobil project 10 1.1 The research questions 10 2 The state of art in the field of automatic transport systems 12 2.1 Case studies and demand studies for innovative transport systems 12 3 The design and implementation of surveys 14 3.1 Definition of experimental design 14 3.2 Questionnaire design and delivery 16 3.3 First analyses on the collected sample 18 4 Calibration of Logit Multionomial demand models 21 4.1 Methodology 21 4.2 Calibration of the “full” model. 22 4.3 Calibration of the “final” model 24 4.4 The demand analysis through the final Multinomial Logit model 25 5 The analysis of interaction between the demand and socioeconomic attributes 31 5.1 Methodology 31 5.2 Application of Mixed Logit models to the demand 31 5.3 Analysis of the interactions between demand and socioeconomic attributes through Mixed Logit models 32 5.4 Mixed Logit model and interaction between age and the demand for the CTS 38 5.5 Demand analysis with Mixed Logit model 39 6 Final analyses and conclusions 45 6.1 Comparison between the results of the analyses 45 6.2 Conclusions 48 6.3 Answers to the research questions and future developments 52

On Imagined Communities

Abstract: Benedict Anderson’s deservedly famous thesis about the origins and nature of modern nationalism turns around the central notion of an “imagined community.” This category provides him with a matrix out of which one can apprehend-theoretically and historically-the different variants of nationalist discourse formulated over the last two hundred years. We will refer, in the brief comments that follow, to three basic dimensions structuring the fabric of Anderson’s argument: 1) the presuppositions implicit in the notion of an “imagined” community; 2) the kind of substitutability or solidarity which is required to be a member of such a community; 3) the kind of relationship that is established between such a community-which is by definition finite or limited-and its outside. Before that, however, let us describe the main features of Anderson’s thesis.