The East Asian miracle: Economic growth and public policy: By the World Bank. (New York: Oxford University Press for the World Bank, 1993. 389 pp. $19.95, paper.)

Background The Indonesian response to HIV has been informed largely by quantitative evidence. This review examines what is known about the Indonesian HIV care cascade from published qualitative research. Methods: A ‘scoping review’ method was used to synthesise and interpret the findings of 17 eligible peer-reviewed publications. Results: Qualitative findings are reported in relation to two themes. Factors influencing successful engagement include a lack of HIV-related knowledge among clients, fear of stigma or lack of privacy/confidentiality at services, limited accessibility and affordability, and poor linkages between services. Factors affecting the broader response include a failure to adapt programs to specific socio-cultural settings, political issues in the distribution of donor funding, distrust and poor communication between service users and providers, the need for cultural privacy in particular community settings, and systemic experiences of gendered stigmatisation. Conclusions: Enhancing understanding of the Indonesian context would benefit from future qualitative research on HIV care in urban settings, describing the experiences of the most at-risk populations, and examining the role of clinics and providers in delivering HIV care in an increasingly decentralised health system.

A 'scoping review' of qualitative literature about engagement with HIV care in Indonesia.

Oil is a curse, it is often said, that condemns the countries producing it to an existence defined by war, corruption and enormous inequality. Carbon Democracy tells a more complex story, arguing that no nation escapes the political consequences of our collective dependence on oil. It shapes the body politic both in regions such as the Middle East, which rely upon revenues from oil production, and in the places that have the greatest demand for energy. Timothy Mitchell begins with the history of coal power to tell a radical new story about the rise of democracy. Coal was a source of energy so open to disruption that oligarchies in the West became vulnerable for the first time to mass demands for democracy. In the mid-twentieth century, however, the development of cheap and abundant energy from oil, most notably from the Middle East, offered a means to reduce this vulnerability to democratic pressures. The abundance of oil made it possible for the first time in history to reorganize political life around the management of something now called "the economy" and the promise of its infinite growth. The politics of the West became dependent on an undemocratic Middle East.In the twenty-first century, the oil-based forms of modern democratic politics have become unsustainable. Foreign intervention and military rule are faltering in the Middle East, while governments everywhere appear incapable of addressing the crises that threaten to end the age of carbon democracy - the disappearance of cheap energy and the carbon-fuelled collapse of the ecological order. In making the production of energy the central force shaping the democratic age, Carbon Democracy rethinks the history of energy, the politics of nature, the theory of democracy, and the place of the Middle East in our common world.

Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil

It is striking how often countries with oil or other natural resource wealth have failed to grow more rapidly than those without. This is the phenomenon known as the Natural Resource Curse. The principle is not confined to individual anecdotes or case studies, but has been borne out in some econometric tests of the determinants of economic performance across a comprehensive sample of countries. This paper considers seven aspects of commodity wealth, each of interest in its own right, but each also a channel that some have suggested could lead to sub-standard economic performance. They are: long-term trends in world commodity prices, volatility, permanent crowding out of manufacturing, poor institutions, unsustainability, war, and cyclical Dutch Disease. Skeptics have questioned the Natural Resource Curse, pointing to examples of commodityexporting countries that have done well and arguing that resource exports and booms are not exogenous. Clearly the relevant policy question for a country with natural resources is how to make the best of them. The paper concludes with a consideration of ideas for institutions that could help a country that is endowed with, for example, oil overcome the pitfalls of the Curse and achieve good economic performance. The most promising ideas include indexation of oil contracts, hedging of export proceeds, denomination of debt in terms of oil, Chilestyle fiscal rules, a monetary target that emphasizes product prices, transparent commodity funds, and lump-sum distribution.

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The Natural Resource Curse: A Survey

The last decade and a half has witnessed a dramatic growth in mining activity in many developing countries. This article reviews these recent trends and describes the debates and conflicts they have triggered. The authors review evidence regarding debates on the resource curse and the possibility of an extraction-led pathway to development. They then describe the different types of resistance and social mobilization that have greeted mineral expansion at a range of geographical scales, and consider how far these protests have changed the relationships between mining and political economic change. The conclusions address how far such protests might contribute to an ‘escape’ from the resource curse, and consider implications for research and policy agendas.

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Contention and Ambiguity: Mining and the Possibilities of Development

This paper presents a critical survey of the literature on the ‘resource curse’, focusing on three main questions: (i) are natural resources bad for development?; (ii) what causes the resource curse?; and, (iii) how can the resource curse be overcome? In respect of these questions, three observations are made. First, while the literature provides considerable evidence that natural resource abundance is associated with various negative development outcomes, this evidence is by no means conclusive. Second, existing explanations for the resource curse do not adequately account for the role of social forces or external political and economic environments in shaping development outcomes in resource abundant countries, nor for the fact that, while most resource abundant countries have performed poorly in developmental terms, a few have done quite well. Finally, recommendations for overcoming the resource curse have not generally taken into account the issue of political feasibility. More generally, it is argued that the basic problem with the literature is that researchers have been too reductionist – they have tended to explain development performance solely in terms of the size and nature of countries’ natural resource endowments. A consensus is emerging that various political and social variables mediate the relationship between natural resource wealth and development outcomes. But rather than acknowledge that these variables are shaped by a range of historical and other factors in each case, scholars have tended to see them as determined by the natural resource base. Put differently, scholars have been asking the wrong question: rather than asking why natural resource wealth has fostered various political pathologies and in turn promoted poor development performance, they should have been asking what political and social factors enable some resource abundant countries to utilise their natural resources to promote development and prevent other resource abundant countries from doing the same.

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The political economy of the resource curse : a literature survey

Prior to the late 1980s, the conventional wisdom was that natural resource abundance was a blessing for developing countries. In the 1950s, for instance, geographer Norton Ginsburg argued that ‘the...

Escaping the Resource Curse

Numerous studies have suggested that natural resource abundance is bad for development. In this context, Indonesia's rapid growth during the 1970s and 1980s seems remarkable. Why was Indonesia able to grow strongly and what are the implications of its experience for other resource abundant countries? I argue that its rapid growth was not simply a matter of policy elites making rational economic policy choices, but rather reflected two more fundamental factors: (i) the political victory of counter-revolutionary social forces over radical nationalist and communist social forces in Indonesia during the 1960s; and (ii) the country's strategic Cold War location and proximity to Japan. Accordingly, the main implication of its experience is that improved economic performance in resource abundant countries requires shifts in structures of power and interest and the emergence of external political and economic conditions that provide opportunities for growth.

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Escaping the resource curse: The case of Indonesia

Contesting reform: Indonesia's new order and the IMF

This book examines the dynamics shaping the economic process of economic liberalisation in Indonesia since the mid-1980's. Much writing on the process of economic liberalisation in developing countries views economic liberalisation as the victory of economic rationality over political and social interests. In contrast, this book argues that economic liberalisation should not be understood in these terms, but rather in the way that political social interests shape processes of economic reform in both a positive and negative sense. Specifically, Rosser argues that economic liberalisation needs to be understood in terms of the extent to which economic crises shift the balance of power and influence within society away from coalitions opposed to reform and towards those in favour of reform. In the Indonesian context, the main coalitions that need to be examined in this respect are the politico-bureaucrats and the conglomerates who have generally opposed reform and mobile capitalists who have generally supported reform. Based on extensive original research, and providing much new material, the book considers the politics of economic policy-making in Indonesia in a range of sectors including the capital market, intellectual property law, the banking industry, and the trade and investment sectors. Analysing why the nature of economic policy in Indonesia has varied over time, this study argues that there is nothing inevitable about a transition to a fully-fledged liberal market order in Indonesia, and outlines possible future scenarios for the country's political economy.

Andrew Rosser

Papers

The political economy of the resource curse : a literature survey

Escaping the Resource Curse

Escaping the resource curse: The case of Indonesia

Contesting reform: Indonesia's new order and the IMF

The Politics of Economic Liberalization in Indonesia: State, Market and Power