世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

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.)

Ethnic Groups in Conflict

Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism

http://www.centrelearoback.org/inrich/assets/documents/Pickett_Wilkinson_SocSciMed2015.pdf

Income inequality and health: a causal review.

Three different theoretical explanations are tested for the exceptionally high level of electoral volatility found in contemporary Latin America: economic voting, institutional characteristics of political regimes and party systems, and the structure and organization of class cleavages. A pooled cross-sectional time-series regression analysis is conducted on 58 congressional elections and 43 presidential elections in 16 Latin American countries during the 1980s and 1990s. Institutional variables have the most consistent effect on volatility, while the influence of economic performance is heavily contingent upon the type of election and whether the dependent variable is operationalized as incumbent vote change or aggregate electoral volatility. The results demonstrate that electoral volatility is a function of short-term economic perturbations, the institutional fragilities of both democratic regimes and party systems, and relatively fluid cleavage structures.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/2585575

Party Systems and Electoral Volatility in Latin America: A Test of Economic, Institutional, and Structural Explanations

Recent research on federalism is extremely divided. While some tout the benefits of “market-preserving” federalism, others point to the fragmentation and incoherence of policy in federal states. This research bridges the divide by analyzing the political andfiscalstructures that are likely to account for the highly divergent economic experiences of federal systems around die world. To test these propositions, the authors use an original data set to conduct analyses of budget balance and inflation infifteenfederationsaround the world from 1978 through 1996. The empirical research suggests that the level of fiscal decentralization, the nature of intergovernmental finance, and vertical partisan relations all influence macroeconomic outcomes. The find- ings have broad implications for the widespread move toward greater decentralization and for the theoretical literatures on federalism and macroeconomics.

Beyond the Fiction of Federalism: Macroeconomic Management in Multitiered Systems

While increased exposure to the global economy is associated with increased welfare effort in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the opposite holds in the developing world. These differences are typically explained with reference to domestic politics. Tradables, unions, and the like in the developing world are assumed to have less power or interests divergent to those in the OECD—interests that militate against social spending. I claim that such arguments can be complemented with a recognition that developed and developing nations have distinct patterns of integration into global markets. While income shocks associated with international markets are quite modest in the OECD, they are profound in developing nations. In the OECD, governments can respond to those shocks by borrowing on capital markets and spending countercyclically on social programs. No such opportunity exists for most governments in the developing world, most of which have limited access to capital markets in tough times, more significant incentives to balance budgets, and as a result cut social spending at the times it is most needed. Thus, while internationally inspired volatility and income shocks seem not to threaten the underpinnings of the welfare state in rich nations, it undercuts the capacity of governments in the developing world to smooth consumption (and particularly consumption by the poor) across the business cycle.The author would like to thank Steph Haggard, Kristin Bakke, Wongi Choe, Tim Jones, and seminar participants at Duke University, Penn State University, Washington University, MIT, and the University of New Mexico for their helpful comments. Nancy Brune, Mark Hallerberg and Rolf Strauch, and Nita Rudra were very generous in providing their capital account, OECD fiscal, and potential labor power data, respectively.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0020818306060139

Dependency Revisited: International Markets, Business Cycles, and Social Spending in the Developing World

Using economic data for the period between 1979 and 1995 for forty-six large federal and unitary developing nations, I analyze the impact of political federalism in the developing world on a number of measures of national economic adjustment, volatility, and crisis. The findings suggest that federalism in the ten nations where it operates has, as theoretically predicted, a negative effect on macroeconomic performance and reform. I argue that the macroeconomic and fiscal imbalances experienced by these federal nations are, in part, structurally determined by their devolved political and fiscal institutions that create incentives for subnational governments to avoid the political costs of fiscal adjustment. he political economy of stabilization and adjustment in developing nations has been a central topic of comparativists for nearly two decades. In large part this interest has been a response to the increases in international trade and capital flows, collectively known as globalization, which have increased the incentives for developing nations to discard statist models of development in favor of free market policies. With globalization, the capacity of developing nations to maintain macroeconomic stability increasingly determines their success in the search for international investment, competitiveness, and economic growth. As a result, questions about the ability of nations to adjust their economies to this reality have assumed tremendous importance. Under what conditions do governments carry through politically distasteful macroeconomic reforms? What are the key political and economic institutions that mediate a nation's insertion into and relationship with the global economy? What are the political preconditions for successful free market reforms? In addressing these questions, most research has followed in the steps of political economists such as Cameron (1984) and Gourevitch (1986), emphasizing the importance of national level institutions as mediators between the international economy and domestic politics, largely ignoring the complicated relationship between market-oriented reform efforts and the decentralization of political and fiscal power inherent in federal political systems. Likewise, the literature on the reform of the state has failed to explore the implications of federalism and subnational institutions for macroeconomic management in developing nations characterized by the devolution of political and economic power from central to provincial governments. In contrast' this research takes as its central point of theoretical departure the potentially negative consequences of federalism in the developing world for economic adjustment to the challenges of globalization.' I

Federalism and the Politics of Macroeconomic Policy and Performance

Both policy-makers and scholars have turned their attention to federalism as a means for managing conflicts between central governments and subnational interests. But both the theoretical literature and the empirical track record of federations make for opposing conclusions concerning federalism’s ability to prevent civil conflict. This paper argues that the existing literature falls short on two accounts: First, it lacks a systematic comparison of peaceful and conflict-ridden cases across federal states; second, many studies seem to suggest that there is one optimal mix of decentralization and centralization, while others acknowledge that there is no one-size-fits-all federal solution but leave this without further theorizing. Our argument is that the “peace-preserving” effect of specific federal traits—fiscal decentralization, fiscal transfers, and political co-partisanship—are conditional on a society’s income level and ethnic composition. The argument is tested across 22 federal states from 1978 to 2000.

Erik Wibbels

Papers

Party Systems and Electoral Volatility in Latin America: A Test of Economic, Institutional, and Structural Explanations

Beyond the Fiction of Federalism: Macroeconomic Management in Multitiered Systems

Dependency Revisited: International Markets, Business Cycles, and Social Spending in the Developing World

Federalism and the Politics of Macroeconomic Policy and Performance

Diversity, Disparity, and Civil Conflict in Federal States