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Political Fragmentation (political + fragmentation)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	100%

Selected Abstracts

Gresham on horseback: the monetary roots of Spanish American political fragmentation in the nineteenth century1

ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 3 2009
MARIA ALEJANDRA IRIGOIN
This article deals with the political economic consequences of the disappearance of the Spanish silver peso standard in Spanish America, the longest monetary union that ever existed. With the Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1808, the fiscal and political structure of the empire imploded and most colonies became independent. Regional competition for revenues exacerbated budget shortfalls driven by military expenditure. Local elites established in former colonial Treasury districts started highly diverse monetary experiments to procure funds. Those in control of mint houses started minting their own coins or debased existing silver currency. Elsewhere, inconvertible paper currency was also created to meet budget deficits. As a result, the most valuable feature of the Spanish American silver peso, its quality standard, was broken and the standard that had organized the early modern international economy for more than 300 years ceased to exist altogether. In Spanish America, as diverse monies co-existed within a formerly highly integrated economic space, a widespread Gresham's law effect exacerbated the conflict among local and regional elites. This fostered the political fragmentation of colonial Spanish America into an increasing number of political and monetary sovereign entities during the nineteenth century. [source]

Fragments of Economic Accountability and Trade Policy

FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 2 2007
RYAN KENNEDY
While there has been a prodigious amount of literature on trade policy written in the past two decades, very little of that literature has dealt with countries in economic transition or nondemocratic regimes. There has also been a lack of work dealing with state interests in trade policy beyond realpolitik discussions of national security. This article seeks to fill some of these gaps through a study of two samples: one of liberalization in 25 post-Communist countries between the years 1991 and 1999 and the other of 124 countries from around the world in 1997. The study concludes that a key element in the choice between free trade and protectionism is the level of "fragmentation of economic accountability." Such fragmentation consists of two major components: (1) the existence of a strong capitalist class that is independent of the government; and (2) the dispersion of political power among actors both inside and outside the government. Where the government is more accountable to a wide range of interests, policies are more likely to be aligned with market mechanisms, encouraging the adoption of reforms, including the liberalization of trade policy. This article builds on the conclusions of Frye and Mansfield in several ways: (1) it embeds political fragmentation into a larger theoretical framework of economic accountability of government institutions; (2) it introduces the importance of state ownership in shaping government interests; (3) it introduces an idea of social, not just institutional, accountability; and (4) it proposes a statist view of trade policy that is lacking in the present literature. [source]

Growth at the fringe: The influence of political fragmentation in United States metropolitan areas,

PAPERS IN REGIONAL SCIENCE, Issue 4 2003
John I. Carruthers
Land use governance; land use regulation; political fragmentation; urban sprawl Abstract. Urban sprawl has evolved into an exceptionally complex public policy problem in the United States over the course of recent decades. One factor that has made it particularly difficult to deal with is its relationship to the fragmented structure of the American system of land use governance. Acting on behalf of their residents, local governments enact land use regulations to secure lifestyle preferences for low density, suburban living environments while at the same time ensuring a high quality of public service provision. This article examines the effect of this process on metropolitan spatial structure through a series of econometric models designed to test the following hypothesis: that fragmentation promotes sprawl by increasing the proportion of growth that occurs at the unincorporated urban fringe. The estimation results reveal substantive evidence that municipal fragmentation and several related factors , including special districts, infrastructure investments, and white flight processes , have a significant and enduring effect on the growth of outlying areas. [source]