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Political Stability (political + stability)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	55%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	35%
2 Other Domains	10%

Selected Abstracts

Historians in ,the liberal hour': Lawrence Stone and J. H. Plumb re,visited

HISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 189 2002
David Cannadine
This articles assesses the careers and impact of Lawrence Stone and J. H. Plumb, examining their formative influences, and the effect which they in turn had on the writing and practice of history, particularly in the nineteen,sixties. It assesses their two most resonant books: Stone's The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529,1642(1972) and Plumb's The Growth of Political Stability in England, 1675,1725(1967). The article traces historiographical debate through the twentieth century and into the new millennium, focusing on the buoyant and heady atmosphere of the sixties, which so affected Stone, Plumb and their contemporaries, and the revisionist response which peaked in the nineteen,eighties, and concludes that no historian could or should claim to be unaffected by the times in which he or she writes. [source]

African elephants: the effect of property rights and political stability

CONTEMPORARY ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 1 2000
MA. McPherson
African elephant populations have declined by more than 50% over the past 20 years. International outrage over the slaughter led to a worldwide ban on ivory sales beginning in 1989, despite the objections of many economists and scientists, and of several southern African countries that have established systems of property rights over elephants. Far from declining, elephant populations in many of these countries have increased to levels at or above the carrying capacity of the ecosystem. This article estimates the determinants of changes in elephant populations in 35 African countries over several time periods. The authors find that, controlling for other factors, countries with property rights systems of community wildlife programs have more rapid elephant population growth rates than do those countries that do not. Political instability and the absence of representative governments significantly lower elephant growth rates. [source]

Post-conflict Statebuilding and State Legitimacy: From Negative to Positive Peace?

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 4 2008
David Roberts
ABSTRACT This article is concerned with the potential that statebuilding interventions have to institutionalize social justice, in addition to their more immediate ,negative' peace mandates, and the impact this might have, both on local state legitimacy and the character of the ,peace' that might follow. Much recent scholarship has stressed the legitimacy of a state's behaviour in relation to conformity to global governance norms or democratic ,best practice'. Less evident is a discussion of the extent to which post-conflict polities are able to engender the societal legitimacy central to political stability. As long as this level of legitimacy is absent (and it is hard to generate), civil society is likely to remain distant from the state, and peace and stability may remain elusive. A solution to this may be to apply existing international legislation centred in the UN and the ILO to compel international organizations and national states to deliver basic needs security through their institutions. This has the effect of stimulating local-level state legitimacy while simultaneously formalizing social justice and positive peacebuilding. [source]

INSTABILITY AND THE INCENTIVES FOR CORRUPTION

ECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 1 2009
FILIPE R. CAMPANTE
We investigate the relationship between corruption and political stability, from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. We propose a model of incumbent behavior that features the interplay of two effects: a horizon effect, whereby greater instability leads the incumbent to embezzle more during his short window of opportunity, and a demand effect, by which the private sector is more willing to bribe stable incumbents. The horizon effect dominates at low levels of stability, because firms are unwilling to pay high bribes and unstable incumbents have strong incentives to embezzle, whereas the demand effect gains salience in more stable regimes. Together, these two effects generate a non-monotonic, U-shaped relationship between total corruption and stability. On the empirical side, we find a robust U-shaped pattern between country indices of corruption perception and various measures of incumbent stability, including historically observed average tenures of chief executives and governing parties: regimes that are very stable or very unstable display higher levels of corruption when compared with those in an intermediate range of stability. These results suggest that minimizing corruption may require an electoral system that features some re-election incentives, but with an eventual term limit. [source]

The Water Crisis in the Gaza Strip: Prospects for Resolution

GROUND WATER, Issue 5 2005
E. Weinthal
Israel and the Palestinian Authority share the southern Mediterranean coastal aquifer. Long-term overexploitation in the Gaza Strip has resulted in a decreasing water table, accompanied by the degradation of its water quality. Due to high levels of salinity and nitrate and boron pollution, most of the ground water is inadequate for both domestic and agricultural consumption. The rapid rate of population growth in the Gaza Strip and dependence upon ground water as a single water source present a serious challenge for future political stability and economic development. Here, we integrate the results of geochemical studies and numerical modeling to postulate different management scenarios for joint management between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The chemical and isotopic data show that most of the salinity phenomena in the Gaza Strip are derived from the natural flow of saline ground water from Israel toward the Gaza Strip. As a result, the southern coastal aquifer does not resemble a classic "upstream-downstream" dispute because Israel's pumping of the saline ground water reduces the salinization rates of ground water in the Gaza Strip. Simulation of different pumping scenarios using a monolayer, hydrodynamic, two-dimensional model (MARTHE) confirms the hypothesis that increasing pumping along the Gaza Strip border combined with a moderate reduction of pumping within the Gaza Strip would improve ground water quality within the Gaza Strip. We find that pumping the saline ground water for a source of reverse-osmosis desalination and then supplying the desalinated water to the Gaza Strip should be an essential component of a future joint management strategy between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. [source]

Popular politics in Angus and Perthshire in the seventeen-nineties

HISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 210 2007
Bob Harris
While a great deal of work on England and Ireland in the seventeen-nineties has been published in recent decades, Scotland has attracted far less attention. This article uses a series of uniquely rich archival collections to reconstruct in detail currents of opinion and political developments in two Scottish counties, Perthshire and Angus, in this period. It presents new evidence on the scope, social depth and resilience of radicalism and loyalism, and examines the nature and limitations of political stability in this region. In doing so, it brings into question the notion of ,massive political stability' in Scotland in the seventeen-nineties and the sharp contrasts which are sometimes drawn between popular politics in England and Scotland in the age of the French Revolution. [source]

The Republics of Ideas: Venice, Florence and the Defence of Liberty, 1525,1530

HISTORY, Issue 279 2000
Stephen D. Bowd
The sixteenth century has often been regarded as a crucial period in the history of political events in Italy, and in the history of political ideas. The contributions of Florence and Venice to this process have long been acknowledged. Florentine admiration for the Venetian political system reflected internal political instability in the former city. The evidence for Venetian-Florentine contacts, and for a Venetian concern or admiration for Florence has been less noted. This article aims to show that there is evidence that Venetian concern for the defence of republican liberty after 1525 was allied to an awareness of Florentine political events and their significance for Venetian political practices. This awareness was stimulated by the pressure of imperial intervention on the peninsula after 1525. Florence and Venice were allies under the treaty of Cognac, and diplomats in both cities articulated a concern for republican libertas in Italy and an antipathy towards imperial rule. The work of Gasparo Contarini can be placed in this context, and as a result the critical point in the development of his arguments about Venetian political stability can be placed in the 1520s rather than in the years around 1509. The politics and political ideas of both cities were therefore developed in a wider context than has hitherto been supposed. [source]

Do Governments Use Financial Derivatives Appropriately?

INTERNATIONAL FINANCE, Issue 2 2001
Evidence from Sovereign Borrowers in Developed Economies
This article provides original evidence on the use of derivatives by sovereign borrowers. Swaps are used both to increase the liquidity of long-term government bonds and for speculation. However, some sovereign borrowers have also used derivatives to ,window dress' their public accounts for the purpose of disguising budget deficits. One actual window-dressing transaction by a sovereign borrower that used it to facilitate entry into the EMU is described. It is shown that the size of the artificial deficit reduction it achieved through this transaction is large. I argue that window-dressing through derivatives might prove particularly damaging for the political stability of the EMU, the effectiveness of stabilization programmes in less developed countries, and the credibility of supranational institutions charged with monitoring the soundness of client-country economic policies. Window dressing also dangerously distorts the relationship between governments and private financial institutions. I suggest proper accounting procedures that should be used to eliminate the possibility of such operations. [source]

Social security for China's rural aged: a proposal based on a universal non-contributory pension

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WELFARE, Issue 2 2010
Yinan Yang
Yang Y, Williamson JB, Shen C. Social security for China's rural aged: a proposal based on a universal non-contributory pension Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 236,245 © 2009 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. China's relative lack of social security coverage for rural elders exacerbates the already severe rural,urban economic disparity, slows the rate of rural poverty reduction, and raises social justice concerns. Our analysis draws on evidence from a number of sources including interviews with experts on China, Chinese government documents, Chinese newspaper accounts, and other sources from other countries. Based on our analysis of what has been tried in other countries and the current situation in rural China, we offer some suggestions for Chinese policy makers. We suggest that, for rural China, a universal non-contributory old-age pension deserves serious consideration, and refer to our proposed model as a Rural Old-Age Social Pension. It will reduce the level of poverty in rural areas and the degree of income inequality between rural and urban areas while simultaneously promoting social and political stability. [source]

Surge, Escalate, Withdraw and Shinseki: Forecasting and Retro-casting American Force Strategies and Insurgency in Iraq,

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES, Issue 3 2007
Andrew J. Enterline
Central to the contemporary American foreign policy debate is the issue of reducing insurgency and promoting stability in Iraq and the role of American military forces in achieving these outcomes. Military force,related proposals range from complete withdrawal to a moderate "surge" in troops to a massive escalation of the force commitment. Here, we draw upon an analysis of domestic political stability in 60 imposed political systems occurring during the period 1816,1994 to forecast the effectiveness of said force-related proposals. The analysis underscores, in part, that (i) a policy of surging American troops is unlikely to succeed, (ii) a policy of belated massive escalation reduces insurgency, but much less so than an initial policy of massive invasion coupled with massive occupation, a strategy that preempts the development of a robust insurgency. [source]

A cornerstone for adequate supply of safe blood

ISBT SCIENCE SERIES: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTRACELLULAR TRANSPORT, Issue 1 2006
M. Y. Zhu
Blood safety and timely adequate supply have significant impacts not only on healthcare service, but also the socio-economic development and political stability of a country. However, until a decade ago the importance has not been seriously taken in the country. Distinct blood programme and safety strategy were not always available. In certain regions of the country the supervision to establishments involved in blood collection, processing and transfusion was neither strict nor sufficient. During the early period of 1990, HIV was transmitted among plasma-apheresis donors in two central provinces. The relevant plasma-apheresis centres, in which plasma is collected solely as source materials for fractionation, were accused for wrongdoings including not performing HIV screening, and mixing red cells from different donors with same blood types before back infusion. [source]

Governance and Agricultural Production Efficiency: A Cross-Country Aggregate Frontier Analysis

JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2009
Mon-Chi Lio
O13; O47; Q17 Abstract This study uses a stochastic frontier approach to investigate the relationship between six governance indicators and agricultural efficiency. We find that improvements in rule of law, control of corruption and government effectiveness enhance agricultural productivity significantly if each indicator enters the inefficiency equation independently. When all six indicators are included in the equation, we find that an improvement in rule of law raises agricultural efficiency significantly, but increases in voice and accountability and political stability appear to significantly reduce agricultural efficiency. Grouping the six indicators into three dimensions, we find that an improvement in ,respect for institutional framework' raises agricultural efficiency significantly, but an enhancement in ,selection of authority' reduces agricultural efficiency significantly. Our results imply that poorer countries can enhance their agricultural efficiency substantially by strengthening the state and citizens' respect for institutional framework. However, our results show that greater democracy is associated with lower agricultural efficiency. This finding is consistent with interest group capture and political failure arguments of the political economy literature. [source]

Backlash Reconsidered: Neoliberalism and Popular Mobilization in Bolivia

LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 4 2009
Håvard Haarstad
ABSTRACT This article argues that the common narrative of a Bolivian backlash against neoliberalism should be reconsidered in light of the continuities and mutual constraints between popular mobilization and neoliberal policy reforms. The study draws on literature that conceptualizes neoliberalism as a particular construction of state and social forms; but unlike those works, it includes an analysis of International Monetary Fund policy shifts to understand how popular mobilization constrains policy implementation. Responding to popular mobilization between 1985 and 2006, the IMF came to accept divergence from orthodox policy in order to encourage political stability. The government of Evo Morales and the IMF are mutually constrained by concern for the investment climate. This study further advocates that analysts probe beyond simple binary divisions between "neoliberalism" and "alternatives" and look more seriously for pragmatic strategies for negotiating neoliberal spaces. [source]

Latin America and the Dollar Bloc in the Twenty-first Century: To Dollarize or Not?

LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 4 2001
Kenneth P. Jameson
ABSTRACT The choice of exchange rate regime is a continuing challenge to Latin American policymakers, who currently face pressure to dollarize their economies. The constraints imposed by the "dollar bloc," the informal but powerful currency bloc that ties Latin America to the dominant currency, are central to that choice. Current weak economic performance has called the bloc's norms and principles into question and has made the exchange rate an open issue. Ecuador's full official dollarization is one possible strategy for countries with political stability but poor economic performance to gain access to needed dollar resources. Most of Latin America, however, will continue with variants of managed floating exchange rates, and the periodic foreign exchange crises will provide access to official dollar resources and facilitate renegotiation of the terms of outstanding debt. [source]

Indonesia fights off oil and gas crises

OIL AND ENERGY TRENDS, Issue 4 2005
Article first published online: 12 APR 200
Rising domestic consumption and falling output have turned Indonesia into a net importer of oil, forcing it to consider withdrawing from OPEC. In recent years, Jakarta has depended on gas for its export revenues. Now, the gas industry is in trouble. Output from the Arun gas fields is declining and the state oil and gas company, Pertamina, was recently forced to delay LNG shipments to its three largest customers. The government is looking for new investment in an attempt to stave off an energy crisis, but foreign companies are unhappy about business conditions there. Meanwhile, oil and gas consumption is rising rapidly thanks to a system of domestic price subsidies, which the government has been unable to end. The delay to much needed reforms in the energy sector threatens not only the oil and gas industries but the economic and political stability of the country as well. [source]

Stimulation of investment in international energy through Nigerian tax exemption laws

OPEC ENERGY REVIEW, Issue 1 2002
Uche Jack Osimiri
This article assesses the impact of recent tax exemption legislation as a vehicle for the attraction of investment in the quest for the development of international energy in Nigeria, particularly oil and gas. It seeks to argue that generous tax incentives are the most successful method of inducement of foreign investors, judging from the rising profile in the expansion of investment in the gas sector and the attendant increase in world trade. It attempts to assert that tax incentives alone, without the combination of other favourable factors, like political stability, observance of the rule of law and deregulation or trade liberalisation, cannot produce the desired result of local industrialisation and integration into the world economy. [source]

Citizenship and The State

PHILOSOPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 6 2009
M. Victoria Costa
This study surveys debates on citizenship, the state, and the bases of political stability. The survey begins by presenting the primary sense of ,citizenship' as a legal status and the question of the sorts of political communities people can belong to as citizens. (Multi)nation-states are suggested as the main site of citizenship in the contemporary world, without ignoring the existence of alternative possibilities. Turning to discussions of citizen identity, the study shows that some of the discussion is motivated by a perceived need for citizens to have a sense of political belonging, on the assumption that such a sense promotes political activity and has other personal and social benefits. But there are serious problems with the strategy of understanding the relevant sense of belonging in terms of identification with the nation-state. The study explores a more promising way to generate this sense of belonging. First, societies should function, to a sufficiently high degree, in accord with political principles of justice and democratic decision making. Second, there should be a general consensus on political principles among citizens, as well as high levels of engagement in democratic deliberation. [source]

Front and Back Covers, Volume 23, Number 1.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 1 2007
February 200
Front and back cover caption, volume 23 issue 1 Front cover A Dutch participant in the reality television series Groeten uit de rimboe, in which Dutch and Belgian families immerse themselves in the daily life of the world's ,most primitive tribes'. Some time afterwards, their hosts pay a return visit to experience life in Europe, screened on television in the sequel Groeten terug. The two series have been subject to heated debate in the Dutch media, having been both lauded as unpretentious entertainment and condemned as unethical ,popular anthropology'. The attention of Myrna Eindhoven, Laurens Bakker and Gerard Persoon was first drawn to the series when a family was sent to Mentawai, where all three have done fieldwork. While they themselves are critical of the unashamed focus on entertainment, they became intrigued by the reactions of other anthropologists to the series. Here they connect this case from the Netherlands to the ongoing debate on ,popular anthropology' in ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, triggered by the UK series Tribe. Dutch anthropologists have mostly dismissed the series as ,not anthropology', criticizing it as exploitative and as ethnocentric. But do anthropologists have the authority to define ,popular anthropology'? How do we come to terms with blatant commercialization of our fieldwork sites, and their conversion into exotic locations for popular entertainment? Back cover NATION-BUILDING IN EAST TIMOR East Timor celebrates its Independence Day on 20 May each year. The day forms the backdrop for the largest annual encounter between the political centre and the periphery. In this photo, an elder (katuas) member of Fretilin, the largest political party, blends traditional and modern at the Independence Day celebrations in the capital, Dili, in 2005. As an exemplar of the United Nations' capacity for ,nation-building', the Democratic Republic of Timor Leste (or ,East Timor' as it is more popularly known) developed into something of a ,poster boy' for the United Nations from the day it became a sovereign nation on 20 May 2002. But in April 2006, some months after the last remaining UN staff had left, violence in the streets of the capital began to undermine social and political stability, resulting in the overthrow of prime minister Mari Alkatiri. Under the more engaged leadership of his successor, José Ramos-Horta, the threat of unrest has abated to some extent. Nevertheless, the country faces an array of serious problems , political, social and economic. In his article in this issue, David Hicks draws on his anthropological fieldwork to highlight the widening gap between the ,centre' and the ,periphery'. Hicks argues that the former embodies the institutions and quasi-Western values professed by the national leaders in Dili, while the latter centres around the traditional, largely indigenous values of the country's local communities, who comprise the overwhelming majority of the population. Although already latent before the United Nations left, this widening divergence in values is eroding the political integrity of the first nation-state to become a member of the United Nations in the 21st century, and if it continues to grow, will call into question the ability of the United Nations to ,manufacture' nation-states. Anthropology has an important role to play in highlighting and analysing the implications of grassroots discrepancies between local populations and political elites. More than this, it has a role to play in confronting the international community with the ethical and other consequences of its increasingly regular interventions in third countries. [source]

Regional Integration in East Asia: Achievements and Future Prospects

ASIAN ECONOMIC POLICY REVIEW, Issue 2 2006
Hadi SOESASTRO
Economic integration in East Asia has been largely market driven. Attempts in the late 1980s to establish an East Asian regional economic grouping failed to materialize for a number of reasons. The financial crisis in 1997,1998 has strengthened the realization of regional countries that they need to have some self-help mechanisms to overcome that crisis and to prevent future crises. This led to the development of several functional integration programs, including the network of bilateral swap arrangements known as the Chiang Mai Initiative. However, progress remains slow. The question that has arisen is how far these efforts need to be supported by institutional integration. Should the ASEAN Plus Three, the main regional cooperation process in East Asia involving the 10 South-East Asian countries plus China, Japan, and South Korea, be deepened institutionally? Meanwhile, the region has seen the establishment of a new process, the East Asia Summit, involving the above 13 countries plus Australia, India, and New Zealand. How will these different arrangements contribute to East Asia's economic dynamism and prosperity as well as peace and political stability? [source]