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on Positive Political Economics |
| By: | Berggren, Niclas; Gutmann, Jerg |
| Abstract: | Personal freedom is highly valued by many and a central element of liberal political philosophy. Although personal freedom is frequently associated with electoral democracy, developments in countries such as Hungary, Poland, Turkey and Russia, where elected populist leaders with authoritarian tendencies rule, suggest that electoral democracy may not be the envisaged unequivocal guarantor of freedom. Instead, an independent judicial system, insulated from everyday politics, might provide a firmer foundation. We investigate empirically how electoral democracy and judicial independence relate to personal freedom, as quantified by the new Human Freedom Index. Our findings reveal that while judicial independence is positively and robustly related to personal freedom in all its forms, electoral democracy displays a robust relationship with two out of seven types of personal freedom only (freedom of association, assembly and civil society as well as freedom of expression and information). These are types of freedom associated with democracy itself, but democracy seems unable to protect freedom in other dimensions. When we study interaction effects and make use of more refined indicators of the political system in place, we find that countries without elections or with only one political party benefit more from judicial independence than both democracies and multi-party systems without free elections. A number of robustness checks confirm these findings. Hence, it seems as if personal freedom has institutional correlates in the form of both democracy and judicial independence, with the latter safeguarding freedom more consistently and more strongly. |
| Keywords: | Freedom,democracy,judicial independence,political economy,institutions |
| JEL: | D63 D72 D78 K36 P48 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ilewps:23&r=all |
| By: | Norris, Pippa (Harvard Kennedy School) |
| Abstract: | Monitors report that many elections around the world are flawed by problems of corruption and violence--sometimes both. These malpractices are deeply troubling for electoral integrity and liberal democracy. Do they also serve as critical barriers to women's representation in elected office and thus the achievement of gender equality in parliaments around the world? Part I in this paper sets out the theoretical arguments and reviews what is known from qualitative studies. Part II then considers sources of quantitative evidence, selecting systematic cross-national and time-series indices from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project. Part III analyzes the impact of corruption and violence on the proportion of women in elected office worldwide, controlling for factors such as levels of democracy and development, electoral laws and gender quotas. Part IV confirms that both legislative corruption and political killings serve as significant constraints on women's election, with important implications for achieving the twin goals of electoral integrity and gender equality in parliamentary representation. |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp19-011&r=all |
| By: | Anthony Edo; Yvonne Giesing; Jonathan Öztunc; Panu Poutvaara |
| Abstract: | Immigration is one of the most divisive political issues in the United States, the United Kingdom, France and several other Western countries. We estimate the impact of immigration on voting for far-left and far-right candidates in France, using panel data on presidential elections from 1988 to 2017. To derive causal estimates, we instrument more recent immigration flows by settlement patterns in 1968. We find that immigration increases support for far-right candidates. This is driven by low-educated immigrants from non-Western countries. We also find that immigration has a weak negative effect on support for far-left candidates, which could be explained by a reduced support for redistribution. We corroborate our analysis with a multinomial choice analysis using survey data. |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:econwp:_24&r=all |
| By: | Fetzer, Thiemo (University of Warwick); Schwarz, Carlo (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | Are retaliatory tariffs politically targeted and, if so, are they effective? Do countries designing a retaliation response face a trade-off between maximizing political targeting and mitigating domestic economic harm? We use the recent trade escalation between the US, China, the European Union (EU) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) countries to answer these questions. We find substantial evidence that retaliation was directly targeted to areas that swung to Donald Trump in 2016 (but not to other Republican candidates running for office in the same year). We further assess whether retaliation was optimally chosen using a novel simulation approach constructing counterfactual retaliation responses. For China and particularly, for Mexico and Canada, the chosen retaliation appears suboptimal: there exist alternative retaliation bundles that would have produced a higher degree of political targeting, while posing a lower risk to damage the own economy. We further present evidence that retaliation produces economic shocks: US exports on goods subject to retaliation declined by up to USD 15.28 billion in 2018 and export prices have dropped significantly. Lastly, we find some evidence suggesting that retaliation is effective: in areas exposed to retaliation Republican candidates fared worse in the 2018 Midterm elections, and similarly Presidential approval ratings, especially among Democrats, have declined. |
| Keywords: | trade war, tariff, targeting, political economy, elections, populism JEL Classification: F13, F14, F16, F55, D72 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:407&r=all |
| By: | Frederick Golooba-Mutebi; Yvonne Habiyonizeye |
| Abstract: | Studies examining the impact of different kinds of organisational and institutional reform on service delivery in the health sector in developing countries highlight and explain advances, strengths, weaknesses, shortcomings and failures in delivery. They rarely explore directly the role of the prevailing political arrangements in individual countries, specifically how politics is organised and practised, in influencing approaches to, and the nature and quality of, service delivery. This paper seeks to contribute towards filling the gap. It explores the extent to which the operation of Rwanda’s political system in the light of the prevailing political settlement shapes service delivery and outcomes in the health sector. A political settlement begets specific rules of the game and incentives, constraints, opportunities and risks in its own context. All things being equal, in Rwanda’s dominant party/dominant leader political settlement, the short- to medium-term prospects of the current government losing power to opposition rivals are slim. Consequently, there is no pressure on the government to deliver on popular expectations or suffer electoral defeat. In the face of marked achievements in recent times, therefore, the paper explores the possible influences on service delivery in post-genocide Rwanda. It argues that the nature of political organisation and how politics works are decisive. |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bwp:bwppap:esid-106-18&r=all |
| By: | Mathieu Couttenier (GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - ENS Lyon - École normale supérieure - Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne] - Université de Lyon - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research - CEPR); Sophie Hatte (GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - ENS Lyon - École normale supérieure - Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne] - Université de Lyon - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Mathias Thoenig (UNIL - Université de Lausanne, CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research - CEPR); Stephanos Vlachos (University of Vienna [Vienna]) |
| Abstract: | We study how news coverage of immigrant criminality impacted municipality-level votes in the November 2009 "minaret ban" referendum in Switzerland. The campaign, successfully led by the populist Swiss People's Party, played aggressively on fears of Muslim immigration and linked Islam with terrorism and violence. We combine an exhaustive violent crime detection dataset with detailed information on crime coverage from 12 newspapers. The data allow us to quantify the extent of pre-vote media bias in the coverage of migrant criminality. We then estimate a theory-based voting equation in the cross-section of municipalities. Exploiting random variations in crime occurrences, we find a first-order, positive effect of news coverage on political support for the minaret ban. Counterfactual simulations show that, under a law forbidding newspapers to disclose a perpetrator's nationality, the vote in favor of the ban would have decreased by 5 percentage points (from 57.6% to 52.6%). |
| Keywords: | Media,Violent crime,Immigration,Vote,Populism |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-02095658&r=all |
| By: | Proaño Acosta, Christian; Peña, Juan Carlos; Saalfeld, Thomas |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the macroeconomic and social determinants of voting behavior, and especially of political polarization, for 20 advanced countries using annual data ranging from 1970 to 2016 and covering 291 parliamentary elections. Using a panel estimation approach and rolling regressions we find empirical evidence supporting that a) traditionally established mainstream parties (center-left, center, and center-right) are penalized for poor economic performance; b) far-left (populist and radical parties) parties benefit from increasing unemployment rates; c) greater income inequality has increased the electoral support for far-right parties, particularly in recent times. Further, we do not find empirical support for the notion that social and economic globalization has led to an increase of popularity of far-right parties. These results have wide reaching implications for the current political situation in the Western world. |
| Keywords: | Income Inequality,Political Polarization,Globalization,Economic Voting Behavior |
| JEL: | E12 E24 E32 E44 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:bamber:149&r=all |
| By: | Sebastian Doerr; Stefan Gissler; José-Luis Peydró; Hans-Joachim Voth |
| Abstract: | Do financial crises radicalize voters? We analyze a canonical case – Germany during the Great Depression. After a severe banking crisis in 1931, caused by foreign shocks and political inaction, radical voting increased sharply in the following year. Democracy collapsed six months later. We collect new data on pre-crisis bank-firm connections and show that banking distress led to markedly more radical voting, both through economic and non-economic channels. Firms linked to two large banks that failed experienced a bank-driven fall in lending, which caused reductions in their wage bill and a fall in city-level incomes. This in turn increased Nazi Party support between 1930 and 1932/33, especially in cities with a history of anti-Semitism. While both failing banks had a large negative economic impact, only exposure to the bank led by a Jewish chairman strongly predicts Nazi voting. Local exposure to the banking crisis simultaneously led to a decline in Jewish-gentile marriages and is associated with more deportations and attacks on synagogues after 1933. |
| Keywords: | Financial crises, banking, Great Depression, democracy, anti-Semitism |
| JEL: | E44 G01 G21 N20 P16 |
| Date: | 2018–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upf:upfgen:1651&r=all |
| By: | Christina Fong; Panu Poutvaara |
| Abstract: | Forty-two percent of Americans give different answers when asked, respectively, about the reasons for being rich and the reasons for being poor. We develop and test a theo-ry about support for redistribution in the presence of target-specific beliefs about the causes of low and high incomes. Our theory predicts that target-specific beliefs about the poor matter most for preferences about transfers to the poor, and target-specific beliefs about the rich matter most for preferences about taxation of the rich. Survey evidence from the United States and Germany and experimental evidence on giving money to real welfare recipients supports our theory. We also find, in theory, the ex-istence of a moral release equilibrium in which the rich choose high taxes on lower income classes to discourage effort and create an unworthy poor class, thereby escap-ing moral pressure to support the poor. |
| Keywords: | redistribution, fairness, taxation, political economy, moral release equilibrium, target-specific beliefs |
| JEL: | D63 D72 H21 H24 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ifowps:_297&r=all |
| By: | Pritish Behuria |
| Abstract: | Two parallel tracks of research on economic transformation in developing countries have operated at a distance from each other over the last two decades. A global track – global value chains/global production networks (GVC/GPNs) – has focused on the increasing interconnectedness of global trading networks and has overlooked the role of the state and the explanatory power of domestic political economy. Meanwhile, a domestic track – including literature on developmental states, industrial policy and political settlements – has tended to take a methodologically nationalist perspective to examine economic transformation in developing countries, with limited reflections on external economic and political pressures. This paper contributes to an emerging stream of literature that examines how the domestic and global scales influence how developing country governments and firms tackle the challenge of economic upgrading. By combining insights from the political settlements and GVC/GPNs literature, this paper examines the Rwandan government’s attempt at upgrading its coffee production to enter specialty coffee markets. It shows how the existing GVC/GPNs literature makes an important contribution to describing how multipolar governance influences the pathways for economic upgrading in Rwanda’s coffee sector, but that even where access is granted, benefits are captive to the demands of international buyers, and gains for some have not translated across the sector. Insights from the political settlements literature showcase how domestic politics influences who benefits from insertion to GVC/GPNs and how the unequal provision of opportunities affects political stability. |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bwp:bwppap:esid-108-18&r=all |
| By: | Ang, Desmond (Harvard Kennedy School) |
| Abstract: | In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act that mandated federal oversight of election laws in discriminatory jurisdictions, prompting a spate of controversial new voting rules. Utilizing difference-in-differences to examine the Act's 1975 revision, I provide the first estimates of the effects of "preclearance" oversight. I find that preclearance increased long-run voter turnout by 4-8 percentage points, due to lasting gains in minority participation. Surprisingly, Democratic support dropped sharply in areas subject to oversight. Using historical survey and newspaper data, I provide evidence that this was the result of political backlash among racially conservative whites. |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp18-033&r=all |
| By: | Samuel Brazys (School of Politics & International Relations, University College Dublin); Krishna Chaitanya Vadlamannati (School of Politics & International Relations, University College Dublin); Tianyang Song (School of Politics & International Relations, University College Dublin) |
| Abstract: | Questions of aid allocation have long focused on discerning the altruistic, self-interested or meritocratic motivation of development donors. Less attention has been paid to the interests and agency of recipient state governments and even less to the interests and agency of constituencies within those states. An implicit assumption is often that the “poor” either passively receive the patronage of their benefactors or they don’t. In this paper, we instead suggest that depending on the altruism/egoism of a donor, their sensitivity to needy subnational constituencies in aid allocation also depends on the political empowerment of those groups. In particular, we take advantage of the unique socio-cultural structure in India to examine if the political agency of scheduled castes and tribes (SC/STs) can explain patterns of district-level allocation of World Bank education aid. Using district-level data on a multi-year World Bank education program, district-level proportions of SC/STs and SC/ST population and of members of parliament, we find that SC/ST districts receive more aid, even when controlling for baseline poverty and educational performance. These results are especially strong when these districts are politically empowered. Our findings suggest that while donors may indeed respond to recipient needs, those recipients who also speak loudly for themselves fare better, highlighting the importance of constituent agency. |
| Date: | 2019–04–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucd:wpaper:201907&r=all |
| By: | Melki, Mickael; Sekeris, Petros |
| Abstract: | Using US data of media's coverage of politics and individual survey data, the authors document that in the states with a greater coverage of politics, citizens especially exposed to newspapers have more polarized preferences, partly coming from better political knowledge, and resulting in a higher political involvement measured as contributions to political parties and candidates. |
| Keywords: | media,ideological polarization |
| JEL: | K4 H0 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwedp:201928&r=all |
| By: | Eberhardt, Markus |
| Abstract: | I revisit the causal relationship between democracy and growth as recently studied in Acemoglu, Naidu, Restrepo, and Robinson (2019, ANRR). I demonstrate the sensitivity of their results to sample selection by dropping a small number of observations in a non-random fashion and use these findings to motivate a generalisation of their empirical approach. My own analysis relaxes the assumption of (i) a common democracy-growth relationship, and of (ii) the absence of strong cross-section correlation. Adopting novel methods for policy evaluation I find a robust positive long-run effect of democracy albeit with only around half the magnitude of that found in ANRR. |
| Keywords: | democracy; Difference-in-Difference Estimator; growth; Interactive Fixed Effects; Political development; Spillovers |
| JEL: | O10 P16 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13659&r=all |
| By: | Bohn, H; Lopez-Velasco, AR |
| Keywords: | Immigration, Political economy model, Overlapping generations, Intergenerational mobility, Guest workers |
| Date: | 2018–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:ucsbrw:qt70z7h8xq&r=all |
| By: | Rasmus Hundsbaek Pedersen; Thabit Jacob |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the introduction and expansion of health insurance schemes in Tanzania. Health insurances were introduced around year 2000 as part of a more general health reform process aimed at improving access to health services. The paper argues that the health insurances were driven by a policy coalition of bureaucrats and transnational actors, who, inspired by international trends, framed reforms as a way for the ruling party to live up to one of its core priorities since independence, namely, improved and, eventually, universal access to health services. The introduction of insurances was expected to help mobilise funds and improve the working of the health care system for this purpose. However, judged by their modest design and slow implementation, the ruling political elite remained ambiguous about health insurances. Politically, a fast rollout was perceived to be risky. Similar political considerations may explain the reluctance to expand health insurance coverage through a mandatory scheme that bureaucrats and development partners have propagated recently. The rejection of the initial design for such a scheme came as a surprise to the policy coalition, which did not enjoy the same access to key decisionmakers as in the past. Concurrently, and driven by increased electoral competition, the ruling party has increasingly focused on improving access through the expansion of physical health infrastructure. This has the additional advantage of being highly visible among the rural majority of the population, who overwhelmingly vote Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM). This is our second paper on social protection in Tanzania. |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bwp:bwppap:esid-110-18&r=all |
| By: | Thabit Jacob; Rasmus Hundsbaek Pedersen |
| Abstract: | Social protection has become a more important part of social service delivery in Tanzania over the last couple of decades. This paper analyses the politics behind the making and implementation of the Productive Social Safety Nets (PSSN), a cash transfer scheme that became part of a broader, existing scheme aimed at poverty reduction and rural development, TASAF I-III. We trace the interrelationship between the domestic policy process and the shifting influence of transnational ideas. We argue that the introduction of TASAF and later PSSN was strongly influenced by international trends, driven by a policy coalition of bureaucrats and development partners, but that it was sanctioned by the country’s political elites, who at times used the programmes for electoral purposes. This happened for instance by influencing the scale and speed of PSSN’s implementation prior to the national elections in 2015, despite a tradition of scepticism towards cash transfers within the ruling CCM party. Recently, President John Magufuli’s more productivist ethos, emphasising the importance of work, poses a threat to the programmes’ continuation. This may also reduce the targeting of the poorest of the poor, which constitutes a major element of PSSN as we know it. |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bwp:bwppap:esid-109-18&r=all |
| By: | Mehmet Ekmekci; Stephan Lauermann |
| Abstract: | We study a model of information transmission through an informal election. Partially informed senders send binary messages to a receiver, and the receiver chooses a policy after observing the number of messages sent. Our leading example is protests in which the citizens' participation choices are their messages, and there may be positive costs or benefits of participation. A policy maker infers information from the aggregate turnout. However, the presence of activists who obtain direct benefits from participation adds noise to turnout. We show that the interplay between noise and costs leads to strategic substitution and strategic complementarity effects in the participation decisions, and we characterize their implications for the informativeness of protests. When there is no noise, information aggregates and the outcome is efficient. Our findings contrast with existing work, which shows that for many informal election scenarios with costless participation, a bias of the policy maker may prohibit any information transmission. |
| Keywords: | Voting, Information Aggregation |
| JEL: | C70 D80 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2019_080&r=all |
| By: | Pacca, Lucia; Rausser, Gordon C.; Olper, Alessandro |
| Keywords: | Social and Behavioral Sciences |
| Date: | 2017–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:agrebk:qt2mx7d5zp&r=all |
| By: | Samuel Brazys; Krishna Chaitanya Vadlamannati (School of Politics & International Relations, University College Dublin); Indra de Soysa (Department of Sociology and Political Science (ISS), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)) |
| Abstract: | Many find that oil wealth produces political conflict. It is also argued that oil makes countries susceptible to the “resource curse” because rulers more easily buy off opposition and stave off economic reforms. We explore this issue by examining whether oil price volatility affects political unrest in oil-producing and oil import dependent states. We argue that in oil-producing countries, low prices generate anti-government protest conditional on a state´s access to foreign exchange reserves that accumulate due to political prudence. We also argue that oil-importing countries are affected by high oil prices, but again, conditional on access to foreign exchange reserves, which allow government to ease the pain of austerity. Using panel data covering 165 countries between 1980-2013 (34 years), we find support for the hypotheses. Our results lend support to the view that prudent governance in oil-producer countries that resist political Dutch disease and save for rainy days are more capable of weathering low-price years. These results are in line with others that show that oil producers avoid civil war through higher public spending. The results are robust to alternative data, measurement, sample size, and estimation methods. |
| Date: | 2019–04–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucd:wpaper:201908&r=all |
| By: | Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the political economy drivers of Ghana’s flagship cash transfer programme, Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP). In contrast to existing accounts of the LEAP as a domestically driven cash transfer scheme, the evidence here shows that donor pressures, leveraged through financing, played a more prominent role than the paradigmatic ideas of domestic political elites in shaping the adoption of the LEAP. Despite the recent discovery of oil and the country’s subsequent ascension to middle-income status, donors remain important players in the Ghanaian political economy, given their dominance in the investment component of government’s budget and the resultant inability of political elites to generate the rents that are so badly needed for meeting various redistributive demands without donor financing. However, once the LEAP was adopted, domestic political calculations and the incentives generated by Ghana’s political settlement dynamics took centre stage in shaping the actual implementation of the programme, especially around questions of targeting and geographical coverage, and the prioritisation of reforms with more visible impact that could be leveraged upon to win competitive elections. These findings suggest that an adapted political settlements framework that goes beyond domestic political calculus, and which explicitly incorporates the influence of ideational and transnational factors, can greatly improve our understanding of the political economy drivers of social protection in Africa. |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bwp:bwppap:esid-112-18&r=all |
| By: | Tom Lavers |
| Abstract: | Recent work on the politics of development and, in particular, the role of political settlements in shaping development outcomes has provided important insights into the types of power relations that can contribute to developmental successes and failures. However, important questions remain regarding how political settlements are formed and maintained over time, as well as the extent to which political settlements determine particular policy choices in particular policy domains. This paper considers the role that ideas can play in studying the politics of development and the extent to which an analytical focus on ideas might address some of these gaps. Work on political settlements has, for the most part, emphasised explanations based on material interests, paying little to no attention to the causal role of ideas. This paper first examines the compatibility between Khan’s political settlements framework and theoretical work on ideas, arguing that taking ideas seriously requires questioning some of the core ontological assumptions underpinning the political settlements framework. The paper then proposes an adapted framework that seeks to respond to this challenge and, drawing on three of ESID’s comparative projects, highlights how a focus on ideas can deepen our understanding of the dynamics within particular political settlements and policy domains. |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bwp:bwppap:esid-095-18&r=all |
| By: | Eraslan, Hulya (Rice U); Evdokimov, Kirill S. (Rice U) |
| Abstract: | This survey of the theoretical literature on legislative and multilateral bargaining begins with the seminal work of Baron and Ferejohn (1989). The survey then encompasses the extensions to bargaining among asymmetric players in terms of bargaining power, voting weights, and time and risk preferences; spatial bargaining; bargaining over a stochastic surplus; bargaining over public goods; legislative bargaining with alternative bargaining protocols in which players make demands, compete for recognition, or make counter-proposals; and legislative bargaining with cheap talk communication. |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:riceco:19-007&r=all |
| By: | Vasudha Chhotray; Anindita Adhikari; Vidushi Bahuguna |
| Abstract: | The idea of state responsibility for ensuring food security has gained ground, withstrong popular mobilisations for the Right to Food around the world; but important variations prevail, both in the articulation of demands around food security interventions and in political responses to these. This paper takes a close look at India’s Public Distribution System, a programme with a long history and clear national-level, legislative backing, but considerable differences in prioritisation at the subnational level. Through an empirically rich and innovative comparison of Chhattisgarh with Jharkhand – both created at the same time, in 2000 – it asks why the opportunities afforded by statehood allowed Chhattisgarh to politically prioritise the PDS, but not Jharkhand. The paper finds that the explanation lies in the interrelated dimensions of political competition, the nature of pressures exerted by electorally significant societal groups, and political enablement of bureaucratic capacity. Finally, the analytical framework at the heart of the paper contributes to the emerging literature on the political conditions that allow the deployment of state capacity for the promotion of welfare. |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bwp:bwppap:esid-111-18&r=all |
| By: | Jennie E. Burnet; Jeanne d’Arc Kanakuze |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the ways in which power and politics shape the realisation of women’s rights and gender equity in Rwanda. In the past decade, Rwanda has become a global leader in increasing women’s inclusion in politics and in promoting and securing women’s rights. This paper considers legislative reform, policy formulation and policy implementation in two areas: gender-based violence and gender parity in education. The paper injects a gender analysis into the political settlement theoretical framework and seeks to answer two questions: (1) how do women and other actors (including formal and information institutions, powerbrokers and other key decision-makers) negotiate within Rwanda’s dominant-party form of political settlement? And (2) how does Rwanda’s political settlement shape gender equity policy outcomes? This study found that Rwanda’s success in terms of women’s rights is the result of its vibrant women’s movement, the political will of the dominant party, the expertise of professional technocrats in the government administration, and a system of performance contracts, which shapes bureaucratic behaviour through to the frontline of service delivery. These findings are significant because they highlight the importance of a highly qualified, professional cadre in government and of accountability within government administration for securing women’s rights. |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bwp:bwppap:esid-094-18&r=all |
| By: | Pritish Behuria |
| Abstract: | The environmental damage that plastic waste is causing has catalysed government action against plastic bags around the world. Despite anti-plastic bag policies gaining traction globally, there has been limited investigation of how the implementation of bans has varied. This paper is the first to comparatively examine why there has been variation in implementing bans on plastic bags, using the examples of three East African countries: Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda. Explanations of why anti-plastic bag policies have been blocked in other countries usually rely on business power-based explanations, with the assumption that plastic manufacturers (and the broader manufacturing sector) have obstructed implementation. The comparatively limited strength and size of plastic manufacturers in Rwanda, as compared to Kenya and Uganda, suggests that business power may partly explain why the ban in Rwanda has been implemented. However, business power-based arguments do not explain the variation between implementation in Kenya and Uganda. In both countries, anti-plastic bag actions have been announced repeatedly but implementation has stuttered, with commitment to implementation stronger and less contested in Kenya than in Uganda. Criticisms of the existing business power literature tend to be weak on examining why governments may go ahead with policies that are against the interests of businesses. This paper argues that developing country government’s ecological modernisation initiatives may be shaped by pressures from three levels – business power, the local environment and the external environment – to explain why implementation of plastic bag bans has varied in Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda. |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bwp:bwppap:372019&r=all |