The Political Economy of Collective Action, Inequality, and Development
The Political Economy of Collective Action, Inequality, and Development

Author: William D. Ferguson

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2020-05-05

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 1503611973

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This book examines how a society that is trapped in stagnation might initiate and sustain economic and political development. In this context, progress requires the reform of existing arrangements, along with the complementary evolution of informal institutions. It involves enhancing state capacity, balancing broad avenues for political input, and limiting concentrated private and public power. This juggling act can only be accomplished by resolving collective-action problems (CAPs), which arise when individuals pursue interests that generate undesirable outcomes for society at large. Merging and extending key perspectives on CAPs, inequality, and development, this book constructs a flexible framework to investigate these complex issues. By probing four basic hypotheses related to knowledge production, distribution, power, and innovation, William D. Ferguson offers an analytical foundation for comparing and evaluating approaches to development policy. Navigating the theoretical terrain that lies between simplistic hierarchies of causality and idiosyncratic case studies, this book promises an analytical lens for examining the interactions between inequality and development. Scholars and researchers across economic development and political economy will find it to be a highly useful guide.

Making Politics Work for Development
Making Politics Work for Development

Author: World Bank

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2016-07-14

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 1464807744

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Governments fail to provide the public goods needed for development when its leaders knowingly and deliberately ignore sound technical advice or are unable to follow it, despite the best of intentions, because of political constraints. This report focuses on two forces—citizen engagement and transparency—that hold the key to solving government failures by shaping how political markets function. Citizens are not only queueing at voting booths, but are also taking to the streets and using diverse media to pressure, sanction and select the leaders who wield power within government, including by entering as contenders for leadership. This political engagement can function in highly nuanced ways within the same formal institutional context and across the political spectrum, from autocracies to democracies. Unhealthy political engagement, when leaders are selected and sanctioned on the basis of their provision of private benefits rather than public goods, gives rise to government failures. The solutions to these failures lie in fostering healthy political engagement within any institutional context, and not in circumventing or suppressing it. Transparency, which is citizen access to publicly available information about the actions of those in government, and the consequences of these actions, can play a crucial role by nourishing political engagement.

India Today
India Today

Author: Stuart Corbridge

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-04-03

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0745676642

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Twenty years ago India was still generally thought of as an archetypal developing country, home to the largest number of poor people of any country in the world, and beset by problems of low economic growth, casteism and violent religious conflict. Now India is being feted as an economic power-house which might well become the second largest economy in the world before the middle of this century. Its democratic traditions, moreover, remain broadly intact. How and why has this historic transformation come about? And what are its implications for the people of India, for Indian society and politics? These are the big questions addressed in this book by three scholars who have lived and researched in different parts of India during the period of this great transformation. Each of the 13 chapters seeks to answer a particular question: When and why did India take off? How did a weak state promote audacious reform? Is government in India becoming more responsive (and to whom)? Does India have a civil society? Does caste still matter? Why is India threatened by a Maoist insurgency? In addressing these and other pressing questions, the authors take full account of vibrant new scholarship that has emerged over the past decade or so, both from Indian writers and India specialists, and from social scientists who have studied India in a comparative context. India Today is a comprehensive and compelling text for students of South Asia, political economy, development and comparative politics as well as anyone interested in the future of the world's largest democracy.

The Dynamics of Socio-Economic Development
The Dynamics of Socio-Economic Development

Author: Adam Szirmai

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2005-01-20

Total Pages: 760

ISBN-13: 1107717566

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Why are poor countries poor and rich countries rich? How are wealth and poverty related to changes in nutrition, health, life expectancy, education, population growth and politics? This modern, non-technical 2005 introduction to development studies explores the dynamics of socio-economic development and stagnation in developing countries. Taking a quantitative and comparative approach to contemporary debates within their broader context, Szirmai examines historical, institutional, demographic, sociological, political and cultural factors. Key chapters focus on economic growth, technological change, industrialisation, agricultural development, and consider social dimensions such as population growth, health and education. Each chapter contains comparative statistics on trends from a sample of twenty-nine developing countries. This rich statistical database allows students to strengthen their understanding of comparative development experiences. Assuming no prior knowledge of economics the book is suited for use in inter-disciplinary development studies programmes as well as economics courses, and will also interest practitioners pursuing careers in developing countries.

Community, Culture, and Economic Development
Community, Culture, and Economic Development

Author: Meredith Ramsay

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1996-01-01

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 9780791427507

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A comparative study of economic development policy, and its relationship with local power structures and cultural and social relations, in two Maryland towns that have rejected development.

Community, Culture, and Economic Development, Second Edition
Community, Culture, and Economic Development, Second Edition

Author: Meredith Ramsay

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2013-12-02

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1438448880

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Community economic development is conventionally explained using one of two models: a market model that assumes individuals always attempt to maximize their wealth, or a growth model that assumes land use is controlled by real estate developers who invariably pursue outside investment as a way of increasing land values and creating jobs and opportunities. In the first edition of Community, Culture, and Economic Development, Meredith Ramsay's close study of two small towns on Maryland's Lower Shore demonstrated that neither model can explain why these communities, alike in so many ways, responded so differently to economic decline or why archaic hierarchies of race, class, and gender remain deeply embedded and poverty seems nearly intractable. Ramsay showed how the lack of economic progress in Somerset, Maryland's poorest county, can best be explained by factoring history, culture, and social relations into the investigator's research. In this second edition she discusses changes that have taken place in the county since the early 1990s, including the dramatic legal victory of the "Somerset Six" and the Maryland ACLU, which ultimately paved the way for the election of an African American to a top county position for the first time in history.

Social Inclusion and Economic Development in Latin America
Social Inclusion and Economic Development in Latin America

Author: Mayra Buvinić

Publisher: IDB

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 1931003653

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Poverty and inequality in Latin America are easily recognizable in the faces of women, Afro-descendents, the indigenous, people with disabilities, victims of HIV/AIDS, and other groups outside the societal mainstream. Social Inclusion and Economic Development in Latin America reviews the common features of these excluded populations, including their invisibility in official statistics and the stigma, discrimination, and disadvantages they have long endured. But it also examines the region's inclusionary policies and programs that can improve access by these groups to the quality social services and economic and political resources these groups need to level the playing field. Case studies examine ethnic and racial political organization, gender quotas, and labor markets across the region, and social exclusion in Brazil, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru. Comparative studies summarize social inclusion policies of both the European Union and selected countries on the Continent.

Critical Perspectives in Politics and Socio-Economic Development in Ghana
Critical Perspectives in Politics and Socio-Economic Development in Ghana

Author: Wisdom J. Tettey

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 486

ISBN-13: 9789004130135

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This volume provides a comprehensive and integrated analysis of contemporary Ghanaian politics and economy and their relationship to culture. It combines rich, recent, empirical material with sophisticated theoretical analyses, bringing fresh and unique interdisciplinary perspectives to bear on the issues examined.

The Community Economic Development Movement
The Community Economic Development Movement

Author: William H. Simon

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2002-01-10

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 082238082X

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While traditional welfare efforts have waned, a new style of social policy implementation has emerged dramatically in recent decades. The new style is reflected in a panoply of Community Economic Development (ced) initiatives—efforts led by locally-based organizations to develop housing, jobs, and business opportunities in low-income neighborhoods. In this book William H. Simon provides the first comprehensive examination of the evolution of Community Economic Development, complete with an analysis of its operating premises and strategies. He describes the profusion of new institutional forms that have arisen from the movement, amalgamations that cut across conventional distinctions—such as those between private and public—and that encompass the efforts of nonprofits, cooperatives, churches, business corporations, and public agencies. Combining local political mobilization with entrepreneurial initiative and electoral accountability with market competition, this phenomenon has catalyzed new forms of property rights designed to motivate investment and civic participation while curbing the dangers of speculation and middle-class flight. With its examination of many localities and its appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of the prevailing approach to Community Economic Development, this book will be a valuable resource for local housing, job, and business development officials; community activists; and students of law, business, and social policy.

The Oxford Handbook of Social and Political Trust
The Oxford Handbook of Social and Political Trust

Author: Eric M. Uslaner

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-01-02

Total Pages: 753

ISBN-13: 0190274816

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This volume explores the foundations of trust, and whether social and political trust have common roots. Contributions by noted scholars examine how we measure trust, the cultural and social psychological roots of trust, the foundations of political trust, and how trust concerns the law, the economy, elections, international relations, corruption, and cooperation, among myriad societal factors. The rich assortment of essays on these themes addresses questions such as: How does national identity shape trust, and how does trust form in developing countries and in new democracies? Are minority groups less trusting than the dominant group in a society? Do immigrants adapt to the trust levels of their host countries? Does group interaction build trust? Does the welfare state promote trust and, in turn, does trust lead to greater well-being and to better health outcomes? The Oxford Handbook of Social and Political Trust considers these and other questions of critical importance for current scholarly investigations of trust.