A Commentary on the Whitening of the Public University: The Context for Diversifying Geography

This chapter focuses on the behavior of relevant political and economic actors in the United Kingdom and Germany during the 1980s in the face of major global pressures to adopt more neoliberal economic reforms. Although both countries faced similar and significant pressures, the outcomes differed. Britain made drastic moves toward greater market deregulation, a severe weakening of labor, and other neoliberal reforms. While facing similar pressures, Germany ultimately made much less far-reaching adjustments. I find the variation in political institutions between Britain and Germany served as a constraint on the relevant political and economic actors, and subsequently constrained or furthered reform.

This article discusses the neoliberal economic and political reforms in the context of the 1980 and 1990, to consider the description of some of its characteristic features for the major developed countries. Besides the introduction that presents the theme and objectives of the work, the text has three parts. At first, it analyzes certain influences that neoliberalism began to have political and economic reforms in the states os Social Welfare. In the second, highlights the role that the United States developed the world scene, given the strength of its economy and its political weight, as had the great global hegemon. One last point reinforces the argument that neoliberalism was a new form of imperialism implemented by developed countries to emphasize the distinct character that they assumed in their territories.

Jordan's seemingly successful economic and political reforms have been used to advertise the American vision of societal transformation in the Middle East. The imposition of neo-liberal economic policies removed a key source of welfare for the populace, leaving the regime without a secure base of support. Economic liberalization led to a radical change in the regime's base of support, marginalizing the previous regime backers - the East Bank population - and replacing them with a strengthened military, formerly only part of the regime's support. Initial economic liberalization was a critical juncture when differing outcomes were possible. The 1990s set the institutions and state policies that persisted after these extreme hard times passed. An analytical focus on state social provisioning demonstrates the changed social base of the Jordanian regime and the groups effectively disenfranchised by the new arrangements. The military and security services are the only sector growing in structural adjustment. Alongside decreasing social welfare allocations in general, the military's budgets are increasing and the military diversifying into sub-contracting and new economic enterprises. Militarized liberalization serves as an alternative model for Middle East regimes, one that can furnish the foundation for semi-authoritarianism into the near future. This changing social base of the regime, illuminated through an examination of social welfare, must be recognized when tackling the perennial question of a democratic deficit in the Middle East. Jordan's seemingly successful economic and political reforms have been used to advertise the American vision of societal transformation in the Middle East. 1 However, the imposition of neo-liberal economic policies removed a key source of welfare for the populace, leaving the regime without a secure base of support. Structural adjustment and the imposition of neo-liberal economic reforms were set to dismantle the social provisioning 2 upon which the state of Jordan had been built, without establishing substantive participation as an alternative foundation for the regime. 3 The removal of social policies was not merely a matter of unemployment and decreased buying power, but threatened the very nature of Jordan's regime itself. Prior to its economic reforms in 1989, a social contract in Jordan, similar to most in the Middle East, provided economic goods in return for political quiescence. The state's abrogation in economic reform would logically generate increased political voice, as the populace would no longer support the regime due to economic benefits received. Instead, economic liberalization in Jordan led not to increased political space but to the radical change in the regime's base of support, marginalizing the previous regime backers - the East Bank 4 population - and replacing them with a strengthened military. The pro-American regime has remained a mystery made more puzzling given the reality of poor economic performance and a lack of democracy. The regime's reliance upon military welfare, strengthening the numbers and economic power of the military, aids in explaining the persistence of this semi-authoritarian regime. Hard times can solidify new institutional patterns that either reverse or reinforce old arrangements. 5 When resources for living decline, critical realignments among domestic actors can institutionalize a new coalition for governing which remains in place long after the crisis is over. The harsh economic conditions of the 1990s, depicted here, effectively raised the role of the military by serving as employment and welfare. The narrow group of the military substituted for previous welfare provided to a broad segment of the population. In the atmosphere of general economic crisis, welfare to one section of the population was welcomed. While new economic policies themselves generated substantial protest, the increasing numbers and economic benefits of the military proceeded without objection. …

More than thirty African countries are now attempting simultaneously to liberalize their political systems and reinvigorate their economies with stabilization and structural adjustment programs. The classic question of the ability of democratic forms of government to sustain economic reform has therefore taken on new urgency in sub-Saharan Africa. However, analyses of the relationship between regime type and economic management have not been very illuminating. In particular, many have tried to understand the relationship between democracy and economic growth across a very broad range of countries instead of focusing on the specific problems faced by African countries that are trying to democratize. In this paper we identify the salient features of African political systems and economies that are relevant in understanding the relationship between regime type and economic performance. By examining a set of countries that have much in common (poverty, recent independence, few institutionalized democratic practices), we hope to make more useful generalizations about the interaction between economic and political reform.' We conclude that the simultaneous pursuit of economic and political reform in Africa will be even more difficult than in most other regions of the world. Indeed, many of the factors that normally might promote the viability of simultaneous change are missing in Africa.

ABSTRACTDo neoliberal reforms (notably, austerity policy) facilitate democratic decline and the gradual deconstruction of democratic institutions? I examine the democratic development of the Western Balkan countries since 2008 by focusing on the two most recent cases of democratic rollback in Macedonia and Serbia. Neoliberal reforms may create a preference to shut down democratic institutions, because such reforms are socially costly and politically risky. However, democratic backsliding is not possible without opportunity. I illustrate this with reference to the examples of Hungary and Croatia. Croatia implemented some neoliberal policies after 2015, but did not see a drop in its democracy score. By contrast, Hungary moved towards centrally planned capitalism, nationalisation and state interventionism (all opposed to the neoliberal concept of reform), and yet saw a significant democratic decline after 2010. The opportunity to dismantle democratic institutions was a consequence of an electoral gap (a difference in vote share between former and new incumbents), which enabled the rise of authoritarian leaders in Macedonia, Hungary and Serbia.

Introduction Uganda’s post-independence period, like in other African states, was afflicted by authoritarian rule, which led to a development crisis. In desperate search for remedies, most African states sought donor support. Accordingly, donors have since the 1980s exerted pressure on African states to pursue neo-liberal economic and political reforms. Whereas donors initially put emphasis on economic reforms, they have since the 1990s added on political reforms arguing that the success of e...

Until very recently, the conventional wisdom was that the return to education was very high in Africa. However, some recent analysis point to low average returns to education in some African countries including Nigeria. Given these low returns to education, a relevant question is what causes low returns or what can cause changes in returns to education? In this paper, I examine the hypothesis that economic and political reforms can lead to increased returns to schooling using the case of Nigeria. Following the sudden death of military general Sanni Abacha, Nigeria moved to democracy in 1999, ending an over 15 years stretch of military rule. This move was followed by significant institutional and economic reforms, which provide an opportunity to examine the short term impact of reforms on returns to education. The average return to education is estimated using instrumental variables exploiting a quasi experiment in Nigeria. The results provide evidence that reforms implemented post democracy in Nigeria led to a 2.6% point increase in average returns to education. Furthermore, I find that the low average return to schooling in Nigeria reflects more the low returns at the primary and secondary levels.

Beginning in 1990, Mongolia, a former client state of what was then the Soviet Union, undertook liberal economic reforms. These came as a great shock to Mongolia and Mongolians, and resulted in food shortages, reports of famine, widespread unemployment, and a collapse of public health and health care. Although economic conditions have stabilized in recent years, unemployment and poverty are still at disturbingly high levels. One important consequence of the transition has been the transformation of the rural, primarily pastoral, economy. With de-collectivization, herding households have been thrown into a highly insecure subsistence mode of production, and, as a consequence, have become vulnerable to local fluctuations in rainfall and availability and quality of forage, and many now lack access to traded staples and essential commodities. Household food insecurity, malnutrition, and migration of impoverished households to provincial centers and the capital of Ulaanbaatar are one result. Reductions to investments in the health sector have also eroded the quality of services in rural areas, and restricted access to those services still functioning. Evidence suggests that women are particularly vulnerable to these political-ecological changes, and that this vulnerability is manifested in increasing rates of poor reproductive health and maternal mortality. Drawing on case-study ethnographic and epidemiological data, this article explores the links between neoliberal economic reform and maternal mortality in Mongolia.

Economic Reforms and Political Attempts in China 1979–1989

This article uses the current economic crisis in Asia to analyze the impact that economic turmoil—especially economic contagion—in emerging markets can have on the process of social, political, and economic institutionalization and reform in Asia and Latin America. It argues that continued financial instability will result in increased democratization and transparency in Asia, as has happened in Latin America as a result of its struggles to consolidate and reconcile democratization and economic reform from the late 1980s to today. This transformation in Asia will temper the argument that the Asian development model was the path Latin America should have followed. This does not mean, however, that the reform path that the Asian countries choose will be successful or certain. Rather, although many authoritarian tenets of the Asian model will be challenged by calls for political and economic reform, the ultimate degree of liberalization in Asia will be uneven and incomplete, especially if the economic crisis deepens. Conversely, Latin American nations will need to use the Asian crisis as further evidence that the most sustainable form of economic and political reform necessitates a renewed commitment to promoting democracy and liberal institutions.

After years of communism and central planning, Russia and China embarked on broad transformations from planned to market economy and limited political liberalization reforms. Chinese reforms commenced in 1978, while those in the Soviet Union started in 1991. The two countries took contrasting paths to economic reform, and their experiences during economic transition have been viewed as polar opposites. The reform experiences of Russia and China sparked intense academic debates over a variety of issues surrounding transition from communism to market economy. The primary source of scholarly disagreement is whether the pace, the sequence, or country-specific initial conditions determines the success of economic and political reforms. The debates revolved around questions such as whether there is a relationship between economic processes and political reforms in the transitional states, or whether economic liberalization should pave the way for political liberalization. Two dominant approaches to transition from socialism to capitalism advanced in the literature are “shock therapy” and gradualism; the former was adopted by the Russians and the latter by the Chinese. Several lessons can be learned from the Russian and Chinese transition, such as the impact of structural forces on the leadership’s policy preferences and the importance of tenable development policies to ensure the success of economic reforms. Notwithstanding these lessons, there remain a number of questions that deserve further investigation, mainly in terms of the role of China and Russia in world politics.

We have seen how the fruit sector evolved as a result of a combination of factors, but coalesced during the late 1970s in the context of the neo-liberal economic and political reforms. These reforms not only created a commercialised farming sector which could lock into the export market, but also created a large, landless, rural labour force which could be drawn in as seasonal workers to meet the labour requirements of the producers and exporters. This chapter provides an overview of the structure of the emergent fruit export sector, in order to provide the context in which fruit employment takes place. The chapter concentrates on the period of the 1980s and early 1990s, once fruit exports had become established. It explores the structure of fruit production and exports, which has formed the basis of Chile’s integration into the world fruit market, describing the internal supply chain from producer to the point of export. We then examine Chile’s position within the world fruit export market, and how it connects to the global supply chain for fruit. We explore how the relatively fragmented production process is linked to a more concentrated high tech export ‘funnel’ facilitated by international accumulation and dominated by large multinational firms. These interconnected levels are considered in the context of the constraints inherent within agricultural production, as discussed in chapter 2, which limit the extension of the industrial processes within agriculture, despite monocultivation and the dominance of agribusiness. The fragmented production process, provides the context for employment of the temporeras, which we then examine in more detail in the next chapter.1

This essay reviews two theoretical books on neoliberalism written by Mexican cultural critics: Capitalismo gore (Gore Capitalism), by Sayak Valencia, published originally in Spanish in 2010 and translated into English in 2018, and La tiranía del sentido común ( The Tyranny of Common Sense) by Irmgard Emmelhainz, published in Spanish in 2016 and yet to be translated into English. These works are pioneering in their discussion of the correlation between neoliberalism, subjectivity, and culture in Mexico, and they have become widely influential in broader discussions of art, visual culture, literature, and cultural production. They add to the work of economic and political historians, such as Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo and María Eugenia Romero Sotelo, by connecting landmark moments in neoliberalization (from the financialization of the global economy in the 1970s to the War on Drugs in the 2000s) to changing paradigms in art. Author Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado contextualizes both books within larger discussions of Mexican cultural neoliberalism and describes the theoretical frame works through which both authors read Mexican politics, art, and popular culture. In Valencia's case, Sánchez Prado discusses her idea of “gore capitalism”: a framework for understanding how neoliberalism relies on dynamics of the shadow economy and on the subjectification of gore (what Valencia calls endriago subjectivity) to function at the social and artistic levels. In the case of Emmelhainz, Sánchez Prado engages with the author's idea of semiocapitalism, a term borrowed from theorist Franco “Bifo” Berardi, which Emmelhainz deploys to account for the interrelation between culture and capital in the era of neoliberalism. As such, Sánchez Prado argues, Emmelhainz and Valencia provide ways of reading artistic and visual production, including museum curatorship and narcocultura, in ways that show their organic relationship to neoliberal economic and political reforms. Find the complete article at artmargins.com .

The present paper will focus on the evolution of economic and political reform in the post-Mao era. It will be argued that although economic reforms were being introduced and implemented from 1979 onwards, the road toward basic systemic reform was blocked by the absence of a simultaneous change of the political system. That the issue of political reform has resurfaced in China Kjeld Erik Brsdsgaard now, ten years after Mao, may signify that economic and political reformers have joined forces and that major systemic changes are likely.
 A postscript has been added to the main body of the article in order to analyze the significance of the fall of General Secretary Hu Yaobang in January this year. It is based on a collection of CCP Central Documents (zhongfa) that have a restricted circulation in China and, in principle, are unavailable to
 Western analysts of Chinese politics.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of economic and political reforms on the decisions related to Financial Sector development both in developed and developing nations. Panel of sixty nations divided almost equally in both sections for the time period 1990-2012 has been used. Using Discroll-Kraay Fixed Effect estimation technique, results revealed that in all cases either for whole panels or for separate developing and developed nations, process of economic reforms is playing most important role in the development of this sector among all other variables and this becomes more prominent in case of developed nations. While among political factors, role of Governance has been observed positive and strongly significant in its impact on the development of this sector for all cases. But Democracy showed positive effect only for developed nations not for developing nations which highlights this fact that consistency is the most required ingredient in case of economic development overall. Overall findings of the study helps in concluding that in case of developing countries, economic reforms are proving to be more fruitful and swift in their outcomes than political reforms.