Detailed Historical Case Study Research Articles

Actor-agency and institutional complexity: multinational corporations’ strategies to combat the framework convention on tobacco control in Brazil

Purpose This study aims to analyse the strategic moves used by major tobacco corporations to thwart the ratification of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in Brazil. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a detailed historical case study spanning 1988–2005 and encompassing the period leading up to Brazil’s FCTC ratification. The authors collected qualitative data from various sources to triangulate and develop a comprehensive historical account. Findings The historical analysis identified three distinct phases. First, the acquisition of a Brazilian cigarette factory, Souza Cruz, by British American Tobacco dramatically altered power dynamics, strengthening the position of the tobacco industry. The second phase regards the era of dictatorship and the efforts of various actors advocating against smoking and the tobacco industry. The third phase involved Brazil’s re-democratisation and the challenges of securing FCTC ratification, during which fierce industry opposition had to be overcome. Throughout these phases, the authors identified four key strategies used by multinational corporations (MNCs) in Brazil to uphold unsustainable practices and products that contradicted public interests instead of reforming them: shaping collective memory, dissimulation, re-presentation and redirecting attention. Originality/value This study contributes to critical international business research on emerging economies by examining how Brazil’s position in the global capitalist system has influenced its dependency and how MNCs produce and maintain cycles of poverty and unsustainable practices through the exploitation of power dynamics within the country.

What kills international organisations? When and why international organisations terminate

This article addresses the puzzle of why, and under what conditions, international organisations cease to exist. International Relations literature offers rich explanations for the creation, design and effectiveness of international institutions and their organisational embodiments, international organizations (IOs), but surprisingly little effort has gone into studying the dynamics of IO termination. Yet if we want to understand the conditions under which international organisations endure, we must also explain why they frequently fail to do so. The article formulates and tests a theory of ‘IO death’ using a combination of population-wide statistical analysis and detailed historical case studies. My analysis is based on an original dataset covering the period 1815–2016. I find that exogenous shocks are a leading proximate cause of IO terminations since 1815 and that organisations that are newly created, have small memberships, and/or lack centralised structures are most likely to succumb. My analysis leads me to suggest a number of extensions and refinements to existing institutionalist theories.

Long live the doge? Death as a term limit on Venetian chief executives

Can an electorate use the projected life expectancy of a lifetime-appointed chief executive to enforce binding, informal term limits? Informal term limits based on the life expectancy of a chief executive candidate at election would enable an electorate to exercise discretion in adjusting tenure lengths to minimize expected turnover and tenure-length costs, while also providing a strictly binding term limit: death. We provide a detailed historical case study of Venice from 1172 to 1797, when the ruling patricians utilized informal term limits on their chief executive, the doge, relying on the projected life expectancy of ducal candidates.

Blood Will Tell: Native Americans and Assimilation Policy

Blood Will Tell: Native Americans and Assimilation Policy

Long Live the King? Death as a Term Limit on Executives

Can an electorate use the projected life expectancy of a lifetime-appointed executive to enforce binding, informal term limits? Informal term limits, based on the life expectancy of an executive candidate at election, would enable an electorate to exercise discretion in adjusting tenure lengths to minimize expected turnover and tenure-length costs, while also providing a strictly binding term limit; death. We provide a detailed historical case study of Middle Age and Renaissance Venice where the ruling patricians imposed informal term limits on their executive, the doge, utilizing the projected life expectancy of ducal candidates.

The Environmental Protection Agency's Budget from 1970 to 2010: A Lifecycle Analysis

Using three approaches, we attempt to explain changes in the Environmental Protection Agency's operating budget from 1970 to 2010. First, we compare qualitative predictions from two general types of agency lifecycle theories to the actual path of the EPA's budget. Second, we test empirically several hypotheses regarding the effects of political, economic, and other variables on the agency's budget. Third, we conduct detailed historical case studies of selected years. The results offer hints of support for theories predicting incremental change but do not support the hypothesized effects of external factors. We also uncover some historical anomalies that warrant further research.

‘You really only made it because you needed the money’: Aboriginal Women and Shellwork Production, 1870s to 1970s

For almost 150 years, Aboriginal women around Sydney have engaged in an informal cash economy by making and selling small shell-decorated objects. The longevity of the practice, which spans the period from the 1870s to the present, provides a rare opportunity to present a detailed historical case study of aspects of Aboriginal women's work in settled Australia. This discussion pays careful attention to the changing contexts within which these commodities were made and sold, along with Aboriginal women's responses to new and changed conditions in ways that sought to sustain this valued economic activity. The approach used in this article combines interpretation of archival, pictorial and oral history sources about markets and makers with analysis of the objects themselves.

Making, breaking, and (partially) remaking markets: State regulation and photovoltaic electricity in New Jersey

This paper describes the development of the U.S. state of New Jersey’s policy to accelerate the growth of photovoltaic electricity generating capacity over the past ten years. It provides insights that may be of use to scholars and policy-makers who seek to understand how markets for photovoltaics and other renewable energy technologies may be created and sustained, and it adds to the growing set of detailed historical case studies on these issues. Aggressive state policy measures have put New Jersey second to California among the U.S. states in installed photovoltaic capacity. That growth was achieved in a series of stages. New Jersey initially experienced a boom and bust as generous up-front rebates catalyzed rapid growth in demand and exhausted the program’s budget. A shift in 2007 to a policy that emphasized Solar Renewable Energy Certificates failed to sustain the growth in capacity. In response, the state began to require regulated transmission and distribution utilities to provide up-front financing for photovoltaic systems. This approach has restarted the momentum of the market, but it shifts the policy’s costs into the future, while empowering a new set of players with uncertain interests over the long term.

Innovation – the endless frontier: historical modes of engineering science

In this article we argue that knowledge production in industrial settings does not follow neat schemata, such as the linear model or the Mode 1/Mode 2 dichotomy. Rather than moving from research to market via development, innovation and production, it is an iterative process where information and knowledge move back and forth between different actors and milieus. Engineering science is a many-sided practice carried out at different institutions and is largely driven by a need for continuous novelty. By means of a detailed historical case study of industrial R&D in the area of engine design we document how theoretical knowledge encountered on-the-spot observations, how well educated engineers met ordinary bus drivers and how engineering test procedures clashed with economic interests. Our story line is about ‘crossover’ processes, trial-and-error ‘research’, recursive development loops, and flexibly acting innovation networks.

Co-evolution of technology and society: The transition in water supply and personal hygiene in the Netherlands (1850–1930)—a case study in multi-level perspective

This article deals with the systems level in Freeman and Perez's innovation typology (incremental, radical, system, techno-economic paradigm). Transitions at this level are understood as changes from one socio-technical system to another, involving co-evolution of technology and society. To understand these transitions, the article describes a multi-level perspective, based on insights from sociology of technology and evolutionary economics. This perspective is used to analyse a detailed historical case study, the transition from surface water to piped water and personal hygiene (1870–1930). By the middle of the 19th century, problems in the water supply regime grew worse, as expanding urban populations dumped their waste in canals and surface waters. Local conditions in some specific cities provided space for the first piped water systems in the 1850s. Problems in the water supply regime grew worse in the 1860s and 1870s, but public authorities in other cities did not embrace the new niche. Instead, they searched for solutions within the existing regime. Only after wider landscape developments in the 1880s and 1890s (economic, cultural, political) could the niche break through and trigger wider transformations. So external macro-developments played a crucial role in the take-off and diffusion phase of this transition. This transition is a good example of co-evolution of technology and society, involving technological innovations, such as piped water infrastructure, soap, toilets, baths, as well as cultural, political, economic and behavioural changes. The case study illustrates how the multi-level perspective can be used to analyse how these changes influenced each other in a co-evolution process. The article thus fits in the growing literature on co-evolution. While most literatures look at co-evolution between two or three aspects, this article develops a broader understanding of co-evolution.

Fuzzy Legality and National Styles of Regulation: Government Intervention in the Israel Downstream Oil Market

This article examines the role of statute law in regulation and government intervention through a detailed historical case study of a crucial retail market. The history of state intervention in the Israeli oil supply market is dominated by “fuzzy legality,” a concept expounded in a former article. Legal fuzziness allowed the industry, acting in concert with the government regulator, to retain a lucrative, practically non–accountable arrangement in changing politico–economic climates. Three central forces encouraged continuing fuzziness: a “cloud” of state security, institutional stickiness that preserved colonial mandatory legal structures, and a prevalent national culture of nonlegalism. The article ends with a careful suggestion regarding the Israeli national style of regulation. Compared to American “adversarial legalism,” and its opposite, “consensual nonlegalism” the Israeli style may be termed “adversarial nonlegalism,” and holds less promise for balancing market and public interests.

Transport Policy Paradigms at the Local Level: The Norwich Inner Ring Road

It has been claimed that transport policy in the UK, once a quiescent area, has been opened to battle between competing advocacy coalitions and that the late 1980s and early 1990s saw a policy paradigm shift. This article examines one detailed historical case study, the plans to complete an inner road in Norwich and the subsequent collapse of the scheme. The aim is firstly to examine the complex decision making processes and subsequent politics of this scheme and secondly to relate the local issue to the idea of a paradigm shift in national roads policy. The complexity of decision making in a multi‐actored arena, where sovereignty is located locally but is circumscribed by central government ‘guidelines’, suggests that the assertions of those who argue in terms of a paradigm shift in policy may be exaggerated.

Legend naturalism and scientific progress: An essay on Philip Kitcher's

Abstract Philip Kitcher's The Advancement of Science sets out, programmatically, a new naturalistic view of science as a process of building consensus practices. Detailed historical case studies—centrally, the Darwinian revolutio—are intended to support this view. I argue that Kitcher's expositions in fact support a more conservative view, that I dub ‘Legend Naturalism’. Using four historical examples which increasingly challenge Kitcher's discussions, I show that neither Legend Naturalism, nor the less conservative programmatic view, gives an adequate account of scientific progress. I argue for a naturalism that is more informed by psychology and a normative account that is both more social and less realist than the views articulated in The Advancement of Science .

The Crisis of Teaching Crisis Decision Making

Decision making under conditions of crisis is an integral part of international relations. Yet in most introductory IR texts, crisis decision making consists of Graham Allison's models, the Cuban missile crisis, and updated examples, discussed in five pages or less. In supplementing such texts, instructors of international politics at the introductory level may find themselves skirting Scylla and Charybdis. In the cliffs lies the extensive simulation exercise requiring additional readings and valuable class time to establish the game. Ahead, lies the whirlpool of detailed historical case studies all vying for attention as the necessary cases for relating to the student experience.Over the past few semesters, I have sought to resolve this dilemma with a simple simulation exercise that integrates current events with the basics of decision making under crisis. The demands on class time are minimal. The simulation adds anywhere from 30 minutes to one hour to the regular classroom time spent on discussing foreign policy decision making. Instructor preparation merely requires a scan of reference materials and some creativity. The results, in terms of student interaction, awakening the shy student, and promoting learning instead of regurgitation of simple facts have all been extremely positive for classes as small as 25 students and as large as 65 students.

The Shaping of Nuclear Weapon System Technology: US Fleet Ballistic Missile Guidance and Navigation: I: From Polaris to Poseidon

This paper (published in two Parts) presents a detailed historical case study of the evolution of the Polaris, Poseidon and Trident weapons programmes, and of the development of the guidance and navigation technologies which are essential to their role in nuclear strategies. Over the last thirty years, these technologies have changed in the direction of greatly increased missile accuracy. Simultaneously, the strategic rationale of these weapons has shifted from that of ultimate retaliatory `counter-city' deterrent (the main perceived role of Polaris) to `counterforce' targeting of opposing silos and command posts (a major role of Trident II). Has technological change been an independent causal factor in this sequence, bringing into being a new strategy, or is technological change the consciously intended product of political will? Part I of this paper presents the historical material as far as the production of Poseidon: Part II will complete the history, and then discuss the various analytical frameworks commonly used to explain such developments.