Political Economy Constraints Research Articles

Households, forests, and fire hazard vulnerability in the American West: A case study of a California community

Due to amplified biophysical risks, rapid population growth, and inadequacies of existing political mechanisms, wildland–urban interface (WUI) fire hazards have become increasingly acute throughout the American West. Using a case study approach, I test the applicability of four social determinants of household level WUI fire hazard vulnerability in the community of Forest Ranch, California. Previous studies have independently identified (1) risk perceptions, (2) amenity value conflicts, and (3) institutional incentive structures as determinants of household fire hazard vulnerability. I introduce (4) political economic constraints as determinants. Findings confirm the role of three social determinants in household risk management decision-making: while determinant (1) is not a significant correlate of household vulnerability, determinants (2)–(4) are significant correlates. Also, findings demonstrate that political economic theory offers concepts applicable to studies of WUI hazard vulnerability. These conclusions call into question current management interventions. The coexistence of affluence and underdevelopment in WUI areas of the American West sheds doubt on one-dimensional representations of residents, mutually exclusive interpretations of social determinants of hazard vulnerability, and thus, narrowly conceived or universal management prescriptions (e.g., interventions directed solely toward educating residents about biophysical risks).

"Change yourself and the whole world will become kinder": Russian activists for reproductive health and the limits of claims making for women.

This article views reproductive health activism as a fruitful site for analyzing the cultural logics through which legitimate claims for women's needs become expressed and circumscribed. It begins from the observation that in the United States and Britain, reproductive health has been a key arena for feminist political claims and struggles for women's rights, bodily integrity, access to health care, and demands for authority in relations with experts. These concerns and struggles have not, however, emerged in all postsocialist contexts, and new activism in Russia reveals strikingly different agendas. Innovative groups of health providers seeking to increase women's access to birth control methods and safe sex, home birth opportunities, and improved health services work outside of feminist perspectives and reject political paths for change. By examining the ideological inspirations, cultural logics, and political-economic constraints shaping the outreach work of Russian health practitioners, the article explains how and why health activism became a site for personal "spiritual" revival and the strengthening of nuclear families. It also explores how conditions following the collapse of socialism have further legitimized activists' rejection of political agendas for change.

The political economy constraints on deployement of a large scale electronic 'hor roadway': a US example

Many transport economists have expressed support for the use of charging as a mechanism for rationing scarce road space, for indicating where additional capacity is needed, and for generating revenues for road investment. Since the work of Vickrey in the US and Walters in the UK in the 1960s most of the focus has been on the imposition of 'Road Pricing' in urban areas. The interest in the recently introduced charges in central London is a reflection of this. This study is concerned with the emerging problems found on many longer distance roads. In theory, these should be open to the same economic approaches as their urban counter-parts. In practice, the reality of the political economy is that there are often a variety of institutional barriers that impede the introduction of economic based charges. The paper looks at some of these in the context of a particular route in the US where there appears to be sufficient demand to initiate more rational, if not economically ideal, charging structures. (A)

Invoking vali: painful technologies of modern birth in south India.

As reproduction becomes increasingly biomedicalized throughout the globe, reproductive technologies are used in unique ways and imbued with different meanings. This article explores why lower-class women in south India in the 1990s were demanding to have childbirth labors induced with oxytocin drugs while rejecting anesthesia. Cultural constructions of women's reproductive power are evoked and reworked in discourses of modernity that explain this preference. Discourses on relationships among gender, pain, and modernity relate to political-economic constraints on hospitals to perpetuate this practice.

Will Gradualism Work When Shock Therapy Doesn’t?

When shock therapy is politically infeasible, will gradualism work? This paper takes up this question by: (i) building a political economy model in which it makes sense; (ii) stating the relevant political economy constraint rigorously; and (iii) analyzing the question in the context of a neoclassical model of adjustment, based on Mussa (1978). The paper answers the question in the affirmative, thus contributing to the scientific and policy literature on the economic analysis of policy reform.

Are the Poor Protected from Budget Cuts? Evidence for Argentina

Macroeconomic adjustment programs often emphasize the need to protect social spending from cuts, and to protect pro-poor spending in particular. But does this happen in practice during fiscal contractions? The paper presents evidence for Argentina. Using aggregate time series data the paper first finds that social spending was not protected historically, although more “pro-poor” social spending was no more vulnerable. Turning next to new data for an externally-financed workfare scheme introduced in response to a macro crisis, the paper finds that this program was far better targeted than other social spending. However, it appears that the program still had to assure that a small but relatively well-protected share of its benefits went to the non-poor. This appears to be a political economy constraint.

Is more targeting consistent with less spending

Economists often advise governments to target their spending better when cuts are called for. The author asks whether that advice is consistent with a political economy constraint that limits the welfare losses to the nonpoor from spending cuts. A simple theoretical model shows that the answer is unclear on a priori grounds and so will depend on the specifics of program design and financing. A case study for a World Bank-supported social program in Argentina illustrates how cuts can come with worse targeting performance: The allocation to the poor falls faster than that to the nonpoor. The author draws some lessons for how the poor might be better protected from cuts.

Impacts on rural poverty of land-based targeting: Further results for Bangladesh

Landholding class has been widely advocated as a targeting indicator for fighting rural poverty in South Asia and elsewhere. Supporters have pointed to the correlation between poverty and lack of land, and have also claimed that land-based targeting raises output. The paper tries to assess the impact on rural poverty in Bangladesh of a benchmark policy under seemingly ideal conditions, generalizing earlier results of Ravallion (1989) on improved data. Poverty is reduced, though the maximum gains turn out to be small, even allowing for pro-poor productivity effects consistent with the farm size-productivity relationship in Bangladesh. The gains are likely to be even smaller under real-world incentive and political economy constraints.

Polygyny as myth. Towards understanding extramarital relations in Lesotho.

The nature and extent of "bonyatsi" (marital infidelity) in Lesotho is presented through the images of population. Because the practice is not morally normative, it cannot be readily explained as part of an earlier custom or as arising from the exigencies of dependency on migrant labor, but as images of the past which are regarded as their own "traditional extramarital relations." This gives meaning and cultural continuity to the present practice, and legitimizes the experience without condoning it. Thus there can be ideological control over a practice which was the result of political economic constraints. The account is in the tradition of rehumanization of ethnography and relates folk explanations to notions of the past. It is based on the author's experiences in Lesotho from the early 1970s to the 1980s. The exercise exemplifies Malinowski's notion of myth as social charter and Spiegel's idea that reformulated traditions are a response to changes in modern practices. Extramarital relations appeared widespread throughout Lesotho, and Bonyatsi individuals could be easily identified in Qacha's Nek villages where the author lived. The practice was recognized as a normal state of affairs only in private rather than in a public forum. Folk songs made reference to it. Bonyatsi is the abstract form, while nyatsi means paramour of any gender and linyatsi is the plural. The definition is one of a relationship, which may be longterm, between already married persons. Gifts may be exchanged between linyatsi, but this is different from the prostitute, who is an unattached woman who loves anyone anytime usually in urban areas, or botekatse (prostitution). The origins of bonyatsi were explained as being part of the Creation and a feature of all human social life. The ministers explained that the practice was a result of labor migration that might last for as long as 2 years. Women argued that this absence of regular sexual intercourse created severe psychological effects such as stopping the blood flow or losing one's sanity. There was an element of inevitability. Births were not uncommon. Other explanations are given as part of polygyny where a husband had access to other women; this was important during abstinence periods after a birth. The practice of clientship among chiefs was another, explanation, or exchange of wives for favors among chiefs. Political alliances were sometimes formed in this manner to establish friendly relations. The story of Moshoeshoe is related. Not all that was permissible is explained.

Economie Action and Buddhist Morality in a Thai Village

Although the Thai-Lao peasants living in rain-fed agricultural communities in northeastern Thailand have experienced some improvements in their socioeconomic situation as a consequence of the growth of the Thai economy since the mid-1950s, these peasants still constitute the poorest sector of the population of Thailand. Moreover, the socioeconomic position of the rural northeastern Thai populace has actually declined relative to that of the urban populace and that of the rural populace living in central Thailand. The economic disadvantageous position of Thai-Lao peasants is linked with a sense of being an ethnoregional minority within a polity that has been highly centralized since reforms instituted at the end of the nineteenth century. Much of the social action of Thai-Lao peasants with reference to the political-economic constraints on their world can be understood, as long-term research in one community reveals, as having been impelled by rational calculation aimed at improving the well being of peasant families. The ways in which peasants have assessed in practice the justice of these constraints as well as the ways in which they have assessed the limits to entrepreneurship must be seen, however, as being rooted in moral premises that Thai-Lao villagers have appropriated from Theravada Buddhism as known to them in their popular culture.