Politics Of Adjustment Research Articles

Politics of adjustment: rural mayors and the accommodation of refugees

ABSTRACT This article approaches the process of opening accommodation centres from the perspective of mayors in rural municipalities. Although the allocation and accommodation of refugees is a competence of the nation-state, it is in the realm of municipalities where reception policies transform into social practices. Mayors have to negotiate socio-political conflicts on the vertical and horizontal dimensions against the background of uneven decision-making structures stemming from multi-governance arrangements and conflicting claims of local citizens. Through qualitative interviews with mayors from rural municipalities in four European countries (Austria, France, Germany and Italy), we show that even though national asylum systems differ, mayors assume similar handling strategies to defuse conflicts and increase acceptance. We introduce the concept of ‘politics of adjustment’ to describe the simultaneous process of people adapting to a new situation as well as the alteration of implementation practices according to the needs of the municipality. Mayors modify the tight legal framework of reception policies to find a local consensus on accommodation, whilst steering the socio-political process of demarcation and othering that leaves imaginaries on rural whiteness and homogeneity unchallenged.

Financial Crises and the Politics of Macroeconomic AdjustmentsWalter, StefanieNew York, Cambridge University Press (2013), 250 pp., ISBN 978 1 107 02870 8

Financial Crises and the Politics of Macroeconomic AdjustmentsWalter, StefanieNew York, Cambridge University Press (2013), 250 pp., ISBN 978 1 107 02870 8

Crisis financiera y la hipótesis del mercado único. Notas para su interpretación

La transición hacia un nuevo modelo de desarrollo tiene como una de sus características básicas la actual crisis financiera, sostiene el autor. Desde el colapso de los años ochenta se definió una política de ajuste orientada bajo la premisa "crecer para pagar", con el fin de enfrentar la deuda externa. En los noventa, en América Latina se planteó la necesidad de retomar la opción del crecimiento sin incurrir en los errores del pasado; sin embargo, el "efecto tequila" exhibe una problemática financiera similar a la anterior.

Economía y política social. Un esbozo esquemático con referencia a México

El subdesarrollo constituye el escenario donde la insatisfacción de las necesidades sociales esenciales representa un problema central, agravado por el modelo neoliberal y las políticas de ajuste. La autora hace un amplio recuento de la problemática social en México, ubicando la influencia de las políticas económicas y del manejo político, paternalista y corporativo, que han desvirtuado el carácter redistributivo requerido para la atención de las demandas sociales de la población.

Social movements in Latin America: neoliberalism and popular resistance

US Imperialism and the Neoliberal Offensive Capitalist Development, Labour and the Rural Poor: The Politics of Adjustment (Non-Resistance) Dynamics of Agrarian Transformation and Resistance Neoliberalism and the Social Movements: Mobilizing the Resistance Turning the Social Movements: Civil Society to the Rescue A Turning of the Tide: The Centre-Left Comes to Power Social Movements in a Time of Crisis Latin America in the Vortex of Social Change

Navigating Institutional Change: The Accord, Rogernomics, and the Politics of Adjustment in Australia and New Zealand

This article uses a transactions approach to examine the ability of governments to develop and sustain negotiated solutions to major economic challenges. Where actors are embedded in long-term, repeated interaction, have long time horizons, and invest in monitoring and enforcement technologies, effective political exchange is more likely. In good transactions environments, policy bargains will be more easily renegotiated and therefore more flexible and durable. To examine the expectations the author looks to the puzzle posed by events in Australia and New Zealand, 1983-1996. Facing similar macroeconomic crises and with historically similar wage bargaining institutions and levels of union density both elect Labor governments, which then make opposite choices: A negotiated solution emerged in Australia but not in New Zealand. Relying on the secondary literature and interviews with key actors, the author finds support for the transactions approach. Findings here point to ways in which to broaden the study of so-called social pacts.

The Politics of Adjustment and Coordination at the Regional Level: The Basque Country

Is globalization forcing economies that are not coordinated market economies, such as Spain's, to converge on a British-American model? This essay seeks to build on the hypotheses generated by the literature on varieties of capitalism to analyze the challenges of developing and sustaining coordination while adjusting for economic change. In particular, it seeks to explore ways in which subnational factors promote the ability of socioeconomic actors to develop public-private institutions. By focusing on a particular autonomous region of Spain, the Basque Country, this article explores the role of institutional arrangements at the regional level in determining national adjustment. In the Basque Country the relative power and the particular interests of the regional state have been central factors in promoting distinctive patterns of coordination. At the same time, actors' preferences and policy outcomes have been constrained by the differences in the quality and configuration of institutional frameworks, political deals, and the existing economic structure.

Social movements and state power: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador

Preface Introduction 1 Bad Government, Good Governance: Civil Society versus Social Movements 2 From Popular Rebellion to 'Normal Capitalism' in Argentina 3 Lula and the Dynamics of a Neoliberal Regime 4 Social Movements and State Power in Ecuador 5 The Politics of Adjustment, Reform and Revolution in Bolivia 6 Political Power Dynamics in Latin America Bibliography Index.

De la descentralización a la regionalización: Nuevo escenario de la guerra y oportunidad para la paz

In many Latin-American countries, the combination among neoliberal politics of adjustment, economic opening and transformations to political regimes, modify both economic geography and spatial conformation of institutions, political systems, social and corporativ e actors. Colombia has also been affected by this redesign, that compromises the operation of its external and internal politics. The spatial effects of the economic opening combine with those of administrative, fiscal, and political process of decentralization, generating a tension on the geographical unit of the State. The consideration of these tendencies that have marked the paths of the economic, institutional, political, and social transformations since twenty years ago, indicate a probable way toward the regionalization of the country. Will this regionalization be convenient for a more stable internal dev elopment and a favorable setting for a peace agreement based on a territorial distribution of the power, or will it be the promptest way to abandon each territory to its luck in the world competence, and to break the territorial unit of the Colombian State? This is the question that is presented here.

Clean‐ups, conditionality & adjustment: why institutions matter in Mozambique

This article critically evaluates the nature of administrative reform in the context of conditionality and structural adjustment. Structural adjustment programmes constitute the broader environment and prioritisations within which donors and creditors support institutional reform. This raises the questions concerning the ownership and purpose of reform, especially if one bears in mind the substantial inequality of power between individual severely‐indebted states and multilateral creditors which enjoy the alignment of many bilateral donors behind their prognoses. One can identify some of the contradictions that this relationship produces through an examination of Mozambique's experience with donors in respect to corruption and anti‐corruption strategies. Here, corruption constitutes part of the politics of adjustment, and the reforms which are to tackle it have to work on an institutional terrain which has already been subjected to the disintegrative effects of a decade of adjustment and minimally‐controlled donor influence. All of this renders the idea — often at the base of much donor thinking concerning reform — of a stable and enlightened leadership motivated to implement rational/technical reform throughout government at best a simplification and at worst a misrepresentation.

Nigeria: The Politics of Adjustment and Democracy. By Julius O. Ihonvbere. New Brunswick: Transaction, 1994. 321p. $34.95.

Nigeria: The Politics of Adjustment and Democracy. By Julius O. Ihonvbere. New Brunswick: Transaction, 1994. 321p. $34.95.

A Future for Africa: beyond the politics of adjustment by Bade Onimode London, Earthscan Publications1992, in association with the Institute for African Alternatives. Pp. ix + 177. £12.95 paperback.

A Future for Africa: beyond the politics of adjustment by Bade Onimode London, Earthscan Publications1992, in association with the Institute for African Alternatives. Pp. ix + 177. £12.95 paperback. - Volume 33 Issue 1

Nigeria: the politics of adjustment & democracy

Nigeria is in a long-standing crisis. Military rule has suffocated civil society and has entrenched a culture of repression, corruption, and official irresponsibility. The reign of Ibrahim Babangida has resulted in near total economic disaster for the country. The situation is so bad, as Julius Ihonvbere shows, that Nigerians are now saying that the days of colonialism were better. In this major new study, Ihonvbere searches out the sources of Nigeria's predicament. He finds them in the country's historical experience, and the consequences of that experience since gaining political independence. Nigeria has become a society in which its citizens live in fear and its youth emigrate to other countries. It is now impossible to survive in the country without belonging to a certain religion, living in a particular region, having connections with top military officers, and being involved with some form of corruption. Even involvement in drug pushing or extrajudicial murder is no longer considered a crime, but a circumstance of life. Such conditions have encouraged the emergence of several popular organizations. New alliances of students, workers, women, youths, intellectuals, professionals, and the unemployed transcend ethnic, regional, and religious differences. For the author, it is at this emerging level of struggle and interaction that the future of Nigeria lies. This work examines several critical, but often overlooked or underresearched aspects of Nigeria's political economy. Ihonvbere analyzes in detail Nigeria's foreign policy, its economic crisis, the military, the decay of its educational system, and democratization. He pays particular attention to the paradoxical connection between IMF/World Bank-supervised structural adjustment and the struggle for democracy. His book will be of interest to experts hi socioeconomic development, foreign policy analysts, students of military science, and scholars of African politics and history.

The politics of adjustment and lifelong education: The case of Argentina

This article seeks to indicate some of the aspects of lifelong education in Argentina. Empirical evidence is found for the hypothesis that continuing education reproduces and reinforces social differences. Secondly, the article identifies some of the contradictions in the present socio-economic and political context of the country, which are posing new challenges to critical and participatory lifelong education. Educational practice is having to respond to a model of society which derives from neo-conservative practices in the economic, social and educational spheres. The article is fundamentally descriptive. Qualitative and quantitative data refer to potential demand, actual demand and social demand for lifelong education. The article concludes with some reflections on lifelong education as a global policy confronting a historical crisis situation.

Corporatist Bargaining and International Politics

International regimes and multinational corporations (MNCs) play active roles in domestic political processes. This article links these international systems variables to corporatist analyses of domestic structural adjustment politics in the Federal Republic of Germany. The interplay of regimes and MNCs with domestic politics is seen in case studies of the German steel and oil refining industries. It is demonstrated that corporatist models should incorporate international-level variables.

BOOK REVIEW: Economic Crisis and Policy Choice: The Politics of Adjustment in the Third World, edited by Joan Nelson

BOOK REVIEW: Economic Crisis and Policy Choice: The Politics of Adjustment in the Third World, edited by Joan Nelson

Economic Crisis and Policy Choice: The Politics of Adjustment in the Third World

The acute economic pressures of the 1980s have forced virtually all of Latin America and Africa and some countries in Asia into painful austerity programs and difficult economic reforms. Scholars have intensively analyzed the economics of this situation, but they have given much less attention to the political forces involved. In this volume a number of eminent contributors analyze the politics of adjustment in thirteen countries and nineteen governments, drawing comparisons not only across the full set of cases but also within clusters selected to clarify specific issues. Why do some governments respond promptly to signs of economic trouble, while others muddle indecisively for years? Why do some confine their response to temporary macroeconomic measures, while others adopt broader, even sweeping, programs of reform? What leads some countries to experiment with heterodox approaches, while most, however reluctantly, pursue orthodox courses? Why, confronted with intense political protest, have some governments persisted while others have altered or abandoned course? The answers to these questions are political, not economic, and they are examined here by Thomas M. Callaghy, Stephan Haggard, Miles Kahler, Robert R. Kauman, Joan M. Nelson, and Barbara Stallings.

Perestroika in Perspective: The Design and Dilemmas of Soviet Reform. By Padma Desai. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. 128p. $14.95. - The Road to a Free Economy: Shifting from a Socialist System: The Case of Hungary. By Janos Kornai. New York: Norton, 1990. $16.95. - Fragile Coalitions: The Politics of Economic Adjustment. Edited by Joan Nelson. Washington: Overseas Development Council,

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Economic crisis and policy choice: the politics of adjustment in the Third World

Economic crisis and policy choice: the politics of adjustment in the Third World

The Politics of Adjustment: Pluralism, Corporatism and Privatization

The Politics of Adjustment: Pluralism, Corporatism and Privatization