Ordering Things: The Irish State Administration Database

New theoretical approaches to the state have posed challenges for the comparative analysis of the organizational features of states. The analysis of state bodies and state agencies has largely been confined to the sub-discipline of public administration, and has been resistant to the systematic classification that has made progress possible in other areas of comparative politics. This article argues that there is much to be gained by reconceptualizing state bodies in a comparative context. This paper profiles the classification system underlying the construction of the Irish State Administration Database (ISAD) (Hardiman et al., 2011). This paper sets out a new approach to conceptualizing the organizational and functional features of states. ISAD not only provides a valuable research resource for work on the Irish state, but can also provide a framework for building a comparative research agenda.

Optimal Tariffs with FDI: The Evidence

Recent theoretical work suggests that the presence of foreign direct investment (FDI) lowers a country’s noncooperative Nash tariff. To test this hypothesis, we first adapt the theoretical model formulated by Blanchard (2010) to derive an intuitive, empirically testable equation. This equation is an augmentation of the standard formula equal to the inverse of export supply elasticity. Using constructed estimates of export supply elasticities and measures of FDI, we test this hypothesis with respect to tariffs set by China prior to 2001. We focus on China before its accession into the World Trade Organization (WTO) for two primary reasons: first, China is a recipient of FDI during this time; and second, prior to becoming a WTO member China can be seen as a player in a noncooperative game. We find evidence to suggest that before entering the WTO, China chooses lower tariffs, ceteris paribus, for industries that receive more FDI. This is an important result since having a better understanding of how countries act unilaterally will provide insight into the multilateral cooperative outcome; that is trade negotiations.Foreign direct investment; Optimal tariffs

Varieties of capitalism or variegated state capitalism? East Germany and Yugoslavia in comparative perspective

Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). This essay is a contribution to comparative capitalism studies. We begin with a critique of the ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ school, before presenting the ‘variegated’ alternative. We note difficulties of both schools in characterising statist challengers to the dominant market order. The rise of China has made this a pressing issue, one that raises questions: Is China capitalist, and since when? And how should one analyse the communist world, which has since the 1920s represented a substantial swathe of the global economy? We next present an account of capitalism that explains étatiste variants as the product of late development, and the ‘communist’ economies as a state-capitalist model geared to catch-up industrialisation. This obliges us to consider how to account for their differences. In the second half we take up this challenge, via comparative analysis of two state-capitalist economies: the GDR (representing the orthodox Soviet model) and Yugoslavia (a maverick, market-friendly variant)

Relative Concerns of Rural-to-Urban Migrants in China

How the income of "relevant others" affects well-being has received renewed interest in the recent literature using subjective data. Migrants constitutes a par- ticularly interesting group to study this question: as they changed environment, they are likely to be concerned by several potential reference groups including the people "left behind", other migrants and "natives". We focus here on the huge population of rural-to-urban migrants in China. We exploit a novel dataset that comprises samples of migrants and urban people living in the same cities, as well as rural households mostly surveyed in the provinces where migrants are coming from. After establishing these links, we fi…nd that the well-being of migrants is largely af- fected by relative concerns: results point to negative relative concerns toward other migrants and workers of home regions - this status effect is particularly strong for migrants who wish to settle permanently in cities. We fi…nd in contrast a positive relative income effect vis-à-vis the urban reference group, interpreted as a signal effect: larger urban incomes indicate higher income prospects for the migrants. A richer pattern is obtained when sorting migrants according to the duration of stay, expectations to return to home countries and characteristics related to family cir- cumstances, work conditions and community ties.China, relative concerns, well-being.

Prelude to America’s Downfall: The Stagflation of the 1970s

Since the end of the Bretton Woods system and the stagflation of the 1970s, the transatlantic core, under the leadership of the United States of America, has been trying to expand its model of free market capitalism embracing every part of the globe, while addressing its domestic overaccumulation crisis. This article follows a historical methodological perspective and draws from the concept of Uneven and Combined Development (UCD), which helps us consider the structural reasons behind the long and protracted decline of the American economic power. In this respect, according to the UCD concept, there is no global power that can enjoy the privilege for being at the top of the global capitalist system forever in a world which develops unevenly and in a combined way. Power shifts across the world and new powers come to challenge the current hegemonic power and its alliance systems. The novelty of the article is that it locates this decline in the 1970s and considers it as being consubstantial with the state economic policy of neo-liberalism and financialisation (supply-side economics). However the financialised capitalism of the transatlantic assemblage lack industrial base producing, reproducing and recycling real commodity values. Further, the article shows that this attempt to remain at the top of the global capitalist system forever has not been successful, not least because the regime which the recovery of the core had rested upon, that of neo-liberal financialisation represents a major vulnerability of the transatlantic assemblage eroding the primacy of the United States of America in it

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Taking the steps toward sustainable livestock: our multidisciplinary global farm platform journey

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Relative Concerns of Rural-to-Urban Migrants in China

How the income of "relevant others" affects well-being has received renewed interest in the recent literature using subjective data. Migrants constitutes a par- ticularly interesting group to study this question: as they changed environment, they are likely to be concerned by several potential reference groups including the people "left behind", other migrants and "natives". We focus here on the huge population of rural-to-urban migrants in China. We exploit a novel dataset that comprises samples of migrants and urban people living in the same cities, as well as rural households mostly surveyed in the provinces where migrants are coming from. After establishing these links, we find that the well-being of migrants is largely af- fected by relative concerns: results point to negative relative concerns toward other migrants and workers of home regions - this status effect is particularly strong for migrants who wish to settle permanently in cities. We find in contrast a positive relative income effect vis-à-vis the urban reference group, interpreted as a signal effect - larger urban incomes indicate higher income prospects for the migrants. A richer pattern is obtained when sorting migrants according to the duration of stay, expectations to return to home countries and characteristics related to family cir- cumstances, work conditions and community ties.china, relative concerns, well-being

An aesthetic for sustainable interactions in product-service systems?

Copyright @ 2012 Greenleaf PublishingEco-efficient Product-Service System (PSS) innovations represent a promising approach to sustainability. However the application of this concept is still very limited because its implementation and diffusion is hindered by several barriers (cultural, corporate and regulative ones). The paper investigates the barriers that affect the attractiveness and acceptation of eco-efficient PSS alternatives, and opens the debate on the aesthetic of eco-efficient PSS, and the way in which aesthetic could enhance some specific inner qualities of this kinds of innovations. Integrating insights from semiotics, the paper outlines some first research hypothesis on how the aesthetic elements of an eco-efficient PSS could facilitate user attraction, acceptation and satisfaction