Inferentials in spoken English

Although there is a growing body of research on inferential sentences (Declerck 1992, Delahunty 1990, 1995, 2001, Koops 2007, Pusch 2006), most of this research has been on their forms and functions in written discourse. This has left a gap with regards to their range of structural properties and allowed disagreement over their analysis to linger without a conclusive resolution. Most accounts regard the inferential as a type of it-cleft (Declerck 1992, Delahunty 2001, Huddleston and Pullum 2002, Lambrecht 2001), while a few view it as an instance of extraposition (Collins 1991, Schmid 2009). More recently, Pusch's work in Romance languages proposes the inferential is used as a discourse marker (2006, forthcoming). Based on a corpus study of examples from spoken New Zealand English, the current paper provides a detailed analysis of the formal and discoursal properties of several sub-types of inferentials (positive, negative, as if and like inferentials). We show that despite their apparent formal differences from the prototypical cleft, inferentials are nevertheless best analysed as a type of cleft, though this requires a minor reinterpretation of “cleft construction.” We show how similar the contextualized interpretations of clefts and inferentials are and how these are a function of their lexis and syntax

Community-based initiatives in response to the OVC crisis in North Central Uganda

In response to the orphan crisis, a number of community initiatives have proliferated to enhance service delivery to OVCs (Orphans and other Vulnerable Children). Part of the literature paints a bleak and pessimistic picture: it believes that community based support interventions anchored on the family are faltering under the weight of increasing number of orphans; while others argue that communities are innovative and resilient to the extent that they have devised new coping strategies. The paper shows how OVC community responses in Northern Uganda are under severe pressure from a range of factors; but how these community initiatives are not collapsing – as the ‘social rupture’ thesis predicts. Instead, these community initiatives are dynamic and constantly evolving through various mechanisms to respond to the challenges of meeting the needs of the orphans. The paper shows how some of these initiatives are more successful than others in doing so.

From Property Rights and Institutions, to Beliefs and Social Orders : Revisiting Douglass North’s Approach to Development

Douglass North is a uniquely creative and inspiring social scientist. The impact of North’s ideas in the area development cooperation can hardly be overstated. By stressing the role of institutions, this scholar has immensely influenced development thinking and practice, providing intellectual underpinnings to the dominant good governance paradigm. North’s landmark Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance is one of the most cited books in the social sciences. This paper contends, however, that North’s ideas are widely cited, but not always properly understood. Moreover, some of his core arguments have been overlooked, ignored, or misrepresented, not least by the aid community. This paper provides a systematic assessment of the content and evolution of North’s writings, from his pioneering works on property rights and institutions in the 1970s, to his recent scholarship on beliefs and political violence. The focus is on identifying the key analytical problems and remaining challenges of the institutional approach to development. The paper also takes issue with the inconsistencies and policy gaps of the good governance consensus. In doing so, it also reflects upon the future of the research program on institutions and development. Would the renewed emphasis on politics, conflict, inequality, and context lead to an improved governance agenda or to a shift towards a post-institutionalist paradigm?

Possibilities for consumer government actions to support coffee producers

This is the final report of a study commissioned by the Belgian Secretary of State for Development Co-operation, with the purpose of outlining possible actions to be adopted by the European Union to ensure a better share of total coffee revenues to producers in developing countries. The way to improve the participation of coffee producers in the economic gains accrued in the world coffee market translates, ultimately, in their receiving a fair price for the commodity they supply. A fair price is not an abstract entity in itself, but - in the competitive world economy - is perhaps better defined as a market price that results from fair market conditions in the whole coffee producing chain. Because of this, as will be seen below, for improving the lot of coffee producers, this reports outlines proposals to take place in the consuming countries, particularly Europe. At first sight, it might seem a contradiction acting in one region to directly impact others, far away. The key to the logic of the argument lies in the definition in the previous paragraph. As we try to demonstrate, market conditions in the consuming-countries side of the coffee producing chain are not fair; the market failures and distortions ingenuously created there are responsible for the enormous asymmetry of gains in the two sides. Radical positive measures for the coffee farms must begin, ironically, in Brussels. The structure of this report is as follows. Section 2 introduces preliminary background considerations. A summary of the past and present experiences in the application of supply management schemes is the content of Section 3 . Section 4 is an introduction to the main issues in the analysis of the coffee market . Finally, section 5 presents the proposals for consumer government supporting actions, and suggestions for a series of detailed studies to support the actions.

South Africa’s BIG debate in comparative perspective

The idea of a Basic Income Grant (BIG) has for long been an appealing alternative to the means-tested social security nets associated with the welfare state as we know it. Proponents of BIG highlight as comparative advantages its unconditionality, its inclusiveness and its administrative simplicity. Moreover, as capital-intensive investment and demographic evolutions engender a decline in activity rates, social security nets that rely on labour as both a source of financing and a condition for entry seem more and more untenable. These latter systems have however for long been in place and have a firm historical embeddedness. Hence, the introduction of BIG requires a revolutionary momentum. South Africa has gone through a period of profound societal change over the last two decades. After decades of racial exclusion, post-apartheid opened the pursuit of a progressive social inclusionary politics. South Africa has been one of the few countries where social security expenditure has been steadily on the rise since the second half of the 1990s. The ANC-government has opted to strengthen several targeted grants (pensions, child grant, etc.), leaving the searing unemployed active population uncovered. This article contends that the introduction of a modest BIG, alongside the pre-existing grant system is a feasible and promising option as it would have a considerable beneficial effect on poverty without entailing large costs. This position is shared among an impressive coalition of civil society organisations and political parties. The article inquires why the ANC, in these conditions, shuns away from the introduction of BIG. We conclude that, how ripe South Africa may be for BIG, the ANC-ideology pushes government to strengthen the workfare-approach, including employment programmes, over a radical overhaul of the social security system.

Agrarian Reform in the Philippine Banana Chain

The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) of 1986 had been the most far reaching postwar institutional change in rural Philippines. To evaluate the dynamic impact of CARP in the banana sector, we have compared the development of smallholders in both the domestic market and export chains. For exports the reform introduced contract agriculture between cooperatives of small Cavendish banana growers and export firms. Small farmers of banana cultivars like Lakatan supply the crop individually to open domestic market channels. Incomes and living conditions of reform beneficiaries improved significantly compared to former plantation workers wages, but remained below the official family living wage rate. Per Kg. of bananas the income of non-reformed domestic market growers has been of the same magnitudes as for the export chain. However, the percentage of the latter has been much lower in terms of the final consumers' prices. The farmers of the domestic market have also more upgrading opportunities to organize cooperatives and reduce production and transaction costs. The export contract growers have already cooperatives and for upgrading will need the consent of powerful downstream agents in the chain. The reason for the limited impact of CARP is the power concentration by five multinationals and four influential Filipino families, which dominate the profitable wholesale supply and export stages of the banana chain.

A Perilous Path to Democracy. Political Transition and Authoritarian Consolidation in Rwanda

The most influential literature on political transitions, the “transition paradigm”, conceived a normative theoretical framework based on the fundamental assumption that any country, which shifts away from authoritarianism is a country in transition to democracy. The Rwandan transition does not fit the “transition paradigm” and Rwanda did not shift in an orderly manner from an authoritarian to a democratic regime. A second school of thought on political transition contends that political transition is not an orderly process and that democracy is not the sole outcome of transition. Scholars have coined new types of “hybrid” regimes that bear democratic and authoritarian regime features and indeed, the post-transition Rwandan regime bears both such features. This paper explores the Rwandan transition and post-transition from the perspective of regime change, that is, changing regime characteristics (ideological/procedural/behavioural attributes) between 1973 to the present day.

Poverty Lines as Context Deflators in the DRC. A methodology to account for contextual differences

In this paper we present a specific methodology to make spatial well-being and poverty assessments based on expenditure data to some extent sensitive to contextual aspects other than price differentials. The rationale behind this method coincides with the view expressed by the advocates of human development pointing to the irrelevance of (real) income levels for well-being measurement compared to an analysis of people?s ability to deploy this purchasing power in a very specific time and setting. Yet, in order to operationalize this principle, we opted to employ the ordinary technique of deflating nominal incomes, but in such a way that genuine comparability over different geographical entities comes within reach. Of course, the extent to which our methodology is able to achieve this goal, largely depend on the exact content and construction of the underlying deflators used. Given our research agenda to analyze the distribution of poverty and well-being in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), we decided to construct 56 regional poverty lines whose pair wise ratios in turn were used as a set of context deflators. The challenge of this exercise essentially boiled down to reconciling the two seemingly discordant –but highly appreciated– poverty line characteristics of „specificity? and „consistency?: i.e. how to give due attention to the myriad of local living conditions while still ensuring sufficient comparability. Although this theoretical discordance has been settled some time ago, methodological problems to align both features still remain cumbersome in practice. Therefore, the main contribution of this paper needs to be understood in addressing these methodological issues within the framework of a household and expenditure survey. As a natural starting point to deal with these issues, we screened the validity of the major criticisms raised against the Food Energy Intake (FEI) method. Indeed, this context-sensitive methodology for setting poverty lines is often condemned for generating inconsistent results, but –after closer scrutiny– not for every reason put forward in the literature. On the basis of these insights, we started to mould our own specific poverty line methodology in which we tried to accommodate the remaining pieces of critique. This resulted in a three-step FEI-like procedure where the anchoring device to ensure consistency between all 56 localities, was built upon the basic human functionings of being adequately nourished and sheltered. Finally, we applied this procedure to our data in order to discern the impact of our own methodology vis-à-vis other internally and externally computed approaches.

The Denial of Politics in PRSP’s Monitoring and Evaluation. Experiences From Rwanda

The new development paradigm strongly reconfirms and redefines the importance of M&E because of some newly incorporated principles. First, increased value is attached to results-orientation, iterative learning and evidence-based policy-making. Realisation of these principles is conditional upon a strong and well-functioning M&E system. A second major principle is an increased role and responsibility for the national government in elaborating and managing the entire M&E system. At the same time, donors are expected to increasingly rely and align to national M&E systems and arrangements. So far, however, a narrowly confined ‘technocratic’ approach to M&E has been adopted, largely neglecting its institutional and political embeddedness. While the fact that politics are part and parcel of M&E has been acknowledged before in the context of projects and programmes, it seems that when moving to the sectoral and national level (where interests and stakeholders are multiplied) the interaction among ‘politics’ and ‘M&E’ is disregarded. This paper elaborates a conceptual framework that furthers the understanding of the interlinkages among politics and M&E in a context of upwardly moving aid modalities. Bringing in case-study material from Rwanda, it argues that a narrow technocratic approach to M&E risks worsening political constraints and even undermines M&E’s technical soundness. Yet, there exist ways of escaping this downward spiral. ‘Smart’ M&E that acknowledges the institutional and political embeddedness of M&E has the leverage to stimulate public discussion, to bring more ‘sensitive’ issues into the bargaining area, to shift debates on a more factual basis and to eventually open up closed political opportunity structures.

Perceived Wealth as a Poverty Measure for Constructing a Poverty Profile. A Case Study Of Four Villages In Rural Tanzania

Poverty assessment and targetting usually relies on expensive, large scale survey data. We argue that, in some cases, exploiting information villagers have on their immediate neighbors in close-knit agricultural societies might provide an alternative. We use the results of a participatory wealth ranking gathered in four villages in Tanzania and explore correlations between perceived wealth and indicators related to household characteristics, human capital, housing and durables, and productive assets. Comparing our results to a similar analysis using houshold expenditure survey data, we find that participatory methods confirm the validity of most commonly used poverty indicators, but we also find some remarkable differences.