Examining the effect of IMF conditionality on natural resource policy

Can International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending improve natural resource governance in borrowing countries? While most IMF agreements mandate policy reforms in exchange for financial support, compliance with these reforms is mixed at best. The natural resource sector should be no exception. After all, resource windfalls enable short-term increases in discretionary spending, and office-seeking politicians are often unwilling to forgo this discretion by reforming the oil, gas, or mining sector. I investigate how and when borrowers go against their political interests and establish natural resource funds -a tool often promoted by the IMF- in the wake of a loan agreement. Using text analysis, statistical models, and qualitative evidence from natural resource policy and IMF conditionality for 74 countries between 1980 and 2019, I show that borrowers under an IMF agreement are more likely to create or regulate a resource fund, particularly if the agreement includes binding conditions that highlight the salience of natural resource reforms. This study contributes to extant research by proposing a new method to extract information from IMF conditions, by introducing a novel dataset on country-level natural resource policy, and by identifying under what circumstances international reform efforts can help combat the resource curse

Between Truth and Amnesia: State Terrorism, Human Rights Violations and Transitional Justice in Brazil

Abstract:The military rule in Brazil between 1964 and 1985 employed less violence than similar authoritarian regimes in neighbouring countries, and attempted to maintain a façade of legitimacy by allowing for a consented opposition. Nevertheless, Brazil was the last Latin American nation to establish a truth commission. Ever since the Amnesty Law was passed in 1979, authorities and citizens have both struggled to come to terms with the human rights violations committed in the past. The Brazilian government went as far as offering material reparations to the presumed victims without disclosing official information to establish what the reparations were being paid for. Is it better to remember or forget? This Exploration discusses transitional justice strategies, and documents recent developments in Brazil's political history.Resumen: Entre la verdad y la amnesia. Terrorismo de Estado, violaciones de derechos humanos y justicia transicional en BrasilEntre 1964 y 1985, el régimen militar en Brasil empleó menos violencia que regímenes autoritarios de países vecinos, e intentó mantener una fachada de legitimidad. Sin embargo, Brasil fue el último país latinoamericano en establecer una comisión de la verdad. Desde la aprobación de la Ley de Amnistía en 1979, tanto las autoridades como los ciudadanos luchan para hacer justicia a las violaciones de derechos humanos cometidas en el pasado. El gobierno brasileño llegó al extremo de ofrecer reparaciones materiales a las presuntas víctimas, sin revelar informaciones oficiales para establecer por qué las estaba pagando. ¿Es mejor recordar u olvidar? Esta Exploración analiza las estrategias de justicia transicional y documenta evoluciones recientes en la política histórica brasileña

Between Truth and Amnesia: State Terrorism, Human Rights Violations and Transitional Justice in Brazil

Abstract:The military rule in Brazil between 1964 and 1985 employed less violence than similar authoritarian regimes in neighbouring countries, and attempted to maintain a façade of legitimacy by allowing for a consented opposition. Nevertheless, Brazil was the last Latin American nation to establish a truth commission. Ever since the Amnesty Law was passed in 1979, authorities and citizens have both struggled to come to terms with the human rights violations committed in the past. The Brazilian government went as far as offering material reparations to the presumed victims without disclosing official information to establish what the reparations were being paid for. Is it better to remember or forget? This Exploration discusses transitional justice strategies, and documents recent developments in Brazil's political history.Resumen: Entre la verdad y la amnesia. Terrorismo de Estado, violaciones de derechos humanos y justicia transicional en BrasilEntre 1964 y 1985, el régimen militar en Brasil empleó menos violencia que regímenes autoritarios de países vecinos, e intentó mantener una fachada de legitimidad. Sin embargo, Brasil fue el último país latinoamericano en establecer una comisión de la verdad. Desde la aprobación de la Ley de Amnistía en 1979, tanto las autoridades como los ciudadanos luchan para hacer justicia a las violaciones de derechos humanos cometidas en el pasado. El gobierno brasileño llegó al extremo de ofrecer reparaciones materiales a las presuntas víctimas, sin revelar informaciones oficiales para establecer por qué las estaba pagando. ¿Es mejor recordar u olvidar? Esta Exploración analiza las estrategias de justicia transicional y documenta evoluciones recientes en la política histórica brasileña

New data, new results? How data sources and vintages affect the replicability of research

Macroeconomic variables like unemployment, inflation, trade, or GDP are not set in stone: they are preliminary estimates that are constantly revised by statistical agencies. These data revisions, or data vintages , often provide conflicting information about the size of a country’s economy or its level of development, reducing our confidence in established findings. Would researchers come to different conclusions if they used different vintages? To answer this question, I survey all articles published in a top political science journal between 2005 and 2020. I replicate three prominent articles and find that the use of different vintages can lead to different statistical results, calling into question the robustness of otherwise rigorous empirical research. These findings have two practical implications. First, researchers should always be transparent about their data sources and vintages. Second, researchers should be more modest about the precision and accuracy of their point estimates, since these estimates can mask large measurement errors

The source of self-restraint? How domestic politics and international markets shape natural resource policy in the developing world

Suppose a country discovers oil or copper in its subsoil and decides to sell these resources in international markets. What should it do with the unexpected profits? It can use a portion of this money to invest in human capital and public goods. It can pay external debt obligations or set money aside in a rainy day fund. It can redistribute resource revenues at the subnational level to reduce regional disparities. But if history serves as a guide, most political leaders in resource-rich countries will use their newfound wealth for electoral or personal gain. For example, they will cut taxes, increase personnel spending, and distribute excludable goods like food or medicine, even if these isolated allocation decisions worsen public service provision in the long run. Under what conditions do political leaders create formal institutions that promote sustainable development through natural resource revenue, instead of spending this revenue immediately to maximize political support? This is the question my project seeks to answer. I argue that the choice to institutionalize the distribution of extractive revenues is influenced by two factors: political competition and sovereign borrowing. First, I posit that political leaders are more likely to restrict their own discretion over the extractive sector at moderate levels of political competition. When political uncertainty is low and rulers are safe in their seats, they can adopt long-run developmental strategies, rather than use public funds for short-term political survival. Under these circumstances, the marginal benefit of using resource revenue to win additional votes is negligible. Still, rulers must face some political competition: there must be a credible opposition citizens can turn to if the incumbent produces bad policy. This middling range of competition, coupled with high public approval, provides space to implement long term-policy while generating enough short-term incentives to do so. Second, I investigate how IMF lending influences natural resource governance; after all, many resource-rich nations in the developing world still need loans to mitigate their capital scarcity. While most IMF agreements mandate policy reforms in exchange for financial support, compliance with these reforms is often mixed at best. Given these expectations, I investigate how and when borrowing governments go against their political interests and comply with IMF conditions requiring natural resource policy reform. I argue that borrowers are more likely to promote these reforms when they are under an IMF agreement, particularly if the agreement includes conditions that highlight the salience of fiscal reforms. However, the effectiveness of these conditions is highly dependent on context: reforms are more likely when the IMF can credibly threaten to suspend loan payments. Third, I examine the role of global capital markets in shaping a country's natural resource policy, arguing that competition for private capital flows reduces policymakers' autonomy to allocate natural resource revenue. In contexts of low creditworthiness and high risk of sovereign default, natural resource policy can provide additional information that allows creditors to distinguish between ``good borrowers'' and ``bad borrowers,'' thus shaping how much access to credit a country will have in times of need. As a result, policymakers seeking to attract foreign capital commit to greater fiscal discipline by restricting their own discretion over the allocation of natural resources -- even if this mitigates their ability to manipulate resource rents for political gain and is not associated with an immediate reduction in risk premiums. I test these three main arguments using novel data on natural resource policy for 87 countries between 1854 and 2019. My statistical models leverage variation in the content of these policies across countries and over time. I also employ qualitative evidence obtained from case studies and IMF staff reports to illustrate the proposed mechanisms. Results support the existence of a the curvilinear relationship between political competition and policy passage. They also largely corroborate the positive relationship between policy passage and sovereign borrowing. These findings have important implications for the management of natural resource revenue. I identify the circumstances under which capital-scarce leaders are willing to overcome their political self-interest, instead adopting policies that -- at least on paper -- are more efficient in the long run.Governmen

Brazilian Flora 2020: Leveraging the power of a collaborative scientific network

International audienceThe shortage of reliable primary taxonomic data limits the description of biological taxa and the understanding of biodiversity patterns and processes, complicating biogeographical, ecological, and evolutionary studies. This deficit creates a significant taxonomic impediment to biodiversity research and conservation planning. The taxonomic impediment and the biodiversity crisis are widely recognized, highlighting the urgent need for reliable taxonomic data. Over the past decade, numerous countries worldwide have devoted considerable effort to Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC), which called for the preparation of a working list of all known plant species by 2010 and an online world Flora by 2020. Brazil is a megadiverse country, home to more of the world's known plant species than any other country. Despite that, Flora Brasiliensis, concluded in 1906, was the last comprehensive treatment of the Brazilian flora. The lack of accurate estimates of the number of species of algae, fungi, and plants occurring in Brazil contributes to the prevailing taxonomic impediment and delays progress towards the GSPC targets. Over the past 12 years, a legion of taxonomists motivated to meet Target 1 of the GSPC, worked together to gather and integrate knowledge on the algal, plant, and fungal diversity of Brazil. Overall, a team of about 980 taxonomists joined efforts in a highly collaborative project that used cybertaxonomy to prepare an updated Flora of Brazil, showing the power of scientific collaboration to reach ambitious goals. This paper presents an overview of the Brazilian Flora 2020 and provides taxonomic and spatial updates on the algae, fungi, and plants found in one of the world's most biodiverse countries. We further identify collection gaps and summarize future goals that extend beyond 2020. Our results show that Brazil is home to 46,975 native species of algae, fungi, and plants, of which 19,669 are endemic to the country. The data compiled to date suggests that the Atlantic Rainforest might be the most diverse Brazilian domain for all plant groups except gymnosperms, which are most diverse in the Amazon. However, scientific knowledge of Brazilian diversity is still unequally distributed, with the Atlantic Rainforest and the Cerrado being the most intensively sampled and studied biomes in the country. In times of “scientific reductionism”, with botanical and mycological sciences suffering pervasive depreciation in recent decades, the first online Flora of Brazil 2020 significantly enhanced the quality and quantity of taxonomic data available for algae, fungi, and plants from Brazil. This project also made all the information freely available online, providing a firm foundation for future research and for the management, conservation, and sustainable use of the Brazilian funga and flora