Primordialists and Constructionists: a typology of theories of religion

This article adopts categories from nationalism theory to classify theories of religion. Primordialist explanations are grounded in evolutionary psychology and emphasize the innate human demand for religion. Primordialists predict that religion does not decline in the modern era but will endure in perpetuity. Constructionist theories argue that religious demand is a human construct. Modernity initially energizes religion, but subsequently undermines it. Unpacking these ideal types is necessary in order to describe actual theorists of religion. Three distinctions within primordialism and constructionism are relevant. Namely those distinguishing: a) materialist from symbolist forms of constructionism; b) theories of origins from those pertaining to the reproduction of religion; and c) within reproduction, between theories of religious persistence and secularization. This typology helps to make sense of theories of religion by classifying them on the basis of their causal mechanisms, chronology and effects. In so doing, it opens up new sightlines for theory and research

Reinventing foreign aid for inclusive and sustainable development: a survey

This survey essay reviews over 200 papers in arguing that in order to achieve sustainable and inclusive development, foreign aid should not orient developing countries towards industrialisation in the perspective of Kuznets but in the view of Piketty. Abandoning the former’s view that inequality will fall with progress in industrialisation and placing more emphasis on inequality in foreign aid policy will lead to more sustainable development outcomes. Inter alia: mitigate short-term poverty; address concerns of burgeoning population growth; train recipient governments on inclusive development; fight corruption and mismanagement and; avoid the shortfalls of celebrated Kuznets’ conjectures. We discuss how the essay addresses post-2015 development challenges and provide foreign aid policy instruments with which discussed objectives can be achieved. In summary, the essay provides useful policy measures to avoid past pitfalls. ‘Output may be growing, and yet the mass of the people may be becoming poorer’ (Lewis, 1955). ‘Lewis led all developing countries to water, proverbially speaking, some African countries have so far chosen not to drink’ (Amavilah, 2014). Piketty (2014) has led all developing countries to the stream again and a challenging policy syndrome of our time is how foreign aid can help them to drink

The competitive selection of democratic firms in a world of self-sustaining institutions

Available from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:9349.2269(ESRC-CBR-WP--15) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

A Theory of Profit and Competition

Starting from the observation that surplus-value is almost always due to the collective undertaking of non-additively separable human capital investments, this paper proposes a theory of the institutional structure of production in the Coasean definition of firms and markets. Rather than being based on the extension of the logic of exchange to property rights, however, the paper attempts to combine institutional and evolutionary elements in light of the classic issues of value and distribution. The main result, in effect, is that monopoly profit is not the only meaningful notion of profit besides the value of individual contribution, and consequently that free entry and competition do not wipe it out. The reason is that in this context, the incumbent’s profit does not arise from some form of scarcity but from the collective nature of the production process. Therefore, the entrant has no incentives to undercut because he can earn the same profit by doing exactly the same thing. Naturally, this fairly favourable condition should not be taken for granted since, when non additive separability is combined with wealth effects, this kind of profit may give rise to structurally inefficient conflicts over the terms of both its production and distribution. In particular, this is shown to happen when the type of investments is such that the individual participation constraint ensuring that investments are made is satisfied at minimum cost when expressed in terms of the amount workers can earn from independent participation in the production process (rather than in terms of the value of the product). In this case, it turns out that profit will be appropriated by entrepreneurs (rather than shared), property rights will be concentrated (rather than distributed), and the subsequent development of the techno-economic paradigm of which the investments are meant to form a stylized representation is inhibited (rather than favoured)