WILL POLITICAL REFORM BRING ABOUT IMPROVED ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT IN SUB?SAHARAN AFRICA?

Summary Unmistakable signs of movement towards political liberalization and more accountable government in sub?Saharan Africa have given rise to expectations that these reforms will result in better economic performance. This article considers the plausibility of such expectations from the point of view of weaknesses in the policy making process and prospects for improvements with political reform in the 1990s. It concludes that while there may be scope for optimism, improved economic management is not a guaranteed outcome of the reform process and it would therefore be unwise to encourage excessive expectations at this stage. Résumé En Afrique sous?saharienne, certains signes manifestes d'un mouvement vers la libéralisation politique et vers des modes de gouvernement plus responsables de leurs actions ont servi à susciter l'espoir que ces réformes mèneront à une performance économique meilleure. Le présent article s'interroge sur la plausibilité de ces espérances eu égard aux faiblesses dans le processus de détermination des politiques; et aussi, sur les possibilités qu'une amélioration pourrait découler des réformes politiques instaurées durant les années 1990. La conclusion des auteurs est que si, de certains points de vue, il y aurait lieu d'être optimiste, le processus de réforme est loin de garantir l'amélioration de la gestion économique et que sous ce jour, il serait imprudent à ce stade d'encourager des espérances excessives. Resumen La inconfundibles señales de movimiento hacia una liberalización política y gobiernos más responsables en el Africa sub?Sahariana han despertado expectativas de que estas reformas resulten en un mejor desempeño económico. Este artículo considera la plausibilidad de esas esperanzas desde el punto de vista de la fragilidad en el proceso de elaboración de pautas, y las perspectivas para las mejoras con las reformas políticas de la década del 90. Llega a la conclusión de que si bien hay lugar para el optimismo, un mejor manejo económico no es necesariamente el resultado garantizado del proceso de reforma, y por esa razón, sería muy aventurado fomentar grandes expectativas por el momento

Inequality, Fiscal Capacity and the Political Regime: Lessons from the Post-Communist Transition

Using panel data for twenty-seven post-communist economies between 1987-2003, we examine the nexus of relationships between inequality, fiscal capacity (defined as the ability to raise taxes efficiently) and the political regime. Investigating the impact of political reform we find that full political freedom is associated with lower levels of income inequality. Under more oligarchic (authoritarian) regimes, the level of inequality is conditioned by the state’s fiscal capacity. Specifically, oligarchic regimes with more developed fiscal systems are able to defend the prevailing vested interests at a lower cost in terms of social injustice. This empirical finding is consistent with the model developed by Acemoglu (2006). We also find that transition countries undertaking early macroeconomic stabilisation now enjoy lower levels of inequality; we confirm that education fosters equality and the suggestion of Commander et al (1999) that larger countries are prone to higher levels of inequality.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/57211/1/wp831 .pd

Why do authoritarian regimes provide public goods? Policy communities, external shocks and ideas in China’s rural social policy making

Recent research on authoritarian regimes argues that they provide public goods in order to prevent rebellion. This essay shows that the ‘threat of rebellion’ alone cannot explain Chinese party-state policies to extend public goods to rural residents in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Drawing on theories of policy making, it argues that China’s one-party regime extended public goods to the rural population under the influence of ideas and policy options generated by policy communities of officials, researchers, international organisations and other actors. The party-state centre adopted and implemented these ideas and policy options when they provided solutions to external shocks and supported economic development goals. Explanations of policies and their outcomes in authoritarian political systems need to include not only ‘dictators’ but also other actors, and the ideas they generate

Among paradigms: Major ways of framing user-related problems in contemporary architectural discourse

While a review of contemporary architectural theory indicates that user-related concerns have not been absent, this discussion remains rather fragmented and incidental. Seeking reasons behind this situation, this paper discusses the major paradigms underpinning contemporary architectural discourse and explicates how different paradigms ground different approaches to users. It reveals certain limitations of the dominating conceptual positions (positivism/post­positivism, critical theory, constructivism), and argues in turn for the relevance of phenomen­ology in supporting a more user- and context-sensitive architectural practice.While a review of contemporary architectural theory indicates that user-related concerns have not been absent, this discussion remains rather fragmented and incidental. Seeking reasons behind this situation, this paper discusses the major paradigms underpinning contemporary architectural discourse and explicates how different paradigms ground different approaches to users. It reveals certain limitations of the dominating conceptual positions (positivism/post­positivism, critical theory, constructivism), and argues in turn for the relevance of phenomen­ology in supporting a more user- and context-sensitive architectural practice

Emulation of SystemC Applications for Portable FPGA Binaries

As FPGAs become more common in mainstream general-purpose computing platforms, capturing and distributing high-performance implementations of applications on FPGAs will become increasingly important. Even in the presence of C-based synthesis tools for FPGAs, designers continue to implement applications as circuits, due in large part to allow for capture of clever spatial, circuit-level implementation features leading to superior performance and efficiency. We demonstrate the feasibility of a spatial form of FPGA application capture that offers portability advantages for FPGA applications unseen with current FPGA binary formats. We demonstrate the portability of such a distribution by developing a fast on-chip emulation framework that performs transparent optimizations, allowing spatially-captured FPGA applications to immediately run on FPGA platforms without costly and hard-to-use synthesis/mapping tool flows, and sometimes faster than PC-based execution. We develop several dynamic and transparent optimization techniques, including just-in-time compilation, bytecode acceleration, and just-in-time synthesis that take advantage of a platform's available resources, resulting in orders of magnitude performance improvement over normal emulation techniques and PC-based execution

Just-in-Time Compilation for FPGA Processor Cores

Abstract Portability benefits have encouraged the trend of distributing applications using processor-independent instructions, a.k.a. bytecode, and executing that bytecode on an emulator running on a target processor. Transparent just-in-time (JIT) compilation of bytecode to native instructions is often used to increase application execution speed without sacrificing portability. Recent work has proposed distributing FPGA circuit applications in a SystemC bytecode to be emulated on a processor with portions possibly dynamically migrated to custom bytecode accelerator circuits or to native circuits on the FPGA. We introduce a novel JIT compiler for bytecode executing on a soft-core FPGA processor. During an iterative process of JIT compiler and emulator architecture codesign, we added JIT-aware resources on a soft-core processor's surrounding FPGA fabric, including a JIT memory, a signal queue, and an emulation memory controller-all unique to JIT compilation for FPGA processors versus traditional processors. Experiments show that regular JIT compilation achieved 3.0x average speedup over emulation, while our JIT-aware FPGA resources yielded an additional 5.2x average speedup, for a total of 15.7x average speedup, at a cost of 21% of a MicroBlaze processor core's slice usage