Privatization and State Capacity in Postcommunist Society

Economists have used cross-national regression analysis to argue that postcommunist economic failure is the result of inadequate adherence liberal economic policies. Sociologists have relied on case study data to show that postcommunist economic failure is the outcome of too close adherence to liberal policy recommendations, which has led to an erosion of state effectiveness, and thus produced poor economic performance. The present paper advances a version of this statist theory based on a quantitative analysis of mass privatization programs in the postcommunist world. We argue that rapid large-scale privatization creates severe supply and demand shocks for enterprises, thereby inducing firm failure. The resulting erosion of tax revenues leads to a fiscal crisis for the state, and severely weakens its capacity and bureaucratic character. This, in turn, reacts back on the enterprise sector, as the state can no longer support the institutions necessary for the effective functioning of a modern economy, thus resulting in deindustrialization. Using cross-national regression techniques we find that the implementation of mass privatization programs negatively impacts measures of economic growth, state capacity and the security of property rights.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40192/3/wp806.pd

The psychology of threat in intergroup conflict: emotions, rationality, and opportunity in the Rwandan genocide

How do security threats mobilize social groups against each other? The strength of such threats lies in the power of group emotions, notably the primary emotion of fear. Fear works by activating psychological processes at the group level that polarize attitudes between different groups. An analysis of survey data, radio broadcasts, and interviews from Rwanda's civil war and genocide of 1990–94 reveals four psychosocial mechanisms at work in group polarization: boundary activation, outgroup derogation, outgroup homogenization, and ingroup cohesion. Additionally, scholarly debates on the role of emotions, material opportunities, and rationality in ethnic conflicts represent a false theoretical choice. Both emotions and material opportunities matter, and rationality and emotion are not incompatible. Two simple refinements to extant theoretical and empirical approaches are needed. First, scholars ought to distinguish between attitudes and violence in ethnic conflicts; emotions matter for the polarization of attitudes, but material and structural opportunities mediate their expression as violence. Second, scholars should pay greater attention to the extensive research in social psychology that shows that both emotion and reason interact in individual judgment and decisionmaking

Québec en direct : Symposium de FAO; interview avec Jean-Marc Fleury

Interviewés: Jean-Marc Fleury, Michel Chossudovsky et Gérard Ghers

QUANTITATIVE RESTRICTIONS ON THE FLOW OF NARCOTICS: SUPPLY AND DEMAND RESTRAINTS IN A NORTH-SOUTH MACRO-MODEL

This paper constructs a macroeconomic model of North-South interaction where the flow of narcotics from the South to the North is restricted. The economic effects are akin to quantitative restrictions in trade policy. Two alternative policy scenarios will be considered. One involves reducing the supply of drugs at the source, accompanied by aid. Supply-side restrictions have negative aggregate supply-side effects in the producing region, because of the monopoly rents generated from that type of control. This makes them a second-best policy, particularly if the accompanying aid is not used for poverty alleviation and fails to expand domestic aggregate demand. Alternatively, demand side restrictions will be found to be superior.North-South interaction, Trade policy, Narcotics control,