查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 The Author(s)Labor is central to the debates on global land-based investment. Proponents purport that these investments are an avenue for rural transformation from resource- to wage-based livelihoods through the generation of employment and contribution to poverty reduction. Drawing on a recent, unique national dataset on land concessions in Lao PDR, this paper uses an agrarian political economy lens to investigate how land-based investments live up to this expectation. The paper analyzes potential determinants of the degree to which different social groups engage in wage-labor within land-based investments. Results show that while land-based investments create a significant absolute number of jobs, former land users were offered predominantly low-skilled and seasonal jobs. The effects of these investments on rural employment are uneven depending on degrees of land and resource dispossession, the extent of job creation, and the availability of alternative opportunities in the region. In the majority of cases, former land users, especially women were pushed into precarious conditions through three processes: dispossession without proletarianization; limited proletarianization; and adverse proletarianization. We argue that the promotion of land-based investments as an approach for rural development, particularly along the gradient of transforming resource- to wage-labor based livelihoods, is ineffective without concurrent opportunities within and beyond the agricultural sector to absorb the labor reallocated from traditional livelihoods. Enforcing labor regulations, including restrictions on hiring of foreign labor, compliance with minimum wages, and relevant skills transfer are essential to minimize precarization and increase benefits for local people. Further, protecting peasants’ individual and common land-use rights is imperative to minimize the concurrence of precarization and increasing traditional vulnerability.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 The Author(s)Virtually all major efforts to address global problems regarding land and resource use call for a multi-stakeholder process. At the same time, there is growing interest in, and commitment to, inclusion of previously marginalized groups – e.g., Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs), smallholders, and women in these groups – in decisions related to sustainable land and resource governance. Nevertheless, multi-stakeholder platforms and forums (MSFs) tend to be idealized as imagined spaces for collaboration among equals, despite ample prior research demonstrating that fostering equity in such “invited spaces” is no easy feat. This article draws on a comparative study of 11 subnational MSFs aimed at improving land and forest use practices in Brazil, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Peru. It analyzes data from interviews with more than 50 IPLC forum participants to understand their perspective on efforts to address equity in the MSFs in which they are participating, as well as their opinion of the potential of MSFs in comparison with other participants. The research sought to understand how MSFs can ensure voice and empowerment and address inequality, and thus be accountable to the needs and interests of IPLCs. The interviews show that IPLCs are overall optimistic, but the results also provide insights into accountability failures. The article argues that to bring about change – one that takes equality, empowerment and justice seriously – there needs to be greater strategic attention to how marginalized groups perceive their participation in multi-stakeholder processes. It builds on the lessons from the literature and the findings to propose specific ways that MSFs might foster the collective action or counter power that less powerful actors need to hold more powerful actors accountable.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier LtdCombining seven years of household data from an original field experiment in villages of Jharkand, East India, with meteorological data, this paper investigates how Indian Self-Help Groups (SHGs) enable households to withstand rainfall shocks. I show that SHGs operate remarkably well under large covariate shocks. While credit access dries up in control villages one year after a bad monsoon, reflecting strong credit rationing from informal lenders, credit flows are counter-cyclical in treated villages. Treated households experience substantially higher food security during the lean season following a drought and increase their seasonal migration to mitigate expected income shocks. Credit access plays an important role, together with other SHG aspects such as peer networks. These findings indicate that local self-help and financial associations can help poor farmers to cope with climatic shocks and to implement risk management strategies.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 The Author(s)This article discusses how the relationship between recipients and providers of development aid is deliberated in top-level international fora, where current and future aid practices are reflected and shaped. It is based on a close reading of official declarations, monitoring surveys and progress reports related to the aid effectiveness agenda. The purpose is to find out what happened to the focus of the ownership principle on the aid relationship, and to the ambition of shifting the power balance between those who receive and those who provide resources. This is done by analysing (1) how the aid relationship is indicated and approached, and (2) how ownership is depicted and assessed. While the discussion goes back to the 1960s and builds on a rich and varied body of research, the core of the article is an analysis of official documentation since 2003. Initially the entire material was read through, searching for ways that the aid relationship and ownership are addressed. This led to a twofold systematic examination; first of the terminology used for those who receive and those who provide resources, and for the phenomenon of aid; and, second, of how the meaning of ownership is elaborated and its progress presented in relation to other aspects of aid effectiveness. The analyses show that inherent inequalities of the aid relationship and political aspects of ownership are being downplayed, with the relationship being approached at a rhetorical level and ownership being assessed with a focus on implementation rather than agenda setting. These findings are discussed in relation to critical research of development practice. The article contributes to the literature through detailed analyses of how the aid relationship and ownership are deliberated in a large and influential body of official documentation. In the concluding reflections, implications of the findings are discussed, and a different focus suggested for future development thinking and practice.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2021 Elsevier LtdSystemic corruption in developing countries often seems intractable. Yet most countries that currently have relatively high public integrity were, at an earlier point in their history, afflicted with pervasive corruption. Studying the history of these countries may therefore make a valuable contribution to modern debates about anticorruption reform. This paper considers the experience of the United States, focusing principally on the period between 1865 and 1941. We find that the U.S. experience calls into question a number of commonly-held views about the struggle against corruption in modern developing countries. First, although some argue that entrenched cultures of corruption are virtually impossible to dislodge, the U.S. experience demonstrates that it is possible to make a transition from a systemically corrupt political system to a system in which public corruption is aberrational. Second, although some have argued that tackling systemic corruption requires a “big bang” approach, the U.S. transition away from systemic corruption would be better characterized as incremental, uneven, and slow. Third, although some have argued that fighting corruption requires shrinking the state, in the U.S. reductions in systemic corruption coincided with a substantial expansion of government size and power. Fourth, some commentators have argued that “direct” anticorruption measures that emphasize monitoring and punishment do not do much good in societies where corruption is pervasive. On this point, the lessons from U.S. history are more nuanced. Institutional reforms played a key role in the U.S. fight against corruption, but investigations and prosecutions of corrupt actors were also crucial, not only because of deterrence effects, but because these enforcement efforts signaled a broader shift in political norms. Progress against corruption in the United States involved a combination of “direct strategies,” such as aggressive law enforcement, and “indirect strategies,” such as civil service reform and other institutional changes.
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