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Publications (20)
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This paper defines a role for human rights and human rights workers in the discussion of humanitarian emergencies. The approach is to look at how human rights law, monitoring, and information can be useful in two ways: (1) to warn of an impending humanitarian emergency, and (2) as part of efforts to...
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– Political Activism, Community Identity and Group Behaviour
This paper explores the nature of collective action and group behaviour through a case study of a highly successful political organization of poorer sex workers in Calcutta. The paper asks: What stimulated the participation of sex workers in their organization, promoted individual commitment to the...
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The paper deals with evaluating the adequacy of the assumption that in economic transactions people are self-interested insofar as they are motivated solely by the concern of maximizing their own utility, and in particular with assessing how this assumption affects within-group behaviour. Policy and...
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– Collective Action and the Market in Colombian Development
This paper considers the role and modus operandi of the National Coffee Federation of Colombia. Much respected and much criticized over time, today its role is being challenged as inappropriate to the new commitment to a free market economy. The paper evaluates the historical role of the federation...
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This paper focuses on the networks of business-related contacts that are built and maintained by manufacturing entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa. It describes the various functions that such networks perform, explaining why each function is important that given the environment in which the...
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– A Gender Analysis and Conceptual Framework
This paper examines group functioning in the management of common pool resources, such as forests. In recent years community forestry groups have mushroomed in South Asia. But how participative, equitable and efficient are they? Many have done well in the short run in terms of regenerating...
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– Leaders and Intermediaries in Producers’ Associations
The development literature considers associations an important economic development tool that allows producers to pursue their economic welfare collectively and through participatory means. This paper comparatively analyses the experience of three associations of agricultural producers in the...
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A very large amount of activity occurs within groups (that is within families, firms, co-operatives, conununities or governments). Yet most economic analysis focuses on market transactions between these agents. The purpose of the study is to analyse within group behaviour. Evidence suggests some...
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– An Econometric Investigation into the Sources of Humanitarian Emergencies
This paper uses econometric methods and case-study evidence to examine the political economy of complex humanitarian emergencies, multidimensional crises characterized by warfare, state violence, disease, hunger, and displacement. We emphasize that economic variables often become salient through...
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This paper explains correlations between humanitarian emergencies and political economies of 'failing states' in Liberia and Sierra Leone. In both, Cold War era rulers acquired personal power through their influence over economic exchange, irrespective of conventional public/private distinctions...
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– The Political Economy of Emergency in Haiti
Towards the Abyss? The Political Economy of Emergency in Haiti analyzes the various factors that have contributed to create a protracted humanitarian emergency situation in Haiti. The first section deals with the economic causes, the interplay between population growth, erosion and falling rural...
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– The Political Economy of Humanitarian Emergencies
This paper uses econometric methods and case-study evidence to examine the political economy of complex humanitarian emergencies, multidimensional crises characterized by warfare, disease, hunger, and displacement. We find that stagnation and decline in real GDP, high income inequality, inflation...
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This diagnostic study explores the political conditions that are associated with humanitarian emergencies. It employs a risk rather than cause-effect methodology. Humanitarian emergencies are not random events. They occur most frequently in states having the following characteristics: i) more than...
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– Lessons from El Salvador
This paper develops and tests five hypotheses regarding the economic causes of complex humanitarian emergencies (CHEs). We argue that: (1) such emergencies, involving large-scale deaths and population displacements, are most likely to occur when growth is slow, negative, or falls far short of...
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– A Case of a Humanitarian Emergency
The recent history of Zaire presents a unique opportunity to understand and explain humanitarian emergencies. This monograph follows an inductive approach in analysing the trajectory of state-building in Zaire as a significant explanatory variable of humanitarian emergencies. By tracing the sources...
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– Insights from the Interface of State, Democracy and Civil Society
This paper provides a beginning toward explaining why humanitarian emergencies have been so substantial in the post-cold war era, a period expected to be less violent. The humanitarian emergencies of the contemporary period tend to be state-centred, focus on identity claims, and occur in developing...
Displaying 16 of 20 results