Political transition in Myanmar: prospects and problems

Since 2011, Myanmar has been undergoing a political transition that, in keeping with the Myanmar government's own claims, has been hailed by many previously critical countries as the start of a process of democratization. Myanmar has become a substantially more liberal country, and in particular its economy has been increasingly liberalized, away from the tight restrictions of the past. However, Myanmar's economic liberalization primarily benefits its entrenched and usually military-dominated or linked elites, while its political liberalization may be just enough to satisfy an appearance of democratization without the army giving up real power. This article looks at Myanmar's process of political liberalization set against some of the literature on political transitions, and highlights some factors that could militate against extensive reform, much less democratization. It concludes by noting that while Myanmar's military has started to step back from direct political control, it still retains ultimate state authority. © 2014 Policy Studies Organization.

Development NGOs, semiclientelism, and the state in the Philippines: from “crossover” to double-crossed

Civil-society participation continues to be a considerable focus of debate surrounding politics and public-policy making at international and national scales, especially in the developing world. Important examples of such processes have occurred in the Philippines. The Philippine polity is widely regarded as embodying a culture of clan-based politics entailing considerable relationships of clientelism and semiclientelism. Yet there is also considerable evidence of widespread civil-society activism. This paper examines how politically left-of-center development nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and people’s organizations (POs) have attempted to “cross over” to state positions in order to implement social and economic reforms. Select engagement by key personnel from the NGO sphere has often been premised on the notion that it was aimed at transforming these features of Philippine politics. Engagement with two recent and (claimed to be) reforming governments has not led to positive outcomes. The Philippine experience, for the most part, is an expression of the problematic assumptions that have tended to inform the debate over civil society and state interaction in many developing-country contexts. Such conceptions have been inserted into an all-encompassing notion of democratic transition, whereby political and economic liberalization are supposed to emerge in synergy, with civil society acting as a form of “stabilizer” compensating for and complementing the role of the state. Given the predominance of such weak states as the Philippines in the developing world, it is important to consider what the impacts of development NGOs participation may be. Most important, what may be the impacts of such forms of participation in a society and polity characterized by entrenched clientelist relationships? Contrasting a Gramscian analysis with Putnam-inspired conceptions of civil society that underpin the transition model, the paper argues that far from being a conditioning force on the state, civil society is itself a sphere where clientelism and semiclientelism predominate. So powerful are these forces, that arguably well-intentioned NGO personnel who previously adopted a critical stance toward neo-clientelism ultimately become absorbed by these relationships.

Output and labor productivity in organized manufacturing: a panel cointegration analysis for India

One of the policy puzzles faced in India during the last two and half decades has been the weak association between output and labor markets, particularly in the manufacturing sector. In this research, we investigate the long-run relationship between output, labor productivity and real wages in the case of organized manufacturing. We adjust the measure of labor productivity incorporating bottlenecks, such as lack of infrastructure, access to external finance, and labor regulations, which all may influence labor market outcomes. Using panel data from seventeen manufacturing industries, we establish long-run dynamics for the output-labor productivity-real wages series over a period of nearly three decades. We employ recently developed panel unit root and cointegration tests for cross-sectional dependence to incorporate heterogeneity across industries. Long-run elasticities are generally found to be low for labor productivity compared to real wages due to the changes in manufacturing output. There are variations across industries within the manufacturing sector for the effects of the labor market on manufacturing output. In some industries, lower wages are associated with higher output, and the reason for the positive relationship in other industries could be due to workers' bargaining power.

Endogenous liberalization and within-country inequality

We model and empirically test the link between income inequality and trade liberalization. We consider a society in which a median voter (MV) will make the decision as to whether the country should switch from its current regime of import substitution (IS) (which protects agriculture) to export promotion (EP). Liberalization entails starting importing the agricultural good and specializing in and exporting the manufacturing good. This will require transferring labor to manufacturing. We find that if MV is a worker, the IS-EP switch will take place regardless. If MV is a farmer, the switch will take place given (1) the relative productivity of an ex-farmer and worker in manufacturing,ß is high, and (2) the society’s tastes for agricultural goods, α, are not as strong as those for manufacturing goods. We also find that, following a switch, the income distribution too will improve if α is low and ß is high. In our empirical analysis, we find the endogenous inflection points of α and ß in our sample, at which the direction of change in income distribution alters its sign. Our results also show in a very robust fashion that, EP regimes - on average and with the presence of certain control variables - have better income distributions than IS regimes. This implies that mostly “right” countries have made the switch.

Trade liberalisation and economic growth in Fiji : an empirical assessment using the ARDL approach

This study investigates the effect of trade liberalization on economic performance in Fiji using a Cobb-Douglas production function, which is expanded to take into account political instability and trade liberalization. The long run results conform to theoretical expectations, except for the contribution of labour force, which is negatively related to real Gross Domestic Product. We attribute this to the rapid and consistent emigration of skilled labour following the 1987 coups. While human capital was found to be the most influential variable, exports and investment were found to be weakly related to Gross Domestic Product. The key finding is that the dummy variable for signing the IMF agreement in 1984 had a statistically significant positive effect on real Gross Domestic Product in the long run, but the short run effects of signing the agreement as well as the short run and long run effects of implementing the agreement in 1986 were statistically insignificant.

The impact of trade liberalization on import demand

In this paper, we empirically analyze the effects of trade reforms on import demand and derive their implications on economic development in Turkey, a country that underwent sudden and substantial trade liberalization in the mid-1980s. The tool for this analysis is the estimation of disaggregated import demand elasticities. The adoption of a more liberal trade regime as well as radical attempts to foster economic development makes the Turkish experience particularly interesting for analysis. Almost all of our elasticities are estimated to be significant, unlike those of most previous studies in the literature on other countries. We test for different elasticities over “closed” and “open” economy periods, and find that the effects of the trade reforms of the 1980s were significant for a number of industries that form the backbone of the Turkish economy. We also compare our results with elasticity estimates from past studies for developed countries.