A Red Record: Lynching as a Competing Informal Institution

By Camille Steens

After the emancipation of slaves in 1865 in the United States’ South, white people that had previously had “unlimited power” over their slaves and could subject them to “any and all kinds of physical punishment” in order to force them into labor, saw their “white supremacy” threatened. Therefore, a system of “anarchy and outlawry” emerged as described by Ida B. Wells Barnett in her pamphlet A Red Record. Lynching became a practice that was often employed to punish black people suspected of a crime without granting them a judicial trial. Lynchings are open, public murders that are carried out by a mob.

Robert Gibson describes this practice as emerging from the Federal Government’s “laissez-faire” policy in regard to black people in the South. This coupled with the idea that lynching emerged as a way to “compensate” the loss of white supremacy seems to reflect a concept that Helmke and Levitsky (2004) described as a “competing informal institution”. This is an informal institution that “coexists with ineffective formal institutions”. Because formal rules and procedures are not systematically enforced, actors can ignore them. Because actors ignore the formal rule, the competing informal institution creates a divergent outcome from the one intended by the formal institution. In the case of lynching, the formal institution is that all American citizens have equal rights, yet this informal institution creates unequal rights for black citizens.

The case of lynching is an example of a case in which an informal institution emerges out of an ineffective formal institution and in which this informal institution competes with the formal institution.

Culture: an informal institution in disguise?

By Lauke Stoel

In their article, Helmke and Levitsky stipulate what should not be considered an informal institution (2004). Out of the four distinctions they mention; weak institutions, informal behavioural regularities, informal organisations, and culture, the latter is heavily contested.  In class we discussed how it is very intuitive that culture in fact is an informal institution, since so much of our behaviour seems to be dependent on the culture we grew up in. For example, people in the Netherlands typically give each other three kisses on the cheek when they greet each other, whereas 2 such kisses are common in France. This rule is nowhere written down, but still enforced through the public - since it is practical to have one universal way of greeting - and everybody abides by it; it seems to follow that culture can constitute an informal institution.

As logical as this may seem, I would like to make a case for Helmke and Levitsky’s argument, namely that culture plays a big role in shaping informal institutions, but cannot be equated with them.

They describe informal institutions as “shared expectations rather than shared values”(2004). This is in line with North’s conception that institutions shape human behaviour (1990), because expectations are more directly indicative of behaviour than values, since society places a filter between holding certain values and acting upon them.So, informal institutions are not the values that people hold, but the expectations we have of people’s behaviour, based on those values. Now, culture is defined as “the beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time” (Merriam-Webster), and seeing as ‘beliefs, customs and arts’ are shared values rather than expectations, it follows that culture as such cannot be an informal institution, but merely shapes informal institutions, that have a practical function within the context of that culture.

The Pseudo-family phenomenon in female prisons

By Margot Marston

In The Social Order of the Underworld, David Skarbek explains the rationality with which prison gangs emerged in male US prisons to provide governance and protection where established institutions failed. In the face of an exploding prison population, as more young, ethnically diverse, and violent men began to enter prisons the unwritten rules of the “convict code,” the prisoners had previously lived by, began to fail and extra-legal governance through gangs began to take its place. Female prison populations are generally far smaller and less violent than their male counterparts, yet does that necessarily mean in the absence of female prison gangs that there aren’t similar informal institution that maintain social order in female prisons?

Interestingly, a similar governance structure has emerged in female prisons, namely: pseudo-families. Pseudo-families are structures of social relationships formed among women in prison, which mirror family structures in broader society. Many of these familial groups co-exist and  provide comfort and protection amongst female inmates. Distribution of contraband among the  “family members” is common, as is protecting one another from intimidation and forced sharing of one’s resources. Leaders can be found within these pseudo-family structures and often take on the  more aggressive role of “husbands” and “fathers”, whereas more nurturing roles are taken on by “mother” figures.
    
These pseudo-families provide material and emotional support, a coping mechanism for women to navigate an unnatural and often temporary environment. The rationality hinges on the basic fact that all humans are social animals, to endure the feelings of humiliation, helplessness, and deprivation in prison these pseudo-families can provide some sense of normalcy and stability. Pseudo-families, like gangs, fulfil needs that the formal institution of the prison can’t provide them.

The Thurmond "Rule"

By Thomas Meijer

On 13 February, American supreme court justice Antonin Scalia passed away, opening up a seat of the bench of the supreme court.[1] Obama would obviously like to nominate a liberal democrat to fill up this vacancy, however this would presumably tip the current balance of four democrats and four republicans to the left, for at least the next two presidential terms.[2] The republicans have been quick to invoke the so-called ‘Thurmond Rule’ – which “is a Senate practice wherein no nominations are decided within the last few months of a presidential election year.”[3] Thus this would supposedly prohibit president Obama to appoint a new judge, and let that decision be made by the next president. While the Thurmond Rule is referred to as an unwritten rule – or informal institution -  I doubt whether it holds up as such.                              

The Thurmond Rule is not written down, thus making it ineligible as a formal institution. After closer inspection, one can argue that the Thurmond Rule is not eligible as an informal institution either. I take Helmke and Levitsky’s definition of an informal institution as “socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated, and enforced outside of officially sanctioned channels”.[4] The Thurmond Rule, however, is not necessarily enforced outside of officially sanctioned channels. In the 20th century there have been 6 cases where appointments were made in an election year.[5] If a party holds the majority in the senate, they will be able to vote against an appointment by the president, with at least 51 votes.[6] However, the Thurmond Rule never became an informal bipartisan agreement.[7] Thus only if one party holds the majority in the senate and is facing an appointment by the president of the opposite party, will they have incentives to invoke the Thurmond Rule and enforce it. Rather than being an informal institution, the Thurmond Rule seems to be a republican obstructionist tool that they can use whenever this comes to their aid.

[1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2016/02/antonin-scalia-1936-2016

[2] Ibid.

[3]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281672260_The_Logic_of_Collective_Inaction_Senatorial_Delay_in_Executive_Nominations

[4] http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=266163&fileId=S1537592704040472

[5] http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2016/02/antonin-scalia-1936-2016

[6] http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2016/02/economist-explains-16

[7] http://www.acslaw.org/sites/default/files/pdf/ACS%20Talking%20Points%20-%20The%20Thurmond%20Rule.pdf

Changing the Incentives: Female genital mutilation in Egypt

By Hannah van der Ham

Female genital mutilation (FGM) involves the “partial or total removal of the external female genitalia for non-medical reasons.” Since it creates physical and mental risk to millions of girls and women worldwide, the elimination of the practice is now specifically included in the United Nations’  17 Sustainable Development goals. However, eliminating FGM often proves to be a big challenge.

In Egypt, FGM was officially criminalized in 2008. However, the practice continues to affect more than 90% of the female population. In order to understand the persistence of FGM, it is useful to see it not just as part of the culture but also as an informal institution. As Helmke and Levitsky explain, informal institutions are a form of shared expectations, rather than shared values. Not living up to these expectations will lead to sanctions. In Egypt, girls who do not undergo FGM will often not be eligible for marriage, which could lead to economic insecurity in the future. Also, parents risk social exclusion. In addition to this, the enforcement of the formal law has not been very strong. Consequently, there is a very strong incentive for parents to comply with the informal institution and not a very strong incentive to comply with the formal law. Therefore, the outcomes are divergent and the informal institution is competing with the formal one.

It is important to differentiate between formal and informal institutions in this case, because they are likely to have different patterns of change. Whereas changing the formal institution required legal changes and strong enforcement, the change in informal institutions requires lowering the costs of non-compliance. Thus, societies need be created where parents are not at risk of social exclusion and daughters can be married to men even if they are not cut. This is a tipping model: if enough people do not comply the rules, no one will have to comply anymore. If enough resources are dedicated to this, the practice can be eliminated, as has already been demonstrated with the elimination of foot binding practices in China.

Strikes and democracy

By Joost Koot

In “Forging democracy from below: Insurgent transitions in South Africa and El Salvador” Elisabeth Wood argues that the way the South-African apartheid regime was convinced to negotiate about equality between black and white, was by hurting their economic interests. She also mentions that a way of hurting the economic interests of the elite was by striking.

In the western world strikes are also used to hurt the interest of the elite, but in a different way. By striking, the personnel tries to force their employer to give in to their wishes. (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/strike?q=strikes)

Nowadays the mere threat of strikes can be enough to start negotiations between unions and employers, or to bump the ongoing negotiations in the favour of unions. The reason for this is similar as in South Africa around the time of the abolishment of Apartheid: it hurts the economic interests of a certain party.

As opposed to that time however, long continuous resistance is generally not necessary to start the negotiations. Actions or resistance that are considered long in modern conflicts between unions and employers do not even come close to the length of the battle in South Africa.

Nevertheless, I would argue that the continued resistance Wood uses in her argument can apply to modern day relationships between unions and employers. A big difference however is that the threat of long lasting resistance has become enough to convince employers to negotiate.

An example of this can be an agreement reached between Fiat Chrysler and a union in America. After threatening strikes, the two parties managed to come to an agreement that resulted in the strikes being called off. (http://www.windsorstar.com/business/continue+bargaining+midnight+strike+threat+looms/11421272/story.html?__lsa=45f1-5c47) 

Categorizing Rightful Resistance as a Type of Institutional Change Agent

By Abdel-Jaouad Ouarraki

O’Brien and Li define Rightful Resistance as “a form of popular contention that operates near the boundary of authorized channels, employs the rhetoric and commitments of the powerful to curb the exercise of power, hinges on locating and exploiting divisions within the state, and relies on mobilizing support from the wider public.” I would like to explore whether this definition fits in to one of Thelen and Mahoney’s four types of change agents, and identify where the definition of rightful resistance might deviate from these four types. I will do this by comparing Thelen and Mahoney’s definitions of the Change Agents to the Chinese case of Rightful Resistance described by O’Brien and Li.

A quick look at table 1.3 that Thelen and Mahoney provide for an oversight of the different change agents, points to the subversives as the type of change agent that most likely fits the definition of rightful resistance. As “Rightful Resisters” resist the elite and have an interest in changing the law, but during this process stay within the formal institutional constraints in order to prevent straight out persecution. Rightful Resistance seems to fit the definition of subversives and the context of strong veto possibilities and a low level of discretion (see table 1.4) as this context resembles the Chinese case, in which the multiple layers of the Chinese Party bureaucracy provide for many veto points while the local county officials do not allow interpretations of the law that would limit their powers.

Hence, Thelen and Mahoney’s types of change agents in this case seem to have succeeded in capturing a type of institutional change agent in one of their categories as both the context and the broad definition of subversives fit the definition of rightful resistance.

Nigeria’s Democratization Caused for Concern

By Kelly Ursem

Nigeria is one of the many countries that democratized over the past decades. Nigeria’s process of democratization occurred in 1999 after 16 years of military rule. However, in most cases it is expected that democratization is the process that allows countries to transition to a more stable state, allow for development, inclusion and participation of citizens,  however, Nigeria’s democratization is a cause for concern.  

Nigeria’s transition to democracy was driven endogenously by its people by collectively electing president Olusegun Obasanjo in order to prevent another military take-over with violence, whereby they looked forward to stability, peace and prosperity. However, Nigeria faced a great backlash with several critical governing problems, including ethno-nationalism (the issue of ethic cleavages), human right violations and corruption (to name the most important dynamics) that disrupted Nigeria’s ability to develop as a state. Corruption, leadership challenges and ethnicity caused for insecurity among citizens and the nation to collectively fall down, hereby becoming one of the 20th poorest nations in the world. Thus, Nigeria’s democratization lead to disempowerment, whereby the lack of strong institutions played a major role, in addition to Nigeria not involving all its stakeholders in their decision making and development.

Whereby it could be questioned whether Nigeria should really adopt a Western-style consensual political arrangement, and instead should try to adopt a system that is more suitable to its country’s ethnic circumstances if it wants to be the “Giant of Africa” that it once hoped to be. However, if it wants to remain a strong democracy, the country needs strengthening and building of institutions of government, rather than a personalized state of authority that is faced with corruption, ethnicity, leadership failure and other national problems.

Who is Afraid of the Death Tax? Manipulating the Public to Change the Law

By Katharina Bauer

The estate tax law in the US is an institution that allows low discretion (tax codes are stated explicitly) and is subject to high veto power by both, president and congress. According to Mahoney and Thelen (2010) change to the tax law would most likely take place through “layering” (see Figure 1). However, the Republicans in the US aim to repeal the tax completely, which would mean “displacing” the law.

Figure 1 (Mahoney and Thelen 2010, 19 

So far, this has been impossible since amendments to the tax law are subject to both, veto power of congress and the president. Thus, Republican attempts to repeal the tax law have failed repeatedly (Schaffner and Atkinson 2010). Winning voter support to repeal the tax is of great importance as both, president and congress are subject to direct elections. But, since the estate tax only applies to 0.2% of the Americans, gaining public support to force repeal of the tax is difficult. .

According to Greatz and Shapiro (2005) , Republicans have employed “framing” techniques to change public perception of the estate tax by relabeling it the “death tax”. Schaffner and Atkinson (2010) find that significantly more people exposed to the death tax frame, believed it applied to most families in America, rather than just a few families. This rendered the tax law less acceptable to the public and individuals favored its repeal.

Thus, Republicans attempted to “change the spirit of the law” by framing it as an “unfair tax imposed on most Americans”. Acknowledging public manipulability, renders strength of elected veto power unstable. This could in turn decrease predictability of institutional change within Mahoney and Thelen’s (2010) framework (Figure 1).

The Informal Institution of Guanxixue in China

By Margot Marston

In their study of informal institutions, Helmke and Levitsky (2004) explain the emergence of blat in the USSR which is often compared to a similar practice in China: guanxi. Both highly flexible idioms are defined as the use of personal networks for getting things done. Guanxi and blat are similar in their re-distributive functions in a state centralised economy, co-dependency with the condition of the shortage and ambiguity between social and instrumental use of the networks (Ledeneva 2003).

Guanxi, like blat proliferated under a communist/state-centralised systems as an accommodating informal institution. It created incentives for behaviour to alter the substantive affects of formal rules, contradicting the spirit, but not the letter of the law (Helmke & Levitsky, 2004).  However the tradition of guanxi, unlike blat, has a longer history. Guanxi can be traced back to Confucianism and carries with it a moral force of reciprocity and codifies the relationship and strengthens trust, kinship and social harmony. The observance of social form, loyalty, and emotional feelings carry further ethical dimensions associated with guanxi that have laid down the foundation for its persistence in the new consumer economy and are tied to a deeper sense of Chinese culture. 

However, guanxi’s recent shift into corruption has halted the universality of its beneficiaries flourishing in the nexus of the public and private, maintaining an inner circle of political and business elite as its primary beneficiaries.  This marked shift of the informal institution under market conditions has had harmful effects, as the highest social class has quietly accumulated public wealth and has subverted an institution that was initially aimed at compensating for formal order and aided in the manufacturing mutual exchange and manoeuvring through difficult circumstance in the Maoist era and 1980s. Trust and social capital in China carries great weight in the functioning of the Chinese economy, yet have also created an exploitative dimension of corruptive behaviour that brings into question whether guanxi has become a competing rather than accommodating informal institution.

Helmke, Gretchen, and Steven Levitsky. "Informal institutions and comparative politics: A research agenda." Perspectives on politics 2.04 (2004): 725-740.

Ledeneva, A. (2008). Blat and Guanxi: Informal Practices in Russia and China. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 50(1).

Unstable Gradual Change

By Thomas Giacoletto

In their Explaining Institutional Change, James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen try to explain the way institutional change gradually takes place in the long run. They argue that change often occurs when “problems of rule interpretation and enforcement open up space for actors to implement existing rules in new ways.” This would, for example, happen with the emergence of new phenomena which are not described in the previous rules; what ‘threat to the nation’ meant when a country’s constitution was drafted probably is very different than what is now a threat. However, whether this reinterpretation is possible depends on the discretion actors have towards a particular rule. Furthermore, although change can gradually take place, only an actual change in the rule (and not in the interpretation) will have a stable effect.

An interesting example of rule interpretation that prevents change has recently been over the news with the death of the Supreme Court of the United States Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia was originalist in his interpretation of the constitution, which means that “when you consult the text, you give it the meaning it had when it was adopted, not some later modern meaning” (Scalia, 2012). Because of this interpretation, he did not believe that existing rules have to adapt to the “new reality” that Mahoney and Thelen describe as a driver for change.

On the other side, however, they explain that change in the enforcement of a rule can lead to change: a local police officer can choose not to enforce a law on a local level because it is not practical, or simply ridiculous. However, this type of change is extremely fragile as the officer can be fired (not to have the law respected), and the change implemented might not remain if another officer is appointed. An actual change in the law is the only way stability can be insured with the new institution. The way constitutional courts (and supreme courts as they also can rule laws as anti-constitutional) read and interpret the texts is therefore very important for institutional change.

Actors in the Civil Rights Movement as Endogenous Change Agents

By Thomas Meijer

In the period after the Second World War, the fight for equality for African Americans in the United States – known as the civil rights movement – really took flight. However, while slow steps were made by executive action and judicial rulings, no major progress was made by legislative initiatives. Desegregation reforms remained slow due to the fact that many key positions, especially numerous committee chairmen, were held by southerners. Moreover, a powerful coalition of southern Democrats and northern Republicans formed a block against any reforms. Thus initially the actors that defended the status quo had relatively strong veto possibilities, due to southern agenda setting power and the strong anti-segregation reform coalition. And these were only the direct institutional veto points, let alone the extrainstitutional veto points that general racism in the south presented. 

While agents of change within the parliament faced too strong veto possibilities to make any significant changes, it were change agents pushing for desegregation outside of this institution that brought on the pressure for change to happen. Protests and racial violence – accompanied by public opinion coming alongside the fight for desegregation - finally led to the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, followed by the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1967. Change agents in the civil rights movement could not take advantage of a disjuncture between the rules and enforcement, thus sought to eliminate the existing rules on segregation and add on new rules to give African Americans civil rights. Thus one could argue that actors within the civil rights movement were insurrectionaries that sought to displace segregation laws, in ways that did not follow the rules of the political system – i.e. (violent) protest. Conversely, actors in the civil rights movement also worked with actors within the government that could be identified as symbionts. They managed to bring about endogenous change by layering new rules on civil rights for African Americans by executive action, judicial rulings and, most importantly, new legislation.

Changing the legal drinking age in the Netherlands

By Nynke de Vette

Mahoney and Thelen argue that institutions have basic dynamic properties that permit change, one of these properties being the distribution of resources with unequal implications such that there are winners and losers to a particular rule. The other property is compliance, where the limitations of rule compliance create space for rule change without actually changing the rules.  

Prior to 2014, the legal drinking age in the Netherlands was 16 years. However, this was changed to 18 years on January 1st 2014. Effectively, the selling to and possession of alcohol by those under the age of 18 became illegal. The government’s decision was grounded on the idea that teenagers should be protected from the harmful effects of alcohol until they are officially regarded as adults. Another motivation was to reduce the incidence of alcohol-induced hospitalization, which had been increasing since 2007. (see figure)

The rule change had implications especially for those that were between the age of 16 and 18. Whereas 16-year-olds had been able to purchase alcohol in 2013, this was suddenly no longer possible; they now had to wait another 2 years. Thus, this group of people can be considered the losers of the new rule, whereas the winners were those that had just passed the age of 18. For this group of people the motivation to change the rules comes from the effect of the rules themselves.

It is then important to discuss the role of compliance. Compliance is complicated through the contested nature of rules, as well as the degree of openness in the interpretation and enforcement of rules. Enforcement is especially relevant in the case discussed above, because the intention of the policy change is not reflected in the figures. Instead, the incidence of alcohol-induced hospitalization has further increased since 2013. This is because the rule is unable to cover the complexities of all possible real-world situations. Those under the age of 18 have been able to obtain alcohol from friends and through the use of fake IDs.

http://nos.nl/artikel/2091440-fors-meer-jonge-comazuipers-die-nu-stiekem-drinken.html

The Failure of State-led Development in Equilateral Guinea

By Yoon Jin Lee

James Scott, in his book (1998), demonstrates the possible reasons why state-led development is unsustainable and unbeneficial. Two reasons that are most relevant to this blog post are: first, state-led development that exclusively pursues one purpose reduces the human capital of the state’s workforce; second, less diverse and less complex economy, usually resulting from state-led development, is more vulnerable to external shocks. We will now delve into a story of Equilateral Guinea that serves as a great example of the Scott’s argument.

Despite its dramatic economic growth after the discovery of huge oil revenues in 1995, Equilateral Guinea’s state-led development notably failed. The 2005 UNDP Human Development Index, for example, ranked the country 121st out of 177 countries.

Diminishment of the human capital by the Equilateral Guinean government accounts for the aforementioned failure. After the country became independent from Spain in1968, the newly elected president declared himself as “president for life” and suppressed his opponents and educated population. Consequently, one third of the population fled from the country, resulting in a lack of labor force and of educated people. Furthermore, after oil was found, the government started to exclusively invest in the oil sectors, which enticed laborers from agricultural sectors. This “resource-pull effect” diminished the already existing agricultural skills. Thus, the authoritarian government created “narrow, planned environments” in which there was no freedom for the people to take risks and learn how to face new challenges.

 A lack of diversity and complexity in the economy also accounts for the failure of state-led development. Aforementioned, after huge oil revenues were found, the government started to depend heavily on the oil sector. Consequently, the country’s oil exports drastically increased, with a further decline in exports of other sectors.

Figure 1: Timber and cocoa exports

 Figure 2: Equatorial Guinea: GDP by Selected Sector, 1994-2005

The result was economy that was highly vulnerable to volatile oil prices. For example, at the end of 2008, the oil price fell dramatically and largely harmed the country’s economic growth. This clearly is an unsuitable economy that is not beneficial for the country as a whole.

To sum up, the failure of the Equilateral Guinea’s state-led development exemplifies the Scott’s argument. Clearly, the state-led development highly likely results in the lack of human capital and the lack of diversity in the country’s economy, which in turn account for unsustainable and unbeneficial growth of the country.

To Smoke or Not to Smoke on the LUC Campus

By Camille Steens

Mahoney and Thelen address the challenges of explaining change in institutions. If the idea of persistence is virtually built into the definition of an institution, they challenge us to think, then how can it change? Well, the authors of Explaining Institutional Change provide us with an intriguing answer. They argue that institutions instead of being completely self-perpetuating are subject to varying interpretations and levels of enforcement.

According to Thelen and Mahoney power is the driving force for change. Institutions can create certain power-distributions, some rules or the way they are enforced or applied benefit some and disadvantage others. Let us turn to a practical example to illustrate this idea.

An example from our own University Campus is the no smoking in the building rule. The Student Handbook clearly states, “smoking in any indoor location including your room and common room is not allowed. From the start of my time in the building however, I have smelled cigarette smoke all across the residential areas, especially during social events in the common rooms. Clearly, this is an example of a rule that is not enforced and therefore does not have its intended effect. Instead, an informal rule came about that smoking was allowed in all the residential areas.

However, slowly more voices started protesting against this informal rule. People who have a problem with cigarette smoke felt severely limited in their freedom to go to social events in the common rooms. As more and more people complained about the non-enforcement of the no smoking policy, it became clear that the informal rule had to change. A struggle over the meaning, application and enforcement of this rule ensued. Smokers felt that they were severely limited in their freedom to smoke in their own room. Therefore smokers did not comply with the rule. This created a gap between the rule and its interpretation and enforcement.

Consequently, the institution had to be changed to make it effective again.

The official rule itself is stable, in order to change the rules of the building and in the student handbook, many parties have to officially agree. However, the enforcement can be changed.  At LUC, in order to create a rule that is closer to the desires of both the smokers and the non-smokers, enforcement now only happens in the common rooms, smoking in the private rooms of students is still, unofficially, allowed.

Therefore, at LUC institutional change took place in the ‘gap’ between the rule and its interpretation. All this happened because compliance with the institution changed over time.

High Modernism in the Twentieth Century Multicultural Policies

By Regis Hijnekamp

In Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott argues against the “high modernist episodes of the twentieth century.” [1] Scott argues that the bureaucratic practice of the twentieth century consisted of visionary intellectuals and planners who arrogantly thought that one bureaucrat or advisor was capable of “designing” or “planning” the best, utopic society. [2] The ideas behind them were no “cynical grabs for power and wealth” but a “genuine desire to improve the human condition.” [3] Bureaucrats claimed that historical laws and specific variables could standardize the subjects of development. However, in all the planned urban centers, collectivized farms, and large development plans from the World Bank, the reality ‘on the ground’ and the future changes in the societal and natural environment were ignored. [4] The consequences of “high modernism,” Scott argues, were collective, societal dramas. [5]

The twentieth century multicultural immigration policies of the Netherlands are an example of high modernist planning with detrimental outcomes. After WWII, labor migrants were ‘invited’ to the Netherlands to partake in low-educated labor. [6] The migrants were considered to be “guest workers:” temporal immigrants who would return to their country of origin. Policies were designed to facilitate the guest workers’ time in the Dutch society and to create a perfect multicultural society. [7] [8]

Governmental policies ‘applied’ pillarization to the guest workers. [9] Top-down state-interference demanded immigrants to construct a public identity and “pressed individuals to organize into groups on the basis of perceived cultural similarity.” [10] The Dutch government influenced the number of organizations, their nature, goals, and continuity. [11] Subsidies and exemptions from general rules encouraged immigrants to “retain tot their ‘original culture.” [12] Organizations received subsidies if their plans were based on stereotypical ideas. [13]

Consequently, the government’s aspiration to create the best multicultural society – in which every cultural expression can be exercised – stimulated the ‘Othering’ of migrants and reproduced stereotypes. [15] [16] When it appeared that the guest workers settled permanently in the Netherlands, the pillarization had led to reinforcement of essentialist ideas about migrants and their descendants and stereotypical mindsets. [17] The multicultural plan failed as it stimulated intolerance, racism, and a segregation of cultures. [18] As Scott argues, the ideas designed on a map are always “misrepresentative and indeed nonsustainable” in reality. [19]

Medellin on LDS?

By Emma Lucas

Kohli describes a developmental state, or a cohesive capitalist state, as “characterized by cohesive politics, that is, by centralized and purposive authority structures that often penetrate deep into the society.” In this blogpost I will try to apply the concept of a developmental state to Colombia. 

After thirty years of Washington consensus and drug related violence, Colombia and specifically Medellin tried to improve their situation. This happened under the leadership of their Mayor Luis Perez in the late nineties and between 2003-2007 under the leadership of Sergio Fajardo . Medellin started to look like a developmental state, however, this was not organized via the state, but via the city itself. One problem in South-America is that the state has very low-tax rates, which means the state is often “undercapacitated and inactive”, especially on the sub-national levels. However Medellin solved this by working closely together with Empresas Publicas de Medellín (EPM), which has to pay 30% of their profit into the city administration’s budget.(http://www.odi.org/publications)

This budget was spend on building a new civic culture, where rich and poor were motivated to care about the city and each other. Moreover, the city invested in publicly-funded business support centres to attract investment in the poorest neighborhoods and help set up new businesses.  Moreover, the city funded micro-loans with very low interest-rates. 

This is an interesting case, because it takes a different organizational level than the states that are the focus on Kohli’s argument. Since one could argue that when Medellin started to behave like a developmental state, Colombia itself would not have been able to do this on the state-level. This could be a small-scale example for other developing nations that do not have the “centralized and purposive authority structures” in their states. 

Microcredits as an Illustration of Scott’s Four Rules of Thumb

By Lotte Levelt

In the conclusion of James Scott’s“Seeing Like a State”, the author lists four rules of thumb with the aim of improving development planning. These four rules are the following: Firstly, take small steps; secondly, favour reversibility; thirdly, plan on surprises; fourthly and finally, plan on human inventiveness[1].

 Many development aid programmes are often criticised. Tom’s shoes is often put forward as an example; when free items, such as shoes, arrive at unpredictable times this hurts the local, receiving community in two ways; they do not know when and in what sizes the shoes will arrive, and local shoemakers lose their jobs.[2]  On the other hand, a development programme that is generally deemed successful is that of ‘microcredits’. Microcredits work because they largely adhere to Scott’s four rules of thumb.

Microcredits are part of ‘banking with the unbankables’. The world’s poor lack collateral, meaning they usually cannot receive loans, for instance for setting up businesses. Because they cannot bank, their skills and knowledge remains unutilised. The main idea of microcredits is to grant small loans for locals to break through their poverty cycle, independent of foreign aid. Microcredits embody Scott’s first rule, precisely because it is ‘micro’, the loans may for instance vary from $50 to $250[3], meaning that if a local’s business does not work out, there are no huge losses. This also ties in with the second rule, because the loans are so small, they are in a way reversible: small projects will be stimulated, rather than overambitious, large-scale ones that may be hard to change once implemented. The third rule and fourth rules are not illustrated explicitly but may become reality once locals are given the opportunity to develop their skills, and unpredictable, high quality projects emerge. 

Oman: A Beneficial Dictatorship

By Ingeborg de Koning

Petro-states exhibit many characteristics inherent to neopatrimonialism, a term developed by Kohli; as mentioned in Pierson, the discovery of oil resources allows personalistic leaders to establish rent-seeking opportunities and patrimonial structures. The Sultanate of Oman too, is a petro-state; yet it does not quite fit the neopatrimonial picture. While it is patrimonial in the sense that the Sultan, Sultan Al-Qaboos bin Said, secures the loyalty of the general population through the use of state resources, Oman’s public resources are not “[treated] as personal patrimony,” along Kohli’s description.  

Indeed, here Oman would fit more into the type of the cohesive-capitalist state, as a distinction is made between the realms of public and private resources. As Al-Yousef states, Oman’s approach centres on the idea “that there was no alternative to a substantial intervention by the state in order to achieve a satisfactory rate of resource mobilisation for economic development.” Throughout a series of Five Year Plans from 1976 onwards, under a repressive, authoritarian government headed by the Sultan, Oman employed an intense development policy to achieve rapid socio-economic development.

Yet, Oman too differs from a cohesive-capitalist state; while the governance is indeed a “centralized and purposive authority structure” and economic growth is the no. 1 priority, this is not achieved through the tight control of labour, but rather, through the effective employment of its public resources, the oil, to stimulate the economy and develop a strong market. The ‘rewards’ of this approach constitute the Sultan’s patrimony: for his position is justified through socio-economic and human development. Recognizing that both categories are ideal types, it remains interesting how Oman does not quite fit snugly into either. Perhaps a useful addition would thus be the category of “beneficial dictator,” as Al-Qaboos has often been called, to explain Oman’s state authority and – intervention dynamics.

Thresholds: Finance, Growth & Institutions

By Ferdinand Folland

Pierson's Politics in Time (2004) outlines several forms of long-term processes, one of which is “Threshold Effects”. Threshold effects are a category of long-term processes in which the causal time horizon is long, while the time horizon for their outcomes are “short” or rapidly unfold. Essentially it is a process in which there is a slow build-up, during which the effects are small or non-existent, until one passes a threshold at which the effects drastically change and/or rapidly unfold. One case which illustrates such mechanisms may be the influence of institutions on the relationship between financial development and economic growth.

This is based on a paper by Law, Azman-Saini and Ibrahim. In their paper they start by review some of the literature on the topic of financial development and its effects on economic growth. They highlight the fact that most research display substantively different results for high-income and low-income countries. The authors proceed to suggest institutions as the omitted variable. Through regression analysis and threshold estimation techniques they research the interaction effects between financial development and the subsequent effect on economic growth. In this research they show how financial development, or development of the financial sector, does not affect economic growth, in any noteworthy or statistically significant sense, unless the institutional quality is at a particular level. Their empirical results provide interesting insight into why financial development can have such different effects across countries, while also illustrating threshold effects in the case of institutions.