Over‐indebtedness and microcredit in Cambodia: Moving beyond borrower‐centric frames

Over the past two decades, Cambodia has experienced an unprecedented credit boom, a growth in lending so rapid that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) referred to it as “one of the fastest financial deepening episodes by historical cross‐cultural standards” (IMF, 2016, p. 4). This deepening has been driven by the expansion of microcredit. In tandem, over‐indebtedness has increased among microcredit borrowers, and debt has become a significant political and economic concern. This article explores how over‐indebtedness is understood and explained by stakeholders across microcredit value chains. To do so, we draw on interviews with microfinance institution (MFI) executives, investors, branch managers, partners, financial literacy trainers, loan officers and borrowers in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh. We find that across the sector, dominant framings of over‐indebtedness privilege borrower‐centric explanations, while discounting the structural drivers of excessive lending and borrowing. As a consequence, current efforts to limit over‐indebtedness are unlikely to produce the kinds of solutions that are most needed to reduce the debt stress among borrowers. These arguments have implications across the Global South, particularly for contexts where microfinance is rapidly expanding.     

Latin American debt,the IMF,and Adam Smith: A proposal for ethical reform

We examine the role of the IMF orthodox paradigm, and the value system upon which it rests, in the Latin American debt crisis. We conclude that the IMF orthodoxy is an inappropriate basis for international transactions because of the a priori utilitarian value assumptions on which it is based. Furthermore, those value premises have hardened into a narrow and inflexible ideology—similar in nature, if not in content, to Marxist ideology—which has been imposed on indebted Latin American countries. We recommend a value system based on the writings of Adam Smith to replace the value system inherent in the IMF orthodoxy. This value system stresses the inestimable value of all individuals, and we argue that governments and economic institutions must never diminish the happiness of innocent people. We conclude the article with some specific recommendations for reform at the IMF to bring its policies more in line with the moral ideals of Adam Smith.     

国际经济形势、中国经济结构转型和国际合作

结构调整是中国近年来经济改革的主题。但自从金融危机发生以来，中国的政策重点不得不转移到应对危机。经过一年多的努力，中国已经从金融危机的阴影中走出来，结构调整势必再次提上议事日程。国际经济形势的变化对中国的结构转型也正产生着越来越大的压力。因为中国经济和世界经济的一体化，国际经济环境影响着中国内部结构调整，而内部结构调整也必须考虑到国际经济环境。在充分考虑各方面因素情况下，对中国的调整策略进行深入分析。     

On socialist fiscal crises

Conclusion Socialist states, it was argued, must address accumulation and legitimation concerns, just as capitalist states do. They too are likely to have fiscal problems, but for somewhat different reasons than capitalist states. Because of the nationalization of ownership of most of the economy, socialist states are not faced with the problem of absorbing the costs of production and reproduction while profits are privately appropriated. However, soft budgetary constraints strain socialist state fiscal resources. Of particular concern to us, the revenue generating problem of socialist states is compounded by the very successes of their social-welfare policies: when social policies raise life expectancy and lower the fertility rate, the size of the labor force available to contribute to the country's economic base withers at the same time that the state's pension and health care costs increase.The accumulation problems of socialist states in the Third World are further compounded by their weak position within the global political economy. Third World countries in general have little control over the prices of the goods and services they trade, and global geopolitical and world-market dynamics generally work to their disadvantage. Socialist states in the Third World have had particular difficulty getting access to Western markets, and this obstacle has been only partially offset by COMECON subsidized trade and concessionary financing. Mean-while, socialist state legitimacy rests on the provisioning of the population at large, and not merely - as in most capitalist countries - the monopoly sector, with a broad range of benefits free of charge or at low cost.The Cuban experience highlights the benefits and costs of Third World socialism. The Revolutionary government has many social accomplishments to its credit. In particular, life expectancy has increased while infant mortality and the birth rate have decreased. Cuba's demographic profile resembles highly industrial Western and East European countries more than capitalist Third World countries. Policies that have served to redistribute wealth, open employment opportunities for women, and guarantee all Cubans an inexpensive basic diet have undoubtedly contributed to the demographic trends; so too have the expansion and universalization of medical care coverage. The medical care restructuring has made it easy for women to obtain abortions and, increasingly, IUDs and birth control pills, at readily affordable prices; it also has helped Cubans live healthier, longer lives. Women have been making use of the birth control options, particularly as their labor-force opportunities have improved.The state's success at reducing infant mortality partly offsets the impact of the declining fertility rate on the country's ability to reproduce itself demographically and to maintain a labor force that adequately generates revenue to finance the needs of the aging population. The universalization of health care, special food rationing for pregnant women, and the promulgation of a maternity law entitling women to absent themselves from work to tend to the medical needs of their children all suggest that the government has been willing to underwrite certain costs (although it shifted some of the costs to enterprises, under the New Management System) to minimize infant mortality.The government might further counter the fertility decline trend with a pro-natal moral campaign. Families might be made to feel that they have a patriotic duty to have children. The government might also tie family allowances for children and work benefits to family size. However, such material incentives as family allowances have been ineffective thus far in Eastern European socialist countries as well as in Western market economies, and there is reason to believe that they would be ineffective in Cuba as well. As Cuban demographer Alvarez Vazquez notes, such material incentives as dietary supplements for pregnant women and families with young children, job-related maternity benefits, and free medical care, are unlikely to induce families to have more children because the island's population by now considers such benefits basic rights, not privileges.Immigration, an alternative source of labor, is not a viable option either. The government would have to make domestic conditions more attractive to entice foreign labor to come. Currently, there appears to be little foreign desire to migrate to Cuba; otherwise, more foreigners would be entering the country legally or, if impossible, illegally. There is, of course, no reason for the government to encourage labor migration as long as the domestic supply suffices. Unemployed labor would only add to the state's social and economic problems.Alternatively, the government might encourage men to assume more household responsibilities so that child-rearing is less onerous for working women. If men would assume more household responsibilities, the state could most readily address its production and reproduction concerns simultaneously, in a manner consistent with its commitment to Marxist principles of gender equality. The Family Code could provide the basis for a moral campaign. However, thus far the Code has not been a sufficient moral force, and its enforcement - through coersion - would undoubtedly meet with male resistance and antagonize a segment of the population whose political support the regime needs.The revolution's social accomplishments are, moreover, generating unintended fiscal problems that are difficult for the state to resolve. The population is no longer reproducing itself, at the same time that the state assumes the health and retirement costs of the increasingly long-living population. The ratio of the retired to the economically active population is growing, while the government's capacity to appropriate surplus and allocate it to social expenditures is decreasing. Economic reforms in the late 1970s and early 1980s improved productivity and made the economy more responsive to consumer demand, but they eroded the central government's revenue-generating capacity. By the latter 1980s the government seems to have been faced with a new dilemma. It tightened control over market activity, undoubtedly in part to increase its revenue base and thereby address its fiscal problems. However, the experience of the late 1960s suggests that productivity may drop again as material incentives contract, and political discontent may grow if living standards decline. When civilian groups felt that the government stressed accumulation excessively over consumption in the late 1960s, they expressed their resentment: in foot-dragging, absenteeism, refusal to work, and in emigration. While the government thus far has not been confronted with electoral opposition at the ballot box or with protests in the streets, the covert ways that civilians expressed their discontent tends to subvert state accumulation efforts.Thus, the Cuban experience suggests that the commitment of socialist states in the Third World to social welfare improves health standards and old-age security. However, it also suggests that socialism does not resolve the fiscal needs of states, even though socialist states are not constrained by significant private appropriation of profits. The base of the fiscal crisis instead shifts.The dilemma of Third World socialist states can obviously not be proven on the basis of a single case study. Certainly, the Cuban experience has been shaped by distinctive features of the prerevolutionary society that Castro inherited and by some distinctive ways that Castro has used state power. Comparisons between post and prerevolutionary Cuba, and between Cuba and contemporary trends in other Latin American countries during the same period, empirically highlight the distinctive impact of socialism. The logic of socialism, in turn, gives us reason to believe that other Third World states that attempt to undertake socialist transformations will face many of the same dilemmas as Cuba.Although facing fiscal problems, the Cuban state assumes more responsibility for social expenditures than the capitalist states in Latin America. It can not relieve itself of those responsibilities without risking its political base. Moreover, if it would relieve itself of social welfare responsibilities Cuban socialism would become an empty shell, stripped of its historical meaning.     

Do Commercial Debt‐for‐Nature Swaps Matter for Forests? A Cross‐National Test of World Polity Theory1

We present cross‐national models of forest loss from 1990–2005 that examine the impact of commercial debt‐for‐nature swaps. In doing so, we find substantial support for world polity theory that poor nations that implement these swaps tend to have lower rates of deforestation than poor nations that do not implement these swaps. We also find support for another aspect of world polity theory—poor nations with higher levels of international nongovernmental organizations have lower rates of forest loss. A number of other factors, including structural adjustment, debt service, democracy, population growth, and domestic economic activity, also predict deforestation. We conclude by discussing the findings, theoretical implications, methodological implications, policy suggestions, and possible directions for future research.     

The crisis of neoliberalism and the future of international institutions: A comparison of the IMF and the WTO

The current crisis of neoliberalism is calling into question the relevance of key international institutions. We analyze the origins, nature, and possible impacts of the crisis through comparing two such institutions: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Both originated in the post-World War II U.S.-led hegemonic order and were transformed as part of the transition to global neoliberalism. We show that while the IMF and the WTO have been part of the same hegemonic project, their distinct institutional features have put them on significantly different trajectories. Historical differences in the two institutions’ systems of rules have placed the IMF in a more vulnerable position than the WTO, which provides clues to the future contours of global economic governance.

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Structural adjustment,women, and agriculture in Cameroon

This article assesses the impact of economic structural programs on the agricultural activities of women's groups in Cameroon, and explores women's ways of coping with the reduction in individual and family income and the loss of public services. It examines the role of 25 women's groups in both rural and urban areas of Cameroon's northwest and southwest provinces in a study conducted from April to June 1999. Economic structural adjustment caused a tremendous increase in the workload of women that are farming usually in lots distant from their homes that yield poor returns. Land for food-crop cultivation has become increasingly scarce, and inputs have become substantially unaffordable. Income generated from the sale of crops is inadequate to supply the economic and social needs of the family. Moreover, the burden of their work has increased as they cope with housework, child-care, and food production, in addition to an expanded participation in paid employment. Moreover, women spend longer working hours than men, meeting both household responsibilities and their outside work. Women have devised strategies to cope with this economic crisis, but they need organizations that will support them with the important resources to be able to operate. Rural women seem to be coping better than urban women cope. In extreme cases, some women in urban areas resort to prostitution to cope with life in this crisis setting.     

基于土地资源约束条件下的上海劣势产业退出研究

当前,面对国际金融危机冲击和国内经济增长放缓的严峻局面,保持经济平稳较快增长是首要任务。上海土地资源有限,劣势产业及时退出去才能实现“腾笼换鸟”,把优势产业引进来。优胜劣汰是市场竞争的基本原则,是提高经济运行效率、保持经济快速增长的源泉,而劣势产业退出机制的建立是实现优胜劣汰的前提。对上海而言,“调结构”是“保增长”的基础、捷径和出路。金融危机对我们是一个挑战,但也是产业结构调整和优化升级的一次机遇,顺势而为,把市场“倒逼”机制和政府的主动调整相结合,及时帮助劣势产业实现退出,对上海经济的长期平稳增长具有重要的意义。     

International Migration Policies: 1950-2000

Policies on international migration since the Second World War reflect the enormous changes in economic, social and political situations around the world.
The implications of changes in the volume and composition of international migration have increasingly become an issue of major concern to governments in all countries.
Following emigration from Europe to countries of the New World as a result of war-damaged economies, reconstruction witnessed high demand for migrant labour, mainly from parts of southern Europe. But by the early 1970s, decline in economic growth, unexpected impacts of the guest-worker scheme, and an increase in refugees from Third World countries led, in due course, to an era of restriction on entry of asylum-seekers and tighter controls over undocumented migration to developed countries.
A "new era" evolved during the 1990s, characterized by growing interdependence of major economic powers. Globalization led not only to a significant demand for highly-skilled and professional workers, but also to decision-making on some aspects of the migration process being transferred from the national to the regional level, and an increase in the influence of multinational corporations.
The globalization process, and the growing influence of international trade regimes, may well represent the first steps towards a new "international migration regime" that incorporates all types of migration.     

2012年中国经济发展展望

2012年,中国经济发展将受到全球经济持续低迷、经济复苏艰难的影响和制约,但仍将保持稳步增长。按照“稳中求进”的总基调,中国经济发展重点要关注三个问题：继续实施积极的财政政策和货币政策;调整结构,重在调整重点领域经济结构,主要体现在调整需求结构、区域结构、要素结构和对外贸易结构;大力发展实体经济。     

中国地方政府债务问题探讨

中国地方政府债务问题形成的主要原因,一是政府过多地、直接地参与经济活动,二是城市化加速导致地方政府举债。对于中国地方政府债务问题,总体判断仍为风险可控。一是地方政府加上中央政府的债务占GDP的比例在40%以内,远低于60%的债务率标准。二是中央政府有非常强的控制能力,在各级政府间平衡债权债务,使得中国加总的净债务率较低。三是中国整体的资产负债表仍然健康,尤其是中央政府保持相当健康的资产负债表。对地方政府债务问题,体制性的解决办法是治本之道。要从根本上解决中国地方政府不规范借债问题,须建立规范化的地方政府举债融资机制。     

Women,Organizational Crisis,and Access to Leadership in International Organizations

Women who successfully break the glass ceiling have historically done so in the context of crises. Crises offer unique windows of opportunity for women because they either legitimize women as suitable candidates or create “glass cliffs” that make positions unattractive to men. This article examines four elections in the World Health Organization (WHO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), applying findings from the national to the international. First access to executive office international organizations—the breaking of the glass ceiling—is facilitated by organizational crisis; however, once broken, the importance of crises diminishes. Organizations become regendered or women become seen as acceptable candidates.     

Immigration Policy in Australia,Canada, New Zealand,and the United States: An Overview of Recent Trends

Immigration policies in most host nations of the west have undergone significant changes in recent years. Based on the four country‐specific papers that appear in this section of the journal, and also on our own research, we present an overview of these changes and their context. In all countries, economic considerations play a central role in shaping immigration policy and greater importance is given to scientific research. Several common policy changes are noted in Australia, Canada and New Zealand which include: a shift away from a human capital focus toward more targeted selection based on labor market demand for specific skills, increased emphasis on temporary foreign worker programs, attraction of international students, an overhauling of the refugee system, and regionalization of immigration. In the U.S., while adoption of some of these changes has often surfaced in public policy and academic discussions, legalization of unauthorized migrants remains an important policy debate, with recent arguments focusing on the economic benefits of legalization.     

Economic Dependency and HIV/AIDS Prevalence in the Developing World: A Comparative,Longitudinal Analysis

The HIV/AIDS pandemic has plagued global society for over three decades. While breakthroughs in antiretroviral treatments (ART) have proven effective in suppressing the virus and HIV/AIDS intervention outreach have widened, epidemic control remains unevenly achieved among countries. At least 95 percent of HIV/AIDS sufferers originate from developing countries. Dependency theory suggests that developing countries' reliance on debt, trade, and foreign investments pose negative effects on their populations' health. Guided by dependency theory's propositions, this cross‐national study assesses whether increasing dependence on trade, debt, and foreign direct investment potentially increases adult HIV prevalence in developing countries from 1989 to 2012. Using a sample of over 80 nations, we perform a two‐way fixed‐effects OLS regression to evaluate the impact of increasing debt, trade, and foreign investment on adult HIV prevalence. Total debt, short‐term debt, external debt, and GDP were found to increase HIV prevalence. The findings for debt support dependency theory's predictions concerning the ramifications of global economic inequality on HIV/AIDS prevalence.     

State and revolution

Conclusion Our brief examination of the conditions underlying the political crises of the Meiji Restoration and the Prussian Reform Movement has tended to reinforce by contrast our central arguments about the causes of revolutionary political crises in France, Russia, and China. Bourbon France, Hohenzollern Prussia, Tokugawa Japan, Manchu China, and Romanov Russia - all became subject to military pressures from more economically developed nations abroad and all experienced in response societal political crises. Yet only France, Russia, and China were plunged into the upheavals of social revolution, while Prussia and Japan, relatively speaking, adapted speedily and smoothly to international exigencies through reforms instituted from above by autocratic political authorities. The different fates of these agrarian monarchical regimes faced with the challenges of adapting to the exigencies of international uneven development can be explained in large part by looking at the ways in which agrarian relations of production and landed dominant classes impinged upon state organizations - though it is also important to assess the severity of the pressures from abroad with which each regime had to cope.In Russia, the revolutionary crisis of autocratic rule and dominant class privilege was due to the overwhelming stress of World War I upon an early-industrializing economy fettered by a backward agrarian sector. The Imperial regime was strong enough to override dominant class interests and enforce modernizing reforms after the shock of defeat in the Crimean War, but it was not able to reorganize agrarian class relations that were inimical to modern economic development or rapid increases in productivity. Even extraordinary successes of state-propelled industrialization were not enough to allow TsaristRussia to make up her economic lag behind the West, and she remained entangled within the European states system as it careened toward World War. By contrast, neither Japan nor Prussia was so agriculturally backward or internationally pressed during early industrialization as Tsarist Russia.Both Bourbon France and Manchu China had fairly prosperous agrarian economies and experienced foreign pressures no greater than those experienced by Tokugawa Japan and Hohenzollern Prussia. Another pattern is the differentiating cause here: specifically, the presence or absence of a landed upper class with insitutionalized political leverage at extralocal levels, over against fiscal and military policing functions centrally organized by royal administrations. If such politically organized and administratively entrenched landed classes were present, as they were in France and China, then the reactions of these classes against autocratic attempts to institute modernizing reforms deposed the monarchies and precipitated breakdowns of administrative and military organizations. This meant that externally induced political crises developed into potentially social-revolutionary situations. But if, as in Japan and Prussia, politically powerful landed classes were absent, so that the oldregime states were more highly bureaucratic, then foreign-induced crises could be resolved through political struggles confined, broadly speaking, within the established governing elite and administrative arrangements. And this precluded the possibility for social revolution from below.Social revolutions in France, Russia, and China were launched, it has been argued here, by crises centered in the structures and situations of the states of the Old Regimes. Still, the actual occurrence of social revolutions in these three countries depended not only upon the emergence of revolutionary political crises, but also upon the conduciveness of the agrarian sociopolitical structures of the Old Regimes to peasant revolts. To go on with the analysis from here, therefore, we would have to reexamine the prerevolutionary societies from the opposite perspective, no longer from the top down with emphasis on the state, the dominant class, and the international context, but from the bottom up with emphasis on the structural situation of the peasants in the agrarian economy and in local political and class relations. While this task cannot be accomplished here, it is undertaken in the larger study of which this analysis is only a part.     

Xinjiang and China's Relations with Central Asia, 1991-2001: Across the 'Domestic-Foreign Frontier'?

The Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region is China's largest administrative unit and is populated by predominantly non-Han Chinese peoples. Throughout the 1991-2001 period, Xinjiang has witnessed regular and sometimes violent incidents of Uighur opposition to Chinese control of the region. The re-emergence of ethnic nationalist sentiment in Xinjiang has serious implications not only for China's internal economic and political development but also for its foreign relations with the states of Central Asia. This paper will argue that this process does not follow an internal-external trajectory exclusively, in that both its foreign policy objectives and the international environment in which those objectives are pursued can also influence China's policies in Xinjiang. Conversely, reformulation of Chinese foreign policy objectives toward certain states can also have an impact upon the formulation and implementation of minority policy within Xinjiang. An example of these processes is China's relations with the post-Soviet Central Asian Republics. This paper argues that China's relations with these states over the 1991-2001 period have been influenced by both fragmenting and integrating dynamics, whereby renewed ethno-religious conflicts have developed in parallel with increasing economic and political integration across Central Asia and Xinjiang.     

Attending to the world: competition,cooperation and connectivity in the World City network

World Cities are acknowledged to be a key aspect of globalization. In many accounts, these cities are depicted as rivals in a global marketplace, their economic success a result of their competitive advantage. However, what has not been fully acknowledged is their connectivity and, in addition, the time and effort taken by specific ‘attendants’ to produce the World City network. Accordingly, this article aims to advance understanding of World City network formation by developing a conceptual model that focuses on four major attendants (firms, sectors, cities and states) that enact network formation through two nexuses —‘city‐firm’ and ‘statesector’— and two communities —‘cities within states’ and ‘firms within sectors’. The utility of this model is demonstrated by drawing upon interviews conducted in offices of 39 advanced producer service firms in banking and law. These interviews were undertaken in three World Cities (London, New York and Singapore) in the wake of the East Asian financial crisis, an event that challenged the consistency of the World City network. Showing how attendants sought to maintain and transform the World City network at this key moment of crisis, we conclude that studies of city competitiveness ultimately need to focus on the cooperative work that sustains global networks.     

Finanzialisierung,Demokratie und Gesellschaft – zehn Jahre nach Beginn der Finanzkrise

This introduction to the special issue—ten years after the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers and the beginning of a worldwide financial, economic, and debt crisis—reflects on the extent to which the economic crisis affected a turning point in society overall. The current state of research into the relationship between financialization, democracy, and social conditions strongly suggests that while the processes of financialization that favored the emergence of a crisis were influenced by the financial crisis, they were not completely reversed. In fact, the financial market regulation, which was changed in response to the crisis, did not exert any modifying pressure in terms of a restructuring of the financial system. An epochal shift in financial market regulation therefore cannot be identified from the steps taken in the reform process. Elseways there is clear evidence that the financial crisis has had a lasting impact on the European integration process, confidence in democracy, and political culture. The financial crisis is therefore likely to be perceived as a historical watershed, mainly due to its impact on societal areas beyond the financial system itself.     

警惕中国经济泡沫化——中国经济增长模式面临的严重挑战

改革开放以来,中国经济35年增长主要是外向型经济拉动的。但2008年国际金融危机时间,中国出台的"4万亿"投资刺激计划,改变了中国原有的经济增长模式,投资在经济增长中的作用越来越重要。同时,带来了两个结构性矛盾:一是投资中政府融资平台的崛起,深刻地改变了中国的投资结构,投资效率开始下降;二是投资拉动的经济增长模式必然依靠货币信贷释放来支撑,容易带来经济泡沫化。评论中国经济是否有泡沫化现象,可以从经济货币化指数、固定资产投资占GDP的比重、PPI和CPI的长期背离三个方面进行分析。     

Die europäische Schuldenkrise als Schub systemischer Vergesellschaftung: Von Partizipationsversprechen zu Partizipationszwang

The article presents a sociological conceptualization of the dealing with the recent sovereign debt crisis in the European Monetary Union (EMU), which is reconstructed as a push of “sociation” (vergesellschaftung in Simmel’s sense) that maneuvered populations of indebted states into de facto contractual obligations vis-à-vis their states’ creditors. Seen from this perspective, the sovereign debt crisis has led to an, if highly ambivalent, deepening of European “integration”. The article suggests a combination of Habermas’s distinction between system and life-world, which enables an interpretation of contract-like relationships as systemic mode of integration potentially harking back on the life-world, with David Graeber’s emphasis on the asymmetrical and hierarchical processes of sociation inherent in contractualized and marketized creditor-debtor relationships. Far from postulating an evolutionary development of processes of debt-related sociation that might be associated with the modernization-theoretical proclivities in Habermas’s theory, the article analyzes the role of financial market publics in creating a structure of legitimation that supported the political interpretation of the financial crisis as a sovereign debt crisis in the EMU, thus bestowing justification on the treatment of populations as “debtors of last resort”.