The Study of Local Public Economies: Multi‐organizational,Multi‐level Institutional Analysis and Development

One important extension of the IAD framework has been to the study of local public economies. These are multi‐organizational, multi‐level arrangements defined as the set of governmental jurisdictions, public and nonprofit agencies, and private firms that interact in various patterns to provide and produce public goods and services within a specific locality or region. Commonly, the localities or regions studied from this perspective have been U.S. metropolitan areas, often defined as a central city and its surrounding or adjoining county. Localities can be delineated, however, on various terms, and in the IAD framework, it is the geo‐physical nature of a locality that, in substantial part, drives the analysis. One of the strengths of the approach is its capacity to explain local variations in public organization as a function of the geo‐physical diversity of localities, while at the same time developing empirical generalizations and normative principles that apply across diverse regions. What, for example, might the organization and governance of a complex metropolitan area have in common with the organization and governance of a complex protected area, such as the greater Yellowstone eco‐region or the Adirondack Park? Construing both sorts of regions as local public economies can enhance our overall understanding of public organization at the same time that it permits a more nuanced understanding of diverse localities. Such work contributes to the ongoing IAD project of “understanding institutional diversity.”     

Family and Collective Remittances to Mexico: A Multi‐dimensional Typology

The development potential of remittances has resurfaced as a topic of analysis, based in part on dramatic increases in migration and amounts of money ‘sent home’, and partly in the growing interest and involvement by states and non‐state actors in gaining leverage over remittances. The trend is indicative of an emerging remittance‐based component of development and poverty reduction planning. This article uses the case of Mexico to make two broad arguments, one related to the importance of extra‐economic dimensions of remittances, particularly the social and political meanings of remittances, and the other based on a disaggregation of remittances into family, collective or community‐based, and investment remittances. Key dimensions of this typology include the constellation of remitters, receivers, and mediating institutions; the norms and logic(s) that regulate remittances; the uses of remittances (income versus savings); the social and political meanings of remittances; and the implications of such meanings for various interventions. The author concludes that policy and programme interventions need to recognize the specificity of each remittance type. Existing initiatives to bank the un‐banked and reduce transfer costs, for example, are effective for family remittances, but attempts to expand the share of remittances allocated to savings, or to turn community donations into profitable ventures, or small investments into large businesses, are much more complex and require a range of other interventions.     

Geography’s Emerging Cross‐Disciplinary Links: Process,Causes, Outcomes and Challenges

In Australian universities the discipline of Geography has been the pace‐setter in forging cross‐disciplinary links to create multidisciplinary departments and schools, well ahead of other disciplines in humanities, social sciences and sciences, and also to a greater extent than in comparable overseas university systems. Details on all cross‐disciplinary links and on immediate outcomes have been obtained by surveys of all heads of departments/schools with undergraduate Geography programs. These programs have traced their own distinctive trajectories, with ramifying links to cognate fields of enquiry, achieved through mergers, transfers, internal initiatives and, more recently, faculty‐wide restructuring to create supradisciplinary schools. Geography’s ‘exceptionalism’ has proved short‐lived. Disciplinary flux is now extending more widely within Australian universities, driven by a variety of internal and external forces, including: intellectual questioning and new ways of constituting knowledge; technological change and the information revolution; the growth of instrumentalism and credentialism, and managerialism and entre‐preneurial imperatives; reinforced by a powerful budgetary squeeze. Geographers are proving highly adaptive in pursuit of cross‐disciplinary connections, offering analytical tools and selected disciplinary insights useful to non‐geographers. However, this may be at cost to undergraduate programs focussing on Geography’s intellectual core. Whereas formerly Geography had high reproductive capacity but low instrumental value it may now be in a phase of enhanced utility but perilously low reproductive capacity.     

The Perpetuation of Regime Security in Gulf Cooperation Council States: A Multi‐Lens Approach

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have been engaging in diversification efforts, yet the types of efforts suggest that the primary interest is regime security. Regional foreign policy is complex; hence we propose a multi‐lens approach to analyze overlapping and complementary political, economic, and social forces. The international political economy of hydrocarbons demonstrates the similarities among GCC states, regional dynamics illustrate interstate relations and similar patterns, while economic diversification suggests individual state trajectories and comparative and competitive patterns. By outlining the contemporary context for GCC states, we argue that low oil prices, regional dependence on hydrocarbons, and trends in economic diversification efforts signal GCC states' preference to reinforce their rentier systems with alternative state revenue streams. GCC states' diversification into new markets and sectors and use of state‐owned enterprises in microcompetitions indicate a new search for alternative revenue streams and prestige, which in turn are used to assure the perpetuation of regime security. This finding sets trajectories and implications for the region, specifically economic stagnation and supplementary diversification processes.     

A Multi‐disciplinary Approach to the Archaeological Investigation of a Bedrock‐Dominated Shallow‐Marine Landscape: an example from the Bay of Firth,Orkney, UK

Investigation of shallow‐marine environments for submerged prehistoric archaeology can be hampered in many localities by extensive bedrock exposure and thus limited preservation potential. Using the concept of ‘seamless archaeology’ where land‐based archaeology is integrated across the intertidal zone through to the offshore, a multi‐disciplinary approach is essential. This approach taken in the Bay of Firth, Orkney uses geophysics, historical archive and ethno‐archaeology, coastal geomorphology, palaeo‐environmental analyses and sea‐level science, and allows a clearer understanding of the landscape in which prehistoric settlers lived. While acknowledging the limitations of the preserved environment, we are successful in identifying areas of archaeological potential on the sea‐bed for both upstanding structural elements as well as sediment preservation that contains evidence for human occupation. This has wider implications beyond Orkney's World Heritage sites to provide a blueprint for similar studies elsewhere in the coastal zone. © 2012 The Authors