Poverty Reduction and Good Governance: Examining the Rationale of the Millennium Development Goals

Whilst the deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) looms large, the outcomes so far have been mixed. This article examines the policy logic that ‘good governance’ leads to poverty reduction, which has been adopted by international agencies in pursuit of the MDGs. This causal relationship is examined through an empirical panel‐data estimation using Worldwide Governance Indicators and the poverty headcount ratio in ninety‐eight countries. The empirical evidence does not support the hypothesis that good governance leads to poverty reduction. Good governance alleviates poverty only in middle‐income countries, not in least developed ones. These findings point to the necessity to devise policies that address poverty directly, rather than through indirect instruments, and highlight the urgent need to address structural inequality in developing countries.     

THE DETERMINANTS OF LOCALIZATION AND URBANIZATION ECONOMIES: EVIDENCE FROM THE LOCATION OF NEW FIRMS IN SPAIN

The objective of this paper is to analyze why firms in some industries locate in specialized economic environments (localization economies) while those in other industries prefer large city locations (urbanization economies). To this end, we examine the location decisions of new manufacturing firms in Spain at the city level and for narrowly defined industries. First, we estimate firm location models to obtain estimates that reflect the importance of localization and urbanization economies in each industry. Then, we regress these estimates on industry characteristics related to the potential importance of labor market pooling, input sharing, and knowledge spillovers. Urbanization effects are high in knowledge‐intensive industries, suggesting that firms locate in large cities to benefit from knowledge spillovers. We also find that localization effects are high in industries that employ workers whose skills are more industry‐specific, suggesting that industries locate in specialized economic environments to share a common pool of specialized workers.     

The Issue of Citizenship for the Bidun Minority in Kuwait after the Arab Spring

Kuwait is a country in which there are many tribes but it is the al‐U'zam tribe which is very dominant and influential in local politics and the economy, in contrast to the other tribes in Kuwait who are recognized by the state as being equal, but have little influence in these things. The Bedouin tribes, such as the Bidun society in Kuwait, who have been excluded from nationality and citizenship and thus have no influence, are an exception. The Kuwaiti government claims that the Bidun themselves gave up these rights so as not to be part of the Kuwaiti state and this has resulted in the Kuwaiti government not granting them any formal economic, political, or social rights. Because of this, the Bidun have had to fight for their rights for decades since the formal establishment of an independent Kuwait in 1961. This article wishes to discuss whether the question of the Kuwaiti refusal to recognize the Bidun as citizens is because of geostrategic reasons, because of the fear of creating a precedent that might lead to the inclusion of other tribes into the Kuwaiti state, or because this is a traditional political strategy for dealing with politically weak tribes.     

Unsafe drinking water quality in remote Western Australian Aboriginal communities

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is important in the fields of public health and health geography because of its heavy burden on the health system and high cost of treatment in its advanced stages. The causes of CKD are associated with diabetes and hypertension, but in some parts of the world, the disease occurs in the absence of these factors. Researchers identify this condition as CKD of “unknown” causes (CKDu). CKDu is a multi‐factored health problem and one suspected causal factor is contaminated drinking water. The disease occurs globally but is found in particularly high concentrations among people of certain ethnic and disadvantaged social groups living in very different locations around the world. CKD has become endemic in Western Australia where hospital admissions for Aboriginal people requiring renal dialysis or treatment for diabetes are much higher than for the general population. The possible proportions of CKDu cases among the CKD patients are unknown. This study examines the drinking water quality among communities such as these. Water chemistry analysis in these areas indicates that the nitrate and uranium content greatly exceed officially recommended levels. Most of these communities rely on raw groundwater to supply their domestic needs, and it is very likely that the people are unwittingly ingesting high levels of nitrates and uranium, probably including uranyl nitrates. Very few such remote communities have access to treated drinking water, and cost‐effective water treatment systems are required to provide potable water at the local scale.     

Pits,mounds, and vernal ponds in a Tasmanian subalpine grassland

Falling trees commonly turbate soils in primary forest, creating characteristic edaphic patterns related to pit and mound topography. Vernal ponds with associated mounds were observed in mineral soils on a treeless plain in subalpine Tasmania, Australia. The hypothesis that paired ponds and mounds on the plain originated as pit and mound features in forests that were later destroyed by fire was tested by comparing the soils and landforms caused by recent tree falls in adjacent forest with those on the plain. The soil characteristics, orientations, and dimensions of the ponds and mounds were consistent with a tree fall origin, although rare secondary ponds on the tops of mounds may derive from the burrowing activities of the medium‐sized marsupial, Vombatus ursinus (common wombat). The characteristics of pond and mound soils suggested that most were hundreds to thousands of years old, with the ponds persisting because of differences in deflation, deposition, and organic matter formation between themselves and adjacent persistently dry land.     

Inherited memory,social learning,and resilience: lessons from Spain's Great Blizzard of 1888

The snowstorms that affected the Cantabrian Mountains in the winter of 1888 caused unprecedented damage, and the absence of a “resilient approach” to this episode had several consequences worth further consideration. In this study, we explored interconnections between and among memory, social learning, and resilience by surveying the affected landscapes, conducting interviews with current residents, and reviewing historical sources such as press archives. The mixed method has enabled us to examine the construction and transmission of respondents' memories and to link those narratives to our reading of the presence or absence of risk mitigation actions—especially against snow avalanches. Our analysis has established that the 1888 snowstorms are remembered down the decades in ways that downplay risk, neglect social learning and changes to community practices and capacities to cope with uncertainties, and fail to shape preventive measures against future disasters. These insights have relevance for those interested in how archival research, field observations, and contemporaneous interviews can aid understandings of inherited memory, social learning, and resilience.     

Disequilibrium in Development Finance: The Contested Politics of Institutional Accountability and Transparency at the World Bank Inspection Panel

This article examines the dynamic nature with which independent accountability mechanisms operate. Focusing on the World Bank, the authors argue that its Inspection Panel evolves according to internal and external pressures. In seeking to achieve equilibrium, and protect its authority and independence, the Panel has gone through several distinct phases: negotiation, emergence, protracted resistance, assertion of independence and authority, renewed tension, and contestation. The core novelty of the article is its application of concepts from outside the field of development studies — notably institutional accountability from the governance literature, and judicialization from the legal studies literature — to the topic of the Inspection Panel. Examining the Panel in this way demonstrates that accountability mechanisms represent a hybrid of transnational governance influenced by a range of actors including project‐affected peoples, national governments, managers and development donors. Accountability in development finance is about competing interests as well as competing conceptions and expectations of accountability. In such a complex and multi‐scalar system, the Panel is not only concerned with delivering well‐researched investigation reports; it is also an entity seeking to ensure its own survival, as well as an arbiter of its own brand of legitimacy and accountability.