Reassessing the Effect of Economic Growth on Well-being in Less-developed Countries, 1980–2003

Development debates have been greatly influenced by the growth consensus: the conventional wisdom that economic growth should be the primary priority for less-developed countries (LDCs) because it most effectively improves the well-being of the world’s poor. We compare the impact of growth to other independent variables in an unbalanced panel analysis of up to 109 LDCs and 580 observations across six time points (1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2003). Our dependent variables include caloric consumption, infant survival probability, one-to-five year survival probability, female life expectancy, and male life expectancy. First, we find that gross domestic product (GDP) has significant positive effects on caloric consumption, female life expectancy, and male life expectancy. Second, GDP does not have robust effects on infant and one-to-five survival probabilities. Third, fertility, urbanization, and secondary school enrollment have larger effects than GDP in the majority of models. The more powerful effects of fertility, urbanization, and secondary schooling cannot simply be attributed to an indirect effect of GDP. Fourth, we find that dependency variables do not have robust significant effects. Fifth, over time, GDP has become much less effective at improving caloric consumption and infant and one-to-five survival. We infer that there are serious limitations to concentrating exclusively on economic growth to improve well-being in LDCs.     

Calling Out the Persistence of Racism

In this issue New Political Science begins a new tradition, printing an extended review essay of the book that received the Michael Harrington Book Award at the most recent American Political Science Association Meeting. The Michael Harrington Award is given for an outstanding book that demonstrates how scholarships can be used in the struggle for a better world. In 2011, the award went to Michelle Alexander for her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Color-Blindness. Sanford Schram, a member of the award committee, has contributed the below review.     

Decentralisation,socio-territoriality and the exercise of indigenous self-governance in Bolivia

This article analyses the ‘indigenous autonomy’ being constructed in two dozen Bolivian municipalities and territories, in accordance with the 2009 Constitution. It finds that Bolivia’s 1994 decentralisation reforms, which created the country’s system of municipalities, are central to understanding the contemporary implementation of indigenous autonomy. Some indigenous people view as favourable the representative and material gains achieved by municipalisation, which helps explain why more majority-indigenous communities have not yet chosen the new option of indigenous autonomy. However, the new legal framework also limits indigenous self-governance, because territorial delimitations of the country’s municipalities are generally inconsistent with indigenous peoples’ ancestral territories. The new institutions of self-governance are legally obligated to include discrete legislative, executive and administrative functions, reflecting not indigenous norms but a municipal structure of liberal design. This study illustrates the way that indigenous self-determination may encounter obstacles where indigenous territorial jurisdictions must coincide with contemporary boundaries of colonial origins, rather than with pre-colonial territories.     

Positive and Negative Emotions: Differential Associations with Sleep Duration and Quality in Adolescents

Despite positive and negative emotions being equally important predictors of adolescent wellbeing, research examining positive emotions is limited. In 4582 adolescents (69.4% females; age M?±?SD?=?14.55?±?1.74 years), we used structural equation modelling to examine associations between self-reported sleep duration and quality with positive affect, negative affect, and happiness, controlling for age and sex. Overall, sleep quality displayed stronger associations with all measures of emotions compared to sleep duration. Shorter sleep was more specifically associated with lower positive emotions (happiness, followed by positive affect), whereas poorer sleep showed stronger associations with negative affect. Protecting sleep duration may promote positive emotions and enhancing sleep quality may reduce mood disturbances. Future research could incorporate both positive and negative emotions to better understand adolescents’ wellbeing.     

The only solution is revolution: the Spanish Confederación Nacional de Trabajo and the problem of unemployment in Republican Spain, 1931–1933

Although the Great Depression has been the subject of much research, focus normally centers on the impact instead of the tactics developed by working-class organizations to tackle the problems it caused, specifically unemployment. Recent research has sought to fill this gap, but numerous areas remain uncovered. This paper covers two of these: the situation in Spain and the reaction of anarcho-syndicalist union – the Confederación Nacional de Trabajo. Spain presents an anomalous case; a country that saw the replacement of a semi-fascist dictatorship by a democracy in the 1930s. Furthermore, the fact that the initial government of the Spanish Second Republic included the Socialists provides an opportunity of comparing and contrasting the positions and policies of reformist and revolutionary workers’ organizations. The study is based on predominantly on articles appearing in the CNT newspaper Solidaridad Obrera. The conclusion reached is that for the CNT rising unemployment was a symptom of an irreversible trend in a failing capitalist system, which could only be solved by the revolutionary overthrow of that system. Nonetheless, the union had to present plausible solutions to ameliorate the conditions of the workers to attract the unemployed and thus, create a force strong enough to lead that revolutionary change.     

The Capitalocene Part II: accumulation by appropriation and the centrality of unpaid work/energy

This essay – Part II – reconceptualizes the past five centuries as the Capitalocene, the ‘age of capital’. The essay advances two interconnected arguments. First, the exploitation of labor-power depends on a more expansive process: the appropriation of unpaid work/energy delivered by ‘women, nature, and colonies’ (Mies). Second, accumulation by appropriation turns on the capacity of state–capital–science complexes to make nature legible. If the substance of abstract social labor is time, the substance of abstract social nature is space. While managerial procedures within commodity production aim to maximize productivity per quantum of labor-time, the geo-managerial capacities of states and empires identify and seek to maximize unpaid work/energy per ‘unit’ of abstract nature. Historically, successive state–capital–science complexes co-produce Cheap Natures that are located, or reproduce themselves, largely outside the cash nexus. Geo-managerialism’s preliminary forms emerged rapidly during the rise of capitalism. Its chief historical expressions comprise those processes through which capitalists and state-machineries map, identify, quantify and otherwise make natures legible to capital. A radical politics of sustainability must recognize – and seek to mobilize through – a tripartite division of work under capitalism: labor-power, unpaid human work and the work of nature as a whole.     

Gender diversity in aircraft maintenance: a cross-sectional triangulation of male perspectives

Certified aircraft mechanics represent the largest gender-based demographic disparity in aviation with a 49-to-1 male-to-female ratio. Recent research into women’s perspective on the aircraft mechanic career field revealed that a large majority of women felt unsure or negatively about their potential promotion opportunities and social acceptance. The purpose of this follow-on mixed-methods concurrent triangulation study was to explore the perspectives of men regarding the aforementioned topics to see if they differ from previously published research on women perceptions. A total of 587 men and 431 women completed an eight-question survey containing 5-point Likert-type and open-ended questions. The quantitative comparison consisted of the total 1018 responses, while only the survey responses from the 587 men were analysed for correlations and qualitative codes. Results indicated that there was a significant difference between the perceptions of men from those of the women regarding work environment safety and social acceptance. Additional correlation analysis revealed social acceptance to be a key variable when predicting career appropriateness, advancement opportunity and work environment safety. The 587 qualitative responses yielded results that differed from those of women, citing an assumption that women have the same advancement opportunities or be as socially accepted as men entering the field.     

Race, Region, and Representative Bureaucracy

Scholars of representative bureaucracy have long been interested in the linkage between passive representation in public agencies and the pursuit of specific policies designed to benefit minority groups. Research in this area suggests that the structural characteristics of those organizations, the external political environment, and the perceptions of individual bureaucrats each help to facilitate that relationship. Work to date has not, however, sufficiently investigated the impact of region on representation behavior, which is surprising given the emphasis that it receives in the broader literature on race and politics. Drawing on that literature, this study argues that, for black bureaucrats, region of residence is an important moderator of active representation because it helps to determine the salience of race as an issue and the degree of identification with racial group interests. It tests hypotheses related to that general argument in a nationally representative sample of more than 3,000 public schools. The results suggest that black teachers produce greater benefits for black students in the South, relative to other regions. A supplementary analysis also confirms the theoretical supposition that race is a more salient issue for Southern black bureaucrats, when compared with their non-Southern counterparts.