Transition Economics

The Syrian civil war has seen the weaponization of its land and property rights system by the primary combatant groups in the country. The government is the most robust in its use of the tenure system to locate, target, destroy, confiscate, cleanse, and gain revenue by way of the institutions and attributes comprising the system. Based on fieldwork with Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, this article describes seven ways the Syrian government is currently using the land and property rights system in its military-on-civilian engagements. While the objective of such use is presumably to permanently prevail over opposition civilian constituencies, the article describes how this actually creates evidence usable for effective restitution of lands and properties subsequent to the war. Introduction The ongoing civil war in Syria has emerged as a laboratory of new weapons used by the various sides in the conflict. While a number of these are purely kinetic-involving both crude and innovative forms of firepower, executions, troop movements and strategies-others take advantage of society based structures and institutions which facilitate targeting specific constituencies within the civilian population and then become attached to kinetic objectives. Statutory land and property rights systems are particularly vulnerable to being used in this way, with significant effect and lasting repercussions. While the Syrian government is not the first to use aspects of land and property rights systems in the pursuit of military objectives, it is the most current, egregious and sophisticated. This paper describes how the statutory land and property rights system has become an important weapon in the Syrian conflict with a number of uses, but with the ultimate counterinsur-gency strategic objective of spatially and permanently prevailing over the insurgency and its civilian constituencies. Permanently ridding certain landscapes of opposition supporters and replacing these with pro-regime inhabitants is just as important to the overall objective of 'prevailing' as is military victory over insurgent combatants for the Syrian government.

トロツキーが1920年代後半以降にスターリン＝ブハーリンの一国社会主義論を批判したことはよく知られている。しかし、その批判には２つの異なった側面があった。１つは、世界革命と切り離して一国だけで社会主義を建設しきることができるという議論に対する批判であり、２つ目は、世界市場と切り離して、ロシア一国の経済的資源だけで高度な社会主義が建設することができるという議論に対する批判である。トロツキーはこの２つの側面を共に批判するようになるのだが、この２つは同時に主張されたのでも、同程度に主張されたのでもなかった。この2つの側面がしだいに結合していくのは、トロツキー派と主流派とのあいだの直接的な論争がなされなかったいわゆる「幕間」の時期（1925～1926年前半）においてである。本稿は、この複雑な過程を１次資料にもとづいて丁寧に解明している。

The research themes of geography of industry are continually evolving. The dynamic development of this sector of the economy after 1945 in the conditions of the socialist economy, in which the processes of industrialisation of the country were treated as priorities, as well as the processes of economic transformation in Poland after 1989, influencing the changes in the previously developed socioeconomic structures, including industry structures, influenced the shaping of the research problem of this sub-discipline of geography in Poland. These changes, leading to the adaptation of these structures to the changing management principles, take place under the influence of impulses from the international environment associated with building a knowledge-based economy and moving from the industrial and post-industrial phase to the infor-mational phase of civilisation development. These essential issues of transformation of industrial structures in the period of economic transformation and the development of a knowledge-based economy have become the subject of interest of many researchers, including economic geographers. The article presents the evolution of the themes and the main directions of research on structural changes in Polish industry in the conditions of transition from the centrally planned economy to market economy. In conclusion, it is shown that Polish geography of industry has undertaken significant scientific and economic problems of structural changes in industry during the period of economic transformation, continually updating its research priorities. Researchers quickly reacted to changes in the legal and political conditions of the functioning of the national economy, despite numerous barriers, related to, among other things, limited access to data on industrial activities, resulting in the lower interest of geographers in industrial research. The paper ends with recommendations regarding future possible research directions and a comprehensive bibliography of the studies.

Relatively little is known about the youth labour market in Mongolia. This paper studies returns to education of 15-29-year-olds by taking advantage of a recent ad hoc School to Work Transition Survey. Based on augmented Mincerian earnings equations, education and work experience appear to be important determinants of earnings. Vocational does not provide higher wages than compulsory education. Factors bearing wage gains include: living in the capital city and in urban areas in general. Factors bearing wage penalties include: gender, informal work, training, using informal job search networks, herding. Union membership, being a migrant, the civil status are wage neutral.

The Transition movement is more than an instrumental strategy to address climate change and fossil fuel shortage. It is a collective form of life. Against the tendency to reduce social movements to mission statements and policy solutions, this book insists on de-strategising the development of Transition. It argues that the flourishing of its distinctive culture is open to both uncertainty and paradox, and resistant to prediction and mapping.
Everything Gardens and Other Stories focuses instead on the body as the site where politics begins, engaging with the disquiets and anxieties that instigate the development of Transition practices: from Inner Transition, to food and currency activism, down to the REconomy project. Borne out of a sociologist’s accompaniment of Transition in Totnes, Everything Gardens and Other Stories inaugurates a new mode of accessing the everyday politics and ethical dilemmas that surface in the process of cultural innovation.

ნაშრომი განიხილავს საქართველოს ეკონომიკური გარდაქმნების ისტორიას სსრკ-ს
დაცემის შემდგომ 1991 წელს დამოუკიდებლობის აღდგენის, დემოკრატიული
ახელმწიფოს დაფუძნების, გეგმიური ეკონომიკიდან ლიბერალური საბაზრო ეკონომიკისკენ გარდაქმნისა და ევროკავშირთან ახლო ინტეგრაციის მცდელობების განმავლობაში. ნაშრომი ასევე მიმოიხილავს ამ პერიოდში ეკონომიკურ განვითარებაზე მოქმედ სხვადასხვა პოლიტიკურ თუ სოციალურ ფაქტორებს.

Corrupt exchanges are often brokered by a third party, but this phenomenon has not been satisfactorily explored by researchers of corruption. Literature on brokerage in general provides interesting models but they have not previously been applied to corrupt exchanges. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with respondents who participated in actual corrupt transactions, this paper identifies several distinct brokerage types in low-level corruption in contemporary Hungary. The paper also provides explanation of variation in corruption brokerage in terms of actors' group affiliations, forms of the corrupt exchanges, brokerage mechanisms, as well as neutrality, benefit and motivation, risk distribution, and stability of the brokerage structure. Finally, we discuss some policy implications of corruption brokerage.

Estonia held the presidency of the Council of the European Union for six months from 1 July to 31 December 2017. This was a great opportunity to strengthen and shape the country image, also known as the country brand. They do have something to build on: there have been very few countries in recent years and decades where country branding was so conscious. It was a brave choice: in the early 2000s, they decided that they would become E-Estonia. This is not just a means to communicate but also involves policies and tangible developments regarding electronics, IT, and brand new technologies in order to build the most advanced digital society of Europe and the world. But how did this appear during the EU Presidency and how are Estonian citizens involved in branding? This rather lengthy case study explores the concept as a good practice, also setting an example for other countries.

In the beginning of this century, humanity is at a crossroads where the Boulding’s spaceship “Earth” has begun to become really unstable. On the one hand, it continues with processes and ways of life based on a consumption that does not see the limits of the planet and that affects it both from a social and an environmental point of view. In addition, certain parts of the population, at the moment very reduced, are starting to be more conscious of the problems of existence and with small steps balance the drift of the spaceship “Earth”. From a perspective in which the “Sustainability” is a question of values and consciousness, will be built a normative individual model based on this paradigm. Three elements will be utilized for it: Spiral dynamics, Wilber’s AQAL system (1996) and some theories of human needs. The systemic and complex dimensions of this model will constitute the extrapolated foundations for a normative model in companies and their Corporate Social Responsibility. Finally, the process that happens in a paradigm shift or change of values will be presented, as well as present examples and initiatives that function in the road to Sustainability.

Scholars and activists mobilize increasingly the term degrowth when producing knowledge critical of the ideology and costs of growth-based development. Degrowth signals a radical political and economic reorganization leading to reduced resource and energy use. The degrowth hypothesis posits that such a trajectory of social transformation is necessary, desirable, and possible ; the conditions of its realization require additional study. Research on degrowth has reinvigorated the limits to growth debate with critical examination of the historical, cultural, social, and political forces that have made economic growth a dominant objective. Here we review studies of economic stability in the absence of growth and of societies that have managed well without growth. We reflect on forms of technology and democracy compatible with degrowth and discuss plausible openings for a degrowth transition. This dynamic and productive research agenda asks inconvenient questions that sustainability sciences can no longer afford to ignore.

Neoliberal economics have emerged in the post-Cold War era as the predominant ideological tenet applied to the development of countries in the global south. For much of the global south, however, the promise that markets will bring increased standards of living and emancipation from tyranny has been an empty one. Instead, neoliberalisation has increased the gap between rich and poor and unleashed a firestorm of social ills.

This book deals with the post-conflict geographies of violence and neoliberalisation in Cambodia. Applying a geographical analysis to contemporary Cambodian politics, the author employs notions of neoliberalism, public space, and radical democracy as the most substantive components of its theoretical edifice. He argues that the promotion of unfettered marketisation is the foremost causal factor in the country’s inability to consolidate democracy following a United Nations sponsored transition. The book demonstrates Cambodian perspectives on the role of public space in Cambodia's process of democratic development and explains the implications of violence and its relationship with neoliberalism.

Taking into account the transition from war to peace, authoritarianism to democracy, and command economy to a free market, this book offers a critical appraisal of the political economy in Cambodia.
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Reviews:

Gunn, G. C. 2013. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 43.1: 188-191.

Brickell, K. 2011. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 52.3: 372-374.

Percival, T. 2011. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 32.2: 270-272.

Christie, R. 2010. South East Asia Research, 19.2: 349-372.

Ordóñez de Pablos, P. 2010. International Journal of Asian Business and Information Management, 1.4: 65-66.

Unul dintre principalii indicatori ai performanței economice și ai integrării în piețele financiare globale este reprezentat de investițiile străine directe. În timpul tranziției economice de la economia planificată la piața liberă, pentru țările din Europa Centrală și de Est, investițiile străine deveneau o necesitate în condițiile în care capitalul autohton adeseori  lipsea  sau  era foarte limitat. Lucrarea de față se concentrează pe analizarea factorilor ce au determinat performanțele diferite  în  domeniul  atragerii  investițiilor  străine  directe  de  către  România  și  Polonia  în perioada 1990-2000. Astfel, vor fi identificate și analizate probleme structurale ale contextului politico-economic  din  țarile  gazdă,  care  determină  o  influență  majoră  asupra  deciziei companiilor multinaționale de a investi în economiile acestora. Totodată va fi analizat și modul în care aceste dificultăți politico-economice au afectat intrările de ISD, dar și impactul acestora din urmă asupra dezvoltării unei economii de piață funcționale.

This PhD research is focused on informal relations between state authorities and business, which exist in a peculiar Belarusian economic system, where the competition remains restricted, and the public sector based on large companies continues to play a crucial role. The author argues that the Belarusian public authorities have developed a broad set of informal rules which allow them to extract resources from small and medium private enterprises (SMEs) and control the expansion of the private sector. He also argues that as long as informal extractive institutions designed and maintained by the state remain in place, the improvement of formal business regulations alone will not produce the expansion of the SME sector.
This research is one of the first qualitative sociological studies which describe the functioning of small and medium private firms in the “hybrid” Belarusian economic system. This dissertation may also help to understand how SMEs operate in many other economies of the post-Soviet area and what obstacles to the development they face.
The dissertation consists of Introduction, 4 chapters and Conclusion. In the Chapter 1 the author explains the concept of informal institutions from the perspective of the new institutional school founded by Douglass North. This chapter also presents the theory of state-led informal institutions in the post-Soviet countries developed by Olga Bessonova and Simon Kordonsky. Chapter 2 describes the peculiar character of the post-Soviet Belarusian economic system. Chapter 3 provides information about the structure of the SME sector in Belarus and its contribution to the national economy. Finally, the Chapter 4 describes the informal barriers preventing Belarusian SMEs from growing. This chapter also enumerates a set of adaptation practices developed by small and medium firms to operate in the unfriendly institutional environment. The Conclusion contains the summary of the main findings of the research and the autor’s view on the perspectives for the development of the SME sector in Belarus. It also contains the author’s opinion about the institutional changes needed to be implemented in order to remove the informal barriers to the development of small and medium enterprieses.
Keywords: institutional sociology, informal institutions, small and medium enterprises, Belarusian economic system, economic transition, regulatory reform

While practice theories and diverse economy approaches are widely employed by human geographers, the two literatures have developed in parallel, rather than in dialogue. This article argues that this has constrained understandings of postcapitalist social change and traces an emerging theoretical conversation between these traditions. It outlines the potential of scholarly engagement with what we term 'diverse practices', especially when discussing the scalar possibilities and constraints of community activism. By grounding diverse economic scholarship in practice-theoretical conceptions of power, politics, and scale, the article proposes a materialisation of postcapitalist possibility and explores the barriers and facilitators of transformative geographies.

Ruling party members increasingly targeted the leaders of watchdog organizations for criticizing the government on malpractice and nepotism. Civil society organizations openly spoke of informal governance and state capture.
A slowdown in economic development, mainly reflected in the devaluation of the Georgian lari, led to a deterioration in the socioeconomic conditions of large segments of Georgian society. Without tangible economic improvements, disappointment in the political system will only increase.
Three different governments have introduced reforms: they modernized financial and public institutions, initiated the harmonization of Georgian legislation with EU regulations and made considerable progress in the fight against corruption.
https://www.bti-project.org/en/reports/country-dashboard-GEO.html
Transformation Atlas 2020
https://atlas.bti-project.org/1*2020*CV:CTC:SELGEO*CAT*GEO*REG:TAB

The past decade has seen the rapid expansion of economic ties between China and North Korea, leading to questions of whether this emerging relationship resembles neo-colonialism or a more positive form of South–South cooperation. This article argues that China's engagement is driven in the first instance by strategic considerations, namely the maintenance of the geopo-litical status quo on the Korean peninsula. However, North Korea has also become increasingly important in terms of Beijing's aims of revitalizing its northeastern region, and as such, economic relations are becoming increasingly market-led. Although this mode of engagement bears similarities with China's engagement elsewhere in the developing world, North Korea's catastrophic economic decline in the 1990s largely preceded the more recent revival of relations with China. We argue therefore that bilateral relations between the two countries cannot usefully be regarded as 'neo-colonial' since North Korea is receiving much needed trade and investment from China within the context of broader international isolation. As such, we suggest that more attention needs to be paid to how geopolitical specificities influence the manner in which South–South cooperation shapes the possibilities of development, and that the dichotomous terrain of the existing debate between optimistic and pessimistic viewpoints is unhelpful.

Transition Engineering: Building a Sustainable Future examines new strategies emerging in response to the mega-issues of global climate change, decline in world oil supply, scarcity of key industrial minerals, and local environmental constraints. These issues pose challenges for organizations, businesses, and communities. Engineers will need to begin developing ideas and projects to implement the transition of engineered systems. This work presents a methodology for shifting away from unsustainable activities. Teaching the Transition Engineering approach and methodology is the focus of the text, and the concept is presented in a way that engineers can begin applying it in their work.

Since the 2007–8 financial crisis and subsequent difficulties in the eurozone, Germany's recent economic history has been much studied. However, less attention has been paid to neoliberalisation in eastern Germany in the early 1990s, when the region became a laboratory for political economic experiments. The results were later spread across the (western) German economy, then into the European Union's (EU's) ideological core. As such, a focus on the western 'German model' and the EU can miss the way neoliberalism crept into German social and economic life through German re-unification in the 1990s. Re-unification provided conditions in the former East for a 'natural experiment' with different modes of economic and social governance – a space of exception from the West German model, whose corporatist features were already fraying in the 1980s. In short, re-unification was a turning point in a drift towards neoliberalism, intensifying moves already quietly under way in West Germany in the 1980s. The contentious nature of this shift has largely been forgotten and sidelined.

This report assesses potential threats and risks that could affect the implementation of the CPEC project in terms of insecurity and violence that pervade Pakistan, internal political and economic constraints, and also global and regional geostrategic impediments. The purpose is to understand and evaluate Pakistan’s security, political and economic environment and regional geostrategic dynamics in the medium to long term to explore feasibility prospects for the corridor and also to manage potential threats, if any, that could hamper the implementation. Most importantly, the report discusses the security aspect in detail in which the probability of threats vis-à-vis extremist militancy, nationalist insurgency and criminal violence are analyzed with the main focus on areas across Pakistan which will be traversed by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

The following thesis discusses the history of economic transitions in Georgia, starting from restoration of independence in 1991 following the fall of the USSR, and progressing towards efforts to establish a democratic state, to make a transition from command economy to the liberal market-one, and to integrate closely with the European Union. The thesis also overviews some political or societal factors, that influenced economic developments at the time.
First Chapter discusses the two main approaches of post-communist economic transition: Shock Therapy and Gradualism, briefly describes a classical example of Shock Therapy application in Poland, i.e. Balcerowicz Plan.
Second chapter examines the initial post-communist transition stages that took place in Georgia in the nineties mostly during Eduard Shevardnadze’s presidency. It overviews successful and unsuccessful reforms of Shock Therapy together with accumulated errors that set foundation for Rose Revolution of 2003.
Third chapter overviews the political “package”, that Mikheil Saakashvili inherited from previous administration and focuses on successful and infamous reforms carried out by his administration.
Fourth chapter explores the history of EU-Georgia relations, Georgia’s recent political developments and current stand on these relations, economic implications of signing DCFTA agreement and how DCFTA is different from FTA, how Georgia complies with the EU Economic Governance, and analyses the chances of Georgia’s preference of ECU over the EU.
The main conclusions are that domestic armed conflicts, declaration of independence by Abkhazia and South Ossetia, post-war infrastructural and social problems, massive corruption, inexistence of proper state institutions, lack of government’s cohesion and expertise on future economic strategies contributed to failure of Shock Therapy, which contributed to the happening of peaceful Rose Revolution. Even though the new government embarked upon a fast track of reforms to liberalize the market, eradicate corruption and harmonize domestic legal system with that of the EU, spontaneity, strategy inconsistency, populist programs, elite corruption and massive violation of human rights resulted in change of government in 2012. Nevertheless, Georgia has been dedicated to Eurointegration, especially after the Rose Revolution. Despite the raised fears about Russia’s actual leverage in the ENP countries right before when Georgia is about to sign Association Agreement with DCFTA component, Georgian government is positive about successful outcome. However, EU’s enlargement fatigue has produced discussions on ENP being a substitute for membership. Therefore, it should be kept in mind that the membership should, by no means, be the ultimate goal of Georgia, but rather approximation with the EU should be regarded as a means of becoming a truly European state or a state of European values.

This chapter seeks to deconstruct the implications of shifting security’s frame of reference from the state to the individual, and the potential for this scalar adjustment to be colonized by the purely economic goal of market preservation. These concerns are placed in the empirical context of Cambodia’s UN sponsored transition in the early 1990s, which effectively served as the pilot programme of the emerging human security agenda. The UN’s orchestration of the Cambodian ‘peace process’ is argued to have allowed the organization to formalize the newly minted human security doctrine during a self-congratulatory fervor that followed in the wake of what was presumed to be a successful transition to peace. However, the violence that swelled both during and after the transition reveals the human security discourse as deceptive, having very little to do with the prevention of violence other than in a rhetorical sense. Rather, the (in)actions of the international community in response to extrajudicial murders, threats of secession, electoral fraud, and coup d'état suggest that human security can be read as a pretext that effectively translates into the acceptance and promotion of the political status quo, as secured hegemony for the reigning political party means a secured marketplace open to foreign interests.

The field of transitional justice has faced several challenges in its relatively short life span. The latest of these challenges is the claim for broadening its scope to incorporate social justice– and development-related matters. And in just a few years, the possibility and adequacy of thicker or more holistic conceptions of transitional justice have become mainstream. Nonetheless, since their beginnings these new approaches have been subject to criticism from both within and outside the field. This article describes the trajectory of the scholarly debate on expanding transitional justice to encompass socioeconomic concerns, as well as its main limitations. It starts by exploring the main reasons that led to the historical marginalization of socioeconomic concerns in transitional justice theory and practice. It then considers the rationale for the implementation of broader approaches to transitional justice and closes with a discussion of the main challenges and limitations these proposals face.

The paper aims to reveal one integrated global map which points out the major geographical inequalities in providing basic utilities across the countries using multivariate analysis and thematic cartography. Sixteen indicators with global coverage were selected taking into account the waste collection services, sanitation facilities, drinking water sources, energy, electricity, habitat and demographic conditions. Several data are broken down for the total, urban and rural population in order to outline the rural-urban disparities between and within countries. A special focus is given to waste collection coverage, in order to compute a comprehensive global assessment of this key indicator of public health, which is one of the poorest monitored basic utility. The world countries were divided into 10 classes according to the hierarchical cluster analysis. Each class has particular features outlining the gaps between high, middle and low-income countries with direct impact on quality of life, public health, and environment.

This article quantifies the impact of incentives related to potential membership on institutional change as measured by the World Bank Governance Indicators. Based on a panel of 25 transition countries for the period from 1996 to 2008, we show that pre-accession incentives provided by EU and NATO clearly matter for institutional development. In addition, path-dependency determined by cultural norms may be overcome by economic liberalization, while foreign aid hampers institutional development.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a symptom of global industrial civilisation’s breaching of key planetary boundaries, which are critical to maintaining a safe operating space for human survival on the planet. The global economy has now entered a volatile new phase of chronic instability which can only be resolved through a transition to a ‘lifeboat economy’.

This must involve debt-free financing for the renewable energy transition, nationalisation and winding down of fossil fuel industries, as well as ecological restoration for clean manufacturing and agriculture. But most of all, we have to roll back the dangerous trajectory of deforestation through a radically different approach to commodities like palm oil to transition to sustainable production. That requires a new global pact on deforestation premised on ensuring that major commodities from beef to soy are produced within planetary boundaries based on consistent global standards.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed structural fragilities and interdependencies across global systems. But at the heart of these fragilities is the increasing dependence of industrial consumption on processes that are accelerating deforestation. That requires both enforcing sustainable practices by producers in the South while curtailing demand in the North.

The probability of a global pandemic was dramatically increased by relentless and unregulated industrial expansion, which has destabilized ecosystems critical for planetary life-support. The same processes are driving other ecological crises which threaten to permanently undermine the health of the global economy.

Without a transition to a ‘lifeboat economy’ where markets are “recalibrated” to protect public health and natural systems, humanity faces a heightening risk of cascading breakdowns across interconnected social, economic and political systems.

Buen Vivir, a political paradigm at work in Bolivia and Ecuador that underpins the state and social regeneration after a prolonged and devastating period of neoliberalism, has become a hotly contested subject within academia and politics. Although it has been categorized as decolonial, post-neoliberal, and post-developmentalist, recent developments suggest that the Ecuadorian government is turning toward a highly extractivist and modernist model based on bureaucratic and technocratic logics. This article focuses on the debate spurred around Buen Vivir, arguing that it has been employed as a cultural representation by many academics, politicians, and social agents, thus foreclosing the possibility of engaging in more grounded and pragmatic discussions and hindering the articulation of alternative political configurations. Accordingly, it seeks to shift the debate from epistemological questions about the conditions of knowledge to thinking the nature of the world ontologically from the perspective of Buen Vivir

Neoliberal policies explain why authoritarianism and violence remain the principal modes of governance among many ruling elites in posttransitional settings. Using Cambodia as an empirical case to illustrate the neoliberalizing process, the promotion of intense marketization is revealed as a foremost causal factor in a country's inability to consolidate democracy following political transition. Neoliberalization effectively acts to suffocate an indigenous burgeoning of democratic politics. Such asphyxiation is brought to bear under the neoliberal rhetoric of order and stability, which can be read through the (re)production of public space. The preoccupation with order and stability serves the interests of capital at the global level and political elites at the level of the nation-state. Citizens themselves may fiercely contest these particular interests in a quest for a more radical democracy, as evidenced by the burgeoning geographies of protest that have emerged in Cambodian public spaces in the posttransition era.

The fall of the so-called socialist economies, as well
as their transition to market economies, had one of the
most interesting and long lasted economic events of the
20th century. Recently, time series became long enough
to be analysed by modern econometric methods. With a
simple, two-equation, linear model we can analyse and
compare the fiscal policy of seventeen Eastern European
countries. The empirical testing of the two versions
of the model has been resulted a variegated picture
about the relation of the GDP and the government
expenditures. The Eastern European transition countries
are possessing very different features. The economic
processes are country specific and it is difficult to
elaborate even a simple economic model to apply for
this group of countries.