scholarly journals Perverse incentives and the political economy of South African academic journal publishing

2018 ◽  
Vol 114 (11/12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyan G. Tomaselli
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
South African ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Research Impact ◽  
Journal Editor ◽  
Academic Publishing ◽  
Academic Journal ◽  
Voluntary Work ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Perverse Incentives

Academic publishing in South Africa attracts a state research incentive for the universities to which the authors are affiliated. The aim of this study was twofold: (1) to examine the composition of the research value chain and (2) to identify the effects of broken links within the chain. The methodology selected was a lived cultural economy study, which was constructed through incorporating dialogue with editors, authors and researchers in terms of my own experience as a journal editor, read through a political economy framework. The prime effect is to exclude journals, especially independent titles, from directly earning publishing incentives. The behaviour of universities in attracting this variable income is discussed in terms of rent-seeking which occurs when organisations and/or individuals leverage resources from state institutions. Firstly, this process commodifies research and its product, publication. Secondly, the value chain is incomplete as it is the journals that are funding publication rather than – in many cases – the research economy funding the journals. Thirdly, authors are seeking the rewards enabled by the incentive attached to measurement systems, rather than the incentive of impacting the discipline/s which they are addressing. Fourthly, the paper discuses some policy and institutional matters which impact the above and the relative costs between open access and subscription models. Editors, journals and publishers are the un- or underfunded conduits that enable the transfer of massive research subsidies to universities and authors, and, in the case of journals, editors’ voluntary work is the concealed link in the value chain enabling the national research economy. Significance: The South African scientific publishing economy is built on a foundation of clay: this economy distorts research impact and encourages universities and academics to commoditise output.

scholarly journals The competitive status of the South African Wheat Industry

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 651-666 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Van der Merwe ◽  
Philippus Cloete ◽  
Herman Van Schalkwyk
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Competitive Advantage ◽  
South African ◽  
Wheat Flour ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Institutional Environment ◽  
The South ◽  
Wheat Market ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Trade Partners

This article investigates the competitiveness of the South African wheat industry and compares it to its major trade partners. Since 1997, the wheat-to-bread value chain has been characterised by concentration of ownership and regulation. This led to concerns that the local wheat market is losing international competitiveness. The competitive status of the wheat industry, and its sub-sectors, is determined through the estimation of the relative trade advantage (RTA). The results revealed declining competitiveness of local wheat producers. Compared to the major global wheat producers, such as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany and the USA, South Africa’s unprocessed wheat industry is uncompetitive. At the same time, South Africa has a competitive advantage in semi-processed wheat, especially wheat flour. The institutional environment enables the importation of raw wheat at lower prices and exports processed wheat flour competitively to the rest of Africa.

Protecting taxpayer information from the public protector – A ‘just cause’?

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-211
Author(s):  
Fareed Moosa
Keyword(s):  
Shock Waves ◽  
South African ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Criminal Sanction ◽  
Just Cause ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gain Access

Under the Tax Administration Act, 2011 (TAA), taxpayers enjoy a right to privacy of information disclosed to the South African Revenue Service (SARS). This note shows that tax officials are obliged to protect the secrecy thereof. It is argued that the Commissioner for the SARS correctly resisted compliance with a subpoena issued by the Public Protector for access to the records of former President Jacob Zuma. If it acquiesced without objection, shock waves would have reverberated through South Africa’s tax community. It is contended that the Commissioner’s decision to maintain taxpayer secrecy under pain of a potential criminal sanction contributed to restoring some of the lost confidence and respect for the SARS which has, in recent times, endured reputational damage owing to internal squabbles which morphed into public scandals. This note hypothesises that CSARS v Public Protector is good authority for the proposition that governmental departments and state institutions not expressly mentioned in s 70 of the TAA do not have statutory rights of access to taxpayer information and must, to gain access, follow due process. This note argues that the judgment in casu is not only a victory for taxpayer rights but also for the rule of law.

Multinational Enterprise, Innovation, and Development: Theoretical Perspectives

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick J. W. Egan
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Development ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Multinational Firms ◽  
Multinational Enterprise ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Business Studies ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Prior Literature ◽  
Enterprise Innovation

This chapter provides the theoretic background and working hypotheses for the empirical tests that follow in subsequent chapters. The book is informed by substantial literature in several academic subfields, including but not limited to international political economy, international business studies, development economics, and global value chain research. This chapter builds a cumulative theoretic framework for interpreting multinational innovation and comparative institutionalist perspectives. Prior literature and debate inform the hypotheses presented in this chapter, which involve both country and firm level attributes and resulting investment patterns. The chapter considers ideas from international development studies regarding the role of multinational firms in processes of country growth and technological upgrading, theories of the firm and contemporary pressures for polycentric innovation models, and institutionalist perspectives from political science and political economy. This chapter also provides working definitions for key concepts and how institutions might be analytically separated from host country policies. The chapter emphasizes the theoretic support for the causal mechanisms supposed in the various hypotheses.

Melodrama Remediated

2014 ◽  
pp. 190-208
Author(s):  
Katherine C. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
English Language ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
First Century ◽  
Academic Publishing ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Uncle Tom's Cabin ◽  
Dion Boucicault ◽  
Market Practices ◽  
A New Species

This chapter reconsiders some tenets of Genette's insightful framework for analyzing paratexts, by examining the transformation of paratexts on one kind of published play—a cheaper, nineteenth-century, English-language “Acting Edition”—after remediation into digital form for new purposes: not for producing theatre, but for studying old drama. Invoking Aiken's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Dion Boucicault plays as examples of general patterns, the author first fill in gaps in the inventory of print paratexts, delineating a species of theatrical paratext different from the literary paratexts spotlighted by Genette, that, together with the publisher's commercial communications, referred away from the single author or drama and rendered the publication into a hybrid literary-practical commodity. Moving to the twenty-first century, the chapter touches briefly on the pre-digital academic publishing formats, print anthologies and facsimile microform, which involved paratextual and market practices variously inherited by digital successors. While acknowledging the diverse array of digitized playbooks, the chapter concentrates on the proprietary database Literature Online produced by the Chadwyck-Healey division of a conglomerate corporation ProQuest, couching the remediated play paratexts within shifts in global capitalism. These for-profit paratexts partly reveal their political economy basis in fusion with the ideologies of the academic market and the materiality of their medium, including a new species of partly visible protocols that the author calls actuating marks. Overall, the chapter uses old melodrama to open new views of the performances of paratexts across textual media and embedded in political economy.

The Politics of the Judiciary

2020 ◽  
pp. 206-228
Author(s):  
Mike McConville ◽  
Luke Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Judicial Independence ◽  
The Political ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Political Character ◽  
Held Back

A foundational theme of this chapter is the refutation of the generalized claim that judges are ‘independent’ and free from political influence. In reconsidering the institutional realities of judicial independence, it contests the views and theories advanced by leading commentators whom have sought to show that judges are ‘political’, not least Professor J A G Griffith in his seminal, The Politics of the Judiciary. Other theorists considered include Alan Paterson, Robert Stevens, David Robertson, and Harry Annison. The chapter critically reviews the strengths and weaknesses of such theories and demonstrates instead how the ‘political’ character of judges may be explicated by empirical data drawn from internal governmental files rather than previously favoured methodologies. Contrary to these widely adopted accounts, this chapter posits that throughout the last century, a cadre of senior judges in criminal cases have been overtly political in a way previously not understood. Senior judges, it is argued, have had a dynamic involvement in building state institutions and state ideology: working in secret with the executive in formulating policing policies, initiating far-reaching change in the political economy of criminal justice, and setting the agenda for successive legislative interventions, underpinned by a state bias, having held back rights for suspects and defendants and commandeered the process of subjugating the Bar.

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