Job Destruction and Closures in Deindustrializing Britain: The Uses and Decline of Workplace Occupations in the 1980s

This article considers the uses and decline of workplace occupations in the 1980s. Developing the contribution by Alan Tuckman on the rise of occupations in the 1970s, attention is given to the structural factors that can explain the reasons why workers’ uses of the tactics have declined since the period. Focusing on the wider context and two contrasting cases (the 1980 Gardner and 1984 Cammell Laird occupations), this article advances six key reasons why this decline has taken place. First, the decline of manufacturing and rising unemployment in the 1980s; second, an overall decline in strikes more generally in terms of their incidence and duration; third, anti-union legislation and policing; fourth, the lack of a positive demonstration effect with regard to ‘successful’ examples of occupations in the 1980s; fifth, the decline of debates around alternative forms of ownership, including nationalization and the incipient workers’ control/cooperatives movement; and sixth, the decline of the far left and the networks that had sustained occupations to some extent in the 1970s and 1980s.

Countries in the hamster’s wheel?: Nurkse- Duesenberry demonstration effects and the determinants of saving.

Throughout the world, stable regional patterns relating to private savings are hard to access. This article revisits the hypothesis that, as there is evidence of emulation patterns between consumers, there might be international (macroeconomic) “emulation”. We test demonstration effect theories exploiting international data on savings, incomes, and means of global exposure. We use two methods of media communication given that their penetration peaked at different times in the sample period: TV and internet were a means of discovering foreign consumption standards. With the resulting country panels, we find some evidence in favour of a statistically significant negative association for the demonstration effect.

Creating Useful and Usable Weather and Climate Information: Insights from Participatory Scenario Planning in Malawi

For climate information to be used at the grassroots level, it needs to be understood, collectively interpreted and effectively communicated. Participatory Scenario Planning (PSP) is one method of co-producing useful and usable sectoral and livelihood advisories for decision-makers, based on locally downscaled weather (typically seasonal forecasts). The chapter outlines an initial investigation into the history and application of PSP in Malawi, finding that it can generate useful and usable information that is deemed credible, legitimate and salient by its intended users. Its usability is reinforced through the demonstration effect which leads to even sceptical farmers adopting it after they have witnessed proof of its effectiveness from early adopters. In Malawi, the sustainability of PSP is threatened due to limited integration in planning frameworks and reliance on projects, hence need for a mechanism to ensure its regular occurrence and embeddedness in formal governance structures.

Do Global Norms Matter?

This chapter examines the role of global norms in institutional change. The nature and extent of the impact of global norm diffusion on the domestic discourse is traced in this chapter. The global–national processes around global norms on transparency, accountability, and access to information are spread over two phases outlined in this manuscript. This chapter shows that while the transparency norms evolved endogenously, they benefitted from the demonstration effect of international norms. At the same time the endogenous movement of ideas played a substantial role in localizing the global norms. Norm diffusion in this case was not part of the coercive conditionalities of multilateral agencies; it was adapted in conjunction with the ideational churning at the national level.

Keeping up with the Joneses: the Relevance of Duesenberry’s Relative Income Hypothesis in Ethiopia

Although it was mysteriously neglected and displaced by the mainstream consumption theories, the Duesenberry’s relative income hypothesis seems quite relevant to the modern societies where individuals are increasingly obsessed with their social status. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate the relevance of Duesenberry’s demonstration and ratchet effects in Ethiopia using a quarterly data from 1999/2000Q1-2018/19Q4. To this end, two specifications of relative income hypothesis are estimated using Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) regression model. The results confirm a backward-J shaped demonstration effect. This implies that an increase in relative income induces a steeper reduction in Average Propensity to consume (APC) at lower income groups (the demonstration effect is stronger for lower income households). The results also support the ratchet effect, indicating the importance of past consumption habits for current consumption decisions. In resolving the consumption puzzle, the presence of demonstration and ratchet effects reflects a stable APC in the long-run. Hence, consumption-related policies should be carefully designed as polices aimed at boosting aggregate demand can motivate low income households to gallop into wasteful competition so as to ‘keep up with the Joneses’—the relative riches.

Revisiting the Egyptian Uprising of 2011: Exploring the Role of Relational Networks within the Cairo-Based Political Opposition

Revisiting the Egyptian Uprising of 2011, I argue that strong relational networks linking actors in the broader Cairo-based political opposition—a conglomerate of prodemocracy movement organizations—should be understood as a necessary, albeit insufficient, causal condition for the diffusion of protest. These networks fulfilled two essential functions. 1) They were critical in terms of professionally socializing a new generation of activists—many of whom would become early riser participants during the initial protests on January 25, 2011. 2) The networks allowed for critically important coordination of and mobilization for the protests as they cut across boundaries of individual social and protest movement organizations. Based on 55 semi-structured interviews, I trace the genesis of these relational networks during the first decade of the new millennium, showing how a coalition of actors sought to capitalize on a transnational demonstration effect triggered by the Tunisian Revolution. This group—linked by dense relational networks—then functioned as early risers during the initial stages of the uprising and encouraged other segments of Egyptian society to join the protests and to openly challenge a regime that had often been regarded as impenetrable to popular demands for socio-political change from below.

Why Democracy Protests Do Not Diffuse

One of the primary international factors proposed to explain the geographic and temporal clustering of democracy is the diffusion of democracy protests. Democracy protests are thought to diffuse across countries, primarily, through a demonstration effect, whereby protests in one country cause protests in another based on the positive information that they convey about the likelihood of successful protests elsewhere and, secondarily, through the actions of transnational activists. In contrast to this view, we argue that, in general, democracy protests are not likely to diffuse across countries because the motivation for and the outcome of democracy protests result from domestic processes that are unaffected or undermined by the occurrence of democracy protests in other countries. Our statistical analysis supports this argument. Using daily data on the onset of democracy protests around the world between 1989 and 2011, we find that in this period, democracy protests were not significantly more likely to occur in countries when democracy protests had occurred in neighboring countries, either in general or in ways consistent with the expectations of diffusion arguments.