The New Asian Development Finance

The recent challenges posed for multilateralism and the emergence of a sustainable development regime have pushed countries to engage in more flexible, issue-based development finance initiatives and institutions. These changes have profoundly impacted how China conceives and delivers its development finance. How is China’s development finance being shaped by other countries’ experiences? How has China been shaping development finance globally? This article argues that China’s development finance has been increasingly market-oriented, concerned about financial and environmental sustainability, and delivered through hybrid bilateral–multilateral channels, particularly since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative. Shaped by the changes that China experienced at both international and domestic levels, these new features signal the rise of a ‘new Asian development finance’ that is refocusing the global debate on the importance of combining aid, trade, and investment under financially and environmentally sustainable frameworks, and channelling development finance through multilateral channels to catalyse structural transformation.

Political Stability in Africa: A Cross-National Analysis

The main objective of this paper is to test the influence of Africa’s founding fathers and the impact of British colonial legacy on the political stability of Africa. We relied on a sample of 50 African countries and employed cross-sectional research designs, which covered two separate periods (1960–1989 and 1990–2018). Using logistic regression and OLS estimators and controlling for French colonial legacy, economic development, regime type, ethnic heterogeneity, and ethnic polarization, we found that the founding fathers were conducive to Africa’s political stability between 1960 and 2018. We also found that British colonial legacy had some impact on former British colonies’ stability between 1960 and 2018. In addition, GDP per capita had a significant impact on Africa’s political stability over the two periods.

Two Key Ocean Governance Challenges for Sao Tome and Principe

Living resources directly support the livelihood of coastal communities in Sao Tome e Principe, while oil and gas reserves are needed to improve economic growth. Yet these resources are widely coveted, resulting in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, as well as illegal oil bunkering and theft of crude oil. STP has settled its maritime boundaries with Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, but not with Nigeria. Instead, the two countries agreed on a joint development regime in the disputed maritime area, albeit unsuccessfully. This article examines two key challenges currently facing STP: unblocking the STP-Nigeria joint development agreement and addressing IUUF.

Live or be left to die? Deregulated bodies and the global production network: Expendable workers of the Bangladeshi apparel industry in the time of Covid

This paper draws upon the experience of mainly women workers in the Bangladeshi apparel industry to explore whether deregulated bodies are the fundamental condition of work in the global production network (GPN). We organised the study during the first waves of Covid-19. To conceptualise how ‘deregulated bodies’ have been structured into the industry as the exchange condition of work, we draw on the work of transnational feminist and Marxist scholars. The study provides insights about how a gendered GPN emerged under the neoliberal development regime; the pattern of work and work conditions are innately linked to volatile market conditions. By documenting workers’ lived experiences, the paper enhances our empirical understanding of how workers depend upon work, and how a form of expendable but regulated life linked with work has been embedded in GPN. Our findings reveal that unlike those of other human beings, workers’ bodies do not need to be regulated by norms that enable protection from Covid-19. As for the workers, work implies earning for living and survival, so ‘live or be left to die’ becomes the fundamental employment condition, and the possibility of their death an overlooked consideration. This reality has not changed or been challenged, despite the existence of compliance regimes. We further argue that as scholars, we bear a responsibility to consider how we engage in research on the implications of such organisation practices in a global environment, when all of us are experiencing the pandemic.

Bridges and Borders: Entanglements of Conservation—Conservation is Development in the Forests of Nagarahole Tiger Reserve, India

The relationship between conservation and development has undergone extensive scrutiny, primarily because of they appear to be antagonistic. Recent work points instead to their complex intermingling, such as the potential economic benefits of conservation. In this article, I argue that conservation is an inherent part of the development regime. I argue this by describing conservation practices in Nagarahole Tiger Reserve that reliy on scientific governance, an essential mechanism of the development regime. I trace this regime from its inception in the colonial period through forestry operations to its continuance in the conservation regime instituted post-independence. However, despite their co-evolution, this relationship is neither simple nor straightforward. I show how everyday governance draws on customary practices and experiential knowledge of local communities inhabiting Nagarahole. This aspect is devalourized in the official governance regime to the extent that these communities are disenfranchized from their lands. By establishing conservation as development, I suggest that conservation projects should be subjected to the same level of scrutiny and examination usually allocated to development projects, which are associated with exploitation, control and drastic modification of the landscapes we inhabit.

Infrastructure finance, late development, and China’s reshaping of international credit governance

How is the rise of China affecting international governance? This paper examines the domain of infrastructure finance by focusing on China’s two policy banks, which are the main creditors of China’s overseas infrastructure projects. While the incumbent international credit regimes led by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) distinguish development-oriented aid from commercially oriented export credits, emerging late-developed economies blur this dichotomy by largely funding development projects with state-backed export credits. The way China alters the OECD’s credit governance, this paper argues, demonstrates both the generality of late development and the peculiarity of “Chinese” development. Rather than directly subsidizing firms’ international business with the state’s fiscal revenue, policy banks financialized host country’s state-owned and state-coordinated assets using various market instruments. By doing so, they gave Chinese firms a comparative advantage in the markets of less developed regions, allowing them to undertake projects that firms from advanced industrial countries cannot. This financing mechanism has reshaped the international development regime by transforming the dominant means of credit allocation from state-led aid-giving to market-based exchange, and rewritten the liberal rules of the international export credit regime by financing the developing world in a both statist and liberalist manner. As a result, China has built a paralleled regime in regions insufficiently covered by the existing financial schemes of incumbent credit regimes.

Socio-economic functions of priority development areas and their implementation in the ecosystem of the Russian Far East

Subject. We investigate the functions of priority development areas created in the subjects of the Russian Far East. Objectives. The study aims to determine the functional purpose of such areas and assess how they fulfill their socio-economic functions. Methods. We employ methods of generalization, systematization, sampling and grouping of socio-economic indicators of organizations and sole proprietors that have been granted the status of residents of priority development areas, methods of statistical, economic, correlation, and regression analysis. Results. The analysis shows that the regions of the Russian Far East have been intensively developing over the recent years. This leads to changes in the volume of investment, GRP and its structure, fixed assets, and created jobs. The paper identifies the main functions of priority development areas and includes findings on their implementation. Conclusions. At the initial stage of advanced development regime, there have been positive trends associated with a growth in investment inflows (Amur Oblast, Primorsky Krai), increased labor resources and employment expansion (Primorsky Krai, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), export orientation of projects (Amur Oblast, Khabarovsk Krai), production ramp-up in manufacturing (Primorsky and Khabarovsk Krai, Amur Oblast), modernization and renewal of fixed assets (Sakhalin Oblast, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).

Public administration tools: Forecasting vs Designing

The article discusses the expediency of abandoning the tool of social forecasting in the practice of public administration in favor of planning and design methods. The methodological basis rests on the conceptual imperative of the impossibility to produce adequate forecasts in the modern world, which is supported by such respected researchers as Douglas North, George Soros, Nassim Taleb and Arnold Toynbee. The fairness of this thesis is illustrated using methods of comparison and analysis. The study analyses the main factors that cast doubt on the possibility and expediency of preserving the tool of social prognostics: the failure of the scenario forecast format; the need for foreknowledge of events rather than values of traditional macro-parameters; the extension of Arnold Toynbee’s principle from a historical retrospective to studying the prospects; the economic growth rate indicator (GDP) losing its indicative universality and the emergence of alternative measures of social development (Gross National Happiness, culture and environment preservation); critical attitude of the intellectual elite to the possibility of social forecasting; unreliability of the source statistics; the expectation of the end of economic growth, a change in the development regime and quantitative forecasting devaluation by the leading experts – Douglas North, Robert Lucas, Tom Piketty, Richard Heinberg; the completion of the mission of capitalism in the form of the Neo-Malthusian trap and robotomics (mass introduction of robots to the economy). The authors prove that amid fading interest in traditional forecasting, alternative prognostication methods are emerging, such as planning, designing, futurology, foresight and strategic intelligence. Devaluation of forecast tools leads to the need to change the old doctrine of public administration, based on forecast documents, to a new one implying a transition to active construction of the future through directive designing and planning. The theoretical and practical significance of the study lies in substantiating the principles of a new management system: expanding the planning and design horizon (up to 30 years); introducing a mechanism for implementing plans and projects; introducing mechanisms for pre-project foresight; creating a twolevel economic management system; and moving from the quantity paradigm to the quality one.