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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Getting Institutions Right: Matching Institutional Capacities To Developmental Tasks, Jacob I. Ricks, Richard F. Doner Mar 2021

Getting Institutions Right: Matching Institutional Capacities To Developmental Tasks, Jacob I. Ricks, Richard F. Doner

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Since the 1990s, scholars and international organizations such as the World Bank have recognized the centrality of institutions for development. While important, this “institutional turn” has generally minimized the diversity of development challenges and the corresponding need for different institutional capacities. Yet distinguishing among developmental tasks is a critical step in understanding the kinds of institutions necessary to accomplish policy tasks. We identify five dimensions of task difficulty that affect the degree and nature of policy challenges and, as a result, the institutional capacities necessary to accomplish such challenges. We assess the utility of this framework through a qualitative analysis …


Tackling Covid-19 In Thailand, Singapore Management University Feb 2021

Tackling Covid-19 In Thailand, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

How can the country balance the need to restart the economy and keeping another wave of infections at bay?


Becoming Citizens: Policy Feedback And The Transformation Of The Thai Rice Farmer, Jacob Ricks, Thanapan Laiprakobsub Jan 2021

Becoming Citizens: Policy Feedback And The Transformation Of The Thai Rice Farmer, Jacob Ricks, Thanapan Laiprakobsub

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Over the past twenty years, Thailand’s rice farmers have become one of the country’s most important and active political constituencies, a sharp contrast from the previous decades wherein they were treated with neglect or even derision by the Thai political elite. These “political peasants” now actively advocate for and successfully receive extensive subsidies from both authoritarian and democratic governments. What has driven this change? In this essay, we draw on theories of the policy feedback loop wherein policies yield both material and cognitive benefits, which change the political behavior of populations. We argue that the Thaksin Shinawatra government’s (2001-2006) paddy …