Political Economy Commons^™

Critique And Transformation: On The Hypothetical Nature Of Ecosystem Service Value And Its Neo-Marxist, Liberal And Pragmatist Criticisms, Andony P. Melathopoulos, Alex Stoner

Journal Articles

Ecosystem service valuation (ESV) attempts to transform the opposition of human economic necessity and ecological conservation by valuing the latter in terms of the services rendered by the former. However, despite a number of ESV-inspired sustainability initiatives since the 1990s, global ecological degradation continues to accelerate. This suggests that ESV has fallen far short of its goals of sustainable social transformation—a failure which has generated considerable criticism. This paper reviews three prominent lines of ESV criticism: 1) the neo-Marxist criticism, which emphasizes the “fictitious” character of ecosystem commodities; 2) the liberal criticism through Friedrich Hayek's concept “scientistic objectivism”; and 3) …

Book Review Of: Why Nations Fail, Ashutosh Mani Dixit

Business Review

The purpose of this article is to assess the contribution of Why Nations Fail about its forefront claim that institution is exclusive determinant of nation’s economic outcome. This paper will examine its findings and put forward arguments and claims of prominent studies about economic development. The paper has been organized in two more section. Immediate section presents chapter wise summary of the book highlighting strengths and key outcomes. While the third section, which is the purpose of the article, offers a critique, than sums up in final section providing some concluding comments.

Does The Message Matter? A Field Experiment On Political Party Recruitment, Jessica Robinson Preece

Faculty Publications

Do men and women respond to various party recruitment messages similarly? Working with the Utah County Republican Party, we designed a field experiment in which we invited over 11,600 male and female party activists to attend a free, party-sponsored “Prospective Candidate Information Seminar” by randomizing different invitation messages. We found that women were half as likely as men to respond to recruitment—log on to the seminar website for more information, register for the seminar, and attend the seminar. While we found some suggestive evidence about what recruitment messages may particularly motivate women or men vis-a-vis a control message, our findings …

Pushing The Limits: International Land Acquisitions In Comparative Perspective, Ariane Goetz

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The role of investor countries in large-scale land acquisitions is poorly understood in the contemporary “land grab” literature. Orthodox explanations largely build on deductive analyses that deviate from the emerging empirical evidence, and/or face analytical difficulties when trying to capture why large-scale land acquisitions happen. This thesis investigates the global phenomenon of “land grabbing” from the comparative perspective of two major investor countries: the UK and China. The regional focus is on Sub-Saharan Africa, a major target of land-consuming investments since 2000.

The dissertation advances three arguments: Firstly, the specific details of the home country’s industrial set-up, development challenges, ideological …

The Role Of Soviet Invasion Of Afghanistan In The Breakdown Of The Ussr, Ezoza Nomazova

Undergraduate Research Posters

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was one of the biggest historic events of XX century. Much like the Roman Empire, the USSR breakdown was due to an aggregate of factors, some internal, and some foreign. Unlike, the Roman Empire, the Soviet Empire collapsed suddenly. Among the reasons for the fall of the Union, the invasion of Afghanistan was one of the poorest decisions that was made by the Soviet government. What factors did this event contribute to the fall of the USSR?

The Russian invasion of Afghanistan had big impact on the attitude of the developing countries …