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19741. Religious Change and Women's Status in Latin America: A Comparison of Catholic Base Communities and Pentecostal Churches

Author:
Carol Ann Drogus
Publication Date:
03-1994
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The last 20 years have seen the emergence in Latin America of two religious trends that challenge the traditional Catholic culture. These are the Catholic comunidades eclesiales de base (base communities or CEBs) and Protestant pentecostal religious groups. The author examines the ways in which women's experiences in CEBs and pentecostal groups may change their gender attitudes and roles and describes the new forms of symbolic and participatory opportunities for women within each group. Do women respond to these opportunities by demanding greater access to traditionally male roles in the religious and public spheres? On the other hand, do women tend to gain greater stature and authority in their more traditional roles within the family as a result of their participation in religious groups? The author finds that while both CEB and pentecostal women reconceptualize gender roles, the two religious settings produce different outcomes. Due to the heterogeneity of available sources and methods, the analysis offers necessarily tentative conclusions. It does yield interesting and suggestive contrasts between the two religious groups, however, which can inform both theory and future empirical research.
Topic:
Religion, Women, Catholic Church, Society, and Gender
Political Geography:
Latin America

19742. The Politics of Economic Liberalization: Argentina and Brazil in Comparative Perspective

Author:
Robert A. Packenham
Publication Date:
04-1994
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The recent trends toward economic liberalization in Latin America provide an unusual opportunity to analyze a number of important questions in the political economy of development and underdevelopment. Why has virtually every Latin American country suddenly reversed the direction of the economic policies that had been in place for a full half-century or more? Why is the pace of such change rapid in some countries and slow in others? What are the already discernible and likely future consequences of such changes for development? What are their implications for theories of development and underdevelopment? What conceptual, theoretical, and methodological tools are available and fruitful for analyzing these topics? This paper examines these questions with particular reference to the difference in the pace of change toward economic liberalization between Argentina under Menem and Brazil under Collor.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Political Economy, Economic Growth, and Liberalization
Political Geography:
Brazil, Argentina, and Latin America

19743. Economic Integration in the Western Hemisphere: A Rapporteurs' Report

Author:
Caren Addis and Matthew A. Verghis
Publication Date:
04-1994
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper summarizes the discussion at an academic workshop titled "Economic Integration in the Western Hemisphere," held at the Kellogg Institute on 17 and 18 April 1993. Debate centered around an overview paper and papers on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the South American Common Market (Mercosur), the Andean Pact, the Chilean experience, the Central American countries, and the Caribbean group.
Topic:
NAFTA, Trade, Economic Integration, and Mercosur
Political Geography:
South America, Caribbean, North America, and Chile

19744. Entrepreneurial Response to Economic Liberalization and Integration: An Inquiry about Recent Events in Uruguay Aimed at Developing Better Hypotheses about Economic Behavior

Author:
Hugh Schwartz
Publication Date:
04-1994
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This study outlines behavioral hypotheses drawn from actual decision-making processes. It is based on in-depth interviews with decision-makers in manufacturing enterprises in a small, relatively conservative and stable Latin American country (Uruguay) and on detailed questionnaires given to members of those firms as well as to economic agents in government, the service sector, and labor unions whose activities may have influenced the enterprises' decision-making. The paper considers the responses to major new incentives that have accompanied an ongoing process of economic liberalization and integration. It offers the tentative conclusion that while serious perception and judgment problems do not characterize all areas, where they are present they are more important than generally recognized and distort decision-making. Some important problems are difficult to ascertain ex post, and there may be serious limits to the ability to verify a number of hypotheses except by direct involvement in the decision-making process.
Topic:
Development, Entrepreneurship, Economic Integration, and Liberalization
Political Geography:
South America and Uruguay

19745. Guidelines for Industrial Reconversion and Restructuring (with Application to Uruguay)

Author:
Hugh Schwartz
Publication Date:
04-1994
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper seeks to contribute to a more informed public discussion of the issues involved in industrial reconversion and industrial restructuring in developing countries, and makes special reference to recent efforts along those lines in Uruguay. It lists ten questions that might be raised and, after consideration of them, offers a series of recommendations and a conclusion that maintains that restructuring is a process involving social interaction, and thus that it can benefit by incorporating into the economic analysis elements from other behavioral social sciences. The discussion emphasizes the importance of often overlooked microeconomic policies in achieving reconversion/restructuring, reviews alternative concepts of restructuring, outlines the current debate on the determinants of dynamic competitive advantage and the techniques of gauging international competitiveness, and considers policies beyond trade liberalization to promote increased industrial productivity and industrial competitiveness.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Trade Liberalization, Trade, Economic Development, Industry, and Competition
Political Geography:
South America and Uruguay

19746. Economic Integration in the Asian Pacific: Issues and Prospects

Author:
Kwan S. Kim
Publication Date:
05-1994
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper examines the scope, broad principles, and characteristics of Pacific Asia's economic relationships and cooperation at the regional level. The author addresses the broad issue of whether Asian efforts for regional cooperation and integration have been compatible with similar arrangements elsewhere or with an open multilateral trading system at the global level. The paper also assesses the changing dynamics of regional integration and its future prospects and explores the possibilities and implications of Asian integration for the United States and the rest of the world.
Topic:
Development, Regional Cooperation, Regional Integration, and Economic Integration
Political Geography:
Asia-Pacific and United States of America

19747. The Political Underpinnings of Economic Liberalization in Chile

Author:
Timothy R. Scully
Publication Date:
07-1994
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The contemporary consensus over economic policy-making in Chile and the democratic government's capacity to effectively implement these policies are powerfully shaped by a combination of institutional legacies from Chile's democratic past and certain institutional holdovers from the Pinochet regime. This paper reviews briefly the performance of the Chilean economy under the Concertation government headed by Patricio Aylwin. It then argues that Chile's democratic government has been uniquely endowed with a capacity to successfully sustain economic liberalization, in part because of the reappearance of a well-institutionalized party system, in part because of certain nondemocratic limits built into the democratic game during the Pinochet regime. Over the medium term, however, these limits may pose a threat to the consensual style of politics that has come to characterize the post-Pinochet political arena in Chile, and ultimately may threaten democratic political stability if left unaddressed.
Topic:
Economics, Governance, Democracy, and Liberalization
Political Geography:
South America and Chile

19748. Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism

Author:
David Stark
Publication Date:
01-1994
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
In contrast to the problematic of transition, this paper sees social change not as the passage from one order to another but as rearrangement in the patterns of how a multiplicity of social orders are interwoven. From that perspective we see organizational innovation not as replacement but as recombination. The findings of field research in Hungarian firms. data on ownership of the largest Hungarian enterprises, and interviews with key policy makers in government. banking. and industry indicate the emergence of new property forms that are neither statist nor private, in which the properties of private and public are dissolved. interwoven. and recombined. Recombinant property is a form of organizational hedging, or portfolio management. in which actors are responding to extraordinary uncertainty in the organizational environment. For enterprise actors the question is not simply, "Will I survive the market test?" but also, under what conditions is proof of worth on market principles neither sufficient nor necessary to survive. Recombinant property is an attempt to have resources in more than one organizational form-or similarly-to produce hybrid organizational forms that can be justified or assessed by more than one standard of measure. The clash of competing organizational principles that characterizes post-socialist societies produces new organizational forms; and this organizational diversity can form a basis for greater adaptability. At the same time, however, this multiplicity of ordering principles creates problems of accountability. Accompanying the decentralized reorganization oj assets is a centralization of liabilities. Both processes blur the boundaries between public and private. On the one hand, privatization produces the criss-crossing lines of recombinant property; on the other, debt consolidation transforms private debt into public liabilities. Whereas in the state socialist economy paternalism was based on the state's attempts at the centralized management of assets, in the first years of the post-socialist economy paternalism is based on the state's attempts at the centralized management of liabilities.
Topic:
Capitalism, Property, Social Change, and Post-Communism
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, and Hungary

19749. Not Even One

Publication Date:
02-1994
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Carter Center
Abstract:
We gathered at The Carter Center, 26 people from various fields and disciplines, all concerned with protecting and lengthening the lives of children, to seek a path forward amid the carnage of our children caused by firearms. What could be done to stem the hemorrhage in the streets?
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States

19750. Report of the Commission on Radio and Television Policy: Volume 6, Number 2

Publication Date:
09-1994
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Carter Center
Abstract:
In September 1994, the Commission on Radio and Television Policy, bringing together the New Independent States, Poland, the Czech Republic, and the United States, met in St. Petersburg, Russia, to discuss the most important policy issue of the electronic media: how to strengthen the independence of radio and television. The members of the Commission represented several different approaches and types of government, but, in the end, there was unanimous agreement on a communiqué urging all parties to defend and extend autonomy of the media.
Topic:
Democratization and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Europe, and Asia