Why did a gradualist transition approach achieve different performances among socialist economies in the 1980s? Why did some socialist economies never try a gradualist approach to economic liberalization? This paper develops a model to show that the liberalization of a socialist economy has two opposite effects on the rent captured by government. The initial economic condition determines the relative strength of the two effects, and consequently the transition path and performance. In addition, a gradualist reform strategy adopted by a rent-seeking government cannot finish the transition toward a complete market economy. To achieve that goal, a new constitutional order and the rule of law are necessary.

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The aim of this study is to examine socio-economic transformation and gender relations in Lao PDR after the adoption of economic liberalization by the Lao government in the late 1980s. Against a background of general socio-economic transformation in Laos the main focus of the study is on the local level, with emphasis on how people in their everyday lives have engaged with and handled the changes. The application of economic liberalization shaped new conditions for people in local communities, and various livelihoods strategies were adopted under the new circumstances. The study examines gender relations, livelihoods and actors of change in two different contexts of globalization. The first context is the case of foreign direct investment in the Sepone mine, the largest gold-copper mine in the country located in Vilabury district, Savannakhet province. Five villages located close to the mine and directly affected by the operation were chosen as research site. The second case is the context of international tourism development in the small town of Vang Vieng, situated halfway between Vientiane Capital and the world heritage town of Luangprabang. The purpose with the two case studies is to examine how changes take place in different places of the same country under the same political direction and development policy. The study is inspired by theories of space and place and the view that phenomena are place-based and different places are constituted by different socio-spatial relations. The findings show that profound changes took place both in the economic and social-cultural spheres, including in gender relations. The two contexts experienced different processes of changes: in the context of Vilabury district, the transformation was produced through top-down development and created a dependency pattern where new social inequalities and social stratification emerged through unequal access to the new resources of the villagers. In the context of Vang Vieng and the expansion of international tourism, the development process proceeded more through a bottom-up pattern; the villagers perceived they were important actors of development, had more equal access to resources and could define livelihood strategies by themselves.

Les récentes crises économiques et financières mettent en débat les prescriptions de politiques dictées par les institutions financières internationales pour réguler les économies. Ces mêmes prescriptions de politiques économiques ont conduit à modifier l’organisation du système coton du Bénin dans le cadre des programmes d’ajustement structurel depuis 1991. L’objet de la thèse est d’analyser les effets de la libéralisation économique du système coton sur les règles de fonctionnement, les interrelations entre producteurs, la coordination économique et sur les mécanismes de prise de décisions, de choix de production et de répartition des ressources. Pour y répondre, nous avons mobilisé la théorie de l’économie institutionnelle dans sa version originelle avec une démarche comparative temporelle pour faire ressortir l’articulation marchand/non marchand. Nos résultats montrent que la stabilité institutionnelle et celle des transactions de répartition entre producteurs résultent de la formation de communautés d’acteurs qui ont encadré et contrôlé les relations marchandes et non marchandes en amont et en aval de la production cotonnière. En revanche, l’introduction de relations marchandes pour le contrôle des ressources dans la coordination depuis 2002 rend instable les institutions et les transactions de répartition. La multifonctionnalité du coton rendue possible par les institutions qui régulent les relations économiques des producteurs est négativement affectée. Il apparaît alors des tensions entre acteurs qui n’incitent plus à la production cotonnière ni aux productions non marchandes. A partir de différents niveaux de spécialisation cotonnière, les unités de production agricole adoptent de nouvelles stratégies quitte à remettre en cause les relations et valeurs de solidarité et la stabilité institutionnelle. Les choix de production et l’allocation des ressources sont déterminés simultanément par des considérations marchandes et l’appartenance à un groupe ou à une famille. La thèse conclut que si les institutions sont nécessaires pour la coordination économique et pour faire fonctionner les marchés, elles sont cependant amoindries lorsque les relations marchandes dominent les relations économiques. Il s’ensuit au cours des dernières années, une baisse de la production de coton qui fragilise l’économie du Bénin. Atteindre les objectifs de production cotonnière fixés par le gouvernement béninois suppose de conforter les institutions fragilisées par la libéralisation / Recent economic and financial crises have prompted discussion of economic policy requirements dictated by international financial institutions to borrowing countries. Such economic policy prescriptions have modified the organization of the cotton system in Beninwith structural adjustment programs since 1991. The objective of the thesis is to analyze how economic liberalization of the cotton system has affected working rules, interrelationships between producers, economic coordination, decision-making mechanisms, crop choice and the distribution of resources. To answer, we adopt a traditional institutional economics framework and use a temporal comparative approach to highlight the joint of market/ nonmarket relationships. Results show that the stability of institutions and the rationing transactions among producers had resulted from the formation of communities of actors which supervised and controlled market/ non-market relationships ahead and down stream production. However, greater competition for resources control in the coordination since 2002 has made the institutions and rationing transactions unstable. Cotton’s multifunctionality,which is enhanced by such institutions and the collective action of producers, is negatively affected. It appears tensions between actors which discouraged both cotton production and non-market production. At different levels of cotton production specialization, farms have adopted new strategies that threaten producer solidarity and institutional stability. Production decisions and resource allocations are both determined by market forces and by group or family memberships. The thesis concludes that strong institutions are necessary for economic coordination and for market regulation, and that they become weak when market forces dominate economic relationships. It follows that in recent years, liberalization has led to a decline in cotton production, which weakens the economy of Benin. Achieving the cotton production goals set by the government of Benin implies a need to strengthen the institutions weakened by recent liberalization

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This dissertation explores the process of foreign economic policy liberalization in Korea from 1980-2010. It accounts for variations in the degree of liberalization across sectors and issue areas through case studies centered on the policies related to trade, FDI, and finance. Sources of influences on this process such as democratization, the state’s developmental legacy, societal interests, ideational diffusion, and external stakeholders are incorporated into an analysis that identifies their impact on policy outcomes. This project looks at how significant changes in the internal and external parameters of the Korean economy generated coalitions favoring a more liberalized domestic economic order and those which sought to defend Korea’s state-centered, mercantilistic developmental model. It offers a detailed explication of the manner in which Korean policymakers sought to formulate political outcomes that accommodated a disparate array of actors with diverging preferences into the policy process, while seeking to serve their own particular multifaceted interests. It finds that while external and domestic proponents of reform were successful in pushing Korea into increasingly deeper levels of liberalization, these efforts were continually conditioned and often attenuated by the institutional legacies of the developmental era and the social forces that were unleashed by democratization. This left the Korean economy with a fragmented set of foreign economic policies that reflected the incomplete and highly contested liberalization reform initiatives that colored policymaking during this period. / Political Science

Economic reform packages became important for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) by the 1980s. Mainly as a result of the growing external debt, together with the regional stagnation that began after the second oil shock in the early 1980s, most of the MENA countries were affected by economic crisis. As a response to the economic crises, which also mostly resulted in regime legitimacy crises, many MENA countries initiated economic liberalization programs in cooperation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. In some of the Middle Eastern states, these economic liberalization processes were followed or accompanied by political liberalization policies. This thesis analyzes the political economy of reform in Jordan between 1989-2002 with reference to globalization. This thesis chooses Jordan as a case study since Jordan has been regarded as a successful case in implementing economic reforms envisaged in the Washington Consensus by the IMF and World Bank, and a country holding prospects for democracy. In this respect, this study seeks to find out why and how economic liberalization reforms were implemented in Jordan. In addition to that, this thesis displays how domestic and external factors affected both the rationale behind and the implementation of economic and political reforms in the country. The basic conclusion of this thesis is that regime survival is the main concern for the economic and political liberalization processes in Jordan.

Orientador: Prof. Dr. Vitor Eduardo Schincariol / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do ABC, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Humanas e Sociais, 2015. / Esta dissertação discute a questão do enfoque da chamada paradiplomacia com base no estudo de caso da cidade de São Paulo ao longo dos anos 1990 e 2000. Busca-se argumentar que as políticas adotadas na cidade de São Paulo neste período refletiram a vitória do neoliberalismo em escala local, tendo tais políticas sobrepujado eventuais iniciativas de internacionalização progressistas adotadas pelo poder público no mesmo período. Com base no estudo de caso e em nossa abordagem teórica, buscamos ponderar o alcance analítico da perspectiva da paradiplomacia para a realidade brasileira, ainda que sem refutá-lo de todo. Expõem-se também sua vinculação com a Teoria Neoliberal das Relações Internacionais, de Keohane e Nye. Por outro lado, apresenta-se uma perspectiva progressista acerca da internacionalização de cidades, concebida por militantes do "municipalismo internacionalista" do Partido dos Trabalhadores. A partir disso, é problematizado criticamente o conceito de paradiplomacia, através das reflexões trazidas pela Teoria do Sistema-Mundo, argumentando no plano teórico que a correlação de forças em âmbito internacional foi um elemento determinante das políticas no nível local no período e não o contrário. O quarto capítulo traz uma análise geral das políticas recentes da cidade de São Paulo de modo a argumentar a tese deste estudo, ou seja, que as políticas adotadas pela cidade no período foram de caráter neoliberal, refletindo opredomínio do neoliberalismo em escala global e nacional e sobrepujando os eventuais potenciais emancipatórios de uma política progressista de internacionalização da cidade. / This work aims to discuss the paradiplomacy approach based on the case study of the city of São Paulo, along the 1990's and 2000's. We argue that the policies adopted in São Paulo along this period reflected the adoption of neoliberal policies, overcoming the progressive internationalization policies adopted. Based on this case study and in our own theoretical approach, we aim to consider the analytical limits of the paradiplomacy approach to explain brazilian reality, even that we do not reject it completely. We show how this perspective originally was developed within the Neoliberal Theory of International Relations of Keohane and Nye. We also introduced the progressive perspective on the so called paradiplomacy given by militants of the "municipalismo internacionalista" from (Brazilian) Worker¿s Party (PT, Partido dos Trabalhadores). Through an analysis of the case of São Paulo we then sought to criticize the concept of paradiplomacy, from the perspective of World-Systems Theory, to argue that the balance of forces at the international level was a key element that determined the kind of policies adopted in the period. Chapter four provides a general analysis of the recent policies of the city of São Paulo in order to demonstrate the thesis of the study, namely that the policies adopted by the city in the period was neoliberal in its essence, reflecting the predominance of neoliberalism on a national and global scale and overwhelming the emancipatory potentials of the internationalization policies.

Esta dissertação ilustra como o regime fordista de acumulação brasileiro foi induzido à sua crise na década de oitenta, pelas políticas de ajuste econômico patrocinadas pelo FMI, e como na década seguinte a política de liberalização da economia terminou por reformatá-lo. Destacam-se as alterações estruturais na economia neste novo ambiente pós-fordista, e evidencia-se como este novo regime de acumulação não permitiu uma ampliação do produto e renda / This master dissertation elucidates how the Brazilian accumulation of fordist type was driven into its crisis in the eighties, by the adjustment policies of International Monetary Fund and how, during the nineties, the liberalization of economy put another one in curse, the so called post-fordist regime. The work approaches the structural changes of the Brazilian economy under this new post-fordist regime, and attempts to show how it was not able foster new economic growth, as expected