1992: Volume 23
Volume 23 Number 4 October 1992
Edited by: Robin Murray
One of the least contentious issues in post war development thinking was the form of public administration. There were disputes about the boundaries between public and private, but not about how the public sector should be run. Most newly independent states adopted a model based closely on metropolitan and colonial forms of administration, or, in the case of socialist countries, on the Soviet system. What is striking are the similarities between capitalist and socialist forms of administration, and the common influences which shaped them - earlier absolutist regimes on the one hand, and modern business organization on the other.
1993: Volume 24
Volume 24 Number 1 January 1993
Edited by: Mick Moore
It is little more than three years since the Berlin Wall began to crumble. In that time, the political context and content of development aid to the Third World has changed rather dramatically. 'Political conditionality' the tying of official aid disbursements to the quality of government (or 'governance') that recipients provide has become the norm. The idea of relating foreign aid to the type or quality of government has a long history. However, it has been applied only sporadically and inconsistently; and, in practice, it was often a matter of supporting one's actual or potential allies in the Cold War context.
Volume 24 Number 2 May 1993
Edited by: John Humphrey
Studies of reorganization among large firms, the focus of this Bulletin, has been stimulated by the increasing dominance of Japanese industry and the attempts to introduce Japanese methods into Europe and North America. Japanese firms have been very successful in manufacturing, and a large part of this success has been attributed to the way large Japanese firms are organized - their management structures, their links with supplier companies and the way they organize production activities on the factory floor. Many Western firms are desperately trying to find out the 'secret' of Japanese success and adopt many elements of Japanese practices themselves. In this literature there is a varying emphasis on interfirm and intra-firm organization.
Volume 24 Number 3 July 1993
Edited by: Gordon White
This Bulletin stems from a dissatisfaction with the way in which the idea of 'the market' or 'the free market' is currently used in conventional discourse on development issues. One notion is particularly dominant, implicitly or explicitly: 'the market' seen as a flexible, atomistic realm of impersonal exchange and dispersed competition, characterized by voluntary transactions on an equal basis between autonomous, usually private, entities with material motivations.
Volume 24 Number 4 October 1993
Edited by: Jeremy Swift
Famine is a preventable tragedy. Unlike poverty or chronic food insecurity, famine could probably be eliminated rapidly by a quite simple set of policies. Such policies might be politically feasible. So the abolition of famine is a realistic goal, perhaps by the end of this decade. There are several reasons why this politically uncontroversial goal will probably not be achieved in practice. One is the continuing insufficiency of good theory about the causes of famine, of good empirical and comparative research, and of good experiments, especially in Africa, with anti-famine policies. This IDS Bulletin, is concerned with how these deficiencies could be remedied.
