1974: Volume 6
Volume 6 Number 1 January 1974
Edited by: Jake Jacobs and Bernard Schaffer
This issue of the Bulletin comprises a digest of some of the research completed during the past two years by members of the Planning and Government Problem Area Group (PGPAG), at the Institute of Development Studies. It does not include descriptions of all the work which was done over this time. There was, for example, research into rural development policies in Ghana, regional developments funds in Tanzania and a comparison of local government systems in Tanzania and Cameroon. In addition, work was also done on the use and development of decision-making games and simulations.
1973: Volume 5
Volume 5 Number 1 January 1973
Edited by: Clive Bell
Those who still entertained fond hopes that UNCTAD, in its present form, could help bring about a more equitable distribution of income among the world's nations should have few remaining illusions after the third conference in Santiago.
There is little doubt that the obdurate selfishness of the rich proved to be a major stumbling block to progress on most issues. Even the better-informed sections of the western press conveyed as much, though in guarded terms. Yet a fundamentally practical question remains: Is a regular but infrequent jamboree, at which national representatives must find it difficult to do otherwise than declaim and posture, the right setting for the long, difficult and patient negotiations of agreements required to achieve a more just distribution of world income? Past experience suggests that new initiatives and approaches are now called for. The single forum for bargaining needs to be split up into a number of much smaller ones each with terms of reference which are specialised and perhaps, in certain cases, related to regions, trade blocs or other groupings.
Agreements on trade in commodities show the way forward in the matters of trade in manufactures and the reform of the international monetary system. In all this, there would be a prominent role for the present UNCTAD secretariat, the work of which has acquired a well-deserved reputation for depth and analytical force.
1972: Volume 4
Volume 4 Number 4 July 1972
Edited by: David Scott-Palmer
This Bulletin looks at Conflict and Aid in a number of different countries, namely:
It also looks at Foreign Military Assistance and Political Attitudes in Developing African Countries.
Volume 4 Number 2-3 March 1972
Edited by: Dudley Seers
Income distribution is a confusing term. What scope is it to be given? Is it to be treated in a purely economic sense, bringing in social and political factors only when they are found to be useful for or obstacles to changing the income differentials in an economy? Is the argument for changing the distribution of income to be grounded in essentially instrumental reasoning changing the structure of demand so as to reduce balance of payments burdens, creating an internal market for national industry, reducing incentives to invest in capital intensive projects which yield little employment and enhance political instability - or is it to find its basis in arguments about the virtues of equality as such?
1971: Volume 4
Volume 4 Number 1 October 1971
Edited by: Gordon Conway
Perhaps the most significant aspect of present day population growth and natural resource depletion is that both are on a scale quite without historical precedent. It is, of course, a great temptation in situations of this kind to project the likely future state of affairs which will come about if current trends are maintained, usually with rather gloomy results. Now it is well known that forecasting is a hazardous business, be it concerned with the weather or the level of economic activity. But this has not deterred a substantial and diverse group of physical and social scientists, supported by a large, if rather disparate, lay chorus, from asserting that explosive population growth in the third world and the levels of exploitation of non-renewable resources in the developed countries are combining to produce a set of conditions which are beyond the 'capacity of the planet' to sustain in the long run.
Despite the crude nature of the assumptions on which these projections are based, it has to be conceded that there is some force to them. The pity is that rational debate has been made more difficult by the strident and lurid tone of much of the language of the 'environmentalists'.
For example, one physicist calculated that if Adam and Eve had lived 10,000 years ago, and if they and their descendents had procreated at a compound rate of just 1 er cent per annum, the human race would now be a sphere of living flesh several galaxies in diameter, expanding radially at the speed of light -- if such were relativistically possible.
