Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

The capitalist state is supposed to create conditions for capitalist accumulation and maintain the unity of the society by pacifying the exploited classes. Yet, the state policies which have precisely these objectives fail. Why? I suggest that an important part of the answer lies in state form. I pursue this theme by looking at the land-reform policy of the Indian state. The land-reform policy happened to be one of the ways in which the postcolonial Indian state tried to create the conditions for capitalist development. But the democratic form of the state and the class alignment in the society set some limit within which the state had to work, and in particular, conditioned the form that the policy took. In short, the policy became bureaucratic as opposed to popular, and also entailed the mediation of market relation. This form of the policy was not what was struggled for by the lower classes. Yet, the state triumphed in imposing this form of the policy. To the extent that the policy failed to benefit the lower classes and to remove the fetters on capitalist development effectively, this was because of the form of the policy. However, the state has not failed equally everywhere. With a different parallelogram of class forces and thus a different context of the state action in particular States than that which generally existed at the national level and in most States, the outcome of the policy was, to some degree, different there. Statistical and qualitative analyses are presented to support this claim.

The basic premise in this paper is that the level of domestic water demand in arid and semiarid rural areas of developing countries is closely related to their culture, social organization and demographic structure. We also provide a methodological framework within which the implications of policies related to domestic water demand can be evaluated, before the policies themselves are implemented. We make use of primary data collected in Katarko, a rural village in northeastern Nigeria. Through regression models for the dry and rainy seasons we demonstrate that beyond socio-cultural and demographic factors, economic ones are also significant in determining domestic water demand. These findings underscore not only the importance of demand-side management in water-related projects, but also the need to incorporate economic principles in them. Making use of the identified determinants into water-demand projections further reveals how changes in these variables can affect future demand.

In this paper we use a variant of the 1–2–3 trade-focused general-equilibrium model to calculate the employment effects of factor subsidies applied to the regional export base. Analytical expressions are derived for the change in basic employment and the export-base employment multiplier. These expressions are compared with the conventional hybrid approach where the impact on the recipient sectors is analysed by using a partial-equilibrium method and the effect on other sectors is calculated through some form of demand-driven multiplier. The conventional hybrid procedure fails to capture fully displacement in the regional labour market. If we use the general-equilibrium results as a benchmark, numerical simulation suggests that the hybrid approach substantially overestimates the employment effects of the subsidies. Similar problems are likely to apply to the evaluation of all supply-side policies targeted on the regional export base.

The author attempts to provide a synthesis of the long-run evolution of cities by taking an economic perspective. He defends the idea that urban growth for preindustrial cities has been limited by the tyranny of distance. Then he argues that technological progress, by fostering mobility, has reinforced economies of agglomeration and thus allowed for larger cities. This has led to the development of industrial cities and the dominance of the tyranny of distance. Nowadays, however, technological progress in communications and telecommunications seems to be challenging the rationale for agglomeration in cities as more and more economic interactions can be realized at arm's length. Increasing mobility may have turned into a threat for cities, hence the prediction about the demise of cities. Nonetheless, it is argued that the ‘tyranny of proximity’ may provide a strong glue to keep postindustrial cities together.

In this paper I review recent stakeholding proposals and critically assess their implications for debates on local and regional economic development. I highlight some of the benefits, tensions, and ambiguitics of the stakeholding metaphor, before considering whether it offers a blueprint for the construction of more ethically and socially responsible regional and local economies. I argue that the idea's main limitations stem from its basis in a notion of corporate autonomy which detracts from the diversity of ways in which places and regional contexts condition the range of feasible and beneficial company strategies. The debate highlights the need for more research into how corporate governance affects regional economic fortunes. I criticise stakeholding proposals for implying that the benefits of cooperative economic relations are sufficient to ensure the formation of new industries and new technological trajectories. In the final section of the paper I briefly examine the use of stakeholding in public policy debates in Britain, and the likely geographical consequences. I argue that the use of the term reflects an optimistic communitarianism, and that the benefits of emphasising community participation, rights, and responsibilities should not be used to legitimate a policy abandonment of those communities lacking the resources to participate as stakeholders.

Set within the context of recent rural restructuring in developed market economies, the authors examine the potential of niche markets for speciality food products (SFPs) to contribute towards rural development in peripheral (lagging) regions. Drawing on elements of regulation theory, actor-network approaches, and consumption studies, niche markets for SFPs are conceptualised as the outcomes of the intersecting activities of networks of producers, consumers, and institutions. On the basis of this conceptualisation and preliminary empirical evidence from a European research project, it is suggested that unique configurations of networks at local and regional levels, and their relationships to cxtralocal networks, will contribute to the success or failure of regional SFPs in promoting endogenous development. It is also argued that a focus on particular products, markets, and regions is required to gain a holistic understanding of the complex and contested network relationships through which niche markets for SFPs are constructed.

Demographic stability in local areas is achieved by maintaining a population core that does not move. However, relatively little is known about contextual factors related to nonmigration. What research exists on nonmigration suggests that the factors anchoring people to places may be different than the factors that are primary determinants of migration. In this paper we discuss the social foundations that anchor people to places and present an analysis that demonstrates an interrelationship between community social institutions and nonmigration. Specifically, we show that the proportion of persons remaining between 1985 and 1990 in 3024 US counties varies directly with the number of locally owned small-scale retail establishments, the number of small-scale manufacturing firms and family farms, the number of local civic associations, and the proportion of the local population in civically active religious denominations.

In this paper new findings on the average life expectancy of the population of Britain arc reported according to housing wealth. In addition, estimates of mortality rates for rough sleepers, hostel residents, and bed and breakfast residents are presented. The results indicate that the death rates of bed and breakfast residents are four to five times those of the housed population, death rates for hostel residents are seven times greater, and death rates for rough sleepers are 25 times greater than those of the housed population. At the extremes, people living in the most salubrious housing in Britain (holding over £100 000 of equity in their properties) can expect to live, on average, more than twice as long as those sleeping rough on the streets.