IPPG News: April 2010
Highlights of recent activities from IPPG - the Research Programme Consortium on Improving Institutions for Pro-Poor Growth
State-business relations (SBR) - new publications from Africa:
Are State Business Relations important to Economic Growth? Evidence from Mauritius
Sawkut Rojid, Boopen Seetanah (University of Mauritius) and Ramessur Shalini (University of Technology, Mauritius)
Mauritius, one of the best economic performers in Africa and with a stable democracy, offers a fascinating opportunity for the study of positive SBRs. This paper looks at how Mauritius has benefited from its privileged public-private sector partnership as well as from an active network of trade support institutions focusing on services ranging from capacity building, business facilitation and research, through to offshore market development.
Read the paper Are State Business Relations important to Economic Growth? Evidence from Mauritius
State-Business Relations and Economic Performance in Ghana
Charles Ackah, Ernest Aryeetey (researchers at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research), Joseph Ayee, Professor in Political Science, and Ezekiel Clottey, PhD Candidate, all University of Ghana.
This study examines how the Ghanaian government's support for a viable private sector has been undermined by its own fear that a strong private sector might weaken Government monopoly. The paper draws on evidence from a panel of 256 Ghanaian manufacturing firms over the period 1991-2002 to build a quantitative economic analysis examining whether an effective state-business relationship is beneficial to economic performance.
Read the paper State-Business Relations and Economic Performance in Ghana
More IPPG publications
IPPG Project News
Giant Sundial, Jaipur. Copyright IPPG
State-business relations - workshop report:
Analysing the economics and politics of state-business relations in Africa and India, Jaipur, India 15-17 December, 2009
A full report from the IPPG-CUTS Jaipur workshop, by Purnima Purohit, Assistant Policy Analyst at CUTS CITEE, India, is now available online.
State-business relations - new web pages:
IPPG has refreshed and updated the SBR cluster section of the website. See the new SBR homepage.
IPPG in the news:
Financial Express India: IPPG's state-business relations research in India selected by Financial Express's Report Card column which summarises a piece of research which they think will be interesting to their readership. See
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/report-card/575080/India Environment Portal: IPPG SBR research covered at: http://indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/content/state-business-relations-and-manufacturing-productivity-growth-india
Economic and Political Weekly online: IPPG researcher Deepita Chakravarty wrote a special article for the EPW titled Trade Unions and Business Firms: Unorganised Manufacturing in West Bengal, based on her IPPG paper Industrialising West Bengal? : The case of institutional stickiness. The article is found in Volume 45 at http://epw.in/epw/user/userindex.jsp
IPPG - Recent Events
Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE)
Bonn, Germany 16 March 2010IPPG's Kunal Sen presented on IPPG's state-business relations work at a DIE workshop on state business relations and pro-poor growth. German Federal Ministry for Economic Development Cooperation (BMZ), GTZ (German Technical Cooperation) and KFW Bankengruppe also participated.
London School of Economics
13 March 2010Kunal Sen also presented on state-business relations and economic performance in the Friday external speaker series for the Development Studies Institute at the LSE. Access his presentation State Business Relations and Economic Performance.
IPPG's Adrian Leftwich lectured to a group of Chevening Scholars at the University of Bradford on The institutions of development and the development of institutions on 20 January. Paul Hare (see below) also presented, based on his IPPG paper Institutions and Development: What we (think we) know, what we would like to know by Professor Paul Hare (Heriot Watt) and Dr Junior Davis (NRI), 2006.
Forest Rights Act
Forest dwellers, India. Coypright IPPG
Taking stock of smallholder and community forestry: Where do we go from here?
Montpellier, France
24 - 26 March 2010
Oliver Springate-Baginski and Madhu Sarin presented their work on The struggle for access to forest justice in India: Implementation of the Forest Rights Act 2006, community rights and the forestry bureaucracy at this international conference organised by CIFOR, the French research institute for development (IRD) and the French international research centre for agricultural development (CIRAD).Abstract: http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/Events/Smallholder+and+community+forestry/Scientific+sessions.htm
FRA Film Screening, India
Adhura Nyaya (the Hindi version of IPPG-supported documentary Delayed Justice) had its first screening on 29 January 2010 at the National Conference on the Forest Rights Act. The event, in Ranchi (capital city of the Indian state of Jharkhand) attracted two hundred activist participants.
Coming up:
State-business relations - regional workshops, India:
Three regional SBR workshops will be held in Hyderabad, Bhubaneswar and Kolkata on 20, 21 and 24 May 2010 respectively, to present the three state-business relations case-studies on Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal. The workshops will be run by IPPG's Indian partners - CUTS and the Centre for Economic and Social Studies, CESS.
IPPG Researchers - News
New paper: Adrian Leftwich Beyond Institutions. Rethinking the role of leaders, elites and coalitions in the institutional formation of developmental states and strategies, Forum for Development Studies, 37(1).
Reminder: IPPG researcher Paul Hare's latest book, Vodka and Pickled Cabbage: Eastern European Travels of a Professional Economist, has just been published. Whilst not formally part of the IPPG programme, the book looks at institutions and their critical importance for a well functioning market-type economy. Read more about Paul's IPPG work in Ghana and a number of IPPG papers by Paul for IPPG, free to download at http://www.ippg.org.uk/publications.html
Vodka and Pickled Cabbage: Eastern European Travels of a Professional Economist is published by Athens Press, GPB10.99, available from Amazon.
IPPG is the shorthand name for the inter-disciplinary Research Programme Consortium on Improving Institutions for Pro-Poor Growth. IPPG supports innovative scholarly research, and seeks to influence development policy and practice that contributes to the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
IPPG's next newsletter will appear in June 2010.
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IPPG's work is made possible by funding from the UK Department for International Development (DFID).
