Christopher Cramer

Homo Economicus Goes to War: Methodological Individualism, Rational Choice and the Political Economy of War

Abstract Neoclassical economic theories of violent conflict have proliferated in recent years and, with their application to contemporary wars, have influenced donors and policy makers. This paper reviews the intellectual foundations and empirical substance of such theories and offers a critique drawing on a political economy perspective. There are strong grounds for arguing that orthodox economic theories of war are reductionist, speculative, and misleading. Theories that are driven by methodological individualism are compelled somehow to model “the social” as it affects contemporary war––for example, by appeal to indices of ethno-linguistic fragmentation––but do so in ways that fail to capture reality and its variations.

Can Africa Industrialize by Processing Primary Commodities? The Case of Mozambican Cashew Nuts

Abstract Industrialization strategies based on vertical diversification into processing of primary commodities have long been appealing to low-income countries. The performance of such strategies is mixed. An aggregate-level literature is divided on the advisability of low-income countries processing commodities for export, especially for countries relatively poor in human capital. While this general literature usefully illuminates the policy debate over processing cashew nuts in Mozambique, commodity and country specific factors reveal the weaknesses of conducting debate at too aggregated a level. It may be that the most significant constraints on processing industrialization are political rather than purely technical or economic.

Women Working for Wages: Putting Flesh on the Bones of a Rural Labour Market Survey in Mozambique∗

The life stories of six women working for wages are analysed together with quantitative data from the first ever large-scale rural labour market survey undertaken in Mozambique. Quantitative data from three provinces are used to emphasise the heterogeneity of the characteristics of women working for wages as well as to examine hypotheses about dynamic processes suggested by the life stories. It is argued that there are important methodological advantages to be gained if researchers can cross-check their own quantitative survey data with qualitative data they have collected themselves, as well as with a wide range of historical and secondary sources. The policy implications of the findings concerning the extreme deprivation suffered by many rural wage workers, the intergenerational transmission of poverty and the relative success of some rural women are discussed.

Lifting the blinkers : a new view of power, diversity and poverty in Mozambican rural labour markets

This paper presents some results from the largest rural labour market survey yet conducted in Mozambique. Evidence from three provinces shows that labour markets have a significant impact on the lives of a large number of poor people, and that employers exercise considerable discretion in setting wages and conditions of casual, seasonal and permanent wage employment. The evidence presented comes from a combination of a quantitative survey based on purposive sampling with other techniques, including interviews with large farmers. The findings contrast with ideas that rural labour markets are of limited relevance to poverty reduction policy formulation in Africa, and the paper concludes with methodological, analytical and policy recommendations.

Privatisation and Adjustment in Mozambique: a 'Hospital Pass'?

Mozambiques privatisation has been one of the largest, by number of transactions, in sub-Saharan Africa. This is the main basis for claims that the programme has been one of the most successful. This paper critically evaluates the only available study (by the World Bank) of the impact of privatisation in Mozambique. Privatisation has been hasty and careless. Contrary to the public finance objectives of privatisation, there has also been a form of subsidy to the private sector, through payment deferral and default. This subsidy appears indiscriminate, unplanned and highly inefficient. Yet it is one key to an alternative perspective on privatisation, focusing on the internal dynamics and beneficiaries since the early 1980s. This real political economy of privatisation in Mozambique confounds the already over-burdened exercises of evaluation. There is an urgent need for more careful data collection on privatisation in Mozambique.

Ownership and Donorship: Analytical Issues and a Tanzanian Case Study

During the 1990s development funders 1 officially incorporated into their rhetoric the ideal of passing control of the design, implementation, and monitoring of projects and programmes to recipient ‘stakeholders’, 2 a goal summarised in the term ‘national ownership’. Ownership has joined a list of funder-agency concerns that in recent years has included governance, institutions, poverty reduction, sustainable development, participation, and decentralisation. Whether or not economic performance improves with greater ownership, the move to encourage recipient country ownership represents a change in the aid relationship. Numerous and detailed policy conditionalities characterised the Washington Consensus programmes of the 1990s. The rhetoric of ownership appeared to signal a retreat from that approach to the relationship between funding agencies and recipient governments (‘development partnerships’). This article explores the implications of a commitment to recipient ownership. The conditionalities associated with loans and grants are central to the discussion, particularly in the context of the Millennium Development Goals. Most attention has focused on the seven poverty reduction goals. Less has been directed to goal eight, which calls for new partnerships for development. The article discusses these issues in the context of recent developments in aid delivery in Tanzania. The definition of ‘ownership’ is central to an analytical discussion. The meaning varies across donors, lenders and governments, in part reflecting the history of agencies and intergovernmental relations, as well as ideology. 3 For example, the interpretation by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) of ownership, which was profoundly affected by the politics of international aid in Sweden from the 1970s onwards, differs considerably from that of the World Bank. 4 Similarly, the Ethiopian government’s more literal interpretation and the more funder-accommodating approach of the Tanzanian government are influenced by the different histories of these countries. The lack of an agreed definition arises partly because recipient control of development assistance means different things in different concrete circumstances. In addition, vagueness may serve the interest of parties less willing to reform the more obvious manifestations of ‘donorship’ (a funder-driven process). Thus, one must be cautious in attributing too much meaning to the emerging consensus among development funders that ownership is central to aid policy. 5

How to do (and how not to do) fieldwork on Fair Trade and rural poverty

Abstract The Fair Trade, Employment and Poverty Reduction (FTEPR) project investigated poverty dynamics in rural Ethiopia and Uganda. When designing fieldwork to capture poor people often missing from standard surveys, several methodological challenges were identified and, in response, four decisions were made. First, FTEPR focused on wage workers rather than farmers and improved on standard questionnaires when collecting labour market information. Second, researchers adopted contrastive venue-based sampling. Third, sampling was based on clearly identifiable “residential units” rather than unreliable official registers of “households”. Fourth, an economic definition of “household” was used rather than the more common definition based on residential criteria.

Fairtrade cooperatives in Ethiopia and Uganda: uncensored

The Fairtrade lobby ignores the degree to which the poorest rural people depend on wage labour incomes, pretending that ‘smallholder’ producers and members of cooperatives are homogeneous and that all or most of them can exit poverty as a result of interventions designed to increase farmers’ income from crop production. The argument here, based on a four-year study of the wages and working conditions of labourers hired by ‘smallholder’ tea and coffee producers in Uganda and Ethiopia, is that activists concerned to reduce poverty should be channelling resources to reward good employers rather than mythical ‘small’ farmers.

Macroeconomic Stabilization and Structural Adjustment

Claims that structural adjustment and stabilization (henceforth ‘adjustment’) programmes are directly responsible for conflict lack empirical support1 and smack of economism. Yet, to the extent that economic forces contribute to the origins of CHEs, policy will affect the likelihood of such crises.2 This chapter explores the role of adjustment policies in the origins of conflict, and the implications for economic policies, especially for designing WB and IMF adjustment.

Fairtrade and Labour Markets in Ethiopia and Uganda

Abstract Drawing on four years of fieldwork in Ethiopia and Uganda, this paper addresses gaps in knowledge about the mechanisms linking agricultural exports with poverty reduction, the functioning of rural labour markets, and the relevance to the lives of the poorest people of Fairtrade. Statistical analysis of survey evidence, complemented by qualitative research, highlights the relatively poor payment and non-pay working conditions of those employed in research sites dominated by Fairtrade producer organisations. We conclude that Fairtrade is not an effective way to improve the welfare of the poorest rural people.