The regional and personal impact of the fiscal policies of a limited franchise government: Italy immediately after unification

For 15 years after its inception, Italy was governed by the Historical Right coalition. The electoral franchise was very limited: registered voters were less than 2 per cent of the population and their actual numbers were further eroded by absenteeism. The achievements of the first governments were impressive, though one can disagree on the merit of the policies, as many did. Most of the policies imposed a lot of hardship: individuals had to pay high taxes; they were drafted into the army for long periods; and they were sent to fight civil and regular wars. The very limited access to the vote led the ruling class to perceive that, in the short term, its actions were insulated against the unpopularity of its policies. Therefore, it pursued the mission of aggrandising the country and creating what it believed to be a viable and modern government system. The regional allocation of budget resources became the most disputed issue as the government coalition was accused of discriminating against southern regions. The article explores these themes empirically by constructing the so-called balance sheet of federations, leading to an estimate for each region of the net impact (the fiscal residuum) of national government tax and expenditure policies. The article also provides an estimate of the impact of tax and expenditure policies on poor agricultural families located in different areas. Both statistical exercises provide an original, though limited, contribution to the literature on the economic and social impact of the unification process in Italy. The analyses reveal that no redistribution was made, and regional discrimination did not emerge.

The Resilience and Agricultural Household Livelihood Strategies of the 2018 Lombok Earthquake Victims at the Emergency Period in North Lombok Regency

A great earthquake was hitting Lombok in August 2018 that caused damage to home and livelihood sources of almost 100% of North Lombok Regency (KLU) population. This research is aimed to investigate the resilience capacity and livelihood strategies of displaced people (the earthquake victims) of KLU, especially the agricultural families during the post disaster emergency period. This research is using mix method between qualitative and quantitative approaches that explained descriptively. The qualitative data in this research was obtained using purposive area snowball sampling technique while the quantitative data was obtained through a comprehensive survey using Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) technique. Result of the research revealed that the earthquake caused the lost of jobs and livelihood sources of KLU’s people in all economic sectors, including agricultural sector. Social capital of the society was influencial as a main strategy of the victims to fulfil their daily needs and strengthen their social resilience in facing the damaging impact of the disaster. By exploiting their social capital, the society was able to fulfil their daily needs by managing all external aids, natural resources, and their remaining personal assets based on their common understanding, local wisdom, and social norms that exist in the society.

Production of the organic cocoa in the amazon: a case study of the amazon organic products cooperative – COPOAM

This article aims to show the results and discussions of the exploratory descriptive research carried out by the Cooperative of Organic Products of the Amazon (COPOAM), which is composed of cocoa producers part of agricultural families cooperative located in the Transamazon Highway region, state of Pará. The main purpose of this research is to illustrate the producer’s strategies towards production and marketing of organic products. This work also demonstrates the cooperative's market expansion based on its formalized contracts and sustainable development practices, which can stimulate initiatives that promote the good use of natural resources in the Amazon, as well as participatory management of the territory. Such actions contribute to local development in a needy and anthropized region.

A full-scale test of the language farming dispersal hypothesis

One attempt at explaining why some language families are large (while others are small) is the hypothesis that the families that are now large became large because their ancestral speakers had a technological advantage, most often agriculture. Variants of this idea are referred to as the Language Farming Dispersal Hypothesis. Previously, detailed language family studies have uncovered various supporting examples and counterexamples to this idea. In the present paper I weigh the evidence from ALL attested language families. For each family, I use the number of member languages as a measure of cardinal size, member language coordinates to measure geospatial size and ethnographic evidence to assess subsistence status. This data shows that, although agricultural families tend to be larger in cardinal size, their size is hardly due to the simple presence of farming. If farming were responsible for language family expansions, we would expect a greater east-west geospatial spread of large families than is actually observed. The data, however, is compatible with weaker versions of the farming dispersal hypothesis as well with models where large families acquire farming because of their size, rather than the other way around.