Managing the Crisis in Greece: The Missing Link between External Conditionality and Domestic Political Economy

The handling of the Greek crisis was not successful. Despite the sacrifices that the Greek people had to endure, the country’s structural problems both in the public sector and the economy have not been resolutely resolved. This chapter offers an explanation for this failure. The main idea is to connect the externally imposed policy conditionality, with the particular characteristics of Greece’s domestic political economy, seeking to integrate an analysis of impediments and opportunities for structural reform. While the literature on external institutional constraints emphasizes the possibility for achieving convergence, the institutionalist literature points towards divergence among national political economies, as institutional change and policy performance are conditioned by crucial intervening variables, namely, aspects of the domestic institutional infrastructure. In this context, Greece is a paradigmatic case of long-delayed or stalled reforms despite external pressures that promoted them. While most attention has been paid to the weaknesses of the EMU, this analysis’ emphasis is on the role of crucial domestic factors. The analysis takes place in three steps: (a) the outline of Greece’s institutional profile and growth trajectory based on an analysis of formal and informal domestic institutions; (b) the description and analysis of the design, implementation and impact of the adjustment programs; and (c) in view of (a) and (b) an assessment of whether the adjustment programs implemented in Greece took into consideration the characteristics of the country’s political economy, and how and to what degree the failure to do so accounts for their results.

Analysis of Shareholding in Companies: Case of Mali

In this article, we analyze in the Malian context the link between the structure of the shareholding and the sustainability of companies based on data from the census of industrial enterprises of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, 2015. The results show that Mali’s economic opening option in the 1980s, strengthened in the 1990s following the implementation of the Structural Adjustment Programs, resulting in the state’s withdrawal from the management of enterprises, have enabled the emergence of private enterprises in almost all sectors of economic activity. However, shareholding in industrial enterprises has suffered from poor governance. It also shows that the number of women entrepreneurs is close to that of men. Between 2010 and 2014, the majority of shareholders are in the agri-food sector. The majority of the investment is in the metal and metallurgical sector.

Doing Taxes Better: Simplify, Open and Grow Economy

Taxes have been the cornerstone of IMF-led adjustment programs for Pakistan for over four decades. During this period, long term growth and productivity have declined while the tax policy has become more contentious and fragmented. Measures multiply as unrealistic targets are chased with mini budgets every quarter. The following arose from a high-level conference arranged by PIDE to outline future directions in tax policy.

Privatizing Refugees’ Human Rights in Hamid’s Exit West, Coetzee’s The Childhood of Jesus and The Schooldays of Jesus, and Hosseini’s Sea Prayer

The contemporary novel seems to be complicit with neoliberalized and economized human rights. It is, time and again, a narrative that attempts to structurally adjust humans’ emotions to further the elitism and exclusiveness of human rights to citizens of Western countries. I argue that some modern neoliberal novels are a part of sentimental adjustment programs that strip refugees of their basic human rights, while at the same time celebrate Western societies and their aggressive and negative attitudes towards displaced individuals as equitable. Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, J. M. Coetzee’s The Childhood of Jesus and The Schooldays of Jesus, and Khaled Hosseini’s Sea Prayer are novels that function as examples of sentimental adjustment programs in which the narrative thread and structure elucidate how refugees struggle to maintain autonomy as they are excluded from human rights discourses as non-citizens. Namely, the aforementioned novels shed light on the failure of human rights ever being established in their storylines because human rights are being obliterated through the introduction of Western compassion as a rectitudinous result.

New Labor Dynamics of Global Public Finance System

This chapter examines the effects of structural adjustment programs designed under the supervision of IMF and World Bank on labor markets. These leading financial institutions are part of global financial system and they finance countries. In return, the countries satisfy the requirements imposed by IMF and World Bank. The requirements imposed by IMF and World Bank includes devastating measures for labor market, including privatization, deregulation of labor market, and flexibilization. There is convincing evidence that structural adjustment programs slowdown economic growth so hurts employment. Besides, the labor markets started to be constituted by unsafe work places without rules as a result of deregulations and flexibilizations. Most of the workers lost social security and workplace security. Feminization, child labor, increasing work incidents are the main severe results of the policies designed under pressure of IMF and World Bank on labor market.