Many political philosophers hold the Feasible Alternatives Principle (FAP): justice demands that we implement some reform of international institutions P only if P is feasible and P improves upon the status quo from the standpoint of justice. The FAP impl
Recent work on the resource curse argues that the effect of resource wealth on development outcomes is a conditional one: resource-dependent countries with low-quality institutions are vulnerable to a resource curse, while resource-dependent countries with high-quality institutions are not. But extant models neglect the ways in which the inflow of resource revenue impacts the institutional environment itself. In this paper, I present a formal model to show that where domestic institutions do not limit state leaders' discretion over policy prior to becoming fiscally reliant on resources, those leaders have little incentive in the wake of resource windfalls to establish institutional mechanisms that limit their discretion. Importantly, this shows that simple calls for domestic institutional reform are unlikely to be effective. Among other things, future prescriptions to mitigate the resource curse must focus on decreasing rulers' fiscal reliance on resources. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]
Recent work on the resource curse argues that the effect of resource wealth on development outcomes is a conditional one: resource-dependent countries with low-quality institutions are vulnerable to a resource curse, while resource-dependent countries with high-quality institutions are not. But extant models neglect the ways in which the inflow of resource revenue impacts the institutional environment itself. In this paper, I present a formal model to show that where domestic institutions do not limit state leaders' discretion over policy prior to becoming fiscally reliant on resources, those leaders have little incentive in the wake of resource windfalls to establish institutional mechanisms that limit their discretion. Importantly, this shows that simple calls for domestic institutional reform are unlikely to be effective. Among other things, future prescriptions to mitigate the resource curse must focus on decreasing rulers' fiscal reliance on resources.
Pogge (2008) and Wenar (2008) have recently argued that we are responsible for the persistence of the so-called 'resource curse'. But their analyses are limited in important ways. I trace these limitations to their undue focus on the ways in which the international rules governing resource transactions undermine government accountability. To overcome the shortcomings of Pogge's and Wenar's analyses, I propose a normative framework organized around the social value of government responsiveness and discuss the implications of adopting this framework for future normative assessment of the resource curse and our relationships to it.
Against the conventional widsom, I propose that clinical theorists should adopt an institutional failure analysis approach, which takes its primary design task to be obviating or averting social failures. The main innovation of this approach is to ground our evaluation of institutional arrangements on a detailed understanding of the causal processes that generate actual problematic outcomes. So conceived, failure analysis enables clinical theorists to prescribe more effective solutions to injustice because it focuses on understanding the injustice, rather than on specifying an ideal of justice. In so doing, failure analysis better fulfills the objective of clinical theory, namely, to think about how, in the midst of current injustice, we might bring about social conditions that are more just than our current conditions. Adapted from the source document.
In an effort to atone for almost two centuries of mishandling, and faced with ballooning urban Aboriginal populations, many of Canada's governments and educational institutions have adopted policies to encourage the integration of Aboriginal perspectives in schools. Realizing that their efforts can only be given life by teachers, this study explores the perceptions of eight teachers integrating Aboriginal perspectives into their Grade 10 ELA classes in the Buffalo Stone School Division (pseudonym used). Interviews conducted with the teachers explored how personal, contextual and institutional realities have shaped the perceptions that the teachers bring to their practice. ; February 2013