the fourth round: history of land reform in pakistan, haris gazdar

(2): half of rural population is landless; top 5 percent own 33% of cultivatable land

(5): three 'estates': (1) collective self-governance, in Fata/Balochistan; (2) malawari, which ended up empowering landowners rather than village in Punjab, etc. (see pg. 9); (3) Ryotwari, which ended up regarding zamindar as cultivator in Sindh (see pg. 12)

(10): canal colonization as technically progressive but socially conservative

(13): in partition, about 1/5th of the cropped area was vacated (7 million acres, 18%). in 1965 40 million acres in cultivation. today 48 million.

(20): LR discussions had three components--tenancy reg, abolition of 'superior claims', redistribution above ceiling.

(21): Shariah Court ruled against '77 LR, upheld by Supreme Court

(22): here is that not enough attention was paid to non-cultivators, which seems a reasonable point [a lot of the rest of this is an exercise in mystification. silly]

(23): in Sindh, due to arid character, irrigation management has always been central. you can't make haris into owner-operators unless you do something about distribution of water, in other words.

(28): 2.3 million acres have been distributed to military officers as career incentives--this is roughly equivalent to the total area ever distributed by the state in LR!

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of the rest of this article is quite unhelpful. calling for moving beyond an 'agrarian reform' framework, it opens with a statistic that still shows its applicability. totally lacking comparative context--other countries succeeded at LR, within this conventional framework. the lack of 'imagination' charge rings quite hollow.

reassessing the three waves, doorenspleet

(385-386): two problems with huntington--conceptual, not taking suffrage seriously; empirical, confusing creation of new states after decolonization with reversion from democracy.

(395): in 1972, only 8 out of 44 new states in Africa were democratic

bizarre coding of Pakistan!

it was like a fever, polletta

(ix): narrative ambiguity --> political resources [WTF]

(3): two claims

1. there are risks (storylines are limiting) and benefits (sustains groups, etc.) to storytelling for disadvantaged groups.
   
2. stories will depend on the context of their telling/hearing

(5): possibilities following from culture are 'unlimited', under structural conditions [WTF is going on here].

(15): relationships between culture, structure, story are variable. sometimes one way, sometimes another. [i.e., you have no idea what you're saying]

(19): example of child abuse laws [where are the movements? this is just insulting]

(34, 51-52): stories as galvanizing for orgs [sometimes, maybe, might be--aside from everything else, the obvious flaw is that there's no evidence that the 'story' being selected is representative of the way in which the movement was actually described. this is the least of the problems, of course.]

(55): need an account of the 'cultural/ideological' context that forecloses some strategic options [yawn]

(58): SNCC abandons participatory democracy when it becomes symbolically associated with 'white' dominance of the org. this in turn rules out local leadership, rules in central leadership which it turns to [hmm]

(84, 107-108): narrative in public deliberation can be both harmful for or facilitative of deliberative democracy, because wile it's normatively powerful it's also considered politically unserious [this arg makes no sense to me, but surely it's important that she is observing a public forum where there is basically no political disagreement?]

(111): casting oneself as victim doesn't necessarily reduce agency. narrative of victim with agency is possible

(143): officials constrained by institutional conventions of storytelling--King integrated into pluralist framework, and elected officials were the bearers of his dream. this was awkward [no shit]

(164-165): Mexicans had Zapata, whereas Sandinistas lacked Sandino, b/c of respective government attitudes [WTF!?!?!]

(166): narrative is both subversive and hegemonic [ok. what are the conditions that produce one or the other?]

(169): for activists, familiar stories are often more an obstacle than a resource. [ok--but the implied counterfactuals, here, are still ludicrous. alternative is to say we weigh tthis with other factors. but when we do that, this is revealed as basically unimportant, i think]

(179): narratives can help you arrive at causal stories [really? bs]

the market as prison, lindblom (1982)

(325-326): business posesses unique power to sanction policy, by withdrawing investment, etc.

(328): other groups don't have same power

(329): mkt imprisons policy-making, as a result. Polanyi underestimated the constraints

(332): no mkt society can be a fully democratic society (though not taking a position on whether this is possible, desirable)

(333): fact of mkt society has also imprisoned our premises/ways of thinking. mkt is taken for granted, when argued that higher wages will lead to inflation

holzner, the poverty of democracy

(88): Przeworski warning that free market will weaken democracy, b/c it requires demobilization of trade unions, leftists, etc.

(91): in sum--not encouraging developments with neoliberalism. democracy has weakened, especially amongst poor

(95): 'apathy' as learned

(95-111): three mechanisms

1. poverty decreases resources. participation requires resources
   
2. weakenes lower-class organizations, denies them resources
   
3. reduction of size and scope of State activities

(104): political participation becomes irrelevant (if not irrational)

(110): decentralization is not accompanied by actual empowerment in local gov'ts

palma, why has productivity growth stagnated (2010)

(4): imp of ideology to the arg [bizarre--b/c of lack of social cohesion in LA?]

(8-9): in LA growth decline in GDP growth absorbed by productivity, in EA by employment [raises question about welfare effects, etc.--Patnaik q.]

(12-13): productivity growth not sustained in LA, unlike other places ['asia'! the more undefined the bloc, the more absurd the explanation that's suggested]

(21, FN): LA taxation makes income distribution more unequal

(22-23): rapid productivity growth is linked to rates of investment [immediately, of course, the question becomes what explains this, in the case of LA]

(25): LA exhibits high employment elasticities--but the key fact being that this is all in services. in other words, the absorbtion effect of employment is absorbtion by a sector with little to no prouctivity growth [probably a better way to think about this sector--'faux' jobs]

(25): his screed against the N. Left, which has acceded to this hook, line, sinker

(28-29): critical--difference between LA and EA is not explained by exogenous demand. eplained instead by LA's exceptional flexibility. the informal sector acts like a 'reserve army lof labour', thus employment is almost a 'fake effect', again. LA has been hemorraging productive jobs.

(31): declining investment in LA

(32): back to a coordination problem. the market locks this pattern in place, no disciplining of the capitalist elite. productive, useful investment isn't forthcoming.

(33): two sectors in LA -- a modern primary sector, and informal sector

(33): loose labour markets disincentivize competition [?]

(36): imp--as prod increases, need for industrial policy increases exponentionally

(39-41): useful export-competitiveness graph (Figure 20)--LA stuck, endogenous mkt forces are not going to push the region upward. will stay stuck in comparative advantage

(42): the heterodox plea

(43): LA de-industrialization. LA and EA basically switch places. from three out of every four dollars in manufacturing value added, to one out of every six!

(44): this neglect of manufacturing is at the heart of LA's prod problems [so this is the key to the causal story]

(46): ISI was not really proper infant industry protection

(47): Asia always doing things right [no 'wrong' period, now? strange]

(48): speaking, principally, of policies to discipline the elite

(49): unfortunate--an 'ideological' argument about why this is stable.

kuritz, dilemmas of democracy (2004)

(263, 264): arg--democracy less likely to emerge because organized social mobilization is weaker in neoliberalism, b/c of changed state-economy relationship

(265): peasants and informal sector associationally disadvantaged

(268): int--acknowleging radical critique, but writing in basically pluralist framework

(269): problem was one of interest group autonomy in ISI period, now one of 'formation'

(272): two causal mechanisms

1. collective action problems for groups
2. reduce scope of State's decision making

(287): looks at three areas, where thesis is borne out

1. labor mobilization--finds workers as fragmented, no longer prone to strike, subject to disorganization
2. political protest--event counts
3. individual political activity--regression on voter turnout, where impact of liberalization is strongly negative

(298): two counter-arguments--(1) satisfaction, which is dismissed--too many grievances; (2) selection, which is accepted--need more research.