Towards a Socio-Liberal Theory of World Development

Economic Cycles, Crises, and the Global Periphery

“…Given the limitations of book publication space, it would not be possible to present here the details of the debates among the Marxist classics of the early 20th century on the proper development strategies to follow. As has been shown already in Tausch and Prager ( 1992 ), the European social democrats, above all the Austrian Otto Bauer and the Swede Ernst Wigforss, were correct in emphasizing a path of slow and fundamental democratic reforms, while Lenin, from the very start, harshly criticized the social democrats, overlooking the powerful societal tradeoffs between reforms and economic growth, and political stability. Not only that: while agricultural and educational reform, an army, based on general conscription and democratic control, social security, public health et cetera are all mighty drivers of economic growth in a democratic and free society, the European social democrats of the early 20th century were also very correct in emphasizing the long-term limitations of unlimited state power, with Otto Bauer clearly predicting, already in 1920, the subsequent state terror under Bolshevik power in Russia.…”

“…Lenin's strategy brought about a net gain of around 45 % in the world-system position, to be wiped out again almost completely in the fi nal phase of the collapse of communism, while the resilience of the social partnership model in Finland and Austria brought about an almost uninterrupted net gain of around 50-60 % in per capita purchasing power as compared to the 'world average' (see Electronic Appendix Graph 24 30 ). For Russia, after having suffered so much damage in all the cataclysms of its history over the last 100 years, it would be important to remember that the most successful postwar political economic strategies (see also Schulmeister, 2013 ;Tausch & Prager, 1992 ) were all defi ned by (a) net real wage increases in the rhythm of economic growth; (b) net interest rates slightly below the rate of economic growth; (c) a strong mixed economy; (d) a strong presence of the organized interests of wage labor, capital, and agriculture in a democratic decision making processes.…”

Migration, Openness and the Global Preconditions of ‘Smart Development

“…6 The statistical design of our study is based on the usual, SPSS-PAWS XVIII Surveying the vast econometric literature on the subject of the possible drivers and bottlenecks of the EU-2020 process and overall development performance of a given country, one indeed finds support for the inclusion of geographic and demographic variables in the comparative analysis of development success or failure. Our list is thus corresponding to international research standard praxis in the discipline of general 'development accounting' (Barro and Sala-i-Martin, 2003;Dixon, 1987;Dixon andMoon, 1986, 1989;Durlauf et al, 2008;Fain, 1997;Fosu, 2009Fosu, , 2010aFosu, , 2010bFosu, , 2010cMoon and Dixon, 1992;Shandra, 2007aShandra, , 2007bTausch and Prager, 1993). Compared to a recent approach on the subject (Knight and Rosa, 2011), we do include globalization-oriented variables as well, and not just levels of GDP, winters, social trust, democracy, inequality, and Latin America, former USSR, Africa, and Asia as 'dummy variables' (Knight and Rosa, 2011).…”

“…The latter captures much better than the above simple equation the underlying nonlinear tradeoffs between 'energy consumption and/or environmental strain' and 'life quality' (Goldstein, 1985). Goldstein's empirically developed idea that basic human needs indicators -like life expectancy -are a non-linear function of development levels has been so widely received in the social science literature that is has become a real international standard nowadays (see Afxentiou, 1990aAfxentiou, , 1990bAnand and Ravillion, 1993;Anson, 1988Anson, , 1991Cheng, 1989;Dixon, 1987;Dixon andMoon, 1986, 1989;Fosu, 2009Fosu, , 2010aFosu, , 2010bFosu, , 2010cKakwani, 1993Kakwani, , 1995Khan, 1991;King, 1998;Knight and Rosa, 2011;Mazumdar, 1996Mazumdar, , 2000Moon and Dixon, 1992;Newman and Thomson, 1989;Rudra, 2009;Tausch and Prager, 1993). The neglect of such a basic non-linear function (whatever its concrete mathematical formulation 12 ) is a major shortcoming of the currently used Happy Planet Index calculation.…”

“…The central question, posed by Meadows, 1992, and by the Happy Planet Index methodology is not how much deforestation, ecological destruction etc. we face in the world system at given levels of , could nothing but support and refine the original argument, independently from the research design for different indicators, time periods, samples and methods (see inter alia and to mention but a few studies : Beer, 1999;Bornschier, 1982Bornschier, , 2002Dutt, 1997;Heshmati, 2006b;Klitgaard and Fedderke, 1995;Tausch, 2003;Tausch and Prager, 1993;Tsai 1995).…”