The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies
The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies is dedicated to increasing our knowledge of the culture, history, and institutions of the world’s major regions and countries. Featured below are recent books by former Harvard Academy Scholars and summaries of the program’s conferences in fall 2007.
Harvard Academy Alumni Conference: What’s Land Got to Do with It? Global Lessons about the Optimal Level of Control Over Property and Land Use
Chair: Tahirih V. Lee, associate professor, Florida State University College of Law
September 21, 2007—Using examples from the major regions of the world, this conference questioned whether or not there exists an optimal level of control over the use of land at the national, subnational, or local levels. Each conference panel employed the wealth of research being conducted on land and property rights in the variety of disciplines represented by members of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies (political science, law, economics, history, anthropology and sociology) to focus the question more narrowly: Is standardization good or bad for local autonomy or individual rights? Should national programs open up land control in certain areas to outsiders in order to create local diversity? Is such opening and diversity good or bad for economic growth?
Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Methods Applied to the Study of Governance in the Developing World
Co-sponsors: Kirk Radke, principal funder of the Clinton Global Initiative at Boston University, and The Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University
Organizers: John Gerring, professor of political science, Boston University; Macartan Humphreys, assistant professor of political science, Columbia University; Devra Moehler, assistant professor of government, Cornell University; Jeremy Weinstein, assistant professor of political science, Stanford University
September 29, 2007—This conference considered recent and potential applications of randomized interventions to understanding institutional outcomes, especially concerning institutions important to governance in the developing world. What studies to date of this nature have been conducted? How successful have they been? What are the prospects for future or ongoing studies? More generally, what is the potential of this mode of analysis? Among the questions addressed by the conference were: How can governance, which tends to be holistic and all-encompassing, be operationalized in such a way that it becomes amenable to scientific study? Where randomization is not possible, is there a good or acceptable alternative? The conference represented an important step in understanding the practical obstacles to the use of experimental methods for program evaluation in the developing world. This one-day conference included twenty-four participants from eleven universities, the John F. Kennedy School of Government, the World Bank, the International Rescue Committee, the Hewlett Foundation, the United Nations Development Programme, and the National Bureau of Economic Research.
New Books
- Globalization and Business Politics in Arab North Africa: A Comparative Perspective
The adjustments to a global economy have produced varied industry/ state relations throughout the world, but perhaps nowhere as crucially as in the developing industrial countries. Melani Cammett’s Globalization and Business Politics finds that these forms of cooperation rely on past relations of the state and industry. Her subtle comparative analysis of the textile and clothing industries in Morocco and Tunisia encompasses the social, political, economic, and historical forces that shaped—and continue to shape—these contrasting examples. Success in this new environment depends crucially, Globalization and Business Politics suggests, on new and productive ways that state, society, and industries can develop means of persistent, ongoing, and adaptive mutual support.
(Cambridge University Press, 2007)
Melani Claire Cammett is the Kutayba Alghanim Assistant Professor of Political Science, Brown University. She was a Harvard Academy Scholar in 2005–2006 and 2007–2008.
- Politics and Volunteering in Japan: A Global Perspective
Mary Alice Haddad’s book is a comparative examination of the sometimes crucial phenomenon in democratic societies: volunteering. Yet patterns of volunteering vary across cultures. These differences are measured in this important study as a combination of citizen’s attitudes toward their government, their own society’s patterns of expectations and practices, and the sense of responsible individualism found in each society. Politics and Volunteering in Japan develops a predictive model for understanding volunteering across cultures from a comparison of three Japanese cites, and tests it against patterns of volunteering in Finland, Japan, Turkey and the United States.
(Cambridge University Press, 2007)
Mary Alice Haddad is assistant professor of government and East Asian studies, Wesleyan University. She was a Harvard Academy Scholar in 2003–2004 and 2006–2007.
- Accountability without Democracy: Solidarity Groups and Public Goods Provision in Rural China
Observers of modern China have noted the stark differences in the kinds of public expenditure undertaken by villages in rural China, villages often located right next to each other. The differences in social services and public amenities between villages in rural China cannot be accounted for by just the exercise of democratic activity, nor by direction from the central government. Instead, these differences are produced by the informal means of exercising accountability and control over officials by village and temple organizations, and family lineages. Lily Tsai’s book is an exploration of the unseen mechanisms of public life in rural China—a study of how governance in rural China at the local level cannot be understood through democratic institutional forms alone.
(Cambridge University Press, 2007)
Lily L. Tsai is an assistant professor of political science, MIT. She was a Harvard Academcy Scholar in 2005–2006 and 2007–2008.