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Cross-Border Higher Education for Regional Integration:Analysis of the JICA-RI Survey on Leading Universities in East Asia
Get PDFSet against the backdrop of increasing economic interdependence in East Asia, the idea of“regional integration” is now being discussed as a long-term political process in the region. As in the field of the international economy, de facto integration and interdependence exist with respect to the internationalization of the higher education system in East Asia. Based on the results of a comprehensive Japan International Cooperation Agency Research Institute (JICA-RI) survey of 300 leading higher education institutions active in cross-border higher education, located in ten Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member Southeast Asian countries and three Northeast Asian countries (China, Japan, and Korea), this paper examines universities’ perceptions of the degree of cross-border activities, the significance of their “expected outcomes,” and their regional preferences for partners. The objective is to envision a direction for a future regional higher education framework in East Asia and to consider the policy implications of the internationalization of higher education in East Asia in the context of regionalization. The findings related to the degree of cross-border activities suggest a current perception that there is more prominent in conventional than in innovative activities, but that innovation will rise considerably in the future. With respect to the significance of “expected outcomes,”academic and political “expected outcome” are perceived to be more significant than economic“expected outcome,” which are nevertheless expected to be more significant in the future. Finally, in terms of their preferred regions of partners, universities in East Asia overall place a high priority on building partnerships within their own region. Yet, among Northeast Asian universities, North America is perceived as the most active partner.research repor
Promoting Gender Equality by Facilitating Women’s Collective Problem-Solving Capacity Development: Japanese Experience with the Post-War Life Improvement Program and Its Application to Contemporary Developing Countries
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Assessing Effectiveness and Sustainability of Communitymanaged Informal Irrigation in Africa: A Comparative Institutional Analysis of “Temporary" Irrigation in Malawi
Get PDFSince early 2000, a type of group-based informal irrigation for irrigating a very small area –less than two hectares on average, has seen widespread adoption among Malawian farmers. The technology, called “temporary” irrigation, uses farmers’ own labor and locally available materials for constructing river diversion structures and canals, and these are managed by informal “clubs.” This paper attempts to assess the effectiveness and sustainability of this technology from the beneficiaries’ point of view, by employing an analytical framework that focuses on property rights and collective action as critical factors affecting technology choice and adoption. A comparative examination of selected informal irrigation cases in the Dowa district reveals that, in spite of the absence of secure tenure over land and water and of strong collective-action incentives among farmers, temporary irrigation has satisfied most of the effectiveness criteria and thus has contributed to technological expansion. This is attributable to the relative resource affluence and temporary nature of irrigation facilities which have existed at least up to the present. But the very “success” of the informal irrigation technology is changing the nature of the resources: where water in the streams has become scarce, river-bank lands have been commoditized and temporary diversion structures have been upgraded to permanent structures. Specific policy measures necessary to ensure sustainability of temporary irrigation should include: 1) provision of agronomic extension services to improve the profitability of irrigation, 2) promotion of basin-wide watershed management including provision of opportunities for stakeholder dialogues for conflict resolution while improving water use efficiency to enable secure and equitable access to productive resources, and 3) a cautious approach in strengthening water users’ associations based on deeper understandings of the farmers’ incentives (cost and benefit) for taking collective action.research repor
Gender-Equality and the Revitalization of Japan’s Society and Economy under Globalization
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Has Decentralization in Indonesia Led to Elite Capture or Reflection of Majority Preference?
Get PDFElite capture in the context of decentralization and democratization is a general concern in public good provision in developing countries. In this paper, we have empirically examined this hypothesis using a large rural household survey conducted in Indonesia concerning access of households to road and electricity services. In Indonesia, prior to decentralization, local infrastructure was supplied by a centralized authority that had the potential to provide infrastructures that did not match heterogeneous local preferences. After the introduction of the decentralization, local infrastructure decision is taken by elected local authorities. It, however, runs the risks of elite capture. We have examined if access to infrastructure reflects’ majority’s preference or results in elite capture in the decentralized period taking the allocation under the centralized regime duly into account.research repor
Challenge for the OVOP Movement in Sub-Saharan Africa - Insights from Malawi, Japan and Thailand
Get PDFThis paper compares the One Village One Product (OVOP) movements of Japan, Thailand, and Malawi to examine their similarities and differences and to provide Sub-Sahara African countries that are adopting the OVOP approach with measures necessary to overcome existing constraints. The OVOP movement encourages the mobilization of local human, material, and cultural resources to create value-added products and services for domestic and external markets. However, the Thai and Malawian OVOP efforts differ from the Japanese OVOP programme in that the initiative spurring their adoption was taken by their central governments and in their emphasis on economic, rather than social purposes. We assess and compare the effectiveness of OVOP approaches in the three countries. With respect to Malawi, we find that OVOP has helped to improve productivity in some cases, changed the value chain structure in other cases, provided market access through labelling and reached many thousands of households. This study suggests that, in order to make OVOP take off in Africa, prompt action is necessary on several fronts. First, spatial connectivity needs to be improved so that OVOP producers can participate in national and global value chains. Brand-making and e-commerce could also be promising areas as demonstrated by Thai success. African countries will need further foreign cooperation in financing and management training. In order to use limited resources effectively, however, stakeholders must coordinate their activities closely. Finally, we need to introduce social indicators (such as women’s empowerment), in addition to economic ones to assess the effectiveness of the OVOP movement.research repor
Conceptualizing and Measuring Ethnicity
Get PDFIn this paper, we examine the ways in which the notion of „ethnicity‟ has been operationalized for quantitative research. We argue that there is a conceptual mismatch between modern theories of ethnicity and the current way in which ethnicity is employed statistically, but that this mismatch can be overcome if we reconceptualise econometrics as using „ethnicity‟ as an indicator of a broader notion of „social distance‟. We conceptually subdivide „social distance‟ into measures of „diversity‟ and „disparity‟, and review the strengths and weaknesses of existing measures employed in the literature. We then explore how far different measures of ethnicity are correlated both across stylized distributions and using real world data from districts in Ghana, Uganda, and Indonesia. We find that even measures that purport to pick up very different underlying distributions are, in fact, very highly correlated, and suggest that this should caution us to be more careful in the interpretation of econometric results. We conclude that quantitative research using theoretically more sophisticated measures of ethnicity that link particular distributions with particular political outcomes, combined with qualitative research that allows a closely examination of causal processes, may be the appropriate way forward for empirical research on ethnicity.research repor
Motives behind Community Participation - Evidence from Natural and Field Experiments in a Developing Country
Get PDFThis study tests alternative hypotheses concerning the motivations behind the participation by rural households in community work. Using unique data from natural and field experiments in southern Sri Lanka, where irrigated fields have been allocated to farmers by government lottery, we compare quantitatively five possible motives behind community participation: public goods investment, general social capital accumulation, production network formation, risk sharing network formation, and pure altruism. Our empirical results show that community participation patterns are consistent with social capital accumulation behavior to form risk sharing networks. Only a few studies have investigated empirically the process of social capital formation, and our analysis fills the gap in the literature. Our findings also suggest the possibility of a poverty trap: facing negative shocks, poor households may have difficulty in finding time for social capital accumulation and risk sharing network formation; this, in turn, may cause them to become more vulnerable and even poorer.research repor
Diversity and Transformation of Aid Patterns in Asia's "Emerging Donors"
Get PDFThis paper analyses comparatively the aid patterns and their formulation of four emerging donor countries: China, South Korea, Thailand and India. The aim of the paper is to increase understanding of how these countries’ aid patterns have been created and by what factors. The aid patterns employed by the emerging donors are divergent. Chinese aid has shifted from the overtly political and ideological to the commercialist; thus, current Chinese aid is closely tied to Chinese state owned enterprises (SOEs). Korean aid has consistently been commercialist, but recently it has incorporated universal and humanitarian considerations. Thailand has maintained a keen interest in aid as a stabiliser of its neighbouring countries. The Indian aid program was initially formed during the Cold War consonant with the ideology of the Non-Aligned Movement, but from the 1990s economic considerations became more important. Indian aid is influenced also by regional strategies, namely the stabilisation of neighbouring countries. Various factors are proposed to account for the formation and transformation of the aid patterns. Current Chinese aid is influenced by deepening economic interdependence and by diplomatic competition with Taiwan. Korean aid is promoted by pragmatic values and more recently by universal humanitarian values. The recent shift to a humanitarian emphasis is explained by a shift in the relative power balance of actors away from the conservative toward the progressive. In addition, its middle power status in the international community makes South Korea sensitive to competition from other donors, such as China, and to international pressure from DAC. Thai aid is motivated by the economic gap between Thailand and its neighbouring countries, by its strategies toward the Indo-China region, and by its compliance with DAC. The Indian aid program was initially formed during the Cold War in response to the political and ideological Non-Aligned Movement, but from the 1990s economic considerations became more important. India is also influenced by regional strategies, namely the stabilisation of neighbouring countries. This comparative analysis of these four emerging donors contributes to an understanding of the diversity of aid patterns and the particular factors that create them. The increasing diversity of aid patterns further implies potential for future pluralism of aid.research repor