Munk School of Global Affairs - Publications

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/1807/81064

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Semi-peripheral Pathways to High-technology Markets: How Organizational Origins Shape Entrepreneurial Ecosystems
(Springer Nature, 2024) Cicci, Alessandra; Ornston, Darius
Recent technological changes have created new opportunities for small- and medium-sized firms in the semi-periphery to enter digital markets. At the same time, the need to connect startups with the diverse range of actors and resources which sustain an entrepreneurial ecosystem poses a formidable challenge to regions which have historically suffered from disarticulation. The literature suggests that regions aspiring to support technology startups could benefit from bridging organizations or “entrepreneurial ecosystem incubators” (EEIs) to build civic capital. Comparing two successful EEIs in Toronto and Waterloo, Canada, we find that their organizational structure, specifically the composition of their board, shaped connectivity in important ways. Whereas Communitech, an entrepreneur-led EEI in Waterloo, relied heavily on horizontal, peer-to-peer mentoring among entrepreneurs, MaRS, led by institutional actors, linked startups to external capital, customers, and other resources within a limited number of verticals. Both EEIs supported local startup activity, but these they fostered different patterns of collaboration and high-technology competition. This analysis suggests that regional leaders in laggard regions may face a tradeoff in how they support technology startups and nurture entrepreneurial ecosystems.
Populism and De Facto Central Bank Independence
(SAGE Journals, 2022-11-17) Gavin, Michael; Manger, Mark
Although central bank independence is a core tenet of monetary policy-making, it remains politically contested: In many emerging markets, populist governments are in frequent public conflict with the central bank. At other times, the same governments profess to respect the monetary authority’s independence. We model this conflict drawing on the crisis bargaining literature. Our model predicts that populist politicians will often bring a nominally independent central bank to heel without having to change its legal status. To provide evidence, we build a new data set of public pressure on central banks by classifying over 9000 analyst reports using machine learning. We find that populist politicians are more likely than non-populists to exert public pressure on the central bank, unless checked by financial markets, and also more likely to obtain interest rate concessions. Our findings underscore that de jure does not equal de facto central bank independence in the face of populist pressures.
The Origins of Persistent Current Account Imbalances in the Post-Bretton Woods Era
(SAGE Publications, 2020-03) Manger, Mark S.; Sattler, Thomas
Why do some countries run persistent current account surpluses? Why do others run deficits, often over decades, leading to enduring global imbalances? Such persistent imbalances are the root cause of many financial crises and a major source of international economic conflict. We propose that differences in wage-bargaining institutions explain a large share of imbalances through their effect on the trade balance. In countries with coordinated wage bargaining, wage growth in export industries can be restrained to ensure competitiveness, leading to persistent trade surpluses. We estimate the contribution of these institutions to trade balances in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries since 1977 and find ample support for our hypothesis. Contrary to much of the literature, the choice of fixed or floating exchange rate regimes has only a small effect on trade or current account balances. In other words, internal adjustment in surplus countries via wage-bargaining institutions trumps external adjustment by deficit countries.
The Coevolution of Trade Agreement Networks and Democracy
(SAGE Publications, 2014-05-29) Manger, Mark S.; Pickup, Mark A.
The proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and the wave of democratization are among the most significant developments in international relations during the past three decades. The correlation between these is well noted. The causal link between these phenomena, however, remains unclear. On one hand, democracies have been found to be more likely to join PTAs. On the other hand, trade agreements should foster democratization because they undermine the ability of governments to distribute rents to maintain an autocratic regime. If PTAs and democracy coevolve through a selection and a contagion effect, then conventional statistical techniques can produce wholly misleading results. This article presents a new approach based on recent advancements in longitudinal network analysis. Our findings confirm that historically, democratization indeed made states more likely to sign PTAs, but that trade agreements also encourage the democratization of a country, in particular if the PTA partners are themselves democracies.
Hubs of Governance: Path Dependence and Higher-Order Effects of Preferential Trade Agreement Formation
(Cambridge University Press, 2016-01-28) Kim, Soo Yeon; Manger, Mark S.
In this paper, we investigate the causes and consequences of institutional design choices in the liberalization of services trade and investment in preferential trade agreements (PTAs). We distinguish between a positive-list and a negative-list approach to services liberalization, and analyze PTAs signed by countries of the Asia-Pacific. We develop an information-based argument that explains why these different types induce path dependence in subsequent choices, and derive hypotheses that capture the “history” effect of choosing either institutional model. In doing so, we examine whether particular “modes of governance” diffuse through the growing network of trade agreements through the adoption of rules by third parties in their own PTAs. The empirical analysis tests these hypotheses using simulation-based dynamic network analysis methods. We find evidence of strong path dependence in the choice of liberalization approach, affecting the evolution of PTA networks in the Asia-Pacific and the diffusion of services liberalization in general. Such path dependence has long-term consequences for the institutional features of the international trade regime.
Towards an Agenda for Profound Urban Climate Resilience in Southeast Asia
(Springer, 2019-01) Garschagen, Matthias; Marks, Danny
The research findings presented in this volume demonstrate that any meaningful engagement with resilience building in Southeast Asia’s small and mid-sized cities needs to start from a vulnerability perspective if it is to bring about sustainable and equitable risk reduction. Urbanization and other socio economic as well as political transitions in the region have in many instances aggravated rather than mitigated the exposure and susceptibility of residents in these cities to disasters and climate-related shocks. In order to overcome these vulnerability effects, four governance issues need to be addressed. First, the findings show that unequal power relations and perverse incentive structures often shape development and risk-reduction decisions in ways that allocate benefits to elites and emerging middle classes while disproportionately allocating ecological and social costs to the urban poor and marginalized, such as through evictions. Second, local governments often have limited accountability to reduce climate risks of their economically and politically marginalized constituents. Third, incomplete decentralization has resulted in national governments giving the responsibility for climate risk reduction to local governments, but often without sufficient resources. Fourth, the inherent tension in planning policies and politics between the short-term pressures for development and growth, especially in second-tier cities, and the long-term requirements for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation has weakened the implementation of climate risks policies. Therefore, we conclude with a call for future research on urban climate resilience to address these governance challenges.
The Implementation Gap: Reality vs. Environmental Rhetoric in Lao Cai, Vietnam
(Springer, 2019-01) Pulliat, Gwenn
This study draws upon a case study of Lao Cai, a province recognized as one of the most important ecological regions in Vietnam, but also one of the most vulnerable to climate hazards. The province has recently adopted an action plan for climate change adaptation. However, the national authorities intend to promote Lao Cai as a major secondary city on the main route from China to Hanoi. In a context of rapid, strategic, state-driven urban development, I identify three main obstacles to effective implementation of environmental and climate change policies: (1) the pre-eminence of economic growth over any environmental goal, (2) the under-enforcement of existing regulations, and (3) a failure of environmental governance. Environmental risk management is mainly based on the reinforcement of defensive infrastructures (such as the river embankment) and the displacement of exposed people. These actions are likely inefficient in a context of increased major hazards that might put great pressure on displaced residents’ livelihoods. In other words, there is a wide gap between discourse and implementation.
From Sea to City: Migration and Social Well-Being in Coastal Cambodia
(Springer, 2019-01) Asif, Furqan
Small-scale fishing communities along Cambodia’s coast have relied on marine resources as a mainstay of their livelihood for many decades. However, in the past 10 to 15 years, environmental change, increased fishing pressure, illegal, underreported, and unregulated fishing, and sand mining have contributed to a progressive decline in their catch. At the same time, economic opportunities outside the coastal village have acted as a draw and catalyzed migration to secondary cities and to the capital. This study examines out-migration of people from coastal communities to the city of Koh Kong. Using qualitative data collected from three fishing villages, I explore why people leave and why others stay in the village. In the context of city provisioning systems, the study also reveals a shift in climate-related vulnerability for coastal village migrants when they become urban residents. The study highlights the importance of looking not only at city planning, infrastructure challenges, and climate risks but also at the attendant social effects that phenomena such as migration have on people who are increasingly on the move. Such a perspective offers a more people-centred understanding of urban climate resilience in Cambodia, and potentially for other countries across Southeast Asia.
Resistance for Resilience: A Reflexive Exploration of Battambang, Cambodia
(Springer, 2019-01) Thuon, Try; Cai, Yanjun
As a secondary city in Cambodia, Battambang has been facing increasing flooding under the pressure of urbanization, modernization, and climate change. Like many other Southeast Asian cities, the issue of land use and management is perhaps the most contentious and significant issue in Battambang, linked closely with building urban climate resilience. This chapter utilizes a reflexive exploration to investigate urban resilience in Battambang. Using researcher interviews, this study showcases different layers of resilience with an emphasis on the conflicts of power hierarchies. We demonstrate a more proactive perspective of resilience by revealing forms of resistance among disadvantaged populations. This perspective is seldom presented in current resilience studies.
Urban Governance of Flooding in Myanmar: A Case Study of Bago
(Springer, 2019-01) Reeder, Graham
Urban flooding poses significant challenges to cities in Southeast Asia including loss of life, human displacement, and damaged infrastructure. As cities in the region grow and as the effects of climate change worsen, urban flooding is becoming more frequent and severe. This research situates flood governance in Bago City, Myanmar, in the literature on environmental governance and urban political ecology, investigating how local governance actors interpret the significance of flooding and how they promote urban climate governance. Using the 2015 Bago floods as a point of entry, results were derived from semi-structured interviews with (10) government officials and (22) key informants. Broadly, this research found that government officials interpreted the 2015 floods as extreme but also as an example of the government’s increasing capacity to respond to disasters, that local and regional governments lack the human and capital resources to take on the greater responsibility for flood management that they wish to, that government often fails to act on their knowledge about external causes of flooding such as land use and climate changes, and that government officials strategically adopt neoliberal paradigms advanced by international networks while reinterpreting them to advance their own goals of expanding the role of the state.
Flood Vulnerability and Resilience in Peri-urbanizing Vietnam: A Case Study from Ninh Binh Province
(Springer, 2019-01) Le, Hue; Ha, Ly Bui
Vietnam has experienced massive peri-urbanization in recent decades. Its level of urbanization increased from 19.6% in 2009 to 36.6% in 2016. Peri-urban areas are caught between development and conservation needs, between economic development and environmental protection, and between cultural preservation and sustainable development. In the context of more frequent extreme weather events, rapid peri-urbanization puts higher stress on local water systems and resources. This chapter examines the vulnerabilities and challenges from the flooding that communities face in the peri-urban area of the city of Ninh Binh. Qualitative and quantitative data from household interviews, group discussion, and key informant interviews found that flooding is annually 70–80 cm high and lasts up to one week in the village and its surrounding areas. Flooding forces villagers to abandon cultivated land which adversely affects incomes. Flood damage is made worse by sewage water from the Khanh Phu Industrial Zone that spreads throughout Phu Hao village, killing cattle and fish. Surface water is severely polluted during the rainy season and polluted water has caused water-borne diseases. Unplanned, unregulated building along with underdeveloped water infrastructures for supply, sanitation, storm drainage, and pollution pose severe challenges to the area’s already strained adaptive capacity.
Migrating Toward Vulnerabilities: The Impacts of Structural Violence on Myanmar Migrants in Phuket, Thailand
(Springer, 2019-01) de Jesus-Bretschneider, Angelica
The concept of climate resilience is widely criticized for its neutral and apolitical approach to planning for climate change. Resilience practitioners typically conduct vulnerability assessments to identify how institutions, systems, and actors are at risk from climate change. They mainly focus on climate exposure, sensitivity, and the adaptive capacities of essential infrastructure systems such as settlement areas, water supply networks, and food systems. Resilience practitioners do not emphasize the inherently political nature of vulnerability and the broader social structures that create or reinforce vulnerabilities, especially for marginalized people. My research on the lives of 80 Myanmar migrants in Phuket, Thailand, serves as a case study for the importance of taking a directly political approach to planning for climate resilience. I provide empirical evidence on the vulnerabilities of Myanmar migrants in Phuket, Thailand, as embodied structural violence. People who are underrepresented in policymaking and planning processes in Thailand, including Myanmar migrants, often bear the disproportionate costs of climate change. Thus, resilience practitioners must advocate for an explicitly political, inclusive, and participatory approach that incorporates the experiences and knowledge of all people.
Water Access and Resilience to Climate-Induced Droughts in the Thai Secondary City of Khon Kaen: Unequal and Unjust Vulnerability
(Springer, 2019-01) Marks, Danny
Much of the research conducted on urban climate vulnerability has not explored drought in cities but instead the impacts of flooding. Studies that examine vulnerability to climate-induced urban water shortages have primarily focused on the entire city or regional scale, and less on the community scale. Using two slum communities in Northeast Thailand as a case study, I address this gap using a political ecology framework to study climate-induced droughts in 2015 and 2016. In keeping with recent scholarship, I view droughts as not only natural but also as a result of social and political processes. To investigate the residents of the two communities’ vulnerability to these droughts, I explore the governance processes affecting vulnerability and potential strategies that might reduce vulnerability. In addition to applying a historical and multiscalar approach to the drought, the research relies on a two-tiered methodology that combines community-based case studies with actor- and discourse-based analysis. Slum communities in Khon Kaen have been doubly marginalized by both the national and municipal governments, which weakened their resilience to the two most recent droughts.
Bridging Systems and People-Centred Approaches in Urban Vulnerability Research: Insights for Resilience from Dawei, Myanmar
(Springer, 2019-01) Martin, Taylor; Marschke, Melissa; Win, Saw
Dawei, a coastal secondary city in southeastern Myanmar, is poised to face significant social and environmental change. Dawei’s location at the head of the Dawei River estuary, just 30 kilometres from the Andaman Sea and 350 kilometres to the west of Bangkok, has attracted increasing attention from foreign investors. Namely, to develop a Special Economic Zone, build the largest deep-sea port in the region, and connect Dawei by road to the southern economic corridor of mainland Southeast Asia. Little is known about how these developments will affect Dawei, nor how climate change will interact with such changes to shape urban vulnerability. In this chapter, we examine how Dawei’s urban systems are exposed to various climatic and non-climatic stresses and investigate how this plays out through people’s everyday livelihoods. Our analysis then turns to how people cope and adapt to social and environmental change, illuminating how social capital and the ways that people relate are fundamental to shaping resilience. We situate this analysis within the larger context of Myanmar’s political and economic transition, highlighting both the challenges that this transition poses to vulnerability and the possibility of shaping a resilient future.
Why Focusing on Urban Climate Change Resilience in Southeast Asia Is Relevant and Urgent
(Springer, 2019-01-02) Danière, Amrita; Garschagen, Matthias; Thinphanga, Pakamas
Abstract This volume brings together primary research conducted in secondary cities of Southeast Asia. It provides readers with improved knowledge regarding issues of vulnerability, governance, and climate resilience. The goal of the book and the Urban Climate Resilience in South East Asia (UCRSEA) project is to suggest possible next steps, even as urban systems are dramatically changing in the face of socioeconomic and environmental challenges. The chapter summarizes specific examples from the book drawn from Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Thailand. As the authors document, urban citizens most directly affected by climate change lack access to power and need to be able to participate in the creation and implementation of climate-adaptation strategies if they are to be more effective.
Is Uber a substitute or complement for public transit?
(Elsevier, 2018-10-05) Hall, Jonathan D.; Palsson, Craig; Price, Joseph
How Uber affects public transit ridership is a relevant policy question facing cities worldwide. Theoretically, Uber’s effect on transit is ambiguous: while Uber is an alternative mode of travel, it can also increase the reach and flexibility of public transit’s fixed-route, fixed-schedule service. We estimate the effect of Uber on public transit ridership using a difference-in-differences design that exploits variation across U.S. metropolitan areas in both the intensity of Uber penetration and the timing of Uber entry. We find that Uber is a complement for the average transit agency, increasing ridership by five percent after two years. This average effect masks considerable heterogeneity, with Uber increasing ridership more in larger cities and for smaller transit agencies.
A Practical Blueprint for Change
(University of Toronto, 2017) Batra, Adrienne; Hoy, Shirley; Palvetzian, Sevaun; Parker, John; Pennachetti, Joe; Soknacki, David; Taylor, Zack; Wylie, Bianca
In Fall 2016, the University of Toronto’s School of Public Policy and Governance assembled a group of current or former politicians, public servants, academics, journalists, and civic leaders, balancing a range of political perspectives, to form a City Hall Task Force to improve City Council’s core decision-making processes and procedures.
Beyond Privacy: Articulating the Broader Harms of Pervasive Mass Surveillance
(Cogitatio Press, 2015-10-20) Parsons, Christopher
This article begins by recounting a series of mass surveillance practices conducted by members of the “Five Eyes” spying alliance. While boundary- and intersubjectivity-based theories of privacy register some of the harms linked to such practices I demonstrate how neither are holistically capable of registering these harms. Given these theories’ deficiencies I argue that critiques of signals intelligence surveillance practices can be better grounded on why the practices intrude on basic communicative rights, including those related to privacy. The crux of the argument is that pervasive mass surveillance erodes essential boundaries between public and private spheres by compromising populations’ abilities to freely communicate with one another and, in the process, erodes the integrity of democratic processes and institutions. Such erosions are captured as privacy violations but, ultimately, are more destructive to the fabric of society than are registered by theories of privacy alone. After demonstrating the value of adopting a communicative rights approach to critique signals intelligence surveillance I conclude by arguing that this approach also lets us clarify the international normative implications of such surveillance, that it provides a novel way of conceptualizing legal harm linked to the surveillance, and that it showcases the overall value of focusing on the implications of interfering with communications first, and as such interferences constituting privacy violations second. Ultimately, by adopting this Habermasian inspired mode of analysis we can develop more holistic ways of conceptualizing harms associated with signals intelligence practices than are provided by either boundary- or intersubjective-based theories of privacy.

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