Sociologists have long recognized uneven development within nations and differential patterns of poverty and prosperity across places. In analyzing why some places fare better than others, researchers largely focus on market forces. Few studies have considered the role of the local state. Yet in many countries today local governments have gained responsibilities and control as national governments offload responsibilities. This shift toward localized government is often associated with neoliberalism. The conventional view is pessimistic about local governments, stressing their potential to reinforce poverty and inequality. Our research challenges this view. We advance a counter-perspective that builds from two subnational literatures, one on poverty and place and the other, mesocomparative research on the state. Focusing on the United States, we examine whether local governments are linked to poverty and income inequality. Using unique data that span all communities (over 3,000 county areas) over the Great Recession, we show that the institutional capacity and spending policy of local governments at the outset of the recession influenced how communities fared subsequently. To our knowledge, this is the first sociological study that integrates theoretical understanding of local state processes and research aimed at explaining poverty and inequality across the United States.

Much of the research on international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) emphasizes their role as transnational actors on a global scale, but INGOs also have a national dimension—they originate in home countries, and they carry out activities in host or recipient countries. How can we understand the way they are shaped by and operate across these multiple contexts? This paper examines differences between U.S.-based, Japanese, and South Korean INGOs in Cambodia. Specifically, we analyze interorganizational relationships between INGOs and their donors and local partners, which we conceptualize as “aid chains.” This comparative analysis of aid chains provides insight into the dynamics that produce patterned variation in the development field.

We summarize the history of Latin American urbanization with a focus on the evolution of cities from the colonial and post-colonial eras to the adoption of the import-substitution model of development and its subsequent replacement by a neoliberal adjustment model. Consequences for the urban system of both import-substitution and neoliberal policies are examined, with a focus on the evolution of the urban population and trends in several strategic areas. We examine indicators of unemployment and informal employment; poverty and inequality; and urban crime and victimization rates as they evolved from the import-substitution era to the implosion of the neoliberal model that replaced it in the early twenty-first century. The consequences for cities of the disastrous application of this model are summarized as a prelude to the analysis of more recent trends. Based on the latest statistical indicators available, we document a significant decline in unemployment and economic inequality in six Latin American nations that jointly comprise 80 percent of the population of the region. Employment in the informal sector also declined steadily, although it still comprises a large proportion of Latin American labor markets. Consequences of this situation for the citizenry and alternative government policies to address it are discussed.

We revisit and recast two prominent theories of environmental degradation: the treadmill of production and the treadmill of destruction. This recasting is guided by critical realism, focused on theorizing generative mechanisms that produce and shape empirical events. Our theorization is informed by Marxist and Weberian insights into environmental sociology contributions. In this critical realist recasting, the treadmill of production and the treadmill of destruction are conceived of as generative mechanisms. A treadmill refers to a process in which powerful organizations appropriate nature to amass power and capital. These organizations degrade the environment, and they suppress and distort information about the environmental damage they cause. The macrosocial context, the organizations at the center of them, and the elites that command these organizations make these treadmills distinct. A treadmill spans the biophysical and the social/cultural realms. Whereas the biophysical is necessary for the social/cultural realm to exist, it exists independent of human knowledge of this realm. As such, historical contingency and social change are at the center of analysis when studying the waxing, waning, transformation, and demise of treadmills. Adopting a critical realist stance, future theorization and research can and should engage a wide range of theories advanced in environmental sociology. The goal is not to establish the single best unitary theory, but to identify and gain insight into the generative mechanisms that shape and constrain human interactions with the environment.

The world environmental regime has influenced government policy and improved environmental conditions around the globe, but its influence on governance is sometimes decoupled from, or loosely connected with, actual practice. This article examines the influence of the environmental regime on foreign aid and proposes that economic incentive, in the form of FDI, is a source of decoupling between aid donors’ stated environmental goals and actual aid commitments. Using a three-dimensional panel design (donor × recipient × year), I test allocations of environmental protection and fossil fuel aid in a two-stage process where first the aid recipient is chosen, and then the aid amount. I find that although donor and recipient environmental regime integration are associated with higher likelihood of exchanging environmental aid, other factors (donor/recipient GDP, recipient democracy, etc.) determine the amount of aid. Regime integration does not reduce the likelihood of exchanging fossil fuel aid, but donor regime integration is associated with giving less fossil fuel aid, contingent on the donor’s level of FDI in the recipient nation. I conclude that the world environmental regime and the global economy exert contradictory pressures on aid organizations that result in policy–practice decoupling. The world environmental regime, therefore, has only been partially successful in improving foreign aid, and its effect is constrained by donors’ economic incentive to ignore environmental norms.

Prior reviews have discussed the potential relationship between global economic integration and smoking prevalence, but for the most part, these non-empirical studies have only offered speculative observations. This cross-national study employs two-way fixed effects regression models and a three-way interaction to test whether integration into the global economy, measured as imports (% of GDP), affects male and female smoking prevalence across country income groups (developed vs. less developed nations) and time from 2000 to 2015. We observe that the effect of global economic integration on female smoking prevalence increased in magnitude over time in both income groups, but we see no such effect on male smoking prevalence. The effect does not differ by income group. We conclude by discussing the theoretical implications of our findings, along with policy recommendations.

Development ethics emerged as a joint critique of economic development research and practice, giving rise to three alternative traditions: human development, sustainable development, and participatory development. The ethical issues surrounding the mainstreaming of these schools have implications for investigators. In this article, I revisit the transformative values at the root of these traditions to articulate common research principles for an international and interdisciplinary field. Ethicists are asking development researchers to deliver actionable and multiparadigmatic understanding by improving measures, aligning values and approaches, and decolonizing knowledge. While these emerging research models can strengthen development relevancy and impact, they are challenging to facilitate and vulnerable to elite co-optation. Not only should the production of knowledge be rigorous and accurate, but scholars also have a responsibility to query power and embrace difference. The principles presented in this article comprise a set of shared values that may be used as a practical guide for planning, conducting, and evaluating development research across methods, topics, and disciplines.

Many scholars assert that the U.S. state promotes free market economic policies abroad through the leverage it wields within international financial institutions (IFIs), such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Other scholars have focused on U.S. bilateral aid programs, such as those implemented by USAID, and their emphasis on free market economic policies. In many middle-income countries, though, IFIs and U.S. development agencies do not maintain economic development programs. If the U.S. state cannot promote free market policies through IFIs and its bilateral development agencies, how does it promote them at all in middle-income countries? In this paper, I provide a case study of U.S. foreign policy toward Venezuela, a middle-income country, under the government of President Hugo Chávez (1999–2013). I draw on interviews with U.S. state elites, including several former ambassadors and State Department employees, and U.S. state documents to show how the U.S. encourages free market economic reforms through its support for civil society organizations that embrace these reforms. In particular, I focus on the work of the Center for International Private Enterprise, which has explicitly linked political freedom with economic freedom. Through this organization, the U.S. works with free market think tanks and promotes free market initiatives, all in the form of political rather than economic assistance.

The rise of participatory democracy in urban Latin America has increased citizen deliberation in local politics, improved access to state officials and given residents greater control over municipal budgets. Simultaneously, welfare state retrenchment across the region has ensured the continued importance of the informal sector in securing citizen livelihoods, including informal political arrangements such as clientelism. Given their documented co-existence, how do informal political strategies operate in this new landscape of formal, local democracy? To answer this question, this article analyzes 21 semi-structured interviews with urbanists in Mexico City who evaluate the informal tactics of two groups that mobilize through participatory democratic initiatives: street vendor unions and white collar neighborhood councils. Urbanists regularly denounce informal, corporatist-clientelistic political strategies when they are used by street vendor groups. However, when deployed by white collar neighborhood councils, these tactics are tolerated and even celebrated. The differential reception of informal political tactics by city officials draws attention to how they construct the legitimacy or illegitimacy of informal political action. I argue that considering legitimacy adds a new analytical category to studies of informal politics that captures which groups are able to use informal tactics to advance their claims in local participatory democracy.