This page lists select journal articles on international trade, development, and cultural economics. All the highlighted articles are downloadable and peer-reviewed.
LATEST
J. P. Singh and Michael Woolcock. 2023. The Future of Multilateralism and Global Development: Opportunities for Constitutive and Functional Reform. Special Collection: Future of Multilateralism and Global Development. Global Perspectives. 3 (1)
In response to the numerous challenges facing contemporary multilateral organizations, and indeed the very idea of multilateralism itself, many have called for “wholesale change” yet few have provided specific details on substance or articulated how any such reforms might be supported (politically, financially) or implemented. We summarize key insights from a recent global initiative that sought to both provide a critical assessment of multilateralism at different units of analysis and offer credible corresponding responses, doing so within a basic framework distinguishing between multilateralism’s constitutive elements (e.g., the creation, organization, and collective understandings of the UN system) and its functional components (everyday activities such as budgets and hiring practices). This collection of fourteen papers and six commentaries highlights specific ways in which different kinds of political, policy, and procedural challenges might be addressed, including strategies to adopt more adaptive management practices, ensure compliance with dues-paying rules, and diffuse secession threats; enact difficult trade-offs between imperatives for transparency, accountability, and confidentiality; learn from regulatory innovations in trade and investment rules to strengthen labor, human rights, and the environment; formulate workable domestic and global rules for multilateral cooperation; enhance data on, studies of, and policy responses to rising inequalities; implement potential technical fixes to redress debilitating “binding constraints”; promote greater staff diversity (geographically, demographically, ideologically); forge greater complementarity between regional, “new” (Southern-based) and “established” multilateral organizations; secure the substantive contributions of small states; and respond proactively to the shifting contours of geopolitical rivalries, opportunities, and imperatives.
J.P. Singh. 2021. Race, Culture, and Economics: An Example from North-South Trade Relations. Review of International Political Economy. 28 (2): 323-335. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2020.1771612
This essay refines the understanding of culture and race – with operational and temporal dynamics – to explain North-South trade outcomes. Following traditions in economic sociology and anthropology, culture is presented as a toolkit of values. The recent rise of racism and xenophobia as values associated with populism can be traced to cultural toolkits that have sedimented histories. The cultural unsettledness of the present times has brought these values to fore. The blindspots in political economy ignored the cultural embeddedness of interests and values as they evolve through time, and therefore missed both the examination of important outcomes and their historical roots. The paper provides an empirical example from racialized values embedded in the history of North-South trade relations.
J.P. Singh. 2020. Political Economy, Markets and Institutions: Preference Formation as a Point of Entry. Global Perspectives 1:1
Understanding the preferences of economic agents such as businesses, consumers, or governments is fundamental to political economy analyses at the micro level. This essay shifts between micro and macroeconomic issues to explain the challenges for political economic analyses, and the need for further scholarship. Analyses of preference formation assist with understanding political-economic change including periods of cultural turbulence and technological transformation, which challenge many long-standing suppositions in economics.
J. P. Singh. 2020. Trade Negotiations at the (Possible) End of Multilateral Institutionalism. International Negotiation 25:
Multilateral negotiations are often facilitated through international organizations, but are not coterminous with them. This essay advances a few ‘mid-level’ propositions with respect to the negotiation structure that provides an overall context and the negotiation process where tactics guide the exchange of concessions. In terms of negotiation structure, a stable institutional structure is giving rise to a transitional one resulting in system spoilers in international negotiations leading to deadlocks and no-agreements. The bargaining phases are marked with games of chicken and grand-standing making it hard to effectively practice common negotiation tactics such as coalition-building, trade-offs and linkages. The article provides examples from the Uruguay Round andthe breakdown of the Doha Round of trade negotiations through the World Trade Organization. The essay’s propositions address the breakdown of existing multilateralism through international organizations, but also document the continuation of underlying multilateral principles.
J.P. Singh. 2019. Development finance 2.0: do participation and information technologies matter? Review of International Political Economy. 26(5): 886-910. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2019.1616600
This essay critically examines the discourse of participation in development finance directed at the poor in the Global South from national and international development agencies. This discourse, often termed financial inclusion, posits the ability of development actors to reach the poor involving them in important economic decisions affecting their lives, provides access to products that improve their material conditions, and ensures their credit worthiness through highly nuanced information technology and social media tools. The paper presents evidence from two ethnographically inspired studies undertaken by the author in India and Kenya to ascertain the ways in which the participatory discourse in finance is understood among societal participants themselves. The paper presents relevant epistemes for analyzing what ’grassroots’ actors understand as their participation in development-oriented financial inclusion projects. The study forwards two major conclusions: (1) ’habits of authority’ among various development actors thwart effective participation; (2) technology platforms that allow for successive innovations and interconnections from businesses and other organizations encourage financial inclusion.
ARTICLES 1998-2019
J.P. Singh and Evangelos Chrysagis. April 2019. Understanding Multimodalities in Arts and Social Sciences. Arts & International Affairs. 3.3/4.1. April 2019. doi: 10.18278/aia.3.3.4.1.1
J. P. Singh. 2018. “UNESCO: Scientific humanism and its impact on multilateral diplomacy.” Global Policy. 9:3.
J.P. Singh. May 2018. Singh, JP, Guy Gotto, Zach Marschall. The Arts, Participation, and Global Interests. Arts & International Affairs. 3:1. May 2018
J.P. Singh. June 2017. Art and the Global.” Arts & International Affairs. 2:2.
J.P Singh & Surupa Gupta. 2016. Agriculture and its Discontents: Coalitional Politics at the WTO with Special Reference to India’s Food Security Interests. International Negotiation. 21: 295-326
J.P. Singh and Mikkell Flyverbom. July 2016. Representing Participation in ICT4D Projects. Telecommunications Policy. July 2016.
J.P. Singh. March 2016. “A Subaltern Performance: Circulations of Gender, Islam, and Nation in India’s Song of Defiance.” Arts & International Affairs. 1:1.
J.P. Singh. 2015. Diffusion of Power and Diplomacy: New Meanings, Problem Solving, and Deadlocks in Emerging Multilateral Negotiations. International Negotiation. Volume 20: 146-174. 20th Anniversary Edition. 2015
J.P. Singh. 2014. “Developing Countries, Agriculture, and the World Trade Organization.” Yojana. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, India. June 2014.
J.P. Singh. 2014. Development Remix: Representing Poverty, Culture, and Agency in the Developing World. International Studies Perspectives. Volume 15:3.
J.P. Singh. 2014. Cultural Networks & UNESCO: Fostering Heritage Preservation Betwixt Idealism and Participation. Heritage & Society.
J.P. Singh. 2013. Information Technologies, Meta-power, and Transformations in Global Politics. International Studies Review.
J.P. Singh. 2010. Development Objectives and Trade Negotiations: Moralistic Foreign Policy or Negotiated Trade Concessions? International Negotiation. 15: 367-389.
J.P. Singh. 2010. Multilateral Approaches to Deliberating Internet Governance. Policy and Internet, Vol 1:1. 91-111.
J.P. Singh. 2009. What is Being Controlled on the Internet? In Johann Erickson and Giampiero Giacomello, Editors. “The Forum: Who Controls the Internet?” International Studies Review. 218-221.
J.P. Singh. 2008. Agents of Policy Learning and Change: US and EU Perspectives on Cultural Policy. Journal of Arts Management, Law, Society. 141-159.
J.P. Singh. 2008. Paulo Freire: Possibilities for Dialogic Communication in a Market-Driven Information Age. Key Thinkers in the Information Age Series. Information, Communication, and Society. Vol. 11: Issue 5. 699-726. 2008
J.P. Singh and Shilpa Hart. 2007. Sex Workers and Cultural Policy: Mapping the Issues and Actors in Thailand. Review of Policy Research. 24:2: 155-173.
J.P. Singh. 2007. Culture or Commerce? A Comparative Assessment of International Interactions and Developing Countries at UNESCO, WTO, and Beyond. International Studies Perspectives. 8: 36 – 53.
J.P. Singh. 2006. Coalitions, Developing Countries, and International Trade. International Negotiation 11: 499 – 524.
J.P. Singh. 2006. Foreign Direct Investment Variations in Emerging Markets: Credible Commitments, Economic Downturn, or Something Else? Information Technologies and International Development. Vol. 2:4. 75-87
J.P. Singh and Shilpa Hart. 2004. Development as Cross-Cultural Communication: Anatomy of a Development Project in North India. Journal of International Communication. 50-75.
J.P. Singh and Sarah Gilchrist. 2002. Three layers of the electronic commerce network: challenges for the developed and developing worlds. Info: the journal of policy, regulation and strategy for telecommunication, information and media. Vol. 4, No. 2. 31-41.
J.P. Singh. 2001. From POTS to E-commerce: What Have the Developing Countries Learnt About Property Rights Over the Last 50 Years? Prometheus. Vol. 19, No. 4, 347-361
J.P. Singh. 2000. The Institutional Environment and the Effects of Telecommunication Privatization and Market Liberalization in Asia. Telecommunication Policy. Vol. 24, 885-906.
J.P. Singh. 2000. Weak Powers and Globalism: Impact of Plurality on Weak-Strong Negotiations in the International Economy. International Negotiation. Vol. 5, 449-484
J.P. Singh. 1998. Unraveling ‘The Missing Link’: The Provision of Telecommunications Services in Select Developing Countries. Communicatio 24(1): 48-58
J.P. Singh. 2000. “Issues of Access, Affordability, and Use: Bringing People and Information Technologies Together in India” Voices: A Journal on Communication for Development. 2000.
J.P. Singh. 1998. “Telecommunication User Groups and Economic Development.” Asia-Pacific Telecommunity Journal. January 1998.
J.P. Singh. December 1997. “Need for Accountability: Telecommunications Policies for Rural India.” Voices: A Journal on Communication for Development. December 1997