Comprehensive Examination in Globalization and Development
Day One: General Examination
Spring 2007
Answer the following question (required):
1) (Required) Mauro Guillen claims that “existing theoretical and empirical research on
globalization is organized around five key issues or questions: Is it really happening? Does it
produce convergence? Does it undermine the authority of nation-states? Is globality different
from modernity? Is a global culture in the making?” How would you answer these questions?
Pay particular attention to global institutions and organizations.
Answer TWO of the following questions:
2) Describe the recent trends in poverty and income inequality in developing countries. What are
the most important factors (societal, political, etc.) affecting poverty and income inequality in
developing countries? What do we know in particular about the impact of structural adjustment
policies and economic liberalization on poverty and inequality?
3) With reference to national and local patterns of urban growth, spatial concentration of poverty
and affluence, and the environmental degradation that one finds in cities of the developed world
today, examine how far your observations lead you to conclude that these are primarily the
outcomes of economic structuring and globalization processes, or on cities in developing
countries?
4) Decentralization has been described as the “Quiet Revolution” (Campbell, 2003). To what
extent has decentralization and devolution come of age across the developing world since the
early 1990s; what are the principal challenges that countries face in implementing these new
governance structures, and, on balance, what have been the outcomes for improved
development?
5) “Neither class, gender, nor ethnicity should be the primary defining basis of political rights.
Rather it is citizenship.” How far do you agree, and to what extent is the concept of citizenship
helpful in activating mobilization and organization for development?
6) Compare and contrast the extent to which countries in two regions (Africa, Asia, Latin
America) were generally able to successfully mobilize “the resources of poverty” in the 1980s,
but since the mid-1990s have suffered from a “poverty of resources”. Explain what González de
la Rocha meant when she coined these two ideas in 1994, and analyze the contemporary
development prospects for the so-called “New Poor”.