When agricultural commodities in developing countries experience an economic boom, they offer potential pathways out of poverty while creating environmental and social problems. While recent research provides insights into the governance of international supply chains, it provides less analysis...

Over recent years, systems of civil or private regulation have emerged across several commodity sectors in developing countries. This paper compares two regulatory systems applied to parallel food and forestry problems: the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm...

Social protection policies involve distributional politics and practices that pose significant challenges. Focusing on Indonesia, where such policies are rapidly expanding, this paper discusses two programmes most relevant to the poor - the rice for welfare (Rastra) scheme and the conditional...

Did colonial rule in Indonesia have a de-industrialising impact? Using the case of the cotton textile industry, this paper finds little evidence. Value added in the industry increased in Java during 1820-71, increased more than three-fold during 1874-1914 and doubled during 1934-41. Most...

This paper examines the recent political economy of trade policy in Indonesia against the backdrop of two key events: the deep economic crisis of 1997-98, and the transition from three decades of rapid growth under an authoritarian regime to a weaker but democratic state. We investigate both...