No abstract

It is widely acknowledged that the involvement of small farmers into markets can contribute to higher productivity and income growth, which in turn can enhance food security, poverty reduction efforts, and overall economic growth. In Africa, as in other parts of the developing world, agricultural production systems and their participants face significant challenges as a result of changing economic, environmental, and sociopolitical context. New dynamics in the global agricultural economy, such as the growth of supermarkets, are providing smallholders with both the new opportunities and new constraints to participate in and benefit from market exchanges. Collective action in the form of producer groups can enable African smallholders to take advantage of the new value chains and deal with existing market imperfections. However, certain conditions must be in place to create and sustain incentives for farmers to organize around marketing. Experiences from collective action in natural resource management (NRM) have shown that the types of markets and products, characteristics of user groups, institutional arrangements, and external environment need to be considered in order to determine the effectiveness and sustainability of collective marketing for smallholders. This paper applies the lessons from collective action in NRM to marketing, using existing case studies of producer groups in Africa, and offers policy recommendations on the factors that contribute to the success of collective marketing efforts. Copyright 2010 by The Policy Studies Organization.

Breadth refers to the number of bundles held. Access rights have less breadth than do access and management rights together.

This article provides a review of literature on the relationship between poverty and the institutions of collective action and property rights, as outlined in the conceptual framework of Di Gregorio et al. (2008). Using the elements of the framework as a guide, it offers an overview of how researchers and practitioners identify and evaluate these concepts. The article emphasises the multidimensionality of poverty and the necessity of applying various approaches and tools to conceptualising and measuring it. In addition to highlighting the crucial role that institutions play in poverty reduction, it shows power relations and the political context to be of fundamental importance in poverty‐related studies.

While many countries have increased the opportunities for patient choice of provider, there is debate to what extent this has had positive effects on efficiency and quality of healthcare provision. First, some conditions should be met to exercise such choice, of which the most important is the provision of reliable data on providers' performance to both patients and physicians as their agents, as well as increasing primary health care (PHC) providers' involvement in realization of patient choice. Second, expanding patient choice does not always lead to efficient allocation of resources in a healthcare system. This article explores these controversial developments by using empirical evidence from the Russian Federation. It shows that choice indeed has value for patients, but there are many areas of inefficient choice, which leads to misallocation of healthcare recourses. Thus, health policy in this area should be designed to ensure a reasonable balance between objectives of expanding choice and promoting more efficient organization of healthcare provision. Political rhetoric about unlimited patient choice may be useless and even risky unless supported by well-balanced programmes of supporting and managing choice.