https://www.journalsajsse.com/index.php/SAJSSE <p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>South Asian Journal of Social Studies and Economics</strong> <strong>(ISSN: <a href="https://nsl.niscpr.res.in/ISSNPROCESS/issnassignedinfo.jsp">2581-821X</a>)</strong> aims to publish high-quality papers (<a href="https://journalsajsse.com/index.php/SAJSSE/general-guideline-for-authors">Click here for Types of paper</a>) in all areas of ‘Economics and Social Studies’. By not excluding papers based on novelty, this journal facilitates the research and wishes to publish papers as long as they are technically correct and scientifically motivated. The journal also encourages the submission of useful reports of negative results. This is a quality controlled, OPEN peer-reviewed, open-access INTERNATIONAL journal.</p> en-US [email protected] (South Asian Journal of Social Studies and Economics) [email protected] (South Asian Journal of Social Studies and Economics) Sat, 24 Oct 2026 09:45:24 +0000 OJS 3.3.0.21 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 https://www.journalsajsse.com/index.php/SAJSSE/article/view/1401 <p>This study examines the association between institutional capacity building (ICB) and local economic development (LED) among decentralised local authorities in Cameroon. It draws on the 2021 Capitalisation Survey of Achievements of the National Participatory Development Programme (ECA-PNDP), which covers 144 municipalities. Multidimensional indices of institutional capacity and local economic development are constructed from survey indicators using principal component analysis and equal-weight aggregation. Institutional capacity encompasses participatory governance, local planning, rationalisation of public investment, financial capacity and human capital. Local economic development is represented by economic infrastructure, employment, income and territorial attractiveness. The empirical analysis uses ordinary least squares regression, alternative index measures and quantile regression. The reported main regression includes 139 observations. Its fully adjusted specification indicates a positive association between institutional capacity and the survey-based LED index, with an estimated ICB coefficient of 0.0611 that is statistically significant at the 5% level. Alternative measures also yield positive associations, while quantile regression results vary across specifications. These findings suggest that administrative and financial management capacities warrant attention in efforts to strengthen local governance and development planning. However, the cross-sectional design and survey-derived measures preclude causal inference and do not capture every dimension of local economic development. The study contributes municipality-level evidence concerning decentralisation and institutional capacity in Cameroon.</p> Clovis WENDJI MIAMO, Monique Merlin NGONO NOAH Copyright (c) 2026 Author(s). The licensee is the journal publisher. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://www.journalsajsse.com/index.php/SAJSSE/article/view/1401 Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.journalsajsse.com/index.php/SAJSSE/article/view/1400 <p><strong>Aim:</strong> To assess how industrial expansion and non-farm employment have affected livelihood security, economic mobility and land, caste and gender relations in Tamil Nadu, and to identify questions requiring field research in Sivakasi.</p> <p><strong>Approach:</strong> A critical narrative synthesis of 67 published and documentary sources, comprising scholarly studies, books, planning and policy documents, official statistics, legal records and selected contemporaneous reports. Evidence is compared across national, state, village and industrial-cluster scales; no primary field data are presented.</p> <p><strong>Main Argument:</strong> Industrial output growth, occupational diversification, economic mobility and changes in social relations are distinct processes. Studies of selected Tamil Nadu villages and clusters document expanded non-farm work and some weakening of agrarian dependence, but also reveal persistent debt, unequal access to skills, gendered labour responsibilities and insecure employment. The extent and direction of these changes are not uniform across places or periods.</p> <p><strong>Conclusion:</strong> Industrial scale alone cannot indicate the quality or distribution of livelihood gains. Historical documentation of the match and fireworks industries in Sivakasi and recent evidence on occupational hazards make the cluster a useful setting for examining whether shifts from agriculture to industry are accompanied by durable household security and changes in social relations. The review identifies empirical questions rather than reporting new field findings.</p> K. Sankara Pandi Copyright (c) 2026 Author(s). The licensee is the journal publisher. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://www.journalsajsse.com/index.php/SAJSSE/article/view/1400 Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000