Peacekeeping,Regime Security and ‘African Solutions to African Problems’: exploring motivations for Rwanda's involvement in Darfur

Rwanda is not a traditional provider of troops for peacekeeping missions, yet since 2004 it has been the second largest contributor to both the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) and its successor the hybrid African Union–UN Assistance Mission in Darfur (UNAMID). This paper analyses some of the key motives for Rwanda's contribution to these missions, situating its actions within a wider framework in which African states benefit in specific ways from being seen to contribute to ‘African solutions to African problems’. Highlighting changing narratives on Africa's role in international security, I argue that Rwanda's ruling party has been able use its involvement in peacekeeping to secure its position domestically and to attract or retain the support of key bilateral donors. I briefly explore the implications of these dynamics for Rwanda's political development, suggesting in conclusion that the focus on building military capacity for peacekeeping purposes may contribute to future African, and Rwandan, security problems as much as to potential solutions.     

The Political Economy of Improving Health Care for the Poor in Rural Africa: Institutional Solutions to the Principal–Agent Problem

Both governments and private for-profit markets have been disappointing in meeting the needs of the African poor for health care. NGO services provide a much more attractive alternative for this clientele, despite the fees they charge. They do so because they represent an institutional solution to the ‘imperfect information’ problem in health care. Through simulations based on data from Cameroon, we demonstrate that if fee-charging NGOs replace the highly subsidised but poorly managed facilities operated by African governments the poor would be better off. Those NGOs that are decentralised in their financial and personnel management are most effective. The politics of making the recommended changes are assessed.     

Terrorism Financing with Virtual Currencies: Can Regulatory Technology Solutions Combat This?

ABSTRACT

This article considers the terrorism financing risk associated with the growth of Financial Technology innovations and in particular, focuses on virtual currency products and services. The ease with which cross-border payments by virtual currencies are facilitated, the anonymity surrounding their usage, and their potential to be converted into the fiat financial system, make them ideal for terrorism financing and therefore calls for a coordinated global regulatory response. This article considers the extent of the risk of terrorism financing through virtual currencies in “high risk” States by focusing on countries that have been recently associated with terrorism activities. It assesses the robustness of their financial regulatory and law enforcement regimes in combating terrorism financing and considers the extent to which Regulatory Technology and its global standardization, can mitigate this risk.     

The Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945: The Current Status of Research and Publication in the People’s Republic of China,and Prospects and Problems for Foreign Researchers

Zhao Erfeng (1845–1911), the Qing governor-general of Sichuan province in 1911, died immediately after the successful revolutionary uprising in Chengdu. This article examines three biographical narratives of Zhao produced during the 1910s. The three different portraits of Zhao in the biographies—Zhao as racial traitor, loyal martyr, and modernizer—reveal radically different ways in which the Qing–Republican transition was understood in the early Republic. Focused on the two major issues associated with Zhao, the Qing incorporation of the Sino-Tibetan frontier and the railway-protection movement in Sichuan, the following discussion utilizes Zhao's biographies as windows on the unsettled definitions of the 1911 Revolution, revealing how Chinese negotiated the issues of nation, territory, and modernity at the birth of a modern state.     

Africa's Quest for Developmental States: ‘renaissance’ for whom?

After a generally disappointing half-century since recapturing formal independence, at the turn of the second decade of the 21st century, Africa(s) may now be able to seize unanticipated emerging opportunities to move from `fragile' or `failed' towards `developmental' political economies. The continent displays innovations in terms of sources of finance, new regionalisms & transnational governance leading to distinctive insights for analysis & policy, both state & non-state. Its potential for renaissance is reinforced by South Africa's accession as the fifth of the BRICS at the dawn of the decade.     

Does Ownership Matter for Employee Motivation When Occupation Is Controlled for?

The public service motivation literature argues that public employees are more motivated than private employees to deliver public service for the benefit of society. But the reason for this may be that the classical welfare services are predominant in the public sector. This article therefore investigates if ownership matters to employee motivation when occupation is controlled for. The findings show that the employees in both sectors have pro-social motivation, but that public sector employees are more motivated to work for the public interest, whereas private sector employees are more motivated to help individual users of services. The survey data are based on 3,304 Danish employees working in private as well as public organizations.     

Kashmir: ripe for resolution?

This paper documents and analyses 46 proposals made between 1947 and 2008 for resolving the India–Pakistan dispute over Jammu and Kashmir. We conduct a content analysis to recognise the patterns that emerge from these formulations and identify the key elements that recur over time. Our analysis suggests that the dispute may be more ‘ripe’ for resolution today than it has ever been in the past. For the first time in the dispute's history, there is growing convergence over a core element of the solution, ie granting autonomy to Kashmiris. This is matched by a virtual consensus on the ‘catalysts’, namely soft borders to allow relatively free human and economic exchange within Jammu and Kashmir, the notion of Kashmiri involvement in any negotiations on the issue and demilitarisation of the state. Ripeness alone, however, does not lead to resolution. Over the years various dynamic proposals have been made, which means that this particular convergence could also dissipate, as some of the prior ones have. There is a potential window of opportunity today, but it will not last indefinitely.     

Prébisch's rationale for protection

The major critics of Prébisch's rationale for protection have tended to overlook an important premise of his argument. The premise is that technological improvements arising in the secondary industries of the advanced countries are transferred much more slowly (i) than they occur, (ii) than the prices of the exports of the advanced countries are allowed to decline, and (iii) than technological improvements are transferred to the export industries of underdeveloped countries. All innovations are assumed to be developed in the advanced countries. Can a disparity between rates of transfer provide the essential justification for Prébisch's policy? The disparity can be said to arise from a hindrance to the transfer of advanced technology to the import‐substituting industries. The conclusion of this paper is that the policy can be justified only when (i) protection is capable of offsetting the hindrance, (ii) it is possible to ensure, during the period of protection, that the transfer of future advances can occur without hindrance, and (iii) the expansion of production possibilities resulting from the newly‐available technology allows income to increase sufficiently (over some period of time) to offset the cost of protection.     

Visegrad: Fit for purpose?

Visegrad inter-state cooperation among the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia has faced numerous near-death experiences since its official birth in 1991. Furthermore, it has faced two challenges since the four member-countries’ accession to the EU in 2004. Then Visegrad was eulogized, considered deceased by many precisely for having achieved the apparently ultimate aim of EU membership. Second, having purposefully stated rumours of its death, Visegrad has since 2008 been confronted by issues from outside and ones well beyond its size – the Obama presidency and its apparent abandonment of Central and Eastern Europe in its “reset” strategy towards Moscow; a post-Lisbon EU agenda; strategic reorientations in NATO; and both the general, that is, global, financial crisis and particularly within the EU and regarding the Euro.This article, by contrast, contends that the fundamental changes and challenges that Visegrad has faced enhanced the Group's clear and successful strategy. It identifies and elaborates that strategy, drawing also selectively and thematically on the Group's historical experience since 1991. These strategies include targeted rather than broad selection of aims; retaining an exclusive membership while also inventing variable and flexible mechanisms for adding non-member countries to help them pursue specific initiatives. Through a study of annual Group Presidency agendas and reports, high-level and ministerial meeting declarations and media and secondary source analysis and interviews with National Coordinators, the article contends that the Group continues to promote realistic aims, and provides a unique platform for exercising them. This study concludes that Visegrad, despite the outside challenges remains effective in raising awareness, advancing smaller-scale policies and influencing EU policy towards the Western Balkans and European Partnership (EaP) countries, as well as achieving specific Visegrad initiatives with those states.