The Cuban revolution and its acolytes

He has written widely on Cuba and Fidel Castro. Among his books are Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution; Cuba, Castro, and the Caribbean;and Secret Report on the Cuban Revolution (all published by Transaction).     

Introduction

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has emerged as an outspoken challenger to US geopolitical preeminence in the Americas. This study explores the framing practices employed by mainstream newspaper outlets in the United States in their coverage of President Chávez over a ten-year time period—between 1998, the year he was first elected president, and December 2007. This content analysis examines media output from a number of influential newspapers: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Using an inductive approach, I identify and critically assess the dominant media frames that emerged over this time period: the Dictator Frame, the Castro Disciple Frame, the Declining Economy Frame, and the Meddler-in-the-Region Frame. I also explore how journalistic norms—like personalization, dramatization, novelty, and authority-order—inform media coverage of this key Latin American leader.     

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF MEXICAN AND CUBAN IMMIGRANTS BY POLITICIANS

Schneider and Ingram (1993) propose that the amount and quality of service that target groups receive from their government is related to two factors: political power (strong or weak); and the target groups’ image in the public eye (positive or negative), also known as “social constructions.” This research examines political candidates’ social constructions of Mexican and Cuban immigrants in major newspapers. Using newspaper articles from Lexis/Nexus (an electronic newspaper database), we content analyzed 495 major US newspapers over a six‐year period. Our results indicate that Latin American immigration, particularly Mexican immigration, is championed as a political platform in ways consistent with Schneider and Ingram's model.     

Jack,Judy, Sam,Bobby, Johnny,Frank...: An investigation into the alternate history of the CIA‐Mafia collaboration to assassinate Fidel Castro, 1960–1997

The CIA‐Mafia plots to assassinate Fidel Castro in the early 1960s serve, by themselves, as comically horrifying tales, some of the many littered throughout American Cold War history. Yet these events have lived an extraordinary life outside of the textbooks and classrooms; the danger and intrigue of the organized crime underworld mixed with a national fascination with the Kennedy family have kept this story alive through all of its mutations. J. Alan Wolske analyzes the various histories of the assassination plots that have sprung from the government's own attempts to face up to its past deeds, and attempts to reconcile them with the ‘official’ history.     

The Baroque, Modernity, and Postmodernity in Latin American Political Culture

This article offers a general view about the contemporary theoretical debate in Latin‐American concerning the idea of modernity. For some authors, modernity is part of Latin‐American history, and its ruts can be found in the baroque experience of the continent, for others, the consequences of modernity such as urbanization, industralization and hope in democracy shows the Latin America is in essence a modern territory, despite the academic difficulties to understand and visualize Latin‐American identity as an integral element of the concept of modernity.     

Public Financial Management Reforms: The Role of Ipsas in Latin‐America

During the last 30 years, many public administration reforms promoted by New Public Management have been undertaken. These reforms have spread to Latin‐American countries and include changes in governmental accounting systems, where the implementation of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs) has been a stimulus for modernization. This article aims to clarify the situation of IPSASs implementation in the Latin‐American context as well as the stimuli for and effects of their implementation. The analysis shows that there is an emerging international trend to adopt IPSASs in Latin‐American countries although at the same time, there are evident obstacles to achieving reform goals. In Colombia, reforms are still underway, and the usefulness of IPSASs to improve decision‐making at an organisational level cannot be evaluated. Meanwhile, in Peru, the modernization is more rhetorical than real, and many efforts remain to be made for the effective implementation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Tragedy of Liberal Diplomacy: Democratization,Intervention, Statebuilding (Part I)

Since the end of the Cold War, democracy promotion, intervention and statebuilding have once again been explicit features of American foreign policy. Current assessments of this return, however, overlook both their longer term history and their roots in liberal (and not just American) ideology. The contradictions and dynamics entailed in the liberal philosophy of history have already played themselves out once before, in the modernization theories and policies of the early Cold War period. Despite their academic and political failures at the time, the same assumptions now underpin democracy promotion in the post-Cold War period and show signs of the same dynamics of failure. In this two part essay, I argue that the repetition of such counterproductive policies constitutes a recurring ‘tragedy of liberal diplomacy’ in which the shaping of US foreign policy by assumptions deeply rooted in the liberal philosophy of history plays a central part in producing the very enemies that policy is designed to confront and transform.     

The Transaction Costs of Government Responses to the COVID-19 Emergency in Latin America

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a crisis that is challenging national and local governments to innovate in their responses to novel problems. Despite similarities to the challenges confronted in developed countries, for Latin American governments, these problems are amplified by structural obstacles such as social inequalities. These countries must respond with capacities and resources that are often limited by spoils systems and by social and political polarization. This essay provides an overview of some innovative practices in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. In particular, this essay concentrates on some salient collaborative efforts in the region. To draw lessons from these practices, the authors focus on the formal and informal institutions that facilitate or obstruct collaboration across jurisdictions. The findings are discussed in terms of the transaction costs of collaboration identified in these experiences.     

Natural History: the Life and Afterlife of a Concept in Adorno

Abstract

Theodor Adorno's concept of ‘natural history’ [Naturgeschichte] was central for a number of Adorno's theoretical projects, but remains elusive. In this essay, analyse different dimensions of the concept of natural history, distinguishing amongst (a) a reflection on the normative and methodological bases of philosophical anthropology and critical social science; (b) a conception of critical memory oriented toward the preservation of the memory of historical suffering; and (c) the notion of ‘mindfulness of nature in the subject’ provocatively asserted in Max Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment. These strands are united by the notion of transience and goal of developing a critical theory sensitive to the transient in history. The essay concludes by suggesting some implications of an expanded concept of natural history for issues in the discourse theory of Jürgen Habermas.     

Mirroring Risk: The Cuban Missile Estimation

The Cuban Missile Crisis is by this point well known to all scholars of international politics. Yet, although it has yielded countless lessons over the years, one critical aspect of the case has remained unexamined: the failure of estimation prior to the crisis that led US officials to discount the possibility of a missile deployment in Cuba. This article re-examines US intelligence estimates of the Soviet Union prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis in light of the concept of ‘mirroring risk’, introduced in this article. I present a framework for understanding a class of intelligence failures that are caused by the mis-assessment of how an adversary frames a decision and the risks that they are willing to take. I also present a new two-stage process for understanding how individuals assess the risk-propensity of adversaries in international politics.     

The Hi-jacking of Global Society? An Essay

Abstract

Globalization is producing a global society of some sort. Three leading forms are on offer: Global Civil Society, Global Islam and Global America. This essay presents an analysis of globalization as a process, and then a discussion of each of the three possible forms, while recognizing that contingency prevails in history. With this said, the odds are against Global Islam succeeding. Rather, the most likely outcome seems to be the ‘hijacking’ of Global Civil Society by the US. The reasons for this are given, plus a glance at alternative possibilities.     

Untimely ripped

In this essay, through an examination of its cultural situation, narrative style, and cinematic structure, I hope to explain the controversy that surrounded Roman Polanski's 1971 film version of Macbeth. With both complex cinematic semiology and poignant sociohistorical mediation, Macbeth brings to a critical juncture the philosophies of the 1960s’ peace‐love—revolution hippies, Vietnam war protestors and civil rights activists, the reified mainstream American populace, and the ruling conservatives, as well as society's preoccupation with aestheticisation. Specifically, I argue that Macbeth manifests what Gilles Deleuze calls the “crystal‐image,”; and, by extension, realises Antonin Artaud's “Theater of Cruelty,”; and, in effect, constitutes a terrorist intervention into a discursive cultural and ideological struggle. Ultimately, I argue that Macbeth itself, in totality, is a “crystalline narration”; that is shot through with various allusions to actual and virtual circumstances particular to the cultural environments from which it initially emerged in Renaissance England and then re‐emerged in the US of 1971. In the first of what is a three‐part analysis, I compare these cultural environments. The second section explicates Deleuze's theories on cinema and discusses them in conjunction with an analysis of the film's Theater of Cruelty. Finally, I contemplate the film ‘s sociopolitical implications.     

The politics of middle ageism

Abstract

Ageism directed at those in their middle years—middle ageism—is being given teeth by midlife downsizing, drops in real income and workforce participation, substandard employment, hiring discrimination, and court decisions that weaken age anti‐discrimination laws. This essay explores the high costs of this trend—not only for individuals currently at midlife, but for their families, the next cohorts aging into the middle years, the value of seniority, the power of employers over workers in the global workforce, and the meaning of the life course. In Europe premature superannuation became a problem decades ago. Middle ageism is becoming a problem in the US, ironically, at the same time that social justice movements have produced increases in peak wages and expectations of “seniority,” broadly defined, for women and African‐Americans. The market's attempt to drive wages to the bottom thus clashes with expanding cultural visions of age‐graded progress. This essay speculates that middle ageism may have negative effects on the age‐wage curve. Ending with a call to institute “full‐employment‐plus” (a set of programs that take life‐course issues into full consideration), the essay argues that academics and the public need to become more alert to the social construction of the midlife and the life course and the manipulation of age as a powerful category of difference.     

The myth of recovered innocence in US intelligence history

David E. Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev and George Bailey, Battleground Berlin: CIA vs KGB in the Cold War (New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 1997). Pp. 530, index. £19.95. ISBN 0–300–07233–3.

James G. Blight and Peter Kornbluh (eds.) Politics of Illusion: The Bay of Pigs Invasion Reexamined (Boulder, Colo, and London: Lynne Rienner, 1998). Pp. 284, index. £35.95. ISBN 1–55587–783–4.     

JFK,FBI, and CIA: playing hardball over an intelligence leak to the New York Times

On 26 July 1962, the New York Times published a front-page story by reporter Hanson Baldwin which, among many things, showed the vulnerability of Soviet land-based missiles, in the event of a first strike by the US. Drawing at least indirectly from a National Intelligence Estimate, it also showed how US intelligence had obtained that information. The story infuriated President John F. Kennedy, who believed it harmed the security of the United States. This article details an aggressive FBI investigation of who had leaked to Baldwin, as well as an initiative at the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct its own future leak investigations inside the US, both authorized by President Kennedy.     

Mega‐Disasters and Federalism

Measured in dollar terms, Hurricane Katrina was the worst natural disaster in American history. Mega‐disaster response recovery and mitigation put federalism to an especially difficult test because they require speed, efficiency, decisiveness, and effective coordination. This essay focuses on the response to and recovery from Katrina in order to probe the implications of mega‐disasters for federalism. It understands federalism as being composed of four dimensions: the three levels of government and the civic realm. It tests key defenses of federalism against civic and government performance during Katrina. It offers examples of successes and failures involving all four dimensions and provides specific recommendations for improving mega‐disaster mitigation, response, and recovery while maintaining an appropriate constitutional balance among the three levels of government and between the civilian government and the military.     

Reviews

Jean‐Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié. BEN LADEN: LA VÉRITÉ INTERDITE (Paris: Denoël, 2001).

Leo Panitch, RENEWING SOCIALISM: DEMOCRACY, STRATEGY, AND IMAGINATION (Boulder: Westview Press, 2001).

The global question in an Urban World*

David Harvey, SPACES OF HOPE (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000).

Liberatory Urbanism vs. Control of Public Space

Jeff Ferrell, TEARING DOWN THE STREETS: ADVENTURES IN URBAN ANARCHY (New York: Palgrave/St. Martin's Press, 2001).

Jamie Peck, WORKFARE STATES (New York: Guilford Press, 2001).

Patrick Colm Hogan, THE CULTURE OF CONFORMISM: UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL CONSENT (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001).

Regin Schmidt, RED SCARE: FBI AND THE ORIGINS OF ANTICOMMUNISM IN THE UNITED STATES (University of Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2000).

DOKUMENTE ZUR GESCHICHTE DER KOMMUNISTISCHEN BEWEGUNG IN DEUTSCHLAND [Documents on the History of the Communist Movement in Germany]. Reihe 1945/1946, 6 vols. Edited by Günter Benser and Hans‐Joachim Krusch, K.G. Saur Verlag, Munich 1993–1997.

Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: Werke, Artikel, Entwürfe Januar bis Dezember 1855. Hans‐Jürgen Bochinski, Martin Hundt et al. (eds.), GESAMTAUSGABE (MEGA) Sec. I, Vol. 14 (Berlin: Akademie‐Verlag, 2001).

Frank Rosengarten, THE WRITINGS OF THE YOUNG MARCEL PROUST (1885–1900): AN IDEOLOGICAL CRITIQUE (New York: Peter Lang, 2001).

Three short works on Cuba

1. Lilah Rosenblum, A TIME FOR CHANGE: RETHINKING US‐CUBA POLICY (Washington Office on Latin America [WOLA], Washington, D.C. 2002). 75pp

2. WORKERS’ RIGHTS IN CUBA. Report of the United States Delegation to the 2002 Exchange Between U.S. and Cuban Labor and Employment Lawyers, Neutrals, and Trade Unionists. Sponsored by the National Lawyers Guild Labor and Employment Committee [c/o Eisner & Hubbard, P.C., 113 University Place, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10003] and the U.S. Health Care Trade Union Committee. 32pp.

3. Debra Evanson, WORKERS IN CUBA: UNIONS AND LABOR RELATIONS (The NLG/Maurice & Jane Sugar Law Center for Economic & Social Justice, Detroit, 2002). 105pp.     

Who is the new citizen? Towards a genealogy

The essay establishes a theoretical framework and outlines an empirical research toward a genealogy of the citizen. It argues that a genealogy would focus on the conditions of citizenship rather than its content (rights and obligations) and extent (eligibility criteria). It describes class, territory and capital as such conditions and outlines significant episodes in which these conditions created different ideal types of citizen: warrior‐citizen, peasant‐citizen, patrician‐citizen, plebeian‐citizen, artisan‐citizen, bourgeois‐citizen, and worker‐citizen. In each episode a genealogy would focus on the emergence of differential class powers resulting from the ownership of different forms of capital that condition the territorial as well as the legal and moral boundaries of citizenship. The essay defends genealogy as a history of the present by finally discussing how significant contemporary changes in class, territory and capital are creating a new type of citizen yet to be defined.     

Performance, Accountability, and the Debate over Rules

Does compliance with rules ensure better program performance and accountability? Since the 1980s, many scholars have answered no to this question, arguing that as managers attempt to comply with a growing thicket of rules, they often lose sight of the performance of their agencies and programs. Even the defenders of a rules‐based approach have tended to view it as a necessary, though inconvenient, means of ensuring that democratic values and public rights are protected in the functioning of government. But does compliance with rules inevitably result in a loss of efficiency and effectiveness in the performance of public projects? This essay presents a case study of a public works project and three additional case summaries to demonstrate a theoretical proposition that compliance with rules for contracting and competitive selection of contractors can be an essential element of both a project’s success and its accountability.     

Agency under constraint: Ideological preferences and the politics of electricity regulation in Latin America

Whereas both the literature on globalization and the literature on regulatory diffusion stress the pressures that led to policy convergence, this article shows how the ideology of incumbents produced different regulatory outcomes, even in the face of strong financial and technological pressures that constrained policy agency. By looking at the regulatory frameworks adopted at the time of electricity privatization in Latin America, this article shows that right‐wing governments adopted regulations that eliminated barriers to entry and investment and limited the discretion of regulators (market‐conforming regulations), and that former statists who had pragmatically converted to the market creed instead chose regulations that tended to impose higher barriers to entry and investment and gave regulators wide discretion in conflict resolution and price setting (market‐controlling regulations). These findings suggest the need to look at the ideology (and ideological legacies) of government coalitions for a more nuanced understanding of the process of regulatory diffusion that took place across many sectors in most regions of the world.