Whose wants in ‘needs-based planning’? Some examples of unwritten agendas from the provincial integrated rural development programmes of Papua New Guinea

The rhetoric of ‘needs’-based planning requires little refining. What must be questioned and recognized are the values of decision makers and the unwritten agendas of those involved in the planning process. Taking the example of some of the integrated rural development programmes (IRDPs) in Papua New Guinea, this paper looks at the way planners and others cast development and information ‘nets’. These nets abrogate indigenous development processes. The ‘nets’ make it easy for development professionals and others involved in planning to follow unwritten agendas and difficult for target groups to articulate their ‘needs’ and to understand what is going on. It is suggested that these problems are not unique to PNG and may well be relevant to ‘needs based planning’ in other situations.     

Electoral Discrimination Against Immigrant-Origin Candidates

Political Behavior - This article explores the Electoral Discrimination thesis, according to which voters tend to discriminate against minority candidates. The free-list PR system used in Swiss...     

Rural development from the ground up: agro-food initiatives in Tasmania

Concerns about the decline of rural agricultural communities have recently refocused on new economic opportunities available in regional food production. This article analyses three on-the-ground case studies of rural development projects in Tasmania, Australia that aimed to develop new regional food opportunities. It analyses these projects to identify how local food producers can create viable economic alternatives in rural settings. The projects illustrate that the existence of regional food assets alone is not enough to guarantee economic development success: rural producers need connections into relevant knowledge networks if they are to identify and respond to new agro-food market opportunities.     

Left Realism: a defence

Conclusion Can anything be said in conclusion on the essence of the realist approach? It is important to end by restating that realism originates as a reaction, in current social and political conditions to the absences in radical criminology. These are the absence of a discourse about crime and a refusal to talk about the constructive as opposed to the destructive role of institutions of criminal justice. Realism rejects a utopian strategy of waiting for the state to whither away, knowing that we would only have to reinvent it if it did.The starting point for realism is the strategy of democratization. The maximization of democratic participation is ultimately the solution both to the problem of what is crime and to the problem of how to deal with it. The solution to the problem of criminal justice is the democratization of its institutions while at the same time recognising their necessary functions. The realist programme is concerned with the redrawing of the boundaries between and the transformation of the character of institutionsand communities in accordance with the values of socialist pluralism.     

Dialogic reverberations: police, domestic abuse, and the discontinuance of cases

This study investigated the social construction of domestic abuse by police officers, specifically in the context of arguments presented to the prosecutor for a decision on whether to proceed with or discontinue the case. Nineteen police files were examined with a particular focus on the MG3, the "Report to Crown Prosecutors for Charging Decision." Access to such sensitive material is usually denied to researchers; therefore, this study offers unusual insights into the treatment of victims and perpetrators of interpersonal violence by the police. Discourse analysis revealed three dominant speech genres: impartiality, credibility, and the "real" victim. These genres separately and in interaction served to construct domestic abuse cases in ways that did not support the victim's account. The "dialogic reverberations" of these findings are discussed and the implications of the work for research and practice are considered.