Bringing the world to Canada: 'The periphery of the centre'

Canada is not a peripheral country by most standards. However, since the 1960s, Canadian cities have sought to change the somewhat provincial image they have historically had, and they have used mega-events such as Olympic Games, World Expositions and other 'second order' international sports events to try to reposition themselves on the world stage. This paper examines the place promotion agendas of the two Canadian cities that have hosted Olympic Games, and will also comment on the aspirations of Vancouver, which will host the Winter Olympics in 2010. The core of the paper will concentrate on different aspects of 're-imaging' the city: image building, signalling and identity transformation. Here I argue that an important but widely overlooked aspect of increasing the stature of a city involves changing the ways that citizens of that city think about themselves. The next section will examine whether the exposure and the opportunities for civic promotion afforded by a Games actually translate into economic growth. I will argue that the evidence for this is mixed at best. Finally, the paper argues that the public money spent on Olympics typically brings the greatest benefits to local and regional elites, despite popular rhetoric that such events are good for the 'community as a whole'.     

Altruism but not Quite: the genesis of the least developed country (ldc) category

This article provides a historical account of the creation of the ldc category in 1971, analyses the motives of the main actors and examines the motivation of the UN to establish the category. A literature review, official document analysis and expert interviews indicate that, from the perspective of both developed and more advanced developing countries, the initial ldc identification process aimed to generate a reduced list of mostly small and economically and politically less significant countries. Contrary to the official narrative, this served the interests of both developed countries (by undermining the UN's implicit effort to normalise/depoliticise international assistance) and more advanced developing countries (disturbed by the discrimination created within the developing countries' group, favouring the most disadvantaged among them).     

Forward Russia! Sports mega-events as a venue for building national identity

This paper contributes to the discussion of links between sports, nationalism, and globalization by focusing on the political aspects of the preparation of Russian national teams for sports mega-events staged in Russia. By analyzing the cases of the XXVII Summer Universiade in Kazan, the XXII Winter Olympics in Sochi, and the XXI FIFA World Cup scheduled to take place in 12 Russian cities, the paper provides a comparative study of the benefits that mega-events provide for the host nation in terms of building national identities. To involve the sports component in the study of the nation-building processes, the paper applies the concept of the “spillover effect” of sporting nationalism which presumes that nationalist sentiment or ideology configured and promoted through sports affects non-sporting political processes, actors, and institutions. The paper argues that the “spillover effect” of sporting nationalism allows for the converting of excellence in sports mega-events – the centerpiece of global sports – into political excellence and displays the strengths of the nation to both the global and domestic public. Therefore, showing excellence as the host nation is the main objective that Russian political actors pursue in both their rhetoric and course of action.     

Between willing and reluctant entrapment: CEE countries in NATO's non-European missions

The article focuses on Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries' experiences related to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, three non-European theatres of Western military operations, in predominantly Muslim lands, in the decade between 2001 and 2011. CEE countries readily became involved in two of these foreign missions (Afghanistan and Iraq) because of their deep ties to Western politico-economic structures, without direct security interests compelling them to do so, but not without normative convictions regarding what were seen by them as virtues of the two missions. In Libya, however, they were reluctant to join the Western intervention. In light of this, the article is interested in examining how political elites within the region relate to the generally constrained security policy agency that they have. A key argument advanced is that such agency may be located in how external hegemony is mediated in elite discourses of threat and legitimacy construction. This as well as the three case studies outlined in the article show that the seeming changes in CEE countries' behaviour in fact boil down to a simple set of rules guiding their behaviour. Having identified this “algorithm” as an implicit pattern of CEE foreign policy behaviour, originating in the intra-alliance security dilemma within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the article formulates its conclusions about the alliance policy of these countries largely within a neorealist framework.     

Seeing/being double: how African immigrants in Canada balance their ethno-racial and national identities

With increased transnational ties to their homelands, immigrants' ontology now verges on being double – and, consequently, on seeing double – most of the time. This double consciousness, and the attendant dearth of fixity in identity among immigrants, has led some to wonder where the allegiance of minority immigrants, in particular, lies. Can these immigrants be loyal to both their ethno-racial identity and their host national identity? Is the identification with one's ethno-racial background and national identity a zero-sum game in which one side of the loyalty equation gains only at the expense of the other? This study examines these issues, using African immigrants (specifically, Ghanaians and Somalis) in Canada as a case study. In particular, we use multinomial logistic regression to predict the factors that prompt these immigrants to identify as: ‘just Canadians’, ‘just Ghanaians/Somalis’, or as ‘Ghanaian-/Somali-Canadians’. The study is significant not only because of the lack of research on African immigrants' identity formation in Canada, but also because immigrants' identity has significant bearing on their settlement and integration in host societies.     

Africa's prospects and South Africa's leadership potential in the emerging markets century

This article examines Africa's role in an evolving international system where powerful emerging markets, such as bric, together with established powers are shaping economic trajectories. The specific focus is on South Africa as an aspiring leader on the African continent, and on its potential for becoming an emerging market shaping the global order together with bric and the West. It is unclear whether a changing global economy in which the postcolonial world plays a greater role will result in improved developmental prospects for Africans as African countries gradually reorient themselves from the West to the South, or whether relations with emerging markets will resemble neo-colonial ties with the West. South Africa's structural weakness, stemming from serious domestic problems of a social, political and economic nature, threatens to undermine its standing in Africa and its emerging market status.     

The less developed countries and the international monetary system

The functioning of the international monetary system is analyzed from the perspective of the less developed countries. They are shown to be significant beneficiaries of the introduction of special drawing rights in the International Monetary Fund, despite the unfavourable distribution formula, but to be confronted with exceptional difficulties in reserve management and exchange rate decision‐making in the period of currency turmoil since 1971. The currency realignments of these countries are summarized in terms of their decisions as to which major currencies to follow both in 1971 and 1973. Their interests in international monetary reform, particularly in the alternative SDR‐aid link proposals, are assessed. It is concluded that if the first‐best reform ‐ an altered distribution formula for SDR's in an SDR‐based system in which low interest rates for borrowers are retained ‐ cannot be achieved, the present system may carry more advantages for the less developed countries than a second‐best ‘link’ scheme.     

Vital Democracy: A Theory of Democracy in Action

Scottish citizens benefit from 19 per cent more public spending per head than English citizens. The ‘Barnett formula’ is slowly reducing the gap, but very little is known about the countries' relative needs and hence about how far the present gap is defensible: the aim of this paper is to throw some light on the countries' relative needs. We begin with the complex formulae that the Westminster government uses to assess the spending needs of English local authorities, and we use these English formulae to assess the needs of Scottish local authorities for three major blocks of local services. These formulae suggest that Scotland needs 6.4 per cent more per head than England for environmental, protective and cultural services, 8.1 per cent more for highway maintenance, and between 24.3 per cent and 35.3 per cent more for fire services. We also combine these results with those of two other papers concerned with local education and social services to show that these English formulae put Scotland's per capita needs for local government services as a whole at about 6 per cent above England's. However, we then compare the relative needs of Scottish local authorities as assessed by the English formulae with their relative needs as assessed by the Scottish needs formulae that are currently used by Holyrood, and we find major differences. This suggests either that at least one country uses seriously flawed formulae to assess needs, or that the two countries have different conceptions of need.     

Unravelling clientelism in the Zambian electoral campaigns

Based on reports on selected parliamentary by-elections from 2009 to 2015 and two presidential elections in 2011 and 2015 in Zambia, this paper examines the political rhetoric to determine the presence and nature of clientelism in Zambian electoral campaigns. Zambia’s three leading newspapers, The Post, Times of Zambia and Zambia Daily Mail, were searched for reports of electoral campaigns. In total, 605 issues of each of the three newspapers spanning a period of 20 months were used. The paper concludes that a blend of vote buying and turnout buying were more evident in the campaign rhetoric in parliamentary by-elections than the presidential elections. Further, the ruling parties extended their clientelistic rhetoric to include perverse accountability.     

The Four P-Words of Militant Islamist Radicalization and Recruitment: Persecution,Precedent, Piety,and Perseverance

This article suggests that a single interpretative framework can be used to understand Islamist militant rhetoric, and to compare it to supposedly more orthodox campaigns such as Irish Republican militancy, differences of culture, scale, and lethality. Both refer to histories of persecution; cite exemplars of their just cause drawn from historical precedent; maintain utopian ideals and justifications of violence that drawn from culturally relevant versions of piety; and use examples of perseverance against overwhelming odds drawn from their respective histories. This framework of “4Ps”— persecution, precedent, piety, and perseverance—is apparent even on the Internet, where rhetoric is necessarily atomized.     

Compliance and non-compliance as sources of recognition: Slovakia and NATO

This article argues that there is a difference in what constitutes the sources of recognition prior to countries' membership in the Euro-Atlantic community represented by NATO and after countries become its members. While prior to membership, countries are recognized for their compliance with NATO standards and policies, upon membership countries get the opportunity to promote specific interests legitimately and may seek recognition via non-compliance with NATO mainstream.The paper explores this dynamic of recognition on the issue of Kosovo independence where Slovakia went from supporting NATO in its effort to protect civilians in Kosovo in the late 1990s to non-recognition of Kosovo in defiance of the majority of NATO member states less than a decade later. The crucial point proposed here is that there was a shift in how recognition by NATO worked prior to Slovakia's membership and upon membership in these frameworks. While prior to membership recognition was achieved by compliance and identification with NATO standpoints, policies and actions, upon membership, recognition is achieved by differentiation from these patterns. More generally, the study shows that NATO membership is a powerful source of conditionality in relation to future members and a powerful source of legitimacy in relation to current members' actions. While this has been discussed in the literature, the point here is that recognition in its various forms is an important driving force in these conditionality processes.     

Democracy and the politics of power alternation in Africa

Namibia's Nujoma, Zambia's Chiluba, Algeria's Bouteflika, Togo's Eyadema, Cameroon's Biya, Nigeria's Obasanjo, Niger's Tandja and Uganda's Museveni have all to varying degrees attempted to subvert the democratization process in their respective countries. These however are only a small selection of an increasingly similar pattern of action by incumbents in Africa. What is most troubling to democratic transitionists is a concerted effort by these leaders to curtail their fledgling democracies in the name of their continued ‘service’ to the people. This paper seeks to examine what has enabled an increasing number of African leaders to negate power alternation in favour of open-ended tenures otherwise ‘presidential careerism’. The article argues that while most of these states have been cited for embarking on some semblance of democratic rule, their rulers have utilized their weak democratic institutional structures, co-opted the elite and rallied the ‘mob’ to commit democracy ‘infanticide’.     

A Question of Agency: Africa in international politics

Over recent years African states have become increasingly prominent actors in high-level international politics. This article makes the case for studying Africa's international relations from the point of view of agency. The article outlines contemporary contexts within which questions of African agency have come to the fore and argues a need to think conceptually about agency in international politics in a way that accommodates the range of different agencies at work. The article outlines three elements as foundations for the analysis of African agency: first, a conceptualisation of different dimensions of agency; second, a recognition of the importance of sovereignty in differentiating between state, or state-enabled agents, and others; and third, a temporally embedded approach to agency that historicises contemporary agency. Combined, these elements suggest that future work on African agency would be able to engage seriously with the continent's role in international politics in a way that presents Africa as actor not just acted upon, historical agent not just history's recipient.     

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 Effectiveness of Inputs in Primary Education: Insights from Recent Student Surveys for Sub-Saharan Africa

With SACMEQ and PASEC there are now two large data bases available on student achievement, socio-economic background and school and teacher characteristics in both anglophone and francophone sub-Saharan Africa. A joint analysis of PASEC and SACMEQ in a common education production function framework allows us to estimate the impact of educational inputs on student achievement in 21 sub-Saharan African countries and to compare our results with those of earlier empirical studies for education systems in Africa and other world regions. In our analysis we focus on school equipment, teacher quality and class organisation. The issue of teacher and student incentives cannot be adequately addressed with the given data. Our results are based on a traditional retrospective analysis of student achievement in PASEC and SACMEQ countries. In contrast to the ‘nothing works’ result from most industrialized countries' studies we find robust positive correlations of achievement test scores and the possession of textbooks and negative correlations with teaching in shifts. The most striking result is the weak or even absent correlation of achievement test scores and teacher education and professional training. However, some differences between francophone and anglophone education systems can be observed in this context if differences in the sampling methodology are duly taken into account.     

Aid Absorption and Spending in Africa: A Panel Cointegration Approach

This article focuses on the macroeconomic management of large inflows of foreign aid. It investigates the extent to which African countries have coordinated fiscal and macroeconomic responses to aid surges. In practice, we construct a panel dataset to assess the level of aid ‘absorption’ and ‘spending’. This article departs from the recent empirical literature by utilising better measures for aid inflows and by employing cointegration analysis. The empirical short-run results indicate that, on average, Africa's low-income countries have absorbed two-thirds of (grant) aid receipts. This suggests that most of the foreign exchange provided by the aid inflows has been used to finance imports. The other third has been used to build up international reserves, perhaps to protect economies from future external shocks. In the long run, absorption increases but remains below its maximum. Moreover, we also show that aid resources have been fully spent, especially in support of public investment. There is only weak evidence that a share of aid flows have been ‘saved’. Overall, these findings suggest that the macroeconomic management of aid inflows in Africa has been significantly better than often portrayed in comparable exercises. The implication is that African countries will be able to efficiently manage a gradual scaling up in aid resources.     

Reframing development and accountability: the influence of sovereign credit ratings on policy making in developing countries

At a time of increased financial volatility, understanding ‘development’ requires that we trace spheres of accountability in order to detect the consequences of shifts in power structures from the public to the private sectors, especially. By focusing on the business of sovereign credit ratings, I argue that ratings have been particularly influential in this context not only because of their function as a benchmark for private investment, but because they now also enter into the calculations of policy makers in developing countries who are increasingly compelled to implement policies that reduce their countries' sovereign risk at possibly high costs for sustained economic growth. I explain that governments' eagerness to signal their potential as reliable capital recipients allows for credit ratings to become a powerful site of governance. This outcome is not justified by the quality of rating agencies' output, but by the subjective power of the notion of risk in a crisis prone environment that shifts accountability—through this disproportional influence of credit rating agencies—from the public to the private realm. The Argentine crisis of 2001 is presented here as a case study that illustrates these dynamics.     

The impact of national culture on organizational change: A danish case study

Contrary to the path-breaking work of Hofstede, it has been argued that management techniques can be exported between countries if fine-tuned to accommodate the host country's cultural values. This paper presents a case study of how a change program was developed to be compatible with the Danish value systems. Comparisons are made to what might have happened if the same change program had been conducted in two countries with quite different cultures: the U.S.A. and Republic of China (Taiwan).

Gert Hofstede⁽¹⁾ was one of the theoretical pioneers of international consulting. He collected data from 160,000 IBM employees representing 40 countries. Hofstede's analysis indicated that there are four values which can be used to categorize a country's culture:     

Is There a Culture or Religion of Torture? International Support for Brutal Treatment of Suspected Terrorists

Do certain cultures or religions predispose citizens to support the deployment of torture against suspected terrorists? Based on an international survey of 31 different countries, we examine how religion and culture affect respondents' position on torture. We find that at the individual level, the nonreligious are resolutely opposed to torture, and that Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and other faiths are more supportive. Among world cultures, Muslim/African cultures are most opposed to the torture of terrorists, while Confucian, English-speaking, and South Asian cultures are the most supportive of it. We also find that the use of torture has less support in countries that are suffering from terrorism, once religion and culture are considered.     

Bilateral Graduation: The Impact of EPAs on LDC Trade Space

Abstract

As trade is prominently mainstreamed into development policies, the ongoing Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations between the EU and the African, Carribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries are a turning point in Least Developed Countries (LDC) engagement with the international trading system. The process covers most UN-designated LDCs and is the first time they feature in the first row of international trade talks. We explore how the space LDCs occupy in the trade regime will be affected by EPAs. The analysis suggests that they move LDCs towards effective graduation from special and differential treatment, while innovating on policy tools to address underdevelopment.