Collapse at the WTO: a Cancun post‐mortem

This article offers an analysis of the collapse of the WTO talks in Cancun in September 2003. It argues that the collapse of the talks should not be regarded as a victory for the developing world, as many have suggested. Rather, the collapse should be seen as the inevitable result of deep‐seated tensions within the wto 's institutional framework, both in terms of the processes that underlie its working and the substance of its agreements. The article argues that these imbalances, if not corrected, will heighten the alienation of developing countries and work to the detriment of the legitimacy and survival of the wto.     

The “Pugachev rebellion” in the context of post‐Soviet Kazakh nationalization*

Football (soccer) provides a useful prism for analysis of the long transition of the Serbian state and society since 1991. To a striking extent, the world of professional football and the attendant phenomena of financial corruption and football hooliganism have informed both the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia and the current concerted attempt to create a “European Serbia.” During the 1990s, football in Serbia to a significant extent became synonymous with organized crime and the criminalization of the Serbian state. Since 2000, the persistent phenomena of crime, violent hooliganism and lethargic reforms have mirrored the difficult and halting transition of the post-Milo?evi? state. Although recent events highlight the reluctance of the Serbian authorities to confront these problems, both government and sports officials are coming to see reform of Serbian football as a key element of the establishment of the rule of law.     

Misrecognitions and missed opportunities: post‐structuralism and the practice of development

Over the past 20 years post‐structuralist scholars have produced critiques of the field of development. In some circles it is now quite broadly accepted that this approach is futile and that we ought to move into a ‘post‐discourse’ era. By way of counterpoint, this paper argues that such exchanges are based on misrecognitions whose acceptance forecloses possibilities that both critics and their detractors would welcome. The paper is broken into two sections. The first engages problems ascribed to post‐structuralist critiques that seem to have been particularly successful in discouraging further engagement. The second explores three aspects of a single moment of post‐structuralist thought that have been obscured by current debate. Engaging these aspects, while bringing difficulties of its own, may secure conditions necessary for the emergence of the sorts of partnerships often claimed as necessary both by developers and by their post‐structuralist critics.     

Japan's post‐war protection policy: Some implications for less developed countries

This article examines some of the implications of Japan's postwar development for contemporary developing countries. Whilst acknowledging the qualitative differences in economic structure between Japan in 1945 and today's developing countries it argues that many of Japan's decisions on economic strategy throw light on current debates regarding the merits of free trade or protectionism as strategies for developing countries. It stresses however the key role played in Japan by the highly competitive nature of the internal market and stresses the need to consider policies to stimulate a more competitive internal structure within developing country markets.     

Pardon,punishment, and amnesia: three African post‐conflict methods

This article examines the thesis that A´lvaro Uribe, the new president of Colombia (2002–06) is a neopopulist. Such a thesis holds that Uribe can be classified as a neopopulist given his election to the presidency after breaking ranks with the Liberal Party, his massive support from largely unorganised citizens, his government under a state-of-siege decree, his promotion of a national referendum, and his frequent public meetings with citizens throughout Colombia. I reject this thesis, arguing that Uribe's method of winning the presidency did not constitute a significant departure from previous practice in Colombia's system of fragmented political parties. His personality lacks a strong charismatic aura. More significantly, Uribe made no concerted effort to cultivate political support among the masses. In office Uribe's state-of-siege powers have been curtailed by decisions of the Constitutional Court, which he has, significantly, been careful to respect. His proposed referendum had to be negotiated with—and was significantly transformed by—the Colombian Congress. And Uribe's public meetings consist largely in his listening to citizen complaints, rather than giving electrifying public orations. A close examination of Uribe's history and governing style shows him to be a talented politician but not a populist.     

Conceptualising Third World politics: The state‐society see‐saw

This article presents and juxtaposes critical genealogies of development studies and postcolonial studies, two bodies of literature on the 'Third World' that ignore each other's missions and writings. I demonstrate that the two fields have some areas of convergence, such as groundings in knowledge of and concern about the West, and other areas of divergence: development studies does not tend to listen to subalterns and postcolonial studies does not tend to concern itself with whether the subaltern is eating. I argue that, of the two fields, postcolonial studies has the greatest potential to be a new and different location of human development thinking if it can overcome a tendency to lock into intellectual rather than practical projects of postcolonialism.     

The North‐South dialogue revisited: Some personal reflections

This article focuses on the experiences of South Korea and the Philippines and examines the relationship of corruption to political and economic development. It argues that corruption is a manifestation of specific sets of state-society relations, political systems, development trajectories and types of external linkages. Corruption in these contexts should not be seen as pathological phenomena but as deeply integrated into the particular path of political and economic development. The article further identifies the context and scope for reform.     

Conditions of non‐development: The case of Lesotho

A peculiar combination of social and economic factors entailed by the proximity of South Africa creates, for Lesotho, a syndrome of non‐development that may usefully be visualised as a vicious circle in three parts—Poverty, Migration, Ideology—and is so described here. It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate that the economic facts of village life in Lesotho (and in countries with certain characteristics in common with Lesotho) are perpetuated by their effect on the individual villager. The analysis enters a caveat to the theory of ‘aspiration effect’ [Firth and Yamey, 1963], extends the concept of frustration gap’ [McLoughlin, 1970] and adds a dimension to the cognitive map of migrant ideology [Philpott 1968].