Getting to Peace? Negotiating with the LRA in Northern Uganda

Getting to peace is not a straightforward process. In Uganda, internal conflict has raged for more than 20 years between the Government and the Lord’s Resistance Army. The construction of a comprehensive negotiated settlement is at the mercy of conflicting ideologies and influences at the international, national and grassroots levels. This paper examines the Juba peace talks, the major actors in the negotiation process, and tension between prosecution and amnesty.

Comparing Putin’s and Brezhnev’s Policies toward the Middle East

This article compares Moscow’s and Washington’s foreign policies toward the Middle East in 1982 and 2008. In 1982, Moscow and Washington each had a distinct set of friends and foes. In 2008, Washington still has a distinct set of friends and foes, but Moscow has relatively good relations with all governments and most major opposition movements in the region—the only exceptions being Al Qaeda and its affiliates. It is argued that Putin’s policy toward the Middle East is not really aimed at displacing the U.S. in the region, but protecting Russia and Russian interests from Al Qaeda and its allies. Indeed, a continued American presence in the region serves to protect Russian interests in the region.

Open Societies and Closed Minds

Karl Popper’s equation of the closed society with tribalism is reviewed and modified. The German origins of the anthropological concept of culture and its related ideas of the folk culture and cultural relativism are explored. The vicissitudes of the idea of The Folk and its swing from Right to Left are related to contemporary neo-primitivism. The open society and high culture are defended.

The Attitudes of the Chinese Middle Class Towards Democracy

Little has been done to quantitatively establish the connection between the middle class and a specific regime type. In an effort to fill in the gap, this study uses Asian Barometer survey dataset to examine the attitudes and orientation of China’s rising middle class. We find that the Chinese middle class does show higher democratic orientation than those we categorize as lower class, but only if class is defined by occupation or by self-identification, and not by income level. We interpret this result to mean that economic development offers new life experiences with the creation of new types of professions and enhances people’s agreement with modern democratic values by arousing people’s consciousness of their new social class status.

Public Opinion and Collective Obligations

This article attempts to identify the general principles that underlie public reasoning about collective obligations and that help explain when political parties can create new obligations or defend existing ones. I use these principles to President Clinton’s unsuccessful attempt to create government health-care plan and attempts by President Bush to privatize Social Security. The success of a party in selling – or defeating – an obligation depends upon what people believe about the competence and capacity of government and the value of autonomy – choices made by each citizen; whether people perceive the obligation as providing floors or establishing ceilings by limiting choice or otherwise restricting opportunities for the better-off; and whether the program is more like insurance or more like welfare. A party’s ability to maintain credibility with voters also depends upon whether party leaders can suppress issues that threaten intra-party elite pacts. When attempts to suppress “taboo” issues like “stem cells” or “black crime” fail, the party loses credibility with its voters and attempts to defend or sell obligations fail.

Book Reviews

Dionne, E.J. Jr. They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era Gitlin, Todd The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America is Wracked by Culture Wars Hochschild, Jennifer L. Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class and the Soul of the Nation Kozol, Jonathan Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation Foster, Christopher D. and Plowden, Francis J. The State Under Stress Barberis, Peter The Elite of the Elite: Permanent Secretaries in the British Higher Civil Service Porter, Norman Rethinking Unionism: An Alternative Vision for Northern Ireland English, Richard and Walker, Graham (eds) Unionism in Modern Ireland: New Perspectives on Politics and Culture Clarke, Peter Hope and Glory: Britain 1900–1990 Harrison, Brian The Transformation of British Politics 1860–1995 Radice, Giles (ed) What Needs to Change? New Visions for Britain King, Preston (ed) Socialism and the Common Good: New Fabian Essays Perryman, Mark (ed) The Blair Agenda Stone, Diane Capturing the Political Imagination: Think Tanks and the Policy Process Denham, Andrew Think Tanks of the New Right Klein, Rudolf, Day, Patricia and Redmayne, Sharon Managing Scarcity: Priority Setting and Rationing in the National Health Service Lawson, Richard Bills of Health Disney, Richard Can We Afford to Grow Older? Brown, Alice, McCrone, David and Paterson, Lindsay Politics and Society in Scotland The Constitution Unit Scotland’s Parliament: Fundamentals for a New Scotland Act The Constitution Unit Regional Government in England     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman, Without a Map: Political Tactics and Economic Reform in Russia Graeme Gill and Roger D. Marwick, Russia's Stillborn Democracy: From Gorbachev to Yeltsin Vladimir Mau, Russian Economic Reforms as Seen by an Insider Kate Hudson, European Communism since 1989: Towards a New European Left? Andrew Chadwick, Augmenting Democracy: Political Movements and Constitutional Reform during the Rise of Labour, 1900–1924 Norman Fairclough, New Labour, New Language? David Coates, Models of Capitalism Alexander de Conde, Presidential Machismo: Executive Authority, Military Intervention, and Foreign Relations Bernard Crick, Essays on Citizenship Nick Pearce and Joe Hallgarten, (eds) Tomorrow's Citizens: Critical Debates in Citizenship and Education Christian Joppke, Immigration and the Nation State: The United States, Germany and Great Britain Robert Geyer, Christine Ingebritsen and Jonathon W. Moses, (eds) Globalization, Europeanization and the End of Scandinavian Social Democracy? John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher, vol. 1: The Grocer's Daughter     

Noam Chomsky's politics

Karen J. Warren: Ecological Feminist Philosophies . Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996.

Nicholas Low and Brendan Gleeson: Justice, Society and Nature: An Exploration of Political Ecology. London and New York: Routledge, 1998.

Robert Elliot: Faking Nature: The Ethics of Environmental Restoration. London: Routledge, 1997.

Barbara Noske: Beyond Boundaries: Humans and Animals. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1997.

Herman E. Daly and Kenneth N. Townsend, eds.: Valuing the Earth: Economics, Ecology, Ethics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993

Steven Mark Cohn: Too Cheap to Meter: An Economic and Philosophical Analysis. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997.

Jesse Vorst, Ross Dobson, and Ron Fletcher, eds: Green on Red: Evolving Ecological Socialism. Winnipeg/Halifax: Society for Socialist Studies/Fernwood Publishing, 1993.     

Ideology, Telos, and the “Communist Vanguard” from Mao Zedong to Hu Jintao

This work discusses why Marxist vanguard parties require ideology in their struggle to gain and maintain political power. Despite being considered theoretically inconsistent with classical Marxism and western vernacular, I chart etymologically how “ideology” came to China and proliferated during the Mao era as a positively framed term via, in all likelihood, Japanese renderings of Leninism. After discussing ideological challenges under Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, I explore whether Hu Jintao’s scientific development and harmony concepts might be understood as ideological campaigns which—by synthesizing Maoist and Dengist approaches to ideology—effectively address what otherwise be referred to as the Party’s telos problem, and thus resolve in part the threat to the Party’s vanguard claim.

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: Vincent Bugliosi, The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President Jack N. Rakove (ed.), The Unfinished Election of 2000: Leading Scholars Examine America’s Strangest Election Daniel Lazare, The Velvet Coup: The Constitution, the Supreme Court and the Decline of American Democracy Andrew Denham and Mark Garnett, Keith Joseph Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox Gerd‐Rainer Horn and Emmanuel Gerard (eds.), Left Catholicism 1943–1955: Catholics and Society in Western Europe at the Point of Liberation Lorna Arnold, Britain and the H‐Bomb Joseph V. Femia, Against the Masses: Varieties of Anti‐Democratic Thought since the French Revolution Gino Bedani and Bruce Haddock (eds.), The Politics of Italian National Identity: A Multidisciplinary Perspective Paul M. Sniderman, Pierangelo Peri, Rui J. P. de Figueiredo, Jr and Thomas Piazza, The Outsider: Prejudice and Politics in Italy Norman Birnbaum, After Progress: American Social Reform and European Socialism in the Twentieth Century Gøsta Esping‐Andersen and Marino Regini (eds.), Why Deregulate Labour Markets? Andrew Murray, Off the Rails: Britain’s Great Rail Crisis—Cause, Consequences and Cure Christian Wolmar, Broken Rails     

A Question of Authority: Religion and Cultural Conflict in the 2004 Election

In this study I adopt a view of cultural conflict that extends beyond the usual set of controversial “moral” issues like abortion and gay rights to include symbolic issues related to patriotism and group affect. Using a set of survey items asking about respondents’ preferences in child-rearing, I create a measure of individuals’ orientations toward authority that proves to be a potent predictor of attitudes on cultural issues, affect toward social groups, party identification, and vote choice. This authority effect persists even in the presence of extensive multivariate controls for demographic and religious variables. I find that both authority measures and religion measures shape political attitudes, suggesting the need for a multi-faceted approach to understanding cultural conflict.

Five Challenges to Legalizing Economic and Social Rights

In recent years, dozens of human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) across the globe have begun to advocate for economic and social rights, which represents a significant expansion of the human rights movement. This article investigates a central strategy that NGOs have pursued to realize these rights: legalization. Legalization involves specifying rights as valid legal rules and enforcing them through judicial or quasi-judicial processes. After documenting some of the progress made toward legalization, the article analyzes five unique challenges involved in legalizing economic and social rights. It is important to identify these challenges because they must be overcome if the human rights movement wishes to refute the notion that economic and social rights are inherently non-justiciable (and therefore, to some, invalid as rights). These challenges also point to the possibility that legalization is not the only, or even the best, strategic pathway to realize economic and social rights effectively.

Reviews

Books reviewed in this article: Tom Christensen and Per Lægreid, New Public Management: The Transformation of Ideas and Practice Noel Preston, Understanding Ethics (2nd edn) Rod Rhodes and Patrick Weller (eds.), The Changing World of Top Officials: Mandarins or Valets? Sandford Berg, Michael Pollitt and Masatsugu Tsuji (eds.), Private Initiatives in Infrastructure Jenny Fleming and Ian Holland (eds.), Motivating Ministers to Morality Heather Strang and John Braithwaite (eds.), Restorative Justice and Civil Society Xu Yi‐chong, Powering China, Reforming the Electric Power Industry in China Greg McCarthy, Things Fall Apart: A History of the State Bank of South Australia Peter Loveday, Dean Jaensch and Baiba Berzins, Labor's Win: The Northern Territory Election 2001     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article: Owen Hughes, Public Management and Administration: An Introduction Byong‐man Ahn, John Halligan and Stephen Wilks (eds.), Reforming Public and Corporate Governance: Management and the Market in Australia, Britain and Korea Fred Argy, Where to From Here? Australian Egalitarianism Under Threat Richard Woolcott,The Hot Seat: Reflections on Diplomacy from Stalin's Death to the Bali Bombings Bent Flyvbjerg, Rationality and Power Bent Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter Denis Murphy, Roger Joyce, Margaret Cribb and Rae Wear (eds.), The Premiers of Queensland Ciaran O'Faircheallaigh, A New Approach to Policy Evaluation: Mining and Indigenous People Michael Pusey, The Experience of Middle Australia. The Dark Side of Economic Reform     

Relativism

Modern democracies increasingly confuse civic or political equality with a radical relativism that calls into question legitimate principles of hierarchy and the very idea of reasonable value judgments. This confusion reflects a “corruption,” in Montesquieu’s sense, of democracy rooted in a refusal to recognize distinctions that are integral to both human nature and social life. A moderate form of cultural relativism is a genuine intellectual achievement that helps combat ethnocentrism and allows one to better appreciate the full range of human experience. But criteria of meaning and truth are by no means entirely dependent upon cultural context. Our contemporary awareness of the “relativity” of cultures and historical experiences must be complemented by a robust appreciation of the universality of Reason and citizenship.

Does social media matter in developing democracies? Examining its impact on citizen political participation and expression in Uganda

This study examines the impact of citizens' use of social media for political participation and expression in developing democracies of Africa in particular Uganda. Findings from studied N = 2,400 respondents, evidenced social media does matter in the developing democracy of Uganda as the second most preferred form of media (.95 ± 2.37). Findings also showed the use of social media for political participation in persuading others to vote for a given candidate or party was positively correlated r = .043*(p value at .05), n = 2,400, and p = .035 with R² = .002. Future studies should examine the use of social media platforms for policy implementation, civic engagement, and inclusiveness.     

Book Reviews: The Balance between Forgetting and Remembering

Books reviewed Gary Jonathan Bass, Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Trials Richard Goldstone, For Humanity: Reflections of a War Crimes Investigator Joanna Van Selm, (ed) Kosovo's Refugees in the European Union Peter Shore, Separate Ways: The Heart of Europe Tommaso Padoa‐Schioppa, The Road to Monetary Union in Europe: The Emperor, the Kings and the Genies Kenneth Dyson, The Politics of the Euro‐Zone: Stability or Breakdown? Stefano Bartolini, The Political Mobilization of the European Left, 1860–1980: The Class Cleavage Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States Richard Little and Mark Wickham‐Jones, (eds) New Labour's Foreign Policy: A New Moral Crusade? Thomas Frank, One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy Fritz W. Scharpf and Vivien A. Schmidt, (eds) Welfare and Work in the Open Economy Fritz W. Scharpf and Vivien A. Schmidt, (eds) From Vulnerability to Competitiveness Fritz W. Scharpf and Vivien A. Schmidt, (eds)Diverse Responses to Common Challenges Andrew Samuels, Politics on the Couch: Citizenship and the Internal Life John B. Thompson, Political Scandal: Power and Visibility in the Media Age Andrew Thorpe, The British Communist Party and Moscow 1920–43     

How High-Yield Farming Saves Nature

High-yield farming—more agricultural output per acre of farmland—has been a boon to mankind and to nature. If today’s agricultural efficiency was the same as in the 1950s, the world would need three times the cropland to produce today’s food supply. That would mean that 15-16 million mi² of forest would have been destroyed—all the global forest area available today. Rising population and increased affluence will require a tripling of agricultural efficiency in the next 50 years if we are to protect wildlife at the same time. More investment in agricultural research and education will be required, but this is what produced the previous green revolution.

The pressures for protection

Japan's Unequal Trade, by Edward J. Lincoln. The Brookings Institution, Washington, 1990. xiii+223 pp. $26.95. ISBN 0–8157–5262–8.

Japan's Quest for a Role in the World: Roles ascribed to Japan Nationally and Internationally, by Bert Edström. Institute of Oriental Languages, University of Stockholm, Stockholm, 1988. xiii+325 pp. ISBN 91–7146–585–5.

Japan at the Summit: Its Role in the Western Alliance and Asian‐Pacific Cooperation, by Shiro Saito. Routledge for RIIA, London, 1990. xii + 220 pp. £30. ISBN 0–415–04271–2.

Made in Japan And Other Japanese ‘Business Novels’, translated and edited by Tamae K. Prindle. M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY and London, 1990. xviii+203 pp. $24.95, ISBN 0–87332–529‐X.

Trade and Investment Relations Among the United States, Canada and Japan, edited by Robert M. Stern. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1989. viii+448 pp. £47.25 ($43.95). ISBN 0–226–77317–5.

International Economic Pluralism: Economic Policy in East Asia and the Pacific, by Peter Drysdale. Allen and Unwin Australia, Sydney and London, 1988. 294 pp. £20 paperback. ISBN 0–04–350075–7.

Japanese Business Down Under: Patterns of Japanese Investment in Australia, by David W. Edgington. Routledge, London and New York, 1990. xiv + 294 pp. £40. ISBN. 0–415–03499‐X.

Japan's Foreign Policy, by Reinhard Drifte. Routledge and the RIIA, London, 1990. x + 112 pp. £7.95. ISBN 0–415–03234–2.

Japan's Trade Policies: 1945 to the Present Day, by Takashi Shiraishi. Athlone Press, London, 1989. viii + 228 pp. £37.50. ISBN 0–485–11363–5.

Resisting Protectionism: Global Industries and the Politics of International Trade, by Helen V. Milner. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1988. xiii+329 pp. $29.50. ISBN 0–691–05670–6.