I: The wars of the Yugoslavian succession: Murder or suicide?

Lenard J. Cohen, Broken Bonds: Yugoslavia's Disintegration and Balkan Politics in Transition, 2nd edn. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995, xvi, 375 pp. + illustrations, maps, index.

Sabrina P. Ramet, Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to Ethnic War, 2nd edn. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996.

Sabrina P. Ramet and Ljubi?a S. Adamovich, eds, Beyond Yugoslavia: Politics, Economics and Culture in a Shattered Community. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995.

Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1995.     

Social darwinism and the taylor system: a missing link in the evolution of management?

Whereas linkages between Social Darwinism and Frederick Taylor's system of Scientific Management have been noted, there has been little elaboration on the relationship. In this paper, the parallels between the Social Darwinist theory of Herbert Spencer and the major tenets of Taylorism are explored. By the early 20th Century, members of the business community and leaders of organized labor had developed very different attitudes toward the principle of “survival of the fittest.” These opinions, informed by the prevailing ethos of society, appear to have colored business's and labor's reactions to Taylor's Scientific Management system. In addition, management historians may have developed different views concerning the strength of the relationship between Social Darwinism and Scientific Management because of the various forms of Social Darwinist theory.     

What helps and what hinders the process of surviving the suicide of somebody close?

This paper presents similar findings about the lack of support and understanding for people bereaved through suicide from four different countries and reports on each country's unique response to this challenge. This paper reports on presentations made at the conference workshop of the International Association for Suicide Prevention meeting in Chennai in 2001, and on participants' suggestions of how best to help the bereaved.     

Ethnofederalism and ethnonationalism in the separatist politics of chechnya and tatarstan: sources or resources?

Common explanations of the recent war in Chechnya add up to an astonishingly overdetermined picture. The conflict between Russia's central government and its separatist ethnic autonomy was blamed on several grand factors: oil interests, resurgent Islam, imperial collapse, international terrorism, organized crime. Superficially, Chechnya shares most of these features with Tatarstan — another defiant republic of the Russian Federation which has oil, notorious gangsters, and a native population of Islamic heritage. A more detailed account shows, however, that the two state entities have little in common except the Soviet-made institutional framework. Tatarstan is a rare example of an ethnically non-Russian republic within the very urban industrial core of the former USSR, while Chechnya was patently peripheral. Differences in historical legacies and present-day social compositions conditioned very different outcomes of multifaceted political struggles that accompanied the demise of Soviet empire. In Tatarstan, local ethnically-colored nomenklatura exploited the chaotic transition to claim property rights over the local economy. The new rhetoric of national revival which the nationally-minded wing of Tatar intelligentsia advanced during Gorbachev's relaxation of censorship, was used by the Tatar nomenklatura to justify its struggle for economic property rights and exclusive political jurisdiction in its territory. By contrast, the Communist patronage network which ruled Chechnya until 1991 was too dependent on the central government for subsidies and coercive resources to follow the Tatarstan example. In the aftermath of August 1991 hardliner coup, when the Chechen apparatchiks misplaced their bets in Moscow's politics and momentarily lost support of the central government, they were swept away by the social movement of rural masses and urban marginal intellectuals. In its turn revolution, the only such outcome among the republics of the Russian Federation (but not the USSR), created an inherently unstable regime in Chechnya which could legitimate itself only with the idea of national independence and, once Moscow attempted to destabilize it, through the patriotic war.     

Al Qaeda and the Islamic State's Break: Strategic Strife or Lackluster Leadership?

Employing counterfactuals to assess individual and systemic explanations for the split between Al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), this article concludes that individual leaders factor greatly into terrorist alliance outcomes. Osama bin Laden was instrumental in keeping Al Qaeda and ISIS allied as he prioritized unity and handled internal disputes more deftly than his successor, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. Although a troubled alliance, strategic differences between Al Qaeda and ISIS were not sufficient to cause the split. Rather, the capabilities of Al Qaeda's leader determined the group's ability to prevent alliance ruptures.     

Russia and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation: Multilateral Policy or Unilateral Ambitions?

Ambivalence and misconceptions surround the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO). Relying upon the literature on multilateralism, state–IGO relations, regionalism and security governance, this study examines: which goals Russia is pursuing in its CSTO policy; how Russia engages with its individual members within the organisation; how Russia uses it in five foreign policy situations and with which results. It shows that Russia’s CSTO policy is more mixed and complex than is usually assumed. Russia uses the CSTO in pursuit of unilateral ambitions but it is also searching for partners. Russia’s policy has resulted in the formation of instrumental multilateralism within the CSTO.     

Islam in Tanzania and Kenya: Ally or Threat in the War on Terror?

This article explores the historical emergence of Islam in East Africa, details the political background of Tanzania and Kenya, the role of Islam in each country, and U.S. foreign policy in the region. The recent U.S. strategy of intelligence-sharing with Kenya, training and military support to both Kenya and Tanzania, and air strikes in Somalia are assessed. In addition to the current military emphasis, the United States should incorporate more “soft” options, such as the promotion of democratic governance in these nascent democracies through political assistance in constitutional, judicial, and law-enforcement reform, as well as encouraging greater inclusion of Muslims in the political system.