Democratising development: NGOs and the state

Many NGOs are moving beyond conventional project work, with its emphasis on 'doing', and are attempting to enhance their impact through 'influencing'. There are four interconnected approaches: Project Replication, Grassroots Mobilisation, Influencing Policy Reform, and International Advocacy. Each calls for a more strategic relationship between NGOs and governments. For NGOs to move to an effective 'influencing' mode, new skills and a new relationship between Northern and Southern NGOs are required. The Technological Age, with its emphasis on physical projects, must give way to an Information Age, whose 'software' comprises access to official information, decision makers, and networks; and access to skills in communication, lobbying, and research. Northern NGOs must recognise that these requirements are becoming more important to their Southern counterparts than funds. If they do not, they will find their relationships becoming out of date, and their former counterparts will seek more appropriate allies — for example, among pressure groups in the North.     

Caught in the Middle: The United Nations Emergency Force,Israel, and the 1960 “Rotem Crisis”

The refusal of the UN forces in Lebanon to accede to Israel's request to provide information on events they were witness to (the October 2000 abduction of three Israeli soldiers on the border), and the subsequent crisis between the two, are not unprecedented. A much more severe crisis broke out in 1960 after nearly the entire Egyptian army surprisingly deployed a few kilometres behind the UN Emergency Force's (UNEF) posts along the border with Israel in Sinai. Israel hurried to request UNEF to provide information—considered crucial to its survival—on this deployment, but was refused.

The author reviews this unknown incident and tracks on the diplomatic efforts made by the then UN Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld alongside about UNEF's role and functions in this affair. He examines the UN's refusal and concludes that while the Egyptians did partially violate some informal understandings with the UNSG, it was indeed justified.     

Undermining Adversaries: Unipolarity,Threat Perception,and Negative Balancing Strategies after the Cold War

This paper engages the ongoing soft balancing debate by suggesting a new analytical framework for states’ countervailing strategies—a negative balancing model—to explain why states do not form alliances and conduct arms races to balance against power or threats as they previously did. Negative balancing refers to a state's strategies or diplomatic efforts aiming to undermine a rival's power. By contrast, positive balancing means to strengthen a state's own power in world politics. I argue that a state's balancing strategies are shaped by the level of threat perception regarding its rival. The higher the threat perception, the more likely it is for a state to choose positive balancing. The lower the threat perception, the more likely it is for a state to choose negative balancing. I suggest that the hegemon provides security as a public good to the international system in a unipolar world in which the relatively low-threat propensity of the system renders positive balancing strategies incompatible with state interests after the Cold War. Instead, states have employed various negative balancing strategies to undermine each other's power, especially when dealing with us primacy. China's negative balancing strategy against the United States and the us negative balancing strategy against Russia are two case studies that test the validity of the negative balancing model.     

Should development agencies have Official Views?

The major development agencies have ex cathedra 'Official Views' (with varying degrees of explicitness) on the complex and controversial questions of development. At the same time, knowledge is now more than ever recognised as key to development--in the idea of a 'knowledge bank' or knowledge-based development assistance. The author argues that these two practices are in direct conflict. When an agency attaches its 'brand name' to certain Official Views, then it becomes very difficult for the agency also to be a learning organisation or to foster genuine learning in its clients. A model of a development agency as an open learning organisation, which is in sharp contrast to other organisational models such as the Church or the party, is outlined. That, in turn, allows the agency to take a more autonomycompatible approach to development assistance with the assisted country 'in the driver's seat' of a learning process rather than as the passive recipient of aid-sweetened policies from the agency.     

Immeasurable Pleasure and Meaningful Imperfection: Raising Good Citizens in a Bad State

Previous research has shown that a party's election results can depend on visibility and tone in the media. Using daily content data from the major news bulletins and daily survey data from the 2007 national election campaign in Denmark (N = 5,083), our analysis improves upon two central aspects of this earlier research. First, the effects on vote choice of the parties' visibility and tone in the media are studied concurrently in the same model. Second, a distinction is made between the effects of direct exposure to specific news content and the effects of the cumulative information environment created by the media. Overall, it is found that the more visible and the more positive the tone toward a given party is, the more voters are inclined to vote for this party. The effects are primarily effects of the information environment, not effects of direct exposure, though undecided voters are also directly affected. In the discussion, central conditions for the strength of media effects are identified.     

Communication technology and development: can South Africa afford the information explosion?

ABSTRACT

Weare living in a world where the availability of information can make you, or the lack of it can break you. The 'information explosion', as it is sometimes called, has already changed our lives. How this affects us, and changes our environment, our economy and our lives is a fascinating issue. But does it affect everyone? Is there a possibility that some communities can be left in the dark without the availability of these masses of information?

In South Africa some major changes are taking place at the moment. It could be argued that while South Africa tries to erase the remains of apartheid and rebuild the country, the rest of the world has 'quietly' moved into the information age. A development problem in South Africa concerns the disparities among the different communities. There is still a significant difference between the information-rich, a small minority, and the information-poor, the majority of the population.

This article first describes the situation in South Africa with regard to Internet availability and accessibility and secondly gives a broad overview of the theoretical assumptions underlying computer-mediated communication from a communication sciences perspective. In conclusion, specific questions on the topic for future research in communication sciences are proposed in general and applied to conditions in South Africa as a developing country.     

Credibility and Strategy in International Mediation

We study mediation in international conflict as a process of strategic interaction among the two disputants and the (would-be) mediator. We develop a rational model that examines the choice, process, and outcome of mediation. We start with a conflict game of incomplete information played by rational players that examines the conditions under which disputants and would-be mediators would consider mediation a preferred strategy. The mediation game that follows models the mediator's choice of mediation strategy and the possible responses of the disputants offers. Finally, we explore the conditions under which a mediated solution emerges and the conditions under which mediation fails.

The credibility of the mediator—defined as the extent to which disputants believe the mediator's statements, threats, or promises and her ability to deliver the promised agreement—emerges as a key factor that drives the model. Each disputant has an assessment of the mediator's credibility. Broadly speaking, the more credible the mediator is perceived by the disputant, the more accepting the disputant will be of her offers. Yet, the mediator does not know how credible she is in the view of the disputants. This uncertainty affects the mediator's decision to intervene and her choice of strategies. We derive testable propositions from this model and test them on a dataset consisting of mediation efforts in international conflicts over the years 1945–1995. The findings generally support the propositions derived from the model, and we explore the theoretical and empirical implications of these findings.     

Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis: Security,Ethics and Global Health

*This article is part of a project on infectious diseases, security and ethics sponsored by the Australian Research Council. For their valuable feedback on earlier versions, the author thanks Simon Rushton, Stefan Elbe and the Global Society reviewers. View all notesThe worldwide spread of drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis (TB) bacteria is out of control and incidents of harder-to-cure TB illness are rising. This article explores the present and potential impact of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB)—a deadly, contagious and virtually incurable disease—on human health and state capacity. Detected cases of XDR-TB can occasion the implementation of extraordinary control measures, because some governments are sufficiently fearful of the disease as to frame it as an issue of national security. Such framing has the potential to precipitate more financial resources and stronger legal powers to bolster public health, but it might also increase the risk that emergency response measures will be counterproductive and/or unjust. Framing XDR-TB as a security issue is empirically plausible, and doing so is a good thing provided that increased response efforts promote rather than hinder the provision of universal access to adequate TB treatment over the long term. Two disease control measures that are motivated particularly by security concerns are border control and patient isolation. This article offers an assessment of each measure by reference to public health ethics in order to differentiate good and bad securitisation.     

Emerging political narratives on Malawian digital spaces

Social media platforms are being considered new podiums for political transformation as political dictatorships supposedly convert to overnight democracies, and many more people are not only able to gain access to information, but also gather and disseminate news from their own perspective. When looking at the situation in several sub-Saharan African countries, it becomes clear there are various challenges restricting social media and its palpable yet considerably constrained ability to influence political and social changes. Access to the internet, or lack thereof, is a recognised social stratification causing a “digital divide” thanks to existing inequalities within African and several other societies throughout the world. This article reports on a study that analysed a popular Facebook page in Malawi using a discursive online ethnographic examination of interactions among social media participants seeking to determine the level of activism and democratic participation taking shape on the Malawian digital space. The study also examined potential bottlenecks restraining effective digital participation in Malawi. The article argues that while social media's potential to transform societies is palpable, keeping up with the pace of transformation is no easy task for both digital and non-digital citizens. The study demonstrated social media's potential but also highlighted the problems facing online activists in Malawi, including chief among them digital illiteracy. Therefore, the digital sphere is not a political podium for everyone in Malawi as shown by the analysis of digital narratives emerging from the country's online environment, which opens its doors to only a tiny fraction of the population.     

The development management task and reform of 'public' social services

With its emphasis on target-setting and performance measures, the New Public Management (NPM) appears to offer a coherent and 'no-nonsense' approach to public sector reform and the public management task. This article suggests that three questions require further thought: 'Management of what?', 'Management by whom?', and 'How to manage?' It considers these questions using the case of Community Based Health Care (CBHC) and its promotion by NGOs in Tanzania. The article argues that the task of public management is one of managing an arena of public action which includes (and excludes) a range of actors and agendas. Once this is taken into account, it becomes clear that the challenge to all development managers is how to manage more effective interdependence.     

Youths in the interface of development and security

This article interrogates the link between youth, security and development in Africa and argues that the central determinant in the link is ‘governance’, especially as this implies the ability of the state to harness the productive potential of youths and to meet their demands on a number of issues. The article also asserts that the reality of a youth bulge in many African countries presents challenges (as opposed to crises), as much as opportunities for national socio-economic transformation. Besides, youths in many developing countries have been the victims of developmental experiments often tele-guided by international financial and development agencies. In its conclusion, the articles argues that efforts to address the challenges posed by youths must move from platitudinous wish-list into formulation of coherent policy agenda that is consistent with the socio-economic and political realities of individual countries; in which youths themselves active agents; and one which must be incorporated into the wider governance framework of nation-states.

The issue of youth and violent conflict concerns more than youth, it is a reflection of society in crisis and hence of development itself. If a society's values, norms, customs, practices, structures and institutions are under threat and such changes in turn threaten the development of its children into youth and then adults, then that society cannot sustain itself.1 ?1. UNDP, Youth and Violent Conflict, p.12. View all notes

The state … the economy… are predicated on notions of adulthood; they all require the participation of adults in order to function. If youth are unable to fully make this transition to the minimal conditions of adulthood, then such structures are unsustainable and will either fracture or mutate in unforeseen ways. An understanding of the intersections between youth, violent conflict and society is a way of re-examining development and developing societies. Youth, those who engage in violence and especially those who do not, are located at the junctures between development, security, peace and conflict.2 ?2. UNDP, Youth and Violent Conflict, p.13. View all notes     

How to solve the many-state problem: a reply to the debate

This article responds to the debate provoked by the author's ‘Does capitalism need the state system?’ (Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 20:4 2007, 533–549) and his exchanges with Justin Rosenberg (Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 21:1 2008, 77–112). It is divided into three parts. The first restates the issues, situating them in the context of a growing Marxist preoccupation with the international in recent years, and contrasts the ‘high road’—Rosenberg's attempt to use Trotsky's concept of uneven and combined development to provide a transhistorical perspective on intersocietal relations—with Callinicos's own preferred ‘low road’ of more focused analysis centred on the prevailing mode(s) of production. The second addresses the fundamental criticisms addressed to him by Hannes Lacher, Benno Teschke and John M Hobson, all of whom deny that there is a necessary relation between capitalism and the interstate system. The third considers the more specific comments offered by Neil Davidson, Gonso Pozo-Martin, and Jamie Allinson and Alex Anievas, before concluding with an appeal for a move off the terrain of abstract theory to more empirical studies that can test the relative value of rival conceptual constructions.     

Disquieting growth: urban space in Kawashima Yūzō's film Suzaki Paradise Red Light

This article examines how Japanese postwar cinematic texts manifest and comment upon contemporary political and economic events, and considers the usefulness of cinema for a more complete historical understanding of the period. In particular, it argues for the significance of fūzoku eiga, or ‘films of customs and manners’ by analyzing a representative text of that genre, Kawashima Yūzō's 1956 film Suzaki Paradise Red Light. Although Kawashima's film has been treated as an apolitical melodrama, a close textual analysis reveals it to be a counter-narrative to the success story of postwar economic recovery and growth that the Japanese state sought to promote. Key to this analysis is an examination of the urban space of the Suzaki neighborhood in Tokyo, as depicted in the film. Kawashima's tour of Suzaki addresses the issues of the economic stagnation within the metropolis, uneven development, and the liminal space of muen, or ‘no ties,’ which offers a brief refuge from an increasingly disciplined everyday life.     

The utopia of suburbia: the unchanging past and limitless future in Doraemon

The long-running Japanese children's media franchise Doraemon is commonly interpreted both inside and outside academic discourse as a representation of a positive vision of the future, an analysis based partially on its portrayal of a lovable robot. This view is supported by the series' use of ‘science’ to represent unlimited accessibility, and the branding of the series as a companion to children's scientific education. Doraemon's celebration of the future's boundless potential is complicated, however, by the impulse in recent works to reject the same notion of ‘progress’ on which the series relies. The works remain frozen in a romanticised vision of 1960s’ Japan, and have come to connote childhood nostalgia while presenting characters that do not grow or change over time. In the 2008 film Nobita to Midori no Kyojinden, the perpetual act of returning that defines much of Doraemon today is taken to a dramatic extreme, as a pre-modern ideal becomes the blueprint for both morality and might. Doraemon constructs temporal mixtures that simultaneously glorify both the past and the future.     

Rand Daily Mail: die dood in perspektief

SUMMARY

The closure of the Rand Daily Mail on April 30, 1985 focused the attention of South Africans on the state of the South African press. This (mainly white) press is examined in the article. It is found that if one uses Merill & Lowenstein's EPS curve of stages of media development in South Africa, the white press is already in the Modern phase, with saturated mass publications, decreasing readership of the mass press and an increasing commitment to specialization and diversification. The black publications are in the Transitional phase, moving from the Elite phase to the Popular phase, with a great potential for mass publications due mainly to increasing literacy and rising levels of income. Readership among Blacks has increased by some 250 per cent between 1962 and 1977. Conclusions drawn from these findings seem to indicate that the Rand Daily Mail had not taken adequate account of the realities of the media market and had positioned itself in a no-man's-land between a sophisticated white market and a developing black one. It had proved itself second best against both its main white and black rivals, namely Citizen and Sowetan. It is recommended that, due to the press's economic difficulties and the need for a diversity of views in a reforming constitutional system on the road to greater democracy, government subsidization of the press be considered seriously as an option for the future.     

Small carrots,few sticks: EU good governance promotion in sub-Saharan Africa

The European Union has developed a one-size-fits-all approach to promote good governance reforms in African countries, focusing on strengthening the effectiveness of state institutions while increasingly asking for reforms that also target their democratic quality. Assessing the EU's policies in Angola and Ethiopia reveals, however, that the implementation of this approach is more differential. While the EU has a hard time making the two governments address governance issues, it has been more successful in implementing its policy approach in Ethiopia than in Angola. These differences are largely explained by these countries' different degrees of interdependency with the EU rather than differences in stability and democracy. Unlike Angola, Ethiopia heavily relies on EU development aid, giving the EU greater leverage to push for governance reforms. While conditionality is more effective in making African governments address governance issues, it undermines the legitimacy of the EU's development cooperation, which emphasizes partnership and ownership.     

An integrated crisis communication framework for strategic crisis communication with the media: A case study on a financial services provider

Abstract

In order for organisations to survive in an ever-changing milieu in the current business environment, sufficient crisis communication and management practices need to be in place. Despite this, organisational crises are often inefficiently managed, which could be ascribed to the lack of strategic management of crises (Kash & Darling 1998: 180). This article explores the lack of strategic crisis communication processes to ensure effective crisis communication with the media as stakeholder group. It is based on the premise that the media are one of the main influencers of public opinion (Pollard & Hotho 2006: 725), thereby necessitating the need for the accurate distribution of information. Furthermore, the study focuses specifically on the financial industry, which is arguably more sensitive and thus more prone to media reporting because financial services providers manage people's money (Squier 2009). A strategic crisis communication process with the media is therefore proposed, facilitated through an integrated crisis communication framework, proposing a combination of integrated communication (IC) literature, with emphasis on Grunig's theory of communication excellence, to build sustainable media relationships through two-way communication; and a crisis communication process that has proactive, reactive and post-evaluative crisis communication stages, thereby moving away from seeing crisis communication as a predominantly reactive function.     

Economic aid to post-conflict countries: a methodological critique of Collier and Hoeffler

In the past five years, research sponsored by the World Bank on the economic aspects of civil war1 ?1. The project was titled the Economics of Political and Criminal Violence. View all notes under the research directorship of Oxford economist Paul Collier has had an extraordinary influence on the subsequent study of violent conflict and civil war and on international policy. The research project has now turned its attention to the problem of countries emerging from civil war and what Collier and his co-author, Anke Hoeffler, call ‘a first systematic empirical analysis of aid and policy reform in the post-conflict growth process.’2 ?2. First reported in a World Bank Policy Research Working Paper circulated in October 2002, their article, ‘Aid, Policy, and Growth in Post-Conflict Societies,’ the paper was in 2003 posted on the website of the Centre for the Study of African Economics, Oxford University until it was published in 2004 in the European Economic Review. There are some minor differences between the two versions of their work, but the conclusions are identical. In the present article, the paper version will be referred to as Collier & Hoeffler (2003) and the published version as Collier & Hoeffler (2004). View all notes Building on the influence of their earlier research and the lively interest currently in knowledge about and policy on post-conflict strategies, this work is likely to be equally influential on research, thinking, and policy. It is all the more important, therefore, to subject the research to critical examination before it becomes established as conventional wisdom. This note reports one such attempt to analyze some major methodological problems with the study and argues that the research cannot sustain the conclusions they draw or the resulting policy recommendations.