Regulation and its modes: the European experience

There is a general trend in Europe, both at the national and Community level, toward greater specialization and institutionalization of regulatory functions. This essay presents three different but related sets of reasons that help to explain the rise of the regulatory state in Europe, and even why regulation seems to be becoming the new frontier of public policy and administration. A first set of reasons has to do with the failure of nationalization as a mode of regulation and the process of privatization, which have led to new regulatory bodies. The second set of factors, related to the increasing complexity and internationalization of the tasks facing policy makers, has led to new or stronger regulatory bodies at the Community level. The third set has to do with the role of the European Community as an independent “fourth branch of government” for the European nations. This latter trend has some problems, as the lack of transparency of the decision-making process. However, this problem can be solved. Moreover, the explanations for the rise of independent regulatory agencies echo many characteristic themes of the politics of efficiency, being recently rediscovered. The conviction that policy should be right, rather than the result of group struggle, leads to demands that policymakers should combine technical expertise and public deliberation to achive decisions that are substantively correct and politically legitimated.     

Taking Hand-Outs or Going It Alone: Nationalization versus Privatization in the Funding of Islamist Terrorist Groups

This article explores the consequences for the funding of Islamist terrorist groups of nationalization, in the form of state sponsorship, versus privatization, in the form of autonomous financing. The article begins by examining the evolution in terrorist groups’ sources of funding from state sponsorship to autonomous activity, then turns to the benefits and costs to terrorist groups of relying on state sponsors. The article then analyzes the benefits and costs of procuring funding autonomously. Finally, the article weighs those benefits and costs in relation to a terrorist group's emphasis on enhancing its constituency versus pursuing its agenda. The article's central conclusion is that nationalization tends to boost a terrorist group's constituency while privatization tends to bolster a group's agenda. Determining which advantage takes priority depends on the relative importance to a given terrorist group at a particular time of enhancing its constituency versus advancing its agenda.     

“Special” Communiqué Issued by the Belgian Marxist Terrorist Group, “Communist Combatant Cells” (CCC)

This section of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism is dedicated to the reprinting of selected, translated terrorist communiqués that provide insights into the mindset, worldview, or operational thinking of a group. In terms of communiqués, this section employs the following typology of terrorist communiqués. There are three types of terrorist communiqués: attack, strategic, and special. Attack communiqués are issued to claim responsibility for an attack, explain the target selected, and provide the political rationale for attacking the target. A strategic communiqué is a longer document that is issued to provide strategic direction or commentary on political events, issues, and developments relevant to the group's cause and constituency. It can be used to explain changes of strategy or reinforce the strategic direction of the group. The special communiqué is similar to the attack communiqué in that it is event-driven but addresses non-attack events like anniversary dates, hunger strikes, elections, deaths of leaders, ceasefires, issuing threats or warnings, annual progress reports, issuing apologies, and so on. All three communiqués are issued publicly and intended to influence various audiences.     

Ideas,Economics and 'the Sociology of Supply': Explanations for Fertility Decline in Bangladesh

The persistence of high rates of fertility in Bangladesh, despite the poverty of its population, has been given alternative, and apparently competing, explanations, including the absence of effective forms of family planning, the resilience of pro-natalist values and norms and the existence of material constraints which led to the reliance on children as economic assets. The recent and dramatic declines in fertility rates, in the absence of any apparent major economic changes in the decades prior to the onset of fertility decline, appears to contradict materialist explanations for fertility behaviour and to support explanations which stressed ideas about the acceptability of birth control and the availability of the means for doing so. This article argues that such an interpretation is based on an historical analysis of events in Bangladesh. It offers an alternative explanation which stresses socio-economic change as the primary motor for change in family size preferences, but which recognises the role of modern forms of family planning in facilitating the pace of the resulting fertility decline.     

The historical foundations of party politics in post-communist East Central Europe

This article gauges how plausible deep historical explanations are in accounting for the emergence of particular types of parties in post-communist Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Generating and testing hypotheses from the centuries-long historical logic of Lipset and Rokkan's model of cleavage and party development, it finds that the historical foundations of post-communist parties may be deeper than most analyses assume and that the influence of the communist era may be less than is often believed. While a full understanding of the emergence of post-communist party types requires both historical and non-historical explanations, historical ones should not be underestimated.     

Cananea consolidated copper company from nationalization to privatization: 1972-1991

Copper, a base metal, became important in the late nineteenth century with the development of electricity and other industrial uses. La Cananea, a Mexican copper mine, was acquired and worked by an American, Colonel Greene, between 1896 and 1907. From 1907 until the mine was nationalized in 1972, the mine was successfully worked by Anaconda, an American multinational copper company. Poor performance under nationalization and a change of policy by the Mexican government led to the reprivatization of the mine in 1990. The process of re-privatization was complicated by two factors: the value of the mine and employee redundance. This paper considers the problems of ownership and management from nationalization to privatization from 1972 to 1991.     

The Privatization Process At The Irish Sugar Company – Logical Incrementalism Or Ensemble Des Jeux?

This article presents an empirical analysis of the privatization process at Comhlucht Siuicre Eireann Teoranta (CSET), the Irish Sugar Company. The CSET privatization was significant in being the first in the modern Irish political context. It was also significant in that the primary momentum for the process was generated and sustained by strategic action at firm level. Yet, it was a transformation in which firm strategists were rarely in full control of events, and one that had national as well as organizational implications. The analysis suggests that even the most robust of firm-level models of change alone provides an inadequate guide to fully understanding such processes. It examines the case for viewing them through a more multi-level perspective.     

Privatization in developing countries: ideal and reality

In both developed and developing countries, governments finance, produce, and distribute various goods and services. In recent years, the range of goods provided by government has extended widely, covering many goods which do not meet the purist's definition of “public” goods. As the size of the public sector has increased steadily there has been a growing concern about the effectiveness of the public sector's performance as producer. Critics of this rapid growth argue that the public provision of certain goods is inefficient and have proposed that the private sector replace many current public sector activities, that is, that services be privatized. Since Ronald Reagan took office greater privatization efforts have been pursued in the United States. Paralleling this trend has been a strong endorsement by international and bilateral donor agencies for heavier reliance on the private sector in developing countries.

However, the political, institutional, and economic environments of developing nations are markedly different from those of developed countries. It is not clear that the theories and empirical evidence purported to justify privatization in developed countries are applicable to developing countries.

In this paper we present a study of privatization using the case of Honduras. We examine the policy shift from “direct administration” to “contracting out” for three construction activities: urban upgrading for housing projects, rural primary schools, and rural roads. The purpose of our study is threefold. First, we test key hypotheses pertaining to the effectiveness of privatization, focusing on three aspects: cost, time, and quality. Second, we identify major factors which affect the performance of this privatization approach. Third, we document the impact of privatization as it influences the political and institutional settings of Honduras. Our main finding is that contracting out in Honduras has not led to the common expectations of its proponents because of institutional barriers and limited competitiveness in the market. These findings suggest that privatization can not produce goods and services efficiently without substantial reform in the market and regulatory procedures. Policy makers also need to consider carefully multiple objectives at the national level in making decisions about privatization.     

Privatization of state-owned enterprises in mexico

The privatization of state-owned enterprises in Mexico, signifies a reversal of its long tradition of state-led economic development. Motivated by the financial crisis of the early 80's, Mexico has reduced the size and significance of its public sector through the process of privatization. The paper outlines the progress of the program since 1982 and discusses the impact of privatization and the lessons learned from the case studies of Mexicana Airlines, Aeromexico and Telmex. The concluding section evaluates the accomplishments and discusses the limitations of the Mexican privatization strategies.     

The Enemy Within: Intragovernmental Politics and Organizational Failure in Greek Privatization

Mainstream approaches explain privatization policy failure by taking account of the surrounding sociopolitical and economic context. This article examines the unsuccessful Greek privatization over the first half of the 1990s by following an alternative approach. It looks at the obstacles originating from intragovernmental politics and the state organizational structures and resources. Contrary to what the British or French experience would suggest, the adoption of a statist, impositional policy-making strategy in the Greek case failed to achieve policy effectiveness. Indeed, it probably ended up accelerating policy failure. The employment of statism as a policy-making strategy was undermined by the structural weaknesses of the state.     

Privatization,efficiency and market failure : transforming ecuador's public sector

Much of the privatization that is occurring in Latin America is leading to improved efficiency. However, privatization in areas where markets do not yield efficient solutions, for example of public goods, like light houses, natural monopolies, mainly utilities, and goods with externalities, like education, can lead to lower output and higher costs in the long run. This paper first presents an outline of the shift in development theory with respect to the role of the public sector. It then examines the growth of Ecuador's public sector and its current debate on how privatization should proceed. It concludes that while careful privatization can be positive, privatizing natural monopolies like the electric utility and/or quasi-public goods, like highways are likely to be detrimental to long run economic development. In order for Ecuador's economy to continue to develop, the public sector still needs to play a significant role in developing human capital and physical infrastructure.     

Changing Patterns of Privatization: Ideology,Economic Necessity,or Political Opportunism

This article considers privatization decisions by governments in four Australian states over twenty years of micro-economic reform. It focuses on the policy frameworks and political context for privatizing government enterprises, drawing on Kingdon's framework for policy change to analyze differences in the substance and timing of decisions. In the 1990s, governments considered privatization as an economic and political strategy to resolve the problem of state-level fiscal crises, but the patterns of adoption were variable. Two states resisted the general trend toward privatization, but recently changed their position. We argue that the recent financial crisis provided a window for reintroducing contentious reform initiatives that had lost momentum.     

National museums,national myths: constructing socialist Yugoslavism for Croatia and Croats

This article concerns two national museums in Croatia during the socialist period, the Museum of the Revolution of the Peoples of Croatia and the Historical Museum of Croatia. Both state-developed institutions were intimately tied to the process of nationalization as they helped articulate the place of the Croatian nation within the ideology of supranational Yugoslavism founded on the ideas of socialist patriotism, brotherhood and unity, self-management, national assertion, and South Slavic culture and community. This paper therefore traces the development and collapse of Yugoslavism in Croatia’s national narrative by analyzing how these museums adapted the mythology of socialist Yugoslavism for a particularly Croatian context. Specifically, this paper investigates the ways in which these museums operated in an often ambiguous national-supranational discourse in order to reinforce the historical precedents of Croatia as part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. I argue that these museums were envisioned by party elites and museum curators alike as essential to the project of building socialist Yugoslavism by adapting and altering Croatia’s previous national pantheon of heroes, places, objects, and events to fit into a larger and distinctly supranational Yugoslav framework.     

Democratization in East Asia in the late 1980s: Taiwan breakthrough,Hong Kong frustration

Political history took an unexpected turn in East Asia in the late 1980s. The booming movement in Hong Kong had gone downhill and suffered defeat, while the authoritarian Taiwan state actively sponsored genuine democratic reforms. What then explains the Taiwan democratic breakthrough and the Hong Kong democratic frustration? This article argues that conventional explanations offered in the modernization, the dependency, and the class literature—such as culture, liberal colonialism, wealth, new middle class, bureaucratic-authoritarian state, crises, and absence of conservative class coalition—are unable to account for the divergent paths of democratic development in Taiwan and Hong Kong. As an alternative, this article presents a model that highlights the importance of conjuncture factors. It is argued that since Taiwan and Hong Kong have shared similar structural conditions, researchers have to bring in conjuncture factors such as the historical event of Chinese unification, the capacity of the political agency to promote democratic reforms, and the strategy of protest in order to explain the Taiwan breakthrough and the Hong Kong frustration.     

THE DYNAMICS OF POLICY CHANGE: WBBYING AND WATER PRIVATIZATION

The privatization of the water industry was one of the most controversial and turbulent privatizations of the 1980s. The government undertook the project somewhat reluctantly, then the first plans had to be withdrawn, but eventually, the privatization of the industry was successfully completed in 1989. In this article, we first set out to provide a thorough account of the process of privatizing water, based on primary sources and exhaustive interviews. In doing so, we identity some major problems of established theories of British policy making: the process of water privatization clearly does not conform to any single model of policy making. Instead, individual 'episodes' of the policy process conform to different models. Arguing that existing theories of British policy making may have focused too narrowly on routine decision-making processes, we propose that a theory of the transformation of policy communities is required to understand the dynamics of radical policy change in Britain.     

Two Stories for Two Nations: Public Diplomacy in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

A substantial part of asymmetric conflicts is the “image war” that takes place in the foreign media. This study examines the circumstances that explain the degree to which political actors successfully promote their preferred frames regarding the conflict in which they are involved to the foreign press. The study examines Israel and the Palestinians’ ability to promote their messages in various events over the last decade. Seven factors were examined, divided into three groups: focal event factors, political context factors, and message context factors. Separate examination of each predictor, followed by analysis of their shared effect, reveals that most factors have an impact on how successful political actors are at promoting their preferred frames to the foreign press. Our findings suggests that the media place greater emphasis on focal event factors when covering conflicts, and that events have a greater impact than cultural assumptions in terms of how foreign media frame news stories.     

privatization in latin America: the other side of the story

In line with the current global trends, most Latin American countries have adopted promarket reforms, including privatization, deregulation, and liberalization, under the auspices of various market-friendly regimes and international financial agencies. They carried out privatization exercises based on the rationales that privatization would enhance competitiveness and efficiency, overcome economic stagnation and fiscal crisis, eradicate poverty and unemployment, reduce external debt, and increase foreign investment. In opposition to these rationales, however, the actual socioeconomic conditions in most Latin American countries have hardly improved, and in many cases, the situation has worsened. This article attempts to offer a more critical account of the outcomes of privatization by evaluating the trends of economic realities in Latin American countries before and after privatization programs were adopted. It is found that except for a few cases, most Latin American economies have not performed well during the privatization period in terms of various economic criteria. The article then explores why privatization remains a favorite policy option in Latin America despite its dismal outcomes during the policy period.     

Towards an Explanation of Intercommunal Peace in Kabardino-Balkaria: Post-War Nationalities Policy and Late Soviet Society in the North Caucasus

Abstract

This essay examines socio-economic processes during the Soviet period to help explain the causes of peace and conflict in the post-Soviet North Caucasus. It argues that the absence of an ethnically stratified social structure in Kabardino-Balkaria is one of the reasons why this republic enjoyed relative intercommunal peace and stability in the 1990s and early 2000s. By contrast, the surrounding national republics of the North Caucasus that came out of the Soviet era with socio-economic disparities along ethnic lines witnessed higher levels of intercommunal conflict. This essay looks to the understudied topic of post-World War II and late Soviet nationalities policies to explain Kabardino-Balkaria’s divergent historical trajectory.     

Color revolutions: The Belarus case

This paper focuses on the 2006 presidential elections in Belarus and offers several explanations for the lack of regime change. It posits that the answers lie in the official interpretations of the historical past, the personal popularity of the president—acquired partly through his firm control over the media and persecution of his enemies—and the electorate's focus on economic rather than political issues or emphasis on democratic values. It notes also the importance of Russia as a player in Belarus, and Russia's ambivalent attitude toward the continuing dictatorship in Minsk.