Devolution Plan 2000: dictatorship,democracy, and the politics of institutional change in Pakistan

Contemporary development theory and policy research puts an overarching emphasis on institution building as a key driver of change in developing countries. Over the past few decades, decentralisation reforms have played out as the linchpin of such institution building efforts, advocated by international development agencies and favoured by national governments. This article examines decentralisation reforms implemented in Pakistan under the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers initiative through a case study of the implementation and outcomes of Devolution Plan (DP) in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province. Promulgated by General Musharaf in 2000, the DP aimed to restructure and rebuild political and administrative structures, to redress key issues of governance, resource distribution, and service delivery. The Local Government System (LGS) was a key reform element within the DP, but it lost traction and was abolished in 2008/09. This article demonstrates two important factors, regime legitimisation and the preservation of clientelistic politics, that have profoundly shaped implementation of the DP. The findings demonstrate how the implementation of this large-scale internationally supported attempt at institution building ultimately succumbed to a range of particularistic interests.     

Direct democracy and subjective regime legitimacy in Europe

While much research focuses on the causes and consequences of direct democracy and regime legitimacy, little attention has been paid to the potential relationship between them. In an attempt to fill this void, this paper focuses on the legal provisions for direct democracy and its use. The key argument is that possibilities for the public’s direct involvement reflect high importance given to citizens, openness of the regime towards different modes of decision-making, and ways to avoid unpopular institutions. Consequently, citizens are likely to accept and support the regime, improving or maintaining its legitimacy. The cross-national analysis includes 38 European countries ranging from transition countries to established democracies. It uses bivariate statistical analysis and country-level data collected from legislation, secondary sources, and aggregate surveys.     

Migrations toward Western Europe: trends,outlook, policies

Recent trends in international migration affecting Europe are reviewed. The author notes that since the 1970s, the pressure from migrants has shifted from northern to southern Europe. He concludes that the focus of future trends will be the Mediterranean region from northern Africa to southern Europe. The possible effect on migration of aid policies to developing countries is considered.     

Patterns of interdependence: Telecommunications in Western Europe

An examination of the telecommunications transactions of selected countries of the European Community (the Six) is undertaken to determine the existence and level of societal interdependence in Western Europe. Relying on data from 1952 to 1976, the author finds that the absolute level of telecommunications transactions has generally increased within the European Community (EC). The percentage share of the international transactions of the EC states which has remained within the EC, however, has come to a peak‐generally in the 1960's or early 1970's‐and subsequently declined. Thus, while the internal or regional interdependence of the EC has been generally increasing, its external or global interdependence has also been increasing, with the latter trend occurring recently at a faster rate.     

Organizing international armaments cooperation: institutional design and path dependencies in Europe

Abstract

Few issues are more important to scholars of Europe's emergence as a foreign policy actor than whether the European Union (EU) can forge a common defense-industrial policy out of 27 states' procurement policies and defense industries. Overlooked in most scholarly analyses of European defense-industrial cooperation, the story of Europe's international armaments organizations stretches back more than six decades. In this article, we examine the impact of past institutional outcomes on the defense-industrial field by applying the concepts and analytic tools of historic institutionalism to European armaments organizations. Because past institutional dynamics have channeled the subsequent development of armaments cooperation, what has emerged is a polycentric governance architecture wherein organizations with transatlantic, pan-European and restrictive-European memberships dominate distinct components of the cooperative process. We demonstrate that this maturing institutional pattern will likely limit the opportunities for the EU – and especially its Commission – to shape the future contours of European defense-industrial cooperation.     

Cosmopolitan democracy and the national identity question in Europe and East Asia

This paper seeks to apply the idea of cosmopolitan democracyto the question of national identity in a comparative contextin the European Union and East Asia. The application of theidea of cosmopolitan democracy to East Asia is constrained bya number of factors, and hence cannot be understood as a universalconcept, but rather as a contingent regional phenomenon thatis dependent on certain conditions. The paper concludes thatEast Asia will find its own approach to the question of nationalidentity and that this has been demonstrated to some extentby China's handling of Hong Kong.     

How democracy ends,by David Runciman

In 2006, Poland and Romania embarked on renewed lustration programmes. These late lustration policies expanded the scope and transparency measures associated with lustration as a form of transitional justice. While early lustration measures targeted political elites, late lustration policies include public and private sector positions, such as journalists, academics, business leaders, and others in ‘positions of public trust’. Given the legal controversy and moral complexity surrounding lustration, why lustrate so late in the post-communist transition and why expand the policies? The dominant explanation is that lustration is a tool of party politics and is a threat to democratic consolidation. However, the late lustration programmes do not fit this hypothesis neatly. The new laws have been restructured and packaged with other reform programmes, specifically anticorruption programmes. Late lustration has evolved to include economic and social, as well as political concerns. As such, some post-communist governments in Central and Eastern Europe appear to be trying to use lustration as a way to further the democratic transitions by addressing remaining public concerns about corruption, distrust, and inequality.     

西欧极右翼思潮

自20世纪90年代以来,欧洲的极右思潮迅速发展,不少极右翼政党上台执政,从而对欧洲一体化进程和欧洲社会局势的稳定构成新的挑战。 一、西欧极右思潮的核心内容及其 表现形式     

Police demilitarisation: cops,soldiers and democracy

Arthur Costa is a PhD candidate at the University of Brasilia, Brazil. His forthcoming book is entitled Transição e Tutela: Militares e Políticos na Nova República. Mateus Medeiros was Co-ordinator of the Office for Human Rights of the City of Belo Horizonte and a lecturer in legal philosophy at the Federal University of Ouro Preto, Brazil. He is now a legislative analyst at the Human Rights Commission, Brazilian Chamber of Deputies.¹     

Towards consolidating democracy: The paradoxical role of democracy groups in Thailand

Civil society is thought to contribute to consolidating democracy, but exactly how this happens is not especially well understood. This article examines the recent experiences of ‘democracy groups’ in Thailand. While acknowledging there are other factors that contribute to democratic consolidation, it finds the cumulative effect of Thailand's intermediating organizations, such as democracy groups, appears to be a redistribution of information and resources in ways that are causing changes in state‐society relations, making the country more pluralistic and contributing to consolidating democracy. Democracy groups and other civil society organizations are providing a widening circle of Thais with virtually unprecedented opportunities to participate in the policy‐making process. Yet despite their accomplishments, these groups might have greater consolidating effects if they themselves adhered more to democratic norms and procedures. Nevertheless, without democracy groups and other civil society organizations, Thailand would be less democratic than it is, although democracy is not fully consolidated yet.     

Regulations as Arbiters of Risk: Great Britain, Germany, and the Hazardous Waste Trade in Western Europe

This article seeks to explain why Great Britain is one of the world's largest importers of hazardous wastes, while Germany, in contrast, is a waste exporter. Why one country exhibits such risk-acceptance behavior, while another is so risk averse, I argue, depends on differences between their national systems of environmental regulation. The style and structure of Britain's regulatory system, unlike that of Germany and its other partners in Western Europe, gives a high degree of leeway to private firms, filtering out the preferences of environmental groups and public opinion, thus enabling and facilitating the importation of hazardous wastes by waste disposal companies. The empirical section tests this argument against two alternative explanations: a state-centric explanation based on individual government's calculations of the relevant costs and benefits associated with the waste trade, and second, a "comparative advantage" explanation, based on the technological superiority of Britain's waste disposal facilities. The conclusion draws out the implication for international environmental regulation and for domestic-level regulatory change.     

Bringing direct democracy back in: toward a three-dimensional measure of democracy

Most procedural definitions and measurements of democracy are missing one crucial component: direct popular decision-making. This is an important gap that does not allow users of data to ascertain some important variation among democracies. Thus, I propose a new measure that is strongly anchored in a procedural definition of democracy but includes this missing dimension. The proposed measure is well rooted in the literature and introduces a dimension whereby citizens may become the masters of their political fate at any time and without the consent of elected authorities, while avoiding the inclusion of extraneous attributes that are not highlighted in democratic theory. Tests of the validity of the new indicator, using Latin American cases, show that there is enough room for its inclusion without the typical collinearity problems this literature faces. This indicator is not only sound, but it is empirically appealing as it performs better than others when testing relevant hypotheses.