Anatomy of a Riot: The Social Imaginary,Single Women,and Religious Violence in Niger

This article asks us to rethink the models that have conventionally represented the coming of Islam to Africa: that of a pre-established entity, given from the outside, coherent, monadic, unity, like an already formed identity. Using Lacanian challenges to conventional notions of identity, this article contests the above version of Islam, viewing it as an incarnation of the imago: always there, always obeying the logic of a model of transmission into Africa as a reception from abroad. The conventional representation of its irruption into Africa has always involved the misrecognition of an identity as a pre-existent, already-whole form, wait ing to be born, presumably in complete unity. What this model ignores is that the language and form of what it came to recognize and name as Islam were already there, and that the Islam that formed its newlyconscious sense of self was grounded in the same act of misrecognition as characterizes the mirror stage, that is, the stage at which the subject comes to state: “This is who I am.” In order to rethink the identitarian model, this article evokes the figure of the dead father, the “McGuffin” on which turns the drama of Hampaté Ba’s Wangrin and Sembène Ousmane’s Faat Kine. In both works, the act of exhuming the father’s body takes on a degree of fantastical importance because it situates the struggle between two competing mirror stage tendencies: narcissism and aggression, tendencies around which all forms of subject-identity formation take place.     

Personality and Job Satisfaction: Evidence from a Sample of Street-Level Bureaucrats

Job satisfaction is an important component of bureaucratic success. In this article, we build on the emerging literature on the five-factor model of personality and argue that basic personality characteristics can help us understand why certain employees are more satisfied with their jobs than others. Multivariate analysis of personality and job satisfaction data from over 1,000 public servants supports this argument. We conclude with a discussion about how personality can add to our theoretical understanding of public personnel management, and help public managers identify applicants who are likely to be satisfied with work in the public sector.     

Political Indigestion: Germany Confronts Genetically Modified Foods

Why has German policy toward agricultural biotechnology been notably unsupportive, compared to other countries with large biotechnology industries, despite its economic significance and the senior governing party's initial support across both the SPD–Green and Grand Coalition governments? I argue that German policy is the result of the interlocking dynamics in the economic and political arenas. In both realms, the GMO issue led to ‘business conflict’ by dividing economic sectors into pro-GMO and anti-GMO blocs. This enhanced the anti-GMO movement's ‘opportunity structures’ in both the economic and the political arena. It also affected the relative strength of contending political coalitions on both sides of the GMO issue, which in turn affected policy outcomes. Finally, I argue that the partisan composition of Germany's coalition governments also contributed to the outcome.     

Political and economic issues within the alliance: The future of Burden‐sharing and the Southern region

Annuario 1999: la costituzione europea : atti del XIV Convegno Annuale, Perugia 7–8–9‐ ottobre 1999 / Associazione italiana dei costituzionalisti. ‐ Padova : Cedam, c2000. ‐ XXXII, 633 p. ‐ ISBN 88–13–22621–7

La constitution de I'Europe / edité par Paul Magnette. ‐ Bruxelles : Editions de I'U‐niversité de Bruxelles, c2000. ‐ 201 p. ‐ ISBN 2–8004–1245–3

Europe's first constitution : the European Political Community, 1952–1954 / Richard T. Griffiths. ‐ London : Federal trust, c2000. ‐ 275 p. ‐ ISBN 1–903403–21–9

Consolidation of democracy in Africa : a view from the South / edited by Hussein Solomon, Ian Liebenberg. ‐ Aldershot: Ashgate, c2000. ‐ xii, 367 p. ‐ (The making of modern Africa). ‐ ISBN 0–7546–1174–4

The dissolution of Yugoslavia and the Badinter Arbitration Commission : a contextual study of peace‐making efforts in the post‐Cold War world / Steve Terrett. ‐ Aldershot: Ashgate, c2000. ‐ xxii, 395 p. ‐ ISBN 0–7546–2102–2

Europe and the breakup of Yugoslavia : a political failure in search of a scholarly explanation / Sonia Lucarelli. ‐ The Hague : Kluwer Law International, c2000. ‐ xvi, 278 p. ‐ ISBN 90–411–1439–4

Evolution and devolution : the dynamics of sovereignty and security in post‐Cold War Europe / Tom Lansford. ‐ Aldershot : Ashgate, c2000. ‐ viii, 242 p. ‐ ISBN 0–7546–1255–4

Funding virtue : civil society aid and democracy promotion / Marina Ottaway, Thomas Carothers, editors. ‐ Washington : Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, c2000. ‐ x, 340 p. ‐ ISBN 0–87003–178–3 (pbk)

The third force : the rise of transnational civil society / Ann M. Florini, editor. ‐ Tokyo : Japan Center for International Exchange ; Washington : Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, c2000. ‐ viii, 295 p. ‐ ISBN 0–87003–179–1 (pbk)

The geostrategic triad: living with China, Europe, and Russia / Zbigniew Brzezin‐ski. ‐ Washington : CSIS, c2000. ‐ XII, 75 p. ‐ (Significant issues ; v.23, n.1). ‐ ISBN 0–89206–384‐X

Islam and European legal systems / edited by Silvio Ferrari, Anthony Bradney. ‐Aldershot: Ashgate, c2000. ‐ x, 203 p. ‐ ISBN 1–84014–466–1

The nuclear challenge : US‐Russian strategic relations after the Cold War / Christoph Bluth. ‐ Aldershot : Ashgate, c2000. ‐ viii, 190 p. ‐ ISBN 1–85521–896–8

The politics of British arms sales since 1964 : ‘to secure our rightful share’ / Mark Phythian. ‐ Manchester: Manchester University Press, c2000. ‐ xii, 340 p. ‐ ISBN 0–7190–5907–0

The role of small states in the European Union / ’Baldur Thorhallsson. ‐ Aldershot : Ashgate, c2000. ‐ x, 252 p. ‐ ISBN 0–7546–1423–9.

South American Free Trade Area or Free Trade Area of the Americas?: open regionalism and the future of regional economic integration in South America / Mario Esteban Carranza. ‐ Aldershot: Ashgate, c2000. ‐ xiv, 245 p. ‐ (The political economy of Latin Amrica). ‐ ISBN 1–84014–795–4

Taiwan's security in the post‐Deng Xiaoping era / Martin L. Lasater, Peter Kien‐hong Yu; with contributions from Kuang‐ming Hsu and Robyn Lim. ‐ London : Frank Cass, 2000. ‐ xii, 355 p. ‐ ISBN 0–7146–5083–8

Taiwan Strait dilemmas : China‐Taiwan‐U.S. policies in the new century / edited by Gerrit W. Gong. ‐ Washington : The CSIS Press, c2000. ‐ XVIII, 174 p. ‐ (Significant issues ; v.22, n.1). ‐ ISBN 0–89206–363–7     

Can contingency be ‘internalized’ into the bounds of theory? Critical realism,the philosophy of internal relations and the solution of ‘uneven and combined development’

Can general mechanisms governing social life (necessity) and the possibility of multiple outcomes in socio-historical processes (contingency) be incorporated into a single theoretical framework? In recent years, the critical realist philosophy of science has emerged as an intellectual strand within international relations (IR) that makes theoretical claims about necessary social processes while recognizing the irreducible role of contingency. However, critical realist scholars treat contingency as an ‘externality’, thereby declining to theorize social processes that result in contingent outcomes. Here, it is argued that contingency emerges out of the combination of events and processes as theorized by the law of uneven and combined development. This provides a general conceptualization that treats differentiated historical outcomes, and their contingencies, as inherent to human development. Out of these assumptions a workable approach to historical sociology in IR can be developed—one predicated upon uncovering the form of historical ‘combination’, the contingent fusion of elements, in international systems.     

Views from the periphery: Changing the political agenda for women in the republic of Ireland and in Scotland

The representation of women as Members of Parliament in the Republic of Ireland and in Scotland is low by European standards. It is argued that two separate political events ‐ the election of Mary Robinson as Ireland's first woman president and pressures for constitutional change in Scotland ‐ could provide the opportunity to change the political agenda for women in these two countries. We record the response of the political parties to the demands for greater representation of women through ‘promotional’, ‘active intervention’ and ‘status quo’ strategies.     

Reading Katrina: Race,Space and an Unnatural Disaster1

Beneath the fleeting commotion of natural disaster, the events of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 revealed deep-rooted dynamics of racial and class inequalities. National media frenzy in the wake of the storm on the Gulf Coast reported on the plight of black poor populations, especially in New Orleans, as those worst impacted and also most neglected. The first part of this article elaborates on the contested concepts of “race” and “racism” in a contemporary context, in which popular visual and narrative representations inform contemporary racial discourses and the perpetuation, in turn, of a dominant neoconservative hegemony. A discursive reading, in part two, of emergent political and media narratives around Katrina reveals the processes and tropes operating to (re)construct “race” in dominant American culture. In this deconstructive analysis, the devastated urban space of New Orleans emerges as a physical as well as highly symbolic regime of knowledge in relation to which dehistoricized racial constructions are propagated and naturalized. Finally, hegemony is reconceptualized as an inherently contingent contemporary power. Discursive processes of racial domination reinforced by popular representations of Hurricane Katrina have been effectively subverted by activist movements in New Orleans which mobilize alternative, experiential and spatial narratives; signifying a grassroots politicization to counter the naturalized racial tropes of neoconservative discourse and intervene with more democratic processes in the ongoing reconstruction of the devastated city.     

Economic change and labour market policy: Corporatist and dualist tendencies in britain and Sweden

This article explicates John Goldthorpe's recent analytical distinction between ‘corporatist’ and ‘dualist’ tendencies in Western political economies. By linking these categories to macro‐economic strategies, the role of trade unions and the circumstances under which state policy is initiated, this dichotomy can be of value in the analysis of these polities. The article examines the major characteristics of British and Swedish labour market policy in the areas of wage policy, trade unions and training and education as they relate to the respective macro‐economic policies adopted by British and Swedish governments. These provide examples of the presence and development of corporatist and dualist tendencies in these two countries.