Creating Direct Incentives for Wildlife Conservation in Community-Based Natural Resource Management Programmes in Botswana

Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) programmes in Botswana were intended to create a wildlife conservation incentive by providing rural communities with tourism rights to wildlife—with limited effect. The 2007 CBNRM policy, increasing central control of CBNRM, is likely to further undermine communities' incentive to conserve wildlife. A complementary conservation corps is needed to create direct incentives to conserve wildlife and to reduce human-wildlife conflict. Responses to contingent behaviour questions indicate broad community support for such a programme and the availability of a suitable labour force willing to work at costs that can be financed from existing CBNRM revenues.     

Reviews and commentary

Running From Sin to Sainthood

Philip Agee: On The Run Lyle Stuart, Inc., Secaucus, NJ., 1987, 400 p., $19.95.

Industrial Intelligence, Once Over Lightly

Norman R. Bottom, Jr. and Robert R. J. Gallati: Industrial Espionage: Intelligence Techniques and Countermeasures Butterworth Publishers, Boston, 1984, 322 p. $25.95.

Deep Black and Shades of Gray

William E. Burrows: Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security Random House, New York, 1987, 401 p., $19.95.

The Affair Behind the Affair

Phillip Knightley and Caroline Kennedy: An Affair of State: The Profumo Case and the Framing of Stephen Ward Atheneum, New York, 1987, 268 p., $18.95.

Double the Agent Double the Pleasure

Juan Pujol, with Nigel West: Garbo: The Personal Story of the Most Successful Double Agent in World War II Random House, New York, 1986,205 p., $17.95.

How Sweet Revenge

Peter Wright with Paul Greengrass: Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer Viking, New York, 1987, 345 p., $18.95.

A Fresh Look at Bulgarian Intelligence

Vladimir Rostov: Le Parapluie Bulgare Editions Stock, Paris, 1986, 236 p., 85 Fr. fr.

French Intelligence Services: A View from the Top

Christine Ockrent and Alexandre de Marenches (Comte de Marenches): Dans le secret des princes Stock, Paris, 1986, 342 p., 98 Fr. fr.     

Japanese corporate groupings (keiretsu): A reconnaissance of implications for the future

Four trends presage a possibly somber scenario for the United States at the dawn of the 21st century. American business managers face growing shares of global markets held by foreign business, diminishing U.S. industrial capabilities, and pressure to compete in Japan for Japanese markets. And U.S. policymakers are experiencing operational difficulties, simultaneously influencing and influenced by U.S. industry performance. Thus, the U.S. political business system appears out of alignment with the emerging global competitive environment.

Many explanations and antidotes have been offered, each with its element of truth. The aim is not to deny them, rather it is to explore the significance of corporate grouping structures for Japanese and by implication world business. Long practiced habits of cooperation, mutually sustained competitive advantage, and interlocking ownership appear to be the major ingredients in the glue holding corporate groupings together.

If corporate groupings are as important as some Japanese scholars suggest then a new paradigm may be necessary for understanding their implications for the global political business environment. Thus, significant changes --in philosophies, perspectives, approaches and strategies-- may loom ahead for U.S. managers and policy makers who want to compete successfully in the 21st century.

Arguably, the most competitively potent and successful enterprises in the world are Japanese. Less visible, but of critical importance to this success, are inter-organizational support networks -- Japanese corporate groupings -- which bolster group members with capital, expertise and markets. This article is a reconnaissance for managers, scholars and policy makers detailing future implications of Japanese corporate grouping structures. The first and second sections establish four important trends and summarize popular and scholarly understandings of the corporate grouping phenomenon. If corporate groupings are as important as some Japanese scholars maintain, then perhaps we need a new paradigm which clearly identifies "strategic coupling" as a critical success factor in the new global political business environment. The third and final sections develop a framework for understanding some of the economic, institutional, organizational and strategic implications of Japanese corporate groupings.     

Politics Can Limit Policy Opportunism in Fiscal Institutions: Evidence from Official General Fund Revenue Forecasts in the American States

Governments make policy decisions in the same areas in quite different institutions. Some assign policymaking responsibility to institutions designed to be insulated from myopic partisan and electoral pressures and others do not. In this study, we claim that differences in political context and institutional design constrain the policy choices governments make. Testable propositions based on an analysis of varying electoral incentives and time horizons created by these different contexts are empirically tested using panel data on official general fund revenue forecasts in the American states, 1987 to 2008. The empirical evidence reveals that executive branch agencies and independent commissions produce more conservative forecasts than legislatures with one important exception. Executive branch revenue forecasts in states with gubernatorial term limits are indistinguishable from legislative branch forecasts. Further, we find that legislative branch forecasts are more conservative in the presence of divided partisan legislatures than unified party government. In turn, this implies that entrusting policymaking authority to either the executive branch or an independent commission may only be consequential when the political system itself fails to check legislative excesses or executive myopia.     

Book notes

Jeffrey Mourssaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy: When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals. New York: Doubleday, 1995.

Val Plumwood: Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge, 1993.

Karen J. Warren, ed.: Ecological Feminism. London: Routledge, 1994.

John Brinckerhoff Jackson: A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.

Wendy Harcourt, editor: Feminist Perspectives on Sustainable Development. New Jersey: Zed Books Limited and the Society for International Development, 1994.     

Social welfare and decision-making in the public sector†

Abstract. This paper is an examination of the important issue of measuring social welfare. The first part of the paper shows that the traditional quantitative methods of socio-economic evaluation may give society misleading answers about the impact of public policy and achievement of social objectives. Social indicators as an approach to policy evaluation are discussed in the second section and their relation to the Economic Council of Canada's ‘goal indicators’ is examined. The paper concludes with a brief comment on how social indicators may complement existing traditional socio-economic measures. Sommaire. L'auteur de cette communication examine l'importante question de la mesure du bien-être social. Dans la première partie, il indique que les méthodes quantitative traditionnelles de l'évaluation socio-économique peuvent induire la société en erreur, quant à l'effet de la politique publique et la réalisation de ses objectifs sociaux. Il examine dans la deuxième partie les indicateurs sociaux en tant que moyen d'évaluation des politiques et leurs rapports avec les ‘indicateurs d'objectifs’ du Conseil économique du Canada. Il conclut en indiquant brièement comment les indicateurs sociaux peuvent complèter les mesures socio-économiques traditionnelles.     

The Grand Deception: Churchill and the Dardanelles

The Grand Deception: Churchill and the Dardanelles. By Tom Curran, edited by Andrew Bonnell (Newport, NSW: Big Sky Publishing, 2015), pp.318. Fourteen illustrations and two maps. AU$34.99 (cloth).