The Voice of the Community in Private Law Discourse

Formalist private lawyers, with their view of law as an autonomous sphere and their emphasis upon allocative rules, tend to approach the issue of the harmonisation of private law in Europe with the following question: are the substantive rights and remedies of private individual actors sufficiently similar within each of the Member States to allow for the unification of autonomous private legal systems. Here the issue is essentially one of terminology. While sceptical voices maintain that formal private law is also a more complex matter of interrelated procedures and practices, many formalists conclude that whilst the terms of rights and remedies may differ slightly throughout Europe, there is sufficient substantive convergence to allow for harmonisation. However, lawyers of a sociological persuasion who see private law as being contingent upon society Ð a process reflexively and recursively facilitating economic activities and responding to social change Ð consider harmonisation to be dependent upon the harmonisation of market practices themselves. This paper, one of the most subtle of sociological contributions, tackles this issue with an innovative eye to the increasing blurring of the distinction between public and private concerns. The voice of Europe is the voice of a political collective and theoretically, under the once sacrosanct paradigm of the public/private divide, should not be heard within the 'individualistic' sphere of private law. However, just as national private law judges are generally responding to social concerns and are seeking to integrate collective voices within a once 'atomised' realm, so too are they taking note of the political voice of Europe: attempting to respond to the desire for integration and harmonisation within their jurisprudence.     

Understanding the Local Government Review: A Retrospective Analysis

Reorganizations have provided fertile ground for researchers and practitioners seeking to draw lessons about the nature of public administration. The review leading to the reorganization of British local government in 1991-96 sustains the tradition. In an extraordinary unfolding of events key features of the policy and political system are laid bare. This article provides a background analysis of the review, examines the main turning points in the process, assesses the performance of key players and concludes with a judgement about the sustainability of the settlement that ultimately emerged. A number of lessons are drawn about the nature of the British political system as revealed through the impact of the challenge of a large-scale structural review of local government.     

A. Reviews: general

AN EARLY ISLAMIC FAMILY FROM OMAN: AL‐'AWTABI'S ACCOUNT OF THE MUHALLABIDS. By MARTIN HINDS. (Journal of Semitic Studies Monographs, 17.) Manchester, University of Manchester, 1991. vi, 97pp. £25.00.

THE ORIGINS OF WESTERN ECONOMIC DOMINANCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST: MERCANTILISM AND THE ISLAMIC ECONOMY IN ALEPPO, 1600–1750. By BRUCE MASTERS. (New York University Studies in Near Eastern Civilisation, 12.) New York and London, New York University Press, 1988. xviii, 240 pp.

MOROCCO IN THE REIGN OF MAWLAY SULAYM#afAN. By MOHAMED EL MANSOUR. Cambridgeshire, MENAS Press, 1990. 248 pp. + bibliography.

THE BALKAN CITY 1400–1900. By NIKOLAI TODOROV. Seattle and London, University of Washington Press, 1983. xxvii, 641pp.

SOVIET POLICIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST: FROM WORLD WAR II TO GORBACHEV. By GALIA GOLAN. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990. viii, 319 pp. £27.50

THE SUPERPOWERS AND THE SYRIAN‐ISRAELI CONFLICT. By HELENA COBBAN. (The Washington Papers.) New York, Praeger (with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C.), 1991. xxii, 182 pp. Map, tables, foreword by Robert G. Neumann. $19.95

LITTLE COMMON GROUND: ARAB AGRICULTURE AND JEWISH SETTLEMENT IN PALESTINE, 1920–1948. By CHARLES S. KAMEN. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991. xi, 327pp. $39.95.

CITIZENS APART: A PORTRAIT OF THE PALESTINIANS IN ISRAEL. By AMINA MINNS & NADIA HIJAB. (Society and Culture in the Modern Middle East.) London & New York, I.B. Tauris, 1990. xiii, 210pp. £19.95.

THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE ARABS IN ISRAEL. By DAVID KRETZMER. (Westview Special Studies on the Middle East.) Boulder, San Francisco & Oxford, Westview Press, 1990. xii, 197pp. £13.50.

WAS THE RED FLAG FLYING THERE? MARXIST POLITICS AND THE ARAB‐ISRAELI CONFLICT IN EGYPT AND ISRAEL, 1948–1965. By JOEL BEININ. London, I.B. Tauris, 1990. xix, 317pp. £29.95.

EGYPT AND THE CRISIS OF ISLAM. By ZAHIA RAGHEB DAJANI. New York, Peter Lang, 1990. ix, 255pp.

WAR AND PEACE IN THE GULF: DOMESTIC POLITICS AND REGIONAL RELATIONS INTO THE 1990s. By ANOUSHIRAVAN EHTESHAMI and GERD NONNEMAN (with a contribution by CHARLES TRIPP). Reading, Garnet Publishing, 1991. 287pp. £30.00.

SUDAN: HISTORY, IDENTITY, IDEOLOGY. Edited by HERVÉ BLEUCHOT, CHRISTIAN DELMET and DEREK HOPWOOD. (St Antony's Middle East Monographs, 25.) Reading, Ithaca Press, 1991. xvi, 298 pp. £25.00.

TRIBES, GOVERNMENT AND HISTORY IN YEMEN. By PAUL DRESCH. Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1989. xxix, 440pp. 14 bw. plates.

SOCOTRA: ISLAND OF TRANQUILLITY. By BRIAN DOE. London, Immel Publishing, 1992. 236pp. £50.00

AN OVERVIEW OF MODERN ARABIC LITERATURE. By PIERRE CACHIA. (Islamic Surveys.) Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1990. viii, 241pp. £30.00 (hb).

THE ARABIAN ORAL HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC AND LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS. By SAAD A. SOWAYAN. (Semitica Viva, 6.) Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 1992. xii, 323pp. DM88.‐

ARABCARD. By ADRIAN BROCKETT, OWEN TAYLOR and IAN CLARK. Durham, University of Durham, Centre for Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies, 1991. (Version reviewed: 3.2). Base Package (3 diskettes): £50.

ISLAM IN EUROPEAN THOUGHT. By ALBERT HOURANI. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991.     

Lawrence's strategy and tactics in the ARAB revolt

Jason Abbott is Lecturer in International Politics in the Department of Political, International and Policy Studies, the University of Surrey. Formerly a Teaching Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies and Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, he is the author of several publications on South East Asian politics.

Oliver Franks is a postgraduate student in Asian Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies.     

ERIC NEWBY,THE HINDU KUSH AND THE GANGES

Hugh Carless was Oriental Secretary in the British Embassy in Kabul and then in the Embassy in Tehran in the 1950s. In 1956 he accompanied Eric Newby on their journey to the Hindu Kush. Later he was British Ambassador to Venezuela and a member of the Council of this Society.

This is the edited text of the lecture which he gave to the Society on 21 March 2007.