Regime transformation from below: Decentralization,local governance,and democratic reform in Nigeria

How realistic are democratic-governance strategies that emphasize local governance as a key component? Using Nigeria’s experience in local government and primary health care in the 1980s and 1990s as a case example, the article finds there were substantial shortfalls in local participation and program performance. These were caused by problems in the local political environment and local institutional design, in the national policy environment (particularly in the funding system), and by the stresses of structural adjustment, resource shortfalls, the natural physical environment, and weak leadership. These combined to create poor and inappropriate reward structures and lack of accountability. However, even though the Nigerian case was not successful, most of the specific problems that hurt it are remediable through policy changes at the national level. Several of these were under consideration at the time of the coups of 1992 and 1993.     

Columbia: Neglected dimensions of violence

Editor's note: Rosa Del Olmo has recently written on the same theme in: The Attack on the Supreme Court of Columbia: A Case Study of Guerrilla and Government ViolenceViolence. Aggression and Terrorism 2 (1988): 57–84.     

The state action doctrine and the Local Government Antitrust Act: the restructured public hospital model

This Article analyzes the development and complexities of the antitrust state action doctrine and the Local Government Antitrust Act as these doctrines apply to both "municipalities" and private entities. The restructuring of a public hospital is used as a model to facilitate the antitrust analysis. The restructuring model, which typically involves the leasing of a hospital facility by a public entity to a private nonprofit corporation, offers the unique opportunity to compare the different standards employed under the state action doctrine and the Local Government Antitrust Act. As a practical matter, the Article provides a framework for a public hospital to evaluate the impact of corporate restructuring on its antitrust liability exposure and to develop strategies to minimize antitrust risks.     

Cyprus: Federation Under International Safeguards

Constitutional engineering to overcome ethnoregional cleavagesis being put to a severe test on Cyprus, where Greek and Turkishcommunities haltingly endeavor to salvage a divided state Threeyears after independence in 1960, the attempt to govern throughfunctional federalism ended in civil war. Intervention by Greeceand Turkey in 1974 resulted in a de facto partitioning of therepublic into two ethnically homogeneous areas. Under UnitedNations auspices, communal elites bargain for a consociationalsettlement, balancing national autonomy and individual rights.The solution requires international safeguards guaranteeinga new constitution and providing for "free cities" under a bicommunaladministration. Failure of the international community to actwill lead to a partitionist solution as manifested by a growingacceptance of Turkish Cypriot statehood.     

The right to die: state courts lead where legislatures fear to tread

The right to die may be among the most legally complex and culturally sensitive areas of civil rights to emerge in our time. The thorny issues associated with a terminally ill individual's right to self-determination, and the disposition of individuals who are incompetent to make right to die decisions for themselves, promises to keep all parties involved - health care professionals, medical ethicists, families, lawyers, judges, and state legislators -busy for some time to come. To this point, the state courts have taken the lead in the right to die debate, while the state legislatures have tended to drag their collective feet. This article lays the case law groundwork for right to die decision making, then goes on to assay the legislative responses to the issue that have been rendered in the fifty states.