Swedish Diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific Region

The year 2018 marks the 150th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and Sweden. It is believed that the first contact between Sweden and Japan came during the Edo Period and was mediated by the Netherlands. The Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation between Japan and Sweden, signed in 1868, also came into being thanks to the good offices of the Dutch. This treaty, like many others into which Japan entered at that time, was an “unequal treaty.” As Japan increased its presence in East Asia, this unequal treaty with Sweden was revised in 1911. The world was changing. Sweden and Japan shared a common interest in opposing Russia’s ambitions. Russia in particular was a common threat to the diplomatic posture and security of both Japan and Sweden. These two nations, positioned like bookends on either side of Russia, could be important strategic partners for one another and allies in their relationships with Russia. Considering the current issue of North Korea, Sweden also has the potential to act as a mediator because it maintains diplomatic relations with North Korea. There is reason to believe that the diplomatic relationship between Japan and Sweden will develop further.     

Everyone Knows the Game: Legal Consciousness in the Hawaiian Cockfight

Past legal consciousness research has revealed a great deal about what individuals think and do with regard to law, but less attention has been paid to the social processes that underpin these attitudes, beliefs, and actions. This article focuses particularly on a “second‐order” layer of legal consciousness: people's perceptions about how others understand the law. Ethnographic observations and in‐depth interviews with cockfighters in rural Hawaii reveal how law enforcement practices not only affect cockfighting rituals, but are embedded within them. Police practices and informal rules work in concert to shape fighters' second‐order beliefs. These beliefs have implications for participants' understanding of central concepts, including order, disorder, and illegality. Examining legal consciousness from a second‐order perspective also underscores that notions of legitimacy are constantly created and recreated. Recognizing legitimacy's inherently relational nature helps us understand how experiences of law are synthesized into beliefs—for example, when an unusual police action directed toward a subgroup of fighters compromised the law's legitimacy for them. Foregrounding the relational nature of legal consciousness offers scholars a means to better understand and operationalize the dynamic nature of human relationships to law.     

ADHD symptomatology and its relationship with emotional,social and delinquency problems

Abstract

The main objective of the study was to investigate the relationship between symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and a number of comorbid problems (i.e. poor socialization, anxiety, depression, and antisocial behaviour). Participants were clinical referrals for assessment of ADHD in adulthood and normal controls. ADHD adults were compared on measures of comorbid problems with: (a) individuals with mild psychiatric disorders (including attention problems) who were referred for an assessment of ADHD, but did not meet the criteria; and (b) a healthy control group. In addition, scores obtained on the comorbid measures were correlated with the YAQ-S and YAQ-I self- and parent-reported scales of ADHD Symptomatology, Emotional Problems, and Social Functioning. The ADHD group was more impaired than the normal controls on all the comorbid measures. Measures of socialization, anxiety, and antisocial behaviour differentiated them from normal controls and the clinical controls. There was a moderately high correlation between the YAQ-S and YAQ-I Delinquency Scale and the number of antisocial behaviours reported in the last year. Future research into ADHD, at least in adults, should include the investigation of potential importance of general adjustment problems rather than impulsivity per se and its relationship with offending.     

Cold War Insecurities and the Curious Case of John Strachey

When Socialist intellectual John Strachey was appointed as Secretary of State for War in 1950, his pre-war record as a Marxist writer with close connections to the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) became a matter of public debate. A bitter campaign was run against him in the Beaverbrook press, and some members of the US defense and nuclear establishment pressed for an embargo on sensitive information being passed to the UK War Office. American suspicion of the political reliability of the Labour government was heightened by the appointment, but this does not explain how and why some Americans were so hostile to Strachey. The FBI's dossier on his pre-war activities, circulated amongst his American critics, documented Strachey's supposed secret membership of the CPGB's Central Committee. MI5 and Special Branch files show that this supposition was based on faulty intelligence. The readiness of American anti-Soviet protagonists to lend credence to such suspicions contrasts with the relaxed view of Strachey's past that was taken in Whitehall. Both positions were characteristic of their time, and of this stage in the Anglo-American alliance. This paper explores the ways in which American insecurities and a British climate of tolerance towards fellow travellers shaped the way that episode played out.     

Prospects for future Australian‐United States defence cooperation

Singapore’s governing elite is less bureaucratic and less separated from private interests than commonly thought. The bureaucracy has little independent strength and the political leadership is entwined with leading members of the business community, particularly the financial sector, to the point that the line between public and private is frequently indistinct. Given that democratic or interest-group constraints are minimal, transparency low and the rule of law in doubt, why Singapore’s activist economic policies have not decayed into a search for private rewards is rather puzzling. This article argues that Singapore’s record of sound government rests on informal governing institutions as well as attributes of the formal government sector. The informal institutions encompass nominally public and private actors in a systematized way, structuring the incorporation of private actors to embed the values of performance-based merit and working with, not against, government. The system of government is, however, fragile and may be showing signs of decay.     

Failing to Yield? Ploughs,Conservation Agriculture and the Problem of Agricultural Intensification: An Example from the Zambezi Valley,Zimbabwe

Agricultural intensification, or increasing yield, has been a persistent theme in policy interventions in African smallholder agriculture. This article focuses on two hegemonic policy models of such intensification: (1) the ‘Alvord model’ of plough-based, integrated crop-livestock farming promoted in colonial Zimbabwe; and (2) minimum-tillage mulch-based, Conservation Agriculture, as currently preached by a wide range of international agricultural research and development agencies. An analysis of smallholder farming practices in Zimbabwe's Zambezi Valley, reveals the limited inherent understanding of farmer practices in these models. It shows why many smallholder farmers in southern Africa are predisposed towards extensification rather than intensification, and suggests that widespread Conservation Agriculture adoption is unlikely.