Hidden in the Household: Gender and Class in the Study of Islam in Africa

The household, if understood in a dynamic multi-status, multi-generational, multi-cultural, “gendered” way, can provide a conceptual framework for reinterpreting practices, processes, and patterns of Islamization in Africa. This framework contrasts with the one privileged in literature that focuses on the agency of traders, clerics and chiefs in public institutions. It reminds us that they “lived Islam” next to their mothers, wives, sisters, and slaves in households. This preliminary exploration of women and slaves usually seen as marginal to Islamization is intended to challenge extant perceptions: women and slaves were not only “recipients” of Islam but its agents. In their households, they shaped how Islam was lived by all around them. So instead of looking only at the history of more public Islamic people and places, addressing attention to the household and its changing nature over time may allow us to see a different face of Islam and different process of Islamization.     

Policy implementation in an international setting: a case study of China and the 1995 united nations conference on women

For successful implementation, policy goals should be clear, shared by affected parties, and linked to implementation efforts. Leadership, capable implementers, adequate resources, and an ability to control the external environment are also necessary for successful policy implementation. In the case of China hosting the 1995 Fourth United Nations Conference on Women, these factors were not present. This study describes the problems of implementation as they are illustrated by this case and makes suggestions on how policies can be carried out in an international setting. These suggestions include the recognition of cultural differences, the acceptance of the fact that politics shapes policy decisions and implementation, and the establishment of structures and processes to resolve any conflicts that arise.     

Evaluating public policy: The administrative role

If public administrators are not heavily involved from the beginning in the development of public policy, policy implementation and program evaluation may not be possible. The tasks and people needed for organizing policy change are identified and the roles of the public administrator in these efforts are discussed. This article describes three legislative efforts in which public administrators were heavily involved at the beginning stages of policy development; administrators helped to create programs that were subsequently more amenable to evaluation.     

Exporting democracy: German political foundations in Central‐East Europe

In the liberal political tradition, representative government, civil society and some form of market are widely regarded as indispensable ingredients of democracy. The first two are essentially ‘home grown’, embedded in the enduring, albeit not immutable, political culture of a given society if they are to have substance as well as form. None the less, western democracies have been actively engaged in transplanting organizations to bolster civil society, along with political institutions, constitutions, and legal codes to Central‐East Europe (CEE) since 1989 as part of their democratization assistance.

This article examines if, and how, external assistance can intervene constructively to promote the development of democracy. A brief discussion of western assumptions about post‐communist society in CEE is followed by a review of the roles assigned to culture and institutions in the transition literature which undergird these assumptions. The comparative cultural advantages of the United States and Germany ‐ the two primary western actors in the region ‐ are outlined, coupled with a more detailed examination of German political foundation engagement in CEE.

The German political foundations were selected to anchor the study empirically because in terms of method and strategy, resources and level of engagement, they do everything right according to studies critical of western democratization assistance. In addition, their home political culture is very similar to that of the host societies in CEE. In short, their operational conditions present a best case scenario.

None the less, the study shows that in some of their highest priority, politically motivated projects, the foundations have not made much of an impression on the CEE landscape. New parties and labour unions they supported have failed or are terminally ill. Many new non‐governmental organizations have been set up but their sustainability is open to question. Projecting donor preferences onto CEE is integral to the problem. The greatest risk is to fabricate the appearance of deep‐rooted democracy by focusing on form at the expense of content. The proliferation of parties and nongovernmental organizations per se tells us little about their ability to integrate the public actively and constructively into the new systems.     

On the power of secondary confession evidence

Research on primary confessions has demonstrated that it is a powerful form of evidence. The goal of the current research was to investigate whether secondary confessions – the suspect confesses to another individual who in turn then reports the confession to the police – could be as persuasive. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants read a murder trial containing an eyewitness identification, a secondary confession, and character testimony, and made midtrial assessments of the evidence. Results indicated that the secondary confession was evaluated as the most incriminating. In Experiment 3, participants read summaries of four criminal trials, each of which contained a primary confession, a secondary confession, eyewitness identification, or none of the above. The two confession conditions produced significantly higher conviction rates. Our findings suggest that secondary confessions are another powerful and potentially dangerous form of evidence.     

Detecting deception in suspects: verbal cues as a function of interview strategy

Research on deception has consistently shown that people are poor at detecting deception, partly due to lack of consistent cues to deception. This research focuses on eliciting verbal cues to deception when questioning suspects who deny crime and how such cues differ due to type of questioning. An experiment examined verbal differences between innocent and guilty mock suspects (N=96) as a function of veracity and interview style (Free recall, Probes, or Free recall plus Probes). Guilty (vs innocent) suspects omitted more crime-relevant information and their statements were more likely to contradict the evidence, showing that statement–evidence inconsistency was a cue to deception. This cue to deception was more pronounced when the interview contained probes. Lie-catchers (N=192) obtained an accuracy rate higher than chance (61.5%) for detecting deceptive denials. Implications for further research on verbal cues to deception are discussed.     

Unanticipated capital flows and the Mexican economy: An empirical investigation

This research explores the differential impact of unanticipated and anticipated foreign capital flows on Mexico's economy for the period 1965–85. If unanticipated flows cause appreciation of the real exchange rate and do not affect domestic expenditure, one can assume that the country's foreign exchange constraint is not binding. Based on empirical evidence, this hypothesis can be rejected. The implication is that Mexico's problems probably do not stem from overborrowing. Anticipated capital flows do affect private spending, but a negative coefficient suggests that the private sector has borne the brunt of post‐crisis adjustment. The results show that the Mexican government has dominated the expenditure of foreign loans throughout the period.     

Exchange controls and national capitalism: The Philippines experience

(There is an) unnecessary degree of unreality and Western bias involved in most economic theorizing about the rural tropical world, as well as economists' gullibility in their use of official statistics…¹