China's Recovery: Why the Writing Was Always on the Wall

China has been a major power for far longer than is typically acknowledged in the West. This paper seeks to redress established discourse of China as a 'rising' power which now enjoys common usage within Western policy-making, academic and popular circles, particularly within the United States; China can more accurately be conceived of as a 'recovering power'. A tendency by successive Washington administrations to view the world in realist terms has forced the label of 'rising' power onto China along with the negative connotations that inevitably follow. We should acknowledge the folly in utilising a theoretical approach largely devoid of any appreciation for the social and human dimensions of international relations as well as the importance of social discourse in the field. Finally, policy-makers in Washington must reconsider their realist stance and, with a fuller appreciation of world history, recognise that American hegemony was always destined to be short-lived.     

Explaining the Rise of Class Politics in Venezuela

The sudden rise to power of leftist former coup leader Hugo Chávez and the subsequent politicisation of social class raises a number of interesting questions about the sources of class politics and political change in Venezuela. Using nationally representative survey data over time, this article considers different explanations for the rise of class politics. It argues that explanations for the politicisation of class can best be understood in terms of 'top-down' approaches that emphasise the role of political agency in reshaping and re-crafting political identities, rather than more 'bottom-up' factors that emphasise the demands that originate within the electorate. The economic crises during the 1990s undermined support for the existing parties, but it did not create a politically salient class-based response. Rather, it created the electoral space that facilitated new actors to enter the political stage and articulate new issue dimensions.     

Africa's New Look

This address was given by the colonial editor of "The Times"to a joint meeting of the Royal African Society and Royal EmpireSociety on April 4, 1957. Mr. Arthur Gaitskell, C.M.G., presided.     

MANAGING CITIZENS' EXPECTATIONS OF PUBLIC SERVICE PERFORMANCE: EVIDENCE FROM OBSERVATION AND EXPERIMENTATION IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Citizens' expectations of public service performance influence their attitudes and behaviour towards services, including satisfaction, choice of service and political voice about them. However, there has been little research on what sets expectations. This paper assesses the effects of prior service performance and information about prior performance on two forms of citizen expectations, positive expectations of what performance will be and normative expectations of what performance should be. In an observational study, prior performance is positively related to expectations of what performance will be. Prior performance is positively related to high normative expectations but is unrelated to low normative expectations. The resilience of normative expectations suggests that poor performance will trigger dissatisfaction and citizen response rather than lowering expectations creating passive acceptance. In a field experiment, performance information effects are found for positive but not normative expectations. Providing information about excellent performance raises positive expectations and providing information about poor performance lowers positive expectations; negativity bias is evident with information about poor performance having a larger effect. Performance information that is credible to citizens can be used to manage citizens' positive expectations but their normative expectations are less amenable to influence by this route.