The Social Construction of Slovakia as a Donor and its Power Effects

This article shows the power effects of Slovak development cooperation discourses. It focuses on how the Slovak population is constructed as ‘willing to help’, and the effects of this construction on the legitimation of the current regime and on the construction of the Slovak identity as developed. The article further shows the unequal relationship between ‘old’ and ‘new’ donors, how transition experience enables this relationship, and the power effects of the discourse of donor effectiveness in Slovakia.     

Millionaires and the public in Czech politics

This article relies on a unique survey of Czech millionaires and the general public to probe the nature and extent of the differences in opinions between these two groups and their correspondence with public policy. Its main finding is that millionaires are substantially more right-wing than the public on economic issues and somewhat more internationalist on foreign affairs, though a number of areas of agreement can be found as well, particularly assessments of the problems facing the country. Most surprisingly, the opinions of the public appear more likely to correspond with policy than those of millionaires. These findings have important implications for the rise of populism and the quality of democracy in the Czech Republic.     

The biopolitics of China’s “war on terror” and the exclusion of the Uyghurs

This article provides an overview of People’s Republic of China (PRC) counter-terrorism policies targeting Uyghurs since 2001 when the state first asserted that it faced a terrorist threat from this population. In reviewing these policies and their impact, it suggests that the state has gradually isolated and excluded Uyghurs from PRC society. Drawing on the writings of Michael Foucault, it articulates this gradual exclusion of Uyghurs as an expression of biopolitics where the Uyghur people as a whole have come to symbolize an almost biological threat to society that must be quarantined through surveillance, punishment, and detention. Rather than suggesting that these impacts of China’s “war on terror” coincide with the intent of state policy, the article argues that they are inevitable outcomes of labeling a given ethnic population as a terrorist threat in the age of the Global War on Terror.     

Narratives of Norwegian governance: elaborating the strong state tradition

Any account of Norwegian governance must engage with four different state traditions (Olsen 1988): the sovereign rationality–bounded or centralised state, the institutional state, the corporatist–pluralist state and the supermarket state. The first three traditions are historically interconnected, while the supermarket state is a fundamental and recent challenge to them. These traditions have co–existed in different combinations and their significance has changed several times, since the Constitution of 1814. In this article, first, I outline each tradition, tracing its historical roots, dominant actors and the competing definitions and interpretations. Second, I discuss the problems or dilemmas that confronted these traditions and the reforms enacted in response to them. Finally, I assess the consequences of these reforms. I focus on the post–World War II period. I finish by discussing the dynamic interdependence of the different state traditions.     

Public affairs and power

This paper argues that Western democracies will have to renegotiate their constitutional and psychological relationship with their intelligence agencies. This follows from the changing role of the intelligence services after the end of the Cold War and recent events surrounding the beginning of the Gulf War. The paper examines the impact of spies and the public affairs function in a world of failed and failing states and concludes that, however uncomfortable, public affairs should not deny its relationship to power. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Reintegrative Shaming, Procedural Justice, and Recidivism: The Engagement of Offenders' Psychological Mechanisms in the Canberra RISE Drinking-and-Driving Experiment

Advocates of restorative justice (RJ) hypothesize that the diversion of criminal cases to RJ conferences should be more effective in lowering the rate of reoffending than traditional prosecution in court processing because the conferences more effectively engage the psychological mechanisms of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice. This study uses longitudinal data from the drinking-and-driving study in the Australian Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE) to evaluate the long-term impact of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice on support for the law and on later recidivism as assessed through the use of police records and by self-report. Analysis first suggests that there is no direct effect of experimental condition on later recidivism. However, it further suggests that both traditional court-based prosecution and RJ conferences increase support for the law and lower the rate of future reoffending when they engage the social psychological mechanisms of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice and thereby increase the legitimacy of the law. Hence, the results argue for the potential value of procedures such as the RJ conference but indicate that those procedures will only achieve their objectives if they are effectively designed and implemented.     

Human Rights in the Scottish Courts

This article looks at the use made of the human rights legislation in the Scottish courts since the devolution of legislative and executive power to Scotland, based on research undertaken in all the ordinary courts, but excluding tribunals. It concludes that the incorporation of the Convention via the human rights legislation has had significant effects within the Scottish court system and on policy development without amounting to a major upheaval.