The need for reliable systems: gendered work in Oxfam's Uganda programme

This paper considers the results of a gender review of Oxfam/Great Britain's work in Uganda that sought to determine what gender approaches had been adopted (theoretically and actually) and how they could be improved. After a desk review in the UK, a team conducted a field visit to Uganda where an initial conventional approach that "targeted" women had given way to efforts to conduct an in-depth gender analysis of programs. The team noted that the post of Gender and Development Program Officer in Uganda had been eliminated so that the entire staff would be responsible for addressing gender concerns. The review revealed that the staff exhibited a poor understanding of key concepts, was unwilling to challenge traditional roles and attitudes, deployed ad hoc initiatives, and failed to interact with appropriate local organizations. This situation occurred because of a lack of systematic procedures for planning and evaluation. Also, the fact that there was no extra compensation for staff living in harsh and insecure conditions discouraged female staff from seeking or maintaining positions in the field. Oxfam needs to develop a clear and binding strategy that will spell out the type of social change the Uganda program is seeking, integrate gender concerns, and implement monitoring and evaluation mechanisms. There is also a need to adopt a more political approach to gender concerns by taking advantage of opportunities and confronting attendant risks.     

Perceptions of Public Security in Post-reform Urban China: A Routine Activity Analysis

This paper investigates the personal and environmental determinants of public security perceptions across 32 Chinese cities within the risk/opportunity framework of Cohen and Felson’s (American Sociological Review 44:588–608, 1979) routine activity theory. Structural path analysis reveals that public security perceptions in China are informed by similar personal and environment characteristics to those reported as important in extant research within Western contexts. However, the frequently reported influence of gender on public security perceptions in the West does not appear to extend to post-reform urban China. The results provide support for the routine activity theory in terms of extending our understanding of the factors that influence perceptions of public security to a non-Western context.     

Symbolic power and police legitimacy: The Royal Ulster Constabulary

In the following discussion we approach the issue of police legitimacy inNorthern Ireland through Habermas's theory of legitimacy and the shiftinglocus of conflict from the economic to the cultural sphere. It is argued thatthe cultural sphere is often a major site of conflict in divided societies suchas Northern Ireland. The process of economic globalisation – a crucialfactor in the emergence of identity based movements elsewhere – has hadthe effect of intensifying conflict over identity and its symbolicrepresentation. The debate on the reform of the RUC in the wake of thePatten Commission Report has focused principally on the recommendationthat the symbolism of the police be changed. Although this conflict oversymbols condenses the central problem of the exclusion and misrecognitionof nationalists it also has the effect of distracting attention from the moreuniversal theme of the Report: the relationship between citizens, police andthe state.     

Voters and macroeconomics: Are they forward looking or backward looking?

The political business cycle hypothesis has been criticized on the grounds that it is impossible for governments to generate a vote winning boom because voters judge political candidates by the performance they expect in the future. In this paper, we directly test the hypothesis that voters are forward rather than backward looking. We compare the conventional view that presidential popularity depends on recently observed inflation and unemployment to three alternative models which assume varying forms of forward looking behavior. Non-tested hypothesis tests reject the forward looking models in favor of the one with the recent actual variables.