National identity and Taiwan's Mainland China policy

Taiwan is a mildly divided society—divided essentially along the lines of national identity. Indeed, there is no doubt that national identity is the dominant factor affecting Taiwan's mainland China policy. Other factors such as business interests and security concerns may enter the picture from time to time, but they often get bogged down in the national identity controversies. As a matter of fact, there is high correlation between people's attitudes toward business and security concerns and their positions on the national identity issue. The key to understanding Taiwan's mainland China policy is thus the distribution of voters on the national identity issue and how it is translated into the political fortunes of various political parties in the electoral game.     

North American first peoples: slipping up into market citizenship?

This article explores the nature of Aboriginal demands for a citizenship regime grounded in a substantive recognition of cultural difference and inherent rights in Mexico and Canada. It provides an overview of the different evolution of Aboriginal citizenship in each country but focuses on two recent development projects, the Puebla Panama Plan in Mexico and the Mackenzie Valley pipeline in Canada. These cases demonstrate the ways in which neo‐liberal globalism is reshaping the substantive recognition of Aboriginal cultural difference and inherent rights. While contemporary neo‐liberal rhetoric recognizes cultural difference, the models of development employed effectively separate territory from the ideas of self‐government, culture and identity. The article concludes that the neo‐liberal turn in the construction of Aboriginal citizenship undercuts potentially much richer conceptions of Indigenous citizenship offered by the First Peoples of North America.     

Decentralisation of service delivery as adopted by the Central District Council in Botswana

The Central District Council (CDC) in Botswana expanded service delivery to five sub‐districts in January 2000 using a model adapted from the South Somerset District Council, UK. As little data were available on the effectiveness of decentralised service delivery, officials and councillors throughout CDC were interviewed regarding their perception of the process. They not only provided recommendations for enhanced implementation but also identified some of the tensions resulting from it. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Palestinian state‐building: police and citizens as test of democracy

This article explores police‐society relations by assessing the impact of current state‐building efforts by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank. The article presents an outline of the emerging civilian policing model and its wider implications for citizens’ rights and the dominant political order. The specific focus of the paper rests on an examination of the potential tensions associated with the perceived need for strong coercive security structures (including the civil police) as part of state‐building efforts and the desire by the population for increased freedom and pluralism. This issue is further complicated by the ambiguous nature of the current experiment in limited autonomy underway in those areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip where Israeli redeployment has taken place.     

The Shi'a of Saudi Arabia: a minority in search of cultural authenticity

This article focuses on the transformation of Saudi Shi'a resistance from one which centred on military confrontation in the 1980s to one which invokes searching for cultural authenticity (al‐asala al‐shi'iyya) in the 1990s. Today the struggle of the Shi'a for equal status among the Sunni majority draws attention to the attempts of Shi'a intellectuals to write their own regional history. Shi'a intellectuals and opposition leaders deconstruct official representations of themselves and provide alternative historical narratives which anchor their community in Saudi history and society, thus dismissing suggestions that they are a non‐indigenous community. This article examines Shi'a historical narratives in an attempt to understand the transformation in their struggle against discrimination in Saudi Arabia.     

Adolescent Depressed Mood in a Multiethnic Sample

This research assessed whether there is an impact of race-ethnicity on depressed mood among adolescents, independent of socioeconomic status, whether gender differences in depressed mood are apparent within all race-ethnicity subgroups, and whether pubertal development influences depressed mood in a similar manner within gender and race-ethnicity subgroups. A three-stage, area probability sampling frame was utilized to select adolescents, ages 12–17 years, for an in-person interview. Depressed mood was assessed by the Children's Depression Inventory. Compared to Whites, African Americans, or Asian Americans, Latinos reported more symptoms of depressed mood, a finding that was independent of socioeconomic status. Advancing puberty was associated with depressed mood only among females, but the timing of pubertal changes, relative to ones peers, was related to depressed mood among both males and females, and among Latinos.     

Voter Disenfranchisement and Policy toward Election Reforms

How did poverty, race, population density, and other demographic characteristics affect disenfranchisement in the 2004 presidential election? I argue that there are two types of disenfranchisement: partisan disenfranchisement, which targets Democrats, and structural disenfranchisement, which targets members of low‐status groups. Drawing demographic data from the United States census in 2000, and voting data from the secretaries of state websites, I use a negative binomial regression to correlate these variables with the incidence of voter disenfranchisement as collected by the Election Incident Reporting System, for the three “swing” states of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, with the “safe” states of California and Texas as controls. The results of this analysis indicate that disenfranchisement increases with population density, Black population, Democratic loyalty, and as the margin of victory decreases. Income and education also correlate with an increase in reported incidents of disenfranchisement, but that likely reflects the failings of self‐report data.     

Risk management for targeting customs controls in developing countries: a risky venture for revenue performance?

Customs authorities in developing countries are often reluctant to forget systematic inspections for fear of risking revenue loss. Such physical inspections however, impede rather than facilitate trade. Control selectivity is therefore a key issue in customs administration reform. This paper shows how a sophisticated risk management method can facilitate trade by automatically and rationally selecting transactions, with the end result of actually enhancing revenue performance. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Livelihood strategies and performance of Ghana's health and education sectors: exploring the connections

The public sector in Africa is riddled with widespread ineffectiveness. Although some countries have implemented various reform programmes with the support of international development agencies, the results so far have been disappointing. One reason for the failure is that the policies have focussed more on achieving macroeconomic stability than making the organisations effective. This article explores a fundamental problem of the policies—the need to focus on the human component of organisational performance. Using education and health organisations in Ghana as examples, the article advances a hypothesis that the livelihood strategies of public sector employees and the performance of their organisations are interconnected. Specifically, it is argued that as public sector employees have become more dependent on multiple sources of income, they have developed multiple social identities, which influence the culture of their organisations. The organisational culture may have encouraged employee effectiveness in some cases, but for most organisations, it has resulted in practices that perpetuate inefficiency and poor performance. To be successful, public sector reform policies must therefore involve deliberate efforts to change organisational cultures. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.