From Apathy to Action: Promoting Active Citizenship and Global Responsibility amongst Populations in the Global North

Efforts to address social and global problems such as poverty, mass hunger and mass-atrocity crimes are hindered significantly by apathy and low levels of active civil and political engagement amongst populations in developed countries. Social change non-government organisations (NGOs), such as Oxfam Australia, Oxfam Hong Kong and Médecins Sans Frontières, have recently employed innovative, creative, experience-based strategies in their efforts to promote active citizenship and greater global responsibility amongst populations in the Global North. These techniques are based on two key assumptions: that experiences change attitudes and that changes in behaviour will follow changes in attitudes. Yet the effectiveness of these newer techniques and the accuracy of the assumptions on which they are based remain largely untested. This article explores these assumptions and discusses the innovative, creative techniques that they have generated in NGO public education efforts. The article examines the theoretical literature on the problem of apathy and on the use of creative techniques to overcome apathy. It further discusses the practical application of these techniques through an examination of Oxfam Australia's “Refugee Realities” project. This discussion is based on preliminary evaluation research conducted by Oxfam Australia and the author's own experiences as an actor/volunteer on the project. The article suggests that creative, experience-based public education strategies are effective in challenging and confronting public attitudes towards issues of global injustice. Further research is needed, however, to determine whether these encounters result in long-term changes in attitudes and whether they contribute to moving individuals and communities from apathy to action.     

Public sector transparency and sustainable development: A focus on Sub-Saharan Africa

This study empirically addresses the relevance of public transparency in promoting sustainable development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using the generalized method of moments techniques in order to account for concerns of endogeneity and simultaneity, the study utilizes a panel of forty-eight (48) countries in Sub-Saharan African countries for the period 2000-2019. We then establish the subsequent findings. Public transparency maintains overall positive net effects on both the human development index (i.e., social sustainability); adjusted net national income growth (i.e., economic sustainability), and renewal energy consumption (i.e., environmental sustainability). Overall, we establish that public transparency enhances sustainable development. This study recommends that policymakers should ensure that public transparency processes are enhanced in order to achieve the post-2015 agenda.     

Navigating the minefield: legal ethics and healthcare law

Practicing law in the healthcare field is a daunting task due to the highly-regulated nature of the field and the increasing scrutiny of the conduct of industry providers, payors, and vendors. Attorneys must provide difficult opinions regarding matters with civil, criminal, and reimbursement implications and often are asked to represent multiple parties in healthcare-related settings. This article discusses some legal ethics issues for the healthcare practitioner and touches on some of the recent changes to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which were adopted by the American Bar Association's House of Delegates at its mid-February 2002 meeting. The authors conduct their analysis by applying the model rules to a number of hypothetical fact situations typical of those encountered in the day-to-day practice of healthcare law.     

Sexing and stature estimation criteria for Balkan populations

Abstract:  Two standard measurements, maximum femur length and head diameter, were collected by International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) anthropologists. Only Kosovans had both femur dimensions for both sexes. Antemortem stature data were available only for Kosovan and Croatian males. Despite these limitations, the data offer the opportunity to examine ethnic variation and to present sex and stature estimation criteria for these groups. Additional data from Croatians and from American Whites were used for comparison in certain parts of the analysis. Femur variation was considerable. Kosovans can be characterized as short and robust, Bosnians as tall and less robust, and Croatians are tall and gracile, resembling American Whites more than the other groups. Some limited antemortem data on stature was also available, allowing stature estimation equations to be estimated for Croatians and Kosovans. Antemortem stature estimates were obtained from interviews with relatives and are shown to overestimate actual stature. We argue that equations predicting height obtained from relatives is the most realistic in this case because that is the height to which an estimate obtained from bone lengths will be compared. Kosovans were also shown to have experienced slight secular increase in femur length over the past 70 years.     

Pro Rata or Pro Tanto? Why Equity Dictates the Choice Is Not a “Toss Up” in Private Party CERCLA Settlements

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) is extremely complicated. Adding to this complexity is the near impossible task of predicting how settlements will be credited. In most tort cases, courts use the pro tanto approach and give the remaining defendants a dollar-for-dollar credit for settlement amounts received by the plaintiff. However, the trend in CERCLA cases is to forego the pro tanto approach and give the remaining defendants credit for the settling defendants’ proportional, or pro rata, share of the liability. This article examines the two approaches and posits which one is more aligned with the spirit of CERCLA.     

Refracted axis: Kitayama Jun'yū and writing a German Japan

The question of how individuals navigate a given regime is inevitably a delicate one, but one no less important because of its sensitivity. This article examines the case of one Kitayama Jun'yū – author of dozens of works during the 1930s and 1940s that purported to introduce Japan to a German audience – and his changing rhetorical strategies in presenting a Japan that would be acceptable to his readership. It employs an adapted notion of Bhabha's concept of ‘mimicry’ as a means to understand both developments internal to Kitayama's works as well as their changing reception. This framework recognizes that power dynamics played an influential role in cross-cultural exchange between the two countries; at the same time, it enables a depersonalized engagement with cultural politics that does not rest on identifying individual authorial political allegiances. Drawing on both Kitayama's writings and archival materials that reflect official and semi-private responses to his work, this article offers a closer look at how a particular Japanese intellectual negotiated Japan's place within the discursive space of the National Socialist regime.     

Democracy,economic crisis and the problem of governance: The case of Bolivia

This article examines the political context within which the Bolivian government of Víctor Paz Estenssoro (1985–1989) launched, implemented, and sustained a draconian neoliberal economic stabilization program. The article argues that the key to the successful economic program was the political skill and leadership of President Paz, in particular, his ability to negotiate a political pact with the main opposition party. Finally, the article ponders the tensions and contradictions between neoliberal economic policies and the process of consolidating democracy in a context of extreme economic crisis. James M. Malloy is professor of political science and research professor, University Center for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. He is the author of a number of books and articles on Latin America politics, includingAuthoritarians and Democrats: Regime Transition in Latin America (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987). He is presently working on issues of regime transition, economic adjustment, and the role of private sector interest groups in Latin America.     

Dead Man Walking: The Affective Roots of Issue Proximity Between Voters and Parties

Do voters like the party they already agree with or do they agree with the party they already like? Previous studies have suggested a link from preferences to perceptions. However, such a causal link has not been convincingly demonstrated. Most issue voting studies have adopted the basic premise of spatial models of voting—that voters compare parties’ positions with their own ideal points and apply a rule to choose among these parties. Drawing on a natural experiment, this study shows that perceptual agreement between parties and voters is endogenous to voters’ party affect. We use the murder of a Dutch politician amidst the data collection period of the 2002 Dutch election study. The death increases respondents’ feelings for his party without providing information about its issue stances. This upward shift in feelings translates into a significant increase in the perceived level of proximity with the party. The design also allows us to explore the mechanism bringing parties and voters closer. Rather than taking up the party’s stances, voters move a party’s positions closer to their own views when their feelings for that party increase. The findings challenge established assumptions about the theoretical underpinnings of spatial models of voting. They support classic notions of voter projection and lend credence to recent theories of attitudinal change, which are based on coarse thinking and uninformative updating.