Mozambique’s post-war success story: Is it time to revisit the narrative?

Over the past years since the signing of the Rome peace Accords, Mozambique has generally been regarded as an exemplary African post war success story. However, events in the last four years illuminate something different. This article will show that the low intensity but violent clashes between FRELIMO government forces and former rebel group RENAMO are not just a mere manifestation of Mozambican’s government inability to consolidate post war gains. These clashes could be framed and located within the broader context of complexities associated with transforming a peace Accord into a genuine and sustainable postwar peace dividend. It seems the success was largely registered in terms of reducing direct violence by creating negative peace. Even though negative peace was good, it was unfortunately not adequate. This article also argues that the success narrative lulled many including Mozambicans into ignoring fissures in the area of structural violence which effectively limited the country’s ability to progress towards positive peace. Despite all this, however, this article will concur with the belief that an outright full scale war is still highly improbable, but not impossible because RENAMO is still capable of spoiling and eroding the registered post war gains.     

Waste in the Sewer: The Collapse of Accountability and Transparency in Public Finance in Jefferson County,Alabama

Following failed auctions for sewer debt in April 2008, major bond rating companies downgraded Jefferson County, Alabama’s bond rating to D (default) triggering massive mandatory payments by the county to its creditors. At the time of writing, the county teeters on the brink of actual default and bankruptcy, unable to pay service on its $3.3 billion sewer debt portfolio. If the county defaults, it will be the largest municipal bankruptcy in United States history, eclipsing Orange County, California’s 1994 default. The intriguingly complex tale of the Jefferson County debt crisis is recounted here by identifying and examining failures of transparency and accountability by local bureaucratic and political actors, private financial institutions, as well as the larger regulatory framework governing public finance. Enhanced regulation of local government and the financial sector plus greater local government capacity to close accountability gaps and thus prevent future crises of similar scale in this or other jurisdictions are recommended.     

Reigniting the fire: a contemporary research agenda for social,political and nonprofit marketing

The paper reports on the core challenges faced by the nonprofit, political and social marketing disciplinary areas and suggests a series of research agendas to develop theory and practice to meet these challenges.

• Social marketing's research agenda involves the continued adaptation of the new developments in commercial marketing, whilst building a base of social marketing theory and best practice benchmarks that can be used to identify, clarify and classify the boundaries of social marketing against social change techniques.
• Nonprofit marketing is pursuing the dual research agenda of developing the theory and practice of social entrepreneurship whilst seeking deeper consumer‐based research to understand motivations for charitable behaviour and gift giving.
• Political Marketing's research agenda looks for an increase in the level of background research, core data and market research to use as a basis for developing more advanced theoretical and practical models. In addition, as political marketing is being transferred internationally between a range of political and electoral systems, there is a need for comparative research into both the relevance and effectiveness of these techniques to isolate nation independent and nation dependent political marketing strategies and campaigns.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Recent Iowa trends in sudden unexpected infant deaths: the importance of public health collaboration with medical examiners' offices

During the winter in 2008, Iowa experienced an increase in sudden unexplained infant deaths (SUIDs). SUIDs and infectious causes of infant deaths generally average 3 monthly (SD = 1.0) in Iowa. However, in January 2008, 9 infant deaths were reported to the Iowa Department of Public Health and the Iowa Office of the State Medical Examiner. Between January and March of 2008, joint investigation of 22 SUIDs was conducted. The investigations required the involvement of multiple medical examiners from various jurisdictions, testing for pathogens at the University Hygienic Laboratory, epidemiologic support from the Iowa Department of Public Health, and consultation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The preliminary hypotheses for the increase in the infant mortality included viral respiratory disease and/or possible novel respiratory viral infections being the cause. Collaboration between public health and the medical examiner offices resulted in timely assessment of the cases. While no single causative agent was responsible for the increase seen in the number of infant deaths, respiratory pathogens played a role in the deaths of 15 of 22 children.