“Our Respective Empires Should Stand Together”: The Royal Dimension in Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1919-1941

In the inter-war period court diplomacy played an important role in Anglo-Japanese relations. Both governments saw the exchange of high-level royal visits and the conferment of decorations, such as the bestowal of the Order of the Garter to Emperor Hirohito in 1929, as a useful means of indicating respect and the desire for continued co-operation. Even as late as 1937 Prince Chichibu's attendance at King George VI's coronation was intended to lead to closer ties. This article demonstrates that the neglected field of court diplomacy and diplomatic protocol can provide a useful parallel commentary on more overtly political events.     

Equilibria and Restoring Forces in Models of Vote Dynamics

e-mail: mdmcd{at}binghamton.edu (corresponding author) e-mail: rbest1{at}gmail.com Theories of voting tell us that party vote dynamics have twocore components, long-run equilibria and more or less rapidreturns to equilibria after short-run deviations. Statisticalmodels used to represent these theories, however, tend to emphasizeone component or the other. The unbalanced emphasis leaves thetheoretical ideas underspecified and produces biased estimatesof both long- and short-run components of vote dynamics. Wespecify the two components in the familiar form of an errorcorrection model and demonstrate its advantages in terms ofits theoretical consistency, simplicity, and precise predictionof whether something is wrong. We illustrate its usefulnessby applying it to two sets of analyses reported in the literatureand showing that it usually changes the conclusions reportedin regard to both the equilibrium levels of party competitionand the strength of restoring forces.     

Overview of penal response towards tax compliance in Nigeria

Tax offences and penalties are created to tackle tax non-compliance. Tax penalties bear civil liabilities while tax offences portends criminal sanctions. This paper employs the deterrence theory of penalty to determine whether tax penalties and enforcement agencies are effective in ensuring tax compliance in Nigeria. It is found that the dwindling economic situation in the country has diminished the deterrent effect of pecuniary tax sanctions. Hence, there is need to review the tax statutes. Corroborative effort between tax authorities would facilitate the probability of detection and punishment of tax offenders, thereby improving tax compliance in Nigeria.     

Trajectories of land acquisition and enclosure: development schemes,virtual land grabs,and green acquisitions in Indonesia's Outer Islands

While the size and speculative nature of land transactions in the wake of energy, food and climate crises have surprised observers, the reasons for partial implementation of many land developments remain largely unexamined. This contribution investigates trajectories of land acquisition and enclosure by analyzing four acquisition processes in Indonesia – those associated with rice, oil palm, Jatropha and carbon sequestration – considering their implications for comparative studies elsewhere. The paper finds that current patterns of land usechange represent a continuation of ongoing land transformation processes. Itdescribes the logic leading to partial realization of large-scale schemes. Highlighting the importance of interactions between formal and vernacular rural land development processes, the essay concludes that many large-scale schemes are better understood as virtual land acquisitions.     

What Does Feminism Want?

This conference confirms the loss of a singular, unified women's movement under the pressures of race, sexuality and class and asks for new directions. The need to rethink collectivity suggests that identification is a priority for feminism rather than desire , which has been the dominant discourse of the psychoanalytical wing of the movement. There are psychoanalytical accounts of the group, but they will have to withstand New Labour's punitive address to the superego by its conservative personalizing of social issues. Thus the relation between psychoanalysis and politics is now a major issue, revealing as it does the problems of coercion in an environment where collective accountability has ceased to exist. Our models of the feminine can be neither Thatcher nor Diana both of whom occlude social accountability. Though the question of sexual difference has not gone away, we need to reformulate the problems, finding new forms of language and of public speech to address a wider constituency, and a radical politics that will reach beyond the academic world. Finally, arising from this, two questions need to be asked. What does feminism want a subject to be? Does feminism want something to serve in the place of some kind of truth?