The myth of equilibrium: winner power, fiscal crisis and Russian economic reform

It has become common to describe Russia as a state that has only achieved partial reform due to the influence of powerful economic forces, the ‘winners’ of economic reform, and to assume that the Russian state lacks autonomy. This paper questions how far reform in Russia has been compromised by the power of winners. The failure of economic reform between 1992 and 1998 is explained as a policy response by state officials unable to manage tendencies towards fiscal crisis because of the state's general helplessness in managing the Russian economy, rather than as a surrender of sovereignty to economic interests.     

Mine smartness and the community voice in mine-risk education: lessons from Afghanistan and Angola

Mine-risk education programmes will fall short of their intended impact for as long as they fail to take into account local responses—knowledge, logic and everyday practices—to mine threats. Community information, systematically collected through household and institutional surveys, can help to define and understand endogenous ‘mine smartness’. The same evidence provides insight into the impact of mine-risk education, including its unintended consequences. Using six criteria of mine smartness, ciet carried out evaluations of mine-risk education in Afghanistan (1997) and Angola (1999). The first clear lesson to be drawn from these evaluations is that people in mine-affected areas do generate their own broadly effective means of facing the daily threat of mines. The second lesson is that people take risks for reasons that make sense to them: ‘education’ that landmines are dangerous probably adds little value for them. The third lesson is that mine-risk education that does not take into account these first two lessons can cause harm. The evaluations produced evidence of unintended risk-taking by people exposed to mine-risk education programmes.     

Casework,issues and voting in state legislative elections: a district analysis

Congressional research has addressed questions regarding the electoral consequences of service and policy responsiveness, as well as whether service responsiveness eliminates the need for policy responsiveness. However, less is known about the criteria by which constituents reward their state representatives. Part of the problem with resolving these questions at the state level has been the absence of data, since individual-level data on state legislative districts are hard to find and are unlikely to combine measures of both kinds of responsiveness. This study utilises data gathered in a particular state legislator's district (both data on actual member–constituent contacts and survey data) to discern more explicitly whether ombudsman service and constituent issue proximity to the incumbent affects vote choice. Our findings support the proposition that like their counterparts in Congress, state representatives prosper when paying attention to both service and policy responsiveness; however, we find convincing evidence that casework enables state legislators to gain support from constituents who otherwise would not vote for them.     

Local Government at the Nexus?

The modernisation of local government in the UK, pursued by Labour governments since 1997, has covered many, often conflicting elements. Councils have been encouraged to be both strategic ‘place shapers’ and also involved in the nurturing of democratic engagement. This latter theme of ‘democratic renewal’ has in itself contained paradoxical elements, but has been a consistent focus of attention. This debate around democratic renewal has also taken place in the context of a broader ‘rethinking’ of local governments’ role, in an era of partnerships, governance and new models of service delivery. Normatively and practically new justifications for local government have been sought. One such normative foundation has drawn on a range of theoretical perspectives to reimagine the place of local government in the democratic polity, seeing local authorities and local councilors as facilitators or nurturers of democratic health. In particular, broad theoretical developments in communicative and deliberative democracy, and also, more recently, on work based in ‘second generation’ governance theory, have been drawn upon to place local government at the nexus of state and civil society. This paper will examine the possibilities for such a role, from a normative standpoint, to argue that local government can have only limited success in this role, particularly in the context of New Labour's restructuring of the local state.     

The personal social services

The Future of London's Government: Research and Consultation Project by the Greater London Council, GLC, March 1986, pp.240. (Free ‐ available from Room 708, London Strategic Policy unit,. Middlesex House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SB.)

Welfare Rights Work in Social Services, Geoff Fimister, Macmillan, 1986, pp.166, £15.00 hardback, £5.95 paperback.

The Structure of Local Government in the European Community and The Structure of Local Government in 20 Arab Countries, compiled by Eileen Martin Harloff, WLA, The Hague, 1986, pp.74 and 64 respectively, each $6.00 IULA members; $10,000 others.

Decentralized Economic Development Activities and their Implications for In‐Service Training, Andrew Coulson, Local Government Training Board, 1986, pp.10, £6.00 (£3.00 for local authorities).

Council Non‐Manual Workers and Low Pay, Nasreen Rahman, Low Pay Pamphlet No. 41, Low Pay Unit, June 1986, £3.00.     

Russia's Response to Crisis: The Paradox of Success

Russia's recovery from the deep economic crisis it experienced in 2008–2009 did not deliver clear political dividends for the Russian leadership. This is because of the context in which the crisis occurred and the way that the leadership, particularly President Medvedev, and many of its critics described the crisis. The oil-fuelled boom that preceded the crisis had the effect of deepening it. Economic recovery based on rising energy prices looks like a failure, rather than a success, and highlights the underlying structural problems of the Russian economy. Arguments about the need for modernisation from within government exacerbated this perception. This seems to have weakened the connection between approval for the leadership and economic growth, a staple of pre-crisis politics.     

Negotiating chile's entry to nafta: trade and investment issues

In December 1994, the United States, Canada, and Mexico agreed in principle to extend the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to Chile at the Summit of the Americas. This paper examines Chile's accession to NAFTA with special reference to key issues in the negotiations. It discusses the rationale for extending NAFTA to Chile from the U.S. and Chilean perspectives. The study also examines how NAFTA negotiators may address issues such as trade and investment rules, technical standards, dispute settlement obligations, intellectual property rights, phase-in periods, and labor and environmental standards.     

A Watershed in White House Journalism: Explaining the Post-1968 Rise of Aggressive Presidential News

Presidential journalism is known to have grown substantially more aggressive through the 1970s and beyond, but a definitive explanation for this trend remains elusive. Some suggest that events surrounding Vietnam and Watergate transformed the professional norms of journalism. However, the trend could also be a more superficial and transitory response to other circumstantial factors that converged in the same time period, such as president-level characteristics (the prevalence of Republicans, Washington outsiders, and more vigorous news management efforts), the political environment (the rise of official discord), and the economic environment (a downturn in the business cycle). This study disentangles these various factors and assesses their relative success in explaining trends in journalistic conduct in the postwar era. Data are drawn from a large sample of presidential news conferences from 1953 through 2000, focusing on the aggressiveness of journalists' questions. The results strongly support the normative shift hypothesis, although economic factors have also been consequential. These results suggest a punctuated equilibrium model of journalistic change in relations between the White House press corps and the presidency.