Fuel for thought? South Africa's position on the multilateralisation of the nuclear fuel cycle

The proponents of international nuclear fuel banks maintain that these banks will contribute to nuclear non-proliferation, whereas those opposing it maintain that nuclear weapon states support these banks in order to control and multilateralise the nuclear fuel cycle, thus preventing developing states from developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Global inequalities pertaining to nuclear energy continue to persist despite developing states’ efforts to reform the international nuclear energy regime. Moreover, some developing states maintain that these nuclear fuel banks perpetuate inequality in international relations. This is one of the reasons why some leading developing states, such as Brazil and South Africa, oppose these banks. South Africa, for example, intends to re-establish its nuclear fuel cycle and has declared uranium a strategic resource. Against the aforesaid, this article, following a constructivist approach, analyses the emergence and social construction of nuclear fuel banks as a practical expression of nuclear non-proliferation norms. The discussion also considers the inter-subjective understanding of these banks, as well as South Africa’s opposition to them. The article concludes with an analysis of the implications of these opposing views for global equity, equality, nuclear non-proliferation and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.     

Improving Children’s Interviewing Methods? The Effects of Drawing and Practice on Children’s Memories for an Event

In the present experiment, we were interested in the effects of drawings and practice on children’s memory performance. Younger (6/7-year-olds; n = 37) and older (11/12-year-olds; n = 44) children were presented with two videos that differed in complexity. Half of the children had to practice recalling an experienced event (i.e., last holiday) before remembering the two videos. The other half was not presented with such practice. Then, all children had to tell what they could still recollect about the first video. For the second video, all children were allowed to draw and tell during the recollection of the event. As expected, we found that for the complex video, making a drawing increased the completeness of children’s statements, but also reduced the accuracy of their statements. Although we found that including practice reduced the completeness of statements, it did not negatively impact the accuracy of children’s memory reports. Taken together, our results imply that interviewers should be cautious in using drawings as an interviewing method as it might elevate the production of incorrect information.     

Weak Enforcement,Strong Deterrence: Dialogues with Chinese Lawyers About Tax Evasion and Compliance

This article analyzes why Chinese lawyers report a high level of perceived deterrence in relation to tax evasion even though enforcement is weak. It finds that deterrence here originates from multiple sources, most directly through clients and more distantly through the firm and the state. Lawyers have highly contextual notions of detection probability and a vague understanding of sanction severity unfitting of the high deterrence found here. In the cases studied, deterrence arises out of a general fear lawyers have of state authorities and clients, as well as through personal morals and social norms in their firms. This shows a broader and deeper approach to deterrence, beyond certainty and severity of punishment for the violation studied, one in which the general perceived risk of such violation is central, whatever its source.     

Reviews

Big Men, Small Boys and Politics in Ghana: Power, Ideology and the Burden of History, 1982–1994 by Paul Nugent. Pinter Publishing Limited (London and New York). 1995. xiv plus 306pp. including bibliography and index. £35 or $63 hardback.

Understanding Contemporary Africa (2nd edition) edited by April A. Gordon and Donald L. Gordon. Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder and London. 1996. xiv plus 432pp. including maps, illustrations, notes, bibliographies, appendices and index.

The Politics of Difference: Ethnic Premises in a World of Power edited by Edwin N. Wilmsen and Patrick McAllister. University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London. 1996. ix plus 210pp.

The Multilateral Development Banks. Volume 1. The African Development Bank by E. Philip English and Harris M. Mule. The North‐South Institute. Ottawa. 1996. xvi plus 213pp.

Brothers at War: Dissidence and Rebellion in Southern Africa by Abiodun Alao. British Academic Press, London and New York. 1994. xiii plus 201pp. including notes, bibliography, index. £39.50. Hardback.

Now that We are Free: Coloured Communities in Democratic South Africa edited by Wilmot James, Daria Caliguire and Kerry Cullinan. Lynne Rienner Publishing, Boulder (Colorado) and London. 1996. 142pp.

Imperialism or Solidarity? International Labour and South African Trade Unions by Roger Southall. University of Cape Town Press, Cape Town. 1995. 398pp.

The Aid Relationship in Zambia: A Conflict Scenario by Oliver Saasa and Jerker Carlsson. Institute for African Studies, Lusaka (Zambia) and Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala (Sweden). 1996. 170pp. including figures, tables, notes, bibliography and index. Paperback.     

Distributive Justice and the Allocation of Costs,Losses, and Profits

In an experimental study, participants read a scenario about five business partners who sold plants at a flea market. Each partner obtained a different outcome and still had to pay the costs of the partnership. Participants either had to indicate what they considered to be a fair distribution of the costs (given each individual partner's earnings) or what they considered to be a fair distribution of the net results (the total outcome minus the costs). The total outcome was either higher or lower than the costs (i.e., the enterprise resulted in a net profit or a net loss). The results indicate that fairness judgments are affected by the target of distribution. Negative outcomes are distributed differently than positive outcomes, and within the domain of negative outcomes, marked differences are observed between costs and net losses. The results are explained in terms of the differential salience of the distribution of the net result.     

Freedom and Opportunity

The article discusses recent attempts in rational choice theory to take account of the opportunity aspect of freedom, i.e., the value of alternatives, in measuring freedom. It is argued that each of these approaches (in terms of fixed preferences, of possible future preferences and of the preferences of reasonable persons) fails to solve important conceptual problems. Furthermore, we argue that differences between measures of opportunity freedom reflect different moral standards for the quality of alternatives, not different conceptions of freedom as such. Hence, we propose to separate discussions about the meaning of the concept of freedom from the issue of determining the value of opportunity sets.     

Rethinking critical criminology

This paper takes the form of a report on the panel discussion held at the conclusion of the 1992 meetings of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control in Padua in September 1992. In the light of a perceived crisis of relevance for earlier, 1970s notions of critique in criminology, and in the context of a conference dedicated to the theme of human rights in a uniting Europe, eight panellists from Italy, England, and Canada via Ireland debated their different versions of the project of critical criminology in the last years of the twentieth century. Each of these presentations is summarised here, and an attempt is made to recognise the emergence of a debate between a human rights criminology, eversensitive to the possibilities of repression and control in Fortress Europe, and an alternative perspective, predicated perhaps on some notion of Social Defence and a realist programme of crime prevention and control across free market Europe.