Rejoinder

Abstract

Many of Mr. van Walt's criticisms are based solely on fabrications of his own making. For example, I am accused, twice, of referring to myself as a “scholar” and to my article as “scholarly.” I could find no trace of either. I am further accused of considering all Tibetan refugee accounts as “unreliable.” To be sure, I believe that one cannot base the study of historical events solely on refugee accounts, but that does not make all of these stories “unreliable.” After all, Dawa Norbu, a refugee himself, wrote in Red Star Over Tibet, “I never saw or heard of any case of misconduct by a Red soldier.” I would never argue that this statement was unreliable. We are further told that I refer to Tibetans as Chinese when in the second paragraph of my review I wrote, “… Tibetans [are] only one of 56 minority nationalities.” Chinese citizens yes, ethnic Hans no. A final example, although there are many more, is Mr. van Walt's attempt to attribute to me the opinion that

… the only importance to the Western academic world is that the situation in Tibet can teach us how to eliminate a “mystical religion” and that “it gives clues as to how Peking will integrate a capitalist Taiwan into a Communist China in the future”. (emphasis added)     

Is the internet an instrument of global democratization?

This article explores the hypothesis that people in less democratic nations will use the Internet newsgroups devoted to those countries as a relatively ‘safe’ form of political discussion and even protest. Also, it is expected that nationals of those countries living overseas will use these newsgroups to more openly discuss politics in those nations than they could otherwise do so. Before turning to a content analysis of the messages posted in non‐United States Usenet groups, the number of these groups and the levels of political discussion in them are quantified. The article quantifies the international usage of the Usenet as a first attempt to find some patterns in this usage that may be politically motivated. After all, many pundits imagine that the Internet will become the vaunted ‘global village’ and source of ‘grass‐roots democracy’, and not merely in the United States. An examination of the content of about 2500 messages in 41 Usenet groups then follows, with a view to establishing the following: how many messages are explicitly political; how many are in opposition to the current government; how many are pro‐government; whether they primarily serve as alternative sources of news; whether they are attempts to recruit people in the subject country and around the world into some sort of political action; and whether richer nations are more likely to have higher levels of discussion in their newsgroups than poorer ones. The findings conclude that newsgroups devoted to countries with lower levels of democratization have a much higher percentage of anti‐government messages than the newsgroups about nations that are more democratic.     

Choosing Sides in the Horn of Africa: Wikileaks,the Ethiopia Imperative,and American Responses to Post-9/11 Regional Conflicts

The United States has faced at times the policy dilemma of seeing conflict erupt between two countries with which it maintains friendly diplomatic relations. The bureaucratic biases of relevant agencies can play an important role in determining whether to choose sides or remain neutral in these conflicts. In the early 1960s the Africa Bureau adopted a pro-Ethiopia bias that shaped American policy in the Horn of Africa. With the insights provided by the 2010 Wikileaks cables, this analysis explores how the “Ethiopia imperative” affected three inter-related American policy decisions in the Horn of Africa in the early twenty-first century: the decision to support Ethiopia despite its refusal to abide by a legally binding decision that favoured Eritrea following the 1998–2000 Eritrea–Ethiopia border war; to give Ethiopia what amounted to a “blank cheque” to invade Somalia in December 2006 and overthrow the Council of Islamic Courts (CIC); and to confront and isolate Eritrea diplomatically for waging proxy war against Ethiopia in Somalia.     

FORGING ACADEMIC LINKS WITH ASIA

The author reviews the potential for forging academic links with Asia, the different models of engagement available, the balance between academic requirements and financial demands, the governance structures required for building successful, sustainable academic links and finally issues of quality assurance of teaching and research programmes being offered either jointly with partners in Asia or through off-shore campuses. This is the edited text of the Anniversary Lecture which he delivered after the Annual General Meeting on 11 June, 2008.     

Film and lantern lectures

The Dutch East Indies. By Amry Vandenbosch. University of California Press. 1941. (Second Edition.)

Wanderer Between Two Worlds: An Autobiography. By Norman Bent‐wich. 8/1/2>” x 5/3/4>”. Pp. vii+358. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., Ltd. 12s. 6d.

Gertrude Bell. By M. R. Ridley. Blackie. 206 pp. Map. Four illustrations. 3s. 6d.

Modern Iran. By L. P. Elwell‐Sutton. Pp. xii+234. Illustrations, maps and plans. Routledge. 1941. 12s. 6d.

Ruz‐gar i Nau. A quarterly illustrated magazine in Persian. No. 2, Autumn, 1941. New York: Doubleday, Doran and Co., Ltd.; London: Hodder and Stoughton. is. net or 20 cents.

Turkey and Britain, is.

This Impertinence. By Peter Arnott. Jenkins. 12s. 6d

Soviet Asia : Its Records and its Problems. By E. S. Bates. Pp. 191 and a map. Jonathan Cape. 8s. 6d.

Green Prison. Twenty Years in Thailand. By W. Leigh Williams. 8/1/2>” x 6”. Pp. 352. Illustrations. London. Herbert Jenkins. 12s. 6d.

The Earth is the Lord's. A novel by Taylor Caldwell. Pp. 400. Collins. 19.41. 9s. 6d.

Genius of Friendship:T. E. Lawrence. By Henry Williamson. 10/1/4>” x 6/3/4>”. Pp. 78. Faber and Faber. 12s. 6d.     

Searching for the best structure for American local government

Citizens, practitioners and academicians involved in local government have for decades debated the best structure for local public organizations; at the polar ends of this debate are those advocating rational administration and those advocating political responsiveness. The conventional wisdom equates rational administration with reformed structures like the council-manager plan and political responsiveness with structures which have an elected chief executive officer. The debate is unresolvable within this value-driven framework, and these ideological positions do not seem to be helping in the design of governmental structures which “work” in a practical and meaningful way. The paper argues for a “functional” model of local government structure based on how much citizens and administrators can know and oversee with competence. The analysis leads to a significant rethinking of the role of governing bodies, administrators, and the general management position in American local government.     

English feudalism and the origins of capitalism

The specific historical basis for the development of capitalism in England — and not in France — is traced to the unique structure of English manorial lordship. It is the absence from English lordship of seigneurie banale ‐ the specific political form of parcellised sovereignty that figured centrally in the development of Continental feudalism ‐ that accounts for the peculiarly ‘economic’ turn taken in the development of English class relations of surplus extraction. In France, by contrast, the distinctly ‘political’ tenor of subsequent social development can equally specifically be traced to the central role of seigneurie banale in the fundamental class relations of feudalism.