Reviews

Crisis Response: Humanitarian Band‐Aids in Sudan and Somalia by John Prendergast. London: Pluto Press, 1997. 180pp.

In the Shadow of Marriage: Gender and Justice in an African Community edited by Anne M.O. Griffiths. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1997. ix plus 310pp including notes, references and index.

From Reserve to Region: Apartheid and Social Change in the Keiskammahoek District of (former) Ciskei, 1950–1990 edited by Chris de Wet and Michael Whisson. Institute of Social and Economic Research, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 1997. xiv plus 343pp. including tables, figures, appendices, maps. Paperback.

Japan and Africa: Big Business and Diplomacy by Jun Morikawa. First published (in Southern Africa) by Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg, 1997. xii plus 298 pp. including contents, figures, a list of Japanese terms and abbreviations, photographs, appendices, select bibliographies and an index. Paperback.

Conflict and its Resolution in Contemporary Africa edited by Harry G. West. University Press of America, Lanham, 1997. xv plus 140pp.

A Different Kind of War Story by Carolyn Nordstrom. The University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1997. xviii plus 254pp. including illustrations, notes, bibliography and index. Paperback.     

Examining alliance management capabilities in university-industry collaboration

The Journal of Technology Transfer - Effective university-industry technology transfer requires universities to maintain and strengthen research and technology capabilities on the one hand, but...     

Indonesia’s swift securitization of the Natuna Islands how Jakarta countered China’s claims in the South China Sea

After being a neutral actor for decades in the complex South China Sea (SCS) territorial disputes, Indonesia has seen itself compelled by China’s assertiveness to become firmer about protecting its territorial sovereignty around the Natuna Islands (NI). Jakarta is alarmed by China’s claims that it has undeniable historical fishing rights in the NI territorial waters because they undermine Indonesia’s territorial sovereignty. Our analysis loosely adopts the securitization conceptual framework proposed by the Copenhagen School to reveal that Jakarta swiftly securitized the NI issue between 2014 and 2016. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, this paper unpacks how the Indonesian printed mainstream media discussed the NI in recent years. By the end of 2016, the Indonesian media portrayed China’s claims that it has historical fishing rights in the NI territorial waters as the most urgent national security threat to Indonesia, i.e. the NI issue was securitized. This analysis shows that the Indonesian people accepted Jakarta’s security discourse, i.e. Jakarta had successfully securitized China’s claims over the NI territorial waters. This paper makes a new contribution to the securitization literature by simultaneously analysing the Indonesian news and social media outlets.     

’Not Septimus Now‘: wives of disabled veterans and cultural memory of the First World War in Britain

Much of the writing on gender and the First World War has looked at the ways in which pre-war gender norms were reasserted in British society after the War. The article looks at the experiences of one group of women, the wives of men psychologically disabled by the experience of war, to show how disability could prevent the reassertion of pre-war gender roles. The experiences of these women, as expressed in the disability files created by the Ministry of Pensions, is then compared with the dramatisations of wives of disabled veterans in two post-war novels. This comparison highlights the ways in which such dramatisations turned the figure of the wife of the disabled veteran into a symbol of suffering that may be compared to the similarly symbolic figures of the neurasthenic veteran.     

Reform,Demokratisierung, Stabilität oder Kollaps? Literaturbericht zur Entwicklung des chinesischen Herrschaftssystems

Politische Vierteljahresschrift - Der Literaturbericht gibt eine Übersicht über die internationale Debatte zur aktuellen innenpolitischen Entwicklung Chinas und zur möglichen...     

Grassroots Citizenship at Multiple Scales: Rethinking Immigrant Civic Participation

Given the finding that the marginalized are less politically engaged, we examine those who are arguably the most marginalized—the undocumented—and ask: what underwrites recent cases where the undocumented have been politically engaged in meaningful and substantive ways? Additionally, how does this compare with the existing literature on the practice of citizenship for those with formal rights? And what are the implications for our understanding of political participation in the contemporary USA? We seek to address these questions by examining cases where undocumented immigrants act like citizens even though they lack formal political rights. Our cases deviate from previous literature which argues that more marginalized people participate less and that those without formal rights engage in contentious politics in lieu of “normal,” institutional politics. Our analysis of the DREAMers and of immigrant worker centers helps us rethink this traditional distinction between “normal” and contentious politics. Moving beyond a focus on the specific actions that fall into each category, we instead emphasize how the context for these actions is crucial to understanding the foundations of political participation. In particular, we argue that the same “normal” political actions taken by citizens versus noncitizens reveals different foundations underneath; for those without formal rights, what underwrites participation in “normal” and contentious politics alike is what we call grassroots citizenship. We examine how the political participation of undocumented workers and DREAMers takes place within immigrant organizations and how it relies on three pillars: solidarity, critical analysis, and collective action. While previous literature has emphasized the urban and local nature of active, alternative citizenships, our cases operate at multiple scales, demonstrating how grassroot citizenship can be leveraged and “scaled up” to state and national levels. Additionally, through an analysis of grassroots citizenship, we get some purchase on the question of why politicians sometimes listen to people who cannot vote.     

Civil service management and corruption: What we know and what we don't

Numerous studies have linked a range of economic, social, and institutional variables with corruption in government. Yet, most of this literature overlooks the management of public officials themselves. This is a relevant omission: almost all corrupt exchanges involve public officials. This article reviews studies—36 in total—that do address civil service management and anti‐corruption. It finds that prior works assess a narrow set of civil service management structures. Meritocratic recruitment and, less robustly, pay levels have been associated with lower corruption. By contrast, robust evidence on how corruption relates to other established public personnel management areas—such as distinct pay structures (rather than levels), promotion, transfer, and job stability practices—is largely unavailable. The article thus calls for research assessing the effects of a broader set of civil service management practices to gain a deeper understanding of corruption, and how to curb it.     

International terrorism as a force of homogenization? A constructivist approach to understanding cross-national threat perceptions and responses

Has the emergence of international jihadist terrorism led to common threat perceptions and responses in Europe? The article argues that the homogenization thesis is based around a misguided functionalist notion of a single ‘optimal response’ to an alleged new and potentially catastrophic kind of threat with uniform consequences for all ‘Western’ countries. Drawing on insights from different bodies of literature, the article elaborates a theoretical framework to understand variations in threat perceptions vis-à-vis international terrorism and enrich the socio-linguistic securitization approach of Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde (Security: a new framework for analysis, London: Lynne Reinner, 1998). The article then empirically examines the rise and fall of threat perceptions among selected European publics between 2000 and 2008. Threat perceptions did converge in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, but soon afterward started diverging. The article considers the reasons for this finding as well as the implication for the evolution of counter-terrorist policies in the European Union.