Economic globalization, job insecurity and the populist reaction

A striking change in the political party systems of many established democracies in recent years has been the rise to electoral and political prominence of right-wing populist parties. Moving beyond the usual anti-statism and racism attitudinal explanatory foci, this article posits that popular support for these parties is associated with the job insecurity that populist party leaders have attributed to deepening international economic integration, or economic globalization. The conceptualization of job insecurity is discussed and its expected relationship to the mercantilism of right-wing populist parties clarified. The hypothesis is tested in the specific context of support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party in the 1998 election to the Australian federal House of Representatives. The article concludes with a consideration of the wider implications of its findings.     

THE NEW U. S. IMMIGRANTS: HOW DO THEY AFFECT OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN EXPERIENCE?

The implications of recent immigration for race relations in the United States depend importantly on family cultural orientations among Mexican Americans and how this group is culturally perceived by Anglos. Because Moynihan's 1965 work (in)famously emphasized the need to change black family culture in order to ameliorate black poverty, his work still holds implications for understanding how cultural orientations affect changing color lines. Unfortunately, his partially insightful analyses inadequately foresaw that policies designed to alleviate poverty through the modification of family cultural patterns are likely to fail without parallel changes in structural opportunities. Similar limitations also often emerge from mis-characterizations of Mexican origin family cultural situations, which all too often are incongruously reified as either being unduly familistic (thus falsely implying Mexican origin families foster self-sufficiency) or largely governed by culture of poverty tendencies (thus inaccurately suggesting Mexican origin families depend on welfare). Here we review research suggesting that Mexican origin families are neither substantially familistic nor disproportionately susceptible to moral hazard, thus indicating that future Mexican origin economic advancement is likely to turn on the availability of structural opportunities. In-depth interviews with Anglos further suggest that Mexicans are not culturally viewed with the same degree of prejudice and discrimination as blacks, implying that the integration of Mexicans into American society, contingent on adequate economic opportunity, will probably progress more steadily than often feared, while that of blacks may proceed more slowly than often expected.     

Endings and Beginnings? Republicanism Since 1994

This article traces the political and ideological development of the various strands of Irish Republicanism since 1994, with particular focus on the transition of the Provisional movement from insurgency to government party. In particular, it explores some of the external and internal dynamics shaping this process, such as the origins of Provisionalism as a social movement organization and the changing relationship between the nationalist population and the British state. It concludes by considering both the possible future trajectory of the Provisionals and the potential of dissident republicans to mount a serious political challenge to the status quo in Northern Ireland.     

Drug Prevention and the DARE Programme in Britain

An increasing interest in drug prevention has led to the growth in various programmes, most of which have been imported from the United States. The programmes receiving the most acclaim are the so-called resistance training programmes, of which Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) is the most widely used whether in America or elsewhere. It has also been surrounded by controversy. Resistance training programmes are given to schoolchildren, the aim of which is to teach them skills to resist pressure to take drugs. DARE has recently been introduced in Britain in Nottinghamshire; another similar programme, Chemical Abuse Resolution Lies in Education (Project Charlie), operates in Hackney, London. The aim of this paper is to review the data on the effectiveness of these programmes. The conclusion is that drug resistance programmes have had a mixed response in the US, but that Project Charlie has had reasonable success in London and that DARE in Nottinghamshire needs a long-term evaluation to determine its effectiveness. Such an evaluation could have an impact on drugs prevention policy over the next decade.     

Rhetorical and Critical/Cultural Intelligence Studies

While the role of intelligence is to reduce uncertainty for decision-makers, a role of intelligence scholarship is to highlight uncertainty, that is, open up possibilities for ethical reflection and deliberation that conventional wisdom, institutional inertia, and mainstream research have closed off. Along these lines, this essay argues for the development and use of rhetorical and critical/cultural perspectives within the field of Intelligence Studies. It describes what rhetorical and critical/cultural research entails and explains how associated perspectives benefit the field.     

Organizational Culture and US Intelligence Affairs

Both US intelligence officials and intelligence studies scholars claim that ‘organizational culture’ is a cause of ‘intelligence failure’ and the proper locus of post-9/11 intelligence reform efforts. This essay uses a postmodern perspective to demonstrate how the dominant discourse of ‘organizational culture’ shapes stakeholders' understandings of accountability and what constitutes necessary, correct, or effective intelligence reform. By exploring institutional struggles over the meanings of ‘culture’ and ‘accountability’, this essay calls for reconsideration of the ways US intelligence officials and intelligence studies scholars talk about ‘organizational culture’ vis-à-vis post-9/11 intelligence reform.