Brazil and the league council crisis of 1926

In 1926, the League of Nations faced a serious crisis over the proposed entry of Germany. On this decision appeared to depend the success of the Locarno treaties and the future peace of Europe. To everyone's surprise German entry was blocked, not by a vengeful European power, but by Brazil. Although it was assumed that Brazil was being manipulated, in fact it had been following its own agenda at Geneva for years, and its veto was more of an unfortunate coincidence than deliberate malice. This article unravels the crisis, and looks more deeply at the failure of statesmen to make the League a truly international organization.     

Realigning Religion and Power in Central Asia: Islam,Nation-State and (Post)Socialism

This article investigates the changing intersections between religion and politics in Muslim Central Asia. Adopting a long-term historical perspective, it shows how successive regimes meshed and clashed with Islam in their efforts to assert worldly power. Religion was uniformly marginalised in the era of Marxist–Leninist–Maoist socialism, but the cases of Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Xinjiang show that religion has been playing somewhat different roles across the region since 1991. For the secular authorities, Islam may be valued as a source of nation building or it may be feared as a potentially destabilising force. The resulting attempts to co-opt, channel and control religious expression provide insights into the nature of secular power and raise questions concerning the applicability to this region of influential theories in the sociology of religion.     

Successful or not? Evidence,emergence, and development management

This article offers a critique of the dominant ways of conceiving of, managing, and evaluating development. It argues that these management methods constrain the exploration of novelty and difference. By drawing on insights from the complexity sciences, particularly the theory of emergence, the article calls for a broadening of our understanding of how social change comes about. Arguing that the domain of development is not a narrow technical discipline, but an intensely social and political practice of mutual recognition, this article calls for a greater focus on power and processes of relating as they affect local interaction between people.     

Recent legal developments

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LAW OF TRUSTS. By Simon Gardner. [Clarendon Press. Oxford. 1990. First Edition. 250 pp. £25.00 (hardback), £11.95 (paperback).]

EXPLAINING CONSTRUCTIVE TRUSTS. By Gbolahan Elias. [Clarendon Press. Oxford. 1990. First Edition. 177 pp. £25.00 (hardback).]

CHARLESWORTH &; PERCY ON NEGLIGENCE. By R. A. Percy. [Sweet &; Maxwell. Eighth Edition. 1,232 pp. incl. index. £135.00 (hardback).]

CLARITY FOR LAWYERS. By Mark Adler. [The Law Society. 1990. First edition. 128 pp. £10.00 (paperback).]

PLANNING LAW AND PROCEDURE. By A. E. Telling. [Butterworths. Eighth edition. 385 pp. incl. index. £16.95 (paperback).]

PRACTICAL APPROACH TO PLANNING LAW. By V. Moore. [Blackstone Press Ltd. Second edition. 401 pp. incl. index &; appendices. £19.95 (paperback).]

THE EVIDENCE OF CHILDREN. By J. R. Spencer and R. Fun. [Blackstone Press. 1990. 362 pp. £19.50 (paperback).]

CROSS ON EVIDENCE. By C. Tapper. [Butterworths. 1990. Seventh edition. 757 pp. £22.95 (paperback).]

EMPLOYMENT LAW. By C. J. Carr and P. J. Kay. [M. &; E. Handbook. Pitman Publishing. 1990. Fifth edition, xxiv &; 232 pp. (inc. index). £7.99 (paperback).]

REVISION WORKBOOK: LAND LAW. By Gordon Henry.

A PARENTS’ GUIDE TO THE LAW. By Jeannie Mackie and Lesley Taylor [Penguin Books. 1990. 419 pp. (inc. index). £7.99 (paperback).]

A GUIDE TO INHERITANCE CLAIMS. By Nasreen Pearce. [Fourmat Publishing. 1989. 162 pp. £12.95 (paperback).]     

Short notes on some books received

Africa's Management in the 1990s and Beyond: Reconciling Indigenous and Transplanted Institutions. By Mamadou Dia. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1996. Pp.xii + 293. NP. ISBN 0 8213 3431 X

A Land Without Gods: Process Theory, Maldevelopment and the Mexican Nahuas. By Jacques M. Chevalier and Daniel Buckles. London: Zed Books, 1995. Pp.x + 374. £55.00/$69.95 and £19.95/$29.95. ISBN 1 85649 325 3 and 326 1

Local Resource Management in Africa. Edited by J.P.M. van den Breemer, C.A. Drijver and L.B. Venema. Chichester: John Wiley, 1995. Pp.xii + 245. £40. ISBN 0 47196004 7

Third World Cities in Global Perspective: The Political Economy of Uneven Urbanization. By David A. Smith. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. Pp.xiii + 202. £40.95 and £13.50. ISBN 0 8133 8720 5 and 2998 1

Power of Development. Edited by Jonathon Crush. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Pp.xvi + 324. £35 and £ 14.99. ISBN 0 415 11176 5 and 11177 3

Financial Liberalisation and Investment. By K.L. Gupta and R. Lensink. London: Routledge, 1996. Pp.xii + 183. £40. ISBN 0 415 13879 5

Anthropology of Tourism. By Denison Nash. Oxford, New York and Tokyo: Pergamon, 1996. Pp.ix + 205. £41/US$66. ISBN 0 0804 42398 1

Politics of Technology in Latin America. Edited by Maria Ines Bastos and Charles Cooper. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Pp.xii + 258. £47.50. ISBN 0 415 12690

Voices from Mutira: Change in the Lives of Rural Gikuyu Women: 1910–1995. By Jean Davison. Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Reinner Publisher, 1996. Pp.vi + 271. £18.95. ISBN 1 55587 602 1

Women and Politics in the Third World. Edited by Haleh Afshar London: Croom Helm, 1996. Pp.xi + 210. £40 and £12.99. ISBN 0 415 13853 1 and 13861

Re‐Presenting the City: Ethnicity, Capital and Culture in the Twenty‐First Century Metropolis. Edited by Anthony D. King. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996. Pp.ix + 282. £42.50 and £13.99. ISBN 0 333 60191 2 and 60192 0

Women and Industrialization in Asia Edited by Susan Horton, London and New York: Routledge, 1996. £50. ISBN 0415 12907 9

Enterprise and the State in Korea and Taiwan. By Karl J. Fields. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1995. Pp.xiv + 269. NP. ISBN 0 8014 3009 7     

Measuring trade strategy in the presence of non‐tradeables: Theory and some evidence for the Caribbean

This article models trade policies in the presence of non‐tradeables, and investigates trade strategy interventions and outcomes where the price of non‐tradeables endogenously adjusts to trade interventions. Trade regime bias and neutrality issues are examined within a three‐sector, open economy model. The theoretical framework is operationalised using empirical evidence for Trinidad and Barbados. The robustness of partial equilibrium measures of protection for classifying trade strategies is challenged and evidence on alternative general equilibrium or ‘true’ measures of protection is reported. ‘True’ or revealed trade strategies are shown to differ from those apparently intended by policy‐makers.     

Building the Education Revolution: Another Case of Australian Government Failure?

Since the 2007 federal election, the Australian government has implemented a plethora of new programs, many with dual economic and social objectives. A significant number of these initiatives have not only proved unsuccessful, but have also been criticized for their implementation and subsequent administration. This paper examines the Building Education Revolution Program, which commenced in 2009 with the objective of stimulating employment growth and improving school infrastructure, through the analytical prism of the government failure paradigm as well as the literature on “hollowing out” and decentralization. It is argued that the BER Program represents a “case study” of how governments should not pursue large-scale public expenditure programs.