Bibliography of Recent Publications on Africa

This bibliography covers publications noticed between Augustand November, 1954. It has been compiled with the co-operationof Miss Ruth Jones (International African Institute).     

Capacity Building as an Instrument of Institutional Reform: Improving the Quality of Higher Education through Academic Audits in the UK, New Zealand, Sweden, and Hong Kong

As countries convert from state to market-centered public policies, there is increasing interest in new forms of public accountability. Capacity building initiatives that reform institutional frameworks are useful policy instruments during this period of transition. What are the impacts and implementation problems characteristic of this approach? This article reviews the experience with "Academic Audit," a capacity building accountability instrument for universities adopted in the UK, Sweden, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. Academic audits altered the incentives for cooperative behavior among faculty members to improve student learning. Identified implementation problems included: training for the new process, the uncertainty of capacity building benefits, and the central role of information.     

Is Irrigationalism a Dominant Ideology in Securing Hydrotopia in Mekong Nation States?

ABSTRACT

For over six decades, grandiose proposals calling for significant expansion of public irrigation schemes have been commonplace throughout the Mekong region, irrespective of the political configuration or developmental stage of each state. From Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea to Thailand’s military and quasi-democratic regimes, irrigation has figured prominently on development agendas. Mainstream narratives around irrigation are embedded in a technocentric, developmental and nationalistic discourse, incorporating socially pre-conditioned beliefs and values that closely reflect the rhetoric of state-linked elites. This article critically examines some of the narratives employed by key actors and groups to justify ongoing practices and processes of irrigation development, focusing on Thailand and Cambodia. It seeks to look beyond conventional econometric and instrumental drivers, to consider other socio-political factors that may account for irrigation’s critical role as a “technology of control,” but which are rarely examined across comparative national contexts. Further, it proposes a dominant ideology of irrigation developmentalism or “irrigationalism” as a useful concept in explaining certain aspects of contemporary social power in these nations. State-led irrigation may be perceived as a utopian intervention that aids in the emergence of an effective monopolistic authority and control by bureaucracies and other powerful groups over development decision-making processes and silencing opposition.     

Political Parties,Australia and the U.S. Alliance: 1976-2016

ABSTRACT

What causes variation in the foreign policies of U.S. allies regarding their desired U.S. military role in their region and their troop commitments to U.S. military interventions? This paper addresses this question through documenting and explaining the sources of variation in Australia’s foreign policies regarding these issues over four decades. Treating the two major political parties in Australia and their respective leaders who self-select into them as endogenous, the paper argues that Australian foreign policy, whilst always supportive of the U.S. alliance, has systematically varied. This variation has correlated with the political party in power while the late Cold War and post-Cold War balances of power remained constant. While the Labor party has only been willing to send combat troops to large U.S. military interventions when the latter have a supporting United Nations Security Council Resolution, the conservative Liberal party has been willing to military intervene without this multilateral support. The Labor party, unlike the Liberal party, has also frequently proposed the formation and consolidation of multilateral regional institutions. These preferences render the U.S. to have been necessary for the Labor Party but sufficient for the Liberal party. Future Sino-U.S. armed conflict would provide a harder test of these hypotheses.     

Employer associations: collective bargaining,services and power in historical perspective: the case of the EEF in the UK

ABSTRACT

This paper makes two major contributions: firstly, following on recent research, it offers a more detailed critical analysis of the historical role and structure of Employers’ Associations (EAs), concentrating on a detailed analysis of the range of member services offered by a local Employers’ Association within the Engineering Employers Federation (the EEF) during the 1970s. This focus is in contrast to the literature which has concentrated on the EAs national or ‘central peak’ level. It secondly addresses the ‘countervailing power’ hypothesis, and in so doing it illustrates the key roles of the disputes procedure. The study, as a typical or representative case, uses a qualitative methodology of documentary research combined with triangulation interviews of former officials: evidence which has so far not been prominent in the literature. This paper is, therefore, a significant addition to our understanding of these institutions.