Managing the Environment: Rhetoric, Policy and Reality

This article argues that, despite environmental issues climbing higher on the political agenda and considerable recent policy activity, rhetoric is not matched by reality in our efforts to manage the Australian environment. We integrate the imperatives emerging from the policy and sustainability literatures and from actual policy, with detailed work on wildlife conservation in Victoria's Central Highlands. Our analysis demonstrates that, rather than undertaking the more intensive policy and 'adaptive management' that is needed, governments are often doing less and may actually be 'taking their hands of their wheel'. Some public policy and administration implications of the emerging policy field of sustainability are illustrated.     

Civil society and democracy in the third world: Ambiguities and historical possibilities

The terminology of “civil society” has gained currency in recent discussions of democratic movements around the globe. Although less grandiose in its implications than claims about the “end of history,” this terminology does suggest a certain universality in human experience. We argue that this claim of universality is warranted, but also problematic. We establish the relevance of our argument in reference to the literatures in African and Indian studies. We note first that the common employments of the concept ignore the theoretical and historical specificity of civil society: civil society is used to label any group or movement opposed to the state, regardless of its intent or character, or used so generically that it is indistinguishable from the term “society.” Instead, we argue that civil society is a sphere of social life, involving a stabilization of a system of rights, constituting human beings as individuals, both as citizens in relation to the state and as legal persons in the economy and the sphere of private association. Thus, we link the wide resonance of the concept to its embeddedness in the logic of liberal capitalist society and the capitalist global division of labor. This conception allows us to see that, although the emergence of a sphere of civil society involves at least minimal democranization and is supportive of struggles for further democratization, the status of democracy is also made quite problematic by the tensions endemic to liberal capitalism and the processes of uneven development within international capitalism. Our usage also allows us to distinguish more clearly movements dedicated to the construction of civil society from those that may count actually as counter-civil society movements. David L. Blaney received his M.A. and Ph.D. at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver. He is on leave from Hanover College, Hanover, Indiana as a visiting scholar for the 1993–94 academic year at The Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 20052. His main research interests include international political economy, culture and international relations theory, and democratic theory. Mustapha Kamal Pasha received his M.A. and Ph.D. at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver. Currently, he is an assistant professor in the School of International Service, American University, Washington, D.C. 20016. His main research interests include international political economy, with particular regard to the Third World, and South Asian politics.     

Moral Status, Human Identity, and Early Embryos: A Critique of the President''s Approach

Underlying President Bush's view regarding stemcell research and cloning are two assumptions: we originate at conception, and we have full moral status as soon as we originate. I will challenge both assumptions, argue that at least the second is mistaken, and conclude that the President's approach is unsustainable.     

Hard responses to corruption: Penal standards and the repression of corruption in Britain, France and Portugal

Despite its difficulties and inconsistencies in framing those practices andconducts recently unveiled by the press and judicial investigations whichhave caused considerable public discontent, the penal definition ofcorruption still highlights an interesting conceptual diversity across spaceand time that should not be overlooked. Most official discussions about andreferences to corruption and its volume are still framed within these hardparameters. It is, therefore, important to look at the intricacies ofcorruption as a crime in order to understand the virtues and failures ofnational repressive efforts. While crime statistics are of limited use for itsmeasurement, they can nevertheless help to interpret the way corruptionhas been treated through repressive instruments cross-nationally over aperiod of time.The aim of this paper is to assess the dynamics of the various processes ofsetting and revising penal standards to the conduct of office holders and theresults observable from the application of corruption and related offencesacross countries with different legal traditions.