The rise and fall of the national ‘decentralized agencies’ in Colombia

The public sector in Latin America has been characterized by the proliferation of national semi-autonomous bodies known as ‘decentralized agencies’. This article focuses on such agencies in Colombia from the 1960s onwards. Attention will be paid to their institutional proliferation and how this affected local government, particularly in the fields of water and sanitation. Such changes in state organization have not been problem free. The growth of ‘decentralized agencies’ has been associated with problems of inefficiency, administrative confusion and problems of social and political unrest. Indeed, such contradictions have resulted in the issue of decentralization being placed on the political agenda and the development of innovative and administrative reforms that could breathe new life into local government.     

Whose wants in ‘needs-based planning’? Some examples of unwritten agendas from the provincial integrated rural development programmes of Papua New Guinea

The rhetoric of ‘needs’-based planning requires little refining. What must be questioned and recognized are the values of decision makers and the unwritten agendas of those involved in the planning process. Taking the example of some of the integrated rural development programmes (IRDPs) in Papua New Guinea, this paper looks at the way planners and others cast development and information ‘nets’. These nets abrogate indigenous development processes. The ‘nets’ make it easy for development professionals and others involved in planning to follow unwritten agendas and difficult for target groups to articulate their ‘needs’ and to understand what is going on. It is suggested that these problems are not unique to PNG and may well be relevant to ‘needs based planning’ in other situations.     

Book Reviews

Aspects of the job situation in Uzbekistan: part one

Iran: the conspicuous few, the unknowable many

Nancy Lubin. Labour and Nationality in Central Asia: An Uneasy Compromise. London, Macmillan, in association with St Antony's College, Oxford, 1984. xxi + 305 pp, map, tables, appendices, references, glossary, index. Foreword by Murray Feshbach. Cloth, £25.00. ISBN 0 333 36739 1.

Sir Anthony Parsons. The Pride and the Fall: Iran 1974–1979. London: Jonathan Cape, 1984. xi + 160 pp, index. Cloth, £8.95. ISBN 0 224 021966

Shaul Bakhash. The Reign of the Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution. London: Tauris, 1985. x + 282 pp, references, index. Cloth, £13.95. ISBN 1 85943 003 9

Sir Denis Wright. The Persians Amongst the English: Episodes in Anglo‐Persian History. London: Tauris, 1985. xix + 273, appendices, glossary, sources and references. Cloth, £19.50. ISBN 1 85043 002 0

Financial Times. Special survey, Iran. Issued as supplement to issue No. 29,589 of 1 April 1985. 20 pp, 35p.     

Family relationships and social competence during late adolescence

Data from a large sample of late adolescents was used to examine associations between family relationships (reported closeness to parents and siblings) and perceived social competence. Significant positive relationships were found between family bonds and the social competence measures, which included social self-esteem, instrumentality, expressiveness, shyness, and degree of satisfaction/ease in same- and opposite-sex peer relationships. There was no evidence of differential effects of sibling versus parent relationships upon adolescent social competence.This project was supported by NIMH Grant 5 R01 MH34570.Received Ph.D. from Northwestern University.     

Book reviews

Islamic homeland, soviet section

Alexandre Bennigsen and Marie Broxup, The Islamic Threat to the Soviet State. London & Canberra: Croom Helm, 1983, 170 pp. Cloth, £12.95. ISBN 0–7099–0619–6.

Islam Today: the USSR

T. S. Saidbaev, Islam: istoriia i sovremennost. Moscow: Znanie, 1985, 64 pp., 47,290 copies. Series Nauchnyi Ateizm, No. 11, 1985.     

Succession,consolidation, and transition in China’s future

Succession politics in China is usually seen as one political process. This article argues that in fact, political succession in China after Deng Xiaoping should be seen as three analytically and politically distinct processes: succession, consolidation, and transition. Each process requires different political skills and attributes, and success in one process does not guarantee success in another, and may in fact work against success in another. The article argues that Jiang Zemin is likely to be the successor, but that he will have great difficulty consolidating power after Deng’s death. One way he might consolidate power is to reverse the verdict of June 4. The failure of Jiang or anyone else to consolidate power is likely to slow economic transition.     

Some observations on the participant method

This paper assesses the participant method as a research design strategy and offers some observations on the utility of such an approach to research. In particular, the method is examined for its utility in theory testing and for providing a more substantial understanding of roles in political behavior. A typology of roles germane to the participant observation process is presented. The use of participant observation in political science is examined, and finally, some illustrations of the participant method are presented and analyzed.