Internationalization and quality assurance: Towards worldwide accreditation?

This paper addresses two very closely related issues, namely the integration of the quality dimension in internationalization policies in higher education and the adaptation of quality assurance policies and practices to an increasingly international environment. Through an analysis of some issues and challenges in internationalization on the one hand and an overview of recent developments in quality assurance on the other, our objective is to question how internationalization and quality assurance can be integrated. Internationalization policies and practices are lacking a quality assurance dimension and quality assurance approaches are too much confined to national contexts. Can quality assurance give answers to the challenges facing internationalization and can the introduction of an international dimension give a solution to issues in the field of quality assurance. This paper then focuses on the concept of multiple accreditation and the development of worldwide mutual accreditation networks among institutions as a possible avenue for future progress. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Institutional vehicles for place-shaping in remote Australia

Some communities in remote Australia represent the most impoverished people in the country, with the problem especially acute amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Effective remedial intervention is often undermined by the absence of democratically elected, local government institutions. Place-shaping as a developmental process enables local people to become agents of change, and thereby self-determine and shape their places for the future. This paper considers the different institutional structures which could underpin place-shaping in remote settlements. Drawing on a range of governance structures, an emphasis on less traditional entities and polity-forming bodies may better serve the interests of remote people.     

Book Reviews

Throughout the twentieth century, the city of Khartoum was the subject of analyses and knowledge produced by diverse actors, such as scholars, urban planners, government agents and institutions, urban dwellers and, more recently, actors from the humanitarian and private sectors. The aim of this article is to offer a critical analysis of Sudan urban studies from the 1970s onwards, and to illustrate their strengths and shortcomings. A revisitation of the work of anthropologist Richard Lobban on Tuti Island, where I recently conducted ethnographic fieldwork, will allow me to comment on Marxist anthropology as the theoretical framework used by Sudanist scholars in the early decades of urban studies, to focus on methodological strategies for data collection, and to analyse the use of concepts such as “urbanisation” and “community”. These reflections will be used to suggest a research agenda for urban studies in Sudan, as well as recent academic approaches to the treatment of the urban question.     

The macro impacts of Korea's Heavy industry drive re‐evaluated

The Korean heavy industry (HCI) drive has been criticised for the misallocation of capital and for negative spillover effects on growth, inflation, the current account and debt. However, such criticism places too much blame on HCI for the late ‐ 1970s' economic deterioration and gives HCI insufficient credit for the subsequent economic rebound. Korean HCI was a catch‐up exercise which attracted cheap foreign capital to accelerate structural change. Nevertheless, the mid‐1970s' decision to pursue HCI as a Big Push was flawed since it did result in project bunching that strained implementation capacity, despite the safeguards which Korea built into its HCI strategy.     

Does Cohabitation Matter? French European Policy-Making in the Context of Divided Government

This article analyses French European policy-making in the context of divided government, arguing that in the area of European policy-making cohabitation increases the number of veto players, as compared with unified government. The increase of veto players, in turn, reduces France's acceptance-sets at the European table and thereby introduces a status quo bias. In order to test this theory, use is made of a comparative case study design. Process-tracing and counterfactual analyses reveal that veto player theory can, indeed, be applied to the interactions of a split-executive government.     

Challenging relations: a labour–NGO coalition to oppose the Canada–US and North American Free Trade Agreements, 1985–1993

In 1987–1988, a national debate erupted in Canada on the desirability of entering into a free trade agreement with the USA and its potential effect on Canadian culture, society, and national sovereignty—as well as its economy. A national coalition of labour unions and civil society groups emerged to oppose such an agreement with the USA, and later its expansion to Mexico as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The coalition was hailed by members as a groundbreaking alliance between labour unions and civil society, as well as a new grassroots challenge to the neo‐liberal economic policies of the government at the time. The experience led to a longer‐term pattern of collaboration between unions and NGOs in Canada, but the coalition also experienced difficulties in reconciling the different approaches and goals of participants, which were resolved with varying degrees of success. This paper discusses the coalition in relation to gendered attitudes and practices; issues of representation and accountability; different approaches to organisation, hierarchy, leadership, and decision making; resource conflicts; class‐based versus new views of challenge and social movements; and views within the Canadian labour movement on coalition work with civil society groups.     

Different Concepts of Ethnicity in a Cross-Atlantic Study of Violence and Drug Use among Deviant Youth

Despite their common multi-ethnic populations, the meaning and application of the term ethnicity varies between the United States, Canada and the Netherlands. This paper attempts the construction of a racial/ethnic measure that enables meaningful cross-national comparisons. As part of the Drugs, Alcohol and Violence International (DAVI) project, the link between different measures of ethnicity and alcohol use, drug use, violence, and delinquency was studied within samples of 14- to 17-year-old juvenile detainees and dropouts in Philadelphia, Toronto and Amsterdam. Results showed a relationship between origin (the most discriminating of ethnicity measures) and alcohol and drug use, but not violence-related behaviour. Differences in substance use and violence were more attributable to differences between countries and samples than between ‘western’ and ‘non-western’ youth.Annemieke Benschop (MSc) is a researcher at the Bonger Institute of Criminology at the University of Amsterdam. Lana D. Harrison (MA, PhD) is Associate Director of the Center for Drug and Alcohol Studies and a Professor at the University of Delaware (Newark, DE). Dirk J. Korf (MA, PhD) is an Associate Professor and Research Director at the Bonger Institute of Criminology at the University of Amsterdam, and an Associate Professor in Criminology at Utrecht University. Patricia Erickson (MA, PhD) is a Senior Scientist with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto (Canada) and a cross-appointed Professor in Sociology and Criminology at the University of Toronto.     

Normative Concepts of Global Distributive Justice and the State of International Relations Theory

The terrorist attacks in September 2001 on the world's most affluent country have highlighted the need to address the increasing disparity between the wealth of different nations. Rather than seeing global distributive justice as a concept non-conducive to their national interest, the affluent states might begin to accept it as an integral part of it, as one of evidently many means to prevent the proliferation of political extremism. This article analyses the role that international relations (IR) theory in its current state can play in this process. Since IR theories purport to explain, and possibly predict, behaviour in settings in which states face problems for which solutions beyond states are required and since global distributive justice is one such problem, it should be reasonable to expect that IR theories provide some answers to these questions. To that end the article critically assesses the major scholarly trends in the field for their ability to accommodate two recently developed normative proposals on global distributive justice put forward by Thomas Pogge and Hillel Steiner. IR theory is found to be inadequate to fulfil the demands usually directed at a theory, in that it fails, firstly, to appreciate the significance of norms in international politics and, secondly, to prescribe and recommend alternatives to policy makers.     

Humanising Imprisonment: A European project?

This paper focuses on the continued significance of human rights in the movement to develop a more comprehensive European framework to improve prison conditions. It identifies the immediate factors that underlie the movement as the successful implementation of the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment; the growing number of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights applying the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms to prison matters; the expansion of the number of member states of the Council of Europe; and the increased political interest at European level in penological matters. Attention is also paid to the wider ideological role that a concern for human rights plays in European criminal justice politics. The paper illustrates the reform movement by focussing on recent recommendations of the Council of Europe on various aspects of imprisonment, including the new European Prison Rules. The possible emergence of an international instrument of treaty status that would deal directly with substantive conditions of imprisonment is noted and its potential impact considered. An argument is made for the systemisation of European prison law and for further reform initiatives.     

Umbruch und Kontinuität des Erwerbseinstiegs in Russland

The paper analyzes the influence of institutional change on the transition from school to work in Russia during socialism and the transition period. Using information from the “Education and Employment Survey for Russia” and comparing the birth cohorts 1949–1986, we analyze the duration of the respondents’ first job episode and the transition out of the first job. The results document shorter first job durations, increasing risks of unemployment and, in the case of women, more rapid transitions out of the labor market. However, the basic patterns of transition from education to job positions continued to exist. Thus, the transition from school to work in Russia did not experience an abrupt change but a gradual adjustment to the new economic order.