The new international financial architecture and Caribbean ofcs: Confronting financial stability discourse

This article examines the role and force of international finance in contemporary capitalism and the norms being established by international financial governance structures. More than the matter of exclusion, the article argues that financial stability discourse girding issues related to the nature of capital market liberalisation, terrorist financing, money laundering and tax evasion attempts to suture over, erase and/or render illegitimate ideational resistance—particularly by offshore financial centres (ofcs) of the global South. The ongoing experience of the English-speaking Caribbean ofcs is discussed as local operatives have long been simultaneously framing as well as resisting Anglo-American insistence on a new configuration of market ethics, norms and sociality in the virtual world of ‘shores’ and high finance. This adds to the emerging body of work seeking to discursively unpack financialisation.     

White Paper Prepared for The Secretary of Defense Task Force on DoD Nuclear Weapons Management: Tradeoffs and Paradoxes: Terrorism,Deterrence and Nuclear Weapons

This article was written at the request of the Secretary of Defense Task Force on DoD Nuclear Weapons Management. While this analysis suggests that certain types of terrorists can be deterred from certain types of attacks, it is less optimistic about the use of nuclear weapons in a terrorist deterrent strategy. A broad approach to deterrence may be effective against certain types of terrorist groups and attacks, making it crucially important to disaggregate the terrorist threat when setting policy. The article goes on to address two types of terrorist groups with a “global reach” that pose a serious threat to the United States: non-state actors driven by doctrines permitting catastrophic attacks and state-sponsored groups capable of carrying out catastrophic attacks. The analysis reveals a number of previously unappreciated tradeoffs and paradoxes associated with the deterrence of terrorists.     

The Rule of Law in Today’s Africa∗

This article is based on the recent decision of the Supreme Court of Nigeria in a case involving illness resulting from the consumption of a bottled drink which contained a dead cockroach. The main issues considered were manufacturers' duty of care; the liability of a retailer in negligence; burden of proof; and causation. Evidence showed that the drink manufactured by the second respondent was sold by the first respondent to the appellant in the same condition in which it left the second respondent. The Court held that in the circumstances of the case, only the second respondent was liable to the appellant.     

Traffick jam: a policy review of the United States’ Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000

The United States enacted the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 to combat organized networks specializing in the illicit transport of human beings across political and geographical boundaries. This response has engendered conflicting definitions and competing agendas attributable to the definition set forth by the TVPA, which divides the crime into ‘sex’ verses ‘labor’ trafficking. The European Union (EU) adopted a different and detailed definition introduced by the United Nations. This paper explores the disparity in anti-trafficking policies of the United States and the EU. By contrasting these efforts, recommendations to strengthen U.S. policy by adapting certain EU practices to an American context are suggested.     

Associations in the Embrace of an Authoritarian State: State Domination of Society?

According to conventional wisdom, associations that are closely linked with and penetrated by an authoritarian state are significant chiefly as symbols of state domination of society. Yet a review of empirical evidence suggests that the nature and significance of incorporated or co-opted associations varies much more widely than the conventional perspective suggests. Not only are close association-state linkages sometimes looked upon favorably by societal participants, but some independent societal associations actually seek to be co-opted by an authoritarian state. Moreover, incorporated associations often have more to do with strategies by state agencies and officials to accomplish parochial goals than with state efforts to control society. This article elucidates a new analytical perspective for understanding the dynamics and functioning of incorporated associations, citing a wide range of empirical cases to show how this perspective facilitates a better understanding of the kinds of state-society engagement that occur within and through incorporated associations. The article concludes with a brief analysis of associations in contemporary China that builds on the preceding discussion, illuminating the importance of local-level interactions in determining the character of incorporated associations. Kenneth W. Foster is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include state-society relations in developing countries, comparative public administration and organizational behavior, and the politics of China and Taiwan. His Ph.D. dissertation focuses on the relationship between bureaucratic processes and the emergence of associations in contemporary China.     

Review Essay / Justifying the rights of pregnancy: The interest view

Bonnie Steinbock, Life Before Birth New York, Oxford University Press, 1992, 256 pp.     

Single-party government,Prime Minister psychology,and the diversionary use of force: theory and evidence from the British case

ABSTRACT

This paper develops expectations about the likelihood of diversionary conflict initiation by parliamentary democracies with single-party majoritarian (SPM) governments. While most of the literature on diversion and governmental arrangement claims that SPMs have little incentive and/or limited capacity to execute diversionary gambits, we contend that the structural and environmental impetuses for diversion in such states are in fact largely indeterminate. We posit that the psychological attributes of prime ministers under SPM – in particular, their level of distrust – is the most important predictor of how they view structural and environmental constraints, and thus of whether they will militarily divert from poor economic conditions. Distrustful prime ministers are predisposed to the use of force, will dwell on the costs of economic problems, and fear that co-partisan MPs (especially in the cabinet) have designs on their office. Thus, despite having a legislative majority, these leaders will choose diversionary conflict over economic policy fixes. We conduct a partial test of this hypothesis in the British case from 1945 to 2007, and our analyses provide robust support.     

Rethinking Leadership for the Public Sector

Leadership and management are best thought of as a matter of competencies. Or are they? The paper challenges the current orthodoxy in Australia on this question, and suggests that leadership and management need to be regarded as reflecting opposing values. The paper also distinguishes between charismatic and collective forms of leadership, and proposes the latter as likely to be of greater value in a public sector context. A challenge for public sector organisations is how to strike and maintain a suitable balance between management for ongoing operations and leadership for deep–reaching change. Strategies for developing collective leadership capability are suggested.     

Federal health care policy and the geographic diffusion of physicians: A macro-scale analysis

The federal government passed legislation in the 1960's and 70's to increase physician supplies and reduce spatial inequalities in access to physicians. A major policy was to aggressively continue increasing the overall supply of physicians on the assumption that market forces would eventually divert physicians from areas of high physician density to those of low density. Using state-level, annual data collected over a 21-year period, this paper investigates the macro-scale spatial diffusion of physicians as an essential element in evaluating this policy. The results provide evidence of the policy impacting locational trends relating to primary care physicians, but not specialists. They also indicate that the Medicaid/Medicare programs may have adversely affected the maldistribution problem.