Book Reviews

Abstract

Stretching a third of the way around the globe, the Asia Pacific is the world's most populous region. Yet, it remains the sole region without a human rights court or commission, and without a human rights treaty. The notable absence there of a human rights mechanism based on such institutions is often explained away by reference to the region's size and heterogeneity, the constituent states’ reluctance to interfere in the affairs of others, and the existence of rivalries. Whilst agreeing that there is no inter-governmental initiative that looks set to change the present state of affairs in the Asia Pacific, this article places the spotlight on another model of creating a regional human rights mechanism, that is, the unique and burgeoning Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions. Specifically, it assesses the prospects for Japan, Taiwan and China – three key regional players whose membership of the Forum is still outstanding – to create domestic human rights bodies that eventually join.     

Statement of General James E. Cartwright,USMC Commander United States Strategic Command Before The Strategic Forces Subcommittee On Space Policy March 16, 2005

ABSTRACT

The following is the prepared testimony of General James E. Cartwright, U.S. Marine Corps, Command of United States Strategic Command, presented to the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on 16 March 2005. The prepared testimony can also be found at http://armed-services.senate.gov/statement/2005/March/Cartwright%2003-16-05.pdf     

Legal Emotions: An Ethnography of Distrust and Fear in the Arab Districts of an Israeli City

Recent sociolegal scholarship has explored the role of emotions in lawmaking and policymaking on security and crime issues. This article extends this approach to the relationship between law enforcement and affect by addressing the role of policing and security agencies in the (re)production of long‐term emotions, which bind a collective and fuel ethnonational division. An ethnography of the distinct emotional climate within the Arab districts of Lod, an Israeli city, shows that this climate is structured by two emotions: rampant distrust toward friends and neighbors, and intense fear of the Israeli authorities. This emotional climate is the product of the subterranean ties of Lod Palestinians with the Israeli security agencies as well as their experiences of the blurred line between state security and crime control enforcement. I embed the initial creation and relative stability of this emotional climate in the broader relationship between the Israeli state and its Palestinian citizens from 1948 to the present. The article concludes with a discussion of how the law enforcement's affective production has consequences for the salience and scope of citizenship and by arguing for a greater focus on the link between law enforcement, collective emotions, and processes of inclusion and exclusion.     

Unequal Laws and the Disempowerment of Women in the Labour Market: Evidence from Firm-Level Data

Institutions are defined as the set of rules that govern human interactions. When these rules are discriminatory, they may disempower segments of a population in the economic spheres of activity. In this study, we explore whether laws that discriminate against women influence their engagement in the economy. We adopt a holistic approach where we explore an overall measure of unequal laws also known as legal gender disparities and relate it to several labour market outcomes for women. Using data for over 59,000 firms across 94 economies, we find that unequal laws not only discourage women’s participation in the private sector workforce, but also their likelihood to become top managers and owners of firms. Suggestive evidence indicates that access to finance, property ownership, business registration, and labour market constraints are pathways by which legal gender disparities disempower women in the private sector.     

Notes and topics

The European Union's difficulty in functioning is to a large degree a result of its decision-making mechanisms, which expose any measure to a veto by a scant minority or even a single state. A flexible model of Europe, one of differentiated integration, attempts to overcome this deadlock. The flexible model is based on the simple and reasonable idea that a member state which dissents is not obliged to associate itself with a certain initiative, but cannot stop the others from carrying it out. Under certain “virtuous” conditions, flexibility would not involve the risk of breaking up the Union. On the contrary, it would offer dynamic instrument for reconciling the requirements of unity and diversity and promoting the process of European integration.     

The Laffer effects of a program of deregulation cum detaxation: the Italian reform of labour contracts in the period 1997–2001

We examine the Laffer effects of the policy of social security tax reduction cum partial deregulation of labour market undertaken in Italy in the period 1997–2001. Laffer effects of tax cut are generally delayed and governments responsible of the reform cannot benefit from the resulting increased revenues when in office. Our empirical findings show that tax cuts combined with policies of liberalization determine almost immediate Laffer effects. In terms of coherent supply-side political programs, the effects of the two measures are not separable. Reflection on our results may broaden the scope of the supply-side policies of deregulation and detaxation.

The political economy of IMF forecasts

We investigate the political economy of IMF forecasts with data for 157 countries (1999–2005). Generally, we find evidence of forecast bias in growth and inflation. Specifically, we find that countries voting with the United States in the UN General Assembly receive lower inflation forecasts as domestic elections approach. Countries with large loans outstanding from the IMF also receive lower inflation forecasts, suggesting that the IMF engages in “defensive forecasting.” Finally, countries with fixed exchange rate regimes receive lower inflation forecasts, suggesting the IMF desires to preserve stability as inflation can have detrimental effects under such an exchange rate regime.