Book reviews

Liverpool Law Review -     

Sweden

European Journal of Political Research -     

Controlling corruption in city-states: A comparative study of Hong Kong and Singapore

This comparative study of anti-corruption strategies in Singapore and Hong Kong has four sections. The first two sections focus on the anti-corruption strategies adopted by both city-states with emphasis on the legislative and institutional measures. The third section discusses the similarities and differences in the anti-corruption strategies and evaluates their effectiveness. The final section identifies the six lessons which other countries can learn from the experiences of Singapore and Hong Kong in curbing corruption.Revised version of paper presented at the Third International Conference on Ethics in the Public Service on Corruption in a Changing World: Comparisons, Theories and Controlling Strategies, in Jerusalem, June 6–11, 1993. I would like to thank Professor Ian Scott, Head of the Department of Political Science, University of Hong Kong, for sending me materials on the ICAC and Hong Kong's anti-corruption strategy, and Professor Michael Johnston for his useful comments on the paper.     

HIV/AIDS,governance and development: the public administration factor

This paper provides an overview of the literature concerned with the impact of HIV on public administration, looking in particular at projections of the impact of HIV/AIDS on public expenditure, the impact of attrition on the health and education sectors and on the civil service as a whole. ‘Success stories’ such as Uganda and Senegal are discussed through their representation in the literature, and ‘political commitment’ is identified as a critical but under‐theorised factor in tackling HIV. Having taken as its starting point the existing work on HIV and governance, the paper then considers the impact of the epidemic in conditions of state vacuum—conflict situations. The paper concludes that governance is both victim of, and part of the solution to, the problems of HIV/AIDS. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The evaluation of economic development conflict is present: Projects where military investing in health care in el salvador

Increasingly, U.S. policymakers have proposed development projects in areas of the world undergoing rapid, disruptive, and often violent challenges to existing political regimes. The U.S. government typically requires that these projects undergo an economic evaluation before they can be implemented. While benefit-cost theory and practice have made substantial gains over the last 20 years, they are more easily and aptly applied to stable economic and political conditions. This paper raises several issues concerning the theory and practice of benefit-analysis in an environment where there is political instability and military conflict. The discussion is illustrated by reference a proposed health care project in El Salvador. I t concludes summarizing the options available to policy analysts who conduct evaluations in such situations.     

Binary Games as Models of Public Goods Provision*

Problems of public goods provision are categorized according to attributes of the good to be provided, and properties of the group of potential beneficiaries. It is argued that not all such problems are Prisoner's Dilemmas. Other games of interest include Chicken, the Volunteer's Dilemma, a variant of the Assurance Came and several others. Which particular model is relevant in a given context depends critically on the specific characteristics of the situation under consideration.