Islam in Tanzania and Kenya: Ally or Threat in the War on Terror?

This article explores the historical emergence of Islam in East Africa, details the political background of Tanzania and Kenya, the role of Islam in each country, and U.S. foreign policy in the region. The recent U.S. strategy of intelligence-sharing with Kenya, training and military support to both Kenya and Tanzania, and air strikes in Somalia are assessed. In addition to the current military emphasis, the United States should incorporate more “soft” options, such as the promotion of democratic governance in these nascent democracies through political assistance in constitutional, judicial, and law-enforcement reform, as well as encouraging greater inclusion of Muslims in the political system.     

Neither worker nor housewife but citizen: BBC’s Woman’s Hour 1946–1955

This article investigates BBC radio’s Woman’s Hour in the post-war period. It explores Woman’s Hour’s focus and insistence on educating women listeners about their role as citizens, and the tensions this caused particularly between broadcasters and different groups of women. The article documents the programme’s development of public and outward looking items, such as the reporting and covering of current affairs, public debates and national politics, women’s party political conferences, and further introducing women MP’s to the microphone. This gave the programme a public and arguably political dimension. The article thus places Woman’s Hour within the broader historiography of the women’s movement in this period, and illuminates the changing role and expectation of women, particularly the middle-class housewife.     

Parentage of Hydatidiform Moles

We were presented with the STR (short tandem repeat) profiles from two separate paternity trios. Each trio consisted of a mother, an alleged father, and products of conception (POC) that contained a hydatidiform mole but no visible fetus. In both cases , antecedent pregnancies had followed alleged sexual assaults. Mole classification and pathogenesis are described in order to explain the analyses and statistical reasoning used in each case. One mole exhibited several loci with two different paternal alleles, indicating it was a dispermic (heterozygous) mole. Maternal decidua contaminated the POC, preventing the identification of paternal obligate alleles (POAs) at some loci. The other mole exhibited only one paternal allele/locus at all loci and no maternal alleles, indicating it was a diandric and diploid (homozygous) mole. In each case, traditional calculations were used to determine paternity indices (PIs) at loci that exhibited one paternal allele/locus. PIs at mole loci with two different paternal alleles/locus were calculated from formulas first used for child chimeras that are always dispermic. Combined paternity indices in both mole cases strongly supported the paternity of each suspect.     

Your woman friend in the West: women broadcasters and the Cold War

ABSTRACT

Radio played a paradoxical role in the Cold War, embraced both as a key tool for propaganda warfare as well as for promoting peace and understanding. Women, too, played paradoxical roles both in radio and on the world stage. In this paper we will attempt to explore these intersecting paradoxes in a transnational perspective by focusing on The International Association of Women in Radio and Television, founded in 1951. This international network of women provides insights into how women broadcasters viewed radio and themselves in the global ideological struggles of the Cold War. Exploring the organization's international networking practices, its positioning within international women's movements, as well as their conceptions of the relationship between women and radio, we show how in each of these arenas, despite a belief in a universal womanhood and striving for a global organization, the organization can be seen falling into the emerging Western camp of the Cold War.     

The Involvement of Children in Decisions about Shared Residence

This article discusses the relationship between law and socialchange in connection with the child's right to participate indecisions on residence. The empirical data are drawn from asurvey of parents who have arranged shared residence for theirchildren. In line with earlier research on children's participationin court disputes over contact and residence, we found thatthe age of the child is decisive regarding the degree of influencethey have in private agreements. But, surprisingly, it was foundthat the educational level of the parents had a major impacton children's participation in decisions about shared residence.When we controlled for gender it turned out that highly educatedfathers were least likely of all parents to report that thechild had been taken into a co-decision process. This resultmight add a new dimension to our understanding of the relationshipbetween law and social change.     

Reflecting Upon Etic and Emic Perspectives on Distributive Justice

The study of distributive justice may be examined using two research perspectives. The first, etic perspective seeks to unveil the common characteristics that characterize the spectrum of distributive justice phenomena across different cultures and circumstances. This perspective focuses on the universal aspects of justice behavior, namely, general laws and causal explanations. The second, emic perspective focuses on the ways in which justice behavior is expressed in specific socio-cultural contexts. This paper proposes a three-part reflection on these two perspectives on distributive justice. First, we review the ways in which the emic, culturally specific perspective has hitherto been incorporated into research on distributive justice; second, we examine the ways which the etic and emic perspectives are employed in two empirical studies on justice perception in Israel; and, finally, we suggest possible ways in which an extended emic perspective can be further incorporated in the study of distributive justice. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Social Justice Conference, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany, March 2005.     

The effects of membership decline on party organisations in Europe

On election day, voters’ commitment is crucial for political parties, but between elections members are an important resource for party organisations. However, membership figures have been dropping across parties and countries in the last decades. How does this trend affect parties’ organisation? Following classics in party politics research as well as contemporary organisational theory literature, this study tests some of the most longstanding hypotheses in political science regarding the effects of membership size change. According to organisational learning theory, membership decline should induce an expansion of the party organisation. However, threat‐rigidity theory and the work of Robert Michels suggest that parties are downsizing their organisation to match the decline in membership size. To test the hypotheses, 47 parties in six European countries (Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom) are followed annually between 1960 and 2010 on key organisational characteristics such as finances, professionalism and complexity. A total of 1,922 party‐year observations are analysed. The results of multilevel modelling show that party membership decline triggers mixed effects. Declining membership size induces the employment of more staff, higher spending and a higher reliance on state subsidies. At the same time, it also triggers lower staff salaries and a reduction in the party's local presence. The findings indicate that today's parties are targeting an organisational structure that is custom‐made for the electoral moment every four years. Faced with lasting membership decline, the party organisation retracts its organisational resources and focuses more on election day. Members matter to parties, but votes matter more.     

The Concept of Minority in International Law: A Critical Study of the Vital Element

Netherlands International Law Review -