Scale,Security, and Political Economy: Debating the Biopolitics of the Global War on Terror1

Critical scholarship in Political Science and International Relations (IR) theory is turning increasingly to Michel Foucault's writings on governmentality and biopolitics to explore the complex discursive interdependencies between transnational governance and the War on Terror. Marxist critics have assailed this effort recently, however, for its premature assumption that the practices of governmental power can simply be “scaled” without the interventions of specific state-imperial powers. Yet both sides in this “debate about biopolitics” seem to rest their arguments on readings of Foucault which ignore his views on the importance of developments in the discourses of political economy for the emergence of modern governmental relations. Inspired by Foucault's recently published lectures on importance of the concept of “economic man” for neoliberal governmentality in particular, this article suggests that Foucault attributed to governmentality an explicit impulse toward economic globalization. Moreover, based on comments made in the same lectures concerning the emergence of contemporary “anarcho-liberalism” and its radically economic ontology of security, the article closes with an exploration of the crucial role played by economic knowledge in the integration of Iraq into a regime of global-governmental security.     

The writing of modern Turkey

This review article outlines the progress that the literature on the causes of ethnic cleansing has made in the last 10–15 years. The article specifically focuses on two lines of research that have expanded our understanding of ethnic cleansing: (a) the studies that focus on the role of wars (this literature can in turn be divided into those works that treat “wars as strategic environments” and those that treat “wars as transformational forces”); (b) the studies that focus on the pre-war domestic or international conditions that hinder or promote ethnic cleansing. The last section of the article suggests several future avenues of research that could further refine the study of ethnic cleansing and its relationship to other types of mass violence.     

Two strategies in Serbian politics in Croatia and Hungary before the first world war*

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David M. Crowe, A History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994, xvii, 317 pp. + map, bibliography, and index.

Paul Hockenos, Free to Hate: The Rise of the Right in Post Communist Eastern Europe. New York: Routledge, 1993/1994, 330 pp. $35.00 cloth; $17.95 paper.

Adrian Hyde‐Price, The International Politics of East Central Europe. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996, xviii, 300 pp. + maps, index.

Gordon Skilling, T. G. Masaryk: Against the Current, 1882–1914. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994, xv, 248 pp.

David Kelly, The Czech Fascist Movement 1922–1942. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1995, 236 pp. + index.

Stanislav J. Kirschbaum, A History of Slovakia: The Struggle for Survival. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995, xvi, 350 pp. + maps, index.

Francine Friedman, The Bosnian Muslims: Denial of a Nation. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, xvii, 275 pp. + bibliography, index.

Levon Chorbajian, Patrick Donabedian and Claude Mutafian, The Caucasian Knot: The History and Geopolitics of Nagorno‐Karabagh. London: Zed Books, 1994, xx, 173 pp., appendices and index.

Manoug J. Somakian, Empires in Conflict: Armenia and the Great Powers 1895–1920. London: I. B. Tauris, 1995, xi, 276 pp. + maps, index.

Vahak N. Dadrian, German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide: A Review of the Historical Evidence of German Complicity. Watertown, MA: Blue Crane Books, 1996, xvi + 271, illustrations, bibliography, index.

Theodore R. Weeks, Nation and State in Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863–1914. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996, xiii, 297 pp. + maps, bibliography, index.

John L. H. Keep, Last of The Empires: A History of the Soviet Union, 1945–1991. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, xiii, 477 pp.

Brian McNair, Glasnost, Perestroika, and the Soviet Media. New York and London: Routledge, 1991, xii, 231 pp., $49.95.

Don C. Rawson, Russian Rightists and the Revolution of 1905. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, xvi, 283 pp. + maps, illustrations, tables, bibliography, index.

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Robert W. Thurston, Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934–1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996, xxi, 295 pp.

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D. A. Amanzholova, Kazakhskii Avtonomizm i Rossiia: Istoriia dvizheniia Alash (Kazak Autonomy and Russia: The History of the Alash Movement). Moscow: Rossiia Molodiia, 1994, 216 pp.

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Stephen Kotkin and David Wolff, Rediscovering Russia in Asia. Siberia and the Russian Far East. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995, xxiii, 356 pp. + maps, photographs, tables, index.     

Trade liberalisation,government expenditure and economic growth in Egypt

This article investigates the combined effects of growth in government expenditure, exports, investment and labour supply on economic growth in Egypt between 1955 and 1996. Using cointegration and error correction models, the article finds a long‐run relationship between the variables, but less evidence of one in the short run. To account for the important policy reforms in 1974 and 1991, dummy variables are added which show the reforms have significantly affected the relationship between government expenditure and growth in a positive direction, but have had a negative effect on exports and growth. This conclusion is further supported by the time‐varying coefficient analysis.     

Taxation,Political Accountability and Foreign Aid: Lessons from Somaliland

For years, studies of state formation in early and medieval Europe have argued that the modern, representative state emerged as the result of negotiations between autocratic governments in need of tax revenues and citizens who were only willing to consent to taxation in exchange for greater government accountability. This article presents evidence that similar dynamics shaped the formation of Somaliland's democratic government. In particular, it shows that government dependency on local tax revenues – which resulted from its ineligibility for foreign assistance – provided those outside the government with the leverage needed to force the development of inclusive, representative and accountable political institutions.     

The Limits of Criminal Disenfranchisement

Abstract

This article begins with the assumption that criminal disenfranchisement is at least sometimes theoretically defensible, as a component of punishment. From this assumption, I argue that it is only legitimate in a constrained set of cases. These constraints include: implementing disenfranchisement only for serious crimes; tying disenfranchisement to both the electoral cycle and to the length of imprisonment imposed for an offence; and assessing a background condition of sufficient justice present within the state that wishes to disenfranchise. Once these constraints are considered, I argue that there are very few instances in which disenfranchisement is defensible. To prove this, I examine both current disenfranchisement practices and the commonly present factors that undermine the constraints outlined above.