Evaluating fair trade as a development project: methodological considerations

This article identifies the need for an appropriate methodology for evaluating Fair Trade, given that most evaluations to date have been in-house or commissioned reviews and hence have not followed a consistent approach. Focusing on the development aspects of Fair Trade, the article reviews a range of impact evaluation methods and presents a detailed methodology for analysing Fair Trade. This methodology incorporates standard project evaluation criteria and is based on a wide range of proven methods for collecting and analysing data, principally qualitative but also quantitative. This framework is a modular package from which practitioners may select according to their needs and means, while still retaining an overarching logic. The article illustrates its use by reference to evaluations undertaken in Costa Rica, Ghana, Nicaragua, and Tanzania. The approach allows for a comprehensive understanding of Fair Trade programmes and enables these to be compared with conventional development projects.     

Analysis: Reconceptualising transitional justice: embedded and distanced justice

This article argues that transitional justice ranges from the very personal and local to the global and structural, spanning processes and outcomes, clear demands, compromises and contracts. It explores this diversity using the framework of ‘embedded justice’ and ‘distanced justice’, and the case studies of South Africa, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. The argument draws on Fletcher and Weinstein (2002) to argue that justice needs to be embedded within and to engage the communities, cultures and contexts of conflict. A recent article by Sieff and Vinjamuri (2002) is used to advocate decentralisation. Transitional justice debates have generally overlooked justice, and human rights, as manifest in political, economic and social processes whilst privileging the law, and dismissing the potential of locally generated and embedded justice. The article argues that achieving the correct balance requires a shedding of naïve faith in, and the transformation of, both local and international justice, and the contexts within which they operate, whilst seeking to build on their complementary capacities and legitimacies.     

Socialism after communism?: The socioeconomic and cultural foundations of left politics in post-soviet russia

This article examines socioeconomic foundations of leftist politics in post-Soviet Russia. It is often argued that the reemergence of left politics is the result of contingent factors connected to transitional crises. While this is one source of strength for the left, there are two more important and enduring sources: a “socialist value culture” among a large majority of Russians, and an emerging pseudo-capitalist system that is creating “traditional” class-based and left-leaning attitudes and affiliations among particular social groups. The article examines the extent of this value culture and the emergence of these attitudes and affiliations through an analysis of statistical data and interviews conducted with Russian workers and intelligentsia figures from 1994–1997.