Whither the Developmental State? Explaining Singapore's continued Developmentalism

This paper examines why the Singapore developmental state, unlike the other East Asian developmental states, has shown no signs of devolving but instead appears to be strengthening its position within society by embarking upon several ‘post-industrial’ economic programmes. By utilising a class relations perspective, the paper argues that the resilience of the Singapore developmental state results from the continued weakness of the domestic capitalist class as well as from the state's collaboration with transnational capital and government-linked corporations. At the same time the working class has continuously been ‘incorporated’ by the state. To illustrate these processes, the paper examines Singapore's Biomedical Sciences Initiative, and the Work Restructuring Scheme, which have reinforced the supremacy of the Singapore developmental state, particularly in the economic sphere. The paper concludes that developmental states need not necessarily devolve, if they can continue to provide economic growth as well as to carefully ‘manage’ class relations in society.     

An input-output approach to the measurement of the information economy

This study presents a set of methods based on input-output analysis to measure the size and structure of a country's information economy. Published current national data bases do not identify even the broad contours of a country's information economy. The methodology which is stylised algebraically using input-output modelling unravels the latent information economy. Both the primary or marketed information activities and the non-marketed or secondary information activities are measured. The interdependencies of the primary and secondary information sectors with the non-information sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing are examined. Linkages and multipliers are also calculated using consistent approaches. Finally, the methodology is empirically validated using Australia as a case-study and the results are discussed.     

Judging Police Misconduct: "Street-Level" versus Professional Policing

In their interactions with citizens, police officers are prohibited from (1) using unnecessary Force, (2) Abusing their authority, (3) speaking Discourteously, or (4) using Offensive language, all captured by the acronym FADO. However, acts of police misconduct are complex social phenomena that involve both following legal guidelines and responding to extralegal or mitigating circumstances. Using a factorial survey of police‐civilian interactions that introduce various dimensions of FADO and surrounding circumstances, respondents are asked to rate from zero to ten the seriousness of police misconduct in an encounter. Findings show that respondents' judgments of the seriousness of misconduct consider both legal and extralegal dimensions. On the legal side of the ledger, officers' unnecessary use of force and use of offensive language significantly increase judgments of serious misconduct; on the extralegal side of the ledger, civilians' confrontational demeanor significantly reduces judgments of serious misconduct. The findings suggest that citizens expect officers to behave professionally, or by the book, but with a recognition that “street‐level” discretion has a place in an officer's toolkit. Citizens' expectations that street‐level discretion has its place is also demonstrated by findings for the dimension abuse of authority: Abuse or threatening behavior by officers is not a significant predictor of serious police misconduct. In addition, characteristics of the respondents explain propensities to observe different degrees of police misconduct. Controlling for the social status, political orientation, and prior experience of respondents with the police, we find that (1) blacks rate police misconduct significantly higher than their white counterparts, and (2) liberals rate police misconduct significantly higher than their conservative counterparts. Differences in judgments by blacks and whites and by liberals and conservatives concerning judgments of police misconduct have important implications for the legitimacy of police authority.     

Watchdogs in Our Midst: How Presidents Monitor Coalitions in Brazil's Multiparty Presidential Regime

When delegating governing tasks to a coalition partner, the president would like to give a minister ample administrative powers to be able to effectively accomplish the political mission. Due to information asymmetries, the president runs the risk that this discretion might be used to pursue policy outcomes that may harm the president's preferences. This trade‐off between delegation and control is key to understanding governance strategies the president chooses to minimize agency risks and coordinate public policies. With Brazil as a case study, this article demonstrates that presidents have strategically made frequent use of junior ministers as watchdogs of coalition partners, especially when coalition allies are ideologically distant from the president's preferences. Yet neither the portfolio salience nor the president's decision to share powers with coalition partners proportionally seems to interfere in such strategic decisions.     

Hannah Arendt's Moral Ontology: Comments on David Luban's Arendt on the Crime of Crimes

David Luban identifies a tension between Arendt's conception of ethnic identification in a context of persecution and her conception of humanity. That tension pertains to the reality—or realities—that Arendt addresses: the moral reality of her Bildung that appears throughout her work, and is centered on the “dignity of man,” on the one hand, and the divisive, “political” reality that she was forced to face when “attacked as a Jew,” on the other. By implicitly accepting that in a context of persecution one cannot escape the framing relevance of the “political” —an idea that is also present in her imaginary condemnation speech of Eichmann—Arendt betrays a fundamental theme of her work: “forgiveness” and the inherent possibility of a “new beginning.”     

古巴共产党与中国共产党:政治互信和互相支持的典范

承认中华人民共和国是新生的古巴革命政权自行使独立主权时起，所采取的最早的行动之一。1960年9月2日，在具有历史意义的哈瓦那革命广场，一百多万古巴人欢呼支持菲德尔·卡斯特罗同志关于古巴与中国这个兄弟国家建立外交关系的提议。同月28日，两国共同发表联合公报，宣布建立外交关系。此举使古巴成为第一个与中华人民共和国建立外交关系的拉美国家。     

Data for Y-chromosome haplotypes defined by 17 STRs (AmpFLSTR Yfiler) in two Tunisian Berber communities

The 17 Y-chromosomal short tandem repeats (STRs) included in the AmpFLSTR Yfiler PCR Amplification Kit (AB Applied Biosystems) (DYS19, DYS389I, DYS389II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393, DYS385, DYS437, DYS438, DYS439, DYS448, DYS456, DYS458, DYS635 and GATA H4) were typed in two Berber communities, a small village (Takrouna) and a town (Sejenane), from North Tunisia. As expected, diversity was higher in the town, even when compared with a pool of three small Berber communities, probably due to the combination of different founder effects and genetic drifts operating in the small villages.     

Inclusive Development and the Asymmetric State: Big Projects and Local Communities in the Brazilian Amazon

In 2003, the Workers’ Party took federal office in Brazil on an agenda of social inclusion and popular participation. This paper explores attempts to implement that agenda in big infrastructure projects in the Amazon: the BR-163 road and the Belo Monte dam. We argue that overlapping inequalities (between social groups, within the bureaucracy and between territorial centre and periphery) result in uneven state capacities for implementing projects in the Amazon. This framework helps explain why the government has moved much faster in building infrastructure than in implementing participatory social and environmental programmes that would benefit affected local communities.