India and South Africa: Shifting priorities

Ties between India and South Africa have grown rapidly over the past few years. But despite close collaboration on a range of issues and growing trade and investment ties, the relationship is a long way from reaching its full potential and there are still areas of difference between the countries. Philip Alves examines how the relationship has evolved historically, particularly since 1994, both politically and economically, and where it might be going.     

From retrenchment to performance: civil service reform in Africa

Whether or not an unfettered market is the best solution to Africa's problems, the public service is both the subject and the object of reform. It is an arena of policy change and adjustment in economic management, as well as the locus of struggle over principles and patterns of administrative practice. Below we take empirical stock of the patterns and progress made in public service reform in Africa, a process characterized by cost containment and retrenchment. Then we examine what is entailed in a qualitatively different public service that well serves a liberal economy, concluding with observations on whether and how that might happen in Africa.     

Trajectories of International Engagement with State and Local Actors: Evidence from South Sudan

External actors have been engaged in what is now South Sudan from the colonial era through to the present day, providing humanitarian and development assistance and exerting political pressure during and since the second civil war that has helped to protect people, legitimize the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), broker the peace agreements leading to independence, and undergird the new state of South Sudan. After the civil war and especially at independence, many international actors approached South Sudan as a tabula rasa, ready for peace and development; since then, engagement has shifted back to large-scale humanitarian efforts and crisis response. This paper investigates how international actors have engaged with the South Sudanese state and local actors in order to improve access to basic services and build state capacity to deliver those services and provide social protection and livelihood support, what the impacts of such engagement have been, and what aid actors can learn from this history. The paper draws on four years of fieldwork by the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC), with a focus on Jonglei State.     

Private regulation and global economic change: The drivers of sustainable agriculture in Brazil

What determines the uptake of private sustainability regulation in developing countries? Existing studies point to the local context as the key explanatory factor. In particular, they identify local program characteristics, industry structures, and the regulatory environment as variables influencing program uptake at the point of production. However, examining two very similar certification programs in Brazil's soy and sugarcane industries, this article finds that local conditions fail to account for the observed patterns. A “local explanation” would have predicted similar levels of industry uptake in the two sectors. Conversely, it is found that Brazil's soy producers first backed but then opposed private sustainability regulation, whereas in the sugarcane sector the dynamic was exactly the opposite. Through an in‐depth analysis and cross‐case comparison this article reveals how changing transnational conditions were decisive in shaping these outcomes. Specifically, shifting end markets exposed the two sectors to different economic and regulatory pressures.     

Passive revolution in Brazil: struggles over hegemony,religion and development 1964–2007

This article examines transformations of the role of religion in Brazil, focused on two transitions within the national political economy. A Gramscian framework of analysis is used to investigate the shift from import substitution industrialisation to neoliberalism, and the varying role of religion within class struggles in each period. The central argument is that Brazil has moved from a period of ‘passive revolution’ to one of ‘hegemony’, and that the role of religion has changed significantly in this period. The article examines ideas, institutions and social forces, with particular attention to the Landless Workers Movement and its relationship with Liberation Theology.     

Spies as Informants: Triangulation and the Interpretation of Elite Interview Data in the Study of the Intelligence and Security Services

This article examines the application of 'triangulation' to the use of elite interviewing in political science, with specific reference to the study of the intelligence and security services. It is argued that the problems involved in using elite interviews in security and intelligence studies are no different than in other areas of political science, but simply more pronounced. It is further argued that these problems can be most effectively addressed in terms of the sociological 'triangulation' strategy of multi-methodological research. The article concludes that this approach is, moreover, generally applicable to political studies at large.