When the center can hold: The primacy of politics in shaping Russian democracy

Violations of rights, a weak Duma, political parties dominated by bureaucrats, and corrupt privatization are ordinarily taken as signs or even causes of the failure of democracy in Russia or at best as normal traits of electoral politics in a middle-income state. Yet all of these are natural consequences of introducing democracy in a country with the Russian electorate’s distinctive recent experience of a loss of a third of the state’s territory and half its population. In such a democracy only a centrist, not a liberal, strategy can block a return to authoritarianism, and such a strategy in Russia will subordinate rights to the task of privatization that a Duma weakened by ideological, demographic and geographic impediments to party development cannot conduct. Consequently what are taken as signs or causes of democratic failure in Russia are instead necessary effects of introducing democracy in Russia’s special circumstances.     

Psychopathology and world politics

The relationship between psychopathology and world politics can be considered firstly from the world politics perspective. This means examining the dysfunctional forms of human behaviour manifest there—both individual and collective/communal. It means examining how such behaviour can be described and explained in psychiatric or psychological/psychoanalytical terms. The relationship between psychopathology and world politics can also be considered from the psychopathology perspective. This means examining some of the key psychopathological concepts that are of relevance to world affairs. It means examining paranoia or narcissism, for example, and the way understanding syndromes like these helps further our understanding of world affairs.     

The Bush Administration's 'Alliance-Based' East Asia Policy

The US will face major foreign policy challenges in East Asia in the twenty-first century. In this article, Ralph A. Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS, Honolulu, examines the Bush administration's policy towards East Asia which he argues continues to be alliance-based. The principal issues include: the precarious situation on the Korean Peninsula; China's potential emergence as a regional power and the sensitive topic of the Taiwan Strait, Japan's struggle with economic and constitutional reform and an unstable Indonesia. The administration's stated commitment to missile defense has been well publicized and the security implications of this for the region are also examined by Cossa. Although a ''Vision statement'' on the Asia-Pacific is still lacking and needed, he argues that the basic components of the Bush administration's Asia strategy appear to be well-formed.     

Distributing social goods between generations

Conclusion The issue of justice in intergenerational exchange has been studied with a focus on what is owed the elderly. Conceptual matters have been emphasized. The analysis has concerned two levels: the macrolevel on which a social contract might be achieved between representatives of generation-based interest groups, and a microlevel on which members of families and family-based networks have to find a proper balance between elder care and their other wants and obligations. The paper was written with the situation in Sweden in mind, but I believe that the analytical arguments have a wider generality.     

Personnel Management: Politics, Administration, and a Passion for Anonymity

Personnel management is vitally important to the maintenance and preservation of the administrative state and its democratic institutions. This reaction critically examines the personnel recommendations made by Floyd W. Reeves and Paul T. David in their study Personnel Administration in the Federal Service. It questions the degree to which there is a coherent set of political and constitutional expectations marking the progress of personnel policy that might enable us to forecast the future, both theoretically and practically. The authors highlight how and why the field should pay greater attention to the political ends that our personnel theories serve.     

The Law and the Desert: Alternative Methods of Delivering Justice

This article considers the way in which the Federal Court of Australia has adapted to the native title jurisdiction. Here we see how common law approaches to law and procedure challenge, and are challenged by, the culture of indigenous peoples and customary law. It conveys the risk of cultural violence in a balancing of legal and cultural norms and shows how access to justice debates reach beyond debates about funding and advice into more fundamental issues about legal process and the nature of substantive law. The Court's approach to facilitating access to justice goes deeper than essential procedural changes. Its approach suggests a cultural change within the Court.     

AGRICULTURAL MARKETING ORDERS AND THE PROCESS AND POLITICS OF SELF-REGULATION

Agricultural marketing orders, put into operation with the initiative and approval of affected producers, are a form of supervised self-regulation. The 47 orders in effect variously authorize quantity controls, quality controls, and market support activities for fruits, vegetables, and specialty crops. Administered by producer committees under the supervision of the Agricultural Marketing Service, for most of their history they produced l i t t l e controversy. In recent years they have been attacked as anticompetitive. The impact of orders on prices, however, seems limited at best. Orderly marketing has largely replaced concern for "parity prices" as the goal of marketing orders.     

THE PUBLIC UTILITY COMMISSION OF TEXAS: A CASE OF CAPTURE OR RAPTURE?1

Anderson reviews the notion of the “captured” regulatory agency and summarizes four theories for how it occurs. The author then uses the example of the newly formed Texas Public Utility Commission to demonstrate none of the four apply; that the regulators became “enraptured” with the interests of the industry rather than “captured” by them.