A survey of micro-enterprise in urban West Africa: drivers shaping the sector

This article identifies some key factors shaping the micro-enterprise sector in urban French West Africa. Drawing on interviews with micro-entrepreneurs and micro-finance practitioners in Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Togo, the study explores the needs, characteristics, motivations, and success factors for micro-entrepreneurship in the region, together with some of the impediments to the growth and success of micro-enterprise ventures. It was found that those operating micro-enterprises in the informal economy are entrepreneurs principally by necessity, and that their most basic needs tend to drive their business activities and behaviours. It was also observed that their success was constrained by a number of barriers, including poor access to capital, poor training, and general aversion to risk. As a result, the development of the micro-enterprise sector in urban French West Africa has been sub-optimal, and the authors conclude that this situation may persist unless broader economic and social barriers are addressed.     

In-house or in court? Legal challenges to university decisions

Every day, decisions are made in universities that affect students. When a decision adversely affects a particular student, what means of redress does that student have? The circumstances in which a student has a legal claim against their university are generally unclear. Courts have traditionally tended to draw a distinction between ‘purely academic’ decisions and disciplinary decisions. There has been reluctance on the part of courts to intervene in non-disciplinary decisions which involve academic judgment, for example, the grade to be given to a student's work. On the other hand, where the decisions are purely disciplinary, for example, in relation to a student's behaviour towards others or towards university property, the courts have made it clear that there is essentially no difference between this and disciplinary matters within any other public institution or organization. However, disciplinary decisions that are connected with allegations of academic misconduct, for example, cheating and/or plagiarism, have been more problematic for the courts. Historically, the debate was whether any such decision was justiciable in public law. Recently the question has also been whether an aggrieved student may succeed in a private law action against a university. The legal issues raised by university decisions affecting students have not yet been clearly resolved in all jurisdictions. Indeed, in some cases, judges have raised many more questions than they have answered. This article will review the framework for legal challenges to university decisions against a background of recent judicial attitudes in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US.     

Affect Regulation and the Cycle of Violence Against Women: New Directions for Understanding the Process

The process of the intergenerational transmission of violence is not well understood. A risk and resilience model of criminal violence against women was investigated using secondary data. The sample was composed of adolescent male juvenile delinquents who had been physically abused by their parents, and who were followed up at ages 25 and 31. A series of structural equation models were fit to investigate whether dysregulated affect mediated the effects of attachment and family chaos on the adult perpetration of violence against women. These models support the hypothesis that affect dysregulation may act as a mediator. Results raise new ideas about the mechanisms by which violence may be transmitted across generations.     

Fighting the wimp image: Why calls for negotiation often fall on deaf ears

Conclusion Must calls for war always dominate pleas for more serious negotiation? Not necessarily. But, if negotiation is to prevail, its advocates have to recognize which elements of their rhetoric sound weak and timid to others.Right after the routing of the Iraqis from Kuwait, the conventional wisdom was that American voters would repudiate those members of Congress who had argued for more negotiation — the surrender lobby, one belligerent called them. Iraq would teach elected officials not to talk of negotiation in the future. Now, barely a year from the start of hostilities, the verdict is not quite so clear. With Saddam still in power and the establishment of President Bush's new world order yet to be proven, opinion polls suggest that a growing number of Americans now regard the war as only a partial success. Public awareness of the costs of war, as well as its seeming benefits, can only be to the good, but apostles of negotiation should be careful not to read such numbers as vindication of their views. Skepticism about war still must be matched by some well-founded confidence in its alternative. Michael Wheeler is Director of the Undergraduate Program, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. 02139. He is also Deputy Director of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.     

Reviews

Christel Lane, Christian Religion in the Soviet Union: A Sociological Study. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978. 256 pp. £10.00.

R. Amann, J. M. Cooper, R. W. Davies (eds.), The Technological Level of Soviet Industry. New Haven, Conn, and London: Yale University Press, 1977. xxxii +575 pp. £20.00.

M. M. Kostecki, East‐West Trade and the GATT System. London: Macmillan, for the Trade Policy Research Centre, 1979. xviii + 157 pp. £12.00.

Josef C. Brada and V. S. Somanath (eds.), East‐West Trade: Theory and Evidence. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University International Development Institute, 1978. xi + 178 pp. $10.00. No index.

Jeremy R. Azrael (ed.), Soviet Nationality Policies and Practices. New York: Praeger Publishers (Praeger Special Studies), 1978. xi + 393 pp.

Robert G. Wesson, Communism and Communist Systems. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice‐Hall, 1978. x + 227 pp.

Adam Bromke and Derry Novak (eds.), The Communist States in the Era of Detente, 1971–1977. Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press, 1978. 306 pp. $7.95.

Jaroslav Krejci, Social Structure in Divided Germany. London: Croom Helm, 1976. 262 pp. £7.95.

Miklós Molnár, A Short History of the Hungarian Communist Party. Boulder, Colorado & Folkestone: Westview, Dawson, 1978, 168 pp. £9.00.

Robert N. North, Transport in Western Siberia: Tsarist and Soviet Development. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press and The Centre for Transportation Studies, 1979. viii + 364 pp. $22.00.     

Indicators as a Technology of Global Governance

The use of indicators is a prominent feature of contemporary global governance. Indicators are used to compare and rank states for purposes as varied as deciding how to allocate foreign aid or investment and determining whether states have complied with their treaty obligations. This article defines the concept of an indicator, analyzes distinctive features of indicators as technologies of governance, and identifies various ways in which the use of indicators has the potential to alter the topology and dynamics of global governance. Particular attention is paid to how indicators can affect processes of standard setting, decisionmaking, and contestation in global governance. The World Bank Doing Business indicators and the United Nations Human Development Index are analyzed as case studies.