The U.S. and third World Revolutionary States: Understanding the Breakdown in Relations

Although scholars focused on Soviet–American relations during the Cold War, the greatest number of conflicts for the U.S. occurred in the Third World, and most of these were with revolutionary states. Could U.S. policies toward the new revolutionary states have prevented the almost universal collapse in relations? Two dominant explanations for this breakdown are (1) American hostility toward revolutionary change and (2) Stephen Walt's variant of the spiral model. Using the comparative case approach and selecting "hard cases," this article disputes these explanations and offers a new theory based on the externalization of domestic conflict in the revolutionary states. Given their ideological goals, the radicals externalized their domestic conflicts with the moderates, who had transnational ties with the U.S., by fomenting tensions with Washington. To demonstrate that this theory can be generalized, this article varies the dependent variable and shows through a critical case that its lack of conflict can best be explained by the absence of the conditions that lead to externalization. The foreign policies of both the U.S. and revolutionary states are explained by classical realism as opposed to Walt's structural realism, which fails to account for the foreign policies of Third World states.     

Analysing changing gender relations: methodological challenges for gender planning

This paper is a starting point for a research project which will try to develop practical methods for analyzing changes in gender relations to inform policy research in improving the storage, processing, and marketing of crops in sub-Saharan Africa. While the research project will focus upon the crop post-harvest sector, many concerns raised in this study are relevant to a wide range of development interventions. This paper is based upon existing literature and offers no new empirical findings. Major conceptual advances in thinking about gender relations suggest the need to reassess conventional gender analyses in the context of development interventions. Evidence from development practice supports the argument that targeting can be undermined by processes of gendered bargaining around project interventions. Academic research points to key problems and potential methods for viewing changes in gender relations which may be adapted to project contexts. Existing gender planning frameworks focus upon shifts in gender relations, but also need to address the process by which gender relations are renegotiated if they are to inform better planning, monitoring, and evaluation.