Macro development planning in tropical Africa: Technocratic and non‐technocratic causes of failure

Based on the targets given in the development plans and the national income data of twenty‐two tropical Africa countries in the late 1960s, this paper finds a wide consensus among the planners on the structural determinants of the macro variables selected as plan targets, so that difference in targets can be explained largely by the different values assumed by these determinants in the sample countries. The implementation record was poor, and may be traced in part to a domino effect inherent in the recursive structure of target selection. The analysis of the causes of implementation failure shows that most of the causes lie outside of the competence of the planners. Alternative methods to calculate plan targets are not likely to meet with superior fulfilment results.     

‘The devil or the Dutch’: Holland's impact on the financial revolution in England, 1643–1694

SUMMARY

In this article Beat Kümin and Andreas Würgler make a comparative study of how the peoples in early modern England and Hesse used their acknowledged rights to present petitions and grievances to exercise a real influence on the process of legislation, and even over administration in general. They could on occasion, virtually initiate legislation from below. The article illustrates the unusually wide scope and usage of the petition in England, helped by the early recognition of the subjects' right to petition both houses of Parliament as well as the monarch. It is suggested that this could result in a broad popular participation in the work of government. But even in Hesse, where the rulers asserted their sovereign rights as sole legislators and where, from the seventeenth century, they were attempting to develop an effective bureaucratic administration to sustain their aspirations, the method of petitioning the ruler, either through the Estates, Gravamina or directly, enabled ordinary people to have a part in promoting legislation and to participate in, and even effectively restrain, the princely administration.     

Japan's Search for the ‘Sweet Spot’: International Cooperation and Regional Security in Northeast Asia

To analyze how Japan's competing objectives and specific policies have been evolving and how they trade off in today's regional security situation, this article argues that shifting Japanese foreign and security policies in Northeast Asia can be understood as ongoing responses to tensions along three key axes. First Japan confronts a tension between bilateralism and multilateralism; second Japan's economic and security interests are often at odds, and third, Japan still struggles with the competing pulls exerted by Asia on the one hand and the West (most particularly the United States) on the other.