Australia's Battle against the Common Agricultural Policy: The Fraser Government's Trade Diplomacy and the European Community

The aim of this article is to offer a different interpretation of Fraser Government's diplomacy towards the European Community. In particular, it will be argued that, although Fraser's European policy was unsuccessful, this was not principally his fault since no matter what sort of approach he adopted, no major result could have been obtained from Brussels. Second, this article will argue that Fraser clearly understood the EC's internal political dynamics and acted accordingly. If he failed to achieve results, it was not because he lacked an understanding of the complexity of the EC's constitutional realities, but because these realities were too complex for anyone to overcome. Thirdly, it will be argued that Fraser did not attribute a disproportionate importance to agriculture, since this was far and away the most important issue for Australia.     

Genetic analysis of the populations from Northern and Mesopotamian provinces of Argentina by means of 15 autosomal STRs

The allele frequencies for the 15 short tandem repeats included in the Power Plex-16 kit (Promega Corp., Madison, WI, USA) were determined in a sample of 429 unrelated individuals from five provinces of the Northern and Northeastern regions of Argentina. Three Northern provinces including Salta, Formosa and Chaco and two within the region surrounded by the Paraná and Uruguay Rivers commonly known as the Argentine Mesopotamia, including Misiones and Corrientes. Since in this region Entre Ríos Province is also present, previously published results were used for comparison. The calculated parameters: polymorphism information content (PIC); discrimination power (DP); matching probability (MP); typical paternity index (TPI) and power of exclusion (PE) showed Penta E to be the most valuable marker from the studied sample set. All loci met Hardy–Weinberg expectations using the Bonferroni correction for the number of loci analyzed, except D3S1358 in Salta and THO1 in Formosa provinces. Population differentiation test revealed that the Salta population sample data denoted significant differences for various loci when compared with the other province information presented here in, as well as with other published data sets.     

Making the invisible public service visible? Exploring data on the supply of policy and management consultancies in Canada

The use of external policy and management consultants in government has been receiving increasing attention in many countries, including Canada. We explore new data on management consulting compiled from information released since the creation of the Federal Accountability Act to address the supply side of contracting. We find several large multi‐year contracts have taken up a larger percentage of contracting activity while the number of smaller contracts has declined. The data suggest a pattern of oligopsonic demand concentrated mostly in a handful of very heavy users and an increasingly oligopolistic supply pattern where less than 5% of companies accounted for 80% of total contract values and where repeat contracts are the norm. Measures of accountability and transparency need to extend to the “invisible” public service of contract consultants.     

Capacity building for adaptive management: a problem-based learning approach

As natural-resource issues become more complex, particularly in developing-world contexts, there is a growing need for adaptive management solutions. However, the skills necessary to deal with these increasingly complex situations are not always present in many low-income countries. There is also a growing recognition that many capacity-building activities are limited in their effectiveness. This article suggests a problem-based learning (PBL) approach to capacity building. Using the example of training courses developed to help natural-resource management in Guyana, this article illustrates how PBL can help to enhance the capabilities needed for adaptive management.     

Communicating with their voters: The use of direct mailing by the SPD and the CDU

One of the key functions of political parties in modern democracies consists of mobilising the voters and thereby integrating them into the political system. Opinion formation and interest representation by political parties are central to linking people and government. This article concentrates on the way in which political parties perform these tasks. Presenting the main findings of an empirical study into the use of direct mailing by the two major parties in Germany, the SPD and the CDU, the paper discusses its effectiveness as a new means of communication between political parties and their voters. More specifically, it shows how direct mailing is put to use and to what extent its themes reflect the themes of relevant election programmes. The paper concludes that direct mailing has been more widely used only since the change in legislation on party finance but has the potential of developing into an important means of communicating party policies to members and potential supporters.     

Coping strategies in prolonged kidnappings

This study investigates prolonged kidnappings as a stressful situation and the different coping strategies used to survive it. A 35‐question, semi‐structured interview and an adaptation of the ‘Ways of Coping Checklist’ by Lazarus et al. (1986) were applied to live subjects who had been kidnapped by different Colombian guerrilla groups for periods of time above three months. The results of the interviews and checklist were compared; it was found that to achieve an efficient coping process it is necessary to be versatile with the coping directed to emotions, such as fantasy and self‐guilt, and directed to the problem, such as problem solving. Other topics for future studies are proposed.     

British nuclear non-proliferation policies towards Iran and the Middle East

The article argues that British non-proliferation policies towards the Middle East have had limited success because they are circumscribed by dependence on alliances and constrained by other factors such as Britain's historical legacy, its status as a nuclear weapons state and, especially through the European Union's engagement with the region, the communication of self-interest rather than credible pursuit of the declared objective of regional security-building. Despite promoting and implementing its own disarmament policies, Britain has been unable to overcome mistrust and perceptions of hypocrisy in the region in order to strengthen the non-proliferation regime. This is particularly evident in the dispute with Iran, which is examined in detail with the assistance of Adler's ‘double-damned dilemma’ model. The analysis argues that the Western coercive approach has facilitated the stalemate with Iran, because it has encouraged Iran's provocations and allowed it to respond with a strategy of denial. The analysis suggests that Britain and its allies adopt a defusing strategy which does not reduce the dispute to a proliferation problem, but treats Iran's behaviour as a quest for recognition. Britain has little influence on Iran, but might build on its relationship with Turkey to develop this approach in conjunction with its allies.