The Dynamics of Enlargement in International Organizations

Most international organizations (IOs) expand their membership over the course of their lifespan. Although these enlargements tend to be heralded as normatively positive — for the IOs themselves, for the new members, and for cooperative outcomes more generally — expansions can also lead to conflicts in the organization. What conditions lead to enlargement rounds that reshape an organization in unexpected ways? We argue that, depending upon the diversity of the initial group of countries, members may vote to admit new entrants that can tilt organizational decision-making in unexpected directions. We anticipate fewer enlargements with lesser impact on the character of the organization among organizations that have either a smaller range of founding members or a relatively even initial dispersion. We develop an agent-based model that accounts for the complex decision-making environment and social dynamics that typify IO accession processes. The model helps us explain how the nature of decision-making in organizations can shift following enlargement, likely changing the organization’s output and goals.     

Understanding the Relationship between Health PACs and Health Lobbying in the American States

We examine how health PAC activity in the states is connectedto lobbying. Is the political money that health interest organizationsbring to the policy process a powerful, independent means ofinfluence or is it better understood narrowly as a tactic usedto support lobbying? We examine the relationship between campaigncontributions and lobby activity and the limited work that hasbeen conducted on them and raise a number of questions aboutthe process by which they are connected. We utilize 1998 dataon state lobbying and PAC activity, allowing us to answer causalresearch questions generated from existing studies at the nationallevel. We conclude that PAC activity is best viewed as an adjunctof lobbying rather than an independent form of political activity.     

Book reviews

The following books are reviewed.

The Hammonds: a marriage in history STEWART A. WEAVER, 1999 Stanford: Stanford University Press viii + 349 pp., ISBN 08047 3242 6, hardback, £30 (US$49.50)

Centering Women: gender discourses in Caribbean slave society HILARY McD. BECKLES, 1999 Oxford: James Currey; Kingston: Ian Randle; Princeton: Markus Wiener. xxv + 211 pp., ISBN 976 8123 78 8, £15.95

Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: a sourcebook JANE ROWLANDSON (Ed.), 1998 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xviii + 406 pp., ISBN 0 521 58212 1, hardback, 0 521 58814 4, paperback

Contesting Politics: women in Ireland, north and south YVONNE GALLIGAN, EILIS WARD & RICK WILFORD (Eds), 1999 Boulder: Westview Press. xv + 278 pp., ISBN 0 8133 3417 9, £17.50

Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: women on Texas cotton farms, 1900–1940 REBECCA SHARPLESS, 1999 Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. xxiii + 319 pp., ISBN 0 8078 2456 9, hardback, 0 8078 4760 7, paperback, $19.95

Cato's Tears and the Making of Anglo-American Emotion JULIE ELLISON, 1999 Chicago: University of Chicago Press. xi + 229 pp., ISBN 0 226 20595 9, hardback, $28, 0 226 20596 7, paperback, £11.50

Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the powerful women of early Hollywood CARI BEAUCHAMP, 1997 Berkeley: University of California Press. 475 pp., ISBN 0 520 21492 7, paperback, £11.50

Maiden Voyages and Infant Colonies: two women's travel narratives of the 1790s DEIRDRE COLEMAN, 1999 London: Leicester University Press. xviii + 247 pp., ISBN 0 7185 0150 0, £17.99

With Women';s Eyes: visitors to the New World, 1775–1918 MARION TINLING, 1999 Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. xvii + 207 pp., ISBN 0 8061 3050 4, £24.50

Broken Silence: voices of Japanese feminism SANDRA BUCKLEY, 1997 Berkeley: University of California Press. xix + 382 pp. ISBN 0 520 08513 2, hardback, 0 520 08514 0, paperback

Conversations in Cold Rooms: women, work and poverty in nineteenth-century Northumberland JANE LONG, 1999 Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Royal Historical Society, Boydell Press. xii +241 pp., ISBN 0 86193 340 4, £40.00

Women in Espionage: a biographical dictionary M.H. MAHONEY, 1993 Santa Barbara: ABC–CLIO. xiii + 253 pp., ISBN 0 87436 743 3, £24.95

In Obedience to Instructions: FANY in the SOE in the Mediterranean MARGARET PAWLEY, 1999 Barnsley: Leo Cooper. xiii + 178 pp., ISBN 0 85052 633 7, £19.95

Enslaved Daughters: colonialism, law and women's rights SUDHIR CHANDRA, 1998 Delhi: Oxford University Press. xi + 249 pp.

English Sexualities, 1700–1800 TIM HITCHCOCK, 1997 Basingstoke: Macmillan. ix + 172 pp., ISBN 0 312 165373–0, hardback, 0 312 16574 9, paperback.

Secret Sexualities: a sourcebook of seventeenth and eighteenth century writing IAN McCORMICK (Ed.), 1997 London: Routledge. ix + 262 pp., ISBN 0 415 13953 8, hardback, £45, 0 415 13954 6, paperback.

Tradition and Liberation: the Hindu tradition in the Indian women's movement CATHERINE A. ROBINSON, 1999 Richmond: Curzon. x + 230 pp., ISBN 0 7007 1143 0.     

Donation and Spending Limits in Political Finance Law and their Compatibility with the Australian Constitution

Events of 2014, particularly in New South Wales and Queensland, have sharpened focus on the relation between money and politics, with calls for increased regulation of donations to, and expenditure by, political parties. This is despite the existence of other features of our political system seeking to limit corruption, like disclosure laws, anti‐corruption bodies, independent media, and Australia's standing as one of the least corrupt countries. This paper considers whether caps on political donations and limits on election spending are consistent with the Australian Constitution. The High Court has found that document requires freedom of political communication. This is subject to laws passed to further a legitimate objective, where their impact on the freedom is proportionate to a legitimate objective. Here, likely justifications for such restrictions are the need to reduce corruption and to create a level playing field. This article challenges both arguments, suggesting such restrictions are constitutionally invalid.     

Challenges to the Theory and Practice of Polyarchy: the rise of the political left in Korea

This paper provides an analysis of the development of democracy in Korea since the transition from authoritarianism in 1987, and its implications for critical analyses of Third World democratisation. Accounts of ‘low intensity democracy’ or ‘polyarchy’ have noted Third World democratisation for its constrained and elite-centred nature, and as an outcome of US foreign policy, which has sought to demobilise restive popular movements and extend the reach of global capital. However, the Korean general elections of 2004 saw the historic entry of the explicitly socialist Korean Democratic Labour Party (kdlp) into the National Assembly. A re-examination of post-authoritarian politics in fact shows a process of continuous contestation that belies the claims made by the polyarchy literature. Formal democratisation has by its very nature allowed for a counter-movement to be mobilised. The paper also examines the relationship between the kdlp and the mass labour union movement and argues that, while democracy has provided opportunities for participation by previously marginalised social forces, concomitant neoliberal restructuring has limited the development of the mass movements from which such political projects draw their strength. Thus, inquiry into the implications of democratisation for a progressive challenge to neoliberal capitalism must also extend beyond ‘politics’ to mass movements in the socioeconomic sphere.     

Workplace Violence: Examining Interpersonal and Impersonal Violence among Truck Drivers

Employees who work alone are at greater risk of workplace violence. One of the higher‐risk lone worker occupations in North America is truck driving. Drawing on interviews with 158 truck drivers across the United States and Canada, this article examines how truck drivers interpret and experience both interpersonal and impersonal forms of workplace violence. Rather than rely on police enforcement and safety regulations, the truck drivers in this study believed that they were primarily on their own with regard to workplace violence. As a result, truck drivers described how they continually engage in informal personal safety strategies in order to decrease their chances of being victimized. These findings reveal how neoliberal responsibilization approaches to health and safety serve to conceal structural patterns of power and risk by containing individual responsibility for safety at the frontline. Overall, this study points to the need for law and policy to better incorporate the frontline experiences of workers when attempting to decrease the risk of workplace violence.     

A Bridge Too Far? Examining Bridging Assumptions in Common-Space Estimations

While most common-space estimations rely upon members who served in both the House and Senate as “bridges” to scale the remaining members, this assumes that these “bridge members” do not change their preferences when they change chambers. Such an assumption conflicts with standard notions of representation, that is, that legislators’ votes reflect (at least to some degree) the wishes of their constituents. We examine the constancy of this common-space voting assumption by focusing on a subset of House members who move to the Senate: those who come from statewide House districts. Using these members as the bridge actors—and thus bridging by constituency explicitly—in a one-dimensional item response theory model, we find that the standard assumption of chamber switchers in common-space estimations is technically, but immaterially, false. While there are statistically distinguishable differences in House and Senate voting records for chamber switchers, they are not sufficiently large to meaningfully undermine bridging.     

Marketization as political technology: unintended consequences of climate finance in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Climate finance involves the transfer of money from advanced economies into developing countries in order to contribute to carbon mitigation or climate adaptation efforts while simultaneously advancing poverty alleviation and sustainable development objectives. Dominant carbon mitigation efforts resemble what Michel Callon calls ‘civilizing markets’, a deliberate harnessing of formal markets to achieve social goals by engaging with multiple political constituencies in market design. This paper looks at carbon marketization in the Democratic Republic of Congo and finds that, despite inclusive planning, climate finance experts produce unintended consequences by assigning social and environmental goals separate strategies within a national portfolio of climate finance interventions. Resulting from the challenges of finding commensurate criteria for measuring market impacts in both social and environmental domains, this programmatic segregation obscures the interconnections between poverty, forest use and climate change in the Congo. Findings suggest a need to reconcile the design of environmental-focused markets with the difficult-to-measure embedded social benefits of informal natural resource economies.     

Following in China's footsteps? The political economy of North Korean reform

Since the coming to power of Kim Jong Un in 2012, the North Korean government has recently announced, and to some degree has implemented, a new set of economic management policies known as the June 28th measures in 2012 and the May 30th measures in 2014. Both of these sets of measures seek to build upon the abandoned reforms of the early 2000s through restructuring North Korea's highly inefficient collective farm and state-owned enterprise management system. In addition, the government has intensified ongoing efforts at building special economic zones for the purpose of attracting foreign investment. As such, the country is attempting to emulate the reforms adopted by China in the late 1970s. Although the success of these efforts is by no means guaranteed, they do serve to question mainstream analyses that suggest that Juche Self-Reliance or S?n'gun Military First Politics ideologies will inhibit any genuine attempt at economic reform in North Korea. We argue, in contrast, that ongoing changes to North Korean state and society mean that, a cyclical stop and start rhythm to the reforms notwithstanding, such attempts at economic reform are likely to continue. However, we also argue that while the contemporary reform drive resembles and may indeed reproduce some of the successes of the Chinese experience, North Korea faces significantly greater challenges, including the greater decline of North Korean industry, local resistance to reform, and the dangers of inflation. Furthermore, North Korea faces a highly challenging external security environment that undermines the ability of the regime to attract investment and by extension the political standing of reformist elements within the country. Given this contrast with the international environment surrounding China's own reform experience, our analysis emphasises the importance of geopolitical context in shaping experiences of economic reform and of development more broadly.     

Decolonising online development studies? Emancipatory aspirations and critical reflections – a case study

Academics in high-income countries are increasingly launching development studies programmes through online distance learning to engage practitioner-students in low-income countries. Are such initiatives providing opportunities to critically tackle social injustice, or merely ‘mirroring’ relations of global inequality and re-entrenching imperial practices? Building on recent scholarship addressing efforts to ‘decolonise development studies’ and the complex power dynamics they encounter, we reflect on this question by analysing experiences of faculty and students in a United Kingdom-based online development studies programme, focusing particularly on perspectives of development practitioner-students working from Africa. We discuss barriers to social inclusivity – including the politics of language – that shaped participation dynamics in the programme as well as debates regarding critical development course content, rethinking possibilities for bridging counter-hegemonic development scholarship with practice-oriented approaches in a range of social contexts. Our analysis unpacks key tensions in addressing intertwined institutional and pedagogic dilemmas for an agenda towards decolonising online development studies, positioning decolonisation as a necessarily unsettling and contested process that calls for greater self-reflexivity.