Inside chinese bureaucracy: Civil service reform in the ministry of light industry

Since 1987, mainland Chinese ministries have been experimenting with a western style civil service system. The provisional guidelines published in that year called for the creation of a professional administrative class to be hired by open recruitment at the central and provisional levels of leading state ministries. The article is a micro-analysis of civil service reform in the Ministry of Light Industry and evaluates the first two years of reform in this ministry, which is responsible for supervising roughly twenty percent of China's production of durable consumer goods. The reform process has been gradual and incremental. The reforms were stimulated by the need to modernize China's state-run ministries in order to make them economically competitive with the mainland's growing private market sector. However, the article concludes that the reforms are too limited to make a substantial contribution to this goal.     

Between warning and response: The case of the Yom Kippur War

Reforming Japanese Intelligence

James Hansen: Japanese Intelligence: The Competitive Edge NIBC Press, National Intelligence Book Center, Washington , D.C., 1996, 222 p., $29.95.

Ichiro Ozawa: Blueprint for a New Japan: The Rethinking of a Nation Kodansha International, New York, 1994, 208 p., $25.00. English translation of Nihon Kaizo Keikaku (1993).

Masao Miyamoto: Straitjacket Society: An Insider's Irreverent View of Bureaucratic Japan Kodansha International, New York, 1994, 197 p., $22.00. English translation of Oyakusko no Okite (1993).

It's Warmer Inside

Michael Smith: New Cloak, Old Dagger: How Britain's Spies Came In From the Cold Victor Gollancz, London, 1996, 338 p., £20.00

Saving U.S. Convoys from U‐boats

Kathleen Broome Williams: Secret Weapon: U.S. High‐Frequency Direction Finding in the Battle of the Atlantic Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md., 1996, $35.00

Getting Serious About Intelligence

Angelo Codevilla: Informing Statecraft: Intelligence for a New Century The Free Press, New York, 1992, 491 p., $24.95

Matters Still Unresolved

Harvey Klehr and Ronald Radosh: The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism Chapel Hill, N.C., University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, N.C., 266 p., $29.95     

Terrorism and local police

The conflict in Nagorno‐Karabakh, an autonomous region contested by both Azerbaijan and Armenia, began in February 1988 following a series of strikes and demonstrations held by Armenians living there. However, the article shows clearly that the eruption of this conflict was a result of a long and gradual process that goes back to the first quarter of the 20th century.

By utilizing primary sources in various languages, this article exposes, describes, and analyzes the historical background of the events that led to the development of this extended and so far unresolved conflict. In doing so, it aims to examine the nature of this conflict and questions whether or not it is possible that the conflict is at the same time both territorial and national‐religious.

The article maintains that this conflict could have far‐reaching consequences for the future of the region and could ultimately alter constellations of power in Central Asia, in the Middle East, and even globally.     

Explaining lustration in Central Europe: a ‘post-communist politics’ approach

Lustration, the vetting of public officials in Central Europe for links to the communist-era security services, has been pursued most systematically in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Prior attempts to explain the pursuit or avoidance of lustration focused on the differing experiences of communist rule or transition to democracy. A closer examination finds that although the three countries in question had very different histories, there were identical demands for lustration in the early 1990s. These demands were translated into legislation at different times and varied considerably in the range of offices affected and the sanctions imposed. This article offers an explanation of this variation by focusing on the dynamics of post-communist political competition. We find that the passage of a lustration bill depended on the ability of its most ardent advocates to persuade a heterogeneous plurality of legislators that the safeguarding of democracy required it.     

What’s Law Got to Do With It? Economics,Nation-Building,and Human Rights in India and Beyond

The review essay examines three recently published books: Eleanor Newbigin’s The Hindu Family and the Emergence of Modern India: Law, Citizenship and Community, Narendra Subramanian’s Nation and Family: Personal Law, Cultural Pluralism, and Gendered Citizenship in India, and Yüksel Sezgin’s Human Rights Under State-Enforced Religious Family Laws in Israel, Egypt and India.     

Two Ecological Models of Academic Achievement Among Diverse Students With and Without Disabilities in Transition

School experiences can have positive effects on student academic achievement, yet less is known about intermediary processes that contribute to these positive effects. We examined pathways between school experiences and academic achievement among 117 low-income urban students of color, many with disabilities, who transitioned to other schools following a school closure. Using structural equation modeling, we tested two ecological models that examined the relationships among self-reported school experiences, school support, academic self-efficacy, and school-reported academic achievement. The model in which the relationship between school experiences and academic achievement is mediated by both school support and academic self-efficacy, and that takes previous academic achievement into account, was an excellent fit with the data. The roles of contextual and individual factors as they relate to academic achievement, and the implications of these findings, are discussed.     

Bullying in Early Adolescence and Antisocial Behavior and Depression Six Years Later: What Are the Protective Factors?

This study identified factors that protected (a) adolescent bullies from becoming antisocial young adults, and (b) adolescent victims of bullying from subsequent depression. Data were drawn from the Australian Temperament Project, a population birth cohort study that has followed participants since 1983. Systematic examination of potential risk modifiers (protective factors) was conducted within a regression framework. Low negative reactivity was found to protect bullies from later antisocial outcomes and higher parental monitoring moderated (ameliorated) the risk relation between bullying and antisocial behavior. High social skills and understanding schoolwork protected victims from later depression, but high attachment to peers intensified the risk relation between victimization and later depression. Preventive interventions targeting interpersonal skills and parent and peer relationships may be effective in reducing adverse outcomes of bullying.     

The Role of Arab American Advocacy Groups in Shaping American Foreign Policy

This paper aims to offer some insights into the ways in which Arab-Americans experience the United States and adjust to its political institutions. It stresses how such a community still finds it difficult to consolidate its efforts and exert pressure on the decision making process. But to gain national visibility and recognition, they need first to voice its concerns throughout mainstream advocacy groups. In this regard, the term “Arab lobby” is a misnomer as very often it is used as a shorthand word for the loose coalition of organizations that seek to improve Arabs’ conditions in the U.S. and to influence American foreign policy in the Middle East. Notwithstanding, this study is meant to highlight the difference between what some termed the informal Arab lobby, sponsored by rich oil countries, and the formal Arab American lobby, represented today by the Arab American Institute (AAI) and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and headquartered in Washington D.C. However, while the different components of the pro-Arab lobby cannot represent “the Arabs” as a united political group, they have been able to share a common concern: Palestine. In effect, not only the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always been a top priority and a principal focus of the Arab lobby as a whole, but it has also been viewed as a tool to measure its political efficacy. Last but not least, despite the very limited success achieved by the Arab lobby in its attempts to shape American foreign policy (compared to its pro-Israel counterpart), this study demonstrates that the members of the Arab and Jewish communities in the United States share common grounds on almost every issue central to Arab-Israel peace and U.S. policy in the Middle East, on top of them the two-state solution (Zogby International, 2007).     

What price fairness when security is at stake? Police legitimacy in South Africa

The legitimacy of legal authorities – particularly the police – is central to the state's ability to function in a normatively justifiable and effective manner. Studies, mostly conducted in the US and UK, regularly find that procedural justice is the most important antecedent of police legitimacy, with judgments about other aspects of police behavior – notably, about effectiveness – appearing less relevant. But this idea has received only sporadic testing in less cohesive societies where social order is more tenuous, resources to sustain it scarcer, and the position of the police is less secure. This paper considers whether the link between process fairness and legitimacy holds in the challenging context of present day South Africa. In a high crime and socially divided society, do people still emphasize procedural fairness or are they more interested in instrumental effectiveness? How is the legitimacy of the police influenced by the wider problems faced by the South African state? We find procedural fairness judgments play a key role, but also that South Africans place greater emphasis on police effectiveness (and concerns about crime). Police legitimacy is, furthermore, associated with citizens' judgments about the wider success and trustworthiness of the state.     

EU developments in IP,IT & telecommunications law

This is the latest edition of Baker & McKenzie's column on developments in EU law relating to IP, IT and telecommunications. This article summarises recent developments that are considered important for practitioners, students and academics in a wide range of information technology, e-commerce, telecommunications and intellectual property areas. It cannot be exhaustive but intends to address the important points. This is a hard copy reference guide, but links to outside web sites are included where possible. No responsibility is assumed for the accuracy of information contained in these links.