Students’ self‐assessment in law: Report of a pilot project

The pilot study reported here was a one‐off study about self‐assessment by students of a law assignment (a problem in the law of Tort). The project was conceived as a result of concern about too much assessment/marking and its effect on staff time (and research and other scholarly activities) and also as a result of discussions the author had with his faculty colleagues and other colleagues outside his institution. This report focuses on the following issues: definition and problems of self‐assessment, aims of the study, review of the literature, method of study, findings and discussion of the findings.     

Arabian Travellers, 1800–1950: An Analytical Bibliography

Western travelogue writing has long been a crucial source of information for scholars of the Arabian Peninsula, but nonetheless, this body of literature has not yet been studied comprehensively and systematically by a modern scholar. This article addresses that deficiency by collecting data on the nationality, routes travelled and intertextual citations of 91 authors active in Arabia from 1800 to 1950. The results of this study provide quantitative verification for several existing theories on Western travel writing in Arabia, including Edward Said’s claim that ‘Orientalism’ was predominantly an Anglo-French project, and observations by Said, James Canton and others that European travellers had intimate ties with European imperialism. At the same time, this study challenges some existing arguments about Western travel writing in Arabia, especially claims by Alaine Hutson and others about the inherent unreliability of this corpus of sources.     

Bringing Law to the Table: Legal Claims,Focal Points,and the Settlement of Territorial Disputes Since 1945

In this article, we argue that international law can help state leaders reach a settlement in territorial disputes by suggesting a focal point for negotiations. International law is more likely to serve as a focal point when the legal principles relevant to the dispute are clear and well established and when one of the states in the dispute has a stronger legal claim to disputed territory. When these two conditions are present, we expect the state with a legal advantage to push for and receive favorable terms of settlement. In our analysis of all negotiated settlements in territorial disputes from 1945 to 2000, we find strong support for the importance of international law in influencing the terms of settlements. States with a strong legal advantage are more likely to secure favorable terms, whereas states lacking a strong legal claim are more likely to receive unfavorable terms.     

China in the era of globalization: the emergence of the discourse on economic security

Abstract

This article looks at the Chinese debate on economic security during the period between 1997 and 2004. The contemporary concept of economic security (jingji anquan, 经济安全) was first raised in the Chinese academic literature in 1997, partly as a reaction to the Asian financial crisis and partly due to the increasing role China began to play in globalization, the effects of which it increasingly felt as its economy became more integrated with that of the world. This article examines the emergence of the discourse on economic security within Chinese academic circles, and identifies the development of this concept in China between 1997 and 2004 prior to the ascendancy of the ‘fourth-generation’ leadership.     

Governing the future: the European Central Bank’s expectation management during the Great Moderation

Abstract

The experience of the global financial crisis has sparked renewed interest in the role of futurity in the capitalist economy in general and in the formation and coordination of expectations under uncertainty in particular. Economic sociologists have carefully studied the ‘defuturizing’ technologies devised by private actors, but have tended to neglect the increasingly pivotal part played by central banks. Political economists have had more to say on central banks, but have focused on institutional issues rather than on the concrete practices of central banking. Making an original contribution to both literatures, this paper traces the construction and subsequent evolution, up to 2007, of the European Central Bank’s communicative apparatus. Drawing on official documents and on interviews with both ECB staff and market participants, the paper shows how this apparatus created the conditions for the formation and coordination of private sector expectations. The insights from this empirical analysis into the performative dimensions of ‘credibility’ and ‘knowledge’ in monetary governance contribute directly to ongoing debates about the recent extension of the ECB’s communicative apparatus through forward guidance and quantitative easing.