The wrong kind of crisis: Why oil booms and busts rarely lead to authoritarian breakdown

Economic crisis has been a central catalyst to Third Wave democratic transitions by contributing to authoritarian breakdown, yet crises in oil-exporting states have generally failed to catalyze such breakdowns, which are a crucial precondition to democratization. This article argues that oil wealth produces two distinct political trajectories, depending on its timing relative to the onset of late development. The dominant trajectory in the oil-exporting world is durable authoritarianism which has forestalled all but a few regime collapses. And, when the alternate trajectory produces vulnerable authoritarianism, oil-catalyzed authoritarian breakdown tends to generate new authoritarian regimes. I use case materials from Iran and Indonesia during the 1960s and 1970s to illustrate the two oil-based trajectories, and I conduct a broader test of the theory against data for 21 oil-exporting, developing countries, which provides suggestive support for a two-path theory of oil-based aturhoritarian persistence. Benjamin Smith is an assistant professor of political science and Asian studies at the University of Florida. His first book,Hard Times in the Land of Plenty: Oil, Opposition, and Late Development, is under contract with Cornell University Press. Other work has appeared in theAmerican Journal of Political Science, World Politics, and theJournal of International Affairs. He is currently at work on a book-length study of durable authoritarianism with Jason Brownlee (University of Texas-Austin) and on a study of the conditions under which democracy can consolidate in oil-rich countries with Joseph Kraus (University of Florida). Thanks to Jason Brownlee, Sam Huntington, Joel Migdal, Pete Moore, Jon Pevehouse, Susan Pharr, Dan Slater, David Waldner, Patricia Woods, participants in the Sawyer Seminar in comparative politics at Harvard University; participants in the “Transforming Authoritarian Rentier Economies and Protectorates” seminar at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Bonn; and three anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions of this article.     

全球化与非洲

过去几十年来,在日益加速的全球化过程中,非洲是受益最少的大陆,尤其是撒哈拉以南地区。非洲的历史与其现状有着内在的关联,并值得密切关注。由于非洲各国遭受过长期殖民统治,因此独立后的非洲国家不可能在短期内拥有完善的民主和繁荣的经济。在日益全球化的今天,只有西方跨国公司从中获利,而非洲国家却身处难以扭转的劣势。在这种情况下,南南合作是非常必要的,其最终目标就是要尽力摆脱工业富国的掌控。     

Students’ self‐assessment in law

Abstract

THIS STUDY is about second‐year students’ self‐assessment in law. Its aims were to test how closely the assessment by the students of their own work matched that of their tutor, to give the students an insight into the “marking process” (which research has shown improves learning), to help the students excel in their examination, to find out whether the male students did better than the female students in their assignment and subsequent examination, and to see how far staff time could be saved. The following were found: there was a high level of agreement between the students’ own marks and those of the tutor, there was generally no significant over‐estimation of assignment marks by the students, the participants did better than the non‐participants in the subsequent examination, the female students did much better than the male students in the assignments as well as the examination (although the participants in general did not do better in their examination than they did in their assignment) and considerable staff time was saved. The findings are discussed in the light of previous research.     

Aligning Ethics with Medical Decision-Making: The Quest for Informed Patient Choice

Clinical evidence suggests that many patients undergo surgery that they would decline if fully informed. Failure to communicate the relevant risks, benefits, and alternatives of a procedure violates medical ethics and wastes medical resources. Integrating shared decision-making, a method of communication between provider and patient, into medical decisions can satisfy physicians' ethical obligations and reduce unwanted procedures. This article proposes a three-step process for implementing a nationwide practice of shared decision-making: (1) create model integration programs; (2) provide legal incentives to ease the transition; and (3) incorporate shared decision-making into medical necessity determinations.