Cattle Markets Integration and Price Discovery: The Case of Mali

This article analyses the level of integration in 10 cattle markets in Mali. The results indicate a limited interdependence among markets where, in majority of cases, more than 70 per cent of price variation is due to own-price shocks. However, the Ségou market exhibited a high level of interaction with other markets, behaving mostly as a price information receiver. Some markets behaved as sources of price information, however, without taking a clear price leadership role. This low level of market integration may be attributed to limited access to livestock markets and timely price information.     

The role of agriculture in economic development: Visible and invisible surplus transfers

The financial surplus of agriculture has been central to theories of the role of agriculture in economic development. Morrisson and Thorbecke (MT) have used a constant‐price social accounting matrix (SAM) framework to measure rigorously the financial surplus of agriculture and decompose the mechanisms of surplus extraction. History and theory have, however, stressed the role of prices as an invisible transfer mechanism in addition to the visible transfers identified in the SAM framework. We extend the MT approach by defining and measuring the real surplus of agriculture and decomposing the mechanisms of surplus extraction between visible and invisible financial transfers. Using an archetype computable general equilibrium model for poor African nations, we trace the generation, transfer, and use of an agricultural surplus created by a productivity gain in agriculture. This shows that prices indeed play an overwhelmingly important role in transferring a surplus from agriculture to the benefit of the rest of the economy.     

Extremists are extremely extreme

Abstract

China's foreign policy during the Cultural Revolution is usually treated as a non-event. Melvin Gurtov in his careful and extremely useful chronological account of China's foreign policy at this time (RAND, RM-5934-PR) still deems it “an aberrant episode” (VII, 83). He describes it as the manifestation of a power struggle between extreme young zealots and implacable older powerholders. “Substantive policy views” are almost beside the point (76). Far Eastern Economic Review (1968 Year Book) also characterizes Cultural Revolution foreign policy as one of “excesses” and “‘extreme’ behavior,” giving anti-foreignism as its content. Anti-foreignism is seen as a deeply felt belief that an attempt to borrow from foreigners has resulted in “manipulation and exploitation” by foreigners. Yung Ho, writing for the Union Research Institue's (URI) Communist China 1967, finds the essence of Mao's thought to be opposition to “anything foreign,” and China's attempt at “propagating Mao-Tse-tung's thought abroad” to be an aggressive policy “even worse than Hitler's rule,” one which inevitably produced setbacks which further isolate China (326–327).     

Russian military patriotic education: a control tool against the arbitrariness of veterans

The military had been concerned about military patriotic education for a long time when Putin's Patriotic Education Programme was published. As soon as the collapse of the Soviet Union occurred, followed a few years later by the creation of the Russian armed forces, they had already been developing patriotic education programmes aimed primarily at youth, aided by veterans of local wars, both volunteers and recruits. The aim of this article is to show that the military version of patriotic education aims openly to encourage military service, and that the Russian state will try to enlist veterans of the Afghanistan and Chechen wars in activities linked to military patriotic education and its spread in military and civilian spheres. Our hypothesis is that the determination to bring veterans together around a common project has two aims: (1) to federate veterans around the authorities and (2) to channel a population that escapes government control and some of whose excesses on their return to civilian life (violence towards the population in the context of their function, for veterans of the Interior Ministry in particular) have darkened the image of the ministries known as the “power” ministries.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Turner's turn with the CIA

Stansfield Turner: Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in Transition Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1985,304 p., $16.95.

007s Analysis of KAL's Flight 007

Alexander Dallin: Black Box: KAL 00 7 and the Superpowers University of California Press, Berkeley, 1985, 130 p., $14.95

Oliver Clubb: KAL Flight 007: The Hidden Story The Permanent Press, Sag Harbor, N.Y., 1985, 132 p., $14.95

Knowing who's who

Ernest May: Knowing One's Enemies Princeton University Press, 1985, 561 p., $29.50

British intelligence from A To Z

Anthony Read and David Fisher: Colonel Z: The Secret Life of a Master of Spies Viking, New York, 1985, 264 p., $17.95

Setting the record straight

Nigel West: A Thread of Deceit: Espionage Myths of World War II Random House, New York, 1985, 285 p., $16.95

Unreliable Witness: Espionage Myths of the Second World War In England: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1984, 275 p., £8.95.

The catcher in the lie

Paul Ekman: Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage W. W. Norton &; Company, N.Y., 1985, 320 p., $17.95

The cat's meow

William M. Leary: Perilous Missions: Civil Air Transport and CIA Covert Operations in Asia. The University of Alabama Press, Birmingham, Ala., 1984, 281 p., $22.50

Proceed with caution

Ernest Volkman: Warriors of the Night William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, 1985, 434 p., $17.95

Beyond what the facts will bear

Walter Laqueur: A World of Secrets: Uses and Limits of Intelligence New York: Basic Books, 1985, 404 p., $21.95     

The Art of Not Being Quite So Governed: An Examination of the Work of the “Critical” Journal

Michel Foucault in his lecture “What is Critique?” argues that criticism offered a response to the state's developing art of governing in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Instead of accepting the state's way of governing, critics presented alternative visions of not being quite so governed or of not being governed thusly. Similarly, in the latter half of the twentieth century, factions within academic disciplines also rejected their disciplines' mode of governing and created alternatives. In response to the desire to make political science more relevant and visible, the Caucus for a New Political Science formed as an alternative to the American Political Science Association. A similar trend occurred in other disciplines. Over the next few decades a number of academic journals were founded that included the word “critical” in their titles or explicitly stated a “critical” aim or approach. However, even dissenting academic groups, like the Caucus for a New Political Science, began to be reabsorbed within their disciplinary homes. With time, many of these groups succumbed to a degree of professionalization that perhaps inhibited their larger aspirations. As Foucault argues, the critical attitude does not reject governing altogether; it is not a call for anarchy. Rather, it demands an alternative to the current governance. The question becomes how to maintain the critical attitude while also building alternative institutions. Does institution building attenuate critique? And what then is critique? This article reflects on these questions by providing a brief study of “critical” disciplinary reorganizations, with greater attention to the Caucus for a New Political Science and its journal, New Political Science.     

Zukunftsfähige Agrarlandschaften in Deutschland – Ziele und Anforderungen aus ökologischer, ökonomischer und rechtlicher Sicht

Natur und Recht - Die global steigenden Treibhausgase verändern in zunehmenden Maße auch in Deutschland die klimatischen Verhältnisse. Betroffen sind insbesondere hiesige...     

Public trust and privacy in shared electronic health records

The development of information and communication technology in health care, also called eHealth, is expected to improve patient safety and facilitate more efficient use of limited resources. The introduction of electronic health records (EHRs) can make possible immediate, even automatic transfer of patient data, for health care as well as other purposes, across any kind of institutional, regional or national border. Data can thus be shared and used more effectively for quality assurance, disease surveillance, public health monitoring and research. eHealth may also facilitate patient access to health information and medical treatment, and is seen as an effective tool for patient empowerment. At the same time, eHealth solutions may jeopardize both patient safety and patients' rights, unless carefully designed and used with discretion. The success of EHR systems will depend on public trust in their compatibility with fundamental rights, such as privacy and confidentiality. Shared European EHR systems require interoperability not only with regard to technological and semantic standards, but also concerning legal, social and cultural aspects. Since the area of privacy and medical confidentiality is far from harmonized across Europe, we are faced with a diversity that will make fully shared EHR systems a considerable challenge.