Ethnicity and participatory development methods in Botswana: Some participants are to be seen and not heard

Participatory methods are increasingly being used in development work at grassroots level in Africa. Western liberal concepts like 'one person one vote' underlie these methods. However, such concepts may not be easily compatible with a grassroots reality in which ethnicity (i.e. superior and subordinate ethnic identities) is an important factor shaping the social order. This article provides insights into the socio-political realities of ethnicity at village level in Botswana. The tension between participatory methods and the ethnically structured village reality are illustrated with examples from a project that tested the relevance of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) in Botswana. The authors identify problems and opportunities of participatory methods in addressing the inequalities in ethnically divided communities.     

World Cricket as a Postcolonial International Society: IR Meets the History of Sport

This article brings together the English School literature, postcolonial approaches to culture, the historical sociology of sport, and IR's own tentative engagement with sport to argue that world cricket constitutes a sui generis postcolonial international society in the sporting sector. The international society tradition within IR has been criticised for its failure to take sufficient note of the history of imperialism, and contributions from postcolonial scholarship can provide a necessary corrective here. However, the adoption of cricket in colonial societies involved a complex mixture of acceptance of and resistance to elements of British imperial culture, as has been documented in the work of some historical sociologists of sport and of philosophers of cricket such as C.L.R. James and Ashis Nandy. Contemporary world cricket is an arena in which the former imperial centre and a number of postcolonial states compete with each other within a framework of quasi-legal provisions (the Laws of Cricket), associated normative expectations (“The Spirit of Cricket”), and an international/transnational sporting organisation (the International Cricket Council). The concept of a geographically (but not regionally) limited, historically specific, and sectoral international society therefore still has some purchase here. This sphere is currently being shaped not by a clash between imperial values and postcolonial resistance, but by tension between the routinisation of international cricket and a shift of wealth and power within the game towards India. World cricket can be characterised as a sphere of non-violent sporting competition which may, perhaps, function as a source of international civility in relations between regions of the world influenced by British imperialism.     

Levels of Generality in the Legal Reasoning of the European Court of Justice

The level of generality or of abstraction used to describe a precedent, a right, or the legislative intent behind a statutory provision or constituent purpose behind a constitutional provision can have a decisive impact on the outcome of a case. Characterising it in narrow terms has the effect of reducing the scope of decision of a judgment; conversely, a broader characterisation provides more leeway for a judge in a case to encompass its facts within the precedent, right or purpose in issue. The issue raised by the level of generality problem is the extent to which courts have a discretion or freedom of manoeuvre as to the level of generality they decide upon, and thus whether generality and abstraction are manipulable in the hands of judges and are not really predetermined by the legal sources in question or an established judicial method of interpretation. Uncontrolled judicial discretion of this kind is problematic from the point of view of the rule of law and democracy, especially when adjudication concerns constitutional provisions, the equivalent in the EU being interpretation by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) of the EU Treaties; reversal of ECJ interpretation through Treaty amendment is particularly difficult to achieve because it requires unanimous coordination by the Member States. This article examines two alternative ways of determining the correct or appropriate level of generality issue in ECJ interpetation, coherence or the legal traditions of the Member States, and argues in favour of the latter as a less subjective method. Application of the two alternative approaches is tested in two areas of EU law, state liability and criminal law.     

Rebel movements and proxy warfare: Uganda, Sudan and the Congo (1986-99)

Sudan and Uganda have for many years carried out an undeclaredwar. One little-known aspect of this conflict is the use ofZaire/Congo as an outside battlefield where proxy guerrillaorganizations either fought each other or fought the armiesof their sponsor’s enemy. From a small scale prior to1996, the conflict grew to occupy a major place in terms ofmen engaged and battles fought after this proxy war morphedinto the bigger ‘Congolese’ conflict which developedfrom the fall of President Mobutu and lasted until 2002.     

Construction of contracts and the role of 'entire agreement' clauses

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. Key points

• The construction of commercial contracts has seena shift from a strict to a liberal philosophy of constructionand this has had an impact on commercial agreements and actors.
• Thereis an ongoing debate concerning the widening background or matrixevidence to include prior negotiations, reflecting the desireof parties to insulate commercial agreements from collateralterm arguments or other recourse to wider materials.
• This hasin part led to the emergence of ‘entire agreement’and ‘non-reliance’ clauses.
• This article considersthe construction of such clauses and whether such clauses takeeffect through construction or estoppel reasoning. It also looksat the merits of estoppel by representation and ‘estoppelby contract’, the impact of Unfair Contract Terms Act1977 and Misrepresentation Act 1967, and the effect of waiverof clause.

  The law of contract is fundamental to all markets, and participantsin wholesale markets are wedded to the . . . [Full Text of this Article]