Migration as a Tool in Development Policy: Caution Ahead?

The World Bank and UNDP have proposed that migration and mobility facilitate economic development. Yet the epidemiological and public health literature has often associated migration and population mobility with the extension and intensification of infectious diseases, most recently epitomised by the AIDS pandemic. Within the context of the well-documented negative developmental impact of AIDS, this suggests a potential clash in perspectives on the role of migration. However, if insights from public health can be incorporated into broader development perspectives, it may be possible to realise the developmental benefits of migration while mitigating or avoiding any associated health concerns.     

Social impact assessment of regional plans: a review of methods and issues and a recommended process

Social impact assessment (SIA) is defined and related to other policy analysis techniques. Conceptual problems in conducting SIA are reviewed. Various SIA methods are identified and evaluated for their probable effectiveness in assessing regional plans. Regional planning conditions are identified and constraints to, and demands on, SIA are examined. A strategy for SIA is proposed which uses public inputs during cyclical planning iterations for efficiently identifying and assessing the most important social impacts.This article is primarily based on earlier work funded by the Kellogg Grant to the University of California at Davis (Kellogg-SRAPC Project). An earlier version of this paper was published by the Sacramento Regional Area Planning Commission (Sacramento, CA) in 1977.     

Changing biases in the operation of the UK's electoral system, 1950–97

The biased outcomes of recent British general elections, whereby the two main parties (Conservative and Labour) would have achieved different percentages of the seats in the House of Commons for the same percentages of the votes cast, are explored, using a method of bias decomposition developed by a New Zealand political scientist. Overall, the situation changed markedly between 1950 and 1997: the biases in the system strongly favoured the Conservatives in the 1950s and early 1960s, but Labour in 1992 and 1997. Examination of the seven components of the bias measure shows that most of these moved in Labour's favour over the 50-year period, with a major shift between 1992 and 1997 because of the greater geographical efficiency of the Labour party's vote at the latter date: reasons for this are suggested.     

The Geography of Insurgent Organization and its Consequences for Civil Wars: Evidence from Liberia and Sierra Leone

This article investigates the determinants of armed group organization and the downstream effects of organization on civil wars. It demonstrates that the interaction between geographical and technological factors influences the types of hierarchical organizations that armed groups develop. It then argues that variations in the types of hierarchies developed by armed groups have important consequences for principal-agent relations, which in turn affect groups' overall level of military effectiveness. Using evidence from field research conducted in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the model's plausibility is examined in comparative case studies of four armed groups that fought in those countries from 1989–2003.     

The construction of NATO's medium term defence plan and the diplomacy of conventional strategy, 1949-50

This article examines NATO's first strategic project, the Medium Term Defence Plan (MTDP) of 1950, and the plan that led to the 1952 Lisbon Force Goals, a landmark in the evolution of NATO's strategic thinking because the failure to reach the Lisbon goals allegedly drove NATO into its subsequent dependence on nuclear weapons from which it has never been weaned. The article disputes this interpretation by showing that the MTDP was conditioned by the desire of the United States to maintain its autonomy over the use of atomic weapons, and its freedom from the constraints of the new alliance. The MTDP was a paradox: a conventional strategy designed to mask the rules governing the balance of decision-making power within NATO which maintained American peripheralism against the integrative pressures of the alliance. Lisbon was actually part of a deepening nuclear commitment on the part of the United States, sustained by the willingness of the Europeans to endorse the rearmament plan in exchange for promises of further economic assistance.