Opposition politics in Malawi: hopeful signs amid the warnings

Across Africa, governments are either peacefully and legitimately ousted, or forced to share power, through the ballot box. In Malawi, the emergence of many political parties since the advent of a multiparty dispensation in 1993 signalled the flourishing of pluralism and opposition politics. However, in the May 2009 elections, the Malawi Congress Party and the United Democratic Front, which constituted the opposition, were largely rejected by the electorate in favour of President Bingu Mutharika's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), credited for his sound economic policies emulated internationally. The reduced presence in parliament of parties outside of the Democratic Progressive Party coalition is troubling. This development has stimulated debate on the opposition's role and ability to defend democratic governance, and the challenges facing it. On the other hand, the DPP's landslide victory has to some degree demonstrated that it is possible to ‘de-regionalise’ and ‘de-ethinicise’ the configuration and alignment of political interests and forces, confirming for other African countries that the analysis of African politics need not be oversimplified into ethnic and cultural terms as is often the case. This paper contends that democratic governance is promoted by a credible opposition that effectively acts as an alternative government. Therefore, there is need for addressing the major factors that militate against its operations to enable it play its rightful role in Malawi's emerging democracy.     

Exploratory spatial analysis of crimes against property in Turkey

Turkey, a rapidly developing country, is a junction point between Asia and Europe in terms of its social and economic structure. Turkey is both the most advanced economy in the Turkish-speaking world and the largest economy in the Muslim world. In the last few years, with the development of Turkey’s economic and social structure, the level of criminality in the country has attracted attention. Consequently, we aimed to explore potential spatial associations of crimes against property rates across the 81 provinces of Turkey (NUTS3) from 1997 to 2009. Geographical information systems and explorative methods of spatial data analysis were employed in the analyses of crime rates. Since crime is a phenomenon that arises from the interaction between social, economic, psychological circumstances and, especially, geographical factors, this study attempts to rectify the possible deficiencies of traditional statistical analyses of geography. Because of the very different population sizes in each province, comparing the volume of crimes makes a major impact on the stability of the crime rates; therefore in this study an empirical Bayes smoothing method was used to interpret the crime rates correctly. Global spatial autocorrelation indices were used to test the spatial dependence of the distribution of the crime rates. Besides the excess risk rates, local spatial autocorrelation methods were used to detect and interpret the clustering of crime rates. In order to model the crime rates, a set of socioeconomic parameters (migration rates by province, gross national product according to purchasing power parity by province, registered number of touristic facilities and number of rooms by province, electricity consumption statistics, provincial unemployment rates and urbanisation index values were handled with geographically weighted regression. According to the results, criminal activities were non-random in terms of time and space. Property crime, except for smuggling, is densely clustered in the west and south-west of Turkey. The present study demonstrates the utility of spatial analysis and geographically weighted regression to detect some important geographical dimensions and crucial geographical aspects of property crimes in Turkey.     

Civil commitment in Turkey: reflections on a bill drafted by psychiatrists

Involuntary hospitalization of the mentally ill has been an issue that still remains outside the judicial system in Turkey. Despite the new Turkish Civil Code, which includes several articles relevant to involuntary psychiatric hospital admissions, there still appears to be a need for a comprehensive mental health law to address specific issues concerning civil commitment of the mentally ill. As a result of the lack of specific statutory regulation, an insufficient number of psychiatric hospital beds and limited appreciation of the safety risks involved in untreated mental illness, involuntary hospitalization remains an underutilized option by psychiatrists and the courts alike. In response to its concerned members, the Psychiatric Association of Turkey has appointed a task force to draft a proposed mental health law, entitled the "Psychiatric Patients' Bill of Rights." Although the draft suggests a model with emphasis on the right to psychiatric treatment, it also recommends close judicial oversight to prevent potential abuses of discretion by the system. However, this might present logistic problems in a country with already overburdened courts. Authors discuss the highlights of the draft within the context of Turkey's current cultural, social and judicial structure, and compare it to similar laws of other countries.     

A Cross-Country Comparison of Corruption and Public Expenditures: A Panel Data Approach

Corruption is an especially serious problem for all countries, and has damaging effects on sustainable economic growth. Although there is a significant relationship between corruption and public expenditures, the degree and way of this relationship is changed according to countries. The main objective of this article is to analyze the relationship between corruption and the level and composition of public expenditures, using data from 21 countries which are classified as countries in above and below average corruption perception indices. In empirical analysis, panel data were used in modeling of the effects of corruption on public expenditures. The empirical results show the findings support the hypothesis that the composition of public expenditures has an important element on corruption for countries.     

Flagging Turkishness: the reproduction of banal nationalism in the Turkish press

This article explores banal nationalist themes and symbols in the Turkish media on the basis of the study by Michael Billig titled “Banal Nationalism”. In this study, we used content analysis method to reveal how the key concepts that encompass the idea of the nationhood have been propagated within presentations of the daily news. The research sampling consisted of 36 daily newspapers of the mainstream Turkish media dated 3th February 2010. Our analysis revealed that even in an ordinary day when nationalist themes or developments were not intensely situated in the newspapers, nationhood was reproduced via both nationalist language forms and classifications of “us” and “them”, praise of the nation/country, and the emphasis on common interest or common history. This further highlights the constant transformation of nationalism, underlining its allusions and evocations not as a forgotten ideology but as something that is being reproduced in an unnoticed way every day and survives as a principal determinant of daily life activities. In addition, although it is not possible to see overt dichotomies or expressions of feeling within each part of the news or in every column, we found that the nation was implied or the national sentiments were presented.     

Rising Powers in a Changing Global Order: the political economy of Turkey in the age of brics

The rise of bric s presents a major challenge to the existing global order. A second category of emerging powers, which may be labelled near- bric s, have also displayed increasing pro-activism in recent years in terms of influencing the regional balance of power politics, in addition to their growing presence in international organisations and global affairs. It is in this context that we aim to examine Turkey as a striking example of a ‘near- bric ’ power, a country that has adopted an increasingly assertive and independent style of foreign policy with aspirations to establish itself as a major regional actor. Using the Turkish experience as a reference point, this paper aims to understand the extent to which near- bric countries possess the economic capacity, sustainable growth performance and soft-power capabilities needed to establish themselves as significant regional and global actors. The recent Turkish experience clearly highlights both the potential and the limits of regional power activism on the part of emerging powers from the ‘global South’.     

Arab Local Government in Israel: Partial Modernisation as an Explanatory Variable for Shortages in Management

About one-third of all local and regional councils in Israel are Arab. Ever since their establishment, and especially during the last decade, the Arab authorities have suffered from financial crises and from administrative and organisational deficiencies that jeopardize their functioning. Arab local politics is characterised by the increased strength of traditional clan-affiliated forces, at the expense of modern representative groups. The present article has tried to explain the problems that beset the management of Arab local government in Israel. We believe that the explanation is rooted in the fact that ‘partial modernisation’ is the dominant explanatory variable for Arab local government shortages.