The failure of immigration reform in Germany

After many years without substantial activity in immigration policy, the German Red–Green government which came to power in 1998 introduced an American-style Green Card and a new citizenship law. From these beginnings, the immigration reform campaign captured the public imagination, and for two years a broad spectrum of figures from German public life took part in a lively debate on the issue. A law was eventually adopted by parliament and promulgated in spring 2002, but – in the wake of a voting scandal in the Bundesrat – it was struck down by the Federal Constitutional Court weeks before its scheduled entry into force. This report recounts the story of the now defunct immigration law and seeks to shed valuable light on German politics by analysing what the key differences were that divided the main political parties.     

The new Middle East

Burma: The Struggle for Independence (2 Vols.) Ed. By Hugh Tinker. London H.M.S.O. 1983/84. £95.00 each Volume.     

Are Latin American peasant movements still a force for change? Some new paradigms revisited

This article is a critique of structuralist and postmodern approaches to the study of agrarian reform and the viability, nature and significance of peasant and landless movements in Latin America. Contrary to the dominant structuralist view, we argue that peasant and landless workers’ movements in Latin America are not anachronistic but dynamic modern classes, which in many contexts play a major role in opposing the dominant neoliberal agenda. Against postmodern interpretations of such grassroots agrarian movements, we also argue that in terms of action and programme, peasant and landless workers’ movements have raised fundamental class issues, in some instances combining them with ethnic demands. Deploying a reconstituted class analysis, we examine four cases of peasant/landless workers movements currently challenging state power: the Rural Landless Workers Movement in Brazil, the Revolutionary Armed Forces in Colombia, the National Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities in Ecuador, and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Mexico. Our conclusion is that in the current context, peasant and landless workers’ movements in Latin America are engaged in a modern form of struggle, combining traditional forms of solidarity not only with the acceptance/adaptation of modern goals and techniques, but also with a strategic understanding of the levers of power in the national and international system.     

The nisi prius Trial Notes of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke

The trial notes of Chief Justices William Mansfield and Dudley Ryder have proved to be rich sources for the study of common law judicial process in the decades after 1750. Equally valuable, but hitherto unanalyzed, are the trial notes of Philip Yorke, Lord Hardwicke, compiled when he was Chief Justice of King's Bench in the mid-1730s. This study provides an account of Hardwicke's notes, comparing and contrasting their style and substance to those of Mansfield and of Ryder, thereby enlarging our appreciation of the character and treatment of civil litigation in the royal courts under George II and George III.