IMPASSE AT MCAS FUTENMA

In 1960, a Japanese prime minister was forced to resign after he committed Japan to an unpopular security relationship with the United States. In 2010, exactly fifty years later, the security relationship with the United States, centered on the stationing of a vast U.S. base complex in Japan, has unseated a prime minister who came to office just last year with an over 70 percent approval rating. In the small southern prefecture of Okinawa, where 75 percent of the U.S. military in Japan is stationed, the continued presence of the unpopular Futenma air base has become a lodestone for Okinawan frustration. High-level talks to remove Futenma from the crowded city of Ginowan have been ongoing since 1996, yet nothing has been accomplished. On 25 April 2010, an estimated 90,000 people rallied in Okinawa and demanded the base be removed from the prefecture completely, and not simply relocated to a location near the city of Nago. This essay attempts to explain Washington's central role in creating the problem and argues that Futenma is an unnecessary burden on the people of Okinawa and on cash-strapped Japanese and American taxpayers.     

Language,nation and citizenship: contrast,conflict and convergence in Estonia's debate with the international community

This paper investigates the clash of (language) ideologies in Estonia in the post-Communist period. In an analysis of changing Western recommendations and Estonian responses during the transition of Estonia from Soviet Socialist Republic to independent state, we trace the development of the discourses on language and citizenship rights. Different conceptions of the nation-state and of how citizenship is acquired, together with different approaches to human rights, led to disagreement between Estonian political elites and the political actors attached to international institutions. In particular, the Soviet demographic legacy posed problems.

We use a context-sensitive approach that takes account of human agency, political intervention, power, and authority in the formation of (national) language ideologies and policies. We find that the complexities of cultural and contextual differences were often ignored and misunderstood by both parties and that in their exchanges the two sides appeared to subscribe to ideal philosophical positions. In the following two decades both sides repositioned themselves and appeared to accommodate to the opposing view. In deconstructing the role of political intervention pressing for social and political inclusion and in documenting the profound feeling of victimhood that remained as a legacy from the Soviet period and the bargain that was struck, we hope to contribute to a deeper understanding of the language ideological debates surrounding the post-Communist nation-(re)building process.     

The Importance of Europe in the Global Campaign Against Terrorism

ABSTRACT

Terrorism and how to respond to it looms large in the current transatlantic debate, with the Europeans often being accused of failing to recognise terrorism as the major strategic issue of the early twenty-first century and thus putting their own security as well as that of others at risk. This is both true and false. It is true in the sense that fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, the Europeans still lack a global strategic vision, never mind how the threat from terrorism might impact upon it. But it is false in the sense that it understates what the Europeans can and are doing to reduce and manage terrorism on a global scale. The article is structured into four sections. The first examines terrorist activity in Europe post-9/11. The second deals with how the Europeans responded to 9/11 collectively within the EU. The third section focuses on what are termed the “outreach” activities of the Europeans via the United National Security Council, G-8, OSCE, NATO, and the European Union. And finally the article concludes that it is this outreach by the Europeans that holds the most promise for effectively countering international terrorism, that the Americans are dependent on this activity, and that the Europeans have to modify their strategic vision in order to deliver more effectively.     

Motivated to Adapt? The Role of Public Service Motivation as Employees Face Organizational Change

Researchers concerned with organizational change have consistently emphasized the role that the work environment plays in employee acceptance of change. Underexamined in the public management literature, however, is the role that employee values, particularly public service motivation (PSM), may play in employee acceptance of change. Some scholars have noted a positive correlation between employee PSM and organizational change efforts; this article extends this work by attempting to isolate the mechanisms that explain this relationship. Using data from a survey of employees in a city undergoing a reorganization and reduction in workforce, the authors find that only employees who scored high on a single dimension of PSM—self‐sacrifice—were more likely than others to support organizational change. Rather than support changes for their potential to improve public service, this finding suggests that employees with higher PSM may simply be less likely to resist changes that might disadvantage them personally.     

Policy Legacies,Visa Reform and the Resilience of Immigration Politics

Comparative scholarship tacitly assumes immigration politics to be relatively rigid. A state's immigration policy legacy is said to institutionalise policy preferences, thereby making it difficult to implement lasting reforms that are inconsistent with that legacy. This presents difficulties for states with restrictionist legacies wanting to implement liberal reforms in response to the emergence of labour shortages or demographic problems. The supposed rigidity of immigration politics is scrutinised in this article through a systematic process analysis of developments in the United Kingdom over the past decade, where the Blair government confounded the UK's characterisation as a ‘reluctant immigration state’ to implement various liberal work visa reforms. The uncoordinated nature of policymaking and implementation, and the limited involvement of state and societal institutions in the reform process, reflect the UK's historical experience with restrictionist policies, and help to explain the subsequent reintroduction of strict visa controls. The case demonstrates that policy legacies indeed play a significant role in defining the character of the policymaking institutions that shape a state's immigration politics.     

Engineering inclusion: Assessing the effects of pro-minority representation policies

In democracies, a constant tension exists between the stability and integrity of the community as a whole, and the desire to ensure minorities a voice in politics. Reserved seats and reduced thresholds are two common means by which ethnic minorities gain legislative seats, though little or no empirical work exists testing their efficacy in this regard. Combining multivariate analysis with in-depth case studies, this article shows that both reserved seats and lower thresholds increase minority representation, though reserved seats accomplish that goal more consistently. Reduced thresholds tend to increase the share of votes and seats won by ethnoregional parties but reserved seats do not. Additionally, Mauritius' unusual best-loser system aids both minorities and ethnoregional parties.     

Going beyond the Roman dictator: a comprehensive approach to emergency rule,with evidence from Latin America

The aim of this article is to contribute to the debate on emergency rule, a practice that democratic theory has struggled to conceptualize. Accordingly, this article differs from existing approaches, which mainly focus on the constitutional design of regimes of exception and tend to identify the institution of the Roman dictator as their source. In contrast, we offer a comprehensive approach, considering other historical sources of emergency rule, going beyond the dichotomy of constitutional and de facto emergency, and focusing specifically on the types of emergency powers involved: executive, legislative and judicial. We propose a different way of conceptualizing emergency rule, following a political rather than a constitutional logic, and we illustrate this different conceptualization by offering evidence from Bolivia, Chile and Guatemala to demonstrate how this comprehensive approach works in practice.     

ASSESSING OFFENDER READINESS TO CHANGE PROBLEMS WITH ANGER

It is widely acknowledged that offender rehabilitation outcomes can be improved by attending to responsivity issues, including the readiness and motivation of offenders to undertake and engage in treatment. The measurement of responsivity, readiness and motivation in offenders, however, has received relatively little research attention. In this paper we focus on anger management programmes and evaluate the utility and psychometric properties of a measure of stages of change in relation to changing anger – the Anger Readiness to Change Questionnaire (ARCQ). Using data from a large sample of offenders undergoing anger management interventions, we investigated the construct validity, convergent validity and predictive validity of the ARCQ. We conclude the ARCQ may have utility as a measure for selecting offenders who are suitable for anger management interventions.     

Responding to youth sexual offending: a field-based practice model that “closes the gap” on sexual recidivism among Indigenous and non-Indigenous males

Abstract

Most studies that have explored the impact of youth sexual offender treatment on recidivism have not assessed whether effectiveness varies for important subgroups. The present study evaluated the impact of treatment provided by the Griffith Youth Forensic Service (GYFS) on 104 adjudicated youth sexual offenders referred between 2006 and 2012. Sexual, violent and “other” offending outcomes were examined, based on Australian Indigenous cultural heritage and whether the youth resided in a remote community, over an average 2.5-year follow-up timeframe. The findings indicated that GYFS treatment was equally effective for Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth for preventing sexual recidivism and, for youth residing in remote and non-remote locations, for preventing sexual, violent and “other” recidivism. Treatment was less effective in preventing violent and “other” recidivism for Indigenous youth. The core components of the GYFS treatment programme therefore appear particularly well suited for reducing sexual recidivism by Indigenous offenders and those residing in remote communities.     

Book reviews

Elites, Parties and Democracy: Festschrift for Professor Mogens N. Pedersen edited by Erik Beukel, Kurt Klaudi Klausen and Poul Erik Mouritzen. Odense: Odense University Press, 1999. Pp.xii + 341. DKK 350 hb ISBN 87 7838 506 7.

Horses in Midstream: U.S. Midterm Elections and their Consequences 1894–1998 by Andrew E. Busch. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburg Press, 1999. Pp.ix + 254. $45 hb ISBN 0 8229 4105 8; $19.95 pb ISBN 0 8229 5705 1.

Race, Redistricting, and Representation: The Unintended Consequences of Black Majority Districts by David T. Canon. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Pp.xiv + 324. £35 hb ISBN 0 226 09270 4, £13 pb ISBN 0 226 09271 2.

Rulemaking: How Government Agencies Write Law and Make Policy by Cornelius M. Kerwin. Washington DC: CQ Press, 1998 Second Edition. Pp.x + 294. $28.95 pb. ISBN 156802 418 5.

The Republican Takeover of Congress edited by Dean McSweeney and John E. Owens. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1998. Pp.xii + 202. £42.50 hb ISBN 0 333 66965 7.

When Women Lead: Integrative Leadership in State Legislatures by Cindy Simon Rosenthal. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp.xiv + 240. £35 hb ISBN 0 19 511540 6.

Reforming the House of Lords: Lessons from Overseas by Meg Russell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp.xi + 368. £18.99 hb ISBN 0 19 829831 5.

EU Committees as Influential Policymakers edited by M.P.C.M. Van Schendelen. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998. Pp.xiv + 294 £42.50 hb ISBN 1 84014 724 5.

The Dignity of Legislation by Jeremy Waldron. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp.xiii + 206. £35 hb ISBN 0 521 65092 5, £12.95 pb ISBN 0 521 65883 7.