Eurodad's campaign on multilateral debt: The 1996 HIPC debt initiative and beyond

'Multilateral debt is not a widespread problem for Severely Indebted Low Income Countries' wrote the World Bank in September 1994. Two years later, the International Financial Institutions-the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund-agreed to a proposal to bring the debt of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) to sustainable levels. While imperfect, the proposal went some way to meeting the demands of NGOs which, with progressive forces both within the World Bank and among creditor countries, have played a crucial role in this process. While the multilateral debt problem is now too great to ignore, the authors maintain that it has been the persistent pressure of these players that has been responsible for the enormous progress made by the IFIs.     

The Normality of the Exception in Democracy's Empire

The motif is one of inversion. In its received mode, the exception – the exceptional decision suspending the normal legal order – generates both the sovereign and the law. Here, on the contrary, the exception is found to be of the 'normal' law and, thus endowed, law goes to constitute the sovereign. This normality of the exception is then matched with the sovereign claim of democracy's empire. That empire is thence shown to have an oxymoronic quality, democracy and its constituent law being conducive to empire yet ultimately opposed to it. The empire of the United States of America provides a 'case'.     

Concession or compromise? The politics of abortion in United Germany

Most GDR policies instituted to secure women's equality between 1949 and 1989 have been dismantled in the name of German unity, including freedom of choice regarding abortion. That right ceased to exist in May 1993, when the Constitutional Court imposed a number of western restrictions on eastern women as the new law of the land. This study addresses the post‐unity search for an acceptable compromise between the western constitutional mandate of foetal protection and the eastern guarantee of a woman's right to choose. It argues that a three‐year reform process which should have provided a positive introduction to the art of democratic compromise served instead as a negative socialising experience for Germans in the new Lander. Besides denying them a chance to render a meaningful policy contribution to their new state, the nature of the process has distorted East German perceptions of the quintessential ‘balance of power’ between legislative and judicial institutions under democracy. ‘Compromise’ has been attained, but consequences for the German Rechtsstaat are not all positive.     

Transportation infrastructure and regional economic development in China

This study examines the trend of transportation investment and analyzes the effect of transportation investment on regional economic development in China. Results from cross-section analysis indicate that those provinces that have invested more in transportation infrastructure tend to have greater output.     

Professionalism as Bar Politics: The Making of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct

Based on extensive archival research, this article offers a political account of the six-year process in which the ABA developed its latest ethics code for lawyers, the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. The article casts doubt on the validity of several functionalist and critical theories about the provenance and significance of professional ethics codes generally and the ABA's codes in particular. It evaluates the Model Rules process as an instance of de facto law making by a private group. And it identifies a lawyer's "professionalism-in-fact"–a set of common themes in the way lawyers currently think about the field of legal ethics. At the same time, however, the article stresses the ethical pluralism and structural differentiation of today's legal profession and roots the ethical preoccupations of various types of lawyers in the circumstances of their particular practices.