German Defence Policy under the Second Merkel Chancellorship

The CDU/CSU/FDP coalition (2009–13) has witnessed the emergence of three important changes in the international security environment: the US ‘Asia Pivot’, the global financial crisis and the fallout from Germany's backseat role in the Libya crisis. This article examines how German defence policy has adapted to this changing context. It explores the reforms which have taken place to the Bundeswehr's structure and military capability procurement process under defence ministers Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and Thomas de Mazière. The article also looks at German policy toward defence cooperation through CSDP and NATO. The article finds that while some important changes have been enacted to German defence policy, Germany is failing to properly adapt to the changing strategic environment. The article concludes by examining key defence policy challenges facing the government over the 2013–17 legislative period and the implications of the analysis for theoretical debates on German defence policy.     

Capitalism and Bonded Labour in India: Reinterpreting Recent (Re-) Interpretations

Examined here is the way the link between capitalism and bonded labour has been interpreted and reinterpreted in the debate over the past half century about rural development in India. A number of those who initially equated debt bondage with a pre-capitalist production relation, and dismissed arguments that unfree labour and accumulation were compatible, changed their minds and espoused the interpretation they had previously opposed. Among the resulting errors perpetuated by more recent entrants to this debate is a misinterpretation of Marxist theory about both relational and systemic transition. The ensuing confusion has prevented them from understanding either the genesis of the debate about the role of unfreedom in advanced capitalism, or why – in the form of deproletarianisation – bonded labour currently serves the ends of the agribusiness enterprise.     

The politics of HIV/AIDS in South Africa: government action and public response

A decade ago it seemed likely that African governments would be destabilised by the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This article tests some of the presumptions in such forecasting with an examination of the South African case. It begins with an assessment of the effects on the public health system of the South African government’s efforts to cope with the illness. Efforts to implement universal treatment of people who are HIV-positive appear to have strengthened government, while the costs have been affordable. The efforts have extended the embrace of the public health system and prompted the engagement of civil society in policy formation and implementation. Survey evidence suggests that the government has gained public approval and that its health service delivery has become more socially accountable. Civil protest to engender political reforms in the treatment of AIDS patients has enhanced the role of constitutional checks on executive authority.     

Rejoinder

Abstract

Many of Mr. van Walt's criticisms are based solely on fabrications of his own making. For example, I am accused, twice, of referring to myself as a “scholar” and to my article as “scholarly.” I could find no trace of either. I am further accused of considering all Tibetan refugee accounts as “unreliable.” To be sure, I believe that one cannot base the study of historical events solely on refugee accounts, but that does not make all of these stories “unreliable.” After all, Dawa Norbu, a refugee himself, wrote in Red Star Over Tibet, “I never saw or heard of any case of misconduct by a Red soldier.” I would never argue that this statement was unreliable. We are further told that I refer to Tibetans as Chinese when in the second paragraph of my review I wrote, “… Tibetans [are] only one of 56 minority nationalities.” Chinese citizens yes, ethnic Hans no. A final example, although there are many more, is Mr. van Walt's attempt to attribute to me the opinion that

… the only importance to the Western academic world is that the situation in Tibet can teach us how to eliminate a “mystical religion” and that “it gives clues as to how Peking will integrate a capitalist Taiwan into a Communist China in the future”. (emphasis added)     

Old conservatism in ‘new’ clothes

This review article considers two books about development theory and practice informed by what is variously referred to as an ‘impasse'/'post‐impasse'/'post‐Marxist’ framework. The latter, its adherents maintain, is a new approach to development that transcends economic reductionism and instead recognises/celebrates cultural ‘difference’, ‘diversity’ and ‘choice’. By contrast, it is argued here that many of the allegedly ‘new’ claims/arguments advanced by the postmodern ‘impasse’ are those traditionally made not just by populism but also by conservatism.

Beyond the Impasse: New Directions in Development Theory, edited by F.J. Schuurman. London: Zed Books, 1993. Pp.ix + 233. £13.95 (paperback). ISBN 1 85649 2109

Rethinking Social Development: Theory, Research and Practice, edited by D. Booth. Harlow: Longman Scientific & Technical, 1994. Pp.ix + 319. £19.99 (paperback). ISBN 0 582 234972     

Class, territory and party: political change in Britain, 1945–1974

Abstract. Two theoretical traditions in the study of European voter alignments emphasize alternatively class and territorial structuring of mass politics. Until the 1970's the developmental paradigm resting on the class-based, stable polity model of the 1945–1970 period ruled the research agenda. The weakening of party alignments in the 1970's and the introduction of the competing territorial paradigm challenged the dominant model. This research tests both models in Britain against the supposed stability of the 1945–1970 period. The results demonstrate that while the developmental model fits Britain as a whole quite well, the introduction of regional polity analysis exposes considerable instability of voter and party alignments, uneven class development and the mobilization of cultural cleavages, dynamics which undergird the politics of cultural defence and find expression in the nationalist parties in the 1970's. In questioning the assumed stability of the 1945–1970 period the findings challenge the foundations of the current debates on realignment in Britain.