Economic Reform and the Strange Case of "Liberalization" in Sierra Leone

The International Monetary Fund imposes policy conditions upon Sierra Leone in exchange for loans. The country's president, however, shapes these policies into tools for his domestic struggle to control strongmen-politicians active in the informal (black) market. The president seeks political gain by manipulating creditor demands that he promote foreign in-vestment. This internal dynamic of "reform" does not accomplish creditors' public aims of supporting stronger state institutions. But creditors acquiesce in some of the president's manipulations of reforms when they generate arrears payments. Ironically, Sierra Leone's president proves able to translate creditor and foreign investor demands into political resources in his effort to bolster his extremely weak political authority.     

Rules, Discretion, and Accountability in Macroeconomic Policymaking

Arguments for rules rather than discretion in macroeconomic policymaking facilitate the understanding of some fundamental issues of democratic theory. This article reviews four such arguments, and relates them to issues of delegation and accountability in representative government.     

The Effect of Political Discussion in Producing Informed Citizens: The Roles of Information,Motivation, and Elaboration

Recent studies have demonstrated a strong empirical relationship between political discussion and political knowledge. However, as of yet there has been no clear discussion or demonstration of how political discussion translates into increased political knowledge. The present study proposes three explanations--exposure (similar to the two step flow), anticipatory elaboration (linking work on uses and gratifications and news information processing), and discussion-generated elaboration (focusing on how discussion itself can influence information processing)--for this observed empirical relationship. In order to test these three explanations, data from the 2000 ANES and a local community survey during the 1996 presidential election were employed. Findings suggest that the direct relationship between discussion and knowledge may be mediated through motivations and information processing behaviors. These findings support the anticipatory elaboration and discussion-generated elaboration explanations while questioning the exposure explanation, and link well with recent findings on the cognitive mediation model.