Building bridges across a double divide: alliances between US and Latin American labour and NGOs

Trying to build alliances that span the divide between trade unions and NGOs as well as the divide between the North and the South might seem a utopian task. But this is exactly what an imaginative new generation of organisers from the Western hemisphere's labour movements and NGOs are trying to do. This paper analyses two very different efforts working to bridge this ‘double divide’. The first is a combination of organisations, including unions and NGOs in both North and South, that are focusing on blatant violations of the dignity of workers in apparel export processing zones in the South. This ‘basic rights complex’ has resulted in important victories. A second complex of organisations, also involving unions and NGOs in both North and South, has raised broad macro issues of governance focusing particularly on the anti‐democratic character of current proposals for a free trade area of the Americas. Neither of these complexes is without its weaknesses, but each makes it clear that bridging the double divide should be thought of not as a utopian dream but as work in progress.     

Decisions: Carltona and the CUC Code

The Committee of University Chairman publishes a code of good practice designed, among other things, to ensure clarity about the authority on which decisions are taken on behalf of universities, subordinate domestic legislation created and the exercise of discretion regulated. In Carltona Ltd.v. Commissioners of Works [1943] 2 All ER 560 AC the question was whether civil servants were acting ultra vires if they acted on behalf of a competent authority without reference to that authority. Oxford and Cambridge, which preserve an ancient system of governance by direct academic democracy, remain testbeds of this principle, for their administrators are in effect their ‘civil servants’, not their managers. This article examines the questions which are arising as both universities begin to create Senior Management Teams, and the implications for the higher education sector more widely.     

INITIATING A COMPARABLE WORTH WAGE POLICY IN MINNESOTA: NOTES FROM THE FIELD

As of January 1986, Minnesota has progressed farther than any other state in implementing acomparable worth (pay equity) wage policy, with two laws requiring pay equity, one covering state employees and a second covering employees of all types of jurisdictions. This article presents a discussion of Minnesota's importance as a case study, a definition of comparable worth, the history and politics o f pay equity policy in Minnesota, and an analysis of Minnesota's role in a national campaign to change wage policy. The article shows that implementation has been more straight-forward in state government than for the 1,583 local jurisdictions, many of which had less-developed personnel systems than did the state. The passage of the local pay equity law ushered in a new stage in this policy, where the issue Is no longer controlled by a small number of legislators, bureaucrats, and lobbyists.     

Symbolic state-building in contemporary Russia

Vladimir Putin has made state-building a central goal of his presidency and recent scholarship has demonstrated that Russian formal institutions have indeed been deliberately reformed. Unlike studies that ass’ess state-building vis-à-vis a particular outcome, our research examines what kind of state Russian political elites seek to build, and focuses on symbolic state-building strategies. To capture symbolic state-building in the Putin era, we examine the Pryamaya Liniya broadcasts: annual, high-profile TV broadcasts in which citizens pose questions to the president. We find that a broad range of formal institutions appear to be central to Putin’s state-building project, a finding that runs counter to claims that governance is largely deinstitutionalized, informal and personal. We argue that symbolic state-building seeks to reconcile personalism and institutionalism, by conveying a dual image of a state in citizens’ everyday lives – emphasizing both formal institutions, while also affirming Putin as the personal guarantor of the state’s authority.     

Commonwealth Diplomacy and the End of Apartheid

This article recounts the struggle that those fighting for an end to apartheid in South Africa faced and the role that the Commonwealth played in that struggle. The author recounts the contribution of the Whitlam, Fraser and Hawke administrations in Australia in bringing down the apartheid regime but stresses that these leaders chose the Commonwealth as their primary vehicle for change. In the author’s view, the fight against apartheid was, arguably, the finest achievement of the modern Commonwealth.     

Direct and Indirect Xenophobic Attacks: Unpacking Portfolios of Identity

Political Behavior - Political threats are typically conceptualized by scholars as targeting particular groups of people. We call for also conceptualizing threats as political attacks directed...     

The Internet and Asia-Pacific security: Old conflicts and new behaviour

The positive uses of the Internet by civil society groups, research ­institutes, governments and other entities interested in promoting Asia-Pacific community building and cooperative security regimes have been studied and ­appreciated. The paper begins with a discussion of regional Internet diffusion patterns and the associated increase in Internet incidents. In the wake of 11 September 2001 and recent analysis of the 'dark side' of the Internet and networks, it then examines some of the destructive ways Internet technologies are being used by actors in the Asia-Pacific region. It provides examples from the patterns of Internet conflict involving a quadral relationship among four nodes, uncivil society, civil society, government and business as well as the pattern of conflict within each of the nodes. Finally, it looks at three topic areas - national security agendas, the making of security policy and the regional security dialogue process - that deserve further attention.     

The management of domain irrelevant context information in forensic handwriting examination casework

That domain irrelevant context information can potentially bias human decision making processes is accepted in the psychological sciences. Although many forensic pattern examination sciences use human perceptual and cognitive processes almost exclusively to form opinions regarding evidence, we have been slow to engage with any procedure that might control for any potential effects associated with context information. The critics of pattern evidence have described how opinions may be unintentionally incorrectly formed and how bodies of evidential information might conspire to form cases where the sum of the totality of the evidence may be significantly more than its specialist parts. Given the body of evidence supporting the potentially serious implications of domain irrelevant information, it was decided to introduce a context management scheme at the Document Examination Unit of the Victoria Police Forensic Services Department. Existing laboratory wide evidence submission procedures were modified in the scheme such that, as far as was agreed to be practical, all handwriting cases were stripped of all but essential information for carrying out examination and comparison tasks. As yet no negative outcomes have been reported as a result of the scheme implementation.