IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL? POST‐CONFLICT STATEBUILDING,PEACEBUILDING, AND THE GOOD GOVERNANCE AGENDA IN TIMOR‐LESTE

Statebuilding after conflict often entails liberal peacebuilding measures. The end of the UN mission in post‐conflict Timor‐Leste in December 2012 provides a unique opportunity to investigate statebuilding in practice. The liberal peacebuilding agenda has met with stiff academic resistance—mainly from the critical theorist camp—and is questioned as an appropriate measure of …statebuilding success. We deploy instead the good governance (GG) agenda as a hybrid local‐liberal guide. Drawing on field work, interviews, and secondary documents, we investigate what we see as four key, intertwined and overlapping aspects of GG: state capacity including the establishment of a state bureaucracy, participation and the engagement of civil society, institution building and rule of law, and corruption control and transparency. We note GG provides a useful policy heuristic, while abstract “one‐size‐fits‐all” liberal peacebuilding models, which avoid the complexities of machinery of government issues, the time taken to develop institutions, and historical and contextual environments of countries, are likely to face severe problems. New states may be dependent on external forces to maintain monopoly of violence. The reversibility and uncertainty of statebuilding and the decades‐long commitment needed by international agencies are noted. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Public administration and the rule of law

This article deals with the enduring problem of administrative discretion in the modern American democratic-constitutional state. In the American constitutional tradition, administrative action is legitimate when and only if it adheres to the rule of law. This implies that administrators must be able to link directly their actions to grants of authority in statutes or the Constitution. But the growth of the state apparatus and the increasing intensification of the public administration's role in society have necessitated rather broad legislative grants of discretion to the bureaucracy. The result has been a seemingly perennial tension between the rule of law ideal and the modern administrative reality.

Attempts to control discretion via evolving doctrines of administrative law have proved unsatisfactory for a variety of reasons explored in this essay. The most important shortfall has been that the continuing expansion of the administrative state threatens directly the rule of law itself. After a survey of the weaknesses of these doctrines, we conclude that the rule of law is fundamentally incompatible with the necessary work of administration in the modern American state. Administrative discretion is thus seen to pose an intractable problem for the liberal democratic society, which accounts for its problematic persistence.     

British scientists,Lysenko and the Cold War

This study describes the impact of the Lysenko controversy in Britain. In particular, it delineates the way in which it became part of the means by which science and ideologies about scientific work were restructured during the forties and early fifties. As such the Lysenko controversy in Britain had, like its Soviet counterpart, social and political roots and effects.     

Housing and ethopolitics: constructing identities of active consumption and responsible community

Recent developments in social housing policy, including large-scale stock transfers, have been proclaimed as marking ‘the death of council housing’ in the UK. The decline of public housing and new techniques for the governance of social housing provision are symbolic of the transformation of welfarist social regimes in advanced liberal democracies. This paper explores recent social housing policy in the UK and suggests that policy developments reflect changes in technologies for governing the conduct of social housing tenants and practitioners. The ethopolitics (Rose 2001) of social housing are characterized by emerging identities of active, entrepreneurial consumption and the invocation of responsibilized community. The paper examines how ethopower is manifested through technologies of social housing governance and identifies conflicts inherent within this new politics of conduct.     

French capitalism ­transformed,yet still a third variety of capitalism

Rather than one or two varieties of capitalism, this paper argues that there are still at least three in Europe, following along lines of development from the three post-war models: market capitalism, characteristic of Britain; managed capitalism, typical of Germany; and state capitalism, epitomized by France. While France’s state capitalism has been transformed through market-oriented reforms, it has become neither market capitalist nor managed capitalist. Rather, it has moved from ‘state-led’ capitalism to a kind of ‘state-enhanced’ capitalism, in which the state still plays an active albeit much reduced role, where CEOs exercise much greater autonomy, and labour relations have become much more market-reliant.     

Anticommunautarisme and the government of religious difference

Abstract

The 1901 Law on Associations and the 1905 Law on the Separation of Churches and the State constitute enduring landmarks in the government of religion in France. With these statutes, a religiously neutralized public space came into being, for the purpose of governing a religiously (and ideologically) divided population. A consideration of the legislative history throws light on the related concepts of laïcité and anticommunautarisme, without caricaturing the ‘secularist’ institutions of a French state where – as in other European liberal regimes – religious associations now play a definite but limited role in areas of governmental concern.     

Natural and political markets: organizing the transfer of technology and knowledge

Abstract

The author inquires into the performative role of calculative devices, and develops the notion of political markets by drawing upon an empirical case of the transfer of flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). Drawing on the work of Michel Callon, the author claims the natural market to be a special case of the political market, its existence being highly dependent upon calculative devices. The aggregated simulation models and investment calculations of economics were instrumental in establishing the necessary conditions of the natural market. Yet, it remained only a temporally stabilized configuration. With the emergence of reflexive economic agencies, the market also underwent unexpected reorganizations. Finally, the author summarizes the theoretical and practical implications by proposing the twin notions of engineering-oeconomicus and the normalizing market residual.     

Contrarian investment philosophy in the American stock market: on investment advice and the crowd conundrum

Abstract

This paper contributes to the understanding of the role of crowds in the financial market by examining the historical origins and theoretical underpinnings of contrarian investment philosophy. Developed in non-scientific, practice-oriented ‘how to’ handbooks in 1920s and 1930s America, contrarian investment advice was aimed at so-called small investors rather than well-established market practitioners. Emerging out of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century debates about public participation in the stock market, the contrarians expanded on a widely held (amongst financial writers) scepticism about the investment and speculation skills (or lack thereof) of the masses and adopted ideas from the theoretical discipline of crowd psychology, whereby they positioned the mass (i.e. the crowd) in opposition to the successful investor. I argue that despite its idiosyncrasies, the contrarians’ conception of the market based on crowd psychology points to a fundamental fragility of market participants, which still lingers on in recent debates about the wisdom of financial market crowds.     

Popperian Peacebuilding,Policing and the Liberal Peace

Abstract

In light of the quarrelling between advocates and critics of the liberal peacebuilding agenda, this article calls for the adoption of a ‘Popperian’ approach. This approach would be one that seeks to identify and address the greatest evils to fundamental liberal principles rather than undertaking swift and sweeping liberalization projects. Tolerance is therefore advocated in all matters that fall outside of this remit in order to temper the current zeal displayed by the liberal peacebuilding agenda. The article then considers how Popperian approaches and the ideal of tolerance were lacking in the case of peacebuilding in the security sector in Timor-Leste. In failing to ensure a clear separation of police and military forces that are apolitical, loyal to the state and professional in serving the liberal democratic polity, for example, international actors inadvertently allowed a ‘great evil’ to emerge. Rather than being distracted and diluted by a sweeping range of goals, international actors should seek to work from these fundamental concepts and be prepared to negotiate on less urgent matters.     

The Financial Viability of Housing for Mentally Ill Persons

Abstract

Although persons with serious mental illness experience significant unmet housing needs, basic information on how housing is successfully financed, developed, and operated for them is lacking. It is possible that standard housing rules of thumb may not apply to this population. (For example, community opposition may raise development costs.) This lack of information may be a stumbling block to policy makers, planners, and developers.

This article attempts to close the gap by examining the financial profile of 153 properties developed for persons with serious mental illness by five nonprofit housing corporations between 1988 and 1992. Our analysis suggests that although this housing may require more management attention, it is not fundamentally different from market‐rate housing for low‐income tenants. After more than 10 years, the nonprofit housing developers continue to thrive, and virtually all of the properties continue to serve persons with mental illness, demonstrating that such housing can be successfully developed and operated.