Downward accountability of NGOs in community project planning in Ghana

This article examines the downward accountability of NGOs in community project planning in Ghana. It is based on primary data collected through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with NGO officials, local government officials and representatives, chiefs, women leaders, and other community members. The findings reveal that although community members were engaged in project planning processes in many respects, these engagements were limited to endorsing pre-prepared plans, decisions, and mundane aspects of the project. The engagements were largely tokenistic, rhetorical, and to garnish legitimacy, and lacked the key elements of empowerment which promoted downward accountability.     

Informal interference in the judiciary in new democracies: a comparison of six African and Latin American cases

This article focuses on the efforts of power holders – at the executive or the legislative level – to influence or curb court activity informally or extra-legally, an acknowledged but under-researched topic in studies of judicial politics. We first define informal judicial interference and operationalize the concept; we then explain how we collected information on the topic through systematic cross-country interviewing. Our concept focuses on judicial intervention actions exercised by political actors once judges are on the bench. We distinguish these actions according to type – direct or subtle – and further differentiate each type according to six different modes. We provide new empirical data on informal interference in six third-wave democracies, three in Africa (Benin, Madagascar, and Senegal) and three in Latin America (Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay). Our empirical findings, first, confirm the importance of informal practices in shaping political-judicial relations. Second, they point to long-standing legacies and to the level of socio-economic development as possible explanations for different performances in terms of the prevalence and severity of informal interference in the judiciary in these newly established democratic regimes     

Hybrid security governance in Africa: rethinking the foundations of security,justice and legitimate public authority

This article asks whether the concept of ‘hybridity’ offers a more convincing account of security governance in Africa than the standard state-focused models. It seeks to clarify the complex intersections between formal and informal, state and non-state security actors, and the varied terrains on which hybridity is constructed, instrumentalised and recalibrated over time. Rather than romanticising informal or ‘traditional’ institutions, it suggests that they too embed their own power hierarchies, become sites of contestation, and do not work equally well for everyone, least of all for the weak, vulnerable and excluded. Thus the focus is placed upon the real governance of security in hybrid systems, and the patterns of inclusion and exclusion (including gender biases) they reinforce. Finally the paper considers how policy-makers and shapers can work with the grain of hybrid security arrangements to create more legitimate, broadly-based and effective African security governance.     

Ethnopolitical demography and democracy in sub-Saharan Africa

Ethnic fragmentation is largely presumed to be bad for democracy. However, many African countries belie this claim, as democracy has recently sprouted in several of its multiethnic states. We argue that African countries that have demographic patterns where the largest ethnopolitical group is at least a near-majority and is simultaneously divided into nested subgroups produce Africa's most democratic multiethnic societies. This large-divided-group pattern, which has gone largely unnoticed by previous scholars, facilitates transitions to democracy from authoritarian rule. The large group's size foments the broad-based multiethnic social agitation needed to pose a genuine threat to a ruling autocrat, while its internal divisions reassure minorities that they will not suffer permanent exclusion via ethnic dominance under an eventual democracy. We support our claim with cross-national quantitative evidence on ethnic fragmentation and regime type.     

Border Security and Drug Trafficking in Senegal: AIRCOP and global security assemblages

Transnational security governance initiatives in West Africa, operationalized through international statebuilding interventions, are altering the sub-region’s borders and border enforcement. The article employs a practice-oriented ‘global security assemblages’ approach to demonstrate how border security professionals compete over how, who, and where to secure the border from borderless threats like drug trafficking. The article demonstrates this theoretical position empirically through an analysis of struggles over a flagship drug control project implemented by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) at Senegal’s Leopold Sédar Senghor (LSS) airport—AIRCOP. Senegalese customs, police, and gendarmes simultaneously cooperate and compete with international actors, private actors based at the airport, and amongst themselves, over how to curb drug trafficking. Through these competitive struggles over who should be the border’s guardian and how it should be guarded, it can be seen how new security practices and understandings are devised, as well as how borders become (re)constituted within the connected spaces of global security assemblages.     

西部外商投资软环境中存在的问题及对策

投资环境是影响和制约外商投资活动的重要因素。我国西部投资软环境中存在思想观念守旧、劳动力素质普遍较低、市场经济体制滞后、政策环境较差、政府机构办事效率低下、法律和监管不健全等问题,影响了外资的大量流入。改善西部投资软环境应从以下几方面着手:转变观念,提高对外资的认识;加速人才培育,开发人力资源;加快西部地区市场化体制改革的步伐;完善外资的政策环境;提高西部地区政府机构的办事效率;优化法制环境。     

Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Does Physical Geography Affect a State's Conflict Risk?

This article considers why and how physical geography may influence conflict patterns within African states. It juxtaposes arguments relating to four features of the physical environment— distance, resources, terrain, and size—to those purporting rebels base insurgency tactics on the strategic value of locations. Using GIS and spatial econometrics, a geographically disaggregated dataset of population, distance to capitals, borders, resources, terrain, and road densities is tested against conflict data from ACLED (Armed Conflict Location and Events Dataset). ACLED disaggregates data on internal conflict into georeferenced individual events. The analysis covers six of the most conflict prone states in Central Africa. The analysis confirms that an area's physical attributes do not have a uniform effect on the likelihood of experiencing a conflict event. Areas of high strategic value, including densely populated areas and military zones, have a higher risk of conflict than rural, peripheral areas.     

新南非的包容性发展之路——非国大100周年纪念

南非曾经是种族矛盾和冲突最为严重的国家,300多年欧洲殖民者的征服和统治,造成了南非种族间政治、经济、社会的割裂与对抗。1994年南非废除种族隔离,建立了种族平等的民主制度。新南非政治社会变革和转型的进程,避免了很多人担忧的种族仇杀和动乱,关键在于坚持了包容性理念和政策,构建了以宪法为核心的一整套法律体系,以保障国家统一和公民基本权利为基本宗旨,在多元一体国家的建设中,取得了举世公认的社会进步。研究南非在新制度下的包容性发展之路,具有重要的现实意义和理论意义。     

谷崎润一郎的唯美历程说略

谷崎润一郎是日本近现代文坛重要作家之一,其成长轨迹体现了日本明治、大正、昭和时期东洋与西洋文化交错影响下文人的心路。纵观谷崎润一郎的文学创作,可以看到在不同时期、不同作品中,体现着不同的美感追求,本文将通过探讨唯美主义的发生与流变,努力廓清谷崎润一郎的唯美历程。     

中国西部地区旅游业全要素生产效率研究

文章通过引入扩展的索洛剩余模型,利用2000—2009年中国西部地区12个省（区、市）的面板数据对旅游经济发展的要素投入和全要素生产效率（Total Factor Productivity,TFP）进行计量分析后发现：（1） 旅游业固定资产投入、人力资本投入、旅游基础设施投入和旅游服务设施投入共同促进了西部地区旅游经济的快速发展;（2） 西部地区旅游经济发展仍然处于规模报酬递增阶段,规模报酬系数为1.4278,旅游要素投入仍将促进旅游经济发展;（3） 但值得注意的是,西部地区旅游业TFP较低,考察期内年均进步速率仅为2.98%。今后,需在加强旅游要素投入、完善基础设施建设的同时,充分重视旅游业TFP的提高。