COMRADES OR CULPRITS? DONOR ENGAGEMENT AND BUDGET TRANSPARENCY IN AID‐DEPENDENT COUNTRIES

Budget transparency has come to be considered a key aspect of governance. Over the past decade, donors have invested increasing resources in strengthening processes through which budget transparency in developing countries can be enhanced. According to the 2008 Open Budget Index (OBI) Report, however, aid dependency and budget transparency appear to be inversely correlated. This article looks at the role of donor agencies in promoting or preventing budget transparency in aid‐dependent countries. It looks at significant correlations across the whole sample of 84 countries covered in the 2008 OBI, and analyzes more specific data for a sub‐sample of 16 aid‐dependent countries, before selecting six countries for which more detailed findings are then presented. All of these countries have implemented reforms aimed at enhancing budget transparency, with substantial donor support. These, however, often had only limited success, partly because they were not well adapted to the local context, and partly because donors put limited emphasis on improving public access to budget information. Donor efforts were also often offset by other characteristics of donor interventions, namely their fragmentation, lack of transparency, and limited use of programme aid modalities such as budget support and pooled sector funding. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

POLICY TRANSFER IN IMMATURE POLICY ENVIRONMENTS: MOTIVES,SCOPE, ROLE MODELS AND AGENTS

The present study aims to contribute to the existing policy transfer research by examining the immature policy environments of post‐communist countries. To determine the main factors explaining the process of policy transfer, the establishment of probation systems in Estonia and Latvia is analyzed by applying a comparative case study design. The study demonstrates that timing is an important variable in the policy transfer in a transitional setting. A transitional context in itself is likely to lead to policy transfer because of urgent decision‐making needs, a shortage of domestic expertise and of financial resources. The process of policy transfer can be characterized as quite fortuitous: the choice of role models is limited to the existing or first contacts with foreign partners who are able to provide financial assistance. Improvement of administrative capacity is seen as a key factor in the shift from haphazard policy copying to responsible policy transfer. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘No‐one likes us; we don't care’: ‘Dissident’ Irish Republicans and Mandates

The episodic dissident republican activity evident in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement has been accompanied by regular assertions from the police, politicians and commentators that dissidents have no backing. This article examines the historic importance of mandates and support for previous and contemporary republican armed campaigns. It explores whether violent republicans have ever enjoyed widespread support in Ireland and assesses the extent to which a lack of backing has precluded violent campaigns. The piece analyses the evidence regarding the lack of sympathy for current dissident violence, assessing the degree to which armed republicanism has reached a new level of isolation.     

Evidence Based Policy: Principles of Transparency and Accountability

This article provides a practical guide for improving the quality of evidence‐based policy. Rather than adopting an approach that gives priority to particular types of research methodologies, this paper argues that evidence drawn from any methodology will improve if standards of transparency and accountability are followed in the process of gathering, analysing, interpreting, and presenting evidence for policy. The papers details what these standards of transparency and accountability mean in practice, how these standards can be achieved, and possible limits to their adoption.     

从受教育权看人权的不可分割性

根据人权的代际理论,受教育权先后被人们归属于公民权利与政治权利,经济、社会和文化权利乃至于第三代人权.事实上,受教育权沟通了三代人权并具有一种综合的权利属性.可见,各类人权不仅在价值上相互依赖,而且在权利属性上相互重合.我们不宜以人权代际理论等理论上的分类方法为依据来延缓对经济、社会、文化权利以及第三代人权的保护,要对之保持一种积极的态度.     

财产权限制措施与财产权关系之分析——财产权保障的新视角

财产权限制措施是针对财产权的占有、使用、收益、处分等权利所采取的侦查行为,其客体包括作为犯罪之物、作为证据之物和可为财产保全之物,具有证据保全、财产保全和社会保全的功能。从财产权限制措施的功能出发,厘清财产权限制措施与占有权、使用权、收益权和处分权之间的关系,是保障公民基本权利——财产权落到实处的必经之路。     

Lost Imperium: the European Liberation Front (1949-54)

In 1947, just two years after the fall of Nazi Germany, an American expatriate living in Ireland named Francis Parker Yockey wrote Imperium, a massive tome that advanced a new strategy for post-war European fascism. Yockey insisted that fascists abandon their narrow nationalist viewpoint and, instead, fight for a new European-wide fascist empire, which he dubbed the 'Imperium'. In 1948 Yockey and his closest collaborators left Oswald Mosley's Union Movement and founded the European Liberation Front (ELF), a British-based groupuscule that lasted until 1954. Rejecting the possibility of building a mass fascist movement in post-war Europe, the ELF defined its primary task as ideological: namely, the advancement of the 'Imperium' idea inside the ranks of Europe's 'fascist elite'. The ELF soon ran into stiff opposition from Mosley over Yockey's controversial identification of the United States, and not the Soviet Union, as Europe's 'main enemy'. The ELF also met with fierce resistance from Hitler worshippers inside the British right like Arnold Leese, who rejected the ELF's emphasis on 'culture' over 'race'. Despite the ELF's relatively brief existence as a groupuscule, its introduction of a new kind of 'Eurofascist' thinking has recently led to its rediscovery by contemporary European New Rightists now searching for a new political strategy following both the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the United States as the world's sole 'superpower'.     

Introduction: the history of anthropology

Abstract

On 24 January 1999 a new party was formed by the former Front national (FN) number two, Bruno Mégret. The Front national–Mouvement national was subsequently renamed twice: it became the Mouvement national (MN) following the loss of a court case, and later the Mouvement national républicain (MNR). Mégret claims that the MNR is a party not of the extreme right but of the moderate right, labelled by him the ‘national right’. This is a definition with which many political analysts in France seem to have concurred. In this article Bastow analyses the extent to which the characterization is a true one. First, he outlines the context in which Mégret formed the MNR, focusing on his political background and the strategy which he previously sought to impose on the FN. An extended treatment of the policy proposals put forward by the MNR is then followed by an analysis of the extent to which these amount to a break from an ideology which can be identified as extreme right. He concludes by assessing the prospects for the MNR's success.     

Mainstreaming populist discourse: the race-conscious legacy of neo-populist parties in Australia and Italy

Curran examines the political legacy of far-right neo-populist parties in Australia and Italy. She argues that assessments of their ‘success’ need to extend beyond the electoral decline or organizational implosion of the parties themselves. An important measure of their impact is the influence they have exerted on mainstream political discourse and styles of communication. That they have been successful in having such an impact is well illustrated in the politically expedient adoption of race-conscious, anti-immigration and anti-asylum policies in Australia and Italy. Curran examines the influence of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party and Umberto Bossi’s Lega Nord (Northern League) on the mainstreaming of populist discourse in these two countries. She focuses on some of the populist themes and styles embraced by the Australian political leader John Howard and his Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi, and she concludes that, regardless of their political fragility or outright demise, these far-right neo-populist parties have been successful in injecting populist themes and prejudices into the mainstream political discourse in their respective countries.     

Mrs Webster’s religion: conspiracist extremism on the Christian far right

Ruotsila examines the interpenetration of premillennialist Christian fundamentalism and secular conspiracy theory through a case study of Nesta Webster, the pioneer of modern Illuminati theory. He offers an alternative to the usual interpretation of Webster as an example of delusional fascist psychopathology, and roots her thinking instead in a secularized rendering of premillennialist Christian echatological thought. The article shows how Webster grew up as a Plymouth Brethren premillennialist and how, in the 1910s and 1920s, she reconfigured this premillennialism into the Illuminati theory, renaming some of the key theological concepts and instituting in their place her own cast of Jewish, Communist and apostate Christian conspirators, yet retaining the sequencing, the teleology and the general terminology of premillennialism. In such conservative propaganda and educational organizations as the Anti-Socialist Union, the Internationale contre le III:e Internationale, the British Fascisti and the Patriots’ Inquiry Centre of the so-called Die-hard movement, Webster then tried to devise strategies for combatting the influence of the Illuminati, and in so doing she always emphasized the Christian themes with which she and many of these organizations’ other activists were familiar. Ruotsila shows that Webster’s kind of conspiracism proved appealing, especially in those circles in which the categories of premillennialist eschatology survived after the original theological content had been drained from its forms. Therefore, Webster’s theories came increasingly to be appropriated not just by fascist and proto-fascist groups but, from the 1930s onwards, also by a range of respectable premillennialist clergy. Especially in the United States, where eschato­logical thought has remained a major force in popular consciousness into the twenty-first century, while losing much of its original doctrinal coherence, Webster’s theories were co-opted and blended with the original meanings of premillennialism.