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Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala, by Kirsten Weld. Durham, Duke University Press, 2014. xvi, 335 pp. $26.95 US (paper). In June 2005, investigators with Guatemala's Human Rights Ombudsman's Office (PDH) stumbled upon what appeared to be vast quantities of old papers in derelict offices of Guatemala's infamous national police. The human rights workers soon realized they had discovered the largest collection of secret state documents in Latin American history. The incredible story that follows this discovery, along with the gruesome tale that precedes it, is the heart of Kirsten Weld's brilliantly narrated and written first book. The story Weld tells, while engaging in its own right, holds concrete lessons and insights not only for scholars of Guatemala and Latin America, but for anyone interested in the politics of history and memory, the power of archives and state terror, as well as the process of postwar transition and reckoning. While the role of Guatemala's military in the state-sponsored genocide that took place in the Guatemalan countryside during Guatemala's civil war (19601996) is well known, Kirsten Weld takes us into a lesser known, but equally important, history of the national police and Guatemala City. Paper Cadavers is divided into four parts covering the initial discovery of the archive, the history of the police archive and its role in Guatemala's counterinsurgency, the role of the archives in social reconstruction at the ends of war, and finally the institutionalization of the archive and the development of a new archival culture in Guatemala. The thread tying these parts and chapters together is the national police archive itself and Weld's compelling argument for "archival thinking:" putting archives--their histories, silences, distortions, and politics--at the centre of our questions. Drawing upon recent works comprising the "archival turn," Weld argues that archives must be analyzed as "more than the sum of their parts--as instruments of political action, implements of state formation ('technologies of rule'), institutions of liberal democratization, enablers of gaze and desire, and sites of social struggles" (p. 19). The heart of Paper Cadavers is thus a story of how this one particular archive was transformed from a weapon of surveillance, social control, and ideological management for a counterinsurgent state to use against its enemies into a weapon of democratic opening in the pursuit of justice for war crimes for a demilitarized Left, victims of state terror and their families. In the first part of the book. Weld narrates the explosive discovery of the archive and the challenges faced by human rights workers as they grappled with what to do with 75-million pages documenting over a century's worth of blood-filled history. The "discovery" of the archives, however, was not entirely accidental. Beginning in the mid-1980s, family members of those disappeared and killed in Guatemala City organized around the collective demand for information about victims' fates and state transparency and their struggles provided instructive lessons for those involved in the rescue of the national police archive. The second part of the book takes up these state secrets by looking backward into the history of the national police and its archival practices. …

[Abstract] This paper reflects to the political reform and the political initiative in quarter of a century after cold war, and in addition to this, reflecting to the collapse of government of Democratic Party of Japan (DP) . At first, we try an analysis about the point of argument that has what kind of political meaning of the House of Representatives election in December, 2012 which decided to the collapse of DP Government. Next, with looking back over the political history about the political reform and the political initiative in quarter of a century, and also with exchanging the suggestion of 21 Seiki Rincho which has led the discourse of the political reform, we reflect about the state of the political initiative that DP Government was unsuccessful. Therefore, we summarize the conclusion of political reform and the political initiative in quarter of a century, we look out over the future.

The European Commission's White Paper on European Governance has attracted numerous critical comments. Some scholars seem to suggest that the whole project was over ambitious and doomed to failure from the outset, since the Commission could not complete the project without calling into question its own functional self understanding. Broadly speaking, most of the comments in the White Paper draw attention to the neglect of what is considered the European Union's core problem, that is the presumed lack of democratic legitimacy.

Mobilizing Democracy: Globalization and Citizenship Protest by Paul Almeida Mobilizing Democracy: Globalization and Citizenship Protest by Paul Almeida Review by: Edwin Amenta American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 121, No. 2 (September 2015), pp. 632-634 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/682157 . Accessed: 07/10/2015 19:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Journal of Sociology. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Wed, 7 Oct 2015 19:48:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Lungisile Ntsebeza. Democracy Compromised: Chiefs and the Politics of the Land in South Africa. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers, 2005. x + 326 pp. Maps. Bibliography. Index. $38.00. Paper. Jaap DeVisser. Developmental Local Government: A Case Study of South Africa. Antwerp, Belgium: lntersentia, 2005. Distributed by Gaunt, Inc., 3011 Gulf Drive, Holmes Beach, FIa., 34217. xix + 313 pp. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. euro59.50. Paper. As a component of both democratization and development, local government has increasingly assumed a central role in the discourse of "good governance." Reflecting the assumption that local government is inherently more democratic and responsive to the needs of the people, the power of local government is increasing under the rubric of devolution, decentralization, and deconcentration. In South Africa, this policy was enshrined in the 1997 Constitution, which marks local government as the "epicenter" of development. Localization marks a significant reverse of postcolonial models of state-led development in Africa. Until the introduction of structural adjustment, state-led development was also at the heart of the developmental programs of the international financial institutions. Since the early 1990s, however, development has increasingly emphasized decentralization of political and economic authority away from the central state toward various subnational units. The two works reviewed here thus represent important efforts to come to terms with the scope and nature of local government in the South African context. DeVisser contends that decentralization is a key tool for economic development in South Africa. For him, the establishment of developmental local government must be predicated on three principles: autonomy, supervision, and cooperation. The bulk of the work consists of exploration of these three principles in the context of the South African case. However, such decentralization can be successful only insofar as the power and autonomy of local government are institutionalized in legal structures, particularly the South African Constitution. The most important source of autonomy, argues DeVisser, is the fiscal autonomy necessary to ensure that the financial resources available to local government are sufficient to satisfy their developmental obligations and responsibilities. Reflecting the legal background of the author, DeVisser's book is at its strongest when exploring the legal framework necessary to establish local developmental government. Indeed, the text makes extensive reference to legal debates over the nature of the emerging federal system playing itself out in South African courts. The institutional model for developmental local government outlined in the text was developed through extensive consultations with local governments across South Africa. However, the text has little to say regarding the informal power relationships that underscore relations between various levels of government in a federal system. Ntsebeza offers a fundamentally different take on the nature and importance of local government in contemporary South Africa. Instead of focusing on the broad legal structures of national-local relations, he looks at the historical political economy of local rule. His analysis offers a more thorough and complete consideration of the historical position of local government in South Africa. Unlike DeVisser's book, which offers only marginal comments on the historical specificity of the South African case, Ntsebeza's text is almost exclusively historical, with most of the chapters devoted to the history of local rule in Xhalanga District, Eastern Cape, during several distinct time periods. The book offers only a brief analysis of the postapartheid system. Most impressive is the well-supported argument regarding the antidemocratic nature of rural authorities (headmen, chiefs, traditional authorities) as shown in the concrete case of Xhalanga District-an analysis that traces the evolution of rural authority from before the establishment of white colonial rule, through apartheid, and into independence. …

This article analyses the activity of the Catalan Parliament which has to do with Catalonia’s political future. The analysis begins with the parliamentary resolution of 2013 that declared the sovereignty and right to decide of the people of Catalonia and goes as far as the latest resolutions on the independence process adopted during the current legislature by the majority that came out of the elections held on 27 September 2015. All these decision have opened up a legal debate on basic constitutional principles, in particular those of democracy and legality. The debate revolves around the following points: how to defend and promote a political project that does not fit in with the established constitutional order? Can the Constitutional Court intervene in non-legal acts of a strictly parliamentary nature? What are the effects of disobeying the duty to comply with the Constitutional Court’s decisions? The article studies all these questions from a legal perspective but without neglecting socio-political considerations that are essential for putting them in the proper context., Aquest article analitza l’activitat del Parlament relacionada amb el futur polític de Catalunya. L’anàlisi parteix de la resolució parlamentària de 2013 que declarava la sobirania i el dret a decidir del poble de Catalunya i arriba fins a les darreres resolucions sobre el procés d’independència adoptades durant la legislatura actual per la majoria parlamentària sortida de les eleccions del dia 27 de setembre de 2015. Totes aquestes decisions parlamentàries han obert un important debat jurídic sobre principis constitucionals bàsics, en particular el de democràcia i el de legalitat, debat que gira al voltant dels punts següents: com defensar i promoure un projecte polític que no s’ajusta a l’ordre constitucional establert? Pot el Tribunal Constitucional fiscalitzar actes no normatius de naturalesa estrictament parlamentària? Quins són els efectes de desobeir el deure de complir les resolucions del Tribunal Constitucional? L’article estudia totes aquestes qüestions des de la perspectiva jurídica, sense ometre, però, consideracions d’índole sociopolítica indispensables per contextualitzar-les adequadament., Este artículo analiza la actividad del Parlamento relacionada con el futuro político de Cataluña. El análisis parte de la resolución parlamentaria de 2013 que declaraba la soberanía y el derecho a decidir del pueblo de Cataluña y llega hasta las últimas resoluciones sobre el proceso de independencia adoptadas durante la legislatura actual por la mayoría parlamentaria salida de las elecciones del día 27 de septiembre de 2015. Todas estas decisiones parlamentarias han abierto un importante debate jurídico sobre principios constitucionales básicos, en particular el de democracia y el de legalidad, debate que gira en torno a los puntos siguientes: ¿cómo defender y promover un proyecto político que no se ajusta al orden constitucional establecido? ¿Puede el Tribunal Constitucional fiscalizar actos no normativos de naturaleza estrictamente parlamentaria? ¿Cuáles son los efectos de desobedecer el deber de cumplir las resoluciones del Tribunal Constitucional? El artículo estudia todas estas cuestiones desde la perspectiva jurídica sin omitir, sin embargo, consideraciones de índole sociopolítica indispensables para contextualizarlas adecuadamente.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Science, Democracy, and the American University: From the Civil War to the Cold War . By Andrew Jewett . New York : Cambridge University Press , 2012. xii + 402 pp. $99.00 cloth; $32.99 paper.Book Reviews and NotesCambridge University Press has released a paperback edition of Andrew Jewett's ambitious investigation into how it is that many of America's intellectual and cultural leaders in the first half of the twentieth century came to see the country's universities--as opposed to its churches--as the arbiters and even the generators of the character traits that sustain a democratic culture. Beginning with the advent of the modern research university in the decades after the Civil War--and the subsequent rise of the social sciences--and ending with the rebellion against the social sciences and their "fatuous optimism about human perfectability" (338) that was launched in the 1940s and 1950s by historians such as Perry Miller and Arthur Schlesinger, Jewett has written a book that will probably become a staple on the exam lists of many future Ph.D. candidates in American intellectual history. I am not sure it should become a staple on the lists of those students who wish to specialize in American religious history, but Jewett certainly tells a story that will be of some interest and use to anyone who wants to interrogate the so-called "secularization" of American culture.Jewett's subject is the "massive effort to mobilize science, so successful in its industrial applications, as a resource for strengthening American democratic practices" (1). This effort, according to Jewett, was rooted in the belief that science offered Americans "the cultural and political benefits that flowed from mainline Protestantism, without the divisive theological claims and metaphysical baggage" (2). Those benefits were thought to include the formation of a collective cultural character in the United States that would "strengthen the state as a counterpoint to big business" and "make possible the modes of self-government endorsed by republicans, liberals, and democrats" (1-2).This belief in the potential of science, which Jewett calls "scientific democracy," was held by politicians and business leaders such as Andrew Dickson White and Ezra Cornell, the founders of Cornell University; it found a popular audience in the last few decades of the nineteenth century, thanks to the publishing efforts of Edward L. Youmans, the founder of Popular Science Monthly ; and it was articulated most vociferously--and perhaps most effectively, if educational reforms and regulations of industry are to be the standard of judgment--in the early twentieth century by psychologists such as John Dewey and William James, sociologists such and Talcott Parsons and Louis Wirth, philosophers and journalists such as Herbert Croly, Horace Kallen, and Walter Lippman, and anthropologists such as Franz Boas.Scientific democracy, we are told, was an alternative to liberal Protestantism, though it did not stand in opposition to liberal Protestantism. Indeed, Jewett places some of the early architects of the social gospel movement in the same camp as Croly, who was known to have had a sympathetic attitude toward August Comte's calls for a secular "religion of humanity." Jewett notes that George Herron referred to Sociology as a "science of sacrifice; of redemption; of atonement," and that Walter Rauschenbusch aligned himself with progressive reformers who had been trained at Chicago's School of Social Service when he insisted that his task as a minister was not one of "getting individuals to heaven, but of transforming the life on earth into the harmony of heaven" (75-76). …

Despite its critique of Pop Art and western consumerism, the former GDR briefly promoted the “paper dress” as an attractive, fashion novelty for its youth, consistent with the tenets of “socialist fashion.” This essay explores the phenomenon of the paper dress, putting it in the context of GDR youth policy, the growing youth culture in the country, and Cold War ideology. It argues that the GDR’s brief embrace of the paper dress, after severe state restrictions on the importation of western youth culture, was part of a gradual liberalization of GDR society.