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In Africa, international donors have increasingly promoted democracy and election monitoring. Do Africans want them to do this or would they prefer some other purpose? We argue respondents will least prefer democracy compared to other purposes because (i) there are other possible uses, like healthcare, that are more in need; (ii) aid has a political salience of control that other purposes do not have; and (iii) democracy and monitoring in Africa often yield negative externalities, while other purposes produce positive externalities. To test this claim, we conducted two rounds of survey experiments in Côte d'Ivoire and Uganda, and then again in Côte d'Ivoire with an extension to Senegal. Our surveys employ a conjoint analysis in which respondents compare two possible development projects. Each survey includes several dimensions, including the project's purpose, which is where we locate democracy and monitoring and alternative purposes such as healthcare or education. Results indicate that democracy and monitoring are the least preferred purposes compared to other purposes. This does not mean that they do not want democracy, nor that they do not want donors to promote democracy, but rather that compared to other possible purposes, democracy is the least preferred use of aid funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of environmental politics and policy experts have long debated whether climate change can be linked to violent conflict. I present a new framework called human–environmental–climate security (HECS), which integrates critiques of traditional security frameworks while offering a systematized method of process tracing. Using existing concepts of vulnerability and resilience, I illustrate the empirical utility of centering the human subject and local conceptions of security when analyzing the role of climate in armed conflict. I develop this framework using the cases of Syria, Sudan, and Morocco. I argue that the ecological drivers of conflicts in Sudan and Syria are best understood as a result of policy decisions that reflected the ideology and preferences of ruling elites rather than direct functions of climate change. Conversely, I present the case of Morocco as a counterfactual in which sound government policy attenuated environmental drivers of conflict. In doing so, this approach considers the impacts of international and domestic structures of inequality on people's climate vulnerability and resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past decades have seen a rise in religious and secular responses to inequality that seek to offer those who are relatively wealthy an opportunity to personally engage with impoverished people and places. This article examines three cases of elite white South Africans who intentionally immersed themselves in poor urban environments. In dialogue with the anthropology of ethics, I argue that immersion was seen as an experimental tool for transforming the self and cultivating virtues of empathy and responsibility towards others. In this way, immersion acted as a technology of the self, linking care of the self to care of others. Yet such experimentation was not without risk. Though imagined as a tool that could promote care of the self and care of others, immersion carries with it the potential to reinforce power divides and/or solicit negative moral judgment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2004, Haiti has been under foreign occupation. The nature and history of this occupation are contested, but the facts of occupation can be easily documented. This essay deploys the timeline technique as ethnographic narrative and analysis—as well as testimony and archive—to demonstrate how consistent the imperial assault on Haitian people and Haitian sovereignty has been and remains. I see this project as offering a set of theoretical and analytical tools that force direct engagement with the messiness of neocolonial imperialism while showing how Haitian people themselves reject and contest imperialism's presumed inevitability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 9/11 attacks claimed the lives of thousands of New Yorkers and also devastated the economy in Lower Manhattan. Many local businesses and restaurants were forced to close, and thousands of residents were displaced from their homes. For more than a decade, the neighborhoods surrounding the World Trade Center site struggled to stay afloat economically. However, recent years have witnessed the revitalization of this area as developers have built new office and retail spaces as well as museums and memorials that attract visitors from around the globe. Drawing from fieldwork conducted between 2010 and 2017, this article analyzes the significance of these rapid economic developments for individuals who were personally affected by the attacks. Some persons condemned the changes as immoral, believing that money and respectful remembrance cannot coexist. Others viewed the revitalization as redemptive, the product of the communitas that had united citizens after the tragedy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research concerning authoritarian stability and peace usually investigates co-optation and repression. Recently, several studies argue that traditional legitimacy is also important for stability in monarchies. However, existing research rarely considers how legitimacy constrains rebellions and help the royal family to stay in power. Hence, this article explores the causal links between sources of traditional legitimacy and absence of uprisings. The study investigates the relationship with a case study of the Kingdom of Swaziland. In line with my expectations, I find a causal relationship between sources of traditional legitimacy and absence of popular uprisings. First, the royal family actively uses traditional legitimacy to justify their rule. Second, the Afrobarometer indicates that the Swazi people trust the King more than citizens in other African countries trust their head of state. Third, opposition actors have limited opportunities to mobilize the broader population against the monarchy. Fourth, traditional legitimacy dampens ongoing protests and thereby hinders their escalation into popular uprisings or political violence. Repression is clearly an important explanation for limited rebellion in Swaziland, but this article shows that also traditional legitimacy sources play a role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007, the Ahmed Baba Institute opened its doors in the storied Malian city of Timbuktu. Named for one of Timbuktu's favored sons—the Islamic scholar Ahmed Baba (1556-1627)—its shelves were fittingly laden with centuries-old Islamic manuscripts, assembled from across the Maghreb, testaments to Timbuktu's historical status as a center of religious and cultural thought. With a glimpse to the past, many activists sought to resurrect Timbuktu to its former glory. "We want to build an Alexandria for black Africa," declared the institute's director, Mohamed Dicko, in a 2007 interview with the New York Times. As activists worked to showcase the lengthy history of African Islam—highlighting the faith's incorporation of African intellectual thought, culture, and elements of traditional worship—the Baba Institute would soon come under assault from Islamic extremists who sought to reassert "pure" Islamic values. In a series of tragic events spanning from mid-2012 through January 2013, notions of religious "purity" led to the destruction of many of Timbuktu's historic shrines and placed the city's storied manuscripts under dire threat. This essay argues that Timbuktu's historical and symbolic status as a fountainhead of African Islamic heritage made the city a prime target for jihadists who sought to promote a universal "pure" Islam, untainted by outside influences. Beyond identifying and contrasting ideologies, I will offer some reflections about the relationship of religion and culture, arguing for an understanding of religion that is not opposed to the cultures of those who worship it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While autocracies constitute a third of all signatories of preferential trade agreements (PTAs), very little research has explained why some autocrats join PTAs while others do not. We argue that this variation reflects the leader’s degree of vulnerability to elite-led coups during leadership change–whether a leader enters power legally or extralegally. New extralegal leaders are more vulnerable than new legal leaders, which encourages extralegal leaders to use PTAs to both build support from exporters and pressure disloyal importers. We test our hypotheses using a dyadic data set of 120 autocracies from 1960 to 2014. Our results show that extralegal leaders sign more and deeper PTAs than legal leaders. Moreover, we find that extralegal leaders with a high risk of coups are more likely to form deep PTAs than extralegal leaders with a low risk of coups. In line with our argument, we also provide evidence that extralegal leaders sign trade agreements that are likely to be enforced. Our article has implications for the political economy of trade and for development studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite the considerable volume of material produced by scholars in recent times on the political and social relevance of Africa's religious revival, policy makers and development workers continue to pay only scanty attention to religion in their work. In cases, where some attention is paid to religion, the focus has been on institutions and public-spirited religious personalities. Most policy makers and development workers seem more comfortable to deal with these than the core religious elements such as rituals. Based on discussion of data drawn from a study of the Corinthian Church of South Africa (ccsa), this paper argues that aspects of religion such as beliefs and rituals, which are often ignored in development work constitute an important "spiritual capital" that can enrich social capital; and that if these are taken account of in social policy crafting, they will provide a new vista to some of the developmental challenges of Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of African Studies Review is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory is the property of University of Chicago Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The concept of empathy has been set to work, across a range of fields, to mark a break with the relational patterns of apartheid. Similarly, empathy has been identified, historically, as that which, within apartheid and colonial rule more generally, exceeded or escaped relations of domination. This paper approaches the discourse of empathy from a different angle, taking empathy as a concept embedded in colonial thinking. Given that so many claims to empathy have had recourse to psychoanalysis, the paper focuses on empathy in Freud’s work, specifically Dora’s case and Freud’s analysis of Michelangelo’s Moses, which are read alongside the images and installations of contemporary South African artist, Nandipha Mntambo, in particular her collection of images and installations inThe Encounter. Three scenes are conjured wherein empathy confronts its impossibility, but rather than foreclose on empathy as a post-apartheid condition, it is through the disclosure of the aporias of empathy that it might be brought into the realm of the ethical through a practice of reinscription and through the figure of Echo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In late 2010, a series of tapes containing damaging conversations between 30 Indian journalists and Niira Radia, leading lobbyist for major business interests, became public. The tapes revealed journalists across the entire Indian news industry violating fundamental professional norms and offering the lobbyist's clients scripted interviews, giving advice on how to place stories in media outlets, talking about writing columns relying on positions articulated by Radia, and even apparently conveying messages on behalf of political interests close to the lobbyist. This paper explores how Indian news media responded to these revelations that posed a threat to the institution of journalism due to the pervasiveness of normative breaches. We propose that the Indian news media's response can be understood as an attempt to repair the institutional myth of the profession broadly defined as the way in which the public views journalism and its norms, using strategies associated with image restoration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The current Islamist government, ushered in by a military coup in 1989, declared that the Sudan must be governed by Islamic law or shari'a in accordance with what it called the Civilization Project. As expected, the personal status for Muslims laws, Ahwal Shakhsiyya, continued to be governed by shari’a as it has always been. However, the Sudanese society experienced unprecedented changes that are considered un-Islamic, and may be even punishable by law. In this paper two of those changes happened in the institution of marriage. This paper discusses two types of marriage, ‘Urfi and Misyar that are not part of the law, and traditionally unacceptable, and by law deemed by some to be illegal. Some scholars are seeking to normalize and may be legalize both types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese economic activities in Africa have gained increased visibility in parallel to the recent acceleration of Sino-African relations. This paper, which is framed from a geographical perspective that is often absent or neglected in studies covering China-Africa, focuses on the spatial forms and dynamics. It depicts the way in which two contrasting Chinese economic entities - a state-owned company in Chad and privately owned commercial malls in Johannesburg, South Africa - engage with their respective host environments. While drawing on concepts of "liminality" as well as "heterotopias", I argue that the modalities of the Chinese footprint are characterised both by closure and interaction, creating a dynamic tension that produces its own set of unique practices. This ambivalence between enclave and active linkages with host societies is not only perceivable from a spatial point of view, but also emerges with regard to economic strategies. In the midst of a transitional period, along with a launching and a consolidating phase, the Chinese economic entities in both case studies show signs of change in terms of behaviour and territorial foothold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Service is India's new economy. The service sector dominates the Indian economy today, contributing more than half of our national income. Service has maintained a steady growth pattern since 1996-97. Trade hotels, transport and communication have witnessed the highest growth of level 10.8% in 2004, followed by financial services (with the overall growth rate of 6.4%) and social and personal services (5.9) of all the three sectors. The share of services in total GDP has grown phenomenally and has been the highest contributor to the total GDP growth rate. From an agro-based economy, it has emerged as a service oriented one. Service providing industries like IT services, IT enabled services, health care, tourism and hotels, communication, media and entertainment, trade and retail, banking financial services, transportation and logistics etc. from the main stay of the Indian economy today. In addition there is the most popular segment of its service sector, the entertainment industry while in most parts of the developed world, the service sector share of employment rose faster than its share of output in India there has been relatively slow growth of jobs in service sector. This is primarily because the rise in labor productivity in sectors such as information technology that is dependent on skilled labor. Growth of services such as hotels holds a large potential for employment generation. IT enabled services, such as business process outsourcing has been growing rapidly in the recent past and will continue to rise. India is on the fast track of becoming an important economic force. According to Frank G. Wisner, former U.S ambassador to India and America international group external affairs wise president; the center of gravity is moving east wards to Asia, away from Europe and North America, and India will be the major force in globalization. With this backdrop paper attempts to highlight the role of service sector in growth of Indian economy. Objectives of the study * Whether the robust growth of the services sector has added a dimension of stability to India's GDP growth * What are the constituents of service sector in India * What are the drivers that led to the growth of service sector * What are the prospects /potential for growth in this sector? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the decade since 9/11, the 'war on terror' has been framed in mainstream global media discourses predominantly as a conflict between medievalist Islamic terrorists and the modern West, led by the United States. In India, where the media market has grown exponentially along the lines of the US commercially led model, the media discourse has broadly followed this global trajectory. After providing an overview of terrorism in India, this article focuses on the coverage of the terrorist attacks on Mumbai on 26 November 2008, the most extensively covered terrorism story outside the Western world. The article shows how during 'India's 9/11,' media and communication technologies intersected to create a tele-visual spectacle, in a fiercely competitive media market, one increasingly shaped by an infotainment-driven news culture. Such 'Bollywoodization' of the 'war on terror,' the article suggests, contributes to presenting grim realities of political conflicts as a feast of visually arresting, emotionally-charged entertainment - genres skilfully borrowed from India's bourgeoning film industry, to sustain ratings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For six years, India has sought to implement an army doctrine for limited war, ‘Cold Start’, intended to enable a Cold War era force optimised for massive offensives to operate under the nuclear threshold. This article asks whether that is presently feasible, and answers in the negative. Doctrinal change has floundered on five sets of obstacles, many of which are politically rooted and deep-seated, thereby leaving the Army unprepared to respond to challenges in the manner envisioned by the doctrine's architects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the Algerian terrorist assault which was carried out by military commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar of Al-Qaeda and his Battalion of Blood activists in the BP-Norwegian-Algerian-Japanese gas facility in In Amenas, Algeria. Topics discussed include the terrorism, Tigantourine terrorist attack, and the Azawad People's Movement (MPA).

This article examines the assumed factuality of globalization in light of its persistent conceptual incoherence. Through a diagnosis of five reoccurring ambiguities within the globalization literature, I argue that the concept of globalization lacks an empirical referent. Scholars writing on globalization overcome this absence by asserting that some things (the Internet, McDonald's, etc.) and not others (genocide in Rwanda, refugee camps, etc.) are essentially 'global.' It turns out, however, that who is positioned to posit some things (and not others) as 'global,' and therefore posit the foundation for a theory of globalization, is shaped by a highly asymmetrical political economy of knowledge production. In particular, some scholars-usually in North American and European universities-are materially better positioned to produce knowledge about globalization than many of their colleagues in postcolonial countries. The seemingly arbitrary positing of some things as 'global,' therefore, should be understood as a symptom of the highly unequal social relations in which knowledge about globalization is produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article makes three arguments about the Sino-American competition, the Sino-Indian rivalry, and the US-India partnership. First, past maritime-continental rivalries suggest that China will pose a greater challenge to American interests as it confronts fewer threats on land, while the US may require continental allies to counter-balance China's rise. Second, whereas a Sino-Indian continental security dilemma could benefit the US by compelling China to invest in capabilities that do not threaten it, a Sino-Indian maritime security dilemma could have the opposite effect. Third, Washington should consider India as a prospective continental ally rather than a potential maritime partner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a critical examination of Nancy Fraser's contrast of early second-wave feminism and contemporary global feminism in 'Feminism, Capitalism and the Cunning of History,' (Fraser ). Fraser contrasts emancipatory early second-wave feminism, strongly critical of capitalism, with feminism in the age of neoliberalism as being in a 'dangerous liaison' with neoliberalism. I argue that Fraser's historical account of 1970s mainstream second-wave feminism is inaccurate, that it was not generally anti-capitalist, critical of the welfare system, or challenging the priority of paid labor. I claim Fraser mistakenly takes a minority feminist position as mainstream. I further argue that Fraser's account of feminism today echoes arguments from James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer (2001) to Hester Eisenstein ( ), but such arguments ignore contemporary feminist minority positions. I challenge Fraser's arguments that feminism legitimates neoliberalism to women, that women's NGOs are simply service-providers enabling the state to withdraw services, and that criticisms of microcredit lending programs can be generalized into criticisms of women's feminism and women's NGOs today. I argue that these claims are vast over-generalizations and ignore countertrends. I give empirical evidence to support my objections by considering women's activities in post-communist European countries, which Fraser discusses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We implemented a randomized field experiment in Malawi examining borrower responses to being fingerprinted when applying for loans. This intervention improved the lender's ability to implement dynamic repayment incentives, allowing it to withhold future loans from past defaulters while rewarding good borrowers with better loan terms. As predicted by a simple model, fingerprinting led to substantially higher repayment rates for borrowers with the highest ex ante default risk, but had no effect for the rest of the borrowers. We provide unique evidence that this improvement in repayment rates is accompanied by behaviors consistent with less adverse selection and lower moral hazard. (JEL D14, D82, G21, O12, O16) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the peace agreements of 2002–2003 which ended the second war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, reconstruction of the army has been an inherently political process, in common with other attempts to carry out security sector reform (SSR). This article briefly sketches out the Congolese army's history, then attempts to fill a gap in the literature on Congolese SSR by detailing what can be found of the actual structure and shape of the present army. The efforts that have been made to reform the army are then examined, followed by a conclusion which examines the major issues and possible ways forward. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Theories of corruption suggest that higher levels of transparency are necessarily associated with lower levels of corruption. Yet in highly hierarchical societies in which the gulf between government officials and the most underprivileged members of society is very wide, this relationship may not hold. In this paper, I test the link between transparency and corruption by means of a field experiment. I ask how effective recourse to a freedom-of-information law is in comparison to bribery for both slum dwellers and middle-class individuals in India as they apply for basic public services. I demonstrate that applicants who make use of the freedom-of-information law attain almost the same rate of success as those who bribe. Recourse to a freedom-of-information law comes close to erasing class differences; that is, it results in comparable processing times for slum dwellers and middle-class individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Security Strategies Journal / Güvenlik Stratejileri Dergisi is the property of Strategic Research Institute and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

One of the major security issues facing the United States today is how to handle the disputed Kashmir region. Since the independence movement in India, the valley has been the source of repeated conflicts between India and Pakistan. After evaluating the history of the conflict in and over Kashmir, this paper proposes a roadmap for peace in the region, drawing on strategic interests of Pakistan, India, and major terrorist actors while reinforcing the conflict's significance to American security imperatives. The paper (1) advises Pakistan to resist further attacks against India in return for territorial concessions in Kashmir, (2)encourages India, due to the disproportional cost of attempting control of a region it has never ruled, to cede much of the region, and (3) provides a framework under which U.S. policy can support these changes. The paper ultimately aims to encourage America to diplomatically facilitate the rise of a powerful Indian state that can balance China's growing regional power, and lead the way in many of the regional issues that continue to plague South-East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our analysis sets out to explain the relationship between economic growth and political freedoms within the context of Chinese domestic politics and foreign policy. The images of China as a rising military power with a growing economy have drawn attention away from the degree to which democratic values and norms have been marginalized in China. The existing literature has typically focused on an increasingly competitive economic globalization that has placed China among the emerging powers of the twenty-first century. The issue of China's surging power is ripe for more probing and systematic analysis. This study contextualizes China's policy toward developing countries, with a special focus on Tibet and Africa, in order to better understand its ramifications for human rights conditions there. What is at stake here is that China's developmental path, which privileges economic growth over political freedoms, is likely to create incentives for states struggling in their transition toward democracy to rely on autocratic styles of development. The international community should insist that Chinese leaders respect the rule of law, democratic principles, and judicial reform. Failure to understand economic tradeoffs and their political dynamics will have profound consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We model the evolution of international refugee law and analyze reform proposals. We show that the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees can be understood as an agreement among states to supply the global public good of refugee protection but that the increase in economic migration has led states to shade on their obligations under the convention. Furthermore, one state shading on its obligations strengthens incentives for other states to shade, potentially creating multiple equilibria. Under the open-ended nonrefoulement norm of the convention, reforms that make a state less attractive for potential immigrants, such as taxes or north-to-south transfer systems, would create negative externalities for third countries. In contrast, reforms in which wealthy states pay poor states to resettle refugees from other poor states would create positive externalities on third countries. Subsidizing such transfers would be more efficient than current policies used to reduce the social costs caused by concentrations of refugees in certain southern host states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why did riots in response to the 2005 Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad occur in nine Muslim states but not in 43 other states in which Muslims form a majority of the population? I show that the location of the cartoon riots is best explained by combining insights from the study of politics with arguments from the sociology of religion. Protests were mobilized by radical Islamist movements alarmed by the moral threat posed by the blasphemous cartoons. In states characterized by political rights and civil liberties, regimes responded haphazardly to the demonstrations, leading to confrontations between security forces and angry rioters. This finding can be generalized beyond the Muslim world: We should expect reactive religious violence wherever fundamentalist movements are confronted by transgressive acts, committed by threatening opponents, in a political environment that permits protest but fails to protect the religious principles of the movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article concerns the paradoxical value potentials of coltan and coltan mining in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, focusing on the actions and statements of diggers, traders, and state and military authorities in and around mining enclaves. Coltan ore is essential for Digital Age technology, and the struggle for it and other minerals is partly responsible for the historical and ongoing violent conflict in the region. However, a great deal of bottom-up social collaboration occurs around these minerals, and many Eastern Congolese argue that controlling and improving their relationship to them is essential for achieving incremental progress over time. I approach coltan's relationship to violence, autochthony, temporality, and political order by focusing on how it has become, for many, iconic of the elemental power of Congolese earth-a potential that foreigners need and try to capture. I convey the experience of temporal dispossession, epitomized in the life story of a child soldier, as context for understanding why some have projected the desire for progressive temporality, epistemological transparency, and social connectivity onto digital minerals and what the consequences of the symbolic struggle over coltan have been, as different groups try to access its social and temporal potentials for diverse ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil war in Sudan - first between the North and the South, then in Darfur - extends over half a century, interrupted only by a spell of uneasy peace between 1972 and 1983. Over time, a number of analytical templates have been propounded to account for the quasi-permanent crisis. The causes for conflict in Sudan have thus been pegged to the legacy of colonialism, ethno-religious divide, Islamist terrorism, a resource war, state failure, regional conflict concatenation, genocide, and a 'turbulent state paradigm' (Alex de Waal). This article takes stock of the various frameworks offered for explanation both in academic writing and the broader media discourse on Sudan. The critical assessment provides for a rehearsal of available scholarship and leads to three interlocking conclusions: (1) the translation of local/national conflict into relevant international language is a form of reciprocal resource mobilization; (2) conflict analysis, and with all the more reason conflict management, are always part of the unfolding crisis they strive to come to terms with; and (3) conflict analysis ought to be predicated on an 'uncertainty principle' akin to the one postulated by Werner Heisenberg for quantum physics, because the momentum of a conflict and its analytical fixation inexorably escape each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A proxy war is a conflict in which one party fights its adversary via another party rather than engaging that party in direct conflict. This article discusses two examples: the Sudan-Ugandan proxy war of the 1990s and the Sudan-Chad proxy war that has fed the conflict in Darfur. In these cases, the states aimed to alter regional power structures through cross-border rebel support. This support generated a perpetual Prisoners' Dilemma whereby the patron governments refused to end proxy support unless the other side did as well, but had little reason to trust that the other side would do so. The Sudan-Uganda and Sudan-Chad peace processes succeeded in reaching agreement, but failed in implementation. Permanent resolution of such complex, persistent, and deadly conflicts requires conflict analyses that take a regional view; conflict mediation that seeks to alter the underlying conflict dynamics through addressing the motivations of both patrons and proxies; and implementation agreements backed by strong guarantees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant models of civil war intervention have difficulty accounting for the intervention decisions of third-party states that share a border with an ongoing civil war. This is troubling, as contiguous third parties account for a large proportion of interventions. I demonstrate that the tendency of civil wars to spread geographically pose neighbor states with threats to their well-being that are faced by no other type of intervener in the international system. Destruction, regime stability, even state survival are threatened by the prospect of civil war infection. I argue that neighboring third parties are thus motivated to intervene in an attempt to thwart war diffusion across their own borders. Through an analysis of civil war prevalence, I generate a measure of each state's yearly likelihood of being infected by a proximate civil war's hostilities. I then use this measure to explain neighboring interventions in civil wars of the post-WWII period. The results support my theorized expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This multi-method study examines how the New York Times reported the Darfur conflict in the Sudan, which has led to an estimated 300,000 deaths and over 2.3 million people displaced by the fighting. Drawing on normative media theories and prior studies of Africa's representation, the role of sources in the frame-building process was analyzed, together with the impact of news-making processes on journalists' reporting about Darfur. The textual analysis largely supports results of prior studies on news framing of Africa. However, interviews with four New York Times journalists reveal that the individual biases and motives of the journalists and their sources significantly influenced the coverage. While the journalists participated in news-making processes distinguishable by journalist goal, source availability, and source credibility, their sources also provided information that reinforced certain media frames. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article extends the limited literature on women national leaders by providing a comparative study of two popularly elected women presidents: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Liberia and Michelle Bachelet in Chile. Both Bachelet and Johnson-Sirleaf rose to power in situations that lacked the circumstances identified by current literature as mitigating gendered barriers to national leadership: neither woman was connected to politically powerful families, they were elected in presidential systems, and they were elected in countries that lag behind regional leaders in terms of women's political inclusion. This comparison reveals important similarities in how both Bachelet and Johnson-Sirleaf incorporated gender into their campaign strategies. Both women pursued electoral strategies that combined attempts to confront gendered disadvantages and to take advantage of specific gendered opportunities present within their political contexts. Both women drew upon their personal biographies, highlighting their education and careers, and political experience to demonstrate that they had the traditionally masculine traits associated with political leadership. In addition, they also strategically appealed to gendered beliefs about women's unique capabilities and strengths and linked these perceived strengths to pressing political issues in both countries. Our study thus demonstrates the continuing salience of gender, even as its influence becomes more flexible and complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. Balancing environmental quality with economic growth in less developed settings is clearly a challenge. Still, surprisingly little empirical evidence has been brought to bear on the relative priority given environmental and socioeconomic issues among the residents themselves of such settings. This research explores such perceptions. Methods. We undertake survey research with 2,500 residents of coastal Ghana on policy issues, focusing on environmental topics. Results. Our analyses reveal a significant amount of environmental awareness, with education and political engagement consistently predicting higher levels of concern. In addition, environmental issues are deemed important even when considered relative to other socioeconomic issues. Conclusion. In the end, we argue that our work sheds light on global environmentalism and the ways local populations in less developed settings prioritize social and environmental concerns. This work also has important policy implications since insight on local perceptions may help buttress policy responses designed to cope with global change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postcolonial, developmental states recognize the need for higher education to generate both ideas and skilled human resources. Many seek too, though, a level of state control incompatible with ideals of academic freedom. This dilemma is all the more keen for semidemocratic states such as Malaysia and Singapore, which can neither curb protest as coercively as their more authoritarian neighbors do nor accept free-wheeling criticism as more politically liberal ones do. Presumed morally “pure” and entitled to speak, students across Southeast Asia are heir to a tradition of political engagement, based largely on their identity as students. Despite crackdowns, students have been central to political change across the region. They remain so in much of Asia—but not, for instance, in Malaysia. The muting of student protest there may be traced in large part to a post-1969 process of intellectual containment, or normative delegitimation and historical erasure of student activism, with far-reaching implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of international relations purports to explain how nation-states and individuals interact around the globe. Yet one major area of such interaction - international sport - remains exceedingly understudied. This in spite of the fact that countries have gone to war over sport, fought for sovereign recognition through sport, and that citizens around the world have it as a daily part of their lives. Indeed it is astounding that a phenomenon that matters so much has been so little studied by a field that purports to explain relations between states and humans around the world. These deficiencies became more apparent in 2008 when we witnessed the world's biggest country hosting the world's biggest sporting event. The Beijing Olympics, though entertaining and exciting, showed how little we have thought about the link between sport and international politics. This article introduces a framework for understanding the link between sport and politics. Its point of entry is to argue that many of the questions about how China portrayed itself during the Olympics and whether the Games marked China's rise as a responsible power cannot be answered without first understanding how sport in general is related to a country's political development, and its sense of nationhood. My arguments do not represent new breakthroughs in political science, rather I attempt merely to offer a systematic way of thinking about how sports and the Olympics matter in world politics through three inter-related causal pathways relating to a country's sense of self, its diplomacy, and its capacity for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the failure and resilience of Guinea-Bissau as a state. According to a survey conducted in 2007 , the state's citizens perceived Guinea-Bissau as among the lowest in Africa in terms of the rule of law due to the failure of their citizens to consider themselves as a community and their lack of trust on political leaders. However, the move of Manjaco youth who continues to learn to become an elder is considered as an enduring, salutary and resilient act under worst conditions. It adds that village youths are considering to leave their homeland to seek better livelihoods elsewhere and not to escape parental authority.

Once touted as the "Ivorian miracle," Côte d'Ivoire has become a development nightmare. For two decades after obtaining independence, its economic growth and unwavering political stability baffled economists and inspired other fledgling African states to imitate its development model. Now, almost fifty years later, Côte d'Ivoire is a model of failed development. Recently emerging from a civil war, its economy stands in shambles, and an ongoing political stalemate threatens to reignite the violence. This article couples Elinor Ostrom's institutional analysis-and-development framework with Claude Ake's development paradigm to highlight the institutional roots of the crisis and suggest how institutional transformation may be used to prod the nation to wake up and again become the "Ivorian miracle." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prevailing perspectives on power cannot explain why political protests from the bottom of societies sometimes result in reforms that reflect the grievances of the protestors. I propose a new theory of "interdependent power" that provides such an explanation. I argue that, contrary to common views, globalization actually increases the potential for this kind of popular power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the political economy of violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a landscape marked by genocidal campaigns where residents are raped and robbed of cattle and crops, and the extent to which that terror has been abetted by the global market for columbite-tantalite, or coltan. Coltan is a dense silicate ideal for digital technologies, and an estimated 80% of the world's reserves lie in the eastern region of the Congo, where the profitability of its mining to local warlords and the frenetic pace of digital speculation have made both agricultural production and pastoralism untenable. As a result, Congolese have had constantly to improvise production systems in order to survive. This improvisation, easy to gloss over as a survival strategy or adaptation, is in fact performed by creative agents who forge elaborately devised artisanal production systems, at times dangerously against the regimes of local warlords, to meet the insatiable global demand for digital products. Coltan is thus a conductor in a dual sense: of digital capacitors for cell phones or PlayStations, but also of the broader social and political economic processes that underlie the global production of knowledge. Indeed, in both a material and symbolic sense, this ore is a veritable source of information production in the digital age. As such, coltan holds importance for understanding the conflicting and diffuse global role of the digital age, as a source hope and creativity on the one hand; and as an instrument of terror, regimentation, and routinisation on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Special Court for Sierra Leone has indicted Liberia's former President Charles Taylor on eleven counts of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and serious violations of international humanitarian law. In April 2006, Charles Taylor was arrested and brought into the court's custody, and his trial will begin in 2007. This article discusses three evolving issues in international law expected to be highlighted in Taylor's trial. First, Taylor's prosecution contributes to the ongoing challenge to the norm of head-of-state immunity from prosecution for alleged human rights crimes. Second, the prosecution will employ a relatively new tool in international prosecution - personal culpability based on participation in a joint criminal enterprise. Finally, this case will continue the path-breaking work of the Special Court for Sierra Leone in prosecuting individuals for the crime of enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into armed forces and using them in hostilities. In each of these three areas, the trial of Charles Taylor will make important contributions to international human rights law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The humanitarian crisis in Darfur has slowly captivated international public, governmental, and media attention. With at least two million persons displaced and an estimated 400.000 killed, it is one of the many grave crises of failed states currently, occurring within Africa. The people of the region have faced murder, displacement, rape, and banditry at the hands of the Sudanese government, the state-supported Janjaweed. and other militia groups, most notably the Sudan Liberation Army. Yet the United Nations concluded after a fact-finding mission to the region that these widespread atrocities did not constitute genocide but rather were defined as crimes against humanity. This article provides a brief overview of the background and contemporary state of the situation as well as a legal examination of the nature of genocide in international law and the United Nation Security Councils rationale .for applying the label of crimes against humanity. The chief purpose of the article is to clearly differentiate the two concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity and to thoroughly examine the practical difference a definition makes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a utilitarian analysis to argue that the leading organizations of the International Human Rights Movement have lost sight of their own professed values. Instead of functioning to check and balance the power of nation-states which formulate policies based on political and economic interests, the leadership of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Committee of the Red Cross follow the politicized United Nations. Their attention and resources have been diverted from where they are most needed and can do the most good. The problem is most evident in the disproportionate focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are serious problems of distributive justice, fairness, and equality of treatment, in that the obsessive, lopsided scrutiny placed on Israel is concomitant with the neglect of the far more horrific human rights violations in the Arab world and beyond. There is a tragic opportunity cost in how the major humanitarian and human rights organizations set their priorities and allocate their resources. The moral failure of politicization also damages the credibility of the human rights leadership, their organizations, and the cause of human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For nearly 20 years, the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has endured massive human and ecological casualties, marked by harrowing tales of atrocities at the hands of various state and non-state actors. At the center of all this conflict is the extraction of and trade in minerals (such as coltan) essential to produce most of the electronic products we now associate with the digital age (mobile phones, gaming consoles). Some regard the calculus for the global exchange in these products as simple: militias that control these minerals (often through theft or forced labor of miners) buy arms to further their campaigns of terror. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which requires American companies to exercise due diligence in ensuring that minerals used in the manufacture of their products are conflict-free, emerged out of those presumptions. But for thousands of Congolese involved in the production and trafficking of its mineral wealth, minerals represent the potential for enduring social networks and positive economic and social futures. Based on ethnographic data collected among middlemen in the mineral trade, we can identify at least three factors that can account for this disjuncture: the demonization of artisanal miners, the vilification of Congolese mineral traders, and the complications wrought by an elaborate international system in which minerals are laundered. [Keywords: Political economy, commodity chains, exchange, fetishism, extractive industries, Democratic Republic of the Congo] [Palavras-chave: Economia Politica, cadeias de mercadorias, troca, fetichismo, industrias extratlvas, Republica Democratica do Congo], This article argues that political and economic reforms aimed at ensuring responsibility in the sourcing of resources for large, highly profitable global enterprises can sometimes have precisely the opposite intended [...]

Abstract: 'Spiritual mapping' is a transnational Pentecostal 'spiritual warfare' practice that aims to identify and fight 'territorial spirits', or demons that possess specific places. It was unique in Cape Town, [...]