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One of the most pressing problems confronting political scientists today is: can global governance have a democratic basis? Picking up one potentially important response, and drawing on original analysis of the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (WSSD) in 2002, this paper constructs and defends an ideal-typical model of a new approach to democracy - ?stakeholder democracy?. In this way, it explores and theorizes stakeholder governance practices and speculates on their uses and the extent of their democratic character. This work is located in the context of the changing vocabulary and practice of global governance, in which concerns about legitimacy, accountability, transparency and participation have loomed increasingly large in recent years. Sustainability and environmental protection is an arena in which innovative experiments with new hybrid, pluri-lateral forms of governance, along with the incorporation of a transnational civil society spanning the public-private divide, are taking place. The paper highlights certain dilemmas confronting efforts to democratize global environmental governance in light of innovative practices at the WSSD. Our central argument is that the WSSD, with all its caveats and limitations, can rightly be seen as exemplifying new deliberative stakeholder practices with general democratic potential at the global level. In examining these arrangements, we draw together the nascent elements of this new ?model?, such as its distinctive takes on principles of inclusion and deliberation of so-called major groups (NGOs, business, youth, women, unions, farmers, science, indigenous peoples, and local government). We take stock of interactive stakeholder forums/dialogues and partnership agreements, which institutionalized relationships between state and non-state actors before and after the Summit. Potential objections to the stakeholder model arising from liberal-reformist, cosmopolitan and critical perspectives on democratizing global environmental governance are pinpointed, and responses are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the complex relationship between South and its neighbors in the quest for deeper economic integration in Southern Africa. South Africa, as the regional hegemon, will play a unique role in SADC attempts to create a free trade area and currency union for Southern Africa. Through interviews with regional decisionmakers, this paper questions the popular assumption that there is something to be feared in South African hegemony [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broadly defined, affirmative action encompasses any measure that allocates goods ? such as admission into universities, jobs, promotions, public contracts, business loans, and rights to buy and sell land ? on the basis of membership in a designated group, for the purpose of increasing the proportion of members of that group in the relevant labor force, entrepreneurial class, or university student population, where they are currently underrepresented as a result of past or present discrimination. The programs involved vary substantially across countries, regarding the identification of their intended beneficiaries (ethnic, national, or racial groups held to be economically or socially disadvantaged, aboriginal peoples, women, people with disabilities, war veterans?), the form of the programs involved (quota/non-quota), the level of the legal norms from which they derive (constitutional, legislative, administrative), and their domain of implementation (whether restricted to the public sector or not). Drawing from previous research on the United States (« Judicial Uses of Subterfuge: Affirmative Action Reconsidered », Political Science Quarterly, 18 (3), 2003, p. 411-436) and France (« Affirmative Action at Sciences Po », French Politics, Culture, and Society, 20 (3), 2002, p. 52-64), the paper will compare affirmative action programs in the United States, India, Malaysia and South Africa, considering each of these four parameters and the relations between them. It will focus both on the intended results and on the different side effects of the policies and of the justifications advanced on their behalf. In particular, I shall argue that in India and Malaysia, reducing the inequality in the distribution of social goods between the different groups involved is not conceived as partaking of the more utopian project of reducing the saliency of group boundaries within the nation-state. Giving communities their proportional share of social benefits is not supposed to lead to the blurring of the lines that keep them separate from each other in private, non-allocative spheres. In the United States and in South Africa, on the other hand, the connection between affirmative action policies equalizing patterns of economic distribution among various ascriptive groups and the ideal of societal integration is a much stronger one. This is reflected in the definition of the social outcome whose attainment would justify the eventual termination of affirmative action programs. In India and Malaysia, the proportionality criterion provides an obvious « focal point » in this respect, generally acknowledged as such. In the United States ? and, to a lesser extent, in South Africa ?, proportional representation is emphatically rejected as a distributive principle, even though it arguably operates covertly at the policymaking level, by providing the benchmark against which « discrepancies » and « deficiencies » will be identified and compensated for. Last but not least, the paper will distinguish among affirmative action regimes according to their degree of internal differentiation, attempting to account for the highly specific configuration found in India, where members of the group generally considered as the most disadvantaged ? the Untouchables ? are being granted some kind of preferential treatment also in relation to the policy?s other beneficiaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current literature on ethnic conflict debates whether certain conflicts will yield different strategies vis ? vis civilians. One viewpoint argues that ethnic conflicts are more brutal with regard to civilians. Critics argue that there is no difference between ideological and ethnic civil wars in the degree of killing, brutality and targeting of non-combatant civilians. My paper examines two ?ideological? conflicts (which included massacres of civilians) in order to show that some of the cases used to demonstrate the ferocity of political civil wars were ethnic wars under the guise of a purely ideological conflict. The cases are: The ?Black on Black? violence in South Africa between the African National Congress (ANC), the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), and the Azanian People’s Organization (AZAPO) and the inter-tribal conflicts in Afghanistan between the Taliban and rival factions. In each of the cases, there were underlying ethnic issues driving the killings but ethnicity was manipulated for political purposes. The paper will further problematize the classification of some conflicts as ethnic while others as ideological by looking at recruitment patterns and appeals of mobilization and opportunities for defection from one side to the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper applies Frensley’s model of two-level conflict endgames to the South African case during the negotiated transition to democracy (1990-1994). The author argues that a process-oriented elite perspective is inadequate to explain the process and outcome of negotiations in South Africa. A study of conflict settlement should not be limited to intergroup interactions, but should also include intragroup interactions that take place within an organizational context. The paper’s emphasis is on intragroup conflicts, negotiations, and ratifications within the African National Congress and the National Party government during the period of elite negotiations. The important role of rent-seeking in influencing strategies and outcomes within and between groups is also highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Men and women often have different approaches to and understandings of issues of war and peace, ending conflict, post-conflict disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) and reconciliation, and different expectations for their society's future. With that starting point, this paper focuses on a series of critical research questions regarding the DDR process with an emphasis on those that are most relevant to policymakers: What are the lessons from previous conflict situations that can be applied to current or future conflict situations? How can the lessons learned be applied specifically to provide guidance for decision makers? In other words, what are the practical applications of what we have learned to date? DDR is a process, and the way in which it is handled, specifically who is involved and how inclusive it is, has implications for the society that emerges at the end of the conflict. This is especially true regarding the roles that women do--or too often do not--play. The literature, as well as lessons of past cases, is instructive in reinforcing the importance of including women in the DDR process. This paper presents an overview of a USIP-funded project² that focuses on several case studies of women, gender and post-conflict transformation, with a more in-depth examination of two of the case studies: Bosnia-Herzegovina and South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development policies are often based on the assumption that decentralization improves (good) governance and both result in more sustainable development. Scholars disagree about if and when decentralization benefits governance. The aim of this paper is to address and clarify the causal mechanisms underlying the relationship between decentralization and governance. In my paper I will elaborate on the relation between decentralization and governance and show, on the basis of a case study of South Africa, how the different types of decentralization are not related to changes in governance (measured by the Freedom House) or might lead to poorer governance (HDI index). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formal presidential trips abroad are the most visible and notable examples of the President's role as "Diplomat-in-Chief." They also are supposedly great public relations events in their own right. Yet little is known about media coverage of these events, especially by the press in the host nations themselves. This paper examines two parallel cases of presidential travel: Clinton's 1998 and W. Bush's 2003 jaunts to the same African countries of Uganda and South Africa, comparing coverage each president received by the same exact same newspapers in each country. It finds Clinton more prominently and positively portrayed than Bush across both newspapers, but that the Ugandan paper was more positive than the South African across both visits. Various factors, such as newsworthiness criteria, the political substance of the visits themselves, and the role and context of the two countries in the global geopolitical system, are used to help explain these findings. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a theoretical framework for the comparative study of the causes and effects of pursuing rights through legal strategies. It then tests that framework on the results of a two-year, five-country empirical analysis of the determinants and impact of judicial interventions in health and education policy. The data gathering effort was carried out by in-country teams of up to five people in each country, using both archival research to build a database of judicial decisions and interviews to explore the implementation and impact of these judicial decisions. The paper first presents extensive original data on the nature and extent of economic and social (ES) rights litigation in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and South Africa. It then presents comparative data suggesting the conditions that promote the extensive and successful use of legal strategies. Finally, the paper presents preliminary findings on the direct effects of a law-based strategy, as well as the indirect, aggregate social policy impact of the widespread use of legal approaches to extending ES rights. We argue that three elements combine to produce a wave of judicial demands: a) demand side factors (social organization and resources to pursue a legal strategy) must coincide with b) supply side factors (judicial support and a credible judicial system), in c) a policy context that is propitious for judicial intervention because it is prone to policy-making or bureaucratic failures. We further argue that, with significant exceptions, the direct effects of judicial strategies tends to reinforce redistributive inequities, but the indirect effect often extends the benefits far beyond the initial claimants, with positive, equity-enhancing results.The five countries were chosen so as to include common law countries with aggressive ES rights litigation (India, South Africa) and weak or incipient ES rights litigation (Nigeria), and civil law countries with aggressive (Brazil) and weak (Indonesia) litigation. Similarly, two specific issue areas have been selected for analysis in order to provide within-country variation in the effectiveness of litigation as a means of enforcement: although the findings will, we believe, generalize to the entire range of ES rights, the empirical sections will emphasize the rights to health care and education. A key element in the project is the creation of a cross-nationally comparable database detailing the characteristics and outcomes of ES rights court cases (number of cases, likelihood that plaintiffs succeed, individual or collective action, level of court), and an investigation of impact on the ground in a random sample of up to 100 cases in each country. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By engaging a substantive definition of democracy, this paper challenges the standard approach to defining democracy in American Political Science literature and argues that African endorsements of liberal and procedural understanding may not be as ringing as Afrobarometer analyses suggest. Drawing upon fieldwork research and interviews conducted over the last decade in South Africa with members of township civic organizations and social movements, it illustrates the approaches that people have taken to defining democracy and explains both the historical development and significance of these definitional understandings. These substantive expectations have profound implications both for theoretical approaches to questions of democratization as well as the practical development of new democracies. By employing a substantive approach and thereby bringing questions of poverty and material inequality to the center of the analysis, this paper seeks to offer a perspective on democratization that helps to explain many of the challenges to the institutionalization of democratic regimes that procedural understandings fail to capture. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between December 1991 and 2006, Russian leaders designed eight significant economic integration accords, calling for free trade areas, currency unions, customs unions and common markets. Two used intergovernmental structures, while the others used single-state structures, in which members delegated decision-making to Russia. Russia's agreements highlight a variation that has largely been ignored in the literature: the choice of governance structure for economically integrating states includes not only intergovernmental and supranational options, as has long been recognized, but also a single-state option, in which a state rather than an organization makes decisions for the members. The Russian case makes apparent this third path. The paper explores why states choose one integration path over another, focusing on a state's governance identity: whether it desires to be seen by the international community as a democrat or a dominator. Yeltsin's switch from democrat to dominator happened at about the same time Russia moved from intergovernmental to single-state structures. The paper concludes by noting that other regional powers have made similar choices based on governance identity, including Prussia and the Zollverein, and South Africa and the Southern African Customs Union. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper draws on Nelson Mandela's autobiography "Long Walk to Freedom" to understand Mandela's perception of the racial power conflict in South Africa, and his own role as a leader in attempting to resolve that conflict. Mandela consistently saw the South African conflict in variable-sum rather than zero-sum terms: it was in all sides' interest to avoid civil war, but without risk-taking acts of leadership civil war was the likely outcome.The paper draws parallels between Mandela's leadership and the strategies for resolving variable sum (or mixed motive) conflict set forth in Thomas C. Schelling's "The Strategy of Conflict." Mandela understood and practiced several of Schelling's strategic moves, including rendering oneself powerless to make further concessions and realizing when it is prudent not to push an opponent too far. But Mandela's accomplishments as political leader also highlight the limitations of Schelling's analysis, which minimizes the role of creative leadership in resolving conflict.The paper then discusses Mandela's own leadership metaphors (herdsman leading a flock, chess player, gardener) and connects them to Mandela's unique ability, over the course of nearly four decades, to articulate for the widest possible audience the principles, methods, ultimate goals, and even the strategies of the anti-apartheid movement. Mandela's frankness about his reasons for turning to violent resistance in the early 1960s reflects paradoxically his own faith in the power of open dialogue about the nation's future. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last years have witnessed the development of a great body of literature about judicial independence. One of the most interesting and provocative theoretical arguments has been put forward by Helmke in the 'Strategic Defection' Theory. In a series of papers and conferences, and particularly in her influential book Courts under Constraints, Helmke develops a rational choice approach to the problem of judicial independence in unstable regimes. She theorized that Justices of the Argentinean Supreme Court shaped their decisions in cases involving the government, depending on the underlying political environment. She claimed that, under some specific conditions, justices decided against the incumbents because of constraints faced vis-à-vis the incoming government. In our paper, we seek to develop the foundations of a cross-country study of the Strategic Defection theory. After outlining the basics of Helmke's theory we examine a series of problems confronting the development of a thorough cross national test, including how to define "regime change", defection from authoritarian versus democratic regimes, problems of information and measurement, the 'inter-temporal conflict of interest', identifying the key issues for the incoming government, the problem of determining whether judges' votes express their sincere preferences rather than strategic concerns, and whether the assumption of a strong executive may be generalized to all relevant cases. We seek to test Justices' votes in National High Courts with judicial review jurisdiction in countries with a documented history of political instability. After developing an approach for a broad cross national study, we provide a preliminary analysis of decision making in the Philippines, Venezuela, South Africa, and Canada. All of these countries (except Canada) experienced some kind of regime change that has been previously documented and analyzed. Canada is included as a control to examine the level of support for the government in a stable democracy. The preliminary results provide some support for strategic defection theory in South Africa, but the case of the Philippines does not appear to be consistent with strategic defection theory. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the differences between the international discourse, as represented by UNAIDS, and national level discourses in Russia and South Africa. Through an examination of how the disease is understood by different actors at different levels, we argue that HIV/AIDS as a social issue is not best understood in a general frame of human rights as largely civil and political. Rather, Russia and South Africa have constructed alternative understandings of their roles in fighting the disease through denial, manipulation, and redefinition of the problem itself. Ultimately, these differences demonstrate that different kinds of rights require different kinds of framing and socialization processes, and that social rights differ from civil and political rights in fundamental ways that hamper the ability of UNAIDS to effectively impact change in some states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper introduces a new framework for studying two institutions of transitional justice: lustration laws and truth commissions. It distinguishes between truth revelation procedures that induce those guilty of collaboration with the past authoritarian regime to step down and testify againt themselves (ITRs) and procedures that do not provide such incentives (ETRs). A signaling model is used to represent the mechanism of ITRs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant disparity continues to exist in countries’ and individuals’ access to information and communication technologies (ICTs). While there are a number of potential reasons for these gaps, this paper argues that an analysis of the regulatory structure in a given country can provide significant leverage in understanding the logic behind the ways in which people access and use these technologies. Using a political economy framework, I analyze the South African case to show how a regulatory environment dominated by a partially-privatized monopoly telecommunications provider, a disjointed and sometimes conflicting set of regulatory institutions, and an education and training sector that is not yet fully satisfying the learning needs of South African citizens have led to an environment generally characterized by stifled innovation and expensive, poor quality access for both corporations and individuals, in particular African (black) rural communities. This case in turn provides us with an example for better understanding the link between regulatory environments and peoples’ access to and use of ICTs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Before the advent of democratic rule in South Africa, most had expected the country to experience an explosion of politicized ethnicity when minority rule was replaced. Yet this has not come to pass, and ethnic political parties have declined in number and influence in post-apartheid South Africa. Instead, between 1994 and 1999 partisan politics developed in a multipolar direction, with some parties embracing racial mobilization and others attempting to build multi-ethnic, non-racial entities. In most instances, parties have explicitly turned away from mobilization based on purely ethnic criteria, and instead have embraced more diverse strategies. This paper explains these developments as a product of the ways that political parties have responded to the incentives established by political institutions on the one hand, and the structure of social divisions, on the other. The analysis holds implications for our understanding of the ways in which social cleavages in ethnically divided societies become politically salient, and for the lessons of institutional and constitutional engineering, particularly with respect to how proportional representation systems interact with other factors to shape politics in ethnically diverse societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratization is frequently touted as a panacea for violence and human rights abuses. However, a growing number of what we call democratization and violence (DV) theorists argue that more violence actually occurs within democratization processes. This paper critically reviews this growing DV theory, arguing that while this body of work asks important questions, it often fails to answer them adequately because of a failure to disaggregate different forms of violence with a process of change. While transitions theory can help to bring process into DV theories, it largely fails to integrate violence into the bargaining processes over power it examines. Using the South African and Kenyan cases, as puzzles to both bodies of theory, we illustrate the explanatory power of disaggregating different forms of violence and examining how these forms come into play as part of tactical bargaining over change. This may help us better understand why in some transitions cases violence escalates while in others such as Kenya and South Africa it de-escalates into more peaceful situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under what conditions can central governments control or reverse processes of decentralization? Why do some central governments actually push for certain decentralizing moves, when it would seem this concedes power to subnational governments? In this paper I explore developments in intergovernmental relations in Brazil and South Africa since 1994. I conclude that processes of decentralization over the last decade have not always enhanced, but have sometimes actually reduced the autonomy of subnational governments. In both cases, central governments have increasingly worked through bureaucratic channels to earmark the money that flows to the states (estados) and provinces. Central governments in both countries have also recently placed restrictions on the ability of states and provinces to borrow money. The comparison shows that similar changes in intergovernmental relations can occur across countries with different histories and institutions. In limiting or reducing subnational autonomy, strong presidential leverage within governing coalitions was crucial; this leverage can be wielded either in the legislative arena, or within the executive. At the same time, variations across the cases point to an additional causal factor affecting the outcomes in these countries: economic crisis. The Brazilian president’s successful reckoning with a generalized economic crisis gave him leverage that South Africa’s president did not have, and this enabled the more dynamic set of (re)centralizing changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine the processes of democratic consolidation in South Africa. Much of the recent scholarship on South Africa has focused on its successful transition to democracy and the important developments which have taken place during this period of change. Yet the more difficult task of democratic consolidation continues to challenge both government elites and groups within civil society. More specifically, while there has been an increasing number of studies conducted in urban areas attempting to measure the deepening of democratic values and behaviors, there has been surprisingly few studies which focus on how this process is unfolding in the rural areas where a significant number of South Africans still reside under the authority of hereditary chiefs. I contend that we cannot fully understand the dynamics of democratic consolidation unless we examine how hereditary chieftaincy institutions "translate" those democratic values, behaviors, and institutions which have been introduced in their communities over the last ten years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on a three country survey study in the Dominican Republic, Poland and South Africa to assess the impact of donor-sponsored civic education programs on a variety of orientations and behaviors. Based on the results of our surveys of treatment and control groups from each program, we discuss the study’s implications for the implementation of civic education programs. We show that both the empirical effects and policy implications are more nuanced than has previously been recognized. Civic education can influence democratic behaviors and attitudes, but only when conducted frequently with certain kinds of participatory teaching methodologies. The policy implications are clear: civic education should be implemented only if it can be conducted "correctly" in a given political context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why would otherwise rational, power-seeking politicians, interest groups and individuals cede power to a set of unelected judges? Why in short, does judicial review happen? What are the forces that drive constitutional democracies to either adopt (as in South Africa) or accept (as in the United States and the European Union among others) strong judicial review? This comparative, cross-national study focuses on four fundamental building blocks that give rise to strong judicial review: institutional imperatives, normative and rights-driven incentives; economic and other interest-driven imperatives and political needs. Drawing from extensive studies of the role of judges, judicial review and judicial institutions within and beyond the United States, and building on case studies of the United States, the European Union, South Africa and the Republic of Singapore, the paper distills four imperative, four universal building blocks that, much like the four nucleotides of human DNA, can be found combined in a wide range of combinations, proportions and sequences: no two final products may look identical, and yet, at base, they share these fundamental characteristics. Identifying these imperatives, and understanding how they work with and against each other will help us to understand not just why strong judicial review emerges, but perhaps more importantly, help us understand the promise and the pathology of its emergence - its costs and benefits, and how it can be improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seventeen years after South Africa's democratization, questions of representation continue to trouble rural localities. Although the franchise has been extended to all adult citizens, many black rural people remain dually subject to so-called traditional leaders-kings, chiefs, and headmen-and to modern government officials such as municipal councilors, provincial premiers, and Members of Parliament. While both "traditional" and "modern" officials claim to represent their subjects-constituents, the extent to which either provides for the effective representation of specific rural localities is questionable. Local people have little power to remove traditional leaders whom they regard as illegitimate or who fail to promote the community's well-being. And local and district municipalities, which are the most accessible modern institutions, not only operate at the supra-locality level and have limited authority but also employ electoral rules that create stronger ties between potential councilors and political parties than to local voters. So how are we to think about representation in this context? How are rural polities configured, through what local institutions are rural people represented, and who possesses the authority to make locality-wide decisions? In this paper, I examine these questions through a close examination of the politics of representation in four rural, impoverished, and politically marginal localities in South Africa's North West province. Drawing from my research in Lekgophung, Molatedi, Pitsedisulejang, and Supingstad between 2005 and 2011, I analyze how black rural South Africans have sought effective and accountable representation from traditional, modern, and new institutions. Each of these created new locality-specific, locality-wide institutions to speak and act on behalf of the collective and also employed other strategies. Pitsedisulejang residents continue to contest the definition of their "traditional" community, Supingstad residents have used a range of tactics to challenge their chief's authority and legitimacy, and Lekgophung and Molatedi residents have empowered local trustees to exert authority over the communities' tourism concessions. In so doing, these localities illustrate the diverse ways through which rural people have conceptualized, pursued, and struggled over representation in post-apartheid South Africa. These cases underscore the need to look beyond formal political institutions and to think carefully about micro-scale representation as well as mass representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strongly associated with the achievement of independence or majority rule, a "Founding Party" enters the electoral arena in a dominant position. Once there, however, how does such a party maintain political dominance? More specifically, we investigate how a Founding Party sustains a broad coalition of supporters while (a) failing to deliver on material promises to large swathes of those supporters; and (b) tolerating a competitive electoral system. Exploiting the case of the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, this paper presents a new theory of single-party dominance in new polities. By way of a formal model, the theory highlights how citizens' beliefs about the party and their access to information impact the incumbent's allocation of state resources and propaganda across groups. Most interestingly, we identify how a Founding Party exploits and maintains a "benefit of the doubt" among certain citizens to extract rents while sustaining popular support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether European notions of securitization and societal security provide insights into immigration policies of non-European states, and if so, how changes in a stategs particular definition of societal security are connected to its policy reforms. The argument proceeds in two stages. First, we examine the securitization theory of the so-called Copenhagen School (and its critics), particularly the concept of societal security and its relationship to immigration. Second, through a most-similar comparison of four specific aspects of recent German and South African immigration policy reforms, we explore how well the societal security concept and the securitization framework 'travel' beyond the European context. We conclude that wider empirical application of securitization theory can both improve the framework's general explanatory value and provide insights into non-European democracies. Yet we also caution that too much attention to unique aspects of the European Union context risks over-shadowing the analytical insights of the framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a game-theoretic model for assessing the relationship between ideological divisions in a society and prospects for good governance. Synthesizing the insights of the literature on political career concerns with those from the literature on issue framing, the model emphasizes that ideological balance--rough equality in the ideological component of utility the median voter derives from government and opposition--is the key to good governance. Polities which are ideologically balanced are ruled by elites who attempt to impress their merit upon the electorate through the provision of public goods. Ideologically imbalanced polities are ruled by elites who use public resources for their own consumption and who court voters through socially unproductive issue framing. The cases of pre-revolutionary Cuba, post-apartheid South Africa, and post-Pinochet Chile are used to illustrate the crucial importance of ideological balance for good governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the positions of South Africa and Mexico concerning the incorporation of labour standards to the multilateral trade regime. Even though both countries have opposed the trade-labour linkage, a favourable position would be justified since 2001, due to the growing Chinese commercial pressure and the poor compliance of China with labour standards.The findings suggest that, in spite of the economic justification, a change in the case countries' policy has not occurred. This is due in the first place to the fact that both governments are institutionally insulated from societal pressures and therefore from linkage demands from some constituencies. In the second place, the international perception of the linkage as "kidnapped" by the US labour movement has entailed North South polarization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the South African case to look at the concept of passive representation—an important element in the theory of representative bureaucracy. Considerable literature has looked at the relationship between passive representation, or the number of members of an identity group that are present, and active representation, or the extent to which those representatives pursue the interests of those they are presumed to represent. I argue that scholars (and oversight agencies) should not see the former as simply a matter of counting the numbers of members of identity groups in an organization. Rather, they should also ask questions such as whether the identity groups that are to be privileged for representation make sense, and whether there are obstacles to the achievement of full representation. I find the answers to those questions in South Africa is complex. At the same time, analysis of reports written by South African oversight departments and articles written by scholars have moved beyond a focus on passive representation as an exercise in computing the proportion of jobs held by members of these groups. They now also engage in a secondary level of investigation that looks "beneath the veneer" at such elements as how the organizational climate may affect passive representation. I conclude that both levels of analysis are important, and should precede analysis of the extent to which the goals envisioned by the theory of representation are being achieved. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the possibilities for an active, indigenous "counter-constitution" of citizenship against liberal democratic constructions. Using historical examples of African women's protests and contemporary examples of women's activism from Botswana and South Africa, I examine how "counter-constitution"—a radical praxis—could be conceptualized and carried out by "women" through a class conscious politics that draws on the African discourse of powerful mothers and the social democratic discourse that challenges the class structuring of power in liberal democracy. Both the "powerful mother" and social democratic discourses embody women as "worker mothers" and together might form the basis for "counter-constitution" that recognizes differences and conflicts among women while challenging liberal democratic constructions of citizenship. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deliberative democrats recognize that the state is crucial for their project of improving democratic politics. But the effect of the state on deliberation is more heterogeneous and variable than they have recognized. Using women's access, voice and contestation as indicators of the openness and inclusiveness of public debate in South Africa, this paper analyzes how a democratizing state in a developing country created, facilitated, manipulated and undermined public debate during the first ten years of democracy. The findings suggest that deliberative theorizing on the state over universalizes the experience of established democracies, missing significant differences among states, the complexity within them and variations in government interests over time. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I consider liberalism's treatment of injustice and the pursuit of justice -- that is, how liberals understand injury, responses to it and what people seek in the redress of injustice. Ultimately, I will argue that, although the South African reconciliation process was designed to meet the exigencies of a transition from an unjust regime, its attention to narrative and context offer a fuller notion of ordinary justice and suggest processes by which more moral, democratic and just decisions are likely to be reached. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the truth commission in South Africa is presented. It discusses how the evaluation of truth commissions from the point of view of the victims produces conflicting results. It differentiates the concept of victims' deficiencies from the concept of needs. It explains how the identification of the economic effects of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa refines the assessment of the impact of truth commissions on victims.

In land controversies in transitional regimes around the globe, the unfairness of the past confronts the fairness of the present as alternative conceptions of justice collide and conflict. Land reconciliation presents prototypical problems of transitional justice. Based on a survey of a large national sample of South Africans conducted in 2004, this paper investigates the means by which ordinary people adjudicate conflicts between alternative principles of justice. The survey included a formal experiment, based on a vignette in which the dependent variable is perceptions of fairness in a land dispute in which a squatter is evicted from private property. Judgments about the fairness of squatter evictions are hypothesized to be related to the perceived need and deservingness of the squatter (distributive justice), the due process of the eviction (procedural justice), and the nature of the current use of the land (individual land rights, rule of law). The findings indicate that the race of the respondent determines almost all aspects of justice judgments. The exception is important: South Africans of all races judge the eviction of the squatter as more fair when the squatter is extended procedural justice. In addition, the group identities of black South Africans significantly influence the nature of their justice judgments. Thus, this analysis yields important insights into the role of justice considerations in contemporary land controversies, especially under the condition of conflict among important principles of justice. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines what the international campaign against apartheid reveals about the relationship between law and norms on the one hand, and power and interests on the other. Why did states, organizations and individuals take part in the campaign against apartheid when there were few apparent absolute or relative gains to be made? I attempt to demonstrate that realist political and economic arguments do not adequately explain why a coordinated global policy of economic sanctions was implemented against South Africa, and argue that international norms played a dominant role in ending apartheid. I then present a liberal/constructivist argument as to why the international community adhered to international norms against apartheid, and assess the consequences of this course of action after a decade of democracy in South Africa. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International organizations and multilaterals have played an important role in fostering recent interest in the potential to use information and communication technologies (ICTs) to promote development (ICT4D). In addition to investment in specific projects, a substantial portion of this activity has involved research, analysis, and the production of public reports on ICTs for development. In this paper I present new data gathered from an analysis of 39 reports produced in the period 1994-2005 by ten different organizations. I highlight key trends in norms about the uses of technology and the goals of ICT for development initiatives, in addition to perspectives on potential barriers to success and strategies for overcoming these barriers. I then test the relevance of these international norms in the cases of India and South Africa. Through this discussion I show that while there has been significant interest in ICTs for development, there is only moderate level of consensus across these organizations on ICT4D norms. In addition, while there is some evidence of activities consistent with these norms and perspectives at the domestic level, there are clear economic and political barriers to the adoption of new ICT for development strategies without explicit sanctions or incentives. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present discussion addresses the conditions for successful preventive diplomacy in a manner that: a) gives a better understanding of when and why certain conflict prevention strategies succeed, and b) develops an integrated policy-operations framework that can be adapted to individual conflicts. The analysis is applied to a comparative study of conflicts in Somalia, Rwanda, and KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa focusing on how preventive diplomacy failed to thwart bloodshed in the former two cases and succeeded in precluding the escalation of violence in the latter. Causal inferences are made based on the case study evidence and the hypothesis is confirmed that where conflict prevention worked, it was the result of informed analysis and understanding of the situation; where it failed, there was a lack of political will and an analytical framework. Based on this assessment, the study concludes by proposing conditions that when present increase the likelihood of successful conflict prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the politics of AIDS policy development in South Africa. Response of the state to the HIV/AIDS epidemic; Impact of globalization on post-apartheid social policy; Relationship between globalization, social policies and the state; Global factors influencing South African state's response to the epidemic.

The South African government?s open challenging of the international AIDS control regime presents a paradox for the study of international regimes and epistemic communities: why would a state that would presumably benefit the most from a regime not only refuse to adhere to its precepts, but openly challenge its basic tenets? I argue that a fundamental disjuncture exists between the identity commitments of the international AIDS control regime and South Africa?s identity, and that this disjuncture is rooted in the country?s negative past experiences with public health interventions and the attempts to forge a new, African Renaissance-inspired self-identity. This disjuncture finds its expression through the development of a counter-epistemic community which offers scientific expertise and policy recommendations to the South African government. The counter-epistemic community offers a mechanism for the South African government to engage the international AIDS control regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political scientists have paid little attention to the politics of epidemics. This article begins to fill this gap by taking up the question of why some states have responded to the HIV/AIDS epidemic more aggressively than others, conceptualizing AIDS responses as a form of state-building. We attempt to answer the general question by comparing two countries, Brazil and South Africa, in which we might have expected similar state responses but in which we in fact observe substantially different policy trajectories. Our method of structured comparison tests for covariance between policy outcomes and political causes, and it identifies intermediate and logically plausible steps between cause and effect. We present evidence that Brazil?s response was more aggressive than South Africa?s with respect to bureaucratic development, and was much more aggressive with respect to both the prevention of HIV and the treatment of persons with HIV and/or AIDS. We argue that two factors explain the divergent responses: institutions established more space for policy entrepreneurship in Brazil, and the scope of the national political community, especially as it facilitated a racial interpretation of the virus, hindered the state response more in South Africa. We examine and reject several rival hypotheses that might explain the largely divergent response in the two countries: the nature and timing of the democratic transition, who was infected and when, the relative strength of civil society, the quality of leadership, general state capacity, and international linkages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I explore the state?s utilization of rape as a tactic of terrorism and torture during states of emergency in the cases of both apartheid South Africa (1950-1990) and Peru during the height of Leftist insurgency, from 1980 until 1992. I propose that this rape is part of a strategy to maintain the subordination of disadvantaged social groups. In both South Africa and Peru, agents of the state used rape to punish women who associated with, who were related to, or who were themselves insurgents; to obtain information about insurgencies; to demonstrate the regime?s power; and to cower an entire disempowered ethnicity or class by raping a few of the girls or women belonging to the group. Rape is, of course, not documented as an official state policy by either government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite many discussions on diversionary war, few have investigated the plausibility of the opposite where leaders choose to make peace with an external adversary to divert domestic crisis. Here I propose a ?diversionary-compliance? hypothesis of nuclear renunciation where leaders give up nuclear weapons to stay in power. The hypothesis is ?diversionary? in that leaders have an ulterior motive of securing their jobs by ?complying? with the international norm of nuclear nonproliferation. When domestic crisis threatens the leader?s tenure in a situation where the international community does not support the leadership, the leader may decide to signal friendly gestures to the international community to obtain support by renouncing nuclear weapons (diversionary-compliance) rather than going nuclear (diversionary-war). I test the hypothesis on South Africa by process tracing its nuclear history with two variables, domestic crisis and foreign pressure. Forty-five years of South Africa?s nuclear history showed that when the degrees of domestic crisis and foreign pressure were high, its nuclear posture turned dovish. Findings also showed that the U.S. had planted the atomic seed in South Africa for economic and strategic interest at the inception of the Cold War, and had sent mixed signals to Pretoria?s earlier attempt at nuclear development. South Africa?s decision to weaponize its nuclear program during 1974-1977, thus, was a natural course of events. In late 1989 to early 1990 when South Africa renounced nuclear weapons, this turnaround occurred when the apartheid regime experienced the worst legitimacy crisis in the National Party?s history. This confirms the hypothesis that the reason President de Klerk dismantled nuclear weapons was not so much his identity change or his fear of the ANC?s possession of the weapons as his anticipation of gaining international recognition to prolong his hold on the apartheid power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action: Evidence from The Concord Project Barbara J. Nelson Linda Kaboolian Kathryn A. Carver The question we posed in our research was how do cross-community organizations with their potential to generate bridging social capital form? More specifically, how do concord organizations start against the odds of daily conflict among racial, ethnic, and religious groups defined by too much particularistic history and too little common future? Concord organizations bring together people with fundamentally opposing views or identities for the purpose of promoting civil society while recognizing group differences. After investigating over 100 concord organizations in the US, Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Palestinian and Israeli groups working in the US, our answer is that concord organizations form because potential collective actors see their actions as worthy long-term investments rather than short-term high prices. They are primarily investors rather than consumers. Each person who decides to work to create a concord organization calculates a net pro-social interest rate. This return on investment includes consideration of the danger, the pleasures, the obstacles, the immediate costs, the opportunity costs, and the benefits of action. In particular, investors are attentive to the opportunity costs of the status quo, that is, of not acting, which they considered to have a high and enduring price. Collective action to create concord organizations is an example of thick rationality, the kind of considerations made by people embedded in social systems with multiple personal, organizational, and communal values. Becoming an investor, especially with people who belong to disfavored groups, requires a special micromobilizing frame?a balancing frame. This frame balances an overarching shared value with the enduring opposing values of participants. Because concord organizations never solve the conflicts of values they embody, they are always to some extent in formation mode. Our research determined the ten design principles and necessary practices that allow a balancing frame to endure. Without adherence to principles and practices, antagonistic group values overwhelm shared values, and the organization fails to form or to continue to function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses several issues on state identity in South African foreign policy. Background on controversies over the country's state identity; Implications of South Africa's status as a self-governing colony within the British empire on the notion of role which assumes states as units of analysis; Significance of solidarity and democracy in defining South Africa's continental role.

Presents a study about the evidence on victims' responses to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process in South Africa. Definition of truth commissions; Variability in victims' evaluations of the process; Results of the study.

Despite the vast literature on constitutional engineering for nascent democracies in changing societies covering almost all aspects of electoral systems as potentially beneficial for or detrimental to democratic consolidation and/or regime stability, the question whether floor crossing should be allowed or anti-defection regulations should be imposed has attracted less than overwhelming scholarly attention. A comparison between India, which had started her democratic career with no constitutional provision to prohibit floor crossing and had introduced an anti-defection law in 1985 ruling out individual defections but still permitting en bloc defections, and South Africa, where an initial anti-defection clause had been gradually undermined in the course of 2002 to the point that floor crossing is now possible at all three legislative levels within specified time frames, can thus be a telling exploration as to a) what the Indian experience may hold as a lesson for the current debate in South Africa, and b) as to what extent the difference in the two respective electoral systems (a simple plurality constituency system in India and a closed list proportional representation system in South Africa) proscribes a different approach to the debate of floor crossing vs. anti-defection laws anyway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the usefulness of rational choice and cultural change perspectives in explaining the individual level predictors for unconventional forms of political participation in Mexico, South Africa and South Korea. Determinants from four approaches; Sources of unconventional forms of political participation; Crucial factor in determining protest action in the democracies.

Existing judicial research has firmly established the role of the law and the courts within a variety of political systems (see Haynie and Tate 2000). Yet very little systematic empirical research has been conducted to fully explore the extent to which theories of judicial behavior based upon the American judicial system are applicable to other legal systems. As a result, these theories lack generalizability and, moreover, have failed to determine if the U.S. judiciary is comparable to other court systems or simply an anomaly within a broader comparative framework. Thus, using the South African legal context we test several theories of judicial behavior derived from research on the American courts. We specifically focus on the South African Appellate Division, the highest court of appeal throughout the time period 1950-1990–roughly the rise and fall of apartheid. Utilizing an integrated approach derived from both the legal and extralegal approaches to understanding judicial decision making, we analyze a particularly salient issue area, the death penalty. The results suggest that ideology and race–constrained by legal factors–are the strongest predictors of death penalty decisions. The implications of these findings parallel those for the United States courts; judicial decision making is much more complex than what the legal model suggests and, concomitantly, theories of judicial behavior extrapolated from the American context can increase our understanding of the role of law and courts within the legal system of South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Late-coming involves benefits as well as costs. As one of the latest surfers on the ?Third Wave of Democratisation? South Africa can draw on a much more supportive international environment as concerns its struggle towards democratic consolidation than any of the post-colonial societies to be considered in this panel. At the same time, it is faced with a shift towards an ever growing diminution of the roles of the state, as democratisation, liberalisation, deregulation, and privatisation become the thin end of the wedge for international agencies. Furthermore, as the world’s only post-apartheid society and as the last remaining powerhouse on an otherwise ?hopeless continent?, South Africa is clearly at the heart of a sympathising global interest. At the same time, the problem of empowering the formerly oppressed African majority without losing social control to ascriptive identities and partisan loyalties seems to make a strong, interventionist, or, for that matter, autonomous state ever more inevitable. In this vein, the widening of the gap between (international) expectations and (domestic) reality becomes some kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The contradictions that are thus brought to the fore by the interdependence of globalisation and the need for an autonomous state are already visible within the country’s ruling tripartite alliance. How can the state in South Africa cope with these contradictions? Will it be able to create an autonomous state against the pressures of globalisation? To what extent different strategies of governance need to be produced at the beginning of the new millennium? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa and Nepal initiated their transitions to democracy at roughly the same time, the early 1990s. In language policy, the transition in both countries entailed an adoption of official multilingualism, rejecting the past monopoly of the mother-tongue of the dominant group. The new multilingualism in both cases, I argue, is more indicative of liberal democratization than it is of fragmenting parochialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disgrace is a highly disturbing novel because it seems to present a world dying without hope. On the one hand there is an academic world deprived of grace by its failure to reproduce the cultural heritage that was placed in its keeping. Here the insecurities of the Eurocentric intellectual in South Africa can be taken as emblematic of the insecurities of Western culture in a post-colonial World. One the other hand, the world outside the university is represented by a post-apartheid South Africa of brutal violence, and the economic squalor that the violence leaves in its wake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]