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This article is based on a case study of a long-term public controversy over the construction of a highway bypass (around Plzeň, Czech Republic). Two principal variants of the bypass were proposed. One of them began gradually to appear preferable, increasingly attractive for experts, but remaining only on paper. In the meantime, however, the other variant became more realistic, pushed through mainly by local politicians and actually constructed. This article shows how purification of science from politics (and vice versa) played a key role in the development and ending of the case. Initial expertization of the case switched to its sharp politicization, when people got frustrated from protraction and indecisive evidence of accumulated expertise. This turned to be fatal for those who consistently staked everything on "pure facts." This article concludes by outlining some general consequences of such a development for both democratic decision making and the political relevance of expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The individual characteristics of the Hungarian constitution are better revealed by comparison with the constitutions of its own region than by comparison with those of the countries of western Europe. A convenient way to explore the topic of how the diætalis tractatus (bargaining between the Crown and the Hungarian parliament) constrained autocratic power is to contrast it with the position of parliaments in Berlin and Vienna. As in the German and Austrian constitutional systems, in Hungary the powers of the Crown were immense. In contrast, the arbitrary power of the executive in Hungary was mitigated far less by the institutions of the Rechtsstaat than by the strong position of the Hungarian parliament. However, the clashes between the monarch and the Hungarian parliament were not fought with modern constitutional devices such as impeachment of ministers or deputations. Instead, they were conducted using the hoary institutions of the past, such as the resistance (vis inertiæ) of the counties, the exchanges of address and rescript between the two sides, obstrukció in parliament by minorities, repeated prorogations by the king, and the appointment of royal commissars with powers of coercion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relying on several extensive databases, this study finds state employee dismissal rates to be low with many managers also complaining about discipline and dismissal processes as a management impediment. Although interstate variation was evident, extent of civil service coverage, the presence of collective bargaining, or past efforts to simplify dismissal processes had limited explanatory power, however. The implications of the findings for civil service reform and the adoption of at-will employment arrangements are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rousseau is famous as an advocate of the politics of “denaturing.” But attention to his conception of the “science of the legislator,” as developed in the and his writings on Poland and Corsica, reveals a more moderate approach to statecraft. Here Rousseau claims that legislative science requires tempering commitment to principles of political right with sensitivity to actual political conditions—a claim that importantly and unexpectedly parallels the better known account of the science of the legislator developed by Adam Smith. In comparing these conceptions, this article draws three conclusions: first, Smith's and Rousseau's shared moderation reveals their common commitment to accommodating the passions and prejudices of modernity; second, their fundamental difference concerns not practical legislative methods but rather differing conceptions of natural justice and political right; and finally, their prudential approach to legislation helps clarify the specific types of “moderation” and “intelligence” required of contemporary nation builders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on blogs as a new media form, and addresses the question of shifts in political subjectivity. The blog is seen as a new way of relating to the public sphere, and to other people, thereby involving new forms of subjectivity and political conduct. Two theories of subjectivity are discussed here, selected because of their explicit links between subjectivity and communication: these are Jurgen Habermas's inter-subjective construction of the subject, and Mark Poster's poststructuralist account of a decentred and fragmented subjectivity. These theoretical subjectivities are subsequently contrasted with the subjectivities enabled by the structural features of blogs. Thus, blog entries; the chronology of blogging; readers' comments; and hyperlinks (internal and external) are examined in terms of the type of subjectivity they support. The analysis reveals that the emerging blogging subjectivity is one that strives for autonomy and self-definition, in a way re-introducing the authorial subject, which was lost in the wake of the poststructuralist critique. On the other hand, the emerging blogging subject is not the originator of all meaning: rather meaning emerges in collaboration with others. The democratic promise of the blog might therefore be located in its potential to deliver an autonomous yet connected subject, and through this to found a new politics revolving around autonomy and solidarity. However, this promise can only be delivered if blogs explicitly address and problematise questions of power and its distribution – and in doing so, they must avoid the twin pitfalls of emotivism, the mere stating of unsupported personal opinions, and empty publicity, the spectacularisation of politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The body of writing that falls under the label of 'new imperialism' proposes a radical and contemporary understanding of post-Cold War international politics that involves a revision and redeployment of the category of inter-imperialist rivalries. Alex Callinicos's 'Does capitalism need the state system?' aims at opening a metatheoretical space where it might be possible, within the frame of capitalist mode of production, to meaningfully speak of such an autonomous logic of geopolitical competition, rooted in the essential political fragmentation of the capitalist system along the frontiers of nation-state, but, crucially, not determined by the logic of capitalist competition. This article takes issue with some of Callinicos's conclusions, particularly the possibility of a 'realist moment' in our understanding of inter-imperialist rivalries. It also explores the possibility of a non-reductionist, Marxist notion of geopolitical rivalries to be developed through the empirical examination of the state-capital link in foreign policy, and attention to capitalist accumulation and its unfolding in space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The story of Socrates' life, and in particular the circumstances of his death, has been a nearly obligatory referent for the development of Western political thought. Contemporary political theorists such as Hannah Arendt and, more recently, Gerald Mara and Dana Villa have presented Socrates as a model of political engagement for our times. Against the background of these accounts, I develop an existential interpretation of Socrates as he appears in the Apology and Crito, focusing on the singular, private, experiential and incommunicable character of Socrates' truth. In doing so, I discuss some important and contentious issues in Socratic studies, such as his disavowal of knowledge, his allegiance to the Athenian polis and the apparent tension between his defiance during the trial and his willingness to submit to the resulting death sentence. My interpretation reveals a Socrates that we should not strive to understand, let alone emulate politically, particularly if we wish to respect his own sensibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that the central question in IR theory today is not perhaps how "the international" should be conceived, rather what role either the state and interstate relations continue to have in a globalizing world with numerous actors of different types engaged in almost every significant issue. Postinternational theory advances this worldview in an aggressive fashion. Yet it is also true that (a) traditional theoretical perspectives continue to have their utility in limited contexts; and (b) postinternational theory intersects in interesting ways with traditional approaches as well as some of their most important challengers. The central organizing question, the paper maintains, is which actors exercise a significant influence over outcomes in particular issues--and why? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the critique of the distributive paradigm from author and philosopher Iris Marion Young. The author cites the broad lines that were developed from philosophical thinking about justice. One could call the first line a focus on distributive justice, while the other on political justice. The author stated that the most important characteristic of Young's critique is its double-sidedness, not only does the distributive paradigm misinterpret significant aspects of justice and turn questions of rights and power into questions of the distribution of goods, it also fails to meet the heart of the matter of distribution itself.

This article argues that scholars should treat populism in East Central Europe (ECE) as a dynamic phenomenon in which pure anti-establishment appeal is overshadowing radical ideological components. It explains that scholars are mistaken in looking at populism in post-communist ECE as static. It compares the populism in ECE with the developed populism frameworks in West Europe. It says that populism draws its appeal by blaming the post-communist governments for their political and moral rather than the inherent challenges of democratic transition.

This article revisits the critique of political science outlined in Bernard Crick's (1959) The American science of Politics. Although this work inspired a number of subsequent critics of the discipline and survives in the footnotes of many historical accounts of political science, its contents are now largely overlooked or forgotten. Having reconstructed its main arguments, I explore the mixed critical response this work elicited on publication, and then seek to explain why its influence was so short-lived. An important reason for its inability to deflect the discipline from its chosen course lies in the very distinctive republican-liberal project that guided Crick's thinking in these years. A critical reengagement with this text is worthwhile, I argue, both because it illustrates the importance of the migration of ideas and thinkers to the tradition of political science critique, and because Crick provides a strikingly different kind of argument for methodological pluralism and political relevance than that which is offered today by critics of political science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William Arthur Lewis, the Nobel Prize awardee in 1979, was actively involved in politics and policymaking. During World War II, Lewis was appointed to be a young advisor to the British Colonial Office where he came into direct collision with the mainstream laissez-faire philosophy. After the War, Lewis took the lead in a Fabian conference on colonial question, and his encounter with Kwame Nkrumah eventually compelled him to write an important monograph on the prospect of plural governance in Africa. Through a rereading of Lewis's original texts, it is demonstrated that his emphasis on peasant-led agricultural development and advocacy of political pluralism were consistently manifested in his academic and nonacademic writings on tropical regions, especially on Africa, contrary to the conventional interpretation of his 1954 model of “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour,” which has tended to pin much faith on top-down industrialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the Chinese articulations of the modular project of governmentality in Zhang Jingsheng's books "The Philosophy of a Beautiful Life" and "How to Organize a Beautiful Society." Identification of the intellectual crosscurrents of the theory of the aesthetic state of the scholar; Indications of fascism in the aesthetic approach of the scholar to politics and the implications of biopower; Failure of the author to realize the possibilities of conjoining aesthetics and politics.

This article examines major methodological issues in Gramsci’s writings that are relevant for re‐thinking contemporary political relationships, by considering his use of the ‘particular’. It draws on Gramsci’s notes on Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, including his contrast between ‘old’ Catholic Europe and ‘new’ Protestant, positivist America, and discusses Gramsci’s critique of positivism and populism with reference to his writings on the palaeontologist Cuvier and the criminologist Cesare Lombroso. It links Gramsci’s use of details and fragments from diverse sources, Father Brown’s methods, and the practice of psychoanalysis. Gramsci’s criticism of Conan Doyle is contrasted with Freud’s admiration for him. It examines the tensions involved in interrogating seemingly unimportant, ‘everyday’ material and in engaging with the innate conservatism of popular ‘common sense’ beliefs, whose ‘good sense’ is nonetheless the necessary point of departure for mass politics. At the same time it argues that in addressing major social and political issues, the ‘general’, universal or hegemonic cannot be derived from the ‘particular’. It connects these themes to contemporary questions about the status and objectives of different kinds of knowledge and the split between politics and people. It suggests that Gramsci’s aim to go beyond the dichotomy between rationalism and irrationalism has profound implications both for understanding his writings and for their use in contemporary political analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Only a few studies of the lower federal court confirmation process consider the role of the race/gender of nominees in that process and none consider the intersection of party politics with those characteristics. We address this deficiency, arguing that the different electoral incentive structures of the two major parties have consequences for the treatment of minority and female nominees. The levels of minority and female support enjoyed by the Democratic Party, as well as the Republican Party's desire to shed its reputation as being insensitive to issues of importance to those constituencies, lead us to expect the nominations of minorities and women will be handled most expeditiously under conditions of united Republican control, followed unified Democratic control, divided control with a Republican president and divided control with a Democratic president. Our empirical analysis provides partial support for this hierarchy and demonstrates the importance of considering the conditioning effect of partisan politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I read Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte as an attempt to articulate a theory of agency despite a lack of adequate concepts. Exhibiting a discomfort with the dueling possibilities of a liberal voluntarism and a structuralist determinism, Marx upsets this supposed dichotomy with an exaggerated use of metonymy. He thus demonstrates the reductive nature of the process of identifying coherent and autonomous subjects, and brings attention to how conventional discourse compels such reductions. Revealing both the inadequacy and the indispensability of established concepts, he tinkers with linguistic convention as a means to open the possibility of thinking and writing beyond them. As these concepts restrict the form of political narratives that can be spoken, he contributes to an enriched political discourse better able to inform political action without succumbing to the liberal tendency to fetishize the individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has called for the adoption of a federal constitution by the EU. As such — particularly given the impact of his thought on the social sciences more generally, and its affinities with traditional theories of European integration — a question arises: why has a specifically Habermasian theory of European integration not developed? This article argues that one is already present, albeit implicitly, in the interstices between Habermas’ journalistic and theoretical oeuvres, merely requiring delimitation, exegesis and application. It combines a sophisticated and comprehensive account of European integration and democracy with an innovative ‘hermeneutic’ dimension. The latter broadens the parameters of EU studies to encompass relevant developments in European culture. Having identified its component parts and ‘reconstructed’ this theory, the article concludes by subjecting it to a preliminary empirical test against the results of interviews with radical left and social democratic MEPs and personnel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relation between the government and the media in post-apartheid South Africa. An overview is given of key developments and tensions between the government and the media in the first 10 years of democracy and the ethical frameworks underlying the respective positions. An overview of the debate between the so-called "national interest" and the "public interest" is given, and linked to normative ethical frameworks of libertarianism vis-�-vis communitarianism. A mean between the 2 is suggested in the form of mutualism, whereas the necessity for conceptual clarification in debating the relation between the government and the media is emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the resurgence of far left in France. There is a parallel between the reemergence of the memory of the Algerian war during the 1990s and the reemergence of the memory of another taboo subject, 68-era Trotskyism, in the early 2000s. Just as immigration controversies in France and civil war in Algeria brought back to the surface uncomfortable memories of decolonisation, so the renewal of the French far left in the present has brought its past into sharper relief. Arguably, this has undermined the credibility of the view that 1968 was simply a soft lifestyle revolt, for harder-edged ghosts are back to haunt us.

This article discusses the work of Cornelius Castoriadis, an important political thinker and theorist of democracy. Castoriadis developed not one but two theories of democracy based on two distinct understandings of autonomy. The first is compatible with the key features of representative government; the second is not. Unfortunately, Castoriadis models his interpretation of the idea of popular sovereignty on the second view, thereby concluding, like Rousseau before him, that it is incompatible with representative government. This article discusses both approaches and presents a reinterpretation of political representation and of the idea of popular sovereignty in order to show how they can be made compatible. I argue that the discourse of popular sovereignty and the modern principles of representative government entail one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the global economy. Role in influencing the global prospects of political democracy; Establishment of the IMF as a financial cooperative by the Bretton Woods agreement in July 1944; Prevention of postwar recurence of worldwide economic depression; Impact of the IMF on democratic governance.

In this article, we assess three explicit strategies (based on three logics of political integration) as possible solutions to the European Union's legitimacy problems. The first strategy amounts to a scaling down of the ambitions of the polity-makers in the European Union (EU). The second strategy emphasizes the need to deepen the collective self-understanding of Europeans. These two modes of legitimation figure strongly in the debate on aspects of the EU, but both have become problematic. The third strategy concentrates on the need to readjust and heighten the ambitions of the polity-makers so as to make the EU into a federal multicultural union founded on basic rights and democratic decision-making procedures. Taking stock of the ongoing constitution-making process, the authors ask how robust such an alternative is and how salient it is, as opposed to the other two strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Iraq crisis has contributed to a deep malaise in the humanitarian community. With humanitarian agencies confronted with major policy and institutional survival issues, the future of humanitarianism may well hinge on how these issues are addressed. This article explores the malaise at the intersection of politics, principles, and pragmatism. It argues that unless urgent action is taken by the humanitarian community itself, principled and independent humanitarian action may become a thing of the past, especially in high profile crises where the superpower and its allies have political or security interests at stake. The article concludes with some specific suggestions regarding a process for the redress of humanitarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author examines the cross forces at play inside Russia between the government and the oligarchs. Why the crackdown on the oligarchy? Various prevailing theories are offered. Among them, perhaps this crackdown was a tactical campaign decision with "guaranteed voter appeal calculated to ensure a first-round victory for Putin." Or perhaps Khodorkovsky broke a tacit pact reached in 2000 with Putin, in which the oligarchs promised to stay out of politics and Putin agreed not to challenge the source of their wealth. The author notes that, "… businessmen are one of the few forces capable of resisting the onset of a new authoritarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Points out that it was under Stanley Baldwin's leadership that the British Conservative Party launched its boldest intellectual venture, when it established the Bonar Law Memorial College (BLMC) at Ashridge in Hertfordshire, England. Evolution of Ashridge into a political education center for the formation of Conservative intellectuals to counterbalance the supposed ascendancy of the Left in the intellectual and cultural realm; Goal of creating a body of Conservative thinkers who could rival the Fabians.

Delves into the issue of inequality and citizenship. Examination of the logic by which the citizenship idea is no sooner born than it is qualified by a binary distinction of active and passive citizenry; Historical background of the concept of inequality and citizenship in France; Story of the feminist or women's movement and the social or labor movement in the nineteenth century.

Recent attempts to model and measure freedom in the Freedom of Choice Literature (FCL) have focused on the range of opportunities enjoyed by individuals. In this article we focus instead on the range of autonomous choices available to individuals. We illustrate how this approach differs from traditional proposals in FCL and discuss a metric that captures the autonomy aspect of freedom of choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses why indigenous social movements formed electorally viable political parties in Latin America in the 1990s. Examination of institutional reforms in several South American countries; Correlation of the success of the parties with the changes in electoral systems; Necessity of institutional change for the emergence of ethnic parties.

Discusses the institutional preconditions of a democratic paideia. Social and educational level of instituting paideia; Examinantion of a transition strategy for the move from present miseducation to a democratic paideia through an emancipatory education process; Basic tenet that education is intrinsically linked to politics.

Analyses of emerging New Labour policy and practice in the post-compulsory education and training sector have been centrally concerned with the role of 'third way' values and politics in the formulation and development of projects and initiatives. Alternative interpretations of the 'third way' conception are examined and located against the background of some flagship schemes, particularly the New Deal Welfare to Work and the University for Industry learndirect initiatives. It is concluded that policies influenced by third way notions involve more rather than less state involvement and centralism than neo-liberal strategies of the past. This New Labour statism – arguably different from both Old Left and New Right centralism – could, conceivably, be justified in terms of achieving the socio-ethical strands of current policy concerned with social inclusion and communitarian approaches to the distribution of educational goods and services in the face of the forces of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Cleitophon, Cleitophon abandons Socrates because he could not provide an art of justice that would bring an end to strife by eliminating cities, families, and the love of one's own on which they depend. Cleitophon's disappointment in reason prepares us for the misology of his legal positivism in the Republic. Although Socrates does not refute Cleitophon, Plato points to the deficiencies of art and legal positivism by pointing to poetic foils. By pointing to the poetic, Plato shows what is sound in poetry and the city informed by it, and, therewith, what they share with Socrates despite their ultimate differences. By not having his Socrates succumb to the promises of art and the irrational conformism of legal positivism, and by pointing to the humane learning of the poets, Plato opens a window on to the meaning of Socratic wisdom and the Socratic life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its previous centrality in Western political science, materialist arguments in contemporary theories of security politics are neglected and attenuated due to several political and intellectual developments. The extensive geopolitical literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was theoretically unsophisticated, deterministic and reductionist, but it was, along with classical Marxism, a branch of a broader attempt to historicize earlier materialist arguments in response to the industrial and Darwinian revolutions. In order to reformulate geopolitics as a more conceptually robust and sophisticated theory, I employ a generalized version of the apparatus of Marxian historical (production) materialism to construct geopolitics as historical security materialism. In this model, the forces of destruction, constituted by the interaction of geography and technology, determine the security functionality of different modes of protection. Two competing modes of protection, the real-state and the federal-republican, distilled from realist and republican (proto liberal) security practices, entail differing forms of arms control and patterns of institution building (asymmetrical binding vs co-binding), and in turn generate differing political structures (anarchy and hierarchy vs republics and states unions). The security viability of these modes and their attendant structures is hypothesized to vary across three different sets of forces of destruction (early modern, global industrial and planetary nuclear). Simple security, the absence of violence applied to bodies, can result either from the presence of a violence-poor material context, or the presence of political restraints on violence. Real state practices and structures are security functional in material contexts characterized by low violence volume and velocity and dysfunctional in material contexts of high violence volume and velocity, while the converse is true for federal republican practices an... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides both a critical review of Alex Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics and its version of 'construtivism', and a more principled assessment of 'progress' in theory building in the social sciences. As to the first task, I argue that Wendt's, attempt that is both indebted to scientific realism and constructivism, fails because of the incompatibility of these two metatheoretical positions. Consequently, his effort of constructing a new 'middle ground' is a disciplinary undertaking that is more likely to result in a new orthodoxy than in the creation of new interesting puzzles by engaging constructivism's heuristic power. In addressing the second question, I follow the epistemological discussion of the last few decades and attempt to show their dependence on the often uncritical acceptance of certain metaphors of 'growth', 'approximation', 'foundations' that deserve closer critical examination, before we can embrace a particular metatheory and utilise its criteria in the assessment of knowledge claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary social and political theorists have addressed the problem of trust in a manner not satisfactory to the development of administrative theory. This article critiques the rational choice theories of trust as well as those theories that depict trust as dependent on widely shared values. It presents instead a version of "political trust" and argues that trust in the political realm derives from confidence in the institutions and processes of government as well as public officials as individuals. Institutional design and its success in balancing discretion and accountability is identified as the problem of trust in the administrative state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some sociologists and other social scientists argue that political and other sociology should be founded on a venerable or nascent rational choice theory seen as a unifying paradigm. On the other hand, many sociologists have been concerned about the impact on political sociology of such applications of the rational choice/economic approach to political phenomena, and more generally of sociologically limited frameworks for analyzing these phenomena. The rational choice theory of politics is usually called public or social choice. As one of the main branches of rational action theory in economics and political science, public choice represents what its advocates and critics alike term an economic paradigm of and approach to politics. As an application of economic theorizing and methodology to politics, public choice theory is premised upon the argument that the main units of political analysis are "rational, choosing, economizing" individual agents. The assumption of the utility-maximizing behavior of individual actors supposedly makes possible the passage from self-interest to public interest, as well as the escape from the zero-model of politics. Political and generally social outcomes are conceived as emerging from an aggregation process involving multiple individuals rather than from some mysterious group mind.

Three distinct components of the citizenship principle have been identified in the literature: a political principle of democracy, a juridical status of legal personhood and a form of membership and political identity. The modern paradigm of citizenship was based on the assumption that these components would neatly map onto one another on the terrain of the democratic welfare state. Globalization, new forms of transnational migration, the partial disaggregation of state sovereignty and the development of human rights regimes have rendered this model anachronistic. Only if the various elements of the citizenship principle are disaggregated and reinstitutionalized on independent levels of governance, some national, some supranational, will the exclusiveness constitutive of the ideal of citizenship be tempered with the demands of justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suggests the necessity of going beyond procedural definitions of democracy to more normative ideas about decision-making being controlled by all members of the group as equals. Conditions for democratic consolidation; Definition of democracy; Analysis of four factors which facilitate democratic consolidation through an assessment of ten key hypotheses.

The article looks at the 1988 presidential election in France and the reelection of President François Mitterrand. According to the author, the last two years of rule of the left-wing were notable for a power sharing phase incorporating Mitterrand and the right-wing parliamentary majority realized by the 1986 legislative election. He notes that the practice of power sharing or cohabitation, between a left-wing president right-wing government attracted much comment and controversy. However, he opines that the experience of cohabitation have a direct bearing on the 1988 presidential election.

Examines Leo Strauss' analysis of Max Weber in the essay `Natural Right and History,' highlighting the difficulties that political science and social science must overcome, to be considered as a genuine science. Expression of doubt by Strauss about the possibility of philosophy or science; What Weber's most fundamental belief was in; When the politicization of philosophy began, according to Strauss.

The reason why `populism' has remained such a confused notion is that two different strategies can be adopted in trying to clarify it, and the more intuitively appealing of the two does not work. Attempts at a theory of populism invariably fail because they are either too wide-ranging to be clear or too restricted to be persuasive. The alternative is a phenomenological approach, leading to the construction of a descriptive typology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent transitions from authoritarianism to democracy have been front-page news. Often attention to such transitions has focused on efforts to create and sustain democratic elections and to guarantee open political competition between parties that are committed to majority rule. However, equally important in such transitions is the implementation of the rule of law. This article examines the efforts of one country, El Salvador, to re-establish the rule of law as part of its passage to liberal democracy. The efforts to implement the Salvadoran peace accords that were signed in January 1992 provide the focus. The United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) was created to monitor compliance. One important consequence of the accords was the effort to achieve broad reform of the justice system. Salvador's progress here is evaluated both in respect of the degree of compliance with the accords, and, more importantly, in establishing an independent judiciary that will be capable of protecting human rights. Salvador's reforms are compared with other efforts to re-establish the rule of law in some formerly authoritarian regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the role of politics and critical paradigms in modern Chinese literary studies. C.T. Hsia, modernism, comparison, and allegory; Literary history and historicism; Liu Zaifu and the Chinese `avant-garde'; `Method' fetishism; More.

Focuses on a discussion between the authors, one who is editor in chief of the `Gazeta Wyborcza,' Poland's largest daily newspaper, and the other, a professor of journalism at New York University, on the role played by the media in democracy. Names of persons having discussion.

Copyright of International Political Science Review is the property of Sage Publications Inc. 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 International Political Science Review is the property of Sage Publications Inc. 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.)

Comments on the political objectives of Great Britain's Labour Party under the administration of Prime Minister Tony Blair. Downplaying of the state distinguished in the roles of the New Labour movement as a political party and as a government entity; Labour party's allegiance to the new liberal values.

This article explores the significance of Dyer D. Lum in bridging the gap in anarchist historiography. Lum moved toward anarchism because of frustration with abolitionism, spiritualism and labor reform. While anarchism could develop out of such indigenous movements, it also arose out of immigrant socialism. As these two strains of anarchism converged in the 1880s, Lum concentrated on how to unite them into an anarchist movement. Drawing upon the economic reforms of the Boston anarchists and the revolutionary strategy of the Chicago anarchists, Lum offered a more holistic anarchism than most of his comrades. He realized that anarchism, like any movement aiming at radical social change, had to combine an organization that could lead and coordinate action, an effective strategy, and an ideology that was convincing, inspiring and relevant to the U.S. culture. In a sense, Lum's anarchist alloy returns us to the organizational focus of the old labor history, that is, creating a stable organization to combine strategy and ideology is the necessary task of any successful social movement. Lum's hopes, efforts and ideas indicate that there were committed revolutionaries who understood the dilemmas of radical movements and who were determined to take those dilemmas by the horns.