On the following pages, the reader will find a comprehensive summary of the 1993 International Negotiation Network (INN) Consultation, "Resolving Intra-National Conflicts: A Strengthened Role for Intergovernmental Organizations."
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Cooperation, and United Nations
The Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
Abstract:
The primary mission of the nuclear weapons laboratories during the Cold War was research, development and testing of nuclear weapons, and that mission largely shaped the laboratories. It is, therefore, difficult to disassociate the future of the laboratories from the future of the nuclear weapons mission. That mission, and the longer term role of nuclear weapons, are changing, and these changes will affect the laboratories and will open opportunities for new directions, including defense conversion. The scope and nature of those opportunities will be defined in the first instance by the evolving nuclear mission.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Industrial Policy, and Nuclear Weapons
Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster
Abstract:
What is a nation? Do nations have a right to self-determination? If so, does that mean that the national identity of citizens is best guaranteed by a system of democratic government, in which power is subject to open disputation and to the consent of the governed living within a carefully defined territory? And what of nationalism? Does it differ from national identity? Is it compatible with democracy? If not, cam its growth be prevented, or at least controlled, so as to guarantee the survival or growth of democracy?
MICHAEL X. DELLI CARPINI and ESTER FUCHS give a brief overview of why women had been excluded from voting and office holding. They then examine the recent successes by women in the political process, culminating in the election of forty-seven women in the U.S. House of Representatives and five new women senators.
Topic:
Elections, Women, Voting, and Political Participation
This paper examines the use of television as a political campaign tool in the 1983-1989 elections in Argentina. Campaigns were conducted against the background of a national television system that was subject to both commercial and political pressures. Initially, politicians' lack of experience in exploiting the medium led to a scramble for air time right before the election. Within a few years, television became the dominant form of political communication. Political candidates soon developed more sophisticated approaches to television campaigning, but failed to reach a deeper understanding of how television could facilitate the interaction between political parties and citizens in a democracy.
Topic:
Democratization, Elections, Media, Political Parties, and Political Behavior
After being the last to join the wave of democratic transitions in the 1980s, Chile is posing intriguing questions for those interested in understanding the present phase of democratic consolidation, not least because of the country's economic accomplishments. This paper suggests that the future of Chile's distinctive transition may be nearer the democratic pole than other "hybrid" democratic-authoritarian regimes that emerged in Latin America in the past decade. The performance of technocratic roles may result in less authoritarian styles of policy-making, due to a unique pattern of interaction between economic and political elites, aided by favorable economic conditions and the legacy of Chile's democratic traditions.
Topic:
Development, Democracy, Economic Growth, and Elites
The article argues that for proper understanding of many processes of democratization, current conceptions of the state must be revised, especially with reference to its legal dimension. On this basis several contrasts are drawn between representative, consolidated democracies and the democratic (i.e., polyarchical) forms that are emerging in most newly democratized countries, East and South. From this perspective, various phenomena not presently theorized (except as deviations from a presumed modal pattern of democratization) are discussed. Concepts such as delegative democracy, low intensity citizenship, and a state that combines strong democratic and authoritarian features are introduced for the purpose of that discussion.
Topic:
Democratization, Authoritarianism, State, and Post-Communism
In this paper we address the logic of wage determination in a regime of high and accelerating inflation, and the rational basis of 'overindexation' of wages. We discuss the incentives and costs of wage overindexation to the workers, and the determination of the 'optimal' level of wage adjustment. We argue that the degree of overindexation is likely to increase as negotiations become more centralized at the industry level. However, at near-national levels of wage negotiation, the incentives to overindex become much smaller. We also argue that increasing uncertainty over the future path of inflation tends to increase the degree of indexation of wages.
Topic:
Development, Labor Issues, Economic Growth, Inflation, and Wages
The Mexican state's use of revolutionary history to invoke nationalistic sentiments nurtures a lively tradition of storytelling. Ironically, Buena Vista's storytellers criticize the inauthenticity of official representations of the past even as they draw on the images and ideals of 'official' history to weave their own tales. This paper explores the power of storytelling to create an aura of authenticity in a setting where the boundary between true and false, pure and impure, is contested.
Topic:
Development, History, Representation, and Storytelling
This paper offers a discussion of development theory, with special attention to its relevance in the context of India. Three successive models of development are distinguished in the paper: empirical (structural-functional) development theory; philosophical modernization theory (deriving from Enlightenment teachings); and 'postmodernization' theory, emphasizing cultural resistance to global standardization. In its first section, the paper reviews (once again) the developmental model articulated during the postwar years by social scientists under the aegis of the SSRC. As the author shows, this model gave rise to numerous challenges and rejoinders on both theoretical and political grounds, rejoinders that often, however, bypassed one of the model's central features: its narrowly empiricist outlook. It was chiefly this feature that motivated a new wave of (postempiricist) theorizing which-under the banners of phenomenology, hermeneutics, and critical theory-raised the developmental debate to a philosophical and quasi-transcendental level. This move intensified existing controversies by making modernization and modernity itself central topics of critical inquiry, thus triggering a confrontation between defenders of modernity and of 'postmodernity.' Throughout the presentation, room is given to arguments of Indian philosophers and social theorists, to counteract the conceit of a Western monopoly of the development debate. This focus on Indian thinkers forms the heart of the paper's concluding section which illustrates a loosely postmodern view of development by referring to a strand of argumentation stretching from Gandhi to Ashis Nandy and others.