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The civil rights movement was arguably the most successful social movement in American history. In a provocative new assessment of its success, David Chappell argues that the story of civil rights is not a story of the ultimate triumph of liberal ideas after decades of gradual progress. Rather, it is a story of the power of religious tradition. Chappell reconsiders the intellectual roots of civil rights reform, showing how northern liberals faith in the power of human reason to overcome prejudice was at odds with the movement's goal of immediate change. Even when liberals sincerely wanted change, they recognized that they could not necessarily inspire others to unite and fight for it. But the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament--sometimes translated into secular language--drove African American activists to unprecedented solidarity and self-sacrifice. Martin Luther King Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, James Lawson, Modjeska Simkins, and other black leaders believed, as the Hebrew prophets believed, that they had to stand apart from society and instigate dramatic changes to force an unwilling world to abandon its sinful ways. Their impassioned campaign to stamp out the sin of segregation'brought the vitality of a religious revival to their cause. Meanwhile, segregationists found little support within their white southern religious denominations. Although segregationists outvoted and outgunned black integrationists, the segregationists lost, Chappell concludes, largely because they did not have a religious commitment to their cause.

"The paper analyses the institutional dynamics surrounding common-pool resources in post socialist Central and Eastern Europe. It is conceived in close conjunction with the case studies reported in the four preceding papers in this series. The purpose of this paper is to frame the individual case inquiries, compare the findings from the four plus two additional case studies, and relate those to broader agrarian and environmental changes in Central and Eastern Europe. The comparative assessment suggests that resource governance has shifted from the previously dominant legal and administrative state hierarchies towards markets. In addition, state power has moved from central governments towards local authorities. The waning and decentralization of state power has caused the emergence of significant gaps between property legislation and rights-in-practice, which have been particularly stark in weak states. The discrepancy between legal texts and rights-in-practice leads to the exclusion of public and collective interests in favor of private interests in CPR management. It finds its environmental expression in the declining use of water control systems, widespread destruction of water infrastructure, and unfettered conversion of agricultural land for urban sprawl. Thus, the findings attest to the central role of distributive issues in post socialist privatization and suggest an additional dimension of distributive conflict: different rights and obligations associated with resources. They also suggest the need for post socialist governments to be actively involved in the management of common-pool resources for the protection of public and collective interests." (author's abstract)

Die Studie untersucht, in welchem Umfang es den Staaten Westafrikas gelungen ist, ihre Außenpolitik zu harmonisieren. Sie waren auch in der Kolonialzeit nie passive Akteure, nach der Unabhängigkeit war die Idee des Panafrikanismus weit verbreitet. Faktoren wie Einfluß oder Führungskraft wirken auf die außenpolitische Entscheidungsfindung ein und schlagen sich in unterschiedlicher Form nieder (Zahl von Staatsbesuchen, diplomatischen Vertretungen und internationalen Verträgen usw.). Dabei findet ein Austausch überwiegend auf politischer Ebene statt, die meisten bilateralen Abkommen decken wirtschaftliche Themen ab. Der Außenhandel zwischen den einzelnen Ländern ist eher gering, es ist hier und z.B. in der Militärpolitik eine starke Abhängigkeit von den entwickelten Staaten zu beobachten. Im Hinblick auf die Mitgliedschaft in multilateralen Organisationen gibt es Unterschiede zwischen anglophonen und frankophonen Staaten. (DÜI-Wgm)