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Enhält Rezensionen u.a. von: Commins, David: The Wahabi mission and Saudi Arabia. - London : I. B. Tauris, 2006. - 276 S

This article presents the results of a quantitative survey among 622 young Moroccans in 2003/04 on concepts of legitimacy under Mohammed VI. The article regards itself as a contribution to the debate about authoritarianism in the Middle East and the production of social consent in Muslim states. It explores changing state-society relations with quantitative as well as qualitative means. The findings show that traditional sources of legitimacy are declining whereas modern rationales and a 'youthful sprit' rise as reasons for accepting the young king's authority. The habitus of youth needs to be regarded as a major contributing element to the stability of the Moroccan monarchy today. The results show clearly that processes of political modernisation and democratisation are more crucial to women than men. (J North Afr Stud)

While Taiwan continues to enjoy a liberal, consolidated democratic regime, citizen discontent continues to be directed at regime, government, and the governing. Identifying the scope and degree of dissatisfaction is an initial step in ascertaining whether discontented citizens might be more or less amenable to destabilizing change at the regime level or more procedural changes at the government levels. Taiwan's 2004 elections topped off four years of mud slinging, legislative gridlock, and a number of serious battles over constitutional jurisdictions and powers. This research note compares survey items from the Taiwan Election and Democratization Study (TEDS) surveys taken in 2001 and 2003 to measure levels of support for a democratic regime and governance within this environment. As party and ethnic identification are key cleavages on Taiwan, this study seeks to establish the relative strengths of the association between partisan and ethnic identification and attitudes towards regime and government. The main findings are: (1) dissatisfaction with regime and governance are more strongly associated with partisan identification than ethnic identification; (2) there exists a surprisingly low satisfaction and commitment to democracy; and (3) alienation from government exists at a moderate level. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

This paper characterises rules-based fiscal policy setting. Basically, we translate a standard monetary policy rule into a simple fiscal policy rule. We then infer on fiscal policymakers' reaction coefficients by testing the rule with GMM. Interaction is also tested directly by the inclusion of monetary policy setting. Our results qualify existing evidence on systematic fiscal policy in two respects. First, fiscal policy usually stabilises public debt. And there is indeed substantial interaction between fiscal and monetary policy via the debt channel. Second, sustainability is achieved with a 'stop-go? cycle of consolidation. Consolidation does not come at the cost of less cyclical stabilisation unless debt ratios are high.