Suchergebnisse

How do electoral systems influence citizens' perceptions of government responsiveness? It is well known that although majoritarian electoral systems emphasize the directness and clarity of the connection between voters and policy makers, proportional representation systems facilitate the representation of all factions in society. Although there have been a few studies of the direct influence of electoral systems on popular attitudes about the political system, the results have not been consistent. The author finds, however, that election systems also affect perceptions of government responsiveness, but the relationship is highly contingent on the degree of ethnic diversity in a society. Using Afrobarometer survey data collected from 15 sub-Saharan African countries, along with contextual variables, this multilevel analysis finds that at lower levels of ethnic diversity, majoritarian electoral systems are much better at boosting citizens' external efficacy, whereas at higher levels of ethnic diversity, proportional representation systems are more likely to elevate efficacy. The findings have important implications for constitutional design and democratic consolidation.

European Report on Development ; How can development policy support weak, dysfunctional or fragile states? What constitutes state fragility and what are the appropriate instruments for state-building? After reviewing two recent quantitative indexes (The Index of State Weakness in the Developing World and The Ibrahim Index of African Governance), this paper cautions against the current tendency to categorise a large number of countries as weak, fragile or failing states. Drawing upon country case studies on Namibia, Somalia and Guinea-Bissau, the paper argues that state-building is fundamentally a political process and external "state-builders" need to develop greater understanding of the internal dynamics of individual societies in order to provide appropriate support to address state fragility. Current strategies for statebuilding are heavily weighted in favour of technical, institutional and formal arrangements. Moreover, since 9/11, the international state-building agenda has increasingly focused on state weakness as a challenge for international peace and security, rather than as an issue of national governance. As a result, many preferred policy prescriptions risk weakening the very states that they hope to strengthen.

The Ethiopia-Eritrea border dispute is embedded within a set of domestic political conflicts in each state, is linked further through proxy conflicts to instability in Somalia and the Ogaden, and is skewed additionally by the application of Washington's global counter-terrorism policies to the region. Each of these arenas of contention has its own history, issues, actors and dynamic; however, each is also distorted by processes of conflict escalation and de-escalation in the other arenas. The intermeshing of domestic insecurities, interstate antagonisms, and global policies create regional 'security complexes' in which the security of each actor is intrinsically linked to the others and cannot realistically be considered apart from one another. Prospects for both the escalation and resolution of the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict are linked to domestic political processes (such as increasing authoritarianism), regional dynamics (such as local rivalries played out in Somalia) and international policies (such as US counter-terrorism policies).

International audience ; The recent literature on immigrant philanthropy and hometown associations has documented the surge on transnational involvement into homeland development. Various categories of diaspora organizations, from informal hometown networks to established immigrant associations, are engaged in development projects in their respective homeland such as the building of schools and health centres or village electrification. And yet, beyond the general observation of a development turn in transnational practices, a closer examination shows that the scope, forms and domain of engagement of immigrant organizations vary a great deal. The literature accounts for this difference on the ground of economic and cultural parameters or of the power relationships between emigrants and villagers. By contrast, little attention has been paid on the bearings of the geopolitical inscription of beneficiary areas in their broader national and international context. And yet, many of these areas are or have undergone tense, and at times, violent, relationships with the central government. Drawing on a comparative study between three groups (the Algerian Kabyles and the Moroccan Chleuhs settled in France and the Indian Sikhs living in Britain), it shows how recent decentralisation policies have converted long standing autonomist policies into a local development dynamics with strong political underpinnings.