Croft reviews 'Paris, Pretoria and the African Continent: The international relations of states and societies in transition,' edited by Chris Alden and Jean-Pascal Daloz, 'Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict management in Africa,' by Francis M. Deng, Sadikiel Kimaro, Terrence Lyons, Donald Rothchild, and I. William Zartman, and 'Africa and the International System: The politics of state survival,' by Christopher Clapham.
Discusses the coordination of industrial citizenship rights in European nations. Although it guarantees a labor force's right of collective participation at their place of employment, industrial citizenship is written in either company or labor law; rights founded in company law ensure participation in economic decision making, whereas those based in labor law affect managerial authority in employment relationships. The exposure of industrial citizenship rights to international competition transformed the harmonization of European industrial citizenship rights into the supranational regulation of national systems; consequently, workplace representation in company law was entirely subverted by labor law & the integration of European citizenship was displaced by maintaining the integrity of national systems. The consequences of the attempt to coordinate European citizenship are identified as incomplete inclusion, the continuation of competition, & the gradual erosion of national regimes that will accelerate erosion in European nations with lower citizenship standards. It is concluded that a successful integration of citizenship rights will be more market- & efficiency-oriented & internally diverse than present national regimes. 37 References. J. W. Parker
Scholars employing world-system theory have tended to examine how world-systemsdevelop and expand, while few have addressed the fragmentation or collapse of world-systems. This paper explores the conditions of world-system collapse using Habermas's concept of legitimation crisis as a starting point. The paper posits that legitimation crises are a recurring problem in world-systems and have led to collapse in a number of cases. Prehistoric North American and Pacific world-systems are used as examples.
ABSTRACTThe failure of attempts at neoliberal social security reform in Brazil since 1990 demonstrates the limited political influence of seemingly powerful economic forces, especially private business and international financial institutions. Besides power-dispersing constitutional structures, the fragmentation of social forces, the weakness of political parties, and the internal segmentation of the state apparatus have hindered the efforts of Brazilian governments to gain the political support necessary to cut entitlements and thus stem the rapid rise in pension spending.
L 'histoire connaît-elle une crise aux Etats-Unis ? Pour tester la validité de ce diagnostic souvent porté, cet article entreprend d'analyser les transformations du monde des historiens depuis les années soixante et de replacer dans leur contexte les débats sur la fragmentation, le multiculturalisme et la synthèse. Il suggère que les efforts actuels de reconceptualisation signalent moins une crise qu'une tentative pour redessiner les contours d'une histoire qui soit nationale tout en conservant la trace des tensions politiques, sociales et culturelles.
This article examines the status of a national mental health policy for children in need of mental health services. The need for systems planning and services integration involving multiple agencies is presented. The different programs of the major governmental agencies involved in the delivery of services to children are reviewed, as are the range of services provided. This article demonstrates the fragmentation and duplication that is endemic in all aspects of mental health, and that consequently makes policy implementation exceedingly difficult.
Argues that the characteristics that influence the manner of agenda-setting permit the EC to consider a wider range of policies and policy alternatives than might an individual nation state. Discusses the fragmentation of the policy-making system, the presence of a number of influential policy advocates, and the availability of a range of alternatives from member nations. These enable the EC to search for superior alternatives, but this is in contrast to negative characterisations of implementation. (Original abstract-amended)
Globalization & regionalization influence the political, legal, economic, & military institutions of modern liberal democratic states & are producing both integration through the growth of communication & interconnectedness & fragmentation through the weakening of existing political relations. This global context challenges the meaning & suitability of democratic politics in three arenas: (1) scope & capacity of the state regulatory ability; (2) the representativeness & accountability of the state to its regional & ethnic communities & movements; & (3) the relationship between sovereignity, democracy, & the territorial political community. D. Generoli
In response to problems of jurisdictional fragmentation in American metropolitan areas, many efforts at regional governance have been undertaken. Few are successful. In most areas, area-wide problems are dealt with by specialized functional entities. The universal avoidance of regional general-purpose governance is analyzed through consideration of the motivations and attitudes of the actors (businesses, governments, citizens) in particular American cities, including Seattle. It is argued that the strongest force against regionalization is the fear of redistribution of real income.
The women's movement in Brazil began to find fertile ground among the urban middle sectors as a radical proposal to politicize the private, to rethink the most fundamental relationships in the family and in daily life. But it developed in accordance with local circumstances, becoming a movement with its own characteristics and seeking to take account of the situation of women in Brazil
In the northeastern Algarve, Portugal, semi-dispersed settlements and property fragmentation evidently had coexisted with a predominantly nuclear family household pattern since the midnineteenth century, suggesting that a small holding pattern of land tenure need not always lead to a stem-family household as is so often true in other areas of Iberia. Other comparisons, drawn between the Algarve and the adjacent region of Alentejo, suggest that regional variation is strong on all measures and poses an interesting challenge to social scientific explanation.
For several decades scholars have accepted a social stratification-government inequality thesis that municipal fragmentation in metropolitan areas is an institutional arrangement for enhancing inequality in the distribution of scarce resources. Policy recommendations to eliminate suburbs through consolidation are based on this thesis. Key propositions underlying this presumption are presented, and the lack of evidence in support of many of these propositions is examined. Scholars are urged to view public policies aimed at eliminating large numbers of municipalities in metropolitan areas with considerable skepticism.
This research examines how sixteen state commissions on local governments concep tualized and defined urban problems. The research indicates that the commissions had a reform-oriented definition which stressed governmental fragmentation and multi plicity. It was found that the commissions took their cues on defining urban problems from organizations such as the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations and the Committee for Economic Development. The note concludes with observations on how urban research is related to urban policy formation.
Version retravaillée du mémoire de soutenance ; Among the studies on urban services in the southern cities, few tackle the subject of gas. And yet, it has become an increasingly necessary domestic energy in these cities. In recent years, Egypt, like several other countries (Tunisia, Algeria, Turkey), has developed a new modern urban service, industrial equipment, a city gas network. This is a major reform which entails replacing a handmade distribution of gas cylinders by this network. Such reforms have radically changed the western cities since the nineteenth century. Thus, through the implementation of this project in Cairo, we study the outlines of change in urban settings, social and political, of a metropolis in urban transition. The crucial point is the social efficiency of the reform, supported by the World Bank, in a fragmented city, characterized by socio-spatial discrimination in access to services. Actually, if this reform strengthens this discrimination, the reason lies neither in the privatization of the service, nor in the model of service organization, but rather in the unchanged outlines of public management, privatized by the regime and characterized by corruption. So, this reform only means a technical modernization of the service. These results are a means to discuss the implications of the development concept in the South, an issue less technical than fundamentally political. ; Parmi les études sur les services urbains dans les villes du Sud, rares sont celles qui s'intéressent au gaz, une énergie domestique pourtant devenue indispensable au quotidien de nombreux citadins. Or, depuis quelques années, l'Égypte, à l'instar de plusieurs autres pays (Tunisie, Algérie, Turquie), a fait le choix de développer un nouveau service urbain moderne, organisé de manière industrielle, un réseau de gaz urbain. Il s'agit d'une réforme majeure du service, le réseau se substituant à un système artisanal de distribution de bouteilles de gaz. De telles réformes ont radicalement transformé les villes occidentales depuis le dix-neuvième siècle. Ainsi, à travers le déploiement de ce projet au Caire, nous étudions les trajectoires d'évolution des configurations urbaines, sociales et politiques, d'une métropole au coeur de la transition urbaine. La question centrale est alors celle de l'efficacité sociale de cette réforme, soutenue par la Banque mondiale, dans une métropole fragmentée, gangrénée par les discriminations socio-spatiales, notamment d'accès aux services. Or, si cette réforme contribue de facto à renforcer ces discriminations, la raison n'est à chercher ni dans la privatisation du service, ni dans sa forme d'organisation, mais bien plutôt dans les termes inchangés d'une gestion publique clientéliste et privatisée par le pouvoir. Cette réforme ne constitue alors qu'une modernisation technique du service. Ces résultats nous permettent alors de revenir sur ce qu'implique le développement dans les pays du Sud, une question moins technique que fondamentalement politique.
