Back to the future or forward to the past? Strengthening markets and rules for effective global energy governance

Current public policy debates on energy security are characterized by a singular focus on questions regarding access to resources. This lopsided attention to the geopolitical dimension of energy security is based on the myopic and erroneous presumption that global energy politics is necessarily a zero-sum game in which one country's energy security is another's lack thereof. In fact, debates deflect attention from the real issues that policy-makers should consider in their attempts to foster effective global energy governance—the central role increasingly international energy markets play in balancing demand and supply—and, even more importantly, the significance of the 'rules of the game' that structure these markets. This article makes a first attempt to apply a broader analytical lens by pointing out and analyzing the important role rules play in determining outcomes in international oil and gas markets; by examining how current trends are affecting the existing 'rules of the game'; and by highlighting consequences for public policy.     

Iran's Free Trade Zones: Back Doors to the International Economy?

Since the late 1980s, Iran has pursued a policy of attracting foreign investment and fostering regional trade by granting favored status to the so-called “Free Trade-Industrial Zones” (FTZs) and “Special Economic Zones” (SEZs). To date six FTZs and sixteen SEZs have been set up throughout Iran. The FTZs are strategically positioned for their potential international links and have their eyes on markets beyond Iran, and the SEZs for their value in serving main industries and for improving the country's distribution system and supply network. This paper examines the experience of these zones in Iran in the context of Iran's contradictory and ambivalent approach to international economic integration in general. It is shown that liberal policies pursued in the free zones have been in marked contrast to the approach in the mainland, which has been generally inward-looking in much of the post-revolutionary period. We examine first the rise of free zones as a global phenomenon followed by an overview of Iran's zones and their characteristics. It is argued that serving mainly as “back doors” to the international economy, Iran's free zones have stalled mainly because their promotion has been decoupled from, if not at odds with, official attitudes to the international economy at large. As a result, the zones' ability to attract investment has been limited by both adverse external perceptions of Iran as an investment destination and internal complexities discouraging such investment.     

Korounkorokalé revisited: ThePays Mande and the West African microlithic technocomplex

In 1992 and 1993, the author reexcavated the rockshelter of Korounkorokalé, located in the heart of the Pays Mande. Evidence from this reinvestigation supports the idea of a long-term recurrent occupation of this site by peoples possessing a conservative quartz microlithic tradition for at least 5000 years. Seemingly aberrant “recent” first millennium AD dates from similar sites in the region are reexamined in the light of the Korounkorokalé sequence. It is argued that some isolated groups of Sub-Saharan peoples maintained a hunting-gathering lifestyle as recently as the mid to late first millennium AD. Oral traditions among modern Savanna groups, which refer to the presence of “little peoples” at their first colonization of the region, are used to support this argument. A new model for the peopling of West Africa is presented based upon a long-term autochthonous presence south of the Sahara.     

Back to the Future? Regionalism in South‐East Asia Under Unilateral Pressure

This article assesses the prospects for regionalization in South-East Asia. It takes as its point of departure the contradiction between a regionalized and a unilateral world order as typically pursued by the EU and US respectively. It acknowledges the commonly accepted thesis that since September 11, 2001, the US has increasingly exercised a unilateral world order and that this poses a challenge to global regionalization. South-East Asia, a conflict-ridden, previously 'peripheral', region with a'successful' regionalization has been depicted as a 'second front' in the war against terrorism and is thus eligible for considerable US pressure. In this context, the 'ASEAN way', commonly benignly viewed, has been criticized for being shallow, 'allowing' terrorism to operate regionally. However, since 2001, and especially after the Bali bombings in 2003, ASEAN, as well as its member states, have devoted themselves to the war against terrorism. To some extent this has allowed the US a great influence in individual countries and altered regionalization. However, at the same time, the US 'needs' South-East Asian regional organization for combating international terrorism. Moreover, the US offensive in South-East Asia has caused both Japan and China to respond and strike deals on regional cooperation with ASEAN/South-East Asia, achieving long-awaited progress. Thus, the unilateral approach to global order does not, de facto, counteract regionalization, but rather operates through it, and to some extent triggers it. The counterintuitive conclusion is thus that an increasing unilateral pressure may not preclude a continued global regionalization, and that these two orders are not necessarily incompatible.     

Back from modernity?

Steve Bruce, The Rise and Fall of the New Christian Right: Conservative Protestant Politics in America 1978–1988, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988, pp.224. £19.50(cloth).

Mark Silk, Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War Two, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1988, pp.206. $US19.95(cloth).

Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since World War Two, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1988, pp.374. $US25(cloth).

This review article discusses three recently released works which deal with the relationship between religion and politics in modern America. It places these works in the context of the rise of the New Christian Right and of the related intellectual debate over the relevance of secularisation theories to contemporary America. After considering the various arguments raised in these works, the article concludes by suggesting that although there is some evidence of increasing secularisation in the American public sphere since 1945, the continuing strength of private religious beliefs indicates that religious groups will continue to impact upon American politics into the foreseeable future.     

Historical and Dialectical Perspectives on the Archaeology of Complexity in the Siin-Saalum (Senegal): Back to the Future?

Drawing on recent critiques of evolutionism, this article reviews the history of Iron Age studies in Siin-Saalum (Senegal) to examine the construction of African archaeological knowledge. From the 19th century to the 1980’s, analyses of complexity in Senegal have been animated by developmentalist views that have portrayed the regional past as a stagnant backwater. In the past 25 years, however, archaeological research has sought to redress these inaccuracies by exploring the diversity and idiosyncracy of African histories, and the processes behind sociopolitical change. These critical agendas can help us exploit the analytic potential of material culture to reincorporate African societies into the stream of world history, and to use the African past to reevaluate current scenarios of complexity and their applicability to various regions of the globe. To achieve these goals, however, and develop a fully self-reflexive archaeology in Senegal, researchers must eschew moral celebrations of African distinctness and strive instead to document how local pasts owe their particular qualities to complex political-economic articulations with other world societies. Concurrently, we must also attend to the dynamics of historical production in and out of guild circles, and consider our entanglement in the making of contemporary ‘culture wars.’ Because it is ideally suited to probe the historical and material depth of cultural differences and inequalities, archaeology must take a leading role in dispelling essentialist readings of Africa and promoting democratic knowledges about the continent.     

The South African Transition: From Development to Security?

This article questions some recent analyses which claim that global neo‐liberal discourses are disseminated to shift the focus away from development towards a greater emphasis on security issues. Taking as its point of departure the analysis of empirical material from Cape Town, the article shows that security and development in South Africa were never separate concerns. After the ANC came to power in 1994 there was an effort to boost development efforts rather than security. However, these efforts were soon dwarfed by local circumstances, notably the pressure from local state employees who felt their jobs and lives to be under threat from the townships, and the changing nature of violence in the city. The first part of the article details the practices and discourses of state agencies; the second section analyses the consequences of reconfigured security and development concerns for the production of political subjectivity in South Africa's townships.     

Bringing Metaphysics Back In?

Summary

Ian Hunter has made a name for himself as a critic of German university metaphysics, finding its progeny at work in places where many of us would not even think of looking, for example in the late twentieth-century celebration of theory in the humanities. Some of his recent work has focused on a rather different issue: the methodological task of making intellectual history empirical. Here he builds on Quentin Skinner's rationale for the Cambridge School's efforts to make the history of political thought more properly historical. Skinner's argument draws on the work of R. G. Collingwood, at least in its earlier versions, and on neo-Kantian tendencies in mid-twentieth century Oxford philosophy. Thus, in aligning his methodological programme with Skinner's argument, Hunter may risk bringing elements of university metaphysics back in another form.     

Do the Banaro Really Exist? Going Back After Richard Thurnwald

Between 1913 and 1915, the Austro‐German anthropologist Richard Thurnwald explored the Sepik area with the Berlin Museum für Völkerkunde expedition. In the last months of his stay, he worked with two Banaro informants and later on published his famous study on that society. Eighty five years after, the only anthropological reference on the Banaro is still his own articles. Bernard Juillerat spent four months among the Banaro in 1989, discussing with the people Thurnwald's analyses on the social structure and the mundu partnership. A book was published in French in 1993. This article is a short abstract of the book, where the author discusses Thurnwald's interpretations and gives ethnographic material on men's house ritual and initiation. Some more anthropological information is given on the transformations of Banaro society in the meantime.     

Mission without end? Peacekeeping in the African political marketplace

Since the mid-1990s the UN, in tandem with major western powers, has embarked upon an ambitious effort of peace support operations in Africa. The results of what we may call the 'Annan experiment' are not yet in. But there are good reasons to fear that, in many African countries, such peace operations have defend normative outcomes that are beyond realistic expectation, so that they can never hope to 'succeed'. This article examines the political and economic functioning of fragile African states using the lens of a 'political marketplace' in which local elites seek to obtain the highest reward for their loyalty, over short time horizons, within patrimonial systems. In such systems, political institutions are incapable of managing confect, which means that standard peacemaking efforts and peacekeeping operations do not align with domestic possibilities for settlement. To the contrary, external engagements can so distort domestic political markets that they obstruct national political bargaining and result in an open-ended commitment to peacekeeping in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan.     

Urban Growth in the 1990s: Is City Living Back?

The 1990s were an unusually good decade for the largest American cities and, in particular, for the cities of the Midwest. However, fundamentally urban growth in the 1990s looked extremely similar to urban growth during prior post–war decades. The growth of cities was determined by three main trends: (1) cities with strong human capital bases grew faster than cities without skills, (2) people moved to warmer, drier places, and (3) cities built around the automobile replaced cities that rely on public transportation. Although the negative impact of population density diminished slightly in the 1990s, there is no real evidence for a return to large, dense cities.     

Is there a distinct African sexuality? A critical response to Caldwell

The author challenges the hypothesis developed by Caldwell and others that sexuality in Africa is inherently permissive, and that prevailing attitudes and behavior are primary reasons for the relative failure of family planning programs to reduce fertility, and thereby will be major factors hindering efforts to control the spread of HIV infections and AIDS. The article is in three parts. "The first is a summary of the thesis as presented by Caldwell et al., including their location of African sexuality and their conceptualisation of change. The second offers a critical response, focusing mainly on the problems of research into sexual behaviour and the christianisation process, with special reference to the case of the Kikuyu people, among whom, recent studies suggest, even where sexual activity may have appeared largely free of moral restraint, there was indeed a moral order.... Part three offers a new way forward." (SUMMARY IN FRE)     

An African Cuba? Britain and the Zanzibar Revolution, 1964

This article examines the response of the British government to the revolution in Zanzibar in January 1964. It demonstrates that, once the safety of British nationals had been assured, British concerns centred upon the possibility that the new regime might become susceptible to communist influence. These fears appeared to be realised as British influence in Zanzibar diminished and the new government welcomed communist aid and advisers. In the aftermath of successful military interventions in support of moderate regimes in Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika, and under pressure from Washington to take decisive action, the British prepared a series of plans for military action in Zanzibar. None of these was enacted and the final plan was scrapped in December. The paper examines the range of factors that undermined British diplomacy and inhibited the government from taking military action in Zanzibar. In doing so it illustrates the complexity of Britain's relationship with postcolonial regimes in East Africa and the difficulties that it faced when trying to exert influence in a region recognised by both London and Washington as a British sphere of influence.     

Righting the course? Humanitarian intervention,the war on terror and the future of Afghanistan

The US‐led post 9/11 ‘intervention’ in Afghanistan was, by definition, not a humanitarian intervention. The intervention in Afghanistan was defined as an act of self‐defence by the US and it was one of the first steps in the ‘war on terror’ by the US and its allies: it had no intention or clear strategies for long‐term stabilization, state‐building or development. The US‐led international coalition failed to ‘find’ Al‐Qaeda in the short term and new arguments had to be made to justify continued international presence. The initial agenda was quickly blurred by a mismatch of intentions including those of long‐term stabilization and state‐building. The ideas developed through the Bonn Agreement (2001–5) and continued through the Afghanistan Compact (2006–10) have focused on building a centrally governed state (sometimes defined as democratic) that has a monopoly on the use of force. Their shortcomings are already well‐documented: the urgency of the Bonn Conference and of the adoption of the Bonn Agreement ostensibly meant trading expediency and stability for accountability and a clean slate, which is not to say that there were no good intentions at Bonn from stakeholders, but that Afghans and the international community put power‐sharing before progress. The choices made at Bonn may have contributed to the culture of impunity and the entrenched poverty that is gripping Afghanistan today. This article responds to the claims that state‐building and all that goes with it are not the responsibility of the ‘international community’ by addressing the accountability and humanitarian paradoxes. The question remains, however, about who should be responsible for reform and politically accountable in the aftermath of non‐humanitarian (and indeed even humanitarian) interventions?     

An African origin for African cattle? — some archaeological evidence

Instead of the usual assumption that the Sanga cattle of Africa arose from the crossing of taurine cattle (Bos taurus) from North Africa or the Middle East with humped cattle (Bos indicus) originating in the Indian sub-continent, it is argued that they are of ancient autochthonous origin and have come to be mixed with taurine and humped cattle probably only in the last few hundred years, which is why they share a mosaic of characters with the other two taxa. Much more work needs to be done on the osteology of Sangas and of cattle remains from archaeological sites in Africa, but if this model proves to be correct African cattle should be regarded as a taxon of equal status toBos taurus andBos indicus.

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Résumé Au lieu de l'hypothèse habituelle selon laquelle le bétail Sanga africain provient du croisement du bétail taurin (Box taurus) d'Afrque du Nord ou du Moyen Orient avec le bétail à bosse (Bos indicus) dont l'origine est le sous-continent indien, nous pensons que ce bétail a une origine autochtone ancienne et que les croisements avec les bétails taurins et à bossus n'ont probablement eu lieu que durant les quelques dernières centaines d'années, ce qui explique pourquoi ils partagent une mosaïque de caractères avec les deux autres taxa. De nombreuses recherches restent à faire sur l'ostéologie des Sanga ainsi que sur les restes de bétail des sites archéologiques africains, mais si ce modèle s'avère correct, le bétail africain devra être regardé comme un taxon équivalent à celui deBos taurus etBos indicus.

     

Boserup revisited: Population and technology in tropical African agriculture, 1900–1940

The Oriental Renaissance: Europe's Rediscovery of India and the East 1680–1880 by R. Schwab, translated by G. Patterson‐Black and V. Reinking with a Foreword by E.W. Said. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. Pp.xxiv + 542. $22.50 paperback.

Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth Century Bengal by T. Raychaudhuri. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988. Pp.xvii + 369, £12.00.

Colonial Dutch Studies. An Interdisciplinary Approach edited by Eric Nooter and Patricia U. Bonomi. New York and London: New York University Press, 1988. Pp.xii + 141. $30.00.

The Economy of Colonial America by Edwin J. Perkins. Second edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Pp.xii + 251. $30.00 ($13.00 paper).

Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience edited by Nathan O. Hatch and Harry S. Stout. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Pp.viii + 298. £22.50.

The British Navy and the Use of Naval Power in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Jeremy Black and Philip Woodfine. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1988. Pp.xiv + 273; maps. £27.50.

The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom by Nicholas B. Dirks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp.xxiv + 458. £35.00.

Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire by C.A. Bayly, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp.xii + 230; maps, glossary and illus. £17.50.

Perfecting the World: The Life and Times of Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, 1798–1866 by Amalie M. Kass and Edward H. Kass. Boston: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988. Pp.xxx + 642; genealogy and illus. £24.50.

The Life of Charles Ledger (1818–1905): Alpacas and Quinine by Gabriele Gramiccia. London: Macmillan, 1988. Pp.xiv + 222. £30.00.

Benevolent Neutrality: Indian Government Policy and Labour Migration to British Guiana, 1854–1884 by Basdeo Mangru. London: Hansib Publishing, 1987. Pp.267; maps and illus. £12.95.

Sir Robert Falconer: A Biography by James G. Greenlee. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1988. Pp.407. £26.50; $43.00 (hardback).

Francophone Sub‐Saharan Africa, 1880–1985 by Patrick Manning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp.199; maps + figures, bibliographical essay. £25.00 (hardback); £8.95 (paperback).

Essays on African History: From the Slave Trade to Neocolonialism by Jean Suret Canale. Translated by C. Hurst. Preface by B. Davidson. Bibliography of works by Jean Suret Canale concerning Africa. London: C. Hurst and Co., 1988. Pp.232; index and bibliography. £25.00.

The Boer War and Military Reforms by Jay Stone and Erwin A. Schmidl. Lanham: University Press of America, 1988. Pp.xi + 345, maps. $22.75.

Rider Haggard and the Fiction of Empire: A Critical Study of British Imperial Fiction by Wendy R. Katz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Pp.ix + 171. £22.50.

The Commonwealth Armies: Manpower and Organisation in Two World Wars by F.W. Perry. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988. Pp.vi + 250. £27.50.

Imperial Rearguard: Wars of Empire 1919–85 by Lawrence James. London: Brasseys, 1988. Pp. + 242, maps and illus. £19.95.

Colonial Development. Die Grundlegung moderner Entwicklungspolitik durch Grossbritannien, 1919–1949 by Herward Sieberg. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner Verlag, 1985. Pp.736. DM 78.

Appeasement and Germany's Last Bid for Colonies by A.J. Crazier. London: Macmillan in association with King's College, London, 1988. Pp.x + 349, maps. £33.00.

Australians, 1938 edited by Bill Gammage and Peter Spearritt, the fourth volume of Australians: A National Library, edited by Alan D. Gilbert and K.S. Inglis. Sydney: Fairfax, Syme and Weldon Associates, 1987. Pp.xviii + 474. £350 (the set of 11 vols.).

Australians from 1939 edited by Ann Curthoys, A.W. Martin and Tim Rowse. Sydney: Fairfax, Syme and Weldon Associates, 1987. Pp.xvii and 474, maps, tables and illus.

The Politics of Persuasion by Desmond Dinan. Lanham: University Press of America, 1988. Pp.xii + 307.

King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan by Mary C. Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Pp.xxii + 289; maps and photographs. £25.00.

Collusion Across the Jordan by Avi Shlaim. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Pp.x + 676; maps. £35.00.

The Commonwealth Armies and the Korean War: An Alliance Study by Jeffrey Grey. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988. Pp.xii + 244; maps and illus. £29.95.

The Oxford Book of Canadian Political Anecdotes edited by Jack McLeod. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Pp.xiii + 273. £17.50.

Mastering Australian History by Ronald W. Laidlaw. Melbourne: Macmillan, 1988. Pp.vi + 477; illus. £5.95 (paperback).

British Review of New Zealand Studies edited by Ged Martin and Guy M. Robinson. No. I, July 1988.