Unions,Parties, and the Politics of State Government Legacy Cost

Many American state governments have made extensive promises to pay for employees’ health care and other benefits in retirement. Currently estimated at over $1 trillion in unfunded liabilities, these other postemployment benefits (OPEB) are creating a major fiscal problem for state governments. In this article, we examine the politics of OPEB. We seek to explain the variation in the generosity of OPEB across U.S. states. We argue that party competition theories do not adequately explain the outcomes we observe. Instead, we draw on the emerging Schattschneiderian approach to the politics of public policy to show that public union strength conditions a party's incentives to represent unions’ interests. In states where public sector unions are strong, unions can find their way into either party's coalition. We find that Republicans are more responsive to public union interests than either their ideological brand or prior research would suggest. It is only in states where public employees are weak that Republicans can act unilaterally and enact their preference for less government spending. To test our theories, we carry out an empirical analysis using a newly assembled data set of per capita OPEB liabilities across 49 states.     

加害与受害的双重变奏——对朝鲜BC级战犯的审判及其遗留问题

因日本殖民者在朝鲜实施强制动员计划,许多朝鲜青年被迫或自愿应募为战俘营看守,协助日军看管盟军战俘。日本战败后,盟国为了追究日本法西斯虐待战俘、侵犯人权的罪行,设置军事法庭进行审判,一些战俘营的朝鲜看守作为BC级战犯被起诉和审判,129人被判决有罪。朝鲜BC级战犯背负"对日协力者"的名声,遭遇来自亲朋故旧的蔑视,同时给在故乡的亲人带来了不堪承受的精神压力,一些战犯既不能回归祖国,也无法融入日本社会,面临精神和物质的双重困境,扮演了加害者与受害者的双重角色。他们为了洗刷罪名、恢复名誉、争取合法权益而进行了持久的抗争。     

The 'Juggernaut Method': The 1966 State of Emergency and the Wilson Government's Response to the Seamen's Strike

In May 1966, in response to a strike by the National Union ofSeamen, Prime Minister Harold Wilson declared the first stateof emergency in Britain for over a decade. This article considerswhy he felt obliged to take such action and how it fitted intoa package of measures aimed at countering the strike. Thesemeasures culminated in his claims of communist influence onthe union, which helped to bring the strike to an end but triggeredhostility towards Wilson from within his party and the tradeunion movement. Furthermore, the article considers, why, giventhe immense emergency powers assumed by the government, it wasso ineffective in ameliorating the hardships caused by the strikeand what implications this had for people throughout the UK.Despite being personally content with the outcome, this wasto prove a pyrrhic victory for Wilson given the ongoing difficultiesfacing the British economy and the bitterness he had provokedamong Labour supporters.     

European Trade in Malawi: The Glass Bead Evidence

In most African contexts, glass beads are evidence of direct and indirect exchanges between communities and are often useful chronological markers. Their analysis contributes to a better understanding of the social relationships between ancient societies. Over the last decade, the archaeometric analysis of glass beads has gained ground in Sub-Saharan Africa, but large regions across southeastern Africa have remained underexplored. Glass beads excavated from the Hora 1, Hora 5, and Mazinga 1 sites in the Kasitu Valley of the Mzimba District of northern Malawi were analyzed using laser ablation—inductively coupled plasma—mass spectrometry (LA-ICP- MS). These are granitic rock shelter sites located 40 km from Lake Malawi. They have predominantly Early Holocene and Pleistocene deposits but with a scattering of more recent material at the top. Analysis revealed that most of the beads were from European manufacture with one exception—a bead that has a composition typical of South Asia and that circulated from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century AD. Although Europeans were not present in the region before the second part of the nineteenth century, the presence of European beads testifies to trade directly or indirectly involving Europeans, most likely in association with increased trade in ivory and enslaved persons. The presence of the bead from South Asia and two cowrie beads from a fourth nearby site (Kadawonda 1) that dates to the seventh century AD show that European trade was the most recent manifestation of connections between the hinterland and the coast.

     

Today's State of Exception: Abu-Jamal,Agamben, JanMofiamed,and the Democratic State of Emergency

Abstract

This essay engages the political philosophy of Giorgio Agamben and the literary criticism of Abdul R. JanMohammed in critically exploring the contours of the present arrangement of democratic politics in the United States. Giorgio Agamben's exception theory of sovereignty and bare life are deployed in order to grasp the political meaning of surprisingly unprecedented and exceptional recent court rulings in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been on Pennsylvania's death row since 1982. Abu-Jamal's experience of exceptional rulings also requires a critical elaboration of the racialized nature of American democracy. Thus, Agamben's theory finds a critical complement with the work of literary theorist Abdul R. JanMohammed, particularly JanMohammed's formulations of "social death" and the "dialectics of death" for "death-bound-subjects." The theories of Agamben and JanMohammed make clear the nature of Abu-Jamal's political struggle and the state of democratic politics that so often transforms the exception into the rule, specifically in the case of the marginal and dispossessed. The significance of Abu-Jamal's case thus becomes one of understanding the production and reproduction of the state of exception and the (im)possibilities of political transformation and liberation from the arrested state of democracy in the modern world.     

The Great Game in Antarctica: Britain and the 1959 Antarctic Treaty

This article is concerned with Britain's political and territorial interests in the Antarctic in the first half of the twentieth century, culminating in the signing of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. Using in part the diaries of a Foreign Office advisor, Dr Brian Roberts, attention is given as to how successive British governments and their officials sustained a presence in the remote polar continent. Rival claimants in the form of Argentina and Chile made the task all the more difficult. Mapping and surveying were essential in maintaining British sovereignty even if the end results were at times disappointing. The article concludes by suggesting that the Antarctic Treaty, while important in promoting international scientific collaboration, did not manage to resolve the political and territorial disputes surrounding the Antarctic. Arguably, the 1982 Falklands War and its aftermath provided a vivid reminder that Britain's most southerly possessions still remain deeply contested.