Governance,the State and the Politics of Development

Current western aid and development policy aims to promote ‘good governance’ in the third world. Few would deny that competent, open and fair administration is both a worthy aim and a self-evident requirement of development. However, the current orthodoxy clearly illustrates the technicist fallacy, which is implicit in the following quotation from Pope, that the effective administration or ‘management’ of development is essentially a technical or practical matter. This article argues that development is fundamentally a political matter and that it is illusory to conceive of good governance as independent of the forms of politics and type of state which alone can generate, sustain and protect it. For Forms of Government, let fools contest; Whate'er is best administered, is best. (Pope, 1734: Bk 3, lines 303-4).     

Hazardous Liaisons: Risk, Power, and Politics in the Liberal State

This article presents a new approach to interpreting and analyzing technological risks and evaluating their impact on policymaking in liberal societies. I argue that risks must be seen first as emergent phenomena that resist reduction for either explanatory or policy purposes to the individual persons, events, or decisions that constitute them. Second, risks are intrinsically political things, involving aspects of power and interest in ways that also make policy decisions difficult. As emergent and political phenomena, then, modern technological risks pose unique policy difficulties for societies steeped in the epistemological and political individualism of classical liberalism.     

史学与政治——美国“共识”史学初探

史学与政治的关系历来备受关注。但人们往往从史学应不应该为政治服务的角度出发看待它们之间的关系,未免有些简单化。事实上,史学与政治的关系涉及了史学理论的诸多问题。本文围绕“共识”史学探讨史学与政治之间的关系,实际上是探讨史学理论中有关主观性的问题。笔者认为,历史学家的研究活动预设了政治前提,其研究的对象也是在政治环境中产生的。因此,史学与政治之间有一种天然的联系。对此,我们应该有一种自觉的认识,才会有利于我们的历史研究。