Privatisation: An attempt that failed

Throughout the twentieth century doctors in most western countries strongly resisted government attempts to intervene in private medical markets. The support for privatisation that has developed during the current economic recession is welcomed therefore by the medical profession. In several countries campaigns have been staged for a full or partial return to market forces in the health care field. This article traces the course of one such push in Canada where doctors and other advocates of privatisation demanded a larger role for the private sector in the funding and management of Medicare, the national health insurance system. The policy outcome is contrary to the general privatising tendency in many countries: after a period of intense controversy the federal government passed legislation to preserve and strengthen the public aspects of the scheme. The normally powerful medical profession lost its campaign for an infusion of private funds into the health system and for the retention of the right of doctors to set their own fees. Consumer and other non‐producer groups, which have not traditionally played a central role in health policy, mobilised in defense of Medicare and were able to achieve most of their aims.     

Domestic abuse and the public/private divide in the British military

Divisions between the social spheres of public and private are always fluid, mutually constitutive, and politically and socially formulated. Within the British military, such divisions are further framed through the needs of operational effectiveness. In the pursuit of operational effectiveness the public/private divide functions at times as porous, in large part through the military's provision of services such as housing, welfare and policing to personnel and their families and through the notion of a close-knit military community, and at others as firm, bolstering operational effectiveness through recourse to militarised ideas of the private sphere as the fixed space of hearth, home and femininity which is to be protected by military force. This article employs narratives of domestic abuse as a window through which to analyse enactments of the public/private divide in the British military. The analysis draws upon interview participants' experiences of abuse and of help-seeking to illustrate the complex and fluid ways in which the prioritisation of operational effectiveness frames and delimits the public and the private within the contemporary British military in relation to domestic abuse. The impacts of this upon victim-survivors' help-seeking experiences are discussed.     

Access Orders and the ‘New’ New Institutional Economics of Development

This article examines the Access Order theories of development that have emerged as the latest reformulation of New Institutional Economics by Douglass North and his associates. These scholars claim that Access Order theory represents a radical break from previous models of institutional change in developing countries. They argue that at the heart of development is the problem of controlling organized violence. Two distinct social orders, the Limited Access Order and the Open Access Order, have emerged as solutions to the problem of endemic violence. This article traces the evolution of these new ideas within North's institutional theory and examines how violence is treated within the new framework. The article evaluates the underlying economic model on which the theory is based and argues that the conceptual device of the Open Access Order preserves key features of the neoclassical approach within North's work. The article contrasts the Access Order approach with the political settlements framework. To conclude, the article argues that the Access Order approach serves to strip the progressive potential out of development by ignoring how controlling violence may affect human capabilities, rights and freedom.     

Neo‐Colonialism in South–South Relations? The Case of China and North Korea

The past decade has seen the rapid expansion of economic ties between China and North Korea, leading to questions of whether this emerging relationship resembles neo‐colonialism or a more positive form of South–South cooperation. This article argues that China's engagement is driven in the first instance by strategic considerations, namely the maintenance of the geopolitical status quo on the Korean peninsula. However, North Korea has also become increasingly important in terms of Beijing's aims of revitalizing its north‐eastern region, and as such, economic relations are becoming increasingly market‐led. Although this mode of engagement bears similarities with China's engagement elsewhere in the developing world, North Korea's catastrophic economic decline in the 1990s largely preceded the more recent revival of relations with China. We argue therefore that bilateral relations between the two countries cannot usefully be regarded as ‘neo‐colonial’ since North Korea is receiving much needed trade and investment from China within the context of broader international isolation. As such, we suggest that more attention needs to be paid to how geopolitical specificities influence the manner in which South–South cooperation shapes the possibilities of development, and that the dichotomous terrain of the existing debate between optimistic and pessimistic viewpoints is unhelpful.     

Asia‐Pacific security regimes: Conditions and constraints

Security regimes constitute an important test of the ‘liberal’ school of thought in contemporary international relations. In the Asia‐Pacific, interest is growing over how they may contribute to that region's future order and stability. It is argued here, however, that Asia‐Pacific security regimes cannot succeed unless ‘realist’ power‐balancing strategies are first applied, affording time for patterns of structural leadership to shape enduring security norms and institutions. The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) is arguably the region's first potential post‐cold war security regime. Its fate, or that of its successor security regimes in the Asia‐Pacific, depends upon satisfying four critical conditions for regime building and upon winning the acceptance of China and the United States, the region's two key ‘structural leaders’. While the ARF does not at present seem close to satisfying these criteria, it may help to provide the breathing space necessary for a successful transition from a competitive cold war environment to a more cooperative climate in the Asia‐Pacific.     

Creating Civil Society? The Emergence of NGOs in Vietnam

Based on recent research in Hanoi, this article examines the emergence of NGOs in Vietnam, and relates their development to the civil society discourse which is used by elements of the international donor community to predict the growth of pluralism and democracy. After examining the social and political environment of post-reform Vietnam, it does not appear evident that these organizations fit into any definition of civil society which stresses independence from the state and opposition to state ideology.     

Chemical changes in buried animal bone: Data from a postmedieval assemblage

Macroscopic chemical analysis of animal bone recovered from dated excavation contexts of known pH from Castle Bromwich Hall, West Midlands, UK, allows an assessment of the rate and effects of bone decomposition, and the evaluation of current models of chemical decay. The results show great variation, and it is suggested that factors such as mechanical disturbance have a more significant effect on the differential destruction of excavated bone assemblages than chemical decay. The implications of this conclusion for the attempted reconstruction of past faunas, diet and behaviour are summarized, recommending caution in the acceptance of assemblages as unbiased samples.