Cargoism in Irian Jaya Today

It appears that many people in Irian Jaya today are protesting against the manner in which they are, as they perceive it, being denied fundamental human rights, guarantees of social interaction based on fairness, and a reasonable share of economic benefits secured through ‘development’, and are searching for something that goes beyond this: a world in which they will enjoy health and a life of youthfulness; in which they will live with one another in peace and happiness, and have access to wealth without limit. In the past decade the number of ‘cargo’ movements has increased considerably and growing clouds of cargoism are spreading over the territory. In this essay we present data on activities from four areas in Irian Jaya. In the brief discussion that follows and in which we focus primarily on causal factors, we venture the thesis that in all these cases we have to do with (new) religious movements. The recurring combination of expectations based on traditional religious beliefs with feelings of political and economic discrimination may result in explosive situations. There will be little reason to assume that cargoism will decrease significantly.     

The Historiography of Deir Yassin

This article describes Israeli and Arab historiography concerning the events in the Arab village of Deir Yassin in April 1948, during the first Israeli–Arab war, of 1948. It begins with the internal, left–right Israeli controversy during 1969–71 about the alleged massacre and then describes and analyses what “really” happened at Deir Yassin on the basis of the Israeli (and, to a smaller extent, British) documentation from 1948 that has been declassified over the last few years. It then concludes by describing the evolution of the Israel and Palestinian histographical narratives on the event.     

BORDERS AS BOUNDARIES TO FISCAL POLICY INTERACTIONS? AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF POLITICIANS’ OPINIONS ON RIVALS IN THE COMPETITION FOR FIRMS

Studies of spatial policy interdependence in (local) public policies usually concentrate on the relations between jurisdictions within a single analyzed region, and disregard possible extraregional effects. However, the theoretical spatial statistics literature shows that biased estimates might emerge if spatial interactions extend beyond the boundaries of the available data (i.e., the boundary value problem). This paper empirically assesses the practical relevance of this concern by studying German local politicians’ assessments of their jurisdictions’ main competitors in the struggle to attract firms. We find that location near a border significantly undermines politicians’ perception that the fiercest competitive pressure derives from jurisdictions within their own state. This effect sets in about 20 km (10.2 km) from a national (international) border. These results indicate that nearest municipalities perceive each other as competitors regardless of the state or country where they are located, which has important implications for estimating spatial dependence models.