A kind of democracy: Political domination in the problematic development

This thesis proposes to answer the question of how despite Cambodia having an election in 1993 in which the Cambodian people elected a government that adopted a constitution based on democratic principles, one party, the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) led by prime minister Hun Sen, has continued to dominate Cambodian politics in a political environment so biased in its favour that it calls into question the credibility of democracy in Cambodia. This thesis contends that Hun Sen and the CPP’s political domination of Cambodia is the result of a combination of historical, cultural, and political factors that together have created Cambodia’s current political environment. These factors include (a) inherent cultural traits that have made the state susceptible to authoritarian rule by placing an emphasis on the development of patronage networks that are anti-democratic by nature, (b) historical and political developments that have made the state’s elite hostile to political opposition and participation, (c) psychological and economic damage caused by decades of civil war and Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge’s wanton destruction of Cambodian society, (d) an imposed transition to democracy supervised by the United Nations and lacking an indigenous origin, (e) a political economy designed to the advantage of the CPP, (f) fragmented opposition parties that have failed to provide a viable alternative to the CPP, and (g) perhaps most importantly, the determination of Hun Sen and the CPP to remain in power regardless of the cost to democracy. This thesis builds upon a theoretical framework derived from a survey of the literature addressing democracy and democratisation and proceeds to analyse historical and political developments chronologically in order to emphasise the progressive nature of political domination in Cambodia. Although it does not offer any easy solutions to the complex and often intractable problems hindering the development of democracy in Cambodia, by analysing the nature of political domination in that country it adds to the understanding of present-day Cambodia

Mirror - Vol. 16, No. 22 - April 16, 1992

The Mirror (sometimes called the Fairfield Mirror) is the official student newspaper of Fairfield University, and is published weekly during the academic year (September - May). It runs from 1977 - the present; current issues are available online.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/archives-mirror/1353/thumbnail.jp

An Innovation System Perspective on Adaptation Strategies to Climate Variability and Water Management in India

Government policies play a critical role in influencing market conditions, institutions and overall agricultural productivity. The thesis therefore looks into the history of agriculture development in India. Taking a political economy perspective, the historical account looks at significant institutional and technological innovations carried out in pre- independent and post independent India. It further focuses on the Green Revolution in Asia, as forty years after; the agricultural community still faces the task of addressing recurrent issue of food security amidst emerging challenges, such as climate change. It examines the Green Revolution that took place in India during the late 1960s and 70s in a historical perspective, identifying two factors of institutional change and political leadership. Climate change in agriculture development has become a major concern to farmers, researchers and policy makers alike. However, there is little knowledge on the farmers’ perception to climate change and to the extent they coincide with actual climatic data. Using a qualitative approach,it looks into the perceptions of the farmers in four villages in the states of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. While exploring the adaptation strategies, the chapter looks into the dynamics of who can afford a particular technology and who cannot and what leads to a particular adaptation decision thus determining the adaptive capacity in water management. The final section looks into the devolution of authority for natural resource management to local user groups through the Water Users’ Associations as an important approach to overcome the long-standing challenges of centralized state bureaucracies in India. It addresses the knowledge gap of why some local user groups are able to overcome governance challenges such as elite capture, while others-that work under the design principles developed by Elinor Ostrom. It draws conclusions on how local leadership, can be promoted to facilitate participatory irrigation management

The Global Political Economy of Israel

Arms accumulation acquisitions capital capitalism centralization competition conflict conglomeration corporation credit crisis debt demographics development distribution dual economy elite energy finance globalization growth imperialism distribution inflation institutionalism IPE Israel labour liberalization M&A merger methodology Middle East military national interest security oil OPEC ownership Palestine peace politics power privatization profit ruling class sabotage stagflation state stock market technology TNC United States US violence war ZionismFROM THE BACK COVER: Over the past century, Israel has been transformed from an agricultural colony, to a welfare-warfare state, to a globally integrated “market economy” characterised by great income disparities. What lies behind this transformation? Why the shift in emphasis from “war profits” to “peace dividends” – and back to conflict? How did egalitarianism give rise to inequality? Who are the big winners here, and how have they shaped their world? Never before have these questions been answered as they are in this highly original book. In order to understand capitalist development, argue Bichler and Nitzan, we need to break the artificial separation between “economics” and “politics”, and think of accumulation itself as “capitalisation of power”. Applying this concept to Israel, and drawing on seemingly unrelated phenomena, the authors reveal the big picture that never makes it to the news. Diverse processes – such as global accumulation cycles, regional conflicts and energy crises, ruling class formation and dominant ideology, militarism and dependency, inflation and recession, the politics of high-technology and the transnationalisation of ownership – are all woven into a single story. The result is a fascinating account of one of the world”s most volatile regions, and a new way of understanding the global political economy

Kenya’s changing counterterrorism policy: From the unsecuritization to the securitization of terrorism

This study investigates why Kenya, unlike other states around the world, did not enact anti-terrorism legislation that would have enabled it to have counterterrorism measures in the aftermath of 9/11 and only did so in 2012. Previous studies argue that concerns about the negative effects of anti-terrorism laws on Kenya’s nascent democratic system and its civil liberties were the main reasons why Kenya’s government could not enact proposed anti-terrorism legislation in 2003 and 2006. However, these studies do not explain why those who had previously opposed anti-terrorism legislation supported the enactment of an anti-terrorism law in 2012 even though their views about the importance of civil liberties and democracy had not changed. Similarly, previous studies which suggest that Kenya enacted anti-terrorism legislation in 2012 because of the detrimental effects of terrorism on the country’s security and economic interests do not explain why these factors did not elicit the same response in 2003 and 2006. Departing from previous studies, this research hypothesises that Kenya’s enactment of counterterrorism measures was dependent on consensus building among the country’s executive and legislative arms of government. To test this hypothesis, this thesis proposed six contextual factors that were used to explain how and why perceptions about the terrorism threat in Kenya developed and changed. Two methods, discourse analysis and process tracing, were used to establish the relationships between the variables in this study. In this regard, discourse analysis provided rich descriptions of the construction and evolution of the terrorist threat in Kenya. The rich descriptions were initially derived from written texts including the Kenya National Assembly Hansard, policy documents, court documents and public testimonies. The data was then triangulated with descriptions obtained from spoken texts including semi-structured interviews, archival press conferences and media recordings. The recurring linguistic patterns obtained from these descriptions formed the narratives that explained how Kenya’s government framed terrorism and the impact that this had on the enactment of anti-terrorism legislation. Process tracing supplemented discourse analysis by pinpointing the conditions under which the securitization of terrorism occurred. In addition to unravelling Kenya’s puzzling counterterrorism behaviour, this thesis contributes to knowledge in two ways. First, it identifies and expounds on new variables that explain Kenya’s puzzling counterterrorism behaviour. Second, this thesis extends literature in securitization studies by explaining how contextual factors can be used to understand both unsecuritization and securitization processes

Institutional structure and the optimal level of lying

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1999This study is an interdisciplinary comparative analysis of two institutional structures and their relation to lying. The author examines institutional structure through an institutional continuum with contrasting ideal-types at opposing ends. These ideal-types are the "private property order" and the "bureau." The author models lying as a benefit-cost analysis and examines lying through a two-person model of society called the "information relation." Using the information relation, he shows the problem of lying is an agency problem between the informer and the informee. In two separate analyses, the author evaluates the ideal-types' tendencies to either allow or hinder lying. In the first analysis, the author identifies seven protection-from-lying strategies and compares their necessary requirements to the institutional constraints of the ideal types. In the second analysis, the author examines six social phenomena, within the institutional context of each ideal type, that affect people's benefit-cost ratio of lying. The author concludes that there exists a positive correlation between the degree of central planning and the optimal level of lying, as seen from the point of view of each individual in society. The author argues that a movement on the continuum away from the private property order toward the bureau tends to (1) breakdown community relations, (2) provide incentive for society members to adopt value relativism, (3) change the nature of competition, (4) lower society's overall material standard of living, and (5) create a social environment of mutual self-deception. The author sees important implications in this study for the economics of information, theories of government regulation, and the sociology of science