2,585 research outputs found

    Laser action from a terbium beta-ketoenolate at room temperature

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    Laser activity is achieved in a solution of terbium tris at room temperature in a liquid solvent of acetonitrile or p-dioxane. After precipitation, the microcrystals of hydrated tris chelate are filtered, washed in distilled water, and dried. They show no signs of deterioration after storage

    Social Forces and the Effects of (Post)-Washington Consensus Policy in Africa: Comparing Tunisia and South Africa

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    This article addresses the consequences of Washington Consensus and more recently post-Washington Consensus policy for democratic good governance in Africa. It acknowledges the increased focus in recent years of policy-makers on poverty as an important force in world politics. Despite this increased concern the authors argue that International Relations as a discipline fails to offer a suitable framework for understanding poverty as a social force. The article proposes a revival of Robert W. Cox and Jeffrey Harrod's approach based on ‘patterns of social relations of production’. This offers a disaggregation of the condition that is often referred to in the literature as ‘the poor’ or ‘the informal sector’. The article then outlines a comparative research agenda based on the cases of Tunisia and South Africa. It demonstrates how these cases provide the sternest test for assessing the authors' scepticism of the prospects of reconciling market-led development with good governance, whilst also offering a ‘most-different’ comparison given their very different political cultures. In conclusion, the article reflects on the methodological aspects to operationalising such a research agenda and proposes an ethnographic approach informed by the work of Burawoy

    The Congress of South African Trade Unions and Free Trade: Obstacles to Transnational Solidarity

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    This article considers the response of the largest trade union federation in South Africa, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), to an extended free trade agenda, which has formed a key part of neoliberal restructuring during recent decades. It focuses in particular on South Africa’s position in multilateral trade talks and its negotiation of three Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). COSATU’s critique of these FTAs is considered and in particular the analysis focuses on its attempts at building transnational solidarity with other national labour movements. It argues that despite COSATU’s opposition to trade liberalisation there are a number of obstacles to developing effective international links

    What’s Left of ‘the Left’ in Post-Apartheid South Africa?

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    This article addresses the question of ‘the left’ in contemporary South Africa in two senses: first, in terms of assessing the health of leftist politics; second, it asks to what extent are the self-identified left progressive in any meaningful sense. The first half of this article reflects on the current development situation in South Africa. Here, it is argued that within most sections of the South African left, there is broad agreement on the need to address the triple challenge of unemployment, rising inequality and poverty. The second half of this article identifies three broad sections to the contemporary left in South Africa (the Tripartite Alliance, the left outside the Alliance and the remnants of the revolutionary socialist left). It argues that the left within the Alliance, despite the launch of the New Growth Path, are failing to implement the sufficiently radical policy changes that are required to address the development challenges identified in the first half of this article. The left outside the Alliance, meanwhile, despite recent attempts at coordination, lacks influence and remains disconnected from the masses

    The EU-SADC Economic Partnership Agreement Negotiations: ‘Locking-In’ the Neoliberal Development Model in Southern Africa?

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    This article focuses on the negotiation of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) which form the central focus of the commitments made in the Cotonou Agreement, signed in 2000 by the European Union (EU) and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states. EPAs are part of a much wider trend witnessed since the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) whereby we have seen the proliferation of bilateral free trade agreements. It argues that both the material and ideational interests of the EU need to be considered, together with the historical context of EU-ACP relations. The EU is portrayed as making a concerted effort to ‘lock-in’ neoliberalism across the seven different sub-regions of the ACP group by negotiating EPAs that include both reciprocal trade liberalisation and a raft of ‘trade-related’ issues. It is suggested that in doing so EPAs will go beyond the requirements for WTO-compatibility, resulting in a reduction of the policy space for ACP states to pursue alternative development strategies. The article then considers the potential developmental impact of EPAs with reference to the negotiations with seven of the fifteen member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Here it is argued that the EU is promoting ‘open regionalism’ and it is shown how this poses a threat to the coherence of the regional project in southern Africa
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