Lebow’s assertion that human beings can reach spiritual satisfaction through ever increasing levels of material consumption is not supported by empirical evidence. Recent psychological research sharply contradicts his hypothesis. According to James, a twenty-five year old American is between three and ten times more likely to be suffering from depression today than in 1950.
Beginning in 1997 Zimbabwe’s ZANU-PF ushered in a radical land reform which rapidly accelerating after 2000. Despite ongoing racialised economic inequality in South Africa, the ANC has retained its measured approach along the market-based terms of willing-buyer/willing-seller with a focus on restitution. This essay explores the factors behind their different trajectories.
The term ‘developmental state’ has been incorrectly used to describe any state presiding over a period of economic development and improvement in living standards. This essay describes the attributes of the ‘developmental state’ and explains how they led to highly successful economic development in the Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs).
Almost sixty years after it was first formed, NATO has changed a great deal from the organisation which once prepared to fight the Red Army in Germany’s Fulda Gap. This essay will argue that the alliance is now fighting fto define its future, in Afghanistan.
Quantitative forms of analysis have long been lacking in studies of African affairs. Bratton et al.’s, assertion that Africa as a whole is a vastly understudied continent, and that data is “scarce, spotty or entirely non-existent” was, until comparatively recently, fairly difficult to contend. This essay will hold up the recent achievements of quantitative analysis to the critiques presented by qualitative scholars.
The devastating financial crises that have hit developing nations in Latin America and Asia over the past several decades have given rise to numerous rallying calls to reform the “international financial architecture.” Liberalizing the financial system to foreign capital flows have contributed to immense domestic political and economic turmoil, and in some nations even to violence.
In seeking to explain ‘tribalism’ and ‘state failure’ in Africa, academics often point towards the misalignment of the nation and the state: either the post-colonial state has failed to make the nation, or nations have descended into ‘tribalism’ in the process of carving out a state. What is common in these two presumptions, is that all African nations or states have the power to make their counterpart; by extension, the ‘failure ‘of such processes is rarely problematised beyond domestic politics and historical references to the impact of colonialism.
Since the end of World War II, international organizations (IOs) have proliferated and redefined the global political and economic landscape as states band together to advance particular interests. To perceive IOs as mere tools of hegemonic predation ignores the complex dynamics that have characterised their evolution.
From a simple positivist position, it is relatively straightforward to claim that – in a not so distant future – the most significant threats to the human society will be environmentally related. It is difficult to conceive another set of problematics that could rival the global scale and potential magnitude of the consequences provoked – for instance – by a constant rise in the sea levels or by a substantial reduction in the global availability of water.
This essay begins with an articulation of authority, and the role of legitimacy in acquiring authority. It then defines power, moving away from realist conceptions to other social relations through which power manifests. It analyses how these different conceptions of power translate to authority once legitimacy is established before finally concluding with an examination of market authority as an illustration of interconnectedness of authority and power.
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