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By webmaster, on July 30th, 2010
By Hichem Karoui, 
The Gulf Today, July 24, 2010
Over the past decade, the US has channeled $11 billion in aid to Pakistan and Afghanistan, with virtually all of it going to the military. Many observers are skeptical, but there is a feeling that without Pakistan’s help, the situation cannot improve in Afghanistan. And there is a need to support democratic development in Pakistan as a way to fight extremism. The education system, as the basis of all societies, needs more care.
Free Islamic education provided by “madrasas” in Pakistan has come under scrutiny in the wake of September 11, 2001. Madrasas have been charged of sowing the seeds of sectarianism and violence in the minds of young people. There were a plethora of analyses and reports and comments in the media and the Think Tanks, with varied levels of objectivity and biases. Madrasas were often linked to Islamic extremism. Even the International Crisis Group (ICG) issued a report (July 2002) distinguishing five types of madrasas, all of them divided “along sectarian and political lines.” Continue reading Pakistan’s madrasas reassessed
By webmaster, on July 24th, 2010
A public access codebook for the international development research community
Arno TAUSCH
Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Innsbruck University, Austria
E-mail: Arno.Tausch@uibk.ac.at
Box 1: The independent variables
% women in government, all levels is one of the UNDP’s long-term lead indicators of the institutionalization of political feminism. We time-lagged the variable and measured the it by around 1998. It was documented in the NDP HDR 2000. The idea of the indicator is to capture the real advance of women not only at the level of the top political administration of a given country, but at the general level of the central government, i.e. taking the important decision-making ministerial bureaucracies into account as well.
Continue reading 41 Indicators of Development
By webmaster, on July 23rd, 2010
| By Hichem Karoui |
July 17, 2010 |
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Just a few days before Netanyahu’s last visit to the White House, the Washington Post (June 25) run a story about Shimon Peres urging the United States and other world powers to engage with Hamas in order to persuade the hardliner group to renounce violence and prepare for peace with Israel. As the Obama administration was preparing to receive the Israeli Prime Minister, the influential magazine Foreign Policy (July 4) run an opinion by Michele Dunne (Editor of Carnegie’s Arab Reform Bulletin), in which she suggests that if Washington does not need at this point to engage directly Hamas, it can do it indirectly. Dunne contends that the only way out of the stalemate is to encourage the reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas instead of impeding it, and to make of it the basis to “broker a power-sharing arrangement,” without which any further negotiations about an Israeli-Palestinian peace would be pipedream. Continue reading Will They Talk?
By Editor, on July 17th, 2010
By Hichem Karoui The Gulf Today, July 10, 2010 Iran’s nuclear ambitions will not ease the country’s tense relationships with the international community, since the UN and the Western powers seem determined to follow through with sanctions. Nor … . . . → Read More: Look at corporations while sanctioning Iran
By webmaster, on July 15th, 2010
Michele Dunne, Taghreed El-Khodary, Henri J. Barkey, Nathan J. Brown Monday, June 7, 2010 – Washington, D.C. Courtesy: Carnegie Endowment . . . → Read More: Can the Peace Process be Saved?
By webmaster, on July 14th, 2010
Social Sciences and Humanities- MESOJ- ISSN 2109-9618- (2010) Volume 1 No 2
‘Cross-national perspectives and European implications’
Dataset, documentation and codebook.
By Arno Tausch, Innsbruck University
French-language sociology in particular, and European sociology in general, as yet did not fully appreciate the full potential of macro-quantitative development research. In this data set for 175 countries, Arno Tausch develops a data framework for the analysis of seven dimensions of development, democracy, growth, environment, gender equality, human development, research and development and social cohesion, and empowers students and researchers around the globe to explain the absolute values of these indicators (EXCEL File Final ata set) and the standardized, UNDP type performance indicators (Excel file UNDP type Index) in a macro-quantitative framework, inviolving the most important universally recognized drivers and bottlenecks of development today, including globalization and migration.
The data sets are for 175 countries each and the sources are fully documented in the codebook. Continue reading Dataset for ‘Globalization, the human condition and sustainable development in the 21st Century.
By webmaster, on July 9th, 2010
Pre-emptive air strike, cumulative diplomacy, technical isolation and the Iranian nuclear crises Henry U. Ufomba and Robert O. Dode The Journal of Public Administration and Policy Research (JPAPR) May 2010 The issue of nuclear proliferation and its imp… . . . → Read More: Which way to Tehran?
By Editor, on July 9th, 2010
By Hichem Karoui The Gulf Today, July 03, 2010 Several Western and Arab observers share the views concerning the current evolution in the region of North Africa, especially regarding the connection between Islam and the problems of political and econom… . . . → Read More: The shipwreck of the Maghreb Union
By webmaster, on July 9th, 2010
Suguna Pathy
Department of Sociology, Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Surat-395007, India.
E-mail:sugunapathy@gmail.com.
Anthropology in general has colonial roots and these influences are still in existence. British colonial policy in Africa and Asia began to change in the 1930s thus, it was suddenly decided to “develop” the colonies. This paper is aimed at objectively studying the process of change without committing itself to any particular policy. The skepticism of colonialism and its arrogant assumption of omniscience and opposition to the existing social order were analyzed. The colonial regime was engaged in the expansion of cash economy and missionary approach. Accordingly anthropologists were cast into the mould of the colonial stereotypes and monolithic notions with functionalist overtones which were the keynote of the colonial anthropology of that time. The functionalist studies dealt with family life, customs, folklore, economic activities and religion. Subsequently, several monographs emerged on the gamut of culture and integration emphasizing diffusionism. The studies were largely based on relations between the individuals occupying specific roles in social structure. By and large, anthropological studies have completely ignored the genesis and basis of social relations, class formation, conflict, contradictions and the question of gender in particular. Precisely this is the crucial point which economic anthropology-formalism, substantivism, structuralism and materialism approach, respectively. In the present exercise an attempt is made to briefly appraise these schools of thought. Continue reading Diverse approaches in economic anthropology: Some reflections
By webmaster, on July 9th, 2010
Strobe Talbott
President, The Brookings Institution- U.S. Deputy Secretary of State (1994-2001)
Occasional Paper Number 23, February 2005; Center for the Advanced Study of India
(…)Strobe Talbott was President Clinton’s “point man” in the intensive talks between India and Pakistan in the two and a half years that followed the nuclear tests you will all recall, in May 1998. The immediate results of those tests, coming on top of decades of estrangement, was what has been charitably described as an acrimonious standoff between India and the United States. Efforts to dig out from that deep and dangerous hole led to the most intensive diplomatic engagement ever between the U.S. and India. Deputy Secretary Talbott and Minister of External Affairs, Jaswant Singh, met no less than 14 times, in seven countries and on three continents. Their efforts, and the mutual trust they were able to develop, were major contributors to the reduction of tensions between India and Pakistan, tensions which many feared at the time could lead to nuclear holocaust (…) Continue reading From Estrangement to Engagement: U.S. – India Relations since May 1998
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