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Elections in Africa is the first volume of a series of election data handbooks published by OUP; it covers all the 53 states in Africa. Elections have always been an integral part of post‐independence African politics and have assumed the utmost importance in the course of recent democratization processes. However, comparative research on political development in Africa lacks reliable electoral data. Elections in Africa fills this gap. Following the overall structure of the series, an initial comparative introduction on elections and electoral systems is followed by chapters on each state of the region. These contributions examine the evolution of institutional and electoral arrangements from independence to the present (1999), and provide systematic surveys of the up‐to‐date electoral provisions and their historical development. Exhaustive statistics on national elections (presidential, parliamentary, and constitutional assembly), referendums and coups d’état are included within each chapter; these cover electoral bodies and voting, electoral participation of parties and alliances, vote distribution, parliamentary composition, and power holders. The data are presented in the same systematic manner for all countries in order to provide electoral statistics in line with internationally established standards of documentation, so that the data can be easily compared. The book, therefore, provides a definitive and comprehensive set of data on elections in order to facilitate comparative research. Together with the other books of this series, Elections in Africa is a highly reliable resource for historical and cross‐national comparisons of elections and electoral systems worldwide.

A pressing question at the forefront of current global political debates is: how can we salvage the democratic project in the context of globalization? In recent years, political activists have mounted high-profile campaigns for the democratization of powerful international institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, and for greater ‘corporate accountability’. In turn, many of the NGOs linked to these campaigns have themselves faced demands for greater democratic legitimacy. Through reflecting on the democratic dilemmas surrounding the political power of global NGOs, this book challenges the state-centric theoretical assumptions that have underpinned the established democratic theories of both ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘communitarian’ liberals. In particular, it challenges the widespread assumption that ‘sovereign’ power, ‘bounded’ (national or global) societies, and ‘electoral’ processes are essential institutional foundations of a democratic system. The book then re-thinks the democratic project from its conceptual foundations, posing a number of questions. What needs to be controlled? Who ought to control it? How could they do so? In answering these questions, the book develops a theoretical model of representative democracy that is focused on plural (state and non-state) actors rather than on unitary state structures. It elaborates a democratic framework based on the new theoretical concepts of public power, stakeholder communities, and non-electoral representation, and illustrates the practical implications of these proposals for projects of global institutional reform.

What are the laws of nature, and what explains their existence? This book develops the proposal that the laws of nature are grounded in the essences of properties. It is argued that fundamental natural properties have dispositional essences — they are potencies (pure powers). After explaining this proposal, the book goes on to show how this accounts for the existence of the laws of nature. A distinctive feature of this account is that it ensures that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary. This account has advantages over the regularity and nomic necessitation accounts associated with Lewis and Armstrong, while the dispositional essentialist view of properties has corresponding advantages over the categoricalist view of properties, according to which properties are quidditistic and do not have qualitative essences, merely primitive identity and difference. The relationship between potencies and modality, and also intentionality is explored. Other potential criticisms are raised and the view defended against them. For example it is claimed that if all properties are potencies, then a vicious regress ensues; it is shown that this does not follow. Geometrical and other ‘structural’ properties are raised as counterexamples, being properties that seem categorical; it is argued that this is the case only if one takes a particular view of the role of spacetime in physical theories. It is held that laws are metaphysically contingent whereas dispositional essentialism makes them necessary; it is argued that the contingency of laws is an illusion. An account of laws is developed in the face of Mumford's claim that neither dispositional essentialism nor science has need of laws.

Justice is one of the oldest and most central themes of philosophy, but sometimes we would do well to focus instead on injustice. In epistemology, the very idea that there is a first-order ethical dimension to our epistemic practices — the idea that there is such a thing as epistemic justice — remains obscure until we adjust the philosophical lens so that we see through to the negative space that is epistemic injustice. This book argues that there is a distinctively epistemic genus of injustice, in which someone is wronged specifically in their capacity as a knower, wronged therefore in a capacity essential to human value. The book identifies two forms of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. In doing so, it charts the ethical dimension of two fundamental epistemic practices: gaining knowledge by being told and making sense of our social experiences. As the account unfolds, the book travels through a range of philosophical problems. Thus, the book finds an analysis of social power; an account of prejudicial stereotypes; a characterization of two hybrid intellectual-ethical virtues; a revised account of the State of Nature used in genealogical explanations of the concept of knowledge; a discussion of objectification and ‘silencing’; and a framework for a virtue epistemological account of testimony. The book reveals epistemic injustice as a potent yet largely silent dimension of discrimination, analyses the wrong it perpetrates, and constructs two hybrid ethical-intellectual virtues of epistemic justice which aim to forestall it.

In all societies, past and present, many persons and groups have been subject to domination. Properly understood, domination is a great evil, the suffering of which ought to be minimized as far as possible. Surprisingly, however, political and social theorists have failed to provide a detailed analysis of the concept of domination in general. This study aims to redress this lacuna. It argues first that domination should be understood as a condition experienced by persons or groups to the extent that they are dependent on a social relationship in which some other person or group wields arbitrary power over them; this is termed the “arbitrary power conception” of domination. Second, it argues that we should regard it as wrong to perpetrate or permit unnecessary domination and, thus, that as a matter of justice the political and social institutions and practices of any society should be organized so as to minimize avoidable domination; this is termed “justice as minimizing domination (JMD),” a conception of social justice that connects with more familiar civic republican accounts of freedom as nondomination. In developing these arguments, this study employs a variety of methodological techniques — including conceptual analysis, formal modeling, social theory, and moral philosophy; existing accounts of dependency, power, social convention, and so on are clarified, expanded, or revised along the way. While of special interest to contemporary civic republicans, this study should appeal to a broad audience with diverse methodological and substantive interests.

This book is concerned with the quantitative aspects of the theory of nonlinear diffusion equations; equations which can be seen as nonlinear variations of the classical heat equation. They appear as mathematical models in different branches of physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering, and are also relevant in differential geometry and relativistic physics. Much of the modern theory of such equations is based on estimates and functional analysis. Concentrating on a class of equations with nonlinearities of power type that lead to degenerate or singular parabolicity (equations of porous medium type), the aim of this book is to obtain sharp a priori estimates and decay rates for general classes of solutions in terms of estimates of particular problems. These estimates are the building blocks in understanding the qualitative theory, and the decay rates pave the way to the fine study of asymptotics. Many technically relevant questions are presented and analyzed in detail. A systematic picture of the most relevant phenomena is obtained for the equations under study, including time decay, smoothing, extinction in finite time, and delayed regularity.

This book attempts to identify and outline the political, economic, and social norms and values associated with Europe and Europeans. It argues that regardless of the doubts associated with the exercise of European integration and the work of the European Union, and regardless of residual identities with states and nations, Europeans have much in common. The opening chapters deal with the historical development of European ideas, and are followed by chapters addressing European attitudes towards the state (including a rejection of state‐based nationalism, new ideas about patriotism and citizenship, and the importance of cosmopolitanism), the characteristics of politics and government in Europe (with an emphasis on communitarianism and the effects of the parliamentary system of government), European economic models (including the importance of welfarism and sustainable development), European social models, European attitudes towards values such as multiculturalism and secularism, and Europeanist views in regard to international relations (emphasizing civilian power and multiculturalism).

This book describes and illustrates eleven powerful conversational strategies used by undercover police officers and cooperating witnesses who secretly tape-record targets in criminal investigations. Twelve actual criminal case studies are used as examples. These strategies creating illusion of guilt include the apparently deliberate use of semantic ambiguity, blocking the targets’ words (by creating static on the tape, interrupting them, speaking on their behalf, and manipulating the off/on switch); rapidly changing the subject before targets can respond (the “hit and run” strategy); contaminating the tape with irrelevant information that can make targets appear to be guilty; camouflaging illegality by making actions appear to be legal; isolating targets from important information that they need in order to make informed choices; inaccurately restating things the target has said; withholding crucial information from targets; lying to targets about critical information; and scripting targets in what to say on tape. These conversational strategies gain power from the fact that the targets do not know that they are being recorded, and often let things go right by them during the discourse. Nor do they know that the real audience of the conversations consists of later jury listeners, who do not know the full context of these conversations. Unlike everyday, unrecorded conversation, the most critical listening takes place at a future time and under very different circumstances. It is shown that undercover officers and their cooperating witnesses make use of essentially the same conversational strategies.