Suchergebnisse

This essay examines Caryl Phillips's second novel, A State of Independence, suggesting that it is often left out of critical accounts of Phillips's career not only, as has been assumed, because of its formal simplicity, but also and primarily because of its ambivalent representation of the United States. Considering the novel's critical reception within the broader patterns of postcolonial literary scholarship, the essay argues for a reading of the book that emphasizes its measured evaluation of U.S. influence in the post-independence landscape. In doing so, it ties the novel's concerns directly to Phillips's later work and career, while proposing that his entire oeuvre can be seen to suggest a mode of critique far more attuned to the affective, political, and economic nuances of global U.S. power than is normally encouraged by postcolonial critical paradigms.

This study examines the adoption of income-tested old-age security programs and mandatory privatized security programs in developing nations from 1960 to 1999. Program data on more than one hundred nations are modeled using discrete-time logistic regression. Findings suggest that, for privatized programs, the level of democratization in a nation is an important predictor. Inertia of existing programs and the role of structural adjustment policies in the 1990s are also important in determining the likelihood of program adoptions of this type. For income-tested programs, the number of political strikes experienced by a nation is associated with program adoption. Results suggest that the study of social policy in the developing world is important for understanding processes behind the development of the welfare state.