Dangerous Alliances: Civil Society, the Media and Democratic Transition in North Africa
* Acknowledgements * Preface by Clovis Demers * Introduction * Part 1: The Public Arena in the Maghreb: Convergences and Divergences * Setting the Stage * 1. Tunisia: The Domination of Plato's Cave * The Tunisian Transition to Democracy Did Not Take Place * 'I am the State' * A Police State * A Legal System in Captivity * Alternation in Office Impossible * 2. Tunisia: The Submission to Plato's Cave * Tunisian Civil Society before Its Collapse * The Fatal Alliance * The Destruction of Al-Nahdha * The Undermining of the Tunisian League for Human Rights * 3. Tunisia: Locking Up Plato's Cave * Disadvantaged Media * How the Tunisian Media Were Neutralized * Survival Strategies * The Happy Agenda * Relations with the Foreign Press * Banning International Human Rights Monitoring * 4. Algeria: The Children of Jocasta * The Birth of Civil Society * The Oedipus Temptation * The Unfinished Business of Remaking the Public Arena * The Press and Its Role in Political Developments * Between Open Dissidence and 'Moderate' Opposition: Prospects for a Rebirth * 5. Morocco: The Slow Ascent of Sisyphus * The Amaoui Affair * A Long Pluralistic Tradition * A Moroccan Model for the Construction of a Civil Society * Facilitating Factors and Obstacles * 6. Conclusion: The Public Political Arena in the Maghreb * Part 2: The Aftermath of Dangerous Alliances: Transformations and Continuities in the Political Arena * Between Cries and Whispers * 7. Happy Tunisia: The Authorized Account * A Dream for Tourists and Foreign Investors * The Security Mania * The Show Democracy: Arguments and Techniques of Stage-Setting * The Quest for International Approval * Propaganda Achievements * 8. The International Press and the Algerian Guardians of Democracy * The Rhetoric of Objectivity * How the International Press Took Sides in the Algerian Conflict * The Rebuilding of a Pluralistic Public Forum by the International Press * 9. Tunisian Dissident Information Networks * Unarmed Prophets * In European Circles * Internal Dissidence * Discrediting Dissidents * The State of Tunisian Dissidence * 10. Islam: Dismantling a Clich' * Propositions: * 1. Religion is a Marginal Theme in the Press * 2. Islam is not the Explanation for Everything * 3. Culturally, Islam is also a Product of Maghreb's Political Systems * 11. Freedom or Tyranny? Perspectives in the Maghreb * Algeria * Tunisia * 12. Toward a Sociology of Citizenship in a Globalizing World * A Political Systems Model * The Classical Democratic Model * A Dynamic Conflictual Model of Democracy * Democratic Transitions are Reversible * The International Media's Connivance with Dictatorships * Reversing the Spiral of Silence * Bibliography * Index
Reframing Township Space: The Kliptown Project
n 1955, the African National Congress (ANC) held its historic Congress of the People to ratify its liberation manifesto, the Freedom Charter. This event took place in Kliptown, on the outskirts of Soweto (fig. 1, above), at a site that came to be called Freedom Square in honor of the occasion. Today Freedom Square is an open, windswept tract of land, lying between a shack settlement, a railway line, and a taxi rank and bounded by the back facades of warehouses and wholesale stores. The trees that once lined its edges, providing shade for local traders and commuters, have mostly died, and the farm that once cultivated the land around it has long been abandoned. Remarkable today only for the tapestry of footpaths marking its surface, tracing the movement of people who traverse it in the course of their daily lives, Freedom Square has an auspicious history. This site in Kliptown was chosen for a meeting of what became known as the
Extent of East-African Nurse Leaders' Participation in Health Policy Development
This paper reports part of a bigger study whose aim was to develop an empowerment model that could be used to enhance nurse leaders' participation in health policy development. A Delphi survey was applied which included the following criteria: expert panelists, iterative rounds, statistical analysis, and consensus building. The expert panelists were purposively selected and included national nurse leaders in leadership positions at the nursing professional associations, nursing regulatory bodies, ministries of health, and universities in East Africa. The study was conducted in three iterative rounds. The results reported here were gathered as part of the first round of the study and that examined the extent of nurse leaders' participation in health policy development. Seventy-eight (78) expert panelists were invited to participate in the study, and the response rate was 47%. Data collection was done with the use of a self-report questionnaire. Data analysis was done by use of SPSS and descriptive statistics were examined. The findings indicated that nurse leaders participate in health policy development though participation is limited and not consistent across all the stages of health policy development. The recommendations from the findings are that health policy development process needs to be pluralistic and inclusive of all nurse leaders practicing in positions related to policy development and the process must be open to their ideas and suggestions.