• Contributors
  
  
• The Politics of Global Legalism and Human Security
  Antonio Franceschet
  
  Abstract
  This article argues that human security discourses and initiatives are made intelligible
  by the politics of applying legalism to global politics. Human security projects like the
  International Criminal Court, the Ottawa Treaty on landmines, and coercive interventions
  like Kosovo are shaped, mobilised, but also limited and constrained by the wider
  problematic of the legal constitution of global politics. Although human security has
  been the justification for efforts to liberalise and humanise politics through law, it
  has also been associated with exceptionalistic and non-universal legal relationships
  that reinforce the interests of the most dominant actors in global politics. As a result,
  human security runs the danger of becoming an instrument of hegemony. Nonetheless,
  the article also argues that there are always progressive political openings in
  the politics of a global rule of law that can facilitate a wider conception of human
  security than has been pursued since the mid-1990s.

  
  
  
• The “Securitisation” of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Critical Feminist Lens
  Colleen O’Manique
  
  Abstract
  This paper offers an account of how the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Sub-Saharan
  Africa (SSA) is understood as a threat to security, placing the various accounts of
  the securitisation of AIDS in the context of the human security situation in SSA.
  The first section examines in a very general way, the context of the “security crisis”
  of AIDS in Africa. The second part identifies the ways in which the HIV/AIDS
  pandemic is being “securitised”, and some of the potential implications of emerging
  security discourses for HIV/AIDS policy on the continent. It closes with an account
  of some of the more critical human security accounts on HIV/AIDS in SSA and
  finally, suggests how a critical feminist lens might broaden and deepen these perspectives.
  
  
• Human Security as “Freedom from Want”: Inequities and Health in South Africa
  Sandra J. MacLean
  
  Abstract
  It is frequently assumed that people’s health is determined primarily by their access
  to technically-based disease treatment, the standard of which is decided by national
  health policies that allocate health services. However, evidence suggests that population
  health is determined more by social status and gradients than by access to clinical
  care. Moreover, in the present era, there is concern that economic globalisation is
  exacerbating inequities within countries, thus contributing to greater human insecurity.
  This paper examines these issues in the context of South Africa since the end
  of apartheid. It argues that the ANC government’s attempts to reduce entrenched
  inequities in the health system and address the broad social determinants of health
  have been severely constrained by pressures of economic globalisation, which have
  induced the government to abandon the objectives of its socially-responsive Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) in favour of the neoliberal Growth,
  Employment and Redistribution Programme (GEAR).
  
  
• Structuring Neoliberal Governance: The Nonprofit Sector, Emerging New Modes of
  Control and the Marketisation of Service Delivery
  Bryan Evans, Ted Richmond and John Shields
  
  Abstract
  Governments in the Anglo-American democracies have restructured their relationships
  with nonprofit organisations (NPOs). New modes of control have emerged which represent the paradox of centralised decentralisation. We examine the impacts on NPO financing, accountability and human resources. While the experience of Canadian NPOs is used to illustrate the impact of neoliberal induced restructuring, comparative evidence suggests that the Canadian experience is broadly representative. The imposition of neoliberal governance structures on nonprofit service providers serves to compromise their autonomy and advocacy function, while commercialising nonprofit operations and imposing burdens that have strained organisational capacity. The neoliberal model of market-based regulation has moved many nonprofit service organisations away from their community oriented focus and towards a “business model”. In various forms, the state has introduced quasi-markets or, at a minimum, required NPO’s to engage in more competitive practices with negative consequences for nonprofit mission, culture and labour-management practices. The result is a growing level of instability within the sector.
  
  
• Indigenous Nationhood Claims and Contemporary Federalism in Canada and the United States
  Erich Steinman
  
  Abstract
  Vibrant indigenous communities have not only survived in both the United States and Canada but have recently been advancing a variety of renewed political claims. Central
  among them are claims to nationhood status and treatment as sovereign governments rather than as racial or ethnic minority groups. While initially following parallel trajectories, these respective efforts have produced surprising and divergent results to date. Although the acceptance of robust indigenous self-government is much more a feature of Canadian public discourse, and robust aboriginal self-government has been
  affirmed in a few unique but high-profile cases, federally-recognised tribal governments in the United States in general exercise more substantive governmental powers. This article addresses this puzzle and attempts to explain the observed respective changes in terms of both the political status of indigenous groups and federalist political structures. Utilising a comparative approach closely examining the two cases regarding a number of key factors, the analysis presented here identifies the source of the divergence in “policy feedback” from three historical differences between the two post-colonial nations. Prior actions regarding recognition of inherent indigenous sovereignty, the forced breakup of tribal lands, and ties to the British Crown shaped the political channels through which tribal nationhood claims were promoted in the present. Contingently rather than deterministically, these political channels led to the distinctive outcomes in each nation.

• The Helms-Burton Bill and Canada’s Cuba Policy: Convergences with the US
  Kalowatie Deonandan
  
  Abstract
  This analysis reassesses Canada’s Cuba policy by challenging the prevailing view that it has been largely independent of the US. The thesis posited here is that despite its opposition to the US’ Helms-Burton legislation (which seeks to increase economic pressures on the Cuban economy by penalising foreigners who conduct business with the island) the Canadian government has been pursuing a Cuba strategy which closely converges with the Americans, and this has been particularly evident since the late 1990s. This argument is made through a discussion of the following themes: Canada’s support for US hegemony; its shared interest with the US in protecting the global trading regime; its desire to defend its trading relationship with the US; its support for the US’ position in the Organization of American States vis a vis Cuba; and its commercial competition with the US in Cuba.
  

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