The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (74 page)

 
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Term derived from French word ‘
diriger
’ (to direct) referring to the control of economic activity by the state. Intervention may take the form of legal requirements, financial incentives and penalties, nationalization, or comprehensive economic planning, though with an underlying commitment to private ownership. Used predominantly in connection with the practices of French governments of both Imperial and Republican varieties.
SW 

 
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Dirty public goods are not necessarily public goods, in the technical sense that an act of consumption does not diminish their supply, but rather public projects assumed to be of benefit to the population as a whole, but not to those living near them. Power stations and airports are among the most common examples: they leave what some political geographers call their ‘externality footprint’ on their neighbours. Naturally the neighbours of such projects are likely to show a NIMBY reaction. There has been considerable debate about the best decision-making procedures for taking into account the interests of both gainers and losers in such issues. In this debate it is generally argued that existing procedures are fundamentally flawed.
LA 

 
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Reduction in fighting capacity. The word disarmament, as commonly used, invariably lacks precise meaning unless subject to careful qualification. For example, it can be multilateral, bilateral, or unilateral. And the extent of what could be involved varies greatly. General and complete disarmament is often piously held among negotiators to be the final objective. But in practice, states have usually concentrated on the less utopian goal of seeking agreement on partial measures intended to cover particular categories of weapons, or applying to designated geographical areas (as in the case of nuclear-weapon-free zones). And in this kind of strictly limited context the goal has sometimes been abolition, sometimes limited reduction, sometimes a freeze, sometimes even a mutually agreed increase. Now a freeze or a mutually agreed increase is not strictly speaking disarmament at all. And such measures may not even be intended to be a first step towards any kind of reduction or abolition. For the aim may simply be to promote stability in force structures. Hence a new term to cover such cases has become fashionable since the 1960s, namely, arms control.
The first practical efforts to limit armaments by general international agreement were made at conferences held at The Hague in 1899 and 1907 but no positive results were achieved. Much more serious were the efforts made under the auspices of the League of Nations after the First World War. Negotiations involving most countries and ostensibly covering all categories of weapons reached a climax in 1932 when the World Disarmament Conference opened in Geneva. By 1935 the Conference was, however, seen to have failed due to rising tensions among the great powers—not least between Germany and France following the rise of Hitler. But perhaps failure was in any case inevitable given the complexity of striking a fair balance among the force structures of a great variety of states with differing security concerns.
More successful were negotiations in the same period for naval arms limitation. In 1922 at the Washington Conference the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, and Italy agreed on the size of their battleship fleets and in 1930 at the London Conference the first three extended the deal to cover all fighting vessels. Verification was easy and the issues uncomplicated. Nevertheless the Japanese in 1935 decided to abandon support for these treaties and hence a new naval arms race began.
Following the Second World War disarmament and arms control negotiations came to be dominated by the Cold War alliances. There was much insincere posturing on both sides until the Soviets achieved nuclear parity with the Americans in the late 1960s. Thereafter negotiations, particularly concerning nuclear weapons, became more serious and notable agreements have been signed ranging from the
SALT
Treaties of the 1970s to the recent
START
Treaties. But experts disagree about the importance of the limitations thus achieved. There certainly have been financial savings— especially since the end of the Cold War. And the spiralling and potentially destabilizing nuclear arms race between Moscow and Washington appears to have ended. But both Russia and the United States still have a massive capacity to inflict assured destruction on any part of the planet. And the improved relations between Moscow and Washington do not appear to be playing much part in preventing the proliferation of nuclear-weapon capability to more and more states. In a world of technological innovation, there is no guarantee that disarmament and arms control will be more successful than before.
DC 

 
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Originally the act of noting differences, discrimination now denotes differentiation between people on grounds such as gender, colour, sexuality, or class. Discrimination in a political system can be explicit or covert. South Africa under apartheid would be a case of institutionalized exclusion of black people from public political life recognized by the state. Similar explicit exclusions are practised against women in many Middle Eastern countries. However, discrimination on grounds of race and gender can also be seen to operate at a more informal level. Levels of education, employment, political representation, percentages of those convicted of crimes, living in poverty, and so on, have been employed as measures by organizations monitoring discrimination in various societies to indicate how informal exclusions operate.
SR 

 
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