It is interesting, for example, to note that (black and white) officials of both the Central African Federation and the Governments of its constituent nations traveled to other British Commonwealth nations in the 1950s and early 1960s. The CAF was even invited to and represented at the Independence celebrations of Ghana in 1957. Officials of the Kenyan administration, for instance, weren’t sent to Australia on extended study tours to share ideas about education policy, as one black Zimbabwean CAF civil servant (whom I knew) was in the early 1960s. I think the black-white relationship in Southern Rhodesia prior to Independence was subtly different from that elsewhere in British colonial Africa, and that the belief of the white population that they were on a path to dominion status played a major part in this. Of course, you are correct that for the overwhelming majority of black people their life experience was little different from that elsewhere.

No doubt your manuscript is careful to note that Zimbabwe (or, rather its geographic predecessors) was only strictly a “colony” for the few short months between the majority-rule agreement at Lancaster House, London, in December 1979 and Independence in April 1980. When initally settled by whites in 1890, it was run, under a royal charter granted to the company by the British crown, by the British South African Company, until, in 1923, it became a self-governing (with, a course, a very restricted franchise) British dependency.

Is your manuscript publicly available? Having lived in Zim, it would be very interesting to read it.

Brad DeLong has a comment on this:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2008/01/do-the-cossacks.html?cid=97500642#comment-97500642

In short: it’s highly plausible that Bush fell for these traps; it’s highly implausible that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice did.

Essence of Decision is the type of book that through its approach to the intersection of individual and institution in decision making processes makes political science something more than just history lite or philosophy lite. I could say a lot of asinine, unsubstantiated pol blog and Heritage Foundation intern words here like nuanced, lucid, revolutionary, and essential (har-har), but I think the work speaks best for itself. Also, to be honest, it’s been three and a half years since I last read the text. I don’t know how much of what I think of when I think of Allison is actually from Essence, or the river silt and ox-bow lakes of other works, personal experiences, and pet theories, the usual claptrap. A few years back, I rewatched the Rankin-Bass Return of the King with a 5 year old and was shocked to see that the scene that stayed with me for all of my childhood, (spoiler warning or some-unnecessary-such) when Eowyn rips off her helm and shouts ‘I am no man,’ doesn’t even register a full 30 seconds. Or it’s like the proverb in Slavery and Social Death that takes me forever to refind every time because it seems so much more revelatory and central in my mind than it ever is in the text, like there should be more on the page. The danger of a lack of rigor.

Prof. Murphy’s syllabus for Race and Foreign Affairs also has a great deal of pertinent work on the intersection of cultural norms and political decision making and bureaucratic implementation.

And I shouldn’t have said ‘trade union,’ I guess-historically Japanese unions are company or workplace unions, but anyway…it’s that damned area training making me say these stupid things (jk).