Staying the course in Mexico: the role of the US in the drug war, 2006–present

With drug-related violence reaching record levels in Mexico, there has been growing debate over its causes. US and Mexican officials blame many factors, including problems with their strategy in the drug war, fighting among cartels, corruption in police forces, an ineffective legal justice system and US drug demand. In this paper, I argue that the Mérida Initiative, a multi-billion dollar programme of US assistance, is an important additional factor. Drug-related violence increased in the years after the implementation of the Mérida Initiative, declined when Mexican officials paused new programmes in 2012 and increased again as US and Mexican officials implemented new Mérida programmes in the following years. Over the same time period, drug-related homicides and complementary counternarcotics assistance from the US Department of Defense are positively correlated. Using US records, I show that US officials have been willing to overlook the growing violence because they have been more focused on achieving their economic and strategic objectives. I conclude that their actions have played a significant role in increasing drug-related violence while starting an ominous new phase of US imperialism in Mexico.     

Acknowledgement of the Secret Protocol of the German–Soviet Non-aggression Pact and the Declaration of State Sovereignty by the Union Republics of the USSR

In June 1989, the First Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union established the Commission for Historical and Legal Estimation of the Soviet–German Non-aggression Pact of 1939. In the commission, representatives from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania condemned the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States, prompting heated arguments regarding the invalidity of the related secret protocol of the pact with other members who continued to hold the traditional Soviet ideological view of the pact as something positive. The debate over the secret protocol had the further potential to extend to disputes over ‘recovery of lost territory’ amongst the Baltic States, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and Russia. This article analyses the arguments used by commission members, considering the interplay of national interests, how they balanced arguments between restoration of ‘state sovereignty’ and maintenance of borders, and how they finally compromised and concluded the commission's report.     

Afro-Porteños at the end of the nineteenth century: discussing the nation

Argentina is a country that, even today, identifies itself as a modern, white, and European nation. This representation began to be projected in the last decades of the nineteenth century, framed in the state-consolidation and nation-building processes, which will be the historical context for this paper. It was also the time when a certain notion became broadly accepted: that Afro-Argentines, the descendants of formerly enslaved African people, had ‘disappeared’. By contrast, in that same period, Afro-Porteños (Porteños are citizens of Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina) had not disappeared but constituted an important community, which produced numerous newspapers. Through the analysis of Afro-Porteño newspapers, their self-representations and discourses, some of the ways they negotiated with the ideology of modernity and Europeanism (that implied whiteness) will be discussed. The agency of Afro-Porteños will be examined as we analyze how Afro-Porteño intellectuals promoted state values to their group and at the same time defended their community against discrimination.     

Crossing the Ideological Divide? Egypt's Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood after the Arab Spring

An important strand in the literature has stressed the analytical distinction between the Muslim Brotherhood's brand of Islamism and the Salafist movement. This article examines the shifts that have occurred within these two movements in Egypt since the Arab Spring. It specifically asks whether approximations between them in terms of strategies of actions have been paralleled by ideological approximations. The article argues that both movements have seen increased diversification which has—especially at the fringes—involved a reshaping of identities and ideological approximations that may facilitate cooperation between segments of these movements in the future.     

The Evolution of the Regulation of Labour in the USSR,the CIS and the Baltic States, 1985–2009

This article is a first systematic study of employment protection legislation in the 15 successor states of the USSR over the last two and a half decades. The analysis is based on new and unique data assembled using OECD methodology. We find that the dynamics of employment protection in the region resemble an inverted U-shaped pattern with the peak of labour market rigidity occurring in the mid-1990s in CIS countries and a decade later in the Baltic states. By now, the former Soviet states as a group are similar to the EU-15 and OECD countries in terms of the overall employment protection legislation index, although they differ in terms of contributions to the overall employment protection legislation of its three major components, namely, regulation of permanent contracts, temporary contracts and collective dismissals.     

Looking for ‘the International’ beyond the West

As international attention focuses on the rebuilding of Afghanistan, this paper looks critically at the evolution and meaning of the core concepts underpinning aims and strategies for recovery: the key role of institutional development and capacity building in establishing good governance based on collaboration between state, civil society and market; the empirical consensus, over many decades, for best practice in development; the acknowledgement that recovery of war-torn societies is a development challenge. It is shown that, despite this understanding, operational practice continues to contradict the principles and lessons learned from proven experience. The financial and administrative culture of the international institutions, lack of political will, donor conditionality and recipients' contrary agendas are seen to contribute to this failure. The paper concludes by examining the implications of this analysis for the recovery of Afghanistan.     

Romania and the Third World during the heyday of the détente

Abstract

All Warsaw Pact countries developed intense relations with Third World countries during the 1970s, following in Moscow’s footsteps, allegedly supporting the struggle against Western imperialism while making profitable arms deals. One Warsaw Pact country, though, saw things differently: it was both American and Soviet imperialism that had to be fought off. This paper reassesses the origins and nature of Romania’s Third World policy in the context of the Soviet–American détente of 1972. Détente was perceived in Bucharest as a risk to the country’s independent foreign policy and a consolidation of the existing bipolarity which is why Romania tried to mobilise small and medium states of the Third World in a fight against hegemony and underdevelopment. Although they adhered to the developmental debates and tried to join the Group of 77, the Romanians viewed underdevelopment not necessarily in structural terms but rather as a product of political obstructions exerted by the superpowers. Refusing the take the Soviet side in the Third World, Romania tried to convince Third World leaders that unity and cooperation among the ‘unprivileged’ were a shield against foreign interference and a guarantee of development.     

Critical peacebuilding and the dilemma of difference: the stigma of the ‘local’ and the quest for equality

Recent research has revealed the need to include and understand local actors in order to improve the effectiveness of peacebuilding. According to these analyses, peacebuilding could become more respectful of cultural differences thanks to a genuine engagement with the specificities of the local. Empirical studies of the ‘different’ local have thus flourished in the field with the ambition of countering the universalist tendency of traditional peacebuilding. Through the use of the concept of ‘dilemma of difference’, this article challenges this intuitive argument and argues that these approaches risk reproducing a stigma attached to the ‘different’ local. Indeed, emphasising difference in order to ensure its respect means separating and reifying ‘it’ as a deviation from the norm(al). As such, this analytical strategy is likely to recreate the stigma that contributed to the exclusion of local actors in previous peacebuilding practice and research. In contrast, I outline three strategies for studying difference differently in peacebuilding: focusing on the institutional arrangements that enabled specific differences to emerge and become visible; recognising that these differences are internal to peacebuilding (and thus an unlikely source of alternative and emancipation); and revealing the unstated and implicit Self for/from whom local difference is relevant.     

Debt Politics and the Free Trade ‘Package’: the case of the Caribbean

While much has been written on how powerful institutions have used debt crises to foist free trade agreements on poorer states, this paper explores how the foisting of free trade agreements on poorer states has resulted in debt crises. Part one critiques the common-sense understanding of ‘free trade’ as a mere technical or policy issue, arguing that it is an intricate political, economic and ideological ‘package’ rooted in complex social, historical and cultural forces. Part two explores the role of debt in the free trade package by examining the impact of free trade agreements on the Caribbean over the past decade, during which time the region has experienced growing public and personal debt crises, further fuelled by an aid packages that included millions of dollars of concessional loans. It is argued that the contradictions of ‘free trade’ are mitigated through a ‘debt for trade’ paradigm, which Caribbean states are beginning to subvert through new preferential South–South partnerships.     

The Debate on the Writer’s Responsibility in France and the United States from the 1920s to the 1950s

The debate on the responsibility of the writer was, in France as in the USA, an attack against literary and artistic modernism. From Charles Maurras to Irving Babbit, the reaction against modernism presented itself as a defense of classicism and of tradition against romanticism. Far from being politically neutral, this attack identified romanticism with revolution and the destruction of the social order. The opposition between responsibility and freedom structured the debate from the end of the nineteenth century until World War II. The war entailed a loss of autonomy of the literary field which fostered, like during World War I, the imposition of national moralism. In both countries, a debate arose on the question of the responsibility of the writer, but it took a different form. Whereas the opposition between art for art’s sake and responsibility continued to structure it in the USA, the notion of responsibility was appropriated in France by the literary Resistance and redefined by Sartre at the Liberation.     

South–South cooperation and the international development battlefield: between the oecd and the UN

This article discusses the transformation in development architecture, focusing on the role of emerging powers and the growing relevance of South–South cooperation (ssc). Drawing on a conceptual toolkit based on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, it aims to approach ssc as a narrative and to understand the processes of contestation that have turned international development into a battlefield since the end of the 1990s. The article argues that the emergence of ssc has contributed to decentring the field of international development, both in terms of the agents authorised to play and the practices considered legitimate. Within this process the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, led by the oecd’s Development Assistance Committee, and the United Nations Development Cooperation Forum have become two sites on the battlefield on which the borders of international development are being redrawn.     

Reading the novel Stone Dreams on the 100th anniversary of the “Great Catastrophe”

The article analyzes the Stone Dreams novel by the famous Azeri writer Akram Aylisli. Published in the Russian literary journal Druzhba Narodov (Friendship of the People) in December 2012, it condemned anti-Armenian pogroms in the republic and in the cities of Baku and Sumgait in particular at the end of the 1980s. The novel also refers to the massacre committed by Turkish troops on Christmas of 1919 in the midst of the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1923. At that time, Turkish commander Adif-bey ordered the mass execution of the Armenian population in the author’s home village Aylis (Agulis in Armenian). Almost all Armenians were killed, with the exception of a few young girls who by the late 1980s had turned into gray-haired women. The writer knew them when he was a young man, and the whole of his narrative was based on the stories that were told by the older people in the village. The novel caused mass outrage in Azerbaijan, for allegedly being one-sided. This included mass demonstrations in front of the author’s house and the public burning of his books.     

The 1950s—the triumph of the Soviet economy

The frequent assertions in both Russian and Western economic literature and the broader press that the command economy is not viable are based on data showing the inefficient use of material and labour resources in the pre-war period and the continuous decline in the rate of economic growth and the efficiency of resource use in the 1960s–1980s. Yet it is a long way from observing these facts to confirming the failure of the command economy. Before the political system of the USSR began to collapse in 1990–91 there had been no prolonged absolute fall in GDP nor, in the post-war period, in the standard of living of the population, nor had technical progress come to a halt as it did, for example, in the 1990s after the rejection of the command economy. Compared with the latter period it is justifiable to talk of the indisputable advantages of the command over the market economy in Russian conditions, if of course we do not consider (for which there are some grounds) the enormous difficulties of the Russian economy in the 1990s to be consequences of a protracted transformation crisis. I would like to draw attention to the fact that these advantages are evident even in comparison with the degenerate mid-1980s version of the command economy, which was very different from the classical model.     

EPSAS—Worrying the Wrong End of the Stick?

The ultimate objective of the European Public Sector Accounting Standards (EPSAS) project is for the European Union (EU) to improve budgetary surveillance of its member states through more reliable statistics. The objective of this article is to analyze the EPSAS decision and discuss the efficacy of the proposed solution. Harmonization is already present through national accounting rules; will more standardization do the trick? Is the problem really being dealt with, or is it just an attempt by the EU to appear to be doing the right thing while the real issue is ignored? This article suggests that targeting governmental accounting systems for this purpose may prove futile.     

Calling on Jefferson: the ‘custodiary’ as the fourth estate in the Democratic Project

Aimed at reinforcing the democratic values of freedom of speech and increased diversity in civic access to the means of communication, this paper examines the concept of democracy within an information and communication technology-mediated context. Discussion proceeds with an analysis of orthodox views adopted by Jefferson and the architects of the American Constitution. Building on the Jeffersonian tradition, a critique is presented of present-day, non-transparent constraints on the democratic values of freedom of speech, information access and the structural constrains mitigating unfettered public access to critical information and debate on fundamental social and political issues of the day. The proposed ‘custodiary’ model for the new Democratic Project is premised on the development of a constitutional framework which encourages information diversity and freedom of access and expression as a way of bringing back ‘discourse’ into democratic praxis.     

Global international relations and the Arab Spring: the Maghreb’s challenge to the EU

Abstract

This article contributes to the Global International Relations project by critically evaluating the roles ascribed to Europe and the EU by Levitsky and Way in their model for explaining regime transitions. Focusing primarily on their international dimensions of linkage and leverage, it assesses both the normative geopolitical underpinnings and explanatory power of their thesis, drawing on the North African cases of Tunisia and Mauritania at the start of the Arab Spring to illustrate and substantiate its observations and arguments. It concludes that the EU’s failure to discipline either country’s competitive authoritarian regime raises important questions about the validity of the privileged role in which they cast Europe.     

‘Finishing the Job’: the UN Special Committee on Decolonization and the politics of self-governance

This article examines the modern day role and purpose of the UN Special Committee on Decolonization. Since its establishment in the 1960s the Committee has helped numerable former colonies achieve independence. Today, with very few ‘colonised’ Non-Self-Governing Territories remaining its work appears almost complete. However, serious flaws have always pervaded its decolonisation strategy; which are now more apparent than ever. The Committee retains narrow and outdated understandings of colonialism and, as a result, fails to recognise how widespread and pervasive global colonial forces remain. This makes its goal of universal decolonisation both unsatisfactory and misguided. The Committee’s problematic approach towards decolonisation stems from its participation within the ‘North–South Theatre’, in which antagonism is perpetuated between the world’s developed and less developed states. The paper argues that the Committee has not prioritised colonised peoples in the way it has always claimed, but instead worked principally in the interests of itself and its members.     

Development Discourse of the Globalists and Dependency Theorists: do the globalisation theorists rephrase and reword the central concepts of the dependency school?

This paper discusses the discourses of the globalisation theorists and dependency scholars in respect of their views on development and underdevelopment. The paper argues that there are underlying similarities between the central concepts of the dependency approach and globalisation theories. Some of the globalisation theorists come remarkably close to the central concepts of the dependency theories by rewording and rephrasing the same concepts but colouring them with different ideological hues. Neither classic development theory nor dependency theories have full explanatory power with respect to the current order of global economic relations. The branch of globalisation theories which has historical roots in classical development theory has shown resilience, while dependency theories have not totally lost their significance.