The Arab World Attempts Third Revival

Many theories have been put forward to explain the civil unrest that erupted across the Middle East and North Africa at the beginning of this year. The author of this paper believes that seen from an historical perspective the unrest was an attempt by the Arab world to stage a third revival.     

关于撒哈拉以南非洲政局走势的研判

北非动荡不仅对中东阿拉伯世界造成直接的冲击,而且对撒哈拉以南非洲政局也构成潜在的影响。在此背景下,由于确实存在诸多有可能引发动荡的社会政治经济因素,撒哈拉以南非洲局部,即某些国家的政局动荡或许难免,但总体稳定的态势不会改变;即便一些撒哈拉以南非洲国家发生动乱,在性质上亦有别于北非国家,更不会像北非地区那样产生扩散效应,覆盖整个次区域,原因在于撒哈拉以南非洲国家在民族结构、宗教信仰、文化传统,特别是政治改革和政治治理等方面均与包括北非在内的中东阿拉伯国家存在较大差异。总体稳定、局部动荡仍不失为非洲政局之常态。     

No News Is Good News: Mark and Recapture for Event Data When Reporting Probabilities Are Less Than One

We discuss a common, but often ignored, problem in event data: underreporting bias. When collecting data, it is often not the case that source materials capture all events of interest, leading to an undercount of the true number of events. To address this issue, we propose a common method first used to estimate the size of animal populations when a complete census is not feasible: mark and recapture. By taking multiple sources into consideration, one can estimate the rate of missing data across sources and come up with an estimate of the true number of events. To demonstrate the utility of the approach, we compare Associated Press and Agence France Press reports on conflict events, as contained in the Social Conflict in Africa Database. We show that these sources capture approximately 76% of all events in Africa but that the nondetection rate declines dramatically when considering more significant events. We also show through regression analysis that deadly events, events of a larger magnitude, and events with government repression, among others, are significant predictors of overlapping reporting. Ultimately, the approach can be used to correct for undercounting in event data and to assess the quality of sources used.     

Analysis of the Current Situation in North Africa ＆ the Middle East

After the upsurge of domestic turmoil in Tunis last December,unrest spread rapidly through North Africa and the Middle East,having a profound effect on current international relations.It will continue to affect relations between the major powers and the international system as a whole for some time to come.The regional turmoil of North Africa and the Middle East is of particular interest to International Political Economy(IPE)studies.It seems to embody a geostrategic conflict between the US and the EU in contending for leadership in North Africa and the Middle East.It is also an expression of the competition for dominance of the global financial structure between the major powers during a period of transition in the international system.Lastly,it is a manifestation of America’s struggle to maintain its global economic hegemony.     

The Domestic Determinants of Foreign Policy Behavior in Middle Eastern Enduring Rivals, 1948–1998

Rivalry-related issues tend to dominate the foreign policy agenda of states in enduring rivalries. Thus, the enduring rivalry research program provides an important framework for foreign policy analysis. This paper probes the domestic elements of strategic interaction in the three main Middle Eastern rivalries: Israel–Egypt, Israel–Jordan, and Israel–Syria. The empirical tests probe whether the number of parties represented in Israel's cabinet and Arab and Israeli domestic unrest impact the propensity for these rivals to employ hostility against each other. We specify vector autoregression (VAR) models and negative binomial event count models with monthly levels of hostility as the dependent variables for the period 1948–1998. The results provide interesting foreign policy implications regarding the impact of Israeli domestic political structures on conflict dynamics in the Middle East. There is no evidence that the foreign policy behavior of Arab states becomes risk averse when Israeli leaders might need an external scapegoat. These findings are discussed in the context of other research on enduring rivalries and strategic interaction.     

Schools of democracy: how trade union membership impacts political participation in Africa’s emerging democracies

Trade unions in Africa have become increasingly vocal in calling attention to the widening socio-economic inequalities that have accompanied global market integration across the continent. This article argues that, in their quest to challenge neoliberal policies, labour movements have contributed to processes of democratization in Africa by acting as instruments of political socialization for their members. Using survey data from respondents in 18 African countries, this article demonstrates an empirical relationship between trade union membership and political participation. The article finds that membership in a labour organization increases one’s propensity to participate in a range of political activities. Specifically, labour movements encourage participation by forging “participatory spillover effects”, which mobilize unionists across different arenas of the political landscape. Finally, the article finds that the effect of union membership on political participation is stronger in countries where unions maintain independence from ruling parties. This research contributes to literature on political participation across Africa and furthers our understanding of the role of labour movements in bottom-up processes of democratization on the continent.     

Global Credit Markets,Political Violence,and Politically Sustainable Risk Premia

How do international financial conditions affect civil unrest? Existing studies examine the domestic economic roots of political violence but say little about the role of external financial conditions. We explore the interactions between international lending, government policy, and domestic unrest. In particular, we note that because of sovereign risk and defensive lending dynamics, credit ratings and interest rate premia are endogenous to expectations about civil violence. We test these claims using instrumental variables techniques and daily data on sovereign bond yield spreads, credit ratings, and episodes of civil violence in 59 developing countries from 1990 through 2004. After correcting for endogeneity, we find that exogenous increases in the price of foreign capital are robustly associated with increased odds of civil conflict. Primary commodity dependence, low economic growth, and poverty can also increase the odds of civil conflict by reducing access to foreign capital.     

“Mtwara will be the New Dubai”: dashed expectations,grievances, and civil unrest in Tanzania

When does inequality lead to conflict? Despite recent studies highlighting the effects of group exclusion, this question has not been fully answered. We argue that objective group inequality is not sufficient to fuel unrest. Structural inequalities need to be perceived as unfair, and become grievances, in order to spark mobilization. While most conflict scholars recognize this on a theoretical level, statistical tests of the effect of inequality on conflict almost exclusively rely on objective data. This limits their ability to distinguish when inequality is politically relevant and when it is not. Southern Tanzania is a case in point. Despite decades of marginalization, the population remained peaceful until natural gas was discovered, and the government was perceived to break their promises of local development. Demonstrating that objective regional inequalities have remained relatively constant, while group grievances seems to have increased, we argue that direct measures of grievances are needed to pinpoint when inequality becomes politically salient. Using novel survey data, we find that people who think that the region is treated unfairly have the highest likelihood of supporting and participating in civil unrest.     

Endogenous knowledge and the development question in Africa*

An apt analogy for speaking to Africa's experience with development is offered by the twinning of colonialism and modernization. While colonialism left behind some forms of hybridity and mimicry, the urge to decolonize—to be free from the colonizer's control in every possible way—was integral to all anti-colonial criticism after the Second World War. The politics of decolonization followed by the new states in the mid twentieth century, however, displayed an uncritical emphasis on modernization, in which development, pursued—with technology and tools of scientific progress—was a catching-up exercise with the West. As an epistemological export from the West, taking the form of science as hegemony and ideology within colonial discourse, this has not delivered material progress for Africa. The widespread concern about the intractability and magnitude of the problems facing the continent has made development a popular theme in the literature on African studies. The disappointment across various academic circles and the popular press over the dwindling prospects of development in Africa—illustrated in its food insecurity, low life expectancy and the familiar litany of its ills—has made revisiting the debates on African development both compelling and timely. Much has consequently been written on what development is or should be about in Africa. This article underlines the centrality of endogenous knowledge as the material precondition for autonomous development for Africa.     

Economic growth and military spending in South Africa

This study applies a statistical model to examine the overtime relationship between military expenditure and economic growth in South Africa. The model is based on a neoclassical production function, and is developed and estimated for the time period 1950 to 1985. The results indicate that the size effects of military expenditure on economic growth are negative, while the externality effects of military spending are positive. In addition, decreasing foreign investment and increasing domestic unrest are found to have negative impacts on GDP growth. Labor employment is positively related to growth, but non‐white labor is more strongly significant than white labor. These results are consistent with previous cross‐section studies that find some evidence for positive and negative effects of military spending on economic growth.     

Precedents,Progress, and Prospects in Political Event Data

The past decade has seen a renaissance in the development of political event data sets. This has been due to at least three sets of factors. First, there have been technological changes that have reduced the cost of producing event data, including the availability of information on the Web, the development of specialized systems for automated coding, and the development of machine-assisted systems that reduce the cost of human coding. Second, event data have become much more elaborate than the original state-centric data sets such as WEIS and COPDAB, with a far greater emphasis on substate and nonstate actors, and in some data sets, the incorporation of geospatial information. Finally, there have been major institutional investments, such as support for a number of Uppsala and PRIO data sets, the DARPA ICEWS Asian and global data sets, and various political violence data sets from the US government. This article will first review the major new contributions, with a focus on those represented in this special issue, discuss some of the open problems in the existing data and finally discuss prospects for future development, including the enhanced use of open-source natural language processing tools, standardizing the coding taxonomies, and prospects for near-real-time coding systems.     

Soft Power and the Currency of Sports: (Re)imagining South Africa’s Rising Hegemony in Africa

Commenting on the utility of sports as a development facilitating instrument, Nelson Mandela, in 2000, remarked that it “has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else can. Sport can awaken hope where there was previously only despair”. Madiba’s iconic statement captures the changing reality of the international system wherein states appreciate the soft power potential of sports as a subtle alternative for gaining political advantage in the international arena. This also lends credence to the argument that politics permeates all elements of social existence, including sports. In view of the preceding, this paper interrogates the rising attractiveness of South Africa in Africa and perhaps globally through the lens of its sporting engagements. From the last decade of the 20th century, South Africa’s status in the sporting world has attracted much international and scholarly attention. The article examines how South Africa negotiates the overlapping arena of politics, sports and foreign policy to normatively secure a regional hegemonic posture through a blend of strategies. These include successful bidding and hosting of sporting mega-events; involvement in the development of sporting codes and local sports content across Africa and a positive cumulative ranking in international competitions vis-à-vis other contenders for regional powerhood. The analysis takes the position that South Africa’s strategy of sports diplomacy masks its aspiration for regional hegemony and this pattern is uniquely relevant for shaping empirical understanding of power politics in Africa as well as appreciating the ideational potency of soft power as a constitutive element of what makes a regional hegemon.     

中国在非洲的舆论环境及非洲媒体对中非关系发展的影响——以尼日利亚为例

尼日利亚是非洲的重要国家，传媒业较为发达，与世界各国媒体交流广泛。尼日利亚媒体涉华报道主流正面、积极、有利，为申尼、中非关系发展起到了重要作用。与此同时，尼媒体也出现了一些关于中国和申非关系消极、负面甚至不实的报道。对此，我应与尼媒体携手，采取综合措施，努力推动中尼媒体交流朝着高水平、深层次、多形式方向发展。     

Event Data on Armed Conflict and Security: New Perspectives,Old Challenges,and Some Solutions

This article presents the Event Data on Conflict and Security (EDACS) dataset, discusses the inherent problems of georeferenced conflict data, and shows how these challenges are met within EDACS. Based on an event data approach, EDACS contributes to the growing number of novel georeferenced datasets that allow researchers to identify causal pathways of violence and the dynamics of (transboundary) violence through spatiotemporal disaggregation. However, the unreflected use of any of these datasets will give researchers unjustified confidence in their findings, as the pitfalls are many and propagating errors can result in misleading conclusions. To identify and handle the different challenges to overall event data quality, we argue in favor of transparency in the data collection and coding process, to empower analysts to challenge the data and avoid cascading errors. In particular, we investigate how the choice of news sources, the handling of geographic precision, and the use of auxiliary data can bias event data. We demonstrate how the EDACS dataset design enables the analyst to deal with these issues by providing a set of variables indicating the news sources, possible sources of bias, and detailed information on geographic precision. This allows for a flexible use of the data based on individual analytical requirements.     

Confronting Islamist Insurgencies in Africa: The Case of the Islamic State in Mozambique

The proliferation of Salafi-jihadi insurgencies across Africa challenges the United States’ counterterrorism approach. From its inception, the insurgency in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique was driven by local and foreign dynamics, which have been complicated by additional external intervention in the conflict. Using the Cabo Delgado insurgency, we demonstrate how efforts to address its global dimensions, such as the group's affiliation with the Islamic State, can work against attempts to mitigate its local drivers. We conclude with recommendations for a more effective U.S. response that takes both the local and global dynamics into account. This article builds on our February 2021 report “Combating the Islamic State's Spread in Africa: Assessment and Recommendations for Mozambique,” published by the American Enterprise Institute.     

Politically motivated violence in the southwest pacific

Over the past 20 years the Southwest Pacific has been changing and there is now considerable scope for unrest within the states and territories of the region. Some of these tensions have already been manifested in politically motivated violence, for example in Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia and Fiji. Those incidents which have occurred to date have stemmed from local issues and been directed against local targets, but an increase in tensions could bring the prospect of international terrorist activity. There is also the possibility of interference from outside elements seeking to capitalize on such unrest as part of a wider campaign.     

Issues and Actors in African Nonstate Conflicts: A New Data Set

Armed nonstate conflict without the direct involvement of the state government is a common phenomenon. Violence between armed gangs, rebel groups, or communal militias is an important source of instability and has gained increasing scholarly attention. In this article, we introduce a data collection on conflict issues and key actor characteristics in armed nonstate conflicts that provides new opportunities for investigating the causes, dynamics, and consequences of this form of organized violence. The data builds on and extends the Uppsala Conflict Data Program Non-State Conflict data set by introducing additional information on what the actors in the conflict are fighting over, alongside actor characteristics. It covers Africa during the time period 1989–2011. The data set distinguishes between two main categories of issues, territory and authority, in addition to a residual category of other issues. Furthermore, we specify sub-issues within these categories, such as agricultural land/water as sub-issue for territory and religious issues for other issues. As actor characteristics, the data set notes whether warring parties received military support by external actors and whether religion and the mode of livelihood were salient in the mobilization of the armed group. The article presents coding processes, key features of the data set, and point to avenues for new research based on these data.     

Faith-based HIV response in post-Soviet Eastern Europe: the case of Channels of Hope in Russia,Romania, and Armenia

ABSTRACT

Most of the data available on faith-based HIV response focus on Africa, which is the heart of the pandemic. This article investigates faith-based community-level HIV responses within Eastern Europe, by studying the implementation of World Vision International’s “Channels of Hope” faith-based HIV intervention. The intervention approach was developed in a high HIV-prevalence setting (South Africa) and then implemented across sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere – including three low HIV-prevalence Eastern European settings (Armenia, Romania, and Russia). Drawing from implementation and evaluation research, this article explores the nature, challenges, and potential of faith-based HIV response within low-prevalence, post-Soviet contexts.     

2002年东北亚地区政治局势述评

在 2 0 0 2年打击国际恐怖主义形势下 ,东北亚地区的政治局势表现出了总体缓和、间有动荡和起伏不定的特征。大国关系、半岛局势处在不断调整和变化之中。我国同以往一样 ,既有挑战 ,也有机遇 ,能否抓住机遇 ,取决于我们能否处理好大国之间的关系。