Targeting the Motivated? Ethnicity and the Pre‐emptive Use of Government Repression

Research on government repression often focuses on the comparison between states over time and provides little insight about the targets of repression within a state. This article unpacks government repression against different ethnic groups. It argues that non‐democratic governments use pre‐emptive and targeted repression against ethnic groups that are discriminated, strong, or have a history of protest or rebellion in order to prevent future ethnic rebellions. For democratic governments, on the other hand, the cost of pre‐emptive repression is too high. The article tests this argument in a quantitative analysis of government‐group dyads. It finds at least partial support for some implications of the argument: Autocratic governments use more repression than democracies against discriminated groups, but only when they are also weak, and against groups with a history of protest. There is little evidence that regimes of either type respond to previous violent mobilization or group strength with repression.     

A word of justice: Islam and state repression in the North-West Caucasus

How does state repression of non-militant Muslims contribute to violent Islamism in the North Caucasus? This article considers the case of the republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, where young residents' embrace of normative Islam post-perestroika roiled the Sovietized Muslim and secular establishments. Greatly aggravated by the brutal and indiscriminate response from law enforcement agencies, this confrontation culminated in the 2005 Nalchik uprising, the North Caucasus' largest insurgent offensive of the past decade. In the culturally comparable nearby republic of Adygeya, by contrast, analogous state repression in the wake of the uprising did not produce a violent outcome. Salient features of the mosque–state relationship in both republics are examined here, particularly the rationale of Kabardino-Balkaria's Muslim opposition leaders before and after their public endorsement of militant jihadism. The author then posits ways of marginalizing such leaders and thereby limiting the scope for conflict.     

Phasing out nuclear energy in Germany

The German Red‐Green government decided to phase out all nuclear power stations and stop the reprocessing of German nuclear fuel in Britain and France. The coalition agreement between the Greens and SPD set out a well‐defined timetable for the implementation of this policy, involving new legislation within the first 100 days and the negotiation of a consensus with the electricity utilities to be achieved within 12 months. While these deadlines passed without political results, an agreement between the government and the nuclear utilities was reached in mid‐June 2000. This analysis of the genesis and development of the policy of phasing out nuclear power focuses in particular on the difficulties of the Green Environment Minister, Jürgen Trittin, to put the anti‐nuclear policies of his party into practice. It is argued that the Greens faced a ‘no win’ situation in their attempt to design a constitutionally and politically viable phasing out policy. The party remains caught in the middle between the radical anti‐nuclear movement that continues its protest against all nuclear operations and an intransigent electricity industry fighting for its commercial self‐interest to keep nuclear stations running as long as possible. A range of theoretical approaches that could help the understanding of these processes is discussed, with an ‘advocacy coalition’ approach appearing to be the most promising option.     

A legacy reassessed: Helmut Kohl and the German party finance affair

Revelations about former chancellor Helmut Kohl's party finance practices spawned the biggest scandal in post‐war German political history. Though some details of this affair's scope remained unclear or in dispute, the author argues that large, unreported private contributions served Kohl's strategy for managing his Christian Democratic Union: such resources helped fund the modern party organisation that he had built and sustained his own quasi‐feudal network of personal relationships at all levels. His intense partisanship made it easier for him to justify circumventing party finance laws. Yet evidence for the contention that Kohl took such funds in exchange for granting policy favours remains more ambiguous.     

History writing as agitation and propaganda: the Kazakh history book of 1943

The reconstruction of the Soviet recent past is a controversial issue in the post-Soviet republics. In Kazakhstan, the reconstruction of the past has gradually rehabilitated leading Kazakh communists, such as Zhumabai Shaiakhmetov. One of the main rationales of this rehabilitation is his support for Kazakh historical writing, which resulted in a textbook published in 1943. This work has been seen as an endeavor by ‘patriotic’ Kazakh officials and historians to defend Kazakh national heritage against the ‘Soviet colonial empire’. By presenting a broader view of the war period in Kazakhstan from the archives, this article argues that this history textbook was in fact merely an agitation-propaganda product of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. Shaiakhmetov and others had mostly secured their career by remaining loyal to the Soviet system during the collectivization, the Great Famine and the Great Terror. Therefore, their encouragement of the publication of a national history in 1943 for propaganda purposes does not qualify them as suitable predecessors of the current generation of Kazakh rulers.     

Reflections on the Chechen Conflict: Geopolitics,Timing and Transformations

The Chechen Conflict is the most fatal and protracted conflict in the post-Soviet space. While it is the most discussed conflict there, it is also the least understood. Many contradicting accounts of it exist, and still many questions remain unanswered. One reason is that the nature of this conflict has changed over time. Unlike what many - particularly Western - analysts think, it is not a religious conflict. It began as an ethno-nationalist separatist conflict but only later was it infiltrated by extremist Salafis/Wahhabis. At this moment a war is going on between the local Chechen and the central Russian governments against the Salafi/Wahhabi Emirate of the Caucasus. Chechnya is the only autonomous region in Russia in which a separatist movement had been successful. The possible reasons are the peculiarities of the Caucasus; especially its mosaic type of ethnogeographic configuration and the traumatic past of many of its peoples. Another important factor in the explanation of such a separatist conflict in Chechnya - and nowhere else in the North Caucasus - is the fact that only in Chechnya has a titular minority enjoyed a dominant demographic position. This paper also discusses issues such as the nature of Islam in Chechnya and the Russian geopolitical codes.     

Why No Mayan Party? Indigenous Movements and National Politics in Guatemala

Unlike indigenous social movements in several other Latin American countries, Mayan movements in Guatemala have not formed a viable indigenous‐based political party. Despite the prominence of the Mayan social movement and a relatively open institutional environment conducive to party formation, indigenous groups have foregone a national political party in favor of a more dispersed pattern of political mobilization at the local level. This article argues that the availability of avenues for political representation at the municipal level, through both traditional political parties and civic committees, and the effects of political repression and violence have reinforced the fragmentation and localism of indigenous social movements in Guatemala and prevented the emergence of a viable Mayan political party. The result has been a pattern of uneven political representation, with indigenous Guatemalans gaining representation in local government while national political institutions remain exclusionary.     

How to build a modern party: Helmut Kohl's leadership and the transformation of the CDU

This article analyses the manner in which Helmut Kohl modernised a traditional party of Honoratioren in the Rheinland‐Palatinate. Four main transformations accomplished this: the renewal of party elite, the construction of a strong party apparatus with a high number of members, the renewal of the party programme, and the strategic alliance with the FDP. These transformations, carried out by Kohl at the Land level in the mid‐1960s, were applied at the federal level after 1973 when he was elected CDU president. They have been constants in his leadership ever since. A close look at Kohl's career in Mainz sheds light not only on his past but also on his present and on his future.     

Repression as a Double‐edged Sword: Resilient Monarchs,Repression and Revolution in the Arab World

The Arab world shows a puzzling variation of political violence. The region's monarchies often remain quiet, while other autocracies witness major upheaval. Institutional explanations of this variation suggest that monarchical rule solves the ruler's credible commitment problems and prevents elite splits. This article argues that institutional explanations neglect the role of repression: increasing the scope of repression raises the costs of rebellion and deters rebels. However, the deterrence effect disappears if repression is used indiscriminately. If remaining peaceful offers no benefits, repression creates new rebels instead of deterring them. A time‐series‐cross‐section analysis of repression and political violence in the Middle East and North Africa corroborates our argument and shows the u‐curve relation between repression and violence. Once we control for repression, monarchies have no special effect anymore. Thus, our article addresses the discussion about monarchical exceptionalism, and offers an explanation why repression deters as well as incites political violence.     

From princely fiefdoms to Soviet nations: interethnic border conflicts in the North Caucasus and the village of Lesken

This article examines interethnic border conflicts that accompanied the Soviet division of the North Caucasus into ethno-territorial autonomous districts after the Civil War. It traces the tumultuous, and often violent, events that led to the transfer of the ethnically Ossetian village of Lesken from the Kabardino-Balkar Autonomous Oblast to the North-Ossetian Autonomous Oblast. The essay shows how the Soviet-sponsored ethnicization of territory exacerbated interethnic tensions in a multiethnic region that defied neat delimitation into coherent ethno-national administrative units. It highlights the ‘dual-assimilation’ that accompanied the introduction of the national principle and the delimitation of national borders. Ethno-national mobilization of populations in defence of their ‘national’ territory from neighbouring ethnic groups, though achieved for reasons of daily survival, represented an initial lesson in the importance of national identity in the modernizing Soviet state, as villagers learned to speak national and Bolshevik. In concluding, this paper seeks to understand the larger significance of Soviet border making in the North Caucasus by exploring issues of continuity and change, both in terms of imperial governance and the lived experience of ethnicity.     

The party,the Gama’a and the Tanzim: the organizational dynamics of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s post-2011 failure

Abstract

In April 2011, the Egyptian Muslim Brothers (MB) founded the first political party in their 83-year-long history, known as the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). Yet the party remained under the control of its parent organization—the Gama’a (literally the ‘community’)—and its internal apparatus, the Tanzim. While both had been shaped during decades of MB’s semi-clandestine existence as a banned-yet-tolerated group, these did not adapt to the changing socio-political configuration and have resisted the transition to fully overt activity. Through an analysis of the FJP’s uneasy creation and with a grounding of extensive empirical research, this article argues that the party’s development was to a certain extent hampered by those pre-existing organizational structures. Organizational crystallization prevented the party from conforming to the emerging rules of the political field then under construction. Instead, the Gama’a’s undefined nature and opaque pattern of regulation were replicated within the FJP’s structure. Thus, the article seeks to uncover a hitherto hidden aspect of in the MB’s post-2011 failure, one which is rooted in organizational dynamics.     

Terror in Japan

Observers of early twenty-first-century Japan commonly note economic, political, and social crisis, on the one hand, and pessimism, lethargy, or helplessness about the possibility of reform, on the other. Yet Japan's civil society was idealistic and energetic in the early postwar decades. What happened? The reform movement that captured much of the vitality of the early postwar decades was either foreclosed, as many were co-opted in the “all-for-growth” economism, consumerism, and the corporation, or crushed in successive waves of repression of dissidence as the cold war order took shape. Political parties sacrificed broad vision and ideals to narrow-interest articulation. While the mass base of the reform movement was discouraged, demoralized, and depoliticized, one minority in the late 1960s turned to violent revolution and another in the late 1980s turned inward to seek spiritual satisfaction. Both paths led to violence. This article looks at the course of the student movement between the late 1940s and the late 1970s, with particular reference to the Japan Red Army, and at the new religious movement Aum Supreme Truth in the 1980s and 1990s. Both adopted “terrorist” tactics, by almost any understanding of that term. However, they were children of their times, reflecting the same deep social, political, and moral problems that Japan as a whole continues to face in the early twenty-first century.     

Reconstruction of the ‘Armenian Homeland’ Notion

This article explores the way paved for the reconstruction of the ‘Armenian homeland’ notion. It considers the emergence of modern ‘national’ history of Armenians, the settlement of the Armenians in the South Caucasus or Transcaucasia, the liquidation of the (Caucasian) Albanian Catholicosate and the impact of the change of the church identity of the monophysite Caucasian Albanians living between the Kur and Araz Rivers on the change of their ethnic identity as factors instrumental in this reconstruction. The examination of this process is especially important for understanding the factors, which played a crucial role in the construction of the Armenian Republic in the South Caucasus in 1918 and its territorial claims.     

Political Institutions and Conservation Outcomes: Wildlife Policy in Zambia

“Messy” democratic political institutions might generate ineffective conservation policy watered down by competing interest groups and rival political parties. A hardcore environmentalist may believe that a pro‐conservation dictatorship would be the type government best able to meet her goals. Such an environmental fantasy became reality in Zambia under President (1972‐1991) Kenneth Kaunda. But despite his dictatorial powers, he did not have much success in curbing the poaching epidemic that swept through Zambia in the 1970s and 80s. The structure of the one‐party state, together with a fall in the price of Zambia's principal export (copper) and a concomitant increase in the value of many wildlife products, created an environment that generated incentives for politicians, bureaucrats, and citizens to disregard Kaunda. This analysis challenges conventional wisdom about the politics of one‐party states. It shows that even in the case of one‐party government, the structure of political institutions remains critical to the extent of a dictator's control.     

Islam,Islamism, and Post‐Islamism: Rediscovering Politics after the War on Terror

Over the past twenty years, an influential body of conservative scholarship has focused on the alleged conflict between Islam and the West. Following widespread criticism of this scholarship, a number of commentators have revived its core assumptions to claim that the real conflict is between liberal democracy within Muslim societies and the political ideology of Islamism. In this article we trace the evolution of this scholarship, and suggest that recent empirical developments in the Muslim world suggest the potential for post‐Islamist parties to successfully adapt to the demands of democratic competition within Muslim societies. In this context, the emerging conflict is not between Islam and the West, or Islamism and the West, but between two very different discursive practices within the Muslim world that invoke Islam for radically different purposes. A traveler enters the world into which he travels, but a tourist brings his own world with him and never sees the one he's in. ¹      

Imperialism from Below: Informal Empire and the Private Sector in Nineteenth‐Century Germany

Far from being the product of atavistic feudal remnants within German society, nineteenth‐century German imperialism stemmed from precisely the liberal milieu that had come to prominence during 1848‐49. Through an analysis of imperialist texts dealing with Central and South America, and the social logic of these imperialist works, an understanding of the nature of private sector and civil society imperialistic projects emerges that sees liberal imperialists seeking out alternatives to statist solutions in the light of political blockages to their efforts.     

When Do Issue Opinions Matter,and to Whom? The Determinants of Long‐Term Stability and Change in Party Choice in the 2003 Swiss Elections

While various studies have highlighted the short‐term importance of issue‐voting for party choice, little attention has so far been paid to its long‐term relevance. Relying on longitudinal data from the 2003 Swiss federal elections, we examine under what circumstances issue‐specific considerations affect stability and change in party choice. We postulate that the impact of issue‐specific considerations is likely to vary depending on a set of mediating factors. Analyzing four mechanisms of stability and change (reinforcement, activation, conversion, and demobilization), we find first that issues matter more when they are pressing, central, and polarizing. Furthermore, issue positions affect the vote more significantly for the parties that are more profiled on them. These results are in line with those on short‐term effects. However, they reveal a stronger influence of shifts in issue opinions in the long‐term than in the short‐term. Finally, we do not find any substantial variations in the effect of issue preferences across individual characteristics (political sophistication and party identification).     

Stability and Change in Party Preference

This article analyses stability and volatility of party preferences using data from the Swiss Household‐Panel (SHP), which, for the first time, allow studying transitions and stability of voters over several years in Switzerland. Analyses cover the years 1999–2007 and systematically distinguish changes between party blocks and changes within party blocks. The first part looks at different patterns of change, which show relatively high volatility. The second part tests several theories on causes of such changes applying a multinomial random‐effects model. Results show that party preferences stabilise with their duration and with age and that the electoral cycle, political sophistication, socio‐structural predispositions, the household‐context as well as party size and the number of parties each explain part of electoral volatility. Different results for within‐ and between party‐block changes underlie the importance of that differentiation.     

Populisms old and new: the Peruvian case⋆

President Fujimori is often seen as exemplary of the Latin American “neopopulist”. Having inherited a country in crisis, he managed to engineer profound changes in the economic sphere, legitimising his government through a direct rapport with the mass of the population that marginalised representative institutions. This article seeks to place this “neopopulism” in an historical context by focusing on the socio‐economic and political characteristics that have sustained a tradition of populism in Peru. It argues that “top‐down” styles of political mobilisation have long had a debilitating effect on the development of a representative party system, and that populist traits can be traced through regimes of widely differing ideological orientations.     

Japan's democracy in crisis: The new tide in Japanese politics

Since August 1993, when Morihiro Hosakawa inaugurated his “anti‐LDP” coalition, unstable coalitions have held power in Japan. Popular displeasure with the current state of politics has been evidenced by voter volatility and low electoral turnouts. In two notable cases, “flash candidates “ have assumed office, and, in some local elections, candidates have run unopposed. What does this listless version of dissent bode for Japanese politics? IIPS Research Director Seizaburo Sato is Professor at the Saitama University Graduate School of Policy Science. In this article, he maps out the issues that have left post‐Cold War Japanese politics in disarray and examines various potential scenarios, from a “super party “ larger than the LDP at its zenith, to the birth of a two‐party system.