Globalization and Social Movement Resistance: The Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas,Mexico

The rebellion launched by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in 1994 in Chiapas, Mexico is best understood not as a guerrilla struggle for state power, but rather a social movement resisting the dominant mode of globalization being imposed from above. Examining the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of globalization as a set of contested processes, this case study of resistance shows how the Zapatistas have contested power in spheres above and below the nation-state, appealing to global networks and universal rights, but also to local practices and identities. Globalization can paradoxically open new political space for contestation as it ruptures existing patterns of relations between state and civil society. This movement points to an important alternative strategy of "globalization from below," based on the radically democratic demand for autonomy, defined as the right to choose the forms of interaction with forces that are reorganizing on a global scale.     

These fine lines: locating noncitizenship in political protest in Europe

Abstract

Since 2012, refugee protest camps and occupations have been established throughout Europe that contest the exclusion of refugees and asylum seekers, but that also make concrete demands for better living conditions and basic rights. It is a movement that is led by migrants as noncitizens, and so reveals new ways of thinking of the political agency and status of noncitizenship not as simply reactive to an absence of citizenship, but as a powerful and transgressive subjectivity in its own right. This paper argues that we should resist collapsing analysis back into the frameworks of citizenship, and instead be attentive to the politics of presence and solidarity manifest in these protest camps as a way of understanding, and engaging, noncitizen activism.     

Claiming rights in exile: women’s insurgent citizenship practices in the Thai-Myanmar borderlands

ABSTRACT

This paper examines insurgent citizenship practices employed by activists in the exiled Burmese women’s movement from the 1990s and onwards. Consisting of political exiles, refugees and ethnic insurgents, this movement has successfully used the transnational, transitory space of the borderlands to constitute its participants as political subjects with legitimate claims to rights, citizenship and leadership. Drawing on interviews, this analysis interrogates women’s activism through the lens of insurgent citizenship practices. Thus, how have Burmese women’s activists claimed rights and lived citizenship in exile? Three main strategies are examined: firstly, women activists have positioned themselves as political actors and authorities through involvement in governance and humanitarian aid delivery in refugee camps. Secondly, they have claimed rights and political subjectivity through engagement with international norms, networks and arenas. Thirdly, they have claimed citizenship and political influence in oppositional nation-making projects through engaging with and negotiating ethno-nationalist armed struggles. The analysis highlights the multifaceted nature of women’s insurgent citizenship practices, showing how they navigate multiple marginalized subject positions, direct their rights claims towards multiple governing authorities, and enact multiple political communities.     

Strange Fruit: Homophobia,the State,and the Politics of LGBT Rights and Capabilities

A tide of oppression against sexual minorities disturbs current theories explaining the globalization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights. But unlike the turn in race theory exploring rights as an outgrowth of marginalization, research on LGBT rights still focuses on structural changes or the influence of Western LGBT forms. This article argues that a powerful new and globalizing state homophobia is a convenient tool for state actors threatened by structural adjustment mandates from above and demands for greater opportunity from below. In such contexts, state actors and allies import ready-made LGBT identities as bogeymen, but in an unintended consequence, organizing among sexual minorities refracts those identities in transformative ways. From research in France, Uganda, and Egypt, this article concludes that some contexts, where the state targets LGBT rights claims as hostile, are better served through a politics of social and political capabilities over rights and identities to allow space for sexual minorities to develop.     

Liberal nationalism,immigration, and the problem of multiple national identities

ABSTRACT

Critics and defenders of liberal nationalism often debate whether the nation-state is able to accommodate cultural and political pluralism, as it necessarily aspires for congruence between state and nation. In this article, I argue that both sides of the debate have neglected a second homogenising assumption of nationalism. Even if it is possible for the nation-building state to accommodate multiple political and cultural communities, it is not obvious that is possible or desirable for it to accommodate individuals belonging to more than one nation. With the rise of international migration, and the growing number of multinational individuals, this flaw is a serious one. I advance an internal critique of liberal nationalism to demonstrate that, from within its own logic, this theory must either reject multiple national identities, or accommodate them at the cost of the normative justifications of nationalism it provides. By analysing David Miller’s influential analysis of national identity in divided societies, I demonstrate how this framework is unable to support an accepting attitude towards multiple national identities.     

What is a Chief without Land? Impact of Land Reforms on Power Structures in Namibia

Abstract

Land is a key element to socio-economic development, peace- and state-building in Africa. It is inherent to local identity and inextricably linked to power. In Namibia, land rights were historically administered and allocated by traditional authorities. However, with the adoption of the 2002 Communal Land Reform Act, these customary land rights were codified. Drawing on qualitative interviews conducted in Namibia with state officials, traditional authorities of the Nama and Ovambo ethnicity, workers and farmers, we show that although it was presented as a decentralization reform, the Act reintroduced the Namibian state as a central actor in land tenure. This has resulted in power struggles between the state and traditional authorities, albeit to varying intensities as some traditional authorities have historically restricted access to communal land and limited political leverage.     

Unequal but fair? Cultural recognition and self-government rights

This review of Patten’s Equal Recognition suggests that minority rights can be grounded either in cultural accommodation rights or collective self-government rights. I defend four propositions: (1) individuals’ interests in membership in political communities cannot be reduced to their interests in being able to pursue their own conceptions of the good; (2) liberal states do not have to extend neutrality as equal treatment to self-government claims that intersect with their own jurisdiction; (3) claims for the establishment of public languages and territorial autonomy need to be justified on the basis of self-government rights rather than on grounds of equal treatment of cultural identities; (4) as a condition for their admission, immigrants can be expected to waive collective self-government rights rather than cultural protection rights.     

Acts of citizenship as a politics of resistance? Reflections on realizing concrete rights within the Israeli asylum regime

This paper investigates how Eritrean refugees in Israel and civil society organisations who engage with refugee issues contest the exclusionary politics of asylum in Israel. It presents various acts of claims-making initiated by Eritrean refugees themselves or in response to hostility by others, as well as acts inaugurated by Israeli civil society organisations on behalf of or with refugee populations. Drawing on the concept of activist acts of citizenship developed by Engin Isin, the paper subsequently analyses to what degree those acts have redefined aspects of social and political membership for Eritrean refugees in Israel. In a further step, it shows the limitations of such acts in terms of developing a solidaristic refugee-citizen agenda that profoundly challenges hegemonic public discourse and political debate. The paper concludes by arguing that activist acts of citizenship are best studied in relation to the transformative power they may have on the various individuals engaging in them, but not as a strategy for a wider politics of resistance, as ultimately nation state politics continue to determine the actual realisation of concrete rights.     

From Gastarbeiter to “Ausländische Mitbürger”: Postnational Citizenship and In-Between Identities in Berlin

The recent condition of complexity within nation-states, triggered by the visibility of transnational communities and by the political demands of cultural identities, indicates that the traditional tools of national narratives with respect to articulations of identity and membership are exhausted. The debate on postnationalism suggests that unbounding citizenship from its national narrative would create the conditions in which the contentious issues of cultural recognition and representation could be resolved without resorting to the narrow confines of national narratives. This paper argues that that even though the postnationalism debate makes an important contribution in terms of indicating alternative forms of citizenship that are not tied to national discourse, it seriously underestimates the deep political connection between citizenship regimes and national narratives. By separating citizenship from national discourse, the postnationalism debate overlooks the ways in which transnational, ethnic, religious, sexual and other cultural identities interact with national narratives to negotiate their citizenship rights. More importantly, this assumed separation of citizenship rights from national discourse fails to acknowledge that the particular forms of citizenship rights, such as political representation and cultural recognition, and how they are exercised, are intertwined with the cultural hegemony of national narratives. Finally, the tension between citizenship regimes and national narratives provides the political space within which formerly marginalized groups and identities can invoke otherness to negotiate the cultural boundaries of nation-states. In other words, the politics of citizenship invoked by marginalized groups and identities is not simply about legal claims but also includes political attempts to reconfigure national narratives.     

Education,epistemic virtues,and the power of toleration

ABSTRACT

Toleration is usually regarded as a pivotal democratic virtue that should be cultivated in the educational systems of liberal democracies. The concept of toleration, however, is marked by deep ambivalence. Power-theoretical criticisms of toleration as a political and educational ideal have emphasized that discourses of toleration are entangled with societal power struggles, and tend to naturalize social hierarchies and reify individual and collective identities. Given this criticism, toleration refers not just to justificatory problems concerning the limits of political or pedagogical authority, or to the peaceful negotiation of conflicts that pervade pluralistic societies. On the contrary, toleration itself seems to create and perpetuate precisely those political conflicts that it is meant to contain. This contribution develops a defence of toleration as a coherent and sound aim of public education and as a democratic virtue against the power-theoretical critique.     

Explaining the Vientiane Action Programme: ASEAN and the institutionalisation of human rights

Abstract

Existing explanations for the emergence of human rights on the political agenda in ASEAN focus either on the role of external pressure on ASEAN member states to ‘do something’, or on the way those states copied the form, but not the function, of other regional organisations such as the EU. Both approaches tacitly acknowledge that given the strong preference for intergovernmental governance displayed by ASEAN, regardless of interpretations, that it was states that drove the institutionalisation of rights forwards. Through examining in detail the causes and consequences of the Vientiane Action Programme this article disagrees with that assertion. At crucial moments before and after 2004 it was the Working Group for the Establishment of an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism, a track III actor, which both inserted human rights into ASEAN discussions and forged the link between protecting those rights and the continuing success of ASEAN's security goals. Through understanding the role of the Working Group as a norm entrepreneur, assisting in the localisation of human rights standards, this article suggests that existing explanations of ASEAN institutionalisation need to be revised to include a wider range of political dynamics than previously were acknowledged.     

Defending popular sovereignty: discursive conflict in French and Swedish parliamentary debates on immigrant voting rights (1968-2017)

ABSTRACT

Through a discourse analysis of French and Swedish legislative debates from 1968 to 2017, this article examines how actors challenge and reinforce dominant ideas about the link between nationality and political rights. We argue that the broader political culture influences which discursive strategies – or ‘frames’ – are more likely to structure parliamentary debates in different national contexts. However, our analysis also shows that legislators sometimes develop new discursive frames in which they reinterpret dominant norms to make them consistent with their views. Through this incremental process of reinterpretation and reformulation of dominant ideas, debates over non-citizen voting rights have chipped away at the link between nationality and political rights. Our findings suggest that initiatives to enfranchise non-citizens trigger lower levels of conflict when they can be framed as a policy tool for immigrant integration rather than as a matter of popular sovereignty.     

State Political Identity and Meta-Governance: Comparative Analysis of Governance Modes in Vegetable Retail in Urban China

Abstract

A government’s political identity is a key factor in meta-governance; it powerfully shapes a government’s policy aims and implementation preferences at the most abstract level and forms a stable governance mode. Dissonance between a pre-existing governance mode and the government’s evolved political identity will lead to governance failures and pose political challenges to the government. In the case of vegetable retail in Shanghai, the neoliberal developmental state transformed the hierarchical governance into market governance; but as it evolves into a corporatist welfare state, market imperfections come to be perceived as governance failures, and the government responds by reintroducing hierarchical measures.     

Property without authority? Between natural law and the Kantian state

ABSTRACT

In Territorial Sovereignty, Anna Stilz seeks to combine a Kant-inspired moral justification of the state with a natural law-inspired account of ‘foundational title’. The aim of my essay is to show that the contrasting ways in which these two frameworks conceptualize the relation between property (or rights over objects more generally) and authority lead to tensions on two levels of Stilz’s own argument. Concerning individuals’ occupation of land, the question is why some rights over objects can be acquired pre-politically (i.e. occupancy rights), while others cannot (i.e. property rights). And concerning states’ claims over territory, it is unclear whether state entrance basically ‘absorbs’ our political obligations, or whether states have a duty of justice to establish more ambitious (and possibly coercive) forms of global government. The underlying question is whether, or to what extent, Stilz remains committed to Kant’s unconditional justification of territorial sovereignty and, if so, how the very idea of natural rights (over objects in particular) can be made to fit into such an account.     

Political Science Perspectives on Human Rights

This special issue of Human Rights Review is devoted to an exploration of the current human rights research agendas within the political science discipline. Research on human rights is truly an interdisciplinary quest in which various epistemologies can contribute to each other and form a larger dialogue concerning rights and wrongs. This special issue is devoted to an expansive understanding of the state of research on human rights in the political science discipline. One common theme throughout these contributions is the need for a more nuanced conceptualization of human rights, tools to promote these rights and as social scientists, methodologies employed to study these rights. A second theme is the policy relevance that can be derived from our empirical analysis. This volume demonstrates that the integration of theoretically and normatively rich concepts, empirical social science, and policy relevance do not have to be mutually exclusive when studying human rights.     

What's Reconciliation Got to do With It? The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) as Antiwar Profiteer

Abstract

This article argues that the actions and activities of the ICTY have not been beneficial to achieving reconciliation or stability in the Balkans, but to the contrary are part of the reason that parts of the region have remained unstable. This result should not be unexpected as there is very little evidence, if indeed any, that indicates that protracted tribunals like the ICTY (and unlike, therefore, Nuremberg), have ever had, or even could have, beneficial effects on reconciliation. It argues, further, that the primary beneficiaries of the ICTY have been international human rights lawyers and human rights agencies, and in the region itself, the political parties of indictees. Considering the amounts of money spent on the Tribunal compared to those spent on rebuilding the region it seems that the ICTY has functioned better as an antiwar profiteer than it has as a promoter of peace and reconstruction     

Twenty-first century cyborgs: cosmetic surgery and aesthetic nationalism in Colombia

Abstract

In this article, I explore the institutional and symbolic construction of aesthetic nationalism in Colombia around a fetishization of women’s surgically exaggerated breasts and buttocks. While political scientists have focused almost exclusively on the internet and social media, other technological advancements have altered the relationships between state and society, public and private, and bodies and national inclusion. Combined with the transnational flow of ideas, goods, and people and a political economy that embraces cosmetic surgeries as a development model, this intersectional analysis suggests that aesthetic nationalism in Colombia has recentered the female body in the practice of nationalism, communicating political information, belonging, and power. Based on archival research, direct observation, and elite interviews, I argue that cosmetic interventions play a key role in conferring citizenship rights and defining the borders of the political community. This study contributes to our understanding of how intersectionality can help explain the ways in which technology shapes national body politics, disrupts conventional modes of political communication and representation, and positions the body at the center of contemporary citizenship practices.     

The Values Shaping Australian Asylum Policy: The Views of Policy Insiders

Drawing on interviews with former political leaders and senior public servants, this article maps the values that have guided asylum policy decisions over the past three decades. The findings support the view that a culture of control permeates policy decisions, but pushing deeper, that policy‐maker perceptions of asylum issues are shaped by two primary values: nation building and good governance. Values that tend to preoccupy policy critics, for example human rights, compassion, international legal obligations and national character, are by no means absent, but are subsumed within and harnessed to the desire to be a good engineer and responsible governor. The study adds to the insights required for constructive dialogue between governments and refugee advocates, and affords a comprehensive framework within which asylum policy can be understood and analysed.     

Foucault,Critique and Rights

Abstract

This paper outlines Foucault's genealogical conception of critique and argues that it is not inconsistent with his appeals to concepts of right so long as these are under stood in terms of his historical and naturalistic approach to rights. This approach is explained by reference to Nietzsche's account of the origins of rights and duties and the example of Aboriginal rights is used to exemplify the historical character of rights understood as internal to power relations. Drawing upon the contemporary ‘externalist’ approach to rights, it is argued that the normative force of rights can only come from within historically available moral and political discourses. Reading Foucault's 1978-1979 lectures on liberal governmentality in this manner suggests that his call for new forms of right in order to criticise disciplinary power should be answered by reference to concepts drawn from the liberal tradition of governmental reason.     

The Impact of Political Connections on Donations to Chinese NGOs

ABSTRACT

In this study, we explore the returns to political connections in non-corporate contexts within China, a country transitioning from a planned to market economy. Using China as an empirical case study, we investigate two separate, but related, hypotheses on the financial benefits of political connections for a sample of 1,435 Chinese foundations from 2005–2011. This extends Western donation determinants literature to a Chinese context and political guanxi (social relationships where individuals or organizations exchange future favors or gifts) research to non-corporate contexts. Our empirical results show that there is no relationship between the presence of state employees on an NGO's staff (a measure of political guanxi) and private donations. However, there is a small but positive relationship between the amount of government funding an NGO receives (a signal of legitimacy) and private donations. These findings suggest that, in post-communist countries such as China, donors may not be seeking future favors from their contributions and instead are interested in developing a robust civil society with legitimate, high-quality NGOs. Additionally, the similarity between Western donation determinants research findings and Chinese donation determinants, in this article, requires future comparative studies of both how and why donors make decisions.