Trade,peace-building and hybrid governance in the Sudan-South Sudan borderlands

ABSTRACT

Trade and markets in weak states are often discussed in relation with violence, security and peace-building. A case in point are marketplaces in the Sudan-South Sudan borderlands where communities separated by insecurity and hostility meet, not only to trade but also to negotiate and exchange information. This does not imply that establishment of such markets automatically results in peace and stability. Based on new empirical research on the Amieth market in Abyei – an area contested by the two Sudans – I argue that such markets rely on security guarantees negotiated between a set of heterogenous societal groups and that the overall impact of such border markets is largely determined within a context of hybrid security governance. The conclusion emphasises that without a proper analysis of this context, external assistance to such borderland markets might just as well enable violent conflict actors as being a tool for peace-building.     

Broadening ‘business’, widening ‘peace’: a new research agenda on business and peace-building

ABSTRACT

What role does business play in peace-building and conflict reduction? This special issue tackles this complex question, exploring varied business efforts to bring peace through six rigorous qualitative cases in Myanmar, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Somaliland, Brazil, Guatemala and El Salvador. Three main findings cut across this issue. First, local context is paramount to success; there is no one universal formula that a regulator, business or peace practitioner aiming to advance a business agenda for peace can employ for operational success. Second, rather than compartmentalising ‘peace’ into projects that often carry ‘win-lose’ consequences for local communities, business-peace projects must first understand who they are empowering so that they do not unwittingly make the conflict worse. Third, investment and access are deeply intertwined in fragile and conflict-affected areas, and business-peace projects that simply try to improve business access typically exacerbate inequalities favouring elite actors. We close with a discussion on how to take the business and peace-building agenda forward with scholarship and policy, stressing that business-peace projects must be assessed at the societal and not project level if their impact is to be truly beneficial for a political economy of peaceful development.     

Diversionary cheap talk: economic conditions and US foreign policy rhetoric, 1945-2010

ABSTRACT

This study explains how the economy affects the foreign policy rhetoric used by American presidents. When economic conditions deteriorate, presidents criticize foreign nations to boost their approval ratings. Presidents use this “diversionary cheap talk” in response to the misery index of unemployment plus inflation, which poses a unique threat to their popularity. They target historical rivals, which make intergroup distinctions most salient. Diversionary cheap talk is most influential for and most frequently used by Democratic presidents, whose non-core constituents prefer hawkish foreign policy but already expect it from Republican presidents. I test the observable implications of the theory with the American Diplomacy Dataset, an original record of 50,000 American foreign policy events between 1851 and 2010 drawn from a corpus of 1.3 million New York Times articles.     

The Mediterranean area in perspective

Selective multilateralism as a US strategy

At home abroad: identity and power in American foreign policy / Henry R. Nau. ‐ Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, c2002. ‐ xiii, 314 p. ‐ ISBN 0–8014–3931–0 (cloth)     

The rise of film production and the politics of the star system in South Africa

ABSTRACT

The rise of film production and the ubiquitous presence of the ‘new wave’ of South African films on the international scene in recent years have raised expectations amongst local film stars hoping to get their biggest break by taking leading roles in major South African productions. However, most of these films – particularly co-productions – have continuously used foreign stars in leading roles. As a result, local stars have constantly voiced concerns about the proliferation of foreign artists in leading roles in South African productions. Many explanations have been offered in trying to understand why filmmakers tend to cast a foreign star when a local one could probably do a better job (in, for example, portraying a local icon like Nelson Mandela) and still command a lesser fee. However, this article puts forward that most of these arguments are based on intuition rather than on the real dynamics and externalities governing this practice. The article attempts to make sense of this issue by arguing that the rationale for this practice stems from a film being a high-risk investment that it is driven by the broader financial imperatives of film production. The article offers empirical evidence to suggest that stars do not add economic value to the film, but to themselves (see Elberse 2005), since the bulk of the money goes towards their appearance fees. It is concluded that the traditional model guiding film finance and the logic behind it need to be looked at afresh, given the fact that several films have failed at the box office, both locally and internationally, despite featuring major foreign stars, compared to the massive success of some local films (e.g., Jerusalema, Tsotsi and Yesterday) with local stars in the leading roles.     

苏丹南北关系中的阿卜耶伊问题

内容提要阿卜耶伊问题始于20世纪60年代,是苏丹南北冲突的一个缩影,基于宗教和种族差异的农牧民冲突和石油资源争夺在其中扮演了重要角色。虽然阿卜耶伊是南北争端中的一个单独问题,但它与南方公投后苏丹南北面临的诸如南北边界划分、石油收入分配、安全安排、公民身份等重要问题息息相关。阿卜耶伊问题的解决与否直接关系到南北双方的未来关系。假如阿卜耶伊问题能够得到妥善解决,南北双方的和平分离就有望稳步推进,该地区也就可能成为解决其他悬而未决问题的模式;反之,阿卜耶伊将很可能成为苏丹的克什米尔,并使苏丹再度陷入南北战争的泥潭。     

苏丹民族国家建构失败的原因解析

苏丹民族国家建构失败的主要标志就是2011年的南北分立。究其原因,首先是苏丹长期封闭落后,缺乏统一的历史实践和民意基础。埃及人以掠夺为主要诉求的征服式治理给苏丹的南北交往留下了深刻仇恨和痛苦记忆。阿拉伯穆斯林精英们以埃及为观察世界的窗口,在独立后未能有效运转英国人留下的国家框架。苏丹政府在独立后未能借助福利或社会保障体系减缓政治和阶级冲突;由于全球化带来的时代特征转变,苏丹政府也无法借助对武装暴力的合法性垄断减缓社会冲突,苏丹最终在内外因素的共同作用下走向分裂。分立后的苏丹和南苏丹依然面临着民族国家建构的任务。     

Global media/local meanings

ABSTRACT

In this article the author argues that qualitative investigations into the consumption practices of local audiences provide an important counter to the pessimistic claims of the media imperialism theorists, limited as they are primarily to institutional and textual analysis. In particular, the author argues that qualitative studies of how local audiences interact with global media provide an important corrective to the assumption that cultural homogenisation and synchronisation (Schiller 1976; Hamelink 1993) is following in the wake of the spread of global (primarily American) media and that this is necessarily something to be deplored.

This article first outlines some of the main tenets of the media imperialism thesis. Next it considers some of the more important critiques of this thesis. Finally, it draws on an interview the author conducted with a student at Rhodes University in order to clarify some of the important theoretical considerations we need to take into account when trying to assess the impact of global media on local audiences.

Indeed after years of anti-apartheid sanctions … South African is a country awash in American consumer goods, colonised by American pop culture, and obsessed with American celebrities. (Bill Keller, New York Times, September 25, 1993:5)

Choices [pertaining to media consumption] are constantly being made … But the questions of what those choices might mean, and how they work their way into the lives of those who make them, separating those lives from others perhaps just down the street, and linking them perhaps with others who share everything but locality; these questions remain. (Roger Silverstone 1990:186)     

Using yoshikono and war to save rakugo in Osaka

Abstract

In April 1936, the magazine Kamigata hanashi (Kamigata Story) was launched in Osaka. This was a rakugo (traditional comic storytelling) magazine published monthly out of a local storyteller's home. One mission of the magazine as laid out by the editor in the inaugural issue was to preserve a local narrative tradition that was losing a popularity battle with manzai (two-person stand-up comedy) and other modern performing arts and media. Interestingly, in the second year of the magazine's run, the editor issued a call for yoshikono, which, like dodoitsu, are songs conventionally written in lines of 7-7-7-5. This too was a tradition that, it was written, needed a champion. Yoshikono submissions increased with each issue until they filled multiple pages, reaching into the hundreds. Prizes were given for the best entries, and public yoshikono gatherings were advertised – singers and shamisen players were even enlisted in what appears to be an attempt to revive a community performance tradition with historic links to storytelling in Osaka. This article shines light on the largely forgotten art of yoshikono, discusses its role in an Osaka rakugo magazine from 1937 to 1940, offers forty verses in translation, and considers why yoshikono was unable to make a comeback after the Second World War.     

“How many miles make an inch?” Center-state relations and the 1967 India-Burma boundary agreement

ABSTRACT

Unabated protests in Manipur against India’s boundary with Myanmar and the lack of demarcation of some boundary pillars, despite the signing of the India-Burma Boundary Agreement in 1967, makes it an important case to study how center-state relations impact India’s foreign policy decision-making and implementation processes. Based on fresh archival material, this article explains why New Delhi refused to consult state governments in Northeast India before signing the boundary agreement, and the limiting consequences of such a top-down decision-making approach during the demarcation phase. A postcolonial entity that struggled to generate legitimacy in and assert sovereign control over the Northeast, India’s approach on this issue offers an opportunity to reflect upon the (limited) conceptualization of, and ongoing debates around, the idea of a ’state’ within foreign policy analysis.     

Evaluating the influence of international norms and shaming on state respect for rights: an audit experiment with foreign embassies

ABSTRACT

How do international norms affect respect for human rights? We report the results of an audit experiment with foreign missions that investigates the extent to which state agents observe international norms and react to the potential of international shaming. Our experiment involved emailing 669 foreign diplomatic missions in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom with requests to contact domestic prisoners. According to the United Nations, prisoners have the right for individuals to contact them. We randomly varied (1) whether we reminded embassies about the existence of an international norm permitting prisoner contact and (2) whether the putative email sender is associated with a fictitious human rights organization and, thereby, has the capacity to shame missions through naming and shaming for violating this norm. We find strong evidence for the positive effect of international norms on state respect for human rights. Contra to our expectations, though, we find that the potential of international shaming does not increase the probability of state compliance. The positive effect of the norms cue disappears when it is coupled with the shaming cue, suggesting that shaming might have a ‘backfire’ effect.     

Psychologically disturbed and on the side of the terrorists: the delegitimisation of critical intellectuals in Terrorism and Political Violence

The journal Terrorism and Political Violence recently published a special issue looking at why particular communities of intellectuals purportedly support terrorism, which, due to its politically partisan nature, is potentially damaging for terrorism studies. Showing that several articles within the special issue use the twin processes of accusing intellectuals of supporting terrorism and of being psychologically disturbed as a form of delegitimisation, three fundamental flaws in the special issue will be examined. In explaining these flaws, this paper draws attention to the way that this special issue forms an “epistemic community” at both the micro and the macro level, where certain assumptions on power and legitimacy are unquestioned. As a result, the special issue gains and performs an ideological function in censuring criticism of Israeli foreign policy.     

The elite press,the global system,and foreign news attention

This article presents summary findings from a content analysis of the foreign news coverage of four U.S. elite newspapers. Overall, the pattern of foreign news attention in the elite American press tends to reflect the “relative distances” between the United States and other national news targets. The more proximate another society is to the United States along economic, political, and cultural dimensions, the more likely the U.S. press will perceive its activities to be newsworthy. The country‐by‐country distribution of foreign news largely corresponds to existing hierarchical divisions within the international system. The reported foreign news is concentrated among the economically‐advanced, politically‐prominent, and culturally‐western societies; that is, the pattern of foreign news coverage is western‐oriented, big‐power dominated, and Eurocentric.     

Pakistan: the political economy of militarism

Ahmad Faruqui is an economist, who serves as a fellow with the American Institute of International Studies. He is the author of Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan. Julian Schofield is an assistant professor in political science at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. His research examines the effects of arms races, particularly in relation to South Asia.     

The Two Halves of Sports-Diplomacy

ABSTRACT

What strategies does the United States pursue when it no longer perceives overt military intervention as politically viable or desirable but the problems or issues for which it was formerly undertaken remain? This analysis identifies three such periods in American foreign policy since the United States became a World Power and draws from the work of Peter Hall to develop a typology of strategies according to the magnitude of policy change. These range from adjustment in the settings of interventionism – persistence; the substitution of alternative instruments of foreign policy – ameliorism; and the principled rejection of interventionism in conjunction with a more systematic critique of prevailing foreign policy assumptions – transformationalism. Yet each approach is beset by certain structural limits and contradictions arising from the domestic politics and constitutional-institutional system of the United States that are important in understandiing and appreciating more fully the challenges – and opportunities – of the period ‘after interventionism’.     

The Mundane Experience of Political Culture

In light of the foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, the present research asks the question of whether the digital media has become the stealth media for anonymous political campaigns. By utilizing a user-based, real-time, digital ad tracking tool, the present research reverse engineers and tracks the groups (Study 1) and the targets (Study 2) of divisive issue campaigns based on 5 million paid ads on Facebook exposed to 9,519 individuals between September 28, 2016, and November 8, 2016. The findings reveal groups that did not file reports to the Federal Election Commission (FEC)—nonprofits, astroturf/movement groups, and unidentifiable “suspicious” groups, including foreign entities—ran most of the divisive issue campaigns. One out of six suspicious groups later turned out to be Russian groups. The volume of ads sponsored by non-FEC groups was 4 times larger than that of FEC groups. Divisive issue campaigns clearly targeted battleground states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin where traditional Democratic strongholds supported Donald Trump by a razor-thin margin. The present research asserts that media ecology, the technological features and capacity of digital media, as well as regulatory loopholes created by Citizens United v. FEC and the FEC’s disclaimer exemption for digital platforms contribute to the prevalence of anonymous groups’ divisive issue campaigns on digital media. The present research offers insight relevant for regulatory policy discussion and discusses the normative implications of the findings for the functioning of democracy.     

The Political Perils of Cold War Foreign Relations: Adlai Stevenson’s Democrats and Foreign Policy in the 1956 Presidential Election

This analysis uses the case of the 1956 American presidential election between Adlai Stevenson and Dwight Eisenhower to highlight the ways that an obsession with foreign relations could prove problematic to a campaign. Focusing primarily on Stevenson’s advisors, long-standing problems in the Democrats’ strategy on foreign relations, coupled with the emotional attachments that several key advisors had to the issue, combined to ensure that the Democrats failed to develop an effective foreign policy platform—particularly when running against a president believed to be so successful in that arena. Ultimately, it argues that the Stevenson campaign’s failure to forge an effective position highlights the problematic relationship between domestic policies and foreign relations.     

Domestic political conflict,issue areas,and some dimensions of foreign policy behavior other than conflict∗

This paper examines the seemingly complex linkage between domestic political conflict and external behavior by broadening our consideration of foreign policy behavior. Underlying this analysis is a view that there are elements of both assertiveness and caution in the political use of foreign policy by domestically threatened leaders. They act assertively to divert attention away from domestic issues and enhance the image of their regime, but at the same time they are likely to show some restraint in order to avoid costly military and economic reactions by foreign actors. It is hypothesized that domestic conflict affects the degree of independence, commitment, and intensity in a nation's foreign policy behavior, but no so much its foreign conflict. Supplementing this, the mediating role of another foreign policy property, substantive issue area, is examined as a means of identifying conditions under which the impact of internal unrest would be greatest. The results of the analysis are mixed, but they do lend credibility to the idea that domestic conflict is related to multiple dimensions of foreign policy. More broadly, they suggest that governments employ different foreign policy strategies in coping with different types of domestic political conflict.     

Rules of military retaliation and their practice by the state of Israel

A major issue intriguing students of international relations is determining to what extent, if at all, do norms and standard operating procedures (SOPs) affect foreign policy. This question is addressed in this article in the case of Israel's policy of military retaliation. Alternative rules of conduct associated with this policy were deduced from strategic and normative arguments presented by Israeli decision‐makers in order to justify military reprisal attacks against Arab countries. These rules of conduct were then formulized into hypotheses and empirically tested with the aid of a database that contained daily accounts of Arab and Israeli acts of aggression towards each other between 1949 and 1982. In this manner it was possible to identify different decision rules that dominated Israel's reprisal policy at different periods of time.