Fighting on behalf of the state—the issue of pro-government militia autonomy in the Donbas war

This study investigates the degree of autonomy the Ukrainian volunteer battalions had from the regular forces during the war in Donbas. The findings indicate that the degree of autonomy was high and that in particular, three initial conditions were decisive for this outcome: (1) the relative level of militia military strength in the initial states of conflict; (2) the degree of agenda overlap; (3) the degree of bottom-up organization. The empirical evidence further suggests that the three factors produced the identified outcome through the mechanisms of “institutional lock-in,” “performance interdependence,” and “entitlement.” Consequently, the Ukrainian state and regular forces ended up accepting a higher degree of autonomy, in terms of command and control, on the part of the volunteer battalions than they otherwise probably would have preferred. This outcome contributed significantly to saving the sovereignty of the Ukrainian state in 2014–2015, but may also have created conditions for challenges to the same state further down the road.     

Soviet studies on workers’ movements in the Middle East

Rabochiy klass Afriki (The working class of Africa), edited by I. P. Yastrebova, Moscow, Africa Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Nauka Press: 1966.

K. A. Guseynov's Rabochiy klass i Profsoyuzi Afriki {The working class and the trade unions of Africa), Moscow, Profizdat: 1969.

B. A. Shabayev's Rabochiy klass strait Magriba (The working class of the Maghrib lands), Moscow, Asia Institute¹ of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Nauka Press: 1968.

Willard A. Beling's important Modernization and African Labor: a Tunisian Case Study, N.Y., Praeger: 1965).

F. M. Atsamba and L. A. Fridman and titled Rabochiy klass stran Azii i Afriki (The working class in the countries of Asia and Africa), Moscow, Moscow University Press: 1966.

F. M. Atsamba's ‘The workers’ movement in Egypt on the eve of the Second World War, 1929–1939’ (pp. 266–94)

Selskohozyaystvenniye rabochiye v stranah Azii i Afriki (The agricultural workers in the countries of Asia and Africa), edited by G. G. Kotovskiy and I. A. Svanidze, Moscow, Oriental Institute and Africa Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Nauka Press: 1969.

Rabocheye dvizheniye v Azerbayzhane v godi novogo revolyutsiyonogo podyoma, 1910–1914 (The workers’ movement in Azerbaijan during the revolutionary progress, 1910–1914), Baku, Soviet Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences: 1967.

A. I. Shamide, Rabocheye i profsoyuznoye dvizheniye v Irane posle vtoroy mirovoy voyni, 1946–1953 (The workers’ and trade‐union movement in Iran after the Second World War, 1946–1953), Baku, Soviet Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences: 1965

Z. Z. Abdullayev, Formirovaniye rabochego klassa Irana (The formation of Iran's workers’ class), Baku, Soviet Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences: 1968.

Sh. M. Badi, Rabochiy klass Irana (Iran's workers’ class), Moscow, the Asia Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Nauka Press: 1965, is a smaller book (130 pages).

M. S. Ivanov, Rabochiy klass sowemennogo Irana (The workers’ class of contemporary Iran), Moscow, Ethnography Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Nauka Press: 1969.     

Andalusiasation: Is Iran on the Trajectory of De-Islamisation?

Andalusiasation is a critical concept in the Islamic Republic's security discourse that implies the gradual de-Islamisation of cultural structures, which will eventually constitute an existential threat to the political domination of the Islamists. The state displays confidence about its hard power, yet it shows anxiety about the enemy's cultural invasion. This article examines the widening religio-cultural gap between the state and the grassroots and evaluates the increasing securitisation of the cultural sphere in Iran.     

Telling the Truth About Empire? A Word on Methodology

Empire/imperialism are terms that re-emerge with patterned frequency. Claims that the Australia United Kingdom and United States agreement is imperial, that an Australian empire exists, or that coloniality continues after the end of formal colonialism are all made without connecting colonialism, settler-colonialism, coloniality, or sub-imperialism to the larger whole of which it is a part — empire. At the same time, political science has begun to make claims about empire as a particular type of politics and comparative historical literature has also emerged. This paper argues that empire should a site of inquiry for any decolonial project and elaborates what would be involved methodologically. It engages the question of methodology by comparing different approaches to the study of empire. My argument is that the interpretivist approach is the more methodologically robust principally because it raises a series of unresolvable methodological problems. I argue that study of empire, as a particular form of politics, is not just a social scientific question, it is an ethical normative question. I argue that it is politically necessary for the decolonisation of knowledge to broach the question of empire and its methodological problems. Only when we know the truth about empire, can we confidently contribute to a politics that would be post-imperial.     

Fuel for thought? South Africa's position on the multilateralisation of the nuclear fuel cycle

The proponents of international nuclear fuel banks maintain that these banks will contribute to nuclear non-proliferation, whereas those opposing it maintain that nuclear weapon states support these banks in order to control and multilateralise the nuclear fuel cycle, thus preventing developing states from developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Global inequalities pertaining to nuclear energy continue to persist despite developing states’ efforts to reform the international nuclear energy regime. Moreover, some developing states maintain that these nuclear fuel banks perpetuate inequality in international relations. This is one of the reasons why some leading developing states, such as Brazil and South Africa, oppose these banks. South Africa, for example, intends to re-establish its nuclear fuel cycle and has declared uranium a strategic resource. Against the aforesaid, this article, following a constructivist approach, analyses the emergence and social construction of nuclear fuel banks as a practical expression of nuclear non-proliferation norms. The discussion also considers the inter-subjective understanding of these banks, as well as South Africa’s opposition to them. The article concludes with an analysis of the implications of these opposing views for global equity, equality, nuclear non-proliferation and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.     

The Media as a Window on the Past? The Impact of Television and Newspaper Consumption on Knowledge of the Democratic Transition in Portugal

This study seeks to expand our understanding of how the media increase the level of political information, by focusing on an understudied yet important learning outcome: knowledge of the political past. The article explores the factors underlying variation in the recognition of the leading actors in the transitional process in Portugal. The results show that television news and newspaper exposure foster recognition of these actors, but that media use interacts with personal experience of the transition (stronger effects among younger cohorts) and party identification (stronger impact on those who do not feel close to a political party).     

The Impact of the Palestinian Refugee Crisis on the Development of Amman, 1947–1958

Amman has been relatively underexplored in the literature on Middle Eastern cities. Using a broad range of primary and secondary sources, this article addresses the impact of the 1947–1949 Arab-Israeli War on the Jordanian capital during the late 1940s and 1950s. A number of themes are examined: Amman during wartime; the settlement of the Palestinians; change and continuity in terms of Jordan's centralization process and Amman's urban growth; and, finally, the city's transformative socio-economic structures and political forces. This article argues that the influx of Palestinian refugees transformed the public culture of Ammani society, which became much more politicized than before. It is also argued, however, that the political developments of the late 1940s and 1950s were not sufficient to overturn the defining characteristics of Amman as it had existed before the 1947–1949 Arab-Israeli War.     

Safe-guarding the colonial present: game farms on the frontier in KwaZulu-Natal's ‘Battlefields Route’

Drawing on Alistair Fraser's concept of the ‘colonial present’, I show how private game farms are both conceptualised and deployed to maintain ideas of boundaries and belonging that sustain colonial ideals and identities. This article is located on the banks of the Mzinyathi River in KwaZulu-Natal, a river that has functioned as a boundary between various groups for almost two hundred years. The game farms located in this area conserve the idea of the river as a frontier space for ‘white’ South Africa and a boundary with ‘black’ South Africa, as well as entrenching their own boundaries through the imagination and realisation of an idealised space. I argue that the game farms safeguard and perpetuate a colonial present whilst obscuring opportunities for other ways of interpreting and using the space of the farm. Ultimately, how the game farms are now imagined and the way they operate is counterproductive to social transformation in the rural landscape.     

The biopolitics of China’s “war on terror” and the exclusion of the Uyghurs

This article provides an overview of People’s Republic of China (PRC) counter-terrorism policies targeting Uyghurs since 2001 when the state first asserted that it faced a terrorist threat from this population. In reviewing these policies and their impact, it suggests that the state has gradually isolated and excluded Uyghurs from PRC society. Drawing on the writings of Michael Foucault, it articulates this gradual exclusion of Uyghurs as an expression of biopolitics where the Uyghur people as a whole have come to symbolize an almost biological threat to society that must be quarantined through surveillance, punishment, and detention. Rather than suggesting that these impacts of China’s “war on terror” coincide with the intent of state policy, the article argues that they are inevitable outcomes of labeling a given ethnic population as a terrorist threat in the age of the Global War on Terror.     

Foreign policy without the policy? South Africa and activism on sexual orientation at the United Nations

Although South Africa led the UN to adopt its first resolution on sexual orientation in 2011, in recent years, South Africa has made various sharp foreign policy reversals on issues related to sexual orientation and human rights. This article discusses five such policymaking episodes over the period 2010–2016 and considers the wider implications of South Africa's flip-flopping. For one, South Africa's recent behaviour on international sexual orientation issues suggests that the foreign policymaking environment in South Africa is weak, unstructured and porous. Moreover, the sexual orientation issue exposes the limited scope South Africa has to act as a representative of Africa, as a leader in the developing world and as a bridge-building middle power.     

A proper study of the discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Methodological implications of a large-scale study of the first Gaza war

Drawing on a large-scale study examining the British broadsheets’ coverage of the first Gaza war, this paper proposes some methodological considerations for analyzing the particularly emotive discourse on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and suggests a reflective multi-methodological approach to account for both the complexities and the intensities of the conflict. The paper starts by arguing that, working with a large data-set, quantitative data are both required and required to be interpreted by acts of contextualisation. Two strategies of contextualization are then introduced: interpreting patterns and associations in the numerical data. Following this, the paper continues by examining the findings and dilemmas that have emerged from quantitative analysis, using qualitative analysis of editorial extracts. It therefore shows examples for how quantitative codes can be built into and built up by narratives and arguments. Doing this, it also demonstrates possible ways of connecting qualitative to quantitative research: explanation, extension, and transformation/subversion.     

Switzerland on the Road from a Consociational to a Centrifugal Democracy?

Can Switzerland still be classified as an example of consociational democracy, characterized by power sharing and elite cooperation, by the second decade of the 21^st century? Drawing on Lijphart's typology of consociational and centrifugal regimes, an analysis of the transformation of Swiss democracy reveals that while Switzerland continues to display institutional elements of power sharing, a polarizing and competitive trend can be observed in the governing style of the elite. Increasingly adversarial elite behaviour and a growing polarization within parliament and government as well as with regards to referendums indicate a growing shift toward centrifugal democracy.     

Man on the Spot: Captain George Gracey and British Policy towards the Assyrians, 1917–45

Oman Since 1856: Disruptive Modernization in a Traditional Arab Society. By Robert Geran Landen. Pp. xvi+488. Tables, maps, bibliography, index. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press; London: Oxford University Press. 100s.

Oman: A History. By Wendell Phillips. Pp. xiv+246. Illustrations, maps, appendices, index. London: Longmans, 63s.

British Interests in the Persian Gulf. By Abdul Amir Amin. Pp. vi+164. Map, appendices, bibliography. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 36 guilders.

Lords of the Atlas. The Rise and Fall of the House of Glaoua 1893–1956. By Gavin Maxwell. Pp. 318. Longmans. 1966. 50s.

Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1894–1914. By Briton Cooper Busch. Pp. x+388. Appendices. Index. University of California Press London: Cambridge University Press. 83s.

Islamic Reform, The Political and Legal Theories of Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida. By Malcolm H. Kerr. Pp. 223, bibliog., index. University of California Press. London: Cambridge University Press. 42s.

Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt. (Historical Studies from the Ottoman Conquest to the United Arab Republic). Edited by P. M. Holt, Pp. xx+400, index. Oxford University Press. 70s.

The Surest Path: The Political Treatise of a Nineteenth‐Century Muslim Statesman. By Leon Carl Brown. Cambridge, Mass.; Harvard Middle Eastern Monograph Series XVI. Pp. 188. Harvard University Press. London: Oxford University Press. 34s.     

A note on the Ottoman socio‐economic structure and its response to the Balkan war of 1912

Agrarniye strukturi stran Vostoka, Agrarian Structure of the Countries of the East (Moscow: Nauka Press, 1977; 280 pp.)

Idiyolojiyat al‐Dimuqratiyya al‐Thawriyya al‐Ifriqiyya, The Ideology of African Revolutionary Democracy (Moscow: The Soviet Academy of Science, 1983; 144 pp.)

Partii v riyevolyutsionniy protsyess b stranakh Azii i Afriki, sbornik statyey, Parties in the Revolutionary Processes in the Countries of Asia and Africa: A collection of articles (Moscow: Nauka Press, 1983; 254 pp.)

Kharaktyerniye chyerti sotzial'no‐politichyeskogo razvitiya Arabskikh stran v 1950–1970ye godi, Characteristic Traits of the Socio‐Political Development of the Arab Countries from the 1950s to the 1970s (Erevan: The Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of Soviet Armenia, 1980; 208 pp.)

Arabskiye strani, istoriya i sovryemyennost, The Arab Countries: History and Contemporary Affairs (Moscow: Nauka Press, 1981; 248 pp.)

Contemporary Development of the Arab Countries (Oriental Studies in the USSR, No. 8 – Moscow: ‘Social Sciences Today’ Editorial Board for the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1984; 236 pp.)

V.L. Fatis's Liviya (Moscow: Misl’ Press, 1982; 160 pp.)

N.I. Proshin's Istoriya Livii v novoye vryemya (syeryedina XVI – nachala XXv.), The History of Libya in Modern Times: The Mid‐Sixteenth Century to the Beginning of the Twentieth (Moscow: Nauka Press, 1981; 288 pp.)

Aldzhirskaya narodnaya dyemokratichyeskaya ryespublika, konstitutsiya i zakonodatyel'nye akti, The Algerian Popular Democratic Republic: The Constitution and Legislative Documents (Moscow: Progress Press, 1983; 414 pp.)

Istoriya Aldzhirskoy ryevolyutsii, 1954–1962, History of the Algerian Revolution, 1954–62 (Moscow: Nauka Press, 1983; 287 pp.) by R. G. Landa

Sturm und Drang years, V.S. Svyetlov's Aldzhir syegodnya, Algeria Today (Moscow: Nauka Press, 1981: 222 pp.)

Ochyerki Marokkanskoy istorii (Moscow: Progress Press, 1982; 384 pp.)

V.G. Rasnitsin's Marokko na rubyedzhye dvukh epokh, 1956–1960 g., Morocco Between Two Epochs, 1956–60 (Moscow: Nauka Press, 1983; 144 pp.)

Anna Kowalska‐Lewicka's Mavritaniya, Mauritania (Moscow: Nauka Press, 1981; 304 pp.)     

Turkey's Protean Regional Policy: Does It Happen on the Ground?

How has regional planning been transformed in increasingly changing socio-economic and political contexts in transition economies? Why do regional planning policies and practices change? This paper explains how the policy ideas of regional development have been formulated and incorporated into the Turkish context since the establishment of modern-day Turkey in 1923. The transformation process shows how, in one way or another, policy ideas have been brought into or appeared in Turkey to shape regional policy. It emphasizes that this sort of acquisition of thinking has been translated into policy frameworks. In other words, Turkey has been taking on policies that have been devised using ideas from outside Turkey which are being dominated by growth-oriented strategies that represent a neoliberal political agenda.     

Growing up on Different Sides of the Wall – A Quasi-Experimental Test: Applying the Left–Right Dimension to the German Mass Public

This paper utilises survey data from the 1999 European Value Study to conduct a quasi-experimental analysis of the relationship between the left–right self-identification and policy preferences of Germany's electorate. Given the German division until 1990 it is plausible that citizens from East and West Germany had different ideological socialisation experiences swayed by the political discourse of their times. This paper models the influence of this diverse experience on ideological thinking, and examines the effects on the understanding of political issues. The findings suggest that differences do exist in the ideological consistency and attitude structuring of respondents. Compared to respondents in the West, East Germans are more likely to understand the term ‘left’ in socio-economic terms. On the other hand, they seem to connect the term ‘right’ rather to xenophobic issues. These results have crucial implications for political communication in representative democracies, as they question the one-level dimensionality of the left–right concept.     

Desert Conquests: Early British Planning on the Future of the Italian Colonies,June 1940–September 1943

Based on British archival sources, this article re-examines early British government planning on the future of the Italian colonies during the period of Mussolini's War from June 1940 to September 1943.     

What Drives the Selection of Political Information on Google? Tension Between Ideal Democracy and the Influence of Ranking

The emergence of the Internet has altered how individuals obtain information—this also applies to political information. Search engines have taken over the role of political information gatekeepers, thus becoming key players in democracy. However, surprisingly little is known about the role of search engines in the political information process, that is, whether they represent an opportunity or a threat to democracy. Through an online survey experiment, which mimicked a Google web interface, this study examines how Swiss citizens select political information on a political news event from a Google search results page. Although citizens consider textual cues from snippets, they are more likely to select sources of information from the top of a Google results page, regardless of the source. We discuss these findings from a democratic theory perspective.     

Taking the “Poison Pill”: A Commentary on a Case Study

A prominent American specialist on legal affairs in the former Soviet Union and Russia comments upon a case study focused on managerial strategies to privatize a large industrial conglomerate. Efforts to prevent outsiders from buying the enterprise are likened to “poison pills” used in the United States to thwart hostile corporate takeovers. The commentary includes references to the tradition of corruption in Russian bureaucracy before and after the October Revolution and notes the difficulties encountered by Western lawyers advising foreign investors in recent years. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: K22, P13, P31.     

Black and White Africa--Is there a Frontier on the Limpopo or Zambesi?

The following address was given by Mr. Richard GOOLD-ADAMS ata meeting held on February 4, 1960. Mr. Patrick Wall, M.C.,V.R.D., M.P., took the chair.