Ideology in brick and tile: Timurid architecture of the 21st century

This study analyses the impact of politics on urban development and, in particular, on Timurid heritage in present-day Uzbekistan. It outlines the problem of landscape manipulation for the advancement of a political ideology. After presenting a brief overview of Tsarist and Soviet restoration practices, the article focuses on the post-Soviet nation-building schemes through public iconography, urban renewal measures and heritage construction. Architectural and epigraphic restorations of Timurid monuments in Samarqand and new constructions in Tashkent provide a valuable illustrative framework. As world heritage sites, the Samarqand monuments are examined both in their historical and current socio-political contexts; the role of UNESCO is also analysed. The study benefits from and contributes to critical heritage studies and urban development as a narrative of power-making and relational space.     

Parsing Pegasus: An Infrastructural Approach to the Relationship between Technology and Swiss Security Politics

How do technologies matter for security politics? This article introduces the kind of arguments an infrastructural approach would focus its answer on. It illustrates how the approach would work by focussing on how the spyware Pegasus developed by the Israeli company NSO matters for Swiss security politics. It follows the infrastructural approach showing how and why it would tend to three things primarily: the politics of the infrastructures Pegasus is inscribed in, the politics of the processes of infrastructuring the software generates and the infrapolitics that sustain and transform these processes and infrastructures. The article also discusses the strengths and weaknesses of infrastructural approaches, underlining that since they are relational, processual and radically open epistemologically and ontologically, infrastructural approaches are suitable for opening new agendas, re‐problematising and re‐imagining the politics of security technologies. They are less suited for studies premised on a fixed understanding of the politics of security technology.     

The New Offshore Frontiers of EU Energy Security in the Mediterranean: The Politics of Hydrocarbon Development in the Adriatic and Ionian Seas

Many EU Mediterranean countries are developing national plans for offshore hydrocarbon exploration and production. The transformation of the Mediterranean Sea into a new frontier for EU energy security has raised important concerns about the protection of the fragile marine ecosystem of this semi-enclosed sea. Additional issues have emerged where states’ boundaries at sea are not yet defined. This article analyses the emerging international and transnational politics of hydrocarbon development in the Adriatic and Ionian Seas by highlighting the main drivers and effects of the recent relaunch of offshore activities in this region.     

China in Pacific Regional Politics

Abstract

Foreign aid from China to the island countries of the Pacific has grown rapidly over the last few decades and an expanding body of literature has examined various aspects of what this means for politics in the region generally. This article focuses on China’s impact on Pacific regional politics partly from the perspective of identity politics. It suggests that China has substantially increased its engagement with the Pacific island states by making use of its own identity as a South–South development partner in contrast to traditional (mainly Western) donors in the region. Unlike most traditional donors, however, China’s diplomacy and engagement are based largely on bilateralism, and this is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. This approach could continue to limit its impact on Pacific regionalism, regardless of how it projects its image.     

The Shifting Tides of Pacific Regionalism

Abstract

The current state of Pacific regionalism is faced with a range of external and internal factors that are acting to reshape the region and which call for a rethinking of Pacific regionalism. Within this context a range of new and in some cases reinvigorated groupings of political actors have emerged, seeking to influence and shape the region. Interpretations of this plurality of political groupings differ, with some authors seeing it as a direct challenge to the previously existing regional order, while others argue it signals a return to a foundational Pacific voice in regional politics. This article suggests that the present plurality is more than resituating a ‘Pacific voice’ and is not necessarily a challenge to the existing order. Rather, the Pacific’s experience mirrors global trends in the evolution of regionalism as a practice, in which network diplomacy or coalition-building across the plethora of actors will become a predominant feature of new regionalism. Further, the authors argue that the Framework for Pacific Regionalism provides the platform for effectively navigating this new context through facilitating the politics of networks and coalitions to drive the shared interests of the region, and presents a shared platform to test paradigm-shifting ideas.     

Cut Loose in the Caribbean: Neoliberalism and the Demise of the Commonwealth Sugar Trade

This article focuses on the way the Anglophone Caribbean succumbed to the overhaul of the European Union sugar trade and how these countries have attempted to restructure their economies in its wake. We show how the protagonists of reform gave a sense of inevitability to the demise of the Commonwealth trade system and conveyed (unrealistic) strategies for how this should be managed for the benefit of the Caribbean. In this way we detail the hegemony of neoliberalism in contemporary trade politics and the need for alternative strategies for rural development in the Caribbean region.     

Indigeneity in the Air: The Case of Chinchero Airport in Cusco,Peru

This article problematises ‘indigeneity’ by looking at the various disruptions, conflicts and fractures that the recent sale of the land for the construction of the new Cusco international airport in Chinchero, Peru, has triggered locally. In addition to examining the erosion of the peasant community model that emerged from the 1969 agrarian reform, it explores the formation of new social groupings in a context of tourism and neoliberal development. The discussion highlights the role of tourism-related, large-scale infrastructure in the production of new identity politics that challenges fixed and preconceived ideas about ‘the indigenous’ in the Andes.     

试论荷兰殖民统治对印尼现代政治发展的影响

本文回顾了荷兰在印尼的殖民统治过程和特点 ,同时也简要论述了它对印尼现代政治发展的影响。本文认为 ,现代印尼政治中的许多问题都与殖民统治有着千丝万缕的联系 ,只有充分了解殖民统治的历史影响 ,才能更好地了解现代印尼政治发展的曲折历程。     

Global Crisis and Latin America

This essay examines Latin America's experience in the crisis and restructuring of world capitalism from the 1970s into the twenty‐first century, with particular emphasis on the neo‐liberal model, social conflicts and institutional quagmires that have engulfed the region, and the rise of a new resistance politics. The empirical and analytical sections look at: Latin America's changing profile in the global division of labour; the domination of speculative finance capital; the continued debt crisis, its social effects and political implications; capital–labour restructuring, the spread of informalisation and the new inequality; the passage from social explosions to institutional crises; the new popular electoral politics and the fragility of the neo‐liberal state. These issues are approached through the lens of global capitalism theory. This theory sees the turn‐of‐century global system as a new epoch in the history of world capitalism, emphasising new patterns of power and social polarisation worldwide and such concepts as a transnational accumulation, transnational capitalists and a transnational state. Finally, the essay argues that global capitalism faces a twin crisis in the early twenty‐first century, of overaccumulation and of legitimacy, and explores the prospects for social change in Latin America and worldwide.     

New Ways of Making and Living Politics: The Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados de Solano and the 'Movement of Movements'

This article develops a critique of liberal and social democratic conceptualisations of the political that seek to analyse contemporary social movements in Latin America, arguing that they often silence, misinterpret and/or de-legitimise new ways of living and making politics in the region. It develops an alternative conceptualisation, based upon the insights of post-structuralism and heterodox Marxism, which offers the analytic means to engage more fully with territorialised movements that politicise place, subjectivity and everyday social relations. It illustrates the potential use of such a framework with reference to the Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados de Solano of Greater Buenos Aires.     

Resisting the Global Slum: Politics,Religion and Consumption in the Remaking of Life Worlds in the Twenty‐First Century

The volatility of Latin American society is producing political challenges to neoliberal capitalism, but these are complicated by the transformations neoliberalism has wrought in everyday social life. This paper explores tensions between movements to ‘democratise democracy’ and politics orientated to controlling the national state, while also considering apolitical forms of ‘resistance’ to humiliating conditions of life and the impact of new religious movements. I argue that although no instant utopias are likely, there are positive as well as negative possibilities in the way that apparently contradictory developments are combining to transform the established historical contours of hegemony in the region.     

90年代菲律宾政党的变化及其特点

步入九十年代 ,菲律宾政治渐趋稳定 ,但政党活动十分活跃。一些在全国影响较大的政党面对新的情况 ,进行了力量整合 ,政纲调整 ,也进行了新的权力角逐 ,在政治发展中留下了鲜明的印迹。随着政治和经济格局的变化 ,菲政党政治也呈现出新的特点 ,这是菲律宾政治中值得注意的新趋向。     

Mending the Divide: Lessons from LGBTQ+ Movements for Latin American Studies

Latin American has made remarkable progress in the last twenty years regarding LGBTQ+ rights. More recently, LGBTQ-related issues have had major impacts on national and regional politics. However, most of the literature about Latin American social movements still largely ignores LGBTQ+ movements. This article argues that including LGBTQ+ movements in social movements research is essential to further our understanding of LGBTQ+ politics in the region and of Latin American politics and social movements more broadly, as well as to address the enduring lack of academic engagement with gender and sexuality as political topics.     

„Begrenzung” durch kulturelles Kapital?

With increasing regional disparities in economic development and living conditions in Europe, migration has become a key element in domestic politics of many European countries. One of the main concerns of analysis has been the search for important determinants of migration, however, the role of ?region specific cultural capital“ has not been considered. This omission is the starting point of our discussion and we introduce region specific capital as a form of cultural capital. In contrast to widespread approaches, hypotheses deriving from the theory of Pierre Bourdieu and his distinction of economic, social and cultural capital are deduced and empirically tested, using a representative survey of 3005 persons living in Saxony. The results show that the main determinants of migration are region specific cultural capital, dissatisfaction and age.     

Economic Governance on Trial: High Courts and Elected Leaders in Argentina and Brazil

Beginning in the 1980s, social and political actors across Latin America turned to courts in unprecedented numbers to contest economic policies. Very different patterns of high court–elected branch interaction over economic governance emerged across the region, with crucial implications for economic development, democratic governance, and the rule of law. Building on both institutional and strategic accounts of judicial politics, this article argues that high court “character,” a relatively stable congeries of informal institutional features, channels interbranch struggles into persistent patterns. Two case studies illustrate the argument. In Argentina, the high court's political character encouraged a pattern of court submission to elected leaders marked by periodic bouts of interbranch confrontation over economic governance. In Brazil, the high court's statesmanlike character induced interbranch accommodation. This study demonstrates that even in politically unstable settings, institutional features can shape law and politics.     

Splitting and making parties: Analysis of party reconfiguration in Taiwan

The development of Taiwanese party politics reached a milestone in the 2000 presidential and 2001 legislative elections. The island's pre-existing three-party system underwent a marked reconfiguration. With the split of the Kuomintang (KMT), two new parties emerged but one existing party nearly collapsed. Party politics in Taiwan have shown a continuous process of proliferation of new parties. This paper analyzes the underlying logic that drives the reconfiguration of the Taiwanese party system. A political-institution perspective is employed to show how social cleavages, mixed electoral incentives, and government formation work in dictating the transformation of the party system. This paper is supported by the National Science Council, Taiwan, under Grant NSC 92-2414-H-001-019, NSC 93-2414-H-001-002, and NSC 94-2414-H-001-012.     

“战略性伙伴关系”往何处去?——欧盟-北约关系剖析

本文从欧盟与北约两个国际组织角度对变化中的跨大西洋安全关系展开了剖析。文章认为,欧盟作为新的安全行为者的出现,在扩大并改变欧盟原有特性的同时,推动跨大西洋安全格局发生缓慢而深刻的重组。一方面,欧盟-北约"战略性伙伴关系"的建立与发展不仅对欧盟和北约意义重大,而且具有深远的安全和政治后果。另一方面,虽然欧盟与北约的关系是塑造跨大西洋安全关系、更广泛的美欧关系乃至全球安全格局的重要因素之一,但"战略性伙伴关系"真正实现的道路并不平坦。     

Representative institutions among contemporary American Indian tribal societies

SUMMARY

In this article Rebecca Starr examines how a broad political consensus was maintained in the politics of South Carolina during the difficult transitional period that followed the gaining of independence. The colony's legislature had been firmly controlled by an oligarchy of planter and merchant families from the coastal plain, and centred in Charleston. Even before the revolution there had been tensions emerging between the oligarchy and the inhabitants of the developing up-country settlements, who had reason to feel that they were being neglected and excluded from representation. The article explains how the oligarchy succeeded in sustaining consensus, while preserving its own ultimate hegemony over the politics of the new state. This was done mainly by a skilful use of committee and petitioning procedures to neutralize and conciliate the potentially divisive political challenges from the up-country. These tactics enabled the oligarchy to maintain its grip on power until the economic development of the decades after independence generated a renewed planter oligarchy which transcended the old geographical divisions and provided a solid foundation for a new consensus in South Carolina politics that held good until the Civil War.     

The UN's response to the underlying causes of the Arab Spring before and after the eruption of events: a critical assessment of the UN's pursuit of its core values and purposes

This article aims to assess whether the UN is effectively pursuing its core values and purposes, focusing on the Arab Spring and UN efforts in the MENA region. It examines how the UN responded to the long-standing causes of the Arab Spring uprisings, both before and after their eruption. After linking the conflict resolution literature with the literature on the root causes of the Arab Spring uprisings, the article surveys UN efforts between 1994 and 2017 regarding human development, democratization, human rights, conflict prevention and peacebuilding, alongside the resolutions of relevant UN bodies. This comprehensive survey of the activities of the UNDP, UN human rights machinery, human security apparatuses, and the General Assembly and Security Council suggests that the UN was limited in promoting its core values democratic governance and human rights, which could have addressed the long-standing root causes of the Arab Spring. The article concludes that the UN's limitations, stemming from its non-interference principle also paved the way for power politics, external intervention and instability in the region.     

Migration,citizenship and autochthony: strategies and challenges for state-building in Côte d'Ivoire

Although migration has for some time been an important topic in African studies, the ‘politics of migration’ remain relatively under-examined. While there is a substantial body of literature on migration and economic development, we know much less about the impact of migration on other state-building processes. The upsurge of autochthony discourses throughout much of Africa is a recent phenomenon and an alarming trend that reveals the increased politicisation of migration and the challenge these discourses pose to state-building. This article uses Côte d'Ivoire as a case study to shed light on the complex relationship between migration and state-building. It also provides a fresh perspective on a new chapter in Ivoirian politics as it re-examines this relationship in light of the recent political developments following the 2010 elections. In so doing, it provides new insights into the enduring nature of autochthony, highlighting the contemporary challenges that these discourses pose for both migrants and state-building.