Whither the Developmental State? Explaining Singapore's continued Developmentalism

This paper examines why the Singapore developmental state, unlike the other East Asian developmental states, has shown no signs of devolving but instead appears to be strengthening its position within society by embarking upon several ‘post-industrial’ economic programmes. By utilising a class relations perspective, the paper argues that the resilience of the Singapore developmental state results from the continued weakness of the domestic capitalist class as well as from the state's collaboration with transnational capital and government-linked corporations. At the same time the working class has continuously been ‘incorporated’ by the state. To illustrate these processes, the paper examines Singapore's Biomedical Sciences Initiative, and the Work Restructuring Scheme, which have reinforced the supremacy of the Singapore developmental state, particularly in the economic sphere. The paper concludes that developmental states need not necessarily devolve, if they can continue to provide economic growth as well as to carefully ‘manage’ class relations in society.     

Small State Discourses in the International Political Economy

Abstract

This article supports growing calls to ‘take small states seriously’ in the international political economy but questions prevailing interpretations that ‘smallness’ entails inherent qualities that create unique constraints on, and opportunities for, small states. Instead, we argue that discourses surrounding the ‘inherent vulnerability’ of small states, especially developing and less-developed states, may produce the very outcomes that are attributed to state size itself. By presenting small states as a problem to be solved, vulnerability discourses divert attention away from the existence of unequal power structures that, far from being the natural result of smallness, are in fact contingent and politically contested. The article then explores these themes empirically through discussion of small developing and less-developed states in the Commonwealth and the World Trade Organization (WTO), considering in particular how smallness has variously been articulated in terms of what small states either cannot or will not do.     

Transnistria’s Order of Friendship: Legitimacy Through Diplomatic Practice

Abstract

What strategies do de facto states employ in conducting their diplomacy? This article examines Transnistria’s Order of Friendship, a state award that primarily targets foreigners, by analysing the profiles of all known award recipients. The Order is found to be a political tool to enhance Transnistria’s domestic and external legitimacy in the absence of recognised sovereignty. The findings confirm the literature on Transnistria’s ‘bandwagoning’ with Russia, indicate that a patron’s support must be actively sought rather than taken for granted, and—since many awardees are from jurisdictions other than the patron state Russia—point to the need to examine the foreign policy of de facto states more holistically.     

War,Violence and the Making of the Stalinist State: A Tillyian Analysis

Abstract

Defining the state as ‘organised violence’, based on the emergence of the modern European national state system, Charles Tilly identified four essential war-driven, state-building activities: ‘war-making’; ‘state-making’; ‘protection’ of elite ‘clients’; and ‘extraction’ of resources. Drawing on Tilly's primary categories of analysis, this essay considers the ways in which war, or the threat of war, real or imagined, shaped the Soviet state, particularly in its Stalinist manifestation. This essay argues that Tilly's warfare-state paradigm, judiciously deployed, brings into high relief facets of Soviet state-making that few other paradigms do.     

Knowing Me,Knowing You: Media Portrayal of the EU in Kazakhstan

Abstract

The dichotomy of Self/Other prevails in shaping identity. This article asks how and to what extent the elements of the EU’s image produced by media discourse shape the national identity of Kazakhstan. It contends that a state’s identity can be formulated not in opposition—that is, not ‘Us against Them’—but rather, ‘Us as One of Them’. It argues that, in the case of Kazakhstan, the predominantly positive media discourse about the EU ‘Other’ contributes to a positive formulation of the Self via the legitimisation of the domestic regime on the national and international levels.     

Civil Society,Populism and Liberalism

This paper considers the threats that various kinds of populism might be said to pose to the ideal of a civil society that mediates between ‘private’ and family life and the state. Although it is difficult to generalise about populisms, just about all—whether on left or right—share a hostility to ‘intermediate’ powers. Of course civil society is exactly what could be called a forum for intermediate powers. In contrast, populists often tend to emphasise a vision of immediate power in the sense of the possibility of the direct expression of the people’s will in political institutions. Populists, of whatever pitch, often tend to invoke a partisan state that will be on the side of the people (however defined) rather than a putatively neutral ‘liberal’ state that stands over and against civil society. These factors make most populisms more or less generically hostile to liberalism, understood not in ideological terms but more as a doctrine which emphasises the necessity of mediating power through institutions. Very often, populism is a threat to the idea of civil society understood as a concept integral to liberal political theory, as a means of balancing the state and its wider interlocutors. In this paper, various means, largely inspired by the writings of Tocqueville on the one hand and Paul Hirst on the other, are suggested for addressing aspects of this predicament.

     

Identity,procedures and performance: how authoritarian regimes legitimize their rule

ABSTRACT

Constructing convincing legitimacy claims is important for securing the stability of authoritarian regimes. However, extant research has struggled to systematically analyse how authoritarians substantiate their right to rule. We analyse a novel data set on authoritarian regimes’ claims to legitimacy that is based on leading country experts’ assessments of 98 states for the period 1991–2010. This analysis provides key new insights into the inner workings and legitimation strategies of current non-democratic regimes. Closed authoritarian regimes predominately rely on identity-based legitimacy claims (foundational myth, ideology and personalism). In contrast, elections fundamentally change how authoritarian rulers relate to society. In their legitimacy claims, electoral authoritarian regimes focus on their ‘adequate’ procedures, thereby mimicking democracies. All regimes also stress their purported success in proving material welfare and security to their citizens.     

Contested National Identity and Political Crisis in Bangladesh: Historical Analysis of the Dynamics of Bangladeshi Society and Politics

This paper develops the theme that the ongoing political polarization and political crisis in Bangladesh since its independence from Pakistan in 1971 reflect the fundamental weaknesses of the pillars of Bangladeshi society and national identity. The paper adopts an historical approach to explain why and how Muslim nationalism, which was the basis for the establishment of Pakistan, has re-emerged in contemporary Bangladeshi society and politics and is competing against Bengali ethnicity, language, culture and secularism (‘Bengali nationalism’) within an emerging ‘two-party’ political system. However, instead of establishing a stable political system following the Hotelling–Downs principle of democracy, the Bangladeshi society/polity has been polarized and divided almost vertically on the question of national identity and political philosophy and created sustained political instability and uncertainty. This has stifled the formation and consolidation of a national identity based on ethnicity/language/culture or religion/territory/political history or that have elements of both. Neither ethnicity/language/culture/secularism-based nationalism (Bengali nationalism) nor predominantly Muslim-territorial nationalism (‘Bangladeshi nationalism’) alone can dominate and flourish in Bangladeshi society and polity; instead, the objective conditions in the country dictate that a competitive democratic system of politics which accommodates aspects of secularism, language, Muslim identity and Islamic ethical–moral codes remains the feasible political discourse for forming and consolidating the country's multi-racial, multi-religious national identity over the long run and its survival as a sovereign state.     

‘The Foreign Within’: State–Civil Society Relations in Russia

Abstract

The development of Russian civil society is linked to authoritarian government, fear of ‘colour revolutions’ and the ‘sovereign democracy’ that legitimises state control of civil society. This article acknowledges the narrowing room for manoeuvre of contemporary Russian civil society and discusses NGOs’ practices in the context of government pressures, the politicisation of transnational connections and the increasing geopolitical tension surrounding Russia. It describes the localisation and depoliticisation of Russian NGOs as well as their disruptive practices, and explains how narrowing civil society identities inform the self-governing of NGOs. Finally, it argues that seeing Russian civil society in simple dichotomies further narrows these identities.     

State effects and the effects of state building: institution building and the formation of state-centred societies

This article discusses the assumptions underlying state-building efforts and the effects of these efforts. It addresses two main questions: why has state building not led to the establishment of effective states? And what are the effects of statebuilding? It is argued that these efforts have been based on an institutionalist model of the state derived from a Weberian framework, and that the basic reason why state building has failed is that the creation of effective states requires the creation of state-centred societies, where both material and symbolic resources are concentrated in the state. This is very difficult to achieve for external actors. But, although state building has not achieved the kinds of effects associated with effective states, it has nevertheless had significant effects. These include, first, accentuating the patrimonialism which has led to state weakness in the first place; second, reductions in national sovereignty as external actors’ substantial influence on policy agendas renders the state itself subject to control and regulation by actors external to it; and, third, perpetuating the idea of the state, while undermining the possibility of creating actual states which conform to this idea.     

Commemorating 1917 in Russia: Ambivalent State History Policy and the Church’s Conquest of the History Market

Abstract

Russia’s historical policy towards the centenary of 1917 was composed of several parallel strategies: diminishing the meaning of the event to avoid the head of state and other government figures having to take a stance; outsourcing commemorative events, with no pre-planned grand design; developing a reconciliatory narrative of the ‘Whites’ and the ‘Reds’; and allowing other actors to promote a plurality of contradictory readings of the events. Yet the space left by the state’s refusal to commemorate 1917 has been taken over by the Church, which, as today’s most active engineer of Russia’s historical policy, promoted a very clear pro-Tsarist narrative best embodied by the multimedia historical park ‘Russia—my history’ (Rossiya—moya istoriya).     

African diasporas,development and the politics of context

This article seeks to add to the debate on the role of diasporas in development outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa by considering why diasporas are not apparently as effective as development agents in an African setting as they have proven thus far in other regions. It argues that changing diasporic engagement and activities on the continent should be examined against the backdrop of the emergence of a ‘liberalisation from below’ which emphasises local ownership of development outcomes, the historical variety of African state forms and the continuities in the exercise of power and the nature of these states. In so doing, it brings into focus the ongoing transformation in state–society relations whereby the dependence—of elites and ordinary citizens alike—on external resources continues to deepen, and the importance of this context in drawing any conclusions about the role of diasporas as agents of transformation.     

Public administration and the rule of law

This article deals with the enduring problem of administrative discretion in the modern American democratic-constitutional state. In the American constitutional tradition, administrative action is legitimate when and only if it adheres to the rule of law. This implies that administrators must be able to link directly their actions to grants of authority in statutes or the Constitution. But the growth of the state apparatus and the increasing intensification of the public administration's role in society have necessitated rather broad legislative grants of discretion to the bureaucracy. The result has been a seemingly perennial tension between the rule of law ideal and the modern administrative reality.

Attempts to control discretion via evolving doctrines of administrative law have proved unsatisfactory for a variety of reasons explored in this essay. The most important shortfall has been that the continuing expansion of the administrative state threatens directly the rule of law itself. After a survey of the weaknesses of these doctrines, we conclude that the rule of law is fundamentally incompatible with the necessary work of administration in the modern American state. Administrative discretion is thus seen to pose an intractable problem for the liberal democratic society, which accounts for its problematic persistence.     

Civilization and international society: the case of European Union expansion

Joining a society of some kind requires the fulfillment of certain standards. In international society, states acknowledge the need for certain collective standards of international conduct if international order is to be maintained. The first truly global application of international norms took place during the nineteenth century through the process of the expansion of the European society of states and its gradual transformation to the contemporary global international society. In this process, the standard of ‘civilization’ played an essential role in determining which states would join the expanding European society and which ones would not. Despite the major changes that have occurred, the standard of ‘civilization’ has remained an international practice as well as a benchmark against which the attitudes and policies of states are assessed. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the EU policy of ‘membership conditionality’. Although many explanations for EU expansion have been put forward rather absent from debate has been the civilization dimension which is embedded in membership conditionality and which should be given more emphasis.     

A genealogy of EU discourses and practices of deliberative governance: Beyond states and markets?

The article offers a genealogy of ‘deliberative governance’ in the EU—an important contemporary discourse and practice of ‘throughput legitimacy’ within that setting. It focuses on three key episodes: the late 1990s ‘Governance’ reports of the European Commission's in‐house think‐tank, the Forward Studies Unit (FSU); the Commission's 2001 White Paper on Governance; and the EU's ‘Open Method of Coordination’, which emerged in the 1990s and was widely studied in the early and mid‐2000s. The genealogy serves to highlight the particular intellectual lineages and political contingencies associated with such a discourse and in so doing points to its exclusive potential in both theory and practice. In particular, the article argues that it excludes, on the one hand, those championing the enduring sociological and normative importance of the nation state and an associated representative majoritarianism and, on the other hand, those (excessively) critical of a functionalist, neoliberal, market‐making status quo.     

Democracy and the politics of power alternation in Africa

Namibia's Nujoma, Zambia's Chiluba, Algeria's Bouteflika, Togo's Eyadema, Cameroon's Biya, Nigeria's Obasanjo, Niger's Tandja and Uganda's Museveni have all to varying degrees attempted to subvert the democratization process in their respective countries. These however are only a small selection of an increasingly similar pattern of action by incumbents in Africa. What is most troubling to democratic transitionists is a concerted effort by these leaders to curtail their fledgling democracies in the name of their continued ‘service’ to the people. This paper seeks to examine what has enabled an increasing number of African leaders to negate power alternation in favour of open-ended tenures otherwise ‘presidential careerism’. The article argues that while most of these states have been cited for embarking on some semblance of democratic rule, their rulers have utilized their weak democratic institutional structures, co-opted the elite and rallied the ‘mob’ to commit democracy ‘infanticide’.     

Legitimacy,Identity and Climate Change: moving from international to world society?

Resource scarcity and climate change could provoke major inter-state and intra-state violence and humanitarian emergencies, an especial threat to the global South. This article examines the dynamics that have followed the major violent crises of the past few centuries to determine whether climate-change-induced conflict might paradoxically generate norms of non-violence and collective identification, and in turn lead to a more co-operative culture of anarchy. Especially since 1945 we have witnessed the development of a ‘security community’ in the North Atlantic—that is, a group of states that not only resolve conflict without resort to violence but also consider war among their members unthinkable. Such communities might develop in other regions in two stages. First, state internalisation of liberal norms of democracy and human rights may enhance the role of intergovernmental organisations in mitigating climate-change-induced conflict. Second, collective identification among states and individuals may be stimulated by structural similarity between increasingly democratic states, the perception of a common fate arising from shared threats, and an expanding global civil society and epistemic communities preoccupied with climate change. Climate change could thus spur movement towards more legitimate and authoritative intergovernmental organisations within a world society that would be more effective at solving common problems than those operating within today's more fragmented international society.     

Civil Society, ‘Traditional Values’ and LGBT Resistance to Heteronormative Rights Hegemony: Analysis of the UN Universal Periodic Review in the Russian Federation

Abstract

This study of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in the Russian Federation uses frame analysis of civil society input into the UN Universal Periodic Review. It reveals a stark state–civil society ‘disconnect’ reflecting oppressive government practices, including Law No. 135-FZ on ‘non-traditional sexual relations’. This raises wider questions about the efficacy of the review system, not least because issues of performativity and legitimation can be seen to facilitate authoritarian resilience. This allows the ruling elite to continue to dissemble by espousing universal rights yet strategically framing them as heteronormative, integral to the protection of ‘traditional values’ and inimical to identity-based rights claims.