Restricting Russians: language and immigration laws in Soviet Latvia, 1956–1959

In 1956, a prominent faction within the leadership of Soviet Latvia, the Latvian national communists, launched two ambitious initiatives designed to redress perceived Stalinist Russification polices – a language law and residency restrictions. This article examines and evaluates these two policies and asks if they were part of a “Latvianization” program that deliberately targeted Russians for denial of residency permits and required Russians to gain Latvian-language competency within a two-year timeframe or face the threat of dismissal. In an effort to restore the primacy of the Latvian language, the national communists created a law enforcing knowledge of Latvian and Russian for Communist Party and government functionaries and service sector personnel. Using the Soviet legal system, the national communists also attempted to halt the influx of predominantly Slavic immigration to the Latvian capital, Riga. By instituting passport restrictions on settling in the city, the national communists sought to limit Slavic migration in order to maintain Riga’s Latvian character and reduce pressure on the city’s housing supply and municipal services. Existing studies deem passport restrictions in other Soviet cities a failure. The author argues, however, that the national communists’ scheme was generally successful, dramatically curbing migration to Riga during its operation.     

CONSUMERISM AND THE PUBLIC SECTOR: HOW WELL DOES THE COAT FIT?

Consumerism attempts to redress the imbalance of power that exists between those who produce goods and services, and those for whom they are provided. To achieve this end, five basic principles have been evolved which seek to improve consumers' access, choice, information, redress and representation. The article examines the relevance of these principles to services provided by local government and the health service. Its conclusion – that they are useful but not necessarily enough – is perhaps surprising, given the author's concern to place consumers' interests centre stage in discussions about what public services are for, and how they should be run. The article then considers whether the messages of consumerism are reaching their mark, and finally points to those issues which managers of public services – both politicians and professionals – must face if consumerism is to leave a legacy of real value.     

Local initiatives for working women: Feminism,economics, or both?

This article examines a public/private sector initiative instigated by Leeds City Council to redress gender inequality in employment. It uses this independent initiative, Opp2k, to assess the business case for equality of opportunity in a ‘post‐feminist’ context. It considers whether or not intended outcomes will make a coherent attempt to redress structural inequality, or whether this is a response to demographic and economic trends indicating increased demand for female labour, finally it addresses the potential impact of public/private partnerships in implementing equal opportunities.     

What might celebrity humanitarianism have to do with empire?

The aim of this paper is to bring into conversation two apparently disparate debates in the fields of politics and International Relations. The first is a debate over celebrity humanitarianism that is divided between optimistic scholars, who see in it an enhancement of democracy, and pessimistic scholars, who link it to capitalist imperialism or a throwback to older colonial tropes. The second is a debate over a (new) American empire which has prompted scholars in IR to redress IR’s historic ‘elision’ of empire and to offer new network theories of empire. The paper argues that these two debates each address the shortcomings in the other and offers speculation on what celebrity humanitarianism might have to do with empire by bridging the connections between structuralist political theories of empire and the cultural accounts offered by postcolonial theory.     

国家利益视角下的“韬光养晦”争议?

坚持追求国家的整体和长远利益,是邓小平"韬光养晦"战略的核心,而在追求国家利益时坚持物质和精神利益的平衡,坚持实事求是、量力而行是"韬光养晦"战略的精髓。从这个视角出发,在三种关于"韬光养晦"战略内涵的解读中,"谦虚、低调的外交风格"的解读显然要比"战略欺骗"以及"苟且偷安"、"鸵鸟政策"的解读更符合国家利益。而从这个视角也很容易可以看出,我国当前仍然需要坚持"韬光养晦",但需要提高"有所作为"在我国外交整体中的地位。     

Huan Xiang

It has become common to regard consociational democracy as a method of managing conflict in ethnically divided societies but little attention has been paid to its applicability to societies where the primary political cleavage is between secular and religious forces. This article seeks to redress this imbalance by examining the applicability of consociationalism to the case of the Palestinian Territory. We argue that, while Palestinian society is characterised by ‘pillarisation’ along a secularist/Islamist cleavage, formal power-sharing between the representatives of the two main Palestinian factions, namely Fatah and Hamas, has proved elusive. However, rather than seeking to explain the seeming inability of the factions to share power by reference to the nature of the cleavage, as other authors have done, we instead highlight the contextual factors that have made power sharing difficult to achieve, namely the difficulties Hamas and Fatah face in accepting each other as political partners, and opposition from external actors.     

Understanding China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’: beyond ‘grand strategy’ to a state transformation analysis

Abstract

China’s massive ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI) – designed to build infrastructure and coordinate policymaking across Eurasia and eastern Africa – is widely seen as a clearly-defined, top-down ‘grand strategy’, reflecting Beijing’s growing ambition to reshape, or even dominate, regional and international order. This article argues that this view is mistaken. Foregrounding transformations in the Chinese party-state that shape China’s foreign policy-making, it shows that, rather than being a coherent, geopolitically-driven grand strategy, BRI is an extremely loose, indeterminate scheme, driven primarily by competing domestic interests, particularly state capitalist interests, whose struggle for power and resources are already shaping BRI’s design and implementation. This will generate outcomes that often diverge from top leaders’ intentions and may even undermine key foreign policy goals.     

Neo-extractivism and the new Latin American developmentalism: the missing piece of rural transformation

What, if anything, is actually new about political and economic transformation in twenty-first century Latin America? Here we explore how ostensibly ‘new’ policies are being built on two ‘old’ foundations that may be mutually exclusive. These are ‘extractivism’ and ‘developmentalism’, concepts that have been used rather loosely to describe current economic policies. The new developmentalism, however, may not only be contradicted by extractivism; it may be more constrained than its predecessor by fortified capitalist class interests and new global conditions. Moreover, it pays little attention to the employment-generating potential of rural areas or to the agricultural sector.     

试论新世纪前十年中国统筹两个大局的成就与挑战

统筹两个大局是充分利用国内国际联系和协调内外矛盾关系的决策方法,是科学发展观的重要内容。统筹两个大局的思想植根于中国传统的整体主义思维方式、辩证唯物主义认识论以及中国历代领导集体驾驭内外关系的实践。新世纪前十年,中国党和政府提出的"两个判断"和"两个意识"、"走出去"和"互利共赢"战略、和平发展观以及"睦邻、安邻、富邻"的周边政策方针均体现了统筹两个大局的思想。中国在外交实践中保持了维护利益与承担责任以及维权与维稳之间的平衡。统筹两个大局面临的挑战主要包括:意识薄弱、机制不够健全以及能力有待提升等。     

Whole-of-Government Approaches to Fragile States in Africa

For a number of years fragile states have been high on the foreign policy agendas of the USA and the EU. Both actors look upon fragile states with great concern and consider them as security threats. Officially they give priority to ‘whole-of-government approaches’ (wga) when addressing the threats from these states. However, there is a gap between the policy declarations and the policies implemented by the two actors. The missing link in the implementation of wga in Africa is explained by two variables: on the one hand, material interests in the continent and, on the other hand, the institutions in Washington and Brussels involved in policy making. It is the lack of a strong foreign policy priority for Africa that explains the inadequate US implementation of wga. In the case of the EU, it is the multitude of institutions and institutional interests that explains the lack of implementation, rather than a lack of European interests in the fragile states on continent.     

A Cooperative Approach to Accountability: Manitoba's Family Violence Prevention Program

Abstract

Can government's need for nonprofit accountability be accomplished without diminishing nonprofit organizations’ ability to pursue their goals of responsiveness and flexibility? The conventional view argues that governments’ accountability objectives conflict with nonprofits’ objectives, implying that there must be some tradeoff. This article adopts the emerging alternative view in which the two parties’ objectives are jointly pursued through a cooperative process. The analysis of a provincial funding program in Manitoba, Canada, presented here, provides evidence that such an approach is not only possible but also efficient. The program analyzed rests on a sustained cooperative process in which government officials and nonprofit managers jointly define goals and establish constraints.     

Entrepreneurs,investors and the state: the public and the private in sub-Saharan African irrigation development

This article draws on ethnographic research in Tanzania to interrogate the discourse of ‘public’ and ‘private’ in sub-Saharan irrigation development. It contrasts the complexity of social and political relations with narratives suggesting that ‘private’ is necessarily opposed and superior to ‘public’. We argue that support for models of private-sector development obscures access to and control over resources and can result in the dispossession of those least able to resist this. Different interests of ‘entrepreneurial’ individuals and corporate investors and the ways in which these relate to the state are also glossed over. Conversely, the failure of the ‘public’ cannot simply be read from the chequered histories of irrigation schemes within which public and private interests intersect in complex ways.     

Political Rivalry and Conflict in Putin’s Russia

The year 2015 throughout Russia was much less about what it seemed than what it revealed. On the surface, after the September 2015 combined regional and local elections, Russia appeared to be tranquil, politically disengaged, and supportive of President Vladimir Putin. The underlying reality was quite different. The election exposed a country divided by rivalry and a conflict of interests within the Russian political establishment set off by Putin’s own policies over the preceding two years. Since the election, Putin and the Kremlin have been confronting the challenge of balancing and containing the competing interests of institutions, levels of government, and establishment stakeholders who are less easily reconciled or controlled.     

Solving the security–democracy dilemma: the US foreign policy in Tunisia post-9/11

Abstract

Scholarly consensus postulates a sharp contrast exists between liberal values and realist interests in US foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, which finds its expression in the ‘security–democracy’ dilemma.? This means the US rhetorical determination to abide by the values of a ‘liberal’ foreign policy is neutralised by the ‘realist’ priority of maintaining US strategic interests, which requires support for friendly authoritarian rulers. Scholarship tends to apply this reasoning indistinctly to the entire region, providing an encompassing framework of analysis for understanding US foreign policy, which is valid across time and space. This study challenges this theoretical assumption and argues that while the US might indeed have a comprehensive regional approach in the MENA, the resulting foreign policy follows country-based trajectories that respond to national specificities and the perceived implications for US strategic interests. Exploring US foreign policy in the MENA after 9/11, the article demonstrates that while the US emphasis on liberalism crumbled when faced with security issues, the US liberal approach to Tunisia unfolded more consistently. Although the US continued formal cooperation with Ben Ali’s regime, it empowered at the same time a coalition of democratic opponents, solving the security–democracy dilemma and positively influencing the Tunisian democratisation.     

America’s Missing Leverage in Afghanistan and Pakistan: a structural analysis

Abstract

Despite strong shared interests and their dependence on US assistance, Kabul and Islamabad frequently fail to cooperate with the USA’s post-9/11 security agenda. Why doesn’t the USA have more leverage in these alliances and what can it change to be more influential? This article identifies four structural factors in Washington’s alliances in Afghanistan and Pakistan (‘Af-Pak’) contributing to Washington’s lack of coercive power: 1) the USA’s interest makes coercion difficult; 2) Kabul and Islamabad have more invested and will bargain to protect their interests; 3) the form of US commitment (an intense but explicitly temporary military commitment) produces incentives for Kabul and Islamabad to adopt short-term solutions, frequently running against US interests; and 4) the tenets of counterinsurgency policy cause Washington to be politically dependent on Kabul and Islamabad, effectively reducing its influence.     

Between Russia and a Hard Place: Great Power Grievances and Central Asian Ambivalence

Abstract

This essay asks how Central Asian states have responded to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and salvos against the West, as a means to assess how Russia and the Central Asian states understand their national interests and exercise state power. It argues that the post-Soviet region shares a cynical and geopolitically driven view of the exercise of global power. Yet Russia has sometimes deployed its resources to advance short-term ideological objectives, whereas Central Asian foreign policy is pragmatic and opportunistic. The Ukraine crisis threatened to coerce the Central Asian states into conformity with Russia’s interests; ironically, their dependence on Russia has enabled their freedom of action in foreign policy, within limits. The essay highlights the ways that geography enables and constrains the execution of foreign policy, and considers the ambiguous role ideology plays in the formulation of national interests and the prospects for international cooperation.     

Introduction: Benefit of U.S. Educational Assistance in the Eastern European Transformation

Abstract

Following the demise of communism, numerous programs were begun to improve the educational systems of Eastern European nations. It was evident that the newly independent states had little knowledge of democracy and free market practices and western nations looked for ways to improve the former communist citizens’ knowledge of these concepts. American governmental agencies and private foundations rushed into redress these problems in Eastern European educational systems to preclude the return of communism or other dictatorial regimes and to help the nations find a position among the democracies of the world. A sample of the programs and their outcomes are presented in this symposium.     

The ‘Anti-politics machine’ in India: Depoliticisation through local institution building for participatory watershed development

This article investigates the rationale and implications of creating non-elected community-based bodies for India's national watershed development programme in 1994. A discourse of depoliticisation is in use to justify the creation of ‘apolitical’ watershed committees in contrast to ‘political’ panchayats, ostensibly unsuitable for participatory development for their embodiment of political contestation and vested interests. The discourse masks conflicts between key actors in India's development process and is highly malleable, acquiring pertinent meanings in specific contexts. Case-study evidence from two project villages in a south Indian district shows that the attempt to depoliticise this programme of panchayat politics fails, but sets up the ground for depoliticisation of another sort, by distancing watershed project spaces from pro-poor progressive politics.     

伽利略与GPS竞争案和我北斗系统参与商用竞争

本文以美国的GPS系统和欧洲的伽利略系统之间的竞争为研究案例,分析了欧洲启动伽利略计划的政治、经济和技术动因,考察了GPS在垄断状态下技术创新动力的减退以及服务品质低劣的状况,研究伽利略计划打破GPS的垄断后挑战者和应战者博弈的各种选项,从信息技术特性和市场期待出发,考察了两个系统之间从冲突到妥协的过程。在此基础上,分析了我国北斗系统参与商用竞争面临的形势,并提出了相关建议。     

The dominant class and industrial development in Peru

From 1968, a reformist military regime in Peru implemented an industrialising development strategy which was fundamentally at odds with the interests of the traditional ‘oligarchy’ that had dominated the primary export phase of the country's development. In order to understand this new phase of development it is necessary to reject the idea of a monolithic ‘oligarchy’ before 1968, and to see the Peruvian dominant class as already internally differentiated. An important sector of that class was by 1968 committed to the development of industry and of the urban economy generally. Its interests were explicitly at variance with those of the exporting fractions of the Peruvian dominant class.