Electoral Competition,the State,and Communal Violence: A Reply

In a review of my 2004 book Votes and Violence,Ashutosh Varshney and Joshua Gubler criticize various aspects of the book and its electoral incentives theory. The implication is that Varshney's own local civic engagement theory provides a superior explanation for communal violence. This article responds to the specific criticisms of my arguments about the role of electoral incentives and state action, or inaction, in leading to communal violence, showing why these are wrong or unimportant. I cite three important recent studies, by scholars working independently of me, who come to the same conclusions I do about the key role of electoral incentives and the importance of the state. I also cite the work of other scholars, based on careful fieldwork, who have questioned Varshney's characterization of the causes of conflict and peace in the cities he discusses in his own 2002 book Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life.     

Gender relations,authoritarianism and democratization in Chile

This article takes Chile as a case study to examine how the women's movement, the non‐governmental sector and the state have worked together to design policies for the prevention of domestic violence, and to transform the culture of authoritarianism which remains an integral part of gender relations within the state and in society. It conceptualizes the linkages between gender relations, authoritarianism and violence, examines how violence against women became a prominent issue during the transition to democracy, and shows that women's organizations have made significant advances in Chile as elsewhere in Latin America, by framing legislation on violence against women within the context of women's human rights. The study indicates that collaboration between the state, women's organizations and the police force can provide a window of opportunity to promote a democratic culture within the state and society.     

Aleksandr Dugin and the ideology of national revival: Geopolitics,Eurasianism and the conservative revolution

This article examines the emergence of Aleksandr Dugin as the leader of the Eurasian Movement and later Party in Russia. For much of the 1990s Dugin was a prominent intellectual among the Russian nationalist‐communist opposition, moving from the position of ideologue of a fringe political party ‐ Edvard Limonov's National Bolsheviks — to advisor to the communist speaker of the State Duma, Gennadiy Seleznev. Dugin's ideology combined an anti‐Western interpretation of geopolitics with mysticism, Aryanism, conspirology, authoritarian statism and Eurasianism. Dugin's expanding set of Internet sites became an ideological empire of a virtual society. In 1999, in the aftermath of the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia, Dugin saw an opportunity to move from the marginal opposition to the ideologue of the post‐Yeltsin president. In this capacity, Dugin and his Eurasian Movement emerged as prominent supporters of Vladimir Putin, whom Dugin identified as the embodiment of the ‘Eurasian capitalist’ model of statist development. Dugin developed a close working relationship with Gleb Pavlovsky, a spin doctor for Putin's Kremlin. In the aftermath of 11 September and Putin's move towards supporting the United States in the war on terrorism, Dugin has continued his nominal support for the president, even as he has criticized his pro‐Western policies as anti‐Eurasian and a threat to Russian interests.     

Exploring FDR'S relationship with the press: A historical agenda‐setting study

This historical agenda‐setting study examined the extent to which Franklin Roosevelt's issue agenda, as expressed in his first seven State of the Union speeches, correlated with subsequent coverage in seven major newspapers and the degree to which newspaper coverage correlated with FDR's issue agenda. While past works have emphasized Roosevelt's ability to influence media coverage, this study suggests that Roosevelt reacted to previous coverage more than he influenced subsequent coverage. Past researchers contend that Roosevelt's strong support early in his first term deteriorated subsequently. By contrast, our study found stronger correlations between FDR's issue agenda and subsequent coverage later in his presidency. FDR reacted to, rather than influenced, coverage in newspapers he read and influenced coverage in newspapers he did not read. Roosevelt's issue agenda posted stronger correlations for the papers that supported him than those that opposed him. This study suggests, then, that historical conditions, amount of exposure to the newspaper, and political leanings of the newspaper are contingent conditions influencing the agenda‐setting process and should be considered in future agenda‐setting studies.     

Ukraine's relations with the West since the Orange Revolution

Abstract

This article argues that many of Ukraine's problems are long-standing and remain unresolved because government policies are virtual (i.e. do not conform to official documents or statements) thereby reducing the effectiveness of the West's (here understood primarily as NATO and the EU) engagement with Ukraine and the ability of Kyiv to pursue its declared foreign policy objectives. The article discusses Ukraine's relations with the West through cycles of Disinterest, Partnership and Disillusionment. Under Presidents Leonid Kravchuk and Leonid Kuchma three cycles equated to Kravchuk's presidency (Disinterest, 1991–94), Kuchma's first term (Partnership, 1994–99) and second term (Disillusionment, 2000–04). Three cycles partially repeated itself during Viktor Yushchenko's presidency with Partnership (2005–06) after the Orange Revolution followed by Disillusionment (2007–09), often described as ‘Ukraine fatigue’. US Disinterest in Ukraine from 2009 is an outgrowth of the Barrack Obama administrations ‘re-set’ policies with Russia resembling the ‘Russia-first’ policies of the early 1990s George W. Bush administration. US Disinterest covers the late Yushchenko era and continued into the Yanukovych presidency. The West held out a hope of Partnership for Viktor Yanukovych following his February 2010 election after taking at face value his claim of becoming a more democratic leader, compared with during the 2004 elections, coupled with an expectation he would bring political stability to Ukraine. Partnership quickly evaporated into Disillusionment the following year.     

Canada's counter‐terrorism experience

This article traces Canada's experience with modern terrorism from its beginnings in 1963 to the present, with particular emphasis on the policies and crisis management techniques which have evolved over those 30 years. A brief review of the Canadian system of government and constitutional framework is provided to assist with understanding Canada's response to the terrorist threat. While Canadians have largely escaped the tragedies of domestic and international terrorism which have plagued other parts of the world since 1968, it is also true that Canada had an early experience of modern terrorism when the Front de liberation du Quebec (FLQ) began its campaign of politically motivated violence in Montreal on the night of 7 March 1963. Canada has been applauded for the firm and expeditious manner in which it dealt with the FLQ threat, and for the security provided for major international events held on Canadian soil (e.g., 1976 Olympic Games, 1981 Economic Summit). Beginning in 1982, however, a series of terrorist incidents brought about a fundamental reassessment which led to the introduction of major policies and measures ‐ based on the ‘lead Minister’ concept ‐ that continue to form the basis of Canada's approach to counter‐terrorism.     

Nourishing men's anger and inflaming the fires of hatred: Bayle on religious violence and the ‘Novus Ordo Saeclorum’

In 1697, the Huguenot writer Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) published his Dictionnaire historique et critique ‐ a one‐man encyclopaedia. The article entitled Macon drew attention to the cruel atrocities perpetrated during the French Wars of Religion. This article explains the context of Bayle's critique, arguing that he uses the example to reflect on the Gallican regime's renewal of persecution against his community, and on the notorious revocation by Louis XIV, in 1685, of the Edict of Nantes. As a long‐term remedy for state violence against a law‐abiding minority, he recommends deliberative freedom within a framework of government impartiality, thereby anticipating a new secular order. A new translation of Bayle's article Macon can be found in the appendix.     

Eisenhower's disarmament dilemma: From chance for peace to open skies proposal

President Eisenhower's image as a promoter of ‘peace and nuclear disarmament’ was established through speeches he made such as ‘Atoms for Peace’ (December 1953) and ‘Open Skies’ proposal (July 1955). However, Eisenhower's approach to the subject cannot be grasped without an understanding of his attitude towards the relationship between arms, war and disarmament. As he saw it, not only would the mere existence of nuclear weapons not trigger a war, they were actually the best guarantee against the eruption of a global conflagration. The real threat to world security was the repressive, closed, totalitarian and expansionist Soviet regime. War could be prevented only by a dramatic change in the competing ‐ and threatening ‐ ideology and social structure embedded in the Soviet system. Until then, the existence of nuclear weapons would ensure the free world's safety.     

State narratives of ‘foreignness’ and ‘criminality’ in South Africa

This article brings the notion of transfiguration to bear on the study of the ‘unspeakable’ identity of African migrants living in South Africa, in the context of state language games on violence perpetrated against these migrants. The significance of these discourses is explored, in particular how official and not-so-unofficial discourses on violence in South African media combine to make migrants simultaneously visible and invisible. Speaking about violence involving black non-South Africans, state functionaries tend to downplay the ‘xenophobic’ element while overplaying the link with motiveless crime. Nevertheless, the sense that the migrant, labelled ‘foreigner’, is to blame for all the problems is never far from the surface of these language games. The migrant is therefore enlisted into a discourse where s/he is transformed and subsequently forced to recognise him/herself as subject. As a victim of violence, the migrants find themselves inhabiting zones of discursive indistinction, where they are both victim and victimiser, criminal and crime victim.     

Where Trotsky's Train Comes From: A Literary Scholar's View of a Revolutionary's Biography

The article discusses the autobiography of Leon Trotsky (published by Bronshtein in 1930) from a psychoanalytic angle. Trotsky the revolutionary leader was a key figure in the October 1917 coup, and a statesman second only to Lenin in the early years of the Soviet regime. The article concentrates on Trotsky's departure from Judaism and evolution toward Christianity. The author sees this drift as parallel to Trotsky's transition from the Jewish bourgeoisie to the Russian proletariat. The next step in this process of denationalization would be Trotsky's embracing of world revolution. Bolshevik terror became for Trotsky a form of emancipation from his personal past.     

Terror mandated by god

Religion's renewed political presence on a global scale is often accompanied by violence ‐ in part because of the nature of religion and its claims for power over life in death; in part due to the nature of secular politics, which places its own legitimacy on the currency of weapons and can only be challenged successfully on a military level; and in part due to the nature of political violence. The symbolic power of violence can be a valuable commodity for religious as well as for political forces. Through violence, the proponents of a religious ideology like Aum Shinrikyo remind the populace of the godly power that makes their ideology potent, and at times religious activists create man‐made incidents of terror on God's behalf.     

Woodrow Wilson and The Birth of a Nation: American Democracy and International Relations

President Woodrow Wilson led the United States into World War One, promising to make the world safe for democracy. Advocating liberal internationalism, he called for collective security and national self-determination. He wanted democratic states to create the League of Nations as a partnership for peace in a new world order. But in his thinking and statecraft, the text of modern liberalism was intertwined with the subtext of White racism. His friendship with Thomas Dixon, Jr., and his contributions to David W. Griffith's 1915 film The Birth of a Nation revealed this nexus between liberalism and racism. His liberal civic ideals appeared quite different from the ultra racism of the film, which was based on Dixon's novels. He seemed to advocate inclusive nationalism, in contrast to its exclusive Americanism. The president's apparently universal principles, however, were still influenced by the White South's Lost Cause. His diplomacy and his legacy of Wilsonianism combined racism with liberalism. He adhered to the color line at home by promoting Jim Crow segregation in the federal government and abroad by limiting his liberal internationalism in practice. Historians and political scientists have typically identified Wilsonian diplomacy only with liberalism. To see him and his legacy in international history from a different perspective, which brings into focus the experience of people of color, it is necessary to recognize the subtext of racism in the text of Wilson's liberalism. Racism shaped his understanding of America's national identity and global mission, and thus his vision of liberal democracy and peace.     

European entry into the multinational Sinai force and observers

Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency presented a mixed record on the issues of Muslim immigration and integration. On the one hand, his administration took novel and constructive steps to advance the integration of Muslim immigrants into French society, notably through the granting of unprecedented official recognition and institutional representation to Islam in the country. On the other, by placing the immigration issue at the centre of his 2012 re-election strategy, he overshadowed and undermined the effectiveness of these integrative policies. Given the country's worsening economic outlook and rising unemployment, immigration is therefore likely to remain as salient and difficult an issue under the new Hollande administration as it was under Sarkozy's.     

Motivation and Intervention in the Northern Ireland Peace Process: An Interview with President Bill Clinton

The role of former U.S. President William Jefferson Clinton in the Northern Ireland peace process has been acknowledged as an example of political risk‐taking and leadership driven by political interests and strategic post–Cold War aims. The tendency to examine Clinton's role from the perspective of international and global policy objectives, however, has obscured consideration of his motivational role in the Northern Ireland peace process and of how he moved between encouragement and intervention to help the political parties reach a settlement. This article, which is drawn from an extended interview conducted with Clinton in 2017, seeks to paint a more comprehensive picture of Clinton's participation in the peace process, showing how his combination of motivational and interventional skills enabled him to help convince others of the need to take risks for peace and gave him greater influence and leverage over the peace process as a result.     

Identity and morality in the Italian red brigades

The article provides a brief background to the activities of the Italian Red Brigades, then examines the group's development in terms of three phases ‐ social, existential and survivalist. A perceived social and political identity in the early 1970s gave the organization an illusory security and the self‐confidence to step up the attack on the state. As the level of violence increased the BR became separated from their social base and created an auto‐identity based on self‐delusion and political alienation. Armed struggle was simplified to existential abstractions of myth and symbol. By the early 1980s the effects of legal and police repression, popular rejection and internal conflict reduced the remaining militants to a strategy of simple survival. The irreversible degeneration of the group's morality accompanied the process of social estrangement.     

René Massigli's Mission to London, 1944–1954

René Massigli's considerable contribution to French diplomacy began during the First World War. After being closely involved with many significant developments in French foreign policy during the inter-war years, Massigli then served alongside Charles de Gaulle during the Second World War. Informed by his experience of the 1930s, he adopted a view of western European security that saw him determined to promote greater co-operation between France and Britain to withstand a potential German resurgence and a looming Soviet threat. But following France's efforts after 1950 to promote European integration based on Franco-German co-operation, Massigli re-defined his role of ambassador and openly challenged French initiatives such as the Schuman Plan and, in particular, the European Defence Community, not only because they did not include Britain, but also because they threatened his view of French security. This analysis assesses Massigli's strategic vision and his attempts to overcome the underlying constraints.     

Disguised warlordism and combatanthood in Balkh: the persistence of informal power in the formal Afghan state

This paper considers disarmament efforts in northern Afghanistan as a Tillyean bargaining process between the state and its armed competitors in the absence of strong, pre-existing formal institutions. Contrary to the ambitious aims of DDR and security sector reform, a political deal emerged in Balkh province that drew warlord-commander Atta Mohammed Noor into the state in order to prevent him and his subordinates from undermining it entirely from the outside. Governor Atta has since established a significant degree of surveillance and penetration as a function of managing loyalists who might otherwise pose a threat to the province's stability. He has embraced formal institution-building to an extent but maintains a degree of informal power that ensures his dominance in the region and his influence vis-à-vis Kabul. While the result of this arrangement does not represent ‘good governance’ in Weberian terms, it has yielded certain dividends for the state and the international community, from security and reconstruction to counter-narcotics, and may represent the best that can be expected under the challenging circumstances of post-2001 Afghanistan.     

Power,Patterns, and Process in European Union History

Sebastian Rosato's admirably provocative Europe United retells the origins of the European Union (EU) as a realist story of the balance of power. While he deserves praise for a bold attempt to extend offensive realism into history's greatest instance of international cooperation, the book ultimately reads as a cautionary methodological tale about how not to support a realist argument. Realist theory has been influential mainly because it offers strong expectations about major patterns in the world—relatively unitary decision-making within states and specific kinds of foreign policies between them—but Rosato's evidence focuses on a thin version of process. He selectively cites leaders' statements about their policy choices across the story, providing no leverage on how these statements related to patterned interests within or across countries. Interestingly, a similar error weakens work by the most salient IR scholar writing on EU history, Andrew Moravcsik. Their shared problems hint at a pattern of IR scholars overlooking patterns in historical evidence.     

Britain's power and influence: Dealing with three roles and the Wilson government's defence debate at Chequers in November 1964

Prior to the advent of the Wilson government, there existed a large number of official memoranda and reports on Britain's power and influence in the world. Central to Whitehall's concern was the discovery of some means of reducing the cost of maintaining Britain's three main strategic roles ‐ nuclear deterrence, the defence of western Europe and East of Suez. It was clear that Britain should not, and could not, maintain these three roles indefinitely, a view which was shared by Labour ministers at the Chequers meeting. This article examines the evolution of Whitehall's thinking on Britain's long‐term world role during the period before and after Labour came into power in October 1964, and concludes that British ministers and officials began to consider Britain's eventual disengagement from bases East of Suez, a disengagement which was finally announced by the Wilson government in July 1967.