The Sichuan Earthquake and the Heavenly Mandate: legitimizing Chinese rule through disaster discourse

In the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, the Chinese authorities launched a major public relations campaign to relay positive images of their relief effort and strengthen their political legitimacy. The effect has been a proliferation of symbols and political statements related to the disaster, not only in the official media, but also in cultural products such as movies or mass-media events. The earthquake has become part of the discourse of suffering, struggle, solidarity and ultimately victory. This article examines the ways in which various cultural products present the Sichuan earthquake and asks what meanings national crises have in the Chinese discourse on political legitimacy. The article analyses two cases: Chinese film, here in the form of Feng Xiaogang's blockbuster Aftershock, and performance-based discourses during the Beijing Olympics, the PRC's 60-Year Anniversary and the Shanghai Expo. By conducting a discourse analysis, we show how the earthquake has become part of a recurring discursive formation that is used by state and non-state actors alike to legitimate China's developmental model. Within this discourse, the leadership of the Party, the mastery of free markets and a revamped version of the Confucian idea of benevolent rule are marshaled as the decisive factors for winning any ‘battle’.     

Populism on Difficult Terrain: The Right- and Left-Wing Challenger Parties in the Federal Republic of Germany

Right-wing populist parties in Germany were unable to benefit from the success of their counterparts in neighbouring Western European states from the mid-1980s. Despite this failure, there were several attempts to establish such a party in Germany. Even the ‘centre’ of the political spectrum attempted to approach populist structures and content, and this was especially true of the FDP during the 2002 parliamentary election campaign. After a discussion of the term ‘populism’, we analyse the different parties' opportunities, political proposals and the reasons why they ultimately failed. We then examine the recently founded party ‘The Left’ as a case of left-wing populism, a rarely discussed topic, and we pay particular attention to the development of the leftist alliance between PDS and WASG. Finally, we discuss whether a leftist populist grouping could, perhaps, have better prospects for success in the German party system than a right-wing populist party.     

Citizenship gone wrong

This paper examines how and why a deliberate enactment of the state got out of control. It does so by outlining three phases of border management in Tusheti, a highland province of post-Soviet Georgia. In the first phase, control was directly exercised by the local population. At the same time, border transgression for economic and political purposes was encouraged. A second phase of border management was triggered by the Chechen war in the mid-1990s. In order to discredit claims that Chechen ‘terrorists’ were hiding in Georgian territory, the Georgian government, monitored by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, effectively brought border transgression to a standstill. Finally, a third phase was initiated by a mission of the Georgian Orthodox Church sent to Tusheti with the aim of ‘spiritual fortification’. In the end, despite their courageous civic engagement, the locals had fewer entitlements than before. In order to explain what went wrong, I reflect on the downside of performing and incorporating the state and elaborate three different models of citizenship enacted by the key players in each distinct period. Finally, I argue for a temporalisation and hence deconstruction of the notion of ‘post-socialism’.     

Explaining institutional change in international patent politics

This article seeks to explain institutional change in international patent politics since the conclusion of the 1995 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (trips). I argue that the distribution of interests in this issue area adheres to a sharp North–South distinction, and that the pursuit of largely incompatible and conflicting patent agendas by industrialised and developing countries, respectively, has led to the gradual emergence of an international patent regime complex. Focusing on trips-plus measures under various Free Trade Agreements, patent enforcement clubs and a range of UN organisations which have recently gained relevance for international patent politics, I show how the distribution of interests in this area has led to the development of two parallel and partially inconsistent international governance structures. I conclude that the distribution of interests explains the propensity of regime complexes towards stability and change, with institutional change being particularly pronounced when overlapping interests among revisionist actors enhance the prospects of collective action.     

FIGHTING CORRUPTION WITH SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY MECHANISMS' POTENTIAL TO REDUCE CORRUPTION IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Given the poor track record of traditional anti‐corruption initiatives, donors and governments are increasingly looking at how civil society can fight corruption in public administration. Social accountability mechanisms intend to perform this role by holding officials directly accountable through citizen engagement. However, this article argues that social accountability mechanisms are only capable of reducing corruption systemically if they activate horizontal accountability and sustain it through the sanctioning mechanisms of electoral accountability. A comparative case study analysis using the cases of the Ugandan Public Expenditure Tracking Survey and the Bangalore Citizen Report Card is applied to test this hypothesis. The Tanzanian Public Expenditure Tracking Survey and an example of citizen engagement in Mumbai are employed as shadow cases to provide additional evidence for the hypothesis. The results indicate that social accountability mechanisms must be inclusive, broad, with public effect and embedded in other accountability relationships to fight corruption effectively. Electoral accountability is key, and support to social accountability mechanisms should therefore always be well placed within a broader agenda aimed at strengthening democratic governance. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nail-biters and no-contests: The effect of electoral margins on satisfaction with democracy in winners and losers

Previous scholarship has found robust connections between winning an election and democratic system support. Building on this connection, our analysis theorizes an additional dimension of competitiveness existing in executive elections. We hypothesize a polarizing effect in close elections: that individuals feel the most satisfied after winning by a narrow margin, while losers will be most dissatisfied. Using survey data from eighteen national elections across eight countries, our findings support half of this expectation. Winner satisfaction with democratic systems is highest in close elections and erodes as margin increases. Losers' reported satisfaction is not affected by margin – those who lose by half a percent are indistinguishable in levels of system support from those who lose in landslides.     

THE CASE OF EXPORT CARTEL EXEMPTIONS: BETWEEN COMPETITION AND PROTECTIONISM

Most competition laws do not prohibit anticompetitive conductthat affects foreign target markets as long as there is no spillover effect on the home market. The U.S. in particular justifiesthis leniency towards export cartels by the aim of increasingefficiency in target markets that are suffering from high entrancebarriers for importers. Attempts to use the legal regime ofthe WTO to overcome private restrictions of competition arelikely to fail, because of the fundamental differences betweentrade policy and competition policy. Although a multilateralcompetition policy would be best suited to challenge exportcartels, the current state of the political debate makes itmore likely that second-best solutions such as capacity buildingin lesser developed target states will have to be established.