Old Tools and New Movements in Latin America: Political Science as Gatekeeper or Intellectual Illuminator?

This article argues that social democratic and orthodox Marxist conceptualizations of politics are unable to "engage in solidarity" with many new forms of Latin American popular politics. Such movements challenge the politics of representation, the market economy, and the state form by reinventing territorialized experiments in self-government, which politicize place, subjectivities, and social relations. Developing a critique of these frameworks of political analysis, this article argues that conceptual categories combining the insights of autonomist or open Marxism and poststructuralism and the critical reflections and theorizations by Latin America's newest social movements enable a deeper engagement with such movements. This critique challenges academics committed to progressive social change to reexamine long-held notions about the nature and agents of social transformation and the epistemological categories that orient our research. It argues that if we fail to do this, then we risk becoming gatekeepers of the status quo.     

Heretical Conversations with Continental Philosophy: Jan Patočka, Central Europe and Global Politics

This article argues that the contributions of the Czech philosopher, Jan Patočka, have been overlooked in the study of International Relations (IR), and more generally international political theory. Attention here is drawn to the many distinctive ideas particular to Patočkian philosophy, such as the solidarity of the shaken and the care of the soul, which combine accounts of a Central European philosophy and dissident political reactions to totalitarian rule. The legacy of Patočka's work frames the latter part of the article, which examines Central European identity and 'samizdat' as often neglected reference points in IR. The article concludes by drawing these themes together in an account of rupture, inspired by the solidarity of the shaken and care for the soul.     

Change and Continuity under an Eclectic Social Security Regime: The Case of Turkey

This article discusses how changes in the welfare regime are shaped by the inherited institutional setting as well as by politics with reference to the particular case of Turkey, where the former social security system combined Bismarckian conservatism with informality and clientelism. Both the reassertion of traditional forms of solidarity and the discovery of social rights as an aspect of equal citizenship figure in the currently emerging social solidarity models. The ability of political actors to defend these contesting models is likely to influence the ongoing transformation of the countryãs eclectic welfare regime.     

British Campaigns for Solidarity with Argentina and Chile

The Chile solidarity movement persuaded British Labour governments (1974–1979) to introduce a range of measures against the Pinochet regime. But campaigners lobbying against the Argentine dictatorship (1976–1983) had less impact on policy. Neither these Labour governments nor the subsequent Conservative government imposed any sanction on the Argentine dictatorship, until the invasion of the Falkland Islands. This article explores why in Britain – and Europe – the Chile campaign had greater public appeal than the Argentina solidarity campaigns. It identifies a number of common factors across Europe which explain why the anti-Pinochet cause generated more support than the Argentina campaign.     

Calidad democrática en América Latina: ¿proyecto o utopía?

While recognizing the heuristic limits of the concept “democratic quality” this article argues that measuring democracy over time is the most adequate way to identify, discuss and analyze its presence in every country. “Democratic quality” sheds new light on both concept elaboration and empirical studies because it synthetizes two political processes that have developed in the region in the last twenty five years: democratic transition and democratic consolidation. This category allows us to define the current state of Latin American countries in terms of their institutional and societal development of democratic life. We can thus, at least in theory, observe and propose an integrated improvement of existing political regimes in a context in which modern representative democracies are reorganized in terms of their new attributes and rights. Based on these premises, this article proposes two interrelated paths of analysis: a) considering the model of “democratic quality” to analyze Latin American democracies and characterize their present problems; and b) examining the relevance of this model’s heuristic power. The main thesis holds that not even the most visible long or short-term transformations undergone by our democratic political legal codes, since its inception, are sufficient in and of themselves to bring us closer to the democratic quality model, or in other words, to the basis of a democratic State of law.     

Redefining Democratic Discourse in Thailand’s Civil Society

ABSTRACT

Thailand’s civil society has contributed to the country’s democratic regression. Underlying this political position are redefined meanings of democracy. This article seeks to shed light on these intriguing positions and processes by exploring the democratic discourses that prevail in Thailand’s civil society and their implications. The article does this by using a case study of a network of development actors associated with a public and influential Community Organisation Development Institution (CODI) organisation. It is found that democratic discourses are associated with a preoccupation with the sense of collective identity, defined through civil society’s communitarian vision. This preoccupation influenced their political emphasis on promoting “collective virtues.” It is argued that these discourses limit the democratic potential of Thailand’s civil society in a number of ways. First, they facilitate the building of connections between civil society and conservative elites. Second, the discourses endow civil society with an organisational culture that puts emphasis on promoting the roles of “good people” who are mostly selected by those at the top of the civil society organisations that are hierarchical.     

Explaining Policy Stability and Change in Swiss Health Care Reforms

The article investigates recent health reforms and reform attempts in Switzerland. A substantial reform, the revision of the health insurance law in 1994, is followed by a long period of refused reform proposals and incremental change. In order to explain policy change and policy stability in health policies, we apply veto‐player theory to partisan and parliamentary debates on reform proposals of the health insurance from the end of the 1980s until today. Shifts in ideological positions of parties, especially with regard to the objective of solidarity, allowed for a new win‐set in the 1990s that was at the base of the law revision. Since then, the win‐set is empty as parties did not change their preferences. New and substantial reforms will only be possible, it is concluded, if the pivot player, the Christian‐democratic party, changes its ideological positions to a significant extent.     

Constructing Mutuality: The Zapatistas' Transformation of Transnational Activist Power Dynamics

This article examines the evolution of transnational Zapatista solidarity networks. Although scholars have described an emerging "mutuality" between the Zapatista movement and its allies at the level of international framing, this article considers how the Zapatistas forged this mutuality on the ground, through active redefinition of alliances with Northern supporters. It argues that the Zapatistas delimited who was included in their solidarity networks, set new terms for partnerships, and redefined legitimacy in their transnational alliances. In so doing, they asserted their autonomy from donors. They also fostered discourses and practices of mutual solidarity and Southern leadership, shifting the balance of power between North and South. The case both illuminates the possibilities for Southern movements to challenge Northern control from within and suggests potential pitfalls of doing so; by defying Northern NGOs' influence, the Zapatistas may have risked their long-term viability.     

Stumbling among Giants: Europe's Frustrated Solidarity with Guatemala, 1979–1996

In the 1980s, Central America became the Cold War's centre stage as Western solidarity committees rushed to shine a global spotlight on the region's revolutionary movements. Drawing on archival research and activist testimony, this article explores the uncharted European solidarity movement with Guatemala (1979–1996) and its transnational structural weaknesses. Additionally, this contribution aims to revisit recent transnational approaches to solidarity movements that highlight the purposive role of actors of the Global South in generating and shaping solidarity. Instead, it argues that restricted political spaces severely constrained Guatemalan agency domestically, affecting the strategies and tactics deployed on the international front.     

The Uneven Performance of Third Wave Democracies: Electoral Politics and the Imperfect Rule of Law in Latin America

This article investigates the performance of the new democracies of the third wave by developing a conceptual model of the core elements of liberal democratic government and by constructing a new Database of Liberal Democratic Performance. The performance is shown to be uneven in two main ways. First, the institutional attributes of democratic government advance while individual and minority rights languish. Second, particular institutional attributes coexist uncomfortably, as do particular rights. A comparison of Brazil, Colombia, and Guatemala complements the big picture drawn from the database and focuses on the specific contextual conditions that can create the general political contours of the wave. The uneven democratic performance of these cases is mainly explained by the combination of persistent oligarchic power and a largely unaccountable military. Yet uneven performance, and the imperfect rule of law in particular, does not necessarily prevent democratic survival.     

Staying Alive: 1970s Southern Cone Exiles in the UK

This article seeks to contribute to the study of the 1970s dictatorships in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay by looking at one specific aspect of those regimes: exile. It considers exile in the UK, a host country on which research is limited, and claims that the fundamental political ideas that had inspired these exiles did not vanish but were variously reshaped, depending on changing political circumstances, how the exiles interacted with local forms of solidarity, and how they lived through the personal challenges that they experienced during exile.     

Security Challenges in Latin America

This article challenges established security ideas on Latin America, beginning with the assumption that militarised states and military coups d'état now belong to a bygone era. The attempt is to demonstrate that, despite a regional framework for cooperation, democratic governments here have not established a democratic process of decision-making, particularly where security issues are concerned. This absence of democratic civil control over the military could challenge, and even potentially undermine, the consolidation of democracy in Latin America.     

Asia’s Conservative Moment: Understanding the Rise of the Right

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarship has identified a new era of post-democracy or democratic crisis in the West, characterised by the increasing resort to authoritarian measures and the erosion of mechanisms such as representative parties and unions that link citizens and social forces with the political process. Conservative political movements, right-wing governments and populism have also emerged in the democratic states of the Asia-Pacific. The existing literature, with its focus on the crisis of social democratic institutions and forms of representative politics, provides inadequate frameworks for explaining these trends in the region. This article suggests that a better way of understanding the emergence of these new forms of political regime in Asia is to locate the origins of democratic crises in processes of global capitalist transformation and political incorporation and disincorporation. The articles in this special issue show that previously dominant modes of incorporation are fracturing under the conditions of neo-liberal capitalist transformation. In the wake of this fracturing, political elites have struggled to created new forms of political incorporation. This has inadvertently resulted in the sharpening of the conditions that give rise to political crisis. The political responses to crises have predominantly been conservative and have led to attempts to restructure the state to limit dissent and electoral competition.     

Publisher's Comment

The extent to which post-communist European and Eurasian countries have instituted democratic politics varies widely. The countries possessing the generally accepted attributes of a democratic polity are without exception members of the European Union and most of the countries that have moved in that direction in recent years are prospective members. This article examines the association between membership in the EU and the development of a democratic polity. It suggests the aspiration to membership and awareness of the EU's political condition for membership contributed, along with attributes related to spatial location, political antecedents, transitional politics, and economic ties, to the development of a democratic polity.     

Seeking the Soul of Democracy: A Review of Recent Research into Citizens' Political Talk Culture

This article provides a review of extant empirical research on ordinary citizens' everyday political communication, its phenomenology, determinants, consequences, and relevance for democratic politics. It highlights the recent upsurge in interest in the study of political conversations against the background of both classic and more recent developments in democratic theory and empirical research that served as intellectual inspirations. The article discusses conceptual and methodological issues of research into interpersonal political communication and presents key findings with regard to the background and consequences of political talk, tapping into fundamental aspects of democratic citizenship such as political preferences, participation, cognitive involvement with politics as well as orientations towards fellow citizens and towards the democratic political system. It concludes with an assessment of the state of the art in this field of study, highlighting desirable avenues for future empirical research.     

Authoritarian practices in new democracies

Despite the rapid spread of democracy in the developing world over the past 25 years, there has been increasing evidence that a significant number of democratic leaders have been adopting authoritarian practices. Such practices include: utilizing devices to bypass legislatures and/or restrict the ability of opposition parties to operate; restricting the political and civil rights of their people; and politicizing the judiciary in their countries. Yet, questions directed at exploring why this happens are only beginning to be addressed. This article seeks to explain why democratic leaders in developing countries use these sorts of authoritarian practices. This article develops a model that suggests that external economic constraints emanating from the global economy compel elected leaders to adopt certain authoritarian practices in order to overcome the limitations they face as a result of these constraints. Specifically, the constraints imposed by capital mobility and conditional lending by the international financial institutions are what force many leaders in developing countries to use authoritarian practices. This study utilizes a comparative approach using two cases, Argentina, and the Philippines. For both countries, the study analyzes a specific incident and offers an explanation regarding why authoritarian practices were employed by the country's leadership.     

Institutional dynamics and party think tank development: Britain and Germany compared

Official party think tanks have been a fixture in a number of Western European democracies for many decades but not so in the Anglo-American democratic sphere even though think tanks aligned to parties have flourished. This article explores the reasons that party and think tank ties have evolved differently in these two settings through an examination of the party think tank scene in Germany and Britain. It is suggested that the predominant form of democracy operating in each of these settings helps to explain this critical difference. While the adversarial tendencies of the British political system militate against parties taking much of an interest in establishing official party think tanks, the consensual institutional dynamics associated with Germany’s political system has encouraged parties to sponsor their formation, and reinforced the perceived importance of the party think tank vehicle as agents of democratic linkage.     

Arbeiterbewegung von rechts? Motive und Grenzen einer imaginären Revolte

The article examines populist and völkisch orientations of unionized workers, some of them active members of workers’ councils. It empirically shows how, in respondents’ everyday consciousness, protest motifs are intermingled with an ethnicized view of the social question. Völkisch populism can be interpreted as a Polanyi-type movement that is motivated by problems generated by post-growth capitalism, presenting itself as a venture to give back power to the people. Its revolt remains an imaginary one, though, for, ultimately in accordance with existing power relations, it aims at reconstructing an irretrievable past. Our empirical results keep a distance from monocausal explanations, though call to mind issues of class that have long been neglected. As workers perceive the current distribution of wealth as unjust, yet don’t believe in any possibility for change, they are spontaneously inclined to redefine existing top-down conflicts into inclusion-exclusion types. Professional right-wing populists take up and aggravate this tendency of exclusive solidarity and thereby pose a serious challenge for the unions as well as for democratic civil societies.     

印尼瓦希德政府:挑战与机遇并存

印尼瓦希德政府的诞生标志着印尼政治进入新纪元、印尼社会开始逐步走上民主改革的道路。本文对瓦希德政府所面临的挑战和机遇作了分析 :印尼人民前进的方向是光明的、充满希望的     

‘Haifa is still Burning’: Italian,German and French Air Raids on Palestine during the Second World War

The air raids against civilian and military targets during the Second World War have been a relatively unexplored chapter in Palestine's tumultuous history. This article examines the circumstances that led the air forces of Italy, Germany and Vichy France to launch attacks against Palestine. It surveys the damage these raids caused and assesses their effect on the country's population. The article raises three central arguments: although the attacks caused considerable damage in Haifa and in Tel Aviv, they failed to alter the course of the war in the Middle East; despite the hostility between Arabs and Jews before and after the war, the period of the air raids saw displays of solidarity between the two communities; and the experiences of the Second World War, including the air raids, played a part in the state-building process of the Yishuv (Jewish community).