Minorities and marginality: pertinacity of Hindus and Sikhs in a repressive environment in Afghanistan

The situation of Hindus and Sikhs as a persecuted minority is a little-studied topic in literature dealing with ethno-sectarian conflict in Afghanistan. Hindu and Sikh communities' history and role in Afghanistan's development are examined through a structural, political, socioeconomic, and perceptual analysis of the minority populations since the country gained its independence in 1919. It traces a timeline of their evolving status after the breakdown of state structure and the ensuing civil conflicts and targeted persecution in the 1990s that led to their mass exodus out of the country. A combination of structural failure and rising Islamic fundamentalist ideology in the post-Soviet era led to a war of ethnic cleansing as fundamentalists suffered a crisis of legitimation and resorted to violence as a means to establish their authority. Hindus and Sikhs found themselves in an uphill battle to preserve their culture and religious traditions in a hostile political environment in the post-Taliban period. The international community and Kabul failed in their moral obligation to protect and defend the rights of minorities and oppressed communities.     

Understanding 'political stability': Party action and political discourse in West Bengal

In contrast to the party political turmoil that plagued New Delhi during the 1990s, West Bengal is an Indian state that has demonstrated remarkable stability. Atul Kohli has made much of this contrast, arguing that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has held power in West Bengal since 1977 through the combination of its organisational and ideological coherence. His wider conclusion is that the institutionalisation of political parties is essential in staving off the 'crises of governability' faced by many democracies in developing countries. At a time when 'good governance' is a major theme within development studies, Kohli's thesis deserves close attention. This paper critically examines his work in two ways. Empirically, it questions elements of his portrayal of the CPI(M), and West Bengal's politics more generally, as 'exceptional'. In theoretical terms, it questions Kohli's treatment of political institutions, arguing that more attention should be given to institutional culture and political discourses.     

Conceptualizing racialized black political activity within European spaces: a political opportunities approach

African presence in Europe can be traced back to Roman times, yet African peoples within European spaces are continually perceived and often treated as new migrants with no sense of an historical attachment to European soil. This paper seeks to understand and challenge this conception of black migrants to Europe by focusing on the community and political activities of black subjects in European spaces. Using Britain as a primary reference point, the paper argues that the unfolding nature of black political activity in European spaces emerges as a result of dynamic interactions between black protagonists and the state. The nature of these interactions it is argued are racialized in character and that black community organizations and individuals play a crucial role in determining the forms and nature of political activity and outcomes that operate under the guise of minority ethnic mobilization. This paper argues a point that is often overlooked in the literature that focuses on African and other immigrants to Europe as recent migrants with problems. The paper uses a refined political opportunities approach and focuses on state practices and black community organizational practices between the First and Second World Wars to outline the varied nature of black community and political activity in an era of state antagonism towards black populations at home and abroad. The paper argues that context, state power and action, and the activities and ideas of black community organizations interact in dynamic ways to account for the changing nature of black political activity in European spaces.     

Psychological Barriers to a Peaceful Resolution: Longitudinal Evidence from the Middle East and Northern Ireland

Does individual-level exposure to political violence prompt conciliatory attitudes? Does the answer vary by phase of conflict? The study uses longitudinal primary datasets to test the hypothesis that conflict-related experiences impact conciliation. Data were collected from Israeli Jews, Palestinians, and Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. Across both contexts, and among both parties to each conflict, psychological distress and threat perceptions had a polarizing effect on conciliatory preferences. The study highlights that experiences of political violence are potentially a crucial source of psychological distress, and consequently, a continuing barrier to peace. This has implications in peacemaking, implying that alongside removing the real threat of violence, peacemakers must also work toward the social and political inclusion of those most affected by previous violence.     

Governance and disorder: neoliberalism and violent change in Jamaica

Structural adjustment policies (SAPs) facilitate the hollowing out of the traditional roles performed by states. As a consequence, private entities (some perverse) offer services the state is incapable of or unwilling to provide. Beginning in the 1980s, SAPs plunged neighbourhoods in Latin America and the Caribbean into socioeconomic, and political disorder. This paper assesses the relationship between neoliberal reforms to the Jamaican state and the metamorphosis of violence since the mid-1980s. Neoliberalism transformed violence in Jamaica by increasing inter-gang conflicts, shootings and gang-related murders in Kingston’s garrisons. It also transformed political enforcers into community dons who use violence as a tool for business transactions in the international drug trade, and as a method of gaining local respect and authority.     

Repression and endurance: anathematized Hindu and Sikh women of Afghanistan

Hindus and Sikhs, longtime minority religious communities in Afghanistan, have played a major role in the social, cultural, and economic development of the country. Their history in Afghanistan has not been faithfully documented nor relayed beyond the country's borders by their resident educated strata or religious leaders, rendering them virtually invisible and voiceless within and outside of their country borders. The situation of Hindu and Sikh women in Afghanistan is significantly more marginalized socially and politically. Gender equality and women's rights were central to the teachings of Guru Nanak, but gradually became irrelevant to the daily lives of his followers in Afghanistan. Hindu and Sikh women have sustained their hope for change and seized any opportunity presented to play a role in the process. Active participants in the social, cultural, and religious life of their respective communities as well as in Afghanistan's government, their contributions to social changes and the political process have gone mostly unnoticed and undocumented as their rights, equality, and standing in the domestic and public arena in Afghanistan continue to erode in the face of continuous discrimination and harassment.     

Oil abundance and violent political conflict: A critical assessment

This paper addresses one of the empirical claims of the ‘resource curse’ argument, namely that oil abundance raises the probability of political violence. I argue that the two main theoretical premises of the oil-civil-war link, rent-seeking and the rentier state model, fail to provide a convincing argument as to why oil economies are more vulnerable to the onset of civil war. I find that three often-mentioned mechanisms as to why oil economies succumb to political violence not convincing; that oil economies are poor economic performers; that oil economies generate high corruption; and that oil economies tend to produce authoritarian regimes. I also examine the empirical evidence on the oil-civil-war link and conclude that the results are not robust. I conclude with some policy implications.     

State, Business, and Economic Growth in India

For the past 25 years, India’s economy has grown at an average rate of nearly 6% annually. The widely embraced argument that this growth acceleration results from the Indian state’s adoption of a pro-market strategy is inadequate for two reasons: the higher growth rate began a full decade before the liberalizing 2reforms in 1991; and post-1991 industrial growth has not accelerated. Instead, India’s economy has grown briskly because the Indian state has prioritized growth since about 1980, and slowly embraced Indian capital as its main ruling ally. This pro-business growth strategy is likely to have adverse distributional and political consequences.     

Mugabe at war: The political economy of conflict in Zimbabwe

This paper employs a 'political economy of conflict' approach to explore the recent deterioration in the governance of Zimbabwe. It argues that this analytical approach, which has been applied by scholars such as William Reno to highly dysfunctional and/or collapsed states like Liberia and Sierra Leone, is appropriate for understanding the current actions of the Zimbabwean government as well, and especially their relation to the military's unpopular intervention in the recent conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While Zimbabwe's current crisis has been aptly described by various scholars as a failure of leadership, this paper argues that such failures of national governments in Africa need to be understood within the broader context of international political economy. Zimbabwe's lapses in governance extend beyond the state and the national border to features that have non-state and informal as well as international and transnational dimensions.     

Labour standards,global markets and non-state initiatives: Colombia's and Ecuador's flower industries in comparative perspective

Political violence in Algeria has often been accounted for only by recourse to caricatures of a society supposedly ‘intensely violent’ by nature, or else rationalised as the product of a peculiar political culture and national historical experience. Departing from both approaches, this article suggests that different occurrences of both state and non-state violence must be understood as particular, distinct moments in both the recomposition and breakdown of inherently conflictual social relations. While Algerian history (including colonial history) provides many examples of the non-violent negotiation of social and political tensions, the social production and experience of violence have been written into dominant historiographies and public culture in complex ways. These complexities of the successive ways in which different moments of violence have been encoded belie both theories of the inescapable reproduction of cyclical violence as a pattern of political behaviour, and less sophisticated, but enduring, clichés of ‘Algerian savagery’.     

The political economy of global firms from India and China

This article attempts to build a bridge between contemporary studies of global firms from emerging economies and existing theories in comparative political economy. It argues that given the primacy of the state as an economic actor in developing countries, the variety of capitalism literature could provide a theoretical foundation for firm-level analyses of emerging market multinationals. For example, the authors suggest that China and India may be moving towards a ‘hybrid market economy’. They also offer a typology of Indian and Chinese corporates to demonstrate an empirical approach to analysing domestic business–government relationships and the ways in which these firms are shaped by the peculiarities of their respective institutional setting. Finally, they identify some of the likely pitfalls of doing cross-national comparisons of emerging market multinationals, particularly with respect to the reliability of corporate data.     

The Role of Forms of Traumatic Exposure in Relational and Physical Aggression Perpetrated by Incarcerated Men and Women

The relationship between history of trauma and violence is well studied. However, the relationship between trauma and relational aggression is not. And yet relational aggression is of considerable relevance to the criminal justice system. This study was designed to extend the literature on trauma and violence by including a measure of relational aggression and testing for sex differences. The sample was comprised of incarcerated men (N = 125) and women (N = 141). Data were collected from inmate interviews and inmate completion of a battery of instruments. Regression analyses revealed that of three types of trauma, only a history of interpersonal nonsexual trauma predicted the perpetration of both relational aggression and physical aggression while incarcerated, although no sex differences emerged. Results provide guidance for intervention efforts.     

A Subnational Study of Insurgency: FARC Violence in the 1990s

This article examines the traditional political and economic factors that have been purported to explain the prevalence of insurgency. It tests the following hypotheses at the subnational level in Colombia: guerrilla violence is positively associated with exports; higher levels of insurgency are associated with low levels of GDP per capita or negative growth rates; guerrilla violence emerges in the context of weak state presence; and higher levels of state repression are associated with higher levels of insurgent violence. The analysis utilizes a zero-inflated negative binomial to capture dynamics of both intensity and onset of violence. The econometric analysis is supplemented with cartographic visualization and qualitative analysis.     

The political determinants of fiscal policies in the states of India: An empirical investigation

Using data from the 14 major states of India, we investigate whether state governments' fiscal policy choices are tempered by political considerations. Our principal findings are twofold. First, we show that certain fiscal policies experience electoral cycles: state governments raise less commodity tax revenue, spend less on the current account, and incur larger capital account developmental expenditures in election years than in all other years. Second, we show that coalition state governments raise less own non-tax revenues and spend less on the current account than state governments that are more cohesive in composition. In sum, the dispersion of political power affects government size.     

Religion and the State: The Singularity of the Jordanian Religious Experience

The history of the Islamic movement in Jordan displays glaring contrasts with its counterparts in other Islamic countries such as Egypt, pre-Revolutionary Iran, and Syria. In a marked departure from a history of violence that characterized the relationship between the state and the Islamic opposition in these countries, the Jordanian Muslim Brothers was not only a peaceful movement but also often defended the state against the challenges of radical ideologies. Following the democratization process launched by the late King Hussein, the Muslim Brothers participated in electoral politics. To adapt itself to the new pluralistic environment, the movement displayed a move toward secularization. This process was reflected in an organizational differentiation and the rationalization of religious discourse. This paper attempts to explain this remarkable phenomenon by first considering the effects of the structure, ideology, and cultural policies of the state and of the development of social classes on the Islamic movement. It then considers the way in which the legal framework and political pluralism in the 1990s contributed to the secularization of the movement.     

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.     

Service-Seeking Behavior,Perceptions of Armed Actors,and Preferences Regarding Governance: Evidence from the Palestinian Territories

Armed non-state actors, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, are visibly engaged in providing social welfare in addition to participating in violence. A number of scholars have suggested that there is a relationship between service provision by terrorist organizations and support from service recipients, and have indicated that terrorist organizations use service provision strategically for this purpose. However, few studies have examined the experiences and opinions of service recipients themselves to understand if services do indeed influence populations' political loyalties and opinions regarding violent activities. Using data from more than 1,000 low to moderate income individuals in Palestine, this study seeks to understand if and how receiving services from a specific organization engenders loyalty to the organization, passive acceptance and/or favorable approval of the organizations' violent activities, and the likelihood of participation in the organization's violent activities. This paper explores if and how provision of aid and “governance” services by armed non-state actors is correlated with various aspects of individuals' experiences of conflict, such as their opinions about the use of violence and various strategies for attaining peace, their fellow community members' likelihood to join armed groups and engage in fighting, and their preferences regarding state structure and legal system.     

It Comes with the Territory: Why States Negotiate with Ethno-Political Organizations

Given that minority ethno-political organizations are generally weaker than states yet seek to change their policies or remove the ruling regime from power, why would negotiation occur? States prefer to ignore or repress such organizations, which typically have little to offer in return amidst negotiations that can legitimize them while delegitimizing the state. When a challenging organization establishes governing structures and controls movement in part of a state's territory, however, it can easily inflict significant economic and political costs on the state while also possessing a valuable asset to exchange for concessions. An organization with territorial control cannot be ignored, while the state will have a strong incentive to negotiate before the state loses more face, the group gains more legitimacy, neighboring states are more likely to invade, and the international community is more likely to formally recognize any facts on the ground as a new status quo. Our analysis of 118 organizations in the Middle East and North Africa from 1980–2004 reveals that territorial control is the most important determinant of intrastate negotiation. In regards to existing scholarship, this suggests that a certain type of successful violence works—not all violence and not only nonviolence—while certain types of strong organizations—those that control territory—are more likely to reach negotiations with the state than weak ones.     

Municipality size,political efficacy and political participation: a systematic review

ABSTRACT

It is an old adage that local government is a training ground for democracy. Its human scale means that political amateurs can contribute effectively and meaningfully to the politics of a state. But in a political climate seemingly driven to consolidate local government into ever larger units, can a not so local local government still elicit an efficacious and participatory citizenry? This paper explores the effect of municipality population size on two important aspects of democratic culture: political efficacy and political participation. Via a two-part systematic review, the paper examines how extant empirical literature bears on the relationship between size and both of these aspects, hypothesising that political efficacy plays a mediating role between size and participation. The findings are unequivocal: citizens of smaller municipalities feel a greater sense of political efficacy and participate to a greater degree in local politics.