Pablo Neruda and the struggle for political memory

This article deals with a topic-poetry-that is often considered to be of marginal interest to politics. To prove otherwise is the article's principle task-a task that is pursed through an engagement with Pablo Neruda's work. Nobel laureate, international diplomat and political activist in one, Neruda reveals how poetry can enter the political process and, perhaps more importantly, turn into a critical historical memory. To engage political struggles a poet must be as accessible as possible. Neruda was well aware of this necessity, which is why he wrote in the language of everyday life. But he was also aware of the need to break through existing linguistic habits, for it is through these very conventions, inaudible and seemingly harmless as they are, that practices of domination become objectified. The article discusses both the theoretical issues that are at stake in this paradoxical tension and the more specific attempts Neruda undertook to engage political issues related to fascism, imperialism and class domination.     

The African struggle continues: The awakening of North Africa

La crise de l’État moderne en Afrique prouve que cette formation historique ne constitue pas la forme achevée du nationalisme africain contemporain. L’État moderne est né d’un contexte occidental historique. Il revient aux Africains eux-mêmes de penser leur propres structures étatiques avec des éléments endogènes de conceptualisation. La structure ethnique en est un. Comment peut-on l’intégrer de manière politiquement et économiquement viable en ce siècle de génocides et de conflits interethniques? Les liens ethniques créent un cadre économique et social basé sur d’autres institutions que celles de la modernité étatique. Le pouvoir ethnique harmonise autrement les trois monopoles de l’État moderne, à savoir la violence légitime, la distribution des ressources et la représentation politique. Il est donc possible de combler l’espace publique avec d’autres loyautés que la loyauté nationale.     

Mining and subaltern politics: political struggle against neoliberal development in Bangladesh

Drawing on social movement scholarship, this paper analyses subaltern struggles against a multinational mining company. The Phulbari coal mine is the centre of contention between the mining company and local/national activists. Local concerns about the dispossession of lands and livelihoods and environmental destruction have been merged with a Leftist political agenda on the growing vulnerability of the state and national sovereignty in the Global South. A close examination of the movement's discourses suggests that a broader political struggle against resource plunder and energy imperialism has been strengthened by local community resistance to an environmentally destructive coal mine. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews, I analyse how activists have created new meanings of the conflict to confront and delegitimize hegemonic discourses of capitalist development and modernity.     

Decentralization or deconcentration: struggle for political power in poland (1)

This paper argues that the 1989 commitment to political and administrative decentralization has weakened over five years. As the point that it has become a rhetorical formula voiced by the governing political leadership when convenient, but in reality never realized. Two sets of factors contributed to such a state of affairs: (1) the inability of the center to reform itself, and (2) center's increasing commitment to regain the power lost over the last few years.

The first part of the paper lays a theoretical framework for analysis of pressures and barriers to decentralize. Second, examines the process of implementing in Poland, of local government and public administration reform over the 1989-1995 period. Finally, the third analyzes in detail the three most significant forces that central states utilized to gain control: (1) political; (2) power resources and (3) fiscal. It concludes by asserting that beyond 1990, while much of the program has been achieved in designing legislative and territorial aspects of the public administration and local governments reform, what was lacking was the political commitment to implement both.     

The political economy of the cycles of violence and non-violence in the Sikh struggle for identity and political power: implications for Indian federalism

This paper presents a critique of the essentialist notions of any community as a pacifist or militant community by examining the long history of the cycles of violence and non-violence in the evolution of the Sikh community in the Indian subcontinent. The theoretical premise of the paper is that communities' resort to violence and non-violence is determined by their strategic perspectives to achieve their politico-economic goals and not from any doctrinal adherence to violence or non-violence. The paper attempts a panoramic view of over 500 years of Sikh history (1469 – 2006) and offers a reinterpretation of that history by locating cycles of violence and non-violence in their historical context. It then provides a politico-economic perspective on violence and non-violence in their struggle for identity and political power. It focuses more on an analysis of the recent political conflict between Sikh militants and the Indian state, and concludes by drawing out the policy implications of that analysis for the politics of the modern Indian state regarding the Sikhs of Punjab. It identifies federal arrangements and human rights as issues of key importance in the political economy of this relationship.     

Politics in the hot zone: Aids and national security in Africa

Traditional security studies and international relations theory do little to address the security issues associated with the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Because security studies and international relations have been preoccupied with conditions affecting the major powers, little of the long history of international relations and national security has practical application to Africa and the HIV/AIDS epidemic it is experiencing. From a theoretical perspective many fields of security studies and international relations do not adequately address critical dimensions in dealing with security. Dimensions of time, scope and depth are often overlooked. This point is important regarding the AIDS epidemic because time and extent often determine the security threat and whether it is a short-run threat (which is subject to greater political expediency) or a long-run threat (which is subject to less political expediency). In the short run the epidemic threatens the security of political institutions, the military and military operations. In the long run the security of populations and national economic performance are at risk.     

Politics at the margins: alternative sites of political involvement among young people in Cameroon

This paper analyses young people’s political discourses and experiences, highlighting their disillusionment with the postcolonial state. Drawing on ethnographic data and interviews with young people in the city of Bamenda, the article argues that young people’s perspectives and discourses on politics constitute alternative forms of political involvement and resistance. Their actions, inactions and discourses about politics and political personalities are informed by their specific identities and positionalities. However, taken collectively, these voices reveal current national anxieties about the postcolonial state whose legitimacy is widely believed to have eroded.     

Crisis,violence and political succession in Africa

This article examines African leadership succession and the effect of crises on the orderliness of succession. The data set consists of 102 successions from 1963-1988, using the African Contemporary Record as our major source. We divide 102 successions into those which are 'regulated,' or rule-directed, and those which are not. We find that about a third of all successions were regulated, and that the presence of a political crisis is the critical obstacle to a regulated succession, more important than either economic or cultural crises. We also find that economic performance is a significant long-term factor in a country's succession record.     

The Politics of Institutional Choice Across Sub-Saharan Africa: Presidential Term Limits

During the transitions to multipartyism that began in the late 1980s, presidential term limits were adopted into the constitutions of a majority of sub-Saharan African states. Yet, a sizable minority of African governments resisted implementing such restrictions on executive power. How can this variation be explained? This article proposes an expanded strategic choice approach that posits that the degree of electoral uncertainty affects institutional choice in cases of controlled, unilateral constitutional revisions (which were common across Africa) just as much as it shapes institutional choice in situations of cooperative constitution-making through bargaining and pact-making. Based on this logic, I argue that term limits were adopted as an electoral insurance mechanism in all cases where constitutional drafters perceive the degree of future electoral uncertainty to be high, regardless of whether the constitutional review process is cooperative or controlled. Alternatively, term limits are eschewed in cases where one unified party fully controls the constitutional review process and also perceives that they will win elections into the foreseeable future. The argument is tested through a statistical analysis of the determinants of term limit choice across all relevant sub-Saharan cases.     

Seeds of hope,seeds of despair: Towards a political economy of the seed industry in southern Africa

The seed industry in Southern Africa has been radically transformed by a policy of liberalisation and privatisation started under structural adjustment. Traditionally under the domain of parastatals, seed research, production and distribution has been criticised for failing to provide modern variety seed to smallholder farmers. However, the private companies which have stepped in to replace seed parastatals in southern Africa have proven no more effective in meeting the demands of smallholders. The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement, concluded in 1994 as part of the Uruguay Rounds of GATT negotiations, as well as certain biotechnological innovations such as Terminator or Traitor technologies, threaten to further undermine local seed production and consumption by destroying the informal seed sector so central to agricultural production in the region. What alternatives exist? The success of Zimbabwe's maize seed network offers some insight. Resting on a unique relationship between government and nationally based producer co-operatives, Zimbabwe's maize programme was able to provide nearly every farmer in the country with hybrid maize suited for local growing conditions.     

A practical model for the management of resistance to change: An analysis of political resistance in South Africa

Change is usually accompanied by resistance -- a neglected and not well understood facet of applied O.D. and large social system change efforts. The management of resistance, just as the rest of the change intervention, should be a planned, systematic, continuous and actively managed process.

The model described in this paper supplies an approach to actively manage resistance according to a systematic and methodological plan. In South Africa this model has been used for two purposes: as a practical management strategy for dealing with resistance during O.D.-projects in business, industry and also in other social settings; and for purposes such as research and as a framework to come to grips with resistance of political parties and other interes groups in these times of major political and social changes. This model is explained and then applied to analyse the resistance of various groups to political changes in South Africa.     

Politics of responsibility: governing distant populations through civil society in Mozambique,Rwanda and South Africa

This article presents and analyses the findings of a research project on power relations in the context of development partnerships with civil society on HIV/AIDS in Mozambique, Rwanda and South Africa, and engages in a critical dialogue with governmentality analysis. It argues that contemporary neoliberal government needs to be understood as context-specific articulations of three forms of power discussed by Foucault – sovereignty, discipline and biopower – and, in the global domain, a fourth form of power – (new) imperialism. Further, the analysis demonstrates how the introduction of a ‘package of (de-)responsibilisation’ shapes CSOs’ activities so that they become competitive service providers, use evidence-based methods and produce measurable results. Addressing the issue of resistance, it shows how the transfer of responsibilities may involve tension and struggle – a politics of responsibility.