Politik als Markt

In this article, I argue that instead of speculating about voter preference, political actors observe each other in a social role structure in the public sphere. Historically developed social cleavages define the positions in this role structure. The public sphere serves as a stage on which political actors define their roles in relation to each other. I find empirical evidence for this market model by investigating the debate surrounding a reference to God in the European Constitution, a debate that does not fit into the cleavage lines. If the market model for political behavior holds true, political actors won’t be able to articulate positions in the absence of cleavages defining political behavior. In this case, the debate will show symptoms of narrative uncertainty. Consequently political actors will produce narrative chaos and relinquish their role in public communication. As a consequence, they will remain in silence.     

A Confluence of Competitions: Regime-Building and Violence in Timor-Leste

In April 2006, riots broke out on the streets of Dili. As violence escalated over the weeks that followed, a beacon of liberal peace-building dissolved into near-anarchy. While there have been several accounts of Timor-Leste’s “crisis” of 2006, it remains unclear why violence spiraled at that time, rather than at an earlier point in the country’s post-conflict transition. This article addresses that temporal puzzle by combining an analysis of the structural origins of the crisis with discussion of proximate, agency-driven triggers to violence. The resulting narrative first details the development of competition between governing elites, and also between state security actors, over the years following independence. The fusion of those two dynamics of competition in 2006, I then argue, created conditions sufficient for violent conflict.     

Wissen und Bewertung auf Märkten

The purpose of this theoretical article is to contribute to the analysis of knowledge and valuation in markets. In each market actors must know how to value its products. The analytical point of departure of this article is the distinction between two types of markets, status and standard. In a status market, valuation is a function of the status rank orders of identities of the actors on both sides of the market, which is more entrenched than the scale of value and what is traded in the market. In a market characterized by standard, the situation is reversed; the scale of value is more entrenched than the identity rankings of actors in the market. The knowledge that market actors need is contingent upon the market structure. In a status market actors need to know of the actors involved in what is traded since there is no scale of value for evaluating the items traded in the market independently of its buyers and sellers. In a standard market it is more important to know how to meet the standard in relation to which all items traded are compared. The article entails empirical examples and four testable hypotheses.     

Education for whom? Engineering multiculturalism and liberal peace in post-conflict Kosovo

ABSTRACT

This paper traces the changing relationship between the state and its education system at the intersection of diverging visions and agendas of local and international actors in post-war Kosovo in the period 1999–2014. Specifically, it explores why and how externally driven reforms that carry the ideals of an inclusive multi-ethnic polity clashed with domestic actors’ visions of education as a locus of national resistance and independent statehood. To critically inquire into the direction of education reforms in the post-war context, the empirical part of the analysis identifies critical historical junctures through which these competing ideas and relevant actors changed and/or gained traction. Accordingly, the paper focuses mainly on the post-war period, but also considers the pre-war period in order to highlight the predominant vision of local actors on the roles of education, its intertwinement with unfolding conflicts, and its central role in processes of state formation and nation-building, in particular in a post-war context. The analysis is based on genealogical historical narrative, textual analysis of key official documents related to the education sector in Kosovo, and semi-structured interviews conducted in Pristina in November 2013 and October 2016. The analysis demonstrates that the role of education in post-war Kosovo reflects tension between multicultural ideals promoted by international actors, on the one hand, and nationalist, often exclusive concerns of local actors embedded in an unfinished and contested process of state- and nation-building, on the other hand. The paper finds that by over-emphasizing equal collective rights, extensive autonomy for the different communities and ethnic-based decentralized governance, international actors have unwillingly contributed to further education separation along ethnic lines.     

‘The association that dissociates’ – narratives of local political resistance in Kosovo and the delayed implementation of the Brussels Agreement

ABSTRACT

The existing literature on the EU’s transformative role in the Balkans looks at EU conditionality as a unidirectional system of rewards that is expected to motivate local elites to comply with EU rules. This article raises a different question: how do local actors bypass the implementation phase of EU conditionality and what kind of political resistance narratives do they use for this purpose? The analysis attempts to tackle these inter-related questions by focusing on the delayed implementation of the Brussels Agreement between Belgrade and Pristina as a case study, using the interpretive method of narrative analysis. The article aims to link fieldwork empirics with theoretical discussions in the field of EU compliance literature by stressing the importance of local actors’ resistance to EU incentives. Three levels of analysis will be conducted in order to address the research question: (1) mapping different types of actors at the local level and stressing their heterogeneity; (2) understanding how local resistance to EU pressure evolved in the period 2013–2016; and (3) showing how their policy narratives influenced the implementation phase and the maintenance of the status quo. In conclusion, the analysis shows that the EU’s mediation strategy of ‘constructive ambiguity’ favours local actors’ political resistance, particularly in the implementation phase. The main findings show that ‘dividers’ outnumber ‘connectors’ in local actors’ narratives, thus strengthening political resistance to EU pressure.     

Paranoia with a purpose: conspiracy theory and political coalitions in Kyrgyzstan

This article considers the political uses of conspiracy theories (CTs). It is widely accepted that post-Soviet citizens are prone to believe CTs, but there has been little research about the conditions under which politicians endorse conspiracy narratives and why those narratives sometimes become hegemonic. I argue that in times of high uncertainty, CTs have properties that are useful in providing political elites with a focal point for coordination in the absence of other bases for coalition formation. I demonstrate this logic by analyzing the politics surrounding the construction and spread of a conspiracy narrative following violence in Kyrgyzstan in 2010. Politicians with different interpretations of the event coalesced around a contrived conspiratorial narrative, and used it to paper over differences as they formed a ruling coalition. This argument has implications for how to understand the appearance and durability of conspiracy claims in states where political formations are fluid.     

Erzählungen des Kindes‐ und Erwachsenenschutzes: Eine Anwendung und Erweiterung des Narrative Policy Frameworks

The Child and Adult Protection Authorities (KESB) have been the subject of controversial discussion since their establishment in 2013. The reform of the Guardianship Law provided for an institutional shift away from local guardianship authorities to regional specialist authorities. This article uses the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to examine the history of today’s controversy, simultaneously proposing an analytic strengthening of said framework. Previous NPF studies summarize policy actors into opponents and proponents. As a result, we do not know whether different actors use different narratives. We therefore separate the expert from the MP discourse. The analysis shows that the experts' arguments for a new institutional arrangement and a person‐oriented narrative dominated, which put the fundamental rights of the persons affected by guardianship measures up front. The study contributes to the understanding of the current controversy, in which a person‐oriented narrative seems to be dominant again, directed against the new authorities.     

Explaining the Politics of Recognition of Ethnic Diversity and Indigenous Peoples' Rights in Oaxaca, Mexico

A 'politics of recognition'– a process of political reform intended to recognise formally cultural diversity and indigenous peoples' rights – has developed in Mexico, both at the federal and at the state levels, since the early 1990s. The case of the state of Oaxaca stands out in this respect – the local constitution and nearly a dozen secondary laws were reformed during the 1990s, resulting in the conformation of the most comprehensive multicultural framework in Mexico. In this article, I attempt to explain the emergence and the particular development of Oaxaca's unique politics of recognition. Following an explanatory framework proposed by Donna Lee Van Cott, I conclude that the recognition agenda emerged in Oaxaca as legitimacy and governability was put under strain. In addition, I conclude that the (by Mexican standards) rapid and broad fashion in which it developed can be explained on the bases of the severity of the threats to governability and of the capacity of indigenous actors to influence the decision‐making process and form alliances with key political actors – i.e. the state governors.     

Abd al-Karim Qasim and the kurds of Iraq: Centralization,resistance and revolt, 1958–63

Despite the presence of women's migration from Syria to Egypt, until recently the extent of their contribution and influence has received insufficient attention. This paper aims to feminize the narrative of migration from Syria to Egypt by positioning women more centrally in this narrative through their cultural activities, especially the establishment of women's magazines. The Syrian/Lebanese and Egyptian phases of these women's lives are treated as a continuum and it is shown that their home life experience in Syria shaped their later life in Egypt. Conceptually, the paper envisions the diffusion of ideas resulting from the migration of Syrian women to Egypt towards the end of the nineteenth century as a process of regionalization, which is termed cross-glocalization.     

Wie entstehen Preise?

How are prices made? From the perspective of economic price theory prices are determined by supply and demand, while from an economic sociology point of view they result from the embeddedness of market transactions in institutions, networks or cultural frames of meaning. In order to build a price, the value of a good has to be transformed into economic value, i.e. a price. The paper analyses the process of transformation from value to price on the market for the rating of structured finance products. On this market, with the help of calculative practices, the abstract value of ??creditworthiness?? is converted into a concrete rating which determines credit costs. As the subprime crisis has shown, the credit bureaus and rating agencies responsible for this translation process have not been able to draw the price near to the value to which it refers. The article describes the divergence between value and price as the ??social space?? where price building is influenced by social factors that may distort prices and lead to a breakdown of the market.     

Learning at the Edges: Participatory Action Research and Child Maltreatment in Post‐War Guatemala

This article focuses on the effect of Participatory Action Research (PAR) on changing parents’ disciplinary practices and galvanising community organisation in Guatemala City. The article analyses PAR with reference to Carr and Kemmis’s threefold typology. The project involved a transition from a technical model, in which participant actors investigate a subject proposed by the lead researcher, through a practical stage, in which participants and lead researcher interact on an equal basis, to participant‐led action that has a critical intent.     

The Campaign for Japanese‐Australian Children to enter Australia, 1957–1968: A History of Post‐War Humanitarianism

Between 1957 and 1968, the Prime Minister Robert Menzies and several of his ministers, including Alexander Downer, the Minister for Immigration from 1958 to 1963, were inundated with hundreds of letters of protest demanding that action be taken to assist Japanese children fathered by Australian soldiers who had been stationed in Japan during the Allied occupation and beyond it between 1946 and 1956. The response from the Australian public forms the basis of this article to consider how attempts for the transnational movement of children in the postwar period point to understandings of humanitarianism at this time. The response to the predicament of the Japanese‐Australian children offers, I argue, an intriguing narrative of postwar humanitarianism that articulates the beginning of several historic shifts. The incident points to the growing challenge to the White Australia Policy, paradoxically on racialised and paternalistic grounds to bring white Australian children to Australia. The government shifted the discussion from one of immigration to foreign aid as a way of diffusing the public response and in doing so positioned itself in the new narrative about supporting rehabilitation and development. The media was crucial in evoking a response that depoliticized the issue of responsibility by reducing it to an emotional reaction.     

Constructing Reform Coalitions: The Politics of Compensations in Argentina's Economic Liberalization

It is frequently argued that the key to "successful" economic liberalization is to marginalize interest groups that profit from existing regulatory regimes. This paper contends that some established interests can craft public policies to protect their rents in the new market setting. The state may shape the interests of social actors and create proreform constituencies out of old populist and interventionist groups. In Argentina, this coalition building was achieved by constructing reform policies that granted rents in new markets to business and organized labor and by deliberately avoiding unilateral deregulation in sectors where reform would hurt traditionally powerful actors. This argument is developed through a comparative analysis of policy reform in the labor market institutions and protected industrial sectors, areas where the costs of deregulation are said to be unavoidable for the established actors.     

From Racial Mixture to Black Nation: Racialising Discourses in Brazil's African Affairs

The article links reflections about Brazilian race relations with institutional transnational dialogues between Brazil and ‘Africa’. I point out that although racial/cultural mixture and the ‘brown’ census category have traditionally reflected much of national identity in Brazil, Brazil today is increasingly spelling out its blackness, both on the national and international scenes. I highlight that, not by coincidence, this fact is happening at a historical moment when programmes of ‘black’ affirmative action and other differential politics in favour of Afro‐descendants are taking off in the country, and also at a time when Brazil is expanding its geopolitical and economic interests in Africa.     

Framing Exclusion in the Public Sphere: Far-Right Mobilisation and the Debate on Charlie Hebdo in Italy

While the January 2015 Paris terrorist attacks presented a crucial opportunity for far-right mobilisation, the focus on liberal democratic values and Charlie Hebdo’s non-conformist progressive profile presented challenges for right-wing discourse. Taking Italy as a paradigmatic case of public controversies on cultural and religious affairs, this article examines the opportunities and constraints generated by multicultural crises for far-right framing choices. A qualitative frame analysis analyses the discourse of three types of far-right actors. While the populist radical right, extreme right, and ultra-religious right groups disagree on crucial criteria for outgroup exclusion, they collectively employed the Charlie Hebdo controversy to redefine their exclusionary discourse on liberal grounds with the goal of gaining legitimacy in the mainstream public sphere.     

On Music,Censorship, and Globalization

Malik Bendjelloul’s music documentary, Searching for Sugar Man (2012), uses the narrative of its central figure, American rock “n” roll musician Sixto Rodriguez, to allegorize South Africa’s emergence from censorship and isolationism to a post-apartheid and increasingly transnational dispensation. I look at the cultural politics of apartheid-era censorship in attempt to account for Rodriguez’s cult appeal in South Africa, despite his artistic shortcomings and his obscurity in the USA. I then focus on the film’s final concert sequence, featuring Rodriguez’s first South African performance, which Bendjelloul subtly positions as a moment of celebration over the new possibilities enabled by the demise of apartheid and the rise of an increasingly integrated global culture.     

Power tug of war: hegemonic and posthegemonic text control in Gustavo Sainz's Obsesivos días circulares (1969)

This article examines the novel Obsesivos días circulares (1969) by Gustavo Sainz from the point of view of the narrator's and characters' attempts to control the text. It analyses the distribution of influence on the text between the first-person narrator (Terencio) and one of the key characters (Leticia), and the changing locus of text control in the narrative line that includes Leticia. First, I examine Terencio's letters to Leticia and determine whether the text construct Leticia is created and manipulated through them. Secondly, I concentrate upon a section of Chapter 3 which appears to be a non-sequitur in the context of the narrative as a whole; it contains a vignette of a party where an apparently enigmatic exchange takes place between Terencio and Leticia. Finally, the article will address the changes in the narrator's character as a result of this encounter and the subsequent shift and split of the locus of text control between the narrator and one of the characters. Since the article explores various means of the distribution of text control, the theoretical foundation used here will include hegemonic masculinity and the relationship between hegemony and posthegemony in the context of text control.     

“Industrial Defence Against the Whole World”: Deakinite New Protection as Narrative of Global Modernity

As it evolved towards the New Protection program from 1906, Deakinite protectionism manifested as a historicised narrative of modernity: an attempt to impose a rationale of nation-building over the heterogeneous and unstable impact of new economic relations and technologies, and the tense dynamics of competition between nations. History was invoked by actors fashioning the nation-building task in post Federation Australia as they claimed to make decisive breaks with past practice, reflected in innovative government strategies and social reforms. The anxieties and opportunities stimulated by global industrial modernity defined New Protection policy, evident in the formation of political narrative and parliamentary legislation, and government intervention in the conduct of business enterprise and industrial relations. The objectives and contradictions of New Protection were clarified in the political narratives and policy interventions constructed to secure the future of the Sunshine Harvester enterprise and its workforce.     

Die symbolische Inszenierung als „kultureller Anderer“ – Zur Auslegung weltkultureller Skripte im Feld der europäischen Inklusionspolitik

This paper puts forward a sociological perspective on the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) going beyond the usual focus on power and learning in governance studies. It uses a combined approach based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social fields and John W. Meyer’s neoinstitutionalism. Seen from this angle the OMC transmits and amplifies the abstract ideas of the world polity for EU Member States. The coordination procedure gives rise to a political field in Bourdieu’s sense filled with a variety of actors that claim to be selfless and disinterested “cultural others”. Hence, the OMC can be used by these actors as an opportunity structure for symbolic enrichment. By symbolically enriching their strategies, these actors avoid triggering the automatic recourse to subsidiarity as a means to fend off European influence. Empirically, the article identifies five types of cultural others: conceptual entrepreneurs, knowledge producers, fundamental critics, detached observers and robust actors.