The Ethiopian Orthodox Church in the Holy Land

ABSTRACT

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tawahedo Church community has had a presence in the Holy Land for at least several hundred years. Throughout most of this period it was composed of a small ecclesiastical corps of monastic clergy who sought to protect the national church’s rights at various holy places in the region of Christianity’s birth. Only in the twentieth century, were these clergy joined by lay people. In this paper, I discuss the way the type of food served at church celebrations and the rhythm of fasts and feasts emphasize the shared national origins of the small diaspora. At the same time, where people sit when eating, and in what order they are served, expresses distinctions within the ranks of the clergy, between clergy and lay people, between men and women, and between Ethiopians and their former compatriots from Eritrea.     

Politics,national symbols and the Romanian Orthodox Cathedral

Among religious denominations in Romania, the dominant Orthodox Church has been the closest to the state, often positioning itself in opposition to the budding civil society. The prolonged negotiations for a location in downtown Bucharest suitable for the new Orthodox Cathedral for National Salvation best illustrate the interactions between different segments of the political class, the Orthodox Church, and a variety of civil society groups seeking to define the public space and the country's new democracy. They further illustrate how contesting actors use the recent past to define the politics of the present.     

Corruption,Privatisation and Economic Growth in Post-communist Countries

Abstract

This article empirically investigates the effects of corruption and privatisation on economic growth in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former USSR. We use a corruption and privatisation augmented open-economy leader–follower endogenous growth model to derive our research hypotheses. In this setting, corruption, privatisation and external openness jointly determine the per capita income in the follower economy. This model predicts that economies with higher shares of private ownership, lower corruption, and higher external openness enjoy higher rates of growth. Our empirical verification of these predictions is based on a panel of 29 post-communist countries during the period 1996–2014. Our estimation results confirm the negative effects of corruption, while the positive effects of privatisation are limited to small-scale privatisation.     

Post-communist regime types: Hierarchies across attributes and space

In this article we order the 28 post-communist countries in a theoretically informed typology of political regime forms. Our theoretical expectation is that a hierarchy exists in the extent to which the post-communist countries fulfill democratic criteria concerning electoral rights, civil liberties, and the rule of law. More particularly, we expect that the countries are doing better with respect to electoral rights than civil liberties and that they fare worst regarding the rule of law. The analyses confirm three – ever stricter – versions of this hypothesis, in the end establishing the presence of an almost perfect hierarchy across the attributes in the form of a Guttman scale. Furthermore, a systematic cross-spatial distribution is identified, which lends support to the notion that the present political differences must be traced back to structural constraints and are, therefore, likely to subsist.     

The construction of Orthodox churches in post-communist Romania

Against the background of church – state relations in contemporary Romania, this article explores the question of the construction of places of worship by the Romanian Orthodox Church after 1989. Besides providing and analysing general figures, it focuses on the proliferation of Orthodox churches in state-owned and state-operated institutions, and on the issue of funding. It also offers an examination of relevant legislation and its implications on church construction.     

Democratisation and the prospects for participatory regionalism in Southeast Asia

This article explores the impact of democratic transitions in Southeast Asia on regional co-operation, and the relationship between this process and the development of a non-official regionalism. Until now, regionalism in Southeast Asia has been essentially elite-centred and politically illiberal. The emergence of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations was founded upon the common desire of its members, which had by then retreated significantly from their postcolonial experiments in liberal democracy, to ensure regime survival. This orientation was further institutionalised by asean 's doctrine of non-interference, which helped to shield its members from outside pressures towards democratisation. But with democratisation in the Philippines, Thailand and more recently Indonesia, the asean model of elite-centric regional socialisation has been challenged. The civil society in the region demands greater openness in Southeast Asian regionalism. The article proposes a conceptual framework for analysing the relationship between democratisation and regionalism, with the key argument being that the displacement of traditional patterns of regional elite socialisation has been offset by potential gains such as advances in regional conflict management, transparency and rule-based interactions. But the realisation of a more 'participatory regionalism' in Southeast Asia faces a number of barriers, including obstacles to further democratisation, the continued salience of the non-interference doctrine and the diminished space for civil society in the wake of the 11 September terrorist attacks.     

The Limits of the German Minority Project in Post-communist Poland: Scale,Space and Democratic Deliberation

This paper explores the development of the German minority community in postcommunist Poland, focusing specifically upon the Opole Silesia voivodship. I argue that the minority's successful engagement within democratic fora at all spatial scales allowed the minority to voice its concerns and secure funds to develop its community infrastructure. However, as the 1990s progressed, the minority's ability to manipulate a politics of scale declined as the policy objectives of key allies were achieved or reformulated. Furthermore, the changing contours of the minority–majority relationship within Poland have exposed significant cleavages within the minority, bringing into question the continued relevance of the German minority political party for the constituency it claims to represent. Introduction The emergence in Europe of a new minority rights regime, adhered to by Poland as part of its desire to “return to Europe” and join the European Union, has created a legislative framework that aims to ensure that members of national minority populations can enjoy substantively the same rights as the majority. The most significant legislation in this area is the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (1995), ratified by Poland in December 2000. The “guarantees” of this new regime, in order to be substantiated, require minorities to be able to mobilise sufficient political capital in order to have their rights (social, cultural, economic) taken into account, both within and without democratic fora. In Poland the most successful minority has been the German minority, which, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, was able to forge up-scale links with powerful allies such as the German government, the Union of Expellees and the Association of Compatriots. As the 1990s unfolded, these links weakened, in part because of the substantial progress made by the minority in gaining the recognition they had been aiming for, but also owing to the changing policies of allies as their own goals were achieved or reformulated.     

Civic Environmental NGOs,Civil Society,and Democratisation in China

This paper examines the potential role of civic environmental NGOs in China's democratisation. Based on interviews with 31 NGO officials, the paper examines the origins, structures, and functions of civic environmental NGOs in China. It also examines how various political and resource constraints have shaped their development. While having made progress in organising educational campaigns and specific conservation projects, civic environmental NGOs have been less successful in influencing government decisions and official behaviours. Most recently, some NGOs have made limited progress on these fronts by maintaining a largely non-oppositional stance towards government and by utilising various formal and information channels for influencing government decisions. NGO leaders will have to negotiate with different party-state entities in defining their precise roles in the political process.     

Democratisation in the Middle East and North Africa: perspectives from democracy support

This article offers perspectives on the prospects for democratisation in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region in the light of political developments since 2010, with particular reference to international democracy support. An introduction shares certain assumptions about democracy support’s general record before threats and opportunities to democracy support arising from developments in the region are discussed. Next democracy support’s response to those developments is examined, while the fourth section highlights some challenges for democracy support in the region and beyond. Throughout, discussion is contextualised within the larger literature on democratisation. Final remarks lead to the conclusion that developments in the region both present challenges that should be viewed as opportunities, and offer opportunities that will be challenging to address, not just for democracy support in the region and further afield but in terms of the guidance that democratisation studies have to offer.