State-building or state-capture? Institutional exports,local reception and hybridity of reforms in post-war Kosovo

ABSTRACT

Post-war Kosovo has been the subject of a highly intrusive international state-building project, including an unprecedented influx of international administrators, assistance and funds. However, it increasingly bears the hallmark of a weak and captured state. This special issue contributes theoretical and empirical insights that shed light on possible explanations, difficulties and prospects of the state-building project in Kosovo. Theoretically, we investigate how international and local explanations play out, interact and gain dominance over each other; highlight the local factors that shape the experience of state-building; and focus on the hybridity of institution- and state-building on the ground. Empirically, we take stock of two decades of international state-building activities and one decade of independent statehood by providing long-term and in-depth analysis of specific areas of reform – municipal governance, state bureaucracy, normalization of relations between Serbia and Kosovo, education, creation of armed forces, security sector reforms and reception of Salafi ideologies. Such time-sensitive, case-nuanced and empirically heavy analysis enables the authors to go back and forth between the role of international activities, domestic strategies of resistance and evidence of hybrid reforms in order to test the role of competing explanations.     

‘Democracy under Threat’: The Foundation of the Opposition in Venezuela

This article sheds new light on how the Venezuelan Opposition was created and, more widely, on contemporary Venezuelan politics. By focusing on the Opposition's articulation of democracy, the article examines how this movement became possible and how it succeeded in maintaining support. Opinion articles covering the period October 2001 to April 2002 were analysed using the theoretical framework of logics within discourse theory. The article argues that although the Opposition succeeded in maintaining its support throughout Chávez's government, it contributed to the polarised politics that currently characterises Venezuela.     

The Transformation of Labor Party Immigration Policy, 1901–1945

ABSTRACT

The Commonwealth Labor government’s introduction of a program of mass immigration after the Second World War was a pivotal moment in the nation’s history. The program itself and the experiences of those who settled in Australia have been studied closely by historians and social scientists. Less attention has been given to the fact that the postwar policy represented a transformation of Labor’s traditional attitude to immigration. Since its foundation in the 1890s, the Australian Labor Party had been suspicious of immigration and opposed to programs of assisted immigration on the basis that migrant labour threatened the wages and conditions of Australian workers. This article traces Labor’s attitudes to migration before the Second World War and shows how economic and security exigencies compelled the party to repudiate its decades-long opposition to assisted immigration. The article suggests that the reason that the postwar immigration program does not receive greater prominence in histories of the Labor Party is because the policy and its chief architect, Arthur Calwell, are diminished by their association with the White Australia policy.     

Was Hugo Chávez to Blame? Media Depictions of Polarisation in Venezuela, 1998–2013

This article explores how seven leading western newspapers covered the topic of polarisation in Venezuelan society during the Chávez era. It found that the media largely ignored the debate as to whether Hugo Chávez was the catalyst or consequence of polarisation. It virtually unanimously presented him as a divisive, polarising character destroying democracy, contrary to the lived experiences of many Venezuelans, while ignoring other possible explanations for the polarisation. It also found that there was a strong similarity in how the liberal and conservative, British and American press covered the issue, with virtually no differences in explanations or outlook, thus manufacturing consent for the elite view of the issue.     

End of an Era? The Landtagswahl in Bavaria,September 2008

The biotechnology and venture capital sectors have flourished in Germany during the 1990s, a surprising development that finds its roots in the policies of the federal government. Years before the private sector became engaged, the federal government had identified biotechnology and venture capital as important for job creation and Germany's world‐wide status as a technological leader. Its success in leading a renaissance in these sectors sits uneasily with dominant understandings of the German state as ‘semi‐sovereign’ (Katzenstein) or ‘enabling’ (Streeck) ‐ as institutionally incapable of defining policy against or without the active participation of societal actors. This article uses a history of the biotechnology and venture capital sectors since the 1970s to re‐examine the relationship between the central state and lower governments as well as organised interests in Germany. The evidence demonstrates the federal government's autonomy in formulating policy priorities as well as its ability to enhance the capabilities of lower level governments and private sector actors to achieve the objectives it defined.     

The Arab Military Force in Palestine Prior to the Invasion of the Arab Armies, 1945–1948

The article examines the size, structure, composition and modi operandi of the Arab military forces which fought the Jews in the 1948 war, before the invasion of the Arab regular armies, based first and foremost on the Arab sources themselves. An attempt is made to assess the substantial reasons behind the Arab defeat in the first ‘civil war’ phase of the campaign, including a comparison of the number of combatants, which also explains the outcome.     

Mining against the State? Gold Mining and Emerging Notions of Territoriality in Southeastern Venezuela

The current economic crisis in Venezuela has drawn members of Pemón communities to the practice of informal (illegal) gold mining, as mining, undertaken alongside other ‘traditional’ economic activities, is a more effective source of income than waged jobs. The increased involvement of Pemón people in informal mining has encouraged their partial retreat from the state's frontiers, and it reveals transformations in the ways in which local people imagine and relate to the Venezuelan state. These transformations are embodied in both a reorganisation of the space, and in burgeoning notions of land ownership.     

The Birth of Cultural Autonomy in Estonia: How,Why, and for Whom?

The 1925 law on cultural autonomy of minorities guaranteed Estonia's most significant minorities the right to independently decide how they wanted to arrange their own national-cultural matters. In this article I will focus on why Estonia decided to pass a law that was exceptional in the atmosphere of that time. To find an answer, it is necessary also to analyze how (through what process) the law was shaped and for whom the law was ultimately intended. In summary, it can be said that there were about ten factors, which were different, yet interconnected and similar in their impact, and only together did they provide sufficient impetus to make it possible to approve autonomy.     

Is It Race,Class, or Gender? The Sources of Perceived Discrimination in Brazil

Observers have long noted Brazil's distinctive racial politics: the coexistence of relatively integrated race relations and a national ideology of “racial democracy” with deep social inequalities along color lines. Those defending a vision of a nonracist Brazil attribute such inequalities to mechanisms perpetuating class distinctions. This article examines how members of disadvantaged groups perceive their disadvantage and what determines self‐reports of discriminatory experiences, using 2010 AmericasBarometer data. About a third of respondents reported experiencing discrimination. Consistent with Brazilian national myths, respondents were much more likely to report discrimination due to their class than to their race. Nonetheless, the respondent's skin color, as coded by the interviewer, was a strong determinant of reporting class as well as race and gender discrimination. Race is more strongly associated with perceived “class” discrimination than is household wealth, education, or region of residence; female gender intensifies the association between color and discrimination.     

The Indonesian killings of 1965–1966: the case of Central Java

The mass killings of 1965–1966 in Indonesia marked a watershed in its history. The consensus estimate of lives lost is 500,000. In this paper, demographic and geographic methods are used to characterize the violence in Central Java, one of the worst-affected provinces. The findings provide a portrait of the violence and its dynamics. This portrait highlights the likely complicity of a diverse array of political opponents of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). The findings also provide evidence supporting Clifford Geertz's three-aliran (cultural “stream”) model of Javanese society, with the complex interplay of the three aliran and the Indonesian Army in the political realm producing the violent outcomes of 1965–1966. In this manner, this study builds on prior work by Hefner, Jay, Lyon, Mortimer, and Ricklefs on the cultural and social underpinnings of the violence. It also builds on more recent work on the neighboring province of East Java in which the role of two of the three alirans was found to be a significant factor, underlining the importance of the intersection of culture, geography, and politics in understanding this violent episode in Indonesian history.     

The Origins of the Redemption in Occupied Suburbia? The Jewish-American Makings of the West Bank Settlement of Efrat, 1973–87

Founded primarily by Jewish-American immigrants after the 1973 Arab–Israeli war, Efrat has emerged as one of the most highly recognizable settlements in the occupied territories. Drawing on archival materials, the periodical press, and interviews never before brought to light, this article both explores the untold history of this ‘city on a hilltop’ as the product of a quadrilateral relationship between American–Israelis, the Israeli government, the native Israeli settler movement, and local Palestinian communities, as well as reconstructing the discourses in the making of Efrat, which combine religio-political imperatives alongside a deeply Americanized vision of building new, utopian, suburbanized communities in the occupied territories, during its formative years between 1973 and 1987.     

The French invasion of the Spanish Netherlands and the Provincial Assemblies in the Dutch Republic 1667–1668

Summary

This article examines the role defence provision played in the relations between a prince and his estates in early modern Europe. Using the Duchy of Wurttemberg as an example, it illustrates why the question of defence proved so significant in shaping prince‐estate relations, and how the attitudes that it forced each to adopt reveal much about their differing aims and general outlook. The dominant group within the Wurttemberg estates rejected the duke's preferred solution to the defence question, a standing army, out of fear that its adoption would alter the duchy's traditional political structure. Maintenance of this traditional structure was essential to the defence of the dominant group's vested social and economic interests. The dukes considered a standing army an essential prerequisite to the achievement of their dynastic and political goals. The estates’ rejection of it made conflict unavoidable. Though the estates were successful in opposing ducal policies, their lack of an alternative solution illustrates the general point that estates were unable to develop their own concept to rival their ruler's ‘modernizing’ pretensions. Instead, they remained entrenched in their traditional values and were not able to develop into modern parliaments. In contrast to the princes, however, their outlook was essentially peaceful, because war meant change and change was to be avoided.     

Italian Politics in an Era of Recession: The End of Bipolarism?

Abstract

Italian politics have undergone momentous change in the 2007–2017 decade under the impact of the eurozone crisis, whose peak in 2011–2013 could be equated to the earlier watershed years of 1992–1994. The lasting impact of the upheaval in Italian politics in the early 1990s could still be felt in the decade of economic recession, but there were also new challenges prompted by a crisis that had its roots in international financial contagion and which unravelled under the shadow of both recession and austerity. The changes were of an economic, social, cultural, institutional, policy-oriented and political nature. If one central quintessentially political theme stands out by the end of this decade it is the apparent exhaustion of the quest for bipolarisation that was initiated in the early 1990s.     

Concession or compromise? The politics of abortion in United Germany

Most GDR policies instituted to secure women's equality between 1949 and 1989 have been dismantled in the name of German unity, including freedom of choice regarding abortion. That right ceased to exist in May 1993, when the Constitutional Court imposed a number of western restrictions on eastern women as the new law of the land. This study addresses the post‐unity search for an acceptable compromise between the western constitutional mandate of foetal protection and the eastern guarantee of a woman's right to choose. It argues that a three‐year reform process which should have provided a positive introduction to the art of democratic compromise served instead as a negative socialising experience for Germans in the new Lander. Besides denying them a chance to render a meaningful policy contribution to their new state, the nature of the process has distorted East German perceptions of the quintessential ‘balance of power’ between legislative and judicial institutions under democracy. ‘Compromise’ has been attained, but consequences for the German Rechtsstaat are not all positive.