Moving towards EU membership and away from liberal democracy

ABSTRACT

The article concludes the Special Issue, Illiberal Politics in Southeast Europe, on the retreat of liberal democracy in the region. It focuses on the central themes that link all the papers together: free and fair elections, media freedom, judicial independence, privileged access to public resources and the role of civil society. It seeks to disentangle the causes and consequences of illiberal politics in the region and explores the similarities in the illiberal practices and strategies incumbents use with the aim of staying in power indefinitely. The main argument is that democratic backsliding in Southeast Europe is deeply rooted in the unfinished transitions of the 1990s, which gave rise to new political and economic elites and that blending those two into one resulted in the dominance of the executive over the judiciary and legislature. These new elites became entrenched during the wars and conflicts that affected the region. The enabling factors were of societal origin – clientelist practices, corruption, nepotism and mistrust in politics accompanied by external factors – as well as international pull and push factors (from the EU and Russia) along with a domino effect of democratic backsliding in the region.     

Entangled history and politics: Negotiating the past between Namibia and Germany

The relationship between Namibia and Germany is marked by intense exchanges about the meaning and the consequences of the colonial wars of the early twentieth century in the erstwhile German colony. This engages various state and civil society actors including groups from across the political spectrum in Germany, whereas in Namibia the debate concerns the descendants of the victims on the one hand and German-speaking Namibians on the other.

The article explores this discursive situation and brings out a range of relationships and interactions to be understood as expressions of an entangled history that eschews attempts of appropriation on one side. The problems emerge most poignantly in terms of the still ongoing exchanges around the denial of genocide in 1904–8 which, given that the framework of the debate is predicated to considerable measure on German history, inevitably points to the Holocaust. A further strand of acting out and negotiating historical responsibility concerns the mode of apology and redress which remains a contended question. Not least, this involves an incoherent set of state and non-state actors on both sides. Here, the call for dialogue made particularly by Namibians raises the sensitive issues of intercultural communication.     

South Africa and Namibia: Aspects of a relationship,historical and contemporary

South Africa occupied Namibia for 75 years. After that occupation ended in 1990, numerous ties between the two countries continued to exist and their economies are still intertwined more than 25 years later. In both countries the liberation movements that fought apartheid and then came to power are still in power. This might suggest that the relationship between the two countries would be a particularly close one. When the leaders of the two countries meet, as they regularly do, they speak of fraternal relations and point to ways in which the two countries are working together to enhance co-operation and regional integration. However, the relationship is a very unequal one, and the small state of Namibia retains suspicions of the regional hegemon, suspicions that have a long history. Areas of tension between the two states therefore remain. This paper considers aspects of their bilateral relations, within the multilateral contexts of the Southern African Customs Union and the Southern African Development Community.     

Political compromise on land reform: A study of South Africa and Namibia

The fact that both South Africa and Namibia achieved democratic rule through a process of negotiation, rather than revolution, has had implications for the land reform programmes being implemented by both countries. The author suggests that land hunger has not been addressed and that while compromise on the issue has enabled political stability to date, this may not last.     

Defence cooperation between Brazil and Namibia: Enduring ties across the South Atlantic

This article addresses the nature of transatlantic relations between Brazil and Namibia in the last two decades and argues that, in stark contrast with any other relationship regarding the African continent, Brazil's motivation in deepening ties with Namibia was largely built upon an extensive military-to-military cooperation partnership. By focusing on long-standing bureaucratic interests, the article demonstrates how Brazilian–Namibian relations were driven over the years by strategic affinities, business opportunities made available by the security sectors of both countries and, more recently, growing concerns over the sovereignty of their respective maritime areas in tandem with renewed interest for security developments within the the South Atlantic region.     

Municipal Democratisation in Rural Latin America: Methodological Insights from Ecuador

As municipal governments in Latin America acquire greater responsibility for public goods and services and the promotion of economic and social development, and play a greater role in local citizenship, questions about the quality of municipal democracy also need to be taken much more seriously. This article proposes a 'relative power approach' that examines the distribution of social power at the microregional level and its impact on municipal governance as the starting point for the analysis of municipal democratisation in Latin America. The approach lays particular emphasis on historical changes in the distribution of local productive assets, the political organisation of local social actors, coalitions between and divisions within local social sectors and the ways in which local power relations are shaped by global and national forces. The article then explores the practical application of the relative power approach to three municipalities in rural Ecuador.     

Social Hierarchy and the Inequalities of Access: Evidence from Rural Southern Laos

The Asian Development Bank's rural road development scheme in Laos is designed to increase the opportunity for rural communities to participate in neighbouring emerging markets.Yet, this improved infrastructural strategy may result in increased social disparities betweenregions and within communities. This paper addresses the possible impact on intra-communityinequality using endowment and network data from a southern Lao commune. The objective is to analyse the way in which the village hierarchical social structure impedes individuals' ability to access emerging markets. The social hierarchy hinders the benefits of improved roads and marketisation trickling down to the poorest. Disruption to the trickledown effect means that existing rural development and anti-poverty strategies tend to favour the wealthy and well connected, and further marginalise the poor in the community. Therefore, it is crucial to recognise the importance of the village social hierarchy and define its contribution to the persistence of povertyand reinforcement of inequalities of opportunities for the rural poor. Policies need to directlytarget those of lower stratification by addressing underlying reasons for intergenerational inequalities of opportunity.     

On the front and at home: women in the modern Ottoman epic

Changes in gender roles are related to larger developments in the spheres of social modernization and discipline. As Ottoman society evolved into a nation through the nineteenth century, women's roles in contemporary epic literature were reassigned to domestic life, showing them protecting the hinterland and nurturing younger generations in order to satisfy the state's growing need for manpower. Gradually, Ottoman women lost whatever autonomy they may have had over their bodies, and their status vis-à-vis the state was redefined. This article examines the female characters in modern Ottoman epic literature so as to explore the reflections in this literature of the social and political transformations that occurred during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It aims to reveal the ways in which heroic female figures created before or at the beginning of the autocratic reign of Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909) changed into domestic characters as the social skeleton of the regime became apparent.     

Whispers from the Bush: The Workplace Sexual Harassment of Australian Rural Women

Whispers from the Bush: The Workplace Sexual Harassment of Australian Rural Women. By Skye Saunders (Sydney: The Federation Press, 2015), pp. xviii +220. Foreword by David Morrison. Bibliography, Appendices, Index. ISBN 9781760020385. AU$59.95 (pb).     

Building transregional and historical connections: Uyghur architecture in urban Xinjiang

Economic investment and the growing immigration of Han Chinese from other parts of China to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region over the last three decades have increased the presence of eastern Chinese architecture in the urban built environment. This paper refers to the making of, residing in and speaking about the materiality of urban architecture by Turkic-speaking Muslim Uyghur middle-class actors. Besides creating personal comfort through Uyghur elements they draw ethnic boundaries to the Han Chinese. In highlighting the materiality of architecture, the analysis expands beyond the individual house by investigating the ways in which urban architecture offers spaces of meaning for social and ethnic communities. Based on ethnographic data, this paper argues that due to the political context and the state-controlled urban development with Chinese characteristics, urban Uyghur architecture was relegated from the outside of houses to an emphasis on interior decoration.     

Teaching Islam at a home school: Muslim women and critical thinking in Uzbekistan

In this article I describe and analyse non-institutionalized religious education among local women in Uzbekistan. I argue that while exhibiting vestiges of ‘traditional’ objectives, methods of teaching, and models of knowledge transmission, and incorporating elements of educational reforms advocated by the Central Asian reformers in the early 1900s, and of Soviet pedagogy, the dynamics of such education foster students' critical thinking. By enabling students to think critically about their lives and social environment, the non-institutionalized religious education does not have one predetermined outcome, but ensures social change that starts on an individual level, whereby a student can, but does not have to, engage politically with the state, which systematically intervenes in shaping its citizens' religious lives.     

From Collectivism to Capitalism: Neoliberalism and Rural Mobilization in Nicaragua

This article draws on longitudinal, ethnographic data gathered in rural Nicaragua over a two‐decade period to examine the ideological and political implications of neoliberalism in the prefigurative, grassroots stages of social mobilization. It contrasts divergent path‐dependent processes of accommodation and resistance to neoliberalism as Nicaraguan peasants have moved from collectivism to individual farming, with an emphasis on interpretive processes. This study explores how market processes both serve as an external grievance and operate internally in rural communities to reconfigure rural social relations and individual and collective identities. It also seeks to develop concepts and interpretations that may be applied more broadly to analyze links between deepening market processes and the forms and content of social movement responses to deteriorating economic conditions.