Building a Repressive Peace: The Case of Post-Genocide Rwanda

Abstract

Security, economic recovery, democracy and statebuilding are seen as tenets of post-conflict peacebuilding in the academic literature. In Rwanda, 15 years of post-genocide peace were built through security, economic recovery and statebuilding, but without democratisation. The result was a repressive peace. The Rwandan case suggests that post-conflict peacebuilding does not require democracy; that elections can reinforce authoritarian tendencies; and that statebuilding can lead to a repressive peace. It also suggests that the repressive peace can be durable, at least in the short to medium term.     

International Constructions of National Memories: The Aims and Effects of Foreign Donors' Support for Genocide Remembrance in Rwanda

Abstract

Commemoration of the victims of conflict is a characteristic national act of post-conflict statebuilding in which the significance and ownership of memorials is typically contested. In the case of post-genocide Rwanda, such contestation is overlain with international agendas and influences. Certain international donors supported memorialization as part of programmes to aid societal reconstruction and reconciliation and to prevent conflict. Studies of international contributions to genocide memorials, especially the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, reveal tensions in this agenda, which seeks to construct both national identity and an imagined ‘international community’ and serves to extend the remit of international actors.     

The Abolition of the Death Penalty in Rwanda

This paper argues that Rwanda’s decision to abolish the death penalty should be viewed in a wider context rather than as a mere result of top–down pressure from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Part I traces the creation of the ICTR and the breakdown of negotiations as a result of the exclusion of the death penalty from the ICTR’s jurisdiction. It then outlines Rwanda’s efforts to prosecute the hundreds of thousands of individuals accused of committing genocide-related crimes and notes the limited and steadily decreasing role the death penalty actually played within Rwanda. Part II discusses Rwanda’s legislation abolishing the death penalty and argues that both international pressure and local historical and political forces influenced the decision. Part III situates Rwanda’s story within a growing paradox of excluding the death penalty from international criminal tribunals for the most serious crimes while national jurisdictions maintain it. It concludes that as in Rwanda, any perceived or potential impact of international criminal law in national jurisdictions must be measured in light of local circumstances.

高校民族团结教育的功能探析

开展民族团结教育是创新民族工作的机制、拓展民族工作载体的重要举措。高校民族团结教育不仅是高校思想政治教育的主要内容,更是培育和践行社会主义核心价值观的应有之义。当前,准确把握民族团结教育的主旋律,应当充分发挥高校在民族团结进步教育事业中的巨大作用。对高校民族团结教育的功能进行深入探究不仅价值重大,而且具有重要的现实意义。高校民族团结教育的功能主要体现为方向功能、聚合功能、激励功能、保证功能和协调功能等五个方面。     

Organic purity and the role of anthropology in Cambodia and Rwanda

Straus investigates the ideology of two genocidal regimes in the developing world: the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and Hutu Power in Rwanda. Although the regimes were quite different - one Communist, the other nationalist - he argues that their ideals converged around a notion of organic purity. Both regimes pursued extraordinary violence to meet the ideal: mass destruction was a method to achieve organic purity. Straus further contends that anthropological writings provided the necessary ideational building blocks for this ideal. In promoting a violent return to a mythic past, both murderous regimes embraced the images and concepts of European archaeology and ethnography.     

The unfinished business of the Solomon Islands TRC: closing the implementation gap

In 2012, the Solomon Islands truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) submitted its Final Report to the Solomon Islands Government. The Report detailed the underlying and proximate causes of the conflict, provided a record of the injustices perpetrated during its course, and presented a set of recommendations designed both to address the underlying sources of tension in Solomon Islands society and to guard against future hostilities. In the time that has since elapsed, however, successive Solomon Islands Governments have failed to uphold their obligations to publish the report and implement its recommendations. This article examines the reasons for this implementation gap and considers its ingoing ramifications for transitional justice and reconciliation in the Solomon Islands. It argues that the implementation gap can be attributed to a fundamental lack of political will, provoked by the TRC's decision to ‘name names,’ combined with the extremely limited economic capacity of the state. What is more, it also demonstrates that the failure to implement key recommendations has meant that the underlying causes of the conflict remain without adequate redress and that the legitimacy of the TRC and the Solomon Islands’ broader reconciliation process has been brought into serious question.     

“变中求统”:大一统政治思想研究中的语境与逻辑问题

大一统作为一种重要的中国传统政治思想和实践遗产,时至今日仍深刻影响着中国的现实政治发展。围绕着大一统内涵、过程、性质与影响的认识与评价,思想史研究中也长期存在着诸多争论。但无论对于大一统本身所持态度如何,争论各方往往都倾向于将大一统视为一种独立于语境之外的固定结构。作为一种限制性认识前提,这无疑妨碍了对于大一统政治思想与实践发展史的全面理解,更影响到从学理逻辑上阐释大一统与现代中国国家建设与治理事业的内在关联。有鉴于此,在大一统政治思想研究中,有必要超越“正典解读”的束缚,以变的思维考察统的历程,同时也以统的逻辑来整合变的史实,将对大一统的思想史解读放在问题逻辑的语境中,关照智识语境与政治语境对其评价的影响,并慎重地探讨其内涵的普遍性与特殊性规律。唯其如此,对大一统的关照和本土化阐释才真正具有了历史性。     

Negotiating in stages: National positions and the reform of the Stability and Growth Pact

Abstract.  This article examines the politics of the 2005 reform of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). It distinguishes between two stages in the reform process. The first stage delimited the negotiation space – confining reform into an interpretation of the formal clauses that prescribe SGP functioning – and set the reform agenda. In the second, decision-making stage, Member States engaged in high politics bargaining, more sensitive to their short-term (fiscal deficit) and long-term (fiscal sustainability) macroeconomic conditions, attempting to upload country-specific 'expenditure exceptionalism'. The authors of this article find a crucial disjunction in some Member States between positions held across the two stages. Strategic considerations, comprising the broader constitutional/political game and the need to demonstrate national macroeconomic credibility, account for such discrepancy in the two negotiation stages.     

从流行腐朽政治文化看反腐斗争的严峻形势——对反腐斗争的艰巨性、复杂性、长期性的思考

流行腐朽政治文化已成为社会一大顽疾,腐蚀人们的心灵。党的十七届四中全会对新形势下反腐倡廉工作做出了重大战略部署,然而,流行腐朽政治文化的社会顽疾却令反腐倡廉工作充满复杂性、艰巨性和长期性。在分析了流行腐朽政治文化的内涵和现实意义后,提出了消除流行腐朽政治文化影响的几点思考。     

‘Together in the National Interest’: The Rhetoric of Unity and the Formation of the Cameron–Clegg Government

Following the formation of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat government in May 2010, David Cameron and Nick Clegg sought to persuade party members, the electorate and a sceptical media that their partnership would hold together for the duration of the parliament. Taking as its starting point Kenneth Burke's theory of rhetoric as identification, this article explores the strategies employed by senior Coalition figures to construct and present an image of unity to these different audiences. Of particular concern are appeals to the parties’ shared values and to the ‘national interest’, as well as the narrative of Britain's ‘debt crisis’. This narrative served to minimise inter‐party divisions by inviting MPs and supporters to unite behind the cause of deficit reduction, in opposition to the ‘fiscally irresponsible’ Labour party that had allegedly wrecked the economy. The article concludes by reflecting on the lessons for the partners in a future UK coalition government.     

On the logic of productive cooperation: a response to critics

This paper identifies and responds to four critiques of democratic contractarianism, as advocated in Democratic Justice and the Social Contract, to be found in this symposium. The first is that, as a contingent practice-dependent account of justice, democratic contractarianism lacks the capacity to explain civic cooperation. The second is that, despite its intentions, Democratic Justice does not lay out an authentic contractarian theory. The third is that the theory is incompatible with our considered judgements about justice. And the fourth is that the ambition of Democratic Justice to use the empirical method to compensate for the failures of hypothetical contract theory fails because all social science needs interpretation. To each of these critiques, replies are offered, drawing attention to the way in which democratic contractarianism exemplifies a logic of social cooperation to mutual advantage that is compatible with justice provided the cooperation emerges from a bargaining situation of roughly equal power.     

Transitional Justice and Its Discontents: Socioeconomic Justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Limits of International Intervention

ABSTRACT

The incorporation of socioeconomic concerns into transitional justice has traditionally, as a result of prevailing liberal notions about dealing with the past, been both conceptually and practically difficult. This article demonstrates and accounts for these difficulties through the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country which has been characterized by a complex transition process and a far-reaching international intervention, encompassing transitional justice and peacebuilding as well as political and economic reforms. Examining the limits of international intervention in Bosnia and the marginalization of socioeconomic justice issues, the article analyses the events surrounding the protests that broke out in February 2014, and the ensuing international engagement with the protest movement. Faced with a broad-based civic movement calling for socioeconomic justice, the international community struggled to understand its claims as justice issues, framing them instead as problems to be tackled through reforms aimed at completing Bosnia’s transition towards a market economy. The operation of peacebuilding and transitional justice within the limits of neoliberal transformation is thus instrumental in explaining how and why socioeconomic justice issues become marginalized, as well as accounting for the expression of popular discontent where justice becomes an object of contestation and external intervention.     

Review article: the moral right to health: a survey of available conceptions

In recent years, there has been increasing recognition of both the philosophical questions engendered by the idea of a human right to health and the potential of philosophical analysis to help in the formulation of better policy. In this article, I attempt to locate recent work on the moral right to health in a number of historically established conceptions, with the aim of providing a map of the conceptual landscape as to the claims expressed by such a right.     

论推进马克思主义“三化”的基本方法

进入新世纪,马克思主义的发展具有中国化、时代化、大众化的多重特征,体现其发展的新意义,也是现阶段发展的必然趋势所在。需要从确立科学态度、培育有效载体和创新实现途径三个层面进行深入性的探讨,从而引领中国特色社会主义的发展。     

Vote-earning strategies in flexible list systems: Seats at the price of unity

In theory, flexible list systems are a compromise between closed-list and open-list proportional representation. A party's list of candidates can be reordered by voters if the number of votes cast for an individual candidate exceeds some quota. Because these barriers to reordering are rarely overcome, these systems are often characterized as basically closed-list systems. Paradoxically, in many cases, candidates are increasingly earning individual-level preference votes. Using data from Slovakia, we show that incumbents cultivate personal reputations because parties reward preference vote earning candidates with better pre-election list positions in the future. Ironically, the party's vote-earning strategy comes at a price, as incumbents use voting against the party on the chamber floor to generate the reputations that garner preference votes.     

State borders as defining lines of justice: why the right to exclude cannot be justified

This paper seeks to answer the question of what we, according to justice, owe to immigrants. The answer to this normative question is extracted by providing an analysis of Michael Blake’s jurisdictional theory presented in Immigration, Jurisdiction, and Exclusion and elaborated upon in other articles in which he argues for states’ right to exclude immigrants based on states’ jurisdictional nature. I regard this theory as unjustified since it rests on a weak basis, which is further problematised by weighing the moral claims of residents above those of immigrants. In this way, my criticism serves to provide argumentative support in a negative manner for weighing the moral claims of immigrants on an equal footing with those of residents.     

On Who matters: extending the scope of luck egalitarianism to groups

Abstract

What is the scope of principles of egalitarian justice? This is the question that Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen addresses in Chapter 6 of his Luck Egalitarianism, where he comprehensively considers the different dimensions along which the issue of the scope can be articulated (e.g. with respect to time, to the boundaries of states, etc.). For all the dimensions taken into account he defends a broad understanding of the scope of equality, except for one. He thinks that the principle of luck egalitarianism can only apply to individuals and not to groups. In this paper, we show that Lippert-Rasmussen’s reasons for caring only about inequality between individuals are unsatisfactory, and we provide an argument that justifies extending the application of the luck egalitarian principle also to groups.     

From absent to present pasts: civil society,democracy and the shifting place of memory in Brazil

This article takes Alexis de Tocqueville’s concern with the emotional life of citizens as a cue for exploring the role of collective memory within ‘the self-organizing sphere’ and asking how the invocation of memory affects progress towards democracy. The article hones in on the Brazilian experience, re-assessing Brazil’s amnesiac past as well as its much-lauded ‘turn to memory’. Against common assertions that Brazil’s ‘turn to memory’ will enhance the country’s democratic credentials, this article argues that the move from an ‘absent’ to a ‘present’ past in Brazil in fact bodes rather mixed prospects for the country’s democratic deepening.     

收入分配的税收调控模式转变:从经济效率型到公平正义型

我国持续扩大的个人收入差距,是体制性和制度性发展模式导致的。从我国历次税制改革的情况看,税制的修改多注重其财政收入功能,税收调控收入分配的职能定位与税制模式的构建还没有实现有机的匹配。从经济效率型税收调控模式逐渐过渡到公平正义型税收调控模式,对于运用税收政策促进收入公平分配,实现分配正义,具有重要意义。