“Here we give advice for free”: the functioning of plant clinics in Rwanda

Although plant clinics are considered an important mechanism in the service delivery to farmers, not much is known about their functioning in the daily reality of plant doctors and farmer-clients. This article reports on an exploratory study describing the functioning of eight plant clinics in Rwanda. Personal and organisational commitment, publicity, and proactive communication with farmers and local leaders are key factors explaining higher attendance of some clinics. Farmer attendance is under-reported by 40–50%. Data management needs improvement to make clinic records reliable tools for decision-makers. This type of assessment can help improve operations and realise the plant clinics’ potential.     

Beyond the “Norm Entrepreneur” Model: Rwanda,Darfur, and Social Sanction among UN Diplomats

When investigating why state decision makers opt for intervention in the heart of armed violence abroad, many scholars refer to new humanitarian norms appearing among state officers, particularly within the UN. In these approaches, “norm entrepreneurs”, and the high risks of public opprobrium they are supposed to induce, stand at the front stage of normative change. Compliance with newly promoted normative ideas seems totally bereft of professional risks, though. This paper intends to bring back in a dimension of norms that is central in sociology: social sanction. Investigating how social sanctions are practically enacted among diplomats at the United Nations precisely provides useful data to detect the many norms that prosper beyond—and before—normative enterprises, and to assess why the humanitarian idea and the recent “responsibility to protect” still have weak normative effects, practically speaking. The international failures in Rwanda and more recently in Darfur deserve re-examination in this prospect.     

Opposition dynamism under authoritarianism: the case of Yemen, 1994–2011

In contrast to the empirical conditions in large parts of the authoritarian world, the systematic literature on political opposition under authoritarianism either treats the opposition as a static entity or fails to comprehensively address its dynamic character. On the basis of a critical literature review and an ensuing analysis of the Joint Meeting Parties, a cross-ideological opposition alliance that gradually evolved to become the main competitor of the Salih regime in Yemen, we suggest that political opposition in electoral authoritarian regimes is an intrinsically dynamic institution in terms of its organizational shape, its goals and its modes of contestation. We also show that, while authoritarian structures do set the basic conditions defining opposition action, much of what motivates this action and contributes to opposition dynamism emerges from within the opposition. In addition, our findings on the Yemeni case suggest that opposition dynamism peaks when the strength of the opposition is nearly on par with that of the regime.     

Multiculturalism,recognition and the “Kurdish question” in Turkey: the outline of a normative framework

Despite the ever-growing literature on various aspects of the Kurdish question in Turkey, there are practically no normative discussions of Kurdish demands for the public recognition of their identities. This is all the more startling given the ascendancy of philosophical accounts in the literature on minority rights. This article will try to redress the balance by proposing a normative framework that could be used to justify Kurdish demands for recognition, drawing on the broader debates that revolve around Charles Taylor's seminal conceptualization of “the politics of recognition”. In this context, I will identify nationalism, a strategy used both by the state to suppress demands for recognition and by the minorities to put forward these demands, as the most serious hurdle in the way of the democratic resolution of the “Kurdish question” in Turkey and promote a form of recognition-based multiculturalism that (a) respects the basic rights of all citizens, not only those in whose name the said claims are made, but also those of the members of the majority against which the claims are voiced; (b) leaves room for alternative values or conceptions of the good life.     

Which Land Is Our Land? Domestic Politics and Change in the Territorial Claims of Stateless Nationalist Movements

Why do stateless nationalist movements change the area they see as appropriately constituting the nation-state they aspire to establish? This article draws a number of hypotheses from the literature on nationalism and state formation and compares the predictions of each about the timing, direction, and process of change to the empirical record in two stateless national movements in the post-Ottoman space: Fatah and the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization. Based on this investigation, the article argues that shifts in the areas stateless nationalist movements seek as their nation-states occur as a byproduct of the politically competitive domestic environment in which these movements are embedded. As nationalist movements engage in the competition for mundane power and survival, their leaders may alter their rhetoric about the extent of the desired national state to meet immediate political challenges that are often only loosely related to territorial issues. If these, initially tactical, rhetorical modulations successfully resolve the short-term challenges that spurred their adoption, they can become institutionalized as comprising the new territorial scope of the desired national state.     

“Dynamite bombs of New York manufacture”: the terrorist perspective in the Stevensons,Greer and James

This article examines the first three literary reactions to Fenian terrorism: Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson’s co-written novel, The Dynamiter (1885); Tom Greer’s A Modern Daedalus (1885) and Henry James’ The Princess Casamassima (1886). Although these works approach terrorism from different angles, they set the pattern for subsequent treatments that will “give primary voice to the perspective of the terrorist”. “Zero”, the hapless bomb-makers in The Dynamiter, is a surprisingly urbane, sympathetic figure; Greer illustrates both the necessity and the moral quandaries of terrorism and James shows considerable sympathy for anarchism’s causes, even though terrorism threatens high art and culture. I also hope to show that fiction can provide excellent source material for studying the cultural imaginary of terrorism and, by extension, make a bid for the inclusion of literature scholars under the umbrella of Critical Terrorism Studies.     

Propaganda,effect, and the cold war: Gauging the status of america's “war of words”

The article examines the interrelationship among propaganda, effect, and the Cold War during congressional debates over America's first peacetime propaganda program. Although the rise of the communication research paradigm affected the production of statistical evidence to measure the effectiveness of America's Cold War propaganda, this case study argues that the “war of words” metaphor further heightened the need for empirical proof of America's status in that conflict, Just as with any physical battle that relies on body counts and land measurements to determine the success of America's war efforts, the criteria for measuring the status of America's “war of words” were driven by a similar demand for “objective” proof. The longevity of the Cold War helped ensure the institutionalization of the communication research paradigm, which rejected the use of anecdotal evidence as support for the program's impact.     

Mending the “Unhinged Alliance” in the 1970S: Transatlantic Relations,Public Diplomacy,and the Origins of the European Union Visitors Program

This article examines in depth the foundation of the EU’s one explicit example of public diplomacy, the European Union Visitors Programme. The narrative covers the historical background to the EUVP, the main individuals involved, and its significance for the development of the EU as an international actor. Public diplomacy relies on personal contacts, and the intention here is to demonstrate the importance of this petit histoire. The contribution of the EUVP towards establishing a transatlantic “community of values,” as demonstrated by the support it received from the U.S. diplomatic representation in Brussels, is an important extra dimension. The article concludes that the EUVP, while offering a potential model for the EU to project its “soft power” and world-view internationally, remains limited in scope and unable to fulfill its potential.