Discourse rights and the Drumcree marches: a reply to O'Neill

In a recent BJPIR article Shane O'Neill uses Habermas' discourse theory of rights to argue that the conflicts over marches in Drumcree can be resolved rationally in the nationalist residents' favour. I question this conclusion via a critique of Habermas' theory. Habermas' apparently unexceptionable requirement that political outcomes win universal acceptability is bought at the cost of vagueness: it fails to specify how acceptability is secured, or how the requirement itself is derived. So it cannot justify the exceptions to equal civil rights which O'Neill wants, such as exceptions to rights of freedom of expression or movement. Unionists can claim that their position respects Habermas' universal acceptability requirement. This exposes the limitations of attempts to impose abstract principles such as Habermas' on real political conflicts. A possible alternative to this is a form of Schmittian decisionism, in which rules either prove indeterminate, or are confronted with exceptional cases that call for executive intervention outside the framework of rules. Sensitivity to political context requires not derogations from rights, but respect for the autonomy of political processes.     

Understanding institutional change: Fiscal management in Local China

As China's economy continues to grow, it wants to expand its markets and secure reliable supplies of resources in support of its economic development. Resource diplomacy therefore becomes a prominent feature of its modernisation diplomacy. In turn, many African governments perceive political and economic ties with China to be an important asset, which strengthens their international bargaining power, especially vis-à-vis Western governments. African countries are also depicted as China's reliable political and economic partners, though one can hardly afford to be optimistic regarding Africa's peace and development in the future. Many small African governments have been switching diplomatic recognition between Taipei and Beijing for economic assistance too. Chinese leaders have no intention of engaging in diplomatic and strategic competition with the USA and the European Union in Africa, but they certainly will not co-operate with Western governments in helping Africa because they want to push for multipolarity.     

Everyday disasters,stagnation and the normalcy of non-development: Roghun Dam,a flood,and campaigns of forced taxation in southern Tajikistan

This article conducts a comparative analysis of a catastrophic flood that hit the Kulob region of southern Tajikistan in 2010, and the government of Tajikistan's campaign to gather money to build the Roghun dam and hydropower station. It advances the notion of ‘everyday disasters’ in order to explain the imprecise boundaries between major catastrophic events and more mundane dimensions of the everyday as experienced by residents of Kulob. The article seeks to shed light, firstly, on the processes that underpin both Kulob residents’ experiences of stagnation and the normalization of non-development, and, secondly, on the ways in which Kulob residents joke and ‘do’ cunning/cheating whilst dealing with disastrous events in order to cultivate an everydayness that is worth living.     

经济危机、社会政策和经济发展:俄罗斯的经验

苏联解体之后,俄罗斯的社会政策保持了基本的连续性。尤其是叶利钦之后的俄罗斯,政府对社会保障和改善民生进行了巨大的投入,居民收入的增长和生活的改善非常明显。经济危机爆发之后,俄罗斯反危机政策更是赋予了社会政策以特别的使命,不仅缓解了危机的烈度,也起到了社会稳定器的作用。俄罗斯社会政策解决了国家长期发展需要面对的两个重要问题:一个是国家长期发展的人力资本积累问题,另一个是社会扩大再生产的可持续性问题。     

French Africa policy: Sarkozy's legacy,and prospects for a Hollande Presidency

This article assesses the record of French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Sub-Saharan Africa. It finds that significant reforms were made to France's role on the continent, most notably in the re-structuring, and reducing, of France's military presence. However expectations of less military intervention were met, as the French armed forces have been active in three very different crises — in Côte d'Ivoire, Chad and the West African Sahel. Equally, Sarkozy did not make a clear break with past practices of support for undemocratic leaders, nor did he put an end to the exceptional status of Africa in French diplomacy. The article goes on to consider African perspectives on France's role, both popular resentment and elite level strategies. Finally, it provides a preliminary assessment of French policy in the first 100 days of Francois Hollande's presidency.     

Access to party positions and preference formation: a field experiment

Abstract: Surveys are sometimes used to assess preferences towards policy issues that are remote from experience and that have never been publicly discussed. How do these preferences of isolated survey respondents compare with preferences expressed by voters who have access to advice from competing political parties? I address this question by conducting a field experiment with a sample of the general public in which I experimentally control the subjects’ access to the actual positions of competing parties and interest groups on specific novel policy propositions. Access to party positions decreased approval of the proposed environmental policy among right‐wing voters by over fifty percent, and this effect was similar for different educational groups. When voters had access to party positions, their policy preferences were more consistent with their general political orientation. I conclude by discussing implications of these results for the debate about voter competence and for preference elicitation using surveys.     

Democratic theory with critical intent: reply to Newey

My critical assessment of competing views on the marching controversy at Drumcree is found wanting by Glen Newey for at least three reasons. The Habermasian approach I adopt is alleged to be motivationally deficient, politically ineffectual and blind to its own decisionistic partiality. Here I indicate that the force of Newey's critique is neutralised once one attends to the important differences between Habermas' moral theory and his discourse theory of law and democracy. I argue, furthermore, that Newey's critique is insufficiently attuned to the institutional context of my argument, and that his line of reasoning has troubling political implications.