Proliferation of neopatrimonial domination in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Literature on Turkey’s post-2011 authoritarian turn – especially after the eruption of the 2013 nationwide Gezi Protests – adopts modern concepts such as ‘dictatorship’, ‘authoritarianism’, ‘totalitarianism’, ‘one-party government’, ‘party-state fusion’, and even ‘fascism’ mainly in order to pin down the nature of the Justice and Development Party (AKP, Turkish acronym) or depict the current character of Turkey’s regime. Through engaging the pre-modern concept of neopatrimonialism, which is derived from Max Weber’s concept of patrimonialism, this paper argues that Turkey’s encounter with authoritarianism is deeply associated with the proliferation of neopatrimonial domination, into which the legacy of patronage politics, fracture of security power, and the metastasis of crony capitalism have been conflated. This article argues that neopatrimonial features have always, to a degree, marked state-society relations in Turkey. Furthermore, this article suggests neopatrimonial characteristics started to dominate Turkey’s modern legal structure under the AKP, which led to a state crisis culminating in the 2016 attempted coup. However, despite the fact that neopatrimonialism cannot be argued as a pathological deviation from modern-legal domination, this paper concludes that tension exists between the crony capitalism-based economic model of neopatrimonalism and Turkey’s decades-long market-based capitalism.     

The “Greening” of China: Progress,Limitations, and Contradictions

China’s rapid economic growth in the last three decades has been fuelled by energy-intensive investment and manufacturing, which have become instrumental for China to become the world’s largest economy based on purchasing power parity, and for the United States and the European Union to have access to cheap consumer goods. China’s development strategy, however, has generated a serious domestic environmental crisis, which has also accelerated the global climate emergency. In addition, the 2008 economic crisis led to a collapse of China’s external demand, inducing the leadership to support domestic investment – including investment in environmental projects – as an alternative source of effective demand. By setting ambitious green targets and by adopting strategic policy initiatives, China has become the world’s largest investor in renewable energy. Yet China remains the world’s largest coal consumer and the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitter. The Chinese economy nears a crossroad: will it be able to maintain its commitment to green energies or will it fall back to its historical reliance on fossil fuels to sustain growth? This article evaluates the interplay between China’s economy and environment over the course of the reform period, and investigates the set of forces that impinge upon China’s ecological future.     

De-Europeanisation in Turkey: The Case of the Rule of Law

Abstract

This article investigates the political dynamics shaping the post-2010 ‘de-Europeanisation’ of Turkey’s judicial system, particularly regarding judicial independence and rule of law. The analysis suggests the limits of conventional Europeanisation accounts emphasising causal factors such as European Union (EU) conditionality and the ‘lock-in effects’ of liberal reforms due to the benefits of EU accession. The article argues that the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP’s) bid for political hegemony resulted in the reversal of rule of law reforms. De-Europeanisation is discussed in terms of both legislative changes and the government’s observed discourse shift.     

Transforming the Unbound Elephant to the Lovable Asian Hulk: Why is Modi Leveraging India’s Soft Power?

Prime Minister Modi’s administration has renewed emphasis on highlighting India’s soft power resources such as yoga, democratic values, spirituality, etc. Modi has also launched an aggressive public relations and marketing campaign to boost India’s economic growth. This article examines the role and importance of soft power resources in Modi’s foreign policy. The author argues that Modi is applying a two-pronged strategy of simultaneously adopting an aggressive sales pitch to boost India’s economic growth and leveraging India’s soft power to mitigate potential threats emanating from the country’s growing hard power. While soft power resources generally supplement a state’s hard power towards achieving foreign policy goals, Modi is using India’s soft power to draw attention away from the state’s rising military power. While India is enhancing its existing military power, Modi is engaging India’s neighbours and other great powers to ensure that its rise is intended to be peaceful, non-threatening and entirely benevolent. This is in stark contrast to how Asian states as well as the world perceive China’s rise. This article also questions the effectiveness of this strategy and predicts that this strategy should bode well for India in maintaining its international reputation and relationships.     

中国和平崛起与新时期对外关系--访哈佛大学中国基金会主席柯伟林教授?

美国著名的中国历史学家柯伟林教授对当前中国经济发展、中国梦、中国的地缘政治及新时期对外关系提出了一些很重要的见解。柯伟林认为，中国经济一直是在全球化和国际化的背景下向前发展，中国的地理位置可以让它经济上和平崛起，未来中国经济能够引领全球经济发展。实现中华民族伟大复兴的中国梦必须立足于20世纪中国发展的基础之上。就地缘政治而言，当前中国正处于现代史上最有利的战略地位，中美关系是世界上最重要的双边关系，双方在一些重要领域要坚持合作。     

马克思物质变换思想视阈下的新时代绿色发展探析

马克思物质变换思想是马克思主义生态思想的重要内容,主要内涵包括三类范畴:自然界、人与自然界关系以及人类社会。随着世界绿色发展道路的形成与发展,我国的绿色发展理念进一步贯彻落实,但在践行绿色发展实践中我国依然面临许多突出问题。步入新时代,我国应当基于马克思物质变换思想,在当前从自然界、人与自然之间、人类社会的物质变换现状出发进行具体分析,探索解决我国绿色发展实践受阻和生态困境的现实问题,坚持用马克思物质变换思想推动新时代绿色发展,并立足本国国情,走出一条服务于国家新时代绿色发展之路。     

Camera,Colony, Künstlerroman: Photography in Three Australian Novels

This article traces the practices of photography that have been portrayed in three Australian artists’ novels: Patrick White’s The Vivisector, David Malouf’s Harland’s Half Acre, and Gail Jones’s Sixty Lights. Photography’s shifting status in relation to art, modes of knowledge, modes of production, and methods of relating to space suggest a growing discomfort in the nation’s literary imagination towards colonial art’s mobilisation of the imagination to authorise “sacred” settler belonging.     

Human Rights and Tear Gas: The Question of Carter Administration Officials Opposed to the Shah

Jimmy Carter’s arrival to the White House and Washington’s new focus on human rights caused an early, although subtle, rift between the United States and the Shah’s Iran. The aim of this paper is to explore how the Bureau of Human Rights’ activist approach, under the leadership of the outspoken Patricia Derian, muddied the waters between Tehran and Washington, while using the export of riot control equipment as the spearhead of Carter’s human rights policy abroad.     

雄安新区引领下的河北主动、创新发展研究

京津冀协同发展是一个系统工程,为实现京津冀协同发展这一重大系统工程,河北的发展至为关键。河北必须依托雄安新区,克服自身弱点,借助雄安新区的辐射引领,提升创新能力,加快创新发展,塑造河北成为京津冀联动发展的重要一极。本研究通过深入剖析河北在创新发展中存在的问题,充分挖掘雄安新区发展对河北创新发展的关键作用,以及引领河北创新的路径,最后,提出了相关的政策措施。     

The official art of the Khrushchev Thaw: The Severe Style as an ambassador of the Estonian national school at Baltic art exhibitions in Moscow

In Estonian post-Socialist art history writing, the term ‘national’ has mostly been introduced as a defense mechanism against the Soviet regime. The aim of this article is to indicate that concept ‘national’ also played quite an important role in ‘official’ Soviet cultural politics, especially after Stalin’s death. The processes of cultivating ‘national particularities’ in the arts will be exemplified by the Baltic exhibitions in Moscow in the end of 1950s and 1960s.     

Marks on the city: the impacts of coastline emergence and bombing on Tallinn’s anachronistic pockets

ABSTRACT

With its complex history, Tallinn is a puzzling patchwork of contrasts – old and new, historic and revisionist. Tallinn’s abrupt contrasts in urban form originate largely from two types of historic disturbance: shoreline emergence and bombing. Through an analysis of archival maps and planning documents, this paper examines how natural shifts in the city’s shoreline combined with bombing during World War II to create anachronistic pockets within Tallinn and divergent densities and access to green space within Tallinn’s districts. Little is written in English about the history of Tallinn’s urban development. This paper analyzes Tallinn’s history of disturbance and poses challenges and opportunities to consider in the city’s future development.     

Zur Charakteristik Italiens als „verspätete Nation“. Helmuth Plessners Idealtypus und die Diagnose der Gegenwartslage eines EU-Gründungsmitglieds

Italy’s current crisis conceals a sociological issue that deserves qualified attention: The plurality of European modernity. Starting from a critical assessment of Shmuel N. Eisenstadt’s concept of multiple modernities the paper deals with the internal differentiation of the classical model of European modernity. Plessner’s concept of “belated nation” allows a survey of different components and speeds of modernisation processes. Applying Plessner’s model to Italy’s current situation presupposes however to work out more precisely its ideal typical structure and sociological foundation. Furthermore, the normative bias of Plessner’s study on Germany has to be put methodologically in parenthesis, so that Plessner’s analytical frame can be used beyond its original context. First, the article elaborates Plessner’s model ideal typically and differentiates between its political-, economical-, religious-, intellectual- and culture-sociological issues. In the second step, the implicit references to the sociological work of Karl Mannheim and Max Weber are reconstructed. In the third step, the paper evaluates the fruitfulness of Plessner’s approach with regard to its application to Italy’s current crisis. Concluding it retraces the limits of Plessner’s analysis and indicates which further inquiries are necessary to develop an ideal typical concept of the plurality within the European modernity.     

Terrorist attacks and public approval of the Russian president: evidence from time series analysis

ABSTRACT

This article applies time series analysis to examine weekly data on Vladimir Putin’s approval rating and their dependence on terrorist attacks. I find that minor terrorist attacks with few or no fatalities in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan increase Putin’s ratings, while major terrorist attacks, with more than four fatalities, have a negative impact. There is also evidence that terrorist attacks in other Russian regions reduce Putin’s public approval; however, this evidence is weaker and depends on the model specification. Furthermore, I control for main annual media events with President Putin’s participation: the television Q&A program “Direct Line with V. Putin,” Putin’s address to the Federal Assembly, and a large annual press conference. All three media events increase the president’s approval, with Direct Line having the least effect.     

Tunisian Women at the Crossroads: Antagonism and Agonism between Secular and Islamist Women’s Rights Movements in Tunisia

The recent rise in Islamist-inspired women’s activism is posing challenges to the longstanding secular women’s movements in post-Ben Ali Tunisia. Starting from the conviction that cohesive, cross-class women’s coalitions are better suited to achieve gender justice for women of all walks of life, this article draws on the concept of ‘agonistic pluralism’ (Chantal Mouffe) to understand how Tunisia’s women’s movements can deal with the new, multifaceted conflict in their ranks. Through a discussion of the ‘Dialogue of Tunisian Women’, the grounds for strategic coalition-building and ‘agonistic’ engagement between secular and Islamist women’s rights actors are illustrated.     

Ferrets in the Caribbean: Britain,Grenada and the Curious Case of the Armoured Cars

Abstract

When the Marxist-Leninist New Jewel Movement seized power in Grenada in March 1979 they set about securing and defending their ‘revolution’ against the threat of a countercoup organised by the deposed Prime Minister Eric Gairy. Military aid was quick to arrive from expected allies, namely Cuba and Guyana. Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop also requested arms from Britain and the United States. The People’s Revolutionary Government’s (PRG’s) ties to Cuba and evasiveness over election plans ruled out the US providing any support. Britain remained more open-minded about the PRG’s intentions. Using recently declassified British government documents, this article will examine London’s deliberations over supplying armoured cars to Grenada. It argues that Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials focused on the bigger picture of steering the PRG away from Cuba at the cost of considering how the sale of the armoured cars to the PRG would appear to a wider audience and that the PRG’s increasingly authoritarian behaviour ultimately vetoed the sale.     

The Resilience of Monarchised Military in Thailand

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that conventional notions of Thailand’s military must be re-examined because they misrepresent the military’s role in politics. Instead of examining its material interests, one must also scrutinise the power and legitimacy of Thailand’s armed forces in terms of its connection to monarchy over time. The relationship between monarchy and military represents a “parallel state”, whereas the ideology, rituals and processes within this relationship result in what can be termed a “monarchised military.” The purpose of this nexus is to sustain a palace-centred order from which the military obtains legitimacy. From 1991 until 2014, the monarchised military mostly operated behind a defective democracy, although it occasionally carried out coups to re-assert the palace’s authority. Its more recent political intrusions have enhanced the military’s power on Thailand’s political stage. Civilian prime ministers have unsuccessfully sought to reign in the military, but to no avail owing to the armed forces’ close association with monarchy.     

越南李朝兵制与唐宋兵制关系探析

兵制是一个国家的重要典章制度,同时也是维护国家独立和民族繁荣的有效手段。李朝作为11至13世纪中南半岛上的强国之一,十分重视兵制的建设。由于中越复杂的历史联系,李朝立国后在兵制的设置上借鉴了唐宋兵制,尤其是重点效仿唐宋兵制的军事领导体制、武装力量体制和兵役制度等军事制度。不过,李朝兵制并没有完全照搬唐宋兵制,它既吸收了唐宋兵制的精华,又因地制宜地发展出了符合李朝自身国情的兵制,并增设了新的兵种"象兵"。李朝兵制无论是在平定内乱抑或开疆扩土中,都契合了国家发展的实际需要。反过来,李朝兵制也对宋朝的兵制产生了一定的影响,宋朝也参考了李朝兵制对其兵制进行改革。宋朝兵制在改革中充分借鉴了李朝的军事编制,尤其是"军"这种新的军队编制的创设,成为宋朝改革军队编制的开端。从李朝兵制大力效仿唐宋兵制,再到宋朝亦在兵制建设上借鉴李朝兵制的优点,这种相互学习与借鉴,增进了古代中国与周边国家的关系,也进一步促进了二者之间的相互交融和融合,从而形成了今天的中国与周边国家的文化中你只有我、我中有你的文化格局。     

“Time to Speak Out”: The 1980s Australian Gay Press and Personal Accounts of Living with HIV

This article considers the significance of gay men’s personal accounts of living with HIV or AIDS that were published in the gay press across the 1980s. Editors utilised individuals’ accounts of living with the illness to challenge mainstream media representations of gay men’s physical and emotional demise in the “final stages” of the debilitating illness. Such accounts conveyed the message that it was possible to resume one’s life after receiving a positive diagnosis. Gay men’s personal accounts of living with HIV or AIDS evolved from anonymous anecdotes to articles accompanied by the narrator’s full name and photograph by the end of the decade. This shift is attributed to Australia’s Third National AIDS Conference in 1988, whereby people with HIV and AIDS publicly disclosed their positive statuses. This article locates gay men’s personal accounts of living with HIV in a broader transnational shift towards the visibility of people with HIV and AIDS that was underway at that time.     

Leadership Traits and Ghana’s Foreign Policy: The Case of Jerry Rawlings’ Foreign Economic Policy of the 1980s

This article examines Ghana’s foreign policy-making with reference to internal and external determinants (structural/systemic). Besides these determinants, political actors (primarily, presidents/heads of state) have shaped the country’s foreign policy outcomes, but this field of enquiry (i.e. the individual-level analysis) has not, received much attention in the literature. To enhance the understanding of leadership and personality traits in foreign policy-making, this study draws on the theory of Leadership Trait Analysis to examine Jerry John Rawlings and Ghana’s foreign economic policy in the early 1980s. It argues that the leadership traits of Rawlings to some extent shaped Ghana’s foreign economic policy decisions in the early 1980s.