Media and Punitive Populism in Argentina and Chile

Punitive populism is common throughout Latin America. It involves political and public opinion support for more police officers, greater police autonomy, and tougher laws to punish crime—options that often perpetuate old police practices and resist police reform efforts. This article critically examines the role of the media in fostering punitive populism by examining the sources used by journalists. Comparing the ‘most different’ cases of Argentina and Chile and drawing on interviews conducted from 2009 to 2015, I argue that the choices made by journalists regarding their sources are affected by neoliberal media policies in a particular way that favours tough‐on‐crime discourses.     

Globalisation, Peasant Agriculture and Reconversion

Abstract — The agrarian issue in Chile is largely defined by the problematic impact, particularly on the peasantry, of the country's continuing integration into the world market. This paper focuses on the shift from a market-led to a state-mediated process of 'reconversion' of agriculture's pattern of production and land use. Although the 'Concertación' governments have designed specific and novel policies aimed at enhancing the productive and transformative capacity of peasant farmers these have not yet been able to reduce the widening technological and economic disparity between capitalist and peasant farming. Thus the future of the peasant economy is far from being assured in an increasingly globalised and competitive environment.     

The Right Turn in India: Authoritarianism,Populism and Neoliberalisation

ABSTRACT

This article argues that the growth of authoritarian forms of politics in India should be seen in the context of a long-term crisis of the state as successive governments have been unable to establish legitimacy for the policies of neoliberalisation that have been pursued since the 1990s. These policies contributed to the fracturing of dominant modes of political incorporation. The previous Congress Party-led government’s mode of crisis management – which it dubbed, inclusive growth – failed to create new forms of political incorporation by addressing long-term structural problems in India’s political economy, such as jobless growth, and gave rise to new problems, such as large-scale corruption scandals. Subsequently, it increasingly developed what Nicos Poulantzas called, “authoritarian statist” tendencies to marginalise dissent within a framework of constitutional democracy. The current Bharatiya Janata Party-led government’s mode of crisis management builds on these authoritarian statist tendencies but has sought to build legitimacy for these tendencies and neoliberalisation through an appeal to authoritarian populism. This seeks to harness popular discontent against elite corruption with majoritarianism to create an antagonism between the “Hindu people” and a “corrupt elite” that panders to minorities.     

Globalisation of Commodification: Legal Process Outsourcing and Indian Lawyers

Legal process outsourcing (LPO) refers to the contracting of legal work from regions where it is costly to perform, such as the US to areas where it can be performed at a significantly decreased cost. LPO has been made possible by the disaggregation of the legal processes into discrete units, each of which can then outsourced to cheaper service providers. Anecdotal evidence suggests a variety of benefits such as financial gains, opportunities to perform “global” work in a corporate atmosphere and acquisition of important skills and training that enhances the prestige of the host country lawyers. In India, which has played a significant role, LPO firms are viewed as important catalysts in the transformation of the country’s highly stratified legal profession based on social identities. This qualitative study, based on 38 interviews, concludes that the corporate culture was an attractive proposition for lawyers from non-elite backgrounds; however, the commodification of offshored work led to a deprofessionalisation of lawyers, reducing them to “glorified clerks.” As a result, LPO firms only provided parallel avenues for career mobility but did not destabilise the local legal market which at its core remains socially networked.     

The Collapse of Fujimorismo: Authoritarianism and its Limits

The resignation of Alberto Fujimori as president of Peru and the convening of fresh elections for 2001 invites a reassessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the Fujimorato . Fujimori's was a hybrid regime, an uneasy admixture of democratic and autocratic elements. While following prescribed election timetables and tolerating certain opposition, this was an authoritarian government. Grounded on a pact with the armed forces and involving a concentration of presidential power, its support was organised along populist lines that took advantage of the weakness of political parties. However, as the regime's demise suggests, the tension between democratic and autocratic elements could never be properly reconciled.     

Seducing the people: Populism and the challenge to democracy in South Africa

Recent ructions in South Africa's ruling African National Congress have been described from time to time in the media as signalling a dangerous shift towards ‘populism’. The article examines this contention. It argues that South Africa is witnessing a significant challenge to the founding precepts of constitutional democracy. This challenge emanates from the (populist) equation of democracy with ‘the will of the people’. The article unpacks some of the implications of reducing democracy to majoritarianism. It provides also an analysis of why populist appeals of various kinds have been so appealing to South African voters 15 years into democracy. The article argues that the challenges that are currently being experienced in relation to democratisation in South Africa have to do with the inherent tension between the animating ideology of democracy, which suggests that power resides with the people, and the practical functioning of democracy, which relies on the devolution of power to the representatives chosen by a section of the people who rely on order and predictability in the polity in order to govern in a workable way. Populist appeals, it is argued, exploit this tension. But what makes it possible for this strategy to succeed is the failure on the part of political elites to engage in the process of building democracy by way of inculcating respect for democratic values.     

Globalisation and the state revisited: A view from provincial Vietnam

The article considers the changing nature of the state in an era of globalisation, exploring the impact on the state of changes in cross-border flows and the rise of private and transnational actors. Presenting data from two Vietnamese border provinces, the article paints a picture of a relatively powerful state, which appears to be extending its reach in some areas. Asking how we reconcile this with increased cross-border flows and the rise of private and transnational actors, the article suggests that where sub-national governments are less integrated in global financial architecture, and where domestic private capital has close relations with the state, the impact in terms of precipitating a diminution of state power is likely to be less. Equally, the article argues that there is a tendency in some of the literature to overstate the influence of foreign private capital and transnational institutions on the state in ways which seem inappropriate away from the capital city.     

A New Islamic Populism and the Contradictions of Development

A new form of Islamic populism has evolved in many parts of the Muslim world. Its emergence is part of the more universal phenomenon of populist responses to the contradictions of globalised capitalism. It is also a consequence of the outcomes of Cold War-era social conflicts and of social-structural transformations in Muslim societies over the last half-century. Specifically, it articulates the rising ambitions and growing frustrations of urban middle classes across the Muslim world, the anxieties of growing urban poor populations and relatively peripheralised sections of the bourgeoisie. Thus representing cross-class coalitions, the New Islamic Populism aims to provide access to power and tangible resources to an ummah conceived to be both downtrodden and homogeneous, though in actuality, increasingly differentiated. This is demonstrated through a discussion of Indonesia, Egypt and Turkey. The article is intended to provide an alternative to analyses that have tended to dominate discussions of Islamic politics over the last decade. These include analyses that emphasise radical ideas transmitted by shadowy transnational networks that threaten the global secular order and those that posit a strong relationship between political moderation and democratic practice but tend to overlook the structural underpinnings of Islamic politics.     

From paradigm shift to retooling: the foundation and maintenance of the AKP

ABSTRACT

This article examines the foundation of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi-AKP) after a paradigm shift and its maintenance through retooling, which involves strategic positionings and tactical manoeuvres within its new paradigm. The positionings and manoeuvres that the party took vis-à-vis states of exception have been imperative for its survival in government. The main argument of the article is that the AKP retooled itself in the face of crises rather than going through a paradigmatic change, that is to say, resorting back to the Islamism of the party elite’s origins, in Kuhnian terms. Through the fluidity of its discourse and the unrivalled charisma of its leader, the AKP has -multiple times- changed the center of gravity of its discourse and policies without having to disarticulate its founding political imaginary. Neither its recently increased nationalism nor authoritarianism was the result of an ideological orientation, just like the democratic reforms in its initial years. They were mostly by-products of survival efforts at power positioning, through retooling.     

Globalisation: A ranking of South Africa and other emerging market economies

Peacekeeping has grown in significance over the years within international relations, yet only a few analyses have applied the frameworks of international relations theory to the issues of peacekeeping. This paper begins with a view to broaden that analysis, and to look at three of the African countries that have contributed significant resources over the years to help restore peace on their continent: Nigeria, Ethiopia and Rwanda. The following article analyses these three countries (and not South Africa, which features a great deal already in the literature) from the point of view of their military capabilities, including sources of training and equipment, after assessing the motivations, challenges and opportunities of each to contribute to peacekeeping in Africa. From that basis, the article assesses the positive and negative impacts these militaries bring to the region's conflicts, as well as the impact of their troops for the sending nations. Lastly, the article assesses the concept of ‘African solutions to African problems’, and argues that this proposition, while worth pursuing, is not a realistic one for peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts on the continent in the short term, mainly owing to funding and equipment restraints.     

全球化、地缘优势与中越关系

在市场全球化和资讯网络化的时代 ,为世界和区域经济结构性调整、新秩序建立、资金和商品技术跨国家跨地区流动提供动力的基本市场元素已经开始转变为一种地域性的集体行为 ,而最具影响力和发展活力的是所谓中心城市。城市网络相信会成为区域集团化的基本动力和手段。跳出国家中心的传统观念 ,建立新的地缘协同发展观应该成为所有地区成员考虑的问题。环南中国海经济共同体的构想以及在此基础上设计的中越新型合作关系更能体现这种时代特征。     

Acts of collusion: myth,media, and the populist imagination in the 2016 United States presidential election

ABSTRACT

This article considers the hypothesis that the 2016 nomination of Hillary Clinton appeared rigged because the Democratic Party persuaded itself that the next step in guaranteeing Obama’s legacy and advancing democratic progress would be the election of the first woman president. Democracy finds logical steps in politics suspicious (even dangerous); consequently, the constructed stability and order begin to falter or appear compromised. In this context, populist figures like Trump may gain political legitimacy by claiming to be outsiders speaking with the voice of the people. Populism, founded on a mythical notion of sovereignty, promises direct access to the democratic experience through four interconnected mythologies (unity, conspiracy, the golden age, and the savior), as evident in the 2016 election. The democratic struggle accordingly extended to Trump’s attacks on the media (as “fake news”) and to the Mueller investigation of collusion between the Trump campaign and foreign actors representing the Russian government.     

Globalisation and the changing management of migrating service workers in the Asia pacific

The advance of globalisation depends in fundamental ways on the continued flows of transnational labour it has stimulated. For semi-skilled and unskilled service workers these flows are managed through numerous controls imposed by states, employers, labour brokers and even by the expectations of their families and communities of origin. This article concentrates on female service labour originating in Indonesia and the Philippines, destined for Hong Kong and Taiwan. It emphasises the collective (family and community-based) nature of the worker's entry into this type of work. It looks at multiple intersecting discourses that shape, construct and attempt to manage the worker's behaviour at different stages of the migration cycle. It gives particular attention to the receiving workplace: the household, and in some instances, the household-based enterprise. The article shows that workers placed in these households are simultaneously governed by contractual relationships and by historically and culturally derived rules reflecting the household's functions as a property-holding, administrative and patriarchal kinship unit. Globalisation has brought far-reaching changes to patterns of labour migration, but the household as a workplace retains important vestiges of these older patriarchal discourses, and ambiguities remain about the emergence of free labour in domestic work.     

东盟面临的危机与挑战

本文探讨了东南亚国家联盟作为一个组织机构在这次亚洲金融危机中所起的作用。从各个国家来看 ,成员国们采取各种措施加强对银行的管理 ,加大金融交易的透明度 ,鼓励竞争 ;从双边关系来看 ,东南亚国家联盟成员国们对受影响最严重的国家 ,尤其是对印度尼西亚进行了援助 ;从国际方面来看 ,东南亚国家联盟成员国们共同呼吁发达国家继续开放市场 ,在重新谈判债务问题时更灵活些 ,在实施改革计划时要注意保护贫穷阶层的人士。本文追踪了在一系列会议上东南亚联盟的初衷 ,但是最后得出结论认为现有的经济合作项目有待进一步扩大合作领域 ,进一步加强责任感。     

Politics and the Price of Rice in Thailand: Public Choice,Institutional Change and Rural Subsidies

Despite the Thai state’s long record of rice market interventions, historically politicians failed to leverage rice subsidies in their pursuit of political support, notwithstanding the large number of farmers in the country. Since Thaksin Shinawatra’s election in 2001, though, each government has subsidised rice producers, although at varying degrees. What explains this change? This article traces the four-decade history of rice price support programmes. It is proposed that these policies be interpreted through the dual lens of institutionalism and public choice theory, demonstrating how political institutions have shaped incentives for politicians to cater to different constituencies. During the pre-1980 period, under authoritarian regimes, Thai leaders applied rice price policies to benefit urban consumers and the government. From 1979 through 2000, following implementation of the block-vote system, rice interventions were used to appeal to voting intermediaries like rice millers, as bargaining chips among competing parties and as stopgap measures to diffuse farmer protests. Since 2001, responding to the electoral system created by the 1997 constitution, politicians have appealed directly to the voting public, seeking broad-based support via subsidies. The analysis highlights the impact that shifting institutional incentives have on politicians’ actions and thus the emergent policies.     

“Don’t tell me this isn’t relevant all over again in its brand new same old way”: imagination,agitation, and raging against the machine in Ali Smith’s Spring

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the third novel in Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet, Spring. Using Achille Mbembe’s Necropolitics as a conceptual frame, I analyze Smith’s rendering of a Britain grappling with Brexit in times of transnational populism. As with Autumn and Winter, Smith’s prose is saturated with intertextual borrowings from pop and “high” culture, also interrogating the links between “nanoracism” and the “immunity and community” knot (Dillet). This paper reads Spring alongside Smith’s contribution to and advocacy of the Refugee Tales project regarding the diverse discourses surrounding migration, xenophobia, and indefinite detention. Smith’s writing traces the darkness of our populist present with its rhetorical and material violence, as well as the possibilities for creative response and resistance. I argue that her seasonal quartet to date and her work with Refugee Tales aesthetically and ethically defend the principle that human dignity, both individual and collective, rests on the ability to tell stories.     

Populism,privilege, and democracy in Henry James’s The Bostonians: encounters with community

ABSTRACT

Unusually for Henry James, The Bostonians (1886) addresses notions of “the people,” popular movements, and socio-political reform. Foregrounding the position of women, the narrative searchingly, if ambiguously, appraises conditions in the United States of the 1870s, following the Civil War. As Olive Chancellor (a Boston feminist) and Basil Ransom (a conservative Southerner) vie for possession of the malleable orator Verena Tarrant, the text explores the failure of “union” in both its personal and political senses. The populist-feminist rally concluding the narrative highlights the prevailing challenges to democratic possibilities. Community in its traditionally cohesive guise has metamorphosed into the “inoperative community” theorized by Jean-Luc Nancy. Mutually dependent, monadic “singularities” converge in tense encounter. “Community,” according to Roberto Esposito, inevitably separates such vulnerable “singularities” from themselves and others through the play of social relationality. The novel’s democratic orientation is nonetheless sustained by its capacious form and the hospitable engagement of its readers.     

The Monetisation of Consent and its Limits: Explaining Political Dominance and Decline in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Malaysia’s 14th General Election in 2018 toppled the Barisan Nasional government after six decades in power. Barisan Nasional’s longevity was due to its performance legitimacy and a capacity to manipulate electoral mechanisms. However, it was the use of money in eliciting consent that led to a political change. This article traces how sustaining the dominance of the Barisan Nasional under Najib Razak used a strategy which we term the monetisation of consent. However, when monetising consent loses its efficacy, political dominance is challenged. We discuss why and how manufacturing consent through the use of money has its limits when regime legitimacy is challenged. Intense political competition on the electoral terrain from 2008 and the multiplication of Malay-Muslim political parties induced Najib’s greater personal grip on state funds to gain political support. This resulted in the Najib regime’s kleptocratic turn. Beyond the disbursement of largesse to political power brokers and business elites, his government monetised consent as a populist strategy. The reduced efficacy of electoral manipulation made the monetisation of consent imperative for regime survival but the use of money and unpopular fiscal policies, which deprived citizens of disposable income, led to a legitimacy crisis and the Barisan Nasional’s defeat.     

‘There Can Be No Revolution without Culture’: Reading and Writing in the Bolivarian Revolution

Under Hugo Chávez's ‘Bolivarian Revolution’, the government made itself present in all stages of literary production, applying the official idea of reading and writing as ‘socialist practices’. The Bolivarian government envisaged a popular counter‐hegemony, courting popular support while delegitimising cultural elites and reinforcing class tensions. Bolivarian cultural policy is anachronistic in an age of global literary markets, while the emphasis on a national collective of writers over internationally promoted representative writers of the revolution is particularly radical.