The local impacts of large-scale land acquisitions: a review of case study evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) are controversially discussed with respect to their local impacts. On the one hand, they are regarded as an opportunity for employment creation and a transfer of knowledge and technology, which enhances productivity and output in agriculture. On the other hand, they are said to impair food security and to foster land conflicts and environmental degradation. Despite the existence of numerous case studies, systematic evidence on the impact of LSLAs on local communities is not available. In this paper we review the existing literature in order to provide a summary of the characteristics of LSLAs and of the impact they have on local livelihoods. We find that while positive effects arise through employment creation and the provision of public goods and services, these benefits are offset by inadequate compensation, land conflicts, and environmental degradation. Overall, most case studies find a negative impact of LSLAs on local livelihoods.     

The ‘ballot and the brick’: protest,voting and non-voting in post-apartheid South Africa

Over the last decade, protest has become an enduring feature of the post-apartheid political landscape. Despite this wave of protest, the African National Congress (ANC) has largely retained its dominant status. The endurance of the ANC’s electoral support in spite of the high levels of protest has led Susan Booysen to conclude that protests in South Africa form part of a ‘dual repertoire’ of political contestation. She argues that protests are used to signal grievances to the ANC between elections but that, ultimately, people remain loyal to the party of liberation. This article interrogates Booysen’s claim through advancing an analysis of voting district and ward-level data in protest hotspots. The article highlights weaknesses in the methodological base of Booysen’s thesis. By analysing the support for the ANC amongst the estimated eligible voting-age population, this article suggests a different relationship between voting and protesting in post-apartheid South Africa.     

Security culture,transnational challenges and the Economic Community of West African States

This special issue explores how one particular regional organisation, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), has defined certain transnational issues as security threats and how it has addressed them. In this introductory article, we begin by providing an overview and analysis of some of the most important transnational security challenges facing West Africa. Specifically, we discuss some of the problems raised by cross-border insurgencies, health challenges, organised criminal activities, terrorism and environmental degradation. We then examine the different levels at which actors have responded to these challenges. The section ‘Security culture: shaping the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) response?’ sets out our approach to thinking about the concept of security culture and asks whether it might be relevant to understanding how and why ECOWAS has focused on responding to certain transnational security challenges and not to others. The final section provides an overview of the other articles in this issue.     

Moving beyond a donor-recipient relationship? Assessing the principle of partnership in the joint Africa–EU strategy

ABSTRACT

The Joint Africa–EU Strategy (JAES, 2007), aimed to break with the traditional donor-recipient relationship between the EU and Africa and to develop a true partnership. This paper investigates whether the JAES has succeeded in this aim. Particularly, it focuses on the principle of equality, defined as a situation where the more powerful partner does not impose its will on the less powerful partner. Empirically, it investigates the thematic partnerships on peace and security and democratic governance and human rights. Based on a review of primary and secondary literature and 32 expert interviews, the paper argues that the EU has overall treated its African counterparts as equal partners in these thematic partnerships, namely by respecting ownership and jointly deciding on what to discuss in the partnership. Nonetheless, divergences based on differences in interests and values have in some cases led to the perception from African partners that the EU did not treat them as equals.     

Short term interests,long term perspectives: Balancing South Africa's peace and security approach in the EU–SA Strategic Partnership

ABSTRACT

South Africa’s peace and security outlook in the EU–South Africa Strategic Partnership has been guided by the content and substance of the founding document, which incorporates an interdependent approach to development. For South Africa, engagement in the EU–South Africa Strategic Partnership is framed by its historical background, its identity and the content of its foreign policy. South Africa's foreign policy in particular adopts an integrated approach to securing the state within its surrounding regional and continental geography. This article reviews South Africa's approach to peace and security, in the context of the strategic partnership. The article argues that, overall, South Africa's definition of peace and security is compatible with that of the EU; however, Pretoria's vision of how it provides peace and security has naturally changed in line with the varying international circumstances in which it has found itself. While this has proved difficult at times to reconcile, peace and security collaboration in the strategic partnership has managed to remain intact.     

A mob for hire? Unpacking older women’s political activism in Kyrgyzstan

This article explores the politics of older women in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, who have emerged as informal leaders in urban neighbourhoods to ‘speak for the poor’ to the state. Their mediating role is crucial for understanding community micro-politics, women’s political agency and more broadly state–society relations in the post-Soviet context. Drawing on in-depth interviews with older female informal leaders, the paper examines their political legitimacy and modes of mediation with the state and elites. Using Bourdieu’s concepts of political capital and ‘double dealings’, the paper argues that older women are important informal mediators, whose representational practices involve communal leadership, protest activism, bargaining and vote mobilization. Their multitasking roles are necessitated by their legitimation struggles and elites’ strategies of state capture. The article challenges the dominant media representation of older women activists as ‘a mob for hire’ and offers a more nuanced account of older women’s politics, addressing a blind spot in the literature on politics in Central Asia.     

‘An act of faith’ or a new ‘Brown Empire’? The dismissal of India’s international anti-Racism, 1945–1961

At the inaugural UN session in 1946, an Indian-sponsored resolution was passed with a two-thirds majority against South Africa’s racist treatment of Indians. India continued its activism over racism and apartheid throughout the 1950s, though the issue was increasingly seen as a painful yearly ritual. Still, Indian diplomats persisted in raising the issue every year, despite diminishing results. The British settler-colonies were particularly offended by India’s campaign, as it challenged the discursive justification for their existence. They rejected what they saw as India’s emotional, hypocritical, even imperialist, campaign against racism. By tracing the construction and rejection of anti-racist politics, we examine the dismissal of racism as a ‘legitimate’ international issue.     

Compromising coalitions and duplicitous diplomacy: US support for Tajikistan after 9/11 and its security implications

This article investigates the development of democracy in Tajikistan and analyzes what has earned it the most international acclaim: its secular-Islamic governing coalition. The investigation reveals a compromised and illegitimate coalition that, with American collusion in local regime repression, poses great dangers to international security. The article argues that government repression, leading to increasing radicalization, combines with foreign aid to damage long-term democracy potential in Tajikistan but also works against global security interests by creating doubt about American intentions and possibly allowing a concomitant rise in Islamic radicalism.     

In Search of Alternatives: The Making of Grassroots Politics and Power in Argentina

This article analyses ethnographically the reconfigurations of the state and relations of power through their dynamic interactions with subaltern alternatives that emerged in the 2001 uprising in Argentina. In this regard, it counters influential interpretations of these events articulated within John Holloway’s framework of ‘anti‐power’, which ignores the reconstruction of the state, and rank and file trade unionism. The article concludes that intensified class and political struggles in the region offer new spaces for contesting hegemonic reinventions of populism and ‘top‐down’ socialism in Latin America.     

Political culture,state elites and regional security in West Africa

This article analyses the dominant patterns of political culture among West Africa's state elites in an attempt to understand what standards, beliefs and principles they cherish. We suggest that although there are significant differences across the region's states, the dominant political culture can be characterised as neopatrimonial, that is, systems based on personalised structures of authority where patron–client relationships operate behind a façade of ostensibly rational state bureaucracy. In order to explore these issues the article proceeds in four parts. After providing a definition of political culture and why it is an important topic of analysis, we examine the central characteristics of the political culture held by state elites in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) region. The section ‘The Nigerian factor’ briefly discusses some of the malign effects that this culture has had upon governance and political economy issues in the regional giant, Nigeria. The final section explores whether the region's elites are living up to their own claims that they are embarking upon a serious attempt to engage in state reconstruction or are instead simply searching for alternative ways to sell their more traditional concern with regime protection. We conclude that, without a fundamental recasting of the political culture guiding the region's elites, a security culture that prioritises democracy and human security is unlikely to emerge within ECOWAS.