Youth,politics and republicanism in the formative years of the state of Israel

The article focuses on the political establishment's attitude toward Israeli youth during the early years of statehood, viewing it from a new angle: regarding young people as a political force reflecting the effects of contemporary social development. I focus on those described as hegemonic youth, members of Israel's social and economic elites. This approach sees the attitude of the political establishment toward the youth as a political expression and suggests an instrumental approach toward youth and the youth ethos in Israeli society as a tool to construct republicanism. Hence, despite publicly having declared the need to strengthen the Zionist youth movements and young national activism, the state's financial and organizational efforts were mainly invested in generating alternatives to the pioneering youth movements, along with the effort to change their ideological and organizational base. These alternatives included ‘good citizenship’ education in schools and informal settings, which were disconnected from the Labor Movement's values and were suited to urban adolescents; the attempts to narrow the dominant position of the parties and the settler movements in pioneering missions, favoring state mechanisms instead; an increase in the state's investments in supplementary education; and the establishment of settings for youth and student clubs.     

Commonwealth Diplomacy and the End of Apartheid

This article recounts the struggle that those fighting for an end to apartheid in South Africa faced and the role that the Commonwealth played in that struggle. The author recounts the contribution of the Whitlam, Fraser and Hawke administrations in Australia in bringing down the apartheid regime but stresses that these leaders chose the Commonwealth as their primary vehicle for change. In the author’s view, the fight against apartheid was, arguably, the finest achievement of the modern Commonwealth.     

Living Beyond Apartheid: The Territorial Ethics of Reconciliation

This essay explores the ethical murkiness of interpersonal reconciliation in the post-liberation era, focusing on the problem of material, and specifically territorial, restitution—an aspect of justice which critics say was the missing component of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. A reading of J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace alongside Bessie Head’s A Question of Power offers a window into the knotty relationship between reconciliation and redistribution, a relationship which, these novels insist, must be accounted for in reassessing directions for the future and defining new political horizons. Theories of post-apartheid interpersonal ethics, this essay argues, are incomplete and unachievable without a territorial dimension. While Coetzee shows territorial demarcations to be the silent shaper of human interaction and a constant snag in the fabric of the “new” South Africa, Head goes outside the boundaries of the apartheid state to envision the ethical restructuring of human relations through transformative practices of cooperative farming. While ethics is fundamentally about a relation to the other, these novels suggest that land distribution must be factored into the interpersonal equation.     

The Commonwealth,Apartheid, and the Role of Micro-states

In the 1980s, the debate surrounding South Africa apartheid consumed the Commonwealth. While superficially this discussion might appear to have had little relevance to the interests of micro and small state members of the Commonwealth, the behemothic nature of apartheid presented significant challenges to such states. This article attempts to assess the varied ways in which South African apartheid affected the diplomatic strategies of micro-states within the political landscape of the Commonwealth, and how it could be perceived as both a hindrance to their agendas, as well a potential tool in the fight to amplify their voices. Micro-states used the egalitarian structure of the Commonwealth and combined it with the prominence of apartheid in international debate to both elevate their status and even to garner support for their own personal concerns. Apartheid’s reframing of the international conversation had broad reverberations which affected Commonwealth responses to a variety of seemingly disparate issues. This culminated in the ejection of Fiji from the Commonwealth in the aftermath of the 1987 coup due to concerns over racial discrimination, emblematising the all-pervasive nature of the apartheid debate within the Commonwealth.     

International Norms and the End of Apartheid in South Africa

This article examines the interface in the post-World War II era between expanding global movements supporting human rights and traditional great power concerns regarding global security, and asks why an international alliance of actors mobilized to pressure the Western powers, particularly the USA, to politically isolate and economically sanction South Africa in the midst of the cold war. We argue that in the international struggle against apartheid, humanist (human rights) ideology emanating from social movements in global civil society clashed with traditional realist ideology regarding what constituted state security in the global polity. The norms of self-determination of nations and anti-racism together fueled global activism and challenged powerful Western states. Facing mass protests and lobbying efforts from citizens, democratic states across the Western world found greater security in upholding their own professed human rights principles than in maintaining close economic ties to the apartheid regime.     

Writings on the margins: Welsh politics

Books reviewed in this article:
Andrews, L., Wales Says Yes
Davies, R., Devolution: A Process not an Event
Osmond, J., New Politics in Wales
Osmond, J. (ed.), The National Assembly Agenda
Taylor, B. and Thomson, K., Scotland and Wales: Nations Again?
Day, G. and Thomas, D. (eds), Contemporary Wales: An Annual Review of Economic and Social Research     

Getting the economic context right: the WWI analogy and contemporary East Asia

ABSTRACT

World War I has become the “go-to” analogy for understanding the contemporary security dynamic in East Asia, especially as it concerns US-China relations and the possibility of war. However, this analogy fails to account for the fundamental changes in economic flows in the current environment, specifically the growth and proliferation of foreign direct investment (FDI). Capital flows were primarily portfolio investments in 1914, while FDI flowed from great powers to secondary, allied states. This is not representative of East Asia today, where FDI flows between possible belligerents in any future conflict and global value chains link states within and across regions. Ultimately, World War I may no longer provide a satisfactory analogy for understanding the impact economic interdependence has on modern war given FDI’s importance in the global economic system.     

Indonesia: The politics of inclusion

Much commentary on Indonesian politics since the fall of President Suharto in May 1998 has suggested that Indonesia's political system has remained just as exclusionary as it was prior to his fall, despite becoming much more democratic and decentralised. In contrast to this view, we argue that Indonesia's political system has become more inclusive, if only somewhat more so. The fall of Suharto and the subsequent process of democratisation have removed key obstacles to organisation by poor and disadvantaged groups and their NGO allies, making it easier for them to engage in collective action aimed at achieving pro-poor policy change. By making attainment of political office dependent on the support of the voting public, many of whom are poor and disadvantaged, these developments have also created an incentive for politicians to pursue policy changes that favour these groups or at least that appeal to them. At the same time, however, we argue that poor and disadvantaged groups have not become major players in the policy-making process. Despite the fall of Suharto and democratisation, these groups continue to lack the resources possessed by other participants in the policy-making process. Whereas the politico-bureaucrats and well-connected business groups have been able to exercise influence over policy by buying support within representative bodies such as parliament and mobile capital controllers, the IFIs and Western governments have been able to exercise influence by virtue of their structural power, poor and disadvantaged groups have had to rely on less potent ways of exercising influence such as holding demonstrations, engaging in lobbying activity and participating in public debates. We illustrate these points with reference to two policy issues: land reform and mining in protected forests. The article concludes by considering the future prospects for inclusive policy-making in Indonesia.     

Mexican teleteatros: the cultural politics of prime-time series

This article focuses on the ideas and discourse of some early television critics regarding the content and direction of television drama specifically teleteatros, the first prime-time dramas in Mexican television. Their opinions reflect the divisions among the Mexican intellectual elite in regard to the meaning of Mexican culture. Professionals and intellectuals advocated for television dramas that would reflect the Mexican culture as cosmopolitan and modern. In their writings and public statements, folkloric aspects such as ranchera music were considered unworthy for the medium. In opposition to the critics was the business class whose interest in television content had two purposes: to develop programs with the widest appeal possible and to represent Mexican culture in a way that did not challenge the discourse of the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) that ruled the country from 1928 until 2000. Thus, television during the 1950s, and into the 1960s, wrangled not only with the usual growing pains of a new technology but also the contradictory perceptions of how Mexico and Mexican culture should be portrayed in television dramas.