Ethnoreligious Politics in France: Jews and Muslims

This article focuses on the relationship between the two major ethnoreligious communities – the Jews and the Muslims – and the state in France, as reflected in lobbying, electoral behaviour, and public policies. It shows how the evolution of that relationship, an aspect of the politics of ethnicity, religion and multiculturalism, has been both a cause and a consequence of modifications in approaches to secularism, communitarianism and affirmative action. Finally, it deals with the question to what extent this development corresponds to a pluralist or corporatist model of politics and argues that changes in the relationship between state and society suggest an evolving accommodationist pattern increasingly similar to that of the United States.     

New Region,New Story: Imagining Mobile Subjects in Transnational Space

This paper investigates the changing relations between citizens and Europe's internal borders by seeing these relations as objects of governmentality of mobilities. It focuses on the particular discursive space of one transnational ‘corridor in the making’, studying how, through practices of visioning and strategy-making, governmental actors make new transnational governmental territories by breathing life into the imagined mobile subjects of these future territories. These mobile subjects play a central part in the politics of emergent transnational governmentalities and in legitimising potential border-crossing infrastructures. In a case study of the COINCO project (Corridor of Innovation and Co-operation), linking Oslo, Gothenburg, Copenhagen, Malmö and Berlin, it is shown how deconstructing imagined mobile subjects reveals the will to power over mobility and sheds light on how governmental practices are remaking European borders.     

Viewpoint: New Ethics for Space Commerce

The space age is likely to be dominated by space commercial activities. As these activities develop, it is important to consider business values, commercial ethics, and trade discipline. The failure to do so could result in space commercial development on the basis of greed for profit and competitive advantage for advancement, as has taken place on Earth. To better prevent this possibility, this article proposes that there is the need to develop a “New Ethics for Space Commerce” based on high standards of business morality and commercial honesty, with moorings in conscious social responsibility and due regard to ecological sustainability.     

Fighting a War in Space: The Case for a Space Innovation Force

Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) is gearing up to face the challenge of a contested, degraded space environment that may degenerate into a full-on battleground. The U.S. space enterprise needs to be ready to not just respond, but dominate. AFSPC’s Space Mission Force (SMF) concept, to “present space forces capable of operating in a contested and operationally limited environment,” is a start toward this goal. Leveraging a historical case study from the air domain, I suggest that the SMF focus on operator training and tactics may be fundamentally insufficient in the event of a conflict in space with a near-peer adversary. To win a war in space, AFSPC must build rapid breakaway capabilities that can asymmetrically rearrange the Space Order of Battle. This work proposes the formation of a top-down “Space Innovation Force” (SIF) to complement the bottom-up SMF. If appropriately empowered, this autonomous flat-management cadre of SIF warriors provides revolutionary technological capabilities that an enemy will be unable to counter in the near term. Establishing such a SIF cadre also encourages retention of talented technical officers.     

Televised Exposure to Politics: New Measures for a Fragmented Media Environment

For many research purposes, scholars need reliable and valid survey measures of the extent to which people have been exposed to various kinds of political content in mass media. Nonetheless, good measures of media exposure, and of exposure to political television in particular, have proven elusive. Increasingly fragmented audiences for political television have only made this problem more severe. To address these concerns, we propose a new way of measuring exposure to political television and evaluate its reliability and predictive validity using three waves of nationally representative panel data collected during the 2008 presidential campaign. We find that people can reliably report the specific television programs they watch regularly, and that these measures predict change over time in knowledge of candidate issue positions, a much higher standard of predictive validity than any other measure has met to date.     

Constraining Political Transformation: The Two Faces of Activist Religious Organizations in the Search for a New Constitution in Kenya

Abstract

Religious organizations are key structural components of Kenyan civil society that have played or continue to play a critical role in socio-political developments. In the last two and half decades especially, religious institutions have been among the principal actors shaping the mechanics and trajectories of Kenya's political order. But religious organizations’ political behaviour, especially in the country's search for a new constitution, was contentious and remarkably inconsistent. There were moments of progressive actions but also behaviour that imperilled progress. This article probes this ambivalence of Kenyan faith groups in the struggles for a new constitution. It is argued that their political behavioural inconsistencies largely reflect an ethnic, class and, to a lesser extent, instrumentalized doctrinal or denominational schism that is ever present in the wider Kenyan society. By analysing how religious leaders and their organizations challenged political elite domination while remaining amenable to its influence, this article illustrates the contradictions of elite pacts in these struggles and how they constrained progressive transformation.     

Space and Diplomacy: A New Tool for Leverage

This essay investigates how United States space systems can be used to directly achieve diplomatic objectives. While space systems are widely acknowledged as vital enablers of terrestrial-based forces, they are often overlooked as a critical component of national power capable of directly pursuing national objectives. The essay presents the Space-Diplomacy model that posits seven facets to the diplomatic power of space assets and shows when they can be effective over the spectrum of conflict: prestige, technology partnerships, access to space services, legal precedent, objective information, presence, and threat of punishment. Therefore, it is in the U.S. national interest to…use the nation's potential in space to support its domestic, economic, diplomatic and national security objectives. Report of the Space Commission During the three decades after World War II ended, on the average, U.S. armed forces were used as a political instrument once every other month. Barry M. Blechman and Stephen S. Kaplan     

协商民主在中国语境下的功能与空间——基于温岭行业工资集体协商制度的考察

社会主义民主巴被确立为中国政治文明建设的发展方向.在我国社会经济体制不断交迁和社会结构多元分化的情况下,选择何种理想的民主化模式,并在中国政治发展不主张政治多元化的背景下,建立一种具有可持续性的长效机制,促进社会和谐发展,成为当前社会主义民主政治建设的一个关键性问题.协商民主的发展,为扩大公民有序化参与,化解各种社会矛盾,维护社会的和谐稳定作了一些有益的探索.浙江温蛉围绕行业工资协商开展的一系列创造性实践,可视为对于协商民主在当代中国所发挥的功能与发展空间问题进行的初步探究.     

Trust in Government Among British Muslims: The Importance of Migration Status

This article engages debates about Muslim integration in Western societies by analyzing trust in government among British Muslims. A central finding of the article is that British Muslims are more likely than Christians to have high levels of trust in government. To account for these outcomes, I highlight the importance of general political satisfaction and political efficacy as opposed to the more specifically assimilation and segregation-related variables identified by the literature on minority attitudes. In addition, I posit that Muslims are more likely to have positive political attitudes because they are more likely than Christians to be migrants and migrants are more likely than natives to have optimistic evaluations of British society. I claim that these migration dynamics help account for much of the attitudinal differences between Muslims and Christians.     

Looking at Muslims: the visibility of Islam in contemporary French cinema

ABSTRACT

Tarr analyses the representation of Islam in five feature films made since 2006 that centre on the changing identities of Muslims in contemporary France. She locates the films within the context of the rise in Islamophobia in France following 9/11 and anxieties about immigration and terrorism, but also in relation to France's troubled postcolonial history and French republican ideology. In particular, the French notion of laïcité (secularism) has given rise to active hostility to any public expression of religious or cultural difference, particularly on the part of Muslims. Cinematic representations of Muslims, and particularly of the children of migrants from the Maghreb, have, therefore, since the mid-1980s, been treated with caution in order not to alienate mainstream Franco-French audiences and to facilitate the second generation's integration into French society. However, the five feature films addressed here—two mainstream popular comedies, Mauvaise foi/Bad Faith (2006) and L'Italien/The Italian (2010), and three independent, low budget, auteur-led, realist films, Dans la vie/Two Ladies (2008), Dernier maquis (2008) and La Désintégration/Disintegration (2012)—offer new narratives that challenge fears of Islam by foregrounding the protagonists' negotiation of their Muslim identities in a French context and, by implication, argue for the integration of Islam as a legitimate referent of French identity. However, their construction of Islam does not extend to positive representations of young veiled women, and they thus still risk confirming the oppressive majority view that certain practices associated with Islam, such as the wearing of the veil, are incompatible with the secularism of the French Republic.     

A New US-Sino Space Relationship: Moving Toward Cooperation 1

Since the late 1990's the United States has maintained a strict policy of no cooperation with China on space activities. The reasons for that are several, including the desire to inhibit the development of dual-use technology considered potentially threatening to the United States and political reluctance to work with a communist country. Increasingly, however, it has become clear that policy is not constraining China from dual-use technology development and that the policy overall may be detrimental to U.S. security interests. Therefore a policy change, from a realistic consideration of circumstances, must be considered.     

Religious policies in post-totalitarian China: Maintaining political monopoly over a reviving society

In the post-Mao era China’s society and religion are both becoming increasingly pluralistic. State policies toward religion are also evolving. Views of state-society relations as “totalitarian” exaggerate the state’s control; the civil-society approach overestimates society’s autonomy. This paper explains the state’s religious policies in terms of a “post-totalitarian” frame of reference. Religious organizations and the Communist Party share a reliance on ideology and organization to operate and survive, making them potential rivals. As a shrewd monopolist of organizational and ideological instruments, the state seeks to reduce the threat posed by religion, adopting differentiated strategies toward them as they revive. The state co-opts, tolerates, deters, restricts, or suppresses different religions or sects, according to each specific religion’s organizational strength, doctrine, and compliance with state authority. The state is thus able to prevent the rise of large, independent, and organized religious groups while leaving considerable space for religious activity. Dr. H. H. Lai is a faculty member the National University of Singapore who has researched on China’s state-society relations. The author would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their comments and Mr. Kelly for his thorough and helpful copy editing.     

Democracy in Practice: Muslims and the Labour Party at the Local Level

This article examines the nature of Muslim mobilisations in local party politics and the broader question of political representation in local democracy. Drawing on original qualitative and quantitative survey data, the Muslim presence in local politics in Britain is documented and the nature of some of the tensions concerning their membership of local Labour parties is examined.
It is clear that some concerns over whether the strategies used by Muslims to secure political presence in local politics are legitimate but there are also incumbent problems of discrimination, exclusion and stereotyping. This research suggests that there is a general feeling among Muslim councillors that Muslims have been unfairly accused of illegal practices of recruitment and have been treated unfairly within their local parties to an extent that goes beyond simple party and candidate competition. The article argues that while there is a need to ensure that all participation is democratic the concerns of Muslims themselves and the discrimination they have encountered should be addressed.     

Campus Religious Life in America: Revitalization and Renewal

What role does organized religion play in the life of the American campus? Among both scholarly and popular observers, the university has long been regarded as secular territory. Contrary to the .cphsecularization thesis, the history of campus religion is not a declension narrative. This essay provides an overview of the student religious landscape in America, focusing most of its attention on schools that are not affiliated with a religious tradition. It identifies six signs of religious vitality on campus: 1) the expansion of evangelicalism; 2) the revitalization of Catholic student organizations; 3) the reinvention of campus Judaism; 4) the growth of new immigrant and alternative religions; 5) the beginnings of renewal in mainline Protestant campus ministries; 6) the embrace of spirituality by student affairs professionals. Noting several recent studies on education and religiosity, it concludes that college is not especially damaging to religious commitment.     

Application of a Maritime Framework to Space: Deep Space Conflict and Warfare Scenario

This article considers how Klein’s argument for the use of a maritime framework for space warfare is buoyed by the consideration of deep space conflict both in application to terrestrial wars and in its own right. It describes the greater alignment of Corbett’s work with this deep space medium than with the orbital medium considered by Klein. Through this analysis, it suggests that possible futures need to consider the deep space medium, making Corbett/Klein’s model superior to other possible approaches.     

Neighbourhood Ethnic Diversity and Orientations Toward Muslims in Britain: The Role of Intergroup Contact

A persistent theme in the British and international debates about immigration and diversity is the controversial claim that living in diverse areas has negative consequences for intergroup attitudes and community relations. In the present paper we test this claim by investigating the impact of neighbourhood diversity and self‐reported intergroup contact on orientations (outgroup attitudes and social distance) toward one religious outgroup: Muslims. Respondents were both White British majority (N=867) and non‐Muslim ethnic minority (N=567) residents of neighbourhoods in England which varied in their proportion of ethnic minority residents. We tested both direct and indirect (via intergroup contact) effects of diversity on outgroup orientations toward Muslims. Results show that individuals living in more ethnically diverse areas—regardless of whether they are White British members of the majority or non‐Muslim members of ethnic minorities—have more positive contact with Muslims, with positive consequences for intergroup relations with Muslims.     

Weapons in Space: The Need to Protect Space Assets

Space assets represent the most critical undefended resource of the United States. Though the government has clearly been aware of this weakness for over a generation, little appears to have been done about it. Every day these assets become more critical, and the threats against them are growing in kind. The United States must address these threats in order to prevent potential future issues in regard to military command and control, as well as the American way of life. This article not only outlines threats to space assets but proposes means by which U.S. space assets could be protected. Such protection comes not only from technology, which has been capable for years of doing the job, but from policy choice as well. In regard to policy, increasing research and development for space-based weapons, reevaluating existing treaties, and increasing interagency cooperation are all needed to better protect U.S. space assets.     

The New Enclosures: London,New York City,Philadelphia, and the Transformation of Public Space

ABSTRACT

In recent years, social movements have taken to the streets to protest various forms of economic and racial injustice. However, these attempts to exploit the political opportunities public spaces afford have been compromised by the increasingly private nature of “public” spaces. What has changed is the rise of privately owned public spaces (POPS), areas that appear to be public, but in fact are owned by corporations that prohibit a range of activities, including political protest. This article argues such restrictions of public space are not limited to POPS. Rather, they are just one expression of a far more pervasive phenomenon, novel variations on centuries-old practices by which common or public land has been enclosed. I suggest that four forms of enclosure -for profit, of behavior, of community, and of the public realm- degrade the status of public institutions and insulate private interests from counter-mobilization by groups pursuing egalitarian ends.