The Super Confederacy: The Military in Fiji’s Politics

Abstract

The military has dominated Fijian politics for more than two and a half decades. After independence Fijian democracy was built on the façade of chiefly elite rule, the legacy of a colonial past. Since the passing of the Sukuna/Mara era, the patron–client relationship between the ruling elite and the military elite has been inverted. The military has since redefined national politics, with Maj. Gen. Rabuka then Rear Admiral Bainimarama becoming prime ministers, Fijian style, after leading successful coups. In the 2014 elections 10 military officers were elected to parliament under a newly decreed constitution. This paper analyses how the military elite once subservient to civilian rule has expanded its role as the major actor in Fiji’s politics.     

The Malta Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting: The Commonwealth’s New Beginnings?

This article argues that the Commonwealth needs to speak with a distinctive voice on a range of issues confronting the world, failing which it will lose its relevance. This calls for inspirational and strong leadership and a clear focus on the organisation’s charter. Among the concrete proposals suggested by the article for the reinvigoration of the Commonwealth is the establishment of a Commission for Democracy, the Rule of Law and Human Rights inspired by the model of the Council of Europe Venice Commission.     

The Mixed Blessings of National Integration: New Perspectives on Development in Vietnam’s Northern Uplands

The ethnic minorities of Southeast Asia’s uplands, including those of Vietnam, tend to be portrayed as excluded from national society and locked into poverty, environmental degradation and positions of subjugation. Recent debates about Southeast Asian uplands-lowlands relations have questioned this discourse by highlighting the diversity of experiences, the agency of ethnic minority groups, and uplanders’ strategies of state evasion. This article finds that the integration of the uplands into the Vietnamese polity should be understood as an ongoing struggle between nation-building and state expansion characterised by grand visions on the one hand, and incomplete policy implementation and uplanders’ ambiguous stance towards integration on the other.     

The More Assertive and Pragmatic New Energy Policy in Putin’s Russia: Security Implications for Northeast Asia

The article examines Russia’s New Energy Policy (NEP) and its impact on Northeast Asian security and the development of the Russian Far East. In contrast to analyses highlighting competition between China and Japan for Russian resources, to the contrary it is argued here that greater cooperation among consumer states in Northeast Asia would be beneficial for Russia. Although the NEP has resulted in changes in the composition of foreign investors in Russian energy projects, the author suggests that Moscow is interested in multinational cooperation in the energy sector because it would help diversify the regional energy market and contribute to the development of the Russian Far East and eastern Siberia.

The Trump Administration and Japan: Challenges and Visions for Japan’s Foreign and Security Policy in the New Era

It is possible that Donald Trump’s success in the US presidential election of November 2016 will touch off the greatest transformation in world politics since World War Two. This is because, for the first time, the presidency of the United States—a country that since World War Two has consistently upheld the liberal world order—has been won by a man who asserts that the US national interests will take precedence over international cooperation.

If so, Japan could be one of the most profoundly affected countries. Japan has thus far accepted its status as a junior partner within the US security framework and—without any significant military power of its own—has devoted itself to economic development.

Although it is difficult to predict what Mr. Trump’s policies will be, there is a possibility, based on the statements he has made to date, that he will be calling for Japan to become more self-reliant. Although his comprehension of the Japan-US security arrangements is fraught with misconceptions, there is ample possibility that he will ultimately opt to maintain the current Japan-US security framework. However, given that the average defense expenditure of NATO countries is 2% of their GDPs, and that the average expenditure of OECD countries on official development assistance (ODA) is 0.7% of their GDPs, it is highly questionable whether Mr. Trump will approve of Japan’s level of defense spending (less than 1% of its GDP) or of its level of spending on ODA (approximately 0.2% of its GDP).

It would not be such a bad thing for Japan to become more self-reliant in terms of security. It is almost unnatural for Japan to maintain this relationship as it is, in the form that it has taken since before Japan’s postwar reconstruction. However, in the context of international relations in East Asia, it has long been taken for granted that this is Japan’s basic stance. Changing this will be no easy task—either domestically or in terms of Japan’s relations with neighboring countries.

In these respects, the authors of this paper decided to consider the question of how Japan should develop its foreign and security policy, and to offer some proposals in this regard.     

The ‘Forgotten’ People: Turkey's Artisans in the 1950s

This paper intends to shed light into a social class, the Turkish artisans who were ignored by the mainstream historiography for a variety of reasons. Yet, they were the ones who formed the bulk of the middle-class in the following decades, helped shape the contours of Turkish politics and were seen as responsible for propogating the ideology of conservatism. In fact, without a thorough analyses of this social class, one could hardly grasped the evolution of the so-called modernization process Turkey underwent for the last half a century or so. By using parliamentary records, periodicals, newspapers and memoirs of the time as well as artisans' own journals, we trace the social and ideological demands of the Turkish artisans of the 1950s and bring about a comparative perspective by using the historical experiences of other countries. We argue that their conservatism should not be confused with the modern day conservatism since they represented a version of a peculiar form of progressive ideas and demands together with pro-Western and pro-capitalist inspirations.     

Church Finances in the Colonial Age: The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem under British Control, 1921–25

The British Mandatory government established in 1921 a commission in order to control the finances and the vast landed property of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem. This paper sketches out the commission's early activity, arguing that its significant powers and its operation at the expense of the clerical apparatus were not so much grounded on the need to facilitate the recovery of the historic church, but were in fact determined by the socio-political developments, at a local and international level, as well as by the necessity to strengthen the British authority in Palestine during a fluid period for public order.     

Representation in the English House of Commons: The New Boroughs, 1485–1640

SUMMARY

In this paper Norman Ball re-examines the well recognised process of enlarging the House of Commons in the Tudor and early Stuart periods by the creation of new, or the revival of old parliamentary boroughs. The usual explanation of the phenomenon has been that it met pressures from local gentry for wider access to parliamentary seats. The paper questions this interpretation, noting the new seats often appeared in areas that were already well provided with borough places. On the basis of a geographical analysis of the new boroughs it is shown that there was a preponderance of creations in the lands of the two royal duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster. It goes on to suggest that the main motive behind the creations was the need of the crown and its advisers to find places for reliable members who could assist the royal business managers in carrying through an expanding volume of parliamentary business.     

The ‘Regulatory State’ in Higher Education: Assuring Quality through New Modalities of Control in Brazil

The Brazilian Higher Education (HE) sector, following a global trend of rapid transformation, has undergone marked changes over the past two decades. These changes have involved the design of quality assurance tools as instruments for regulatory governance. In presenting an overview of the recent history and characteristics of quality assurance in the Brazilian HE sector, this paper contextualises the Brazilian experience according to broader conceptual frameworks and discusses how and why regulatory governance in this sector has so radically changed.