Hybrid Politics and New Competitiveness: Hong Kong’s 2007 Chief Executive Election

In recounting Hong Kong's chief executive election in 2007, this paper charts the unexpected appearance of an “unauthorized” candidate and the occurrence of vibrant campaigning. Further, as electoral competitiveness increased, the liberal form of authoritarian rule that has characterized politics in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) began to change in ways that parallel the electoral authoritarianism practiced in Singapore. This paper argues that such change, if regularized and enhanced, may bring greater stability to the HKSAR’s politics, yielding greater legitimacy, popular compliance, and hence, new efficiencies in control. Even so, analysis of the chief executive election shows that this competitiveness was strongly resisted by the central government in Beijing.

Securing Hong Kong’s identity in the colonial past: strategic essentialism and the umbrella movement

ABSTRACT

The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong is the most radical political movement to have taken place in the former British colony since 1967 anti-colonial demonstrations. Using empirical evidence obtained from activists who participated in the Umbrella Movement, this paper explains how Hong Kong’s youth are looking simultaneously to both the past and future to secure their identity in the colonial past even as some hope to achieve ultimate secession from Mainland rule. Racism and anti-Mainland hostilities in Hong Kong are the result of nostalgia and the insurrectionary impulse akin to the millenarianism of social movements founded on suffering and loss that continually seek the recovery of pasts of which they are now deprived. We illuminate how, to young activists, the Umbrella Movement presents hope for a future embedded in the past that remains one the territory and former colony may still aspire toward.     

How to Win a Lost Election: Malapportionment and Malaysia’s 2013 General Election

Abstract

Allegations of electoral irregularities loomed large prior to and following Malaysia’s 13th general election in May 2013. Yet while these irregularities elicited strong reactions domestically and internationally, they are unlikely to have played a significant role in shaping the election’s outcome. Rather than how the game was played, it was the very rules of the game itself that were responsible for returning the United Malays National Organization and its Barisan Nasional coalition to power for the 13th consecutive time, as Malaysia’s electoral institutions quietly transformed the incumbent coalition’s 4% deficit in the popular vote into a 20% winning margin of parliamentary seats. This is largely the result of substantial variation in the size of electoral districts, which had the effect of delivering parliamentary seats to Barisan Nasional with significantly fewer votes than were required by the opposition to secure its seats. This article has two primary aims. First, it seeks to understand better malapportionment in Malaysia by examining the degree of distortions at multiple institutional levels. It demonstrates these distortions to be exceptionally high from a comparative perspective. Second, it seeks to understand better the factors responsible for the size variation of electoral districts, specifically the extent to which the non-partisan factors stipulated in the constitution can explain the variation. Several tests are conducted using new data on the density of voters in electoral districts. The results strongly indicate a partisan element to malapportionment. This creates an institutionalized bias against the opposition and risks increasing polarization in the Malaysian polity.     

How to be a Girl: Consumerism Meets Guidance in the Australian Women’s Weekly’s Teen Segments, 1952–1959

In 1952, when Australian teenagers were beginning to emerge as their own distinct social and consumer group, the Australian Women’s Weekly introduced a column specifically targeted at teens. “Youth Sums Up” was intended for both boys and girls, but by 1954 it had developed into For Teenagers, a monthly lift-out aimed predominantly at girls, which became Australia’s first version of a national teen girl magazine. In this article, I examine the ways in which the Weekly used its teen segments and lift-outs to mould teenage girls into the 1950s feminine ideal, and to sell the products that reflected the attitudes and values of the time to this new and powerful young market. I also demonstrate that while the Weekly’s teen segments promoted a traditional femininity, some of its teen girl readers publicly rejected these notions within the pages of the magazine, giving us a broader understanding of teenage girls, girl culture, and what is usually defined as a purely conservative decade.     

A Last Word: Amendments and Corrections to Indonesia’s Colonial Surplus 1880–1939

This article corrects and amends earlier calculations of Indonesia’s colonial surplus appearing in past issues of the Journal of Contemporary Asia. The final corrected total for 1880–1939, the period of domination by private enterprise, is now put at approximately 27 billion Netherlands guilders. The main reasons for the changes were two faulty methods of calculation used previously and the realisation of several sizeable omissions more from the balance of payments. The new methods of creating estimates of missing items are explained whilst the erroneous method of the balance of payments dealing with undistributed profits is discussed critically. The balance of payments specifies no data at all for undistributed profits although, clearly, they are large. It is also observed that almost all other discussions of the size of undistributed profits deal with the part not mentioned in the balance of payments and are unaware of the hidden element that is included. Our total is almost certainly an underestimate.     

The sketch of Brazil’s grand strategy under the Workers’ Party (2003–2016): Domestic and international constraints

After passage of the 1988 Constitution of Brazil, successive democratic governments worked to build bridges between the nation’s foreign policy and its defence strategy, thus fostering a dialogue among administrations and constituencies under the aegis of the rule of law. It was under the Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff administrations that Brazil laid out a grand strategy, implementation of which was interrupted by the controversial impeachment proceedings of 2016. The argument unfolds from a consideration of Brazil’s development model and domestic politics as key structural variables in analysing the challenges faced in the conception and implementation of its grand strategy. The article is organised into two sections: (1) The sketch of a grand strategy: when Brazil’s foreign and defence policies converged; (2) An ambition frustrated? Or, the impact of Brazil’s development model and domestic politics on the conception and implementation of its grand strategy.     

Thailand’s Deep State,Royal Power and the Constitutional Court (1997–2015)

ABSTRACT

This article challenges the network monarchy approach and advocates for the use of the concept of Deep State. The Deep State also has the monarchy as its keystone, but is far more institutionalised than the network monarchy accounts for. The institutionalised character of the anti-democratic alliance is best demonstrated by the recent use of courts to hamper the rise of electoral politics in a process called judicialisation of politics. This article uses exclusive material from the minutes of the 1997 and 2007 constitution-drafting assemblies to substantiate the claim that the Deep State used royalists’ attempts to make the Constitutional Court a surrogate king for purposes of its own self-interested hegemonic preservation.     

(In)civility and online deliberation: readers’ reactions to race-related news stories

Reacting to an increase in gratuitous racist and sexist comments made by readers in response to online articles, media outlets in South Africa have begun closing down their comments sections, an action that has been repeated many times over across the globe. After a particularly abusive tirade against a young women who wrote an article about being black in Cape Town, Independent Media established an advisory panel in 2014 to investigate the nature of user-generated content (UGC) on their news site, Independent Online (IOL). One of the panel’s recommendations was that what is meant by “uncivil” discourse on online news sites be delineated more accurately and narrowly. Employing computer-mediated discourse analysis, we explore the nature of civility and incivility generated by readers of online news. We look at readers’ posts in response to race-based topics and uncover the complexities inherent in describing both (in)civility and deliberative discourse precisely. Our sample is drawn from the South African newspaper Mail & Guardian Online, one of the few national media establishments that permitted user comments during our data collection phase.     

Domesticating Ivoirité: Equating xenophobic nationalism and women’s marginalisation in Tanella Boni’s Matins de couvre-feu (2005)

Abstract

Tanella Boni, an author engaged with African women’s emancipation, has written cautionary essays since the 1990s decrying the xenophobic nature of government-sanctioned ivoirité in the Ivory Coast. Forced into exile owing to the subsequent strife (2000-2010), she wrote Matins de couvre-feu (2005), an allegorical novel in which the woman’s status as a second-class citizen is equated with that of a foreigner in a xenophobic state. This representation plays on the domestic / public space dichotomy, considered by feminist discourse to be a social barrier to women’s equal citizenship. Drawing on Boni’s own ‘feminist’ monograph, Que vivent les femmes d’Afrique? (2008), this article explores the internalisation of national politics (the public sphere) through the ‘domestication’ of an anonymous female narrator who is placed under house arrest. Thereafter an analysis of Kanga Ba, a character who is a victim of xenophobic nationalism, is used to substantiate the equation of the woman’s social and political marginalisation as being that of the foreigner. The argument concludes that Boni’s representational framework ultimately subverts the very notion of a public / domestic dichotomy through narrative strategies that illustrate the porous nature of both spaces, thus eliding the separation between private and national experiences.     

Jan Christian Smuts (1870–1950) in Context: An Answer to Mazower and Morefield

This article engages with the recent scholarship of Mark Mazower and Jeanne Morefield regarding the South African and Commonwealth statesman Jan Christian Smuts (1870–1950), and in particular with their contention that Smuts was preoccupied with issues of racial superiority, and that this was his main motivator in matters of politics, both internationally and domestically. However, during his lifetime Smuts did not see the ‘Native question’ in the form in which it manifested from the 1950s onwards. It is therefore unfair and inaccurate to over-emphasise the racial question when writing about Smuts. Any historical account of Smuts must keep at least one eye on what Smuts could not have foreseen and must place Smuts in the context of his own time. Progression from smaller to greater wholes – one white nation instead of two language sections; a united South Africa instead of divided colonies and republics; membership of self-governing Dominions in a single British Commonwealth, and membership of international organisations, in particular the League of Nations, and later the United Nations – these were the ends to which Smuts’ energies were unreservedly devoted throughout his career. This is the correct lens through which to view Smuts’ liberal credentials.     

Slipping through the net: everyday agency of youth and the politics of amnesty in Nigeria’s Niger Delta (2009–2015)

Using the 2009 Amnesty in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, this paper explores youth manipulation of neopatrimonial systems of coercion and cooptation. It makes three arguments. First, the violence preceding the amnesty declaration was as much a youth-led insurgency to protest social and environmental justice issues as it was a crisis within Nigeria’s neopatrimonial system. Second, the amnesty programme was designed to re-constitute the collapsed neopatrimonial system, linking youth to patrons both within the Delta and in the broader Nigerian society. Finally, the paper argues that a counter hegemonic process through which youth express their agency by manipulating the amnesty in innovative ways is going on simultaneously. These arguments indicate a need to reconsider familiar tropes of ethnicity, culture and institutional deficits in the way we think about governance projects in post-colonial Africa and the tendency to exaggerate the relevance of the ‘bigman’.     

From Positive Neutrality to Partisanship: How and Why the Armenian Political Parties Took Sides in Lebanese Politics in the Post-Taif Period (1989–Present)

This article examines the policy of the Armenian political parties in Lebanon in light of the Taif agreement in 1989 that ended the Lebanese civil war and granted the Armenian community more political rights. The Armenian parties (Dashnak, Hunchak and Ramgavar) in the post-Taif period were obliged to abandon the policy of positive neutrality that they adopted from 1975 to 1989, and took sides with various Lebanese parties to protect the communal interests that the consociational structure of the state had allowed them. However, the Armenian parties were not united over the goal of maintaining the Armenian bloc inside parliament. As they chose different policies to pursue communal interests they took sides with the ruling majority and the anti-government opposition. The Armenians were criticized by some Christian politicians for their partisanship and were expected to maintain their traditional neutrality in Lebanese politics. It is very likely that the Armenians will return to their neutral policy and support the President and the government once their group rights are protected.     

Capturing Brazilian society in movement: from cordiality to circulation and “spaces between” in Maria Augusta Ramos’s Futuro junho (2015)

ABSTRACT

This article analyses Maria Augusta Ramos’s 2015 observational documentary Futuro junho (Future June), filmed in the Brazilian city of São Paulo in the lead-up to the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Taking as its starting point a connection, established by one of the film’s four main “characters,” or subjects, between Brazilian historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s influential work on cordiality and the idea of circulation between public and private spheres, the article explores how circulation (economic, urban, media, and cultural) is portrayed in the documentary, as well as how it foregrounds both spatial and temporal movements. This is complemented by a discussion of the film’s own circulation through attention to critical reviews which have debated the film’s success in documenting, in a timely way, a national conjuncture characterised by crisis and conflict as well as unpredictability and rapid change. The article argues that by imbricating and intertwining multiple cultures of circulation, and by drawing attention to the varied economic and urban experiences of its characters and the spaces between them, Futuro junho captures a Brazil in flux.     

Women in the House (of Parliament) in Fiji: What’s Gender Got to Do with It?

Abstract

Women in Fiji have made steady, albeit slow, progress in terms of parliamentary representation, with women now holding 14% of seats in the lower house of parliament. Some of the progress has occurred as a result of improvements associated with increased socio-economic development, such as education, female employment and incremental changes in women’s standing in Fiji society. Much of this change, however, has been due to women’s movements and civil society activism becoming more astute to concerns of gender equality and lobbying for women’s political participation. In a country that witnessed four political coups, women have had to create their own path into the public sphere. Despite progress, with an increasing number of women in the 2014 parliament, patriarchy is still a major force hindering women’s political advancement in Fiji. This paper argues that a combination of cultural stereotyping and persistent gendered norms contribute to masculinisation of the political realm and eulogise women’s role in the private sphere. But gender intersecting with ethnicity, age and class create differential levels of political agency for different groups of women in Fiji.     

The EU and the international socialization of gender equality: a case study of Tunisia’s AFTURD and Women and Citizenship (WAC)

The paper explores the impact of EU democracy promotion in the area of gender in Tunisia. It corroborates and adds nuance to the claim found in previous literature that the EU finances those CSOs whose leadership already embraces gender equality. It shows that members of these CSOs are socialized to different degrees and the internalization of gender equality differs depending on age, gender and location. Already socialized members increased their levels of attachment and investment. New CSO members differed in their socialization outcomes. Some undergo a full internalization process, others develop attachment to some features, while they reject those ideas that do not resonate in their value system. Findings also show that the EU successfully fosters local ownership in project management.     

Legitimation of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party: Socialism,Chintanakan Mai (New Thinking) and Reform

ABSTRACT

To date, scholars of authoritarianism have paid much attention to the use of democratic institutions in dictatorships to mitigate threats from both internal and external ruling elites, to co-opt and divide opposition and to solve commitment problems among the ruling elite. However, there have been no in-depth studies of legitimacy in an authoritarian regime. In communist states, opposition and dissent are addressed not through co-optation but exclusion. By contrast, communist parties attach great value for their survival to obtaining legitimacy from the masses. This article argues that the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) has endeavoured to acquire legitimacy since the foundation of the regime through a dialogical configuration of economic reform and socialist ideology. Economic reform and ideological legitimisation always go together, interacting with each other: economic reform requires ideological modification, and ideology defines the framework of reform. In Laos, this paradoxical configuration is necessary for the LPRP to maintain legitimacy while concurrently pursuing an ideal of socialism and reality of economic reform. In making this argument, this article reassesses the nature and significance of chintanakan mai (new thinking), which was not a formal reform policy, as often assumed, but a temporary slogan for promoting economic reforms.     

Climbing to the Rooftop,Falling off,yet Landing on One’s Feet (and Finding a Wallet on the Pavement?): The Electoral Fate of the Greek Ecogreens (2004–15)

After a prolonged period of feeble electoral success, the Ecologists Greens (Ecogreens) managed to break into the Greek political landscape by electing one MEP in the 2009 European election. However, that electoral success proved to be quite short-lived, since in the years to follow the Greek Greens faded away. They were divided and faced the threat of political extinction, only to be resuscitated at the national election of 2015 by allying themselves with the winning leftist Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA). This article draws on archival and survey data to recount the electoral fate of the Ecologists Greens from their creation to their current place in the Greek parliament and government.