Justifying military intervention: Yemen as a failed state

The Saudi-led military intervention into Yemen began on 26 March 2015, and it has largely been supported by the international community despite resulting in the world’s largest current humanitarian disaster. The paper explores the emergence of the failed state concept, particularly as it has impacted the norm of sovereignty. It shows how being defined as a failed state can undermine the norm of sovereignty. This article argues that Saudi Arabia has utilised the failed state concept to legitimise its military intervention into Yemen by framing the intervention as necessary to establish a strong executive power and protect the Yemeni people.     

From state socialism to capitalism: The role of class and the world system

While theories of global capitalism have added a new dimension to our understanding of the dynamics of the modern world, a ‘globalisation’ approach to the transformation of the state socialist societies is relatively underdeveloped. This paper studies the role of international and global factors under state socialism and the world system in the pre-1989 period. The paper considers traditional Marxist approaches to the transition to capitalism and criticises the model of state capitalism as well as the world system approach. In contrast, social actors (the ‘acquisition’ and ‘administrative’ social strata and the global political elite)are identified as playing a major role in the fall of state socialism, and were a nascent capitalist class. The transformation of state socialism, it is contended, had the character of a revolution rather than a shift between different types of capitalism.     

The garrison state revisited: civil–military implications of terrorism and security

Lasswell’s original vision of the garrison state was spurred by the increasing militarization of states in the industrial age. The advent of the Cold War seemed to confirm Lasswell’s predictions. In the post-industrial age, conventional warfare and the attendant mobilization of societies seem less probable, but the changing threat of terrorism may lead to a variation of Lasswell’s construct. While states no longer appear likely to evolve into a system of armed camps directed at one another, this article argues that the threat of terrorism may necessitate the garrisoning of society and enhance the role of military and police organizations, as Lasswell warned.     

Capitalism,socialism and economic growth: A post-Keynesian pekspective

I thank Robert Dixon for many comments and suggestions and Michael W. Hughey for editorial remarks.     

The promises and perils of subsidiarity in global governance: evidence from Africa

In the messy world of global governance, the principle of subsidiarity has the potential to order relations between different layers of governance as well as compensate for the legitimacy deficit of global governance institutions. However, subsidiarity has received surprisingly little scholarly attention in the discipline of International Relations. This article therefore seeks to examine the promises and perils of subsidiarity in global governance by adducing empirical evidence from Africa, a region which has authored norms and policies that often contest global norms and institutions. Based on two case studies of pro-democratic intervention in The Gambia and court proliferation at the (sub-)regional levels, the article concludes that while subsidiarity may strengthen democracy and the rule of law at the national level, it may also undermine the rule of law at the global level, as well as dilute fundamental global norms that serve to protect basic human rights. At the same time, subsidiarity provides opportunities for normative innovation, which suggests that more attention needs to be paid to the law-generating effects of subsidiarity and to the Global South as an agent of change in international law and global governance.     

Rose,Orange, and Tulip: The failed post-Soviet revolutions

In 2003–2005, democratic revolutions overthrew the Georgian, Ukrainian, and Kyrgyz post-Soviet authoritarian regimes. However, disillusioned citizens witness today their new leaders creating a Bonapartist regime, entering into open conflict with former revolutionary allies or being forced to accept cohabitation with leaders of the previous regime. This article argues that despite internationally acclaimed civic mobilisation, civil society's weakness seriously affected the three revolutionary processes. These were in fact initiated, led, controlled, and finally subordinated by former members of the authoritarian regimes’ political elite. Finally, the supposedly democratic revolutions proved to be little more than a limited rotation of ruling elites within undemocratic political systems.     

Examining citizen participation: local participatory policymaking and democracy revisited

This article discusses developments in citizen participation and its contribution to democracy since the publication of the original article. It evaluates the continued relevance of the use of a normative framework to assess different forms of citizen participation, nuances some of the conclusions and shows how inclusion and a connection with formal decision-making remain central issues that need more scholarly attention. Moreover, the article shows how the framework has been used in advising councillors and organisers of local citizen initiatives.     

Third World multinationals revisited: A research critique and future agenda

ABSTRACT In this work we test the hypothesis that Israel has a strategic dependency on territorial labour. We also look at the situation of dependency on this commuting labour in both the occupied territories and Israel and, subsequently, examine the strategic impact of the growth in Israeli capital on the future of this labour market.     

Complex political emergencies and the state: Failure and the fate of the state

It is argued that an understanding of the role and nature of the state and of processes of state collapse are vital for understanding Complex Political Emergencies for various practical reasons and for drawing general lessons from particular experiences: CPEs are often rooted in prior state collapse; humanitarian assistance may have to contend with a fractured, ineffective or nonexistent state; part of post-conflict recovery will involve reconstituting the state. Such lessons can only be generalised where there is some degree of shared context and experience. As a tool for facilitating comparisons of like with like and for understanding the inter-relatedness of several factors, a typology of situations is drawn up on the basis of the state and its dynamics and of the origins, forms and trajectory of the CPE and of interventions into it.     

Negotiating interference: US democracy promotion,Bolivia and the tale of a failed agreement

Since 2009 the USA and the Bolivian government have been trying to fix their broken diplomatic relations. These negotiations culminated in 2011 in the signing of a bilateral agreement but, ultimately, failed to establish a basis for mutually acceptable development aid relations. This article analyses these negotiations and suggests a partial explanation that accounts for their dynamics and results. Specifically it shows how the negotiations have pitted Bolivian demands for state sovereignty and mutual respect, based on an egalitarian understanding of inter-state relations, against the US emphasis on common obligations and universal rights, informed by a non-egalitarian notion of liberal hegemony.     

Between class and nation: Ideology and radical Basque ethnonationalism

This article uses the case of the Basque country as an example of the apparently ironic situation where, in the face of the demise of Socialist regimes in Europe after 1989, ethnic nationalist movements pursue an avenue of continued radicalism. These movements, which include political parties, trade unions, youth movements, and other organizations, try to combine a leftist appeal to the working class with a call to support the nationalist demands of a given ethnic group that the movements claim has been oppressed by other groups. The article explores how these movements justify their ethnonationalistic appeals to the working class. It also examines the relevance of these movements to their respective regions and the support that they find within these regions. Lastly, the paper speculates on what direction the politics of their respective regions might take in the future.