The ‘basket case’ and the ‘poster child’: explaining the end of civil conflicts in Liberia and Mozambique

Through a comparison of protracted domestic conflicts in Liberia and Mozambique this paper evaluates several standard explanations regarding the roles of leaders, third parties and domestic social forces in resolving or continuing civil wars in Africa. The paper finds that no single account of how peace is achieved is sufficient to explain the continuance of violence in Liberia and the successful attainment of peace in Mozambique. Rather, an explanation that can accommodate the divergent outcomes of conflict in the two countries must combine insights from elite, structuralist and agency‐based approaches. Furthermore, the paper addresses the ways in which the construction of social organisations, particularly women's groups, during wartime affects the direction of donor funding and the shape of reconstruction efforts after the peace is signed. We illustrate our argument by examining the efforts of leaders, third parties and local actors, particularly women, to perpetuate violence or to bring about peace in Liberia and Mozambique, and the gendered contexts in which donor aid is distributed in the postwar period.     

The case of the ‘other India’ and Indian ir scholarship

ir scholarship in India has focused on the borders, territory and sovereignty of the Indian state, overlooking the rich complexity of interior border formation between colonial and independent India. The paper argues that the study of the princely states under the British paramountcy (1858–1947), neglected so far, is valuable to ir scholarship on three grounds. First, in mapping colonial India’s engagement with the outside world, the focus has been solely on British India. The princes were equally participative and perceptive of the outside world. Second, the princely states represent yet another challenge to the Westphalian notion of sovereignty, demonstrating the limited capacity of European categories to understand the ‘non-West’. Third, incorporating the paramountcy system in the genealogy of sovereignty of the Indian subcontinent offers a fresh account of border construction inside the state.     

Debt Politics and the Free Trade ‘Package’: the case of the Caribbean

While much has been written on how powerful institutions have used debt crises to foist free trade agreements on poorer states, this paper explores how the foisting of free trade agreements on poorer states has resulted in debt crises. Part one critiques the common-sense understanding of ‘free trade’ as a mere technical or policy issue, arguing that it is an intricate political, economic and ideological ‘package’ rooted in complex social, historical and cultural forces. Part two explores the role of debt in the free trade package by examining the impact of free trade agreements on the Caribbean over the past decade, during which time the region has experienced growing public and personal debt crises, further fuelled by an aid packages that included millions of dollars of concessional loans. It is argued that the contradictions of ‘free trade’ are mitigated through a ‘debt for trade’ paradigm, which Caribbean states are beginning to subvert through new preferential South–South partnerships.     

The ‘puzzle’ of autocratic resilience/regime collapse: the case of Cuba

Why do some authoritarian regimes abruptly collapse, whereas others display remarkable resilience and durability? This article addresses one particularly striking example. Why did the Batista regime in Cuba unexpectedly and suddenly disintegrate in 1958 under challenge from the small guerrilla force that Fidel Castro had established in the Sierra Maestra, whereas – over half a century later – the Castro regime has not only survived as the most long-lasting system of personalist rule in existence but has actually displayed a plausible capacity to perpetuate itself after the inevitably approaching death of its founders?     

How to study ideas in politics and ‘influence’: a typology

The influence that ideas have (or do not have) in political life is widely regarded as a problematic issue – across many fields of study. Reservations about the possibilities for assessing ideas' influence can be shown to differ, however, in quite revealing ways. Apprehension rests neither on a single, shared reservation, nor even on a core set of reservations. Moreover, many of the reservations lack cogency. A more useful way of addressing the ‘influence-problem’ is by employing a typology. This typology would seek to capture the full range of modes in which influence might be exercised. The article therefore proposes one, as a heuristic framework for investigation and analysis, with the intention that it might be applied to the study of ‘real-world’ cases.     

The personal as political: the function of the private space in contextualizing the ‘other’ in Jewish–Palestinian encounters

The private/personal sphere is perceived to be a channel of empowerment that fosters processes of acknowledgment and recognition during encounters between participants from different cultural groups. Drawing on ethnographic research at an inter-cultural program that offered a space for engagement for Palestinian and Jewish educational trainees’, we followed the role played by the private sphere in the process of articulating a perception of the ‘Other’. Most participants from both groups chose to locate their position toward the ‘Other’ in their private sphere. The different ways through which the private sphere was preformed and justified by the participants reveals that for the Palestinian participants the private sphere served as a way to create particularity, while for the Jewish participants it served as a way to construct universalized claims. These justifications, which were tightly coupled with each groups’ social position and social power, were working in both cases to isolate the discussion from immediate historical, social, and political contexts. Thus, these findings deepen our understanding of the meaning ascribed to the private sphere and the common epistemology that defines the personal as political and contributes to advance warm relations between Palestinian and Jewish individuals that these educational frameworks seek to foster.     

China’s international socialization of Caribbean state-society complexes: Trinidad and Tobago as a case study

ABSTRACT

Using the case study of Trinidad and Tobago, this article analyzes the process of reciprocal international socialization that allows Beijing to construct a cognitive and normative space conducive to a new regional order in the Caribbean which should be politically friendly, economically profitable, and socially open to its government, companies, and citizens. We argue that there has been a shift in the identity of Trinidad’s state-society complex due to the influence of China’s very visible political, economic, and social conditionalities. Their impact on political elites (which is reflected in government discourse and actions) and on the society at large (as shown by interviews with 30 Trinidadian nationals) is analyzed in order to show that Type I, ‘role playing’ socialization has been reached. However, frustration within Trinidad’s society with the domestic effects of China’s economic and social conditionalities clearly limits the potential for the evolution toward the more advanced Type II socialization exemplified, in the same region, by the Soviet-Cuban relationship. This suggests that, at least in the near future, key features of the Chinese approach incompatible with its self-proclaimed win-win nature will prevent Beijing from upgrading its status to that of a decisive socializer in the Caribbean.     

The Rise of Militant Islam and the Security State in the Era of the ‘Long War’

This paper distinguishes between political and militant Islam and analyses the latter's current ability to confront empire and to become a social force in Muslim-majority states. This analysis is within the dialectic of collaboration and resistance, starting with client postcolonial states' pivotal role in bringing to fruition the collaboration between political Islam and US imperialism during the cold war era. The post-cold war period signals the imperialist putsch to confront militant Islam in the ‘Long War’ by employing the cold war strategy of ‘permanent war’ and universalising the idea of the security state. Militant Islam's resistance to the Long War and the security state makes this two-pronged imperial strategy a losing proposition for the USA. Paradoxically this strategy has also become the prime mover for militant Islam's ascendancy. The paper addresses the paradox of the USA's continuation with its losing Long War strategy and securitisation agenda which, although providing succour to militant Islam, is also achieving its larger objectives to buttress capitalist globalism; fuel the military–industrial and security–industrial complexes; and support ‘big oil’.     

War Minus the Shooting? The politics of sport in Lebanon as a unique case in comparative politics

In the literature on sport and politics the potential of sport to unite fragmented societies is emphasised. Lebanon is a counter example. Sport does not unite but further divides people. Confessionalism, the political system of this ‘mosaic state’ with 18 state-registered sects, produces conditions that only allow for competition within sects. The sport sector, especially the professional men's teams in football and basketball, serves as a tool for competition within and between sects. In a middle-income country with only four million inhabitants, club revenues from ticketing and broadcasting are almost non-existent. Therefore professional sport teams are completely dependent on sponsors. Within a patron–client relationship system, political leaders finance the clubs but expect complete loyalty from the teams, implemented through such practices as choosing their party colours as team colours or posting large pictures of themselves in the arenas. While national sports teams often have the potential to unite societies, in Lebanon this can only happen if first steps from a sectarian to a secular state are taken. Then a common national identity (including general support for the national sports teams) might gradually develop and later transform the confessional subsystems such as the media, schools and sports clubs towards non-sectarian entities.     

Regionalisation as a Driving Force of EU Widening: Recovering from the EU ‘Carrot Crisis’ in the ‘East’

This article focuses on the ‘globalisation-cum-regionalisation’ process in the European Union that has led to the emergence of functional macro-regions. It provides first a classification of regionalisation, and describes the organisational and mental barriers of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The second part traces the shift of the ENP from the South to the East that has also activated the EU's pre-accession policy in the West Balkan region and the Eastern Partnership programme. Finally, it argues that the Baltic Strategy and the Danube Strategy as functional macro-regions are the main instruments to overcome the weaknesses of the incentive-based approach in the EU's conditionality (or, as it is described here, its ‘carrot crisis’).     

Crossing borders in North America after 9/11: ‘regular’ travellers’ narratives of securitisations and contestations

This article is part of a larger project on ordinary border crossings and state practices in North America. The changing border governmentalities in the region focusing on securitising their borders against potential terrorist threats and the increased emphasis on the managing of population flows have led to a reduced mobility for certain travellers as opposed to others. The construction of potentially safe and ‘un-safe’ subjects through profiling on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, religion and socioeconomic background and the increasing use of biometrics have impacted upon travellers’ mobilities. In the North American context, the Mexican state has undergone significant modernisation in terms of its border control capacities, thus enhancing not only its capacity as a buffer state, but also its performative sovereignty, and is therefore an interesting case to study. This article aims to analyse how these transformations in border governmentalities have affected the mobility of ‘ordinary’ travellers, and how they have developed coping strategies and resistances towards the potential curbing of their respective mobilities.     

The politics of post-conflict space: the mysterious case of missing graffiti in ‘post-troubles’ Northern Ireland

Why is there so little graffiti in Northern Ireland compared to cities in North America and Europe – including Great Britain, to which it is constitutionally connected, and Ireland, with which it is geographically connected? This question is particularly perplexing given the highly developed political mural tradition on both sides of the sectarian divide in the North, and the almost 15 years that have passed since the signing of the Peace Agreement ending some three decades of militarized conflict. This paper explores the connections between the absence of graffiti, and the street-level structures and processes of reconciliation or conflict – with a specific focus on the geopolitics of paramilitary control within communities throughout Northern Ireland. The contributions of the paper are three-fold: (1) it highlights the importance of graffiti as a (usually neglected) lens for assessing the degree to which the expected benefits of a peace agreement are experienced at the street level; (2) it addresses the methodological challenge of how to examine something that is not there (specifically, it studies the absence of graffiti in Northern Ireland by comparing it to the logic, mechanics and meanings of graffiti elsewhere); and (3) it questions the well-marketed representation of Northern Ireland as a unqualified case of successful post-agreement peace.     

‘The new Europeans’: the image of the African refugee in European literature

Abstract

This essay examines the representation of African refugees and asylum seekers in European literature in general, as well recent life writings and literature for young adults in particular. Examples will be drawn from writers as diverse as Benjamin Zephaniah and Senait G. Mehari. It is argued that the selected refugee stories invest in narrating an imagined community of ‘the new Europeans’ and thus invite readers to a plural reading of history. Following this train of thought, I am particularly interested in the interplay between images and motifs that evoke and shape various nation-states while illuminating an imagined European community. I therefore seek to excavate a transcultural imagery that characterizes refugee and asylum seekers as the ‘new Europeans’ by utilizing narrative strategies which reflect Paul Ricoeur's ideas about a new ethos for Europe.     

The ‘philanthropic’ gene: biocapital and the new green revolution in Africa

Climate change and population growth have prompted calls for African countries to embrace a ‘new Green Revolution’ in order to promote food security. What is ‘new’ about this new Green Revolution? What configurations of capital, the state, agribusiness, and the law define this period of agricultural transition? In this new Green Revolution, I argue, there is a proliferation of new forms of capital – biocapital and philanthrocapital – that integrate biotechnology with philanthropy to create market value. These shifts are engendered by philanthropic giving, in the form of donated genetic material for the development of ‘pro-poor’ biotechnology which normalises seed as commodity, and legislative reform that renders seed patentable material.