Social Service Provision in the US and Germany: Convergence or Path Dependency?

With a special focus on social services, the article discusses the topic of convergence versus path dependency of state welfare arrangements in the US and Germany. In both countries, social services cover a broad spectrum of activities. In the US as well as in Germany, these services are to a large extent provided by non-profit organisations, although the two countries belong to very different welfare regimes. With a special eye on social services, the article provides an overview of the history of the two welfare states; it refers to current developments, of which the shift towards private commercial social service provision is most prominent. Against this background, the article comes to the conclusion that there is no simple answer to the question of path-dependency versus convergence. Indeed, in both countries commercial provision of social services is on the increase; however, current developments in Germany and the US do not reflect thoroughly the path-dependent or the convergence approach of depicting change.     

Firm supporter and severe critic – Germany’s two-pronged approach to EU enlargement in the Western Balkans

Abstract

Germany has demonstrated an active commitment towards the accession perspective of the Western Balkans, which found its most vocal expression in the initiation of a Western Balkans summit in August 2014 and the ensuing “Berlin process”. However, German support reflexively goes hand in hand with a reference to rigid accession conditionality. This not only fosters stabilization and transformation in the Western Balkan states, but also – at the domestic level – counters widespread enlargement scepticism among decision makers and the German public. The far-reaching participation rights of the Federal Parliament, acquired by the 2009 amendments to the Act on EU Cooperation, involves the Bundestag inter alia in the opening of accession negotiations, thus also increasing domestic constraints for Germany’s position in the Council. Federal elections due in late 2017 and a political environment shaped by a discussion about migration, including from and through the Western Balkans, make enlargement policy a particularly hard-to-sell issue.     

‘A Pioneer in the Struggle for Social Justice’: Manuel Larraín and Transnational Catholic Activism in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s

This article explores the development of inter-American Catholicism during the 1950s and 1960s. It analyses the role of the Chilean Catholic bishop Manuel Larraín (1900–1966) in his efforts to disseminate his diagnosis of underdevelopment in Latin America and to establish links with the Catholic world in the United States. Based on a review of his writings, the American press and documentation from Catholic organisations, it is suggested that the Chilean bishop advocated the implementation of social reforms and American collaboration to prevent the advance of communism and strengthen Catholicism on the continent.     

Hiding in Plain Sight? Japan’s Militarization of Space and Challenges to the Yoshida Doctrine

ABSTRACT

Japan’s security discourse – despite accelerating shifts in its security stance over the last two decades, and more recently, under the Abe administration – remains dominated by views of essential continuity and maintenance of the “Yoshida Doctrine.” The case of Japan’s militarization of space is used to create a framework for systematically dismantling default assumptions about the durability of the Yoshida Doctrine. The militarization of space serves as a driver of broader trends in Japan’s security policy manifested in the procurement of dual-use assets in launch systems, communications and intelligence satellites, and counterspace capabilities necessary for active internal and external balancing with the US–Japan alliance; the strengthening domestically of security policymaking institutions; and the jettisoning of anti-militaristic norms. Japan’s increasingly assertive military stance, bolstering of the US–Japan alliance and cessation of hedging, facing down of China’s rise, and departure from the Yoshida Doctrine as grand strategy are thus revealed as hiding in plain sight.     

Facebook,Contestation and Poor People’s Politics: Spanning the Urban–Rural Divide in Cambodia?

Rural internet use, although still limited, is growing, raising the question of how rural people are using social media politically. As a vehicle of communication that permits the rapid transmission of information, images and text across space and connections between dispersed networks of individuals, does technological advance in rural areas presage significant political transformations? This article investigates this question in the light of a poor result for the Cambodian People’s Party in the 2013 elections, and the subsequent banning of the main opposition party, before the 2018 elections. Expanding internet use in rural areas has linked relatively quiescent rural Cambodians for the first time to networks of information about militant urban movements of the poor. Rural Cambodians are responding to this opportunity through strategies of quiet encroachment in cyberspace. This has had real effects on the nature of the relationship between the dominant party and the rural population and suggests the declining utility of the election-winning strategy used by the party since 1993. However, the extent of this virtual information revolution is limited, since neither the urban nor rural poor are mapping out new online political strategies, agendas or identities that can push Cambodia’s sclerotic politics in new directions.     

Will the North’s secessionist winds blow South? The past,present, and future of self-determination and border change in Africa

World politics tend to go through cycles of long periods of stable borders followed by bursts of secessionist movements. For this reason, it is important to examine whether the two recent cases of secessionism in the Northern Hemisphere symbolise such a turn in world politics. After reviewing the Catalan and Kurdish secessionist movements, the article turns to the history of secessionism in order to distil comparative insights and lessons. The main part of the article examines six categories of secessionism in Africa. In particular, the emphasis is on highlighting the various historical patterns of self-determination and border change in Africa. The final part is a comparative reflection on the future of secessionism in Africa.     

Gender and local executive office in regional Russia: the party of power as a vehicle for women’s empowerment?

We employ a political ambition framework to study women’s under-representation in Russian local politics. We conduct a survey of current heads of municipal districts and municipal urban and rural settlements in four regions of the Russian Federation. The study reveals gendered pathways to local leadership positions. The advantage of incumbency is fully used by male politicians: male incumbents are more likely than female incumbents to run for re-election. Self-initiated ambition, term in office, and age explain the decisions of male executives to run for re-election. Female incumbents are likely to run for a subsequent term only if they are supported by the United Russia Party.     

What Explains President Joseph Kabila’s Quest for a Third Term until Pressured to Reluctantly Relinquish Power,late in 2018?

Abstract

The era of Congolese political, socio-economic instability that has affected the central African region has returned, yet again. Nearly two decades after Joseph Kabila was installed as president of the Democratic Republic of Congo by the Southern African Development community (SADC), at the height of the regional central African war, following the assassination of his father, Laurent Desire Kabila, he has not shown any willingness to relinquish power. This is even so after the lapse of his constitutional mandates in December 2016, secured in 2006 and 2011. This continued reign, which is dependent on the repressive use of force by the state, has elicited spirited attempts by the political opposition, including the influential Catholic Church, calling for his immediate resignation. In response, the state has unleashed repression, which has resulted in fatalities and uprooted communities, resulting also in forced migration that destabilised the Great lakes sub-region. This article argues that the state reconstruction of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, following the hurried departure of Mobutu Sese Seko, engineered by Laurent Kabila, and his son Joseph, has failed to take root, resulting in sub-regional instability that has engulfed, not only the Great lakes region, but also southern Africa as a whole.     

Identity,dignity and development as trajectory: Bihar as a model for democratic progress in Nepal? Part II. Nepal’s promise

Part I of this article traced the experience of India’s Bihar state as it shifted in the last decade of the twentieth century from a region dominated by landowning upper castes and plagued by entrenched poverty to one led by newly emergent middle castes. In a two-step process, these groups first attained a significant dignity and self-respect and then it became possible in the 2000s to turn to economic growth and improvement in living standards. Part II makes a case that Nepal, long suffering under conditions similar to those hobbling Bihar until recently, might follow a similar two-stage path of dignity and then development.     

“But how to speak of such things?”: decolonial love,the coloniality of gender,and political struggle in Francisco Goldman's The Long Night of White Chickens (1992) and Jennifer Harbury's Bridge of Courage (1994) and Searching for Everardo (1997)

This article presents an analysis of works by Francisco Goldman and Jennifer Harbury, which deal with “cataclysmic moments” of recent Guatemalan history. It explores gender relations in these works with reference to three themes: storytelling, communication and affective relationships. Conceptually, I draw on the notions of decolonial love, the coloniality of gender, and the world gender order as categories of analysis. I take Chela Sandoval's methodology of the oppressed as a guideline for my analysis, and look at the ways in which different types of storytelling perpetuate or question the coloniality of gender, at the consequences of intercultural misunderstandings produced by different readings of the coloniality of gender and the world gender order, and at the significance of a critical and liberatory practice of gender roles for decolonial love. The practice of decolonial love is an alternative to what Tzvetan Todorov has called “the dreadful concatenation,” which is a result of cultural encounters during the conquest of the Americas and which conceptualizes as “love” a feeling that sidesteps equality, an exercise in destruction and possession. The coloniality of gender and decolonial love are explored through their interactions with masculinities and femininities across the different case studies.