Introducing the Great Successor: North Korean English language news coverage of Kim Jong Un 2010–2011

How did North Korea initially frame coverage of the “Great Successor” Kim Jong Un for an international audience? This paper argues that North Korea's daily English language news reports, while commonly dismissed as purely propaganda, provides potential insights into such framing. Through automated content analysis of daily news reports from 2010 through 2011 coupled with regression analysis, this analysis both suggests an increased focus on Kim Jong Un's formal positions and less on his pedigree.     

Economic sanctions and the rhetorical responses of totalitarian regimes: Examining North Korean rhetorical strategies, 1949–2010

This study investigates the impact of economic statecraft on the North Korean Government. As a totalitarian regime, which is characterized by a controlled mass media, the North Korean Government tries to contain potential problems caused by sanctions by using three types of political rhetoric: appeasement, backlash, and surveillance. Using time-series data from 1949 to 2010 derived from a content analysis of the New Year's Day addresses by Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and Kim Jong Un, the empirical results suggests that the North Korean Government does alter its rhetorical strategies in response to external economic sanctions. Negative sanctions cause the regime to use appeasement strategies (or calls for reforms and internal changes). It tends to use backlash rhetoric (or blaming the sanctioning powers) in response to, interestingly, positive sanctions. Surveillance rhetoric, or the call for internal vigilance against enemies, on the other hand, does not have any statistical connection with sanctions, rather driven by other factors, such as the Korean War, external instability, and so on.     

Assessing the leadership transition in North Korea: Using network analysis of field inspections, 1997–2012

This paper examines changes in the in the composition of the North Korean elite from 1997 to 2012, a particularly tumultuous period in the history of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). Specifically, the paper assesses the changing composition of the leadership networks around both Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un, using data from the entourages that accompanied the great leaders on their “on the spot guidance” inspection tours. The paper finds that there have been significant changes in the leadership elite since the succession of Kim Jong Un. The paper offers some observations regarding the implications these changes have on the receptivity of the regime to a normalization of relations with the West and future economic and political reform.     

Kim Jong-il's military-first politics and beyond: Military control mechanisms and the problem of power succession

Military-first politics has been at the heart of the unexpected regime stability in North Korea under Kim Jong-il and his son Jong-un. This article analyzes Kim Jong-il’s military-first politics as a strategic choice for regime survival, in which the locus of political power switched from the party to the military. At the same time, Kim Jong-il formulated a complex system of circumventing the possibility of the armed forces' political domination, including personalistic control using sticks and carrots, fortifying security and surveillance institutions, and compartmentalizing the security institutions for intra- and inter-organizational checks and balances to prevent the emergence of organized opposition to the regime. Although an effective short-term solution, military-first politics could never be a long-term strategy for building gangseongdaeguk (a powerful and prosperous nation). The current Kim Jong-un regime needs to conduct sweeping reforms to address dire economic difficulties, which might result in a departure from his father's legacy and downgrade the military's power. In this process, the current regime's (in)stability will depend on how it maintains a balance between revoking military-first politics and preserving the armed forces' allegiance.     

The Violence of Aid? Giving,power and active subjects in One World Conservatism

Abstract

Using ?i?ek's theorisation of power, we analyse the UK Conservative Party's Green Paper on international development, ‘One World Conservatism’ (OWC). We argue that by placing the West's giving of development aid as something beyond politics, on the moral high-ground of self-evident certainty, it acts to deflect attention from critical engagement with the nature of globalisation, power and aid itself, hiding both economic and epistemological violences behind the apparently benevolent act of giving. An analysis of the nature of the green paper demonstrates the ways in which it draws in UK citizens as active subjects complicit with this vision of the world.     

Pakistan's Approach to Countering Violent Extremism (CVE): Reframing the Policy Framework for Peacebuilding and Development Strategies

Countering violent extremism (CVE) is one of the central focuses of the government of Pakistan. This article examines the current CVE policy framework and questions the existing paradigm of CVE policies in Pakistan. The article employs R. Kim Cragin's model of “resisting violent extremism” to suggest the need for a paradigm change in Pakistan's CVE policy framework, especially after the launch of another military operation in 2017. After a decade of security-centric counterterrorism policies, such a change requires balancing security-, development-, and prevention-centric policies in order to redefine Pakistan's policy framework.     

试析朝鲜半岛核问题与中国的政策走势

当前,朝鲜半岛形势由于朝鲜最高领导人金正日突然逝世、国家全面进入权力过渡阶段而充满不确定性。在朝鲜权力交替的敏感时期,各方为恢复六方会谈、重启半岛无核化进程进行的积极努力受此影响而放缓。朝鲜寻求核武器既是朝鲜半岛南北长期敌对、朝美间的冲突所铸安全困境之果,也是引发东北亚地区更大范围动荡的诱因,并且由于朝鲜权力交替蕴含的潜在风险,核危机对东北亚地区安全构成的威胁在增大。针对半岛核问题,中国政府一直通过双边和多边渠道发挥着稳定地区局势、推动半岛无核化的积极作用。结合朝鲜半岛形势的变化,在客观分析东北亚地区战略格局的基础上,中国政府将围绕维护半岛和平稳定和实现半岛无核化这两大战略目标继续作出更大的努力。     

Hezbollah's Strategy of “Walking on the Edge”: Between Political Game and Political Violence

Since entering Lebanese politics in the 1990s, Hezbollah has defined itself as a political party that plays by the rules. Simultaneously, it has continued to use social assistance to win over Lebanon's Shi’ites while using violence to eliminate rivals. Through this strategy of “walking on the edge,” Hezbollah has metamorphosed from an illegitimate terrorist organization into a legitimate political party heading Lebanon's government. An International Tribunal's recent indictment of four senior Hezbollah officials for involvement in the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Al-Hariri provides an opportunity to understand how Hezbollah maintains this canny—and successful—balancing act.     

Is India a Responsible Great Power?

Abstract

To what extent does rising responsibility accompany rising power in international relations? This article focuses on India to address the question: is a responsible great power in the making? Following a brief theoretical discussion on the notion of responsibility and its relationship to rising power, the article offers an empirical overview of India's achievements thus far, and also the international and domestic challenges that it faces today. It argues that despite the attempts by observers to thrust greatness upon India, the country is yet to achieve greatness. The article further illustrates that India's record of assuming global responsibility has been lacklustre at best. A central argument of the article is that India's reluctance to share the burden of providing global public goods is inseparably bound with the nature of its rise to power.     

Reinterpreting India's Rise through the Middle Power Prism

Abstract

India's spectacular rise in recent years has been the source of hyperbolic theorising and speculation on its major power status. Middle power theory offers a set of dynamic analytical parameters which allow for re-evaluating India's global influence and identifying both strengths and weaknesses of its power projection and resources. Placing emphasis on themes of Third World leadership, good international citizenship, multilateral activism, bridge-building diplomacy, and coalition-building with like-minded states, the middle power concept can encapsulate key aspects of India's contemporary agency and account for structural dynamics which constitute a reformist world-view through the reconfiguration of the Indian state within the existing world order. Overall, middlepowermanship delineates fundamental continuities in India's foreign policy tradition, epitomises India's existing position in the neoliberal world order, while providing a good indication of the directions India will take on the global stage in the short and medium-term.     

“I Teach Them Correct Principles and They Govern Themselves”: The Leadership Genius of the Mormon Prophet Abstract

Abstract

In an age characterized by “strong-man” or “leader-centered” leadership styles, Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet, set himself apart by leadership behaviors that centered in the conviction that the world of human interaction is governed by interpersonal and moral laws in just the same sense that the physical world is governed by the laws of nature. If one could identify these correct or “fixed principles,” and live in harmony with them, one would thereby gain leadership power and influence. From this belief grew his leadership dictum, “I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves.” Specifically, we note Smith's emphasis on integrity as a foundation for leadership interaction, both in truth-telling and in living in harmony with the correct principles one knows. In addition, Smith underscored the importance of unleashing the creative talent of followers by trusting them with sizeable responsibilities (empowerment, in today's terms), in demonstrating love for followers, and in having the courage to think and act independently of mainstream thought and practice. His chief concerns in selecting a leadership team included his focus on character, building an organizational structure which would institutionalize over time the principles he taught, and then motivating followers in pursuit of challenging goals.     

Genealogies of horror: three stories of slave-women,motherhood, and murder in the Americas

ABSTRACT

This article examines three cases of infanticide committed by slave women in the Americas – Margaret Garner (1856) of Ohio, Ignácia (1868) of Paraná, Brazil, and Justina (1878) of Rio de Janeiro. The article argues that each woman sought to dislodge their own as well as their children's place in what I term slavery's ‘genealogy of horror’, making the act of killing their children into an expression of black female agency, love, and insurgence against slavery. The cases of Justina and Ignácia's, I argue, provide a counternarrative to the myth of Brazil's genteel and harmonious slavery, propagated throughout the nineteenth century, by exposing the violence and desperation in which slave women and their progeny lived. In the second half of the article, I examine how cases of infanticide were depicted and used in the nineteenth-century abolitionist poetry of Brazilian poet Castro Alves and noted African American writer Frances Harper.     

Third World Military Spending

This article critically examines the concept of 'partnership', ubiquitous in contemporary development aid discourses. It investigates whether the language of 'partnership' signifies a change in aid relations away from the stark exertion of power characteristic of the conditionality decades of the 1980s and 1990s, or, conversely, whether 'partnership' is merely the latest guise behind which power-based relations continue to operate. A conceptual framework facilitates the deconstruction of the recently established 'Partnership for Governance Reform' in Indonesia, posited as a co-operative venture between national stakeholders and the international community. Elements of partnership or of power are sought through an examination of decision-making structures and activities. Findings are of the largely rhetorical and instrumental use of 'partnership' by international actors. Although there is nominal control by Indonesian actors, decision-making bodies are constructed in a manner which ensures that the reform agenda of international agencies remains relatively unchallenged, both in terms of what is included and excluded. Contrary to the official discourse of partnership as encouraging locally formulated reform strategies, the notions of 'partnership' and 'local ownership' simultaneously disguise and legitimise the interventions of international agencies in domestic reform processes, serving to mystify power asymmetry.     

Illiberal Democrats versus Undemocratic Liberals: The Struggle Over the Future of Thailand's Fragile Democracy

Abstract

This article examines the inter-related factors that underpin the fragility of Thailand's democracy. Uneven economic development, the high levels of income inequality, and unequal access to power and resources are significant drivers of Thailand's ongoing political conflict. Social divides across classes and regions, and populist exploitation of the rural poor's sense of alienation from the traditional ruling elites, provide a volatile backdrop to national politics. In addition, Thailand's unstable political history and the weakness of liberal institutions present risks to its democracy. The army, the revered monarch and the judiciary comprise elites whose periodic interventions in politics and reservations about electoral democracy further render the Thai polity fragile. Thailand's political situation represents a ‘slow-burning’ crisis of democracy: a long-term historical confrontation developing slowly, with the fundamental issues unresolved. It is undergoing a period of social turmoil fuelled by a power struggle between competing material interests and by an ideational contest to determine the country's constitutive political rules. This can be conceptualised as a struggle for control of Thailand's future between a heterogeneous populist-capitalist movement of illiberal democracy and conservative forces of undemocratic liberalism.     

The oppression/emancipation nexus in ongoing power struggles: Village—Power dynamics in Western Nepal 1

Abstract

How can we gain a more nuanced understanding of power struggles than is assumed under the ‘power as domination’ perception that attributes power to dominant actors who exercise control over others, and thus dichotomises domination and emancipation? This article addresses this question by exploring the power dynamics underlying ‘participatory’ public works in a village in western Nepal. Drawing on an alternative analytical framework that brings together Giddens' ‘structuration’ perspective and the Foucauldian notion of power, the case study illustrates that dominance and resistance are interwoven in day-to-day social interactions, and that the existing social order is continually being readjusted. The article concludes by discussing this study's implications for proponents of empowerment, namely the need to ascertain the emancipatory potentials that are immanent in daily power contestation, and then to develop strategies that compensate for the limitations of everyday struggles.     

Development perspectives from the Antipodes: an introduction

Abstract

Is there a distinctive Antipodean approach to development? In this introduction I take up Raewyn Connell's challenge to explore the possibilities for knowledge production that reflects Australia's and New Zealand's geographical situation of rich peripheral countries and their history of settler colonisation. While Antipodeans' contributions to development theory have been limited, their work is characterised by close connections between theory and practice. The Antipodes' positioning as global North in the geographical South has stimulated a search for alternative approaches to development knowledge. This is variously pursued through collaborative research relationships with indigenous communities, close engagement with non-Western cultural frameworks, and a focus on marginal spaces and positions. As the centre of global economic power shifts to the South, existing development relationships and established ways of doing development are increasingly challenged by newly constituted subject positions and coalitions.     

Another final battle on the stage of history

Abstract

Taking its point of departure in remarks made by Ulrike Meinhof during the 1972 trial in West Germany of Horst Mahler, this paper goes on to examine some of the ideas and assumptions of the members of the terrorist group to which he belonged. Meinhof's as well as Mahler's views of the Jews in Germany and their fate, including their charge of a conspiracy on the part of the malevolent powers, are quoted and make it clear that as terrorists they conformed to a grandiose millenarian tradition. This millenarian tradition has had a long history in Germany, comprising anarchic, egalitarian, and communistic elements. Examples are the followers of John Hus and Thomas Müntzer. The need for group identification is also strong in the millenarians of the present day who believe in and act unquestioningly upon tenets such as those of terrorist groups like the Red Army Faction which, fortunately, has not gained the following of such predecessors as Hitler's Third Reich.     

A new continuity with colonial administration: Participation in development management

Development management owes an unacknowledged debt to colonial administration, specifically to indirect rule. Development management, as opposed to development administration, has newly adopted a specific set of managerialist participatory methods, to achieve 'ownership' of development interventions. These methods are particularly evident in World Bank/ imf implementation of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers ( prsp s) and Comprehensive Development Frameworks ( cdf s). They have their conceptual foundation in action research, invented, it can justly be argued, by John Collier, Commissioner of the US Bureau of Indian (ie Native American) Affairs 1933-1945. Collier was a self-proclaimed colonial administrator, and remained an advocate of indirect rule as late as 1963. Evidence is presented to show his development of action research was a tool of indirect rule. Achieving 'empowerment' through participation was at its very beginning, therefore, subject to the colonialist's asserted sovereign power; and the limited autonomy it granted was a means of maintaining that power.     

The Identity of Turkey: Muslim and secular

Abstract

This article analyses the rise of political Islam in Turkey in the context of the akp's tenure in power with reference to complex social, economic, historical and ideational factors. It aims to answer one of the key questions, which has wider implications for the West and Islamic world: ‘having experienced the bad and good of the West in secularism and democracy’, as claimed by Samuel Huntington's ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis, is Turkey in transition from a secular to an Islamic state? The article first questions Turkey's ‘bridge’ or ‘torn-country’ status and then explains the akp's ambivalent policies towards religious and identity issues in relation to the increased public visibility of Islam and a ‘performative reflexivity’ of ‘Muslim-selves’. It concludes that the real issue at stake is not the assumed clash of secular and Muslim identities but the complex of interdependence between Islam, secularism and democratisation in Turkey.     

China's Relations with India's Neighbours: From Threat Avoidance to Alternative Development Opportunity

Abstract

China, once seen as a threat by the states of South Asia, is now viewed correctly as an alternative development opportunity. The unprecedented success of the Chinese development model places it as an obvious alternative to that offered by India—or indeed by the Western model of development—but what implications does this have for the middle and small powers that surround India, and indeed for India and the Western developed world? The fundamental rationale for China's relations with South Asia has changed radically, but the Sino-centric nature of Chinese foreign policy remains. Uniquely, for India's neighbours, but also for the global political economy as a whole, Chinese economic power raises political issues of human security, economic interdependence, and the relationship between physical infrastructure and the benefits of global public goods. The Chinese necessity to tranship through South Asia is identified as a complex new reality for the great power.