Human Rights, “Orientation,” and ASEAN

This article will first look at the recent promulgation by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) of its ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD). This development follows on from ASEAN's official attempts since the development of the 2007 ASEAN Charter to promote a “people-oriented” ASEAN. This article explores the various criticisms that have arrived of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration, and, in particular, considers the criticisms concerned with or relevant to sexual orientation and gender identity rights. Second, the article uses the context of the arrival of the AHRD and, indeed, the arrival of its auspicing institution, the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), to ask broader and deeper questions about the cultural politics of making rights claims and the manner in which these claims may contribute to the development of a more democratic politics.     

The Civil Society,the Uncivil Society,and the Difficulty Israel Has Making Peace with the Palestinians

Abstract

The difficulty Israel has making peace with the Palestinians, which became evident with the failure of the 1993 Oslo Agreements, can be explained through the internal relationships and historical dynamics within the Israeli public sphere, and the relations between the public sphere and the state. Using the terms ‘civil society’ and ‘uncivil society’ as a theoretical framework, the article examines both the relations between these two binary representations within the public sphere and the ability of each of them to influence state policy through two analytical tools: cultural politics and instrumental politics. The contention is that the Oslo Agreements failed in part because while both the civil and uncivil societies arose as a cultural innovation and alternative collective identities in neo-liberal Israel, the uncivil society succeeded in translating its collective representations into effective instrumental politics that influenced the Israeli state, while the civil society failed to do so.     

ASEAN and regional governance after the Cold War: from regional order to regional community?

Abstract

This paper first reviews and critiques the dominant realist and constructivist accounts of ASEAN, which have enjoyed much prominence in The Pacific Review since the journal's founding in 1988. ASEAN behaviour and outcomes cannot be fitted into neat theoretical categories that emphasize either material or ideational variables in explanation. Instead, ASEAN displays complexities in behaviour that are the product of the contingent interaction between the material (power, territory, wealth) and the ideational (norms, ideas, identity) as member states actively seek to manage domestic order as well as regional order within and beyond ASEAN. In all of this, state interests and identities remain paramount, which means that the long-standing ASEAN norms of sovereignty/non-interference remain central to regional governance. Under these conditions, and despite the Charter's newly articulated political norms of democratization, human rights, and the rule of law, the prospects seem doubtful for building a people-centred ASEAN Community in which regional governance displays inclusiveness, seeking to address the interests and needs of the region's ordinary people as opposed to what its elites deem appropriate. The final portion of the paper explores what a critical approach to studying ASEAN might reveal. In particular, the paper attempts to identify whether there may be any political spaces opening up within existing structures and practices from which progressive change could emerge, even if slowly, particularly in the area of human rights and social justice, key elements in building an inclusive, ASEAN Community.     

Re/visioning the women's movement in Israel

Current literature on the women's movement argues that in recent decades, a schism based on the politics of identity has divided women and led to the weakening of the movement. This process, intersecting with the escalation of neoliberal trends and the ‘NGOization’ of civil society, has resulted in the depoliticization of the women's movement and the waning of its influence as a political force. The present paper seeks to examine whether this argument is consistent with the situation in the Israeli women's movement of the early twenty-first century. Based on the history of the women's movement in Israel, the paper posits a twofold argument: (a) the women's movement in Israel has not disappeared but has been restructured as a result of its NGOization; (b) despite criticism of the movement in the literature and on the part of activists as the result of its NGOization, the movement's political messages have remained intact and even expanded to embrace questions of social justice, including novel thinking on matters of peace and security.     

The Dynamics of Change: Class, Politics and Civil Society—From Marx to post-Marxism

This paper discusses how Marxist understandings of politics and civil society, particularly Marx's own work, can contribute to understanding the dynamics of political change in contemporary capitalist democracies. While briefly exploring the conceptual problems contained in the political-philosophical agenda set out in Marx's earliest works, the paper argues that his subsequent examinations of civil society and class relations are grounded in a political economy of capitalist development which retains considerable salience. The possibilities of a post-Marxist politics of civil society are assessed in this light, using the example of recent neo-liberal and neo-conservative assaults on the welfare state to indicate the ways in which membership of civil society is itself a critical focus of political contestation. A politics of civil society (for example, contemporary 'third way' strategies) lacks any substantive democratic potential, without the type of radical political economy developed by Marx.     

Explaining the Vientiane Action Programme: ASEAN and the institutionalisation of human rights

Abstract

Existing explanations for the emergence of human rights on the political agenda in ASEAN focus either on the role of external pressure on ASEAN member states to ‘do something’, or on the way those states copied the form, but not the function, of other regional organisations such as the EU. Both approaches tacitly acknowledge that given the strong preference for intergovernmental governance displayed by ASEAN, regardless of interpretations, that it was states that drove the institutionalisation of rights forwards. Through examining in detail the causes and consequences of the Vientiane Action Programme this article disagrees with that assertion. At crucial moments before and after 2004 it was the Working Group for the Establishment of an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism, a track III actor, which both inserted human rights into ASEAN discussions and forged the link between protecting those rights and the continuing success of ASEAN's security goals. Through understanding the role of the Working Group as a norm entrepreneur, assisting in the localisation of human rights standards, this article suggests that existing explanations of ASEAN institutionalisation need to be revised to include a wider range of political dynamics than previously were acknowledged.     

Identity,Culture and Democratization: The Case of Egypt

This article seeks to present an alternative approach to understanding the failure of democratization in the Arab world by locating the problem of democracy-building within the logic of the process of reproducing national identity and culture. The conceptual framework draws on the writings of Antonio Gramsci and postcolonial theorists such as Edward Said. Taking Egypt as a case study, I examine a series of events surrounding a human rights report about police brutality in Egypt to illustrate how the struggle to reproduce Egyptian national identity impacts upon the practice of democracy. In the course of searching for an “authentic” Egyptian identity, uncorrupted by Western influences, a critical mass of Egyptian civil society participates in producing a political consensus in which civil and political freedoms may be legitimately sacrificed in the name of national unity and security. This is despite attempts by some Egyptian activists to challenge dominant conceptions of national identity and culture in order to open up democratic spaces.     

On the creation of indigenous subjects in the Russian Federation

For many of Russia's poorest people, and especially for the officially recognized ‘indigenous small-numbered peoples’, neoliberal reforms following the collapse of the Soviet Union represented a major retrenchment in ‘social citizenship’ as defined by T.H. Marshall. However, some reforms also promised increased civil, political and cultural citizenship rights, which Russia's indigenous peoples have sought to realize through new legislation and appeals to international agreements regarding the rights of indigenous peoples. But with Russia's current economic and political course geared towards maximizing revenues from the extraction and sale of natural resources, Russia's indigenous peoples have been frustrated in their efforts to realize these citizenship rights, particularly in their attempts to assert rights to land and resources through legal means. This paper draws on case studies from southern Siberia to discuss first how Russia's identity politics and an international focus on indigenous peoples have combined to create indigenous subjects in the Russian Federation, and second how the anticipated transition from indigenous subjects to indigenous citizens has for the most part failed to materialize.     

Gendered political space: civil society,contingency theory,and the substantive representation of women

Whilst existing civil society studies generally fail to systematically examine the way that contextual factors shape women’s representation in the civil sphere, political science has predominantly focused on legislative settings. This article responds to the resultant knowledge-gap by examining the hitherto underexplored role of civil society as a political space integral to the substantive representation of women (SRW)—or, the process by which women’s concerns are advanced in policy and politics. The article uses grounded theory in order propose a systematic analytical model showing how the SRW is a contingent process whereby the motives of civil society organizations are translated into action repertoires shaped by three (non-discrete) spheres: political, socioeconomic, and organizational. Its wider contribution to civil society scholarship is in highlighting how civil society is a complex, heterogeneous political space wherein SRW claims-making requires cognizance of the co-presence of contingent factors that offer immanent explanatory power.     

The North Korean factor in the improvement of Japanese intelligence capability

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, human rights have been a contentious issue for relations between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the European Union (EU), especially in the Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM). It is an issue that has constantly led to tensions in interregional cooperation. However, the ASEAN–EU dialogue on human rights has, in fact, had a significant impact on regional dynamics by stimulating the process of regional identity formation, especially in Southeast Asia. The core mechanism through which this development takes place is that of interaction, the process in which the two regional groupings engage while negotiating human rights policy. It can be argued, therefore, that interregional and intraregional human rights interactions are mutually dependent. ASEAN's rather confrontational mode of interaction with the European Union in relation to human rights has served as a catalyst for the dynamic growth of a collective definition of self in ASEAN. It has led to an ‘essentialization’ of ASEAN's idea of self as opposed to a common other, something which has undermined the possibility of maintaining an interregional dialogue that is not confrontational. However, it has also contributed to the development of a regional space for communicating about human rights and has thus played a central role in the gradual transformation of ASEAN's collective identity formation.     

(Dis)qualified bodies: securitization,citizenship and ‘identity management’

This article attempts to think citizenship politics in the international security context of a post‐September 11th world. Considering specifically the introduction of biometric technologies, the article reveals the extent to which contemporary citizenship is securitized as a part of the wider post‐September 11th ‘securitization of the inside’. This securitization contributes directly to the intensification of conventional citizenship practice, as biometric technologies are employed to conceal and advance the heightened exclusionary and restrictive practices of contemporary securitized citizenship. The intensified restriction and preservation of particular rights and entitlements, vis‐à‐vis the application of biometric technologies, serves both private and public concerns over ‘securing identity’. This overall move, and the subsequent challenges to conventional notions of citizenship politics and agency, is referred to here as ‘identity management’. To then ask ‘What's left of citizenship?’ sheds light on these highly political transformations, as the restricted aspects of citizenship—that is, its continued obsession with the preservation and regulation/restriction of specific rights and entitlements—are increased, and the instrument of this escalation, biometrics, dramatically alters existing notions of political agency and ‘citizenship/asylum politics’.     

‘Domestic transnationalism’: legal advocacy for Mexican migrant workers' rights in Canada

Every year thousands of Mexicans travel to Canada to work in Canadian fields and greenhouses under the Mexico-Canada Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program. While the programme is often praised, it has also been the subject of persistent criticism about its failure to meet certain human rights standards. In this article, we examine the legal strategies civil society advocates of migrant workers have adopted to promote migrant workers' rights in Canada. Specifically, we examine legal struggles undertaken by the United Food and Commercial Workers union to challenge Ontario government legislation that does not permit collective bargaining by farmworkers in the province. We argue that this case demonstrates that despite the fact that many of the workers involved are transnationalized, appeals to international bodies or to international human rights standards have been of limited utility in promoting their rights. Despite frequent arguments about the increased relevance of international human rights and citizenship norms and transnational human rights advocacy, in this case the national and sub-national scales remain predominant. The result, we argue, is a form of ‘domestic transnationalism’, in which domestic political actors engage in advocacy within domestic legal institutions to promote the rights of a transnational mobile labour force.     

ASEAN and human rights: resisting Western pressure or emulating the West?

Abstract

Observers of Southeast Asian affairs commonly assume that the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are reluctant to pursue liberal agendas, and that their main concern is to resist pressure from Western powers to improve their human rights practice. This article, however, argues that such a conventional view is too simplistic. The Southeast Asian countries have voluntarily been pursuing liberal agendas, and their main concern here is to be identified as ‘Western’ countries – advanced countries with legitimate international status. They have ‘mimetically’ been adopting the norm of human rights which is championed by the advanced industrialized democracies, with the intention of securing ASEAN's identity as a legitimate institution in the community of modern states. Ultimately, they have been pursuing liberal agendas, for the same reason as cash-strapped developing countries have luxurious national airlines and newly-independent countries institute national flags. Yet it should be noted that the progress of ASEAN's liberal reform has been modest. A conventional strategy for facilitating this reform would be to put more pressure on the members of ASEAN; however, the usefulness of such a strategy is diminishing. The development of an East Asian community, the core component of which is the ASEAN–China concord, makes it difficult for the Western powers to exercise influence over the Southeast Asian countries. Hence, as an alternative strategy, this article proposes that ASEAN's external partners should ‘globalize’ the issue of its liberal reform, by openly assessing its human rights record in global settings, with the aim of boosting the concern of its members for ASEAN's international standing.     

Codes in context: How states,markets, and civil society shape adherence to global labor standards

Transnational business regulation is increasingly implemented through private voluntary programs – such as certification regimes and codes of conduct – that diffuse global standards. However, little is known about the conditions under which companies adhere to these standards. We conduct one of the first large‐scale comparative studies to determine which international, domestic, civil society, and market institutions promote supply chain factories' adherence to the global labor standards embodied in codes of conduct imposed by multinational buyers. We find that suppliers are more likely to adhere when they are embedded in states that participate actively in the International Labour Organization treaty regime and that have stringent domestic labor law and high levels of press freedom. We further demonstrate that suppliers perform better when they serve buyers located in countries where consumers are wealthy and socially conscious. These findings suggest the importance of overlapping state, civil society, and market governance regimes to meaningful transnational regulation.     

Acts of citizenship as a politics of resistance? Reflections on realizing concrete rights within the Israeli asylum regime

This paper investigates how Eritrean refugees in Israel and civil society organisations who engage with refugee issues contest the exclusionary politics of asylum in Israel. It presents various acts of claims-making initiated by Eritrean refugees themselves or in response to hostility by others, as well as acts inaugurated by Israeli civil society organisations on behalf of or with refugee populations. Drawing on the concept of activist acts of citizenship developed by Engin Isin, the paper subsequently analyses to what degree those acts have redefined aspects of social and political membership for Eritrean refugees in Israel. In a further step, it shows the limitations of such acts in terms of developing a solidaristic refugee-citizen agenda that profoundly challenges hegemonic public discourse and political debate. The paper concludes by arguing that activist acts of citizenship are best studied in relation to the transformative power they may have on the various individuals engaging in them, but not as a strategy for a wider politics of resistance, as ultimately nation state politics continue to determine the actual realisation of concrete rights.     

Nationalism and Civil Society in Romania

We explore the theoretical underpinnings of a political debate initiated in 1989 by the Grupul pentru Dialog Social about identity, legitimacy and civil society in Romania. Commentators have often focused on the resurgence of nationalism as a response to the politics of transition. We concentrate, instead, on the normative engagement which distinguishes practical argument in general. We offer a theoretical bridge which sets the sharply differentiated positions of protagonists contributing to the Romanian debate in a broader theoretical perspective. Our central claim is that attempts to defend a revised version of 'civic nationalism' fail to resolve tensions between individualist and collectivist notions. By focusing on what is 'civic' about civic nationalism, the terms of reference of the debate are significantly shifted.     

The counter-hegemonic role of civil society: Palestinian–Arab NGOs in Israel

This paper deals with the causes and impact of the rise in the number of Palestinian–Arab Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Israel in the last two decades. It provides a multi-level model that combines economic, political and cultural factors to explain the shifts in Palestinian-Arab political mobilization in Israel and as a result to the rise of a complex network of Arab NGOs. The paper demonstrates the way in which the civil institutions and their intensive involvement in public social affairs generate social capital that has internal as well as external political impact. Arab civil society institutions, which operate mainly separately from civil institutions of the Jewish majority, assist in the empowerment and the development of Arab society. They provide services in different fields, such as education, health, and planning. They also advocate and lobby for the rights of the Arab citizens inside Israel and internationally. Arab civil society institutions also provide information necessary for political mobilization, identity formation, and cultural preservation. In this framework the paper claims that they play a counter-hegemonic role vis-à-vis the Israeli state. However, the paper also claims that the broad advocacy and lobbying activity of Arab civil institutions did not manage to fully democratize Israeli policies towards Arab society, demonstrating the centrality of state identity and power structure when it comes to democratization processes. On a different level, the paper reveals that, although the Palestinian–Arab NGOs network has managed to lead to a liberalization process within Arab society, this process is partial and selective.     

Creating Public Value and Institutional Innovations across Boundaries: An Integrative Process of Participation,Legitimation, and Implementation

Public value creation has become a critical challenge, but existing approaches have limitations and it is unclear how they can be integrated. This article addresses this issue by analyzing four best‐practice cases in which public value was created through the integration of community indicators and government performance management. It identifies an iterative process of participation, legitimation, and implementation, with institutional innovations across boundaries between civil society, politics, and administration. These institutional innovations help integrate the often fragmented arenas of participation, legitimation, and implementation.     

A feminist challenge to the gendered politics of the public/private divide: on due diligence,domestic violence,and citizenship

This article examines the feminist appropriation of the legal principle of due diligence to politicize acts of violence at the hands of private actors within the private sphere. This move expanded traditional notions of state responsibility for violence against women under international human rights law. Using frame analysis, we focus on the institutionalization of this feminist understanding of due diligence through its discursive incorporation in international human rights policy documents and its mobilization in cases of domestic violence litigated within the UN and the Inter-American and European human rights systems. Through this discursive framing work and its institutionalization, feminists have challenged the gendered politics of the public/private divide to change the terms on which differently positioned women can engage with the state and global governance institutions. We argue that this change can potentially reconfigure women's state-bounded and transnational citizenship. The implications of due diligence as a political and sociological concept require more careful consideration by citizenship and human rights scholars.     

Enhancing the redistributive capacity of the Chinese state? Impact of fiscal reforms on county finance

This article seeks to test the degree to which ASEAN has been able to develop a security identity based on its collectively held norms. The article begins by isolating two norms that are central to ASEAN, namely non-intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign states and non-use of force. The article then seeks to determine how consistently these norms have been upheld within ASEAN by analysing the policies of member states during two major crises where these norms were threatened: the 1979 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia (Kampuchea) and the 1995 Chinese occupation of Mischief Reef. If member states pursued policies which upheld the norms in question (even where alternative unilateral policies may have been more beneficial to them), then this would suggest such a security identity existed. On the other hand, should unilateral interests take precedence over the will to uphold these collective norms, questions must be raised over the strength of ASEAN'60 Col No: 189;s security identity, both then and now.