The Far North Act in Ontario,Canada: a sons of the soil conflict in the making?

In 2010, the Government of Ontario, Canada passed the controversial Far North Act. The Act purportedly aims to promote land use planning and sustainable development while recognising Aboriginal and Treaty rights. There are, however, early warning signs that the Act could be a breeding ground for future conflict between Indigenous peoples and other stakeholder groups. This article adopts a ‘sons of the soil’ conceptual framework to explore the mechanisms that could give rise to the escalation of Indigenous vs. non-Indigenous conflict. The findings provide important insights for theorising the contentious politics around land and territory in diverse settler-colonial contexts.     

Youth welfare policy in Turkey in comparative perspective: a case of ‘Denied Youth Citizenship’

This article explores the main characteristics of social and economic policies for young people in Turkey. Inspired by Tom Chevalier’s typology of youth welfare citizenship designed for Western European countries, the article situates Turkey’s youth welfare citizenship model within a comparative perspective and contributes to the extension of Chevalier’s typology to a non-Western European country context. Relying upon the systematic analysis of findings of a nationwide survey on young people that was conducted in 2013, comparative youth statistics, official youth statistics, public expenditures data and existing policy frameworks, the article suggests that Turkey fits well with the denied youth citizenship type in Chevalier’s typology. Two conclusions are drawn with respect to Turkey’s youth welfare citizenship model. First, with respect to the social citizenship dimension, the article finds that social and youth policy structure in Turkey has a familialization effect on young people’s access to income. In terms of economic citizenship, the article suggests that Turkey implements a selective strategy that results in unequal distribution of labour market skills among young people.     

The party,the Gama’a and the Tanzim: the organizational dynamics of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s post-2011 failure

Abstract

In April 2011, the Egyptian Muslim Brothers (MB) founded the first political party in their 83-year-long history, known as the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). Yet the party remained under the control of its parent organization—the Gama’a (literally the ‘community’)—and its internal apparatus, the Tanzim. While both had been shaped during decades of MB’s semi-clandestine existence as a banned-yet-tolerated group, these did not adapt to the changing socio-political configuration and have resisted the transition to fully overt activity. Through an analysis of the FJP’s uneasy creation and with a grounding of extensive empirical research, this article argues that the party’s development was to a certain extent hampered by those pre-existing organizational structures. Organizational crystallization prevented the party from conforming to the emerging rules of the political field then under construction. Instead, the Gama’a’s undefined nature and opaque pattern of regulation were replicated within the FJP’s structure. Thus, the article seeks to uncover a hitherto hidden aspect of in the MB’s post-2011 failure, one which is rooted in organizational dynamics.     

The de Bunsen Committee and a revision of the ‘conspiracy’ of Sykes–Picot

The Sykes–Picot The Sykes-Picot Agreement is often cited as evidence of a Western conspiracy to carve up the Middle East and subordinate the Arabs. It is a prevalent view across the region, and has been a refrain repeated by critics. Yet very little is known of the far more significant conclusions of a Committee, formed by Maurice de Bunsen on the orders of the British government, which ascertained the options open to the Allies in 1915. Far from a nefarious conspiracy, the Committee came down in favour of a decentralised, ultimately independent region. The First World War compelled some revision of the original intent, but the essence of the Committee's conclusions remained intact throughout the war, and after. Conversely, Sir Mark Sykes repudiated the ‘agreement’ he had made with the French diplomat Picot, and substantial revisions were made to that temporary scheme. Yet it seems that ‘conspiracy sells’, and generations have colluded with the theme of perfidy to reinforce particular narratives, including, most recently, the Da´esh movement's claim to have ‘ended Sykes-Picot’.     

Explaining Canada–US differences in attitudes toward the role of government: a test of S.M. Lipset’s ‘Continental Divide’

For decades scholars have engaged in a lively debate about the distinctiveness of Canadian and American value systems. Lipset (1990) argues that divergent responses to the American Revolution led Canada to embrace Tory values of ‘peace, order, and good government’ while Americans pursued classical liberal values of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’. Other scholars question the extent, or even the existence, of the differences Lipset describes. Using surveys of students from Canadian and American universities close to the Canada–US border, we identify compelling support for Lipset’s hypothesised differences on the role of government in the least likely setting imaginable.     

Τhe energy parameters of the Russian–Ukrainian–EU impasse: dependencies,sanctions and the rise of ‘Turkish Stream’

The overwhelming dependency of Ukraine on Russian energy and the lack of any short-to-medium term diversification of European Union (EU) oil and gas supplies away from Moscow dictate a cooperative approach vis-à-vis Russia in dealing with the Ukrainian crisis. The EU is unable to impose any more severe sanctions on Russia’s energy industry without provoking a major negative impact on its own troubled economy. The continuation of the current confrontational friction in EU–Russian energy relations will most likely consolidate Russia’s decision to seek the elimination of its gas transit dependence on Ukraine after 2020. Such a target will be very difficult to attain by the end of this decade, even if Russia will be able to partly replace the now abandoned South Stream project with Turkish Stream.     

Military frames and Canada’s Conservative government: from extending to transforming perceptions of Canadian identity

This article looks at framing strategies behind the recent Canadian Conservative government’s rhetoric on the military. Critics argue that Conservative rhetoric has politicised Canadian history and overemphasised the armed forces. Few scholars, however, have looked at the specific forms this rhetoric took and the strategies it suggested. The article presents the results of a systematic analysis of Conservative rhetoric between 2005 and 2015. It argues that three key frame alignment strategies were at the heart of the Conservative Government’s rhetoric: extension, consolidation and transformation, with truly transformative rhetoric transpiring only in the last phase. While agreeing with critics that this emphasis on the military aimed to alter perceptions of Canadian identity, the article shows that Conservative rhetoric was far from and monolithic.     

The Rise and Fall of Turcophilism in Nineteenth-Century British Discourses: Visions of the Turk, ‘Young’ and ‘Old’

This article examines the evolving British perceptions of the Ottoman Empire from the onset of the Tanzimat to Abdülhamid II. The article aims to attest the emergence of a positive image of the ‘reforming Turk’ and the erosion of this positive assessment following the disillusionment with the achievements of Tanzimat. The article discusses the Christian dimensions of the positive and negative attitudes towards the Ottomans and ‘moral racism’ inherent in both the positive and negative assessments. The article ends with concluding that this reference framework from which the British discourses on the Ottomans derived had eclipsed with the demise of the British nineteenth-century political elite and culture in tandem with the waning of the Ottoman political culture and elite.     

Religion,the churches,and the German ‘revolution’ of November 1989

The state election of 2006 in Rheinland-Pfalz resulted in a (bare) majority of seats for the SPD, which allows the party to govern alone for the first time in the history of the state. The CDU, on the other hand, received slightly less than one-third of the vote, an all-time low in its former stronghold. This result was by and large determined by factors at the state level. Yet it had a considerable impact at the federal level: it signalled the end of a string of devastating losses for the SPD, enhanced the standing of minister president Kurt Beck (now the SPD's chairman), and brought to an end the last coalition between the SPD and the FDP. These repercussions notwithstanding, there is no evidence of a durable voter realignment benefiting the SPD, since the party's victory was apparently due to short- and mid-term factors. Therefore, the outcome of the next election (scheduled for 2011) is by no means a foregone conclusion.     

‘Strong,United and Independent’: the British Foreign Office,Anglo–Iranian Oil Company and the internationalization of Iranian politics at the dawn of the Cold War, 1945–46

This article challenges traditional accounts of the 1946 Cold War Crisis in Iran by moving beyond Soviet–American confrontation to focus on British policy. In contrast to the United States, Britain was a major stake-holding power in Iran due to the valuable holdings of the Anglo–Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). By comparing the reactions of the AIOC and Foreign Office, continuity between the events of the 1946 Crisis and later developments in the Mosaddegh premiership becomes apparent. Soviet interference in Azerbaijan prompted great concern from representatives in Iran, but the central Foreign Office pursued a more cautious policy. Only concerns relating to the growth of domestic Iranian communism in the form of the Tudeh Party and the threat this entailed to the British concession prompted the Foreign Office and AIOC to take measures rendering them partially complicit in the internationalization of Iranian politics, setting an important precedent for future action. This article evaluates the policy-making process and its impact on Anglo–Iranian relations by utilizing records from the UK National Archives, British Petroleum Archive and diplomatic personal papers.     

‘Europeanization’ as a legitimation strategy of political parties: the cases of Ukraine and Georgia

This article’s objective is to critically assess the top-down rational choice and sociological approaches to Europeanization, while advocating the ‘usages of Europe’ approach. I argue that both classic top-down perspectives do not adequately grasp the nature of Europeanization of political parties beyond member and candidate countries. Empirically, the analysis focuses on transnational cooperation of political parties from Ukraine and Georgia and stresses agency of domestic partisan actors seeking international and domestic legitimacy. It is argued that European party federations and parliamentary cooperation formats should not only be seen as channels of top-down Europeanization, but they should rather be conceptualized as resources that are used strategically by domestic political parties. Thus the article deals with the following question: To what extent and how channels of Europeanization have been used by national political parties from outside the European Union as resources serving to attain partisan goals, both in terms of domestic positioning and international legitimacy? Patterns of strategic and legitimating usage of European partisan and parliamentary resources depend on whether parties in question are in power or in opposition and whether they are more pro-European or more pro-Russian.     

Identity,Politics and Nation: Algerian Nationalism and the ‘Berberist Crisis’ of 1949

Abstract

Between the 1940s and the 1950s, a crucial period of change for Algerian nationalism and state formation, Berber activists within the anti-colonial nationalist movement challenged the political line of the nationalist party, the Mouvement pour le Triomphe des Libertés Démocratiques. This opposition focused on the need to redefine the concept of identity: activists did not reject either Arabic or Islam—the dual linguistic-religious core of national identity for Algerian nationalists—but they identified with a broader idea of an ‘Algerian Algeria’ that could incorporate various components of society.

Through the study of archival sources, this paper analyses the origins and consequences of the 1949 controversy within Algerian nationalism known as the ‘Berberist crisis’. Particular attention is paid to the idea of the nation proposed, assessing whether and how Berber activists participated in the political debate and state-building.     

Father,son, and holy ghost: Pye,Solomon, and the ‘spirit of Chinese politics’

Abstract

Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture structurally is two books. The first (parts I and II pp. 1-159) is a discussion of Chinese psychological characteristics based on the author's 1966 dissertation for MIT, The Chinese Revolution and the Politics of Dependency: The Struggle for Change in a Traditional Political Culture. The second (parts III and IV pp. 160-526) is a competent if somewhat narrow think-tank piece written in 1969 on the Hundred Flowers, the Great Leap, and the early phase of the Cultural Revolution.     

Soviet musicology and the ‘nationalities question’: the case of latvia

Nation branding, as a phenomenon, is attracting increasing scholarly attention. However, much of the existing literature has been written by those involved in the public relations industry themselves. There have been some studies which have been written from a critical viewpoint; however, the tensions of branding a nation have often been neglected. This paper aims to explore the inherent tensions between nation branding and nation building. To what extent is nation branding a tool or a practice? What images of the nation do branders seek to promote, and who is this image for? Is nation branding merely a more palatable version of nationalism? In particular this paper focuses on the debates surrounding the launch of Brand Estonia in 2001/2. Brand Estonia, with the slogan Welcome to Estonia: Positively Transforming, was launched to coincide with Estonia staging the Eurovision Song Contest in 2002. It is a unique and interesting case study given the level of controversy that the initiative generated amongst the Estonian public. Estonia was the first Former Soviet Republic to launch a nation branding project and, perhaps more controversially, it was managed by a British-based company, Interbrand. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to public-level discourses concerning Brand Estonia. The empirical findings discussed in this article highlight some of the more salient narratives on national identity that Brand Estonia engendered and therefore aims to fill this gap.     

‘On the outskirts of the Empire’: Joseph Brodsky and Lithuania

This article explores the role of Lithuania in Joseph Brodsky’s life and works before and after his exile from Russia in 1972. As a former Soviet republic, Lithuania represented an intermediary space for Brodsky both culturally and geographically, contributing to his realization that it was a ‘rehearsal’ for his actual emigration. However, Brodsky’s notion of Lithuania changes when, after 1972, instead of representing a simulacrum of the ‘abroad,’ the poet sees Lithuania as a ‘home’ from afar. Emigration, in Brodsky’s case, thus became a realization of the myth of exile implicit in his earlier texts about Lithuania.     

‘Raising a moral generation’: the Republican People's Party and religious instruction in Turkey, 1946–1949

When Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, as the Prime Minister of the Turkish Republic, declared his government's intention to raise a ‘religious generation’, his proposition drew harsh criticisms from Turkey's secularists, who argued that doing so would clearly challenge the secular nature of the Turkish state. Yet it may come as a surprise to many that it was not a conservative party with Islamist leanings that first experimented with the idea of relying on religious education as an antidote to the perceived moral decadence of the society. Rather, it was the secularist party, the Republican People's Party, which attempted to use religious instruction for the same purpose during the heyday of Kemalism in the 1940s. Against this backdrop, providing an analysis of how the Republican People's Party had come to the point of offering religious education to school children and how it justified this policy can shed light on today's debate on secularism and the secular character of the Turkish state.     

Kenya's political ‘transition’ through the eyes of its ‘foot soldiers’ for democracy and human rights (1997–2012)

This is a study of young human rights activists who provide a unique window on Kenya's recent and turbulent political history (1997–2012). The period includes the end of authoritarian rule and election of a ‘reform’ government in 2002 that expanded some human rights but abused others. Based on archival materials and periodic, multiple interviews by the author with key youth activists, the findings make three contributions to the study of human rights and democracy. First, it identifies the often overlooked role of secondary level activists in a human rights/democracy social movement, the so-called ‘foot soldiers’. Second, it explores the failure of Kenya to consolidate its democracy and quell police violence, including the assassination of two human rights investigators, an event which sent a chill through the activist community. Third, by tracing the trajectory of some ‘foot soldiers’ during this period, the study confirms a theory of a cycle of social movement activism but suggests modifications.