Hurdles to peace: a level-of-analysis approach to resolving Sudan’s civil wars

Why do some peace agreements end armed conflicts whereas others do not? Previous studies have primarily focused on the relation between warring parties and the provisions included in peace agreements. Prominent mediators, however, have emphasised the importance of stakeholders at various levels for the outcome of peace agreements. To match the experience of these negotiators we apply a level-of-analysis approach to examine the contextual circumstances under which peace agreements are concluded. While prominent within the causes of war literature, level-of-analysis approaches are surprisingly scant in research about conflict resolution. This article compares two Sudanese Peace Agreements: the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (2005) that ended the North–South war and led to the independence of South Sudan, and the Darfur Peace Agreement (2006) which failed to end fighting in Darfur. We find that factors at the local, national and international level explain the different outcomes of the two agreements. Hence, the two case studies illustrate the merit of employing a level-of-analysis approach to study the outcome of peace agreements. The main contribution of this article is that it presents a new theoretical framework to understand why some peace agreements terminate armed conflict whereas others do not.     

Combating Coups d’état in Africa, 1950–2014

Recent years have seen African militaries attempt coups in virtually every geographic region, from Egypt to Lesotho and Guinea to Madagascar. They have targeted established democracies, infantile democratic experiments, increasingly authoritarian executives, power vacuums brought on by leader death, and—most recently in Burundi—leaders attempting to circumvent constitutional limitations on their tenure. These continuing acts perpetrated against regimes with such varied backdrops suggests that coups still afflict a wide range of states and remain a continuing threat to leader tenure. This is in contrast to the African Union’s emphasis on curbing the practice. This paper explores the African Union’s effectiveness to combat military coups, primarily focusing on the potential for sanctions to act as a deterrent to would-be coup plotters. The paper also considers potential limitations on the African Union’s (AU’s) ability to project power against certain states. Analyses for the years 1950–2014 indicate Africa has in fact witnessed a meaningful decline in coup activity, an impact even more pronounced than the end of the Cold War. Results also indicate that the AU’s effectiveness in deterring coups is not constrained in cases where they are expected to lack leverage.     

Old bottle new wine? The evolution of China’s aid in Africa 1956–2014

Abstract

China’s aid is frequently portrayed as a challenger to established Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) norms, but it is unclear when the distinct ‘Chinese-model’ of aid emerged and how it has evolved over time. Using new historical data on Chinese aid in Africa and the case of Ethiopia, we have three main findings. First, China developed a distinct model of mixing ODA-like aid and commercial forms of economic engagement only after the mid-1990s, reflecting institutional reforms for allocating and managing foreign official finance. Second, social sectors have played a much greater role in China’s aid programme than is commonly perceived. Finally, Chinese aid to productive sectors has changed substantially whereas in social sectors it is relatively consistent.     

The Debate on the Writer’s Responsibility in France and the United States from the 1920s to the 1950s

The debate on the responsibility of the writer was, in France as in the USA, an attack against literary and artistic modernism. From Charles Maurras to Irving Babbit, the reaction against modernism presented itself as a defense of classicism and of tradition against romanticism. Far from being politically neutral, this attack identified romanticism with revolution and the destruction of the social order. The opposition between responsibility and freedom structured the debate from the end of the nineteenth century until World War II. The war entailed a loss of autonomy of the literary field which fostered, like during World War I, the imposition of national moralism. In both countries, a debate arose on the question of the responsibility of the writer, but it took a different form. Whereas the opposition between art for art’s sake and responsibility continued to structure it in the USA, the notion of responsibility was appropriated in France by the literary Resistance and redefined by Sartre at the Liberation.     

Quasilegality: khat,cannabis and Africa’s drug laws

Abstract

This article explores the concept of ‘quasilegality’ in relation to two of Africa’s drug crops: khat and cannabis. It argues that the concept is useful in understanding the two substances and their ambiguous relation to the statute books: khat being of varied and ever-changing legal status yet often treated with suspicion even where legal, while cannabis is illegal everywhere in Africa yet often seems de facto legal. The article argues that such quasilegality is socially significant and productive, raising the value of such crops for farmers and traders, but also allowing states to police or not police these substances as their interests and instincts dictate. It also argues that there is no clear link between the law on the statute book and the actual harm potential of these substances. Finally, it suggests that the concept has much wider use beyond these case studies of drugs in Africa in a world where global consensus on drug policy is cracking, and where many other objects of trade and activities find themselves in the blurred territory of the quasilegal.     

“The (final) solution of the Gypsy-question:” continuities in discourses about Roma in Hungary, 1940s–1950s

Although the repression and elimination of Roma from Hungarian society in the 1940s did not reach the same extent as in the German and Austrian part of the Third Reich, their characterization as lazy and work-shy, used to justify their persecution, was similar. This paper establishes the presence of racial hygienic discourse related to Roma during the late 1930s and the first half of the 1940s in Hungary, and traces its survival and influence on regional policy-making in the postwar period. It furthermore explores the transformation and adaptation of racism and eugenics to the socialist ideology of equality based on citizens’ participation in productive work in the early state socialist period, including the first Party declaration on the situation of Roma in Hungary in 1961. Specific attention is paid to the role of medical experts who discussed the “radical solution of the Gypsy-question” in the early 1940s and the immediate years following World War II. Reflecting on wider transformations of racism in the postcolonial and post-World War II period in Europe and North America, the paper contributes to scholarship that complicates the evaluation of the state socialist past, including the connection between medicine and politics in Cold War Europe.     

The 1950s—the triumph of the Soviet economy

The frequent assertions in both Russian and Western economic literature and the broader press that the command economy is not viable are based on data showing the inefficient use of material and labour resources in the pre-war period and the continuous decline in the rate of economic growth and the efficiency of resource use in the 1960s–1980s. Yet it is a long way from observing these facts to confirming the failure of the command economy. Before the political system of the USSR began to collapse in 1990–91 there had been no prolonged absolute fall in GDP nor, in the post-war period, in the standard of living of the population, nor had technical progress come to a halt as it did, for example, in the 1990s after the rejection of the command economy. Compared with the latter period it is justifiable to talk of the indisputable advantages of the command over the market economy in Russian conditions, if of course we do not consider (for which there are some grounds) the enormous difficulties of the Russian economy in the 1990s to be consequences of a protracted transformation crisis. I would like to draw attention to the fact that these advantages are evident even in comparison with the degenerate mid-1980s version of the command economy, which was very different from the classical model.     

The Persistence of the Cattle Economy in Zululand,South Africa, 1900–50

This article critiques the recent turn towards social capital from the perspective of the history of colonial Uganda and the Gold Coast. Social capitalists emphasise the need for community solidarity and networks as an essential framework for development. This emphasis usually assigns a role to traditional institutions, which is interesting for historians of Africa because it calls up the ghost of the colonial doctrine of Indirect Rule. In fact, a very close parallel exists between Indirect Rule and social capital as tools of development. There is a crucial difference, however, between the two doctrines. While colonial officials used discourses about African community to shore up the power of the dominant elites, social capitalists tend to ignore the possibility that community-based policies might reproduce unequal power relations at the village level. For this reason, it is important to historicise social capital with reference to the colonial period.     

The ‘Ankara Moment’: the politics of Turkey’s regional power in the Middle East, 2007–11

Around 2007 Turkey became a regional power in the Middle East, a status it has maintained at least until the outset of the Arab Revolt in 2011. To understand why Turkey only became a regional power under the Muslim akp government and why this happened at the specific point in time that it did, this article highlights the self-reinforcing dynamics between Turkey’s domestic political-economic transformation in the first decade of this century and the advantageous regional developments in the Middle East at the same time. It holds that this specific linkage—the ‘Ankara Moment’—and its regional resonance in the neighbouring Middle East carries more transformative potential than the ‘Washington Consensus’ or the ‘Beijing Consensus’ so prominently discussed in current global South politics.     

The Impact of Resource Inflows on Child Health: Evidence from Kwazulu-Natal,South Africa, 1993–98

This paper investigates changes to the health status of young children (aged 0–5 years) in the Kwazulu-Natal province of South Africa during 1993–98. In our estimation we explicitly take into account the potential endogeneity of household resources in affecting child health. In particular, we examine whether the effect of resources is differentiated by the source, the age and the sex of the recipient. Finally, we also take into account the panel structure of the data and conduct (household level) fixed effects estimation of the determinants of child health. The estimation results show that the state of child health has experienced marked improvement following the dismantling of apartheid. Our results point to the role of household resources and health infrastructure availability in improving the health status of children.     

The Determinants of Women’s Empowerment in Bangladesh: The Role of Partner’s Attitudes and Participation in Microcredit Programmes

This paper employs data from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (2004) to explore how women’s empowerment is related to partner’s attitudes, participation in microcredit programmes and a set of other socio-economic factors. We use a structural equation model with categorical observed variables. We get that participation in microcredit programmes has a positive impact on both the empowerment’s dimensions considered, while partner’s attitudes effect is weaker, proving that gender community norms are likely to be rooted in women’s minds regardless of the partners’ perceptions of women’s status.     

The Art of War: Instability, Insecurity, and Ideological Imagery in Northern Ireland’s Political Murals, 1979–1998

This article examines the purpose behind, and rhetorical content of, political wall murals produced during the troubles in Northern Ireland. I utilize a semiotic approach to analyze the ways that the symbolic content and physical placement of Northern Irish murals was used by actors on both sides of the conflict. I examine the major thematic traditions utilized by muralists on each side and situate them within the historical and political contexts of the conflict in Northern Ireland. This approach highlights the ways that murals did more than simply champion ideological causes, as earlier scholarship has argued, but served an active role in efforts to catalyze cultural support for organizations’ political goals. I argue that murals played a key role for organizations on both sides of the conflict, as they each struggled to craft a communal self-identification and legitimizing central narrative that furthered their ideological goals. Organizations on both sides used murals to mobilize cultural support for their political and military struggles. In this regard, murals functioned as a form of mythic speech, attempting to depoliticize highly political ideologies and make the rhetoric used by the competing groups seem natural and pure. The grassroots nature of the mural traditions is particularly telling in this regard, exposing the deep-seated insecurity of organizations on both sides. This insecurity is further reflected by, and served as a catalyst for, the paramilitary violence that was a defining characteristic of Northern Ireland for so long.