Democracy promotion through regional organisations: A missed opportunity for South African and Brazilian leadership?

What role do regional powers Brazil and South Africa play in democracy promotion in their respective regions, South America and Africa? While both Brazil and South Africa played an important role in building regional institutions’ normative frameworks for democracy promotion, most notably within the Union of South American Nations and the African Union, their leadership applying these frameworks within regional organisations is inconsistent. South Africa is trapped between regional and global expectations; Brazil’s leadership lacks commitment. The interplay of domestic, regional and international politics needs to be scrutinised to explain why South African and Brazilian regional leadership falls behind expectations.     

COMESA and the Tripartite Free Trade Area: Towards an African Economic Community?

Economic integration has been an espoused goal of the African continent for several decades, and steady progress has been made through the African Union and the eight regional economic communities (RECs). The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) is one of the largest and most diversified RECs on the continent, and played a significant role in the launch of the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA). This article assesses the performance of COMESA, and considers the prospects for the TFTA. It also addresses the contribution of COMESA and other RECs to the continent’s economic development and considers the prospects for a potential African Economic Community.     

Germany in Europe: return of the nightmare or towards an engaged Germany in a new Europe?

Especially since (re-)unification, perceptions of Germany alternate between the fear of the return of the German hegemon and – at the same time – the diametrically opposed call for more German leadership based on Germany's outstanding pro-European engagement. Nonetheless, Germany's foreign policy has changed little since 1989: it is still cautious rather than assertive. Due to Germany's experience with the two world wars, German foreign policy places great value on the enlargement as well as the deepening of the EU. In sum, Germany can best be characterised as a normal and engaged European state.     

Remaking German democracy in the 1950s: Was the civil service an asset or a liability?

This article offers a new look at the conflicting forces behind decisions on the shape and character of the civil service in the 1950s. It is argued that the controversial measures taken to reaffirm the traditional hierarchical system and reinstate former civil servants were not only the product of policies devised by the Adenauer government and the conservative majority in the Bundestag. The inability of the Western Allies to agree on a clear course of action was also a factor, as was the support for some legislation by the Social Democrats, who were hoping to broaden their electoral appeal and improve relations with the administrative and military elites. Decision makers did succeed in moulding the civil service into an effective tool of government, and in this respect it was an asset in stabilising the new democratic system. Yet the extent to which politically compromised staff members were reinstated was counter‐productive, creating political burdens that outweighed short‐term advantages. Moreover, civil service policy bolstered traditional lines of social and gender stratification, undermining the credibility of a political system ostensibly based on the principle of equal rights and opportunities.     

Uzbekistan between the great powers: a balancing act or a multi-vectorial approach?

The expulsion of US forces from the Karshi-Khanabad airbase in November 2005 and the subsequent rapprochement between Uzbekistan and Russia represents one of the most dramatic diplomatic turnabouts in Uzbek foreign policy. This article analyses the theoretical discourses surrounding the alignment behaviour of Uzbekistan. It posits that traditional alignment theories, such as balance of power and balance of threat, are inadequate in their explanations of Uzbek foreign policy due to the lack of attention paid to the nature of the regime and the internal politics of the country. It also dismisses previous attempts at characterizing Uzbekistan's alignment behaviour as ‘omnibalancing’ as inadequate and incomplete. This article argues that Uzbekistan's foreign policy is based on a multi-vectorial approach, which is designed to maximize the benefits that a particular alliance may offer Uzbekistan. A variety of sources have been consulted in the formulation of this work, from official Uzbek foreign policy statements to secondary sources, in both English and Russian.     

Australian Labor as a Federal Organisation: State Uniformity or Distinctiveness?

Is the Australian Labor Party (ALP) one party, or eight? Academic accounts of the ALP throughout its history have emphasised the importance of state-based policy-making and organisation as evidence that the “life of the party” occurs within state and territory branches. However, over the last three decades, changes to the national conference and constitution, the increasing prominence of national leaders and the professionalisation of campaigning practices have arguably created the conditions for a far more centralised organisation, raising the question of whether, in 2019, there is anything distinctive about the ALP state and territory branches beyond the jurisdictions in which they operate. In this article, we investigate the distinctiveness of state Labor branches in terms of their formal organisational diversity and the characteristics and attitudes of their supporters. Using data from an original survey of Australian party supporters conducted in 2016, as well as undertaking an analysis of formal party rules, we show that the ALP exhibits a high degree of organisational uniformity across its branches, and supporters of the party in all states and territories very closely resemble each other. We conclude that even though the party maintains a federal structure it is possible to study its supportership and formal structure as a national organisation.     

Towards a new paradigm for pan‐African knowledge production and application in the context of the African renaissance

Abstract

The article argues that the primary purpose of education, both formal and non‐formal, is the development of interrelated and interdependent sets of human capacity to think, to know and to act by honing social consciousness or awareness, values and skills. Investing in education is therefore viewed as investment in the development of social capital that combines with material resources and other non‐material phenomena to produce goods and services, as well as a favourable spiritual environment for human sustenance and development.

Education in Africa needs a fundamental paradigm change which entails, among other things, focusing on confronting, with a view to correcting and departing from, hegemonic knowledge and knowledge systems that are predicated on racist paradigms that have deliberately and otherwise distorted, and continue to distort, the reality of who Africans really are. The article visits some of the terrains most in need of this change: contestations about the roles Africans and Africa have played in human civilisation during the four main historical periods to date: Africa's leadership as the cradle of humankind or the Naissance of Humanity; Africa's leadership in all fields of knowledge and human achievements at the beginning of modern civilisation up to about the fourteenth century AD; the fifteenth century AD to the present which marks the only period in human development when Africa and Africans have been dominated and marginalised by mainly European civilisation and its global projections; and, the emerging era of the renaissance of Africa and other marginalised peoples.

A model curriculum that requires supplementation by the specific characteristics of each country that adopts it is suggested as a step towards this paradigm change. This modest effort at constructing a model curriculum is informed by the understanding that all Africans and peoples of African descent need to possess some basic, shared common knowledge about Africa, the Diaspora and the world ‐ and to acquire critical approaches to contextualised learning.     

Energy in Northeast Asia: Resources for Conflict or Cooperation? An Introduction

Although Northeast Asia typically is seen as an arena for conflict over energy supplies, complementary economic relationships would seem to make the region ripe for energy cooperation: Russia possesses major oil and gas resources, while China, Japan, South and North Korea all depend on imported energy. The four papers in this issue raise a number of important and, at times, neglected issues about the prospects for energy cooperation in Northeast Asia. While focusing on specific projects for energy supply and conservation, the authors implicitly raise broader theoretical questions about the prospects for and consequences of regional energy cooperation.

Somalia: federating citizens or clans? Dilemmas in the quest for stability

This paper is concerned with the theoretical analysis of the legitimacy challenges faced by the federalist structure of the Somali state, as established with the 2012 constitution. Understanding federalism in Somalia, I argue, is not a simple question of political power distribution: there is also a dichotomy between a predominant European-based conceptualisation of the state and the bulk of often-neglected Somali notions of communitarian organisation, to which the clan is a part. If the decentralised structure of clans in Somali tradition seems to realise a certain convergence with the current federalist project, the dichotomy is rather evident when it comes to the definition of ‘(civil) society’ in Somalia. Thus, in order to assess both the progression of the federalist project, more than four years after its launch, and the factual legitimacy it holds among the Somali population, this paper will focus on the complex relation between state and citizens.     

Israel: ethnocracy or multicracy?

Much of the recent academic literature that assesses democracy in Israel labels it either as incomplete or flawed, yet such literature employs minimal systematic analysis of how the state is actually governed. Since the 1990s, there has been a tendency to describe the Israeli political regime as an ethnocracy. This article argues that the term ‘ethnocracy’, when applied to Israel, has certain weaknesses and instead proposes the concept of ‘multicracy’ (multiformocracy) as a more appropriate term by which to describe Israel's political organization. It will demonstrate that existing Israeli democratic institutions do not control the state's policymaking in full and that several politically important processes are controlled or at least influenced by various other politically active forces. Whilst these forces can influence, stimulate, inhibit, and otherwise change governmental decisions and actions, they can be labeled as kratiae. While the capacity of Israel's democracy to govern is weak, these other kratiae can intervene in policymaking and the state's regime acts as democracy-dominated multicracy.     

Failure of security co‐operation in SADC: The suspension of the organ for politics,defence and security

Political opposition parties are considered crucial to the nurturing, enhancing and consolidating of democracy in every political system. Indeed, their existence is proof of political tolerance, competitive party elections, the provision of choices to the voting public and the possibility of alternation in power. However, the political opposition on the African continent is generally weak, and particularly so in Botswana, resulting in the predominance of the ruling party in political affairs. This article analyses the weaknesses of Botswana's opposition parties by tracing their historical evolution, characteristics, electoral base, and performance against the background of the political and electoral system in Botswana and the strength of the ruling party itself. It concludes that future prospects for the opposition to make greater inroads into the Botswana Democratic Party's support are small because of the fragmented nature of the opposition itself and the relative satisfaction of citizens with the current government's performance.     

BRICS corporates: In collaboration or in competition in Africa? Case studies from the South African mining industry

Framed by the 5th BRICS Summit in South Africa in March 2013, this analysis examines economic ‘South-South’ linkages on a company level. A qualitative case study focuses on a small number of private corporations operating in the South African mining and minerals sector. It looks at their reactions to increasingly competitive markets in the regions of Southern and West Africa, thus on their agency, defined as the ability to act in complex uncertainty. Findings present how the South African cases' engagements with strategically selected partner companies from the other BRICS economies can succeed. This contribution attempts to examine entrepreneurial rationale that can be taken as anecdotal evidence of a new ‘economic diplomacy’ at corporate level. The examples illustrate how agency enables certain adaptations of strategies for creating competitive synergies from collaboration with new actors from the other BRICS economies in Africa.