To History or to Hollywood? Monuments to Foreign Celebrities in Twenty-First Century Balkans

The article identifies an emerging trend in the reconstruction of identities in the Balkans which involves the memorialisation of foreign celebrities, including Rocky Balboa, Tarzan, Bruce Lee, Bob Marley, Tupac Shakur, and Samantha Fox. The article aims to understand the meaning and the purpose of foreign celebrity monuments to the local communities. The findings suggest that the monuments represent radical political statements by emerging civil societies in a process of transition from Yugoslav socialism, 1990s nationalism, and foreign-led liberalisation and democratisation in post-conflict times. The monuments are constitutive in themselves as democratic expressions and examples of citizens performing political acts.     

Stability First,Development Second,Democracy Third: The European Union's Policy towards the Post-Conflict Western Balkans, 1991–2010

This article assesses total EU financial flows towards the Western Balkans between 1991 and 2010. It shows that, in the short term, the majority of support has been allocated to humanitarian assistance and socio-economic development. Although the EU has declared its interest in democracy promotion, democracy assistance ranks only third on the list of its financial expenditures in the Western Balkans. Therefore, although EU financial aid is consistent with official EU programmes, it is inadequate in the post-conflict context of the EU candidate and potential candidate countries that require support for democratisation.     

Policy Transfer as a “Contested” Process

Policy transfer studies have commonly assumed that changes to policies borrowed from abroad are either the result of deliberate efforts to adjust/translate them to fit its receiving environment, or an adaptive response to the cultural and institutional circumstances of the latter. In introducing the concept of “contested policy transfer,” this article will argue that differences between the “original model” and the borrowed one might be actually due to the series of conflicts and negotiations which take place among key bureaucratic actors at the “importer” jurisdiction. The article will illustrate the concept by analyzing the transfer of the Chilean “Programa de Mejoramiento de la Gestión” to the Mexican government, a process which took place between 2005 and 2010.     

Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan as Post-Soviet Rentier States: Resource Incomes and Autocracy as a Double ‘Curse’in Post-Soviet Regimes

This article presents an analysis of two post-Soviet states, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, which can be identified as post-Soviet rentier states. Both countries are characterised economically by enormous national resources of gas and oil and low economic diversification as well as politically by strong autocratic presidentialism with neopatrimonial structures. These two factors, combined with further post-Soviet legacies such as a low level of political interest in the respective societies and a basically hierarchical orientation of the population, lead to a specific post-Soviet variety of rentierism. From a political science perspective, this article reveals the impact of resource policies on these comparably new political systems and concludes with a summary of core features of these post-Soviet rentier states.     

Innovation Policy as Performativity—the Case of Sweden

This article analyzes how the idea of “innovationism” in Sweden has generated a new kind of idea-driven policy around the creation of innovative regional policy. In contrast to similar policies in this area, this policy does not manifest itself through traditional instruments, but evolves through symbolic and ritual performances, in particular through events and conferences. The article asks how this emerging idea has changed the existing institutional formation of sponsoring industrially relevant research. The vision of concerted action between decision-makers within modern innovationism reinforces territorial identity, but it also tends to devolve responsibility to the regional level since concerted action on the national level is hard to obtain. What emerges is a system of governing at a distance where different actors perform their roles according to often academic ideas of innovationism. The study is based on two qualitative studies in Sweden entailing both documentary sources and semi-structured interviews.     

History as a propaganda tool in Putin’s Russia

This paper analyzes the propaganda campaign orchestrated by the Russian authorities with the aim of promoting a version of the country’s history for political purposes. This version puts the accent on the exceptionality of Russian historical development, and is geared to endowing the figure of Vladimir Putin – seen as the person who has succeeded in carrying out a number of national projects that have been frequently abandoned throughout Russian history. The analysis presented here centres on two channels used in the campaign: school textbooks and the film industry.     

Did Gorbachev as General Secretary Become a Social Democrat?

As General Secretary, Gorbachev evolved from a Communist reformer to a socialist of the social democratic type. The most important programmatic documents of the CPSU in 1990–1991, on which Gorbachev had the predominant influence, were essentially social democratic. (Many in the Party apparatus had no intention of implementing them.) From 1988, Gorbachev was advocating fundamental change of the Soviet system, although there were zig-zags in his public pronouncements under the pressure of events. Ill-understood both at home and abroad, Gorbachev's social democratic ideas were ‘outflanked’ by the market fundamentalism and political impatience of his radical opponents and frustrated by the implacable enmity of conservative defenders of the vanishing Communist party-state.     

How Asian countries understand policy experiment as policy pilots?

Policymaking based on the classical experimental design is regarded as a golden rule in the field of public policy. Despite the methodological superiority of randomized control experiment, the practices of policy experiment differ across countries, reflecting the different intentions of policymakers. This paper reviews how policy experiments are practised in Asian countries, especially Korea, China, and Singapore. As our review suggests, the term ‘policy pilot’ is preferred to ‘experiment’ as the former is considered as an exemplar proposed by the central government. At the same time, the selection of pilot sites depends on central government’s political and practical (rather than methodological) consideration. Moreover, the utilization of policy pilots does not solely depend on the success of the pilot programme or the effect size per se. As the policymaking process is a complex endeavour involving multiple streams of actors, resources, and solutions, Asian countries use policy pilot results to get ideas on how different actors respond to policy, instead of a determinant of policy decision. Therefore, we conclude that Asian countries emphasize less the rigorousness of experimental design than the possibility of pragmatic utilization of policy pilots.     

Voting as a habit in new democracies – Evidence from Poland

Among the wide range of theories explaining why some people vote and others do not, one is recently gaining particular popularity. This is the theory of voting as a habit (e.g. Plutzer, 2002; Franklin, 2004; Hooghe, 2004). The empirical evidence supporting this theory covers only Western democracies, so the following question might be asked: is this pattern universal? In the case of old democracies, voting is a habit acquired gradually in a process which starts at the moment of the very first election one can cast the ballot. In new democracies the situation is different, as we can pinpoint the starting moment (first democratic election), which is the same for different voters and thus different age cohorts. In this paper we investigate voting as a habit in new democracies, using data from the Polish National Election Study. We find that voting in Poland has some habitual aspect; repeated voting brings about a (sort of) habit, which has an intrinsic, irreducible effect on voter turnout. We also find that habit of voting is formed likewise in all age cohorts.     

Migration as a Tool in Development Policy: Caution Ahead?

The World Bank and UNDP have proposed that migration and mobility facilitate economic development. Yet the epidemiological and public health literature has often associated migration and population mobility with the extension and intensification of infectious diseases, most recently epitomised by the AIDS pandemic. Within the context of the well-documented negative developmental impact of AIDS, this suggests a potential clash in perspectives on the role of migration. However, if insights from public health can be incorporated into broader development perspectives, it may be possible to realise the developmental benefits of migration while mitigating or avoiding any associated health concerns.     

Words as interventions: naming in the Palestine – Israel conflict

This paper examines the practice of naming events, actions, places and people in the Palestine?–?Israel conflict. It explores the way colonialism and the national project deploy transformations in naming to construct places and identities and craft widespread imaginaries about these places. Names form part of cultural systems that structure and nuance the way we imagine and understand the world. They embody ideological significance and moral attributes and can be consciously mobilised for various projects of power. Words and names reference a moral grammar that underwrites and reproduces power. As such, our analytical approaches to lexicons must be embedded in historical, political and cultural frameworks.     

Endgame? Sports Events as Symbolic Targets in Lone Wolf Terrorism

This article explores how terrorists acting alone or in small groups have used sports events as symbolic targets in their performance of terrorism. Drawing on a comparative analysis of the attacks on the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games and the 2013 Boston Marathon, it is argued that terrorist target selection of major sports events should be understood in relation to the grievances and desires of the perpetrators. The article finds that rather than being the primary target of their attacks, sports events are among a broader range of densely crowded spaces that terrorist actors may seek to target as part of their violent struggle against their adversaries. The findings are contextualized in relation to broader patterns and trends in lone wolf terrorism, including the significance of a copycat phenomenon and inspiration effect.     

Reconstruction as modernisation: the ‘post-conflict’ project in Afghanistan

This paper examines the post-war reconstruction programme in Afghanistan, arguing that it contains the seeds of radical social change. The paper analyses the tensions of the present reconstruction project in light of the past experience of similar programmes launched by Afghan rulers and their foreign supporters. The central argument is that the conflation of post-war reconstruction with a broader agenda for development and modernisation has brought out a wide range of tensions associated with social change. Simultaneously the prominent foreign role in the undertaking has increasingly had negative effects. As a result, the entire project shows signs of severe contradictions that are adding to the problems caused by the growing insurgency.     

Re-politicisation as post-NPM response? Municipal companies in a Norwegian context

This is an exploratory study of re-politicisation of municipal companies in one Norwegian municipality. Unlike re-municipalisation, which seems to imply the reversal of privatisation and out-contracting, and the reinstitution of municipal ownership, the Norwegian case demonstrates a continued adherence to the provision of certain public services through municipal companies. However, our study reveals increasing re-politicisation, especially with respect to board composition. The mechanisms behind this process seem first and foremost to be a post-new public management (NPM) response (re-centring) combined with efforts of rebalancing NPM-inspired solutions without changing them in any fundamental way (learning from experience).     

EU–Russian Relations and Turkey's Role as an Energy Corridor

This article analyses the impact of EU–Russian relations on Turkey's role as a corridor for the transit of energy supplies to Europe. While the European Union (EU) has inherent leverage in its collective purchase of most Russian gas exports, market power has shifted in Russia's favour. Russian efforts to build new pipelines and widen downstream access have stimulated EU interest in diversifying energy imports and transit routes. In this sense, the EU has recognised Turkey's potential value as a secure and independent route for importing non-Russian energy supplies, which may in turn have an impact on Turkey's EU accession process.     

‘Greatpowerness’ as the key element of Russian self-consciousness under erosion

The article analyzes changes in attitudes to and interpretations of Russian ‘greatpowerness’ (velikoderzhavnost') between the years of 2000 and 2014, that is to say during President Putin's period of rule. The concept of Russia as the great power was changing during this time in two respects: first, there was an increasing reticence of self-assessments; second, we observe prioritization of protecting the country's own, mostly regional, interests as opposed to expansion which would be characteristic of a great power. Moreover, this period clearly demonstrates contradictions and dangers, engendered in the process of losing self-perception as that of the great power. The readiness of Russian political elite to part bit by bit with the status of the great power and to go to the status of a regional power is combined (as the events around Ukraine have shown) with unwillingness to sustain the new status of the country with the help of the capabilities of a soft power. Lack of these, as well as of the skills in their use, and finally, a desire to raise the rating of trust in the government with the help of “a small victorious war” have formed the basis for the aggressive upsurge towards Ukraine. In the absence of serious hard and soft capabilities, the splashes of aggressiveness in Russian foreign policy and of anti-Western sentiments in domestic political life are unlikely to have any lasting effect. They are able, however, to generate extremely negative long-term consequences for the country.     

Should suicide prevention programs target individuals or society as a whole?

The issue of whether it is more useful to focus on societal interventions to prevent suicide or individual-centered approaches is discussed. The advantages and drawbacks of each approach are explored.