Domestic politics,news media and humanitarian intervention: why France and Germany diverged over Libya

The European Union member states split over the military intervention in Libya with France, Germany and the UK voting differently in the United Nations Security Council. This article compares news media in France and Germany to better understand the foreign policy decisions of these key actors. Using a newspaper analysis of 334 articles, it shows that the German domestic debate started very late and was much less stable than the French debate. This supports arguments that Germany's decision-making was erratic. The analysis, however, also shows that the German debate was comprehensive and included an extensive discussion of the legitimacy of intervention. This fits in well with the traditional reluctance of German foreign policy elites to support military action.     

Humanitarianism and politics: the dangers of contrived separation

Humanitarianism and politics are more often than not considered to be separate from each other, despite the increasing complexity of contemporary conflict. This article highlights the specifics of the flight of one renegade soldier and some 300 of his men from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to Rwanda, at a time when the international community was plotting the roadmap for an ideal solution that everybody could have approved. The article explores what caused the relevant parties to forfeit such a solution and recommends ways to improve operational coordination and complementarity among international actors.     

Afghanistan: the politics of post-war reconstruction

Post-war reconstruction has become a dominant feature of Western political discourse and a key policy concern since the 1990s. While there is an acute need for informed debate between political scientists and practitioners engaged in such activity, this requirement is often ignored. From a practical perspective, most post-war reconstruction initiatives have, in recent years, been mired by lack of donor support or by no reduction in the dangers that were present prior to the outbreak of violence. Using Afghanistan as a case study, this article seeks primarily to advance policy thinking on what has become known in the literature as ‘state building’. Based on a theoretical and empirical examination, it attempts to assess the political future of Afghanistan following international involvement in the country over the past year. Most importantly, it highlights that the reconstruction of Afghanistan is dependent on developing a new political culture and a new way of thinking among the citizenry that ranks compromise over con?ict. More generally, the paper concludes that contemporary approaches to post-war reconstruction have been depressingly limited in their results.     

The politics of Hegemony and the politics of development: The 1994 elections in South Africa's Eastern Cape

Following the first multi‐racial, democratic elections in South Africa, in April 1994, the new leadership and the country are confronting the dual task of political transformation and economic redistribution having won a clear popular mandate on the basis of a populist, Reconstruction and Development Programme. In government, however, the former liberation movement is now under pressure to adjust its policies and its developmental strategy in the light of new economic constraints, both domestic and international. The choice is between the politics of compromise, suggesting adoption of a corporatist (and elitist) model of policy‐making, with the co‐optation of various constituencies, or adherence to a more radical style of direct popular political participation, akin to the ‘mass action’ of recent decades. Nowhere is this contradiction clearer than in the Eastern Cape Province, with a long tradition of militant mass action, strong trade unions and industrial action and a history of popular involvement in the liberation struggle.     

The Naga dream and the politics of peace

A section of Naga tribes-people in northeastern India are engaged in an insurrection against the government on the premise that they had been an independent people until the British brought the areas where they lived under its control after the signing of the Treaty of Yandaboo in 1826 with the Burmese. The Burmese were defeated by the British and this treaty brought the curtains down on the first Anglo-Burmese War. Even before the seeds of the Naga insurgency movement were sown in 1946, the Nagas had petitioned the British authorities, in the wake of the possibility of India gaining independence, saying they should not hand over the Naga areas to India when they leave after granting Delhi freedom. The Nagas wanted London to let them revert back to their way of life before the signing of the Treaty of Yandaboo. This was not to be and Naga areas became a part of India as they were in any case a part of British India before that. The Naga insurrection was shaped in 1946 and since then has undergone a massive transformation. Today, the Naga insurgency movement is faction-ridden, with four groups on the scene, pushing the dream of an independent Naga homeland. The dominant among these groups, the Isak-Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland or the NSCN-IM has been engaged in peace talks with the Indian government ever since a ceasefire was reached between the two sides in 1997. A solution is nowhere in sight although dozens of rounds of parleys have been held. The problem is compounded by the emergence on the scene of other Naga rebel players, formed mostly by break-away groups from the NSCN-IM. Factional wars have become the order of the day, resulting in the authorities focusing their attention to ending the turf battles among the factions rather than pushing the peace process forward. The situation is hazy to say the least and the politics of peace has assumed different dimensions, posing newer challenges to peace-makers.     

World politics and social movements: the Janus face of the global democratic structure

This article advances a theoretically informed understanding of the relationship between world politics, democracy and social movements. The pivot of the discussion is the concept of a global democratic structure. The global democratic structure is rooted in changes taking place after the end of the Second World War, but has become globally dominant only after the end of the Cold War. The global democratic structure is undergirded by powerful political, security and economic interests. At the same time, however, it provides opportunities for social critique and change. This potential is exemplified through a discussion of the role of social movements in world politics. Social movements are influential through discursive means. The article offers a number of propositions about the conditions for social movement success and failure in the global democratic structure.     

Populism,ontological insecurity and Hindutva: Modi and the masculinization of Indian politics

Abstract

In an era increasingly defined by insecurity and populist politics, India has emerged as a forceful ontological security provider under the leadership of Marendra Modi. If ontological security is about finding a safe (imagined) haven, then ontological insecurity is about the lack of such a space in narrative terms. Drawing on Lacanian understandings of ‘the imaginary’ as something that can fill and naturalize this lack of space, the article is concerned with how memories, places and symbols of narrative identity constructions are used in populist discourse. More specifically, it attempts to understand the relationship between ontological insecurity and the imaginaries of populist politics in India. In so doing, it argues that the re-invention of ‘nationhood’, ‘religion’ and ‘Hindu masculinity’ along gendered lines has created a foundation for governing practices aimed at ‘healing’ a number of ontological insecurities manifest in Indian society. It specifically looks at how the Modi doctrine has formulated and expanded its foreign policy discourse into one that privileges populist narratives of nativism, nationalism and religion as forms of ontological security provision at home and abroad, but also how everyday practices can challenge such narratives, thus allowing different imaginaries of the Indian state.     

Rethinking Kurdish geopolitical space: the politics of image,insecurity and gender

Global publics and local actors are increasingly saturated with variegated still and moving images. The important role played by images in world politics, however, remains understudied in the International Relations (IR) discipline. This article argues that the Kurdish geopolitical space is increasingly tied to a new regional and global imagination, which emanates from verbal–visual meaning-making strategies such as narrative reconstructions and pictorial representations (for example illustrations, pictograms, or photographs). The article’s investigation illustrates how the construction of new Kurdish geopolitical imagination became increasingly regionalized and internationalized during the war against the so-called Islamic State (IS), particularly after the Kobane siege in Syria in late 2014. It shows how the war between the Syrian Kurdish forces and the IS involved gendered and aesthetic signification for the global and regional audiences. Such strategies of meaning-making served as vital venues for gendering and making the threat of the IS and its “distant war” proximate, familiar and urgent for otherwise disinterested western audiences. These verbal–visual strategies vitally acted as a transmission belt between individual, state and systemic levels, turning the struggle against the IS into a globalized cultural-symbolic war. The article employs critical visual semiotics and critical discourse analysis to investigate the regional and global politics of image and offers three empirical cases to illustrate its argument: the narratives of the Kobane siege; the cartoon depicting a “Kurdish homeland” and globally circulated Kurdish female fighter photographs.     

Playing at peace: Western politics,diplomacy and the stabilization of Macedonia

On 27 July 2001 negotiators of the ethnic Slav and ethnic Albanian political parties from the self‐proclaimed unity government of the Federal Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) met at Ohrid, a lakeside resort in the southwestern corner of the war‐torn country. The negotiators had fled Skopje, the country's starved, gray capital, because the pressures from the spreading war between ethnic Albanian insurgents and the dominantly ethnic Slav security forces had made constructive political dialogue nearly impossible. Ohrid, on the other hand, was a community that embraced many of the region's historical contradictions. The town had seen Romans, Byzantines, Franks, Ottomans, Serbs, Greeks and Albanians all come and go. Saint Clement of Ohrid (d. 916) had once lived and worshipped in the city, and much of the architecture, with its winding streets and numerous churches and monasteries, still bore the marks of its medieval and diverse past. All parties arrived in this contemplative setting under intense diplomatic pressure from the European Union (EU), the United States (US), and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to find a constitutional and political solution to the crisis, and find one soon. As all parties sat down to thrash out a compromise, a senior EU mediator was heard to remark: ‘This country doesn't need mediators, it needs a psychoanalyst.”