The repercussions of the Iraqi Kurdistan independence referendum

Iraqi Kurdistan President Masoud Barzani appears to have overreached in holding a referendum on independence, although almost 93% voted for it. Major powers support Iraq's territorial integrity. The Iraqi government has asserted military control over the region with Iran's help. Facing political and economic isolation, the Kurdistan Regional Government's authority and cohesion has been weakened. Barzani's futility has likely hardened the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK)'s position in Turkey and increased its regional freedom of action.     

Winning Hearts and Minds in Civil Wars: Governance,Leadership Change,and Support for Violent Groups in Iraq

The “hearts and minds” model of combating rebellions holds that civilians are less likely to support violent opposition groups if the government provides public services and security. Building on this model, we argue that a political event that raises popular expectations of future public service and security provision increases support for the government and decreases sympathy for violent opposition groups. To test this argument, we leverage a unique research design opportunity that stems from the unforeseen announcement of the resignation of Iraq's divisive prime minister in August 2014 while an original survey was being administered across the country. We show that the leadership transition led Iraq's displeased Sunni Arab minority to shift support from the violent opposition to the government. In line with our argument, this realignment was due to rising optimism among Sunni Arabs that the new government would provide services and public goods—specifically security, electricity, and jobs.     

The Iraq War and the Responsibility to Protect: Uses,Abuses and Consequences for the Future of Humanitarian Intervention

Before the 2003 Iraq war, the political leadership of the United States and United Kingdom had to sell the case for war to their people and the world. This was attempted through a number of speeches that employed rhetorical justifications for the war. Two prominent justifications used during this period involved the employment of security and humanitarian narratives. The security narrative focused on claims regarding Iraq's undermining of international law, possession of weapons of mass destruction and threat to the world. The humanitarian narrative revolved around claims about human suffering in Iraq and the need to liberate its people. While it is widely assumed that security is the dominant casus belli in the post-9/11 world, there is much evidence to suggest that the humanitarian justifications that played a critical role in the military interventions of the 1990s were still important after 9/11. The use of humanitarian justifications for the Iraq war clearly has implications for the ‘responsibility to protect (R2P)’ movement, which has gained prominence since the December 2001 publication of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) report. Based on an extensive content analysis of speeches by the US and UK political leadership before the war, this article will quantify the relative importance of each narrative and analyse what the findings mean for the ongoing debates within the ‘responsibility to protect (R2P)’ movement.     

Gender,political participation and electoral systems: A cross‐national analysis

This article investigates whether the smaller gender gaps in political engagement, found in more proportional electoral systems, translate into smaller gender differences in political participation. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, it presents the argument that more proportional systems may send signals that multiple interests are included in the policy‐making process, which may increase women's levels of political participation and thereby reduce gender gaps. Additionally, the article tests for the possibility that a greater number of political parties and the elected representatives they provide act as barriers to political participation that have a greater impact on women's levels of participation than men's. It is argued that women's lower levels of political resources and engagement might create more difficult barriers for them than for men. Results lend little support for the first hypothesis, but a greater confirmation for the second.     

Institutional Reforms and Democratization in Korea: the Case of the Kim Young Sam Administration, 1993–1998

This article examines the nature of political and institutional reform initiatives that have been carried out under former president Kim Young Sam. How effective have they been in consolidating democracy in Korea? Specifically, we examine why the Kim Young Sam government's political reform campaigns have been limited, and explore the impact of this limitation on his institutional reform initiatives and the process of consolidation of democracy in Korea. We argue that Kim Young Sam's initial political reform campaigns have contributed to creating a favorable environment for his institutional reform efforts. However, limitations of these initial political reform campaigns such as political funding and bribery scandals have hampered institutional reforms. We also argue that these difficulties were intensified by public dissatisfaction with Korea's poor economic performance and International Monetary Fund (IMF) financial assistance. As a result, Kim Young Sam's moral legitimacy as a civilian and reform-oriented leader toward the public has totally evaporated. Therefore, experiences under the Kim Young Sam administration are just trials and errors of democratization that show another failure in presidential leadership in Korea. These experiences will negatively affect the consolidation process of democracy in Korea by increasing the public's distrust of government as a whole. As a result, democratic consolidation in Korea is being delayed.     

Citizenship rights in Malaysia: the experience of social and institutional discrimination among ethnic minorities

This article examines the experience of political, social and cultural rights for Malaysia's ethnic minorities. Using a survey method, our research finds that while Malaysia has made substantial economic progress, lack of attention to political, social and cultural rights for ethnic minorities in Malaysia has meant that ethnic minorities have become increasingly dissatisfied with their experience of citizenship. Experiences of institutional and social discrimination within Malaysia's ethnically differentiated model of citizenship are common. Such experiences can lead to low levels of confidence in Malaysia's national institutions and have the capacity to undermine the kind of political support that is necessary for good governance and national stability.     

Iceland's Economic Crash and Integration Takeoff: An End to European Union Scepticism?

Iceland's application for European Union (EU) membership in summer 2009 suggests that the country's political parties had reconsidered their longstanding scepticism towards European integration and opted for closer engagement with the EU after the financial crisis. Applying Moravcsik's liberal theory of preference formation, this article investigates the European policies of Iceland's political parties from 2007 to 2010, focusing on four related European issues which have been prominent in the Icelandic EU debate: an application to join the EU with no reservations; the unilateral adoption of the euro; the inclusion of a clause in the constitution allowing a transfer of sovereignty; and the holding of a referendum on an EU application. It analyses whether the economic crash actually led to a change in the political parties' economic preferences and to a subsequent reformulation and adaptation of their long‐term European policy goals and, if not, then how Iceland's decision to apply for EU membership is to be understood. The article concludes that the parties' European policies have remained remarkably stable despite the EU application. This indicates that Iceland's EU membership application can only be understood through a thorough examination of domestic politics, to which liberal intergovernmentalism pays insufficient attention.     

The politics of government reorganizations: Evidence from 30 OECD countries, 1980–2014

Revisiting the seminal study of March and Olson (1983), this article aimed to empirically test whether or not government reorganizations at the ministerial level can be better explained by political factors than administrative and functional rhetoric. Government reorganizations have often been understood as functional adaptations to increase organizational efficiency and effectiveness, but little empirical research has been conducted on their political context. By analyzing pooled‐time series data from 30 OECD countries from 1980–2014 taken from the Statesman's Yearbook, this article sought to examine whether changes in political power are associated with government reorganizations and whether their intensity is affected by the country's political system (parliamentarism or presidentialism), transitions of administrative power, and political cycles of the top executive's tenure. The results suggested that government reorganizations are more likely to occur in parliamentary systems, after transitions of political power, and at the beginning of the top executive's tenure.     

Progress and Challenges with Iraq's Multilevel Governance

Nations in the Arab world are largely unitary states, yet Iraq has embarked on a seemingly ambitious agenda of decentralization and devolution mixed with federalism. While local elections have been delayed at least until 2012, and indeed may never take place, Iraq's constitutional commitment to decentralize and subsequent statutory enactments appear to be turning provincial governments into significant actors in Iraqi governance. Progress has taken place at a slower, more deliberate pace than both proponents and opponents feared in 2002–6. This article discusses the current state of implementation of this process as a cornerstone of Iraqi democratic development, from the perspective of a former U.S. Department of State senior governance specialist who served on an embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team in 2009–10. These reconstruction teams were dismantled in the year leading up to September 6, 2011, as the American relationship with Iraq was “normalized,” though they likely will continue in Afghanistan into 2013.     

Political Brand Equity Model: The Integration of Political Brands in Voter Choice

The voters’ choices about political parties have many similarities with how they make their choices about commercial brands. Therefore, political parties are now constantly applying the concept and strategies of brand management to make the political product attractive, appealable, trustable, differentiable, a source of long-term relationships, and a decision-making driver. Furthermore, the political parties have to play an active role in the community's political socialization processes, which rely heavily on branding strategies. Because, the party equity is largely based on the community's social gregariousness that has profound effect on the electorates' propensity to participate in the politics. This study has deeply explored and broadened the concept of party equity analogous to commercial brand equity typology by developing a politics-specific brand equity model. This model demonstrates the integration of political brands in voter choice. Empirically, this model has been validated by collecting 550 valid responses from the constituency of District Gujrat, Pakistan. A careful analysis of these responses through structural equation modeling methodology has revealed that political parties vary according to the outcomes of their role in the political socialization process of the communities, loyalty, and voters’ attitude. Parties that have favorable role in the socialization process have strong party knowledge and thus have high party equity as compared to competing political parties, which have a weak position of party knowledge. Similarly, this study provides the roadmap and guidelines for the political parties to manage their party equity. Similarly, the model would be able to facilitate political parties in comparing different constituencies on the basis of their diversified social dynamics and political knowledge and in the development of a constituency-based manifesto, also termed “localized manifesto,” to further enhance their vote bank.     

Interest group dynamics in a weak and transitional state: the case of Bolivia

Bolivia's political development has been characterized by elitist control set in an environment of political instability and a weak decentralized state. Since the 1980s and Bolivia's transition to a limited form of democracy, this elitist control has been successfully challenged from the left and, since the early 2000s, particularly by the indigenous population. In fact, Bolivian contemporary politics and interest group activity have been shaped mainly by the rise in political power of the left and indigenous interests. This rise, given a weak state transitioning to limited democracy, has had several consequences for interest group activity that add increasing complexity to the group system. One consequence of Bolivia's course of political development is that, although it exhibits many common elements of interest group activity explained by existing group theories, aspects of its group development are not adequately accounted for by these theories. In addition, there are questions about whether the new configuration of interest groups promotes or undermines democracy. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Political survival and the Yasukuni controversy in Sino-Japanese relations

Abstract

This article presents a reinterpretation of Japan's responses toward China's pressure over the Yasukuni issue. It is generally taken for granted that Japan's official responses to China's pressure over the issue are determined by the personality of individual leaders, the emergence of Japanese conservative nationalism and the calculations of Japan's national interests with regard to China's strategic role. With the examination of two cases during the Koizumi and Abe administrations between 2001 and 2007, this paper offers an alternative interpretation by highlighting the rationality of individual political actors and the primacy of domestic political survival. The article suggests domestic political legitimacy of individual leaders is a vital factor that affects Japan's official responses to China's pressure over the Yasukuni issue.     

Discourses of popular politics,war and authenticity in Turkish pop music

Turkey and the United States (US) have had a close mutually beneficial political and military relationship since the end of World War Two. However, this relationship came under pressure when the US government and Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) tried to cooperate closely in the 2003 military invasion of Iraq. AKP's leadership failed to persuade Turkey's parliament to accept the deployment of US troops and equipment in Turkey partially due to public opinion. Despite Turkish media and its government being intertwined to the extent where subversive discourses are all but silenced, some popular music videos were able to articulate discourses which questioned AKP's military policies. This paper analyses lyrics, visuals and sounds of one of these songs to look at the way war and political issues become articulated through a form of simplified popular politics, despite being presented as serious and authentic by a number of key signifiers across the different modes. A number of scholars have addressed the issue of subversion in music both as actual political challenge and as popular counter culture. This case study is used to assess subversion in music in these terms in order to consider its likely place in political debate in Turkey.     

Profoundly Un‐Conservative? David Cameron and the UK Bill of Rights Debate

This article considers David Cameron's proposal to repeal the Human Rights Act (HRA) and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. Cameron's proposal has been heavily criticised by a range of political, academic and non‐state actors and was described by a current senior Coalition Cabinet member as ‘xenophobic’ and ‘legal nonsense’. This article takes a slightly different direction to those lines of attack and critique that have been developed of the Conservative's proposals. The central proposition of the article is that Cameron's proposal is profoundly un‐Conservative at two levels. Firstly, at the level of Conservative approaches to constitutional reform and secondly, at the level of Conservative political philosophy.     

Neo-liberalism,big business and the evolution of interest group activity in Latin America

In the 1980s and 1990s, the confluence of the third wave of democracy, neo-liberal economic reforms and economic crises in Latin America, produced several significant consequences for the region's underdeveloped interest group systems. By using an international political economy approach, this article examines these developments and particularly how neo-liberal policies affected the political fortunes of big business plus the broader political fall-out from neo-liberal policies. In essence, we make the argument that, for three reasons, the consequences of the confluence of these three developments for Latin America's emerging interest group system are mixed in terms of a more pluralist, open-access system. First, the influence of big business persists and in many ways has been enhanced as the economically and politically privileged position of large private companies since the 1980s has given way to economic concentration, transnationalization and the rise of multilatinas (Latin American multinational companies, which primarily operate across the region). Second, political opportunities have been opened for a range of interests, many from the left, that likely would not otherwise have emerged so early in the region. Third, the election of leaders opposed to neo-liberal policies may transform Latin America's political economy and aid in the democratization of its interest group system. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

UK Governance: From Overloading to Freeloading

The UK's ongoing political turbulence has prompted a reprise of debates from the 1970s when many concluded the country was ungovernable. Then, the most influential diagnosis conceptualised the UK's governance problem as one of ‘overloading’ caused by the electorate's excessive expectations. This article argues that these accounts overlooked another phenomenon besieging UK governance during this period. This phenomenon was freeloading: the withering of government capacity deriving from the ability of actors to enjoy the benefits of citizenship without altogether contributing to the cost. In the interim, these problems have become endemic, not least because of the unspoken but discernible policy of successive governments to turn the UK into a tax haven. High‐profile scandals involving prominent individuals and corporations, plus the failure to clamp down on them have reinforced the perception that the UK's political system is geared towards the rich and the powerful at the expense of the marginalised majority.     

Political Planomenon and the Secret Thereof

Abstract

Taking Derrida's notion of the ‘secret’ and Deleuze's immanence' as its starting point, this essay proposes a reading of Marx's living labour' that critiques Hardt and Negri's understanding of political subjectivity. In doing so, the essay examines the possibilities of rethinking political agency in terms of a ‘powerless power’.     

Leeway for Personal Impact: The Case of Foreign-Policy Making in Norway*

Setting their focus on the role of decision-makers at intermediate and higher levels of a country's foreign policy administration, the authors analyze contextual factors that may determine the impact of decision-makers' personal characteristics on foreign policy. The article highlights the dynamics of these factors in the case of Norwegian foreign policy-making in the mid- and late 1970s. Over time, there has been a general relaxation of formal bureaucratic constraints, including the use of internally recruited political appointment, compounded by the growth of non-traditional international public affairs. The Foreign Minister's leadership style appears to have served as a catalyst to create an environment in which middle-to-upper level administrative leaders and political appointees have had greater opportunity than previously to garner influence and make it felt.     

Alienation and Belonging - Women's Citizenship and Emancipation: Visions for Sudan's Post-Islamist Future

This essay examines Sudanese Islamist debates about the position of women within an Islamic framework, oppositional groups' stances on the nature of a post-Islamist Sudan and women's role in the nation. The author critiques oppositional groups for a lack of vision for a post-Islamist gender egalitarian Sudan and feminism for its lack of clarity about the concept of women's emancipation. The author argues that all groups in Sudan have not extended a visionary approach to women, but have been limited to expressions about "women's rights." Using the concepts of "emancipation," "gender egalitarianism," "citizenship," "alienation," "belonging," and "subject," the author deconstructs segments of crucial political documents such as Islamic decrees, the new Sudanese Constitution (1998), the "Asmara Declaration" of the National Democratic Alliance, and various statements by political parties in exile. Using excerpts from women's narratives, the author attempts to illuminate Sudanese women's self-identification, belonging, and citizenship.