Tunisian Women at the Crossroads: Antagonism and Agonism between Secular and Islamist Women’s Rights Movements in Tunisia

The recent rise in Islamist-inspired women’s activism is posing challenges to the longstanding secular women’s movements in post-Ben Ali Tunisia. Starting from the conviction that cohesive, cross-class women’s coalitions are better suited to achieve gender justice for women of all walks of life, this article draws on the concept of ‘agonistic pluralism’ (Chantal Mouffe) to understand how Tunisia’s women’s movements can deal with the new, multifaceted conflict in their ranks. Through a discussion of the ‘Dialogue of Tunisian Women’, the grounds for strategic coalition-building and ‘agonistic’ engagement between secular and Islamist women’s rights actors are illustrated.     

The limits of agency: Emily Hobhouse’s international activism and the politics of suffering

Abstract

This article pieces together the activism of the British welfare worker and feminist-pacifist Emily Hobhouse (1860–1926) during two largely unrecorded episodes of transnational activism: firstly, her ministry of Cornish miners in Virginia, Minnesota, in the United States; and secondly, her interventions during the period of reconstruction following the South African War (1899–1902). The article endeavors to contextualize Hobhouse’s activism and offer a broader understanding of the limitations and restraints on her actions. Ultimately, her activism required a platform that was in the gift of political actors and establishment figures, and dependent on fluctuations within specific political and bureaucratic situations. Based on close inspection of undocumented material in both South African and British archives, the article investigates Hobhouse’s repertoire of missionary and philanthropic roles within a wider context of humanitarian politics. It demonstrates how women’s activism and their behind-the-scenes politicking informed political decision-making in modern imperial and international affairs.     

The sketch of Brazil’s grand strategy under the Workers’ Party (2003–2016): Domestic and international constraints

After passage of the 1988 Constitution of Brazil, successive democratic governments worked to build bridges between the nation’s foreign policy and its defence strategy, thus fostering a dialogue among administrations and constituencies under the aegis of the rule of law. It was under the Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff administrations that Brazil laid out a grand strategy, implementation of which was interrupted by the controversial impeachment proceedings of 2016. The argument unfolds from a consideration of Brazil’s development model and domestic politics as key structural variables in analysing the challenges faced in the conception and implementation of its grand strategy. The article is organised into two sections: (1) The sketch of a grand strategy: when Brazil’s foreign and defence policies converged; (2) An ambition frustrated? Or, the impact of Brazil’s development model and domestic politics on the conception and implementation of its grand strategy.     

The Implications of Brexit for the Caribbean’s Future Relationship with Britain and the EU

Abstract

The UK Brexit referendum to leave the EU has created concerns internationally, particularly for countries that have formal trade, aid and investment treaties with the EU and none with Britain alone. The notion of a Commonwealth Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is a non-starter and would bring no benefits to the Caribbean. But, Britain outside the EU deprives the Caribbean of a sympathetic voice on a range of issues, including financial services, and alters the level of official development assistance that will be available from remaining EU members that have no historical relationship with the English-speaking Caribbean. The importance of the UK as a market for their goods and services make it imperative for Caribbean countries to start early ‘talks’ with London so as not to be crowded out by FTAs that the UK will conclude with countries larger and richer than the Caribbean. At the same time, Brexit provides an opportunity for the Caribbean to revisit its unsatisfactory Economic Partnership Agreement with the EU. Caribbean countries need to determine their objectives and take early initiatives to realise them.     

Orientalism and binary discursive representations of Tunisia’s democratization: the need for a “continuity and change” paradigm

ABSTRACT

Mainstream analyses of Tunisia’s post-2011 democratic transition have been largely divided along two mutually exclusive narratives. There are those hailing the country as ‘the Arab Spring’s only success story’ on the one hand and those sounding sensationalist alarms about the country’s democratization failure and return to authoritarianism on the other. This is consistent with, and perpetuates, a problematic zero-sum binary in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) scholarship between either a linear democratization process or authoritarian resilience. Furthermore, these reductionist representations highlight the failure of predominant democratization theories to account for the nuances and complexities of democratic transition. This paper critically examines the binary discursive representations of Tunisia’s democratization and explores their underpinning in two competing Orientalisms: the classic Orientalism underscoring an ontological difference (and inferiority) of the ‘Arab world’ to the West, and a liberal civilizing Orientalism which, while acknowledging an ‘essential sameness’ between the West and the ‘Arab world’, places the West as the temporal pinnacle of democracy and the normative monitor of democratic success. This paper thus rejects the binary discursive representations of Tunisia’s transition and advocates for a more nuanced narrative which accounts for the patterns of continuity with and change from authoritarian structures within the democratization process.     

Eurosceptic yet pro-enlargement: the paradoxes of Hungary’s EU policy

Abstract

The present article seeks to explore the main aspects of Hungary’s EU enlargement policy. It reveals a tension between the government’s committed support for EU enlargement and its critical stance towards the EU on several other fronts. However, on the basis of liberal intergovernmentalist theory, this article argues that this is not a real contradiction since enlargement to the Western Balkans serves Hungary’s national interests in spite of its government’s Euroscepticism. At the same time, Hungary’s questioning of the basic values of the EU as a community of liberal democracies has weakened the legitimacy of Hungarian interventions in favour of speeding up EU enlargement. While Hungary has become ever more isolated from the ‘old’ EU member states, more recently, its government managed to increase its leverage in the Western Balkans and central Europe in the context of the migration crisis.     

Haseki Women’s Hospital and the female destitute of nineteenth-century Istanbul

This article is on one of the longest-lived medical institutions of the Ottoman Empire, the Haseki Hospital. I will try to glimpse to the daily workings of the Haseki Hospital and the transformations it underwent in terms of the services it offered, its patients, its social functions, and its relevance for the urban lives of the destitute women of the empire for the period between the 1830s and 1893. During that period, the Haseki Women's Hospital was an institution hosting poor and destitute women as well as pregnant, ill, feeble-minded, convicted women, widows, prostitutes, and orphans. Although it has been called a hospital, it has been used as a women's hospital, lying-in clinic, madness asylum, widow's house, orphanage, and a women's prison. I submit that the Haseki Women's Hospital fulfilled a dual purpose by combining social relief services with medical care for female patients. Besides being a locus of medicine, the hospital was also a site where women in the margins were confined and isolated, but also received care otherwise denied to them. Along these lines, this article searches the vulnerability of the destitute women of nineteenth century Istanbul.     

Strengthening Authoritarian Rule through Democracy Promotion? Examining the Paradox of the US and EU Security Strategies: The Case of Bin Ali's Tunisia

Since the end of the Cold War, much has been made about the crises that recurrently characterize the transatlantic relationship. Since the attacks of September 11th and the war in Iraq, such a crisis, according to many, has developed into a fully-fledged rift, which is beyond repair. The different views and policies of the US and EU in the Middle East are usually held as a paradigmatic example of the differences that exist between the two actors. The paper challenges this assumption and argues that the transatlantic rift, once the rhetoric is set aside, is not as deep as many suggest. In fact, through an in-depth analysis of how the democracy-promotion policies on the EU and the US are implemented, the paper shows that they are attempting to achieve similar objectives, under similar constraints and suffer from similar contradictions and shortcomings. The paper investigates such policies in the context of Tunisia, a country which, at least theoretically, should be moving forward towards democracy given the pro-democracy environment in which it operates.     

Reading twentieth century urban black cultural movements through popular periodicals: a case study of the Harlem Renaissance and South Africa’s Sophiatown

There exists a long history of debate among scholars in the humanities and social sciences regarding the potential of literature and popular culture to be socially transformative and to generate collective identities that empower a community. This transformative power of literature and popular culture, particularly in terms of the value granted to oppressed peoples seeking expression or catharsis, represents perhaps the truest value of cultural production. Its long-term contributions to the resilience of racially oppressed communities both in the USA and worldwide cannot be overstated. In Sophiatown and during the Harlem Renaissance, two periodicals, Drum and The Crisis, allowed black writers and readers alike to share in the formation of new modes of identity that spoke back in a firm voice to the long-standard stereotypes of blackness that permeated white-dominated popular culture. In both South Africa and Harlem, these publications gave voice to a distinctly black and urban culture, resisting notions of the “tribal” or “plantation” black subject. These movements were historically significant both within the study of black culture and literature and within the trajectory of socially transformative political movements.     

The party,the Gama’a and the Tanzim: the organizational dynamics of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s post-2011 failure

Abstract

In April 2011, the Egyptian Muslim Brothers (MB) founded the first political party in their 83-year-long history, known as the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). Yet the party remained under the control of its parent organization—the Gama’a (literally the ‘community’)—and its internal apparatus, the Tanzim. While both had been shaped during decades of MB’s semi-clandestine existence as a banned-yet-tolerated group, these did not adapt to the changing socio-political configuration and have resisted the transition to fully overt activity. Through an analysis of the FJP’s uneasy creation and with a grounding of extensive empirical research, this article argues that the party’s development was to a certain extent hampered by those pre-existing organizational structures. Organizational crystallization prevented the party from conforming to the emerging rules of the political field then under construction. Instead, the Gama’a’s undefined nature and opaque pattern of regulation were replicated within the FJP’s structure. Thus, the article seeks to uncover a hitherto hidden aspect of in the MB’s post-2011 failure, one which is rooted in organizational dynamics.     

The irreversibility of history: the case of the Ukrainian crisis (2013–2015)

Abstract

Today’s Ukraine figures as the land of irreconcilable differences, on the verge of disintegrating into different parts. Issues regarding nation-building processes, national identity types within the main ethnic communities, as well as regional political preferences have all become critical. Thus, this paper examines how enduring regional political preferences, embedded in a fragmented and porous national identity framework, have been serving as destabilizing factors in the eastern part of the country. The conclusions offer an understanding of the 2013–2015 crisis, while they can also be extrapolated to other regions of the ex-Soviet space.     

Performing the ‘India Permitida’: The Counter-Gift of Indigenous Women Targeted by a Corporate Social Responsibility Programme (Chile)

Relying on ethnographic data, this article critically analyses the pro-mining position adopted in Chile's Atacama Region by a group of Diaguita women who benefited from a corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme to revive indigenous culture. While the desire to escape from poverty (salir adelante, moving forward) appears as the main reason for participating, the benefits generated a sense of indebtedness resulting in allegiance to the company. The investigation also shows how this programme played a part in building a scenario in which indigenous females perform subjects apparently more suited than men to the neoliberal and multiculturalist governmentality of the Chilean State, whose politics favours mining.     

Russia’s use of semi-state security forces: the case of the Wagner Group

This article provides a definitive, in-depth case-study, using primarily Russian sources, of Russia’s use of the informal “Wagner Group” private military company (PMC) and its antecedents (from 2012 to 2018) in Nigeria, Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, Syria, Sudan, and the Central African Republic. It explores why Russia has used this group without legalizing its existence or role. While Wagner is sometimes used in the same ways that other rational states use PMCs, corrupt informal networks tied to the Russian regime have also used it in ways that are not typical of other strong states and that potentially undermine Russian security interests. Understanding the Wagner Group is interesting for comparative academic studies of PMCs, because Wagner doesn’t fit well any existing PMC category or template in the literature. It is also crucial for US and allied policy analysts attempting to attribute “Russian” actions in foreign theaters.     

The Commonwealth of Nations and the EU after the ‘Global’ Crisis: Rethinking Post-2015 ‘Global’ Development?

Abstract

The continuing ‘global’ crisis has accelerated divergences between regions, especially between the ‘rising’ global South, the European Union (EU) of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) and Cyprus, which belongs to both the Commonwealth and the EU. This article studies the emerging ‘vertical’ divergences between the EU and the global South, especially around the so-called Economic Partnership Agreements, and the parallel ‘horizontal’ divergences among Anglophone, Francophone (the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie) and Lusophone (the Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa) Commonwealths, with their inheritance of emulation and competition. It focuses on the possibilities of enhanced human/citizen security to propose an analysis that challenges established perspectives and points towards prospects for Commonwealth ‘schools’ of international relations/development.     

Youth welfare policy in Turkey in comparative perspective: a case of ‘Denied Youth Citizenship’

This article explores the main characteristics of social and economic policies for young people in Turkey. Inspired by Tom Chevalier’s typology of youth welfare citizenship designed for Western European countries, the article situates Turkey’s youth welfare citizenship model within a comparative perspective and contributes to the extension of Chevalier’s typology to a non-Western European country context. Relying upon the systematic analysis of findings of a nationwide survey on young people that was conducted in 2013, comparative youth statistics, official youth statistics, public expenditures data and existing policy frameworks, the article suggests that Turkey fits well with the denied youth citizenship type in Chevalier’s typology. Two conclusions are drawn with respect to Turkey’s youth welfare citizenship model. First, with respect to the social citizenship dimension, the article finds that social and youth policy structure in Turkey has a familialization effect on young people’s access to income. In terms of economic citizenship, the article suggests that Turkey implements a selective strategy that results in unequal distribution of labour market skills among young people.     

Between national and European foreign policy: the role of Latvia and Romania in the EU’s policy towards Central Asia

This article explores whether and to what extent new member states of the European Union (EU) seek to pursue their national foreign policy goals towards Central Asia through the EU rather than bilaterally. To do so, it focuses on Latvia and Romania. While the article finds evidence of Romanian attempts to project its interests in the region onto the EU level, Latvia appears to rely more extensively on the EU level to pursue its goals towards Central Asia. Using insights from the literature on Europeanization of national foreign policy, the article explains this finding with reference to four variables that determine whether a member state will seek to upload its national foreign policy preferences onto the EU level, namely the perceived salience of the policy goals, the extent to which member states can carve out a niche, their perceived capabilities and the level of Europeanization of their national foreign policies.