Theorizing Islamism and democracy: Jamaat-e-Islami in India

Liberal reading often posits Islamism as obverse of modernity and reason. Phil Briscoe's statement that Hitler's Mein Kampf might be kept in libraries but not the books by authors like Jamaat-e-Islami's founder's (Maududi) amply illustrates it. This article calls such an understanding into question. On the basis of my historical-ethnographic fieldwork on India's Jamaat-e-Islami and its offshoot, Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), I examine the interrelationships between Islamism and democracy showing Jamaat-e-Islami's moderation and SIMI's radicalization. It is my contention that Islamism and democracy are not antithetical to each other; they cohere in complex ways. When democracy is responsive to the traditions and aspirations of its Muslim citizens, Muslims relate to pluralism and democracy. But when democracy becomes majoritarian and a theater of entertainment and violence against Muslims, Islamists turn radical. I also suggest that radicalization such as SIMI's symbolizes a complex dynamic of democratization and demonopolization of religious authority. By foregrounding the salient transformation of Indian Islamism, this article aims to advance a nuanced, fresh understanding of both Islamism and democracy.     

Local,National and Global Islam: Religious Guidance and European Muslim Public Opinion on Political Radicalism and Social Conservatism

The attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and Kosher supermarket in Paris in January 2015, as well as the announcement of a ‘Caliphate’ by radical Islamists of the so-called ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’ (ISIS) in 2014, reignited political and academic interest in the possible appeal of radical Islamism among young Muslims living in Western Europe. This analysis expands existing knowledge by adding a large-n, cross-national comparison to the small-n or single-case-study approaches dominating research on European Muslims over the last two decades. Moving beyond examination of the interaction between European governments and groups claiming to represent European Muslims, this analysis takes into account the individualisation of Muslim religious discourses, practices and identities. Binary logistic regression analyses challenge conventional wisdom which emphasises discrimination and rejection of Western foreign policies in the explanation of political radicalism. Instead, religious guidance and socio-economic status emerge as consistent correlates of political and social attitudes among West European Muslims. These findings not only add to a growing body of literature providing empirical evidence for the political impact of religious elites, they also have crucial policy implications for West European governments working to maintain national security and social cohesion.     

The European Community and South Africa: Economic Reality or Political Rhetoric?

This article examines the economic and political relationship between the European Community (EC) and the Republic of South Africa (RSA). From the economic perspective, the Community's objective of securing economic independence for the region, trends in EC-RSA trade and the arguments pertaining to mineral dependency are discussed. From the political perspective, Community statements on apartheid are compared with its foreign policy record. In particular, the Code of Conduct for European firms operating in the Republic is analysed within the framework of European Political Cooperation (EPC). The achievements, failures, future role and alternatives to the Code are considered and the limitations imposed by EPC in realizing a collective foreign policy are recognized.     

Political interest furthers partisanship in England,Scotland, and Wales

According to much of the literature, partisanship in Britain exercises little independent influence on the vote but merely reflects voters’ prospective and retrospective evaluations of the parties’ performance with regard to their management of the economy, national security, and public services. In this view, partisanship comes close to Fiorina’s model of a “running tally” of political experiences. Similarly, Dalton’s notion of “cognitive mobilization” suggests that seeking out political information should undermine both the need for and the likelihood of party identification. Applying Mixed Markov Latent Class Analysis to the British Election Study Panel 1997–2000, we challenge these perceptions by demonstrating that partisanship is more stable than previously thought, and that high levels of political interest are linked to higher levels of partisanship and possible also to higher levels of stability. This is much more in line with classic ideas about party identification than with “revisionist” critiques of the Michigan model, and with current models of political cognition. Moreover, it suggests that political interest renders affective ties more powerful in stabilizing themselves.     

The politics of regulatory enforcement and compliance: Theorizing and operationalizing political influences

There is broad consensus in the literature on regulatory enforcement and compliance that politics matters. However, there is little scholarly convergence on what politics is or rigorous theorization and empirical testing of how politics matters. Many enforcement and compliance studies omit political variables altogether. Among those that address political influences on regulatory outcomes, politics has been defined in myriad ways and, too often, left undefined. Even when political constructs are explicitly operationalized, the mechanisms by which they influence regulatory outcomes are thinly hypothesized or simply ignored. If politics is truly as important to enforcement and compliance outcomes as everyone in the field seems to agree, regulatory scholarship must make a more sustained and systematic effort to understand their relationship, because overlooking this connection risks missing what is actually driving regulatory outcomes. This article examines how the construct of “politics” has been conceptualized in regulatory theory and analyzes how it has been operationalized in empirical studies of regulatory enforcement and compliance outcomes. It brings together scholarship across disciplines that rarely speak but have much to say to one another on this subject in order to constitute a field around the politics of regulation. The goal is to sharpen theoretical and empirical understandings of when and how regulation works by better accounting for the role politics plays in its enforcement.     

Varieties of Radicalism: Examining the Diversity of Radical Left Parties and Voters in Western Europe

Radical left parties (RLPs) are diverse and several RLP subtypes have been distinguished in the literature. However, the degree to which these subtypes are linked to significantly different policy proposals has not been analysed, and little is known about whether subtypes are associated with differences in their respective voters’ characteristics. This article analyses the policy positions of RLPs across a number of issues, using manifesto and expert survey data, allowing insights into the differentiation between types of RLPs. RLPs differ in the extent to which they adopt New Politics issues, and the article proposes a classification of Traditional and New Left RLPs. Using cross-national survey data from the European Election Studies series and multilevel multinomial models, the article examines the ideological, policy and social differences in the electorates of the various types of RLPs. It finds socio-demographic and attitudinal differences between the voters of Traditional and New Left RLPs that are consistent with the programmatic differences of the parties.     

简单问题的复杂化和复杂问题的简单化--试析思想政治教育主阵地的一个误区

各类学校的思想政治理论课是思想政治教育的主阵地,这一领域的教育效果如何至关重要.一段时间以来,我国学校思想政治理论课教育存在一个不容忽视的误区,即简单问题的复杂化和复杂问题的简单化,严重降低了思想政治教育的实效,必须转变传统的思想政治教育理念,才能走出这一误区.     

Kosovo: Statebuilding Utopia and Reality

ABSTRACT

Twenty years of international statebuilding have made little impact on the ‘stateness’ of Kosovo. This article puts this failure in the broader context of the shift from the liberal internationalist assumptions of the late 1990s to the pragmatic realism of today. It does this through the lenses of E H Carr’s classic work The Twenty Years’ Crisis, UN policy thinking on the problematic assumptions of international statebuilding and the diagnoses in David Lake’s 2016 book The Statebuilder’s Dilemma, which sets out three pragmatic alternatives. The article concludes that all three of these alternatives can be seen in practice in Kosovo.     

Theorizing power in transition studies: the role of creativity and novel practices in structural change

An important theoretical challenge for theorizing about power dynamics in societal transitions is the transformation of power itself. In this respect, it is especially puzzling how agency at the level of novel practices can extend beyond the habitual, how it can draw on structures and destructure at the same time and in doing so, how it might emerge both as a creative and a destructive force. This article addresses this puzzle by scrutinizing and refining multi-level conceptions of power in the field of transitions studies. In the first part, it explores one specific multi-level framework by Grin and Van Tatenhove in a longitudinal case study of wind energy projects in Denmark and establishes that it has four conceptual short-comings—relating to (1) temporality; (2) relationality; (3) materiality; and (4) creativity—that this article claims to overcome in the second part. In order to so, it draws on several practice theories for an extended framework that enables the unpacking of the interplay between creativity and transition processes.     

Responsibility and the Deliberative Citizen: Theorizing the Acceptance of Individual and Citizenship Responsibilities

The responsibilities of citizenship have, in recent years, become a central concern in political and policy debates. Nevertheless, the practical meanings of such responsibilities have remained opaque. This article examines these meanings by asking what theories of citizenship have to say about how people engage with, and accept, their responsibilities. An examination of how the liberal, communitarian, republican and deliberative democratic theories explain the way citizens engage with their responsibilities shows that only deliberative democratic theory provides a nuanced range of concepts that may explain the acceptance of responsibility. In specific, Habermas's deliberative democratic theory is underpinned by a model of how the individual may develop a range of mental capacities to accept the extensive responsibilities associated with the deliberative citizen. By explaining how the individual grapples with her personal responsibilities, this approach also explains how she can deal with her responsibilities as a citizen. Four discourses through which people accept their responsibilities are thereby identified. These include egotistical, conformist, reformist and reflexive discourses. These discourses are explored by drawing on interviews with groups for whom the privatization of responsibility may have particular meanings. Using these interviews, this paper explores how people accept their personal responsibilities, thereby unfolding the discourses people use to deal with their citizenship responsibilities. In particular, by accepting the deliberative democratic contention that the individual already has the capacities to act as the deliberative citizen, it is possible to come to a view of just how people accept both their personal and citizenship responsibilities.     

Rural Development Policy: Rationale and Reality

America's rural communities have fared poorly in economic termscompared to metropolitan areas. After a spurt of growth in the1970s that seemed to be closing the gap, rural areas are againlosing ground. Rural communities have argued for special helpfrom the national government. Such help can be justified tofacilitate balanced economic growth, create "more equal" standardsof living, and benefit small farmers, a group for whom the nationhas a special regard. The counter-arguments are that specialhelp to rural areas postpones adjustments to an increasinglyurban world and that federal rural programs subsidize a favoredlife-style. In fact, several federal development programs serverural areas. President Carter announced a rural policy in 1979.In 1980 the Congress enacted legislation requiring future administrationsto address rural concerns systematically. The Reagan administrationhas sent Congress the rural development strategy required bythe law, and two annual updates. However, if having a policymeans having a systematic approach to reaching defined objectives,the U.S. has had no rural policy. The objectives of federalrural efforts have never been settled on, and approaches torural problems continue to be unsystematic.