Out of Sight,Out of Mind? External Voting and the Political Representation of Portuguese Emigrants

Over recent decades, emigrants have gained expanded voting rights on a global scale. Despite the normative debates about this issue, there are few empirical studies on why states decide to implement external voting and how electoral systems perform. This article seeks to fill this gap by looking at the Portuguese case. Our study suggests that a combination of political and socio-economic factors explains the implementation of external voting. On the other hand, the interests of political parties and the low level of civil society engagement are key to determining the failure of electoral reforms and the attempts to overcome the shortcomings of external voting.     

On race,sport, and politics in South Africa’s past and present

There has been a steady emergence of quality writing about sport, politics, and the intersection between them in South African society in recent decades. This review essay looks at a number of recent works on soccer, rugby, and cricket, placing them within a larger context of race, sport, and politics in South Africa’s past and present.     

Will the North’s secessionist winds blow South? The past,present, and future of self-determination and border change in Africa

World politics tend to go through cycles of long periods of stable borders followed by bursts of secessionist movements. For this reason, it is important to examine whether the two recent cases of secessionism in the Northern Hemisphere symbolise such a turn in world politics. After reviewing the Catalan and Kurdish secessionist movements, the article turns to the history of secessionism in order to distil comparative insights and lessons. The main part of the article examines six categories of secessionism in Africa. In particular, the emphasis is on highlighting the various historical patterns of self-determination and border change in Africa. The final part is a comparative reflection on the future of secessionism in Africa.     

The politics of national‐populism: Ideology and policies of the German Republikaner party

In this article, the Republikaner party's ideology and policies are explored on the basis of programmes and other public statements. There will be an emphasis on economic policies and issues of national and ethnic identity. It will be argued that the Republikaner party is targeting a broader electoral coalition than its main competitors and predecessors on the extreme right. In its attempt to mobilise a broad and heterogeneous protest coalition and to attract voters beyond the narrow confines of traditional right‐wing extremism the party makes contradictory promises to various sectional groups without being able to integrate them into a consistent framework of economic policy. These contradictions are covered up by the party's radical nationalism, extreme xenophobia and populist propaganda.     

Post-crisis Political Normalisation? The 2018 Presidential Elections in the Republic of Cyprus

This article takes stock of the most recent presidential election in the Republic of Cyprus and connects it to broader currents in post-crisis European political settings. Although the elections took place against a backdrop of improving economic prospects, the crisis has left its political mark in a number of areas we identify that include a growing political fragmentation, the rise of the far right and increased voter abstention. The empirical analysis focuses on the media campaign and draws on a topic-modelling approach to identify and contrast emphasis given to policy issues over the two electoral rounds. The policy themes identified clustered around two dominant dimensions of political conflict: the Cyprus conflict and the economy.     

China Crisis? Indian Strategy,Political Realism,and the Chinese Challenge

Abstract

China's rise has provoked a substantial debate about its possible consequences for Indian security and its implications for Indian strategy. This review essay examines the parameters of this debate, concentrating especially on the rise of a new American-derived political realism in Indian thinking about China. It argues that in urging India to abandon its longstanding posture of strategic restraint, the new realists overestimate India's political military capabilities and run the risk for driving India toward a costly and dangerous confrontation with China.     

Indianisation or indigenisation? Greater India and the politics of cultural diffusionism

The paper focuses on the notion of Greater India that celebrated the diffusion of Indian cultural practices in Asia. Although prominent in the early twentieth century, it continued to fascinate Indian statesmen in the post-independence period. Juxtaposing its cultural frame with alternative conceptions of India’s self-identity, the paper argues that Greater India at once engaged with, and was in defiance of, both colonial and nationalist discourses. To what extent was the diffusionist logic calibrated to acknowledge mutual learning in the region? The paper critically engages with the dynamics between the circulation of ideas and their systematisation in India’s intellectual history.     

British decline or the politics of declinism?

Books reviewed in this article:
C. Barnett The Audit of War: The Illusion and Reality of Britain as a Great Nation
P. Clarke and C. Trebilcock (eds) Understanding Decline: Perceptions and Realities of British Economic Performance
B. Collins and K. Robbins (eds) British Culture and Economic Decline
A. Gamble Britain in Decline: Economic Policy, Political Strategy and the British State
W. Hutton The State We're In
P. Kennedy The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000
D. Marquand The Unprincipled Society
S. Pollard The Wasting of the British Economy: British Economic Policy 1945 to the Present
S. Pollard Britain's Prime and Britain's Decline: The British Economy 1870–1914     

The Green Challenge and Political Competition: How Typical is the German Experience?

Despite apparent successes in recent years, the Green challenge in western Europe remains electorally marginal, and the various Green parties seem to perform substantially below their potential. By comparison to other new and small parties, they have also proved very slow to break through the executive threshold. Far from mobilising a wholly new politics, their role has become that of a radical ginger group to the left of the social democrats. Nonetheless, it is as part of the left that they may yet make their most important contribution, in that their participation in government in Germany and elsewhere has the potential to transform traditional patterns of centrist coalition formation into more bipolar and alternating systems of competition. The emergence of the Greens has also helped the left to gain a strategic advantage over the right.     

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.     

Failure of security co‐operation in SADC: The suspension of the organ for politics,defence and security

Political opposition parties are considered crucial to the nurturing, enhancing and consolidating of democracy in every political system. Indeed, their existence is proof of political tolerance, competitive party elections, the provision of choices to the voting public and the possibility of alternation in power. However, the political opposition on the African continent is generally weak, and particularly so in Botswana, resulting in the predominance of the ruling party in political affairs. This article analyses the weaknesses of Botswana's opposition parties by tracing their historical evolution, characteristics, electoral base, and performance against the background of the political and electoral system in Botswana and the strength of the ruling party itself. It concludes that future prospects for the opposition to make greater inroads into the Botswana Democratic Party's support are small because of the fragmented nature of the opposition itself and the relative satisfaction of citizens with the current government's performance.     

The politics and economics of “retraditionalization” in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan

This paper analyzes attitudes of women enrolled in secular and religious universities in the capital cities of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan toward family life and the role of Islam in the private and public sphere. Survey data indicate that women from both types of universities in both countries sympathize with retraditionalization, or “a return to traditional values, family life, and religion, which entails, in part, women being moved out of the work force.” Thus far, there is no statistical evidence of this phenomenon in the literature. Sympathy for retraditionalization is unfolding in the context of ongoing economic uncertainty that has plagued Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan since the Soviet Union's collapse, and its manifestations produce political responses. I argue that Kyrgyz and Tajik elites push a particular gender norm implying female secularization to counter expressions of retraditionalization among young women. In conclusion, I highlight counterintuitive findings of the survey regarding Islam's role in Central Asian society and discuss collective versus individual acts of resistance to female secularization policies in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.     

Non-State Actors,Political Opportunity Structures and Foreign Relations: The Case of Germany's Federation of Expellees and the ‘Foundation Flight,Expulsion and Reconciliation’

This article examines the political process leading to the creation of the controversial ‘Foundation Flight, Expulsion and Reconciliation’ in Germany. The foundation aims to establish a permanent exhibition by 2016 showcasing the flight and expulsion of up to fifteen million Germans from the East following the Second World War. The foundation was the result of lobbying by the Federation of Expellees (BdV); it caused frictions in Germany's relations with its eastern neighbours and jeopardised Germany's reconciliation process with these states. The process reveals that the structure of Germany's polity, paired with astute alliance building and its members' rhetoric, aided the BdV's cause. Thus, non-state actors can utilise favourable domestic structures for the lack of material resources in order to maximise their lobbying ‘power’. This contributes to the growing literature on reconciliation in international relations which neglects domestic structures as a variable determining reconciliation processes in favour of more normative policy instruments.     

‘Making democracy a reality’? The politics of decentralisation and the limits to local democracy in Ghana

Through a case study of Ghana, this article focuses on the relationship between decentralisation and local democracy. The Ghanaian constitution emphasises decentralisation as the key means to ‘making democracy a reality’, reflecting the view common amongst international development agencies that decentralisation enhances local democracy and leads to more responsive government. This article questions such views and investigates whether decentralisation in Ghana has led to increased political participation at the local level and to downwardly accountable local government. Empirical findings are two-fold. On the one hand, relatively high levels of participation in local democratic processes are indicated. On the other, accountability mechanisms have not been strengthened, with a number of limitations and shortcomings identified at local level that undermine citizens’ attempts to hold local government and their elected representatives to account. Yet, in seeking to explain this delinkage between participation and accountability, such local issues do not provide a full explanation. Attention is thus refocused on the national context, where structural obstacles to devolved government are identified in the form of legal, political, administrative and fiscal constraints. Such obstacles are not easily overcome, however, due to the politics of decentralisation, notably central government's reluctance to relinquish control over its powers. Recent proposals for reform in Ghana's decentralisation system are considered, but political change is unlikely given the built-in advantages to the ruling party, whichever is in power. Without such reforms, though, local democracy is likely to remain more appearance than reality.     

The transnational construction of “national allegory”: China and the cultural politics of postcolonial Indonesia

Abstract

“The story of the private individual destiny,” declares Fredric Jameson, “is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the public third-world culture and society.” Using the case of China's involvement in the cultural politics of postcolonial Indonesia, this essay examines the transnational dynamisms of the making of a national allegory and discusses the production and reception of the China images in Sukarno's Indonesia (1949–65), with a focus on the PRC's cultural diplomacy and how Chinese literary principles were appropriated and domesticated, subsequently constituting an integral component of Indonesian cultural politics. Arguing that the narratives about China (both as a sociopolitical entity and a cultural symbol) served as an important transnational inspiration to public deliberations and cultural polemics—thus contributing to the formation of national allegories in postcolonial Indonesia, this essay takes the Jamesonian thesis a step further by suggesting that a transnational imaginary within Third World countries plays a significant part in the making of domestic literary politics. This essay may also be taken as an exercise in going beyond the nation-state-centric historiography that has been the defining characteristic of Asian Studies and pointing to the need to study Sino-Southeast Asian relations from the angle of cultural politics and its intertwining ambiguities with conventional diplomacy.     

The Commonwealth Caribbean and Europe: The End of the Affair?

Abstract

The institutional relationship between the Commonwealth Caribbean and the European Union (EU) dates back to the mid-1970s, when the Lomé Convention was signed. The agreement was seen as a high water mark in First–Third World relations. However, since then the bond has come under concerted pressure. The consequence is that today the particularism that underpinned relations for so long has almost vanished and the EU is beginning to treat the Caribbean like any other relatively marginal region of the world. The article evaluates the reasons for this change, in particular: the scrapping of the trade protocols; the erosion of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) preference due to free trade agreements signed by the EU; the refocusing of EU development policy towards the least developed countries; and the split in the ACP group with the creation of an ill-designed regional Economic Partnership Agreement. The article places these changes into starker relief by assessing briefly the deepening links between the United Kingdom Overseas Territories and the EU. However, as the article highlights, this link will neither reboot nor sustain the more important Commonwealth Caribbean–EU relationship.     

The institutionalization of relative advantage: formal institutions,subconstitutional presidential powers,and the rise of authoritarian politics in Russia, 1994–2012

What role do formal institutions play in the consolidation of authoritarian regimes such as the Russian Federation? Oftentimes, it is assumed that autocrats, usually potent presidents, wield informal powers and control far-flung patron–client networks that undermine formal institutions and bolster their rule. After the institutional turn in authoritarianism studies, elections, parties, legislatures, or courts have taken center stage, yet presidencies and public law are still on the margins of this research paradigm. This paper proposes a method for measuring subconstitutional presidential power and its change by federal law, decrees, and Constitutional Court rulings as well as a theoretical framework for explaining when and under which conditions subconstitutional presidential power expands. It is argued that as a result of a gradual, small-scale, and slow-moving process of layering, presidential powers have been accumulated over time. This furthers the institutionalization of presidential advantage toward other federal and regional institutions, which in turn contributes to the consolidation of authoritarianism.     

Father,son, and holy ghost: Pye,Solomon, and the ‘spirit of Chinese politics’

Abstract

Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture structurally is two books. The first (parts I and II pp. 1-159) is a discussion of Chinese psychological characteristics based on the author's 1966 dissertation for MIT, The Chinese Revolution and the Politics of Dependency: The Struggle for Change in a Traditional Political Culture. The second (parts III and IV pp. 160-526) is a competent if somewhat narrow think-tank piece written in 1969 on the Hundred Flowers, the Great Leap, and the early phase of the Cultural Revolution.