Out of Malta,Beginning Anew

The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) held in Malta witnessed high drama in the election of Patricia Scotland as the organisation’s new Secretary-General. This article notes, among other things, that it once again demonstrated the myth that the Secretary-General is chosen on the basis of consensus. In the view of the author, although the conference discussed a number of issues of substance and importance, there is an urgent need to give the Secretariat new collective purpose and vision. Malta, argues the article, provided an important point of departure, and the next CHOGM, to be held in Britain in 2018, offers Commonwealth organisations and civil society an opportunity to make their own unique and enhanced contributions.     

A provocative event,media, and religious choice in post-Soviet Russia

This paper uses the famous events related to Pussy Riot as a natural experiment to examine the effect of alternative media on church membership. A difference-in-differences strategy is used to explore the effect in question. The hypothesis is that, given a lack of religious background in the majority of the population and strong temporary interest in religious issues promoted by a particular provocative event, mass media substantially affect religious choice. To check if this is the case, I compare the dynamics of religious choice of those exposed to alternative media reports on church topics and the rest of the population. As a proxy of familiarity with an alternative view, I use a dummy variable for using the Internet to obtain news. The main finding is that, during the experiment run over the year 2012, the growth of self-reported Orthodox believers was significantly lower in the treatment group than in the control group. Exposure to alternative media coverage turned out to heavily affect religious choice.     

Hidden in plain sight: political opposition and hegemonic authoritarianism in Azerbaijan

This paper examines the consolidation and maintenance of hegemonic authoritarianism in post-Soviet Azerbaijan. Hegemonic regimes are characterized by their nearly total lack of political competition. Despite the presence of opposition parties and regular elections, the incumbent in these cases is reelected with 70% or more of the vote. What does it take to sustain overwhelming margins of victory in regular elections in the face of institutionalized opposition? Previous studies have suggested that either violent repression or institutionalized co-optation of opposition groups is central to securing long-term hegemonic regime stability. These mechanisms explain how rulers forestall potential opposition. Upon coming to power in 1993, however, Heydar Aliyev – like many post-Soviet leaders – inherited a genuine, existing opposition in the Popular Front movement. I suggest that in the presence of an intractable opposition, Azerbaijan's rulers have taken a different approach with regard to regime maintenance. Drawing on over 50 original interviews conducted during 6 months of field research, I identify the mechanisms by which the government has “hidden the opposition in plain sight” by making it effectively difficult for existing opposition groups to function as credible political parties. Since the mid-1990s, the Aliyev regime has used informal measures to prevent these groups from aggregating and articulating the diverse interests present in society from visibly competing in elections and from serving effectively in government to craft and implement policy. These practices have rendered the opposition technically legal, but completely ineffective. Besides weakening the opposition, these measures produce a series of mutually reinforcing effects – including noncompetitive elections by default and a politically disengaged society – that sustain long-term regime stability. The paper concludes by examining this argument in comparative perspective. Hegemonic regimes have proliferated in the post-Soviet region, and I suggest that this strategy is an important factor in sustaining many of these regimes.     

Administrative Reforms to Governmental Financial Information Systems in GCC Countries: The Case of Qatar

Gulf Cooperation Council countries are seeking to develop their governmental financial information systems to make them more informative and transparent. The aim of this article is to determine the extent to which Qatar has developed its governmental financial information systems in response to the enormous degree of economic and administrative development in recent decades, and to identify the most important factors that have influenced the reforms made in this area. For this purpose, Lüder's Financial Management Reform Process Model (2001) was referred to and semi-structured interviews were carried out with governmental accounting officials in Qatar in June 2011.     

Seconds Out for the Second Round: The Landtagswahl in Hessen,January 2009

The ‘second round’ of the Hessen Landtagswahl was held in mid-January 2009 and was necessitated by the deadlocked outcome of the ‘first round’ held less than a year earlier. The failure of two attempts by the SPD to displace the CDU ‘caretaker’ administration ensured that new elections were the only remaining credible option. The outcome of the 2009 elections overcame this previous deadlock. We need however to be cautious about extrapolating from this particular result to the forthcoming federal election in late September. The nature of partisan competition within the Hessen party system is unique to the Land, and carries little substantive importance outside it.     

Between 'traditional' and 'new' Catholic church religious discourses in urban, Western Mexico

Abstract — This paper analyses processes of belonging, identity formation and construction of knowledge within and between 'new' and 'traditional' Catholic groups in a low-income neighbourhood of Guadalajara. It argues that these two expressions of the Church carry through distinctive 'progressive' and 'conservative' messages in matter of engagement with, and empowerment in social reality, notions of personal responsibility, relation to non-human agents and embodiment of experience. However, those groups are not internally homogeneous and to a certain extent the 'new' Church–the CEBs–is similar to the 'traditional' Church in terms of subtle hierarchical control of production, transmission and withholding of knowledge.     

Breaking Out is Hard to Do: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty in Mexico's One-Party Hegemonic Regime

Theoretically based on Albert O. Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty , this study examines three cases of rupture or exit by Mexican presidential contenders, in 1940, 1952, and 1988, and one "noncase," in 1999, with a view to how dissidents' strategies shape political institutions. Mexico's PRI-dominated political system depended on its leaders' ability to create an equilibrium based on mutual incentives to remain loyal to the regime.