A New Islamic Populism and the Contradictions of Development

A new form of Islamic populism has evolved in many parts of the Muslim world. Its emergence is part of the more universal phenomenon of populist responses to the contradictions of globalised capitalism. It is also a consequence of the outcomes of Cold War-era social conflicts and of social-structural transformations in Muslim societies over the last half-century. Specifically, it articulates the rising ambitions and growing frustrations of urban middle classes across the Muslim world, the anxieties of growing urban poor populations and relatively peripheralised sections of the bourgeoisie. Thus representing cross-class coalitions, the New Islamic Populism aims to provide access to power and tangible resources to an ummah conceived to be both downtrodden and homogeneous, though in actuality, increasingly differentiated. This is demonstrated through a discussion of Indonesia, Egypt and Turkey. The article is intended to provide an alternative to analyses that have tended to dominate discussions of Islamic politics over the last decade. These include analyses that emphasise radical ideas transmitted by shadowy transnational networks that threaten the global secular order and those that posit a strong relationship between political moderation and democratic practice but tend to overlook the structural underpinnings of Islamic politics.     

Trump the antisemantic,and the boundaries of populism

ABSTRACT

In this article I consider Donald Trump as an “antisemantic” president, and link antisemanticism to broader forms of populism. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s analysis of Thatcherism, I explore the political and discursive domains as intrinsically linked in the Trumpian moment. Second, I turn to a theory of the antisemantic, showing its difference from the Orwellian universe. Where the Orwellian model depends on the inversion of meanings, the Trumpian paradigm (“Truth isn’t truth”) attacks the foundations of meaning itself. In the Trumpian age the internet also acts as a dark multiplier, thinning out meaning through its distortions and profusion. As counterpart to these patterns, I show how the antisemantic rests on certain symbolic fixities, especially around boundaries and the “uber” symbol of the wall. I end with some notes on how to reconstruct a sense of accountability in meaning, and to think of boundaries that are transitive and generative rather than singular and walled.     

The United Kingdom and EU enlargement in the Western Balkans: from ardent champion of expansion to Post-Brexit irrelevance

Abstract

This article examines the United Kingdom’s approach to the question of European Union enlargement in the Western Balkans. It shows that while Britain had no traditional attachment to the region, it championed expansion as part of its long-standing aim to widen EU membership to prevent deeper political union. However, as immigration from the EU increased after the 2004 enlargement and a Eurosceptic Conservative-led government took charge in 2010, official support for enlargement began to decline. Britain ceded its place to Germany as the strongest supporter of EU expansion. Meanwhile, during the referendum campaign on EU membership, the prospect that future enlargement could further increase the number of migrants emerged as a central point of debate. Although this discussion was primarily focused on Turkey, the Western Balkans also played a part. Therefore, even had the United Kingdom decided to remain in the EU, there is an argument to be made that Britain could well have become more opposed towards future expansion. As it is, the decision to leave the EU (Brexit), has ensured that Britain has now all but lost its say over enlargement.     

The Welfare Agenda of the Populist Radical Right in Western Europe: Combining Welfare Chauvinism,Producerism and Populism*

Recent scholarship on the populist radical right tends to imprecisely describe the welfare agenda of this party family with reference to its key ideological characteristics of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. We propose an alternative analytical framework that considers the multidimensionality of welfare state positions and the “deservingness criteria” that underlie ideas about welfare entitlement. Applying this framework to a sample of four European populist radical right parties, we conclude that three interrelated frames inform their welfare agenda. These parties, we argue, advocate social closure not only on the basis of the deservingness criterion of identity (welfare chauvinism), but also on criteria of control, attitude, and reciprocity (welfare producerism) and on an antagonism between the people and the establishment (welfare populism). Understanding the welfare agenda of the populist radical right requires us to move beyond welfare chauvinism and to reconsider the concept of welfare producerism and its interaction with welfare chauvinism.     

Acts of collusion: myth,media, and the populist imagination in the 2016 United States presidential election

ABSTRACT

This article considers the hypothesis that the 2016 nomination of Hillary Clinton appeared rigged because the Democratic Party persuaded itself that the next step in guaranteeing Obama’s legacy and advancing democratic progress would be the election of the first woman president. Democracy finds logical steps in politics suspicious (even dangerous); consequently, the constructed stability and order begin to falter or appear compromised. In this context, populist figures like Trump may gain political legitimacy by claiming to be outsiders speaking with the voice of the people. Populism, founded on a mythical notion of sovereignty, promises direct access to the democratic experience through four interconnected mythologies (unity, conspiracy, the golden age, and the savior), as evident in the 2016 election. The democratic struggle accordingly extended to Trump’s attacks on the media (as “fake news”) and to the Mueller investigation of collusion between the Trump campaign and foreign actors representing the Russian government.     

1898年后美国对菲律宾领土政策的决择及实践

美西战争后,美国内部对菲律宾领土范围的确定曾产生意见分歧,1898年巴黎和约最终确立了美国对菲律宾的领土政策,即将整个菲律宾群岛纳入美国统治体系。1930年形成的菲律宾条约界限正式确立了美属菲律宾的领土范围。20世纪上半叶,美国在菲律宾领土政策上的实践表明,美国不仅致力于依据条约规定适时调整圈定菲律宾领土范围的巴黎和约线,而且严格遵守有关和约中关于领土界限的规定。美方的这一行动最终奠定了菲律宾独立之后国家的领土界限。     

Kazakhstani public opinion of the United States and Russia: testing variables of (un)favourability

ABSTRACT

Though Central Asia is often studied through the prism of its relationships with external powers, research on local public perceptions of these different actors has largely been overlooked. The literature on Kazakhstanis’ perceptions of their neighbours, for instance, is scarce, and mostly focused on analysis of official discourse on Kazakhstan’s multi-vector policy, with little exploration of how this is received, appropriated or refuted by the population. On the basis of Gallup data spanning the last decade, and several other surveys, we test most of the main hypotheses usually advanced to explain attitudes to the US and Russia – age, ethnicity and access to information – and draw five main conclusions: (1) Kazakhstanis are not defined by an exclusive pro-US/pro-Russian dichotomy; (2) they nevertheless largely choose Russia over the US if forced to pick; (3) age does not have a significant effect on foreign policy attitudes; (4) ethnicity does affect some of the attitudes under consideration, but its effects are not large enough to produce markedly different opinions among ethnic Kazakhs and ethnic Russians in aggregate; and (5) consumption of media from Russia and access to non-governmental and Western sources of information do not seem to have significant effects on the attitudes under consideration.     

Breaking boundaries,defying borders: transnational networks of gender and race in South Africa and the United States

Abstract

This special issue examines transnational connections and collaborations among women and People of Color from South Africa and the United States, from the late nineteenth to the beginning of the twenty-first century: it considers how connections were fostered and how ideologies travelled. Key figures include Emily Hobhouse, Charlotte Maxeke, Cecilia Lilian Tshabalala, Maude White Katz, Madie Hall-Xuma, Elizabeth Mafeking, Miriam Makeba, Gloria Steinem, and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Actively and symbolically, each of these non-state actors approached the relationship between the two nations differently, through political and religious affiliations, and as individuals and through organizations. Many challenged and transcended the restrictions imposed upon them officially, through state-sanctioned segregation and apartheid, but also socially, on account of their gender. These women fostered intellectual and social connections with each other, as well as for their nations, through interpersonal relationships and in print, but also simply – and perhaps most problematically – through abstracted ideas about humanitarianism, motherhood, apartheid, and nation. Such travels and intellectual journeys could prove both mutually beneficial and hierarchically imbalanced, but nonetheless reiterate the continued transnational relevance and resonances between South Africa and the United States.     

美国南海政策的军事化及其影响

当前,国际社会正处于"百年未有之大变局"中,中美两国竞争加剧。在这一背景下,美国南海政策的军事化倾向尤为突出。通过案例分析、运用比较分析的方法对美国南海政策军事化及其影响进行探究,可以看出美国南海政策军事化的主要目的是遏制中国的崛起。为达到这一目的,美国提升了"航行自由行动"的频率和烈度,增加了在南海内沿和外围的军事战略存在,还加强了与盟国的同盟关系。不过,美国国内有一部分人认为南海政策军事化目前并未达到其希望的效力,反而使美国在战争与和平之间愈加难以保持平衡。美国在南海地区的影响力受到挑战的同时,中美关系也因此有所倒退,南海局势变得更加复杂。鉴于此,中国一方面要保持克制态度,增强危机意识,做好预案,通过高质量外交对话等方式增进与美国的政治互信,另一方面也要加快推进与东盟国家《南海各方行为准则》的谈判与磋商,与东盟国家一道维护好南海地区的和平与稳定。     

日美中小企业划分标准的比较分析及其启示与借鉴

世界各国政府界定中小企业标准的目的,是为了把握企业的规模结构,了解不同规模企业情况,为制定和实施扶持政策提供依据.由于经济发展情况不同,各国对中小企业的具体确认标准和办法也不同.日本和美国分别在20世纪五六十年代依据相关法律制定了中小企业划分标准,之后作过修改和完善.本文对中小企业发展较好的日本、美国的中小企业划分标准进行比较分析,并为完善我国现行标准提供几点启示.     

19世纪中叶赴美合同制华工与赊单制华工的比较

19世纪华工出洋的情况经常被笼统地归于契约劳工体系,美国学者当中有不少人认为华工赴美仍有苦力贸易的成分,但又缺乏有力证据证明。本文试图厘清契约劳工体系下,契约华工赴美的两种不同方式,即将债务合同与劳务合同绑定的合同制劳工和自愿且带有信贷色彩的赊单制劳工。华工出洋方式的演变既反映了晚清时期中国珠三角地区在近代化过程中不断适应西方世界经济体系的尝试,也从一个侧面折射出晚清珠三角地区民间经济的活力和潜力。     

Spectacles of Dystopia: Lauren Beukes and the Geopolitics of Digital Space

Lauren Beukes’ latest novels—The Shining Girls (2013) and Broken Monsters (2014)—present forays into new generic and geopolitical spaces, shifting from the Joburg and Cape Town-based “allegorical apartheids” of the science-fictional texts Moxyland (2008) and Zoo City (2010) to supernatural crime novels set in dystopian American cities. This paper explores the productive tension between the global and the local in her body of work, framed within the concepts of “developing world” science fiction and the figure of the hybrid. I argue that the esthetics and generic conventions of “cyberpunk” often associated with Beukes animate a seemingly ubiquitous dystopian space. Her writing explores the dissemination of commercial icons, visual fads, and digital pop-objects around and within global bodies: networked, linked electronically, and sometimes physically in what I suggest comes to form the illusion of a digital, dystopian everywhere, relentlessly performing transcendence of locality.