Pacific Regionalism and the Polynesian Leaders Group

ABSTRACT

In November 2011, the Polynesian Leaders Group (PLG) was formed. The inclusion of Samoa, Tonga and French Polynesia gives it enough political muscle to have some influence on Pacific regionalism, but exactly what this will be is uncertain. Notably, it was formed during a tense period for regionalism; Australia’s and New Zealand’s disproportionate influence in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat was increasingly being called into question, while Fiji was crowned the chair of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) even though it was then expelled from the PIF. To date, the PLG’s most notable work has been done in relation to climate change, while it also promises to address decolonisation, both of which are pressing issues on the regional agenda. These might be issue-areas where the PLG will make its mark. Another might be in counterbalancing the increasing regional influence of the MSG, which over the past 10 years has been willing to act independently of the PIF and its traditional benefactors: Australia and New Zealand. An examination of when and why the PLG was formed, how its membership is determined, and its position on key regional issues might provide answers about its regional implications.     

Global reporting from the Third World: the Afro-Asian Journalists’ Association, 1963–1974

ABSTRACT

Originating from the 1955 Bandung Conference, the Afro-Asian Journalists’ Association (AAJA) promoted international collaboration among journalists in newly independent countries. Built on an inclusive foundation of peaceful co-existence, the AAJA contributed to the development of expansive global information networks, lively intellectual traffic, and rich visual arts among Afro-Asian nations. However, the cosmopolitanism of its early years was later undermined by the decline of constitutional democracy in Indonesia and a lack of cohesion among Afro-Asian nations. After the September Thirtieth Movement in Indonesia in 1965, the AAJA relocated to Beijing and was mobilized by the Chinese state to promote the P.R.C. as the leader of an embittered Third World’s battle against American imperialism and Soviet revisionism. In the early 1970s, ideological fervor began abating in China. During this time, Mao’s reframing of the three worlds, which was based on developmental measurements, redirected the AAJA’s Third World discourse to issues of modernization until its quiet dissolution in 1974. The history of the AAJA demonstrates the complex and often conflicted ways in which two important post-colonial states – Indonesia and China – conceptualized “the Third World” and formulated media representations during the Cold War.     

Astuteness in Commitment: Rwanda and UN Peacekeeping 1994–2014

Abstract

This article traces Rwanda’s history under German and Belgian colonialism, through independence and genocide to international respectability and membership of the Commonwealth. It examines Rwanda’s impressive contributions to United Nations and African Union peacekeeping forces. There is no single explanation for the magnitude of Rwanda’s contribution. It owes something to Rwanda’s commitment to ‘African solutions for African problems’. Deployment is relatively cheap and allows Rwanda to use its participation for political leverage in international affairs, to attract donors and to benefit financially. Peacekeeping is a factor in the astute foreign policy of Paul Kagame’s government that enhances its authority and stability at home and its prestige abroad.     

Bernard Magubane’s critique of anthropology in southern Africa: an introductory essay

ABSTRACT

This essay is an attempt to piece together the fundamentals of Bernard Magubane’s critique of anthropology in southern Africa. The point is not to berate the discipline of anthropology, but to discuss Magubane’s work in relation to it. The essay comprises three main parts. First, it examines Magubane’s critique of southern African anthropology in a colonial situation – particularly in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Second, it assesses the usefulness of anthropological notions of pluralism and ‘tribalism’ in explaining conflicts in Africa. The remainder of the essay contends with anthropological themes such as social change and ‘modernisation’ in southern Africa. Generally, anthropology had problems at two levels: political and epistemological. Politically, anthropology was a handmaiden of colonialism and imperialism; and its main flaw was to study southern African societies outside of history and context. Epistemologically, anthropology is a discipline founded on alterity, that is, on studying the cultural Other.     

Between indifference and hesitation: France and EU enlargement towards the Balkans

Abstract

France’s hesitant stance on EU enlargement towards the Balkans is illustrative of a broader ambivalence among both French elites and citizens towards the European project. Despite principled support for the Balkans’ EU membership, achieving this step is no strategic priority for France. The official approach emphasizes strict conditionality and a rigorous monitoring of reform progress in aspirant countries. A hostile public opinion and superficial media coverage further strengthen the country’s reluctance to admit new, possibly unprepared candidates into the Union. Analysing the historical evolution of the French position on EU enlargement as well as its current political, institutional and societal expressions, this article construes France’s disinvestment from the Balkans’ EU perspective as the result of failed expectations and a growing disillusionment with the EU’s international role and its political future more broadly.     

Addressing Corruption in Post-Soeharto Indonesia: The Role of the Corruption Eradication Commission

ABSTRACT

Anti-corruption became one of the top priorities in post-Soeharto Indonesia, with democratisation, market liberalisation and institutional anti-corruption frameworks pursued as means to enhance transparency and accountability in public governance. A core component of these efforts was the establishment of a powerful anti-corruption agency, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). This article assesses the effectiveness of the KPK, using evidence from two contrasting cases to identify factors that facilitated or impeded its ability to successfully investigate, prosecute and thus contain high-level corruption. The analysis highlights the threats to the KPK posed by resilient networks that were able to reconsolidate and resist anti-corruption efforts in post-Soeharto Indonesia. However, it also identifies countervailing social forces that emerged in the context of democratisation – in particular, an active civil society and a largely free press. While these supportive pressures from civil society could not fully counter the attacks on the KPK, they were able to prevent its marginalisation in the two major cases examined. Overall the KPK’s success in addressing high-level corruption is shown to be dependent on the interaction of political dynamics, interests and power relations, with no guarantee that anti-corruption forces will prevail in future cases.     

An interview with Eben Venter: Trencherman and environmentalism in South Africa

This interview explores the role of environmentalism – specifically as it relates to meat and agriculture – in the literature of South African writer Eben Venter. As discussed in the interview, Venter’s novel Trencherman, through its envisioning of a post-apocalyptic South Africa, serves as an especially productive text for examining the interplay of colonialism and ecological violence.     

Colonization with Chinese characteristics: politics of (in)security in Xinjiang and Tibet

ABSTRACT

China as a victim rather than a proponent of modern colonialism is an essential myth that animates Chinese nationalism. The Chinese statist project of occupying, minoritizing and securitizing different ethno-national peoples of Central Asia, such as Uyghurs and Tibetans, with their own claims to homelands, is a colonial project. Focusing on China’s securitized and militarized rule in Xinjiang and Tibet, the article will argue that the most appropriate lens through which this can be understood is neither nation-building nor internal colonialism but modern colonialism. It argues that the representation of Uyghurs and Tibetans as sources of insecurity not only legitimizes state violence as a securitizing practice but also serves contemporary Chinese colonial goals.     

The Two Language Problem: Sélim Abou,Lebanon and the Ethnolinguistic Nation

Abstract

In 1961, Sélim Abou, then a young doctoral student and now chair of cultural anthropology at the Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut, published his thesis. It argued that Lebanon's most formative national characteristic is its French-Arabic bilingualism. Moreover, he proposes that Lebanese communities should be defined not by confession but by language. Abou’s work raised red flags for partisans of Arabic in Lebanon who argued that bilingualism was nothing more than a conceptual 'fig leaf' for maintaining French and an established cultural and political status quo that worked in favour of Lebanon’s Maronites. Critics suggested that his design was nothing more than a thinly veiled promotion of sectarian politics. Through an examination of his work, and of the critical response it provoked, this article examines the possibilities of language as an alternative category of analysis in Lebanon. While Abou’s bilingualism most certainly served as an apology for French colonialism and for Maronite interests, his work nonetheless illustrates alternative local categories of use other than “confession.” Instead of focusing on the criticism of Abou and his category, we must examine how language can provide possibilities that might crack open the hermetic and fragile structure of confessionalism, highlighting the types of moveable communities in the post-colony.     

An introduction to the articles on Indonesia

Abstract

In May 1987, general elections will be held in Indonesia. These will be the fifth such elections since the country's independence in 1945, and the contesting parties will be the government electoral organization, GOLKAR, which convincingly won the last elections, the largely Muslim PPP (Unity Development party), and the small Christian and nationalist PDI (Indonesian Democratic party). After the previous elections in 1982, the Indonesian government made the claim that the proceedings had been “direct, general, free and secret,” and indeed it was difficult to find more than incidental evidence of fraud or manipulation in the conduct of the poll itself. However, this attempt by “Pancasila Democracy” to claim kinship with the Western democratic tradition studiously ignored the context of political restriction which has operated in Indonesia for the last three decades. Since such claims are likely to be revised after the coming elections to suggest that the power of the New Order government of President Suharto rests on the active consent of the people, the editors of the Bulletin have thought it appropriate to devote this issue to a closer examination of the recent political history of Indonesia.     

The CFA Franc Zone: a political re-evaluation twenty years after the advent of the Euro

ABSTRACT

Although the CFA monetary union is not an ‘optimal’ currency area as such, it has allowed member countries to benefit from the convertibility guaranteed by the French Treasury and from enhanced policy credibility in achieving low inflation rates.

Both benefits may be under threat. The convertibility is under threat due to the harder budgetary commitments imposed on France by its membership of the Eurozone and the dwindling political interest in the CFA Franc Zone shown in France.

The policy credibility is becoming costlier as evidenced by output-inflation trade-offs, which, although still more favourable than in comparable sub-Saharan African countries, have been declining since the 1994 devaluation period.     

Recovering the transnational life of Charlotte Maxeke: an interview with Zubeida Jaffer

Abstract

A conversation with Zubeida Jaffer, discussing her recent book Beauty of the Heart: The Life and Times of Charlotte Mannya Maxeke (2016) and Maxeke’s perspectives towards colonialism, women’s rights, and transnational pan-African movements during the twentieth century.     

Parliament,printed petitions and the political imaginary in seventeenth-century England

ABSTRACT

Building on recent scholarship relating to the emergence of printed petitions in Britain in the seventeenth century, this article concentrates on those printed petitions that were designed for more or less discreet or limited circulation in order to lobby parliament. It draws on two collections of such material gathered by the MPs Bulstrode Whitelocke (in the 1650s) and Sir Michael Wentworth (in the 1680s and 1690s). Because print facilitated novel ways of engaging with parliament – not least as problems went unresolved and cases dragged on – printed petitions provide a useful window into the aspirations and frustrations of supplicants, and indeed into their political thinking, however rudimentary this may have been. In tracing what might be called the ‘political imaginary’ of contemporary petitioners, this study recovers evidence of radicalization, but also suggests that the art of petitioning could involve the deliberate avoidance of ideological issues that nevertheless underpinned specific interventions.     

The Shifting Tides of Pacific Regionalism

Abstract

The current state of Pacific regionalism is faced with a range of external and internal factors that are acting to reshape the region and which call for a rethinking of Pacific regionalism. Within this context a range of new and in some cases reinvigorated groupings of political actors have emerged, seeking to influence and shape the region. Interpretations of this plurality of political groupings differ, with some authors seeing it as a direct challenge to the previously existing regional order, while others argue it signals a return to a foundational Pacific voice in regional politics. This article suggests that the present plurality is more than resituating a ‘Pacific voice’ and is not necessarily a challenge to the existing order. Rather, the Pacific’s experience mirrors global trends in the evolution of regionalism as a practice, in which network diplomacy or coalition-building across the plethora of actors will become a predominant feature of new regionalism. Further, the authors argue that the Framework for Pacific Regionalism provides the platform for effectively navigating this new context through facilitating the politics of networks and coalitions to drive the shared interests of the region, and presents a shared platform to test paradigm-shifting ideas.     

From AKP’s ‘Conservative Democracy’ to ‘Advanced Democracy’: Shifts and Challenges in the Debate on ‘Europe’

Abstract

Following the AKP’s victory in the 2002 general elections, ‘conservative democracy’ has emerged as a trademark in Turkish politics, focusing on cosmopolitanism and European integration. In the late 2000s, the party’s favourite notion was ‘advanced democracy’, this time underlining Turkey’s leadership claim in the region and displaying a more critical approach to ‘Europe’. In this paper, I aim to show how different narratives on ‘Europe’ emerged within the context of these empty signifiers. The paper claims that the difference in the two narratives on ‘Europe’ in two different periods does not point to a complete and fully fledged de-Europeanisation trend.     

Women in War and Peace: Karen Women’s Political Participation during and after the Karen–Burma Ceasefire Accords

ABSTRACT

This article examines Karen women’s political participation in the Karen National Union (KNU) and in KNU-controlled towns and villages during three phases of the protracted Karen conflict in Burma/Myanmar – the guerrilla activity phase, the civil war phase and the ceasefire phase. It argues that two interrelated institutions – a participatory governance system and a politically autonomous women’s group – affect Karen women’s levels of political participation in their communities. The logic is that as the Karen conflict de-escalated from the civil war phase to the guerrilla activity phase, the KNU’s leadership, in response to deteriorating security conditions and outside pressure, was forced to accept greater civilian participation in governance that opened up the political space for Karen women to become politically active. This de-escalation process also meant that the KNU had fewer resources and lacked the institutional capacity to control the activities of the KNU-affiliated women’s group – the Karen Women’s Organisation. When the conflict de-escalated again after the KNU signed a ceasefire accord with the Burmese government in 2012, the terms of the ceasefire agreement in combination with an influx of non-governmental organisations created new avenues in which Karen women could participate in politics.     

Fiji’s Foreign Relations: Retrospect and Prospect

Abstract

Of all the island states of the Southwest Pacific, Fiji’s foreign relations have been the most fraught since the advent of independence in the region, due largely to a succession of coups d'état. These have invariably precipitated adverse responses from major partners and aid donors, notably Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the European Union. The last coup in 2006 also unsettled relations in Fiji’s more immediate region, especially among some of its smaller Polynesian neighbours, contributing to Fiji’s unprecedented suspension from the Pacific Islands Forum. This article reviews Fiji’s foreign relations from the time of independence in 1970 through the period of successive coups to the 2014 elections. It also examines Bainimarama’s strategies in extending foreign relations in the broader international sphere as well as issues surrounding the ‘normalisation’ of relations with its traditional partners.     

Shifting Logics: The Discourses of Turkish Political Elites on EU Accession

Abstract

The article compares the EU accession discourses, during the 2002, 2007 and 2011 elections, of Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) with those of the two main opposition parties, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), tracking the continuities and shifts in their discourses. In the light of Habermas’s distinction between pragmatic, ethical and moral justifications, the discourses are analysed on the basis of three explanatory logics – interests, rights and identity – by means of a theoretically guided qualitative content analysis of the election manifestos of these three political parties. These logics, emerging and shifting in line with periodical dynamics, have been instrumental to varying degrees in the discourses of Turkey’s political elites.     

Proliferation of neopatrimonial domination in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Literature on Turkey’s post-2011 authoritarian turn – especially after the eruption of the 2013 nationwide Gezi Protests – adopts modern concepts such as ‘dictatorship’, ‘authoritarianism’, ‘totalitarianism’, ‘one-party government’, ‘party-state fusion’, and even ‘fascism’ mainly in order to pin down the nature of the Justice and Development Party (AKP, Turkish acronym) or depict the current character of Turkey’s regime. Through engaging the pre-modern concept of neopatrimonialism, which is derived from Max Weber’s concept of patrimonialism, this paper argues that Turkey’s encounter with authoritarianism is deeply associated with the proliferation of neopatrimonial domination, into which the legacy of patronage politics, fracture of security power, and the metastasis of crony capitalism have been conflated. This article argues that neopatrimonial features have always, to a degree, marked state-society relations in Turkey. Furthermore, this article suggests neopatrimonial characteristics started to dominate Turkey’s modern legal structure under the AKP, which led to a state crisis culminating in the 2016 attempted coup. However, despite the fact that neopatrimonialism cannot be argued as a pathological deviation from modern-legal domination, this paper concludes that tension exists between the crony capitalism-based economic model of neopatrimonalism and Turkey’s decades-long market-based capitalism.