Implementing Brussels Agreements: the EU’s facilitating strategy and contrasting local perceptions of peace in Kosovo

ABSTRACT

This article examines the conditions that influence the implementation process of the Brussels Agreements. The implementation process is analyzed along three dimensions: (1) the role of EU involvement, including conditionality pressure, (2) the capacity of the domestic actors to fulfil their commitments and (3) the content and clarity of the agreed provisions to guide the implementation process. Specifically, we analyze the interaction of each of these factors and how they play out and gain importance in explaining the intricacies of implementation at different points in time. The empirical analysis suggests that implementation, or the lack of it, arises from the dissonance between the hybrid negotiation strategy of the EU and the adversaries’ doubts with regard to the goals and benefits of negotiation. The negotiation tactic is expected to institutionalize cooperation between local actors and solve the conflict at large, but de facto, it is steering further resistance and allowing relevant local actors’ creativity to block the process.     

The use of ‘privileges’ in political discourse in the early modern Low Countries

This article examines why the privileges occupied such a prominent place in Dutch rebel propaganda from the 1560s. It then considers whether these continued to be so highly regarded after the United Provinces gave up the search for a princely overlord to succeed Philip II in the late 1580s. It concludes by suggesting that with the emergence of provincial sovereignty, the privileges gradually lost their significance as one of the bastions of Dutch freedom.     

Continuity and change in instrumentalizing ‘The Precedent’. How Russia uses Kosovo to legitimize the annexation of Crimea

The article contributes to the efforts of understanding Russia’s legitimization endeavours by looking at the policy narratives centred around the so-called Kosovo precedent and the way they were perceived by different actors from Ukraine, Russia, and international experts. The aim of the paper is to scrutinize the process of politicization of contested international norms (in particular, territorial sovereignty and the right to self-determination) in the case of Russia’s legitimacy claims in Ukraine. In assessing the instrumentalization of the ‘Kosovo precedent’ in the Crimea crisis, we focused on three main elements identified in the selected policy narratives: the reinterpretation of history, the humanitarian and ethnic factor and the reinterpretation of Western actions in the Balkans.     

The lessons of the ‘Nookat events’: central government,local officials and religious protests in Kyrgyzstan

As Muslim communities reassert themselves in public life across the world, including Central Asia, their actions are causing tension in relations with ‘secular’ governments. Various global theories have been offered to explain these dynamics. According to one theory, tension between religious communities and secular states is caused by the exclusion or marginalization of Muslims, a process exacerbated by the perceived anti-Muslim bias in the foreign- and domestic-security policies of Central Asian states. A second view is that tension results from the work of global extremist groups espousing the restoration of an Islamic Caliphate. The third approach presents the rising tension as part of a broader trend: a putative clash of Western and Muslim civilizations. This article challenges these theories by using a case study of a Muslim grassroots protest in Kyrgyzstan to highlight the importance of local politics, namely informal arrangements among local officials, power brokers and community members. In so doing, it seeks to make a contribution to theorizing Muslim–state relations in Central Asia.     

‘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 making of the ‘Basque’ political institutions: the federal association of the representative assemblies during the Liberal Revolution (1793–1833), part II

SUMMARY

In this article Joseba Agirreazkuenaga continues his previous contributions on the development of Basque political institutions. Having followed developments to the end of the Ancien Regime, he analyzes here the process of political and bureaucratic consolidation during a time of political, ideological and military confrontations between supporters of the liberal revolution and those of the counter-revolution, in defence of the old order. This article concludes at the beginning of the long civil war, known as the first Carlist War, in which the Basque Country became one of the focal points of political debate and articulation of the new Spanish liberal state.     

The Rise and Fall of Turcophilism in Nineteenth-Century British Discourses: Visions of the Turk, ‘Young’ and ‘Old’

This article examines the evolving British perceptions of the Ottoman Empire from the onset of the Tanzimat to Abdülhamid II. The article aims to attest the emergence of a positive image of the ‘reforming Turk’ and the erosion of this positive assessment following the disillusionment with the achievements of Tanzimat. The article discusses the Christian dimensions of the positive and negative attitudes towards the Ottomans and ‘moral racism’ inherent in both the positive and negative assessments. The article ends with concluding that this reference framework from which the British discourses on the Ottomans derived had eclipsed with the demise of the British nineteenth-century political elite and culture in tandem with the waning of the Ottoman political culture and elite.     

The ‘Europeanization’ of the Religious Cleavage in Turkey: The Case of the Alevis

The EU accession process reveals a series of paradoxes, which are not merely indicative of the complexity of Turkey's state–religion relations in general but also point to how the Justice and Development Party (JDP) government portrays controversies such as the Sunni–Alevi divide. The religious cleavages in Turkey have become Europeanized and found expression in the European political and legal structures. The Alevis have been one of the groups most affected by this issue partly because of their heterodox and transnational religious identity and partly as a result of their links with secularist political sectors. The paper underlines a dilemma of current Turkish politics. The case of the Alevis shows that the regime's current transformation undermines its basis through exclusion. The JDP's political strategy, focusing on the effective control of the mainstream Sunni base, does not willingly accept or tolerate the autonomy of some civil society groups, including the Alevis.     

Learning to laugh: satire and political thought in the Latvian ‘National Age’

ABSTRACT

Satiric publications are often recognized as an important part of the political communication of the nineteenth century. Their role, however, in the national ‘awakenings’ in central eastern Europe has been rarely addressed. This paper argues that satirical publications provide useful material for the research of the political ideology of early Latvian nationalism. The development of the ‘ethnic Other’ in the figure of the Bizmanis or ‘Plaitman,’ the invention of the ‘dumb minority,’ the Malenians, as well as the representation of imperial and provincial forces in animal fables illustrate the development of the political thinking of the emerging national movement.     

The Worst Is Not over Yet: The Lives and Deaths of the ‘Self’ and ‘Others’ in Brazil's Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper focuses on the politics of life and death in Bolsonaro's Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is argued that while this administration, and the president himself, have long supported violence against individuals and social groups they did not see as fully human, their response to the pandemic marked a public transition from valuing certain kinds of lives as opposed to others, to a general contempt for human lives. The paper explores this transition by discussing the reification of the economy to the detriment of the people who produce and consume.     

Radicals and moderates in the Liberal party in 1886: The processes of political assimilation in the house of commons∗

Joseph F O'Callaghan: The Cortes of Castile‐León, 1188–1350 (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1989; pp. x, 265; ISBN 0–8122–8125‐X; £31.95)

Jack P. Greene, Charles F. Mullett, and Edward C. Papenfuse, Jr. (eds), Magna Charta for America: James Abercromby's ‘An Examination of the Acts of Parliament Relative to the Trade and the Government of our American Colonies’ (1752) and ‘De Jure et Gubernatione Coloniarum, or An Inquiry into the Nature, and the Rights of Colonies, Ancient and Modern’ (1774), Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, Held in Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge, Vol. 165 (The American Philosophical Society, Independence Square/Philadelphia, 1986; pp. v‐xii, 346; ISBN 0–87169–165–5; US ISSN 0065–9738).     

‘Europeanization’ as a legitimation strategy of political parties: the cases of Ukraine and Georgia

This article’s objective is to critically assess the top-down rational choice and sociological approaches to Europeanization, while advocating the ‘usages of Europe’ approach. I argue that both classic top-down perspectives do not adequately grasp the nature of Europeanization of political parties beyond member and candidate countries. Empirically, the analysis focuses on transnational cooperation of political parties from Ukraine and Georgia and stresses agency of domestic partisan actors seeking international and domestic legitimacy. It is argued that European party federations and parliamentary cooperation formats should not only be seen as channels of top-down Europeanization, but they should rather be conceptualized as resources that are used strategically by domestic political parties. Thus the article deals with the following question: To what extent and how channels of Europeanization have been used by national political parties from outside the European Union as resources serving to attain partisan goals, both in terms of domestic positioning and international legitimacy? Patterns of strategic and legitimating usage of European partisan and parliamentary resources depend on whether parties in question are in power or in opposition and whether they are more pro-European or more pro-Russian.     

Beyond polarity in Zanzibar? The ‘silent’ referendum and the government of national unity

On 31 July 2010 the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar held a referendum to decide on the government of national unity so as to end the impasse between the two main political camps, each dominating one of the two islands of Unguja and Pemba. The outcome of the referendum was that the majority of Zanzibaris voted in favour of the government of national unity. This article revisits how the referendum was carried out in terms of observing the basic principles of a democratic referendum and whether the referendum would be a panacea for the polarisation between the two islands. The main argument held here is that the referendum fell short of observing some of the basic principles of a democratic referendum since it systematically suppressed the voices of those who opted for a ‘No’ vote. Besides this, the government of national unity created after the referendum was in essence the unity of the two major political parties, namely the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) and the Civic United Front (CUF). Relatedly, some of the fundamental issues causing polarisation are yet to be tackled, a situation which, if not addressed in time, would make this polarity a likely facet of Zanzibar's future politics.     

‘Made in Eastern Germany’: The PDS and the articulation of Eastern German interests

The electoral success of the post‐communist PDS has surprised politicians and academics alike. The PDS has been able to find a niche for itself within the German polity by articulating territorially salient political difference. The PDS has expanded its voter base beyond merely the politically disaffected and the former ‘Dienstklasse’ of the GDR, as it has developed into an effective articulator of eastern German interests. Western German parties have been unable to incorporate differences in eastern German attitudes and perceptions into their political platforms — leaving space for a regionally concentrated political party (the PDS) to establish itself.     

The bridge that divides: local perceptions of the connected state in the Kyrgyzstan–Tajikistan–China borderlands

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought profound changes to the borderlands of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Xinjiang. In eastern Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan region, present-day weaknesses in territorial control of the post-Soviet state’s edges are directly wedded to borderlanders’ memories of Soviet-era practices of bordering, perceived locally as both systemically stronger and cognitively more beneficial to local lifeworlds than contemporary ‘Chinese penetration’. Across the border in Xinjiang, a formerly distant state has been brought into borderlanders’ locales and inscribed into everyday lifeworlds through novel manifestations of the state, which significantly affect cross-border interaction. By comparing how borderlanders on both sides of this frontier themselves choose to characterize border processes between ‘their’ states in the initial two decades of connections to Xinjiang, I explore how and why Kyrgyz and Tajik/Pamiri borderlanders voice strong opinions about what it is they feel has changed in these administrative-territorial homelands. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork on both sides of this frontier, I argue that the gradual bridging of this formerly sealed border has led to neither the development of a new trans-frontier identity nor locally established trans-frontier networks but, instead, reconfirmed borders between China and Central Asia.     

The Iraqi Ba‘th Party Preparatory School and the ‘Cultural’ Courses of the Branches

Political indoctrination of the Ba’th party cadre in Iraq was critical for the durability of the regime for 35 years. The party preparatory school was the vehicle for the ideological training of the party elite, while special courses, provided by the party branches, focused on the ‘cultural’ education of the party's lower echelons to prepare them for becoming active members. Using the Ba’th's own archives, the article examines how the party's school, the branches’ cultural courses, and the Ba’th cultural activities, combined to create an ideologically educated cadre which paved the way for the party's domination of Iraq's culture and ideology.