Conscientious politics and Israel’s moral dilemmas

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces ‘conscientious politics’, discusses their features and shows their resonance in the case of Israel. I define conscientious politics as politics informed by moral deliberations about legitimacy, and locate them in the larger matrix of conscience. In the balance between passion and persuasion, conscientious politics provide time and invite venues for deliberation on the social contract, challenging rulers’ convenience and society’s conventions. While the individual’s freedom of conscience draws mainly on positive liberty (from within), conscientious politics also requires emancipation from without. However, conscientious politics are not necessarily harmonious or liberal, nor does liberalism necessarily entail free conscience. Conscientious politics are often ‘hidden in plain sight’, and the normative task of bringing them to light depends on revealing the moral dilemmas that underpin actual politics. I unearth such dilemmas with regard to Israel’s 2011 social justice movement, the subsequent prisoner exchange and Israel’s relations with the Palestinians.     

Qatar’s humanitarian aid to Palestine

The purpose of this paper is to document Qatar’s recent contribution of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. We consider Qatar as an example of a mini state that relies on its wealth and soft power to further its interests in the Middle East and support a beleaguered Arab-Muslim state. The paper carries out analysis of Arabic newspapers and other documentary evidence to contextualise and estimate Qatar’s financial contribution 2010–2016. Contextualising Qatar’s aid necessitates considering Israel’s military control of the Palestinian Territories, and its ability through hard power to regulate the inflow of aid to Palestine. The paper concludes by calling for adopting the political economy perspective in dealing with humanitarian aid.     

One anthropologist’s answer to Glenn D. Paige’s question challenging peace studies

ABSTRACT

Glenn D. Paige pioneered in the revolutionary development of a far-reaching transformation of science, academia, and society from a killing to a nonkilling worldview, values, and attitudes. For six decades, anthropology has been accumulating scientific empirical evidence and rational arguments demonstrating that nonkilling societies exist, thereby rebutting the simplistic biological determinist myth that human nature inevitably and universally generates violence and war. Nevertheless, Hobbessians persist in their echo chamber advertising and celebrating the innate depravity of the human species as apologists for war and peace resisters. This systemic bias operates in synergy with the American industrial-military-media-academic complex and culture, the latter exemplified by a revealing comparison of war and football. With great intellectual courage and creative thinking, Paige critically challenges the anachronistic Hobbesian paradigm and offers a far more compelling and positive alternative for sustainable peace in the future.     

The Achaemenid Empire’s Contributions to Public Administration

The Achaemenid Empire established the world’s first complex administrative system of government in 559 B.C. There are numerous administrative accomplishments by the Achaemenids that have not successfully been duplicated in modern times, despite the Pony Express, the Suez Canal, and perfected recycling systems. Political debate, formal rewards systems, federal agencies, and integrated federal and provincial levels of government among a culturally diverse population were characteristic of the trailblazing Achaemenid Empire. Furthermore, administrative ideologies such as government’s responsibility to serve the public and provide equal rights were incorporated first by Cyrus the Great’s Human Rights Charter.     

China’s road from socialism to global capitalism

Abstract

China’s engagement with global capitalism is driven by the emergence of a statist and private transnational capitalist class. Nevertheless, aspects of China’s foreign policy from the Maoist period still echo today. Consequently, elements of third world solidarity and opposition to Western domination continue to exist as China’s past is redefined to further its transnational strategies in Latin America and the US. The main Chinese investments in South America have been in energy and infrastructure among the left lead countries of the Pink Tide. In the US, Chinese capital has grown despite heated political rhetoric. This paper will examine how economic ties in South and North America reflect past and present conditions, and if China has initiated a non-Western globalisation.     

Civil Society’s Claims to Political Representation in Brazil

Civil society is laying claim to political representation in contemporary democracies, destabilizing long-standing ideas about democratic legitimacy. The participatory governance structures that have emerged alongside classic institutions of representative democracy encompass not only direct citizen participation but also political representation by civil society actors. Using original data from São Paulo, Brazil, we show that most of civil society actors that work for the urban poor claim political representation of their “constituency.” Theirs is more often than not an “assumed representation,” we suggest, because our data show that most lack formal members and do not select leaders through elections. Civil society actors (in contrast to political parties and labor unions) lack historically settled and politically sanctioned mechanisms to authorize and hold accountable their representation. This new layer of political representatives therefore faces a historic challenge—constructing novel notions of democratic legitimacy that can support their forms of representation. We examine what new notions of representations are emerging and trace the historic roots of the most widespread and promising that focus on remedying inequality in access to the state.     

Shortcut to Legitimacy: Popularity in Putin’s Russia

Survey evidence suggests that Vladimir Putin’s legitimacy rests on three pillars: domestic order; economic prosperity; and the demonstration of great power status internationally. This is problematic inasmuch as it is based on a high degree of personal popularity which inhibits and contravenes the legal–rational legitimacy of state institutions. This requires continued delivery in all three areas in order to maintain the legitimacy of the regime. This framework allows us better to interpret the 2014 Ukraine crisis as an attempt to shore up support in one ‘pillar’ as performance-based legitimacy recedes.     

Hurdles to peace: a level-of-analysis approach to resolving Sudan’s civil wars

Why do some peace agreements end armed conflicts whereas others do not? Previous studies have primarily focused on the relation between warring parties and the provisions included in peace agreements. Prominent mediators, however, have emphasised the importance of stakeholders at various levels for the outcome of peace agreements. To match the experience of these negotiators we apply a level-of-analysis approach to examine the contextual circumstances under which peace agreements are concluded. While prominent within the causes of war literature, level-of-analysis approaches are surprisingly scant in research about conflict resolution. This article compares two Sudanese Peace Agreements: the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (2005) that ended the North–South war and led to the independence of South Sudan, and the Darfur Peace Agreement (2006) which failed to end fighting in Darfur. We find that factors at the local, national and international level explain the different outcomes of the two agreements. Hence, the two case studies illustrate the merit of employing a level-of-analysis approach to study the outcome of peace agreements. The main contribution of this article is that it presents a new theoretical framework to understand why some peace agreements terminate armed conflict whereas others do not.     

The great paradox: how Obama’s opening to Cuba may imperil the country’s reform process

This article examines the kind of development and political model most likely to emerge in Cuba, particularly in the wake of the gradual US–Cuban normalisation currently taking place. The rapprochement process, culminating with President Obama’s historic visit in March 2016, has unleashed stiff resistance in both countries. The liberal democratisation paradigm is held up against what we have termed ‘socialist neo-patrimonialism’, with both seen as alternative tools for assessing the direction of social transformations underway in Cuba, focusing on the debate about the role of the national private sector. Paradoxically, normalisation with the USA may so far have had the contrary effect of what President Obama had in mind in this respect: judging from the 7th Congress of the Communist Party in April 2016, it seems that resistance against economic reforms has hardened, caused by a fear that Obama’s charm offensive, combined with a strengthened entrepreneurial sector, will undermine the entire revolutionary project. The article concludes with a discussion of four development scenarios.     

Africa’s Pasts and Africa’s Historians

Creation of local government districts has become an enterprise in Uganda, with many stakeholders having diverse opinions about the government's motives. This article examines the questions: What are the proclaimed and hidden or implicit intentions of the government? What evidence is available to provide reasonable interpretation of government action according to a particular rationale? By triangulating primary and secondary data and using a deductive approach, the study concludes that the initial intention of the government to create new districts to bring services and government closer to the people was consistent with the country's constitution and decentralisation policy. However, since 1997, and especially since 2006, other rationales have come to the fore, though not communicated as such in public policy statements. While we do not exclude ethnic rationale, the article finds more evidence that points to political patronage and a variant of gerrymandering (namely, that of splitting up districts while not redrawing boundaries).     

From hero worship to organized oblivion: representations of the People’s Front in Tajikistan’s national memory

The People’s Front of Tajikistan (PFT), one of the parties to the country’s civil war, was instrumental in bringing the government of President Emomali Rahmon to power. The article examines the official strategies of memorialization of the PFT from the early 1990s to the present. It discusses the emergence of a canon of the PFT heroes and martyrs and locates it within the nascent national mythology after independence. It argues that the maintenance of this canon was rendered impossible by the imperatives of consolidating presidential authority and securing national reconciliation following the 1997 peace deal. It concludes with an examination of the growing tension between the official line of historical amnesia on the one hand and resurgent social memory on the other. People in Tajikistan are increasingly interested in revisiting the events and protagonists of the war to develop a sense of the past, and remembering the PFT forms an essential part of their search for shared history and a sense of identity.     

Political board’s contribution to strategic management: a case study

This study examines the support, control and strategic functions of an executive hospital political board from the perspective of how institutionalised internal procedures influence board functions. Board members and leading hospital managers were interviewed about politicians’ ways of working, managers’ preparation of decision issues and board work under the presidency model. The politicians strengthened the decision-making processes by requesting additional supporting documents, and by defending the hospital from public criticism. However, the board exercises weak strategic and control functions; it absorbs the responsibilities of the hospital managers and the upper political levels as it reaffirms its executive authority. Nonetheless, the study suggests that abolishing or replacing the board with a non-political board may not improve organisational governance. The study gives insights in politicians’ contribution to strategic public management, an aspect lacking in existing literature.