The EU and Multidimensional Forms of Power: Critical Moments and Change in Actorness and Power

This article introduces a framework for studying the European Union (EU) as power by focusing on what EU does rather than what EU is. Conceptualizing EU as a regional international society, EU is constituted along multidimensional lines. While a code of conduct limits internal and external practices, critical moments are important junctures for practitioners to reinterpret norms and rules, leading to the reproduction of EU as power. The practice of minority rights illustrates how a lack of intersubjectivity limits the EU’s power. It is first through practitioners’ engagement with norms and rules that new practices are established.     

Poetics of Disaster: Nationalism, Gender, and Social Change Among Palestinian Poets in Israel After Nakba

Following the 1948 Nakba (disaster) and collapse of Palestinian society, its national project and cultural sites, a residue of 170,000 Palestinians became citizens of the emerging state of Israel, which existed under a strict military rule until 1966. This residue was mainly illiterate villagers who were left without national and intellectual leadership. After a few years of frightened silence, a new intellectual stratum of young poets from this group began to publish reflections on their national situation. Intentionally simple, direct, and mainly easily memorized, their poetry became the ultimate cultural channel to create and disseminate a Palestinian version of the 1948 war, its subsequent state, and the vision of a desired future. These young poets gradually became the leading producers of Palestinian culture in Israel and abroad. Their poetry became the ultimate reference point for Palestine’s national ethos and myths. Palestinians abroad named them the “poets of resistance” and their poems were composed into inflaming national songs. But while this new intellectual strata became active cultural producers, intervening in “the nation building process,” their social role remained ambivalent and problematic. Despite their national enthusiasm and appeal for social change, they were unable to transgress the patriarchic rule that was hegemonic in Palestinian society. This hegemonic narrative was interwoven in three themes: (1) using the lexicon of natural disaster to conceptualize the 1948 events, presenting them as an irresistible natural disaster (even by God who appeared during the events as pathetic and useless); (2) representing the Palestinian defeat in 1948 through patriarchal language of “collective shame,” “land rape,” and “honor lost;” and (3) articulating the national liberation project as masculine, promising to liberate the “captured land-woman” and to recover the collective honor of the nation.

Supervisor Relationships,Teamwork, Role Ambiguity and Discretionary Power: Nurses in Australia and the United Kingdom

This paper reports comparative research comparing the relationship between supervisor-subordinate relationships, teamwork, role ambiguity and discretionary power for nurses working in public and private sector hospitals in Australia and the UK. The findings indicate that the four factors accounted for approximately a quarter of the variance for nurses in the UK and almost a fifth of the variance for nurses working in public sector hospitals. Moreover, the findings identify a significant difference across all variables for nurses working in public sector hospitals compared with private sector with nurses in the private sector having higher satisfaction levels and perceiving lower levels of role ambiguity. There were fewer differences for nurses working in Australian hospitals compared with UK hospitals with nurses in Australia perceiving a better supervisor-subordinate relationship and nurses in the UK perceiving greater satisfaction with teamwork.     

The politics of paper: negotiating over and around indigeneship certification in Plateau State,Nigeria

The certification of indigeneship in Nigeria has become one of the most contested documentation processes in the country, given its implications for Nigerians’ citizenship rights and political and economic opportunities. This paper analyses the contestations over and around indigeneship certification in Plateau State. It argues that while the notion of indigeneship has roots in the colonial period, postcolonial forces have reshaped and transformed it. The increasingly poor documentation practices of the Nigerian state, particularly at the local level, have interacted with a fragmentation and formalisation of “indigenous belonging” and given it new functions. In the context of Plateau State, then, this paper shows how these processes have resulted in at least two distinct forms of contestation over indigeneship: first, the intergroup competition over indigeneship in Jos North and, second, the contestation around the margins of indigeneship in the rural areas of Quan Pan.     

The 1996 Split of the Islamic Movement in Israel: Between the Holy Text and Israeli-Palestinian Context

This article aims to explain the causes and meaning of the formal split of the Islamic Movement in Israel into two factions—following the decision to participate in the elections to the fourteenth Knesset (Israeli parliament) on May 29, 1996—while locating these in a larger theoretical framework. This split resulted from a delicate combination of doctrinal-ideological controversies relating to secular electoral competition and historical-political-tactical controversies that are rooted in the Israeli-Palestinian context. Specifically, the split of the Islamic Movement in Israel derived from two interpretations of the Islamic belief: a more literal or concrete interpretation and a more abstract one.     

Parties, rules and government legislative control in Central Europe: The case of Poland

A distinguishing feature of Central European polities is a strong policy-shaping role of parliaments. This article demonstrates how party political and procedural factors set the scene for the executive's loss of legislative control in Poland. Parties undermine the governmental grip because of their limited internal cohesion and competitive coalitional strategies. Parliamentary rules reinforce such party effects. The executive can shield its bills from amendments by relying mainly on partisan controls, not formal privileges. But, as an analysis of over 300 bills shows, when party discipline and coalition cooperation are in short supply, partisan controls are ineffective as instruments of legislative control.     

Economic Reform and Social Change in China: Past, Present, and Future of the Economic State

China's socioeconomic crisis before 1978 and its success over the past two decades can be viewed as a zigzag process of politicization and depoliticization of the economic state. By summarizing the Chinese experience, this article shows the importance of a specific pattern of general public policy (GPP) in determining the nature of a policy system. China's economic and serialized reforms since 1978 are reviewed in order to illuminate the current situation and future direction of the nation. The changes have undermined the economic state by creating a trend of de-economicization in the Chinese government. If economic reform and social change are to continue smoothly, another transfer of state emphasis to more balanced development is required.     

Money, organization and the state: The partial cartelization of party politics in Slovenia

A detailed analysis of party organization, party funding and voting behaviour in parliament in Slovenia indicates a partial cartelization of Slovene party politics. In line with the cartel thesis, parties in Slovenia are heavily dependent on the state for their finances and there is evidence that parties have used the resources of the state to limit competition. Nonetheless, there is much less evidence of cartelization in terms of party organization indicating more cartelization in the party system as a whole than within individual parties.     

The Implementation Effectiveness of Trash Management in Ambon,Maluku: The Influence of Socialization,Coordination and Control to the Effectiveness of Trash Management

Principally, the policy is made to change the situation to be the desired one. The policy implementation in management context is in the terms of socialization, coordination and the control. This research is focused in the result process of public policy related to the trash management. The joint influence between the socialization, coordination and the control through the implementer and society behavior to the effectiveness of trash management in Ambon is being considered. The structural equation modeling (SEM) and Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS) 20 is used to analyze the data in this research.     

The Not So Good,the Bad and the Ugly: Over Twelve Years of PPP in Ireland

Public–private partnerships have been adopted extensively in Ireland for over 12 years. This article analyses the practice of PPP procurement at the level of local government. It adopts economic and governance perspectives on PPP which highlight challenges with procurement under PPP such as complexity, uncertainty, hold-up, transparency and accountability. These perspectives provide a basis for an analysis of three cases of PPP procurement. Two cases from the water services sector illuminate problems arising from the complexity of value for money assessment at the ex ante contracting stage. These cases were also characterised by governance problems stemming from central government's role as policy advocate and steward of public funds. The case of PPP to deliver social housing also demonstrated the challenges of procurement under conditions of economic uncertainty and difficulties with achieving appropriate levels of risk transfer. All three cases demonstrate the value of stakeholder consultation in terms of meeting the governance challenges faced when adopting PPP.     

The politics of return: exploring the future of Syrian refugees in Jordan,Lebanon and Turkey

Abstract

Although the Syrian conflict continues, local and global stakeholders have already begun to consider the return of the six million refugees, especially as neither the option of local integration in the countries of first asylum nor that of resettlement to third countries is seen as a realistic possibility. Elaborating on the return debates in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, we relate the politicisation of this question to the growing acceptance of the option of voluntary and involuntary repatriation in the international refugee regime as well as to policies and public opinion. We argue, based on empirical fieldwork, that any debate about the return of Syrian refugees is problematic, since the conditions of safety, voluntariness and sustainability are not fulfilled. Further, returns should not be left entirely to the individual hosting states and actors in the region but should be carried out in collaboration with representative authorities in Syria and the mediation of international organisations upon full resolution of conflict.     

The Croatian Diaspora in North America: Identity, Ethnic Solidarity, and the Formation of a “Transnational National Community”

As I attempt to reveal in this article, Croatian Diaspora's press in North America plays a crucial role in ethnic mobilization and formation of attitudes among members of Croatian Diaspora community toward their home society—Croatia and construction of transnational national community. Discourse analysis employed when examining writings published between 1980–1995 in the most influential Croatian Diaspora's journal—the Fraternalist—builds on the idea that not only news from both the host and home countries are provided, but they are also used to constantly reproduce elements of group identity among Diaspora's community. This study explores the main trends in different stages of ethnic homogenization and mobilization of Croatian Diaspora in North America, which progressed in response to political changes in the home country, reaching its peak with the commencement of the war in Croatia in 1991.     

The ghosts of the past, the dreamlands of the future … or why fantasies are bound to fail in socialism and the market: The case of public health policy development in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia

The transition ‘from planned to market economy’ in the former Soviet Union and in several countries in post-communist Europe is one of the most sweeping social transformations of the second half of the 20th century. It is widely accepted that this transformation was driven by a shared belief in the market's superior ability to deliver economic growth, to create wealth and contribute to the well-being of the populations after the demise of the defunct socialist ideology. However, the element of utopian fantasy undergirding the grand projects of socialism and the market is usually ignored, often with detrimental results. The study draws on Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis to propose an alternative reading of the process of transition, as an exchange of one powerful fantasy for another. My key contention is that as long as the common utopian dream of social harmony underlying both projects will not be recognised for what it is, which is in itself an unattainable desire of the human psyche, the illusory dreamlands will continue to exist and so will their violent political consequences. The study uses the example of public health policy development in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia to illustrate how unacknowledged fantasy leads to violent utilitarianism as it was manifested in socialism, and is now repeated differently but no less tyrannically in the market. In conclusion, I argue for integrating fantasy as a constitutive element of political projects and explore the possibility of the autonomous (self-determined) mode of governance that Cornelius Castoriadis (1987/2005) theorised on and juxtaposed to the heteronomous ways of organising ruled by master signifiers present in various ideologies.