Weathering the storm: why was there no Arab uprising in Algeria?

This article re-opens the discussion of why there was “no Arab Uprising in Algeria.” After critically reviewing previous findings, the paper suggests that the stability of the Algerian regime was mainly a result of the non-formation of a cross-class and cross-ideological coalition. Splitting this hypothesis into its two main parts, it will be shown, first, that the working class was the missing element. Two factors explain this: (a) the numerical and strategic marginalization of productive workers – in turn, an effect of the process of de-industrialization that hit the country from the late 1980s onwards; and (b) the presence of an aristocracy of labour in the hydrocarbon sector, from which a tiny minority of workers produced an overwhelming amount of wealth. Secondly, the enduring distrust among opposition groups – a direct legacy of the still-too-recent civil war, as well as an effect of the specific institutional environment that developed from the mid 1990s onwards – prevented the establishment of a “negative coalition” through which all opposition forces could jointly mobilize against the regime.     

Semi-presidentialism,moderating power and inclusive governance. The experience of Timor-Leste in consolidating democracy

The relationship between the choice of a government system, namely semi-presidentialism, and the performance of democracy is the subject of current debate. This article considers Elgie's proposal for a positive correlation between premier-presidential forms of semi-presidentialism and the success of democratic transitions, and discusses the way in which Timor-Leste fits the model as well as the need for a clear view of the incentive mechanisms at play. It further analyses the importance of “independent” presidents with “moderating powers” as a way of achieving inclusive governance and to facilitate democratic consolidation. Contrary to suppositions that attribute a tendency for president-parliamentary regimes to succumb to conflict between the main political actors, the case of Timor-Leste suggests that the definition of the president's role as a “moderator”, and the exercise of the function by “independent”, non-party personalities counteracts such inclinations with positive effects on democratic consolidation.     

Reforming governance under authoritarianism: motivations and pathways of local participatory reform in the People’s Republic of China

Many authoritarian regimes use participatory political reform to maintain control over the societies under their rule and survive global waves of democratization. Recent studies of transitional governance have underscored the importance and intricacy of institutional reform; however, no consensus has been reached on an explanation of the dynamism that shapes institutional reforms under non-democratic systems. Why do authoritarian apparatchiks reform their institutions of governance? How can the varied pathways of these reforms be explained? Post-Deng China provides an ideal laboratory in which to study these issues. Since the 1990s, growing tensions between the Leninist polity and a gradually opened society have compelled local governments in China to test a vast set of participatory reforms. In an examination of three major local participatory budgeting reforms in China, this article maps the main pathways – representation, consultation, and transparency – of these recent sub-national participatory reforms implemented by the incumbent regime, and explores the driving forces that sculpt a reformist model over the alternatives. By introducing an “incentive-contingent framework”, this article sketches out the “repertoire” of participatory reforms in the authoritarian governance of China and suggests an explanatory framework for the variation in the strategies and forms of such institutional innovations.     

Civil War Settlements,Size of Governing Coalition,and Durability of Peace in Post–Civil War States

We examine the ways in which the size of the governing coalition in a post–civil war state affects the durability of the peace. Previous studies relate the durability of the peace to the outcome of the civil war, the extent and forms of power-sharing arrangements, and the role of third-party security guarantors. We argue that the way conflict terminates and the power-sharing agreements between former protagonists structure the composition of governing coalition in the post–civil war state. Any settlement to civil war that broadens the size of the governing coalition should increase actors' incentives to sustain the peace rather than renew the armed conflict. Peace is more likely to fail where the governing coalition is smaller because those excluded from the governing coalition have little to lose from resuming armed rebellion. To test these propositions, we analyze data on post–civil war peace spells from 1946–2005.     

Confrontation by default and confrontation by design: strategic and institutional responses to Poland's populist coalition government

For a short and controversial period in 2006–2007, Poland was governed by a three-party “populist coalition” which attempted to break with the liberal-democratic model of post-communist transition and implement a far-reaching set of reforms. In this article, I analyse the ways in which domestic and external actors responded to the challenges posed by this coalition. I argue that Poland's Constitutional Court and the temporarily united opposition parties were key to repelling the populist challenge. However, the anti-populist response was driven less by a deliberate strategy than by the confrontational logic of populism itself, and the institutional design of Poland's liberal-democratic system. I conclude with a discussion of several lessons the Polish case holds for further analyses of anti-populist reaction.     

Translating Technical Diplomacy: The Participation of Civil Society Organisations in International Standardisation

ABSTRACT

This article examines the participation of civil society organisations (CSO) in the various arenas of global governance with focus on the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). While diverse studies recognise the difficulty of CSOs’ participation despite the growing importance of standards in the organisation of markets, little attention has been paid to how such involvement is likely to be reinforced in what we call “technical diplomacy”, the negotiating processes involving states and non-state actors geared toward setting specifications claiming to be based on scientific knowledge. Drawing upon scholarship in new forms of regulation in organisational studies, international relations, and science and technology studies, the paper argues that CSOs’ participation depends on multiple translation practices between lay- and expert-knowledge. Findings are based on an action-research project, INTERNORM, pooling academic and CSO participation in ISO technical committees. It suggests some promising directions for addressing the democratic deficit of technical diplomacy.     

Untangling global-local linkages: The case of the Right to Information Act in India

ABSTRACT

Transparency laws have proliferated worldwide: between 1990 and 2010, 76 countries promulgated laws or ordinances on the freedom or right to information. By examining the domestic and global processes involved in the passage of the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTIA) in India, this article locates the global trend within the local context. It argues that the RTIA signifies institutional change because it replaced the norm of secrecy—nested and perpetuated within the Indian state since colonial times—with the norm of openness. But was this change a result of an endogenous process, or did exogenous factors—such as the global policy stimulus toward transparency and accountability or the “good governance” agenda of international financial institutions—play an instrumental role? The existing scholarly literature argues that international influence was “marginal” and the process of institutional change was largely “homegrown.” By considering historical archival material and internal government documents, this article attempts to unravel the process of norm diffusion from the global to the local and to determine how much exogenous factors and global norms affected institutional change in India.     

Immoderation: comparing the Christian Right in the US and pro-Islamic movement-parties in Turkey

This article will discuss the “immoderation” of religious political actors – defined as the continuation of a relatively closed and rigid worldview – through a cross-religious comparison of the Christian Right coalition within the Republican Party in the US with the pro-Islamic movement-parties in Turkey. By adapting a “most different systems approach”, this study will question the similar evolution of two religious political actors in two dissimilar political regimes. In particular, it will question the processes and types of immoderation by looking into (1) “behavioural immoderation”, immoderation for the strategic purpose of forming a small yet ideologically pure supporter base, and into (2) “ideological immoderation”, immoderation as a result of a continued advocacy for a moral role for the state without a full embrace of political pluralism. In this, it will argue that religious political actors are strategic actors who try to guarantee their organizational survival amidst changing costs and benefits of moderation vis-à-vis immoderation. Through its discussion of “immoderation” and through its cross-religious comparison, this study will aim to contribute to the inclusion-moderation literature.     

Limits of ethnofederalism and local political autonomy arrangements: Continuing violence in the Bodoland Territorial Area Districts of Assam

This article analyzes the continuing interethnic and anti-state violence in Assam, India after the creation of the semi-autonomous Bodoland Territorial Area District (BTAD) in 2003. We argue that this institutional arrangement, as an “innovative” model of ethnofederalism and political autonomy, has been unsuccessful in effectively preventing continued violence. We identify several dynamics resulting from the creation of the BTAD that contribute to its ineffectiveness, including the emergence of parochial and militarized Bodo ruling cliques, competitive radicalization between Bodo political elites competing in insular electoral constituencies, the inability to co-opt and integrate factionalized Bodo militants, reinvigorated non-Bodo activism and communalism, and the increased politicization of land. The extreme and multi-faceted “ethnic” diversity found in India’s Northeast, and its aggressive political expression at the local level, differentiates this region from other parts of India where ethnofederalism has been comparatively more successful for conflict mitigation. Thus, the prospects for successful ethnofederalism are area-specific.     

Norming “Moderation” in an “Iconic Target”: Public Policy and the Regulation of Religious Anxieties in Singapore

The maintenance of a “moderate mainstream” Muslim community as a bulwark against the fraying of harmonious ethnic relations has become a key governance concern post-September 11. In light of the global concern—and often paranoia—with diasporic Islam, Islamic religious institutions and civil society have been portrayed in the popular media as hotbeds of radicalism, promoters of hatred, and recruiters for a “conflict of civilization” between the Muslim world and the modern world. Having declared itself a terrorist's “iconic target,” Singapore has taken a broad-based community approach in advancing inter-religious tolerance, including a subtle initiative to include the “Muslim civil society” in advancing the understanding and the promotion of a moderate brand of Islam in Singapore. This tacit process of regulation (top-down, intra-community and inter-community), while effective, is constrained by the unique governance context in Singapore.     

Gender,Financial Deepening and the Production of Embodied Finance: Towards a Critical Feminist Analysis

This article critically interrogates the ways in which gender equality has been linked to processes of financial deepening, partly via a global coalition of public and private institutions that have come together in recent years to promote an instrumentalist gender equality agenda. Corporations, banks and financial firms are playing an increasingly important role in shaping the contours of the global gender equality agenda and reproducing narratives regarding the need to (1) financially “empower” women, (2) uphold women as the “saviours” of national economies post-2008 and (3) “tap in” to the productive (i.e. profitable) potential of women's bodily capacities. Drawing on Marxist and feminist theory, I develop an approach to theorising the inherently embodied and gendered nature of finance that reveals the ways in which these tropes obscure the labour associated with social reproduction, promote the commodification of women's bodily capacities to produce, and support the differential production of bodies while simultaneously masking embodied forms of difference.     

探索中美关系新范式及全球安全治理

特朗普执政以来,美国对华战略定位出现全方位负面趋向,由“接触”向“规锁”的转型不断加深。作为当今国际体系中的新兴大国与霸权国家,两国关系正在形成战略竞争日益突出的新态势。中美经贸摩擦的出现和深化表明,经贸合作作为两国关系的传统“压舱石”,在单独应对战略竞争“新态势”方面所能发挥的作用有限。为有效阻止“新态势”向全面对抗与冲突方向演变,中美亟须重新定位、处理和管控彼此关系的“新范式”。包括全球安全治理在内的全球治理架构为中美战略博弈与权势平衡提供了相对稳定的制度体系。通过明确战略竞争边界、构建对话协调平台,有效借助第三方力量等,中美的理性博弈、积极合作能够得到有效推动,并直接带来全球安全治理在观念、制度、模式等方面的变革。这不仅符合两国根本利益和国际社会的普遍愿望,也是全球治理健全发展的需要。但确立“新范式”有待解决的一大问题是,经贸合作作为两国关系“压舱石”的作用已经不稳,需要探索新的“压舱石”,全球安全治理合作在此方面的作用是不够的。未来中美关系的首要特点是战略竞争,新的“压舱石”可以通过权力博弈建立某种相对稳定的机制架构,最终以大国权势平衡的方式来打造。     

Governing migration from a distance: interactions between climate,migration, and security in the South Mediterranean

Links between security and migration are well established and are associated with the meaning, status, and practice of borders in the international political system. This article assesses how and with what effects the effects of environmental and climate change have entered this relationship between migration and security. It does so by assessing the EU’s external governance of migration in “South Mediterranean Partner Countries” (SMPCs): Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, and Tunisia. It is argued that a focus on promoting “adaptation” and building “resilience” has developed that is consistent with the logic of governing migration from a distance. However, the article challenges ideas that environmental/climate change act as simple migration “triggers” and instead explores implications of movement towards and not away from risk, as well as the potential for populations to be trapped in areas that expose them to risk. It is shown that both have important implications for the relationship between migration, environmental/climate change, and security in SMPCs.     

A theory of emerging order within institutional complexes: How competition among regulatory international institutions leads to institutional adaptation and division of labor

The article examines the consequences of functional overlap among regulatory international institutions for governance within institutional complexes. Whereas the existing literature assumes that states tend to exploit forum-shopping opportunities to pursue their parochial interests, we show that multiple members of several overlapping institutions operate in a setting of ‘nested games’. They have a general interest in some form of institutional complementarity within the complex and therefore take the implications for overlapping institutions into account when determining their behavior within either of these institutions. On that basis, we show first that the multiple members are likely to induce complementary processes of institutional adaptation, even if their interests diverge with regard to the specific form of institutional rearrangement; second, that a balanced distribution of power among the advocates of different institutions may be expected to produce particularly sophisticated forms of institutional adaptation that do not simply separate the domains of overlapping institutions, but establish patterns of permanent co-governance; and third that state-induced processes of institutional adaptation gradually produce a spontaneously emerging division of labor among overlapping institutions that organizes their governance activities. These theoretical claims are probed by two case studies on institutional complexes that are characterized by sharp distributional conflicts among the multiple members: First, we demonstrate the emergence of a sophisticated division of labor in the institutional complex on international trade in agricultural GMOs. Second, we show that an equally sophisticated division of labor has emerged in the institutional complex on public health-related intellectual property rights.     

Ethnicity,political survival,and the exchange of nationalist foreign policy

How does leadership’s desire for political survival in ethnically heterogeneous democracies affect the probability of states exchanging nationalist foreign policy? I define nationalist foreign policy as foreign policy that aims to fulfill national self-governance using a civic or ethnic frame. I argue that civic-nationalist policy disputing the territoriality of one’s own state is more likely, while ethno-nationalist policy favoring the leadership’s foreign co-ethnics is less likely, when the size of the leadership’s ethnic group is small and the level of democracy is relatively high. This is because the leadership, under such domestic conditions, has to mobilize support from other ethnic groups in order to stay in power. Civic-nationalist policy allows the leadership to increase domestic solidarity across ethnic lines and mobilize support from other ethnic groups, whereas ethno-nationalist policy would risk other ethnic groups criticizing the leadership of being ethno-centrist. These hypotheses are supported by quantitative analysis using an original dataset.     

Press coverage of lone-actor terrorism in the UK and Denmark: shaping the reactions of the public,affected communities and copycat attackers

Following 9/11, Al-Qaeda-orchestrated plots were considered the greatest threat to Western security and sparked the coalition’s war on terror. Close to a decade later, the post-9/11 threat landscape had shifted significantly, leading then CIA-director Leon Panetta to describe “the lone-wolf strategy” as the main threat to the United States. Subsequent lone-actor attacks across the West, including the cities of London, Nice, Berlin, Stockholm, Ottawa and Charleston, further entrenched perspectives of a transformed security landscape in the “after, after-9/11” world. The unique features of lone-actor terrorism, including the challenges of interdiction and potential of copycat attacks, mean that the media is likely to play a particularly important role in shaping the reactions of the public, affected communities and copycat attackers. This article presents findings from a content analysis of British and Danish newspaper reporting of lone-actor terrorism between January 2010 and February 2015. The study highlights that lone-actor terrorism is framed, with national variations, as a significant and increasing problem in both countries; that Islamist lone-actors are often represented as distinct from far-right lone-actors; and that some reporting, despite relatively limited amplification of specific terrorist messages, potentially aids lone-actors by detailing state vulnerabilities to attacks.     

Shaping the European External Action Service and its post-Lisbon crisis management structures: an assessment of the EU High Representatives’ political leadership

ABSTRACT

This article assesses the role, influence and core aspects of the EU High Representatives’ (HR/VPs) “political leadership” in the context of their efforts to advance the institutionalisation of the EEAS and its crisis management structures in the post-Lisbon era. By combining analytical lenses from the literature on “European political leadership”, foreign policy analysis (FPA) and political psychology with insights from a wide range of semi-structured interviews and primary sources, the article analyses how the leadership approaches of Catherine Ashton and Federica Mogherini were influenced by core aspects, such as institutional setting, situational factors and “personal qualities”. By examining how both HR/VPs and their chosen advisors sought to shape the EU’s EEAS and crisis management institutions, scholars can gain important insights about how “personal qualities” and prior foreign policy experience can influence the HR/VPs strategic choices and their impact within and across the EEAS. Finally, the article considers the differing effects between “maverick” and “orthodox” leadership and approaches and concludes that whilst outside perspectives can bring fresh ideas and institutional innovations, they will fail to be of lasting significance and permanence if not accompanied by sufficient support from the dominant foreign and security policy conventions.     

The External Dimension of EU Counter-Terrorism Relations: Competences,Interests, and Institutions

Some very significant policy developments indicate “supranationalisation processes” of EU external relations in counter-terrorism, even in its most significant relationship with the USA. This means that, increasingly, the USA is willing to work with Europe through its institutionalised forum—the European Union. Thus, the EU achieves certain recognition on the world stage in areas previously completely unsuspected—the “high politics” of counter-terrorism. This supranationalisation process proceeds in two stages. Firstly, the construction of an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) pools a significant amount of national sovereignty at the level of the EU through the establishment of internal EU competences. As a side effect, however, it also constructs an institutionalised structure for external actors, such as the U.S., to deal with. Through dealing within this institutional setting, member states' interests become defined in such a way that increasingly they construct a “European” interest related to counter-terrorism.     

On regional security governance once again: how analysis of the Southern Caucasus can advance the concept

Already introduced to the academic and political debate some years ago, the concept of “security governance” still needs to be clarified. In particular, four main shortcomings need to be overcome to make the concept more useful for an assessment of current security dynamics: in the first place, attention has been devoted more to “governance” than to “security”, while failing to consider the role of the understandings and perceptions of the actors involved in the governance system. Second, the literature on the actors (governmental or not) involved is still fragmented. Third, the literature on security governance has too often been detached from reflections on regionalism, while it would be useful to further explore the relationship between cognitive definitions of regional and security dynamics. Fourth, the literature has predominantly focused on Europe and the transatlantic area, overlooking processes of “region-building” in security terms in other “unexpected” geographical spaces. After proposing avenues to overcome the current gaps in the literature, the Southern Caucasus is chosen as a case study to show the different instances of security governance emerging, thanks to definitions of the region in security terms that have involved regional and external actors, of a state and non-state nature.     

Ethnicity,Colonial Legacies,and Postindependence Issues of Identity Politics in North-East India

The idea of indigenousness has been evoked to legitimize group exclusive claims including separate territories in North-East India. By analyzing experiences in Meghalaya and Manipur, the article argues that the colonial ethnic categorization that produced “ethnic conglomerates” has generated a number of problems leading to conflict in the postindependence period. First, certain composite identities have been formed by bringing together under a single umbrella a range of distinct indigenous groups' identity, often leading to the suppression of smaller identities within the larger group. Thus, the smaller groups struggle to have their own identities recognized. Furthermore, the imposed ethnic categorization has enabled the contemporary political class, which has simply perpetuated the colonial system, to use cultural identity and “indigenousness” instrumentally to their own advantage.