Brazil’s political and economic crisis

Brazilian Interim President Michel Temer will probably serve out impeached President Dilma Rousseff's term. He is compelled to deal urgently with Brazil's distressed economy and scandalous corruption. But his lack of an electoral mandate, unpopularity and initial obduracy in appointing an all-white, all-male cabinet – perceived negatively as 'business as usual' backroom politics – cast doubt on his ability to do so effectively.     

Venezuela’s deepening crisis

Venezuela's currency has collapsed, and shortages of food and medicine have produced widespread poverty and malnutrition. President Nicolás Maduro is increasingly autocratic, while his approval rating is about 18%. Popular protests are occurring and government officials – including some military officers – appear to be losing confidence in him. The country appears to be moving towards dictatorship and, possibly, a political tipping point in favour of the opposition.     

Malaysia’s political crisis

After shifting coalition politics in February 2020 all but overturned the results of federal elections in 2018, Malaysia’s new prime minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, is attempting to hold together a fragile majority in parliament while staking a claim to legitimacy amid the public-health and economic crises caused by COVID-19.     

Deficits,Democracy, and Demographics: Europe’s Three Crises

This article argues that the EU and, above all, the eurozone are facing not one crisis – an economic and fiscal one – but three: an economic crisis, a crisis of institutions, and a crisis of demography. These crises are not simultaneous; they are overlapping and self-reinforcing, and there is a high degree of feedback across all three crises. Economically, the euro inflated economic growth and government revenue in the peripheral economies, giving those member states a false sense of their economic prospects. Institutionally, mechanisms were too weak at the EU level to prevent a dangerous escalation of asset (above all house) prices and too fragmented to confront the crisis through an immediate and decisive plan that would provide calm to the markets. Demographically, Europe’s economic and fiscal problems are and will increasingly be exacerbated by the continent’s demographic situation and its projected development, especially in southern Europe.     

Second order secrecy and Europe’s legality mosaics

Abstract

In today’s information society the citizen is ever more visible to government and to private companies while paradoxically government itself becomes ever more secret. This asymmetry is not caused by secrecy implying deliberate or intentional concealment of information. Rather, it results from systems of secrets held by remote or non-visible public and private actors, having been put together in an invisible manner. Second order secrecy is enhanced in the EU by the composite character of EU administration. In the EU it is the courts ? and not the legislature or the administration ? that are playing an active role in addressing bits of the transparency paradox for the citizen from the perspective of legality and the rule of law. Three different aspects of EU governance are explored from the legal perspective: terrorist blacklists, interoperable security administration and mandatory data retention and transfer.     

Hong Kong’s security law

China has imposed a security law on Hong Kong that specifies severe penalties for what Beijing deems to be secession, subversion of state power, terrorist activities and ‘collusion with foreign external forces to endanger national security’. Beijing is determined to bring Hong Kong to heel, whatever the international repercussions. In the long term it is likely that Beijing will progressively eliminate all vestiges of Hong Kong’s separate identity along with all remnants of the territory’s colonial past.     

Nigeria’s security under Buhari

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has made progress in containing the jihadist group Boko Haram in the northeast, but in other parts of the country he faces burgeoning security challenges. These include Niger Delta rebels attacking oil facilities, Biafran separatists confronting security forces, Muslim pastoralists fighting Christian farmers and Shia Muslim political agitation. Buhari will need to formulate and fund considered policies to stem the rise of each element and prevent some from converging with others.     

Spain’s Catalan separatist crisis

Catalonia’s 1 October referendum on independence precipitated a major political crisis in Spain and prompted Madrid to assume direct rule of Catalonia pending regional elections scheduled for 21 December. There appears to be a realistic possibility that Catalan voters will opt for a less disruptive push for enhanced autonomy within Spain. But if they re-assert independence, the cycle witnessed over the past several months could repeat and produce deeper crisis.     

Macron’s strategic vision for Europe

President Emmanuel Macron’s February 2020 speech at the École Militaire, ostensibly about French nuclear policy, was also a major strategic statement about France’s role in Europe and the world. His primary message, directed towards Berlin in particular, advocates for an ‘awakening’ of Europe as an autonomous actor in the defence and possibly nuclear realms.     

Uncertainty,Complexity, and Gamson’s Law: Comparing Coalition Formation in Western Europe

According to Gamson’s Law, the allocation of cabinet portfolios in parliamentary democracies is proportional to the legislative seat shares of the governing parties. However, portfolio allocation departs systematically from perfect proportionality. This paper proposes a theory of portfolio allocation that seeks to explain the variance in proportionality across different bargaining situations. It argues that the degree to which the coalition formation process is characterised by uncertainty and complexity influences portfolio allocation. In uncertain and complex bargaining situations, parties that otherwise would be in an advantageous bargaining position will have a difficult time exploiting their bargaining advantage. As a result, portfolio allocation in such circumstances will be closer to proportionality. These patterns are observed in data on coalition formation in 14 West European parliamentary systems in the period 1945–1999.     

Theorizing identity: beyond the ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomy

ABSTRACT

Yuval-Davis discusses three interconnected questions relating to identity. She first examines whether and in what ways the notion of identity should be theorized, on the one hand, and empirically researched, on the other, focusing on the opposing views of Stuart Hall and Robin Williams. She then examines the contested question of what is identity, positioning it in relation to notions of belonging and the politics of belonging, and in relation to several influential schools of thought, especially those that construct identity as a mode of narrative, as a mode of performativity or as a dialogical practice. Her third interrelated question concerns the boundaries of identity and the relationship between self and non-self. She explores both social psychological and psychoanalytical approaches to that question, and deals with questions such as reflexivity, identifications and forced identities. The last part of the article explores several types of relationships between self and non-self, such as: ‘me’ and ‘us’; ‘me/us’ and ‘them’; ‘me’ and other ‘others’; ‘me’ and the transversal ‘us/them’. Yuval-Davis's basic argument here is that dichotomous notions of identity and difference, when theorizing boundaries of individual and collective identities, are more misleading than explanatory.     

Japan’s uncertain security environment and changes in its legislative‒executive relations

Abstract

Focusing on Japan, this paper explores whether powers and competences in the political system are likely to be recalibrated in favour of the executive when the environment is perceived as increasingly threatening. It shows that the executive has been significantly strengthened during the past two decades of political reforms, though a closer look reveals that only the most recent efforts are motivated by security concerns. Case studies on military deployments and arms exports do not expose any clear trend towards curbing parliament’s formal control powers, but they indicate two related mechanisms that affect executive?legislative relations. Firstly, the executive has sought to ensure faster decision-making in security policy, which may limit the Diet’s ability to scrutinise policies in depth. Secondly, the level of contestation over security policy issues has been decreasing, especially given the securitisation of North Korea and China. This provides the executive with more leeway in devising policies.     

From Adjudication to Aftermath: Assessing the ICTY’s Goals beyond Prosecution

After more than a dozen years of activity, some 161 indictments, 64 arrests, and 47 surrenders, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has accomplished a good deal in terms of its primary task of prosecution. Nonetheless, there is still much debate over the state of transitional justice in the Balkans and what has been accomplished. We cannot forget that the ICTY was created with broad political and social purposes in mind, specifically to contribute to the restoration and maintenance of peace. Using a comparative framework, we develop benchmarks of transitional justice outcomes to examine these vague but important and ambitious goals. Although conventional wisdom says that the ICTY is used instrumentally by Balkan leaders who are fundamentally opposed to the court??s existence, we demonstrate that there is also evidence of broader political and social change throughout the region. Thus, we contend that Balkan countries have indeed moved beyond mere prosecution.     

Japan’s approach toward Asian regional security: from ‘hub-and-spoke’ bilateralism to ‘multi-tiered’

This article argues that Japan’s growing activism in promoting multilateral regional security arrangements since the early 1990s stems from the country’s adoption of the ‘multi-tiered approach’; a new policy perspective that packages different types of coordination among region states, including bilateral, multilateral, and minilateral or subregional, in a layered, hierarchical manner. The significance of the approach explains why Japan has retained its enthusiasm for promoting multilateral arrangements, despite continuous criticism of their effectiveness and significance, as well as the marked decline in Japan’s economic power to support financially the country’s activism in regional institution-building. Meanwhile, the multi-tiered approach also explains Japan’s effort to maintain and strengthen its bilateral security relationship with the United States during the last decade. Four factors – a perceived change in the regional security order, growing self-recognition of major-power status, the legacy of history, and constitutional constraints – worked essentially to lead Japanese policy-makers to settle on a multi-tiered approach as a desirable policy choice in shaping the country’s security policy in post-Cold WarAsia.     

‘The dead are coming’: acts of citizenship at Europe’s borders

This article combines the research agenda of the acts of citizenship literature with reflections on emancipatory theatre. I examine the Centre for Political Beauty’s activity-based artwork ‘The dead are coming’ which problematizes the cruelties of the European border regime in symbolically charged spaces in the German public. Focusing particularly on the roles available to ‘actors’ and ‘spectators’, and the directionality of the message conveyed through the artwork, I examine how the performance subverts the ‘sites’ and ‘scales’ of citizenship. My analysis indicates that the artwork’s subversive potential emerges not only from the political vision conveyed by the artist collective, but also from the way in which others become involved in the performance. Acts of political beauty thus most extensively challenge instituted citizenship’s orientalist anchoring, reverse status-based role allocations and subvert the structural violence of borders when the performance enables the enactment of novel forms of political agency and solidarity.