Aid and transition from a war economy to an oligarchy in post-war Tajikistan

Exclusion and violence persist in post-conflict states, despite international assistance aimed at the demilitarization of politics. Through a field-based study of Tajikistan, this paper argues that aid focuses on economic liberalization, not the implementation of peace agreements, in the initial stage of post-war transition. Such an organization of aid empowers a particular group of elites who have privileged access to state assets at the time of civil war settlement, allowing them to establish institutional frameworks that will consolidate their personal and monopolistic control of resources. This leads to the collapse of power-sharing arrangements, as the incumbent regime seeks to remove wartime commanders and opposition leaders from the administrative apparatus. In Tajikistan, the incumbent regime has also prosecuted many of these former allies and opponents on account of corruption through state agencies established with donor assistance. Aid thus institutionalized exclusion and sustains patterns of violence along civil war divisions, rather than transforming wartime power structures.     

Acute and Everyday Violence in Sri Lanka

Police torture in Sri Lanka has been subject to extensive investigation and condemnation but remains a widespread and seemingly entrenched practice. Seeking to understand the resistance of such practices to existing interventions, this article locates the police’s use of torture within a broader geography of social violence in Sri Lanka. We discuss the findings of extensive fieldwork conducted in the north-west of Sri Lanka where we examined not only police behaviour and interactions between police and the broader community but also the social dynamics relationships more generally. One significant finding was that violence against certain types of people, including police use of torture against such people, is generally accepted, even as the police are broadly criticised in the community for their unethical and ineffective behaviour. Another significant finding was that the society is riven with social hierarchies and that patterns of domination are embedded in social, political and symbolic systems. We conclude that police torture needs to be understood against the background of broader cultural practices whereby social subjects are disciplined and policed to produce appropriate citizens and punish social boundary violations.     

The political economy of Russian higher education: why does Putin support research universities?

This article argues that Vladimir Putin's regime launched support programs for the leading Russian universities in 2005 because of a perceived threat of the political mobilization of youth, similar to the one that triggered “color revolutions” in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine. The support programs created cleavages in the university community, covered an attack on university autonomy, and made the containment of possible anti-regime student mobilization a part of an implicit agreement between the regime and the universities. The historical coincidence of the “demographic hole,” which caused a shrinkage of the higher education market, and high oil prices, which provided the necessary resources for the regime, made this implicit agreement possible. The article contributes to the research on authoritarianism, youth mobilization, authoritarian backlash after the color revolutions, and the development of research universities in Russia.     

Mapping the Labyrinth from Within: The Political Economy of Nicaraguan Youth Policy Concerning Violence

This article explores some of the methodological dimensions relating to the study of the two main Nicaraguan governmental organisations that deal with youth violence: the National Police and the Office of the Special Ombudsman for Children and Adolescents. It details how they were mapped institutionally and how their dysfunctions, contradictions and interactions were identified, including the ways in which the problem of political interference emerged and manifested itself through the coexistence of incongruent interest groups, discourses and practices in both organisations. The analytical process is explained and there is a detailed discussion of how the author obtained access to information.     

State Discourses, Police Violence and Democratisation in Argentina

Police violence is a persistent problem throughout Latin America despite the return of electoral democracy; it is pervasive and includes torture, murder and disappearances. Certainly institutional reforms aimed at changing police practice are important. However, it is equally important that state actors maintain a clear and relatively consistent discourse in favour of democratic policing. This article argues that, in the case of Argentina, state actors do not maintain a consistent position in favour of democratic policing and instead oscillate between denying the occurrence of police violence, justifying such police action and absolving themselves of responsibility.     

Family resources,sitting at home and democratic choice: investigating determinants of educational attainment in post-Soviet Tajikistan

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, school enrolment, attendance and attainment rates fell across the region. In Tajikistan, there has been a decrease in average completion rates for basic, secondary and higher education, as well as a growing gender gap because girls are much less likely than boys to finish all levels of schooling. Past work on educational stratification in the region has demonstrated similar trends, but not sought to explain the processes generating these patterns. Scholars of educational participation suggest that a variety of family, community and macro-structural factors influence educational attainment. This paper broadens our understanding of the processes generating the decline in educational attainment and widening gender gap by analysing interviews conducted with parents, teachers and university students living in Tajikistan in 2006–2007. Respondents overwhelmingly attribute the drop in educational rates to increased poverty and its effects on family resources. The large decrease in girls' attainment is rationalized by citing cultural norms dictating that they will only become housewives, ‘sitting at home’, and do not need further education. Others point to changes in educational policy as a reason for lower attainment rates because parents and children are now able to choose whether or not to continue studies in the new democratic society.     

The impact of remittances and equivalence scales on poverty in Tajikistan

The aim of this paper is to study the impact of remittances from labour migrants on welfare, as well as the impact of the use of equivalence scales on poverty, in Tajikistan. The magnitude of remittances sent back is fairly well known from official statistics (e.g. the amount of remittances is regularly monitored by the balance of payment at the Central Bank). In 2009 a change in the flow of money from abroad occurred, and volumes dropped, but it was unknown to what extent; its impact on poverty is still officially unknown. This paper describes a project aimed at conducting a survey to investigate this impact. It would not be possible to do this kind of analysis with a traditional sample survey, since it would generate only a small selection of migrant households. Instead, the new Migration, Remittances and Poverty Survey was used, which was conducted by the Tajik State Statistical Office in August 2010 using an adaptive sampling design from a set of enumeration areas selected mainly from the 2009 Integrated Household Budget Survey (IHBS) and showing households with remittances. To evaluate the impact of equivalence scales on poverty measures, new scales have been estimated on the basis of consumption expenditure from the 2009 IHBS.     

新加坡:权威主义,还是精英民主?

在新加坡的政党制度类型上,有些学者同意亨廷顿的观点,认为新加坡实行一党制,因此是权威主义国家.笔者不同意这种观点.本文从新加坡的政党制度是一党独大制入手进行研究,认为新加坡是有限民主国家,又由于新加坡在治国实践上奉行精英主义,因此认为它是精英民主国家.     

From ‘clients’ to ‘magnates’: the (not so) curious case of Islamic authoritarianism in Turkey

ABSTRACT

This paper sketches out the historical emergence and progress of political Islam in modern Turkey by emphasizing its statist and clientelistic aspects emanating from the authoritarian basis of Turkish political modernization. The paper contends that there has always been an authoritarian and autocratic tendency in modern Turkish politics that depends on a peculiar and modernist articulation of both Islamism and secularism, which eventually stand on the same ground. This very ground is formed upon a sacred understanding of the state that can be defined as an all-encompassing and absolute perfection of political power, which manifests itself differently in content for secular nationalists and Islamists, and yet produces the same authoritarian tendency. Both the secular nationalism and Islamism appear to be state oriented movements in the sense that they both have emanated from the state, and envisage to control the state in an absolute sense.     

民主在东南亚的前提条件和发展趋势

20世纪50、60年代民主政体在东南亚国家的实行均以流产而告终,威权主义代替民主政体对东南亚国家的稳定和发展起到了巨大的作用.本文认为"民主"之树移植容易,但是开花结果却需要许多前提条件.本文从经济、文化和社会基础三个角度分析东南亚国家实行"民主"所需的相应条件.并对"民主"在东南亚的发展趋势作了简短预测.     

Integrating domestic politics and foreign policy making: the cases of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan

Matters of domestic political consideration exerted a major influence on the processes of foreign policy making established and developed by the authoritarian leaderships of post-Soviet Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The preservation of internal authoritarian stability and the political survival of the national regimes have therefore constituted the key foreign policy ends set by decision makers in Ashgabat and Tashkent. This article unveils and discusses the interconnection between domestic politics and foreign policy making in post-Soviet Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan by looking comparatively at the dynamics through which the regimes manipulated foreign policy to consolidate their internal power. In particular, this article will analyse the crucial role played by foreign policy in the regimes' responses to perceived threats to their political stability.     

哈萨克斯坦和乌兹别克斯坦独立以来的转型战略:悖论和前景

自苏联解体以后,中亚地区成了国际社会瞩目的焦点.作为曾经的苏联国家的一部分,目前该地区充满矛盾.地区内的两个大国--哈萨克斯坦和乌兹别克斯坦选择了不同的发展战略,导致了有趣而充满分歧的结果.取得独立后,哈萨克斯坦选择开放它的经济,而乌兹别克斯坦政府则专注于政治稳定和完全协调发展的经济.1990年代早期,乌兹别克斯坦的策略看上去更合理且更少痛苦,而哈萨克斯坦在那时遭受了严重的经济衰退.然而,到了世纪之交,哈萨克斯坦的经济表现远远超过了它的邻国.本文的目的是分析和比较哈萨克斯坦和乌兹别克斯坦独立早期所选择的两种不同的转型战略,以及评价未来几年里这两种战略的前景和它们所隐含的意义.