Coming to terms with the communist past: East Germany in comparative perspective

As so often after the collapse of authoritarian regimes, the post‐communist societies of eastern Europe confront the problem of dealing with alleged regime‐sponsored criminality by their predecessor rulers. This article examines the various approaches taken toward this problem in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and (east) Germany, with special emphasis on the anomalies presented by the latter case. It is argued that the different approaches taken in these countries can be explained by a combination of two main factors: the ‘weight of the past’ (the level of development of civil society before 1989) and the ‘politics of the present’.     

Reflections on Japan's past

Fifty years after the devastation of World War II, Japan's remarkable long‐term, export‐driven economic success is known as the East Asian development model and East Asian economies have become the engine for the world's economic growth. Yet the collapse of Japan's 1980s over‐inflated “bubble economy” has created apathy and pessimism, says former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. In May 1995, on the occasion of his seventy‐seventh birthday, after more than 45 years in the Diet, IIPS Chairman Nakasone reflects on Japan's modern history and issues a call for renewal in the following speech. Above all, he says, “Japan does have a few mavericks” and “people with true convictions [should] come forward . . . the Japanese are waiting for genuine leadership.”     

Seychelles: Democratising in the shadows of the past

This article is an assessment of the country's governance and the likelihood that the country can break free from the shadow of former President René and his one-party state. The paper examines eight key areas of democratic governance: the constitution and rule of law; the judiciary; the National Assembly; elections; civil society; the internal security forces; economic life; and the executive. Although it finds some changes for the better over the last few years, old habits remain of a politicised judiciary, a blurring of the boundaries between party and state, regime policing, partisan distribution of state benefits and a constrained National Assembly. It concludes with a discussion of the likely role of the former incumbent, given that he still retains the chair of the ruling party and shows little sign of allowing the new President to be his own man. The likelihood of further governance progress for Seychelles depends on the political courage of President Michel.     

The Hadhramaut and its past

Sir Aurel Stein: Archaeological Explorer. By Jeannette Mirsky. Chicago and London, Chicago University Press, 1977. Pp. 547. Maps. Illus. Bibliog. Notes. Index. $17.50.     

School textbooks and assembling the puzzle of the past in revolutionary Egypt

Saudi Arabia found itself under an unflattering spotlight in the wake of the events of 9/11, perhaps more than any other country in the Middle East. The fact that 15 of the 19 suicide skyjackers were Saudi citizens provoked an avalanche of criticism in the West as well as in some parts of the Islamic and Arab world against Saudi religious beliefs, rulers, social customs, and school curricula. This article traces the Wahhabi Post-9/11 ideological “self-examination” of relationships with non-Wahhabis. Emphasis will be placed on the current Wahhabi perceptions of the fundamental terms of “other” and “otherness” that are most likely to affect relationships between the Wahhabis and other cultures and religious groups. I argue that post-9/11 Wahhabi Islam acknowledges the problematic nature of its traditional perception of the ‘other’ and, therefore, is making significant and unprecedented efforts to reformulate and redefine religious doctrines, such as jihad, tolerance, interfaith dialogue and so forth.     

Media in the Western Balkans: who controls the past controls the future

ABSTRACT

The contribution assesses the role of the media in respect to democratization and EU accession in the countries of the Western Balkans (WB) and the development of press freedom over the long run. The author closely analyses the legislative framework and its implementation in practice and focuses in particular on the economic and political pressure on the media in the region. The article offers three arguments to explain the bad shape of media freedom in the Balkans: structural factors (state advertisements as the main source of income, economic tycoons close to incumbents as media owners), proximate or external factors (the deteriorating level of media freedom in some EU countries and the whole WB region, with an accent on stability rather than democracy) and political-societal dynamics (defamation and libel as means to punish journalists, verbal and physical assaults on journalists). The media in the WB region do not serve as the watchdog of democracy but are instead used as a means to reinforce illiberal regimes.     

Entangled history and politics: Negotiating the past between Namibia and Germany

The relationship between Namibia and Germany is marked by intense exchanges about the meaning and the consequences of the colonial wars of the early twentieth century in the erstwhile German colony. This engages various state and civil society actors including groups from across the political spectrum in Germany, whereas in Namibia the debate concerns the descendants of the victims on the one hand and German-speaking Namibians on the other.

The article explores this discursive situation and brings out a range of relationships and interactions to be understood as expressions of an entangled history that eschews attempts of appropriation on one side. The problems emerge most poignantly in terms of the still ongoing exchanges around the denial of genocide in 1904–8 which, given that the framework of the debate is predicated to considerable measure on German history, inevitably points to the Holocaust. A further strand of acting out and negotiating historical responsibility concerns the mode of apology and redress which remains a contended question. Not least, this involves an incoherent set of state and non-state actors on both sides. Here, the call for dialogue made particularly by Namibians raises the sensitive issues of intercultural communication.     

Mediated and unmediated access to the past: Assessing the memoir as literary genre

A survey was conducted of a number of younger generation members of Estonian and Latvian émigré communities (11 and 16 subjects, respectively) who had ‘returned’ to the ancestral homeland, to determine the reasons for their decision. A detailed questionnaire was provided for the respondents. Attempts were made to ascertain the subjects’ level of ‘Latvianness’ or ‘Estonianness’ and their emotional commitment to their new-found homeland. While the small sample may not provide definitive answers, the study gives richly suggestive insights into the thought processes and motivations of these young Baltic people.     

A past: a revolution in public ethics

This piece is about those elements of British nineteenth-century deep culture which have to do with the production of subordination, compliance, and acquiescence. It is about perceptions of deviance. The purpose of this work is to provide some support for a suggestion about attribution of the replacement of the dominant British public ethic concerning treatment of deviance during the nineteenth century (1780-1914). Until then deviant persons had been, by and large, subject to policies and customs of exclusion and excision. These practices were replaced by new mechanisms of relegation and subordination, arrangements which lent themselves readily to institutionalisation and subsequent centralised control under a rubric of inclusion in humanity. The social, legal, and administrative mechanisms of exclusion increasingly came under attack for their inhumanity, and a climate of favour grew in Britain for a public ethic of inclusion. This principle, once it got hold, asserted into public life the beliefs which ended such practices of exclusion as slavery, public execution, transportation to the colonies, the inhuman treatment of lunatics and the dispatch of "savages". In order to support the suggestion, it will be necessary to establish that evangelicals placed themselves in the public domain as moral experts, that evangelicals expertly labelled deviant persons and groups, that evangelical publicities and structures energised in the main the revolution in the treatment of deviance without threat to power relations, and that the beginnings of national institutions of labelling are to be found in this revolution of ideas.     

Bangladesh-Pakistan relations: hostage to a traumatic past

Bangladesh-Pakistan relations reached a low point in December 2013 when the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh convicted nine persons of war crimes pertaining to Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, and imposed a death sentence on senior Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Quader Molla. This paper examines the trials in connection to their impact on Bangladesh-Pakistan relations. The analysis in this paper shows that the traumatic break of East and West Pakistan continues to haunt bilateral relations and now has spill-over effects on South Asian regionalism. It also argues that the Awami League-India nexus is another historically persistent factor precluding better Dhaka-Islamabad relations.     

The past in the present: Historical memory and German national security policy

In recent years a number of scholars and commentators have suggested that freed of the constraints placed upon it by the Cold War, Germany is likely to aspire to a more active, great power role. This article argues that such predictions overlook the extent to which German national security policy continues to be burdened by the lessons that its population drew from the Second World War and that make it profoundly difficult for any German leader to implement a more active defence and national security policy.     

Migration past and present: changing patterns in Kyrgyzstan

Internal and international labour migration is a main livelihood strategy for many people in rural areas of Kyrgyzstan. It is estimated that approximately one-third of the employable population of Kyrgyzstan is working abroad. However, current labour migration phenomena are not exceptional since Central Asia's history has always been characterized by the movement of people, including external and internal, forced and voluntary, legal and illegal, permanent and temporary, ethnically or economically motivated migration. This article gives an overview of the historical and present migration processes with a special focus on three village communities in rural Kyrgyzstan. It deals with the opportunities and difficulties with which labour migrants and their non-migrating family members are confronted today. The results are based on extensive field work in Kyrgyzstan.