‘Provincializing’ critical theory: Islam,Sikhism and international relations theory

This article will attempt to ‘provincialize’ or ‘decentre’ critical theory by looking at the development of critical discourses from within the Islamic and Sikh religious traditions. Although important theological, philosophical and historical differences exist between the two communities, Islamic and Sikh narratives share a rejection of the subordination of the religious to the political and thus potentially challenge the Westphalian order. However, in the case of the Sikh Qaum, no clear distinction between ‘nation’ and ‘religion’ is possible given the strong attachment to a territorially defined ancestral homeland. This article suggests that both critical Islamic and Sikh discourses, particularly those emanating from the diaspora, are potentially compatible with the ‘discourse ethics’ of critical theory. This is, however, conditional on the recognition of the universality of their beliefs, a position incompatible with the ‘thin’ cosmopolitanism of critical theory.     

政治权威主义在当今俄罗斯的发展情况

从20世纪90年代初期到现在,与俄罗斯国内政治、经济和社会改革进程相适应,俄国内的各种政治思潮也足风起云涌。追溯在这10多年中俄政治思潮的发展轨迹,可以发现传统和保守、西方派和新斯拉大派、自由主义和权威主义等思想流派不断碰撞、摩擦出新的“思想火花”。90年代中期以前,俄     

新加坡威权政治：特征、基础及其走向

新加坡的威权政治是一种现代型的集权政治模式。自20世纪60年代中期以来，新加坡政府以集权主义的现代形式去推进国家建设，以勤政务实的现实主义态度去解决不同时期的历史课题，将国家的发展和民众的行为纳入一种既有传统精神又有现代气息的政治秩序之中，使国家经济高速发展的同时又能维持社会的政治稳定，创造了举世称道的“新加坡奇迹”。新加坡威权政治及其演变，对于广大的发展中国家尤其是东亚、东南亚国家的政治建设而言，有积极的启示意义和借鉴作用。     

Authoritarianism in the Hypermasculinized State: Hybridity, Patriarchy, and Capitalism in Korea

Authoritarianism in East Asia's capitalist developmental state (CDS) is highly gendered. A hybrid product of Western masculinist capitalism and Confucian parental governance, CDS authoritarianism takes on a hypermasculinized developmentalism that assumes all the rights and privileges of classical Confucian patriarchy for the state while assigning to society the characteristics of classical Confucian womanhood: diligence, discipline, and deference. Society subsequently bears the burden of economic development without equal access to political representation or voice. Women in the CDS now face three tiers of patriarchal authority and exploitation: family, state, and economy. Nevertheless, new opportunities for democratization may arise even in the hypermasculinized state. We suggest: (1) emphasizing substantive, not just procedural, democratization, (2) exercising a maternalized discourse of dissent, and (3) applying hybrid strategies of social mobilization across states, societies, cultures, and movements. South Korea during the 1960s–1970s serves as our case study.     

Morocco: the Promise of Democracy and the Reality of Authoritarianism

The survival of the Moroccan monarchy amidst the wave of protests that characterised the Arab uprisings did not come as a surprise to observers of the Kingdom. Despite the size of the protests in February 2011, demonstrators never demanded the fall of the monarchy and the king was never in danger of being dethroned. Once the King reclaimed political leadership through the launch of a constitutional reform, the protest movement faded and whatever challenge to the pre-eminence of the monarchy might have existed ended quickly. A number of explanations have been advanced for the survival of authoritarianism in Morocco, but they generally rehash conventional wisdoms about Moroccan politics that might no longer be as valid as they were in past. Less obvious factors, ranging from repressive practices to ‘de-politicisation through technocracy’ and from the complex impact of neo-liberal economics on social relations to divisions within the opposition, contributed to the survival of the monarchy.     

国际环境对东南亚威权政治的影响

冷战期间,东南亚国家处在冷战的全球国际大环境之下的“热战”地区国际小环境之中。两种制度之间的争夺、美苏中三大国之间的角逐对东南亚国家推行威权政治起到了一定的推动作用。由于实行威权政治的东南亚各国的国情不同,国际环境对它们的作用方式和影响效果也不尽相同。本文试对新加坡、印度尼西亚和菲律宾三国的情况进行初步的分析。     

当代埃及威权主义政治合法性的构建

1952年七月革命后,埃及建立起威权主义的政治统治模式。埃及之所以走上这条道路,从宏观角度分析其合法性构成至少具有三方面因素:首先,历史上根深蒂固的专制主义政治传统提供了长期而普遍的相适应心理环境,使人们在一定历史时期内能够接受威权主义统治;其次,革命后埃及加快现代化进程的经济政治动员,客观上要求威权主义政府的强力推动;最后,纳赛尔特性,以及纳赛尔、萨达特和穆巴拉克三任总统,都具有强烈的威权主义政治诉求所强制构成的合法性。     

Sudan and the Unbearable Lightness of Islamism: From Revolution to Rentier Authoritarianism

The regime ruling Sudan since 1989 represents a pioneering experiment in the field of Islamist politics, being the first case in which a movement affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood managed to conquer power and hold on to it for a considerable time. During the late 1990s, internal and external pressures threatened the survival of the regime, leading the ruling class to abandon its ambition to represent a model of revolutionary Islamic governance. Oil exports provided a catalyst for this pragmatic shift, intensifying patronage-based relations at the expense of ideological affiliation. Seen from a political economy perspective, the Sudanese experience proves the flexibility of Islamism as an ideology, but also its failure as a political practice to constitute a real alternative to the authoritarian dynamics that are widespread in the MENA region.     

当代东亚威权主义模式体制性疲劳分析

20世纪60、70年代以来,不管是繁荣还是危机,东亚地区(以新兴工业化国家为主)以其独特的发展模式而受到世界瞩目。这其中,威权主义模式的政治取向尤其受到关注。本文拟从政治发展的视角,结合公共选择等经济学理论,对其存在的内在逻辑以及体制性疲劳的困境进行分析,并试图简单勾勒出该模式未来的发展趋势和方向。     

Open economy politics: A critical review

An emergent paradigm, referred to as Open Economy Politics (OEP), now structures and guides research among many scholars. This essay sketches the general contours of the paradigm. Scientific accumulation is, in my view, the potential and great benefit of a self-conscious understanding of OEP as a single, unifying paradigm. The essay also provides a sympathetic critique of OEP and shows how the paradigm can be extended to capture some of the concerns and insights of other critics. Most important, this critique highlights the role and consequences of certain simplifying assumptions commonly used in OEP and calls for a closer examination of how international institutions and policies structure and change the interests of actors within countries that are now taken as exogenous.     

Terrorist violence and the enrollment of psychology in predicting Muslim extremism: critical terrorism studies meets critical algorithm studies

Discourse on terrorist violence has long facilitated an especially liberal form of securitisation. Originally evoked in reference to anarchists and communists, a rational consideration of terrorist violence, inaugurated by the concept, asks for deferred judgement about the nature of, or reasons behind, violence related to terror on the premise that state and international legal norms governing the legitimate use of violence fail to circumscribe the proper capacities of the state to regulate and explain terrorism. Where sovereign powers along with their military and civilian instruments of coercion are deemed unable to regulate violence effectively, analysts of terrorist violence and their readership are invited to consider and cultivate new sensibilities. Beginning in the 1980s, studies by psychologists found renewed urgency among a growing cadre of interdisciplinary terror experts who found religion, Islam especially, a key variable of analysis. I situate their contributions in a longer history of secular and racialising discourse about terrorist violence. Central to this history are practices of reading, translating, interpreting and archiving texts. Evidence for the argument is based on the analysis of an algorithm that allegedly predicts the likelihood of terrorist strikes by counting words spoken by al-Qa?ida leaders and correlating their frequency with over 30 psychological categories.     

Being resilient to radicalisation in PVE policy: a critical examination

ABSTRACT

The problematic nature of certain policies and approaches to preventing and countering violent extremism has been robustly demonstrated; it is clear that rethinking the prevention of violent extremism requires concerted attention. One response to critiques of security-driven approaches has been the adoption of the language of resilience building. However, the turn to resilience has not been matched by a fundamental rethinking of approach, and may often mask troubling approaches in the language of objectivity and positivity. In rethinking the question of prevention, examining the concept of resilience is important not only to address a current trend in policy discourse, but also to benefit from the rich literature on resilience from which valuable lessons may be drawn. A critically informed concept of resilience has the potential to provide a framework of response that recognises individuals and communities as political actors who, rather than being shielded from ideologies, require the resources and channels to challenge violence, discrimination, and injustice, be it state or non-state driven. This article, through examining the current use of “resilience” in PVE policies, makes a modest attempt to draw on lessons from applying resilience in other contexts to articulate possible features of a critically informed approach to preventing violent extremism.     

Hidden in plain sight: racism in international relations theory

This article addresses the centrality of racism in international relations (IR) theory; specifically, in realism and liberalism, two of the most prominent paradigms of IR. It examines the extent to which these major paradigms of world politics are oriented by racist—primarily, white supremacist—precepts that inhere within their foundational construct, namely, anarchy. I maintain that due to the centrality of anarchy—and other racially infused constructs—within these prominent paradigms, white supremacist precepts are not only nominally associated with the origins of the field, but have an enduring impact on IR theory and influence contemporary theses ranging from neorealist conceptions of the global system to liberal democratic peace claims, and constructivist theses as well.     

Assessing Russia's cards: three petty games in Central Asia

Moscow's growing influence in Central Asia stems from the evolution of the region's five states in close correspondence with Vladimir Putin's semi‐authoritarian model. Absent adequate resources and consistent policies, however, Russia must engage in complicated manoeuvring in order to advance its interests. The result is not overt geopolitical competition with the West—often defined by the tired notion of the ‘Great Game’—but rather a series of at least three separate intrigues, or ‘petty games’.     

Region-building and critical juncture: Europe and Northeast Asia in comparative perspective

China, Japan, and Korea have begun to engage one another vigorously since the 1997 crisis. As intraregional economic ties have further deepened and broadened, interconnectedness in cultural and political aspects has risen rapidly in a variety of forms. Decision-makers and intellectuals in China, Japan, and Korea have been floating ideas and interests for establishing various types of Northeast Asian community formation. New security dialogues and co-operation frameworks also emerge. Accordingly, the rapidly growing Northeast Asia is likely to emerge as an identifiable regional community. With the incipient emergence of regional community in Northeast Asia, Northeast Asian region-building becomes a salient issue of major academic and policy debates. Yet, in spite of the recent mushrooming of research in and attention to the region-building, the questions regarding within what surrounding and under what situation regional community can be built, as well as what motivates people to choose region-building, and when and how state system can be transformed into a regional community remains only partly resolved. In order to solve this puzzle, this paper will compare the current Northeast Asian region-building with the early stage of European region-building, arguing that while there are important differences in evolution, format, and kind of region-building in Europe and Northeast Asia, critical juncture is influential in region-building.