Re-animating a radioactive landscape: informal life politics in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster

The earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident of 11 March 2011 posed massive and continuing social challenges to communities in the affected areas. People from wide areas around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant received vastly conflicting information about the levels of radiation released and about the likely health effects. They were left facing agonising decisions whether to remain and face possible (but uncertain) long-term health risks, or whether to move away, leaving behind homes, friends, jobs, schools and communities. Focusing on the case of the small farming community of Tōwa in Nihonmatsu City, this article examines self-help activities that have emerged in the affected areas in the wake of 3/11. The activities have included community monitoring of radiation levels and collaborative research with academic scientists to explore ways to reduce radioactive contamination in forests, farm soil and crops. The self-help activities of Tōwa residents can be seen as an example of “informal life politics” – that is, of the way in which grassroots groups respond to challenges to their livelihood or way of life by organising themselves and taking actions outside the sphere of formal governmental structures. It is argued here that the residents of Tōwa were able to respond rapidly to the challenges of the Fukushima disaster because they had already developed informal life politics practices in response to earlier challenges of local economic decline and depopulation. I also suggest that, in responding to the Fukushima disaster, the relationship between the people of Tōwa and their landscape has been profoundly changed, and that this change has implications not just for the community itself but also for the wider world.     

Contending logics of strategic partnership in international politics

Asia Europe Journal - Faced with the emergence of strategic partnerships (SP), international actors have approached this new phenomenon in the international system through different logics of...     

The politics of self-defence: beyond a legal understanding of international norms

This contribution considers an alternative approach to the research on the use of force, a field that has been largely dominated by international legal scholars. I argue for application of an evolutionary approach to international (legal) norms, one that complements current legal approaches and moves the discussion of norms beyond their dichotomous legal/illegal understanding. This kind of research highlights the role of politics in international law and allows us to determine factors influencing dissemination of international norms. Through a study of seven post-Second World War cases, I trace the development of both narrow and expanded notion of preemptive self-defence and conclude that while ascertaining legality of specific actions is vital for understanding established international law, one cannot talk about radical breaks in development of the law on the use of force. The expanded concept is in fact a product of the evolution of (societal) norms on self-defence and an accumulation of previous successful challenges in metanorms on the use of force.     

The politics of food aid: John F. Kennedy and famine in China

The horrific famine China experienced during the early 1960s not only highlighted the failures of Communist Parry policies, but also sparked a debate within the administration of John F. Kennedy over possible US reactions. Several of Kennedys closest advisors argued for sending American surplus food, while others were adamant that no change should be made in US policy. The final decision to ignore pleas for assistance from the United Nations and other sources was influenced by many issues, including China's relationship to the UN, its aggression toward India and offshore islands, and its role in Southeast Asia.     

The politics of food aid: John F. Kennedy and famine in China

The horrific famine China experienced during the early 1960s not only highlighted the failures of Communist Parry policies, but also sparked a debate within the administration of John F. Kennedy over possible US reactions. Several of Kennedys closest advisors argued for sending American surplus food, while others were adamant that no change should be made in US policy. The final decision to ignore pleas for assistance from the United Nations and other sources was influenced by many issues, including China's relationship to the UN, its aggression toward India and offshore islands, and its role in Southeast Asia.     

Assessing international aid for local governance in the Western Balkans

This article investigates the impact of international efforts to cultivate effective and authoritative local governing institutions in the Western Balkans, a prime testing ground for democratization aid to post-war states. It explores three hypotheses, each of which argues that a particular approach of international actors toward domestic officials best improves the quality of local governance. The study's gathering of interview and survey data from field-based actors enables it to evaluate local government reforms' impact on domestic communities. This investigation arrives at three findings. First, in the view of Western Balkan peoples, local governance reforms do not produce benefits when they are either imposed or ignored by international authorities. Secondly, reforms produce benefits for local communities when they are designed to meet domestic concerns. More specifically, reforms valued by local communities are designed in ways that respond to domestic, rather than international, concepts of good local governance that emphasize socioeconomic aspects and produce tangible benefits. Well designed reforms also include significant aid targeting local governance that is coupled with the promise of a larger political settlement that is attractive to powerful domestic elites and contingent on clearly articulated local governance reforms. Thirdly, such aid best characterises European Union efforts only in Macedonia.     

Control,soft information,and the politics of international organizations staffing

This article offers insights into the aggregate patterns of the geographical distribution of professional staff in some of the major international organizations (IOs). Building on the principal-agent framework, I argue that powerful member states seek dominant positions in IOs’ secretariats, in an effort to increase their ability to control them. At the same time, it is often the weakest low-income countries that are the IOs’ primary clients. Over-representation of the most powerful states is likely to lead to functional and legitimation problems for the IOs, in particular with regard to the IOs’ lack of access to ‘soft’ information about the countries in which they operate. Using a newly created dataset covering 19 major bodies of the United Nations family, I identify two aggregate patterns in the geographical distribution of their professional staff. First, the most powerful states dominate IOs’ secretariats. Second, however, many IOs systematically deviate in their staffing practices from this overall pattern, as well as from the existing rules that formalize it, and relatively over-represent also low-income countries. What results is a curvilinear (U-shaped) pattern where both powerful and very poor states are over-represented in many IOs’ professional staff.     

Norms from the periphery: tracing the rise of the common but differentiated principle in international environmental politics

Abstract

Over the last three decades, constructivist scholars of international relations have created a rich body of literature on the influence of global norms. Until recently, the vast majority of that work focused on norms originating in the developed world and neglected the ideational impact of developing countries. This article confronts this oversight in the literature by tracing the rise of the “common but differentiated responsibility” (CBDR) norm in international environmental politics. The CBDR principle traces its origins to the developing world and today it is part of the framework principles of international environmental agreements. Thus, it represents a global norm promoted by, rather than diffused to, the developing world. In the process of tracing this norm’s rise, this article generates a set of hypotheses about the conditions under which developing countries create global norms.     

Bringing the outsiders in: an interactionist perspective on deviance and normative change in international politics

Abstract

In this article, we draw on insights from the interactionist perspective in sociology and international relations (IR) norm contestation literature to explore the relationship between deviance and normative change in international politics. In IR, this is still largely unexplored territory: we already know a great deal about how norms change, yet we know much less about the actual role norm violations play in this process. In order to address this gap, we conceptualize three types of normative contestation and affirmation that take place in connection with deviance (re)construction: (1) applicatory contestation and affirmation, reconstructing the meanings of international norms; (2) justificatory contestation and affirmation, challenging and reaffirming the legitimacy of international norms; and (3) hierarchical contestation and affirmation, contesting and reaffirming the relative value and importance of international norms. We discuss how, as a consequence of these dynamics, deviance-making produces both stability and change in the normative structure of world politics.     

Being a 'pathetic hero' in international politics: The diplomat as a historical actor

This article posits that the diplomat's weakness as a historical actor stems from two salient factors: (a) the impassivity of the diplomatic practice, and (b) the diplomat is an actor of 'one front' - the external. Politicians and military men act within the internal lines of the domestic and the external. The diplomat is in the service of grand things but is never on heroic tracks; his service is always that of dependency. The apparent political weakness of the professional diplomat makes him, in not a few cases, a 'pathetic hero' of international politics.