Contesting the ‘Active’ in active citizenship: youth activism in Cape Town,South Africa

ABSTRACT

In post-apartheid South Africa, efforts to encourage practices of citizenship and new citizens who will act in ways that support communities and the nation are promoted by government policies and networks of international organizations, civil society groups, and NGOs. In this paper, we analyse the pedagogy of citizenship that is common in these efforts and the role of ‘active citizenship’ within it. Relying on interviews with leaders of NGOs and activist groups and on participatory research with six organizations, we examine the ways in which different meanings and aspects of active citizenship are mobilized. Active citizenship is often dismissed depoliticizing citizenship and dampening dissent. The activists we interviewed and with whom we worked, however, challenge that critique. A central issue in our analysis are competing views as to whether active citizenship should be evaluated in terms of ‘effectiveness’ or ‘disruption.’ While some agents might incline toward effective and incremental change, many youth activists understand active citizenship as a tool that enables radical, disruptive acts capable of decolonizing South African society. Their use of active citizenship points to the need to avoid conflating citizenship with particular political goals and to not assume that active citizenship is necessarily and unequivocally enrolled in post-political consensus.     

Between Accommodation and Opportunism: Explaining the Growing Influence of Small Gulf States in the Middle East

Abstract

Smaller members of the Gulf Cooperation Council defied theoretical and practical expectations as they were able to enlarge their international influence during the years of the Arab Spring. They adopted markedly different foreign policy strategies, which can be seen as stances lying between accommodation and opportunism, depending on the extent to which they respected the security concerns of their geopolitical patron, Saudi Arabia. The mainstream schools of IR theory – neorealism, neoliberalism and constructivism – offer different explanations for these phenomena. Although none of the three schools can provide a completely exhaustive explanation, neoliberalism seems to offer the most comprehensive framework for analysis.     

Drones and the uninsurable security subjects

This paper engages with the security dynamics underlying the use of drones and their impact on security subjects – individuals and groups that are the ultimate recipients of specific security policies, regardless of whether these have beneficial effects on them. Using Mark Duffield’s distinction between the insured Global North and the non-insured Global South, this paper discusses how drones generate a radical dissociation between the intervener and the intervened that ultimately produces new security environments at the margins of the international system. These new security environments are defined by the articulation between space, technologies and bodies: bodies of invisible subjects; bodies that are uninsurable.     

Intimate Encounters with the State in Post-War Luanda,Angola

Abstract

Since the end of the war in 2002, Luanda has become an iconic site of urban transformation in the context of a particularly entrenched oligarchic regime. In practice however, urban dwellers are often confronted with a ‘deregulated system’ that fails to advance a coherent developmental agenda. The paper narrates the trajectory of a family forcibly removed from the old city to the periphery. It shows how city-dwellers experience the control of the party-state through a series of encounters with authority across the city. Questioning the intentionality of a state that appears at the same time omnipotent and elusive, openly violent and subtly hegemonic, the paper reveals the fine mechanisms through which consent is fabricated in the intimacy of the family.     

An externally constrained hybrid regime: Hungary in the European Union

The paper focuses on the unique, role model characteristics of the Hungarian hybrid regime, the Hungarian political system’s new incarnation forged in the past years’ democratic backsliding process. Following the short review of the main hybrid regime literature and the key analyses putting the democratic quality of the Hungarian political system under the microscope, the paper argues that Hungary’s European Union (EU) membership, the competencies of EU institutions, and the scope of EU law have played a crucial role in the development of the system’s unique characteristics. Based on this argument, the paper qualifies Hungary as an “externally constrained hybrid regime”. However, the EU does not only fulfil system constraining functions regarding the Hungarian regime, but performs system support and system legitimation functions as well. Ultimately, the changing scope of these functions, determined by the European integration’s internal dynamics, influences first and foremost the Hungarian power elite’s strategic considerations about the country’s future EU membership.     

Institutional Weakness and the Puzzle of Argentina's Low Taxation

Current explanations of taxation levels have identified a host of factors, such as levels of economic development and GDP per capita, tax handles, tax morale, and political regimes. But none of them can account for Argentina's exceptionalism. Using a "transaction cost politics" approach and the case of Brazil for comparison, this article argues that the key to explaining low taxation in Argentina is political instability. Systemic instability affects the tax behavior of governments. Facing an uncertain future, incumbent governments choose to extract resources from society through inflation rather than normal taxation. This article argues that political institutions, particularly federalism, contribute to instability and thereby reduce the discount rates of government policymakers.     

Neuere Beiträge zur empirischen Institutionenanalyse: Von der Gegenstands-zur Problemorientierung

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Variability of the pattern of aging on the human skeleton: evidence from bone indicators and implications on age at death estimation

Age at death assessment of adult skeletons is one of the most difficult problems in forensic and physical anthropology. Two fundamental sources of error are described: the complex variability in the process of skeletal aging and methodological bias. Taking into account these limits, we developed a new scoring system for the auricular surface of the ilium and the pubic symphysis. In order to address a large variability, we examine reference samples from Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia. Data were processed using Bayesian prediction in order to classify specimens in age range categories. Results show that combining indicators do not perform better than the auricular surface used as a single indicator. Morphological changes with aging are variable between Asian, African, and European populations, confirming the necessity to use population-specific standards. Bayesian prediction produces reliable classification and is applicable for subjects over 50 years old, a real methodological improvement.