Intervention Theatre: performance,authenticity and expert knowledge in politicians’ travel to post-/conflict spaces

ABSTRACT

This article explores the role of official travel activities by politicians to post-/conflict spaces in German foreign policymaking. Starting from the observation that official travel justifications stress the value of authentic insights and unfiltered information, while journeys in practice are meticulously planned and staged, it asks what kind of knowing is possible, how actors make sense of the staged nature of field trips, and how multiple performances create and/or undermine notions of authenticity and first-hand expertise. The article shows that official on-site visits are composed of multiple conscious performances by all actors involved, but that these performances do not undermine the notions of authenticity and expertise. On the contrary, knowledge authenticity—or truth claims on the basis of authentic insights—and related expert authority are produced through travel-as-performance. The emphasis policymakers put on on-site presence and (the performance of) localized knowledge contradicts intervention literature’s generalized finding of a prioritization of technocratic over localized knowledge. The article draws on politics and performance scholarship and authenticity theories in tourism studies to make sense of a wealth of empirical material on the claims, practice and functions of German MPs’ journeys to post-/conflict spaces as part of broader political struggles over policy knowledge.     

How people organise cultural attitudes: cultural belief systems and the populist radical right

Political scientists generally agree that all individuals structure their cultural attitudes in the same unidimensional fashion. However, various populist radical right parties remarkably combine moral progressiveness with conservatism regarding immigration-related issues. This suggests that the structuring of cultural attitudes among the electorate may also be more complex than typically assumed. Applying Correlational Class Analysis to representative survey data, the study uncovers three cultural belief systems. For individuals adhering to an integrated one, all cultural attitudes are interdependent, as typically assumed. However, two alternative belief systems are also uncovered: intermediate and partitioned. In the latter, positions on one cultural attitude (e.g. ethnocentrism) are barely related to positions on others (e.g. rejecting Islam or opposing homosexuality). The existence of multiple cultural belief systems challenges the widely held assumption that all people organise their cultural attitudes similarly. Both political party agendas and individuals’ education level and religion appear key to understanding variation in belief systems.     

How Public Officials Gain Policy Influence—Lessons from Local Government in Sweden

That public officials influence public policy is generally agreed upon, but the issue of how individual officials gain this influence is less developed in the literature. Here, the stories and experiences of 10 officials, active in local environmental governing in Sweden, are used to identify, describe, and discuss key strategies for gaining policy influence. The result shows the importance of accessing key politicians; avoiding isolation within the administration; developing long-term strategies; and being skilled in communication, networking, and generating external resources. The way these officials act and think challenges some well-established theoretical notions and adds empirical insights to the democratic dilemma of bureaucratic power.     

Hague Case Law — Latest Developments

Netherlands International Law Review -     

The Kuomintang's secret service in action in South China: operational and political aspects of the arrest of Liao Chengzhi (1942)

The arrest in May 1942 of Liao Chengzhi – a CCP spy chief as well as the son of a celebrated KMT elder assassinated in 1925 – is considered a Big Case in China. Using the original KMT case file on Liao Chengzhi, van de Ven describes how the KMT's secret service turned the Jiangxi Provincial Committee and then arrested leading members of the CCP in south China and thereby eliminated its organization there. The article further uses letters by prominent CCP and KMT personalities involved in the case to suggest the existence of a revolutionary aristocracy bound by personal relations and with an elite code of conduct. When the political will was present, members of this elite deployed their personal connections in the search for solutions to complex political problems.     

基础设施网络整合与跨区域治理——“哈大齐”工业走廊与松花江水污染案例分析

在全球化和信息化背景下,区域管理正在从传统的都市区(Metropolitan)管理过渡到巨型都市区(Megapolitan)或者城市走廊(City Corridor)的管理.从社会技术系统(Societal-techno System)视角,将区域管理作为一个涉众系统(Multi-actor System)考虑,研究物理系统与社会网络之间的交互作用,通过研究基础设施网络和跨区域治理关系,探索涉众系统情境下的政策制定模型.采用理论分析和案例研究相结合的方法,利用哈大齐工业走廊案例和松花江水污染案例进行了研究.结果发现,基础设施整合具有嵌入性特征;基础设施整合和专业化分工网络的形成,是跨区域治理的基础,所形成的城市网络,其核心功能体现在"分散的集中化"上,以保证有效的基础设施整合、分工网络的形成和提供高级生产者服务;在跨区域治理政策制定中,应该采用自上而下和自下而上组合的基于规则和过程的涉众情境下的政策制定过程,以实现社会、政府和市场之间的均衡.     

The Capitalist Peace

It is widely accepted that democracies are less conflict prone, if only with other democracies. Debate persists, however, about the causes underlying liberal peace. This article offers a contrarian account based on liberal political economy. Economic development, free markets, and similar interstate interests all anticipate a lessening of militarized disputes or wars. This "capitalist peace" also accounts for the effect commonly attributed to regime type in standard statistical tests of the democratic peace.     

Freedom and growth: Do constitutions matter?

This paper uses an augmented Solow model, with cross section data, to measure the effect on per-capita income of a) the entrenchment of various rights in a country's constitution and b) the level of economic freedom in a country, broadly construed. The results suggest that entrenchment,per se, of any single right seldom has a significant general economic effect, while the effect of economic freedom is significant and substantial. The paper then considers whether such evidence could support the proposition that “constitutions do not matter.” While it concludes otherwise, it does caution against incurring excessive negotiation costs to obtain entrenchment of a comprehensive “wish list” of rights.     

Explaining differences in productive efficiency: An application to Belgian municipalities

The purpose of this paper is to measure and explain variations in productive efficiency of municipal governments in Belgium. Technical efficiency is evaluated using a non-parametric method based on the Free Disposal Hull (FDH) reference technology. We first calculate input, output, and graph Farrell efficiency measures for a cross-section of all 589 Belgian municipalities. In a second stage of the analysis we explain the calculated differences in efficiency in terms of variables related to the structural characteristics of municipalities and to the institutional environment.