India and the dialectics of domestic and international “land grabbing”: Historical perspectives,current debates,and the case of Ethiopia

International land “acquisition” or land “grabbing” has become a global phenomenon in which India plays an increasingly important role. While there is a critical domestic debate regarding land deals within India — especially pertaining to the provisions of the Land Acquisition Act of 2014 — there is practically no such debate regarding international land deals by Indian companies in Sub-Saharan Africa. By applying a two-level discourse analysis, this article argues that the land discourse within India can be understood as a strategy of exclusion. By linking land issues with questions of “development,” the discursive strategies of powerful actors lead to the exclusion of the arguments of NGOs and others opposed to the land deals from the discourse within India. This strategy of exclusion is then taken to the extreme with the strategy of securitization outside India: land deals are linked to “food security,” as the example of Ethiopia highlights.     

Hyper‐Securitization,Everyday Security Practice and Technification: Cyber‐Security Logics in Switzerland

This contribution to the SPSR debate about technology and security in Switzerland looks at how and by whom cyber‐security is constructed in Swiss security politics. Using three securitization logics as developed by reflexive Security Studies – hyper‐securitization, everyday security practices, and technification – it illustrates how Swiss actors have sorted out roles and responsibilities over the years. The article suggests that all three logics are present in the political process, but that ‘technification’ – a way to construct the issue as reliant upon technical knowledge and the supposition that this serves a political and normatively neutral agenda – is currently the dominant one. For democratic politics, technification is a big challenge. Assigning an issue to the technical realm has a depoliticizing influence and makes contestation from those with less technical expertise very hard.     

States' interests as limits to the power of finance: Regulatory reforms in early local government financialization in the US and UK

Through a comparison of typical and deviant cases, this study probes and refines the augmented power model which argues that the structural power of the financial industry fosters its instrumental power in influencing regulatory reforms under certain scope conditions. It shows the industry's success in influencing policymakers to authorize municipalities to use derivatives and thereby to financialize their debt management in the US (typical case). The failure of banks to acquire such a law in the UK (deviant case) reveals a hitherto little-noticed condition under which this power explanation collapses: states' fiscal and monetary constitution. We demonstrate that analyzing the operation of finance power requires a precise consideration of how states' fiscal and monetary constitution structures governments' responses to financial industry's regulatory preferences. Moreover, we conclude that synthesizing business power research with literature on the mutual dependence between states and finance helps to explain patterns of state financialization.     

Debating War and Peace: US Congress and the Domestic Legitimization of Military Interventions

This article investigates how members of US Congress legitimized their votes in four cases of military interventions after the Cold War (Iraq 1991, 2002–2009; Somalia 1993; Libya 2011). Using an original dataset on congressional rhetoric, the qualitative content analysis highlights that the domestic legitimization of military interventions hinges on members of Congress’s perception of external threats and national interests. So far, international relations research focused on the executive and the war powers literature offered mainly quantitative accounts on voting patterns within the legislative branch―especially for the US case. The relevance of national interest arguments within congressional debates confirms the expectations of neoclassical realism while contradicting previous studies about a dominant discourse in US society, which legitimizes interventions with universal values, such as democracy promotion or human rights.     

“New Terrorism” = Higher Brutality? An Empirical Test of the “Brutalization Thesis”

This article focuses on the so-called “brutalization” of terrorism. The brutalization thesis as part of the larger theoretical concept of “new terrorism” argues that “new terrorism” is more brutal than “old terrorism.” Many scholars claim that the 9/11 attacks mark the beginning of a new era of terrorism that has lifted international as well as domestic terrorism to a new level of violent brutality. Others argue that this process had already started in the early 1990s. After discussing possible ways to operationalize a brutalization of terrorism, for example focusing on suicide bombings or terrorist attacks against soft targets, this article tests the empirical credibility of the brutalization thesis regarding both potential starting points. Data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) shows that only three out of nine indicators increased significantly during the 1990s, partially backing the idea of a general brutalization, whereas increasing numbers of suicide attacks and beheadings after 9/11 support the notion of a qualitative change in terrorism and its brutality connected with the idea of maximizing media and public attention. Yet, these developments are regionally limited and the brutality of this “new terrorism” exceeds the levels known from the zenith of “old terrorism” in the 1970s and 1980s in only a few cases.     

Afghanistan’s Taliban – Legitimate Jihadists or Coercive Extremists?

ABSTRACT

The military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 was portrayed as a fight to oust the extremist Taliban. But the Taliban have long been regaining influence, with the military victory of the Afghan government and its foreign allies now seeming less likely than ever. In light of these developments, this article investigates what the affected people – rather than the foreign interveners – think about the Taliban, and whether they perceive them as coercive or legitimate. Building on a conceptual understanding of legitimacy that has been adjusted to the dynamics of conflict-torn spaces, the article suggests that people judge the Taliban on the basis of how their day-to-day behaviour is perceived. While the Taliban are a coercive threat in urban centres and other areas where they launch attacks, they nonetheless manage to construct legitimacy in some of the places which they control or can access easily. A major source of their legitimacy in these areas is the way in which they provide services – such as conflict resolution – which some people consider to be faster and fairer than the state’s practices.     

Outward Foreign Direct Investment,Exporting and Firm-Level Performance in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

We consider the relationship between how a firm serves foreign markets and performance, using survey data on manufacturing and services firms for African countries. Results for manufacturing industries indicate a clear productivity ordering with firms undertaking outward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) performing best, followed by exporters and domestically oriented firms. Results for services firms are more nuanced, indicating that while exporters and firms undertaking outward FDI are more productive than domestically oriented firms, there is no significant difference in productivity between these two types of firms (some evidence suggests that the productivity of exporters is larger than that for firms undertaking outward FDI).