Why Have Chinese Reforms Come to a Halt? The Political Economic Logic of Unfinished Transformation

This study approaches the Chinese reform process from a political-economic point of view, focusing primarily on institutional changes. Besides revealing the main factors behind the different phases of the reforms, it argues that in the framework of the current authoritarian regime, vested interests work against the continuation of the reforms, making it impossible to fully establish the institutional framework of a market economy. Current rents and privileges also deter the elite from implementing serious political reforms, leading to a trap that prevents the completion of the transition process.     

Connolly and the never-ending critiques of liberal peace: from the privilege of difference to vorarephilia

Over the last decade, a dominant critique of international interventions underlines the problem that interventionary strategies have denied the political, societal and cultural heterogeneity of conflict-affected societies, excluding the interests of the majority of their population. A deeper engagement with the everyday life of these societies is understood to expose the errors of international missions and animate an alternative way of thinking about peace: ‘hybrid peace’, which is formed contextually and from below. Engaging with William Connolly’s work on pluralism, this article clarifies the nature of this critique, which rests securely on the assumption that local alterity cannot be fully understood, respected or treated sensitively by international governance approaches. However, as much as this assumption enables the thinking of an emancipatory hybrid peace, it is in turn the source of its critique, as hybrid peace is also seen as reproducing binary schemas and thus considered incapable of caring for the societies intervened in. At the conclusion, the metaphor of vorarephilia—paraphilia where sexual arousal occurs in the idea of being eaten or eating another person—will be used to warn against the tragic direction that critiques seem to be travelling to: critical scholars would be increasingly tempted to welcome the inevitable failures of international interventions.     

They are from within us: CVE brokerage in South-central Somalia

ABSTRACT

This article explores how societal actors in Somalia take part in a transnational politics of countering/preventing violent extremism (CVE/PVE) through a political sociological approach to militarisation. We argue that the transnational politics of CVE represents an extension of global militarism by some states, institutions, donors and brokers. CVE works to adapt global militarism and to reconfigure the global-local relationships that sustain it. We explore the roles and influence of local ‘CVE brokers’ in deradicalisation efforts in South-central Somalia. They inadvertently merge the counter-terrorism approach to Somali people, values and territory with non-military means. We show that their key practices – co-ordination, translation and alignment – advance, but also disrupt, alter and transform CVE policy objectives.     

Measuring double consciousness among black law enforcement officers to understand the significant role of race in law enforcement occupational cultures

The current study correlates Merton's anomie theory and W. E. B. Dubois's double-consciousness theory to measure black law enforcement officers' reactions to occupational strain resulting from officers' ethnic-identification. Measuring levels of anomic behavior provides a scale for identifying levels of risk affecting the well-being of individual officers and organizations. Testing hierarchal regression models with a national sample of black state- and federal-level law enforcement officers (n = 84) reveals a presence of double consciousness as a significant predictor for levels of anomic behavior in law enforcement occupational cultures. It also further suggests that race remains a significant factor in law enforcement organizations and cultures, whereas many police executives would prefer to believe that race issues in policing are settled.