Carbon sink geopolitics

Abstract

This paper explores an example of global politics in action by attending to the modalities and outcomes of United Nations negotiations on global warming. More precisely, the paper ethnographically traces how the capacity of tropical forests to act as carbon sinks is turned into a matter of global concern. The focus is on a negotiated policy called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) and its anchoring in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whose territory contains the second largest area of rainforest after Brazil. The paper discusses the importance of the promissory in climate actions, the multivalence of what is at stake and the porosity and resilience of national demarcation. To do so, it identifies three moments and sites of geopolitical re-composition: the formulation of international consensus, the work of preparatory agents and the quest for metrological inclusiveness. These moments and sites point to the theatricality and semi-secrecy of United Nations negotiations, the mobilizing activities of expatriate consultants hired with overseas aid funding and the unstable evidential grounds on which emission reduction efforts are based. The paper suggests that, through this series of processes, the carbon stored by tropical forests becomes a matter of global exigency.     

State,Society, and Informality in Cities of the Global South

Contemporary urbanization in the Global South merits greater attention from scholars of comparative politics. Governance, associational life, and political behavior take distinctive forms in the social and institutional environments created by rapid urbanization, particularly within informal settlements and labor markets. In this special issue, we examine forms of collective action and claims-making in these spaces. We also consider how the state assesses, maps, and responds to the demands of informal sector actors. Tackling questions of citizen and state behavior in these informal urban contexts requires innovative research strategies due to data scarcity and social and institutional complexity. Contributors to this symposium offer novel strategies for addressing these challenges, including the use of informal archives, worksite-based sampling, ethnographic survey design, enforcement process-tracing, and crowd-sourced data.     

No Colonial Working Class,No Post-Colonial Development: a Comparative-Historical Analysis of Two Oil-Rich Countries

Development sociologists generally agree that states play a critical role in promoting, as well as in impeding, development. However, far less scholarly consensus exists on the precise historical processes that lead either to strong or to weak states. This paper investigates the factors that shape varied state capacities through a comparative-historical analysis of two similar countries with divergent development outcomes—Trinidad and Tobago and Gabon. In the 1960s, both countries had comparably large amounts of oil wealth, minimal state involvement in the economy, and low levels of development. In the 1970s, state capacity in Trinidad and Tobago dramatically increased and the country went on to achieve high levels of development. The Gabonese state, on the other hand, remained weak resulting in persistent low levels of development. This paper traces the divergence in state capacity to variations in working class mobilization, specifically the particular type of working class movements in each country and the political opportunity contexts. In doing so, this paper reveals new agents and contingencies producing state capacity that are not predominantly discussed in the contemporary development literature, and the meso-level mechanics by which these agents are successful or constrained in doing so.     

Les dockers dakarois. L’organisation du travail dans un port ouest-africain, 1910–1990s

This paper deals with the long-term evolution of dock labor in Dakar. Through the utilization of archival sources and their analysis, this investigation explores the changes that occurred in this sector and primarily the reform plan developed during the world wars but that was never introduced into the labor regulations, mainly due to the colonial regime. In addition, this paper studies the legal changes since the 1970s when the dockers’ statute was settled. Furthermore, this research uses oral testimony from retired Senegalese dockers to study the way these workers observed these structural changes. It is the first time that this topic has been explored for the port of Dakar from a historical long-term perspective.     

Hurdles to peace: a level-of-analysis approach to resolving Sudan’s civil wars

Why do some peace agreements end armed conflicts whereas others do not? Previous studies have primarily focused on the relation between warring parties and the provisions included in peace agreements. Prominent mediators, however, have emphasised the importance of stakeholders at various levels for the outcome of peace agreements. To match the experience of these negotiators we apply a level-of-analysis approach to examine the contextual circumstances under which peace agreements are concluded. While prominent within the causes of war literature, level-of-analysis approaches are surprisingly scant in research about conflict resolution. This article compares two Sudanese Peace Agreements: the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (2005) that ended the North–South war and led to the independence of South Sudan, and the Darfur Peace Agreement (2006) which failed to end fighting in Darfur. We find that factors at the local, national and international level explain the different outcomes of the two agreements. Hence, the two case studies illustrate the merit of employing a level-of-analysis approach to study the outcome of peace agreements. The main contribution of this article is that it presents a new theoretical framework to understand why some peace agreements terminate armed conflict whereas others do not.     

The Role of Public Sociology in the Development of Cultural Policies in Chile: a Transformation of Cultural Expertise

This paper seeks to analyze the policies on the cultural field implemented in Chile in recent years, explaining how expertise became fundamental and, more specifically, how this expertise evolved from that of an expert intellectual to that of an expert professional. The paper is based on the general hypothesis that the cultural field needs to be viewed in the context of a growing differentiation and autonomization of Chilean society, but that there are some interesting nuances to its evolution, particularly with regard to the transformation of expertise. This article argues that the expert in culture has a twofold nature, which is illustrated through drawing a timeline from the 1980s to the present, marking certain milestones in Chile’s national and cultural history. This timeline incorporates the intellectual work of two of Chile’s most important contemporary sociologists and experts in culture and cultural policies, Manuel Antonio Garretón and José Joaquín Brunner. A sample of their publications is analyzed and then contrasted to documents on cultural policy since the approval of the country’s institutional framework for culture in 2003, when the National Council for Culture and the Arts was created, gauging the influence of the expert intellectual on this new institutional framework and the thrust of public policies on culture. The paper concludes that the figure of the expert in culture has shifted from the “expert intellectual” to the expert of a professional kind, although the theoretical work of the former has continued to influence the debate around cultural policies to this day.     

Migration as Social Seismograph: an Analysis of Germany’s ‘Refugee Crisis’ Controversy

This article tests the hypothesis that the attitude towards migration can be understood as a social seismograph for the degree of a society’s degree of democratisation. In this article I present my hypothesis and analyse the constellation of arguments within the public controversy following the so-called refugee crisis in Germany. I work out the internal problematics structuring the three main polarisations in this discourse. Most of the contributions analysed here are interventions rather than academic texts (albeit often authored by academics) making practical suggestions to cope with what they respectively relate to different definitions of crisis. Methodologically, this article is based on a thorough reading of essays and books and their relation to one another, with view to the current conjuncture. Understanding this ‘crisis’ after 2015 requires an approach attentive not only to the different ‘politics of polarisations’ within the public controversy but also to the real and phantasmal dimensions of the crisis. Although the figure of the refugee has began to occupy a central role in the discussion of migration policy, the debate has, I demonstrate, surprisingly little or nothing to do with migration whatsoever, but rather speak to the degree of required democratisation.     

‘Refugees Not Welcome Here’: State,Church and Civil Society Responses to the Refugee Crisis in Poland

The Polish response to the crisis that escalated across Europe in 2015, banning refugees from crossing its borders, has been one of the least welcoming in Europe. Poland has been reprimanded by the EU for its lack of solidarity with other countries that accepted refugees. The government’s response was that it does indeed welcome refugees as long as they are not Muslims, since letting Muslim refugees in would be a security risk. The figure of the Muslim terrorist posing as a refugee has become a key trope through which xenophobic nationalist politics have been employed. In this sense, Poland can be seen to be drawing particular inspiration from the Eurosceptic politics of Orbán’s Hungary while also reflecting a broader European trend towards Islamophobia in countries such as France, Germany, Sweden or the UK. This article maps responses to refugees from key public actors. It focuses on how three key players in the Polish public sphere—the Catholic Church, the State and civil society actors—responded to the looming perspective of welcoming refugees to Poland. The paper argues that the Polish response to the so-called refugee crisis should be analysed as subtext to a broader political change in the country towards nationalism that has as its goal to push out all foreign ‘invasion’. Mobilised within this are new and old manifestations of racism, suggesting that Poland’s long history of racial Othering and exclusion has not been sufficiently accounted for.     

Who matters for memory: Sources of institutional memory in international organization crisis management

Scholarship on organizational learning has explored how international organizations (IOs) reform but has paid little attention to the origins of institutional memory. For IOs engaged in crisis management operations, acquiring knowledge about strategic errors is necessary for adopting reforms that could save lives. This study seeks to identify the sources that affect whether or not IO elites will contribute knowledge to an IO’s institutional memory in crisis management. The study employs a survey experiment in the field on 120 NATO elites who decide on and plan operations. Findings indicate that when the United States introduces knowledge of a strategic error, NATO elites are significantly less likely to share it. This deterrent effect on knowledge-sharing illustrates an unexpected way in which the US influences international crisis management. The study also finds that an IO’s secretariat can somewhat increase elites’ likelihood of contributing to the IO’s institutional memory.