Representing minorities in the city. Education policies and minority incorporation in the capital cities of Estonia and Latvia

This article explores the relationship between minority city-level and state-level political representations through the analysis of the contested implementation of state education policies in Tallinn and Riga. Referring to the US debate on this issue, the article asks what role minority incorporation into city-level power structures can play for its substantive representation. The comparison between Tallinn and Riga reveals two potential answers to this question. The case of Riga illustrates how city-level representation can be an alternative representative channel through which the minority can put pressure on state government and magnify its political voice within the country's democratic space. On the contrary, the case of Tallinn illustrates how a municipality can be an alternative locus of representation, which does not guarantee minority empowerment but rather entraps the minority at the local level within the implicit understanding that the minority (or at least the parties that get the minority vote) can “have its share” locally, but it cannot hope to influence state policies. The comparison between the two cases reveals different levels of legitimacy of the minority's voice in the democratic debate of Estonia and Latvia, and shows the risks and opportunities linked to the two models of minority city-level incorporation.     

Domestic actors and liberalization: a case study of internal and external pressures in Moi's Kenya

The diffusion of political and economic liberalization to countries all across the world over the last 30 years has raised questions about the influence of domestic and international actors. Most scholars have given credit to international actors such as the USA, Western European countries, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank for the spread of liberalization or any political openness and/or market-oriented reform. Their external-actors-focused explanations have been almost exclusively at the expense of domestic actors. They have essentially viewed domestic actors as simply receivers of liberalizing change or incapable of initiating reform. As a result, international development policies and programs have tended to focus on what these external actors can do to force other countries to liberalize. While recognizing the influence of these external actors, this article reverses this emphasis and notes that the focus should be on internal actors and factors, primarily social movements/groups and opposition political polities that are agitating for reform. This article is a case study on Kenya that shows how domestic factors and actors pressured the Moi government to embrace reform starting in the 1980s.     

“If You Want to Be Russian Go to the United States”

Abstract

The latest and largest group of Russian immigrants arrived in the United States after 1983, when the Soviet Union collapsed. This was the first time in over seventy years that Russia's Jews were allowed to leave Russia. Unlike many other immigrants, this group had lived in a country where little or no contact had been allowed with the outside world. Not unlike Plato's characters living in a cave, the Russian Jews saw the outside world only as it had been portrayed in Russian propaganda. Mistrust of the Soviet regime led to fantasies and confusion about it.

Understanding this group of immigrants requires knowing something of Jewish life in Russia during the last hundred years. In an enclosed, totalitarian, oppressive society, individuals developed character traits that were necessary for survival. Some of these will be discussed in this article. Lack of knowledge on the part of the immigrants as well as on the part of American human services professionals has often led to culture shock for both groups. Misunderstandings, unrealistic expectations, and difficulties with language have caused frustration, anger, and hurt.

Increased cultural knowledge has been necessary to open up communication between immigrant clients and American service providers. Many signs have begun to point the way to different attitudes and greater     

Choosing Coalition Partners in Belgian Local Government

Government formation is a crucial phase after elections. This article focusses on coalition formation in Belgian local government after the elections in 2006. Coalition theories have mainly been developed at the national level, but they are also applicable to the local level where there is no shortage of coalitions. This level offers the opportunity to not only test rather classic coalition theories such as minimum size theories or the coalitions’ incumbency status. In a federal state like Belgium we can compare the local coalitions with coalitions made at higher levels. The results show that the local political parties prefer to form minimal winning and minimum parties coalitions, but not the smallest coalition that is possible. Coalitions are also more likely to form when they represent the incumbent coalition. Finally, political parties prefer congruent coalitions with the federal and regional government.     

Coping with U.S. and EU's challenges? Strategic confusion in the Czech foreign and security policy

This article traces developments in the Czech political elite's thinking about structural changes that the region and the country have experienced during the last several years. It is argued that two parallel, external structural constraints have significantly shaped decisions of the Czech political elite as the country has, once again, proven to be an ostensibly “reactive state”. These structural constraints have been the ongoing U.S. recalibration of its grand strategy as well as the financial crisis with a systemic challenge to the European political project in which fiscal and monetary issues have largely replaced previous criticism of the Constitutional Treaty and then the Reform Treaty. It is argued that these developments have posed a notable problem for two predominant ideological convictions present in the Czech political thinking – Atlantism and Europeanism, as neither of them has offered readily answers to deal with such a challenge. As will be shown, this mutually reinforcing dual challenge has further exacerbated previously existing Czech government's lack of political vision, and resorted to a political mentality which has contained elements of denial, rationalization, and political resignation.     

The continuing relevance of Germany's engine for CEE and the EU

The article looks first into the nature of the relations between Germany and the CEE countries a decade since the accession of the CEE countries to the EU. The relations are characterized as normalised and intensive with diverse levels of closeness and co-operation reflecting of the conceptual and ideological compatibility/differences.Next, the article focuses on the German attitude to the euro zone crisis. Germany has become a hegemon in the rescue effort aimed at stabilisation and economic invigoration of the euro zone. However, German hegemony has developed by default, not by design: her leading position is linked with considerable political and financial costs. Germany moved central stage and took the position of a reluctant hegemon. However, German role is contested internationally (it has not the support of the French government in key areas) as well as internally (particularly by the Federal Constitutional Court and the Bundesbank).The article argues that the new situation makes the German–CEE relations increasingly relevant for both sides. The German leadership of the EU increasing split along the north–south divide requires backing by the Northern group countries to which the CEE in general belongs. Given a number of reasons the CEE countries implement three distinctive strategies of co-operation with Germany in European politics. Also military co-operation, which remained rather limited so far, may receive new impulses, given the financial austerity.     

Media,citizenship and the politics of belonging in contemporary South Africa

Abstract

Drawing on a wide range of theoretical and empirical studies, the articles in this special issue examine issues of citizenship and belonging in South Africa. Questions of belonging and citizenship are neither novel, nor particular to South Africa – they have been high on the intellectual (and popular) agenda internationally since at least the early 1990s. Yet South Africa's history of artificially separating and defining its citizens in the racial regimes of colonialism and apartheid still reverberates today, as is reflected in the continued inequalities marring South African society. Post-apartheid governance of redress still requires the use of apartheid categories of ‘race’, but the terms under which we understand what it means to be South African are much wider, and require continued critical reflection. Using South Africa (and not the global North, as is so often the case) as the focal point for rethinking notions of citizenship and belonging, may urge us to rethink these notions and their meanings within fledgling democracies and societies in transition.     

Turkey’s Judiciary and the Drift Toward Competitive Authoritarianism

Turkey has always been considered an “illiberal democracy”, or in Freedom House’s terms, a “partly-free” country. In recent years, however, there has been a downward trend toward “competitive authoritarianism”. Such regimes are competitive in that opposition parties use democratic institutions to contest seriously for power, but they are not democratic because the playing field is heavily skewed in favour of incumbents. One of the methods employed by competitive authoritarian leaders is the use of informal mechanisms of repression. This, in turn, requires a dependent and cooperative judiciary. Thus, in Turkey the year 2014 can be described as a period when the governing AKP (Justice and Development Party) made a sustained and systematic effort to establish its control over the judiciary by means of a series of laws of dubious constitutionality.     

安倍再度执政后的中日关系展望

2012年12月安倍晋三再度执政后,手中握有改善中日关系的机会,但在日本政治右倾化抬头背景下,其对华政策仍可能受到日本右翼和鹰派的影响。安倍内阁企图通过加强日美同盟,在中国周边开展所谓"价值观外交",构建针对中国的战略格局,在钓鱼岛问题上迫使中方让步。安倍最大政治目标是修改日本宪法,为日本对外使用军事力量铺路。近期在对中国采取强硬立场的同时,也会谋求缓解紧张关系,防止局势失控。若2013年7月自民党在参议院选举中获胜,很可能推动修改日本宪法。中日关系将进入新的历史阶段,前景不容乐观。2013年是《中日和平友好条约》缔结35周年。中日双方信守条约,妥善处理钓鱼岛争议,对未来的中日关系和东亚和平稳定是至关重要的。     

The American friends service committee and Nixon's China policy

This study investigates the influence of the American Friends Service Committee (a Quaker lobbying group) on the policy of detente pursued by the Nixon Administration in dealing with the People's Republic of China. Nixon's Quaker family background is viewed as a link between A.F.S.C. lobbying efforts after 1965 and President Nixon's decision to change U.S. policy toward mainland China. The Quakers were not directly responsible for the Nixon‐Kissinger initiative, but through its lobbying activities in Washington, at Harvard University, and elsewhere, they did help to create a climate of opinion which made acceptable a shift in U.S. China policy.