South Africa's Iran policy: ‘Poster child’ meets renegade

Compliance with universal norms is one of the most important aspects of the global order. Iran, through the conduct of its nuclear programme, is seen as a challenger of the global non-proliferation norms, which enjoy almost universal recognition. South Africa's policy on Iran has been extremely puzzling — a rising power in the international system, subscribing to a global norm of nuclear non-proliferation, but challenging the interpretation and application of that norm. This contribution asks why this is the case, and demonstrates that South Africa's policy towards the Iranian nuclear programme has been clearly marked by a strongly held belief regarding the value of negotiations, a distrust of the global North, and a preference for a wide multilateral approach in institutions.     

South Africa and Myanmar: Beware the politics of perfidy

The article examines the repressive actions of the government of Myanmar, focusing on its continuing incarceration of a Nobel Peace Prize Winner, and questions the diplomatic route South Africa has chosen in terms of its relations with the country.     

Debating Economic Democracy in South Korea: The Costs of Commensurability

ABSTRACT:

In the 2012 Korean presidential election, both liberal and conservative parties fought their campaigns on the slogan of “economic democratization,” marking a strong departure from past presidential elections and the growth-first policies of the then-incumbent conservative administration. Both parties pledged to tackle growing social polarization and the concentration of economic power by reforming the corporate governance of Korea's large, family-led conglomerates (chaebol), to the degree that chaebol reform itself became synonymous with economic democratization. This focus led to a series of heated exchanges among liberal-left reformers about the vision of economic democratization being promoted, with one camp favoring the creation of a “fair market” through the restructuring of the chaebol and another promoting the protection of the chaebol’s management rights over their affiliates as a desirable strategy for the creation of a Korean welfare state. This essay examines the long-standing tensions between these two liberal-left perspectives and argues that the capital-centric and market-based visions these camps promoted risk confining intellectual debate over the meaning of economic democracy within boundaries that serve dominant political interests.     

The case of the ‘other India’ and Indian ir scholarship

ir scholarship in India has focused on the borders, territory and sovereignty of the Indian state, overlooking the rich complexity of interior border formation between colonial and independent India. The paper argues that the study of the princely states under the British paramountcy (1858–1947), neglected so far, is valuable to ir scholarship on three grounds. First, in mapping colonial India’s engagement with the outside world, the focus has been solely on British India. The princes were equally participative and perceptive of the outside world. Second, the princely states represent yet another challenge to the Westphalian notion of sovereignty, demonstrating the limited capacity of European categories to understand the ‘non-West’. Third, incorporating the paramountcy system in the genealogy of sovereignty of the Indian subcontinent offers a fresh account of border construction inside the state.     

The visual politics of corruption

Despite the fact that corruption is essentially invisible, communication campaigns by the global anti-corruption industry regularly feature photographic images. So far, however, we do not know much about the narratives that are encoded in these images. Through the theoretical lens of postcolonialism, this paper takes a first step towards developing an understanding of the visual representation of corruption. Specifically, the paper applies semiotic and iconographic methods to two photography competitions run by Transparency International – the major non-governmental player in the anti-corruption industry. The analysis shows, first, that the anti-corruption industry reinforces colonial stereotypes, suggesting that the ‘sinful’ and ‘irrational’ Global South is waiting to be civilised by the North. Second, through its visual imagery, the anti-corruption industry also emphasises ideas of a ‘humanitarian family’, which serves to cover up the North’s role in transnational webs of corruption. These findings are triangulated with semiotic/iconographic analyses of the Transparency International logo and the Corruption Perceptions Index map.     

Evaluating Brazilian South–South Cooperation in Haiti

I focus on evaluating Brazilian development and humanitarian cooperation in Haiti to answer how emerging providers such as Brazil are contributing to global development through cooperation. The paper establishes criteria for evaluation, arguing that global standards for aid effectiveness need to be expanded. I argue that when assessed on ownership, efficiency and sustainability, cooperation holds several advantages and limits, such as misplaced assumptions that Brazil’s approach is appropriate elsewhere. The discussion is rooted in the context of Haiti in order to underline how outcomes are not pre-determined, but rather depend on the model’s interaction with the partner context.     

The regional brand: collective image consciousness in Africa and Southeast Asia

States in the same region are bound together by the ways in which the world imagines them as a collective. One distinguishing feature of post-Cold War regionalism is its outward orientation – the importance of the external dimension of regional cooperation. By and large, though, existing analysis of regional institutional development in the Global South does not explicitly conceptualise and theorise collective image consciousness and management. This paper works to address this conceptual gap. Making use of two cases of regional image crisis – post-1980s Africa and post-1997 Southeast Asia – it draws out two primary logics of regional image consciousness: the logic of influence and the logic of resources. A region’s ‘brand’ with respect to (dys)function and international norm (non-)compliance matters to regional actors because it affects the region’s political influence in international arenas and the region’s ability to attract resources from donors and investors.     

African Union and Intra-State Conflict Resolution: A Return to the Libyan Crisis (2011)

This paper looked at the performance of the African Union (AU), in the resolution of intrastate conflicts in Africa. The study necessitated a revisit to the Libyan crisis. It is acknowledged in the study that conflicts pervade human relations. In the case of Africa, the study further shows that Africa has never experienced a lasting peace. The theoretical framework of games theory has been adopted in the study, to describe the character of African conflicts and to proffer solutions for the minimization of the level and number of such intrastate conflicts. The Libyan conflict typified the character of intrastate conflicts in Africa and was used for illustration in the study. The study concluded that the AU has made significant contributions toward the resolution of intrastate conflicts in Africa but there are still shortcomings of the AU and impediments to the efforts of the African Union, toward the resolution of such crises.     

Cultural Planning and Urban Renewal in South Africa

The author explores the role of cultural planning as a planning tool in South Africa. He argues that cultural planning contributes to arts "as an intrinsic part of the way humans operate in the world" (Bamford 2006, 19), thereby focusing on cultural identity, creativity, and the globalization of culture. Arguing that cultural planning, as an engine for community development, is essential in South Africa, the author examines the broad definition and importance of cultural planning; the status of South African cities, particularly Johannesburg and Tshwane in Gauteng Province; and the requirements for successful cultural planning.     

Reproducing plantation society: Women and land in colonial South Carolina

Some women in colonial South Carolina inherited, possessed, and sold real property. This article examines how and why women took on roles as landowners. Such practices were part of a range of innovative strategies designed to hand down plantation capital to the next generation. High mortality rates in the region challenged white families as they sought to establish their children within the planter class. Recent scholarship on women in South Carolina has identified instances in which “female planters” wielded control over land and slaves, temporarily assuming authority otherwise reserved for men. Tracing the presence of female landowners in land records, plantation advertisements, and court records reveals that although women made up only a small minority of landowners, they performed an important role in transmitting land and bringing it into production. Unlike their counterparts in other slave societies, white women in the Lowcountry were engaged directly in managing the domestic economies of plantation businesses. Even the archetypical female planter, Eliza Lucas Pinckney, conceived of her influential experiments with indigo production as an extension of her primary, domestic responsibilities as a planter's daughter and as a planter's wife. Such intensive and extensive domestic experience accounts for the unusually active roles South Carolina women undertook as family agents tasked with reproducing plantation society.