The Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding Ten Years on: Critical Reflections and Stimulating Ideas on an Evolving Scholarship

ABSTRACT

The Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. This special volume opens up with a selection of nine of the most influential articles published in the journal. JISB's editorial team has asked the authors for their reflections on their original articles, telling us more about the writing process at that time, what they would do differently (with hindsight), or how they see their articles contributing to current debates on intervention and statebuilding. We have selected one article per volume, and we have ordered the contribution starting from volume 1 (2007) to volume 9 (2015). The articles will be made open access for the year, and we highly recommend (re-)reading the original articles along with the comments from the authors.     

Willingness and Opportunity: A Study of Domestic Terrorism in Post-Cold War South Asia

Domestic terrorism, as a form of intrastate violence, has varied widely in South Asia along with the post-Cold War period of global economic integration and political openness. How are these two phenomena—economic integration and emergence of democracies—related to domestic terrorism in South Asia? I argue that resorting to terrorism is a rational choice when individuals'/groups' cost of heterogeneity—deprivation from public goods due to geographical and ideological distance—increases; opportunity is provided by democratization and integration into the global economy. The testable hypotheses derived from the theory are empirically tested on a dataset of five South Asian countries for the time period between 1990 and 2007. The results show that both minority discrimination and presence of unconsolidated democratic institutions increase terrorism in the highly heterogeneous South Asian countries. International trade in the presence of minority discrimination increases homegrown terrorism, but foreign direct investment neither increases nor decreases such incidents.     

Variation in subnational electoral authoritarianism: evidence from the Russian Federation

Despite the burgeoning comparative literature on electoral authoritarian regimes, fewer studies have accounted for the emergence of hegemonic and competitive authoritarian regimes at the subnational level. This article examines the variation in subnational electoral authoritarianism with data from the Russian Federation. First, the article shows that by using a comparative regime classification most Russian subnational cases can be classified as electoral authoritarian between 1991 and 2005. Yet, there are considerable differences in competitiveness between the electoral authoritarian regimes. The article accounts for this variation by drawing on both comparative electoral authoritarianism literature as well as more context-specific explanations. Statistical analysis on 192 subnational electoral authoritarian cases shows that the determinants of Russian subnational authoritarian stability are rather similar to those found in cross-national studies. Subnational (non)competitiveness in Russia appears to be related to the structure of the regional economy and natural resource rents, and to a lesser degree to the specific Russian federal context. Authoritarian “know how” also plays a role in authoritarian regime building. The findings of the article contribute to the literature on electoral authoritarianism, subnational democratization and Russian subnational politics.     

Populist liberalism as dominant ideology: Competing ideas and democracy in post-authoritarian Argentina, 1989–1995

This article identifies a new dominant political ideology, populist liberalism, which emerged in Argentina after 1989. This elite-constructed discourse (combining some neo-liberal ideas with old populist emphases) emphasized leadership more than institutions; glorified grand transformation rather than incremental change; stressed economic efficacy more than political representation and participation; and elevated liberty over equality and solidarity. This ideology, a contributing cause and consequence of the Menemist transformation of the Argentine political economy, is assessed against democratic norms and contrasted with its main ideological competitors in Argentina, populist nationalism, democratic nationalism, and democratic liberalism. The article concludes with a comment on the relationship between populist liberal ideology and the uneven democratization of post-authoritarian Argentine politics.     

军事政变和独裁交替下的泰国民主化道路——泰国民主化的特征与未来

比其他亚洲国家起步早的泰国民主化道路走得并不平坦,军事政变和政治独裁的交替似乎成为了近70多年来泰国政治的主线。这种奇特的政治现象和泰国的政治文化、宗教意识、教育水平、社会结构等因素密切联系在一起。最初由精英发起的泰国民主化运动,如果得不到整个国民的回应,没有获得成熟市民社会的支持,真正的民主主义也就不可能在泰国扎根。     

"走出去"--到缅甸做生意

1988年9月缅甸政府全面对外开放,使缅甸与周边国家的经贸关系得到全面发展.1997年东南亚金融危机爆发后,东盟国家对缅甸的影响有所减弱.中国加入WTO特别是江泽民主席访问缅甸后,更有利于中国企业到缅甸去投资.2002年9月8日-11日,国家外经贸部举办第六届中国投资贸易洽谈会,其间举行了"走出去"研讨会,缅甸是唯一被列入讨论的东南亚国家.这说明国家外经贸部对缅甸市场的重视.     

Trials,lustration, and clean elections: the uneven effects of transitional justice mechanisms on electoral manipulation

Transitional justice aims to promote democratization, but previous research has found that it has mixed effects. We address this puzzle by focussing on how transitional justice affects a necessary condition for democracy: clean elections. We test for the effects of four transitional justice mechanisms – truth commissions, lustration policies, amnesties, and trials – on two different types of electoral manipulation, using data from 187 post-transition elections held in 63 countries around the world from 1980 to 2004. We find that post-transition trials limit illegal forms of electoral manipulation, such as vote-buying and falsification of results, but have no effect on legal forms of manipulation. By contrast, lustration policies limit legal manipulation tactics, like intimidation and harassment of opponents by the security services, but do not affect illegal tactics. By showing that different aspects of transitional justice can have varying influence on electoral integrity, this project improves understanding of the mechanisms that link transitional justice and democratization.     

Home-grown strategies for greater agency: reassessing the outcome of civil society strengthening in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan

This paper seeks to reassess the outcome of mainstream civil society promotion policies in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. While it agrees with critics that the distorting effects of funding relations have meant that the promised ‘grassroots citizen empowerment’ has not been achieved directly through NGOs, it does not agree that NGOs are therefore merely vehicles of the Western ideological agenda and international aid to the Kyrgyzstani population. It argues that the facilitation of international actors has opened up opportunities for individual NGO activists to pursue their own social and political development agendas. In recent years, some activists have begun to use these opportunities to develop strategies through which grassroots interests are represented to decision-makers, and citizens' abilities to represent their own interests are enhanced. The strategies adopted differ from the mainstream civil society model and have allowed some NGOs to function in a manner more relevant to the specific Kyrgyzstani context. This suggests that local Kyrgyzstani NGOs and activists should not all be written off as ‘artificial’ civil society, irrelevant to the dynamics of state–society relations.     

Soft competitive authoritarianism and negative stability in Kosovo: statebuilding from UNMIK to EULEX and beyond

ABSTRACT

After 1999, democratization, normalization and Europeanization were the key processes through which Kosovo’s final political status was expected to take shape. All three processes, however, were guided by the stability paradigm. Though Kosovo cannot be categorized as a typical authoritarian state, its political leaders have openly displayed illiberal tendencies, governing in an unaccountable manner and utilizing public assets for their private gain. In the period from 1999 to 2008, while UNMIK’s approach was based on maintaining stability instead of democratization, a soft competitive authoritarianism began to emerge incrementally. In its first decade of independence, Kosovo’s statehood remained internationally disputed, whereas its governance culture was characterized by a lack of internal accountability, which is a key component of the soft competitive authoritarianism in the country. Thus, the negative trajectory of political developments did not change even after the deployment of EULEX and the 2008 declaration of independence. This article analyses the development of authoritarian and illiberal tendencies in Kosovo and suggests that the democratization and Europeanization discourses served to conceal soft competitive authoritarian practices in Kosovo.     

转型时期俄罗斯政治制度探析

俄罗斯实行宪政民主制度,要求有一部至高无上的宪法。并在宪法范围内推行民主制度,经过几年的改革,目前俄罗斯宪政制度的框架已基本建立起来。俄罗斯政治制度的最大特点是其过渡性,目前的民主化进程正处于由高度集权政治向民主政治过渡阶段——权威政治的初始阶段,要建立起真正现代意义上的民主政治制度还有漫长的道路要走。