Caste,Class and Peasant Agency in Subaltern Studies Discourse: Revisionist Historiography,Elite Ideology

On the basis of empirical evidence from the princely states of Rajasthan, it is argued here that Subaltern Studies discourse about peasants and peasant movements in colonial India is seriously flawed, mainly due to its symptomatic underestimation of the significance of land relations. A close scrutiny of its epistemological assumptions reveals that Subaltern Studies is elite (Brahmanical-bourgeois) ideology and revisionist historiography (anticipated by contemporary conservative historians of the French Revolution). Its claim to reconcile epistemologically irreconciliable positions is intellectually unsustainable.     

Re/visioning the women's movement in Israel

Current literature on the women's movement argues that in recent decades, a schism based on the politics of identity has divided women and led to the weakening of the movement. This process, intersecting with the escalation of neoliberal trends and the ‘NGOization’ of civil society, has resulted in the depoliticization of the women's movement and the waning of its influence as a political force. The present paper seeks to examine whether this argument is consistent with the situation in the Israeli women's movement of the early twenty-first century. Based on the history of the women's movement in Israel, the paper posits a twofold argument: (a) the women's movement in Israel has not disappeared but has been restructured as a result of its NGOization; (b) despite criticism of the movement in the literature and on the part of activists as the result of its NGOization, the movement's political messages have remained intact and even expanded to embrace questions of social justice, including novel thinking on matters of peace and security.     

From customary to constitutional right: the right to petition in Scotland before the 1707 Act of Union

ABSTRACT

The confirmation of a constitutional, rather than customary, right to petition the monarch in Scotland and England in 1689 has been recognized as an important precedent for modern constitutions, but the underlying forces impelling this historical transition have been less well recognized. The assertion of a constitutional right to petition the Scottish crown appeared after of decades of conflict over increasingly bold forms of collective political petitioning to crown and parliament. These innovations involved ordinary people in organized political protest, stimulating Scotland’s monarchs to block what they considered seditious and tumultuous activity. Standing laws against lese-majesté and unauthorized meetings were deployed to restrict petitioning, despite claims by Scottish dissidents for a customary liberty and natural right to petition. Within the composite British monarchy formed in 1603, England experienced similar but not identical conflicts over participative petitioning, leading revolutionary assemblies in both realms to demand in 1689 a right to supplicate the crown without fear of prosecution. Though Scotland’s monarchs still sought to discourage and evade unwelcome petitions, this new right allowed assertive political petitioning to crown and parliament to re-emerge in Scotland, contributing to the prominence of petitioning in British political culture after the Union of 1707.     

Electoral rules and manufacturing legislative supermajority: evidence from Singapore

Electoral authoritarian regimes usually preserve the dominance of the ruling party through electoral fraud, violence and intimidation. This paper focuses on the subtler forms of manipulation that undermine the electoral integrity and democratic outcomes. Specifically, we examine how an unusual electoral rule, involving multimember districts elected through plurality bloc voting for party slates, exaggerates the legislative seat shares of the People’s Action Party (PAP) in Singapore. This rule, used also by other electoral authoritarian regimes, facilitates the manipulation of district magnitude and gerrymandering, especially the ‘stacking’ form, to produce a large disproportionality which distorts the seats–votes linkage. It operates in an undemocratic fashion by precluding the opposition from gaining anything but token seats as long as the PAP remains the plurality-winning party. The importance of this electoral rule and its manipulation has been overlooked in current work that emphasises redistributive strategies or coercion to repress electoral competition.     

Diminishing returns: Russia’s participation in the World Trade Organization

Russia’s 2012 accession to the World Trade Organization was widely expected to spur economic growth and modernization, by helping the country abandon its import-substitution model and fully integrate into the global economy. However, thus far, Russia’s compliance record with its WTO commitments has been mixed, and WTO membership has given Russia limited economic benefits and few political gains. In analyzing why, this article uses neoclassical realism as a framework for assessing Russia’s behavior in WTO trade disputes and negotiations. During Russia’s economic recession, the regime of President Vladimir Putin advanced protectionist policies and maintained statist control over the heights of the economy, while using rhetorical strategies to counter accusations from Western powers that Russia had violated WTO norms. Russia’s struggling economy weakened its status as a global economic power, and it was viewed as unqualified to sit among the core group of negotiators in the WTO.     

Is more institutional coup-proofing better or worse for regime protection? Evidence from the Philippines, 1986–1987

Is more institutional coup-proofing (ICP) better or worse for leaders’ chances of political survival? Are coups less or more likely to occur and succeed as a state’s military structure becomes increasingly divided into rival branches, organizations, and factions? The article evaluates two competing perspectives on the effectiveness of counterbalancing as a regime protection measure. Seeing strength in numbers and the prospects for divide-and-conquer tactics, most scholars take a more-is-better view, suggesting that higher levels of ICP should increase the effectiveness of counterbalancing. Some scholars, however, advance a more-is-worse perspective, suggesting that collective action problems confronting larger numbers of military organizations decrease the effectiveness of counterbalancing. Through a qualitative analysis of eight coup events in the Philippines during 1986–1987, strong evidence is found in support of the causal mechanisms and predicted outcomes for the more-is-better view.     

The determinants of fiscal transparency in Chinese city-level governments

ABSTRACT

The transparency of the fiscal performance of governments has attracted attention from researchers, policy-makers and practitioners around the world. This study examines the determinants of fiscal transparency in the city-level governments of China, which has become a key issue in the drive to modernise the Chinese state. Employing cross-sectional data from the 2017 Statistical Yearbooks published by the official statistical institutions and the 2017 Fiscal transparency report of city-level governments edited by the Tsinghua University, this study finds that economic development, economic openness, and dependence on transfer payments are associated with weaker fiscal transparency. Large cities, those with high levels of internet usage and cities higher up within the Chinese administrative hierarchy are associated with stronger fiscal transparency. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Solving the security–democracy dilemma: the US foreign policy in Tunisia post-9/11

Abstract

Scholarly consensus postulates a sharp contrast exists between liberal values and realist interests in US foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, which finds its expression in the ‘security–democracy’ dilemma.? This means the US rhetorical determination to abide by the values of a ‘liberal’ foreign policy is neutralised by the ‘realist’ priority of maintaining US strategic interests, which requires support for friendly authoritarian rulers. Scholarship tends to apply this reasoning indistinctly to the entire region, providing an encompassing framework of analysis for understanding US foreign policy, which is valid across time and space. This study challenges this theoretical assumption and argues that while the US might indeed have a comprehensive regional approach in the MENA, the resulting foreign policy follows country-based trajectories that respond to national specificities and the perceived implications for US strategic interests. Exploring US foreign policy in the MENA after 9/11, the article demonstrates that while the US emphasis on liberalism crumbled when faced with security issues, the US liberal approach to Tunisia unfolded more consistently. Although the US continued formal cooperation with Ben Ali’s regime, it empowered at the same time a coalition of democratic opponents, solving the security–democracy dilemma and positively influencing the Tunisian democratisation.     

Meiji Japan's China solution to Tokugawa Japan's China problem

The underlying concern of this article is with the function and purpose of the normative imaginary of ‘China’, Chūgoku (Zhongguo) or Chūka (Zhonghua) in the Japanese discourse up to and around the mid-nineteenth century; namely, how it was deployed to make sense of the historical situation facing the contemporaries amid the combined internal and external crises and how it structured the range of options available to them. To exemplify this, we first turn to the debate of the shape of the polity that straddled the critical decades of 1850s–1860s. The self-conscious restoration of a past political ideal was the ostensible justification of the revolutionary overhaul, but in terms of the models of polity, there existed very different versions and understandings of what past could or should be restored. In the classical conceptual language of politics, the choice was between the hōken and gunken model. While the year 1871 saw a closure that cast Meiji as a gunken revolution, the debate continued beyond and the shift of preferences from hōken to gunken needs to be explained. In arguing for Meiji as a ‘Chinese revolution’, we can further point to the surprising degree of overlap between the concerns of earlier Edo-period commentators and the actual factors of the revolution when it finally arrived. Lastly, the normative imaginary of China is shown to have served as the key mediating filter for processing and appropriating the West both before and after the Meiji revolution.     

Examining Dose–Response Relationships Between Childhood Victimization,Depression, Symptoms of Psychosis,and Substance Misuse for Incarcerated Women

The current study uses the dose–response model to examine the relationships between childhood victimization events and subsequent depression, symptoms of psychosis, and substance misuse in a sample of 230 randomly selected incarcerated women in the United States. Results on the frequency of victimization were mixed. In this sample, both frequency of physical abuse and frequency of sexual abuse significantly predicted current symptoms of psychosis, but only frequency of physical abuse significantly predicted substance misuse. Incarcerated women who experienced multivictimization were 5.7 times as likely to report depression, 4.2 times as likely to report current symptoms of psychosis, and 3.8 times as likely to meet criteria for a substance use disorder. Results indicate that adjusting prison-based interventions to address multivictimization may improve outcomes and reduce recidivism among this population.