Critical election and a new party system: Italy after the 2015 regional election

Although party system change has been widely explored, it is less so for the regional level. The article provides the first systematic attempt to discuss party system change at the regional level in Italy. Through a comprehensive overview of the five 1995–2015 regional elections, indicators of party system change, based on an original database, are explored. It will be showed that in the 2013–15 election cycle while party system fragmentation, volatility and recomposition reached their maximum high – parallel to what happened in 1995 – the level of bipolarism, one of the main features of Italian party system since the mid-1990s, dramatically dropped replaced by a three-pole configuration. These results, and their consistency with the relevant junctures at the national level in 1994 and 2013, may allow to state that a party system change at the regional level occurred and thus to consider 2013–15 elections as critical.     

Situating soldiers’ demands: mutinies and protests in Burkina Faso

In Burkina Faso in 2011 military mutinies followed widespread civilian protests, indicating a crisis of confidence in President Compaoré. Through an in-depth examination of the events, this article encourages an understanding of military revolts that extends beyond the military. Although the mutineers never united with the demonstrators, their grievances mirrored those of the civilians. The article puts the revolts into a historic context and shows a pattern of interconnectedness between military revolts and civilian demonstrations in Burkina Faso. The work draws on interviews conducted with military personnel and civilians involved in the widespread protests.     

Does the Millennium Challenge Corporation reinforce capitalist power structures or empower citizens?

In development practice, how does ‘mutual benefit’ accrue, and to whom? China criticises America for perpetuating capitalist power relations and claims it can seek a new geopolitical order based on South–South cooperation. Meanwhile, there has been an extraordinary shift of emphasis towards the private sector as a driver of development, but this shift is attracting increasing criticism. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) – the only development agency to grow in influence under the Trump administration – is evaluated in the light of these two key themes. Neither China nor the private sector is successful in achieving ‘mutual benefit’ for ordinary citizens – both replicate existing power inequalities. As with the rise of both China and the private sector, the MCC also enmeshes developing countries further into the existing neoliberal capitalist structures. However, the advantages of the agency should not be dismissed outright, as its Ruling Justly and Investing in People indicators can enhance the capacity of citizens to challenge these power structures themselves.     

The politics of convergence in Bolivia: social movements and the state

Abstract

The convergence of social movements in Bolivia was a decisive factor in bringing President Evo Morales and the Movement Towards Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo, hereafter MAS) to power in 2006. Yet in recent years, this convergence has become fraught with internal tensions as the state’s extractivist development model and promises for plurinationalism and alternative forms of development reveal fundamental contradictions. This paper traces the formation of social movement alliances over time, revealing their power to effect change and their strength when there is unity in diversity. Rather than ‘neoliberalism’ which represented the injustice frame and united identity- and class-based politics during the rise of the MAS, the single greatest threat to the indigenous, peasants, originarios, women and the youth in the current context is extractivism.     

Decolonising drug studies in an era of predatory accumulation

Abstract

The cultural and political-economic valences of psychoactive drugs in the Global South offer critical insights on local and international fault lines of social inequality and profiteering. Historically, in a classic primitive accumulation process the trafficking of industrially produced euphoric substances across the globe have wreaked havoc among vulnerable populations while extracting profit for the powerful. The complex flows of capital generated both by illegal addiction markets and also by the mobilisation of licit public funds to manage their mayhem, however, suggest the contemporary utility of the concept of ‘predatory accumulation’. The Enlightenment-era concept of ‘primitive accumulation’ usefully highlighted state violence and forcible dispossession in the consolidation of European capitalism. A contemporary reframing of these processes as predatory accumulation, however, highlights contradictory, nonlinear relationships between the artificially high profits of illegal drug sales, repressive governmentality and corporate greed. It sets these patterns of destructive profiteering in the context of our moment in history.     

“It’s all about money”: urban–rural spaces and relations in Maputo,Mozambique

Within the anthropological urban scholarship on sub-Saharan Africa, there is a shared notion of the continued, and in some cases re-emerging, importance of rural spaces, values and relations in cities and towns. In Mozambique’s capital city, Maputo, associations with the rural are shaped by the urban dwellers’ different positions on a scale of social (dis)advantage. This has led to very diverse types of engagement with the rural among the population, primarily differentiated along positions of class but also gender and age. For the best-off, who are able to live up to urban expectations, the rural is seen to have little to offer and is largely disregarded. For the poorest and most destitute, rural areas are effectively out of reach and unheeded. For the rest, the rural continues to be an important part of their cosmologies and struggles to survive albeit without losing their urban base and identity.     

Child soldiers as peace-builders in Colombian peace talks between the government and the FARC–EP

Children, especially girls, are considered victims in armed conflicts. Children who participate in conflicts, as combatants, sexual servants, spies, informants and messengers, may be considered perpetrators of atrocities. These two classifications of children in armed conflicts do not consider their roles as agents who may also participate in peace-building efforts. This paper analyses how children involved in armed conflicts are classified and represented in the current peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo). We aim to understand if children are recognised in this peace process as participants and, in some capacity, as peace-builders. Dialoguing with the literature on critical security studies and childhood studies, we conduct a critical discourse analysis of the peace agreement documents. The study of the Colombian case enables an empirical analysis in which child soldiers are categorised as victims with the possibility of participating in peace-building and, at the same time, as potential challengers to the peace process.     

The relationship between crime victimization,corruption, and public attitudes of Mexico’s armed forces

This paper studies the relationship between self-reported crime victimization, perceptions of corruption, and attitudes of Mexico’s armed forces. We find that perceptions of corruption along with individual and state-level factors are important predictors of support for Mexico’s Army and Navy. While crime and violence have had a tremendous impact on Mexican society, crime victimization does not seem to undermine public support for the armed forces. In contrast, corruption in these institutions does undermine support. Given the historical and contemporary significance of the armed forces, this research has significant implications for the role of the coercive apparatus of the Mexican state.     

Bolshevism,Stalinism and the Comintern: a historical controversy revisited

ABSTRACT

‘Bolshevization’ and ‘Stalinization’ have been used variously by historians of American and British Communism to designate and date the processes by which the Comintern and national parties were subordinated to Soviet policy. Despite their pervasive influence on the American and British left, this literature reveals little curiosity or consensus about the politics of Bolshevism and Stalinism, their history and relationship, indeed, these labels have sometimes been employed inexactly and interchangeably. In some narratives, Bolshevization dates from 1924 and was completed from 1929. In others, the Comintern and its affiliates were Stalinized from 1924, in still others, from 1929. The historiography of the Soviet Union, in contrast, includes forensic interrogation of Bolshevism and Stalinism, their meaning, periodization and consequences as well as the continuities and disjunctures between them. This work has been overlooked by historians of the American Workers’ Party and the British Communist Party. The present article assesses both literatures. It utilizes insights from Sovietologists to argue that Stalinism constituted a politics and practice connected with but distinct from Bolshevism. Reviewing Comintern and party history, it proposes a specific periodization. State Bolshevism, 1919–1923, saw subjugation of the American and British parties to Russian imperatives. Incipient Stalinism, 1924–1928, witnessed restructuring of the politics of subordination. From 1929, Stalinization accomplished a distinctive subordination. It enthroned a politics and practice foreign to that of Lenin and the Bolsheviks which endured, through different phases, until the 1950s.     

South–South cooperation and the future of development assistance: mapping actors and options

International development cooperation is undergoing fundamental changes. New – or often re-emerging – actors have gained importance during the past two decades, and are increasingly challenging the traditional approach to development cooperation associated with the members of the Development Assistance Committee of the oecd. Their supposedly alternative paradigm, ‘South–South cooperation’ (ssc), has been recognised as an important cooperation modality, but faces contradictions that are not too different from those of its North–South counterpart. ssc providers are highly heterogeneous in terms of policies, institutional arrangements, and engagement with international forums and initiatives. This article contributes to current debates on ssc by mapping the diversity of its actors – based on illustrative case studies from the first and second ‘wave’ of providers – and by presenting and discussing some possible scenarios for the future of ssc within the international aid system.