Criminalising Academia: The Protection of State Information Bill and Academic Freedom

This article assesses the implications of the controversial Protection of State Information Bill for academic freedom in South Africa, specifically for communications, media and journalism studies. The Bill requires the security cluster to classify sensitive documents on national security grounds. Academic teaching and research can help citizens to understand whether the security cluster is acting in the universal interest, rather than the interest of a political elite; it can also be used to assess media performance in reporting on national security matters. Using a critical approach to the concept of national security, I argue that the Bill favours secrecy over openness, and South Africa’s embrace of the human security definition of national security has contributed to the problem. This overemphasis on secrecy is likely to reduce the few spaces that exist in academia for critical, emancipatory work on security issues, which could hobble the sector’s attempts to understand the deeper processes at work in the security cluster. If such enquiry is marginalised, then the higher education system risks becoming an instrument for continuity rather than change in South Africa’s existing, highly unequal power relations: relations that are being maintained increasingly by force.     

Teaching Islam at a home school: Muslim women and critical thinking in Uzbekistan

In this article I describe and analyse non-institutionalized religious education among local women in Uzbekistan. I argue that while exhibiting vestiges of ‘traditional’ objectives, methods of teaching, and models of knowledge transmission, and incorporating elements of educational reforms advocated by the Central Asian reformers in the early 1900s, and of Soviet pedagogy, the dynamics of such education foster students' critical thinking. By enabling students to think critically about their lives and social environment, the non-institutionalized religious education does not have one predetermined outcome, but ensures social change that starts on an individual level, whereby a student can, but does not have to, engage politically with the state, which systematically intervenes in shaping its citizens' religious lives.     

Neopatrimonialism and beyond: reassessing the formal and informal in the study of Central Asian politics

Neopatrimonialism has emerged as the central conceptual label applied by scholars to understand the politics of the Central Asian republics. Like the use of neopatrimonialism in other regional settings, this article argues that the concept has become susceptible to concept misinformation and stretching. Adopting a critical perspective, this article highlights three significant problems with the application of neopatrimonialism in the study of Central Asian politics: its appropriateness and operationalisation; the difficulty in ontologically and empirically untangling the formal and informal; and an inherent normativty in its application. While not advocating an abandonment of the concept, the article considers instead how it can be used better in conjunction with additional analytical approaches and/or concepts. The article proffers that a focus on either formal-institutional structures; discourses of power; and the concept of ‘multiple modernities’ would aid comprehension of the region and resolve the three issues highlighted in this work.     

Lost in transition,found in recession? Satisfaction with democracy in Central Europe before and after economic crises

For decades, research on democracy has produced evidence that the peoples of countries in Central Europe are less satisfied with the way democracy works in their countries than people in Western Europe. Using the data from the European Social Survey (ESS) I explore, how satisfaction with the way democracy works (SWD) changed in these countries between 2004 and 2014 and test the impact of satisfaction with the present state of the economy and trust in parliament on SWD. Results of the analysis reveal that people in Central Europe are still less satisfied with the democratic performance on average than people in Western Europe, but their satisfaction is on the rise especially in countries where the economy performs well, economic performance brings better standard of living, and people share a sense of economic optimism. Results also suggest that in countries where economic optimism is low, political evaluations of “crises in democracy” may play a larger role in explaining satisfaction with democratic performance.     

“Les catholiques sont l’élite!”: représentations de l’espace politique par une minorité religieuse au Burkina Faso

Abstract

The Catholic Church occupies a privileged position in the religious arena in Burkina Faso. Having invested very early in the public arena of the country, it constitutes a vital actor in the socio-political landscape of the country as attested to by its involvement in the domains of education and health and its positioning as mediator in times of crisis. Based on a field survey conducted among members of the Catholic community (members of the clergy, religious and lay), this article studies the manner in which Catholics in Burkina Faso portray themselves as a religious community in the country’s political arena. It reveals that in Burkina Faso the Catholics portray themselves as a dominant religious minority in terms of politics due to their disproportionate engagement in the apparatus of the state. The article also shows that the Catholics in Burkina Faso see their dominant position as under threat, on the one hand, from competition by the Protestants and, on the other, by the rise of Islamism.     

Neo-extractivism and the new Latin American developmentalism: the missing piece of rural transformation

What, if anything, is actually new about political and economic transformation in twenty-first century Latin America? Here we explore how ostensibly ‘new’ policies are being built on two ‘old’ foundations that may be mutually exclusive. These are ‘extractivism’ and ‘developmentalism’, concepts that have been used rather loosely to describe current economic policies. The new developmentalism, however, may not only be contradicted by extractivism; it may be more constrained than its predecessor by fortified capitalist class interests and new global conditions. Moreover, it pays little attention to the employment-generating potential of rural areas or to the agricultural sector.     

Limits of regulatory governance change in the post-developmental state: Korean telecommunications market restructurings from a comparative perspective

This study explains the limits of institutional transformation in Korea from the developmental state to a post-developmental state, in terms of regulatory institutions instead of developmental institutions. The Korean state has taken advantage of the government's discretionary policy changes and power formed by both informal state institutions and informal policy networks, while the regulatory state has placed a special emphasis on social consensus as well as political support for changes of market institutions. New market rules and laws have also been inefficient and ineffective for fair market competition. Limits of regulatory governance change have occurred due to misalignments between informal regulatory institutions in the developmental state and formal regulatory institutions in the post-developmental state. State managers have created discretionary state intervention in policy implementation, politicized the roles of regulatory agencies, and brought ministry-type regulatory state institutions back in. The establishment of effective market institutions has failed due to informal market institutions (unfair and illegal market practices) that have interfered with the policy implementation of new formal market regulations.     

Why Is There Less Public Trust in Local Government Than in Central Government in China?

The public’s trust in government, whether at national, regional, or local levels, is always a subject that arouses interest and debate among researchers as well as politicians. This article presents findings from an analysis of survey research conducted in 2011 and provides insights both on a hierarchical trust pattern of public trust in central and local governments in China, and on the key factors accounting for variance in this respect by multiple regression analysis.     

坚持中国特色反腐倡廉道路不动摇

从党的七届二中全会毛泽东倡导"两个务必"开始,到改革开放新时期的邓小平、江泽民、胡锦涛,把反腐倡廉与党的建设、与改革开放和社会主义现代化建设紧密结合在一起,在理论和实践方面丰富和充实了反腐倡廉建设的内容,形成了中国特色反腐倡廉道路。在新世纪新阶段,坚持中国特色反腐倡廉道路不动摇,是贯彻落实十七届四中全会精神的需要。     

兼顾表达成员利益与注重社会功能的工会制度选择——学习中国共产党十六届六中全会决议的思考

中共中央十六届六中全会关于构建和谐社会的决议,提出和阐述了协调劳动关系及其建立相应的集体协商制度问题。这是吸取了历史上正反两个方面的经验做出的正确选择。有助于兼顾表达成员利益与注重社会功能的工会制度的建设。而其中认可和认同工会表达成员利益的功能,是需要付出社会成本的。中央决议相关的政策安排,特别是提出党和政府主导而同时又支持社会团体维权的机制,有理由使人们期许一个理想的工会制度前景。而这需要党、政府、工会承担起相应的责任。