Accountability mechanisms in community-driven reconstruction in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

A lack of accountability is often considered a root cause of conflict. Many post-conflict reconstruction efforts therefore aim to enhance accountability between authorities and the population through community-driven reconstruction programmes. This article examines the accountability mechanisms in the Tushiriki community-driven reconstruction programme in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The ethnographic research found little impact of formal programme accountability. Rather, accountability was shaped differently and had its own context-specific meaning. To make accountability more sustainable, stronger embeddedness in local institutions and more appropriate translations of abstract concepts into the local context are needed.     

The state of public discourse in Kenya’s post-Moi era: Where are Kenya’s organic intellectuals?

One of the defining moments in Kenya’s political landscape was the defeat of KANU, the party that had been in power since the country’s independence in 1963, by the National Rainbow Coalition, NARC in 2002. The victory was hailed as a new dawn that would entrench good governance, equity, rule of law, and human rights. After all, the victory was a culmination of many years of agitation against KANU dictatorship. Furthermore, NARC was a mass movement with national appeal and led by renowned anti-establishment politicians, civil society, and activist intellectuals and clergy. But, these aspirations would be betrayed by fragmentation of elites in NARC and re-invention of corruption by the same elites. This paper investigates the ramifications of the NARC collapse to the country’s post-Moi democratization process, more so the diminished role of intellectuals in public discourse. The paper demonstrates the urgent need for organic intellectuals and the way forward.     

The Blue (White and Red) Orchestra: a soundtrack for the country that never was

The aim of the paper is to go beyond the commonly accepted view of Sarajevo’s Plavi orkestar (The Blue Orchestra) as the 1980s “teen pop-rock sensation” and illuminate the less conspicuous, but nevertheless crucial, political dimension of the band’s music and visual aesthetics. This will be done by discussing several “pieces of the puzzle” essential to understanding the background to and motivations behind Plavi orkestar’s political engagement in the second half of the 1980s: (1) the “Sarajevo factor;” (2) the Sarajevo Pop-rock School and the New Primitives “poetics of the local;” (3) the generational Yugoslavism; (4) the New Partisans “poetics of the patriotic;” and (5) the post-New Partisans “hippie ethos.” The concluding section of the paper will reflect on Plavi orkestar’s resurgence in 1998 and explore the question of the band’s continuing resonance within the post-Yugoslav and post-socialist contexts. An argument underlying the discussion of all of these elements is that Plavi orkestar’s Yugoslavism of the 1980s is best understood as a soundtrack for the country that never was (i.e. a popular-cultural expression of what, from the viewpoint of a particular generational cohort and its location in the “Yugoslav socialist universe,” the community they thought of as their own ought to have been but never really was), and that the current value of this soundtrack lies in offering not only a particular window into the pre-post-socialist past but also in being a symbolic referent for a certain kind of retrospective utopia that gauges the realities of the post-socialist – that is, neo-liberal capitalist – present and, in so doing, figures as a “normative compass” for the life of dignified existence.     

Meeting development goals: evidence from the Civil Society Education Fund

In recent years, the Civil Society Education Fund has supported national education civil society coalitions (NECs) in low-income countries so that they put pressure on governments and donors to implement the Education for All agenda and the Millennium Development Goal on education. This article draws on literature on global governance as well as on an extensive evaluation of the CSEF to explore the actual contribution of this initiative to the activity of NECs. The article highlights the achievements and shortcomings of the CSEF and includes a set of practical recommendations on the role of global civil society in international development processes.     

Taiwan in the Caribbean: a case study in state de-recognition

The rich and complex recent International Political Sociology (IPS) literature on state recognition has completely ignored the process of de-recognition. The present article uses the case study of Taiwan’s efforts to preserve its ‘diplomatic allies’ in the Caribbean in order to fill this gap. Taking advantage of the IPS development of the constitutive theory of recognition, it introduces and analyses the concept of state de-recognition while emphasizing the deep contradiction between present international law principles and the political reality of national identity building as well as the de-linking of political science and international law understandings of recognition made possible by the progress of the constitutive theory. De-recognition is perceived as resulting in a hierarchical relationship between recognized and de-recognized political entities that is arbitrary and ethically questionable as it ultimately reflects the denial of the right to self-determination of peoples.     

Unpacking the Presumed Statelessness of Rohingyas1

ABSTRACT

The decades-old Rohingya problem, which has affected Myanmar and other Southeast Asia countries, has long been defined in terms of forced migration, statelessness, and humanitarian crisis. As the problems involving Rohingya refugees, forced migrants, and internally displaced persons are commonly believed to have stemmed from the highly discriminatory 1982 Citizenship Law, international advocacy has focused on amending or repealing the law as the ultimate solution. Despite the law's several discriminatory provisions, this article argues that the real problem primarily lies in a lack of implementation by successive Myanmar governments and the Rohingya's arbitrary deprivation of the right to nationality and citizenship documentation.     

This is your afterlife: gender,slavery, and televisual subjection

In 1957 Arries Ann Ward, who was formerly enslaved, appeared on the classic television interview-entertainment program, This Is Your Life. Despite Ward’s practices of refusal, the rare interview enacts an idealization of black female servitude and indebted obligation through performances of affection and racial benevolence. Ward’s appearance effectively works to resolve national crisis produced by widespread images of civil-rights protest and counterinsurgent violence, reifying discourses of American exceptionalism in Cold War context.     

亚太新格局及其对两岸关系的影响之研究

自2010年以来,美国在亚太地区加紧展开各方面新的部署,美国的举措对该地区的政治、经济、军事等关系和地区格局影响重大。本文分析了美国推行“亚太再平衡”战略对亚太地区局势产生的影响,提出亚太地区正面临战争与和平、独赢与普赢、猜忌与互信的抉择。文章探讨了亚太新局对两岸关系的影响,认为两岸难以超然于亚太新格局,两岸政治、经济和军事等方面的关系更加复杂化,但在亚太地区新的矛盾冲突中,两岸可以从新的视角谋求共同出路。     

Spaces of self-consciousness: Carla Accardi's environments and the rise of Italian feminism

“Spaces of self-consciousness” examines three environments created by the Italian artist Carla Accardi in light of an emerging feminist politics. Though better known as a painter, Accardi created these three-dimensional works during an era of political and social upheaval in which her own commitment to the Italian feminist movement began to take shape. Her environments were deeply imbricated both with her own experience of autocoscienza, or consciousness-raising, as well as with radical design proposals that rejected the current state of civilization. This article examines how these environments functioned as prototypes of the transient, anti-institutional spaces that she would later create as co-founder of Rivolta femminile, a historic Italian feminist collective, and examines a previously obscure moment in Carla Accardi's career.     

英国劳动制度改革及其对劳资争议处理的影响

自1950年代,英国的劳动制度改革经历了从“自愿主义”到“新自由主义”为指导原则的转变.1997年新工党执政以来,劳动制度的改革在“新自由主义”的继续影响下,反映出政府试图能够在经济效率与工人发言权之间找到平衡.然而,严格的法律规制使劳动争议的处理在实际操作中陷入了困局,并导致新的更加灵活的劳资争议处理方式受到广泛认同.这说明英国劳动制度的改善需要兼顾规范性和灵活性两个方面,才能成为真正调节劳动关系,处理劳资争议的有效手段.