Building Support for the Asad Regime: The Syrian Diaspora in Argentina and Brazil and the Syrian Uprising

ABSTRACT

Brazil and Argentina are hosts to two of the largest populations of Syrian descent in Latin America. While Syrian immigrants and their descendants have usually defined their identities based on broad Arab nationalistic references, creating and affiliating themselves to Syrian-Lebanese and/or Arab institutions, the ongoing civil war in Syria has triggered an unprecedented mobilization around specifically Syrian issues. Most diasporic organizations have shown an unconditional support for the Ba?thist regime. This article aims at understanding the political mobilization of the Syrian diaspora in Argentina and Brazil, as well as unveiling how Bashar al-Asad's government has tried to build on their support.     

Violence and nationalist mobilization: the onset of the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey

According to theories of nonviolent resistance, violence is counterproductive and undermines the ability of a movement to achieve mass support. At the same time, studies of ethnic insurgencies suggest that violence is the only available method of mobilization in political systems characterized by entrenched ethnic hierarchies. Engaging with these arguments, this article addresses a historical puzzle: What factors explain the timing and ability of the PKK's (Partiye Karkerên Kurdistan) rise as the hegemonic Kurdish nationalist organization in Turkey between the late 1970s and 1990? The article argues that studies that identify Kurdish nationalism as a reaction to repressive policies of the Turkish state without paying attention to prevailing social conditions and oppositional strategies fail to provide a satisfactory response. It argues that the rise of the PKK was primarily a function of its ability to gain support among the peasantry in deeply unequal rural areas through its strategic employment of violence. It also identifies four causal mechanisms of PKK recruitment based on rich archival and field research: credibility, revenge, social mobility, and gender emancipation.     

Online Mobilization in Comparative Perspective: Digital Appeals and Political Engagement in Germany,Italy, and the United Kingdom

This study analyzes the relationship between online voter mobilization and political engagement in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom during the 2014 European election campaign. Internet surveys of samples representatives of these countries’ populations with Internet access show that respondents who received an invitation to vote for a party or candidate via e-mail or social media engaged in a significantly higher number of political activities than those who did not. Moreover, the relationship between mobilization and engagement was stronger among those who followed the campaign less attentively, as well as in countries where overall levels of engagement with the campaign were lower (Germany and the United Kingdom) than where they were higher (Italy). These findings indicate that online mobilization may contribute to closing gaps in political engagement at both individual and aggregate levels, and thus suggest that digital media may contribute to reviving democratic citizenship.     

Voting for peace,mobilizing for war: post-conflict voter turnout and civil war recurrence

In democratic elections around the world, high levels of voter turnout are frequently praised as a sign of democratic legitimacy and consolidation. However, while popular participation should be lauded in many circumstances, under certain conditions it can also have nefarious side effects. In post-conflict countries, high levels of voter turnout may make it easier for militants to return to arms because everyday people are invested in the political process and the electoral outcome. Through the use of survival modelling, this study finds that voter turnout is positively correlated with civil war recidivism in post-conflict first elections. Even when elections are not particularly contentious or when structural factors (such as level of development) are auspicious, voter turnout continues to have a positive and statistically significant relationship with recidivism.     

Candidate-centric systems and the politicization of ethnicity: evidence from Indonesia

When and why do electoral candidates politicize ethnicity? From the literature, we might expect this behaviour to occur during democratic transitions or under proportional rules. However, empirical support for these arguments is mixed. This article presents a new approach, arguing that candidate-centric rules offer candidates incentives to politicize ethnicity. The argument is tested in Indonesia with empirical evidence drawn from coding newspaper reports on campaign events, endorsements and group appeals. Indonesia used party-centric rules from 1997 to 2004, and even though the country democratized during this period, the politicization of ethnicity actually declined. I show how party-centric rules, coupled with a national economic crisis, encouraged candidates to campaign on broad national platforms of reform and development, thereby appealing to the poor rather than to ethnic groups. Between 2004 and 2009, the system became more candidate-centric and the politicization of ethnicity increased. I argue that changes in the system freed candidates from national party platforms and motivated them to campaign on their local connections with ethnic groups. This study is particularly pertinent amidst the push for direct candidate-centric elections in the developing world and the lack of literature on how such rules could affect ethnic politics.     

Cab fair: taxi driving and South Asian labor activism in New York City, 1985–1999

Abstract

The labor strike of 13 May 1998 was an historic event for the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA). Under the leadership of Bhairavi Desai, 98% of New York City’s 24,000 yellow cab drivers refused to work. The strike disrupted the flow of city life, but it also shattered the belief that taxi drivers were atomized and therefore unable to organize, effectively exercise power, or earn basic working rights for themselves. This unprecedented strike was thus an act of self-assertion for taxicab drivers in the 1990s, who were predominantly of South Asian origin and had been victims of unjust violence and discrimination in the city. This article questions how immigrant taxi cab drivers came to cooperate with one another in the late nineties to fight for fair wages. It also explores how members of the NYTWA overcame class disparities and ethnic differences among themselves to serve common goals.     

War,democratization, and generational cohort effects on participation in Japan

Studies show that both democratization and war mobilization boost levels of participation enduringly among members of the generational cohort that come of age around the time. But little is known about the relative effects of war mobilization and democratization on long-term participation rates among impressionable generations that experience both. We address this question by examining generational cohort effects by gender, drawing on newly available data on the case of Japan. Age-period-cohort analyses of the Survey on Japanese Value Orientations (1973–2013) show that the increase in lifelong participation rates of the “war generation” over prewar generations was much greater for men than for women, thus suggesting that the high rates of participation among members of this cohort are driven more by mobilization than by democratization. This finding yields significant implications for the analysis of democratic consolidation in different parts of the world.     

以程序规范权力推动湖南省地方政府行政改革

通过实证研究分析湖南省行政程序政策制定路径与实施效果,发现其基本模式是政治动员,通过政治动员推动政策制定与政策实施;《湖南省行政程序规定》的作用是通过规范行政程序推动当地政府行政管理体制改革,是一种新的行政改革路径和改革模式。该政策的实施正向效果非常明显,值得肯定。通过政治动员模式制定和执行政策有许多优势,但也容易政随人走,如何使以程序规范权力的立法精神及推动行政管理体制改革的路径较少依赖脱离政治家而得以持续,需要进行更高层面的立法支持,进行地方人大立法甚至全国性立法十分必要。     

社会动员问题研究:以群防群治为视角

群防群治运行机制越来越不适应市场经济条件下安全防范的需求,必须在新的理论支撑下进行实践探索,以寻求新的组织形式和运行机制、管理模式,其创新的理论基石是社会动员理论,通过对主体、内容等创新,使群防群治重新焕发生机。     

Military Mobilization and Commitment Problems

Because of its costliness, military mobilization is generally seen as a mechanism by which high-resolve leaders can credibly signal their high resolve in international crises, thereby possibly overcoming informational asymmetries that can lead to costly and inefficient war. I examine how power-shifts caused by mobilization within a crisis can lead to commitment-problem wars. In a simple ultimatum-offer crisis bargaining model of complete information, war occurs if and only if the power-shift caused by mobilization exceeds the bargaining surplus, which is Powell's (2004 Powell, Robert. 2004. The Inefficient Use of Power. American Political Science Review, 98 May: 231–241. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2006 Powell, Robert. 2006. War as a Commitment Problem. International Organization, 60(1): 169–203. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) general inefficiency condition for commitment-problem wars. When private information is added, and hence mobilization potentially has a stabilizing signaling role, under certain conditions the commitment problem overwhelms the signaling role and mobilization leads to certain war. Finally, I analyze an infinite-horizon model that captures the reality that mobilizing takes time, and find that commitment-problem wars occur under broader conditions than the general inefficiency condition implies.