The role of social media in freeing Botswana from state control of the media

This paper argues that social media is important in any state which claims to be a democracy and that failure to have robust media involvement in the democratic process is likely to jeopardise democratic principles. Although Botswana has been crowned as a successful story of African democracy over time, it is argued here that she is a liberal democracy marred by some shortcomings – especially those that have to do with government-media relations. The paper contends that the media (both government and private) is an indisputable partner in the deliberative democratic process, which should be nurtured and celebrated. A case is made that relations between the Botswana government and the country's media houses has of late become hostile, as evidenced by the arrests and detentions of journalists. Premised on deliberative democratic theory, the article argues that a state which claims to be democratic, such as Botswana, needs to respect basic fundamental principles of democracy, such as freedom of the press.     

Neither inside nor outside the corridors of power: prosaic petitioning and the royal burghs in early modern Scotland

ABSTRACT

This article explores early modern petitioning in the context of urban Scotland. It focuses on prosaic rather than political petitioning, on the basis that the former was more truly characteristic of what the purpose of petitioning was understood to be by most of those who engaged in it. The burghs of Scotland provide an added dimension to the history of petitioning because of the role of their national assembly (the Convention of Royal Burghs), which was simultaneously a recipient of petitions, a conduit for its members’ petitions to the crown, and a petitioner of the crown in its own right. This article also reveals how changing practices of petitioning shed light on the development of the early modern Scottish state, as the Convention of Royal Burghs found its members increasingly bypassing it and instead they resorted directly to central government institutions.     

Abolishing Illiteracy and Upgrading Culture: Adult Education and Revolutionary Hegemony in Socialist Laos

ABSTRACT

This article examines the monopolisation of political space by the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, before and after 1975. Together with coercive measures, the Marxist-Leninist regime consolidated rule by establishing and disseminating new concepts of state power, social responsibility and socialist subjectivity, which formed the basis of a radical form of revolutionary hegemony. The Party propagated a new rhetoric of rule through mandated activities including village meetings, co-operatives and a much expanded but poor-quality mass education system. This article examines the system of adult education, where the Party sought to eradicate illiteracy and “upgrade culture” among economically productive 15 to 45-year-olds. Motivated by both politics and pedagogy, the Party imported this system from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the 1960s before institutionalising it after 1975. The resulting organisational structure fanned the rhetoric of rule across the national territory in an extensive manner that reached the illiterate “masses” in large numbers. Even where the programme encountered material shortages and apathy, mandated participation in adult education propagated the vocabulary and grammatical structure of socialist Laos, providing a codebook for how to participate in socialist society.     

The logic of competitive influence-seeking: Russia,Ukraine, and the conflict in Donbas

The crisis in Ukraine since late 2013 has seen four successive internationally mediated agreements that have been at best partially implemented. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and 42 key informant interviews sides, we explain this outcome with reference to the logic of competitive influence-seeking: Russia is currently unable to achieve a friendly and stable regime in Kyiv and thus hedges against the consolidation of an unfriendly pro-Western and stable regime by maintaining its control over parts of eastern Ukraine and solidifying the dependence of local regimes there on Russian support. This gives Russia the opportunity to maintain the current status quo or settle for re-integration terms through which Russia can sustain long-term influence over Ukraine’s domestic and foreign policy. We conclude by reflecting on the consequences of competitive influence-seeking in the post-Soviet space: the likely persistence of low-intensity conflict in Ukraine; the further consolidation of territorial divisions in other post-Soviet conflicts; and the need for policy-makers in Russia and the West to prioritize the management of the consequent instability.     

Education for whom? Engineering multiculturalism and liberal peace in post-conflict Kosovo

ABSTRACT

This paper traces the changing relationship between the state and its education system at the intersection of diverging visions and agendas of local and international actors in post-war Kosovo in the period 1999–2014. Specifically, it explores why and how externally driven reforms that carry the ideals of an inclusive multi-ethnic polity clashed with domestic actors’ visions of education as a locus of national resistance and independent statehood. To critically inquire into the direction of education reforms in the post-war context, the empirical part of the analysis identifies critical historical junctures through which these competing ideas and relevant actors changed and/or gained traction. Accordingly, the paper focuses mainly on the post-war period, but also considers the pre-war period in order to highlight the predominant vision of local actors on the roles of education, its intertwinement with unfolding conflicts, and its central role in processes of state formation and nation-building, in particular in a post-war context. The analysis is based on genealogical historical narrative, textual analysis of key official documents related to the education sector in Kosovo, and semi-structured interviews conducted in Pristina in November 2013 and October 2016. The analysis demonstrates that the role of education in post-war Kosovo reflects tension between multicultural ideals promoted by international actors, on the one hand, and nationalist, often exclusive concerns of local actors embedded in an unfinished and contested process of state- and nation-building, on the other hand. The paper finds that by over-emphasizing equal collective rights, extensive autonomy for the different communities and ethnic-based decentralized governance, international actors have unwillingly contributed to further education separation along ethnic lines.     

可行性及其路径

在中国周边次区域中，东北亚地区安全困境最为严重，而该地区对于中国实现和平稳定与发展繁荣具有重大意义。具备区域合作重要属性的“一带一路”倡议能有效缓解安全困境。东北亚地区之所以成为“一带一路”倡议的缺口，主要由于朝鲜半岛紧张局势高居高不下、美国因素的负面影响、中日竞争关系的影响存在，这些因素的根源又是该地区的“安全困境”。将东北亚地区逐步纳入“一带一路”能在一定程度上缓解该地区的安全困境，并为深化东北亚区域合作提供新的动力，两者有望形成良性循环。俄罗斯、蒙古国和韩国对中国的“一带一路”倡议态度积极，朝鲜也表现出一定的兴趣，日本和美国态度复杂，但已经很难置身度外。在推动东北亚地区纳入“一带一路”倡议时，需先从双边合作入手，争取各国均加入到“一带一路”倡议和亚洲基础设施投资银行；然后扩大到中日韩、中俄朝和中朝韩三边合作；进而扩大到多边范围，在亚洲基础设施投资银行下设立“东北亚建设资金”，专注于东北亚项目投资；。同时激活和利用大图们江开发计划和长吉图国家发展战略。     

Disciplined and undisciplined repression: illicit economies and state violence in Central Asia’s autocracies

What explains the use of disciplined repression in some autocratic regimes and undisciplined repression in others? Despite its relevance to these broader debates on authoritarianism, this question remains inadequately explained in conventional approaches to repression. This article proposes that autocrats’ discipline over the use of state repression is a consequence of their differential control over illicit commercial networks. Autocratic regimes that consolidate their control over rents become dependent on security apparatuses to deepen and maintain that control. These regimes invest in and support the development of coercive capabilities, which leads to more disciplined state repression. Where autocratic regimes do not control illicit networks and rents, their dependence on security offices is low. Consequently, their investment in coercive capacity suffers, giving rise to patterns of undisciplined repression. This article explores the empirical implications of these regime trajectories through a controlled comparison of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, two drug transit states in post-Soviet Eurasia whose coercive institutions and patterns of state violence have developed in markedly different ways.     

“We need more clips about Putin,and lots of them:” Russia’s state-commissioned online visual culture

In this article, we examine how the Putin government is attempting to respond and adapt to the YouTube phenomenon and the vibrant oppositional online visual culture on Runet. We show how these processes are giving rise to new forms of state propaganda, shaped and driven above all by the quest for high-ranking search-engine results and the concomitant desire to appeal to the perceived new sensibilities of the Internet generation through the commissioning and production of “viral videos.” We focus in particular on the videos created by Iurii Degtiarev, a pioneer in the development of this genre, whose works we explore in light of the “Kremlingate” email leaks, which offer inside information on the strategies and aims being pursued on the online visual front of the campaign to manage the Russian mediascape, and Degtiarev’s own reflections on this subject. Examining the output of young creatives patronized by the Kremlin offers a “bottom-up” view to supplement studies of the Russian ideological and media landscape as shaped by “political technologists” such as Vladislav Surkov and Gleb Pavlovskii.     

Austere State Strategies: Regenerating for Recovery and the Resignification of Regeneration

Through this paper, I seek to draw attention an apparent fundamental resignification of regeneration that has been taking shape over recent times. Conceptually, I engage with political economy theory in order to examine how élite economic interests have resignified the nature of state articulations of regeneration. The argument is developed that this implies a profound subversion of more marginal socio-economic interests traditionally at the heart of regeneration interventions or at least the customary ‘targets’ of such policy. Empirically, the analysis draws upon interviews conducted with those operating at the coalface of policy, politics and practice, augmented by my practical experience of the English regeneration milieu. Documenting the contested evolution of policy practice during what I term the ‘regenerating for recovery’ phase, I investigate the interactions and interconnections between meanings, modes and scales of practice. This analysis helps to demonstrate dual aspects of the resignification of regeneration as both cause and condition that has effectively legitimated and been legitimised by an austere state strategy.