A question of trust: military defection during regime crises in Benin and Togo

This article examines the role of trust between military officers and opposition forces in fostering mass defections of military personnel during pro-democracy uprisings. The current literature on military defection emphasizes the role of either opposition characteristics, or government control policies. Combining the two, however, takes better account of defection as an interaction between officers and the opposition. Through an analysis of civil–military relations during mass uprisings in Benin (1989–1990) and Togo (1990–1993), this article finds that loyalist stacking creates a core of military personnel with a strong stake in regime preservation, while counterbalancing leaves open the possibility for a military-opposition alliance. Alliance also depends on civic resistance campaign characteristics (the unity of the movement, its nonviolent character, the presence of opposition leaders with social ties to military personnel) and promises to military personnel that acknowledge the latter groups’ interests. These findings provide a new theoretical framework for understanding military actions during regime crises.     

To Care and Protect: Care Workers Confronting Sweden Democrats in their Workplace

Austerity policies across European countries have encountered diverse forms of public protest and resistance. In Sweden, we have seen the emergence of a number of networks and organizations which take care workers’ professional identity as their point of departure. These networks and organizations stress the impossibility of being professional care workers in slimmed-down, neoliberal organizations. Parallel to this, and sometimes embedded into one another, female-dominated professions (e.g. social workers, nurses, doctors, and teachers) have been engaged in opposing restrictive refugee policies. This article analyses how care workers in an emergency room in Malmö mobilized against a visit by Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the right-wing, xenophobic Sweden Democrats. The article explores how workers used a gendered discourse of care and professionalism to argue that their actions were consistent with both organizational culture and their professional ethics. The article shows how, by defending their professional role of providing quality care to all in need, workers challenge both austerity and racist policies, which both impose restrictions on who has the right to care. Theoretically, the article explores how the politicization of care creates spaces of resistance, to critique both austerity policies and exclusionary understandings of national belonging. The study stresses the importance of identifying emerging forms of collective resistance among care workers at the intersection of the struggles against austerity and right-wing xenophobic parties.     

Abnormal fears: the queer Arctic in Michelle Paver’s Dark Matter

With focus on queer resistance emanating from place, this article examines Michelle Paver’s 2010 novel Dark Matter: A Ghost Story, set in the 1930s and focused on an all-male expedition to Svalbard. As representatives of the norm, the fictional expedition members attempt to enforce heteronormative models of interpretation characterizing depictions of the Arctic, but several aspects blur the boundaries between previously discreet categories. Starting from Sara Ahmed’s discussions about spatial and existential orientation in Queer Phenomenology (2006), the article maps how the Arctic is imagined and perceived by Jack Miller, the novel’s protagonist. Although hoping that Svalbard will constitute a productive testing ground for a particular kind of inter-war, British masculinity, specificities of place represent a progressively more threatening transgression of what Jack perceives of as normal. The Arctic is thus initially constructed as a stable place; geographical particularities then overturn possibilities for Jack’s orientation, and supernatural occurrences finally violate boundaries between past and present, sane and mad. What Ahmed refers to as ‘queer moments’ that slant that subject’s perception of the world are in the novel produced by the actual as well as the supernatural Arctic: they highlight a continuous, geographically specific resistance to categorization.     

The sounds of silence: American history textbook representations of non-violence and the Abolition Movement

In this paper we examine how the Abolition Movement’s approach to non-violent resistance has been silenced in four American history textbooks. Despite extensive research that reveals an extensive network of groups dedicated to the peaceful abolishment of slavery little of this historical record is included in the textbooks. Instead, a skewed representation of the movement is conveyed to the reader, one that conveys an image of a movement that contributes to a climate of social violence. Through a critical discourse analytical approach to the data we carefully deconstruct how this process of misrepresentation occurs. By employing the discursive tools of narrative framing, positioning, and stance we lift up what is often hidden from the reader and demonstrate how language use communicates powerful social messaging to the reader. We argue that student readers are left with an impoverished sense of how non-violent democratic change has occurred when presented with a limited portrayal of the Abolition Movement. We therefore emphasize the importance of equipping students with the skills needed to critically interrogate both historical and contemporary sources that purports to convey the inevitability of war to resolve complex social problems; we maintain this is both an educational imperative and a civic obligation.     

Resilient Peace: Exploring the Theory and Practice of Resilience in Peacebuilding Interventions

ABSTRACT

This introduction provides a conceptual and theoretical background to the more detailed analyses contained in the articles of the Special Section. The introduction firstly presents a critical overview of the rise of resilience and its increasing role in shaping the terms of international interventions. It identifies a set of interrelated conceptual themes relevant to theorising the relationship between resilience and peacebuilding and evaluates how appropriate a resilience approach might be in promoting sustainable peace and what might be its main dangers and pitfalls.     

Ensuring the safe and effective FDA regulation of fecal microbiota transplantation

Scientists, policymakers, and medical professionals alike have become increasingly worried about the rise of antibiotic resistance, and the growing number of infections due to bacteria like Clostridium difficile, which cause a significant number of deaths and are imposing increasing costs on our health care system. However, in the last few years, fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), the transplantation of stool from a healthy donor into the bowel of a patient, has emerged as a startlingly effective means to treat recurrent C. difficile infections. At present, the FDA is proposing to regulate FMT as a biologic drug. However, this proposed classification is both underregulatory and overregulatory. The FDA''s primary goal is to ensure that patients have access to safe, effective treatments—and as such they should regulate some aspects of FMT more stringently than they propose to, and others less so. This essay will examine the nature of the regulatory challenges the FDA will face in deciding to regulate FMT as a biologic drug, and will then evaluate available policy alternatives for the FDA to pursue, ultimately concluding that the FDA ought to consider adopting a hybrid regulatory model as it has done in the case of cord blood.     

Between Resistance and Compliance: Non-participation and the Liberal Peace

Abstract

This work is interested in the concept of non-participation in relation to international peace–support interventions. While the concept of participation has received significant attention, non-participation is under-conceptualized. A typology of non-participation is advanced, differentiating between voluntary and involuntary types of non-participation. It is argued that there is an overhasty tendency by many observers to subjectify inhabitants in post-war settings into the categories of resistance and compliance. This article rejects such a binary as too crude, and argues that non-participation needs to be examined in its own right, not automatically in relation to wider projects of liberal peacemaking or of resistance to that form of peacemaking.     

劳动者抗争行为的处罚与刑事政策研究——以我国台湾地区为视角

在任何一个国家或地区的劳资关系中,劳动争议的发生可以算是一种常态,因为在一个组织之中管理者和被管理者之间一定会有冲突和争议。劳动者为求取尊严和生存,有时会从事若干自力救济的群体性抗争活动,若当该等行为触犯刑法时,应该如何处罚?关于劳动者群体性抗争事件处罚与刑事政策,是任何一个国家或地区内部和谐稳定的重要政策之一。2011年5月1日我国台湾地区开始施行新的《劳资争议处理法》,增设了特殊刑事豁免规定,但内容颇多疑义,在施行后未必能解决现有难题,对于普遍存在的劳动者群体性抗争活动帮助不大。毕竟,劳动者抗争群体性事件问题的解决,最终仍须回归刑事政策研究。     

The Italian Mediation Explosion: Lessons in Realpolitik

Between the time that the first modern Italian mediation statutes were issued in 1993 and March 2011, when mandatory mediation procedures under Italian Legislative Decree 28/2010 went into effect, an interesting paradox emerged in Italian mediation: mediation usage was virtually nonexistent despite the high success rates of mediated cases. Clearly, the mere availability of mediation was not sufficient to attract disputants away from the courts, even though the Italian court backlog skyrocketed to 5.4 million cases during this period. Decree 28/2010 was issued by the Italian government to address this paradox through a mandatory mediation requirement, but the law has faced significant opposition from some members of the Italian bar in the form of public strikes and legal challenges. Legislators have responded to this dissent with reactionary amendments to “cure” problems in the regulatory structure, even though there has also been significant positive attention paid to the Italian mediation model at the European level. As the opposition to Decree 28/2010 now appears to be diminishing and recent data indicate that mandatory mediation is achieving its objectives (to the tune of tens of thousands of mediated cases since March 2011), two lessons in realpolitik emerge for mediation proponents. First, nothing less than compulsion can rapidly increase mediation use. Second, the legislator who compels mediation without openly engaging the opposition is not mediation savvy, for even in compelling a policy choice, one should be respectful and mindful of the opponent's position, if for no other reason than to minimize his or her opposition to the final result.     

The unlikely terrorist: women and Islamic resistance in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories

Islamic resistance groups in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories have been accused of using terrorist tactics to achieve their aims. Although some critics suggest that such groups may also have hijacked the democratic agenda in ways that disadvantage women, their supporters claim that they are promoting a model of modernity that is empowering women. This article examines the reasons why some Lebanese Shi'i and Palestinian women support the resistance against Israeli invasion and occupation that is justified in terms of religion. Far from seeing the actions of Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories as acts of terrorism, many women welcome the resistance as it brings dignity and meaning to their lives and enhances feelings of national identification.