CIAO DATE: 06/2013
Volume: 8, Issue: 1
February 2013
Aron Szele
This article provides an example in which the historical method is used as a tool to define and study the ideology of the radical right. It does this by using Hungary as a case-study and explores the questions of continuity, core ideas, and inner logic of radical right wing discourses. The vehicle is a diachronic comparison of regenerative planning in the interwar and contemporary period, concentrating on the main themes of ideological content. The article shows an interesting amount of commonalities between the thought patterns of the interwar and the contemporary radical right wing in Hungary.
Romy Wöhlert
Against the background of increasing EU enlargement fatigue amongst EU countries, and with the official accession negotiation process with the Western Balkan countries currently underway, a comparative analysis of current reciprocal perceptions between both sides is carried out to identify potential conflict lines, and to trace how the EU is currently perceived from inside and from. In an exploratory media study three EU countries (Austria, Germany, and the United Kingdom) and two Western Balkan countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina BiH and Serbia) are compared.1 This paper shows that the reciprocal perceptions are not only shaped by assumed distance and difference, but also by proximity and similarities. However, the communicated boundaries and obstacles between EU and non-EU also show some indicate barriers for Western Balkan countries in the accession steps lying ahead. Furthermore, the media study suggests a broadening of the analytical spectrum to include thematic areas that go beyond political discourse.
Escalation of Social Conflict During Popular Upheavals: Evidence from Bahrain (PDF)
Magdalena Karolak
Bahrain experienced rapidly growing sectarian strife as a result of the "Day of Rage" uprising organized in February 2011. The aim of this article is to assess the sources of latent hostility as well as to explain why the social conflict manifested itself and why it took on a sectarian dimension. The appraisal is based on the elements of Hocker and Wilmot's conflict assessment model, which focuses on the adversaries' perceptions of the conflict. Through an in-depth examination of created stereotypes we evaluate miscommunication between adversaries and ultimately, rigidity of positions and polarization of society. We conclude that, following this pattern of development, the social conflict ultimately enters into a destructive phase, negatively impacting the prospects of conflict resolution. The social division engulfing Bahrain is representative of the power struggle and confessional tensions in the Gulf region.
The Fallacy of De Facto Independent Candidacy in Tanzania: A Rejoinder (PDF)
Alexander B. Makulilo
The independent candidate question in Tanzania has, since 1992, remained a subject of debate among political parties, judiciary, parliament, executive, the attorney general’s chamber, academics, civil societies, and election observers. The issue of this debate is whether or not independent candidates should be introduced in the electoral system. The ruling party and its government have been against the independent candidates on the ground that it would jeopardize the entire electoral system. The purpose of this article is twofold. First is to present my rejoinder to the issues raised by Frank Mateng’e’s article “Protesting the Independent Candidacy in Tanzania’s Elections: A Bona Fide Cause?” concerning one of my earlier works about the independent candidate issue in Tanzania. Second, I engage the contribution of Mateng’e to the independent candidate debates. This entails also interrogating his concept of “de facto independent candidacy”.
Valentin Stoian
Joshua Cohen’s book, Rousseau: a Free Community of Equals interprets Rousseauan political thought with the tools of analytical philosophy. It is part of a wider project of “translating” the works of early modern philosophers into contemporary academic speech. Moreover, together with Rawls’s Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, Cohen’s book represents a radical turn in the interpretation of Rousseau’s philosophy. Similarly to Rawls, Cohen’s book seeks to challenge an older generation of Rousseau’s exegetes. Cohen‘s central thesis is that Rousseau’s philosophy does not represent the blueprint for a non-democratic oppressive society. For Cohen, Rousseau is the designer of a deliberative democracy composed of public-minded, free and equal citizens.
Daniel Sandru
Alongside theories of democracy and the evolution of its forms from the 5th century B.C. there is a rich tradition of political reflection. The latter aims to reveal the functioning of such a regime at the often ignored level of common citizens. In the political theory of democracy, researchers distinguish between normative and empirical approaches. However, the above mentioned tradition seems to be less characterised by a methodological approach (be it normative or empirical), theoretical-political in nature, and more anthropologically oriented. In this direction, the most meaningful example seems to be Alexis de Tocqueville’s who, although seen as an outstanding theorist of democracy, may also be described as an “excursionist” in search of real, palpable democracy, of a democracy that is being built every day, and whose main promoters are not politicians and government decision-makers but common people.
Dylan Kissane
International relations, as a discipline, is concerned with the many and varied questions that arise through inter-state engagement. Some are trivial and fleeting, specific to a certain space and time and destined to only ever emerge as a sub- specialty, perhaps with a small group of committed yet marginalised scholars pursuing answers to questions that most in the field will only ever consider of secondary or tertiary appeal. Some questions, though, are central to what this social science is about, perhaps none more so than questions of war and peace in international politics. International politics, so said John Mearsheimer, is a ruthless and dangerous business and there is no sector of that business more ruthless or dangerous than war. As a result, understanding why states enter into wars that have, in the last century alone, led to the collapse of empires, the subjugation of great powers and the destruction of man and his environment is essential, if only to mitigate the ruthlessness and danger and not solve it. In this disciplinary and historical context, Richard Ned Lebow’s Why Nations Fight: Past and Future Motives for War offers an argument that, if heeded, should teach theorists and practitioners of international affairs just how and why they continue to find themselves embroiled in conflict year after year.
Jiří J. Šebek
Applying “postmodern” and “public management” in one sentence, albeit one book title, is a challenge that editors John Fenwick and Janice McMillan acknowledge in their introduction and concluding remarks to this neat book which groups nine essays on public management by subject in the theory, application and resolution sections. The anthology collects essays by Wayne Parsons, Paul H.A. Frissen, Mark Evans, Andrew Massey, David Farnham, B. Guy Peters and Henrik P. Bang. Each author takes a distinctly different approach to solving the puzzle set out by the two editors of the book which belongs to the New Horizons in Public Policy series.
Oana Elena Brânda
Cultural diplomacy is usually limited spatially to the European and American areas and is mostly investigated for the period of the Cold War. What the two editors intend to do is extend both the geographical and temporal limits to African and Asian continents as well as back to the middle of the 19th century, as is the Japanese case. What Jessica C.E. Gienow-Hecht and Mark C. Donfried attempt in this work is to offer a comprehensive view of the term "cultural diplomacy" not only by looking at its multiple aspects, but also by offering throughout time and space various examples of such a practice. As "cultural diplomacy" is not only a term, but also a valuable practice employed by both state and non-state actors.
Emilian Kavalski
The need to develop sustainable and resilient governance mechanisms has plagued scholars, policy-makers and publics for several decades. Traditionally, such frameworks for coordinated decision-making have been associated with the problem of war. Yet in recent years both the recognition of and the proliferation of complex challenges emerging from the interconnectedness between local and transnational realities, between markets, migration, trafficking, and social movements, and between pandemics, a looming energy crisis, and climate change have tested the ability to comprehend and address convincingly their turbulence. Such risks have disturbed not only the assumption of a predictable model of world politics, but equally importantly they have also unsettled the accepted ways in which international affairs have been explained and understood. In this respect, the study of global governance seems to have been undergoing an intense and oftentimes troubled reflection on the validity and relevance of its theories, methods, and propositions. At the same time, the proliferation of a diverse set of new (or previously overlooked) issues on the political stage has urged such reconsiderations of the study of politics to promptly produce explanatory frameworks that can offer germane responses to the emerging challenges.
Maja Nenadovic
This edited volume brings together “the coming generation of Balkan social scientists” in an effort to open up discussion and shed light in various elements of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s troubled post-conflict transition processes. The book, like others focusing on the same subject, illustrates why Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) remains the most intriguing piece in the puzzle of Yugoslavia’s disintegration. In the most ethnically diverse republic of Yugoslavia, the particularly bloody conflict shocked the world that was watching in disbelief as international community scrambled to respond to the escalating crisis. The Dayton Peace Agreement put an end to the war but put into place a dysfunctional political system fashioned with consociational characteristics that resulted in ethnicization of politics, education and just about every other aspect of life in the country. Finally, the unprecedented international intervention that culminated in the institution of ‘international administration’, as embodied by the Office of the High Representative (OHR), made BiH the ‘perfect’ social experiment in the making. As an extreme or crucial case study, it attracted hordes of social scientists analyzing peace building, intervention, state building, nation-building and post-conflict reconstruction. With the international administration now in its sixteenth year of presence on the ground and with the political situation spiraling out of control to the point of talk among (nationalist) political elites of renewed conflict, it is not difficult to understand why the country is a mess that continues to fascinate.
Salvador Santino Regilme Jr.
Southeast Asia has recently been dubbed as one of the world's fastest rising economic hubs. Although it has some countries that offer exemplary stories fromthe East Asian economic miracle, the region also has its share of middle-income and low-income countries beset with grave problems in their respective political economies such as endemic poverty, environmental challenges and economic governance issues. Notwithstanding that the region is indeed a fascinating focal point for the analysis of emerging political economies, there appears to be a vacuum in Asian studies scholarship on a comprehensively-written volume examining political-economic change of the countries from a distinctive regionalist perspective which justifiably abandons the country-by-country analytic approach. More particularly, this means that it considers the entirety of Southeast Asia as a focal unit of analytic-scholarly endeavor, rather than examining each country in the region - with the latter task usually ending up in a mere stockpiling of case studies.
Lina Klymenko
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's transformation has been an object of study by scholars of transition studies. The challenges of political, economic, and nation-building processes occurring in post-Soviet Russia have sparked numerous scholarly debates, and with the comeback of Russia in international politics, the interest of scholars in the societal and political developments of that country became even more pronounced. Michael's Urban recent book contributes to the body of existing scholarly literature on Russia's post-Soviet transformation and, due to its alternative conceptual framework, the book presents an interesting and thought-provoking study of the Russian society and politics.
Simon McMahon
The Transnational Condition represents a valuable development of the academic literature on social movements and transnationalism. The objective of Simon Teune has been to "take protests in Europe as an example for the crosscutting relevance of transnational exchanges" (p. 2). Protest and activism act as a lens through which we are able to explore how local, national and global (or European) levels of social relations are shaped and integrated. Although the conceptualisation of ‘transnationalism' as a set of "pluri-local relations of entanglement beyond national borders" (ibid.) initially seems somewhat vague and imprecise, the case studies that complete the edition clearly illustrate how a tighter definition of boundaries between these levels would fail to capture the fluid and dynamic nature of cross- border exchanges across them. In summary, the editor has brought together a range of texts that successfully "expands the depth of academic focus with reference to political processes on the European continent", whilst also presenting academics of social movements, European integration and communication studies with new avenues for investigation. The result is a collection of studies that does not only inform about the topic at hand, but offers analytical tools for the future development of the field.