Police power in green: Furthering political ecologies of the state

The growth of wildlife and environmental crime has catalysed efforts to strengthen state policing to better exert control over activities, flows, and people that threaten states’ desired socio-ecological orders. The expanded role of policing in and over human-environment relations provokes conceptual and empirical imperatives to better centre policing in political ecology and political geography scholarship on state-environment relations. This article begins with the question of how political ecology might better account for and conceptualise policing power, and how doing so can help understand how, where, and through what practices and institutions states exercise power over socio-ecological relations. To capture the role of policing in exerting power and control over socio-ecological orders, this article brings together insights on critical theories of police power, conservation power and state power to develop the concept of police power in green. I argue that police power in green grounds the mechanisms through which state power is exerted over socio-ecological relations in ways that reflect a broader strengthening of state power. I use multi-scalar and ethnographic research to examine three processes that extend and expand police power in green, and related state power. These are: 1) expanding conservation law and criminality beyond conservation spaces to national territory; 2) creating new environmental police bodies; 3) strengthening and expanding traditional policing, enforcement and criminal justice institutions. I end by outlining how police power in green can connect and further critical scholarship on political ecologies of the state and broader debates on policing, the green state and state power.     

International Regimes and Democratic Governance: Political Equality and Influence in Global Institutions

Proponents of cosmopolitan democracy rely primarily on institutional design to make their case for the feasibility of democratic governance at this level. Another strategy seems more plausible: proposing a 'non-ideal' theory in Rawls's sense that examines the social forces and conditions currently promoting democracy at the international level. The strongest forces operating now are various transnational associations that help to produce and monitor regime formation and compliance. Such a highly decentralized form of governance suggests that democratization is thereby promoted by a dense network of associations in international civil society, a global public sphere, and responsive political organizations. However much these forces disperse power through the normative principle of equal access to political influence, they could also fall well short of realizing desirable ideals such as free and open deliberation. In order not to devolve into an interest group pluralism, the decentralized strategy requires that a richer democracy be realized through the legal institutionalization of free and equal access to the global public sphere.     

Politics squeezed through a police state: Policing and vinculación in post-1968 Mexico City

Contemporary political geographers accommodate everyday practice in accounts of state power but arguably tend to retain a bias towards sites easily identified with the state. This bias complements a frequent conflation of policing and the state in recent scholarship on the post-political. This article challenges these assumptions by showing how rituals of anti-stateness may themselves paradoxically give to the senses a partitioned world of state domination and non-state resistance that delimits political possibility. I specifically examine activist participation in such policing through analysis of student-left commemorations of 1968 in Mexico City. My analysis of such activism also reveals tension in processes that consolidate a partitioned state/non-state world. I show that, through vinculación, some activists establish unaccounted-for solidarities that exceed the categories through which state power has in the past been exercised, reconfiguring relations between people whose place vis-à-vis the state would otherwise be predictable. I therefore reveal ongoing interplay between processes of politics and policing, not a “post-political condition” that would demand, as politics, the negation of any social-spatial order.     

The end of the territorially-sovereign state? The case of crime control in the United States

Numerous commentators argue that the nation-state is an endangered species. External forces of globalization and internal forces of social differentiation, many suggest, are significantly weakening the state's capacity to regulate its subject population within its jurisdictionally-defined space. Such an argument is often made in the specific case of crime control. The spread of international communications networks and the growth of international policing suggest that single-state crime control efforts will increasingly be insufficient, the growth of private security and community-oriented crime reduction efforts suggest that the state is surrendering crime control to other domestic agencies. This paper examines the specific case of crime control in the United States to argue that the putative weakening of the state is not in fact occurring. When examined more closely, suggested evidence of decreased state power vis-a-vis crime turns out, if anything, to demonstrate the opposite. The analysis demonstrates that, in the American case especially, the state remains startlingly relevant when it comes to efforts to combat crime and maintain order. Because police agencies are bureaucratic institutions that must demonstrate their relevance to ensure their continued health, and because the state's broader legitimacy is linked to the provision of security, the public crime control apparatus promises to remain robust for the indefinite future.     

‘It was Satan that Took the People’: The Making of Public Authority in Burkina Faso

This article explores the making of public authority through the analysis of one specific master‐hunter in Western Burkina Faso and of the cultural and political contexts in which he has emerged as a political actor. Instead of looking at institutions and socio‐political structures per se, the article focuses on a powerful but controversial political actor, in order to unpick the intricate networks that he has creatively appropriated in the making of public authority. The master‐hunter, whom we will call Kakre, has been breaking state law in order to assert his own authority, but he has also drawn upon state institutions to be recognized as a legitimate political actor. External actors, such as civil servants, politicians and private business entrepreneurs, have consulted him and asserted his public authority. As a political actor Kakre is generally held to be unpredictable, which is one of the reasons for the importance of scrutinizing his public authority. It could even be argued that ‘unpredictability’ is one of the characteristics that make authority and power compelling. In conclusion, it is suggested that public authority is derived from a combination of different sources of legitimacy and that, therefore, public authority is shaped by the very ‘unpredictability’ of specific political actors.     

Editorial

Abstract

During this last century war has taken more lives and wrought more damage than in all of human history. Its persistence - with over a hundred armed conflicts on the scale of ‘war’ raging in the last decade - prompts a search for causes, since diagnosis comes before a cure. Many fingers point to the stress of poverty as a major contributing factor, but both anecdotal and modelling approaches reveal that poverty has not been and is not now a significant proactive or enabling factor: if poverty were to become a thing of the past there would be no assurance that wars would be eliminated or even significantly reduced. Poverty is associated with societal stress and with sporadic and endemic societal violence, but stress does not lead to war or play a major role in enabling the rise to power of war prone leaders and their associated elites unless other factors are at play. The causal factors conducive to war making are varied but all are characterised by tribal, religious, and ethnic rivalries that political leaders exploit to mobilise support for war, and/or by the lust for money or hegemonic power of the political leadership. It is exceptionally difficult to prevent the rise of leaders who, for various self-serving reasons, are able to gain power and are prone to pursue policies leading to war. The way to thwart these ambitions is to create conditions, nationally and internationally, that are inimical to the rise to power of such leaders and, if they do gain power, to make the realisation of their war bent policies too costly to them. At the national level of governance the essential elements of policies to create such war inhibiting conditions are education, especially at the primary level, a free independent media, and a guaranteed protection of political and civil rights - in a phrase, democratic governance. At the international level of governance the support calls for financial and other forms of assistance that would enable national governments to carry through the democracy enhancing programmes and projects related to education and to political and civil rights, and measures to strengthen democratic control of the system of international institutions and to constrain the exercise of national sovereignty in those areas where doing so enhances ‘the global common good’, one key element of which is the radical diminution of international and intrastate wars. Economic and social rights are the other aspects that comprise the concept of ‘human rights’, and, though they are mutually reinforcing, for tactical reasons the struggle to achieve these rights should be pursued on a separate track from the struggle to gain political and civil rights that appear to face less formidable obstacles and could thus, in the short and medium term, progress sufficiently to have a significant impact in reducing the occurrence and intensity of wars.     

The invasion of Iraq: what are the morals of the story?

It is uncontroversial that the invasion and occupation of Iraq involved the following errors: the misinterpretation of intelligence; the underestimation of the number of troops requisite for law and order; the disbanding of the Iraqi army; and indiscriminate debaathification of the civil service. The first error was one of imagination rather than virtue; the others were caused by ‘callousness”, impatience, and consequent imprudence. These vices were partly responsible for massive civilian casualties, which many wrongly assume to teach the fundamentally erroneous character of the invasion. Nonetheless, we should beware such moral flaws in tomorrow's policy‐makers and renounce the managerial mentality that fosters them. Another lesson is that, in so far as nation‐rebuilding requires substantial and long‐term commitments, it must command the support of the nation‐builder's domestic electorate; and to do that, it must be able to justify itself in terms of the national interest. From this we should not infer the further lesson that morality's reach into foreign policy is limited, since, according to Thomist ethics, the pursuit of the national interest can itself be moral. Finally, one lesson that we should not learn from Iraq is never again to violate the letter of international law and intervene militarily in a sovereign state without Security Council authorization. The law's authority can be undermined as much by the UN's failure to enforce it, as by states taking it into their own hands. It is seriously problematic that the current international legal system denies the right of individual states to use military force unilaterally except in self‐defence, while reserving the enforcement of international law to a body, whose capacity to act is hamstrung by the right of veto. Given this situation, military intervention without Security Council authorization could be morally justified on certain conditions.     

Reordering Society: Vigilantism and Expressions of Sovereignty in Port Elizabeth's Townships

Crime and vigilantism in South Africa are generally seen as a reaction to the breakdown of formal law. Both are constituted outside the state and emerge when the new social contract has been broken — that is, when the state can no longer provide security. This article argues that there is often an intimate relationship between vigilante formations and state structures. It explores this apparent paradox through public discourses on crime and the emergence of twilight institutions such as vigilante groups. It suggests that vigilantism has to be analysed as an attempt to promulgate a new legal‐political order, despite being constructed outside this order. This argument is explored in the context of the Amadlozi, a vigilante group operating in the townships of Port Elizabeth. The article situates this discussion within an examination of discourses on crime, as well as the production of township residents and their protection from crime. Finally, it proffers some ideas on sovereignty and its relationship to twilight institutions.     

The influence of Operation Allied Force on the development of the jus ad bellum

Some have argued that NATO's air campaign against Serbia in 1999 was manifestly unlawful, others that it was an entirely legitimate humanitarian intervention. A third position suggests that the intervention while unlawful, in the strictest sense, was nonetheless legitimate. Here, a customary law right to intervene was seen as emerging, permitting action to prevent a mass atrocity crime, even when UN Security Council authorization was absent. Did Operation Allied Force, then, add to the case for the emergence of this new customary norm? While the 1990s was a decade of humanitarian intervention, the decade since has been dominated by international action against terrorism and, of course, the effects of the highly controversial US and British led invasion of Iraq. In this context, there is scant evidence that a customary right or obligation to intervene for humanitarian reasons has crystallized since 1999. But if Kosovo achieved anything, it was to prompt greater attention to the merits of the argument in favour of a ‘responsibility to protect’. If NATO's 1999 action were repeated today in a similarly unauthorized manner it would still be unlawful, but it would perhaps be seen as a legitimate means to preventing a mass atrocity crime.     

What Does the Somali Experience Teach Us about the Social Contract and the State?

Since 1991 the international system has struggled and failed to recreate a state on the territory of the former Somalia. Proto‐state systems have been formed by Somalis themselves in Somaliland and Puntland and alternative forms of governance and order exist in other parts of Somalia, but none enjoys international recognition. The polities of Somalia offer important lessons concerning our general theories about social contract, the role that states play in creating wealth, indigenous systems of governance, and the failure of existing international approaches to state reconstruction. Contemporary Somali politics is re‐explored here to extract these lessons. The article explores the assumptions embedded in the works of the classic Western social contract theorists in the light of Somali experience in order to show that the underlying conceptual structure of international state reconstruction work needs to be rethought. We conclude that it frequently is better to allow for bottom‐up, organic, disjointed negotiation of indigenous governance solutions (even though they probably will not conform to Western ideas of liberal democracy) than for the international system to impose top‐down answers. The former more closely tracks the history of state formation in Europe and the latter is troubled by the inconsistent and not necessarily benign interests of the international actors involved. Indigenous, local political systems are changed by the stresses of violent conflict, so prompt action to employ them in a post‐conflict situation is indicated.     

Neoliberalism,the Developmental State and Civil Society in Korea

Following the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s, some scholars predicted that the introduction of neoliberal ideas and policies would result in the definitive passing of the Korean developmental state. Despite these predictions, Korean state elites have retained their influential position as economic managers by, for instance, practicing a revised form of industrial policy. Neoliberal reform has, however, had significant social implications. Rather than neoliberalism acting as a democratising force that curtails the power of the state, this article illustrates that the Korean state has used the reform agenda to justify an expansion of its powers. The state presented itself as an agent capable of resolving long-standing economic problems, and of defending law and order. By doing so, the state reduced the political space available to non-state actors. The article concludes that for some states, neoliberalism is a means of retaining economic and political influence, and that former developmental states may be particularly adept at co-opting elements of civil society into governing alliances.     

Vattel's theory of the international order: Commerce and the balance of power in the Law of Nations

Vattel's Law of Nations (1758) claimed that a system of independent states could maintain the liberty of each without undermining the ideal of an international society. The chief institution serving this purpose was the balance of power. In Vattel's account, the balance of power could be stabilized if it operated primarily through a process of commercial preferences and restrictions. These limits on how states ought to defend themselves were grounded in Vattel's thoroughly forgotten writings on the mid-eighteenth-century luxury debates, which addressed the political economy of reforming the state and pacifying the international order. An examination of Vattel's Law of Nations in this context shows that his approach to the law of nations should not be dismissed as a capitulation to the harsh reality of international politics.     

Post‐conflict Statebuilding and State Legitimacy: From Negative to Positive Peace?

This article is concerned with the potential that statebuilding interventions have to institutionalize social justice, in addition to their more immediate ‘negative’ peace mandates, and the impact this might have, both on local state legitimacy and the character of the ‘peace’ that might follow. Much recent scholarship has stressed the legitimacy of a state's behaviour in relation to conformity to global governance norms or democratic ‘best practice’. Less evident is a discussion of the extent to which post‐conflict polities are able to engender the societal legitimacy central to political stability. As long as this level of legitimacy is absent (and it is hard to generate), civil society is likely to remain distant from the state, and peace and stability may remain elusive. A solution to this may be to apply existing international legislation centred in the UN and the ILO to compel international organizations and national states to deliver basic needs security through their institutions. This has the effect of stimulating local‐level state legitimacy while simultaneously formalizing social justice and positive peacebuilding.     

The Biafran secession and the limits of self-determination

The Biafran secession crisis raised a series of profound and unanswerable questions about the nature and limits of self-determination, state sovereignty and African decolonization. A wide range of actors—both supporters and opponents of Biafra—viewed the Nigerian civil war and Biafra's attempt to carve out a new state as an important moment in the history of self-determination as a political and legal principle. Likewise, the collapse of Biafra seemed to offer a series of lessons for movements asserting their right to self-determination, as well as for those seeking to limit its application, suggesting the open-ended and contested nature of the concept even as it was institutionalized in the fabric of international human rights law. Ultimately, however, Biafra's failed secession attempt could only highlight the ambiguity and contested nature of sovereignty and self-determination in the international system, and the ability of groups such as the Igbos to exploit their indeterminacy in an effort to achieve their aims.     

Getting out of the Iraq trap

The Iraq crisis has been variously defined as a problem of local leadership, regional security, culture clash, arms control, neo–imperialism, transatlantic relations and international legitimacy. The competing definitions reflect the worldviews of different actors with a stake in the outcome of the crisis. Each perspective has validity for its proponent and none of them can be expected to triumph to the exclusion of the others. Consequently, it is argued here, whatever the goals of UN and/or military intervention in Iraq, at the receiving end, the experience will be at odds with what is meant or sought by such intervention. A way to understand the problem and thence to address it is ventured which combines local, regional and international perspectives and calls for a multitiered, multilateral approach to rethinking Iraq and the region. The intention is to take on 'the hawks' who claim that the United States can deliver democracy to client states, challenge their logic and propose an alternative vision that would require all parties, international and local, to take shared responsibility not only for Iraq but for Palestine too.     

Internationalisation of the Chinese subnational state and capital: the case of Yunnan and the Greater Mekong Subregion

This article examines the participation of China's Yunnan Province in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) in order to understand the dynamics behind the regionalisation and internationalisation strategies adopted by a Chinese subnational state. It argues that the Yunnan case demonstrates the outflow of state capital—both national and provincially based—to have been instrumental in harnessing Beijing's and Kunming's political support for programs of subregional economic cooperation. This political support has led to a state capital alliance underpinning the economic expansion of provincial state capital into the GMS. It also argues that subregional governance arrangements, such as those featuring in the GMS, embed the competitive advantage of state capital through new forms of extra-territorial governance that ostensibly de-emphasises the political dimensions of state capital. The internationalisation of Yunnan subnational state is reflected in its political strategy of subregional governance. These changes point to complex rescaling of not just national state but also subnational states in Asia that find expression in variegated regional and subregional political projects.     

Violence and vigilance in Nahua communities of seventeenth-century central Mexico

While historians have long studied the institutional dimensions of crime and punishment, this article examines the informal, extra-legal efforts of Nahuas and other residents of central Mexican communities to contend with violence and resolve conflicts. Residents of Nahua communities could not rely entirely on the authorities for protection and justice; rather, by being vigilant and taking matters into their own hands, they played a vital but underappreciated role in policing their communities, dealing with disorder, and preserving the peace. As such, they shouldered some of the law enforcement functions of the state apparatus. At times, their contributions could prove indispensable to the administration of justice. Their efforts not only helped to maintain public order and protect one another but they also tell us much about perceptions of acceptable behavior as well as notions of civic responsibility and, by extension, community membership and social solidarity.     

Examining the Impact of Turkey's Approach Vis‐à‐Vis Syria into Turkey's Iraq Policy

The tension between “international order” and justice has long been a focus of critical attention of many scholars. Today, with the rise of the humanitarian crises, the debate is once again visible, and Turkish foreign policy is one of the most important areas of observation of this tension. Indeed, the U.S.‐led invasion of Iraq in 2003 paved the way for Turkey to actively engage in regional affairs. Meanwhile, the need to bring human justice into world politics makes Turkish foreign policy decision makers operate on a much more humanitarian basis. Nevertheless, active humanitarian engagement poses an important challenge to traditional Turkish foreign policy as it is mainly based on the notion of “non‐interference,” as well as on the elementary components of international order, by raising suspicions on the intentions of the Turkish authorities. This article aims to explore the challenges Turkey has been facing since the U.S.‐led invasion of Iraq, and diagnose Turkish foreign policy vis‐à‐vis Iraq in the shadow of the Syrian civil war from Hedley Bull's framework of “order” and “justice.” It argues that Turkey's recent fluctuations in the Middle East could be linked to Turkey's failure to reconcile the requirements of “order” with those of “justice” and the Turkish governing party's (AKP) attempts to use justice as an important instrument to consolidate its power both in Turkey and in the Middle East.