Ethnurgy,mobilisation, memory and trauma in consociational systems

I intend to study three characteristics of deeply divided societies that hinder consociationalism: ethnurgy (politicisation of ethnic identities), mobilisation, memory and trauma. My argument is that consociational practices may be hampered by non‐structural elements, which is a break‐away from the classical study of consociationalism which focuses on institutional functions and external actors. By studying consociationalism from this new dimension, I intend to show that internal factors are critical in understanding the threats and pressure of any consociational arrangement, in an attempt to create better power sharing arrangements and/or improve the existing consociational provisions in deeply divided societies.     

The foundations of modern political thought

This paper aims at setting Montesquieu's 1729 sojourn in the Dutch Republic within its specific Dutch context whilst reconsidering the impact this short period may have exerted on his work. Based on a wide variety of Dutch, English and French sources, the article offers a study of Montesquieu's Dutch networks and contacts, a comparative Franco-Dutch approach to taxation and fiscal policy and an insight into the history of the stadholderate under William IV. The main argument made in the paper is two-fold: first, that the Dutch Republic was a mirror Montesquieu held up to the French monarchy, allowing him to put a number of ideas of government to the test; secondly that, owing to the fluctuating nature of Dutch political events between 1729 and 1748, the Dutch model remained somewhat elusive in Montesquieu's broader understanding of the paradigm of republican regimes.     

Scaling the City: The Political Economy of 'Glocal' Development - Brussels' Conundrum

In this contribution, the new position of the city in the urban political economy will be considered in the context of the shifting realities that characterize an increasingly hybridizing and cosmopolitan global (dis)order. We shall argue that globalization is paralleled by a restructuring of the city and with an increasing importance of the urban in a context of intensifying inter-urban competition. The success of cities is dependent on their local 'embeddedness' in institutional and other networks of power. Attention will be paid to the role of local elites and to the need to forge 'growth coalitions'. We shall conclude that the formation of an inclusive and cohesive growth coalition is a key condition for the future development of Brussels in a context of intense inter-urban competition. However, this poses a host of political problems. Not in the least, the fact the new 'glocal' elites often refuse to partake in local institutional or political networks. The commitment to place that invariably comes with a greater 'local' institutional embedding which may militate against their global strategies and aspirations. The key question for 'local' politics then becomes one of how to forge networks and linkages that force 'glocal' elites to become inserted actively in the regional armatures of governance.     

Spatial Planning in the Network Society-Rethinking the Principles of Planning in the Netherlands

The Dutch planning system rejoices a very positive reputation in the international academic planning literature. Yet both the conceptual orientation and the institutional practices of Dutch planning are eroded. New institutional practices have emerged that effectively form a 'shadow structure' to the official planning system, eroding both its effectiveness and legitimacy. The article suggests that this instititutional development is to be understood against the background of larger processes of social change to which the system has so far not responded: the coming 'network society'. In light of this analysis it is suggested that Dutch planning could enhance both its effectiveness and legitimacy by reconsidering some of the basic features of the planning system.     

Interpretation and its others

An interpretive approach to political science provides accounts of actions and practices that are interpretations of interpretations. We develop this argument using the idea of ‘situated agency’. There are many common criticisms of such an approach. This paper focuses on nine: that an interpretive approach is mere common sense; that it focuses on beliefs or discourses, not actions or practices; that it ignores concepts of social structure; that it seeks to understand actions and practices, not to explain them; that it is concerned exclusively with qualitative techniques of data generation; that it must accept actors' own accounts of their beliefs; that it is insensitive to the ways in which power constitutes beliefs; that it is incapable of producing policy-relevant knowledge; and that it is incapable of producing objective knowledge. We show that the criticisms rest on both misconceptions about an interpretive approach and misplaced beliefs in the false idols of hard data and rigorous methods.     

Industrial change and meso‐corporatism — a comparative view on three German states

Tripartite‐arrangements between state, unions and employers associations played a prominent role in the theory and practice of corporatism, with incomes policy at national level providing the paradigm for this approach. Now the focus has changed. Concepts of meso‐corporatism have gained significance in research on interest groups; alternative modes of political‐economic governance in general, and problems of industrial restructuring in particular, have become central to the discussion. Accordingly, important contributions have come from industrial and economic sociology and from the theory of the state, marking a distinctive expansion of the analytical framework. At the same time, studies of meso‐corporatism have neglected the regional perspective in favour of sectoral studies. This paper undertakes to remedy this by examining the governance of industrial adjustment through industrial policy in three Länder of the Federal Republic of Germany. The three cases can be considered as different variants of meso‐corporatism: ‘Corporate’ corporatism in Baden‐Württemberg; ‘staged’ corporatism in North Rhine‐Westphalia; ‘situative’ corporatism in Saxony. In its final part the paper raises questions on the conditions for those arrangements and the prerequisites for their continuance.     

The Positive Economics of Inflation in Brazil

High and unstable inflation rates have prevailed in Brazil during the period 1985-92. All attempts to stabilize the economy have failed and ‘living with inflation’ has become politically feasible. The structure of the financial market in general, and financial adaptation mechanisms in particular, have played a crucial role in implementing and maintaining this political-economic option. Financial adaptation mechanisms sway the management of monetary and fiscal policies, with a direct influence on the credibility of macroeconomic policy announcements. More importantly, distributive asymmetries generated by those financial instruments, in association with differences in political motivation for different groups in the society, have created a stalemate regarding stabilization efforts. This article argues that, for the Brazilian case, the positive economics literature has failed to explain the inflationary phenomenon because it has not considered financial adaptation as an important linkage between political motivation of certain groups in the society and the correspondent desirable economic outcomes. The validation of social-economic objectives of certain classes became an important raison d'être of financial adaptation. Consequently, change of inflationary regimes carries costs and benefits far beyond those implied by fiscal reform alone.     

The Modern Revolution and the Collapse of Moral Analogy: Tocqueville and Guizot

Abstract

I locate the Leveller John Lilburne within the broader literature on the history of political thought and I challenge scholars who associate Lilburne's Leveller political thought with Hobbesian liberty, with proto-libertarianism, or with proto-bourgeois political thought. I advance an understanding of Lilburne as creatively merging central tenets of proto-liberalism with central tenets of republicanism. To develop this amalgamation of ideas, I go considerably beyond the Agreement of the People and the Putney Debates to explore the larger Leveller corpus. Through this investigation I articulate Lilburne's account of key concepts in the history of political thought including: liberty, tyranny, rights, rule, political participation, popular sovereignty, civic virtue, self-interest, harmony, antagonism, and institutional design. I conclude by arguing that we should consider the Levellers, particularly John Lilburne, as offering an early example of what has come to be called liberal-republican political thought, a way of theorizing found within the writings of English Commonwealthsmen.     

The Paradox of Subjective Truth

Abstract

This paper focuses in part on Jan Assmann's interpretation and refutation of Carl Schmitt's very well-known secularization theory that all significant modern concepts of the state are secularized theological notions. It will be demonstrated that Assmann attempts to counter Schmitt's conception of modern secularization by suggesting that Mosaic monotheism inaugurated a revolution by theologizing the political. By briefly exploring Assmann's interpretation of Egyptian religion, it will be argued that a conception of the political as distinct from the theological characterized the political form of ancient Egypt. This leads to a discussion of Assmann's argument that Schmitt's conception of the friend/enemy distinction should be understood as an aberration of the political form of ancient Egypt and therefore viewed as a category of political illegitimacy. In order to illustrate this, attention will first be drawn to Assmann's distinction between primary and secondary religion. This is followed by a discussion of Assmann's notion of the structural transform of the political by theology, which then moves specifically into his argument for the intellectual origins of Schmitt's concept of the political. It will be attempted throughout this paper to bring conceptual clarification to Assmann's notion of theologization by relating it to the question of political theology currently taking place in France and the English-speaking world. Towards the end I offer a number of criticisms of Assmann's notion of theologization.     

State functioning and state failure in the South Pacific

The South Pacific region features enormous variation in state performance. While Polynesian nations such as Samoa have proved to be relatively successful post-colonial states, Melanesian countries like the Solomon Islands are increasingly categorised as 'weak', 'failing' or 'failed' states. Drawing on a range of comparative studies by economists and political scientists in recent years, this article argues that cross-country variation in ethnic diversity between much of Polynesia and Melanesia is a key factor in explaining differences in state performance across the South Pacific. It shows how different kinds of ethnic structure are associated with specific political and economic outcomes, including variation in political stability, economic development, and internal conflict from country to country. In so doing, it helps explain why some parts of the South Pacific appear to be failing while others are relative success stories - and why this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.     

Advocacy Coalitions,Policy Stability,and Policy Change in China: The Case of Birth Control Policy, 1980–2015

This study used the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) to explain stability and change in China's national birth control policy from 1980 to 2015. We found that policy remained stable, despite internal and external changes to the relevant subsystem, from 1980 to 2013. The stability was explained by the dominant advocacy coalition's mobilization of considerable resources to defend its policy core beliefs. Policy changes in 2013 and 2015 were caused by a combination of external and internal perturbations, in addition to policy-oriented learning and advocacy by two expert-led minority advocacy coalitions. The case showed that the openness and plurality of China's policy processes had increased over time but were still limited in comparison with those in Western democracies. The case analysis confirmed two policy change hypotheses and suggested a mechanism for policy change: a hierarchically superior jurisdiction is more likely to impose a major policy change when it learns that the change is an adaptation to internal and external perturbations and that adopting the change will serve the jurisdiction's political interests.     

The arc of autonomy in Georgia's Ajara

Drawing on the case study of Georgia's Ajara region, this paper makes the argument for foregrounding autonomy as a strategy used by states for managing diverse territories. Particularly salient to the concept of autonomy is its flexibility as a spatial fix, one which can be variously deployed depending on the form of political relations between center and periphery. Empirically, we draw from a set of 22 interviews conducted in Tbilisi and Ajara's capital of Batumi to trace the arc of autonomy in the republic through its Soviet and post-Soviet history. Established on cultural grounds, the form of Ajara's autonomy has subsequently been institutional, instrumental, and nominal. The republic today maintains its autonomous status, though its competences are delimited from Tbilisi; rather, this status serves as a model for the future—albeit unlikely—reincorporation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia into the Georgian state. In conclusion, the paper endorses greater engagement with autonomies that fall short of conflict and separatism but nonetheless provide valuable insights into the suite of strategies that states employ in the management of territory. Autonomies are possibly entering a new, more unstable period of centralizing pressures that will challenge their original purpose and perhaps also regional peace and stability.     

Local politics and foreign ventures in China's transitional economy: the political economy of Singaporean investments in China

The re-articulation of China into the global economy since December 1978 has led to a tremendous influx of foreign capital during the past two decades. Constrained by the limited domestic market and encouraged by home-country government, transnational corporations from Singapore are regionalising increasingly into the Asia Pacific region. To date, a significant amount of Singaporean investments abroad has gone to China. Based on personal interviews with parent companies in Singapore and their subsidiaries and/or affiliates in China, this paper aims to examine the political economy of Singaporean investments in China. Specifically, I argue that successful cross-border operations of Singaporean firms are embedded in dense networks of social and political relationships. These relationships provide the political leverage and strategic resources to enable the establishment of Singaporean firms in China. This establishment, however, is contingent on blending with local politics in China through which foreign firms use leverage on the partnership advantage of local governments (difang zhengfu), their enterprises, and business activities. This rise of local corporatism is a key institutional consequence of the recent rescaling of China's political economy. Case studies of ventures by Singaporean firms in China are presented to support my arguments. Taken together, these empirical materials shed light on the importance of understanding the role of politics at different spatial scales in influencing transnational corporations and their international business operations.     

The politics of conflict: a constructivist critique of consociational and civil society theories*

ABSTRACT. This article presents a (critical realist) constructivist critique of both consociational and civil society/transformationist approaches and their crude understandings of politics and the prospects for political change. Consociationalism's primordialist or essentialist foundation leads it towards a world‐weary, pessimistic, conservative realism about how far ‘divided societies’ may be transformed. Advocates of the civil society approach, in contrast, take an instrumentalist view of identity and are optimistic that a radical transformation can be achieved by mobilising the people against ‘hard‐line’ political representatives. The constructivist approach can provide a framework in which a more complex and nuanced understanding of identities is possible. This better equips us for understanding the prospects of bringing about desirable political change. The first part of this article is a critique of Nagle and Clancy's consociationalism. The second part provides a brief outline of a constructivist critique of both the consociational and civil society understandings of politics and their contribution to understanding the politics of managing conflict.     

Alphonse Aulard Revisited

Alphonse Aulard (1849–1928) institutionalised and professionalised the practice of history. Beyond this undisputed contribution, however, Aulard's place in historiography remains contested. Scholars' perceptions that anti-clerical and radical-republican commitments skewed his research findings, and that he chose narrowly to study history as a series of constitutional, institutional and political developments in stark contrast with his student Albert Mathiez, have divided opinion regarding the beliefs and significance of Aulard. Yet Aulard's work and the cultural and political contribution it made have become a source of inspiration for a generation of scholars now studying revolutionary and European history. Based for the first time on an examination of his private papers, professional activities and oeuvre in tandem, this article revisits Aulard, and, using a post-analytic hermeneutics, re-reads his work in order to show how in his age Aulard advanced a demonstrably original contribution to historical research. He likewise left behind him a neo-Jacobin legacy more attentive to raison d'état than party division and championing international, liberal democracy and human rights. Multifaceted commitments therefore both explain the content of Aulard's oeuvre and help to understand contemporary developments, and suggest future directions, in historical enquiry.     

Party Interests,Public Opinion and Institutional Preferences: Electoral System Change in New Zealand

Explanations of the origins of electoral systems tend to rely heavily on rational choice assumptions: essentially the common sense inference that political parties prefer electoral arrangements that promote their interests. Accounts of electoral system change in New Zealand support either a partisan interest interpretation on the basis of survey evidence from voters, or point to other deeper causes in historical, institutional and cultural phenomena. Using survey data from the 1993 referendum, covering both voters and political party elites, we seek to reconcile these approaches by establishing the limits of the party interest approach. We construct an argument which also stresses the effects of cultural and institutional variables-most notably, many New Zealanders' frustrated expectations that governments be accountable between elections as well as on election day, and their hopes that multi-party government may facilitate such accountability.     

The politics of the accord does corporatism explain it?

The period between the holding of the National Economic Summit Conference in April 1983 and the 1984 election has seen the politics of the Accord shift from a primary concern with wage setting through the Arbitration Commission to the management of trade‐offs in non‐wage areas between business, government and the ACTU. The politics of the Accord in this period is not understood by adopting an interest group approach to business, the ACTU and the government or by accepting EPAC's view of its own institutional role. Rather, business and the ACTU obey two different logics of collective action and Epac is a ‘disorganising’ institution. It is a representation system based on closure by exclusion called partial corporatism. Partial corporatism benefits business disproportionately and excludes women, welfare recipients and the unemployed.     

Labour internationalism and the public sector: The case of the Public Services International

This paper sets out the need to conceptualise labour internationalism in the public sector, given its distinct political character and orientation. Our analysis adds to a literature on labour internationalism that hitherto has mainly depicted strategies of unions in private sector industries. To better understand the reasons for upscaling trade union efforts in a sector where the main employer remains the institutional apparatus of the nation-state, we have interviewed office bearers in the most important global union federation organising across different public services – Public Services International (PSI) – asking them to explain their political and strategic considerations. We find that the distinct role of the nation state as an employer, the public character of work and specific relations between public sector workers and the users of services, are all determinants in shaping labour transnationalism in the public sector. This in turn leads to a greater emphasis on alliances with social movements and oppositional campaigns, representing a radical global political unionism. Neoliberal austerity and privatisation measures have reinforced the importance of such political relationships and power, but also challenged their organisational foundations. However, alliance-building is not PSI's sole strategy. We find that office bearers at the transnational level combines three strategic rationales through orientations that we have labelled the political-institutional, the movement-popular and the industrial-corporate. We also suggest that employing these sensitising concepts can bolster the scholarly treatment of understanding labour internationalism and its strategy repertoires more generally.     

Inter-firm knowledge creation: A re-appreciation of embeddedness from a relational perspective

Embeddedness studies often follow a structural approach, arguing, for example, that long-term relations are necessary for trust to develop. A case study of the Dutch company Océ shows that such need not be the case. Taking the process of knowledge creation as the starting-point of analysis, this can be explained. However, it is the content of network relations, what is going on inside them, that needs to be examined rather than their structure. This approach is more in line with Granovetter's original embeddedness argument. After all, it is not the fact that actors are embedded that matters, but how this affects their actions.     

Corporations,Government and Development: The Case of Institutional Corruption in Tasmania

The proliferation of studies into corruption over the past decade has highlighted its widely differing manifestations and causes. This article applies the notion of institutional corruption to the case study of the Lennon government's approval of the Gunns pulp mill in Tasmania. A multidisciplinary framework is developed to explain why the approval process became embroiled in widespread allegations of commercial favouritism. It is argued that the institutional corruption involved in this process was an outcome of the interaction of the political economy of Tasmania, its political culture and the political psychology of Paul Lennon as leader. The implications of such a multidisciplinary approach for a study of corruption are discussed.