Protest Cycle,Political Violence and Social Movements in the Basque Country

A close look at the groups, organisations and social movements among which a terrorist organisation seeks refuge and support, will provide a fundamental and strategic view of its evolution. By means of the concept of a protest cycle, I analyse the relationship between political violence and social movements in the Basque Country. With the help of Tarrow's fundamental variables in the political structure, to which I have added the degree of consciousness‐raising and mobilisation in civil society, I aim to study the protest cycle of ETA's violence from its social origins at the start of the 1960s, through its consolidation in the 1970s, to its decline from the mid‐1980s onwards. The idea I will defend is that political violence should be seen as a form of collective action directed towards a mobilisation of society, and that its vicissitudes depend on the structure of interactions set up between the armed organisation, social movements and civil society.     

Can Grassroots Mobilization of the Poorest Reduce Corruption? A Tale of Governance Reforms and Struggle against Petty Corruption in Bihar,India

The rural poor in India have long experienced corruption, exclusion from welfare schemes and the denial of rights. Critical accounts of development policy and practice advocate the need for pro‐poor governance reforms as well as effective mobilization of the poor for exercising their rights and entitlements. However, there is a dearth of empirical work which examines the following questions. What are the dynamics of such mobilization strategies in the environment of pro‐poor governance reforms? How do they affect local power relations from the perspective of the poorest social groups? And what are the challenges involved in sustaining struggles led by civil society organizations on behalf of the poorest and against petty corruption? This article addresses these questions in the context of a grassroots mobilization of Musahars (a Dalit caste group) in Bihar, one of the poorest provinces in India, which has recently initiated pro‐poor governance reforms. It explains what has or hasn't worked (and why) for the Musahars, in terms of their dealings with public officials. The authors argue that pro‐poor governance reforms and welfare schemes on their own are not sufficient; both grassroots mobilization and political will of the ruling dispensation are also necessary.     

Poverty and Agrarian‐Forest Interactions in Thailand

In this paper we address the often sterile and circular debates over relationships between poverty and deforestation. These debates revolve around questions of whether forest loss causes poverty or poverty contributes to forest encroachment, and questions of whether it is loss of access to forests or dependence on forest‐based livelihoods that cause poverty. We suggest that a way beyond the impasse is to set such debates within the context of agrarian change. Livelihoods of those who live in or near forests depend considerably on a rapidly changing agriculture, yet agrarian contexts receive only background attention in popular, political and academic discourse over poverty and forests. Moreover, to the extent that agriculture is considered, little heed is paid to social, technical and economic change. We therefore address agriculture's changing relationships with the wider economy, otherwise referred to as the agrarian transition, and with the natural resource base on which it depends. The paper draws on the experience of Thailand to illustrate our key argument, and more specifically addresses the situation on the resource periphery through a look at the agriculture‐forest interface.     

IT Industrial Development in Taiwan and the Constraints on Environmental Mobilization

Studies in the development of high‐tech industries have shown low levels of community involvement and environmental mobilization. In contrast to the tenets of social movement theories, it seems that the openness of political systems and the tactics of social movements are not enough to lead to increased grassroots environmental resistance in the context of high‐tech development. This article uses the example of high‐tech electronic development in Hsinchu, Taiwan, to examine why and how grassroots activism has been impeded in the past two decades. The article highlights the industrial characteristics and processes within the information technology sector, and analyses existing obstacles to environmental mobilization in the context of a fast‐growing high‐tech economy. It argues that a unique IT development structure has dramatically changed local social characteristics in a way that constrains grassroots mobilization in public social agendas. It also shows how the influential and rapidly expanding IT sector has come to dominate resource‐use in the area, leaving opposing forces more powerless than ever.     

The 2011 uprisings in the Arab Middle East: political change and geopolitical implications

The Arab uprisings of 2011 are still unfolding, but we can already discern patterns of their effects on the Middle East region. This article offers a brief chronology of events, highlighting their inter‐connections but also their very diverse origins, trajectories and outcomes. It discusses the economic and political grievances at the root of the uprisings and assesses the degree to which widespread popular mobilization can be attributed to pre‐existing political, labour and civil society activism, and social media. It argues that the uprisings' success in overthrowing incumbent regimes depended on the latter's responses and relationships with the army and security services. The rebellions' inclusiveness or lack thereof was also a crucial factor. The article discusses the prospects of democracy in the Arab world following the 2011 events and finds that they are very mixed: while Tunisia, at one end, is on track to achieve positive political reform, Syria, Yemen and Libya are experiencing profound internal division and conflict. In Bahrain the uprising was repressed. In Egypt, which epitomizes many regional trends, change will be limited but, for that reason, possibly more long‐lasting. Islamist movements did not lead the uprisings but will benefit from them politically even though, in the long run, political participation may lead to their decline. Finally, the article sketches the varied and ongoing geopolitical implications of the uprisings for Turkish, Iranian and Israeli interests and policies. It assesses Barack Obama's response to the 2011 events and suggests that, despite their profound significance for the politics of the region, they may not alter the main contours of US foreign policy in the Middle East in a major way.     

Poverty and Neo‐Liberal Bias in the Middle East and North Africa

This article examines the definition of poverty and the evidential base for the claims that the region of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has historically low levels of poverty and relatively good levels of income distribution. It argues that the dominant trend in the literature on poverty in the global south in general, and in MENA in particular, has a neo‐classical bias. Amongst other things, that bias fails to understand that poverty does not emerge because of exclusion but because of poor people's ‘differential incorporation’ into economic and political processes. It also raises the question: if the MENA has indeed had relatively low levels of poverty and good income distribution, does this complicate the issue of autocracy and the western drive to remove political ‘backwardness’ in the region? In particular, the characterization of autocracy and the west's attempt to promote political liberalization is likely to impact adversely on the social contract that autocratic rulers have enforced regarding the delivery of basic services.     

From Politicization to Policing: The Rise and Decline of New Social Movements in Amsterdam and Paris

This paper analyzes the rise and decline of social movements in Amsterdam and Paris, focusing in particular on the organizations of left‐wing immigrant workers. These organizations performed crucial roles for new social movements in the 1970s and 1980s but were isolated and coopted in the 1990s and early 2000s. To explain why this is so, we engage in a dialogue with Jacques Rancière and develop an understanding of cities as strategic sites for both politicization and policing. Cities serve as sites of politicization because they are incubators of the relational conduits that enable activists from different sectors to engage with one another's struggles and look beyond narrow temporal and spatial horizons. However, cities also serve as sites of policing because authorities constantly attempt to reconfigure governmental arrangements in such a way that civil society serves as an extension of the government and comes to fulfill an instrumental role in the development and implementation of policy. Just as politicizing implies the widening of temporal and spatial horizons, policing implies the narrowing of such horizons. The analysis shows the social movements of the 1960s lost steam in two of the major hubs of the new left and reveals some of the more universal mechanisms through which cities generate or quell dissent.     

“Compassionate” Strategies of Managing Homelessness: Post‐Revanchist Geographies in San Francisco

Abstract: After almost 30 years of Federal retraction from anti‐poverty initiatives, many American cities have been left with the dual burden of intensified poverty and far fewer resources to combat the problem. At the same time, such devolution has afforded cities the authority to forge poverty policy at the local level, such that the familiar neoliberal imperatives of state retraction and the mobilization of territory for capitalist expansion are frequently tempered by more progressive political imperatives at the local scale. What has thus emerged is a deeply ambivalent policy landscape, of which “kinder and gentler” poverty management strategies are a central feature. Using the example of a recent homeless program in San Francisco, “Care Not Cash”, this paper argues that such poverty management strategies, while less punitive than their revanchist predecessors, nonetheless introduce a new set of exclusions to the service delivery system, many of which are obscured by the language of compassion. In order to illustrate those new exclusions, I describe the city's homeless geographies—the public spaces, shelters, service sites, and housing models—that have been produced and reconfigured according to a logic of managing homelessness through the provision of care.     

Change without Transformation: Social Policy Reforms in the Philippines under Duterte

This article explores social policy reforms championed by the Philippines’ strongman president Rodrigo Duterte during his first three years in office (2016–19), as a case for examining the transformative potential of social policy expansion under rising new right-wing and authoritarian leaders. By showing how political economy and historico-institutional conditions foreclose the transformative possibilities of the social policy changes effected by Duterte, the author offers a critique of current tendencies in global development discourses to treat all forms of social policy expansion as progressive. In the Philippines case, there is no progressive ideology guiding the reforms, nor are there political movements overseeing the expansion of social rights now inscribed in law. Rather, the reforms institutionally entrench a minimalist approach to universalism and strengthen the foothold of poverty targeting as an organizing principle of social provisioning. Social policy expansion under Duterte manifests aspects of the ‘dark side’ of social policy reforms during the current global political moment, including the use of such policy reforms to legitimize a conservative and authoritarian political order, and the functionality, across the political spectrum, of ‘narrow universalism’ — the type championed by international development agencies — which serves to deepen segmentation in social provisioning.     

Fuelling Social Inclusion? Neo‐extractivism,State–Society Relations and Biofuel Policies in Latin America's Southern Cone

Scholarship on neo‐extractivism agrees that this ‘post‐neoliberal’ model of development is founded on an inherent contradiction between the commitment to continue natural resource extraction and the need to legitimize these activities by using their revenues for poverty reduction. Using the cases of the national biofuel policies of the ‘post‐neoliberal’ governments of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, this article enquires why and how these policies emerged, how they were implemented, and how the resulting national experiences exemplify the inherent contradictions embedded in neo‐extractivist policies. Adopting a strategic‐relational approach to analyse state–society interaction, it is argued that the scope of progressive policies is conditioned to a large extent by pre‐existing social structures, institutions and state–society interactions. The article shows how progressive reforms intersect with the prevailing interests of agribusiness and state actors and are recast and used for different ends as these interact with powerful actors such as the multinational soybean complex and agrarian movements. It is suggested that the prevailing over‐emphasis in the neo‐extractivist literature on the politics of domination and contestation overlooks the multiple and complex rural responses of the different progressive governments. It also obscures the possibilities to explore the ruptures and continuities of these countries’ governments with previous models, and therefore fails to recognize state advances.     

Peace Protest and Policy

The tremendous fluctuations in public mobilization against United States nuclear weapons policy, a relatively stable policy over four decades, present a difficult riddle to social scientists. Since the dawn of the nuclear age small groups of activists have consistently protested both the content of United States national security policy and the process by which it is made. Only occasionally, however, has this protest spread beyond a handful of relatively marginal groups, generated substantial public support, and reached mainstream political institutions. This article examines the political cycles of peace movement engagement and quiescence, and their relation to external political context, particularly public policy. I begin with a brief review of the relevant literature on the origins of the movements, noting parallels in the study of interest groups. Building on recent literature on political opportunity structure. I suggest a theoretical framework which emphasizes the interaction between activists choices and political context. I then describe the cycles of peace movement activism and quiescence on nuclear weapons issues in the United States using mass media sources to delineate periods of mobilization. I outline a number of policy variables which may help explain protest mobilization. My conclusions address the importance of policy and political context in explaining movement cycles and the potential influence of protest movements on policy.     

Maximum Working Class Unity? Challenges to Local Social Movement Unionism in Cape Town

Joint political mobilisation between trade unions and community groups, often referred to as ‘social movement unionism’, has been upheld as a way forward for organised labour in a neoliberal world economy. Analysing the interaction between unions and communities is critical for understanding the potential and actual roles played by trade unions in voicing the concerns of marginalized workers and poor communities. This article examines the efforts of organised municipal workers and urban social movements trying to unite their forces in post‐apartheid South Africa, by looking at the politics of the Cape Town Anti‐Privatisation Forum (APF). While the participants of the APF have in common their opposition to commercialisation and privatisation of service delivery, their political unity is fragile. By contrasting the ‘ideal‐type’ social movement unionism depicted in the contemporary literature on labour and globalisation with the findings of this particular case, we uncover some main dimensions along which this organisational cooperation is challenged. In contrast to the political unity experienced during the anti‐apartheid struggle, the APF initiative operates in a restructuring post‐apartheid economy where bridging internal organisational differences and confronting the hegemonic position of the African National Congress (ANC) in civil society have proved particularly challenging.     

A Matter of Framing: Explaining the Failure of Post‐Islamist Social Movements in the Arab Spring

Shortly after the Arab Spring began in 2010, multiple scholars noted that the dominant discursive trend present within these protests was that of post‐Islamism. Post‐Islamism is broadly defined as an ideology seeking to establish a democratic state within a distinctly Islamic society. Despite the presence of post‐Islamist opportunity structures, social movements embodying post‐Islamist principles have had little success consolidating power. The theoretical argument presented here is that the failure of these movements is the result of inherent flaws within post‐Islamist frames. Specifically, this study posits that unlike traditional Islamist frames (i.e., frames emphasizing the creation of a state governed by Shari‘a) post‐Islamist frames limit the ability of movements’ to monopolize religion as a cultural asset. As such, when post‐Islamist movements face political challenges during contentious periods they cannot rely on nontemporal legitimacy to retain power. Additionally, the challenging task of integrating Islamic and democratic frames in contentious moments renders post‐Islamist movements susceptible to counterframing. The preceding claims will be tested through a comparative analysis of the Iranian Hierocracy (1977–1979), and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (2011–2014). Comparing the experiences of a post‐Islamist movement (Brotherhood) with that of an Islamist movement (Hierocracy) will explicate the flaws within post‐Islamist frames.     

Hardworking Newcomers and Generations of Poverty: Poverty Discourse in Central Washington State

This research is part of a project that aims to reinterpret geographies of poverty in the American Northwest by focusing on the intersections of cultural and political–economic processes that produce poverty differences. This paper contributes to this aim by unpacking poverty beliefs by race at the local county level. This qualitative analysis is grounded in a brief discussion of the political economy of Kittitas County in Central Washington State, which provides space to analyze the theoretical linkages between structural and cultural constructions of poverty differences. Specifically, this paper argues that first generation “hardworking” Hispanic immigrants embody the “working poor”, while individual explanations of poverty are articulated as the “intergenerational poor”, who are racialized as white and choose poverty as a lifestyle. In this vein, many local residents use the marker of “generation” to distinguish between white, lower class individuals who choose to be poor from a group of Hispanic newcomers whose poverty stems from structural forces such as non‐living‐wage jobs and discrimination. This forms one part of a larger strategy to “blame the individual” for the existence of white poverty. This analysis poses new theoretical insights into the intersection between difference markers such as race, class, and generation and contributes to the literature on racial differences in poverty explanations. The geographical specificity of poverty discourse argues for further grounding of the poverty literature in material conditions, which will allow for more nuanced understanding of the creation and persistence of poverty in poor communities.     

Social Mobilization in Protest of Trans‐boundary Highway Projects: Explaining Contrasting Implementation Outcomes

Trans‐boundary highways have increasingly complemented trade agreements as instruments of global economic integration, and both have incurred political protest. This article presents a comparative analysis of two recently proposed trans‐boundary highway projects, the Trans‐Texas Corridor from Mexico through Texas to Oklahoma in the USA, and the Inter‐Oceanic Highway in the southwestern Amazon where Bolivia, Brazil and Peru meet. The analysis focuses on the similar political contexts, justifications and funding models, as well as the contrasting political responses and implementation outcomes. The findings reveal important differences in the two cases, even among their ostensibly similar aspects, which are necessary to provide an adequate explanation as to why social mobilization stopped one project but not the other. The analysis bears implications for the social‐political study of trans‐boundary infrastructure as an instrument of economic globalization.     

Sub‐state nationalism and the welfare state: Québec and Canadian federalism

ABSTRACT. This article examines the relationship between sub‐state nationalism and the welfare state through the case of Québec in Canada. It argues that social policy presents mobilisation and identity‐building potential for sub‐state nationalism, and that nationalist movements affect the structure of welfare states. Nationalism and the welfare state revolve around the notion of solidarity. Because they often involve transfers of money between citizens, social programmes raise the issue of the specific community whose members should exhibit social and economic solidarity. From this perspective, nationalist movements are likely to seek the congruence between the ‘national community’ (as conceptualised by their leaders) and the ‘social community’ (the community where redistributive mechanisms should operate). Moreover, the political discourse of social policy lends itself well to national identity‐building because it is typically underpinned by collective values and principles. Finally, pressures stemming from sub‐state nationalism tend to reshape the policy agenda at both the state and the sub‐state level while favouring the asymmetrical decentralisation of the welfare state.     

Law,arbitrariness and the power of the lords of North Lebanon

The paper focuses on the role of arbitrariness and violence and their relation to law‐in‐practice. The locus is the semi‐feudal society of North Lebanon and more widely the Lebanon as a whole. Weber and others have suggested that the arbitrary is an important element in the characterisation of specific political types of domination such as patrimonialism. There are ambiguities in this kind of treatment which are explored for the case of the beys of the Akkar region of the north. A system of status honour, founded originally on military control and taxation, identified personal might and personal right Modern social changes in the Ottoman and French Mandate periods and up to the present have combined to produce a social world in which violence has become more systematically important in local power. A fragmented and weak state formation has reinforced such processes and the use of law as a visible instrument of individual and group domination enshrining arbitrariness at the heart of society.     

Denied ethnicism: on the Walloon movement in Belgium

The Walloon movement is the lesser‐known counterpart to the Flemish movement in Belgium. In contemporary political debate it presents itself, and is usually perceived, as a civic and voluntaristic movement predicated on the values of democracy, freedom, openness and anti‐nationalism. As such it is contrasted against its Flemish counterpart, which accordingly is characterised as tending towards an ethnic exclusivist form of nationalism hinging on descent, culture and language. However, the historical record behind these representations shows that the Walloon movement is rooted in ethno‐cultural as much as social politics, and that it has always contained both civic and ethnic elements to varying degrees. This article highlights the Walloon movement in order to analyse the language and national stereotypes in which national movements are characterised both in political rhetoric and in scholarly analysis. The case is particularly relevant for the problematic usage of the ‘civic–ethnic’ opposition, slipping between the discourses of antagonism and analysis; one type of such slippage is here identified as ‘denied ethnicism’.     

中国城市贫困的基本特点与脱贫模式探讨

本文通过城市贫困家庭的收入情况、消费情况、社交情况以及城市贫困的社区分布分析中国城市贫困的基本特点。提出三条形成城市贫困的相互影响的机制链条,即由于产业结构调整和经济体制的转轨、社会保障不完善和政府财政实力较弱以及人力资本偏低和市场需求高三方面引发城市贫困。并构建了城市贫困脱贫模式,分析了脱贫过程以及将"内外结合、标本兼治"作为脱贫模式的核心。得出了四个解决措施:一是加强政府反贫困建设,完善社会保障体系;二是提高贫困主体自身素质,强化脱贫意识;三是积极推进再就业工作,完善再就业服务;四是发展非政府组织的扶贫事业,拓宽救助渠道。     

Juvenile Delinquency in Kuwait: Applying Social Disorganization Theory

Juvenile delinquency is considered one of the most serious and challenging problems worldwide. Criminology provides a wide array of explanations for delinquency; however, the vast majority of the theories were applied and tested in Western societies. Therefore, the possibility of applying these theories to non‐Western societies is yet to be determined. This article will examine juvenile delinquency in Kuwait and will attempt to determine the relative effects of social disorganization on delinquency. The study will also test the effects of competing theories such as social control, strain, and differential association. Some researchers believe that urbanization, modernization, and social change lead to such problems. They believe that crime and delinquency can be viewed as an outcome of rapid social changes in societies, which in turn, lead to social disorganization. Faris (1948 ) believed that the decline of unity and harmony in a society is a major condition of social disorganization. Furthermore, Mowrer (1942 ) indicated that disorganization of society can produce many social problems such as divorce, delinquency, crimes, poverty, and unemployment. More recently, researchers viewed the concept of social disorganization as the inability of a local community to identify the common values of its residents and solve their problems ( Bursik, 1988 ; Bursik & Webb, 1982 ). This article explores the assumptions of this theory and other theories as they relate to the Kuwaiti society.