Building Peace with Conflict Diamonds? Merging Security and Development in Sierra Leone

This article examines the merging of security and development agendas in primary commodity sectors, focusing on the case of peace‐building reforms in Sierra Leone's diamond sector. Reformers frequently assume that reforming the diamond sector through industrializing alluvial diamond mining will reduce threats to security and development, thereby contributing to peace building. Our findings, however, suggest that the industrialization of alluvial diamond mining that has taken place in Sierra Leone has not reduced threats to security and development, as it has entailed human rights abuses and impoverishment of local communities without consolidating state fiscal revenues and trust in local authorities. This suggests alternative strategies for resource‐related peace‐building initiatives, which we consider at the end of the article: the decriminalization of informal economic activities; the prioritization of local livelihoods and development needs over central government fiscal priorities and foreign direct investment; and better integration between local economies and industrial resource exploitation.     

The second Prodi government and Italian foreign policy: New and improved or the same wrapped up differently?

This article examines whether Italian foreign policy has undergone significant and substantial changes under the second Prodi government. The first part identifies the variables affecting continuity and change in a country's foreign policy and addresses the question of the conditions under which one can expect changes as a result of a change in government, and the conditions under which continuity is instead more likely. The second part looks at the second Prodi government's foreign policy on a number of topical issues, most of which were also faced by the Berlusconi government, to see to what extent the Prodi government's approach to foreign policy indeed changed from that of its predecessor. The article concludes that the Prodi government did not change Italian foreign policy in any substantial manner; differences existed only in the way the new government occasionally chose to present and justify its policies publicly.     

Structural Adjustment and Subsistence Industry: Artisanal Gold Mining in Ghana

Since the implementation of Ghana's national Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), policies associated with the programme have been criticized for perpetuating poverty within the country's subsistence economy. This article brings new evidence to bear on the contention that the SAP has both fuelled the uncontrolled growth of informal, poverty‐driven artisanal gold mining and further marginalized its impoverished participants. Throughout the adjustment period, it has been a central goal of the government to promote the expansion of large‐scale gold mining through foreign investment. Confronted with the challenge of resuscitating a deteriorating gold mining industry, the government introduced a number of tax breaks and policies in an effort to create an attractive investment climate for foreign multinational mining companies. The rapid rise in exploration and excavation activities that has since taken place has displaced thousands of previously‐undisturbed subsistence artisanal gold miners. This, along with a laissez faire land concession allocation procedure, has exacerbated conflicts between mining parties. Despite legalizing small‐scale mining in 1989, the Ghanaian government continues to implement procedurally complex and bureaucratically unwieldy regulations and policies for artisanal operators which have the effect of favouring the interests of established large‐scale miners.     

Policy Change and Policy Stasis: Comparing Swiss Foreign Policy toward South Africa (1968–94) and Iraq (1990–91)

This article investigates how concepts from the field of public policy, in particular the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) initially introduced by Sabatier and Jenkins‐Smith, can be applied to the study of foreign policy analysis. Using a most similar comparative case studies design, we examine Switzerland's foreign policy toward South Africa under apartheid for the period from 1968 to 1994 and compare it with the Swiss position toward Iraq after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, when the Swiss government imposed—for the first time—comprehensive economic sanctions against another state. The application of the ACF shows that a dominant advocacy coalition in Swiss foreign policy toward South Africa prevented a major policy change in Swiss–South African relations despite external pressure from the international and national political levels. Actually, quite the opposite could be observed: Swiss foreign policy increased its persistence in not taking economic sanctions against the racist regime in South Africa during the 1980s and early 1990s. The ACF, with its analytical focus on policy subsystems and the role of external shocks as potential triggers for change, provided a useful framework for analyzing the factors for policy change and stasis in Swiss foreign relations toward the selected two countries.     

Resource nationalism or resource liberalism? Explaining Australia's approach to Chinese investment in its minerals sector

Since 2005, a burgeoning wave of Chinese investments has set off a new ‘minerals boom’ in the Australian iron ore and coal mining sectors. While normally a welcome development, the state-owned and strategic nature of the investors has raised concerns in Australia about how these should be regulated. As a result, in February 2008 the Australian government declared an intention to more closely screen foreign direct investment (FDI) from state-owned sources, which both supporters and detractors alike have claimed is evidence of ‘resource nationalism’ in Australia's approach towards its trade and investment relationships with China. This article challenges this understanding through an examination of the characteristics of Chinese mining FDI, the dilemmas these present to the Australian government, and the relatively restrained nature of its response. Through this, Australia's FDI policy is explained as a defensive move against the potential for strategic behaviour by Chinese investors resulting from their state ownership, rather than any national program to subject minerals trade and investment to political control. On this basis, the article argues that Australian government policy instead evidences a ‘resource liberalism’ approach, which intends to ensure that the governance of Australia's minerals trade and investment with China remain market-based processes.     

South Africa: The politics of pre‐negotiations, 1989–1991

The international community has hailed South African state president, F.W. de Klerk, a ‘liberator’. De Klerk liberalised the political process and deracialised aspects of state and society. But how committed to racial reform are be and his government? The regime's policies, strategies and tactics over the last two years raise many concerns that the international community has either baulked or simply ignored. The argument that the government must be rewarded and encouraged is fallacious. The South African government reacts only to pressure. The international community acted prematurely by lifting some sanctions and is undermining the prospects for a post‐apartheid society based on equal rights.     

A critical assessment of the Hawke government's 1985 code of conduct for Australian companies with interests in the republic of South Africa

Like other Australian governments in the contemporary period the Hawke government sought to enhance its international standing by condemning apartheid. Failing to implement effective policy to match the strong criticism exposed the rhetorical character of the government's South Africa policy. Repeatedly the Hawke government found itself defending a policy framework, which in opposition it had denounced. In essence Australia's South Africa policy had displayed little principle. Refusing to play sport while maintaining bilateral trade and investment with South Africa, underscored the contradictory basis of Australia's South Africa policy. In an effort to redress this policy imbalance the Hawke government chose to enact an employment code for Australian employers of black South African labour. The government promoted this element of policy as a substantial advance in reformulating its overall policy approach. Archival documents and material released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal a very different image.     

South Africa in the company of giants: the search for leadership in a transforming global order

South Africa, the continental economic giant and self‐appointed spokesman for African development, is finding its distinctive national voice. Emboldened by the invitation to join the BRICS grouping, its membership of the G20 and a second term on the UN Security Council, Pretoria is beginning to capitalize on the decade of continental and global activism undertaken by Thabo Mbeki to assume a position of leadership. Gone is the defensive posturing which characterized much of the ANC's post‐apartheid foreign policy, replaced by an unashamed claim to African leadership. The result is that South Africa is exercising a stronger hand in continental affairs, ranging from a significant contribution to state‐building in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan, to an unprecedented assertiveness on Zimbabwe. But this new assertiveness remains constrained by three factors: the unresolved issue of identity, a host of domestic constraints linked to material capabilities and internal politics, and the divisive continental reaction to South African leadership. These factors continue to inhibit the country's ability to translate its international ambitions and global recognition into a concrete set of foreign policy achievements.     

Fatal Transactions: Conflict Diamonds and the (Anti)Terrorist Consumer

This paper brings recent research on the geographies of commodities and the politics of ethical consumption to bear on contemporary spaces of violence. Focusing on the discourse of “terror”, it discusses the tactics and ambivalences of a human rights advocacy campaign seeking to stop the financing of belligerents by the diamond trade. I argue that the campaign successfully reconnected “violent” spaces of exploitation and “peaceful” spaces of consumption and achieved significant trade reforms in the diamond sector. Yet, with its inclusion of racialized images of Africa, its responsiveness to policy compromises and its overtaking by savvy marketing by Western mining companies, the campaign and its mediatization also had ambivalent outcomes: burnishing the “reputable” character of Western industrialized mining interests at the expense of their historical accountability, indiscriminately associating terror with poor young African men, and overlooking state violence.     

Unpacking Land Grabs: Subjects,Performances and the State in Ghana's ‘Small‐scale’ Gold Mining Sector

During the 2008 global financial crisis, gold‐backed reserves became a ‘safe haven’ for capital investment, causing gold prices to hit historic highs. Globally, small‐scale gold mining activities proliferated as prices climbed. Along the banks of Ghana's Offin River, abandoned, waterlogged mining pits now stretch for kilometres where agricultural and other land uses recently existed. While small‐scale mining is a right reserved for Ghanaian citizens, many mining sites are foreign‐operated and almost all go unremediated. There is thus a stark tension between Ghanaian minerals laws and environmental regulations and the ongoing transformation of rural landscapes. Based on 112 interviews and long‐term observation in Ghana since 2010, this article untangles the relationships and practices mediating ‘illegal’ foreign mining operations. Shifting subjectivities, performances and practices bring land grabbing into being as state actors weave together legal and extra‐legal domains to facilitate, and profit from, foreign mining. Other officials experience fear and frustration in the face of powerful mining interests, demonstrating the complex workings and conflicts between government actors and agencies. Detailing co‐productions between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ domains in official licensing procedures complicates understandings of the state and its role in foreign land grabbing, breaking down the ontological binaries — rational/irrational, official/unofficial — used to uphold an image of state legitimacy and cohesion. Finally, given the spatial extent of small‐scale mining deals and ensuing social and environmental transformations, the authors urge land‐grab scholars not to dismiss the importance of small‐scale deals alongside larger transactions.     

A neglected chapter in Italy's transition from Fascism to the Republic: The Kingdom of the South (1943–1944)

Gallerano's paper examines the reasons why Italian historians have paid little attention to the political events that followed the liberation of the Italian Mezzogiorno and the brief life of the government established under the auspices of the monarchy during the period of what was termed the Kingdom of the South. He argues that this neglect derives in part from the brevity of the period of civil government in the south, but mainly from the fact that historians have been attracted above all by the history of the Resistance which has led them to consider events in the south to be of secondary importance. Gallerano argues that such a view is quite unjustified and shows how some historians ‐ from Chabod in the early 1950s ‐ have understood that events in the south bore very directly on the broader transition from Fascism to the Republic. Challenging Renzo De Felice's recent claims that Italy's defeat on 8 September 1943 marked the beginning of a crisis of national identity, Gallerano argues that the circumstances that obtained in the months that followed made the south an exceptionally rich terrain for exploring the very contradictory feelings and expectations that were aroused in Italy by the experience of military defeat and political reconstruction.     

Who's making UK foreign policy?

The war in Iraq has intensified a debate about the extent to which Tony Blair's style of government is presidential, secretive, ad hoc, informal and susceptible to groupthink. But who is really making UK foreign policy? This article suggests that there is no simple or singular answer since the government simultaneously pursues multiple foreign policies involving different combinations of institutions, actors and external pressures. It then discusses New Labour's impact upon the four interrelated phases of the foreign policy process: formulation, interpretation, implementation and presentation. The author suggests that Blair's government has found it difficult to implement many of its foreign policy initiatives and has relied instead upon three ‘big ideas’, namely, multilateralism, Atlanticism and neo‐liberalism. To date, it has failed to resolve the practical tensions between these three commitments. The final section explores how the demand for open and accountable government has increased the importance attached to the presentation of foreign policy. This, in turn, has increased the importance of the news media as a battlefield on which the struggle for hearts and minds is taking place. Ironically, the government's unparalleled attempts to sell its foreign policies (both at home and abroad) has opened the policy process up to levels of scrutiny that it may not be able to withstand.     

Resource extraction and national anxieties: China’s economic presence in Mongolia

Abstract

Over the last two decades and particularly in the last 10 years, Chinese investment in Mongolia has skyrocketed, with the vast majority of the country’s exports now flowing to China. As foreign investment has grown in Mongolia, particularly in the mining sector, apprehension circulates about the extension and meaning of increased Chinese power. We argue that contemporary anxieties about China’s economic influence in Mongolia go beyond recent and contemporary political economic issues and are tied to memories of the Qing Dynasty. Controversies surrounding Mongolia’s flagship mine, the Oyu Tolgoi copper–gold mine in South Gobi province, demonstrate how even non-Chinese foreign mining operations are intertwined with Mongolia’s past and future relationships with China. Rather than acting simply as resource nationalists, the people and government of Mongolia often see contemporary Chinese economic power through a historical lens, with fears of declining sovereignty and becoming Chinese through control over land and resources. This paper draws on fieldwork conducted by the authors in Mongolia from 2009 to 2015 and contributes to discussions about fears of Chinese influence, extractive industry development, and resource nationalism in Mongolia.     

The regulation of direct foreign investment in the Australian mining sector

Although Australia has relied on foreign capital and multinational corporations to develop its mining sector, it has been successful in restricting foreign ownership and control to 50 per cent The Australian experience provides a valuable case study because its successive minerals and energy booms in the last two decades occurred before and after restrictions were imposed and the Foreign Investment Review Board established in the mid‐1970s. During the prior minerals boom when there were virtually no restrictions, levels of foreign ownership and control increased from less than 30 to 50 per cent. During the second energy boom, in the late 1970s to early 1980s, a firm policy of 50 per cent Australian participation in all mining projects was successfully implemented. Australia did not become a ‘client state’ of international capitalism, nor did its federal system preclude the regulation of foreign investment The article summarises the results of Australia's regulatory policy and examines the political and policy reasons for its success.     

‘Decolonisation’ on the Periphery: Liu Xiang and Shipping Rights Recovery at Chongqing, 1926–38

Between 1929 and 1932, Sichuan militarist Liu Xiang pursued his own anti-imperialist agenda in Chongqing, a port city beyond the purview of China's ‘central’ Guomindang government. In both its autonomy and its defiant tactics, Liu's programme contradicted the Guomindang regime's official strategy of negotiated revision of the unequal treaties. In its concrete objectives, however, Liu's project was strikingly similar to the Guomindang's programme of shipping rights recovery, an effort to reduce the presence and power of foreign shipping in China's coastal waters and an integral part of its agenda for treaty revision. This essay examines Liu Xiang's efforts to eliminate the privileges of foreign shipping, bolster Chinese shipping and extend his regime's oversight over all shipping within his garrison area on the Upper Yangzi River. In examining Liu's local motives as well as his marginalisation of central government institutions like the Maritime Customs, the essay addresses his fraught relations with the centre, yet, in contrast to standard nationalist critique of China's early twentieth-century warlords, it also reveals how efforts like Liu's may have multiplied the sites of resistance to the unequal treaties and achieved a measure of ‘decolonisation’ on the periphery of central government control.     

Umberto Zanotti Bianco and the Mogadishu events of 1948

Soon after the Second World War and the signing of the 1947 Peace Treaty, Italy was faced with the traumatic loss of its African colonial Empire, an Empire whose establishment had been one of the main objectives of the Fascist regime's foreign policy. This article analyses Anglo-Italian relations in the Somalian context, highlighting the contributions made by Fascism and by the anti-Italian policies of British troops to the tensions that were to lead to the tragic events of January 1948. Attention is focused on the diplomatic mission carried out by Umberto Zanotti Bianco, President of the Italian Red Cross, an important figure in Italian Liberalism. Zanotti Bianco was conscious of the need for Italy to rejoin the ‘club’ of democratic powers and, in accordance with the diplomatic strategy of Foreign Minister Carlo Sforza, he sought to reopen dialogue between Britain and Italy. The dispute between Italy and Britain brought about by the Mogadishu events and, more generally, by the Italian presence in Africa was soon brought to a close, due both to Zanotti Bianco's shrewd strategy and to the clear need for the Western Allies to strengthen De Gasperi's government on the eve of the decisive April 1948 elections.     

‘The Bay and the Ocean’: A History of the ANC in Swaziland, 1960–1979

Abstract

South African political refugees first began arriving in Swaziland in significant numbers in the late 1950s. In the mid-1960s the ANC tried to recruit these refugees to engage in operational activities but with little success. After Swazi independence in 1968 the kingdom's rulers were too scared of South African retaliation to provide active support for the ANC's armed struggle. Meanwhile ANC members in Swaziland were cut off from ANC structures in central Africa because the kingdom was landlocked between white-ruled South Africa and Mozambique. This changed following the army coup in Lisbon in 1974 which led to Mozambican independence. Mozambique's provisional government allowed the ANC access to Swaziland. The ANC sent Thabo Mbeki to try and establish links with activists in South Africa, but whilst he made some progress, this was reversed by police countermeasures early in 1976. A rump of activists left behind after Mbeki's expulsion led ANC efforts to handle the exodus of youths into Swaziland after the June 1976 Soweto uprising. In the late 1970s Swaziland formed part of what the ANC referred to as the ‘Eastern Front’ of its liberation struggle. In trying to stop ANC infiltrations South Africa made use of an extensive network of highly-placed agents in the Swazi establishment. However this collaboration proved ineffective in stopping the ANC because, even if it wished to, Swaziland lacked the resources to prevent its territory being used, whilst there were also many prominent Swazis, including King Sobhuza II, whose sympathies lay with the ANC. By the end of the 1970s ANC activity in Swaziland had grown to such a scale that it began to unnerve the Swazi authorities. This set the stage for the closing of the ‘Eastern Front’ in the early 1980s.     

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the South Sudan question: reconsidering moderation

This article examines the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) movement's stand on the South Sudan question. The aim here is to contribute to the ongoing debate over the MB's moderation. Throughout the civil war in Sudan, the MB consistently objected to South Sudanese secession. Yet, while it had traditionally framed its objection in religious terms, describing the South Sudanese struggle as a Christian conspiracy against Islam, in the decade preceding South Sudan's declaration of independence it moved to base its opposition on more practical grounds, revolving around issues such the absence of democracy, stability and infrastructure in South Sudan. This correlated with wider shifts in the MB. Since the 1990s, the movement has claimed to have undergone a transformation, adopting a moderate, pro‐democratic stance. These statements persuaded many scholars that the MB has come to represent political moderation in both its domestic and international agenda. More recent works on the movement, however, have come to question the MB's moderation hypothesis, suggesting that even though the movement has changed its discourse and some aspects of its activism, this could not be seen as a linear process of moderation. This article uses the South Sudan case to further support this critique from a foreign policy perspective. It demonstrates that even though the MB changed its tactics and discourse, its goals remained unchanged— even when the circumstances and the normative environment changed dramatically. Moreover, it shows that at times of crisis, the liberal discourse gave way to the old‐fashioned radical discourse of previous decades.     

The only good Bushman …

Abstract

The glaring contrast between the furore over the repatriation of the unknown El Negro and the continuing neglect and subordination of some 100,000 of his San and other Remote descendants is considered. Botswana's Foreign Minister shows respect for EI Negro, but Botswana's treatment of the San today is the worst in the region. Relocation of ‘unwanted’ San , carried out using highly authoritarian methods, continues to occur, and the San population remains in general without secure land rights. The grounds given by the Botswana government for relocations have included maintaining the ‘pristine environment of game reserves’, but the possibility of extensive diamond mining within the Central Kalahari Game Reserve seems also relevant. The relocations and the lack of rights have recently prompted protests and expressions of concern about the future of Botswana's San population from powerful human rights groups. It is in the context of those protests that the ceremonies surrounding the reburial of El Negro, promoted by the authorities, are to be understood.     

The long shadow of apartheid: a critical assessment of heritage transformation in South Africa 25 years on

ABSTRACT

Based on insights gained from two decades of research on South African heritage and monuments, this paper critically reflects on the status quo of heritage transformation in South Africa 25 years after the end of apartheid. It assesses new directions in national heritage policy and government strategy in relation to recent developments around post-apartheid heritage and the popular demand for a removal of ‘colonial statues’, which gained impetus from the #Rhodes Must Fall campaign. It is argued that the government’s approach to heritage transformation and most notably its treatment of white minority heritage, dominated by the ‘juxtaposition model’, has had limited success. The paper illustrates how heritage and the memory of the past are entangled with socio-political and economic realities in the present, which in turn is overshadowed by the long-term effects of apartheid and impacted by global or transnational considerations, such as foreign investment and tourism.