“Until dignity becomes customary” archiving the #28A strike in Colombia

ABSTRACTA body of literature has examined the role of ‘crises’ on policy-making. Yet, we observe that endogenous or exogenous events called ‘crisis-events’ are often randomly chosen as sweeping explanations for reforms in migration and integration policy. Thus, we attempt to find answers for the question of how the latest financial and economic crisis affected policy-making in the area of migration and integration. We apply a combination of interest-based and ideas-based theories to the case of Belgium in order to question the role of crises in policy reforms in the field of migration and integration. Multiple political and economic crises have affected the country since 2007. Examining these crises and immigration politics we argue that electoral competition both between and within the Francophone and Flemish party systems continues to be the main driver of migration and integration policy reform. Yet, we also discover a cumulative effect of economic and political crises: while the intention of restricting immigration has remained largely unchanged over the years, the policy instruments employed to reach this objective have changed with the political and economic crises.

The foundations of economic and financial crises are conventionally attributed to the technicalities of macroeconomic fragilities. Yet political instability (caused by the deficiency of democracy and/or unfunctional political institutions) can also be considered as a major determinant of economic instability by deteriorating the debt dynamics through depreciation of the national currency or the ascent of interest rates. Analogously, political instability, for instance, disruption of cabinet durability, to a large extent depends on the economic performance of governments. Hence, though most economists conceive macroeconomic fragilities as the mother of all crises, the issue is rather complex and there is an intermingled relationship between political and economic crises. 
 
 Besides, as macroeconomic fragilities or structural imbalances are results of inappropriate policies, the political rationale and the social motives behind such misleading policies should also be well comprehended. For that purpose, an elaboration will enable the negation of the dominant argument that it is only economic factors that instigate crises. 
 
 This study investigates the political background of eight economic crises in Turkey, since 1946. It is observed that in all of them, significant levels of devaluation and retraction of growth are experienced. All of the devaluations were indispensable, except the first one in 1946 which was discretionary and precautionary. The crises of 1978/9, 1994, and 2001 ended with drastic austerity programmes, albeit the others, where governments refrained with macroeconomic adjustment through fiscal and monetary measures. The 2001 twin-crisis was so peculiar, as it was to a large extent caused by the design-defection of the programme recommended by the IMF. Yet, since the attempt of financial liberalization, all of the other economic crises were prompted by capital flights. The 2008/9 crisis was due to global contagion and the 2018 crisis was caused by the tensions in the bilateral relations with the US, amid high private sector foreign debt. In all economic crises, the profligate fiscal stance of governments has played a prominent role, as well as the maintenance of appreciated exchange rates, but such choices had a political rationale. Finally, in the background of all the economic crises in Turkey, we observe stern political instability.
 
 Political instability not only restricts the rational decision-making capacity of the policy-maker, especially if it converges into a political crisis, but also exacerbates economic sentiment, either by consumer confidence or by investor appetite, which subsequently results in economic decline. It also intensifies risks and causes exchange rate depreciation as well as interest rate hikes, both of which degenerates debt dynamics. Since the financial liberalization attempt, as portfolio investments have boosted, political stability has become imperative to sustain the stability of risk-sensitive financial markets. Both the experience of the 2008/9 and especially the 2018 financial crisis, have verified the importance of political instability as a determinant of economic crises. In short, economic crises cannot be analysed disregarding their political anatomy.

The new millennium has meant a new start for Peruvian society. After decades of political violence, economic crisis, and an internal war, democracy was restored, and economic growth resumed. The many grassroots organizations that had been established to address the economic and political crisis seem to have lost their initial raison d’être. Still, they have remained in operation to this very day. In this article, we analyze the history and continued presence of two types of urban grassroots organizations: the communal kitchens and the victim-survivor organizations. Our leading question is: what is the present-day rationale sustaining these grassroots organizations that originated as responses to the political and economic turmoil from the previous decades? As we will argue, insight into the values of economic solidarity, participatory democracy, and gender equality is important to better understand the organization’s continuity. They shed light on the organizations’ changing roles and diverging meanings that their members attribute to them. Nowadays, members see the organizations as a platform for self-expression.

This article intends to examine the economic and political crisis in Sri Lanka, especially considering the incident of Rambukkana. The first part of this article describes the background of the economic and political crisis in Sri Lanka, the commencement of protests throughout the country, and further discussed, why ordinary masses came on the street? And what are the reasons behind this situation? Secondly, this article examines the incident of the ‘Rambukkana’ shooting which happened on 19th April 2022. The end of this article indicates the debt trap and failed policies of the current government.

Territorial Conflict, Domestic Crisis, and the Covid-19 Pandemic in the South Caucasus. Explaining Variegated EU Responses.

This article, drawing on an extensive collection of peace agreements dating from 1990 until the present day, analyzes peace agreement provisions for civil society involvement and considers the extent to which peace agreements proffer new models of participatory democracy. We begin with some background and a short overview of political theory on participatory democracy, identifying key dilemmas. The body of the article sets out a comprehensive analysis of peace agreement provisions for civil society, indicating how peace agreements negotiate the dilemmas identified in theory. We then evaluate this negotiation in the context of post-agreement implementation difficulties. In conclusion, we discuss the implications for future research.

The political foundations of economic and financial crises have been examined solely vis-a-vis populist macroeconomic policies, but the political consequences of such economic crises have seldom been discussed in the literature. There have been ten notable political crises and six major economic crises in the last half-century of Turkish history. All political crises in Turkey involved a priori economic slowdown. Some of them even followed economic crises, especially sharp devaluations. Secondly, all political crises had social implications, as they all occurred as a result of severe welfare losses of the civilian and military bureaucracy due to inflation. Thirdly, the nature of political crises has recently changed, as they no longer involve overt military interventions. On the contrary, consecutive coups have enhanced the deepening of democracy, as there is a stronger embrace of civil democracy and hostility against the military intentions by the society. Our research demonstrates that all economic crises have occurred during populist right-wing governments and involved budget deficit problems, while only some of them also involved foreign debt crises. Naturally, all economic crises had political consequences.

In 2011, South Sudan seceded from Sudan following a landmark referendum on self-determination. Yet fewer than three years after the historic vote for independence, the world’s newest country descended into a civil war that, since December 2013, has brought killing and bloodshed. In attempts to resolve the conflict and bring the civil war to an end, the warring factions have signed peace agreement after peace agreement. In September 2018, Salva Kiir, the president of South Sudan, and his major adversary, the former vice-president and rebel leader Riek Machar, signed yet another peace agreement in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. This is the 12th agreement between them. Most of these agreements have suffered from a fraught mediation context (at times, being very coercive), deficits in preparedness (with inadequate time to fully implement the agreements), consent, impartiality, inclusivity (given the proliferation of armed and unarmed oppositions), and lack of a broad political strategy to anchor the agreed-upon peace deal. How did this young country that attained her independence in 2011 amidst massive international fanfare degenerate into chaos so quickly? And why have the attempts to resolve the conflict faced such difficulties? The Zambakari Advisory is pleased to publish its First Special Issue on the subject: “Peace Making and Peace Agreements in South Sudan.” We asked scholars, activists, students, former government officials, and leading intellectuals to think about the theme for the issue and offer insights into it. We hope these analyses will provide new insights to both reflect on, and inform, the work of stakeholders engaged in brokering peace and/or the pending National Dialogue. This collection features 15 articles contributed by Douglas H. Johnson, Peter Adwok Nyaba, Rev. Elias Rinaldo Gamboriko, Joseph Madak Wuol, Nichola Mandil Ukeil, Asha Abdel Rahim, Mabior P. Mach, Abui John Garang, Samson S. Wassara, Mahmood Mamdani, Rita M. Lopidia, Luka Biong Deng Kuol, John Ashworth, Angelina Bazugba, and Malish John Peter on South Sudan’s experiences with peacemaking and peace agreements, providing both a social and historical context, as well as an analysis of the specific peace processes. These papers offer a critical evaluation of South Sudan’s political crises, its experience with peace deals, and offers innovative solutions for the bumpy road ahead as South Sudan seeks once more to implement an imperfect deal. The authors make it clear that the contemporary history of South Sudan has been that of conflict and civil wars (1955–1972, 1983–2005, 2013–Current) with the Republic of Sudan to the north and with itself after securing independence in 2011. This issue highlights lessons learned from The Wunlit Peace Process in 1999, the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), the 2015 Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS), and finally the 2018 Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS).

As touched upon in the introduction, it is common practice for political scientists to infer causal implications of short-term contextual factors, such as political or economic crises, in the production of mass mobilization (Åslund and McFaul 2006, Birn 2005, Eckstein 2001, Epstien 2004, Giarracca and Teubal 2001, Tucker 2007). In the case of Ukraine, a political crisis in the form of election fraud, as noted by Tucker (2007), and foreign influence, as noted by Åslund and McFaul, are seen as the main explanatory factors of the 2004 mass mobilization (Åslund and McFaul 2006, 97, 152). In the case of Argentina Fiorucci and Klein (2004) and Giarraca and Teubal (2004), among others, highlight the economic crisis and specifically the corralito as the main factor explaining mass mobilization in 2001. These explanations seem to miss a piece of the puzzle, namely, that while there have been several instances of economic and political crises in both countries, not all have produced the outcome of mass mobilization. It must be that factors beyond crisis and deprivation are equally if not more important in the process leading to the moments of mass mobilization in 2001 and 2004. This puzzle leads us to return to our main question: What is the process leading to the moment of mass mobilization? And we are provoked to ask: How do contextual (endogenous and exogenous) variables affect this process?KeywordsFocus GroupEuropean Social SurveyPolitical LegitimacyMass MobilizationPolitical CrisisThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

When analyzing the relationship between democracy and social exclusion in Latin America, the perspective prevails that emphasizes the contradictory nature of ‘formal democracies’ characterized by both deep social inequality and political and economic marginalization. However, when taking into account the astonishing durability of democracy in most Latin American countries it is time to shift the focus to incorporate the surprising compatibility of real-existing Latin democracy with a highly exclusive social structure. Although confronted with grave economic, social and political crises, countries like Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia have (so far) maintained their, howsoever precarious, democratic regimes. Drawing on the recent experience of the surprisingly quick restabilization seen in Argentina following its deep crisis in 2001/2002, the article argues that it is the specific result of Latin America's ‘double transformation’ (combining political liberalization and neo-liberal restructuring), which explains the central features of de- as well as re-stabilization. The combination of political democratization involving processes of economic crisis and their neo-liberal ‘resolution’ has socio-economic consequences that are, firstly, socio-politically destabilizing. Secondly, they hollow out democratic participation and representation by undermining the capacity for collective action on the part of broad sectors of society. Thirdly, however, it is this second implication — since it is the capacity for politically mobilizing precisely those harmed by the neo-liberal reforms and economic crises, which is being limited — that simultaneously operates in a politically stabilizing way.

In the context of the worsening economic crisis analogies tend to be drawn between the economic and political crisis in Europe of the 1920s and 1930s and the current situation. Now as then, it is argued, there is the risk that a systemic economic crisis and the crisis of representative politics will in turn lead to authoritarian outcomes. Rarer, however, is the idea that the current political and economic crisis may lead to a “progressive” outcome. This article examines both options under the light of the thinking of one of the most important interpreters of political crisis and change in the 1920s and 1930s: Antonio Gramsci. One of the central arguments in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks is the crisis of parliamentarism and democratic politics. Gramsci did not limit his analysis to the crisis however. His theoretical undertaking also consisted in the attempt to imagine the conditions for moving beyond the democratic crisis in a progressive manner. What emerges is an existing continuity between the Gramscian categories of Cesarism-Bonapartism, economic-corporative State, hegemonic crisis and contemporary politics, particularly with reference to phenomena such as populism, technocracy and neo-liberalism; the utility of the conceptual category of Passive Revolution to comprehend the current forms of exerting power and building social consent; the potential fruitfulness of Gramsci’s schemata on counter-hegemonies, to understand the changes in the party-organization and the possibilities of building counter-hegemonies.

Leading economists address the ongoing challenges to economics in theory and practice in a time of political and economic crises. More than a decade of financial crises, sovereign debt problems, political conflict, and rising xenophobia and protectionism has left the global economy unsettled and the ability of economics as a discipline to account for episodes of volatility uncertain. In this book, leading economists consider the state of their discipline in a world of ongoing economic and political crises. The book begins with three sweeping essays by Nobel laureates Kenneth Arrow (in one of his last published works), Amartya Sen, and Joseph Stiglitz that offer a summary of the theoretical foundations of modern economics—the twin pillars of general equilibrium theory and welfare economics. Contributors then turn to macroeconomic stabilization and growth and, finally, new areas of research that depart from traditional theory, methodology, and concerns: climate change, behavioral economics, and evolutionary game theory. The 2019 Nobel Prize laureates, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer, contribute a paper on the use of randomized control trials indevelopment economics. Contributors Philippe Aghion, Ingela Alger, Kenneth Arrow, Abhijit Banerjee, Kaushik Basu, Lawrence Blume, Guillermo Calvo, Francesco Caselli, Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, Shantayanan Devarajan, Esther Duflo, Samuel Fankhauser, James Foster, Varun Gauri, Xavier Gine, Gäel Giraud, Gita Gopinath, Robert Hockett, Karla Hoff, Ravi Kanbur, Aart Kraay, Michael Kremer, David McKenzie, Célestin Monga, Maurice Obstfeld, Hamid Rashid, Martin Ravallion, Amartya Sen, Luis Servén, Hyun Song Shin, Nicholas Stern, Joseph Stiglitz, Cass Sunstein, Michael Toman, Jörgen Weibull

Zoonotic Parasites of Sheltered and Stray Dogs in the Era of the Global Economic and Political Crisis

This paper discusses the land struggles of the urban poor in Zimbabwe and the emerging strategies used by the alliance of the Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation and its partner Dialogue on Shelter to address these struggles in the face of continued economic and political crisis. The paper looks at how they are navigating this space and creating new solutions for housing and livelihood strategies. It considers the recent history of informal settlements and government measures to control or destroy them, including Operation Murambatsvina in 2005, which made hundreds of thousands of people homeless. It discusses the pragmatic decisions regarding partnership with different government agencies that the alliance has had to make in light of the sustained political and economic crisis, and the positive responses, especially from some local governments. It suggests that these decisions and strategies taken at a time of crisis and rapid change should be seen as part of a longer-term debate that seeks to change the relationship between communities of the urban poor and the state. Today, the alliance presents government with an alternative way of dealing with land and housing issues. Although progress to date has been minimal given the scale of need, there is a strong basis for partnership that can be scaled up.

The article compares Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro diplomacy with the traditional one and explains in what terms and why his foreign policy is different from a classical approach.Before he came to power, such principles as peaceful coexistence with neighbors, aspiration for national grandeur, peaceful conflict settlement and independent decision making were inherent in Brazilian diplomacy. Today the country’s foreign policy is unpredictable, inconsistent, and far from traditional peacefulness. Before changes in the US administration in 2021, Bolsonaro, as well as many of his predecessors, bet on the USA to solve national problems. Unilateral concessions to Washington predictably gave no results and lowered Brazilian independence in decision making. The USA was not interested in strengthening its rival in Latin America, no matter how friendly the relations between the two countries were. Bolsonaro’s policy is influenced by different lobby groups with opposing interests in government agencies. An important role is played by the military and followers of the theoretician Olavo de Carvalho. Paying attention to each of these groups, Bolsonaro implements an inconsistent foreign policy and runs a risk of not putting important political projects into practice and of finding himself in an international isolation.The changes in foreign policy take place amidst political and economic crisis in Brazil. Coronavirus pandemic aggravated the conflict of the branches of power. To strengthen his positions, the president appeals to the population, looks for support in the Parliament and pushes through an administrative bill aimed at making the president more autonomous in managing the executive branch structures.The appearance of the “right-wing” president and powerful influence of the conservative military stem from the economic and political crisis in Brazil, and Bolsonaro’s “special” governance style fits a worldwide trend of populism and active politics coverage in social networks.