Authoritarian Intervention Research Articles

Paradigm Conflict: Village Health Volunteers and Public Health in Thailand

Reformist doctors in Thailand have combined to create a primary health care system in rural areas in which village health volunteers play a major role. Consistent with the WHO whole-of-society approach, these doctors have envisaged a decentralised system that emphasises volunteers as community oriented, self-reliant agents of change. Our ethnographic research in Chiang Mai, Thailand, reveals that these ideals of village health volunteer empowerment have not been realised. Rather, village health volunteers have become entrapped in a hierarchical, top-down health bureaucracy that affords them limited deliberative agency. We argue that this predicament reveals a conflict of paradigms between, on the one hand, an idealised holistic, spiritual dimension of health with village health volunteers as dedicated, self-sacrificing agents of local communities and, on the other hand, the imperatives of state authoritarian interventions in the avian influenza and COVID-19 pandemics, including rigorous public health protocols and epidemiological methods.

Repression and growth in the periphery of Europe: The politics of changing growth regime in Turkey

This study shows that in peripheral economies that are linked into circuits of global capital on unequal terms, attempts to change the core features of an existing growth regime without broader political support intensify externally induced conflict among the ruling coalition. Under these circumstances, a transition to a new demand regime within a short time frame is more likely to take place via authoritarian intervention when the political cost of repression is lower than the cost of redistribution. In developing these points, the analysis builds on evidence from Turkey: following the 2008 global credit crunch, the Justice and Development Party’s (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP) domestic demand-led and credit-fueled growth under dependent financialization has experienced a major crisis. However, the subsequent push to replace this regime with a profit-led model with an emphasis on exports worsened the conflict among the political coalition supporting the party as their preferences over monetary policy began to diverge. A temporary resolution of this deepening rift has been possible by way of an authoritarian intervention under R. T. Erdogan’s presidential bid in 2017–18. By situating the debate on the relationship between growth regimes and political institutions, the study further unpacks the nexus between democratic backsliding, dominant social blocs, and economic growth in the periphery of Europe.

Bureaucracies under authoritarian pressure: legal destabilisation, politicisation and bureaucratic subjectivities in contemporary Turkey

AbstractDrawing on ethnographic research across two street-level bureaucratic institutions in Istanbul, Turkey in the late 2010s, this paper traces the causes and implications of the politicisation of bureaucrats in the context of authoritarianisation. It argues that politicisation of bureaucrats cannot solely be taken as a reflection of the erosion of bureaucratic autonomy and capacity but must be explored further to reveal how bureaucrats cope with authoritarian pressure as well socio-legal destabilisations to preserve their institutional ethos. To this aim, I demonstrate how bureaucrats get politicised in response to authoritarian policies and, in turn, labour to uphold the rule of law despite politico-legal risks. The paper particularly focuses on how bureaucrats weave political solidarity and circulate anti-government discourses and how they use their knowledge of the legal-regulatory repertoire and archives to deter and ‘correct’ unlawful practices through their everyday work. The paper generates insights into the fashionings of political subjectivities and agency by bureaucrats through their labouring in the face of authoritarian interventions, legal disruptions and the increasing interactions with the citizenry. In doing this, my objective is to shed light on the everyday workings of authoritarian state and to get a better picture of the way the law is ‘made real’ (Latour, 2002) across mundane encounters between bureaucrats and the citizenry.

China's Public Health Policies in Response to COVID-19: From an "Authoritarian" Perspective.

Background: China is generally regarded internationally as an “authoritarian” state. Traditional definitions have assigned many negative connotations surrounding the term of authoritarian. We realize that it might not be considered value-neutral in other countries. But authoritarian in the Chinese context emphasizes more on centralized decision making, collectivism, coordinating all activities of the nation, and public support, which is considered a value-neutral term. Therefore, it is adopted in this paper. We would like to clarify this. Authoritarian governance is considered an important mechanism for developing China's economy and solving social problems. The COVID-19 crisis is no exception. Most of the current research on crisis management and government crises focuses on advanced, democratic countries. However, the consequences of crisis management by authoritarian governments have not been fully appreciated. Although prior research has addressed authoritarian initiatives to manage crises in China, authoritarian interventions have rarely been theorized in public health emergencies.Methods: Based on a literature review and theoretical analysis, we use a descriptive and qualitative approach to assess public health policies and mechanisms from an authoritarian perspective in China. In light of the key events and intervention measures of China's government in response to COVID-19, the strategic practices of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to construct, embody, or set political goals through authoritarian intervention in public health crisis management are discussed.Results: China's government responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with a comprehensive authoritarian intervention, notably by establishing a top-down leadership mechanism, implementing a resolute lockdown, rapidly establishing square cabin hospitals, enhancing cooperation between different government departments, mobilizing a wide range of volunteer resources, enforcing the use of health codes, imposing mandatory quarantine on those returning from abroad, and implementing city-wide nucleic acid testing. These measures ensured that China was able to contain the outbreak quickly and reflect on the unique role of the Chinese authoritarian system in responding to public health crises.Conclusions: Our paper contributes to expanding the existing understanding of the relationship between crisis management and authoritarian system. China's response to COVID-19 exemplifies the unique strengths of authoritarian institutions in public health crisis management, which is a helpful and practical tool to further enhance the CPC's political legitimacy. As a socialist model of crisis management with Chinese characteristics, it may offer desirable experiences and lessons for other countries still ravaged by the epidemic.

Weakening the Strong Mayor: Partisan Division and Presidential Intervention in Istanbul

Istanbul, the leading city of Turkey, is a good case for analyzing the conflictual relations of the mayor with the city council and the central government. Istanbul had been governed by the mayors from the ruling party, the Justice and Development Party ( Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi; AKP) and its predecessor parties since 1994. In the local elections held in March 2019, which was repeated only for Istanbul after two months with a highly suspicious decision by the Supreme Election Board, the AKP lost this city. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the mayor of Istanbul, has harsh relations with the city council, which is dominated by the AKP and its alliance party, the Nationalist Movement Party ( Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi; MHP). What exacerbates this situation is the partisan intervention of the increasingly authoritarian central government that weakens the mayor's position. The mayor tries to counterbalance the power of the city council and central government agencies through livestreaming the city council meetings and attracting civic engagement on his side. This article is expected to contribute to the literature on mayoral leadership, partisan constraints to mayoral powers as well as the mayor's strategies against the authoritarian intervention of the central governments. Mayor İmamoğlu's strategies and measures adopted for overcoming the efforts of blocking his agenda by both the council and central government might inspire other mayors experiencing similar partisan constraints.

Groundwater quality index assessment at Raebareli district: A part of Indo‐Gangetic Alluvium, India

The present study highlights the water quality of groundwater and associated health risks with the consumption in various parts of district Raebareli. The water quality at 16% of the total sampling sites was found to be under the ‘highly polluted’ category with high values of Total Hazard Index (THI). The values of fluoride exceeded the permissible limits at44% of the sites. A good correlation of fluoride with WPI and magnesium was seen in the study, with the impact of mild weathering of biotite as a potential cause. The severe health risks found in the study area raise an urgent need for remedial actions and authoritarian interventions.

The future of humanity

Abstract With the recent advancements in scientific comprehension of genetics and the decipherment of complex techniques for editing human genomes, liberal eugenics—eugenic ideal premised on the liberal values of autonomy and pluralism that leaves reproductive choices to parents rather than anachronistic statist authoritarian interventions—has inevitably become a polarising conundrum in contemporary liberal societies as to its utility and destructiveness. Focusing on one species of liberal eugenics—namely, genome editing interventions—I contend that liberal eugenics could be harmful—harm herein construed as that which undermines the salient liberal values of equality, autonomy, and pluralism—since it is itself antithetical to the bases of the liberal society. This contention is based upon three premises: first, that individuals are rather seldom rational decision-makers such that leaving all reproductive choices to the whims of individual parents would be immensely counterproductive to future offspring’s right to open future; second, that liberal eugenics—much like its authoritarian antecedent—could intersect with myriad identities, including race, class, sex, disability, and sexual orientation in ways that might exacerbate social divisions, marginalise different groups, and engender homogeneity; and third, that it undermines individual autonomy of the future person as a member of the liberal community, particularly if their capacities and abilities are tailored to fit parents’ specific life projects and putatively reasonable conceptions of the good. The underscored potential malaises of liberal eugenics should, I argue, be discursively negotiated between parents and the state via the development of robust general laws that regulate heritable genome editing interventions to ensure that the welfare of the future persons is prioritised and that the liberal commitment to autonomy is immune to antiliberal perversions.

Marketisation of Academia and Authoritarian Governments: The Cases of Hungary and Turkey in Critical Perspective

This article analyses the recent political repression of academia in Hungary and Turkey within the critical scholarship on globalisation and neoliberalisation of higher education. We introduce and challenge the hegemonic definitions of academic freedom that sit comfortably with the capitalist logic as well as repressive governing forms and assess the recent attacks on university communities with emphasis on both academic labour and freedom. Adopting a case study approach, we investigate how economic and political forms of repression accompany and reinforce one another within the specificities of both country contexts. We delineate the underlying structural and historical dynamics as well as emergence and evolution of methods of struggle and resistance employed by diverse university communities in their shared and divergent characteristics. Our conclusions include critical reflections on the broader implications of higher education restructuring, authoritarian interventions, and the future of systemic-level resistance.

Mao versus the People: A Review of Climate Leviathan by Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann

This review of Climate Leviathan by Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann assesses the authors’ arguments and locates them within a context of the slow responses to climate challenges offered by Western liberal-democratic countries in contrast to the more radical recent efforts of the Chinese leadership. The essay considers for its powerful analytical lens Wainwright and Mann’s framework for understanding the two axes upon which future responses to climate change may occur—either capitalist or anticapitalist responses, organized either along planetary sovereignty or universal democratic lines. It offers for consideration some criticisms of the book’s lack of engagement with the potential specter of authoritarian state intervention in the name of a climate emergency—the so-called Climate Maoism.

China’s PES-like horizontal eco-compensation program: Combining market-oriented mechanisms and government interventions

Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) conceptualizes a pro-market conservation approach to address ecological problems, but political influences in social reality always challenge PES implementations. There remains limited known about PES(-like) practices in authoritarian states like China. Particularly, the Chinese state launched the Horizontal Eco-compensation program, labeled as combining market-oriented mechanisms and governmental interventions. This paper examines how horizontal eco-compensation (HEC) is framed in China and deployed as a form of practicing state environmental governance. We employ an X-Y dimension framework to critically examine China’s HEC policies, focusing on the interplay of policy tools and project components. We find that China’s HEC has typical characteristics of market-oriented ecosystem services, including marketization, commodification, privatization, and devolution. China’s HEC also embodies at least three forms of authoritarian intervention: governments arrange most HEC financing; governments often act as ES providers and/or buyers; and governments also supervise the HEC’s implementation. We further argue that China’s HEC may be effective in the short term, but it is not sustainable in the long run. These findings contribute to broader PES literature on how the idea of PES is translated and practiced in an authoritarian state.

Universal patterns of intervention: practice, no ‘-isms’

ABSTRACTWidely used distinctions between national and international, between external and local, direct our view away from the political economy of classed interests guiding interventions. In Western and authoritarian interventions alike, such interests align across borders, calling into question the separateness of profiteers groups. Critiques of the liberal peace have overlooked how (capitalist) interests alloy the practice of interventions beyond norms, legitimation claims and international order; unless researchers turn to mapping the cross-connections of the global ‘interventionist class’, interventionism will not be fully understood.

The urbanization policy of Turkey: an uneasy symbiosis of unimplemented policy with centralized pragmatic interventions

ABSTRACTRegarding urbanization policy in Turkey, one can observe how policy-making efforts continuously have moved away from transnational influences and reverted to more pragmatic, national-oriented practices in the last three decades. The results of different attempts to make sustainable urbanization policy for Turkey are vivid examples of how aspirations to reframe national urban development pattern through policy transfer failed and a nationalistic, pragmatic and authoritarian intervention, each time more hard-hitting than before, emerged with dire consequences. Occasionally, distinctive characteristics of the Turkish experience manifested itself in the uneasy symbiosis of policy-making with neo-liberal practices in cities. Using qualitative methodology, this study provides an account of Turkey’s urbanization policy-making episodes in the last decade to show how consecutive attempts to use policy learning and participation as leverage gradually alienated policy intermediaries and allowed strengthening of neo-liberal interventions in urban sphere.

‘Authoritarian neoliberalism’ and the Australian border-industrial complex

What functions do the securitization and the militarization of the border serve under ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’ in Australia? Having pursued the policy of mandatory detention of all undocumented migrants since 1992, the Australian government has also increasingly sought to outsource, privatize, and offshore the construction and operation of its immigration detention facilities, whilst simultaneously engaging in increasingly authoritarian interventions via the militarization of border control. This article seeks to problematize these developments by constructing an emergent cartography of the various links between the ongoing processes of neoliberal structural adjustment, and the intensification of the policing and punitive apparatuses of the Australian border-industrial complex. Accordingly, using theoretical insights gleaned from emergent work on ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’ and from race critical theory as a cue, I outline in this article three functions of the border within punitive approaches to immigration control under neoliberal structural adjustment in Australia: first, as an apparatus of ongoing colonial power; second, as a technology of racial differentiation through its functioning as a ‘filter’ that privileges certain migrant bodies over others, and as an ‘insulator’ against popular dissent; third, as a site of profit and accumulation for transnational capital.

The Work of a Few Trees: Gezi, Politics and Space

AbstractIn June 2013, Istanbul and many cities across Turkey became stages of massive demonstrations and occupations, which were sparked by a conflict over Gezi Park in central Istanbul. For many, the ‘park issue' was simply the last straw, and it led to unprecedented revolt, reflecting a huge number of grievances against the government for some, while for others it emphasized the impoverishing consequences of the Justice and Development Party's (AKP's) urban policies. Instead of disentangling causes and effects, we think that a productive way of approaching the oppositional surge that erupted in Gezi Park is through the political work that space does in the context of the increasing prominence of speculation‐driven and authoritarian interventions in urban spaces. Gezi, as an event, not only disrupted the routinized scripts of an increasingly autocratic government and defied the presumed consensus over real‐estate and infrastructure‐led economic growth policies, but also helped to articulate a series of political agendas across the urban–rural continuum that came before it. Even after the occupation, the Gezi spirit continued to politicize space through various de‐localizations. By elaborating on a particular phrase popularized during Gezi, namely yaşam alanı (life space), the article discusses how the riot's political impact deepened and expanded not only through defending a space but also by creating new ones, both materially and conceptually.

THE RISE AND FALL VOJVODINIAN LIBERALS

The political rise and fall of Vojvodinian Liberals, led by Mirko Čanadanović, is one of the topics from our recent history that has so far not been historiographically treated in the way it deserves, as opposed to publicist material and memoirs in which the events from the early 1970’s in Vojvodina received considerable attention. This paper is an attempt to make a sketch for the portrait of a young and promising political team, whose development was suddenly interrupted by the authoritarian intervention of Josip Broz Tito to the joy and satisfaction of certain Belgrade and Novi Sad political circles. The paper was written on the basis of the previously unreleased original material from the Archive of Vojvodina (fund of the Provincial Committee), numerous published and autobiographical sources, the periodicals published at the time and a small quantity of historiographical literature.

The Authoritarian Threat: Weaknesses of Autocracy Promotion

Abstract: As the international balance of power has shifted away from established democracies, autocrats have begun to assert themselves on the world stage. Once the passive targets of democracy promotion, dictators now actively defend their power abroad, often seeking to undermine democracy in the process. Such deliberate efforts to promote authoritarian rule present a potentially serious threat to democracy in the world today. Yet a closer examination of the actual impact of “autocracy promotion” suggests that it so far presents a less serious challenge than is often assumed. The influence of autocracy promotion is limited, above all, by the fact that authoritarian powers tend to be concerned less with promoting authoritarianism as such than with furthering their own countries’ more narrow economic and geopolitical interests. As a result, authoritarian interventions often have contradictory effects and may in some cases even foster greater pluralism .

Planning Order and Self-Organisation. The Regulation of Competitionand Spatial Relations inInterwar Transport Expertise

Planning Order and Self-Organisation. The Regulation of Competition and Spatial Relations in Interwar Transport Expertise Planning practices in high modernity are often analysed as authoritarian and topdown interventions. This interpretation is derived from the concentration on largescale planning projects. By investigating small-scale and everyday transport planning examples, this article tries to enhance our understanding of high modern planning practices. Transport planning during the interwar years was meant to establish a transport regime in which all means of transport were put into a rational relation to each other. This was only possible by building up a spatial order in which different spatial functions – connecting places, opening up regions and structuring spaces – were placed in a hierarchical order. Hence, the planned spaces often displayed a hierarchy of top-down and bottom-up organisational patterns. This should by no means be regarded as a form of pre-postmodern fascination for self-organisation of order out of chaos. On the contrary, these planning projects, too, reveal strictly defined power relations, even if their objectives and methods cannot be put on a par with famous large-scale projects.

Gardens of Eden or Hearts of Darkness? The Genealogy of Discourses on Environmental Insecurity and Climate Wars in Africa

This article argues that the securitisation of Africa’s environment and climate in the early twenty-first century has less to do with multidisciplinary inquiry into the complexities of climate change, development and conflict, and more with historically established paradigms of thinking about Africa, its ecosystems and notions of disorder and violence. Securitisation is the result of a specific moment in the post–Cold War era with its particular geopolitical configuration and of deeply embedded modes of imagining the African continent, its peoples and their relationship with the environments they inhabit. The main objective of this article is to historicise and politicise the prevailing dystopian discourse about climate-induced insecurity. I show that the assumptions and chains of causality that constitute today’s climate wars narrative are remarkably similar in nature to the environmental narratives that underpinned imperialist and post-independence discourses on environment and development, legitimising highly authoritarian interventions against local populations by governments.

NÓS E OS OUTROS: CONCEPÇÕES DE PESSOA NO DEBATE SOBRE INFANTICÍDIO INDÍGENA NO CONGRESSO NACIONAL

Este ensaio deseja refletir sobre as concepções contrastantes de pessoa que, indiretamente, compõem o debate legislativo sobre o infanticídio indígena. Para os defensores da Lei Muwaji – como ficou conhecido o Projeto de Lei 1057/07, que propõe a criminalização do infanticídio indígena –, a noção de pessoa aparece como sinônimo da noção de vida, compreendida única e exclusivamente sob a ótica da sociedade ocidental. Assim, ao contrapor a noção ocidental-moderna de pessoa às diferentes noções ameríndias, além de apresentar as causas de interditos de vida, pretendo evidenciar a importância atribuída pelos povos indígenas ao nascimento social e à corporalidade como elementos constitutivos da pessoa. Não obstante, diante da insuficiência de dados sobre a ocorrência de casos de infanticídio indígena, sugiro pensá-lo como uma alegoria política e jurídica usada para legitimar a intervenção autoritária do Estado no cotidiano das aldeias, e assim justificar e reafirmar o poder tutelar que nunca foi totalmente sepultado.

State Response to Contemporary Urban Movements in Turkey: A Critical Overview of State Entrepreneurialism and Authoritarian Interventions

This paper grapples with the state's response to contemporary urban movements. In light of recent debates on the changing nature of urban movements, it presents an overview of the responses of states in different modes of regulation, ranging from a Keynesian regime to sequential stages of neoliberalisation. Examples of authoritarianism and the entrepreneurial roles of the state are drawn from the Turkish experience to show how economic liberalism can be combined with increasing social control, restrictions, penalisation and exclusion. Reviewing Turkish urban policies and practice, the urban mobilisations against them, and the varying positions of the state will shed light not only on what is happening in Turkey but also on the transformative nature of neoliberalisation. © 2013 The Author Antipode© 2013 Antipode Foundation Ltd.