Dissident Groups Research Articles

Колумбия: мирный процесс и вызовы постконфликтного периода

The paper discusses the main trends in the social and political development of Colombia in the early 21st century. Due to a compromise between the struggling parties, on the one hand, and effective mediation by international community, on the other, the internal armed conflict ended with a peace treaty signed by both forces: government and left radical guerilla. During referendum, a majority of participants did not support peace agreement. In the context of a “right drift”, I. Duque, the supporter of a tougher policy towards former partisans, came to power. However, later, under pressure from international community and internal opposition, the President has taken a more cautious stance. Representatives of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have occupied a number of seats in parliament; government does in general fulfill its financial obligations towards integrating the demobilized fighters into peaceful life, but it has failed to implement sound structural reforms. Former partisans are particularly concerned about growing attempts to revise conditions of transitional justice while the government is unable to offer them an adequate level of personal security. As a result, some dissident groups and their leaders have resumed hostilities, the guevarist (associated with the strategy of Ernesto „Che” Guevara) National Liberation Army (ELN) has also continued terrorist acts. Nevertheless, the renewal of a full-scale conflict is unlikely due to powerful security forces, small number and fragmentation of partisan units operating in some remote areas, their weak coordination and a rivalry between the FARC and the ELN. Despite relatively favorable economic situation, the President has attempted to unleash the unpopular measure of tax increase. Other challenges are student strikes demanding a reform of higher education, continuous drug trafficking, high level of violence and corruption, and the presence of more than a million of Venezuelan refugees on the Colombian land. According to the author’s conclusion, amid such extreme political polarization, unresolved social problems and high level of organized crime, definitive stabilization in Colombia is an extremely complicated matter. However, the country’s unconventional experience in overcoming acute armed confrontation may be useful to unblock protracted conflicts in other regions of the world. Acknowledgements. The article has been supported by a grant of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR). Project no. 18-09-00021 History of Colombia, from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the XXI Century.

Freedom of Expression in Erdogan’s New Turkey

Free-speech in Turkey is dead, the pressure and fear atmosphere have been prevailing in the public sphere. If before, the were oppositional media outlets, the critical academicians, judiciary mechanisms, dissident groups then in ‘New Turkey’ the only Erdogan who can criticize, remove and staff, oppress or appreciate, do whatever he thinks would work for his interests. In each internal resistance, Erdogan has suppressed the oppositional groups as it was during the Gezi Protests. After the Gezi Protest as the mass resistance, any kind of investigation or criticism toward government have been suppressed and criminalized by instrumentalization of conspiracy theories. The failure of democratization by AKP government has dealt major blow to the human rights, freedom of speech, and liberties. The death of moderation and check and balances cause the chaotic atmosphere and radicalization of Turkish citizen at home and abroad. The instrumentalization of all possible manipulative tools and speculative methods in the hands of Islamist regime have impacted the Turkish society, mainly in polarization and division into pro and anti-Erdoganist poles. There were several internal resistances by Erdoganist dissidents, nevertheless all of them immediately were suppressed by the AKP government.

Protestors, terrorists or something else? How to think about dissident groups

Many scholars of contentious politics claim there is no such thing as a group that uses only one tactic, yet scholars, pundits, and the public routinely use single-minded terms like protestors, dissidents, and terrorists. Other scholars and research programs suggest that some groups are specialists who tend to stick to a single tactic to achieve their goals, such as non-violence, violence, or specific kinds of violence, like terror. We make the claim that both sides of the debate are empirically valid and that both types of group exist. That is, some groups tend to specialize in a single tactic while others use a variety of tactics. This paper examines the empirical distribution of group types by examining the mix of tactics that groups employ. The analysis helps resolve part of the debate and pushes scholarly thinking in new directions about how often, why, and when groups operate across this spectrum.

The Consolidation of Donatism in the First Half of the Fourth Century

The Donatist Movement represents a phenomenon that can be studied as a paradigm for the emergence of schisms and their evolution from a canonical-disciplinary deviation to a dogmatic-moral one, transforming the dissident group into a heretical one. This study aims to deepen the way in which the resistance of the Numidian clergy was consolidated during the Constantinian dynasty despite the concessions and pressures exerted on it. Keywords: Constantine the Great, North Africa, Donatism, Donatus Magnus, circumcelliones

Dispatches from Baghdad: sectarian war in Iraq, 2006–2007

When the dissident media group WikiLeaks published more than a quarter-million US diplomatic cables from 2010 to 2011, it included thousands of cables written by US diplomats involved in the War in Iraq (2003–2011). Although the scholarly literature covers many aspects of the war from the perspective of US officials, it has largely excluded the viewpoints captured by the WikiLeaks cables. In this article, I use the cables to reveal the thinking of US diplomats during one of the most violent phases of the war, the sectarian war, which peaked from 2006 to 2007. The cables document the sectarian cleansing of Baghdad from 2006 to 2007 and provide new information about the factors that caused the rise and fall of sectarian violence. The cables show that US actions contributed to the sectarian violence.

How elite sport helps to foster and maintain a neoliberal culture: The ‘branding’ of Melbourne, Australia

This article explores the role that elite sport has played in the State Government of Victoria’s (Australia) neoliberal agenda of creating an environment conducive to commercial activity. Adopting an urban entrepreneurial approach of selling the ‘city’ as an attractive place for cross-border investment, the state government has strategically invested public funds into major sporting events in Melbourne. Four specific sporting events were examined: i) construction and redevelopments of ‘Melbourne Park’ to host the Australian Open Tennis Championships; ii) hosting the 2006 Commonwealth Games; iii) acquisition of the Australian Formula One Grand Prix and continued political, corporate and media support for the event; and iv) construction of an urban football stadium. Newspaper reports and parliament transcripts between 1984 and 2014 were collected to highlight issues of contest in the ‘sport city’ in conjunction with a thematic analysis of interviews with influential cultural producers of the ‘sport city’ – most notably state premiers, members of parliament, CEOs of public sports trusts and newspaper journalists. Findings illustrate that the Victorian state has successively re-regulated a neoliberal urban entrepreneurial strategy, often preventing dissident groups from resisting neoliberal activities, and that in Melbourne sport operates as ‘cultural glue’ to establish the logic of neoliberalism in an embodied sense.

Better the Devil You Know? How Fringe Terrorism Can Induce an Advantage for Moderate Nonviolent Campaigns

ABSTRACT Fringe terrorism is common during nonviolent campaigns. We examine how this can modify the strategic environment between dissident groups and the state in ways that present both challenges and opportunities to moderate factions. Terrorism is intended to promote violent escalation in a conflict, but we argue that fringe terrorist activities in a nonviolent campaign under certain conditions can induce an advantage for well-organized moderate factions. The risk of escalation following terrorism can give the government more incentives to offer concessions to moderate campaign leaders if the movement can credibly prevent armed escalation. The ability to control and prevent violence is more likely when nonviolent movements have a hierarchical structure and a centralized leadership, as such campaigns are better able to prevent shifts by supporters towards violent fringes. Using new data on terrorist attacks by factions sharing the same overall objectives as ongoing nonviolent campaigns, we show that nonviolent campaigns are more likely to see substantial gains in spite of fringe terrorist activities when a movement has a hierarchical structure and a centralized leadership.

Dissident and dissenting republicanism: From the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement to Brexit

The 1998 Good Friday/Belfast Peace Agreement was almost universally supported by nationalists in Northern Ireland, and Sinn Féin’s high-profile role in the discussions was the foundation upon which it would transform itself from the political wing of the Provisional Irish Republican Army to second biggest party at Stormont. However, dissidents pointed out that the compromises made by Sinn Féin during the Peace Process were a sell-out of the political and ideological aspirations held by republicans for at least a century. New dissident groups emerged in opposition to the course taken by Sinn Féin, and the period since 1998 has been one of the most dynamic in republican history since the Irish Civil War. New political parties and organisations like the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, éirígí, Republican Network for Unity and Saoradh emerged reflecting this state of flux and the existential fears felt by those for whom the Good Friday Agreement fell far short of delivering the republican aspiration of a united Ireland. Although Brexit provided a curious and fortunate opportunity for momentary public attention, these groups have remained peripheral actors in the Irish and British political public spheres.

Russian Foreign Policy Management and Manipulation with the Soviet Successor States

ABSTRACTRussia has been anxious to maintain its influence with the other successor states of the Soviet Union (the Near Abroad). It used a variety of methods, both overt and covert, to further its foreign policy objectives with these countries. Moscow has relied on traditional economic statecraft including trade manipulation, free trade arrangements, and currency linkages as well as ethnic appeals and propaganda/news manipulation to influence foreign audiences. In addition, Russia has used clandestine operations, including cyber attacks, and support for dissident groups. With the annexation of Crimea and the conflict with Georgia Russia chose direct military force because all other options had failed.

The transformation of Turkey’s Islamic media and its marriage with neo-liberalism

ABSTRACTThe Islamic press in Turkey started at the beginning of the 20th century as a reaction to the secularist Young Turks’ revolution of 1908. In the Republican period, Sufi orders and other religious communities maintained internal communication via periodicals despite being interrupted by the 1960, 1971 and 1980 coup d’etats. In the 1990s, the first private Islamic TV channels were opened and soon were targeted by the Turkish Armed Forces through mainstream media in the run-up to the 1997 military memorandum. Only after Erdoğan came to power did the Islamic media find favourable conditions to flourish, lining up with Erdoğan’s AKP. However, there are still small dissident groups who struggle for an independent identity.

Rents from power for a dissident elite and mass mobilization

AbstractPopular uprisings in autocracies seldom lead to democratic regimes. We propose a model that helps explain how rents from power encourage popular revolts. We study why citizens would follow a dissident group seeking regime change, if rents from change accrue only to the group. Our model predicts that higher rents may increase the incidence of public mobilization because rents facilitate coordination. The results suggest that cohesive dissident groups may spur seemingly spontaneous mass mobilizations, even when the mass public know that the dissident group is driven by greed rather than a genuine desire to halt incumbent’s rent‐seeking activities.

Moral Dichotomization at the Heart of Prejudice: The Role of Moral Foundations and Intolerance of Ambiguity in Generalized Prejudice

This study confronted the classical idea that generalized prejudice is rooted in a cognitive tendency to sort reality into rigid and simple categories with the more recent idea that prejudice is shaped by moral intuitions. In a diverse Swedish sample (N = 430), moral absolutism was more strongly associated with generalized prejudice against derogated and dissident (but not dangerous) groups than were other aspects of intolerance of ambiguity. But there was little direct association between any aspect of intolerance of ambiguity and generalized prejudice once indirect relations through binding moral intuitions (which elevated prejudice) and individualizing moral intuitions (which decreased prejudice) had been taken into account. These findings suggest that intolerance of ambiguity is associated with generalized prejudice mainly insofar as it leads to a distinctly moral dichotomization of persons into categories such as insiders and outsiders, law-abiding citizens and deviants, and the righteous and the impure.

Turning a communist party leader into an internet meme: the political and apolitical aspects of China’s toad worship culture

ABSTRACTA cultural phenomenon called ‘mo ha’ (toad worship) has been increasingly popular on the Chinese Internet since 2014, with ‘the toad’ referring to former Party and country leader Jiang Zemin. His memes have gone viral. To examine the toad worship fever, I propose a two-dimensional framework: on the one hand, it differentiates the political and apolitical aspects of the content, and on the other hand, it draws from James Carey’s two views of communication to examine the functions. I collected and analyzed more than 100 toad worship memes, interviewed 24 creators and sharers of the memes, and conducted participant observation in two toad worship online communities. The framework yields four aspects of the phenomenon: implicit criticism toward the current leadership and the regime, ritual satire among groups of dissidents, playfulness, and a shared community with cultural capital and rituals. The motivations of participants are not only multi-faceted, but also fluid. This study contributes to the study of Internet memes and online expression in authoritarian regimes.

Conclusion

Conclusion

Openness and Intellect differentially predict Right-Wing Authoritarianism

The Big Five factor of Openness/Intellect has shown a robust relationship with Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) across multiple studies, but few have investigated the relative contribution of the Big Five Aspects of Openness and Intellect, with mixed findings. The present correlational study of 304 participants expands previous research by using a multi-dimensional measure of authoritarianism that resolves methodological concerns regarding prior RWA scales. Specifically, structural equation modelling indicated that Openness had a direct effect on the RWA subscales of Conservatism, Authoritarianism and Traditionalism, whilst Intellect had a direct effect on Traditionalism as well as an indirect effect on both Traditionalism and Authoritarianism via Dangerous World Perception. Additionally, the RWA subscales fully mediated the relationship between the personality variables and prejudice towards Dissident and Dangerous groups. Conservatism predicted prejudice towards Dissident groups, whilst Authoritarianism predicted prejudice towards Dangerous groups. The findings are discussed with reference to potential mechanisms underlying these relationships.

La militancia política femenina en la izquierda marxista ecuatoriana de la década de los sesenta: La URME y el PCE

The article examines the conflict emerging in the sixties from the threat of “factionalism” at the heart of the Communist Party of Ecuador (Partido Comunista del Ecuador (PCE) as a result of the bets being placed on guerrilla warfare by dissident groups who looked to Cuba’s experience as a model to bring about the revolution. This crisis forced the PCE to rethink its approach to the role of women in its rank and file membership and to draw up control mechanisms based on the Party’s hierarchical structure and the value system of its activism. As for the option to provide greater autonomy, it led certain leftwing women who were critical of the prevalence of men in the party’s leadership and its hierarchical structure to develop their potential for organizing; this in turn sustained the opportunity for women to develop their own political agency marked by their gender difference.

박정희 정권 시기 저항 세력의 사회기술적 상상

The myth of Park Chung Hee as a “President of Science,” which has served to glorify his developmental dictatorship, needs to be criticized and dismantled. What is equally important, however, is to critically analyze the context that has made it possible in the first place-i.e., how the particular vision of science and technology consolidated during the Park Chung Hee era can still exert a considerable influence in our society today. As a preliminary step in that direction, this paper examines how dissident groups during the Park regime-who became one of the major political actors after democratization -understood the meaning, role, and goals of science and technology and how these understandings differed from South Korea’s widely shared sociotechnical imaginary at the time. e prevailing sociotechnical imaginary of the 1960s and 1970s did not suddenly emerge with the seizure of power by Park Chung Hee, and its historical origins can be dated back to the late Chosŏn and colonial periods. e paper thus begins with briefly reviewing the formation of Korea’s sociotechnical imaginary before the 1960s. It then analyzes the features of the dominant sociotechnical imaginary during the Park Chung Hee regime, and explores how those opposed to the regime approached science and technology, focusing on the cases of Sasanggye, the theory of ‘national economy’, and progressive Christian groups. The tentative conclusion of this paper is that many of the dissident groups were also not free from the sociotechnical imaginary of developmental nationalism deeply entrenched in South Korean society under Park’s rule.

Postsecular History

This study provides a particular historical reading of the postsecular moment. In an effort to problematize and historicize the claims of both the secular and the postsecular, this study draws a connecting line between a contemporary postsecular thinker (Daniel Colucciello Barber), and a group of religious dissidents in the seventeenth century Dutch Republic (the Collegiants). In order to demonstrate that the concept of the secular is value-laden and historically situated, the following will explore the ways in which an historical group shares many epistemological characteristics with present postsecular discourse.

Power, Ideology and Authority

In many religious (and other) communities, a dispute about ideology is often more accurately understood as a dispute about authority and power. Such a conflict may progress through three stages, each one more deeply challenging to the legitimacy of traditional authority structures. Whether the challenge ultimately succeeds or fails, its impact may reach far beyond the immediate issue ostensibly in contention: What might start as a narrowly-defined question of ideology or theology may evolve into a comprehensive rejection of the dominant authority’s moral foundation. This article examines such a dynamic through two case studies from the Daudi Bohra community, a denomination of Shi’a Islam spread across Asia, Africa, and four other continents. The first case involves a century-long contestation between the denomination’s apex cleric and a group of dissidents over the proper limits of clerical control. The second case, unfolding in 2014, involves a clerical dispute over succession to the hegemonic office of da’i-al mutlaq. In both cases, the Bohra experience in dealing with issues of ideology and authority provides an example illustrative of a dynamic found in many religious communities worldwide.

Escaping the LRA: Examining the Decision to Disengage from Militarized Dissident Groups

ABSTRACTThis study seeks to understand the conditions that led individuals to accept the risks associated with leaving the Lord’s Resistance Army. To this end, a large participant survey of former rebels was conducted. Results from the survey suggest that the investment model offers a useful tool for capturing the factors that weigh into an individual’s decision-making process as he or she considers disengaging from a group. However, the data also suggest that lack of investment does not equate to disengagement. The perceived opportunity for escape and the costs associated with the risk of escape play critical roles. Consequently, counterinsurgency campaigns and postconflict reconciliation efforts in Africa ought to be jointly calibrated to maximize the likelihood of disengagement.