Domestic Power Struggles Research Articles

Post-Euromaidan Ukraine: domestic power struggles and war of national survival in 2014–2023

Post-Euromaidan Ukraine: domestic power struggles and war of national survival in 2014–2023

Bouteflika’s Foreign Policy in the Service of Algeria’s Internal Power Struggle, 1999–2004

In 1999, Algeria’s military establishment nominated former foreign minister ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Bouteflika as president in order to leverage his diplomatic skills to stabilize the country and end its isolation amid a brutal civil war. Instead, Bouteflika strategically employed Algerian foreign policy to consolidate his own personal power against the military. In this article I explore how Algerian foreign policy thus became instrumental in the domestic power struggle between the army and the civilian president, arguing that this was essential to Bouteflika’s solidification and maintenance of power.

Power struggle on subjectivity and foreign policy: a post-structuralist analysis of JDP’s policies towards the United States (2002–2016)

ABSTRACT This article analyses Turkish foreign policy towards the United States (US) during the Justice and Development Party (JDP) era by using a post-structuralist approach. Post-structuralism posits that foreign policy is a political practice reflecting domestic power struggles. Moreover, subjectivities and foreign policy practices are neither universal, objective, nor predetermined, since they are co-constitutive. From this theoretical perspective, the article explores the JDP’s 'foreign policy' discourse on US-Turkish relations, highlighting discursive practices in legitimising specific subjectivities, such as 'conservative' and 'Muslim' ones, as 'inherent' origins of foreign policy conduct. In two phases, 2002–2009 and 2009–2016, it analyses how changes in JDP’s foreign policy preferences towards the US function to legitimise or marginalise particular subjectivities in its power struggle vis-à-vis 'Kemalist' state elites. Ultimately, the article concludes that the JDP’s discourse exhibits a continuity in hegemonising the 'Islamic' subjectivity ascribed to the Turkish population, despite changes in foreign policy decisions.

Critical Junctures and Ontological Security in Unrecognized States: The Response of Northern Cyprus to the COVID-19 Pandemic

AbstractThis article will examine the response of the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) to the COVID-19 pandemic from an ontological security approach to illustrate how critical junctures may help de facto states in their quest for status and internal legitimacy. Stressing the pandemic’s role in the reconstruction of political narratives and self-legitimating practices among Turkish Cypriot elites, it sheds light on the effects of this global crisis on domestic power struggles in Northern Cyprus as well as its quasi-foreign relations with its patron state (Turkey), parent state (Republic of Cyprus), and the European Union. The study shows that both nationalist and federalist elites of the de facto entity instrumentalized the pandemic in their legitimation strategies and engaged in opportunistic behavior amid the outbreak. It also reveals how the pandemic enhanced the ontological security of Northern Cyprus while advancing its nationalist leadership’s claims for legitimate authority by enabling state-specific forms of agency and unilateral acts concerning the Cyprus dispute that may jeopardize the resumption of peace talks with Greek Cypriots. Thus, it can be assumed that advanced ontological security of the TRNC is highly volatile given the prospects of further isolation and de-engagement in the post-pandemic era.

Framing as a Social Movement’s Transnational Strategy: The Gülen Movement’s EU-Turkey Discourses in the Post-2016 Online Media

This paper focuses on framing as a social movement’s transnational strategy. Applying the cultural approach to framing analysis, it investigates how the Gülen movement, as a social group with restricted access to national gatekeepers, uses discourse to internationalise a domestic power struggle with a powerful opponent. Moving the struggle to the international arena presents a discursive opportunity that determines which ideas become visible and legitimate both internationally and nationally. The importance of such internationalization increases in times of conflict and the media play a vital role in this process. The paper argues that the editors of the pro-Gülen movement foreign online platforms established after the movement was forced into exile following the failed 2016 coup, use strategic framing to tailor their frames for the host context and culture. That increases the resonance of their frames and the potential of the discursive opportunity. The article confirms the previous findings that media are a crucial resource for transnational social movements because policymakers are sensitive to public opinion, which is shaped by media frames.

Framing as a Social Movement’s Transnational Strategy

This paper focuses on framing as a social movement’s transnationalstrategy. Applying the cultural approach to framing analysis, it investigateshow the Gülen movement, as a social group with restricted access tonational gatekeepers, uses discourse to internationalise a domestic powerstruggle with a powerful opponent. Moving the struggle to theinternational arena presents a discursive opportunity that determineswhich ideas become visible and legitimate both internationally andnationally. The importance of such internationalization increases in times ofconflict and the media play a vital role in this process. The paper arguesthat the editors of the pro-Gülen movement foreign online platformsestablished after the movement was forced into exile following the failed2016 coup, use strategic framing to tailor their frames for the host contextand culture. That increases the resonance of their frames and the potentialof the discursive opportunity. The article confirms the previous findings thatmedia are a crucial resource for transnational social movements becausepolicymakers are sensitive to public opinion, which is shaped by mediaframes.

The false promise of Europeanisation in Turkey’s national identity discourse

ABSTRACT On the question of whether Turkey has been turning away from Europe in the last decade, this research argues that there has been a false promise of Europeanisation of the Turkish national identity since the pro-Islamist AKP government came to power in 2002. Adopting a critical constructivist approach has revealed that the Europeanisation process has contributed to the domestic power struggle of competing Turkish nationalist discourses in maintaining and transforming Turkey’s Kemalist nation-state identity that, paradoxically, has empowered de-Europeanisation of Turkey’s identity. An analysis of debate in the print media discourse empirically shows how Turkey constructs its identity as ‘the other’ in Europe in different discourses of Turkish nationalism. Consequently, this study points out that the domestic power struggles involved in the reconstruction of Turkey’s identity, which was triggered by the Europeanisation process that targeted the Kemalist and Europeanist construction, has consolidated the Islamist, post-Kemalist nation-state identity discourse.

THE DECLINE IN BRAZIL’S INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCE: FROM AN EMERGING COUNTRY TO AN INWARD-LOOKING STATE

Why has Brazil’s international influence subsided? From 2003 to 2014, Brazil fostered its socioeconomic development and pursued an assertive foreign policy that raised its international profile. Besides promoting regional integration, with Mercosur and UNASUR, Brazil played an important role in international coalitions such as the BRICS and the G 20. However, those initiatives have lost momentum from 2015 onwards. This paper aims to explain the decline in Brazil’s international influence. We hypothesize that Brazil’s politico-economic crisis, caused by domestic power struggles and international reaction to its ascent, has weakened its position as an emerging country. International systemic constraints are important, albeit not enough to account for such a setback. A comprehensive explanation needs to take in consideration both geopolitical factors and domestic power struggles.

Reexamining Taiwan’s South China Sea policy dilemma

While other claimants are directly involved in maritime territorial disputes and dialogues, Taiwan has stalled its momentum and kept its distance from controversy. The government in Taiwan has quietly retreated from the most legitimate and conventional role in the South China Sea in hope of gaining diplomatic support in the region. Many have wondered why Taiwan consistently shies away from the issues. Does the government in Taiwan realize its key role in the South China Sea has been further marginalized as a result? Over the last 2 decades, following democratization, various administrations in Taiwan only managed to imply that Taiwan may have a policy guideline on the South China Sea, but not a firm policy per se. With substantially less political weight in domestic political debates and fierce power struggles in Taipei, Taiwan’s South China Sea claim has unfortunately been left far behind general issues on the policy agenda, especially when the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is in power. Due to their relevance to the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan’s complicated relationship with it, the DPP does not want to attach its political efforts to South China Sea issues. This paper intends to review the effectiveness of political measures on South China Sea issues taken by various administrations in Taiwan and examine reasons why indecision has become mainstream in policy thinking on the territorial disputes.

Engaging the US in the Age of Trump: The Case for a New European Strategic Discourse

While the prevailing perception of EU Member States of NATO is that cooperation with the US under President Trump has become close to impossible, there is still no alternative to engaging. International solutions of consequence will hardly be sustainable without the US. How can EU/NATO Member States and the EU engage effectively with the US on workable international solutions? Policy is applied analysis that inevitably infers from theory in response to the question: what works? Therefore, policy is an intervention, as therapy uses the term, and theories are cognitive tools. Policy and therapy are comparable because both work through discourse to effect change by cognitive restructuring. Therefore, psychological theories offer cognitive tools for designing a strategic discourse as policy intervention. A model for cognitive behavioural therapy and a theory on identity can innovate theory and make policy more effective. Current US political controversies mainly boil down to conflicting US identity stories. Foreign policy issues are an extension of competing domestic group identities and derived domestic issues. The domestic political process does not consider foreign policy issues on their own merit. As a result, current US foreign policy of unilateral confrontation causes some serious risks and costs to US interests. The states now seen as adversaries, such as Russia and Iran, have comparable identity stories that are in a similar way dysfunctional. Stories of confrontation bestow assets in a domestic power struggle while undermining international solutions. A new European strategic discourse should avoid identity stories but seek cognitive restructuring of grand strategies by proposing within the EU/Russian Permanent Partnership Council a comprehensive multilateral conference on the new regional political order in Syria and Iraq. This proposal can emulate the most successful cognitive restructuring of a grand strategy ever, the process led by Willy Brandt and Egon Bahr in West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s leading to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Clausewitz and the politics of war: A contemporary theory

ABSTRACT This paper re-examines the theoretical underpinnings of Strategic Studies, proposing a novel theory and a new framework for analysing war’s fundamental relationship with politics in line with the Clausewitzian tradition. Throughout modern history, Clausewitz’s concept of politics has been misconstrued as referring only to policy whereas in fact, for him, ‘politics’ was a much broader concept, including domestic power struggles. The political logic of war is defined here as the convergence of the interrelating factors of power struggles and policy objectives within a given polity that restrains and enables these political forces. The analysis of the Clausewitzian political logic of war is conducted through the sociological ‘liquid modern’ lens. It is argued that with power increasingly shifting from centralised state-oriented political leadership towards market forces, non-state actors and other political bodies, the effectiveness of war has been reduced. This is evident in the fragmentation of Western political systems and, as a result, suboptimal strategy and the domination of domestic power struggles in political decision-making concerning war.

INTERNATIONAL LAW IN THE TURKISH LEGAL ORDER: TRANSNATIONAL JUDICIAL DIALOGUE AND THE TURKISH CONSTITUTIONAL COURT

Much has been written on the increasing significance of domestic courts in the international realm. However, the role of the Turkish constitutional judges in determining and orienting the relationship between international law and Turkish domestic law has rarely been subject to legal analysis. Literature on the involvement of the Turkish judges in transnational judicial dialogue is also almost non-existent. As far as the existing Turkish literature is concerned, much of the contemporary writing on the subject tends to focus on the hierarchical position of international agreements in the Turkish legal order. This paper intends to fill an important gap in the scholarship by providing an analysis of the decisions of the Turkish Constitutional Court (TCC) and by illuminating the TCC’s role as implementers or non-implementers of international law, and the scope of their participation in transnational judicial dialogue. Relevant sub-questions concern the extent to which the stance of the TCC’s judges may or may not alleviate concerns of the international community on the rule of law in Turkey, and whether their engagement in international law is substantial enough to limit and moderate the excesses of different political forces, including those in power, engaged in the domestic power struggle.

Domestic Motivation and the Case of the East China Sea ADIZ: Diversion or Mobilization?

The Sino-Japanese dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands has intensified since 2012. In November 2013, China's Ministry of Defense declared an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea (ECS). An ADIZ refers to publicly defined area extending beyond national territory in which unidentified aircraft are liable to be interrogated and, if necessary, intercepted for identification before they cross into sovereign airspace (Welch 2013). While many states have set up their own ADIZs since 1948, the ECS ADIZ was considered a destabilizing move by East Asian states as well as other stakeholders because it includes the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands and it applies generally to aircraft flying in the ECS ADIZ, regardless of whether the aircraft intends to enter the PRC's airspace (Rinehart and Bart 2015, 7). Since its announcement, many have sought to understand the motivation behind the ECS ADIZ. Some analysts have looked at it from a strategic perspective, while others have seen it as a result of Tokyo's provocative decision to nationalize the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in 2012 in the context of the hawkish foreign policy orientation of the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. However, all of these explanations overlook the possibility that domestic factors also played an important role in deciding to implement an ADIZ. Noting this shortcoming, some contributors to a special issue of Asian Perspective on the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands conflict presented analyses that took domestic factors into account. For instance, Togo (2014) and Hirano (2014) discussed how Japan's domestic have become entangled with international factors and how this has contributed to the dispute. Moore (2014, 238) looked at the role of politics at the domestic and international levels in China and Japan. Moore's argument is especially illuminating in that he establishes a two-level analytic framework to examine the interaction of ideational factors at different levels, in and across countries. In his conclusion, he suggests a face-to-face solution for the dispute, which would allow both sides [to] come away with enough face to proclaim victory to their constituents (238).However, although ideational factors are powerful in explaining the structure of conflict, they are insufficient to explain its timing. In this article, we argue that the issue cannot be fully understood without looking into the decisionmakers' political motivation. To offer another plausible explanation that may fill this gap, we consider two distinct theoretical frameworks: the diversionary foreign policy and the mobilization models. The first model is based on the idea that state leaders utilize external conflict to divert domestic attention away from their political, economic, or social problems in order to reconsolidate their power position. The second model deals with how state leaders manipulate international crises to mobilize patriotic sentiment among their citizens, making these citizens more willing to accept a radical policy agenda requiring the sacrifice of their individual rights. Both models focus on the linkage between domestic and foreign policy, but each has different theoret- ical and empirical implications. We assess which mechanism offers a better explanation of China's ADIZ decision by carefully reviewing available empirical evidence.Diversionary Incentive vs. Mobilization Effort: A Brief Theoretical ReviewScholars of Chinese foreign policy have made considerable efforts to understand the impact of domestic factors on China's decisions to take belligerent action. For example, Chen (1987) and Zhang (2010) argue that an important driver behind China's decision to fight a brief war with Vietnam in 1979 was Deng Xiaoping's domestic power struggle and his agenda of economic reform. In a broader examination of China's use of military force, Scobell (2003) also demonstrates that China's strategic culture, including the historical legacy of the cult of defense, the evolving civilmilitary culture, and military organizational culture, can be used to explain continuity and change in China's decisions to use military force abroad. …

The clash of great powers and revolution in the Baltic Sea?

The Soviet party leadership claimed repeatedly after the mid-1920s that the Soviet Union was under an acute threat of intervention. The interpretation was based on different views regarding the development of socialism in the USSR. The role of Finland in the Soviet policy towards other border-states offers a case for observing the relation of ideology and practice in Soviet foreign policy, especially in the Baltic Sea context in 1925. The main interests for the Soviets were plans for military alliances and spheres of influence and intelligence. Contrary to the ideological worldview, the Peoples’ Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (NKID) did not see the western great powers, Great Britain and France, as being behind the Baltic alliance plan. Instead, the alliance attempt was primarily seen as an independent Polish initiative, especially lacking British support. The Soviet foreign administration was able to evaluate the grounds for eventual Finnish non-alliance accurately, despite Baltic sympathies and the lack of an active Scandinavian orientation. The results suggest the NKID observed international relations from the traditional viewpoint of Soviet state interests, and on the basis of quite accurate information, not reflecting the needs of ideological interpretation or domestic power struggles.

Serbia's Military Neutrality: Origins, effects and challenges

Abstract Serbia is the only state in the Western Balkans that is not seeking NATO membership. In December 2007, Serbia declared military neutrality and in spite of its EU membership aspirations, developed very close relations with Moscow. The objective of this paper is threefold. First, I argue that in order to understand why Serbia declared military neutrality, one has to look both at the discursive terrain and domestic power struggles. The key narrative that was strategically used by mnemonic entrepreneurs, most importantly by the former Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica, to legitimize military neutrality was the trauma of NATO intervention in 1999 and the ensuing secession of Kosovo. In the second part of the paper, I discuss the operational consequences of the military neutrality policy for Serbia's relations with NATO and Russia, as well as for military reform and EU accession. Finally, I spell out the challenges ahead in Serbia's neutrality policy and argue that its decision makers will increasingly be caught between pragmatic foreign policy requirements on the one hand and deeply entrenched traumatic memories on the other.

The myth of ‘Europeanization’ of Turkish foreign policy: the Cyprus debacle as a litmus test

This article examines Turkish–EU relations and the Cyprus issue within the Europeanization framework. It seeks to underline how and to what extent EU conditionality was performed in Turkey’s Cyprus policy in the post-Helsinki period. The exploration of the relationship between domestic political pressures and the foreign policy choices of the AKP government on the Cyprus issue suggests that EU’s potential in transforming the foreign policy of candidates is both context dependent and questionable. Alongside EU-related factors such as the credible membership perspective, what accounts for change is predominantly determined by how domestic actors perceive it, and how much domestic power struggles are affected by it.

Coercive Europeanization: the EU's struggle to contain secessionism in the Balkans

Secessionism is still the predominant conflict type in Europe. Even though the European Union (EU) extended the enlargement perspective to the Balkans 15 years ago, secessionist ambition remains pervasive, especially in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia. How does secessionism affect Europeanization and how does Europeanization affect secessionism? It is argued here that in cases of unattained statehood domestic power struggles among deeply divided elites over status and territorial control undermine the consensus needed for Europeanization. In cases of attained de facto statehood the conflict focuses on recognition, which likewise polarizes societies and marginalizes reform. In such high-resistance scenarios, where the inclusionary EU norms clash with the exclusionary norms of the secessionists, the EU vigorously works to marginalize the secessionists by relying mainly on denial, punishment and imposition. Still, the EU's leverage is often insufficient in moving the conflicting parties towards within-state solutions and reform. A study of Bosnia's transformation since Dayton reveals, however, that the EU's leverage varies over time and that the EU at times itself inadvertently fans secessionism.

LEGISLATION

Much has been written on the increasing significance of domestic courts in the international realm. However, the role of the Turkish constitutional judges in determining and orienting the relationship between international law and Turkish domestic law has rarely been subject to legal analysis. Literature on the involvement of the Turkish judges in transnational judicial dialogue is also almost non-existent. As far as the existing Turkish literature is concerned, much of the contemporary writing on the subject tends to focus on the hierarchical position of international agreements in the Turkish legal order. This paper intends to fill an important gap in the scholarship by providing an analysis of the decisions of the Turkish Constitutional Court (TCC) and by illuminating the TCC’s role as implementers or non-implementers of international law, and the scope of their participation in transnational judicial dialogue. Relevant sub-questions concern the extent to which the stance of the TCC’s judges may or may not alleviate concerns of the international community on the rule of law in Turkey, and whether their engagement in international law is substantial enough to limit and moderate the excesses of different political forces, including those in power, engaged in the domestic power struggle.

La crise de Berlin de 1961

The Berlin Wall was but an episode in what is referred to as the Berlin Crisis of 1961. The latter's context included two other conflicts : a domestic power struggle within the Soviet Union and a race for strategic superiority between the superpowers. The methodology employed makes it possible to show that the Berlin Crisis constituted a hiatus within the much larger conflict of the Cold War. It also reveals that the frequency with which objectives were formulated constitutes a very important « indicator » « reference point » or « signpost » within the crisis process. These findings would tend to demonstrate that the stimulus-response model, nothwithstanding its importance, should be completed by a much more methodical examination of the evolution of the objectives pursued by a State in the conduct of its foreign relations.

The critical geopolitics of the Uzbekistan–Kyrgyzstan Ferghana Valley boundary dispute, 1999–2000

In 1999 the Uzbekistan–Kyrgyzstan Ferghana Valley boundary became a brutal reality in the lives of borderland inhabitants, when it became the key issue in a crisis of inter-state relations. Mainstream explanations have suggested that the Soviet boundary legacy and convergent post-Soviet macro-economic policies made conflict inevitable. Drawing on critical geopolitics theory, this paper questions the implicit determinism in these accounts, and seeks to augment them by a political analysis. It suggests that ‘the border crisis’ was the product of the interaction of complex domestic power struggles in both countries, the boundary itself acting as a material and discursive site where elites struggled for the power to inscribe conflicting gendered, nationalistic visions of geopolitical identity. It concludes by insisting upon a moral imperative to expose and challenge the geographical underpinnings of state violence.