Elite Negotiations Research Articles

Revolution and Elite Negotiations: Deconstructing Constitutional Pathways in Hungary and Poland

Revolution and Elite Negotiations: Deconstructing Constitutional Pathways in Hungary and Poland

Revolution and Elite Negotiations: Deconstructing Constitutional Pathways in Hungary and Poland

Revolution and Elite Negotiations: Deconstructing Constitutional Pathways in Hungary and Poland

:Etruscan Literacy in Its Social Context

:<i>Etruscan Literacy in Its Social Context</i>

Nicola Terrenato, The Early Roman Expansion into Italy. Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019, XX + 327 p.

Nicola Terrenato, The Early Roman Expansion into Italy. Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019, XX + 327 p.

Militant Mothers: Gender and the Politics of Anticolonial Action in Côte d'Ivoire

AbstractOn 24 December 1949, two thousand women marched on the prison at Grand Bassam in protest of the detention of militants of the Parti Démocratique de Côte d'Ivoire (PDCI). Considered the first mass demonstration by West African women against French colonial rule, the march on Grand Bassam was a watershed moment in the Ivoirian anticolonial movement. Though party officials have framed women's activism as a political ‘awakening’, women's militancy was in keeping with longstanding practices of public motherhood, whereby women's status as caregivers — both biological and symbolic — authorized their moral interventions in community life. Maternal authority enabled a variety of powerful political tactics, yet in an Ivoirian anticolonial context dominated by elite negotiations, it also circumscribed women's activism. This article examines the women's march on Grand Bassam as a case study for understanding the possibilities and limits of women's participation in the Ivoirian anticolonial movement.

Mount Lebanon and Greece: Mediterranean Crosscurrents, 1821–1841

This article uncovers the interactions between the Greek War of Independence and the Ottoman district of Mount Lebanon. Greek forces made corsairing raids on the Syria-Lebanon coast, sometimes leading Ottoman governors to retaliate against local Christians. A more substantial attempt was made to draw the district’s quasi-autonomous ruler, Emir Bashir al-Shihabi, into an alliance with the revolutionary Greeks, leading to a major Greek assault on Beirut in 1826, but this was unsuccessful. Underlying its failure, the article argues, was the persistence of an older pattern of elite negotiation across religious boundaries, which was resistant to the stark Christian-Muslim polarisation developed in parts of the Greek war. In the decades following this war, it then suggests, some sectarian polarisation and Christian nationalist aspirations reminiscent of Greece did emerge in Mount Lebanon, largely through Maronite Christians’ interactions with France. The goal of a monoreligious nation-state, however, never took root.

Nicola Terrenato: The Early Roman Expansion into Italy. Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas.

Nicola Terrenato: The Early Roman Expansion into Italy. Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas.

Clans of Roman Italy

Clans of Roman Italy Roman Roth Terrenato, N. 2019. The Early Roman Expansion into Italy: Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. xx + 327, 43 black-and-white illustrations. ISBN 978–1–108–42267–3. £75.00. I In 381 bc the city-state of Tusculum became the first community to be incorporated into the Roman state as a municipium, probably by inclusion in the tribus Papiria to which it belonged in historically better documented times.1 Livy informs us that the incorporation came in the wake of an impending war between Tusculum and Rome, which was averted by the community's surrendering itself to the Roman troops that had menacingly entered the town's territory.2 Yet its allegiances remained uncertain, so that by the time Rome's Latin allies revolted from her forty years later, Tusculum appears to have been on the rebels' side. Livy represents this as the result of a factional struggle within the municipium when he describes the restitution of the town to its citizen status in 338 bc in the following terms: Tusculanis seruata ciuitas quam habebant crimenque rebellionis a publica fraude in paucos autores uersum ('The Tusculans retained the citizen status which they had and the charge of rebellion was laid against a few ringleaders while the community was absolved from that of collective betrayal', Livy 8.14.4). [End Page 268] This incident provides a prime example of the fact that Rome's successful expansion in Italy depended on loyal members of local elites being in control of her allied communities or, as in this case, of a recently incorporated municipium.3 By the same token, it was possible for those elites to lead their city-states to break away from Rome – or at least attempt to do so – which raises the question what motivated such individuals to be either loyal or opposed to the emerging imperial power. In the case of Tusculum, this issue again arose only fifteen years after the town had been allowed to retain its citizen status. In 323 bc, Livy writes of a recent rebellion in which the Tusculans were said to have sided with the people of Velitrae and Privernum.4 The tribal assembly rejected the proposed terms of punishment – execution of adult males, sale into slavery of women and children – almost unanimously, except for the tribus Pollia, which Livy (8.37.7–12) suggests was the reason why candidates from this tribe usually failed to gain the Papiria's vote ad patrum aetatem ('down to our fathers' time'). Again significant is the fact that the status of the town was preserved although at least some of the Tusculans – almost certainly members of the elite – had attempted to break their allegiance to Rome yet another time. There is yet another twist to the tale; one of the Roman consuls who were elected for the following year (322 bc) was L. Fulvius Curvus, member of a prominent Tusculan family and generally considered to have been the first immigrant homo nouus who attained the consulship.5 Although Livy does not comment on this, the Elder Pliny supplies additional information on both the man and his rise to power, which is as intriguing as it is confused.6 According to Pliny, Fulvius had in fact been consul of 'the rebellious Tusculans' only recently and obtained the same office as soon as he had changed sides and joined the Romans, to the point of celebrating a triumph over his town of origin. Since this anecdote is recorded neither by Livy nor, more importantly, in the fasti triumphales, we ought not to lend it too much credence. Rather, its roots might be traced to later Republican discourses of noble origins.7 In turn, these were quite possibly elaborated upon by the exemplary tradition [End Page 269] of the early Empire that also provides a context for this and many other chapters in the seventh book of Pliny's Naturalis Historia.8 Still, there is rarely smoke without fire. In this case, the fact that this anecdote could credibly be circulated during later times invites the suspicion that the historical rise of the Fulvii had something more to it...

Nicola Terrenato. The Early Roman Expansion into Italy: Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas.

N<scp>icola</scp> T<scp>errenato</scp>. <i>The Early Roman Expansion into Italy: Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas</i>.

The Early Roman Expansion into Italy: Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas

The Early Roman Expansion into Italy: Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas

Participatory constitution-building in Fiji: A comparison of the 1993–1997 and the 2012–2013 processes

Abstract Participatory constitution-building during times of transition from war to peace or from authoritarian to democratic rule is quickly becoming an established norm. This article analyzes and compares two Fijian participatory processes; the 1993–1997 process and the 2012–2013 process. The purpose of doing so is to understand the extent to which these processes were genuinely participatory in terms of extending the Fijians’ possibility of influencing the content of the constitution. The article concludes that these processes were merely symbolic in terms of public participation; that there is not much that public participation can achieve in and by itself; and that the sequencing of public participation and secluded political elite negotiations in the context of constitution-building during times of transition is a field of research that is in dire need of further systematic analysis, particularly as an increasing amount of post-conflict and post-authoritarian states endeavor participatory constitution-building.

Nicola Terrenato, The Early Roman Expansion into Italy. Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2019

Nicola Terrenato, The Early Roman Expansion into Italy. Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2019

Moderating polarised positions on questions of national identity and sovereignty: Deliberative surveys on federalism in Myanmar

Myanmar is in an important phase of its political transition. The opportunity for substantive federal reform, which is central to peacebuilding and democratisation, is present and being progressed through parallel elite level forums. However, these elite negotiations have serious limitations, as they fail to reach out to citizens, and contribute to polarisation and the perpetuation of extreme views regarding federalism. To address the absence of public deliberation on federalism in Myanmar, we organised five deliberative events based on the Deliberative Polling® methodology. This paper discusses some of the key findings and demonstrates how they can contribute to federal constitutional reform in Myanmar. It shows that when debating fundamental issues relating to identity and national sovereignty, public deliberation has moderation effects even in conflict-ridden deeply divided societies. Indeed, questions that related to the institutions associated with identity and religion had the highest quality of deliberation, opinion change and moderation. These more moderate and considered deliberated perspectives are of great value for dealing with the polarisation issue that Myanmar faces and demonstrate the potential of deliberative democracy tools to supplement and moderate electoral democracy and elite-driven constitutional change processes.

The Early Roman Expansion into Italy: Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas by Nicola Terrenato

426 PHOENIX The volume succeeds admirably in showcasing erudite essays that illustrate the variegated ancient approaches to the marvelous vis-à-vis medicine. At the same time, the near-exclusive focus on Hellenistic and imperial texts leaves little space for a diachronic or longue-durée perspective of this disciplinary or generic alliance. Consequently, the category of wonder comes to acquire an almost amorphous and ahistorical cast, conceived in privative terms as the antipode to scientific or rational knowledge. The chronological limitations also occlude potentially illuminating preconditions and substrates of the phenomenon under examination. Arguably, the primary questions of the volume—how postclassical literati exploited discourses of wonder, and how, conversely, science and medicine struggled to disentangle themselves from these tenacious discourses—trace their ancestry back to contentious fifth-century debates about disease and medicine between proponents of Hippocratic or Ionian medicine and apologists of charismatic modes of healing. How did the stakes and commitments in this long, sinuous debate over the role of the “non-rational” in scientific inquiry evolve between these two watersheds? What accounts for the enduring fascination exerted by wonder on Greek savants over centuries? And how does the relationship between medicine and paradoxography intensify, fade, or mutate with the cultural transition into late antiquity? I raise these questions by way of conclusion not to obscure the value of the book, but to suggest that its topic has resonance far beyond its already considerable scholarly range. University of Toronto Kenneth W. Yu The Early Roman Expansion into Italy: Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas. By Nicola Terrenato. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 2019. Pp. xx, 334. Have our histories of the Roman conquest of Italy neglected the contribution of Italian elites? In this important book, Nicola Terrenato argues that they have and that this oversight obscures our understanding of the broader dynamics of the making of Roman Italy. Once Italians are integrated into the picture, his account becomes less a story of violent imperial domination and more one of negotiation, a grand bargain bringing Italy’s elite families into alignment with Rome during the fourth and third centuries b.c. Thus, he asks in his concluding chapter, “Did Rome conquer Italy or did Italy overcome Rome?” (269). The question is provocative, but it should not be taken lightly: Terrenato is a leading specialist on the subject and has worked on many of these themes for several decades. The book’s long gestation has resulted in a powerfully argued and eminently readable volume, which should be on the shelves of all those working on early Roman archaeology and history. The first chapter traces historical thought on the Roman conquest from ancient sources all the way to the present-day debate between those who attribute Rome’s rise to its particular aggressiveness, and those who attribute it to its desire to defend itself and protect its allies. As Terrenato emphasizes, both sides focus on Rome itself with little regard for the non-Roman context. Chapter Two begins to repair this oversight by situating the conquest in the very long-term social dynamics of Central Italy. The development of Iron Age Italian society from family to extended-kinship groups, and eventually larger collectivities organized in city-states, has been described numerous times before. Terrenato ’s account largely follows established lines in seeing the urbanization process accel- BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 427 erating in the seventh century before reaching completion, at least in Tyrrhenian Italy, by the sixth. He acknowledges problems with the evolutionary concept of the primordial Central Italian gens, but ultimately favors the idea that clans or extended lineage groups formed the basis of early Italian society. These elite groups were highly mobile, while they interacted in increasingly formalized modes of commensality, ritual, or gift exchange. More and more, such activities concentrated in urban settlements for convenience. Early Italian cities thus functioned as stages for elite political interaction, but urbanization and state-formation by no means marked the end of these groups, who retained their own private interests. Chapter Three is a brilliantly original contextualization of the consequent expansion of one such city state, Rome. Case studies of Syracuse, Carthage, Marseille, and Tarquinia demonstrate that early Roman expansion took place...

The Bantustan State and the South African Transition: Militarisation, Patrimonialism and the Collapse of the Ciskei Regime, 1986–1994

This article examines the Ciskei bantustan and processes of state formation during the transition to democracy. In the Ciskei, the rule of Brigadier Oupa Gqozo rested on the continued support of the South African state: identified as the weakest link in the National Party's conservative alliance, the Ciskei became the first target for the African National Congress's mass action campaign of 1992. The struggle in the Ciskei thus had some significance for the shape of the transition. While at a constitutional level the National Party eventually conceded to the reincorporation of the bantustans in late 1992, it continued to stall change and to bolster the bantustans through covert military operations and land transfers to bantustan elites. These dynamics of state formation are critical aspects of the history of the transition and were at the heart of the emerging political conflict in the Ciskei, which by mid-1992 was escalating into civil war. This article examines mass mobilisation, political repression and the consequences of the patrimonial militarisation of the Ciskei state in the Ciskei/Border region. By focusing on processes of state formation and struggles over the fabric of the state, the article provides a corrective to the prevailing academic focus on the elite negotiations and argues for the value of social histories of the bantustan states for understanding the enduring legacies of these regimes.

Participatory Constitution-Building in Nepal – A Comparison of the 2008-2012 and the 2013-2015 Process

Participatory constitution-building is a trend that appears to be here to stay; particularly when new constitutions are drafted in the aftermath of war or during transitions from authoritarian to democratic rule. Anticipations as to what the involvement of the public will achieve are several, and scholars are only recently starting to systematically investigate whether or not these expectations find empirical support. Previous research has shown that public participation in the making of the constitution can have certain positive effects at an individual level of analysis, but that the actions of political elites during constitutional negotiations might affect outcomes at a macro level of analysis more than what has hitherto be acknowledged in this strand of research. Nepal is one of the most recent cases of participatory constitution-building, and the country carried out not only one, but two, such processes within a time period of only seven years. The first resulted in failure as a draft constitution was never finalized; the other in success with the adoption of a constitution in 2015. This article takes an interest in exploring and comparing these two separate processes as regards the extent of public participation vis-à-vis political elite negotiations and bargaining behind closed doors. The article finds that what primarily sets the two processes apart, is how broad based public participation and secluded elite negotiations were sequenced. In light of other empirical examples, the article also discusses if elite bargains ought to be struck before the general public are invited to participate.

Internal Opposition Dynamics and Restraints on Authoritarian Control

Autocrats rely on co-optation to limit opposition mobilization and remain in power. Yet not all opposition parties that pose a threat to their regime are successfully co-opted. This article provides a formal model to show that reliance on activists influences whether an opposition leader receives and accepts co-optation offers from an autocrat. Activists strengthen a party’s mobilization efforts, yet become disaffected when their leader acquiesces to the regime. This dynamic undermines the co-optation of parties with a strong activist base, particularly those with unitary leadership. Activists have less influence over elite negotiations in parties with divided leadership, which can promote collusion with the regime. The results ultimately suggest that party activism can erode authoritarian control, but may encourage wasteful conflicts with the government.

Rural Movements and the Transition to Democracy in Spain

Scholars of Spain's democratic transition vary considerably in the role they attribute to movements. Spanish democratization is widely known for its successful elite negotiations and some describe it as an instance of democratization from above. For others it is a case of social movement activism creating problems for those elites negotiating the democratization process. Among those social movements, the least studied took place in the Spanish countryside. Rural movements played a role well beyond the standard accounts in two important ways. First, they challenged significant obstacles to democratization that elite deals had left in place at the local level. And, second, the local arena had major implications for the national scene. We trace the history of four rural campaigns that were a pivotal component of Spanish democratization. We conclude with some general observations on the role of social movements in imparting a dynamic character to democracy.

Crafting Liberal Peace? International Peace Promotion and the Contextual Politics of Peace in Sri Lanka

Contemporary armed conflicts are typically intrastate conflicts in the Global South. These are often represented as global security threats, providing a justification for practical geopolitics of promoting liberal peace through elitist peace negotiations and instrumental use of humanitarian and development aid. In this context, the contemporary hegemonic discourse on peace emphasizes the synergies among liberal peace, liberal democracy, and neoliberal development. Based on recent democratic transitions, it is assumed that liberal peace can be crafted through internationally facilitated elite negotiations. This article examines this technocratic approach to peace and highlights the tension between elitist crafting of liberal peace and contextual political dynamics in conflict situations, using Sri Lanka as an exemplary case. Sri Lanka's fifth peace process is presented as a product of international and domestic power relations and stakeholder strategies, with a convergence between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam around two defining characteristics: (1) crafting of peace through narrowly defined elite negotiations and (2) linking of peace and development through humanitarian and development aid. It is argued that the use of development as a precursor to peace politicized the issue of interim development administration and the combination of political exclusion of elites and social exclusion of intermediate Sinhalese classes undermined the government and its agenda for liberal peace. Sri Lanka is thus an illustrative case of international promotion of liberal peace but also the tensions between internationalized and elitist crafting of peace and contextual power relations and political dynamics in conflict situations.

The Northern Irish Peace Process: From Top to Bottom

Like the conflict in Northern Ireland, the peace process has the distinction of being one of the longest-running processes both in the time required to reach an agreement and in the time required for implementation of that agreement. This article analyzes the peace process from the perspectives of elite negotiations to community relations and in between in order to determine how each of these peace processes within the overall peace process contributed its longevity and overall success. The distinction that peace is made from the top-down is contrasted with the notion that it cannot succeed without social preparation through bottom-up, or middle-out initiatives; concluding with analysis of frameworks that attempt to capture the entirety of the peace process and what its success means for the study of the Northern Irish peace process and peace processes in general.