Leftist Regime Research Articles

Transformation of the US approaches to radical leftist Latin American regimes under the Biden administration

This article is devoted to the transformation of the course of the Biden administration towards radical leftist regimes in Latin America. The purpose of the research is to identify the features of the process of normalizing their interaction, which is complicated by the external and internal political tasks of the White House. In the investigation will be analyzed Washington's steps to build a dialogue with Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. The results of this study will contribute to a better understanding of the US strategy in the region and the reasons for the conflict continuing in inter-American relations, despite the cooperation pragmatism.

Politicized Refuge: Chicago and the Transformation of the Sanctuary Movement

Politicized RefugeChicago and the Transformation of the Sanctuary Movement Nathan Ellstrand (bio) "We are writing to inform you that today our congregation voted to declare our church as a sanctuary for undocumented refugees from El Salvador. On Saturday, July 24, we will openly receive a refugee family into the care and protection of the church. We realize in so doing that we will be in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act Section 274(A)."1 In a letter to United States Attorney General William French Smith dated July 18, 1982, leadership at Chicago's Wellington Avenue United Church of Christ took a public stand on the rampant violence in El Salvador. It was the first place of worship in the Midwest to declare sanctuary, acting in clear defiance of the federal government and its intervention in Central America during the Cold War of the 1980s. The literature on the sanctuary movement concentrates on U.S.-Mexico border region organizers who provided refuge in Tucson and across southeastern Arizona, highlighting the actions of the Manzo Area Council, Jim Corbett, and the Reverend John Fife in declaring public sanctuary through the Tucson Ecumenical Council (TEC) in 1982. Lawyers, journalists, and anthropologists have focused on these individuals, emphasizing their religious and moral convictions.2 Since the 1980s, historical scholarship on the sanctuary movement has evolved from hagiographic accounts of leaders to works that place the movement in a broader context of transnational and borderlands history. Only one work examines the sanctuary movement in Chicago rather than Arizona; it emphasizes the internal organizational structure and gender dimensions of the movement instead of historicizing its politicized origins in the city a decade before.3 Although the initial movement to provide sanctuary—in the form of shelter, aid, and consultation—to Central American refugees emerged out [End Page 25] of the southwestern U.S., the push for expanding sanctuary came from political, solidarity-based organizing centered in the Midwest in Chicago between 1980 and 1983. Chicago sanctuary activists built on both the Central American solidarity movement and sanctuary in Tucson. They moved away from Tucson's localized, defensive approach of providing refuge on the border. Instead, Chicago organizers were steeped in the Central American solidarity movement, creating an interfaith coalition to proactively reject the Cold War priorities of the U.S. government abroad. Chicago activists politically weaponized sanctuary, using it not only to protect refugees, but to turn Central Americans' lived experiences into a sharp critique of U.S. foreign policy. This resulted in more than three hundred sanctuaries created nationwide by 1986, an example still widely invoked by immigrant and refugee advocates today. The Situation in Central America and Sanctuary in Tucson U.S. political involvement in Central America dates back to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. However, starting in the 1960s, Central America became a regional battleground of the Cold War. The U.S. and Soviet Union competed globally for hearts and minds, and a range of "hot wars" occurred within many Central American nations. The U.S. government actively sought to prevent the spread of communism and, ultimately, leftism. Guatemala's civil war between the state and left-wing organizations extended from 1960 to 1996. Ethnicity as well as ideology divided individuals of Spanish descent from the country's Indigenous poor and mixed-race people. The civil war in El Salvador occurred from 1980 to 1991 between the military government and a coalition of leftist organizations known as the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front. Nicaragua suffered its own prolonged period of revolutionary conflict from 1961–1990, starting with the overthrow of the Somoza family by the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Later, the Sandinistas fought the Contras, a coalition of right-wing paramilitary organizations. During the 1980s, Honduras served as a U.S. training ground for the Salvadoran military and for the Nicaraguan Contras; moreover, the Honduran state combatted its own leftist guerrillas.4 The U.S. intervened in all of these political conflicts, aiming to prevent the rise of leftist regimes in the region during the Cold War. The election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980 heralded U.S. government expansion of intervention in Central America, as the president [End Page...

Radical Leftist Latin American Regimes in Joe Biden's Foreign Policy

The article is devoted to the attempts of the Joe Biden’s administration to normalize relations with the radical leftist regimes (Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua). At the same time, the negotiation process is complicated by bureaucratic and ideological difficulties. The purpose of the study is to identify key obstacles of the improving the interaction between Washington and the antagonist countries. The author will analyze the main trends in the foreign policy of the United States in the region, as well as the behavior of the governments of Latin American countries. The results of the investigation will contribute to a better understanding of inter-American relations and will determine the trajectory of the transformation of the White House's course in the Western Hemisphere.

Justice for All in the Americas? A Quantitative Analysis of Admissibility Decisions in the Inter-American Human Rights System

The overwhelming majority of unsuccessful petitions in the Organization of American States’ Inter-American human rights system are unsuccessful because they are dismissed at the pre-admissibility or admissibility phase rather than at the merits phase. Although this preliminary screening of applications constitutes the major obstacle to petitioners seeking justice, there has been relatively little scholarly analysis of the potential interplay of legal and attitudinal factors at this phase. That is, whether this phase may be where the biases that the system has been accused of (i.e., bias against leftist regimes and a “hierarchization” of negative rights and liberties over social justice) manifest themselves. This article fills this gap in the literature by undertaking a comprehensive quantitative analysis of Inter-American Commission on Human Rights admissibility decisions that measures the impact of a broad range of factors and compares the dynamics of admissibility decisions with those of merits decisions. In so doing, it places into context backlash against the system that has led to recent changes in the system’s procedures.

Inequality, Covid-19, and International Human Rights: Whose Lives Matter?

[Part 1 of the article shows that the poor, everywhere, are more likely to get sick and more likely to die when they do. In many countries, they are also more likely to starve. Part II explains why this is a matter of human rights. The ongoing deprivation of basic rights to healthcare and an adequate standard of living are major factors. As this Part demonstrates, however, the extreme vulnerability of the poor is grounded in earlier violations of human rights, including state-sanctioned segregation in the American south in the 1950s and what one author has called “the darker side of American hegemony,” referring to the United States’ role in the overthrow of leftist regimes in Latin America during the Cold War. Part III argues that the current crisis demands a broader, deeper, and more authentic commitment to human rights. We are living in a world of brutal economic inequality, in which some lives matter and others do not. The United States has played a major role in creating this world, in part by violating the human rights of Black Americans, immigrants, and asylum-seekers. This Article argues that the United States should take responsibility for these violations and suggests how it may begin.

Razvoj neoliberalne ekonomije u Čileu od 1973. do 2020. godine

In 1973, the Chilean army led by General Augusto Pinochet, with the support of Chilean right-wing formations and the United States, overthrew the world's first democratically elected leftist regime - the regime of Salvador Allende. In addition to strong political reforms, embodied in the banning of the Communist Party of Chile and the persecution of left-wing dissidents, Pinochet immediately began intensive economic reforms inspired by the neoliberal, the so-called shock therapy that originated at the famous Chicago School. The reforms were aimed at dissolving Chile's short-lived socialist legacy, which was reflected in the country's nationalization of land and natural resources, the improvement of workers and trade unions rights, and an accessible health, education and social system. Nationalized goods have been returned to their owners or redistributed to individuals in general, union work has been limited, and the principles of doing business in the market have been extremely liberalized in order to attract as many foreign investors as possible, usually powerful multinational corporations. An important segment of the reforms was the stabilization of the inflation rate. In this paper, we will follow two waves of reforms - from 1973 to 1990 (when Pinochet was overthrown) and from 1990 to 2019, when there were strong riots on the streets of Chile due to the announced increase in subway transportation prices, and in fact, driven by the overall dissatisfaction of citizens with the end effects of reforms - unequal income redistribution, austerity measures, a large number of extremely poor and expensive public services in the fields of education and health. Despite that, we will also point out the positive effects of the reforms - long-term positive macroeconomic trends, high average salary for Latin American conditions, significant inflow of foreign investments, etc. In this paper, we will use the method of analysis and the case study method.

USA and leftist regimes in Latin America: D. Trump administration approach

The article is devoted to the policy of the Donald Trump administration toward the leftist regimes of Latin America: Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.Washington’s strategy and tactics are examined, the reasons for its diplomacy are determined.The efficiency of theUSAsanctions is evaluated.

Producing local neoliberalism in a Leftist regime: neoliberal governmentality and populist transition in West Bengal, India

ABSTRACTThis paper presents a theoretical reassessment of a contentious chapter in India’s economic liberalisation – the case of West Bengal, a state ruled by the pro-labour ‘Left Front’ coalition, led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPIM) from 1997 to 2011. The onset of neoliberalism in India had naturally created a serious political dilemma for the CPIM, but it eventually transitioned to a private-industrialisation agenda, thus prompting serious questions of ideological deviation. While the political-economy of the CPIM/Left Front and its industrial fortunes have been extensively scrutinised, this study introduces a rather different theoretical perspective to the story. Going back to the initial period of policy transition (c.1994), it uses the analytical categories of local neoliberalisms and populist transition to show how the state of affairs in West Bengal under the CPIM was demonstrative of a particular variant of interventionist neoliberal governmentality, characterised by a gradual intensification of pro-market impulses. Furthermore, the study also contextualises West Bengal within wider political economic trends, arguing that pro-market transitions by populist regimes tend to be characterised by a series of mobile calculative techniques of governing, embedded in local historical and geographical specificities and localised relationships.

Guests of Empire, Ghosts of Dispossession: Traumatic Loss and the Subject without a Proper Name in The Gangster We Are All Looking For

Guests of Empire, Ghosts of DispossessionTraumatic Loss and the Subject without a Proper Name in The Gangster We Are All Looking For Yasuko Kase (bio) The strategy of not-naming raises some related questions about identity and the mechanisms of identification through which identity is ascertained and secured: In what ways does a name indicate presence? Must the absence of a name be linked to loss? —Leigh Gilmore, The Limits of Autobiography: Trauma and Testimony What constitutes the outrage of the Holocaust—the very essence of erasure and annihilation—is not so much death in itself, as the more obscene fact that death itself does not make any difference, the fact that death is radically indifferent: everyone is leveled off, people die as numbers, not as proper names. In contrast to this leveling, to testify is to engage, precisely, in the process of re-finding one's own proper name, one's signature. —Shoshana Felman, "Education and Crisis, or the Vicissitudes of Teaching" Vietnamese American writer lê thi diem thúy's first novel The Gangster We Are All Looking For (2003) has provoked discussions on the complicated politics surrounding the memory of the Vietnam War.1 According to Isabell Thuy Pelaud, for example, writings by Vietnamese refugees were "vivid reminders of either national guilt or the abuses perpetrated by leftist regimes—neither the American Right nor the Left were keen to hear Vietnamese American stories."2 Thus, even in the field of Asian American literary studies, Vietnamese American literature was long ignored because [End Page 71] of their positioning in relation to the conventional Leftist political formula, which idealizes "bad subjects," that is, resistant subjects.3 Since the mid-1970s, it can be argued, one basis of the US acceptance of Southeast Asian refugees was to create a cultural memory of the war based on US notions of hospitality. However, because of internal economic tensions and outward social hostility toward Southeast Asians who "embody" the war, the American public has often expressed displeasure and antagonism at receiving refugees. To achieve a smoother assimilation by easing these ambivalent feelings, the US public expected Vietnamese refugees to behave as versions of "good" refugees, principally by becoming economically self-sufficient, socially passive, and academically successful. This typical "model minority" stereotype, which most Asian American intellectuals have always disavowed, but the political conservatives often endorse, has long been attached to the image of Vietnamese refugees.4 "Good" Vietnamese refugees at one level appease US national war guilt and allow it to retrieve an illusionary return to "wholeness." In "Fetishism: The Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real" (referring to Freud's version of fetishism), Jacques Lacan and Wladimir Granoff argue that for the little boy who denies his difference from his mother and her "castration," fetishism operates in order to replace his mother's "absent" phallus.5 The fetish object covers up this loss by allowing the boy to maintain the misperception and turn away from his own fear of castration. With his attempt to maintain his dual relationship with his mother, he refuses or fails to enter the symbolic realm governed by the "Father." Similarly, the "good" refugees serve as "fetish" objects, allowing the United States to maintain a mode of social-political-psychical defense against the national castration/defeat, substituting the "lack" of "phallic" victory.6 In US official memory, the war should be remembered as a "heroic" war against communism to protect humanity, liberty, and democracy. "Good" Vietnamese refugees are often framed therefore to justify US Cold War ideology: they operate as proof that the United States can offer minorities social mobility and human rights. Thus, Vietnamese refugees have needed to behave as "idealized" guests, who follow what Jacques Derrida calls "the law of hospitality,"7 within the "symbolic order,"8 or the preexisting linguistic and cultural structure that constitutes and defines the subject. These guests should "politely" follow this "law," in exchange for receiving "conditional" hospitality. [End Page 72] "Proper" Vietnamese American writings should therefore conform to this "symbolic order" of the host country by accepting their assigned role as "good refugees." Conforming to the ideological fantasy of a version of the American Dream, "good refugees" need to accommodate...

Investment Treaty Arbitration 'Down Under': Policy and Politics in Australia

Disaffection regarding treaty-based investor–State dispute settlement (ISDS), especially binding arbitration, is slowly spreading from a few, mostly leftist regimes in South America,3 to middle-income and developed countries in other parts of the world. In particular, now that the European Union (EU) has exclusive competence to conclude treaties relating to foreign direct investment (FDI),4 tension has emerged between the European Commission and the European Parliament, particularly in the context of the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP),5 given the potential economic impact of such a free trade agreement (FTA) still being negotiated between the EU and the USA. However, there has also been some debate over the advisability of having included ISDS in the FTAs recently concluded with Canada6 and even Singapore.7 The reverberations are now being felt in the rapidly growing Asian region.8 Asian States have gradually come to accept extensive ISDS provisions not only in their bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and FTA investment chapters, but also in their existing regional agreements, notably the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Comprehensive Investment Agreement and the ‘ASEAN+’ agreements with Australia and New Zealand (AANZFTA), China, Korea9 and India (signed in September 2014).10 Yet the path has been a winding one, with a few dead ends. For example, an investment chapter was omitted altogether from the ASEAN–Japan FTA. Although Japan has FTAs and/or BITs with all ASEAN Member States, including Myanmar (signed in December 2013),11 which all incorporate ISDS provisions, it agreed to a request from the Philippines to omit ISDS from its bilateral FTA.12 Neither Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand or India are State parties to the 1965 ICSID Convention.13 More generally, it has been suggested that a ‘combination of a historical sense of hostility, nationalism that continues to dictate events, pragmatism and competition among themselves to attract foreign investment underlies the different policies of the Asian states’ towards FDI.14

Storytelling, Myth, and the Afghanistan Wars in Spozhmai Zaryab’s Antiwar Short Stories

Spozhmai Zaryab and Her Narrative WorksBorn in 1955 in Kabul and holding a BA in French language from Kabul University and an MA and a PhD in comparative literature from Montpellier University in France, Spozhmai Zaryab is one of Afghanistan's major authors. She has published two collections of short stories, Sharang Sharang-i Zang-ha [The Jingling of the Bells] and Dasht-i Qabil [Cain's Desert], and a novel, Dar Keshwar-i Digar [In Another Country]. It is not the quantity but the artistic merit of her works that has established her reputation. Zaryab has been writing fiction since the early 1970s, but she emerged in the 1980s as one of the country's leading writers. She writes in a variety of genres, but her contribution to modern fiction in Afghanistan lies mainly in her anti-war works; she is considered the godmother of Afghan anti-war literature (Bezhan, Women Causes 264). This type of fiction emerged with the outbreak of war after the 1978 Leftist coup and the invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet troops in late 1979. Neighboring countries, Iran and Pakistan, and the West chose to channel financial, military, and political aid to the armed opposition groups, known as the Mujahideen, or freedom fighters. Soon the war escalated and involved many players, from domestic to regional to international superpow- ers. To the present day the war has undergone many stages. But the peak of the war was in the 1980s, when Afghanistan became a battleground for internal, regional, and superpower forces. Although the protagonists changed, the misery of the people did not. As the conflict ground on, each side accompanied their military efforts with fierce public relations campaigns to promote the righteousness of their cause and to vilify their opponents.The significance of Zaryab's works lies in the ways that they give voice to the ordinary people who have no stake in the war. They demonstrate the impact of war on the population in general and women in particular. Her account of the war is from the victims' perspective. An essential element of this strategy involves bringing elements of oral storytelling, the people's medium, into her narrative frameworks. Zaryab incorporates two types of traditional stories into her works: epic and religious folktales. They represent literary, religious, and folk heritage and assume value in being the collective residue of the past. As well, they are the most popular types of storytelling across a wide spectrum of society, from the educated elites to illiterate groups. By using these types of stories, she also undermines ideological representations of the war by the warring partisans.The Leftist government and the Mujahideen had striven to create mas- ter narratives of the conflict that would serve to uphold their own political/ ideological outlooks. The Leftist regime portrayed it as a nationalist struggle, defending the homeland from the aggression of foreign powers who would install the Mujahideen as their proxy. The support of the Mujahideen by the regional governments and the West was proof of their intention to compromise Afghanistan's sovereignty and keep it a backward country. The regime's invitation to the Soviet troops simply served to defend the national sovereignty and the southern, eastern and western borders and to sustain socioeconomic and cultural progress. For the Mujahideen, Russian troops represented an occupying power that would transform Afghanistan into a satellite socialist state. They believed that the Russians would destroy not only the country's sovereignty but also its sociocultural and religious character. The war was fought (and is still being fought) not only for the liberation of the homeland from invaders but also for the liberation of Dar ul-Islam, the land of Islam, from the grip of infidels. Zaryab's use of epics and religious folktales had the intended effect of countering both sides' warring narratives.Storytelling in AfghanistanStorytelling has a rich tradition among women and men in Afghanistani culture, from courtly palaces to popular meeting places where ordinary people gathered. …

<em>UN Peacekeeping in Africa: From the Suez Crisis to the Sudan Conflicts</em>, Adekeye Adebajo

Reviewed by: UN Peacekeeping in Africa: From the Suez Crisis to the Sudan Conflicts Agber Dimah Adebajo, Adekeye. 2011. UN Peacekeeping in Africa: From the Suez Crisis to the Sudan Conflicts. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers. 270 pp. Adebajo’s book is an historical narrative and an excellent delineation of the key issues and actors involved in United Nations peacekeeping efforts in Africa during the last half century. In the first chapter, the author repeatedly states the key problem as lack of cooperation among the three principal actors whose collaboration and cooperation are indispensable. These actors are the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, regional African organizations, and African nations involved directly or indirectly in violent conflicts. Adebajo defines success as restoring peace and stability after ceasefire, disarmament, demobilization, and rehabilitation. He cites examples where such cooperation led to success (the Suez crises) and where the lack of it led to failure (Congo). Chapter two is a detailed historical account of the birth of the U.N. peacekeeping missions that emerged out of the necessity to deal with the Suez crisis. It is a good example of how the alignment of the interests of the most influential nations (the United States and the Soviet Union) led to a peaceful resolution. The focus of the chapter is on the games that the great powers play and the domestic or regional sociopolitical dynamics and how they influence the outcomes of U.N. peacekeeping missions. It is clear from the author’s assertions that the primary goal of collaborative action was not peace and stability in the region, but the protection of the interests of the big powers. The interest of the United States was to keep the Suez Canal open, and more importantly, to secure for itself and its Western allies the oil that is vital to industry. By contrast, the interest of the Soviet Union was to threaten that access by sowing seeds of discord among Western allies and aligning itself with leftist regimes in the region. Like chapter two, chapter three begins with a detailed historical account of the conflict in the so-called Great Lakes Region of Africa. The author correctly points out that successful resolution of conflict is contingent upon the convergence of interests of the actors before the introduction of armed U.N. peacekeepers; however, while he repeatedly refers to Western interests, he does not clearly identify them. These interests were, and still are, Western access to the enormous natural resources of the region, especially those of the Congo. The author indicates that the United States wanted to stem the spread of communism; however, it is not the spread of communism per se that was important, but the threat that such a spread poses to these natural resources and markets. Similarly, the interests of [End Page 91] African nations are not clearly delineated. Undoubtedly, Egypt cooperated during the Suez Crisis because the solution ensured its control of the canal coveted by England, France, and Israel. An important question is why did the United States and the Soviet Union cooperate during the Suez crisis, but not during the Congo crisis? The author does not provide an answer, except to mention in passing that it was a “marriage of convenience.” A possible explanation is that they found it helpful to divide the region into respective satellite states to each other’s satisfaction and thus avoid violence. Southern Africa (Angola, Namibia, Mozambique) is the subject of chapter four. Here again, reference is made to the interests of Western powers. It is implied that for Western powers and their regional ally, apart-heid South Africa, the goal is the containment of communism and, for the African nations involved, political independence; however, by that time, the Soviet Union had collapsed. Why, then, did the United States insist on linking the independence of Namibia to the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola? The answer appears to be that Angola was already by this time a potentially big oil producer, sharing a border with the Congo. The author does not appear to realize that Western interests are almost invariably economic, even when described as strategic or stemming the influence of communism. In...

Industry, Labour and the State

Despite the pursuit of similar industrial policies during the post-1990s, Indian states have revealed divergent outcomes in industrial growth. Such divergence suggests different levels of policy implementation which itself is a result of the interplay of formal and informal institutions, historically shaped. We try to ex-plain this divergence in the context of the evolution of state–business relations in West Bengal, a coastal state in Eastern India, and unique among Indian states not only by virtue of being ruled by a Leftist regime for an uninterrupted 34 years (1977—May, 2011), but also by having witnessed a turnaround of sorts in the outlook of the former government towards private capital within this period. Our findings suggest that it is the peculiarity of institutional behaviour that determines the policy outcomes in the state. The rigidities in political as well as economic institutions in the state are prompting us to look at West Bengal as a classic case of ‘institutional stickiness’ leading to ‘path dependency’.

Trauma, Mourning and Resistance in Spozhmai Zaryab's Short Stories

The war in Afghanistan (1978 to the present) is one of the longest and bloodiest wars in modern history. From the early 1980s war intensified between the Leftist regime and the opposition Mujahideen and touched the life of every citizen. Bombardments, rockets and landmines killed and injured hundreds of thousands of civilians and caused massive displacement. Women were the direct and indirect targets of the war; some women lost members of their immediate family, others were displaced and emigrated, some were raped, and others were enslaved and sold. Thus trauma and mourning mark the lives of the majority of Afghanistani women. Given the political nature of the conflict—with superpowers and regional powers behind the warring sides—and the nature of socio-cultural bonds that required women to keep silent, how did women deal with these traumas? One of the areas in which this can best be seen is in women's literature—most notably narrative works. These works, in which the authors were themselves either victims or witnesses, voice women's resistance to the war and portray war and its consequences for ordinary women's everyday lives. In the narrative works of Spozhmai Zaryab (the pioneer of the anti-war fiction in Afghanistan), women and trauma are multi-dimensional. In some of her short stories women mourn publicly; in others, women cope with war and resist it by whatever means available to them. In others, women visualize war, invasion and destruction of all socio-cultural bonds. Women are transformed by a profound change, including in their perception of gender relations.

Development, trans/modernities, and the politics of theory

Five or ten years from now, the performance of the allegedly leftist regimes in Latin America (particularly those of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia and, to varying degrees, those of Argentina, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil) will be assessed in terms of the extent to which they were able to bring about a reduction of poverty, sustained rates of growth, and a measure of democratization in their countries, including less inequality and more inclusive policies, particularly toward ethnic minorities.

Legacies of Leftism: ideology, ethnicity and democracy in Benin, Ghana and Mali

Africanists must increasingly account for disparities in the success of the continent's democratic experiments. This paper addresses why three countries—Benin, Ghana and Mali—have become surprisingly successful democracies. The argument begins with the leftist (African socialist) regimes in each case, which set the countries on a path with unintended consequences that supported democratisation over the long run. Several key steps emerge. The leftist regimes were led by minority presidents who attempted ideological incorporation in ways that attenuated the political salience of ethnic identity. Results differed from other African regimes in the ways that neo-patrimonialism interacted with ethnicity. At Africa's critical juncture (1989–92), the lack of a dominant ethno-patrimonial coalition opened political space for more programmatic contestation. Opposition became likelier to coalesce and cohere on non-ethnic bases, and combined with constitutional militaries to make these cases among the likeliest to consolidate democracy.

Eleições, política externa e integração regional

O artigo analisa a relação entre regimes políticos domésticos e integração regional. O argumento central é que a tese que indica que uma convergência política maior com outros regimes de esquerda da região impulsionará o aprofundamento da integração sul-americana embute um paradoxo ainda não explorado nos debates. Embora seja defensável a idéia de que governos de esquerda tenham maior propensão a conferir apoio político ao regionalismo sul-americano, é igualmente verdadeira a idéia de que regimes presidencialistas de esquerda são menos propensos à supranacionalização de normas e à cessão de soberania a instâncias supranacionais. O artigo apresenta breve revisão da literatura a respeito da relação entre política doméstica (regimes políticos e partidários) e produção da política externa e, com respaldo nessa discussão, analisa o tema dos acordos comerciais nas eleições sul-americanas, com ênfase no caso brasileiro.

Political Gender Equality and State Human Rights Abuse

Feminist theorists argue that more equal societies that are not based on gender hierarchies ought to be less plagued by collective violence. This study tests whether political gender equality is associated with lower levels of personal integrity rights abuse carried out by state agents, such as fewer political imprisonments, torture, killings, and disappearances. Two indicators of political gender equality are used: (1) a dummy indicating that the chief executive of a state is a woman; and (2) the percentage of women in parliament. The impact of political gender equality on personal integrity rights abuse is tested using multiple regression techniques and a dataset spanning most countries of the world during the period 1977–96. Female chief executives are rare, and their tenures are not significantly associated with the level of abuse. The percentage of women in parliament is associated with lower levels of personal integrity rights abuse. Results show both a direct effect of female representation in parliament and an effect in interaction with the level of institutional democracy. These results hold when controlling for the most important factors known or suspected to influence human rights behavior: democracy, leftist regime, military regime, British colonial experience, civil war, international war, wealth, population, ethnic heterogeneity, and regime transition and collapse.

Entering Linh Dinh's Fake House: Literature of Displacement

For two decades after 1975, Vietnamese American literature was mostly ignored, largely for political reasons. Vivid reminders of either national guilt or the abuses perpetrated by leftist regimes - neither the American Right nor the Left were keen to hear Vietnamese American stories. Like Third World literature, these literary texts project political dimension in the form of a national allegory regardless of how private the subject matter may be. In the last decade, however, with the end of the cold war, the subsequent lifting of the economic embargo on Vietnam in 1994, and the coming of age of Vietnamese Americans educated in the United States, a shift in reception has occurred, and Vietnamese American literature has enjoyed a relative degree of popularity, especially when addressing the Vietnam War and the refugee experience.

Repression of Human Rights to Personal Integrity in the 1980s: A Global Analysis

This crossnational study seeks to explain variations in governmental repression of human rights to personal integrity (state terrorism) in a 153-country sample during the eighties. We outline theoretical perspectives on this topic and subject them to empirical tests using a technique appropriate for our pooled cross-sectional time-series design, namely, ordinary least squares with robust standard errors and a lagged dependent variable. We find democracy and participation in civil or international war to have substantively important and statistically significant effects on repression. The effects of economic development and population size are more modest. The hypothesis linking leftist regime types to abuse of personal integrity rights receives some support. We find no reliable evidence that population growth, British cultural influence, military control, or economic growth affect levels of repression. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for scholars and practitioners concerned with the prevention of personal integrity abuse.