Patterns Of Contestation Research Articles

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime as a “Failed Promise”: Contestation and Self-Undermining Dynamics in a Liberal Order

Abstract The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) forms the core of the most prominent multilateral security governance regime of the liberal international order (LIO). Despite being a widely supported and remarkably successful security regime to prohibit the spread of nuclear weapons, NPT politics have become increasingly polarized. In this article, I analyze contestation and self-undermining dynamics in the nuclear regime. The NPT is a strongly institutionalized but weakly liberal regime. However, it is unevenly institutionalized. Patterns of contestation in the regime derive from these characteristics. The basic source of contestation is the fundamental inequality between the nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.” Specifically, dissatisfied states seek to strengthen the rules and obligations in the less institutionalized domain. I argue that when efforts at order-consistent reform fail, states shift to a more radical strategy of liberal counter-institutionalization to pursue their goal of equality. Nonnuclear states have long been dissatisfied with the uneven distribution of the burdens and benefits of the regime, and especially the nuclear-armed states’ failure to pursue their obligation of disarmament. Most of the contestation in the NPT over the decades has been order-consistent and pursued “liberal reform.” However, when proponents of nuclear disarmament failed to achieve meaningful progress through the NPT, they shifted to a liberal counter-institutionalization strategy and adopted an entirely new legal instrument, the 2017 Nuclear Prohibition Treaty, to pursue disarmament. This was a direct—but liberal—challenge to the existing suborder. This treaty, which prohibits nuclear weapons for all, legalizes the NPT obligation to pursue disarmament.

Urban people power strategies in a connected world: exploring the patterns of practice, exchange, translation and learning

Urban social movements, alliances and organisations use a range of strategies to contest injustice and inequality by making urban authority accountable to the ‘power of the people’. While there is irrepressible diversity in the strategies used to build and enact people power across global urban contexts, movement participants rarely start from scratch in developing these strategies. There are patterns of contestation that resonate and circulate between urban movements. This article outlines an approach to analysing the patterning, diffusion and translation of commonly used urban people power strategies in and between cities. To track these strategies, we mapped hundreds of examples of urban people power, conducted field research across a range of cities, and co-designed findings and frameworks at a two week gathering of urban activists from a diverse group of cities. We identified five strategies of people power that are commonly repeated across different urban contexts—playing by the rules, mobilising, organising, prefiguring, and running for office. We outline the key characteristics of these different strategies, and discuss the different channels and forms of diffusion that facilitate their exchange across diverse urban contexts. All forms of diffusion involve the hard work of translation and learning, but this work takes different forms for different strategies. We find that where people power takes on a more visible and modular form it is more able to spread through weak ties and digital channels. However, where people power practices are more practice-based and harder to see, strong ties and personal relationships are often needed to spread the strategy. This is illustrated with a case study of the diffusion and translation of an organising strategy between housing activists in Cape Town and Barcelona. Our research and modelling of people power strategies and diffusion is offered as a contribution to on-going work of movement translation.

KONSTESTASI PENDIDIKAN ISLAM DI LOMBOK: NAHDLATUL WATHAN VIS A VIS SALAFI-WAHHABI

This article will discuss the contestation of Islamic Education in Lombok in post reformation 1998. Namely the contestation of madrasas and schools managed by the Islamic organization Nahdlatul Wathan (NW) and the Salafi-Wahhabi community in East Lombok. By using qualitative approach in the form of library research, this article focuses on discussing some issues: first, the genealogy of the Nahdlatul Wathan and Salafi Madrasas. Second, Madrasas as the basis for the construction of aswaja and Salafi-Wahhabi ideologies. Third, the pattern of contestation between Nahdlatul Wathan (NW) and Salafi-Wahhabi. This research shows: First, the Nahdalul Wathan and Salafi madrasas in Lombok were genealogically founded by Middle Eastern Alumni (haramain). Second, curriculum design both in NW and Salafi madrasas uses for strengthening the ideology, identity and militancy of their own group. Third, the pattern contestation of Nahdlatul Wathan Islamic education vis a vis Salafi-wahhabi does not take place formally in madrasas, but uses the medium of mosques and virtual da'wah as well

Understanding Violence by Non-State Armed Groups: The Case of the RUF

ABSTRACT This paper uses a case study of Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front to help explain when and where non-state armed groups (NSAGs) use violence, and what type of violence such groups use. The first part of the paper compares ‘ideological’ and ‘instrumental’ theories and finds strong support for ‘instrumental’ explanations, particularly contestation theory. The second part of the paper seeks to explain the patterns of contestation, which the existing scholarship treats as an independent variable, and finds that the patterns of contestation are explained by the interaction of the state and NSAG’s policy goals.

American Modernisers and the Cow Question in Colonial and Nationalist India

The cattle modernisation sought by American missionaries in colonial North India advanced a productivist argument around the efficiency of cattle and their contribution to agriculture. On the face of it, by criticising the excessive supply of cattle in North India, this position went against the core preservationist concerns of the cow protectionists. But in reality, these modernisers struck a range of correlations with colonial and nationalist positions on the management of livestock and, ironically, even some limited space with the cow protectionists in treating India’s cattle as productive beings that were beneficial to the nation. These American prescriptions were stable constructs that became visible once again in the American food aid apparatus in India after Independence and shared overlapping concerns with ongoing cattle productivity debates in India. This paper illuminates the overlaps between the advocacy of the multiple constituents and a recurrence of certain patterns of contestation that were constitutive of the very paradigm of agrarian modernisation.

The geopolitics of negative emissions technologies: learning lessons from REDD+ and renewable energy for afforestation, BECCS, and direct air capture

Non-technical summary Negative emissions technologies (NETs) have received increasing interest in recent years as a potential part of a portfolio of measures to address anthropogenic climate change, in particular following the 2015 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Paris Agreement and the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report ‘Global Warming of 1.5 °C’. This increasing significance for global climate policy is faced with a multitude of open questions regarding, among others, the geopolitical implications of large-scale use of NETs. This paper outlines what we can learn for the possible geopolitical futures of NETs from existing international ‘green’ approaches. Technical summary We contribute to assessing political implications of NET scenarios, addressing the following question: What are potential geopolitical challenges, conflicts, and consequences of a large-scale deployment of three NETs, namely afforestation, bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), and direct air capture and carbon storage (DACCS)? We turn to the two cases of renewable energies and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation for answers. We find that, first, not only afforestation, but also BECCS and even DACCS would have a geopolitical impact due to their requirements of territory – in the latter two cases, for instance, due to requirements for appropriate carbon storage space. Second, the material requirements of various NETs might also impact geopolitical constellations and induce conflict, providing certain countries and regions of the world with new leverage in the case of large-scale deployment, for instance those which can provide raw materials for fertilizer (for afforestation and BECCS) or energy generation (for DACCS). Third, discursive construction of space and identity might lead to very interesting new patterns of contestation, for instance if specific nation-states can successfully construct an identity of front-running climate protectors and use this to put pressure on other states. Social media summary What might be geopolitical implications of using NETs on a large scale to counteract anthropogenic climate change?

Patterns of contestation across EU parliaments: four modes of inter-parliamentary relations compared

Studies of political contestation of EU decision making usually focus on the division lines in the European Parliament and, to a lesser extent, the Council of Ministers. This article seeks to broaden the analysis of the contestation of EU politics by conceptualising EU contestation across the EU’s ‘multilevel parliamentary field’. It distinguishes three ideal-typical structures of contestation – national, inter-institutional, and transnational contestation – and hypothesises that the more institutionalised the mode of EU decision making, the more likely it is that contestation takes place along transnational lines. The article then draws on the empirical literature on multilevel parliamentarism to assess the plausibility of this hypothesis for four modes of EU decision making: EU legislation, executive decisions, policy coordination and institutional design. Finding the hypothesis broadly confirmed, the article concludes that, if the supranational implications of EU decision making are to be appreciated, also less institutionalised decision-making modes require some form of transnational contestation.

Politics and Inequality in Comparative Perspective: A Research Agenda

Democracy’s normative foundation is political equality. Yet the dominance of the elite over the masses, and the systematic exclusion of particular social and economic groups from the influence on, and outcomes of, important decisions, manifests in political inequality. If this situation is normatively intolerable, why does political inequality endure? We build on the theoretical and empirical literature of politics and inequality and the collection of articles in this special issue to argue that the reproduction of political inequality within and across nations and time results from two key interrelated mechanisms: elite coordination and mass discoordination. We discuss how these mechanisms shape patterns of contestation and participation that reproduce inequalities in both old and new democracies.

The President and the States: Patterns of Contestation and Collaboration under Obama

Current accounts portray President Obama’s tenure as dominated by executive policymaking and vigorous challenges from the states. We argue that such accounts overlook how federal–state collaboration has been critical to achieving Obama Administration ends. Partisan polarization has gridlocked Congress and made the President dependent on the states to advance his central policy initiatives. As a result, these initiatives are both more responsive to state demands and more bipartisan than they might appear. After exploring tools by which the President works with the states, we discuss implications for federalism, the separation of powers, and partisan polarization. In particular, the state role in shaping federal regulation raises the possibility that states are both aggrandizing and checking presidential power.

CLAUDE MCKAY AND DISSIDENT INTERNATIONALISM

poses several questions central to much transnational political theory: “What does it mean to be a ‘citizen of the world’? Through what institutions is this ‘citizenship’ expressed? Is it mediated through various particular, more local solidarities?” (90). Questions like these are at the core of many well-known theories of globality and locality. Arjun Appadurai, for example, examines the multiple ways in which transnational networks play a role in the production of locality, and Homi Bhabha examines the ways in which transnational Xows of culture and affect are inscribed in local patterns of contestation.1 Less familiar, however, is the note of skepticism audible in Calhoun’s interrogation of cosmopolitanism as a political project. When “a large proportion of global civil society—from the World Bank to non-governmental organizations setting accountancy standards—exists to support capitalism and not pursue democracy” (92), what credible institutions of global self-government can we point to? Ultimately, Calhoun argues, if cosmopolitan democracy is to be “more than a good ethical orientation for those privileged to inhabit the frequent traveller lounges, it must put down roots in the solidarities that organize most people’s sense of identity and location in the world” (112); in other words, it must be built from the ground up, from “networks of directly interpersonal social relations, such as those basic to local community” (98). This ideal of local autonomy within transnational self-government is frequently invoked in contemporary theories of global democracy.2 But its practical corollary—what this ideal would look like in terms of institutions, practices, and regulative mechanisms—is often difWcult to visualize. For example, in A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, Gayatri Spivak notes that invocations of local, concrete experience all too often Claude MCKay and dIssIdent InternatIonalIsM

Voting systems in parallel and the benefits for small parties

In simple plurality voting systems smaller parties facing resource constraints may struggle to field candidates, particularly when the number of electoral districts is large. In the absence of a strong coordinating party organization, the pattern of contestation may also be sub-optimal – the small party fields candidates where support is minimal, ignoring other electoral districts where voters would support the party if it had stood a candidate. This article considers how and whether the separate operation of an Additional Member voting system running parallel to a simple plurality system assists smaller parties by providing low-cost information about the spatial distribution of voter support. Using aggregate voting data collected at the London ward level for both simple plurality local council elections and the separate mixed-member proportional system used to elect the Greater London Assembly we test whether the Green Party demonstrated an ability to modify and optimize its pattern of contestation. There appears to be little evidence of either a contagion or learning effect in respect of the location of Green candidates, suggesting that a free but valuable data source is unexploited.

French Political Parties in Campaign (1989–2004): A Configurational Analysis of Political Discourses on Europe

This article analyses the nature of French political parties' attitudes towards the EU. Three main dimensions of the EU process and of its impact on the member states are focused upon: identity, representation and scope of governance. We propose for the analysis a complementary insight in to the ideological explanations of party attitudes towards the EU by focusing on two main factors of variation: the institutional position of parties and time effects. We show that French parties divide over EU issues, along the lines opposing (1) major parties to radical and outsider parties, and (2) governmental parties to non-governmental and extra-parliamentary parties. Left and right do not impact the pattern of contestation of the EU issue in the French case. Parties divide upon EU issues producing in the end a peculiar pattern that differs from the more traditional patterns of party competition of France. Finally, there is diversity between the attitudes of the party central office and the party in public office.

Taking Tilly south: durable inequalities, democratic contestation, and citizenship in the Southern Metropolis

Drawing on Charles Tilly’s work on inequality, democracy and cities, we explore the local level dynamics of democratization across urban settings in India, South Africa, and Brazil. In all three cases, democratic institutions are consolidated, but there is tremendous variation in the quality of the democratic relationship between cities and their citizens. We follow Tilly’s focus on citizenship as the key element in democratization and argue that explaining variance across our three cases calls for analyzing patterns of inequality through the kind of relational lens used by Tilly and recognizing that patterns of contestation are shaped by shifting political relationships between the nation and the city. We conclude that Tilly’s theoretical frame is nicely sustained by the comparative analysis of cases very different from those that stimulated his original formulations.

The Importance of Being Quasi-Democratic - the Domestication Of International Human Rights in American and Arab Politics

The paper builds on a comparative treatment of the politics of contestation and incorporation of human rights law in the United States, Morocco and Tunisia to highlight the salience of international law's democratic legitimacy problems of popular representation and mobilization. The author shows that Morocco enjoyed the most sustained and broadest recent mobilisation of these cases in the domestic extension of international human rights norms. This finding suggests four conclusions. First, democratic legitimacy problems for international law are similar across more and less democratic regime types. Second, the democratic legitimacy problem allows states to use populist appeals to justify their internal deviations from international legal norms. Third, international human rights norms stand the best possibility of mitigating these legitimacy concerns and permeating domestic practice when they have a basis in a pattern of contestation that engages more than a narrow elite, and which might therefore be called quasidemocratic. Fourth, these points demonstrate the imperative of comparing the political processes for the domestic incorporation of international law across different spaces and regime types.

ギャリィ・マークス, マルコ・スティーンベルゲン編『欧州統合と政治的対立』

In this book, scholars of comparative politics analyze political contestation concerning the European Union, using diverse sources of data, and examining a range of actors such as citizens, political parties, members of the European Parliament, interest groups, and social movements. The main purpose of this book is to investigate and to find some patterns of conflict in the EU.In the introduction, the editors present four hypothetical models. The following chapters, however, substantially focus on the examination of the validity of two competing models, the Hix-Lord model and the Hooghe-Marks model. These two models differently conceptualize some dimensions of contestation.One of them is the “EU-national dimension” ranging from more integration to less integration. The second one is the “socio-economic left/right dimension”, which is rooted in the basic conflicts that have shaped political life in Western Europe for many years. The third one is the “GAL-TAN dimension” ranging from the green/alternative/libertarian to the traditional/authoritarian/nationalism, which is tended to be submerged into the “socio-economic left/right dimension”. (GAL is fused into left and TAN into right.). So, the second and third dimensions form “single left/right dimension”. The core question throughout this book is whether the “EU-national dimension” and the “single left/right dimension” correlate or not.The Hix-Lord model assumes that the “EU-national dimension” and the “single left/right dimension” are schematically orthogonal, because national sovereignty issues are difficult to assimilate into the existing left/right pattern of contestation. Correspondingly, four alternative positions are feasible for different actors—left/more integration, left/less integration, right/more integration, and right/less integration.On the other hand, the Hooghe-Marks model assumes meaningful correlation between the two dimensions, that are not fused together. This model hypothesizes that the left who aims to regulate market at the European level, is likely to become more pro-European integration. In contrast, the right who wish to combine European-wide markets with minimal European regulation, are considered to be more skeptical of further European integration. Therefore, contestation in the EU is vaguely structured in two camps—Regulated capitalism (left+more integration) and Neoliberalism (right+less integration).Through the analysis of the following chapters, at the aggregate level, when treating European integration in general irrespective of policy field and nationality, the Hix-Lord model seems to be valid. For example, Chapter 5 (EP election manifest research) confirms that four alternative positions are historically observed for EP political groups.On the other hand, the validity of the Hooghe-Marks model is conditional. Especially, Chapter 6 reveals that only with individual market correcting policy fields such as environment, employment, and regional policy, center-left political parties (social democracy) in the member states support EU and right parties are skeptical. However, including other policy fields, and excluding a few far right parties, national political parties seem structure the dimension ranging from left/less integration to right/more integration. This means that the direction of correlation between the two dimensions assumed by this model is entirely opposite, therefore, the validity of this model is decisively denied. Moreover, Chapters 3 and 4 also present compelling evidence of the opposite correlation, showing that in redistributive welfare states it is the left that oppose further EU integration, whereas in liberal-residual welfare states it is the right.In the concluding chapter, Gary Marks, one of the inventors of this model and editors of this book, tries to find the condition

Measuring the Level and Direction of Split-Ticket Voting at the 1979 and 1997 British General and Local Elections: A Survey-Based Analysis

Only in 1979 and 1997 have British general elections coincided with the annual local government electoral contests. This research note uses both survey and aggregate data to provide new estimates of the extent of split-ticket voting in England at those two elections, and to compare similarities and differences between them. It appears that no fewer than one in six of those electors who voted for one of the three major parties in both contests made a different choice at national as opposed to local level. The fact that the proportion of those splitting their vote in this way was so similar in 1979 and 1997 may surprise those expecting the phenomenon to have grown as part of a general process of partisan dealignment. Rather it appears that changing patterns of contestation between 1979 and 1997, especially at local level, may be better able to account for those variations observed.