Political Accommodation Research Articles

Beijing’s New Strategies toward a Changing Taiwan

Beijing’s new strategies toward Taiwan are informed by neo-functionalism derived from European experiences, assuming that economic integration will eventually lead to political accommodation and integration. Despite the surprising Sunflower Movement and the fiasco of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in the 2014 local elections, Beijing will try its best to maintain the momentum of peaceful development of cross-Strait relations. Facing a brand new Taiwan that seems an oddity to the mainland, however, Beijing has adapted to ‘the new normal’ with a slower pace, refocusing on the economic and cultural issues. Whether or to what degree Beijing will change its asymmetric engagements with the two main parties on the island, however, is contingent upon whether the KMT and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) can reach a balance of power domestically and whether their policies toward the mainland converge rather than diverge. At any rate, Beijing is likely to pay more attention to ordinary people’s feelings about cross-Strait economic and cultural exchanges and consider quality of cross-Strait exchange as more important than quantity of activities.

Germany’s New Ostpolitik

A survey of perceptions of Germany’s new Ostpolitik in Russia, the United States and Germany. The author argues that Germany’s abandonment of its strategic alliance with Russia by assuming the lead on sanctions within the EU has not received due attention of experts because it is not supported by any doctrine within Germany itself. The new Ostpolitik is the product of many small steps. It is the consequence of Germany’s uncritical acceptance of democracy promotion as the guideline to foreign policy coming from Brussels and of Berlin’s political accommodation with its neighborhood, the new EU Member States to the East, bringing their revanchism and hostility to Russia into the EU institutions that Germany controls.

Keeping Pakistan as a Balancer While Courting Indian Friendship

Andrew Small's analysis of recent developments in Sino-Pakistan relations in his book The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia's New Geopolitics is insightful and persuasive. Small's central thesis, as I understand it, is that around 2013 China significantly shifted its policy for managing its vital relationship with Pakistan. Motivated both by the metastasis of Islamic extremism across the region and by deepening understanding of the impact that a possible India-Pakistan nuclear war would have on that spreading extremist cancer, China set aside its earlier policy of noninterference in Pakistan's affairs. It began urging Pakistan's leaders to rein in extremist groups, not only those mucking around in China's Xinjiang region (which Beijing had long warned Islamabad against), but even within Pakistan and Afghanistan. Beijing recognized the diminishing utility of secret side deals worked out with extremist groups in years past. Such deals simply did not work as well with the generation of extremist leaders-a conclusion attested to by the more frequent attacks in Xinjiang and on Chinese interests in Pakistan. Beijing also signaled to Islamabad that its support for Pakistan in a future confrontation with India would be conditioned by Pakistan's role in provoking that confrontation. This shorter leash was an attempt to dissuade elements in the fragmenting Pakistani state from again condoning terrorist attacks on India that threatened to trigger Indian retaliation and thence an India-Pakistan war that could further destabilize the entire region.This approach expanded diplomatic common ground with the United States in countering the spread of Islamic extremism and the disintegration of the Pakistani state. Derivatively, Beijing attempted to mediate a search for political accommodation in Afghanistan and adopted a more relaxed view toward the U.S. military presence there. Lord, make them [the Americans] leave, but not yet, became the Chinese mantra, Small suggests.Scholars will need to test Small's thesis of a major shiftin China's Pakistan policy through further primary research. But at a minimum, the book's clear, thoughtful, and empirically substantiated argument has advanced our knowledge of an important issue. Small posits two primary factors driving the shiftin China's Pakistan policy: (1) greater fragmentation of the Pakistani state and use of Pakistani territory as a base for Islamist operations, and (2) a rethinking of the implications of a possible India-Pakistan nuclear war.Regarding the first factor, the growing frequency of violent protests in both Xinjiang and major Chinese cities outside Xinjiang, combined with extremist attacks on Chinese citizens in Pakistan (e.g., construction crews refurbishing the Karakorum Highway, academics conducting research, or women operating massage parlors) indicated to Beijing that China's traditional reliance on Pakistan's military and political elites to minimize such incidents was simply no longer effective. The generation of extreme Islamist leaders is more ideological and less pragmatic than the older generation, with whom a deal might stick. The collapse of states such as Syria, Iraq, and Libya, together with the looming U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the prospect of renewed civil war there, caused China to give much greater emphasis to internal security concerns arising out of its deeply rooted Uighur problem. In short, these concerns increasingly influenced China's management of its all-weather relationship with Pakistan. The spread of terrorist movements in the post-Soviet countries of Central Asia also threatened to undermine the ambitious transport-building programs of the new Silk Road designed to draw those lands into China's economic sphere and foster stability through faster economic growth.Regarding the nuclear factor, Small persuasively argues that, starting with the Kargil confrontation of 1999, Beijing recalculated the region-wide destabilizing effects of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan. …

A Proibição de Procissões nos Países Baixos

Resumo Este artigo faz um relato histórico da acomodação política das procissões católicas nos Países Baixos e da legislação relacionada ao tema. Tem por base a Interdição de Procissões (processieverbod), uma lei que teve como alvo os católicos holandeses e durou de 1848 até 1983. Enquanto que no século XIX uma lei foi adotada para banir, limitar e controlar a infraestrutura sacral da religiosidade pública católica, o século XX pode ser caracterizado pela transição de uma hegemonia protestante para um modelo pluralista de governança das religiões. Finalmente, nos anos 1980, a Lei de Manifestações Públicas terminou com a Interdição de Procissões do século XIX. Isso continua a afetar a acomodação e a manifestação da diversidade religiosa nos Países Baixos nos dias de hoje.

When liberal peoples turn into outlaw states: John Rawls’ Law of Peoples and liberal nuclearism

John Rawls’ account in Law of Peoples of a realist utopia composed of a society of liberal and decent peoples is a stark contrast to his description of “outlaw states,” which seek to undermine the legal and moral frameworks that constitute a pacific global order. Rawls argues that outlaw states cannot conceive of political accommodation with their external enemies; instead, they opt for the rule of force, terror, and brutality. Rawls even urges that liberal peoples are justified in maintaining a nuclear deterrent to prevent outlaw states from obtaining and then using nuclear weapons on liberal societies if the opportunity arose. This article examines the paradoxical question of liberal societies that, in the name of opposing outlaw states, undertake security policies which correspond to “outlaw” statist behavior. It then explores the implications of liberal roguishness for the legitimacy of liberal international security arrangements, such as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Regime.

Germaine Dulac: A Cinema of Sensations by Tami Williams

Williams, Tami. Germaine Dulac: A Cinema of Sensations. Chicago: UP of Illinois, 2014. ISBN 978-0-252-03847-1. Pp. 314. $28. Standard histories of French filmmaking long associated Germaine Dulac (1882– 1942) with The Seashell and the Clergyman (1927), the visual dreamscape scripted by Antonin Artaud hailed as the first surrealist film, and with the associative, symbolfueled Smiling Madame Beudet (1923).While scholars Sandy Flitterman-Lewis andAlain and Odette Virmaux made strides in rehabilitating Dulac, who was arguably the Third Republic’s most important woman filmmaker alongside Alice Guy-Blaché (1873–1968), their partial portrayals fell far short of the extraordinary archival reconstruction performed here. Using documents made public in 1996 and tracking down prints of all extant features and shorts Dulac shot between 1916 and 1936, Williams delivers primary scholarship of the highest order. Her jargon-free prose blends biographical narrative, institutional histories of Belle Époque feminism and syndicalism, economic and industrial considerations, as well as close analyses of films that survived and reconstructions of those that did not.Dulac emerges as a socially committed journalistcritic , an astute film theoretician, and a subversive yet diplomatic creator who braved considerable prejudice as a homosexual and as a woman.Williams notes the privileged background of Dulac (born Schneider, her family headed the metallurgy concern at Le Creusot) and the nontraditional marital arrangement she enjoyed with Catholic freethinker Albert Dulac even as she pursued liaisons with actress Stacia Napierkowska and onetime production associate Irène Hillel-Erlanger.Attracted in equal measure as a theater-goer and dramatist to Lugné-Poë’s symbolism and to Antoine’s realism (41), Dulac looked primarily to modern dance (Fuller, Duncan) and post-romantic music (Debussy) to conceive a“pure”cinema predicated on gesture, movement, and rhythm. For all its abstraction and self-reflexivity, this view of cinema remained bound to ordinary social life, particularly, argues Williams, to those gender norms that screenplays from La cigarette (1919) to La princesse Mandane (1928) consistently undermine. A pioneer in the interwar ciné-club movement and international documentary circuit (she shepherded early projects by Jean Vigo and Jean Painlevé), Dulac co-founded, in 1936, the storied Cinémathèque française.Williams reappraises the maligned newsreel years with Gaumont and France-Actualités, underscoring the several innovations Dulac brought to the musical short (disques illustrés); to sports coverage (dailies for Le tour de France [1932] saw national distribution, reducing the temporal gap between the event and its transmission); and to the compilation film (Le cinéma au service de l’histoire,1935).Her equivocalVichy-era shorts lauding Philippe Pétain,arguesWilliams, show a surprisingly conservative turn toward political accommodation while reflecting the national consensus circa 1940–41. At times, the book’s monographic focus hides from view other players of note: readers unfamiliar with interwar film comment might wonder whether, Dziga Vertov aside, anyone in the 1920s save Dulac thought to write about gesture, movement, and rhythm in film. A Cinema of Sensations is nonetheless an impressive achievement. It establishes Dulac as no less a crucial architect of France’s 244 FRENCH REVIEW 89.1 Reviews 245 flourishing yet economically-embattled cinema culture than Henri Langlois, Louis Delluc, or André Bazin. Retrospectively, in light of this groundbreaking, generously documented study, it is perhaps their achievements that should be compared to hers. Johns Hopkins University (MD) Derek Schilling Literary History and Criticism edited by Marion Geiger Albanese, Ralph. Racine à l’école républicaine. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2013. ISBN 9782 -343-01839-3. Pp. 285. 29 a. Albanese explores the same question that he posed in earlier monographs on Molière, La Fontaine, and Corneille: how did the French educational system after the Revolution appropriate and nationalize a seventeenth-century writer, in this case Racine? Racine would appear to be the most difficult classical author to assimilate into “l’école républicaine,” given the tragedian’s association with monarchist and religious values, precisely the opposite of what a democratic and secular school system should inculcate.Yet Albanese shows a remarkable plasticity to Racine’s works, which can serve a variety of moral purposes depending on the particular value that the pedagogue wishes to highlight—e.g., maternal virtue (Andromaque), the...

Migration behavior of maturing sockeye (Oncorhynchus nerka) and Chinook salmon (O. tshawytscha) in Cook Inlet, Alaska, and implications for management

Worsening recruitment of Alaskan Chinook salmon over the past decade has created major conservation problems. In Cook Inlet, lucrative Sockeye salmon fisheries are severely limited because of Chinook bycatch, restricting economic opportunity and creating political conflict between user groups. Although Chinook are thought to migrate at deeper depths than other salmon during the marine phase, an inability to quantify the depth difference has prevented regulatory changes to protect Chinook while allowing Sockeye fisheries to operate. Using a purpose-built acoustic telemetry array, we found that Chinook salmon repeatedly ‘patrolled’ back and forth in the nearshore fishing area for multiple weeks before river entry (a previously unrecognized behavior) while Sockeye salmon rapidly crossed the area to enter the river. Both species substantially increased migrations speeds at river entry. Migration speeds then progressively dropped, returning to baseline levels about 14 km upstream of the river mouth. Clear differences in the median depth of marine migration of Chinook (4.8 m) and Sockeye (1.8 m) were evident, enabling us to quantify the potential trade-off between reducing Sockeye harvest and increasing Chinook protection from using shallower gillnets in the commercial fishery. Based on the 16,608 depth measurements collected for Chinook and 3,389 measurements for Sockeye, reducing the vertical depth of surface-hung gillnets to one-half of current maximum depth would potentially reduce the Chinook interception rate by nearly two-thirds, while reducing Sockeye harvests by one-quarter. Alternatively, if commercial fishers were fully compensated for the reduced area of netting by allowing exactly compensatory increases in net length, Sockeye catches could potentially increase to 200% to 300% of current levels, but Chinook interceptions would remain similar to current levels despite reductions in net depth. Identifying an intermediate strategy between these two extremes could provide a ‘win-win’ solution rather than the current zero-sum game between deeply opposed stake-holders. Biotelemetry enabled rapid collection of very large numbers of depth measurements despite relatively few adults being tagged. The collected data have already been used to implement some of the first regulatory changes in the fishery in more than a decade and have identified a potential avenue for political accommodation between opposing user groups.

Liberdade, identidade e política na arte contemporânea: um diálogo com Danto

O presente trabalho se propõe a instaurar um diálogo crítico com a filosofia dantiana da arte. A primeira parte do texto acompanha o desenrolar da construção teórica dos trabalhos de Danto paralelamente ao desafio de explicar as conseqüências estéticas e filosóficas das mudanças que ocorreram no cenário artístico mundial contemporâneo. Mostramos como Danto extrai implicações filosóficas dessas mudanças, colocando em pauta temas como o da liberdade artística, do pluralismo, das identidades multiculturais e da política. Contudo, problematizamos também os aspectos ideológicos presentes na relação que ele estabeleceu entre sua tese do fim da arte e a ideia do fim da história. Na segunda parte do texto, discutimos algumas intuições do próprio Danto sobre os temas acima elencados para confrontarmos sua teoria oficial com a especificidade da produção local de identidades artísticas periféricas. Finalmente, procuramos indicar como alguns elementos renovados da Teoria Crítica da Sociedade podem nos ajudar a perceber o surgimento de subjetividades históricas que estão fora da comunidade dominante, mas encontram com grande criatividade “novos usos” para os objetos do cotidiano, bem como para suas próprias identidades, em contraste com aqueles que vivem apáticos sob a segurança e a acomodação política do mercado global.

Toxic War and the Politics of Uncertainty in Iraq

The long American war on Iraq is not over. In a country ravaged for more than two decades by crippling sanctions and military occupation, the social, cultural, and political-economic legacies of war seem unending. Perhaps even more disturbing, Iraqis now face widespread environmental destruction and a dystopian environmental future. The ecological wages of America's long war in Iraq are partly the consequence of “routine” violence, resulting from the systemic destruction of vital electrical, water, and sewage infrastructure over two decades. It is possible to imagine that Iraq's cities and villages can be rebuilt. But even if it finds its way to the kind of political accommodation that makes reconstruction possible, parts of the country face other pernicious long-term environmental threats, among the most dangerous being the hidden toxic and radiological dangers that have settled in Iraqi bodies and deep in its landscape.

Unilateral Forgiveness and the Task of Reconciliation

Although forgiveness is often taken to bear a close connection to the value of reconciliation, there is a good deal of scepticism about its role in situations where there is no consensus on the moral complexion of the past and no admission of guilt on the part of the perpetrator. This scepticism is typically rooted in the claims that forgiveness without perpetrator acknowledgement (1) aggravates the risk of recidivism; (2) yields a substandard and morally compromised form of political accommodation; and (3) comes across as patronizing and offensive to the recipient, thereby causing further alienation. In this article, my aim is to show, firstly, that none of these arguments is decisive and, secondly, that forgiveness is a suitable object of political concern in the absence of cross-community consensus on the rights and wrongs of a conflict. In this way, I aim to demonstrate that forgiveness deserves to be taken seriously as a means to civic reconciliation in a broader range of situations than many have allowed.

The Political Accommodation of Islam in Portugal and Ireland: Testing the ‘Convergence Thesis’ in Two Peripheral Cases

Este artículo compara la acomodación política del Islam en Portugal y en la República de Irlanda desde el término de los años 50. Mucha literatura tiene como foco los sospechos usuales, como Alemania, Francia, Holanda y Gran Bretaña, contextos con comunidades musulmanas de tamaño considerable y establecimiento de considerable duración. Por su turno, no se conoce mucho sobre la institucionalización del Islam en Estados en los cuales la presencia de musulmanes es más reciente y sigue siendo relativamente pequeña. Portugal e Irlanda son dos Estados periféricos, de pequeña dimensión y de matriz católica. Sus populaciones musulmanas representan debajo de 1% de la población total. Los dos casos providencian un teste único a la tesis de Jonathan Laurence sobre la convergencia de los procesos de institucionalización en la Europa Occidental en contextos de diferenciación histórica, política e institucional. Nuestras conclusiones apuntan al hecho que Portugal converge conforme la sugerencia de Laurence, Irlanda no es un caso de convergencia. Lo explicamos recurriendo a dos puntos. Las comunidades musulmanas en Irlanda tienen niveles de diversidad intracomunitaria mayores y eso explica la mayor dificultad de movilización. La posición de la Iglesia Católica Romana es el segundo punto. En Portugal, ese agente institucionalizado tiene un papel de gatekeeper y intermediación mas fuerte que su homólogo irlandés. El proceso de cooptación del Islam es una ilustración. En Irlanda, la Iglesia Católica tiene un papel más ambiguo y no tiene las capacidades ni los recursos para operar como su homóloga portuguesa en el contexto de la institucionalización del Islam en Irlanda.

KEBIJAKAN PEMERINTAH TENTANG LEMBAGA KEUANGAN SYARIAH ERA REFORMASI

Government Policy on Islamic Financial Institutions Reform Era. Government policies on Islamic financial institutions in the New Order were backgrounded in political accommodation, namely the accommodation of the Islamic academic elite within the state structure. This was used by the Islamic academic elite to broach ideas and opinions to conceive one of ideas as Islamic banking. Factors driving the process of policy formation of Islamic financial institutions was the support of policy makers, community banking, socio-cultural and juridical. Now, it so happens, that the inhibiting factors were that the policy makers were un-aspirational, public confidence in the conventional banks was still high and the lack of human resources and socialization. In the Reform era, many laws were conceived to support the development of Islamic financial institutions.DOI: 10.15408/ajis.v14i2.1280

Unpacking (white) privilege in a South African university classroom: A neglected element in multicultural educational contexts

Multiculturalism currently aims for the political accommodation of difference instead of the subversion of the resulting privileges of difference. In the South African context such a distinction is especially important since the economic and symbolic subjugation of the majority of Black South Africans continues despite political transformation, and is exacerbated by an unwillingness to reflect on privilege and inequality. Drawing on Biko and Soudien’s critique of multiculturalism and vision for anti-racist education, this paper describes a classroom activity set for 164 nationally and culturally diverse second year sociology students at a university in Cape Town, South Africa. The activity tasked students to reflect on texts by Peggy McIntosh and Khaya Dlanga (one canonical, the other contextual) and reports on these students’ nuanced understandings of personal biography, experiences of privilege and self-reflexivity that connects personal experience to social structure and historical contexts. It concludes by offering modest implications for moral education in a multicultural university classroom.

Patronage and Professionalism: Manning a Transitional Empire, 1760–1870

While there is agreement that the Colonial Office continued to man an expanding empire in the nineteenth century by the technique of patronage, the reasons for the longevity of this practice, despite ‘reform’ of civil service recruitment in the early 1850s, have been little analysed. This article explores, from patronage records and private papers, the factors sustaining preferment in the gift of secretaries of state and their governors, rather than by resorting to examinations. Its conclusions are that the practice was associated with class status among senior civil servants, gradually mitigated by promotions from within colonial establishments. Patronage was burdensome to manage centrally and had to be devolved to governors, as colonial establishments expanded, creating a pool of talent among senior officials for secretaries of state to draw on. This trend is evident in establishment statistics from the late 1840s to1871. It supports the Colonial Office claim that the service was ‘professional’ according to its own criteria of learning through experience in political accommodation with local notables and dealing with emergencies. Thus, the department justified its opposition to competitive examinations for appointments overseas, while tolerating them for junior posts at home, and the practice survived till the end of the century and after.

As centrais sindicais e o fenômeno do transformismo no governo Lula

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo analisar as cinco principais centrais sindicais brasileiras, no contexto do fenômeno do transformismo e das políticas de reestruturação produtiva e de precarização do trabalho levadas a cabo no governo Lula. Além disso, pretende-se analisar as propostas de ação sindical defendidas pelas centrais no sentido de fazer frente ao quadro de mudanças em curso, mudanças essas que têm incidido diretamente tanto no plano da materialidade como na subjetividade das classes trabalhadoras. Assim, algumas indagações nos parecem pertinentes: o que tem levado as centrais sindicais a optarem por uma política de parceria e aproximação com o governo, em detrimento de uma linha mais conflitiva? O fenômeno da aproximação das centrais sindicais seria responsável pela acomodação política diante da ofensiva das empresas no tocante à reestruturação produtiva, à flexibilização e à precarização do trabalho? Dito de outra maneira, as centrais sindicais não estariam operantes frente à ofensividade do capital sobre o trabalho?

Business and Welfare State Development: Why Did Employers Accept Social Reforms?

In recent years, employer-centered explanations of welfare state development have begun to challenge conventional labor-centered and state-centered explanations. These new explanations suggest that sector-specific business interests and cross-class alliances propelled the adoption and expansion of social programs (the business interests thesis). This article presents a novel explanation of differences in business support for welfare state expansion based on a diachronic analysis of the German case and shadow case studies of Sweden and the United States. The article suggests that when looking at changes in employers’ positions across time rather than across sectors, political constraints turn out to be the central factor explaining variation in employers’ support for social reforms (the political accommodation thesis). The article identifies two goals of business intervention in welfare state development: pacification and containment. In the case of pacification, business interests propel social policy expansion; in the case of containment, they constrain it. Business chooses pacification when revolutionary forces challenge capitalism and political stabilization thus becomes a priority. Business chooses containment when reformist forces appear likely to succeed in expanding social protection and no revolutionary challenge exists. The article shows that changes over time in the type of political challenges that business interests confront best explain the variation in business support for labor-friendly social reforms.

Politics in deeply divided societies

Preface vi List of Tables viii 1 Introduction 1 2 The Characteristics of Deeply Divided Societies 13 3 Violence, Order and Justice 33 4 The Challenge of Policing 55 5 Limits to Integration 77 6 Partition and Population Transfer 95 7 Power-Sharing and Political Accommodation 113 8 External Mediation 133 9 Conclusion 154 Bibliography 161 Index 168

Language, religion and the politics of difference

AbstractLanguage and religion are arguably the two most socially and politically consequential domains of cultural difference in the modern world. Yet there have been very few efforts to compare the two in any sustained way. I begin by aligning language and religion, provisionally, with ethnicity and nationhood, and by sketching five ways in which language and religion are both similar to and similarly intertwined with ethnicity and nationhood. I then identify a series of key differences between language and religion and draw out their implications for the political accommodation of cultural heterogeneity. I show that religious pluralism tends to be more intergenerationally robust and more deeply institutionalised than linguistic pluralism in western liberal democracies, and I argue that religious pluralism entails deeper and more divisive forms of diversity. The upshot is that religion has tended to displace language as the cutting edge of contestation over the political accommodation of cultural difference – a striking reversal of the longer‐term historical process through which language had previously displaced religion as the primary focus of contention.

The dilemma of adopting ethnic federal system in Africa in light of the perspectives from Ethiopian experience

This article aims to analyse the major challenges of adopting ethnic federal system in Africa with special focus on the context of Ethiopia’s ethnic federal system. It is argued that though the adoption of ethnic federal system in Ethiopia has created the opportunity for minority groups to exercise their cultural and linguistic rights, the ethnic federal experiment has faced enormous challenges. The challenges include problems of legitimacy, unprecedented emphasis on ethnicity and lack of genuine democratization process. The article argues for concrete measures to be undertaken on political accommodation of various political groupings, realization of genuine democracy and establishing efficient political institutions as well as the need to accommodate minority rights in a manner that fosters social cohesion and national unity in the country. Key words: Ethnicity, federalism, Ethiopia, diversity, democracy, democratization.

Victimhood Status and Public Attitudes towards Post-conflict Agreements: Northern Ireland as a Case Study

The rights and needs of victims have become an increasingly controversial issue in post-conflict societies. Yet to date, the views of victims concerning the new political arrangements in post-conflict settlements remain unexplored. Mindful of this omission and using Northern Ireland as a case study, this article investigates the relationship between victimhood status and attitudes towards the new political arrangements of devolved government in Northern Ireland, namely the Assembly and its power-sharing Executive. Based on the 2010 Northern Ireland Election Survey, the results suggest that individual victims – those who had directly and indirectly experienced violent instances and perceived themselves as victims – are notably more supportive of these new political arrangements and this relationship remains regardless of whether Protestants or Catholics are considered. A key factor in accounting for this phenomenon is their greater endorsement of its systems of governance, or underlying consociational principles of inclusion and decision making, as well as a positive view of its current political leaders. The Northern Ireland evidence suggests that victims can act as ‘moral beacons’, providing a positive and inclusive force for political accommodation and societal reconciliation in societies emerging from conflict.