Political Contours Research Articles

Searching for Difference in a Homogeneous Discipline

International Relations and the Problem of Difference. By Naeem Inayatullah, David L. Blaney. London: Routledge, 2004. 288 pp., $80.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-415-94637-9), $26.95 paper (ISBN: 0-415-94638-7). By its very subject matter, international relations (IR) scholarship ought to engage the complexities and diversities of world politics: the myriad cultural, linguistic, political, religious, and ideological experiences that encompass the globe. And yet, few disciplines are as homogeneous as international relations. Its most influential conceptual models have emerged almost exclusively from observing the behavior of Western states. Non-Western experiences, perspectives, and ideas only rarely enter the purview of leading theorists. Texts, other than those written in English and approved by social science conventions, are rarely consulted. In International Relations and the Problem of Difference , Naeem Inayatullah and David Blaney address this shortcoming, and they do so in a stimulating and sophisticated manner. Drawing attention to the striking absence of voices from the Third World, they reach beyond the spatial and temporal boundaries of conventional international relations. Rather than accepting the interwar period as the origin of IR scholarship, they trace the roots of current IR theory and practice back to the early modern period. The contours of contemporary world politics thus become intrinsically linked to historical practices of colonialism and religious cleansing. The main proposition of International Relations and the Problem of Difference is that the theory and practice of international relations is in many ways about the erasure of difference. To be more precise, it is about the effort to mark and …

The Warming of Turkish-Russian Relations: Motives and Implications

Relations between Turkey and Russia have taken significant turns for the better in the past several years, culminating in the visit of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Moscow in December 2004, and followed by Russian President Vladimir Putin's reciprocal trip to Ankara in January 2005. This was the first time a Russian chief of state had paid an official visit to Turkey.1 The latter meeting was timed, perhaps not coincidentally, to occur just before the European Union summit meeting in Brussels, which included the perennial matter of membership on its agenda. Although those visits are significant in their own right, they are emblematic of a larger significant shift in each country's disposition to the other, and in some respects are symptomatic of shifting political orientations in their domestic and international politics. As Shireen T. Hunter asserts, Turkish and Russian officials increasingly refer to their respective countries as two great Eurasian powers, indicating that the and Russian versions of Eurasianism need not be competitive. Rather, they can be complementary.2 This article explores the contours of this changing landscape with an eye toward identifying and critically analyzing alternative interpretations of the reasons for the emergence of a more cooperative set of relations between Turkey and Russia. It also does so from the perspective of the implications for democracy in each of these countries and the region more generally.This remarkable turn toward greater cooperation between Russia and Turkey calls for commentary on several grounds, not least of which is the long history of suspicion, studied alienation, and overt military conflict between the two countries. As Lesser notes, [djespite the fact that Turkey no longer shares a border with Russia, Ankara still continues to view Russia with concern. A long tradition of Russo-Turkish competition contributes to unease, and reinforces more modern worries about Moscow as a geopolitical competitor and a source of regional risk.3 That unease, however, appears to be giving way to substantial change. Improved relations between these two significant powers will certainly shape the contours of domestic and foreign politics in Eurasia well beyond each country's current regime.4 This is already evident in terms of rapidly expanding trade (from an estimated $4 billion in 2002 to approximately $10 billion in 2004, and projections of $25 billion by 2007),5 something akin to a military detente (if not rapprochement), an increasing measure of regional cooperation in attempted conflict resolution, and perhaps most demonstrably, diplomatic exchange. The last is perhaps most significant in that it may set the stage for expanded cooperation in economic and military domains as well as open doors in other aspects of bilateral and multilateral regional cooperation.Historically, relations between the Ottoman and Russian empires were never particularly good or close, and were punctuated by armed conflict.6 Chronic conflict between the Ottoman Empire and a continually expanding Muscovy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was capped by Peter the Great's victory in capturing the fortress of Azov in 1696.In 1715, Peter renamed Muscovy the Russian Empire, but with that redesignation came no change in long-term relations with the Ottoman neighbor to the south. There were wars fought in 1710, 1736, 1768-74, 1787, 1806-12,1828-29, 1854-56, and 1877-78. During World I, Russian imperial forces occupied eastern portions of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. This, along with the postwar occupation of western Anatolia by Allied forces, led the founders of the modern Republic to dub the confusing mass of conflicts during and after World I as Turkey's War of Independence (Kurtulus Savas). Although the early regime of Mustafa Kemal Atatiirk has been interpreted as having sought to base its principles on the ideals of both the American and Russian Bolshevik revolutions,7 Turkey took a decisively pro-Western and anti-Soviet orientation after World II. …

Der Kuckuck and the problem of workers' photography in Austria

In 1929, a group of editors affiliated with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (SDAP) established Der Kuckuck, a magazine modelled in content and format on mainstream boulevard weeklies, but directed specifically at a working-class public. Der Kuckuck was one of the few SDAP publications that attempted to collaborate with its audience, introducing within its first year a photography contest open to all readers. The photography contest became a signature feature of the magazine and was described by the editors as a means to cultivate ‘Arbeiterfotographie’ or workers' photography, a term usually associated with the pioneering activities of the German communist magazines Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung and Arbeiterfotograf. This study explores the political and aesthetic contours of ‘Arbeiterfotographie’ in an Austrian social democratic context.

Emma Spaulding Bryant: Civil War Bride, Carpetbagger's Wife, Ardent Feminist; Letters and Diaries, 1860-1900

Emma Spaulding's life might have been simple story of a nineteenth-century woman in rural Maine. Instead, wooed by ambitious John Emory Bryant, Yankee Reconstruction activist and Georgia politician, she became Civil War bride of a Republican carpetbagger intent on reforming South. The grueling years in shadow of her husband's controversial political career gave her a backbone of steel and convictions of an early feminist. Emma supported John's agenda-to northernize South and work for civil rights for African-Americans- and frequently reflected on national political events. Struggling virtually alone to rear a daughter in near poverty, Emma became an independent thinker, suffragist, and officer in Woman's Christian Temperance Union. In eloquent letters, Emma coached her husband's understanding of the woman question; their remarkable correspondence frames a marriage of love and summarizes John's career as it determined contours of Emma's own story-from bitter politics of Reconstruction Georgia to her world as a mother, writer, editor, and teacher in Tennessee and, with her husband, running a mission for homeless in New York. In this extraordinary resource, Ruth Douglas Currie organizes and edits their voluminous correspondence, enhancing letters with an extensive introduction to Emma Spaulding Bryant's life, times, and legacy.

New Roles for Diasporas in International Relations

Cohen ’s essay reviews the recent volume edited by Hazel Smith and Paul Stares, Diasporas in Conflict: Peace-Makers or Peace-Wreckers (United Nations UP, 2007), even as it explores new developments concerning “the important role diasporas can play in the politics of their homelands,” an established topic in the study of diasporas and international relations. Cohen argues that although there are antecedents for such a role extending back to the Cold War and even earlier, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decline of bipolar global politics, combined with the increasing importance of NGOs, has offered “diasporas an enhanced opportunity to intercede in the often precarious politics of their homeland states.” He explores and comments upon the empirical variations that emerge within the general categories and conclusions deployed by the contributors to Diasporas in Conflict , working on specific diasporas, and especially by the editors. There is, he shows, considerable latitude in these categories. Thus, it can be demonstrated that “shifts in the global opportunity structure will either accommodate diasporic interventions or inhibit them”; that “the contours of diasporic politics will vary according to whether the diaspora is stateless or state-linked”; and, finally, that “leaders of diasporas may be imbedded in dominant state structures or may seek to remain free of state influence.” It is not surprising, then, that—to return to the title of the book under discussion—diasporas can function, and have functioned, both as peace-makers and as peace-wreckers.

Tocqueville and Gobineau on the Nature of Modern Politics

This essay takes its bearings from an epistolary dialogue between Arthur de Gobineau and Alexis de Tocqueville about the contours of modern politics. Their dispute illuminates in a remarkable way the theological-political problem that suffuses the emergence of modern politics and, as a consequence, provides a helpful frame of reference for understanding several contemporary controversies bearing on the relationship between religion and liberal democratic politics. Moreover, their correspondence casts new light on the underpinnings of Tocqueville's thought. The frankness of this exchange together with the relentless character of Gobineau's arguments, provoke in Tocqueville an articulation of the larger context within which he understands modern politics and, in so doing, reveals an important, though largely neglected, intellectual framework that informs much of his published work.

“George II and All That Stuff”: On the Value of the Neglected

A valedictory article is a piece of sadness, but it is also an opportunity to shout at the wind. This piece is doubly written in that sense, first because it focuses on a king, and secondly because it discusses sources and emphasizes the need for archival research. Readers who are enthralled in modishness, and in the multiple mirrors of post-modernism, will proceed no further, but that simply reflects the peculiar and self-serving nature of the dominant approach to eighteenth-century British political history, with its fascination for the rhetorical strategies of discourse and its lack of interest in the contents and contours of politics, and in the hard work required to re-create them.In part this reflects a sense that somehow all this high politics has been done, but that is deeply misleading. It is particularly so for the reign of George II (1727–60), for that monarch, a king in deed as well as name, still lacks a scholarly biography. This is an important omission, for, without such a study, the monarch appears as a figure of episodic importance, distinctly secondary to his ministers, and as a restraint on them, rather than as an initiator of issues. To understand the king and his role, it is necessary to consider him not thus from the outside but rather on the basis of a thorough study that makes full use of the surviving sources. Secondly, without a focus on the king, it is difficult to understand the Anglo-Hanoverian monarchy, and the problems this created for British ministers. Thirdly, the failure to give due weight to George II ensures that Britain appears more different from Continental states than it should, and certainly removes a possible way to offer a comparative study.

Partners in Conflict: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Labor in the Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1950-1973

Partners in Conflict examines the importance of sexuality and gender to rural labour and agrarian politics during the last days of Chile's latifundia system of traditional landed estates and throughout the governments of Eduardo Frei and Salvador Allende (1964-1973). Heidi Tinsman analyses differences between men's and women's participation in Chile's Agrarian Reform movement, considering how conflicts over gender shape the contours of working-class struggles and national politics. Tinsman restores women to a scholarly narrative that has been almost exclusively about men, recounting the centrality of women's labour to the pre-Agrarian Reform world of the hacienda during the 1950s and recovering women's critical roles in union struggles and land occupations during the Agrarian Reform itself. Providing a theoretical framework for understanding why the Agrarian Reform ultimately empowered men more than women, Tinsman argues that women were marginalised not because the Agrarian Reform ignored women but because the Agrarian Reform, under both the Frei and Allende governments, promoted the male-headed household as the cornerstone of a new society. Although the Agrarian Reform's emphasis on gender co-operation stressed that men should have more respect for their wives and funnelled unprecedented amounts of resources into women's hands, the reform movement defined men as its protagonists and affirmed their authority over women. This is the first monographic social history of Chile's Agrarian Reform in either English or Spanish, and the first historical work to make sexuality and gender central to the analysis of the reforms.

Globalization, Democratization, and the Prospects for Civil War in the New Millennium

The last half of the twentieth century was marked by dramatic changes in the patterns of armed conflict in the world. First, whereas wars between sovereign nation-states had defined the contours of international politics for the previous three hundred years, civil wars—revolutions, secessionist wars, and anticolonial revolts—became the most frequent and deadly forms of armed conflict in the post-World War II era. The Correlates of War data indicate that between 1945 and 1999 there were only twenty-five interstate wars (resulting in a total of 3.3 million battle deaths), but five times as many civil wars (127) occurred, resulting in five times as many battle deaths (16.2 million) (Fearon and Laitin 2003:75). Second, whereas the major powers (including Europe, the United States, China, and Japan) had been the site of most of the world's interstate wars, the Third World—Asia, Africa, and Latin America—became the locus of almost all the armed conflict that punctuated the history of the last half-century. While Europe enjoyed what John Gaddis (1986) termed the “long peace” (the longest period in the post-Westphalia era without a major war among the major powers), conflicts in the Third World inflicted all but 176,000 of the 22 million battle deaths that occurred between 1945 and 1989 (Holsti 1992:37).

Cosmopolitanism: globalisation tamed?

The processes, problems and dilemmas generated by globalisation shape new contours of politics. They delineate some of the starkest challenges faced in the contemporary era. The first half of this article maps some of these, focusing particularly on questions of governance. Exploring the changing circumstances of politics illuminates why nationalism and statism provide inadequate political resources to meet the problems posed by a more global age. In the second half of the article, cosmopolitanism is defended as a more relevant and appropriate way of framing politics today. Four cosmopolitan principles are set out and a strategy is elaborated for cosmopolitan institution-building. In the final section of the article, cosmopolitanism is defended against possible charges of utopianism, and it is argued that cosmopolitanism is a political project for the here and now – and just as pertinent as the theory of the modern state was when it was first promulgated in Leviathan.

Everything New is Old Again: Technology and the Mistaken Future

The political contours of social actions appear not only in the relationships between cultural actors but in the artifacts that surround them. This is increasingly the case as digital technology becomes the vehicle for education. This article focuses on the rhetoric that accompanies such educational technology. All too often, both the hype and the criticism surrounding technology in education implicitly accept that digital machines and media represent the impending future. However, if technology is understood as the instantiation of enduring social relations, then it must always represent the sociopolitical configurations of the past, however recent that past is. Seen in this light, technology does not drive change so much as it resists it. Technology becomes a tool of maintenance, not innovation. This article spins out how this might be the case and accompanies the arguments with concrete instances of how this is being played out in public schooling.

Guest Editor's Introduction: Historians and Histories of the Horn of Africa: Toward a Comparative View

Guest Editor's Introduction:Historians and Histories of the Horn of Africa: Toward a Comparative View Federica Guazzini For we can get some idea of a whole from a part, but never knowledge or exact opinion. Special histories therefore contribute very little to the knowledge of the whole and conviction of its truth. It is only indeed by study of the interconnection of all the particulars, their resemblances and differences, that we are enabled at least to make a general survey, and thus derive both benefit and pleasure from history. Polybius, The Histories Although much has been written on the history and culture of the Horn of Africa, one of the most contentious, controversial, and important questions regarding the contemporary history of Africa still remains: what is the matter with the Horn? Examining cutting-edge issues in the ongoing redrawing of the political map of the Horn of Africa, the organizing committee of the international conference titled "The Horn of Africa between History, Law, and Politics" set as its goal the presentation of a rich and stimulating range of papers exploring the historical and contemporary meanings of the major changes the region has undergone. The articles in the present issue of Northeast African Studies are derived from papers presented at this conference. [End Page 1] The primary objective of the organizing committee was to examine the Horn of Africa's postindependence struggle to build transparent, accountable, and participatory governance structures, in order to predict scenarios of conflict resolution, new bases of cooperation, and modes and models of reconstruction of the legal and juridical systems in the region. Indeed, as Bereket Habte Selassie aptly underlined, the conference was "a bold and imaginative exercise in optimism" or, at least, a challenge to participants to adopt an international comparative perspective, which is of interest above all for its discussion of the major changes that have taken place since the imposition of European colonial rule on the Horn. Both African-born scholars and other experts were encouraged to attend the conference. The audience took an active part, and indeed the number of international scholars from different fields within the humanities and social sciences who participated in panel discussions reflects the lively interest resulting from the broad guidelines provided for the conference. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to publish in the present volume all the papers that were discussed. This edited collection confirms the insights of both mature and younger scholars, successfully demonstrating that the peoples of the Horn are much more complexly embedded in, and reflective of, interacting social and political processes than was understood by previous generations of scholars. Whereas historians and ethnologists of past decades tended to address each people separately, the panelists highlight the important interrelationships between groups. Each author tackles this interpretative challenge, providing different approaches, with thematic essays that strike a successful balance between political and social history. The Horn of Africa is thus increasingly treated as a cohesive area of study. The historical and social links between most of its constituent countries have always been strong. In part, this has been because of its colonial past, with Eritrea and Somalia among the Italian colonial possessions, Djibouti under French control, and Somaliland administered by Great Britain. Moreover, today these countries share a common destiny, in which the emerging political contours do not arouse much hope for the enhancement of international cooperation for peace and prosperity, for the rule of law and justice, for the gaining of support for [End Page 2] poverty alleviation. Thus, stabilizing the assessment of the past becomes a critical first step in reversing these expectations. The reader of this collection can particularly appreciate the collaboration of colleagues in their efforts to deal with political, anthropological, social, and legal questions, and in the fresh look they take at the way peoples, symbols, and ideas straddle the various regions of the Horn and at the clashes between these things in these regions. Common research questions raised during the conference focused on the institutional and cognitive structures resulting from such interactions. Among the topics included were the historical and current processes of construction of spaces of action and communication, as well as the processes of conflict and...

SOMALILAND

This essay outlines recent developments in the Horn of Africa with particular focus on the emerging democratic state of Somaliland. It maps out the key political contours of Somaliland and Somalia. In this respect, the implications of recent developments for the international community and multilateral institutions are analysed. Somaliland has shown extraordinary determination to succeed. Those governing Somaliland have shown respect for democratic principles, begun to develop natural assets which will strengthen the economy, and rebuilt much of the capital city. The union with Somalia has proved difficult to say the least, while relations with Kenya, Djibouti and African multilateral organisations remain complex. Yet despite the advances the citizens of Somaliland have made, recognition of Somaliland as a viable independent entity by the international community remains an uncertain hope.

“En Plena Libertad y Democracia”: Negros Brujos and the Social Question, 1904-1919

“En Plena Libertad y Democracia”: Negros Brujos and the Social Question, 1904-1919

The Uneven Performance of Third Wave Democracies: Electoral Politics and the Imperfect Rule of Law in Latin America

AbstractThis article investigates the performance of the new democracies of the third wave by developing a conceptual model of the core elements of liberal democratic government and by constructing a new Database of Liberal Democratic Performance. The performance is shown to be uneven in two main ways. First, the institutional attributes of democratic government advance while individual and minority rights languish. Second, particular institutional attributes coexist uncomfortably, as do particular rights. A comparison of Brazil, Colombia, and Guatemala complements the big picture drawn from the database and focuses on the specific contextual conditions that can create the general political contours of the wave. The uneven democratic performance of these cases is mainly explained by the combination of persistent oligarchic power and a largely unaccountable military. Yet uneven performance, and the imperfect rule of law in particular, does not necessarily prevent democratic survival.

Plural Policing and Democratic Governance

This article asks how we might best come to terms with - and seek to govern - the multiplicity of institutional forms that are now involved in the delivery of policing and security services and technologies. I begin by documenting briefly the network of providers that constitute the policing field locally, nationally and transnationally, before specifying how the fragmentation and pluralization of policing has called radically into doubt a number of received (liberal) suppositions about the relationship between police and government. I then attempt - drawing constructively yet critically on recent theorizations of governance and ‘governmentality’ - to make sense of some contemporary reconfigurations of policing within and beyond the state, and tease out their implications for questions of democratic legitimacy. Finally, I outline the contours of an institutional politics for the regulation of policing that is both normatively adequate to the task of connecting policing to processes of public will-formation and sociologically plausible under the altered conditions of plural, networked policing.

Ṭabarī on the Companions of the Prophet: Moral and Political Contours in Islamic Historical Writing

The History of Tabarī is examined in the light of a key religious motif (the doctrine of the status of the companions and the form of Islamic history («akhbār» reports). An analysis of two accounts in Tabarī, the Battles of the Camel and Siffīn, suggests that the author expressed his views on this doctrine in relation to prevailing Hanbalī and Abbāsid views. The judicious use and placement of the various reports allowed the author to rank the companions in relation to their involvement in the first internal conflict in Islam. Moreover, his doctrine of the companions of the Prophet was a careful appraisal of their moral, and not their political, merits and demerits.

European Socialists Respond to Fascism: Ideology, Activism and Contingency in the 1930s

Based on documents collected in six European countries, European Socialists Respond to Fascism: Ideology, Activism and Contingency in the 1930s is a transnational study of largely parallel developments in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, and Spain in the years 1933-1936. Triggered into action by the shock effect of the Nazi rise to power in Germany, socialists throughout Western Europe entered an unusually active period of practical reorientation and debate over political strategy which helped determine the contours of European politics up to the outbreak of World War II and beyond. Stressing the transnational dimension of this process while simultaneously integrating local, regional, and national factors, this work finds that it was social democracy, rather than communism, that acted as the primary vehicle for radical change among European marxists during the 1930s. Following major figures within the European left and the significant events that made up the inter-war period, Gerd-Rainer Horn demonstrates the interconnectedness of Europe's interwar socialists. Finally, Horn manages to relate these findings to the ongoing interdisciplinary debate on structure, agency, and contingency in the historical process.

Technological Innovation and Welfare

The first part of this article presents a brief analysis of the reasons why the immense amount of technological innovation in (old and new) industrialized countries does not seem to have contributed to any increase in social welfare. It is argued that the support from the political system to multinational firms' strategies for globalization is too affirmative, for reasons that are more of an ideological than of an economic nature. Thus, in the second part of the article the contours of a transnational politics are outlined, in an attempt to show how technological innovation can serve the development of a new social welfare around the globe.

Race and the Myth of the Liberal Consensus

For thirty years, the idea of liberal has governed interpretations of post1945 history. Coined by John Higham in the 1950s, it appeared at a time when older ideologies of the Left and Right seemed to have vanished, leaving broad agreement on the proper political contours of American society. The was thought to pertain primarily to questions of political economy and class relations: Everyone agreed that the productivity of American capitalism and its capacity to spread affluence throughout the social order had made questions of class inequality meaningless and that political conflict would be limited to well-regulated and institutionalized struggles among interest groups over how much affluence would come their way. 1 By the early 1960s, civil rights had become a central plank of that liberal consensus. These were the years when the nation-state undertook a second Reconstruction to complete the work left unfinished by the first. Popular support for this renewed commitment to racial equality seemed overwhelming. A deep and widespread revulsion against segregation spread through the nation as millions watched Sheriff Bull Connor unleash his dogs and high-pressure hoses on peaceful civil rights protesters in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. Hundreds of thousands-Black and white-joined the March on Washington in August 1963 while millions endorsed their efforts. In 1964 and 1965, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, the most significant pieces of civil rights legislation in a hundred years. And Lyndon B. Johnson won a landslide victory over Barry Goldwater in 1964, in no small measure because of his outspoken support for civil rights. White southerners, of course, did not share this determination to end discrimination against African Americans. But the fact that the South stood outside the consensus did not damage the notion of consensus, for the South was regarded as a backward region that did not truly represent the United States. Once the South was forced to become part of the nation-and the civil rights laws of 1964 and 1965 were meant to accomplish just that the liberal would prevail there too.