Political Order Research Articles

The Ligue des Droits de l'Homme and the ‘Right to Life’ in the 1930s

This article examines the debates within the French Ligue des Droits de l'Homme on the adoption in 1936 of a Complément (Complement) to the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. The Ligue questioned the relevance of the 1789 Declaration when social dislocation, economic distress and fascism challenged democracy. New rights, principally the ‘right to life’ (droit à la vie), the fundamental right from which all others flowed, were pronounced. The article examines the values and principles informing the Complément to address why a declaration of new rights was seen as a proper response to these crises. Aspirations for a radical transformation of the social, political and economic order were expressed in a genre and a language of rights deeply embedded in French history. The Complément continued the work of 1789, assuming a form through which this transformation could be imagined.

Re‐Embedding Trade in the Shadow of Populism

In the last 75 years of international economic cooperation, we have witnessed tremendous changes. The global trade and investment regime is under pressure and undergoing a significant transformation. Supply chains are being restructured, new trade blocks are forming based on strategic and political considerations, support for trade among citizens is weak and inconsistent, and populist opposition to the global economic and political order is ascendant. In this time of uncertainty about the future of the world order, the articles for this thematic issue address how and if the global trade and investment regime can be re-embedded into society.

Self-Giving and the Constitution of Political Order: The Case of Liu Xiaobo

Self-Giving and the Constitution of Political Order: The Case of Liu Xiaobo

Newspaper Leaders as Moral Exhortation: Understanding the Rhetoric of Civil Religion in Colonial Australia

This article argues that the leading article, or leader, of a newspaper played a role in the ‘secular’ society of colonial Australia not unlike that of the sermon in the religious sphere. One of its primary objectives was moral exhortation to encourage Australian colonists to follow a path that would enable the colony to fulfil providence and create an appropriate moral order. Their celebration of the British political order was a form of civil theology that matched the more dogmatic theology to be found in church sermons. This similarity was also assisted by the fact that a significant number of clergy either edited newspapers or wrote for them. This article considers several expressions of this civil theology, and then concentrates on the Rev John West who edited the Sydney Morning Herald and who used his leading articles to castigate his fellow colonists for their failure to live up to the ideals of their British political heritage. He was particularly harsh on the workings of colonial democracy which led him into conflict with another cleric, the Rev John Dunmore Lang.

The Palestinian-Israeli market: ‘feels like somewhere else’

ABSTRACT This article explores the relations between Israel’s Mizrahi Jews (Middle East and North African countries’ descendants) and Palestinian citizens as manifested in the popular open-air market of Kafr Qasim, a Palestinian town in central Israel. The town’s market is a unique space where Jews and Palestinians work, shop, and hang out side by side. This article argues that visitors, vendors, and market owners perceive the market as a space offering an alternative social and political order for various groups suffering from oppression within Israeli society. Specifically considering settler colonialism implications and the status of Mizrahi Jews in Israeli society. Following findings from an ethnography conducted in Kafr Qasim between 2016–2019, it is argued that the town’s market carries elements such as perceptions of shared cultural space and elsewhereness that allow both Mizrahi Jews and Palestinian citizens to feel more comfortable than in other public places in Israel.

Bridging inquiry and critique: a neo-pragmatic perspective on the making of educational futures and the role of social research

ABSTRACT The making of digital educational futures raises pressing social justice concerns. Against this background, scholars face the challenge of bridging the tasks of investigation and critical engagement. Inspired by French pragmatic sociology, this article presents the notion of plural school worlds as analytical anchor point for dealing with this double-task coherently and productively. Varying understandings of what makes ‘good and fair school education’ are identified as defining features of different school worlds. These understandings (1) are historically entangled with social and political orders, (2) inform how we envision, enact, and evaluate possible educational futures, and (3) define a shared discursive space for exchange between various groups of actors. We claim that the notion of school worlds thus furthers both our understanding of persistent patterns of disadvantaging in digital education and our capacity for critical dialogue with involved actors through sensitizing explication, shifting problematizations and reflecting performativity.

FOREIGN PÓLICY OF POST-REVOLUTIONARY IRAN: EXPEDIENCY AT THE CROSSROAD OF SUPRA-NATIONALISM AND SOVEREIGNTY

Following the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the subsequent formation of the Islamic Republic, the Islamization of Iran’s foreign policy has arguably become the newly established state’s primary agenda on the international arena. In accordance with Islamic thoughts on international relations, the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy was constructed on the concept of Islamic supra-nationalism - which places its emphasis on the unity of the global Muslim community (Ummah). Arguably, this supra-nationalist doctrine is incompatible with the current political world order which is based on the concept of the Westphalian nation-state. This incompatibility exists on three levels; firstly, Islam places its emphasis on ideological boundaries rather than political borders and therefore rejects the idea of nationalist states. Secondly, Islam denies current sources of legitimacy with regard to international laws and regulations, and finally, Islam calls for the elimination of cultural, ethnic and geographical boundaries among Muslims in order to unite Muslim communities in a new power bloc within the current political world order. This paper firstly identifies the differences between Islamic supra-nationalism and the doctrine of Westphalian sovereignty. Secondly, by emphasizing on the concept of maslahat (expediency) and by using several examples; this paper also provides explanations on how the foreign policy of Iran decides which path to take at the crossroad of supra-nationalism and sovereignty.

Tuu Karrai Spi: Deconstructing Aman Committees and Life in South Waziristan

ABSTRACT This study explores the post-9/11 ramifications of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in South Waziristan, Pakistan. It discusses how the post-colonial state has undermined state and tribal political relations which constituted political order first during the British colonial era and later in Pakistan. Furthermore, it explores how the post-colonial state has shared de facto sovereignty in the region with a “good” Taliban in the shape of a peace committee. To understand the Pakistan post-colonial state’s engagement with South Waziristan, it is necessary to make sense of the ongoing GWOT and the resulting necropolitics of life and death in South Waziristan. The paper explores how residents have confronted different scenarios when they encounter the new powerholders. It details the everyday experiences, life stories, and socio-political existence of the people of South Waziristan as an alternative narrative to how mainstream media and academic sources have discussed this area.

«LYSISTRATA’S PHENOMENON»: NEW SENSES OF THE ANCIENT PLOT IN THE CONTEXT OF SOCIO–POLITICAL CRISES OF THE 21ST CENTURY

The Peloponnesian war and the crisis of the police system of the end of the 5th – beginning of the 4th century BC became the historical context and stage chronotope for Aristophanes’ comedies. The article explores the peculiarities of the formation of modern «Lysistrata» receptions, in particular in cinematography and journalism. The premises of the «Lysistrata’s phenomenon» emergence and their interconnections with the reinterpretation of the ancient heritage are examined. In the 21st century «Lysistrata» serves as the source for the formation of the new mythologems. In the first years of New Millennium the plot of the Aristophanes’ comedy was considered as purely comic, fantastic, or even absurd. We consider the year 2003rd and the global culture initiative «Lysistrata project» to be the starting point for the «Lysistrata’s phenomenon». After «Lysistrata project» and, especially, events in Liberia global media cultivated neo-mythological concept of Lysistrata as the embodiment of political sex-strikes. Such simplification led to changes in artistic reception of the play, which could be traced in the theatre adaptation of the first decade of the 21st century. Spike Lee’s «Chi-raq» brought back complexity and multiple dimensions of Aristophanes’ play – juxtaposition of modern Chicago and ancient Athens opened plenty of senses and allows new optics for modern classic’s reception and for classical text itself. The Old Greek comedy «Lysistrata» became the optimal artistic focal point for the comprehension of the problems of war, peace, political order, race, and gender conflicts. The «Lysistrata’s phenomenon» demands further discussion based on multidisciplinary approach.

International Relations in the Middle East: Hegemonic Strategies and Regional Order by Ewan Stein

In this ambitious work, international relations scholar and Middle East politics specialist Ewan Stein takes on nothing less than the causes of order and disorder in the international politics of the Middle East. In doing so, he succeeds by producing a theoretically informed, analytical, and rich historical overview of Middle East regional politics from the end of the First World War to the early 2020s. Unlike works that deal with the region only as a kind of strategic arena, this book takes domestic politics very seriously and shows how internal politics affect external affairs and vice versa. Stein focuses on two key themes in state behavior in the Middle East: competitive support-seeking and ideological externalization. Given the broad historical scope of the book, the author starts with state formation and the creation of the modern Middle East as a regional system. Regime consolidation, he notes, is a continuous process, and hence, one continuing even today, as regimes attempt to shore themselves up and generate domestic support for their own longevity and survival. These domestic drivers lead regimes to compete with one another for external support, from economic aid to military support and alliances. But Stein is also deeply mindful of nonmaterial factors in the domestic and international politics of the region, emphasizing ideological and ideational factors as well, as regimes seek external ideological validation and support to enhance their domestic credentials and legitimacy.

In, Of, and For the City: Acknowledging the 2022 Anthony Leeds Prize in Urban Anthropology

In, Of, and For the City: Acknowledging the 2022 Anthony Leeds Prize in Urban Anthropology

Deterritorialized Threats and the “Territorial Trap”: The Geographical Imaginaries of Piracy in the Gulf of Aden

This paper investigates how modern theories of international security are being revised in relation to a perceived “deterritorialization” of the global security environment. Using the case of piracy in the Gulf of Aden, I examine how geographical imaginaries of security and insecurity are reproduced in relation to non-state, global threats. I show that while the objects to be secured from threats like piracy are interpreted in relation to networked and deterritorialized space, diagnoses of threats themselves, their origins, and their movement, rely on a territorial imaginary of political order. This attributes a one-way spatio-political directionality to global threats, as incubating in zones of local disorder before crossing into the complex, networked space of the global. Drawing on recent research into the territorialization of modern sovereignty and its relationship to European colonization and imperialism, I underscore continuities between contemporary geographical imaginaries of security and threat and those of the early 20th century. This analysis helps make explicit the spatial heuristics that are usually implicit in global security research and highlights the kinds of empirical and political questions that these heuristics sideline. The case of Gulf of Aden piracy foregrounds the material effects of these threat diagnoses, which shape particular geographies of bordering, surveillance, and state and non-state violence.

The Greek Military Dictatorship: Revisiting a Troubled Past, 1967–1974 by Othon Anastasakis and Katerina Lagos, eds.

<i>The Greek Military Dictatorship: Revisiting a Troubled Past, 1967–1974</i> by Othon Anastasakis and Katerina Lagos, eds.

Pandemic Micropolitics in Latin America: Small Business and the Governance of Crisis From Above and Below in El Salvador

The COVID-19 pandemic had severe impacts in Latin America, with small businesses intensely affected. Beyond its economic consequences, the pandemic also exacerbated structural flaws in some of the region's weakly institutionalised democracies, diminishing State legitimacy and expanding that of organised criminal groups. In considering how State governance from above is challenged by non-state governance from below, this article examines a “pandemic micropolitics” as seen through the lens of support to the small business sector. We outline a framework to understand co-governance in hybrid political orders during crises; and examine this using case studies of urban informal markets and the transport sector in El Salvador. In showing that the pandemic contributed to a renegotiation of co-governance between the State, criminal organisations, and business associations, we contribute to understandings of the dynamics of distributive politics and the co-governance of crisis; and the potential implications for a post-COVID-19 political economy in Latin America.

World in the making: On the global visual politics of climate engineering

AbstractProposals for large-scale technical interventions into the Earth system to mitigate global warming – or climate engineering – have sparked considerable debate about their potential implications for international security and global governance. The article furthers this debate by bringing it into dialogue with the literature on visual global politics to develop a more ‘imagistic’ concept of climate engineering imaginaries. Based on a novel visual dataset, three major visual clusters in the public discourse on climate engineering are identified: images of the human–nature relationship, of climate engineering as tangible infrastructure, and of the actors involved in climate engineering projects. The analysis shows how images and other visuals do not only shape the dominant understanding of climate engineering but also competing imaginaries of future political orders in which such approaches might be deployed. Three main results of this analysis stand out. First, dominant ways of seeing climate engineering can further reinforce already dominant discursive frames by adding ‘visual proof’ to their underlying claims. Second, climate engineering visuality can also enable the politicisation of climate engineering by rendering concrete projects visible and hence contestable. Third, climate engineering images can paradoxically limit the scope of imagination as they often revolve around powerful visual icons and symbols of the past and present.

East Africa after Liberation: Conflict, Security, and the State since the 1980s by Jonathan Fisher

Only a small number of Africa’s many civil wars since independence have ended with rebel victory, and an even smaller number of those victories have seen rebels transition into successful rulers able to create durable political systems that persisted for decades following the ouster of the ancien regime. In East Africa after Liberation, Fisher considers several flagship cases from the 1980s and 1990s—Uganda’s National Resistance Army (nra), the Rwandan Patriotic Front (rpf), the interlinked Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (eplf), Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (eprdf), and Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front. With compelling theoretical insight and rich empirical detail, Fisher shows how, after these “post-liberation” insurgencies won their wars, their leaders then renovated regime politics in the states that they captured and became new governing elites. He also shows how they shaped Africa’s regional politics, both in conjunction and, ultimately, at odds with one another.At its heart, this book is about how revolutionary ideologies about state–society relations were refracted through social relationships within and across insurgency movements both during and after victory. It is about how movement leaders sought to invest their liberation mindsets not only into building cohesive rebel organizations but also into the development of pragmatic solutions to the domestic and regional challenges of maintaining their regimes after victory.In the book’s substantive chapters, Fisher develops this story across three periods, which also serve as key conceptual categories. Taking each rebel movement in turn, Chapters 1 and 2 examine the first category of “insurgency,” the initial period when rebel leaders acquired their liberation ideologies and deployed these ideas in building and sustaining their movements during their wartime experiences. This section also shows how leaders developed relationships across movements based on shared characteristics, ultimately leading to the formation of what Fisher describes as a “collective.”In the second category, “Liberation” (Chapters 3–4) refers to how this distinct category of actors—victorious rebels now rulers—consolidated new regimes at home and built their collective affinities into a formidable regional power bloc in East and Central Africa, while continuing to wear strident revolutionary ideology on their sleeves. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with the culmination of these events into a regional “crisis,” when these four regimes meddled in the Great Lakes and sparked a complex and protracted regional conflict following their ouster of Mobutu Sese Seko, Zaïre’s dictator. Very soon after this episode, by virtue of shifting priorities of regime security and competitive jockeying for regional dominance, the liberation alliance unraveled and issued into the “wars between brothers”—Rwanda vs. Uganda, and Ethiopia vs. Eritrea—still packaged as ideological battles.The main strength of this book is its effort to take seriously the notion that “ideas matter” and to operationalize it theoretically and empirically. Fisher successfully weaves the cases through time while providing conceptual markers for how the ideological frameworks of East African leaders elided and collided with rebel, regime, and regional governance. Yet although the stories of Uganda, Rwanda, Eritrea, and Ethiopia are important to tell, their convergence into a similar theoretical stream deprives the book of comparative leverage vis-à-vis the stories of political development in other African states. This shortcoming is not, however, a deal breaker by any means.Another core strength of this book is Fisher’s ability to build relationships in the field, establishing credibility with key actors and penetrating networks of elites that often refuse to tell outsiders about the inner workings of their politics. For all its refreshing audacity, however, this methodology also points to potential pitfalls, among them the uncritical reproduction of elite narratives. Although Fisher discusses the challenges that accompany this kind of research, the next step should be a more thorough attention to the distinct caveats involved in talking to Africa’s politico-security elites.East Africa after Liberation makes critical contributions to our understanding of the intersections between domestic and regional politics in four pivotal East African states. Whereas the prevailing literature tends to focus on the instrumental motivations of Africa’s political actors, Fisher’s more sociological approach considers the frames of meaning that guide the behavior of the revolutionary elites who had to govern fragile states within contentious neighborhoods. It also has broader implications regarding political order in Africa more generally. This book is essential reading for the study of contemporary African politics.

The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier by Chris Gratien

The frontier has long been a subject of interest for historians of the Ottoman Empire, whether their focus has been on the empire’s origins, its expansion, or its efforts to assert its sovereignty as it faced the threat of European imperialism.1 Gratien’s The Unsettled Plain shows a similar interest. It examines the rationale, implementation, and legacies of various Ottoman political projects that resulted in the environmental transformation of the swampy lowlands of Çukurova in southern Anatolia into an important center of commercial agriculture from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. The book spans the late Ottoman period, the tumultuous years of World War I, and the formative decades of the Turkish Republic. This important contribution to the steadily growing body of work about the Ottoman frontier draws heavily from the methods of environmental history.2For Gratien, the Ottoman frontier was not simply the sum of regions located along the empire’s geographical limits; rather, its defining features were its spaces, “pockets of transformation within the Ottoman provinces” (14). Moreover, that transformation manifested in at least three distinct ways to create a particular type of frontier experience during the late Ottoman period—new forms of state presence in rural settings (“frontiers of state”), the settlement of millions of people (“settlement frontier”), and human-nature interactions shaped increasingly by the forces of global capitalism (“ecological frontier”) (14). Although Gratien’s use of the term frontier throughout his book departs from the more common meaning of the term, this framing effectively “reveals a common story that was central to the remaking of Ottoman society” (15–16, 14). For example, it helps scholars to describe the process of environmental change in Ottoman lands with greater specificity than that captured by more conventional terms such as “provincial reform” (14).This framing device in place, Gratien narrates Çukurova’s environmental transformation as an Ottoman frontier with great clarity, carefully outlining what this process meant for the many generations of the region’s inhabitants. As Gratien demonstrates, seasonal migration was a key facet of life in Çukurova well-before it became Ottoman territory. The reason varied, but by the Ottoman period, one of the most important was health; locals regularly retreated to the pastures in the surrounding mountains to escape the malaria-prone swamps of the lowlands during the summer months. Seasonal migration also gave rise to a particular political order in Çukurova, whereby the Ottoman state delegated the task of securing the obedience of the region’s nomadic population to local elites in the nearby mountains. By the second half of the nineteenth century, however, the Ottoman government sought to curb the power of these elites as part of a broader centralization of the empire. It also began to see pastoralism as at odds with its vision of Çukurova as a potential center for commercial agriculture in the future. Thus, from the second half of the nineteenth century forward, the Ottoman government worked to settle not only pastoralists in Çukurova but also refugees in hopes of tapping into the region’s agrarian potential, which Ottoman officials often compared to that of Egypt. Among the many unfortunate consequences of this ecological transformation was the continued exposure of the region’s inhabitants to malaria, which remained a threat during World War I and after the establishment of the Turkish Republic.Historians of the Ottoman Empire and environmental historians in general will certainly recognize the importance of The Unsettled Plain. But non-specialists interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of history also stand to benefit from it. Gratien includes several citations from scientific studies that further deepen readers’ understanding of Çukurova’s environmental history, especially as it concerns the types of mosquitos that transmit malaria and the conditions under which they thrive (37, 159). Indeed, Gratien’s book is just the latest to demonstrate how sophisticated the field of Middle East environmental history has become.

Piracy in World History ed. by Stefan Eklöf Amirell, Bruce Buchan, and Hans Hägerdal

Reviewed by: Piracy in World History ed. by Stefan Eklöf Amirell, Bruce Buchan, and Hans Hägerdal Elizabeth M. Schmidt Piracy in World History. Edited by stefan eklöf amirell, bruce buchan, and hans hägerdal. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021. 289 pp. ISBN 978-94-6372-921-5. $124.00 (hardcover). Conventionally, piracy has been defined as seafarers operating outside the laws of any sovereign power, referred to in Europe since the Early Modern period as "hostes humani generis," or "enemies of all mankind." Most histories of piracy take this as their starting point, incorrectly regarding piracy as a European concept that was applied to foreign mariners in the context of colonialism. This edited volume on piracy questions that assumption with twelve original essays that cover case studies of maritime violence and encounters in Europe, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, the Ottoman Empire, China, and Vietnam between 1500 and 1900. In their introduction, the editors write that their aim is to write a global history that "[unsettles] the conventional oppositions between piracy and sovereignty" (p. 11). To do this, the authors represented in the book move beyond the bounds of western historiographies, legal systems, and linguistics to explore how piratical activity was categorized, understood, exploited, and resisted all over the world. The collection explores the myriad meanings of the word "pirate" and other colloquial terms that refer to maritime violence, as well as the encounters between these different concepts and understandings in colonial contexts. Covering the globe and engaging in 400 years of history is a big promise, but the collection [End Page 143] delivers as each author contends with different political, economic, and diplomatic contexts. Perhaps unsurprisingly, half the book engages with piracy from a European perspective, taking European nations, intellectuals, politicians, and sailors as their starting point. Yet while it seems as though these authors will cover familiar ground, the book has stayed away from rehashing the narratives of the so-called "Golden Age of Atlantic piracy." Its authors also avoid writing only top-down histories of how European state actors defined piracy and they often actively challenge Eurocentrism in the way that piracy was defined by those engaged in such activity. Many authors begin with the concept of pirates as "hostes humani generis ," showing how it was used to develop the first international legal system. For example, using English, French, and Dutch examples of maritime court cases, international treaties, and political philosophy, Michael Kempe argues that piracy provided common ground in policing seas that were theoretically the only space open to all nations. Bruce Buchan's standalone essay in Chapter 3 also starts from the political philosophy of "hostes humani generis ," but uses the works of Englishman John Locke to show that "pirates were merely one among a pantheon of archetypal enemies of good order" (p. 27). Locke, and others like him, argued for not only a legal definition of piracy, but also a moral and political definition based on "political order and the legitimacy of sovereignty," making the maritime pirate and "terrestrial tyrant" symbols of insecurity in all parts of the globe (p. 79). Buchan's co-authored piece with Joachim Östlund, Chapter 10, looks at a 1716 Swedish dissertation which functioned like Locke's works. Magnus Thelaus's Dissertatio gradualis de piratica brought together moral, philosophical, and historical arguments to consider a more pragmatic approach to piracy: could pirates be useful to the Swedish state? Buchan and Östlund argue that, although the dissertation ultimately concluded that pirates were the common enemy to all, Thelaus was also realistic in debating how negotiating with pirates could strengthen the Swedish state. Buchan and Östlund in these two chapters thus showcase how conversations about piracy were dynamic and contingent on political and economic context in European nations. Many of the essays in the Piracy in World History deal with piracy in the context of imperial expansion but take non-Eurocentric views of piracy in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. For example, Hans Hägerdal's "The Bugis-Makassar Seafarers" does a masterful job at wading through the Dutch perspective of all non-European seafarers as pirates to uncover the "range of their socio-political roles" in the region...

Held in Suspense

Abstract Promises of incorporation, threats of punishment, and fragile, revocable entitlements mark the signature of a modality of governance dedicated to the production of subjects who are neither included nor excluded from political or economic orders, but who are provisionally appended to them as though hanging by a thread. A wide array of political regimes renders these subjects simultaneously indispensable and expendable. The authors examine promise, threat and revocability as modalities of governance appearing across liberal and illiberal registers as a means to displace the costs, risks and responsibilities of political and economic projects onto the indeterminate subjects they simultaneously produce. The authors ask what subjects do as they are held in suspense, by studying the collectivities, social orders, and forms of political organisation that emerge amongst subjects as they anticipate the authorisations and the censures, the arrival and the forfeiture of governance.

Being a master of metaphors

Being a master of metaphors