Political Paralysis Research Articles

Memory and protest in Belgrade: Remembering the 1990s in the mass demonstrations of 2023

The history of the 1990s and of political life in Serbia can be viewed as a history of protest. It was during this decade, in which Slobodan Milošević held power, that an entire generation of activists became part of a process of learning to engage in civil resistance. In waves of massive anti-regime protests as well as in smaller, yet persistent, anti-war protests, they asserted that ‘Belgrade is the World’. This article examines the ways in which practices and themes from these protests have resurfaced more recently, and how this activism is remembered and referenced in the 2020s. Based on data collected in Belgrade during anti-regime protests in 2023, which began as a movement ‘against violence’ (‘ protiv nasilja’), it traces how the memory of protest of the 1990s turned into memory in protest as it appeared in banners, chants, slogans and speeches, as well as in everyday conversation among citizens, some three decades later. Deploying the concept of the memory-activism nexus, the article analyses generational claims in Serbia, the practices of protesters, their hope in activism, their fear of cultivating false expectations and their continuing demands for a better future. It places cultural memory in Serbia in the context of a politics of disappointment, illustrating that memory in protest can function as both a mobilising force and a source of political paralysis.

L'histoire du nouvel univers en tant que levain du changement

This paper explores ways of motivating persons of good will to see the signs of a planet in distress, recognize our human and political paralysis, and change our behavior in ways commensurate to the historical challenge of our time. Framing this exploration within a “tapestry of stories”, the author examines ways creation itself learns, for clues as to how humans may grasp the large systems changes and collapses in which we are involved and/or implicated. Thomas Berry calls this the “great work” of our time. In the end, the paper concludes that the power we need to address climate change is not education, activism or financing, as important as these are. As an integral dimension of a 13.8 billion year evolutionary process, humans’ reflexive consciousness, is a power we can call upon. We need a major shift in consciousness, related to a new understanding of our place in the universe.

Analysis of the Zimbabwe heads of Christian denominations’ call for a Sabbath on elections

The Zimbabwe heads of Christian denominations issued a pastoral letter proposing to postpone the general elections for seven years. The leaders argued that Zimbabwe’s political paralysis and the economic decline have a long history and they needed to be addressed. The leaders called for a national Sabbath on all political contestation to allow for the rebuilding of trust, and confidence, reset politics, and chart a shared way forward toward a comprehensive economic recovery path in a non-competitive political environment. Their views were criticised by politicians and individuals resulting in the Church leaders withdrawing the call. This article was aimed at analysing the church leaders’ theological justification of the Sabbath call. It also challenged the leaders’ muting of their prophetic voices at a time when they were supposed to shout louder on issues that direct political leaders to democratic elections that are controversially marred with mistrust, intimidations, abductions, and rigging.

Autofiction of the Cognitariat: Self-Criticism of a Bourgeois Dog

Artists and intellectuals living in precarious conditions (or: belonging to the cognitariat), find themselves at the crossroad between precarity and privilege. Julian Radlmaier’s Selbstkritik eines bürgerlichen Hundes (Self-Criticism of a Bourgeois Dog GER, 2017) deals with this issue in a very explicit, self-reflexive way. Its protagonist is a filmmaker on the dole who is sent by the German workfare program to work seasonally as an apple picker. Once at the orchard, when the other workers attempt a revolt, he discovers that his attachment to his status as an artist impedes him to join their struggle. The autofictional form of the film, I demonstrate, reflects a subjectivation dynamic that turns into a spiral of perceived debt, guilt, and political paralysis. By internalizing a widespread anti-intellectual bias, the film offers a paradigmatic account of why it is difficult for members of the cognitariat to solidarize with other segments of the precariat or the working class: the difficulty depends largely on the internalization of neoliberal capitalism’s ambivalent consideration of immaterial, cognitive, and creative work.

From inevitable disaster to Ineradicable possibility: Critical pedagogies of ecocide, educational privatization, and new technology

From climate disaster to the specter of nuclear annihilation to the rise of fascism and destruction of democracy to the advent of AI and other potentially destructive technologies, a number of material threats are matched by symbolic threats that undermine the capacities of people to respond. The war on public and critical education and the public sphere, the erosion of investigative journalism, ideologies of cynicism, and the crises of critical theoretical tools and literacies undermine individual and collective agency to respond to these threats. The result of these material threats and crises of agency is political paralysis, cynicism, and despair. This article focuses on three material and symbolic disasters: (1) climate crisis and natural disaster; (2) the privatization of public education in continuing and new digital forms as part of the broader rightist war on the public; and (3) the rise of authoritarian anti-democratic movements. The threats posed by these phenomena are bolstered by ideologies in education that are profoundly deterministic, fatalistic, and anti-agentic. The first section briefly details these intertwined threats and the ideologies about them. The second section makes the case for modes of education and pedagogy that inform the understanding and agency of teachers, citizens, and other meaning making actors to challenge these threats and pursue public and democratic values and build institutions of care and security.

Pakistan in 2023: On the Brink of a Full-Blown Crisis

Pakistan continues to face multiple sources of internal and external conflicts. Its all-powerful military is engaged in a subterranean battle to maintain its power. Economically, the country persisted in troubled waters as it has been for most of its recent history. In domestic politics, the failed experiment of a hybrid regime under Ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan forced the military to part ways with Mr Khan and install a coalition government of 13 political parties through a no-confidence vote in parliament in April 2022. Mr Khan’s political party is facing a severe crackdown in Pakistan after he accused the powerful military of his ouster from power. At the regional level, a favourable outcome in Afghanistan in the shape of the Taliban’s takeover has not yielded any significant positive results for Pakistan. After concluding the Afghan conflict on a favourable note, paradoxically, the military establishment hints at a desire to shift away from geo-security to geo-economics in its foreign policy goals. At the extra-regional level, the military is walking a tightrope to balance its ties between the USA and China to offset any adverse consequences arising from its strategic partnerships with China over China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). In this article, we explain a series of issues confronting Pakistan currently—including a deep economic crisis, political paralysis, and a resurgent terror threat—focusing on the military’s ambitions in the region and beyond.

Leaders and the Breakdown of Democracy in Turkey, 1973-1980

This article focuses on Turkey’s crisis-ridden years, from 1973 to 1980. As an under-explored era in English language scholarship, it makes a distinct contribution to the literature on pre-1980 coup Turkish politics. In doing so, it illustrates the implications for the democratic order arising from the two central political leaders of the era Süleyman Demirel and Bülent Ecevit’s tussle for power across the decade. The study draws on fieldwork interviews and critical reading of Turkish and English sources to reveal new insights into the leaders’ actions and decisions that trapped the country in a state of political paralysis, inflamed left-right violence, and politicized state institutions, ultimately dragging Turkey down one of its most turbulent periods. It illustrates how the leaders played crucial roles in shaping conditions that eventually resulted in the termination of multi-party politics with a military coup on 12 September 1980.

Chrystal Ann Chemris. The Spanish Baroque and Latin American Literary Modernity: Writing in Constellation

Chrystal Ann Chemris. <i>The Spanish Baroque and Latin American Literary Modernity: Writing in Constellation</i>

PER ASPERA AD ASTRA: ТЕРНИСТЫЙ ПУТЬ ИТАЛЬЯНСКОЙ КОМПАРТИИ К ВЛАСТИ В "БЛОКИРОВАННОЙ ДЕМОКРАТИИ" ПЕРВОЙ РЕСПУБЛИКИ

Since the Cuban Missile Crisis, analysts have turned to examine its impact on European politics at the turning point of the Cold War. As a large European state, Italy found itself at the epicenter of the Cold War – this conflict of interests reached planetary proportions and left a devastating mark on Italy. Even so, the scientific literature has not sufficiently reflected such global issues as the overcoming by the Italian Communist Party of the “Italian anomaly” and the “imperfect bipartisanship” which turned out to be a direct result of the Cold War. The starting point of this research is to analyze the processes of overcoming the isolation of the PCI and its path to power in the context of the Caribbean Crisis influence on the transformations of the Italian political system. The author takes a closer look at the Center-Left experiment as the impact of the Cuban Crisis and the main result of the rethinking by the élites of the Center, including the communists, of the new formats of their interaction with the left political spectrum in order to overcome the situation assessed by analysts as a “political paralysis”. Carrying out research on the PCI drifting towards the so-called “room with buttons”, the author comes to the conclusion that in the conditions of the Cold War and the dictatorship of the Communist Party of the USSR in relation to the international communist movement, that goal could never have succeeded. Besides, the author draws a conclusion about a consistent contribution of the Center-Left to the reinforcement of liberal democracy and to the gradual overcoming of the Cold War binary logic in Italy and also in Europe. Considerable attention is paid to the transformation of Italian communists. The Caribbean Crisis and the Center-Left experiment influenced greatly the communist’s transit to Eurocommunism as a revised design of social democracy. Finally, Vatican’s role in overcoming the Missile Crisis as well as its transition to positive neutrality at Vatican II at the very peak of the world conflict had a huge impact on the reduction of the ideological conflict severity in Catholic Italy.

African cities by 2063: Fostering theologies of urban citizenship

Grounded in a postcolonial, liberationist urban vision, this article lamented the theological and political paralysis of urban denialism that fails African cities and African urban populations. Considering different possible urban trajectories towards 2063 – ranging from floundering to flourishing, implosion to explosion, and apocalyptic disaster to complete rebirth – it then proposed theologies of African urban citizenship, as response. It sought to articulate a vision of citizen-driven African cities, remaking cities ‘from below’, through interconnected and intersectional urban movements. It considered urban citizenship not as the decent and orderly conduct of subjects of the nation-state but as the disruptive and transformative presence and participation of citizens of God’s new city, breaking into cities across the African continent. While it bemoaned the absence of ‘Africa’s urban revolution’ from mainstream theologies and politics practised in the African context, and the insufficient attention paid to it even by the Africa 2063 manifesto, it dared to evoke hope, in spite of evidence to the contrary. This should be viewed as a conceptual contribution, fusing literature study with deep urban immersion.Contribution: Grounded in a postcolonial, liberationist urban vision, this article lamented the theological and political paralysis of urban denialism that fails African cities and African urban populations, contemplating theologies of African urban citizenship instead.

Tackling the Climate Crisis with Counter-majoritarian Instruments: Judges between Political Paralysis, Science, and International Law

Tackling the Climate Crisis with Counter-majoritarian Instruments: Judges between Political Paralysis, Science, and International Law

Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream

Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream

Hope on the move: Israeli humanitarians between resilience and utopianism

ABSTRACT The proliferation of voluntary and grassroots relief initiatives during the recent ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe brought renewed attention to the feelings, desires, and motivations that prompt aid workers and volunteers to engage in humanitarian actions. The article expands on this interest in ‘the need to help’ and in the care of the self that humanitarian engagements involve by looking at another layer of humanitarian affectivity – the need to hope – that bears on the helpers and on their aid activities in an intimate and yet impersonal way. I demonstrate how the helpers’ experience of living in an impasse and their tentative coping with political stuckness and paralysis find expression in their humanitarian subjectivities and relief programs, and how their humanitarian encounters and the affects they trigger are entangled with the crisis of the future that their own political communities face. The analysis focuses on two refugee relief projects that were carried out by civil society organizations from Israel in Europe since 2015, in which the resonance between the refugees’ predicament and the crisis of hope that the Jewish helpers from Israel confronted was mobilized as an affective and an operational resource. I show that the normalization of the Israeli occupation and its view as an intractable condition had contrasting effects upon the helpers’ political and humanitarian expectations, fostering both a minor humanitarianism that reaffirmed resilience as a prime political virtue, and a visionary humanitarianism that sought to leverage the humanitarian exception as a platform for practical utopianism.

How to Live Different Deaths: Withdrawals from Abrahamic Kinship in Mahmoud Darwish and Dahlia Ravikovitch

Abstract This article examines the poems of two authors whose work emerges from within a contemporary scene of political paralysis, Palestine and Israel, in order to study what forms of agency they develop to shift representational systems of impasse and their embodiment in restrictive kinship orders. Though not generally put in conversation, both Mahmoud Darwish and Dahlia Ravikovitch make use of Abrahamic narratives, reimbuing reigning figures of matriarchy and patriarchy with the scene of death to disrupt competing accounts of national coherence. Exploring what new forms of life may develop from within a recurring encounter with death, both poets study the unknown avenues toward which figures of sacrifice and anti-generation may point. Following Judith Butler's call in Antigone's Claim to read Antigone's death as an index for an as-yet-unknown form of politics, I examine the ways in which Darwish and Ravikovitch's suicidal rewritings of Abrahamic ancestry unsettle intertwined notions of kinship and gender in order to gestures toward unacknowledged possibilities for ethics and coexistence. Studying Antigone's relation to death alongside the Abrahamic progenitors Ismāʿīl (Ishmael) and Rachel, the article details how Darwish and Ravikovitch shift their tradition's procreative logic away from the principle of self-preservation toward one of self-sacrifice, highlighting the promise of their implicit and explicit alliances across political, religious, and gendered boundaries.

From democratization to fostering resilience: EU intervention and the challenges of building institutions, social trust, and legitimacy in Bosnia and Herzegovina

ABSTRACT Over the past two decades, the European Union (EU) has provided assistance and is unequivocally committed to the European perspective of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The EU strategy has evolved from a top-down approach to democratization and statebuilding in the 2000s towards a more pragmatic approach that seeks to foster resilience. However, BiH still suffers from internal party contestation and political paralysis, socio-economic challenges and areas of limited statehood. Thus, to what extent is the EU enhancing resilience? In this article we answer this question by examining how the EU is contributing to the three sources essential to obtain resilience, as understood by this Special Issue: efficient governance institutions, social trust, and the legitimacy of governance actors. By revising the EU support of BiH and interpreting to what extent it is contributing to these three sources, we conclude that the EU intervention in BiH is resulting in continuity – a process of slow progress that is increasingly perceived as frustrating for the local population – rather than peaceful change.

Modern Political History of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Since Bosnia and Herzegovina’s declaration of independence in 1995, its path has been a rocky one. Unwillingness by the international community to stand by the central government and stand in the way of the neighboring states of Serbia and Croatia’s territorial pretensions, produced a succession of ceasefire agreements, culminating in the final, Dayton Peace Agreement. Each of these agreements espoused the ethnic principle as the guiding philosophy for the organization of the state. The post-war period demonstrates that despite the passage of time, the principle of organization of multi-ethnic state along ethnic lines presents a stumbling block to the functioning of the political, economic and social life in the country. The political history of post-independence Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&amp;H) therefore reads as a history of protracted political paralysis, with no hope of rectifying the problems without another forceful intervention of the international community.

Latin American and Caribbean Regionalism during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Saved by Functionalism?

ABSTRACT Covid-19 arrived in Latin America in a context of ideological polarisation among national governments and internal socio-political turmoil, which bode badly for its numerous and overlapping regional groupings. However, in a manner suggested by functionalist theories, some of them have “found refuge” in technical/expert cooperation and side-stepped political paralysis with different degrees of success. With institutions and previous experience in health issues, CARICOM and SICA had a significant role in the management of the pandemic, while CELAC revived by promoting technical cooperation. In contrast, MERCOSUR failed to overcome the political rift among its members, so technical cooperation occurred, yet remained limited.

Iraq

Iraq's socio-economic fragilities have been severely aggravated by the pandemic and the sharp decline in oil revenues, which arrived on the heels of widespread social unrest and political instability. The health system’s limited capacity has been strained, while the fiscal position has become untenable as oil revenues declined sharply to a level that barely covers the government’s large wage and pension bills. Although the number of new infections declined recently, Iraq registered the second-highest COVID-related fatalities in the region, and the fiscal response to the pandemic has been one of the lowest. A six-month political paralysis preceding the formation of the government in May 2020 and plans to hold early parliamentary elections in mid-2021 have been weighing on political support for reforms. Risks of social unrest, geopolitical tensions, and insecurity remain elevated.

The Democracy of Everyday Life in Disaster

Neighbors inhabit a distinct social sphere whose regulative ideal is the democracy of everyday life. Its chief elements are reciprocity and a practical disregard for the differences and inequalities that shape interactions in the broader society and in democratic politics. The democracy of everyday life has heightened significance during disasters. Neighbors hold our lives in their hands. But COVID-19 differs from physical disasters in ways that alter neighbor interactions. Contamination makes relations more fearful at the same time that isolation makes them more valuable. When the meaning attributed to the virus is not shared experience of disease and mortality but rabid partisanship, neighbor relations become distorted. This degradation of the democracy of everyday life signals that democracy itself is imperiled more deeply than political paralysis, corruption, and institutional failure suggest.

Heinrich Heine’s Critique of the Present: Poetry, Revolution, and the “Rights of Life”

Although the poet, journalist, and critic Heinrich Heine has not received much attention among recent political theorists, his revolutionary poetry and criticism were foundational for many German thinkers who have become canonical and comprise a powerful theoretical and historical project in their own right. This essay revisits Heine’s Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, situating it within the broader arc of his poetry and prose works, to examine the unique mode of criticism he developed in response to a sense of political impasse and paralysis in his moment. For Heine, this paralysis stemmed from the persistence of outmoded institutions in a revolutionary age, and the act of exposing it was the first step toward rebelling against and overcoming it. Heine thus developed a revolutionary notion of criticism that sought to lay bare and get beyond his moment.