Times Of Political Transition Research Articles

How to Repair the Harm after Violent Conflict in Bosnia? Results of a Population-Based Survey

Debates about serious human rights violations and international crimes committed in the past usually start during times of political transition, that is when societies are moving away from a non-democratic regime and the new political elites are confronted with the fundamental question on how to address the heavy burden of their dark past. This question was posed in most countries of Latin America in the 1980s, in all countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s and in several countries in Africa and Asia during the last decade. The issue of ‘dealing with the past’ or ‘transitional justice’ is most often managed by elites, national and international, and the views and expectations of the local populations are rarely taken into account. Yet population-based research can yield interesting insights into strategies and mechanisms for dealing with the crimes of the past and for reconstructing the future. In this contribution we report on the findings of a population-based research in Bosnia in 2006 that dealt with several issues of post-conflict justice. The focus is on the issue of reparation for the harm inflicted, how it is perceived by the population in Bosnia, what forms it may take, and how to feed it into policy-making at the national and the international level.

THE FACE OF MONEY: Currency, Crisis, and Remediation in Post-Suharto Indonesia

In the period of transition following Suharto's resignation as president of Indonesia in 1998, the image of the 50,000Rp bill bearing his face became a visual shorthand for the corruption and abuse of power that had characterized his regime. Accessible, decentralized consumer technologies enabled people to alter money's appearance, transforming it from a fetish of the state into a malleable surface available for popular reinscription. As the medium of money was “remediated”—absorbed into other media, refashioned, and circulated along new pathways—it became a means by which people engaged questions of state power, national integrity, political authenticity, and economic relations opened up by the crisis of Reformasi (Reform). The essay argues that remediations of public forms play a crucial role in times of political transition by enabling people to materialize alternative visions of political authority and authenticity. Moreover, remediated forms have become a characteristic modality of political communication in the post-Suharto period under conditions of democratization and an increasingly diversified media ecology.

Upsurge of tick-borne encephalitis in the Baltic States at the time of political transition, independent of changes in public health practices

Despite evidence that socio-economic factors associated with political transition played a major causal role in the abrupt upsurge in tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) in the newly independent Baltic States, doubts are still repeatedly expressed about the importance of these factors relative to changes in public health practices that may have affected merely the registration of cases. In response to these doubts, evidence of relevant practices of surveillance, registration, diagnosis, awareness and immunization is presented as taken from archived data and interviews with experienced medical practitioners. There were changes that could have had neutral, negative or positive impacts on recorded TBE incidence, but the variable timing in these changes at both national and regional levels is not consistent with their having been responsible for the epidemiological patterns observed in the early 1990s.

Volvo: Environmental Initiatives for What Reasons?

Volvo’s position in the automotive market during a time of political transition gave it great incentive to advocate for recoverability standards. Although there is no “smoking gun” relationship between Volvo and the European Commission, the channels of contact and the similarity of Volvo’s voluntary recoverability initiative make it very likely that Volvo did have contact with the European Commission and influence the regulation that was eventually adopted. Volvo advocated for this legislation because it had already made an investment in environmental management in an effort to preempt regulation in Sweden. Another finding of this investigation was the alignment of interests between Swedish environmental groups and Volvo that occurred after Volvo made a fixed investment in environmental management. This may decrease the likelihood that a race to the bottom in terms of environmental standards will occur as a result of market integration, and bolsters evidence that higher environmental standards are often favored by multinational corporations in their global operations.

Contesting Megawati: The Mediation of Islam and Nation in Times of Political Transition

Sparked by threats of religious fatwa deriving from different Islamic groups in contemporary Indonesian society, the issue on whether or not, according to Islam, a woman could become leader of a nation, was heavily discussed among religious scholars, politicians, intellectuals, and feminists in mass media. In this debate, the figure of Megawati Sukarnoputri came to represent multiple symbols in the realm of nationalism and religion. Three dominant discourses – namely the nationalist, the Islamic, and the feminist discourse – prevailed during the debate. Their respective arguments, nevertheless, were complex and layered, and did not always pertain to the same ideological framework. Exploring the debate on female leadership in the mass media, this article outlines these complex socio-political and religious layers by assessing how the gendered body is contested and politicized in each of these discourses. I argue foremost that the politics of the media played a crucial role in constituting chaos and polarization between different opposing groups. The mediated effect of the media coverage, nevertheless, showed how the politics of gender in debating female leadership articulated ways of negotiating nationalist, religious, and feminist politics in the ‘new’ national political arena. Thus, I hold forth that rather than seeing the debate as an indication of Islamic radicalization, it pertains more towards the rearrangement of ‘publicness’ according to new priorities in imagining the Indonesian nation-state.

Creating a Vision for Teacher Education between East and West: The case of the Hong Kong Institute of Education

This paper might be described as a case study, depicting the process of vision development for a new institution of teacher education, established in a time of political transition for Hong Kong. The focus is on issues of cultural identity, and the first part of the article lays out a framework for civilizational dialogue in the post Cold War period. Next the context of educational development is analysed, including the emergence of this new institution, and the demands placed upon it to support a range of educational reforms after Hong Kong's return to China in 1997. The third part of the paper describes the process of developing a vision statement, and the ideas that informed it. The fourth part provides a careful look at four of the nine guiding values chosen for the Institute, showing the particular shape they give to the development of the vision, and the ways in which they are linked to the dialogue of civilizations.

Self-Censorship Through the Eyes of Hong Kong Journalists

Through the narratives of Hong Kong journalists on self-censorship, this paper asks—who is the “self” in “self-censorship”? In the attempt to answer the question, this study highlights the journalists' struggle for autonomy within their media organizations and in society in times of political transition. What is most disturbing in the findings is that some journalists are gradually internalizing the norms set by the ruling regime. This paper, therefore, argues that self censorship is a process of semi-socialization.

Parliamentary elites in times of political transition: The case of Eastern Germany

This article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of elite and institutional (in this case parliamentary) changes in times of political transitions, and more specifically, to a better understanding of the political changes currently under way in Germany. In doing so, it illuminates patterns of elite change by looking at the composition of the state diets (Landtage) in the five new federal states which were created in October 1990. The focus is on predictors of explanation in elite recruitment and elite replacement. Elite replacement in 1990 was thorough and continued in 1994. Members of parliament display remarkably similar background and career characteristics within and across states. In turn, commonalities of origin and career have facilitated efficiency in parliamentary work.

Transition tricks? Policy models for school desegregation in South Africa, 1990‐94

Abstract Political transition in South Africa has proved to be a contradictory, contested and faltering process. One of the sites of greatest social conflict and breakdown since the mid‐1970s has been the apartheid education system. Yet, during the three years following De Klerk's historic moves towards a ‘new South Africa’, there were no fundamental attempts to address the overall education crisis through policy change. A key issue in the educational dispensation is the future of the comparatively small number of well‐resourced, well‐functioning historically white schools. This article analyses the desegregation of these schools to illustrate trends in state policy which are likely to influence the future educational settlement. It argues that the De Klerk government's policies around school desegregation exhibit a complex mix of privatization and devolution as part of a strategy to protect vested interests in the historically privileged sector of white education. The policy shift towards desegregation itself reflects the contradictions of the transition as well as the resourcefulness of the apartheid state in securing patterns of privilege at a time of political transition.