VI National and Area Studies Études Nationales et Régionales
| Published date | 01 April 2018 |
| Date | 01 April 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002083451806800206 |
| Subject Matter | Abstracts |
275
VI
NATIONAL AND AREA STUDIES
ÉTUDES NATIONALES ET RÉGIONALES
68.2736 ABRAHAMIAN, Andray — North Korea and transitioning
[Burma] Myanmar in comparative perspective. Asian Per-
spective 41(4), Oct.- Dec. 2017: 619-644.
North Korea and Myanmar both experienced core existential challenges
early in their postcolonial history: the former via a challenger state in
South Korea and its superpower ally the US, the latter via multiple
internal insurgencies. Both young states responded to these threats in an
intensely militarized, authoritarian fashion. Their responses also eventu-
ally earned them pariah status, sanctioned respectively for their weapons
programs and suppression of democracy. Myanmar, unlike North Korea,
has been able to alleviate its security concerns with various battlefield
victories and peace treaties in the 1990s and 2000s, and then turned to
address the reasons for its pariah status. North Korea has been unable
to find such a victory and thus is unlikely to escape its position as a
sanctioned, isolated state. [R]
68.2737 ADEBANWI, Wale — Contesting multiculturalism: ethno-
regionalism and contending forms of nationalism in late
colonial Nigeria. Commonwealth and Comparative Politics
56(1), 2018 : 40-64.
Is multiculturalism the best way to deal with diversity in an emerging but
divided (African) nation-state? Is multiculturalism antithetical to nation-
building and mutual recognition of equal value among different ethnic-
nationalities within African polities? These were some of the most fun-
damental questions that Nigeria’s ethno-regional political parties and
their leaders confronted in the decolonisation period. Analysing different
ethno-regional approaches to the challenges of political unity and nation-
alism in late colonial Nigeria, this article shows how the adoption of a
federal system of government designed to encourage "interactive plural-
ism" ended up promoting "fragmented pluralism". [R]
68.2738 AFOLABI, Olugbemiga Samuel ; AGUNYAI, Sam uel Chuk-
wudi — Governance crisis in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic:
an exploration of the roles of politicians and their cro-
nies. Taiwan Journal of Democracy 13(2), Dec.2017 : 153-
176.
The essay examines the level of interdependency between politicians
and their cronies over their gain of power and the allocation of state
resources; it also identifies the rationales behind the actions of political
cronies that lead politicians to continually satisfy their demands to the
detriment of the national interest. It examines the effects of the roles of
politicians and their cronies on the crisis of governance in Nigeria. The
essay relies on secondary data from empirical works on the subject and
documentary analysis of works on governance and democracy. The data
have been analyzed using descriptive analysis. The essay concludes
that the actions and roles of politicians and their cronies in placing
private interests ahead of the national interest has adversely affected
good governance. [R, abr.]
68.2739 AGH, Attila — External and internal Europeanization in
East-Central Europe: the new populist parties and de-
consolidation in the 2010s. Journal of Comparative Politics
11(1), Jan. 2018 : 12-32.
The main message of this paper is that there are two periods of Europe-
anization and Democratization in the ECE political systems with a transi-
tory grey zone in the 2000s. They can be termed as the periods of
“permissive tolerance” and “increasing disappointment” seen from the
side of the ECE populations, and the periods of “formalities” and “aliena-
tion” in Europeanization from the side of the ruling elites. This paper tries
to describe these two periods of the political systems in general and the
party systems in particular. The first party systems of the young ECE
democracies have collapsed in the 2010s due to the failure of the catch-
ing up process in the last Quarter-Century that has been aggravated by
the effects of the global crisis. This paper argues that the decline of
democracy in ECE has been accompanied with the rise of the second
party system. The critical elections in the 2010s have also meant the
change in the party system towards the dominance of the populist par-
ties. [R, abr.]
68.2740 AGUZZO, Loretta Dell' — Modes of transition and the
timing of separatist war onset: a comparative analysis of
South Ossetia and K osovo. Nationalities Papers 45(5),
Sept. 2017 : 928-949.
This paper compares the escalation of civil war in South Ossetia and
Kosovo and shows how different modes of transition deeply influenced
the timing and type of conflict in these two cases. It argues that regimes
resulting from a transition from above — when the elite in power leads
the process of regime change and imposes its political agenda on other
social actors — are more likely to ensure political stability in the short
term, since governments are more cohesive internally, enjoy the support
of the military, and can rely on a loyal bureaucracy. In contrast, regimes
that em erge from transitions from below are more likely to experience
civil war with an ethnic minority in the short term because of an intrinsic
weakness of the elite in power. [R, abr.]
68.2741 ALKON, Meir ; WANG, Erik H. — Pollution lowers support
for China’s regime: quasi-experimental evidence from
Beijing. Journal of Politics 80(1), Jan. 2018 : 327-331.
Using an eight-week-long original survey conducted day by day in Beijing
in 2015, we leverage daily variation in air quality to estimate the causal
effects of pollution on support for the Chinese regime. Our results show
that pollution decreases satisfaction with both central and local govern-
ments and increases demand for oversight of government. Additionally,
we time our survey to partially coincide with a period during which the
government intentionally reduced air pollution, allowing us to exploit a
unique instance of authoritarian environmental engineering. We show
that government efforts to reduce pollution do successfully improve
citizens’ evaluations of the regime. [R, abr.]
68.2742 ALMEIDA DE MEDEIROS, Marcelo — What does the field
of International Relations look like in South America?
Revista brasileira de Política internacional 59(1), 2016 : on-
line.
This article provides a comprehensive picture of IR in South America by
applying content-analysis to 7,857 articles published in 35 journals from
six South American countries from 2006 to 2014 in order to discover
what the predominant theories, methods and research areas in this field
are, how scholars tend to combine them in their research designs, and
what the profiles of regional journals are, regarding their epistemological,
methodological and subject preferences. The findings reveal a predomi-
nantly Positivist and largely Qualitative discipline, resembling North
American and European IR. [R]
68.2743 ALSINA JUNIOR, João Paulo S. — Grand strategy and
peace operations: the Brazilian case. Revista brasileira de
Política internacional 60(2), 2017 : online.
This article contributes to the analysis of Brazilian grand strategy and the
place of UN peace operations (POs) in the context of this strategy. It deals
with the political economy of POs and grapples with the trends of POs in
the recent past, especially the increasingly robust mandates of peace
operations and their implications. Brazilian participation in peace operations
is discussed, focusing on its main characteristics and the consequences of
an absence of consensus on the role of POs for the country´s grand strat-
egy. Finally, suggestions are proposed that might create synergies be-
tween participation in POs and Brazil´s grand strategy. [R]
68.2744 ANCESCHI, Luca — Turkmenistan and the virtual politics
of Eurasian energy: the case of the TAPI pipeline project.
Central Asian Survey 36(4), Dec. 2017 : 409-429.
What would a "good" industrial policy in the realm of cotton production
look like? This article seeks to address this question through a focus on
reforms to the cotton sector in Kazakhstan. In contrast with neighbouring
Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, administrators in Kazakhstan had widely
freed the cotton sector from government control as early as 1998. Agri-
cultural collectives had been replaced by small private farms, and com-
mercial cotton processors and traders entered the sector. However, in
2007, regulation tightened again and forced ginneries to use a complex
warehouse receipt system without making sure that it was accepted by
stakeholders and without appropriate institutions for implementing it in
place. Moreover, it imposed financing restrictions on ginneries, which
were major loan and input providers to farmers. [R, abr.]
68.2745 ANDERSON, Charles W. — State formation from below
and the Great Revolt in Palestine. Journal of Palestine
Studies 47(1), Autumn 2017 : 39-55.
National and area studies
276
Zionist colonialisms during the thirty years of British rule in Palestine.
Although its ultimate defeat has led to negative appraisals of its historical
significance, the uprising was in its day the largest mass mobilization in
Palestinian history and, at its apex, threatened to overturn the British
regime. The rebellion was characterized by considerable organizational
ingenuity as Palestinians created novel institutions that embodied their
drive for popular sovereignty and an end to colonial domination. This
article examines two such sets of institutions, the national and popular
committees of 1936, and the rebel court system from 1937-1939. It
argues that much like revolutionary peasant-based movements else-
where in the colonial world, insurgent forces in Palestine embarked on a
process of state formation from below. [R, abr.]
68.2746 ANDERSON, Nicholas D. ; CHA, Victor D. — The case of
the pivot to Asia: system effects and the origins of strat-
egy. Political Science Quarterly 132(4), Winter 2017-2018 :
595-617.
The authors discuss the origins of the pivot to Asia, the B. Obama ad-
ministration’s strategy in the Asia-Pacific. They argue that the pivot was
neither a failure, as its critics suggest, nor a success, as its supporters
claim. For the authors the pivot was a midcourse adjustment to a weak
and flawed early Obama Asia policy. [R]
68.2747 ANDRONIKASHVILI, Zaal — Verfemt und vergessen.
Georgiens Sozialdemokratie und das Jahr 1917 (Ostra-
cized and forgotten. Georgia's social democracy in his-
tory and remembrance). Osteuropa 67(6-8), 2017 : 409-
424.
2017 as the year in which the Revolution is commemorated is no interest
to Georgia. In 2018, the country will celebrate the 100th anniversary of
the founding of the first Georgian nation-state, and in 2021, it will com-
memorate the destruction of that state by the Bolsheviks. This purely
national perspective — just like that of the devotees of Stalin, who are
still to be found — ignores the significance of Georgian social democ-
racy, its social and national reformist ideas and their implementation from
1918-1921. In order for them to be rediscovered, the national Bolshevist
myth be questioned as well as the image of history that focuses solely on
the nation state. [R] [See Abstr. 68.2876]
68.2748 ARAMPATZI, Athina — Constructing solidarity as resis-
tive and creative agency in austerity Greece. Comparative
European Politics 16(1), Jan. 2018 : 50-66.
Recent scholarship on the global financial crisis and its geographical
underpinnings has highlighted its macro-economic causes and varie-
gated effects in Europe and beyond. Drawing on the case of Greece, this
paper contends that these discussions fall short in uncovering the social
impact of the European crisis and austerity politics introduced since
2010. In adding to debates that call for nuanced approached to crises,
through the very forms and means people and communities contest and
subvert these "from below", the paper discusses solidarity, its meaning
and practices, in constructing resistance to austerity and grassroots
creativity. In particular, it shows how solidarity initiatives and networks
have acted as survival means in the face of a social reproduction crisis
for vulnerable social groups and, at the same time, opened up spaces for
political struggle against austerity to unfold. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 68.1620]
68.2749 ARCY, Michelle D' ; NISTOTSKAYA, Marina — The early
modern origins of contemporary European tax out-
comes. European Journal of Political Research 57(1), 2018 :
47-67.
What explains variation in tax outcomes between European states? Previ-
ous studies emphasise the role played by political institutions, but focus
mostly on the input side of politics — how access to power and policy
making is structured — and the institutions of relatively recent times. It is
argued in this article that output-side institutions related to the implementa-
tion of political decisions als o matter and have deep institutional origins. As
the classic literature has argued, the early modern period from 1450 to
1800 was formative for the development of fiscal capacity, but European
states diverged in the stock of capacity they acquired. This article tests
whether these differences still affect contemporary tax outcomes using a
novel measure of fiscal capacity, based on the age, extent and quality of
state-administered cadastral records. [R, abr.]
68.2750 BAH, Abu Bakarr — People-centered liberalism: an alter-
native approach to international state-building in Sierra
Leone and Liberia. Critical Sociology 43(7-8), Nov. 2017 :
989-1007.
Efforts to build stable states in Africa have often been conditioned by
ideological and policy debates about the right approach for enhancing
freedom and social wellbeing. Since independence, African countries
have experimented with unorthodox variants of liberalism and socialism.
However, neither of these has enhanced African states. This article
examines the shift from orthodox neoliberalism in the international
approach to state-building in Africa and raises questions about the
feasibility of an international development approach that fuses neoliberal-
ism with a human development approach. The article advances the
notion of people-centered liberalism as the latest approach to interna-
tional state-building in war-torn African countries. It uses the internation-
ally-driven postwar reconstruction plans for Sierra Leone and Liberia to
demonstrate people-centered liberalism. [R]
68.2751 BAHÇE, Serdal ; KÖSE, Ahmet Haşim — Social classes
and the neo-liberal poverty regime in Turkey, 2002-2011.
Journal of Contemporary Asia 47(4), Sept. 2017 : 575-595.
The Justice and Development Party (AKP) era in Turkey has witnessed the
emergence of a new welfare regime resting on voluntary public and private
transfers. This system has been replacing the former welfare system in
which the right to social welfare benefits was constitutionally guaranteed.
The new welfare system has tended to distribute transfers on a selective
and unequal basis. This article analyses the size and effects of this system
using a social class-based analytical framework. [R, abr.]
68.2752 BAKAWAN, Adel — Kurdistan: l’indépendance en balance
(Kurdistan: independence on balance). Politique étrangère
82(4), Winter 2017 : 41-51.
For a century, Kurdish movements have been seeking the constituent
elements of a state. Iraqi Kurds are without a doubt the closest to reach-
ing this objective. But their separatist rhetoric has undergone several
phases and considerable changes. The objective conditions, both local
and international, do not favor the independence of Kurdistan. Pan-
Kurdism no longer exists and Iraqi Kurdish separatism will have trouble
coming together as a formal State. [R] [See Abstr. 68.2832]
68.2753 BALDERACCHI, Claudio — Political leadership and the
construction of competitive authoritarian regimes in
Latin America: implications and prospects for democ-
racy. Democratization 25(3), 2017 : 504-523.
Recent developments have raised new concerns regarding the prospects
of democracy in Latin America, particularly in what are often defined,
although not unanimously, as cases of competitive authoritarianism,
including Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. In light of their
significance and diffusion on a global level, understanding how these
regimes emerge is important, especially when they replace democratic or
imperfectly democratic regimes such as in the cases examined in this
study. What explains the emergence of competitive authoritarian regimes
(CARs), particularly when the starting point is democratic or imperfectly
democratic? What are the region’s democratic prospects after the emer-
gence of various CARs in the last two decades? [R, abr.]
68.2754 BARRETO, Amílcar Antonio ; LOZANO, Kyle — Hierarchies
of belonging: intersecting race, ethnicity, and territorial-
ity in the construction of US c itizenship. Citizenship Stud-
ies 21(8), Dec. 2017 : 999-1014.
What is the essence of American citizenship and nationhood? Traditionally
scholars have divided into three camps: civic, ethnic, or a civic-ethnic
hybrid. Each approach presumes there is but one kind of citizenship. This
paper challenges that unitary assumption. A century ago American intellec-
tuals and policy-makers wrangled over naturalizing their new colonial
subjects in Puerto Rico. These deliberations in the Academy and Congress
did not envision granting Puerto Ricans the same kind of citizenship found
in the states, but a lower ordered citizenship that took into account race,
ethnicity, and territorial status. The Puerto Rican case added another layer
of complexity to the debate over, and the nature of, US citizenship. Con-
trary to assumptions of a unitary citizenship we argue that the American
polity has developed, de facto, multi-tiered subtypes of citizenship. [R, abr.]
68.2755 BATCHOM, Paul Elvic — La guerre du peuple: de la popu-
larisation de la guerre contre Boko Haram au Cameroun
(The people's war: popularizing the war against Boko
Haram in Cameroon). Études internationales 47(2-3), June-
Sept. 2017 : 285-304.
This article showcases the multiple advantages derived from the popu-
larization of a war that seems to transcend the traditional divide between
the perceptions of people as victims and people as actors in revolution-
ary conflict. It enriches the sociology of war by describing the “supervised
spontaneous support” expressed by the population of Cameroon for the
war against Boko Haram and chronicles the multiple potentials of war,
both as a factor of integration for the state and as a source of benefits for
individuals. These factors appear to underpin the popularization of the
war against Boko Haram in Cameroon since May 2014. [R]
68.2756 BELLINGER, Nisha Mukherjee — Dem ocracy and infant
mortality within India: from whether to why. European Po-
litical Science Review 10(1), Feb. 2018 : 3-28.
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