VI National and Area Studies / Études Nationales et Régionales
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/00208345211023823 |
457
VI
NATIONAL AND AREA STUDIES
ÉTUDES NATIONALES ET RÉGIONALES
71.4480 ADHIKARI, Anindita ; CHHOTRAY, Vasudha — The political
construction of extractive regimes in two newly created
Indian states: a comparative analysis of Jharkhand and
Chhattisgarh. Development and Change 51(3), 2020 : 843-
873.
This article presents a multidimensional account of the politics of re-
source extraction in two subnational regions of India in response to the
question: what are the political conditions that facilitate extraction?
Emerging from the same moment of state creation in 2000, Jharkhand
and Chhattisgarh are adjacent mineral-rich states with similar demo-
graphic profiles and comparable levels of economic development. The
authors argue that despite these similarities and India's highly centralized
legislative framework for natural resource governance, the two states
have developed distinctive ‘extractive regimes’ in the years since state-
hood, which contrast in important ways across three dimensions: political
organization and history, institutional effectiveness, and the nature and
management of social resistance. [R, abr.]
71.4481 AKÇAY, Ümit — Authoritarian consolidation dynamics in
Turkey. Contemporary Politics 27(1), 2021 : 79-104.
This paper explains the key dynamics underlying the Justice and Devel-
opment Party's (AKP) recent authoritarian consolidation efforts in Turkey
from a critical political economy perspective consisting of the Regulation
School's framework and Nicos Poulantzas's state theory. The depoliti-
cised mode of regulating money, labour, and macroeconomic manage-
ment worked in parallel with introducing dependent financialisation as the
predominant capital accumulation regime between 2002 and 2013. Since
2013, however, the successive AKP governments have struggled with
the structural crisis of Turkey's capitalism, which is a combin ation of the
crisis of accumulation regime and the crisis of the state, leading to two
changes: the mode of regulation has re-politicised, and the struggle
within the power bloc has intensified. As a result, the AKP implemented
more ambitious survival strategies, and deepened authoritarianism. [R,
abr.]
71.4482 ALDRIN, Philippe ; VANNETZEL, Marie — Dans les lisières.
Une sociologie des acteurs secondaires de la politique
dans deux petites villes françaises (On the edges. A so-
ciology of the secondary political actors in two small
French towns). Politix 128, 2019 : 31-63.
On a day-to-day basis, local political activity does not only involve pro-
fessional or semi-professional politicians. All of the practical dimensions
of political activity, from the makeup of candidate lists to the daily exer-
cise of municipal power, relies on the work of “secondary actors,” i.e.,
novices, amateurs, and part-timers, who perform various roles. They
might be delegates of associations or organizations, intermediaries or
representatives of social groups, or nonpartisan grassroots activists.
Together, they make up the “edges” of local politics, which are the
subject of this sociological discussion based on the case studies of two
small French towns. [R] [See Abstr. 71.3691]
71.4483 ALINIA, Minoo — White ignorance, race, and feminist
politics in Sweden. Ethnic and Racial Studies 43(16), Dec.
2020 : 249-267.
This article discusses the Swedish government’s policy document on a
feminist policy to reduce and prevent men’s violence against women.
Permeated by racial ignorance and politics of difference this document
systematically and consistently excludes and ignores racial and ethnic
power structures and their consequences in migrant minorities’ daily lives
and experience. The article raises questions about why some knowledge
is silenced or abandoned while some is embraced and encouraged.
Within a wider intersectional framework, and through critical race theory
and ignorance studies, it investigates the knowledge produced in the
government document and the way it reproduces, maintains, and nor-
malizes racial otherness and social exclusion. [R]
71.4484 ALRABABA’H, Ala’, et al. — Attitudes toward migrants in a
highly impacted econom y: evidence from the Syrian ref-
ugee crisis in Jordan. Comparative Political Studies 54(1),
Jan. 2021 : 33-76.
With international migration at a record high, a burgeoning literature has
explored the drivers of public attitudes toward migrants. We address this
sample bias by conducting a survey of public attitudes toward Syrians in
Jordan, a developing country with one of the largest shares of refugees.
Our analysis indicates that neither personal- nor community-level expo-
sure to the economic impact of the refugee crisis is associated with
antimigrant sentiments among natives. Furthermore, an embedded
conjoint experiment validated with qualitative evidence demonstrates the
relative importance of humanitarian and cultural concerns over economic
ones. Taken together, our findings weaken the case for egocentric and
sociotropic economic concerns as critical drivers of antimigrant attitudes
and demonstrate how humanitarian motives can sustain support for
refugees when host and migrant cultures are similar. [R, abr.]
71.4485 ANKENBRAND, Christina ; WELTER, Zabrina ; ENGWICHT,
Nina — Formalization as a tool for environmental peace-
building? Artisanal and small-scale mining in Liberia and
Sierra Leone. International Affairs 97(1), Jan. 2021 : 35-55.
Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) has long been a vital source of
livelihoods for rural populations in the global South. Yet, it has also been
linked to a host of social, political and environmental adversities, includ-
ing violent conflict. As environmental peacebuilding increasingly stresses
the importance of livelihoo d improvement as a means of fostering peace
in conflict-affected extractive societies, ASM formalization has been
identified as a solution to mitigate the sector's challenges, thereby
addressing underlying causes of conflict. This article critically investi-
gates the contribution of ASM formalization to sustainable peace by
focusing on its impact on the livelihood dimension of peacebuilding. It
analyses the livelihood impact of three formalization interventions in the
diamond sectors of two countries: cooperatives in Liberia, and, in Sierra
Leone, ethical sourcing schemes and a community-based natural re-
source management initiative. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 71.3391]
71.4486 ARÁOZ, María Florencia ; NICOLINI, Esteban A. — Region-
al growth and the persistence of regional income ine-
quality in Argentina in the first half of the twentieth cen-
tury. Journal of Latin American Studies 52(2), May 2020 :
293-316.
Southern and central regions of Argentina moved from being relatively
poor in the sixteenth century to being the richest in the country today.
Although there is some evidence of this reversal, the process of regional
growth in Argentina in the first half of the twentieth century is, in the
main, unknown. In this paper, we present an estimation of the GDPs of
Argentina's 25 provinces in 1914: this is the first consistent estimation of
this variable for any period before the 1950s. Our results confirm that in
1914 the city of Buenos Aires and some districts in Patagonia had the
highest per capita GDP, and a comparison with the available data for
1953 shows strong persistence in incomes per capita in this period;
sectoral analysis of provincial GDPs suggests that growth in the leading
districts was driven by economies of agglomeration in some cases and
land abundance in others. [R]
71.4487 ARNOLD, Tobias — Reforming autonomy? The fiscal
impact of the Swiss federal reform 2008. Regional and
Federal Studies 30(5), Dec. 2020 : 651-674.
The Swiss federal reform 2008 (NFA) has been a major undertaking in
the recent history of the Swiss federation, with the re-allocation of policy
tasks being a key component of the reform. So far, research has focused
in particular on the decision-making process of the reform. This paper
focuses on the fiscal impacts by asking whether the re-allocation of tasks
has changed the vertical distribution of fiscal resources and whether
these changes have increased fiscal autonomy of subnational govern-
ments. The paper shows that subnational government expenditure as
well as non-earmarked federal government grants have increased
slightly. At the same time, however, revenue has not increased corre-
spondingly. This has imposed strong limitations on subnational fiscal
autonomy and has led to a deterioration rather than an improvement of
the situation of subnational governments in federal Switzerland. [R, abr.]
71.4488 ARNOLD, Tobias ; MUELLER, Sean ; VATTER, Adrian —
Shock or design: what drives fiscal de/centralization? A
comparative analysis of twenty-nine OECD Countries,
1995-2017. Publius 51(1), Winter 2021 : 1-26.
Over the past decades, decentralization has become the new paradigm
in how states should organize power territorially. Carefully planned
institutional re-designs are the most visible expression thereof. Yet the
Great Recession of 2007-2009 has pushed governments into the oppo-
National and area studies
458
site direction, i.e., towards centralization, to better weather the fiscal
drought. Given these contradictory developments, this article compares
the effects of twenty-three separate state reforms with the impact of the
Great Recession on fiscal centralization in twenty-nine countries over
more than two decades. In the main, our analyses attribute a larger
effect to design, i.e., pro-active policy making through reforms, than
reactive crisis management after a great shock. However, this difference
is only apparent once we consider a state’s institutional structure, that is
whether a political system is unitary or federal. [R, abr.]
71.4489 ASANTE, Kofi Takyi — Imagining citizenship and belong-
ing in Ghana. Development 63(1), 2020 : 90-94.
In recent times, questions about who should be considered an insider
and who an outsider have come to dominate political debates across the
world. In postcolonial countries like Ghana where the modern state is
built upon pre-existing social formations, there are anxieties that national
attachment would be eclipsed by the strength of ethnic ties. However,
this article presents qualitative evidence that suggests that individuals
were inspired to a stronger attachment to the national state because, not
in spite, of their keen aware ness of the ‘inauthenticity’ of the national
state. [R]
71.4490 AUERBACH, Adam Michael ; KRUKS-WISNER, Gabrielle —
The geography of citizenship practice: how the poor en-
gage the state in rural and urban India. Perspectives on
Politics 18(4), Dec. 2020 : 1118-1134.
When and why do poor citizens expect the state to respond to their
claims, and how do those expectations shape citizenship practice?
Drawing on survey and qualitative research in northern India, our study
reveals an expectations gap that complicates widely held views of the
urban core versus the rural periphery. The urban poor residing in slums
are dramatically less likely to believe that they will get a direct response
from an official compared to similarly poor rural residents. Slum residents
are also significantly more likely than villagers to report the presence of
political brokers, who create mediated channels for claim-making. Re-
flecting on these patterns, we develop a place-based theory to explain
sub-national variation in citizen-state engagement. [R, abr.]
71.4491 AZEEM, Muhammad — The state as a political practice:
Pakistan’s postcolonial state beyond dictatorship and Is-
lam. Third World Quarterly 41(10), Oct. 2020 : 1670-1686.
This article analyses the prevalent academic literature on the postcoloni-
al Pakistani state. In these analyses, an omnipresent and omnipotent
military state decides the fate of democracy, now and again replacing
politicians at the helm and also promoting Islam. Political practice re-
mains confined to inter-elite struggles for the restoration of democracy,
whereas imperialist hegemony and the role of marginalised classes as
reservoirs of counter-hegemony are largely missing. This article critically
builds on the legacy of the renowned Pakistani scholar Hamza Alavi to
show, historically and empirically, how imperialist powers (from the US to
China) have used the military as a seat of power to bring the local elite
under their hegemony. [R, abr.]
71.4492 BÄCHTOLD, Stefan ; BASTIDE, Joan ; LUNDSGAARD-
HANSEN, Lara — Assembling drones, activists and oil
palms: implications of a multi-stakeholder land platform
for state formation in Myanmar. European Journal of De-
velopment Research 32(2), 2020 : 359-378.
Amid Myanmar’s political transition and despite its new government’s
discourse of inclusion and dialogue, land conflicts have increased across
the country’s ethnic-minority areas. We argue that land plays a central
role in the complex interp lay of state formation, armed conflict and
international development in Myanmar’s contested borderlands and that
land conflicts can provide an entry point to make sense of these dynam-
ics. We use ethnographic data and a framework combining Deleuze and
Guattari’s concept of assemblages with Foucault’s conception of power
to provide a detailed analysis of a multi-stakeholder platform (MSP)
addressing land disputes in Myanmar’s south-east. Analysing the plat-
form’s discourses, practices and technologies, we argue that, despite its
emphasis on inclusion, participation and dialogue, it is the operation of
power that upholds this inherently conflictive assemblage. The platform
opens spaces for agency for less-influentia l actors, but it equally produc-
es de-politicising and exclusive effects. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 71.4650]
71.4493 BALDARO, Edoardo ; DIALL, Yida Seydou — The end of
the Sahelian exception: Al-Qaeda and Islamic State clash
in Central Mali. International Spectator 55(4), Dec. 2020 :
69-83.
Until the beginning of 2020, the Sahel was something of an exception
with respect to international rivalry between jihadists. This came to an
end when violent clashes involving supporters of Al-Qaeda and those
affiliated with the Islamic State were recorded in central Mali. The violent
escalation that has taken place between Katiba Macina and Islamic State
in the Greater Sahara in the inner Niger Delta should be framed as a
battle between a dominant power whose position has begun to be con-
tested, and a rising challenger trying to exploit the situation. More specif-
ically, the rise of Islamic State appears directly connected to the m aterial
and symbolic crisis of the system of governance established by Katiba
Macina in the area under its control. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 71.4501]
71.4494 BANINI, Daniel Kofi ; POWELL, Jonathan ; YEKPLE, Michael
— Peacekeeping as Coup avoidance: lessons from Gha-
na. African Security 13(3), July-Sept. 2020 : 235-259.
Recent scholarship has claimed that peacekeepers are more likely to
mutiny or attempt military coups against their governments after return-
ing home. These trends stand in contrast to the case of Ghana, which
witnessed a perhaps unprecedented transition out of the “coup trap” to
stable democratic rule, including multiple transfers of power to the politi-
cal opposition while providing substantial and ongoing peacekeeping
manpower. This is especially interesting given Ghana’s infamous mutiny
in the Congo and the coup against Kwame Nkrumah, had their roots in
peacekeeping. Potentially seen as a deviant case through the lens of
recent scholarship, as evaluation of Ghana’s experience illustrate that
different leaders under various regime types deliberately utilized peace-
keeping deployments as a coup-avoidance strategy. [R, abr.]
71.4495 BARAT, Somjit — Claim to fame by the Indian govern-
ment: fact or fiction? Journal of Social, Political and Eco-
nomic Studies 45(1-2), Spring-Summer 2020 : 63-92.
The author conducts a pilot study to investigate whether the benefits of
global marketing and the purported liberal policies of the Government of
India have percolated to the Indian middle-class since the year 2014,
when the present government came to power. The author collects data
through online surveys from Indian citizens, and then conducts a qualita-
tive analysis of the same to test six propositions based on Maslow’s
Hierarchy of Needs Model and the Theory of Reasoned Action. The
author finds moderate to strong support for five of his propositions and
sets the stage for a more robust research study that the author is plan-
ning to conduct on this highly relevant topic. [R]
71.4496 BAUM, Toshiro Jeffrey — The responsibility of power:
shifts in Chinese conceptualisation of the legitimacy of
overseas intervention to protect nationals abroad. Global
Change, Peace and Security 32(3), Oct. 2020 : 259-273.
The number of Chinese nationals travelling, working, and residing out-
side of China has reached a historical high and will likely continue to
grow. As China’s people and businesses conduct more and more of their
activities overseas, domestic demand has increased for the PRC Gov-
ernment to take a more effective role in protecting Chinese nationals
abroad. In tandem with larger shifts occurring in China’s conception of its
global role including emerging ideas about great power responsibility, the
desire to protect of nationals abroad will drive new concepts and ap-
proaches to international interventions in China, and may challenge long-
held policies of upholding state sovereignty and non-intervention. [R]
71.4497 BERRIDGE, W. J. — Briefing: the uprising in Sudan.
African Affairs 474, Jan. 2020 : 164-176.
On 7 March 1985, the railway workers of Sudan’s north-eastern town of
Atbara took to the streets to protest against the rise in the price of basic
foods decreed by the regime of President Jafa’ar N imeiri. These protests
continued for two and a half weeks before the outbreak in Khartoum of
the main Intifada, which toppled Nimeiri, his ruling party, and his main
state security service. On 19 December 2018, similar protests against
rising food prices erupted once again in Atbara, and spread to the rest of
the country much more rapidly. [R]
71.4498 BILODEAU, Antoine, et al. — Attitudes toward ethnocul-
tural diversity in multilevel political communities: com-
paring the effect of national and subnational attachments
in Canada. Publius 51(1), Winter 2021 : 27-53.
It is well documented that the strength of national attachment relates to
attitudes toward ethnocultural diversity, and that the direction of the
relationship varies across national contexts. Yet, little attention has been
given to the fact that attachments may not be expressed solely at the
national level. In federal and multinational states, individuals can express
attachment to the country and to its territorial units. This study investi-
gates the relationship between (national and provincial) attachments and
attitudes toward ethnocultural diversity in the Canadian federation. Our
findings indicate that stronger attachments to Canada lead to more
positive attitudes toward ethnocultural diversity in all provinces. [R, abr.]
71.4499 BLUMBERG, Renata ; MINCYTE, Diana — Beyond Euro-
peanization: the politics of scale and positionality in
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