VII National and Area Studies / Études Nationales et Régionales
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208345231169353 |
| Published date | 01 April 2023 |
| Date | 01 April 2023 |
297
VII
NATIONAL AND AREA STUDIES
ÉTUDES NATIONALES ET RÉGIONALES
73.2573 AASKOVEN, Lasse — The political effects of wealth ine-
quality: evidence from a Danish land reform. Comparative
Politics 55(1), Oct. 2022 : online.
A prevalent viewpoint is that wealth inequality leads to political inequality
and that economic elites are more powerful when they control a larger
wealth share. However, as wealth inequality changes are often endoge-
nous, studying the political consequences of wealth concentration is chal-
lenging. I study a 1919 Danish land reform that confiscated 20 to 25 per-
cent of the value of entailed estates, which were old aristocratic land and
capital holdings. Using difference-in-difference estimation, I assess the
political effects of this shock to local wealth inequality. I find no effect of a
wealth inequality decrease on pro-elite political outcomes. These results
question the degree to which wealth inequality matters for political equality
under widely held political rights and strong rule of law. [R]
73.2574 ABRASSART, Aurélien ; WOLTER, Stefan C. — Rejecting
education as the basis of the social prestige of occupa-
tions: the role of polarized political ideologies and parties
in Switzerland. Acta Politica 58(1), Jan. 2023 : 1-35.
Because of an important consistency in the prestige ratings of occupations
from respondents across various social groups, countries and over time,
the roots of divergent perceptions of the social prestige of occupations
have attracted little attention. Yet structural changes in modern econo-
mies, brought by rapid globalization and technological change, and the
polarization of political life might have triggered a growing contestation of
the traditional foundations of modern societies. We analyze a unique data-
set in Switzerland based on a survey of adults’ perception of the social
prestige of occupations. As our results indicate, respondents identifying
with major or minor right-wing populist parties do not reject the dominant
view of the prestige of occupations. [R, abr.]
73.2575 ADISONMEZ, Umut Can ; ONURSAL, Recep — “Strong, but
anxious state”: the fantasmatic narratives on ontological
insecurity and anxiety in Turkey. Uluslararasi Ilişkiler (Inter-
national Relations) 73, 2022 : 61-76.
The political discourse on the problem of state survival in Turkey is hege-
monic. What is central to this discourse is Sévresphobia: the idea that Tur-
key is surrounded by internal and external enemies who are ready to de-
stroy it. This article aims to explain why the political discourse on the prob-
lem of state survival in Turkey sustains itself over time and how it captures
the collective mode of being. The article argues that fantasmatic narratives
play an important role in maintaining the hegemonic discourse and gov-
erning collective anxiety. First, fantasmatic narratives simplify the socio-
political space by offering a comforting explanation for the ongoing inse-
curities and making anxiety tolerable. Second, they act as an ideological
force by keeping the political dimension of the discourse on ontological
security at bay. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 73.2053]
73.2576 AKBARI, Farkhondeh ; TRUE, Jacqui — One year on from
the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan: re-instituting gender
apartheid. Australian Journal of International Affairs 76(6),
2022 : 624-633.
One year on from the Taliban’s takeover, what has changed in Afghani-
stan? Why has re-instituting a gender apartheid regime been so central to
the Taliban 2.0’s (Taliban 2.0 refers to the second version of the Taliban
that came to power in August 2021. The first Taliban rule were from 1996
to 2001.) consolidation of power in Afghanistan since August 2021? We
address these questions by explaining how gender has become a salient
feature of multi-level power struggles in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. First,
we examine the changes experienced by women and girls over the past
year under the second Taliban regime. Second, we consider four types of
power struggles — in international relations, in transnational politics, within
the Taliban organisation, and between Afghan men and women — that
constrain the realisation of women’s rights and security. [R, abr.]
73.2577 Al-FADHAT, Faris — Indonesia’s G20 presidency: neolib-
eral policy and authoritarian tendencies. Australian Journal
of International Affairs 76(6), 2022 : 617-623.
Multilateralism at the regional and global stage is essential for Indonesia’s
foreign policy. Apart from ASEAN, which has long been a pivotal array for
Indonesia’s regional economic interdependence and political stability, the
G20 is recently added to the country’s interest. It serves Indonesia’s desire
for global leadership and middle-power status. As Indonesia began its
year-long presidency of the G20 in 2022, the government is confident that
hosting numerous meetings and the Group’s summit at the end of 2022 is
a notable milestone for its international leadership exposure. This time,
Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo emphasises priority agendas:
strengthening global health architecture, transitioning to green and renew-
able energy, and promoting the digital economy. This commentary evalu-
ates and projects Indonesia’s G20 presidency amidst the country’s demo-
cratic decline in recent years. It argues that Indonesia’s proposed agendas
are more ambitious goals than strategic. Instead, the country’s priority will
be marked by a solid neoliberal economic policy and stability, which is
likely to cause even more democratic setbacks at home. [R]
73.2578 ALBRECHT, Peter ; MYNSTER CHRISTENSEN, Maya —
Trembling city: policing Freetown’s war-peace transition.
Cooperation and Conflict 57(4), Dec. 2022 : 478-495.
While divided cities are characterized by spatially cemented segregation
and polarized divisions, the trembling city is organized around transient
and transformative borders. We conceptualize this notion of urban space
to capture Freetown’s war-peace transition in the late 1990s a nd early
2000s. Ex-combatants settled on the city margins, bringing with them spa-
tial strategies from war-fighting into the c ity by recreating a system of ba-
ses. The Sierra Leone Police (SLP) re-emerged with external support,
seeking to compartmentalize and fixate Freetown through a combination
of force and negotiation. We use borders and bordering to understand po-
licing as attempts by both ex-combatants and the SLP to border in as well
as out; defensively against external interference and offensively to make
territorial claims. [R, abr.]
73.2579 ALONSO, Marta ; PALMA, Nuno ; SIMON-YARZA, Beatriz —
The value of political connections: evidence from China's
anti-corruption campaign. Journal of Institutional Economics
18(5), Oct. 2022 : 785-805.
We study the value of the political connections of directors on Chinese
boards. We build a new dataset that measures connections of directors to
members of the Politburo via past school ties, and find that private firms
with politically connected directors in the boardroom get on average about
16% higher subsidies over sales per firm (7 million yuan). Connected
state-owned enterprises (SOEs) access debt at 11% cheaper cost, which
translates into average savings of close to 32 million yuan per firm in lower
interest payments. We find that the value of the political connections per-
sisted after the anti-corruption campaign (ACC) of 2012. It became weaker
for the cost of debt in SOEs, but stronger for subsidies to private firms. We
argue that the value of connections in the private sector increased after
the ACC because they became a less risky alternative to corruption. [R,
abr.]
73.2580 ÁLVARES, Maria — Policy discourse in times of crisis: de-
bating educational policy in Portugal in the years of aus-
terity. Journal of Language and Politics 21(5), 2022 : 742-762.
The current paper explores the relation between deliberation, political le-
gitimization and decision making in educational policy in the aftermath of
the intervention by the troika in Portugal in 2011. Cen tring on political de-
bates about equal opportunities in education in the Portuguese parliament,
it explores how arguments, such as ‘crisis’ and ‘change’, were employed
to frame — and covertly promote — a concession of sovereignty to inter-
national organizations and legitimize a turn in policy-making to an austerity
doctrine regarding education policies. Findings reveal the interplay be-
tween a loose and polyphonic discourse of international organizations, and
the construction of a narrative of failure regarding educational policies pre-
viously adopted, recontextualized and thus enabled the change towards
neoliberal policies in Portuguese education policies, bringing about a
leaner concept of equal opportunities in education at the national level. [R]
73.2581 ANDERSEN, Lars Erslev — Radical secularism and
worldview dilemmas in countering sectarianism in Leba-
non. Negotiation Journal 38(3), Summer 2022 : 477-500.
Through an analysis of Lebanon, this article investigates the secularism
dilemma, namely, that secularism often leads to the politicization of reli-
gion and a high risk of conflict. Although this is the case in Lebanon, Leb-
anese political activists and youth movements advocate for secularism as
the only alternative to the present consociational political system. The ar-
ticle introduces the worldview theory of the German philosopher Karl Jas-
pers and deconstructs the concept of secularism by focusing on philosoph-
ical and anthropological academic debates on the topic. The goal is to
National and area studies
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discover why Lebanese support of secular movements and parties is re-
markably limited despite the massive support of civil society for a radical
critique of the present political system. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 73.1653]
73.2582 ANDERSON, Kevin B. — The January 6 [USA] insurrection:
historical and global contexts. Critical Sociology 48(6),
Sept. 2022 : 901-907.
The 6 January 2021, Trumpist insurrection is in continuity with centuries
of white mob violence in the United States, going back to the thwarted
1861 attempt to attack the Capitol in order to overturn Lincoln’s election.
At the same, time Trumpism as a modern phenomenon also exhibits links
and affinities to contemporary global neofascist and rightwing populist
movements. Although small towns and rural areas were heavily repre-
sented among the participants on 6 January, analysts need — in the spirit
of Marx — to avoid the Lassallean trap of writing off rural populations as
uniformly conservative. In this sense, we need to grasp the pervasive rac-
ism at the root of Trumpism and its analogues without falling into a view of
rural areas as monolithic. [R]
73.2583 ANGHEL, Veronica ; JONES, Erik — Riders on the storm:
the politics of disruption in European member states dur-
ing the COVID-19 pandemic. East European Politics 38(4),
2022 : 551-570.
This paper explores how democracies handle the trade-off between public
safety and fundamental democratic principles. We show that an exoge-
nous shock, like the pandemic, creates incentives for governing elites to
deploy self-empowering mechanisms to avoid institutional checks and bal-
ances – with lasting consequences for democratic performance. We ex-
amine this prospect in Italy and Romania. These cases have a long history
of institutional gridlock; such history reinforces incentives to work around
traditional institutions in responding to the pandemic. While the two cases
vary in terms of the quality and resilience of their democratic institutions,
we find that elites displayed a similar propensity to overlook the intricate
institutional balances during a mome nt of crisis. In Italy, the executive
strengthened its power relative to the legislature; in Romania, the strength-
ening is relative to the judiciary. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 73.2595]
73.2584 ARAN, Meltem A, et al. — How to assess the child poverty
and distributional impact of COVID-19 using household
budget surveys: an application using Turkish data. Euro-
pean Journal of Development Research 34(4), Aug. 2022 :
1997-2037.
This study presents a methodology to predict the child poverty impact of
COVID-19 that can be readily applied in other country contexts where sim-
ilar household data are available — and illustrates this case using data
from Turkey. Using Household Budget Survey 2018, the microsimulation
model estimates the impact of labour income loss on household expendi-
tures, considering that some types of jobs/sectors may be more vulnerable
than others to the COVID-19 shock. Labour income loss is estimated to
lead to reductions in monthly household expenditure using an income
elasticity model, and expenditure-based child poverty is found to increase
in Turkey by 4.9-9.3 percentage points (depending on shock severity) from
a base level of 15.4%. Among the hypothetical cash transfer scenarios
considered, the universal child grant for 0-17 years old children was found
to have the highest child poverty reduction impact overall, while schemes
targeting the bottom 20-30% of households are more cost-effective in
terms of poverty reduction. [R, abr.]
73.2585 ARNDT, Melanie — Environmentalism or sausages? Polit-
icizing the environment in the late Soviet Union. European
History Quarterly 52(3), July 2022 : 418-439.
This paper analyzes the politicization of the environment in the late Soviet
Union based on a new perception of the interconnection between the hu-
man being and the ‘rest’ of nature. On the basis of previously ignored
sources, it shows the emerging rise and ultimate decline of human subjec-
tivity as a political force in the Soviet Union, and the Byelorussian Soviet
Socialist Republic (BSSR) in particular. Experts, politicians, and the secret
service had long understood the need to conserve natural resources and
the ecological consequences of relentless industrialization or nature trans-
formation projects, and they had at least partially attempted to counter
them. However, the disclosure, in the late 1980s, of the extent and conse-
quences of the Soviet Union's ecological legacies, particularly the Cher-
nobyl disaster, triggered an unprecedented awareness of the vulnerability
of the human body and the Soviet state's disregard of the dangers to hu-
man health. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 73.2667]
73.2586 ATTWELL, Katie ; NAVIN, Mark — How policymakers em-
ploy ethical frames to design and introduce new policies:
the case of childhood vaccine mandates in Australia. Pol-
icy and Politics 50(4), Oct. 2022 : 526-547.
Australian states exclude unvaccinated children from early education and
care via ‘No Jab No Play’ policies, but some offer exemptions for the
socially disadvantaged. Such mandatory vaccination policies provoke
heated arguments about morality and potential downstream impacts, and
the politics of which kinds of people get exempted from mandates are often
fraught. Synthesising existing frameworks for considering the role of moral
principles and rational-technical justifications in policymaking, we show
how the same values can be the focus of both ‘rational-instrumental’ and
‘morality’ frames, while ‘pragmatic’ approaches are crowded out by high
epistemic or moral certainty. [R]
73.2587 AUERBACH, Kiran ; PETROVA, Bilyana — Authoritarian or
simply disillusioned? Explaining democratic skepticism
in Central and Eastern Europe. Political Behavior 44(4), Dec.
2022 : 1959-1983.
Survey research has revealed that post-communist citizens are skeptical
towards democracy. Despite a substantial body of literature that has re-
searched the origins and determinants of these attitudes, consensus has
not yet emerged. A major challenge has been to distinguish between indi-
vidual support for democracy as an ideal political regime and satisfaction
with the way democracy is practiced in one’s country. Using structural
equation modeling with latent variables, we improve measurement validity
and account for feedback effects to better understand the relationship be-
tween these attitudes. Consistent with our performance-based theory, we
find that positive assessments of political performance drive normative
support for democracy. The impact of satisfaction with democracy on dem-
ocratic support suggests that we should not rush to view post-comm unist
citizens' mindset as anomalous and inherently anti-democratic. [R, abr.]
73.2588 BACKLUND, Anders — State repression of racist associa-
tions: dilemmas of tolerance in the Nordic countries.
Scandinavian Political Studies 45(3), Sept. 2022 : 348-369.
When faced with organized racism, liberal democracies attempt to strike a
balance between combating extremism and protecting core values such
as freedom of association. Earlier research has argued that states that
have experienced nondemocratic regime control in the 20th c. — either
through a domestic takeover or a foreign occupation — are more likely to
take a repressive approach to racist associations. I show that the previ-
ously overlooked Nordic region speaks against this explanation. Finland,
which managed to avert a domestic authoritarian threat, is more repres-
sive of racist associations than are the Scandinavian countries. The latter,
two of which faced Nazi occupation, take a more liberal approach, which
targets illegal actions rather than associations. These findings lead me to
argue that the explanatory power of historical legacies cannot be reduced
to a binary indicator such as nondemocratic regime control. [R, abr.]
73.2589 BADARIN, Emile — Jordan’s economic, security and polit-
ical challenges under Covid-19. Mediterranean Politics
27(5), 2022 : 665-673.
This essay examines the implications of the continued spread of Covid-19
on the political, economic and security challenges that confront Jordan. It
argues that the country’s response to the pandemic constitutes a signifi-
cant juncture in the counter-revolt and counter-reform in the region. The
reactions of the Jordanian government unfolded as a process of power
consolidation in the office of the appointed prime minister while weakening
the democratic institutions, organized socio-political dissent and civil soci-
ety. Through this policy, the Government has sought to pre-empt popular
demands for political reforms and participation in a context where the ren-
tier social contract has become unsustainable. The deferred Israeli plan to
formally annexe parts of the West Bank represents serious threats to the
tenuous balance in the country and its century-long security strategy. [R,
abr.]
73.2590 BAHL, Roy W. ; TIMOFEEV, Andrey ; YILMAZ, Serdar — Im-
plementing federalism: the case of Nepal. Public Budgeting
and Finance 42(3), Fall 2022 : 23-40.
The new Constitution of Nepal established a federal system of governance
in 2015. Implementation began in 2018 following the 2017 subnational
elections. The new system is comprised of seven provinces and 753 local
governments. The constitution assigns important functional responsibili-
ties to provincial and local governments and mandates that they have sig-
nificant autonomy in deciding how services will be delivered. Subnational
governments accounted for over one-third of total government expendi-
tures planned for FY2021, financed primarily by intergovernmental trans-
fers. This paper describes the new federal system, discusses the early
implementation successes and challenges, and draws some lessons from
Nepal's experience. [R]
73.2591 BELDER, Ferit — Making sense of risky Haredi behaviors
in Israel during the covid-19 pandemic. Uluslararasi Ilişkiler
(International Relations) 73, 2022 : 29-44.
Covid-19 not only posed a threat to the bodies of individuals or their mental
health but also disrupted routines that are re-producing certain communi-
ties every day. This is particularly the case for communities with already
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