Articles
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Open Access A RELIGION NOT MINE: FOUR AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC POEMS ABOUT THE INFLUENCE OF ISLAM ON NON-RELIGIOUS WOMEN IN MUSLIM-DOMINANT KAZAKHSTAN(Anthropology and Humanism, 2022) Zhunussova, DarinaThese autoethnographic poems reflect how Islamic patriarchal culture influences non-religious women in a Muslim-dominant Kazakhstan. The majority of the country's population identifies itself as Muslim, and the government pursues the traditionalization of values directed at the national revival. The core of this process deals with the re-imagination of the pre-Soviet patriarchal past, with women and men having different roles and statuses. For me, as a Kazakh woman and a citizen of Kazakhstan, not following this process equals being a marginalized minority. In an attempt to address the position of these minorities, I explore Islamic patriarchy's effects on society and women.Item Open Access UNE GUERRE QUI AURAIT PU ÊTRE ÉVITÉE(Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, 2022-03-24) Caron, Jean-FrancoisAvec l’invasion de l’Ukraine par les troupes de Vladimir Poutine, plusieurs ont vu dans ce geste le retour à un monde international anarchique et hobbesien au sein duquel les grandes puissances s’octroient désormais le droit d’attaquer des états plus faibles. Qu’en est-il réellement ? Et si Vladimir Poutine ne faisait que reproduire la logique étasunienne des 30 dernières années marquée par des actions unilatérales et souvent en contradiction avec le droit international ?Item Open Access SUR LA FOLIE DE VLADIMIR POUTINE(Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, 2022-03-31) Caron, Jean-FrancoisVladimir Poutine aurait-il perdu la raison? Voilà la thèse qui domine chez plusieurs qui voient dans le déclenchement d’une guerre dans laquelle son armée s’enlise la preuve irréfutable de ce qu’ils avancent. Et si la réalité était plus complexe et subtile qu’elle n’y paraît au premier abord?Item Open Access DES SANCTIONS ÉCONOMIQUES IMMORALES(Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, 2022-04-08) Caron, Jean-FrancoisCette série de textes de réflexion ont pour objectif de fournir un éclairage autour de certaines questions que la guerre en Ukraine a contribué à soulever, à savoir les causes de ce conflit, l’efficacité et la moral-ité des sanctions économiques imposées à la Russie, sur l’irrationalité de Vladimir Poutine ainsi que les perspectives d’avenir de ce conflit non seulement sur les relations russo-ukrainiennes, mais aussi sur le monde global qui est en train de se dessiner à travers ce conflit. Cette note est la troisième dans cette série. Pour lire les deux premiers, cliquez ici et ici...Item Open Access EUROPEAN UNION MEMBERSHIP STATUS AND DECENTRALIZATION: A TOP-DOWN APPROACH(REGIONAL AND FEDERAL STUDIES, 2020) Chacha, MwitaDespite state resilience and the waning of the ‘Europe of the Regions’, European integration persists in affecting subnational actors. Subnational actors have maintained lobbying offices in Brussels to access European Union institutions while others have continued to organize around regionalist parties in the European Parliament. This study explores whether and how EU membership has influenced decentralization. I argue that states exposed to Europeanization, candidates and members of the EU, decentralize more compared to non-EU states. Quantitative tests using recent data on regional authority and three case studies of France, Poland, and Spain provide support for this argument. This article contributes to the research on Europeanization and multilevel governance by focusing on state-level motivations for decentralization. This study’s findings allude to the need of examining how other facets of European integration affect subnational actors and investigating variations in decentralization between EU member-states.Item Open Access ONLINE TEMPTATIONS: DIVORCE AND EXTRAMARITAL AFFAIRS IN KAZAKHSTAN(Religions, 2021-08-18) Dall’Agnola, Jasmin; Thibault, HélèneIn recent years, the institution of marriage in Muslim Central Asia has undergone profound transformations in terms of religious dynamics, migration patterns, and the impact of globalization. In Kazakhstan between 2014 and 2019, every third marriage ended in divorce. By examining how Muslim Kazakhs’ support for divorce and casual sex is related to their consumption of information obtained on the Internet, mobile phone, and social media, this study contributes to the growing body of literature on the transformative forces of information and communication technology (ICT) in Kazakhstan and Central Asia. It uses a mixed-method approach that contrasts wider statistical trends from the World Values Survey Wave 7 country dataset on Kazakhstan with empirical data from focus groups conducted in five different regions of the country in 2019, involving a total of 96 respondents. The findings from the statistical and non-statistical analysis show that frequent exposure to information online influences Muslim Kazakhs’ support for extramarital affairs and divorce. Yet, frequent use of ICTs does not necessarily weaken the institution of marriage. Apart from its effect on university-educated female Kazakh youth, it seems to reinforce traditional understanding of marriage obligations among older generations and young men.Item Open Access THE MIGRANT OTHER: EXCLUSION WITHOUT NATIONALISM?(Cambridge University Press, 2021-02-09) Schenk, CaressMigrants are an easy, visible Other, seeming to fall neatly into the us-versus-Them framework of nationalism. Nevertheless, much of the scholarly approach to migrant identity, with the partial exception of a largely separate literature on citizenship, has eschewed overt ties to nationalism studies. When us-versus-Them language is used in relation to nationalism, the focus or nodal point is the identity of the seemingly homogenous us of the nation. However, when migrants are othered, the focus is not always the nation, and while othering migrants always creates exclusion, it is not always exclusion from a nation or identity group. This state of the field article analyzes the literature on populism, securitization, biopolitics, and other critical scholarship related to the issue of othering migrants. In each of these bodies of work, different sets of us are set against migrants, some of which evoke identity and others of which do not, elucidating the links (or the lack thereof) of each approach to the study of nationalism. In each of these frameworks, the migrant Other comes up against a different frame of reference, leaving migrants themselves (or any sense of migrant identity) somewhat lost amid the analytical frameworks, at continual risk of being re-othered as victims of circumstance without agency.Item Open Access CAMPAIGNING BY HUMAN BRANDING: ASSOCIATING WITH AMERICAN PRESIDENTS(Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2020-09-08) Collins, NeilHuman branding has become an essential issue in political marketing. It is exemplified in the election of American Presidents. This paper examines the American experience to suggest a typology of human branding that may apply in both presidential and other political systems. It examines examples of presidential human brands from George Washington on but, given significant changes to electoral procedures, concentrates on first-time successful presidential candidates since 1901. The fourfold typology offers an interrelated set of ideal types that will augment the analysis of human branding. It is applied to presidents when they take up office rather than after serving. The typology draws on the source of primary brand association and relation to the core political system of each politicianItem Open Access Misruling the Masses: The Consequences of Cracking Down in Kyrgyzstan(CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS, 2019-09-16) Sullivan, CharlesCan nondemocratic leaders initiate a crackdown against mass protesters and suffer little in the way of political-reputational costs? In conceptualizing a "crackdown" as a government-orchestrated violent restriction of civil society involving the killing of civilians, this article analyzes how the use of force is perceived by ordinary citizens when their government represses a portion of the populace. In analyzing the findings of a 2016 survey that gauges contemporary attitudes toward the overthrow of presidents Askar Akaev (in 2005) and Kurmanbek Bakiev (in 2010), this article argues that Kyrgyzstanis evaluate the Bakiev administration more negatively than they do the Akaev administration because of the former's resort to forceful measures in attempting to quell mass protesters in April 2010. Such findings imply that nondemocratic leaders who employ force against mass protesters incur significant political-reputational costs, irrespective as to whether the wider public views the mass protests as legitimate or not.Item Metadata only Public Opinion and Foreign Aid Cuts in Economic Crises(World Development, 2016-01-01) Heinrich, Tobias; Kobayashi, Yoshiharu; Bryant, Kristin A.; Tobias, HeinrichSummary Economic crises generally lead to reductions in foreign aid. However, the widely held view that budgetary constraints caused by economic crises reduce aid is inaccurate because donor government outlays actually tend to increase. We develop an argument that aid cuts occur because voters place a lower priority on aid during economic downturns and politicians respond by cutting aid. Using data from Eurobarometer, we demonstrate that economic downturns lead to reduced public support for helping the poor abroad. These findings are robust across a large number of alternative specifications. Our findings have implications for how advocates may prevent aid reductions during economic recessions.Item Open Access In Defence of the Will Theory of Rights(Res Publica, 2012-06-09) Van Duffel, SiegfriedNicholas Vrousalis has aimed to recast an old objection to the will theory of rights by focusing on Hillel Steiner’s version of that theory. He has argued that Will Theorymust either be insensitive to the (values of the) lives of the unempowerable, or be incomplete, because it has no argumentative resourceswithin its conceptual apparatus to ascribe or justify restrictions on the amount of discretion exercised by legal officials. I showthat both charges are problematic.They rely on someof Steiner’s inferenceswhich are simply unjustified because they are based on misinterpretations of the logic of Hohfeld’s terminology. The problem for Vrousalis is that his critique takes for granted some of these flawed arguments. The critique is also misdirected to the extent that it assumes that the problems with Steiner’s theory affect Will Theory in general.Item Open Access Polanyian Reading of the Socio-Economic Transformation of the European Union(Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 2014) Savevska, MajaIn an attempt to analyse the socio-economic transformations of the European Union, an increasing number of scholars have resorted to Polanyi's double movement thesis. In doing so, some scholars, by looking at the evidence of intensified marketisation of social relations, consider the EU disembedded; whereas others identify a re-embedding tendency in the recent surge of socio-environmental protection. The paper follows Lacher, Burawoy, Dale and Streeck's readings of Polanyi and argues that the exiting socio-environmental provisions do not re-embed the economy. Socio-environmental protection does not eclipse the neoliberal accumulation strategy which continues to propagate the disembedding tendency, because it fails to decommodify fictitious commodities. The EU is characterised by a heightened intensification of both disembedding and protective tendencies, which Polanyi contends is disruptive in nature. What emerges out of the dialectics between neoliberalisation and socio-environmental provisions is a decelerated rate of change, which, although it temporarily secures the habitation of man, prevents the inception of a synthesis that is capable of sublating the contradictions of the marketisation/protection binary. Moreover, we have a paradoxical situation wherein the socio-environmental measures, despite their protective invocation, are predicated on deepened commodification.Item Open Access Corporate Social Responsibility: A Promising Social Innovation or a Neoliberal Strategy in Disguise?(Romanian Journal of European Affairs, 2014) Savevska, MajaSince the Lisbon Summit the European Union has become resolute in its intention to promote the uptake of corporate social responsibility among European companies. The recent financial crisis has provided further impetus for evangelising CSR, which is identified by the EU public authorities as one exit strategy from the crisis and a promising means of fulfilling the Treaty objectives of inclusive and sustainable social market economy. This paper finds the above assertion problematic and uses a Polanyian framework to evaluate its validity. The paper represents a conceptual intervention in the policy justification provided by the European Commission. Contrary to the overly optimistic voices that see decommodifying tendencies within CSR, this paper claims that CSR does not have a potential to re-embed the economy as argued by the Commission. Despite its protective invocation, CSR is predicated on deepened commodification. It depends on the staging of a special type of exchange relation, whereby reputation is quantified and sold as a commodity by being denominated in a common unit. As such the CSR form promoted by the Commission is a microeconomic counterpart to the regime of rule-based macroeconomic depoliticisation.Item Open Access Female Virtue, Religion and State Ideology in Tajikistan(CERIA Briefs n. 10, 2016-01) Thibault, HélèneSince independence in 1991, Tajikistan’s authorities have been trying to promote a unifying ideology that could inspire the whole nation. Na-tional unity is particularly challenging in this country that has been wounded by a five-year civil war (1992-1997). As religiosity has be-come more prevalent over the years, the authorities have tried to thwart the growth of Islam by promoting a conservative ideology de-void of Islamic content, resting on imagined national traditions, nation-al purity and ancient wisdom. Interestingly, the female figure has be-come increasingly instrumental in the state’s national discourse. Pat-ronizing moral recommendations focus mainly on female clothing and virtue, which have come to embody national values. The role of women in the transmission of family and patriotic values is celebrated, yet dis-courses hide a difficult reality for Tajik women who are deeply affected by poverty, labor migration, and social and state pressure...Item Open Access The Soviet Secularization Project in Central Asia: Accommodation and Institutional Legacies(Eurostudia, vol. 10, n.1, 2015) Thibault, HélèneThis article investigates the effects of the Soviet social engineering project and forced secularization in Central Asia. Emphasis is placed on the ideological foundations of Marxism-Leninism, its stance on atheism, its holistic character, and its ideological exclusivity. The article details the measures taken by authorities to eradicate religious beliefs during the seventy years of Soviet rule. Taking the case of Tajikistan, it highlights the remaining influence of Soviet policies on state-religion relations by reviewing the functions and responsibilities of current regulatory institutions as well as laws and official discourses framing religious practices.Item Open Access Neoliberal reform and protest in Latin American democracies: A replication and correction(SAGE, 2014) Solt, Frederick; Kim, Dongkyu; Lee, Kyu Young; Willardson, Spencer L; Kim, SeokdongDo neoliberal economic reforms in Latin American democracies mobilize citizens to overcome their collective action problems and protest? A recent addition to the scholarship on this crucial question of the relationship of markets and politics, Bellinger and Arce (2011), concludes that economic liberalization does have this effect, working to repoliticize collective actors and reinvigorate democracy. We reexamine the article’s analyses and demonstrate that they misinterpret the marginal effect of the variables of theoretical interest. Thus, the article’s optimistic claims about the consequences for democracy of economic liberalization in the region are not supported by its own empirical results. It is argued here that its results suggest instead that protests became more common in autocracies when they moved away from markets. Rather than speaking to how people have mobilized to protest against liberal reforms in Latin America’s democracies, the work’s analyses illuminate only when people protested against the region’s dictatorshipsItem Open Access Strategic Intelligence during Coin Detention Operations – Relational Data and Understanding Latent Terror Networks(2013) Willardson, Spencer LOne aspect of the global “War on Terror” that has received limited coverage in the academic literature is the problem of detained persons as it relates to intelligence. This is a surprising oversight, given the number of detainees that the US has been responsible for (over 25,000 were in custody in Iraq alone at one time during its peak). The detention environment offers a prime strategic intelligence opportunity for the US intelligence community to study the tactics and organizations of individuals who have been removed from the overall conflict. In this article an easily-implemented collection program is recommended to be deployed in US/Coalition detention centers. The primary recommendation is to gather relational data on detainee communication, both authorized and illicit, and to use this data to perform network analyses of terrorist groups and their individual membersItem Open Access Detention as a Peacemaking Strategy: The 2007-08 Iraq Surge and US Detention(2016) Willardson, Spencer LThe Surge in Iraq was one of the key foreign policy decisions of the past decade. Its success prompted a second surge into Afghanistan by a new president a few years later. The success of the Iraq surge has prompted work by academics and policymakers alike. One factor of the success of the surge has been understudied by both academics and policymakers is the role played by the detention of individuals and the changes in detention policy that accompanied the surge. In this paper I outline a brief informal model of how an intervening state can use detention to help alleviate some of the causes of intergroup conflict to increase the odds of successful intervention. I then show how the changes in US detention policy during the surge contributed to the success of the overall strategy. A key argument in this paper is that detention contributed to the success of the surge even though it was not a primary or public aspect of the surge strategyItem Open Access Controlling Immigration Manually: Lessons from Moscow (Russia)(2013) Schenk, CaressIn 2007, the Russian government instituted quotas for immigrant work permits that were consistently lower than actual labour demand. While low quotas are politically popular on the mass level, this article argues that low quotas are also a tool of the government to distribute patronage resources to regional political and economic elites. For several years after quotas were instituted, they remained quite controversial, and during this time decisions about them were firmly in the hands of Vladimir Putin, first as president and then as prime minister, giving him a powerful tool to control the immigration process and labour market manually. While this type of manual control is effective in the short term to manage contentious policy arenas, it suffers a number of possible long-term consequences.Item Open Access Policy vs. Reality: Immigration Management in Russia(2014) Schenk, Caress