When did Brexit happen? The UK formally left the EU on 31 January 2020, followed by a transition period that ended on 31 December 2020. Still what does post-Brexit mean? Adding “post” and a hyphen, ...signifies both being beyond or after a singular moment of Brexit, yet re-inscribes it unto the future. Post-Brexit thereby stretches ahead: The subject of further discussions, negotiations and interpretations. In this critical review, we consider these through the long and comparative arc of class, nation and state formation, imperial decline, uneven development and a series of crises. Post-Brexit sees the UK’s geopolitical position the most uncertain since the 1940s. The internal territorial structure of the UK is also more sharply in question and, in the absence of compelling alternatives, the space for progressive, let alone stable resolution of these multiple quandaries looks set to be colonized by protracted post-Brexits.
The history of modern Chinese schools in Singapore may be traced back to the early 20th century, when efforts to provide vernacular education in the British colony were made by community leaders ...across Chinese dialect groups, with support of the Qing Empire. Only a handful of these were selected as elite schools for bilingual education under the Special Assistance Plan (SAP) introduced in 1979 in independent Singapore. This paper examines the historical trajectories of these early schools from early association with Chinese nationalism to becoming multi-ethnic schools or simply defunct. It will focus on the case of the former Yeung Ching School in 'Chinatown' catering to the Cantonese community, to explore how the legacy of a Chinese school may be impacted by state formation and urban development since the 1950s, and also to point out a gap in current heritagisation pertaining to the role of education in shaping cultural identities.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Africa is often seen as a continent of mass migration and displacement caused by poverty, violent conflict and environmental stress. Yet such perceptions are based on stereotypes rather than ...theoretically informed empirical research. Drawing on the migration and visa databases from the Determinants of International Migration (DEMIG project) and the Global Bilateral Migration Database (GBMD), this paper explores the evolution and drivers of migration within, towards and from Africa in the post-colonial period. Contradicting common ideas of Africa as a ‘continent on the move’, the analysis shows that intra-African migration intensities have gone down. This may be related to state formation and the related imposition of barriers towards free movement in the wake of decolonisation as well as the concomitant rise of nationalism and inter-state tensions. While African migration remains overwhelmingly intra-continental, since the late 1980s there has been an acceleration and spatial diversification (beyond colonial patterns) of emigration out of Africa to Europe, North America, the Gulf and Asia. This diversification of African emigration seems partly driven by the introduction of visa and other immigration restrictions by European states. Contradicting conventional interpretations of African migration being essentially driven by poverty, violence and underdevelopment, increasing migration out of Africa seems rather to be driven by processes of development and social transformation which have increased Africans’ capabilities and aspirations to migrate, a trend which is likely to continue in the future.
Two key themes of this special issue are: how violence challenges democracy and how democratic politics might, over time, diminish violence. This paper explores how violence(s) embedded in Latin ...America's state formation process are multiplied rather than diminished through democratization, generating a securitizing logic which fundamentally distorts democratic principles. Known for its high levels of historic violence(s), Latin America today is second only to Southern Africa in levels of homicide in the world. Some see contemporary violence in the region as a rupture from the past: 'new violence' characterized by its urban and social nature in contrast to the rural and political nature of the past. Violence, however, has a reproductive quality, by which it is transmitted through space as well as time. This article argues that rather than reflecting a rupture with the past, violence in Latin America has merely accelerated its complex reproduction in many forms across (gendered) spaces of socialization. The paradox is that the proliferation of this violence has occurred alongside democratic transitions. Although the state is not directly responsible for all the violence which is taking place, this article argues that in many countries it is the very trajectory of the state-formation process which has facilitated this rapid reproduction of violence. I call this process 'perverse'. Democracy is increasingly subject to the fears and insecurities of the population, enabling the state to build its authority not on the protection of citizens' rights, but on its armed encounters and insidious collusions with violent actors in the name of 'security provision'. Categories of people become non-citizens, subjected to abuse by state, para-state and non-state violent actors. If this process continues, democracy will ultimately be securitized.
In this afterword to the special issue on Consociationalism and the State: Lebanon and Iraq in Comparative Perspective, we reflect on the insights from the articles in the special issue and their ...contributions to the wider field of consociationalism studies, including the relationship between the state, state formation, and consociationalism; the interplay between consociationalism and identity construction and change; and the functionality, longevity, and agility of the consociational state. We suggest that the emergent research agenda on consociationalism and the state should engage further with ideas of agency and with wider cross-regional comparisons from the global south in order to show how historically contingent developments precondition conflict processes, group grievances, and post-conflict preferences in power-sharing systems.
The prosopographic portraits of the founding fathers of the Ukrainian independent state and the Republic of Lithuania, restored in 1990 and 1991, are revealed. The research is based on general ...scientific and special historical methods, among which the comparative method and the method of prosopography occupy a special place. The first part of the article is dedicated to the leaders of those sociopolitical organizations that formed the core of the opposition movement against the dictatorship of the Communist Party - Vytautas Landsbergis, Vyacheslav Chornovol and Levko Lukyanenko. Thanks to the appropriate methodological tools, it was possible to reveal the common and distinctive features of leaders in both countries: national-democratic bias, duration of dissident activity, belonging to one or another social stratum, participation in political activities, personal contribution to the development of the country's independence, etc. Attention was also drawn to the fact that the leader of the national-democratic forces of Lithuania V. Landsbergis was the highest political figure of the Restorative Seimas for almost three years (1990-1992), while the leaders of the Ukrainian democratic movement were given mediocre roles in the shadow of the communists. Which at that time dominated the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. The second part of the study paints a prosopographic portrait of the first presidents of Ukraine and the Republic of Lithuania. Ukraine is considered number one here because the institution of the presidency was founded on its territory in 1991, and in Lithuania in 1993. Despite the fact that the presidency of Leonid Kravchuk and Algirdas Brazauskas is considered taking into account the time factor, it depicts significant differences in the strategies of the state behavior of these two natives of the same communist system, who were almost the same age. In particular, this concerns the issue of distancing from the Russian Federation and the country's geopolitical choice of joining the European Union and NATO. Thus, in conclusion, we see that the path to independence in both countries was paved by national-democratic movements led by the intelligentsia. However, not everyone achieved the final result of the activity. We also notice that both in Ukraine and in Lithuania, former Communist Party members became the first presidents.
The mid-1990s through the first decade of the new millennium marked an increase in publications pertaining to war and violence in the ancient past. This review considers how scholars of the past ...decade have responded to that work. The emerging consensus is that war and violence were endemic to all societies studied by archaeologists, and yet the frequency, intensity, causes, and consequences of violence were highly variable for reasons that defy simplistic explanation. The general trend has been toward archaeologies of war and violence that focus on understanding the nuances of particular places and historical moments. Nevertheless, archaeologists continue to grapple with grand narratives of war, such as the proposition that violence has decreased from ancient to modern times and the role of war and violence in state formation and collapse. Recent research also draws attention to a more expansive definition of violence.
Regulation and state capacity Chowdhury, Arjun
Rationality and society,
11/2022, Letnik:
34, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
While one might expect states with low capacity to regulate less than states with high capacity, this is not supported by evidence, leaving open the possibility of rent-seeking. I use the example of ...the regulation of witchcraft in parts of Africa to informally model the conditions under which states with low capacity still come to promulgate a range of regulations even in the absence of rent-seeking interests. The model suggests that regulation can be a substitute for basic state functions like policing. I identify one normatively troubling aspect of this; the conditions under which such regulation might still improve state capacity over time, which qualifies claims made about rent-seeking and neo-patrimonialism; the model’s implications for contemporary state formation; and the parallels between the regulation of witchcraft and the regulation of offensive speech.
Abstract What explains the origins and survival of the first states around 5000 years ago? In this research, we focus on the role of weather-related productivity shocks for early state development in ...ancient Egypt. We present a framework of extractive state consolidation predicting that political stability should be high whenever environmental circumscription is high, i.e., whenever there is a large gap between the productivity of the area under state control (core) and that of the surrounding areas (hinterland). In such periods, the elite can impose high levels of taxation that the population will be forced to accept as exit to the hinterland is not a feasible option. In order to test this hypothesis, we develop novel proxies for both the historical productivity of the Nile banks and of the Egyptian hinterland on the basis of high-resolution paleoclimate archives. Our empirical analysis then investigates the relationship between these proxies for environmental circumscription and political outcomes such as ruler and dynastic tenure durations, the area under state control and pyramid construction during 2685–1140 BCE. Our results show that while extreme Nile floods are associated with a greater degree of political instability, periods with a greater rainfall in the hinterland (i.e., a lower effective environmental circumscription) causes a decline in state capacity and a delayed increase in political instability.
Why do some winning rebel groups build obedient and effective state militaries after civil war, while others suffer military defections? When winning rebels face intense security threats during civil ...wars, rebel field commanders are more likely to remain obedient during war-to-peace transitions. Intense security threats incentivize militants to create more inclusive leadership structures, reducing field commanders’ incentives to defect in the postwar period. Intense security threats also reduce commanders’ capacity for postwar resistance by forcing insurgents to remain mobile and adopt shorter time horizons in rebel-governed territory, reducing the likelihood that field commanders will develop local ties and independent support bases. The plausibility of the argument is examined using a new list of winning rebel groups since 1946. Two case studies—Zimbabwe and Côte d'Ivoire—probe the causal mechanisms of the theory. The study contributes to debates about the consequences of
military victory in civil war, the postwar trajectories of armed groups, and the conditions necessary for civil-military cohesion in fragile states.
PDF
