Despite the fact that critical junctures are frequently deployed in historical analyses, we lack an explicit causal logic for them. This article proposes a distinction between permissive and ...productive conditions in critical junctures. Permissive conditions are necessary conditions that mark the loosening of constraints on agency or contingency and thus provide the temporal bounds on critical junctures. Productive conditions, which can take various logical forms, act within the context of these permissive conditions to produce divergence. I develop these concepts in detail and use classic analyses that apply the concept to show the implications of this new framework for the scope conditions, case selection, and theoretical completeness of historical analysis, as well as for broader issues in historical analysis such as the relationships between crisis and outcome, and between stability and change.
Gujarat is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home State and training ground. His Gujarat Model is projected as growth and development oriented. This article shows the actual Gujarat Model as ...top-down, favouring big business and undergirded by violent Hindu nationalism. The cult of the strongman leader - directly attuned to his people and above the corruption of politics as usual - rounds off Gujarat's authoritarian populist playbook. While the antecedents of this playbook are found in recent history, natural and political crises entrenched the Gujarat Model. The leader and his New Gujarat have since been popularised across scale, including nationally. Moving in the opposite direction, the article traces aggressively promoted business and violently repressed dissent in a sub-sub-national district of Gujarat. It then turns to the district's village hinterland, focusing on those who witness and occasionally participate in the Gujarat Model's politics and economics. Here the article finds capitalist development built on precarious labour and jobless growth. It also observes the much-feted Hindu nation riven by contradictions of caste, class, region and gender. Despite such cracks, deepening state authoritarianism, and the populist connect with a larger-than-life leader endure - for now - in the absence of substantive alternatives.
The bowing out of the designated successor to the leadership of the long-ruling People's Action Party, Heng Swee Keat, and thus the prime ministership of Singapore in April 2021 led to a sense of ...political crisis in the illiberal state. This article argues that this troubled third leadership transition was preceded and conditioned by the similarly troubled protracted first leadership transition in the 1980s and 1990s. The technocratic statecraft that framed the first transition is ill-adapted to tackle the new contentious politics that have gathered pace since the 2011 general election, thus engendering the sense of crisis.
Migrant domestic workers (MDW) in Lebanon suffer grave human rights abuses as highly exploited social reproduction laborers under the kafala, or visa sponsorship system. Amidst the current economic ...and political crises in Lebanon, compounded by the spread of COVID‐19, MDW find themselves in an even more precarious situation. As funding from international and local nongovernment organizations is unable to keep up with the increasing demands for support, MDW community leaders and activists have shifted their labor in order to support some of the most marginalized members of this community of workers. To do this, these workers strategically use their often‐minimal personal sources of social reproduction resources to create this network of support. In so doing, the grassroots work of these MDW become yet another “fix” to capital's continuing crises and equally challenge their construction as a class of workers whose social reproduction needs can be disregarded.
Not since the late 1850s has the United States seen the portents leading to a major political crisis be so numerous and grave. Over the last two decades, local and national social capital has steeply ...declined, culminating in a near‐collapse of social capital within the last 6 years. The potential for a national political crisis is now more plausible, making a dramatic crisis (e.g., bloodless revolt, a civil war, or secession) conceivable within a generation. This article reviews the interlocking concepts of social inclusion, social exclusion, radicalization, and societal collapse and draws from these concepts to elucidate the antecedents to major political crises. We connect these observations to the central role of political and administrative leadership in a democratic society in challenging times. Integrative recommendations for combating extremism and radicalization are provided to highlight key strategies for restoring social capital and stability.
Previous literature on diasporas assert that political crises such as revolutions in home states work as pressuring devices which activate diasporas, alongside political opportunity structures (POS) ...present in host countries, as an explanation for mobilisation. However, this does not sufficiently explain why two diaspora groups from the same country of origin mobilise in a sustained or episodic manner. Through interviews this paper will focus on the two core Egyptian diaspora groups in the United Kingdom (UK) since 2011 - the sustained mobilisation of the Egyptian Revolutionary Council (ERC), and the episodic mobilisation of the Egyptian National Association for Change (ENAC). It argues that the availability of specific incorporation mechanisms such as movement diffusion and the (non) -existence of elite proximity in host states incorporate or disincorporate a group, leading to sustained or episodic mobilisation. It contributes to emerging literature on contentious diaspora politics with these two added variables.
The Syrian political crisis that swept through the country caused a fierce, exhausting, destructive war and forced hundreds of thousands of Syrians to leave their homes in search of a safe life, ...though full of deprivation. Many of them have settled in the EU. According to psychologists, the level of stress that a person experiences during the process of adaptation to a new environment and integration into a new society is enormous and equal to 8 (on a scale from 1 to 10), which certainly affects many aspects of life, including the artistic potential. The aim of this study is to analyze the art of the Syrian descendants which is currently becoming a new way of communication and helps to discuss problems in those fields where the artistic expression is more effective than the verbal means of communication.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a global health and political crisis like no other in recent history. As ground zero of the virus outbreak, significant criticism and blame have been directed at ...China for covering up the outbreak. Yet a systematic assessment of China's responses to international opprobrium of its pandemic measures has been largely lacking in the literature. Drawing on the concept of “blame” from public administration, this article seeks to fill this gap by investigating China's COVID-19 crisis and blame (mis)management practices. We make two key contributions in this article. First, we highlight how Beijing engaged in the politics of blame and outline three modes (defensive, aggressive and proactive benevolence) of its blame management practices. Second, we suggest that China sought to articulate and refine its identity during the COVID-19 pandemic, providing insights into a China that is increasingly assertive yet vulnerable to reputational damage. We contend that China's efforts to counter international opprobrium and shift strategic narratives speak directly to issues of autocratic legitimation and its conceived “responsible great power” identity, with greater success among domestic rather than global audiences.
This paper concerns accountability and agency concepts in governance reforms in Indonesia. The country's economic crisis in 1997, which snowballed into social and political crisis, triggered the ...country to reform the governance of the ministries by transferring government functions from ministries to agency-type organizations. However, this reform has led to rising questions about the accountability arrangements of the newly formed organisations which are oriented to agency-based governance. In addition, there are several different arrangements for these agencies. This study aims to analyse the extent to which accountability is accorded in various types of agencies. In doing so, the study uses typology of the government agencies as a tool to understand the accountability through its autonomies. The results indicate that the variety of agencies' forms requires a different accountability setting, which is not being met in the current regulations.
Au Burundi, la crise politique déclenchée en avril 2015 après l’annonce par le président Nkurunziza de sa troisième candidature a occasionné une vague migratoire de plus de 300 000 personnes vers les ...pays voisins. À partir d’une étude ethnographique, cet article montre la manière dont les pratiques musicales, que ce soit la pratique des musiciens ou l’écoute privée ou publique dans un concert ou à l’église, constituent un espace où le passé et le présent s’articulent dans une dynamique de (re)construction identitaire. Le contexte migratoire permet en outre aux artistes de s’internationaliser tout en gardant un ancrage dans leur pays d’origine. La musique convoque des souvenirs du passé des auditeurs, tant à l’échelle individuelle que collective, et participe au renforcement et à l’expression du sentiment d’appartenance à l’identité burundaise.
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