microsoft word politikon our ed[1].doc 98 the values and myths of modern society in the usa petr sumkin∗ during the last decade important changes have happened in the global structure of world politics. the collapse of the ussr was one of the main reasons for this process, which also led to a decay of the bilateral system of relations and redefinition of strategic interests of world leading countries. the destruction of the ussr put a final end to the cold war, however it couldn’t prevent the development and expansion of the military interests of the usa, because it was the only country, which possessed a powerful political and military potential. the ussr had been a very dangerous opponent during many years, and its collapse formed a curious situation: the us had no enemy and this produced a vacuum in values and norms, because there wasn’t any stimulus to develop its nuclear forces, anti-ballistic missile system etc. but the vacuum couldn’t last long and one of the main purposes of the new american government was to fill the vacuum with new values, which would be useful for government foreign policy. probably, that’s why i consider this process to be very interesting to investigate and understand what the main values of modern american society are and how much the last decade has influenced on them. from the very beginning the usa tried to spread its influence and political model in other countries, american democracy proclaimed itself the best one and this laid the foundation for shaping a new chain of values in the consciousness of a typical american: ‘our country is the best one’, ‘our democracy is the best one’, ‘our country is an example for the whole world to follow’ and ‘we have a right to develop our democracy everywhere’. this was the start of an active expansion of the foreign policy of the usa. ∗ petr sumkin is a student at mgimo 99 in 1990 the vice-secretary for european relations j. dobbins stated in the congress that the nato was necessary in europe and hadn’t lost its role since 1949 when the alliance had been created. he defined the us as the key member of the organization, because without any control european states would go back to their ‘bad behavior’, old military games and alliances. the inheritance of truman’s politics and its success was perceived as the main idea of american foreign policy. much attention was paid to the words of state secretary acheson (1947), that building of a successful system of international relations is impossible without the usa and creation of the system must become the purpose of american leadership. that’s why all efforts to change the us foreign interests show disability of those, who try to do it, to understand the values of american policy, which are much more important than the confrontation with the ussr. s. huntington, commenting on the problem, stated that the us develops contradictory policy, playing the role of the world hegemony, which possesses all democratic values, but actually working in its own interests, indeed. in his work, huntington proved that the us foreign policy can be characterized as unfair : forced introduction of american values and political institutes into the culture of other countries strong resistance to the military development of other countries so, that they mightn’t be able to compete with the usa, although nato doesn’t guarantee security of independent states breaking the principles of state sovereignty, intervening in international conflicts of independent states, the usa promotes its interests, while declaring free trade the us also exerts pressure on the policy of the imf and economic and strategic preferences of independent states making them favorable to the united states the usa refuses even to pay the payment in the un, but exerts pressure on the results of the elections of the un general secretary. 100 introduction of economic sanctions against iraq, although it prevents the development of economic cooperation between the countries of the region today the usa even divide some countries into dangerous and non-reliable states which can’t be admitted into any international organizations, but in general these countries get refusal only because they don’t admit american leadership. big military operations in yugoslavia and iraq were not necessary to protect the us, but to benefit them in developing economy and getting new easily controlled territories. the us even decided to break the contract of anti-missile ballistic defence, and in december 2001 the american officials announced their withdrawal from the contract in order to build national anti-ballistic missile system. but what were the results of the self-centred policy of the united states? all the main interests, which were officially stated, turned out to be myths: promotion of state interests has replaced the ideals of democracy. all the efforts to settle quickly conflicts in europe and asia (israel, yugoslavia, afghanistan) were not very successful or even became the reason for civil wars and an escalation of local conflicts. the destruction of the world trade centre proved disability of any national defence to protect the state. i don’t think that any conclusions will be made from the results of the american foreign policy, and i’m sure that if the tendency of global hegemony is the main principal of the policy, there will be no foundation for real partnership between the usa and russia. microsoft word politikon our ed[1].doc 90 the 55th anniversary or who and how writes rights alexander bulychev∗ this year we are going to celebrate the 55th anniversary of the adoption of the universal declaration of human rights. however, what are human rights? the concept itself went through a long evolution before it was possible to list a set of rights on paper and proclaim a universal declaration. the idea of human rights developed with the development of the world and new epochs highlighted its new sides. when we think about human rights, we can clearly see three ‘generations’, two of which are included to the universal declaration of human rights. the first generation is political and civil rights (the right to life, liberty and security of an individual, the right to vote, the freedom of thought, protection against arbitrary arrest etc). these rights steadily developed during the xvii and xviii centuries. that time absolutism in some european countries managed to combat chaos of the late feudal era, however, at the same time, it managed to combat the common man and deprive him of almost all rights. people had no safeguards against arbitrary arrest, detention or exile, and the very idea of public accountability of the government seemed dangerous and dissident. the main aim of the concept of human rights was to protect subjects (that soon turned to citizens) against arbitrary rule. the english habeas corpus act of 1679, the american declaration of independence of 1776 and the constitution of 1787 and the french declaration of rights of man and citizen of 1789 are important landmarks of the process of struggle for civil and political rights. in 1789 the french declaration proclaimed four ‘natural and unallied rights’ – freedom, property, security and resistance ∗ alexander bulychev is a student at mgimo 91 against oppression. and during the next two centuries these rights were embedding to the constitutions all around the world. economic and social rights (the right to work, the right to equal pay for equal work, the right to rest and leisure, the right to education and the like) belong to the second generation. arbitrary rule was already more or less prevented, however, a lot of people failed to integrate to laissez-faire capitalism. pauperized masses were dangerous for political systems. what is more, the existence of millions of poor people undermined economic growth (mass consumption is impossible when so many people can not make both ends meet). so ideas of economic and social responsibilities of the state were advanced and developed. the russian revolution of 1917 and the great depression of 1929 legalized state intervention to economy and gave the government some social responsibilities. what is more, it became clear that human beings do not have only political, but economic and social rights as well. at the same time women fought for and by the end of world war ii in some countries managed to achieve equality in rights with men. as for the third generation, it only appeared in the 1960s, and thus was not included to the universal declaration. it was the time of national liberation, struggle against colonialism and first steps of newlyborn states on the international arena. this new set of rights is sometimes called ‘collective rights’. these are: the right to development, the right to disarmament, the right to healthy environment etc. there will probably be the 4th and the 5th generations but this does not undermine the importance of the universal declaration. it gives a firm basis for further development of the concept that is why there is more reason to dwell on this document at greater length. by the end of world war ii human rights were incorporated in many national constitutions, however the international law had no definition of human rights. the adoption of the un charter in 1945 necessitated the elaboration of some international document on human rights. the charter proclaimed in its first article the aim ‘to achieve international co-operation…in promoting and encouraging 92 respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion’. so in 1946 the un commission on human rights was created and tasked to work out an international document on human rights. historians agree that eleanor roosevelt was the key figure in the process of creating the universal declaration. president truman (her husband’s successor) appointed her to the commission and she was unanimously elected its first chairperson. she had plenty of difficulties trying to bridge the gap between two rival camps – the western world and the soviet bloc. meetings of the commission sometimes fended to turn to spirited discussions about what is more important, political rights or social security? mutual accusations of ‘suppression of genuine freedom’ on the one side and ‘neglect of economic rights’ on the other side hampered the work of the commission. however madam roosevelt was determined to ensure the adoption of the declaration by christmas 1948 and she pressed for it. finally, the document was elaborated. it consisted of 30 articles, on the 10th of december 1948 the general assembly of the united nations organization adopted the universal declaration of human rights. in 1948 the organization had 58 members of whom 48 voted in favour of the declaration, none voted against, 8 members abstained and 2 were absent. the soviet bloc abstained because of lack of economic and social rights in the declaration, saudi arabia considered it too prowestern and south africa, where apartheid had just started, objected to the spread of human rights to all races. the declaration gave birth to a great number of treaties and in 1988 it became an international treaty. today there are a few hundreds of international law acts that protect human rights. however, it is still very important to read and remember 30 articles of the first universal act on human rights – the universal declaration of human rights. it is a firm basis for the whole system of human rights. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 38 (september 2018) 64 book review the people vs. democracy: why our freedom is in danger and how to save it by yascha mounk. harvard university press, 2018, pp. 400. https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.38.4 david w. choi david w. choi, 27, from princeton, nj (usa), received his bachelor’s degree in “political science” and “middle eastern and islamic civilizations studies” at colgate university in 2013. in 2018, he obtained a master's in political science at the american university of cairo where he was in the comparative & middle east politics and society joint master’s program with the university of tübingen. he wrote his master’s thesis on elite consolidation during development and state building in gamal abdal nasser’s egypt and park chunghee’s korea. his interests include comparative politics, development studies, elite politics, nationalism, populism, the middle east and north africa, east asia, etc. e-mail: david.w.choi.91@gmail.com. keywords democracy; diversity; economy; liberalism; media; populism in the people vs. democracy: why our freedom is in danger and how to save it, yascha mounk claims that unless there are changes soon, liberal democracy as we know it may not survive much longer. mounk paints a bleak picture fitting of the alarmist title. he focuses on one particular phenomenon: the rise and consolidation of power of populist movements around the world. mounk states that populists are gaining in popularity in various places around the world, with some already ruling and consolidating their power. they are democratic as they are offering what the majority of the people demand though perhaps to the detriment of the rights of others. however, established elites would like to strengthen their position, often while being out of touch with the rest of the people. while fighting for the protection of rights, which allows them to solidify their position, they do not expect an expansion of democracy, which may lead them to lose their position. these phenomena are the results of mounk’s core claim (20): liberal democracy is deconsolidating into “illiberal democracy” and “undemocratic liberalism”. populism is democratic in that it is catering to the majority, but illiberal because it does not protect the rights of everyone. meanwhile, established elites are entrenching themselves to strengthen their positions. thus, they become more undemocratic as the gap between them and the rest of the population widens, but they desire their rights (and position) to be protected, so they defend liberalism. mounk argues that this de-consolidation is not surprising although most people assume democracy and liberalism naturally go together, there is nothing inherent about such a consolidation. https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.38.4 mailto:david.w.choi.91@gmail.com politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 38 (september 2018) 65 mounk discusses that while the strength and source of legitimacy of liberal democracy is its ability to honor freedom and equality at the same time, its dominance has not been because of this legitimacy. liberal democracy “can fulfill some of the deepest and most universal human aspirations” (130) but actually because “it has delivered such good results” (131), like keeping peace and increasing life standards. hence, as liberal democracies are no longer as adept at delivering for citizens, populist movements are exploiting the opening to dismantle key elements of the system (131). mounk examines the major causes of the de-consolidation of liberal democracy. he argues that there are three “scope conditions” of democracy, that is, three areas in which certain conditions brought about the stability of democracy in the past, but these conditions are no longer in place at present. firstly, it is the media, as social media “weakened traditional gatekeepers,” whereas before the dominance of mass media limited the distribution of extreme ideas. secondly, the economy, as in the past most people enjoyed a rapid increase in living standards, but many now fear that they will suffer greater hardship in the future. finally, nearly all stable democracies were monoethnic nations or had a dominant ethnic group but now this dominance is being challenged in many places (135). mounk argues that these three issues need to be quickly addressed for the survival of liberal democracy. he offers several solutions such as defending the rights of everyone in a country and advocating for keeping immigration open, but having control over borders (214); creating a “new sense of pride in a very different kind of mass employment,” so that liberal democracies “retain the ability to shape a future in which an openness to the world does not need to be synonymous with a loss of control” (235-36); and having civic education that features “both the real injustices and the great achievements of liberal democracy” (251). although the book spells out the problem of liberal democratic de-consolidation clearly and offers solutions, there are some areas where the book shows weaknesses and feels somewhat incomplete. among them is that its scope is largely limited to the western world, that is, north america and europe. perhaps the rise of populism can be seen as a largely western issue, but the few mentions of non-western nations (though usually only in passing) in the book implies that mounk believes the issue exists in non-western nations as well. however, there is little mention of such cases, and if they are mentioned, it is done imprecisely. for example, when borrowing the 201617 korean protests against the president as an anecdote, there are mis-spellings of names that could have easily been rectified through a simple internet search (185). this adds to the sense that cases outside of north america and europe are an afterthought. another issue is that it seems mounk’s remedies are somewhat limited. if the situation is as dire as mounk argued, this would require solutions beyond the status quo. as alarmist as the title of politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 38 (september 2018) 66 the book and the problem it spells out are, the suggested solutions are quite tame in comparison, perhaps even obvious. and they leave many questions. how do you get people fully on board with the idea of continuing to protect rights in the face of populist movements that say otherwise? how do you create this sense of pride of a different kind of employment? what does a civic education that features “both the real injustices and the great achievements of liberal democracy” even look like? these issues aside, if it is assumed that mounk’s book is only meant to raise these concerns and bring it to people’s attention in a comprehensive way, then it is timely and allows for further comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon and is a welcome addition to the discussion. however, there is still a sense of regret in the limited scope of the book and of what could have been. book review prima pagina1 andrea theocharis—— –university of marburg this year for the first time a delegation from marburg participated in nmun in new york, representing canada. 19 students (most of them are pol-sci students) prepared more than one year to improve their english, learn the rules of procedure, learn and research about the un and about canada and of course to find sponsors for the project. but actually, what they had to spent most of their time on, was dealing with teamwork. throughout the year the group had to handle with several inner conflicts and in endless discussions they had to practice their diplomatic capabilities in the forefront of the simulation. unfortunatly one can not say, that these “negotiations” were always as open, peaceful and successful as one wishes unnegotiations should have to be. but that’s just sad reality isn´t it? as canadian governor in the board of governors of the inter american development bank the simulation iadb – never heard about it? me neither, before i decided to bring the canadian perspective inside that body during the national model united nations this april in new york. the iadb is a multilateral development bank for latin america and the caribbean and has 47 member states. next to american states several european countries, israel and japan are among them. the issues discussed in the iadb during the simulation were: combating corruption in latin america and the caribbean and rehabilitation after natural disasters. but soon it was clear that real substantial discussions were not necessary. astonishing i recognized that many participants reduced negotiations on basic positions of their country. the session started with the opening of formal debate. during formal debate every governor had the possibility to be set on the speakers list and once being in front as the next speaker, stressing in a limited time ones interests and priorities on the topic. these speeches were often used for diplomatic flourish without much substantial content but nevertheless with passion. (e.g. “honourable governors, i (or the state of surinam) would (really) like to thank all of you for the amazing work you have done so far…) the more important and intensive discussions took place during suspensions of the meeting for the purpose of caucus. actually most of the time in session was spent in suspension of the meeting in new york in order to discuss more effective. immediately the countries built blocs during informal debate. while the latin american and the caribbean states met in the corner of the conference room to talk about their strategy, the european countries discussed in the hall. the usa, israel, japan and canada tried to negotiate with both blocs from the beginning on. the aim of the whole session was to formulate resolutions on the topic and get them passed in formal session. as in most committees, the canadian part was a kind of an open-minded mediator. but unfortunately in the beginning the participants formed quite exclusive blocs, so that the usa, japan and me as canada were not really able to talk to the member states, since the latin american bloc and the european bloc as well simply refused to talk to us. they wanted to clear their positions first to ensure a strong common sense among them. so spontaneously we (usa, japan and canada) went for a coffee in diplomatic style, doing small talk about cultural differences, reassuring us our mutual good relations and things like that, knowing that if the other states would want our support for their ideas they would have to talk to us anyway. after dropping some hints in this directions discussions were more open in the end. the draft resolutions were elaborated on the few laptops brought by some students. in fact this gave the owner of the laptop a little power and influence which was in my opinion not very good for the simulation process. during the drafting of resolutions everybody tried to bring his own interests into the text. if you weren´t loud enough or stood not near to the laptop owner you nearly had no chance. only when we reached the second topic on the last day of sessions someone had the idea of asking every nation about their perspectives and priorities on the topic x and continuing with formulating common points. but in the end both topics did not lead to extremely controversial discussions and we were able to elaborate and pass resolutions that also had the support of canada. july-august politikon the national model united nations claims to be the most realistic simulation of the united nations in the world. every year more than 2500 students participate in the nmun in new york, which partly takes place inside the original un buildings. for five days, the students simulate the different bodies of the un-framework (e.g. security council, general assembly, ecosoc) by using the original un-rules of procedure and negotiating to formulate and pass resolutions on various topics. surprisingly on the 3rd day of the conference two real representatives of the iadb joined our session and we had the possibility to ask questions whenever we wanted to during informal debate. the attendance of these “real iadb diplomats” was a great motivation and actually it had a very positive affect on the atmosphere of our negotiations. saving the world, manager qualities and the un a résumé acting as a diplomat, see how it is to represent the interests of a country, standing inside the un-headquarter in new york – on the whole great experiences for every participant. so long, and what else? what do i take with me after these five days with 2500 student “future leaders”, as we were called during the opening session? now, some days later i try to keep the overview – why else does it make sense to take part in nmun? for me personally the main gain was the realization that the “diplomatic parquet” will not be my carrier perspective. instead of representing, selling and carrying through (foreign)-interests as practiced in the model, i deem it more interesting to go into topics doing research. if nmun is was it claims to be, the most realistic model of the un in the world, then the task of diplomats is reduced to transmitting national interests, which most of the time pursue mere national profit. it appears to me as if for this position the basic presupposition is not necessarily and by all means the ability of independent critical thinking. not even extensive knowledge of the matter seems to be necessary. what is needed is what can be labelled as “manager qualities”: leader personality, rhetorical capacity, the ability to prevail and convincing appearance. all these qualities can be read every week in the newspapers if one looks at vacancies of business enterprises. but shouldn’t an organisation like the united nations also apply other standards? shouldn’t the “political world elite” that works together in the worlds biggest multinational organisation, at least officially pursuing to fight together for world peace, the realization of human rights and the reduction of the north-south differences as declared goals, differ from and stand out against the “worlds economical elite”, that simply pursues the maximum of profit for their own enterprises?! during the time of my experiences with un-models in marburg, hamburg and new york, unfortunately a discussion on the student level of this kind did not take place; nor there was an evaluation at the end. the idea of un-simulations is in my opinion nevertheless a good one, because one can learn much about history, functions and structure of the un as well as about the country one represents. hope remains that in reality everyday life passes less “profile neurotically” as seen on nmun level. but even more then before, i deem the un as an important and good element of international relations. what would happen, if this world forum would not exist? but it is no secret that it does not function really perfectly and just. that means the un needs to stay in a process, having the ability to change and to improve into a more democratic and just direction. this can only start with criticism of the status quo and through its actors on state level as well as on the personnel level. maybe i should keep my carrier perspective still open☺? july-august politikon un general assembly politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 2 volume 41: june 2019 issn 2414-6633 https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.41 editorial board editor-in-chief: max steuer (slovakia) deputy editor-in-chief: rafael plancarte (mexico) ana magdalena figueroa (brazil) justinas lingevičus (lithuania) stephanie mojica (usa) dana rice (australia) gergana tzvetkova (bulgaria) editorial assistants cláudia susana rodrigues de araújo (portugal) andressa liegi vieira costa (brazil) karla drpić (croatia) damla keşkekci (turkey) jesslene lee (singapore) emmanuelle rousseau (france) kamila suchomel (czech republic) bruna veríssimo (brazil) https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.41 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 3 table of contents editorial note ....................................................................................................................... 4 articles jordan peterson and the (f)law of ‘scientific inquiry:’ a critical evaluation of peterson’s use of science and philosophy in his conquest against social justice/david guignion .......................................................................................................... 7 people or preservation? how electoral accountability reduces human cost in south africa’s national parks/aj golio ..................................................................................... 24 rescuing rationality from the rationalists: for a neo-weberian understanding of rationality in critical terrorism studies/bernardino leon-reyes .................................... 43 research note downward mobility: when social lifts change direction /maxim chupilkin .......... 58 book review homo deus. a brief history of tomorrow by yuval n. harari / marzio di feo ............... 66 call for papers .................................................................................................................... 69 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 4 editorial note https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.41.0 this is the second regular issue of iapss politikon for 2019. as promised in the first one, we are pleased to report the results of the evaluation process for the first best article award, comprising the four issues published in 2018. congratulations to our authors (both from volume 39 of the journal) paola imperatore (university of pisa) and adil nussipov (central european university) who share this year’s award. we also express our sincere gratitude to all members of our evaluation committee, namely chair and honouree of this year’s award professor i̇lter turan (istanbul bilgi university, ipsa past president), senior members professor yuko kasuya (keio university, ipsa ec member and publications subcommittee chair), professor petri koikkalainen (university of lapland, ecpr ec member and training subcommittee chair), and junior member rafael plancarte-escobar (autonomous university of querétaro, deputy editor-in-chief of iapss politikon). the award committee concluded that both articles stood out equally for the innovative questions they raised as well as the methodological and theoretical coherence they displayed and decided that the award be divided between the two authors. the award committee also noted that, though employing different modes of analysis, both articles stood out for the sophisticated operationalization of variables and use of data followed by penetrating analysis. the articles represent notable contributions to their respective subfields of social movements and international organizations. while imperatore’s article contributes to understanding the frames and discursive strategies present in the protest campaigns against infrastructure projects in the case of italy, nussipov’s paper, employing a quantitative model, helps us understand why international organizations allow or deny access to transnational actors in their policymaking process. in the past months, the efforts to further improve the performance and outreach of iapss politikon led to the preparation of an annual report, covering the period from june 2018 to may 2019. one of the findings of this report is that the journal received1 90 submissions, with a desk-rejection rate of 63 percent and a rejection rate (including desk-rejections) of 71 percent. the acceptance rate (excluding articles withdrawn by authors at some stage of the review process) equals 19 percent. these basic statistics match the journal’s ambition to meet high standards of academic quality (hence the relatively low acceptance rate). at the same time, the higher desk-rejection rate mostly due to submissions not meeting the formal requirements and the authors not rectifying them as requested, but relatively low rate of rejections in the main review process indicate inclusivity of authors from 1 depending on the counting of the exact submission dates and other methodological details. https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.41.0 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 5 disadvantaged (educational, language, financial) backgrounds. in other words, authors who place considerable efforts into improving their manuscripts normally have a good chance of getting them accepted to the journal. last but not least, to the issue itself. in this one, all the publishing formats currently in place are represented (but we are working on extending these also based on the feedback and types of submissions received). there are three research papers. the issue begins with the contribution belonging to political theory by david guignion, which critically assesses some of the central theses of the well-known contemporary thinker jordan peterson. departing from the context of a particular piece of canadian legislation, guignion uses a number of primary writings and speeches of jordan peterson and juxtaposes them with the political thought of the philosophers jean baudrillard, hannah arendt, and friedrich nietzsche. the findings are an ambitious ‘counter-critique’ to peterson’s critique of the notion of science in contemporary society. next, aj golio’s article combines theory and empirics by identifying the ‘human costs’ that accompany the “fortress design” preservation policy of national parks which carries severe restrictions on land use including by local rural communities. while this model of conservation originates from the us, the author scrutinizes the case of south africa which has implemented it as well. the south african case, with its regime transition, enriches the understanding of how opening up this policy area to more public participation, in particular through electoral accountability, may help reduce its negative side effects on the communities that existentially depend on the land. the last research article shifts the balance back to a theoretical study revolving around the notions of rationality and rationalisation in critical terrorism studies. bernardino leon-reyes gains inspiration from the weberian conceptualization of rationality in studying how a critical take on terrorism seems to have missed the centrality of (a certain type of) rationality in the conduct of terrorist actions. breaking down this ‘objectified rationality’ into different subtypes creates room for empirical analyses of processes of rationalization of terrorist conduct as well as of the responses to it which may undermine the foundations of democratic regimes. the last part of the issue is devoted to a research note by maxim chupilkin who advocates a more intense focus on inequality in political economy. he argues for a bi-directional study of social mobility, looking at both those who achieved a better economic position than their predecessors and those whose position worsened (including individuals from wealthy family backgrounds who do not end up with as high earnings as expected). lastly, marzio di feo reviews the popular book by yuval harari homo deus, praising it for its holistic and interdisciplinary approach but also raising a note of caution in relation to the generally optimistic outlook of the author on the civilizational transition towards ‘an age of algorithms’. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 6 we invite you to engage with the papers from the present issue and look forward to presenting more original scholarship from junior researchers in the coming months. on behalf of the editorial board max steuer editor-in-chief references imperatore, paola (2018): ‘“not here nor elsewhere”: the local-global dialectic in locally unwanted land use (lulu) campaigns; the case of italy’, politikon: the iapss journal of political science 39: 36-63. doi: https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.39.2 nussipov, adil (2018): ‘international authority of international organizations and access provision for transnational actors’, politikon: the iapss journal of political science 39: 64-85. doi: https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.39.3 https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.39.2 https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.39.3 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 1 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 2 volume 39: december 2018 issn 2414-6633 https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.39 editorial board editor-in-chief: max steuer (slovakia) deputy editor-in-chief: rafael plancarte (mexico) ana magdalena figueroa (brazil) justinas lingevičus (lithuania) stephanie mojica (usa) gergana tzvetkova (bulgaria) editorial assistants cláudia susana rodrigues de araújo (portugal) jesslene lee (singapore) andressa liegi vieira costa (brazil) dana rice (australia) ngoc anh khoa doan (vietnam) emmanuelle rousseau (france) karla drpić (croatia) kamila suchomel (czech republic) damla keşkekci (turkey) bruna veríssimo (brazil) https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.39 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 3 table of contents editorial note ......................................................................................................................... 4 articles the role of foreign direct investment (fdi) in promoting access to clean water / jessica neafie .............................................................................................................................. 7 “not here nor elsewhere”: the local-global dialectic in locally unwanted land use (lulu) campaigns; the case of italy / paola imperatore ........................................ 36 international authority of international organizations and access provision for transnational actors / adil nussipov ........................................................................... 64 the impact of economic globalisation on the rise of nationalism: the case of western balkan countries / fiammetta colombo ........................................................... 86 call for papers ..................................................................................................................... 103 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 4 editorial note https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.39.0 this is the closing issue of iapss politikon for the 2018 calendar year. in the course of the last twelve months, the journal published four issues with 17 contributions altogether. each of them addresses a noteworthy segment of social reality, contributing to our understanding and interpretation of the world around us. each of them is a result of a detailed evaluation process. each of them shows the dedication of the authors to revise and improve their initial manuscripts, taking into consideration the comments from the editors, reviewers and editorial assistants. this commitment is crucial for the success of the submissions, as not one of these 17 contributions were deemed publishable straight away, in the form they had been received; at least minor revisions were necessary for each of them to be accepted in the end. the content of this collection varies thematically from political philosophy, through political communication and election studies to international relations and conflict studies—few conventional subfields of political science remain without representation. the same holds true for the methodologies and methods employed by the authors. this means that the journal has an added value to readers interested in a diverse selection of latest results of political science research and reflections. at the same time, the articles deserve attention within the specific research subfields they belong to. some of this year’s articles are particularly focused at providing new findings and perspectives to policymakers, such as international and european institutions or governments. others call for further attention (including academic research) of understudied problems. the editorial board hopes that they will generate a cross-cutting conversation, and invites proposals for structured responses to individual articles published in iapss politikon in the form of stand-alone research papers or research notes. next year our ambition is to uphold and further improve the publishing standards of the journal, which seem the more important in the current academic environment where poor scholarship can be published without material peer review, in exchange for high fees, in predatory journals. furthermore, with growing concern we witness attacks on the academia alongside the more general backlash against expertise (nichols, 2017). while this is nothing new ‘under the sun’, the attacks have reached unprecedented levels with the forcing out of the central european university from budapest, hungary. hungary is a member state of the european union that took pride in upholding standards of openness and academic excellence. hence the sheer fact that this could have happened may encourage further steps along similar lines by other non-democratic actors (for an academically https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.39.0 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 5 rigorous elaboration on these developments bárd, 2018; enyedi, 2018).1 critical discussions in academic journals such as iapss politikon as well as other platforms that stick to the standards of academic work play an important role in assessing current developments in a more in-depth fashion. we proceed by introducing the four research articles in this issue, starting with jessica neafie. her research puts forward a hypothesis that, contrary to conventional assumptions, foreign direct investment decreases access to clean water. she presents and statistically tests the validity of this hypothesis, as well as of several possible explanations of it. her findings contribute to the broader debate about the ways how potable water access can be increased. the issue continues with paola imperatore’s analysis, based on her paper presented at the iapss world congress 2018 in paris. she shows how the opposition movement towards locally unwanted land use (lulu) has emerged in italy, and how it functions. applying frame analysis to evaluate primary sources from a number of these oppositional movements, she discovers the pushback of infrastructure owners to these movements, and the subsequent ways of reacting to it. these ways indicate how a particular contentious issue may be generalized so that it speaks to general public concerns such as democracy, corruption, the application of public finances and social justice. the background of these discursive constructions point to the dialectic between the local and the global, exemplified in the iapss 2018 annual theme ‘diversity and globalization’ as well. thirdly, adil nussipov presents the revised and abridged version of his graduate thesis which argues that there is an inverse u-shaped relationship between the ‘international authority’ of international organizations and the levels of access these ios provide to transnational actors (such as international ngos or multinational companies). his article explains how organizations with medium authority provide the most access through a perspective of rationalist self-interest: it is these organizations that can gain most by allowing the participation of transnational actors in their decision-making processes. in the final article of this year, also based on a presentation at the iapss world congress 2018, fiammetta colombo explores the possible connections between several phenomena that are frequently associated with economic globalization (such as growing rates of inequality and unemployment rates), and the rise of nationalist political parties in the western balkans. while no causal relationship emerges, she shows how nationalism goes hand in hand with support of economic globalization in the majority of the nationalist parties of the region, and suggests avenues for further research based on this observation. 1 among the continuing sources of concern are the violations of academic freedom in turkey (özkirimli, 2017; öztürk, 2018) and the case of dismissal of a tenured faculty member on the basis of fabricated criminal charges in japan (kim, 2018). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 6 each issue of iapss politikon is a result of hundreds of hours of work of the authors, editors, reviewers and editorial assistants. as this is a non-profit publication available open access to all interested readers around the globe and considers high-quality evaluation (including peer review) process a core feature of its mission, this investment of time and effort is essential for its functioning. thus, this year has witnessed the largest growth in the number of editorial assistants (currently ten positions) and reviewers (currently over 130) in the journal’s history. the editorial board would like to thank each contributor for the time and expertise they invested in the management and publishing of the journal and looks forward to the continuation and development of this cooperation. here, special thanks go to the senior scholars who are members of our advisory committee. although the editor and editorial assistant positions might be limited, there is no limit to the number of authors submitting manuscripts for evaluation, and to reviewer applications. hence, please accept our invitation to consider your first or next active contribution in one of these forms in 2019, or contact us with your suggestions. max steuer editor-in-chief references bárd, petra (2018): ‘the rule of law and academic freedom or the lack of it in hungary’, european political science, online first: pp. 1-10. doi: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41304-018-0171-x enyedi, zsolt (2018): ‘democratic backsliding and academic freedom in hungary’, perspectives on politics 16(4): pp. 1067–74. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/s1537592718002165 kim, mikyoung (2018): ‘at the intersection of nationalism, incompetence and money: mikyoung kim versus hiroshima city university of japan’, european political science, online first: pp. 1-9. doi: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41304-018-0169-4 nichols, thomas m. (2017): the death of expertise: the campaign against established knowledge and why it matters. oxford: oxford university press. özkirimli, umut (2017): ‘how to liquidate a people? academic freedom in turkey and beyond’, globalizations 14(6): pp. 851–56. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2017.1325171 öztürk, ahmet erdi (2018): ‘lack of self-confidence of the authoritarian regimes and academic freedom: the case of i̇ştar gözaydın from turkey’, european political science, online first: pp. 110. doi: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41304-018-0170-y https://doi.org/10.1057/s41304-018-0171-x https://doi.org/10.1017/s1537592718002165 https://doi.org/10.1057/s41304-018-0169-4 https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2017.1325171 https://doi.org/10.1057/s41304-018-0170-y editorial note comparative perspective on women's representation in the executive and legislative powers in romania and croatia mongolian constitutionalism: traditions, features and today turtogtoh janar national university of mongolia ulaanbaatar, mongolia the mongols are the people that have established their own state since ancient times and who pacified the world during the certain time of history. as a result of developing traditions of the mongolian statehood, the constitution of mongolia was ratified on january 13, 1992 and 10 years passed since that time. the decade after the introduction of the democratic political system, has been the time to perceive the prospective development trends of constitutions, which regulate basic social relations according to the laws. the introductory part of the mongolian constitution, ratified in 1992, claims: ”to inherit the traditions of national statehood, history, and culture”. mongolia has over 2200 years of history. the first state on the territory of mongolia was the hunnu state which was established 209 ad. following nomads continued the tradition of the hunnu state and established their own united state in 1206. after the establishment, all states furnished their legal and political policy arrangements. this phenomenon was being revealed in every ancient state that emerged and developed on mongolian territory. chinggis khan’s powerful empire that covered the huge land from the baikal lake in the north to the great wall in the south and from the khingan mountains in the east to altai in the west, needed a unified legal system to strengthen the state and regulate various relations in society. the main primary law of the mongolian state was chinggis khan’s “great yasa”. many scientists and writers such as persian scientist makrizi, ibn-batuta of arabia, armenian historian v.vartang, the friar mahakia, iranian scientist rashid-al-din and famous travelers like plano carpini, wilhelm rubruk and marco polo, scientist ata malik juwaini, noted about chinggis khan’s great yasa and other teachings in their works. the main significance of the “great yasa” is that it systematized and developed into laws the best moral values of the mongols. american scientist george vernadsky argued that: the “great yasa” was the complete new constitution, based on laws and customs and containing all aspects such as state administration, military, civilians, punishment, trade and customs. the main idea of vernadsky’s conclusion seems to be significant in illuminating the fact that during the times of chinggis khan the mongols operated their political and social institutions through fundamental laws of state. after the “great yasa” the laws such as “yuan dynasty’s law”, “the history of ten white virtuous teachings”, “khutagtai prince’s laws”, “law documents of altan khan”, “noble documents of laws of khalkha’s”, “laws of mongol oirads”, “khalkha juram”(laws of khalkha’s), “law documents of mongolian state” regulated political and social relations of that certain period of time. it is obvious that the first controlling factor of the mongolian state structure was the “great yasa’s” social, political and legal principles, reflected in all the laws mentioned above. soon after gaining independence from the manchu-chin dynasty in 1911 and the coronation of bogd javzundamba, a large number of initiatives to produce legal acts along with a new constitution and to set up a parliament have been discussed. because, previously, the state was perceived trough the eyes of certain figure’s only, especially the khan’s, one major peculiarity of the traditional state at that time was the fact that the khan’s orders and unwritten laws were dominant. new political and legal regulations were established, for the first time, in written form. as a result of political reformations on the basis of the national democratic revolution victory in 1921 the first constitution was ratified by the first state great khural (the parliament) in 26 november 1924. in this way, the legal foundations of constitutional structure and political principles of constitutionalism were established and the process of forming a new state system and legacy developed on this basis. the second constitution of 1940, finished by the first stage of the people’s revolution, emphasized on the laws from the perspective of socialist ideology and values. the constitution of 1960 adopted socialist laws and included among its articles the confirmation of the achievements in building socialism, leaving out capitalism. analyses of the three laws presented above, show that all of them had to implement essential principles derived from the central socio-political goals of the certain period of time. nevertheless, all of these constitutions served to the socialist dogma neglecting the traditions of mongolian statehood and culture. in the end of 1989 and beginning of 1990, the former political system was replaced trough the democratic revolution and the era of development began. the mongolians’ national convictions revived, together with the motivations to keep and inherit their statehood traditions. it has become a historical revolution in the mongolian political history, the beginning of a new state system based on a democratic state-social structure. the amendment law to the constitution was ratified in may, 1990. this law accepted multi-party system and pluralism, and amended many provisions to the constitution of 1960 such as renewing main characteristics and activity principles of legislative and executive branches. the law of amendment mentioned as the traditional supreme authority, the people’s ikh khural, the newly re-structured parliament state baga khural and the head of state the presidential institution and their mutual correlation of power; it also gave priority to principles to separate the power equally and properly. moreover, the amendments above show the signs of the state’s transition period, until the ratification of the new constitution. the constitution of mongolia from the 13th of january 1992,s ratified to strengthen the new state democratic system and to provide a legal basis and guarantees to the country’s development, replaced the former structure and identified political and legal standards to establish the mongolian state’s social structure and democratic principles of constitutionalism. scientists and professionals such as state and party leaders, lawyers, economists, historians and linguists participated in the development of the new constitution project. moreover foreign representatives’ from the usa, australia, austria, germany, france, russian federation, poland and japan and expert opinions from international organizations such as international human rights committee, uno, international parliamentary committee and international advocacy organization were reflected. positive and negative sides of the constitutions of 1924, 1940, 1960 and trends of the 1990 law of amendment were taken into consideration. from this point the 1992-ratified mongolian constitution became modern and democratic, based on modern scientific achievements and reflecting recommendations of many professionals from various countries with long-term traditions of democracy. the new constitution of mongolia is very significant and specific in comparison with the laws and constitutional periods in the history of mongolia: 1. it replaced the totalitarian regime in mongolia, following the requirements and principles of international parliamentarism, transmitted into democratic and market relations. it also confirmed the aims to establish a “humane, civil and democratic society”. 2. it provided democratic state systems directed to the principles of power separation, and defined its organizations and regimes. 3. according to this constitution, the state shall be under the control of voters and respect national independence, security, solidarity and serve its citizens. the state itself, all citizens from ordinary people to the head of state, shall be equal under the laws. 4. the citizens are the center of the social policy; the development of each side is considered to be realization of humanity, thus confirming human rights and freedom. 5. it legally confirmed a position of mongolia in the international community, its open foreign policy’s goals and principles. references: avirmed e., dashtseden d., sovd g. (1997). mongol huuli (mongol laws). ulaanbaatar. britannica, encyclopedia 11th ed., vol. 7, genghis khan. encyclopedia britannica pub. co. constitution of mongolia. ulaanbaatar, 1992. ducat, c. r. and harold, chase (1992). modern constitutional law new york. gadjiyev, k.s. (1995). political science, moscow. lattimore, o. "chingis khan and the mongol conquests" in scientific american no. 209, august 1963 vernadsky, george (1994). the yasa of chingis khan: a code of honor, dignity and excellence. columbia university press. vernadsky, g. (1953). the mongols and russia. yale university press. vernadsky, g. (1938). "the scope and content of chingis khan's yasa." in harvard journal of asiatic studies, vol. 3. renchin, l. (1993). new constitution and power, ulaanbaatar. riazanovsky, v. (1965). fundamental principles of mongol law indiana university press, sovd, g. (1993). a newsletter “constitution of mongolia” ulaanbaatar. stephen, holmes (1997). comparative constitutional law. ceu. "the secret history of the mongols" translated by cleaves, f. w. 1982. harvard university press. trubetzkoy, n. s. (1991). the legacy of genghis khan michigan slavic publications, ann arbor. tsanjid, a. (1996). political science, ulaanbaatar. mongolian constitutionalism: traditions, features and today 4 mongolian constitutionalism: traditions, features and today turtogtoh janar references: e ethics and politics. antinomy, interdependence or imposed co-existence? by irina patrintas bibliography : c comparative perspective on women's representation in the executive and legislative powers in romania and croatia nadia-suzana seaptefrati general remarks concerning women's representation in the decision-making process the case of romania (1996-2000) the case of croatia in lieu of conclusion references on the discourse and propaganda of anti-terrorism by gal kirn introduction context and propaganda propagandistic techniques defining propaganda theory of ideology ideology and individual theory of institution phrases ideological message of war against terrorism conclusion literature: origins of terrorism gorazd gavrilov, references nationalistic tendency in communist camp: the cases of yugoslavia and romania badamdash dashdavaa introduction analysis of the nationalist tendency in the communist “world”: yugoslavia and romania yugoslavia romania conclusion references comparative perspective on women's representation in the executive and legislative powers in romania and croatia ethics and politics. antinomy, interdependence or imposed coexistence? by irina patrintas abstract this article is centered on the idea of “concentricity” regarding two fundamental concepts that seemed to have become indirect priorities both on the political and the philosophical stages, throughout the centuries: ethics and policy. the main dilemma is represented by an obvious discontinuity between moral principles, which were adopted and implied in the political area, and the way they are understood and respected by the individuals. is “ethics” an empirical construction, a real term that should be reported to the real existence, not just to the “noumena” universe or is it an utopia, a construct without any appliance in the reality? it cannot be denied that modern societies have tried to adopt these principles, but just from the theoretical point of view; unfortunately, the political field always comes into contradiction with the moral items, although justice and law are founded on ethics. consequently, a simple, superficial selection of the xxth century’s main violent events proves that no matter how we analyze these theoretical constructions, from a negative or a positive point of view, we develop different theories on major principles, that make the essence of both the political and the philosophical field: liberty, freedom, justice and equality. there also exists a striking discrepancy between the technological progress, which lately has reached incredible standards and levels, and the spontaneous evolution that should have been also requested in the individual’s inward structure, regarding consciousness and responsibility. the modern society confronts itself with another rhetorical question: what has happened to the authentic communication or has it ever existed in real terms? rawl’s theory of justice and the ethics of communication, in the manner j. habermas analyzed it, sustains the vital necessity of a minimal consensus among the members of any society. the article presents the hypotheses of this conceptual and empirical conflict. how to behave towards oneself and towards other individuals is a matter of making choices: whether to be friendly or unfriendly, whether to be generous or greedy. these and all other questions about how people act towards themselves and one another are dealt within a field of study called ethics. the major question is if this concept has ever been “alive” not only from the theoretical point of view, but also reporting it to the very pragmatic dimension of reality. in modern developed societies the systems of law and public justice are closely related to ethics in that they determine and enforce definite rights and duties. they also attempt to regress and punish deviations from these standards. most societies have set standards, whether by custom or by low, to enable those in a society to live together without undue disruption. it is possible for law to be neutral in moral issues or it can be used to enforce morality. the brought prologue to the united states constitution says that insuring domestic tranquility is an object of government. this statement is morally neutral. such laws as those passed to enforce civil rights, however, promote a moral as well as legal commitment. it is obvious that ethics should be primarily concerned with attempting to define what is good for the individual and for society, but it also tries to establish the nature of obligations or duties, that people owe themselves and each other. the first dilemma appears when the relativist doctrine imposes itself as being the most appropriate one in order to define the essence of what we call ethics. therefore, the relativists do not believe that there are self-evident moral principles that are true for everyone. they say that people’s moral judgements are determined by the customs and traditions of the society in which they live. these may have been handed down for centuries, but their age does not mean they are true standards. they are simply norms that a certain society has developed for itself. the end of the xxth century is incredibly favorable to a deep analysis and discussion upon the inward relation between ethics and politics. the events and the theories developed on this subject can be interpreted both from a negative∗ and a positive point of view, which had as a major effect a new attitude towards concepts like liberty, justice, equality. consequently, the western political philosophy has the tendency to perceive the truth of the being in the experience of war, the last one destroying the moral imperatives and justifying sacrifice. hence, emmanuel levinas proposes the eschatology of messianic peace, somehow related to the kantian model. if hegel points out the conflicts among liberties which establish the structure of those undeclared fights for the individuals and people’s legitimacy, levinas focuses on the priority and the anteriority of the ethic relation towards any sparkle of violence. thus, a new principle has appeared on the political and philosophical scenethe principle of alterity, which concentrates both on the other’s vulnerability and our responsibility for the relation we have with this alter, who is, actually, a metaphor for any other individual in this world we could possibly come into contact with. taking into account dostoievski’s statement: “we all are or we should be very responsible for every action, and i must be more responsible than all the others”, i dare say that it is essential that we should try to understand tolerance, freedom, peace and ∗ the totalitarian experience brought its contribution to the disparagement of the politic-alienation-critics, which would pretend that they established a limit between science and metaphysics while refusing the possibility of analyzing the rules of any action by reporting them to the essence of ethic values. morality trough our own methods of reporting to the others. therefore, tolerance and diplomacy cannot be reckoned as solutions to the social, political conflicts, unless we do not try to apply these “formulas” starting with every individual. in this case, isn’t it true that man should be given the chance to judge in the name of moral consciousness, the real and authentic history he belongs to, instead of choosing the anonymous history as the main criteria and dimension of his judgements? while concentrating on the problem of alterity, the modern individual denounces “the ethical void” of the traditional morality, which seems to be totally innocuous towards the unsolved problems put into discussion on account of the technical level and the individual’s capacity to manipulate his natural framework. the paradox is that this technological progress is not necessary followed by a spontaneous evolution or eruption in the individual’s inward structure, especially regarding his consciousness, the sense of responsibility. since the idea that democracy has turned into “a moral adventure” is considered to be characteristic to the modern society, this means that evil has entered into all social and political levels trough a very simple, ”childish”, still complex structure of relations the game. what is really frightening is that people have experienced the effect of the totalitarian systems, that proposed serious assurances as for them being guided by the laws of science: the historical materialism and the racialist theories, and this has happened under the sight of the democratic systems. the other is no longer seen as a subject, but as an isolated entity, while the lack of authentic communication becomes the only characteristic of the relations among individuals; all these generate conflicts at the beginning, only among certain members of a community, followed by contradictions appearing at a higher level, which involves all the members of the society. with the conflict reaching high proportions, it is possible that more societies could get involved. the major problem democracy must deal with is that it cannot put an end to the manipulation of violence (which is, actually, inherent to any policy) just by making use of the fragile resources the human ethics could represent. this is why kant’s and john rawls’ universal theories are reckoned to be so important, as they try to found the bases of all moral laws and principles, deriving from reason. the positive aspect of this fact is that every member of the social system could recognize, accept and respect these universal rules. in this way, democracy is not seen as a non-conflictual political regime, but as one structure with open, still negotiable conflicts, depending on the accepted rules. rawls’ theory of justice together with the theory regarding the ethics of communication, evoked by j. habermas, also sustain the vital necessity of a minimal consensus among the members of any society. but if these theories are not susceptible of being put into practice, what would happen to the political field? is politics, in this case, just a business of pure decision, a “struggle among powerful political forces”, after carl schmitt’s formula? therefore, the program paul ricoeur proposes in order to make politics and morality be co-existent is focused on the other’s understanding. one should totally assume the symbols of his autonomy and he also should let the others know that these symbols cannot be conceived and disenchanted beyond this dimension which belongs to the alter; thus, the transcendence from the community to the political level is fulfilled. political correctness has become an ideology showing sensitivity, tolerance and respect for every individual, especially if certain situations differ from one’s own, while rejecting prejudicial or stereotypical remarks directed against other people’s views. oponents fear that such conforming ideology threatens freedom of expression and anoints to political censorship. this inability to comprehend the world is compounded by individual’s incapacity to gain a thorough understanding of other people or even of themselves. and since politics has been partially and sometimes almost totally deprived of any moral principles, of any diplomatic strategies, there is a possibility for a terrorist association or movement to appear. every conflict and every violent form of expressing human potentials and interests has as a matrix the lack of respect and communication between one individual and another. for instance, in the late 1960’s, european cities were often the scene of terrorist attacks. among the most notorious events of the 1970’s and 1980’s were the attack in 1972 on israeli athletes in the olympic village in munich, west germany, by the palestinian organization, known as black september; the assassination in madrid in 1973 of spain’s premier luis carrerro blanco by basque militants, who demanded basque independence from spain and france; the kidnapping in rome and later the murder (in 1978) of italy’s five time’s reelected premier aldo maro, by the red brigades, the attempted assassination in 1981 of pope john ii in the vatican, by a member of the turkish nationalist, etc. terrorism, understood as the use of violence to achieve political goals, without taking into account moral concepts and believes, has long been an instrument of repression by governments as well as a tool of revolutionaries trying to overthrow government. political murder is as old as politics, but to understand modern terrorism, it is necessary to understand the political and social climate of the 1960’s. a generation had grown up with no memory of world war ii and in the united states, western europe and japan, with the majority of this generation still in college. in the us, social protest was a common result of the civil rights movement. college age young people became aware of many social and economic wrongs. after 1965, with the heavy american involvement in the vietnam war, they found a new reason for protest. what the younger generation wanted was to change everything all at once, and this yearning led eventually to the formation of small bonds of people devoted to change by violence. therefore, several organizations in many countries emerged almost simultaneously. the violent protest and the political inability helped spawn the international terrorist network in the democratic countries. subsequently, i do believe in the fact that its essential that people nowadays should reconsider kant’s political analysis, just to understand that, despite the historical flux, which is always involved in a complex process of changing, and although the social and political conditions are different, the conclusions kant drew in order to define the relation between policy and morality are still valid and full of authenticity. ’’any form of politics must submit itself to moral principles and values!” the main political believe that should be “somehow refreshed” in the contemporary politicians’ and all people’s mentality is that morality and politics must co-exist, as the real policy cannot impose and improve itself unless moral values are taken into account. morality and public justice must also be correlated, so to enable morality to shape politics. as the tension between morality and the public justice cannot be denied, they must remain connected but they’re also distinct. the use of teleology as a linking structure between the moral realm and the political, and juridical one is not something new as kant himself uses the ends for his work unification. the ends establish a strong relation among nature, human freedom and art, and the last three ones make the connection between the moral and the juridical one be stronger. as a conclusion, i dare say that in order to recognize and analyze an object, people should be able to prove its possibility as attested by experience, or a priori, by means of reason. this is the same process the individual should follow in order to determine any realistic relation or interdependence between morality and the political realm. this problem remains and this vicious circle is concealed by too much subjectivity. one zenith people should strive to attain in order to establish an order in their existence is to adopt a diplomatic attitude towards the others, to understand or, at least to pretend understanding them, to act in the name of the supreme principle of morality, because political rules can never guarantee a moral infrastructure, while the moral laws succeed in combining both the political and those priorities related to ethics. bibliography : hans-klaus keul, mircea flonta filosofia practica a lui kant; ed. polirom, iasi, 2000, page 270 jurgen habermas -knowledge and human interests; ed. beacon press, boston, 1993; translated by jeremy j. shapiro; page 357 ernest gellner conditiile libertatii.societatea civila si rivalii ei; ed. polirom, iasi, 1998; translated by andreea poruciuc; page 212 mongolian constitutionalism: traditions, features and today 4 mongolian constitutionalism: traditions, features and today turtogtoh janar references: e ethics and politics. antinomy, interdependence or imposed co-existence? by irina patrintas bibliography : c comparative perspective on women's representation in the executive and legislative powers in romania and croatia nadia-suzana seaptefrati general remarks concerning women's representation in the decision-making process the case of romania (1996-2000) the case of croatia in lieu of conclusion references on the discourse and propaganda of anti-terrorism by gal kirn introduction context and propaganda propagandistic techniques defining propaganda theory of ideology ideology and individual theory of institution phrases ideological message of war against terrorism conclusion literature: origins of terrorism gorazd gavrilov, references nationalistic tendency in communist camp: the cases of yugoslavia and romania badamdash dashdavaa introduction analysis of the nationalist tendency in the communist “world”: yugoslavia and romania yugoslavia romania conclusion references comparative perspective on women's representation in the executive and legislative powers in romania and croatia on the discourse and propaganda of anti-terrorism by gal kirn (faculty of social sciences, university of ljubljana, slovenia) “bullets and missiles are perceived as cool objects prompting the frequent reaction that the early stages of the war resembled an electronic game”. (falk, page 24, 1995) introduction the subject of my inquiry will be the public discourse on terrorism, which has explicitly unfolded since the “terrorist” attack on the world trade centre. in the first part i will focus on some propagandistic schemes that have become apparent in the last few months, then i will continue to analyse some theoretical concepts of the ideological matrix of anti-terrorism and terrorism, which leads me to a critique of war. this article is theoretically based on the legacy of louis althusser (his theory on ideology and its effects, as interpreted by rastko močnik) and some other contemporary thinkers like richard falk. context and propaganda to start with, the war of terrorism and counter-terrorism is a new war (kaldor, 1995), but also it has to be taken into account that it is happening inside the empire (negri and hardt, 2001), or to be precise on the borders of the empire whose power will expand after installing a new pro-american government. war is one of the constitutive elements of the current global (dis)order (negri and hardt, 2001). so, we are faced with the war for re-distribution of wealth and power between global elites, where one comes from the developed north and the other comes from the south. the image of the unreal hunt for osama bin laden is merely a disguise for strategic interests of the usa (control of central asia and oil pipes). but what is happening in front of our eyes? the public is exposed to the militant and one-sided messages from the north-based alliance (i.e. usa-led). in the centre of the message there is the old ideological pattern of division into self »good guys« and others – »bad guys« (see also s.žižek, z.kanduč both 2001). propagandistic techniques america' s propagandistic machines (like pentagon, and its media allies cnn and bbc, to name a few) are using various techniques to promote their ideology of antiterrorism and the inevitability of war. there were three direct and very recognisable propagandistic operations. the first one was breaking news live about america and americans under attack, so at the end of the day we all knew that america was going to retaliate. also, the news and accusations against potential culprits were so strong that the “criminals” simply deserved capital punishment and were not regarded as humans (one of the consequences is the way american authorities are treating prisoners from afghanistan in guantanamo bay). another technique is a reference to higher fairness regarding the whole nation, and more, leading the entire civilized world in the war against other. a typical example of “underground” (indirect) propaganda took place during the bombing of afghanistan (also described by r.močnik, 2001). all television stations were showing pictures from the global media giant cnn of pilots in technologically elaborated planes f-18 who flew from the aircraft carrier on the mission. the main problem of journalist report here is that we do not get the real picture. we do not get to know that these planes are killing people, not just military targets but also civilians. also, we did not see any refugees leaving their homes etc. we could associate this reports wit the old phenomenon of censorship, where american and later also british authorities hailed the media not to show much information (for example to show interview with the leader of al-qaeda), because osama bin laden could order other terrorist acts to be carried out. the only exception was the tv and radio station al-jazeera, situated in qatar. their journalists critically assessed taliban and american points of view, but the problem was they could not transmit the message to western media, since the white house accused them of laden's propaganda (one can find an interesting article about freedom of press regarding al-jazeera on the web site, michael moran, http:// www.msnbc.com/news/643471.asp?cp1=1 ). as a response to alternative voices from media and to the present geopolitical situation the pentagon launched the institutional apparatus of propaganda the office of strategic influence (for further details check the on-line article of the rightist newspaper new york times, dao and schmitt, 2002: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/19/international/19pent.html ). the primary role of the ideologically non-biased office will be the dissemination of “true” lies to foreign diplomats, again with the function to strengthen and exercise control on important global political issues and to set priorities in media agendas . defining propaganda the organized spread of ideas, in other words propaganda, can be seen in the omnipresent »criticism« of global terrorism, without any self-reflection on military actions taken in afghanistan. in the near future we can expect more “humanitarian http://www.msnbc.com/news/643471.asp?cp1=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/19/international/19pent.html interventions” and wars against global terrorism in the rest of the rogue states, which have to be subordinated to the global hegemonic (dis) order. as it has been implicitly suggested propaganda is intrinsically linked with strategic spread of ideology. let us explore some ways of defining ideology. we shall focus on some phrases of the most “prominent” politicians of the era. theory of ideology having described the “real” situation we can move to theoretical analysis of ideology. at first there is a crucial need to reconstruct the theory of ideology while limiting us just to simplistic views on false consciousnesses would not be theoretically productive. ideology and individual in althuserrian' s terms, discourse is ideology. we have different kinds of discourses, like political, media, economic, legal and others. for the inquiry presented here the focus will be on media and political discourse. as already mentioned in the text, the ideological matrix is quite simple: white and black. one of the well-known theses of louis althusser is: “ideology interpellates the individuals as subjects” (for detailed study on the theory of ideology see močnik, 1991, and also 1993). in the case of anti-terrorism ideology, its protagonists try to persuade or to hail individuals in the way that they are going to identify with and believe and that gives the crucial moral and political justification for future fair deeds in the name of democracy and liberty. so, ideology presents an imaginary relation between individual, or rather subject supposed to believe and his or her institutional practices – institutions . theory of institution an important dimension in understanding the theory of ideology is the theory of institution. as althusser says ideology has its own material existence, in sociological terms, it can be perceived as a social fact (durkheim). it exists as an institution; it establishes the structural relations between people. today, the anti-terrorist ideology has established the way people of the north think and also make sense of their social actions. people in these countries are feeling bound and uncritical to support the waging of war against all rogue states. also, the ideology of other is perpetuated by the prophesies of conservative thinker huntington' s “civilizational” conflict. to be sure this pattern is also used by the global terrorist elites that wish to appeal their people, so this process acts like a self-fulfilling prophecy – the circle is being closed. phrases after having constructed the conceptual apparatus we can analyse some phrases of the u.s. president bush and osama bin laden. right after the attack on wtc bush concluded his speech in the words: “we are going to get these folks”. with this sentence he already began the politics of revenge and made war legitimate in the eyes of most americans. they were perfectly “interpellated” in anti-terrorist ideology, of course with the help of some other already mentioned techniques. maybe revenge is one of the features of human being but it is certainly not legally permissible to attack other states. one of the greatest phrases that uniformed the worldview on terrorism is: an attack on the civilized world (for details go to: http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/terrornet/). it served the white house to build a coalition, to let the rest of the world identify according to the old saying that you are either with us or against us. of course most of people did not agree with the attack on wtc, so this could be easily used in the formation of anti-terrorist coalition and its discourse. on the mentioned web site an interesting phrase of osama bin laden can be found: “god has blessed a group of vanguard muslims, the forefront of islam, to destroy america” (page 20). bin laden tried to unify muslims and strong anti-american sentiment in arab countries, so he tried to establish (manipulate) an imaginary relation between all muslims. that is a social fact. here, he did not succeed. but this does not make him guilty of the attack on wtc and above all this gives no legitimate right to the usa to intervene in afghanistan (again check page 20.) ideological message of war against terrorism in the words of z.kanduč (2001): “the biggest danger of the civilised world is terrorism semantically and physically undefined, which can be located everywhere or nowhere…that recruits its members from the poor and fanaticised (islamic) masses of the third world”. so, be ready war against the undefined will be eternal! conclusion the world after 11.9 has not changed so drastically because some forms of repression and escalation of violence has been apparent at least from genova summit in july 2001 on. to be sure the day 11.9 acts like, in lacan's terms “tenant-lieu” that legitimizes future violence against “terrorists”. the matrix of anti-terrorism and terrorism has to be “overthrown”, theoretically and practically. we have to think about alternative discourse from inside, make more efforts and improve political imagination that could reach beyond the empire. but we have to be aware that this anti-terrorist ethos is overdetermined by the hegemonic ideology of neoliberalism. the empire, in other words the system of global capitalism is sewing up the holes, which are emerging everywhere. governments all across the world are shrinking places for manoeuvres for their people and reducing civil rights, which have been fought for over long time. one of the great dangers is well described in the work of richard falk. he argues that the north is dominating in all spheres of human society and “beaming its messages everywhere, but hearing few echoes… terrorism and religious extremism are the primary echoes that are heard … but widely shared forms of backlash are rarely reported” (page 13, 1995). one of the worst consequences of the terrorist attack and the escalation of the multidimensional war against it is the great shift of attention from the most important issues of humankind (in the words of falk: widely shared forms of backlash). these issues are famine, poverty, environmental decay, alienation and others. the war has to become outmoded and outlawed. it is a social institution, which can destroy but cannot create (falk, 1995). we have to build hope and build global transactional democratic forces that can bring some positive norms and values with the strong non-violent behaviour. this process is a gradual one, one of bitter fight, though representing the voices of the most vulnerable and marginalized of the world. i would like to conclude with chomsky' s statement in the interview (2001): “it is correct to say that this is a novel event in world history, not because of the scale of the atrocity -regrettably -but because of the target. how the west chooses to react is a matter of supreme importance. if the rich and powerful choose to keep to their traditions of hundreds of years and resort to extreme violence, they will contribute to the escalation of a cycle of violence, in a familiar dynamic, with long-term consequences that could be awesome. of course, that is by no means inevitable. an aroused public within the more free and democratic societies can direct policies towards a much more humane and honorable course«. literature: chomsky, noam, 1993, necessary illusions: thought control in democratic societies, pluto press, london. falk, richard, 1995, on humane governance: toward a new global politics, the pennsylvania state university press hardt, michael and negri, antonio, 2001, empire, harvard university press kaldor, mary, 1995, new and old wars: organized warfare in the global era, cambridge: polity kanduč, zoran, 2001, srhljiva ideološka sporočila vojne proti terorizmu medijska preža, volume summer/autumn, on-line article can be found on: http://mediawatch.ljudmila.org/ bilten/seznam/12/uvodnik/ močnik, rastko, 1991, from historical marxism to historical materialism: toward the theory of ideology, graduate faculty philosophy journal, vol.xiv/1, new school for social research; marxism and contemporary philosophy močnik, rastko, 1993, ideology and fantasy, zbornik the althusserian legacy, verso, london – new york močnik, rastko, 1999, 3 teorije: ideologija, nacija, institucija, založba *cf.: ljubljana močnik, rastko, 2001, posredna propaganda, medijska preža, vol. summer/autumn, online: http://mediawatch.ljudmila.org/bilten/seznam/12/september/ žižek, slavoj, 2001, welcome to the dessert of the real, commentary (also part of theoretical material for conference) slovene translation on page http://www.mladina.si:3000/tednik /200138/clanek/slavoj/ on-line sources: interviewing chomsky 2001, interviewers: (b92) svetlana vukovic and svetlana lukic on-line: http://www.zmag.org/terrorframe.htm us state department, 2001, the network of terrorism, october 11, on-line publication http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/terrornet/ michael moran, 2001, in defense of al-jazeera http://www.msnbc.com/news/643471.asp http://www.zmag.org/terrorframe.htm http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/terrornet/ http://www.msnbc.com/news/643471.asp james dao and eric schmitt, 2002, pentagon readies efforts to sway sentiment abroad, new york times, february 19, on-line: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/19/international/19pent.html http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/19/international/19pent.html mongolian constitutionalism: traditions, features and today 4 mongolian constitutionalism: traditions, features and today turtogtoh janar references: e ethics and politics. antinomy, interdependence or imposed co-existence? by irina patrintas bibliography : c comparative perspective on women's representation in the executive and legislative powers in romania and croatia nadia-suzana seaptefrati general remarks concerning women's representation in the decision-making process the case of romania (1996-2000) the case of croatia in lieu of conclusion references on the discourse and propaganda of anti-terrorism by gal kirn introduction context and propaganda propagandistic techniques defining propaganda theory of ideology ideology and individual theory of institution phrases ideological message of war against terrorism conclusion literature: origins of terrorism gorazd gavrilov, references nationalistic tendency in communist camp: the cases of yugoslavia and romania badamdash dashdavaa introduction analysis of the nationalist tendency in the communist “world”: yugoslavia and romania yugoslavia romania conclusion references untitled politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 the limits of kantianism towards a project of global justice daniel nunes pereira1, universidade federal fluminense, brazil abstract estern societies believe they can improve human settlements all around the world by universal standards of justice, concerning mainly the distribution of wealth and sound democratic institutions. such concern arises from the reflections regarding the hodiernal world condition, which is, at large, vile and unjust. these two ways of improving human condition have their mains ideas established on the work of immanuel kant. this paper intends, therefore, to understand and foresee the limits and boundaries of these ideas specifically on the contemporary world – plural, polysemic and filled with theoretical uncertainties. keywords: kant; global justice; cosmopolitanism; human rights; morality 1 daniel nunes pereira, 26, is m.a candidate in political science and l.l.m. candidate in sociology & jurisprudence, both at universidade federal fluminense (uff) in brazil. he received his bachelor in jurisprudence at universidade federal fluminense in 2010, and on the same year attended at cpe in european history at the universiteit utrecht (u.u.) in netherlands. his interests and fields of research include political theology, philosophy of law, political philosophy and psychoanalysis. email: danielnunes@id.uff.br. english revision: marcos ceia; email: marcos.e.teixeira@gmail.com w daniel nunes pereira the limits of kantianism 92 i rom the concern that the world at large is unjust arises the issue of global justice, i.e., the idea that we can improve society all around the world by universal standards of justice, concerning mainly the distribution of wealth and sound democratic institutions. through these two main concerns lie two fundamental ideas, namely, cosmopolitanism (all human ethnic groups belonging to a single community) and universal morality, i.e., immanuel kant’s theoretical constructs. though cosmopolitanism and universal morality roots until hierocles and the platonists, respectively, it was kant who gave it the consistence known today. the kantianism imbued in these two ideas is somewhat a response to hobbes’s claims about the relation between justice and sovereignty, since the later understands political legitimacy and the principles of justice on collective self-interest, rather than on any irreducibly moral premises. these two ideas, moral universalism and cosmopolitanism, can lead to dangerous pathways on the international community. since every man and woman belongs to this single global community that has its own portentous universal moral with standards of justice, this same community shall protect them by force, if necessary, through some of its countries. this scenario is not new, since the world has already testified kipling’s “white man’s burden” – in this bleak scenario kantianism reaches its limits: should this theoretical universal moral and shared citizenship overcome individuals and traditional and endangered cultures? the understanding of human rights through kantian “lenses” looking forward to a global justice challenges the tensions amongst increasing globalization, the socalled "clash of civilizations", the crisis of universalism, and the attempt to impose the cultures strengthened localisms. this study deals with these aporias of kantian thought through the following expediency: a) review of the origins and meanings of cosmopolitanism and moral universalism in kant b) comments on the possible subversions of kantian assumptions c) commencement of solutions to the problems raised from jürgen habermas thought. ii cosmopolitanism as a worldview is not something new. it probably emerged in ancient greece, around the fourth century b.c., alongside the conquests of alexander the great in the east. with these achievements, the greek citizen began to f politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 think beyond the horizons of the city-state. hellenism intellectually grew through contacts with other cultures and people, enhancing the ethos of citizen of the world (brock, brighouse, 2005: 3). philosophically, the stoics, v.g., were the forerunners of cosmopolitanism, since they thought that self-acceptance was the way to reach things such as family, homeland and the human race in general sense. (brock, brighouse, 2005: 4-8). however, cosmopolitanism understood as matter of jurisprudence (rechtslehre) is a kantian novelty. for kant, cosmopolitanism is not a philanthropy or a fanciful representation, but it is a necessary complement to the unwritten codes of civil law and international law to enable the realization of fundamental principles aimed at the ideal of perpetual peace. (kant, 2009: 12-66). with the apparent ending of the religious wars in europe, the peace of westphalia of 1648 consolidated the required frames for a european international law, no longer based on the two highest medieval authorities – pope and the emperor, but based on the sovereignty of states. therefore, it seemed to be the end of the medieval doctrine of just war (justum bellum), and sovereign states become the only ones in a position to declare the legality of the war, no longer needing the approval of a higher authority – non expectata auctoritate principis superioris (schmitt, 2006: 152-166). the absolute monarchs, towards the goal of maintaining internal control over its own territory, guaranteeing them the right of war and peace in international relations, included new terms inscript on the "state of nature" theory (hobbes, 2005), even in international affairs. with the transition from the middle ages to the renaissance, pacifism resurfaces among christian thinkers from the fourteenth century as, for example, the king of bohemia jiříz poděbrad consigning the congragatio concordiae (odložilik, 1965), and erasmus of rotterdam proposing his quaerela pacis (erasmus, 2004). at the mainstay of these ideas, kant underlies his conception of perpetual peace in determined conception of public law, that leads to some kind of cosmopolitical jurisprudence as its highest expression kantian philosophy is the maximum expression of the enlightenment, and as such, has a universal character. the starting point of his analysis does not differ substantially from other illuminists such as rousseau, montesquieu or hume. kant understands the relationship between the states as return to the “state of nature” in some extent, which is a state of conflict and injustice in which only states are subject of international relations and recognize no higher authority. that is, according to kant, daniel nunes pereira the limits of kantianism 94 the main cause of the existence of a permanent state of war between them. so, under kant’s ideas, the overcoming of the absolute sovereignty of states and the overcoming of war are processes that must go together. but the ultimate goal is to carry out a cosmopolitan project to all humankind and every individual, not restricted to europe or the so called respublica christiana. in contrast, the cosmopolitan conception considers that the primary interest of global justice is to ensure justice for individuals in the world as a whole. it assumes that all people, no matter where they are, have the right to equal care as citizens, and the purpose of justice is to ensure that global institutions and international relations are governed by the principle of individual equality. this means that global justice can not only be concerned with how states relate to each other, even if it is conditioned by the requirement that basic human rights must be domestically respected. under such cosmopolitan understanding, global justice would require, above all, that all societies should maintain and aid their domestic institutions and social policies that regard human dignity. in summary, the cosmopolitan approach to global justice regards a globalized liberal and egalitarian justice, and, to this point, one may assume some economic egalitarian commitments, then the same is true for global justice. but the political dimension of cosmopolitan justice is the focus here studied, and this concept of cosmopolitanism is based on kantian ideas of individual rights and international law (habermas, 1996: 20) thus, the cosmopolitan kantian jurisprudence is based on the fact that the earth has a finite, spherical surface, and therefore, humanity cannot spread to infinity, but is limited to live on this territory common to all mankind. although the definition given by kant of the earth as a terraqueous globe – a mathematiciangeographical setting – such definition is closed and limited to the natural conditions that make the possibility of interaction, however, composed towards some dynamicity. the world, of which kant speaks here, is man's place, one in which it carries out its activity. and man, as an inhabitant of the land, is naturally a traveler. thus, kant saw humanity as a genuine potential community for interaction – pacific, but not friendly. kant routed on some cosmopolitan law the possibility of mankind achieving the establishment of a perfect political organization. this particular cosmopolitanism depends on a specific notion of men and its telos. in this sense it is noticeable that the human being is differentiated in relation to politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 other entities for being understood as a "terminal end" (scopus) under the teleological order of the world. but what does it means being terminal end of creation? what qualifies man as such? according to kant, man, whilst existential category, needs no other purpose as a condition of its possibility. it is therefore an unconditioned being because it is not restricted simply to the cosmological or mechanical laws of cause and effect and do not serve (or should not serve) to the purposes of any other being. this independence on the chain of purposes is accredited by his supersensible capacity of freedom to volition and rationality. especially, in this morality lies the centrality of human as terminal end of creation, which is rooted in a triple existential capacity: a free, rational and moral entity. these three assumptions also form the basis of human dignity, so that the just man is worthy of being treated as an end in itself because it is essentially free, rational, and therefore autonomous. such dignity is deduced from a specific understanding about morality. this is the stance of the kantian metaethics system concerning a universal ethea, namely, universally applicable for all similarly situated individuals, regardless of race, culture, sex, religion, nationality, sexuality or any other distinguishing feature. of course, such a project is difficult in a pluralistic and mutable society. iii contemporaneously to kant the old iberian colonialism had already entered into crisis, but another form of geopolitical and ethnical exploitation emerged (cooper, 2005: 113) that accentuated during the so-called neo-colonialism, especially with the disputes that would later foment the great war. anyway, in both events of imperialist practice there was some discourse of "westernization" (stuchtey, 2011), then called “christianization of the barbarism” or later the "white man's burden." in such discourses were laying beliefs that a universal and eminently true, unfeigned and veritable ethnocentric morality should be taken and disciplined to other people (stuchtey, 2011), since they all belonged to the same great and ineffable godlike earthly project erected on eurocentrism it was therefore a kind of cosmopolitanism. but, in contrast, what is the humanistic foundation of kant's cosmopolitan thesis? it is truly based on the very idea of communitarian ownership of the surface of earth. originally under the ‘state of nature’, whilst physical possession (possessio phaenomenon), all individuals have the same rights on the ground. the earth is, daniel nunes pereira the limits of kantianism 96 in this sense, a universal good. the very “sphericity” of the earth, being itself circumscribed, constrains individuals and nations to not isolate themselves infinitely, contracting, however, some sort of relationship and, therefore, affect each other, what compels the creation of rules concerning the rights that should enables these volitions to coexist harmoniously. a central aspect of kant's cosmopolitan theory is the limitation of the concept “visitation rights” (besuchsrecht). this has significant implications when its understood as opposed to the ethnocentric practices of european colonialist nations contemporaries to kant. according to the author, these so-called "civilized" states were unfair and abusive because they took the simple right to visit the foreign land as a right of conquest and consecutively led all forms of oppression to colonized peoples. for kant, the european colonialists powers lived through a humbug, because on one hand they righteously follow their rites of worship and religious orthodoxy, but on the other, act on unfairly and vile ways towards its “colonized subjects”. however, the complaint and the combat against such injustices become plausible within the cosmopolitan speech, in the sense that a single violation of rights in one corner of the earth should be felt in every part of the world. it is in this sense that habermas points kant as one who anticipated the nowadays called world public opinion. (habermas, 2002: 197). kant himself, during his lifetime, criticized the subverted cosmopolitanism of the imperialist european nations, and there are interpreters of the philosopher of königsberg that update his critiques, bringing it to today's reality. western societies are structured upon capitalism and have been thriven in a multicultural context, composed of very different identities, under the ideological background of an alleged homogenization and universalization. the multiple cultures in those societies are part of a general culture where the logic of capital puts its manifestations in a network of mass production oriented towards endless consumption. there is a recrudescence of the interrelationships between individuals, understood as products and concomitantly producers of social reality, magnifying the individualistic organization and individualism. considered as an ideology and moral base structuring of capitalist society, individualism is under constant mutation, showing strong tendency to radicalization, amid an abundance of human resources which, strictly speaking, would be sufficient to provide human happiness. in this reality, there is a formalist abstraction of kantian theories, pursuant to currently invoking aristotelian conviction politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 that moral judgment is necessarily limited to certain socio-cultural contexts, leading to an alleged waiver of the needing for emancipatory potential of moral universalism, relinquishing to direct a scathing moral criticism towards unjust social structures. overcoming this problem of modern atomism using universalist ethics of good only hampers the first issue, since that would rely on precursors of moral universalism, id est, in a morality grounded in religious and cosmological weltanschauungen, even more difficult to reconcile alongside the hodiernal postmetaphysical thought than to the teleological worldview of aristotle (habermas, 1986: 125) cultural relativism had undeniable relevance towards raising questions about the alleged superiority of one race, or to question the basis on which rested the claims that classified people according to stages of development. however, the ideal of tolerance then fetched currently encounters a series of obstacles supplied by the design of the relativist position, which seeks to establish it negating the possibility of judgment on behaviors of different people around the globe. regarding the analysis of an alleged westernness of human rights standards, which would compromise with a european cultural tradition (perhaps understood as imperialist), it is argued that the category "western" is an abstract and fluid formulation, beneath it a pluralistic mosaic of various traditions, sometimes antagonistic, being displayed. it is considered that the possibility of incorporating the idea of hodiernal standards of human rights as a pathway to continue such tradition through a reinterpretation of the principle of human dignity, in order to avoid an imperialist imposition of any legal code. however, the possibility of any universal moral principle cannot be imposed in relation to specific cultural contexts of the world simply because any ethical discourse or universality principle will not be performed independently at any real discourse of praxis (habermas, 1986). the principle of universal morality and a pragmatic transcendental reasoning (derived from assumptions arisen from inevitable speeches of a specific reason) are not sufficient, however, to substantiate standards of legal and moral demeanors. the legitimacy of modern cosmopolitanism theory and its human rights laws must necessarily pass through complementarities between individualism and collectivism or communitarianism, processes that are no longer merely conflicting and, still, retain a tension and a complementariness essentials for the integration of morality in historical and social contexts enabling to join iura humana within culture and society, not as an outer daniel nunes pereira the limits of kantianism 98 levy, but as part of an institutionalized tidal process, complementing the many other collective processes of political nature. references brock gillian, brighouseharry. 2005. the political philosophy of cosmopolitanism. cambridge: cambridge university press. cooper, frederick, 2005. colonialism in question: theory, knowledge, history. oakland: university of california press. erasmus, desiderius. 2004. complaint of peace. new york: cosimo publishing. habermas, jürgen. 2002. a inclusão do outro estudos de teoria política. são paulo: edições loyola. habermas, jürgen. 1996. “kants idee des ewigen friedens – aus dem historischen abstand von zweihundert jahren“. in: lutz-bachmann, m., bohman, j. 1996. frieden durch recht. frankfurt: suhrkamp verlag. habermas, jürgen. 1986. “moralität und sittlichkeit. treffen hegels einwände gegen kant auch auf die diskursethik zu?” in: kuhlmann, wolfgang. 1986. moralität und sittlichkeit. das problem hegels und die diskursethik. frankfurt: suhrkamp verlag. hobbes, thomas. 2005. leviathan oder stoff, form und gewalt eines kirchlichen und staatlichen gemeinwesens. hambur: meiner verlag. kant immanuel. 2009. “perpetual peace, a philosophical sketch”. in. an answer to the question: what is enlightment? london: penguin books. odložilík, otakar. 1965. the hussite king. bohemia in european affairs 1440– 1471. new brunswick: rutgers university press. schmitt, carl. 2006. the nomos of the earth. new york. telos press publishing. stuchtey, benedikt. 2011. “colonialism and imperialism, 1450-1950”. in. european history online, mainz: institute of european history, 2011, retrieved: feb. 02, 2013. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0159-20101025319 http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0159-20101025319 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/european_history_online http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/institute_of_european_history untitled politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 73 responsibility to protect: what for?: r2p and the nonintervention in syria adelaida rivera, university of amsterdam, the netherlands abstract n march 17 th 2011, the united nations security council approved the resolution 1973 which authorized the use of force in libya in order to protect civilians from the attacks performed by the state armed forces. the military action by nato in libya has resulted in diverse and divided opinions. the recourse of responsibility to protect appeared later as a measure intended to be implemented in the ongoing conflict in syria, but after two failed resolutions, it became clear that some un security council members are not willing to repeat the libyan scenario. this text aims to examine some basic notions of the r2p concept, its application in libya and the implications of the results after the libyan case on its possible application in syria. should the discussed objectives behind the application of responsibility to protect in the libyan case and its results be determinant on the decision whether this doctrine can be applied in syria? is it possible that the mistakes committed in libya, the atrocities now experienced in syria and the non-response by the international community could mark the end of the whole concept of responsibility to protect? these questions are intended to be discussed in this paper. keywords: responsibility to protect, syria, libya, military intervention, sovereignty, use of force, civilian protection o adelaida rivera responsibility to protect: what for? 74 introduction esponsibility to protect was officially applied for the first time to establish a non-fly zone over libya. the recourse of responsibility to protect also appeared at the beginning of the conflict in syria, but soon became clear that there would be no repetition of the libyan scenario. this text aims to examine some basic notions of the concept, its application in libya and the implications of the results of the libyan case for the possible application in syria. in the first part of the paper, the concept of responsibility to protect will be presented. this document will first discuss the origins of r2p as a response to the failures of states and the international community to prevent mass human rights atrocities, as well as its subsequent development. its development will be examined with a specific case of study: libya, focusing on the criticisms that followed nato’s intervention. subsequently, a revision of the current situation in syria and the response by the international community will be presented. at this stage of the text, it will be possible to establish a comparison between the conditions in which the intervention in libya was executed so then there is some space for questioning whether the syrian crisis fulfills the same criteria. finally, this document aims to recognize the principles of r2p, the main characteristics of the libyan and the syrian crisis and the international reaction towards both situations under the concept of responsibility to protect. this paper is grounded on the idea that r2p has deviated its focus of protecting civilians when mass atrocities are being perpetrated. considering the difficulty in turning the doctrine from words to actions it is necessary to explore alternative forms to define in a more precise way the scope of the whole concept. despite the importance of its contributions in protecting civilians, the experiences of libya and syria could mark the end of responsibility to protect. the bases on which the decisions of intervening or not in each case were made are not clear. at the end of this document, the question on the practicality and applicability of the model of responsibility to protect will be opened. origins of r2p responsibility to protect was developed in the late 1990s in response to the failures of states and the international community to prevent mass human rights atrocities such as the experienced during the holocaust, and later on in cases like rwanda, srebrenica. by the failure of the international community to prevent such mass atrocities and after several attempts to outline a framework applicable when a state fails to protect individuals during internal armed conflict, the international commission on intervention and state sovereignty (iciss), composed by members of the un general assembly and initiated by lloyd axworthy, then-canadian minister of foreign affairs set and named the concept of responsibility to protect on 2011. the concept stressed on when and how international community should take action to prevent or stop grave human rights abuses committed against civilians by state. (van landingham, 2012; tarnogórski, 2012). the first major instance of security council practice under r2p’s third pillar was the march 2011, nato led, intervention to prevent atrocity crimes being committed by the government of libya against its own citizens. (williams et at, 2012, 12) r2p rests on three pillars; the first two referring to the responsibility of states and international community to protect the civilian population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, as well as from their incitement. states are responsible for protecting their own population, while the international community has the responsibility to assist a r politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 75 state to fulfill its duty. r2p is primarily about prevention, so that intervention is only required when the state fails to fulfill its responsibility to guarantee the safety of civilians among its territory. intervention must be considered as last resort responsibility to react-, followed by the mission to provide international assistance after the actions -responsibility to rebuild (bellamy, 2012; tarnogórski, 2012) r2p is based on the idea of respect of sovereignty of states and nonintervention in internal affairs. the idea of sovereignty, even though involves self determination and territorial integrity as the most important rights of a state, also implies the responsibility to protect civilians under its territory. the principle of nonintervention was fundamental for the creation of the un. however, according to the third pillar of r2p, the international community is responsible for taking action, when the state has failed to protect its population from one or more of the four crimes (bellamy, 2012). every state has the primary responsibility of protecting populations within its jurisdiction against acts of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. nevertheless, in the event of a failure on the part of the territorial state, when the state is unable or unwilling to stop these crimes, the international community has the responsibility to intervene. sovereignty entails responsibility, so that nonintervention depends on the territorial state fulfilling its duty to protect its population. (evans, 2012; omorgobe, 2012; pommier, 2011) r2p in libya the roots of the libyan crisis lie in the political upheavals associated with the ‘arab spring’ protests started in the early months of 2011. political protests demanding an end to muammar gaddafi’s rule began in the capital of tripoli and spread across the country, descending into a civil war and a humanitarian crisis. from february until august 2010 gaddafi forces arrested thousands of people across the country, including antigovernment protesters, suspected government critics, and people alleged to have provided information to international media and human rights organizations. (maluwa, pp. 200-232, cited by omorogbe, 2012). aware of the situation, the arab league took a strong position against the use of force by the gaddafi regime, suspended libya from the league and convened an extraordinary session calling on the security council to take the necessary measures to impose a no-fly zone, and to intervene to protect the population, while respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of neighboring states. “following extensive human rights abuses, and statements of intent to commit mass atrocities by muammar gaddafi, on february 26, 2011, the un security council passed resolution 197088 in an attempt to resolve the libya crisis peacefully. the resolution cited the libyan authorities’ responsibility to protect its population, further referring the libyan situation to the icc, imposing an arms embargo, travel ban, and asset freeze on a number of specified individuals” (williams et at, 2012, 12).on early march un security council authorized a no-fly zone over libya and air strikes to protect civilians, over which nato assumes command. finally, on 17th march 2011, the u.n. security council authorized military action in libya, stating that the point of the action was to protect the libyan people. nato's military intervention in libya was initiated under the principle that the world should not stand by while mass atrocities go on within a sovereign state. as a response to the widespread and systematic attacks by the regime of libyan president gaddafi against civilians, the united nations security council adopted resolutions 1970 and 1973 that called for an arms embargo and a no-fly zone. resolution 1973 also authorized member countries and regional organizations to take “all the necessary adelaida rivera responsibility to protect: what for? 76 measures” to protect civilians and population centers in the country from the threat of attack. the nato mission expanded over time beyond its mandate to give air support for anti-gaddafi forces. nato conducted a seven-month operation to protect civilians from the threat of attack in libya, launched thousands of air strikes on government targets during the conflict, some of which killed civilians. (bolopion, 2011; nato, 2010; hrw, 2012). on july 2011, the national transitional council (ntc), which describes itself as the only legitimate body representing the people of libya and the libyan state as the legitimate government of libya, was formally recognized as the main opposition group. later that year, in october, gaddafi was finally captured and killed. after declaring libya as officially "liberated" and announcing the upcoming elections, the security council ordered to end the international military action in libya. finally, the security council unanimously passed a resolution ending the un mandate allowing military intervention and terminating a no-fly zone over libya that had been imposed in march. r2p in syria starting on march 2011, the crisis in syria has transformed from remote peaceful protests into large-scale demonstrations, followed by the creation of the free syrian army by president bashar alassad’s regime. since then, the regime’s army has performed brutal attacks against the civilian population, from arrests of political activists to torture and killings on a massive scale. syria has denied that its government was committing such atrocities and justified its actions as a reaction to the attacks by the opposition forces. (drobolowska-polak, 2012; mohamed, 2012; gatlin, 2012). massive human rights violations have been and are still being committed. there have been many examples of peaceful, unarmed protesters being killed by the syrian government forces than in libya where armed rebels were engaging in revolt. however, responsibility to protect has not been contemplated. unlike in the libyan case, the proposed resolution concerning syria did not authorize any use of international force or sanctions. (hall findlay, 2011) on march 16, u.n. envoy, kofi annan, developed a six-point plan for peace in syria. president assad accepted the plan and assured that his regime would comply. nevertheless, government forces continued to murder demonstrators. on 4 february 2012, the un security council voted on a draft resolution, resulting on 13 votes in favor, and the veto of china and russia. on 19 july 2012, china and the russia used their veto again to block another resolution. this time, south africa and pakistan abstained, and stressed the importance of finding a peaceful settlement through dialogue as well as the importance of maintaining syrian territorial integrity. the failure to pass a resolution on syria was directly related to the actions of the nato intervention in libya. some scholars affirm in this regard that the disagreements within the security council could have a direct impact on the future of the responsibility to protect. (gatlin, 2012; koops, 2012) according to the explanations provided by china and russia, the two states that used their right to veto on the last two resolutions about the syrian case, the vetoes against a first draft security council resolution in early 2011 were not emitted because syria lacked any responsibility to protect its people but due to the resolution’s failure to hold opposition forces accountable. in the case of the second resolution in october 2011, their veto was due to the failure of the resolution to appropriately call on the opposition to disassociate with extremists, and because they –china and russia-, along with india, politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 77 brazil, and south africa, were concerned that the resolution was a pretext for armed intervention similar to what they believed occurred in libya. (van landingham, 2012) why libya and not syria? on one side, based on the concept of sovereignty as the most important right of a state, r2p stands on the principle stating that international community should not execute military interventions. “the syria crisis illustrates the extent to which the international community must exhaust its peaceful options before low intensity military options could be considered. in syria, the international community has tried multiple rounds of regional and unbrokered peace plans, and sanctions without success. in fact, the assad regime’s attacks on civilians have intensified, with the regime increasingly relying on heavy military weapons such as cluster bombs and helicopter gunships.” (williams et at, 2012, 20). military intervention is considered a measure of last resort and only used when every non-military option for the prevention or peaceful resolution of the crisis has been explored. r2p does not prescribe a particular course of action, nor aims at authorizing military intervention. instead, it makes emphasis on the responsibilities of sovereign states and commits them to take consecutive, steps to mitigate the risk of mass atrocities, based on existing legal obligations. (hall-finlay, 2011; tarnogórski, 2012) on the other side, it could also be argued that military intervention is justifiable and sometimes necessary as last resort to stop mass atrocities when the state is not able to do it by itself. according to claudia mcgoldrick (2011), special adviser to the international committee of the red cross presidency and journalist who worked in west africa, even though the use of force to protect civilians as a last resort is sometimes unavoidable, it might be perceived as a political construct aimed at weakening the notion of state sovereignty. additionally, the political, military, and humanitarian agendas of the key international players in the libyan case were difficult to read. it appeared that the military operations were aimed at supporting the forces assembled by the national transition council. the idea of the legitimacy of the use of force to ‘protect civilians’ had become unclear although “military intervention is an essential part of responsibility to protect, in the libyan case, the intervention was highly imperfect, placing the region’s long term stability in the hands of rebels and leading to an inconsistent protection of the civilian population” (pommier, 2012; bellamy, 2011, pg 269). it is argued by many scholars that nato’s operation in libya went far beyond its main objective of protecting civilians to become an intentional action against its regime (bolopion, 2012; welsh, 2011; hallfinlay, 2011; pommier, 2012). “un’s mandated measures restricted libyan state terror and tipped the balance of forces in favor of the rebel forces” (dunne & gifkins, 2011). the objective of the executed operations seemed more oriented towards the defeat of gaddafi’s regime by supporting the rebel forces. the operation in libya has introduced doubts, about the intentions of some international actors involved, about the validity of the principle of using force to protect civilians, and even about the validity of the idea that the world has a responsibility to protect citizens from their rulers. (pommier, 2011; bolopion, 2011) approved with ten votes in favor and five abstentions, it is clear that many countries were not sure or even opposed the security council's action in libya. abstentions during the security council vote indicated that some governments already had reservations about implementing the protection of civilians by force in libya, same sates that are now hesitant to support intervention in syria. the countries that opposed the security council's action, now believe the western operation has gone far beyond merely protecting libyans, and it is now widely seen as an action intended from adelaida rivera responsibility to protect: what for? 78 the start to get rid of the libyan ruler (pommier, 2011; bolopion, 2012). however, diverse scholars (hall finlay, 2011; dunne & gifkins, 2011) support the idea that the future of r2p should not be defined by the origins and effects of the operation in libya. the no-fly zone and other punitive sanctions were in place for five months before the gaddafi regime fell. it could be said then, that it is still too soon to make a definitive estimation on the r2p success. according to the statements presented below, such considerations about the objectives behind the libyan intervention and its final results should not be a determinant for the decision whether to take or not action in the syrian case. “the syria crisis highlights the current limitations of the r2p doctrine. despite r2p’s important contributions to the protection of populations over the past decade, the security council’s veto system can still create situations where states are permitted to commit mass atrocity crimes against their citizens. at present, r2p lacks a framework for the limited use of force when the security council fails to act. in its present formulation, therefore, r2p is missing a crucial component”. (williams et at, 2012, 2) as gatlin (2012) has stated, “the international community is doing little to contest the horrors in syria. if military intervention was warranted in libya, the united nations should not deny the same cause of action for syrian civilians, where the population is four times larger than that of libya and the circumstances are arguably worse”. further hesitation for military intervention under r2p is only leading to more syrian citizens causalities. conclusion it is argued by many scholars that the coalition’s objective during the intervention in libya was the collapse of the gaddafi regime, finally considering this objective as one of the necessary measures to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat. additionally, there has been an imbalance between the sides and the reported systematic attacks on unarmed civilians by government forces, leading to debate about the imperative of protecting civilians, initially primarily by means of the imposition of a no-fly zone aimed at preventing gaddafi’s air force from attacking civilians, but the hidden pretext was to stop his forces. (pommier, 2012; bolopion 2012; white, 2011) originally, responsibility to protect appears as a response to the unquestionable need to prevent mass crimes. however, the guidelines about how and when the operations by the international community should take place are very imprecise and there has not been an agreement on the situations in which the concept applies. it is known that the current situation in syria has lead to a large number of deaths at the hands of national authorities, a situation which, if not intervened on time, could lead to many other abuses by the local government. the question about whether or not the possibility of a military intervention in syria should be considered must be resolved based on the six criteria on military intervention, established by responsibility to protect, and not based on the past events experienced in libya. non-military options for the resolution of the crisis have been already explored. after several attempts of dialogue with the local government, syrian authorities keep denying the commission of any crimes against the civilian population and the country remains in conflict as the assad regime murders demonstrators and opposition. “when peaceful measures have been exhausted and the security council is deadlocked, r2p’s third pillar should allow politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 79 the use of only those low intensity military options, such as no-fly zones and humanitarian safe havens that are focused on protecting populations. this approach would advance r2p’s development by establishing specific criteria that allow for the limited use of force when the security council fails to act. in doing so, r2p will be able to fulfill its primary purpose of preventing mass atrocities within a sovereign state, thus preventing future tragedies similar to those that have been seen in bosnia, rwanda, darfur, and now syria.” (williams et. al, 2012 pg 1) even if the causes for interventions may be equally just, it is unavoidable that specific internal, external and regional conditions and configurations affect the likely success and overall justification of an intervention. a large scale loss of civilians’ lives is indeed one of the main issues of the syrian conflict, fact that makes of this case a just cause for military intervention according to responsibility to protect guidelines. even though, the security council is failing to act. as stated by gatlin (2012) the syrian crisis serves as the impetus for a new discussion on the legitimacy of military intervention under the concept of r2p. like the libyan crisis, more remarkable action to protect civilians is needed in syria. in conclusion, despite the importance the contributions that the concept of responsibility to protect has done to the prevention of mass atrocities and protection of civilians in conflict situations, the scope of the concept is still very questionable. however, the crisis of the concept of responsibility to protect is not a product of the outcomes of the libyan intervention. it has been syria the case that has placed the concept of r2p in crisis. the lack of military intervention in syria calls into question the mere existence of this doctrine. references bellamy, alex j. (2011) the responsibility to protect—five years on at ethics & international affairs, volume 24, issue 2, pages 143–169, summer 2010. bellamy, alex j. (2011) libya and the responsibility to protect: the exception and the norm at ethics & international affairs, 25, no. 3 pp.263-269. carnegie council for ethics in international affairs. bolopion, philippe (2011) after libya, the question: to protect or depose? los angeles times, 12th august 2011 available at http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/08/25/aft er-libya-question-protect-or-depose dobrowolska-polak, joanna (2012) nonlegitimized military intervention in syria a possible scenario in the coming months? at institute for western affairs poznań, bulletin no 100. dunne, t.and gifkins, j (2011) libya and the state of intervention. australian journal of international affairs vol. 65, no. 5, pp. 515_529 gatlin, husain a (2012) a problem of mixed motives: the responsibility to protect in syria student scholarship. paper 20. on http://erepository.law.shu.edu/student_sch olarship/20 glanville, luke (2012) the responsibility to protect beyond borders at human rights law review 12:1 oxford university press. hall-findlay, m. (2011) can r2p survive lybia and syria?, strategic studies working group papers, canadian defence & foreign affairs institute and canadian international council, available at http://www.opencanada.org/wpcontent/uploads/2011/11/sswg-papermartha-hall-findlay-november-2011.pdf human rights watch (2012) world report 2012. http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/08/25/after-libya-question-protect-or-depose http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/08/25/after-libya-question-protect-or-depose http://erepository.law.shu.edu/student_scholarship/20 http://erepository.law.shu.edu/student_scholarship/20 http://www.opencanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/sswg-paper-martha-hall-findlay-november-2011.pdf http://www.opencanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/sswg-paper-martha-hall-findlay-november-2011.pdf http://www.opencanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/sswg-paper-martha-hall-findlay-november-2011.pdf adelaida rivera responsibility to protect: what for? 80 inter-parliamentary union (2013) enforcing the responsibility to protect: the role of parliament in safeguarding civilians’ lives at report 128th assembly and related meetings quito (ecuador), first standing committee c-i/128/r peace and international security kirwan, stephen (2012) rethinking the norm of responsibility to protect: towards a better use of chapter vii? at social and political review, volume xxii, trinity college dublin pg 8797 koops, joachim a (2012) syria: a responsibility to protect? the ‘just case’ versus the ‘valid case’ at strategic snapshot no. 5. group on grand strategy. lee, shin-wha (2012) the responsibility to protect (r2p) from libya to north korea?at asia security initiative working paper. east asia institute, korea university mcgoldrick, claudia (2011) the future of humanitarian action: an icrc perspective. international review of the red cross, volume 93, number 884, pp965-991. mohamed, saira (2012) the u.n. security council and the crisis in syria at insigths, volume 16, issue 11. american society of international law. omorogbe, eki yemisi (2012) the african union, responsibility to protect and the libyan crisis. journal of conflict & security law vol. 16 issue 1 2011. p. 35-62 pommier, bruno (2011) the use of force to protect civilians and humanitarian action: the case of libya and beyond. international review of the red cross, 93, pp 1063-1083 tarnogórski, rafał (2012) libya and syria: responsibility to protect at a crossroads, pism strategic files, issue: 26 / 2012, on http://www.ceeol.com. van landigham, rachel (2012) politics or law? the dual nature of the responsibility to protect at denver journal of international law and policy, forthcoming weiss, thomas g. (2011) rtop alive and well after libya. ethics & international affairs 25, no. 3 welsh, jennifer (2011) civilian protection in libya: putting coercion and controversy back into rtop. ethics and international affairs: 1-8 white, nigel (2012) libya and lessons from iraq: international law and the use of force by the united kingdom at netherlands yearbook of international law i. f. dekker and e. hey (eds.), 42, chapter 9. stichting t.m.c. asser instituut, the hague. williams, paul r. ; ulbrick, j. trevor; worboys, jonathan (2012) preventing mass atrocity crimes: the responsibility to protect and the syria crisis at case western reserve journal of international law, forthcoming. american university, wcl research paper no. 2012-45 http://www.ceeol.com/ prima pagina1 andrea theocharis -university of marburg marcus graetsch -university of warwick abstract we all study political science, but what do we actually do here anyway? this essay expresses our thoughts about our subject. the everyday life in university doesn’t seem to give enough space for questioning what is this all about? maybe a debate on that issue does not exist extensively because of fears of the loss of entitlement. the aim of this essay is to support the heightening of student’s awareness about the status quo of research and teaching in political science as we can judge it from our modest experiences. trying to get to the basis of such a problem is not easy. the things here written are surely not the state of the art, but they could shine a better light on the problem what had been called the 'politics of political science' in an earlier internet discussion on the iapsswebsite. this paper should be understood as a start for a discussion, where we all can express our surely different experiences and ideas. since we have often been told to be one of the elites of tomorrow or even “future leaders” (e.g. on iapss –conferences in oslo and debrecen, on nmun in new york), our selfreflection is directed at our possible future responsibility. a survey of our national association for political science students showed that many students entering the university pursue a career in the media business. for them, the reason to study political science is to become a journalist. many other polsci-students want to work in international organisations. both ideas can be linked to something like having an influence on the public or even having a leadership function in a contemporary society, with a growing awareness of the international sphere. the word “globalisation”, whatever the differences of its definitions may be, puts the development in a nutshell. so we asked ourselves: what do we actually learn? and what does it may cause? for whom and how do we act, through learning specific ideas and later promoting them, may it as journalists who contribute to spread ideas or may it as bureaucrats who negotiate, govern or manage parts of public life? let the ideas flourish it is obvious that we learn from our social environment and especially from the scientific community of political science of today, of which we are already a part. hence one has to keep in mind that this learning has an influence on political behavior. according to peter l.berger and thomas luckmann most people develop views and ideas which reflect closely the social and political circumstances that surround them. this 'sociology of knowledge' causes us to believe certain things and even convinces us that those things are objectively true (berger/luckmann, 1967, esp. pp.1-19). since we are concerned about the contemporary situation of our planet and being aware of our future responsibility, it seems quite important to us to look at the current situation of political science in our universities and as far as we can value it also outside. to bring the spotlight towards the right direction we could ask 'how is the situation of political science' but we believe that doesn’t go into it deep enough. inspired by the claim of the international relations critical theorist robert w. cox 'theory is always for someone and for some purpose' (cox et.al., 1996 [1981], p. 87) we asked us: for whom is political science? since the goal of every science is to produce knowledge and knowledge means power, we asked ourselves july-august politikon luiss university, rome endnotes: * the power/ knowledge distinction is elaborated in michel foucaults 'truth and power', in: michel foucault, 'power/knowledge', 1980, new york and london, pp. 109-133 concerning political science: for whom is this power? * according to habermas, research in science is of all kind always related to a specific interest. different interests are possible. habermas distinguished between a technicalinstrumental interest on learning, which enables humans to extend control over nature. secondly a moral-practical interest through which humans learn how to achieve more consensual social relations. thirdly an emancipatory interest which should lead to identification and eradication of unnecessary confinements and constrains (see ashley, 1981, p. 233-234). out of these interests deriving, through research of scholars, theories. contemporary political science research and teaching can be characterised by the dominance of positivistic approaches. positivistic means, by doing research where there is a belief in the unity of science, i.e. were the same methodologies apply in both the scientific and nonscientific world. these methodologies were used by newton for the natural sciences and introduced by comte and others to social sciences. the belief is that there is a possible distinction between facts and values, with facts being neutral between different theories. it also assumed that the social world, like the natural one, has regularities, and that these can be 'discovered' by our theories in much the same way as scientist do by looking for regularities in nature. another assumption is that the way to determine the truth of statements is able by appealing to these neutral facts. as political science students we are confronted often with this approach circumscribed with the term empirical analysis. because of the dominance of positivistic theories that favor empirical-analytical research often every other approach is seen as unscientific. in habermas distinction these empirical-analytical approach has an interest to control nature, or for political scientist more relevant society. related to our question for whom political science is the answer gives a heavy weight on this group of people who want to control society. important to mention is that the question of what is the common good for the society stands in the background, if it is not fully neglected. once upon a time political science asked for “good government” but more and more the question transformed into that of “effective government”. and we as students, we get “hammered-in” all these methods how to control society effectively. how to measure income inequality, what effects does inequality have? use of mathematical methods here and there and you became an expert. use the gini coefficient, make a regression analysis, do clustering. sort humans and their behavior into numbers and try to understand reality trough these mathematical methods. and if you understand how to change income inequality then you can give a policy expert tip towards your government or whatever. you can tell them which screw they have to turn and how much to give the lower quintile (another nice word which separated humans from each other) exactly that income they need to keep them in silent. it is all about how do we achieve this and how do we achieve that. we do not take our time and the departments of today lesser focus to set up lectures, which are concerned with the question why are we doing all this? why do “big questions” – ethical or morally formulations of questions have less and less space in the political science community? recently in the american political science association there started a revolt. mr. perestroika and other were not satisfied with the democratic situation in the association. one has to melt this away on ones tongue, the association of a subject which is strongly related to democracy in a country which is called to be the most democratic in the world, this association has a lack in democracy. one could think that this is a nice cartoon or comedy story, but it is real: “the association never entertained the wildly radical notion of conducting internal elections. what rules is a cozy arrangement whereby a committee chosen by the president nominates its successor members who picks the next governing council who pick the next president, and so on.” (jacobsen, 2001). are all these ‘experts’ of democracy not able to live it through their own association? or is that on purpose? what seems clear is that in the open society the association of a subject, which is concerned with exactly this society, is closed. anyway the furthermore interesting thing is that under the “governments” of this association the main journal, the widely read and heavy important american political science review, is suspiciously biased with articles which use the rational choice theory as starting point of research. “rational choice theory derives from neoclassical economics, which ambitious political scientists notice grabs lots of nobel prizes. the theory deploys a set of assumptions about behavior that boil down complicated lives and societies to prioritized "rational" choices in any given situation. in short, political science is sancti july-august politikon endnotes: * the ‘post-autistic economics network’ website: http://www.paecon.net/ ** see werner onken’s short paper: ‘a market economy without capitalism’ for an introduction to gesell ideas: http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~roehrigw/onken/engl.htm fying a chalkboard universe inhabited by "homo economicus," which, in the name of utility maximization, tries to erase all trace of culture, history, personality or any quirky quality that might smudge the one size fits all model.” (jacobson, 2001). basically one could say we leave the social out of our science. humans become a heartless, computer-like rational decision-maker. how could one expect to reach a “good society” in a world, which is full of such zombies? the hope here is that the struggle of the perestroika movement themes to take fruits. but the awareness of such a problem cannot be overemphasized. if we as students are not aware that these humanly constructed regimes of truth is nothing more than a construction, one runs in danger to take science of that way for granted. follow your rational choice leader, do as he/she does and everything is fine could led to a regime of truth which has totalitarian aspects. social science should and must live through pluralism. and any teacher of those subjects should be aware of his/ her responsibility. they should not drop, systematically or not, other ideas of how to understand the world under the table. students should have the offer of diverse ideas; they should make their own judgements of which theoretical approach serves my interest and which not. if a single department or even a single teacher does not take this into account than the danger is there that students, through the mechanisms of the sociology of knowledge stated above, adapt to uncritical ideas which ‘govern the universe’. the political science students association could take the post-autistic student movement in france and elsewhere as a good example for fighting against the dictatorship of reason reflected through mathematical oversimplifications **. but we not only should be concerned about those number games; also the underestimation of other research ideas should bother us. critical theoretical and all the post-modern ideas like for example post-structuralism, feminism have their right to become taught to us. we are the people who should decide what we want to use and what not. every other teaching methods is undemocratic in the end. something to hide? although power is a main subject in the field of pol-sci, it seems to us that today power is analyzed insufficiently. important structures of power are maybe intentionally or unintentionally not taken into consideration of political science analyses. structures of power have an influence on every dimension of human relations but the majority of political science analyses are state–centered. what about for example psychological ties that have a determining influence on all social relations? since “soul economy” can be influenced by every political and economical development, political psychology needs to be an integral part of research and curriculum in order to understand political events. the situation described above, repressing some ideas, is also heavily related to power. specific ideas could lead through practice to specific power relationships. regimes of truth decide what is right or wrong, they could lead to the fact that for example a dictatorship is taking for granted within a society because, the members of the society do not have the other ideas, which dismisses dictatorship. what has this to do with political science? surely the impact of ideology is and was of concern in political science research. but one could say that contemporary student at universities simply do not learn enough of that impact. let’s take for example the political field of economic policy. is not this field related to specific economical ideas of key thinkers in economy? a political decision-maker is guided exactly towards those ideas which decision they should make to achieve this or that result. but if one looks at contemporary teaching of those economic ideas one could think their seems to be only one idea and that it is true. nearly every economic first year textbook seems really to promote only specific ideas. but not all which became developed throughout economic research. you find for example nearly nowhere the ideas of silvio gesell who developed ideas of a ‘free economy’ which is a critical examination of the monetary system*. even more and more the ideas of marx went into the trashbin. but should a textbook which is used in so called ‘open societies’ simply underestimate even any idea, although there is no proof that everything of those ideas are wrong? and what exactly should that mean for the power relations if the future decision-makers simple only reflect and use what they got taught at the university? how open are those societies really? and in whose interest could this happen? another example of underestimated power relations is also related to the production of ideas. gabriel a. almond is well known to nearly every third year political science student. his and co-authors sidney verbas, ‘civic culture’ is quite popular. the research findings are chewed through in the early years of studying political science. their methods became state of the art. but the knowledge july-august politikon which has been produced in the name of “objective” science, which is concerned only to elaborate the truth and nothing but the truth, is under suspicion to serve in the first place the national security agency and/or the government. ‘his scholarship tracked us foreign policy concerns, and it was part of a broader cold war cultural formation. 'political culture', thus, was not pure of the politics of national security.’ (oren, 2000, p. 543) one could ask, what about all the fuzz? well it is not the problem that it is a work for and maybe indirectly by the national security agency which is of concern, but more that it is not explicitly said that it is. a student and a scholar could make other judgements about research, if it is clear in whose interest it is made. simple hiding it seems unscientific. surely stating it does not necessarily lead to solve all those problems, for example we do not get the information which research is not made after the rejection of funding or whatever. why do for example the american political scientists do not cover the important problem of racism in their country seriously enough? * or why is the process of german unification nearly uncovered as if it is not of importance? where is the action? john f. kennedy once said that he runs for president because there is where the action is. with action he surely meant power. so the political science community research a lot about the american presidency. the impact of parties, trade unions, business unions, social movements, think tanks, foreign governments and so on are all elaborated. but do we really take everything into consideration? what is the real impact of the several ‘discussion councils’ for foreign policy making like the council on foreign relations in the united states the royal institute of international affairs in the united kingdom or the german society for foreign policy? what is the effect of the meetings in the mont pelerini society and the bilderberg group? do they drink tea and play golf and have only chitchat about the world like any group of political science students in pubs? or do they make politics there, is there the action? if those things aren’t covered by anybody within the scientific community and only by a bunch of extremists in the outside than this is questionable. helo, helo is there a world out there? one of the main characteristics of pol-sci is that a quite little of its output reaches the public. is the public really not interested in the results or can we find the reasons inside the working method of the scientific community? if that is so, what leads to the building of the so-called “ivory tower” where the knowledge power is isolated? in 1968 the otto-suhr-department of political science of the free university in berlin agreed on new statutes, which stated: “the department – examines in research and teaching the shaping and structure of public life under empirical-analytical and normative aspects with a variety of scientific methods; because of that, it elaborates conditions for the broadening of freedom and selfdetermination in all areas of society.” this can be labeled as a democratization agreement. in reality, democracy has always been a subject of political science that has mainly been defended; but quite seldom it has been seen as a goal that still has to be reached and really worked on in the western world. but let’s get back to the “ivory tower”. somehow scientists tend to create their own language, their political science jargon, which ensures them to appear scientific. this leads to exclusion and at least in germany to the “worship of the incomprehensible”. in the end, scientists write for scientists only and then science degenerates into an end in itself. lets take for example what an editor of the political quarterly tony wrigth wrote about bad language: “here is one example, typically of many others, from a political scientists: ‘it is possible to offer a discussion of the ‘pacific asian model’ in terms which gesture to an idealtypical political-economic configuration, related to socialinstitutional structures, and associated cultural forms.’ is anybody supposed to read this kind of stuff? academics are writing more and more about less and less, and in a mutilated language that cuts them off from the public arena. is it because they really have nothing to say, or because – even if they had – they have forgotten how to say it?” (wright, 2001). the task of an emancipatory science can not be limited to university. if the democratizationtask of our subject is taken serious, political science needs to have broader demands to itself. the political scientist harald may once said: “parliamentarianism without feedback in society is oligarchy.” what about science then? one can then say: science without feedback in society is oligarchy of knowledge. but the use of language is also in other ways important. in social sciences we very often make definitions of specific concepts. the purpose to do this is to make things easier instead of saying for example “a person who is en rolled in a university for eductaion” someone says just “student”. if someone would talk about these unwashed july-august politikon endnotes: * thank mr. ido oren for that tip persons then the word ‘student’ simply replaces the whole fragment. concepts we often use in political science are for example ‘leadership’, ‘authority’, ‘sovereignty’, ‘power’ and so on. many of these concepts are well known in the public opinion but others are not. who knows what a concordance democracy is, or even a consensus democracy? but the main problem is if we take concepts just for granted, without taking them under critical investigation. take for example the concept of the gross domestic product, what does this number really measure? we use it to talk about the wealth of nations, how it develops, in what conditions the economy is and so on? but do we also relate it to the whole society of that country? we compare the gdp numbers of different countries, but do both numbers really are came in the same way about? aren’t their different national techniques to count them? and if so is that still comparable? it is said that gdp reflects the wealth of a nation state. wealth has to do with well being; therefore it is said that gdp reflects the well being of … yeah the well being of what exactly? the economy, the whole society or what? if you drove with a car on the pedestrian walk and causes that one human has to sit in future in a wheel chair, that will increase the gdp. but did you really increase the well being than? what is with the well being of the person in the wheelchair? does that life not count more than the production of a wheelchair, the repair service for the car and so on? the same with ecological problems, if you produce whatever in a factory which pollutes whatever does that really contribute to the well being of the society if humans became ill because of that pollution? it should be made clear that this is not against any kind of measurements, but we should be aware that we know what we exactly know what has been measured if we use numbers of any authority. the way those numbers came about should be as transparent as possible in every situation. it is simply unjust if governmental administration changes for example the way the unemployment rate is set up from on legislature towards another. if that happens society could think well done party y you decreased unemployment, whereas the real unemployment is the same ore even more, but now people who are in a specific education program, but waiting for a job, simply do not count anymore. and not only society is taken for a ride by administration, scientists often enough also are. although measurements change over the years they seem to be used unreflective too often in comparison studies. for what purpose should research be then, just to give a bunch of paper which could legitimize this or that policy? in the last years the debate about the aim of pol-sci focused on the idea of politics consulting/ management. the idea is not to inform the public but to inform, support or help specialists. which is in general not a bad idea. there is of course the danger of mutual abuse. anyway, why isn’t there the same demand to inform, support or help society to really live their democracy? isn’t it a fact that people live in democracy but the vast majority doesn’t really know how it works? it almost seems to be mainly a “spectator-democracy”. conclusion “power is if you can convince others of your definition of truth” (john r. saul) the way of teaching as we have experienced it so far suffers from a lack of creativity and does rarely encourage independent thinking. since the scientific community also underlies structures of power, a danger of having an atmosphere of a “ruling” method or a “ruling” theory is given also in our university life. of course dominating theories oppress other knowledge or theories. that means for us as a first step, as students to think about the possibility of searching for and using different literature than the one proposed by our professors. unfortunately, this is by no means a matter of course. and this can by any case only be the start of trying to study and act more conscious. looking at all the different problems listed above, one can sum up, that the prevailing political science as we describe it, can be suspected of disguising certain coherence and subliminal legitimising the status quo in a general way. it also runs the risk of getting totalitarian if we as student’s do not get aware of our possibilities to bring pluralism back to our subject. not sure of really having reached the bottom of all the questions we had, we conclude with a last statement. we have the possibility to broaden our demands to political science and can decide about the way we research, write and speak as far as we start thinking about it. what does that mean? you do not have to study many years first, to be able to judge certain developments in our scientific community, you can do this right now. and we hope that many of you share your experiences and thoughts with us in future discussions about political science as our sphere of influence. july-august politikon literature: -albrecht, ulrich; altvater, elmar.; krippendorff, ekkehart (hrsg.): was heißt und zu welchem ende betreiben wir politikwissenschaft? opladen 1989 -ashley, r.k., 1981, "political realism and human interest", in international studies quarterly, vol. 25, p. -berger, peter l., luckmann, thomas, 'the social construction of reality: a treatise in the sociology of knowledge', 1967, garden citry, n.y. -cox; robert w. 'social forces, states, and world orders: international relations theory', in: cox, robert w., sinclair, t., 'approaches to world order', 1996 [1981], cambridge -foucault, michel, 'power/knowledge', 1980, new york and london -horkeimer, max, adorno, theodor w. , 'dialektik der aufklärung', 1947, amsterdam -jacobsen, kurt, ‚revolt in political science‘, in: post-autistic newsletter no. 6, http://groups.google.com/groups? -may, h.: zusammenhänge zwischen innerer demokratie und äußerem frieden. aachen 1984 -oren, ido, 'is culture independent of national security ? how america's national security concerns shaped 'political culture' research', in: european journal of international relations, vol. 6, no. 1, pp.543-573 -popper, karl r., 'logik der forschung', 1976, tübingen -saul, john r.: the unconscious civilization. concord 1995 -wright, tony, ‘bad language’, in: the guardian, 6.april 2001 untitled politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 15 rituals in conflict resolution: a helpful tool or a new turn? anna bilous1, university of kent, uk, jagiellonian university, poland abstract hile the essay will be mostly concentrated on the role of rituals in resolution of conflicts and promoting negotiations and the impact ritual theory can have on conflict resolution as a discipline, it will also try to address these general questions on substantial issues of conflict resolution development. the essay defends that the study of rituals can substantially deepen the understanding of conflict and conflict resolution in world politics. therefore, the paper argues that the body of ritual helps to uncover practical ways of tackling the contradiction between universalism and relativism in conflict settlement/transformation. as a unique tool of social order restoration, ritual studies open a new perspective on conflict resolution and, in accordance with a deep conviction of an author? which one?, give an opportunity to address the critic posed towards conflict resolution as a discipline. 1 anna bilous, 24, is a graduate who has recently obtained an ma in european governance at the university of kent and the jagiellonian university. she has previously received her bachelor and master in "political science" at the kyiv national taras shevchenko university in 2009 and 2011 respectively. anna’s latest master thesis was dedicated to the problem of accountability in democracy promotion in third countries and currently interns at camfed. her interests include democratic transition, development studies, conflict resolution and political philosophy. w anna bilous rituals in conflict resolution 16 relevant debates on conflict resolutions eated debates on contemporary conflict resolution2 as a discipline are connected with tensions between conflict settlement and conflict transformation, communitarian and universalistic ideas as well as the ones between cultural relativism and human universalism (ramsbotham, woodhouse, miall, 2011). in this respect, the main problem lies in ontological and epistemological roots of conflict resolution. as polly walker puts it: “the discipline of conflict resolution perpetuates ontological violence, the suppression and silencing of indigenous ways of conceptualizing and experiencing the world.” (2004) the issue of interpreting conflict resolution as a westerncentred discipline is still a highly controversial topic. from one perspective, a human nature can be considered as universal in its predisposition to conflict and in its need to have a certain level of safety, so that it is understandable why there should be some common mechanisms for achieving the progress towards the establishment of peaceful and safe life-world in different societies. at the same time, another approach to this issue considers that conflict resolution covers wide range of conflicts worldwide and addresses conflicts to promote peace working within remarkable number of cultural settings. obviously, an involvement into various cultural situations provokes changes and developments in conflict resolution, so that it is hardly possible to agree the discipline is entirely 2 being aware about the debates surrounding the concept of ‘conflict resolution’, here and after in the paper the notions ‘conflict transformation’, ‘conflict settlement’ and ‘conflict resolution’ are predominantly used interchangeably. western-minded. understanding this problem the author brings attention to the fact that the main matter in here is that conflict resolution is developed within western schools of social sciences and is based on the practice of international institutions built by western countries. this leads to a situation when conflicts are intentionally or subconsciously handled in the way that should be understandable for western system of power relations and structures. at the same time, western countries do what they can do – the actions they undertake represent the logic that lies upon western model(s) of states, institutions as well as traditions of resolving conflicts. after briefly outlining the differences between western and non-western perceptions of conflict resolution it is important to mention few points. as abunimer puts it, the western model of conflict resolution is characterised by a direct method of interaction and communication focused on tangible interests (1996: page). even thought conflict resolution as a field of activity and a discipline was modified after the condemnations in simplifying conflict resolution to certain steps and measures, in western approaches the generic belief in rationalised practises is still quite remarkable. at the same time, in other cultural settings conflict can be seen not from a perspective of the utilitarian need to solve it, but as a constant change of social order, as a natural phenomenon that exists as a part of just order, as a performance, etc. threfore, the main idea of the article in itself is a proposition to approach contradictions between western and nonwestern perceptions of conflict resolution from the perspective of ritual theory. the h politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 17 rationale that lies behind it is that it helps both (1) to illustrate alternative approaches to conflict resolution and (2) to show how understanding of rituals in terms of conflict resolution can help to integrate different views on conflict and conflict resolution. ritual studies as a way to address problem in modern social sciences, definitions of ritual are so diverse that there is hardly a way to summarise all the approaches. this created a situation when contemporary researchers simply resign from the idea of catching the essence of ritual (bell 2009, 138-169; huesken and neubert 2011). in frames of the essay, the main attention is dedicated to functionalists and structuralists approach towards rituals avoiding the implications made by scholars of cambridge myth and ritual school in order to generalise the developments of ritual theory that are applicable in field of conflict resolution. it is worth noting that the concept of ritual itself appeared in social sciences in the end of the xix century, even though its etymology has a long history and is derived from latin “ritus”. adopting a functionalists perspective on ritual emile durkheim in his elementary forms of religious life pointed out integrative characteristics of rituals such as an ability to bring people together, to remind them of their commonality and their past, to give them a feeling of belonging to the society and to discipline them. for durkheim, rituals constitute a cognitive means of interpreting the social world, rendering it intelligible by organizing people's knowledge of the past and present and their capacity to imagine the future. arnold van gennep, in his work rites of passagesees, rituals as practices symbolize the change of different periods in personal or social life (life-crisis rituals) (2004). among the biggest developments of van gennep's theory is the outline of ritual process' stages according to which ritual phases include separation, transition and incorporation (van gennep, 2004, 11). an anthropologist victor turner develops on this creating a comprehensive structuralist perspective on rituals (1969). in his early works he describes how rituals create structure and antistructure through separation, liminality, and reincorporation (idem: 94-131) while later he emphasises the dynamic dimension of ritual telling that it is “a world in becoming, not a world in being” (turner, 1974, 24). a communicative approach in the ritual theory applied by clifford geertz presents ritual as a special language which creates its own symbols and helps communities to communicate empowering their own cultural codes (2000). such an interpretation of ritual broadens our perception of intercultural communication and ways to bring up compromise in conflict situations. while rituals definitely play an integrative role in the society, as it was shown by researchers mentioned above, they also may provide an arena for conflicting groups to consolidate against others. peter winn makes an important point in this respect: the impact of ritual, according to winn, depends on the definition of the ritual action itself and not on the intensions of participants (1996, 552-553). this makes ritualistic practices safer because of their traditional roots. indeed, ritual prescribes participants certain roles and prescribes their behaviours. in this sense, ritual creates a dramatic performance the outcome of which is presupposed from the beginning. using the words of peter winn, ritual is “characterised by standardized, repetitive interpersonal symbolic actions patterned according to social customs, which involve anna bilous rituals in conflict resolution 18 constant form over time, and which influence or orient human affairs” (winn, 1996, 553). while such perspective on rituals gives us a clear basis for distinguishing rituals from other actions in terms of conflict, it also creates an unwarranted impression that ritual is doomed to success. the later supposition is supported by one more group of ritual theorists. if previously mentioned researchers of ritual interpret this phenomena taking into account its meaningful nature, frist staal in rules without meaning. ritual, mantras and the human sciences points out that the main characteristic of rituals is that it has “no meaning, goal or aim” (staal, 1993, 131). this researcher considers that rituals are connected with symbolic value in western writings just because western thought comes from christian tradition of understanding sacred ritual as a symbolic act. as a consequence of such state of things meaning? becomes a substitute for religion. “in ritual activity, the activity itself is all that counts,” mentions the author (staal, 1993, 133). staal derives these conclusions from his assumption that the result of the ritual is well known even before the start of the ritual. in practice, when used in conflict resolution, rituals prove the opposite as it is argued by the scientists researching on the grassroots functioning of ritual in conflict. stemming from field studies in conflict zones provided by sharon lang, carolyn nordstrom, doronpely, lisa schirch and other scholars, it becomes evident that ritual gives certain frames to resolve conflict on different stages. ritualistic practises address different types of conflicts and they can be involved on the stage of negotiations, as well as after the visible conflict is over. nevertheless, rituals only frame people’s behaviours and emotions reflecting beliefs and structures functioning in the society. it does not guarantee that after its empowerment conflict will be resolved, but it empowers traditional methods to bring people together and create a new social reality. taking into account previously mentioned influence of rituals on conflict resolution, the need for rituals in this field is related to the fact it is seen by conflict parties as a natural way to solve problems, so that it gives additional legitimacy to new developments on the way to ascertainable peace. the framework given by the ritual is not rationally built, but culturally inherited and this creates its own variations on the way to re-establishing social order. after the outline of theoretical basis of the study of rituals the article resorts to practical examples that were traced in the field of conflict resolution. it is important to note that in current publications discovering the role of ritual in conflicts there is a tendency to see rituals as appropriate tools for reconciliation of conflict after the stage of negotiations is over and the war itself is already solved. while such approach gives an opportunity to see a clear application of the theory of ritual developed by structuralist turner, most probably the most popular theory among scholars in the field, it does not cover the whole variety of rituals' application conflict resolution. ???article proposes to illustrate the role of ritual in conflict resolution with two examples – the case of mozambique cleansing rituals and the palestinian negotiations ritual (sulha). – the abstract doesn’t make any reference to the case studies. in the abstract or in the introduction, you should explain better your argument and how you develop it. mozambique: healing the wounds of war. in her book another kind of war story carolyn politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 19 nordstrom uncovers anthropological dimensions of war telling about ways how people deal with conflicts in mozambique and how normal life is brought to people's interactions after the war period has ended (nordstrom, 1997). the case of mozambique can be seen as an appropriate illustration to victor turner's theory of ritual. rituals give mozambican people an opportunity to create a separate reality which goes far beyond material concerns of everyday life. according to the belief of tribes living on territories of mozambique, spirits of the dead live together with the community, so that they can help and influence lives of people. this creates a situation when after years and years of war when soldiers return home it is supposed they are highly dangerous for the family as they carry the responsibility for actions undertaken during war period. it is thought that spirits of killed people can damage ex-soldiers lives as well as lives of their family members. however this can seem ridiculous for western people, it is hard not to trace an objective side of such concerns: in western societies the aftermath of war is also a problem for soldiers involved in armed actions and it creates wellknown pressures on ex-soldiers so that it makes cases of successful return to their “normal” life without additional therapy is almost impossible. while in western societies the reaction towards such situation is to go to the specialist and to talk about problems trying to overcome them through reflection, in other traditions there is a communal approach towards salvation of this problem. in mozambique, they refer to traditional ritual where person is healed by special procedures made by a spirit medium or by the oldest and the most respected family member. this person usually gives to the ex-soldier some tea made of special herbs and washes away his guilt in a river (davidheiser, 2006). only after the ritual is over, ex-soldier can return to the family and communicate with other people without any danger. unmaking violence, according to carolyn nordstrom, is “not a citizen's option, but a social obligation” (nordstrom,1998, 116). such rituals propose an alternative framework to oppose the violence with the usage of collective knowledge and traditions (nordstrom & martin, 1992). such practices correspond to the structure of the society and help people to overcome the conflict because they are integrated to the people’s worldview. palestine: establishing negotiations. informal negotiations in the middle east tradition of conflict resolution called sulha provide factual support to the communicative theory of ritual. sulha is used for settlement of different levels and types of conflicts creating basic preconditions for negotiations on a wide variety of issues. the main function of this ritual is to bring conflicting parties together through a set of actions taking a communal approach linking psychological and political dimensions of conflict resolution (pely, 2008). however, the process of sulha seems to be a simplified model of behaviour which gives parties preprepared roles, in fact it is much more complicated. the success of the ritual is not guaranteed by the start of the negotiations. the first step is made when the sulha committee composed of respected men among the community-members. the second step includes a set of actions which each party has to perform in order to start sulha process. practically, it resembles a theatre where parties are forced to start moving towards a compromise by traditions. after this phase of sulha is over, the sulha committee during disputes discusses what additional mechanisms should be used to anna bilous rituals in conflict resolution 20 keep the safety during the ritual process. after that the main negotiations are carried within the committee which cooperates with all parties of the conflict and finally has to decide on a decision that has to be imposed. parties do respect the decision of the sulha committee and follow it because, in case they do not, they will loose respect towards them within the community. sulha ritual proves that, carefully used, rituals can allow to restore honour and dignity of parties participating in conflict while provoking reconciliation in the wider community (gellman &vuinovich, 2008). if to compare, the main difference between indigenous ritual practices in conflict resolution and western models of negotiations is that, in case of rituals, the whole procedure corresponds to the structure of the society and answers more complex set of relations between parties. western models of negotiations, on the contrary, are aimed to give set ‘roles’ to all the parties of the conflict adopting a generalised scheme of conflict resolution on each particular case without taking into account cultural differences. the main conclusion from both examples of ritual application in conflict resolution mentioned can be that culture is crucial for renewing mutual understanding, and ensuring the basic human right to dignity in and after conflicts. this implies that potentially ritual can become an efficient component of conflict resolution executed by third parties. implications for conflict resolution the question addressed by the essay is how ritual theory can change conflict resolution giving a comprehensive reply to critics posed by main philosophical schools, namely critical theory (michel foucault, jurgen habermas, mandy turner) and poststructural theory (mark hoffman, oliver richmond) (ramsbotham, woodhouse, miall 2011, 35-62, 396-413). western ontology and epistemology are different from non-western and there is no need for conflict resolution to search for the way out of this situation by finding common values and building unified ontological and epistemological frame that would allow different cultural practices to be employed. to a certain extent, this question was arisen by carolyn nordstrom: “talking about creativity and imagination is not easy within the confines of western epistemology. … the actual processes of the creation of self and world are poorly understood” (nordstrom 1998, 110). the key solution can be to broaden the frames of conflict resolution as a discipline and to enrich it with analysis of practices used for the settlement of conflicts in different historical periods applied in various civilisations. there is a huge entirety of knowledge about conflict resolution in this perspective that is currently used only within other disciplines. the author argues that there is a rationale standing behind a creation of a special research field focusing on this sort of questions within conflict resolution as a discipline. as illustrated by the ritual theory, there is a need to study phenomena existing in conflict resolution in different countries, nations, ethnic groups, etc. which are mainly approached by researchers from other disciplines within conflict resolution. currently, conflict resolution is lacking systemic (re)examination of knowledge existing in other sciences from the perspective of its applicability in contemporary theory and practice of politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 21 conflict resolution. as it was traced on the example of ritual theory, studies of rituals are not represented in conflict resolution on a sufficient level. practically, the massive knowledge gathered by theorists of ritual is not integrated into conflict resolution. this results in a lack of comprehensive theory of conflict resolution which would address critique in searching for 'universal panaceas' or 'universalising assumptions'. conclusions the article explored the main theories of rituals in their connection to the conflict resolution. discovering the applicability of those theories, the article provided examples of rituals' usage in world politics. the conclusions drawn from this have provided the evidence that rituals should be seen by theorists and practitioners of conflict resolution not only as existing on a level of conflict reconciliation, but implicitly present on different stages of conflict transformation. the power of ritual in conflict resolution is seen in the essay as depending on its ability to create, order and structure human social institutions. moreover, in a broader sense, ritual is always dealing with social order and social relations, so that it is highly important to study rituals from the perspective of conflict resolution, especially in non-western societies where they have more evident influence on social structures and disputes. moving towards a more generic conclusion, the essay has shown that the theory of ritual can influence the perspectives of understanding conflict resolution as a discipline. with certain limitations it can help this field to address serious critics from the side of critical and post-structuralists' theory. the main challenges conflict resolution is currently facing as a discipline can be addressed by the understanding of rituals as culturally inherited ways of settlement/transformation of conflicts. references belikow, juan. temas emergentes: terrorismo, narcotráfico, tráfico ilegal de personas, crimen organizado. paper presented at the vi encuentro nacional de estudios abu-nimer, m. (1996) “conflict resolution approaches: western and middle eastern lessons and possibilities.” in the american journal of economics and sociology, volume 55, №1 baker, j. (2000) the labyrinth – a transforming ritual. ytc publishers, london. bell, c. (2009) ritual: perspectives and dimensions. oxford university press, new-york. bergen, j. (2005) reading ritual: leviticus in postmodern culture. t&t clark international, london. boal, a. (1985)theater of the oppressed. new york: theater communications group. bocock,r. (1974)ritual in industrial society: a sociological analysis of ritualism. london: allen and unwin. buc, p. (2001)the dangers of ritual: between early medieval texts and social scientific theory. princeton: princeton university press. corkill, d. (2000) «symbol and ritual in the new spain: the transition to democracy after franco by laura desforedles» in: the modern language review, vol. 95, no. 1 (jan., 2000), pp. 246-247. modern humanities research association. accessed: 28/10/2011. anna bilous rituals in conflict resolution 22 crocker, c. a. (2007)leashing the dogs of war: conflict management in a divided world. washington, d.c.: united states institute of peace press davidheizer, m. (2006) «rituals and conflict transformation: an anthropological analysis of the ceremonial dimensions of dispute processing.» beyond intractability. ed. guy burgess and heidi burgess. conflict information consortium, university of colorado, boulder, colorado, usa. accessed: 20/10/2011 <www.beyondintractability.org/biessay/rituals_and_ceremonials/>. durkheim, e. (2001) the elementary forms of religious life. oxford university press, new-york. fischer, j. «symbol in mediation.» in: mediation quarterly 18 № 1: 87 107. accessed 18/11/2011. geertz, c. (2000) the interpretation of cultures. new york: basic books. gluckman, m. (1971) politics, law, and ritual in tribal society. oxford university press. gulliver, p. h. (1979) disputes and negotiations: a cross-cultural perspective. new york: academic press. desforedles, l. (1998) symbol and ritual in the new spain: the transition to democracy after franco. cambridge: cambridge university press. jennings, s. theatre, ritual and transformation: the senoitemiars. london: routledga, 1995. kertzer, d. (1988) ritual, politics and power. yale university press, new haven and london. kiely, l. s. and crary, d. r. (1986) «effective mediation a communication approach to consubstantiality.» in mediation quarterly 12: 37-54 lukes, s. (1975) political ritual and social integration. in sociology, the journal of british sociological association. vol. 9, № 2: 289-308. nordstrom, c. (1997) a different kind of war story. university of pennsylvania press. nordstrom, c. (1998) «terror warfare and the medicine of peace.» in: medical anthropology quarterly 12(1): 103121. available at: www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 525/maq.1998.12.1.103/pdf. accessed 25/10/2011 nordstrom, c. and martin, j. (1992) the paths to domination, resistance, and terror. university of california press. schirch, l. (2004) ritual and symbol in peacebuilding. bloomfield, ct: kumarian. staal, f. (1993) rules without meaning. ritual, mantras and the human sciences. n.y.: peter lang publishing. turner, v. w. (1967) the forest of symbols: aspects of ndembu ritual. ithaca, n.y.: cornell university press. turner, v. w. (1969) the ritual process: structure and anti-structure. chicago: aldine. turner, v. w. (1974) dramas, fields and metaphors: symbolic action in human society. ithaca: cornell university press. tylor, e. b. (2010) primitive culture: researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, art, and custom. new-york: cambridge university press. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 23 vallas, k. (2007) reclaiming the theory of ritual: recent debates, new perspectives. paper presented on the annual meeting of political science association. new york city. walker, p. o. (2011) "decolonizing conflict resolution: addressing the ontological violence of westernization." the american indian quarterly. 2004. highbeam research. available at: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1g1 -132163757.html. accessed 11/10/2011 winn, p. a. (1996) legal ritual in readings in ritual studies/ ed. by grimes, ronald l. precentice-hall, inc untitled politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 69 features of the international regulation of space activities elena sidorova1, center for comprehensive european and international studies, moscow abstract o identify key prerequisites for the formation of the international system of space activities regulation, there are analyzed the paper starts with the analysis of four distinctive space security theories. the author compares and contrasts special features relating to the international space activities regulation in the 20 th century with the contemporary ones. apart from the military side of the issue, there is tackled the problem of international private space activities regulation. three development stages of private space activities are defined. the overall obsolescence of the present international legal system of space activities regulation is proven. 1 elena sidorova, 20, is a fourth year student majoring in international relations at the national research university higher school of economics in moscow. she writes her bachelor thesis on the political role of the jewish diaspora in the usa. she currently works as a junior researcher at the center for comprehensive european and international studies in moscow. her academic interests include u.s.-russia relations, history of international relations, international law, political psychology and political philosophy. t elena sidorova features of the international regulation of space activities 70 introduction he international space activities are in the limelight of political science now, as they were in 1960s and 1980s. there are several reasons for this. first, after the end of the space race between the usa and the soviet union, joint space exploration projects had been initiated, but later on did not get sufficient further development. second, the process of missile technologies proliferation goes on, with the number of member states of the so called “space club” increasing. third, in the beginning of the xxi century a new confrontation among the great powers for the leadership in exploring the moon, solar system planets and near space occurred. fourth, pioneering concepts of military space development were put forward, primarily in the field of missile defense systems with the use of space-based detection systems and space-based missile defense interceptors. fifth, apart from the military side of the issue, competition both among countries and big companies for dominating the space services market has been intensifying more and more over last two decades. all things considered, space attracts lots of actors of the international system and to make space activities more accurate and efficient, the legal status of space, space activities and space objects has to be clearly defined. when the space race began, the usa and the soviet union, as the only owners of space technologies, decided to divide space between themselves on the basis of the treaty of tordesillas of 1494 between spain and portugal. this treaty divided the newly discovered lands outside europe between the two countries along the meridian 370 leagues west of the cape verde islands. another option was to introduce the co-management system per sample of the antarctic treaty of 1959, which was considered the first arms control international agreement signed during the cold war and a very sound diplomatic expression of the scientific and operational cooperation achieved "on the ice". eventually, neither track was chosen because of the absence of mutual consent between the usa and the soviet union (bogaturov, 2011: 143). initially, the necessity to work out international legal norms of space activities was related to the space security issue. the term “space security” appeared for the first time in the academic literature in 1950s. in 1950-1980s four theories of space security were put forward. the first one is called the space nationalism theory. it was introduced by h. kahn, d. kash, d.l. harvey, l.c. ciccority, m. von bencke and e.c. dolman in 1950s. these scholars alleged that governments had an exclusive right to protect their space assets and that international treaties did not guarantee protection of one state from military space activities of the other state. much attention within this theoretical approach was given to the possibility of space militarization, on the one hand, and technological limitation and juridical restriction of this process, on the other (bogaturov, 2011:144). space nationalism theory was a success in the usa in 1980s because it corresponded to the strategic defense initiative (sdi) introduced and supported by ronald reagan’s administration. the second space security theory was called by its creators (a.c. clarke, w. ley, f. gibney and g. feldman) the global institutionalism theory. it implies that independent actions of states aimed at protecting their space assets may lead to t politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 71 space militarization. that’s why the only way to guarantee a peaceful nature of space activities is to establish specific international institutions that would have a legal right to manage space activities (bogaturov, 2011:144). as global institutionalism theory claims, international regulation of the cosmic space should be benchmarked against international regulation of the antarctic and oceanic space; the structure and contents of united nations convention on the law of the sea of 1982 could be an ideal model for an international space treaty appropriate for the whole international community. the third space security theory – the technological determinism theory was originated by v. basiuk, n.p. ruzic, w.a. frutkin and h.e. york in 1970s. unlike the first two theories, this one admits that, under existing 1970s international order, it was impossible to grant control over space activities to international organizations, only sovereign states had a legal right to manage space activities. at the same time, technological determinism theory acknowledges the fact that an international body is needed to monitor space activities. but such an international organization can perform only supervisory, non-binding functions; it can only make recommendations that do not have any mandatory power (bogaturov, 2011:145). the fourth theory is the one of social interactionism. it emerged in 1980s addressing the issue of space policy implementation mechanisms. the authors of this theory (r.e. neushtadt, e.r. may, s. kull, d.w. larson) touched upon a political side of decision making process relating to space activities. if the global institutionalism theory treats the possibility to work out international legal norms of space activities as a crucial step towards creating the international regime of space activities management, the social interactionism theory does not refer anyhow to international space regulation. instead, it only describes different possible political outcomes of international cooperation among two or more parties interested in performing this or that space activity, without providing any legal framework for their actions (bogaturov, 2011:146). en masse, the concept of space security, irrespective of all the attempts to provide distinctive ways and methods for formulating international legal norms of space activities, does not refer neither to the reasons for which international space regulation was introduced, nor contents, theoretical meaning and practical significance of the international space law. today none of the four theories of space security dominates, but insteadach theory can be applied under certain circumstances to this or that case. the real need to work out international legal norms of space activities occurred in late 1950s, when the usa and the soviet union succeeded in running their first space programs. almost simultaneous success of both superpowers in space potentially could lead, on the one hand, to possible declaration of sovereignty of any country over distinctive segments of space and, on the other hand, to possible launch of the weapons of mass destruction (wmd) to space and militarization of circumterrestrial space (arbatov & dvorkin, 2009:60). prior to starting elaboration of international space laws, were established a series of international organizations and united nations committees on the use of space. thus, in 1950 there was founded the international aeronautics federation, in 1958 the committee on space research, in 1959 – the united nations committee on peaceful use of outer space, in 1961 the united nations office for outer space affairs. these international organizations elena sidorova features of the international regulation of space activities 72 and un committees were not granted the right to work out universal legal norms relating to the use of space. furthermore, their activities contradicted one another. but the mere fact of establishing such international bodies was extremely important, as it contributed a lot to maintain a status-quo in international space security (bogaturov, 2011:149). in other words, even if irreconcilable contradictions between the usa and the soviet union over the leadership in space remained, the involvement of the international community in the issue via the newly established legal entities to some extent eliminated the risk of open military confrontation in space, which could endanger the whole mankind, between the two parties. the adoption of the united nations general assembly resolution № 1721 (xvi) on international co-operation in the peaceful uses of outer space in 1961 gained momentum to further development of international space law. this document addressed the principles of the peaceful use of space, the necessity to register spacecraft launched from the earth and correspondent institutions responsible for launching, the requirement to codify international space activities. these regulations were voluntary to follow for the countries that adopted the resolution. later on, the regulations set up in the un ga resolution № 1721 were included in the limited test ban treaty signed and ratified by the usa, the soviet union and the united kingdom in 1963. under the treaty, it was introduced the compulsory ban on launching nuclear weapons into space. it is widely considered that this particular limitation confirmed the real possibility to put supranational regulation of space activities in practice. negotiations on the elaboration of a universal agreement on space activities started at the xviii session of the united nations security council in 1963. the participants of the negotiations reassured of their decision to abandon the idea of launching wmd into space, placing wmd on any celestial body and in space. it is quite hard to guess whether these restrictions represented the goodwill of the space superpowers or they were the recognition of technical inability to initiate such projects at that moment. anyway, on the basis of the negotiations, the usa, the soviet union and the united kingdom signed in 1967 the treaty on principles governing the activities of states in the exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies (outer space treaty). it introduced some crucial restrictions on space activities. space exploration and space usage in the interests of the whole mankind, complete equality of all the countries in space, freedom of scientific explorations in space and full compliance with the norms of the international law, including the un charter, were enunciated as basic principles of the treaty. in addition, the document prohibited appropriation of space, the moon and other celestial bodies by any country; launching wmd into space, placing wmd on any celestial body and in space; deliberate contamination and pollution of space. the parties to the treaty undertook the responsibility to use space peacefully, to recognize astronauts as envoys of the mankind in space, to apply to the principles of collaboration and mutual help during space exploration missions. outer space treaty solved a whole set of problems accumulated by that moment. prima facie, u.s.-soviet space race was put into legal framework. countries openly announced their will not to declare sovereignty over celestial bodies (this principle started to be widely used much politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 73 later, when the technical progress made it possible to send man-tended missions to the moon and to realize orbital manned flights). the treaty eliminated the direct threat of launching wmd into space and complicated the execution of the works undertaken by the usa and the soviet union on the creation of the missile defense system(s) with the use of space-based detection systems and space-based missile defense interceptors (fenenko, 2008:27). however, outer space treaty contained several legal gaps that allowed countries to evade the law. for instance, the document did not include a ban on launching conventional weapons into space. nothing was mentioned about the regulation of commercial space activities. the status of disputable space segments, such as geostationary and polar earth orbits, was not identified (fenenko, 2008, 28). the hugest hiatus in the treaty was the absence of the definition of the term “space”. the international aeronautics federation marked the border between air space and cosmic space at a height of 100 km starting from the sea level in 1955. this definition was not legally binding. the usa, in turn, set their own demarcation line between air space and cosmic space in accordance with the type of the aircraft in use. under such circumstances, the need to close the gaps of outer space treaty became a key prerogative for the specialists on international space law. such an intention explains the adoption of several international space treaties in late 1960s and 1970s. in 1968 there was signed the united nations general assembly agreement on the rescue of astronauts, the return of astronauts and the return of objects launched into outer space (rescue agreement). this document fixed the commitment of the countries to render assistance to astronauts and set up norms of the return of wrecked spacecraft. to enlarge the regulations of the rescue agreement, in 1972 there was adopted the convention on international liability for damage caused by space objects (liability convention), which made it incumbent upon the countries to repair damage done to spaceship in accordance with the principles of international law and the principle of justice. in 1976 the united nations general assembly convention on registration of objects launched into outer space (registration convention) came into effect. this document introduced the norms relating to the mandatory provision of information about space objects, gave legal force to the un ga resolution № 1721, and developed the international register of operating spacecraft. despite looking promising, international legal documents of 1968-1976 did not manage to form a new regime of security granting to international space activities. the situation has changed in late 1970s, when the soviet union, argentina and poland worked out the project of the international agreement on the legal status of the moon. on its basis itwas signed the united nations general assembly agreement governing the activities of states on the moon and other celestial bodies (the moon treaty) in 1979. the moon was declared the general heritage of the mankind. moreover, the agreement says that all the activities on the moon are performed on behalf of all the human beings. in fact, this claim was the attempt to create the international regime of the moon exploitation and potential benefits sharing. the agreement came in for criticism on the part of the usa. ronald reagan’s administration affirmed that the document contradicted the principles of outer space treaty of 1967, which fixed the neutral status of celestial bodies and did not allow any country to declare ownership rights over elena sidorova features of the international regulation of space activities 74 them. also the usa called into question the clause concerning redistribution of the recourses extracted from the moon in the interests of the mankind. from the american perspective, the moon resourses could not belong to anybody, or otherwise could be shared only by the space superpowers, rather than be redistributed among the countries that did not perform their own space activities (bogaturov, 2011:151-152). in 1984 the usa refused to ratify the moon treaty. the soviet union eventually followed the example of the usa. ultimately, the treaty came into force only in 13 countries, among which there were no space superpowers. with the crash of the soviet union in 1991, the usa became the only leader in space, especially in the military space sphere. however, because of extremely high costs of space activities, the usa, russia and the european union formed a cooperative system of space exploration. in late 1990s it became clear that the international space station (iss) was the only successful international joint project. no further development was given to international moon, solar system planets and near space exploration projects (fenenko, 2008, 30). in 1999, when bill clinton’s administration announced its intention to modify the soviet-american anti-ballistic missile treaty of 1972, a new wave of debates around international space law occurred. prevention of space militarization was the main issue under discussion. the russian president vladimir putin made a statement on the necessity to minimize the risk of space militarization at the united nations general assembly meeting on 6 september 2000. he proposed to sign the international treaty that would ban launching warlike equipment into space. putin’s announcement was welcomed by china, but the usa refused to discuss this issue. moreover, in 2002, george bush’s administration withdrew from the sovietamerican anti-ballistic missile treaty of 1972 and said america did not intend to be involved into any international joint project relating to the prevention of space militarization. after 9/11 terrorist attacks, the usa intensified cooperation with its nato allies and started to develop the missile defense system without the participation of russia (bogaturov, 2011:153). so far, the latest attempt to impose mandatory legal norms of space activities regulation on sovereign states was undertaken in 2007, when russia and china presented to the juridical subcommittee of the united nations committee on peaceful uses of outer space the draft on the prohibition of placing in space any warlike equipment, launching into space any weapons and any using any force against space objects. on 7 august 2007 un copuos approved the draft. the treaty was planned to be made open for signing at the annual united nations conference on disarmament in february 2008. but the usa refused to sign the treaty on the pretext that it contradicted the american national interest in securing its space assets. the u.s. department of state forwarded to the un a series of amendments to the draft. there was found no consent among counties either over the text of the draft or the amendments, that’s why the treaty was not made open for signing at all. today international space law deals equally with the military side of the issue and the commercial one. space tourism and private spaceflight require the international law of outer space to alter and to become more adaptive to the revolutionary development of this new economic sphere. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 75 private space activities have undergone three development stages (von der dunk, 2011, 146). at the first stage, the categories of shareholders and stakeholders in space activities were very limited. governments and their space agencies were accountable for launching, operating and controlling space objects. the role of private companies was merely nominal. they were allowed only to be manufacturers of spaceship for public entities, downstream customers of space-based applications and providers of subsidiary services for the benefit of the governments. for this reason, outer space treaty of 1967, rescue agreement of 1968, liability convention of 1972 and registration convention of 1976 focused exclusively on the rights and obligations of state space agencies, rather than private enterprises (von der dunk, 2011:146). the second stage of private space activities development demanded from private entities to start to independently render launch services and operate space objects. from the legal perspective, this implied that governments got obliged to exercise jurisdiction over private companies and to make them meet the requirements of liability and responsibility in accordance with international space law. to achieve this goal, many countries, primarily the usa (commercial space launch act of 1984) and russia (law of the russian federation on space activities № 5663-1 of 1993), decided to enact national space laws, national licensing systems and national supervision mechanisms in order to ensure that private space activities were under control both of the government and international space law. at that moment the combination of international space treaties and national space legislation and regulation was sufficient for proper private space activities functioning (von der dunk, 2011, 147). space tourism and private spaceflight represent the third development stage. as a legal category, space tourism is a quite vague notion. it underlines only motivation (people are engaged in this activity for pleasure and entertainment, rather than for scientific or training purposes) as a key indicator that distinguishes space tourism from traditional spaceflight. in addition, space tourism can be divided into orbital one and suborbital one. the first orbital touristic spaceflight took place in april 2001, when dennis tito arrived with a one-week visit to the russian module of the iss at a ticket price of 20 million u.s. dollars. since that time at least seven private orbital touristic space trips have been taken on a private basis. nevertheless, in legal terms one cannot define orbital touristic spaceflight as a purely private enterprise at least for technical reasons. if the private character of passengers is out of question, still only public spacecraft are technically viable to travel to the iss, which is also a public destination itself (von der dunk, 2011, 147). in turn, the suborbital touristic spaceflight implies a few-hour trip to the edge of outer space and back. such a ride legally falls into the category of private space tourism beyond any doubt, as spacecraft in use are completely financed, owned and operated by private companies (such as virgin galactic, xcor and rocketplane) and the motivation (that is for pleasure) is absolutely clear. the term “private spaceflight” has a broader meaning, since such a flight can be taken not exclusively for touristic purposes. most generally, lawyers define private spaceflight as suborbital spaceflight, whose primary task is to offer individuals the opportunity to fly on board private spaceship to a place of destination (or from one place to another). to save a elena sidorova features of the international regulation of space activities 76 considerable amount of time, in the process of such a trip an individual can enter, traverse and leave the edge of outer space. in future some companies (e.g. bigelow aerospace) even plan to build, launch and operate space hotels, which are likely to be legally defined as private destinations in outer space (von der dunk, 2011, 148). on the whole, because of the state orientation of current international space law, the legal status of private operators and their activities is defined primarily through national legislation. the development of private space activities goes much faster than the development of international space law. it seems very unlikely that in the nearest future the state-orientated model will be substituted by the state-plus-private-sector orientated one. however, technical advances may soon demand from international space law to set up necessary universal legal framework for private space activities. among most disputable issues at the international level in this case will be the ones of certification, space traffic management, authorization, control, registration and liability arrangements (von der dunk, 2011, 152). apart from the above mentioned controversial issues, there remains another serious legal gap: the concept of “astronaut”, as defined in international space treaties, does not fit well with contemporary proposals for commercial space tourism. by now, astronauts have been described in all the international space documents as highly trained state-employed professionals with a specific range of duties and responsibilities, rather than as ordinary untrained people (clients of private space companies). with the development of space tourism the ambit of the term “astronaut” becomes unclear (lyall, 2010, 1614-1615). the usa has already imposed national rules for space tourism that make undubious distinction between a space crew and space flight participants (commercial space law amendments act of 2004; human space flight requirements for crew and space flight participants: final rule of 2006). the american initiative is rather comprehensible, as it specifies the type and the grade of responsibility each individual on board bears. consequently, it would be reasonable is this idea was made applicable at the supranational level. all in all, the majority of methods of space activities regulation, which continue to be widely used today, were worked out either by american or soviet lawyers in the second part of the xx century. for many years the agenda of space activities regulation has been defined by key clauses of outer space treaty of 1967. theoretically, international space legal documents signed in 1970s-1990s dealt with the issue of maintenance of the space co-management system between the usa and the soviet union and with the issue of prevention of space militarization. practically, they answered the purpose of closing legal gaps of outer space treaty of 1967. in 1990s2000s the situation on the world arena has changed. america’s achievement of the undoubtful leadership in space put an end to the balanced system of international space co-management. private space activities development confirmed that the international legal system of space activities regulation based on outer space treaty of 1967 and subsequent international legal documents became completely obsolete. today the paucity of mutual understanding among countries over space issues is a huge problem. if the international community does not return to the negotiation table and does not elaborate contemporary international space laws, negative politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 77 consequences might be expected. on the one hand, these consequences may have economic implications, such as intensification of competition over commercial activities in space, shifting of liability for outer space private and commercial activities from state to private companies or vice versa. on the other hand, such consequences may lead to higher risks in global space security, fragmentation and segmentation of space, appropriation of space objects, which is likely to be achieved through open military confrontation. the renewal of international legal documents should be run in full accordance with international principles of law. the involvement of international bodies into this process, primarily the united nations organization, is required. references arbatov, a. & dvorkin, v. (2009) outer space: weapons, diplomacy and security. moscow: rosspan. bogutarov, a. (2011) international relations of the russian f ederation in new p olitical spaces. moscow: urss. fenenko, a. (2008) spa ce race and international security. international trends, vol. 6, №3 (18), pp. 26-41. lyall, f. (2010) who is an astronaut? the inadequacy of current international law. acta astronautica, vol. 66, pp. 1613-1617. von der dunk, f. (2011) space tourism, p rivate spaceflight and the law: key aspects. space policy, vol. 27, pp. 146-152. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 147 challenges that global governance currently confronts to ensure more secure, prosperous and democratic world mikheil shavtvaladze mikheil shavtvaladze, 36, is a graduate who received his master’s of arts degree in political science at the central european university in 2010. his written master thesis was on the post-soviet transitions and conflict resolution. currently, he is a phd student, visiting lecturer and afp returning scholar at the tbilisi state university’s faculty of social and political science. his interests include comparative politics, international relations, democratization and state building, modernization and development, conflict resolution, foreign policy analysis, etc. abstract the study intends to explore what those emerging challenges are that global governance presently deals with on its attempts to guarantee more secure, prosperous and democratic world. for that reason, the cases for each specific emerging regional threat have been selected and analyzed. the conclusion drawn from the analysis shows the major deficiencies found in the contemporary system of global governance which can be attributed to the systems incapacity to address these problems with more concerted and coordinated global approach. keywords: conflict resolution; debt trap; democratic peace; global governance; security. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 148 introduction: the current stage of global governance the growing threats that our planet currently faces mainly in forms of repressive regimes, violent conflicts, human rights abuses, poverty, pandemics and environmental hazards, as never before, “require a concerted and coordinated global approach” (griffits, o'callaghen and roach 2008). for that reason, the existing system of global governance needs to be enhanced in a way to respond more efficiently those emerging challenges, implications of which transcends far beyond a nation-state. despite the existing or emerging global powers such as the united states, the european union, the brics, together with the numerous multilateral institutions such as the un and nato, attempting “to manage relations between states and to facilitate cooperative action across various issue-areas” (griffits, o'callaghen and roach 2008, 127) , no supranational global government yet exists to be able to take immediate and more effective measures against those above mentioned security concerns. consequently, citizens around the globe face with dilemma what kind of governing mechanism to rely on to ensure better democratic stability inside and outside of the countries in which they inhabit. besides, another important issue deserving close attention is how to create such system in a way to ensure its legitimacy and equality. pondering nowadays about the creation of the global constitution can still sound as a quite distant futuristic project. portraying, however, the current state of international system as a mere anarchical also misses the point and distorts the changing reality that now exists. hence, it can be presumed that thanks to the all-encompassing and accelerating globalization processes that humankind currently experiences, the modern system of global governance can be better described “as a half-way house between the international anarchy underlying realist analysis and world state.” (weiss 2013) it should be acknowledged that despite some converging tendencies taking place in the current structure of global governance, the system still lacks accountability and legitimacy to act in collective manner. first of all, the global governance so far is heavily constrained by national borders, laws, rules and norms. second of all, because of sharp disparities among the countries around the world in distribution of the political-economic powers, not every country has the same share and weight in the global governance’s decision-making. finally, albeit “governance is carried out in the name of the global polity by both governmental and non-governmental organizations” (griffits, o'callaghen and roach 2008, 127) the contemporary system of “global governance lacks fundamental dimensions of constitutional and hence democratic accountability.” (davis 2012, 4) politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 149 considering the above mentioned problems, in this conference paper, firstly i would like to explore what those emerging challenges are that global governance confronts these days to ensure more secure world. secondly, i want to find out those existing economic challenges that global governance urges to address at present so as to facilitate more economically prosperous world. finally, i aim to discuss the challenges that current global governance are encountering on its way to promote more democratic and legitimate world order. global implications of regionally emerged security threats: violent conflicts recently ignited violent civic upheavals in places as ukraine, syria, thailand and venezuela, as well as the unresolved ethno-territorial conflicts in the south caucasus, point to the fact that “the contemporary system of global governance” (weiss 2013) fails to avert and resolve quickly and efficiently such security threats that emerge foremost at the regional level. even though, the violent civil conflicts for the most part are confined within borders of a particular state, their implications to global security often turn out to be critical. hence, in order to understand how civil conflicts initially emerged at the regional level transform into a problem with a global dimension, several serious concerns can be highlighted. first of all, in such conflicts, main participants or actors “in a given state often are linked in various ways to actors in other states.” (billon 2009, 596) second of all, a “conflict in one state may spread and foster violence in other states as well as generate conflict between nation states.” (billon 2009) lastly, the extremely aggressive civil clashes affect other states, including neighboring countries, “through externalities of conflict such as refugees” (billon 2009), transnational crime and “economic impact.” (billon 2009) explanations of such incapacity to efficiently respond the above mentioned challenges can be many, calling for deeper and further examinations of this topic. for example, one of the main explanations can be ascribed to the institutional deficiencies of governances in a country level itself relating to its corrupted, undemocratic and unstable regimes. however, this section of the paper focuses on global governance today and its failure to address these problems with more efficiency. consequently, it can be argued that the global governance’s failure to resolve the above mentioned security threats can be mainly attributed to “the lack of authoritative institutions with truly global reach.” (davis 2012, 276) violent civil upheavals: the ukrainian revolution the recent violent street clashes that ukraine has experienced, leading to “dozens of people dead and hundreds more injured as protestors fought police in the capital, kiev” (prodi politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 150 2014), points to the fact that failure to prevent violent civil upheaval promptly causes its further deterioration with wider ramifications and consequences. although the most blame to precipitate such violent strife in that case falls on the prorussian viktor yanukovych led government provoking it firstly by “not signing a trade and association agreement with the eu” (bershidsky 2014), secondly not “to call an early elections” (bershidsky 2014) that could have sent protesters home, and thirdly resorting to violence to disperse activists, it should be emphasized that the contemporary global system of governance responsible for managing this type of security threats, failed either to prevent this clash from becoming even more deadly and chaotic. regardless of international efforts “aimed at ending a lethal spiral of violence in ukraine” (higgins and kramer 2014) resulting in a “hard-fought accord” (higgins and kramer 2014) between the pro-european opposition leaders and pro-russian president yanukovych that “lasted less than a day” (shevtsova 2014), the global approaches intended to resolve the conflict seemed far from concerted and coordinated one. instead what we witnessed resembles to a zero-sum “geopolitical struggle between russia and the west” (higgins and kramer 2014) over spheres of influence in ukraine. hence, as the case of ukraine shows, due to the sharp internal divide, mutual distrust and winner-take-all approaches characterizing major participants of the modern system of global governance, the system appears to be incapable to address such security threats in more competent way. violent intra and interstate conflicts: the georgia’s post-soviet wars similar to ukraine, georgia, another post-soviet state but located in the south caucasus, has also suffered from several violent internal conflicts since its independence. however, apart from atrocious civil clashes and coups, georgia fought two ethno-territorial wars with its autonomous republics of abkhazia and south ossetia in the early 90s. yet, due to the unsuccessful attempts to resolve these “frozen” conflicts, the military interstate conflict between georgia and russia had ensued over the breakaway autonomous republic south ossetia in the august 2008. as in the case of ukraine, the conflict resolution approaches of the global powers supposed to end the georgia’s post-soviet conflicts turned into “the clash of alternative regional projects: that of russia’s would-be sphere of influence with that of an ever enlarging sphere of democracy, security and prosperity as promoted by the eu and us.” (makarychev 2011, 79) whatever internal and external “multiple causes and many contributing factors” (crocker, hampson and aall 2009, 493) leading to these conflicts, in this particular chapter, i politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 151 want to emphasize the limits of the contemporary global governing system to successfully manage the above mentioned emerging security threats with large-scale repercussions. the mounting discord between georgia and russia over the issues as the breakaway regions of abkhazia and south ossetia, the russia’s interest to reassert its influence in the region, the georgia’s euro-atlantic drive added with “the bush administration’s unequivocal backing to president saakashvili” (bowker 2011, 12) and ill-thought, arbitrary and aggressive rhetoric towards russia espoused at that time by president saakashvili and his associates, led the tensions to descend further into bitter hostilities between two post-soviet states. such rapidly progressing hostilities between the countries culminated into the war resulting in 850 casualties from both sides “not to mention those who were wounded, who went missing, or the far more 100 000 civilians who fled their homes.” (tagliavini 2009, 6) speaking of the wider implications of the war, apart from the military fight between “the russian and georgian armies, it was also a clash of ambition and vision between russia, the us and the eu.” (makarychev 2011, 79) moreover, the august 2008 war demonstrated how important georgia is for the europe’s energy security because of georgia’s geostrategic role of being transit route for energy resources flowing from the caspian basin (jones 2013, 345) to europe. furthermore, it pointed to the fact that politically unstable georgia threatens not only the country’s internal security but also europe’s. consequently, the unresolved ethno-territorial conflicts further exacerbate problems associated with refugees, criminality, illegal arms and drug trafficking. however, despite “the cease-fire agreement negotiated by the european union on 12 august 2008” (bowker 2011, 2), overall, the conflict exposed serious constraints of the contemporary system of global governance to avert such emerging challenges efficiently. with regard to specific shortcomings in the existing global structure to counter successfully the emergence of the intra and interstate violent conflicts, the case of georgia revealed several of them. first of all, “the war exposed the west’s inability to prevent russia from moving aggressively to restore its primacy over the former soviet territory.” (sarikaia 2011) for example, the chain of events as the recognition of kosovo’s independence on february 2008, weak international reactions to the atrocities in chechnya, refusal to grant georgia nato’s membership action plan in april 2008, contributed to the russia’s aggressive moves towards georgia. (jones 2013, 345) besides, despite of the united nations (un) and the organization for security and cooperation in europe (osce)’s eighteen year long involvement in the peace processes in the breakaway region of the south ossetia, these multilateral institutions, largely due to their politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 152 uncoordinated efforts and modus operandi, ensured russian peacekeepers, under the mandate of the commonwealth of independent states (cis), to be the only peacekeeping force to be presented on the ground. (jones 2013, 337) however, it is important to note that such outcome was the result of the russia’s permanent membership into the un’s security council, empowering russia to veto any internationally proposed peace initiative. (jones 2013, 337) in addition, russia’s continuing violation of georgia’s territoriality and sovereignty was not followed with subsequent international sanctions pointing to the notion that compared to the conflicts in balkans, the west showed less interest towards the conflicts in georgia. (jones 2013, 345) concluding this section that discussed specifically the limits of global governance with regard to resolve successfully violent ethno-territorial conflicts, particularly in the post-soviet georgia, it can be observed that “great power mismanagement -or – ‘cacophony’ instead of a ‘concert’ may be regarded as a symptom of the international society dysfunctions” (makarychev 2011, 78) leading to military conflicts. global implications of regionally emerged economic threats: recessions and inequalities since the stability and security of any system, whether local or global, largely depends on its level of economic development and equality, it can be assumed that severe recessions and inequalities can seriously undermine system and even lead to its ultimate collapse. besides, it can be claimed that implications inflicted by recessions and inequalities can go beyond borders of any nation-state by becoming a problem with worldwide magnitude. moreover, “there is broad consensus that poverty constitutes the leading risk factor for conflicts.” (billon 2009, 210) for example, “major interstate conflicts such as the second world war, often took place following protracted economic recessions” (billon 2009, 212). furthermore, as the analysis on the recent world protests shows, 843 protests occurred “between january 2006 and july 2013 in 87 countries covering over 90% of world population.” (ortiz, et al. 2013, 5) apart from deep recessions, another important economic and societal challenge in front of global society today is inequalities, which, among many things, are precipitated also by uneven economic growth, corruption and market externalities (e.g. monopolies, cartels etc). for instance, as we have witnessed recently “the occupy movements which began in wall street and then spread elsewhere” (weiss 2013) was clear manifestation of growing “distaste for inequalities within industrialized countries as well as worldwide.” (weiss 2013) politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 153 accordingly, this part of paper discusses those locally emerging economic concerns such as recessions and inequalities which effects extend much further than a country’s economic system causing as well global instability and insecurity. recessions: the greece’s debt crisis when the global “financial and economic crises of 2008” (ortiz, et al. 2013, 8) wreaked havoc on the entire world’s financial system, not only developing but also the eurozone member countries such as greece, spain, italy and portugal fell victims of massive bailouts and austerity measures that “exacerbated pre-existing concerns about poverty, unemployment and rising inequality.” (ortiz, et al. 2013, 8) as a result, greece, a member of the eu and eurozone, hit badly by these circumstances plunged deeper into debt and recession spiral. apart from domestic causes of this emerging greece’s debt crisis, mostly associated with elite corruption and government’s inefficient economic policies, the major external factor was the country’s heavy “dependence on wider european and atlantic economic structures.” (fouskas 2013, 133) it is important to note that dramatic increase of a country’s debt ratio, especially external debt, with regard to gross domestic product (gdp) might lead a nation-state downwards to the debt trap, “a situation in which a state has to spend much of its earnings from trade on servicing its external debts rather on economic and social development.” (griffits, o'callaghen and roach 2008, 61) thus, the consequences inflicted by such crises turns to be grave both domestically, and globally. speaking of domestic impact, the greece’s debt crisis “brought the country to the brink of economic collapse” (sotiropouls 2012, 23). for example, over the five-year long recession, in 2013, the greece’s gdp emerged “20 percent lower than in 2008, unemployment at 26 percent and one in three people living on or below the poverty line” (fouskas 2013, 132). moreover, the greece’s debt ratio to gdp amounted to 180 percent. apart from devastating economic impact on the country, the economic crisis in greece revealed internal societal dangers such as “disintegration of middle class”, “sociopolitical polarization” and the rise of “the extreme-right golden down party with 16 percent of national vote” (fouskas 2013, 137). as to the economic crisis’s international repercussions, if greece has to “exit from eurozone” due to “debtor-led default” (fouskas 2013, 137) “ it could not only bring about the end of eurozone but damage the entire geo-political balance of power in nato” (fouskas politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 154 2013, 138). besides, leaving the eurozone “would also gravely affect other eu national economies” (sotiropouls 2012, 34) and “the exchange value of the euro” (sotiropouls 2012, 34). for that reason, facing with much more complex and highly interrelated world, further concerted and consolidated global governance by “governments and international organizations is needed, in order to manage problems initially believed to be negligible, such as the crisis in greece” (sotiropouls 2012, 35). global implications of regionally emerged political threats: political inequality and intolerance what kind of global governing system would be emerged from the world with still so many undemocratic states around? since sovereign states “for foreseeable future” (weiss 2013) remain “the fundamental units of the system” (weiss 2013) “political inequality at home translates into political inequality on the global stage” (dubrow 2013, 65). as the latest study on world protests shows, a large number protests that took place between 2006 and 2013 resulted “not for economic justice per se, but for what prevents economic issues from being addressed: a lack of real democracy” (ortiz, et al. 2013, 6). for example, other than ukraine, the most recent anti-government protests flared up in such different parts of the world as venezuela and thailand. it is noteworthy to mention that, akin to ukraine, both these protest actions turn out to be deadly for the citizens of these countries. in venezuela’s case, during the protest that started on february 12 2014, demonstrators among security and economic related issues also demanded “protected freedom of speech” (shoichet, mullen and bothelo 2014). whereas in thailand, demonstrators called for resignation of prime minister yingluck shinawarta alleging her in corruption deals. while the political stability and peace in the world should be among major goals of the contemporary system of globally governance, the above evidences show clearly that only through genuine democratic political systems, as at domestic as well as at global level, are these goals attainable. as kofi a. annan wrote in his article “democratic rulers cannot mobilize their countries for war without convincing most citizens that war is both just and necessary” (annan 2002, 138). therefore, in general, wars and conflicts, according to the “democratic peace” (griffits, o'callaghen and roach 2008, 67) theory, are less likely within democratic system since disagreements aroused locally or internationally “are resolved through compromise and negotiation rather than conflict and coercion” (griffits, o'callaghen and roach 2008, 67). politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 155 for that reason, this section of the paper tries to analyze the locally emerged political threats such as political inequality and intolerance that present great challenges for the existing system of global governance to secure more democratic and legitimate world order. political inequality and intolerance: the syrian turmoil reflecting on the violent crisis in syria, evoked by the arab spring and “caused over 100 000 deaths and more than two million refugees” (hussain 2013, 39), it can be presumed how the behaviors of authoritarian regimes, manifested in political violence and repressions directed towards their dissents, could turn a local political dynamics “into regional rivalry and global threat” (hussain 2013, 39). despite “a landmark agreement on 14 september between john kerry and russian foreign ministry sergei lavrov” (hussain 2013, 47) on peacefully solution of the crisis last year, there is a risk that the “shaky peace deal” (hussain 2013, 47) still might not succeed leading to forceful and military resolution of “the syrian conundrum” (c. crocker 2013, 16). failure of the existing global governing system to manage the syrian crisis timely and efficiently, and what is most important without so much bloodshed and destruction, further exemplifies the limits of the current international community to deal with such locally emerged political crises with more combined and synchronized global approach. in short, this particular crisis revealed sharp internal divide within those global and regional actors interested in solving this issue and also exposed “another dangerous development” (hussain 2013, 48) namely “the incapacitation of the united nations to act in global affairs in the light of global rivalry and divisions in the un security council” (hussain 2013, 48). conclusion the major purpose of the paper is to uncover those crucial regionally originated security, economic and political challenges that often convert into global threats and require joint and organized global approach from the contemporary system of global governance in order to avoid their further exacerbation. for that intention, i embarked on analyzing the cases for each particular regionally or locally emerged danger. while examining the global implications of the regionally erupted security menaces such as violent civil and ethno-territorial conflicts, i invoked cases of the ukraine’s recent revolution and the georgia’s post-soviet wars. concerning global influences of the locally emerged economic problems, i draw an example from the greece’s latest debt crisis. finally, i discussed politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 156 the recent syrian crisis in relation with a global impact of regionally or locally mounted political hazards as the political inequality and intolerance are. based on the subsequent observations and analysis of this study, it can be deduced that major deficiencies in the ability of the existing system of global governance to peacefully, efficiently and timely resolve the aforementioned growing security, economic and political challenges can be mainly related to the systems’ incapacity, resulting largely from its sharp internal divide and mismanagement, to act in a more unified and coordinated way. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 157 references annan, kofi a. 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subjective factors, which reflect the perceptions of russian political leaders. more precisely, by analyzing russia's position vis-à-vis the missile shield, we argue that subjective factors, such as leaders' perceptions, play a key role in the conduct of the russian foreign and security policy. that the ontological and epistemological foundations of a neoclassical realist approach can help us to establish a logical and conscious process in our analysis. this can be explained in part by the fact that neoclassical realism focuses on internal factors to explain foreign policy. 1 irakli geluk’ashvili, 33, is a graduate who received his bachelor in "public management" at uqam in 2009 (canada). in 2011, he obtained a ma in public and international affairs at university of ottawa (canada). he has written his master thesis on the russia-nato relations. currently he is a phd candidate in political science at uqam (canada). his research interests include russian foreign policy, post-soviet space and causes of conflicts. the author expresses his gratitude to professor jacques lévesque, university of quebec at montreal, for his comments at the initial stage of work on this article. t politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 25 introduction uring the summit that took place on the 20th and 21st of may 2012 in chicago, the north atlantic treaty organization (nato) announced that the missile defense system would have an interim capability. according to the secretary-general of nato, anders fogh rasmussen, the missile shield will allow the atlantic alliance to defend against threats originating outside the euro-atlantic area. rasmussen also said that the missile shield does not target russia, and if necessary, is capable of intercepting missiles from iran. vladimir putin surprised everyone by announcing his absence at the g8 summit at camp david, held just days before the nato summit, sending in his place his prime minister and former president dmitry medvedev. according to official russian sources, putin could not attend the meeting due to his busy schedule after the presidential elections of march 2012. however, we can assume that it was also a sign of his disapproval regarding the european missile shield. the perception of russian leaders of the international system, and the role that this shield would play in the international system would not match up with u.s. perceptions of the international system. the russians could neither understand nor accept the statements of americans trying to ensure the russian political elite that the shield was intended only to protect european allies from possible attacks from "rogue" states. the announcement of this shield was therefore a very negative turning point in russia-u.s. relations. the russian response was firm. this project was considered to be a growing threat from nato. russia has announced a series of military intimidation tactics to counter the alliance’s influence in europe. how can we explain russia’s position toward european missile shield? what factors are most likely to help us understand russia’s position? this article aims to demonstrate that russia’s position towards the missile shield reflects internal factors, as well as some subjective factors, which reflect the perceptions of russian political leaders. more precisely, by analyzing russia's position vis-à-vis the missile shield, i argue that subjective factors, such as leaders' perceptions, play a key role in the conduct of the russian foreign and security policy. it seems that the ontological and epistemological foundations of a neoclassical realist approach can help us to establish a logical and conscious process in our analysis. this can be explained in part by the fact that neoclassical realism focuses on internal factors to explain foreign policy. first, we will briefly present the neoclassical realist approach. then, we present the internal and external russian contexts when the intention to install the missile shield was announced by the americans. finally, in the neoclassical realist framework, we will operationalize the following concepts: perceptions of russian leaders of the relative power of their state and of the balance of power, and the impact of ideology on the design of russian foreign policy and reformulation of the “grand strategy." neoclassical realism neoclassical realism is primarily a theory of foreign policy. according to neoclassical realists, the scope and ambition of states’ foreign policies are determined by their relative power, but this impact of power capabilities on foreign policy is indirect and complex, because systemic pressures must be interpreted by intervening variables at the unit level, such as leader’s perceptions and the state structure (taliaferro and al 2009, 5). consequently, states (or their leaders) are d irakli geluk’ashvili russias position towards the shield project 26 mainly guided by their perception of their relative power, and the power distribution becomes subjective (macleod and o'meara 2010, 126). according to the neoclassical realism, anarchy gives states wider latitude in defining their security interests, while the relative distribution of power sets the parameters for grand strategy (taliaferro and al 2009, 7). thus, the neoclassical realism focuses primarily on intermediate variables (all factors within a state: its institutions, its relations with society, the beliefs of its leaders, the importance of ideologies, etc.) and how these variables determine the foreign policy (the dependent variable). neoclassical realists see the balance of power rather "as a desirable solution” based on the perception of the relative distribution of power in the international system (macleod and o'meara 2010, 126). neoclassical realism identifies state’s extraction capacity and resource mobilization as a crucial variable between the systemic imperatives and foreign and security policies. taliaferro and others have pointed outthat, apart from institutions, ideational factors such as ideology and nationalism can play an important role in the extraction and mobilization of society's resources (taliaferro and al 2009, 38). thus, the ideology is one of the determinants of state’s power, which can facilitate, but also hinder the efforts of political leaders to extract and mobilize resources from domestic society. this profoundly depends from the content of the ideology and the nature which political elites and the public understand the ideas about the state’s role vis-à-vis the society. the concept of "grand strategy", according to neoclassical realists, is the level where systemic and unit factors converge. therefore, the grand strategy involves a process within the states in order to pursue the objectives of the national interest. background before beginning our analysis, to contextualize and acknowledge the russian situation (on intern and external levels) when the u.s. decision on a missile-defense system was put on the table. we can distinguish five phases of russia’s research for its place in the international system since the collapse of the soviet union (levesque 2012, 1). the first-phase ran from 1991 to autumn, 1993. the second was 1994 – 2001. the third phase began after the september 11th attacks and ended in 2003. the fourth began in the end of 2004 and ended with the russia-georgia war of august 2008. the fifth phase began in 2009 with the obama administration and his attempt to reset u.s. russia relations (levesque 2012, 1-2). as levesque noted, between 1992 and 1993, russian foreign policy was fully and unconditionally aligned with the u.s. positions (2012, 2). this first phase was largely fueled by illusions and unrealistic expects toward the west. however, very quickly yeltsin and his team began to lose popularity. the first adjustments were already starting to appear in 1993. the second phase was characterized by greater inconsistency and russia’s long struggle against nato enlargement in eastern europe. as mankoff noted, this was when russian leaders recognized that russia's integration to the west and its institutions was neither possible nor desirable, at least in the short and medium terms (2012, 5). thus, at the end of second phase, when vladimir putin succeeded boris yeltsin in 2000, he inherited a range of problems such as an unstable institutional environment, a climate of demoralization, the deterioration of russia's relations with the west, the politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 27 diminishing role of russia in world policies, etc. (lo 2002, 157). as bobo lo noted, russia’s weakness manifested in four primary areas: the search for a new identity (the place of russia in the post bipolar world), a dysfunctional political system, the rampant corruption and the inability to choose concrete policy priorities (2003, 10). thus, putin faced huge challenges in the development of a consensual vision of national identity to reform a chaotic political system and to stop the decline of russia's international position (lo 2003, 29). in addition, 1999 and 2000 were marked by not just the rise of xenophobia in the russian society, but also by the growth of antiamerican and anti-caucasian sentiment in connection with the events in kosovo, chechnya and moscow (as a result of moscow terrorist attacks). the 9/11 terrorist attacks were seen as an opportunity for putin to establish a truly strategic partnership with the united states. he was the first head of state to express his solidarityto george w. bush. at the same time, the russians expressed their desire to support the americans in afghanistan. in fact, putin was obsessed with "international terrorism" based on radical islam. for him, it was the main cause of the inability to win the war in chechnya (levesque 2012, 8). putin has therefore focused on the international instability (terrorism) and potential economic opportunities. he has begun to move closer to the west. however, to the great displeasure of russians, bush formally supported the further enlargement of nato in the baltic states in november 2001. then, in december, he announced that the united states would withdraw from the abm treaty to focus on central europe and start the construction of the missile shield against long-range missiles. from the beginning of this initiative, the united states indicated that their goal was to defend not only the united states but also its european allies against missile attacks from "rogue states" (referring to iran and north korea). in june 2002, the united states abandoned unilaterally the abm treaty, and in december of the same year, they announced the deployment of interceptors and radars from 2004. however, even if russians saw these events as very negative, they still continued to cooperate with the americans. shortly after his re-election in march 2004, putin was confronted with a series of a new challenges, both nationally (intensification of terrorist activities in the north caucasus) and internationally (the orange revolution in ukraine, preceded by the rose revolution in georgia, the destabilization of central asia, the expansion of the american military infrastructure near the russia’s borders, etc.). the united states also intensified contacts with the former soviet states— georgia and ukraine—that expressed their intention to join nato. in 2005, putin adopted a vision of "assertion" in foreign policy. moscow no longer believed in the defense cooperation with western countries and insisted on the acceptance of russia's interests in world politics (tsygankov 2010). russian leaders' perceptions of the relative power of the russian state and the balance of power the two concepts—relative power and the balance of power—are closely interrelated and depend largely upon perceptions of political leaders. in this sub-section, we will try to answer the two following questions: how do russian political leaders (political elite who head the russian federation) perceive the relative power of russia? and consequently, how these leaders perceive the irakli geluk’ashvili russias position towards the shield project 28 international system and the role of russia in this system? the analysis of governmental documents and russian leaders’ speeches could provide important insights for understanding the current views on the perception of the postbipolar international system and russia’s place in this system. putin's speech at the munich conference on security policy in early 2007 was a turning point in russia's relations with the united states and other western countries. at this conference, putin has clearly shown how he saw the international system. during his speech he criticized the conception of an american "unipolar world," noting that: “the united states go out of their national borders in all areas and it is very dangerous. nobody feels safe because nobody can find refuge behind international law" (rtn, 2007). he also criticized the bush administration for supporting the missile shield project. at this conference, putin has sent a clear message by stressing that russia's relations with the west have been compromised because of america’s destabilising politics (tsygankov, 2010: 171). at the bucharest summit in april 2008, russia was able to block the delivery of the membership action plan (map) for georgia and ukraine. medvedev, as the new russian president, criticized the security system of the osce and nato. in addition, he has said that russia was "extremely disappointed" that the united states signed an agreement to deploy a missile shield in central europe. meanwhile, the russians had already tested new missiles capable of penetrating the missile defense system and announced their intention of reequipping the new ballistic missiles. in fact, seeing no positive response from nato and the united states, russia adopted a series of measures in order to counter western ambitions (especially american) in eastern europe. as tsygankov has noted, russia felt humiliated because it had to swallow the kosovo war, the enlargement of nato, the u.s. unilateral withdrawal from the abm treaty, the u.s. military presence in central asia (the area considered to be russia’s backyard), the invasion of iraq and the proposed deployment of a missile shield in central europe. after the russian-georgian war, medvedev stated that "we will not tolerate humiliation any more, and we are not joking" (tsygankov, 2010: 226). russian leaders' concerns about a missile shield centered around three key elements (caves & bunn, 2007: 5-6). firstly, according to the russians, this missile shield posed a threat to russia, upsetting russia’s strategic stability and causing an arms race. secondly, in the case of missile shield deployment, russians plan to respond by targeting europe with ballistic nuclear missiles, and by withdrawing from the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty (1987), which would allow russia into western europe to target its missiles ss-20 (shirinov, 2008: 98; caves and bunn, 2007: 6). thirdly, according to the russian officials, the americans had not sufficiently informed and did not consult russians about the missile shield plan. according to the russians, these defense interceptors can be turned into offensive weapons (shirinov, 2008: 98), so they fear that the missile may have a "potential first strike" against russia (felgenhauer, 2009). in the end, the russians accused the americans of being non-compliant with the principles of international law as the united states took the decision to withdraw unilaterally from the abm treaty. to sum up, the russians had several reasons to be wary of the americans. in the context politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 29 of their history with the u.s., they see the installation of a missile shield in central europe as a campaign to degrade the capacities of russian nuclear strategic deterrence. russian leaders’ suspicions regarding nato are partly fueled by a long period during which the two sides were enemies. nato, with its shifts in policy since 1991, has greatly contributed to russian suspicions. in addition, under george w. bush, in response to russian attempts at rapprochement in the early 2000s, the americans responded with attempts to extend their influence in the former soviet space and support the new waves of the nato enlargement. in the end, the russian political elite were convinced that the americans had also supported color revolutions in some former soviet republics (georgia, ukraine, kyrgyzstan), undermining the russian influence in the region. in this context, the unilateral withdrawal from the abm treaty and the project of the missile shield in central europe is seen as a new attempt to increase u.s. influence in the post-soviet space. therefore, the russian political leaders perceive the relative power of russia diminished and threatened by foreign forces. according to them, the iranian threat does not exist and over time the number of interceptors can grow, that will create a global missile defense system, thus strengthening the position of the united states as hegemony in a unipolar world. impact of ideology and the "grand strategy" in this section, we will analyze russia’s position from two other concepts: the role of ideology in the extraction and mobilization of resources from society and the development of a "grand strategy." these two concepts, as in the previous case, are closely interrelated. we will try to identify how threat perceptions through strategic ideas have "facilitated" the extraction of resources from domestic society and developed a "grand strategy." various geo-political schools emerged after the collapse of the soviet union, whose objectives were to examine the role and identity of russia in the post-cold war world. lo argues that ideology in post-soviet russia remains a powerful factor in the formulation of domestic and foreign policy. however, he notes that every ideology brings a unique perspective to the debate on foreign policy (lo 2002, 40). we can distinguish the three main geo-political currents of thoughts with its sub-schools: westernism, eurasianism and centrism. first, westernizers argued that russia is primarily a european country associated with the western world and its institutions. according to them, the only condition to adequately respond to different political and economic challenges is the ability to collaborate with western countries, as well as integrate western institutions. this school of thought thus shows a perception of the west as the only viable and progressive civilization in the world (tsygankov 2003, 107). ////contemporary eurasianism (unlike the eurasianism of the early twentieth century) is a mixture of different ideas of identity in response to a range of emotional and intellectual needs. there is the specificity and exclusivity of russia as a country both european and asian, the importance of its geographical size, its mission, etc. in general, eurasianists see the west (and particularly the united states) as the main threat to russia’s cultural identity. they believe that russia should take advantage of its geographical position and mobilize its resources in order to face the “atlantist” world widely associated with the united irakli geluk’ashvili russias position towards the shield project 30 states. in summary, contemporary eurasianism was designed as a "recipe" for the reconstruction of a soviet-style russia, in terms of its borders and its authoritarian political system (mankoff 2009, 65). in other hand, it allows the participation of russia in almost of all major issues of world politics (lo 2002, 18-19). the last major geo-political current is “centrism.” this school of thought has emerged as a reaction to the pro-western liberalism conducted under the yeltsinkozyrev tandem and focuses mainly on the new liberal era. according to the centrists, given its geographical location, russia must play the role of bridge between the western and non-western world. centrists do not necessarily see the west as hostile and are willing to cooperate with anyone who supports the balance of international power and the role of russia in this balance (tsygankov 2010, 95). in sum, after the collapse of the soviet union, the political elite began to search for a new identity and a place for the "new" russia. westernizers’ failed attempts to develop a strategic partnership with the west and its institutions during the 1990s have increased the mistrust among the russian political class and the general public. for example, according to the 2006 polls, approximately 50 percent of russians believed that nato was a threat to russia, compared to the 2005 rate of about 40 percent. in 2008, approximately 59 percent of respondents saw as negative the possibility of nato enlargement to ukraine and georgia (korrespondent 2008). eurasianism, which is considered as a major ideology, has been reduced to certain elements of its "geo-politics." as noted by natalia morozova, russia had neither the capacity nor the desire to exercise sovietstyle control over the post-soviet space. it lacked the resources to compete with new major players (the eu, china, etc.), and especially with the united states, which began to pursue their own goals in the postsoviet space (morozova 2009, 672-3). as a result, putin has opted for a more pragmatic and moderate policies while adopting elements of each current of thought in order to consolidate russia’s position. westernizers saw the opportunity to get closer to the west, and eurasianists saw the opportunity to see russia as a great power. basically, the desire to become a great power was seen as a necessary condition to defend national interests in interactions with other states. thus, as miller noted, the main policy objective was to restore russia's great power status, even if the ideology behind these objectives was not always clear. the key was to recognize the necessity of their existence as a factor of orientation and legitimation (miller 2011, 18-9). the missile shield project contradicted the russian ideational inspirations, undermining russia’s desire to once again become a great power and play a major role in world politics. in summation, the external threats to russia were determined by the russian leaders’ perceptions of the post-cold war international system and the relative power of the russian state (as we saw in the previous section). this conception of threats, in turn, has pushed the russian leaders to adopt a new “grand strategy”, which was a mixture of various strategic ideas borrowed from different ideologies. as an ideational factor of extraction and mobilization of society's resources, the ideology has facilitated the russian government's position in that it largely reflects the opinion of the general public. indeed, the political elites and the general public distrusted western institutions and favored the putin’s method of undertaking. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 31 conclusion we made an analysis of russia’s position toward the european missile shield from the neoclassical realist approach. each of the variables that we analyzed gave us a different perspective. we explained the position of russia based on perceptions of russian leaders, including how they perceive the relative power of their state and the international system. we also showed the scope of ideology and position of the general public towards this ideology. at the end of our analysis, we can draw certain core conclusions corresponding to the objective set in the introduction of this article. first, russia’s position towards the missile shield depends largely on internal and subjective variables. therefore, in the eyes of russian leaders, the installation of a missile shield in central europe implies both a threat to russian security and the desire of the west to undermine russian influence in europe. they viewed the international system as dominated by the united states, where they act unilaterally without taking into account the interests of other states. nato is seen as the u.s.’s strategic and military instrument. as an ideational factor of the extraction and mobilization of society's resources, the impact of ideology was significant and favored the russian government’s stance against the installation of the missile shield. in fact, looking at the unsuccessful attempts of "westernizers" in the early 1990s to approach the west and its institutions, the russian political elite and the general public were convinced that it was better to rely on their internal resources. it thus was agreed that the way to achieve this goal was to become a great power and gain respect from the other powers. in the end, since the collapse of the ussr, the general public has shown a more distrustful attitude towards the west, particularly toward nato. during yeltsin’s first presidential term, part of the general public was convinced that russian foreign policy was dictated from washington. this has largely influenced the change and continued the pattern of foreign policy under putin. references belikow, juan. temas emergentes: terrorismo, narcotráfico, tráfico ilegal de personas, crimen organizado. paper presented at the vi encuentro nacional de estudios bassin, mark (1991), « russia between europe and asia: the ideological construction of geographical space”, slavic review, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 117. caves, p. john &bunn, elaine (2007), « russia’s cold war perspective on missile défense in europe », points de vue, fondation de la recherché stratégique, 11p. ? http://www.frstrategie.org/barrefrs /publications/pv/defenseantimissile/ pv_20070503_eng.pdf (accessedseptember 21, 2012). felgenhauer, pavel (2009), « russians see u.s. missile defense in poland posing 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(2010), “russia's foreign policy: change and continuity in national identity”, new york: rowman and littlefield publishers, 2nd edition, 292 untitled mikhail shavtvaladze effects of democratic citizenship on pursuing global justice 80 effects of democratic citizenship on pursuing global justice: from the perspective of the post-soviet georgia mikhail shavtvaladze1, tblisi state university, georgia abstract hroughout the world history one particular pattern is obvious that people in all nations desperately strive towards justice. what justice really means and what it entails can have many definitions and explanations ranging from liberty to equal distribution of opportunities, however it often can be also associated with such concepts as democracy, the rule of law and human rights. although, significant progress have been made in this direction, notably abolishment of slavery, introduction of universal suffrage in most countries, alleviation of poverty, adoption of universal declaration of human rights, severe problems such as authoritarian regimes, conflicts, terrorism, inequality, environmental hazards, human trafficking, inadequate living standards and widespread poverty still largely persists and haunt us. despite significant differences in attitudes towards global justice from country to country, based on its size, economic power and political influence across the globe, the above mentioned positive steps has been still made, yet plenty of problems still largely remain. hence, it is interesting to find out how this progress has been achieved, was it global democratic process, economic development or something else. looking from the perspective of the post-soviet country such as georgia, in this paper, firstly, i would like to explore what the concepts of global justice and democratic citizenship mean and how they can be related to each other. secondly, i would like to find out what is the current state of democracy in georgia and to what extent active political participation along with strong civil society can influence on pursuing justice not only domestically but also globally. finally, i would like to examine what are those domestic and global factors that might inhibit the people's aspiration to global justice. keywords: global justice, democratic citizenship, democratization, political participation, civil society. 1 mikhail shavtvaladze, 34, is a graduate who received his bachelor in international economic relations at the georgian technical university in 2001. in 2010, he obtained a ma in political science at the central european university. he has written his master thesis on the post-soviet transitions and conflict resolution. currently, he works at the tbilisi state university as an hesp afp (academic fellowship program) fellow and visiting lecturer. his interests include comparative politics, international relations, democratization and state building, modernization and development, conflict resolution, and foreign policy analysis. t politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 81 introduction esperate efforts to achieve justice are well observable pattern in nature of humankind that can be traced throughout the entire history of the world. what justice really means and what it entails can have many definitions and explanations ranging from liberty to equal distribution of opportunities, however it often can be also associated with such concepts as democracy, the rule of law and human rights. although significant progress have been made in this direction, notably abolishment of slavery, introduction of universal suffrage in most countries, alleviation of poverty, adoption of the international bill of human rights, severe problems such as authoritarian regimes, conflicts, terrorism, inequality, environmental hazards, discrimination of minority groups, inadequate living standards and widespread poverty are still largely persisting in our days. despite significant differences in attitudes towards global justice from country to country, derived mostly from the uneven distributions of magnitudes, economic powers and political influences among countries in the world, the above mentioned positive steps has been still made, yet plenty of problems such as widespread poverty, illiteracy, discrimination of minorities, repressive regimes and corruption still largely remain. hence, it is not only interesting to find out how this progress has been achieved either through the means of democratization, economic development or something else, but also why so many above mentioned faults and problems still continue to haunt us. given that, whatever broad range of definitions and explanations the concept of global justice might entail, in this paper, i want to analyze the concept in relation with democracy, the rule of law and human rights. consequently, in order to investigate the links between global justice and democratization as well as links between global justice and human rights, the postsoviet georgia, as a country case-study, will be examined. therefore, i firstly intend to explore what the concepts of democratic citizenship and global justice mean and how they can be linked to each other. secondly, i would like to find out what is the current state of democratization process in georgia and to what extent it can influence on pursuing justice globally. finally, i would like to examine what are those domestic and global perspectives and challenges that can promote or hamper people’s aspirations towards global justice. democratic citizenship versus injustices domestically and globally d mikhail shavtvaladze effects of democratic citizenship on pursuing global justice 82 in any political system or regime, be it totalitarian, authoritarian or democratic, individuals engage in certain forms of relationship with the existing government and its structures or institutions. however, the roles and the nature of such relationships vary across the regime types. if individuals in totalitarian or authoritarian regimes are considered to be a mere subjects who are coerced to obey a dominant power’s dictates and decrees, in democratic societies though, individuals are assumed to be main source of power and relationship between a citizen and government can be described as social contract based on justice, equality, the rule of law and peaceful manner to resolve social cleavages. contrary to the highly asymmetric relationship between a citizen and government observed in the totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, where individuals play no role and have no say in shaping public policies that affect their everyday lives, the idea of social contract envisages active citizen participation in politics implying that government and governed are engaged in some kind of formal dialogue, deliberation or partnership with the aim to set overarching rules and common public goals, among which justice to be a primary. elaborated by such prominent thinkers as thomas hobbes, john locke, jean-jacques rousseau, immanuel kant and others, the idea of a social contract dates back almost six hundred years. later on, namely in the second half of twentieth century, the contractarian theory was further expanded and examined by john rawls. however, all these bright ideas pertinent to the establishing just societies, based on liberal, democratic and egalitarian values, were mostly limited to one particular nation-state. as a result of the industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the emerging world wars in first half of twentieth century and, finally, the intensified globalization processes of the last decades, resulting in rapid technological advance, have largely contributed to the increase in demand for global justice. hence, on the one hand, such call for global justice can be attributed to the intensive people’s movements as within as well as across the countries precipitated generally by the globalization processes and their effects. while, on the other hand it can be also ascribed to the challenges that a particular nation or multi-nation state has faced in forms of environmental disasters, ethnic conflicts, poverty, corruption and autocratic regimes that become beyond the reach of citizens in any country. even though no centralized authority (nagel, 2005, p. 116) yet exists to resolve all these injustices and address all those challenges found in today’s modern highly interrelated world (bozac, 2012, p. 451), emergence of the intergovernmental organizations (e.g. united politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 81 nations, nato, eu, wto etc.), international non-governmental organizations (ingos) and global civil movements (e.g. freedom house, human rights watch, amnesty international, oxfam, medecines sans frontieres etc.) after the world war ii, provide some kind of universal guidelines and rules for any state to promote justice, protect human rights and alleviate poverty at least within their national borders. consequently, all these globalization effects that lead to the process of increasing connections in the areas of economics, communication, technology and politics (barrington et al., 2010, p. 87), together with widespread societal acceptance of democartic values, takes public sphere from domestic to global level. successively, people’s demand for justice, before confined within nation-state, expanded further towards global domain. political consequences of such global trends and developments can be observed in recent uprisings and revolutions taking place in egipt, tunisia and libia, dubbed as the “arab spring”, as well as movements such as “occupy” and the anti-austerity protests throughout europe (lutsevych, 2013, p. 2). particularly, these events illustrate to what extent mass mobilization organized by means of the internet and mobile communication (castells, 2008, p. 87) can pose threat not only to dicatorial powers of the old authoritarian rulers, but also to follies and wrongdoigns of multilateral institutions (chandhoke, 2007, p. 3018) . however, it is important to note that the coercive imposition of democracy upon others (encarnacion, 2005, p. 50) by external powers may backfire resulting in even more chaos, violent conflicts or the consolidation of new dictatorial rules rather than democracy. cases of such democartic imperialsim (encarnacion, 2005, p. 55) can be traced by observing us foreign policies in the early twentith century towards the countries in the central and south america. hence, due to the united states' crusade in latin america (e.g. in mexico in 1914), in the name of promoting democarcy (encarnacion, 2005, p. 51), contributed to establish authoritarian one-party political system, lasting over the seventy years. more recently, it was the us military intervention in iraq under the bush presidentship, due to which, right after the invasion, iraq turned into a chaotic and violent land where thousands of civilians have been killed (encarnacion, 2005, p. 52). hence, for the healthy democarization process to take place in any country, which in turn leads to more just and peaceful society, it is necessary for global powers to promote democracy by example rather by force (encarnacion, 2005, p. 58). subsequently, it can be noted that no metter how noble, liberal or democratic the ends are, they do not justify any means. mikhail shavtvaladze effects of democratic citizenship on pursuing global justice 84 for that reason, instead of forceful or coercive means, democratic values in any society can be effectively promoted by means of education, free media and civil activism. given that, the concept of democartic citizenship, introduced first at the national level by means of civil society organizations, education or mass media, can greatly contribute to more just and peaceful environment not only within the particular state but beyond its borders. hence, one of the main reason for such optimistic assumption is that albeit the democartic mind (burroughs, 2011, p. 6) is hardly innate in humans, unlike egocentricity and ethnocenticity that require no special training (burroughs, 2011, p. 6) as walter parker, in his book educating the democartic mind, contends, cultivating democartic habits and competences (burroughs, 2011, p. 6) through educational programmes, free media and civil society organizations can greatly induce citizens in any particular country to establsih more just and democartic societies challenging domestic as well as global injusticies. in addition, the concept of democratic citizenship, apart of conceptions as personally responsible, participatory and justice-orinted citizen (westheimer & kahne, 2004, p. 239), aslo concieves such principles and skills as critical thinking, tolerance, the protection of human rights, inclusion, peace and consensus. consequently, if adopted widely, through its tendency to resolve conflicts peacefully, the concept of democartic citizenship can in turn lead to comparatively less unjust world than it is today. therefore, it can be deduced that connection between pursuing justice and seeking democracy (sen, 2009, p. ix) is rather obvious and it can extend to the global level. state of democratization process in the post-soviet georgia: no justice without genuine democracy past sequence of events that took place in georgia, the newly independent, small, multiethnic state that emerged from the rubbles of the soviet empire, clearly show the pattern that path towards democratic nation-building are not always smooth, but is rather characterized by chaos and violent political cleavages. as a consequence, georgia’s transition from the old totalitarian regime has not been resulted in a stable democratic system but rather in series of semi-authoritarian, hybrid regimes without strong, viable civil society and system of checks and balances. although, the causes of such dramatic turns of events are many and complex, at least some of the major causal effects such as soviet legacy expressed in undemocratic and illiberal political culture, political elite’s illjudged approaches to diversity issues, especially to the issues of ethnic minorities residing in the territory of georgia, as well as unfavorable global circumstances that politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 81 significantly affected domestic outcomes, can be emphasized. speaking of the above mentioned specific type of soviet political culture, during the late period of the ussr’s existence, people in most union republics, including in georgia, more or less tended to favor those ideals such as freedom of movement, increased autonomy and cultural expression (beisinger, 2002, p. 48) instead of security and order. such outcome can be attributed to the gorbachev’s reformist politics aimed to liberalization of the soviet totalitarian system. however, since the soviet union’s demise, most citizens in georgia started to favor order and security over freedom and democracy, largely due to the complete deterioration of economy, emerging violent conflicts, sharp rise of crime level, corruption and inequality. for example, crrc’s caucasus barometer 2010 survey results show that more than fifty percent of the households surveyed in georgia, versus 35 per cent, see the government’s role as a parent rather than employee (caucasus research resource centers, 2010). moreover, the claim with respect to citizens’ preferences of order and security can be further substantiated by the fact that, over the last twenty year period, people in georgia became overwhelmingly supportive towards the georgian orthodox church and its leader catholicos-patriarch of all georgia, ilia ii. for example, according to the recent opinion polls conducted in georgia by iri (international republican institute) among the three most trusted institutions (international republican institute, 2012) the georgian orthodox church tops by 93 percent, followed by the army (89 percent) and police (87 percent). furthermore, looking the georgia’s postsoviet political culture from the lenses of the almond and verba’s civic culture theory, it can be noticed that in the form of the soviet legacy of totalitarian regime, due to its highly centralized nature of nomenklatura (wheatley, 2005, p. 21) georgia inherited the type of civic culture, more characterized as “subject” and “deferential” rather than “participatory”. as a result most citizens in georgia yielded most of their powers to the newly emerged charismatic leaders, in hopes that the incumbent will resolve all their socioeconomic issues and provide justice and fairness. consequently, every successive post-soviet leader, whether gamsakhurdia, shevardnadze or saakashvili, who emerged as a result of overwhelming popular vote, misused their powers in their own ways. if the first president gamsakhurdia’s hypernationalistic appeals largely contributed to the escalation of civic and ethnic conflicts leading to coup d’état, the next president shevardnadze’s rule, aside of devastating military conflict in abkhazia, was marked by mikhail shavtvaladze effects of democratic citizenship on pursuing global justice 86 widespread corruption, clientelism, economic stagnation and lawlessness. as for the third president saakashvili, an us educated lawyer who surged to power in the peaceful rose revolution of 2003 (de waal, 2012), instead to consolidate democracy and resolve the frozen ethnic conflicts peacefully, he choose to solidify his own power through amending the constitution. as a result, saakashvili acquired power to initiate and veto legislation, to abolish existing laws, and dissolve parliament (shavtvaladze, 2012, p. 36). because of such undemocratic political setting and the absence of judicial independence (barrington et al., 2010, p. 280) in georgia, that was characterized the saakashvili’s nine year rule, it become even more difficult for ordinary citizens to find justce at the national level. moreover, despite more effective measures taken by saakashvili’s government to eliminate petty corruption that increased state revenues further (shavtvaladze, 2012, p. 38), it turns out that throughout this period, largest part of these revenues and most efforts of the ruling elite were directed towards building an authoritarian police state rather than democratic political system. for that reason, saakashvili and his ruling party (united national movement) created an extensive – and very lakely illegal – surveillance and security apparatus in georgia (cecire, 2012, p. 2) based on the harsh “zero tolerance” policy on crime (dolidze & de waal, 2012). hence, if in one case modern communication technologies are used for mass mobilzation against authocracy and government injustices, in another case the same tools are employd by the authoritarian rulers to strenghten their grip on the society they rule. as a result, many political opponets and activists objecting the regime, ended up in jail without fair trial, their private properties were forcefuly extorted and some of them even became subject of killings (e.g. sandro girgvliani’s case, in 2006) and phisical abuse. consequently, unable to find justice at the national level due to the georgia’s highly unjust judiciary system, with the acquital rate close to nil, many citizens in georgia who become victims of such systemic violence sanctioned by saakashvili’s regime, had to apply for the european judiciary institutions, such as the european court of human rights in strasburg. even if the recent electoral victory of the main opposition “georgian dream” coalition over the ruling “united national movement” party in the last october 2012 parliamentary elections can be regarded as a positive signal that more particpatory political culture has been emerged in georgia and peacful transfer of power is possible despite numerous obsticles (lutsevych, 2013, p. 2), it hardly denotes that georgia has already consolidated its democarcy. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 81 thus, further commitments to the democartic values, as among general public as well as governing elites, is yet to bee seen, meaning that faced again with issues of transitional justice, it remains to be seen whether the georgian society will approach these challenges with loyalty to democartic ethos, transparency and due process (cecire, 2012). furthermore, speaking of the curent state and extent of georgia’s civic and political culture, it is important to highlight that the recent student protests movements, which was triggered due to the leak of shocking video evidence of torture and abuse, including rape, from tbilisi’s notorious gldani prison (dolidze & de waal, 2012) can be regarded as positive step towards the direction of democartic citizenship. accordingly, unlike to the previous youth mobilizations in georgia, influenced mostly by concrete political forces, in most cases by certain political parties or movements, this new student movements were marked by its impartiality, inclusivness and demands for more democarcy and stronger citizens role in shaping public policies and bringing social change (lutsevych, 2013) rather intereting in the victory of concrete political groups. however, it is also important to stress that despite the rose revolution was percieved by the west as a triumph of civil society (lutsevych, 2013, p. 2) largely due to twenty years of western democarcy assitance aimed at supporting civil society in georgia (lutsevych, 2013), civil activism in this post-soviet country, and the current state of civil society in genaral, remains feeble, meaning incapable to exercise due oversight functions and hold autorities accountible to their citizens (lutsevych, 2013). such weaknesses of civil society in georgia can be explained by number of aspects, among which, most important can be the soviet legacy of totalitarian communist regime, absence of class cleavages, clientelism, political patronage and civic apathy. due to highly unequal distribution of military, political and economic power among the countries across the world, as just as well as unjust actions of global powers or superpowers can significantly affect democartic outcomes in much less powerful, small countries such as georgia. hence, speaking specifically of georgia’s case, although russia’s neo-imperialistic attitudes and politics, partcularly over the last twenty year period, can be hardly regarded as constructive for georgia’s stathood and democracy, western partiality (cecire, 2012) and double standards failed either to foster genuine democartization proceses in georgia. while, many officials in the west saw the rose revolution as having been led by western-oriented reformers (mitchel, 2012), many severe wrongdoings and human rights abuses done by the saakashvili’s regime against its fellow mikhail shavtvaladze effects of democratic citizenship on pursuing global justice 88 citizens were overlooked and not assessed and studied properly. therefore, the question is to what extent the selfproclaimed strong pro-western attitudes by certain leaders or political groups should be automatically counted by the western institutions as pro-democratic and liberal ones. since, as the recent georgian example clearly demonstrates it is possible to build authoritarian system even under the guise of neoliberal values such as free market or laissez-faire economy. perspectives and major challenges to pursue justice domestically and globally: closing remarks the aim of this paper is to analyze the linkage between attempts to establish democratic system and pursuing global justice. based on many observations and the employed studies in this field, it can be concluded that democracy is essential part of just societies whether at the national or global level. hence, despite globalization phenomenon, which had been set in motion two decades earlier (chandhoke, 2007, p. 3018), leading to growing role and influence of international networks and organizations and diminishing capabilities of national governments to tackle new challenges effectively, even within their controlled boundaries, justice globally still can be achieved through the organized civil power (lutsevych, 2013, p. 3) that will based on the concept of democratic citizenship. however path towards relatively more just world, specifically through the democratization process can be complex and might consist of several stages. in the first stage, for instance, through introducing the concept of democratic citizenship at the country level, by means of education, free media or civil society organizations, can lead to much more stronger and viable civil society capable to promote the rule of law, protect human rights and hold national governments and businesses accountable to the public. apparently, such optimistic outcome should be expected because of active, inclusive, participatory and consensus based approaches this type of citizenship presumes to resolve existing conflicts peacefully and uphold universal human rights nationally. consequently, in the second stage, the civil society groups, created at the national level in the first place, can also easily become agents or parts of global civil society movements or ingos, mainly through such phenomena as modern communications networks and new information technology (held, 1997, p. 253). given that, shared with the universal principles and concepts of democratic citizenship, the newly emerged civil society groups will be able not only to resist the symbols of unbridled globalization (chandhoke, 2007, p. 3018) but also to question critically politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 81 the actions of power hungry states and profitdriven markets (chandhoke, 2007) and hold them accountable to general public. finally, speaking of domestic and global challenges along the path leading to global justice specifically via democratization process, from the perspective of the postsoviet georgia, several internal and external factors can be identified. hence, among internal factors, most important of them can be ascribed to the soviet legacy of the totalitarian rule, reflected in weak civil society, civic apathy, corruption, informal rules of clientelism and political patronage, intolerance towards minority groups and poverty. as for specific relationship between poverty and democratic outcome, many social scientists argue that as income rises, so does civic activism (clover, 2012). whereas, given the sharp disbalances of power that exists among the countries in today's highly interrelated world, most important external factors that might have significant effects on democratization processes in the post-soviet country such as georgia can be related to how just and democratic the policies and actions of global superpowers as well as international financial institutions will be particularly with respect to small countries. bibliography westheimer, j., & kahne, j. 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(1997). democarcy and globalization. global governance, vol.3, no.3 , 251-267. lutsevych, o. (2013). how to finish a revolution: civil society and democarcy in georgia, moldova and ukraine. london: chatham house. nagel, t. (2005). the problem of global justice. philosophy&public affairs , 113-147. mitchel, l. (2012 л 15-november). georgia: four observations and four questions from the georgian election. retrieved 2012 л 18-november from eurasianet: http://www.eurasianet.org/node/66186 sen, a. (2009). the idea of justice. cambridge, massachusetts: the belknap press of harvard university press. shavtvaladze, m. (2012). saakashvili's rule: compromising democarcy, unsuccessful efforts to strenghten georgian state and the august war 2008. in m. shavtvaladze, post -soviet transitions and conflict resolution: attempts to build democartic nation-state in an ethnically diverse country: the case of georgia (pp. 1-49). saarbrucken: lap lambert academic publishing gmbh&co.kg. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 133 how to solve a crisis of legitimacy?: empirical insights into the wto public forum anne reiff anne reiff, 24, is a graduate student at goethe university of frankfurt in the master programme “international studies/peaceand conflict research”. she has a bachelor degree of bremen university in “political science” since 2013. she worked several times as student research assistant, currently for professor nicole deitelhoff. anne´s main research interests are north-south relations, ir theory, latin american politics, power and resistance. abstract who participates in the discourse of legitimation taking place in the wto public forum and how do the participants evaluate the world trade organization (wto)? this paper offers two empirical insights into the phenomenon of global governance. firstly, the discourse of legitimation is analyzed with a quantitative text analytical tool. secondly, as the framework of the discourse is a forum founded by the wto to start dialogue with civilsociety after the crisis of legitimacy in the 1990s, it sheds light on a strategy of relegitimation. the empirical results show that (1) the discourse in the forum is “emptyingout” as ngos are largely replaced by academia and national politicians and (2) that it is limited by power inequalities between the actors. keywords: global governance; international organizations; legitimacy; legitimation; ngos; power; quantitative text analysis; world trade organization (wto). politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 134 1. introduction it has become quite popular among international economic organization to found forums for discussion with civil society. besides the world trade organization, at least world bank and imf, g8/g20 and the oecd have implemented one 69 . the wto public forum was founded in 2001 in order to start the dialogue with civil society after example of a global governance institution: it invites 1.) a wide range of actors, from ngos and politicians to corporations for 2.) problem-solving as it shall prevent another crisis of legitimacy. apart from the functional arguments for multi-actor-cooperation, the inclusion of different actors especially from the civil-society was attributed a big potential of democratization (e.g. esty 2004). global governance thereby delivered just what international elites and researchers were both desperately looking for: legitimacy for the international system. however empirical evidence for this potential was widely lacking. this paper gives an empirical insight into the legitimation discourse taking place in the wto public forum from 2007-2011 and tackles important questions like: who is participating (and who is not)? how do the participants evaluate the wto and on which normative grounds? the results of the discourse of legitimation are paradoxical: on the one hand the forum is clearly “emptying out” as instead of the expected audience of ngos and social movements, academics and ambassadors take the lead in the discourse. on the other hand even these less critical actors are contesting the wto and claim democracy and efficiency. the empirical findings support the general critique on global governance approaches. their focus on horizontal decision making processes has been widely criticized for not matching the reality of international relations (e.g. deitelhoff 2012: 67), as it does not take into account global power inequalities (brand et al. 2000:47). but by ignoring the huge power inequalities that characterize the wto, neither the wto public forum nor the discourse of legitimation can be understood properly. the strategic design of the forum for example, reinforces existent power inequalities between the wto and the participants, between different civil society actors and between north and south. the paper is structured as followed: after the introduction, the second chapter describes the “opening up” of the wto after the “battle of seattle” in 1999 in ways of transparency and participation and puts the wto public forum into context. the third chapter presents in 3.1 the theoretical and methodological grounds of the analysis; the “grammar of legitimation” from nullmeier et al. (2010), a text analytical method for empirical legitimation research. in 3.2 a short 69 world bank and international monetary fund found the annual „spring meeting” with civil society, g8/g20 organize “civil8/civil20” and the oecd hold the” oecd forum”. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 135 description of the design of the wto public forum and its general participation trends are outlined. 3.3 contains the core of the paper: the empirical analysis of the statements of legitimation in the forum. the level of legitimation (how positive/negative are the evaluations?), the different groups of speakers (e.g. ngo/wto; north/south) and the normative grounds on which the evaluations are done (input/output; democratic/non-democratic) are analyzed. the conclusion sums up the findings and gives future research perspectives. 2. the “opening up” of the wto after seattle since the 1990s, a lot of international organizations face criticism and protest from the global civil society. but it is the world trade organization (wto), which became the prime example of an international organization in a crisis of legitimacy, since the so called “battle of seattle” from 1999. the street protest with 30.00060.000 participants led to the break-down of the ministerial conference in seattle and generated an enormous attention by media and also by researchers. the latter analyzed since then extensively the lack of legitimacy of the wto (e.g. steffek/ehling 2008; dingwerth et al. 2011) and presented possible solutions (e.g. kapoor 2004; esty 2002). based on this literature, the responses of the wto to the frequent claim for an “opening up” after seattle shall be presented at this point. thus, the discourse of legitimation concerning the wto and its frame of the wto public forum can be put into context. “opening up” shall mean transparency of processes and decisions of the wto on the one hand. on the other hand it also implies more participation of non-state actors; in the ministerial conferences (the highest decision-making organ of the wto), in the dispute-settlement mechanism and in the thematic committees. the wto did not really have another choice than responding to some of the claims of civil society, in order to prevent another attention-grabbing protest in the future. rhetorically this concern can be seen in a speech hold by the director-general at that time, mike moore, in front of the house of commons in 2000: “to survive and to be effective, structures have to be underpinned by the support of the people. it seems at the moment that this is singularly lacking. as demonstrated by seattle, davos, and now at every international gathering, many people feel that decisions which are having a fundamental impact upon their lives are devised behind closed doors. […] if the wto is to succeed, it must reinforce its democratic credentials. it must engage the confidence and the support of civil society, it politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 136 must respond to their needs and interests, and it must be answerable for the decisions that are made.”70 if the wto actually lived up to this promises will be presented briefly. for an “openingup” in ways of transparency, the wto made all official documents available (including documents from the dispute-settlement-mechanism and gatt-documents) on their website, which is generally seen as user-friendly (steffek/ehling 2008: 98; dingwerth at al. 2011: 137). the wto-secretary circulates position papers, organizes informative meeting and in particular briefings ahead of the ministerial meetings. in terms of participation, non-state actors can be accredited as observers for the ministerial conferences and hand in civil society statements, so called “amicus curiae briefs”, in the dispute-settlement-mechanism (van bossche 2008:726). in sum, the cooperation of civil society and wto has been strengthened, but the possibilities for direct influence/lobbying remain on the national level. the fact that the wto “opened-up” much less than for example the un, is explained by steffek/kissling (2006:20-28) with the lack of “pulling-factors” for the wto. as a member-based io with a small bureaucratic apparatus, the organization has no interest at any stage of the “policy cycle” to cooperate with civil society. the policies to enhance transparency and participation that were mentioned above, has to be seen therefore as direct responses to the crisis of legitimacy in the late 90s (steffek/kissling 2006: 26f). likewise, the foundation of a public forum was already outlined in the guidelines of the general council from 1996, but it was only after the protests of seattle that the format was changed from a plenary meeting with hundreds of participants in one room to the current design of parallel panels with room for discussion (van bossche 2007: 728f). van bossche (2007:731) summarizes the goals of the wto public forum: “the [...] public forums do not lead to any specific outcomes, such as, for example, a civil society statement to the wto ministerial conference or general council. […] their aims have been more modest, namely to facilitate the exchange of views and perspectives on wto issues in a frank and open way and to allow participants to network and establish contacts.” the wto public forum as the probably most timeand money-consuming reform after seattle illustrates the general goal of the “opening-up”-strategy of the wto: much exchange, little direct influence. 70 quelle wto (1): http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/spmm_e/spmm26_e.htm. http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/spmm_e/spmm26_e.htm politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 137 3. “civilized discourse”71 or “calling for the shutting down”72? text analysis of the publications of the wto public forums 2007-2011 3.1. how to catch legitimation? the grammar of legitimation (nullmeier et al.) the empirical analysis of the statements made in the wto public forum is done with the method of “grammar of legitimation” by nullmeier et al. (2010). for reasons of limited space, only a very short overview of the theoretical and methodological background can be given at this point. the priority is to make the empirical results of chapter 3.3 comprehensible. the book “precarious legitimacies” [prekäre legitimitäten] by nullmeier et al. (2010) develops an approach to grasp the dynamics of legitimation concerning international institutions just as nation-states. the approach does rely on max weber´s descriptive understanding of legitimacy. but instead of using his concept of legitimacy as “the willingness to obey”, the authors focus on weber´s comment that legitimacy always has to be attributed. nullmeier et al. (2010) outline a model of legitimacy, in which legitimation is the process of evaluations, which then attributes legitimacy to a political order (nullmeier et al. 2010: 31f). to put the concrete evaluations of legitimacy in the focus of the analysis, offers on the one hand the possibility to get a differentiated viewpoint on the legitimacy of a political order (between secure and absent legitimacy). on the other hand it enables us to grasp the dynamics of legitimation processes as it understands legitimacy as a linguistic process, where the speaker and the normative grounds of their evaluations can be identified (schneider/nullmeier/hurrelmann 2007: 131). this new understanding of legitimacy requires a new method, which can extract and categorize different information from a statement of evaluation: the grammar of legitimation. after slightly adapting the method to the specific case of the wto and its public forum, four variables are coded at each statement (table 1). the analyzed statements are taken from the “publications”, the official summaries of the forum, written by the different organizers of the panels. to make the analysis manageable, 27 panels have been selected from the publications from 2007-2011, which resulted in 123 statements in total. in the description of the empirical findings only the most frequent groups of speakers and used criteria of legitimation can be taken into account. 71 cited from the opening speech of the first forum by mike moore, director-general of the wto at that time. available at wto (2): http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/spmm_e/spmm67_e.htm (14.09.2013). 72 cited from aftabalam khan, international coordinator of the ngo action aid in session 12, wto public forum 2007, p 124. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 138 table 1: overview of all coded variables and their values tenor of evaluation: pattern of legitimation: group of speaker: origin of speaker: legitimation democratic input (di) national politician north delegitimation non-democratic input (ndi) corporation south claim democratic output (do) ngos not defined non-democratic output (ndo) academics/ think-tanks wto other io audience source: author 3.2. what is the wto public forum? as director general mike moore opens the first wto public forum in 2001, he demands the present ngos to distance themselves from “masked stone-throwers […], antiglobalization dot.com types” and instead engage in the “civilized discourse” taking place in the new forum. the foundation of the forum is clearly a reaction to the protests of seattle, but the statement shows that it never had the goal to integrate the corresponding social movements, but to divide civil society by inviting some, sympathetic actors. the strategic use of the forum to channel the discourse can also be seen in the design; not every participant or topic is per se accepted, instead: “the wto will select the best proposals and allocate the sessions” (wto 3). the wto public forum is held annually in the wto headquarter in geneva, where discussions take place in around 40 panels in three days. these panels are mainly organized by the invited organizations themselves, which have to apply with a panel proposition. the wto selects the proposals, offers infrastructure and organizes the opening panels. who participates? the wto has documented the general participation in the forum since 2009. what can be seen from the accordant documents is that the number of participants rises from 2009 until 2011 up to 1520 participants and drops in 2012 to 1359. the biggest groups of participants were ngos, followed by academics, national politicians and corporations. but a closer look at the development over time points in another direction: while all groups follow a positive trend of participation, only ngos participate less and less. even though publications from wtopolitikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 139 representatives prefer to ignore this development (pérez-esteve 2012: 18), it fits perfectly into the new wto-strategy from 2006 “to promote the participation of experts from all categories of stakeholders […] in particular government officials and business representatives” (pérez-esteve 2012:18). in sum, the forum has no longer ngos as the main audience, like in the first years after seattle. 3.3. empirical results of the text analysis tenor of claims and critique chart 1 shows the critical tenor of the analyzed statements; de-legitimations and claims with almost the same share contribute more than two third of all statements. with only 36 legitimating statements, the level of legitimation results in 29%. chart 1: level of legitimation (n=123) source: author a very critical statement and its reaction shall help to get an idea about the scope of the evaluations. andré misiekaba, parliamentarian from surinam states, statement 105: “a decade and a half of the wto had delivered a world with closed, non-transparent and unfair trade, a growing gap between rich and poor, and unmet engagement from developed countries. he asked whether this was the accountability the wto needed to deliver” (publication 2010, session 19). as a defense, gabrielle marceau, legal affairs division of the wto, responded “that this was a moral question and that neither the wto nor any international forum had a responsibility for wealth distribution” (publication 2010, session 19). in sum, there is a wide scope of evaluations, from enthusiasm about the accomplishments of the wto to fierce critique of its contribution to global injustice. the general level of legitimation in the discourse remains low. 36 44 43 legitimation de-legitimation claims politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 140 northern academics and southern politicians but which groups of speakers are dominant in the discourse and what role does the origin (north – south) play? chart 2 provides the crucial information about the bias of participation: first, the number of statements per group is very unequally distributed. the group “academics/think-tanks” is dominating the discourse in the forum, followed by “national politicians”. ngos only make the same amount of evaluations as the wto itself. second, the southern speakers are focused on very few groups of speakers. while nearly all national politicians are from the global south, they are highly underrepresented within the academics/think-tanks. only ngos have a balance of north-south speakers. chart 2: number of statements per group and origin source: author the fact that academics/think-tanks are the most present group in the discourse of legitimation is surprising. in the academic literature on the “opening-up” of the wto, researchers hardly see themselves as actors of civil society or as the addressee of the wto reforms. the high number of statements by national politicians seems to be illogical: as a member-based organization who decides by consensus, the wto provides more direct channels of communication and influence for the member-states representatives than a yearly held forum. nearly all of them being southern politicians, it becomes clear how little weight they give their own voice in the wto decision-making process. the wto public forum seems to be an alternative way to be heard. the fact that the majority of the southern speakers can be found in this group could be explained by the limited capabilities of other southern speakers to travel to geneva for the forum, while the political elites from the south do not have these limitations. the ambassadors might even be situated in geneva anyways. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 number of statements per group proportion of southern speakers politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 141 concerning the level of legitimation per group of speakers, the picture stays diverse. academics/think-tanks assess the wto critically by making many claims. they argue on a high information level, even taking into the account the concept of “legitimacy” itself in the claims, like in statement 21 from mayur patel, global trade governance project oxford: “after the bitter experience of not understanding the implications of new rules negotiated during the uruguay round, more informed negotiations […] would strengthen the wto´s legitimacy” (publication 2007, session1). national politicians instead evaluate the wto in a much more positive way. some statements are even more enthusiastic than the self-legitimation by the wto, like statement 67/68/69 from sergio abreu, senator and former foreign minister of uruguay shows: “mr. abreu pointed to the wto as the only organization today, whose structures has not been questions, whose decisions are based on consensus and whose agenda moves in line with –and sometimes ahead ofworld events” (publication 2009, session high level panel). as expected the speakers from the wto itself are busy with self-legitimation; their statements have the highest level of legitimation, only two are not legitimating ones. from the named groups, ngos take the most critical view on the wto, only one statement is positive. alexandra chandra from trade knowledge network, indonesia points out in statement 91: “civil society groups in indonesia take a cynical view of the wto; they like the wto because they do not think it does very much by way of market opening” (publication 2010, session 11). mike moore´s announcement of a “civilized discourse” taking place in the wto public forum seems to limit the space for radical statements, questioning the institution as such. but since 2011, with the deadlock of the negotiations of doha, more and more speakers see the wto in an existential crisis. consultant jaques carles, paris, claims in statement 121 “the wto is negotiating as if it was still in the 1950s, but now it is 2011. he suggested that maybe it is time to remove the agriculture component from the wto and create a world agriculture organization” (publication 2011, session 13). also northern diplomats, otherwise supportive, like michaela dodini, permanent representative of the eu to the wto criticizes: “there needs to be a serious discussion on what is not working and why, as the time for “business as usual” is definitely over” (publications 2011, session 19). democracy and efficiency the grammar of legitimation seeks to extract who raises voice in a discourse and how positive or negative the tenor is. but its particular contribution to empirical legitimation research politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 142 is that it can analyze the normative criteria an evaluation (legitimation/de-legitimation/claim) is based on. table 2 lists in the first column the four patterns of legitimation and its most frequent criteria, the second column contains the distribution of statements per pattern in numbers and percentage and the third column adds the level of legitimation (share of positive statements) of each pattern. table 2: patterns – level of legitimation distribution of pattern of legitimation level of legitimation per pattern: n % % democratic input (di) 68 55,28% 30,88% north-south-justice 17 transparency 16 participation (non-state actors) 12 non-democratic input (ndi) 11 8,94% 18,8% capability/agency 7 expertise 2 democratic output (do) 8 6,50% 37,5% contribution to public good 4 democratic empowerment 3 non-democratic output (ndo) 36 29,27% 27,78% efficiency 17 distributive justice 8 relevant agenda 7 source: author the table shows that the pattern “democratic input” is used the most frequently (more than half of all analyzed statements), followed by the pattern of “non-democratic output”, which is used almost in a third of the evaluations. the most frequently used criteria of the dipattern reflect the two conflict lines after seattle, described in chapter 2: opening up (transparency and participation) and north-south-justice. still, it is noteworthy that the wto with its technocratic mandate is now mainly evaluated by democratic criteria. the pattern of “non-democratic-output”, especially the criteria of “efficiency” comes closest to the “traditional” criteria to evaluate international organizations: fulfilling the mandate. even though democratic criteria dominate the discourse in the forum, they still play a significant role for evaluation. especially the deadlock of doha negotiations for years could be a reason for the politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 143 criticism of efficiency of the wto. concerning the level of legitimation, both democratic patterns (input and output) are used more frequently for legitimating statements than the two non-democratic ones. still the difference is small; especially the most common patterns (di and ndo) only have a level of legitimation of around 30%. in that sense, no pattern or underlying criteria is functioning as a resource of legitimation for the wto. as a last point on the pattern of legitimation, it is also worth noticing that the different groups of speakers all established the same patterns for their evaluations. even though their level of legitimation differs a lot, from highly legitimating like the wto-speakers to very critical like the ngos, they all use mainly the pattern of “democratic-input” and “non-democraticoutput” to evaluate the wto. 3.4. summary of empirical findings the empirical findings on the discourse of legitimation can be summarized in 5 points: first, the discourse of legitimation is characterized by a low level of legitimation (less than a third of the statements are legitimating). for a forum that was set up for discussion about the wto that does not come as a surprise. after the widespread protests at the end of the 90s, even a more critical tenor could be expected. this negative tenor of the statements relies mainly on the de-legitimations and claims by the group of academics/think-tanks and ngos, while the wto in particular and also national politicians seek to strengthen the wto´s legitimation. second, the discourse of legitimation in the forum is clearly dominated by academics/think-tanks from the global north, followed by national politicians from the global south with half so many statements. wto speakers and ngo representatives participate less frequent in the discourse; the participation of corporations and other ios is negligible. third, the general trend of participation is therefore confirmed: ngos are no longer the main actors of the forum, like in 2001, when mike moore addressed his opening-speech to them. those ngos that opted for the “civilized discourse” have either lost their interest in the forum or they are strategically replaced by other (less critical) audiences. fourth, the analysis shows the strong attempt of self-legitimation by the wto, which is confronted since 2011 with the deadlock of doha-negotiations with more fundamental criticism concerning the whole institution. still, the “calling for the shutting down” stands alone; instead a lot of the critique is formulated in diplomatic claims. fifth, the evaluation of the legitimation of the wto is mostly done on grounds of democratic-input criteria, like north-south justice, transparency and participation. but also the pattern of non-democratic output, in particular the criterion of “efficiency” plays a significant politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 144 role. both patterns have become established for all the groups of speakers, regardless their different level of legitimation. 3.5. conclusion the empirical analysis gives proof to the assumption some researchers already had: the forum is “emptying-out” (e.g. deitelhoff 2012: 72f). while it was never meant to include those parts of civil society that are highly critical (e.g. the various social movements from the “battle of seattle”), but instead divide the coalitions of the protests of the 90s (o´brien et al.:208-209, 222), even the sympathetic ngos are less and less present in the forum and academics and national politicians/ambassadors take their place. one reason could be the frustration about the very limited influence, outlined in chapter 2; greenpeace international stopped their campaign due to this reason (steffek 2012: 235). another reason could be the strategic change of audience since 2006 by the wto to national politicians and corporations (pérez esteve 2012). but the analysis of the discourse shows that nonetheless, the tenor of the discourse is highly critical and claims especially for a more democratic wto are raised. the importance of power inequalities do not only have impact on the participation of civil society, but the fact that nearly all politicians participating in the forum come from the global south, illustrates their marginalization in the decision-making processes of the wto. the paper raises several issues for future research. first, the fact that a civil society forum is clearly dominated by academics calls for empirical work (e.g.: what is the role of academics in international discourses?) and normative evaluations (e.g.: is legitimacy strengthened because academics represent the civil society/because of their expertise or weakened because of the widening gap of information?). second, a comparison of the various forums of international economic institutions including the design, participation and the discourse would be very interesting. third, a closer look at the patterns of legitimation, in particular the combination of the criteria of democracy and efficiency could be crucial for the evaluation of international organizations. tony mcgrew (2001:42) gives an outlook for the wto: “the battle of seattle framed the future of the wto in terms of a stark choice between a democratic and an effective wto. a decade later neither alternative has been realized. […] rather the existential crisis of the wto is ultimately concerned with how these aspirations can and must be combined.” politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 145 references brand, ulrich/brunnengräber, achim/schrader, lutz/stock, christian/wahl, peter (2000): global governance. alternative to a neo-liberal globalization? [global governance. alternative zur neoliberalen globalisierung?] münster, westfälisches dampfboot. deitelhoff, nicole (2012): deliberation and opposition in the context of transnational policies of legitimation. [deliberation und opposition im kontext transnationaler legitimitätspolitik]. in: leviathan, special edition 27: the rise of policies of legitimation [der aufstieg der legitimitätspolitik], 63-80. dingwerth, klaus et al. (2011): postnational democracy [postnationale demokratie]. chapter 5. wiesbaden: vs verlag für sozialwissenschaften. esty, daniel c. (2002): the world trade organization´s legitimacy crisis. in : world trade review (2002), 1(1), 7-22. kapoor, ilan (2004): deliberative democracy and the wto. in: review of international political economy, 11(3), august 2004. 522541. mcgrew, tony (2011): after globalisation? wto reform and the new global political economy. in: cottier, thomas/ elsig, manfred (eds.), governing the world trade organization. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2046. nullmeier, frank/ biegon, dominika/ gronau, jennifer/ nonhoff, martin/ schmidtke, henning/ schneider, steffen (2010): precarious legitimacies. justification of rule in the postnational constellation. [prekäre legitimitäten. rechtfertigung von herrschaft in der postnationalen konstellation]. frankfurt/ new york: campus verlag. o´brien, robert/ goetz, anne marie/ aart scholte, jan/ williams, marc (2000): contesting global governance. multilateral economic institutions and global social movements. cambridge: cambridge university press. pérez-esteve, maria (2012): wto rules and practices for transparency and engagement with civil society organizations. staff working paper ersd2012-14. text abrufbar unter: http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/reser_e/ersd201214_e.pdf (zugriff am 14.09.2013). schneider, steffen/ nullmeier, frank/ hurrelmann, achim (2007): exploring the communicate dimension of legitimacy: text analytical approaches. in: hurrelmann, achim/ schneider, steffen/ steffek, jens (hrsg.), legitimacy in an age of global politics. hampshire: palgrave macmillan, 126155. steffek, jens (2012): conflicting mandate, criticism of liberalism and the politicization of gatt and wto. [mandatskonflikte, liberalismuskritik und die politisierung von gatt und wto.] in : zürn, michael/ eckerehrhardt, matthias (hrsg.), die politisierung der weltpolitik, berlin: suhrkamp verlag, 213239. http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/reser_e/ersd201214_e.pdf politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 146 steffek, jens/ ehling, ulrike (2008): civil society participation at the margins: the case of wto. in: steffek, jens/ kissling, claudia/ nanz, patrizia (hrsg.), civil society participation in european and global governance. hampshire: palgrave macmillan, 95115. steffek, jens/ kissling, claudia (2006): civil society participation in international governance: the un and the wto compared. transstate working papers, no. 42. abrufbar unter: www.hdl.handle.net/10419/24955 (zugriff am 05.06.2013). van bossche, peter (2008): ngo involvement in the wto: a comparative perspective. in: journal of international economic law 11(4), 717749. wto (1): http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/spmm_e/spmm26_e.htm (zugriff am 28.05.13). wto (2): http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/spmm_e/spmm67_e.htm (zugriff am 14.09.2013). wto (3): http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news13_e/pfor_22may13_e.htm (zugriff am 18.09.2013). wto public forum 2007, publication: http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/public_forum06_e.pdf (15.09.2013). wto public forum 2008, publication: http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/public_forum08_e.pdf (15.09.2013). wto public forum 2009, publication: http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/public_forum09_e.pdf (15.09.2013) wto public forum 2010, publication: http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/public_forum10_e.pdf (15.09.2013). wto public forum 2011, publication: http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/public_forum11_e.pdf (15.09.2013). appendix (list of all coded statements) (abridged due to spatial limitations. please, contact the author.) http://www.hdl.handle.net/10419/24955 http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/spmm_e/spmm26_e.htm http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/spmm_e/spmm67_e.htm http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news13_e/pfor_22may13_e.htm http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/public_forum06_e.pdf http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/public_forum08_e.pdf http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/public_forum09_e.pdf http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/public_forum10_e.pdf http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/public_forum11_e.pdf untitled politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 3 challenges, cooperation and paradoxes in the coca cocaine complex mariá de los ángeles lasa1, university of camerino italy abstract he coca-cocaine complex in south america is one of the most serious threats to the region’s political, economic and social institutions. it has infected the public and private sectors with the virus of corruption and violence, and it has brought about the intervention of extra-regional actors that have contributed to worsening the situation. in the fight against this threat since the 1970s, south american countries have had the support of the united states (us) and the european union (eu) which, these being the world’s largest consumers of cocaine in the world, has become the source of a vicious paradox: the challenges for south american states arise not only from the coca-cocaine complex itself, but also from the cooperation of those world superpowers in the fight against it. this paper analyses both the cooperation among drug actors –an issue that has historically been overlooked–, and the previously mentioned paradox in the case of south american states and the eu. 1 mariá de los ángeles lasa, born in argentina 1986 is a cuia scholar and doctoral fellow in social sciences on work and legality at the department of law and politics, school of advanced studies, università degli studi di camerino (italy). she is currently visiting researcher at the lozano long institute of latin american studies (college of liberal arts, university of texas at austin). she has published several articles on public corruption, drugs and organized crime in books and academic journals in argentina, italy, mexico and switzerland. her interests include security studies, drug trafficking, counternarcotics policies, and violence and criminality in latin america. she would like to thank her ph.d. advisor, dr. giovanna ricci, for providing useful comments on her first drafts, prof. andrea vartalitis, from the national university of villa maría (argentina), for her advice and careful editing of the final english version of this paper. t maria de los angeles lasa challenges, cooperation and paradoxes in the coca cocaine complex 4 introduction oca leaves have been chewed by andean people for centuries “to help combat hunger and to overcome fatigue and exhaustion caused by the high altitude, as well as for traditional and religious practices” (dreyfus, 2001, 22). since pre-columbian times the coca bush is deeply rooted in the andean culture, but its rich cultural dimension has no bearing on the harmful effects it has had on the rest of the world once it is transformed into cocaine. the coca plant is a medium-sized bush that grows in tropical climate regions, “anywhere between 100 and 1.700 meters above sea level” (mejía and posada, 2010, 255). there are more than 250 varieties of coca bushes that can be harvested from three to six times per year for a period of 10 to 25 years depending on the level of care it receives. depending on the coca variety, the geographical region and the number of bushes cultivated per hectare, 1 hectare planted with coca bushes produces, on average, between 1,000 and 1,200 kilograms of fresh coca leaf per harvest. between 1.1 and 1.4 kilograms of cocaine can be produced from 1 kilogram of coca leaf. using an average of four harvests per year (…), we arrive at a general production estimate of between 5 and 6 kilograms of cocaine per hectare per year.” (mejía and posada, 2010, 255). according to the 2012 world drug report, the total number of hectares illegally cultivated with coca bush in 2010 was estimated in 149.200 (unodc, 2012, 35). produced with crystalline tropane alkaloid, a chemical obtained from the leaves of the coca bush, cocaine hydrochloride is a highly addictive illegal drug. “it is either snorted or dissolved in water and injected,” (mejía and posada, 2010, 255) and its consumption triggers different physical effects. in moderate doses, it causes disturbance in heart rates, elevated blood pressure, dilated pupils, decreased appetite, irritability, and argumentative behavior, among other effects. in large doses it can lead to loss of coordination, collapse, blurred vision, dizziness, anxiety, heart attacks, chest pain, respiratory failure, strokes, seizures, headaches, abdominal pain, nausea, and paranoia (mejía and posada, 2010, 256). cocaine is the second most consumed illegal drug in the us (after marihuana) and the third in most european countries after marihuana and heroin (mejía and posada, 2010, 256). from the perspective of the demand of drugs, in fact, the us is to have the largest number of cocaine users worldwide with more than 5 million users aged between 15 to 64; followed by western european countries with an estimated number of 4 million users within the same age range (unodc, 2011, 86). the coca-cocaine complex: a real threat to south american countries specialized literature in the field of international security studies defines drug trafficking as both an emerging post-cold war global problem and a national security problem (cf. belikow, 2003; dreyfus, 2001). regarding south american countries, while the first statement may be debatable for illicit cocaine production, traffic and consumption has clearly been a threat to this region long before the collapse of the bipolar world, the coca-cocaine complex is definitely a national security problem in south america.2 2 traditionally, south america has been divided into two major areas: the andean area and the southern cone. the andean region is composed of five countries: venezuela, colombia, ecuador, peru and bolivia. the southernmost area of the americas includes argentina, uruguay and chile in its most narrow concept, but sometimes paraguay and the south of brazil are also included. they all share a common set of historical and political characteristics. guyana, suriname and french guyana are not included as part of the region “because these countries and overseas dominions (in the case of french guyana) are generally considered part of the caribbean from both a classical geopolitical point of view and from their role in drug trafficking” (dreyfus, 2001, 66). cf. figure 1. c politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 5 according to barry buzan, national security refers to the situation of freedom from harmful threats to a given state.3 this includes freedom from military attack or coercion, from internal subversion, and freedom from the erosion of the political, economic and social values, which are essential to the quality of life and human development. as it can be seen, this concept goes beyond the weberian concept of state, “defined in politico-institutional terms as a central government” (dreyfus, 2001, 35). instead of considering the state and society as two separate phenomena, the state is defined here as a complex socio-political sovereign entity that includes territory, governing institutions and population. but more interestingly in buzan’s approach, is that the concept of threat plays a major role. threat is defined in his work as a danger to the attributes of the state. these threats can be specific, in the sense that they may have a clear focus and source (posed by a particular state or by a non-state actor); or they can be diffuse threats arising from processes, rather than from a particular actor, object, or policy. iveland lloyd griffith, taking buzan’s concept of threat, considers what he has called “the drug problem” (griffith, 1997, 5) to be the major threat to caribbean states. this problem, the theorist asserts, is a multidimensional dilemma with four areas: production, consumption, trafficking and money laundering (cf. griffith, 1997, 1322). on the other hand, pablo dreyfus, who has also taken buzan’s concept, has largely studied the spillover negative effects of cocaine producer countries on their 3 this state-centric definition belongs to buzan’s classical study people, states & fear ([1988] 2009). in his most recent works, buzan adopts a strong constructivist perspective, so “security issues are made security issues by acts of securitization”, a discourse that takes the form of presenting something as an existential threat to a referent object and the audience accepts it as such (buzan, wæver, and de wilde, 1998, 21-22). with this new approach, buzan abandons the idea that “security is about what is a threat, and the analyst can tell whether something really is a security problem and for whom” (buzan, wæver, and de wilde, 1998, 204). neighbors, and considers that the major threat is drug trafficking and its interaction with the weak nature of south american countries (dreyfus, 2001, 65). as can be seen, in dreyfus’ work, production and consumption are collateral dimensions of drug trafficking and not problems as such, which means that many actors involved are not taken into account. on the other hand, while griffith includes money laundering in this equation, i think money laundering –as well as arms trafficking, human trafficking, forced labor, etc.– is itself a related criminal activity and should not be considered part of the coca-cocaine complex. in my view, the real threat to south american countries is the coca-cocaine complex with its three structural dimensions: production, trafficking and consumption. first of all, i consider these dimensions to be structural because should any of them be absent, we would not have the coca-cocaine complex. second, although other drugs are also being cultivated in different and important regions in south america, such as opium, marijuana and heroin in colombia, guatemala, mexico, peru and venezuela, (unodc, 2011, 59) and cannabis in bolivia and paraguay, i argue that the major threat to south american countries is the cocacocaine complex, mainly for the reasons i summarize as follows: 1. 100% of the coca and cocaine produced at an international level originates in south america (unodc, 2011, 59). 2. poppies in colombia, for example, started to be sowed by the same organizations devoted to the cultivation, manufacturing, distribution and sale of cocaine. in other words, the complex that gave origin to them is not the opium-heroine but the coca-cocaine complex. 3. marijuana is widely available to the direct consumer, and it is evident that the illegal organizations related to its commercialization have not been as destabilizing as those connected to the coca-cocaine complex. maria de los angeles lasa challenges, cooperation and paradoxes in the coca cocaine complex 6 4. neither the cultivation of cannabis nor the cultivation of poppies has suffered –like has been the case of the cultivation of coca– the intervention in south america of extra-regional actors such as the us and, to a lesser extent, the eu. having made that clear, and considering, first, that the coca-cocaine complex is a diffuse threat to the national security in south american countries since it is not posed by a particular actor; and, second, that the three dimensions of the coca-cocaine complex only affect south american countries, the present paper argues that: a) the coca-cocaine complex involves the interaction of regional and extra-regional actors; b) the coca-cocaine complex involves the interaction of states, trans-states, interstates, non-states and individuals actors; and c) the actors involved in the coca-cocaine complex have broadly two kinds of interactions: conflict and cooperation. regional and extra-regional actors involved identifying actors in any process is a crucial task if we are to refer to some kind of interaction among them. since this paper is aimed at analyzing the cooperative interactions between some actors involved in the coca-cocaine complex, we should first identify them. without being exhaustive, for the list is always open as the problem continues, the variety of actors involved in the cocacocaine complex include the interaction between regional and extra-regional actors, and among regional actors themselves and extra-regional actors themselves (see figure 2). on this regard, some explanatory comments are due. 1. the interaction between actors can be either conflictive or cooperative, and all possible levels of conflict or cooperation in that continuum. 2. the term regional actors should be understood as south american actors, and extra-regional actors, are actors from the rest of the world outside south america. 3. inside each diagram, state actors and state-structure actors (states, armed and police forces); trans-state actors (igos); inter-state actors (mncs and other corporations); non-state actors (criminal groups, paramilitary groups, guerrillas, narcos, drug cartels, ngos); and individual actors (peasants and individuals) have been included. in the following section i analyze international cooperative interactions both between non-state actors, such as narco groups, as well as between state and transstate actors, such is the case between south american countries and the eu. narco cooperation vs. international cooperation a definition of cooperation in broad terms, international cooperation involves the interaction of individuals, institutions, states and international organizations in the pursuit of a common goal of interests. on a general level, then, the term cooperation can be defined as “any act of working together to one end” (siitonen, 1990, 11). going deeper in the analysis, however, one may observe that the very concept of international cooperation is relatively vague. in his article (1990), siitonen suggests that the first task to define international cooperation is to identify the international actors in question, and to determine their cooperation criteria. after numerous considerations about the differences between cooperation and other goal oriented actions (such as competition, assistance or rivalry), his conclusion is that international cooperation could be defined as “any form of social interaction between actors allowing them to achieve voluntarily set common goals by sharing certain resources together” (siitonen, 1990, 13). and the author adds: “cooperation should not be seen as a harmonious relationship where no conflicts exist. on the contrary, cooperation may politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 7 involve hidden power struggles between the partners, and it may as well be a mode of dominance of one partner over another” (siitonen, 1990, 13). bearing in mind that there seems to be a particular tendency in cooperation studies to ignore the problems that arise from international cooperation, the definition provided by siitonen is optimal in two senses. the first one is that it considers the potential power struggles between cooperative partners. and the second one is that it states that cooperation “is a social interaction between actors” (siitonen, 1990, 13). referring to actors alone, from my point of view, siitonen includes in his definition not only states and international organizations, but non-sovereign actors too. this is a crucial aspect in the scope of this paper, considering that, in the following section, i argue that the challenges for south american states arise not only from the cooperation and conflict between non-state actors, but also from efforts at legal international cooperation. narco-cooperation despite the fact that financial interests often lead to conflictive relations among them, cartels and narco-actors often engage in cooperation. this seems to be a forgotten dimension in cooperation studies, which is strange considering the ample evidence that demonstrates the existence of cooperation between south american narco-actors themselves, and south american narcoactors and criminal organizations based in asia, europe and africa. the cooperation between narco-actors usually involves “market rationalization, trafficking logistics, money laundering, and drug-weapon, drug-cash, and drugs-drugs exchanges” (griffith, 1997, 18). as a result, as rensselaer lee has noted, international narco-cooperation opens new markets for narcotics and other illegal products, exploits economies of scale for selling in those markets, enhances organized crime’s penetration of legal economic and financial systems, and generally increases the power of criminal formations relative to national governments (lee, 1995, 210). on the road from the south american andes to the main consumption markets, hundreds of narco-actors intervene in the process. as a result of this chain of illegal cooperation, in 2010 between 788 and 1,060 tons of cocaine were produced and trafficked (unodc, 2011, 36). the first step in the line of production of cocaine is the cultivation of the coca leaf. just in colombia, the leading region with the largest extension of cultivated areas, during the 2001-2010 decade an estimated 60.000 to 100.000 families were involved in this illicit agricultural activity (emcdda and europol, 2012, 15). “many of them grow coca for a living because the frontier areas lack the infrastructure –especially transportation– needed for other, licit crops to be profitable, or because they do not have access to the resources needed to launch sustainable licit agricultural activities” (emcdda and europol, 2012, 15). after this first stage in which the coca leaf is cultivated, the dynamics of production and trafficking already follow an organized process (table 1). first, the same farmers who cultivate the coca leaf produce the coca paste, which is nothing else but the coca leaf with lime, ashes, cement or any similar alkaline. immediately after that, the farmers sell the paste, which is going to be mixed with kerosene, fuel or any other equivalent solvent in order to obtain the cocaine paste to be sold to the local dealers. since the cocaine paste is usually produced in precarious kitchen laboratories, it is often sold to criminal organizations that have better equipped facilities and the technical resources needed to turn the paste into hydrochloride of cocaine. currently, these organizations operate in countries like argentina, brazil and venezuela, which have more specialized human resources and easier access to chemicals such as potassium permanganate or ephedrine (dreyfus, 2001, 305-306). once the process of production is finished, the transportation of the final product is coordinated for its distribution to maria de los angeles lasa challenges, cooperation and paradoxes in the coca cocaine complex 8 the main consumption centers: the us and western european countries. the moment of trafficking in the cocacocaine complex is probably the most logistically organized among narco-actors. the illegal load not only needs to pass border controls, but it also needs to travel long distances through different geographical areas. for instance, in order to have some cocaine loads delivered to south america and europe, the cocaine must go across the atlantic ocean by boat or by plane, the distance to go being more than 10.000 kilometers. according to europol, three main narcomaritime routes towards europe have been identified: the northern route, which originates in the caribbean and whose final destination is portugal or spain; the centre route, from south america to europe going through the canary islands; and the southern route, from the south coming from western africa, and from there to portugal and spain. along these paths, the local narco-actors not only participate in the trafficking but also in the selling in target markets (emcdda and europol, 2012, 15). some of them, according to available evidence, are “syndicates, nigerian networks, and sicilian and russian organizations” (griffith, 1997, 18). according to europol, in the trafficking and selling chain in target markets, “criminal groups located in and around the netherlands and belgium, some of them of colombian origin” (emcdda and europol, 2012, 29) also operate. in the case of the us, the cocaine that arrives there has been handled by central american gangs and some of the nine drug cartels that currently control mexico (federico, 2011, 67-82). international cooperation: the case of south american states and the european union international cooperation offers the best prospect for dealing with the coca-cocaine complex, especially since all state and nonstate actors “face resource limitations” (griffith, 1997, 19). however, collaboration among states can also result in conflict. as griffith has pointed out, there are two main reasons for this. the first reason is related to domestic factors, “including party rivalry, leadership chances, composition and control of the military, budgetary and economic conditions” (griffith, 1997, 19). the second reason is to do with “differences among ruling elites, which cause disparate definitions of the nature and severity of threats and, therefore, varies policies and measures to deal with them” (griffith, 1997, 19). the war on drugs led by the us, could be considered as the paradigmatic case of collaboration that results in conflict. after all, the hard core of that counternarcotics policy is a militarized solution to a nonmilitary problem. but the case of study considered here is that of the eu and some south american states. in the mid 1990s, the andean community of nations (can) and the eu started negotiations to fight against drugs jointly; and so did the rio group and the eu. since then, there have been important advances in coordination and cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking. a very important advancement has been the adoption of a comprehensive action plan on drugs (panama, 1999) and the different declarations of intention like the one signed in quito in 2009 of coordination and cooperation mechanism on drugs among latin america, the caribbean and the european union. furthermore, in 2009, the cooperation in anti-drugs policies between latin america and the european union (copolad) started with the financial support of the european commission of 6 million euros. besides, there exist programs which finance the alternative development of coca leaf cultivation. by the end of 2009, the funds assigned to these projects were approximately 360 million euros (emcdda and europol, 2012, 34). in spite of the progress of these cooperative efforts through their institutionalization, the goals of the abovementioned agreements reflect the priorities of the anti-narcotics policy of the eu: reducing the demand and politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 9 supply of cocaine4. it is highly positive that these programs have not been militarized, like in the case of the cooperation given by the us. in this sense, as has been noted by the international crisis group, in europe, us and us-led counter-drug policies in latin america are often perceived as efforts to exert influence on domestic politics in latin america and as counterproductive attempts to reduce the scale of the drug problem by concentrating on fighting supply in the source and transit countries. (...) the eu does, however, prioritize reducing supply through interdiction and law enforcement, in particular at its borders and within the union, and curbing demand at home through prevention, treatment and rehabilitation programs (international crisis group, 2008, 9). nevertheless, it is evident that there exists an important gap between europe and south america in terms of diagnosing the problem; a gap that turns anti-drug policies ineffective and inefficient to fight against the cocacocaine complex, and therefore result beneficial to narco-actors. the realities of drug production and trafficking in latin america and limited demand reduction progress in europe, (…) show that eu policy is falling short of its goals. the emphasis on supply reduction through law enforcement and interdiction within the eu and its immediate neighborhood has not significantly interrupted the cocaine flow. a european commission official acknowledged that once routes and methods have been detected and action 4 the basic premises of eu policy are contained in the eu drugs strategy (2005-2012) and the eu action plan on drugs (2005-2008), which seek to coordinate the actions of the 27 member states and facilitate international dialogue. cf. european council, “eu drugs strategy for the period 2005-2012.” accessed september 23, 2012. available at http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/html.cfm/index1016 11en.html “eu action plan on drugs 2005-2008.” accessed november 14, 2012. available at http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/html.cfm/index1036 0en.html taken, the traffickers adjust and find new ways to supply the european market: ‘the traffickers are more intelligent than we are, and they change routes quickly’ (international crisis group, 2008, 9). while south america receives financial support to work on the reduction of the drug demand and supply, the real problems to be faced are infinitely worse: criminal groups, victims of violence, impoverished farmers, weakened governments, corrupted police officers, destroyed ecosystems and consumers of discarded garbage of cocaine. genuine cooperation should respond to the needs in each region, and not only taking into account the needs of european countries. disregarding this urgency in latin america is actually undoing all the efforts made to fight against the coca-cocaine complex. iv. concluding remarks the negative effects of the intended cooperation from the two most important extra-regional actors in the fight against drugs in south america, i.e. the us and europe, are quite evident. the militarized cooperation of the us in the region has provoked a rise in the violation of human rights; more corruption of the military and police forces; the weakening of democracy in the andean countries; and the recrudescence of political violence5, among others. on the other hand, the unidirectional cooperation of the eu has concentrated on responding to the flux of drug supply and demand which affects europe, neglecting the real and serious problems that south america has to face. in the meantime, narco-actors are advancing in their foul pursuits and, although it would be too risky to affirm that narco-cooperation has 5 on the negative effects of the war on drugs led by the us, it is highly recommended to consult the numerous studies financed by the washington office on latin america (wola). among them, those directed by coletta a. youngers and eileen rosin deserve special attention (youngers and rosin, 2005). http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/html.cfm/index101611en.html http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/html.cfm/index101611en.html maria de los angeles lasa challenges, cooperation and paradoxes in the coca cocaine complex 10 been more effective than international cooperation among legal actors, there is not enough evidence to assert that it has not. this brings me back to the paradox that inspired this paper: the challenges for south american states arise not only from the coca-cocaine complex itself, but also from the efforts made to fight against it. nevertheless, and while the history of the coca-cocaine complex in south america is the history of paradoxes and misconceptions of what the real nature of this scourge is and where the real problems lie, history can be changed… but understanding comes first. tables and figures table 1: stages in the process of elaboration of cocaine and its by-products coca leaf + alkaline (lime, cement, etc.) = coca paste coca paste + kerosene and sulphuricacid = cocaine base paste cocaine base paste + sodium bicarbonate and acid, acetone, ether, etc. = crack potassium permanganate, sulphuric acid and ammonia cocaine washed or cocaine base cocaine base + acetone, hydrocloridic acid and potassium permanganate = hydrochloride of cocaine hydrochloride of cocaine + sodium bicarbonate and acid, acetone, ether, etc. = crack (of highest quality) source: carrió, cinquierrui, and martello, 2006, 7. figure 1: the andean region and the southern cone in south america the following map shows two areas: the andean region and the southern cone. venezuela, colombia, ecuador, peru and bolivia are highlighted in dark grey; while chile, argentina and uruguay (southern cone) are highlighted in light grey. paraguay and brazil have been signaled with a lighter shade of grey because depending on the criteria applied, they can be considered – or not– as part of the southern cone. source: personal elaboration. maria de los angeles lasa challenges, cooperation and paradoxes in the coca cocaine complex 12 figure 2: regional and extra-regional actors involved in the continuum conflictcooperation within the coca-cocaine complete regional actors extra-regional actors x3 x13 x1 x2 x5 x4 x12 x11 x14 x8 x6 x9 x10 x7 x1: peasants x8: armed forces x2: guerrillas x9: police forces x3: drug cartels x10: igos x4: narcos x11: ngos x5: paramilitary groups x12: mncs x6: criminal groups x13: other corporations x7: states x14: individuals z1: narcos z6: individuals z2: criminal groups z7: igos z3: states z8: ngos z4: police forces z9: mncs z5: armed forces z10: other corporations z1 z6 z9 z4 z10 z8 z2 z5 z3 z7 note: this graphic, of personal elaboration, was inspired in that developed by ivelaw l. griffith to explain the conflict interactions in what he considers the geonarcotics milieu (griffith, 1997, 17). politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 13 references belikow, juan. temas emergentes: terrorismo, narcotráfico, tráfico ilegal de personas, crimen organizado. paper presented at the vi encuentro nacional de estudios estratégicos, buenos aires, argentina, november 3-5, 2003. buzan, barry. people, states & fear. an agenda for international security studies in the post-cold war era. colchester: ecpr press, 2009. buzan, barry., wæver, ole., and de wilde, jaap. security: a new framework for analysis. boulder (co): lynne rienner, 1998. carrió, elisa., cinquierrui, sebastián., and martello, walter. “paco, la punta del iceberg”, afirmación para una república 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drugs and democracy in latin america. boulder (co): lynne rienner, 2005. http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/wdr2011/world_drug_report_2011_ebook.pdf http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/wdr2011/world_drug_report_2011_ebook.pdf http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/wdr2011/world_drug_report_2011_ebook.pdf http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/wdr2011/world_drug_report_2011_ebook.pdf http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/wdr2012/wdr_2012_web_small.pdf http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/wdr2012/wdr_2012_web_small.pdf http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/wdr2012/wdr_2012_web_small.pdf http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/wdr2012/wdr_2012_web_small.pdf 1 malte brosig* three roads to europe or the social construction of european affairs abstract: the paper draws on social constructivism with regard to european politics. even so, there are many constructivist approaches, which claim to have the greatest explanatory power, with three of these approaches being considered as especially important in recent research. therefore, checkel’s concept of social learning, risse’s notion of argumentative action, and schimmelfennig’s approach of rhetorical action are at the center of the paper. all three scientists favor a constructivist ontology. moreover, they all depart from a common ground, the ”middle ground”, which constructivists claim to seize. this, via media, puts constructivism between reflectivism and rationalism. in the first section i elaborate on adler’s notion of the ”middle ground.” i then outline the above mentioned three social constructivist approaches. the point, however, is to compare these approaches and to demonstrate their explanatory power as well as to show their inherent weaknesses. ”seizing the middle ground” in his article ”seizing the middle ground,” emanuel adler (1997) recommended to place constructivism between rational and reflectivist theories. he was not the first who pledged for a via media, but adlers work received much attention and is considerably influential. ultimately, rationalist and reflectivist theories circle around one question. is there a real world out there independent of our minds? can we refer to a existing physical reality that determines human behavior or are material kinds only important because we give them a meaning? rationalism claims the former, reflectivism the latter. according to realism or neorealism, states act out of their material capabilities or constraints. an individualist ontology prevails. in a rather simple mechanism, states react only to changes in the material world. physical forces from outside determine the behavioral response of international actors. interests and preferences are given in an exogenous manner. a cause-effect relationship is central in rationalist approaches. the rationalist worldview finds its strongest opponent in postmodernism and post-structuralism, which can be regarded as reflectivist approaches. they follow a more interpretivist sociology of knowledge. as a result, only social kinds, like ideas, matter and should be examined. in contrast to rationalism and reflectivism, constructivism claims to seize the middle ground between them. international politics, constructivists argue, are socially constructed. cognitive structures give meaning to the material world. nonetheless, they do not deny that the material world shapes human action. but material factors are not causally central, nor do they entirely prescribe a unchallengeable manner of action. constructivists ”believe that the identities, interests and behavior of political agents are socially constructed by collective meanings, interpretations and assumptions about the world” (adler 1997:324). furthermore, social actions cannot be reduced to individual attributes and motives, for instance, to states and their capabilities. social constructivism takes ideas, norms, and identities seriously. ideas are more than just intervening variables or transmission belts. they constitute a cognitive frame, which to a great extent makes up international life. in contrast to rationalism, the constructivist ontology stresses much lesser individualism and materialism. central to the constructivist approach is the assumption, that collective understandings and intersubjective meanings provide actors with”indications as to how they should use their material abilities and power” (adler 1997: 322). if intersubjective knowledge is a fundamental momentum in international relations we can no longer follow exclusively the rationalist epistemology. intersubjectivity bears in it not only a causal relationship but also mutual constitutive effects. consequently, the character of international life is determined by the beliefs and expectations states have about each other. actors do not only follow the rules of the game, because ”agents and structures are by themselves processes, in other words, on-going accomplishments of practices” (wendt 1999:313 and 1992:413), they have also the power to change the rules. the construction of the social world is a two way process. on the one hand, we can investigate how structures (e.g. collective identities) constitute agents or on the other hand, how agents construct these structures. here, it becomes most clear that constructivism can be placed in the middle ground. it stands at two ”intersections”: that between materialism/idealism and agency/structure (adler 1997:325). moreover, constructivism takes into account causal and constitutive effects. ”in a causal relationship an antecedent condition x generates an effect y. this assumes that x is temporally prior to and thus exists independently of y. in a constitutive relationship x is what it is in virtue of its relationship to y. x presupposes y, and as such there is no disjunction; there relationship is necessary rather than contingent.” (wendt, 1999:25) * political science student based in germany. 15 social ontologies which constructivism focuses on include not only intersubjective meanings, or ideas but also norms, rules, formal and informal practices, communicative actions (arguing, persuasion, deliberation, rhetorical action, speech act), collective identity formation, and symbolic interaction. these social kinds are reproduced through interaction. identities play a key role. they are the basis of interests. interests are defined in the process of defining identities (wendt 1992: 398). state identities are to a great extent the outcome of relational processes. the self needs the other to constitute its identity. for this reason, identity relates to these intersubjective aspects of social structures. the point is, that agents engage in an ongoing identity building process, which is constituted in relation to the other and furthermore constitutes the other in parts. put differently, interaction establishes identity. constructivism claims those agents’ behavior correlates with their identity i.e. the agents’ action should not contradict their identity (banchoff: 278). identity and international norms, which can be treated as having similar effects, define a code of conduct. state behavior is supposed to be inline with the notion of legitimate statehood. social learning jeffrey checkel (1999, 2001) showed that sometimes agents comply with norms out of social processes. social learning and deliberations can result in a preference change. his main attention is directed toward the underlying social mechanisms that led states comply with norms. the goal is to operationalize these mechanisms. a rational agenda sees norm compliance explicitly as resulting from instrumental calculations. rationalists maintain that the costs of compliance should not exceed the benefits. especially material factors exert influence. if costs actually exceed benefits this is due to the use of coercion. compliance is the pure alignment to the material world. communication processes are portrayed as strategic and instrumental interaction. actors are egoistic and self-centered entities. egoism is a given feature in the states’ world. checkel calls himself a modernist constructivist. he favors a ”loosely causal epistemology” but is critical of individualism (checkel 2001:554). his notion of compliance entails processes of complex social learning. to illustrate, rational approaches prefer models in which simple learning prevails. they follow a cause-effect model, whereas complex learning takes into account mutual constitutive effects. as we have seen, agents’ interests and identities are constructed through interaction. social learning does not place individualism at the center of attention. checkel has developed five conditions under which agents are supposed to be open to argumentative persuasion, and norm compliance. he strictly separates argumentative and manipulative persuasion. the latter is described as asocial and lacking interaction. it is close to an instrumental use of norms. the former is a ”social process of interaction that involves changing attitudes about cause and effect in the absence of overt coercion” (checkel, 2001:562). a persuader or communicator attempts to change the beliefs and practices of another agent. social learning is most likely to occur: 1. when actors are in a novel and uncertain situation 2. when actors have ”few in-grained beliefs” that oppose the learning process 3. when the persuader is an authoritative member of an in-group 4. when the persuader can base his arguments on legitimacy 5. when interaction occurs in a private insulated and less politicized environment. (checkel/moravcsik 2001:222, checkel 2001:562, 1999:550). checkel is interested in national-level compliance. he aims to show how international norms bring about domestic change. in addition, he pledged for an inclusion of domestic factors into the constructivist research agenda. communication and social interaction, however, are at the heart of his approach. checkel does not claim that social learning occurs at any time in any place. rather is it a question of fitting. if international communication fits in the five scope conditions the likelihood of social learning processes increases. empirical data support his theoretical assumptions. two cases, ukraine and germany, provide evidence of norm-based behavior as relying on persuasion and on cost-benefit calculations. most states in europe possess an inclusive citizenship. germany was over many years an exception. thus, dual-citizenship is a controversial issue. finally, international pressure and a massive domestic campaign led to a change in law. norm compliance was hindered because citizenship was attached with an ethnic conception of germans over a long period of time. not argumentation, persuasion, or deliberation led to a change in preferences. instead, social pressure and sanctioning changed preferences. social learning was excluded because the citizenship issue was highly politicized. due to the low level of political insulation and a longstanding ethnic definition of german citizenship, social learning was largely impossible. norm compliance was a result of strategic adaptation to lessen the pressure on decision-makers. in the ukraine the adaptation of an inclusive citizenship law followed a completely different pattern. after the cold war, the ukrainian state found itself in a novel situation. it was no longer a part of the ussr. the ukraine became a member of the council of europe. no conception of citizenship or nationality could be described as predominant. western norms and prosperity were seen as desirable ends. therefore, a dialogue between ukrainian officials and staffers from the council of europe took place. ukrainian politicians acted out of a learning process. their incentive to adapt new information was high. no interference from pressure groups distorted the dialogue. in the end, social learning seems to have the greatest explanatory power. argumentative action thomas risse (risse 2000) investigates processes of argumentation, which also entail persuasion and deliberative communication. risse places his approach in the ”middle ground” insofar as he stresses to stand between rational 16 ism and sociological institutionalism. in argumentation processes, he claims, ”human actors engage in truth seeking with the aim of reaching a mutual understanding based on a reasoned consensus” (risse 2000:1). the ”mutual understanding” is based on the social constructivist notion of mutual constitutiveness of norms and agents. as we have seen, engaging in social interaction encompasses in some parts putting your/our own system of meaning at the risk or chance to be changed. thus social constructivism is consistent with argumentative actions, because the latter has constitutive effects on agents, norms, and identities. ”arguing implies that actors try to challenge the validity claims inherent in any causal or normative statement; and to seek a communicative consensus about their understanding of a situation as well as justifications for principles and norms guiding their action” (risse 2000:7). risse implies that agents who interact through arguing are open to be persuaded by the better argument. consequently, relationships of power are neglectible. argumentative processes are goal oriented as much as rational actors which try to attain their given ends. what sets arguing apart from rational action is the incentive to reach a reasoned consensus. furthermore, processes of argumentation have the potential to change the interests of all participants. forms of arguing can be found in many situations. often actors must convincingly explain why they pursue a certain goal. arguing can help to justify their behavior (risse 2000:8). here, the instrumental use of arguments is not excluded from arguing. in all european countries the public sphere and democratic rules demand regularly that decision-makers justify or at least explain their behavior (risse 2000:21). nevertheless, risse understands communicative action not as driven by egoistic cost/benefit calculations. instead, processes of arguing are guided by a mutual thrust to find a common, agreeable understanding. argumentative consensus with the other is a key element in risse’s approach. communicative action reproduces and constructs the intersubjective meaning which actors need to interact. what preconditions are needed for communicative action? risse singles out two necessities (risse 2000:11). first, a ”common lifeworld” i.e. a collective interpretation of the world. common historical experiences or cultural ties may also establish a common lifeworld. second, equality. hierarchies and power relations distort communicative action. therefore, actors must recognize each other as equals. in conclusion, the more international organizations rely on non-hierarchical procedures the more likely are communicative actions as arguing (risse 2000:19). the eu as a densely institutionalized area can be described as a common lifeworld. risse implies that if the less powerful convinces the more powerful, argumentative action occurs. moreover, if actors change their preferences although they contradict their instrumental interest, processes of arguing are likely to work (risse 2000:19). finally, risse underscores his theoretic frame with empirical data. he draws on the demise of the soviet union and german unification within nato. moscow’s influence in world politics declined after the end of the cold war in 1989, nonetheless, the russians were strong enough to press for a neutral germany. gorbachev wanted a neutralized germany without weapons of mass-destruction and outside nato. but ultimately, he changed his mind during the famous two plus four negotiations. george bush was able to persuade gorbachev by changing his arguments. first bush argued that the german membership would stabilize europe and maintain security in the region. for western european countries this argument was convincing and consistent with past experiences. but not so for gorbachev. bush tried again, this time he referred to a liberal argumentation. he pledged for self-determination of the german state. gorbachev agreed and the unified germany remained a member of nato. rhetorical action frank schimmelfennig (2001) wants to know why the eu decided to expand itself to central and eastern europe, and, more precisely, why it was necessary to go beyond association treaties. he tries to overcome the dichotomy between rational intergovernmentalism based on egoistic preferences and relative bargaining power on the one hand, and norm-driven argumentation’s to enter the eu based on sociological institutionalism, on the other. rhetorical action, schimmelfennig argues, is able to bridge the gap which rational intergovernmentalism and sociological institutionalism cannot fill. the rhetorical action approach assumes actors to belong to a community whose values, norms, and practices they share. while a collective identity shapes preferences, day to day politics often follow a more material and egoistic pattern. schimmelfennig takes this into account and defines rhetorical action as strategic use of norm-based arguments. material interests may compete with the community norms. nevertheless, collective identities exert influence because they are the origin of standards of legitimacy. identities define legitimate and appropriate behavior. thus, deviation becomes problematic. inconsistencies between proper state action and standards of legitimacy make actors vulnerable to processes of shaming in which the actor’s reputation is at stake. losses in credibility can cause severe consequences. states may comply with norms out of egoistic motives notwithstanding ”they can become entrapped by their arguments and obliged to behave as if they had taken them seriously” (schimmelfennig 2001:65). not only the full internalization of norms into actors beliefs and practices but also their rhetorical commitment affects international life. in contrast to intergovernmental approaches in which states interests reflect patterns of bargaining power, schimmelfennig emphasizes that ”rhetorical action changes the structure of bargaining power in favor of those actors who possess and pursue preferences in line with, though not necessarily inspired by, the standard of legitimacy” (schimmelfennig 2001:64). appropriateness and being in-line are key terms here, they may compensate deficits in bargaining power. how can we explain the incentive of eu member states to come along with enlargement? by and large, schimmelfennig implies the geographical position of member states determines states preferences towards eu enlargement. border states like germany, austria, and finland are strongly affected through economic and security changes in the region. these states want to stabilize eastern europe and expand the zone of economic prosperity and peace. they 17 also expect future gains from their investments in central and eastern europe (cee). border states have disproportionately high shares in exports to cee. close proximity leads to a positive position towards eu enlargement. on the other hand, states like ireland, portugal, and spain slow down the enlargement process because they fear severe cuts in structural funds and disadvantages after reforms in the common agricultural policy (cap). eastern enlargement would also cause a power shift that possibly favors germany and the northeastern countries. especially france is sensitive to new power constellations. schimmelfennig admits, ”the divergent state preferences on enlargement are best understood as individual and self-centered” (schimmelfennig 2001:33). states are preoccupied with the maintenance of security and welfare. the traditional intergovernmental model tries to mediate the opposing interests through compensations for the losers and concessions by the winners. but the winners can only compensate if their benefits from enlargement exceed the compensation costs. what can constructivism and especially rhetorical action add to rational approaches? collective identity does not shape concrete preferences. day to day politics follow a more material and egoistic pattern. but sooner or later agents ”are obliged to justify their political goals on the grounds of institutionalized identity, values, and norms” (schimmelfennig 2001:63). actors whose interests are not inline with the community norms must legitimize their position through norm-based arguments and/or actions. for this reason, the bargaining power depends on the ability to create legitimacy. ultimately, legitimacy depends on intersubjective meanings about what others and we consider as legitimate. after world war ii the european integration process was based on pan-european ideas, only the cold war limited cooperation. eastern states couldn’t join the common institutions because of the iron curtain. since the iron curtain disappeared cee states use the pan-european idea to support their membership application, also because they lack the necessary material capabilities to press for enlargement. by using the pan-european concept, enlargement has become an issue of credibility for the west. cee states argue that they belong to europe because they share the values and norms of the european culture. western states got under pressure to “complete europe”, which means enlargement of the eu. a common european heritage demanded the completion. this pan-european rhetoric prevented some member states from openly opposing the goal of enlargement. they became rhetorically entrapped because opposing would have meant rejecting the values and norms on which the eu rests. the credibility costs of non-enlargement rose over time with the repeatedly stressing of a wider europe. in sum, rationalism can explain some actors’ preferences and much of their bargaining behavior, but it fails to account for the collective decision of enlargement. rhetorical action offers a via media between norm-guided behavior and rational-choice models. it does not ignore the material and causal needs of states but it adds a highly valuable insight: the power of political legitimacy. three roads, one direction? a critical analysis the first section of this paper delineated a common starting point for most constructivist theories. adler’s notion of the ”middle ground” is a unifying element in checkel’s, risse’s, and schimmelfennig’s approach. but constructivism does not exactly seize the middle ground. in other words, it fills the space between rationalism and reflectivism. this space is broad enough to be the home of a great variety of constructivist approaches (christiansen, jörgensen, wiener 1999:535-37). schimmelfennig’s theoretical frame is much more influenced by rational assumptions than risse or checkel’s are. nonetheless, all three are placed somewhere between the two extreme poles of rationalism and reflectivism. i proceed by discussing all three authors separately in detail, and i finally elaborate on constructivism as such. according to checkel, his main incentive is to strengthen constructivism. thereby he follows moravcsik’s critique that accused constructivists of not theorizing on the precise socialization process. especially, constructivists take for granted the outcomes of socialization (moravcsik 1999:227). actors act ”as if” they were already socialized. constructivism misses a decision-making theory. checkel is highly aware of moravcsik’s objection and tries to theorize about those mechanisms that facilitate social learning. five hypotheses or scope conditions make up the core of checkel’s approach (page 6-7). i will not discuss every single hypothesis, but some remarks are necessary. it is striking that checkel strictly separates manipulative and argumentative processes from social learning. manipulative learning means learning through enforcement in which coercive capabilities of actors dominate. this entails a huge variety of action, such as brute military force or social sanctioning, for instance, initiated by human rights groups. in sum, manipulative persuasion is externally given. checkel claims that social learning is more likely to occur if it happens in a less politicized setting. not surprisingly, he is convinced that ngo’s or other pressure groups distort processes of social learning (checkel 2001:56970). his approach is close to sociological institutionalism and its view of socialization, where an intrinsically motivated actor internalizes collectively held values. states adapt norms because they identify themselves with these norms. for three reasons this cannot be the whole story. first, politicization does not always equal manipulative persuasion as checkel implies. particularly non-governmental groups rely on non-coercive capabilities because their material basis is thin compared with those of state actors. therefore, arguing becomes important. it also seems strange to me that, for instance, moral consciousness raising as practiced by human right-groups would be per se a manipulative technique. truthful arguing is convincing out of its arguments, it does not need necessarily to be reinforced by other means but it can be and often appears to be useful to back up norms and values with material kinds. checkel implies that truthful arguing becomes implausible when power relations enter the scene. but the sheer existence of power does not necessarily impede social learning. this leads to a confrontation of power relations and social mechanisms, which seems less fruitful. power is not an isolated monolithic block that is immune to socializing effects. it should rather be integrated into a social logic of action that takes into account the mutual constitutive effects of power relations. precisely, the ex 18 clusion of power relations is unnecessary because power is to some extent a social kind and as a social kind it is sensitive to interaction. second, social learning is supposed to happen in a rather apolitical environment, but it is hard to find such a place. therefore, eu affairs seem to be ill suited for social learning. checkel’s mistake is to expect apolitical behavior in a politicized world. above all it is not wise to exclude power relations from social learning. the opposite would be helpful. in many situations neither brute force nor utterly idealized agents are at work. most often it is a mixture of power constellations based on material kinds and socialized behavior. third, even instrumental adaptation of norms and opportunistic behavior to foster egoistic goals may lead in the long run to a truthful internalization of norms. in ”the power of human rights” risse, sikkink, and ropp (1999) describe, in many case studies around the world, how states first denied human rights violations, but then adapted human rights norms instrumentally to avoid international sanctions, and in a final stage how states institutionalized and internalized these norms. there is ample evidence that instrumental adaptation of norms or reinforced learning can lead to a truthful internalization of them in the long run. mechanism of social learning and socialization are at work in european relations. it is highly likely that the arrangement of rules, procedures, and practices exert influence on those who are exposed to them (risse, wiener 1999: 778). the challenge is to detect those mechanisms that drive socialization and social learning. checkel’s approach is a useful step forward to operationalize constructivist thinking but it should not be the last. like checkel, risse makes visible the constructive power of language or communicative action. his approach is oriented towards arguing. in an ideal speech situation the best argument has the greatest influence. similar to checkel, he claims that power relations distort the picture. in many cases this is true but fundamentally it misses the point. risse and checkel try to show that social learning and arguing have effects independent of power relations. this is less important than they think because the sheer existence of power relations does not impede arguing or social learning. there is simply no evidence that power hinders social learning or communicative action in every case. it would be even more convincing to demonstrate how socialization and communication have effects despite the presence of power structures. risse must admit that his model of arguing is not the dominant in international relations. this is ultimately true because he excludes power structures. in contrast to checkel, risse connects politicization not automatically with power structures. the public sphere, he argues, forces decision-makers to justify their behavior regularly. besides manipulative techniques, arguing is crucial to maintain or create political credibility. although argumentative action departs from the constructivist middle ground, risse’s approach is a rather weak synthesis. his approach is most convincing when ideal speech situations occur that exclude power relations. but i doubt that we can find many of these ideal situations in the international or european arena. as a consequence, his theoretical determinants limit the explanatory range. a fruitful combination of causal and constitutive effects delivers schimmelfennig. he tries to overcome the dichotomy between rationalism and reflectivism. therefore, rhetorical action is the strategic use of norm-based arguments. he understands socialization ”as a process of rational action in a normatively institutionalized environment” (schimmelfennig 2000:109). decision-makers must show compliance to community norms and values in order to be perceived as legitimate leaders. nevertheless, schimmelfennig assumes that norm adaptation is less likely if actors recognize that their adaptation costs exceed the adaptation benefits (schimmelfennig 2000:117). schimmelfennig draws on the constructivist implication according to which state behavior should not contradict state identity. he showed how the cee countries threatened the collective eu identity. they point to the tension between past promises and the dragging enlargement process (see also fierke and wiener 1999:732). schimmelfennig is aware of the fact that identity is not the only source of state behavior. identity does not replace material kinds and causal relations, or vice versa. therefore, it is not social kinds versus material kinds. schimmelfennig’s synthetic view resembles that of banchoff, who writes ”[...] a shared conception of state identity, publicly articulated within state institutions, can channel the pursuit of wealth and power in a particular direction” (banchoff 1999:278). this concession to rationalism is criticized by reflectivists. they question the middle ground position of social constructivism by arguing that constructivists become more and more tacit rationalists (steve smith 1999:683). schimmelfennig demonstrated how inconsistencies between identity and behavior could have a tremendous impact on politics. this mechanism only works, as banchoff stresses, if someone picks up the issue and others feel compromised. moreover, there is no automaticity between inconsistencies in identity and behavior that forces actors immediately into norm compliance. in 1999 nato launched a war against yugoslavia in the name of human rights to prevent further war crimes. the strategic importance of the kosova region is neglectible just as economic factors are. massive human rights abuses before the intervention provided an outcry among western states. what is striking with regard to the kosova war is not only the fact that international held norms were crucial for the intervention. put differently, those events, which provoked an outcry in 1999, did not provoke intervention in the years before although war crimes were committed and well documented in bosnia and elsewhere in former yugoslavia. it is not sufficient to note that international norms and values matter somehow. constructivism, and so schimmelfennig, is not precise when it comes to specifying time and space for norm compliance. schimmelfennig’s shaming-process assumes and presupposes ”[...] an on-going process of states taking identities in relations to others, casting them into corresponding counter-identities, and playing out the results” (wendt 1999:21). unfortunately, schimmelfennig, like wendt, presents states as nearly fully socialized actors. both put too little emphasis on the construction of social actors (for a critical review of wendt's notion of identity, see zehfuss 2001:335) and their identities. the point, however, is that identity as a whole is not prior to international politics. at least some parts of actors´ identities depend on the other and how others perceive the me. the mutual constitutiveness of norms and actors encompasses not only a simple adjustment of action in relationship to identity. identity itself is shaped through interaction. schimmelfennig is right when he expects eu enlargement is driven by shaming of the ap 19 plicant states. my argument here is that the collective eu identity is likely to be changed because of shaming and long lasting accession talks. as wiener has recently pointed out one of the constructivist challenges is to conceptualize patterns of mutual constitutiveness (wiener 2001). conclusion steve smith criticizes the heterogeneity of constructivist approaches. indeed, there are many different approaches, which call themselves constructivist. the paper discussed three of them. smith rightly mentions that ”there is little agreement over what constructivism entails” and that the ”current literature is more united on what is being rejected than on what is being proposed” (smith 1999: 690). nevertheless, this apparent weakness may also appear as a particular strength. due to the middle ground position, constructivism sets a frame for scientific debates (wiener, 2001). on the one hand, it brings into play rationalism and reflectivism, on the other hand, it fills the broad middle ground and initiates a huge array of research activity. as a result, the constructivist family encompasses diverse approaches. this diversity is also the outcome of the fact that constructivism is not a theory as such. it is not a substantive theory like rationalism that gives a stringent alternative and clear testable hypothesis (risse and wiener, 1999:778). the middle ground position produces variants of constructivism like social learning, argumentative action, or rhetorical action. these approaches do not directly compete with one another. the paper showed how checkel, risse, and schimmelfennig developed their constructivism in a particular direction. the strength and weaknesses of each were discussed in detail. in sum, all three approaches rely on a constructivism that undervalues the mutual constitutivness of social kinds. references adler, emanuel (1997) ”seizing the middle ground: constructivism in world politics,” european journal of international relations 3, 319-363. banchoff, thomas (1999) ”german identity and european integration,” european journal of international relations, 5, 259-289. checkel, jeffrey t. (1999) ”social construction and integration,” journal of european public policy, 6, 545560. checkel, jeffrey t. (2001) ”why comply? social learning and european identity change, international organization 55, 553-588. christiansen, thomas, knud e. jörgensen, and antje wiener (1999), ”the social construction of europe, journal of european public policy, 6, 528-544. fierke, karin m. and wiener, antje (1999) ”constructing institutional interests eu and nato enlargement,” journal of european public policy, 6, 721-742. moravcsik, andrew (1999) ”is something rotten in the state of denmark? constructivism and european integration, ”journal of european public policy”, 6, 669-681. moravcsik, andrew and checkel, jeffrey t. (2001) ”forum section, a constructivist research program in eu studies?” european union politics, 2, 219-249. risse, ropp, and sikkink (1999) ”the power of human rights,” cambridge university press, 1999. risse, thomas and wiener, antje (1999) ”something rotten and the social construction of social constructivism: a comment on comments,” journal of european public policy, 6, 775-82. risse, thomas (2000) ”let’s argue!: communicative action in world politics” international organization 54, 1-39. schimmelfennig, frank (2000) ”international socialization in the new europe: rational action in an institutional environment, european journal of international relations, 6,109-140. schimmelfennig, frank (2001) ”the community trap. liberal norms, rhetorical action, and the eastern enlargement of the european union”, international organization, 55, 47-80. smith, steve (1999) ”social constructivism and european studies: a reflectivist critique,” journal of european public policy, 6, 682-91. trondal, jarle (2001) ”is there any social constructivist-institutionalist divide? unpacking social mechanisms affecting representational roles among eu decision makers, journal of european public policy, 8,1-23. wendt, alexander (1992) ”anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics, international organization, 46, 391-425. wendt, alexander (1999) ”social theory of international politics,” cambridge university press, 1999. wiener, antje (2001) ”social facts in world politics – the value-added of constructivism,” paper presented at the 42nd annual convention of the isa, chicago, february 2001. zehfuss, maja (2001) ”constructivisim and identity: a dangerous liaison,” european journal of international relations, 7, 315-348. claudiu craciun( political science and the european construction ö özden u. akbas( potential challenges of european enlargement to the european structure 1. introduction: background of the enlargement process 2. institutional challenges 3. economic problems 4. external security 5. justice and home affairs 6. europe's responses to challenges of enlargement; what has been done so far? 7. conclusion references malte brosig* three roads to europe or the social construction of european affairs ”seizing the middle ground” social learning argumentative action rhetorical action three roads, one direction? a critical analysis conclusion references raúl josé feliciano-ortiz* re-defining sovereignty: how the eu has expanded the possibilities for puerto rico* sovereignty: past and present present progressive: the european re-definition of the concept the lack of puerto rican sovereignty: past and present future: applying this new concept to a scared colony so in conclusion... references qerim qerimi( the european union’s southeast enlargement: prospects and challenges introduction the enlargement process challenges towards south eastern enlargement the eu role and contribution in south eastern europe inter-ethnic reconciliation as a means for european integration the advantages of european enlargement conclusion references salomeea romanescu( roma: a challenge and opportunity for a new eu paradigm of enlargement introduction the question raising awareness on the roma issue promotion of minority rights conclusions references roberto scaruffi( which eu and what for? eu towards the east and south-east from common market to “super-state”? unifying eu markets with subsides and without adequate surface communications? eu as state building some open questions references microsoft word politikon_onfe.doc 31 alexandra tieanu romania faculty of history and philoshopy, babesbalyai university clujnapoca, romania eurocentrism vs international thinking today, at every corner we find the same question in different forms: should we think only of europe or we should remember that europe is just one part of the world? this essay is meant to discuss the meaning of euro-centrism and how it is conceived nowadays. but living in a complex and inter-connected world we also have to take into consideration all the other elements: different cultures and civilizations, different economic powers and different mentalities. this is probably the best way to understand the reality we are living in. euro-centrism could be defined as the practice that takes into account europe as a continent, the european culture, traditions, and civilization – all that matters is belonging to the european identity. this is one of the most frequent elements that influenced the mentality of this continent starting with early times and going on up to now (today, the tendency of all the states in europe is to integrate into the european union, the common symbol that everyone understands). this mentality of the common european is in part born because every man sees himself as part of the place where he was born; but it is also created. it is created by the history and philosophy he learned in school, by his interaction with others, by the things he watches on tv, by the things he reads in books and so on. firstly, history usually presents the events from europe, starting with the greeks and romans and onwards to the present. in all the cases there is “us” and “them”: the christians and the pagans, the barbarians, creating, thus, a stereotype. for example, we learn about the ccrusades: there are us, the christians, as a whole (we can say the whole europe) and there is them, the muslims (arabs, turks, etc.), but the accent is on the christians. only if we go deep into the essence of things we will learn about the muslims and their culture. also, there is little interest for the ancient non-european empires, like the chinese empire, the indian empire or the empires from south america; but everyone knows about rome. secondly, the first steps in science are recognised as belonging to the europeans but few are interested to know that scholars from the far east have come to the same conclusions years before. like in mathematics, everyone talks about isaac newton and leibniz, but the chinese had, from ancient times, methods and systems of calculus. thirdly, philosophy studies aristotle, plato, augustine, kant, and so on, but there is a diminished accent put on confucian or islamic philosophy although they are as old and as interesting as the european. fourthly, the practice and mental representations of the world, starting from antiquity, are all about europe and how europe is in the centre of the world. before the discoveries of the americas, africa and of the orient, the europeans thought there was only their continent. after seeing that there were others in the world, they saw themselves as the centre and all the others as barbarians that needed to be civilised. fifthly, most of the things we see or read are about europe and its people; we can find only limited information that we can access about the other parts of the continent. so, if we want to learn more about a certain culture or a certain people we have no choice, but going to that country. it is important, i think, to talk about diversity and self-image. as european nations, we see ourselves as better than the others and tend to discriminate. this is seen especially in these last years (after september 11, 2001, to be specific). this is not the correct attitude we should take. we should try to understand the differences that exist in the other cultures and admit that every 32 culture has its own malign elements. it is universally known that people tend to fear what they don’t know, what they don’t control. when it comes to knowing other cultures, most people see only the differences but do nothing to understand why the others are different and what is good about their culture. people usually just choose to ignore the others because they don’t know anything about their culture but they could make an effort to understand them. also, there should be less discrimination. just because they are different it doesn’t mean that they are not human or that they don’t have feelings. it’s just our opinion and we can tend to let ourselves be influenced by old-fashioned stereotypes, a thing that should make us think, should make us want to be better persons. for example, if one sees an arab in the street, he first asks himself what country could he come from and if he is aggressive, rather than think about the islamic religion and culture throughout history and what they had given to humanity. however, we must not forget that we live at the beginning of the 21st century and our mentality has evolved in the last hundred years (as it should have). in an age of communication and technology, in an age when everyone can contact everyone, we cannot ignore the rest of the world. everyday we touch, eat, drink, wear and buy things that are made all over the world by people of different cultures, religions, languages and races. we cannot say that we are from europe; we should say that we are from earth. yes, we are european, but we are all humans and equal and belonging to the same world. we define ourselves by relating to the rest of the world, to the different cultures, religions, languages, and races. in order to understand who we are, we should first understand the world we live in. we live in a global world, that’s the truth. there are multinational corporations that have offices all around the globe; there are universities that have academic connections with other universities from other continents; everyday we hear on the news what happened that day in the world, no matter that it is a carnival in brazil, a bombing somewhere in an islamic country, a civil war in the middle of africa or a car crash in france. all events are equally important and everyone hears about them. nowadays it doesn’t matter only what happens in europe, all that happens in the world matters because everything is connected to everything and anything can influence something. it is, therefore, important to learn even the smallest thing we can about other cultures and realise the fact that we are not alone in this world. we have to admit the fact that each culture has its own characteristics and they all create the same world, and we live in it. the european union has within its borders different cultures, different traditions and many mentalities. but the european union must never forget that all these cultures have to work together so that they could be strong as one. all member states define themselves as european but through this they admit the existence of all the other cultures because in an identity definition a comparison is needed. so, it is generally admitted that the world has different elements but they all work together and this is seen especially at the economic level. in trade and finances it doesn’t matter much what country you are from or what religion you have, only if you have enough resources to compete. also, in cases of natural disasters in a country, it doesn’t really matter what nationality is the man or woman that comes to help; all that matters is the solidarity. in conclusion, i think being european is a part of every person that is born on this great continent, but that no one should ignore the fact that he belongs to a wider assembly: the world. before judging or blaming anyone, we should make an effort to understand the entire mechanism of our world. this is not complicated: we just need to open our minds and find out a few things about the cultures that surround us. this is the first step. then all we have to do is to see everyone as our friends and do not think that they are bad or lesser persons just because someone from an old, forgotten time had a bad experience. we are all part of the same universe in the end. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 177 cosmopolitanism – an alternative for global governance? a new model for a new international conflict line 80 stefan wallaschek stefan wallaschek, 27, received his bachelor of arts in political science and social anthropology at the martinluther-university halle-wittenberg in 2011 and currently studies political science in the master program at the university of bremen. he is writing his master thesis on ‘cosmopolitanism in the public sphere”. in september 2014 he will start his phd at the bremen international graduate school for social sciences (bigsss). his current research interests are modern political theory, migration politics, political communication and qualitative methods. abstract in the last decades global governance was one of the most used and contested terms in international relations. many researchers have shown that the concept is overstretched and they call for alternatives. can cosmopolitanism as a “new” international political theory be an alternative? i will propose a new theoretical model which can be used to analyze cosmopolitanism empirically. drawing on both normative and empirical research on cosmopolitanism i demonstrate the necessary combination of both. i formulate a two-axesmodel which is based on norms and conflicts. such a theoretically based and empirically applicable model can be used to analyze different (claims of) actors in relation to a (cosmopolitan) position. in addition the model gives researchers the opportunity to scrutinize the relevance of international norms on different levels and thus offers a possible visualization of the interconnection between global arrangements and local activities. therefore the model presents an alternative to global governance. keywords: communitarism; cosmopolitanism; global governance; international political theory; particularism; politics of space. 80 i am grateful to the participants of the iapss world congress for their comments as well as janosik herder, martin nonhoff and sandra reinecke for their notes of earlier drafts of this article. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 178 1. introduction governance is both en vogue and an ‘empty signifier’ as claus offe (2009) provocatively states. it seems that governance research has been the ‘new’ paradigm of political science and especially in international relations 81 the term global governance has been omnipresent in the last two decades. surprisingly, there is no concrete definition of governance. moreover, it seems that every researcher has its own interpretation of what governance means and in academic handbooks and anthologies on governance a big variety of definitions and usages of this concept exist (e. g. schuppert and zürn 2008; enderlein et al. 2010; levi-faur 2012). consequently, schuppert describes governance as an “accepted ambiguous term” in academics (schuppert 2008) which is an interesting evaluation of the state of the art, but from an analytic perspective it is not very helpful. apart from the general and mostly uncritical usage of this term, critics try to examine the deficits and problems of the ‘catch-all-term’ global governance. in the last years a critical debate of global governance concepts has been established. while some researchers try to improve the global governance concept and distinguish between the analytic, the normative and the public use of the global governance term (dingwerth and pattberg 2006), other academics criticize (global) governance itself and try to reframe the term in a more emancipated and critical way (brand 2005; 2007). instead of reframing terminological debates on governance, my main question is: can a cosmopolitan approach be an alternative to global governance? in order to answer this question, i introduce the cosmopolitan approach by seyla benhabib, but i will go further and develop a cosmopolitan model. i will argue that a cosmopolitan approach has two advantages in comparison to a critical governance perspective. firstly, cosmopolitanism is based on international norms such as freedom or justice. it has a clear theoretical base and furthermore an obvious goal – a cosmopolitan order – which are not existent in either of the other approaches – critical and noncritical governance. secondly, a cosmopolitan approach is not bound to an institutional and efficient-oriented perspective, because cosmopolitanism and democracy cannot be divided. a cosmopolitan order has to be democratic 82 and cosmopolitan thinkers argue for a broad participation of the people and interest groups such as ngo’s as well as the involvement of nation-states in new international treaties. while governance approaches are mostly focused on changing structures, a cosmopolitan approach recognizes the actors in a changing structure. the 81 by using initial capitals for ‘international relations’ i refer to the discipline and by using regular letters for ‘international relations’ i mean the topic of the discipline. 82 it is not the other way around which means that a democracy does not have to be cosmopolitan. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 179 different actors and their different localizations have to be recognized profoundly for a cosmopolitan model. moreover, such a model has to clarify what the opposite of cosmopolitanism is 83 and, thus, i will argue for particularism as the opposite of cosmopolitanism. i will structure my paper as follows. in the next chapter i review the existing critics of the governance literature and show that their criticism is not sufficient. i introduce the cosmopolitanism by seyla benhabib and describe her main theoretical ideas in chapter three. based on her approach and findings from the empirical cosmopolitan studies i develop the model and argue for a combination of normative and empirical research in the next part of my paper. in the last chapter i summarize and reflect my work and i argue for the relevance of a cosmopolitan view in governance research. 2. global governance and its critics 2.1 defining (global) governance the origins of the governance literature are the changing relations of polity, policy and politics as well as complex interconnections of state, economy and society. a functional and territorial distinction of state and market sphere is difficult and thus, as arthur benz states (2004, 13-15) the term ‘governance’ can help to understand and fix its own changes. edgar grande defines five aspects of governance: a non-hierarchical structure for the production of public goods, a criticism of the state, multiple interdependence between actors, policies and levels of social action, an increased complexity and the need for cooperation and coordination (grande 2012, 566-567). in international relations the term ‘global governance’ can be seen as a double shift of the established perspective: from international to global politics and from government-oriented politics to governance as a broad technique to manage problems (kacowicz 2012, 688). furthermore global governance describes firstly the absence of a (global) sovereign with a clear identifiable domination structure, secondly the interconnection of coercion and cooperation in international relations and thirdly the continuous transformation of structures and processes (benz 2004, 16-17). the emergence of new global actors such as transnational social movements, private international networks or non-state spheres of authority goes hand in hand with the 83 it is interesting to note that both the governance and the cosmopolitan approaches mostly have not theorized the opposite of its assumption: if it is not cosmopolitan, what is it? if it is not a (global) governance structure, what is it (for the governance-part see dingwerth and pattberg 2006, 389-393; offe 2009, 551)? i will come back to this point in chapter four. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 180 transformation of structures. dingwerth and pattberg (2006, 388) describe this pluralist and nonstate-centrist perspective as strengths of global governance approaches. the concept of governance is nevertheless more focused on structures than on actors (risse 2008; offe 2009). hence, there are criticisms on the strong institutional focus, the missing recognition of social and economic circumstances and the absent ethical foundation of global governance (kacowicz 2012, 695), i will draw more attention to these critics. 2.2 criticisms of global governance in his articles ulrich brand points out that the research on global governance often falls together with an implicit normative understanding of good governance. the terminological relevance in the public as well as in social sciences supports a meaning which relates to an efficient solving of (world) problems 84 . a critical governance approach, which tries to investigate an alternative global structure and to show the socio-economic contradictions of the “postfordist politics”, is not wanted (brand 2005, 165-167; brand 2011a). thus, so brand in another article (2007, 40), the mainstream research on global governance justifies the existing global order and it can be added that this mainstream has “a tendentious blindness for questions of power, distribution, and conflict” (offe 2009, 558; also grande 2012, 584). although the state is not in the academic focus anymore, brand criticizes that the regulative ability of the state is further on the implicit normative goal in governance approaches. the western liberal state is not only a neutral instance, but also the exclusive political order for an efficient regulation and has the capacity to act in a global governance structure (brand 2007, 35-37). otherwise, as offe (2009, 555-556) states, governance can be seen as a new rhetoric framework to justify the reduction of state services. horizontal cooperation and support through outsourcing governance structures seems to be more effective than a hierarchical bureaucratic state structure. moreover, the broader inclusion of non-state actors can introduce societal selforganization and thus governance is the result of the limited state capacity in times of globalization and liberalization. the political result would be a less democratic structure. another criticism is that the term ‘global’ in global governance is far away from really being global. dieter senghaas scrutinizes the research on global governance and shows the bias between a highly connected and regulated oecd-world and ‘the rest of the world’ including approximately 80 per cent of all human beings which are not integrated in the thick governance 84 to solve problems is the ubiquitous goal of global governance, but the academic discourse on governance misses three aspects: firstly if cooperation through governance is the major global acting or the minor acting, secondly if every cooperation leads to problem-solving or are these the well-researched exceptions and thirdly the failure of governance is not addressed and discussed (dingwerth and pattberg 2006, 392-393). politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 181 structure. this theoretical and empirical pitfall is hardly recognized in the literature on global governance (senghaas 2003). finally, global governance is a form of regulation and order on a global and complex level and it seems that the crucial aim is not to make a political decision but to manage a problem in the right manner. in addition, with the focus on constantly changing structures, it seems that any acting in a global governance structure is a problem-solving acting without political or ideological convictions. instead of political ideologies, conflict and legitimacy, cooperation, effectiveness and regulation seem to be the ruling aspects of global governance. moreover, the assumption that every actor in the global governance structure theoretically has the same rank and impact on political decision-making (dingwerth and pattberg 2006, 381) is naïve and ignores the existing power relations. the criticisms of global governance are manifold and therefore, the question is, are there alternatives to it and how do they look (similar grande 2012, 587)? in the next section, i present cosmopolitanism as a possible alternative, describe the main aspects of it and show the advantages of a cosmopolitan perspective. 3. federal cosmopolitanism by s. benhabib cosmopolitanism has been one of the most important international political theories in the last years (delanty 2012). the kantian version of cosmopolitanism is the most prominent one and it has been combined with ideas of deliberative democracy (held 1997; habermas 1998b; archibugi 2003). 3.1 benhabib and discourse theory seyla benhabib has further developed this approach and apart from using kant’s idea of hospitality, she uses hannah arendt’s thought on “the right, to have rights” to examine a new cosmopolitan approach (benhabib 2006a; benhabib 2009; benhabib 2011a). benhabib’s federal cosmopolitanism does not have an institutional focus or will propose a new institutional arrangement such as david held does (1997). instead her approach is norm-based. she demonstrates that the universal declaration of human rights (1948) inaugurates a new era of international law in which numerous international agreements and regimes on the rights of women, children or refugees emphasize individuals – and their rights – as its objects. since international norms such as justice or self-determination are the base for every international agreement, benhabib asks how these norms can be negotiated and justified. she uses discourse theory and ethics by jürgen habermas (1998a), but she advances two aspects of it. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 182 firstly, benhabib claims that every public discourse has to be open for everyone who is affected by the issue of this discourse. thus, the limits of public discourse have to be questioned 85 . she claims that the discourse participants have to reflect the discourse limitations. the participation in a discourse is her second point. benhabib states that every discourse participant has to recognize the others as equal with the same right to argue. furthermore, the arguments of the others have to be recognized too and the inner-discursive dispute has to be structured as reciprocal dialogue. in conclusion, benhabib tries to handle the problems of the deliberative discourse theory through a general openness of the discourse for all affected individuals and an equal participation and reciprocal structure in the discourse (benhabib 2009, 24-30). the result is that in every discourse the discourse itself, its normative groundings and its discourse principles should be considered. 3.2 from national to international to cosmopolitan law as mentioned above, benhabib sees a transformation of law: starting from a national context of law in the treaty of westphalia in 1648 which guarantees every state the unlimited sovereignty of its territory to the first international laws at the beginning of the 20 th century. benhabib’s final stage is the emerging cosmopolitan law at the beginning of the 21 st century. the foundations for this emergence are manifold agreements and treaties such as the universal declaration of human rights or the geneva convention relating to the status of refugees of 1951 (and its protocol in 1967). while in international law the main content is the regulation of national interests and national cooperation, the content of these new treaties are the rights, the protection and the freedom of individuals and the fact that nation-states have to guarantee these norms through their subscription. moreover, apart from the nation-states, the recognition of a plurality of international actors such as ngo’s, transnational social movements and individuals is another sign that the law is in transformation; individuals have among others the right to initiate proceedings against states if they violate human rights (benhabib 2006a). the transformation from a state-centric to a cosmopolitan perspective 86 is interconnected with the emphasis on human rights as fundamental rights for every human being; independent from their affiliation and nationality. she explains this with hannah arendt’s account on “the right to have rights”: “„i propose that the ‚right to have rights‘ needs to be understood more broadly as the 85 for example she exposes the problem of public agency for children or disabled people who are mostly not part of such a discourse because of their age or ‘unnormal’ physicial and/or psychic conditions. 86 important to note is that benhabib is against the abolition of nation-states or the idea of a world-state. she argues for recognizing the multiplicity of actors on the international level by focusing on the interconnections between human rights, state-centric treatments and non-state actors. therefore benhabib argues for a cosmopolitan “republican federalism” (benhabib 2011c, 112-116). politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 183 claim of each human person to be recognized and to be protected as a legal personality by the world community“ (benhabib 2011b, 9). apart from this fundamental consideration benhabib has the idea that every (international) norm has to be justified through a discourse; it does not matter if this norm still exists or will be introduced by a new treaty. only a public discourse legitimates an international norm because the people affected by this norm are concurrently the authors of it (through the participation in the discourse). since the people can participate in such a discourse, they are involved in the pre-decision-making process and can argue for or against the norm, the process itself is democratic. benhabib calls such a process a “democratic iteration” (benhabib 2006c, 4751; benhabib 2009, 174-179). the iteration symbolizes that a term does not have an original and constant meaning, but is transformed by every usage in different contexts. therefore, democratic iterations “are linguistic, legal, cultural, and political repetitions-in-transformation, invocations that also are revocations. they not only change established understandings but also transform what passes as the valid or established view of an authoritative precedent” (benhabib 2006c, 48). in contrast to the governance paradigm, benhabib’s cosmopolitanism has a strong focus on democratic processes and participation of the people; also on the international respectively cosmopolitan level. moreover, she reveals her normative assumptions and goals and does not argue for democratic legitimacy through efficiency and “top-down”-regulation. benhabib involves the people in two ways: as objects by binding them to international treaties and human rights and as subjects as authors of cosmopolitan norms which are discussed within the above mentioned public discourses. with these claims, she does not only focus on the global, but also the local and national level for the grounding of cosmopolitan norms. benhabib scrutinizes her theoretical idea of the interconnection of the local, the national and the global in cosmopolitan norms by examining the head scarf affair in france and germany and the debate on the definition of german citizenship (benhabib 2009, 179-202). the problem with her explorative approach is that benhabib grants the interconnection and the relevance of cosmopolitan norms. it is not clear if the participants of the discourse recognize the same transformation to cosmopolitan norms as benhabib. furthermore it seems that the localization of the actors as local or national is not very clear. the result is that benhabib’s theoretical ideas are interesting but her empirical findings are too narrow and superficial in its modus operandi. my aim is to fix this shortcoming by developing a social science model for measuring cosmopolitanism (and particularism as the opposite approach). in the next chapter i draw on the existing empirical research on cosmopolitanism, combine this with benhabib and a new finding from the cleavage theory. at the end of the next chapter i will present my model. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 184 4. a social science model for cosmopolitanism most of the time normative and empirical cosmopolitan approaches do not engage with each other and, thus, they have hardly influenced each other, although empirical research on cosmopolitanism has significantly increased in the last years (roudometof 2012). i will show that empirical as well as normative findings are well combinable and give fruitful insights for a model of cosmopolitanism. 4.1 empirical cosmopolitan research only shortly after 2000 the broad empirical investigation of cosmopolitanism started and in the journal current sociology a debate on the measurement and operationalization of cosmopolitanism began. victor roudometof has proposed a one-axis-model to measure cosmopolitanism. in his article he distinguishes between local and cosmopolitan whereas local and cosmopolitan are the end points on a continuum. a cosmopolitan attitude is “more (or less) ‚open‘ towards the world” and thus “she or he is less (or more) ‘bound’ by territorial and cultural attachments” (roudometof 2005, 122). this operationalization poses the questions: what are these territorial and cultural attachments and why can an individual only be a local or a cosmopolitan person? from roudometof’s perspective, the existence of a local cosmopolitan is not possible and therefore an individual has to detach its local affiliations and belongings to become a cosmopolitan. olofsson and öhman criticize this approach and develop a two-axes-model. their y-axis is the distinction of local and global while the x-axis is constituted by the distinction of openness 87 and protectionism. they test their model with survey data from sweden and distinguish four types: “local protectionists, open globals, global protectionists and open locals“ (olofsson and öhman 2007, 886). although their model constitutes a progress, their operationalization is inadequate. they use individual attitudes towards the liberalization (or protectionism) of the swedish economy to measure openness or protectionism. olofsson and öhman mix up a liberal attitude towards an international economy with a cosmopolitan attitude which is based on human rights and the self-determination of the others; as i have shown in chapter three. finally, florian pichler summarizes the empirical cosmopolitan research and distinguishes between cosmopolitanism as a subjective and an objective concept (pichler 2009, 710). he uses data from the european value survey (evs), tests numerous hypotheses and 87 openness as crucial aspect of cosmopolitanism refers mostly to ulf hannerz (1990). politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 185 combines objective aspects such as socio-economic factors (age, education level, income etc.) in the analysis. he examines that the objective concept is much better and grounds cosmopolitan attitudes in a more substantive way. for example only seven per cent of all people advocate the complete openness of national borders for immigrants and asked for the acceptance of different ethnic groups in their neighborhood. about 40 per cent say that they do not want sinti and roma in their neighborhood. a high education level and safe social status minimize the refusal of open borders and immigrants in the neighborhood (pichler 2009, 717). furthermore with a scale on how people feel affiliated with the local, national or global level, pichler examines that the higher the affiliation to the local area, the higher is the affiliation to the global level and thus the identification as a cosmopolitan citizen (pichler 2009, 721) 88 . 4.2 developing the cosmopolitan model since local and cosmopolitan affiliations do not exclude each other, the theoretical opposite of cosmopolitanism and the concrete relation of the localization of actors have to be investigated. from this result i derive the y-axis as a continuum from local to global. however, global is not equal to cosmopolitan, global is just the spatial scope of an actor. for example the united nations (un) has a global scope while the mayor of paris has a local scope. dependent on the question the researchers can divide the y-axis continuum in several scopes such as subnational, national or regional. as i mentioned in the introduction, the opposite of cosmopolitanism is highly contested. chris brown (1992) proposes the distinction of cosmopolitanism and communitarism and michael zürn expands this into a broader concept for international political theory and the politicization of world politics (2014). the main aspect of communitarism seems to be an account of limited communities which are not open for foreigners. however such a concern is also possible in liberal theories. john rawls for example is not a cosmopolitan thinker (see the criticism by benhabib 2009, 79-88), but he is not a communitarian either. nevertheless, rawls argues for fixed and limited communities – nations respectively nation-states – he does not see individuals as political actors on an international level and has a concept of international relations based on (neo-) realism (rawls 2010). because of the theoretical ambiguity i reject the distinction of cosmopolitanism and communitarism and follow the approach by broszies and hahn (2010). their distinction of cosmopolitanism and particularism bears the opportunity to subsume different – liberal and communitarian – approaches under the opposite of cosmopolitanism. the authors define 88 in a later article pichler confirms his findings by using data from the world value survey (pichler 2012). politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 186 particularism in three aspects: the overlapping of national sovereignty and justice, the realization of justice only for the members of a nation-state and the impossibility of a roughly similar global political structure with the same justice capacities as a nation-state (broszies and hahn 2010, 1112). therefore i propose the x-axis as a continuum between cosmopolitanism and particularism. it is a continuum because i argue for an empirical grounding of the distinction in the cleavage theory and thus i see in cosmopolitanism vs. particularism a new international conflict line 89 . the research group headed by hanspeter kriesi (2008) describes two issues which do not fit in the existing cleavage theory: the issue of eu-integration and the issue of immigration and integration. they draw the conclusion that there is a new conflict line which they call it integration vs. demarcation. this conflict line will be the empirical base for the theoretical distinction of cosmopolitanism vs. particularism. a cosmopolitan approach sees all people as human beings with the same ‘right to have rights’ (arendt), argues for national borders as open as possible and the recognition of individuals as equal and reciprocal components of a public discourse. that is why cosmopolitanism has an integrated standpoint. on the other hand, a particularistic approach argues for limited access of foreigners to the existing national community, the realization of profound justice principles in the nation-state only and sees nation-states as the main actors on the international level. thus particularism has a demarcated standpoint. for an empirical analysis the scope of integrate, less integrated, neutral, less demarcated and demarcated 90 could be added. the following figure illustrates my considerations. figure 1: social science model for cosmopolitanism and particularism source: author. 89 in his latest article michael zürn (2014) argues in the same way but on the theoretical base of cosmopolitanism and communitarism. as i already mentioned this theoretical distinction is inadequate. 90 this scale is based on the considerations of the bridging project “the political sociology of cosmopolitanism and communitarism” in the social science research center berlin (wzb). global cosmopolitanism particularism local politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 187 in addition i propose that this model can be used to measure claims by political actors in the public sphere, because results from surveys contain the problem of the “sunshine-effect” – societally accepted answers expressed by the respondents during a survey – and the related problem of abstract questions on issues and decisions without a concrete event. the public, however, is strongly affected by events on different issues and through the media political actors such as politicians or ngo’s claim their positions, justify their actions and react on events. focusing on events also has the advantage that researchers can compare the results over time and can examine different event structures and different levels of participation of political actors. a public debate on a new national immigration law has surely different actors and structure as a public dispute on the violation of human rights in the refugee camps in greece or italy. 5. conclusion edgar grande states that governance seems to be the “all-purpose-tool” in political science (grande 2012, 565) and it can be added that for international relation it is global governance. the main problem is that governance approaches are too focused on the efficient regulation and problem-solving through institutions. the result is that this concept is blind for power structures and different interests; it has a hidden normative base and does not recognize non-institutional actors enough. critics of the governance approach try to focus on this term in a critical way and see transformations of the state and fundamental changes on the international level in governance structures. after my considerations about governance research and its critics in chapter two, i proposed a theoretical approach of cosmopolitanism which can be used as an alternative to the governance paradigm. thus, i presented the federal cosmopolitanism by seyla benhabib and explained her ideas of an equal and reciprocal ‘public discourse’ through deliberations, the change from national to cosmopolitan law and the understanding of ‘democratic iterations’ as transformations of the meaning of norms through public discourses. although benhabib’s theoretical considerations are very elaborate, the localization of cosmopolitan norms on the local, national and global level is difficult and her empirical investigation of cosmopolitanism is insufficient. therefore and considering some of the first empirical findings on cosmopolitanism, i propose a two-axes-model which is theoretically derived. moreover it does not equate the distinction between local and global with the distinction communitarism and cosmopolitanism. since local and global do not exclude each other, i compose the y-axis of my model. for the xaxis i draw on both, the opposite pair of cosmopolitanism and particularism, and new insights politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 23, june 2014 188 on the cleavage integration vs. demarcation. furthermore my cosmopolitan model is actorcentric which has the advantage that the convictions of human rights and international norms are connected with concrete actors and their position; without only focusing on international institutions and their regulation efficiency as the global governance approaches propose. the next step for an empirical cosmopolitan research agenda is the usage of the model and the comparison of the normative considerations and the empirical findings, because, as bernhard peters (2000, 279) states, “the power of persuasion of universal principles has to show the plausibility of the concrete application”. a normative theory cannot be disproved by empirical results, but the results can help the theory to focus. moreover, empirical findings can illuminate possible blind spots in the (normative) theory. if the theory of cosmopolitanism and empirical 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political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 33 political dogma strolls non political moral decision ma king processes: a quantitative analysis of ideological decision making of liberals and conservatives in western europe ibrahim noorani1, benazir bhutto shaheed university khurram shakir2, benazir bhutto shaheed university muddasir hussain3, benazir bhutto shaheed university abstract thical enigma kernelling concerns about actions against concerns about consequences have been dealt by philosophers and psychologists to measure “universal” moral intuitions. although these enigmas contain no evident political content, we decipher that liberals are more likely than conservatives to be concerned about consequences, whereas conservatives are more likely than liberals to be concerned about actions. this denouement is exhibited in two large, heterogeneous samples and across several different moral dilemmas. in addition, manipulations of dilemma averseness and order of presentation suggest that this political difference is due in part to different sensitivities to emotional reactions in moral decision-making: conservatives are very much inclined to “go with the gut” and let affective responses guide moral judgments, while liberals are more likely to deliberate about optimal consequences. in this article, extracting a sample from western europe, we report evidence that political differences can be found in moral decisions about issues that have no evident political content. in particular, we find that conservatives are more likely than liberals to attend to the action itself when deciding whether something is right or wrong, whereas liberals are more likely than conservatives to attend to the consequences of the action. further, we report preliminary evidence that this is partly explained by the kernel of truth from the parodies – conservatives are more likely than liberals to “go with the gut” by using their affective responses to guide moral judgment. this research was supported by our friend and colleague ms. fahdila azam (lecturer, department of economics, bbsu) who helped me in the application of two-level hierarchical logistic regression models. we are also indebted to ms. maria abdeali (research fellow, department of experimental psychology, oxford university, uk) for her sincere efforts in the collection of data used in this research. 1 ibrahim noorani, is a lecturer at the department of public administration at the benazir bhutto shaheed university (bbsu), lyari, karachi 2 khurram shakir, is a lecturer at the department of public administration at the benazir bhutto shaheed university (bbsu), lyari, karachi 3 muddasir hussain, is a lecturer at the department of public administration at the benazir bhutto shaheed university (bbsu), lyari, karachi e noorani, shakir, hussain political dogma strolls non political moral decision making 34 introduction onservative is traditionally viewed as an individual who is reluctant to accept change in favour of preserving the status quo and traditional values and customs, whereas liberal is a person who is deemed tolerant of different views, standards of behaviour and the belief in equality for all (encarta word english dictionary). various psychological studies have been done in order to understand the different conservative and liberal mindsets. stephen colbert’s parody of american conservatism takes aim at right-wing claims to intuitive moral clarity about right and wrong actions, regardless of situation or consequences: “since the beginning of my show i’ve led a crusade against facts. too often, they upset the truth that’s in your gut” (the colbert report, january 9, 2007). the mirror-image parody of liberals presents them as irresolute moral flip-floppers, changing their moral convictions to suit the situation and its likely consequences. although political differences in what partisans morally care about are well-known (feather, 1979; feldman, 2003; graham, haidt, & nosek, 2009), these parodies suggest that political ideology may influence how people make moral decisions, regardless of what those decisions are about. some ethical enigmas force a choice between a morally aversive (or even gutwrenching) action and a dormancy that produces even worse consequences. for instance, is it morally permissible to kill one person (action) in order to save the lives of many who would otherwise perish (consequence)? philosophers (foot, 1967) and legal theorists (thompson, 1986) have employed such hypothetical enigmas to answer these questions normatively. more recently, behavioural and cognitive scientists have taken them under consideration to deliver a semantic account of the practices involved in ethical and moral decisionmaking. this empirical vestige denotes that when people choose inaction (i.e., they refuse to kill one person) these discretions are based largely on “hot” affective reactions of aversion to the action itself, whereas consequentialist responses (i.e., killing one to save many) are reached via “cold” processes of deliberative reasoning (cushman, young, & hauser, 2006; greene, sommerville, nystrom, darley, & cohen, 2001; greene et al., 2009). despite having no explicit political content, there are doctrinal reasons to expect ideological differences in approaches to these enigmas. john stuart mill, after all, is the father of both liberalism and utilitarianism. conservatives often express contempt for moral relativism and situational ethics, preferring rules that are binding and eternal (hunter, 1991; sowell, 2002), and may thus be more likely than moderates or liberals to object to actions violating such rules. liberals, on the other hand, may be more likely to question the justification of rules and endorse civil disobedience or other forms of morallymotivated law-breaking (kohlberg [1969] called this a hallmark of post-conventional thinking). also, liberals are more likely to embrace efforts to make delicate adjustments to laws and traditions in order to maximize overall utility (muller, 1997). having the hot/cold findings discussed above, however, it is possible that ideological differences in responses to these c politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 35 enigmas could be due to differential use of affect in moral decision-making. for instance, conservatives may be more inclined to reject consequenceoptimizing actions because of their intuitive aversion to them, not because of a deliberate endorsement of deontological principles. this is predicted based on earlier work showing ideological differences in tolerance of ambiguity, needs for cognition and cognitive closure, and disgust sensitivity (see jost, federico, & napier, 2009, for a review). we investigated whether conservatives would be more inclined to focus on actions, and liberals on consequences. we were also interested in whether any differences we found might be due to differential reliance on affective reactions. we gave several different moral dilemmas to a large and demographically diverse sample. each dilemma had two versions that were presented sequentially. dilemmas varied widely in terms of settings, actions proposed, and overall averseness, yet each set of dilemmas had the same logical structure. one version required an aversive action to prevent negative consequences (e.g., killing one patient in a hospital and using the organs from that patient to save the lives of four others), while another version had the same costs and benefit but required a less aversive action (e.g., redirecting deadly fumes in a hospital, killing one patient to save four others). in each case, we expected that conservatives would be more likely than liberals and moderates to prioritize the action in moral judgment, rejecting the action as morally impermissible despite its utilitarian justification. to test whether a difference in sensitivity to affective reactions is the potential mechanism for ideological differences in moral reasoning, we presented the more and less aversive versions of each dilemma together, and manipulated their presentation order. if conservative moral judgments are more sensitive to affective reactions, then the strong affective response to the more aversive action may be more likely to linger and influence subsequent judgment of the less aversive version of the same dilemma. for example, seeing the organ transplant version first should make the fumes version seem more aversive, especially for conservatives. material and methods participants participants were 656 visitors (48% female, median age 30) to the yourmorals.org website; 473 were from the uk, 70 from germany, 48 from france and 39 from other countries of the eu. political identity was self-reported on a 10-point scale that included a 7-point liberalconservative continuum plus 3 additional options. there were 356 liberals (three scale points, from slightly to extremely liberal), 80 moderates, and 101 conservatives (three scale points). all analyses retained the seven-point strongly liberal to strongly conservative scaling. the 54 “libertarian,” 27 “other,” and 38 “don’t know/not political” were excluded, leaving a sample of 501. procedure participants self-selected to take a study described as “moral dilemmas – what is the right thing to do in difficult situations?” participants were instructed to go through 6 moral dilemmas and were asked a question about the right thing to do in each case. they were shown two different versions of each dilemma with exact same consequences but requiring different actions. participants were randomly assigned to condition: either the more aversive version of each dilemma (previously called the “personal” version noorani, shakir, hussain political dogma strolls non political moral decision making 36 [greene et al., 2001]) always came before the less aversive (“impersonal”) version, or the less aversive version always came before the more aversive version. the order of the six dilemma pairs was randomized for each participant. the dilemmas were adapted from greene et al. (2001), and modified so that the two versions were the same except for the action required. the titles of the dilemmas – "trolley," "doctor," "father," "vaccine," "safari," and "lifeboat" – and names describing the unique action (e.g., “doctor dilemma – fumes version”) were visible to highlight the similarity within each pair. participants answered “is it morally appropriate for you to [do action] in order to [prevent some other danger]?” with a dichotomous yes/no response. then they answered “how certain are you about your answer?” with a 7-point scale from “extremely uncertain” to “extremely certain.” full text of all dilemmas can be found in the supplements. results data were analyzed using two-level hierarchical logistic regression models, with withinperson factors (the dilemma’s averseness and its order, i.e., whether it was presented before or after the other version of the same dilemma) at level 1 and between-person factors (self reported demographics) at level 2. the outcome measure was whether the participant deemed the action to be morally appropriate or not (yes/no); more “yes” responses indicated greater concerns about the consequences of inaction within the dilemmas, and more “no” responses indicated greater concerns about the actions required to attain those consequences. liberals were more concerned about consequences, conservatives about actions. to test the overall influence of political ideology, we tested a model with ideology (z-scored) as the only level-2 predictor. there was a main effect of ideology, such that conservatives were more inclined than liberals to reject the action despite its prevention of worse consequences, b = .17, t(417) = 3.11, p = .002. ideology remained a significant unique predictor of responses (b = .13, t (413) = 2.24, p < .05) when gender (0 = male, 1 = female) as well as age, religious attendance, and education level (all z-scored) were added as level-2 predictors. 1conservatives were significantly less inclined to make consequentialist decisions in four of the six dilemmas when examined separately. relations to politics and means for each dilemma in each political ideology on responses to these moral dilemmas was replicated even when only one condition are provided in table 1. in a separate data collection (n = 4981), the main effect of condition are provided in table 1. in a separate data collection (n = 4981), the main effect of version of each dilemma was given to each participant (see online supplements). less aversive moral dilemmas were rejected more when they followed the more aversive versions. in a model that included averseness (-1 = less aversive, 1 = more aversive), order (-1= first, 1 = second), and the averseness x order interaction as level-1 predictors, there were significant effects of averseness, b = .81, t (5535) = 24.11, p < .001 (people were more likely to say “no” to the more aversive dilemmas) and order, b = .10, t (5535) = 2.88, p = .005 (people were more likely to say “no” when the dilemma came second). there was also a significant averseness x order interaction, b = -.14, t (5535) = 2.38, p = .02, indicating that the effect of order politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 37 was stronger for the less aversive dilemmas than it was for the more aversive dilemmas. running separate models for each dilemma type revealed an effect of order for less aversive dilemmas, b = .23, t (2763) = 4.16, p < .001: people were more likely to reject the less aversive actions when they followed the more aversive actions. in contrast, following the less aversive versions had no effect on responses to the more aversive versions, b = -.03, t (2772) = -.43, p = .67, suggesting that the order effects found were not simply driven by consistency pressures. this replicates findings using the trolley dilemma (lombrozo, 2009; petrinovich & o’neill, 1996; schwitzgebel & cushman, 2010), one of the six we used, in a diverse sample and across multiple dilemmas. 1each of these covariates was also a significant predictor of responses to the moral dilemmas: being female (b = .50, 1 p < .001), older (b = .20, p = .001, more religious (b = .20, p = .001) and more educated (b = .14, p < .05) all predicted greater rejection of the actions. averseness lingered for conservatives, but not for liberals or moderates. to test whether the strength of the order effect for less aversive dilemmas varied by political ideology (i.e., whether politics moderated the averseness x order interaction) we tested a model with averseness, order, and their interaction as level-1 predictors and politics as a level-2 predictor. the main effects of averseness, politics, and order, as well as the averseness x order interaction remained significant. in addition, there was a significant averseness x order x politics interaction, b = -.12, t (5531) = 2.05, p = .04. to decompose this 3-way interaction, we tested separate models for liberals, moderates, and conservatives. this allowed us to determine how the averseness x order interaction varied across the three groups. neither liberals (b = .09, t (3688) = 1.18, p = .24) nor moderates (b = -.22, t (765) =1.20, p = .23) showed a significant averseness x order interaction, but conservatives did, b = -.31, t (1074) = 2.43, p = .02. we further decomposed this interaction for conservatives, testing the effect of order separately for less aversive and more aversive dilemmas. conservatives were more likely to reject the less aversive actions when they followed, rather than preceded, the more aversive actions, b = .45, t (534) = 3.80, p < .001. conversely, following the less aversive versions had no effect on responses to the more aversive versions, b = -.09, t (540) = .63, p = .53. this suggests that the negative affect induced by the more aversive dilemmas lingered and influenced the less aversive versions shown afterward, but only for conservatives. discussion first proof is extracted from the two large samples which denote that conservatives are more likely than liberals to respond to ethical enigmas based on the actions required, and liberals are more likely than conservatives to respond based on the consequences of inaction. the effect was consistent across a diverse set of dilemmas including a variety of roles, situations, actions, and tradeoffs. interactions with this effect provided antecedent evidence that the political differences were due in part to conservatives’ greater sensitivity to affect in their moral decision-making. conservatives were more affected by the order manipulation: seeing the more aversive versions first made them more likely to also reject the less aversive actions. seeing the less aversive version of scenarios first did not have an effect on subsequent judgments of more aversive versions, suggesting that results were not driven simply by a desire to be consistent. the gut-level reaction to an noorani, shakir, hussain political dogma strolls non political moral decision making 38 action like removing someone’s organs against their will lingers, and makes a less aversive action like redirecting deadly fumes seem morally inappropriate as well – but only for conservatives. it is noteworthy that seeing the more aversive dilemma first increased rejections of the subsequent less aversive action, but seeing the less aversive dilemma first had no effect on responses to the subsequent more aversive version. the palpable affective reaction to aversive scenarios (e.g., removing someone’s organs against their will) may just be too strong to allow for cold consequenceweighing calculations (e.g., four lives > one life), even in a subsequent decision involving a less aversive action. this asymmetry in order effects supports the idea of affective primacy in moral judgment (haidt, 2001): the aversion remained with participants, while the rational deliberation did not. conservatives’ responses to the less aversive dilemmas in general – and following the more aversive ones in particular – support our hypothesis that conservatives’ moral judgments are more sensitive to intuitive affective reactions than are liberals’. however, our inference about the role of affect is indirect. though previous research demonstrating that more aversive dilemmas elicit stronger affective reactions (greene et. al, 2001; 2009) supports our inference, a valuable next step would be to replicate these results while measuring affective reactions more directly (e.g., with physiological measures). 5. conclusion these descriptive moral decision-making differences do not necessarily imply any particular normative conclusions. although moral consequentialism has been cast as normatively optimal in decision research (baron & spranca, 1997; sunstein, 2005), this has been disputed (bennis, medin, & bartels, 2010). liberal consequentialism can be taken as a sign of wise and thoughtful deliberation in moral matters, or as irresolute flip-flopper in the face of changing circumstances. conservatives’ actionfocused stands can be taken as decisiveness and strong moral character, or as arrogant ignorance of the consequences of behaviour. just as liberal and conservative moral education approaches make normative appeals to different sets of moral values (graham, haidt, & rimm-kaufman, 2008), liberals and conservatives may also differ in opinions about which approach to moral decision-making is normatively better. the descriptive results of our study cannot normatively tell us which ideological group is more virtuous, but they do suggest that individual difference approaches can contribute to our understanding of the processes of moral judgment and decisionmaking. contrary to universalist claims (hauser, 2006), individuals do systematically vary in their responses to these abstract and hypothetical dilemmas. this systematic variation may account for why some conservatives consider themselves more virtuous, due to their moral consistency, while some liberals consider themselves more virtuous, due to their moral rationality. further studies combining individual difference and experimental approaches will shed light on both the nature of political ideology and the mechanisms of moral decision-making. as a first step, the present findings indicate that conservatives are more likely to focus on actions (and liberals on consequences) in moral tradeoffs, and suggest that this is partially due to the stronger role that affects plays in conservative moral decision-making. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 39 these findings can be highly useful and have significant implications for fields including political science, moral psychology, and decision science. they call into question popular perceptions of liberals as “bleeding hearts,” more affected than conservatives by feelings in their moral and policy opinions (farwell & weiner, 2000). the findings also suggest that partisans may differ even in their initial approaches to novel issues, with those on the left focusing more on likely consequences and those on the right focusing more on immediate reactions about the rightness or wrongness of an action regardless of the consequences. the fact that the differences were found using nonpolitical dilemmas suggests that moral disagreements between ideological opponents involve not only different prioritizations of moral concerns (e.g., equality vs. social order), but different processes of moral decision-making. however, due to its artificiality these dilemmas are non-representative of everyday morality (pincoffs, 1986), and thus future work is needed to determine how accurately such political deviations synthesize to other domains of ethical discretions. references baron, j., & spranca, m. 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(1986). rights, restitution, and risk: essays in moral theory. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 41 appendix 1. table 1. relation to political orientation and percentage of participants endorsing the required action for each moral dilemma relation to endorsement dilemma politics (r) more aversive version less aversive version shown first shown second shown first shown second doctor .10* .04 .03 .77 .57 father .18** .06 .09 .15 .09 lifeboat .07 .25 .22 .66 .60 safari .10* .37 .35 .52 .41 trolley .11* .12 .17 .81 .65 vaccine .07 .35 .39 .45 .37 note. relations to politics collapsed across averseness and order of presentation; positive numbers indicate liberals more likely to endorse. * = p < .05, ** = p < .01. 2. text of moral dilemmas. (more aversive version of each is shown first, less aversive second.) doctor dilemma – transplant version: you are a doctor working in a hospital. you have four patients, each of whom is about to die due to a failing organ of some kind. you have another patient who is healthy. the only way that you can avoid the deaths of the first four patients is to transplant four of this woman's organs (against her will) into the bodies of the other four patients. if you do this, the woman will die, but the other four patients will live. is it morally appropriate for you to perform this transplant in order to save four of your patients? [no/yes] doctor dilemma – fumes version: you are a doctor working in a hospital. due to an accident in the building next door, there are deadly fumes rising up through the hospital's ventilation system. in a certain room of the hospital are four of your patients. in another room there is one of your patients. if you do nothing the fumes will rise up into the room containing the four patients and cause their deaths. the only way to avoid the deaths of these patients is to hit a switch that will cause the fumes to bypass the room containing the four patients. as a result of doing this the fumes will enter the room containing the single patient (against her will). if you do this, the woman will die, but the other four patients will live. is it morally appropriate for you to hit the switch in order to save four of your patients? [no/yes] father dilemma pillow version: noorani, shakir, hussain political dogma strolls non political moral decision making 42 you are in hospital lounge waiting to visit a sick friend. a young man sitting next to you explains that his father is very ill. the doctors believe that he has a week to live at most. he explains further that his father has a substantial life insurance policy that expires at midnight. if his father dies before midnight, this young man will receive a very large sum of money. he says that the money would mean a great deal to him and his family, and that no good will come from his father's living a few more days. after talking with him you can tell this man is in desperate need of the money to feed his family. the man asks you to go up to his father's room and smother his father with a pillow. is it morally appropriate for you to kill this man's father in order to get money for the man and his family? [no/yes] father dilemma – circuit breaker version: you are in hospital lounge waiting to visit a sick friend. a young man sitting next to you explains that his father is very ill. the doctors believe that he has a week to live at most. he explains further that his father has a substantial life insurance policy that expires at midnight. if his father dies before midnight, this young man will receive a very large sum of money. he says that the money would mean a great deal to him and his family, and that no good will come from his father's living a few more days. after talking with him you can tell this man is in desperate need of the money to feed his family. the man asks you to go to the hospital basement and pull a circuit out of the circuit breaker, shutting off his father’s life support machines. is it appropriate for you to kill this man's father in order to get money for the man and his family? [no/yes] lifeboat dilemma throw overboard version: you are on a cruise ship when there is a fire on board, and the ship has to be abandoned. the lifeboats are carrying many more people than they were designed to carry. the lifeboat you're in is sitting dangerously low in the water – a few inches lower and it will sink. the seas start to get rough, and the boat begins to fill with water. it seems to you that there is only one way to stop the boat from sinking, and that is to start throwing other passengers overboard, starting with old people who are too weak to resist. is it morally appropriate for you to throw some of your fellow passengers overboard in order to save yourself and the other lifeboat passengers? [no/yes] lifeboat dilemma rope version: you are on a cruise ship when there is a fire on board, and the ship has to be abandoned. the lifeboats are carrying many more people than they were designed to carry. the lifeboat you're in is sitting dangerously low in the water – a few inches lower and it will sink. the seas start to get rough, and the boat begins to fill with water. a group of old people are in the water and ask you to throw them a rope so they can come aboard the lifeboat. it seems to you that the boat will sink if it takes on any more passengers. is it morally appropriate for you to refuse to throw the rope in order to save yourself and the other lifeboat passengers? [no/yes] safari dilemma torture version: you are part of a group of ecologists who live in a remote stretch of jungle. the entire group, which includes eight children, has been taken hostage by a group of paramilitary terrorists. one of the terrorists takes a liking to you. he informs you that his leader intends to kill you and the rest of the hostages the following morning. he is willing to help you and the children escape, but as an act of good faith he wants you to torture and kill one of your fellow politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr.19, may 2013 43 hostages whom he does not like, if you refuse his offer all the hostages including the children and yourself will die. if you accept his offer then the others will die in the morning but you and the eight children will escape. is it morally appropriate for you to torture and kill one of your fellow hostages in order to escape from the terrorists and save the lives of the eight children? [no/yes] safari dilemma help version: you are part of a group of ecologists who live in a remote stretch of jungle. the entire group, which includes eight children, has been taken hostage by a group of paramilitary terrorists. one of the terrorists takes a liking to you. he informs you that his leader intends to kill you and the rest of the hostages the following morning. he is willing to help you and the children escape, but as an act of good faith he wants you to help him kill one of your fellow hostages whom he does not like. you are to tell the man to meet you in a remote location to plan an escape, and when he goes there this terrorist will kill him, if you refuse his offer all the hostages including the children and yourself will die. if you accept his offer then the others will die in the morning but you and the eight children will escape. is it morally appropriate for you to help him kill one of your fellow hostages in order to escape from the terrorists and save the lives of the eight children? [no/yes] trolley dilemma – push version: a runaway trolley is heading down the tracks toward five workmen who will be killed if the trolley proceeds on its present course. you are on a footbridge over the tracks, in between the approaching trolley and the five workmen. next to you on this footbridge is a stranger who happens to be very large. if you do nothing the trolley will proceed, causing the deaths of the five workmen. the only way to save the lives of these workmen is to push this stranger off the bridge and onto the tracks below, where his large body will stop the trolley, causing his death. is it morally appropriate for you to push the stranger onto the tracks in order to save the five workmen? [no/yes] trolley dilemma – switch version: a runaway trolley is heading down the tracks toward five workmen who will be killed if the trolley proceeds on its present course. on the tracks extending to the right is a single railway workman. you are standing on a footbridge over the tracks, in between the approaching trolley and the five workmen. next to you on this footbridge is a switch that can redirect the trolley. if you do nothing the trolley will proceed, causing the deaths of the five workmen. the only way to save the lives of these workmen is to hit the switch, which will cause the trolley to proceed to the right, causing the death of the single workman. is it morally appropriate for you to hit the switch in order to save the five workmen? [no/yes] vaccine self version: a viral epidemic has spread across the globe, killing millions of people. you work for the bureau of health, a government agency that has developed two substances. your organization knows that one of them will be a useful vaccine, but you don't know which one. you also know that the other one is likely to be deadly to most people. once you figure out which substance is the vaccine you can use it to save millions of lives. the only way to identify the vaccine is for you yourself to secretly test the substances on a minimum of 200 patients in the bureau of health facilities, against their will. it is expected that approximately noorani, shakir, hussain political dogma strolls non political moral decision making 44 half of the patients will slowly and painfully die from this testing. you will need to sneak in and personally inject the patients with the substances one by one, killing 100 of them. once testing is complete the effects of the substances will be identified, and you will be able to start saving lives with your vaccine. is it morally appropriate for you to personally kill 100 patients with a deadly injection in order to identify a vaccine that will save millions of lives? [no/yes] vaccine organization version: a viral epidemic has spread across the globe, killing millions of people. you work for the bureau of health, a government agency that has developed two substances. your organization knows that one of them will be a useful vaccine, but you don't know which one. you also know that the other one is likely to be deadly to most people. once you figure out which substance is the vaccine you can use it to save millions of lives. the only way to identify the vaccine is to secretly test the substances on a minimum of 200 patients in the bureau of health facilities, against their will. it is expected that approximately half of the patients will slowly and painfully die from this testing. once testing is complete the effects of the substances will be identified, and you will be able to start saving lives with your vaccine. is it morally appropriate for you to direct your organization to begin the testing, killing 100 patients with a deadly injection in order to identify a vaccine that will save millions of lives? [no/yes] mining – shoot version: you are part of a four-person mining expedition. there is a cave-in and the four of you are trapped in the mine. a rock has crushed the legs of one of your crew members and he will die without medical attention. you've established radio contact with the rescue team and learned it will be 36 hours before the first drill can reach the space you are trapped in. you are able to calculate that this space has just enough oxygen for three people to survive for 36 hours, but definitely not enough for four people. the only way to save the other crew members is to shoot the injured crew member so that there will be just enough oxygen for the rest of the crew to survive is it morally appropriate to kill the injured crew member in order to save the lives of the remaining crew members? [no/yes] mining – refuse aid version: you are part of a four-person mining expedition. there is a cave-in and the four of you are trapped in the mine. a rock has crushed the legs of one of your crew members and he will die without medical attention. you've established radio contact with the rescue team and learned it will be 36 hours before the first drill can reach the space you are trapped in. you are able to calculate that this space has just enough oxygen for three people to survive for 36 hours, but definitely not enough for four people. the only way to save the other crew members is to refuse medical aid to the injured crew member so that there will be just enough oxygen for the rest of the crew to survive. is it morally appropriate to allow the injured crew member to die in order to save the lives of the remaining crew members? [no/yes] note. vaccine dilemmas used only in main study; mining dilemmas used only in replication study. certainty question asked after dichotomous moral decision question. microsoft word politikon modificat.doc humanitarian intervention and the changing concepts of sovereignty dominika švarc dominika švarc has graduated from faculty of law ljubljana with the title ll.b..she has been a student of msc political science at the american and world studies program at the faculty of social sciences ljubljana and she is currently a phd candidate at the same faculty and a ll.m. candidate at the london school of economics and political science. she has also been working as an independent legal advisor and researcher for the european law institute in ljubljana and as an independent researcher for the south-european comparative law institute. abstract: u.n. secretary general kofi annan recently observed that "state sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined ... by the forces of globalisation and international cooperation." the article deals with the question of how much this is an accurate observation in the context of humanitarian intervention. within the theories of classical international law, the principle of nonintervention involves the prohibition to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. even though there have always existed exemptions to this principle, there was never an exemption of humanitarian intervention mentioned, neither in the un charter or any other international legal instrument, nor in the customary law. in the article the possibility of new international legal norms evolving in this field is discussed, to justify intervention in the name of protecting fundamental human rights that are today one of the leading concepts of international legal order, tightly connected to the protection of international peace and security in a highly interdependent international community. to clarify the concept, some basic elements and dimensions of humanitarian intervention are outlined, together with some possible features of the future development of the humanitarian intervention concept. the aim of the article is to discover, what is, both in the legal sense and in practice, the relationship between the sovereignty of states and their responsibility to fulfil their obligations under the international law, including the obligation to respect and protect human life and dignity, as well as other fundamental human rights. the contemporary political discourse often labels sovereignty as an emptied, irrelevant and sometimes even a disturbing category. for the international lawyer, these statements are unbearable and deserve a strong rejection. international law has emerged as the law of sovereign states. it has certainly never praised it as an absolute, nor a fundamental category. however, the concept of sovereignty has always been central to the history of international law and international relations. today, as even the un secretary general kofi annan has observed, "state sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined... by the forces of globalisation and international cooperation". to discover if this is a truly accurate observation, it is fundamental that one understands the relevance of this concept in a rapidly changing context of the modern international community. a critical approach to the con 15 temporary discussion of the very concept of sovereignty, usually takes one of the two fundamental positions. the first approach considers international law as an apology of the state practice, whilst the other understands it as something normatively utopian. the apologetic approach should clearly be avoided, but at the same time, there might as well be too much normativism. international law was shaped by history and in this course of historical evolution; the sovereignty itself has recently faced at least two major challenges – the issue of international criminal jurisdiction and the problem of non-intervention. this article tends to deal with the latter, by discussing the nature and future of humanitarian intervention. within the theories of classical international law, the principle of nonintervention involves the prohibition to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. nevertheless, there have always existed the exemptions to this prohibition. the international legal doctrine distinguished between the exemptions that are in themselves the law, and the exemptions, that are legally allowed for. the emergence of national states in the first twenty-five years of the un has changed the course of these discussions. the 1970 friendly relations declaration77 clearly considers any intervention a breach of international law. the un security council is the only competent body to authorise the use of force in cases when international peace and 77 declaration on principles of international law concerning friendly relations and cooperation among states in accordance with the united nations charter (friendly relations declaration), ga. res. 2625 (xxv), u.n. doc. a/8018 (1970) security are endangered or breached. is this formulation outdated? at the time, it seemed that the development will strengthen the concept of sovereignty and the principle of nonintervention, turning it into an absolute imperative norm (ius cogens) of international law. however, the expectations did not quite turn out that way. a number of international legal experts believe, that international practice, or international customary law has already amended the written law of non-intervention, specifically through the increasing resort to humanitarian intervention78. this principle was in general a valid reason for intervention in the 19th century. it was not deemed wrong, at least not from the legal point of view, to use force by a state or a group of states in another country for the protection of some ethnic or religious community. however, this is mostly indifferent from the point of view of the present dilemma, since back then there were no international legal norms prohibiting the waging of war. thus, it did not really matter how an armed intervention was justified. in the 20th century package of international legal norms, expressly and absolutely prohibiting the use of force or the threat to use force in international relation, humanitarian intervention is by no means mentioned as an exception to that rule. interestingly enough, even those states that used force for similar aims did not refer to their military operations as humanitarian intervention. many realised only later, after the kosovo crisis, that there had been 78 see e.g. thürer, daniel. 2000. der kosovokonflikt im lichte des völkerrechts: von drei – echten und scheinbaren – dilemmata. archiv des völkerrechts, 38(1). 16 other humanitarian interventions carried out before. at the beginning of the 21st century, the positions are melting and the security council has itself contributed a great deal to the changing notions, by its actions. the cases of somalia, haiti, rwanda and albania provide examples of humanitarian intervention, though they were not called so at the time. we can thus observe that at the beginning of the 21st century, the positions are melting and the un security council has itself contributed a great deal to the changing notions, by its actions. in case of somalia (1992) and haiti (1993) the security council authorised intervention in cases not so clearly involving a threat to or violation of international peace, nor were there any acts of aggression recognised. somalia was facing a blast of a vast humanitarian crisis, but the security council itself has never argumented its decision on the matter, nor revealed the dimensions and elements that were threatening international peace in the particular case. it only provided for an ethical definition of "what by definition constitutes threat to international peace". in haiti, the government was violently overthrown and that could consequently cause mass emigrations and flooding of refugees. nevertheless, does the humanitarian crisis in itself constitute a threat to international peace? couldn't it be that the security council thus opened a path for the states to intervene as they please in situations they deem similar and in which the security council refused / fails to react? on the other hand, should we maybe allow such developments to take place in the name of global security? can security concerns override traditional notions of sovereignty? how do we reconcile new doctrines, such as the legitimate use of pre-emptive military force and regime change, which are couched in terms of democracy, security, and sovereignty in the modern international discourse? the questions raised could be merged into two basic dimensions of the attempted refurbishment of sovereignty concepts. firstly, what are the criteria that could and/or should stimulate intervention against a sovereign state, i.e., what are the moral, legal, security, and humanitarian bases of intervention? secondly, who in the internationally community decides when these criteria have been met, when a certain threshold of behaviour has been passed that justifies intervention in the sovereign affairs of a nation state? added to that might be another sub-question of maybe even greater importance – who is than to intervene? are there new norms of international law evolving? international law rests on two legs. codified law as represented by the un charter enshrines the principles of sovereignty and non-interference in the domestic affairs of a state, while customary law increasingly emphasizes the protection of human rights and the safety and well-being of the individual. looking back at the kosovo case, a spirited debate regarding the legality of the nato action has not yet reached a conclusion. one view holds that, as there was no security council approval for nato’s use of force, the intervention was illegal according to black letter law. a contrary viewpoint out that yugoslav violation of previous security council resolutions and a clear pattern of widespread human rights violations 17 did, in the end, provides sufficient justification for the nato action. when looking to the future, one must also consider the evolutionary nature of international law, of working to shape international law to help build a more peaceful global society. however, before we go forth with the discussion about the basic parameters of humanitarian intervention in the contemporary security and sovereignty context, the observation must be made, that stricto sensu, the principle of humanitarian intervention has not yet become and maybe even cannot become part of new customary law for several reasons. however dynamic the interpretation of legal norms may be, the general prohibition of the use of force is considered a peremptory international legal norm (ius cogens) in both written law (the un charter) and customary law. given its universal and absolute nature, it can only be changed by the international community as a whole (represented by the un, not other institutions, such as nato). that is to say, as long as the un does not change more than halfcentury old international legal order, others may not change it either. the second reason is that an intervention, whose executors do not refer to the principle of humanitarian intervention, may not establish a new customary law. regarding kosovo, the nato politicians did indeed speak about protecting human rights at stake, but none of them explicitly mentioned humanitarian intervention as the legal basis for intervention. this is strongly connected to the third reason, which is the lack of the so called opinio iuris, that is, the firm and certain belief of state that by their behaviour they wish to establish a new norm of customary law, or more legalistically said, that they clearly believe they act the way they do out of some legal (not merely moral) obligation. the states involved in the recent cases of intervention did not recognise the emergence of a new practice and, consequently, of a general norm of customary law. finally, as long as some states executing intervention say that their practice establishes customary law while other opposes this practice, a new customary legal norm cannot come into being. in the before mentioned cases of haiti, somalia, rwanda and albania, foreign forces were acting under explicit authorisation by the un security council, and intervention in each case was thus lawful under international law. on the other hand, at the time of the kosovo crisis, moscow and beijing were no longer willing to give their blessing to draft resolutions that would have authorised the use of force. consequently, nato acted without authorisation. there is no "third" way, once one or more permanent members of the security council have rejected the authorisation by the un sc. the changing concept of humanitarian intervention the recent international legal order – as it was shown – does not recognise the legality of military intervention even in case of genocide or ethnic cleansing. thus, it would not allow an intervention to defend human rights either. there is no provision in the un charter or in any other international instrument for that matter, which would permit such an intervention. the international legal framework set in 1945 contained rather simple rigid rules. according to them, the un security council may only use in selfdefence or on authorisation force. the 18 purpose of and reasons for the use of force, and the enforcement of protected human rights were not distinguished. the charter did not authorise the use of armed force by any state against another state for the protection of human rights or establishment of democratic institutions (like in the case of iraqi war – 2003), or for any other cause. therefore, the conclusion here could be that no new norm is emerging in the recent international legal order, which would recognise the legality of either form of humanitarian intervention. however, in the 20 the century, international law seemed to reach the point of evolution where the protection of human life and dignity constitutes its most fundamental element. it is possible to say that there is a slight contradiction between these to principles – the principle of non-intervention and the principle of protecting human rights, since the reality often prevents the latter without breaching the former principle. it seems that some critics might be right to criticise international legal order to be deaf to the tones of reality and helpless when its fundamental principles collide. the current absolute (imperative) legal norm of non-intervention thus paralyses any protection of basic human rights from an outside force other than those acting explicitly with the un sc blessing. the natural question follows – what if the security council fails or refuses to act. the current mechanism of un sc voting clearly leads to an even greater chance of such outcome. how can the international community, a state or a group of states step aside in cases of mass murders, state terror and torture? furthermore, the concept of state responsibility to fulfil their obligations under international law (including those to protect international peace and security; to recognise, respect and protect fundamental human rights) also calls for a refurbishment of our notions on the nonintervention principle. for that reason, at least some developments must be also made in the direction of changing the understanding and the legal reality of humanitarian intervention. as a needed step in this direction, there is much discussion of the wisdom of changing the parameters and terminology of the debate. above all this means making states and governments more accountable for their actions vis-à-vis their citizens, so that the issue becomes one of a responsibility to protect on the part of states, rather than a right to intervene on the part of the international community. similarly, humanitarian intervention becomes rather protective intervention when states and governments have failed their responsibility. for its part, however, the international community has the responsibility to assist states and governments in providing the means by which fundamental human rights can be assured in the first place, before intervention becomes necessary, and then to adequately follow up in post-conflict reconciliation and reconstruction should intervention occur in short, full cycle involvement. issues of legitimacy more thought needs to be given to the why is of intervention, the criteria that should be met to justify intervention in order to help pinpoint where international law and custom should be evolving. delineating such criteria could also help establish common ground between quite divergent international perspectives on the relative 19 weight to be given to sovereignty v. intervention, thus ensuring that when intervention occurs, it has the widest international support. following some discussions, four possible categories of criteria justifying intervention, from the easiest to the most difficult, could be set out: • gross and systematic human rights abuses, including genocide (such as occurred in cambodia and rwanda); • the suppression of the clearly demonstrated will of the majority (such as the overthrow of the democratically-elected government in haiti or the suppression of an internationally-mandated expression of selfdetermination, as in east timor); • clear cases of failed states, where central authority is nonfunctioning and the civilian population is at the mercy of militias, warlords, criminal gangs, etc. (somalia, liberia, sierra leone); • the illegal and inhumane use of power by one side or the other during a civil war encompassing an attempt at secession and/or ethnic/religious self-determination. the obvious difficulty with these categories is that evidence of the criteria in question is not always clear-cut and that grey areas can exist within a category (when does widespread civil strife become a failed state?), and that some cases fall into more than one category. one way of considering the legitimacy of humanitarian interventions is to place such interventions along a consensual/coercive continuum. speaking in words of historical examples, intervention in sierra leone poses no problem concerning legitimacy, as the government in freetown requested international aid. regarding east timor, the consent of the indonesian government was granted, albeit following strong international diplomatic and economic coercion. kosovo represents the most difficult case. while not legitimate in the narrow sense of not having the approval of a direct mandate from the un security council, the kosovo intervention was attempted to be justified by nato on primarily humanitarian grounds. these were amplified in public only by the british government, which refuted the accusation of illegitimacy by pointing to the framing authority of past un sc resolutions on yugoslavia as well as to the six non-aligned states in the security council which joined western nations in voting against the russian resolution (condemning the nato action), which could be taken as implicit approval. the wider international response was either sympathetic or muted. the modalities of intervention the current international environment, as said before, is not at all conducive to well-planned, well-carried out, well-supported interventions that can stay the course. especially in a period of generalised retreat from multilateral institutions, the re-empowerment of state agency may, while seeming a paradox, be all the more important in terms of strengthening notions of a responsibility to protect. five categories of the modalities of intervention can be reviewed in the course of current international reality: 1. conflict prevention; 2. sanctions, where there are more problems than opportunities, and where it's difficult to show causal effect and avoid injuring the innocent; 20 3. legal instruments, where definitions of sovereignty are conditional on norms developed through the nürenberg, yugoslav and rwanda tribunals, by the international criminal court, by legal intrusion into the conduct of military operations; and by expanding case law that provides for domestic jurisdiction over international behaviour; 4. military intervention, of three types: (a) coalition action without a direct un mandate (kosovo); (b) a un sc mandate with a framework nation in the lead (australia in east timor); and (c) an independently legitimated action to rescue and restore a un effort (the uk in sierra leone); 5. full cycle planning, noting how strategic opportunities created by military interventions have been squandered by lack of post-conflict administration and reconstruction (angola, east timor, kosovo)79. who intervenes, and why? while the united nations is best positioned to give legitimacy to interventions, too often un sc action is blocked by a great power veto. one solution to this could be the concept of a negative veto, where action will be taken unless a veto is cast, making it more difficult for countries to block action. in the absence of such reforms, what other sources of authority can we look to provide legitimacy for intervention? certainly regional organizations can, and have, taken the lead. regarding the organization of american states (oas), there is the triggering mechanism provided by the santiago decla 79 intervention, sovereignty and international security, avaliable at http://www.pugwash.org/reports/rc/rc11htm ration of 1991 regarding military overthrows of a democratically elected government. yet regional politics can militate against regional solutions; in the cases of el salvador and guatemala, countries in latin america expressed a preference for having the international community, not regional organizations, intervene. regarding africa, even though non-interference is enshrined in the oau charter, there have been cases of the oau being willing to give primacy to intervention over sovereignty (especially in the case of south african apartheid). regarding domestic politics and the national interest, domestic considerations can both propel and constrain intervention. indeed, some semblance of a “national interest’ must be present for a country to commit troops and resources to an intervention. in the case of the us and haiti, for example, it was argued that several important national issues helped justify us intervention: haitian refugees, the congressional black caucus, and the affront to us power when the uss harlan was turned away from haiti’s shores. as in the case of somalia, of course, events can also conspire to constrain and ultimately terminate an intervention. while there does seem to be convergence within the international community on criteria for intervening in the case of gross human rights abuses, the problem is one of agencies and modalities. there is thus a need to come back to issues of world governance and new concepts of security. while recognizing the need to avoid invidious double standards, a distinction (in terms of global security) can be made between instability in bosnia and kosovo and those in a country 21 like rwanda. such threats to global security are also present from current and potential conflict in and around the former soviet union, china, and india, (the three countries most opposed to intervention). to that end, unilateralist sentiments such as are being seen in the us will create difficulties for consensus building, especially with russia, china and india. the "effectiveness of intervention" debate a strictly utilitarian approach to judging a ‘successful’ intervention could be based on the prospects of: 1) the number of lives saved; and 2) whether the intervention helps create postconflict political stability. an obvious question here is how will you know how many lives you have saved? kosovo could be an example of more lives being lost because of the nato operation. to prevent, what ultimately turns out to be the criteria for successful intervention the goals and strategy of the intervener(s) themselves, there is need to ensure that the original rationale for intervention does not change during the intervention itself. however, sometimes avoiding that outcome could mean that the job is not done. in the case of iraq, not finishing the job has meant continued oppression of kurds and shi'a and continued international intervention in iraq. the outcomes of the latest intervention in iraq are yet to be crystallised. when it comes to creating political stability, how long is the time line by which an intervention is judged? the bosnia intervention could be called successful, but is it irreversible? issues such as the return of refugees are very complex and not always handled well by international community. it could be said that the right of return is essential to the long-term success of an intervention (e.g., dayton will fail otherwise). yet, the right of return has two inherent problems: establishing the status-quo-ante may not be the preferable solution, and taking away someone's refugee status by telling him/her that they can now go home (especially if there is no effective policing and no individual security to return to) could expose such returnees to danger. post-conflict cooperation with local authorities is also a delicate issue. sanctions and intervention the use of sanctions as a tool short of military intervention (application of chapter vi and article 41 – chapter vii of un charter), is also an important part of the discussion at stake. the fact that 250,000 children have died in iraq in the past over a decade, partly because of international sanctions, demonstrates the need for ways of making sanctions more ‘humanitarian.’ yet on the other hand, targeted sanctions, aimed at political leaders, elites, and governments (freezing assets of iraq, ec diplomatic ban on burma) have been difficult to make effective. authoritarian regimes have too much leeway in determining the internal allocation of resources, and thus can largely avoid the impact of sanctions. in addition, the effectiveness of sanctions is often diminished by the behaviour of some states, ignoring the sc resolutions and not respecting the sanctions established by the sc. whilst all the un member states are explicitly obliged under the charter to enforce the sc resolutions (accepted under the chapter vii of the charter), there is no such (legal) obligation on 22 the non-member states. though the sc often calls upon those states to help the un carrying out the sanctions imposed, their refusal to do so, strongly affects the success of the sanctions. at the same time, military capability is employed against a wide range of objectives (including communications), and at times sanctions can entail more suffering than military force, so a continuum from one to another is not always obvious. the international community needs to focus on modalities of non-violent humanitarian intervention, while recognizing that these will not solve emergencies of mass killing such as occurred in east pakistan, cambodia, and rwanda. in contemporary discussions on this issue, six principles are repeatedly enumerated in defence of the use of force80: 1. just cause (supreme humanitarian emergency "shock to the conscience of mankind"); 2. last resort, exhausting peaceful solutions (but not in a drawn-out continuum), never forgetting that the use of force will always produce some harmful effects; 3. seek to end the catastrophe as quickly as possible; 4. non-combat immunity as the sine qua non of proportionality; 5. right intention (while recognizing that beneficial outcomes can be produced from non-humanitarian intentions, e.g., vietnam's intervention in cambodia); 80 see e.g. intervention and military force, report of the pugwash conference working group, avaliable at http://www.pugwash.org/reports 6. reasonable prospect of success (both saving the victims and putting in place structures to safeguard rights, though this will be very difficult to do). international perspectives on intervention equally significant in thinking about humanitarian intervention is the fact that the world could well be moving into a period of renewed strategic rivalry, marked by a renewal of individual state power, a reduced reliance on multilateral institutions, and the return of nuclear weapons in global politics (the latter stimulated by a growing us-china rivalry, nuclear proliferation concerns and us choices about dealing with those concerns, and nuclear weapons being a logical choice for countries wanting to forestall intervention against them). given the difficulty of establishing criteria, and the divergent political, cultural, and ideological views on intervention vs. sovereignty, there is a real need for airing the fundamental disagreements between countries on what is legitimate intervention. many non-western states essentially see interventionism of western states as neo-colonialist. the concept of intervention can be either viewed as positive (giving a helping hand) or negative (interference) by different actors involved or simply by different parts of the world. likewise, the concept of human rights is viewed differently around the world, encompassing both the individual and the collective society. regarding human rights, these include not only individual freedoms but also social goods such as equitable living conditions and access to health care. in recent times, interventions have caused widespread and lasting 23 damage to society (e.g., iraq, afghanistan). human rights abuses are not unknown in western countries, are these grounds for intervention? finally, intervention is a tool of the powerful. weak states cannot intervene, thus they must rely on sovereignty. hence the apprehension in some parts of the world that the “new interventionism” is based mainly on western values of human rights. yet, it must be observed that many international interventions have not been aimed at either the territorial integrity or the political independence of the state in question (e.g., the no-fly zone in iraq, the kosovars in yugoslavia), at what might be called the fundamental elements of sovereignty. rather, such interventions have sought to compel a change in behaviour regarding widespread abuses of human rights (kurds and kosovars). the future of humanitarian intervention the un has been heavily criticized for flawed outcomes that stem from flawed interventions (whether military or non-military). yet the un has to deal with inherently unstable regions, where conflict/post-conflict is not a continuum but a cycle. the organization is often called on to respond with insufficient notice (the post-conflict kosovo situation was dumped on the un with 3 weeks notice); insufficient funds; and inequality in funding (kosovo v. sierra leone). there are also the difficulties of coordination within the un and between un agencies and ngos (there were some 200 in kosovo shortly after the end of conflict) and the manipulation of the international community by warring parties. looking at the case of africa, there is now 40 years of intervention experience on the continent, but little in the way of lessons learned and strategizing on how to do it better. issues of governance are critical to conflict prevention in africa, of people focusing on what their governments can do for them, of holding governments accountable. once conflict does break out, there will be no quick fixes, and so be wary of rushing into a truce that will break down. while conflict prevention is necessarily a long-term strategy, this is where the focus should be: democratization, accountability, transparency, good governance. in support of these goals, some coercion (diplomatic, economic) on the part of the international community will be necessary. in terms of the way forward, there is an often-discussed need to reconcile intervention principles and procedures, while recognizing that intervention issues are drivers of international relations can either facilitate cooperation or sharpen tensions between the major powers, between, and within different regions. regarding how to intervene, five components are thought to be essential: assess the objectives; assess the setting and actors involved; assess options; maintain solidarity among the coalition of the willing; and do no harm and stay the course. problems remain, however, of how to turn substantive principles into procedures for action of providing practical policy guidance on articulating principles and procedures for intervention. the difficulty of transforming principles into practical policy guidelines is obvious, but such an exercise is important in promoting convergence on these issues between the great powers, differing regions, and different global 24 constituencies (security, development, human rights communities). also important is the effort to think about concepts of national interest that incorporate individual rights and the dangers posed by failed states that can help strengthen the case for intervention, where needed. these issues should also be set in a global governance framework, where intervention and human rights protection affect issues managing strategic rivalry, un reform and effectiveness, mal-distribution of resources, and trans-national civil society. conclusion it must be acknowledge that many people see using military force in defence of humanitarian aims as an oxymoron. nonetheless, the enumeration of principles that can guide the use of military force is important not just to shape policy but in the setting of benchmarks for outside evaluation of the use of force by publics, media, ngos, etc., all of whom should hold the intervener accountable. the issue of non-combat immunity is also problematic, as we might have learned bitterly from the yugoslav example, in that hitting civilian targets hard early in the yugoslav campaign might have ended the war earlier, thus reducing overall civilian casualties and adhering to the principle of proportionality. in the end, international norms might evolve so to more widely enable intervention, but they still will not guarantee it. thus, it is all the more important to place the defence of human rights and values as being in both the national interest and a prime responsibility of states. regarding the future, it is likely that the international community will continue to face two practical alternatives: those cases where it can intervene (bosnia, kosovo, and east timor) and those cases where it cannot (chechnya, tibet). we should not downplay the hard task of consensus building and of intervention achieving widespread political legitimacy, which is juxtaposed with the larger problem of losing the post-cold war peace, deteriorating relations between the west and russia and china, and the possibility of state failure on a much larger level. further, it can be noted that the concepts of state sovereignty and individual human rights are evolving, and even more, in a way they have been integrated since their origins in the 12th century. what is somewhat new here is the concept of international security, beginning with league of nations in 1919, and evolving through the 20th century? what china, cuba, north korea, and others defend is a concept of absolute sovereignty, but sovereignty has never been absolute. in western countries, sovereignty is maligned by stressing its negative connotations, but sovereignty is a positive concept when grounded in equality (extending to both territory and the individual). human rights in both international law and the un charter have now become a "major legal net" of rules, procedures, statutes, albeit of a different character than the body of international law surrounding sovereignty. the problem should not be seen as one of intervention per se, but of continued tension between sovereignty and intervention and the fact that intervention only takes place in countries where state structures are eroding: i.e., in developing countries, in precisely those countries that need sovereignty the most. needed here are steps to 25 support the state-building process. intervention should be seen as a rare contingency; the less it has used, the more successful and stable the international community. stable states are important as well because the very decision to intervene is a sovereign decision (in terms of contributing troops and funds to peacekeeping missions). problems arise with the tendency of powerful states to export their values, however worthy, through illegitimate means (e.g., the messianism of the french revolution in exporting democracy). comparisons today would be countries exporting free-market and democratic values through trading policies (globalisation) or through military mean (the recent us led war in iraq); noteworthy ends not always implemented by legitimate means. it is possible that states will still give priority to their many internal problems created by interstate rivalries and the flaws of globalisation. the international community risks being squeezed between a new scylla and charybdis. the charybdis being a universal intervention, unilaterally decided by the leaders of just one or a few superpowers who are convinced that they have found a global mission provided by some global threat. the scylla is resignation to universal chaos in the form of new and even more catastrophic abuses of human rights, fresh humanitarian disasters, or regional wars that risk escalation. only through wise judgment can the path between them be charted. references: intervention, sovereignty and international security. available at: http://www.pugwash.org/reports/rc/rc11htm barry, tom. 2002. us foreign policy: shaping global affairs. available at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0207jingoism.html hoffman, stanley. 2002. the clash of globalizations. foreign affairs 81(4): 104-115 jackson, john h. sovereignty-modern: a new approach to an outdated concept pollack, kenneth m. 2002. next stop baghdad? foreign affairs 81(2): 3247 thürer, daniel. 2000. der kosovo-konflikt im lichte des völkerrechts: von drei – echten und scheinbaren – dilemmata. archiv des völkerrechts, 38(1) valki, lázslo. 2003. consequences of 9/11: emergence of new norms in international law? 2nd pugwash workshop on terrorism, como, italy, 9-12 october 2003 1 45 roberto scaruffi∗∗∗∗ which eu and what for? abstract: the eu enlargement is inside the historical tendency of continental europe to be dominated by a german-russian axis. the “creation of europe” has been the german continuation of ww1 and ww2 in other ways. will the german tradition of state-building by custom unification lead to a simple great germany or instead to some kind of new state-formation, an original form of a new feudal state? will this new space be the pure enlargement of the existing eu or should a greater eu inevitably lose western pieces? no easy institutional solutions exist for what is presently happening, while modernization of the eu states and of the eu as a whole is on the agenda for fully valorizing the chances of the unique market space. eu towards the east and south-east the process the eu formally launched in march 1998, and which makes enlargement possible, affects the following thirteen applicant countries: bulgaria, cyprus, the czech republic, estonia, hungary, latvia, lithuania, malta, poland, romania, the slovak republic, slovenia and turkey, for a total population of 105 million59. from the one side, the eu stretches to the russian/cis60 western and southern borders, while from the other side it inserts directly into the middle east and caucasian area by turkey. there is also an increasing competition with russia and usa-uk in the whole balkans as it is testified from the june 27, 2001 free trade zone treaty (ftz) signed in brussels by albania, bosnia and herzegovina, bulgaria, croatia, yugoslavia, macedonia and romania61. the same as in 1939, when different geopolitical spaces removed (or found removed) intermediary “obstacles”, a situation of direct confrontation is created. in 1939, the reciprocal removal of intermediary obstacles led germany and soviet union towards the military clash in 1941. then, germany hurriedly preceded the soviet attack of a couple of weeks62, but it is legitimate to suppose that, since irrational triggers are in every historic event, even without the defensive war germany was obliged to in 1941, it would have attacked russia the year later. rationality would have suggested cooperation but, when both sides of an interaction are dominated by irrational factors, conflict is inevitable, overall if the external world63 operates and pushes for it. that attitude was anyway a reply from both sides to a real problem: the inevitable attraction and complementarity between the german and the russian spaces. after the long freezing created by the british and us war policies and games, this german and russian question ineluctably reemerges. now the eu, or great germany as some might call it, will find itself directly bordering with the russian field (traditionally subordinate, from ww2, even if conflictually, to the anglophone world) and with the anglophone interests in the middle east. if the russian world would economically integrate with the eu, there would be, from that side, vast access to raw materials and natural resources, and practically unlimited perspectives of colonization and development until the pacific ocean and north, central and south east asia64. this immense space has long borders with rapidly developing china, a further possibility of synergies. around the political axis berlin-moscow, a united europe may be built, if other factors and rivalries do not finally obstruct that. today, the dramatic weakening of a russia obliged to suffer false liberal policies makes it economically colonizable and integrable, if the way of fully respecting and exalting its identity is found. the uk (from 1973) and the french presence inside the eec/ec/eu is the presence of interests historically opposed to a european union centered on germany and developing and consolidating along the axis berlin-moscow. if a german eu really wants to expand from the east side, either germany subordinates the western powers, either it should free itself from them. these historical determinants and rivalries do not seem to have changed despite two wws, and some other confrontations and events, created from the usual anglophone policies of dividing europe for hampering its development and controlling it. if, until 1989, the french and british presence inside “european” agreements and institutions was indispensable for tutoring germany and other eec/ec countries relatively to open obstruction from the western side, the 1990s evolution seems to have made their presence an obstacle to the eu project development, although the us policies are not reassuring. the 1990’s us vain attempt to build a mono-polar world, and now the terror line against all differences (but only when the “enemy” countries are sufficiently small and ∗ phd student by the ucl, louvain-la-neuve, belgium. 59 http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/intro/index_en.htm 60 and ukraine in certain parts. 61 (ranchev 2001). 62 (suvorov 2000). 63 then, the uk and usa. 64 russia has land borders with korea and sea borders with japan (since the ww2 events, russia still occupies some islands which are actually japanese). 46 without atomic weapons), are a continuation of the usual anglophone option of neutralizing all adversaries. this terror line is a senseless65 option of world intimidation perhaps for trying arresting the perception of the us decline, although with the possibility that the senselessness of this course produces its degeneration toward greater catastrophes. inside, these anglophone attempts against the consolidation of a pluralist world is rapidly growing, the advantages of the eu continuing to be its apparent weakness. for instance, it is not (apparently) having a military power and it is letting the us free to dissipate energies for reaffirming their impossible world hegemony: this makes the eu difficult to attack from the west. the usa, not perceiving a eu head, perceive just a potential enemy they do not know where to strike. the financial and monetary maneuvering for hampering and sinking the euro failed. the usa-uk reaffirmed their [ephemeral] military “world” hegemony, while the euro became real and it is now worldly competing with the dollar. fortunately, easy enterprises and targets periodically attract the us-british attention. for instance, iraq attires considerable us and british military energies for striking there some eu countries (italy, france, germany) interests and for intimidating the arab world. but oil resources are abundant also from the russian side, and thus stimulates the continental eu direct access to them, while the usa and uk involve in vain military options. certainly the us and british liberalism is continuing to conserve a systemic superiority over continental european statehood, although german etatism, and eventually a regeneration of the russian one, should not be undervalued. they are not abstract models, by themselves necessary and always superior or inferior to other ones66. even if the german custom-way of state-building is exasperatingly slow and likely less efficient than the revolutionary and military way, not only that it worked for state-building in the case of germany, but it revealed the only possible way towards european unification under german hegemony after germany failed to conquer its vital space in two wws. in a too crowded world, with all vital spaces already occupied, perhaps the german way was the only possible one, although the custom and monetary unification is not yet a united europe under its rule. the usa were more successful in the containment of japan, from this point of view, the point of view of a large state-building effort objectively antagonist to the us and anglophone domination. there, they have been favored from japan being an island. but differently from russia, china refused the caricatural liberalism of the international agencies and now it is successfully developing at accelerated rates and fully exploiting the synergies offered by its geopolitical space. the containment of japan has produced popular china. now, the prc is becoming the strongest world antagonist of the usa. the present eu eastern enlargement is proceeding with exasperating slowness despite the desire of the new states to be rapidly integrated and despite the same incumbents advantage on various markets, starting from the labor force one. perhaps this slowness depends on the perception that the real question is, with the intermediate areas nearly removed, the integration of the russian and para-russian spaces with the eu, and there are diverging orientations on how to deal with the problem. on the other side there is the consciousness that for fully exploiting the vast economic space represented by the eu, modernization reforms for improving efficiency would be indispensable. however, not only simple, but also effective improvements of the labor and other markets are avoided or introduced with excessive shyness in the continental eu states. the discussion on liberalism and etatism in the eu countries is based on idealizations and caricatures both of liberalism and etatism. whatever the reasons, it is a way for not discussing of and for not operating for efficiency for the citizens’ common welfare. stability is evidently preferred to development and to growing welfare. where a development line is followed, as in ireland, wealth grows rapidly. from common market to “super-state”? from a technical point of view, the eu building (“europeanization”67), reduced to “a more or less accentuated process of supra-nationalization at the eu level of the decision-making process which manifests itself in the emergence of new institutions of supranational government, in the redefinition of the competencies of national and/or sub-national government institutions”68, as in reality this already partially happened, it seems to me a poor and inconvenient thing, decidedly worse than a simple monetary and free trade space and not necessarily having a future. in fact, superor supra-state69 governments are generally inefficient as real state entities, differently from well built forms of federalism or, eventually, confederalism. in addition, ruling classes at union level are not magic consequences of the new space, what makes the states’ ruling classes (where there are ruling classes70) inevitably not disposable to cede powers to indeterminate levels and centers of sovereignty. a level of sovereignty is never a pure act of will. not casually, too many unsolved and perhaps unsolvable problems are obstructing the 65 senseless, because too many antagonist poles are growing, without any possibility the usa can contrast all them. 66 generally, discussions are on caricatures of models. as caricatures of statism have traditionally perpetuated the italian state inferiority, a caricature of liberalism has destroyed, in the 1990s and over, the economy of a large part of eastern europe. 67 (graziano, 5-6 april 2002, p. 5). 68 (graziano, 5-6 april 2002, p. 5). 69 in supra there is more of the concept of transcendence, while super is more positional. 70 in italy there are no ruling classes at italian state level, so with visions and projects at the level of the italian state and for it. italy is a eu state where in front of all problems the political representatives of monopolistic capitalism, speculative finance and backward bureaucracies limit to invoke metaphysical “european interventions”. 47 “natural” passage from a common space to a unique state: traditional approaches to reality do not work in front of historical novelties. it is certainly true that a currency, a partially common currency in this case71, should be solidly founded on state-kind entities at the same level of the space it covers, although nothing is so mechanical as it may seem. a currency implies a level of monetary management, consequently of economic policy management in the same way, covering the same space covered by it. this is a level of central or common governance guarantying the common currency. today, in practice, the meetings of the different governments (represented by the prime and other ministers) define this and other common governance frames. the common management of trade and monetary policies is not the only possible solution for a unique trade and monetary space, although the eu historically was born and lived in this way. among the possibilities, there are also possible forms of monetary colonization, which de facto take shape when certain states or similar spaces adopt a foreign currency. in this case, there is, from the side of the adopter, a form of delegation of the monetary policy without possibility of any formal control on it. in this case, although the adopter has not the control on “its” currency, there are no particular constraints on internal economic policies apart from the subjection to the trust of savers and what happens to the adopted currency. it is what balkan areas did in the 1990s, adopting the dm, and later the euro, as accepted currency in contexts of uncertainty and state dissolution. in the eu case, inside certain very general parameters and rules for guarantying the currency stability (and fair competition, but this is conceptually different from the question of the common currency), each state does what it wants. taxation and its repartition are generally free. the states’ complaints for the eu budget constraints are frequently internal propaganda, which would be more usefully replaced by pursuing state efficiency instead of complaints. even without eu constraints the state debt could not infinitely grow, in relative terms, and, even if inflation is the easiest way of social restructuring, it is the most unfair and undemocratic (because it’s outside any formal democratic control) way of realizing it. governments’ claims discharge frequently on the eu, actually on what they have contributed to decide, their ineptitude. from this point of view, the eu has a useful deception function for governments, which decide unpopular but necessary policies at eu level and later present them as ineluctable eu constraints72. so, in practice, the common currency implies only very general parameters to conform to, and agile institutions managing this superand supra-state level. different and well more complicated aspects are [1] the free trade, and [2] the relatively fair-trade and competition. these two aspects are different, as they are different questions relatively to the common currency. if a common currency clearly facilitates mercantile and personal exchanges, and it is generally created for this reason, relatively fair competition is a further aspect that may exist or may not in a frame of common currency. in the eu case, it exists, while it is the common currency that doesn’t exist for the whole eu. however, a monetary space, with consequent general economic policy frame, and even a fair mercantile space, are not necessarily for a state. if one abandoned the mystification, and sometimes useful equivocation, that the commission is a kind of eu government instead of a secretary service at the states’ governments’ orders, it would be evident that this is roughly the present condition of the eu: a non-state guarantying relatively fair trade and competition, and, for part of the associates, a common currency. the expansion to new areas is not certainly obstructed by this condition, as well as it (the eu enlargement) does not imply the transformation of the eu in a state or super/supra-state. the tendency of the superor supra-state is to obey to intrabureaucratic logics of the eu bureaucracy and of those who eventually think to have the possibility to control it or really can or could control it. perhaps to this kind of logics and intentions [some hetero-direction of the eu] obey attempts, otherwise extravagant, as that of imposing the european arrest warrant without any common criminal and criminal procedure law, any justice and interior ministries at eu level, no common guarantees’ and constitutional frame. in the literature on this type of questions [superor supra-state], one prefers to call the present eu condition as scarce institutionalization73. it is a frame in reality well defined but perceived as inefficient or unsatisfying and with environmental pressures towards something implying devolution of power from states to superior entities. a well centralized state with wide federalism, alias with large delegation to the different local levels of all the masses of unessential questions for a well managed central state, is certainly more efficient than a badly assorted kaleidoscope of states. however things are not so easy and there is no magic model, neither any magic solution. unifying eu markets with subsides and without adequate surface communications? already in the 1987 single european act (sea), which fostered the integration process of the european community (ec), there were illusions which unfortunately did not remain simple empty claims, specifically the economic and social cohesion principle. for (faíña 2001): “the objective of strengthening economic and social cohesion [esc] implies to promote the overall harmonious development of the eu by reducing regional dispari 71 part of the eu remains outside the monetary space. 72 in post-ww2 italy, this kind of practices (the foreign constraint) was adopted from institutional levels already when italy was still occupied from the opposing powers between 1943 and 1945. the foreign constraints permitted to avoid that economically incompatible policies expressed by catholic and stalinist common anti-capitalist visions could express all their devastating pulses and lead to the state’s collapse. 73 (graziano, 5-6 april 2002, p. 7). 48 ties and, in particular, the backwardness of least-favored regions. the erdf74 and the other structural funds in a coordination framework are intended to help redress the main regional imbalances in the eu by participating in the development and structural adjustment of less developed regions and in the conversion of declining industrial regions and other areas with structural and/or employment problems.”75 this general orientation, here referred by the words of the quoted authors well synthesized this ec/eu orientation, is certainly very sounding. its intentions are apparently noble. actually, good intentions are not necessarily, in this case not at all for me, the wished results. an equalizing frame is necessarily opposite to a development frame. development is disequilibrium. that the extension of a market union produces adjustments among countries, according to the interactions between the competitiveness of incumbents and newcomers, is not an unexpected event. for instance, the 1986 ec enlargement saw the entry of spain, portugal and other countries, produce market share losses overall for france and the uk, while italy did not and germany only in lesser degree76. the enlargement from the german, austrian and italian side will inevitably produce greater shocks for the market shares of the states from this side. common advantages, even for the temporarily apparent “losers”, are the other face of market shares restructuring from eu enlargement. “development” policies, more precisely “equalizing” policies, of the eu, actually subsidies not infrequently intercepted by frauds, are de facto revenue distribution. if, from the one side, market and, later, currency unification has inevitably, apart from diffusive effects, some spontaneous equalizing effect, from the other side “investments” in subsides instead of in great communication works and other infrastructures is a waste against development, privileging illusory forms of equalitarianism against development. certainly, infrastructures favoring developments may be also at micro level, from the water management to services for enterprises and entrepreneurship, although “investments” from a distant entity are without possibility of real controls on their destination. however, a macro political and economic policy entity could more usefully manage great works for unifying markets and creating conditions for fair competition. competition creates development benefiting everybody77, while subsidies to underdevelopment are surely popular for their profiteers, but ineffective and eventually damaging wastes. this kind of logic is more easily observable inside single states, where massive subsidies as in south italy have not created development but depressed it both in the north and in the south78. in case of sudden creation of common markets or their enlargement, there are spontaneous adjustment that may be easily presented as an effect of the ec subsidies policies although it is not so. development is generally triggered suddenly, eventually since interaction with the environments, following some mysterious logic more understandable from ex-post historical reconstructions than by the illusion one could find some inexistent sure and ineluctable cause. however, apart from specific situations of colonization, no external intervention triggers development where self-propelling forces are not already acting. instead, subsidies policies may more probably have the consequence of further depressing entrepreneurial propensities. if pauperism can stimulate reactions and where an adequate infra-structural frame is created, revenue subsidies favor adaptations to underdevelopment. in italy for instance, the less developed area myth is, after decades of massive but useless state interventions, a job in the inefficient and corrupted civil service. this, despite in the southerner areas there is no absence of entrepreneurial skills: they are canalized towards intercepting public subsides. people follow adaptive logics, what in these cases means adaptation to the subsidies’ and statist logics, which inevitably kill entrepreneurship where inefficiency and clientelism already predominate. areas where development logics already triggered can well profit from eu subsidies, although they are perhaps useless there in terms of development. a reliable quantitative testing of the influx of the same subsidies seems very improbable because it would be necessary to discriminate between their positive or negative influence and what would have verified without them since simple effects of market and monetary integration. neither, subsidies polices may be justified by asymmetric advantages deriving from integration, for instance favoring larger and stronger countries, because this results need not to be verified79. different aspect is the negotiation of dilations of full market competition for backward productive sectors should be temporarily preserved for social reasons and for having time for finding adjustments to market rules. the discourses and practices on esc are just covers for eu assistance policies temporarily surrogating single states ones, while care for the creation of development preconditions seems absent, apart from custom unification certainly. it is the case of development-self-generating great infrastructures, as high-speed inter-state motorways and railroads, which seem outside the eu intervention. it would have been a greater incentive to selfpropelling development of spanish, greek, south-italian area their easiness of access even from abroad or local subsides? on the contrary, it seems that for what concerns motorways and railroads, without which also some sea and other communications are impossible or uneconomical, single states’ egoisms, obstructions or simply ineptitude are continuing to dominate. with difficulty of access, markets are less efficient. for instance, certain greek, 74 european regional development fund. 75 (faíña 2001, p. 2). 76 (casella, november 1995). 77 (ranchev 2001). 78 very roughly: fiscal pressure has depressed northerner entrepreneurship, while subsides have favoured southerner fatalism. 79 (casella, november 1995) 49 spanish or south-italian areas of even millions of people use the euro but they remain in another world as the difficulty to physically reach them still exists. these non-policies are actually policy choices defining areas of underor obstructed and dependent development. for instance, for italy as a whole, some kind of choice of this type has been somewhere made, as it is evident from its 1990s’ and following years’ politico-institutional destabilization and its economic policy reflexes. no surface communication works had been realized in the 1990s italy, despite a condition of growing insufficiency and decaying of the existing ones, and even now, in 2002, they have not yet restarted. despite different projects in the field from the very early 1990s, the political and managerial personnel could have realized them if they wouldn’t have been judicially removed, with unanimous international approval, from their positions. in the communications field, the european commission seems to limit its efforts to listing state and interstate projects, which will be realized according single states conveniences, decisions and times.80 actually, prodi, sent to preside the european commission for avoiding his interfering with italian politics after the same scalfarolefts block removed him from office, was guarantor in italy of the internal and international interests and thus wanted to block of infrastructure works and a line of italy’s further soft and silent decreasing81. prodi had been dc82-backward-left-designed president, from 1982 to 1989, of the clientelist iri83. he became again iri president from 1993 to 1994 (in a key moment for some relevant privatizations), thanks to the judicial liquidation of the then iri president nobili, a skilful manager coming from the private sector arrested without any evidence by the usual partisan prosecutors and magistrates of milan and for iri “crimes” of the 1982-1989 prodi presidency.84 prodi was not perhaps the right commission president if the eu had wanted to follow a line of european unification from the point of view of rapid transports, outside the “egoism” of single states and of other interests. he was on the contrary perfect for not-stimulating the eu states over this key point of fair market competition and efficiency: transports. in practice, the different geopolitical visions and egoism of the different eu powers condition the full deployment and access to development of all the eu areas, privileging some communication corridors and sabotaging other ones85. irreconcilable rivalries among states dominate also other levels. in foreign and military policies, rivalries emerge both at strategic level and whenever there are crisis affecting a single eu country. at strategic level, while claiming future intentions of currency integration, the uk is aligned with the us military course for imposing its world hegemony. it is a line objectively opposed to the construction of a eu power, whomsoever concretely leads this power. for what concerns occasional conflicts, for instance, in occasion of the july 2002 affair of the leila island, france and portugal immediately obeyed to their anti-spanish conditioned reflex, deriving from their competing interests in africa, and de facto immediately aligned with morocco against spain. it was the usual logic of geopolitical competition openly re-proposed, while perhaps a cooperative attitude of states inside a common space would have suggested a different way of dealing with the conflict opened by morocco on the residual presence of the old spanish colonialism in its area. at least for what concerns the main eu states, the moment of conflict seems to dominate over the one of real co-operation. there are even eu states using now slanders on their magistrates for political operations against other eu states86. eu as state building actually, in all state or supra-state formations, not only in contemporary ones87, efficiency is achieved if there is the right trade off, a perfect balance, between the dimensions of the state entity and the spectrum of governance matters it can efficiently centralize. increasing distance, perfect vision [manageability/governance] is directly proportional to the dimensions of the watched objects. in other words, each one of the state levels’88 centralization is efficient if that state level realizes perfect penetration89 and operativeness. if a governance level invades superior and inferior levels relatively to these it can efficiently manage, this inevitably negatively affects 80 (ec-dget 2001). 81 for what concerns italy even the existent works of communication with europe are obstructed for what concerns commercial transports. it is the case of the mont blanc gallery, for instance. it meets continuous obstructions to the commercial traffic from the french side. perhaps, for some eu power, italy would be just a tourist space. 82 christian democracy. 83 the holding of relevant part of the state economy. 84 http://scaruffi.homestead.com 85 as reality wanted to add mockery to damage, all the italian statesmen and entrepreneurs had supported the 1990 justicialist subversion and have obstructed also directly communication and transportation works and, perhaps not casually, were therefore regularly awarded by the french with the légion d’honneur or laurea honoris causa from francophone universities. while the political personnel pursued and pursues modernisation it is slandered and obstructed in all possible ways. 86 see the case of the magistrate baltasar garzón and others used not only for the judicial intimidation of the spanish socialists, of spanish independentism and of some extra-eu states, but also for the intimidation of the italian politics in coordination with the italian monopolistic and parasitic interests. 87 (alesina, december 2001). 88 i prefer not to say “national level” since existing equivoques in the use of “national” and “national state”. what is called “national state” or “nation-state” is actually multi-national if one follows the etymology of the world nation, which is an ethnic concept more than a vaguely settling/spatial and legal one. 89 (hobson 1997). 50 results. a region (with only regional powers, naturally) cannot efficiently build roads at state level. a state cannot efficiently manage local details. when and where accountabilities are not clearly defined and attributable90, efficiency is impossible. accountabilities and their attribution certainly imply levels of management/governance (formal-democratic or administrative) with the power to reward and to penalize behaviors and results. for instance, foreign and military policies at state level cannot be efficiently managed by local governments, while central governments cannot efficiently manage the details of local life. in a custom union of states, where all or only a part of them have veto power, everything complicates further. in the eu, there are fully self-sufficient states but with the partial91 devolutions of the powers necessary for realizing common markets and currency. trade union foreign and military policies, simply combing with the self-sufficient ones at state level, create a union based on feudal-kind relations. on the other side, the creation of a union with the characteristics of a self-sufficient central state is improbable without some common ethnic identity as a common language diffused at this state level. the common currency (not differently from markets’ unification) seems to me only sufficient to the creation of a mercantile identity and nothing more. individuals and local entities perceive themselves simply as inside a unique monetary and market space, as in fact it is. foreign and military policies of a state-union or of an empire92, not differently from a central level of judiciary and police, could not be founded on the negotiation with states with veto power, if these central functions were really functions of a modern central state. everything is different if they were functions of the coordinating center of a feudal-kind state formation. i do not want to say that a modern feudal state would necessarily be less efficient than a modern centralized or federal-centralized state. evaluations and comparisons should be made with concretely well-defined and stabilized state entities. the present eu is the evolution of a group of state towards something else. it is even possible that finally everything limits to the monetary and market aspects, and/or that an aggregation different from the pure extension of the original eec/ec is defined. for instance, a german central and central-east europe seems more possible than a german france or a french germany. it seems equally improbable a germanized russia or a russified germany. it is certainly easier to manage one bilingual-space or a couple of bilingual spaces than a multilingual union. english and american as the new latin of the eu may not reveal so easy when one passes from a language nowadays generally universally known and used in an important part of the intellectual world, to the first or second language of a state building effort driven by germany, in part also by france, and with russia-cis objectively gravitating (as colonized or as colonizer, or both) towards central europe and towards the vast south of the same russia-cis. it is probably impossible to know the same destiny of english and american as new latin with the usa running towards a spanish language prevalence, chinese people and language having already invaded the world and on the way of rapidly becoming the most diffused and used language even on the internet, and so on for the other linguistic and cultural poles of the world. over language and common discourses (religions, traditions, behaviors, sense of belonging, selfperceptions), state entities are built more solidly than over common markets and currencies. common markets and currencies can be rapidly given up, as different cases of state dissolution have shown. common discourses (identity, a marked and permanent sense of belonging) are even stronger than common languages. common discourses have permanencies through centuries and centuries even when formally overcome and forgotten, as, for instance, recent and less recent balkan evolutions show. stable coexistence, eventually inside the same state formation, of different common discourse entities is possible only if forms of non-conflictual co-operation are realized. that further forms of internationalizations have de facto been created, in a kind of counterbalancing, the affirmation of orderly inferior93 identities, so stronger nationalisms and micro-nationalisms, may not be simply resolved in the improbable affirmation on the [supposed] existence of a “post-sovereign order”94. if, generally imaginary “nations”, with relative voluntarist nationalism at the state level, have been progressively replaced by stronger nationalisms along communitarianethnic lines, stronger sovereignty levels have evidently emerged. it is not even sufficient to specify, in an attempt of some more realistic approximation, that this “postsovereignty does not mean the end of sovereignty, but rather the end of its traditional meaning as a state monopoly.” sovereignty has always existed at different levels combined among them. perfect sovereignty existed and exists nowhere. in the real world, there are instead relations of domination, subordination and interdependence. forms of restructuring of traditional sovereignty levels were verified the moment the us-uk world cops (with soviet sub-cop) had been weakened by the collapse of the apparently us-soviet world order. energies before repressed had finally restarted to operate relatively freely. it is not really a question of supposed “globalization”. economic historians had evidenced that there is a media overvaluation of the current trends. for instance, the economic and trade revolution of the late 19th century did not certainly produce less globalization than the claimed ‘globalization’ of the late 20th century and following years. the 19th century transports and communications revolution had then a great impact on the international capital, labor and commodities 90 for instance, where nobody is responsible of anything, in a limit case not infrequent in part of continental europe. 91 partial because single states conserve the real power to intervene (with more power than an elected entity as the european parliament) on the eu institutions to which they have formally devolved some powers. the moment of the permanent negotiation de facto prevails over that of the devolution of powers. 92 (böröcz 2001). 93 in the sense of more basic, nearer to micro-communitarian levels. 94 (keating 2002). 51 markets. finally, the late 19th century capital flows pushed toward divergence instead of convergence: capitals moved to the richest countries.95 that is what was actually verified in concrete worlds with concrete power relations. is the present “globalization” something else than the anglophone vain attempts to “globalize” the world to the anglophone powers’ domination? the claims on “globalization” and its supposed needs had actually covered the caricatured liberalism which has actually further collapsed in the large majority of eastern european economies. despite the uspromoted claims on globalization, the usa seem to practically be, if one judges concrete actions, the real antiglobalizing power while pursuing an adventurist line of impossible military world supremacy. it is the “globalization” of the us world military power while economic protectionism is well preserved when it is judged that us interests are threatened. some open questions real steps forward in spatial integration could be well more useful than formal institutions, which today would only be forms of war regulations among the different eu powers wanting to impose or preserve their “national” hegemony over the eu. for what concerns the institutions already existing, is a european parliament elected on state basis the best solution for representing a confederation of local interests (which are more at regional than at state level) and for overcoming the single states’ threats? for understanding the background forces pushing and obstructing the eu extension, as well as for understanding the other international trends, it would be necessary to individuate and analyze how the different material forces interact and intertwine: for instance, the different financial, industrial and financial-industrial96 interests. references alesina, a., i. angeloni, and f. etro, the political economy of international unions, nber working paper no.w8645, december 2001. bayoumi t. and b. eichengreen, is there a conflict between ec enlargement and european monetary unification?, nber working paper no.w3950, january 1992. bornschier, v., hegemonic decline, west european unification and the future structure of the core, journal of world-systems research, vol. 1 (5), 1995. http://csf.colorado.edu/jwsr/archive/vol1/v1_n5.htm bornschier, v., european processes and the state of the european union, paper distributed at the occasion of volker bornschier's talk opening the sessions on "european processes, boundaries & institutions." third european sociological association conference on "20th century europe: inclusions/exclusions", university of essex (uk) 27-30 august 1997. http://www.suz.unizh.ch/bornschier/pdfs/european_processes.pdf böröcz, j., and m. kovács [edited by], empire’s new clothes. unveiling eu enlargement, central europe review ltd., uk, 2001. http://cermember.mirhouse.com http://www.mirhouse.com/ce-review/empire.pdf http://www.ce-review.org casella a., large countries, small countries, and the enlargement of trade blocs, nber working paper no.w5365, november 1995. eu, enlargement, http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/index.htm http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/pas/twinning european commission, enlargement directorate general, the enlargement process and the three pre-accession instruments: phare, ispa, sapard, february 2002. european commission, the directorate-general for energy and transport, european transport policy for 2010: time to decide, ec, dget, white paper, 2001. http://europa.eu.int/comm/energy_transport/en/lb_en.html european commission, enlargement and agriculture: successfully integrating the new member states into the cap. issues paper, brussels, 30.1.2002. european commission, making a success of enlargement. strategy paper and report of the european commission on the progress towards accession by each of the candidate countries, brussels, 13.11.2001 faíña, j. a., and j. l. rodríguez, the regional policy of the european union and the enlargement process to central and eastern countries, university of exeter, department of economics, discussion paper in economics, 01/07, exeter, uk, 2001. http://web.uvic.ca/ecsac/toronto/papers/on/line/pdf/4a-jfaina-jrodriguez.pdf graziano p., europeanization or globalization? a framework for empirical research, paper prepared for the cost a15 research network, second conference – welfare reforms for the 21st century, oslo, 5-6 april 2002. 95 (o’rourke 1999) 96 where there are, as in germany, institutional and operational frames as the mixed-bank one. http://csf.colorado.edu/jwsr/archive/vol1/v1_n5.htm http://www.suz.unizh.ch/bornschier/pdfs/european_processes.pdf http://cermember.mirhouse.com/ http://www.mirhouse.com/ce-review/empire.pdf http://www.ce-review.org/ http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/index.htm http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/pas/twinning http://europa.eu.int/comm/energy_transport/en/lb_en.html http://web.uvic.ca/ecsac/toronto/papers/on/line/pdf/4a-jfaina-jrodriguez.pdf 52 http://www.isaf.no/nova/nyheter/kalender/costa15/papers/graziano.pdf hobson, j. m., the wealth of states. a comparative sociology of international economic and political change, cambridge university press, 1997. keating, m., plurinational democracy in a post-sovereign order, queen's papers on europeanization, no. 1/2002, belfast, uk, 2002. http://www.qub.ac.uk/ies/onlinepapers/poe1-02.pdf o’rourke, k. h., and j. g. williamson, globalization and history. the evolution of a nineteenth-century atlantic economy, the mit press, 1999. ranchev, g., free trade zone in southeast europe? the harmonization of tax and customs legislation, research paper, center for policy studies budapest, international policy fellowships 2001, budapest, hungary, 2001. suvorov, viktor, stalin, hitler. la rivoluzione bolscevica mondiale, spirali, milan, italy, 2000. http://www.isaf.no/nova/nyheter/kalender/costa15/papers/graziano.pdf http://www.qub.ac.uk/ies/onlinepapers/poe1-02.pdf claudiu craciun( political science and the european construction ö özden u. akbas( potential challenges of european enlargement to the european structure 1. introduction: background of the enlargement process 2. institutional challenges 3. economic problems 4. external security 5. justice and home affairs 6. europe's responses to challenges of enlargement; what has been done so far? 7. conclusion references malte brosig* three roads to europe or the social construction of european affairs ”seizing the middle ground” social learning argumentative action rhetorical action three roads, one direction? a critical analysis conclusion references raúl josé feliciano-ortiz* re-defining sovereignty: how the eu has expanded the possibilities for puerto rico* sovereignty: past and present present progressive: the european re-definition of the concept the lack of puerto rican sovereignty: past and present future: applying this new concept to a scared colony so in conclusion... references qerim qerimi( the european union’s southeast enlargement: prospects and challenges introduction the enlargement process challenges towards south eastern enlargement the eu role and contribution in south eastern europe inter-ethnic reconciliation as a means for european integration the advantages of european enlargement conclusion references salomeea romanescu( roma: a challenge and opportunity for a new eu paradigm of enlargement introduction the question raising awareness on the roma issue promotion of minority rights conclusions references roberto scaruffi( which eu and what for? eu towards the east and south-east from common market to “super-state”? unifying eu markets with subsides and without adequate surface communications? eu as state building some open questions references untitled jennifer di paolo violence against native american women in the united states 174 violence against native american women in the united states jennifer di paolo, university of toronto, canada abstract n response to the topic of global justice and human rights: country case studies, i will discuss the origin and continuation of violence against native american women in the united states. in a report named maze of injustice: the failure to protect indigenous women from violence by amnesty international, the organization deemed the current status of violence against indigenous women one of the most pervasive yet hidden human rights abuses. the u.s department of justice has found that native american and native alaskan women are 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted1. during an international expert group meeting discussing combatting violence against indigenous women and girls, the united nations department of economic and social affairs declared it a human rights issue of epidemic proportions. one in three native american women are raped and three in five are physically assaulted. in reference to interracial violence, four out of five native american victims of sexual assault reported that the perpetrator was white2. unfortunately due to the shame and stigma surrounding topics such as sexual assault and rape it is estimated that in reality these numbers are far higher. scholars and historians of pre-colonial native societies have found that during this period women held prominent positions and violence against women was rare. with colonization came a radical change to the role of women in native society. gender based violence and the exclusion of women in important positions was a powerful tool used by british settlers to dismantle the structures of native society and ultimately conquer it3. presently, due to the inadequate legal power given to indian nations the crisis is not being dealt with efficiently. for example, indian nations are unable to prosecute non-indian offenders4. in my discussion of violence against native women in the united states i will begin by analyzing its colonial origins. next i will discuss why this violence persists today with reference to laws and judicial processes. finally, i will discuss what must be done to end these human rights abuses. 1 amnesty international. ma ze of injustice: the f a ilure to p rotect indigenous women from violence in the usa (24 april 2007) http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/amr51/035/2007/en/ce2336a3-d3ad-11dd-a3292f46302a8cc6/amr510352007en.html (accessed december 20 2012) 2 henry, terry. addressing violence aga inst na tive america n women a nd girls a s a huma n rights issue. united nations department of economic and social affairs. combatting violence against indigenous women and girls: article 22 of the united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous people (new york, january 2012) http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/egm12_henry.pdf (accessed december 20 2012) 3 amnesty international. ma ze of injustice: the f a ilure to p rotect indigenous women from violence in the usa 4 henry, terry. addressing violence aga inst na tive america n women a nd girls a s a huma n rights issue i politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 175 n a report named maze of injustice: the failure to protect indigenous women from violence by amnesty international, the organization deemed the current status of violence against native women one of the most pervasive yet hidden human rights abuses of our time. the united states department of justice has found that native american and native alaskan women are 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaultedi. during an international expert group meeting discussing combatting violence against indigenous women and girls, the united nations department of economic and social affairs declared it a human rights issue of epidemic proportions. one in three native american women are raped and three in five are physically assaulted. in reference to interracial violence, four out of five native american victims of sexual assault reported that the perpetrator was whiteii. unfortunately due to the shame and stigma surrounding topics such as sexual assault and rape it is estimated that in reality these numbers are far higher. scholars and historians of pre-colonial native societies have found that during this period women held prominent positions and violence against women was rare. with colonization came a radical change to the role of women in native society. a gender based hierarchy, violence, and an attack on the important role of native motherhood were powerful tools used by british settlers to dismantle the structures of native society and ultimately conquer itiii. presently, due to the diminution of native sovereignty and the subsequent inadequate legal power given to indian nations the crisis is not being dealt with efficiently. despite these limitations, the recent developments in laws pertaining to native women and various organizations and initiatives created by female native activists have made progress for the safety of native women. in this discussion of violence against native women in the united states we will begin by analyzing women’s role in traditional native society. then we will investigate the colonial origins of violence against native women. next we will discuss why this violence persists today with reference to laws and judicial processes. finally, we will discuss what female native activists are doing to combat the problem and the most efficient solutions to these issues. we must begin our analysis of violence against native women by addressing the question of what role native women had in traditional society. although the position of women in native society differed from tribe to tribe there are many common characteristics among them. overall, women held a complementary role to men instead of a secondary oneiv. native society was built on beliefs and practices that made up an integral part of their culture such as the belief of respect and safety, which protected all native people, including women, from violence. the relationship between men and women within native families was built on these beliefs of safety and respect and mothers played an important role within the family, culture, society, and economyv. native mothers were a part of the economic system because they had control over the home, food production, trade, and the distribution of resourcesvi. although there was a division of labour between men and women this division was not used to oppress women i jennifer di paolo violence against native american women in the united states 176 because the labour of both genders was seen as equally valuablevii. some native societies such as the iroquois were matrilineal and in these societies mothers held very powerful positions such as acting as clan mothers. some other rights that native women enjoyed were the right to separate from their husband and keep their property and owning most or all of the land including the house and animalsviiiix. women were political, military, and spiritual leadersx. despite the absence of an over arching patriarchal system like that of europe, gendered violence did happen within native society. however, according to oral and written records these occurrences were very rare and the perpetrators often faced severe and public punishment, displaying how much respect and safety was built into native society xi. it is difficult to understand how gendered violence towards native women went from a rarity to something that occurs at a rate higher than any other group of women in america. the root of violence against native women can be traced back to the conquest of america. during conquest european colonists instilled a gendered hierarchy within native society, employed violence, and attacked native motherhood. europeans did not understand the powerful role of women in native society because european society was far more patriarchalxii. for the europeans, dismantling the egalitarian role of women in native society was a way of dismantling native social structures. during conquest natives were coerced into abolishing their system of governance including the system of traditional laws and beliefs that kept native women safe. europeans believed that the status of women in native society was uncivilized and that instituting a gendered hierarchy was a part of the process of civilizationxiii. one way in which this hierarchy was achieved was through the refusal of european colonists in negotiating with native women. for example, despite the number of female chiefs and councilors, men signed all of the historic treaties, which greatly undermined the role of women in political leadershipxiv. christian missionaries also pushed for the performance of their view of correct gender rolesxv. these roles were different from the spiritual views that natives held and were used to oppress native women. furthermore, christianity suppressed sexual freedom in sexually liberal native societies such as the cherokeexvi. sexual violence was another tool of conquest, which was displayed in the records of russian soldiers in alaska employing sexual violence towards native women. in response to this, native alaskan men attempted to defend native women from this violence displaying their devotion to maintaining the safety and respect of women in their communityxvii. in contrast to the use of sexual assault as a tool of war, it was rare that natives used sexual violence towards white prisonersxviii. another violent method used by colonists was clearing the land, which was usually done through relocating entire communities to an area more accommodating for the colonists. removal and relocation led to the loss of customary land, the lifestyles that politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 177 natives had built on that land, economic downturn, and disparityxix. laws created by the united states government changed individual rights pertaining to property, which created drastic changes within matrilineal societies. not only did women lose their control over resources, they also lost control over domestic and voting rightsxx. despite these atrocities, the implementation of a gender hierarchy and the use of violence during conquest were not as vicious and hurtful as the colonial attack on native motherhood. due to the important role that mothers played in native society as economic decision makers, clan mothers, and property owners, it is no surprise that the colonists attacked native motherhood during colonization. the two ways in which the colonists did this was through residential schooling and forced sterilization. in the boarding school era of 1880-1950, residential schooling would become one of the strongest forms of forced assimilation. in this era native children as young as five years old were taken from their homes and families to attend residential schools until age 18xxi. the first boarding school was named the carlisle indian school and was created by captain richard henry pratt in 1879. initially this school had no support from the american government but in 1891 after pratt had lobbied the government extensively, funding and support was given to open more boarding schools. the separation of natives from their homes was thought to be vital to the assimilation process. not surprisingly, native parents desperately attempted to resist sending their children to boarding schools but congress allowed the commissioner of indian affairs to make rules ensuring attendance. there were also harsh consequences for parents who did not allow their children to attend these schools. for example, native parents underwent coercion such as the rationing of food for their tribes, which ensured that parents would have to choose between starving their child or sending them to boarding school with the hopes that they would be fed well. despite this hope, the living conditions in residential schools were no better than in poverty stricken reserves. boarding schools were unsanitary, children had to perform labour intensive work, and they provided poor nutrition. the combination of these living conditions bred disease and illness. the conditions of the residential schools were cruel and inhumane and native children were subjected to emotional, physical, spiritual, and sexual violence. at residential schools native children were not allowed to practice their language or culture and instead were taught about european history, culture, and the english language. many native children lost their spirituality in the forced conversion to christianityxxii. this was important for native women because although native spirituality was egalitarian, christianity is patriarchal. upon returning home, natives felt alienated because they could not understand the language or culture and because they had been taught that native culture was inferior to american culture. many natives that had grown up in residential schools were unable to become adequate parents in terms of passing down their culture, language, spirituality, or lifestyle to their children. residential jennifer di paolo violence against native american women in the united states 178 schooling dismantled the empowered traditional position of motherhood in native society in three ways. first, by taking children away from the guidance of their mothers to force them into residential schooling where they lost their language and culture. second, by ensuring that women that grew up in residential schools would be unable to properly mother their children because of emotional and psychological issues. the effect that boarding schools had on the mental health of natives led to mental health conditions and a reliance on alcohol. these two issues combined with a lack of the ability to be good parents led to the removal of native children from their homes to be placed in foster care or adoption. this continued the cycle of removing native children from their mothers and is the third way that the role of the mother in native society had been forever changedxxiii. the next way in which the colonists attacked native motherhood was through forced sterilization. although women of many minority groups in america underwent forced sterilization in the 1970s, there was something unique about native women in that they were much more dependent on the federal government. this dependence was specifically in relation to the indian health service, the department of health, education, and welfare, and the bureau of indian affairsxxiv. between 1973 and 1976, indian health service clinics sterilized 3,406 native women. it is difficult to determine if native women were thoroughly informed of the procedure and truly consented to it. there was not a standard consent form used for every patient and most of the forms used for native patients did not abide by government regulations of informed consent. furthermore, it is unknown if adequate counseling was provided before sterilization procedures. some native tribes such as the navajo provided counselors but areas such as south dakota, montana, and oklahoma did not have counselors and only the doctor was present during the sterilization procedure. various law suits have been filed in reference to these flawed sterilization procedures. michael zavalla is a lawyer that represented three native women from montana in a class action lawsuit against the department of health, education, and welfare. this litigation was based on the evidence that these women were sterilized without consent or being fully informed of the operation. it was filed against hospital doctors who forced native women into sterilization by suggesting that if they did not undergo the process they would lose access to welfare benefits, that the surgery was unavoidable, or worse, that it could be reversed if needed. the case did not go to trial but it was settled through compensation on the agreement that the plaintiffs’ identity and the details of the case would remain undisclosed. after learning of this case and others, a judge from the northern cheyenne reservation named marie sanchez decided to conduct her own inquiry into the cases of sterilization within her tribe. the results she obtained were unsettling. between 1973 and 1976, two girls under 15 years of age were sterilized under the false pretense that they were getting their appendices removed. another woman politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 179 underwent a hysterectomy after being convinced by her physician that the migraines she was suffering from would be cured by it. it was discovered at a later time that the source of her problem was actually a brain tumour. forced sterilization undermined the ability of native women to reproduce, disabling them from creating the next generation to maintain their beliefs, culture, and traditionsxxv. sterilization also has destructive effects on the survival of an entire tribexxvi. women that were misinformed or coerced into sterilization were denied basic reproductive rights and more importantly, control over their own body. for these reasons, sterilization was a direct attack on the traditionally powerful role of native motherhood. next we will investigate the legal relationship between natives and the federal government. through a gradual process of diminishing native selfgovernment and the sovereignty of native jurisdiction, native women have been separated from any other group of american women and it has become increasingly difficult for native tribes to protect themxxvii. this legal relationship has made native women the most oppressed group of women in america and the least protected legally. in our investigation of the legal relationship between native tribes and the federal government we will analyze the major crimes act of 1885, public law 280 of 1953, the indian civil rights act of 1968, and the oliphant v. suquamish case. the major crimes act of 1885 allowed the american government to assume complete jurisdiction over severe crimes committed by native americans in native countryxxviii. the crimes deemed severe were murder, kidnapping, assault, and sexual abusexxix. this act has restricted the ability of native tribes to exercise jurisdiction within their own reserves thus threatening their self-governance and sovereigntyxxx. the basic premise for federal control over native jurisdiction rests upon the dependence of native tribes on the american government despite the reality that many native tribes posses their own government, police force, and judicial system. federal response to native crime is slow and inadequate and native prosecution would be much more efficient. native police and judicial systems are superior in investigating and prosecuting crimes that occur within their tribes because of their proximity to the crimes and their knowledge of the nature of native crimexxxi. the major crimes act has facilitated violence against native women because it has allowed the american government to assume control over jurisdiction of crimes that disproportionately affect womenxxxii. the inefficiency of the federal government in their response and investigation of major crimes committed in native country has become an inefficiency related to crimes against women. public law 280 was enacted in 1953 and altered the laws of the major crimes act in some states. this law shifted the control of the federal government over native jurisdiction to the state governments within california, minnesota, nebraska, oregon, washington and alaska in 1958. the rest of the states were given the option to adopt public law 280 if and when so chosexxxiii. the shift from federal to state government occurred jennifer di paolo violence against native american women in the united states 180 with no contribution or consent from the native tribes and native americans rightly saw it as another threat to their self-governancexxxiv. a major reason public law 280 was passed was to decrease federal spendingxxxv. however, in this process the federal government did not supply money to state governments to fund law enforcement activities leading to even more deficiency in these areas. moreover, the bureau of indian affairs decreased funding to native authorities because of the transfer from federal to state governmentxxxvi. native women were negatively affected once again because of the decrease in funding for dealing with crimes that fall under the major crimes act and public law 280. the indian civil rights act of 1968 allowed native tribal government jurisdiction over some criminal procedures and the protection of other basic rights including due process of law. supposedly, it was created to protect natives from civil rights abuses inflicted upon them by their tribesxxxvii. however, many native tribes did not see the icra as a bill of rights designed to protect natives but as another attack on their sovereigntyxxxviii. certain policies within the indian civil rights act had once again restricted their ability to respond to crime. tribal courts were restricted from imposing a penalty of more than one year and a five thousand dollar fine for any one offence. these offences could include murder or rape, two crimes that effect native women at an alarming ratexxxix. this undermined the ability of tribal courts in responding adequately to serious crimes and in protecting native women from these crimes. the next case that threatened the protection of native women was the oliphant v. suquamish indian tribe decision. the plaintiffs of this case were arrested by tribal police on the suquamish reserve. both plaintiffs wanted to be tried under habeas corpus in federal courts but they were denied this request and their case went to the supreme courtxl. the ruling that came out of this case was that native tribes are unable to prosecute non-natives. the reasons given for this ruling were that the reserve was given to the suquamish tribe by the federal government, that the state of washington had funded the creation of their schools, roads, and other public property, and that there were far more non-natives in this area than natives. this ruling has had disastrous effects on the safety of natives because both the federal and state governments have proven to be inefficient in prosecuting crimes pertaining to natives. this is due to the lack of resources and desire to respond efficiently and promptly to native crimexli. this ruling has left native women susceptible to danger imposed on them by non-natives, which is startling due to the high percentage of violence imposed on native women by non-native perpetrators. for example, four out of five native victims of sexual violence claim that the assaulter was whitexlii. this decision structurally prevents protection for native women against the interracial violence they endure. the legal initiatives that we have explored so far have led to a serious deficiency in protecting native women against violence. the major crimes act restricted tribal jurisdiction over severe politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 181 crimes that disproportionately affect women, thus separating native women from other american women. public law 280 transferred this power from the federal government to the state government in certain states without providing sufficient funding leaving native women even more unprotected. the indian civil rights act gave natives a bill of rights but limited tribal governments from employing serious punishments to perpetrators of major crimes. finally, protection for native women against violence inflicted on them by non-native men was diminished in the oliphant v. suquamish decision. these acts and decisions have impacted the services and programs provided to native women. the increase in psychological and physical illnesses is a demonstration of the negative effects that violence has had on native women. studies have shown that native women experience a higher rate of post traumatic stress disorder, alcohol abuse, suicide and various other mental illnesses than any other group of women. although it is proven that native women experience sexual and physical violence at a greater rate than women of any other race, there is still a serious lack of research on the physical and psychological effects of these crimes. what is distinct in the situation of native women is the historical trauma endured by native americans within their relationship with the federal government. historical trauma includes intergenerational and societal oppression that is historical and ongoingxliii. the policies of stripping away the power of tribal court systems over crimes related to native women coupled with the federal and state governments insufficiency in dealing with native crime has left native women unprotected, alienated, and distrustful. two recent acts that have somewhat responded to these issues and have improved the protection of native women against violence are the violence against women act of 2005 and the tribal law and order act of 2010. the violence against women act passed in 2005 is the first of the two most recent acts that have sought to diminish violence against native american women. due to the policies within this act, for the first time native tribes have gained access to valuable resources that can combat violence against native women in their communities. it is especially helpful for aiding domestic violence, sexual violence, and stalking. not only does it allow access to new resources but it also recognizes the sovereignty of tribal responses to these crimesxliv. the second contemporary act that has made a positive impact on the lives of native women is the tribal law and order act of 2010. this act includes policies that will help native survivors of sexual and domestic violence. some of the specific sections within this act that pertain to victims of sexual and domestic violence are sections 261, 262, 264, and 266. section 261 gives tribal government modes of amending the criminal system and the ability to track federal offenders. by ameliorating the criminal system, tribal governments will be able to deal with perpetrators of violence more efficiently. increasing the ability to track federal offenders will reverse some of the negative affects of the oliphant v. suquamish decision and will aid in the protection of native jennifer di paolo violence against native american women in the united states 182 women against non-native perpetrators. section 262 gives tribal police more efficient methods of questioning victims and obtaining evidence. it also ameliorates the services provided to victims by extending the u.s department of justice sexual assault procedures to native health clinics. this policy helps in decreasing the alienation of native women from non-native women by providing them with the same standard in sexual assault assistance. section 264 increases the services and programs for native american victims of assault and it seeks to decrease the amount of native women that are trafficked for sex work. this addresses the very serious issue of sex trafficking by working to protect and decrease the number of native women that are negatively affected by it. lastly, section 266 enhances the ability of the indian health services to respond to sexual and domestic violence in remote areas. this is especially helpful in protecting native women that live in isolated tribes and have difficulty traveling to federal health clinics or seeking federal legal actionxlv. overall, it has attempted to increase the services and programs available for native women to a level comparable to those available for other women within the united states. despite the overwhelming amount of structural ways in which violence is inflicted against native american women it would be discouraging and incomplete to ignore the progressive work that native female activists have done in regards to combatting this violence. although there are numerous exceptional native female activists, we will be focusing on three scholars that embody native feminism: renya ramirez, andrea smith, and luana ross. renya ramirez is a member of the winnebago tribe of nebraska. she advocates that natives need to consider fighting violence against native women a priority in ameliorating the overall status of native communities. ramirez argues that this must be done by considering racial, tribal, and gender issues as intersectional and nonhierarchical. she believes feminism is an important ideology to spread within native communitiesxlvi. next is andrea smith, an activist and scholar from the cherokee nation. smith advocates ending gendered violence as a means of survival for native tribes. she views the abolishment of the power held by native women as simultaneous to the abolishment of native sovereignty. smith sees the value in creating a native criminal justice system separate from the state because the state has created many problems within the native communityxlvii. andrea smith has also organized the colour of violence: violence against women of colour conference to combat violence against women of colour specifically because it is often over looked in academia and activism. this conference serves as an open forum for women of colour, including native women, to converse about the violence they facexlviii. an initiative that came out of this conference and that was co-organized by smith is incite! women of colour against violence. this organization is comprised of feminists of colour and it works on intersectional issues pertaining to state violence, sexual, and domestic violence. it politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 183 functions as a grass roots organization instead of using social service methodsxlix. lastly is luana ross, a keynote speaker at the first colour of violence conference and another phenomenal native female activist. during her speech she called on natives to use traditional views of sovereignty to protect native women against violence instead of depending on the federal government for assistance. she also advocated for full tribal jurisdiction over crimes relating to native womenl. ross was born in flathead indian reservation in montanali. in the 1980s she began organizing retreats for native women to help them heal from violence. these retreats became a forum for women to speak to each other and female counselors about the violence they endured. she also gave presentations to reserves about the importance of feminism and gave native women the opportunity to speak about their experiences with violence. this is important because during the 80s violence was entrenched in native society and even normalized. ross addresses an important issue in her work that is not easy to quantify by research. this issue is the desire of native women to shield native men from the federal criminal justice system because it is viewed as another form of colonialism. for this reason, it is difficult to know exactly how many native women are subjected to violence. ross advocates for the power of feminism and for connecting native feminism to the larger feminist community. she directly connects the increase of domestic violence programs for native women and the new openness for discussion about violence to native feminismlii. ross’ work empowers women through storytelling and advocacy and promotes native tribal sovereignty. by analyzing female native activists one can view the progress that is being made within native communities in terms of creating organizations and conferences to analyze and attack these issues, theorizing about solutions, and creating safe spaces for native women to speak about the violence that they have endured. the complexity of the issue of violence inflicted upon women coupled with the cultural differences between native tribes makes it difficult to establish a set of blanket guidelines to eradicate this problem. however, after analyzing the reasons and responses behind violence against native women in the united states we can conclude with three viable solutions. the three solutions that would make profound differences in the protection of native women would be the establishment of tribal sovereignty, increasing awareness surrounding this issue, and the empowerment of native women. tribal sovereignty is the most obvious solution to this and numerous other problems that native americans face. by allowing tribes to have legal authority over their own affairs, the traditional spiritual and political role of native women can be re-established. tribes will be able to respond to crime in a manner that is non-assimilative and corresponds with their culture, which will ultimately end the colonial legacy of federal control over native crime especially those crimes that affect native women at alarming rates such as murder, rape, kidnapping, and stalking. moreover, it would work to reverse jennifer di paolo violence against native american women in the united states 184 some of the negative affects of colonialism. the next solution is ending the silence surrounding the injustices suffered by all native americans with an emphasis on those endured by native women. this can be done by garnering more research with respect to the issues discussed and by ensuring that the methods of attaining this research is engineered in a way that properly examines native culture and life. the final solution is empowering native woman. this would include ensuring that native women are able to resume powerful roles in society through adequate education and health services especially safe reproductive services. this would also include allowing extensive access to resources for native women activist organizations so that they can uplift women in every native community. ensuring that women have the resources they need to address issues pertaining to their specific community will lead to the most positive and efficient change for native women. i amnesty international, “maze of injustice: the failure to protect indigenous women from violence in the usa” (amnesty international publications, 2007) accessed december 20 2012 http://www.amnestyusa.org/ourwork/issues/women-s-rights/violenceagainst-women/maze-of-injustice ii terry henry. “addressing violence against native american women and girls as a human rights issue” (new york, united nations department of economic and social affairs, january 2012) 1 http://www.un.org.myaccess.library.utoront o.ca/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/egm1 2_henry.pdf iii amnesty international “maze of injustice: the failure to protect indigenous women from violence in the usa” iv laura f. klein and lillian a. ackerman eds. women and power in native north america (usa: university of oklahoma press, norman, 1995) 236 v sarah deer, bonnie clairmont, carrie a. martell and maureen l. white eagle eds. sharing our stories of survival: native women surviving violence. tribal legal studies, ed. gardner, jerry (plymouth, u.k:altamira press, 2008) 5 vi ibid., 8 vii andrea smith. conquest: sexual violence and american indian genocide. (cambridge, ma: south end press, 2005) 18 viii roe bubar and pamela jumper thurman “violence against native women” social justice 31, no.4 (2004) accessed january 1 2013, 74 http://www.jstor.org.myaccess.library.utoro nto.ca/stable/29768276 ix hilary weaver “the colonial context of violence: reflections on violence in the lives of native american women” journal of interpersonal violence 24, no. 9 (september 2009) accessed january 27 2013, 1554 http://journals2.scholarsportal.info.myacces s.library.utoronto.ca/tmp/113619194713538 92927.pdf x andrea smith conquest: sexual violence and american indian genocide 18 xi ibid., 12 xii ibid., 17 xiii sarah deer, bonnie clairmont, carrie a. martell and maureen l. white eagle eds. sharing our stories of survival: native women surviving violence. 8 xiv hilary weaver “the colonial context of violence: reflections on violence in the lives of native american women” 1555 xv amnesty international “maze of injustice: the failure to protect indigenous women from violence in the usa” http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/women-s-rights/violence-against-women/maze-of-injustice http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/women-s-rights/violence-against-women/maze-of-injustice http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/women-s-rights/violence-against-women/maze-of-injustice http://www.jstor.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/stable/29768276 http://www.jstor.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/stable/29768276 http://journals2.scholarsportal.info.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/tmp/11361919471353892927.pdf http://journals2.scholarsportal.info.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/tmp/11361919471353892927.pdf http://journals2.scholarsportal.info.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/tmp/11361919471353892927.pdf politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 185 xvi laura f. klein and lillian a. ackerman eds. women and power in native north america, 241 xvii sarah deer, bonnie clairmont, carrie a. martell and maureen l. white eagle eds. sharing our stories of survival: native women surviving violence. 11 xviii andrea smith conquest: sexual violence and american indian genocide, 18 xix roe bubar and pamela jumper thurman “violence against native women” 73 xx ibid., 240-241 xxi amnesty international “maze of injustice: the failure to protect indigenous women from violence in the usa” xxii ann murray haag “the indian boarding school era and its continuing impact on tribal families and the provision of government services” tulsa law review 43 (2007-2008) accessed february 16 2013, 151154 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cf m/342749 xxiii ibid., 157-161 xxiv sally j. torpy “native american women and coerced sterilization: on the trail of tears in the 1970s” american indian culture and research journal 24, no.2 (october 1 2007, 2000) accessed february 16 2013, 1 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cf m/342753 xxv ibid., 7-9 xxvi ibid., 11 xxvii sarah deer, bonnie clairmont, carrie a. martell and maureen l. white eagle eds. sharing our stories of survival: native women surviving violence. 11 xxviii warren stapleton. “indian country, federal justice: is the exercise of federal jurisdiction under the major crimes act constitutional?” arizona state law journal 29 (1997) accessed february 17 2013, 337 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cf m/342756 xxix sarah deer, bonnie clairmont, carrie a. martell and maureen l. white eagle eds. sharing our stories of survival: native women surviving violence, 13 xxx warren stapleton. “indian country, federal justice: is the exercise of federal jurisdiction under the major crimes act constitutional?” 339 xxxi ibid., 341-342 xxxii sarah deer, bonnie clairmont, carrie a. martell and maureen l. white eagle eds. sharing our stories of survival: native women surviving violence, 13 xxxiii ross naughton “state statutes limiting the dual sovereignty doctrine: tools for tribes to reclaim criminal jurisdiction stripped by public law 280” ucla law review 55, (2007-2008) accessed february 17 2011, 494-6 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cf m/342757 xxxiv ibid., 491-492 xxxv ibid., 497 xxxvi amnesty international “maze of injustice: the failure to protect indigenous women from violence in the usa” xxxvii jennifer s. byram. “civil rights on reservations: the indian civil rights act & tribal sovereignty” oklahoma city university law review 25 no. 1,2 (2000) accessed february 18 2013, 494-496 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cf m/342760 xxxviii carla christofferson. “tribal courts failure to protect native american women: a reevaluation of the civil rights act” yale law journal 101 (1991-1992) accessed february 18 2013, 171 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cf m/342761 xxxix amnesty international “maze of injustice: the failure to protect indigenous women from violence in the usa” xl judith v. royster “oliphant and its discontents: an essay introducing the case for reargument before the american indian nations supreme court” kansas journal of law and public policy 13, no. 1 (2003-2004) accessed february 18 2013, 59 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cf m/342763 xli ibid., 60-61 xlii terry henry. “addressing violence against native american women and girls as a human rights issue” 1 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/342749 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/342749 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/342753 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/342753 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/342756 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/342756 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/342757 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/342757 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/342760 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/342760 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/342761 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/342761 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/342763 http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/342763 jennifer di paolo violence against native american women in the united states 186 xliii angela gebhardt, jane woody. “american indian women and sexual assault: challenges and new opportunities” affilia: journal of women and social work 12, no. 3 (august 2012) accessed february 18 2013, 238-240 doi:10.1177/0886109912452642. xliv sarah deer, bonnie clairmont, carrie a. martell and maureen l. white eagle eds. sharing our stories of survival: native women surviving violence, 19 xlv angela gebhardt, jane woody. “american indian women and sexual assault: challenges and new opportunities” 241 xlvi renya ramirez “race, tribal nation and gender: a native feminist approach to belonging” meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 7 no. 2 (january 1 2007) accessed february 19 2013, 22 doi:10.2979/mer.2007.7.2.22. xlvii andrea smith conquest: sexual violence and american indian genocide, 138-139 xlviii renya ramirez “race, tribal nation and gender: a native feminist approach to belonging” 27-28 xlix andrea smith conquest: sexual violence and american indian genocide, 2 l renya ramirez “race, tribal nation and gender: a native feminist approach to belonging” 28 li luana ross “from the “f” word to indigenous/feminisms” wicazo sa review 24, no.2 (october 2009) accessed february 19 2013, 43 doi:10.1353/wic.0.0041 lii ibid., 45 bibliography amnesty international. 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http://journals2.scholarsportal.info.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/tmp/11361919471353892927.pdf politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 26 33 the supranational governmentality of neoliberalism: an analysis of the governing principles of troika programs for greece ben behrend ben behrend, 25, is a ma student of “international relations: global governance and social theory” at the jacobs university bremen and university of bremen. in 2013, after a semester abroad at the saint mary´s university in halifax, canada, he obtained his bachelor in political science at the university of bremen. he wrote his bachelor thesis on “the systemic boundaries of neoliberalism for global development – an analysis of the structural adjustment programs in developing countries”. his research interests include international political economy, development studies, international organizations and theories of international relations. abstract with his concept of governmentality, michel foucault delivered one of the most innovative approaches to analyze neoliberalism, which is predominant on the international stage since “thatcherism” (1979-90) and “reagonomics” (1981-88). even an own discipline developed around this concept (governmentality studies), bringing fruitful theoretical merits. however, there is a huge gap. benchmark for most researches in the governmentality studies is always the geographical and jurisdictional confined state. thus, inter-, trans-, and supranational organizations such as the un, imf, eu, world bank or ingos are completely neglected. i try to fill that gap and to deliver starting points for further analysis of (neoliberal) governmentality on a supranational level by asking: how do neoliberal socio-economic programs of the imf and european commission (ec) for greece work in a foucauldian perspective? while conducting a theoretical discussion of the governing principles of troika programs for greece and using the concept of governmentality, i find that social security is reconcilable with neoliberalism, but an organization of it on a public basis is not. public welfare is not excluded in neoliberalism; the neoliberal governmentality even insists on private, personal provision, which is based on individual responsibility of a rational acting subject. the objective is to transform social security to a private good. and the same principles are used by the troika through their adjustment programs during the greek crisis. key words: euro crisis, governance, governmentality, greece, international monetary fund, michel foucault, neoliberalism, post-structuralism, social welfare. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 26 34 introduction probably more known for his articles about power, discourse or sexuality, michel foucault delivered one of the most innovative approaches to analyze neoliberalism, which is predominant on the international stage since “thatcherism” (1979-90) and “reagonomics” (1981-88). although the term and phenomenon neoliberalism is often used in various researches, most of the times an equation of neoliberalism and its effect took place – leaving out the principles of neoliberalism (gertenbach 2010: 9). in his lectures of 1977-78 (security, territory, population) and of 1978-79 (the birth of biopolitics) at the collège de france, foucault generates the concept of governmentality, which he uses to inquire liberalism and neoliberalism. expressed by the names and structure of his lectures (foucault 2008: 185; (gane 2008), he initially had other plans. in the aftermath of foucault, an entire discipline developed around the concept of governmentality – governmentality studies. the theoretical merit of governmentality studies is without doubt its capability to combine abstract political rationalities with micro-techniques of everyday life. for this reason, they exhibit outstanding tools to analyze political rationalities and behavior patterns in general and for neoliberalism in particular (lemke 2008: 58-59). however, there is a huge gap. an implicit or explicit benchmark for most researches in governmentality studies is always the geographical and jurisdictional confined state (lemke 2008: 58-59). thus, inter-, trans-, and supranational organizations like the un, imf, eu, world bank or ingos are completely neglected by governmentality studies. i try to fill that gap and to deliver starting points for further analysis of (neoliberal) governmentality on a trans-, inter-, or supranational level. in doing so, i apply the concept of governmentality on a supranational level, constituted through the imf and eu. thereby, i focus on the current crisis in greece and on the adjustment programs – imposed by the imf and the european commission (ec) or eu – in order to examine the neoliberal governmentality. my approach tries to shift the levels of the state and the individual. hence, the troika, consisting of the international monetary fund (imf), the ec and the european central bank (ecb), is the “state“, which stimulates the actions of the “individual” (greece as economy with its citizens), respectively, to lead the greeks implicitly to certain behavior patterns. my general question is how neoliberalism works in a foucauldian perspective. to understand the mechanics of neoliberalism better and to understand how it works in current and concrete terms, i apply foucault`s concept of governmentality and neoliberalism on the economic and debt crisis in greece. therefore, my concrete question will be as follows: how do neoliberal socioeconomic programs of the imf and ec for greece work in a foucauldian perspective? while conducting a theoretical discussion of the governing principles of the troika programs for greece and using the concept of governmentality, the subsequent question will be if this application works at all, or if it is not fruitful to apply foucault`s thoughts on the current case in greece. before the analysis of the adjustment programs for greece (3.), i will examine the theoretical basics of foucault´s concept of governmentality (2.). afterwards, i will complete this work with a conclusion (4.), in which i confirm the utility of governmentality to depict the patterns of supranational neoliberalism in the example of the troika´s adjustment programs in greece. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 26 35 governmentality and neoliberalism the concept of governmentality foucault uses the concept of governmentality explicitly to analyze the classical liberalism and neoliberalism. thereby, he focuses on their ways of problematization and practical governance. the frequently used translation of governmentality to “mentality of the government” is wrong in two respects: first, it is not the realization of a certain mindset or ideology and, second, governmentality comes from “gouvernemental”, which means “concerning the government”, and not from “gouverner” (“to govern”) (gertenbach 2010: 11). in his first attempts, foucault (2007: 87-114) describes the concept of governmentality in a narrow way, which contains as main target the population, as most important mode of thinking the political economy and as substantial technical instrument the security disposition. later, in “the birth of biopolitics” (foucault 2008: 185-186), he defines its nature in a broader way, as a manner of controlling the behavior of people. nonetheless, the conception of governmentality serves as a frame joint between power and subject (the self) (gertenbach 2010: 21), while having in mind the procedure and technique of those interactions. it deals with the question of how bodies, things, emotions and thoughts are permeated by power mechanisms, from which they arise at the same time (pieper/gutierrez rodríguez 2003: 10). contradictory to the classical definition of government as a central institution, foucault (2004: 159) sees government simultaneously as a wide instance of individualization and totalization (gertenbach 2010: 23). in his concept, power is not an abstract field of action; it is connected to the institutional apparatus of the state. and here, the state is not just an administrative apparatus, but rather a geographical, historical and political configured and self-transforming composition of institutions, practices and discourses (pieper/gutierrez rodríguez 2003: 10), which could operate in an individualizing and a totalizing way. although, barnett (2005) argues that marxists and governmental studies see neoliberalism only as an ideology which follows a top-down model. for him, neoliberal processes could, by all means, also come from the bottom (barnett 2005: 10). his critics are partially right when it came to first “neoliberalization” processes in the western world, but in the global south (e.g. structural adjustment programs (saps) of imf and the world bank) or now in the greek case, neoliberalism is obviously more a top-down project from “above”. and contradictory to barnett´s (2005) perception, in a foucauldian understanding the governmentality of neoliberalism or governmentality in general is not a typical hegemonic top-down concept. it includes the people who act in a certain way on their own, not directly influenced by the government. moreover, barnett (2005: 11) criticizes studies about neoliberalism in general. by saying that the “radical academic discourse of ‘‘neoliberalism’’ frames the relationship between collective action and individualism simplistically as an opposition between the good and the bad”, he is definitely oversimplifying. especially foucault does not judge neoliberalism, but rather explores the mechanisms and the mode of its governmentality. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 26 36 classical liberalism, ordo-liberalism and the chicago school in order to clarify the foundations of the neoliberal governmentality, i will briefly sketch the commonalities and the differences between the two major forms of neoliberalism – ordoliberalism and the chicago school – and its relations to classical liberalism. foucault develops his governmentality concept along the historical appearances of all three schools of thought. the ordo-liberalism of the freiburg school developed around walter eucken, franz böhm and wilhelm röpke in the 1930s and could also be related to the austrian school around friedrich august von hayek and ludwig von mises (couldry 2010: 24). ordo-liberalism is kind of a third way between the two extremes of total state-directed economy and uncontrolled anarchy of the market (foucault 2008: 101-128). features of ordo-liberalism are a linkage of economy and justice, an order by the state (economic system) as well as free creation on the level of processrelated economic outcomes (economic process) (gertenbach 2010: 58). in all, it is a social liberalism which focuses on societal rather than on economic policies. in contrast to ordo-liberalism, the chicago school neoliberalism could rather be named as reanimation of the classical liberalism. the “three elements – keynesian policy, social pacts of war, and the growth of the federal administration through economic and social programs – together formed the adversary and target of neo-liberal thought” of the chicago school (foucault 2008: 217). it fueled an extension of economic behavior to the social, the state and the individual from an economic, action-theoretical perspective. here, the economic principle spans its lattice over the society. the neoliberal governmentality of the chicago school acts like “a sort of economic tribunal that claims to assess government action in strictly economic and market terms” (foucault 2008: 247). this kind of neoliberalism is still predominant. most prominent scholars of the chicago school of economics, which came into being between the 1950s and the 1970s, are milton friedman, george stigler, ronald coase and gary becker, who are all nobel laureates in economics (palley 2005: 20, 29). the most prominent representative of the connection of the chicago school and ordoliberalism and for neoliberalism is august von hayek. he was the only protagonist who was active in all big schools of neoliberalism (austrian school, london school of economics, chicago school, freiburger school) (gertenbach 2010: 67). von hayek was characterized by anti-socialism. he argued that a political differentiation in left and right was futile because it would be an inner-socialistic conflict line (gertenbach 2010: 69). wiser would be a differentiation in liberal and anti-liberal. the difference between von hayek (and von mises and ordo-liberalism) and the laissez-faire of classical liberalism is the belief that the market is not always able to self-regulate. ordo-liberal scholars and von hayek overlap in their advocacy of adequate regulatory frameworks to stabilize the market order. their difference lies in the scope of regulation. but ordo-liberals are focusing on the criteria of “social justice”, what is contradictory to von hayek´s (2003) opinion that too many and vast rules are an “arrogation of knowledge”. according to von hayek, it is not possible to have answers for all eventualities a priori. however, the essential accordance between von hayek and the ordo-liberalism of the freiburg school is a significant attribute of neoliberalism as a whole, which is also the most outstanding difference to classical liberalism – the linkage between the state and the market. the great difference between the freiburg and the chicago school is about the degree of political politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 26 37 intervention. after von hayek, neoliberalism is a way between planned economy and total free markets but, nonetheless, neoliberalism does not have automatically a moderate and mediating character (gertenbach 2010: 75). a crucial element for the classical liberalism after david smith (1776) and david ricardo (1817) is political critique and the separation between economics and the state (gertenbach 2010: 31, 50). although there is heterogeneity in the discourse around the term neoliberalism, there is, nevertheless, a consistency detectable which clearly separates the governmentality of neoliberalism from the liberal one. the same dichotomous separation of the realms of the market and the state exists, according to foucault (2008: 91-95), in socialism and keynesianism. that is why he neglects to analyze these forms of government with his concept of governmentality; only neoliberalism with its modified relation of integrating the market and the state brought a new governmentality. neoliberalism is no „laissez-faire”, it is rather a “cultivation of the market”, a “culture of entrepreneurship” (gertenbach 2010: 15). the individualizing governmentality of neoliberalism in contrast to the reactive governmentality of classical liberalism, which has as main principle the defense of intervention in the spheres of the free market economy, the neoliberal governmentality is active and fuels the existence of frame conditions within the market and doubts that the free market could develop its own rules and laws (gertenbach 2010: 81). neoliberalism and liberalism could not just be reduced to its effects. therefore, neoliberalism is not simple the withdrawal of the state because it is not possible to separate state and economy. the imagination that there is a pure economy which could be restrained or civilized by politics or the state is unrealistic, since both spheres are strongly intertwined. contrary to hannah arendt, foucault sees the modern society as one which is more, not less, politicized compared to previous societies (dolan 2005) because the governmentality of neoliberalism affects the whole society with its implicit manner. neoliberal economic policies are not restricted to economic issues anymore. everything is theoretically “economizable” (economized would have the wrong meaning) or could be explained in economic terms. the “noneconomic” is, so to say, just the “not-yet-economic” (gertenbach 2010: 82-83). this described vigilance is the decisive criteria of a neoliberal governmentality which, based on a permanent active policy, is ex-territorializing the economy and “economizing” the social (gertenbach 2010: 83). in short, the basic principle of the neoliberal governmentality is not “power of economy”, but “economy of power” (lemke 2008: 73). the reason why neoliberalism with its market competition needs an active government is that “competition is not the result of a natural interplay of appetites, instincts, behavior, and so on” (foucault 2008: 172). the failure of defining the free market with a natural given pure competition is what foucault (2008: 120) calls “naive naturalism” of the classic liberalism. thus, the market does not have a pure competition as a natural inner logic or any natural inner logic at all. consequently, the competition is a non-natural nature of the market. the meaning of this composition could not be exaggerated. foucault (2008: 121) describes it as follows: there will not be the market game, which must be left free, and then the domain in which the state begins to intervene, since the market, or rather pure competition, which is the essence of politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 26 38 the market, can only appear if it is produced, and if it is produced by an active governmentality. there will thus be a sort of complete superimposition of market mechanisms, indexed to competition, and governmental policy. government must accompany the market economy from start to finish. another aspect of neoliberalism is that the theory of homo oeconomicus has changed. the homo oeconomicus is no longer just a partner of exchange, like in liberalism, but an entrepreneur of himself. in “all neo-liberal analyses is the replacement every time of homo oeconomicus as partner of exchange with a homo eoconomicus as entrepreneur of himself, being for himself his own capital, being for himself his own producer, being for himself the source of [his] earnings” (foucault 2008: 226). now, manpower is described out of a subjectivistic perspective which sees the worker as a productive subject and not as a static factor due to the mechanization of working processes in the time of liberalism (gertenbach 2010: 105). also an example for the expansion of the economy on a discursive level is the term “human capital”, which arose out of the circle of neoliberal theorists from the chicago school (theodore m. schultz, gary s. becker, jacob minzer) (gertenbach 2010: 113-114). the term human capital means that the individual has to “form” and “prepare” him-/her-self to increase the chances to get a job, to be attractive for firms on the job market. you have to invest in your own, individual human capital. this radically individualizing tendency of the “human capital” concept indicates clearly the political and especially the governmental meaning of neoliberalism. it shows the manner how politics appeal individual subjects and try to make them governable. it does not work through a production of obedient and docile-disciplined citizens, but rather through an invocation of the subject as a rational and calculatory acting entrepreneur, who is the producer and administrator of his/her own human capital (gertenbach 2010: 117). moreover, the neoliberal concept of human capital puts poverty and its causes on an individual level. everyone is for his own “human” capital responsible. individuals with a human capital of good quality get a job; people with bad human capital do not. work could be paid with high or low wages. it is a result of the quality of the human capital. thus, poverty is a consequence of low (or no) income, which is an effect of bad human capital. and for this every person is responsible on his/her own. in this sense, work is an abstract factor, a transfer of value (human capital), and not accountable for poverty (gertenbach 2010: 137). it is up to “the entrepreneur of its own”. in addition, there are two ways in neo-liberalism for integrating social security: to organize it on a market basis or to organize it in a form that it does not disturb the market. not the social security as such is irreconcilable with the concept of neoliberalism, but an organization of it on a public basis. public welfare is not outside of neoliberalism; the neoliberal governmentalitiy even insists on private, personal provision, which is based on individual responsibility of a rational acting subject. the objective is to transform social security to a private good as it is done in the greek case. consequently, there is a strong appeal on self-responsibility and rationality of the individual within an above personal responsibility and freedom operating neoliberal governmentalitiy (gertenbach 2010: 137). it is important to say that poverty is not seen as bad condition in neoliberalism, thus, to eradicate poverty is not an aim (gertenbach 2010: 138) – it belongs to the play of the market. relative poverty works as a “negative tax”, which should stimulate people of lower classes to invest in their human capital (foucault 2008: 129-158). of politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 26 39 course, neoliberals also notice the problem of absolute poverty, which they indeed pity but for which they do not have a solution (foucault 2008: 129-158; hayek 2003: 292). an increase of the general level of prosperity does not mean that particular groups could not suffer under an aggravation of their position at times (hayek 2003: 292). that is a crucial defect of the governmentality of neoliberalism: it notices serious problems, but refers merely to the privatization of personal social security. that does not solve those problems at all. considering this notion of poverty, it leads us to the understanding of inequality in neoliberalism. according to von hayek (1981), inequality is necessary to attract people to invest more, to be productive. inequality is a form of a political good, which needs to be conducted; the existence of inequality is an opportunity and an imperative of the liberal art of governing (ewald 1993: 89). particularly the differences of payments serve as a promoter for high performance (gertenbach 2010: 141). here, one could see probably the clearest common ground between liberalism and neoliberalism: inequality would lead to the increase of the general level of prosperity. however, neoliberal governmentality demands from individuals to perform and to invest privately in their human capital, fostered by inequality, not just in economic terms, likewise in all other (social) terms, which ends in a meritocracy. characteristic of social policies in a neoliberal constellation – either in the usa, france or germany, whose political-historical development served as examples for foucault – is the placement of the principle of competition into the realm of welfare state policies; redistribution policies are regarded as restrictions for investment opportunities and not as required compensation for unequal consumption levels and income resources (pühl 2008: 108). therefore, social security is subject to progressively individualizing tendencies. the social rights of citizens become to participation rights, which could only be reached by an individual contribution of the citizen. reactive and compensatory orientations of social policies are changed to preventive measures, with the tendency to create employability (pühl 2008: 113). one has to “deserve” social security. and to put it in an exaggerated nutshell, not everybody is worth to receive social security within the governmentality of neoliberalism. social security is a precarious, revocable social good, which is questioned through the progress of neoliberal social changes (pühl 2008: 121). the activating state rather endorses the prevention of the occurrence of social risks and the individual investment in ones employability than supporting individuals in tough situations. similar to the social security is the concept of insurance. it is conceived as a private shape and contributes to the individualizing dimension of the neoliberal governmentality (gertenbach 2010: 143-144). insurance is needed to protect oneself against the risk and uncertainty, fear and speculations neoliberalism is implicating (foucault 2008: 66-70). hence, risk or fear is part of neoliberalism and assists to widen the economic principle of market competition to all private (social) areas. the idiosyncrasy of neoliberal strategies is that they shift the responsibility for societal risks like disease, unemployment or poverty and for living (or surviving) in the society into the area of competences of collective and individual subjects (individuals, families, associations, etc.) and that they make it to problems of the self-care (lemke 2008: 55). moreover, the choice as an option for action implies the free will; and the responsibility of consequences of the free will are politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 26 40 attributed to the individual. thus, societal and public problem areas are an issue of individual security (lemke 2008: 55). katharina pühl (2008: 104) describes the neoliberal governmentality as a more or less subtle and assertive implemented technology of government which preaches a redefinition of social security within a tense relationship between economics, social and economic policies and security technologies. furthermore, it leads to an individualized and competitive organized understanding of social relationships, including the removing of social solidarity (pühl 2008: 104). there is not only one principle of competitiveness and security; and there is no closed programmatic neoliberal strategy. it is more about a deconstruction of a project of neo-liberalism in different social and policy areas (pühl 2008: 107). many actors are involved in its expert-controlled elaboration of a political-socio-economic project, in favor of a comprehension of manifold, parallel proceeding processes of neoliberalism. governing principles of troika programs for greece neoliberal countermeasures and conditionality the involvement of the imf and the ec in greece, since may 2, 2010, means the first implementation of imf-adjustment programs in europe since 1975 (in the cases of the uk and italy) (van aarle/kappler 2011; dasgupta 1998: 71). the directives of the programs are negotiated between greece and the imf and ec – the ecb possesses only an observing role. altogether these institutions constitute the so-called troika. various reports and other review documents conducted by the ec or imf concerning the implementation of troika programs for greece confirm the evidence of a neoliberal mindset (eble et al. 2013; moghadam/bredenkamp 2013; european commission 2014, 2010; see also all other occasional papers of the ec or imf country reports on greece since 2010). the troika generally demands more liberalization and privatization and criticizes an underutilization of stateowned assets and “an overburden of regulation” (eble et al. 2013: 6). therefore, the troika, respectively the greek government, imposes severe austerity measures on the greek society (chryssochoou et al 2013: 41). in doing so, the focal point is on restrictive fiscal policy, which consequently affects the public sector in particular. for the public sector, the programs involve a freeze pay for all public servants and state pensioners as well as huge reductions in their salaries and pensions; cessations of bonus payments; a prevention of early retirement; and an increase of the number of years for earning a full pension (psimitis 2011: 193). for example, the “omnibus law (…), approved by the greek parliament on 6 august 2014 includes the provisions to merge all supplementary pension funds under the public sector into [the private] etea [unified auxiliary insurance fund]” (european commission 2014: 2). additionally, a loosening of the employment protection and a tax increase concerns the private sector, while a decrease of government spending and extensive privatization affect the education and health system (psimitis 2011: 193-194). those adjustments have to be implemented in order to receive further rescue packages, whereas only the greek government is officially responsible for their outcomes. this conditionality, which is agreed by contract, is expressed through following passages of the memorandum of understanding on specific economic policy conditionality (musepc) between greece and the ec, the ecb and the imf, which is attached in the appendix of imf country report no. 13/153 (moghadam/bredenkamp 2013: 121): politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 26 41 the disbursements of financial assistance to greece, by the european financial stability facility (efsf), are subject to quarterly reviews of conditionality for the duration of the arrangement. the release of the tranches is based on observance of quantitative performance criteria and a positive evaluation of progress made with respect to policy criteria[.] (…) [t]he government will fully cooperate with the commission, the ecb and the imf staff teams to strengthen the monitoring of programme implementation, and will provide the staff teams with access to all relevant data and other information in the greek administration. the ownership of the programme and all executive responsibilities in the programme implementation remain with the greek government. (emphasis added) hence, the austerity measures of the troika clearly implement neoliberal features, which are similar to former saps of the “washington consensus” (imf and the world bank). typical policies of their neoliberal conditionality contain structural adjustments through reductions of government spending; removing of subsidies to domestic industries; removing tariffs, quotas and other restrictions on the import and export of goods; general deregulation of the economy; market liberalization; privatization; and devaluation of the exchange rate to encourage exports and reduce imports (heywood 2011: 371; williamson 1993). the supranational governmentality of neoliberalism the following discussion emphasizes that neoliberalism is applied in greece through the mechanisms explained by foucault. the imf and ec reports give an impression of the principle of the troika-led adjustment programs. it does not differ from the already described mechanisms and techniques of the governmentality of neoliberalism. in fact, greece has no choice. it has to do what the troika wants them to do. and if it does not work, it is not the failure of the troika, but of greece. as a result, one could clearly identify the notion of neoliberal governmentality which shifts social risks and threats to the individual level (greece). exemplary for this thinking are both emphasized parts of the musepc. instead of investing in greece and trying to reanimate the economy, it seems more like they try to punish greece by imposing severe austerity measures, which only concentrate on macro financial consolidation and reducing government expenditure. there are no investments and efforts to generate growth and to deliver improvements for the ordinary citizens or the poor. they have to care for themselves. primary objective is to implement austerity measures and to safeguard banks. in 2013, 26% of the active population was unemployed and the record of youth unemployment rate was even over 60% (chryssochoou 2013: 42). between 2009 and 2012, more than 3,000 people committed suicide, which implies an increase of the suicide rate about 37% (chryssochoou 2013: 42). the consequences of the austerity programs definitely led to general grievances within the greek society (chryssochoou 2013: 42) since the troika “focuses on fiscal consolidation and on improving the capacity of greece to repay its debtors, and not on building the country’s capacity for long-term development” (vlachou 2012: 179). on the one hand, neoliberal governmentality is on the explicit socio-economic level because of the pressure of the troika. on the other hand, there is a neoliberal governmentality in an implicit way, for greece as an individual country, articulated by the troika in form of an alleged own choice and responsibility greece has. the principle of neoliberalism is to emphasize the politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 26 42 promotion of individual freedom of choice and of life opportunities, whereat, nevertheless, neoliberalism is rather a predetermination of people´s actions through a governmentality of the state (or superior institutions like the imf or eu). based on these guidelines, greece is comparable with a welfare-recipient. it has its own choice (but when it does not stick to certain terms and conditions, it will not receive any help anymore). also very important is to realize how the neoliberal governmentality, expressed by imf and ec (eu) on a supranational level, allocates problems and risks to the individual level (greece), even if the main causes for the crisis have not been on this level. despite the internal problems of greece, such as violations of the eu convergence criteria (not as sole country), corruption, exaggerated military expenditures, the non-taxation of ship-owners and so on, the real crisis in greece and europe were caused by other factors. crucial problems for greece and the eurozone were, and still are, failures in the structure of the economic and monetary union (emu), the us subprime crisis 2006, the world financial (then economic) crisis 2008, as a corollary too fast cash drains compared to too fast prior cash inflows etc. but to explain these internal and external reasons in depth would not be feasible in this analysis and would be misleading regarding the purpose of this paper. neoliberal social policy is, after foucault (2008), always directed to the privatization of social risks. according to the norm of radical economic individualism, it seems unjustifiable to demand a collective social security for individuals from the society. the notion of the universality of the entrepreneurship sees the individual as smallest producing unit and follows the guideline that the objective of social policy is not equality (foucault 2008: 129-158). in fact, social relationships should pursue the economic patterns of supply and demand, costs and benefits and of a competitive market (pühl 2008: 109). after this principle, the “small” individual greece has to suffer under, and to be liable for, the risks of the “big” banks and investors. in the neoliberal context of the re-regulation of welfare state arrangements, enhanced by the troika in the wake of the euro-crisis, modes of problematization are shifted from the field of social policies to labor market policies and its organization of streamlined labor markets, which would have to resist the competitive pressure of a globalized economy. this implies pressure on labor costs, thus, on wage differentials; to that effect, working arrangements will be made more flexible, expressed through increasing part-time employment, precarious working arrangements or more temporary work (pühl 2008: 111). despite the comparatively still high social standards in europe, there are clearly reorganization processes of the welfare state in evidence. the break of collective representation forms (labor contracts or trade unions) and of social spending fuels the individualization processes and the social vulnerability, particular of people who live in precarious conditions and get their social security just from wage labor (pühl 2008: 111). pühl (2008: 112) notes that one might even call the shift from a caring to an activating neoliberal (welfare) state a paradigm change. these processes together with current mass (youth) unemployment and job-related down-skilling are great threats for established societies, especially in greece and in entire southern europe. furthermore, the incremental development of the european single market (1992) took place through negative integration. this means a continually further going liberalization and reduction of standards towards the lowest common denominator in economic and labor market policies, politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 26 43 launched by the white paper (completing the internal market, 1985) with its over 300 suggestions for reductions of trade barriers and the single european act (1987) (hix/høyland 2011: 192-216) and expanded by the troika in the course of the euro-crisis. such deregulations or negative integration could be introduced by the ec and the european court of justice (ecj) without the approval of eu member states. regulations on the social level are lagging behind since they need a high degree of coordination. most countries are keenly concentrated on offering suitable economic conditions to attract corporations and to strengthen their national economies. hence, social risks are individualized in the typical neoliberal manner. the ordinary criticisms on neoliberalism (from the left or the anti-globalization movement) that it leads to a reduction of the state and politics as well as it fuels a dominance of the economy is wrong. the greek case shows in a compelling way that, in fact, the politico-economic programs and policies on the ground are “typical” neoliberal (liberalization, deregulation, etc.) but they just come into being through political decisions from imf and eu due to the euro-crisis. thus, the programs do not come into being because of the ruling power of the economy. they are implemented because of strategic political decisions. that the euro-crisis and the necessity to solve those problems only occurred by reason of failures of the uncontrolled financial sector is a different point. the neoliberal market is produced by neoliberal governmentality, respectively by policies of the troika. accordingly, the european commission (2010: 10) states: an overarching objective is to durably restore greece's credibility for private investors. the poor track record of greece in terms of delivering on commitments and promises, and a history of unreliable fiscal and macroeconomic statistics are major additional burdens on the programme. (bold in the original) other “main programme objectives” are “to restore confidence and maintain financial stability”; “to improve competitiveness and alter the economy’s structure towards a more investmentand export-led growth model”; or “to modernize the public sector, to render product and labour markets more efficient and flexible”; as well as to “create a more open and accessible business environment for domestic and foreign investors, including a reduction of the state’s direct participation in domestic industries” (european commission 2010: 10). moreover, illustrated through the debate about greece´s possible exit out of the euro-zone or by the current success of the german anti-euro (anti-greece) party “alternative für deutschland” (afd), there is a public atmosphere of no small extent which makes solely greece responsible for their problems. that fits to the neoliberal governmentality of seeing responsibility for failures on the individual level. conclusion the market is, different to old liberal perspectives, not an isolated terrain. it is de-localized and there is no array which does not or could not belong to the market in principle. contrary to the often propagated “retreat of the state” or “anarcho-capitalism”, neoliberalism is more about persistent, active and activating policies. the governmentality of neoliberalism is a form of an oblique steering of individuals, an indirect intervention. virtually, there is no contraction of the state in neoliberalism, but an extension of the state into the minds of the citizens. and exactly the same principle is used by the imf and the ec through their adjustment programs during the politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 26 44 greek crisis. with help of the concept of governmentality it is possible to decode the neoliberal programs of a retreat of the state as a technique of governance. the crisis of keynesianism and the cutbacks of welfare state benefits and other forms of intervention result less in a loss of governmental regulatory and steering competences than in a reorganization of governmental techniques, which shift “management capacities” away from the state to responsible and rational individuals (lemke 2008: 56). foucault provides with his concept of governmentality an analytical axis which allows an investigation of the technologies of power in its interaction with collective and individual subjectivities. central questions concerning how powerful actors could succeed to be part of the subjects and to influence their actions, and the logic behind making an apparent consensus between their actions and the governmental leadership techniques (pieper/gutierrez rodríguez 2003: 10), are answered in a convincing manner. the perspective of foucault´s concept of governmentality is proper for analyzing neoliberalism in two ways. first, it shows that the borders between the state and society as well as between the public and the private become blurred; and secondly, that the liberal polarity of subjectivity and power is dissolving because governance is a continuum of selfand external-leadership – governance could be produced directly by the political government and also by forms of self-governance (lemke 2008: 54). finally, the governmentality approach delivers new critical perspectives. it opens an epistemological field of discussions about what foucault (1997) calls “politics of the truth” and which is going far beyond traditional criticisms of ideologies. instead of analyzing ideas, concepts and theories only in terms of true and false, here, it is of interest how truth is produced and how and which power technologies are affiliated, which also works on the supranational level. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 26 45 references van aarle, bas and marcus kappler (2011): ‘fiscal adjustment in greece: in search for sustainable public finances’, zew discussion papers 11-080. mannheim: zentrum für europäische wirtschaftsforschung mannheim. barnett, clive (2005): ‘the consolations of neoliberalism’, geoforum 36: 7–12. chryssochoou, xenia, papastamou, stamos and gerasimos prodromitis (2013): ‘facing the economic crisis in greece: the effects of grievances, real and perceived vulnerability, and emotions towards the crisis on reactions to austerity measures’, journal of social science education, 12 (1): 41-49. couldry, nick (2010): why voice matters: culture and politics after neoliberalism. london: sage. dasgupta, biplab (1998): structural adjustment, global trade and the new political economy of development. london and new york: zed. dolan, frederick m. (2005): ‘the paradoxical liberty of bio-power: hannah arendt and michel foucault on modern politics’, philosophy & social criticism 31 (3): 369–380. eble, stephanie, maliszewski, wojciech, shamloo, maral and iva petrova (2013):’ greece: selected issues’, imf country report 13/155. washington, d.c.: international monetary fund. european commission (2014): ‘report on greece's compliance with the milestones for the disbursement to the hellenic republic of the third tranche of eur 1.0bn of the efsf instalment related to the fourth review under the second programme’. brussels: european commission. european commission (2010): ‘the economic adjustment programme for greece. directorategeneral for economic and financial affairs’, occasional papers 61. brussels: european commission. ewald, françois (1993): der vorsorgestaat. frankfurt a.m.: suhrkamp. foucault, michel (2008): the birth of biopolitics. lectures at the collège de france 1978-1979. edited by senellart, michel., ewald, francois and alessandro fontana. chippenham and eastbourne: palgrave macmillan. foucault, michel (2007): securtiy, territory, population. lectures at the collège de france 19771978. senellart, michel., ewald, francois and alessandro fontana. new york: picador. foucault, michel (2004): ‘sicherheit, territorium, bevölkerung‘. vorlesung am collège de france 1977-1978. in: sennelart, michel (ed.): geschichte der gouvernementalität i. frankfurt a.m.: suhrkamp. foucault, michel (1997): the politics of truth. edited by lotringer, sylvère and lysa hochroth. new york: semiotext(e). politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 26 46 gane, mike (2008): ‘foucault on governmentality and liberalism’, theory, culture & society 25 (7–8): 353–363. gertenbach, lars (2010): die kultivierung des marktes: foucault und die gouvernementalität des neoliberalismus, 3rd ed. berlin: parodos verlag. hayek, friedrich august von (2003): recht, gesetz und freiheit. eine neufassung der liberalen grundsätze der gerechtigkeit und der politischen ökonomie. edited by viktor vanberg. 1st ed. tübingen: mohr siebeck. hayek, friedrich august von (1981): ‘ungleichheit ist nötig‘. interview in wirtschaftswoche 06.03.1981: 36-40. heywood, andrew (2011): global politics. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. hix, simon and bjørn høyland, (2011): the political system of the european union, 3rd ed. london: palgrave macmillan. lemke, thomas (2008): gouvernementalität und biopolitik, 2nd ed. wiesbaden: vs verlag für sozialwissenschaften. moghadam, reza and hugh bredenkamp (2013): ‘greece: third review under the extended arrangement under the extended fund facility—staff report; staff statement; press release; and statement by the executive director for greece’. imf country report 13/153. washington, d.c.: international monetary fund. palley, thomas i. 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(2003): gouvernementalität: ein sozialwissenschaftliches konzept im anschluss an foucault. frankfurt a. m.: campus verlag. psimitis, michalis (2011): ‘the protest cycle of spring 2010 in greece’, social movement studies: journal of social, cultural and political protest 10 (2): 191-197. pühl, katharina (2008): ‚zur ent-sicherung von geschlechterverhältnissen, wohlfahrtsstaat und sozialpolitik. gouvernementalität der entgarantierung und prekarisierung‘. in: purtschert, patricia, meyer, katrin and yves winter (eds.): gouvernementalität und sicherheit. zeitdiagnostische beiträge im anschluss an foucault. bielefeld: transcript verlag: 103-126. pühl, katharina (2003): ‘der bericht der hartz-kommission und die ,unternehmerin ihrer selbst´: geschlechterverhältnisse, gouvernementalität und neoliberalismus‘. in: pieper, marianne and encarnación gutiérrez rodríguez (eds.): gouvernementalität: ein sozialwissenschaftliches konzept im anschluss an foucault. frankfurt a. m.: campus verlag: 111-135. ricardo, david (1817): the principals of political economy and taxation. homewood: irwin. smith, adam (1776): an inquiry into the nature and the causes of the wealth of nations. chicago: chicago university press. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 26 47 vlachou, adriana (2012): ‘the greek economy in turmoil’, rethinking marxism: a journal of economics, culture & society 24 (2): 171-200. williamson, john (1993): ‘democracy and the „washington consensus”’, world development 21 (8): 1329-1336. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 7 jordan peterson and the (f)law of ‘scientific inquiry’: a critical evaluation of peterson’s use of science and philosophy in his conquest against social justice david guignion https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.41.1 david guignion is a doctoral student in media studies at the university of western ontario, ontario, canada. his master’s thesis explored the intersection of jean baudrillard’s work with posthumanism. e-mail: dguignio@uwo.ca abstract this article explores jordan peterson’s political project in response to canada’s legislation of bill c-16, a bill seeking to add gender expression to the list of grounds for discrimination under the criminal code. peterson opposes bill c-16 because it presents, for him, an ideological mode of speech and thought regulation. for peterson, this bill is the result of the decline of scientific validity and the rise of a postmodernism motivated by the desire to undermine western civilization. therefore, this article argues that peterson’s challenge to postmodern thought as an anti-scientific doctrine is perplexing given the general lack of consensus between his views and those of the greater scientific community. the article presents different theoretical frameworks attesting to the reality of gender non-conforming identities as well as to the consequences of denying these identities, and argues that rather than challenging oppressive systems of governance, peterson’s project actually mirrors them. keywords friedrich nietzsche; gender; hannah arendt; jean baudrillard; jordan peterson; judith butler; totalitarianism; trans-identities https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.41.1 mailto:dguignio@uwo.ca politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 8 introduction if all enigmas are resolved, the stars go out. if everything secret is returned to the visible […], if all illusion is returned to transparence then heaven become indifferent to the earth. —jean baudrillard (2008a: 79) what is the purpose, and, worse still, what is the origin of all science? what? is scientific method perhaps no more than fear of and flight from pessimism? a subtle defence against truth? or, to put it in moral terms, is it something like cowardice and insincerity? to put it immorally, is it a form of cunning? o, socrates, socrates, was that perhaps your secret? o, mysterious ironist, was this perhaps your irony? —friedrich nietzsche (2007: 4) on september 27th 2016, jordan peterson, a psychology professor at the university of toronto, released a youtube video of himself speaking out against bill c-16, a law proposed by the canadian government that would add “gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination in the canadian human rights act and [to] the list of characteristics of identifiable groups protected from hate propaganda in the criminal code” (parliament of canada, 2016). for peterson, and many of his right-wing followers, bill c-16 represents a shift towards an impending totalitarian regime that seeks to restrict freedom of speech and deny scientific reason. as he stated in an address to a group of students at the university of toronto, “i have studied totalitarianism for four decades and i know how it starts” (peterson, 2016a). according to peterson, anyone that agrees with and promotes bill c-16 must necessarily oppose “logic,” “dialogue,” and “western civilization” (peterson, 2017a). peterson’s video, along with his vocal refusal to adopt gender-neutral pronouns, marked the beginning of peterson’s rise to fame. this article discusses jordan peterson’s crusade against bill c-16 in order to challenge his utilization of scientific discourse to promote his ideological position on contemporary social issues. his arguments can be difficult to follow as they are riddled with aporias and contradictions that make a coherent analysis nearly impossible. for example, he has been vocal about his fear of a looming totalitarian regime while simultaneously calling for the complete abolishment of the ontario human rights commission that serves to “promote and enforce human rights, to engage in relationships that embody the principles of dignity and respect, and to create a culture of human rights compliance and accountability” (ontario human rights commission). despite this, this article categorizes his overall project into three broad conceptual domains: his arguments about postmodernism, his “scientific” discourse, and gender identity. the article traverses each of these domains sequentially, giving credence to his arguments by constructing them in a coherent manner to allow for a steady theoretical terrain from which to mount this polemic. this strategy is employed to give a face to an politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 9 otherwise faceless argument and to make this dialogue possible. in relation to these three domains, this article presents counter-arguments and evidence that destabilize the facile deployment of a scientific rationality by peterson and his allies and therefore calls into question many of his central claims. this paper moves through each of these domains methodically, beginning with his juxtaposition of postmodernism with neo-marxism, all the while claiming to be a faithful reader to friedrich nietzsche. this section demonstrates not only that postmodernism and neo-marxism are two incommensurable terms, but that nietzsche’s work has heavily influenced what peterson labels postmodernism. moreover, this section attempts to destabilize his problematic association of postmodern philosophy with totalitarianism. to do this, this paper invokes hannah arendt’s the origins of totalitarianism (1994), a seminal text on the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century. this use of arendt’s theorization of the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century serves as a plea for peterson and his followers to recognize the parallels between those movements in the 20th century and much of the rhetoric that dominates our social zeitgeist today. moving from this domain, the second section presents divergent scientific data that attests to the reality of trans* identities. this section presents a number of scientific studies on the increasing risk experienced by trans* people today and the measures that should be taken to alleviate these risks. this section will serve the purpose of demonstrating the fragility of so-called scientific rationality and will call into question his axiomatic faith in science as universal and ahistorical. the third and final section presents the voices of those marginalized by peterson and his allies in an effort to highlight the present efforts by marginalized folks to resist the erasure committed by peterson. this section places these marginalized voices, and their theoretical approaches alongside the work of jean baudrillard and his consideration of simulation and singularity. the incommensurability of marxism and postmodernism peterson predicates a great deal of his political work on the flawed assumption that postmodernism is a threatening political doctrine that derives from marxism. he often characterizes social activism as being propagated by “bloody neo-marxists” who wish to promote postmodernism, a “pernicious and philosophically primitive and nihilistic doctrine” (peterson, 2016c). peterson argues that the rise of postmodernism constitutes the first step in replacing basic scientific tenets with “radical social constructionism” (peterson, 2016c), a theoretical framework that would, according to him, allow the left to replace a so-called objective truth rooted in biology and genetics with a socially constructed human identity. he adds, in one of his many public lectures, that postmodernism is a “well developed and pervasive, pernicious, nihilistic, intellectually attractive doctrine” that now “dominates the humanities and…social sciences” (peterson, 2017a). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 10 furthermore, peterson suggests that european marxist thought, defined by richard d. wolff and stephen cullenberg as a theory that distinguishes “the production and distribution of surplus labor from…matters of property and power” (wolff and cullenberg, 1986: 128), has been re-appropriated by contemporary postmodernists who have transposed the hegemonic marxist relationship of “poor against rich” onto the broader postmodernist domain of the “oppressed against the oppressor” (peterson, 2017a). with this argument, he therefore suggests that postmodernism is merely a clever marxist “sleight of hand” (peterson, 2017a) seeking, like its marxist predecessor, to undermine the west. clare hemmings problematizes this approach to postmodernism and marxism by emphasizing some of the most significant differences between the two theoretical frameworks. she writes that postmodernism’s “attention to complexity of meaning and interpretation distracted us from [the] more substantive concerns with inequality, experience, political economy, and justice” (hemmings, 2011: 97) that marxism attends to. hemmings extends this analysis by suggesting that, without a marxist— or other tangible approach to critical theory— “we remain powerless to alter the pernicious power relations our poststructuralist tactics can cleverly identify but spectacularly fail to transform” (hemmings, 2011: 97-8). hemmings’s point stresses the lack of consistency between marxist and poststructuralist theories, demonstrating their fundamental incongruency in the domain of political action, with the former emphasizing a radical transformation of capitalism into a socialist system, and the latter belonging to the domain of theory interested in the immaterial conditions of signification. jean baudrillard, referred to by some as the “high priest of postmodernism” (1993a, 21), is one such figure that greatly disturbs peterson’s conflation of marxist and postmodern theories. in the mirror of production, baudrillard vehemently challenges marxism, asking: “are we, quite simply, within a mode of production at all, and have we ever been in one?” (baudrillard, 1973: 124). baudrillard extends this question by turning his critical gaze back on marxism, suggesting that marxism is predicated on the fundamentally eurocentric tenets of “productivism, scientism, and historicism” (baudrillard, 1973: 73), and that it homogenizes earlier societies under the “light of the present structure of the capitalist economy” therefore silencing specific sociohistorical contexts, projecting onto them “the spectral light of political economy” (beaudrillard, 1973: 66). this book marked a fundamental turning point in baudrillard’s work as he grew wary of the possibility that marxism could actually provide the blueprints for an effective mode of societal change. postmodernism, as demonstrated with baudrillard’s work, does not share an indubitable affinity with marxism, but actually condemns it. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 11 baudrillard is not the only thinker indicative of postmodernism to be critical of marxism however. michel foucault, who peterson argues attempted to “resurrect marxism” (peterson, 2017b), is another such figure of the so-called postmodern tradition that has been highly critical of marxism. in the order of things, he systematically avoids discussing marxism in terms of economic theory in favour many other liberal approaches to economics indicative of the work of adam smith and françois quesnay. foucault does this because, as he makes abundantly clear, he believes that “marxism exists in nineteenth century thought like a fish in water: that is, it is unable to breathe anywhere else” (foucault, 2005: 285). this sentiment resonates in harmony with the overarching themes of his work because he refuses to acknowledge that societal ills, or power, can be reduced to a single structural locus. thus, foucault is highly sceptical of the possibility of a meaningful societal revolution because, without a comprehensive evaluation of the plethora of institutions that govern our daily lives, we risk perpetuating the same oppressive schema. peterson’s definition of postmodernism, however, seems to exclude this type of postmodernist critique of marxism. for him, the contemporary postmodern movement is simply a “new skin that the old marxism now inhabits” made up of nihilistic yet dominating “neo-marxists” guided by a desire to dismantle the “structure of western civilization” (2017d). although peterson’s fears of nihilism, or the disavowal of moral or ethical principles, may appear sound, his contradictory position on postmodernism as both fundamentally nihilistic and actively dominating delegitimate one of his central concerns. additionally, the thinkers that peterson cites as representatives of the postmodern movement—michel foucault and jacques derrida—were greatly indebted to the western philosophical and literary canons with some commentators even labeling them “neokantians” (meštrović, 2013: 154). peterson’s reduction of these thinkers to philosophical aberrations, detached from western civilization, illuminates his own obliviousness to said canon. peterson, arendt, and totalitarianism in peterson’s maps of meaning he tries to grapple with and understand the historical instantiations of state mandated fascist and totalitarianism in the 20th century. one of the central questions he asks is, “how was it possible for people to act the way the nazis had during world war ii?” (peterson, 1999: xii). what is particularly striking is that peterson makes no significant use of hannah arendt, the thinker of fascism and totalitarianism par excellence. he does mention her briefly however, suggesting that her seminal text, the banality of evil would have been more appropriately titled “’the evil of banality’” (peterson, 1999: 369). the absence of arendt’s work in peterson’s exploration of these themes is suspicious, and signals that his understanding of totalitarianism is missing integral philosophical insight. this is particularly true of the lineage he traces between nihilism and the development of totalitarianism. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 12 even if we were to overlook the contradictory nature of peterson’s position on nihilism and political praxis, and were to engage with his scientific terms immanently, his linking of nihilism with totalitarianism remains problematic. as hannah arendt argues in the origins of totalitarianism, “indifference to public affairs [and] neutrality on political issues, are in themselves no sufficient cause for the rise of totalitarian movements” (arendt, 1994: 313). according to arendt, it is the “strong man” rather than the indifferent public that has historically lead to the rise of totalitarian regimes. as she explains, competitive and hostile “attitudes are very useful for those forms of dictatorship in which a ‘strong man’ takes upon himself the troublesome responsibility for the conduct of public affairs” (arendt, 1994: 313) and hardly conform to traditional or typical definitions of nihilism. though arendt’s observations regarding the “strong man” and totalitarianism more broadly are based on her experiences during the jewish holocaust, many of her theories seem to run parallel to peterson’s claims regarding scientific rationality and human nature. this is not to say that peterson directly emulates the fascist movements of the 20th century, as that comparison would be erroneous and misguided. rather, arendt’s description of the “strong man” as founded upon “the belief in a kind of human ‘nature’ which would be subject to the same laws of growth as that of the individual” (arendt, 1994: 298) shares a strong affinity with peterson’s persistent reliance on essentialist positions, as illustrated in statements about “essential female [and] masculine patholog[ies]” (peterson, 2017e). arendt elaborates on these “essentialist beliefs” as irrelevant since “western philosophy and religion” has been defining and redefining it “for more than three thousand years” (arendt, 1994: 298). furthermore, such assumptions do very little to protect the rights of those who we consider human but still deprive of “expression within and acting upon a common world” (arendt, 1994: 302). these sorts of oppressive mechanisms through which human nature is established and used to justify the removal of legal and/or political rights were used quite successfully by the nazi regime during the second world war. as arendt explains, “the nazis started their extermination of jews by first depriving them of all legal status” (arendt, 1994: 296) and then depriving them of their homes (arendt, 1994: 293), therefore leaving them without “territory and (…) government of their own” (arendt, 1994: 19). by expelling the jewish people from any “community willing and able to guarantee any rights whatsoever,” the nazis were therefore able to expel them from humanity itself (arendt, 1994: 297). the oppressive mechanisms adopted by the nazis are not only observable in the context of the second world war, however, and can in fact be observed today. as mary ellen donnan reveals in the shattered mosaic: how canadian social structures cause homelessness (2016), “the national data indicates that although only about 10% of the general youth population identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual, or two-spirited, people who identify in those ways make up 25 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 13 to 40% of the youth homeless population” (donnan, 2016: 60). interestingly, such statistics are ignored by peterson, who prefers instead to claim that bill c-16 only poses a threat to freedom of speech. this attitude is exemplified in an address given at the university of toronto in which peterson stated, in response to a trans* person’s concerns: “i don’t believe that using your pronouns will do you any good in the long run” (peterson, 2016b). peterson’s silence on issues of poverty and homelessness in the trans* community in canada, combined with his aggressive stance against laws that seek to recognize trans* people and protect them from discrimination, mirror the tactics used by totalitarian regimes (such as the nazi regime) to oppress marginalized communities. nietzsche and postmodernism as previously discussed, peterson’s construction of contemporary social activism as a nihilistic and dangerous threat to western values and scientific discourse born out of the postmodern movement is dependent on the axiom that the “fundamental assumptions of western civilization are valid” (peterson, 2017c). though peterson centers most of his core arguments around this “fundamental assumption,” his appreciation for friedrich nietzsche, a theorist described by the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy as a “precursor for postmodernism in his genealogical analyses of fundamental concepts, especially what he takes to be the core concept of western metaphysics” (alesworth, 2015), remains unshaken. in the birth of tragedy, nietzsche argues that the notions of “truth” that run through the course of history are founded, not on their objectivity, but in their continual self-proclamation of objectivity. for nietzsche, the shift from language to science placed the scientific method at the forefront of western civilization, making everything quantifiable under the scientific gaze. as he explains, “it is language which works on building the edifice of concepts; later it is science” (nietzsche, 2007: 150). nietzsche expands on this idea, writing: “what i understand by the spirit of science is the belief, which first came to light in the person of socrates, that the depths of nature can be fathomed and that knowledge can heal all ills” (nietzsche, 2007: 82). according to nietzsche, this belief in the ultimate infallibility of science, or “socrates' tendency to murder art” (nietzsche, 2007: 82), is destructive, especially when left unacknowledged. to nietzsche, science is “truly capable of confining the individual within the smallest circle of solvable tasks” (nietzsche, 2007: 85). as he explains, “science, spurred on by its powerful delusion, is hurrying unstoppably to its limits, where the optimism hidden in the essence of logic will founder and break up” (nietzsche, 2007: 75). there is no thinker that would stand as opposed to peterson as nietzsche, whom peterson repeatedly cites and applauds in his 12 rules for life: an antidote to chaos. peterson has remarked of nietzsche that he is as an “absolute intellectual tour de force of staggering magnitude” (peterson, 2017f) and that he has influenced “every philosopher of the modern age [in] one way or another” (peterson, politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 14 2017g). 12 rules for life, proclaiming the necessity for people (young men) to adopt an ascetic lifestyle in the form of a mutated christian conservatism, stands diametrically opposed to nietzsche’s central claim in the genealogy of morality that the ascetic ideal is not something to strive for, but is rather the consequence of a life attempting to inject artificial meaning into its veins in a poor attempt at inoculation from degeneration (nietzsche, 2017: 89). in this capacity, peterson resembles the “ascetic priest” that nietzsche castigates (nietzsche, 2017: 89). the task of intellectuals should not be to inject arbitrary rules and regulations into people, but rather to foster “perspectival seeing” that welcomes “more eyes, various eyes we are able to use” to sketch a more complete understanding of our “objectivity” (nietzsche, 2017: 89). according to peterson, the western scientific discourse he holds so dear is not merely threatened by a general postmodern movement made up of nameless “neo-marxist” social justice warriors, but rather, may be seen in specific actions taken by the members of this movement. these specific threats are especially apparent in relation to challenges made to the male/female binary. as peterson explains, legislation (such as the proposed bill c-16) that seeks to expand gender categories is “patently absurd” (peterson, 2016c) and undeniably driven by “ideologues” that want to push “made up words” (peterson, 2017h). peterson is not so much concerned with the so-called ‘absurdity’ of these challenges as he is with the threat they pose to his belief system. for peterson, “rational discourse,” “objectivity” and “scientific inquiry” (peterson, 2017i) must necessarily be silenced for non-binary gender identities to exist and, because these concepts are paramount to eurocentrism and the “success” of the west, peterson dismisses any questions about their validity as intrinsically unfounded. with this dismissal, peterson therefore eliminates the potential for any meaningful dialogue that may not align itself with his fixed opinions. peterson’s project is an attempt then to move away from the nietzschean notion of “perspectival seeing” toward the domains of ahistorical, and acontextual seeing. this narrowing of possibility operates to maintain the authority of those who choose what is considered worth seeing, and through what means, pushing society toward the sovereign and dictatorial rule. the ‘science’ vs. peterson though peterson’s line of argumentation seems to suggest a science/postmodernism opposition, a considerable number of scientific journals have published articles addressing the growing stigmatization and discrimination trans and genderqueer people experience regularly. such articles, though they conform to the same scientific rationale utilized by peterson, shed light on the great deal of contradictions, oppositions and divergent beliefs in this supposedly “objective” field of study. these studies correspond to the domain of research that aligns with the aristotelian maxim of phronesis, which may be understood as fostering “practical, intellectual activity aimed at clarifying politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 15 the problems, risks, and possibilities we face as humans and societies” (flyvbjerg, 2001: 4). this approach, although still immersed in the scientific tradition, stands opposed to the other domain of aristotelian reason of episteme that proclaims the a priori nature of “scientific knowledge” (flyvbjerg, 2001: 2). this brand of research, while disavowed by peterson, presents a foray into the lives and experiences of marginalized groups that would otherwise be silenced. in their article, “transgender population size in the united states: a meta-regression of population-based probability samples” for example, esther l. meerwijk and jay m. sevelius demonstrate just how restrictive and inefficient the gender binary can be for so many people in the u.s. in their study, meerwijk and sevelius report that approximately 1.2 million people do not identify with their “sex assigned at birth” (meerwijk and sevelius , 2017: 1), adding that this estimate would rise by “1.5 times” if it were to also include other forms of gender nonconformity (meerwijk and sevelius , 2017: 1). divan et al. confirm this position, arguing in their study that the “recognition as human beings” of trans* and genderqueer folk requires “a guarantee of (…) core rights that recognize [the] legal personhood” of these individuals (divan et al., 2016: 81). still, to divan et al., the acknowledgement of someone’s gender identity is just the first step. as they explain, “preventing human rights violations and social exclusion is key to [a] sustainable and equitable development” (divan et al., 2016, 82) that can only be established with “systemic strategies to reduce the violence against trans people” occurring, necessarily, “at multiple levels” (divan et al., 2016: 81). the harmful consequences of the stigmatization faced by trans* people are further discussed in a study published in the archives of neuropsychiatry of istanbul in march of 2017. this study, which included 99 transmen and 42 transwomen participants, reported that the “overall incidence of at least one suicide attempt among participants was 29.8%” and that of those that did attempt to commit suicide, 76.7% were under the age of 21 (şahika yüksel, et al., 2017: 29). furthermore, its authors suggest that as youth begin to familiarize themselves with their own identity, “heterosexist false information, which normalizes binary gender” can lead to the “internalization of transphobia, self-blame, shame, and problems that can continue into adult life” (şahika yüksel, et al., 2017: 30). still, suicide is just one possible mode of harm that trans* people may regularly experience. this disavowal of gender identities and sexualities, and the continual denial of adequate health care, social care, and housing diminish any opportunity to generate a more accepting and open environment free of stigmatization and discrimination. the standardization of a limited gender binary that recognizes only two, stable gender categories based on physical sex at birth combined with the persistent refusal to acknowledge identities that defy this system seems, therefore, to cause much greater harm than do the so-called “neo-marxists” peterson is so deeply concerned about. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 16 despite the growing body of scientific literature that supports and recognizes more fluid definitions of sex and gender while acknowledging the harmful effects of the oppression faced by trans* and genderqueer individuals, jordan peterson continues to argue that attempts made to redefine and recognize a wider range of gender expressions and identities is a simple “construction of people who have a political ideology” (peterson, 2016d). for peterson then, there is simply no way to make sense of trans* and/or genderqueer individuals within the realm of western scientific discourse and, therefore, any gender identity that does not conform to his “objective” and “scientific” definition of gender as fixed binary system related to biological sex must be invalid and therefore repudiated. peterson’s erasure through disavowal of trans* peoples’ chosen preferred pronouns consequently locates cisgender identities within the realm of ‘reality,’ and any other nonnormative gender identities within the realm of artificiality. baudrillard, reality, and truth peterson’s categorization of people based on their connection to a “real” biological imperative or ideologically motivated political strategy implies that there is an essential reality pertaining to gender identity that exists across cultural epistemes and historical epochs.2 though peterson suggests that there is a fundamental “truth” pertaining to identity, and that this “truth” can be rigorously supported with the use of scientific methods, his claims do not account for the possibility that the gender binary is itself an ideologically motivated tool, and that there may in fact be no ultimate “truth” pertaining to gender identity. jean baudrillard has vigorously challenged the position held by scholars such as peterson on objectivity and “truth,” suggesting instead that “science, like any discourse, is organized on the basis of a conventional logic” adding that it “explains things which have been defined and formulized in advance and which subsequently conform to these explanations” (baudrillard, 1993b: 61). the studies presented above, remaining faithful to the aristotelian notion of phronesis, resonate in concert with baudrillard’s theorization of science because they do not refuse that science is valid and results may be concluded from them, but that these conclusions should not be transposed onto any societal or cultural context. therefore, despite the many attempts to dissuade a baudrillardian praxis for scientific conduct, these studies speak to the late baudrillard’s conception of singularity which holds that “every detail of the world is perfect if it is not referred to some larger set” (baudrillard, 2005: 140). this turn to baudrillard then may appear ironic given the implicit rejection of postmodernism by peterson and many other members of the 2 of course, not all trans* people locate themselves outside of the gender binary. those people reserve every right to identify how they choose, even if it subscribes the dominant notion of the gender binary. the goal of this argument is not to condemn, in any way, trans* people who fit within the gender binary, but to suggest that the gender binary is but one of a plethora of ways to look at gender identity and expression. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 17 scientific community. however, this paper sketches a version of baudrillardian theory that speaks to the aristotelian notion of phronesis to broaden the conceptual and physical possibility of scientific research. prior to exploring baudrillard, it is important to consider the way that contemporary psychological research has become attuned to the nature of simulation in understanding humans and their relationships to the world. lisa feldman barrett, professor of psychology at northeastern university, has greatly challenged what she calls the “classical view of emotion” that maintains there to be universal attributes to human emotion and interaction. in her how emotions are made: the secret life of the brain, she disturbs this classical view by suggesting that the world is understood by humans through “simulations,” which dictates what we “see, hear, touch, taste and smell” (barrett, 2017: 27). moreover, these simulations can “cause tangible changes in your body” (barrett, 2017: 28). while barrett does not draw a direct parallel between her own work and that of baudrillard, there are many parallels between their conceptions of simulation. this is because, like baudrillard, barrett is trying to wrest the broader scientific community from the clutches of transcendental, universalistic assumptions regarding emotion and the human body. barrett proposes that we become attuned to our relationship to simulation opposed to these transcendent principles because “people spend at least half their waking hours simulating rather than paying attention to the world around them, and this pure simulation strongly drives their feelings” (barrett, 2017: 71). reality, for baudrillard, is always caught in a play of signification, and suggestions of a “naturality” made by the authoritative scientific community mistake the only true nature of the world as a world of appearances in which there may not be “anything but a discourse of the real and the rational” (baudrillard, 2008b: 14). according to baudrillard then, notions of an objective “truth” are fundamentally flawed and any attempt to occupy an objective field of study is bound to fail and merely become “signs: signifiers of a ‘real’ signified” (baudrillard, 1973: 48). the fundamental impossibility of performing “objective” studies and/or of revealing fundamental truths is understood by baudrillard and his theory of simulation. for baudrillard, simulation occurs when “the world has become real beyond our wildest expectations” (baudrillard, 2008b: 65) and can be described as the outcome of a calculated move to put the “illusion of the world to death” (baudrillard, 2008b: 17). scientific discourses that rely on notions of objectivity and “truth” therefore dissolve “into the imaginary of the sign, or the sphere of truth” (baudrillard, 2008b: 17) and leave us with reality (and therefore simulation) in all its glory. the ‘real’ then, is “merely a particular case of that simulation” (2008b: 17) that baudrillard argues “allows our society to think itself and live itself as superior to all others” (baudrillard, 1973: 113). jordan peterson’s politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 18 understanding of the world as fixed, stable, and decipherable through the use of science therefore operates to uphold and reinforce the realm of oppressive simulation. for baudrillard, the only adequate way to challenge peterson’s oppressive rhetoric within this realm of simulation is to engage with “seduction,” a concept he defines as the “symbolic mastery of forms” (baudrillard, 2003: 24). rather than attempt to understand the world as existing outside of appearances, representation, or ideology, seduction diverts things from “their identity, their reality, to destine them for the play of appearances, for their symbolic exchange” (baudrillard, 2003: 21). baudrillard’s “seduction” opposes peterson’s scientific discourse precisely because seduction is able to engage with the world at the level of appearances. this approach remains faithful to his concept of singularity as it takes cultural formations, in the demonstration of rites and rituals, as immanent in any culturally faithful analysis in the form of science or otherwise. this line of argumentation may be observed in baudrillard’s earlier work when he argues that “only a critique of the political economy of the sign can analyze how the present mode of domination is able to regain, integrate and simultaneously take advantage of […] all previous,’ archaic’ modes of production and exchange, infraor transeconomic (baudrillard, 1981: 120). baudrillard’s work can then be read as not necessarily opposing the domain of scientific inquiry, but accounting for the degree to which any scientific inquiry should be attuned to the cultural and significator conditions of the object of study. this critique of the political economy of the sign functions to simultaneously address the nature of signification, while simultaneously challenging the historical and cultural instantiations that have culminated in its potentially oppressive existence. without this sort of criticism, we run the risk of perpetuating the notion of a “real” method or approach to criticism that mobilizes the discursive and scientific tools of eurocentric enlightenment thinking that has been so categorically responsible for much of the hegemonic oppression that we find ourselves associated with today. it is in this capacity that baudrillard is particularly effective at putting forth a methodological imperative for the realization of the aristotelian notion of phronesis because he refuses to suggest that there is a single way to conduct research, but that research and science may adapt to accommodate the given societal or cultural moment. baudrillard, butler, and those voices of the marginalized the trans* community is one example of a community that challenges the greater system at hand through a radical re-evaluation of the hyper-normalized position of cisgender people. riley j. dennis, a trans* contributor to the internet site everyday feminism, disturbs the strict relationship between gender and sex when she argues that “sex is not a biological fact because it is determined by things that are largely changeable” (dennis, 2017). still, this is not to say that trans*identity is inherently opposed to any biological ‘fact.’ as riki lane explains, if we simply dismiss ‘‘‘biologism,’ politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 19 we forget that there really is biology that we have to theorize through investigating what is natural, biological, social, and cultural and how these categories develop and condition one another in discourse” (lane, 2009: 138). rather, biology should be subjected to the same discursive challenge as is mobilized against the dichotomization of gender. this radical challenge to the scientific validity of the dichotomization of biological sex presents a baudrillardian “reversal.” this reversal occurs when biological sex is inverted to mirror the highly unsteady terrain of gender identity. no longer is gender something that is predicated on the objective finality of ‘sex,’ but it is ‘sex’ that is reversed to be predicated on the fundamental uncertainty of gender identity. in this instance, sex is seduced away from the objective finality of its biological imperative, toward the “form which tends always to unsettle someone in their identity and the meaning they can have for themselves” (baudrillard, 2003: 22). judith butler adds to this theory, arguing that gender “ought not to be construed as a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow; rather, gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts” (butler, 2002: 179). by challenging peterson’s understanding of the male/female binary as inextricably linked to a transcendental natural apparatus, butler confirms baudrillard’s theory of simulation, outlining the play of appearances and signification emblematic of simulation and of gender. as she explains, the “replication of heterosexual constructs in non-heterosexual frames brings into relief the utterly constructed status of the so-called heterosexual original. thus, gay is to straight not as copy is to original, but, rather, as copy is to copy” (butler, 2002: 41). as both baudrillard and butler demonstrate, to acknowledge the fluidity, diversity, and multiplicity of gender as a social construct allows us to move closer to the reality of the world, not further away from it. assumptions about gender as belonging to fixed binary system, however, illustrate our denial of the world as illusion and, therefore, further remove us from our world. perhaps baudrillard says it best when he writes that at all events, illusion is indestructible. the world as it is—which is not at all the ‘real’ world –perpetually eludes the investigation of meaning, thus causing the present catastrophe of the apparatus of production of the ‘real’ world, so true is it that illusion cannot be combatted with truth—that is merely to redouble the illusion—but only be a higher illusion (baudrillard, 2008b: 19). jordan peterson is characteristically emblematic of a drive to purge the world of all illusion. his reliance on scientific rationale, and a very specific scientific rationale at that, attaches meaning to a world that is first and foremost unnatural. for peterson, there is a “truth” beneath the illusion. with enough science, reason and rationality, this “truth” may be attained from under the heavy politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 20 weight of illusion that clouds our judgment and intellect. peterson’s failure to ask if the only truth of the world is that beneath the bedrock of illusion there is only a greater illusion feeds the progression of western archaeological excavation into illusion and drives this machine of modernity deeper into the bedrock of illusion than ever before. what will remain then, once the final illusion has been purged? conclusion this paper has attempted to present many of the philosophical and psychological shortcomings of jordan peterson’s work. by drawing upon a plethora of sources from academic circles indicative of the “hard” and “soft” sciences to the philosophical tradition of the humanities to voices of those marginalized outside of academia, this paper has demonstrated the range of perspectives that oppose and resist many of the facile claims put forth by peterson. beyond locating the various contradictions and fallacious remarks peterson makes, this paper has also argued that peterson’s assault against bill c-16 risks mirroring the same systemic instantiations of totalitarianism that he claims to know so much about. to re-iterate, this is not to suggest that he represents these movements directly, but that there are many affinities between these oppressive ideological systems and peterson’s faith in a universal conception of truth. this paper serves the purpose of mounting a philosophically analytic rebuttal to peterson’s central claims by performing an immanent critique, pointing to the many shortcomings of his speculations, and locating epistemic fallacies that may be observed in his ideas. this is a necessary form of critique because, unlike the hegelian mode of oppositional politics that poses a critique from an antithetical and exterior positionality, this form identifies the core of the theoretical inadequacy of peterson’s project from the inside. references alesworth, gary (2015): ‘postmodernism’, stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. accessible at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/ (16 june 2017) arendt, hannah (1994): the origins of totalitarianism. 2nd edition. new york: harcourt, inc. barrett, lisa feldman (2017): how emotions are made: the secret life of the brain. new york: mariner books. baudrillard, jean (1973): the mirror of production. trans. m. poster. st. louis: telos press. baudrillard, jean (1981): for a critique of the political economy of the sign. trans. charles levin. london: telos press. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/ politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 21 baudrillard, jean (1993a): “a virtual state of rupture”, in mike gane (ed.) baudrillard live. new york: routledge. baudrillard, jean (1993b): symbolic exchange & death. trans. i. hamilton grant. london: sage publications inc. baudrillard, jean (2003): passwords. trans. c. turner. new york: verso. baudrillard, jean (2005): the intelligence of evil: or the lucidity pact. transl. c. turner. london: bloomsbury. baudrillard, jean (2008a): fatal strategies. trans. p. beitchman and w.g. j niesluchowski. los angeles: semiotext(e). baudrillard, jean (2008b): the perfect crime. trans. c. turner. new york: verso. butler, judith (2002): gender trouble. new york: routledge. canada (2016): ‘bill c-16: first reading’, parliament of canada. accessible at http://www.parl.ca/documentviewer/en/42-1/bill/c-16/first-reading (17 may 2016). dennis, riley j. (2017) ‘no, trans women are not “biologically male”’. everyday feminism. accessible at: https://everydayfeminism.com/2017/02/trans-women-not-biologically-male/ (10 february 2017). divan, vivek, et al. (2016): ‘transgender social inclusion and equality: a pivotal path to development’, journal of the international aids society 19(2): pp. 79-84. doi: https://doi.org/10.7448/ias.19.3.20803 donnan, mary ellen (2016): the shattered mosaic: how canadian social structures cause homelessness. vernon: jcharlton publishing ltd flyvbjerg, bent (2001): making social science matter: why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again. cambridge: cambridge university press. hemmings, clare (2011): why stories matter: a political grammar of feminist theory. london: duke university press. lane, riki (2009): ‘trans as bodily becoming: rethinking the biological as diversity, not dichotomy’, hypatia 24(3): pp. 136-157. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2009.01049.x meerwijk, esther l. and jay m. sevelius (2017): ‘transgender population size in the united states: a meta-regression of population-based probability samples’. american journal of public health 107(2): pp. 1-8. doi: https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2016.303578 http://www.parl.ca/documentviewer/en/42-1/bill/c-16/first-reading https://everydayfeminism.com/2017/02/trans-women-not-biologically-male/ https://doi.org/10.7448/ias.19.3.20803 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2009.01049.x https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2016.303578 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 22 meštrović, stjepan (1993): the barbarian temperament: toward a postmodern critical theory. new york: routledge. nietzsche, friedrich (2007): the birth of tragedy. 9 ed. trans. r. spiers. united kingdom: cambridge university press. nietzsche, friedrich (2017): on the genealogy of morality. 3 ed. trans. k. ansell-pearson. ed. carol diethe. united kingdom: cambridge university press. ontario human rights commission (n.d.) “about the commission.” http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/about-commission. oxford english dictionary, ‘nihilism’,. accessible at https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/nihilism (15 june, 2017). peterson, jordan (1999): maps of meaning: the architecture of belief. new york: routledge. peterson, jordan (2016a): ‘prof jordan peterson speaks at university of toronto protest’, youtube: 8:37. posted by genuinewitty. accessible at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=halpjmiakdw. peterson, jordan (2016b): ‘professor jordan peterson swarmed by narcissistic sjw ideologues after uoft rally’, youtube: 13:20. posted by katrina flemming. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-nvnacvupe&t=1s peterson, jordan (2016c): ‘prof. jordan peterson: “absurd” that biological sex and “gender identity” are independent”’, youtube: 2:20. posted by rebel media. accessible at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dbkjv6566c. peterson, jordan (2016d): ‘genders, rights and freedom of speech’, youtube: 54:58. posted by the agenda with steve paikan. accessible at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kasiov0ytec. peterson, jordan (2017a): ‘jordan peterson: why you have to fight postmodernism’, youtube: 12:00. posted by philosophyinsights. accessible at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpojltjv4m0 peterson, jordan (2017b): ‘jordan peterson foucault the reprehensible & derrida the trickster,’ youtube: 10:56. posted by bite-sized philosophy. accessible at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbfsdd_5tie&t=50s. peterson, jordan (2017c): ‘dr. jordan peterson on western civilization every "snowflake" should hear this!’, youtube: 2:35. posted by ocean of freedom accessible at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxy17y2gb4m. consulted july 1st, 2017. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/nihilism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=halpjmiakdw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-nvnacvupe&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dbkjv6566c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kasiov0ytec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpojltjv4m0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbfsdd_5tie&t=50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxy17y2gb4m politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 23 peterson, jordan (2017d): ‘jordan peterson exposes the postmodernist agenda (part 1 of 7)’, youtube: 6:31. posted by epoch times. accessible at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pknzyttjshe peterson, jordan (2017e): ‘jordan peterson on becoming an independent person’, youtube: 6:33. posted by personality owl. accessible at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbru-xnk5ru peterson, jordan (2017f): ‘nietzsche and christianity’, youtube: 6:49. posted by dose of truth. accessible athttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgbuoql1vyy peterson, jordan (2017g): ‘jordan peterson banned at linfield jp starts at 6:05’, youtube: 1:52:32. posted by joe tyndall. accessible at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3gztimdsga peterson, jordan (2017h): jordan peterson, “jordan peterson: political correctness | islam | marxism,” youtube, 14:58, posted by democracy in name only, april 24, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xinudw7iz78. consulted july 1st, 2017. peterson, jordan (2017i): ‘jordan peterson on milo, free speech & postmodernism’, youtube: 18:13. posted by rebel media. accessible at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv17a0uix2y wolff, richard d. and stephen cullenberg (1986): ‘marxism and post-marxism’, social text (15): pp. 126-135. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/466496 yüksel, şahika, et al. (2017): ‘a clinically neglected topic: risk of suicide in transgender individuals’, archives of neuropsychiatry / noropsikiatri arsivi 54(1): pp. 28-32. doi: https://doi.org/10.5152/npa.2016.10075 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pknzyttjshe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbru-xnk5ru https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgbuoql1vyy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3gztimdsga https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xinudw7iz78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv17a0uix2y https://doi.org/10.2307/466496 https://doi.org/10.5152/npa.2016.10075 jordan peterson and the (f)law of ‘scientific inquiry’: a critical evaluation of peterson’s use of science and philosophy in his conquest against social justice introduction the incommensurability of marxism and postmodernism peterson, arendt, and totalitarianism nietzsche and postmodernism the ‘science’ vs. peterson baudrillard, reality, and truth baudrillard, butler, and those voices of the marginalized conclusion references 76 book review misra amalendu, politics of civil wars: conflict, intervention and resolution, routledge, london and new york, 2008. nina wilén researcher in political science université libre de bruxelles, e-mail: nina.wilen@ulb.ac.be amalendu misra has written one of few single-volume works about the different aspects of civil wars. the book covers the different phases of civil wars, by following the ‘cycle’ of conflict, starting with causes, then conduct and finally the end of the wars. while the first part examines the start and the conduct of civil wars, the second part gives room for the analysis of intervention and conflict resolution. the list of contents follows the structure of the author’s own approach to how civil wars should be treated; “capable of going through the cycle of development, decay and eventual demise” (p.1). in his first chapter misra guides the readers through the theories of civil wars, investigating the main actors, such as the state, the rebel and the individual, but also some of the causes, mailto:nina.wilen@ulb.ac.be book review of "politics of civil wars: conflicts, intervention and resolution" by nina wilen 77 including grievance and greed. additional factors like identity, ethnicity and religion are thereafter added to the analysis after misra had finally established that the causes of civil wars are limitless. the author takes on an in-depth perspective on the aspect of nationalism in the second chapter, by claiming that the level of nationalism determines the level of violence and conflict in a given state. nationalism is according to misra’s main argument; both able to unite and divide. it is also through this facet that he borders the issue of globalisation, emphasizing the radically different standpoints that might be taken in this regard from a nationalistic point of view. in the chapter with the intriguing title; “erotics of violence”, an analysis of violence in civil wars is structured along themes such as logic, genocidal (genocide) and psychology of violence. it is also in this section that the author connects to the introduction, discussing the difference between new and old wars and making a rather bold statement that present-day civil wars lack both legitimacy and politics (p.59). although misra does defend this argument by some examples, the lack of an exhaustive analysis of the actual causes behind this change, which for the author seems so obvious, leaves the reader without a strong conviction. though a plausible explanation leans towards a change in the mentality of the population, this aspect is never investigated. the second part of the book examines the different features of intervention and conflict resolution. it is in these chapters that the author’s own experience of working in conflict affected areas comes most to its right, as the empirical examples enriches the analyses with their clarity and pertinence. it is also in these parts that the author’s own voice is heard through the many references and misra’s contribution to the study of civil wars becomes evident. in the chapter discussing intervention the reader is led through the many obstacles and motivations behind the decision to intervene, touching upon the principle of sovereignty and the never-ending debate about selective interventions and self-interest. while highlighting many risks with intervention, in particular preventive intervention, the author adopts the standpoint that the risk of spill-over effect is one of the strongest arguments for intervention. misra goes on to portray the difficulties associated with rebuilding a nation or a state, or both, as he sees them as intrinsically linked; differing between the soft (nation building) and the hard (state institutions) aspects of state construction. he then compares two actors’ records in state-building; the us and the un and concludes that even though the us has had book review of "politics of civil wars: conflicts, intervention and resolution" by nina wilen 78 two success stories in germany and japan, the conditions for state-building are no longer the same and the un stands as the more successful of the two. a more inclusive examination of exactly where the un has succeeded would have been suitable here for a more balanced comparison. in his last chapters, the author depicts the difficulties with both reconciliation and resolution of civil wars. after having explored different strategies such as pardon, punishment and amnesia for reconciliation and resolution approaches, the general conclusion is that there is no such thing as one overarching answer to all civil wars; each conflict needs a tailor-made solution. overall, amalendu misra delivers an excellent introduction to the study of civil wars. it offers both a wide overview of the different aspects and phases of the conflicts as well as thorough analyses of certain well-chosen issues. in particular, the many different case studies make the work easy to read while also lifting the quality of the book above that of a typical textbook. the complexity of the work is however also one of its weaknesses. the broad perspective occasionally leads to the author’s own contribution getting lost in the many references. rather all-inclusive conclusions are also somewhat disappointing as few alternatives are rejected or clearly embraced. 47 why  corruption  is  perceived  to  be  higher  in  poor  countries   than  in  richer  countries?:  a  critical  assessment  of  the   corruption  perception  index   denisse rodriguez olivari11 abstract: this article will critically examine why corruption is perceived to be higher in poor countries, than in richer countries. it will be argued that narratives corruption has an impact on its definition, perception and measurement of this phenomenon. this article will therefore assess the implications of these three dimensions in the construction of one of the most commonly consulted instrument on the subject, the corruption perception index (cpi). a further analysis of such instrument will help to disaggregate the usual discourse on the subject and supporting ideas behind corruption as it is being measured nowadays. corruption is considered a major obstacle to achieve economic development by international financial agencies such as the world bank, organisation for economic cooperation and development, and the international monetary fund. many authors in the literature acknowledge that the increasing concern on governance and corruption (or the lack of thereof) emerged in response to the failure of the structural adjustment programmes (polzer 2001; doig & marquette 2005; zaman and ur-rahim 2009). since the good governance agenda is mainly promoted by these organisations, an assessment of the perception of corruption cannot dismiss the power and influence of the underlying narrative of the ifis. this article will proceed as follows. the first section will provide an analysis of the discourse of corruption as a western, business-centric, and culture-blind notion that determines how corruption is defined, how it is perceived, and ultimately how it is measured. the second part will examine the cpi according to the three dimensions mentioned previously. also, it will give an account of the cpi sources, advantages and disadvantages, and its overall influence as a global barometer on corruption. finally, this article will offer a critical assessment on this troublesome issue and possible ways to shift the debate around the usual notions around it. 11 denisse rodriguez olivari, 27, just completed a master in international development: politics and governance at the university of manchester, united kingdom. she obtained her bachelor in political science and government from the catholic university of peru. her interests include politics and development, political representation of women and indigenous, conflict analysis and european and latin american politics. 48 zaman and ur-rahim indicate that since racial superiority is outmoded and no longer politically correct, the imperative to drive world politics is now governance indicators (including corruption) which give the ‘rich and powerful countries’ a moral right to advise and compel the lesser countries to perform according to higher, this is, their standards (zaman and ur-rahim 2009:123). as part of good governance, corruption is a universal notion strategically used by developed countries to reinforce moral, economic and political western constructions that continues to reproduce power asymmetries between the ‘north’ and the ‘south’ (crush 1995; bracking 2007; de maria 2008b). furthermore, it is widely argued that corruption is not only higher in non-western (poor) countries, but it is culturally intrinsic to them (bracking 2007:15). the idea of a ‘culture of corruption’ in many developing countries is a sign of a western discourse. for example, szeftel (1998:221) quotes a former british tory mp, matthew parris: “corruption has become an african epidemic. it is impossible to overstate the poisoning of human relations and the paralysing of initiative that the corruption on the african scale brings”. in addition, an american diplomat said that “you can no longer buy an african state; you can only rent one by the day” (charlton & may 1989 cited in szeftel 1998:223). both remarks support the idea of corruption as a widespread practice in many countries, especially african ones. in addition, this global yardstick is culture-blind. as kurer points out (2005:225), “what the public condemns as a ‘corrupt act’ in the west today has not been so condemned in the past, nor is it generally condemned elsewhere”. at the same time, what constitute a corrupt act in the west might not be considered as corrupt in non-western countries. because culture is a set of belief and values about what is desirable or not, the definition, perception and measurement of corruption might differ as well (seleim & bontis 2009; melgar et al. 2010). for instance, corruption in africa, and well as in other poor regions, is mostly related to ‘politics of the belly’, or the daily struggle against poverty, disease and exploitation” (bayart 1993 cited in de maria 2008b:185), whereas in developed countries corruption might manifest through financial crimes or influence peddling. as a result, this western discourse deslegitimises southern states’ polities. at the same time, anti-corruption campaigns neglects local cultures and traditions with different views of the public and private spheres, conflict of interests, and corruption which have emerged from 49 former western rules (de sousa et al. 2009). moreover, it is likely that donors use the label of ‘corrupt state’ as a basis for aid allocation (galtung 2005:17). having said that, the analysis of corruption is flawed because it has a narrow approach. in this sense, measurement indicators, as well as anti-corruption campaigns, will follow this logic. consequently, both elements will fail in its objectives because there are failing to address the real dimension of the problem (szeftel 1988; polzer 2001; stefes 2007; bracking 2007; de maria 2008b). the first element to disaggregate is the concept of corruption itself. the most common definition is “the misuse of public office for private gain” (transparency international 2003; kurer 2005; svensson 2005; world bank 2005; seleim & bontis 2009; melgar et al. 2010). furthermore, according to de maria (2008b:186), the economist intelligence unit (one of cpi sources), refers to “misuse of public office for personal (or party political) financial gain”. these definitions raise several questions. the first one is related to the scope of corruption. apparently, there is no difference in the impact or volume of corrupt transactions. the second one refers to emphasis on public office. this narrow approach overlooks other in the private sector such as “collusion between firms or misuse of corporate assets that imposes costs on consumers and investors” (svensson 2005:21). thirdly, the use of the term ‘misuse’ denotes a legal standard of what constitute a legal or illegal activities, and it can only be applicable according to the particular legal framework of each state (svensson 2005:20). the international financial institutions (ifis) use this concept to influence how corruption is being measured (bracking 2007:15). the second element in the analysis is the perception of corruption. according to melgar et al. (2010:120), “high levels of corruption perception could have more devastating effects than corruption itself”. for instance, it might seem that corruption is acceptable and worthwhile to imitate, increasing (involuntarily) the incidence of corrupts acts (zaman and ur-rahim 2009:122). certainly, one reason for higher perception of corruption among poor countries is the idea proposed by melgar et al. (2010:129) that “better economic performance reduces corruption perception, and macroeconomic instability has the opposite effect”. as a result, latin american, african and asian countries, as well as exsocialist states, tend to perceive higher corruption than other countries. a 98 percent correlation between log (gnp per capita) and corruption in 2005 revealed that “’corruption’ is another name for ‘poverty’ while ‘honesty’ is another name for ‘wealth’” 50 (zaman and ur-rahim 2009:122). additionally, greater levels of inequality also determine a higher level of corruption perception (melgar et al. 2010:122). thirdly, measurement of corruption still lacks of a precise standard to measure. the most popular indicator is the number of bribes paid to government officials. zaman and ur-rahim (2009:119) go on to say that corruption cannot be measure because it needs to be measurable. for instance, pakistani officials calculate the cost of smuggling and lowered the tariff rate at the level which equal to the bribe (zaman and ur-rahim 2009:120). consequently, the lack of a clear-cut definition of corruption will cause a narrow measurement instrument as well. transparency international (ti) is trend-setter organisation in the study of corruption (de maria 2008b). it was initially conceived as a “coalition to curb corruption in international business transactions” (galtung 2005:3). certainly, most of the publications are focused on business-oriented indicators. however, ti has move a step forward introducing a bribe perception index, and incorporating a broader notion of corruption in its latest edition of corruption perception index. this document is the most prominent instrument in the study of corruption. it is argued that it has raised awareness of the problem (galtung 2005), and influences a country’s political trajectory (galtung 2005; stefes 2007). this section will re assessment the potential and limitations of the cpi. this index is constructed through the inputs from non-residents experts, both-resident and nonresident business leaders, and also number of surveys (bowman et al. 2007:438). de maria (2008b) classifies the nine sources used by transparency international to construct the cpi: the world bank, the economist intelligence unit, freedom house, institute for management development, merchant international group, political and economic risk consultancy, un economic commission for africa, world economic forum, world markets research centre. one major criticism of the cpi is what it actually measures. for de maria (2008b:189), the cpi does not measure corruption per se, but it measures “perception-based epiphenomenal proxies of it”. for instance, the world bank survey measures the proxy values of accountability and transparency because a “high degree of accountability and transparency discourages corruption” (world bank 2005:41). apparently, there is risk of ‘reification’ or “thinking of a common manifestation of a concept as if it was the concept itself” (babbie 1995 cited in de maria 2008b:189). 51 furthermore, perception-based interviews can be influenced by media or personal experiences. for example, the executive opinion survey made by the world economic forum asks “how common are un-documented extra payments or bribes from one private to another to secure business”. the respondents are not required to have witnesses the acts (de maria 2008b:191). additionally, when non-residents experts are interviewed, the fact that “they are not used to local customs and language, unfamiliar with uses and practices” (zaman and ur-rahim 2009:121) might produce biased results. thus, evidence suggests that most of the sources used by transparency international to construct the cpi are heavily dependent on perception of wealthy businessmen. in the same way, galtung (2005) believes that there is no proof that business perception is any more valid than perceptions from victims of corruption. returning to the features of the cpi’s sources, it is worthwhile to point out that five of them measure only competitiveness and economic environment. also, six of them do not publicly disclose their methodologies or results (de maria 2008b:190). in consequence, most information relates to ‘business corruption’. by 2008, four out these nine sources were international risk management and business surveys organisations such as the institute for management development’s (imd) world competitiveness year book as well as world economic forum’s (wef) global competitiveness report (de maria 2008b:189). finally, de maria highlights that only six provide information about african countries, and four of them were exclusively business management surveys. this might shed light on the high perception of corruption in poor countries, and reinforcing the idea that corruption is a culturally-rooted institution. however, by 2010, ti includes new sources such as the asian development bank, african development bank, and the bertelsmann foundation. all these three sources focus on transparency, accountability and corruption on the public sector (transparency international 2010). yet, what ti identifies as corruption is highly misleading. the corruption perception index measures perceptions of businessmen regarding corruption in various countries (zaman and ur-rahim 2009:120). since the cpi contains samples from residents and foreigners (businessmen), it is not affected by the level of tolerance for corruption in the country (galtung 2005:4). for example, de maria (2008b:192) argues that, “a young executive from finland (cpi low-level “corruption”) newly arrived in uganda answering poll questions about his or her perceptions of ugandan “corruption” may talk up their “awareness”. however, a long-term expatriate resident from hungary (cpi middle-level 52 “corruption”) may talk down their perceptions of ugandan “corruption”, even though both may have had the same matters in mind when they responded to the polls”. cpi classification has several consequences. first, a country that would like to lower its corruption perception ranking would be interested in hiring “madison avenue experts, and invite foreign businessmen on special tours” (zaman and ur-rahim 2009:122). thus, there will be efforts on propaganda rather than policy change. on the other hand, high corruption may lead to an involuntary promotion of corruption, giving the impression that it is customary, and goes unpunished as it was mentioned previously (zaman and ur-rahim 2009; melgar et al. 2010). furthermore, galtung (2005:2) indicates that cpi’s blind spot is the “[it] casts a spotlight on the major bribe takers of the world; it lets the major bribe givers and safe havens of looted funds off the hook”. cpi index provides a limited approach of corruption, and hence a limited measurement of it as well. this might be one of the reasons why poor countries are perceived as more corrupt. the business-centric focus and the universalism of the notion presented by this index shed light on the generalisation impression than poor countries are per se more corrupt than rich countries. for instance, emphasis on public office neglects to address the problem accurately. in the case of corporations in usa, it is well-known that “influential politicians or generals (or relatives) at fat consultant fees, and end up winning enormous government contracts. the volume of a small number of such transactions is greater than the total estimated volume of bribes for many ldc’s ranked as highly corrupt” (zaman & ur-rahim 2009:188). nonetheless, there are other instruments of measurement such as the international country risk guide (which indicate the likelihood that high government officials will demand special payments and the extent to which illegal payments are expected throughout government tiers); and the control of corruption (with a broader definition of corruption) that could help to measure corruption in a more accurate way. however, according to svensson (2005:22), a correlation between these three instruments shows that they were highly correlated (control of corruption and cpi is 0.97 and, cpi and international country risk guide is 0.75). in other words, most of the instruments measuring corruption (regardless of their sources) offer similar results. 53 this article set out to disaggregate elements of corruption to understand why poor countries are perceived as more corrupt than rich countries. overall, a narrow conceptualisation of corruption considers as corrupt acts within public office. as it was mentioned, in poor countries these kinds of transactions are quite common, especially in countries with systemic corruption. however, they are doomed to score poorly in international rankings. this idea does not imply that these countries do not need to eradicate any form or corruption, nor improve governance quality but they should move beyond a western ownership of the definition of corruption as it is perceived today. the business and foreign bias in cpi reveals serious weaknesses for an integral study of corruption worldwide. as zaman and ur-rahim (2009:119) argue, the target of proposed measure needs to be measurable. also, the goals of measurement need to be specified. in order to obtain accurate measurement it is need to establish a prior definition. moreover, a broader definition of corruption as ‘an outcome of a country’s legal, economic, cultural and political institutions’ will require taking into consideration culture, historic age, actual social climate, and social groups (gallup 1999:1). the potential of cpi cannot be neglected. it offers a barometer that includes a worldwide sample based on several sources. furthermore, it provides incentives for ‘corrupt’ countries to perform better, and maybe discourages ‘clean’ countries to improve their efforts. either way, it provides a measurement on corruption, or proxies of what corruption really is. in addition, it is important to mention the shift towards a more broad definition of corruption in transparency international. for example, the corruption perception index 2010 defines corruption as the “abuse of entrusted power for private gain, encompassing practices in both the public and private sectors” (transparency international 2010:4), including the private office as well. yet the cpi still ranks countries according to perception of corruption only in the public sector. transparency international has franchised the growth and collaboration of local chapters. according to de sousa (2009), ti is represented in more than 90 countries among developed and developing countries with different levels of democracy. it managed to launch worldwide campaigns raising awareness globally. however, it also led to transforming this organisation into a resource-draining, bureaucratic and conservative institution (de sousa 2009:203). 54 the problem with the discourse behind corruption is that it does not estimate the impact or volume of corruption. in this case, as zaman and ur-rahim (2009) assert, bush lied to the public claiming that iraq has weapons of mass destruction through misleading cia reports. for the authors, this misuse of public office and betrayal of public trust is perhaps the single most massive corrupt transaction in the history of mankind. the combined monetary value of all petty bureaucratic corruption in the poorer countries pales in comparison. however, poor countries are still perceived as more corrupt. thus, current instruments should focus on the characteristics, volume and impact of current instruments rather than the number of them. a phenomenon of such complexity as corruption does not have adequate measurement standards. another innovation in the study of corruption is the inclusion of ‘culturallysensitive’ approaches to improve assessment of corruption in determined regions or geographical areas, as well, as economic performance or degree of development. indeed, “one does not condemn a jew for bribing his way out of a concentration camp” (roseackerman 1978 cited in kurer 2005:225) references babbie, e. (1995) the practice of social research, 7th ed., wadsworth, belmont. bayart, j-f. (1993) the state in africa. the politics of the belly. longman, london. bevan, g. & hood, c. (2006), “what’s measured is what matters: targets and gaming in the english public health care system”, public administration, 84 (3): 517-38. blackburn, k., bose, n., & haque, m. (2004) endogenous corruption in economic development. university of nottingham, gep research article n. 2004/16. bowman, d. & gilligan, g. (2007) ‘public awareness of corruption in australia’, journal of financial crime, 14 (4): 438-52. bracking, s. (2007) ‘political development and corruption: why ‘right here, right now!’?’ in bracking, s. (ed) corruption and development: the anti-corruption campaigns. palgrave macmillan, basingstoke. bracking, s. 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(2009) ‘corruption: measuring the ummeasurable’, humanomics, 25 (2): 117-126.     politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 2 volume 40: march 2019 issn 2414-6633 https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.40 editorial board editor-in-chief: max steuer (slovakia) deputy editor-in-chief: rafael plancarte (mexico) ana magdalena figueroa (brazil) justinas lingevičus (lithuania) stephanie mojica (usa) dana rice (australia) gergana tzvetkova (bulgaria) editorial assistants cláudia susana rodrigues de araújo (portugal) andressa liegi vieira costa (brazil) ngoc anh khoa doan (vietnam) karla drpić (croatia) damla keşkekci (turkey) jesslene lee (singapore) emmanuelle rousseau (france) kamila suchomel (czech republic) bruna veríssimo (brazil) https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.40 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 3 table of contents editorial note ....................................................................................................................... 4 special section: iapss academic think tank & academic committee 2017/2018 articles attending to the wrong issue in the political spectrum: right-wing populism for leftwing concerns in the eu / lora hadzhidimova and aaron stacey ..................................... 7 more integration or more disintegration in the european union? a sociological perspective / lora hadzhidimova ....................................................................................... 28 research note understanding the enlargement of the eurasian economic union: the case of armenia and kyrgyzstan / rigina syssoyeva ..................................................................... 48 article domestic politics as an explanation for voluntary union: the missing case of the united arab republic / joshua a. schwartz ..................................................................... 61 call for papers .................................................................................................................... 76 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 4 editorial note https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.40.0 while each issue of iapss politikon presents unique original texts, this issue is special in two additional respects. firstly, vol. 40 contains a special section bringing together the contributions of the members of the iapss academic think tank and academic committee (att & acom). thereby it continues the tradition of the journal to encourage submissions from individuals and research groups that are active in the association. these submissions undergo an equally rigorous peer review process and at the same time point to some areas of current research interests of junior scholars. on this occasion, we are grateful to dr. jamila glover, the 2017/2018 att & acom coordinator, who facilitated this initiative and who introduces us to the special section below: the 2017-2018 att/acom research efforts focused on issues, debates and controversies related to the (un)intended consequences of globalization. such topics included inequality, regional integration and the rise of nationalism. lora hadzhidimova and aaron stacey analyse the relationship between populism and the national concerns expressed by citizens in the european union’s (eu) eastern and western member-states. the authors find that the predominant type of populism in the eu does not overlap with the type of concerns on a national level. the article concludes with outlining the implications of their findings. in a single-authored piece, lora hadzhidimova presents a comprehensive overview of the emergence, evolution and current state of scholarly debate on the contentious issue of integration in the european union. she argues that the debate has shifted from a paradigm perspective to a problem driven approach. the article further contends that this new approach is optimal because it is pragmatic in solving complex problems that occur within the eu. rigina syssoyeva’s research note addresses the growth of the eurasian economic union (eaeu). she conducts s a rigorous qualitative research study that demonstrates that schimmelfennig’s theoretical concepts can explain the process of enlargement of the eaeu. subsequent but definitely not secondary to these contributions is the article by joshua schwartz who critically examines the argument joseph parent presented in his book uniting states, and claims that it does not provide a satisfactory explanation for the emergence of voluntary mergers of states into one. surveying the argument in detail, the article offers an in-depth analysis of the case of the united arab republic and concludes that there are other possible causes of voluntary unions than the one parent identified. https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.40.0 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 5 the second speciality is the introduction of the iapss politikon best article award. this award will be given out to the article published in each annual edition of iapss politikon (comprising four issues of the journal each) that represents an outstanding contribution from the perspective of (1) the quality of the article’s work with concepts and theories and/or empirical data, (2) the originality of the article’s argument, and (3) the potential of the article to enhance academic discussion in political science and/or practice. the award consists of a certificate of recognition, promotion of the winning article through the iapss channels, and a registration fee waiver for one of the upcoming iapss conferences within 12 months after the reception of the award. honorable mentions may be given out in addition to the award accompanied with a certificate. depending on available means, other prizes may be included into the award on a case-by-case basis. all research papers published in the journal are automatically eligible (there is no separate nomination process). the inaugural edition of the award will be based on the issues published in 2018; however, the articles of vol. 40 will be subject to evaluation in 2020, and those who consider the submission to the journal still have a chance, depending on the outcome of the evaluation process and the date of publication, to be considered for the 2020 edition of the award. the editorial board hopes that the award will encourage even more high-quality contributions as well as stimulate the readership and reflections on the published articles. as with other aspects of the journal’s functioning, the politikon best article award is a collaborative enterprise between junior scholars with the help of senior scholars.1 as such, the award committee consists of two senior scholars and one junior scholar, who may be joined by an honorary chairperson. the honorary chairperson is a senior scholar in the honour of whom the award is given out for the respective year. each of these scholars needs to demonstrate significant contributions to political science research and/or teaching but also to place special emphasis on support for students and junior scholars worldwide and/or in a particular region of the world where institutional support of this kind is lacking. we are pleased to announce that the inaugural award committee will be chaired by professor i̇lter turan, past-president of the international political science association (ipsa) and emeritus professor of political science at istanbul bilgi university, who is thereby recognized for his contributions to the fields of comparative and turkish politics and foreign policy, but also for the significant support provided to students and junior scholars through 1 it should be noted that there is no legal claim for this award nor for reviewing the award committee’s assessment, which also reserves the right not to hand out the award in a particular year in case none of the articles exceed the quality standards determined for the award. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 6 various positions in university administration and in ipsa. the names of the other members of the award committee will be announced together with the results of its work. last but not least, the publication of this issue in advance of the publication date in order to increase the dissemination of new findings and discussions has been made possible by the continuous dedication of the editorial board as well as the editorial assistants. also, welcome to the newest member of the editorial board, dana rice. we look forward to continuing the dialogue with many of you and to the introduction of further good news about the development of the journal in the near future. max steuer editor-in-chief editorial note 34 understanding  russian  aggression  towards  georgia:   an  expected-­‐utility  approach5   michael j. langlois6 abstract did russia initiate conflict with georgia in an attempt to restrain georgia from formally joining the western coalition, or was the decision more complex? what did russia hope to gain from initiating conflict? what value did russia assign to maintaining an interest in regional oil trade routes, in which georgia straddles an important route to the caspian sea region? how was the potential incorporation of georgia into nato factored into russia’s decision? to answer these questions, i used the expected-utility model developed by bruce bueno de mesquita. in this analysis, policy preferences and power measurements were considered to determine that russia’s decision was rationally selected based on a positive expectedutility calculation. i attempted to explain whether this model’s explanatory and predictive capabilities could accurately elucidate russia’s conflict decision. furthermore, within the context of the expected-utility model, what can we expect about russian-georgian relations in the future? introduction the primary research question of this study was derived through an interest in the russian-georgian conflict of 2008. was russia’s decision to initiate conflict with georgia rationally based on a positive expected-utility calculation? since the decision process of the russian leaders cannot be known for sure, the underlying question is if russia had a positive expected-utility and therefore could have been expected. fundamentally, then, this study is a test of the expected-utility theory and its usefulness in understanding contemporary conflicts between states. a positive expected-utility is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for the decision to initiate conflict if the decision is rational (bueno de 5 paper originally prepared for presentation at the 2009 annual meeting of the midwest political science association, chicago, illinois april 2-5 2009. i would like to thank the guidance and advice from daniel geller, as this project was originally an assignment for his graduate course in international relations. it was on dr. geller’s advice that i pursued this project. 6 michael langlois, 30, is a ph.d. candidate at wayne state university working towards the completion of a doctoral degree in world politics. his major area of study is in international relations, with a minor in comparative politics. his research interests include international political economy, globalization, interdependence, and conflict. he is currently working on his dissertation studying the relationship between economic integration and conflict. in 2007, he obtained an mba concentrating in international finance and business at wayne state university. he is currently an adjunct lecturer at eastern michigan university teaching courses in international relations and globalization., m.langlois@wayne.edu, www.mjlanglois.com 35 mesquita, 1981: p.182). for this statement to hold true, there are five assumptions detailed in the war trap by bueno de mesquita that i will explain in the literature review. theoretical foundations – literature review the seminal study on expected-utility theory was by bueno de mesquita in 1981 called the war trap. bueno de mesquita believed that he could develop a theory that accounted for conflicts explained by other theories, while at the same time able to account for the anomalies past theories could not. i believe that bueno de mesquita’s work builds upon the neo-realist paradigm of ken waltz. bueno de mesquita proposes that his theory accounts for the necessary, but not the sufficient conditions for war. in addition, bueno de mesquita’s work is unique since the calculation of expected-utility is from the perspective of a single leader. mesquita complains about the vast array of plausible, but mutually contradictory hypotheses about the causes of war. it is mesquita’s hope to deliver a comprehensive theory about the conditions for war. for example, mesquita argues that many other theories are pieces to a greater puzzle that have yet to be put together into a coherent general theory. mesquita clarifies his arguments by detailing two assumptions that are too commonly relied upon and are wrong. the first assumption that he disagrees with is the notion of a world community of nations. the second assumption that he disagrees with is the argument that states are actors themselves. according to mesquita, leaders of nations are the actors; however, without that distinction between state and leader “most theorists implicitly assume that all decision makers share the same propensity to take risks” (ibid. 1981, p.11). mesquita goes on to argue that “treating individuals with such diverse attitudes toward risk as if they follow the same rules of decision making so misrepresents reality that logically and historically incorrect generalizations are bound to result” (ibid. 1981, p.12). although there is an obvious departure from structural realism, mesquita does agree with waltz’s analysis of the international system. for instance, at a fundamental level mesquita’s work agrees with waltz on the notion of an anarchic international system. furthermore, mesquita agrees with the state centrism assumption in that states are the most important entities; however, he deviates by focusing on the leadership decisions of those states. the rationality assumption is clearly the basis of where mesquita’s theory comes from as he contends leaders are rational utility maximizers. mesquita also agrees with the power assumption since a state’s strength is a core component of the expectedutility figure, especially in bilateral conflicts. as a result, i argue that waltz would classify 36 mesquita within the third image level of analysis. i believe a first image categorization would not be correct since mesquita does not argue that human nature is the reason for war. instead individuals determine their behavior through an amoral expected-utility calculation with other states. a second image classification is also incorrect because mesquita does not designate between good and evil states. instead, mesquita, like waltz, sees an anarchic international system where each state secures its own safety. i also argue that mesquita’s theory is in line with waltz’s elements of system structure. each state calculates its own expected-utility without interference from other states. at least at the international level, states perform the same functions as in the unit functional homogeneity argument. similar to waltz, mesquita’s theory places importance on the distribution of capabilities between states. expected-utility model foundation the foundation of mesquita’s expected-utility model can best be explained when mesquita states that “we rarely think of the planning and calculating that precedes the battle. yet for all the emotion of the battlefield, the premeditation of war is a rational process consisting of careful, deliberate calculations” (ibid. 1981, p.19). mesquita is arguing that war does not occur by accident. according to mesquita, war is “premeditated,” where military actions do not occur by chance. the determinants of the size of expected gains or losses of going to war depend on the following three aspects: the relative strength of the attacked and the defender, the value the attacker places on changes in policies that the attacker may be forced to accept if it loses, and the relative strength and interests of all other states that might intervene in the war. these three aspects are at the foundation of mesquita’s calculation of expected-utility. mesquita’s expected-utility model is broken down between bilateral wars and multilateral wars. “in a bilateral war, success affords one [country] the subsequent opportunity to influence the policies of the adversary, making them more consistent with one’s own interests” (ibid. 1981, p.46). in other words, this is what success means for the winner of a bilateral war. mesquita defines bilateral wars as “pure competition” mechanisms, which means under bilateral conditions, there is a zero-sum game. essentially, country a’s losses are country b’s gains, and vice versa. moreover, mesquita argues that the expected-utility calculation in a bilateral context is solely determined by the relative power differences between the two states. in multilateral interactions, mesquita 37 uses a complex expected-utility calculation that includes the proportional utility contributions of supporting states into the basic bilateral calculation. items such as the intensity of support from other states matters, and the level of risks are considered by mesquita to determine the actual values of utility. mesquita lays out some expected-utility decision rules which are logical extensions of his basic theory. first, an attacking country must derive a net gain in utility by initiating the conflict; otherwise it would irrational to attack if you would lose utility. second, mesquita argues that risk-acceptant and risk-neutral decision makers should be expected to meet the necessary conditions for war more often than risk-averse decision makers. this makes sense because by nature a risk-averse person would avoid risky situations, and would need to receive a higher expected-utility to initiate conflict. mesquita clearly lists five assumptions of his expected-utility theory. i adopt only the first two assumptions into this study for reasons i will explain later. the first assumption is that war decision making is dominated by a single, strong leader. the second assumption is that leaders are rational expected-utility maximizers. the third assumption is that the differences in leaders’ orientations toward risk taking influence decision making. the fourth assumption is that uncertainty about the likely behavior of other states in the event of war affects decision making. the fifth assumption is the power a state can use in a war declines as the site of the war becomes geographically distant from the nation. in the expected-utility model mesquita operationalizes utility as a direct, positive function of the degree to which they share a common policy perspective. furthermore, utilities are determined by the congruence of policy ends between states. in fact, mesquita states that the “expected utility of the war strategy is simply the sum of the utilities of the possible outcomes times their probabilities” (ibid. 1981, p.36). assumptions in addition to the first two assumptions by bueno de mesquita, i propose that the russian-georgian conflict should be treated as a bilateral conflict. i believe that russia did not expect other nations to intervene militarily, since at first it was a minor conflict. the conflict itself arose from people living in south ossetia and abkhazia who wanted to rejoin with russia. georgia’s decision to reincorporate those separatists caused russia to intervene to aide their loyalists living in georgia. when russia made the decision to broaden the conflict and invade the georgian capital, however, russia was met with 38 international pressure to stop. the decision to broaden the conflict, however, is the decision i examine with the expected-utility model. by assuming bilateral conflict, i will not include the following three variables from the war trap: loss of strength gradient, risk, and uncertainty. the loss of strength gradient variable will not be used since russia and georgia border each other and therefore the loss of strength gradient is zero. risk and uncertainty will not be considered since both variables are used in multilateral expected-utility calculations only (bueno de mesquita 1981: p.122 – 25). proposition the proposition in this study examines the contention that russia wanted to maintain its reputation in the region. i argue that russia had a direct interest in preventing the georgian government from forcefully reincorporating south ossetia and abkhazia. russia may have feared a setback in regional influence and may have believed that georgia’s actions could embolden other former soviet republics like ukraine to oppose russia. even more, russia may fear that former soviet nations could join nato. this fear is not unfounded as nato has promised to add georgia as a member nation at a later date. also, russia wants to control the oil pipeline that runs through georgia from the caspian sea to the black sea, which bypasses russian authority. it is possible that russia, in an attempt to maintain its influence and reputation in the region, attacked georgia as an example for other former soviet nations. hypothesis the hypothesis of this study tests whether or not russia had a positive expected-utility when conflict began: h1: russia had a positive expected-utility calculation when it decided to initiate conflict with georgia. data and methods i have chosen to examine the hypotheses and research questions outlined above with an available data type study. the data used in this study came from the correlates of war (cow) dataset for country capabilities, and from the united nations treaty series (unts) database for country relationship information. 39 unts database the unts database was used instead of data on formal military alliances from the cow alliance database7. unts is an online searchable database that maintains records on all formal relationships between two countries that were registered with the united nations. each relationship is coded with a unique registration number, and in most cases a link to the full-text document is available. this database allows quick and up-to-date access to data which can be used to examine contemporary conflicts when other data is unavailable. even more, the unts is ideal for small scope projects since you can easily modify the search criteria to your specifications. the data retrieved from the unts database included all treaties and agreements which russia and georgia were involved in. there were a total of 59 individual relationships, which could be reduced to 31 unique cases because of redundant agreements between the same countries within the same years. for example, in 2008 russia made two agreements with latvia on the same day, therefore it was counted as one agreement between russia and latvia in 2008. these 31 cases were used to estimate the level of congruence in policy preferences between russia and georgia. cow dataset composite index of national capability (cinc) scores from the cow database were used to estimate military power and thus the probability of a win or loss relative to the other country. as mesquita explains, the cinc scores are calculated by incorporating the proportion of “three theoretically distinct dimensions of national capabilities: military, industrial, and demographic” (see singer, bremer, and stuckey, 1972; bueno de mesquita 1981, 1992; bennett and stam, 2004). expected-utility calculation the key factors of the expected-utility model are shown below in table 1. these factors in the model were derived from the war trap. although i use different sources for data, the equation and the factors that comprise the model remain the same. the 7 i will explain how i operationalized this source and used it to measure utility, or policy congruence, when i discuss independent variables. 40 interpretation of two of the key factors should be explained further: tau-b and e(uij). taub can be interpreted as the magnitude of the relationship between two countries. the range of values for tau-b is from -1.0 to 1.0. in this study, the magnitude of the relationship signifies the level of agreement in terms of policy preferences between russia and georgia. e(uij) or the expected-utility country (i) has for country (j) represents the value assigned to the amount of gain or loss from war or peace respectfully. in other words, a positive expected-utility means that conflict is likely to result in favorable gains in terms of realigning the defeated country’s policies to match your own (bueno de mesquita, 1981). the expected-utility equation used in this study is listed just below table 1. table 1: expected-utility key factors temporal and spatial domain the temporal domain for this study runs from 1998 to 2008; however it is focused on the russian-georgian conflict in 2008. in its original conception, expected-utility calculations were derived from the policy preferences and power capabilities in the form of cinc scores of two states during the year leading up to the conflict until three months prior to the military action (bueno de mesquita, 1981: p.114). since formal alliance data and cinc scores are only available until 2000 and 2001 respectfully from the correlates of war project (cow), i have adjusted the temporal domain of the study. for reasons that will be explained in the independent variables section, i found it necessary to include relationships over the past ten years. the spatial domain for this study includes the countries of russia and georgia. these countries have had a long history of stressful relations over both the russian separatists living in georgia and over the potential incorporation of georgia into nato. focusing on a single conflict between the two countries in 2008 is admittedly narrow and will not offer much in terms of generalizability. such a narrow study, however, is the only reasonable way to test an expected-utility theory of a contemporary conflict when the data 41 is not available. the selection of the two countries is interesting because the analysis is a test of the expected-utility theory. dependent variable the dependent variable is the decision to initiate conflict or not. in this study, the only dependent variable of interest is if russia chose to initiate conflict with georgia. obviously russia did initiate a conflict with georgia, but this study is an attempt to find if that initiation decision was based on a positive expected utility calculation. independent variables utility: the concept of utility in the context of this study refers to the level of policy preferences congruence between russia and georgia. policy congruence, as first conceptualized in the war trap, is measured by formal alliance agreement between two countries. since formal alliance data is only available until 2000 from cow, i have conceptualized a surrogate measure of formal relationships using data from the unts database. therefore, i operationalized utility by calculating how related the sets of relationships are between russia and georgia using kendall’s tau-b. i have coded the relationships in the unts database as either an “agreement” or a “treaty”, or 1 and 2, respectfully. treaties include all formal treaties between two or more countries. agreements include all economic and political agreements between two or more countries. since there can be three distinct ordered classifications (treaty, agreement, or no formal relationship) the variable is ordinal. as a result, if there is a treaty and an agreement within the same year with the same member countries, then only the treaty was counted since it is a stronger relationship. the decision to use a substitute measure for formal alliances was based the war trap, where he explains his wish to include other measures of utility rather than only formal military alliances in future small scope projects (bueno de mesquita, 1981: p.114). for instance, relationships such as economic integration and other political agreements could be considered (ibid, p.115). i have accounted for all relationships that either russia or georgia are involved in that were registered with the united nations from 1998-2008. expected-utility scores were calculated between russia and georgia from 1998–2006 and from 2007-2008. since the conflict occurred in 2008, i argue that the policy preferences during the 2007 and 2008 are relevant to understand the decision for conflict. 42 probability: the independent variable of probability in this study refers to a country’s power and the likelihood that the country will win a conflict. to estimate this probability, cinc scores have been used as a measure of power. these cinc scores, however, are only available until 2001 from the cow project’s alliance database. as a result, i have averaged the cinc scores for russia and georgia for the ten years leading to 2001. the notation (pi), as seen in table 1, represents the probability of a win or russia’s cinc score for georgia. similarly, (1-pi) represents the probability of a loss. as the founders of the cow project point out, there are some problems with conceptualizing power in terms of a standard score, “various caveats must be made concerning the validity of the indicators the project selected; the first of these is comparison, which relies on the sometimes questionable assumption that equal values of the same indicator make equal contributions to capability” (singer, bremer, and stuckey, 1972). findings the policy congruence between russia and georgia is best summarized in the form of contingency tables and is shown in table 2 and table 3. the country abbreviations were adopted from the cow project. the relationships in these tables exist between either russia or georgia and other countries. in addition, the relationships represented are all bilateral in that there is a direct connection between two of the countries. where russia and georgia agree, with finland in table 3 for example, it means that both russia and georgia have a unique relationship with finland during the 2007– 2008 timeframe. kendall’s tau-b, which is indicated below both table 2 and 3, represents the magnitude of congruence. as explained earlier, there are two represented time frames: 1998–2006 and 2007–2008. it is interesting to note that from 1998 to 2006 russia and georgia had no relationships in common, and thus the tau-b or utility value was -1.000. in other words, russia and georgia had completely different policy preferences. from 2007 to 2008, russia and georgia had five relationships in common, which reduced the magnitude of the negative relationship indicated by the tau-b or utility value of -0.420. either way, russia and georgia have very divergent policy preferences. table 2: congruence of interests between russia and georgia 1998 2006 43 table 3: congruence of interests between russia and georgia 2007 2008 another interesting note is that russia and georgia have no treaties in common. do strong formal ties like treaties mean that countries are less likely to attack? if so, is the lack of treaties in common a factor that lead to the russian-georgian conflict? although formal testing of this idea is beyond the range of this study, it does add to the strength of using an expected-utility model to examine conflict decisions since common treaties are lacking in the russian-georgian context. over time there was an increase in the number of dissimilar relationships between russia and georgia leading up to the conflict in 2008 (see figure 1). since the last conflict between russia and georgia in 20028, russia and georgia had continually added dissimilar relationships. this could be interpreted to mean that since 2002, russian and georgian policy preferences have continually diverged. even more, from 2006 to 2008 russia and 8 related to the chechen rebels and was coded by the international military intervention dataset as a conflict (see kingasani and pickering 2008). 44 georgia increased the number of dissimilar relationships from 12 to 26. of the five similar relationships that were added from 2006 to 2008, three were either economic or environmental in nature while only two were strong political relationships. the trend of increasingly dissimilar relationships paints a clear picture that diverging policy preferences were building up until the conflict in 2008. figure 1: accumulated level of policy congruence between russia and georgia the expected-utility scores calculated based on the model explained earlier are represented in tables 4 and 5 below9. so, from 1998 to 2006 russia expected to gain a utility value of 1.962 if it succeeded in a conflict with georgia. similarly, from 2007 to 2008, russia expected to gain a utility value of 1.393 if it succeeded in a conflict with georgia. these numbers only explain that since russia had a positive expected-utility in both timeframes, a conflict initiation with georgia would be rational in strictly cost-benefit terms. by looking at figure 1 again, however, we see that the trend of increasingly dissimilar relationships really tell the story of the conflict in 2008. it is worth noting that during the overall time period from 1998 to 2008, russia maintained a positive expectedutility10. table 4: expected-utility scores 1998 2006 9 note that since risk, uncertainty, and loss of strength are not factored into this study (since it is being viewed as a bilateral conflict) the expected-utility for georgia is simply the opposite of russia’s expected-utility. 10 overall 1998 – 2008: kendall’s tau-b = -.617, sig. = .000, n = 31, e (uij) = 1.586 45 table 5: expected-utility scores 2007 2008 these findings, therefore, do support the hypothesis that russia did have a positive expected utility when it decided to initiate conflict with georgia. in other words, russia’s decision to initiate conflict with georgia to stop the reincorporation of the russian separatists was rational in a strictly cost-benefit sense. discussion the proposition in this study appears to be supported, but in no way is proven by this single study. the proposition about russia’s reputation seems like a plausible explanation for the conflict. russia may have feared other former soviet nations could be emboldened if georgia was allowed to suppress the russian separatists. even more, defiance in the face of russia could also encourage the former soviet nations to consider joining nato. it is also possible that russia had an economic, as well as, a security interest in the oil route running through georgia by maintaining russian loyalists living in georgia. did russia attack georgia for these reasons? although the answer could be yes, it would take additional studies about the region and the relationships of former soviet nations with russia for a clearer picture. an elaborate game theoretic model may help to explain the relationship between russia and georgia and the decisions that led to conflict in a future study. finally, when data from the cow dataset becomes available through 2008, it would be interesting to compare my results using unts with results using cow alliance data. if they provide similar results, then the use of unts could be justified for other 46 contemporary conflict studies using expected-utility when traditional data sources are not yet available. references bennett, d. scott, and allan c. stam. 2004. the behavioral origins of war. ann arbor: university of michigan press. bueno de mesquita, bruce. 1981. the war trap. new haven: yale university press. bueno de mesquita, bruce, and david lalman. 1992. war and reason: domestic and international imperatives. new haven: yale university press. kisangani, emizet f., and jeffrey pickering. international military intervention, 1989-2005 [computer file]. manhattan, ks: emizet f. kisangani and jeffrey pickering, kansas state university [producer], 2007. ann arbor, mi: inter-university consortium for political and social research [distributor], 2008-01-29. doi:10.3886/icpsr21282 singer, j. david, stuart bremer, and john stuckey. 1972. "capability distribution, uncertainty, and major power war, 1820-1965." in peace, war, and numbers, ed. b. russett. beverly hills: sage. singer, j. david. 1987. "reconstructing the correlates of war dataset on material capabilities of states, 1816-1985." international interactions 14:115 32. united nations treaty series (unts) database. [available from http://treaties.un.org/.] waltz, kenneth neal. 1979. theory of international politics. 1st ed. boston, mass.: mcgrawhill. prima pagina1 1-hayek, friedrich-august v. law, legislation and liberty 2-from the greek verb kattalatein meaning ’to exchange* but also ’to admit into the community’ and ’to change from enemy to friend’ 3-hayek, op.cit. 4-undp human development report 1999 5-melchior, arne, telle, kjetil & wiig, henrik globalisering og ulikhet(norwegian:globalisation and inequality), norwegian institute of international affairs, 2000 6-undp human development report 1998 by allan guldberg, aarhus universitet, denmark what is globalisation? globalisation is a flimsy and unclear concept, used in various ways to denote various phenomena. in this article however, globalisation is taken as meaning the increase of trade and especially free trade, that is supposed to have happened over the last few years. this done mainly for the reason, that free trade is what is often being descried by those who claim themselves to be opposed to globalisation, or at least globalisation at it is occuring at present. the least of all evils in his book law, legislation and liberty the austrian economist friedrich-august von hayek, devotes an entire chapter(ch.9) to the question and phenomenon of social justice. the gist of the position of the whole school of austrian economics, is that the market order is the result of a spontaneous process, in which untold amounts of information is dispersed among millions of persons, directing resources in directions where they are most effectively put to use for the greatest good of mankind (1). this is a process which no central authority or agency could ever emulate or better, mainly because it will lack the specific knowledge required from situation to situation. the result will always be a totalitarian government acting arbitrarily towards its subjects. the issue of social justice, is the question of whether different levels of income and wealth can be defended, supposedly ending with the answer that they cannot in themselves. hayek argues against this, that it is not possible to attain equality of result, without drastically curbing basic human rights. true, the market might not always reward the most merited, or always punish the undeserving, but neither will anyone else, the market is better at it. he then goes on to state, that even the question of justice and fairness is absurd in this context, since those concepts must necessarily be the result of deliberate human action. a quality which the market order, or catallaxy (2), lacks. the market is not perfect, but infinitely better than the alternative (3). is poverty increasing? the basic question, we have to ask is whether globalisation, necessarily creates winners and losers and leads to increased inequality in the world? the second question is whether a poverty increase if it does exist, is occuring because of or perhaps in spite of, globalisation? according to organisations such as the undp (united nations development program), it appears that poverty is not only on the rise but rampant on the globe as we know it today. in their human development report published in 1999, the organisation examined the ratio of income among the quintile living in the richest countries to the quintile living in the poorest. it appeared that the ration had risen from 30:1 in 1960 through 60:1 in 1990 to 72:1 in 1997 (5). it thus appeared that, not only where the rich getting richer but the poor getting poorer aswell. however, a report published by the norwegian institute of foreign policy, asserts that this is a false picture (5). first of all undp’s own numbers, shown in the corresponding publication from 1998, stated the 1995 ratio, as 82:1 which must mean that in the last six years inequality has been decreasing (6). secondly, the norwegian report criticizes undp, for failing to adjust their findings for purchasing power. if that is done, according to the norwegian report, the conclusion is that inequality between countries has been reduced since the 1960, and the trend has continued through the 1990’ies. even using the undp’s own methods, and inequality measures such as the gini coefficient. this is not to say that the trend applies equally all over the world. in the last 30 years, it has been especially the east asian countries that have developed, and lately the latin american economies have been on the rise. africa is still obviously lagging behind. july-august politikon abstract this article starts with stating the hayekian position, that social justice is an uattainable, and even undesirable goal for the development of human society. whereas the market economy, might not always result in the best possible result for each and every individual, the alternatives are by far worse. it then goes on to the international level and shortly examines the findings of the undp, of increasing poverty and also why this might not be true. next it reviews the possible connections between the so called globalisation, here defined as the evolvement of free trade, and poverty levels. it then clarifies some basic questions on how free markets would affect the developing nations, before finishing with the possible alternatives, that would only make matters worse. 1-the whole section is based on frågor och svar om frihandeln(swedish: q&a on free trade), at www.frihandel.nu 2-department for international development aking globalisation work for the worlds poor, three basic questions it appears however, that the solution to the problems, that especially africa seem to be facing, is not the halting of the globalisation process, but the opposite. the expansion of free trade to include the developing countries in africa and elsewhere. it appears that these countries are not poor because of globalisation, but in large part because this globalisation has passed them by. there are three basic questions which could be asked which i’ll examine in turn. will free trade benefit the developing countries at all? (1)trade and an act of trade is generally not a process in which one person is left poorer and the other richer, but an exchange for the mutual benefit of both traders. today, the developing countries are certainly not in a position in which they can trade their good freely with, say ,the west. the tariffs that most oecd countries, and especially those in the european union, are imposing on typical 3rd world goods, are higher than the tariffs imposed between the oecd countries. this obviously robs the 3rd world manufacturers of the opportunit to gain an income on selling their goods on the global market, and where the consumers are, that is mainly in the west. this is a conclusion that was also made, in a report published by the british labour government entitled making globalisation work for the world’s poor.(2) shouldn’t the developing countries protect their own industries, especially in the beginning? there is nothing to indicate this. since the 1970’ies the developing countries that have experienced the highest levels of growth are those that have maintained relatively open economies. exposure to competition, helps the developing economies to innovate, and allocate their resources in the way in which they reap the highest benefits. furthermore, where developing countries have been abled to build some sort of industry, those that have maintained closed economies experienced stagnation and decay, whereas those that have maintained open economies did not. research also shows that comparative advantages and not just absolute advantages is enough to keep an economy up and running. wouldn’t globalisation lead to social dumping, and a race to the bottom? true, the particular person might lose his particular present source of income, but a well functioning economy, which is not necessarily a highly developed one, will be able to provide, alternative sources of income, for those who have lost either jobs, businesses or farms. secondly it is a fact that the richest countries in the world, are also those that have the highest average wage, the best environmental records and rather effective labour organisations. restriction of, say, unionist activities are often not a specific economic measure, but just one of wide array of policies restricting the basic economic, political and civil rights of the citizens. an unviable alternative the heritage foundation regularly publishes an index of economic freedom. different economic parameters, are ranked on a reversed 5 point scale, according to their correspondance to an ideal of openness. the different countries are ranked based on their average score. the evidence is clear, that the richest countries in the world are also those with the most open and unregulated economies. according to this statistic north korea is the poorest country, scoring 5 on all parameters. most african countries are in the bottom half of the table aswell. but what does the opponents of globalisation suggest? a radical sollution would be to force the west to share its abundant wealth with the rest of the world. that, would not achieve anything i believe, since the problem is just as much a problem of maintaining high levels of prosperity, not just being given handouts. another solution, is to halt the globalisation process, and reduce trade. preferably through increased protectionism. thus ignoring the fact, that it is precisely the protectionism of the developed world that is keeping the developing countries on their knees. as an example can be provided the support certain opponents of globalisation has given to the common agricultural policy or cap, run by the european union. this policy is responsible, not only for wasting the resources of the european tax payer, and keeping the price of agricultural goods artificially high, but also in maintaining an impregnable barrier against competition from the farmers in the developing world, who are just made to suffer, at the advantage their ineffective european colleagues. free trade free trade is the only thing that can ignite economic growth in the developing world, thus reducing poverty. the market might not be perfect, but nothing in human socikety ever is. and it is this chase for the ideal state, that most often leaves mankind in misery. the market certainly has a stronger case that any conceivable alternative. the road ahead seems not to lie in the reduction, or remodelling of globalisation but the expansion thereof, and expansion to include the areas in the world which globalisation has so far been passing by. “if goods do not cross borders – soldiers will!” litterature department for international development making globalisation work for the world’s poor,2000 hayek, friedrich-august v. law, legislation and liberty melchior, arne, telle, kjetil & wiig, henrik globalisering og ulikhet(norwegian:globalisation and inequality), norwegian institute of international affairs, 2000 undp human development report 1998 undp human development report 1999 july-august politikon politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 125 emerging actors in international development: the case of brazil and portuguese speaking countries in africa (20032014) iara binta lima machado iara binta lima machado, 25, has a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the federal university of rio grande do sul (ufrgs – brazil). she is currently pursuing a master’s degree in political science at the university of montréal (udem – canada). her interests include international politics, brazil-africa relations and african politics. abstract under the leadership of former president luiz inácio lula da silva (2003-2010) and his successor, dilma rousseff (2011), brazil has emerged as an important donor within the international development system. within this context, africa has stood out as a meaningful partner for brazil’s development initiatives. this paper analyses the dynamics of brazilian cooperation for international development (cobradi) with portuguesespeaking countries in africa (palop) between 2003 and 2014. it examines both the implementation of initiatives, pondering over the relative importance of the palop within brazil’s development assistance to africa, as well as the dynamics of solidarity and interests that shape brazilian cooperation with africa. the analysis of discourse and practice suggests that the palop clearly stand out as prominent partners to cobradi; beyond that, it suggests that self-interest and solidarity are not excluding dynamics in brazil’s development cooperation. key words: brazil-africa development cooperation, brazil-africa relations, cobradi, emerging donors, international development, palop. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 126 introduction at the beginning of the century, emerging donors (e.g. china, india, brazil) have come to occupy a more prominent place as providers of development assistance, whereas not long ago they stood out as aid recipients themselves (cabral and weinstock 2010; milani and carvalho 2012; fingermann 2014). this re-emergence of south-south cooperation (ssc) has become the object of a growing interest on the part of researchers and the media, but its dynamics still merit further study, particularly as more data becomes available. this paper, which is part of on-going research on brazilian development cooperation, seeks to address some of these knowledge gaps by focusing on brazilian aid to portuguese-speaking countries in africa (palop)78 between 2003 and 2014. under former president luiz inácio lula da silva (2003-2010) and his successor, president dilma rousseff (2011), brazil sought to diversify its international relations by strengthening partnerships with developing nations. in doing so, it prioritized africa within its foreign policy strategy, albeit more markedly during lula’s tenure. since then, not only have diplomatic and economic ties with the continent intensified, but development cooperation has also become a major driver in brazilian engagement and discourse towards the african continent (amorim 2010; white 2010; oliveira 2014). this paper will thus examine brazilian discourse and practice towards the palop. these five portuguese-speaking countries in africa have become important partners to brazil since the final moments of their struggle for independence in the 1970s. since then, not only have bilateral exchanges intensified, but multilateral institutional arrangements have also emerged, such as the community of portuguese speaking countries (cplp), established in 1996 (saraiva 1996; pimentel 2000; pinheiro 2007; amorim 2010). as such, the paper seeks to understand how brazil implements its development cooperation initiatives in these countries. precisely, it ponders over their relative importance in brazilian foreign aid towards africa. beyond that, it also examines how brazil reconciles solidarity and national interest in the context of its development cooperation strategy in africa and the palop. while important contributions have been made to the subject, they remain largely focused on specific issues (e.g. chichava et al 2013) and countries, leaving room for a broader approach. furthermore, this paper aims to contribute to an expanding literature 78 these countries are: angola, cape verde, guinea-bissau, mozambique, and sao tome and principe. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 127 on the relationship between self-interest and solidarity in cooperation for development, particularly with regards to brazil (e.g. pino and leite 2010; milani and carvalho 2012). the study will be largely based on the analysis of official documents and secondary sources. after introducing the concept of south-south development cooperation, the paper presents the main features of brazilian cooperation for international development (cobradi). it then analyses brazilian initiatives in lusophone africa and, before its concluding remarks, presents a brief discussion on the dynamics of solidarity and selfinterest shaping such cooperation. conceptualizing south-south development cooperation (ssdc) as emerging donors have become an influential force on the international development architecture, there has been a greater need to conceptualize the phenomenon of ssdc. even though a consensual definition is still lacking, with each country proposing its own general vision of the topic (fingermann 2014), this process can largely be apprehended by the notion proposed by the un, whereby ssdc can be understood as “(…) a process whereby two or more developing countries pursue their individual and/or shared national capacity development objectives through exchanges of knowledge, skills, resources and technical know-how (…) for their individual and/or mutual benefit within and across regions” (un 2012: 5)79. ssdc stands out as a particular dimension of the broader phenomenon of south-south cooperation as it has evolved since the 1950s. broadly speaking, collaboration between developing countries can be traced back to the bandung conference and the subsequent establishment of the non-aligned movement (nam). in the following decades, efforts to enhance the development prospects and the negotiating capacity of developing nations continued through the establishment of the united nations conference on trade and development (unctad) (1964) (and within it of the g-77), with the approval of the declaration on the new economic international order in the un and a greater emphasis on technical cooperation with the adoption of the buenos aires plan of action for promoting and implementing technical cooperation among developing countries 79 operational definition proposed at the outset of the may 2012 meeting of the high-level committee on south-south cooperation. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 128 (1978)80. nevertheless, in the midst of the debt crisis, neoliberal adjustments, and democratic transitions that marked the following two decades, ssc lost its impetus. it is only recently that it has regained prominence in the international scene under the more active international stance adopted by emerging nations (chatuverdi 2012; leite 2012; milani and carvalho 2012; ullrich and carrion 2013). in practical terms, ssdc differs from the official development aid (oda) provided by the members of the development assistance committee of the organisation for economic cooperation and development (dac-oecd) with respect to its modalities and composition, thus standing as a broader concept (lengyel and malalcalza 2011)81. perhaps more important though, and of particular interest here, are the principles which guide cooperation between developing nations, most notably the ideas of solidarity, mutual benefit, respect for sovereignty, reciprocity, and the absence of conditionalities (milani and carvalho 2012; fingermann 2014; undp 2014). beyond that, one must not forget the political implications of the rise of ssc pursuant to milani and carvalho (2012), ssc in the 21st century stands out as (…) an attempt to ensure a differentiated insertion on the part of some countries from the south in their dialogue with developed countries. much of the institutional engineering that, since the early 2000, has supported ssc is based on the assumption that developing countries can and must cooperate with one another in order to ensure political reforms on global governance (imf, wb, un) and solve their own social and economic problems based on their shared identities (…), common efforts, interdependence, and reciprocity. this is the equivalent of saying that ssc presupposes geopolitical and geo-economic arrangements of the world 80 according to carlos puente (2010), the united nations conference on technical cooperation among developing countries (1978), from which derived the buenos aires plan of action, was a milestone to technical cooperation within the global south. the document makes 38 recommendations to technical cooperation and focuses on 15 different areas of action. 81 pursuant to the dac, official development assistance consists of “(…) those flows to countries and territories on the dac list of oda recipients and to multilateral institutions which are: i. provided by official agencies, including state and local governments, or by their executive agencies; and ii. each transaction of which: a) is administered with the promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries as its main objective; and b) is concessional in character and conveys a grant element of at least 25 per cent (calculated at a rate of discount of 10 per cent)” (oecd 2015). the exclusion of export credits from the modalities of oda is one of the differences between the dac framework and south-south cooperation in general (cabral 2011). politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 129 that are not the sole expression of western priorities (milani and carvalho 2012: 15)82. brazilian cooperation for international development (cobradi) (2003-2014) under the leadership of president lula, brazilian foreign policy underwent significant adjustments, particularly in its affirmative stance towards the developing world. such a stance has continued under president rousseff, albeit with specific characteristics (amorim 2010; hirst, lima and pinheiro 2010; milani and carvalho 2012; oliveira 2014). an important component of this new strategy has been brazil’s efforts to extend its position as a provider of development cooperation through the expansion of its budgetary and project portfolio, particularly during lula’s second term in office (rizzi et al 2011; inoue and vaz 2012) (figure 1)83. figure 1 –cobradi (2005-2010) (in current us dollars) source: author with data from ipea (2011) and ipea (2014). brazil defines its international cooperation for development as follows: 82 translated from the original text: (…) uma tentative de garantir uma inserção internacional diferenciada de alguns países do sul no diálogo com países desenvolvidos. boa parta da engenharia institucional que, desde o começo dos anos 2000, tem sustentado a css fundamenta-se no pressuposto de que países em desenvolvimento podem e devem cooperar uns comos outros a fim de garantir reformas políticas da governança global (fmi, banco mundial, onu) e resolver os seus próprios problemas econ¸omicos e sociais com base em identidades compartilhadas, esforços comuns, interdependência e reciprocidade. isso significa afirmar que a css pressupõe uma geopolítica e uma geoeconomia do mundo que não sejam exclusisamente a expressão das prioridades do ocidente (milani e carvalho 2012: 15). 83 aggregate data for the period 2011-2014 is currently unavailable. 100,000,000.00 200,000,000.00 300,000,000.00 400,000,000.00 500,000,000.00 600,000,000.00 700,000,000.00 800,000,000.00 900,000,000.00 1,000,000,000.00 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 e x p e n d it u r e ( u s $ ) year politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 130 the total funds invested by the brazilian federal government, entirely as nonrepayable grants, in governments of other countries, in nationals of others countries in brazilian territory or in international organizations with the purpose of contributing to international development, understood as the strengthening of the capacities of international organizations and groups or populations of other countries to improve their socioeconomic conditions (ipea 2011: 17). noteworthy are the principles that guide development cooperation, such as the ideas of solidarity and of mutual benefits and responsibilities, all of which bring brazil closer to the discourse shaping ssc. indeed, brazil is reluctant to refer to its own initiatives as foreign aid, stating that “(…) in brazil, when we talk about aid, we are talking about cooperation: south-south cooperation (ssc)” (farani 2011: 3). the brazilian government thus opposes the notion of a donor-recipient relationship, opting for such terms as “exchange between equals”, “international cooperation”, “emerging donor” or “horizontal cooperation” (ipea 2011; inoue and vaz 2012). according to cristina inoue and alcides vaz (2012), this characterization can be understood both in practical and philosophical terms. indeed, although subject to change, brazilian cooperation has not historically relied on loans and grants, which are commonly associated with oda. beyond that, brazil’s bid can be seen as a move that reflects the country’s will to distance itself from images of paternalism, hierarchy and conditionality associated with traditional donors (inoue and vaz 2012). brazilian cooperation for development officially comprises the following modalities: (i) educational cooperation; (ii) contributions to international organizations; (iii) humanitarian assistance; (iv) technical cooperation; (v) scientific and technological cooperation and (vi) peacekeeping operations (ipea 2011; 2014). despite being excluded from the definition, debt relief will be accounted for in this paper. this move is justified by the significant evidence as to its usage and as an effort to increase the intelligibility of future comparisons84. within these modalities, technical cooperation, which is coordinated by the brazilian cooperation agency (abc) under the ministry of foreign affairs (mre), has come to occupy a noteworthy symbolic place in cobradi, even being termed the “brand 84 independent references to scientific and technological cooperation, as well as peacekeeping operations appear only in ipea 2014; the former being placed under technical cooperation for ipea (2011). carlos milani and tássia carvalho (2012) point to the fact that brazil’s current characterization of its development cooperation is still incomplete, excluding elements such as cooperation provided by federative units. other issues concern the inclusion of financial and economic cooperation into brazil’s official aid modalities (cabral 2011). politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 131 image of brazilian cooperation” (cabral 2011: 12; albuquerque 2013). officially, this type of cooperation is said to be free of conditionalities and commercial purposes while also serving as an instrument to consolidate brazil’s external relations (ipea 2011). finally, all throughout the period under study, trilateral or triangular cooperation has increasingly become a mechanism to foster development projects, through the establishment of partnerships with developed countries and international organizations85. moreover, since 2008, brazil has sought to promote structuring or groundwork projects, claiming that they have a greater positive impact on the field (ipea 2011; abc 2012c; inoue and vaz 2012; fingermann 2014). brazil-palop development cooperation (2003-2014): practices, modalities and initiatives the present section analyses brazil’s development cooperation with the palop. particularly, it will assess the relative importance of these five countries as development partners in the african continent. it begins with a brief description of the general aspects of brazilian development initiatives in africa before focusing on lusophone africa in particular. brazilian cooperation for development in africa: general aspects upon taking office in 2003, president lula pledged to make a contribution to the development of africa’s full potential (silva 2003), a commitment that was followed by a series of initiatives. indeed, until 2006, brazil had relieved more than us$ 931.8 million of african debt – notably 74.25% of all debt relief initiatives up to that year –, in a move consistent with the millenium development goals and the paris club prerogatives. debt relief measures continued under president rousseff, benefiting countries like gabon, sudan, and senegal (presidência 2007; moura 2013). with regards to official cooperation modalities, brazil’s programs and expenses between 2005 and 2010 targeted the african continent and african nationals in the form of humanitarian assistance, contributions to international organizations and banks, and refugee protection (ipea 2011; 2014). under the guise of the india, brazil and south 85 according to inoue and vaz (2012), brazil has also began pursuing south-south south trilateral cooperation arrangements. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 132 africa facility for poverty and hunger alleviation (ibsa fund), functional since 2006, projects in guinea-bissau, cape verde, among other nations, have been financed (ibsa 2011). on the field of educational cooperation, the exchange program for undergraduate students (pec-g) and the exchange program for graduate students (pec-pg) stand out as two of brazil’s most prominent educational programs by allowing foreigners to graduate from brazilian universities. between 2003 and 2013, africans from 17 countries benefitted from pec-g, representing almost 81% of all students enrolled in the program (5149 out of 6377 students); as to the pec-pg, african participation was considerably lower, slightly over 20% (ipea 2014; mre 2014a; 2014b). following demands by president lula, the mre sought to increment brazil’s network of technical cooperation. in this context, africa, and particularly the palop countries, became a regional priority (farani 2009; abc 2014). indeed, during lula’s tenure, 238 technical cooperation agreements were signed between brazil and african nations, as opposed to the 33 established by the previous government (1995-2002). some of these agreements established new partnerships, thus enlarging the geographical scope of brazilian technical cooperation in africa, an increase of over 318% compared to 2002 (from 11 to 35 countries) (mendonça 2013). the increase in the number of partners was accompanied by growing expenditure between 2004 and 2010 (from under us$ 2 million to more than uss$ 22 million), with the exception of 2007; in 2010, the continent accounted for 57% of all budgetary execution on technical cooperation. despite a large array of themes, most projects focused on agriculture, education and health (52%), but fields such as social protection and biofuels also received great attention, not least on brazilian discourse towards african development. over the following two years, budget execution underwent a considerable reduction, as shown below (figure 2) (abc 2011; 2013; cabral 2011; stolte 2012). politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 133 figure 2 – technical cooperation with africa: annual budget execution (2003-2012) (us$) source: adapted from abc (2013). that notwithstanding, under president rousseff, brazilian technical cooperation with africa continued to foster some of the innovations devised under lula. by building on the expertise of public institutions such as the brazilian agricultural research corporation (embrapa) and the oswaldo cruz foundation (fiocruz), the impetus to develop groundwork projects and foster trilateral cooperation was reinforced by the advancement of projects such as the capacity improvement project on research and technology transfer for development of agriculture in the nacala corridor (prosavana) and the production of anti-retroviral drugs, both in mozambique (chichava et al. 2013; russo et al. 2014). brazilian development cooperation with the palop : strengthening partnerships brazilian development cooperation with the palop covers the full range of official modalities of cobradi, as well as initiatives in debt relief. given the greater availability of data regarding technical cooperation and its centrality as the “brand image of brazilian cooperation”, analysis will focus mostly on this particular modality. after a broad overview, attention will be directed towards specific themes in technical cooperation, precisely the fields of education, agriculture and social protection, as well as technical cooperation in health. 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 524 068.48 198 601.99 525 732.23 2239 310.87 1410 692.35 3633 053.01 9608 816.64 20212 738.41 14154 268.35 9947 301.70 politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 134 brazilian technical cooperation with angola, mozambique, cape verde, sao tome and principe, and guinea-bissau dates back to the end of the 1970s, when brazilian foreign policy started advocating for the strengthening of ties with these former portuguese colonies. by the mid-1980s, all five countries had signed a basic technical cooperation agreement with brazil; even more so, the late 1990s brought about the allocation of specific resources to finance projects in the palop amidst the incremental expansion of efforts to foster brazilian technical cooperation. throughout this trajectory, portuguese-speaking countries remained the main recipients of brazilian technical cooperation. in fact, only taking into account the period between 1995 and 2005, for which data are available, one finds that they accounted for 94% and 68.9% of projects and actions in africa, respectively (puente 2010; inoue and vaz 2012; abc 2012a; 2012b; 2012d; 2012e; 2012f; 2012g). despite the geographical expansion of technical cooperation agreements and projects during lula’s tenure, the palop have continued to account for the bulk of initiatives in africa, a reality that is consistent with abc’s stated priorities. according to the agency itself, these countries responded for 55% of resources allocated for projects in africa (abc 2010). this trend is even more impressive when one considers that, between 2005 and 2009, as much as 27% of all resources made available for technical cooperation were disbursed in portuguese-speaking countries86. in this same period, guinea-bissau alone responded for 6% of expenditures; being closely followed by angola and mozambique, each with 4%. in 2010, lusophone countries accounted for 24% of all budgetary expenses within this modality (ipea 2011; 2014). the establishment of a complementary agreement on technical cooperation was even a part of the strategic partnership established between brazil and angola in 2010; the said agreement was signed in 2012 and it envisages action in the fields of energy, health, education, and the justice system (cruz 2012; abc 2012a). an assessment of technical cooperation in particular fields allows one to further grasp the importance of the palop in both quantitative and qualitative terms. taking advantage of the shared portuguese language, technical cooperation in education has seen some interesting initiatives in professional education, which responded for 61.96% of all technical cooperation projects in education between 2000 and 2012 with 86 timor leste is included in this calculation. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 135 africa, for when data is available (ullrich and carrion 2013). according to ullrich and carrion (2013), the impetus to foster professional education in these countries stems from the lack of specialized main d’oeuvre. central to this strategy has been the implementation of vocational training centers by the brazilian service for national apprenticeship (senai), which began even prior to lula’s administration. in angola, for example, where a center has been active since 2000, courses are offered in the fields of mechanics, masonry, and sewing, among others. its administration was transferred to the angolan government in 2005. beyond that, other units exist in guinea-bissau and cape verde and implementation is under way in sao tome and principe and mozambique. concerning the latter, this process included the offering of courses to the center’s future trainers (abc 2010; 2012c; modelo 2011). furthermore, since 2007, senai began to work in association with private brazilian companies in africa. the outset of such partnerships came with the establishment of the odebrecht center for technical education in angola. in 2013, senai and odebrecht signed a new contract to ensure the training of 770 angolans from biocom, a company that operates in the bioenergy and sugar-alcohol sectors. vale, brazil’s giant mining corporation, has also engaged in educational arrangements with senai. indeed, in 2009, both came to an agreement regarding the qualification of workers for the moatize mine, a project that has sparked controversy over its social effects87 (ipea and wb 2011; pires 2013). from the support for horticulture in cape verde, through the strengthening of cashew production in guinea-bissau, to the broader collaboration to the development of agriculture in sao tome and principe, brazil has fostered a series of projects and actions in agriculture and social protection in portuguese-speaking nations in africa (abc 2010; abc 2014a). brazilian cooperation in agriculture and social protection with the palop also provides a good illustration of the patterns that characterize brazil’s more general approach, such as reliance on the country’s own expertise and experience, and the usage of long-established public institutes to provide cooperation (e.g. embrapa). furthermore, it allows one to probe into the more recent trends of mixed-modality arrangements, groundwork projects and trilateral cooperation, the mozambican portfolio being a great example (chichava et al 2013). in 2011, mozambique was one of the five countries which have adhered to the more food africa program, a mixed-modality family farming program 87 for further information, see ‘mozambique protesters at brazil-owned vale coal mine’ (2013), bbc, april 17th. available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-22191680. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-22191680 politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 136 that couples technical cooperation with concessional loans for africans to buy brazilian equipment and machinery (chichava et al. 2013; moçambique 2014). mozambique is also one of the beneficiaries of a program launched in 2012 combining the efforts of the brazilian government and britain’s dfid, with the support of the world food program and the fao. the purchase from africans for africa program (paa áfrica) stems from an idea put forward by the brazilian government during the high-level brazil-africa dialogue on food security, fighting hunger and rural development (2010) and builds upon the zero hunger national initiative. the program seeks to enhance access to institutional markets for small-scale farmers while at the same time ensuring food assistance to school children. phase i, which ended in december 2013, saw 497 farmers and 74,520 children assisted by the program in mozambique (paa africa 2014). embrapa has been a major supporter in the development and implementation of structuring projects in the palop by means of trilateral cooperation. in mozambique, two programs are noteworthy, the prosavana and proalimentos. according to chichava et al (2013: 11-2), “prosavana is perhaps the most ambitious and high profile initiative in the recent history of brazil’s international cooperation for development in africa”. the project was born from a partnership between the brazilian and japanese governments back in 2009 and seeks to build upon brazil’s experience with turning its cerrado region into a productive agricultural zone. its ultimate goal in to increase food security in mozambique, a partner sought due to the similar conditions between its savana region and the cerrado, through investments in research and extension. the initiative, under implementation since 2011, will be concluded in 2016 (chichava et al 2013; embrapa [2014b]). food security is also at the core of the technical support to nutrition programs and food security in mozambique (proalimentos), a trilateral initiative between brazil, mozambique and usaid established in 2010. the project focuses on subsistence agriculture and family farming and operates under the global initiative to fight hunger and food security (ghfsi). its implementation phase began in 2011 with completion scheduled for december 2014 (fingermann 2014; embrapa [2014a]). starting in 2014, a groundwork project is under development in angola in partnership with the fao under the brazilfao south-south triangular cooperation program. it seeks to enhance the country’s agricultural innovation and research prospects (embrapa [2014c]). politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 137 brazilian technical cooperation in health with the palop targets a range of issues, such as projects against malaria, the strengthening of national health institutions, and hiv/aids. with 31 active projects in these five countries in 2011, the palop were the main recipients of brazil’s projects in health (russo et al. 2013). similar to agriculture and social protection, structuring projects have been launched in recent years, with some remarkable examples being implemented by fiocruz (wb and ipea 2011; fiocruz 2014). noteworthy is the establishment of an anti-retroviral pharmaceutical plant in mozambique, a project born back in 2003 from a request made by the mozambican government. despite delays due to procedural and financial matters, the factory was finally inaugurated in 2012. in the following year, production of five different drugs began and, interesting enough, the mozambican government intends to move production beyond the initial focus on hiv/aids medication. as it stands, it is the sole publicly owned drug plant in subsaharan africa; brazilian support is currently scheduled to end in 2017 (stolte 2012; roa and silva 2013; russo et al. 2014). other groundwork initiatives include actions to strengthen the public health institutions of the palop countries, such as the support for technical health schools in cape verde and guinea-bissau, as well as the development of national health schools in mozambique and angola. cooperation in health between fiocruz and the palop benefits largely from the framework provided by the cplp. here, one notes the initiative to establish human milk banks in cplp countries (2008), with a unit opening in cape verde in 2011 (fonseca 2013; roa and silva 2013). in regard to the other modalities of brazilian development cooperation, the pattern of expenditures allows one to probe into the importance of the palop in brazil’s foreign aid. even though the african continent only accounted for 7.26% of disbursements in humanitarian assistance, the members of the cplp combined – thus including timorleste – represent 8% of total expenditure between 2005 and 2009. in particular, guineabissau received 3.48% of total spending in the period (ipea 2011). the palop were by far the main beneficiaries of pec-g between 2003 and 2013. together, they represented almost 84% of all african students awarded scholarships to brazilian universities; and close to 68% of all students welcomed in the same period. in pec-pg, they accounted for more politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 138 than 92% of african students (mre [2014a]; [2014b]). in 2010, for when data is available, the portuguese-speaking countries were the five main recipients of brazilian development assistance to africa, receiving almost 77% of all spending (ipea 2014). debt relief measures were also extended to the palop. in 2003, president lula ratified a debt forgiveness agreement relieving mozambique of 95% of its debt with brazil (us$ 331 million), concluding negotiations under way since 2000. with cape verde, debt restructuring resulted in the elimination of us$ 1.2 million out of the us$3.9 million in interests owed by that country. during rousseff’s first term in office, sao tome and principe was one of the countries whose debt, which amounted to a little more than us$ 4.3 million, was restructured amidst measures to renegotiate almost us$ 900 million of the debts from twelve african nations. the formal announcement, made during the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the african union, also includes guinea-bissau (perdão 2004; em cabo verde 2010; afp 2013; senado federal 2013). solidarity and national interest in brazil-africa development cooperation: insights from the palop the growing role of emerging nations as providers of development cooperation has sparked interest over the motivations guiding their actions. in the brazilian case, recent studies have sought to engage in this discussion (e.g. pino and leite 2010; inoue and vaz 2012), with some focusing on relations with the african continent (e.g. milani and carvalho 2012). this section seeks to probe into how brazil reconciles its geopolitical and economic interests with the logic of solidarity attached to ssdc by looking at examples from the palop. as mentioned before, solidarity is a prominent concept in brazil’s discourse on development cooperation. this conception is reflected on official addresses specific to the african continent. indeed, during his speech at the opening ceremony to the 13th general assembly of the african union, in 2009, president lula stated that: brazil is not coming to africa to expiate the guilt of a colonial past. we also do not see africa as an extensive reserve of natural resources to be exploited. brazil wishes politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 139 to be a partner in development projects. we want to share experiences and lessons, consolidate efforts and unite capabilities (silva 2009: 2)88. even more so, in the african context, solidarity is coupled with an ethical component whereby development cooperation is associated with reparations for slavery (puente 2010).that notwithstanding, does the notion of solidarity thus exclude the importance national interests can play in brazil’s development cooperation with the palop in particular, and with africa in general? according to milani and carvalho (2012), historical, regional and cultural contexts provide the basis for solidarity in south-south cooperation, though this particular element cannot be dissociated from other interests (i.e. political, social, cultural, economic), and that on the side of both providers and recipients of this said development cooperation. indeed, brazil is kin on stating that its development cooperation serves as a foreign policy instrument where its mechanisms can help strengthen brazil’s relations with other developing nations. this is made explicit in regards to technical cooperation (ipea 2011), in the brazilian case, south-south cooperation [technical cooperation] is inspired by the concept of “diplomacy” whereby brazil makes available to other developing countries the experiences and the knowledge of specialized national institutions, without the imposition of any conditionalities and detached from commercial interests or lucrative intentions (…) this modality of international exchange represents, moreover, an important instrument to promote brazil’s image and potential abroad. in south-south cooperation, one transfers not only what is best, in terms of competencies and services, but one also disseminates the country’s position as an active actor on the international scene, in favor of development and solidarity, materializing a traditional point in brazilian foreign policy (farani 2009: 21)89. 88 translated from the original text: o brasil não vem à áfrica para expirar a culpa de um passado colonial. tampouco vemos a áfrica como extensa reserva de riquezas naturais a ser explorada. o brasil deseja ser parceiro em projetos de desenvolvimento. queremos compartilhar experiências e lições, somar esforços e unir capacidades (silva 2009: 2). 89 translatd from the original text: : no caso brasileiro, a cooperação sul-sul é inspirada no conceito de "diplomacia” na qual o brasil coloca à disposição de outros países em desenvolvimento as experiências e conhecimentos de instituições especializadas nacionais, sem a imposição de condicionalidades e desvinculada de interesses comerciais ou fins lucrativos (...)essa modalidade de intercâmbio internacional representa, outrossim, um importante instrumento de divulgação da imagem do brasil e de suas potencialidades no exterior. na cooperação sul-sul, transfere-se ao exterior não apenas o que há de melhor no país, em termos de competências e serviços, como, também se difunde a postura do país como ator ativo no cenário internacional, em fav or do desenvolvimento e da solidariedade, materializandose assim um dos pontos tradicionais da política externa brasileira (farani 2009: 21). politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 140 the “brazil-africa dialogue on food security, fight against hunger and rural development”, held in brasília in 2010, provides an illustration of the political impetus attached to brazil’s development cooperation with africa (albuquerque 2013). pursuant to the final document, africa and brazil must engage in joint efforts to secure better access to markets, technology and financial resources, as well as the lifting of barriers in international trade in favor of developing countries (mre 2010). perhaps more symbolic is the election of josé graziano da silva to serve as fao’s director in 2011. pursuant to a mozambican official interviewed by chichava et al. (2013: 22), “for his election, brazil negotiated with guebuza the support of mozambique for his candidacy. brazil pressured the palops to support graziano by committing to a south-south cooperation policy”90. the matter of economic interests attached to brazilian cooperation for african development is harder to evaluate at this stage, although some points of contention are worth highlighting. for instance, the experience with mixed-modality arrangements, particularly the more food program, leaves one to ponder over the relationship between brazil’s technical cooperation and commercial interests. according to cabral and shankland (2013), the issue became a point of bureaucratic contention between ministries from economic portfolios, keen on partnering with commercially relevant countries, and the mre, which rejected the conditionality approach. in the end, demands from african nations emerged as the criteria for selecting partners and terms for concessional loans for machinery were agreed upon. private sector engagement also plays a role in prosavana, though not in the official project itself. besides visits from brazilian farmers, business events were held to lure private entrepreneurs and farmers into mozambique, such as the ‘agribusiness in mozambique: international cooperation brazil-japan and the investment opportunities’ in 2011. another initiative concerns the establishment of the nacala fund, which seeks to mobilize private capital to help develop agribusiness in the nacala region (chichava et al. 2013). though not an official modality in brazilian development assistance, 90 following miguel lengyel and bernabé malacalza’s (2011), one could apprehend such behaviour through the concept of political conditionalities. pursuant to them, “(…) the empirical evidence allows us to state that southern relations also apply political conditionality of the donor (not necessarily exposed to the public) that comes from the use of ssc as an instrument of foreign policy. it is therefore a tacit conditionality related to the donor’s foreign policy; in many cases, it may take the form of an appeal for international support of a particular case, the support to a peacekeeping mission or simply a fulfillment of a particular diplomatic issue by the host/recipient country (lengyel and malacalza 2011: 15-6). this is not to say that there is a contradiction with the brazilian discourse since the country does not impose policy and procedural conditionalities, commonly associated with cooperation by traditional donors. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 141 debt relief measures can also be related to brazilian economic interests, since poverty relief and the prospects for financing new investments are both envisaged by the brazilian government (mre 2013; brasil 2013; renegociação 2014). to what extent all these elements pose a challenge to brazil’s conceptual framework and discourse in favor of development cooperation remains to be seen. conclusion following president lula’s initial commitment in 2003, brazil-africa cooperation for development underwent a significant renewal, as seen by the increase in the number of partners and in expenditures until 2010 (the year 2007 constitutes an exception to this trend). even though the rousseff years have seen a decrease in expenditures in technical cooperation with africa, the “brand image of cobradi”, important projects have continued to be implemented, some of them through means of trilateral cooperation. through it all, the portuguese-speaking countries in africa have remained prominent partners to brazil’s international development efforts. their centrality to brazil’s development cooperation in africa can be apprehended both through quantitative means, as well as qualitative aspects. in 2010, in particular, they responded for 77% of all disbursements made to initiatives in african nations (ipea 2014). with regards to education cooperation, for instance, the palop account for the majority of all africans enrolled in the pec-g and pec-pg initiatives. technical cooperation provides an even clearer picture of the importance of the palop, with these countries being singledout by the brazilian government as priorities to development projects. moreover, they have also been the scenario for the implementation of ambitious initiatives, combining several recent innovations in brazil’s approach to development cooperation. the prosavana project is but one example of such trends. to what extent does brazil engage with africa and the palop in order to express solidarity or in pursuit of self-interest? as the analysis has shown, with illustrations from the palop, national interest does play a role in brazil’s stance towards development cooperation, though a clear and coherent vision seems tostill be under discussion. regarding economic interests specifically and exemplified by the internal dispute over the more food program, different sectors within the brazilian government disagree over the criteria to be applied when engaging in development projects, a situation that will need to politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 142 be addressed as cobradi expands. this, of course, is not meant to offset the logic of solidarity that underlies discourse and the will to contribute to african development under the guise of south-south development cooperation. even more so, as noted by pino and leite (2010), the association between self-interest and development cooperation should not undermine the fact that cobradi has had positive outcomes through a commitment to international development in regional, interregional and multilateral settings, the passing on of good practices, and the engagement of multiple actors. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. 27 143 references afp (2013). ‘brasil perdoa 900 milhões de dólares em dívidas de países africanos’. carta capital, may 25th. available at: 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(2010). ‘understanding brazil’s new drive for africa’. south african journal of international affairs 17 (2): 221-242. world bank (wb) and instituto brasileiro de pesquisa econômica aplicada (ipea) (2011). bridging the atlantic: brazil and sub-saharan africa – south-south partnering for growth. new york: wb. http://toolkit.undg.org/uploads/contents/1338317764.pdf http://ssc.undp.org/content/ssc/about/what_is_ssc.html 10 “yes”  or  “no”:  an  analysis  of  the  2010  referendum  in   turkey   özden melis uluğ2 , arda bilgen 3 abstract referendums are used as last-ditch devices to resolve issues in certain contexts. this was the case in turkey, as the current justice and development party government decided to hold a constitutional referendum on september 12, 2010 to amend the current constitution of 1982, ratified by the military junta of 19801983. at the end, 58% of the voters voted “yes”, as opposed to 42% of “no” votes. however, despite its enormous political and social impact, the subject remains under-researched and in need of explanation. this study gives a snapshot and evaluation of the 2010 referendum campaign according to relevant theories of psychology and political science. accordingly, this study denotes eleven interrelated factors of crucial importance in similar referendums and discusses their representation in the context of referendum, thus, contributes to the literature in terms of explaining both psychological and political factors in the referendums. introduction in many modern democracies, a great number of elections, referendums, and voting processes take place every year in order to enable the voters to shape their future on the basis of their decision and will. in this process, while some of the voters value for certain aspects of a candidate, party or ideology, some vote in an irresponsible manner. the latter case is more common in the cases of referendums in some countries, as voters are generally little informed of what or who they vote for. even though politicians usually dislike referendums (butler and ranney 1994), there is an optimistic suggestion that voters’ political interest and engagement, along with their political knowledge, will increase as a function of more frequent use of the referendum (qvortrup 2005). 2 özden melis uluğ, 25, is a phd candidate in psychology at jacobs university bremen in germany. her research interests include conflict and peace, identity and group conflicts, political violence, and how societies understand these processes. more specifically, she is focusing on the turkish-kurdish conflict in turkey. she holds an msc degree in political psychology from queen’s university belfast in northern ireland, and a bsc major in psychology and minor in studies in politics from the middle east technical university in turkey. 3 arda bilgen, 25, is a phd student in development studies at rheinische friedrich-wilhelms-universität bonn in germany. his research interests are in turkish foreign policy, turkish domestic politics, transnational security, terrorism, and security-development nexus. he holds an ma degree in international security studies from the george washington university in washington, dc and a ba degree in international relations from bilkent university in turkey. 11 in some occasions, it is a common practice for political party leaders to refer to referendums as ultimum remedium for resolving issues. this was the case in turkey in the recent past, as a constitutional referendum was held on september 12, 2010. the main reason for referring to a referendum was that the justice and development party (adalet ve kalkinma partisi, henceforth akp) government, amidst objections of the opposition parties in the parliament, wanted to amend the current constitution of 1982, which was ratified by a popular referendum during the military junta of 1980-1983. in this context, the akp government decided to hold a referendum as a last resort solution to achieve its goal(s) in a legitimate and democratic way. to this end, the akp conducted a very comprehensive and successful campaign. despite the political and psychological significance of this successful campaign, however, the subject remains under-researched and in need of explanation. this study aims to evaluate the akp’s 2010 referendum campaign for a new constitution that would include 26 amendments regarding the equality before the law, right to privacy, freedom of movement, children’s rights, right to organize labour, right to petition, loss of membership in parliament, administration of parliament, recourse to judicial review, public service, inspection of judicial services, military justice, constitutional court, supreme council of judges and prosecutors and economic planning in turkey from psychological and political perspectives. in addition, the study will try to explain what factors are of crucial importance in similar referendums, and thus, contribute to the literature in terms of understanding both psychological and political factors in the referendums. in accordance with that, in the first section of the study, a background of the referendum will be given. following this, the campaign activities and how the akp won the referendum will be evaluated by incorporating different theories, models, and study results in a concise yet comprehensive manner. background on september 12, 1980, turkish armed forces staged a military coup and two years later prepared a constitution, which was indeed not a civil constitution, for ratification. the akp was the first political party to amend that many articles at once, partly because of being the first political party to rule the country without a coalition since the military agreed to pass the government to the motherland party in 1983. the akp, as well as the main opposition party republican people’s party (cumhuriyet halk partisi, 12 henceforth chp) aimed to change the constitution of 1982 on the grounds that the country was in dire need of a new, civil constitution and the “people” were expecting a change after almost three decades. with that aim in their mind, the akp conducted a serious referendum campaign and gave the clear message to the electorate regarding the necessity to amend the constitution of 1982. in this process, the akp and some other right-wing parties such as the felicity party (saadet partisi) and the great union party (buyuk birlik partisi) supported the “yes” for the constitutional change, while the opposition parties such as the “social democrat” chp, the “far-right” nationalist movement party (milliyetci hareket partisi, henceforth mhp), and other impotent left-wing parties supported the “no” campaign to these amendments in the referendum. throughout the referendum process, the akp emphasized that the constitutional amendments would make turkey a more democratic and stable country. in return, the chp claimed that the akp had a hidden islamist agenda to set up their own cadre in constitutional court to violate the judiciary independence, change turkey’s republican regime in the future, and challenge the secular foundations of the country. on the other hand, pro-kurdish peace and democracy party (baris ve demokrasi partisi, henceforth bdp) boycotted the referendum on the grounds that the changes in the new constitution were irrelevant to turkey’s democratization process. amidst such debates, the akp won the referendum at the end of the process, as the 58% of the voters voted “yes” and 42% voted “no”. the following section will try to evaluate the factors behind this success. evaluation indeed, there are numerous factors for the victory of the akp. under the light of the political and psychological theories, models, and results of the previous studies, it can be suggested that these factors of success include (1) active leadership, (2) mass commercialization, (3) social influence, (4) unity and articulate messages, (5) effective use of the media, (6) effective use of popular figures and organizations, (7) use of negative emotions to influence opinions, (8) positive and negative advertisement, (9) financial support and huge election budget, (10) religion, and (11) expert power. below, each one of them will be discussed in a concise, yet informative manner. active leadership 13 according to bean and mughan (1989), political party leaders are increasingly at the heart of party struggle in democracies. specifically with the media’s ever more significant role in the dissemination of political information and the structuring of political discussion, party leaders are among the primary means by which political parties project themselves and shape popular images. similarly in the literature, it is generally indicated that the active leadership is needed for good teaching both in the schools and projects. in line with that, it is arguable that the party leaders need to perform active leadership in order to “teach” the issue at hand and transfer information. this was what turkish prime minister recep tayyip erdoğan aimed to do during the referendum campaign. he visited 36 out of 81 different provinces in turkey, including istanbul, ankara, bingol, malatya and bursa in order to effectively run the referendum campaign in a short period of time. he not only attended the mass meetings in provinces, but also participated in the “iftar tents”, where people break their fast in the evenings during ramadan in 2010, to be in closer interaction with the electorate. in these meetings, he and his member of parliaments (mps) had close contacts with the local people and explained them why casting the “yes” vote would be in their and turkey’s best interest. to further influence the voters, prime minister erdoğan engaged in demagoguery at times. for instance, he cried in the parliament for people who were executed because of their left/communist political leanings after another coup in 1971. he pretended to take the revenge of these people in the referendum, even though his and his party’s ideology were quietly opposite of them. apparently, through this, he aimed to show that he and his party felt sorrow for all people, regardless of their political views, and shared their grief. in addition, he indeed aimed to get support from the electorate from the left-wing. mass commercialization according to the mere exposure theory, if a person experiences a new/simple stimulus repeatedly, it brings about more positive affect for the object, idea, or phenomenon at hand (atkin and heald 1976). the akp exposed their “yes” campaign to almost every person in the public through the effective and widespread use of billboards, cloth banners, flags, and brochures with their slogans and ideas on them. during the campaign, a person, whether at home or out, was bombarded with the akp’s messages conveyed through pamphlets, tv programs, radio shows. to illustrate, during the abovementioned mass meetings, the akp distributed t-shirts, cloth bags, badges, car air 14 fresheners, stickers, bottle waters, hand fans and hats with their referendum slogans on them. these were quite important materials for the people at that time, as the referendum campaign was in august, arguably the hottest month in turkey. in addition, large billboards were rented by the akp to inform the public about their campaign. the slogan of the akp, “our love is people; our decision is yes”, was visible at all times during the campaign. in other words, the akp endeared itself to the electorate by exposing more and more. social influence social influence theory posits that public compliance can be created “through normative social influence, where people conform essentially to be liked by their peers” (fein, goethals, and kugler 2007). moreover, another study result interested in canadian referendum in 1992 shows that, according to the consensus estimates, the more a voter is exposed to friends and family members who supported the “yes” campaign, the higher the estimates of the “yes” vote in the eyes of that voter. hence, it is more probable that the voter will support and vote on the “yes” side (koestner et al. 1995). this phenomenon is called “false consensus bias”. according to koestner et al. (1995), “the referendum context ensured that there was a built-in contingency between the behaviour of the reference group and the individual making the estimate.” therefore, if the estimate results of referendum are similar to their estimates, they are more likely to vote on the “yes” sides. this was the case in turkey, as well. the results of the public opinion surveys conducted before the referendum were generally showing that “yes” votes were ahead of “no” votes. furthermore, the survey companies that were supportive of the akp displayed the results more biased as “yes” was by a great amount ahead of “no”. when the voters believed that their friends and the people in their environment supported one party or one ideology which was also supported by survey opinions, they were more likely to support it in order not to be ‘out of group’. the akp was very successful on showing to the public that there was a high consensus on supporting “yes”, even though it was not totally reflecting the reality regarding the results. through that tactic, the akp might have increased the possibility for the electorate to vote for “yes” by showing there is a high support for “yes”. 15 unity and articulate messages in order to better communicate with the electorate and show its unity and teamspirit for better results, the akp prepared a guide to direct the entire party members in their local branches. to this end, a guidance of 23 rules that included suggestions towards the simplicity and visibility of the conveyed messages was distributed. it was strongly recommended that the discourses were adapted to the understanding levels of people. this phenomenon can be explained by the elaboration likelihood model (dainton 2004), which argues that there are two possible routes or methods of influence which are centrally routed messages (more complex) and peripherally routed messages (less complex). elaborated messages are ineffective when targeted participants are incapable of receiving the message. therefore, such campaigns use peripherally routed messages that are incomplex. the results after the referendum demonstrated that there was a negative correlation between the educational level and the inclination to cast “yes” vote. given that, it was understandable that the akp refrained from using centrally routed (complex) messages and adapted the discourses and messages according to the level of understanding of the electorate. effective use of the media in the literature of psychology, it is argued that national elections in most societies have become oriented toward candidate-centred media campaigns (mcallister 2001). it is further argued that party leaders packaged and presented through the electronic media and this type of canvassing produces tangible electoral gains. similarly, hillygus (2005) shows that mobilization, specifically among voters who previously not planning to cast their votes, increases with high exposure to campaign advertising and personal vote persuasion. the results of the referendum demonstrate that the akp was very successful in using the media and advertisements as a tool to influence and persuade the electorate, as well as to explain its goals and ideology. especially in terms of appearance, prime minister erdoğan and cabinet members were almost always on mainstream tv channels during the campaign process, and always prepared to discuss their prospects with the opposition parties. moreover, specifically prime minister erdoğan paid extra attention in order to prevent the media from spoiling the essence of his and his party’s campaign messages. to illustrate, at one occasion when erdoğan encountered a difficult question on a very popular tv program, siyaset meydani (political arena) on august 23, 2010, he refrained 16 from answering a challenging question. instead of trying to answer the question, he scolded the moderator for asking such a question. effective use of popular figures and organizations the above-mentioned elaboration likelihood model (dainton 2004) indicates that simple messages are more preferable for voters to understand the issue better. accordingly, using agents such as popular figures and organizations to convey messages in a simple form instead of a complex form greatly helps the electorate body comprehend the gist of any message and party’s goals. in line with that, the akp used popular writers, columnists, singers, and the presidents of very popular non-governmental organizations (ngos) in turkey during the campaign. these figures explained what they would vote for in the referendum to support the akp. even one of the arabesque singers composed a rhythmic song to explain why he votes “yes”. also, erdoğan visited a great number of ngos and associations including tüsi̇ad (turkish industry and business association) and asked–even forced–them to explain their position. as the president of tüsi̇ad did not want to reveal the organization’s position, erdoğan went too far to and stated that people who decided not to vote would be neutralized and people who voted for “no” would be “coup-lovers”. in a similar vein, egemen bağış, the current minister for the european union affairs and turkey's chief negotiator with the eu, stated that the mental health and patriotism of those whose vote is ”no” to the amendments in the referendum should be questioned. the results suggest that these popular figures and organizations helped the akp spread their referendum campaign messages out and increase their “yes” votes at the end of the process. use of negative emotions to influence opinions jerit (2004) suggests that in order to mobilize their party’s base and also attract the support of the uncommitted voters, political candidates have the incentive to refer to arguments that evoke emotions such as fear, anxiety, and anger. evoking these emotions gives political candidates the opportunity to underline consensual values. according to one of the social judgment theories, attitudes affect behaviour since, your attitude toward a candidate will influence whether you vote for him/her (dainton 2004). the theory argues that there should be “latitude of acceptance” which includes all ideas that are acceptable for the person to be persuaded. 17 under this light, it is fair to argue that the akp induced fear and anxiety during campaign activities. as mentioned before, the party labelled those who would vote for “no” in the referendum as “coup-lovers”. this was an informed choice, as the 1980 coup was staged on the very same day, september 12, and had very negative connotations for the majority of people in turkey. as countless number of people, regardless of their political leanings, were killed or tortured due to the 1980 coup, nobody would normally like to remember this day in turkey. bearing this in mind, prime minister erdoğan reminded the voters in many occasions that they had to vote for “yes” in order not to face a similar catastrophic coup again. in other words, the idea and fear of “another coup” was used as a political weapon to garner the support of the people who suffered from the past coups. therefore, the akp’s campaign was well designed according to social judgment theory, as, in the referendum context, the idea of not facing a new coup fell within the border of latitude of acceptance for people who suffered from 1980 coup. positive and negative advertisement king and mcconnell (2003) argue that positive advertisement is effective in winning the case for the sponsoring candidate, while negative advertisement is effective in creating a less favourable image of the candidates and minimizing the likelihood of voting for the targeted candidate. in this context, even though there is the high risk that negative political advertising can produce a boomerang effect that may create more negative feelings toward the sponsor rather than the target, prime minister erdoğan not only conducted a positive campaign for himself and his party, but also did a negative advertising for opposition party leaders. he fiercely attacked kemal kilicdaroğlu (the leader of the chp) and devlet bahceli (the leader of the mhp), especially during mass meetings. erdoğan’s move was not only successful in terms of increasing the “yes” votes, but also increasing the election turnout (77%), as, according to the mobilization hypothesis (martin 2004), negative information attracts attention, people pay more attention to negative information than positive one, therefore, turnout rate in the election is increased by the negative stimulants. financial support and huge election budget the public choice theory (brodsky and thompson 1993) suggests that most of the voters behave in self-interested (private-regarding) ways, rather than in selfless (publicregarding) ways. supporting this, the study results of bullock, gaddie, and ferrington 18 (2002) show that when more money is spent for the campaign, there is more stimulated environment. in accordance with that, the more the environment is stimulated, the more a political party gets participation. as is well known, the akp granted the voters with low socio-economic levels coal and food supplies, as it did in every election process. additionally, the municipalities of the akp allowed everyone to use big buses and minibuses–covered by the campaign slogans–for free to attend their mass meetings. these municipalities even employed the supporters. with full awareness that the more they give financially to the electorate, the more votes they will win, the akp spent 25.282.162 tl (approximately £10.826.986) for the campaign activities, accordingly to parliamentary documents (2010). in brief, there was a highly stimulated environment all around turkey and the voters were inclined to vote “yes” due to their short-term betterment in financial conditions. religion religion affects political behaviour of large groups of voters (powell and self 2002). the akp is widely defined as a conservative democrat party with islamic roots or leanings. the party’s nature paved the way for the emergence of a close connection between the akp and the controversial gulen movement, whose goal is to teach a moderate form of islam worldwide under the teachings of the exiled islamic theologian/preacher fethullah gulen. during the campaign, gulen himself addressed his followers in millions and explained the importance of casting a “yes” vote in the referendum by stating that he wished they had a chance to raise the dead people from their graves and urge them to cast 'yes' votes at the referendum. in a similar vein, one of the turkish islamist opinion leaders, abdullah büyük, stated that if people vote “yes” with faith, they would deserve a place in the heaven. in this context, the akp successfully influenced the voting behaviour of the electorate through linking religion and politics, as well as using powerful, credible, and popular people to affect masses. expert power social influence theory can be explained as the process by which individuals make real changes to their feelings and behaviours as a result of interaction with others who are perceived to be similar, desirable, or expert (rashotte 2007). research on political persuasion also demonstrates that the effectiveness of a message depends largely on the 19 credibility, authority, and likability of the message source (as cited in hillygus 2004). in other words, in close relation with the factor above, people can easily be influenced by the expert power, which depends on the target’s attributing superior knowledge and experience to the agent or person. in the context on the relationship between religion and voting behaviour in the referendum, it can be argued that the followers of the gulen movement or other devout persons found these religious figures/experts credible, believed in them, and casted their votes accordingly. thus, the akp used very prominent figures in turkey including politicians, experts in economy, and religion and public opinion leaders to influence big masses through their expertise, credibility, authority and likeability. conclusion this study gives the snapshot of the 2010 referendum campaign in turkey and evaluates it according to relevant psychology and political science theories, models, and previous study results. in the light of the findings, it can be argued that the akp and prime minister erdoğan together were quite successful in the referendum campaign in terms of meeting the expectations of the voters and taking the sociological, psychological, political, and economic realities of the country into account prior to formulating the campaign strategy. the results of the referendum, with 58% in favour and 42% against, are supportive of this claim as well. this study indicates that the akp has better understood the dynamics of the turkish society and political life and formulated its policies and election/referendum strategies accordingly. this crucial factor brought victory to the party on september 12, 2010, as it did previous election victories in the past decade. it appears that in different occasions and context, other political parties in different countries or of different political leanings would implement certain strategies and tactics the akp has implemented so far. last, but not least, taking the theories drawn from the areas of politics and psychology into account to understand why and how a political party succeeds or the factors behind the high turnout rate would generously help. references atkin, charles and gary herald.1976. “effects of political advertising.” public opinion quarterly 40: 216-228. bean, clive and anthony mughan. 1989. “leadership effects in parliamentary elections in australia and britain.” american political science review 83: 1165-1179. 20 brodsky, david. m and thompson, edward. 1993. “ethos, public choice, and referendum voting.” social science quarterly 74: 286-293. bullock, charles. s., ronald keith gaddie, and anders ferrington.2002. “system structure, campaign stimuli, and voter falloff in runoff primaries.” the journal of politics64: 1210-1224. butler, david and ranney, austin, eds. 1994. referendums around the world. hampshire: the macmillan press. dainton, marianne and zelley, elaine d. 2010. applying communication theory for professional life: a practical introduction. california: sage. fein, steven, goethal, george, r, and kugler, matthew, b. 2007. “social influence on political judgments: the case of presidential debates.” political psychology 28: 165192 hillygus, d. sunshine. 2005. “campaign effects and the dynamics of turnout.” the journal of politics671: 50-68. jerit, jennifer. 2004. “survival of the fittest: rhetoric during the course.” political psychology 25: 563-575. king, james. d and mcconnell, james. b. 2003.” the effect of negative campaign advertising on vote choice: the mediating influence of gender. social science quarterly84: 843-857. koestner, richard, et al., 1995. “false consensus effects for the 1992 canadian referendum.” canadian journal of behavioural science 272: 214-225. martin, paul. s. 2004. “inside the black box of negative campaign effects: three reasons why negative campaigns mobilize.” political psychology 25: 545-562 mcallister, ian.1985. “campaign activities and electoral outcomes in britain 1979 and 1983.” public opinion 49: 489-503. ministry of state of republic of turkey. 2010. soru onergesine yanit [reply to parliamentary question]. b.02.0.001/740. qvortrup, matt. 2005. a comparative study of referendums: government by the people. manchester: manchester university press. powell, larry and self, william. r. (2002). factors affecting vote decisions: an example from alabama lottery. north american journal of psychology, 469-478. rashotte, lisa. (2007), social influence. in: g. ritzer, eds, the blackwell encyclopedia of sociology, blackwell publishing, pp. 4426–4429. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 7 climate justice at the local level: the case of turkey beyza sarıkoç yıldırım doi: https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.45.1 beyza sarıkoç yıldırım, from i̇stanbul (turkey), is a ph.d. student at the department of political science and international relations at boğaziçi university. she received her bachelor’s degree in “political science and public administration” at middle east technical university in 2012. in 2015, she got her master’s degree in local governments and urban politics at marmara university with her thesis entitled “urban climate justice in the local climate change policies: the cases of bursa, izmir, nilüfer and karşıyaka.” her research interests fall under comparative politics and international relations, specifically environmental politics, climate change, local politics, social justice and climate justice. currently, she is working as a research assistant in the department of local government at marmara university. e-mail: beyza.sarikoc@marmara.edu.tr; beyzasarikoc@gmail.com. abstract climate change is an issue of social justice, as it affects different social groups in the urban space differently. yet, while formulating climate action plans, local governments often disregard the relationship between climate change and justice. by using content analysis, this article explores climate change action plans of turkish municipalities from the perspective of climate justice. it concludes that action plans of turkish municipalities do not consider climate change as a problem of justice despite the emerging or exacerbated inequalities in the urban space caused by climate change. keywords climate change; climate justice; local governments; municipalities; urban climate justice https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.45.1 mailto:beyza.sarikoc@marmara.edu.tr mailto:beyzasarikoc@gmail.com politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 8 introduction1 climate change, as one of the most significant global environmental problems, has several consequences at the local level. cities and climate change have a symbiotic relationship with each other, as the former contribute to the rising levels of greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions due to the high concentration of production and consumption within specific areas. according to un-habitat (2011), cities are responsible for 60% to 70% of total ghg emissions. moreover, urban population is projected to reach 66% of the world population by 2050 (united nations 2014), causing a further increase in ghg emissions in urban areas if our consumption and production habits do not change. at the same time, cities are the most vulnerable to severe outcomes of climate change such as extreme weather events, drought and sea-level rise, which have impacts on human health, food security, housing, employment and cultures (revi et al. 2014). as such, climate change has significant effects on the socio-economic structures of urban areas and increases the vulnerability of cities. vulnerability may vary according to two main and interconnected factors. the first factor is the structure of cities, such as the level of development, quality of infrastructure services, and institutional capacity at the local level. the second factor is the socio-economic conditions of city dwellers, including distribution of income, poverty rates, gender inequality and adequate health services for people with disabilities and the elderly. hence, climate change is an issue that has the potential to deepen social inequalities within and between urban areas. as a result, climate injustices that emerge in urban areas have been framed as “urban climate justice” in the literature (steele et al. 2015; bulkeley et al. 2013). in order to counteract climate change, local governments have pursued actions in the two main policy areas of climate change, namely mitigation and adaptation. while the objective of mitigation policies is to reduce ghg emissions, adaptation policies endeavour to adapt to the changing conditions caused by climate change. through mitigation and adaptation plans, local governments have taken measures against the effects of climate change since the 1990s. international climate change negotiations, such as the paris agreement and cop21 decisions, also underline the importance of actions of local and subnational governments (iclei 2016). by using content analysis, this article explores the climate change action plans of turkish municipalities from the perspective of climate justice and aims to fill the gap in the existing literature on climate justice. it concludes that although 1 an earlier draft “urban climate justice in the local climate change policies: the case of turkey” was submitted as a working paper to the iapss world congress 2019 and this article is developed from my master thesis entitled “urban climate justice in the local climate change policies: the cases of bursa, izmir, karşıyaka and nilu ̈fer” which was supervised by semra cerit mazlum in marmara university, turkey. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 9 climate change has caused or exacerbated inequalities in urban areas in turkey, action plans of turkish municipalities do not perceive climate change as a problem of social justice. in the first part of the article, i present a literature review of existing research on inequalities caused by climate change in urban areas and the theories of urban climate justice. in the second part, i examine the documents that delegate power and responsibilities to local governments by the central government in turkey, in order to understand the context in which municipalities implement climate change policies. finally, i assess the mitigation and adaptation policies to demonstrate the differences between them with an emphasis on climate justice. inequality of climate change in urban areas urban climate justice is a concept describing the emerging or exacerbated inequalities in urban areas caused by climate change. coincidentally, those who contribute the least to climate change are generally most affected by its negative consequences both at local and global levels. there are a few studies investigating the relationship between vulnerable groups and climate policies in cities. a recent study conducted in twenty u.s. cities shows that areas populated by the most disadvantaged and vulnerable groups are the most affected by the urban heat island effect (mitchell 2017) which means that the average temperature of cities is higher than its surroundings due to the changes in the land use in urban areas (stone and rodgers 2001). in new orleans, increased invoices due to rising electricity prices adversely affected the low-income groups (stein 2018). another study uncovers how in birmingham, fuel poverty could not be overcome by adaptation policies, and building affordable housing in vancouver brought about the displacement of low and middle-income groups because of structural factors (mckendry 2015). overall, many studies indicate that climate changerelated adaptation and mitigation policies can have unintended consequences on different groups and reproduce societal inequalities. therefore, these repercussions must be considered in the process of policymaking and implementation. the difference in vulnerability to climate change between lowand high-income groups is insignificant in urban areas where health and safety standards are provided, land use planning is done considering the risks in the region and where infrastructure and services are centrally regulated. however, low-income groups living in lowand middle-income countries are vulnerable to climate change as a result of inadequate infrastructure, health services and secure housing (ipcc 2012; revi et al. 2014). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 10 vulnerability to climate change is not only related to the income level. another factor that increases this vulnerability is the gender roles in society. beyond income level, gender also has an impact on vulnerability to climate change. for example, women living in rural areas are more vulnerable to climate change because they are directly dependent on natural resources of the land they work on. moreover, due to their gender roles as care-givers, women living in urban areas are disproportionately forced to cope with adverse health conditions exacerbated by the negative effects of climate change, such as vector infectious diseases and malaria caused by the urban heat island effect and water shortages in droughtaffected areas (terry 2009, 2-3). according to hardoy and pandiella (2009), some questions should be raised to understand vulnerability to climate change in urban areas. the options for low-income groups for housing remain quite limited in the absence of affordable housing in the cities. therefore, it is important to ask the question: which residential areas are more exposed to climate change impacts? subsequently, low-income groups are forced into residential areas where the effects of extreme weather events are more destructive. therefore, ‘who lives in areas where the direct and indirect effects of climate change are more hazardous?’ should be the second question. third, who lacks the knowledge, capacity and opportunity to take measures against the impacts of climate change? the answer of the third question emphasizes not only the lack of capacity of the population, but also the inadequate guidance from local governments (hardoy and pandiella 2009). these questions help to identify disadvantaged groups who are vulnerable to climate change, such as low-income groups, children, elderly people, women and people with disabilities. theoretical framework the main objective of this section is to define urban climate justice through the main theoretical approaches. yet, it is important to highlight that while there has been an increasing number of studies on global climate justice since the beginning of 1990s, they are still relatively few in number (bulkeley et al. 2014). using the prevailing theories on justice of notable scholars such as rawls (1971), sen (1999), young (1990) and lefebvre (2015), we can identify six approaches to urban climate justice in the existing literature, namely distributive and procedural justice, the capabilities approach, procedural justice in local climate adaptation, justice as recognition, spatial justice, and the eco-cultural political approach. adger et al. (2006) explain climate justice through both procedural and distributive justice, using the theory of john rawls as the foundation of their approach. accordingly, politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 11 adaptation to climate change requires both procedural justice, meaning the road to justice, and justice in distribution. while procedural justice is necessary for participation in the policy-making processes, distribution of burdens and benefits of climate change requires distributive justice. as such, procedural and distributive justice are interdependent on climate change policies (adger et al. 2006). therefore, at the local level, the elements of both procedural and distributive justice are important for the development of climate-just cities. adopting the capabilities approach, sen (2009, 18-19) argues that policies that increase basic capacities and opportunities for social justice are more egalitarian than others. using sen’s approach to justice, moser and satterhwaite (2008) have developed a “pro-poor adaptation to climate change”. they also note the fact that the population density is higher in lowand middle-income countries. moreover, the vast majority of the population in low and middle-income countries lives in coastal areas that are vulnerable to the impacts of sea level rise and extreme weather events. furthermore, lowand middle-income countries lack the capacity to adequately adapt to climate change because of deficiencies in infrastructure and constraints on public administration. therefore, the capacities of lowand middleincome societies should be increased to reduce their vulnerabilities in urban areas. dodman and satterthwaite (2009) argue that local and subnational governments can increase the adaptation capacity of urban areas by improving their administrative system and by providing housing and basic infrastructure services for vulnerable groups. bringing together the distributive justice and capabilities approach, holland (2017) recommends adopting the procedural justice approach in local climate adaptation. he argues that the reasons for vulnerability can be understood through the analysis of the political power of vulnerable groups who are most exposed to climate change, as well as examination of the policy-making process of climate change. only through such an analysis can vulnerabilities be understood. there are two obstacles to decreasing the vulnerabilities of certain groups to climate change. the first one is the influence of experts in decision-making processes because technical experts evaluate climate change as solely a technical issue, disregarding the justice dimension. the second obstacle is the conflict of interest arising from financial loss of certain stakeholders, such as polluting companies, due to climate change policies. by acting on these two fundamental barriers, the influence of vulnerable groups on the policy-making process can be increased (holland, 2017). bulkeley et al. (2014) add the dimension of recognition to the distributive and procedural justice in urban climate justice. climate justice on the international level is often discussed from the perspective of the distributive and procedural justice. however, the politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 12 question of rights and responsibilities in relation to climate change cannot be debated from the perspective of distributive and procedural justice only, given the socio-economic and structural characteristics of urban areas that vary within themselves and between the nation states. therefore, there is a necessity to analyse urban climate justice separately from climate justice at the international level. for this reason, bulkeley et al. (2014) argue that the approach of traditional international politics to climate justice, which is based on distribution and procedures, should be amplified at the local level with the notion of justice as recognition. the implementation of climate change policies requires a deliberative analysis because of the unequal distribution of burden and benefits of climate change across urban areas. in other words, in climate change policies at the local level, the cultural injustices that have already existed in cities should be taken into account in order to ensure the rights of oppressed groups such as the working class, women and ethnic minorities (bulkeley et al. 2014). another approach to urban climate justice is the spatial justice approach based on the claim of lefebvre’s ‘the right to city’ (2015). according to this approach, adaptation to climate change is essentially spatial. this means that, as opposed to the capitalist understanding of justice, resources such as jobs, income, political power, social services and healthy environment should be equally distributed in urban areas. however, these resources are currently concentrated among the urban elites and the unequal access to resources is reproduced through the structure of production processes. research on environmental justice shows that pollutants and hazardous facilities are often established in areas inhabited by low-income families and/or ethnic minorities (shi et al. 2016). in addition, urban planning policies in lowand middle-income countries cannot be implemented due to rapid population growth and the needs of the expanding urban area cannot be met due to lack of financial resources (reckien et al. 2018). therefore, while eco-friendly urban planning – which is essential in the face of climate change – in many cases cannot be adequately implemented in lowand middle-income countries, in high-income countries, refurbishing houses to make them more energy-efficient and reduce emissions is increasing housing prices, thereby causing ‘eco-gentrification' (reckien et al. 2018). as such, the effects of climate change and climate policies are not equally distributed in urban areas. for this reason, urban climate justice is the right to the city (cohen 2018). accordingly, inclusion of the citizen in both the policy-making processes and the policy implementation processes are necessary for overcoming injustices. likewise, in order to bring equality and justice, the environmental justice movement has been focusing on vulnerable groups who suffer the politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 13 most from the effects of climate change, yet do not often have a voice in the policy-making processes in urban areas (taylor 2000). overall, climate change, as a global problem, increases existing inequalities both between the north and the south and between social groups living in cities. policy areas of local governments such as infrastructure, transportation and energy determine the level of vulnerability of citizens to the impacts of climate change. such policies are likely to create socio-economic and socio-spatial inequalities if the unequal distribution of burdens and benefits of environmental processes are not addressed and the lack of participation of vulnerable groups in the policy-making processes persist. for these reasons, multi-layer and participatory policy-making processes that include all groups in the society and includes different institutions of state/private sector/non-governmental organizations/communities are necessary to achieve urban climate justice. methodology by examining whether turkish municipalities consider the justice dimension of climate change in their policies, i analyze their climate/sustainable energy action plans. i argue that the municipalities in turkey disregard the justice dimension in their action plans, as they mostly aim to develop mitigation policies. my hypothesis is that although climate change has created or exacerbated inequalities in urban areas, the action plans of municipalities in turkey do not frame climate change as a problem of social/climate justice. after developing the conceptual framework of the study and analyzing the powers and responsibilities of local governments in turkey, i conducted content analysis of municipal climate action plans, which unpacks the framework of policies since content analysis enables to go beyond merely counting the number of times specific words appear in the text (hsieh and shannon 2005). the study covered all municipalities in turkey with climate/sustainable energy action plans. at the time of the research, the number of municipalities with action plans was fifteen. i selected official and announced plans, as they represent the unified actions of municipalities to climate change. as such, other activities of municipalities on climate change are excluded from the scope of the study. i examined action plans by manual coding with the keywords employed from the conceptual framework of urban climate justice which i have delved into in the theoretical framework part of the study. then, i explored the words within their contexts and tried to examine thoroughly whether the words are related to urban climate justice. accordingly, i used content analysis as a qualitative method. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 14 the words chosen for the content analysis are divided into two categories. the first category is “concepts directly related to climate justice” in which i search for the following words: ‘justice’, ‘vulnerability’, ‘equality’, ‘inequality’ and ‘human rights’. the second category is “subcategories related to climate justice” containing the words ‘participation’, ‘woman’, ‘child’, ‘elderly’, ‘disabled’, ‘unimpeded’, ‘disadvantaged’, ‘poor’, ‘poverty’, ‘low income’ and ‘level of income’. i prefer to use subcategories because some municipalities do not use explicitly the words related to climate justice, but their policies nevertheless aim to overcome inequalities in society. due to time constraints, i was not able to conduct interviews with administrators and elected officials in local governments. this is the main limitation of this study, as i will not be able to analyze the details of policymaking and policy implementation processes, which are crucial for climate justice. the case of turkey local governments implement climate policies in accordance with their powers and responsibilities established by the legal system. municipalities in turkey operationalize their powers and responsibilities such as waste management, transportation and zoning to implement climate change policies (republic of turkey 2005; republic of turkey, 2004: 8902-8905). in addition, metropolitan municipalities in turkey are required by law to protect the environment for sustainable development (republic of turkey 2004, 8902-8905). for these reasons, the main agents of environmental management in turkey are the municipalities (orhan 2013, 601-616). however, the laws pertaining to climate change make no direct reference to the powers and responsibilities of local governments. therefore, municipalities in turkey use their discretion and voluntarily attempt to decrease the effects of climate change through the initiative of bureaucrats working in the environmental protection departments, stretching their powers and responsibilities to introduce adaptation and mitigation policies. municipalities in turkey are the latecomers in action against climate change compared to the local governments in the united states and the european union, for example, the covenant of mayors launched in 2008 by the european commission for local climate action (covenant of mayors n.d.). their hesitation to implement climate policies stem from the policies of the central government (turhan et al. 2016) that i will elaborate later. there are a number of studies revealing the importance of the guidance of local governments by the central government. for instance, a study conducted in sweden (storbjörk 2007) uncovers how local government officials are unclear about the extent of their power and politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 15 responsibilities in combating climate change. according to this study, the municipalities are in need of information provided by the central government on the effects of climate change. therefore, guidance by central governments helps local governments to take substantial action on climate change (storbjörk 2007). however, the policy documents of the central government in turkey are limited to the delegation of power and responsibility directly to local governments in relation to climate change. the roadmap to combat climate change for cities and municipalities in turkey are drawn in the development plans (republic of turkey 2000; republic of turkey 2006; republic of turkey 2013), the strategy of climate change 2010-2020 (republic of turkey ministry of environment and urbanization 2012a), the climate change adaptation strategy and action plan (republic of turkey ministry of environment and urbanization 2012b) and the urban development strategy and action plan 2010-2023 (2010). these documents do not precisely define the role of local governments and lack measurable and observable indicators. this may indicate that the central government disregards the power and responsibility of local governments in climate action. the central government’s negligence is also evident in the intended nationally determined contribution of turkey (indc). turkey's actions identified in the indc are classified under the sectors of energy, transport, buildings and urban transformation, agriculture, waste and forestry (republic of turkey 2015). although many of the contributions require action at the local level, the indc does not empower or include the municipalities. the limited role given to local governments can be explained by two factors. the first factor is turkey’s position in the global climate change policies. turkey has demanded to be removed from the annex i countries which are industrialized countries in 1992 and “countries with economic transition” (unfccc, n.d.) on the grounds that it was not as industrialized as the other annex i countries in 1990 and its historical responsibility was the lowest (cerit mazlum 2009, 56). furthermore, the special circumstances of turkey have affected its national climate politics. for example, according to turkey’s indc, turkey pledged to cut ghg emissions by up to 21% by 2030 compared to a business-as-usual scenario (republic of turkey 2015). in other words, turkey does not have an absolute reduction target. moreover, in turkey there is yet no national-level climate change legislation in place. as such, local governments do not set ambitious reduction targets in the absence of regulations giving them power and responsibility on climate change. the second factor contributing to the limited role given to local governments in turkey is the centralization of metropolitan municipalities because of amendments to local politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 16 government legislation. as a result, power and responsibility has been concentrated in the hands of 30 metropolitan municipalities while the power and responsibility of 519 metropolitan district municipalities has been limited (arıkboğa 2018). this type of centralization within local governance, focusing on metropolitan municipalities only, was carried out in the name of decentralization. in line with the amendments, in the 2019 budget for ministry of environment and urbanization, it is stated, “in order to enhance the capacity of local governments to combat climate change, the ministry has initiated the preparation of local climate action plans in 30 metropolitan municipalities” (ministry of environment 2018, 12). the statement of the ministry uncovers the concentration of power in the metropolitan municipalities and it opposes the principle of subsidiarity. yet, at the time of this research, none of the metropolitan municipalities have prepared climate action plans with the direction of the ministry. therefore, the limited role of local governments on climate change in turkey can be explained by the country’s national climate change politics and its tendency towards centralization. the central government’s negligence of local governments causes a crucial problem: the lack of capacity, both in terms of human and financial resources. preparing and implementing action plans is in fact a burden on the budgets of municipalities. therefore, instead of using their own human resources, the municipalities in turkey tend to receive consultancy on the action plans as the laws enable them to spend their budget on consultancy (republic of turkey 2004, 8912; republic of turkey 2005, 9490-1). however, the limited number of consultancy firms that prepare action plans for local governments in turkey creates a serious problem. as a matter of course, the inventories should be prepared specific to each action. nonetheless, when read closely, one can observe that the guiding principles and actions are copied and pasted between documents. although the main mitigation and adaptation policies are generally common, it would not be possible to overcome emerging and exacerbated inequalities unless the policies are constructed with due consideration for each city’s unique problems and socio-economic structure. such observations suggest that municipalities in turkey do not consider climate change as a problem of justice. however, it is worth noting that climate change policy is a learning process and the municipalities often tend to revise their documents. for this reason, such problems can be overcome in time with the development of new regulations that empower municipalities in the policy area of climate change. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 17 action plans and urban climate justice municipalities play an important role in combating the effects of climate change. therefore, the reflection of environmental justice, climate justice and urban climate justice in the action plans developed by municipalities is an indication of whether climate change is recognized as a justice problem. the elements that are indicative of climate change being considered as a justice issue in the action plans include recognition and inclusion of different groups in the policy-making and policy implementation processes, equal distribution of the burdens and benefits of climate change policies to society and direct reference to justice and equality as a principle. in the case of turkey, the indicative elements vary between the adaptation and mitigation plans. therefore, i studied the mitigation and action plans separately. action plans for climate change mitigation fifteen municipalities in turkey have climate or sustainable action plans and sixteen municipalities have signed the covenant of mayors initiated by the european commission this is an initiative to implement climate-related objectives of european union at the local level (covenant of mayors, n.d.). only three municipalities have not signed the covenant of mayors, despite aiming to reduce emissions through an action plan. therefore, there is a tendency to implement climate change policies in turkey by affiliation with a transnational network. in addition, the municipalities in turkey tend to implement mitigation policies in order to reduce emissions. only four of them have adaptation action plans. the action plans prepared to reduce emissions resemble other action plans submitted to the covenant of mayors. table 1 (see appendix), which is inspired by the table named “common mitigation measures in climate action plans” in the evaluation report of ipcc (2014, 92), demonstrates the mitigation policies of local governments in turkey. accordingly, the municipalities use their power and have responsibilities mainly in eight sectors: a) buildings and built environment, b) transportation, c) waste, d) energy supply, e) awareness campaigns and trainings, f) urban land use, g) industry, and h) agriculture animal husbandry and forestry. in different countries, local governments carry out different kinds of policy tools related to climate change within the framework of their powers and responsibilities. these tools are classified under different categories in the literature. according to the classification by bulkeley and kern (2006), there are four main policy tools in local climate change policies, namely self-governing, by provision, by authority and through enabling. the municipalities in turkey implement climate change policies using all of the four tools. through selfpolitikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 18 governing, they aim to reduce their own emissions with policies such as energy efficient planning in the municipal buildings and replacement of municipal vehicles by electric vehicles. by using the tool of ‘by provision’, municipalities reduce emissions arising from services that are under their control such as transportation and waste management. the third tool ‘by authority’ helps municipalities to implement climate change policies through their traditional form of authorization, i.e. regulatory instruments. finally, with the awareness campaigns and trainings, they guide citizens, civil society, private sector and other public institutions. table 2 (see appendix) shows the frequency of the words related to climate justice in the mitigation plans of municipalities. as it can be seen from the table 2, the word ‘justice’ was not used in any of the documents, and other concepts directly related to climate justice, i.e. ‘vulnerability’, ‘equality’, ‘inequality’ and ‘human rights’, are rarely used in the action plans. only one municipality uses the word ‘equality’ as it is a general principle to guide policies and four municipalities use the word ‘resilient’ to mention the role of local governments in making the city resilient to climate change. other words were used neither in the context of urban climate justice nor as a guiding principle. however, the words under the subcategories related to climate justice are mentioned at least once in the action plans. as shown in table 2, ‘participation’ is the most commonly used word in the mitigation plans of the municipalities in turkey. all municipalities either held meetings or organized workshops with the participation of stakeholders before preparing their action plans. however, participants of the meetings and workshops came mostly from other public institutions, municipalities, trade associations, universities and civil society organizations. the participation of individual citizens who are not directly affiliated with any institutions, such as women, people with disabilities, low-income families and children, and the participation of members of the municipal council is low. moreover, in all of the action plans, the sectors and the subject matters discussed for the action plans were determined by the administrators in municipalities and by consultancy firms. for these reasons, although the most commonly used word in the action plans is ‘participation’, it can be concluded that most turkish municipalities currently do not have inclusive policy-making processes. while the term ‘poor’ is used ten times in the action plans of four municipalities in total and it is mentioned in the context of urban climate justice in three of them, the municipalities using the word ‘poverty’ do not contextualize it as a guiding principle or an action. the three municipality underline the inequalities exacerbated by climate change but only one out of three takes substantial action against it, aiming to overcome inequalities politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 19 resulting from fuel poverty (gaziantep metropolitan municipality 2016). in relation to the words ‘poor’ and ‘poverty’, the term ‘low-income’ is used in the same context by the same municipalities. the municipalities use the words ‘woman’, ‘child’, ‘elderly’, ‘disabled’ and ‘unimpeded’ as targeted groups for raising awareness about climate change or increasing resilience to climate change. in general, it is clear that the action plans do not mention the concepts of environmental justice, climate justice or urban climate justice and the aim of overcoming injustices resulting from climate change in the action plans is not defined explicitly in the action plans. only a few of the mitigation plans such as by gaziantep metropolitan municipality (2011), nilüfer municipality (2016), çankaya municipality (2017) and antalya metropolitan municipality (2014) use the words related to climate justice. it can be argued that, although the action plans of municipalities do not explicitly integrate the idea of climate justice, they aim to include the dimension of procedural justice of urban climate justice through workshops and meetings. action plans for adaptation to climate change there are only four municipalities in turkey with both mitigation and adaptation action plans (bursa metropolitan municipality 2017; i̇stanbul metropolitan municipality 2018; kadıköy municipality 2018; karşıyaka municipality 2018). these municipalities are focusing mostly on the urban heat island effect, public health, biodiversity, green zones and raising resilience in energy, waste management, transportation, infrastructure, buildings and industry in their adaptation plans. in addition, two of them aim to raise institutional capacity for an integrated action plan expanding all the departments of the municipality. although there is no direct reference to environmental justice and climate justice in the adaptation plans of the municipalities, as can be seen in table 3 (see appendix), the number of words related to urban climate justice is higher than the numbers in the mitigation plans. furthermore, the relationship between climate change and its unequal effects on society has been established directly and it is clearly accepted that the consequences of climate change have not been affecting every individual in society at the same level. it is a result of the fact that the aim of the action plans for adaptation to climate change is making cities resilient to climate change. for example, the action plan of bursa metropolitan municipality remarks that there is a need for agreements that try to overcome environmental injustices (2017, 70). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 20 amongst the terms directly related to climate justice, ‘resilience’ and ‘vulnerability’ are used at least once by all of these four municipalities. except for the action plan of karşıyaka municipality (2018), the main strategy of the three municipalities is to make the cities resilient. for instance, the motto of bursa metropolitan municipality is “to be a livable, healthy and resilient city” (2017: 105). however, the only municipality that inserts this main strategy into its actions by mentioning it explicitly is the istanbul metropolitan municipality (2018). although istanbul metropolitan municipality (2018) is also the one that uses the term ‘vulnerability’ the most in its action plan (65 times), the context in which the term is used in the document doesn’t differ from the other municipalities. therefore, the istanbul metropolitan municipality’s action plan includes more detailed actions and policy areas and sectors compared to other municipalities. all four municipalities highlight that climate change causes vulnerabilities in society, and they all aim to reduce them. for the purposes of this paper, it is important to consider the definition of vulnerable groups in the action plans. all municipalities define children, elderly people and patients as vulnerable groups, and bursa metropolitan municipality and kadiköy municipality define the poor as vulnerable (2018). karşıyaka municipality (2018) and istanbul metropolitan municipality (2018) also include pregnant women in their classification. the only municipality categorizing women and people with disabilities as a vulnerable group is the karşıyaka municipality (2018). however, this municipality does not envision climate changerelated actions that are directly related to women. therefore, the action plans of the municipalities remain gender-blind and they do not take into account the effects of climate change on women. many local and subnational governments in the united states, europe and latin america directly mention environmental justice and climate justice in their action plans, including minneapolis (minneapolis city coordinator 2013), new york (city of new york 2015), athens (city of athens 2017) and mexico city (mexico city 2014). for example, the action plan prepared by the government of new york entitled “one new york: the plan for a strong and just city” (city of new york 2015) emphasizes equality and justice stating that environment and justice cannot be considered separately (city of new york 2015, 164). athens has plans to combat inequalities exacerbated by climate change, such as providing employment and housing for vulnerable groups (city of athens 2017). in the case of turkey, according to their plans for adaptation to climate change, the municipalities do seem to consider the consequences of climate change as an issue of justice. however, they do not explicitly mention climate justice in these action plans. the attempts to reduce vulnerabilities politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 21 is a common feature of all adaptation plans in the case of turkey. however, it will be challenging to introduce the concept of urban climate justice in the near future, given the municipalities’ pre-established subject matters and exclusionary workshops. conclusion urban climate justice and discussions on inequalities caused by climate change at the local level require a multidimensional analysis. beyond the emphasis on distributive justice, urban climate justice has been elaborated from different perspectives in policy debates and literature to reflect the various effects of climate change in cities. it must be considered at the local level how to distribute the burdens and benefits of climate change policies equally, how the decision-making processes are structured, and who is involved and recognized in these processes. the most prominent actor of climate change policies in urban areas is the local government. the local governments are crucial actors in the global climate action, as they implement decisions made in international negotiations. in order to overcome climate injustices, preparation and implementation processes are important in taking substantial action against climate change. it is necessary to determine the capacities and needs of vulnerable groups in climate actions and include their experiences and opinions in the development and implementation of such actions. therefore, action plans and policies initiated by local governments that include these aspects can pave the way for climate-just cities. the case of turkey shows that, although the municipalities do not explicitly consider climate change as a social justice issue, their action plans for mitigation and adaptation to climate change differ in terms of emphasis on inequalities and vulnerabilities exacerbated by climate change. as for the mitigation plans, although a few municipalities mention the effects of climate change on different income groups and sectors, they are not translated into practical actions. adaptation to climate change requires consideration of vulnerabilities to climate change and the evaluation of climate-related injustices in the adaptation plans. this tendency is seen in the action plans for adaptation to climate change of the municipalities in turkey: they all make vulnerability assessments by defining vulnerable groups and plan to take action to build up their resilience. however, there is no direct reference to overcome injustices exacerbated by climate change. lastly, climate action requires distinct policies depending on the social, economic and geographic structure of the cities. for this reason, local action is crucial for overcoming politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 22 climate injustices. however, given the legal constraints and scarce human and financial resources, turkish municipalities tend to outsource the preparation of the action plans to consultancy firms, which are very few in number in turkey. as a result, the action plans of municipalities are almost identical to each other, and even certain numerical targets are the same between municipalities with different socio-economic 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[sustainable energy action plan]. http://www.skb.gov.tr/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/tepebasi-belediyesisurdurulebilir-enerji-eylem-plani.pdf (01 may 2019). terry, geraldine. 2009. “introduction”. in climate change and gender justice, edited by geraldine terry, 2-3. oxford: oxfam gb. https://doi.org/10.3362/9781780440088. turhan, ethemcan et al. 2016. “beyond special circumstances: climate change policy in turkey 1992–2015.” wires climate change 7, no. 3: 448-460. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.390. unfccc. n.d. parties & observers. https://unfccc.int/parties-observers (february 2020). un-habitat. 2011. global report on human settlements 2011. cities and climate change. london/washington, dc: earthscan. https://unhabitat.org/global-report-onhuman-settlements-2011-cities-and-climate-change (16 april 2018). united nations. 2014. world urbanization prospects: the 2014 revision. highlights. new york: united nations. https://population.un.org/wup/publications/files/wup2014highlights.pdf (16 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http://www.skb.gov.tr/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/tepebasi-belediyesi-surdurulebilir-enerji-eylem-plani.pdf http://www.skb.gov.tr/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/tepebasi-belediyesi-surdurulebilir-enerji-eylem-plani.pdf https://doi.org/10.3362/9781780440088 https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.390 https://unfccc.int/parties-observers https://unhabitat.org/global-report-on-human-settlements-2011-cities-and-climate-change https://unhabitat.org/global-report-on-human-settlements-2011-cities-and-climate-change https://population.un.org/wup/publications/files/wup2014-highlights.pdf https://population.un.org/wup/publications/files/wup2014-highlights.pdf politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 28 young, iris marion. 1990. justice and the politics of difference. new jersey: princeton university press. appendix table 1: mitigation policies of local governments in turkey this table was prepared using the action plans of antalya metropolitan municipality (2014), bornova municipality (2013), çankaya municipality (2017), i̇zmir metropolitan municipality (2016), kahramanmaraş metropolitan municipality (2017), maltepe municipality (2016), 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 energy efficient planning in new settlements energy efficient urban renewal measures for the ener gy efficiency in existing buildings susta inable planning financing for the rea dj ustments energy efficient street lig htening fuel transition or centra l heating system s tr ansportation increa sing the use of public transport increa sing pedestria n and the use of bicycle in transportati on energy efficient ar rangem ents a nd vehicle renewals in public tra nspor tation promoti ng the usag e of electr ic v ehicles sma rt tra ffic management waste improvement/renova tion of solid waste storag e areas improvement/renova tion of wastewater treatment f acilities energy production from wa ste energy supply renewable energ y investments encour agement of renewable energy i nvestm ents energy cooperatives awareness campaig ns and trainings tr aining and awar eness cam pa igns urban land use reforestation and pr otection of ur ba n f orests urban agriculture crea ting ecoreg ions industry cooperation with industry and encoura gem ent of i ndustr y agr iculture, animal husbandry, forestr y susta inable ag riculture pr actices metropolitan municipalities other municipal ities politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 29 muğla metropolitan municipality (2013), nilüfer municipaltiy (2016), seferihisar municipality (2013), tepebaşı municipality (2014). table 2: the frequency of the words related to climate justice in the mitigation plans of municipalities. this table was prepared using the action plans of antalya metropolitan municipality (2014), bornova municipality (2013) çankaya municipality (2017), i̇zmir metropolitan municipality (2016), kahramanmaraş metropolitan municipality (2017), maltepe municipality (2016), muğla metropolita municipality (2013), nilüfer municipaltiy (2016), seferihisar municipality (2013), tepebaşı municipality (2014). 0 0 2 1 2 4 121 8 3 1 1 2 1 10 1 1 1 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 justice vulnerability equality inequality human rights resilient participation woman child elderly disabled unimpeded disadvantaged poor poverty low income level of income c o n c e p ts d ir e c tl y r e la te d t o c li m at e j u st ic e s u b c at e g o ri es r e la te d t o c li m at e j u st ic e politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 45 (june 2020) 30 table 3: the frequency of the words related to climate justice in the adaptation plans of municipalities. this table was prepared using the action plans of bursa metropolitan municipality (2017), kadıköy municipality (2018), karşıyaka municipality (2018), i̇stanbul metropolitan municipality (2018). 0 88 1 1 0 45 139 1 29 13 9 5 3 3 1 7 2 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 justice vulnerability equality inequality human rights resilient participation woman child elderly disabled unimpeded disadvantaged poor poverty low income level of income c o n c ep ts d ir ec tl y r e la te d t o j u st ic e s u b c at e g o ri es r el at ed t o j u st ic e climate justice at the local level: the case of turkey introduction inequality of climate change in urban areas theoretical framework methodology the case of turkey action plans and urban climate justice action plans for climate change mitigation action plans for adaptation to climate change conclusion references appendix 21 electoral  reform  in  a  post-­‐soviet  republic:  the  case  of   georgia   mikheil shavtvaladze4 abstract the paper aims to contribute to the comparative electoral studies in post-soviet sphere, with particular focus on georgia. specifically, i tried to examine the major features of the recent electoral reform in georgia in line with the "theory of post-soviet regime change" and analyzed the extent of the reform's trustworthiness in terms of holding free and fair competitive elections in georgia. the summary of conclusions drawn from the analysis shows that this particular case of electoral reform can be adequately explained by the theory on post-soviet regime change. introduction holding free and fair competitive elections (lipset and lakin 2004, 19), guaranteeing peaceful and constituional transfer of power, is yet unachievable for georgia. the absence of such independent electoral system poses serious problems to further democratization process in country and continues to be a major source of political and social unrest. between 2008 and 2009, large-scale anti-government demonstrations were unleashed in georgia's capital tbilisi largely due to the disputed extraordinary presidential and parliamentary elections held in 2008. according to the official results on these controversial elections, mikheil saakashvili won the presidential elections with minor advantage garnering just 53.41 per cent (civil georgia 2008) of votes from 56.18 per cent of voter turnout. as for the 2008 parliamentary elections, despite a low voter turnout of 53.9 per cent (civil georgia 2008), the ruling (unm) united national party, receiving 59.31 per cent of votes, ensured 119 of the 150 parliamentary seats. due to such unequal configuration of the parliamentary seats, strongly favorable to the ruling party, georgia once again ended up with one-party rule. incurring severe criticism domestically and internationally, the government of georgia was forced to make significant efforts to restore its shattered image and prove its commitment to democratic credentials. as a result, it introduced the direct election of the 4 mikheil shavtvaladze, 33, is a graduate who received his bachelor in "international economic relations" at the georgian technical university in 2011. in 2010, he obtained a ma in political science at the central european university. he has written his master thesis on the post-soviet transitions and conflict resolution and currently works at the tbilisi state university. his interests include comparative politics, democratization and state building, modernization and development, conflict resolution, foreign policy analysis. 22 mayor, yet applicable only for tbilisi, by amending the electoral code of georgia in december 2009 (transparency international georgia 2010, 3). moreover, important attempts were made to hold 30 may 2010 municipal elections in accordance with legal procedures. however, despite these steps to improve the electoral system and its legal framework over the past years, serious deficiencies yet remain. as a result, public trust toward electoral administration continues to be low and divided. based on the crrc's caucasus barometer 2010 survey results, only 5 per cent of the households in georgia disagree completely with the statement that election administration is politically biased. whereas, 29 per cent agreed somewhat that election administration is politically biased. however, one third of respondents did not know the answer regarding this statement (caucasus research resource centers 2010). moreover, based on the interim and final reports prepared by competent local and international observer organizations, serious legal and procedural deficiencies were detected during the 2010 local self-government elections in georgia, risking further deterioration of the confidence of voters in the electoral process (the congress of local and regional authorities of the council of europe 2010). for example, the eu mission reported that specific legal and procedural violations were identified in relation to the protracted vote counting process and doubtful practices of voter mobilization and control (the congress of local and regional authorities of the council of europe 2010). furthermore, the mission indicated that the pre-election period was not free from intimidation and bullying tactics. significant shortcomings also were detected with respect to misuse of administrative resources and the appeal procedure (the congress of local and regional authorities of the council of europe 2010). in addition, based on the final report on the monitoring results of the may 30 municipal elections, the transparency international georgia points that creating unequal conditions for the political contestants (transparency international georgia 2010) during the pre-election period in favor of the ruling party remains to be subject of serious concern. specifically, allocation of budget funds for the election campaign purposes, illegal use of human and material resources of the government agencies during the campaign and pressure on political opponents and voters aggravates the idea to establish truly 23 competitive level playing field for all participants (transparency international georgia 2010). most recent demonstration of such power abuse from the government of georgia was measures taken against the georgian billionaire bidzina ivanishvili, who recently announced his intention to enter into georgian politics with the aim to challenge saakashvili's regime in forthcoming elections. faced with such strong opponent, the government turned to the drastic actions by stripping ivanishvili of his georgian citizenship (the economist 2012), under the pretext that he was at the same time holder of french and russian citizenships. furthermore, the government initiated the draft law that envisaged further restriction of the rules regarding the party financing by empowering the chamber of control (georgia's internal auditing agency) to oversee the processes. as a result, the chamber of control launched "widespread questioning of opposition party members and supporters throughout georgia" (amnesty international 2012) that ended up with" the selective examination of only opposition party members and presumed supporters" (amnesty international 2012). however, sensing strong backlash as from international as well as from local civil society organizations regarding these draconian and politically motivated moves, aimed only to intimidate opposition groups , the government started to reconsider the motions. in this article, firstly i intend to discuss major features of recent electoral reforms in georgia. secondly, i want to analyze to what extent these reforms are trustworthy in terms of holding free and fair competitive elections and ensuring government's accountability in georgia. briefly on electoral systems as for electoral systems and their basic functions, they can be defined as "the means by which votes are translated into seats in the process of electing politicians into office" (farrell 2006, 3). hence, the design of the electoral system largely determines how easier or difficult it would for concrete politician or party to win mandates (farrell 2006, 3). for their part, corresponding electoral laws regulate the electoral systems. it is noteworthy also to mention that electoral systems in general are designed to perform a number of contradictory functions such as reflect voters' wishes, form a strong 24 and stable government and elect qualified cadres for offices (farrell 2006, 3). correspondingly, the central concern of a debate on electoral systems usually focuses on which type of system to choose one that produces strong and stable government or one that ensures "the inclusion of minority voices" (norris 1997, 5) in legislature. given that, classification of electoral systems, despite their diverse nature, is possible based on what results a particular electoral system brings in the process of transforming "votes into seats" (farrell 2006, 4). consequently, two types of electoral outcomes, proportional or non-proportional (farrell 2006, 4), can be observed. if the main distinguishing characteristic of the pr system is "the proportionality of votes to seats" (norris 1997, 7), in contrast, non-proportional systems tend to ensure any particular party with clear majority of parliamentary seats facilitating the party to form strong and stable government. while pr system in most cases produces coalition government, non-proportional system, on the other hand, usually generates single-party governments. apart of electoral outcomes, comparison and classification of electoral systems can be also achieved through identification and examination of their major elements, which in turn are the mechanisms responsible for translating votes into seats. hence, based on the research results of leading political scientists in this area of study, three main electoral variables can be highlighted: electoral formula, district magnitude and ballot structure (lijphart 1990, 3). speaking about electoral formula, it is a mechanism, which translates votes into seats. on its part, there are various forms of plurality, pr and mixed systems. with regard to district magnitude, firstly, it implies to what magnitude certain electoral district has, based on the registered voters, and secondly, how many representatives a district will have in legislature. hence, district magnitude has substantial influence on the proportionality of electoral outcomes, implying that the greater the electoral magnitude the more proportionally are votes reflected in seats (farrell 2006, 6). lastly, the ballot structure defines "whether the voter votes for a candidate or a party and whether the voter makes a single choice or expresses a series of preferences" (reynolds, reilly and ellis 2008, 5). concerning the dilemma of which electoral system to choose specifically by a post soviet country such as georgia, among most countries in latin america, southern europe 25 and later east and central europe, almost none of them selected plurality/majority systems. instead, their growing sympathy was showed towards mixed electoral systems, which represent some combinations of plurality/majority and proportional systems (e.g. the german model). electoral system in georgia: some basic aspects according to the existing electoral code of georgia, "elections in georgia shall be held on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot". as for the voting rights, based on the electoral code, every citizen of georgia from the 18 years of age has the right to vote (the electoral code of georgia 2005). georgia, under the current constitution, is the presidential state with unicameral parliament (parliament of georgia n.d.). accordingly, the president of georgia is elected for a five-year term "by absolute majority vote through a two-round system" (international foundation for electoral systems (ifes) 2012). as to the supreme legislative body of georgia, the parliament, composed of 150 seats, is elected in every four year. besides, georgia elects its parliament through "mixed" electoral system (inter-parliamentary union 2011), implying that 75 members from 150 are elected through "a closed-list proportional system" (international foundation for electoral systems (ifes) 2012), while the other 75 members are elected "by majority vote in singlemember constituencies" (international foundation for electoral systems (ifes) 2012). to win parliamentary seats under the proportional system, the parties should surpass 5 percent threshold (inter-parliamentary union 2011). however, in case of electing parliamentary members by majority vote, if none of the candidate gathers "30 percent of valid vote" (international foundation for electoral systems (ifes) 2012), second round of voting will be scheduled "between the two leading candidates" (international foundation for electoral systems (ifes) 2012). furthermore, based on both systems, voting will not be considered valid, unless "at least 50 percent of the registered electors" (international foundation for electoral systems (ifes) 2012)vote for the poll. besides, voting is not compulsory in georgia (inter-parliamentary union 2011). it is notable to emphasize that the legislative power of the georgian parliament is limited by the parliaments of the georgia's autonomous republics of adjara and abkhazia. correspondingly, the supreme council of adjara (parliament) is also elected by mixed electoral system (muskhelishvili and jorjoliani 2006, 5). prior to the constitutional 26 changes in 2005, the parliament of georgia consisted of 235 delegates, from which 150 were elected through a proportional system and 85 through majority/plurality system. moreover, municipal elections in georgia occur in every four years based on mixed electoral system. while, regional representative bodies are elected "by a plurality/majority multi-member system" (muskhelishvili and jorjoliani 2006, 5), tbilisi sakrebulo (city council), consisting of 50 seats, are elected by means of mixed system. unlike tbilisi, where "the threshold in the pr tier is 4 percent" (international foundation for electoral systems (ifes) 2012), in other parts of georgia, it is 5 percent. additionally, except of tbilisi, "mayors in other cities are not directly elected" (international foundation for electoral systems (ifes) 2012). most expert around the world agree that for building truly democratic country it is essential for elections to be free, fair and competitive to ensure that its result are recognized as by political contestants as well as by voters. considering this, some politicians from both government and opposition groups with support of local and international civil society organizations decided to start negotiations with the aim to improve further the existing electoral system of georgia. however, to carry out truly efficient and meaningful electoral reforms in any particular country factors such as political system, societal structure, ethnic, religious and language diversities should be taken into account. hence, speaking on georgia's political system, specifically on the party system in georgia, serious challenges can be detected. many experts in georgia characterize the existing party system as a weak or a loose multiparty system dominated by one party rule. despite large number (about 180) of political organizations registered in georgia, only a very few of them are actively participating in georgia's political life. therefore, the problems faced by georgia's party system are as follow. first, it is a weak institutionalization of parties, meaning that in successive elections parties change dramatically, hence every new election brings new types of parties and blocs. moreover, parties in georgia fail to be closely connected to the social groups they represent, which results in their very low mandate of legitimacy. second, the public in georgia usually grants low credibility to parties, and their preferences during the elections are largely determined by the party leaders and personalities rather than their programs. third, usually 27 opposition parties are largely fragmented but ideologically polarized. the ways of their cooperation are limited with creation of election blocs, common fractions usually in parliament and tactical alliance on concrete issues. besides, cleavages between the ruling party and opposition can escalate to personal attacks and violent scuffles. negotiation failure to reach broad consensus on electoral matters due to growing interest displayed by georgian public towards the upcoming parliamentary (october 2012) and presidential elections (october 2013), the representatives from the ruling party and several opposition parties initiated series of negotiations over the electoral related issues. particularly, among those parties that participated in this negotiation process, the ruling national movement party expressed the government's position, whereas the coalition of eight opposition parties (e.g. christiandemocratic movement (cdm), new rights, national forum, our georgia free democrats (ogfd), conservative party, republican party, georgia's way and party of people) exhibited alternative views. as a result, through these negotiations, along with many other pressing issues, two major problems were highlighted with regard to georgia's electoral system. hence, the first problem is that the principle of equality is violated and the second is that the election outcomes are not proportional. in case of first problem, pertaining to "to undermining the principle equality of the vote" (venice commission and osce/odihr 2011, 7), the existing wide disparity among the constituencies in georgia results in unequal distribution of voting population. for instance, the voter population in georgia's smallest singlemandate electoral district is about 6000, whereas "over 150 000 voters in the largest one" (civil.ge 2012). as for the second problem related to the proportionality of electoral outcomes, under the current system a party winning 30 or 35 percent of votes can form "a constitutional majority in parliament" (transparency international georgia 2011). given that, the current electoral system in georgia fails to ensure that the votes garnered by any political party at the national level will be reflected proportionally in parliamentary seats won by party. considering these shortcomings in the current electoral system, the coalition of eight opposition parties, with the aim to address these issues, put forward their proposals. 28 based on the first proposal, the changes will apply only to the single-member majority vote system. namely, those electoral districts with more voting population will be allowed to choose several parliamentary members (transparency international georgia 2011). at the same time, the number of electoral districts will be reduced by merging those "historically/geographically related" (transparency international georgia 2011) districts with less dense voting populations. after the ruling national movement party's strong disapproval of the proposal, the opposition's group of eight presented its final vision on electoral reform. according to the "new package of reforms" (rousseau 2011), the current georgia's electoral system should be replaced by the new one, more resembling to the "german model" (rousseau 2011). in particular, 100 out of 150 parliamentary seats will be elected by closed-list proportional system, while the remaining 50 seats according to majority vote. hence, contrary to the "winner takes all" (reynolds, reilly and ellis 2008, 14) approach of the current electoral system, the major principle of this proposed model is to reflect more proportionally electoral votes in parliamentary seats. for example, in the last parliamentary elections, the ruling national movement party won 59 percent of votes that translated into 119 seats, instead of 89 seats, as the german model would have suggested. additionally, the project proposed by the opposition group envisaged increase of the electoral threshold from 30 to 50 percent. such proposition can be explained by the idea that the 50 percent barrier would induce mps "to be more accountable to a greater majority of the voting public" (rousseau 2011). moreover, based on this proposed package, the number of constituencies will be reduced from 75 to 50. it should be noted, however, that the government in 2005, adopted the system similar to final proposal offered by the group of eight, but it was replaced by the existing system in 2008 (transparency international georgia 2011). apart of severe criticism of the recommendations offered by the coalition, the governing party responded by its own package of electoral reform. namely, according to this bid, in largest constituencies, with more than 100 000 voting population, "the number of majoritarian mps" (transparency international georgia 2011)would increase from one to two. consequently, such changes, all things being equal, will increase the share of majoritarian mps from 75 to 83, subsequently reducing the number of mps elected 29 "through the proportional party list system" (transparency international georgia 2011) from 75 to 67. with respect to the negotiations process, it was not without interruptions and it disrupted several times especially at the end of the process, due to disagreements over such important issues as the introduction of biometric id cards. as a result, the representatives from both sides often accused each other in thwarting negotiations by resorting to the language of ultimatums. however, the debates on the electoral matters that lasted ten months, suddenly was suspended in june 2011. the main reason of such break up was the decision of two opposition parties, the christian-democratic movement (cdm) and new rights, to defect from the group of eight and sign the agreement with the ruling national movement party (unm) on the new project. it is also important to note that the author and initiator of these amendments is the governing party, and as to the amendments, they were adopted by the parliament in the last year's autumn. consequently, the newly adopted package envisages the following changes in the georgia's current electoral system: first, increase of parliamentary seats from 150 to 190, from which 107 seats will be allocated to the mps elected by the closed-list proportional system, whereas remaining 83 to the mps elected through the single-member majority vote system. second, the special commission will be established which will "oversee the compilation of voter lists" (corso 2011). moreover, an opposition party representative will chair the commission, which in turn will be composed of equal numbers of "unm, opposition and non-governmental organization representatives" (corso 2011). third, those parties, which exceed the five percent threshold, will receive one million lari (about 595,000 usd). finally, another commission will be set up "to monitor media election coverage and the use of administrative resources" (corso 2011). as a result, despite the above-mentioned electoral changes, the remaining sixopposition party (from the group of eight) and civil society representatives agree that these amendments are not sufficient for holding genuinely fair and democratic elections in georgia. for instance, according to the transparency international-georgia, "the proposed changes fall short of substantive election reform" (corso 2011). moreover, the changes proposed by the ruling party fail to address the issue with regard to proportionality of votes to seats "a system that will give a party more than 67 percent 30 representation in parliament with significantly less than 67 percent public support is a bad system" (mullen 2011). given that, the final agreement cannot be regarded as the result of broad consensus among the ruling party, opposition and civil society groups but rather it more resembled to "a carter-like deal" (gel’man 2008, 7) that are quite common among those hybrid regimes in the post-soviet sphere, which are inclined more towards to the authoritarianism. hence, in this particular case, after teen months of negotiations, the "deal" was closed between "the dominant actor" (e.g. unm) and its "subordinated actors" (e.g. cdm and new rights party). based on this theory, while the ruling party shared some of its powers with these two opposition groups, it retained "control over major decisions without constraints" (gel’man 2008, 7) from these actors. therefore, this type of agreement fails to ensure such competitive political environment that will conducive to truly fair and democratic elections in georgia. conclusion the georgia's electoral dynamics of the past twenty years clearly showed that the current electoral system needs serious overhaul to pave the way for genuinely free, fair and competitive elections in georgia. although the ruling party, opposition and civil society representatives took a positive step in starting negotiations over the electoral matters, these efforts proved to be unsuccessful. since, the agreement reached by the sides was not the outcome of the broad consensus but rather the "facade" that further undermined the credibility of the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections in georgia. besides, the outcome of the negotiation points to the fact that under the georgia's current rule, characterized as a "semi-authoritarian" (mitchell 2012) regime, the governing national movement party is unwilling to enable the opposition groups to be more substantially involved in the georgian politics. consequently, to retain its current overwhelming power, as legislative as well as executive and judicial, the georgia's current governing party shares insignificant resources with those parties loyal to the government. given that, the electoral reform failed to end with tangible results beneficial to the georgian public. it rather concluded as a cartel-like deal favorable only to the narrow part of the governing elite. 31 even though fewer time has left before the upcoming parliamentary elections, still there is chance to bring the existing electoral system to more in line with the democratic standards and values. first, it is important to increase the threshold from 30 to 50 percent for the mps elected through a single-member majority vote system. however, the degree of transparency, fairness and efficiency of the reform would largely depend on the government's willingness, opposition political parties' active engagement, civil society's productive involvement and the international community's sustainable support. furthermore, the current media's role to cover the processes objectively must be also taken into consideration. since today, the georgian media, especially tv stations, experiences heavy political and economic pressure from the government. references amnesty international. 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"proposed election reforms define fault lines in georgian political landscape." the jamestown foundation web site. april 18, 2011. http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5btt_news%5d=37806&tx_ ttnews%5bbackpid%5d=13&chash=ec5610de2cb13e01348065c84ea843b2 (accessed april 16, 2012). the congress of local and regional authorities of the council of europe. election observation: debate on the observation of the municipal elections in georgia (30 may 2010):19th congress session of local and regional authorities of the council of europe. september 23, 2010. http://www.coe.int/t/congress/sessions/19/observation_en.asp (accessed march 11, 2012). the economist. "elections in georgia: degrees of control." the economist: eastern approaches: excommunist europe. march 20, 2012. http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2012/03/electionsgeorgia?fsrc=gn_ep (accessed march 21, 2012). the government of georgia. "election code of georgia." center of electoral systems development, reforms and trainings . 12 23, 2005. http://electionreforms.ge/img/pdf/saarchevno_kodexi.pdf (accessed april 12, 2012). transparency international georgia. "publications: reports: the use of administrative resources for election." transparency international georgia: transparency and accontibility in action web site. july 14, 2010. http://www.transparency.ge/en/post/report/final-report-use-administrativeresources-election-campaign (accessed march 9, 2012). transparency international georgia. blog: "proposals for georgian electoral reform, explained". june 1, 2011. http://www.transparency.ge/en/blog/proposals-georgian-electoral-reform-explained (accessed april 15, 2012). 33 venice commission and osce/odihr. draft joint opinion on the draft election code of georgia. draft joint opinion, strasbourg/warsaw: venice commission, 2011. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 66 book review homo deus. a brief history of tomorrow by yuval n. harari. london: harvill secker, 2016, pp. 448. marzio di feo https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.41.5 marzio di feo holds an m.a. in international relations from school of political science “cesare alfieri”. he attended the advanced training course in “intelligence e sicurezza nazionale”, offered by university of florence in collaboration with “dipartimento delle informazioni per la sicurezza” (dis). his master thesis “automi, realtà virtuale e formiche. un’analisi della complessità del fenomeno bellico spaziale (automata, virtual reality and ants. an analysis of complexity of space warfare)” received the guido galli award, and was published by firenze university press (april 2017). his research interests concern the evolution of war, science fiction and security implications of new emerging technologies. e-mail: marziodifeo@hotmail.it. keywords human enhancement; politics of ai; post-humanism homo deus addresses the pathway to a superhuman transition through human enhancement, where narratives of religion, war, equality, and freedom are coupled with the concrete implications of new godlike technologies such as artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. composed by three parts, the book starts from an analytical approach to the anthropocene era (part i: homo sapiens conquers the world), over the turning point of modernity (part ii: homo sapiens gives meaning to the world), until the next stage of evolution (part iii: homo sapiens loses control). the opportunity to change history begins with preemptive conditions about the coming end of the historical course of homo sapiens due to the attempt to merge humanity with new technologies. the unique ability of humans to assert dominion over all other animals belonged to a very sophisticated cooperation on an imagined order, beyond objective and subjective realities or myths about war, gods, corporations, and politics. modernity was the promise of unprecedented power within a complete renunciation to all these beliefs. the antidote to this meaningless view has been provided by humanism: a quasi-perfect potion composed by a large variety of intellectual, emotional, and physical experiences. humanism enabled us to answer all ethical questions, even if the sanctification of life, emotions and desires undermines its very foundations by unleashing new posthumanist technologies. organisms are algorithms, so replicating life and reality does not seem sisyphean. while the usefulness of humans as unique individuals faces emergent upgraded superhumans, liberal assumptions are thwarted by three principles of life sciences: (1) humans are “dividuals” composed of many different and networked algorithms; (2) the algorithms constituting https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.41.5 mailto:marziodifeo@hotmail.it politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 67 a human are not free; (3) it follows that algorithms are always right because they know humans much more than humans can ever know themselves. consequently, “beauty will be in the calculation of the algorithm” (328-29). the success of liberalism consisted in ascribing value to individuals in the spheres of politics, economy and war, but financial flows and trade are managed by computer programs, in warfare soldiers are being replaced by autonomous robots, and democratic elections face algorithmic predictions about opinions and desires, undermining free will with a barrage of computational propaganda. the post-liberal world consists of worshiping data flow as a value for understanding any phenomenon through its contribution to data processing. taking place in science labs, the new religion of dataism finds the parameters to guarantee eternal life and happiness, i.e. chemical and electric stimuli to the point of continuous orgasm. as a consequence, death is a technical problem, and it is no longer possible for any actor to physically win a war. whoever controls the data process, a new social contract will be signed; in order to gain immortality, humanity loses its free will by abandoning the human-centric world view in favor of a data-centric one, destroying basic foundations of liberal democracy: “what’s the use of having democratic elections when the algorithms know how each person is going to vote?” (392). although dystopian claims about technology are becoming popular to a large audience and the book is written in an engaging style, harari seems to primarily target academics and experts who are shaping the tech-driven world, in order to define a new human agenda. an innovative point concerns the method of investigation of the author, who as a historian envisions the future not based on the lessons of history but on a predictive discourse about concrete developments of new technologies and life sciences, emphasizing the idealistic perspective of the human-centric premise. the analytical exploration across disciplinary boundaries focuses on the possibilities of future scenarios, and relies on a wide range of empirical examples from art to observation of political phenomena and processes through technological advancements. a basic critique might point out two fundamental questions. firstly, the undue faith in progress is not likely to improve the form of government. on the contrary, it produces hegemonic control by states or even by high-tech corporations. secondly, the disregard for the factors affecting power and, in turn, for the correlation between power and the post-human destiny does not take into account the idealized harmony of individual interests with the interests of humanity. although harari describes the future as the capacity to balance technological capabilities and visionary suggestions, the rise of the new species, a form of cyborg-elite, homines dei, will provide deeper cleavages. if war is of a dialectic nature between opposing wills escalating to the extreme, the struggle for the beautiful creation of homo deus would exacerbate the algorithmic race, giving rise to new forms of war, from hybrid wars to cyberwar. in politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 68 this view, conflicts are all but obsolete and technology is the most useful instrument for strengthening divisions. humans use it merely to satisfy their endless animus dominandi. 121  “taoisigh  &  prime  ministers’  policies  towards  extremists   in  northern  ireland  1985-­‐1996:  a  learning  process?”   dawn walsh38 abstract several different explanations of policy change based on notions of learning have emerged in policy literature. these explanations can largely be divided into those that deal with policy learning and those relating to policy adaptation. policy learning is a fundamental process that involves re-thinking primary values, altering the goals of policy and constructing complex cause and effect chains as the result of processing new knowledge in the policy area provided by epistemic communities. policy adaptation, on the other hand, is an ad hoc process of change where fundamental values remain constant and only the means of achieving goals change not the goals themselves. this paper applies these possible explanations to the case of the policy change effected by the british and irish governments in relation to negotiating with extremists in northern ireland 1985-1996; a policy change that has been cited as being pivotal to the success of that peace process. (150 words) introduction ‘we will not negotiate with terrorists’ is a refrain that is commonly heard flowing from the mouths of various statesmen across the globe in relation to a multitude of different groups involved in politically motivated acts of violence. it is a refrain prime minister john major vehemently endorsed in numerous speeches to the british house of commons in relation to the various paramilitary groups in northern ireland. to enter into talks with such people would ‘turn [his] stomach’ (dixon, 2001, pp361). in reality, however, conflict resolution is not so black and white. by the time the good friday agreement was signed at belfast in 1998 political parties with connections to paramilitaries on both sides had been included in the negotiations. notwithstanding the conditional nature of their public inclusion in talks, there had clearly been a departure from the policy being pursued by both governments at the time of the 1985 anglo-irish agreement. at that time the taoiseach and prime minister were attempting to end the conflict by reaching an agreement that empowered the 38 dawn walsh, 27 is a graduate of trinity college dublin. in 2003 she graduated with an honours degree in political science. after a short break which include a period working in the house of the oireachtas (irish parliament), she return to trinity to complete an m.phil in international peace studies. here she developed a long-standing interest in the northern ireland peace process including writing on issues, leadership in the peace process and the cross border elements of the good friday agreement. she is currently undertaking her phd research at dublin city university examining the use of independent commissions in the northern ireland peace process and was the recipient of the 2010-2011 paddy moriarty postgraduate fellowship. 122 moderate parties and removed support from those pursuing violent means. by 1996 they had visibly altered this policy to one that sought to co-opt the fringes into mainstream politics. this change in how governments felt extremists must be treated in order to end the conflict is extremely significant. it shows a recent case where governments attempted to end a small war not by military or security means but by entering into talks with those previously excluded. the focus of this paper is to ascertain whether this change was as a result of policy learning by the taoisigh and prime ministers or if it was the result of an ad hoc process of alteration in response to particular events (policy adaptation). policy adaptation and policy learning in when knowledge means power (1990) ernst haas offers a clear dichotomy which addresses the significant differences between policy learning and policy adaptation haas explains the differences between policy learning and adaptation by asking who learns, what is learned and to what end does the learning occur? in relation to who learns haas argues that in the case of policy learning epistemic communities are central. they provide policy makers with consensual knowledge from which new purposes can be derived. in the case of policy adaptation there is no central role for an epistemic community. the actors involved in policy-making simply change their policies on an incremental basis due to the ambiguous lessons of history. in policy learning ‘what is learned’ is a whole new nested problem set. the consensual knowledge provided by the epistemic communities allows not just for more efficient methods of achieving existing goals but for new interconnected understanding of issues to be constructed. in policy adaptation the role of new consensual knowledge is not central; what is learned is much more restricted. more efficient means of achieving existing goals may be ascertained. there is not a broad reassessment of the nature of the problem. to what end does learning take place? in policy learning the end of learning is a fundamental reassessment of values that underpin policy aims. values are deeply held over long periods of time and to propose that they would be re-examined with change in mind shows how policy learning is transformative of fundamental beliefs. policy adaptation does not involve such fundamental examination of values. consequently, although policy adaptation may involve achieving more aims through new routes it does not operate to the same fundamental end as policy learning. 123 extremists, exclusion and spoilers the change in the british policy in relation to negotiating with extremists has been highlighted as being one of the most important developments that made ending the conflict in northern ireland possible. small wars are often fought against states by groups who hold extreme aims or grievances and are determined to see their goals achieved or the grievances dealt with. in turn states often refuse to recognise these groups as being in any way legitimate in their aims or methods and thus adopt certain policies to end the war by dealing with them but rule out negotiations. it is often argued that permitting them to enter into negotiations would legitimise their tactics or even appease them (spector, 2003, pp2). a number of the most widely used strategies for managing the issue of extremists reflect this idea. elimination, for example, is a popular policy adopted by leaders when faced with extremists. it seeks to use intelligence information, the law and physical force to identify, locate and apprehend extremists or key leaders of extremist groups. this may also entail the seizing of funds from such groups and efforts to ensure international funding networks are dismantled. ‘expanding the middle’ is another tactic that is often employed. it seeks to establish conditions that grow the more moderate segments, thus attracting more moderate members of extremist groups toward a position of tolerance and away from a commitment to the destruction of the other (bartoli & coleman, 2003, pp4). such security related policies towards the irish republican army (ira) in particular can be seen in thatcher’s policies towards northern ireland (thatcher, 1993, pp379-415). the idea of ‘expanding the middle’ by supporting the sdlp (social democratic labour party) is also a policy clearly pursued by both thatcher and fitzgerald. such policies that seek to sideline extremists may not be the most effective way end small wars or conflicts. some peace processes result in lasting peace, others break down and the war resumes. the emergence of extremists who want to ‘spoil’ the peace process greatly accounts for this variation. spoilers often originate from extremist groups. they pose a great risk to those seeking to make peace. minimising and overcoming this risk is one of the greatest challenges facing those engaged in seeking to end wars, big, small old or new (stedman, 2003, pp104-105). zahar makes an important distinction between inside and outside spoilers. this terminology relates to the position of the group in negotiations. those who have been 124 involved in the negotiations are insiders. if they are to consider spoiling they need to take into account not only the costs associated directly with returning to violence but those associated with losing the ‘peace dividends’ (zahar, 2003, pp119). the ‘peace dividends’ may take many forms such as of positions of power promised to the group or aid promised to their supporters. they also have to take into consideration the damage that will be done to their international reputation if they are seen to renege on promises they have signed up to. ‘outside’ spoilers are those who have been excluded from negotiations. these groups are more likely to view peace as a threat. the exclusion of a group from negotiations that result in a particular peace agreement means that the agreement’s success can be seen as evidence of the irrelevance of the group and can thus undermine their political significance and threaten their continued survival. financially, outside groups that benefit from the war economy have no interest in peace. their exclusion means that they have not had an opportunity to negotiate side deals that allow them to benefit from the peace. it is in the interest of such groups to continue the violent conflict so that they can continue to reap the monetary rewards (zahar, 2003, pp118). in short, actors included in negotiations have a vested interest in the success of the agreement. any gains they have made are dependent on its survival. in contrast groups left out of the negotiations have no stake in peace and they may even have extensive stakes associated with the continuation of the violence. this logically indicates that a management strategy for extremists that seeks to exclude them from a peace process makes it more likely that they will seek to destroy that process. operationalising the model the hypothesis of the research on which this paper based is that: the taoisigh and prime ministers’ policy change to negotiate with extremists in northern ireland was caused by policy learning not policy adaptation. in order to make this hypothesis testable the differences between policy learning and policy adaptation were compiled into a four-fold typology that clearly allows for the observation of theoretical concepts. the presence of the four main observable implications will be investigated: • original values examined; • purposes redefined; • new nested problem sets constructed; 125 • new purposes derived on the basis of knowledge provided by epistemic communities. the presence of these observable implications will be considered in direct contrast with the four central observable implications of policy adaptation: • behaviour changes as actors add new activities without examining the implicit theories underlying their actions – values are not questioned; • emphasis is on altering means of action not ends – not the ultimate purpose; • new purposes are added to old ones without worrying about their coherence; • change is incremental (tannam, 2001, pp496). a wide range of data was examined with the explicit and sole intention of ascertaining whether or not policy learning is more evident than policy adaptation. original values examined key original values were examined over the period 1985-1996. firstly, the potential to exclude the extremist groups, namely, sinn féin, from the political framework was reassessed. in the post-hunger strike years, sinn féin enjoyed increased electoral support. this worried the leaders and fitzgerald39 in particular feared that sinn féin could become the main party of northern nationalism as well as increasing their representation south of the border. this fear motivated a policy that sought to exclude sinn féin from the political structures. it was believed that an agreement that supported the sdlp’s role as representatives of the nationalist minority could deprive sinn féin of its constituency and political legitimacy and thus make them irrelevant. the 1985 anglo-irish agreement was such an agreement and in the years that followed the belief that sinn féin should and could be sidelined continued. by 1996 there was an acceptance by major and reynolds that no matter how problematic it was to include sinn féin and their loyalist counterparts in the process, it was necessary for a settlement to be successful. a commitment to the mitchell principles was a necessary condition for the inclusion of any party and different parties were excluded at different points. there was, however, no longer a belief that such parties could be sidelined or an agreement reached without them. their exclusion was temporary and used as a pressure tactic to punish and prevent violence by their armed colleagues. the belief 39 haughey was also concerned about the electoral threat of sinn féin but this was during his early period as taoiseach and while in opposition. by the time his final period in office, which is the subject of this analysis, began this threat had decreased. 126 that they could be marginalised to the point of political extinction or a meaningful agreement reached in their absence was re-examined. the practicality and effectiveness of this belief was re-evaluated and a policy of cautious engagement through a ‘carrot and stick’ approach replaced it. secondly, and more fundamentally, the legitimacy of the extremists as a political voice was examined. the view of them as simply representing a grave security threat was replaced by a more nuanced view of their role. through the exchange of various position papers on issues such as self-determination and consent the leaders demonstrated a de facto acknowledgement that the extremists had political and constitutional concerns that were worthy of addressing. this represents a fundamental re-evaluation of values because it shows that the leaders did not enter into narrow contacts with the extremists seeking simply to put an end to immediate violence. the inclusion of constitutional elements in the discussions is indicative of leaders that fully recognised the necessity of taking into consideration the views of the extremists on constitutional matters. together these new positions represent the adoption of values that recognise the importance of bringing extremists into the process both for the practical reason of ending the current violence and for the theoretical reason that the more inclusive the process the more likely it is to succeed. purposes redefined values inform purposes and as a result it is only logical that if there was a real change in values this would be observed in the goals the prime minister and taoiseach set themselves in relation to the extremists in northern ireland. as i’ve just mentioned, both redefined their purpose in relation to the extremists. by the early 1990s the aim of isolating and defeating sinn féin and the ira, and the loyalist paramilitaries, had been replaced by an aim of finding a way forward in which sinn féin could be included. the rhetoric of defeating the ira was replaced by a dialogue that recognised the significance that the republican leadership could play in negotiating a broad political settlement. the aim became the construction of an environment in which the extremists could be brought into the political mainstream. this new goal involved the employment of a new set of instruments. moves such as the lifting of the broadcast ban on members of sinn féin, the issuing of visas for the us 127 to adams and cahill, and the statement by brooke that the british had ‘no selfish interest’ in northern ireland all sought to create an environment where an ira ceasefire could be achieved. securing an ira ceasefire was a top priority of the leaders, not simply as an alternative to military force in ending the violence and suffering but in order to create a situation where extremists could be brought into negotiations with the governments and constitutional parties. there is an important issue to be highlighted here. the prime minister and taoiseach were not always in agreement as to how far the policy of coaxing an ira ceasefire should go. downing street strongly opposed the granting of the us visa to gerry adams, a position that they made clear to both dublin and washington. they felt that such privileges should be held back as examples of what could happen after a ceasefire, not used as enticements before the ending of violence. new nested problem sets constructed in 1985, the understanding on which the anglo-irish agreement operated defined the problem as being one that could be solved by creating new institutions with the moderates. this approach failed to realise that the conflict could not be ended without fully taking into consideration the role of the extremists. the extremists were not simply violent criminals to be dealt with through security measures. they also held positions on principled issues regarding the broad political position of northern ireland. these positions were supported by significant numbers within their communities. thus the new understanding of the conflict realised that these positions had be addressed. there was an appreciation that securing a ceasefire was not an end to the conflict. it was one very important goal but was interconnected with goals that sought to moderate the extremists’ positions on political issues. it is this understanding that allowed reynolds to defend his support for the issuing of adams’ and cahill’s visas for the us. while such a move may have seemed unwise while violence continued, it represented a reasoned expansion of goals to a position where securing a ceasefire and inviting the republicans into constitutional politics were both being pursued due to their indivisibility. furthermore the casual relationships between the aims of different groups were taken into consideration. when redrafting the hume-adams’ document that eventually comprised a large part of the downing street declaration major and reynolds recognised 128 that the nationalist/republican origins of the document would be a problem for the unionists. to this end they went to great lengths to ensure it was viewed as a neutral document written by the governments. new purposes derived on the basis of consensual knowledge provided by epistemic communities it has been said that success has many fathers (john f. kennedy, 1961). this is undoubtedly true in the case of the northern irish peace process. the role of actors such as dr. martin mansergh, john hume, fr. alex reid and archbishop robin eames has been the subject of many papers and books, and in relation to this paper these actors take on a particular significance. the role of these actors in providing consensual knowledge to the governments over the period in question is a strong indication of policy learning. knowledge and those who provide it are central in haas’ distinction between learning and adaptation. the ‘muddle through’ incremental style of policy change that haas terms ‘adaptation’ does not utilise outside knowledge to a great effect. this contrasts with learning (and the previous three indicators of such) which is not possible without the dissemination of new knowledge. the examination of values, alteration of aims and reconstruction of causeeffect chains is only possible because of the existence of previously unavailable knowledge. the arguments put forward by fr. reid are an example of this new knowledge. while his role as facilitator of the contact between the taoiseach of the time and sinn féin is often praised, the most important element of fr. reid’s involvement in relation to the hypothesis being tested in this paper is the consensual knowledge he provided that persuaded charles haughey to begin a process of contacts that ultimately led to a fundamental policy shift by the irish leaders. similarly, the role of john hume in promoting dialogue, both between the leaders and with extremists in order to secure a lasting peace, has been highlighted as being extremely important (o’leary, 2003, pp81). while the massive role played by john hume in the peace process is far beyond the scope of this paper, his involvement is illustrative of policy learning in the way in which it served as the provision of knowledge to leaders. such new knowledge does not immediately become embedded in policy. the change in policy towards the extremists in northern ireland took over a decade to become fully embedded but this gradual nature of change should not be confused with 129 incrementalism that haas associates with adaptation. while the process of change was gradual it was not ad hoc, in the way adaptation is, because of the involvement of the epistemic communities. they provided the knowledge that seeped into policy making over time to inspire an examination of fundamental values – the very process by which policy learning occurs. the presence and consideration of such knowledge is sufficient to support the hypothesis being examined in this paper. conclusion having established the presence of policy learning this paper is an important first step in analysing the process through which an important policy change occurred. the british and irish governments’ approaches to ending the conflict in northern ireland underwent a fundamental change. this highlights how governments engaged in small wars may end them by engaging with groups previously only target for elimination. policy learning highlights the importance of the provision of new knowledge from epistemic communities in facilitating such policy changes. this is a key area in which further research would be useful. the author encourages others to investigate how epistemic communities provide such knowledge. in relation to this conflict suggestions for individuals and institutions that could be included in such research include: the us government, john hume and the sdlp and some church leaders, civil servants and political advisors. alternatively additional research which examines whether governments have undertaken policy learning in relation to how they end various small wars in which they are engaged would also be useful. (3,195 words) references bartoli, a., & coleman p., (2003) ‘dealing with extremists.’ in beyond intractability burgess, g., & burgess h., (eds) conflict research consortium, university of colorado, boulder. accessed on 12th april 2009 at: www.beyondintractability.org/essay/ bunreacht na heireann (pre-1998) available at: www.taoiseach.gov.ie coakley, j. & gallagher, m. (eds), (2002) politics in the republic of ireland, routledge, london. dixon, p., ‘british policy towards northern ireland 1969-2000: continuity, tactical adjustments and consistent ‘inconsistencies’, british journal of politics and international relations: vol. 3 no. 3:340-368. darby, j. & macginty, r., (eds) (2000) the management of peace processes, macmillan press, london. dorr, n. (2009) interview with author at ise, trinity college dublin may 12th 2009. fitzgerald, g. (1991) all in a life, gill & macmillan, dublin. 130 fitzgerald, g. (1999) what happened to good friday? london review of books, london. assessed on 25th june 2009 at: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n17/fitz01_.html the guardian (2001) ‘thatcher suggested 'cromwell solution' for northern ireland’ accessed on june 20th 2009 at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/jun/16/northernireland.catholicism haas, e., (1990) when knowledge means power, stanford university press, berkley. hansard (1987) ‘terrorist attack in enniskillen’ accessed on june 20th 2009 at: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1987/nov/09/terrorist-attack-enniskillen icsr (2009) ‘engaging with radicals: do negotiations work?’ accessed on june 15th 2009 at:http://www.icsr.info/events/conferences/videos/1234454380engagingwithradic als_0.pdf the independent (1994a) ‘ulster players circle around peace: as albert reynolds urges sinn fein to adopt a policy of non-coercion of ulster's protestants at its conference in dublin this weekend, david mckittrick reports on the unprecedented republican debate which could decide whether ireland is to have peace or continuing conflict’ accessed on june 10th 2009 at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ulsterplayers-circle-around-peace-as-albert-reynolds-urges-sinn-fein-to-adopt-apolicy-of-noncoercion-of-ulsters-protestants-at-its-conference-in-dublin-thisweekend-david-mckittrick-reports-on-the-unprecedented-republican-debatewhich-could-decide-whether-ireland-is-to-have-peace-or-continuing-conflict1396260.html the independent (1994b) ‘government u-turn on sinn fein talks’ accessed on june 12th 2009 at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/government-uturn-on-sinn-feintalks-1388988.html kennedy, j., (1961) quoted in safire, w., (1993) "safire's new political dictionary" pp8412, random house, new york. macdonagh, o. ‘what was new in the new ireland forum’ the crane bag, vol. 9, no. 2, irish ideologies, pp. 166-170 maiese, m., & burgess, h., ‘extremists and spoilers’ in beyond intractability burgess, g., & burgess h., (eds) conflict research consortium, university of colorado, boulder. accessed on 15th april 2009 at: www.beyondintractability.org/essay/ major, j. (1999) the autobiography, harpercollins, london. mallie, e., & mckittrick, d., (1996) the fight for peace, heinemann, london. mansergh, m. (2009) interview with author at the office of public works, dublin may 12th 2009. mitchell, g. (2009) on acceptance of his position as us envoy to the middle east. assessed on 25th july 2009 at:http://edition.cnn.com/2009/politics/01/22/obama.mitchell/index.html nally, d. (2009) interview with the author, dublin may 12th 2009. o’donnell, c., (2007) fianna fail, irish republicanism and the northern ireland troubles 19682005, irish academic press, dublin. o’kane, e., 'decommissioning, where did it come from and why did it stay so long?' irish political studies, vol.22 no. 1:81-101. o’leary, b., (1987) ‘the anglo-irish agreement: meanings, explanations, results and a defence’ in teague, p., beyond the rhetoric: politics, the economy and social policy in northern ireland, lawrence & wishart ltd., london. 131 o’leary, b., ‘an taoiseach: the irish prime minister’, west european politics vol. 14 no. 2:133-62. o’leary, b., ‘the conservative stewardship of northern ireland, 1979-97: soundbottomed contradictions or slow learning?’ political studies, vol. 45 no. 4. o’leary, b., (2003) ‘the anglo-irish agreement: folly or statecraft’ in o’leary, b., & mcgarry, j., the northern ireland conflict: consociational agreements, oxford university press, oxford. rafter, k., (2002) martin mansergh, a biography, new island, dublin. rafter, k., ‘the irish government and the peace process, 1992-94, ‘an observer’s perspective’ working papers in british irish studies, no.30:13-18. reynolds, a. the irish government and the peace process, 1992-94, ‘a political perspective’ working papers in british irish studies, no.30:1-13. reynolds, a., (1993) statement by the taoiseach, mr. albert reynolds, on the joint declaration on peace. wednesday, 15 december 1993. accessed on 23rd june 2009 at: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/peace/docs/ar151293.htm spector, b., ‘negotiating with villains: research note,’ international negotiation no. 8 vol. 3. stedman, j., (2003) ‘peace processes and the challenges of violence’ in darby, j. & macginty r., (eds) contemporary peacemaking, palgrave macmillan, new york. stedman, j., (2006) ‘spoiler problems in peace processes,’ in druckman, d., & diehl, d., conflict resolution vol.5, sage publications, london. tannam, e., (2001) ‘explaining the good friday agreement: a learning process’, government and opposition, vol.36 no.4: 493-518. tannam, e. (2009) in discussions with the author at the ise, trinity college dublin. tannam, e. (2009b) ‘explaining british-irish cooperation’ (pending publication) thatcher, m., (1993) the downing street years, harpercollins publishers, london. the times (2005) ‘what was margaret thatcher’s greatest achievement?’ accessed on june 13th 2009 at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article578011.ece?token=null&offset=0&pa ge=1 ury, w., & patton, b., (1991) getting to yes, penguin books, new york. wolff, s., (2007) ‘conflict management in northern ireland’ in koenig, m., & de guchtneire, p., (eds) democracy and human rights in multicultural societies, aldershot, ashgate. zahar, m., (2003) ‘reframing the spoiler debate in peace processes’ in darby, j. & macginty r.,(eds) contemporary peacemaking, palgrave macmillan, new york untitled jakub tloka feeding truffles to porcupines 10 feeding truffles to porcupines: why the west consistently fails to export democracy and human rights jakub tloka1 , bratislava international school of liberal arts, slovakia abstract raditionally, the west has promoted the commendable cause of human rights because it was here that its contours were eloquently outlined by the champions of early liberalism. we uphold the western societal model because it results from our cumulative efforts to introduce into practice the noble standards conceptualised by john locke, thomas hobbes, thomas paine, and other influential contractualists. naturally, we are eager to share its fruits with the world. however, in the process of attempting to export western values we tend to disregard completely the fact that they took centuries to solidify into their present form. furthermore, we fail to take into account the political and cultural climates which facilitated the advent of democracy and human rights. further still, although our eagerness to market the products of our civilisation borders on intrusive advertising, we are yet to appreciate completely the qualities they entail. in this paper i shall argue that, in spite of being established theoretical concepts, from a practical perspective, democracy and human rights are novelties. i shall argue that the sociocultural evolutionary process cannot be expedited; that historically, piecemeal reform has taken pragmatic precedence over political adventurism. i shall argue that insofar as the west continues to recklessly impose its cultural ethos upon exotic civilisations, the ideals it espouses will become utterly devoid of authenticity. 1 jakub tloka, 24, is currently reading a ba in political science at bisla (bratislava international school of liberal arts), slovakia. t politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 11 he past century bore the marks of enmity, oppression and belligerence. it witnessed two appallingly devastating conflicts which many had previously thought unfathomable. the great nations whence came numerous forefathers of democracy approached the verge of positively obliterating their nationals' constructive efforts. merely two decades had passed since the collapse of european imperialism when the preservation of civilised values came into competition during an unprecedented attempt to institute a global hegemony. following years of extraordinary hostilities, reconciliation came about and parts of the west re-embarked upon a more propitious track. nevertheless, several states across europe were a long way from concluding their democratic transition, while a great deal of others became trapped in an authoritarian stranglehold. with respect to the former, consider francoist spain, the estado novo in portugal or the regime of the colonels in greece; with respect to the latter, consider yugoslavia and the eastern bloc. democracy did not dawn in these countries until as recently as the 1970s2. as much as the west enjoys patting itself on the back about how far it has progressed, when juxtaposed with other systems of governance, democracy comes out as quite embryonic. we should therefore endeavour to conduce to its uncomplicated gestation and birth. similarly, we should safeguard the other hallmark of the western civilisation – the observance of human rights. i shall note that in 2014, fifty years will have elapsed since the enactment of the civil rights act of 1964, which outlawed discriminatory practices against minorities and women in the united states3. a year later, a halfcentury will have passed since the enfranchisement of african americans4 2 1990s as far as yugoslavia and the eastern bloc are concerned. . one must bear in mind, while reflecting on these facts, that in 1948, the u.s. adopted 3 titles ii vii. 4 the voting rights act came into effect on august 6, 1965. the universal declaration of human rights, article 2 of which states that '[e]veryone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex . . . or other status' (p. 535). of these rights and freedoms, consider everyone's 'right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives . . . right of equal access to public service in his country . . . [right to] genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage' (article 21). these and other entitlements did not apply catholically until almost two decades after their formal adoption. it is flagrant and revolting that the policy makers of any country should act in systematic denial of the standards they had consented to. it is sensational, yet, at the same time, somewhat lamentable that democratic values triumphed over sociopolitical inequity largely thanks to the perseverance and subversiveness of reform movements. it is preposterous that establishments with a history of suppressing individual and collective self-determination should become their most zealous proponents. it is entirely unacceptable that democracy should be undemocratically imposed upon those, whose cultural fabric is incompatible with its pretences. ludwig wittgenstein, perhaps the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, made an assertion in philosophical investigations that i shall now paraphrase: 'if a porcupine could speak, men would fail to understand him' (p. 225). it is because the porcupine's perception of the world differs entirely from ours that we could not appreciate it. the same, of course, could be said of the human perspective from the point of view of the porcupine. in its vehement attempts to export human rights and democracy, the west is feeding truffles to porcupines. it is seeking to introduce into foreign lands values and a societal structure which, more often than not, collide with the established cultural norms. moreover, it is doing so in quite an imprudent and seemingly t jakub tloka feeding truffles to porcupines 12 extemporaneous way. the west does not seem to recall that democratisation progresses incrementally. it does not seem to recognise the importance of historical tradition and the extent to which it has shaped contemporary societies. and finally, fond as its leaders are of the popular platitude 'change comes from the bottom up', they do not seem to grasp its implications. edmund burke, the great irish conservative political theorist, wrote in reflections on the revolution in france that '[p]eople will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors' (p. 29). political establishments may come about by means of three disparate modes, which i shall now expound. first, there is infliction – the forced introduction of extrinsic government. second, there is revolution – the collective quest for political reorganisation. third, there is evolution – the gradual transition towards a socially opportune state of affairs. the expediency of the transitions which proceed from these modes can be determined through investigating their popularity and timeliness. a popular transition will be consented to by the concerned population. a timely transition will only take place once the public have become attuned to its precepts. thomas masaryk, the first president of czechoslovakia, once said: 'we have got democracy. what we need now are some democrats'5 5 this is a literal translation from the czech language. to my mind, there exists no official rendering of the quote. . what regimes came of inflictive transitions have been either tyrannical by design or became so gradually. albeit their acceptance was rather short-lived, they have occasionally been popular. at the same time, however, they have been particularly untimely. consider the introduction of socialism in the former eastern bloc. what regimes came of revolutionary transitions have been at the mercy of their orchestrators. popular as they initially were, revolutionary establishments have seldom outlasted the preceding governments. for a cautionary example, one might look to the french revolution an event whose engineers mismanaged the authority which they had wrested from the sovereign and eventually precipitated the state's relapse to autocracy. jean-jacques rousseau, whom many have called the 'father of the french revolution', wrote in the second discourse: discourse on the origin and foundations of inequality among mankind that '[a] people once accustomed to masters are not able to live without them' (p. 73). newly emancipated states, most of which stretch across latin america and central and eastern europe, are yet to endure the many trials of a free society. time alone can tell how well they will fare. what regimes came of evolutionary transitions have become prosperous and self-sufficient. consider norway, a country whose becoming a sovereign constitutional monarchy represented a culmination of the historical, political, and socio-economic developments. it was timely because by 1905, when the union between sweden and norway was dissolved, norway's economy had grown vigorously and its administrative institutions had become largely self-reliant. it was popular because in the 1905 referendum, an overwhelming majority6 of norwegians voted in favour of the dissolution. it has been said time and again that history cannot be accelerated. yet time and again, men have brazenly sought to alter its currents. one such endeavour in the former ussr brought about a regime whose despotism and uncompromising brutality against the 'politically proscribed' are unparalleled by modern historical standards. a synthesis cannot occur without a thesis and an antithesis. recently, the disenfranchised masses of the arab world rallied for social and political rearrangement. their crusade was met with enthusiastic praise by numerous statesmen across the west. whether the arab spring will yield more favourable establishments remains to be seen. let us bear in mind a quote from hegel's lectures on the philosophy of history: 6 approximately 99,5 % politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 13 'what experience and history teach is . . . that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deducted from it' (p. 6). the porcupine is not in a position to recognise the delicacy of truffles. he might find man's insistence upon his consuming the precious fungus rather curious. but because dietary appreciation has not yet penetrated into his world, the porcupine is not to be held accountable for his gastronomic inadequacy. it remains to be seen whether he will ever relish savoury food. man, unlike the porcupine, realises that the procurement of truffles is especially laborious. he should therefore know better than to shove mushrooms down the poor rodent's throat. if the west desires to export its cultural standards, it is important that it acquaint itself with the intricate constitution of the porcupine's world. it must essay to determine, by means of a thorough and dedicated analysis, the likelihood of exotic sociocultural markets accommodating its product. should the west fail to execute this measure, its reformative endeavours might soon prove untimely. furthermore, should it disregard the sentiments of its clients, the western mode would prove inflictive and therefore unpopular. john locke said in the second treatise of government that '[no man] can be . . . subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent' (§ 95). it would be unworthy of the west to contradict the maxims of its ideological fathers. progress has a harsh way of correcting our judgment. it is remarkably difficult to accomplish, yet unusually simple to reverse. references burke, e. (1791), reflections on the revolution in france, london dagre, t. (1999), the history of norway: millenium, 15. retrieved february 22, 2013 from: http://repositorio.ipv.pt/bitstream/10400.1 9/868/1/the%20history%20of%20norwa y.pdf garrard, g. (2012, may/june), brief lives, jean-jacques rousseau (1717-1778). philosophy now, 90. retrieved february 23, 2013 from: http://philosophynow.org/issues/90/jeanjacques_rousseau_1712-1778 hegel, g. w. f. (1914). lectures on the philosophy of history, london: bell locke, j. (2002). the second treatise of government, london: dover publications inc. rousseau, j-j. (2002). the social contract and the first and second discourses. yale: yale university press transcript of the civil rights act (1964): retrieved february 22, 2013 from: http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?fla sh=true&doc=97&page=transcript yearbook of the united nations (19481949), retrieved february 22, 2013 from: http://unyearbook.un.org/194849yun/1948-49_p1_ch5.pdf wittgenstein, l. (1958), philosophical investigations. london: basil blackwell http://repositorio.ipv.pt/bitstream/10400.19/868/1/the%20history%20of%20norway.pdf� http://repositorio.ipv.pt/bitstream/10400.19/868/1/the%20history%20of%20norway.pdf� http://repositorio.ipv.pt/bitstream/10400.19/868/1/the%20history%20of%20norway.pdf� http://philosophynow.org/issues/90/jean-jacques_rousseau_1712-1778� http://philosophynow.org/issues/90/jean-jacques_rousseau_1712-1778� http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=97&page=transcript� http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=97&page=transcript� http://unyearbook.un.org/1948-49yun/1948-49_p1_ch5.pdf� http://unyearbook.un.org/1948-49yun/1948-49_p1_ch5.pdf� untitled politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 149 legislative representation and governability in brazil: does brazilian democracy represent its social plurality? lívia de souza lima1, são paulo foundation school of sociology and politics thiago henrique desenzi2, são paulo foundation school of sociology and politics abstract emocracy is, ideally, an equality fostering tool in face of different demands present in any given society and that currently is put in practice by a representative democratic model. nevertheless, several modern thinkers are pointing to an unmeasured scale of interests within the representation spheres, in which the most powerful society’s sectors overcome the less influential social and economical groups, turning democratic representation into an uneven scheme. by having this in mind, this reflection is aimed to make an analysis of the brazilian democratic representation model, specifically in relation to its majoritarian government composition, that, in this country, is part of a unique legislative model named as “coalition presidentialism”. at the composition idealized by the brazilian national constitution, the federal parliamentary ministers have the responsibility for the formulation of laws as well as monitoring the executive power in consonance with the will of the society’s sectors that has got them elected by the voting system. the conflict is established though, when the actual governmental practices leave aside the constitutional principle of a plural representation in consequence of economic and power interests that act independently from the diverse interests and needs of other groups belonging to the brazilian society. it can be argued that the establishment of governmental practices better aligned to the concept of global justice, in the brazilian case, can be achieved by a better quality democracy, through adequate governance mechanisms and plural representation practices that are capable of attending the distinct demands of diverse society layers. thus, this article is aimed to present how the brazilian democratic representation works, exploring its conflicts and deployments and mainly its divergences in relation to the democratic morality that presupposes the existence of gradated ways to the reaching of higher social and political equality levels, closer to the general global justice ideas. keywords: quality of democracy, brazilian political culture, democratic representation and participation 1 sociology and politics student at the são paulo foundation school of sociology and politics. visiting student at napier university – edinburgh – scotland email: livdesouzalima@gmail.comscholarship studentcnpq brazil 2 sociology and politics student at the são paulo foundation school of sociology and politics. visiting student at university of helsinki – helsinki – finland email: thiago.desenzi@gmail.com scholarship studentcnpq brazil d mailto:livdesouzalima@gmail.commailto:thiago.desenzi@gmail.com de souza lima and desenzi legislative representation and governability in brazil 150 introduction esides the pre carnival euphoria in 2013, one specific chapter of the brazilian national congress “soap opera” was also capable to “entertain” the country. in the beginning of february of this same year, mr. renan calheiros has been elected president of the federal senate, being supposed to remain on the post for a biannual mandate. it caused a big fuzz in the national news and what was being exposed by several newspapers and political commentators is that this election is a result of pre accorded agreements in between the situation party, its allies and the opposition, accounting for the exchange of government positions, sketchy favours and political advantages3. part of this practice should be normal for a political system known for the formation of such polarized coalitions. but, what makes this chapter deterring is the fact that the just elected senator is a politician that carries over his shoulders three processes on the supreme court, in which he is under investigation for corruption practices. it should not be considered as trivial the fact that in the year 2007, the same 3 see the editorial: “renan gives positions, consolidating support in the senate and must win by a wide margin” – our translation (bergamasco&lopes, 2013) politician renounced his post as senate president, for running the risk of having his political rights revoked4. the damage to the government's image is clear, and can be seen in repulsions in the media, digital networks and in society in general5. the party leader of the executive and the entire coalition base “pays the price” of these divergent interests in this political chessboard called “coalition presidentialism”. through this episode, we can have a clue of how the legislative representation and governability interrelate in the brazilian democratic system. aiming to clarify the reasons that lead and make possible this sort of political arrangements, the discussion will be developed towards the democratic values in the contemporary academy discussion; secondly the brazilian democratic representation model and its nuances will be discussed. further on, it will be verified the connections and disconnections among the governability and the representation, trying to verify if the society plurality is represented 4“he was accused of paying personal expenses (the pension of a daughter out of wedlock) with funds from a lobbyist. to prove the money received, renan had fake notes regarding the purchase of cattle” – our translation (alvares&brito, 2013) 5 more than 1,5 million digital signatures collected in less than ten days asking for the senate's president impeachment in the www.avaaz.org. b politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 151 in this system, and within this dynamics, delineate perceptions over the desirable ways for the brazilian democracy. democracy as a polical regime and social relation despite the differences in the ways democracy was put in practice in its very beginning and the transformations occurred throughout the times, there is a general definition that can be understood as the very structure of a democracy: that in democratic states, people are sovereign. thus, democracy means literally rule by the people (dahl, 1989). nevertheless, a democracy could not be identified as such only by the completion of this organizational political process. thus, the ‘rule by the people’ activity should be accompanied by its capacity to promote ‘freedom and equality’, being these the basic principles by which a political organization of a nation can be named and recognized as a democracy. in as much as the modern democratic format is inspired by ancient greece, there are many differences from the original practice that has accompanied the sets of political, social, cultural and economic transformations that has led the world to what it is today. the first and perhaps most important difference is on how the decision-making process was conducted in the original greek democracies. in that time, all public issues should be considered by the “greek citizens”, which had to be gathered in order to discuss and get to agreements in which the achieving of a common good was the main goal. as much as the original democracy in greece promoted direct political participation, it failed in promoting equality by having a very limited concept of citizenship. thus, just a few part of the population could enjoy political liberty in its pure sense; consequently political equality was not fully achieved. democracy is no longer performed by direct civic participation, but is rather exercised nowadays by representative devices. robert dahl argues that representation became accepted as a solution that eliminated the ancient limits on the size of democratic states and transformed democracy from a doctrine suitable only for small and rapidly vanishing city-states to one applicable to the large nation-states of the modern age (dahl, 1989, p.29). indeed, representation is a suitable solution to make governable the modern large states, in terms of practical organization of the political process. but, one should bear in mind that, democratic representation can only be understood as such if the basic principles of liberty and equality are involved in democracy making. in this sense, a democracy is recognized and evaluated by its capacity to de souza lima and desenzi legislative representation and governability in brazil 152 pursuit liberty and equality in a broader sense, both social and political. is it impossible, asks touraine (1997), to conceive a democracy that protects the freedom of opinion and choice at the same time that combats inequality? by intriguing his reader with this question, the author is arguing that these elements are indissociable if there is the will to evaluate the quality of a democracy, exposing the need to work with these elements together. it is not an easy task, mainly taking into consideration that both principles may vary according to the political and social cultures associated to any given nation-state. but as democracy is not a static object, but yet an open oeuvre in constant expansion, there is the possibility to watch over it, understand its functioning and relations, and by finding flaws and potentials, be able to design better ways to do it. what has been defined as the study of the democratic quality accounts for the important normative conceptions of a democracy, offering some analytic tools for exploring and detecting democratic quality in various countries (morlino, 2009). morlino’s work offers an interesting and complete framework reflecting on the qualities to be presented by a democracy that shall to be defined as good. overall, the author considers that a good democracy is the one that presents “a stable institutional structure that realizes the liberty and equality of citizens through the legitimate and correct functioning of its institutions and mechanisms”. robert dahl (1989) argues that the institutions are the result of the transformation of the modern democracies into the current representative model. for him, this new set of institutions form together what is commonly referred to as ‘democracy’. in summary, to measure the quality of a democracy is to analyse to what extent is working the connexion in between the representation institution, no matter in what level, and the population, according to the basic principles and values of a democracy. in addition to this general assertion, morlino (2009) specifies the qualities to be considered for a democratic evaluation and divides them into three dimensions: procedure, content or substantive and result. the procedural dimension is composed by mechanisms that confer effectiveness and legitimacy to the institutions, and are, more specifically (i)rule of law; (ii) electoral accountability; (iii) interinstitutional accountability; (iv)participation; (v) competition. the second dimension, in morlino’s framework, is related to the nature of a democracy, and accounts for political freedom and political, social and economic equality. finally, the result, as the last dimension, is related to responsiveness. the procedural dimensions are concrete and moreover, devices for the realization of the politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 153 substantive democratic dimensions. as argued, the modern democratic scenario presupposes the existence of institutions responsible for the organization of life in societies. nevertheless, despite any political, social or even economic ideologies, the core definition of a democracy keeps being rule by the people, and not rule by institutions. as so, a democratic institution must act in accordance to the people’s wills and rights, and the exposed procedural dimensions offer an orientation guidance to make the power delegation, from the people to the institutions, legitimate. legitimacy, argues pierre rosanvallon (2011), is an invisible institution and establishes a firm foundation for the relation between the governing and the governed. it is well known that the representative system is signified by the vote, as if the general will is reflected by election results. it seems that the contemporary political debate is giving great attention to the lower voter turnouts presented even by consolidated democracies and this perception is generally connected to consequences such as lack of trust in political institutions or in politics itself. but, as much as universal suffrage is an essential organ in the functioning of the democratic body, it cannot be the solely argument in detecting a democracy failure or crisis. for rosanvallon, democracy has a “dual foundation: universal suffrage and public administration” and the organization of the state within the bureaucratic apparatus is a “solution to democratic credibility”. in this sense, the procedural dimensions for evaluating and measuring democratic quality are a suitable direction to the achievement of legitimacy and credibility in modern democracies. in this sense, legitimacy is connected to responsiveness, thus, the citizens will respond satisfactorily to the institutional capacity of legitimately bringing off the democratic substantive dimensions, according to the local reality. having this in mind is interesting to understand what legitimacy stands for. rosanvallon (2011) dissects legitimacy in three parts, so as to know, impartiality, reflexivity and proximity. those elements are essential in modern political representation due to the fact that democracy has the rule by the people as a prerogative, but the very significance of the people has changed. for this author, “the people can no longer be apprehended as a homogeneous mass” and the interests of the greatest number is not automatic identified as general will. although this reflection appoints for the necessity of several other participation mechanisms in a democracy in order to achieve a legitimacy status, universal suffrage cannot be taken for granted, especially when the history for the right to vote is traced. universal suffrage is still de souza lima and desenzi legislative representation and governability in brazil 154 considered the major democratic symbol and expresses the notion of generality among men since every citizen, in a nation, has the right to vote. rosanvallon (2011), in his latest work on equality, argues that the citizen is presented as a pure individual, detached from any specificity. when the right to vote is then conferred to every citizen, an equality measure is subsumed. in his words: within the universal suffrage exercise, every individual is deposed from its own determinations and affiliations. this abstraction is the quality that constitutes the citizen socially and helps to develop the political equality idea. and this is what makes this equality format, among the individuals, both radical and exemplar. it is disengaged from all the distinctions that are ordinarily imposed to ordinate and classify men. the great sage and the simplest spirit, the rich and the poor, are considered as equally able to think about the common good and to trace a separation line between justice and injustice (rosanvallon, 2011, p.57 our translation). hence the right to vote is the utmost political equality representative that also contains, within itself, the basic elements for social equality, by considering all the men as similar. as a procedural dimension democratic mechanism, voting is the basic pillar for political participation. but, other guarantees are necessary for the existence of a free and equal political process. robert dahl (1971) suggests that the democratic political process must make room for the people to formulate, signify and have their preferences weighed equally. besides voting, the author argues that those actions are possible by the existence of freedom of expression and to form and join organizations, right for party competition, alternative sources of information, free eligibility for public office, free and fair elections, and institutions for making policies depend on votes and other expressions of preference. as much as these elements are part of the procedural democratic dimensions, they are a more explicit definition of the political tools designed acknowledging the importance of both freedom and equality. by these important points, it can be noticed that voting and what is encompassed by it, as much as it is part of the nature of a democracy, must be invigorated by other mechanisms. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 155 in morlino’s analysis (2009), when voting and representation is involved, then accountability “becomes a truly central dimension in so much as it grants citizens and civil society in general an effective means of control over political institutions”. in other words, both electoral and interinstitutional accountability offers the citizens a chance to keep a watch in how their societies are being led, and act over any sort of dissatisfaction they might have. those mechanisms widen out the participation realm, and assure that people are empowered over their nations in and outside the ballots. accountability apparatus in rosanvallon (2008) is also seen as a counterdemocracy device. democracy, in having freedom as a value, has suspicion as a presupposition. in institutionalizing suspicion, with systems of check and balances and transparency measures, for example, the modern democracies aims to protect the individuals from the encroachments of public authority. moreover, the citizens must have the chance to make sure that the representative institutions are acting in favour of a common good, by delivering appropriate services, and designing good policies around the social justice ideal. in other words, it is a means to guarantee, or at least try to guarantee, that the government is acting towards the population interests and not its own. accountability evaluation has a direct impact to the citizen satisfaction within their government. thus, responsiveness becomes a harder task in the current social scenario. norris (1999) argues that better levels of education and greater information accessibility has resulted on the rise of more “critical citizens” that can observe the current government practices, criticize them and claim for better ways of performing a democratic form of rule. this same group of individuals are also more aware of these system and its functionalities for regulating social and political institutions. in addition, as much as equality tries to set up a world of similar people in nature, there is also the exaltation of the differences, and a claim for the accommodation of diversity. this creates a demand for more plural governments that are able to respond to the higher variety of groups, associations and movements that want and need to have a say and place in society. nevertheless, as plural as a government can be, it is just about impossible to have a perfect responsiveness equation. for powel (2004), there is a contradiction in between responsiveness and interests representation and thus, the only tentative solution is to understand that total responsiveness is not the only public virtue. as intriguing and interesting this assertion can be, is not sufficient if an evaluation of responsiveness and interests representation de souza lima and desenzi legislative representation and governability in brazil 156 is to be conducted. so, considering that each democracy has its sets of social, political, cultural and economic particularities, the question to bear in mind for a critical analysis of any democracy is: whose and to which interests the government is more responsive? this framework will allow the discussion of what are the instruments and resources that each different social group has to make a pressure on the government and thus achieve more benefits to its own interest group. these evaluations must always consider, at first hand, liberty and equality principles, and it can be almost considered as a moral judgement of a democracy capacity to work in a balanced way. democracy then, is confronted with the challenge of affirming its vitality as a regime at the same time that is reaffirmed as a form to organize the social. this challenge is especially controversial in an age where the citizens keep enlarging their forms of intervention and exercise more actively their surveillance capacities. for pierre rosanvallon, these more critical and active citizens are determined to keep alive the democratic ideal: it is the spirit of an era. the aspirations for freedom enlargement and for the instauration of powers submitted to the general will have made the despots shake and modified the face of the earth. but this political people that impose themselves more strongly have left a less social heritage. the political citizenship progresses at the same time that the social citizenship regresses (rosanvallon, 2011, p.11 – our translation) still in rosanvallon (2008), there is a current sense that this is a great time for political freedom with the spreading of citizen counter-democracy practices by which people have been acting as the overseers of democracy. it becomes evident that freedom is currently a strong and visible value within the democratic world. but the simultaneous intensification of the inequalities presents itself as a rupture from the democratic values that should be walking hand in hand. the latest oxfam report 6 headlines that the annual income of the richest 100 people in the world is enough to end global poverty four times over. the report asserts that this huge economical gap “is not only unethical but also economically inefficient, politically corrosive, socially divisive and environmentally destructive. thus, for pierre rosanvallon (2008), equality 6 see the editorial: “the cost of inequality: how wealth and income extremes hurt us all” (oxfam, 2013) politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 157 is in crisis, not just because it is so evident, but mainly for the general acceptance of it. equality itself is not easy to define. what is the measure for equality? this question is aimed to identify an issue, a problem. this measure means a question of space (income, wealth, happiness, life opportunities, satisfaction of necessities, freedom) from which different persons can be compared in relation to the hope of an equal treatment to all the people, despite the differences that cross their lives and their forms of existence. it is a field made of a group of value references that are also cognitive and political references. and from these references the social life complications and mistakes are, or can be, described and measured, figured and evaluated as problems to be repaired (telles, 2004). in this sense, equality becomes a social relation, and not a product that can be arithmetically evaluated and accounted. the term equality should be identified with emancipation, autonomy and with the consequent constitution of a world of similar people that live in pairs and do not know the levels that separate or humiliate them. the critic of economic inequality is directed to the creation of a society where the differences in between the individuals are not generating exploitation, domination or exclusion. in this sense, a society without classes is the one by which work is not submitted to predator powers and that the dignity of all is guaranteed (rosanvallon, 2011). having a more clear idea of what equality means and represents helps to pave the way for its achievement, or at least, pave the way towards it. pierre rosanvallon (2006) understands that it should be a democratic perspective to work in society itself. in michael foucault (1997) this concept is defined as governing the social, creating civility and fundamentally constructing a social unity. hence, the art of government, cannot be understood only as a power submission mechanism, but as practice in defence of society. what rosanvallon suggests, is a democratic approach that might lead to a communion of the ideals of democracy with those of socialism: historically, the first have above all been defined in procedural terms, while the second have been thought about in a substantive fashion. if politics is conceived, however, as the work of society itself, then the experimentation with differences that makes it up is also its heart. substance and procedure blend, in the end, to make democratic progress connect with the deepening of the exigency for de souza lima and desenzi legislative representation and governability in brazil 158 social justice (rosanvallon, 2006, p.251). the equal society must be thought under three orders: singularity, reciprocity and communality. singularity implicates the freedom that each individual has of manifesting itself according to personal preferences and that each human being is unique. governing the social, in this sense, accounts the existence of policies that give the individuals the means to express their singularities. among it could be mentioned anti-discrimination measures, genre equality and sexual option liberty. reciprocity is a dimension sensible to the rights and duties of all members of a state, and also implicates on just wealth distribution. moreover, it expresses itself with a negative reaction towards certain behaviours where any individual might take irregular profit from the system, being also a denial to the constitution of privileges directed to a specific class of individuals. communality, related to the citizen notion, is the evidence that the individuals are members of a community and protected by the laws pertained to it. the group of laws accounts for civil and social rights of an individual in its relation to the other members of a society or community (rosanvallon, 2011). in summary, governing the social, in an equality framework, is create the ways for the exposed orders to happen, and involve everyone in the process, helping to construct the common good in a substantive manner.7 what has been reflected and exposed here is that, democracy as a political regime has its intrinsic legitimacy mechanisms that by having its dimensions observed can deliver credible procedures and devices, to the achievement of the rule by the people. at the same time, the substantive notions, being the core democratic principles, has to be considered in every single aspect if the rule by the people is to be exercised according to the values and objectives that generated it. finally, democracy as an alive body, has the potential to evolve by observing the local and global challenges and rebuild itself, leading towards the construction of justice to as many people and nations as possible. democratic political representation in brazil the main goal in this section is to delineate the brazilian political system mechanics, defined originally under the concept of “coalition presidentialism” a 7 pierre rosanvallon (2011), in la société des égaux, retraces the ideologies and struggles that helped to define the concept and orientation for equality. for a better understanding of all the propositions made by the author regarding the equality orders, refer to iv chapter: le grand retournement. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 159 term coined by sérgio abranches8. further studies comproved the original attribution of this term, due to this peculiar brazilian format, basing the academic literature that in general accepts and uses this term, thus establishing brazil as a country ruled by an unique political model in the democratic world (figueiredo&limongi,2004; moises,2011). according to the original author of this term (2012), this concept was conceived during the constitutional debates in 1988, in consequence of the paths these debates were taking. these debates were guiding to a perception of an inflexible government model, unable to deal with political crisis in face of interests’ polarization among executive and legislative, and the institutional devices contained in the premises of the new constitution. the 1998 constitutional debates´ revealed the shock of different political thoughts, in several issues, but the present discussion has a focus on the shock between supporters of parliamentary government against presidentialist government. the debate´s polarization can be perceived in the constitutional devices contained in the final 8 “brazil is the only country which, as well as combining proportionality, a multisystem and an 'imperial presidentialism', organizes the executive based on large coalitions. i will call this peculiar trait of the concrete brazilian institutionality, for lack of a better alternative, 'coalition presidentialism'” (abranches, 1988) text, and the disagreement can be verified in the plebiscite predicted in this same final text, performed five years after the promulgation of the 88´s brazilian constitution, that transferred to the people the final responsibility in chosen the national government system9. the result of this clash and the final constitutional text made possible to emerge mixed government structures in the brazilian political system and in this background arose the concept of “coalition presidentialism”. thus the brazilian political system was conceived under mixed characteristics10 from presidentialism (united states of america model) and parliamentarism (european model), in other words, it gathered the concepts of federation and presidentialist republic and the concepts of multiparty system, with proportional representation vote. this mixture brought the polarity among both systems of government (parliamentarism and presidentialism) to the brazilian model, and in addition, left this polarity even stronger by providing two different sorts of representatives, between executive power and legislative power. 9 the plebiscite performed in 21/04/1993 had presidentialism system as winner with 55,58% of vote. data available at <http://www.tse.jus.br/eleicoes/plebiscitos -e-referendos/plebiscito-de-1993> access in 02/02/13 10 (abranches,2012); (santos,2004). http://www.tse.jus.br/eleicoes/plebiscitos-e-referendos/plebiscito-de-1993 http://www.tse.jus.br/eleicoes/plebiscitos-e-referendos/plebiscito-de-1993 de souza lima and desenzi legislative representation and governability in brazil 160 in one hand the congress members (federal deputies and senators) are elected by each state of the federation, having a fixed number of seats for each one of the state independent of number of inhabitants and geographic dimensions of them. this specific election is deeply influenced by local interests, due to the necessity of resources to pay the costs of a political campaign11. it reaffirms local elites responsiveness at the related congress and guide toward policies that seek to allege pre-established interests. on the other hand the executive power is elected by the totality of brazilian citizens defining the elections by considering the total amount of votes in absolute numbers. however this so called majority actually represents mainly the urban votes, originated from big cities and metropolitan areas of the country, being then a reflection of reformative interests that desire structural changes in the society dynamics, unlike the parliament, that are oriented for its maintenance. nevertheless, the question that remains is the same one that worried academics by the time of 88´s constitution promulgation: how will this government deal with this interests’ polarity in order to attain governability? the executive power, to achieve governability and implement his government program, uses different forms of persuasion 11 (vianna,2012); (abranches, 2012) and bargain with other political parties, seeking to obtain the support of brazilian congress majority (santos,2004). bargain is the buzzword at the government base composition’s negotiations and the executive distribution of ministerial, secretarial, public companies posts and so on, is used as a bargain chip with other parties, in the effort to build government support basis. thereby, unlike the original political instability theories that pointed out several factors that could take the government towards an operative inertia due to conflicts of interest in between executive and legislative, this consolidated political system guarantees the executive capacity to set up its own agenda, obtaining approval at the house of the parliament, and besides, place the executive in a comfortable and dominant position over the parliament (moises,2011). several critics that commented this relationship between executive and legislative accused that actually, the government, in its effort to achieve governability, is not properly representing the society´s interests. unlike the individual representation of people’s will by their elected representatives, presupposed by the brazilian constitution12, this mechanic sets a 12 “art. 45. the congress is composed of representatives of the people, elected by the proportional system in each state, in each territory and the federal district” – our translation. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 161 different sort of representativity, characterized by the representatives aggregation in two different blocks, the government and the opposition, being the latter a force extremely weakened by institutional devices available in the constitution for guaranteeing “governability”13. instead of a truly democratic representativeness, these party negotiations for governmental base arrangements, leads the “coalition presidentialism” to a movement of democratic “delegation” (santos, 2004). and both words have completely different meanings and objectives towards public issues. besides, the legislative capacity to formulate laws and accountability over the executive actions is hampered. the presidential government 13 is important to keep in mind a brief sum up of the issues that concerned the constitutional assembly toward this conception of “governability”. according to moises (2012) the problems of decisional blockade due to conflicts among executive and legislative between 1946 and 1964, the last democratic experience period in brazil before the military government, were the cause of several government crisis that happened in almost all the governments in this specific period. and during the constitutional debates, not just the representatives but also the media were concerned in how to solve “problems of efficiency and effectiveness” in the government, and searching for a way out of these crisis the final constitutional text predicted some institutional devices that could manage this constitutional shocks favoring the executive power over the legislative. coalition disables any individual effort in the legislative, having available not just the coalition agreements among its basis partner parties, but also by having different institutional tools that can block any divergent interests in the congress. one of the coalition presidentialism main characteristics is one of the european parliamentary system basis, the party discipline in congress voting (moraes,2001; moises,2011; santos,2004). in the broad study prepared by figueiredo e limongi (2004, our translation), this tendency can be thus verified: “since the promulgation of the constitution, mps affiliated to political parties that compose the government basis, voted with the government in 90% of the consultations. variations by government and party are small.” this finding underpins the theory of the lack of individual and fragmented action in the congress shown before in the beginning of this article. in addition, as stated before, the minority in the congress, the opposition, is not capable to block any government basis interests by voting (limongi, 2006), due to the inexistence of institutional mechanisms available for them. in other words, the majority in the congress sets the agenda. in this scenario the only option to influence the government agenda and to propose new initiatives or changes in de souza lima and desenzi legislative representation and governability in brazil 162 government politics is to be part of the government basis, or to wait the next term trying to become the government, rather than opposition. another aspect important to underline is that the legislative members, ever since the political campaign, depended more of their individual efforts and actions to become elected than to the party actions14. and once elected, if they seek power maintenance and reelection, they must engage in political actions directed to the groups that got them elected (vianna, 2012). often, this specific electorate is sensitive in political campaigns to impactant projects, such as bridges, roads, new schools and other public local ameliorations. and the regional representatives negotiate inside the government how to achieve their goals, bringing federal resources to political projects that are for the sake of their specific agenda and electorate. to accomplish this individual necessity, the legislative members have available the possibility of budget amendments15, with a common value fixed for all them during each year of their mandate, allowing them to act as the executive power, choosing the destination of 14 according to jairo nicolau (2002, p.224): “the frequencies suggest the predominance of mandates customization: members attributed a weight of 73% on individual performance and 27% to the party label” – our translation 15 to go further in this subject consult (figueiredo&limongi, 2005). the resources available, toward projects of their interest. this individual orientation could generate clashes with the coalition action, but as shown by argelina figueiredo and fernando limongi (2005), the executive has the attribution to liquidate or not the projects in queue waiting for budget availability. this legal proposition sets the necessity for setting up and forward projects aligned to the presidential program agenda, otherwise they will not be put in practice, thus legislative body individual political interests will not be accomplished. above to control to execute individual budget amendments, as exposed before, the executive has other institutional mechanisms that guarantee the governability over the legislative, such as possibilities to set an urgency tag over his projects (directly affecting the commission’s work in projects analysis), or to edit a law in a provisional form without the immediate legislative participation or its approval16. inside this dynamics is not surprising the conception accepted by the largest part of the academic literature on the issue17, that in brazil the executive exercises two functions, being also the country’s main legislator. as a result, who sets the agenda 16 to go further in this subject consult (almeida&santos, 2011). 17 (moraes,2001; moises,2011; santos,2004; figueiredo& limongi, 2004) politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 163 based on its own interests is the executive power, and of course the coalition parties influence it during negotiations, being undergone by some restrictions and impositions over their specific goals and policies, but through the bargain mechanisms, the executive agenda can outweigh the coalition interests. but even with this executive supremacy, is an illusion to think that the executive can grasp the majority interests, as we can verify by fernando henrique cardoso words, brazilian president in between 1995 – 2002: to accomplish what he promised his voters (the president) needs the congress. and to get a majority in congress, alliances must be made because the heterogeneity of the federation and the peculiarities of the brazilian proportional representation system produce a fragmented party framework, in which no single party holds a majority (quote moises, 2012, p.11) one point to be discussed over this specific statement is a reflection about which voters he is speaking of. in this sense, it can be reminded what has been already exposed here, about the fact that the executive votes are originated from big urban centers and metropolitan areas mainly. these votes can be signified as a desire for reformist policies, and are encompassed by the search for the application of a clearer political program and the interests in the accomplishment of the agenda promised during the political campaign. thereby in order to keep the power and to guarantee the reelection, the elected president must put in practice his own government agenda, even being somehow conflicting with the legislative interests, as stated before, characterized as more conservative. right here there is another shock of interests, between the coalition parties’ political agenda and the president party. these parties in the government basis play a “regulator” role, because even with the bargain of political positions, they have to engage in actions that could be accepted by their electorate, in other words, they will try to moderate the reformist action of the executive, to defend their own political agenda, at the same time that they will search for positions and power inside the coalition composition. as pointed by abranches (2012), this dynamics are natural in the democratic regime, due to its central characteristic of seeking maintenance and power preservation instead of big structural changes. for this de souza lima and desenzi legislative representation and governability in brazil 164 author, it was always a conflict area for democracies in developing, that need structural and fast changes, and this conflict can be clearly visualized in the brazilian agenda as well. this power conflict results in endless negotiations among legislative and executive powers, having the executive as the leader setting and directing the political agenda. at the same time this is not just a counter-power relation, is an eternal power struggle against and with all the other parties, in a continuous relation of rejection and necessity. the question to answer at this time is: how does the executive set its political agenda? to answer this question it is essential to expose what the term “reactive legislative” stands for: a reactive legislative is that one who delegates the initiative of the most important legal propositions to the executive. setting the agenda, as well as the priorities regarding the order of consideration of bills, is transferred to the government and negotiated later with mps who lead the legislative majority party or coalition. the brazilian legislative is reactive (santos, 2004, p.32 our translation) be “reactive” is one of the main characteristics of the brazilian legislative, being one of the reasons of their small contribution in relevant public policies. its contribution with proposals is almost insignificant in absolute numbers and also in relative numbers related to their main attribution (laws and accountability). and even in the executive proposal analysis, the legislative is limited to small technical adjustments, without any substantial changes in it. josé álvaro moisés in order to prove this statement did a broad study over the congress dynamics toward proposals’ analyses and approvals, comproving that the legislative ability in the production of laws is quite low compared to the executive, demonstrating once again how the executive outweigh the legislative in this specific government attribution. according to his study: …of the total of 2,701 proposals that were brought to the plenary of the chamber of deputies between 1995 and 2006, involving the production of laws and policy decisions, 85,50% (2,310) were originated by the executive and only 14,50% (391) by the politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 165 legislative… (moisés, 2011, p.16 our translation) this clearly can point out to a reversal of roles, when the executive takes the responsibility to legislate. it changes all the government dynamics, due to the double attribution, of legislating and executing, according to its own political agenda and interests, breaking the democratic classical conception of power division and balance. supporting this dynamics of executive´ primacy, this study also showed that proposals connected with themes towards the electorate expectations took more time to be approved in the congress than proposals concerned with governability interests18. this roundly demonstrates that the governability interests bare advantage in relation to the state policies, once the category of proposals concerned with governability were treated with more urgency than structural state policies, in other words, reflects the primacy of short term policies concerned with “government” 18 “…the projects that took more time to be approved were precisely the ones referred to the accountability over the executive (1717.7 days), then come the economy (1405.2) and health (1262.4), whereas in the case of executive projects of direct interest, relating to ensuring good performance of governments, their procedure time is quite lower: the taxation and budget (537.4) days and administration and organization of power (541.6)…” (moises, 2011, p.18) instead of long term policies concerned with “state”. regarding the development of this section, to put the executive agenda in practice is the main goal of the government, therefore to guarantee a good government is a central condition toward the power maintenance in the reelection and in the others power projects of this specific party. during all the explanation in this section, it could be verified how blur is this individual representation in the congress, being highly influenced by antagonistic interests and characters. the constitutional19 premise of people´s sovereignty and representativity is being filtered by other sort of interests, in face of the institutional design of the brazilian political system. if this system is not suited to society’s expectations or to the democratic concept of individual representation, the fault cannot be leaned over the actors in this dynamic. they are playing a game of political survival in this chessboard conceived by the 88´s brazilian constitution, and using the words of vianna (2012): “blame the game, not the players”. governability against plural representation 19 “art.1 all power emanates from the people, who exercise it through elected representatives or directly, under this constitution” – our translation de souza lima and desenzi legislative representation and governability in brazil 166 one of the most important characteristics that can be related to the brazilian presidential system is that, since the 1988 federal constitution promulgation, governability has been the buzzword by which this political system revolves around. this is due both by historical facts and the supremacy of an elitist democratic theory, mostly in line with the models advocated by schumpeter20. this elitism is verified as rule in many other modern democracies (manin, przeworski e stokes. 1999). as the academic studies demonstrates, this democratic model not only places individual participation on a second plan, but also regards it as something to be limited21, and has universal suffrage as 20 “the voters outside of parliament must respect the division of labor between themselves and the politicians they elect. they must not withdraw confidence too easily between elections and they must understand that, once they have elected an individual, political action is his business and not theirs. this means that they must refrain from instructing him about what he is to do—a principle that has indeed been universally recognized by constitutions and political theory ever since edmund burke’s time.” (schumpeter, 1969, p.295) 21 “this stabilization occurred in two ways: by giving priority to the accumulation of capital in relation to social redistribution, and by limiting citizen participation, both individually and collectively, in order to not "overload" to much the democratic system with social demands that could put endanger the priority of accumulation over redistribution”. (avrtizer&santos, 2003, p.14) a power delegation instrument and not as an object for a pluralist representation. in the studies developed by manin, przeworski and stokes (1999), it was asserted that, in modern democracies, it does not matter the “direction” to which the elected representatives follow through, as long as they move along, or to be more explicit, as long as they hold governability in their hands, thus preventing structural crisis derived from an inertial condition of actions. indeed, stability is preferred over the risks that might be brought by a more plural political representation. the brazilian political model is corroborant with this scenario as they make use of strategies such as distribution of posts, either ministerial or administrative in public companies, so as to be able to activate their agenda, as shown in the last section. the representation of the individual wills is overlooked and used in election issues, mainly based in the power relation among media and politics in the construction/deconstruction of electoral arguments (castells, 2009). in this sense, it can be wondered: can we affirm that the underrepresentation could be strict connected to the structural problem of the executive power overlapping of the legislative power in the “coalition presidentialism”? having this question on mind, some thoughts can be developed. in spite of politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 167 the fact that the proportional vote brings in itself a more fragmented character, thus more connected with the different national demands in the countries´ geographical aspect, it lacks of this same fragmentation in the economical aspect. as we showed before, the legislative vote in brazil is more conservative, representing mainly the local elites, due to its economic resources to pay the campaign costs. in face of this character, the parliament would be prone to specific status quo maintenance (abranches, 2012). contradicting the executive votes profile who represents voters with more reformist features, willing to change this specific status quo and that make reference to at least half plus one of the national electorate, referring to the number of votes needed to the president election. thus, it is not possible to affirm that the legislative with conservative characteristics would represent the aspirations of the population within its social plurality. therefore as observed, the plurality representation flaws are not just located on the structural nature of the "coalition presidentialism". this surely brought various characteristics to this “relationship”, further accentuating the disconnection with the social demands, due to the power struggle that prevails over the structural policy changes implementation, as demonstrated previously. besides, this power struggle within the brazilian government presents itself as an effective filter of social plurality demands. to understand the democratic representation filter regarding the maintenance of certain status quo, the veto players concept of tsebelis (2009) can be useful. according to the author, political institutions would also be composed of actors constitutionally power vested with the right to opine about policy decisions, with the capacity of veto. the distance between the interests of these actors would set the game of interests within the government. in addition, according to tsebelis (2009), the structural design composed with the veto players, allows only incremental changes in political legislation, due to the difficulty of reaching consensus in any specific bill with the diverse interests being sometimes diffuse or antagonistic, contained in the discussion and decision sphere. corroborating the thesis of democratic elitism, according to müller (2009), is the multiplicity of veto players that guides to an institutional stability. compared with the previous section on the functioning of the brazilian political system, we can verify this institutional structure composed of several instances with veto power, providing institutional stability within the "coalition presidentialism". however, despite the desired institutional stability, due to the large number of veto players it allows de souza lima and desenzi legislative representation and governability in brazil 168 only incremental changes and the maintenance of a certain status quo. in protecting this particular status quo, according abranches (2012), developing countries face a central problem because such countries need deep structural changes, while the mechanisms of selfpreservation of modern democracies prevent these changes, such as reflected here. this conflict is against the flow of individual demands for reforms. the self-preservation in modern democracies dynamics came to play an important role in the recent political maturation in brazil, not just as political system but in its institutions in general. this is also due to the international scenario that differs almost completely to the others national democratic experiences, these experiences were marked by decisional paralysis and constant tensions between the powers. however, despite this harmony between military, political system and constitutional norms obedience, combined with a long period of stability and economic growth, the perception of democracy by the people is negative. the negative public perception on the performance of congress cannot be ignored if the goal is to understand the dynamics of representative democracies, because it affects the legitimacy and effectiveness of a central dimension of the system, from the perspective that emphasizes the quality of democracy (moises, 2011, p.27 – our translation) assessing the democratic quality, in this case, is directly connected to the legitimacy of this political process in apprehend the people, in its plural and diverse sense, as sovereign and central at the government structures. thus, for the democracy to be understood in its full sense, representation and inclusion should be observed within the great national plurality dimension, in relation to the interests pertained to several society’s stratus. nevertheless, apart from legitimacy, from a value chain point of view, the procedural most important dimensions, whose existence is essential to a higher level of democratic quality, is also defective, since accountability, as one of the most important dimensions for representation, cannot be fully applied. due to these exposed points, some political thinkers22 have considered the brazilian democracy as a low quality one. the argument behind this assertion accounts for the fact that, in the name of 22 (moises,2011; vianna, 2012, santos, 2004) politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 169 governability, a reprehensible political practice has been put in practice. for the difficulties in obtaining a simple majority in the decision making process, paves the way to the construction of heterodox alliances with very distinct ideologies. desirable ways for the brazilian democracy it might be surprising to make such an assumption regarding the brazilian political scenario, especially in this moment that the country has been acknowledged as a nation in strongly “development” that has accomplished notable achievements in reducing inequality and extreme poverty. in 2012, a survey applied by the national economic research institute reveals that in a 0 to 10 scale, brazilian people ranked their lives with a 7,1 grade, in a medium scale23. as an addition to that, the president in exercise has been approved by 78% of the population, according to the last opinion survey from december 201224. deeper scrutiny is necessary if a comparison in between political and economic attitudes is to be taken. it is not possible, at this moment, to relate the differences in between representation and economic satisfaction to a theory of economic security and value 23 see the editorial: “2012: desenvolvimento inclusivo sustentável” (ipea, 2012) 24 see the editorial: “aprovação do governo dilma atinge novo recorde de 78%” (cobucci, 2012) change, as inglehart and abramson (1994) would argue. in this specific reflection, the goal it is to analyse this scenario with a philosophical political point of view. if it is assumed that democracy presents the best tools for organizing the societies25, than this type of judgment is essential. in this sense, lefort has a very strong point that helps to make clear the role that the political science has in the defence of our democracies, when he advocates for the revival of a political philosophy: understand democracy as a subject with a set of moral values. this will allow us to understand democracy as a form to organize the society considering the dichotomies that are in the kernel of the human relations, being able to understand and grasp the difference in between legitimacy and illegitimacy, between truths and lies, between authenticity and imposture, between the pursuit of power or of private interests 25 “althought democracy may not assure representation, it is still plausible that democracy is more conducive to representation than alternative regimes.” (manin,przeworski &stokes, 1999, p.50) de souza lima and desenzi legislative representation and governability in brazil 170 and the pursuit of the common good. if we refuse to risk making judgements, we lose all sense of the difference between forms of society. if is assumed that democracy presents the best tools for organizing the societies, than this type of judgment is indispensable (lefort, 1988, p.9) it cannot be denied that democracy is founded in tension and some level of contradiction. as reflected by rosanvallon (2008), democracy represents a contradiction in between conflict legitimacy and the aspiration of consensus, a contradiction between a realistic decision principle and a justification principle. nevertheless, as a philosophical and moral concept is also part of a democratic dimension analysis, the values attributed to the political practices are also to be considered. thus, another dualism is emerged, by which a tension in between a decision-making democracy and a conduct oriented democracy is also established. in this sense, as figured by avrtizer and santos (2003), democracy should always imply the rupture of a series of consolidated traditions and, therefore, set up the continuous tentative of instituting new determinations, new rules and even new laws. in a clear contradiction to an elitist model that is being perceived at the political scenario in brazil, democracy, in history, was not conceived as a movement towards the maintenance of an status quo and this was not its central role along the its consolidation path. democracy, as the rule of the people, has in its reasoning the premise to follow up with the new conceptions of people, taking into consideration the general changes in society. reflecting on this, the exposed political system as it is composed and founded cannot be able to exercise a flexibility that a democratic practice requires. for this reason, recovering some points exposed in this reflection, might lead us to think about the importance of democratic legitimacy to be applied over this political model, as a means to change the consolidated structures that builds a barrier to the attempt of constructing a valuable and better quality representation system. the points highlighted by pierre rosanvallon (2008) accounts for the establishment of a modern sense of generality, by which could be applied the procedures towards democracy decentralization. thus, attention to the three types of legitimacy should be given. impartiality legitimacy should be linked to a detachment of particularity, supporting the basis for equality and suppression of granted privileges. on reflexivity, democratic legitimacy is regarded to the possibilities of multiplying the expressions of social sovereignty, creating real participation spaces other than direct elections. and finally, in a proximity politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 171 dimension of legitimacy, attention to particularity is to be given in order to attend the diverse society demands in the defence of a plural representation. through this perspective the democracy and its representation system in brazil needs to move towards a refunding of its basis, bringing more legitimacy by plurality, replacing elitism by a new political concept "based on the creativity of social actors"26. as stated by manin, przeworski and stokes (1999, p.51): "hence, there is lots of room for institutional creativity". (1999, p.51). references abranches, sérgio. presidencialismo de coalizão: o dilema institucional brasileiro. dados – revista de ciências sociais, rio de janeiro, vol. 31, nº1, 1988, p.5-38 abranches, sérgio. federação e presidencialismo de coalizão: 3º ciclo de conferências eleições e reflexões: federação e presidencialismo de coalizão, rio de janeiro, 15 jun. 2012. available in: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdbnc le10rk&feature=youtube_gdata_player> access in 02/01/2013 26 (avrtizer&santos, 2003) alvarez, débora; brito, ricardo. renan calheiros volta à presidência do senado após 5 anos de sua renúncia parlamentar venceu disputa contra pedro taques (pdt-mt) por 56 votos a 18. estado de são paulo, são paulo, 01 fev. 2013. available in: < http://www.estadao.com.br/noticias/nacio nal,renan-calheiros-volta-a-presidencia-dosenado-apos-5-anos-de-suarenuncia,991822,0.htm> access in: 12 fev. 2013. avritzer, leonardo and santos, boaventura de souza. para ampliar o cânone democrático. revista critica de ciências sociais, 11 mar. 2003. 30 p. available in <http://www.eurozine.com/articles/article _2003-11-03-santos-pt.html> access in 02/01/2013 bergamasco, débora; 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limongi, fernando. modelos de legislativo: o legislativo brasileiro em perspectiva comparada. revista plenarium. câmara dos deputados, ano 1, nº 1, novembro de 2004, p. 41-56. figueiredo, angelina; limongi, fernando. processo orçamentário e comportamento legislativo: emendas individuais, apoio ao executivo e programas de governo. dados – revista de ciências sociais, rio de janeiro, vol. 48, nº 4, 2005, p. 737-776 foucault, t, michel. il faut defendre la société: cours au college de france. 19751976. paris: gallimard/seuil, 1997. inglehart, ronald; abramson, paul. economic security and value change. american political science review 88: 336354 ipea. 2012: desenvolvimento inclusivo sustentável. comunicados ipea, brasília, nº158, 18 dez. 2012. available in: < http://www.ipea.gov.br/portal/images/stor ies/pdfs/comunicado/121218_comunicad oipea158.pdf> access in 04 jan. 2013 lefort, claude. democracy and political theory. cambridge: polity in association with basil blacwell, 1988. limongi, fernando. a democracia no brasil: presidencialismo, coalizão partidária e processo decisório. novos estudos cebrap, são paulo, nov., nº76, 2006, p. 17-41 moisés, josé alvaro. o desempenho do congresso nacional no presidencialismo de coalizão (1995-2006). in: moisés, josé alvaro (participation/org.). o papel do congresso nacional no presidencialismo de coalizão. rio de janeiro: konrad-adenauerstiftung, 2011. p. 7-29. moraes, filomeno. executivo e legislativo no brasil pós-constituinte. são paulo em perspeciva, são paulo, vol.15, nº4, 2001, p.45-52 morlino, leonardo. qualities of democracy: how to analyze them? florence: instituto italiano di scienze umane, 2009. müller, gustavo. representação política: neoinstitucionalismo em perspectiva comparada. revista brasileira de ciências sociais, são paulo, vol. 24, nº69, 2009, p.115-127 nicolau, jairo. como controlar o representante? considerações sobre as eleições para a câmara dos deputados no brasil. dados – revista de ciências sociais, rio de janeiro, vol. 45, nº2, 2002, p. 219-236 norris, pippa. critical citizens: global support for democratic government. oxford: oxford university press, 1999. oxfam the cost of inequality: how wealth and income extremes hurt us all: oxfam media briefing, ref: 02/2013, 18 jan. 2013. available in:< http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pres srelease/2013-01-19/annual-income-richest100-people-enough-end-global-povertyfour-times> access on: 08 fev. 2013 powell, g. bingham. the chain of responsiveness. journal of democracy, vol.15, n.4, october 2004. p.91-105 przeworski, adam; stokes, susan; manin, bernard. democracy, accountability, and representation. cambridge: cambridge university press, 1999, 351 p. rosanvallon, pierre. democracy past and future. new york, columbia university press, 2006. rosanvallon, pierre. la legitimité democratique: impartialité, reflexivité, proximité. paris, editions de seuil, 2008. rosanvallon, pierre. la societé des égaux. paris, seuil, 2011. santos, fabiano; almeida, acir. fundamentos informacionais do presidencialismo de coalizão. rio de janeiro: appris, 2011, 216 p. santos, fabiano. a reforma do poder legislativo no brazil. revista plenarium. câmara dos deputados, ano 1, nº 1, novembro de 2004, p. 26-40. http://www.ipea.gov.br/portal/images/stories/pdfs/comunicado/121218_comunicadoipea158.pdf http://www.ipea.gov.br/portal/images/stories/pdfs/comunicado/121218_comunicadoipea158.pdf http://www.ipea.gov.br/portal/images/stories/pdfs/comunicado/121218_comunicadoipea158.pdf http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2013-01-19/annual-income-richest-100-people-enough-end-global-poverty-four-times http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2013-01-19/annual-income-richest-100-people-enough-end-global-poverty-four-times http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2013-01-19/annual-income-richest-100-people-enough-end-global-poverty-four-times http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2013-01-19/annual-income-richest-100-people-enough-end-global-poverty-four-times politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 173 schumpeter, joseph alois. capitalism, socialism and democracy. london: routledge, 1994, 437 p. touraine, alain. pourrons-nous vivre ensemble? égaux et différents. paris: editions fayard, 1997 telles, vera da silva. igualdade: qual a medida? in: veras, maura pardini bicudo (org.). hexapolis: desigualdades e rupturas sociais em metrópoles contemporâneas. são paulo: educ e cortez, 2004. tsebelis, george. atores com poder de veto: como funcionam as instituições políticas. rio de janeiro: editora fgv, 2009, 440 p. vianna, sérgio besserman. representatividade na democracia brasileira: 3º ciclo de conferências eleições e reflexões: federação e presidencialismo de coalizão, rio de janeiro, 18 jun. 2012. available in: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8fo 4zhzla0&feature=youtube_gdata_player> access in 02/01/2013 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8fo4zhzla0&feature=youtube_gdata_player http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8fo4zhzla0&feature=youtube_gdata_player 66 a  constant  ‘state  of  war’  or  a  ‘dog-­‐eat-­‐dog’  system?  a   critical  analysis  of  (neo)realist  perspectives  on  world   affairs   nathan andrews13 abstract it has become far too fashionable to adopt a (neo)realist approach to world affairs, especially since this approach purports to deal with the ‘here and now’ of international politics. while this perspective can be seductive and even dominating, it is imbued with certain shortfalls that cannot be left unchallenged. (neo)realism often presents a world that is anarchic, bound by state power and self-interest. although these are “real” features of world politics, an exclusive concentration on these aspects alone does not present a comprehensive understanding of what states do and why they do what they do. this paper investigates realism, particularly the realism of hans morgenthau and kenneth waltz, to ascertain the extent to which the assumptions these authors present explain the nature and scope of international relations. the contention is that (neo)realism’s perspective on world affairs is unprogressive, non-transformative, and deterministic of state behaviour, a feature that makes its analysis limited even in capturing the ‘here and now’. keywords: international relations (ir), (neo)realism, power, self-interest, morality/ethics 1. introduction the discourse of international relations (ir) is replete with many assumptions and predictions about the motives, interests and behaviour of actors on the international scene. there is, however, no consensus on what constitutes the theory of international relations. this paper analyzes (political) realism and neorealism, particularly the ideas of 13nathan andrews is a phd student in international relations and comparative development at the university of alberta, edmonton, where he also works part-time as a teaching/research assistant. for correspondence: dept. of political science, 10-16 hm tory building, university of alberta, canada. email: andrews5@ualberta.ca. 67 hans morgenthau (1973[1948]) and kenneth waltz (1986; 1959), respectively. while these two theorists differ in some ways, i find in their arguments these core themes: 1) the question of having a “science” of ir, 2) the idea of state of nature, 3) the concept of power and order, and 4) the ethical challenge. the paper’s focus will be on these four main themes, although it is admitted that there may be variations in the worldview of e. h. carr for instance, who is considered a classical realist. the clarification is that while the new realists are more “self-consciously scientific” than their predecessors, there is no fundamental difference between the old and new especially regarding methodology (gilpin, 1986: 307). the limits on this paper will not permit us to delve into the various strands of realism and neorealism, and thus i find morgenthau and waltz to be a fair representation of these two somewhat interrelated schools of thought. this does not mean that these two theorists represent the vast body of literature on (neo)realism. the main premise with which this paper begins is that while the use of power and/or force is visible in world politics, it is not progressive or transformative to assume that the international system is anarchic, and that states dwell in an arranged structure where there is a perpetual balancing of power to ensure stability and maintain the status quo. what i mean by progressive and transformative is the ability of a theory (and its proponents) to revise, change, reinvent, and adapt itself to be useful in many contexts and paradigms. the subsequent question will be why a theory should be transformative; and the answer to this derives from the fact that the objects that ir theorists tend to study are not stationary entities which remain constant over time and space. thus, any quest to illuminate the processes and practices they are engaged in should take account of both continuities and discontinuities instead of straightjacket monocausal assumptions. the nature of the realists’ argument is often too constricted, disallowing this overhaul. the ‘old school’ critique is that realism, as the dominant theory at the time, could not predict the collapse of the soviet union (see ruggie, 1998). this is mainly because the logic of anarchy and balance of power gave way to the triumph of a hegemon. while the argument against (neo)realism might sound liberal in tone, it has to be clarified here that liberalism (or neoliberal institutionalism) certainly has its weaknesses, just like any other theory. the paper chooses to focus on what some may consider as dated readings mainly to show that the debates in the ‘realist camp’ has not changed that much since the mid-1950s, although there are some attempts to adapt the theory to recent trends – for instance, the growing need for reflexivity. the paper starts with a brief 68 account of the core assumptions that underlie realist thinking, particularly the assumptions spelt forth by morgenthau. the second section will address the core themes within these assumptions and the final part discusses the current place of (neo)realism in ir theory. revisiting such debates contributes to the ongoing discussion of issues such as war, peace, stability, and consensus in world politics, as these theories often inform international relations praxis. 2. core themes in (neo)realist assumptions the core themes in morgenthau’s (1973[1948]) writing are based on his six principles of political realism where he argues that self-interest is the fundamental standard by which all political action should be judged and, in fact, directed. waltz (1959) also posits that self-interest inhibit any recourse to morality. while some theorists have tried to reformulate these main principles for their own purposes (see tickner, 1988 for instance), they remain the core assumptions of realism and it is based on these that we proceed with our analysis of (neo)realism. this section discusses the four main themes identified in the core assumptions in both morgenthau and waltz, including the question of having a ‘science’ of ir, the idea of state of nature, the concept of power and order, and the ethical or moral challenge to state behaviour and practices. there may be other themes inherent in the realist perspective but for the purpose and scope of this paper, concentration shall be on these four. 2.1 the question of having a “science” of ir there is no unity in the discipline regarding the appropriate approaches to adopt in the study of world politics. at the least, there has been a contention between those who believe the inductive methodology of the natural and physical sciences can be applied (for instance, kaplan, neumann, morgenstern, modelski, among others) and those like morgenthau and waltz who belong to the so-called “classical” or “traditional” school. both of them challenge the application of science to ir as a result of the ambiguity and indeterminacy of the material the observer has to deal with. i must indicate, however, that of the two, waltz appears to have been the one to make ‘real’ efforts at constructing a theory that explains state behavior, a theory which lies within the broader framework of structuralism. on the question above, morgenthau insists that even the science of economics which many assume is the most accurate of all social sciences is “incapable of 69 reliable prediction” (morgenthau, 1973[1948]: 22). for waltz, though the empirical approach is necessary it is not sufficient. on the idea of a metatheory of ir,waltz expresses doubt since a macrotheory of ir for instance “would lack the practical implications of macroeconomic theory” (waltz, 1986: 107). this is because change, stability or the behavior of states cannot be predicted as the economists can predict economic change. he thus suggests a “micropolitical approach” which will cover some matters and leave others aside. he admits that the predictions of his balance-of-power (bop) theory are indeterminate, making falsification difficult. morgenthau (1973[1948]: 21) maintains that “world affairs have surprises for whoever tries to read the future from his knowledge of the past and from the signs of the present.” the implication here is that since we cannot give a good prediction about what states will do, we cannot have a “science” of international politics. while i agree with them in principle that we cannot have a “meta-narrative” or theory that explains the entirety of world politics, there is a contradiction between the arguments they make and the propositions that follow. first, it would be useful to distinguish the waltz of 1959 form waltz of 1986. the former waltz, in trying to understand the causes of war, focused on the systems level of analysis, looking at what he calls the “third image” – the international system. he later builds on his understanding of the system to construct a more structural analysis which espoused the balance-of-power (bop) theory. both analyses are behaviourist and have elements of scientism in them but specifically, his bop theory follows a more game-theoretic, economic model based on a utilitarian actor (the unit/state) who continually rationalizes and calculates their actions in order to establish both their survival and the stability of the system. this position clearly contravenes his discounting of a ‘science’ of ir, as noted above. besides, waltz’s theory ignores the influence of motives, ideology and the value-laden nature of the object of study. the argument here is that international affairs is a broad and diverse arena and cannot be explained in a cause-and-effect manner. moreover, it becomes very problematic when explanations derived from such analyses are considered general theories. with my understanding of ir which encompasses the multiple interconnections and interface among diverse entities, including states, corporations, institutions and individuals, i will argue that both classical realism and neorealism fail at the attempt of constructing a theory that would apply in many contexts as they sought to do. it is static and deterministic to the extent that it disallows “effective change” that could cause the units as well as structure to interact with other variables outside the system. 70 the reason why the realism of e. h. carr is not considered under this discussion is that he fits more into what bull (1966) calls the ‘classical’ tradition or what kaplan (1966) calls ‘traditionalism’, which sets him apart from the scientific-inductive tradition to which waltz adheres. although the scientific approach has become the “orthodox methodology” in the us and the ir discipline in general, bull, who argues for the classical approaches, posits that the scientific approach is “positively harmful” (bull, 1966: 366) to the field of study. he provides seven propositions to support this conclusion: 1) abstinence from “intuitive guesses” or “wisdom literature” keeps practitioners of the scientific approach far removed from the substance of international politics, 2) while they advocate for the scientific approach, they employ the classical methods since most of their work consists of unsubstantiated and untestable judgements that are not established by the scientific method they employ, 3) since only ‘peripheral’ topics have been dealt with in a scientific way, practitioners of this approach are not likely to make the progress they aspire to, 4) their conception of the field of ir as the construction and manipulation of models is a great disservice because essentially these models lack internal rigor and consistency, 5)the fetish attachment to measurement or quantification by the scientific school distorts and impoverishes some of their cases, 6) the need for rigor and precision in ir has been amply accommodated within the classical approach, and 7) by ignoring history and philosophy, practitioners of the scientific approach have deprived themselves of the means of self-criticism and consequently have a narrow but arrogant view of the subjects. underlying this critique is the level of analysis problem (singer, 1961) which is also referred to as the agent-structure problem (wendt, 1987), the issue of whether it is the individual agent or the structure/system of states that deserve the focus of analysis. some of the arguments against the scientific approach can be levelled against waltz since of the two (morgenthau and waltz) he makes a concerted effort at constructing a structural model for the understanding of world affairs, a model with no agency. there is still no agreement on which of these two main theoretical/methodological approaches best captures the nature and scope of ir. as bull critiques the scientific approach, traditionalism or the classical approach is also criticized for applying unfalsifiable generalizations that are “indiscriminately applied over enormous stretches of time and space” (kaplan, 1966: 15). these have been contested methodological issues that remain unresolved but for the purpose of this paper, we insist that the idea of a scientific and deterministic ir is only an elusive convenience of scholarship which fails to represent the 71 subjectivities, diversity, and value-laden nature of the discipline. in fact, it is this positivist tone of (neo)realism that makes it a “theory-masked-as-method” which does not facilitate a proper understanding of ir, particularly regarding its treatment of the social world as “an external, objective, ‘dump generality’” (ashley, 1986: 281). 2.2. the idea of state of nature (self-interest vs. self-help) morgenthau’s first premise is that the objective laws that govern politics have their roots in human nature, and since interest dominates actions, politics becomes governed by interest defined in terms of power. waltz, on the other hand, believes that since man is the root of all evil, “he [man] is himself the root of the specific evil, war” (1959: 3). the point is that if humans derive their nature from society, then studying them can neither be separated from the study of society nor from the study of government, both of which are intertwined. in answering the question, where can we find the major causes of war? waltz answers; “within man, within the structure of the separate states, within the state system” (1959: 12). the commonality between the two is the belief that self-interest rules. however, while morgenthau stresses a constant struggle, a state of nature, and a war of all against all, waltz insists on the state of war. first, the idea of “politics in the absence of government” is where waltz thinks the problem lies. it was the fear of returning to the solitary and brutish life of the state of nature that led human beings to enter the social contract, and to elect someone to possess all the powers they share in common. in hobbes there was a sovereign, and in locke, a political society with legislative, executive and federative powers to make sure the contract holds. with world affairs, “the strong do what they can and the weak do what they must” (thucydides, 1951: 331). a universally accepted governing power is absent in international relations, or at least ineffective. however, to think of a state of constant chaos or anarchy condemns to futility efforts towards cooperation. the ideas of “state of nature” itself by morgenthau and waltz’s “state of war” are both questionable if they derive from the hobbesian perspective. empirical evidence from kropotkin (2006) shows how primitive human and animal communities were not always in a state of fierce competition to survive. he argues that history shows human beings posses the tendency to cooperate and to aid. so, man was not such a beast! two things are implicit in this evidence. one, it is possible morgenthau and waltz misunderstood the “state of nature” and “state of war” ideas as derived from hobbes and locke, respectively. two, it suggests there is a potential for 72 cooperation even within the anarchic international realm just as there was some cooperation in the so-called state of nature. 2.3 the concepts of power and order with the idea of the state of nature and war arises the concept of power and the need to maintain order in the chaotic system of states. waltz claims that international politics is characterized by the absence institutions that look more like government in the domestic realm; morgenthau argues it is “the struggle for power” and regardless of whatever ultimate goals exist, “power is always the immediate aim” (1973[1948]: 27). although efforts such as the league of nations and the un aimed at eliminating power from the international scene, he maintains that the struggle for power is universal across time and space. this universality of power derives from the insatiable human tendency for dominance. as such, the whole political life of a state, be it local or national, is a perpetual struggle for power –and states are condemned to this struggle in the international system. morgenthau’s idea of “relative stability” and “peaceful conflict” could be compared to waltz balance-of-power theory. waltz proposes an international system made up of states as units within an abstract structure where states are ordered or arranged in terms of relative capability. the ordering principle here is decentralized and anarchic unlike a domestic system. to him, international-political systems are formed by “the coactions of self-regarding units” (waltz, 1986: 84) whose survival or annihilation depends on their own efforts – which makes it a self-help system. essentially, whether balance of power or the perpetual struggle for power, both of them glorify the idea of self-help. the only difference is that in waltz’s self-help system, “units worry about their survival, and the worry conditions their behavior” (1986: 102) to co-act while still maintaining a measure of independence. in morgenthau, however, the fierceness of the struggle does not guarantee anyone’s security. we shall now turn to a critique of both waltz’s and morgenthau’s conception of power. first, the extreme prominence morgenthau gives to power makes his conception of ir myopic. he distinguishes between actions of a political nature (which takes into consideration power) and actions that are of some legal, economic, humanitarian or cultural nature. yet, every action a state takes is of a political nature as the “political” does not only encapsulate the “vicissitudes of power”; calling some actions political and 73 relegating others to the non-political is like removing the limbs of an individual and yet claiming that he is a whole being, and should be able to do what every human being does. morgenthau gets this wrong. this is not to say that power is not at play on the stage of world affairs, neither does it mean that states are altruistic entities seeking the welfare of all. if power did not exist, we would not have countries divided into first, second and third worlds, neither would we expect that members of one category need to help “the rest”. if power was not at play, there would not be an ever-widening north-south divide (see kacowicz 2007; bowles, 2005) which has created the “castaways” of development collier (2007) calls “the bottom billion.” but this would not also mean that states are condemned to a perpetual struggle of diverse self-aggrandizing interests. while the un and its affiliated agencies do not adequately perform the role of a universal, “truly governmental” power, the fact that the 192 states that make up the body have not abrogated it means there might be some value in cooperation or interdependence at the international level, which derives from mutual instead of self-interest. second, waltz’ focus on the state and causes of war is reductionist in terms of level of analysis, so is morgenthau’s idea of where power lies in the international system. the power he frequently refers to is power possessed by nation-states, not other actors that may exist within or outside the state. while he briefly mentions that domestic politics is also characterized by the struggle for power, he does not establish clearly what he means by “domestic”. the claim is that actors operating on behalf of the state still work within the broader framework of state-interest and would usually separate the “official” from the “personal”. but even beyond these state actors, we can cite examples of international organizations such as amnesty international, green peace, red cross, doctors without borders, among other nonstate actors who influence world affairs. thus, reducing the level of analysis to the state renders morgenthau and waltz’s theory incapable of explaining the role the myriad actors in world affairs play. while the state still holds a good position in world politics, the 1648 westphalian foundation on which it once stood faces the intercourse of many actors (state and nonstate) who do not only influence as morgenthau would claim, but also may potentially weaken the pillars of the temple. although the realist may cite the us invasion of iraq and “war against terror” as evidence of dominance and international anarchy, the idea that a nonstate actor (al-qaeda) managed to topple monumental buildings in a so-called powerful state would nullify aspects of their arguments. 74 additionally, the use of “international system” in realist thinking is questionable. waltz (1986: 70) argues that “a system is composed of a structure and of interacting units” and the structure is the system-wide component that makes it possible for one to think of the system as a whole. yet, he says to be able to make a definition of structure theoretically useful, it has to be delinked from the characteristics of units, their behaviour and their interaction. a system would usually entail “an aggregation of diverse entities united by regular interaction according to a form of control” (cited in gilpin, 1981: 26). in this way, we can talk of the digestive system, which represents an interaction right from the esophagus through to the rectum. even from a limited knowledge in biology, it is quite obvious that one cannot remove any of the internal organs that form part of this digestive interface and still maintain it is a functional system; neither can one sufficiently justify the “power relations” between the small and big intestines without recognizing the role the veins, arteries and blood cells play in this interaction. to conceive of units within a structure that is self-enclosed and influential on the composite units without the units reacting to it or to some external factors outside of the structure is short-sighted. in sum, whether it is called a “system” or a “society of states” the argument is still reduced to one level – the state – ignoring other levels that could be incorporated into the analysis. introducing other levels such as the social, economic, cultural and so forth makes a theory more adaptable to a variety of contexts without necessarily making it a “grand narrative”. furthermore, waltz’s idea that the domestic is orderly and the international is disorderly is ambiguous. this means that the theory may apply in certain contexts but definitely does not explain the dichotomies of domestic and international politics worldwide. there are many instances where there is what he calls “government” and some kind of a hierarchy, yet order is absent. what would he say of such cases like somalia where there has not been a formal government for a decade or so? what about rwanda where, despite the installation of formal government, order has not yet prevailed? in most of these cases formal institutions accepted by all were in place before they retrogressed into disorder, and they have not be able to recuperate as waltz claims the domestic will. this case basically refutes this statement: “national politics is the realm of authority, of administration, and of law. international politics is the realm of power, of struggle, and of accommodation” (waltz, 1986: 111). the paradox, however, is that sometimes international affairs is a realm of “relative order” while the domestic could be one of “relative disorder”. relative here means that none of these conditions is permanent, and 75 we cannot hold any theory constant in its ability to explain these phenomena. recent developments in north africa (tunisia, egypt, and presently libya) and parts of the middle east (for instance, yemen and syria) show that the domestic can be as anarchic as the international, even when it is perceived that systems and processes of government, instead of governance, are in place. 2.4 the ethical challenge in the system both morgenthau and waltz describe, morality is scarce, if not completely absent. realism insists “universal moral principles cannot be applied to the actions of states in their abstract universal formulation [...]” (morgenthau, 1973[1948]: 10). it is naive to assume that a diplomat will pursue moral goals as against the national interest since political prudence outweighs issues of morality, further limiting a normative ir theory. as such, there cannot be universality in a complex and diverse world but there is the un declaration of human rights for instance – an agreement by a large number of countries whom morgenthau will claim co-exist in a “peaceful conflict”. this declaration at least shows the potential for world leaders to agree on some elements of what can be called a moral/ethical standard of living. my argument is not that morality exists. the point is that there is the need for an acceptable moral code that will limit the use of force or resort to war. if morality was the main issue countries like china, for instance, might not have joined the un as a result of its track record in human rights abuses: the same would have been the fate of some african states where the absence of rule of law, mass killings and genocides were obvious. nonetheless, if morality was totally nonexistent states would not offer humanitarian assistance to people from whom they will gain no political or commercial returns. at some point, we might need to move beyond the realists’ “doomsaying” to assess the feasibility of a normative ir. here, the argument is not necessarily for kant’s (1795) idealist perpetual peace because such peace will require a more robust international society or community which seems far-fetched, for now. in fact, it is the realist critique of morality that appears to be the most apparent (perhaps, ‘real’) feature of world politics today. while there exist the un declaration and other statutory documents that speak to some kind of international concerted efforts towards “the universal good”, there is still evidence of absolute neglect of “moral” concerns when it comes to foreign policy. we are aware of the claim by kennan (1985/86) 76 that “government needs no moral justification, nor need it accept any moral reproach for acting on the basis of them” and also thucydides’ assertion that in anarchy, the strong always wins. these claims derive from the cumbersomeness in defining morality or ethics, yet paying too much attention to thucydides, as welch (2003) argues, can be “largely pernicious” because it can potentially limit a conceptualization of “justice”, “equality”, and “fairness” – if only these words mean anything in actual practice. this argument does not imply that because it is difficult to think of a universal morality, issues of morality do not apply to ir. to the strong states, morality is a relative term used to suit the particular action they wish to take to secure their interests. a case in point, which has almost become a cliché is ir discussions, is when the us defied all international laws governing sovereignty and noninterference to enter iraq and then also to afghanistan after the september 11 terrorist attacks. this even happened in the presence of the un which is perceived by liberal institutionalists as representing the era of “governance without government” (see rosenau & czempiel, 1992; ruggie, 2004), and thus showing that this architecture of global order is not formidable enough. waltz (1959) will generalize that a foreign policy based on his third image (the international structure) “is neither moral nor immoral.” states in waltz’s international system are regarded as acting units who are pressured by the system to behave in one way or the other in the sense that if, for instance, one state decides to “pare down their military establishment, other states will be able to pursue similar policies” (waltz, 1959: 161). however, this is hardly the case because states cannot act in a purely rational manner unless they are fully convinced that others will do same. rationality in such a system is so relative and fragile that no one would want to take chances. thomas hobbes, for instance, saw no such thing as order present in a system with the absence of a superior governing power. according to him, “[…] the bonds of words are too weak to bridle men’s ambition, avarice, anger, and other passions, without fear of some coercive power […].” (hobbes, 2005; 596). for waltz (1959), it is due to “the absence of truly governmental institutions” that war arises. in this instance, the “element of co-operation and regulated intercourse among states” (bull, 1977: 41) is limited or even absent, and thus we assume its existence at our peril. this addition to the critique reveals the complexity of world politics and shows that we cannot simply hold on to a fixed and rigid explanation of how states behave or how they will behave in the future, and that no 77 single theory can claim to know the “truth”. but in no way does it delimit the overall argument that has been pursued against (neo)realism so far. 3. conclusion like buzan notes, “power politics … and the dynamics of (in)security do seem to be universally relevant to international relations” (buzan, 2000: 60). states are often selfinterested in their actions, and the absence of a moral code or a universally accepted sovereign power to curb such interests and tendencies can extend this condition to higher, sometimes deplorable, proportions. however, to argue that state interest and power are the central underlying principles of state behaviour is inaccurate since in most cases there are so many interests (other than national) and motivations (other than political) that define the choices and decisions states make. if considered in entirety, (neo)realism is rigid, deterministic and narrow in its description of the international political reality. waltz in particular is limited in “his atomistic view of states, his rationalist assumptions about their behaviour and his view that the texture of international politics remains highly constant […]” (joseph, 2010: 479). from the discussion above, it is clear that while power does not define the totality of state behaviour, there is the expression of power in many forms (military, social, political and economic), mostly by powerful states and especially when it suits their self-interests. however, in the context today’s growing interdependence and the increasing role of numerous nonstate actors in international affairs, it would be naive to hold on strongly to realist assumptions and discount multidimensionality, intersectionality and contextuality. let me note that there have been some attempts to synthesize realism with other theories such as constructivism (see molloy, 2010) and with liberalism (or pluralism), and marxism culminating in international political economy (see katzenstein, keohane and krasner, 1998). these are useful configurations but until (neo)realism in itself is able to adapt itself to the changing nature of the discipline, it will remain unprogressive and unable to capture in any greater detail the phenomena that define ir both as a discipline and practice. references ashley, richard k. (1986), “the poverty of neorealism” in robert o. keohane (ed.), neorealism and its critics. new york: columbia university press. bowles, paul (2005), “globalization and it boundaries: is the development divide still relevant?”, canadian journal of development studies, no. 3: 427-448 78 bull, hedley (1977), the anarchical society: a study of order in world politics. new york: columbia university press. bull, hedley (1966), “international theory: the case for a classical approach”, world politics vol. 18, no. 3: 361–77. buzan, barry (2000), “the timeless wisdom of realism?” in smith et al. (eds.), international theory: positivism and beyond. cambridge: cambridge university press. collier, paul (2007), the bottom billion: why poor countries are falling and what can be done about it. oxford: oxford university press. gilpin, robert (1981), war and change in world politics. cambridge: cambridge university press. gilpin, robert (1986), “the richness of the tradition of political realism” in robert o. keohane (ed.), neorealism and its critics. new york: columbia university press. joseph, jonathan (2010), “is waltz a realist?”, international relations vol. 24, no. 4: 478493. kacowicz, arie (2007), “globalization, poverty, and the north-south divide”, international studies review vol. 9, no. 4: 565-580. kant, immanuel (1795). perpetual peace: a philosophical sketch. kaplan, morton a. (1966), “the new great debate: traditionalism versus science in international relations”, world politics vol. 19, no. 1: 1-20 katzenstein, peter j.; robert o. keohane; stephen d. krasner (1998), “international organization and the study of world politics”, international organization vol. 52, no. 4: 645-685. kennan, george (1985/86), “morality and foreign policy” in foreign affairs. kropotkin, peter (2006), mutual aid: a factor of evolution. mineola, ny: dover publications, inc. [originally published: heinemann, 1902]. molloy, seán (2010), “from the twenty years’ crisis to theory of international politics: a rhizomatic reading of realism,” journal of international relations and development vol. 13: 378-404. morgan, michael (ed.) (2005), classics of moral and political theory. indianapolis: hackett publishing company inc. morgenthau, hans (1973[1948]), politics among nations: the struggle for power and peace. new york: knopf. rosenau, james n.; ernst-otto czempiel (eds.) (1992), governance without government: order and change in world politics. cambridge: cambridge university press. ruggie, john g. (1998), constructing the world polity. london: routledge. ruggie, john g. (2004), “reconstituting the global public domain – issues, actors and practices”, european journal of international relations vol. 10, no. 4: 499-531. singer, j. david. (1961) “the level-of-analysis problem in international relations”, world politics vol. 14, no. 1: 77-92. thucydides (1951), the peloponnesian war, bk. v ch. xvii. new york: modern library. tickner, j. ann, (1988), “hans morgenthau's principles of political realism: a feminist reformulation”, millennium vol. 17, no. 3: 429-440. waltz, kenneth n. (1986) “political structures and anarchic orders and balances of power” in robert o. keohane (ed.) neorealism and its critics. new york: columbia university press. waltz, kenneth n. (1959), man, the state and war: a theoretical analysis. new york, london: columbia university press. welch, david a. (2003), “why international relations theorists should stop reading thucydides”, review of international studies vol. 29: 301-319. 79 wendt, alexander e. (1987), “the agent-structure problem in international relations theory,” international organization vol. 41, no. 3: 335-370. untitled politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 99 a boundedly rational analysis of global distributive justice alexandru volacu1, national school of political and administrative studies, romania iris-patricia golopenta2, national school of political and administrative studies, romania abstract n the present paper we analyze two prominent global distributive justice theories, i.e. pogge’s global resource dividend theory (1994) and dorsey’s maxificing welfarism (2005) under an assumption of bounded rationality. we consider that the agencies responsible for distributing resources are informationally constrained in regard to the assessment of economic positions in society and cognitively constrained in regard to the decision making process within the agency. we argue that under these conditions the distributive patterns prescribed by both theories can be severely distorted. further, in dorsey’s case bounded rationality can even lead to a complete failure of the theory, since not only are the resulting distributions sub-optimal if we introduce the possibility for a single mistake in the identification process, but they can also be completely redundant by prescribing distributions which are not capable of lifting a single citizen to the minimum level required for the fulfillment of basic needs. we further show that for both theories the identification problem becomes more severe and that the agencies are more susceptible to make mistakes in circumstances of extreme poverty, i.e. the circumstances primarily targeted by the theories. aside from this main result, we also obtain three secondary results: 1. we extend the ongoing debates in political philosophy between ideal and non-ideal theories and in particular between factinsensitivity and fact-sensitivity, 2. we provide a preliminary defense of a proportional distributive principle for global justice and 3. we provide a new starting point for the construction of arguments regarding the nature of the agency (e.g. global government, national governments, un institutions, international ngos) entitled to distribute resources in global justice theories. 1 alexandru volacu is a 2nd year ma student in political theory and analysis at the faculty of political science, national school of political and administrative studies, bucharest, romania. he is a member of iapss since 2009. he has previously published scientific articles on political philosophy and political science in the romanian journal of european affairs, the romanian journal of society and politics, revista de stiinte politice. revue des sciences politiques, perspectives in politics and the sphere of politics. his main research interests include: political philosophy, the philosophy of science, public choice theory, game theory, spatial analysis and political ethics. e-mail address: volacu@gmail.com 2 iris-patricia golopenta is a 2nd year ma student in political theory and analysis at the faculty of political science, national school of political and administrative studies, bucharest, romania. she is currently an intern at romanian academic society. her research interests include: normative theory, political philosophy, ethics, institutional approaches of political science and gender studies. e-mail address: irisgolopenta@yahoo.com i mailto:volacu@gmail.com mailto:irisgolopenta@yahoo.com volacu and golopenta a boundedly rational analysis of global distributive justice 100 keywords: bounded rationality, distributive agency, distributive pattern, dorsey, global distributive justice, nonideal theory, pogge motto: “should the facts be allowed to spoil a good theory?” (lovell, 1986, p.120) introduction ver since rawls’s (1993) first important contribution to global justice theories, the field has become one of the most fertile debate forums in political philosophy. theories of global distributive justice3 also share a common root with the rawlsian line of thought, with some of the most important theories in this strand being considered extensions of the difference principle (see rawls, 1971, p.72), although rawls himself opposed such a view by stating that “the principles of justice for the basic structure of society are not suitable as fully general principles. they do not apply to all subjects […] or to the law of the peoples” (rawls, 1993, p. 39). instead, rawls argues that they should be systematically constructed by a procedure that modifies 3 among the prevalent cosmopolitan defenders of global distributive justice we can find, inter alia, pogge (1994), (2001), (2002), beitz (1979), (2000), barry (1999), mollendorf (2002), tan (2004). some of its prominent critics (which mostly defend rawls’ conception of global justice) include: rawls (1993), (1999), dworkin (2000), reidy (2004), nagel (2005). this list does not even begin to scratch the surface of the literature in question but it does manage to briefly outline some of the most important contributions. and adapts to the nature of the situation each time the parties are required to agree on the principles of fair distribution and cooperation. one of the main characteristics of global distributive justice theories is that they do not take into account a significant number of empirical circumstances, which when considered, could completely alter the distributive patterns of the theory. we argue that one such circumstance is the fact that human beings are cognitively and informationally constrained, or in simon’s terms boundedly rational (1976), and that as a consequence they will not be able to accurately identify in all instances the members to which they should distribute goods if they follow a prescribed distributive pattern. our purpose in this paper is to show that for at least two theories of global distributive justice, one which follows the mainstream position of extending the difference principle to a global framework, i.e. pogge’s grd approach (1994) and one which is derived on a consequentialist basis, i.e. dorsey’s maxificing welfarism (2005), the prescribed patterns of distribution are susceptible to lead to perverse outcomes. e politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 101 the paper is divided into seven parts, excluding the introduction. in the first two parts we present a brief overview of the theories of global distributive justice as developed by pogge and dorsey. in the third part we present a brief overview of the concept of bounded rationality and explain the sense in which it will be used in the paper. in the fourth part we explain the general context in which the bounded rationality assumption is relevant for political philosophy, namely the debates between ideal theories and non-ideal theories, and in particular between factinsensivity and fact-sensitivity. in the fifth part we explain the distributive patterns prescribed by pogge and dorsey by capturing them in a common structural framework. in the sixth part, where the bulk of our argument is concentrated, we show what effects the introduction of a bounded rationality assumption could have on the distributive patterns prescribed by pogge and dorsey. in the final part we draw the conclusions of the paper and lay the groundwork for potential discussions which could stem from the present paper but were not included here due to spatial constraints or due to the different scope of the paper. 2. global distributive justice – pogge and dorsey’s perspectives 2.1. pogge’s grd approach to global distributive justice according to pogge, the present global order is characterized by political and economical interdependency that is very likely to persist in the future. hence he expresses three egalitarian concerns regarding the deficiencies in mitigating inequalities: 1. citizens of different nations benefit from unequal chances to influence the transnational political decisions, 2. equally talented and motivated individuals do not possess equal chances to obtain public goods, services and positions, regardless of their nation of origin and 3. social and economic inequalities are not used in the benefit of the world’s worst off positions. (pogge, 1994, p.196) these three observations are substantially compatible with rawls’s two principles of justice that state the following: 1) “each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others” (rawls, 1971, p.53) and 2) “social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest expected benefit of the least advantaged and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity” (rawls, 1971, p.72). given the similarities, the questions that naturally rise are whether the rawlsian original position could be applied to the international order in all its complexity and how should it be constructed on a metavolacu and golopenta a boundedly rational analysis of global distributive justice 102 theoretical perspective? the specialized literature identifies several answers to these questions. rawls discusses two possibilities: 1. initially the principle of justice is applied to the basic structure of each society and subsequently in a second round of negotiations between the state’s representatives in order to construct international principles of justice or 2. the application of a single-step process under the form of a global original position. pogge (1994), argues in favor of the first option as it seems to comply with the egalitarian concerns formulated above and he uses it in order to both clear the methodological background of his research and also defend his conception of global justice: “what is needed is a principle that asses alternative global economic orders in terms of their distributive effects, just as his [rawls’] principle assesses alternative ways of structuring a national economy” (pogge, 2001, p. 16). he basically criticizes rawls’s lack of precision in arguing about the nations and its borders and is trying to counter the following highly-idealized case: “there really is a clear-cut distinction between peoples and other kinds of groupings, that every person belongs to exactly one people, and that each national territory really does, nearly enough, contain all and only the members of a single group” (pogge, 1994, p.197). pogge addresses the problem of national borders not as historically arbitrary limits of states as rawls does, but rather as the result of violence and coercion. thus, their distributional significance, as they determine the contextual life of individuals benefiting and controlling its land and all its natural resources is not justified. therefore, the affluent states and its citizens who unconditionally benefit from public goods and open positions, development and resource opulence have the moral responsibility to offer foreign aid to those who are dealing with daily poverty, mortality and malnutrition and support the universalization of human rights to a “standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of oneself and one’s family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care” 4. moreover, the moral duty of these states is even greater since they are directly responsible not just for alleviating poverty, but also for perpetuating it, taking into account the role and rationale off some of the international economic institutions that have been founded and consolidated particularly at the initiative of these states (pogge, 2001, p. 15). how can foreign aid as duty of the global economic order be transposed into proper mechanisms to justify the state’s 4the universal declaration of human rights, accessed at: http://www.ohchr.org/en/udhr/docu ments/udhr_translations/eng.pdf, at 19.02.2013. http://www.ohchr.org/en/udhr/documents/udhr_translations/eng.pdf http://www.ohchr.org/en/udhr/documents/udhr_translations/eng.pdf politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 103 negative responsibility towards the other states? pogge formulates one institutional proposal, i.e. the global resource dividend5 (grd) that could be interpreted as a type of difference principle and may be successfully defended by an egalitarian conception of international justice. the grd implies that people should pay a proportional tax on the resources6 they extract from the territory within its national borders, weather they use it themselves or export it. the grd is therefore a consumption dividend that discriminates between the amount of the taxes, proportionally to how much value each takes from our planet (pogge, 1994, p. 199) and automatically leads to higher prices for natural resources. pogge argues that the dividend could be interpreted as a sort of lockean proviso, with the mention that the dividend does not bear the proviso’s lack of precision, on the contrary: anyone can enjoy the earth’s resources to the fullest, but in return must share some economic benefit. the amount of money shall therefore be used by the governments in mitigating the socio-economic global inequalities and directly offered as aid to the poor countries, based both on their per capita income and population size (pogge, 1994, p. 1999). 5 in a previous paper called the global resource tax (pogge, 1994, p. 199). 6 pogge does not limit the concept of national resources just to land, but extends it to water, infrastructure, education and even air. pogge also identifies 4 problems that the grd must confront, which are as follows: 1. the risks of establishing prohibitive taxes and block economic sectors of states, 2. the dividend imposed on the cultivation of basic commodities might lead to increasing their prices, which will negatively affect the worst-off positions, 3. the necessity to anticipate the worst-off positions of the future and therefore overtax the limited resources of the world or the highly dangerous pollutants and 4. the tax should be based on resources and pollutants whose extraction should be easily monitored and estimated. (pogge, 1994, p. 204) the issue of global poverty could therefore be approached and solved if the interdependencies of the world were perceived in a constructive perspective: the affluent countries are due to expand their advantages and enter into a global bargaining process with the other countries, while the poor are due to accept the economical, technological and know-how abilities that the rest posses in their advantage. hence, the grd could be a proper instrument to try. 2.2.. dorsey`s maxificing welfarism an alternative perspective on how global justice should be achieved is entertained by dale dorsey who argues volacu and golopenta a boundedly rational analysis of global distributive justice 104 against human rights7 as a main justifying instrument for achieving global justice, for “this language cannot form a plausible foundation for international obligations and […] although some thinkers claim that they posses powerful rhetorical appeal and thus might profitably be used to mobilize action designed to reduce or eliminate suffering, human rights are not sensitive to the concerns of justice that exist in recipient nations” (dorsey, 2005, p. 562). dorsey develops a bilateral approach, focusing both on the obligations that the rich countries have to the poor ones, but also on the domestic justice of the second, meaning the proper way that their national institutions ought to be organized to account for a particular conceptions of justice. actually, the concern regarding the internal framework of justice and its consistency with the nature and type of international aid is essential, for any kind of intervention would be prone to fail if they completely neglect the domestic circumstances of justice. for instance, in the very poor countries, in the midst of crises or a powerful famine, fair distribution could not possibly be achieved according to rawls’s difference principle, for prioritizing the worst-off implicitly means decreasing the goods for the ones that are barely able to avoid starvation and creating a greater harm. 7 even the basic rights that assure human needs, in the manner that pogge argues. the human rights approach would have argued in favor of the distribution that attempted to ensure a basic level of needs to all citizens, because no governmental action or institution is legitimized to infringe on their rights, as possession of basic needs is considered to be an obligation and forms a side-constraint on the social policy (dorsey, 2005, p. 568). however, according to dorsey, when dealing with deprivation, starvation or severe poverty, this approach fails. dorsey’s main hypothesis is “that many theories of justice are unable to capture […] is that fulfilling basic needs has priority” (dorsey, 2005, p. 566). thus, survival is the goal of legislators in very poor countries and rights are violable only when the benefit is great enough and there are enough individuals who could be saved (dorsey, 2005, p. 571). otherwise stated, dorsey does not avoid at all the concept or rights, but more likely seeks to maximize their fulfillment (dorsey, 2005, p. 572) instead of arbitrary distributing between individuals and calls this way of reasoning maxificing. however, the theory is incomplete because it fails to respond to a minimum of two aspects: 1) situations in which resources are left over and all have been brought up to the sufficient level (dorsey, 2005, p. 578) 2) situations in which resources are left over, but are not enough to bring any further persons to the sufficient level. (dorsey, politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 105 2005, p. 578). thus, in dorsey’s view, global justice should not be concerned with human rights, but with the desiderata of assuring the level of living decency for the greatest number of individuals. 3. the importance of bounded rationality for theories of global distributive justice 3.1. bounded rationality – an overview for a long time mainstream economic theories as well as their applications in non-economic fields (e.g. public choice theory, the economic analysis of law, the new economic history) upheld a tradition of adopting the “homo economicus” view or phrased in other terms, “comprehensive rationality”8, (jones, 1999, p.299) as a core assumption. however, some authors argue that “the fully rational man is a mythical hero who knows the solutions of all mathematical problems and can immediately perform all computations, regardless of how difficult they are. human beings are very different. their cognitive capabilities are quite limited. for this reason alone the decision behavior of human beings cannot conform to the ideal of full rationality” (selten, 1999, p.3). at least five 8 jones identifies the following assumptions which cumulatively characterize comprehensive rationality: 1.preferences are defined over outcomes, 2. the outcomes are known and fixed and 3. decision-makers maximize their utilities by choosing the alternative that yields the highest level of benefits (jones, 1999, p.299). main objections to adopting a comprehensively rational view of human nature can be brought: 1. even casual empiricism leads to the conclusion that even in quite simple decision problems, most economic agents are not maximizers, i.e. do not scan the choice set and consciously pick a maximal element from it, 2. maximizations of this type are sufficiently difficult to prevent people from acting as in this way in most practical situations, even if they have maximizing intentions, 3. polls and experiments widely confirm that individuals fail to conform to at least some of the rational choice postulates, 4. laboratory experiments show that the conclusions of analysis based on strong rationality assumptions are unrealistic and 5. the conclusions of rational analysis sometimes seem unreasonable even on the basis of simple introspection (aumann, 1997, p.2). in order to counter many of the deficiencies met in models based on comprehensive rationality, simon introduces the concept of bounded rationality, which places limits on both an individual’s “ability to perform” and on his “ability to make correct decisions” (simon, 1976, p.39), since they act in a “world of limited epistemic, cognitive, and analytical opportunities” (sen, 1997, p.768). simon’s basic idea is then to “replace the global rationality of economic man with a kind of rational behavior that is compatible with the access to information volacu and golopenta a boundedly rational analysis of global distributive justice 106 and computational capacities that are actually possessed by organisms, including man, in the kinds of environments in which such organisms exist” (simon, 1955, p.99). a way to understand the concept of bounded rationality, in particularly in respect to informational and cognitive constraints9, is by following lipman’s (1995, p.42) interpretation of agents as information processors. in this view, the agent receives inputs (information external to the individual) and generates outputs (decisions) after processing the former. in this framework, bounded rationality would therefore refer to “choice that is imperfect in the sense that the output is often not the 'correct' one, but is sensible in that it can be understood as an attempt by the agent to do reasonably well. put differently, the procedure used is a reasonable compromise between accuracy of the output and the difficulties involved in processing” (lipman, 1995, p.43). the reason why we argue that taking into account the constraints mentioned in the preceding paragraph, in the form of a bounded rationality assumption, is important is that its empirical plausibility has repeatedly been confirmed in experimental situations starting from the pioneering work of tversky and kahneman (1974), (1979) and continuing with many other similar results 9 which is the dimension of bounded rationality in which we are interested here. (for overviews of studies favoring the empirical superiority of bounded rationality to strict views of rationality see, inter alia, conlinsk, 1996, camerer, 1998 and selten, 1998). we therefore consider that following the considerable amount of proof which supports the bounded rationality hypothesis, its incorporation into global distributive justice theories is justified, as these sorts of theories are economic by construction, albeit normative, especially when we view economics as the study of “rational allocation of scarce resources” (simon, 1978, p.2). 3.2. bounded rationality as a step towards building non-ideal theories of global distributive justice before examining the effects which the introduction of a bounded rationality assumption would have on the distribution of goods in the two theories previously described, we consider it necessary to take a short meta-theoretical detour in order to explain the larger picture in which this discussion takes place. this conceptual field is represented by the on-going debate between ideal theorists and non-ideal theorists with respect to the relevance of taking into account certain types of constraints in normative theory-building. the distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory with regard to normative assessments of justice is first discussed by rawls (1971, politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 107 p.8) who frames his theory of justice as fairness within the framework of ideal theory, assuming that the parties will comply in all cases with the principles established in the original position. in the initial meaning introduced by rawls, ideal theory differs from non-ideal theory in that the former “attempts to describe those principles for the design of institutions and the conduct of persons that would be appropriate to a morally and politically ideal order, while non-ideal theory concerns itself with the principles that would be appropriate for these purposes under less perfect conditions” (phillips, 1985, p.551). the main element of disagreement between the two approaches is therefore exclusively axiological, being reduced to the universal following of moral constraints by individuals. the current debate focused on the subject is however decidedly more complex10 introducing several other dimensions complementary to the full compliance one, namely the distinction between idealization and abstraction11, the distinction between a 10 for a basic introduction to the main issues in question see farrely (2007), simmons (2010), valentini (2012) and hamlin and stemplowska(2012). 11 idealization is understood as the “making of false assumptions about some significant aspect of the problem in hand”, while abstraction is “understood to consist in ignoring or bracketing off some complexities of a given problem, but without assuming theory of perfect justice (or a transcendental theory) and a theory of local improvement in justice (or a comparative theory)12 and the distinction between fact-sensitivity and factinsensivity (hamlin and stemplowska, 2012, pp.3-6). the last distinction, which specifies whether the theory is empirically constrained on any level, is the one in which we are primarily interested in this paper. as farrelly (2007) points out, rawls himself takes into account some moderate constraints when constructing his original position, such as pluralism or the human nature as well as others, e.g. moderate scarcity13, but that many other constraints, such as unfavorable historical, social or economic conditions, indeterminacy, fallibility, human vulnerability, problems of institutional design, etc. are not included in the assumption set of the theory of justice as fairness, further arguing that the theory itself is unrobust when some of these assumptions are altered (farrelly, 2007, p.847). if we adopt the view made explicit by hamlin and any falsehoods about them” (hamlin and stemplowska, 2012, p.4). 12 a transcendental theory “focuses on identifying perfectly just social arrangements while a comparative theory concentrates on ranking alternative social arrangements” (hamlin and stemplowska, 2012, p.6). hamlin and stemplowska underline however that the transcendental-comparative dimension doesn’t in their view perfectly correspond to the ideal-non-ideal categories. 13 although farrelly specifically targets the explicit introduction of moderate scarcity as a constraint arguing that in effect he fails to take it into account (2007, pp.848-856). volacu and golopenta a boundedly rational analysis of global distributive justice 108 stemplowska, that the distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory is a fuzzy one and it should be interpreted on a continuum rather than through a categorical approach (2012, p.3), then rawls’ theory of justice as fairness is not placed on either extreme, although it is somewhat closer to the factinsensitive extreme14 and the same can be said of pogge and dorsey’s theories previously discussed, since they take into account certain constraints such as extreme resource scarcity (dorsey, 2005, p.565) or even non-compliance (pogge, 1994, p.202), but not others such as the limits of human nature. the introduction of bounded rationality as a constraint in theories of global distributive justice is therefore a step forward in the attempt to ground the normative principles derived through their usage in empirical facts and move the theories towards a non-ideal perspective. there are at least two reasons why we consider it necessary to follow this course of 14 on this extreme position we could place, as farrelly (2007, p.847) does, cohen’s approach, who argues in favor of complete fact-insensivity in deriving normative principles by stating that “a principle can reflect or respond to a fact only because it is also a response to a principle that is not a response to a fact. to put the same point differently, principles that reflect facts must, in order to reflect facts, reflect principles that don't reflect fact” (cohen, 2003, p.214). on the opposite extreme we could place any normative theory which is fully grounded in empirical circumstances. action. first of all we agree in general with farrelly’s remark that the bracketing of certain real-life constraints in some theories of justice15 severely limits or even distorts the results of the theories in their practical application (farrelly, 2007, p.859). secondly, we argue that an even stronger argument can be brought in support of our enterprise, namely one which starts from rawls’ (1999) own transcendental position and more specifically from his claim that a theory of global justice should be realistically utopian16. the argument is constructed as follows: the fact-sensitive constraint set can broadly be described as consisting of three types of categories: 1. elements which are historically derived, e.g. unfavorable circumstances generated by colonization, 2. elements which are morally derived, e.g. quasi-full compliance or 3. elements which are physically derived, e.g. cognitive limitations. the problem with non-ideal theorizing under historical or moral constraints is that there is a possibility that in future scenarios we may come to respect a principle derived under constraints which are no longer valid and would therefore be 15 farrelly directs his own criticism at liberal egalitarianism but it can also be applied on principle to global distributive justice theories. 16 rawls states that a normative theory is “realistically utopian” when it extends what are ordinarily thought to be limits of practicable political possibility and, in so doing, reconciles us to our political and social condition” (rawls, 1999, p.11). politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 109 sub-optimal. however, since we have adopted a transcendental stance we cannot simply argue that at some point in time we will re-evaluate the social arrangements made, because we are ab initio in the position to seek perfectly just social arrangements, which are atemporal. but because bounded rationality is a physical characteristic of individuals we cannot presume that there is a foreseeable future populated by individuals with similar physical characteristics, where the constraint might be altered, therefore, the risk of principles becoming sub-optimal at some point does not exist. the objection which could be therefore brought against the first type of constraints, i.e. that they are not utopian in the rawlsian sense (rawls, 1999, p.14) cannot be brought against the bounded rationality constraint. further, as the assumption of bounded rationality is a part of human nature, it is required by a theory which seeks to be realistic even under rawls’ own view (see rawls, 1999, p.13). thus, we conclude the argument by stating that the introduction of bounded rationality in theories of global justice is not only requested by meta-theoretical conceptions in line with non-ideal theory, but that it is also required in the original transcendental framework of a rawlsian realistic utopia. 4. distributions under the assumption of bounded rationality 4.1. distribution beneficiaries in pogge and dorsey's approaches as we mentioned in the introductory part of this paper, our objective is to discuss global distributive justice theories from the perspective of a specific component, namely the pattern of distribution prescribed by the theories. all distribution mechanisms broadly adopt the following structure: citizens from category 1 2 3 { , , ,..., ,... } i n x x x x x x are taxed by institution (or agency) i and the goods extracted are being redistributed to citizens from category 1 2 3 { , , ,..., ,... } i n y y y y y y 17, on the basis of a set of conditions 1 2 3 { , , ,..., ,... } i n c c c c c c . the main objective of a significant part of distributive justice theories18 is therefore to provide arguments justifying why a certain condition19 from set c must be the determinant factor in the redistribution of goods from -typex citizens to -typey citizens, while also specifying certain other aspects such as the trigger and stopping mechanisms for the redistribution (if such mechanisms exist), the type of goods to be redistributed, the level of goods which are to be redistributed, etc. 17 in an informal language, we can state that the x-type citizens are net contributors to the redistribution while y-type citizens are net beneficiaries. 18 including the approaches of pogge and dorsey. 19 or a subset of conditions. volacu and golopenta a boundedly rational analysis of global distributive justice 110 by looking at the two global distributive justice theories examined here through this lens we can fix them in a common framework which we will use in the next part in order to more easily explain their shortcomings. the first of these theories, namely pogge’s grd proposal, states that the rules governing the distributions should be conceived in such a way so that “the entire grt scheme has the maximum possible positive impact on the world's poorest persons -the poorest quintile, sayin the long run” (pogge, 1994, p.203). we can notice that this can basically be understood as the difference principle, i.e. “social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are to the greatest expected benefit of the least advantaged” (rawls, 1971, p.72), applied on a global scale but focusing solely on economic issues20. in pogge’s view, set c consists of a single condition, let us call it p c , which is that a distribution is justified when it is to the greatest advantage of citizens from p y , where p y is the set of citizens which are, 20 freeman (2007) argues that in fact a global distributive principle cannot be the rawlsian difference principle since the latter is a political principle which is predicated on the existence of both a system of property and a legal system which are common for the agents to which it applies. in the absence of such systems, which is characteristic to the global environment as a whole, freeman argues that any principle of distributive justice cannot be anything more than a simple reallocation model (2007, p.444). from an economic standpoint, worse-off. thus, it can be said that , ( ) , i i i p i p y x y y x x    . in dorsey’s maxificing welfarism, the distribution condition, which we will term d c , radically differs from p c . dorsey argues that “the main concern of the government should be to alleviate poverty for the greatest number possible” (2005, p.565) and that “the maximal fulfillment of basic needs, so that persons can live lives of at least minimal decency and avoid unnecessary morbidity and mortality, is the essential priority for just institutions in poor countries” (2005, p.566), thus d c states that a distribution is justified when it brings the maximum number of citizens from d y to a level  in which their basic needs are fulfilled, with d y representing the set of citizens which are below level  . formally, , ( ) , 0 i i p y y y     . we can immediately observe two major differences between the approaches: 1. d c is focused on maximizing the number of -typey citizens who will benefit from the distribution, while p c is focused on maximizing the benefits of -typey citizens and 2. d c incorporates a stopping mechanism, i.e. it allows for the possibility politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 111 that set d y is empty21, while in pogge’s case set p y can never be empty22. thus, dorsey’s theory is applicable only if certain prerequisites are met. we can also observe however, that the approaches are identical from the following point of view: both imply23 that the distributing agency i 24 precisely identifies all -typey citizens, meaning both that they do not mistakenly add -typex citizens in set y and that and they do not omit any -typey citizens from set y . 21 if there are no individuals who fall under the threshold of basic need fulfillment. 22 in the extreme case in which each individual holds exactly the same amount of resources x and y would be identical and would contain the entire set of individuals. 23 we maintain that the assumptions are implied since they are not explicitly discussed in either case, but since an exclusion of facts relating to the capacity of agents to implement normative principles is customary in political philosophy we take it that this is also the case here. if our reading of pogge and dorsey’s theories is correct and they do indeed imply that individuals in distributive agencies are comprehensively rational, we will show that in some cases the introduction of a bounded rationality can lead to problematic distributions under their principles. if our reading is incorrect and they implicitly argue that the theory generates the same results in a boundedly rational world as much as in a comprehensively rational one, we will show that this view would be erroneous. 24 in some cases the institution which is responsible for taxation may not be responsible for the redistribution as well but we ignore this aspect here as it does not influence the general result. in the subsequent section we seek to explore the implications of relaxing these strong assumptions, which are unrealistic because they demand a maximal cognitive capacity uncharacteristic for real-life individuals, by framing the theories in a boundedly rational framework and therefore taking a step in the direction of weakening the ideal perspective of global distributive justice theories. 4.2. the role of bounded rationality in pogge and dorsey’s distributive patterns in order to observe if introducing the assumption of bounded rationality is relevant to the prescriptions of pogge and dorsey’s theories we will only discuss a single form of manifestation of bounded rationality, namely the capacity of individuals who are responsible for the decision-making process in the distributing agency i to precisely and exhaustively identify the agents in the group who will benefit from the distribution (the -typey citizens). to use lipman’s (1995) terminology, we will consider that: 1. the inputs are imperfectly absorbed by the distributing agency, i.e. the information gathered on the economic position of citizens is not perfectly accurate and 2. the process through which individuals in the agency analyze the inputs is cognitively constrained, i.e. the agents evaluating the economic positions of citizens are susceptible to make mistakes in judging volacu and golopenta a boundedly rational analysis of global distributive justice 112 the individuals which require a distribution of goods or the level of goods required25. thus, we are interested to analyze what the outputs of the distributive agency would be if they conformed to the normative theories advanced by pogge and dorsey and if they were the result of imperfections in the input absorption and the decision-making process. in order to operationalize the outputs we will argue that the distributing institution attaches probabilities to the identification of -typey citizens, the deterministic case (where the institution identifies them with a probability of 100%) used by pogge and dorsey being reducible to a special case of the probabilistic identification. in order to account for a large number of cases we will use mathematical functions to determine the probability of a correct identification of 25 various reasons can be brought in support of both assumptions. for instance, input imperfection can be caused by employment on the black market, tax evasion, gaining undeclared income, variability in agricultural production used for subsistence etc., all these forms of unmonitored economic activity preventing the state and the distributive institution from accurately assessing the economic status of citizens. imperfections in the decision-making process can also have multiple causes, such as low incentives to perform adequately in bureaucracies (for the basic idea behind this assertion see mueller, 2003, pp.359-385), incapacity to correctly determine the incorporation of citizens into the category of net beneficiaries or net contributors to the redistribution in certain cases, incapacity to correctly aggregate the individual cases into groups targeted for obtaining benefits after the redistribution, etc. -typey citizens, which will peak at the positions of -typey citizens and will monotonously decrease as the position of the citizens is further from the position of -typey citizens, in order to offer a plausible depiction of reality. for pogge’s grd approach we define a function of the following type: 2 :[ , ] [0, ], ( )f w f x ax bx c      , with w representing the worst-off economic position26. the probability that i identifies position i x as the worst-off individual is then calculated as a percentage through 1 ( ) ( ) 100 ( ) i i n n f x p x f x    . but as previously stated, in order to ground the theory in reality as much as possible, we do not consider that i assigns equal probabilities for every agent to be in the worst-off position, the input absorption and decision-making process being imperfect but still useful for gaining some knowledge regarding genuine economic conditions. thus, we consider that any function ( )f x , defined as above, could theoretically be used for evaluating the probability that a individual with an i x amount of goods is in the worst-off position if it satisfies the following condition: 1. it 26 w can also represent a quintile not a single position, as in pogge’s formulation (1994, p.203). for reasons of simplicity we will consider that w is a single point instead of an interval but the results are not affected by this interpretation. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 113 peaks at w (in mathematical terms 2 b w a   ) and 2. it decreases monotonically on the entire domain (in mathematical terms ( ) 0f x  ). in figure 1 we can see some of the shapes which the functions, as restricted by the conditions above, can take. let us try to explain the reasoning in an informal language. by introducing the bounded rationality assumption we consider that the outputs of the agency which handles the distribution is susceptible to being wrong, in the sense that it is possible for the figure 1. probabilistic functions for identifying worst-off positions under a bounded rationality assumption source: authors agency to distribute goods to some positions which are not in fact worse-off. the purpose of these functions are then to attribute probabilities of obtaining accurate results for each choice made by i regarding the distributive patterns, which are afterwards expressed as a percentage by calculating ( ) i p x with the above mentioned formula. the functions are built in such a way as to always assign a higher probability for identification as the worst-off position to individuals who are actually in the proximity of the position and the probability decreases as the actual level of goods possessed by individuals increases. further, we intentionally allow for an entire class of functions to be eligible for describing the effects of bounded rationality as we cannot identify a single function that could be universally applied precisely because the capacity to collect information and the internal decision-making process varies on a case-by-case basis, from state to state and from agency to agency. therefore, if we follow pogge’s example of a society which would distribute one third of their grd through the government and two thirds through other channels such as international ngos or un agencies (pogge, 1994, p.202), we could notice that the differences in their monitoring capacity could for instance lead to a superior probability to accurately identify worse-off positions in the case of one of the agencies, either the government due to their detailed access to economic records or perhaps, on the contrary, un agencies or ngos due to their superiorly qualified personnel. in mathematical terms, the most efficient agency would be the one with the highest function slope and the one which minimizes the result of i x w when o x (w, f(w)) f(x) volacu and golopenta a boundedly rational analysis of global distributive justice 114 ( ) 0 i f x  . a final and essential aspect is that the choice of a specific function in the defined set is irrelevant, as the results obtained will hold if at least one position i x exists that will take values from the codomain (and by assuming that agents are boundedly rational this should happen in every case), although depending on the capacity of the distributive institution to obtain accurate identifications, the importance of the results can vary. let us consider the following example which will be useful both for a clearer understanding of the way in which bounded rationality would work in the theory and for an understanding of the negative effects which it would bring. suppose we have a society comprised of only two individuals: a and b. let us further consider that a is in the worst-off economic position as he only has an amount of 5 units of goods while b has 10 units. let us also consider that the identification of the worstoff position can be made by following the function: 2 ( ) 10 25f x x x    , with :[ , ] [0, ]f w    . since 10 5 2 2 b a    and ( ) 2 10 0, ( ) [5, )f x x x        we notice that the peak of the function is at the worst-off position and the function monotonically decreases on the entire domain, therefore ( )f x belongs to the class of functions which satisfy the two conditions imposed above. to compute the probabilities with which i would identify each position as being the worst-off we have ( ) 50 ( ) 100 100 66.(6 ( ) ( ) ( ) 50 25 41 f a p a f a f b f c       and ( ) 25 ( ) 100 100 33.(3)% ( ) ( ) 50 25 f b p b f a f b     . therefore, in this situation, the distributive agency would be susceptible to make a mistake in identifying the worst-off positions in one case out of every three. the probability that they would make the correct choice still remains higher than the average however, but what happens when we introduce additional agents? let us consider that two more actors are introduced to the citizen set: c, which in reality has 8 units of the good and d which has 15 units. first let us notice that the probability for d to be chosen as the worst-off position is 0 since ( )f x would not take values in the codomain. c however would be chosen as the worst-off position with a probability of ( ) 41 ( ) 100 100 35.34% ( ) ( ) ( ) 50 25 41 f c p c f a f b f c       , while ( ) 50 ( ) 100 100 43.1% ( ) ( ) ( ) 50 25 41 f a p a f a f b f c       . we can notice therefore that: 1. as the set of citizens increases the worst-off positions become harder to detect and 2. as more citizens are placed in the vicinity of the worst-off position, the true worst-off positions become harder to detect. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 115 the practical consequences of these two conclusions are significant. first of all, they state that in large societies, as societies which are in need of a global distribution of goods usually are, the genuinely worst-off positions are very difficult to identify27 and that concentrating efforts on finding these positions in order to apply pogge’s principle may be an enterprise which would not be worthy of the costs. secondly, the fact that worst-off positions are more difficult to indentify in larger societies means that high demographic growth rates in poor societies will make the identification of individuals in worse-off positions exponentially harder to identify. third, the conclusions also imply that when many citizens in a society are in fact in positions relatively close to those of the worst-off quintile, it is much more difficult to assess which group should be the beneficiary of the distribution. to put it simply, in extremely poor societies it is very difficult to find out which groups are the “poorest” and organize the distributions so as to exclusively target their problems. by adopting the grd approach with the purpose of maximizing the benefits of the worst-off pogge therefore ignores second worst-off positions, or second worst-off 27 the worst-off position should not be understood in a narrow way as the position of a single individual, which would of course be quasi-impossible to identify (as the final probability would tend towards 0 even when the slope of the function would be very high). quintiles, which may have severe economic disadvantages as well, but in an extremely poor society and in a boundedly rational world it is, as we previously show, very likely that in many cases the worst-off positions will be incorrectly identified and because there is no distributive mechanism for second or third worst-off quintiles, the poorest members of society will actually be bereft of any distributed goods. dorsey’s approach requires different conditions than that of pogge, since dorsey does not care about worst-off positions, but about those positions which are sufficiently close to the level of minimum basic needs so that a distribution of goods could bring them above the respective level. thus, let us define a function 2 :[0, ] [0, ], ( )f f x ax bx c      . similarly to the previous case, any function ( )f x defined in such a way must also satisfy two other conditions in order to generate realistic probabilities: 1. 1. it peaks at  (in mathematical terms 2 b a   ), where  is the level of goods required for the minimal satisfaction of basic needs and 2. it increases monotonically on [0, ) and it decreases monotonically on [ , )  . let us also consider that 1 ( ) ( ) 100 ( ) i i n n f x p x f x    is the probability that the citizen which holds an volacu and golopenta a boundedly rational analysis of global distributive justice 116 i x amount of goods will be a part of the group benefiting from the distribution. all the observations made when describing the role which bounded rationality would play in pogge’s prescribed distributive pattern, i.e. that the purpose of the function is to faithfully depict real conditions, that bounded rationality allows for an entire class of functions to be used in evaluating the probability that a certain citizens is in proximity to the level of minimum goods, depending on the capacity of the distributive institution to accurately identify the respective positions and that the choice of any function which does not perfectly map every citizen to the exact level of goods held by them can potentially led to problematic consequences for the distributive patterns. we will also consider an example in order to illustrate this last claim. let us assume that this time we have a society composed of three citizens: a, b and c, possessing 4, 3 and 2 units of goods respectively. let us further consider that the level of minimal decency (i.e. the level where citizens can fulfill their basic needs) is 5  and that there are only 3 available goods for distribution28. finally, we will consider that 28 remember that dorsey’s approach targets radical poverty specifically, focusing on prioritizing the welfare of some citizens (the citizens who are more likely to achieve a minimum level of subsistence) over others in conditions of scarce resources which 2 ( ) 10f x x x   , with :[0, ] [0, ]f    . since 10 5 2 2 b a    and ( ) ( 2 10) 2 0 ( ) is concavef x x f x        , ( )f x satisfies the two conditions imposed for the acceptability of the function. figure 2. probabilistic functions for identifying positions closest to a minimum level of basic needs fulfillment under a bounded rationality assumption source: authors thus we can observe that the probabilities attached to the three citizens are: ( ) 24 ( ) 100 100 39.34% ( ) ( ) ( ) 24 21 16 f a p a f a f b f c       , ( ) 21 ( ) 100 100 34.42% ( ) ( ) ( ) 24 21 16 f b p b f a f b f c       and prohibit all the citizens to be brought over the minimum level. o x f(x) ( , ( ))f  politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 117 ( ) 16 ( ) 100 100 26.22% ( ) ( ) ( ) 24 21 16 f c p c f a f b f c       . keep in mind that in this case, the probabilities also refer to proximity between the citizens and the level of basic needs. since dorsey’s distributive principle argues that we should seek to maximize the number of citizens which are alleviated from extreme poverty it is natural to consider that the closer a citizen is to the level of fulfillment of basic needs, the higher is his chance of being part of the redistributive scheme. in this scenario, c only has about 1 chance in 4 to enter the redistribution scheme but let us examine what would happen if that would indeed be the case. if c gets a part of the 3 units which will be distributed, it automatically means that of the other two agents will not become a part of the distribution mechanism29 since there is a scarce amount of resources to be distributed. in a perfectly rational world, dorsey’s principle would prescribe that a should get 1 unit and b should get 2 units, thus both a and b would be lifted to the level of fulfilling basic needs. but in a boundedly rational 29 for the sake of simplicity we will assume that even in a boundedly rational world the distributing institution has the capacity to compile reasonably accurate aggregate data about citizen incomes but that it does not have the capacity to pinpoint the economic status of each individual and it cannot precisely incorporate every individual into the categories. world, where c would enter the distribution scheme with 1 in 4 chances, one of the following 4 scenarios could then be possible: 1. a gets 2 units, c gets 1 unit30. c does not get sufficient resources to be raised to  and b also fails to be raised to the level. only a is alleviated from poverty, 2. a gets 1 unit, c gets 2 units. the same situation occurs, only a has reached  , 3. b gets 2 units, c gets 1 unit. only b reaches  and 4. b gets 1 unit, c gets 2 units. b gets 4 units in total (3+1; he is below  ), c gets 4 units in total (2+2; he is below  ), a gets 4 units in total (4+0; he is below  ). although the last case is the most striking one as by following dorsey’s principle in a boundedly rational environment we would arrive at a situation in which none of the 3 citizens are able to reach the level of basic need fulfillment, all cases in which the distributive agency does not perfectly identify both the agents which have a chance to be raised above a certain level of decency and the level of goods required to reach it generates a sub-optimal result. since the number of alternative cases increases exponentially as the number of citizens increases, we can notice that it would basically be impossible to precisely identify all the positions of the 30 of course it is also possible that within the distribution mechanism i will incorrectly assess the positions of a and b and distribute 2 units to a and only 1 to b which would also be sub-optimal from dorsey’s point of view. volacu and golopenta a boundedly rational analysis of global distributive justice 118 actors and the level of goods required by them to be alleviated from poverty. on a practical note, we consider that introducing a bounded rationality assumption in assessing the applicability of dorsey’s maxificing welfarism has a much bigger impact than in pogge’s grd approach because of the fact that on top of the problems outlined when discussing the latter theory, which also hold in this case, dorsey asks that the distributive agencies arrive at a much more demanding level of knowledge of each individual in the society as well as the difference between the current economic position of every citizens and the level required for the fulfillment of basic needs. further, since dorsey’s objective is to maximize the number of citizens which reach the specified levels of decency, the slightest imperfection in the absorption of inputs or the decision-making process would yield sub-optimal results, either by allocating supplementary resources to citizens who are already above the level of decency, by wasting resources on citizens who cannot reach the level at all or can reach it only through a higher distribution of resources than optimal or by not allocating resources to citizens who are in the proximity of the level of decency but have yet failed to reach it. 5. conclusions and further discussions the results of the paper can be summarized as follows: the assumption that individuals in organizations which allocate goods on the basis of principles established in theories of global distributive justice are boundedly rational generates distorted distributive patterns. even if we interpret bounded rationality only as an incapacity to obtain full information on the economic situations of citizens and as a cognitive limitation in the decision-making process, there is a significant chance that the theories will miss the groups which they target as beneficiaries for the distribution. in order to observe the effects of the bounded rationality assumption we analyzed pogge’s grd theory, as it follows distributive principles common to most cosmopolitan theories and dorsey’s maxificing welfarism, as it is predicated on a distinctly consequentialist perspective. we defined a probabilistic function which mapped the level of available goods for individuals (or groups of individuals) to the probability that the distributive agency will correctly identify them as members of the group which is a net beneficiary of the distribution or the group which is a net contributor. we found that the inaccuracies appearing in the identification of citizens with their true group (on the basis of the theories) were enhanced by three factors: 1. a gently sloping probabilistic function (caused directly by how limited the informational or cognitive politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 119 capacity of the agency is)31, 2. a high number of citizens, especially if the positions sought for beneficiary status represented a small groups32 and 3. a high accumulation of citizens near the worst-off position in pogge’s case or under the level where they can fulfill their basic needs. the last result is the most important, because it suggests that in cases of extreme poverty, which are paradigmatic cases in which both theories must apply33 the probability that the distributive allocations would miss their targets, as specified by the principles is considerably high. further, as we show at the end of section 4.2. dorsey’s theory appears especially problematic as the slightest amount of noise in the process of allocating the distribution will generate a sub-optimal distribution and in some cases can even subvert the theory completely, by prescribing a pattern in which not even one citizen is lifted to a level where they can fulfill their basic needs. the first discussion which would ensue is therefore the manner in which the allocation mechanisms should be constructed. pogge and dorsey both share the view34 that the distribution should 31 this is an assumption not a result but it is also important. 32 such as dorsey’s theory would imply. 33 and dorsey targets specifically these cases. 34 which is a commonplace among philosophers dealing with distributive justice. concentrate exclusively on a certain set of citizens and ignore all others. in nuce, pogge maintains that this set should be composed of the poorest individuals in a society, and that individuals who are in other positions (second worst, third worst, etc.) should not receive anything. dorsey maintains that this set should be composed of individuals who have a significant chance to achieve a minimum fulfillment of basic needs and that individuals who have already achieved this minimum or are so poor that they cannot hope to achieve it should receive nothing. if we consider that the agencies which distribute goods have the complete capacity to identify individuals in each position the categorical distribution is unproblematic. but if we consider that distributive agencies see these sets as diffuse and that they can make mistakes in allocating resources then we should wonder if we should not forego the widely shared view that principles of justice must distribute goods targeted to only certain groups and perhaps adopt a certain type of proportional distributive principle? the principle could be constructed so as to give more weight to some individuals than others, but it would not abandon other groups altogether, who may be in an only slightly more favorable situation in pogge’s theory, or who may be considered too poor to be eligible for an allocation in dorsey’s theory. although the spatial constraints of the paper prevent us to further elaborate on volacu and golopenta a boundedly rational analysis of global distributive justice 120 this issue, a preliminary assessment entitles us to argue that at least for dorsey’s idea of poverty alleviation for the greatest number, a proportional allocation would make the potential emergence of perverted results such as 0 poverty alleviation (which is valid for dorsey’s principle under a bounded rationality assumption) almost impossible. another important discussion would regard the agency which should be responsible for the distribution, an issue which has already been thoroughly discussed in the literature on distributive justice35 and was briefly alluded to in section 4.2. taking into account the fact that the organization responsible for the allocation of resources can distort the prescribed pattern, would it be better if the distribution was conducted by states toward their own citizens, since they have a better capacity to gather inputs on the economic conditions of their citizens, or by international organizations due to their superior expertise in the allocation process? although we do not directly approach the issue in the current paper, from this point of view the framing of debates in a boundedly rational assumption could provide fresh support in favor of one of the arguments. some other potential research directions which would continue the work began in the paper could extend the debate towards the ideal-type of non-ideal theory by 35 see inter alia, beitz (1979), tan (2004), pogge (2002), held (2003), cabrera (2004). analyzing global distributive justice within a full framework of organizational theory, not just under one assumption alteration as in this paper. this type of analysis, whereby we replace a single assumption which characterizes a normative theory is in our view extremely important on its own however, as in many cases, as is the present one, it shows that the principles prescribed by the theory are heavily reliant on unobservable elements which form its background36. to conclude, we consider that in this paper we have shown that by replacing the comprehensive rationality framework with a boundedly rational one in what concerns the ability of the agency which handles resource allocation in global distributive justice theories we obtain results which can considerably subvert the original intention of the principles. the assertion lacks generality, in the sense that it does not say anything about every conceivable global distributive justice theory, but for at least two of them, i.e. pogge’s grd theory and dorsey’s maxificing welfarism, which we consider representative since the former belongs to 36 for another example of such an analysis see volacu (2012), where the author replaces the maximization assumption in rawls’ (1971) original position with a satisficient one and argues that in an environment defined as such the agents would not choose the original difference principle but either a constrained difference principle or a constrained version of rae’s (1975) general advantage principle. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 121 the mainstream cosmopolitan strand of global justice and the latter is a perfect example of a consequentialist-derived interpretation of global justice, we believe that we have managed to prove that the prescribed distributive patterns are severely problematic. even if we have not developed a full account of bounded rationality as applied to the full specter of global distributive justice theories, we trust that, at the minimum, we were able to show that these types of theories can be inextricably dependent on their assumptions and that there is a need to ground these assumptions in genuine empirical circumstances, thereby taking one step further in the direction of non-idealizing theories of 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(2012), “on the optimal choice criterion in a satisficiency-based original position”, presented at the center for research in applied ethics, faculty of philosophy (university of bucharest), 19 october 2012. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 48 understanding the enlargement of the eurasian economic union: the case of armenia and kyrgyzstan rigina syssoyeva11 https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.40.3 rigina syssoyeva, 30, from astana (kazakhstan), received her phd in “international studies” at the university of the basque country (spain) in 2015, after obtaining her ba and ma degrees in “international relations” at the l. n. gumilyov eurasian national university (kazakhstan), university of lapland (finland) and hankuk university of foreign studies (south korea). she currently works at the national space centre of the republic of kazakhstan. her research interests include regional integration, security and peace studies, international cooperation in the post-soviet area, internal politics of members of the commonwealth of independent states, and development of the eurasian economic union. dr. syssoyeva was a member of the iapss academic committee/academic think tank 2017/2018. e-mail: dra.syssoyeva@outlook.com. abstract the research note addresses the enlargement of the eurasian economic union (eaeu), which armenia and kyrgyzstan joined shortly after its establishment in 2015. in theoretical terms, it aims to test frank schimmelfennig’s concepts on enlargement of integration communities. in practical terms, it seeks to answer why and how new members enter the eaeu. qualitative research methods, such as historical, deductive and comparative analysis, to demonstrate that schimmelfennig’s theoretical concepts can explain the process of enlargement of the eaeu. keywords enlargement; eurasian economic union; integration theories; post-soviet integration; regional integration 11 the research note is based on findings and conclusions of the phd thesis “eurasian integration as a way to respond to global challenges” defended by the author at the university of the basque country, spain (syssoyeva, 2015). https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.40.3 mailto:dra.syssoyeva@outlook.com politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 49 introduction this research note studies the enlargement process of the eurasian economic union (eaeu), whose treaty came into force on january 1st, 2015. it aims to answer the question: why and how its new members, armenia and kyrgyzstan, were admitted into this organization? the eaeu is an organization of regional integration, whose origins date back to 2000s. it is based on the eurasian economic community (eurasec), established on october 10th, 2000 as a free trade zone consisting of five former soviet countries: russia, kazakhstan, belarus, kyrgyzstan and tajikistan. in 2007, due to a similar level of economic development, common political views and close industrial ties, three eurasec members, russia, kazakhstan and belarus, agreed on the creation of a customs union, which came into force on january 1st, 2010. two years later, the same countries formed the eurasian economic space, a common market of goods that removed nontariff trade barriers and prepared the basis for the establishment of the eaeu. building on their close economic, military, social and political interdependence, the founding members of the eaeu, inspired by the eu integration model, launched this regional integration project with the goal to form a single market of goods, services, labor and capital. armenia joined the union on january 2nd, 2015 and kyrgyzstan entered on august 12th of the same year. single markets of goods (including pharmaceuticals) and labor between these five countries were since created, and a common electricity market is planned for mid-2019, while common markets of oil and oil products are expected to be put into operation by 2025. the union has a supranational executive body (eurasian economic commission) and judiciary powers (court of the eaeu), and its highest supranational body is the supreme eurasian economic council, composed of the head of states of its members; by 2025, the establishment of a financial regulation institution is also planned (eaeu web-portal). the study of the enlargement of the eaeu is relevant because it changes the geopolitical balance of power in the post-soviet area and indicates the zones of influence of its regional players. it is also of high policy relevance as its members have a long-term priority to change the international order, currently led by the usa: they promote a multi-polar world to be based on five or more regional pillars (or centers of power) in the post-soviet area, asia, europe, latin america and other regions (the number of pillars still not being clearly defined). implementation of this concept will have an influence on the global security and economy architecture. as such, the geopolitical importance of this organization goes far beyond regional concern and has global-level consequences (bogaturov, 2009: 26). in social terms, and similarly to the eu, the eaeu may affect the formation of social values and identity of its members´ peoples (this is, however, a long-term prospect as the current development of the union is limited to economic issues). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 50 as the eaeu is a new integration community, no integration (or re-integration) theory has so far been developed specifically for its explanation. theorization of the eaeu is a new topic in international relations studies, and it provides wide opportunities for both recently graduated and experienced scholars to design novel approaches. the purpose of this paper is to test frank schimmelfennig´s concepts on armenia and kyrgyzstan’s accession to the union. it analyses the issue from one direction only – it aims to explain the reasons why the founding members are interested in enlargement of the union and the processes which make it possible. as such, this research note does not analyze the reasons why armenia and kyrgyzstan are interested in joining it. literature review in theoretical terms, the article is based on concepts related to the expansion of integration communities as described by frank schimmelfennig (2001). the author provided an analysis of and formulated theoretical claims relating to enlargement, which were originally developed to explain the expansion of the european union. in order to test these theoretical statements, the author mostly studied the works of postsoviet scholars, who developed their research driven by the national interest of russia and kazakhstan and who are loyal to the policies of their governments.12 regarding publications of scholars loyal to russian governmental policy, the most significant works on post-soviet space are those by marina lebedeva, anatoly torkunov, alexei bogaturov, sergei glaziyev and andrei kazantzev. they are academic employees of the moscow state institute of international relations (mgimo, 2018), members of the russian academy of sciences (ras, 2018) or public officials (kremlin, 2018). these authors analyze the issue from their considerable experience within relevant organizations and consider eurasian integration as a promising opportunity for industrial and economic development of integrating countries and as a process that changes the existing balance of power in the international arena in geopolitical terms, which is consistent with the idea of a multi-polar world order mentioned above. as for scholars loyal to kazakhstani governmental policy, the author finds that publications by murat laumulin (2008) and bolat ahmetgaliyev (2010) are the most valuable. they share nationcentric political views, which coincide with the multilateral political course of the republic (officially called as “a multi-vector policy”), focused on balancing power amongst world powers competing in the region, and consider the issue of integration through the prism of its opportunities for the internal development of kazakhstan. 12 as it is difficult to affiliate these authors with certain theoretical schools, the author classifies scholars into those who are loyal to the governmental policy of kazakhstan, and those who are loyal to the governmental policy of russia. the distinction between russian and kazakhstani, therefore, follows a purely geographical principle. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 51 herewith, the author uses schimmelfennig´s theoretical concepts as a theoretical basis for this article and considers the contributions of russian and kazakhstani scholars as additional tools to help with the analysis and evaluation of the case study. theoretical framework frank schimmelfennig considers enlargement of integration communities as being an “efficiency-driven” response of their member-states to increased interdependence with newly integrating members (schimmelfennig, 2010: 221). his concepts are related to a) interests of member-states which intend to involve new members into this community; and to b) interstate negotiation of the process of enlargement. he distinguishes those member-states, which favor the process – the “drivers of integration” – from those which oppose it – the “brakemen of integration” (schimmelfennig, 2009: 416). concerning the interests of its new members, they are likely to be influenced by geographical proximity, threats and the opportunity for influence. proceeding from geographical proximity, three arguments are worth noting. first, member-states that are geographically closer to candidatecountries are more interdependent and thus more vulnerable to crises, conflicts and other political changes occurring in their neighbor-states than in the more distant members. second, economic benefits increase with geographical proximity because of low transportation and communication costs. and third, and taking into account these political and economic dynamics, it is reasonable to note that those countries that have a common border with candidate member-states, or are at least situated close to them, are likely to be drivers of their involvement (schimmelfennig, 2001: 50-51). in relation to threats, the experience of already existing integrated communities demonstrates that potential disputes can take place among those members and candidates that specialize in the same industrial fields or claim equal financial aid from supranational bodies and community funds. as far as potential influence opportunities, again proceeding from world integration experience, it may be stated that under conditions of asymmetrical interdependence, those states that are geographically closer to candidates gain more influence over them (schimmelfennig, 2001: 52). this explains why germany is considered the major beneficiary of eastern enlargement of the eu and france is known as its traditional brakeman (schimmelfennig, 2003: 53; schimmelfennig, 2001: 62). concerning interstate negotiation of the process of enlargement, frank schimmelfennig’s theoretical contribution relates to the conditions of successful bargaining and “rhetorical entrapment”, which takes place in a situation when new members find themselves caught up or “entrapped” into an integration community (schimmelfennig and thomas, 2009: 501). in the sphere of “rhetorical entrapment”, schimmelfennig proposes two theoretical concepts – “rhetorical action” and “political conditionality” (schimmelfennig, 2003: 495). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 52 rhetorical action relates to the strategy of drivers of enlargement, which could be summarized as “strategic use of norm-based arguments” (schimmelfennig, 2001: 62). the main instrument of this strategy is legitimacy, with norms determining standards of behavior, affiliation, rights and obligations of those who can become members of integrated community; it states the rules on how governance should be exercised, decisions to be implemented, the initiatives to be proposed, etc. theoretically, rhetorical action could be used by all actors: allowing less powerful actors to influence more powerful ones, as those states which behave in accordance to institutional legitimacy increase their bargaining power on common issues (schimmelfennig, 2010: 230). political conditionality also relates to the process of interstate bargaining under the enlargement process, but it concerns the external relations of integrated community, not the internal ones. it is a top-down mechanism for determining rules, principles, norms and standards of behavior that should be followed by those candidate countries which claim the community’s financial support, association status and – ultimately – membership, in order to obtain all these gains (schimmelfennig and choltz, 2010: 445). schimmelfennig finds that political conditionality frequently takes the form of “reinforcement by reward” and is a widely used strategy by integrated communities in shaping the relations with their neighbors and candidate countries. this strategy implies the practice of extending benefits to those “target” states which have fulfilled prescribed norms – from technical assistance and financial aid to access to internal markets and membership, and differs from “reinforcement by punishment” (charging penalties if norms have not been complied) and “reinforcement by support” (giving absolute support), the other two strategies of political conditionality, as it gives the integrated community a wide scope for maneuver – for example, it allows the integrated group to control target countries’ behavior without coming into long-term agreements with them. the most efficient means of this form of coercion are intergovernmental, taken the institutional form of treaties on cooperation, trade, association and – ultimately – admission agreements (schimmelfennig, engert and knobel, 2003: 496-497). all these theoretical observations of frank schimmelfennig can be applied to the example of armenia and kyrgyzstan’s accession to the eaeu described at the “analysis and findings” part of this paper, where the following concepts will be used: − rhetorical action, − rhetorical entrapment, − political conditionality, − reinforcement by reward, − reinforcement by support, politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 53 − driver of integration, − brakeman of integration. methodology this article prioritizes explanation of the enlargement process of the eaeu, and it is based on qualitative methods of rationalization and testing of theoretical concepts. more precisely, the author uses historical research, deductive and comparative analysis (berg, 2012). historical research explains how and where events happened and allows understanding the past as “a source of experience”; the observer is separated from his/her object of cognition by time and space and he/she uses a heuristic technique in order to discover and to interpret what happened in the past (špiláčková, 2012: 22-23). in the present paper, historical research is used for explaining the context of the case-study, i.e. the establishment of the eaeu and the circumstances under which armenia and kyrgyzstan entered the union. deductive analysis is used to test theories; according to bruce berg, it is widely applied by scholars, who use a theory as a conceptual framework for developing their reasoning and explanation of the topics they study (berg, 2001: 246). in this paper, the concepts by schimmelfennig create a framework for explaining the issue of enlargement of the eaeu. for comparative analysis, both qualitative and quantitative data can be used. the method is based on comparing an issue “a” and an issue “b” in a bid to establish similarities and contradictions in these cases (mills et al., 2006: 621). within the present paper, comparison is made between armenia's and kyrgyzstan’s accession to the eaeu. data data used by the author can be divided into two groups: primary and secondary sources. primary sources relate to qualitative data from original articles by prof. schimmelfennig, from which the concepts that explain enlargement of integration communities were captured. secondary sources are articles, agreements, internet-resources, and statistical data offered by unctad, imf and other statistical agencies, which were used for explaining the case-study, and to back up the primary sources. analysis and findings entrapment through political conditionality: the case of the republic of armenia in the case of the accession of the republic of armenia (ra) to the eaeu, the russian federation (rf) is the main driver of integration. rf-ra are asymmetrically interdependent. armenia is largely dependent on russia in economic terms (the rf is armenia’s second trade partner politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 54 after the eu), in energy (yerevan is dependent on rf fuels supply), investments (russia is the main investor in ra) and migration issues (migrants´ remittances accounts for more than 22% of ra’s gdp) (eurasec anti-crisis fund). yerevan is also dependent in security issues: armenia considers russia a reliable military partner because the country is isolated by its neighbors, with whom it does not maintain diplomatic relations and whose borders are closed (the border between armenia and azerbaijan is closed due to the nogorno karabakh conflict, and the armenian-turkish border is closed due to the armenian genocide, as well as turkey-azerbaijan close relations) (kazanzev, 2014). in this situation, military support by russia and assurance of its non-alliance with azerbaijan in nogorno kazabakh’s case is vital for securing armenian interests in this conflict and for its national security. russia is dependent on armenia primarily in security issues: russian decision to drive armenia to join the union is rationalized by armenia’s geographical proximity to the russian caucasus, an important region in the rf’s security system, and especially to chechenia, the region of relative internal instability. herewith, for both countries, cooperation is a matter of security reasoned by considerations of geographical proximity and military threats (glaziev, 2014: 29). concerning negotiation of the enlargement, armenian entrapment into the union is an example of the use of the political conditionality strategy by russia. yerevan actively participated in the eastern partnership program by the eu and negotiated association agreements with it. in spite of that, in 2013 when negotiations were almost finished, armenia stated that it would access the eaeu instead of the integration projects proposed by the eu (fayos, 2014: 8). in addition to the economic consideration for that change in direction, there are also military questions related to the nagorno karabakh, an issue always influencing armenian’s foreign policy decision-making. in this situation, armenia’s preference to maintain the conflict frozen makes it prioritize partnership with the rf over any other potential benefits proposed by the eu (mirzayan, 2014). considering these dynamics, fernando garcés de los fayos observed that yerevan’s “u-turn in policy” was forced by the rf’s agreement with baku to supply azerbaijan with new weapons one month before the armenian declaration of commitment to join the eaeu (fayos, 2014: 8). this case of entrapment can be seen as an example of “reinforcement by punishment” tactics used by russia, forcing armenia to decide in favor of the eurasian organization. however, and similarly to the eu, russia prefers to use more sparing tactics such as “reinforcement by reward”. the country is the main investor in armenia: total russian fdi in this caucasus republic is around 2,5 billion usd, representing more than 50% of all fdi funds accumulated in the country) (unctad). moscow also pursues a loyal energy policy toward politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 55 armenia, for whom the price of natural gas is kept at the level of 150 usd per 1000 m3, the most “friendly” price for russian gas in the world (neftegaz, 2018). the brakemen of yerevan’s accession to the union was kazakhstan, which demanded (and achieved) that armenia enters the union with its borders recognized by the international community and the un, i.e. without nogorno kazabakh (muminov, 2014). in spite of the limited economic contribution of armenia to the eaeu economy (the republic accounts for 0.5% of the rf gdp) (imf), its entrapment represents an important achievement of moscow. “reinforcement by reward” and “reinforcement by support”: the entrapment of the kyrgyz republic similar to armenia, the current economic development of the kyrgyz republic (kr) cannot largely contribute to the material prosperity of the union – kr’s gdp is much lower than its partners and accounts for only 0.4% of russian gdp (unctad). kr is one of the poorest republics in the region and its industrial capacity has largely decreased since the collapse of the ussr. even though the country has one of the most liberal regimes in the region in terms of openness to foreign investments, its industrial base, inherited from soviet times, was largely destroyed, especially concerning machinery, agriculture and manufacturing of consumer goods (glaziev, 2014: 28). kyrgyzstan´s accession can be explained in terms of security. after 9/11 and proclamation the war against international terrorism by the usa, kyrgyzstan has been involved in washington’s sphere of potential geopolitical interests. this was against russian interests, as it traditionally considered this central asian republic as its zone of influence. the competition between the rf and the usa for influence over kr is seen in the example of military bases deployed by both powers in that country: as of 2001, washington used manas airport (situated close to kr’s capital) as its base, assuring herewith its military presence in kyrgyzstan (wilkinson, 2014: 146), while russian military presence has, in turn, been legitimized by kr´s membership in the collective security treaty organization (csto), which moscow used in order to establish kant military base in 2003, following the usa agreement with bishkek regarding manas. kant became the first new military base opened within the csto (russia inherited all other bases in the region from soviet times) (klimenko, 2011: 12). in 2009, bishkek announced the closure of the manas base, following a russian offer of 2 billion usd credit, to which washington responded by offering a 180 million usd payment, thus keeping the base at american disposition (wilkinson, 2014: 146), with a change of name: from “manas air base” to “transit center manas”. in 2013, bishkek did not prolong the agreement with washington and american troops left manas in 2014 (russia today, 2014), which can be considered as russia’s political victory. in such a manner, eurasian entrapment of kyrgyzstan politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 56 coincided with a russian victory in the struggle with the usa for influence over that country. for kyrgyzstan, in turn, accession to the eaeu is a way of preserving its political stability and nationhood development, widely disturbed by conflicts endured by the country (glaziev, 2014: 29). in its entrapment policy toward bishkek, moscow uses not only political and military leverages but also the “reinforcement by reward” and “reinforcement by support” tactics, seen in the support of kr’s economy through an 8.513 billion usd eurasec anti-crisis fund largely financed by moscow (7.5 usd billion) and astana (1 usd billion) (dodonov, 2012: 65) and in a 1 billion usd russian-kyrgyz fund to support the agriculture, services and industrial base of the country, established after kr declared its commitment to eurasian integration (the moscow times, 2015), among other financial support. it should be added that 31% of kyrgyz gdp depends on remittances of its workers abroad (primarily in russia) (schenkkan, 2014). by joining the eaeu, kyrgyzstan will largely improve the situation of its workers in kazakhstan and russia, as the common labor market agreement will ensure similar working conditions to its citizens, close to those of the citizens of its neighboring countries. conclusions the present article sought to explain the process of accession of new members to the eaeu by using frank schimmelfennig´ theoretical contributions. this analysis demonstrates that russia is the main driver of the entrapment of both new members – armenia and kyrgyzstan – to the eaeu. in the first case, entrapment is determined by yerevan’s need for russian military support, significant russian fdi into the armenian economy and low prices on natural gas. the brakemen of armenia’s accession was kazakhstan, which insisted (and achieved) that armenia enters the union without nogorno karabakh. in the case of kyrgyzstan, entrapment was done through bishkek’s military considerations, russian “reinforcement by reward” and “reinforcement by support” tactics (also used in the case of armenia), via financial support to the country, and giving equal rights to workers from kyrgyzstan, on whose remittances the country´s economy is largely dependent on. application of theoretical concepts proposed by frank schimmelfennig demonstrates their usefulness goes far beyond explanations of eu integration, for which they were originally designed. analysis confirms that his concepts, such as driver and brakeman of integration, rhetorical entrapment and its strategies (i.e. political conditionality, reinforcement by reward, and reinforcement by support) can be used for explanation the enlargement process of the eaeu. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 57 future research this research note analysed schimmelfennig’s concepts from one direction only, i.e. from the perspective of the founding members of the eaeu. the next step to fully understand this issue would be to analyze these dynamics from the perspective of armenia and kyrgyzstan. new concepts by schimmelfennig can also be considered in explaining the development of the eaeu, such as “widening” of integration or “horizontal institutionalization”, which refers to the process of increasing the area of influence of integrated communities (schimmelfennig and sedelmeier, 2002: 503). application of these concepts might explain the process of establishment of free trade zones between the union and not-eaeu allies, such as vietnam, serbia, egypt and iran. references akhmetgaliyev, bolat (2001): 10 years: kazakhstan and integration. almaty: kazakhstan institute of economics and law. 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to respond to global challenges’, phd thesis. university of the basque country. accessible at: https://addi.ehu.es/handle/10810/15842 (1 june 2018). neftegaz. ru (2018): ‘armenian prime minister creates task force to look into natural gas price’. accessible at: https://neftegaz.ru/en/news/view/175347-armenian-prime-minister-creates-taskforce-to-look-into-natural-gas-price (1 june 2018). the moscow times (2015): ‘russian government approves giving $1 billion to kyrgyz development fund’. accessible at: https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/russian-governmentapproves-giving-1-billion-to-kyrgyz-development-fund-45230 (15 july 2018). unctad: bilateral fdi statistics. accessible at: http://unctad.org/en/pages/diae/fdi%20statistics/fdi-statistics-bilateral.aspx (15 july 2018). wilkinson, cai (2014): ‘development in kyrgyzstan: failed state or failed state-building’ in anthony ware (ed.) development in difficult sociopolitical contexts. new york: palgrave macmillan: pp. 137-162. https://addi.ehu.es/handle/10810/15842 https://neftegaz.ru/en/news/view/175347-armenian-prime-minister-creates-task-force-to-look-into-natural-gas-price https://neftegaz.ru/en/news/view/175347-armenian-prime-minister-creates-task-force-to-look-into-natural-gas-price https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/russian-government-approves-giving-1-billion-to-kyrgyz-development-fund-45230 https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/russian-government-approves-giving-1-billion-to-kyrgyz-development-fund-45230 http://unctad.org/en/pages/diae/fdi%20statistics/fdi-statistics-bilateral.aspx understanding the enlargement of the eurasian economic union: the case of armenia and kyrgyzstan introduction literature review theoretical framework methodology data analysis and findings entrapment through political conditionality: the case of the republic of armenia “reinforcement by reward” and “reinforcement by support”: the entrapment of the kyrgyz republic conclusions future research references politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 58 downward mobility: when social lifts change direction maxim chupilkin https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.41.4 maxim chupilkin from moscow (russia), is an undergraduate student at new economic school and higher school of economics. planned year of graduation is 2020. he currently interns at carnegie endowment for international peace moscow center and works at the political economy research group. his interests include social and political anthropology, protest dynamics, democratic transition and wealth inequality. e-mail: mchupilkin@nes.ru abstract in this research note, a new direction in the study of inequality is being advocated. the current research in the field of social mobility is extensively focused on upward mobility and pays no attention to downward mobility. with the help of intergenerational wealth data, this contribution demonstrates the unexplained questions of downward mobility, shows the importance of studying children from both poor and privileged backgrounds and outlines possible research directions in the field. this research note is a call for action for scholars of inequality. keywords capital accumulation; income; inequality; intergenerational inequality; social mobility; wealth https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.41.4 mailto:mchupilkin@nes.ru politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 59 introduction inequality is one of the most discussed problems in the field of social sciences. inequality of income and inequality of wealth, inequality and democracy (bartels, 2008), intergenerational inequality (corak, 2013) — the problem of inequality encompasses many broad topics and is perhaps one of the most multi-disciplinary problems in the scholarly world. the study of inequality originally reserved for the universities and think-tanks is now influencing public opinion and policy making. the impact of the discussion around inequality on the state of affairs in the real world makes it even more urgent to find drawbacks and blind spots in the existing debates. one of the biases in the study of inequality is that the current literature is extensively focused on the upward mobility and constraints for the economic performance of the low-income youth — the main example would be the discussion started by the work of the economist thomas piketty (piketty and goldhammer, 2014). the field has omitted the fact that mobility is usually a two-way process: if somebody goes up, someone else has to go down. the typical question asked by the research is “how can we explain why a child born in the lowest quintile of the income distribution has a low probability of getting into the highest quintile?” this research note also makes a case for studying why and how youth from the privileged families move down the social and economic ladder. firstly, the problem in statistics of intergenerational wealth and income inequality is identified. in the further sections, implications of the concept are developed and ideas for future research are made. this research note pursues two contributions to political science. firstly, it broadens the optics used to study inequality and mentions consequential policy-making implications. secondly, it raises the question about the impact of institutions — if the access to the best schooling, healthcare and infrastructure guarantees success on the income ladder with almost the same efficiency as the flip of a coin, what is the real role of institutions in the financial success of the individual? note on existing research the problem of inequality is intrinsic to the neoliberal economic system which is the dominant approach of today’s policy-makers (alfredo et al., 2005). what is more important for this study — specifically downward mobility is one of the philosophical foundations on which neoliberalism is built. contemporary economics appraise the approach of schumpeterian creative destruction — big companies are forced to step down by disruptive startups (schumpeter, 1942). this can be broadened to the whole economic structure of the society — the old and inefficient should be brought down by the young and dynamic. this is downward mobility in its essence — industrial magnates were replaced by the silicon valley, middle class factory workers by programmers and designers, cinemas by netflix. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 60 the problem of downward mobility is neglected. major scholars of inequality focus on how wealthy groups create political and economic systems that protect the rich while excluding the poor (stiglitz 2015, bartels 2008). this study shows that downward mobility exists and should be studied. despite making rules work in their favor rich families still face high risks of moving down the wealth ladder. there are several studies of the downward mobility which show that, firstly, privileged classes do tend to lose status and power and, secondly, that after the loss prestige is not easily gained back. this is present in different countries and economic systems — american middle-class (newman, 1999), kids of the maoist middle class in the changing china (davis, 1992), refugees and migrants (gans, 2009), previously non-poor families in rural uganda (bird and shinyekwa, 2005). these findings show that downward mobility is a problem as well and can have a significant economic and emotional cost. this research note advocates that downward mobility can be shown on the crossgenerational income and wealth data in the us. the significant probability of the downward mobility and the associated costs make it even more urgent to broaden the research of inequality to explain why the downward mobility occurs. the unexplained statistics sixteen years ago, charles and hurst (2003) computed the correlation of wealth across generations. they did so in the research on the us households, having taken the date from the panel study of income dynamics, the survey of the socio-economic status since 1968. the sample used by the authors includes all the families in which in 1999 a child had at least one core sample parent known to be alive and both parents and children have positive wealth in the years measured. this results in 1491 parent-child pairs observed. charles and hurst calculate a regression of the log of children’s wealth on the log of parents’ wealth. this study is already not up to date; however, it suits well to illustrate the blind spot in the study of inequality. charles and hurst show that a child born in the first (lowest) quintile of wealth distribution as an adult has a 65% chance to be in the first or second quintiles and 19% chance to end up in the 4th and 5th quintiles of the wealth distribution. they also show that the child born in the fifth quantile of wealth distribution has a 60% chance to be in the fifth or fourth quintile of the distribution. most of the research on inequality is focused on explaining the first observation: schools which are reproducing the intergenerational poverty (corcoran, 1995), inefficient parenting (mclanahan and sandefur, 1994) and lower cognitive skills (doren and grodsky, 2016). at the same time, there is no research that explains why children born in the wealthiest families (fifth quintile) have a 40% chance to end up in the third quintile or lower. their chances of getting to the lowest quintile of wealth distribution are 11 % (charles and hurst, 2003). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 61 similar statistics can be observed in the income distribution. in a recent significant study of income inequality and race conducted jointly by stanford, harvard, and u.s. census bureau scholars, the authors performed the analysis of the longitudinal u.s. census bureau data on the whole american population from 1989 to 2015 focusing on income dynamics across generations. information on income, race and other factors was obtained from american community surveys 2005-2015. the primary analysis sample of the authors includes 20 million children. the research shows that white children born in the fifth quintile have a 41.1% chance to stay there, black — 18%, asian — 48.9%, hispanic — 30.6%, american indian — 23% (chetty et al., 2018). these numbers highlight not only the racial disparities but also the unexplained mechanism of the downward social lifts. why do kids even from the most privileged groups have less than 50% chance to stay in the privileged state? this problem can be summed up as that of the mechanism of downward social mobility. the contemporary scholarship of inequality has a gap in understanding which factors influence the movement of the person down the income and wealth ladder. this blind spot can cause bias in both scholarship and policy making. the studies used as examples focus on the united states; however, as the point of this research note is to show the limitations of contemporary scholarship of inequality rather than to make empirical conclusions about the problem, the us data serves as a good example. the next part of this research note explores, firstly, what are the implications of the downward social mobility and, secondly, what research can be conducted in this field. implications of the downward mobility downward social mobility calls into question the philosophical foundations of our society. in both academy and policy-making there is an assumption that children from wealthy families have a guarantee of success in the future. in the review of the debates on wealth inequality killewald, pfeffer and schachner (2017) write: parental wealth is associated with greater offspring educational and cognitive achievement (conley 1999, 2001a; doren & grodsky 2016; friedline et al. 2015; jez 2014; orr 2003; pfeffer 2011; yeung & conley 2008) and labor market outcomes, such as occupational attainment and work hours (conley 1999, pfeffer 2011). the same logic is present in the oecd centre for opportunity and equality (2017) reports which can serve as a proxy of what ideas are guiding the policy-making in the countries: children from more affluent families tend to develop better skills in reading and problem solving, are less likely to drop out of school without a diploma, and are more likely to complete tertiary education. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 62 though being so privileged, these kids still have less than 50% chance of replicating the financial success of their parents — this is a paradox. kids of the parents from the highest quintile of the wealth or income distribution have access to the best institutions of our society: best education at all levels, best healthcare, best methods of parenting, best housing, best infrastructure broadly. research even shows the developed advantage in cognitive skills. nevertheless, after getting all the best of the best institutions, they have a less than 50% chance to have income as high as their parents. both academic literature and policy recommendations show that in the debate about inequality the goal of social mobility is always to give the kids from poorer background opportunities similar to the affluent children. in this logic, there is an implicit statement that the goods that the kids from rich families were lucky to get from birth secured for them high levels of success in the future life. data shows that this assumption is not as solid as it is often supposed to be. our society is based on the belief in the power of human-designed institutions to influence the outcomes. otherwise, it would be pointless to debate the merits of any political order, educational system or healthcare policy. the goal of the institutions is to tackle nature by nurture. this is important for the aspect of justice. any theory of justice is arguing for the independent criterion — be it the highest utility for all (bentham, 1781), equality of basic liberties (rawls, 1985) or equality of basic capabilities (sen, 1980) — on which the institutions should be created. in any discussion about justice there is an implicit assumption that the better the institution the higher the opportunity to have a prosperous life. if being treated by the best institutions in all aspects of life from the early childhood still leave a 50% probability of not being in the top 20% of financially successful citizens — the role of the institutions is somewhat exaggerated. research on these questions may have wide policy implications. currently, the anti-inequality policy is focused on providing better access to institutions such as healthcare or education. for example, oecd policy recommendations are interventions in the field of education, labor market, urban planning, healthcare and parenting (social mobility and equal opportunities, 2017). but if the best institutions do not guarantee the place in the highest-earners, the policy which tackles inequality and promotes mobility should be aimed at something different. studying downward social lifts may offer valuable insights into the problem of inequality itself. in order to understand mobility, the best strategy is to understand both directions, while the current research is noticeably biased towards understanding upward mobility. such research can uncover new factors which influence both upward and downward mobility — social network, consumption behavior, status. upward and downward inequality are happening simultaneously. the research into only one of two types of lifts may create biases while studying both directions helps avoid at least some of them. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 63 the proposed research can be useful for better understanding the dilemma of social mobility. social mobility is by its nature a zero-sum game. everyone can’t be in the top 20 % of the income distribution and 20 % of the population have to be in the poorest 20 %. when more comparatively poor children become comparatively rich adults, the more comparatively rich children become comparatively poor adults. in any case, the children from the privileged background should not be punished for the opportunities they had in the childhood. the goal of tackling inequality is to make access for resources provided by merit or other just criterion and not by privileging or denying the privilege to any background: rich or poor. the lack of study of the children from the rich background excludes them from the discussion about inequality and therefore can lead to policy bias as well. avenues for further research there are several research directions in the study of downward social mobility. some of these are outlined as examples. the interesting fact about children from the very rich background is that their problems may be mirrored problems of kids from the very poor background. corcoran and goertz showed that schools reinforce the problem of poverty among children (1995). the perverse effect of schooling may also be visible in the privileged kids. children of rich parents often study in closed communities and have almost no contact with people from other circles. as a result, they study in the closed system which reinforces all the problems of the social group “rich kids”. there is no contact with the outside world which could have had eradicated the inefficient norms. in the study of the childhood poverty lichter (1997) writes: a growing policy concern is whether the increasing geographic concentration of poverty in lowincome urban neighborhoods or rural areas promotes maladaptive behavioral or cultural adjustments—juvenile delinquency, school dropout, and nonmarital childbearing. the same promotion of harmful practices may be happening in the closed rich communities. in both schooling and segregated neighborhoods very poor and very rich differ significantly from the middle class. the second direction of study can be investment and consumption behavior. charles and hurst (2003) stress the important fact that children tend to have the same investment behavior as their parents. children of rich parents may hold riskier assets, not because of the risk tolerance but by replicating the behavior of successful parents. these practices may have bad consequences — risky investment strategy, though efficient for the wealthy person, may be too risky for the young adult even from a privileged family. extrapolating the investment behavior on consumption, rich kids may continue the patterns of consumption adopted in childhood throughout the whole adult life. this can be a strong hit to politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 64 the wallet in the time of being a young adult and can decrease savings and therefore make the individual more vulnerable for the financial stress. the research on investment and consumption patterns is connected to the broad question of status. affluent families transmit to the offspring the feeling of “high status” which can impact many decisions in the later life. status can have an effect on consumption, job choice, family decisions. the privileged background may reinforce the behavior “beyond the means” for the child who is not supported by the family any longer but has not managed to accumulate her own wealth yet. conclusion all in all, downward social mobility is significantly understudied in comparison with upward mobility. this gap is present in institutional analysis as well as the study of upward social lifts. important insights about the structure of inequality and policy-making can emerge as a result of the proposed research program. the current situation can result in a bias in the scholarly discussion and policy-making. in order to tackle the problem of inequality, all its aspects deserve equal attention. references alfredo, saad-filho and deborah johnson (2005): neoliberalism: a critical reader. chicago: university of chicago press. bartels, larry m. (2008): unequal democracy: the political economy of the new gilded age. princeton, nj: princeton university press. bentham, jeremy (1789): an introduction to the principles of morals and legislation. oxford: oxford university press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/oseo/instance.00077240 bird, kate and isaac shinyekwa (2005): ‘even the 'rich' are vulnerable: multiple shocks and downward mobility in rural uganda’, development policy review 23(1), pp. 55-85. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7679.2005.00276.x chetty, raj. et al. (2018): ‘race and economic opportunity in the united states: an intergenerational perspective’, nber working paper no. 24441. doi: https://doi/org/10.3386/w24441 corak, miles (2013): ‘income inequality, equality of opportunity, and intergenerational mobility’, journal of economic perspectives 27 (3), pp. 79-102. doi: https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.27.3.79 corcoran, thomas and margaret goertz (1995): ‘instructional capacity and high performance schools’, educational researcher 24(9), pp. 27–31. doi: https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x024009027 https://doi.org/10.1093/oseo/instance.00077240 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7679.2005.00276.x https://doi/org/10.3386/w24441 https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.27.3.79 https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x024009027 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 65 doren, catherine and eric grodsky (2016): ‘what skills can buy: transmission of advantage through cognitive and noncognitive skills’, sociology of education 89(4), pp. 321–342. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040716667994 gans, herbert j. (2009): ‘first generation decline: downward mobility among refugees and immigrants’, ethnic and racial studies 32(9), pp. 1658-1670. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870903204625 charles, kerwin k. and erik hurst (2003): ‘the correlation of wealth across generations’, journal of political economy 111(6), pp. 1155-1182. doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/378526 killewald, alexandra et al. (2017): ‘wealth inequality and accumulation’, annual review of sociology 43, pp. 379-404. doi: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-060116-053331 lichter, daniel t. (1997): ‘poverty and inequality among children’, annual review of sociology 23, pp. 121-145. doi: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.23.1.121 mclanahan, sara and gary sandefur (1994): growing up with a single parent: what hurts, what helps. cambridge: harvard university press. newman, katherine (1999): falling from grace: downward mobility in the age of affluence. berkeley: university of california press. oecd centre for opportunity and equality (2017): conference issues note. the only way is up? social mobility and equal opportunities. paris: oecd publishing. piketty, thomas and arthur goldhammer (2014): capital in the twenty-first century. cambridge: the belknap press of harvard university press. rawls, john (1985): ‘justice as fairness: political not metaphysical’, philosophy and public affairs 14(3), pp. 223-251. sen, amartya (1980): ‘equality of what?’ in mcmurrin, sterling m. (ed.) tanner lectures on human values. cambridge: cambridge university press. schumpeter, joseph a. (1942): capitalism, socialism and democracy. new york: harper & row. stiglitz, joseph e. (2015): rewriting the rules of the american economy: an agenda for growth and shared prosperity. new york: w.w. northon & company, inc https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040716667994 https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870903204625 https://doi.org/10.1086/378526 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-060116-053331 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.23.1.121 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 38 (september 2018) 2 volume 38: september 2018 issn 2414-6633 https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.38 editorial board editor-in-chief: max steuer (slovakia) deputy editor-in-chief: rafael plancarte (mexico) justinas lingevičus (lithuania) andrés lopez rivera (ecuador) ana magdalena figueroa (brazil) stephanie mojica (usa) gergana tzvetkova (bulgaria) editorial assistants ngoc anh khoa doan (vietnam) dana rice (australia) bruna veríssimo (brazil) https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.38 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 38 (september 2018) 3 table of contents editorial note ....................................................................................................................... 4 articles mission accomplished? evaluating the effectiveness of the financial action task force’s war on terrorist financing / james ferencsik ...................................................... 6 the formation of electoral alliances in the republic of armenia: a case study of the 2017 parliamentary elections / gayane shakhmuradyan .......................................... 31 the challenge of unintelligible life: critical security studies’ failure to account for violence against queer people / alexander stoffel......................................................... 48 book review the people vs. democracy: why our freedom is in danger and how to save it by yascha mounk / david w. choi ....................................................................................... 64 call for papers .................................................................................................................... 67 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 38 (september 2018) 4 editorial note https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.38.0 politikon, the flagship journal of the international association for political science students (iapss), welcomes submissions from scholars and students of all academic levels. run by students and junior researchers, the journal occupies a prominent space in ‘student publishing’ in political science and international relations. a recent study comparing iapss politikon to two other student-run journals in the field found that it not only published the highest number of articles among the three in the period from 2005 to 2015, but it also attracts authors from a diverse set of countries and institutions from almost all continents (cox and kent, 2018: 807–8). while there are limitations to this analysis, it indicates the impartiality and openness of the submission evaluation process where what matters is the quality of the scholarship rather than the ranking of the author’s institution. the present issue consists of three research articles that succeeded in the double-blind peer review process and one book review. the issue starts with james ferencsik’s study of one of the less known international organizations, the financial action task force (fatf). contributing to the scholarship about the trends in (non)compliance with the decisions of such organizations, he conducts a quantitative analysis of the effectiveness of selected recommendations of the fatf in terms of reducing the instances of terrorist attacks and restricting terrorist financing. the conclusions give grounds to some scepticism about the fatf’s effectiveness in selected areas and give rise to questions about the factors standing behind these trends. secondly, gayane shakhmuradyan directs our attention to the 2017 parliamentary elections in armenia which witnessed an unusually high number of electoral alliances. her analysis of original data obtained through interviews and a survey gives some support to the prevalence of strategic, as opposed to ideological, motivations of the parties in forming these alliances. recognizing some methodological limitations, the article contributes to the scholarship about electoral alliances and electoral studies more generally. thirdly, the academic subfield of critical security studies is subject to scrutiny by alexander stoffel, who argues in his article that the scholarship in this field does not currently possess appropriate tools for comprehending the phenomenon of violence against queer people, and explains this by the specific features that ‘queerness’. hence, a more refined theoretical frameworks is needed to decrease the risk of violent acts going unnoticed even at the level of academic analysis. finally, david w. choi reviews the book the people vs. democracy: why our freedom is in danger and how to save it by yascha mounk, pointing to some of its core claims as well as limitations of the framework the author used. congratulations to all iapss politikon manuscript authors who took the comments from the reviewers seriously and worked with them in the revision process. the significance of the peer review https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.38.0 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 38 (september 2018) 5 process (which in iapss politikon operates on a double-blind basis) cannot be overstated since it is a core vehicle towards academic excellence. the editorial board hopes that even if the peer review process does not end with publication, the authors will benefit from the feedback obtained, and this experience (the first for many iapss politikon authors) will encourage them to contribute further to the areas of their research interests. from this issue, iapss politikon has a new member of its editorial board (stephanie mojica) and has been collaborating more actively with the iapss editorial assistants, who contribute to increasing the quality of its presentation. furthermore, the editorial board is very grateful to those senior and high-profile scholars who accepted the invitation for membership in the international advisory committee of the journal and are willing to invest their time and effort to advise the journal on selected questions pertaining to its further development. last but definitely not least, special thanks in this issue goes to outgoing iapss politikon editor andrés lopez rivera who significantly contributed to the quality of this issue as well as previous ones. as always, we look forward to receiving new submissions from aspiring as well as more experienced students and researchers fascinated by puzzles in the societal reality that social sciences endeavour to unpack. max steuer editor-in-chief references cox, michaelene, and jaimie m. kent (2018): ‘political science student journals: what students publish and why student publishing matters’, ps: political science & politics 51(4): pp. 804-810. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/s1049096518000057 https://doi.org/10.1017/s1049096518000057 prima pagina1 radu nicolae, 3rd year, political science, undergraduate studies horia terpe, 3rd year, political science, undergraduate studies assp, bucharest, romania in this paperwork we will try to prove that, after the first round of the general elections in romania, which took place on 26th of november 2000, the strong reaction of the civil society against the second candidate remained in the race for the presidency of romania, corneliu vadim tudor, block the rise of his popularity and, consequently, to lowed his chances to become the president of romania. we will assume that this reaction was effective. in addition, we will analyze the genesis and the ethical and political implications of this reaction. let us present the involved actors for some of the readers who may be less informed about the romanian political life. after the first round of the general elections from 26th of november, two candidates remained in the race. the first one was ion iliescu-36, 35%, following the official counting, at that time the candidate and president of pdsr (the party for social-democracy of romania). now, this party and another party -psdr. (the social democrat party of romania) united and formed psd ( the social democrat party.) the second one was corneliu vadim tudor-28, 34%-, the president of prm (the greater romania party). they will be more detailed presented later. the romanian society of the year 2000 the social phenomena to which we relate ourselves is, of course, the romanian revolution from december 1989.this event meant the changing of the political regime and fundamental metamorphosis in all the areas of the public and private life: political, social, cultural and more painful economic ( inflation and unemployment). dealing with our theme the peoples perception of the reality is maybe more important than the reality itself. so, this change is perceived as one from social protection and the safety of the job to economic insecurity, as one from order to chaos and corruption of the state (even if it is possible that the level of corruption to be almost the same "before" the fall of communism).the change was even broader romanian society being forced to switch from determination in taking the decisions of state (that means authoritarianism) to hesitations and contradictory decisions, taken with a lot of "democratic pain", from implicit independence, autarchy and military security to the dependence of the international financial organisms and military insecurity between the russia (which we reject ) and nato ( which rejects us).in a competition where we lost almost entire capacity to compete , foreign capital infusion and the status of market for foreign products (marketisation of the nations) completed the picture. in this context it might be seen a phenomena of values dissolution. the clear old set of values dissolute itself into an ocean of values. because of them diversity and contradictions, there is no more an easy eligible set of values. romanian society deconstructed the old values but didn’t to replace them. this generated a remarkable high level of the social anomie. the opinion polls constitute a clear prove: constantly, they are significant more people which answer to the question: "do you consider that you live now better or worse as before 1989?" by "worse" and rank very high mortal social fears (as poverty, war, illness ). this matter of fact is extremely important for understanding the results of the 2000 vote. the specificity of 2000 general elections for the first time in the "post-revolutionary" history of romania there was an exponential growing of the popularity of an party and candidate (with real chances to become the president of the country) in whose political and electoral message matched exactly those requests and frustrations we spoke about. the president of prm promises were: order in the society, determinate fight against corruption and mafia, protection the economy against the foreign capital, support for the romanian traditional economic areas, granting social, economic and military security, determinate and radical decisions, support the national values and, generally, recovering the national pride (its lack is an essential part of values dissolution phenomena and social anomie). an important element of its massage was the promise to over the revisionism of the hungarian minority and its organizations, because of its possible intentions to reach the federalization and destabilization of the romanian state. against such a threat, special political actions are not only acceptable but necessary (authoritarianism and non constitutional actions). those promises were presented in the past years in a violent language. this language and those declared intentions brought to corneliu vadim tudor the label of extremist, nationalist and chauvinist. its opponent was ion iliescu, considered to be an enemy of the reform and the main culpable of its failure in the first years after 1989. his promises were: social protection, politics against unemployment, independence from the west, the slowing of the reform in order to ease the social costs. even if in the case of the romanian july-august politikon political life the main cleavage is the rather classical leftright one (centered on the problem of the reform) during this election, the main debate was inside the left perspective. the definition of the concepts from the beginning, we have to make clear the fundamental concepts that give resistance to the hole work. the title, first, compel us to detail some contradictories aspects. so the civil society concept in romanian rise plenty of legitimate questions regarding as much its existence as its elements. before we try a definition, it seems necessary a discussion about the roots of civil society post 1989 witch must take in account the communist period as well. in the context of the 80’s in eastern europe, romania is different. the civil society 20failed to become as powerful as the civil societies in the rest of the communist camp. the civil society of the 80’s in eastern europe brings together the independent, nongovernmental groups, associations, institutions witch represent obstacles for the totalitarian ambition of complete domination over society. the hungarian samizdat, the polish kor, the czechoslovac 77 chart are attempts to banish the ideology from the public life, to pull the public life out of the pseudo-political manipulation which prevented the free exercise of the fundamental individual rights. therefore, the civil society meant the first step in the process reinventing politics outside the official borders of politics. this process did not become reality in romania or it had no relevance what so ever. the few dissidents either were forced to leave the country as the writer paul goma, the historian vlad georgescu, the poet dorin tudoran, the mathematician mihai botez, or they were on strict surveillance (mircea dinescu, dan petrescu, doina cornea) the agreement between the labors and the intellectuals was mist in 77 (the miners strike) and in 87 (the strike from brasov). therefore the ceausescu regime succeeded to keep under control the attempts of free association, of building a civil society and this was one of the causes of its bloody collapse. the true rebirth of romanian civil society began late, after the year 1989 and the lack of tradition and political experience was felt a great deal. the fight against the new communism sustained by fsn (national salvation front) represented one of the main directions of the romanian civil society. romanian civil society meant in the 90’s a way of mobilization hinting the accomplishment of political objectives; it had an intellectual and cultural dimension. nowadays, we see o revisiting of the conceptualization of the civil society in terms of élites who play professional roles. to conclude, romanian civil society seems to contradict a dictionary definition, structuring in complex ways and sometimes behaving contradictory. this short history was necessary in order to give legitimacy to a broader definition of civil society. semnificant for this essay are the << intermediate structures >> between individuals and state (political power, politicians); structures that pretend talking on behalf of the citizens and in the same time structures that are sources from which people extract their political and civic beliefs. the structures not only that express the wishes, the beliefs and the expectations of the society but sometimes they shape these wishes, beliefs. in many cases do not matter the reality as the image about that reality (it is accepted the role of mass media in the political changes in 1996 and 2000). the way press uses it influence undermines the trust in the democratic institutions empowering the opinions the only solution is the authoritarianism. the language press uses is apodictus, splitting on criteria like personal interests and dislikes, the public sphere in good and bad guys, worshiping the good guys and diabolishing the bad. the tints, the fair expression of the achievements and the failures, the fair presentation of the facts and statements are replaced with the emotional presentation of the corrupt people or those thought to be corrupt. therefore, these structures present interest to us and its reaction had a powerful impact on citizens. obviously, we exclude from the beginning the political parties due to their purposes: the competition for the political power. therefore the definition of civil society structures on three levels: ngo level, intellectuality level and independent mass-media level. this definition includes the journalists also because they have a contribution in forming the political and civic options of the citizens. the second concept in our analyses is the one of reaction. we assume as a premise that the civil society defined above, had a reaction more or less coherent to the results of the first round of general election of 2000. the reaction consisted in sending a message and realizing some actions (conferences, debates, seminars, and meetings) and suggesting actions. our analysis will concentrate on the reaction, which will be analyzed in a communicational as well as in a political value perspective. hypothesis: the motivations of vote why such an important part of the electorate voted corneliu vadim tudor and its party? we will evoke a number of possible causes, specifying that they acted in several combinations, but all on the ground of the generally value dissolution phenomena and social anomie. one of them is what we call "the tiredness of the transition": the wear of people's disposability o accept another sacrifices presented as necessary from each government after 1989 in order to attain national goals which become sacred, taboos: the integration in eu and nato, capitalist free market economy, welfare state, stopping the inflation and lowing the unemployment level. because july-august politikon iliescu at the vote bibliography tismăneanu, v. (1999) reinventing politics, polirom, iasi, romania, 1999. vlăsceanu, l. (1982) the methodology of social research, ed. enciclopedica, bucharest. van cuilenburg, j.j, scholten o, noomen g.w.(2000) – the science of communication, humanitas, bucharest, romania, vlăsceanu, l. and zamfir, c. (1998) dictionary of sociology, babel, bucharest, romania. volkoff, v. (1998) treatise about dezinformation, nemira, bucharest, romania miroiu, m. & blebea-nicolae, g. (in printing) introduction to ethics,ed.trei, bucharest, romania romanian institute for marketing and opinion polls-research reports, 2000 no significant, visible result appeared after making them, people largely voted corneliu vadim tudor, which had the courage to reevaluate those "non-questionable” objectives. such a result, well presented, could have had a curative effect on people, showing that the sacrifices were not useless. however, nothing happened in this direction. very tide linked to this perspective, another two motivations appear. the first of them is the disappointing of the west. romanian society behaved as it expected too long at the occident's doors. the west was the hopeful example in the revolution' period: the reach and free alternative to the socialist system. but, because of the too long waiting, its perception changed from the trustful wait for its decisive help to its considering as something far, prohibited and with a touch of superiority. so, there is an important (still!) minority, which perceive the west as hostile, stupid or brutal (especially after kosovo war). the political leader of this current is corneliu vadim tudor. in the same direction, another possible motivation is the need of national pride and international recognition: coming back to a global foreign politic, recovering the romanian oriental and african traditional selling-markets, which were left for the european market. related to the "tiredness of transition" another possible vote motivation could be the blaming of the whole romanian political class for those failures. the explication is mainly referred to disposability of the electorate in accepting undemocratic, extra parliamentarian and over the constitution policies and ways of acting. that means, people were ready to sacrifice the democratic and representative character of the state's decisions in order to assure their efficiency. we can also discuss about a vote due to crises of trust in the system. the trust in the democratic system disappeared because it was accused of not being able to solve the social problems. this thing could also explain a vote given to a threat to this system: the cvasi democratic solutions. following our opinion, the most important cause of this vote was the failure of the governing 1996-2000.in 1996, cdr (the romanian democratic convention) was thought to be an alternative to the social-democrat governing of the years 1990-1996, which proved its incapacity in making the desired reforms. all the hopes were than invested in cdr, its team, and its candidate, emil constantinescu. but its failure was almost total: the vote from the 26th of november, 2000 came as a severe sanction and a refuse to return to the 1990-1996 period by choosing the third option: corneliu vadim tudor. the genesis of the reaction the reaction against corneliu vadim tudor was two folded: first, there was a blocade of the transmission of its message: his access on the media was limited as more as possible. second, the quantity of messages against vadim registered grows with 482,5% only in the written media, following our measurement. it existed several conditions that made possible such a reaction. first, it existed an elite who become more active and: 1.realised its responsibility in such a situation and 2. was in the possession of the middles to react: control of the media. it existed a common sense, more or less conscious of its role in those political events. second, as a very important factor was the negative signals of the occidental political circles on the address of the rise of the extremist ideas. the romanian civil society is always very careful to those signals, because of the "non questionable" european and euro atlantic integration. however, the releasing condition was the extreme rate of the growing of his popularity in the opinion polls. this was a shocking alarm. if the rate was not so big, people could get used with the situation and many the civil society's members would have define the situation as "normal". this reaction was a compromise for the civil society, marking its symbolical defeat: this one was needed to support ion iliescu, the enemy which enabled it to form during the 1990-1996 period. it was a nasty situation for many to choose between iliescu and vadim, but some of them have their share of responsibility for the situation. between the two rounds there was a widely manipulation of the public opinion media bombardment and a prohibition against the vadim's message had their effect in the vote given in the second round of the elections. the winner of this round was ion iliescu, and he was saw as a saver near corneliu vadim tudor. july-august politikon waiting for the results untitled antonio puggioni justice and democracy in amartaya sen: another procedural approach? 2 justice and democracy in amartya sen: another procedural approach? antonio puggioni 1 , institute for advanced studies, italy abstract he present paper aims at delivering a critical view of the links between justice and democracy as set by amartya sen’s paramount work on these themes, “the idea of justice”, by considering the constitutional and political experience of india. a central role will thus be given to the importance of public discussion and reasoning as the basis of democratic thought throughout the world, as sen postulates. nevertheless, an analysis of the indian constitutional process shows how the mere reliance on reason and justice is not sufficient for a successful democratic tradition: the role of liberal values and of the underlying institutional developments is indeed capital for a wider understanding of the democratization process of india. the intertwining of these two aspects, the former socio-philosophical, the latter institutional, will help in reviewing the indian experience as a demonstration of the maintenance of traditions within a clear framework, and in further expanding the notion to other contexts. 1 antonio puggioni, 24, is a ph.d. candidate in institutions, politics and policies at the institute for advanced studies in lucca (italy). he holds a ba in political sciences and international relations (2009) and a ma in european legal studies (2011) from the university la sapienza in rome. he wrote both his ba and master’s theses in comparative constitutional law (the ba on the constitutional processes in japan from the 1870s to the 1940s, the ma on linguistic rights in the indian legal system). he is currently working on a research project on the legal and constitutional perspectives of the democratization processes in india and burma, with a comparative approach. t politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 3 introduction he theme of justice gained momentum again thanks to john rawls’s paramount work a theory of justice and has so far been the object of investigation of several authors (as nozick), who generally followed the “contractarian” approach, in line with the tradition started with hobbes, locke and rousseau on the existence of a social contract. this new tendency towards studies on justice, and especially on the related concept of fairness, 2 has found in amartya sen a major contribution, thanks to the elaboration of a complete theory on reasoning and the public sphere. sen’s approach reached a capital point for a more comprehensive understanding of the theme of justice with the links created between the reason-based idea of justice and the relevance of democracy and of the democratic process. in fact, the concepts of justice and democracy are more deeply analyzed in the idea of justice, where sen explores these two inherently intertwined notions with a view to a global understanding of the subject, deriving his arguments from both the western and the oriental historical experiences. in order to investigate the connection between justice and democracy, a proper definition of both notions will be helpful for clarifying the limits of the analysis. justice could be intended, as rawls does, as the “first virtue of social institutions”, associated with fairness. nevertheless, while maintaining the selfevident link with fairness, sen adds a more feasible argument: instead of framing justice within an institutional scheme, he derives the 2 justice as fairness is in fact the title of the first article by john rawls in 1958, and a key association developed in his work of 1973. notion from actual accomplishments, that could be eventually ranked. this notion of justice is linked to democracy by association with the method: as justice stems from an open and reason-based approach characterized by discussion, so is democracy defined in terms of public reasoning, with an emphasis on informational availability and possibility of choice. although this framework is indisputably correct for a philosophical analysis of the two concepts, the institutional and procedural characters of democracy could not be neglected. from a minimal procedural perspective, democracy could be conceived as “the institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions (…) in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote”, as schumpeter defined the notion (schumpeter, 1942, 269). a broader explanation is given by sartori, according to whom democracy is “a system fictitiously based on the will of the majority, which is in fact produced and safeguarded by the government of a minority”, thus presenting the elitist version of the notion (sartori, 1957, 96). what sen proposes seems to be a sort of procedural conception of democracy as a method characterized by open discussion that could eventually lead to just or fair outcomes thanks to the procedure itself. despite the agreement on the relevance of the dimension of the public sphere, is this the correct path to understand the inherent link between justice and democracy, and the definition of democracy itself? the present analysis will be initially devoted to the study of the question of justice in amartya sen’s thought, through a comparison with the contractarian tradition lately embodied by rawls. then, the focus will switch to the notion of democracy, from a general perspective to the links that sen establishes with the concept of justice. finally, the critical examination of the theory t antonio puggioni justice and democracy in amartaya sen: another procedural approach? 4 of justice and democracy will concentrate on the role of institutions and of liberalism in the general framework of a democratic theory. the ideas of justice in the idea of justice, amartya sen classifies the theories of justice according to two streams of philosophical reflection: the contractarian school and the comparative approach, both stemming from the enlightenment tradition. the former category, including rousseau and rawls among others, deals with the identification of the just institutional agreements for a society, with the purpose of finding the right institutions that could ensure perfect justice; on the contrary, the latter concentrates on an accomplishment-based view of justice, taking into account the different possibilities of reaching the goal of less injustice and ranking the alternative choices (sen, 2009, introduction). despite its main concentration on the establishment of just institutions, rawls’s theory is fundamental in the understanding of the entire question of justice. the reasoned conclusions drawn by rawls are shared by sen as well, acknowledging the “firm footing” (sen, 2009, 53) set by rawls for the theory of justice. the starting point of rawls’s theory is the basic idea of justice seen as a demand of fairness, following the traditional theory of the social contract. the institutional question is thus at the core of rawls’s investigation: from a social contract equally agreed by everyone, just institutions that satisfy shared principles of justice arise. the idea of social contract is here developed at a higher level: the aim of the act is a joint decision over “the principles which are to assign basic rights and duties and to determine the division of social benefits” (rawls, 1973, 10). the theoretical stratagem invented by rawls in order to pass from a state of nature to a just society is the well-known “veil of ignorance”: thanks to this original position of restriction of knowledge concerning his place in society or his social status and also his conception of the good (rawls, 1973, 112), a reasonable person could not but choose a fair social contract. this unanimous agreement will be based on two principles of justice: first: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others. second: social and economic equalities are to be arranged so that they are both reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and attached to positions and offices open to all (rawls, 1973, 52). thus, two pillars constitute the concept of justice: a liberty principle and a difference principle, with the former having priority over the latter. after having selected these principles, two further stages are provided: a “constitutional” stage for choosing institutions, and a “legislative” stage to implement social decisions by means of laws. as sen notes, two elements in rawls’s theory of justice are capital: the use of reason for the choice of the agreement and the importance of freedom. both elements underlie the existence of a public sphere sufficient to reach conclusions by the use of reason and through discussion, which is a common point with the comparative approach (rawls, 1973, 62-64). the difference lies in the content of the “programme” and in the role of institutions: while rawls clearly states the content of the agreement in the “basic liberties” (political; of speech and assembly; of thought; of the person; personal property and freedom from arbitrary arrest), sen develops his own reasoning according to the concept of politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 5 capabilities, which is more real but more vague as well. this same argument of capabilities, typical of sen’s attention to actual achievements, leaves to the background the question of institutions. according to sen, “just institutions” could not properly work if the actual behaviour is not in line with the expected reasonable behaviour. in fact, the comparative approach neglects the role of institutions to focus on actual realizations. the theoretical device employed by sen is the “impartial spectator” that adam smith used in his theory of moral sentiments, according to whom a comparative assessment of different options becomes possible through a variety of viewpoints. this comparative view on justice is also developed from the traditional difference between two concepts of justice in sanskrit, niti and nyaya: while the former term identifies a procedural concept of justice, the latter encompasses the actual achievements, the social realizations (sen, 2009, introduction). sen’s theory clearly aims at reaching nyaya by means of public reasoning and comparison of different possibilities. the typical example is delivered with the illustration of the competing reasons for the property of a flute. three children, quarrelling for a flute, have good reasons for owning the instrument: the first one because he is so poor that he has no toys; the second because he produced the flute; the third one because he can play it (sen, 2009, 12-15). the three alternatives are equally valid according to a contractarian view, but from a comparative approach they can be ranked through public reasoning: the prevention of manifest injustice will be the parameter used to assess the claims. sen’s approach thus gives an open perspective convenient to impartially rank demands of justice. moreover, this same concern for open discussion links the concept of justice to the broad understanding of democracy in his thought. the quest for a comprehensive notion of democracy in amartya sen’s academic production, the relevance of open discussion in the achievement of freedom is essential. as in rawls, the importance of freedom for the attainment of one’s objectives is at the basis of his philosophical investigation. nevertheless, the emphasized aspect is the fulfillment of “comprehensive outcomes”, as in the sanskrit notion of nyaya. in order to insert these considerations in the framework of a comprehensive theory of justice and of the link with democracy, the system presented by sen relies on the capability approach. what is meant by capability is a person’s “real opportunity (…) to do things he or she has reason to value” (sen, 2009, 233): this calls for the necessity of judging and comparing several individual advantages (what sen calls “combinations of functionings”) from an “informational focus”. so, the idea of capability guarantees the actual possibility for people to freely choose, according to a comprehensive range of opportunities. an important feature of this approach is the use of reason and public discussion, shared with the contractarian views of rawls. unlike him, though, sen opens the possibility for different solutions: instead of a single social contract embodying unanimous principles of justice, the approach based on social choice theory, here proposed, aims at giving to each person the chance to find a way for reaching an actual position of less injustice by means of free and open discussion (sen, 2009, 225-252). 3 3 this aspect is developed in chapter xi of the idea of justice, lives, freedoms and capabilities. antonio puggioni justice and democracy in amartaya sen: another procedural approach? 6 despite the equal importance of public reasoning in rawls’s and sen’s theories, the results diverge not only in the absence of a social contract, but also in the relevance of equality. indeed, sen does not claim the necessity of equality of capabilities, because the concept itself is related to individual advantages, not to a general ordering (sen, 2009, 295-298). thus, the priority of freedom is repeatedly stated, the procedure of reaching freedom through public discussion is shared, but the outcomes are different for each person. this understanding of justice, equality and freedom leads to the comprehensive notion of democracy proposed by amartya sen. amartya sen tries to elaborate a concept of democracy that is universally applicable to experiments of local government both in the western and eastern worlds. indeed, the tendency for public reasoning for the decision-making process is not a western monopoly that started in athens in the 5 th century b.c., since ancient india testifies of several experiences of local governance. what sen regularly stresses is the “intimate connection between justice and democracy, with shared discursive features” (sen, 2009, 326). so, the character of open discussion is the capital element in democracy, in contraposition with schumpeter’s idea of a method for reaching decisions by means of a majority vote, but also of sartori’s view, which poses at the forefront the elitist idea of a government by a minority supported by an initial majority decision. sen’s view of democracy is said to be content-based: by means of open discussion, through which a plurality of reasons can be compared, a just solution is to be found. according to this view, the procedural and institutional features of democracy look secondary if compared with the inherently primary discursive element of the concept, that always leads to the establishment of free alternatives, to nyaya-based solutions. the institutional elements of democracy, from the western tradition, and especially the practice of elections, are thus given minor attention, to leave space for the establishment of an open forum for dealing with tolerant values and priorities. several examples are provided in order to support this claim, all derived from the indian experience since 1947: the prevention of famines in democratic countries thanks to the attention of the media to natural and social disasters; the prevention of sectarian violence; the role of educational rights. notwithstanding the coherence of this approach and the evident results, the inference that derives the success of democracy only thanks to the discursive features seems overemphasized. in fact, what sen proposes is another procedural notion of democracy, and not a contentbased approach: by means of the discursive method, that brings to the forefront reasoned claims for justice and reasoned solutions, just and democratic achievements can be reached, independently from the institutional features of a society. thus, it is the discursive method, that in itself should completely guarantee the rise and acceptance of just decisions by impartially-reasoned ranking of the alternatives, that defines the concept of democracy. while the philosophical derivation of this conception is not questionable, is this view historically consistent? comprehensive and traditional notions of democracy if amartya sen’s view is correct, what about the fall of the weimar republic? wasn’t it one of the best examples of the burgeoning of open discussion and of politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 7 cultural vitality ever achieved? this mere example should be sufficient for understanding that the role of institutions should not be neglected in the study of democracy. a democracy that does not defend itself 4 by means of institutional devices is deemed to failure sooner or later, because the protection of minorities and of human rights and freedoms, which are at the basis of the concept itself, must be supported by some protective framework. weimar germany was an example of public discussion without public reasoning, especially towards the end of the democratic period, but the existence of public reasoning is not to be taken for granted, as amartya sen seems to do. least of all should it be considered for building a complete system of thought, regardless of previous experiences. trust on human capacities and on the use of reason is certainly the ground for sen’s understanding of the notion of democracy. nobody denies that, and nobody could speculate about the supposed western monopoly of reasoned discussion: the historical examples provided by sen suffice to deny the conception of decision-making by open discussion as purely western, and the experience of the indian democracy after 1947 is there as a proof of the universal relevance of the democratic values. but the confusion between values and the notion itself is misleading. sen tries to defend the 4 the concept of defence is introduced with a view to the parallel of the two democratic experiences of germany: the weimar republic from 1919 to 1933 and the redemocratization of 1949 with the new grundgesetz. this new constitution established a system of institutional clauses aimed at preventing a return to authoritarianism that allows to define it as a wehrhafte demokratie, a democracy that defends itself, a fortified democracy. new democratic experiences, in asian countries especially, from the idea that asian values are not compatible with democracy: an idea promoted in the 1990s by mahatir mohamad and lee kwan yew, the prime ministers of malaysia and singapore, in order to justify the authoritarian regimes in south-east asia. the claim for the universality of the value and method of public reasoning and discussion is undisputable. nevertheless, the historical experience shows that from the 19 th century onward the only institutional system that could sustain the value of public discussion and at the same time guarantee peaceful coexistence has been the liberaldemocratic framework as designed by the western tradition. what sen correctly points out is the fact that the seeds of democracy, meant as government allowing discussion and just decisions, are present in each society and in each human context. however, the method of open discussion is not sufficient to define democracy, because it is only the prerequisite for the establishment of a democratic system: it is a procedural feature that is deprived of content. the issue is not about installing just institutions, as rawls indicates in line with the contractarian theory: the real problem concerns the association of institutions that embody a certain idea of liberty and of protection of minorities, and that help guaranteeing it by the discursive method, with the eventual accomplishment of actual progress in justice. the two aspects are strictly linked: the respect of democratic values does not arise by itself by means of discussion. the respect of individual rights and freedoms is the essence of a democracy: sen acknowledges this view by giving priority to freedom, but then leaves to the “unknown” forces of human reason the task of supporting this priority. but a blind trust on antonio puggioni justice and democracy in amartaya sen: another procedural approach? 8 human reason is not a reasonable point of departure: the framework for decisions is itself important. the idea of democracy is characterized by a plurality of elements, whose basis is the possibility of open discussion, as sen emphasizes, but this is not an exhaustive definition. besides the precondition of public discussion, another procedural element lies in the participation in the government by an elected minority: government by the people is the characteristic of the concept, and the etymology of the word states this evidence. according to hans kelsen, this procedural component is the essence, “the liberal element being of secondary importance” (kelsen, 1955, 4). but the rule of the majority, the procedural framework, must be supported by a content, and this content lies in an agreement (a social contract?) on the values to be protected, promoted and embodied by the institutional system. the values of freedom and of justice seem to gather a secure agreement from the representatives of both the contractarian and the comparative approaches. the comprehensive notion of democracy thus encompasses three aspects: two procedural elements, the government by discussion and by majority rule; and a content-related feature, the protection of freedoms and the promotion of justice. the embodiment of these three elements has been so far guaranteed only by the institutional system derived by the liberal tradition: the successful implant of western liberal institutions in contexts alien to the liberal experience shows how this type of institutions are able to universally serve societies in which the precondition of public discussion is already present, but miss the organizational structure necessary for dealing with today’s world challenges. open conclusions: liberalism and traditional values this short study on the concepts of justice and democracy has tried to present a critical view of the currently most acclaimed theory of justice as linked with universal democratic thought. by the analysis of amartya sen’s the idea of justice, some points of discussion arise about the necessity of eliminating the institutional element in the concept of democracy so as to universalize the notion. while a common ground seems to be found in the definition of justice and in the link of the philosophical notion with the concept of democracy, the definition of the latter is still a matter of dispute. the mere definition of democracy as public reasoning is clearly insufficient, because it lacks the empirical basis, which is given by the institutions derived by the western tradition. thus, a notion of democracy, to be considered sufficient to respond to the aspiration of people in both a demand for justice and freedom and a way to guarantee this demand, must be related to content and method. the case of india is of high significance in showing this evidence. the constitution of india was framed between 1947 and 1949 by men who at the same time possessed both the lessons of liberalism and the awareness of the indian tradition of discussion. nevertheless, the result was a text that derives its features from the liberal thought, as bhimrao ambedkar, the chair of the drafting committee, admitted in contrast with the ecumenical views purported by gandhi and his “republic of panchayats” (villages). a traditional system, as supported by gandhi, could never have come into being, because of the necessity of having a functioning state. but the seeds of democratic thought were present, and the politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 9 fact that the indian democracy still survives today is an evidence of the success reached by allying public discussion with institutions protecting individual freedoms at a broader level, ensuring at the same time the participation of the popular will to the decisions. social realizations, actual advancement of justice intended as nyaya, seem to be possible nowadays only through a democratic system in which institutions play a role. references austin, g. (1966), the indian constitution: cornerstone of a nation. new delhi: oxford university press. guha, r. (2007), india after gandhi: the history of the world’s largest democracy. kelsen, h. (1955), foundations of democracy, ethics, vol. 66, no.1, part 2 (oct. 1955). morlino, l. (2008), democracy and changes: how research tails reality, west european politics, vol. 31, nos. 1-2, 40-59, januarymarch 2008. morlino, l. (2011), changes for democracy: actors, structures, processes. oxford: oxford university press. nariman, f.s. (2006), india’s legal system: can it be saved?. new delhi, penguin books india. rawls, j. (1973), a theory of justice. cambridge: harvard university press. sartori, g. (1957), democrazia e definizioni. bologna: il mulino. schumpeter, j.a. (1942), capitalism, socialism and democracy. london and new york: routledge. sen, a. (2009), the idea of justice. cambridge: harvard university press. singh, m.p. (2006), outlines of indian legal and constitutional history. delhi: universal law publishing co. pvt. ltd., 8 th edition. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 37 (july 2018) 2 volume 37: july 2018 issn 2414-6633 https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.37 editorial board editor-in-chief: max steuer (slovakia) justinas lingevičus (lithuania) andrés lopez rivera (ecuador) rafael plancarte (mexico) ana magdalena figueroa (brazil) gergana tzvetkova (bulgaria) https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.37 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 37 (july 2018) 3 table of contents editorial note ....................................................................................................................... 4 articles the impact of country characteristics on civic knowledge and political participation / benjamin tyler leigh ............................................................................................................ 6 global feminism and undecidabilities: beijing’ 95 and beyond / tarsis daylan brito 19 rainwater harvesting to reduce water and economic poverty in coastal bangladesh / m. rafiqul islam ................................................................................................................ 39 imperfect good and evil: savonarola, soderini, and machiavelli’s excusing of failure / zachary e. shufro .............................................................................................................. 60 call for papers .................................................................................................................... 74 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 37 (july 2018) 4 editorial note we live in times when, on the one hand, scientific discoveries in all disciplines are proliferating, with more and more specialized approaches, while on the other hand, the very relevance and benefit of science for societal advancement is questioned, even at the basic level of the existence of a set of objective facts. this means that scientific rigour, if not coupled with valid and thought-through ways of presentation and communication of original research results, might increasingly reach its limits in facilitating progress. scientific discoveries remain valuable regardless of their practical impact, nevertheless it seems desirable to combine both and, through these means, prevent from staying locked in ‘academic ivory towers’. academic journals can play a prominent role in the conversation beyond academia, since they often present ground-breaking findings sooner and more rigorously than any other platform. however, it is then important that they are able to reach out beyond specialized academic for a to policymakers and citizens alike. poitikon, the flagship journal of the international association for political science students (iapss), aims to continue in contributing to this fusion between academia and practice, while not shying away from the commitment to the broadening and deepening of sub-, interand multi-disciplinary academic discourses of pertinent questions of politics, broadly conceived. founded in 2001, it builds upon an extensive tradition of critical peer-to-peer feedback and presentation of high-quality research in political science and related disciplines without any restrictions on academic seniority. politikon is open to authors of any level of academic seniority, but it is particularly welcoming towards contributions of students and early career researchers. because of its ties to iapss, it offers a unique platform where academic excellence is combined with efforts to empower all individuals involved in the publishing process (authoring, editing, reviewing, proofreading, disseminating of academic content) to express their visions on various issues, always based on a sound theoretical and methodological framework, in most cases combined with empirical analysis as well. vol. 37, as several previous ones, presents four articles on a broad range of subjects, adding to geographical and topical diversity of the journal’s scope. nevertheless, all are connected by answering critical questions pertaining to individual and collective well-being, policy advancement or the role of principles and rationality in decision-making. in the first article, tyler leigh explores whether selected country specifics are able to influence the capacity of civic education to increase levels of political participation, and answers this question in the affirmative with the help of statistical analysis, acknowledging the limitations stemming primarily from the lack of availability of detailed data on politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 37 (july 2018) 5 this subject. secondly, tarsis daylan brito applies the concept of undecidability from the philosopher jacques derrida on the outcomes of the 1995 beijing conference on women’s rights in order to uncover and critically access them from a feminist standpoint. the third article by m. rafiqul islam pays attention to the political as well as administrative challenges surrounding the critical issue of freshwater supplies in bangladesh, arguing that the lack of ‘financing, rules and regulations, technical know-how, and awareness’ is detrimental for the local population, and proposing the investment of resources into rainwater harvesting as a possible solution. last but not least, zachary e. shufro provides a fresh view on machiavelli’s understanding of intentions and rationality in governing the state by interpreting the actions of three machiavelli’s political contemporaries in the famous discourses on livy. the politikon editorial board encourages its readers to interact with the authors as well as authors with each other, via contacting them by e-mail or proposing to write a reply to their findings. we welcome your feedback and suggestions for further improvements of the journal and for new opportunities that we might be able to offer. as always, we also look forward to receiving and reviewing new manuscripts on all kinds of questions in political science and related disciplines. max steuer editor-in-chief editorial note prima pagina1 benjamin zyla -bzyla@gmx.de preface when you look at the discussion of the last years new terms like globalization, digitalization and individualization were coming up more and more and now even each children in school knows that notions. the democracy and its institutions are threatened with the movement of supranationalization which especially is a big problem for the european union. memberstates loose their competence and influence to the bureaucrats in brussels. but still parties in london, berlin, paris or warsaw have an important function. they form and elect the government in their countries, candidates of the parties are running for the parliament. parties aggregate ideas over whole europe, figure out what people want and try to transfer this ideas into political movement, political action. parties in western democracies play an important role; without those parties no government can be elected, no government can be controlled, no political decision be taken. so there’s still a need for them. to transform that thoughts to the european level you can ask why don’t we need transnational parties, who surmount the complained lack of democracy. why don’t we install transnational parties who aggregate the thoughts, desires and wills of all european citizens to transform them conclusively into united european action? or are european parties transnational parties? what is a transnational party? – a definition to understand the following explanations we have to define what we understand under a transnational party. from the first view this term seems to be a fantasy word, which only says that a party is transnational. but still this is an important character. what means transnational? it means that parties do not only focus on the domestic politics, but further on focus on the international political market. parties run on the transnational or supranational level for elections, recruit élites and try to articulate and aggregate the will of the people. in this sense we can assume that european parties like the spe or evd or efa are transnational parties. in focus we can say european parties are party families, because they are a unity of lets say all social democratic parties over europe. english social democrats are a member as well as the spanish or the german social democrats are. finally this essay assumes that transnational parties are european parties. what makes a party like a party? the european union consists of about 15 memberstates. and each memberstate has its own parliamentary system with differences. in england we only have a two party system, with two dominant parties, who formed the government now more than hundreds of years. and on the other hand we have a multiparty system like in sweden, france and especially italy, where more than two parties fight for the favor of the voters. researchers have found five main functions political parties fulfil in parliamentary: • the identifications of goals: parties do have an ideology and programs. they try to develop strategies and alternatives. • the mobilization and socialization of the general public within the system, particularly at elections. • the articulation and aggregation of social interest. parties present (quite similar to interest groups) interests, the articulate interests; but they bundle up (aggregate) these interests in the political willing process. • and elite recruitment and government function. in other words these functions are representative for all european parties in all memberstates. so the main question when we are talking about transnational parties is now if transnational parties can fit with this functions? can they have the sane functions or do we have transnational parties like parties in the us? lets go into more detail and try to find out if transnational parties function like national parties in considering point by point. the first point: in western democracies parties always do have programs in which they mostly describe their view of the future. in this programs they are saying which kind of world they would like to have. in other words their ideology is written down in such programs. parties try to work on guiding strategies and inform the people about try to develop strategies for the future and alternative action possibilities. to write down such a program takes a lot of time, because different party wings want to contribute their views. especially for the huge parties this process is difficult, because their wings have grown up historically. considering the social democrats for example, they traditionally have two completely different wings. the most crucial point discussing the program and the strategy for the next campaign is the labour market policy. because the people want to grant from the polity and the new government. people mostly think rational, so they do not to pay attention that much to programs, they want to know which advantages they can expect from that party if it wins the election. and traditionally the different social democratic wings have different views about the right labour market policy. july-august politikon the european parliament nections between the personnel and institutional separated organs of the executive and legislative and the people. parties try to work on guiding strategies and inform the people about try to develop strategies for the future and alternative action possibilities. to write down such a program takes a lot of time, because different party wings want to contribute their views. especially for the huge parties this process is difficult, because their wings have grown up historically. considering the social democrats for example, they traditionally have two completely different wings. the most crucial point discussing the program and the strategy for the next campaign is the labour market policy. because the people want to grant from the polity and the new government. people mostly think rational, so they do not to pay attention that much to programs, they want to know which advantages they can expect from that party if it wins the election. and traditionally the different social democratic wings have different views about the right labour market policy. but on the other side a program binds party members together. so to say writing a program is a long and difficult process which has to run trough party institutions and groups. positions, sharpen opinions, opposite meanings and views from all sides come together. and the duty of each party leader now is to bind those different ways together. at the end a big compromise is the result. each party wings contributed to that process and are satisfied with their position. and of course this result is, so to say, the common ideology of that party. this result of this discussion process or ideology has a main purpose: it borders the party members with their special view from other parties; so to say the ideology shows the difference of the parties. so you can conclude that the process of writing a program is to border the party from the enemy other ones, to draw out the main ditches. this again binds the members together and sharpens their view for the enemies. the behavior within parties is more determined by the prevailing counter party. the ideal case is a solidly stand behind the program and the goal of the party which is the main prerequisite to run into a electoral campaign. and here we come to the second point, the mobilization and socialization of the general public. who else as the parties mobilize the public when it comes to elections. therefore parties use their programs and try to combine a program with a candidate. this is of course a part of the strategy. parties and their candidates want to recruit people for political activity and political participation. during a federal election other candidates are running on a minor level for political responsibility, local responsibility at the same time. therefore parties definitely need recruitment. but this people who are running to become the major of a city or village are not just appearing. they have to be formed on different party levels, so to say they have to learn the political business. and candidates have to be associated with the program the party they belong to. so one purpose is to build up long-term settings and examples to show the future of the society and the welfare of the country or the municipality and get this future plans associated with persons. regional strongholds are playing an important part in the mobilization, because here voters do pay more attention to their surroundings. it is quite obvious that one candidate by himself can not organize a whole campaign, so he needs help, help and support from outside. often candidates can win old fellows for that job. and he needs the feeling that people do believe in him. this point is related to my third definition point. parties articulate and aggregate social interests. now you critically can ask what is the difference between parties and interest group, because interest groups as well as parties articulate interests of a special part of the society. modern society systems are segmented and fragmented, many singular interest are competing against each other. and only opinions which have a strong reputation have a chance to win public access. in earlier societies some of these functions were performed by the different classes or estates, or the bureaucracy. but parties do no only have to represent one single aspect, not one single opinion like for example non governmental organization like wwf or greenpeace. this is at least the duty of the major parties who want to be called “public parties”. they want to represent and stand for social democracy as well for neo-liberal labour market policy. their political establishment wants to be the agent of the higher class as well as for the working class. parties can only stress general interests in its propaganda or even develop a tendency to see itself as the “natural party of government”. we have spoken already about that. what parties specially do is to recruit political personal, so called political élites. they are standing at the top of each party organization. this are members of the parliament, ministers, permanent secretaries, party leaders and so on. with this persons the party will be associated in the public. on the other side they fulfil a main function. politicians in the parliament on the local or federal level, it does not matter, form he government. concluded to head you can say the political personal has government function, in electing and controlling the government. it could also mean to vote a member of the government out of his/her office. the correct term for this procedure is the vote of no confidence. parties affect as a transmission belt, they cause connections between the personnel and institutional separated organs of the executive and legislative and the people. july-august politikon strasbourg conclusions now the final question is do parties on the european level matter? the best way to answer that question is to look at the given explanations upper that article. here we defined parties about their function in the political system. to stay in the line of the definition i would say each point has to be answered with “yes” to say this is a transnational party. i do not want to deny the fact that the definition of parties i have given is a result of a normative concept of democracy. this concept, this idea entails that parties should be representatively democratic and not bureaucratic. they should be oriented to lead the government, at least to from it or to get into opposition. but how is it now? do transnational european parties have this characteristics given by weber, beyme and some others? and is it allowed to speak about transnational parties? european parties do have a common ideology and a common program which all the members are standing for. this program borders them from other european party families. this sharpens the view for the own members. european parties do have a program in which they extend their views of the future of the society. second european transnational parties do mobilize and socialize the general public. they do touch the interest of the european citizens. one good example for that is that most of the national laws are directives or regulations given by the european union. so to say brussels – governs more and more the memberstates. some regulations and directives come from the initiative of the european parliament. and the parliament is nothing more than elected representatives of the people. and for each election to the european parliament representatives and parties organize a campaign, so they mobilize voters and try to convince them with different strategies. in theory members of the parliament and their parties they belong to aggregate and articulate the interest of the people, also on the european level. the social democratic party for instance tries to aggregate the ideas, meanings, opinions bout politics and polity of their party family subsidiaries. abstractly you can say parties are the mouthpiece of the people. here as well i would answer the question with yes. now we come to the crucial fourth point. do european parties recruit political èlites? and even more are they responsible for the government formation? my answer will be half and half. european parties definitely recruit political èlites. each european party has a leader, and each parliamentary group of the european parliament has a leader. on the other hand european parties do not train and recruit political personal for being in the government as a secretary or minister. so to say political parties in the eu-parliament do not form and elect the european government, because this does not exist. european parties do not form the government, they do not send their political personal in high political offices. you can say even the opposite. parties on the european level are concealed as interest associations, because they miss this one important function to form, govern and control the government which is elected by the parliament. as we know the “government” of the eu is the commission and the council. and they will not be elected by the parliament but by the national governments. each european commissioner was sent into his office by the head of the government of the memberstate he/she belongs to. the same with the president of the commission. he was as well elected by the heads of the governments of the european memberstates. the last years the parliament fought for more participation in the european political process and they won some rights concerning control of the commission. now each commissioner has to be acknowledged by the parliament, they only have less influence on the fate of the commission. because of the fact that members of the eu-parliament are never forced to get responsibility in a government or where ever, the eu-parliament is a calm and silent institution, maybe a bureaucratic institution. and maybe this bureaucratic institution at the same time is the last station for careerists. the eu-parliament does not have any promotion prospects, it is very tough to get a step higher. so european parties miss this main function. and for that one they only are interest associations, interest associations of the people, but also of companies, other interest groups, scientific staff, bureaucracies and so on. but they are not parties in the original sense. european parties are parties of clients, but not parties of a huge amount of members. or you can say according to the american party system that european parties only are congressional parties. you can characterize this parties with the attributes “constituent”. a constituent party priority effects the structure, composition and the function way of the political system. however a responsive party, the second type lowi describes, is being responsible for their voters through a programmatic which leads its political acting. a responsive party develops coherent models for solving a problem with the obligation to make them to law in the case this party will win the election and form the government. now just two final comments. the main difference because european parties can not be parties in the conventional sense is that national parties like labor in england or democratia christiana in italy are so called parties for the people. they still have a strong membership and still a lot of people are member of that parties. this is a strong basis for the parties, because this members are mostly loyal voters, so to say staunch supporter by election. party leaders almost can count on that basis when it comes to federal elections. where do these staunch supporter come from. in theory these supporter have grown up from a special milieu, lets say the working milieu in big industrial areas. these workers have been socialized with the problems of the working class, they were members of the same sports clubs and so on. so they almost had the same social and political education and experience which distinguishes them from other milieus. and especially this basis is missing for the european parties, because they do not have this staunch supporter. and so they do not have s special milieu where they recruit there political personal from. july-august politikon prima pagina1 1-rīgas balss, 23.03.00 2-neatkarīga ciņa, 8.01.91 3-same. 4-rīgas balss, 18.12.91 5-the referendum was held, asking if people wanted to live in “independent and democratic republic of latvia”. the results showed, that the numbers for independence were higher than the percent of ethnic latvians in population of latvia, that meant, that minorities voted for independence too. 6-both ltf and lnnk formed in the period of perestroika. ltf was the party, which aim was to assist gorbachev’s perestroika in the beginning. lnnk was proindependence from the start. 7-the citizenship law was liberalised after the referenda was held in october 1998. 8-the supreme council was elected in 1990, those elections were first in soviet latvia, where relative concurence to communist party was accepted. first parliament in the history of renewed latvian republic was elected 1993. di juris dubrovskis—lu rhi, rīga, latvia. abstract. the aim of this article is to look at one of the two parties in latvia, whose ideology is classical liberalism. in the situation of the transition from totalitarianism to democracy the liberal ideas appeared to be unpopular to the majority of the population of latvia, due to different difficulties linked to transition, both economical and psychological. the article gives a glance to the programme and internal problems of llp. when speaking of liberal parties in the sense of neoliberalism in latvia, we should speak of parties, which ideology is classical liberalism. there were two such parties in latvia—latvia’s liberal party and latvia’s liberal democratic party. both parties participated in the elections of the parliament (saeima), but failed to get any places. these are not the only liberal parties in latvia of course. in 1993 the party called “latvia’s way” was founded and it’s one of the leading parties in latvia’s politics, though it’s ideology is not that of classical liberalism. let’s look at one of them, that is latvia’s liberal party (llp). the party was founded in 1990 and dissolved in 2000, due to a lack of members, as told the leader of the party janis danoss (1). it should be noted that the party had small amount of members from its foundation. the number was 40 in the beginning (spring 1991), then 130 (november 1991), (2). though, the list of parties, organizations etc., published in moscow in 1990, meant 140 as the number of members. the small number of members is an usual case for political parties in latvia, but numbers for llp were really small. the leaders of the party understood, that there will not be much people in post-soviet latvia, wishing to become members of liberal party. as gunars lansmanis put it “llp doesn’t wait for 700 000 pensioners and 100 000 invalids to support it” (3). the party stated, that it’s the party of people, who can sell their work, that is party of businessmen, doctors, scientists, intellectuals. free market, private enterprise etc. were aims of the party. llp wanted to use the tactics of “shock therapy”, which as they thought should heal the state in some months. the 1st congress of llp took place in november 1991 and the programme was adopted. as one of the problems the small number of members was mentioned. the programme (4) of the party in the field of economics stated that the private property, which was nationalised during the soviet times, should be returned to heirs of oldier propietiors. llp suggested the wide range privatisation of the state property at open auctions. the taxes system should be changed, and those, starting business, making export, enlarging the amount of work places, should be assisted. speaking of the political system, the party wanted to recreate the democratic parliamentary republic, which was based on the constitution of latvia (satversme, 1922). one of the most interesting questions is the question of citizenship. the situation of latvia was such, that there lived both descendants of citizens of independent latvia, and people, which came to latvia from the time it was soviet. at the dawn of renewed independence latvian people’s front (ltf), (5) proclaimed, that the citizenship will be given to all people now living in latvia. after the independence was regained the balance of political powers changed, latvian people’s front losing power, and the latvia’s national independence movement (lnnk), (6) suggested to give citizenship only to the descendants of the citizens of independent latvia. therefore 1/3 part of the population had no right to vote (7). llp thought that the law should be prepared by the supreme council of lr and approved by referendum (8). human rights were one of the central points in the pro july-august politikon 1-neatkarīga ciņa, 5.06.92. 2-1st saeima was elected 1922 for 3 years, 4th saeima was elected in 1931, but it’s work was interrupted by the coup d’etat, made by k. ulmanis. 3elections took place in 1993 and 1995. 4-the percent and number of those, who voted for the party: 0.13592% (1520)—5.saeima, 0.22640% (2163)—6.saeima. 5-neatkarīga ciņa, 8.11.91 6-v.blūzma was one of those, who signed “copenhagen declaration”. gramme: the party declared that death penalty should be abolished. according to llp none should object the right of a person to one’s sexual orientation. when speaking of prostitution, the party suggested to legalize it. to avoid alcoholism, the creation of the free market system was suggested, which should give people possibility to realize their talents. in the field of education, the party was for state financed education, suggesting to find money by limiting money spent for the needs of bureaucrats. there were some internal quarrels in the history of liberal party. the year 1992 was marked by the first crisis in the party—some members being expelled from the party without making them know, which was against the stautes of the party. expelled members published “copenhagen declaration” and accused the leader of the party of authoritarianism and neglect of all traditions of liberalism. they asked international and latvia’s organizations to boicott the party, until it neglects the stautes. the second negative moment in the history of llp was its extraordinary congress in 1993, when the leader of lldp g.čulkstēns was elected the leader of the llp. the previous leader j. danoss was not present at the congress and did not accept the result of elections. as a result both parties participated in the 5th saeima elections with two different lists. as it was told earlier llp participated in the 5th, 6th saeima elections, but failed to get any of the candidates to be elected to the national legislature. same is true to local government election of 1997. the programm of the party for the 6th saeima elections had not a lot of changes, when comparing it to the first programm: decentralisation and more power to local government, less money to bureaucrats, the rights of person in the first place, lowering of taxes. latvia is told to have two antiliberal traditions—one that of authoritarian regime (1934-1940) and the second—the failures of reforms in the 1990-s, which are associated with liberalism, not with people, who realized reforms. the electorate of the liberal party was very small. after the breakdown of planned economy, the economic situation was not that good and there were not a lot of people, who could start doing something. people, who looked for food and money, couldn’t be pleased by the proposals of “shock therapy”. no wonder, that in 1991 gunars lansmanis had to note at the press conference some time before the 1st congress, that the party unites people, who want to see economic prosperity of latvia, not those, who want to sell latvia. as valdis blūzma noted, there were two things, that deprived the party from success: a) quarells inside the party and b) the party couldn’t understand interests of the largest part of the electorate and make their programms fit interests of voters. july-august politikon literature: —“latvijas valsts atjaunošana 1990-1993”, r., 1997. —“spravočņik političeskih i obščestvennih organizacij latviji”, sost.iļja kudrjavcev, moskva, 1990. —“liberāļi ir par ‘šoka terapiju’ “—ģ. konrads— neatkarīga ciņa—1991—8.nov. —“latvijas liberālās partijas paziņojums”—neatkarīga ciņa—1992—5.maijs. —“kopenhagenas aicinājums”—neatkarīga ciņa— 1992—5.junijs. —“par llp programmu”—v.blūzma—rīgas balss— 1991—18.dec. —“latvijas liberālā partija izbeidz darbību”—rīgas balss—2000—23.marts. prima pagina1 by marcus grätsch (erasmus student university of warwick) june 2001 between the 4th and the 6th of may 2001 the third general meeting was held in berlin. so far 30 students are members of the national association. this members study actually at 15 different universities all over the country. the executive committee also produces an information newsletter distributed by mail for all people who gave a sign that they are interested in the association. this newsletter is issued unregularly, only important events became distributed. on the general meeting there were discussions held on administrative (i.e. statute changes and elections) and on project matters. this report is about the several projects of the national association of political science students in germany. workshop "democracy in post-cold war europe" the workshop, which was organized by members of iposs was held in february 2001 in marburg, germany. about 50 people participated at the discussions and lectures, among them students from eastern and western europe. these students were basically invited via iapss. some essays are already on the website of iposs: http://www.iposs.de/ marburg2001/index.html . essay competition a new project that is just in progress to become launched is an essay competition. students of universities and schools could write essays about “global governance” and try to win several prizes. the idea of how the project would look like in the end is not very clear elaborated. very many decisions have to be made by the organizing team over the next months. so far the idea is to set up a jury, maybe with iposs members and some international relation scholars. also book publishers, foundations and so on have to be asked for possible prizes. the organization team has to develop a poster, which should be distributed for promotion in nearly all universities in germany. the idea is to collect as many essays as possible until the end of april or the beginning of may 2002. linklist our website has the possibility to insert new internet links, which could be of importance for political scientist students. so far not much input has been done. we hope that will change in future. excursion the members of the association want to visit a city in which we could visit organizations related to the field of political science. in berlin the decision was made to organize a journey to brussel in belgium. in the capital of the european union we want to visit organization who are important for the policy decisions in the social security policy field. the members who plan the trip want to try to get some meetings arranged with officials of the european commission, the european council, the european parliament, european trade union confederation (etuc) and the union of industrial and employers' confederations of europe (unice). another idea is to meet people who work for the project www.eustudentvote.org . care&contact is a job fair of a different kind. job fairs for students can be visited very often. on normal fairs students have the possibility to speak to future employers of several business fields. large corporations present themselves on those fairs and try to seek new employees. those fairs are more organized for students of subjects like economics, business studies, engineering and the like. our fair, which will be held in berlin in november 2001 is one on which organization are presented who work in fields of social and ecological responsible fields. the idea is to bring students who can not make their choice on normal july-august politikon this report elaborates the actual projects of the german national association for political science students. mentioned are the workshop “democracy in post-cold war europe”, the essay competition, the linklist, the excursion, the care&contact fair, the university department profiles, the volunteership databank, the survey of new students, the book ‘introduction to political science: by and for students’, the essay peer reviewing, the homepage, the public relations work and finally the finances. job fairs because of their ethical attitudes, skills or whatever. university department profiles if a pupil decides to study political science he or she has to make a difficult decision. hoe does a specific department look like? how many students are their? which is the main field worked on in a specific department within political science? do they have a bias towards a theoretical background or not (eg. empirical-analytical, normative-ontology, critical-dialectical)? how many lecturers are their? that are just some questions which should become answered through a questionnaire which was designed by a member of iposs and will be filled out in the next month by department officials and/or students of that department. volunteership databank a volunterership is in germany in most study programs obligatory. we send to many organizations that are of interest for political scientist a questionnaire. the result of that survey can be reached over our website. students who want to do a volunteership can look there for specific details about organizations who replied on our questionnaire. the databank should grow in the future, if we send again the questionnaire around the world, because next time the idea is to send the form also to organizations abroad. survey of new students why do students decide for political science? from where do they get their information for those decisions? which job do they think they could do with a political science degree? these are some of the questions we asked in our first survey in october 2000. these and new questions will be also asked in october 2001, then the survey group will be widened to 2nd year and 3rd year students. introduction to political science some members want to write a book, which introduces to political science. this book will be a compilation of essays. regarding to the specific topics should these essays provide overviews of the several political science fields and of research and study tips from students for students. the idea is to publish that book at the end of the year 2002. essay peer review members who wrote essays for their study can send their work through our email distribution list and asking for people who want to read over it. in doing so we could help each other to make those study works better. finished essays can be reached over our website if send to our webmaster. homepage the homepage is the main communication with the world “outside” iposs. our webmaster designed just the layout new. you can visit it at www.iposs.de . there we have a formula for persons who want to get in contact with us. also the possibility to set up a discussion forum. people can read about our actual projects, visit the volunteership database and the university department profiles. public relations work some interviews had been made with journalists and members of the association. these interviews became printed. we send not regularly press information throughout the country. we want to get more active in public relations. our projects could be of interests for several governmental bodies, like for example the ministries for employment who are in germany in charge for job advises of pupils who had to left school. also the german association of political scientist (dvpw) could have an interest in our works. at the end of the summer vacation 2001 iposs will send information packages with poster, flyers and other promotion material to all political science departments in germany. finances membership fees finance our association. each member has to pay 10,euro a year. we got also some funding of the marburg local political science student association who gave us some money which had been taken of the surplus of a party. (not the cdu more a celebration event ;-). luglio-agosto politikon prima pagina1 by mojca nemgar the growth of the gdp seems much more important than overall development of the country. the gap between rich and poor is increasing drastically. everything that challenges profit e.g. worker s rights, pollution, descreasing absolute poverty is set aside and considered irrelevant. only few are to decide what the world itself and world economy should be like. g-8, imf, wb, wto are deciding about the future of the world in a name of few, as they are deciding about the important matters of humanity away from the eyes of the public. even the agreement of ftaa(free trade area of americas) was adopted away from the eyes of the public. namely ftaa is compromising 34 states of latin america and north america, although it seems that is only an extension of the nafta who has proved to be harmful both for the mexico, which obviously does not have enough economic power to cope (financial crise 1995) with thriving american economy, as for canada, a member of g-8. the canada-united and nafta trade agreement can more accurately be described as a economic integration treaty designed to integrate the canadian, american and mexican economies.among the most impportant provision are: creating a continental energy, water and natural resource markets, guaranteeing the united states privileged access to canadian integrating the canadian banking system and capital markets with those of the united states by granting u.s. banks national status in canada, restricting canada s right to control the inflow of u.s. capital and u. s. takeovers of canadian firms and resources and granting all american firms national status and the right of operation in canada, granting u.s. firms guaranteed access to canadian market for services, restricting canadian sovereignity over large areas of internal economic policy(e.g., although the classification of a prohibited subsidy has yet to be agreed upon the two countries, it will almost certainly restrict regional development subsidies, that have been the backbone of economic development policies dating back to the confederation.), and restricting the use of the public sector and state aid to promote economic development in canada. the nafta agreement incorporating mexico, signed in 1995 , is largly the extension of fta to include mexico, though the agricultural provisons are somewhat diffrent (ferfila, 1999). the problem is that corporations use nafta to attack environmental laws: of the seven known challenges using nafta's investor right-to-sue-governments provisions, six involve u.s. corporations attacking federalor state-level environmental measures in canada and mexico. in three cases, the u.s.-based companies are suing mexico for the right to open hazardous waste disposal facilities.the other three cases involve u.s.based corporations suing canada claiming environmental laws are "regulatory takings" against which nafta created new investor rights. these include a british columbia ban on the export by tanker of water to the united states; a federal public health ban on the import of a toxic gasoline additive; and a federal rule temporarily banning the export of pcbs for disposal.the best known of these is the ethyl corporation's successful 1997 claim against canada, which forced the canadian government to kill a major public health law. the u.s.-based ethyl corporation the company that put the lead in leaded gasoline used nafta against the government of canada to get the ban of its gasoline additive mmt reversed. canada banned mmt because public health officials determined that potential neurotoxins in mmt posed a public health hazard. ethyl demanded $251 million in compensation under nafta, arguing that canada's ban constituted an unfair "taking" of ethyl's property that property included the profits ethyl expected to earn from the sale of mmt in canada. ethyl charged, among other things, that simply by debating the proposed ban, the canadian parliament had damaged ethyl's reputation an actionable offense under nafta's rights for intellectual property holders. faced with the growing likelihood it could lose the suit, canada agreed to repeal the ban and pay ethyl $13 million in damages for lost profits to-date. contrary to the views of its own canada further agreed to pronounce mmt safe without scientific evidence and in direct contradiction to the views of the nation's environmental protection agency. many trade lawyers viewed the etyl suit as a test case that would indicate whether nafta's investor rights provisions went too far. july-august politikon in the 1995 the un set a target of a 50% reduction in the number of people existing in absolute poverty by 2015. this outcome is to be delivered not by any redistributive mechanism, but rather by appliacation of the particular neoliberal model of development promoted in the 1980s and 1990s by global governance institutions. this model places its faith in the markert rather than the state and focuses on export-led growth based on free capital mobility. the model represents a significant departure from the earlier embedded liberalism of the post-second world war period. it is even further removed from a critical alternative model of the development that places needs at the centre. the neoliberal model reqieres high and sustained growth to achieve the un s target for poverty reduction,african economies, for example would need to grow at estimated 7% a year on average to reach the target by 2015(amoako,1999). caroline thomas, global governance ,development and human security: exploring thelinks,third world quaterly, 2001 bibliography caroline thomas, global governance ,development and human security:exploring thelinks,third world quaterly, 2001 bogomil ferfila and paul philips: slovenia and canada; a comparative approach, 1999 international center for the settlement of investment disputes (icsid); appleton & associates. icsid is the only investor-to-state arbitration facility that keeps a public listing of its cases. under nafta, investors may also use the united nations center for international trade law (uncitral) rules to sue governments. unlike icsid, uncitral is not an agreement nor an institution; it is merely a set of rules. there is thus no secretariat to maintain publicly accessible records on each case. thus, there is the distinct possibility that other nafta chapter 11 cases exist, but have not been leaked to the public. -metalcald corp. v. mexico (being arbitrated at the international center for the settlement of investment disputes (icsid); azinian, et. al v. mexico (being arbitrated at icsid) and waste, inc. v. mexico (icsid). -heather scoffield, "b.c. water export ban brings u.s. lawsuit." the globe and mail, 12/9/98.) s.d. myers v. canada is being arbitrated under the uncitral rules. ethyl corp. v. canada was settled in 1997. -ethyl corporation, "u.s. company files notice to seek $200 million in claim against government of canada," press release, september 10, 1996. -nafta lawsuits cloud mai discussions," parliamentary bureau, august 24, 1998. 'expropriations' takes on new meaning: mmt case sets far-reaching precendent," the financial post, 7/28/98. www.oneworld.org -www.debtchannel.org ethyl vs. canada certainly did prove that nafta provisons are favorizing multinationals not people. implementing nafta did not help at all to create more working places in usa, canada and mexico, it just caused the wages to go down while working force in mexico is cheaper. although i have just superficialy revised some of the problems connected with globalisation and free trade agreements, it must be o b v i o u s from the p r o b l e m s s t a t e d above that g l o b a l governance i n s t i t u t i o n a r e p r o m o t i n g n e o l i b e r a l a g e n d a . with the fall of communism in eastern europe all the alternatives to capitalistic world-system seemed to be history, so we should live happily ever after in democracy and american model of world order.but human rights are also worker s rights, right to free education, access to health services, etc. not just freedom of association, freedom of speech.the free market economy which is obviously not free of obstacles since third-world countries have problems with exporting their products to usa and eu, it is only a market dominated by economically and politicaly most powerful states, and multinationals.on the other hand world bank and imf structural adjustment policies have required 36 countries in sub-saharan africa -where more than half of the population lives in absolute poverty -to decrease domestic consumption and shift scarce resources into production of cash crops for export; state-owned companies and many state services have been privatized, civil services have been drastically downsized, and health and education expenditures have been cut and restructured. the absolute number of people living in poverty rose in the 1990's in eastern europe, south asia, latin america the caribbean, and subsaharan africa-all areas that came under the sway of adjustment programs. what's more, the world bank has an astounding 65-70 per cent failure rate of its projects in the poorest countries. obviously the neoliberal agenda is only bluring the real problems of the today world, since the deregulating of the markets, privatisation, will not make world more just and d e m o c r a t i c , because the driving force of the world is not only the » m i g h t y « market. we have not yet come to the end of the history. notes: g-8 group of eight. established in 1975 as the g5(france, germany , japan and uk and usa) and subsequently expanded to include canada, italy and russia. the g-8 conducts semiformal collaboration on world economic problems. gatt general agreement on tarrifs and trade . established in 1947. has coortinated the multilateral negotiations to reduce state restrictions on crossborder merchandise. it was replaced by wto 1995, which has a wider agenda and greater powers. imf international monetary fund. established in 1945. membership of 182 states. the imf oversees short-term c r o s s b o r d e r m o n e y f l o w s a n d f o r e i g n exchangequestions. since 1979 it has also formulated stabilisationand system transformation policies on states suffereing chronic difficulties with international debt (many of latin american states, africa) and transitions from communist central planning. july-august politikon prima pagina1 by taina ahtela the global economy. global information exchange. global politics. global markets. global values. global responsibility. globalization, “globality”, globalism, the “g-word”, “mondialisation du monde” or “worldization of the world”. globalization defines both the development optimists’ greatest dreams as well as its critics’ worst nightmares. its progression cannot be stopped, and mostly the real issue in discussions about globalization concerns the rules that regulate it or rather the lack of them. whether one loves globalization or hates it, few doubt its existence. but the only thing about globalization that is certain seems to be that there is no agreement either on the concept nor its substance. with its self-legitimating symptoms it makes talk of the end of history or ideology seem slightly amusing. has a significant strucutural transformation truly taken place and if so, what is it like; what is even meant by globalization? two books, four specialists and a question: is there something new in all of this? globalization and its criticism the discussion on globalization is dispersed. the is no hope for an all-encompassing theory, when there isn’t even a working set of scientific concepts applicable to globalization. it is a different thing to speak of economic, cultural or communications-technological globalization. is politics globalized? globalization is often seen as representing the unavoidable reality, the historical development phase, which, due to its focus on economic aspects, sometimes seems even value-free and outside political control. ulrich beck, who is known for his concept of the “risk society” remarks that despite its value-free rhetoric, globalization hasn’t meant the end of politics but rather its extension outside the conceptual structure of the nationstate, outside the traditional dichotomy “political” and “non-political”. (what is globalization? beck 1999). this perception is common to almost all analyses of globalization and globalization is in fact most often defined as the extension of action (whether this be related to economics, political control, the definition of law or culture) outside the traditional level of the nation-state. it is of central importance, that no longer are individual actors’ and, most of all, corporations’ opportunities for influence limited to the sphere economic action. at its extreme it is a question of a “market-anarchic minimalist state utopia” which transforms the world without revolution or even political debate“business as usual”. the critical attitude towards globalization usually presents criticism towards the ideology of the so-called “globalism”. what is meant by globalism is the dominance of neo-liberalism in the interpretations of the international economy which has been made possible by globalization’s political and ideological side. globalism sees the dismanteling of political administration and the weakening of the role of the state as indicators of progress and, according to ulrich beck, all other dimensions as subordinate to this linear economic view. it dissolves the distinction between politics and economics, implicating that political action is replaceable by world markets. it is ironic that also the opponents of globalization have adopted this perception of the hegemony of world markets. i asked four experts in their own fields how they understand the concept of globalization and how it presents itself to them. common to all, was that globalization was not seen as a structurally new phenomenon, although, perhaps as something of a new degree, as deepening internationalization or as globalization amongst other phases of globalization. between the lines were also apparent the threats emanating from globalism. the globalizing economy hasn't given birth to a functioning political, social and legal control mechanism at the global level. and i quote beck: “a world society without a world state and without a world government”. the empire of the liberal market economy is there something new about globalization from an economic perspective then? grahame thompson and paul hirst question the concept of globalization from an economic perspective in their book globalization in question (polity press, 1996). according to them globalization has become a fashionable concept, which perceives the fundamental dynamic of the world economy as having changed structurally. but hirst and thompson reject the idea that the accelerating internationalization of the economy that has taken place after the 1970s reflects the formation of a “global” ecomic structure as something distict from previous internationalization. they also demonstrate that the international economy was partly even more integrated at the turn of the 20th century than now. and on the question of transnational corporations, hirst and thompson claim that the national level has not lost its meaning. quite the opposite actually, the central actors in the july-august politikon tions that have a national base. also the director of the department of economics at the university of helsinki, tapio palokangas says that no qualitative break has taken place. globalization has been happening gradually for centuries, although while progressing, it has affected institutions; the economic units have grown in size. but he still emphasizes, that although therewere, for example, no customs or passport formalities at the turn of the 20th century, now they are being given up because of ecomic and not political reasons. when asked what an economist means when speaking of globalization, palokangas says that ecomists have spoken of internationalization for centuries. “now we can of course speak of globalization, which is the exact same thing. actually, based on these previously mentioned reasons economists don’t even use the concept”. from the point of view of traditional development studies and the group of developing countries, globalization reflects the politics which have defined the developing countries’ position in the international economy for the past 15-20 years. pertti multanen from the department of development studies (hu) emphasizes that independent of globalization and the ideology of globalism, the central questions, such as indebtedness, are old. “the image of globalization in the era of free international trade doesn’t apply to developing countries. they still have significant obstacles to bringing their products to the world markets.” this issue is closely related to the falling prices of raw materials, which goes far back in history by way of colonialism, and which has accelerated during the era of globalization. if we observe the concrete development of the past 20 years, we see that the results are really badin practice globalization has, in its current form, meant the isolation of the group of developing countries and the deepening of their societal crisis. expressly due to the almost total lack of mutuality and equality, in the future there will have to be a discussion, which will decisively transform the concepts that are related to the liberalist, moneratist economic perception of, for example the role of the state in development. in the developing countries, the societal crises are so deep that their resolutions will require a democratically led state. global regulation, please? there have been essential transformations in societal development during the past years., such as the birth of the “information society” and the increased mobility of capital. problems have arisen that cannot be dealt with at the national level. but globalization itself is more than these developments, according to burkhard auffermann who specializes in international politics. “too often it is forgotten, that globalization is age old. one should remember, that european welfare has been based for many centuries on the exploitation of colonies.” from the point of view of political research the principal challenges involve the grave disappearance of opportunities for democratic means of action and influence in the current state of globalization. as power internationalizes through the financial markets, does the action of citizens also become more international? even at the level of the eu there is talk of the democratic defecit. “the eu at least has some institutions, through which citizens have the possibilty to influence policy-making. at the global level there is none.” the issue there is the effectiveness of international non-govenmental organizations. the director of the katti-intitute (intitute of economic law) veijo heiskanen (on leave of absence) also doesn’t see globalization as a historically unique phenomenon, but as one amongst others. even though, in the current – “conventional globalization” there are new aspects brought by technology, it is a matter of similar empirebuilding as was the roman oneand practice makes perfect – colonialism. from a social-philosophical perspective, the genuinely new aspects are not sufficient to make globalization irrevocable. although fom the legal perspective it is a question of the legal system’s substance being defined at the international level now, it is not necessarily permanent phenomenon. as opposed to international law, also informal actors participate in the formation of global law: corporations, ngo’s and private individuals. but heiskanen remarks that here “global” is actually restricted to the “west” or the sphere of liberal market economy. the main challenge he perceives, is fitting together local and global regulation. since conventional law is territorially defined, at the global level law becomes more and more abstract and less reflective of local needs. but heiskanen sees globalization as an almost natural pendulum movement, that is in itself difficult to criticize but which can be, more or less, managed. i know you are there veijo heiskanen asked in his speech at the law graduate study conference: “why is the world globalizing, “worldwidening” or becoming world wide only now? hasn’t the world always been as wide as itself, so world wide? if not, how wide has it been previously? the answer to this question comes down to the fact that the world has always been world wide, but only the technological development of the last decades has allowed a wider awareness of this fact to develop. the widening exchange of information has both enabled the world-widening of different sectors as well as made possible the discovery and analysis of these phenomena by specialists of different fields. but it is significant that this is not enough, and that “globality” is a collective feeling in our every-day lives. in a situation where our state has been taken away, as has the party and, seemingly, ideology as well, what would we do without globalization? we need to base our political awareness on something. choose life. get globalized. july-august politikon politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 61 domestic politics as an explanation for voluntary union: the missing case of the united arab republic joshua a. schwartz https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.40.4 joshua schwartz received his bachelor’s degree in economics and political science from the george washington university in 2012. during that time, he interned with the united states department of state and the united states senate. he is currently a doctoral student at the university of pennsylvania, and his research interests include international relations theory, drones, nuclear weapons, and terrorism. his work has been published in the washington post, the bulletin of the atomic scientists, and the cornell international affairs review. e-mail: josha@sas.upenn.edu. abstract what are the causes of voluntary union in world politics? in other words, why would two states decide to freely surrender their individual autonomy and merge into one state? in a sweeping new study that emanates from the realist tradition, joseph parent claims to have examined all the relevant historical cases and found that the unmistakable cause of voluntary union between two states is “optimally intense, indefinite, and symmetrically shared” external security threats. however, this paper will demonstrate that parent has mistakenly omitted valid historical cases of voluntary unions from his sample and, in the process, biased his findings. by examining one of these wrongly excluded cases in-depth, that of the united arab republic between egypt and syria, this paper will demonstrate that internal security threats and personal political incentives can also be causes of voluntary union. keywords arab nationalism; nasser; political integration; realism; united arab republic; voluntary union https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.40.4 mailto:josha@sas.upenn.edu politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 62 introduction in his book, uniting states, joseph parent attempts to explain what causes voluntary political union in world politics. in other words, why would two states decide to freely surrender their individual autonomy and merge into one? his central argument, emanating from the realist tradition, is that two states unify if they face “optimally intense, indefinite, and symmetrically shared” external security threats from third-party states (parent, 2011: 8). while parent’s argument may fully explain why some voluntary unions occur, this paper will challenge it in two principal ways by examining a single case in-depth – that of the united arab republic, a short-lived union between egypt and syria that lasted from 1958 to 1961. though the results from a single case study are not as generalizable as those from a large-n analysis and cannot disprove a probabilistic argument, one case can disprove a deterministic argument simply by showing a single situation where the argument does not hold (rogowski, 2010: 89-97). parent makes two deterministic arguments that i will argue the case of the uar disproves. the first one is definitional. in defining voluntary union, he asserts that “the first [factor that makes a union less voluntary] is the power disparity between unifying states. when a large state annexes a small state, the outcome cannot be called voluntary” because coercion undoubtedly must have been at play (parent, 2011: 5; emphasis added). as a result of this assumption, parent dismisses several potential cases from his analysis, which he claims include the entire “universe of cases”.13 however, whether coercion is at play in a union is an empirical question that cannot be determined a priori (coggins, 2013: 352). though parent dismisses the uar as a union “between unequals” (parent, 2011: 5), it was actually the weaker state, syria, that aggressively sought union with the stronger state, egypt. therefore, even though it is only one case, an analysis of the uar will demonstrate that parent’s restrictive definition of voluntary union is incorrect. the second deterministic argument that parent makes is that “…only security deficiencies causes states to unify. unification is extreme balancing behavior against other states” (parent, 2011: 23; emphasis added). nevertheless, the case of the uar will demonstrate that, in addition to external security threats, internal security threats to syria, along with the personal political incentives of certain egyptian and syrian elites, were also critical to the formation of the uar. accordingly, parent’s argument that only external security threats can spur voluntary political union is also incorrect. to support these claims, the paper will be organized as follows. first, it will consider parent’s arguments in more detail and foreshadow how the case of the uar supports and contradicts his framework. second, it will examine in-depth the conditions leading to the formation of the uar. third, it will conclude by explaining the implications of the uar for parent’s arguments. 13 parent examines the unions of the united states, switzerland, sweden and norway, and gran colombia in his book. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 63 parent’s argument summary parent argues that there are at least three necessary conditions that must be present for two states to unify: (i) they must face optimally intense external security threats that are indefinite and symmetrically shared; (ii) there must be some crisis that highlights the need for union in order to address security concerns; and (iii) elites must use the tools at their disposal to persuade the necessary audiences that union is necessary. optimally intense external security threats are those that are severe enough to warrant the extreme step of union, but not so overwhelming that union fails to alleviate the security threat in any meaningful sense (parent, 2011: 9-10). egypt and syria did face significant external security threats in the form of israel, iraq, the us, the ussr, the uk, france, etc., and forming the uar did help deter these threats to some extent. parent also argues that threats must be of long duration to spur union, as only threats that extend indefinitely will be powerful enough to motivate states to forsake their autonomy (parent, 2011: 10-11). since the us, ussr, uk, and france were not going anywhere, the threats that egypt and syria faced did seem to be long-term. finally, parent contends that states will not merge unless they are symmetrically (i.e., about equally) vulnerable to these security threats, as asymmetric vulnerability might make the less vulnerable state unenthusiastic about union (parent, 2011: 11). however, this argument does not hold for the uar. even though syria had its own unique internal threats and was more vulnerable to external threats than egypt, union still occurred. parent’s mistake is a function of how he defines voluntary union, as by excluding any cases “between unequals,” he biases his sample towards finding unions between states that are equally vulnerable to external threats. nevertheless, the fact that egypt was less vulnerable than syria did make egypt more tepid towards union and allowed egypt to drive a harder bargain when it came to the terms of forming the uar. parent’s second necessary condition for union is that there must be some sort of crisis that highlights the need for union to address security deficiencies (parent, 2011: 8, 12). without this, citizens will not be convinced that a measure as extreme as union is necessary. this argument fits the case of the uar since the syrian crisis of 1957 was the spark that precipitated its creation. parent’s last condition for union is that elites must use the tools at their disposal to persuade critical audiences that union is necessary (parent, 2011: 13-14). one important tool is the media, and it is true that the egyptians used propaganda to convince the masses that union was necessary and desirable. a second tool is the military, and specific syrian elites effectively utilized the military to pressure egypt into accepting union. finally, political procedures can be an important factor, and politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 64 certain syrian elites undoubtedly manipulated who sat at the bargaining table in order to make union more likely. therefore, this aspect of parent’s argument fits well with the case of the uar. finally, parent argues that realism explains voluntary union better than other major international relations paradigms. while parent’s realist theory argues that it is security threats that drive union, liberals have argued in favor of economics (haas, 1964; 1968; rodrik, 2000), and constructivists in favor of ideas (adler and barnett, 1998). although this paper disagrees with parent about what kinds of security threats can lead to union, it agrees with him that realism, broadly defined, does a better job than the alternative theories of explaining the formation of the uar. liberalism does not explain the formation of the uar, as economics played little to no role in the merging of egypt and syria. on the other hand, constructivism does help explain the creation of the uar, as ideas about arab unity and nationalism certainly played a role in motivating political leaders to seek union and the public to accept it. nevertheless, what drove the creation of the uar was security threats and the personal political incentives of egyptian and syrian politicians. though ideas about arab unity were enough to convince egypt and syria to consider union on several occasions, union was explicitly rejected until security threats became particularly salient (palmer, 1966: 50). thus, it was realist-related variables like material threats and power that were the most important factors precipitating union. theoretical criticisms this paper makes two central criticisms of parent’s argument. the first is that parent defines voluntary union too narrowly. just because there is a power disparity between states does not automatically make a union involuntary. the union between egypt and syria was voluntary given that it was the weaker state (syria) that pushed for union and the publics of both states overwhelmingly approved of it. the second main criticism this paper makes of parent’s argument is that he inconsistently applies (coggins, 2013: 352) the fundamental neorealist assumption that states are unitary actors, which essentially means that domestic politics is unimportant (waltz, 1979). for example, parent allows for domestic politics as an explanation for when unions form (after a crisis), how they form (by elite persuasion), and why they collapse (if internal threats eclipse external threats) (parent, 2011: 10-12, 15, 27). however, when theorizing about why states unify, he appears to assume that states are unitary actors that only face external security threats. therefore, while parent allows for domestic politics to creep into his analysis, he does not consider it as an explanation for his central question of why states would agree to voluntarily unify. this paper argues that parent did not go far enough in relaxing neorealist assumptions and considering the importance of factors at the state level of analysis. domestic politics was critically important in motivating union between egypt and syria, as two of the major reasons for the formation of the uar were (1) to protect syria from politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 65 internal security threats, namely communism; and (2) to further the political power of key syrian and egyptian elites. consequently, this paper will demonstrate the limitations of strictly adhering to neorealist assumptions. the uar: a story of external threats, internal threats, & elite incentives methodology it is precisely because parent makes such unconditional arguments that a single case study can disprove his claims and significantly contribute to our understanding of voluntary union. parent argues that unions between unequal states “cannot be considered voluntary” and that “only” external threats cause states to unify (parent, 2011: 5, 23). neither argument holds in the case of the uar, which establishes that unions between unequal states can indeed be considered voluntary, and that there are other causes of voluntary union besides external security threats. background on egypt: the rise of nasser before discussing the years immediately preceding the formation of the uar, it is important to note some background information that will help structure the following sections. egypt became a british protectorate in 1882 and only received formal independence in 1922. the uk nevertheless continued to maintain significant influence over egypt afterwards. it is in this context that gamal abdel nasser came to power in 1954, after helping overthrow the british-backed egyptian king farouk (yapp, 1991: 211-212). nasser was first and foremost an egyptian nationalist that aspired to free egypt from british oppression and establish egypt as a hegemon in the arab world (podeh, 1999: 28). later, nasser also became an aggressive supporter of arab nationalism: the idea that arabs in different states are linked and should unite based on their common language, culture, and (in most cases) religion in order to fend off foreign threats, especially western imperialism and israel (hopwood, 1988: 79). nasser, of course, favored arab unity under his leadership. to this end, his two major doctrines were: (i) non-alignment with the superpowers is the best guarantee of independence; and (ii) arab states should rely on other arab states for their defense (seale, 1965: 199). given that egypt was the strongest middle eastern arab state, these doctrines were somewhat self-serving and led to conflict with other arab states that did not want to depend on egypt (hopwood, 1988: 49). foremost among them was iraq. background on syria: domestic instability & the ba’ath party politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 66 two key points are important regarding syria. first, besides external threats, syria also faced significant internal threats in the form of domestic instability: the country had three military coups in 1949 and one in 1954 (yapp, 1991: 99-101). second, a critically important political group within syria for the formation of the uar was the arab socialist ba’ath party, formally founded in 1946 and a minority member of the governing coalition in 1956 (hopwood, 1988: 38). the goals of the ba’ath party were to achieve socialism, a unified arab state, and independence from imperial influence, (seale, 1965: 153). therefore, both the ba’ath and nasser shared a passion for arab nationalism, which demonstrates the importance of ideas in fostering union. the baghdad pact: a battle between egypt & iraq with syria in the middle on february 24, 1955, iraq joined the baghdad pact or central treaty organization, a military alliance between iraq, iran, pakistan, turkey, and the uk. this signaled iraq’s alignment with the west and pledged the uk to defend iraq if it were attacked and to provide them with military aid (khadduri, 1960: 348-349). iraq’s signing of the pact illustrates the contrasting visions for the middle east held by nasser and iraq’s prime minister, nuri al-sa’id. sa’id was more supportive of relations with the west because he believed that the soviet expansionist threat was substantial and that arab armies were too weak to deter it (seale, 1965: 199). furthermore, sa’id believed that forsaking western aid would empower egypt as the hegemon of the middle east, thereby disadvantaging iraq (seale, 1965: 200). alternatively, nasser bitterly opposed the baghdad pact because he was against significant western influence in the middle east on principle and believed the pact threatened egypt’s regional position by isolating it and enabling iraq (jankowski, 2002: 59). the result of egypt and iraq’s specific feud over the baghdad pact and general struggle for influence in the middle east was attempts by both sides to destabilize and depose the other. egypt waged a scathing propaganda campaign on their voice of the arabs radio station that criticized sa’id for his “betrayal of arabism” (hopwood, 1991: 43) and his acceptance of “…an alliance that will destroy iraq’s aspirations of freedom, palestine’s hope of independence, and the arabs’ hopes of unity” (jankowski, 2002: 72). iraq also utilized its own propaganda radio station, the voice of free iraq, to call for rebellion in egypt (jankowski, 2002: 73). moreover, both parties provided financial support to opposition groups with the hope of overthrowing the other (jankowski, 2002: 73). consequently, iraq was a serious external threat to egypt. the fight over the baghdad pact between egypt and iraq also extended to syria, as iraq wanted them to join as well, while egypt strongly opposed such a move (izzeddin, 1981: 303). iraq had previously aspired to annex syria in the so-called “fertile crescent plan,” which would have politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 67 strengthened iraq’s regional position at the expense of egypt’s (pearson, 2007: 46). to this end, iraq had a hand in the syrian coups of 1949 and 1954, as well as plans for additional coups that never materialized and military invasion plans that were never approved (seale, 1965: 266-280). none of these schemes ever led to union, and syria ultimately decided not to join the baghdad pact because it was very unpopular with the arab masses (jaber, 1966: 37-39). nonetheless, given iraqi designs on syria, which were also shared by jordan, syria faced significant external security threats during this time (anderson: 1995: 23-24). the suez crisis & nasser’s skyrocketing popularity standing up to perceived western imperialism with the baghdad pact improved nasser’s standing in the arab world, and two additional events in 1955 furthered this trend. the first was the bandung conference in indonesia in april, which was attended by 29 asian and african states, many of which were newly independent. at the conference, nasser advocated for the end of colonialism, including the right of algeria to gain its independence from france, championed the palestinian cause, and became a leader in the non-aligned movement (izzeddin, 1981: 200-202). although nasser’s support for the non-aligned movement angered the west, and his support for algerian independence infuriated the french, it increased his prestige among arabs (hopwood, 1991: 46). a second event occurred in september, when nasser bought arms from the ussr through czechoslovakia, bypassing the west. western anger towards nasser only increased in early 1956. in march, jordan, which had a treaty linking it to the uk, ordered general john glubb and other british officers to leave the country (jaber, 1966: 42). since the uk mistakenly thought that the egyptians had a direct hand in removing glubb, their frustration with nasser expanded even further (lucas, 1991: 94-95). in may, egypt formally recognized communist china, which was yet another black mark on nasser’s record (izzeddin, 1981: 156). britain and france only needed one more antagonistic act by nasser to push them over the edge. the suez canal, occupied by the uk since 1882, was a clear symbol of external political domination and economic exploitation. principally for this reason, nasser announced on july 26, 1956, that egypt would be nationalizing the canal. this was immensely popular with the arab masses in general, and after this announcement there was a rally in syria with over 100,000 people celebrating nasser’s decision (podeh, 1999: 33). even iraq had to publicly support and congratulate nasser because his actions were so popular that opposing them risked revolution (jankowski, 2002: 83). in private, however, iraqi leaders condemned nasser’s actions and urged the uk to overthrow him (jankowski, 2002: 84). for example, sa’id told uk prime minister anthony eden that “you have only one course of action open and that is to hit, hit now, and hit hard” (lucas, 1991: 41). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 68 eden thus decided that nasser needed to go (jankowski, 2002: 84). france also saw this as an opportunity to remove nasser as punishment for his support of algerian nationalists, as did israel, who was concerned about egypt’s arms buildup with the czechoslovakia deal (hopwood, 1991: 46, 52). consequently, the uk, france, and israel colluded to invade egypt, overthrow nasser, and reoccupy the suez canal. this plan was known as the protocol of sèvres. on october 29, israel invaded egypt and the uk and france followed on november 5 (hopwood, 1991: 53). egypt was outmatched militarily and only saved when the us, ussr, and united nations demanded that the three aggressors end their invasion and subjected them to intense pressure (hopwood, 1991: 55). nasser consequently suffered a relatively small military defeat, but a massive political victory, as he had stood up to western imperial aggression and survived an attack on three fronts (mansfield, 2010: 290). thus, by the end of the suez crisis, nasser was by far the most revered arab leader (hopwood, 1988: 39). nasser’s popularity will thus be critically important to the formation of the uar, and the suez crisis clearly illustrates some of the significant external threats faced by egypt. the syrian crisis of 1957: satisfying parent’s crisis condition the syrian crisis of 1957 was a result of perceptions that syria was falling to communism and on the verge of becoming a soviet satellite state. this notion began when king hussein of jordan, a uk ally, blamed syrian arab nationalists for directing a pro-communist subversion in jordan, which almost led to the fall of the monarchy in april 1957 (anderson, 1995: 24). then, in late july, syrian defense minister khalid al-azm, a known soviet sympathizer who was allied with the one member of the syrian communist party in parliament, signed a significant economic agreement with the ussr (podeh, 1999: 37). the drama accelerated in august, when 3 us “diplomats” were expelled from syria for allegedly being involved in a plot to overthrow the syrian regime (anderson, 1995: 25). in reality, this was a cia plot (one of many) to overthrow the syrian government, codenamed “operation wappen” (little, 1990: 55-58). four days after the expulsion, afif al-bizri, another communist sympathizer, was appointed the chief of staff of the syrian army (little, 1990: 55-58). even though there was just one member of the communist party in the syrian parliament, by this time the us, uk, israel, iraq, jordan, and turkey were convinced that syria was on the verge of becoming a client state of the soviet union (anderson, 1995: 25-28). many states were eager to intervene in syria before this occurred, especially the us, israel, iraq, and turkey (anderson, 1995: 25-28). however, the us could not intervene alone because unilateral western intervention in the arab world would have been immensely unpopular among the arab masses; the israelis were held back by the americans because the optics of an israeli intervention would have been even worse politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 69 than a western-led one; and sa’id was restrained by his government (anderson, 1995: 29). nevertheless, the turks were intent on taking military action, and at the height of the crisis, in september 1957, they massed 50,000 troops on the syrian border with the acquiescence of the us (pearson, 2007: 49). in a show of strength, the us also moved its powerful 6th fleet to the syrian coast and sent aircraft from western europe to their base at adana in turkey, which is close to the syrian border (pearson: 2007: 49). ultimately, however, the crisis abated without any violence, as the us did not want turkey to intervene unilaterally and be isolated in the arab world (anderson, 1995: 37). when it had become clear that no military action was forthcoming, nasser sent 2,000 troops into syria as a sign of solidarity, boosting his support among the syrian public and some circles of the syrian government (jankowski, 2002: 96). still, this crisis highlights that syria faced significant external security threats, and it was the trigger that would spur the creation of the uar. the birth of the uar: confirming the importance of elite maneuvering by the end of the 1957 crisis, the syrian ba’ath were worried about the growing communist influence, especially since their prestige within syria had increased after the economic deal with the ussr and the fact that the soviets supported syria during the crisis (jankowski, 2002: 96). as a result, the ba’ath and some other syrian political parties boycotted municipal elections in november 1957 for fear of significant communist gains or even a victory, and the syrian prime minister eventually postponed them indefinitely (jaber, 1966: 44-45). the refusal to participate in elections demonstrates the electoral weakness of the ba’ath and the urgency of their concern regarding the ascendency of the communists (podeh, 1999: 37). the ba’ath were also anxious that an attempt by the communists to take power would be used by the syrian right-wing to justify forceful countermeasures that would move syria closer to the west and pro-western iraq and jordan (seale, 1965: 316-317). given that the ba’ath were at the height of their political power yet controlled just 20 of the 142 seats in the syrian parliament, they concluded that they had to take a new approach in order to rise to power (seale, 1965: 310). over the past few years, the syrian parliament had passed resolutions calling for union with egypt and created committees to negotiate a federal union between the two countries (palmer, 1966: 50). however, nasser’s position had consistently been that conditions were not favorable for union and likely would not be for many years (podeh, 1999: 102). furthermore, nasser had never even visited syria before (podeh, 1999: 49)! this demonstrates that while ideas about arab nationalism caused egypt and syria to consider union, they were not sufficient to convince them to unify. however, the ba’ath calculated that aggressively pushing for union with egypt now was their best move for four reasons: (i) it would help them achieve their goal of arab unity; (ii) it could help politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 70 stabilize syria and mitigate the internal threats that the ba’ath believed syria faced, namely communists and right-wingers; (iii) it would allow them to more effectively deter external threats given that egypt was more powerful than syria; and (iv) they hoped it would increase their domestic power, given that union with egypt was popular with the syrian public and nasser and the ba’ath would be natural allies if syria and egypt merged (hopwood, 1988: 39). hence, internal threats and personal political incentives are a critical part of the ba’ath’s motivation for union. to try and make this a reality, the ba’ath turned to the syrian military, whose most powerful faction consisted of pro-ba’ath officers who believed that nasser could strengthen syria’s weak institutions and prevent it from falling into civil war (hopwood, 1988: 39). this shows that critical members of the syrian military were also motivated to seek union with egypt due to internal threats. in any case, the ba’ath believed that if the military demanded that nasser agree to union in order to save syria, he would have to accept given his public image as a strong advocate of arab nationalism (jankowski, 2002: 105). in addition, nasser had signaled in the past that he would not accept union unless it had the support of the syrian military, as he did not want the military to overturn it and embarrass egypt (seale, 1965: 319-320). this fits with parent’s argument that elites often must utilize the military to make union a reality. to this end, ba’ath foreign minister salah al-din al-bitar suggested to the syrian military command council that they open direct negotiations with nasser (jankowski, 2002: 105). while chief of staff bizri (a communist sympathizer) at first tried to resist bitar’s proposal, he eventually had to accept it for fear of popular backlash if it ever became public that he opposed union with egypt (jankowski, 2002: 105). it was only after the military decided to leave for egypt and press for union that they informed the rest of their political superiors. although syrian president shukri al-quwatli considered this essentially another military coup, he was powerless to stop it for the same reasons as bizri (jankowski, 2002: 106). in their initial meeting, nasser worried that he did not know much about syria, that he would be taking responsibility for a fragile state that could collapse, and that the military command council did not represent the legitimately elected government of syria (monte, 1966: 52). to address the last point, bitar flew to egypt to negotiate some sort of federal union between the two states (jankowski, 2002: 107). ultimately, nasser decided that he would accept union with syria. one of the main reasons for this is that the ba’ath had ensnared nasser in a trap. if he rejected the offer, then his image as a courageous champion of arab nationalism would be tarnished, diminishing his personal power (podeh, 1999: 46). the second reason involved the external security threats faced by both egypt and syria. by agreeing to union, nasser gained an advantage in the fight for regional influence with iraq (e.g., by gaining control of syria’s military, economic resources, and strategic location), as well as in the continued conflict with israel (podeh, 1999: 47). additionally, politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 71 nasser would be able to better secure his ally, syria, from foreign threats. this was important to nasser because syria provided a geographic buffer from his middle east enemies, and if syria fell, egypt would have a new enemy near its border (podeh, 1999: 28). a third major reason nasser decided to accept union was to combat syria’s internal threats. he legitimately feared a communist takeover of syria (jaber, 1966: 48) and worried that syria’s collapse could destabilize the middle east and ultimately threaten egypt’s security (jankowski, 2002: 98). so, like his syrian counterparts, nasser was motivated to accept union largely due to internal threats to syria and personal political incentives. at this point, the terms of the union were still up for negotiation. in this debate, however, it was nasser that had caught the syrians in a “trap of their own making” (jankowski, 2002: 112). nasser demanded that the union be total, that all parties be eliminated except his national union party, and that the syrian army cease political participation (hopwood, 1988: 40). even though many syrian politicians and parties (e.g., the ba’ath) had no desire to “commit party political suicide” (seale, 1965: 322) and tried to renegotiate nasser’s demands, he refused to yield and the syrian military supported him because they believed that only he could solve syria’s problems (palmer, 1966: 52). the ba’ath and other syrian politicians were trapped in a catch-22: if they capitulated to nasser’s demands, they would lose power, but if they refused his conditions and rejected union, they would enrage the syrian public and risk being overthrown (palmer, 1966: 53). in bizri’s words, “since they’re all saying unity, unity, unity, nobody would dare say no, we don’t want it. the masses would rise against them. i mean we followed the masses. the crowds were drunk…who at that hour could say that we don’t want unity? the people would tear their heads off” (jankowski, 2002: 106). therefore, syria agreed to nasser’s demands, and on february 21, 1958, a referendum was held in egypt and syria, which approved the union and nasser’s election as its president by a resounding majority of 99.9% (hopwood, 1988: 40). the uar was officially established. putting it all together: evaluating parent’s argument what did parent get right? parent’s framework fits many aspects of the uar. first, he was correct that external threats played an important role in explaining why egypt and syria were motivated to merge. both countries faced significant external security threats, and they had reasons to believe that union would help alleviate these threats. second, parent was correct that a “security crisis” usually precedes union and helps explain the timing of when unions occur, as the syrian crisis of 1957 shows (parent, 2011: 12, 27). third, parent was right that elite persuasion/maneuvering was a critically important factor in explaining union. nasser utilized the media with his voice of the arabs radio station to increase public support for union by aggressively promoting arab nationalism. additionally, the syrians politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 72 employed their military to put pressure on nasser, and they manipulated political procedures so that it was pro-union syrians (i.e., the military command council and bitar) that sat at the bargaining table. the latter point is critical, as once union had been agreed to, pro-union syrians knew that public pressure would make it difficult for anti-union syrian politicians to reject it. lastly, parent was right that realist-related variables do a better job of explaining union than constructivist-related variables. though ideas about arab unity certainly played an important role in the formation of the uar, what explains why union was agreed to in february 1958, as opposed to earlier, was a change in the threat environment faced by egypt, syria, and their political elites. as parent argued, “states unify…not because their identities change but because their environment does” (parent, 2011: 19). what did parent get wrong? the case of the uar suggests two of parent’s central arguments are incorrect. first, his definitional argument that voluntary unions cannot take place between two states with a significant power disparity is contradicted by the formation of the uar. in that case, it was the weaker state, syria, that aggressively sought union with the stronger state, egypt. in fact, before the syrian military command council flew to egypt, nasser had suggested that union would not happen for many years. furthermore, the union was put to a referendum and was overwhelmingly endorsed by the people from both countries.14 now, parent might respond by arguing that significant coercion was involved, given the pressure the military command council put on nasser to accept union and the pressure nasser put on syria to accept union on his terms. however, neither side was prepared to use their military and economic resources to force union. therefore, either side could have walked away freely, though they may have faced significant political costs. in addition, parent allows for a certain amount of coercion with his arguments about elite persuasion/maneuvering. finally, it is possible parent would argue that the uar was not a voluntary union because its terms essentially meant egypt was annexing syria. however, if the smaller state voluntarily agrees to be annexed, which was the case with syria, then there appears no logical reason why parent’s claim must hold. the second argument that parent gets wrong is his assertion that voluntary unions only form in response to external security threats from third-party states. however, the case of the uar demonstrates there are at least two additional explanations that parent does not consider. the first is that voluntary unions may form at least partially in response to internal/domestic rather than external/foreign threats. one of the principal motivations in forming the uar for all actors was to 14 i have not found any references to significant voter fraud or intimidation in the cited literature, but it stands to reason that the 99.9% majority is at least a bit inflated. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 73 combat the internal threats facing syria. a reasonable response by parent would be to point out that syria’s internal threats were an external threat to egypt. nevertheless, this would not explain why syria sought union to address their internal difficulties, and it contradicts parent’s claim that voluntary union is a response to threats from third parties. it is because parent fails to consider internal threats as a motivation for union and assumes that unions between unequals are inherently involuntary that he mistakenly claims that voluntary unions cannot occur unless states are symmetrically vulnerable to security threats. given that egypt did not face the serious internal threats that syria did and was stronger militarily, they were asymmetrically vulnerable. the fact that syria was more vulnerable did not mean that voluntary union could not occur, as parent asserts, but that the union that did form was more unequal since egypt did not need union as badly as syria and consequently had more bargaining power. the second motivation for voluntary union that parent misses is personal political incentives, which played a strong role in convincing the ba’ath to push for union, nasser to accept it, and syrian politicians to bow to nasser’s terms. if domestic politics played no role in motivating union, per neorealist assumptions, then it is possible that the uar would have never been formed. for example, the ba’ath may never have pushed for union for fear that syria’s relative vulnerability would lead to strong demands by egypt; nasser may never have accepted union to avoid assuming the responsibility of fixing syria and risking the arab unity failing in practice; and syria’s politicians may never have acquiesced to nasser’s terms and surrendered a large portion of syria’s autonomy. therefore, by strictly adhering to neorealist assumptions and neglecting domestic politics, parent may underestimate the chances of voluntary union in some cases (e.g., the uar) and overestimate it in others (e.g., where elites have political incentives to reject union). conclusion: the limitations of this study there are at least three big questions that this paper leaves unanswered. the first is: what is the most important factor motivating states to form voluntary unions? since external threats, internal threats, and personal political incentives are all present in the case of the uar, it is difficult to know which factor played the largest role. parent may yet be right that external threats are the most powerful; we will need to examine more cases to be sure. a second outstanding question is: what conditions are sufficient to cause voluntary union? because this paper only examined a case where voluntary union occurred, we cannot definitively know what causes voluntary unions since external threats, internal threats, political incentives for union, etc. are also present in many cases where union does not materialize. we must avoid selecting on the dependent variable and analyze cases where union does not occur. finally, the third question this paper leaves open is: why do some voluntary unions break down? considering that this was not parent’s main research question, this paper did politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 74 not analyze the collapse of the uar. doing so could be an avenue for future research on voluntary unions. references adler, emanuel and michael barnett (1998): security communities. new york: cambridge university press. anderson, phillip (1995): ‘summer madness: the crisis in syria’, british journal of middle eastern studies 22(1): pp. 21-42. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13530199508705610 coggins, bridget (2013): ‘uniting states: voluntary union in world politics’, perspectives on politics 11(1): pp. 351-353. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/s1537592712003908 haas, ernst (1964): beyond the nation-state: functionalism and international organization. stanford: stanford university press. haas, ernst (1968): the uniting of europe: political, social, and economic forces, 1950-1957. stanford: stanford university press. hopwood, derek (1988): syria: politics and society. london: unwin hyman. hopwood, derek (1991): egypt: politics and society. london: harper collins. izzeddin, nejla abu (1981): nasser of the arabs: an arab assessment. london: the third world center for research and publishing. jaber, kamel abu (1966): the arab ba’th socialist party: history, ideology, and organization. syracuse: syracuse university press. jankowski, james (2002): nasser’s egypt, arab nationalism, and the united arab republic. london: lynne rienner publishers. khadduri, majid (1960): independent iraq: 1932-1958. london: oxford university press. little, douglas (1990): ‘cold war and covert action: the united states and syria’, middle east journal 44(1): pp. 51-75. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/2468-1733_shafr_sim140160732 lucas, w. scott (1991): divided we stand: britain, the united states, and the suez crisis. london: hodder & stoughton. mansfield, peter (2010): a history of the middle east. london: penguin books. palmer, monte (1966): ‘the united arab republic: an assessment of its failure’, middle east journal 20(1): pp. 50-67. available from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4323954 parent, joseph (2011): uniting states: voluntary union in world politics. new york: oxford university press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4323954 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 75 pearson, ivan (2007): ‘the syrian crisis of 1957, the anglo-american special relationship, and the 1958 landings in jordan and lebanon’, middle eastern studies 42(1): pp. 45-64. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/00263200601079625 podeh, elie (1999): the decline of arab unity: the rise and fall of the united arab republic. brighton: sussex academic press. rathmell, andrew (1995): secret war in the middle east: the covert struggle for syria. london: i.b. tauris. rodrik, dani (2000): ‘how far will international economic integration go?’, the journal of economic perspectives 14(1): pp. 177-186. doi: http://doi.org/10.1257/jep.14.1.177 rogowski, ronald (2010): ‘how inference in the social (but not the physical) sciences neglects theoretical anomaly’, in henry brady and david collier rethinking social inquiry: diverse tools, shared standards. lanham: rowman and littlefield, pp. 89-97. seale, patrick (1965): the struggle for syria: a study of post-war arab politics. london: oxford university press. waltz, kenneth (1979): theory of international politics. long grove: waveland press. yapp, malcolm edward (1991): the near east since the first world war: a history to 1995. new york: addison wesley longman. domestic politics as an explanation for voluntary union: the missing case of the united arab republic introduction parent’s argument summary theoretical criticisms the uar: a story of external threats, internal threats, & elite incentives methodology background on egypt: the rise of nasser background on syria: domestic instability & the ba’ath party the baghdad pact: a battle between egypt & iraq with syria in the middle the suez crisis & nasser’s skyrocketing popularity the syrian crisis of 1957: satisfying parent’s crisis condition the birth of the uar: confirming the importance of elite maneuvering putting it all together: evaluating parent’s argument what did parent get right? what did parent get wrong? conclusion: the limitations of this study references politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 7 attending to the wrong issue in the political spectrum: right-wing populism for left-wing concerns in the eu lora hadzhidimova and aaron stacey2 https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.40.1 lora hadzhidimova is a phd candidate in international studies with a focus on security studies at old dominion university, norfolk, va. she earned her ma degree in humanities at odu and holds an ll.m. degree from sofia university, bulgaria. previously, she completed internships with the operational analysis branch in natoact and the joint forces staff college in norfolk, va. e-mail: lhadzhid@odu.edu. aaron stacey has a ba in politics, philosophy, and economics from the university of stirling in the uk, and an ma in political economy of russia and eastern europe from university college london. he is currently a doctoral candidate in the graduate program in international studies at old dominion university, norfolk, va, where he concentrated in transnational, interdependence and power, and international political economy. in addition to european academic interests, he has also worked at the institute for asian studies, and the confucius institute. email: astac005@odu.edu. abstract this study aims to explore the relationship between populism and the national concerns expressed by citizens in the european union (eu). in particular, we seek to determine if a certain type of populism in the countries (right or left) responds to the leading national concerns (cleavages). in order to do so, we examine the national concerns and the type of populism in the eu’s eastern and western member-states, separately, and then compare them. results show, first, that right-wing populism in the eu is much more common than left-wing populism, and, second, that the east and the west share to a large extent similar national concerns that are left-wing in nature. we conclude that the predominant type of populism in the eu does not overlap with the type of concerns on a national level. implications for this tendency are provided. keywords european union; left-wing; national concerns; populism; right-wing 2 the authors would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and for their valuable recommendations that contributed to making this paper a scholarly contribution of higher quality. https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.40.1 mailto:lhadzhid@odu.edu mailto:astac005@odu.edu politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 8 introduction in the past few years, there has been a rise in the support for parties that have come to be termed ‘populist’ or ‘anti-establishment’. the parties come from both left and right, can present different degrees of authoritarianism, of nationalism, and geographically span through the european continent. based on these parties’ diversity, has arisen the question of the type of populist party that countries have. in some countries, the populist party has a left-wing hue while in other it leans to the right. some theories suggest that the leftness or rightness of a populist party depends on what social cleavages and concerns are most salient in that society. when an economic cleavage is most salient, such as the gap between rich and poor, income inequality, job prospects and so forth, populists tend to lean to the left. in the case of a salient cultural cleavage, in terms of immigration, language, religion, and others, populist parties will tack to the right. in some places both cleavages may coexist, populists consequently having elements of both (rodrik, 2017). in this case, the variety of populist parties across europe as a whole may be explained by the concerns that are most pressing to the people of each country. using responses from eurobarometer surveys from the past 10 years, that ask people in each eu-member state what the most pressing concern facing their country is, this paper seeks to test the hypothesis that economic cleavages lead to left-wing populism and cultural cleavages to right-wing populism. if it is true, then we might expect to see that countries, where people have economic concerns would tend to have a populist party that leaned to the left while in countries where people reported cultural concerns the local populist party leaned to the right. we will also pay attention to variations over and across different regions of europe such as in the east and the west. literature review one of the striking features in the literature on populism is the difficulty that authors have had to define the concept as it has been used to describe a variety of movements, parties, and policies, across a variety of geographical locations and time periods, beginning with the narodniks of russia in the 1870s and the farmers’ movement in the united states of the same period. one of the earliest attempts to analyze and define the concept of populism was the 1969 book populism (ionescu and gellner, 1969) which derived from a conference held in london. it discussed the phenomena from a variety of angles and across a number of geographical areas but did not reach an all-encompassing definition beyond the underlying criteria that populism lionized “the people” (ionescu and gellner, 1969). the lack of consistent ideological content lead populism to be described as a “thin ideology” (mudde, 2004). the key feature of the ‘people versus the elite’ core idea is that the people are pure politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 9 whereas the elite are corrupt, or even that the people are superior to the elite (mudde, 2004). beyond that, populism does not present a set of ideas and policies of its own, offering a narrative about how society should be run. on its own, the people versus the elite dynamic can be meshed with either left-wing or right-wing ideologies (taggart, 2000; mudde and kaltwasser, 2013). a study of the voting patterns of left-wing and right-wing populist parties in the dutch parliament showed that they had little in common in terms of their voting positions, except their opposition to supranational institutions (otjes and louwerse, 2013). from this perspective, there are no “pure” forms of populism and its study takes the form of case studies, mixing the concept in with specific contexts of time and place (taggart, 2000). culture and context are important in understanding populist movements as they reach across geographical location, historic period, and political ideology (kaltwasser, 2014). in western europe, resurgent populism has sought to exclude others, especially immigrants, through welfare chauvinism, while in latin america the populist movements have sought to include previously marginalized groups in the political life (madrid, 2008; mudde and katwasser, 2013; koster et al., 2013). however, it should not be said that all european populist movements are based on exclusion, a counter case being the greek leftist party syriza (stavrakakis and katsembakis, 2014). these differences in the inclusiveness or exclusiveness of populism are also part of the debate about whether populism is good or bad for democracy (mudde and kaltwasser, 2012; gidron and bonikowski, 2013). those who look at populism in its european context, such as mudde, kaltwasser (2012), and bartolini (2011), view it as a negative development for democracy. this negativity stems from its main european manifestation in the form of rather xenophobic radical right-wing parties; some of the language surrounding the discussion about this strain of populism brings up imagery of disease and pathology (bartolini, 2011; gidron and bonikowski, 2013). populism, analyzed as policy, is faced with the problem of the large array of the types of policies implemented by populists. at the same time, not all political groups that implement a particular policy are necessarily populists: on the one hand, latin american populists pursued policies of economic redistribution and nationalization of natural resources (madrid, 2008); on the other hand, although the tea party has been characterized as populist, it advocates for radical free market policies (lowndes, 2012) and is strongly opposed to redistributive policies and nationalization. hawkins et al. (2012) describe the rightist and pro-capitalist orientation of populism as typical across most wealthy countries. fuest (2017) considers more broadly that populist economic policies are designed for people who feel “left behind” by globalization, international trade, and feel pressure from immigrants in the labor market and that the policies pursued by populists are shortpolitikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 10 termist and careless of budget constraints. other studies also noted this short-term characteristic (guiso et al., 2017). simultaneously, existing economic difficulties are blamed on foreigners and international institutions that engage in or support unfair competition, harming the domestic population but benefiting the elite. immigrants are presented as stealing jobs, enabling employers to hold down wages, and “bleeding” the welfare system dry. an elevated sensitivity to immigration as a political issue is also found to be a factor in generating support for populism by bale (2013), alongside the party leader’s style, and whether or not a party is in opposition or in power. hostility to immigration can fit into the broader category of “heritage populism” as described by reynié (2016) in his study of the french front national. heritage populism centers itself around the protection of heritage in both tangible and intangible forms. tangible heritage refers to living standards and intangible heritage to ‘way of life’. both of these can be claimed by populists to be threatened by immigrants as well as by global economic changes (reynié, 2016). the populist economic policies’ short-termism is put into practice through expansionary economic policies, running deficits yielding quickly visible short-term benefits but can build up debts and other longer-term problems in the financial system. economic openness can also be reduced, including the freedom of trade and increased regulation, as well as erosion of some laws (rode and revuelta, 2015). immigration can be made harder and welfare chauvinist social policies make access to welfare payments more difficult for foreigners. longer-term problems can be large enough to end up canceling out the short-term gains, sometimes to the extent that the overall economic interests of the intended beneficiaries are harmed (acemoglu et al. 2013). fuest (2017) also echoes a point made elsewhere by taggart (2000) that populists usually offer simplistic interpretations and solutions to complex problems. according to madrid (2008), populist proponents of these types of policies in latin america have used them as a way to signal to the electorate that they have not been captured by powerful elite economic interests. rodrik (2017) distinguishes between populist orientations responding to cultural cleavages and those responding to economic cleavages. this is similar to inglehart and norris’ (2016) observation that the traditional left-right cleavage also has a cross-cutting cultural cleavage along the populist-cosmopolitan liberalist lines. the populist movement’s policy emphasis and its leftness or rightness depend on which cleavage is the focus. in case of a cultural cleavage, populism emphasizes the identity of the people against outsiders who could jeopardize it. the type of identity may combine some or all of national, ethnic, religious, and cultural identities. it has been pointed out that in the u.s., the target of this cultural cleavage has been mexicans, chinese, and muslims; in europe, the targeted outsiders have politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 11 been muslims, the eu, and other minorities such as gypsies or jews. in this case, populism takes a right-wing form and is epitomized in the u.s. by trump, and in europe by radical right parties such as the french front national. in the case of an economic cleavage, the emphasis tends to be on the gap between the haves and have-nots. populists calling attention to this cleavage tend to be leftist, and include bernie sanders in the u.s., and parties such as syriza in europe. these two cleavages can overlap, and both are subject to the “supply and demand” rule with certain problems generating a demand and populist parties stepping in to supply a narrative. mukand and rodrik (2017) divide society into three groups: elite, majority, and minority. depending on the cleavage, a different group will be cast as the problem. in the case of a cultural cleavage, the minority is portrayed as the ‘other’ on the base of identity. with an economic cleavage, the elite is singled out based on their wealth. populists mobilize supporters based on these divisions, with the former being right-wing and the latter left-wing (mukand and rodrik, 2017). guiso et al. (2017) expand this idea of demand and supply, i.e. where there is an interaction between a ‘demand’ stemming from economic and distributional problems, creating an inchoate sense of dissatisfaction, and anxiety. populists ‘supply’ a narrative that helps make sense of these problems and explains who is to blame (also in rodrik, 2017) by saying that demand/supply for short-term protection is at the conjunction of the two. when faced with an economic cleavage this can take for instance the form of import restrictions; when responding to cultural cleavages shortterm protection may take the form of immigration bans or border walls. since the cultural and economic cleavages can overlap, some populist parties may combine the two, such as ataka (attack) in bulgaria, which has a nationalist and anti-muslim message combined with policies to improve welfare spending. other populist parties that combine a xenophobic message with criticisms of the global capitalism’s dynamics include jobbik in hungary and golden dawn in greece (inglehart and norris, 2016). either way, the response generally involves some radical institutional change or the removal of some institutional restraints that have unclear long-term effects. populists try to obscure these effects or only talk about them vaguely. detailed scrutiny of long-term effects coming from experts or various prominent institutions can be rebuffed as coming from the elites who caused the problem in the first place (guiso et al. 2017). other lenses through which to consider something populist include seeing it as a type of discourse and as a type of political strategy and organization (gidron and bonikowski, 2013). as a discourse, populism does not refer to its policy content alone but to a narrative that tends to be dualistic and moralistic; it juxtaposes a virtuous ‘people’ against a corrupt elite. the us-vs-them politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 12 dynamic is an “empty signifier” that is filled in according to a given context (laclau, 2005). as a political strategy and organization, populism is described as being centralized around a charismatic leader who is able to interpret and channel the will of the people. (gidron and bonikowski, 2013). additional factors discussed as causes of support for populism include demographic and psychological characteristics of certain voters, who are considered to typically be of lower socioeconomic status, lower formal education, male, and of the majority ethnicity, while on psychological measures such supporters score low on agreeableness and have a tendency towards conspiracy theorizing (bakker et al., 2015; taggart, 2000). however, in a more recent article, roodujin suggests that there is no ‘typical’ supporter of populist parties across western europe, with characteristics varying from country to country (rooduijn, 2017). support for populists may also signal the health or lack thereof in a democracy whereas an increase in populism suggests that the regular democratic functioning is not as good as it could be (taggart, 2000) and acts similarly to a “drunken dinner guest” that brings up important issues that “polite society” would rather ignore (arditi, 2007). support for populism arises from the gap between the ideal of democracy representing the will of the people and the practical reality of institutions that are run by professional and political elites (meny and surel, 2000), as well as the sometimes opaque functioning of these institutions (canovan, 2002). populists prioritize the implementation of the will of the people to the detriment of checks and balances (urbinati, 1998). methods the research question that we aim to explore in the present study is the relationship between populism and the national concerns expressed by eu-voters. more precisely, we seek to uncover if a certain type of populism (right or left) actually responds to a particular national concern (cleavage) that belongs to the realm of the leftor the right-wing populist agenda. we explore national concerns in two time-frames: in a ten-year time frame (2008-2017); and in the most recent time frame for which information was available (2013-2017) so that we can observe how concerns evolve in time and if the countries’ type of populism reflects these concerns as they change. two reasons presided to our choice to dividing the time-periods this way. first, we want to delineate the most predominant concerns in the eu for the entire period for which data was available whilst capturing the immigration crisis. second, we aim to examine if, in the shorter 5-year period characterized by high tension engendered by immigration issues, these tensions will assign immigration a leading place among other concerns. as a secondary inquiry, we endeavor to trace the extent of the overlapping of the kind populism in the european union in its eastern with the one predominant in the west, as divided into the following categories: right-wing, left-wing populism or both. we also seek to discover if the politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 13 concerns on a national level are the same in the east and in the west. the countries included in the category for eastern europe are: bulgaria, czech republic, croatia, cyprus, estonia, greece, hungary, latvia, lithuania, malta, poland, romania, slovakia, and slovenia. the ones in the group of western europe are: austria, belgium, denmark, finland, france, germany, ireland, italy, luxembourg, portugal, spain, sweden, the netherlands, and the united kingdom. we expect to observe, as hawkins et al. (2012) note, that the far-right populism will be predominant in the more affluent western countries, and left-wing in eastern europe, due to the economic cleavage existing inside these populations. the present study uses data from the standard barometer conducted by the european commission in the years from 2008 to 2017 in order to determine what the biggest concerns for the population of a certain eu-member state on a national level are. since the standard barometer is a survey conducted twice a year, the results reveal slight differences. for the purposes of our research, from the two annual barometers, we chose the national concern that is the most shared among the respondents. the answers of the surveyed sample fall into the following categories: security, economy, rising prices/inflation, taxation, unemployment, terrorism, defense/foreign affairs, housing, immigration, healthcare system, education system, pensions, environmental concerns, energy-related concerns, government debt, climate change. these groups correspond to different types of populism that will be discussed further in the context of the findings. the units of analysis are the 28 member-states of the eu (including the u.k). despite the fact that croatia has become a member only in 2013, it is part of the dataset as its development was not only monitored closely for reasons related to its potential membership but was also part of the official data gathering for the eurobarometer. the information about the type of populism present in a certain country is determined on the basis of the literature regarding this question, which is included in the appendix. concerns such as the economy, rising prices/inflation, unemployment, pensions and the healthcare system allude to a left-wing populist agenda, while security, terrorism, defense/foreign affairs, energy-related concerns and climate change refer to right-wing populism. that said, it is true also that many categories from the left-wing populist agenda could be an element in the right-wing one. for instance, economic concerns, if attributed to immigrants who are accused of “stealing” jobs from nationals would place this category in the right-wing political program. in case there is more than one nationalist party in some member-states we chose the one that had the highest score in the last national and european elections. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 14 results and findings the first set of findings includes an overview of the populist types in the entire european union, then in the eastern part, and in the western, respectively. by doing so, we aim to make the first step toward a comparison between the type of populism in the eu and the concerns that the citizens express, by country, and to respond to the question if they match or there are some deviations from what we expect to observe. in addition, the results and the findings in this study do not aim to provide support for the fact that only one single factor causes one or another type of populism but only to show some tendencies in how different types of populism reflect on popular concerns. as shown in table 1, right-wing populism is not only prevalent in western europe, as the literature on the question suggests but is also predominant in eastern europe, contrary to our expectations. in a small number of cases, there are some amalgamations between leftand right-wing populism. nonetheless, even if they are added to the percent of left-wing populism, the right-wing type still overwhelmingly outweighs the percentage of the left-wing populism. interestingly, the right-wing populism’s level in eastern europe is just as high as in western europe. in this regard, it could be concluded that the eu is very homogenous in terms of the predominant type of populism regardless of outlined cultural, economic, historical, and societal differences. table 1. percentage of populism in the european union by type (2008-2017). type of populism in the european union in eastern europe in western europe right-wing populism 75% 71.43% 78.57% left-wing populism 14.29% 14.29% 14.29% both types 10.72% 14.29% 7.14% source: authors. the results from the second part of the study emphasize the biggest national concerns, as expressed by citizens of eu member-states. figure 1 shows them for two periods: a ten-year one, and the most recent five-year period in an effort to capture how concerns have evolved on eu-level. for the first time-frame, unemployment leads, followed by inflation, immigration, and concerns about the economy. unemployment has a notable advance in front of the other three major concerns with more than 75% of the eu-citizens stressing this as a main concern, followed by the other three with less than 10%. even if the second most predominant concern is taken into consideration, it could be asserted that typical elements of the left-wing agenda are still among the most pressing concerns that the europeans have – a fact that could reasonably provide a suitable environment for left-wing populism across the union. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 15 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 16 figure 1. percentage of national concerns in the european union (2008-2017). source: authors. the second part of this stage of our study focuses on the results from the more recent and shorter 5-year period. while the findings in figure 2 overlap with those from figure 1 in terms of the leading concern, there are some very important differences and changes that have taken place in the eu. first, the view of unemployment as a major concern has decreased among the eu-citizens. with much less support than the unemployment but still with a sensible increase is the immigration as a concern from the right-wing domain. in the 2013-2017 period, concerns like housing, healthcare and social security and economy also appear, all of them belonging to the left-wing populist agenda. these dynamics captured in these two snapshots underline two factors. one of them has to do with the confirmation of left-wing concerns even when we focus on a shorter period of time, thus, it should logically lead to a more heightened presence of left-wing populist parties. the second finding relates to the increased importance of immigration as a concern on a multinational level and its potential to be used in narratives that could affect discussions about other non-right-wing issues (such as housing, the economy, and the healthcare and social security system). figure 2. percentage of national concerns in the european union (2013-2017). source: authors. 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% economy immigration inflation unemployment percentage of national concerns in the european union (2008-2017) 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% economy healthcare and social security housing immigration inflation unemployment percentage of national concerns in the european union (2013-2017) politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 17 table 2 shows what particular countries shifted from left-wing concerns to right-wing concerns, by comparing the 10-year period to the 5-year one. four western states – austria, denmark, sweden and the u.k. transitioned from predominantly left-wing concerns (inflation and unemployment) to immigration as the most shared concern. as opposed to this, only one eastern european country, the czech republic, shifted toward the immigration (right-wing) concern. in the case of three of the four western european states, austria, denmark, and sweden, the shift of main concern to immigration may have been caused by the country’s respective experience of the 2015 migration crisis. austria and denmark found themselves part of the overland transit route into neighboring countries that had initially adopted an open stance towards refugees and migrants. as a result, they experienced a sudden increase of transiting refugees and asylum seekers. sweden took something over 134,000 refugees and migrants during the crisis equivalent to 1.6% of sweden’s population, and a total that exceeded the number of births in the country that year (the swedish institute, 2018a). the few years before the crisis had also seen historically high rates of immigration to sweden too (the swedish institute, 2018b). in all three of these countries in the preceding 5-year period, there was a significant increase in the number of people from abroad. in the u.k., comparatively, few people were taken in during the migration crisis, although the crisis added further rhetorical fuel to the already burning debate over immigration that had its origins in issues such as freedom of movement (bbc, 2016). also from around 2012-2013 period, the unemployment in the u.k. had begun to decline (office for national statistics 2018). in sweden too, unemployment began to ease a little after 2010 (statistics sweden, 2005), while in denmark it began to fall around 20122013 (statistics denmark, 2018). the czech republic took few refugees in during the crisis, and overall its immigrant population accounted for 6% of its population, the 24th highest rate in the organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd, 2018). however, efforts by the eu to redistribute the refugee population among member states has stoked resistance in the czech republic to being forced to take in refugees that it does not want (frum, 2017). table 2. difference between the most frequent concern in a ten-year period (2008-2017) and the last five years of this period (2013-2017) in terms of the transition from left-wing to right-wing populism. country: transition in the type of concern: austria inflation (2008-2017) => immigration (2013-2017) denmark unemployment (2008-2017) => immigration (2013-2017) sweden unemployment (2008-2017) => immigration (2013-2017) united kingdom unemployment (2008-2017) => immigration (2013-2017) czech republic unemployment (2008-2017) => immigration (2013-2017) source: authors. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 18 the second research question that we attempt to address is related to the differences between the national concerns in eastern and western europe. in order to compare them properly, we divided them into two periods as we did with the results from the entire eu. findings from our study in western europe do not provide support for what the literature suggests we would observe – right-wing concerns that will provide a suitable political climate for right-wing populism. while this type of populism is indeed the predominant type, empirical results do not show that the biggest concerns on a national level are the right-wing concerns. unemployment, as belonging into the leftwing domain is overrepresented (more than 75%) in western europe, followed by inflation, immigration, and concerns about the economy, all with less than 10%, as shown in figure 3. figure 3. percentage of national concerns in the western member-states of the european union (2008-2017). source: authors. as opposed to the 10-year period, the 2013-2017 one shows notable discrepancies regarding immigration. unemployment remains still the most prevalent concern, represented by 50%, but immigration had advanced to 36% which is a significant increase from the 10-year time-frame. one other change is also observable in figure 4 – the housing, and the healthcare and social security concerns, customary for the left-wing domain. interestingly, the picture of the 10-year period for the eastern european concerns, captured in figure 5, does not look much different from the one for western europe considering the same time-frame. unemployment leads as the most shared concern with 79%, followed by inflation, immigration and economy concerns with 7%. these results point to the conclusion that there are literally no differences between the perceptions of the biggest concerns in both eastern and western europe when a 10-year period is considered. 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% economy immigration inflation unemployment percentage of national concerns in the western member-states of the european union (2008-2017) politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 19 figure 4. percentage of national concerns in the western member-states of the european union (2013-2017). source: authors. figure 5. percent of national concerns in the eastern member-states of the european union (20082017). source: authors. figure 6 shows, similarly to the concerns of western europeans in the longer time-frame, the ones of eastern europeans for the shorter, 5-year time-frame, that almost fully replicate the ones discussed above. unemployment is still the leading concern, followed by inflation and immigration that all have 14%, and concerns about the economy with 7%. compared to the 10-year period, the shorter one (2013-2017) reveals the same characteristics as the former but with somewhat increased support for immigration and inflation, that are, still far behind the 64% support for unemployment as a major concern. the eastern european citizens supporting immigration as the most pressing concern (14%) are significantly less than the ones in western europe (36%). a possible explaining factor lays in the series of terrorist attacks perpetrated by isis in western and not eastern europe – a fact that was exploited by right-wing populist parties supporting narratives that inspire fear of issues typical for the right-wing populist agenda. 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% healthcare and social security housing immigration unemployment percentage of national concerns in the western member-states of the european union (2013-2017) 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% economy immigration inflation unemployment percent of national concerns in the eastern member-states of the european union (2008-2017) politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 20 figure 6. percentage of national concerns in the eastern member-states of the european union (2013-2017). source: authors. discussion the results presented in the section above suggest two major findings. first, the biggest issues that europeans see on a national level are left-wing concerns but the predominant type of populism in the states is right-wing one. second, eastern and western european states are not that different in terms of the predominant concerns, despite their historical, cultural and economic differences. these findings, in contrast to what the literature suggests, create some room for a further discussion. the lack of similar studies exploring the relationship between populism and national concerns is not allowing us to compare the results from this research with other inquiries. however, in this section, some context of the problem is provided and mainly to the question if there are economic rather than cultural and social concerns that are predominant in the eu, then to what we could attribute the lack of success of the left-wing populist and the growing popularity of right-wing parties. our findings point to an interesting paradox: the predominant concerns are left-wing in nature and yet the voters choose right-wing populist parties over left-wing populist parties. politicians from the right-wing populist spectrum do not change their programs based on the concerns of the citizens but instead, they skillfully endeavor to adapt the conditions that different events create in order to bolster their right-wing agenda despite the overwhelming amount of leftwing concerns of the europeans. thus, they attempt to incorporate right-wing solutions to left-wing concerns, for instance to resolve an unemployment problem through blocking immigration. moreover, the motive of vilifying a particular group of the population by attributing major concerns that they supposedly create has much more power due to its applicability to a very wide range of topics. in addition, it is much easier to control a narrative about an enemy than to face economic problems that deserve proper attention, concrete reforms and are generally much harder to be 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% economy immigration inflation unemployment percent of national concerns in the eastern member-states of the european union (2013-2017) politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 21 managed. campbell (1998) links this enemy creation to the state’s identity that protects the citizens from threats, as a way to reaffirm its role as an authority distributing public goods, including security. another reason why right-wing populism has been so widely successful is that it provides much more clarity of its political program to the voter than the traditional parties (canovan 2002). moreover, a left-wing populist party would also be hardly understood by the average voter mainly because of the specifics that the economist terminology poses. as opposed to this tendency, the right-wing populists have easily comprehensible manifestos that rely on emotions and symbols, rather than on stable socio-economic programs – a fact that makes them appealing to the masses that find themselves in a transition to a “postindustrial capitalism” (betz 1993: 665). yilmaz (2012: 377) explains the success of right-wing populism by a change from the economic division in society to a division between the different cultures, as the latter has become increasingly important for the ontological security of the europeans. he continues by outlining why the left-wing parties suffered from the discourse that the right-wing populists created and maintain: the populist right managed to frame media debates, via ongoing moral panics around immigrants’ ‘cultural’ behaviors, in such a way that political parties of all persuasions are forced to respond continually to ever fresh scandals and intentional provocations. they thus tacitly accept the premises for these so-called debates (yılmaz, 2011). whatever the differences between political platforms, the basic antagonism produces its own culturally defined social divisions, making it impossible to articulate alternative visions under given conditions. this is what paralyzes social democrats. our study showed that europeans across the two geographical regions keep sharing leftwing concerns about unemployment, the economy, and inflation, despite the growing tensions about immigration between 2013-2017. however, populist parties in the eu belong, to an overwhelming extent, to the far-right. the explanation for this lack of overlap between what is needed by the public opinion and what is delivered in the political spectrum adds arguments to the question whether rightwing populist parties respond to the most pressing public concerns or merely shift the focus toward an agenda that is easier to control. an example of this is the greek left-wing populist party syriza and the political difficulties it suffered by adhering to a left-wing rather than right-wing agenda (stavrakakis and katsambekis, 2014). it placed itself in an impossible situation from which it either had to suffer a defeat ideologically or a political defeat since the antagonistic relationship that it created with the lenders from the eu was the only one capable of alleviating the severe financial crisis in the country (mavrozacharakis, kotroyannos and tzagkarakis, 2017). on a supranational level, a study by ivarsflaten (2008: 3) examined the three mobilizational patterns of populist parties politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 22 – “economic changes, political elitism and corruption, and immigration” and in particular determined which one is responsible for the success of right-wing populist parties in western europe. she found that the appeal to immigration issues is the factor without which the right-wing populist parties did not perform well on elections. that said, it could be derived that left-wing populist parties relying heavily on political manifestos that accentuate economic and class issues in society were not as successful as their right-wing counterparts. conclusion in the era of a new wave of populism in europe, it is important to distinguish between the types of populism, the goals that they pursue, and to what extent these political parties are a response to actual concerns shared by voters. in this study, we explored the link between the two variations of populism – the right-wing and the left-wing and perceptions of problems in eu member-states. in addition, we compared the concerns in eastern and western europe. our results refuted the idea that, because of their economic, historical, cultural and societal characteristics, their needs and concerns were fundamentally different. we also found a lack of overlap between the concerns shared by eu-citizens, belonging to the left-wing domain – unemployment, inflation and economic concerns, and the right-wing populist parties that notably surpass the number of left-wing populist parties. having established that the predominant type of populism in the eu, the far-right, does not seek to address public concerns in regard to the economic sector, we identified a few factors that could have engendered this tendency. among them is the appeal of the narrative about the “enemy” that is in the core of the immigration debate. it shifted the attention of both the voters and the traditional parties from conversations about concrete political measures and reforms to improving the socio-economic indicators. at the same time, left-wing parties are at a significant disadvantage in comparison to the right-wing ones because of the dilemma that they inevitably face – how to improve the nation’s economy in a globalized, interconnected world, by economic self-sufficiency and by cutting ties with major organizations and institutions of international significance. in theory, in various eu-states with increased presence of left-wing populist parties (i.e. greece, ireland, spain), the economic challenges were becoming so unmanageable to deal with domestic measures that the only choice left was to continue the dialogue with the eu and the other transnational partners despite the inherent antipathy of populist parties towards multilateral organizations and institutions. considering these factors, it would be logical if the literature further explores to what extent the public opinion is shaping the profile of populist parties. in addition to this, it would be beneficial to study the extent of the opposite phenomenon, i.e. populist parties that, dominating the political debate, divert the focus of left-wing concerns by offering right-wing solutions that are much more politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 23 easily created, applied, and supported through the presence of a common cultural enemy that could 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27 appendix: list of populist parties in the european union country party name type of populism austria fpo right belgium vlaams belang right bulgaria3 united patriots right croatia human blockade both cyprus citizens alliance right czech republic ano 2011 right denmark people's party right estonia centre party both finland the finns right france front national right germany alternative for germany right greece syriza left hungary fidesz right ireland4 sinn fein left italy five star movement both latvia national alliance right lithuania order and justice right luxembourg5 alternative democratic reform right malta maltese patriots movement right netherlands party for freedom right poland law and justice right portugal national renovator party right romania greater romania party right slovakia smer-sd left slovenia slovenian national party right spain podemos left sweden sweden democrats right united kingdom uk independence party right 3 the bulgarian nationalist parties united for the last parliamentary elections in 2017. however, they were still separate parties for the european elections and did not get more than 3% each. 4 sinn fein is not a populist party per se but is considered to have attracted most of the vote of people discontented with the status quo. 5 luxembourg has as a couple of soft populist features, railing against elitist public spending, and soft euroscepticism, but not populist as such. attending to the wrong issue in the political spectrum: right-wing populism for left-wing concerns in the eu introduction literature review methods results and findings discussion conclusion references appendix: list of populist parties in the european union untitled natalie sophie cebulla impact of foreign aid on human rights violations? 60 the impact of foreign aid on human rights violations: innocent flower or the serpent under it? natalie sophie cebulla1, university of mannheim, germany abstract espite the vast amount of literature on the effects of foreign aid on democr atic and economic structur es in the recipient countries, there is a lack of studies focusing on the effect of aid on human rights violations. i consider democra cy and human rights as two related concepts and thus any such effects should also be taken into account. this paper aims at finding out whether there is a relationship at all between aid and human rights. i will finish by concluding that there is a slight correlation at the macro level and politics needs to consider this when distributing aid. keywords: timor-leste, peacebuilding, statebuilding, global justice 1 natalie sophie cebulla is currently reading a ba in political science and public law in the university of mannheim, germany. d politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 61 introduction heoretically, the transfer of foreign aid to less and underdeveloped countries is considered as a tool to move the world towards global justice by giving money and other resources from those who have them in abundance to those who hardly have anything. consequently, advertising on public transportation or commercials on television asking people to donate money to poor people who do not have enough food, sufficient health care or primary education are inherent parts of our everyday life. as a result, the amount of aid donated from the mid-fifties until 2006 has amounted 2.3 trillion us dollars (easterly & pfutze 2008, 29). numerous researchers in the social sciences as well as some politicians and government officials severely criticise the distribution of foreign aid (see for instance easterly 2007; erler 1985). most of those studies and reports focus on the political and economic consequences in the recipient countries, however, there has been no systematic research done so far on the influence of foreign aid on human rights violations. with this paper i aim at filling this gap. it is not my intention to criticize the donation of foreign aid as a whole, but to evaluate it critically and, if necessary, draw attention to improvement, especially as far as the protection of human rights is concerned. although – from a rational point of view – the circumstances in faraway countries do not concern us rather wealthy europeans, it is nevertheless our duty, not only morally, but also legally according to for instance art.21 of the treaty on european union, to ensure the protection of human rights and economic development all over the world (eur-lex 2008). furthermore, it is the money we pay to our governments that is given to economically less developed countries. therefore, it is in our interest to make sure that our money does not hurt people instead of protecting them. in this study, democracy and human rights are regarded as two related concepts, so the basic assumption is that aid does not only have a negative impact on democracy in the recipient countries as previous studies show, but also on the protection of human rights. the main limitation of this paper is that it was not possible to discover the actual causal link between aid and human rights violations, because i only used macro level data to check whether there is a correlation at all. in addition, the indicator i used for violations does only include civil and political rights and not economic, social, and cultural rights. therefore, it was not possible to discover the impact of aid on the whole spectrum of human rights. this paper is composed of the following parts: first, i will present common criticism on foreign aid and then the current t natalie sophie cebulla impact of foreign aid on human rights violations? 62 state of research on the relationship between aid, democracy, and human rights. after that i will demonstrate why i consider democracy and human rights as two related concepts from which i derive my hypotheses. after testing them empirically i will conclude that there is a weak, but statistically significant relationship at the macro level. why foreign aid is not aiding general criticism is that aid creates incentives for leaders to delay economic and political reforms and the fact that there are hardly any institutional constraints for donor countries regarding aid programs, so they are free in the distribution of their money and resources (lundsgaarde 2013, 2). william easterly, one of the most cited scholars in the area of foreign aid research, names four main points of criticism: firstly, there is donor coordination. recipient countries are not only burdened with poverty, conflicts, and problems resulting from that, but also with administrative duties what results in “higherthan-necessary overhead costs for both donors and recipients” (easterly & pfutze 2008, 38). in addition, there is a huge donor fragmentation instead of a clear and well organized structure resulting in numerous donors donating to numerous recipients in numerous projects and sectors what partly can be ascribed to the fact that donors act according to their national interests when selecting their recipients. thus, aid often is rather a policy instrument serving the donor instead the recipient (lundsgaarde 2013, 3; poe 1992, 163). secondly, aid tying diminishes the actual value of aid, because donors insist that recipients purchase certain items from them, which leads to the fact that aid actually becomes inefficient. however, easterly also notes that there has been great improvement, but on the other hand, some donors refuse to report their statistics on aid tying or deliver incomplete or unclear reports. thirdly, food aid has the disadvantage of pushing aside local food producers and shop owners by making them uncompetitive and thereby destroying the local economy. fourthly, technical assistance in most cases involves experts from donor countries who lack local knowledge and are hardly able to transfer their expertise to local actors (easterly 2007, 639-644). foreign aid and democracy according to knack, foreign aid can contribute to the promotion of democracy in three main ways. first, through conditionality: donors award grants or loans to foreign governments for liberalization, i.e. for adopting civil and political rights, politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 63 holding free and general elections and respecting the rule of law, secondly, through technical assistance such as the promotion of civil society organizations and monitoring during elections, and thirdly by improving education and increasing the people’s income. however, he could not find any evidence that aid directly promotes democratic development, so he warns that the results of his study need to be interpreted with caution, because aid could be aligned with effects that undermine rather than promote democracy (knack 2003, 2; 20). on the other hand, wright states that aid can promote democracy, but it depends on the size of the ruling party’s coalition partner: the leader of an autocratic regime will only democratize if success for the new regime with competitive, multiparty elections can be guaranteed, and this requires a large and supportive coalition. if there is only a small coalition, foreign aid decreases the likelihood of democratization (wright 2009, 552; 561562). morrison discovered that aid – like oil – is an “externally obtained” revenue, i.e. neither the government nor the citizens have to work and pay for it. the consequence is that in a country that is rather autocratic, externally obtained revenues are used to raise social benefits to appease citizens who could start a revolution, because they are unsatisfied with the social and economic circumstances. in a democracy revenues are associated with lower taxes to restrain rich elites who otherwise might pursue the establishment of an autocracy. in short, aid does not promote regime change from autocracy to democracy, but fosters regime stability (morrison 2009, 109; 112-113). similarly, djankov et. al. demonstrate that aid is rather a “curse” than a blessing, because it reduces the incentives for democratic accountability: “when revenues do not depend on the taxes raised from citizens and business, there is less incentive for accountability. at the same time corrupt government officials will try to perpetuate their rent seeking activities by reducing the likelihood of losing power” (djankov et. al. 2008, 169; 172). easterly and pfutze criticize that donors do not consider the quality of democracy when distributing aid and even “appear to be irresponsive to political changes in recipient countries”: “unfree2 countries have retained about a third of aid, while around 80 percent of aid goes to countries either partly free or unfree” (easterly & pfutze 2008, 31; 41-42). in sum, if a country is receiving foreign aid this does not necessarily mean that a stable democracy can also be guaranteed. also, being democratic does not mean that a country is rewarded with aid. 2 this classification is taken from freedom house which rates states according to their level of democracy. they can be assigned to three categories; “unfree”, “partly free”, and “free” states. natalie sophie cebulla impact of foreign aid on human rights violations? 64 foreign aid and human rights it is remarkable that despite all that criticism, it seems that there has not been any reconsideration of the distribution practice of aid. in the following i will try to find out whether or not aid has a negative impact on the protection of human rights. i consider this important for three reasons: first, there has not been done much research on that topic as far as i know. second, in my opinion negative impacts of aid on human rights are more important than negative impacts on the democratic system, because i consider being killed or tortured worse than not being allowed to vote3. third, if the results show that aid does indeed promote human rights violations, it would be another severe reason to reconsider and restructure the politics of foreign aid. in most studies foreign aid has been analyzed as a resource given to countries to reward them for protecting civil and political rights or punish them for abuse as the case may be (hawkins & goodliffe 2009; knack 2003, 2; 20; lebovic & voeten 2009). some authors on the other hand, such as neumeyer, argue that there is only limited support for the assumption that aid serves as a reward for the protection of human rights. 3 however, i am well aware of the fact that a malfunctioning economy can also have a negative impact on physical integrity rights in the long run. for instance, decisions to distribute aid do not only depend on the recipient country’s performance, but often also on the donor’s interests such as political and strategic concerns (neumeyer 2003, 25-26; poe 1992, 163). alesina and dollar state that “an inefficient, economically closed, mismanaged non-democratic former colony politically friendly to its former colonizer, receives more foreign aid than another country with similar level of poverty, a superior policy stance, but without a past as a colony”. france as a donor can be considered as such an example. furthermore, when giving aid the us acts according to its interests in the middle east. on the contrary, the some donors – mostly the nordic countries – respond to incentives such as income levels and good institutions (alesina & dollar 2000, 33-34). carey shows that the levels of human rights violations have no impact on the decisions of whether or not to give aid as far as european donors, especially the united kingdom, are concerned. germany, on the other hand, does give less aid to more repressive countries. however, more attention was given to countries that succeeded in improving their human rights records. she concludes that the reason for this is bureaucratic inertia among the donor countries (carey 2007, 447; 461-462). nielsen finds that states selectively impose sanctions against repressive states for violating human rights if three politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 65 conditions are met: firstly, the sanctioned country does not have close political ties to the sanctioning country. secondly, the sanctions do not have any negative outcomes for the sanctioning country, and thirdly, the sanctions are widely publicized. as the cause for this he sees rationalist motivations he also refers to as “realpolitik”, because donor states are interested in keeping peaceful and thus stable relations with their political partners and weakening their enemies. constructivist thoughts purely motived by normative intentions aiming at protecting and promoting human rights cannot be used to explain those findings (nielsen 2012, 2-3; 25). moreover, it is “aid shocks” that can cause violence: when there are severe decreases in aid revenues, potential rebels gain bargaining power in negotiations with the government. the reason is that aid normally is used to appease rebels, but when there is a sudden stop of aid transfers, they have no incentive to behave peacefully. furthermore, with sudden changes in the state budget, the government has difficulties in keeping its military’s ability to preserve peace (nielsen et. al. 2012, 2; 25). altogether, these results lead to the assumption that the relationship between human rights and foreign aid is marked by two problems: first, there is no formula that ensures that aid promotes the protection of human rights and sanctions decrease them, respectively. second, donors do either not seems to be aware and/or willing to face that their foreign aid policies are actually causing more harm than good in many cases. democracy and human rights – related concepts i argue that democracy and human rights are two closely related concepts. for instance, most constitutions of established democracies not only contain provisions of how the government and other state institutions are formed in a democratic way, but also several articles that protect the basic rights of the individual such as freedom from arbitrary detention, killing, and torture. furthermore, both concepts are also codified together in international public law such as in art.21 udhr and art.25 iccpr (united nations 2012a; office of the united nations high commissioner for human rights 2007). according to the united nations, “the values of freedom, respect for human rights and the principle of holding periodic and genuine elections by universal suffrage are essential elements of democracy. in turn, democracy provides the natural environment for the protection and effective realization of human rights” (united nations 2012b). similarly, norman states that “it is natalie sophie cebulla impact of foreign aid on human rights violations? 66 (…) clear that human rights and democracy are interdependent, especially when defined in the broader conceptualizations of democracy as substantive democracy, and human rights as civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights. these different kinds of rights cannot be realized in a nondemocratic system, and likewise, no democracy is sustainable without the presence of these rights” (norman 2005). de mesquita et. al. argue that party competition is essential for the protection of human rights for which the appropriate institutional foundations are necessary, but respect for integrity rights actually involve all dimensions of democracy. thus, it is not enough if a country is merely defined as democratic as opposed to autocratic. it needs to be a fully established democracy. only if that is the case, there is greater respect for integrity rights. in addition, full accountability is also important (de mesquita et. al. 2005, 439; 456). davenport and armstrong find that democracy decreases state repression, but also that “below certain values, the level of democracy has no discernable impact on human rights violations, but after a threshold that has been passed” (davenport & armstrong 2004, 551). consequently, i assume that aid does not only have a negative impact on democracy, but also on the protection of human rights. foreign aid as a means to violate human rights in her 1985 report, brigitte erler – former member of the german bundestag and development policy expert working for the federal ministry of economic cooperation and development – depicted the deficits and problems she was facing working in development politics for many years. she states that all her illusions that her work is actually helping have been more and more destroyed and thus she decided to resign from her position. one main point of criticism is that aid is disguised as having humanitarian and social aims, but actually – and many donors do not seem to be aware of that – helps to promote genocides and keeping exploitive elites in their positions (erler 1985, 8-9). similarly, dutch freelance journalist linda polman reported that donations are misused by corrupt leaders to finance wars, because donors are forced to cooperate with local authorities, in most cases rebels or military regimes. those who are responsible for wars were given aid what prolonged conflicts instead of ending or preventing them and helping its victims. in some cases the perpetrators even extorted resources from the donors as some kind of taxes or admission fees. in sierra leone, rwanda, somalia, congo, and afghanistan politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 67 she discovered the same patterns of misuse in which in total more than 200 million us dollars disappeared (spiegel online 2010; the guardian 2010). there are at least two causal mechanisms through which aid can cause human rights violations: first, the recipient government can keep the aid for itself, which causes dissatisfaction and anger among the population for whom the aid was originally intended. as a consequence, they might start revolting against the state and the state in response will use violent means to protect itself and stay in power (poe 2004, 16-17; 23-27; 31). second, as the example of ethiopia shows, foreign aid can be misused as a means of coercion: the ethiopian government under president meles zenawi and his party ethiopian people’s revolutionary front (eprdf) control all aid programs and suppress political dissidents by conditioning access to aid on support for the ruling party. in addition, aidfunded capacity-building programs whose purpose is to improve people’s skills that would help the country’s development are used for indoctrination of children, teachers, students, and citizens with a neutral political view. food aid is even withheld in cases of emergency. as rona peligal, africa director at human rights watch put it: “if you don’t play the ruling party’s game, you get shut out”. this seems to be the dominant theme in ethiopia’s foreign aid politics (human rights watch 2010a; 2010b; 2010c; 2010d; the telegraph 2010). therefore, the first hypothesis is h1: countries that receive foreign aid are more likely to have a high level of human rights violations. as already mentioned above, foreign aid can also have a negative impact on democracy. thus, i used the level of democracy as a control variable. h2: countries that have a low level of democracy are more likely to have a high level of human rights violations. one possible reason why aid is associated with human rights violations might be as a result of corruption: money is given to a government which is supposed to give it to those in need, but instead government officials use it for their private interests (schudel 2008, 507). it is also criticized that “[a]id agencies are typically not transparent about their operating costs and how they spend the aid money” and that aid money often goes to corrupt autocrats (easterly & pfutze 2008, 31; 41-42). thus, i also included corruption as an additional control variable. h3: countries that have a high level of corruption are more likely to have a high natalie sophie cebulla impact of foreign aid on human rights violations? 68 level of human rights violations. variables and data for human rights violations as the dependent variable i used the political terror scale (pts) index that ranges from 1 to 5 with 1 indicating that the country is “under a secure rule of law, people are not imprisoned for their view, and torture is rare or exceptional. political murders are extremely rare” and 5 that “terror has expanded to the whole population. the leaders of these societies place no limits on the means or thoroughness with which they pursue personal or ideological goals”. the pts provides two ratings, one based on amnesty international reports and one based on us state department reports (political terror scale 2012), both of which i will use separately. i personally prefer the ratings by amnesty international, because ratings by the us state department are considered to be biased in favour of friends of the united states while discriminating against their enemies (poe et. al. 2001, 677). for the main independent variable – foreign aid in us dollars – i used two types of aid; that by countries on the one hand, and that by international organizations and agencies on the other hand (tierny et al. 2011). the polity iv index served as first control variable: it ranges from -10 “autocracy” to 10 “democracy” (polityiv project 2012). the second control variable is the corruptions perception index ranging from 1 indicating that a country is highly corrupt to 10 indicating that there is no corruption. the problem here is – as the name might suggest – that this index is based on reports by the population whether they think there is corruption or not (corruption perceptions index 2012). this could have led to some cases of bias, but there was no alternative indicator available. the analyzed time frame goes from 2000 to 2010 and includes all countries that were listed on the pts scale and in the aid data set. analysis and results for the analysis i created three models: the first one only includes both main independent variables; aid by countries and by organizations and agencies such as the european community, the world food program, the united nations development programme, and the world bank. one fundamental problem with this model is that it does not detect and balance those cases in which aid does have positive effects. thus, in model 2 i did the same as in model 1, but here i eliminated those cases in which the average pts indicator of the years from 2000 to 2002 was worse than the average of the same country from 2008 to 2010. in politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 69 model 3, the democracy and the corruption variables were additionally included. model 1 model 2 model 3 aid by countries 1.829* 1.82** 0.95** aid by organizations/agenci es 0.21 0.536* 0.14* democracy - - -.02* corruption - - -.06** constant 2.06** * 2.37** * 2.31** * r2 .002 .072** * .089** * table 1 shows the results with the human rights violations documented by amnesty international. as expected, the first model does not explain anything which is probably due to the fact that there have been too many cases that balanced actual human rights violations caused by foreign aid. in the second and third model, however, this looks a bit different: in those cases in which aid did have a negative impact, this impact is rather strong considering that aid actually is supposed to aid. in addition, the results also show that the level of democracy and corruption are important factors, i.e. that the more autocratic and corrupt a country, the more likely it is that aid is misused as a weapon. in table 2 in which i used the pts indicator provided by the us state department, the results were similar, but model 2 and 3 were only significant on the .01 level in contrast to the results based on the amnesty international indicator that were significant on the .001 level. model 1 model 2 model 3 aid by countries 0.14 0.72* 0.821* * aid by organizations/agenci es 0.11 0.24* 0.414* democracy - - -.032* corruption - - -.045* constant 2.06** * 1.56** * 2.21** * table 1: foreign aid and human rights violations (amnesty international) * p < .05; ** p < .01 ; *** p < .001 table 2: foreign aid and human rights violations (us state department) natalie sophie cebulla impact of foreign aid on human rights violations? 70 r2 .003 .047** .062** conclusion the results in both tables show that foreign aid does promote human rights violations. it is now the duty of the donor states to restructure and reconsider their foreign aid politics, because aid that physically hurts people and even kills them is worse than aid having just negative impacts on the level of democracy and the economic system in the recipient countries. when doing that, donors need to put back their own interests and not label them as help. furthermore, they need to keep detailed track of their actions and be responsive to improvements and declines in the 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more dollars than sense: refining our knowledge of development finance using aiddata. world development 39(11): 1891-1906. the telegraph. 2010. overseas aid is funding human rights abuses. http://blogs. telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/1000613 37/overseas-aid-is-funding-human rights-abuses/. access august 3rd 2012. united nations. 2012a. the universal declaration of human rights. http://www.un. org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml. access september 24th 2012. united nations. 2012b. global issues, democracy and human rights. the human rights normative framework. http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/democ racy/human_ rights.shtml. access september 21st 2012. wright, joseph. 2009. “how foreign aid can foster democratization in authoritarian regimes”. american journal of political science 53(3): 255-271. http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/fehlgeleitete-entwicklungshilfe-spendenhttp://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/fehlgeleitete-entwicklungshilfe-spendenhttp://blogs/ http://www.un/ http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/democracy/human_ http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/democracy/human_ politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 28 more integration or more disintegration in the european union? a sociological perspective lora hadzhidimova6 https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.40.2 lora hadzhidimova is a phd candidate in international studies with a focus on security studies at old dominion university, norfolk, va. she earned her ma degree in humanities at odu and holds an ll.m. degree from sofia university, bulgaria. previously, she completed internships with the operational analysis branch in natoact and the joint forces staff college in norfolk, va. e-mail: lhadzhid@odu.edu. abstract this paper analyzes the scholarly debate about integration in the european union; its emergence, evolution and current state. it examines works employing theoretical and problem-driven approaches, dedicated to analyzing integration as their main object. the findings suggest that the debate has progressed significantly a fact evident by the change of the initial question with which scholars engaged – whether international organizations and institutions have a future as independent entities. the way the eu integration was explored has also gradually shifted from paradigmatic debates, mostly between realists and liberalists, to diverse problem-driven contributions. this new, pragmatic approach is preferred as an effort to better explain the complex question of the eu integration in times of crises. an assessment of this debate is required to improve the quality of the future research agendas, methodological approaches, and policy recommendations of the field. keywords debate; disintegration; eu; integration; sociology 6 the author would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for the helpful comments and recommendations that contributed to improving the quality of this paper. https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.40.2 mailto:lhadzhid@odu.edu politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 29 introduction generations of scholars have looked to evaluate the european union. in the uncertain times after the world wars it was claimed as an impossible illusion to construct an international community. the initial branch of scholarly discussions were focused on the role of such an international community. as the states needed to abandon the old balance-of-power doctrine, they realized that anarchy is hard to temper, state interests are a persistent tendency even when a compromise must be reached for the sake of the common peace and wellbeing. despite these tendencies, in 2016, the eu has been described as “a unique partnership in which member states have pooled sovereignty in certain policy areas and harmonized laws on a wide range of economic, social, and political issues” (archick, 2016). scholars no longer argue if the idea of an international society could be implemented at all. instead they started wondering if it will disintegrate, and eventually disappear, or further integrate to become a cohesive multinational community. while they differ in the ways in which they look to address the problem, they all contribute to the question of the future of the european union and integration. some examine what particular theory would be most useful in assessing current events and thus will be most appropriate for making predictions. others use a problem-driven approach7 to reflect on how particular crises could influence the development of the union – leading to more or to less integration. as one of the most influential figures in bringing european states together, jean monnet, recognized early on that “europe will be forged in crises and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for these crises” (barber, 2010). indeed, scholars see crises as the ultimate test for the foundations of the eu – the sense of common identity, shared interests and goals. the crises challenge these notions and pose the question if the union will walk toward more or less integration in the future. in this paper, i aim to explore how the scholarly debate about the integration of the european union has evolved since the foundation of the union, the current trends in how the topic is discussed, and the potential causes of these trends. similar to other studies, such as the one by höing and kunstein (2018), this study is a scholarly effort to examine different conceptualizations of crises and questioning whether one framing is prevalent over others. previous studies using scholarly articles to assess trends in popular debates, and to suggest areas for future research accentuate more on a quantitative approach (kolk and rivera-santos, 2016). therefore, this study will be a qualitative analysis. it is important to contribute to this question since the evolution of the debate on the future of the european union still continues as global developments from rising nationalism and the refugee crisis to economic inequality and deterring expansionistic russia keep 7 a distinction between problem-driven and theoretical approaches is made in the “methodology” section. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 30 challenging scholars. researchers attempt to address these problems by providing a parsimonious approach that will both facilitate contextualizing political phenomena, and enhance decision-making. moreover, in times of crises, these conditions of the international system require scholars to be even more careful in their predictions (goudzwaard, vander vennen and heemst, 2017). building on these crises, the main task of this article is to assess whether theoretical or problem-driven approaches are preferred in the recent scholarship on the eu integration. to complement this task, i also present a brief overview of the history of the debate and the central questions in the field. methodology in order to analyze the development of the debate over the years, i first conduct a sociological analysis on the existing research and how it approaches the issue of integration. the analysis follows a sociological logic as it “operates according to a methodological principle of linguistic consistency; that is, if a ‘sufficient proportion’ of participants’ accounts appear consistently to tell the same sort of story about a particular aspect of social action, then these accounts are treated as being literally descriptive” (gilbert and mulkay, 1984: 7). furthermore, to begin the examination of the topic and to provide a framework that situates this article within a broader literature, i build on douglas webber’s work titled “how likely is it that the european union will disintegrate? a critical analysis of competing theoretical perspectives”, that laid the foundations of the integration/disintegration metadebate. however, while webber (2014) focuses on theoretical perspectives on the topic, i further expand the analyzed materials to also include the more recent problem-driven approaches. moreover, i add the element of the five eu-crises, following the framework archick (2014) suggests (the sovereign debt crisis, the refugee flow, the brexit, resurgent russia, and the threat of terrorism), as they trigger controversial reactions in the scholarship in regard to the eu’s future as an expression of more or less integration. nevertheless, i consider webber’s research and his continued efforts as a focal point in measuring the effectiveness of scholarly contributions and their applicability in the complex environment of eu politics. at this point, a few words need to be dedicated to the selection of the scholarly works included in this study. while the most seminal contributions on the question of eu integration have been written in the period of the two world wars and after the end of the cold war, more recent works were selected for this study, through a google scholar search using keywords such as “eu integration”, “eu disintegration”, and “eu crises”. therefore the time-period the works cover is from 2008 onwards as more recent articles were preferred over older ones from a large volume of works. in addition, since the integration debate benefits from a very broad scholarly attention, the works selected for the analysis emphasize mostly the literature from international studies/political science fields as it was the scholars from these two academic traditions were the ones that initiated politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 31 the debate and are more engaged with it. additionally, a proper analysis of the literature on the future of eu integration should include a few words about the inevitable definitional issues, since only a small number of scholars define “integration” or “disintegration” before utilizing the terms. webber’s definition brings some clarity to the dimensions of the debate. he sees three aspects of the term integration: (1) “the range of common or joint policies adopted and implemented in the eu”, (2) “the number of eu member states”, and (3) “the formal (i.e. treaty-based) and actual capacity of the eu organs to make and implement decisions if necessary against the will of individual members” (webber, 2010: 342), whereas “disintegration” implies a decreasing number/authority of these elements. in the following parts of the article, first, i present the framework that accounts for the foundational theoretical approaches in literature and some more recent ones. second, i incorporate the problem-driven scholarship on the subject, divided into four different crises that point to scholarly views on more integration or less integration in the union. while a distinction between a theoretical lens and a problem-driven approach is subjective and a clear line for differentiation is difficult to achieve, i employ the following criteria. by a theoretical perspective, i identify a predominant, if not full, focus on a theory that is applied to a phenomenon. as opposed to this, a problem-driven approach is a tool that utilizes a specific case and empirically examining it in an effort to make a broader argument. thus the theoretical approach relies more on deductive reasoning (applying a principle to a case) while the problem-driven one is rooted in inductive reasoning (using a case to build a conclusion). third, i discuss the implications of this debate, its characteristics and directions of research. fourth, i summarize the main findings and propose avenues for subsequent inquiries. theoretical approaches webber describes some of the main theoretical approaches which differ in evaluating how the crises changes/changed the eu either in the direction of increased optimism toward integration or pessimism. first, there are the realists represented by john mearsheimer (1990: 5-6), who argue that after the fall of the berlin wall, the absence of a common threat for western europe would be followed by the disappearance of nato and the withdrawal of the u.s. presence, engendering mistrust, suspicion, and fear between western europeans. building on these, mearsheimer anticipated the dissolution of the european union by various crises that would most likely surface from power struggles between the main powers in europe. furthermore, he maintained that the cyclical nature of world events will continue to present itself in the time ahead, driven by the impossible task to temper forces of anarchy. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 32 another theoretical perspective is the one of classical intergovernmentalists that webber (2010) classifies as “moderate”, as opposed to the utter “pessimists” in the case of the realist school. here, stanley hoffman sees the vital role of the nation-states as “a factor of international nonintegration” (1966: 863). in a similar perspective to hoffman but a bit more nuance, moravcsik puts the emphasis of eu integration on the degree of overlap between major actors’ interests in the context of intergovernmental negotiations and the dynamics of domestic politics (1991: 25-27). third perspective that weber mentions is the institutionalist one. within this category, keohane and nye for instance, accept the role of supranational actors not as completely independent entities but rather as tools through which a higher degree of collaboration between states could be achieved (1977: 20-28). moreover, they argue that such institutions make the “collective” element in the eu realistic and expanding. in general, neofunctionalists, transactionalists, and liberal intergovernmentalists share a more optimistic perspective. for instance, karl deutsch, one of the most notable scholars among the transactionalists, maintains that the increased transactions between the states in the european community will result in increased cooperation (1961). here, webber points out it is unlikely that “even profound economic crisis…could undermine european integration” (2010: 348), while underlining the arguments of contemporary neofunctionalist scholars like sandholtz and sweet (1999: 152-153). to this group of scholars could be attributed the work of adler and barnett (1998) who build on deutsch’s concept. however, instead of measuring integration from the standpoint of transactions, they utilize a constructivist approach that implements the idea of socialization of the states sharing common goals and interests. while they do not deny that a very cohesive (“amalgamated”) security community could be achieved, they acknowledge that this concept could have different expressions – some “nascent”, others more “mature” (adler and barnett, 1998: 48). finally, evaluated from the perspective of the federalists, kelemen, believes that a common sense of identity may empower integration in the union (2007: 53-61). furthermore, it is capable of overcoming the uncertain future of federations that domestic partisan politics in the eu could evoke. in regard to parsimonious approaches to integration, bulmer and joseph on the other hand, point out that integration as a process is too complex to be examined simply through the lens of class, economic privilege or functionalism (2016: 744). they maintain that integration is a sum of hegemonic projects that could be easily disrupted by any issues experienced at the domestic level, later reflecting much higher on the eu-structure (2016: 725). other scholars argue that the role of identity politics is severely undermined when addressing the process of integration through liberal intergovernmentalist and neofunctionalist approaches. for instance, drawing on the idea of “ideational liberalism” that moravcik (1997: 515) introduces, börzel and risse (2017: 102) claim that politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 33 social constructivism could best explain some crises, such as the sovereign debt crisis. however, where some of these crises result in more integration, and others result in more disintegration (the schengen crisis, that later was incorporated into the narrative of the refugee crisis, and brexit). these crises, among others, will be analyzed in the paragraphs below through the lens of some problemdriven, rather than theoretical, approaches. problem-driven approaches as opposed to these theoretical perspectives on the process of european integration, other scholars prefer to focus on the subject by utilizing a problem-driven approach. for instance, in the cases of the sovereign debt crisis, the refugee flow, the brexit, resurgent russia, and the threat of terrorism, archick (2016: 17-18) envisions four possible scenarios for the future of the eu that imply either higher level of integration or disintegration. according to her, an initial outcome from these crises can be a steady situation in which the current status-quo persists – eu continues to adopt and apply common policies where possible. a second scenario would be a “europe on two speeds”, that refers to a close tight cooperation and policy harmonization between some states and more independence in legislation for other member states. this scenario incorporates both integration and disintegration features. according to her, a third possible development would be more intergovernmental cooperation, instead of further integration strategies. in this scenario, she claims, there would be some amount of disintegration caused by far-right parties that traditionally express euro-skepticism. the fourth scenario may involve closer integration between a lower number of member states than before the crisis occurred. differently, authors such as karolewski and cross (2017: 151) accentuate on the “restraining or enabling” effects the crises have on eu integration. they claim that in some cases, the eu could produce a common policy and a united reaction against the external crisis. in other cases, the crisis could merely show that the limits of integration have been reached, and that the member states are, to a large extent, comfortable with maintaining their sovereignty intact and thus rejecting further integration (karolewski and cross, 2017: 141-142). based on these, the following sections describe problem-driven works focused on different crises, suggested by archick (2016) that the eu faced throughout the years and faces presently: 1) economic crises (2007-2009); 2) security-related crises; 3) brexit; 4) crises concerning eu-russia relationship. here, brexit and the eu-russia relationship are placed in separate categories, mostly because of they include multiple aspects (e.g. economic, social, and security elements). the implications of such scholarship show that integration or disintegration tendencies are best demonstrated in times of crises. theoretical insights are not missing in these contributions, but instead they are oriented toward a problem (crisis)-driven perspective that seeks to hypothesize from a single or a number of cases. in theoretical contributions, the theory predominantly sets the politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 34 conceptualization of the events and suffers from its limitations because it aims to apply a set of principles (a theory), perceived as valid, to a case. in problem-driven contributions, the problem stays in the core of the analysis, and the chosen method of reasoning and framework revolve around the problem, and not on the contours of the employed theory. authors who advocate for such approach find it capable to avoid the “often bitter, repetitive, and inherently inconclusive paradigmatic debates” (katzenstein and okawara, 2002: 183). the eu’s financial crisis becker and jäger (2012: 183) argue that the eurozone created room for uneven economic development of the member states as it stimulated growth based on substantial debt, thus provoking instability in the entire union. this conclusion that more integration could ironically lead to more disintegration in the future was also supported by polyakova and fligstein (2016). seeing that the financial crisis of 2007-2009 that pushed forward integration on the economic level, in terms of coordinating fiscal policy and bank supervision, at the same time made citizens anxious about their economic security. this eventually led to an increased support for right-wing parties that advocated for (more) domestic sovereignty, which can lead to a certain degree of disintegration in the union (polyakova and fligstein, 2016: 68). to further problematize the issue, kuhn and stoeckel (2014: 638) assert that strict economic policies adopted on a supranational level are perceived by developing member states as a difficult but much needed measure, while stronger economies in the union tend to see it merely as an additional financial burden. in addition, kuhn and stoeckel (2014: 638) propose that european integration is conditional upon whether member states perceive it as a threat to the national identity. on the other hand, a much more hopeful view on the future of european integration, in the spirit of post-functionalism, is the one of by frank schimmelfennig (2014). since he argues that in challenging times of a financial crisis in europe, integration policies defeated disintegration, thanks to three essential factors: isolating policy-making at the european level from the constraining dissensus through euro-compatible government formation, avoiding or taming referendums, and supranational delegation (schimmelfennig, 2014: 335). the crises engendered by eu’s security concerns8 the refugee crisis brought a tension escalation about the immigration policies in the european union. one of the puzzles that scholars look to resolve, in this regard, relates to the 8 by security concerns, i identify the most debated topics in this field such as the refugee flow, border control and immigration policies, as well as their implications for integration. terrorism is not listed as a separate category because politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 35 asylum law on a supranational level and its implementation or lack of implementation in the member states. trauner (2016: 321) argues that imposing rules to deal with the refugee crisis would be an immense burden for the southern states, while ignoring the problem and the legislations to solve the issue would burden the northern states. explained through a more theoretical point of view, this work seems to imply that nation-states have diverging interests and pose the inevitable dilemma of the rubik’s cube – a solution that is good for northern europe causes disruption in the southern europe, and so on. thus, the refugee crisis and border control concerns could reintroduce the problem of disintegration that stems from the incompatible interests of different member states. contrary to this perception about the refugee crisis, timothy hatton (2015: 605) sees it as a case for deeper integration, which is “desirable and politically possible”. the focus of his analysis is on the success of harmonization policies and shared responsibilities in the process of developing a common european asylum system. introducing the idea of a search for “social optimum”, hatton (2015: 632) encourages further integration efforts in times of crises related to european security. to this end, alexander caviedes (2015: 563) subscribes as well. he emphasizes the great amount of work by eu institutions and agencies dedicated to issue of migration in the union, thus demonstrating the increased level of integration between the member states and the empowerment that supranational bodies received as a consequence through the implementation of directives in regard to asylum, for instance (caviedes, 2015: 561-562). brexit brexit not only posed difficult questions for the future of the eu integration process, but also gave scholars a variety of new topics to consider – what would be the future of the u.k. outside of the eu? how would the eu continue survive without one of the strongest actors in the union? could brexit be seen as an opportunity for further integration, remaining as is, or would it have a spillover effect over other member states that are already skeptical about their membership? in terms of these general trends about brexit, giandomenico majone (2017: 26) argues that concerns for sovereignty would make member states indecisive in terms of crises when it comes to further integration, thus “contemporary europe can become, at best, a confederation”. he adds that the idea for a confederation, as an expression of the functionalist approach, might be a possibility in the negotiations between the eu member states, especially after brexit and other events that entail disintegration. its components fall under one of the already included categories. there were no scholarly works found that examined the relationship between eu integration and “homegrown terrorism”, as this is the only element not examined in this work from the category pertaining to terrorism. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 36 thus, the future of the previously outlined integration-disintegration dyad could be understood, as a risk for disintegration for some while a chance for more integration for others – where some countries will form stronger bonds, as others become peripheral (pisani-ferry et al., 2016: 10). richard whitman (2016: 49) sees the degree to which the u.k. wants to remain a part of the eu’s common foreign, security and defense policy, as a determining component of the extent of disintegration after brexit. sampson (2017: 181), on the other hand, questions if brexit should be perceived as a negative response to the increased integration in the union or merely as a result of the fact that globalization has certain boundaries, which were reached. another important issue that also needs consideration is “understanding and responding to the motivations of voters who oppose the european union” (sampson, 2017: 182). for this, nauro campos expresses strongly positive opinions for the case of greater integration (2016: 41). he underlines that it is not questionable if more or less integration is needed, but a more efficient and enhanced type of integration should be the focus of policy-makers, scholars and the public. the multispectral crisis of the eu-russia relationship when it comes to the meaning of eu integration in terms of its relationship with russia, timothy snyder (2015: 706) underlines russia’s role in stimulating disintegration processes in the context of support for nationalist and separatist parties across the union. focusing on the same question, lukyanov (2008: 1118) views russia’s policy as a reaction to the eu’s refusal to recognize it as a european state, even though it has participated in the politics of the region for centuries. while there was a certain degree of notable closeness in the positions of the eu and russia in the past, the latter still gravitates towards east and south asia while rejecting the eu-model with the claim of it being unsuccessful (lukyanov, 2008: 1118). russia and the eu, according to samuel charap and mikhail troitskiy (2013: 51) have created intense competition for integrating new states into their political entities, which exacerbated their otherwise conflictual relationship. during the eu and russia’s attempts to integrate eastern european states into their economic and social models, the states were weakened and destined to remain highly dependent on one of these respective regional hegemons (bosse, 2014: 107). according to richard sakwa (2015: 554), another factor that contributed to the problematic relationship between the eu and russia, ever since the end of the cold war, was the exclusion of moscow from the implementation of the idea of a “pan-continental” unity (sakwa, 2015: 579). based on these, delcour and kostanyan (2014: 10) conclude that no stable future for integration in the continent would be possible without a proper understanding of the geopolitics and historical politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 37 relationship that kremlin has with some of the current eu member states as well as some potential member states. on the other hand, the annexation of crimea brought new aspects of consideration into eurussia relationship. åslund (2014: 64) argues that european integration would now, to a large extent, depend on how ukraine manages to overcome its most serious problem – corruption. he believes in that the eu, the imf and the u.s. will have a very important role to play in helping ukraine become a well-functioning state, replacing corruption practices with order, justice and legal means of economic development (åslund, 2014: 73). further examining ukraine as a component in the eu-russian political environment, samokhvalov (2015: 1372) puts an emphasis on the choices and preferences of “three significant social actors: government, society and business elites”. namely, these components would contribute to answering the question whether ukraine will come closer to the eu, thus contributing to the integration process, or lean toward russia, closing the door for further cooperation with a united europe. discussion history of the debate while the debate about the future of international society (carr, 1946) emerged in the field of international studies many decades ago, it did not have the form it has today. the reason for such development is that the challenges the international society faced, in a sense that bull (1977) implies, changed significantly over the years. therefore, the focus of the discussion, transitioned slowly from questioning the existence of elements of an international society to the question of its capabilities, and future, as it was accepted to exist. even those scholars who believe in the scenario in which the european union will soon disintegrate and lose its power as an independent international body, admit that an international community currently exists and is (except for the case of brexit) expanding. on one hand, this view differs greatly from the perspective expressed in the years after the world wars, when most of the scholars were disillusioned by the destructive balance-of-power politics (fox, 1944) and the shortcomings of the league of nations that made them skeptical about the prospects of an international community. on the other hand, others like e.h. carr have, to some extent, kept their ambitions and hopes that while the present times were not promising in terms of international cooperation, “idealism” was something to strive for, thus still possible to be achieved if the issue of power and interests is taken seriously (carr, 1946). while carr to some extent shares the concerns of other scholars who were very skeptical of the idea for international community, he believes that is still possible if the unequal power distribution between units in the system is taken seriously. mainly this perspective became in the center of future efforts to support the existence and politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 38 the development of an international community despite the predominant, at the time, scholarly view that such idea would be impossible. substantial contributions in the field ever since the beginning of the eu-integration debate, scholars have made significant contributions that resulted in even deeper and broader discussions. initially, they argued about general questions pertaining to the future of europe – either as a united entity or as a continent that will be repeatedly torn apart by power struggles. every work in the field that has given strong evaluations about the future of the eu has moved the debate further – it pushed other scholars to counter the arguments that others presented. during this time, as the question of whether european states have a future together emerged, it was viewed and analyzed mainly by realist and liberalist (idealist) approaches. while the realist approach remained negative, the liberal approach revealed different nuances that demonstrated a large variety of prognoses, not as skeptical as the one held by realist. neofunctionalists, transactionalists, institutionalists, classical and liberal intergovernmentalists share more optimistic perspectives than realists. but their standpoints are quite different in terms of how far integration would go, and what specific conditions should be included in the theoretical framework for making predictions about it. it was also the question of european integration that gave birth to the emergence of the main schools of thought’s different divisions in terms how likely they think eu integration is. considering this issue, realists were perceived as too uncompromising in terms of a skeptical scenario for integration, and liberalists (idealists) were seen as too extreme in their optimistic prognoses. after the first stage when the debate relied mostly on theoretical approaches passed by, the new generation of scholars began looking at integration from a more practical, problem-driven perspective. they added a conditionality in their analyses and were no longer questioning whether integration is possible anymore, but asking under what conditions it could occur. as opposed to this, others looked at conditions that might presuppose disintegration. some of these works were entirely detached from affiliations to a particular school of thought. instead, they adopted an eclectic approach that drew on both scholarly and foreign policy theories9. the complexity of the problems at hand called for much more diverse approaches than the application of monochromic realism or liberalism. it became clear that the best might be found somewhere in between. what started to 9 the difference between ir-theories and foreign policy theories is that the first group seeks to explain phenomena and their effects at a global level, considering the whole system of ir, while foreign policies take as a starting point the national perspective and how different elements within the nation can provoke changes in the system, and how the system can affect these elements. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 39 matter more were the particular nuances of the approach, how they addressed the issue and not so much the approach itself. state of the debate in an effort to make an evaluation of the lifecycle of the scholarly debate about the future of the european union, one of the most important conclusions in this regard is that it made a significant progress. from a simple “illusion” of having a collective security system, it evolved into a discussion seeking to improve the imperfect, though still well-functioning, union of states. in more recent times, the question whether the eu is developing into a more integrated or more disintegrated community, is mostly viewed through an evaluation of the crises it experiences. in this form, the debate reached a steady phase where it is neither getting resolved, nor it has disappeared from the literature. some scholars see crises as a potential for a more integrated community, and others see them as just another event leading to disintegration. until the official dissolution of the european union or until an event leading to its utter amalgamation, scholars will most likely keep the debate alive without uniting around a common position since signs of total disintegration or achieving a superior form of integrated community are not currently evident. nevertheless, this, in no way undermines the contributions in the field. while there are conflicting opinions offering nuanced assessments on the question, scholars could still contribute in conceptualizing problems, developing effective policies, and identifying potential issues. in fact, by doing so, they could determine the future of the union itself. scholars closely observe every problem that threatens to become or has already escalated into a crisis, and its implications for integration, to inquire about the future of the eu. the vast majority of them are united around the centrality of the problem in the study of international relations – a fact that is best reflected on the creation of a scholarly journal, called the journal of european integration10 that addresses different components of the topic. when it comes to identifying these focal points (crises) that shape predictions of more/less integration, researchers are relatively unanimous about what constitutes them: the media, at least partly. ringo ma writes that: news media, in the process of reporting, inevitably ‘select, emphasize, and arrange’ events (singer & endreny, 1993: 21). although mass media rarely initiate or change an event, they can influence perceptions of disasters and risks. in other words, the manner in which a crisis is developed can be largely related to the agenda setting role (selecting issues to report) and framing process (selecting specific aspects of issues to report) of mass media. this is why many scholars postulate that media construct reality (2005: 242). 10 the first issue dates back to 1977. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 40 many of the challenges that the eu is facing could rapidly be reported as a “crisis” in the mainstream media through a so-called “discursive struggle”, a motivation to label events in a particular way (raboy, 1992: 133). media focuses predominantly on the events that could potentially lead to disintegration and to some extent leave the achievements of the union outside public attention. this could be attributed to the populist nature of the media coverage, as some scholars argue (roodujin, 2014: 741). hence, the public opinion about future integration could quickly become polarized and the integrity of the union could be gradually jeopardized, as in the case of brexit. so far, in the literature, it seems that the negative and the positive assessments of the work of the eu have been balanced, perhaps with a slight prevalence on the side that anticipates disintegration. this could be attributed to the critical thinking the scholars apply to problems rather than to achievements. it is also possible that works that are skeptical towards integration are a reflection of the rise of the populism in the eu, that has achieved a continuous presence in the member states’ and benefitted from voters’ fear of integration, provoked to a large extent by alarming newspaper headlines (brack and startin, 2015; caiani and guerra, 2017; usherwood and startin, 2012). headlines are frequently exaggerated for marketing purposes and it is also recognized that: “newspapers are more typical points of reference and sources of information for lay people than are academic journals” (thurlow, 2006: 689). thus, it should be acknowledged that mainstream media has a much more significant influence on public opinion than academics. however, even though scholars might not have the power to set the tone for portraying a problem and its seriousness, this does not mean they could not be part of its solution. as noted above, the debate about the future of the european union attracts a lot of media attention. this makes it inevitable that scholars, public opinion, and journalism are intertwined and mutually influence each other. an example in this regard is a recent study by the chatham house, published in politico (paravicini, 2017). it seeks to identify public moods about integration, disintegration and their implications. it is most likely to leave a door open for an even more intensified discussion on the topic, since the main result of the survey showed that the largest group of the eu population falls into the category of “hesitant europeans”. the latter supports the union and their nation-states’ membership in it, but expresses concerns about a variety of topics, such as immigration, sovereignty, decision-making, etc. they are not only the largest group in the study, but also the one that is likely to be convinced either in favor of the idea that more integration has its merits or that more disintegration will result in more benefits for the respective nation-states. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 41 central questions in the scholarship about eu integration the most critical questions to be asked in this debate depends highly on one precondition – does a researcher believe that the european union, as a modern expression of the idea of an international society, has a chance of survival. one group of scholars in the literature, mostly represented by realist thinkers, believe that integration processes will fail and ultimately the union will either dissolve or become an example of a victory of domestic interests, over collective ones. for this group of scholars, the most essential issue in this debate is (if they are indeed right) that further integration or at least maintaining this level of integration are both impossible. furthermore, if the eu disappears or ceases to function as a collective body, it should be considered what other mechanisms would replace the power politics and the inevitable conflicts that may follow in future. traditionally, realists do not focus much on the question of how to enhance the international environment, but rather only give a prediction that stresses the cyclical nature of struggles for power. as outlined in the “theoretical perspectives” section, some scholars from this school frame crises into a theoretical approach that could best explain them. while this could be useful in terms of methodological parsimony, such an approach has many limitations as it fails to seek solutions for two factors. first, how the immediate negative consequences from a crisis could be limited, and second, how future crises could be prevented while, at the same time, accounting for the complex nature of the international environment. additional important questions such as how to fix the direct damage on the eu’s overall credibility and its selfidentity narrative that is harmed by a current crisis remain also unanswered. a much more pragmatic and larger group appears to be the one of researchers implementing the problem-driven approach that seeks to avoid shortcomings of the purely theoretical framing of crises. this group of researchers invests efforts in changing the status-quo. the main question to be asked by this group is how to overcome the sovereignty concerns of states in an effort to build collective security and a shared identity. in all of the works examined in this essay, it was evident that the clash between domestic and collective interests was at the foundation of every major eu crisis in the 21st century. thus, the core of the problem with integration could be depicted in more simple terms: what mechanisms should be developed to increase the number of areas where domestic and collective interests match? while this goal seems difficult to achieve at first glance, it has had remarkable results in the past as the eu have walked towards more and more integration until it obtained the dimensions it currently has. the crises have challenged them to a large extent but instead of general solutions that are impossible to implement in this state of the eu affairs, scholars should concentrate politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 42 on more practical issues that may act as a prevention to crises, such as how to increase the level of attraction to the union in the eyes of the member states. conclusion a few words about the limitations of this study are also in order. due to the large volume of literature dedicated to the questions of integration and disintegration, the works that i was able to examine are far from exhaustive. therefore, i focused on works in the ir/political science fields, thus leaving studies in other fields unexplored. future efforts that aim to contribute to the topic, similar to this one, should select works from other academic disciplines. this would provide academia with an opportunity to compare the evolution of the debate across different scientific fields, and to eventually combine these discussions in an effort to better cope with the interdisciplinary challenges that crises present to the integration of the european union. the findings of this study could be summarized in four major points. first, there has been a significant progress in terms of how the topic of european integration was examined over the years. in the very first works where the idea of an international society appeared, the predominant part of the postwar literature was very skeptical about such a perspective. nowadays, the focus of the debate has shifted toward a discussion on the levels of integration and ceased to be limited to the question whether a common future for european countries is possible. as the scholarship subtly accepted this change in the assessment of the issue, scholarly works evolved in a following direction and achieved notable progress on the problems of eu integration. second, an important element of the evolution of the eu integration debate is the tripod of scholarship-media-public opinion that should be understood as an interactive process, rather than a sum of independent static elements that are in a vacuum. they all influence each other, and it will be unwise to analyze the matter of eu integration independently, as it exists in today’s highly interconnected world. third, there are two main groups of scholars, based on the perspectives they use. the first one uses a theoretical approach and the second one a problem-driven approach. another characteristic that distinguishes scholars is whether they think that deeper integration is possible. on one hand, realists outline assumptions about the cyclical nature of events, the inevitable conflicts and challenges that international societies face. at the same time, they lack a vision of how a brighter future of european affairs could be achieved. on the other hand, another cluster of scholars address the challenges that threaten the integration processes, investigate the reasons for the crises, and thus suggest solutions on how to avoid crises in the long run. within the same group, some authors formulate idealistic solutions that could serve as an end goal for the far future of the union. but, nevertheless, they are not compatible with the concerns about state sovereignty. these suggestions politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 40 (march 2019) 43 do not correspond with how these plans should be implemented in an atmosphere of growing mistrust about the idea of collective interests, provoked by various crises that the eu has encountered since its foundation. thus, it is crucial that scholars of all schools of thoughts, using either theory-driven or problem-driven analyses become receptive to the ideas of other authors, especially such of those that they do not share a standpoint. if achieved, the debate about the future of the eu has the potential to provide a balanced approach that could ensure a much more efficient lens for viewing and analyzing crises. fourth, the scholarship on eu integration will surely benefit if researchers dedicate more time and efforts to further evaluate the quality of the debate they have initiated. therefore, an occasional assessment of the functionality of the existing research would make future contributions more applicable to the multifaceted world of eu politics. references adler, emanuel, and michael barnett (eds.) 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(2016): ‘the uk and eu foreign, security and defence policy after brexit: integrated, associated or detached?’ national institute economic review 238(1): pp. 43-50. https://doi.org/10.1177/002795011623800114 https://doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2016.1140756 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5965.2012.02297.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5965.2012.02297.x https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066112461286 https://doi.org/10.1177/002795011623800114 more integration or more disintegration in the european union? a sociological perspective introduction methodology theoretical approaches problem-driven approaches the eu’s financial crisis the crises engendered by eu’s security concerns brexit the multispectral crisis of the eu-russia relationship discussion history of the debate substantial contributions in the field state of the debate central questions in the scholarship about eu integration conclusion references untitled megha criminalizing rape within marriage 124 criminalizing rape within marriage: recasting indian rape law megha, university of delhi, india abstract he paper is an attempt to bring marital rape under the purview of legal discourse in india with substantive equality approach to problematize the existing defined structure of indian rape law. this paper takes up the challenge to create a legal language on the issue of rape within marriage which is till now absent from the legal and social scenario. the equal treatment of women before and under the law within the context of marital rape is critical to ensuring the recognition of women as full citizens, and ensuring their freedom from violence. this paper examines the following questions: how marital rape contributes to and results from women‘s inequality; how the discriminatory roots of the historicalcultural rationales contributes to the exemption of marital rape from the indian legal system; how the issue of marital rape has been debated in personal-political scenario from the feminist viewpoint; how equality jurisprudence can support the case for the legal treatment of marital rape claims. this paper questions the socio-legal passivity about the suppression of married women; cultivate the knowledge that helps women to generate their own thinking and to apply that in creating the new subjects, to make the women able to express their disagreements about the consent and to make them aware of their active sexuality to provide them bodily integrity. the paper is, thus, an attempt to emphasise the need to transform the prevailing masochistic heterosexual sociolegal matrix. the paper underlines the need to bring the issue of marital rape in the political sphere by bringing this to the purview of indian law in both formal and substantive manner. keywords: marital rape, masochistic heterosexuality, personal-political dichotomy, socio-legal matrix, sexual passivity, substantive equality introduction t politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 125 ender inequalities are embedded within the state structures and practices and, through the same dynamic process, gender relations are also constituted through the state. the state is strategic in the sense it acts as the ‘main organizer’ of gendered power through its legislation and policies, and the ways in which it is implicated in the construction of the public/private distinction. this demarcation between public and private life within a society is an inherently political process, which reflects and reinforces power relations of gender and which legitimates direct and indirect violence against women. this public / private distinction established by the state was first interrogated by radical feminists through the slogan ‘personal is political’ where women are brought from the confines of ‘private’ realm to the ‘public’ sphere. the gendering of sexuality within the private sphere drew attention to the way the state constructs ‘women’ in terms of their distinction from men by formulating law and policies which apply only to them, and also by differentiating among them. for instance women have been treated ‘differently’ in law and government policies categorized as ‘good’ and ‘bad’(prostitutes and housewives), virgin and non-virgin, married and unmarried, normal and deviant ( the deviant constituting the destitute and insane) and so on. the feminists argue that construction of “women” in these ways — both as a unitary category and as a differentiated one — is primarily the work of the state. and that is why violence done to women in the private sphere cannot be left untouched by the state and in order to make women free from all kinds of subordinations state needed to come up with some affirmative laws. with such provisions state no longer remains passive in the private domain. so, to end the violence in private sphere, state took many progressive steps like laws against dowry, domestic violence act, criminalizing rape, and measures against girls and women trafficking and so on. at the same time, however, such interventions still take place in gendered ways. the gendered practices of state and law have been particularly criticized by radical feminists in the domain of sexual violence. this is an area where the law and state still work on the public / private divide and by blindly adhering to the social norms, they tend to reinforce such cultural myths such as women’s passive sexuality and men’s active sexuality, coital imperative, cultural sadism and other phallocentric norms and tend to view through the lenses of such norms. geetanjali gangoli argues that while purporting to provide justice to raped women, the legal system tends to reinforce patterns of heterosexual dominance in which women are seen as inferior, sexually passive and within marriage, the sexual property of their husbands. feminists argue that the state constructs the meanings of sexual violence or even domestic violence done to women. many women do not even think that they have been sexually abused, even though so much force may have been used because they were not raped in a way that can be legally proved. though women’s movements have forced the state to intervene in the domestic sphere in the hope that it could abolish all kinds of violence and oppression women face but in reality state has often used this power to manipulate, formulate and categorize women’s identity, in different ways. one such issue that has been manipulatively excluded by the state and law is the issue of marital rape in india which is not only the product of inequality but reinforces the grounds for inequality too. marital rape is not a crime in india. a woman has no legal recourse if she is raped by her husband. though this issue remains a taboo among women, it does not mean that it doesn’t exist or that it is right. on the contrary, marital rape is very common in india but remains hidden behind the iron curtains of the “sacrosanct” institution of marriage, which coupled with legal ignorance on this issue, reinforces the denial of women’s sexual agency and bodily integrity. it amounts to women losing their self respect and identity after marriage as the law g megha criminalizing rape within marriage 126 provides no relief to women in case of marital rape. rape is usually defined in terms of what has done to the victim rather than establishing a legal relationship between the perpetrator and the victim. the legal definition of rape as per the section 375 of the indian penal code (ipc), states that a man commits rape when he engages in intercourse with a woman, ‘not his wife’, by force or threat of force, against her will or without her consent. marital rape is not recognized under this definition. this implies that when a woman marries, as a wife she loses her right to consent to sexual relations and the husband on the other hand acquires an unconditional, unqualified right of sexual access to her. from the standpoint of basic human rights, the husband should not be entitled to have intercourse with his wife without her consent and irrespective of her state of health or her valid objections and a wife must have a right to retract her consent to cohabitation or intercourse. in other words, excluding marital rape from the purview of law amounts to an infringement of a woman’s fundamental human rights, equality and justice. the paper throws light on the dualistic nature of the state towards the issue of rape within marriage. for instance, if domestic violence can become a part of ‘public’ issue despite the fact that it is about ‘private’ domain, then why rape within marriage is still conceived as the part of the ‘private’ realm and is still excluded from the legal purview and even social debates. the paper underlines the need to bring this issue in the political sphere so that women can attain complete bodily integrity even in the private realm. this paper not only abides by the old feminists slogan of ‘personal is political’ but also points to other side of this picture that ‘political is personal’ because without criminalizing rape within marriage in ‘political’ domain, which includes the state, law and society, a radical change cannot be expected at home, that is the ‘personal’ sphere. in this sense both ‘personal’ and ‘political’ mutually complement each other and, that is why, the paper emphasizes the need to understand the issue of rape within marriage through the engagements between socio-political and legal understandings and emphasizes the need to criminalize rape within marriage to provide women substantive equality and justice. defining marital rape there are very few historical accounts available on the issue of a wife’s rape. susan brownmiller addressed it, probably for the first time, in her book, against our will. according to brownmiller, “the exemption from rape prosecutions granted to husbands who force their wife into acts of sexual union by physical means is as ancient as the original definition of criminal rape, which was synonymous with that quaint phrase of biblical origin, ‘unlawful carnal knowledge’ outside the marriage contract, which meant that it was, by definition, ‘lawful’ so long as it was obtained within such a contract. thus, as the law evolved, the idea that a husband could be prosecuted for raping his wife was unthinkable.1 e.h. russell argues that wife’s rape should not be seen only as the extension of violence, but rape in marriage should rather be seen as being at one end of a marital sex continuum, with voluntary, mutually desired and satisfying sex. at the other end rape like behavior such as coercive sex (without physical force or threat of physical force), unwanted sex, sex in which the wife is totally passive servicing her husband.2 in some countries, marital rape is a cognizable offence. in the un conference in beijing in 1995, almost 150 countries including america, canada, and vietnam admitted marital rape as legal offence. in these countries either the legislature has criminalized marital rape or the judiciary has 1 susan, brownmiller, against our will: men, women and rape, new york, routledge, 1975, p. 380. 2 d.e.h. russell, rape in marriage, indiana university press, 1982, p. 377. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 127 played an active role in recognizing it as an offence. in california, usa, for example husbands can only be charged with felony or misdemeanor crime of “spousal rape” if they use force of threat and if rape is reported within ninety days.3 in nepal, the supreme court has declared that husbands who force their wives to have sex can now be charged with rape. the may 2002 landmark ruling was a result of a july 2001 petition filed by the forum for women, law and development (fwld), a women's rights organization in nepal. the court’s judgment declared that marital sex without a wife's consent constitutes rape. drawing upon the religious texts, which do not condone men who rape their wives, the court stated that hinduism stresses conjugal harmony based on mutual understanding between husband and wife. types of marital rape three kinds of marital rape may be identified: 1. battering rape: many marital rape victims are battered wives and violence and terror are an integral part of their lives. women experience physical and sexual violence. men hit their wives and after insulting and abusing them in a 3 they can be charged if they use violence without force or threat; or if the wife is incapable of giving consent because of a mental disorder or a developmental or physical disability about which they are cognizant, or if the wife is prevented from resisting due to intoxicating, anesthetic or controlled substances administered by them or with their knowledge; or if the wife is unconscious of the nature of the act at the time it occurred, and this is known to them; or if intercourse if forced on the wife by the threat of deporting or incarceration. ibid., pp. 377-378. humiliating and degrading manner they resort to sexual violence. while beating the wife a husband may strip his wife and force her to disrobe and then have intercourse. sometime the hitting and the punching continue throughout the sex and that itself becomes a violent experience. 2. force-only rape: in this, husband uses only as much force as necessary to coerce their wives into sex, though it is also humiliating and upsetting, they use less violence and more often, these involve a specifically sexual grievance. 3. obsessive rape: in this, husband’s sexual interests are strange and they use torture and force to force his wife for participating in such activities. to put it simply, marital rape refers to unwanted intercourse by a man with his wife obtained by force, threat of force, or physical violence, or when she is unable to give consent. it is a non-consensual act where wife’s consent is ignored or ruptured by a husband and wife is physically and sexually abused.4 thus, it becomes important to explore the dynamics of heterosexuality that reinforces masculinity and how it operates to legitimize women’s sexual oppression within the institution of marriage. 4 priyanka rath, “marital rape and the indian legal scenario”, in indian law journal, vol. 2, issue 2, 2007. (http://www.indianjournal.com/ on 12.08.2009). http://www.indianjournal.com/ megha criminalizing rape within marriage 128 feminist interrogation of heterosexuality: pivotal to legitimizing masculinity and women’s sexual oppression post modernist thinking has introduced the idea of viewing men and women and divisions between them as discursive constructs, which opened up heterosexuality and within this masculinity to interrogation. though mary wollstonecraft from a liberal standpoint had first questioned the normative modes of male sexuality in the late eighteenth century, two centuries later, the development of sexology also witnessed a decline in feminist attention to sexual politics. in fact, sexology, with its scientific engagements legitimized the patriarchal model of sexuality which was found in the model of heterosexuality naturalizing the domination of men over women. through sexology and its popularization with sex manuals and essentialisation of penis and phallus by freud and lacan respectively, the norms of sex were re-casted as immutable and determined by laws of nature. such ideas not only accepted and legitimized male aggressive behavior as natural but also made women responsible for their rape within marriage. with the emergence of ‘women only’ groups and practice of consciousness raising among them, feminists coined the slogan “the personal is political”, that is because women discovered that many of their individual problems and anxieties were shared by others and concluded that these were not personal but derived from their social and political situation and within marriage it is more prominent because women do not have right to say ‘no’ to their husbands for sexual intercourse. feminists like sheila jaffrey , mackinnon, dwarkin, russell, jackson, kelly, clark and lewis, burt, berger and searles, considered sexual violence simply as the endpoint on a continuum of heterosexual interactions where male aggression and female passivity are integral to the socially constructed roles and forms of coercion are normative5 within marriage. so the feminist critiques of heterosexuality took the oppression of women as their point of departure. sheila jaffrey viewed heterosexuality as pivotal to women’s oppression. stevi jackson discussed heterosexuality in terms of both heteronormativity and heteropatriarchy or hetero-oppression. in heteronormativity, heterosexuality is considered as a norm and any alternative is viewed as ‘other’ or ‘marginal’.6 alternatively, heterosexuality leads to the hetero-patriarchy as if that is the standard norm and women find it very difficult to get rid of this and ends up being captured in the male dominated system that is heterosexual in character. within this heterosexual structure pleasure for sex does not pertain to women’s desire, but is used to discipline women according to men’s wishes. women discipline their own bodies and pleasure to suit men, and thus, concede sex as penetration alone as it is pleasurable for men and it is assumed that penetration is pleasurable for women as well. with this perspective sex within marriage is always 5 lynne segal is of the view that to generalize heterosexual relationship as the foundation of rape and sexual violence actually devalues the trauma of the rape victim. see, lynne segal, “feminist sexual politics and the heterosexual predicament” in l. segal (ed.), new sexual agendas, basingstoke, macmillan, 1997, pp. 36-37); and, susan estrich argued that radical feminists arguments are trying to prohibit all sex. see, susan estrich real rape, ma, harward university press, 1987, p. 82. 6 stevi jackson, “heterosexuality, heteronormitivity and gender hierarchy: some reflections on recent debates” in jaffrey weeks, janet holland and matthew waites (eds.), sexualities and societies: a reader, cambridge, polity press, 2003, pp. 7173. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 129 regarded pleasurable for women, which makes it unquestionable. it is interesting to note that some feminists have also strongly defended heterosexual eroticism. lynne segal, for instance, is aware of inequalities in heterosexual relations but this, according to her, is ‘incidental’, and she argues that heterosexual relations (consensual sex) could generate equality at a broader level and even sexual passion is capable of transforming, even dissolving gender because all oppressive dichotomies slide away in a sexual act.7 on the other hand, for wendy hallway penetrative sex is not about oppression or subjugation but about feeling somebody’s love inside the body.8 such an understanding of heterosexuality accords higher priority to penetration and is not able to see politics of hegemonic masculinity behind sexual acts. in fact, heterosexuality is understood as penetration by man, while some scholars also view it in terms of invasion and colonization of women’s bodies. an alternative reading of this phenomenon is offered by carol smart who suggests discouraging penetration from heterosexuality so that penetration’s privilege place, resulting in masochistic sex, as an essential heterosexual act can be challenged and we can move towards post heterosexual desire.9 radical feminists, on the other hand, understand heterosexuality in context of gender. heterosexuality is not a monolithic but a complex of institution, identity, 7 lynne segal, “feminist sexual politics and the heterosexual predicament” in l. segal (ed.), new sexual agendas, basingstoke, macmillan, 1997, p. 86. 8 wendy hallway, “theorizing heterosexuality: a response”, feminism and psychology, london, sage, 1993, pp. 413-414. 9 carol smart, “desperately seeking post heterosexual woman”, in janet holland and lisa adkins (ed.), sex, sensibility and the gendered body, basingstoke, macmillan, 1996, p. 236. experience and practice — all of which intersect with gender, which in turn, is sustained at a variety of levels. heterosexuality in its gendered form creates a hierarchical platform that gives privilege to masculinity over feminity.10 tamsin wilson further argues that gender and heterosexuality are mutually constituted to the extent that heterosexuality institutionalizes subordination of women and puts forth the concept of heteropolarity — the socially constructed difference that positions men and women as complementary opposites — which is crucial for maintenance of heterosexuality11 and masculinity resulted from this. women’s identity is determined within heterosexual relations as a wife, girlfriend, daughter or mother. association with these identities affects the ways in which, women experience the institution and practice of heterosexuality. in sexual terms too, her identity is shaped by heterosexual imperatives — the need to attract and please a man. this is heterosexuality that produces conventional feminine identities in which women’s self worth is assumed in her desire to be sexually attractive that is closely bound up with the gendered disciplinary practices through which docile female bodies and masculine imperatives are produced.12 there are indeed a host of everyday practices through which the social technologies of gender produce men and women as gendered subjects. drawing upon the foucault and althusser’s notions of interpellation butler deploys the concept of interpellation to explain how particular kinds of identities are produced. such discursive power not only constructs our minds, but our 10 jackson, op. cit., 2003, p. 78. 11 t. wilson, “which one’s the man? the heterosexualisation of lesbian sex”, in d. richardson (ed.), theorizing heterosexuality: telling in strength, buckingham, open university press, 1996, p. 126. 12 s.l. bartky, feminity and domination, new york, routledge, 1990. megha criminalizing rape within marriage 130 whole beings, including our bodies, because discourses, “actually live in bodies”.13 this notion of reiteration of interpellation can well be understood in the context of sexual practice within marriage that helps to understand how the physical bodies function according to the practices of normative heterosexuality. such practices of heterosexuality determine our physical experiences of sex and their discourses implicitly constitute subjectivity and positions us in particular ways. women are, for instance, trapped in the passive feminity within marriage which is accepted as a ‘natural’ phenomenon without realizing that she has been forced in this social and cultural web of subjugation. she cannot even recognize and resist male sexual drive discourse and the coital imperative14 which function together to ensure that penis vagina penetration becomes a necessary part of a “real” sex for heterosexuals that is precisely why rape within marriage is always considered as something which even does not exist. the paper draws upon three dominant discourses of heterosexuality outlined by wendy hallway that provide a cultural foundation on which heterosexual relations are organized and by which masculinity is normalized within marriage. first, male sexuality is pervasively influenced by a “male sexual drive discourse” that produces masculinity. it holds that the drive or need to have sex is uncontrollable for men and this overwhelming drive is natural, and thus a man can go to great lengths to satisfy this need which is justifiable within 13 judith butler, bodies that matter: on discursive limits of “sex”, london, routledge, 1993, pp. 35-38. 14 male sexual drive discourse holds that the desire or the need to have sex is a strong drive that exists in all healthy normal men. coital imperative is used to advance the idea that heterosex is about penetrating vagina by penis. it is considered to be uncommon to exclude coitus from heterosex. marriage because it is considered normal to play their sexual drive on their wives even in violent ways. second, a “have / hold discourse” has played an important role in shaping women’s sexuality in relation to men within marriage. women’s sexuality is considered asexual, and must be viewed within the parameters of a monogamous heterosexual relationship, for producing children. some also consider a woman’s sexuality as dangerous and, always in need of control.15 in both these discourses, men are seen as the subject and women as objects of a sexual discourse. husbands are considered as always ready for sex and it is assumed that it is one of the wife’s duty to arouse this interest. a heterosexual matrix makes it very difficult for women to step outside this discourse. when a woman is not considered sexual or attractive she is often labeled as “ball-breaking”, “a cock teaser”, “frigid”, “a cold bitch’ or “uptight” and if woman doesn’t show her interest in sexual acts with her partner, she herself enters a discursive space riddled with pejorative and potentially punitive consequence.16 third pertains to a “permissive discourse” in which women are portrayed as sexual as men. however, it does not have a libratory context but deploys hidden components of double standard and gender inequality in sexuality. characterizing it as “pseudo liberation”, segal points to pornography reaching its higher peak, where women’s bodies were not only subjugated but this subjugation got a platform to be enjoyed.17 for many feminists, this new equalization of woman was a conduit of misogynist fantasy. in fact, the phenomenon of heterosexuality cannot be seen as an 15 wendy hallway, subjectivity and method in psychology: gender, meaning and science, london, sage, 1989. 16 nicola gavey, just sex: the cultural scaffolding of rape, london, routledge, 2005, p. 105. 17 segal (1983), op.cit., p. 30. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 131 individual preference, as something into which people either drift or are fixed as a result of psychological processes in childhood but rather as a socially constructed institution18 which hegemonise masculinity. radical feminists emphasize that masculinity should not be taken for granted as a norm but its prevalence needs to be explained. masculinity, feminists argue, is the most important base of patriarchy. in a heterosexual relationship, women emotionally, materially and sexually service men and owing to their masculine upbringing, men are in a dominant position at home as well as in the public domain. adrienne rich further argues that women are bound to heterosexuality, which has been imposed on them as compulsory. that is perhaps why she has coined the term of “compulsory heterosexuality”.19 drawing upon rich’s work the paper articulates the term “compulsory masculinity” because this is masculinity which is imposed on women’s mind and body with in heterosexual relations which is the root of masculine imperative of marriage. rich elaborates different spheres through which it works and male power is perpetuated. women’s denial of their own sexuality by means of clitoridectomy and infilbulation20 chastity 18 even freud considered that all people are originally bisexual, but become heterosexual during the normal path of development. 19 adrienne rich, “compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence” in ken plummer (ed.), sexualities: critical concepts in sociology, london, routledge, 2002. 20 clitoridectomy refers the partial or complete removal of a woman’s clitoris. as a result, after undergoing a clitoridectomy, most women can no longer function sexually. however, due to cultural beliefs in certain parts of the world, the procedure is a common rite of passage that marks a girl’s transition into womanhood. it is believed that by removing the clitoris women are belts, denial of lesbian existence and clitoris; imposition of male sexuality upon women by rape within marriage, wife beating, incest, the socialization of heterosexual romance in everyday life, psychoanalytic doctrines of frigidity and vaginal organism, pornographic depictions of women responding pleasurably to sexual violence and humiliation, are all different meanings which make up the ideology of sadistic masculinity being normal. masculinity is, thus, forced on women and violative aspect of masculinity is considered normal by women themselves within marriage.21 kathleen barry also argues that this compulsory heterosexuality resulted into essentialist masculinity legitimizes all kinds of enforced conditions under which women live subject to men such as in prostitution, marital rape, father-daughter and brothersister incest, pornography, bride price, the selling of the daughter, purdah and genital mutilation. rape within marriage is a vicious circle that leads to the rationalization and acceptance of other forms of enslavement, where the woman is presumed to have chosen her fate to embrace it passively.22 characterizing such conditions as that of women’s sexual slavery, she argues that it is present in all situations where women or girls cannot change their given conditions, or, are subject to sexual violence and exploitation and marriage is such an institution where she finds herself stuck in. in this heterosexual matrix, the conquering male sex drive is pervasive and the penis has a life of its own, which not only justifies prevented from engaging in premarital sex. this, procedure is often accompanied by infilbulation, or the stitching together of the vulva. this is usually done following the removal of the clitoris, when the woman’s labia major is sewn together, leaving an opening small enough for only urine and menstrual blood to pass through. 21 rich, op. cit., pp. 104-105. 22 kathleen barry, female sexual slavery, new york, new york university press, 1979, p. 33. megha criminalizing rape within marriage 132 sexual slavery but has become the norm and rationale for adult male sexual behavior – a condition of arrested sexual development.23 women learn to accept the inevitability of this drive as natural. in heterosexuality, the problem does not lie in ‘hetero’ per se, but in the way, it is practiced, which is masculine in nature. masculinity is the problem and a feminist understanding renders it as a socially constructed phenomenon. janet holland, for instance, points out that heterosexuality is not about putting masculinity and feminity in opposition, but it is about masculinity primarily because feminity simply does not exist or, does not play an active role in heterosexuality. with her notion of the “the male in the head”, she emphasizes that it is a kind of surveillance power of a “male dominated and institutionalized heterosexuality” which has in its base foucauladian notion of panoptican model that produces surveillance power to regulate the acts of the people24 in heterosexual matrix, there is no room for women’s pleasure and desire since women are a sexual object, they are considered as a natural sexual prey to men within marriage and it is assumed that women love it. sexuality and violence are considered congruent, so that for women sex is essentially masochistic, humiliation pleasurable and physical abuse erotic. in other words, enforced submission and use of cruelty are taken as sexually “normal” within marriage. mackinnon points out that in a heterosexual relationship where male is supreme, the notion of consent within marriage has no meaning because sex is always violent. in this sense in marriage men’s violent nature is taken as normal and women’s screaming is considered as a symbol of pleasure. for mackinnon too, the institution of heterosexuality has admitted force on women by men in normal sexual encounters. this idea has made force or violence an integral part of sex within marriage. it is assumed if force has not been 23 ibid., p. 140. 24 gavey, op. cit., p. 112. used during sex then the wife would not understand him masculine enough.25 a close association between male sexuality, power and violence is constructed as a biological necessity and therefore, inevitable and, at the same time, there is a connection between female sexual pleasure and pain. ellis argues that women instinctly enjoy roughness, violence, pain and danger and in this way women enjoy their subjugation26 within marriage. on the other hand, the masculine tendency is to enjoy giving this pain and violence, and thus, men enjoy dominating women. a. marro corroborates this viewpoint and emphasizes the force as the foundation of male sexuality and it is also a quality in men wanted by women. that is how, the aggressiveness in masculinity and submissiveness in feminity stands naturalized.27 mackinnon further states that inequality is always covertly or overtly inclined into the social conceptions of male and female sexuality of masculinity and feminity and of sexiness and heterosexual attractiveness. in this way, sexual intercourse within marriage normally occurs between un-equals. the nature and pressure of heterosexual force actually amounts to eroticized women’s subordination. john archer defines masculinity in terms of power and argues that men who internalize masculine role attributes and values, perpetuates a proclivity towards sexual 25 c.a. mackinnon, feminism unmodified: discourses on life and law, london, harvard university press, 1987, p. 92. 26 h. ellis, studies in the psychology of sex, 3rd edition, london, william heinemann, 1948, pp. 3, 32, 95. 27 ellis also argues that only to a certain limits a woman really enjoys the pain, discomfort or subjection to which she submits but she has not clarified who will decide the parameters of these aggression and pain. in this way she has not considered for the active ground for women in heterosexual sex. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 133 aggression. coercive strategies are used by men to obtain sex which has its basis in adversarial attitude to women who are viewed largely in terms of sexual gratification.28 men’s masculinity is assured through his categorization as macho male whose sense of self worth is bolstered by the pursuit of dominance and exploitation of the opposite sex. this masochism is very much engrained in the state apparatuses and indian legal system that it naturalizes rape within marriage and leaves wife’s body unquestionable when it comes on terms with husband’s context. legal and statutory discourse on marital rape in india marital rape exists de facto but not de jure. according to legal definition of rape, as described in section 375 of the indian penal code, if a man has a sexual intercourse with his wife who is not below fifteen, it is not rape. so, a marital rape cannot occur by definition in the case of sexual intercourse between husband and wife, in which a possibility that a man can use force to have sexual intercourse with her is, thus, in the realm of juridical nullity. section 375 and 376 of the ipc, therefore continues to remain a site of struggle which do not accept that all rape is rape even if it is not by a stranger. law still follows the binary system of logic that is thinking in the oppositional terms of active/passive, truth/lie, rationality/emotionality, man/woman, in which the female is always subordinate to the male. our constitution guarantees equality to both men and women. however noncriminalization of marital rape violates all fundamental rights guaranteed to its women citizens. article 14 ensures equality before law and article 19 guarantees the right to freedom to every citizen but the wife is excluded from their purview. laws do not consider wife as a person or a citizen but merely as an object, a property of her 28 john archer, “male violence in perspective” in john archer (ed.), male violence, new york, routledge, 1994, pp. 3, 8. husband to use, abuse and violate as and when he desires. the exemption of marital rape from section 375 and section 376a of the ipc shows that the laws are not only blind, but it’s also patriarchal in nature. according to the rape law, rape is a sexual intercourse with a female not his wife without her consent. this gave david finkellor and kersti yllo an understanding that “the marriage license can indeed be called a ‘license to rape’.”29 in the dictionary of judicial grammar the law has defined two circumstances – the first in which rape cannot occur by definition and the second where no judicial verification is required for establishing consent. the first holds true in cases of sexual intercourse between a man and his wife, where latter’s consent is taken for granted. the second is the case of a girl below the age of 15 in which case only the fact of intercourse is sufficient to establish the offence of rape.30 the idea of marital rape is associated with two categories wherein law recognizes rape based on the age of consent decided by the state through its age of consent act. age of consent is about the age at which a girl can give her consent to marriage. second category is about the will of the married 29 david finkelhor and kersfi yllo, license to rape: sexual abuse of wives, new york, the free press, 1985, p. 2. 30 an analysis of section 375 and 376 proves that indian law is bounded with patriarchal ideology, if we look into three positions regarding the wife. (a) below the age of 12 (b) between the age of 12 and 15 years (c) not below the age of 15. in the first and second circumstances severe punishment is prescribed. in contrast to it, in the third instance, by virtue of the exception clause to section 375, forcible sexual intercourse with a wife above 15 years is not considered to be rape at all. see, nidhi tondan and nisha oberoi, “marital rape: a question of redefinition”, in lawyers collective, march, 2000, p. 24. megha criminalizing rape within marriage 134 women, where the law has not recognized rape within marriage. according to law, if a woman is legally married (in the context of age) then she does not have any right to say no to her husband for sexual intercourse. the following section discusses their implications in detail. age of consent controversy: where is the will of women? age of consent controversy is directly linked to the issue of marital rape, because the whole discourse of age of consent act (1860, 1891, and 1927) evolved as a result of occurrence of marital rape. the inclusion of marital rape was first recommended by j.c. thomas, a member of the law commission of 1846, who argued that because of the prevalence of child marriage in india, it was necessary to include married and unmarried girls in the ‘age of consent clause’ of the indian penal code. in view of the growing abuse of child wives, colonial government decided to include thomas’s suggestion in the 5th clause (in the exception) to section 375 of the indian penal code. some hindu reformers such as brahmo reformer a.k. dutt, and pandit ishwarachandra vidyasagar, also supported inclusion of married girls in the age of consent clause in 1860 penal code. the nine years age of consent as proposed by thomas, was raised to ten for both married and unmarried girls. there was hardly any resistance against this change and it was prominently accepted in india.31 it became a controversial issue when the native marriage act iii of 1872 sought to introduce extremely radical provisions prohibiting polygamy, legalizing divorce and setting up a fairly high minimum age of marriage. after this the 1891 age of consent act, came into existence which was brought after two drastic incidents. legally, the demand for consent legislation was reinforced by two 31 mrinalini sinha, colonial masculinity: the manly englishman and the effeminate bengali, manchester, manchester university press, 1995, p. 162. court cases that considered different aspects of the child marriage. the first was ‘rukhmabai case’ and the second ‘phulmonee dasi’ case. rukhmabai case offered a famous example of imposing the oppressive and aggressive nature of hindu patriarchal traditions of hinduism on women doing “her duty”. this case was fought under restitution of conjugal rights and indirectly became the issue of the consent or the age of consent.32 in 1884, rukhmabai’s husband dadaji bhikaji filed a suit for restitution of conjugal rights over rukhmabai. she had refused to live with her husband on many grounds such as his poverty, uneducated status, consumptive nature and more importantly, her lack of consent to the marriage when she was only eleven years old and, was not eligible to give her consent for that marriage, and the fact that it had not been consummated. but all these claims were in vain because the court decided against rukhmabai and ordered her to go back and live with her husband dadaji, or if she didn’t follow the law, she will face imprisonment. rukhmabai was ready to undergo imprisonment rather than live with her husband. ironically by enforcing restitution of conjugal rights britishers actually perpetuated child marriages, as in this case rukhmabai was forced to go back to her husband to consummate the marriage.33 hindus were satisfied because the 32 certain provisions of section 260, code of civil procedure 1882, introduced by colonial law, related to the execution of decrees for the restitution of conjugal rights and suit for the recovery of a wife. by this law husbands could use threats of imprisonment to force their reluctant wives to live with them. 33 sudhir chandra, “whose laws: notes on 19th century hindu case of conjugal rights”, in vasudha dalmia and hvon stitencron (ed.), representing hinduism: the constitution of religious tradition and national identity, new delhi, sage, 1995, pp. 155, 167. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 135 fear of imprisonment, it was argued, would make many young wives return to their husband’s home and live a happy life.34 it is significant to note that orthodox hindus who had always opposed any interference by colonial rule in their personal laws favoured the colonial law in rukhmabai’s case because that law helped in strengthening patriarchy. in other words, they didn’t shy away from supporting the colonial rule if it led to the curtailment of women’s rights.35 it was malabari who refused to consider marriage between dadaji and rukhmabai as a valid marriage. raising the issue of consent, he insisted that since in rukhmabai’s marriage her consent was absent, so marriage could not be considered as valid.36 the case of phulmonee was even more important because it not only divided the society into two ideologies— revivalists and reformists, but also shook the patriarchal foundations of the indian society. in 1890, phulmonee, a girl of about ten or eleven years of age was raped to death by her 35 years old husband hari maiti, but he was not charged with the rape as it was claimed that phulmonee had been within the statutory age limit of ten. the judges were forbidden to go beyond the established law: “neither judges nor juries have any right to do for themselves what the law has not done.” the phulmonee’s mother, aunt and grandmother’s arguments that the marriage had never been consummated earlier, and that hari maiti had forced himself on their daughter were ignored. the court believed that the couple had slept together earlier and for them the fact that phulmonee gained the age of ten was sufficient to give benefit of doubt to hairi maiti. tanika sarkar explains that then main concern was the exoneration of man, rather than the horrible death of 34 charu gupta, sexuality, obscenity, community: women, muslims and the hindu public in colonial india, new delhi, permanent black, 2001, pp. 129-130. 35 ibid., p. 130. 36 chandra, op. cit., p. 169. phulmonee. the law preserved the custom, and protected male’s right to enjoy an infantile female body.37 these two cases highlighted the disastrous consequences of child marriage beginning from lack of choice and compatibility, leading to unhappiness in the bride’s life and premature consummation resulting in tragic death of the bride. that is how a reformer started campaigning against child marriage or sexual abuse of a girl child within marriage. efforts of malabari and these cases reinforced sir andrew scoble’s resolve to amend section 375 of the indian penal code. scoble drafted the bill which was introduced by the viceroy of india, lord landsdowne, into the supreme legislative council on january 9, 1891. the age of consent was raised to twelve years in the case of both married and unmarried girls but in the case of married girls the offence by the husband was made non-cognizable and the law would apply all religious communities. after a well reasoned debates and wise speeches the age of consent act was passed on march 19, 1891.38 this age of consent act of 1891 created a hue throughout india, resulting in sharp divisions between revivalists and reformists opposing the bill and favouring it.39 the whole debate centered around two contrasting notions of subjection: the 37 tanika sarkar, hindu wife, hindu nation: community, religion, and cultural nationalism, new delhi, permanent black, 2001, p. 212. 38 meera kosambi, “girl brides and sociolegal change: age of consent bill (1891) controversy”, in economic and political weekly, vol. 26, no. 31-32, 3-10 aug, 1991, p. 1859. 39 kosambi has a different opinion on this, she has searched for another strand between revivalists and reformists and that was reactionists. according to her the fight was not between reformists and revivalists, but between reactionists and reformists. she clubs together the revivalists with reactionists. megha criminalizing rape within marriage 136 colonized hindu male, denoting the forced surrender and real dispossession of the male, and the apparently subordinated hindu wife at home. such juxtaposition between the husband and wife and former’s conjugal rights remained at the centre stage of debates on domination and subordination; and subjection and resistance. revivalists could not bear the interference of colonial rule in the private sphere — the only place where they could exercise their power and turned it into a test of their manhood by criticizing bill on accounts of rituals, ethics and rites.40 they argued, for instance, that this bill would violate the garbhadan ritual because it had raised the minimum age for a girl’s marriage to twelve and, if she menstruates before this age, as it happens with thousands of girls, these girls will have impure garbhas and their children would be impure as they won’t be able to offer ‘pindas’. consequently, this would destroy the hindu community and principle of hindu domesticity.41 the nationalists also projected the entire issue especially as a test of the reformer’s masculinity. gangadhar tilak claimed that reformers were not masculine because of their inability to control their own household or to protect their daughters or that they are asking the colonial government to have watch over their private family matters. the support for the bill was interpreted as support for the government, which in turn, was linked to the effeminacy of reformists.42 the british government which imposed the bill also had their political motives behind these reforms. they allowed them to intervene into the daily social and cultural lives of indians. britishers wanted to create ideological hegemony to seek 40 sarkar, op. cit., pp. 197-198. 41 ibid., p. 224; sinha, op. cit., p. 148. 42 sarkar, op. cit., p. 159. legitimacy of their rule.43 their government made no changes in the existing patriarchal structure. the british secretary to the public health society wrote to the government of bengal: council directs one to lay special stress upon the point... that they base no charge against the native community.... the council admits that our national fellow’s subjects must be allowed the fullest possible freedom in deciding when their children should be ceremonially married. that, in the constitution of hindu society, is a matter with which no government could meddle and no government ought to meddle. 44 so, the colonial rule had a dualistic nature, in that, they favoured social reforms but wanted to sustain the patriarchal approach. reformists were also not much different. they did not favour conviction of husband on the charge of marital rape, but argued that the crime of a sexual intercourse between a husband and wife should be recognized as ‘criminal assault’ and not rape.45 their concern was not to protect the child wives from harm but to save men from the punishment. their rejection of child marriage was also born out of the need for maintaining good and healthy nationhood.46 the word ‘consent’ itself was used in the reference of a girl’s ‘body’ but not her ‘will’. medical and legal experts, reformists and nationalists all associated consent with a certain physical capacity when a girl could sustain intercourse without much damage. the girl could get the 43 himani bannerji, inventing subjects: studies in hegemony, patriarchy and colonialism, india, tulika, 2001, pp. 72-75. 44 sarkar, op. cit., p. 239. 45 sinha, op. cit., p. 162. 46 sarkar, op. cit., p. 238. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 137 security by law only till the age of twelve. so it was her body not the will of the girl that signified consent.47 finally it may be concluded that reformists and revivalists both had a patriarchal approach. the concept of the self rule in the domestic sphere was bound with the sacrifice of the physical safety or the body of hindu girl or her life, as might be necessary.48 this sacrifice could bring autonomy for the hindu male or hindu community.49 both reformist and revivalists didn’t break patriarchal matrix.50 in 1927, harbilas sarda mooted the idea that the consent of the child wife was not enough, but it was necessary to fix a minimum age for marriage. the issue was hotly debated in the legislative assembly. and, an age of consent committee was set up that submitted its reports and evidence from various provinces. the report revealed that there were many cases of infringement of the law of consent but very few came before the courts.51 the bill, which was named sarda act, was finally passed in 1929, fixed the minimum age of marriage at 14. revivalists launched an agitation but this time, there was an organized response by women’s organization, all india women’s commission (aiwc) that took a lead in mobilizing support. however, in practice it proved to be a dead letter and was not able to stop child marriages throughout the province. reports received from commissioners and district officers of uttar pradesh on the implementation of this act 47 ibid., p. 243. 48 cultural nationalists made a comparison between phulmonee’s death and death of indian culture. their motive to keep the culture alive or superior made her death insignificant. they argued that the death of an ordinary girl phulmonee dasee can’t be recognized at the cost of the death of the culture. see, sarkar, op. cit., p. 236. 49 ibid., p. 18. 50 kosambi, op. cit., p. 1860. 51 gupta, op. cit., p. 136-137. revealed that most were not aware of it or thought it could be disregarded. still, this act was a victory for the women’s movement 52 the whole debate on the age of consent controversy brought the women’s body under the scrutiny of the debate between the reformists and the revivalists. thus, women’s body was at the centre stage and her will was ignored. the whole historical debate highlights the fact that it was the state that enforced marital rape. in the contemporary period too, the state and law have become instruments for enforcing marital rape. this aspect has been addressed in the following section. law and state: an instrument enforcing marital rape the foundation of the legal justification for the marital rape exception was expounded in the famous declaration made by sir matthew hale: c.j. in 17th century england, hale wrote: “the husband cannot be guilty of rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for by their mutual matrimonial contract, the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto the husband, which she cannot retract”.53 under lord macauly, when the first indian law commission, drafted the indian penal code in 1837, it followed the same law by declaring that “sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife is in no case rape”.54 this established the notion that once a woman is married, she doesn’t have the right to refuse sex with her husband. this allows husband’s rights of sexual access over their wives in direct contravention of the principles of human rights and provides husbands with a “license to rape” their wives.55 52 ibid., p. 138. 53 sinha, op. cit., p. 161. 54 ibid. 55 saurabh mishra and sarvesh singh, “marital rape: myth, reality and need for criminalization”, pl webjour 12, 2003. (http://www.ebchttp://www.ebc-india.com/lawyer/articles/645.htm megha criminalizing rape within marriage 138 the tensions between judicial grammar and judicial verification may restrict a husband from inflicting grievous bodily harm to his wife during sexual intercourse but in the realm of judicial grammar, this cannot be classified as rape. on the other hand if a girl is below 15 years of age consents to sexual intercourse, then her consent somewhere reduces the period of imprisonment.56 the fulfillment of male desire within the confines of matrimony is considered legitimate, irrespective of how it is done. the legal codes do not recognize marital rape and consequently at the level of judicial grammar, this category does not exist. in the process of judicial verification, the judges can find instances when grievous bodily harm has been done to the wife in exercising a man’s conjugal rights but even then this whole act could not be classified as a sexual offence by the husband.57 to quote das, “in the case of conjugal couple, the surface of the female body has no information to convey for determining the ‘nature’ of the inside for she does not exist as a subject for purposes of rape law”.58 a woman doesn’t have rights on her own body, as conjugal rights are only for men where his rights on her body are naturalized in the political and social definitions. she asserts that in the indian judicial discourse the relationship between power and sexuality has played a dynamic active role in the production of bodies and speech—both male and female. female body and male india.com/lawyer/articles/ 645.htm on 12.07.2009). 56 though it is prescribed in law that even if a girl, who is below 15 years of age, gives her consent to sexual intercourse, the man who is engaged with her in the act of sexual intercourse would be criminalized for rape. 57 the well known case of this kind was phulmonee dasee case as discussed in the text earlier. 58 veena das, “sexual violence, discursive formations and the state”, in economic political weekly, vol. 31, no. 35/37, 1 september 1996, p. 2421. desire are the sites of judicial discourse and silence is maintained on the contrasting attributes of female desire and male body. male desire is considered ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ and female body as the natural site on which his desire is to be worked out. in this sense, women are not seen as desiring subjects in the rape laws as wives they do not have the right to withhold consent from their husbands.59 even where the state protects them from the desires of other men, their concern is not the protection of bodily integrity of women, but protection of the property of the legitimate property owner, that is the husband. hence marital rape is not recognized, but law has prescribed punishment for nonage marriage. marriage is a contract and under section 23, indian contract act, 1872, if both parties are below the age of consent then it is an invalid contract and since their marriage is not valid, the question of marital rape does not arise.60 another area of concern is section 9 of the hindu marriage act, 1995 that gives both the husband and wife a right to apply to court for restitution of conjugal rights when either the husband or wife has withdrawn from the society of the other. does the hindu wife have the right to privacy, enabling her to have control over her body in the light of such a provision? interestingly the manu smriti wrote against forced cohabitation. manu said, “a man is advised to approach her wife only when she desired it or intercourse is not allowed if the wife or the husband is suffering from any disease”.61 in the modern context as well, 59 ibid. 60 nidhi tondan and nisha oberoi, “marital rape: a question of redefinition” in lawyers collective, march 2000, p. 24. 61 ramnika jalali, indian women in the smrities, jammu, vinod publisher, 1944, pp. 128-129. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 139 sexual relations should not be restored when the marriage in essence has broken.62 in one such important case in the andhra pradesh high court filed in july, 1983, venkata subbiah sought restitution of conjugal rights against his wife, film actress sareetha. in the judgment, justice p.a. chowdhry concluded that section 9 constitutes the grossest form of violation of an individual’s privacy and human dignity which are both included in the fundamental right to life and personal liberty guaranteed by article 21 of the constitution. that judgment declared that forced sex, like all forced things, is a denial of all joy... no positive act of sex can be forced upon an unwilling person, “because nothing can conceivably be more degrading to human dignity and monstrous to human spirit than to subject a person by the long arm of the law to a positive sex act.”63 it noted that restitution of conjugal rights is a ‘barbarous’ remedy, and is not good for society. it’s unconstitutional to exercise sexual rights on wife in the grant of restitution of conjugal rights. though this judgment still falls short of recognizing marital rape, there is no doubt that it spreads a message that forcible sexual intercourse within marriage is also unconstitutional and deprives a woman of her rights to life and liberty (article 21). in boddhisattawa gautam v. shubhra chakraborty, ir 1996 sc 922, the supreme court noted that rape is a crime against basic human rights and a violation of the victim’s most cherished of fundamental rights namely, the right to life enshrined in article 21 of the constitution. but once again, it shied away from recognizing marital rape as a criminal and sexual offence. 62 tondan and oberoi, op. cit., p. 24. 63 vimal balasubrahmanyam, “conjugal rights vs personal liberty: andhra high court judgment”, economic and political weekly, vol. 18, no. 29, jul. 16, 1983, p. 1264. giving an account of parliamentary debates, pratiksha baxi has demonstrated that during its discussions on marital rape, the use of force in sexual intercourse was considered normal. in the report of the joint parliamentary committee on the proposed amendments to the rape law, a separate category of illicit sexual intercourse not amounting to rape was introduced to cover cases in which a man who is separated from his wife has forcible sex with her. in favour of this amendment they stated that the committee feels that in a case where the husband and wife are living separately under the decree of judicial separation, there is a possibility of reconciliation between them until a decree of divorce is granted. hence the intercourse by the husband with his wife without her consent during such period should not be treated as, or equated with rape. the committee is of the opinion that intercourse by the husband with his wife under such circumstances should be treated in illicit sexual intercourse.64 baxi, on the other hand, argues that “the distinction between rape and sex from the women’s point of view gets blurred for the state permits force in sexual intercourse, not only for describing it as normal but by normalizing it for the sake of ‘reconciliation’. here power is deployed to constitute married woman’s sexuality as ‘passive’ for the capacity to say ‘no’ to sex within marriage is not recognized by the law as a legal right.”65 in the committee, however, several members of parliament argued that marital rape should not be 64 pratiksha baxi, “rape, retribution, state: on whose bodies?” economic and political weekly, xxxv, 14, 2000, p. 1198. 65 ibid. megha criminalizing rape within marriage 140 criminalized, irrespective of wife’s age. senior advocate, ram jetmalani rejected the idea of criminalizing marital rape because sexual intercourse between husband and wife is a right of husband. state should not have any right to interfere in their personal relationship. moolchand daga went much further to argue that if marital rape is criminalized then, “woman would not have been raped, but the poor man will certainly be raped in court.”66 the 42nd law commission report had recommended that sexual intercourse between a man and his wife below fifteen years of age be removed from section 375 and made a separate offence. consequently, an amendment to the ipc was proposed by the way of the ipc (amendment) bill, 1972. the joint committee, however, took the view that intercourse by a man with his own wife, regardless of her age should not be regarded a rape. consequently, it deleted the proposed new section in clause 157 of the bill, which sought to introduce the offence of marital rape.67 the law commission has rejected proposals to repeal the marital rape exception on the grounds that it would amount to “excessive interference with the marital relationship”.68 by not criminalizing marital rape, governments and their agencies participate in maintaining silence on sexual abuse, especially in case of marriages. several studies, including the 2005-06 national health survey (nfhs-3) have revealed that despite the child marriage restraint act (cmra), 1929, and the prohibition of child marriage act (pcma), 2006, child marriages still take place. they have failed to prevent a child bride from living with her husband or, from being abused, sexually or 66 ibid., p. 1197. 67 ibid. 68 review of rape laws, law commission of india, 172nd report, 2000, chapter 3, p. 14. otherwise.69 the delhi commission of women and the national commission for women have also questioned cmra and pcma because their definition of ‘child’ has not been specified and suggested that all marriages below the age of 16 should be declared null and void and those between the ages of 16 and 18, be rendered void at the instance of either party.70 indian law only recognizes marital rape in case a girl is below the age of fifteen years (under section 375, ipc 1860, act no. 45 of 1860). however, this is mitigated by the religiously defined personal laws71, whereby even the rape of a young girl between the ages of twelve and fifteen years carries a lesser sentence if the rapist is married to the victim.72 this raises the question if both the state and women’s local communities are simply unwilling to confront the rape of young girls in the name of marriage, which goes on every day. there is another aspect of marital rape, whereby rape is accorded the status of marriage which became evident in imrana case. imrana was raped by her father-in-law and then following a fatwa issued by some local clerics she was forced to accept the miscreant as her husband. even the hindu women meet the same fate as in many cases the penalty of rapists is mitigated if they agree to marry the victim. such judgments tend to legitimize the continuation of marital rape.73 69 t.k. rajlakshmi, “child redefined”, frontline, vol. 25, no. 7, march 29–april 11, 2008, pp. 91-93. 70 ibid. 71 see socio-legal aid research and training centre (slartc), rights of women in india, calcutta, 1995, p. 6, 24, 40. 72 lotika sarkar, “rape: a human rights versus a patriarchal interpretation”, in indian journal of gender studies, vol. 1, no. 1, jan-jun, 1994, pp. 69-91. 73 saswati chakrabarti, “the commercial heritage of marital rape in relevance to indian women”, in gender inequality, 3 politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 141 domestic violence act: an illusion it is argued that marital rape has been subsumed within the much awaited domestic violence act 2005. but this is not correct. in fact, this act has also been a real disappointment. it has provided civil remedies to the provisions that have already been noted or criminalized. on the issue of marital rape, however, silence persists. though section 3 of the domestic violence act acknowledges sexual abuse “harms or injuries or dangers to the health, safety, life, limb or well-being, whether mental or physical, of the aggrieved person or tends to do so and includes causing physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal and emotional abuse and economic abuse,” and its accompanying explanatory note on “sexual abuse” includes any conduct of a sexual nature that abuses, humiliates, degrades or otherwise violates the dignity of a woman.74 in this definition the word unwanted sexual intercourse or rape is not used. the inclusion of the term ‘sexual abuse’ alone would not allow women to charge their husbands for rapes because the law has different interpretations for rape and sexual assault/abuse. a male, for instance, cannot be raped but sexually assaulted. moreover section 375 of ipc still exempts the husband from marital rape which makes the inclusion of term ‘sexual abuse’ void. another point of concern is that it restricts sexual abuse in a domestic relationship of marriage or live-in, only if it is threatening or grievously hurtful. it is not about the will or desire of women. it is decided by the state, when and in what condition she can rightly claim for protection. april 2006. (http://www.meghbarta.org/nws/nw_ main_p022b.php?issueid=6/&sectionid =29&articleid=127 on 12.07.2009). 74 rath, op. cit. marital rape, as it violates women’s bodily integrity and her self esteem, needs to be redefined. it is violent assertion of power and denies women the right to intimacy and pleasurable sexual activity within marriage and more than anything else becomes yet another instrument for further entrenching the patriarchal value system. this brings a need to discuss the social aspects of marital rape. marital rape: a by-product of the society the phenomenon of marital rape must be understood in the context of society’s patriarchal structures because ultimately this structure is responsible for rendering women powerless and allowing men in a dominant position. patriarchal structure makes the division of labour unequal for men and women, which “perpetuates the husband’s power over the wife. this is the context within which wife rape and wife beating occur/s and often continues”.75 this is mainly because men treat their wives as their private property, in fact, as the sexual property of their husbands. their economic status in the society is determined by their sexual and reproductive capacities.76 wife rape is equally a manifestation of male sexuality which is oriented to conquest and domination, and to prove masculinity defined in terms of power, superiority, competitiveness, control and aggression, a “real man” is supposed to get what he wants, especially in their sexual relationships.77 groth notes: “wives are regarded as possession or even opponents to be used, controlled or dominated…sex is seen as the solution to all marital problems, as well as the source of validation for the masculine identities”.78 75 russell, op. cit., p. 4. 76 lorenne clark and debra lewis, rape: the price of coercive sexuality, toronto, the women's press, 1977, pp. 111-114. 77 russell, op. cit., p. 357. 78 cf. clark and lewis, op. cit., p. 120. http://www.meghbarta.org/nws/nw_main_p022b.php?issueid=6/&sectionid=29&articleid=127 http://www.meghbarta.org/nws/nw_main_p022b.php?issueid=6/&sectionid=29&articleid=127 http://www.meghbarta.org/nws/nw_main_p022b.php?issueid=6/&sectionid=29&articleid=127 megha criminalizing rape within marriage 142 with marriage all women learn that sexual intercourse is formative of their identities as married women.79 the dominant cultural discourse prescribes that a woman without a husband has no life. if the woman doesn’t obey her husband, including being sexually available to him, he would go to other woman. so, to have ‘a life’, status, esteem and honour as a married woman, she has to submit herself to the demands of her husband. they have been taught that by consenting to sexual experiences women gain legitimacy and symbolic value as good wives.80 the normative social biography associates honour with a woman who follows all the norms and rituals of married life. consequently, women often do not accept the reality of marital rape. these are buttressed by societal beliefs that acknowledge male sexual supremacy as a source of pride and measure of self worth. when that supremacy is challenged, men need to reassert their dominant position in the gender hierarchy. finkelhor and yllo’s study shows that one quarter of divorced or separated women reported a past incident of forced marital sex.81 in indian society attainment of puberty gives a free license to a husband for sex. equating girl’s attainment of puberty with a husband’s license to seek and force sex upon her denies each girl control over whether, when and with whom she has sexual relations.82 by appreciating the sexual activity, she understands that she has power 79 annie george, “embodying identity through heterosexual sexuality: newly married adolescent women in india”, in culture, health and sexuality, sexual and reproductive health in south and southeast asia, vol. 4, no. 2, april-june, 2002, p. 215. 80 ibid., p. 217. 81 finkelhor and yllo, op. cit., p. 8. 82 mariam quattra, (et al.), “forced marriage, forced sex: the perrils of childhood for girls”, in gender and development [violence against women], vol. 6, no. 3, nov. 1998, 1998, p. 32. and she always remains in an illusionary satisfaction of body-for-self.83 many of them accept unwanted sex as something normal, and as part of their duty to please their husband. with marriage, a women’s body is no longer her own body, it has been taken over by the community of men to establish and legitimize their image in society. through socialization, such discourses about marriage create a web of norms, within which a woman encapsulates herself as a whole. foucault argues that discourse becomes normative and normalizing ideals, according to which the body is trained, shaped, cultivated and invested. the daily sexual disciplining of married women can be seen as the operation of biopower at the sight of individual women’s bodies. “biopower emphasized localized, routinized bodily practices in families and constructs the body as a corporeal entity that becomes the systematic target for disciplinary measures implemented by local experts like family members”.84 in this way women can be seen as victims of social practices and patriarchal system whose bodies become a vehicle for their husband’s satisfaction. these discourses discipline women, not through the threat of violence or force, but by creating desires, embodying individuals with specific identities, and establishing norms against which they and their behaviours and bodies are judged and against which they police themselves. women are forced to accept sexual exercise with their husbands as normal because that is how women’s identities are validated in a particular social situation. when wives are battered and raped daily, they don’t resist forced sex for they fear that resistance will provoke a more severe beating. since women are associated with child rearing, keeping house clean or as a homemaker they are not economically independent. in russell’s study, ninety percent of wives stayed with their husbands following a rape because they didn’t have 83 ibid., p. 208. 84 george, op. cit., p. 214. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 143 their own economic sources and were dependent on their husbands for financial support. their dependency becomes a source of economic vulnerability and many wives in this situation are coerced by their vulnerability into living with objectionable or abusive husbands.85 on the other hand, those who were economically self sufficient walked out of their marriage.86 bourdien’s concept of habitués provides an alternate understanding of social fabrication of beings. he argues that our identities are never defined simply in terms of our individual characteristics but they place us in particular social spaces that we come to understand through embodiment, as our place in dialogical actions. 87 habitués, or embodied understanding, gives meaning to practice when it encodes certain cultural beliefs and practices. women discipline their bodies to encode cultural expectations of idealized feminity and accept unwanted or coercive sex as wanted as they want to become a good wife, which makes them habitual to their rapes by the husbands. they discipline their bodies into heterosexual necessities. in order to make their marriage work, they just surrender their bodies to their husbands and let them do whatever they want to do, whether in a coercive and violent way. george has named both of these positions as compliance and resistance. it is compliance because women participate in enacting female subservience in heterosexual sexuality. it is resistance because women are fully aware that they are using their bodies for taking social and economic benefits. on the other hand rajan argues that this cannot be seen as transformation, as transformations are always constrained by 85 russell, op. cit., p. 4. 86 ibid., p. 220. 87 p. bourdieu, the logic of practice, trans. r. nice, stanford, stanford university press, 1990; p. bourdieu, outline of a theory of practice, trans. r. nice, cambridge, cambridge university press, 1997. the restricting nature of dominant constructions of feminity which has been accepted and internalized by women as being their defining characteristics.88 the reality is that a woman cannot search for a space of emancipation in coercive sexual experiences. sangari similarly argues that transformative agency must be understood in a framework of their dialectical relations with determining material, epistemic, institutional and ideological structures which they both reproduce and transform. so “the truth about agency is that the dividing line between compliance and subversion is thin and the women’s body is often the conflicting site of both giving in to, as well as resisting, dominant constructions”.89 a woman may not always be aware of the conditions of their construction; hence agency has both endless possibilities and is limited. since a family is supposed to be full of harmony and peace, the society finds it difficult to accept the phenomenon of domestic violence. the family can, thus, become a subversive site where violence is institutionalized and abetted by the state and society, which also uses law to deny the existence of marital rape. the public / private dichotomy in a society, however, plays out in different ways. on the one hand, criminal laws construct the family as a public space which needs protection as in the cases of adultery, and on the other hand in the case of marital rape, the sphere of family becomes so private that it’s beyond the reach of law. yet, both the regulations of adultery and marital rape share an understanding of marital relationship which views it as an exclusive site of legitimate sexuality. paradoxically, privacy continues to, and reinforces, the intimacy and sense of solidarity in family life, while it also nurtures 88 r.s. rajan, real and imagined women, london, routledge, 1993. 89 k. sangari and s. vaid, recasting women: essays in colonial history, new delhi, kali for women, 1989, p. 11. megha criminalizing rape within marriage 144 and protects the very conditions in which conflict and violence develop.90 marital rape: a violent experience feminists focus on the violent aspects of marital rape. notwithstanding the legal and societal silences on this subject, marital rape is very much a reality. several studies have shown that between ten to fourteen per cent of married women are raped by their husbands. in clinical samples of battered women, one third to half of the cases is that of marital rape. sexual assault by one’s spouse accounts for approximately twenty five per cent of rapes committed.91 k.g. santhya’s pioneering study examined the extent of unwanted sexual experiences among married young women in rural settings in india. it showed that sexual activity among adolescent girls and young women in india mostly takes place within marriage and almost twenty five per cent of adolescent girls aged between fifteen to nineteen years are married and presumably sexually active while fewer than ten per cent of unmarried young women are reported to be sexually experienced. marriage does not inherently make sex safe, voluntary or pleasurable. indeed the marriages of ten to fifteen per cent of adolescent brides are consummated by force.92 the results corroborate this assessment because twelve percent of married young women reported that they frequently experienced unwanted sex, while thirty two percent experienced it occasionally. thus forty four percent had experienced frequent or occasional sex against her will. this study also illustrated some examples of sexual coercion. a first time mother from west bengal stated: “he forces me often for sex. we have sex three to four 90 tondan and oberoi, op. cit., p. 23. 91 rath, op. cit. 92 k.g santhya, (et al.), “consent and coercion: examining unwanted sex among married young women in india”, in international family planning perspectives, vol. 33, no. 3, 2007, p. 125. days a week. in one month, he has coerced sex four to five days. i do not feel like having sex, it becomes painful, but he does not stop”.93 another narrated a similar story: “sometimes my husband forces me to have sex, which i don’t like. once i was feeling sick; i had burning sensation while urinating and was feeling giddy. i told him that i didn’t feel like having sex at that time, but he didn’t listen to me and he forcefully did it. sometimes he will not listen to any of my problems. if i try to resist him, he will ask me whom should he go to instead and he will get angry, then i just accept it”.94 this study showed women also suffered from physical abuse with unwanted sex. a woman during her first pregnancy stated: “if i say no at night, he will do it in the morning, i can’t say no anytime. he will not say anything at night; he goes to sleep turning his back. but when he asks for something in the morning and i say no, he beats me”.95 often women accept their husband’s demands for sex because they want to prevent an argument or punishment. coerced sexual experiences are more common in the earlier years of marriages and if the wife knows the husband at the time of marriage and he is supportive in nature then the risk of unwanted sex is low.96 the physical effects of marital rape, it is important to note, may include injuries to private organs, lacerations, soreness, bruising, torn muscles, fatigue, vomiting, broken bones, black eyes, bloody noses, and sometimes even knife wounds. specific genealogical consequences of marital rape include miscarriages, still births, bladder infections, infertility and the potential contraction of sexually transmitted disease including hiv.97 women also suffer psychological scars because of marital rape which includes anxiety, shock, intense fear, 93 ibid., p. 128. 94 ibid. 95 ibid. 96 ibid., p. 130. 97 mishra and singh, op. cit. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 145 depression, suicidal ideas and post traumatic stress, problems in establishing trusting relationships, sexual dysfunction and emotional pain; they also create negative feelings about themselves.98 in this way, the marital rape is as much traumatic as rape is. women equally suffer in both the cases. purva sen’s research shows that women who complain about sexual abuse in marriage are aware that this may lead to separation, which may cause further problems ranging from social ostracism to violent attacks, including rape and economic destitution. that is why they hesitate in taking step against their husbands even if they rape or experience sexual abuse at their husband’s hands.99 sen’s study revealed that in almost half the cases of forced sex or marital rape, the girl wives had made their husbands aware of their unwillingness to have sex or of pain during sex, but in eighty percent of these cases the rape continued.100 feminist voices: encountering legal bases feminists have identified three common law fictions on which the exemption of marital rape has been made or accepted: the theory of “women as chattel”, “unities” theory, and “implied consent” theory.101 the “women as chattel” theory establishes women as a property, in that a woman was first the property of her father and after marriage became the property of her husband. with this regard, if a woman was merely a property, she is not supposed to have individual human rights and the 98 ibid. 99 quattra, op. cit., p. 31. 100 the study revealed that girls were even consummated before their menstruation or the very beginning of menstruation. that makes it a severely painful and bloody affair for her. 101 suman saha, “sleeping with the enemy? recognizing marital rape”, women’s link, vol. 10, no.2, april-june 2004, p. 3. husband who committed rape on his wife is actually using his own property according to his own wishes.102 “unities” theory sees husband and wife as one person. sir william blackstone articulated that: “by marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated [into her husband]”. this theory encapsulated husband and wife as one but actually this constitutes the husband only.103 third “implied consent theory” led to the belief that because a woman gave her consent to sexual relations with her husband at the time of marriage, the consent will remain valid forever. this theory is actually grounded on the above two theories – the fake notions of woman as the chattel or property of her husband and the unity of the husband and wife on marriage these theories in the contemporary context are legitimized through four ‘modern’ rationales that may be characterized as relatively more “benign”: marital privacy; marital reconciliation; fear of false allegations and difficult evidentiary requirements; the argument that rape within marriage is less severe than outside marriage. the idea of marital privacy suggests that relationship between husband and wife is private and personal which should be kept outside legal interference. marital relationship depends upon intimacy protected from outside scrutiny and legal interference would break the intimacy that is foundation of marriage.104 marital reconciliation may be seen as an extension of the first notion which stipulates that keeping the spouses “in” and the law “out” fosters greater mutual respect between the parties and would make their ultimate reconciliation easiest. third problem pertains to the fears of false allegations, that 102 ibid. 103 ibid. 104 ibid., p. 4. megha criminalizing rape within marriage 146 is with the criminalization of marital rapes it is feared that women would file false charges against their husbands and use this right to threaten their husbands. there would also be the problem of lack of evidence because it is really difficult to find evidence in marital rapes. finally, marital rape is considered to be less severe than that outside marriage, or ‘real’ rape is ostensibly considered to be rape by a stranger. it is assumed that with marriage a wife provides her individual rights to her husband and so she doesn’t lose self-respect in same manner as in case of rape by a stranger. so, it should not be criminalized.105 feminists reveal the fallacy of all these arguments to make a case for criminalizing marital rape. first, it is argued that if one views article 14 in our constitutional paradigm then marital privacy cannot be considered as an absolute right, in which case no crimes between husband and wife can be prosecutable. if domestic violence can be penalized under law, which means, that a husband is not justified in beating his wife, he cannot also justify raping his wife under the guise of a right to privacy. likewise on the issue of false allegations, it can be argued that such fears are present in other crimes also, then why should there be an exemption made only in the case of marital rape? the difficulty of collecting evidence also applies to other criminal acts; so, law cannot choose to ignore injurious acts such as marital rape merely because they are difficult to prove. in fact, this is true for most sexual offences, which take place in the private domain. the reconciliation theory is ridiculous as it denies the wife the protection of the criminal laws. after being raped by her husband, a wife is unlikely to consider the probability of marital reconciliation. rape is a heinous crime irrespective of who perpetrates it. the notion that marriage is a perpetual license for assuming women’s consent is wrong. on the contrary, rape by a stranger may be a devastating one-time 105 ibid. occurrence but marital rape involves a continuing nightmare for the women. women can charge her husband under section 498-a of the ipc, dealing with cruelty, to protect themselves against “perverse sexual conduct by the husband”. but no standard of this measure or interpretation of perversion or unnatural is available. is excessive demand for sex perverse? can a husband use force or violence to achieve sex? there is no answer because judiciary and the legislature are silent on these issues.106 some feminists have suggested certain steps to end these unwanted or coerced sexual experiences. these include increasing the years of schooling for girls. education will help girls master better resources and enhance their ability to deal with the outside world, seek an equitable relationship with her husband. this would also help her become permanently independent because it’s well proven that economic pressures are directly related to sexual coercion.107 an excellent study conducted by santhya also shows that government’s sexual and reproductive health programmes seeking to protect women from hiv infection cannot succeed without mitigating or ending the risk of coercive or unwanted sex for a wife that is because sexual coercion within marriage has adverse effects on sexual and reproductive health.108 women themselves don’t talk about their sexual experiences because they feel inhibited for discussing them owing to their socialization and cultural beliefs. feminists underline the need for openly discussing the issue of marital rape. in fact they lack even the vocabulary for discussing sexual violence within marriage, which in turn, hinders their ability to distinguish husband from rapists. many do not even acknowledge the 106 rath, op. cit. 107 santhya, op. cit., p. 130. 108 ibid. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 147 phenomenon of rape within marriage. this attitudinal invisibility reinforces the statistical invisibility of the most prevalent form of rape, that is, marital rape, which is why there is hardly any survey done on marital rape in india. in russell’s study, only seven percent of women responded affirmatively when asked directly if they had been raped. another six percent acknowledged incidents of forced sex but changed their language and explained it in other ways by saying “it was almost like rape”, or “he pinned me down like it was rape”; or it was just like a rape except i was on (my own) bed”.109 so women themselves don’t realize that something wrong has happened to them and the reason being absence of language by which they can define their emotions in the law. indian judicial grammar does not possess women’s voice, emotions and their living. the law takes steps for abolishing rape because it wants to save virginity of virgin girl for the sake of legitimate property owner that is husband but manipulatively sidelines those women who are not virgin — married women and prostitutes. the mere difference is that a married woman is there to be raped by one and only legitimate husband and a prostitute is categorized as a legitimate rape victim by different men. so women must have their own vocabulary, their own emotions to speak and write not in the context of men but in their own context or in the context of their own material and linguistic space of bodily matter as has been emphasized by luce irigaray so that women’s body could be incorporated in the linguistic discourses110. in the same vein helen cixous asks women to write more and bring women to writings as well so that their bodies could write and speak their own anti – linear and cynical behavior which is not bounded or structured 109 russell, op. cit., p. 53. 110 luce irigaray, this sex which is not one. ithaca, ny: cornell up, 1985 and luce irigaray, speculum of the other woman, ithaca, ny: cornell univ., 1989. as presupposed by patriarchal society111. she comes up with a new writing practice (‘l’écriture feminine) to deconstruct fixed categories of sexual identities and in these terms deconstructs the masculine fixed sexual behavior which expects women to act in certain fixed ways. she wants women to write because when they write they actually speak about their bodies. another poststructuralist, julia kristeva has adopted an emancipator path for women and drawing upon derrida argues that due to endless differences of meaning, language is dynamic and if subject is the product of language, which is dynamic, then the subject is a dynamic process as well. she brings ‘semiotic’ and ‘symbolic’ as central to her idea of subjectivity and argues that though the ‘semiotic’ that is pre-linguistic stage where differences do not take place, remains not that much important as ‘symbolic’ captures but ‘semiotic’ is important in the sense that it does not incorporate the hierarchy which brings inequality112. the paper drawing upon these understandings argues that women should write their own legal language on rape within marriage. they should speak, shout, debate and write about the rape within marriage which is not ‘just sex’ for them because when they speak they actually speak about their bodies, for their bodies. the need is to make their own new language and vocabularies not biding by masculine social cultural and legal contexts but in the context of their own spaces. first a woman should herself have the courage to speak with new vocabulary that she has been raped by her husband and should create a judicial grammar to criminalize rape within marriage. conclusion 111 cixous, h. “ the laugh of the medusa”, trans. k. and p. cohen, in e. marks and i. de courtivron in new french feminisms brighton: harvester,1981(a), pp. 245-64. 112 kristeva, j. (1986) ‘a question of subjectivity. interview with s. sellers’, in women’s review, vol.12, pp. 19-22. megha criminalizing rape within marriage 148 rape is an offence against the woman, violating her dignity and self respect and even when it occurs within the four walls of the home, it reduces the wife to a sexual objectification for men’s gratification. to make the woman realize her own being, the law should seek to protect the right of every woman to choose whether to have sexual intercourse or not with her husband and evolve a new, more suitable judicial grammar for this purpose. there is also a need to educate the masses about this crime, as the real objectives of criminalizing marital rape can only be achieved if the society acknowledges and challenges the prevailing myth that rape by one’s spouse is unquestionable. however, it is important to realize that the first step would be effective only if the law takes some appropriate action about it otherwise women will always have to carry the label of “second sex”. therefore, there is a need to criminalize marital rape and moreover the law should have substantive equality approach towards criminalizing rape within marriage because this is the discrimination inherent in the failure to criminalize marital rape. this substantive approach would expose the root sources of discrimination and would facilitate reform efforts to address the cause of the problem rather than the symptoms of the problem so that the contexts — sociocultural, political and legal — in which the roots of inequality generates and further reinforces the grounds for legitimizing rape of a wife by husband within marriage could be analysed and examined. the paper emphasises the need for the law to adopt substantive equality approach by problematizing reasons for rape within marriage in sociocultural and political contexts with women’s own vocabulary. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 43 rescuing rationality from the rationalists: for a neo-weberian understanding of rationality in critical terrorism studies4 bernardino leon-reyes https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.41.3 bernardino leon-reyes, 22, from málaga (spain), is currently a ‘la caixa scholar’ and a master’s student in anthropology of ‘politics, violence and crime’, at university college london’s department of anthropology. prior to this, he completed his bachelor’s degree in sociology and philosophy at the université paris sorbonne (paris-iv), and his master’s degree in ‘international relations theory’ at the london school of economic and political science (lse), where he wrote his dissertation on the power-knowledge nexus of (neo)liberal conflict studies. he has worked as a member of millennium – journal of international studies’ editorial board (vol. 47 no. 1), and he currently serves as commissioning editor at e-ir. his interests include international political sociology, critical terrorism studies, the anthropology of revolutions, and post-structural ir theory. e-mail bernardino.leon.reyes@gmail.com. abstract a decade after its emergence, critical terrorism studies (cts) has remained unable to engage with one of the most prominent discourses that, on the one hand, justifies the dehumanisation of those accused of terrorism and, on the other, disciplines critical scholarship: the presentation of the terrorist as an irrational subject. recognising the tensions that emerge from cts’s critical understanding of “the world” and its simultaneous aim of making knowledge claims, this paper draws on the work of max weber in order to create a reflexive methodology able to analyse the rationality of terrorism. after showing the incompatibility between recent understandings of rationality in ‘mainstream’ terrorism studies with cts, and the limits of ‘postmodern’ stances, this article proposes a neo-weberian ‘via media’ capable of offering an analysis of the rationalities of terrorism, while remaining sensitive to the limitations of social theory. keywords critical terrorism studies; ideal-type; international relations theory; international sociology; isis; max weber; methodology; rationality; social action 4 this work was supported by “la caixa” fellowship [grant number lcf/bq/eu18/11650025]. https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.41.3 mailto:bernardino.leon.reyes@gmail.com politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 44 introduction why is it relevant for critical terrorism studies (cts) to elucidate whether terrorism is rational or not? after all, cts was articulated as a “critique of the existing field” (jackson et al., 2009: 216-7) in an effort “to highlight a number of potentially serious problems” that have characterised the conduct of inquiry in orthodox terrorism studies (jarvis, 2016: 61). cts scholars have been, consequently, more interested in exposing dubious epistemological, ontological and normative assumptions present in orthodox terrorism studies, rather than in engaging with definitional debates such as what rationality is. in this paper, nonetheless, i will suggest that determining whether terrorism is rational has both important theoretical and practical implications that, indeed, cts should take into account. this paper will argue that cts should adopt a weberian ideal-typical approach to rationality. section one will present why cts should adopt the methodological tool of the ideal-type. i will start by showing why the question of rationality is relevant for cts, followed by the shortcomings and epistemological incompatibilities of the dominant understandings of rationality in terrorism studies. i will commence this section arguing how an ideal-type of rationality offers a potential solution, as a “via media” between “rationalist” and “particularist” approaches. furthermore, in section two, i will argue why max weber’s typification of rationality represents a useful point of departure to conceptualise this ideal-type, explaining his model of rationalities, and sketching some of the ways in which it could be applied to the study of terrorism. rather than a case study, this paper is a proposal for this specific approach, and an invitation for further research. the case for an ideal-typical approach to rationality in cts the relevance of the question of rationality the notion that terrorism is irrational has not only precluded a rigorous study of terrorism; it has also led to the “villainisation and demonisation of researchers as ‘sympathisers’ and ‘defenders’ of terrorists” (stampnitzky in tellidis, 2016: 627) when scholars have tried to study the motivations behind the actions of militants. this is what lisa stampnitzky (2013: 189) refers to as the politics of “anti-knowledge” present in the discipline; “as terrorism is understood to be irrational, the very possibility of understanding it can be called into question.”. challenging the assumption of irrationality can, as well, be part of “overcoming the orientalist” bias present in the discipline (gunning, 2009: 172) and the gendered representations of terrorists as irrational (see gentry and sjoberg, 2016), because it would attempt to understand the orientation of actors situating them in their particular within socio-political contexts (tellidis and toros, 2015: 3), such as one of poverty or oppression. in short, determining that terrorism is rational is important in theoretical terms insofar politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 45 as it bestows terrorism the status of being an intelligible phenomenon, something that can be studied and understood. moreover, since the commitments of cts are both analytical and normative (jackson et al. 2009), there are a set of practical reasons that justify a defence of the engagement with rationality. when terrorism is posited as an irrational phenomenon, and terrorists as irrational subjects, then it is pointless to attempt to change the contexts that conditioned how they “came to be”, as they would not have followed a rational course of action. for instance, voices that call for the ending of american imperialism in the middle east as a way to address the “roots” of terrorism can be decried as foolish, inasmuch as terrorism is posed as a product of an irrational hatred towards the west, modernity, or christianity—“our way of life”. this allows relocating the origin of the terrorist’s grudge from a contingent us foreign policy to a less flexible american culture. it follows that, since the us “cannot” give up on their culture, democracy, or wealth, all that is left is to repress and kill these terrorists (mann, 2005: 162). however, the consequences of portraying “terrorists as irrational fanatics” (wolfendale, 2016: 258) are not only related to the legitimisation of targeted killings, or even interventions, on the basis of counterterrorism; this portrayal has also transformed “economic, political, and social structures” (wolfendale, 2016: 258), operating as a justification for situations of exception beyond the law (see, e.g., agamben, 2005). in light of the practices enabled by the discourses of/on irrationality, part of the project of cts should, therefore, be to advance the idea that terrorists are rational actors. hence, the question becomes how. rationality in terrorism studies notwithstanding the dominance of everyday discourses that paint the terrorist as an irrational and pathological individual, a considerable body of literature on rationality has been published in “orthodox” terrorism studies. robert pape (2003: 355) has argued, in relation to the case of the israeli occupation, that despite the high cost for the individual, suicide terrorism cannot be considered irrational, as it is an “effective” means for the advancement of political goals. in this vein, rational choice theory (rct) has also been applied to terrorism to explain, for instance, the presence of suicide terrorism as the consequence of individual choices driven by “future selfgratifying benefits” (perry and hasisi, 2015: 72), or the absence of suicide terrorism by the dearth of these rational motivations (see, e.g., kalyvas and sánchez-cuenca, 2005). in other words, for this body of thought, rationality has to do exclusively with the means chosen and not with preferences (gambetta, 2005: ix). orthodox scholarship has been predominantly positivist, directed to formulate causal empirical generalisations built on “falsifiable hypotheses on the basis of more general theories, and collecting the evidence needed to evaluate those hypotheses” (king et al., 1994: 37) (for an early politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 46 critique exploring the notion of the ideal-type as a reconciliation between objectivism and subjectivism, see timothy mckeown’s [1999] excellent review of king et al.). for instance, when bryan caplan (2006: 99) explains that terrorists “estimate the costs and benefits of irrationality without bias” and that, in equilibrium, “the choice to be irrational reflects a rational estimate of the price”, a certain mind-world dualism underlines his research, as the researcher can know the world as it is. or, in terrorism studies, the terrorist as (s)he is. the key problem with this approach is that because it holds terrorism as an “objectively knowable” phenomenon, it is incompatible with the reflexive standpoint that constitutes cts (fitzgerald, 2016: 115-129). furthermore, orthodox scholarship has inquired how rationality can help policy makers predict certain actions to eradicate terrorism, following a “prioritisation of policy-relevant knowledge as the basis of legitimate academic output on terrorism.” (fitzgerald, 2016: 121). pape, for instance, raises a question in dying to win (2006) that illustrates this point: “can we find a lasting solution to suicide terrorism that does not compromise our core interest in maintaining access to one of the world’s key oil-producing regions?” following robert cox’s (1981) distinction, orthodox terrorism studies are “problem-solving” theories that lack critical distance from governments (fitzgerald, 2016: 121) working as patches to hegemonic relations of power. in contrast, cts are critical because they call into question the origins and transformations of these social and power relations (cox, 1981: 129). therefore, the above-mentioned positivist epistemology, and this problem-solving use of rct are at best scarcely compatible with the methodology of cts—if not the very assumptions against which cts emerged. thus, if hayward alker (1990) called for rescuing reason from rationalists (understanding by rationalists positivists; what robert keohane [1988] labelled as such), in this paper i will attempt to rescue rationality from “rationalists”. however, what do we find on the other “extreme”? at the very heart of cts, we find the post-structuralist approach to questions such as “what is rationality?”. in an analogous fashion to the cartesian hyperbolic doubt—yet without the horizon of the determination of truth—poststructuralist authors leave aside the question of what rationality is, delving instead into the ways in which rationality is deployed in dominant discourses. for instance, judith butler considers rationality unstable, unfixed, and performative; in other words, everyday discourses creates and legitimates what rationality is. she analyses how the western civilisational discourse sets islamic beliefs and practices as “tokens of mental illness”, in opposition to hegemonic norms of “western rationality” (butler, 2006: 72). furthermore, others have focused on rationality as a teleological discourse of modernity grounded on a “forced and contingent” separation between nature/animal and human, in which essentially, they are dependent on each other. in both cases, nevertheless, a political investigation underwrites; namely how reason can legitimise the “rationalisation” of others, which in turn enables politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 47 “going against their inner beings”. hence, in post-structuralism’s ontology, there is no rationality outside discourse (cf. dillet, 2017). in stark contrast with positivism, where a law-like “egoistic” rationalism is assumed to exist as an explanatory model for behaviour, the post-structuralist research programme is concerned with unveiling particular rationalities. in the words of michel foucault (1983: 210), “what we have to do is analyze specific rationalities rather than always invoke the progress of rationalization in general”. this approach represents the danger that richard jackson et al., pioneers of cts, warned against: “that critical scholarship, with its understandable concern for interrogating the discursive foundations upon which the study of terrorism is founded […], disengages from the empirical study of political violence and its foundations in the ‘real’ world” (jackson et al., 2009: 233). cts scholars have further options beyond the orthodox rct rationality and the poststructuralist deconstruction of the concept. however, albeit “methodological and disciplinary pluralism” was characteristic of cts (jackson et al., 2009: 225-6), it has been the adherence to “postpositivist and non-international relations based methods and approaches” and the commitment to understanding (beyond “linear notions of cause and effect”), that has framed cts’s research agenda as sui generis (jackson et al., 2009). indeed, most cts scholars have been committed either to a certain “analyticism” (following post-structuralism and historical sociology, ethnography, inter alia) or to “reflexivism” (following critical theory, feminism, and postcolonial scholarship) since the conditio sine qua non in cts (cf. stump, 2016: 218) has been scepticism over the ontological difference between “knowledge” and “world” (jackson, 2010: 116). there is, therefore, a monist epistemology that underpins cts. this epistemology is expressed in the maxim “terrorism does not exist outside of the definitions and practices that seek to enclose it” that cannot be “adequately defined due to its unstable ontological status” (jackson, 2008: 28-9). this might uncover a tension in cts: on the one hand, it holds that categories in/of the social world—be it terrorism or rationality—are ontologically unstable; yet, on the other hand, it attempts to demonstrate that, for instance, state terrorism is terrorism; namely to make “truth” claims. sociology, just as post-structuralism, feminism, critical theory, or post-colonial theory provides a reflexive approach (smith, 2002: 227), which has yet to be fully explored in cts. besides “counter[ing] the ahistoricity and lack of context that terrorism research has often been accused of” (gunning, 2009: 172), i suggest that sociology offers the resource of the ideal-type as a “via media” between the objectivist law-like claims of positivism and the particularist approach of many critical theories, including but not limited to the concept of rationality. the ideal-type itself was conceptualised by the sociologist max weber as a via media to the methodological debate (methodenstreit) between the nomothetic austrian school and idiographic german “historicists” (gerhardt, 1994: 78; lebow, 2017: 43). weber followed simmel in the division between law-like politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 48 sciences (gesetzeswissenschaften) and what he called the cultural sciences (kulturwissenschaften), where such regularities were impossible to find (lebow, 2017: 51-53). however, he did seek a method to overcome the particularist intuitionism characteristic of historians “in an attempt to explain individual social phenomena as an outcome of historical process and also as a manifestation of wider institutional structural patterns” (gerhardt, 1994: 78). hence, a possible route to overcome the above-mentioned impasse—without claiming to be the sole, nor the best one—is adopting an ideal-typical approach to the question of rationality. similarly to what jackson proposed in regard to the definitional deadlock (namely to “retain the term [of terrorism] as a focus for research […] according to a set of identifiable and unique characteristics” in spite of its instability (jackson, 2008: 29-31), an ideal-type is a mental construct that exaggerates certain aspects of a social phenomenon for analytical and pragmatic reasons. it is, at the same time, a simplification and a misrepresentation of reality that allows us to understand an object or a process (jackson, 2010: 143). the ideal-type is an idealisation not in a normative way, but insofar it does not exist in the real world; it abstracts, combines, and exaggerates elements that are present in real phenomenon (weber, 1978 [1922]: 20). the ideal-type provides “a schematic representation” of a social phenomenon that works as an “analytical grip” (swedberg and agevall, 2016: 156) to make knowledge claims without engaging in objectivism (lebow, 2017: 70-71). an ideal-type is “used” (see swedberg, 2018; gerhardt, 1994) by confronting it to the individual empirical cases and observing the correspondence or contrasts in it, analogous to the outline advanced by bates et al. (2000) in their analytical narrative project. in other words, the divergence from the ideal-type to the individual case is the “payoff” (swedberg, 2018: 8-9): where the researcher can then hypothesise how and why it diverged from the ideal-type. therefore, viewing rationality in ideal-typical terms “prevent[s] logically general abstractions from being mistaken for either reliable predictions or transcendental certainties” (jackson, 2017: 80) such as the way it is frequently understood in orthodox terrorism studies, while it overcomes a particularist approach. i have, so far, argued that (a) proving that terrorism is rational is relevant to cts; that (b) the ways in which rationality has been conceptualised in terrorism studies are not fertile enough for cts to do so; and that (c) an ideal-typical approach can resolve the tension between adopting a reflexivist stance and making knowledge claims on rationality. of course, this claim per se does not ineluctably lead to the conclusion that among all possible ideal-types of rationality, cts should incorporate the weberian one. in the coming section, i aim to explain why. the case for a neo-weberian approach if there is a “division of labour” through which some authors concentrate on creating idealtypes and others attempt to confront them with particular cases (as jackson [2010: 152] has argued), politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 49 then cts should adopt weber’s typification of rationality since few social theorists have attained the level of sophistication that he accomplished in his categorisation of rationality (see, e.g., levine, 1981: 10). as i will explain in the coming paragraphs, weber conceptualised rationality both as a driver of action and as a process. in addition, jackson et al. (2009: 234) have pointed out when they framed the “new research agenda” for cts that a key challenge was “the risk of bifurcating the broader terrorism studies field into critical and orthodox intellectual ghettos [that] would likely result in a level of intellectual and political irrelevance.” if we were to follow jackson in advocating in favour of an inter-paradigmatic dialogue, then, i suggest, it is essential to share part of our canon. weber’s work on rationality set an idea of rationalisation that fostered part of the work of the frankfurt school, but also the foundations of rct. i suggest that, beyond this sophistication, a pragmatic reason to invoke weber is to use his ideas as a lingua franca between competing approaches to terrorism studies. however, it is important to highlight the fact that weber used the concept of rationality in several ways throughout his oeuvre. similar to what, for instance, załęski (2010) did by reconstructing and completing weber’s ideal-types for the study of religion, drawing on the work of kalberg (1980) and levine (1981), i will attempt to clarify weber’s understanding of rationality. it is essential to bear in mind that the purpose of an ideal-type is to be useful (jackson, 2010: 135); therefore, we can, and indeed must, rectify them by making them more systematic, if this adaptation us to use these idealtypes in a more insightful way. before i proceed with this re-ideal-typification, i must highlight that the debate on what weber means by rationality is still an ongoing one, and the purpose of this paper is in no way to provide a final solution to it. instead, it will attempt to sketch which kind of insights this ideal-typification of rationality could bring to the discipline. before continuing, as a preliminary note, let us keep in mind that weber conceptualised the manifestation of rationality in two varieties: subjective, as a driver of social action, and objective (or, better said, objectified), which corresponds with institutionalised processes of rationalisation (levine, 1981: 10). this considered, let us turn to these categories. in economy and society (1978 [1922]: 4), weber described sociology as the “science concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences.” this stemmed from his verstehen, the idea that sociologists must grasp the meaning of social action from the social actor’s perspective, for what the sociologist, therefore, had to empathise to understand what motivated a determined social action. its scope is different from the one of psychology, as it is interested in the motivation of social relationships of action (weber, 1981 [1913]: 152), intentionally directed towards social “others”. thus, weber proposed a classification of social action in relation to four orientations: instrumental rationality, value politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 50 rationality, affect, and tradition (table 1). following kant’s dichotomy between means and ends (swedberg and agevall, 2016: 166), weber argued that an action is instrumentally rational (zweckrational) when it aims towards the realisation of a determined end (zweck) through a “conscious and calculated use of certain means” (swedberg and agevall, 2016: 166). by the same token, an action is value-rational (wertrational) when the social actor “feels forced or compelled to act in this manner, […] regardless of […] the cost to the actor” (swedberg and agevall, 2016: 166) and “independently of its prospects of success” (weber, 1978 [1922]: 25). in contrast, non-rational social action is driven either by interiorised habits (traditional) or by the actor’s emotions (affective) (this interest, should be noted, would roughly correspond to the research of sociologist jon elster who, drawing on weber, has suggested that motivations go beyond pure unbounded selfish calculations [see, e.g., elster, 2009]). it is important to highlight that ideal-types do not exist in the real world, yet they are valuable in virtue of their results—they provide us with interesting insights by contrasting them with empirics (weber, 1978 [1922]: 26). table 1. orientations of social action (weber, 1978 [1922]: 4) rational orientation non-rational orientation value rational affective instrumentally rational traditional source: author. the above-mentioned typology (see table 1) is similar to the one that tosini (2009; 2010) suggested to utilise in order to understand suicide terrorism. analysing interviews and biographical information of suicide terrorists, he follows weber’s typology of social action, arguing that suicide terrorism can be rational in both senses (as instrumental and value-oriented), and non-rational in the instances where it is caused by “outrage and humiliation” (tosini, 2010: 412). therefore, terrorists can be value rational in that they are motivated by political and religious “interiorised […] moral criteria that command certain actions regardless of their consequences” (tosini, 2010: 408) as well as instrumentally rational since it provides “prestige […] to his name and his family” (ricolfi, 2006: 113). this typification of rationalities is not a description of the world; rather, it more of an analytical tool that cts may apply to see contrasts or similarities, and then tell a useful story as tosini does. in contrast, objectified rationality corresponds to processes of “rationalizations […] in all areas of culture” (weber, 2013 [1905]: xxxix) that are transformed towards an “ultimate points of view” (levine, 1981: 12). terrorism could, therefore, be considered a “rationalising” force insofar politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 51 as it attempts to put in place a determined point of view (religious in the case of islamic terrorism, nationalistic in the case of secessionism, etc.) in different spheres of life such as economic organisation, political order, military structures, legal systems, education and certainly, religion, inter alia. levine (1981: 11-15) has argued that these processes of objectified institutional rationalisations can be ideal-typified in four primary forms: (1) instrumental (practical in kalberg, 1980), (2) substantive, (3) formal, and (4) conceptual (theoretical in kalberg, 1980). instrumental objectified rationality occurs when spheres of life become “increasingly more precise in calculating the methodical attainment of given practical ends” (weber, 1946 [1922]: 293), while substantive rationality, “accords predominance to ethical imperatives […] or political maxims” (levine, 1981: 13). scilicet, they represent the institutionalisation of the instrumental and valueoriented subjective rationalities (respectively). further, formal rationality manifests an “inexorable” process of bureaucratisation (weisz, 2014: 693-4), in which rules and routines (planmässigkeit) are set to limit the effects of social relations in favour of efficiency and predictability (levine, 1981: 13) while, lastly, conceptual rationality relates to the constitution of a worldview and the establishment of a canon (levine, 1981: 12) composed of “symbolic meanings” (kalberg, 1980: 1152). there are numerous cases in which terrorism has crystallised in the form of institutions, for instance, the case of the ltte in sri lanka, or isis in syria and iraq. it can be argued that these terrorist groups engage in processes of rationalisation that transform the social world of their societies. in the case of the latter, the establishment of a certain worldview (see juergensmeyer, 2018), the systematic use of their propaganda and housing programmes (gerges, 2017: 178) or the recently revealed bureaucratic structure (see callimachi, 2018) can all be understood as part of a rationalising process in which terrorism attempts to control all spheres of life, subjugating them under “ultimate points of view” (see table 2). further research in the form of rigorous case studies could confront these ideal-types with the evidence, potentially leading to interesting insights on how terrorist organisations engage in processes of modern rationalisation. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 52 table 2: levine’s typology of weberian objectified rationalities (levine’s, 1981: 13), applied to isis form of objectified rationality institutional spheres religion economy conceptual establishment of a worldview in al abu bakr al-baghdadi’s theology (juergensmeyer, 2018) science of economics (levine, 1981) e.g. applied to agriculture (see jaafara and woertz, 2016) instrumental use of prayers (levine, 1981) systematic use of propaganda such as dabiq (see mahood and rane, 2017) substantive jihad as the greatest deed in islam (roy, 2017: 13) as a doctrine for salvation allocation of resources according to a standard of fairness (levine, 1981); e.g. housing programmes for homeless isis fighters (gerges, 2017: 178) formal sharia law; establishment of praying routines bureaucratisation and tax accounting (callimachi, 2018) source: author it should be noted that this framework does not, and indeed should not, be applied exclusively to the study of “terrorists” groups in cts. applying these ideal-types to hegemonic worldviews such as the “war on terror”, in order to construct insightful narratives, can potentially show the ways in which this phenomenon is conceptually rationalised through a determined scholarship (i.e. problem-solving orthodox scholarship); instrumentally rationalised through the construction of a “useful enemy” (keen, 2014: 171) which, in turn, legitimises a governmental logic (aradau and van munster, 2007) or a dominant class project (boukalas, 2015). further, we could argue that the war on terror is substantively rationalised in a language of “good versus evil” (see richards, 2017), and politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 53 formally rationalisated through the bureaucratisation of violence expressed in “efficient” targeted killings (see adams and barrie, 2013). conclusion the question of rationality has been largely disregarded in cts. this paper has argued why rationality should be at the heart of cts, and how a weberian ideal-typical approach offers a “via media” between positivist and particularist research programmes. the major limitation of this piece is the fact that these ideal-types must be applied in rigorous case studies in order to obtain interesting findings. therefore, to this end, further work needs to be undertaken to apply and refine these typifications. these limitations notwithstanding, this paper has contributed to the ways in which one can understand rationality in cts, insofar as it offers a way forward to make knowledge claims while recognising the “ontological instability” of the object studied. this is an approach that assists cts overcome the politics of “anti-knowledge”, creating new possibilities for analytical narratives on the ways in which terrorists are rational, and in the ways whereby terrorism is rationalised in formal (e.g. state terrorism) and informal institutions. contra the “sciences” of his time, weber rejected the notion that “rationality derived from the enlightenment” (kalberg, 1980: 1160), as well as its supposed singularity as a “uniquely western phenomenon.” (levine, 1981: 9). perhaps his ideas can illuminate contemporary debates in international relations and security studies, helping us challenge contemporary assumptions by understanding the ways in which terrorism is rationally motivated—regardless of how morally reprehensible these actions might be. references adams, richard and chris barrie (2013): ‘the bureaucratization of war: moral challenges exemplified by the covert lethal drone’, ethics & global politics 6(4): pp. 245-260. doi: https://doi.org/10.3402/egp.v6i4.21850 agamben, giorgio (2005): state of exception (vol 2). chicago: university of chicago press. alker, hayward r, jr. 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https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315778914 https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409104969 https://doi.org/10.1163/156853110x499945 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.1981.tb00654.x http://www.redalyc.org/pdf/598/59840009009.pdf https://www.jstor.org/stable/41275160 untitled carla luís do globalization and global justice go hand in hand? 48 do democratisation and global justice go hand in hand? the case of timor-leste carla luís1, university of coimbra, portugal abstract eace missions often focus on statebuilding policies, being statebuilding a key aspect in these interventions. however, beyond or parallel to the democratisation process, questions regarding global justice arise. in this paper we are going to analyse the situation in timor-leste. we are going to argue that, beyond the classic democratisation approach, there are a number of factors that still have to be addressed, and these can be intrinsically related to democracy. we will conclude that the focus of the international interventions, especially within multi-dimensional missions and, therefore, the priorities of the host state, should go beyond the formal democratisation aspect. social and economic factors, much related to the idea of global justice, should also be present and be a key aspect and result of these interventions. keywords: timor-leste, peacebuilding, statebuilding, global justice 1 carla luís, 33, lisbon, is a phd candidate at ces – centre for social studies, university of coimbra, in the phd programme international politics and conflict resolution, with the thesis project “un peacebuilding and the role of electoral systems: the case of timor-leste”. she holds a masters’ degree in human rights and democratisation (eiuc, venice) and is graduated in law by the law faculty of the new university of lisbon. she is a researcher in the project “peacebuilding and sustainable peace: un missions in timor-leste and portugal's contribution”, funded by the portuguese foundation for science and technology. her interests are electoral systems, peacebuilding, post-conflict and the southeast asia region. this research is funded under the phd scholarship sfrh/bd/79096/2011, granted by the portuguese foundation for science and technology. p politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 introduction eacebuilding interventions, particularly within the un, focus mainly on statebuilding policies, with a great emphasis on democratisation and institution building, aiming at building a democratic state that could provide protection and proper living conditions to their citizens. as we are going to argue in this paper, this is not always the resulting outcome. in timor-leste, the un intervention focused mainly on institution building and the creation of the liberal state democratic institutions. however, this has not led necessarily lead to global justice within the new state. the social situation in the country demonstrates that there are severe problems, especially regarding the social conditions of the population. we can therefore conclude that liberal state institutions do not, by themselves, lead to global justice. there is the need to put extra care in more substantial factors that just formal democratic institutions and formal democratic processes, in order to achieve the desired results. peace operations peace operations are one of the most important instruments to address violent conflicts after the cold war period, being the un its primary actor (chandler, 2010: 166; pushkina & maier, 2012). in the document “an agenda for peace” (a/47/277 s/24111) a solid framework for un peacebuilding is provided. peacemaking and peacekeeping are required to “halt conflicts and preserve peace once it is attained. if successful, they strengthen the opportunity for post-conflict peace-building, which can prevent the recurrence of violence among nations and peoples (a/47/277 s/24111: 55). the un charter does not expressly mention peacebuilding. its classic instruments for intervention are the diplomatic resolution of violent conflicts (chapter vi) and the clause of collective security, foreseen on chapter vii, which allows the use of force. however, peacebuilding has become one of the un most used forms of intervention in armed conflict situations. peacebuilding interventions often focus on statebuilding approaches. this can be seen as a recurrence from the phenomena of weak states (chandler, 2010: 163), which, after the fall of the soviet union, and a the post-9/11 world, started to be perceived as a global security problem by the international community (robinson, 2007). with the development of the responsibility to protect (r2p) doctrine, states are understood to have the ultimate responsibility in the international system to protect individuals (chandler, 2010: 163). statebuilding as an intervention instrument also derived from the western perspective that violent conflicts are less likely to emerge in liberal democracies (friis & hansen, 2009) and became one of the priorities in international interventions. there is no undisputable definition of statebuilding (carton, 2008: 2). however, the most frequent approach, rather than focusing on people, focuses on building institutions of governance (chesterman, 2004). chandler defines the objectives of statebuilding as “constructing or reconstructing institutions of governance capable of providing citizens with physical and economic security” (2006: 1). richmond notes that the rationale behind statebuilding is that “liberal democratic and market reform will provide for regional stability, leading to state stability and individual prosperity” (2009). this is achieved through the creation of entities that are in line with the dominant economic and social policies and also accountable to the international community (carton, 2008: 6), being globalisation seen as the key propagator of peace (richmond, 2004: 137). market economy is also a key aspect on this process (duffield, 2001; paris, 1997; pugh, 2005; richmond, 2005). therefore, one of the aims of statebuilding policies is to have states that are “able to deal with globalization, namely [states] that [are] flexible and able to draw on social resources to cope with change” (robinson, 2007: 11). in this approach, statebuilding policies comprise institution-building (carton, 2008), p carla luís do globalization and global justice go hand in hand? 50 which can be defined as ‘the creation of new government institutions and the strengthening of existing ones” (fukuyama, 2004). these institutions need to be sound and to be perceived as legitimate by the population, in order to avoid the risk of creating “phantom states” with resources but whose governing institutions might not have social or political legitimacy (chandler, 2006: 9). a sustainable peace requires a broader participation in the peacebuilding and statebuilding process (adekanye, 1998). within this framework, the un has carried out extensive mandates, which include the “organisation of democratic elections, guarantee of security, organisation of transitional governments, constitutional reform, development of civil society, humanitarian relief, rehabilitation, rebuilding infrastructure, reactivating agriculture, (...) in other words “international social engineering” (korhonen, 2001: 496). the primary role of the state and the concept of global justice in the international scene the state is meant to be the primary actor. it concentrates political legitimacy, being also the main space where to seek for justice (nagel, 2005: 1). however, when and where the nationstate for itself is not sufficient, questions of global justice and governance may arise (nagel, 2005: 1). the concept of global justice can have many approaches. nagel (2005: 1) points out two different aspects: “the international requirements of justice include standards governing the justification and conduct of war and standards that define the most basic human rights” and “socioeconomic justice” on a world scale. adopting a statist conception, he aims at establishing a relation between justice and sovereignty, focusing as well on “the scope and limits of equality as a demand of justice” (nagel, 2005: 1). in this analysis, nagel goes back to hobbes and rawls. hobbes defended that justice could only be achieved within a sovereign state. rawls argued that one of the components of justice would be the equality among citizens, within a nation-state (rawls, 2005). justice would, therefore, rather be something internal and non comparable or applicable to members of different societies, that citizens would seek within their sovereign state (nagel, 2005: 2). still in accordance to hobbes, in the absence of a sovereign power that could provide assurance through some form of law, individuals would be left to their own resources, confined to the sole defensive objective of self-preservation, without being able to pursue justice for themselves (nagel, 2005: 2). sovereignty can therefore be seen as an “enabling condition” to grant stability to just institutions, through which individuals should be able to seek for justice (nagel, 2005: 2). the link between democracy and global justice: democracy as a normative standard for global governance dingwerth (2010) suggests that we should rethink the link between democracy and global justice and that in the concept of democracy we should rather emphasize the democratic values of inclusiveness, transparency, accountability and deliberation (dingwerth, 2010: 21). dingwerth departs from the concept of democracy and wonders how can it act as a normative standard for global governance (2010: 1). he argues that, despite the fact that a higher claim for global governance and global democracy exists, there is still a lack of both “structural preconditions for it to actually make a difference”, being these “rarely addressed by global democracy scholars and activists”. this is what dingwerth calls the “structural preconditions for realizing democracy at a world scale” (dingwerth, 2010: 14). this does not mean that we should not demand more democratic global governance, but rather that this should have a more substantial content. dingwerth suggests that the core of global democratic governance should consist of three dimensions, namely “inclusiveness, democratic control and discursive quality” (dingwerth, 2010: 3). politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 this author defines transparency as “the extent to which individuals who may be significantly affected by a decision are able to learn about the decision-making process, including its existence, subject matter, structure and current status” (dingwerth, 2007: 44). however, an extremely important posterior step is that “those to whom information is made available can do something with that information” (dingwerth, 2010: 13). as obstacles to it, and also to inclusiveness and discourse quality, the author points out that “illiteracy rates in some parts of the world exceeding 50 per cent, with internet access virtually unavailable in others, and with language skills, economic knowledge and political education distributed extremely unevenly across the globe, realizing transparency in a meaningful normative sense is indeed a farfetched dream” (dingwerth, 2010: 13). there would be three main areas with immediate relevance for the democratic process: subsistence, health and education (dingwerth, 2010: 14). democracy depends upon a minimum level of subsistence, so that people can have secured lives, that can afford them to engage in political life (dingwerth, 2010: 7). this can also be understood as the freedom from want (united nations general assembly, 2005: 7), which was at the core of the universal declaration of human rights (united nations general assembly, 1948). health is also equally important, reinforced by the fact that, if the right to health is note generalized, it risks threatening the representativeness of some specific and vulnerable groups (dingwerth, 2010: 7). this includes not only the right to access to health as well as the mitigation of health risks (dingwerth, 2010: 15). the impacts of deficient access to health can also be seen in indexes such as the life expectancy at birth or the child mortality rate, which can have huge disparities from country to country. education is also an extremely important factor for democracy. krishna (2008: 13) concludes that education has greater effects on democracy than wealth, as there is the trend of more educated people to have a greater demand for democracy and to participate more. literacy and primary education have here a great role. civil and political rights are important, but a democratic public law should also include “health rights, social and economic rights, cultural and pacific rights” (dingwerth, 2010: 19). held argues that “if any of these bundles of rights is absent from the democratic process, it will be onesided, incomplete and distorted” (1995: 190). political rights are not sufficient per se, as “unless other rights clusters are recognized there will be significant areas in which large numbers of citizens (...) will not be able to take advantage of these equally in practice” (held, 1995: 191). krishna and booth also underline the need to build institutional links, to promote and facilitate accountability between poor populations and the institutions of democratization (2008: 154). these should be widely known and accessible, as “political parties, local governments, ngos, and other civil society organizations (...) are often weak to virtually nonexistent, especially in rural areas of developing countries, where large parts of the poorer populations reside. under such circumstances, citizens are considerably handicapped in terms of access and information” (krishna and booth, 2008: 152). timor-leste and the un missions timor-leste has probably been the first state to be built from the beginning through a un intervention (gorjão, 2004: 1044), with a un mandate that included even the control over the territory. it has been pointed out as a true test to statebuilding policies, in its different aspects (richmond & franks, 2007: 1). the united nations transitional administration in east timor (untaet) – from 1999 to 2002 (security council resolution 1272) – constitutes an example of some of the most ambitious un statebuilding missions (carton, 2008: 4; korhonen, 2001: 497). untaet was authorised under chapter vii of the un charter and given a broader mandate than many of un missions in the 1990s. carla luís do globalization and global justice go hand in hand? 52 untaet was created in 1999, through the security council resolution 1272(1999), of 25 october and lasted until may 2002. it had all the authority over the territory, including all the administration of the territory and all legislative and executive powers, including justice administration (gorjão, 2004: 1044) and the maintenance of order (richmond & franks, 2007: 5). untaet exercised these powers in the period of transition to a de facto independence (gorjão, 2004: 1044). it was building a state from the beginning (pureza, simões, josé, & marcelino, 2007: 20), where all big political options also gave rise to strong social conflicts. it is a model of post conflict reconstruction tout court (pureza et al., 2007: 21). untaet was considered as having a great success, although this is still disputable (alldén & amer, 2007: 1055; gorjão, 2004: 1055; lothe & peake, 2010). after untaet’s contribution to the independence of timor-leste, in 20 may of 2002 (richmond & franks, 2007: 2), unmiset (united nations mission of support to east timor) was established and lasted from may 2002 to may 2005. unmiset was established through the security council resolution 1410(2002), by an initial period of 12 months, that was further extended. it intended to articulate the un presence with the statute of independent country already achieved (alldén & amer, 2007: 6; richmond & franks, 2007: 5), keeping nevertheless a strong un presence, as the maintenance of the special representative of the srsg shows (pureza et al., 2007: 21). unmiset addressed mostly institution building (pureza et al., 2007: 20). the un presence was supposed to end with this mission. in 2005 unotil (the united nations office in timor-leste) was created, in order to make the follow up of the remaining action, so as to smooth the end of its mandate in 2006 (richmond & franks, 2007: 2). however, a new situation of turbulence, arising from within the timorese army, but quickly widespread to the whole country (scambary, 2009), led to the creation of a new mission (richmond & franks, 2007: 2). this new mission will have the direct influence of these incidents, which left profound marks in the timorese society and have strongly affected the statebuilding process so far going on (richmond & franks, 2007: 2). unmit, the united nations integrated mission in timor-leste, was the last mission to be created in timor-leste. it was established in 25 august 2006, through the security council resolution 1704/2006 (unsc, 2006). it was created by an initial period of six months and has subsequently been extended, and its mandate has terminated in 31 december 2012. unmit had, for the first time, the objective of being an “integrated mission” and was expected to articulate the activity of all un agencies in timor-leste (pureza et al., 2007: 22). it was multidimensional and should have also addressed the causes of conflict, such as economic and institutional reconstruction, including the reform of the police, army, justice and electoral system (hegre, hultman, & nygard, 2010: 3). it was expected to “support the government on consolidating stability, on implementing a culture of democratic government and to facilitate the political dialogue between several timorese sectors, in order to ensure a national reconciliation process and to promote social cohesion” (united nations security council, 2011). it had as main targets the judicial system, the justice institutions, ensuring a true rule of law (grenfell, 2009) and a true peace process with an effective transitional justice. the un intervention was initiated in the territory with the organisation of a referendum (1999), followed by elections for the constitutive assembly in may 2002. for untaet, the adoption of a constitution was a prerequisite for the independence process (ingram, 2012: 10). untaet had to decide when and how to hold elections and which positions should be elected (galbraith, 2003: 211). it started with the constituent assembly, for which the electoral mechanism used narrowed popular politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 representation, by using an electoral mixed system, combining proportional representation with a circle of majoritarian representation, resulting in a lack of accountability (ingram, 2012: 12). in 2007, following a violent conflict eruption, there were presidential and parliamentary elections and, in this context, a major reform of the electoral laws took place. in 2012 another electoral cycle, with both presidential and parliamentary elections, was held. it was precisely the 2012 electoral cycle, that served as a test to the maturity of the national institutions and, therefore, helped to determine the end of the un peacekeeping mission (united nations security council, 2012: 3). critical appreciation an important aspect regarding the un intervention and the new state of timorleste was the need to ensure the soundness of the institutions created, to guarantee a true sustainability of the new state (croissant, 2008). at the time of independence, there were barely any democratic institutions at the local level (risley & sisk, 2005: 26) and undp, along with the central government, have put in place the first local elections in 2004 and 2005 (risley & sisk, 2005: 26). the setting of democratic institutions proved to be a challenge for the un (untaet), as there was little information and it was also not clear whether the timorese and international community preferences were the same (risley & sisk, 2005: 27). therefore, many traditional structures were maintained from the previous regime. it was recognised, even by untaet officials that, in the beginning, the un achievements in building democratic local structures below the national level were quite limited (blanco, 2010: 187; risley & sisk, 2005: 27). according to some authors, one of the flaws of the un interventions in timor-leste was the lack of local realities’ integration (blanco, 2010: 185; brown, 2009; richmond & franks, 2007: 4) from the beginning (gorjão, 2004: 1046), which led to a poor implementation and lack of soundness of the proposed model (jones, 2010) and few security guarantees (dougall, 2010). as richmond points out, timor-leste is a remarkable case of hybridism, where the local structures and hierarchies coexist, sometimes in parallel levels, sometimes even prevailing over the institutions of liberal peacebuilding (richmond, 2011). many local leaders and local institutions remain with their traditional legitimacy, with different levels of democracy and accountability (risley & sisk, 2005: 26). although their legitimacy can be questioned (risley & sisk, 2005: 26), the fact is that local leaders are more accepted than the liberal state institutions, as tradition structures coexist and sometimes prevail over the statebuilding structures (richmond, 2011). in the international intervention that took place in timor-leste, the formal institutions of the liberal state were given a major importance and there was little consideration to reflect the social organisation of the country on these. the statebuilding model was adopted without taking into account the local experiences, being therefore distanced from the majority of the population, with an exception to the local elite based in dili. timor-leste in numbers despite the long presence of the un missions in the territory and the big effort in the democratisation process, the social reality in timor-leste is still very challenging. timor-leste is in the 147th place, out of 187, in the world human development index 2012, with about 37,4% of the population living with less that $1.25 per day (undp, 2012). according to unicef, 58% of the children suffer from malnutrition, a percentage that was of 54% in 2011 (irin, 2011). timor-leste is the third asian country with more people suffering from malnutrition, despite the nutrition programme put in practice by the government since 2004 (irin, 2011). there is a “an inter-generational chronic and silent epidemic of malnutrition [stunting] as well as [a 2009-2010 national average of] 18.6 per carla luís do globalization and global justice go hand in hand? 54 cent acute malnutrition [wasting]”, which also increases the risk of “premature death and irreversible mental and physical disability”, according to the world health organisation (irin, 2011). according to the data available from “20092010 demographic data survey”, the numbers are striking. 38,8% of under-five children has anaemia, so do 21,9% of women. 18,6% of under-five children is acutely malnourished and 58% are malnourished chronically. 52% of under sixmonth old babies are exclusively breastfed and among stunted children, 64,7% ate very small at birth. 21% of the babies are acutely malnourished at birth and there is 64,5% of mothers of stunted children with bmi less than 18.5 (thin). there are 27,1% of women overall with bmi less than 18.5 and only 79,2% of children had consumed vitamin a rich foods in previous 24 hours. only 35% of children had received de-worming treatment in previous six months (irin, 2011). tuberculosis is still the first main disease in the country and malaria and dengue are still very frequent (alvarez, 2012). in 2012 the infant mortality rate was of 41.40, the 56th highest in the world, with a maternal mortality rate of 300 deaths/100.000 live births, as of 2010, the 37th highest in the world (cia, 2013; who, 2013). according to the who, the infant mortality rate in 2010 was of 46 (who, 2013). timor-leste comes in the 10th place in the list of countries at risk of a coup d’état in 2013 (ulfelder, 2012b). this index is calculated according to an algorithm taking into account multiple factors (fisher, 2013; ulfelder, 2012a). in the case of timor-leste, the risk in the country increases due to “high poverty and hybrid political authority patterns”, as well as the past of social unrest and attacks to the former president of the republic and prime-minister (ulfelder, 2012b). nevertheless, ulfelder considers that if the country “makes it through 2013 without another coup attempt, though, its estimated risk should drop sharply next year” (2012b). despite these facts, timor-leste comes is the sixth world fastest-growing economy in 2013, according to the economist (a., 2013). in february 2013 the oil fund reached us $11.8 billions, according to radio timorleste. the world bank representative said that the growth rate would likely stand on the two digits in 2014 and that there is the risk of creating an excessive oil-based economy, harming the remaining sectors. (lusa & dinheiro digital, 2013) it has also called the attention for the risks of misusing those funds, which can lead to corruption and undermine the society (lusa & dinheiro digital, 2013). according to the corruption perceptions index 2012, timor-leste was in 113th place, in a total of 174 countries (transparency international, 2012). a study by the anti-corruption commission showed that 50% of the timorese do not know what corruption is (lusa & dinheiro digital, 2013). in 2009, 41% of the population was below the poverty line and in 2007 the country was the world’s 107 regarding the gini index, which measures the degree of inequality in the distribution of family income in a country (cia, 2013). conclusions as we can see from the previous data, despite having had a un peace mission for more than a decade, the situation in timorleste is still very challenging. areas like health, nutrition, child mortality, political stability or even corruption control still present really poor indicators. inequality is also widespread, with almost half of the population living below the poverty line, with great income disparities, and despite the high rates of growth in the timorese economy. the outcome of the un multidimensional peace mission, in this aspect, risks not being positive. the un policies put in practice in the territory have, by themselves, and through the new state that has been created, produced an outcome that does not meet the requirements of global justice, or of a more composite notion of democracy, as politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 defined above. extra care should have been put in more substantial aspects, also relevant not only for the citizens’ daily life, but also necessary to build a more significant and richer democracy, in terms of citizenship and participation. we have to conclude, therefore, that the statebuilding policies, aiming at creating democratic institutions, do not always achieve the goals of global justice. in the same way, it has to be said that un statebuilding policies, as well as the new state created, do not necessarily lead to global justice, in the sense of more internal equality, nor do they mean a wider conception of democracy. in the case of timor-leste, the un presence, which lasted for more than a decade, is considered by many as an example of success. however, looking at more substantial indicators, as well as their trends, can prove to be disappointing. one should, therefore, rethink the concept of democracy that is being put in practice, as well as what should be the scope and outcome of the allegedly democratic institutions created. carla luís do globalization and global justice go hand in hand? 56 references a., j. 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(2013). who | timor-leste: country profiles. who. retrieved february 13, 2013, from http://www.who.int/gho/countries/tls/cou ntry_profiles/en/index.html politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 64 international authority of international organizations and access provision for transnational actors adil nussipov https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.39.3 adil nussipov, kazakh, 24, from almaty (kazakhstan), is a graduate who received his bachelor of arts in political science and international relations from nazarbayev university (astana, kazakhstan) in 2017. in 2018, he graduated with degree in master of arts in international relations with distinction from central european university (budapest, hungary). he wrote his master’s thesis on the topic of international organizations and transnational access, and currently interns at the center for media, data and society (budapest, hungary). his research interests are global governance, international organizations, models of global governance, financing of international organizations and relations between international organizations and transnational actors. email: nussipov_adil@alumni.ceu.edu. abstract why do some international organizations (ios) provide more institutional access for transnational actors (tnas) into their policy processes than others? i argue that the international authority of ios plays an important role in shaping the level of access provision. ios with high and low international authority levels provide less access than ios with medium levels of authority. high authority ios have no functional needs in involving tnas. low authority ios are not mandated with tasks that may require additional input by tnas. in contrast, ios with medium levels of authority experience an institutional shortage of authority for achieving the goals of their mandates. for this reason, they see a strong functional benefit in involving tnas as a way to overcome their authority limitations. i employ regression analysis using existing datasets in order to test the hypothesis. statistical results support the argument. keywords access provision; international organizations; io-tna relations; quantitative analysis; transnational actors https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.39.3 https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.39.3 mailto:nussipov_adil@alumni.ceu.edu politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 65 introduction international organizations (ios) came to dominate the international scene as the main forums for global policy-making (johnson, 2016: 738). however, in today’s world, states and ios are not the only actors in global governance as they were joined by an increasing number of transnational actors (tnas) such as non-governmental organizations, civil society organizations, global policy networks, multinational companies, private lobby actors and epistemic communities (johnson, 2016: 738). as ios are the main arenas for the global management of the world, they have been facing the issue of how to accommodate, engage or limit the increasing number and importance of tnas. considering the increasing complexity of today’s global affairs, why and how ios do so become an important area of research. yet, international relations (ir) literature expressed a limited interest in io-tna relations. firstly, the most of academic literature on io-tna relations are dominated by comparative case studies approach. although these studies provide empirically rich analyses, the levels to which their findings can be generalized across a wider scope of ios is at least questionable. possibly, the absence of reliable and comprehensive datasets in the past has been one of the key reasons for the lack of quantitative studies in this specific domain. with the release of transaccess data by tallberg et al. (2014: 741), on which this paper builds on, extensive data-driven comparative analysis became possible. secondly, the ir literature also failed in taking seriously the self-interested behavior of ios to explain their relations with tnas. the literature is still dominated by a state-centric approach to global governance, and although states indeed are the main drivers of international cooperation, it still should not constrain our perception of ios to empty shells filled with state interests. such understanding not only detaches the academia from the empirical facts, but also limits its ability to explain the complexity of states-io-tna trio, and to contribute important knowledge into the policy-making process of improving inter-institutional cooperation. the present paper addresses both of these limitations. the puzzle it aims to investigate is as follows: considering ios as self-interested actors, what motivates some ios to provide extensive access for tnas into their policy-making processes, and what motivates other ios to provide limited or no access? i argue that this variation can be explained by authority limitations of ios. different levels of authority result in different abilities and willingness of ios to provide access. highly authoritative ios have the highest ability to provide access but they are unwilling to do so. ios with a low authority neither have the ability nor willingness for access provision. ios with a medium level of authority, due the limited authority, experience strong functional need in the involvement of tnas. as such, the argument makes access provision less contingent on members’ interests and politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 66 more on ios’ own functional preferences. i test my argument on the original panel dataset of 29 ios from 1950 till 2010. statistical results provide the support for the argument illustrating inverse u-shaped relationship between authority and access. literature review ios have experienced a gradual evolution of their transnational dimensions, which are comparable to their original pre-dominantly intergovernmental orientation (cronin, 2002: 55; willetts, 2000: 199; alger, 2002: 109). the rise of tnas as important actors on the international arena pushed ios to accommodate the demands and utilize the benefits that come from the interaction with them (pevehouse et al., 2001: 103; alger, 2002: 110). although this gives a foundation for arguing about the self-directedness of ios in global affairs, the ir literature keeps focusing on member-states as the main drivers behind any of ios’ accommodation of tnas. as it will be illustrated below, dominant schools of ir provide little space for self-interested behavior of ios in the access provision. neoliberal institutionalism considers ios as rationally designed institutions created by states to solve their cooperation problems (koremenos et al., 2001: 761). consequently, the involvement of tnas is also a design choice based on the future utility that such involvement will bring to international cooperation among states (tallberg, 2010: 48; kahler, 2005: 145). states will allow ios to provide more participation opportunities for tnas if such participation promises functional benefits (raustiala, 1997: 730; tallberg, 2010: 55). tnas can serve as useful partners in collecting and analyzing information, bringing new issues to international agenda and acting as implementation partners on the local level (raustiala, 1997: 731; raustiala, 2004: 389). in contrast, according to realism, states design access for tnas not to solve cooperation problems, but to advance their own national interests (tallberg, 2010: 62). relative gains from international cooperation are the main concern for states, as such the involvement of tnas will be allowed only when it helps to increase the gains of members relative to the previous power balance arrangement. the interests of major powers dominate any cooperative arrangement, which helps realists to explain the global emergence of tnas by the dominance of the united states’ power in international relations and its interests on keeping its power projection through like-minded ios and tnas (gilpin, 1975: 96). realists do not deny the functional benefits of tnas, but they emphasize the power distribution as the main explanatory variable in allowing them to participate in international policy-making (tallberg, 2010: 62). as such, tnas that were provided with access to ios are primarily oriented to serve the interests of the current major power and only those tnas that align with the major power’s interests are to be provided with such access (tallberg, 2010: 62). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 67 constructivism proposes international norms as affecting the access provision by ios. in the face of intensifying discourse on democratic deficit in global governance, the new norms of global civil society and global democracy pushed ios to more transparency, accountability and participation in international policy-making processes (checkel, 2005: 805; steffek et al., 2008: 45). discourse on democratic deficit put into danger policies created by international bodies, and the bodies themselves (vaubel, 2006: 128). it follows then that providing participation opportunities for tnas should help to address democratic deficit as they are perceived as the representatives of global civil society (checkel, 2005: 810; steffek et al., 2008: 55). ios, however, are not seen as the ones who initiate the access provision. as democratic deficit threatens not only ios, but also states that allowed them to solve global issues and create policy responses, pushed by domestic constituents, states have strong preferences in providing tnas with involvement opportunities. the emergence of global democracy norm itself is associated with the dominance of democratic powers on the international arena (grigorescu, 2007: 626). major powers tend to diffuse norms that emerged in domestic settings on the international arena to create the community of like-minded states and actors. since democratic powers have dominated much of ios in the past decades, the prominence of global democracy norm is associated with their efforts to bring more accountability and transparency that originated from their national discourses to the international level. the present study extends the neoliberal institutionalist logic in explaining access provision, but instead of putting emphasis on states’ interests, the theoretical argument that will be presented below highlights the importance of self-interest of ios, namely their desire to be able to perform tasks on their own, as an important explanatory factor. theoretical argument i define international authority as institutionalized power of ios to make collective binding decisions on the behalf of, but autonomously from, their member-states (hooghe and marks, 2015: 309). international authority has legal-rational character (barnett and finnermore, 1999: 707). it is “institutionalized, i.e. codified in recognized rules; circumscribed, i.e. specifying who has authority over whom for what; impersonal, i.e. designating roles, not persons; territorial, i.e. exercised in territorially defined jurisdictions” (hooghe et al., 2017: 14). legalization of authority through codified rules and procedures provides the main basis for legitimizing international authority (barnett and finnemore, 1999: 707-708). it clearly defines the hierarchy of institutionalized relations as collectively agreed. authority of ios is constituted by delegation and pooling (hooghe and marks, 2015: 310). while delegation reflects the supranational, pooling refers to intergovernmental dimension of international authority. delegation is a grant of authority to the international secretariat of an io to politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 68 take, institutionally independent of state control roles in the overall decision-making of the organization (hooghe and marks, 2015: 311). institutional independence stems from the fact that national governments do not held privately accountable the officials of the secretariat (hooghe et al., 2017: 24). pooling is a transfer of authority from individual member-states to the body of an io, which consists of nationally selected representatives of member-states, where member-states cede their national veto to some form of majoritarian collective decision-making (hooghe et al., 2017: 24). such bodies inside an io can take the form of national assemblies or boards of executives, where national representatives are directly selected by their national governments (hooghe and marks, 2015: 324-325). international authority and transnational access institutional access provision by ios is an institutionalized mechanism that allows transnational actors to take part at different stages of policy-making (tallberg et al., 2014: 724). as the definition of international authority, the institutional access also focuses on its legal-rational character as codified in legal rules of ios. importantly, access does not imply the actual participation of tnas in ios, but only the presence of opportunity for such engagement. to illustrate how international authority and institutional access link, i look at the ios authority as one single continuum ranging from the extreme high level to the extreme low level. along this continuum, i differentiate between the levels of access by looking at ios’ opportunity and willingness for access provision. opportunity is an ability of ios to provide access for tnas, while willingness is ios’ perception of utility of tnas’ involvement for the advancement of the goals of their mandates. considering the difference in access provision between ios with the highest and lowest levels of authority, we have to remember that these are idealized theoretical cases, which are useful in order to provide a comparative outlook and threshold points for measuring the real-life levels of authority. i argue that ios with high authority have opportunity for access provision, but they are not willing to do so. ios with low authority neither have opportunity nor willingness for access provision. lastly, ios with medium authority have higher level of opportunity than the ones with low authority, and very high level of willingness compared to high authority ios (table 1). table 1: international authority and opportunity and willingness for access provision. io authority pooling delegation opportunity willingness high highest level highest level high low politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 69 low lowest level lowest level low low medium low level high level high high source: author. high authority ios and access provision in an idealized io with the highest levels of delegated and pooled authority, member-states exercise minimized control over the secretariat, while the io itself enjoys significant budget, and final decision-making autonomy. these ios can be characterized in three aspects: first, they have extensive regulatory competence in the specific policy area they are operating in, possibly to the level of being international rule creating body; second, they have all the necessary resources, including financial and technical-scientific, for implementation of their international policies; and last, considering the two factors mentioned above, they are considered to be the main international rulemaking authorities in their policy domain, as such, they enjoy taken-for-granted legitimacy (abbott et at., 2015: 21; genschel and zangl, 2014: 339). with such authority, ios may effectively govern international issues on their own. however, these ios are not closed to tnas, and they do have enough institutional capabilities to provide access. in fact, high authority ios are the ones who have the highest opportunity for access provision, and the majority of tnas are more than willing to work with these ios due to legitimacy and reputation that they will gain (abbott et al., 2015: 21). however, these ios do not perceive an urgent utility for their goals in access provision. member-states still may want to involve transnational actors for two reasons: either when there is functional need in additional expertise, or states may want to institute additional controlling mechanism over international bureaucracies (tallberg et al., 2014: 743). in high authority ios, member-states may want to involve tnas in order to establish additional monitoring system over international secretariats, illustrated through the concept of “fire alarms” (hawkins et al., 2006: 12). however, having considered the fact that high authority ios operate within specific policy domains over which member-states are willing to retain national control, members may be afraid that involvement of tnas may bring up harmful criticism or advocacy for policies that will not serve their domestic interests. low authority ios and access provision alternatively, ios with the lowest levels of delegated and pooled authority neither enjoy policy and budget independence, nor they are tasked with any extensive mandate that would require such independence. as such, these ios are delegated with minimized levels of regulatory competence, operational capacity or taken-for-granted legitimacy. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 70 these ios are dominated by intergovernmentalism, with secretariats playing only administrative and supportive roles in negotiations of states. their mandates do not require any additional input by tnas. although their policy scope may be quite extensive, member-states themselves may want to negotiate and co-operate with tnas without the intermediary function of ios because of domestic sensitivity to issues that they cannot compromise over. tnas will not be willing to work with them, as these ios neither can provide tnas with additional resources and rewards for their job, nor do these tnas will receive international reputation or legitimacy for working with such low authority ios. these ios do not have enough opportunity nor are mandated with extensive tasks to be willing to engage with tnas. medium authority ios and access provision having established these two extreme threshold points, we now turn to the authority area where the most of current ios operate within –the one of medium international authority. these ios may have a variety of combinations of regulatory competence, operational capacity, legitimacy, and the involvement of tnas helps them to complement their deficiencies. i argue that exactly this capability gap pushes them to pursue states to establish institutional channels for access provision for tnas, as it is essential for the achievement of collective goals. medium authority ios have a relatively higher level of delegation, as they usually handle an extensive scope of issues, but a lower level of pooling, with member-states willing to keep things under their national veto. as such, these ios are faced with functional dilemma: on one hand, they have an extensive list of issues that they should solve, but their hands are tied by member-states’ control mechanisms, which means that every decision taken by the secretariats should gain approval of the members. this makes international policy-making and implementation inefficient, as by the time the secretariat gets the permission to act, the issue may evolve in an unexpected way, and the old policy may no longer be relevant. these ios are not able to hierarchically govern states through the creation of international laws and enforcement mechanisms, neither they have powers to directly access private actors protected by national jurisdictions in order to ensure the compliance with international policies (abbott et al., 2015: 24). the access provision for tnas helps ios to overcome these limitations. firstly, even the soft involvement of tnas may help an io to indirectly manage states into compliance with international norms and policies, through public naming and shaming that may re-shape interests and behavior of member-states in alignment with the io’s mandate goals (abbott et al., 2015: 24). secondly, tnas also help an io to bypass states in accessing private actors operating under the umbrella of national sovereign jurisdictions, without dealing with states as intermediaries (abbott et politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 71 al., 2015: 24). in both cases, ios avoid into entering into conflict with member-states over foreign intervention into domestic affairs with the help of tnas. medium authority ios may use the existing access mechanisms and expand them over time by illustrating that they are essential for the fulfillment of their mandate. the main difference between high and medium authority ios is that both have the opportunity to expand access over time, but only medium authority ios go for it. as such, i propose the following hypothesis for the empirical testing: h: ceteris paribus, international organizations with the medium level of international authority provide the higher level of access to transnational actors than international organizations with the high and low levels of authority. methodology in order to test the hypothesis, i compile a panel dataset containing information on the levels of authority and access provision among 29 international organizations in the period from 1950 to 2010. as such, the unit of analysis is an international organization in a year. to qualify as such, an international body should be “a formal organization for collective decision-making among at least three-member states”, created “among national governments”, and “structured by rules for a continuous purpose” (hooghe et al., 2017: 36). ios in the dataset range from global to regional organizations, covering a variety of different policy issues ranging from energy, free trade, security and environment among others (see appendix 2). although it does not cover all existing ios in the international system, the sample of 29 ios present in the dataset covers an extensive period of time from 1950 to 2010 with more than 1000 observations. independent variables i operationalize the international authority of ios through two variables, delegation and pooling, which come from measuring international authority dataset by hooghe et al. (2017: 105). both variables range from 0 to 1, 0 being the lowest level of delegation and pooling, and 1 being the highest level of both. delegation is operationalized as “an annual measure of the allocation of authoritative competences to non-state bodies in io’s decision-making process” (hooghe et al., 2017: 105). it consists of political delegation and judicial delegation. political delegation is measured across the bureaucratic bodies within an io that are composed of non-state actors and have institutionalized ability to “exercise or co-exercise authority” over agenda-setting and final decision-making across six following decision areas: membership accession, membership suspension, constitutional reform, budgetary allocation, financial non-compliance, and policy-making in up to five different issue areas politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 72 (hooghe et al., 2017: 105). judicial delegation is a “conditional grant of authority to courts, arbitrators, or tribunals” (hooghe et al., 2017: 105). pooling measures “the extent to which member states share authority through collective decision making” (hooghe et al., 2017: 113). pooling is measured by looking at voting rules across the bodies of an io that involves members’ decision-making in the two processes: (1) agenda-setting, and (2) final decision-making on the six decision areas mentioned above (hooghe et al., 2017: 113). because of proposed non-linear relationship, i created square term variables for delegation and pooling in each year of the dataset, and labeled them as delegation_sq and pooling_sq. dependent variable the dependent variable, the level of access provided by ios to tnas, is operationalized through tna access index created by sommerer and tallberg (2017: 249). tna access is composed of four indicators: the depth of access; the range of access; the permanence of access; and the level of codification of access (sommerer and tallberg, 2017: 254). the depth of access is the level of tnas involvement into ios’ activities (sommerer and tallberg, 2017: 254). the range is the level of exclusiveness of access to some particular type of tnas (sommerer and tallberg, 2017: 254). the overall tna access index is the combination of depth and range multiplied by two additional institutional indicators – permanence, which is the level of sustainability of access over time, and codification, which is the level to which access is codified in formal rules (sommerer and tallberg, 2017: 254). tna access ranges from 0 to 12, 0 indicating the total absence of access, while 12 indicating the ideal type of access into all decision-making activities for all kinds of tnas on a permanent and codified basis. control variables i also include eight additional variables in order to control for biased estimates. the data for these variables is taken from transaccess dataset (sommerer and tallberg, 2017: 251). firstly, it is argued that the heterogeneity of preferences of member-states may have an effect on the level of ios’ access provision for tnas. however, there is no clear agreement between scholars on this: while some argue that goal divergence among members leads to the limited authority of an io, as a result of which the io will seek tnas’ involvement to complement its limited capabilities; others argue that if members have similar interests, they are more likely to design more institutional access mechanisms for tnas (abbott et al., 2015: 27). the variable affinity of members is based on the voting patterns of member-states of ios in the united nations generally assembly, and measures yearly average policy interest convergence among all possible combinations of member-states of each io in the dataset (sommerer and tallberg, 2017: 254). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 73 secondly, overlapping logic applies to the argument of democratic memberships: ios that are dominated by like-minded democracies tend to provide more access for tnas as an extension of domestic democratic principles such as transparency and accountability to the global level (grigorescu, 2007: 626). the variable democratic members captures the average score of the level of democracy among the member-states of each io as aggregated based on polity iv scores. thirdly, in following constructivist argument that democratic major power in the membership of an io diffuses its norms and values on the io and its members, for example through promoting more access opportunities for tnas (grigorescu, 2007: 626), i add the democratic major power dummy variable, which takes the value of 1 if there is a democratic major power in an io in a year without any other power of non-democratic character, and 0 if not (sommerer and tallberg, 2017: 260). fourthly, i include two dummy variables in order to test whether the sovereignty concerns of member-states affect the level of access provision. the argument is that members may fear that the involvement of tnas may touch upon their sovereign domestic affairs in undesired or unexpected ways, as such they would like to avoid their involvement in two cases: if an io’s secretariat has major legally binding decision and rule-making capabilities, and if an io operates in the field of international security (tallberg et al., 2014: 756). the dummies decision and security take the values of 1 if an io has major decision-making functions and engages in international security issues, and 0 if otherwise. finally, in order to account for the argument about the functional need for tnas involvement, i also include three more control variables that specify the kind of tasks that ios perform: technical complexity, local activities, and non-compliance incentives. ios are interested in providing access for tnas if their mandate tasks are “technically complex, require local implementation and present significant noncompliance incentives, and where the relevant information – policy expertise, implementation knowledge, and compliance information – is held by societal actors” (tallberg et al., 2014: 754). the measure of technical complexity of an io’s mandate ranges from 0 to 1, while the measures of the need for local implementation, and of the level of possible non-compliance incentives range from 0 to 2. since this study uses large-t and small-n panel data, meaning extensive time period (19502010) relative to a limited number of ios (29), i employ two-way fixed effect model to account for how the authority and access levels within ios change over time. the model includes squared delegation (delegation_sqit) and pooling (pooling_sqit) terms to account for non-linear causal relationship, organization (𝑢𝑖) and time (𝑣𝑡) fixed effects in addition to control variables (∑ 𝛾𝑋𝑖𝑡) and error term (𝜖𝑖𝑡). the overall base model looks as following: politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 74 tna accessit =  + 1delegationit + 2poolingit + 3pooling_sqit + 4delegation_sqit + ∑ 𝛾𝑋𝑖𝑡 + 𝑢𝑖 + 𝑣𝑡 + 𝜖𝑖𝑡 results before jumping into the empirical results, it is worth to take a minute to look at anecdotal evidence coming from the dataset. figure 1 illustrates the correlation between the degree of access provision with the level of pooling in 29 ios in 2010, while in the figure 2, pooling is substituted with delegation. figure 2: association between the level of pooling and tna access in 2010. source: author. from both figures it is evident that on the scale from 0 to 1, the maximum levels of pooling and delegation in the dataset reach only 0.3 and 0.25, which may seem as an indication of absence of high authority ios in the dataset. however, as it was mentioned in the theory section, high and low authority are idealized cases that serve the theoretical purpose of providing a comparative framework for different kinds of ios. in the essence, it is perfectly legitimate that no ios with pooling and delegation levels close to 1 exist in the international system, however, this does not deteriorate the theoretical utility of these idealized cases. data on the maximum and minimum levels politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 75 of pooling and delegation that come from the dataset is an empirical fact, as such, the scores for high and low authority levels may be adjusted according to the existing data. in the dataset, 90th percentile of pooling score is 0.49 with the highest score being 0.53, while 90th percentile of delegation is 0.32 with the highest score of 0.46 (appendix 3). these scores present an empirical reflection of high authority ios with high delegation and pooling levels. throughout the period from 1950 to 2010, there are two ios that can be characterized as such: the bank for international settlements (bis), and the world trade organization (wto). low io authority is captured through the lowest 25th percentile: 0.11 and lower for pooling, and 0.06 and lower for delegation (appendix 3). there is only one io that consistently fulfils this condition throughout all the years in the dataset – the asia-pacific economic cooperation (apec). medium authority ios, consequently, operate within these two extremes. the international criminal court (icc) consistently has been scoring high on access provision and had pooling and delegation scores within the medium range, similar to the organization for american states and the council of europe (appendix 2). this illustrates the non-linear nature of correlation between two independent variables and access provision. figure 3: association between the level of delegation and tna access in 2010. source: author. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 76 main models results presented on table 4 support these trends. i start with a simple ols regression in the model 1 including all independent and control variables. in accordance with the expectations, there is statistically significant negative relationship between pooling_sq and tna access: the rate of change in tna access in an io depends on the io’s level of pooling. since sign for pooling is positive, and sign for pooling_sq is negative, results indicate that the effect of pooling is positive until the level of pooling reaches 0.422 threshold, after which its effect becomes negative. ios with the level of pooling of 0.422 provide the highest level of access. as such, there is inverted u-shaped relationship between tna access and pooling_sq. although having a negative sign, delegation_sq has no statistically significant effect on the level of access provision. in the terms of magnitude, the effect of pooling is strongest among all statistically significant variables included in the model. decision comes the second: ios with the international decision-making powers on average provide less access than ios with fewer powers. in order to specifically account for how authority and access vary over time, i employ fixed effects ols regression controlling for years and ios in the models 2 and 3. the model 2 includes only main independent variables in the absence of control variables. picture remains the same; pooling_sq is negative and significant, although its magnitude almost doubles. delegation_sq remains insignificant. the model 3 is a base model with all control variables included. even in the presence of control variables, pooling_sq keeps its significance and increases the magnitude of its effect. in the base model, the threshold level of pooling is 0.403: ios that have the level of pooling equal to 0.403 provide the highest access level to tnas; ios with pooling levels below and higher than this, provide less access. interestingly, delegation_sq becomes significant at 95% level of confidence, having a positive effect on the level of access. decision and security’s effects on tna access remain negative and statistically significant, scoring the third after pooling_sq and delegation_sq in the terms of the magnitudes. with 1110 observations, the two-way fixed effects ols explains 70% of within-ios variation over the whole period in the dataset. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 77 table 2: regression results for simple ols and fixed effect ols models. source: author. note: *** p < 0.01; ** p < 0.05; standard errors are in brackets. models (2) and (3) include organization-fixed effect and year dummies. ols fixed effects ols (1) (2) (3: base model) pooling 1.20*** (0.14) 2.15*** (0.22) 2.21*** (0.22) pooling_sq -1.42*** (0.24) -2.02*** (0.39) -2.74*** (0.40) delegation 0.10 (0.17) -0.09 (0.18) -0.33 (0.20) delegation_sq -0.00 (0.40) 0.09 (0.41) 1.09** (0.47) affinity of members -0.27*** (0.03) __ -0.07 (0.04) democratic members 0.02*** (0.00) __ 0.00*** (0.00) democratic major power 0.08*** (0.01) __ 0.02 (0.02) decision -0.5*** (0.03) __ -0.86*** (0.07) security -0.27*** (0.02) __ -0.73*** (0.10) technical complexity -0.00 (0.01) __ -0.31*** (0.03) local activities 0.11*** (0.02) __ 0.01 (0.03) non-compliance initiatives 0.25*** (0.02) __ 0.14*** (0.04) intercept -0.07 (0.04) -0.26*** (0.04) 0.28*** (0.08) r2: within between overall 0.57 0.64 0.12 0.23 0.71 0.45 0.40 # of observations 1110 1211 1110 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 78 robustness check i run three additional models in order to check for the robustness of results. firstly, i run fixed effects ols models while clustering for standards errors on ios in order to check for heteroscedasticity and serial autocorrelation. results are reported on table 4. as in previous models, pooling_sq remains negative and significant, although its magnitude reaches the highest level among all estimated models: ios with the level of pooling of 0.38 provide the highest level of access; ios with pooling levels lower and higher than this threshold provide less access. delegation_sq also does not illustrate any changes in comparison to previous models. out of eight control variables, only two has statistical significance: decision, which keeps its negative effect on the level of access, and surprisingly, affinity of members that did not show significance in the base model (4). one-point increase in affinity of members is associated with 0.22-point drop in tna access. following tallberg and his co-authors (2014: 761) that used the same tna access variable in their study, i also run tobit regression for the model 5. the choice is motivated by the type of data-points distribution for the dependent variable tna access: it is left-censored at zero, thereby indicating a higher density of data-points that score zero in comparison to data-points scoring higher than zero. in the essence, whether tna access is equal to zero or not indicates whether an io provides access to tnas or not, and all values higher than zero indicate the degree of access provision (tallberg et al., 2014: 761). tobit model presents a better suit to account for this leftcensored bias in the data, which allows to get the most of information from “theoretically relevant zero entries” (tallberg et al., 2014: 761). in other words, as these data points reflect empirical observations, even small unnoticeable variations among values that are close to zero may have theoretical significance. results do not differ a lot from fixed effects ols model. pooling_sq still has the strongest effect and it is still negative. the effect of pooling on access stays positive till it reaches the threshold level of 0.395, after which its effect becomes negative. decision, security, and few of other control variables illustrate the same statistically significant but limited effects on tna access. among all models, tobit model provides the strongest support for my hypothesis. this is due to the fact that surprisingly, delegation_sq acquires negative sign which is significant at 95% confidence level: ios with the delegation level of 0.286 provide the highest level of access to tnas, while ios with delegation levels lower and higher than this provide less access. the magnitude of its effect also turns out to be the strongest after the effect of pooling. lastly, building from the logic that values in the tna access variable that take value of higher than zero indicate the general openness of ios, i construct a dummy open dependent variable, which takes value of 1 if tna access is higher than zero, and takes value of 0 if otherwise. i run logit regression in order to test the implications of the substituted dependent variable. logistic regression politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 79 table 3: alternative models for robustness check. fixed effects clustered s.e. tobit logit (4) (5) (6) pooling 2.54*** (0.95) 1.93*** (0.20) 22.85*** (2.77) pooling_sq -3.26*** (1.42) -2.44*** (0.34) -31.17*** (4.39) delegation 0.15 (0.67) 0.66*** (0.24) 8.82*** (3.03) delegation_sq 0.71 (1.59) -1.15** (0.54) -22.87*** (7.19) affinity of members -0.22*** (0.09) -0.37*** (0.04) -4.65*** (0.70) democratic members 0.01 (0.00) 0.02*** (0.00) 0.31*** (0.02) democratic major power 0.02 (0.07) 0.10*** (0.01) 1.40*** (0.28) decision -0.92*** (0.30) -0.77*** (0.05) -9.07*** (0.82) security -0.71 (0.48) -0.35*** (0.04) -4.72*** (0.48) technical complexity -0.29 (0.15) 0.03 (0.02) -0.09 (0.29) local activities -0.04 (0.14) 0.16*** (0.03) -1.35 (0.49) non-compliance initiatives 0.19 (0.19) 0.24*** (0.03) 0.77 (0.48) intercept 0.20 (0.27) -0.31 (0.06) -2.69*** (0.86) r2 within between overall 0.65 0.48 0.40 # of observations 1211 1110 1110 source: the author. note: *** p < 0.01; ** p < 0.05; standard errors are in brackets. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 80 is also a useful tool when having data that lacks normal distribution, which is the case with the present dataset: as previously mentioned, zero-values dominate among data points. looking at general direction of coefficients, we can observe that as in the two previous models, both pooling_sq and delegation_sq have negative signs, indicating that on average, ios with higher levels of pooling and delegation are likely to provide less access for tnas than ios with less pooling and delegation levels. control variables keep their previous signs. as it can be seen from the models, although estimates for pooling are consistently statistically significant, estimates for delegation lack such consistency. in the models 3, 4 and 5, ios with pooling level around 0.4 provided the highest levels of access. in the same models, only in the tobit regression estimates for delegation were statistically significant. this brings an interesting implication for the intergovernmental-transnational conflict in ios: these results may suggest that pooling is a more fundamental dimension of international authority and as such, ios are still predominantly characterized by their intergovernmental dimension. alternatively, it may be the case that pooled authority is more determining factor in one governance tasks, while delegated authority is in another. these hypotheses need further testing. conclusion the study makes a claim that the level of international authority of ios plays one of the determining roles in their levels of access provision. it argues that ios with the highest level of international authority are able to provide access, but they do not see functional benefit in doing so. ios with the lowest authority are neither able nor willing to provide access. ios with the medium level of authority have higher opportunity and willingness to provide access as they want to use it to overcome authority limitations for the fulfilment of their mandate goals. the findings present an entry point into the understanding of how elites within ios, namely, international secretariats develop their own preferences, and in which situations they decide to proceed with the advancement of their preferences. international secretariats may have interest in effective achievement of mandate goals and gaining more autonomy and resources from memberstates. they base their actions on legal-rational framework of delegated authority and move on from there to proceed with achieving their interests. ios engage tnas only when they experience authority shortage, but still enjoy just enough authority to be able to set up institutional mechanisms for access provision. further research should employ a more extensive dataset covering a wider scope of ios and a mix of different quantitative and qualitative tools. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 81 references abbott, kenneth w. et al. 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(2014): ‘explaining transnational design of international organizations’, international organization 68(4): pp. 741774. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020818314000149 vaubel, roland (2006): ‘principal-agent problems in international organizations’, review of international organizations 1(2): pp. 125-138. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-006-8340-z willetts, peter (2000): ‘from ‘consultative arrangements’ to ‘partnership’: the changing status of ngos in diplomacy at the un’, global governance 6(2): pp. 191-212. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/19426720-00602003 https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2016.1217902 https://doi.org/10.1162/002081801317193592 https://doi.org/10.1080/07388940490463933 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2478.00064 https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230592506 https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230283220_3 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020818314000149 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-006-8340-z https://doi.org/10.1163/19426720-00602003 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 83 appendices appendix 1 table 4: list of abbreviations of names of international organizations. african union au andean community can asia-pacific economic cooperation apec association of southeast asian nations asean arab maghreb union amu bank for international settlements bis caribbean community caricom central african economic and monetary union cemac commonwealth of nations comw council of europe coe european free trade association efta intergovernmental authority on development igad international criminal court icc international monetary fund imf international whaling commission iwc organization for arab petroleum exporting countries oapec organization for economic cooperation and development oecd organization for islamic cooperation oic organization for security and cooperation in europe osce organization of american states oas nordic council nc north american free trade association nafta north atlantic treaty organization nato northwest atlantic fisheries organization nafo pacific islands forum pif shanghai cooperation organization sco united nations un world bank wb world trade organization wto politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 84 appendix 2 table 5: 29 ios and their levels of delegation, pooling and tna access in 2010. international organisation delegation pooling access international criminal court 0.34 0.37 1.21 organization of american states 0.24 0.4 1.17 council of europe 0.4 0.48 0.90 andean community 0.39 0.26 0.83 organization for security and cooperation in europe 0.18 0.19 0.80 african union 0.3 0.5 0.78 united nations 0.2 0.49 0.75 european free trade association 0.21 0.15 0.63 pacific islands forum 0.27 0.31 0.62 nordic council 0.08 0.09 0.58 world bank 0.17 0.39 0.57 organization for islamic cooperation 0.05 0.34 0.53 commonwealth of nations 0.25 0.31 0.51 international whaling commission 0.05 0.33 0.51 caribbean community 0.31 0.33 0.50 world trade organization 0.44 0.49 0.49 organization for economic cooperation and development 0.14 0.11 0.48 northwest atlantic fisheries organization 0.14 0.32 0.44 intergovernmental authority on development 0.05 0.19 0.38 north american free trade association 0.21 0.07 0.37 central african economic and monetary union 0.46 0.28 0.35 international monetary fund 0.30 0.30 0.31 association of southeast asian nations 0.25 0.13 0.28 asia-pacific economic cooperation 0.01 0.04 0.27 shanghai cooperation organization 0.08 0.20 0.18 organization for arab petroleum exporting countries 0.19 0.22 0.17 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 85 north atlantic treaty organization 0.13 0.07 0.15 bank for international settlements 0.33 0.52 0.04 arab maghreb union 0.19 0.02 0.02 note: sorted by the highest level of tna access to lowest. highest scores are highlighted. source: the author. appendix 3 table 6: summary statistics of all variables. observations mean std. deviation min max tna access 1211 0.26 0.26 0 1.21 pooling 1211 0.25 0.16 0 0.53 delegation 1211 0.17 0.10 0 0.46 affinity of members 1117 -0.71 0.17 -0.98 0.09 democratic members 1164 3.56 5.08 -8.75 10 democratic major power 1211 0.33 0.47 0 1 decision 1211 0.39 0.19 0 1 security 1211 0.07 0.22 0 1 technical complexity 1211 0.61 0.45 0 2 local activities 1211 0.20 0.21 0 1 non-compliance initiatives 1211 0.14 0.26 0 1 source: the author. appendix 4 table 4: top 3 ios with highest and lowest scores for delegation, pooling and access. levels delegation pooling access top 3 ios cemac, wto, coe un, bis, au icc, oas, coe bottom 3 ios sco, osce, apec asean, nc, oic bis, au, wb source: the author. international authority of international organizations and access provision for transnational actors introduction literature review theoretical argument international authority and transnational access high authority ios and access provision low authority ios and access provision medium authority ios and access provision methodology independent variables dependent variable results main models robustness check conclusion references appendix 1 appendix 3 appendix 4 politikon_vol. 36_2.3 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 25 the international win-set: boundaries for influence shayna servillas https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.36.2 shayna servillas, 20, is a third-year undergraduate pursuing her bachelor of arts in economics and political science at northwestern university, and currently studying philosophy, politics, and economics (ppe) at st. catherine’s college in oxford university. she has spent two years on foreign policy research for the london-based human security centre and her most recent summer on human rights research for the tehran-based tavaana institute. her research interests include domestic and international iranian politics, strategic applications of game theory, and international political economy. abstract in line with the structural realist school in international relations, this paper argues that while being considerable, the power domestic actors have in the foreign policy sphere is bounded by international constraints. the argument proceeds by extrapolating the concept of a ‘win-set’ constraint from the robert putnam’s 1988 two-level model on negotiation onto a decision structure of foreign policy actors. hence it explains the unusual strength of domestic influence in the u.s., relative to other states. through the use of applied game theory and the case studies of the kennedy administration’s response to the cuban missile crisis and the bush administration’s response to the israeli ‘operation defensive shield’, this research attempts to demonstrate how domestic groups exercise influence within the boundaries created by the international power structure. keywords aipac; cuban missile crisis; domestic actors; international win-set; rational actor model; structural realism; u.s. privileges https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.36.2 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 26 introduction there is no doubt that domestic actors influence american foreign policy. domestic actors, in this sense, refer to organized groups of people within the united states who seek some personal interest in a change of u.s. foreign policy. while some heads of state are more or less isolated from electoral pressures of congress, diplomatic actors within democracies are almost always either elected by the public or appointed by elected officials. this exposure subjects foreign policy decisions made by those heads of state to the ebb and flow of both majority opinion and the financial leverage of strong domestic actors. even autocratic leaders are still dependent on the financial backing of powerful domestic interest groups (hill, 2010: 224). however, the extent to which domestic actors have control over foreign policy is contested. it is a radical proposition to say that the strength of a favorable domestic group is the primary determinant of a policy outcome. while domestic groups have considerable, and sometimes concerning, levels of influence, their preferences must still be balanced with those of the state in an international incentive structure. this paper will attempt to investigate this balance by first explaining the calculus of an international win-set, then by discussing the means by which domestic groups operate within this constraint. it will accomplish this by examining unique u.s. privileges and delving into two cases: the kennedy administration’s response to the cuban missile crisis and the bush administration’s response to the israeli ‘operation defensive shield’. overall, i hope to argue that domestic groups exert influence proportional to their economic strength within the boundaries created by an international structure. review of the literature at the core of international relations is the economic assumption of state rationality. mearsheimer describes a rational state as: they are aware of their external environment and they think strategically about how to survive in it. in particular, they consider the preferences of other states and how their own behavior is likely to affect the behavior of those others states, and how the behavior of those other states is likely to affect their own strategy for survival. moreover, states pay attention to the long term as well as the immediate consequences of their actions (mearsheimer, 2001: 31) notable in this definition is both a consideration of both the actor’s choice and the resultant choices of other players, as well as endogenized long-term consequences. waltz’s structural realist school suggested a game with several actors, each of whom could make choices bounded by interests and limits of an international ‘structure’ (waltz, 2001). the most rational action by each individual would be that within its constraint whose outcome maximized the interests of the state it led. when kenneth waltz used the rational actor model to analyze decisions of political actors, he brought with him assumptions from rational choice theory in economics that have been critiqued and reexamined for the latter half of the 20th century (waltz, 2010). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 27 one of the most popular critiques of the rational actor model came from herbert simon, who argued that the translation of theory to reality came with restrictions on the capacity of actors to make ‘theoretically’ rational choices. because it is almost never possible for an individual to know the full series of consequences created by their decision, they may only act rationally within the boundaries of their limited foresight. a modification of rationality, simon’s bounded rationality sought to find the most rational outcomes within the boundary of limited information (simon, 1955). modern critics, such as jonathan kirshner in the economic sins of rationalist ir theory, notice that actors ‘bring’ their cultural backgrounds and individual experiences into their respective models. contrary to homogenous consumer groups in economics, individual actors in foreign policy dilemmas use different economic models from each other (kirshner, 2014: 169). while kirshner refers to historical timelines that construct value structures, this complexity can also take place between individuals within the same state. for example, one administration in the u.s. might prioritize preponderance, while another chooses peace. such a heterogeneity would allocate utility differently. for the pro-preponderance actor, ensured hegemony might increase utility by 100, but for the propeace actor, only by 50. taking these differences into account changes a cost-benefit analysis based on the preferences of the actor, and allow for a range of optimal outcomes. of course, one might extrapolate these values to be rational and irrational decisions themselves. for example, preponderance might be more effective than peace in the satisfaction of u.s. interests. however, the limited capacity of individuals to foresee outcomes, argued by simon, often causes actors to substitute individual values for the foresight they lack. this paper follows the rationale of kirshner, assuming that values can allot for diversity between actor choices and that those choices can be influenced by domestic actors, but that those choices will still fall within the structural constraints initially suggested by kenneth waltz. however, because this paper evaluates real-world cases with the restriction of limited information, it relaxes the assumption that actors have, as mearsheimer described, long-term foresight and certainty of actor responses. in ‘diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-level games’, robert putnam outlines a two-level bargaining model in which states negotiate agreements in terms of ‘win-sets’, or sets of policy outcomes that either an international opponent or domestic constituency would find agreeable. the negotiator seeks to find viable solutions within the ‘overlap’ between demands by the opposition party and those made by domestic groups at home (putnam, 1988: 433-459). however, this model is also useful in other foreign policy choice games. any state action subject to foreign policy consequence operates within a similar, if less formal, constraint. if policy is evaluated in terms of (a) the extent to which it contributes to state interests and (b) the extent to which it imposes costs on the state, there exists a threshold beyond which policy becomes too costly to pursue, no matter politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 28 the domestic influence. therefore, domestic groups exert strong influence contingent on their chosen policy falling within the constraints of a foreign policy ‘win-set’. within these boundaries, there exist plausible arguments that each of the policy options encompassed best advances state interest. considering this bounded constraint, it appears implausible that domestic groups in the u.s. would have as much influence as they do, as their policy choices still must fall within these boundaries. however, u.s. privileges allot it a ‘larger’ range of plausible policy choices than other states. consequently, proportionally more of u.s. foreign policy is subject to the push and pull of domestic interest than the policy of its international counterparts. figure 1. model 1 of international win-set the top half of the model presents a series of decisions available to an actor in a foreign policy dilemma. rational options are presented in green, irrational options in red. the second model presents a similar set of options, this time with the assumption that utility is variable, based on preexisting value differences both of individual belief and cultural background. the volatility of actor preference causes prior ‘suboptimal’ choices to merit utility not before offered by the ‘optimal’ choice, and therefore opens up more than one rational option. the set of all rational options is the international win-set. these privileges date back to the u.s. position of leverage following a military victory in world war ii. during the bretton woods conference in 1944, harry dexter white cemented the u.s. dollar as the reserve currency by tying its value to the gold standard. when the bretton woods system fell in 1971, the dollar remained the reserve currency through the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. the international value of the dollar encouraged any state who wished to avoid a liquidity politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 29 crisis to store reserves of the currency in its national bank. the constant demand for dollars allowed the united states to borrow without concern, passing its adjustment burdens onto allied states in its security apparatus (mastanduno, 2009: 134). such exorbitant borrowing privileges allow policymakers to bypass the political cost of austerity, pushing those costs onward to future generations. while future costs already are subject to a discount factor in cost-benefit decisions, the current administration also understands it will likely not be the actor undertaking those costs. this dramatically reduces the disincentive of fiscal cost on the decision-maker. in addition to economic resources, the cost of policy choices in terms of diplomacy is relatively more crippling for a state which does not enjoy military supremacy. for example, south africa struggled to negotiate with international partners on the continent during apartheid, the racism underlying the policy not lost on african heads of state (hill, 2010: 227). the consequences for south africa of such loss in international opinion, especially from a continent which hosts so many of its trading partners, were of such magnitude to pressure a change in domestic policy, regardless of domestic interests. a similar circumstance for the united states, the loss of international support in response to its 2003 intervention in iraq, was costly, but relatively less crippling. the u.s. was able to sacrifice international opinion without concern for loss of security and even undertake large economic costs by invading iraq unilaterally (schmidt and williams, 2008: 193). the u.s. is much less dependent on its relationship with middle eastern states than south africa on its african peers. u.s. military supremacy also provides it leverage in many of its alliances because so many states are dependent on its security (mastanduno, 2009: 133). the decreased cost of many policy endeavors expands the number of ‘contestable’ policy options for the u.s., and increases the size of its international win-set. therefore, the job of determining which of the now many policy options in this constraint will be implemented often falls in the hands of domestic interest groups. the cuban missile crisis exemplifies the pull of domestic interests within the constraint of the international win-set. in october 1962, president kennedy made a public statement that the united states would not tolerate the presence of ‘offensive weapons’ in cuba. weeks later, intelligence discovered il-28 bombers on the island, and the president was forced to take action (graham, 2010: 120). stephen krasner outlines six policy options available to the executive committee of the national security council (excomm), the secret group of advisors to president kennedy, in response to the crisis — do nothing, leverage diplomatic pressure, perform a secret approach to castro, invade, implement a surgical airstrike, or construct a naval blockade (krasner, 1972: 170). the ‘secret approach to castro’ option was abandoned early on because castro did not have control of the missiles, leaving five alternatives remaining. the diplomatic options were politically unviable politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 30 for president kennedy, who was under political pressure from republicans to be more assertive, and whose decision to not follow his previous statement would undermine confidence in both him and the democrats who pledged him their loyalty. an upcoming election made this a politically precarious situation (allison and zelikow, 2010: 119). however, the assertive options — invasion and surgical airstrike — ran the risk of prompting a response from the soviet union in berlin, and a forced reactionary response of nuclear engagement. graph 2. model 2 of international win-set and aggressive policy the cuban missile crisis is an ideal case of u.s. constraint by concrete international interests. military supremacy and borrowing privileges could not excuse the state from the consequences of a nuclear war — the interest in avoiding escalation was absolute. yet, there was still debate about whether to perform an airstrike. why was this the case? the decision about whether to engage assertively was a game of risk in which the worse outcome involved escalation, whereas the better income would mean the ‘backing down’ of the soviet union and a grand display of power for president kennedy. if, alternatively, the case had been that excomm was sure the soviet union would escalate the crisis, there would be no room for discussion. an escalation toward nuclear war is against u.s. interests, and no sane leader would prioritize political capital at the expense of nuclear conflict. it was the ambiguity about whether this outcome would play out that encouraged debate. the extent to which the decision was encompassed within the international win-set could be said to have increased as the likelihood that aggressive action would cause escalation decreased. the top half of the model presents a foreign policy dilemma with a low risk of escalation. in this case, the choice to enact escalation policy is more tempting, as he or she receives absolute gains politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 31 in political utility on a low-risk wager. the ‘% chance policy is chosen’ is therefore slightly higher than in the latter model, in which risk of escalation is higher. in this case, the incentives to pursue the policy decrease. an interpretation is that the percentage risk of escalation pushes the policy choice out of the international-win set. the percentage risk of non-escalation remains safely within the win-set. the actor, without information about whether the outcome will or will not remain in the win-set, gambles accordingly. however, excomm soon decided that the threat of nuclear escalation was too great to perform a surgical airstrike or invasion. the ‘domestic’ interests therefore played within the confines of the three remaining options — do nothing, exert diplomatic pressure, or construct a naval blockade. the domestic incentives for president kennedy pushed him toward the third option, a naval blockade. therefore, while domestic pressure certainly guided the president’s actions, he still had to operate within the confines of the international structure. another example of a situation in which domestic interest groups had questionable influence to guide policy away from u.s. interests was the push and tug between the american israel public affairs committee (aipac) and the bush administration during operation defensive shield (ods) in 2002. aipac’s domestic influence is multifaceted. its strategic campaign donations make its support a necessity in order to win an election, both for a majority of congressmen and the president. candidates often compete for aipac’s resources, attempting to outdo each other’s enthusiasm for pro-israel policy. the absolute necessity for politicians to frame their rhetoric in support of israel also directs the national conversation away from potential criticism (mearsheimer, 2007: 152). operation defensive shield was a response to a palestinian suicide bombing on passover seder which killed 30 israelis (mearsheimer and walt, 2007: 208). the attack, although condemned by arafat, undermined any trust israel had in the palestinian authority as a negotiating partner. ods involved an attempt to create ‘facts on the ground’ and assert ownership of populous territories in the west bank, including the largest military occupation since the 1967 six-day war and the construction of a wall within the territories. almost all international actors considered the response vastly disproportionate to the attack. u.s. concern for loss of international favor prompted secretary of state colin powell to depart for palestine and attempt to reconcile peace terms between israel and the palestinian authority. this decision subjected the secretary to ten days worth of aggressive response from domestic sources. neoconservatives in the media strongly condemned his actions, members of congress across parties vocalized their lack of support, and a shift in the balance of power within the white house tilted heavily against powell, who had before enjoyed a position of leverage. several days later, president politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 32 bush reluctantly vocalized support for ods, and, three months later, allotted israel $200 million to aid in the effort against terrorism (mearsheimer and walt, 2007: 210). it first appears as though domestic politics won against u.s. interests. while the u.s. certainly cares about israel, the sacrifice of international rapport and the goodwill of the entire muslim faith seem a heavy cost at which to support its ally unconditionally. within the policy community, there was near-consensus that support for ods was against u.s. interests (quandt, 2005: 398). however, there are plausible arguments that such unconditional support for israel is in line with u.s. interests. this possibility, combined with the relatively small costs the u.s. endures from unpopularity, mean that radical pro-israel policy falls within the state’s international win-set. in the rational actor model, this outcome would likely have been ‘suboptimal’, attesting to the failure of the model to account for the complexities that make up real-world decisions. the contestability of a claim that a policy is against u.s. interests ought to contribute to its place within the range of policy choices, even if there is more evidence to the contrary. eisenstadt and pollock argue that there are several ways our alliance with israel actually upholds u.s. interests, in addition to value-based ideas of supporting a fellow democracy. the primary argument is that a close trade relationship with israel stimulates innovation in the u.s. because of the relationship between both states’ prosperous technology sectors (eisenstadt and pollock, 2012: xii). while there is a forced equivalency here between securing a trading partner and unconditional support for an ally, the relative economic benefits of israel’s support relative to that of other arab allies is still worth taking into consideration. eisenstadt and pollock’s stronger argument is that many u.s. allies — i.e. egypt, saudi arabia, and jordan — did not alter their relationship with the u.s. in response to ods, or to past pro-israel maneuvers (eisenstadt and pollock, 2012: 5). the persistence of u.s. allegiances with jordan and saudi arabia factor into the ‘low-cost calculus’ of u.s. decision-making. saudi arabia and jordan are both on the lower hand of leverage in their u.s. relationships — saudi arabia in terms of economic aid, and jordan in terms of access to trade agreements. the predicted ‘costs’ of u.s. controversial support for israel are therefore, as demonstrated earlier, lower than they would be for a less powerful state. eisenstadt and pollock also attribute unfavorable opinion of the u.s. to other policy choices. for example, antiamerican sentiment arises in iran from the placement of the corrupt and extraordinarily unpopular shah in 1941, and in other states from support of autocratic rulers and the invasion of iraq (eisenstadt and pollock, 2012: 7). taking this into account, the consequences of unconditional support are not so drastic. with this being said, there is still a need reconcile the apparent truth that the israel lobby was at odds with the preferences of foreign policy actors in the administration — president bush and politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 33 secretary powell were both described as ‘reluctant’ to support ods. would the u.s. have been able to resist aipac influence in a ‘less contested’ case where the calculus of international interests were more absolute? to answer this hypothetical, we can look to the cuban missile crisis — it was not in kennedy’s domestic interest to pursue a diplomatic solution, and outside the boundary of viable international policy to escalate the conflict with an airstrike. in such a case, kennedy was pushed into a median position, a reconciliation between structural international interests and domestic influence. therefore, if the benefits of supporting ods had not been contestable, as was the case in the cuban missile crisis, powell would likely have been guided to a similar compromised position, perhaps a vocal condemnation of palestinian terrorism without a $200 million financial contribution. it is worth addressing a question which arises from a conclusion that the u.s. win-set is so large — that is, if the international structure has so weak a hold on u.s. policy choice, why even mention international structure at all? there are two reasons why acknowledging the existence of an intact u.s. incentive structure is necessary. the first is that not all cases fall within its boundaries. a choice in absolute conflict with u.s. interests will be unavailable to domestic groups. the second reason is that just because the u.s. is currently so loosely constrained, does not mean it will be so in the future. privileges the u.s. enjoys are not guaranteed. eventually, the u.s. will have to make reasonable spending decisions and undergo austerity. it also will not always be facing actors in a relationship of absolute military supremacy. acknowledging the existence of such restraints is therefore a useful means to evaluate the importance of maintaining such u.s. privileges. in general, the pressure on president kennedy to take military action during the cuban missile crisis, and aipac’s influence on our foreign policy are some of the most extreme cases of domestic influence. even such radical examples, while challenging the boundaries of the u.s. international win-set, still remain within it. the ease with which domestic interest groups can dip their toes in policy is a consequence of the u.s. position of power and privileges in the world. however, just because we can pursue a policy, doesn’t mean we should. the notion that domestic groups have as much decision-making power as they do means that other parties, such as academic specialists, do not. the conclusion that policy is within the interests of the state should not be the only prerequisite for a policy to be enacted. other secondary concerns such as whether the policy contributes to a better world, or the values prioritized, should be considered before the satisfaction of powerful minority groups. within the academic framework it is of concern, however, that adjustments to the structural realist model which suggest such a diverse array of options for u.s. foreign policy erode the explanatory use of rational choice. rather, with such an empowered hegemonic leader, rational choice theory provides little predictive power. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 34 the research here presented therefore directs attention to a boundary on rational choice theory’s applicability. the array of rational choices that lie within the framework of the u.s. win-set is now vast, including outcomes which provide disproportionate benefits to a single domestic group, even at an overall cost deficit to the state. as such, domestic political theory is necessary to fill the explanatory role which international relations theory cannot. the economic politics of domestic political influence, an economic question in terms of capital, and a sociological question in terms of social appeal, is perhaps now, under hegemonic leadership, a more useful predictor of foreign policy. in the trump era, this trend is even more apparent. the administration’s foreign policy, its trade policy in particular, appears to follow little rational choice. the trump administration is a vessel which expresses the interests of a key domestic group within the boundaries of a privileged, hegemonic international win-set – the pursuit of protectionist policy for the disproportionate interests of displaced industrial workers. anyone who wished to predict foreign policy outcomes in the 2010s would have been better suited to look at patterns of structural unemployment and sociological distrust of authority than in the rational choice models of large states. if such variations exist within the rational actor model, what does this now say about mearsheimer’s claim that states “consider the preferences of other states and how their own behavior is likely to affect the behavior of those others states” when the u.s. is not subjectable enough to the actions of its consequences to, in many cases, even other state preferences into consideration? is the u.s. even a ‘rational actor’ in the structural realist sense? the u.s. is still acting rationally, but within constraints so flexible that the concerns that typify structural realism no longer predict its policy outcomes. therefore, while these seemingly irrational u.s. foreign policy choices are in fact rational, the growing number of rational outcomes decreases the usefulness of structural realism to predict outcomes. the integration of other means of predicting policy must be used 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(2010): theory of international politics. long grove: waveland press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-90400-9_127 https://doi.org/10.2307/1147761 https://doi.org/10.1353/wp.0.0030 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4967.2006.00260.x https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020818300027697 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020743800063340 https://doi.org/10.1080/09636410802098990 https://doi.org/10.2307/1884852 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-90400-9_127 the international win-set: boundaries for influence politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 37 (july 2018) 6 the impact of country characteristics on civic knowledge and political participation benjamin tyler leigh https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.37.1 b. tyler leigh, 24, from atlanta, georgia, usa, received bachelor’s degrees in international affairs and african political development from the university of georgia in 2016 and a master’s degree in education policies for global development from the autonomous university of barcelona in 2018. tyler is a current phd student in political science and communications at the university of pennsylvania. his research focuses on political participation and political socialization through the internet. e-mail: tylerleigh94@gmail.com. abstract political participation scholars have argued for years over whether or not civic education has any effect on political participation, with no clear conclusion being drawn, despite a variety of analyses. these analyses tend to ignore the country characteristics and structural factors that influence the relationship between civic education and political participation. this article seeks to address the gap in the literature by using data from the international civic and citizen study and other sources to show through quantitative analysis that country characteristics such as low economic development, stable state authority structures, and high inequality play a clear role in how effective civic education is in encouraging political participation. the article concludes by discussing limitations of the research and suggestions for future research. keywords civic education; economic inequality; education; governance; political participation https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.37.1 mailto:tylerleigh94@gmail.com politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 37 (july 2018) 7 introduction democracy depends on the active participation of citizens in a variety of governance activities, from voting in elections and donating to political campaigns to protesting and running for office. scholars and researchers have found ample evidence supporting this assertion over the years, and it is now widely acknowledged as fact that democracies cannot be built or survive without robust political participation (carpini & keeter, 1996; galston, 2001; nie, junn, & stehlik-barry, 1996). unfortunately, there is evidence that political participation in many western democracies is dropping, and recent studies show that younger age cohorts are the least likely to participate. in this context, some politicians and researchers are beginning to fear that democratic institutions and the freedom and equality associated with them may begin to erode (galston, 2004). educators and policy-makers point to education generally, and civic education specifically, as a cure for falling political participation rates and rising political apathy. according to galston (2001), the concept of civic education can be traced back to plato and aristotle, who noted that a key aspect of education is teaching future citizens how to behave and interact within the political system. this holds true in autocracies and democracies alike, where children must learn how to interact with the political structure of the society in which they live. in modern usage, civic education most often refers to a specific type of formal education in democracies through which students learn about their country’s political system and how to take part in the system (galston, 2004). murphy (2007) argues that civic education also involves the transmission of certain civic virtues to students, but many scholars disagree with him. most recently, the process of civic education has been distinguished from civic knowledge, which is the set of skills and competencies necessary for engagement in politics (lauglo, 2013). for the purposes of this analysis, civic education will be defined as the formal educational process through which students learn the concrete skills and knowledge necessary for participation in the political systems of democratic countries, while civic knowledge will be the measurable outcome of the civic education process.1 unfortunately, the literature on the effect of civic education on participation is mixed at best. using data from the vietnam war era, berinsky and lenz (2011) show that increasing overall education levels among veterans did not impact rates of political participation. instead, they present evidence that although education is correlated with political participation, there is no causal link between the two (berinsky & lenz, 2011). this finding is supported by research in sweden showing 1 although most of the research cited throughout this article focuses on the relationship between civic education and political participation, the focus of the analysis will be on the relationship between civic knowledge and political participation, in recognition of new developments in the field and new methods of investigating civic education and civic knowledge. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 37 (july 2018) 8 that increased exposure to civic education curriculum did not lead to increased political participation (m. persson & oscarsson, 2008). other researchers provide evidence supporting the idea that civic education can address falling political participation. based on years of research and experience in the field, william galston argues that civic education is the most effective way to raise rates of political participation (galston, 2004). research on civic education in the united states has shown that it builds civic skills and increases civic knowledge which researchers argue in turn increases political participation (nie et al., 1996; niemi & junn, 2005). finally, lauglo (2013) shows that civic knowledge, the product of civic education, is positively correlated with expected political participation across almost 30 countries using data from the international civics and citizenship education study. a consistent weakness across all of the studies mentioned is the treatment of the civic education – political participation relationship as a black box. the research above looks at civic education as the input and political participation as the outcome, but that may be an overly simplified view of the relationship. lauglo (2013) notes that there is variation in the average correlation between an individual’s civic knowledge and expected political participation across countries, yet there is no further exploration of the causes of these variations. the fact that variations in the strength of the correlation exist suggests that outside factors may influence the civic education – political participation relationship. by looking at the economic, political, and social contexts in which citizens receive civic education and participate in politics, this article aims to present evidence that previous studies examining civic education and its efficacy in encouraging political participation overlook the importance of the national context. the next section outlines the theoretical arguments for including an analysis of the national context in any examination of the relationship between civic education/knowledge and political participation. following that, three national characteristics—economic development, governance structure, and economic inequality—are discussed as potential national characteristics that could influence how civic knowledge affects political participation. analytical framework resources for participation and the political environment the analytical framework for this article is adapted from the resource model of political participation developed by brady, verba, and lehman schlozman (1995). based on the strong positive correlation between socioeconomic status and political participation, this model argues that individual political participation is closely related to the resources available to the individual, which are in turn reflected in socioeconomic status (brady et al., 1995). brady, verba, and lehman schlozman identify three resources that most heavily influence participation: time, money, and civic politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 37 (july 2018) 9 skills. individuals need free time in order to be engaged in political activities, whether it is voting in an election or taking part in a protest, and they also need money to be able to participate in activities and to support their preferred candidates and interests. finally, civic skills are necessary in order to use time and monetary resources efficiently in the political arena (brady et al., 1995). interestingly, there is little exploration of the relationships between the three resources and if deficiencies in one resource can be countered by surpluses of other resources. although brady et al. (1995) focus on the resources necessary for participation at the individual level, others have noted how the broader social, political, and economic environments play a role in resource allocation, thereby shaping political participation. kuklinski, quirk, jerit, and rich (2001) show how the socio-political environment shapes the resources and motivations of citizens, which then influence the individual’s participation in political activities. taken together, these two models of political participation argue that factors influencing the social, political, and economic environment can have an impact on the resources crucial to political participation. with this in mind, it is possible to identify the country characteristics that influence the social, political, and economic environments of citizens, thereby shaping the resources available for participation in the context of a given country. national characteristics influencing the civic knowledge – political participation correlation assuming an efficient and effective education system, civic education leads to increased civic knowledge, which in turn helps to develop the civic skills identified by the resource model of political participation as critical to political participation (brady et al., 1995; nie et al., 1996; niemi & junn, 2005). given these assumptions, national characteristics that influence the civic skills available to citizens will likely have the most significant influence on the strength of the civic knowledge – political participation relationship. in contrast, where national characteristics limit the availability of money and time, there may not be as strong of an influence on the civic knowledge – political participation relationship, since having the civic skills necessary to participate is unrelated to the monetary and time-based barriers to participation imposed by structural factors. three national characteristics have been identified that could influence the relationship of interest: governance structure, economic development, and inequality.2 each of these is discussed below, along with hypotheses of the expected effects on the civic knowledge – political participation correlation. 2 data limitations constrained the national characteristics that could be analyzed. since this analysis is based on publicly available secondary data, it was not possible to find data for some structural factors initially identified as interesting to the research. future research can compile data on structural factors for which there is not data available, extending and enhancing the findings of this article. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 37 (july 2018) 10 the first national characteristic expected to influence civic knowledge and political participation is the governance structure of a country. the governance structure of a country refers to the authority characteristics of the government of a state. this concept can be thought of as how democratic or undemocratic a state is. while the governance structure of a state has far reaching implications for all aspects of society, it impacts the civic skills available to citizens most. research has shown that when there is competition in the politics of a country, a key aspect of democracy3, political participation rates are higher (franklin, 2004; norris, 2004). as this competition continues to occur over generations, participation becomes a part of the political culture of a state, which is then transmitted to new generations through formal civic education and informal political socialization, further strengthening the culture of participation (bockstette, chanda, & putterman, 2002; franklin, 2004; giuliano & nunn, 2013; searing, schwartz, & lind, 1973). viewed a different way, past experience with democracy provides citizens with the necessary skills to participate politically in the future. just as one learns to ride a bike or swim by practicing, one can also “learn” democracy and gain civic skills through practicing democracy. these skills are then transmitted from one generation to the next. an important assumption, drawn from the literature, is that while one can learn the civic skills necessary for participation by participating in democracy, one cannot gain the civic knowledge taught through schools and civic education by simply practicing democracy (carpini & keeter, 1996; muller & seligson, 1994). as used throughout this article, civic knowledge refers to the outcome of civic education, which is not gained from participation in democracy. civic knowledge can lead to the development of civic skills identified by brady et al. (1995) as important to political participation, but having the civic skills does not mean one also has civic knowledge (brady et al., 1995). since democracy transmits civic skills, it is expected that the more democratic a state is, the weaker the civic knowledge – political participation relationship will be. when civic skills are passed on outside of civic education from democratic culture, political participation is not as dependent on civic education and civic knowledge. when civic skills are not passed down due to a lack of previous democratic experience, then the civic knowledge of a citizen is more important in developing the civic skills necessary to participate. this leads to the hypothesis that as democracy increases, the strength of the civic knowledge – political participation relationship will weaken. in other words, the more democratic a country is, the less civic knowledge is related to political participation. this relationship is expected to be strong since both civic knowledge and past democratic experiences affect the civic skills used for participation. 3 for a more thorough discussion of the characteristics of democracy and the role of political competition in it, refer to lipset (1959) and schmitter and karl (1991). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 37 (july 2018) 11 the second characteristic expected to have an impact on the civic knowledge – political participation correlation is the level of economic development of a state. most commonly measured by gross domestic product, the level of economic development of a country is how productive the country and its economy are. as lipset (1959) states, a basic level of economic development is a necessary condition for democracy and can be used to predict political participation. as economic development and country wealth increase, democracy often becomes ingrained in society, and participation becomes more and more a part of political culture (t. persson & tabellini, 2006). brady et al. (1995) explain these findings by showing that money is an important resource in allowing citizens to participate in government and politics and by linking the money available to individuals to the wider economic state of the country. as a country and its citizens becomes more wealthy, political participation becomes more likely, so it is expected that the relationship between economic development and the civic education – political participation correlation will be positive simply because political participation becomes more likely. because economic development encourages participation through the monetary resources available for participation, and not civic skills, it is expected that the relationship between economic development and the civic knowledge – political participation correlation will be weak. finally, the level of income inequality in a country is expected to influence the correlation between civic knowledge and political participation. income inequality limits the money available for participation by concentrating resources in the hands of economic and social elites (solt, 2008). this in turn depresses participation not only by limiting the resources available but also by decreasing public motivation to participate due to a perceived lack of relevance (brady et al., 1995; kuklinski et al., 2001; lipset, 1959). by limiting participation in the ways described, income inequality is expected to have a negative effect on the civic knowledge – political participation relationship. with inequality depressing participation, all else equal, civic knowledge will not counter this effect since inequality and civic knowledge affect two different participation resources. income inequality most directly affects money, therefore it is not expected that there will be a strong relationship between the civic knowledge – political participation correlation and income inequality. methodology in order to examine the relationships between the three national characteristics identified and the civic knowledge – political participation correlation, a quantitative analysis of the available data was undertaken. to do this, the structural factors identified were operationalized using well known measures and datasets. governance structure was operationalized using the polity iv dataset which contains a variable for how democratic a government is in any given year as well as a variable for the amount of time since the last change in governance structure (gurr & marshall, 2015). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 37 (july 2018) 12 economic development was operationalized using gross domestic product (gdp) from the world bank (“gross domestic product,” 2017). the gini index provided quantitative measures of income inequality used for the analysis (“the gini index,” 2017). the dependent variable comes from lauglo (2013), who used student-level data from the international civics and civic education survey to calculate the average correlation between an individual’s civic knowledge and his or her expected level of political participation for approximately 30 countries. once all the data was compiled, an ordinary least squares linear regression was performed to determine how the structural factors related to the dependent variable—the national civic knowledge – political participation correlation. findings analysis of the data collected shows that the national characteristics identified account for just over half of the variation in the country civic knowledge – political participation correlations (adjusted r2 = .505)4. this confirms the central hypothesis of this article which argues that the civic knowledge – political participation relationship is not a direct relationship but rather is affected by the national context. the adjusted r2 value suggests that other structural factors are influencing the correlation but were not accounted for in the regression. since data limitations forced the exclusion of some variables initially deemed relevant to the analysis, this result is not surprising. future research may be able to address this gap by expanding the data collected beyond publicly available secondary data. the first variable analyzed was governance structure, operationalized by the polity iv scale. as expected, the sign of the correlation was negative, indicating that high levels of civic knowledge are less likely to correlate with high levels of political participation when a state is democratic in nature. unfortunately, the result is not significant for this variable, meaning that the observed correlation between governance structure and the civic knowledge – political participation correlation may be due to chance, so all interpretations of the data must be made with this in mind. surprisingly, this relationship was the weakest of all the variables analyzed, indicating that the effect of governance structure on the civic education – political participation correlation is the least influential of the structural factors identified. this finding runs contrary to the expectation that governance structure would be the most influential of the factors identified since it most directly affects civic skill resources available for participation—the same resource that civic knowledge affects. 4 complete regression results can be found in annex 1. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 37 (july 2018) 13 the length of time since a change in governance structure, measured by polity iv durability, was also included in the analysis and showed a surprisingly strong effect on the civic knowledge – political participation correlation. the correlation was positive and significant to 96%, meaning that the length of time since the last change in governance has a noticeable impact on civic knowledge and political participation. all things equal, for each year since a change in governance structure, a high level of civic knowledge is nearly 40% more likely to correlate with a high level of political participation. further analysis was performed by running the same regression noted above but only using cases which are considered a full democracy5. the relationship was confirmed and the correlation was stronger and maintained significance. the implications of this finding are discussed in more detail in the discussion section of this article. the regression analysis showed that there was a weak but positive relationship between income inequality and the strength of the civic knowledge – political participation correlation. this means that as income inequality increases, civic knowledge becomes more positively correlated with political participation. although the finding is insignificant, the moderate positive correlation found refutes the original expectation that income inequality would weakly and negatively correlate with the civic knowledge – political participation correlation since income inequality affects money available to participate, while civic knowledge affects the civic skills participation resource. finally, the level of economic development of a country was found to have a strong negative correlation with the strength of the civic knowledge – political participation correlation. the finding was significant to 98%, indicating a real and observable relationship. as a country develops economically, civic knowledge is not as closely correlated with political participation. when all other variables are held constant, every $10 billion usd increase to a country’s gdp, weakens the civic knowledge – political participation relationship by nearly 90%. this clearly and resoundingly rejects the expectation that economic development would have a weak and positive effect on the dependent variable. the implications of this finding are discussed in the following section. discussion as noted above, although increasing levels of democracy decrease the potential role of civic knowledge in encouraging political participation, the length of time since a change in governance structure increases the chance of civic knowledge positively correlating with political participation. this is a surprising finding because it calls into question the idea of the civic skills that lead to political participation being transmitted as a part of democratic culture outside the context of civic education and civic knowledge. since it is clear from the findings that higher levels of democracy weaken the 5 the definition of “full democracy” is derived from the polity iv codebook. for more information, consult gurr and marshall (2015). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 37 (july 2018) 14 relationship between civic knowledge and political participation, and since democracies inherently have higher levels of participation, it is possible to say that the civic skills needed to participate could be transmitted outside the context of civic knowledge and civic education. the findings on the length of time a given governance structure has persisted could suggest that the transmission of the civic skills through democratic culture does in fact increase the civic knowledge of citizens, contrary to expectations. this would mean that civic knowledge and political participation increase due to the consolidation of democracy, but there is not necessarily a causal relationship between the two. further research probing the role of civic education and the development and transmission of civic skills and knowledge in democracies could help to clarify the findings from this analysis. the correlations observed between economic development and income inequality on one hand and the civic knowledge – political participation correlation on the other suggest that there is the possibility for substitution between the resources brady et al. (1995) identify as crucial for political participation. as noted above, income inequality limits the monetary resources available for participation. based on the finding that an increase in income inequality strengthens the civic knowledge – political participation correlation, it can be said that the civic skills derived from civic knowledge might bolster political participation in cases where there is a lack of money available to participate. the finding that low levels of economic development similarly strengthen the correlation between civic knowledge and political participation further supports this conclusion. if civic knowledge does correlate with higher political participation in instances where monetary resources are low, then building civic knowledge through civic education can be a viable policy tool to address low rates of political participation. with the results of the analysis in mind, it is possible to build an ideal type of the context in which civic knowledge most positively correlates with political participation. the concept of an ideal type comes from max weber who developed the idea to facilitate comparisons between cases (eliaeson, 2000). by coming up with a hypothetical ideal type to act as the standard for comparison, social scientists can compare variations in real life cases to the ideal type in order to predict variables for analysis. constructing an ideal type of the context in which civic knowledge most strongly correlates with political participation will allow researchers and policy-makers to better explore the relationship between civic knowledge and political participation as well as to know in what situations increasing civic knowledge may lead to increased participation rates. from the analysis, it is clear that civic knowledge is more likely to positively correlate with political participation when economic development is low. additionally, the relationship between the two is strongest when income inequality is high. as less money is available as a resource for participation, civic knowledge and civic skills may be able to act as a substitute resource for politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 37 (july 2018) 15 participation. finally, less democratic states are more likely to show a stronger positive civic knowledge – political participation correlation, and this relationship strengthens as a government remains unchanged. altogether, these findings indicate that civic knowledge is most highly correlated with political participation in countries with high income inequality, low economic development, and governance structures that are stable but undemocratic. in other words, the relationship between civic knowledge and participation is strongest in countries that are the least developed by western standards. this means that efforts to increase civic knowledge, such as increasing exposure to civic education or reforming civic education curriculum, might be effective ways of raising political participation in less developed countries. in turn this could promote transitions to democracy which is a major goal of many international actors (barro, 1999; diamond, 2006; dunning, 2004). unfortunately, this also means that improving civic education and increasing civic knowledge in developed western democracies may not address the concerns many researchers and policy-makers have regarding decreasing participation rates. conclusions the analysis and discussion of the findings above does shed some light on the relationship between civic knowledge and political participation and the situations in which the two have the highest positive correlation, but there are some limitations to the research conducted. first, it is important to note that nothing in the research establishes causality. there is no clear causal link between civic knowledge and political participation, so the effects observed and discussed in this article could be resulting from changes in an unknown and extraneous variable. this possibility limits the validity of the findings, but it does not discredit them altogether. further research into the mechanisms behind political participation and civic knowledge may reveal causality, but that is beyond the scope of this analysis. additionally, the research was limited by the availability of public secondary data. it was not possible to collect data for this analysis, so some national characteristics of interest had to be excluded from analysis. future research can address these gaps by collecting primary data for analysis. another limitation of this study is that it only considers the national characteristics affecting the civic knowledge – political participation relationship. there are almost certainly individual level factors that also influence the correlation, but it was not possible to explore these factors with the data available. there is some support in the literature for the idea that individual level factors such as socioeconomic status, job status, and personal attribute/characteristics may affect the civic knowledge – political participation correlation (brady et al., 1995; kuklinski et al., 2001; lilleker & koc-michalska, 2016). extending the analysis into individual level factors influencing the correlation politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 37 (july 2018) 16 would provide additional insights into the relationship that could benefit policy-makers and researchers in the future. finally, this research can be further developed and built upon in several ways. as previously mentioned, more detailed research into the mechanisms behind political participation can help to establish causality, moving beyond the correlational research of this analysis. future research can also explore the substitution of the resources brady et al. (1995) identify as crucial to political participation. the analysis above suggests that there may be a substitution effect between civic skills and money, but a more detailed analysis of the process through which this occurs would benefit the literature greatly. from the analysis conducted it is clear that structural factors do play a part in determining the strength of the civic knowledge – political participation correlation, and that the relationship should not be treated as a black box, but should be explored more thoroughly. some structural factors were identified that influence the correlation, but it is likely that others also play a role. nonetheless, this study provides a starting point for discussing the contexts in which civic education and civic knowledge can be expected to correlate with higher levels of political participation, and this allows policy-makers interested in political participation to begin to develop strategies to increase it. references barro, r. j. 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(2004): electoral engineering: voting rules and political behavior. new york: cambridge university press. persson, m. and h. oscarsson (2008): the effects of education reform on democratic citizenship (quality of government working paper series no. 14). goteborg. persson, t. and g. tabellini (2006): 'democratic capital: the nexus of political and economic change', nber working paper no. 12175. schmitter, p. c. and t. l. karl (1991): 'what democracy is. . . and is not', journal of democracy 2(3): pp. 75–88. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.1991.0033 searing, d. d. et al. (1973): 'the structuring principle: political socialization and belief system', the american political science review 67(2): pp. 415–432. solt, f. (2008): 'economic inequality and democratic political engagement economie inequality and democratic political engagement', american journal of political science 46(1): pp. 48–60. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2007.00298.x world bank (2017): gross domestic product. world bank (2017): the gini index. annex 1: regression results regression coefficients predicting the strength of civic knowledge political participation correlation unstandardized b std. error standardized b polity2 -0.014 0.01 -0.244 gini 0.003 0.003 0.301 gdp_2009 -0.009 0.004 -0.899** durable 0.001 0.001 0.38** (constant) 0.626 0.13 notes: adjusted r^2 = .505 * p < .10 ** p < .05 *** p < .01 appendix 2: datasets used the datasets used in this research can be accessed online through the following link (1 july 2018): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0b6p5s-rpombyrg5wedj4wkuzym8/view?usp=sharing https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.1991.0033 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2007.00298.x https://drive.google.com/file/d/0b6p5s-rpombyrg5wedj4wkuzym8/view?usp=sharing the impact of country characteristics on civic knowledge and political participation politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 24 people or preservation? how electoral accountability reduces human cost in south africa’s national parks aj golio https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.41.2 aj golio, from pittsburgh (united states), is a master of arts candidate in political science at columbia university. he received his bachelor’s in international political economy and english from fordham university in 2016 and spent two subsequent years in new orleans working on issues of housing inequity and justice. his interests include matters of political inequality, protest and social movements, and the intersection of art, performance, and politics. email: ajg2256@columbia.edu. abstract natural protected areas (npas) are commonly used to preserve environmental biodiversity. such policies, however, often harm rural communities. this article argues that the human cost of npas is often because of a lack of formal electoral accountability that links national governments to these communities. through the case of 1994 democratic elections in south africa that signified the end of the apartheid, i show that an increase in electoral accountability can be associated with a decrease in the human cost of npas. using scholarly observations and histories on npas in south africa, and primary documents from governmental agencies, i examine the post-apartheid change in three areas pertinent to human cost: law and intention, communication and community involvement, and land restitution. in doing so, i demonstrate that the enfranchisement of black south africans, who overwhelmingly populate the rural communities that are harmed by npas, has led to a shift in human cost. keywords biodiversity; electoral accountability; national parks; preservation; human cost; south africa https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.41.2 mailto:ajg2256@columbia.edu politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 25 introduction land preservation has become an increasingly important international issue, as world leaders turn their attention toward the state of the environment. in this setting, natural protected areas (npas) like parks and preserves play an imperative role in protecting biodiversity, as well as easing the effects of desertification, sensitivity to drought (stringer et al., 2009), and rapid urban expansion (huang et al., 2018). however, the literature on npas is critical of how these parks also create substantial human cost in the developing world, and especially in africa (neumann, 1998), where many people rely on subsistence land use (brechin et al., 1991; chatty and colchester, 2002). this conflict between the use of npas in africa for positive environmental outcomes, and the harm they tend to inflict on local communities, suggests that further research is needed to find equilibrium between the two. in this article, i look at the human cost of npas in depth and argue that a previously absent, yet crucial, component of the issue is electoral accountability. existing research, while hinting at this relationship, has yet to explicitly connect accountability to the human cost of npas. specifically, i will demonstrate that the substantial harm the land preservation policies in africa exert upon rural communities is often due to the failures of formal electoral systems in holding governments accountable to these communities. i hypothesize that stronger electoral ties between governments and rural communities are associated with lower human cost npas. to substantiate this claim, the following pages will present a case study of south africa, where an increase in electoral accountability was observed during the 1994 elections, the first in which black south africans could fully participate. i identify three primary areas of concern for human cost—law and intention, communication and community involvement, and land restitution—and compare the conditions in each of these areas in both preand post-apartheid south africa. to do so, i mostly use secondary accounts and histories, supplemented by analyses of primary documents from the south african national assembly and the government agency on south african national parks. overall, through this case study, i document the decline in the human cost of the nation’s national parks system post1994 and provide evidence for the claim that an increase in political accountability is associated with a decrease in human cost. the human cost of protected areas: a literature review before delivering a history of national parks in africa and their human cost, some key terms must be clarified. firstly, i borrow the definition of a “protected area” from brechin et al. (1991: 7), who understand it as “any finite area of land or water that comes under a systematic managerial regime.” a natural protected area (npa), then, has the explicit objective of land management for politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 26 environmental and biodiversity protection. research confirms that land preservation in npas is an essential part of maintaining the ecosystems, wildlife, and natural habitats threatened by climate change and human impact (stringer et al., 2009; huang et al., 2018). for instance, evidence shows that npas are effective in meeting global biodiversity targets (chape et al., 2005), and there is a decline in the loss of natural land-cover at protected sites in africa (beresford et al., 2013). as such, npas are an integral and indispensable part of environmental protection. as a salient issue across the world, including in africa (lubbe, 2017), npas exist in some form in nearly every country (brechin et al., 1991). governments play a key role in land preservation and the management of npas. in most countries, npas are designated and maintained by the central government, exemplified by national parks (chatty and colchester, 2002; brechin et al., 1991). the tendency toward governmental management becomes clear when viewed through the lens of space. the designation of an npa necessitates a portion of land, and states, by definition, represent some kind of institutionalized authority and control over this land (north, 1981; tilly, 1985). in a system of state-controlled preservation, npas are a result of intentional domestic policy choices that are shaped by competing interests (duffy, 2000). most policy on npas and land preservation across the world follows the example of the united states. the u.s. introduced the world’s first national park in 1872, yellowstone, based on the assumption that conservation of land requires extreme restriction of human use of that land (chatty and colchester, 2002). this “fortress design” style quickly became the prominent preservation practice across the world (thondhlana and cundill, 2017), so much so that “the ideas that people should not live in protected areas or consume their resources are virtually synonymous with the national park ideal” (brechin et al., 1991: 10). npas, then, can be understood as excluding human use entirely (brechin et al., 1991; chatty and colchester, 2002). the “fortress design” and the policies required for such a mandate are, however, not always well suited for other countries, as in the united states relatively few people rely on subsistence land use (brechin et al., 1991). across sub-saharan africa, many individuals live in rural communities that require the use of local natural resources for survival (anthony, 2007). therefore, the implementation of “fortress design” npas can lead to significant human cost. as a second key term, i use “human cost” to denote the negative impacts on a community, that interfere with its societal and economic development. the relationship between npa policies in africa and the human cost for those who live in and around them is the primary concern of this article. historically, this relationship has been a sour one, to put it lightly. npas often run in tandem with the forced removal of communities that live in or use the designated area. this practice, while politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 27 seemingly extreme, has been quite common across sub-saharan africa (anthony, 2007). in tanzania, a country that boasts the largest protected land area in africa, over half of the preservation endeavors involved evictions (brockington, sachedina, and scholfield, 2008: 567). an estimated 1,200 persons were displaced from the country’s well-known serengeti national park alone (neumann, 1998). furthermore, in uganda, in 1983, the creation of lake mburo national park involved the displacement of an estimated 4,500 families (pearson and muchunguzi, 2011: 126). the inability to cultivate the land for subsistence or the use of natural resources, one of the core tenants of “fortress design”, leaves many communities economically deprived. in tanzania, the maasai that live within the confines of the ngorongoro conservation area are worse off than similar maasai groups who do not (galvin et al., 2002). the exclusion of local communities applies not only to economics, but also the policy-making processes that form npas, as “[t]he exclusion of local people as knowledgeable active participants in management” (goldman, 2001: 65) is widespread.1 accounts of human cost suggest that balancing the environmental and social outcomes is essential to the goals of preservation, as hostility resulting from local resentment of npas presents a significant detriment to the proper maintenance of ecosystems (fabricius and de wet, 2002; brockington, sachedina, and scholfield, 2008). it is therefore imperative to bridge the gap between these natural and social concerns. here, my article contributes to the conversation by bringing electoral accountability into the picture. preservation and electoral accountability: a theoretical framework while mechanisms of formal accountability among governments and those they govern is a dense and complex topic, its basic logic can be explained through the self-interested politician. in a competitive election, where this policy-maker faces a punishment of being voted out of the office or a reward of being voted in, she must advocate for the desires of her constituents in order to gain power (ashworth, 2012). thus, the representative remains accountable to protect the interests of the represented. without free and fair elections, this system of formal accountability either does not exist, or is dysfunctional to some degree, and politicians may have little incentive to address the problems of the underprivileged. the staggering human cost of land preservation across africa suggests a breakdown of this political accountability mechanism. however, matters of environmental concern, like biodiversity protection and land preservation, can lead to cases where an incumbent is incentivized to act against the voters’ short 1 for those that live adjacent to npas, complaints about the negative impacts of the wildlife itself are numerous. in fact, encounters with wildlife are the primary source of dissatisfaction, according to local-level public opinion data (anthony, 2007; pearson and muchunguzi, 2011). wild animals, which often call the parks home, destroy crops in the surrounding communities, graze on pasture intended for livestock, and carry diseases (pearson and muchunguzi, 2011). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 28 term interests for the sake of their long-term interests (bueno de mesquita, 2007; daley and snowberg, 2011). therefore, a decision in favor of a policy that will fight climate change, a longterm interest, at the expense of short-term economic growth is possible despite a potential shortterm electoral punishment (ashworth, 2012: 184). for example, disaster preparedness spending, a policy that is not likely to have short-term electoral reward, is nonetheless a sensible policy as it has potential life-saving benefits in the long run (healy and malhotra, 2009). it is possible to relate such cases to npas and human cost. accountability mechanisms could be functional in a sense that african politicians do represent the interests of their constituents, but they incur short-term human cost, to trade off in favour of the long-term benefits of biodiversity conservation. yet, this outcome is unlikely because as existing research shows, high human cost and the resulting poverty, marginalization, and hostility subverts conservation goals (fabricius and de wet, 2002; brockington, sachedina, and scholfield, 2008). therefore, the trade-off here would result in neither short-term social benefit nor long-term environmental protection. instead, historical land preservation policy can be better explained through a common dynamic wherein systems of governmental accountability tend to respond to economic elites, not the laypeople that typically make up the rural and subsistence communities that are negatively affected by npas (gilens, 2012; diop, 2012; mizuno, 2016). this issue becomes apparent by examining public opinion toward preservation, such as infield’s (1988) study, in which positive attitudes toward npas increase in correlation with an increase in affluence and education levels. this is likely because most of the benefits of npas are disproportionately received by urban areas and economic elites. for instance, historically, parks in africa tended to be only accessible to highranking chiefs or colonial figures, and excluded laypeople and most indigenous africans (brechin et al., 1991). while npas have recently become nominally more accessible for all, their economic benefits are still far out of the reach of rural communities. profits from park tourism in kenya tend to be centralized in urban centers like nairobi, instead of going to local businesses (brechin et al., 1991). urban companies gain large revenues from preservation and eco-tourism, but incur little, if any, of the cost that comes with them (obunde, 2005; pearson and muchunguzi, 2011). in an era of heightened global environmental and biodiversity concerns, as reflected in the signing of the paris climate accord and dire reports from the united nations intergovernmental panel on climate change (davenport 2015; davenport 2018), countries that take action toward biodiversity conservation can receive rewards in the form of improved international relations (duffy, 2000). as duffy (2000) points out, african wildlife holds a prominent position in the western imagination, and african biodiversity protection is a highly salient issue among the western public. in the united kingdom, for example, prince harry holds a secondary role as the president of the politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 29 conservation ngo african parks network (mfula 2018). with african biodiversity holding such a prominent position among the western populace, national governments in africa could pursue npas to please these groups, obtain their tourism dollars, and secure a diplomatic victory, unconcerned with the human cost laid on rural constituents. lastly, legacies of human cost could be explained by the fact that countries in africa have historically not been very democratic. most african nations spent much of the twentieth century as colonies of european powers, and upon independence, fell into various authoritarian and one-party regimes. in 2017, the economist intelligence unit’s democracy index rated twenty-four countries in sub-saharan africa as authoritarian regimes. the freedom in the world report for the year 2018 notes little progress in democratization across sub-saharan africa, with only 11% of people living in countries that are considered “free”. without strong democratic elections, there is little reason to think that formal accountability between governments and people can exist at all. in this scenario, human cost is of little consequence simply because the victims have no means of electoral punishment. in this section i presented three explanations of accountability failure which prompt governments across sub-saharan africa to pursue high-human cost npas. (1) they could be accountable to rural communities by responding to long-term environmental interests at the expense of their short-term social concerns, but this is not likely. (2) they could choose to be accountable only to economic elites instead of the rural communities, relying instead on patronage networks to get elected (van de walle 2003; corstange 2016). (3) they could simply not be held accountable at all, in the case of non-democratic regimes. all of these possibilities suggest that there is a high risk of human cost, incurred by those living in areas of at-risk biodiversity, or simply rural places that make attractive locations for potential npas. i hypothesize that this risk can be reduced through an improvement in electoral accountability, especially in rural communities. a case study of south africa in order to test my hypothesis, i now turn to a case study. south africa is ideal for examining how npa systems change over time, and how responsive they are to these institutional changes, given its extensive history with npas. in 1898, the establishment of the sabie game reserve in the transvaal republic marked the second of such preservation efforts in the world, after the establishment of yellowstone in the united states over one decade earlier (cock and fig, 2002). this effort shows that early twentieth-century south africa championed the united states’ “fortress design” application of npas (carruthers, 2008; dlamini, 2012). the sabie game reserve later survived the unification and independence experiences and was renamed as kruger national park, which to this day remains south africa’s largest park and the nation’s flagship preservation effort. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 30 since the original national parks act of 1926, management of all the national parks in south africa, which today number twenty, has been institutionalised under the department of environmental affairs and tourism, and the governmental organization south african national parks (sanparks) (sanparks, n.d.a, sanparks, n.d.b). in this sense, npa management in south africa as an institutionalised and legislated governmental endeavour is subject to frameworks of formal electoral accountability. this robust history of npas in south africa also includes accounts of violence and disregard toward rural communities, which indicates that pre-1994 south africa represents high human cost occurrences. in writing about sanparks, moore and van damme (2002: 64) are blunt, stating, “biodiversity preservation was the exclusive concern of conservationists in [sanparks], whilst human and social issues were mostly ignored.” household interview data from a rural community in natal, south africa, reveals markedly negative opinion toward the local npa, despite positivity toward the concept of environmental conservation generally (infield 1988). it also appears that perceptions of npas in south africa varied significantly among certain groups. as mentioned earlier, a positive opinion was correlated with affluence and education level (infield, 1988). a study of south african reserves also reveals that those affiliated with sanparks, like reserve managers, perceive little conflict with local communities, where the communities themselves hold grievances over restricted access and lack of benefits (thondhlana and cundill, 2017). it is not difficult to imagine south africa’s history of forced removals from npas and other negatively impactful land preservation practices to be linked to un-democratic tendencies. rural peoples typically lack the ability to hold south african politicians accountable for human cost issues, as confirmed by the authors here: people [who were] forcibly relocated to make way for conservation in south africa shared a number of characteristics… they lived in underdeveloped parts of the country with weak formal infrastructure. these small communities therefore lacked political leverage (fabricius and de wet, 2002: 143). several scholars categorize the practices of sanparks firmly into the racially divided apartheid regime that ruled south africa under the national party from 1948-1994, because by and large, the forcibly removed rural communities were mostly composed of black south africans (cock and fig, 2002; carruthers, 2008; dikeni, 2016). a shift in conservation philosophy toward a more militant “management by intervention” (carruthers, 2008: 203) style in post-world war ii south africa, coincided with the 1948 ascendance of the national party, and the beginning of the apartheid. this is not necessarily surprising, given the lack of representation of black south africans pre-1994, when they were excluded from, among other sectors of government, serving on the board of sanparks (cock and fig, 2002). but the rural politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 31 communities that faced the human cost of preservation were largely made up of black south africans, and therefore, an increase in electoral accountability towards black south africans would yield an opportunity to push for accountability to these communities. in 1994, the national party’s control of the south african government was challenged when black citizens became enfranchised, marking what many consider the first fully democratic elections in the country (carruthers, 2008; ross, 2008; thompson, 2014). the 1994 election signalled a sweeping shift in electoral accountability in favour of black south africans, and therefore, for rural communities and the victims of past sanparks policy. as historical accounts confirm, despite some imperfections, the election was overall representative of these communities (ross, 2008; thompson, 2014), with an estimated 90% voter turnout in april 1994 (beinart, 2001: 291). therefore, this case study includes an increase in electoral accountability at a particular point in time (the 1994 elections) that makes during-apartheid and post-apartheid comparison possible. there is some debate, however, over how “accountable” south africa’s government became after these elections. the african national congress (anc), which became the ruling party, has controlled the national government ever since (thompson, 2014). thus, there is concern over electoral accountability under the dominant party rule, and despite the practice of largely free and fair elections with multiple parties, scholars express scepticism over responsiveness to voters within anc supremacy (graham, 2014). others find, however, that at the local level anc politicians are largely responsive to voter opinion, and re-nomination is closely correlated with local government performance (wegner, 2018). another debate concerns the system of proportional representation adopted by south africa, and whether politicians in states that utilize proportional representation face any incentive to respond to their constituents in rural and agrarian areas instead of national party platforms (barkan, 1995). other scholars assert that such proportional representation is best for highly fractionalized democracies, and note the amendments of the south african government to combat parliament’s detachment from voters (reynolds, 1995). south africa also ranks consistently high on international measures of democratization (freedom house, 2018; economist intelligence unit, 2018), suggesting that concerns over governmental legitimacy in south africa are largely unfounded. therefore, south africa as a case study adequately mimics the hypothesis of human cost and accountability established earlier, which suggests that a decrease in human cost, especially when it comes to sanparks practices, should be observed after the 1994 shift toward electoral accountability for black and rural citizens. the following section provides an analysis of the evidence of this decrease in human cost. these results are divided into three main areas of south african npa policy and practice that impacts on human cost. each of these is examined in both duringand postpolitikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 32 apartheid periods, for that the differences can also be attributed to the increase in electoral accountability. firstly, in the law and intention section, i analyse and compare primary documents from sanparks and laws from the south african national assembly pertinent to land preservation. this constitutes a study of formal governmental change. secondly, as important as changes within policy, are changes within practice. works on npas’ human cost note high instances of local communities being left out of the decision-making process and economic development (goldman, 2001; galvin et al., 2002). there is evidence in existing literature to determine that communication with populations affected by npas leads to desirable social outcomes (bidol and crowfoot, 1991), most expressively the general public approval of npas, as occurred in south africa’s neighbouring swaziland (ntshalintshali and mcgurk, 1991). therefore, evidence of an increase in communication and community involvement would indicate fewer human cost outcomes. i document this change through secondary accounts and histories, as well as data on sanparks employment. finally, land restitution consists of policies that involve returning land to its original inhabitants of previously displaced communities. the literature on npas stress forced removals as a primary grievance of local communities (neumann, 1998; pearson and muchunguzi, 2011), and although a history as traumatic as this one may not ever be fully rectified, several authors point to these policies as one significant and necessary area of redress (cock and fig, 2002; moore and van damme, 2002). any change in human cost should include a change on this front, as i demonstrate, again, via analysis of secondary documents in the following section. results law and intention a post-1994 decrease in the human cost of npas in south africa can be observed, first through laws and policies that governed the npas. “a new beginning was to be made in sanparks, which would see the introduction of a more inclusive form of conservation aligned with south africa’s new democracy,” (moore and van damme, 2002: 66). this new beginning is evident, first, in the new philosophies that governed sanparks. for instance, in 1995, the organization introduced its social ecology program (moore and van damme, 2002), with the explicit purpose to build more positive relationships with communities living in the vicinity of national parks, according to the sanparks website as of january 28, 2019. an investigation of other primary documents from sanparks reveals similar peopleoriented intentions. in 2012, for example, the organization released a report on recent social investment programs, titled, “from fortress conservation to people and conservation” (magome and daphne, 2012). in it, sanparks ceo dr. david mabunda acknowledges a “painful politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 33 conservation past where public institutions were used to implement a well-crafted system of alienating certain spheres of society,” while advocating an imperative to “re-orient protected areas” toward the inclusion of social considerations as well as conservation goals (magome and daphne, 2012: iii). even sanparks publications that are not specifically dedicated to the topic of human cost extoll a similar attitude. the organization’s publicly available 2018 annual report states, historically, the national parks excluded the majority of south africa’s people (...) to ensure an inclusive national parks system, sanparks formulated a comprehensive socio-economic development strategy to assist with the development of communities neighbouring the parks (south africa national parks 2018, 8). these statements present a stark contrast to the pre-1994 tendency, outlined above, wherein the human cost of preservation was summarily ignored, if not outright exacerbated. brief analyses of the laws that give sanparks its mandate also reveal the shift toward a more community-centred organisation. in 2003, the national environmental management: protected areas act effectively replaced the 1976 national parks act, through the efforts of the south african legislature. both laws provided the legal groundwork for the establishment of natural protected areas for the purpose of ecology and biodiversity protection. the 1976 law, however, makes zero mention of community development, participation, local or social needs, or even simply “humans” or “people” (1976). these omissions fit the, previously outlined, “fortress design” preservation mentality. the 2003 replacement, on the other hand, directs as one of its objectives: “to promote participation of local communities in the management of protected areas” (page 12). it makes explicit mention of social and economic development (on pages 20, 32, 34), and provides entire sections on park co-management (page 34) and public participation (page 26). the disparity between these two legislative acts and the emphasis each places on human cost indicates a sweeping change in preservation policy, and the two laws passed on either side of the 1994 election. communication and community involvement given how imperative the systems of communication and community involvement are to implementing npas in a socially responsible way, the sanparks shift that occurred after the widening of electoral accountability in 1994 should include noticeable effects on the practice of intentional inclusion of people living in the vicinity of national parks. indeed, there is evidence of such an increase in several scholarly accounts. for instance, a process of, “formalization of interactions between [national parks] and neighboring communities” (cock and fig, 2002: 142-143) that involved public consultations and forums with conservation bodies on social issues such as water access, wildlife impact, and economic opportunities is observed. the presence of community and neighbour advisory structures on the planning and management of parks have become politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 34 commonplace (moore and van damme, 2002). overall, interactions between representatives of sanparks and members of neighbouring communities are much more prevalent after the election of 1994. the literature on npa management also stresses practices like the social impact assessment as vital for the inclusion of local communities in the political processes. this allows for social concerns to be integrated into park planning and policy, through several tools of predicting potential adverse effects (hough, 1991). these tools, virtually non-existent in south africa pre-1994, have been used by sanparks since the end of apartheid rule (moore and van damme, 2002). similarly, schemes of tourism revenue sharing with local communities have been observed (moore and van damme, 2002; cock and fig, 2002). revenue sharing programs tend to improve local public opinion and attitudes toward npas (groom and harris, 2008). significant steps toward community revenue sharing programs came in 1997 and 1998, when the sanparks board “instituted organizational restructuring” (cock and fig, 2002: 145), and targeted local economic opportunity as a strategic concern. the formalization of these practices is exemplified in endeavors like the kruger social ecology unit and the skukuza alliance, both of which provide “business opportunities for local artists and traders” (moore and van damme, 2002: 68). finally, there is evidence that sanparks became more inclusive, not just at the community relations level, but also within the organization itself. table 1 below shows the proportion of individuals of different races employed by sanparks in 1999 and 2018. the raw numbers for employment in 1999, shown in the table, were reported by cock and fig (2002: 141) and by the sanparks annual report (2018: 167-168) for the more recent figures. in both cases, the figures were meant to demonstrate gender equity in sanparks employment, so they were categorised by gender as well as by race and skill level. for this article, both genders have been combined and the raw numbers have been put in proportions of each employment skill level. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 35 table 1: sanparks employment proportions by race and skill level, 1999 vs. 2018 1999 2018 african white other* total african white other* total management .178 .753 .069 1.0 .428 .405 .167 1.0 skilled .224 .676 .100 1.0 .677 .139 .184 1.0 semi-skilled .666 .090 .244 1.0 .768 .018 .214 1.0 unskilled .923 .003 .074 1.0 .910 .001 .089 1.0 total .749 .126 .125 1.0 .772 .063 .165 1.0 sources: cock and fig 2002: 141; sanparks annual report 2018: 167-168 * includes racial categories “coloured” and “asian” from cock and fig (2002); “coloured” and “indian” from sanparks (2018). as can be observed, the proportion of africans employed at the highest skill levels of sanparks, including many of the top management positions, rose significantly from 1999 to 2018. this change further indicates the inclusion of black south africans in land preservation efforts post1994. though this shift in employment was not immediate, there is reason to think the effect of the 1994 election would be slow to progress on this front: south africa’s democratic transition was a negotiation that left many bureaucrats in place for several years, including in sanparks (cock and fig, 2002: 134). therefore, the employment composition changes observed after 1999 can still be attributed to practices adopted after the 1994 election, despite delays in the actual makeup of the workforce. overall, increased interaction between sanparks and local communities, as well as the prevalence of formal practices like the social impact assessment, revenue sharing schemes, and the observable increase in the employment of black south africans in leadership positions, contribute to the narrative of a post-1994 decrease in human cost. land restitution as mentioned, displacement due to land preservation policy was common in south africa before the 1994 election, and represented one of the most harmful human costs of sanparks practice. secondary sources observe the regular practice of evictions and forceful removals of black and indigenous south africans from land designated as an npa (cock and fig, 2002; moore and van damme, 2002). for example, in his fieldwork notes from the year 1994, dikeni (2016: 26) quotes from a conversation with a resident of the village of cork, next to the kruger national park, in which she recalls the policy that pushed her out of the npa: “we were controlled like animals and placed on land that we cannot use. our families were often separated without their will.” the flagship politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 36 kruger national park was notable among instances of relocation (dlamini, 2012), with an estimated removal of over 3,000 people by the south african government in the name of biodiversity conservation (dikeni, 2016: 22). the makuleke community, for example, was forcibly evicted from their territory in 1969 to make way for a new section of kruger and placed on land much less suited for farming and grazing (fabricius and de wet, 2002). land restitution was observed as a new standard practice after 1994, with several prominent claims successfully resolved through sanparks and the south african ministry of land affairs. the makuleke, for instance, were allowed ownership of their land again in 1998 (cock and fig, 2002; moore and van damme, 2002). the process was not severely limited, either. fabricius and de wet (2002: 143) note examples of land claims in eleven different npas across nearly every province of south africa, from blyde canyon in mpumalanga province to kalahari gemsbok national park in northern cape province, just in the eight years between 1994 and 2002. consequently, the prevalence of land restitution in npas across south africa is directly linked to the first fully democratic elections, because it was only under the provisions of the new constitution that these claims could be legally recognized (moore and van damme, 2002). the social benefits of land restitution policies are numerous, providing communities like the makuleke and khomani san in southern kalahari with not only commercial and residential rights, but also aspects of cultural identity tied to the land that had been taken (cock and fig, 2002). it is also notable, however, that this decrease in human cost does not have to come with negative conservation impacts like biodiversity loss, as suggested by the original philosophy of “fortress design” preservation. on the contrary, the conservation benefits seem to be numerous; from a decrease in poaching attributable to improved community relations, to the development of new institutions and conservation models like the sanparks/community joint management structures that are now prevalent in south african npas (fabricius and de wet, 2002). thus, the evidence of human cost change from the listed three areas had observable substantive impacts. for instance, local public opinion on kruger national park has improved over time (anthony 2007). in fact, anthony’s (2007: 240) table 1, based on a survey of community respondents in 2004, indicates that large majorities replied affirmatively to “liking” kruger, and responded that they are “satisfied” that their village is located near the park. these statistics present a vastly different picture of positive public opinion than the history of national parks in south africa before the 1994 election. alternative explanations two alternative explanations could be used to explain the decrease in human cost of south africa’s npas around 1994, but neither holds up against existing evidence and reasoning. it could be argued that this decrease is due to either (1) changing international norms of socially responsible politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 37 preservation, or (2) the influence of ngos. the government under national party rule, however, was notoriously stubborn in its resistance to international norms and behavioural demands, so it is difficult to imagine that these alone would have altered the scenario in south africa. for instance, starting in 1977 with the united nations embargo on arms sales to south africa, the apartheid government faced intense international scrutiny to end its racially discriminatory practices, but did not relent for many years (thompson 2014, 222). further, it was only after the anc came to power, claims dikeni (2016: 31), that the environmental ngos were invited to work with sanparks and other conservation agencies. finally, if low-human cost preservation is influenced primarily by these factors, then similar changes should also be observed in other sub-saharan african nations, even without a change in accountability. yet, there is little backing for such shift elsewhere, given that recently published literature sheds light on ongoing human rights abuses in npas in many other countries (brockington, sachedina, and scholfield, 2008; goldman, 2011; pearson and muchunguzi, 2011). for example, neighbouring botswana, which shares the bi-national “transfrontier” gemsbok national park with south africa, has had a regime of one-party rule since its independence, and therefore no electoral accountability shift. there, forced removals and “continued disrespect” of local san communities continued long after south africa ended the practices (cock and fig, 2002, 139). there is little evidence to back these alternative explanations, and therefore, the electoral accountability-based arguments i advance in this article offer a more satisfactory answer. conclusion land preservation policies must strike a delicate balance between important biodiversity conservation goals and the needs of the rural communities living on and/or around these lands, which are often subsistent and lacking political leverage. building on histories of human cost and theories of electoral accountability, i contend that an increase in electoral accountability leads to a decrease in human cost. the case study of south africa has confirmed this thesis, with the democratic election of 1994 proving to be a pivotal turning point for both electoral accountability, and national park policy and procedure when it comes to law and intention, communication and community involvement, and land restitution. surely, there is still room for improvement on both fronts in modern south africa, but steps forward have been taken in tandem. the findings of this article touch upon the political science literature on conservation policy and electoral accountability, suggesting that fair elections, meaningful participation in park management, and access to information on npas, should lead to more socially responsible practices and therefore better conservation outcomes. however, further research on this topic is needed. the use of natural experiments and the ability to survey human cost and public opinion on npas in a local community both before and after an accountability shift should present convincing evidence. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 41 (june 2019) 38 for instance, in south africa, npa opinion data from before 1994, as represented in infield (1988), can be replicated. in terms of policy, governments that wish to provide solutions to both environmental and human rights issues may take steps toward greater enfranchisement and local participation in npa procedure. in this article i have shed some light on the relationship between conservation outcomes, social responsibility, and electoral accountability, and suggested that the strength of each is dependent on the others. preservation of biodiversity resources is a goal that the world must achieve, and it must be accomplished with the humanity of every individual in mind. references anthony, brandon (2007): ‘the dual nature of parks: attitudes of neighbouring communities towards kruger national park, south africa’, environmental conservation 34(3): 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http://www.eiu.com/handlers/whitepaperhandler.ashx?fi=democracy_index_2017.pdf&mode=wp&campaignid=democracyindex2017 https://doi.org/10.1080/21513732.2017.1315742 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511628283.008 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022278x03004269 https://doi.org/10.1017/gov.2016.1 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 7 the role of foreign direct investment (fdi) in promoting access to clean water jessica neafie https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.39.1 jessica neafie from the united states, is a phd candidate who received her bachelor’s degree in asian studies from the university of florida. she received an ma in diplomatic studies from the university of westminster (london, england), and an ma in climate science and policy at columbia university (new york city). she currently studies international relations at the university of oregon. her interests include globalization, chinese politics, foreign investment, development studies, and natural resources. her master’s thesis on globalization and water won the award for best graduate student paper in the environmental studies section at the international studies association conference in 2016. e-mail: jneafie@uoregon.edu. abstract does foreign direct investment (fdi) decrease access to clean water in developing nations? governments use economic growth from globalization to fund investment in infrastructure to improve water access, but fdi is hindering these efforts through pollution and increased water usage that put pressure on the supply of this public good. i test the hypothesis that growing pressure from increased use and pollution of water by foreign investors reduces water access in developing countries, where impacts are felt more acutely than in developed countries where public goods institutions are stronger. using a country-year fixed effects regression model on a panel data set of over 130 countries from 1990 to 2010, i assess whether fdi increases or decreases potable water access in developing countries, and the role that development plays in moderating this effect. i find strong evidence of a negative relationship between fdi and access to potable water in developing countries. keywords developing countries; development; foreign direct investment; globalization; international political economy; natural resources; water https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.39.1 mailto:jneafie@uoregon.edu politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 8 introduction increases in foreign direct investment (fdi) lead to reduced water access. the literature on the effects of fdi varies, finding both positive and negative effects on issues of economic development, wages, income inequality, capital distribution across sectors, labor rights, and the environment (mosley and uno, 2007; kentor, 1998; firebaugh, 1996; dixon and boswell, 1996a; dixon and boswell 1996b; bandelj, 2007: 17). included in this is the debate over the influence that foreign investment has on environmental degradation, natural resource depletion, and the institutes that protect the environment (bues, 2011; garcia-johnson, 2000; grimes & kentor, 2003; jorgenson, 2006a, 2007). however, despite the positive effects that fdi may have, i.e. introducing new ‘environmentally friendly’ technologies and policies, the negative effects, i.e. water use and pollution, significantly impact the water quantity and quality available to the population. this study will address these effects of fdi through the lens of potable water access, and further the debate over whether fdi is a help or a hinderance to developing countries. governments in developing countries face ever-increasing challenges in improving access to potable water as populations rise, urbanization becomes more prevalent and climate change limits water resources. potable water is a particularly challenging resource to manage because governments must supply it in both the quality and quantity needed for consumption across different temporal and spatial scales,2 and it is essential to the health and well-being of the nation. water quality alone does not capture the issues between the government and the people, that can be caused by not only wastewater discharge and chemical pollutants infiltrating the waterways but also alterations of water flows for power supplies or industrial uses. previously, variations in water access have been linked to countries with increased participation in the global economy, but these studies have just started to investigate the relationship between the globalized economy and water access. for instance, a study by rudra (2011) looked at the way that trade is linked to changes in potable water access in developing countries over a ten year period. rudra discovered a relationship between reduced potable water access and an increase in trade. however, the findings of this study fail to account for changes that occur due to more robust drivers of developing economies: fdi. this paper explores the in-depth interplay 2 a measure of potable water is not just a measure of quality or quantity individually but a measure that captures both quantity and quality at the same time. by only looking at one or the other you are not accurately encompassing the two features that are needed for consumption. people can only consume water that is of drinkable quality, and it must be in a quantity large enough fulfill their daily needs or there is fear of sickness, malnutrition and death. see the world bank development report (2010). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 9 between fdi and resource management started in other research and will evaluate the negative effects of fdi that must be addressed to seek new ways to provide resources better in the future. how does fdi influence access to potable water? research shows that fdi has been proven to be the strongest driver of trade and economic growth in developing countries since the 1980s (fontagne, 1999). giving these multinational companies the power to appeal to the water management institutions for policies and regulations which allow them to use water anyway they wish for their own interests (cole et al. 2006; jorgenson, 2007). during this time, investment has intensively used water both directly, i.e. pollution and use, and indirectly, i.e. water used in supply chain, leading to decreases in water quantity and quality (bornschier and chase-dunn, 1985; cadbury, 1997; fontagne, 1999; jorgenson, 2007; levallois et al. 1998). at the same time foreign investors have increased environmental policies and brought new technologies and supply chain management techniques that reduce corporate environmental impacts (garcia-johnson, 2000; rudra and jensen, 2011). however, none of these studies have directly tied the changes in foreign investment to changes in potable water access, that has implications for both the direct effects, i.e. pollution and water use, and indirect effects, i.e. water used in supply chain and policy influence, of foreign investment that may be having independent negative and positive effects on water access. this paper’s purpose is two-fold: first, to use potable water access as a new way to systemically test the relationship between fdi and the environment and provide new conclusions to the debate over whether investment is a help or hinderance. second, to show the disparate impact depending on level of development, as the least developed countries have weaker infrastructure and institutions. i hypothesize a strong negative relationship between foreign direct investment (fdi) and potable water access in developing countries, due to a need for fdi that increases their willingness to give concessions to investors in order to promote development, and the potential for investors to use these countries as “pollution havens”—locations of comparatively large amounts of environmental degradation (redclift and sage, 1996). i test this hypothesis in a country-year fixed effects regression model on a panel data set of over 130 developing countries from 1990 to 2010. this research contributes to the globalization-natural resources debate in two ways. first, the use of the potable water variable contributes to the debate on governance of natural resource, and forms a comprehensive study of the link between globalization and water pollution (bossio et al. 2012; bues and theesfeld, 2012; jorgenson, 2007; liu et al. 2013; rudra, 2008; sebastian and warner, 2013). the potable water variable reflects both quality and quantity of water supply and is more salient to the general population who needs access to potable water on a daily basis. it has been used in the politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 10 comparative political economy literature to examine the relationship between trade and environmental degradation, and it is an important tool to be used to show how increased engagement with foreign multinational corporations might persuade developing countries to ignore behaviors that affect the supply of some natural resources. second, i build on a common claim in comparative politics that fdi wields more influence over domestic politics and institutions in developing countries than in developed countries. developing countries often attract investors in resource extraction and heavy manufacturing, which generate large demands on the water supply and large pollution loads. additionally, these multinational corporations are influential on the governments because developing countries are willing to overlook the environmental effects of certain industries in order to encourage needed economic growth. in the next section i show the links (both implicit and explicitly) in the political science literature to water and introduce key variables that influence access to water: regime type, inequality, as well as other social and economic factors. in the third and fourth sections, i introduce my argument and my main hypothesis: that growing pressure from increased use and pollution of water by foreign investors reduces water access in developing countries. the fifth and sixth sections introduce my country-year fixed effects model and displays evidence to suggest that fdi has a negative effect on potable water access. finally, i draw conclusions for these findings, and the implications that it has on the larger political economic literature. potable water access and politics according to the world bank (2010) up to 40 percent of the world’s population may be suffering from water stress by 2030, with some areas expected to see increases of up to 85 percent of the population affected by water stress (united nations development programme, 2006). this study evaluates potable water access (see rudra, 2008) rather than water stress as it the combined impacts of water quality and access. as defined by the world bank (2012), access to potable water is measured as a percentage of people with reasonable access to clean water from an improved source near their home.3 by looking at only one aspect—quantity or quality—research is not accurately encompassing the full effect that a reduction of potable water can have on the political will of the people. previous 3 for example, a protected well or spring, public works, or household connection, which must meet a quantity standard of at least 20 liters per day per person from a source within one kilometer of their home. a measure of potable water is not just a measure of quality or quantity individually but a measure that captures both quantity and quality at the same time. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 11 studies have mainly focused on the issues of water quality, and the overall impact of pollutants on water resources (cao and prakash, 2010; jorgenson, 2007). by focusing on issues of pollution impacts alone, they miss other important impacts, i.e. poorer citizens who are denied access to water even when it is clean, and their connection to wider government policy. by looking at quantity and quality of water access we are better able to connect political dissent to issues of water access. allowing this study to further identify infrastructure and policy accomplishments or problems that are connected to the population’s access to appropriate amounts of potable water. potable water access issues more often exist in poorer nations, where the majority of citizens are not politically active and where institutions do not exist to protect these groups. this inspires the motivating questions for this analysis: have policymakers in developing countries had the political will to ensure that high pollution problems and water usage from fdi do not affect access to safe drinking water? will these policymakers, as compared to developed country actors, take the measures necessary to ensure that water pollution does not adversely affect the population by reducing the availability of potable water? what other factors in developing countries make them more or less vulnerable to the impacts of fdi on water access? important political, social, and economic growth factors explored in international economic studies impact potable water access. for example, as states develop increases in the gross domestic product (gdp) are linked to increases in industrialization and consumption, as a result developing countries with higher income that lack institutions of environmental regulation may produce more pollution and use more natural resources, which can severely reduce access to resources, such as potable water (grossman and krueger, 1995; liu and zhang, 2018). at the same time, economic growth and a higher gdp also leads to technological improvements that reduce pollutants and strengthen the regulatory environment, which improves water access. more development also means more residents moving to urban centers which can have both positive and negative effects on water access. when states lack infrastructure capacity fast-growing municipalities put increased pressure on a state’s infrastructure, resulting in decreased access to potable water (jorgenson, 2007; khan and siddique, 2000; rudra, 2011), but municipalities also see faster gains in access to piped water, between 1990 and 2012 more than twice as many people in urban areas as opposed to rural areas gained access to an improved water source (who and unicef, 2014). the type of government and institutions available to citizens affect the capacity to supply water (li and reuveny, 2006; neumayer, 2002). democracies have been shown to provide greater access to potable water and have a greater ability to overcome the stresses that infrastructure problems cause politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 12 on public good supplies. democratic institutions also provide more access points for members of society to communicate their dissatisfaction to governments, as a result, democratic governments should respond more quickly to water access problems. even when governments have the capacity to increase water access benefits are not equally distributed, and countries with high levels of inequality give water access preference given to some groups over others, particularly those with more power and economic means (rodrik, 1999). in these situations, powerful interest groups, like domestic investors, trade partners and foreign investors, have their own demands, and are able to influence policy makers when economic growth is prioritized (mulligan et al. 2004). the effect of fdi on potable water access the globalization-natural resources literature has long debated whether fdi is a contributor to the “race to the bottom” or to the “race to the top”, but evidence suggests that the overall effect of foreign investment on the environment is negative. fdi is able to influence environmental outcomes because it makes developing countries more vulnerable to global-economic conditions that can influence different environmental outcomes. on one hand, the “race to the bottom” literature finds that engagement with foreign multinational corporations increases pollution and water use and leads to weaker environmental regulations and pollution havens (grimes and kentor, 2003; jorgenson, 2006a, 2006b, 2007). on the other hand, the “race to the top” literature foreign investors facilitate economic development, which, in turn, increases environmental standards, as it provides access to improved technologies and the regulation of supply chains (garcia-johnson, 2000; rudra and jensen, 2011). this literature also finds evidence to suggest that developing countries are not a haven from pollution, and multinationals are not flocking there to take advantage of weak environmental standards and enforcement (eskeland and harrison, 2003; redclift and sage, 1996; thompson and strohm, 1996). however, the globalization literature is criticized for failing to fully investigate the negative externalities of foreign investment, and for a failure to address the large percentage of investment into developing countries in the manufacturing and extractive sectors. negative externalities can result from the positive features of foreign investment, like when newer technologies demand more water or create new pollutants. in one such case, clean technology transfer resulted in improvements to production methods to clean up atmospheric pollution, but at the same time they increased levels of water pollution (duhigg, 2009). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 13 moreover, fdi into developing countries is mostly focused on the manufacturing and extractive sectors, see figure 1.4 studies show that these resource intense sectors causes increased water usage creating a water quantity issue (bues and theesfeld, 2012), and increased contamination of water sources, creating a water quality issue (jorgenson, 2007; roberts et al 2006). it is also common for countries to divert water streams for increased investment, so that even when foreign investors are improving the quality of water diverted streams and water usage reduces the overall water quantity available. these direct effects of fdi has even been shown to disrupt the infrastructure improvements that governments have already made to water quantity and quality (jorgenson, 2007).5 additionally, due to the perceived benefits of fdi, states become increasingly willing to make the political environment more hospitable for foreign investors (over domestic investors) that are only looking for the promise of adequate infrastructure with natural resource exploitation promise (bellos, 2010; bellos and subasat, 2012; bues, 2011; hu et al. 2013; jessup, 1999; oneal, 1994). fdi has allowed developing countries to stimulate their domestic growth, increase research and technological domestic know-how, deregulate, stabilize, and liberalize the economy, while creating jobs and increasing the skills of workers (mosley and uno 2007; javorcik 2004; blomstrom and kokko 1997; balasubramanyam et al. 1999). this entices governments to provide concessions to foreign investors that create problems when these investors are not interested in the environmental impact their decisions make in the pursuit of profit (borregard and dufey, 2002). leading to tradeoffs where there 4 this bar graph shows all greenfield foreign investment from 2003 to 2015. over 60 percent of investment is into developing countries is in the manufacturing and extractive sectors. the other sector is made up of all other sectors including shipping, hotels, and real estate groups. 5 for examples of weak regulatory policies see kahn and yardley (2007) and french (2007). figure 1: capital investment into developing countries, 2003-2015 source: author, data: fdimarkets (2016). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 14 are gains in terms of economic development and labor standards, but weakening of standards in other areas, most importantly water. why focus the study on foreign investment rather than domestic investment? first, some studies have argued that domestic investment does less harm to the environment than foreign investment (jorgenson, 2006b; rivera, 2004). domestic investments do not have the same disincentive to ignore environmental concerns or limit water access (borregard and dufey, 2002; jorgenson, 2006a, 2007). second, not all foreign investors carry significantly better environmental policies and technology than the recipient country’s domestic corporations (rivera, 2004). this increases the likelihood that investors will participate in environmentally harmful activities and will be less motivated by local interest and stakeholder groups to protect natural resources. the sharp contrast between domestic and foreign investors further increases the importance in studying the effects of fdi. particular cases have also shown that while foreign investment does have some positive effects, it may overall have a negative effect on potable water access. in india, reports have shown how polluting of the waterways by pepsi resulted in reduced access to ground water and contamination of rivers throughout the country (brady, 2007). india is not alone in this, however; studies have linked the increase in fdi to water contamination and pollution problems in ecuador (cueto, 1996), ethiopia (bossio et al. 2012; bues, 2011), etc. and yet, there are limited studies looking into this connection between potable water and fdi. in developing countries, such as india, ethiopia, and ecuador, the inflows of fdi have led to high-polluting, labor-intensive manufacturing processes that are not ecologically efficient (clapp, 1998; jorgenson, 2006b; roberts et al. 2003, 2006) and contribute to pollution in both the air and water within a state (grimes and kentor, 2003; jorgenson, 2006b, 2007). this is further supported by a study by the world resource institute (2005), showing that sectors associated with high amounts of water contamination and water usage all tend to be sectors that are heavily funded by fdi inflows in developing countries. these attributes of fdi create a barrier to clean water, and lead to my hypothesis: that increases in fdi lead to higher levels of water consumption and pollution by the investor, and indirect consequences through their supply chain management and policy influences, thus causing adverse effects on access to potable water. the first hypothesis is thus as follows: hypothesis 1: foreign direct investment (fdi) will have a negative effect on potable water access. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 15 the moderating effect of the level of development fdi is an international induced constraint on a natural resource that is vital to the well-being of a nation, and there are political considerations that should influence the degree to which trade affects water access. in developed county, institutions largely prevent water access from being affected, even in some of the largest polluting nations like the united states and japan. this is harder to achieve in developing countries where there is less institutionalization and policy is more malleable (acemoglu et al. 2001). policy makers see foreign investment as critical to a developing economy, and fear any policy that might bring about the threat of capital flight (wallerstein, 2005). to prevent this, they will try to keep labor costs low, lower environmental standards, and suppress labor rights in order to promote economic growth. in many cases allowing foreign investors to shape government policies in directions that favor their interests and harm the interests of the poor and the environment. the trade-off is such that economic growth and material prosperity have tangible benefits that citizens can quickly realize (rogoff, 1990). until development has reached such a level that the citizens can be motivated to engage in collective action to improve the environmental situation, governments in developing countries will be motivated to prioritize growth over environmental resources (grossman and krueger, 1995; panayotou, 1993; yandle, bhattarai, & vijayaraghavan, 2004). many developed countries also faced issues of unclean water when economic growth was accompanied by industrialization, and only after pressure from political coalitions did these countries create reforms for water and sanitation (szreter, 1997). in sum, domestic political process and institutions in developing countries are at a disadvantage, whether democratic or authoritarian, and that it is only through further development that countries will reach a point by which they will start environmental reforms. as a result, actors affected by fdi’s impact on water in developing countries are more likely to suffer from collective action problems and poor water policies. these factors are exacerbated when inequality is high and the economy is growing. the second hypothesis is: hypothesis 2: fdi’s ability to reduce potable water access will be moderated by the country’s development level. methodology and variables the primary goal of this study is to empirically evaluate the extent to which fdi affects the percentage of the population able to access potable water. using a country-year fixed effects regression politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 16 model, i conduct a series of quantitative cross-national analyses of water access. i use a panel data set6 of about 136 countries from 1990 to 2010 in the middle (high and low) and low income brackets, defined as developing countries by the united nations (2017) (see country list in appendix). potable water data7 is only collected every five years (i.e., 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010), while most other variables are available every year. the univariate statistics are laid out in table i, and include my measures of trade, domestic investment, inequality, political regime (polity), gross domestic product (gdp), measures of gdp growth, and urban population growth. table i: summary of univariate statistics. source: author, data: qog standard dataset (teorell et al. 2013). 6 panel data comes from the qog standard dataset (teorell et al., 2013). 7 world bank data that measured percent of the population with access to a refined source (world bank, 2007). source: prepared by the author source obs mean std. dev. min max dependent variable water access world development indicators 787 78.83 18.99 4.94 100 independent variables fdi flows (percent of gdp) world development indicators 5-year average 583 4.31 10.17 -22 187.3 domestic investment (percent of gdp) united nations statistics division 5-year average 665 22.72 10.12 2.5 85.1 gini coefficient world development indicators 140 43.4 9.5 25.6 62.8 trade (percent of gdp) world development indicators 5-year average 590 79.4 38.7 1.53 241.02 rapid economic growth (logged) world development indicators 5-year average 750 4.07 3.89 -21.7 39.34 percent urban population (logged) world development indicators 5-year average 806 2.81 -2.01 -3.22 18 gdp per capita (logged) world development indicators 5-year average 743 7.32 1.25 4.36 11.54 freedom house polity freedom house polity iv 5-year average 677 5.01 2.91 0 10 population (logged) world development indicators 5-year average 348 15.35 2.23 9.07 21.02 human development index united nations development programme 966 0.62 0.14 0.32 0.9 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 17 dependent variable the dependent variable is water access, measured as the percent of the population with access to at least 20 liters of water per person a day from an improved source within one kilometer of the dwelling (world bank, 2007). measures are gathered by the world bank every five years, i am using the logged value of this data. this value is logged to control for outliers and variance in the water data as can be seen in the summary of the data. independent variable the measure of net inflows of foreign direct investment (fdi),8 as a percentage of gross domestic product (gdp) is used, as it is considered the more appropriate measure for this study. this data is taken from the world bank (2012), and the average lagged measurement of fdi is appropriate as the expected impact of fdi would not be immediate and instead would take time to affect the overall domestic water situation. net inflows of fdi as a percent of gdp take into account the economic size of a country and can allow a better comparison as country’s with larger economies attract more fdi allowing us to compare between countries and regimes more succinctly (choi and samy, 2008). i use net inflows rather than total fdi because i am looking at change over a period of time, which would be influenced by new inflows during that time period. this will give a more accurate assessment of how fdi flows directly impact changes in potable water access. control variables to further test resource management issues, this model will control for variables that would be expected to impact water access and help the model more accurately predict the effects of fdi. i use eight control variables to account for economic, social and political factors that affect potable water access according to the literature linking water to political science and economics. gdp, gdp growth, populations, and urban population growth variables are all logged, and come from the world bank’s (2012) world development indicators list. inequality is measured by the gini co-efficient, in which higher scores represent higher levels of inequality. this measure is not reported in all countries during all time periods. these variables are important in the literature as they have impacts on potable water access and infrastructure within the country and, by controlling for them, i can further isolate the effects of fdi. 8 fdi is an investment in the managing stock of a company, measured by the world bank of any purchase over 10 percent of controlling stock, outside of the investor’s home country (2012). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 18 domestic investment measured through gross fixed capital formation (gfcf), which was formerly known as gross domestic direct investment, and is included for a more rigorous assessment of fdi. this variable controls for any domestic level investment in fixed assets and allows testing for foreign controlled manufacturing. it also removes the effect of pressure from domestic investors and local communities that may seek “greener” methods of production (jorgenson, 2007; young, 1997). this measure comes from the united nations statistics division and is measured as a percentage of the gdp. trade as a percent of gdp is used to further isolate the effects of fdi. previous studies have found trade to have negative effects on potable water access (rudra, 2011) and will provide a test for the robustness of fdi. this model will also use the freedom house (2011) dataset to control for levels of polity. this is a 10-point scale that measures the level of democracy from zero to 10, from less to more democratic, and this variable will be called polity. it is then averaged across countries for the five-year period between the measurements to capture the average level of democracy over that time period.9 the model my model is a country-year fixed effects regression model, in which the variables (where possible) are five-year averages in order to estimate the effect in water access over a five-year period.10 for example, fdi is available for all years and is aggregated into five-year averages so as to identify the average impact of fdi inflows, as a percentage of the gross domestic product (gdp), has on potable water access.11 the model also uses year dummy variables to account for annual trends and clustered standard errors to account for serial correlation.12 the data includes all developing countries for which water and fdi data were available, with control variables. the following model assesses the effect of fdi on potable water access: log⁡(𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑡) = 𝛼 + 𝛽1𝐹𝐷𝐼𝑖𝑡−1 + 𝛽𝑗𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑖 + 𝛽𝑘𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑙𝑠𝑖𝑡 + 𝑢𝑖 + 𝑖𝑡 9 water privatization is not included because total water privatization, which prevents water access for the poor, is in decline (izaguirre and hunt, 2005). findings by rudra (2011) show that water privatization activity was heavily skewed by an outlier, the philippines. 10 fixed effects are used because it is assumed that the intercept varies across the cross-sectional units and across the time periods. this was confirmed through a hausman test. 11 even when using total fdi rather than averaged fdi, the coefficient is still statistically significant. but the use of averaged fdi considers variation during the five-year period. 12 i also tested my model without the lagged dependent variable and found the direction and magnitude not substantially changed, thus finding no evidence that this variable had any adverse effects on my model (see achen, 2001). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 19 in this equation, 𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑡⁡denotes the percentage of the population with access to potable water in every five-year period when data was collected. 𝛽1is the change in log(water) when there is a one unit change in 𝐹𝐷𝐼𝑖𝑡−1, the net inflows of fdi into country i at period t-1, average of the prior five-year period. 𝑌𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑖⁡denotes a time dummy, ⁡denotes independent and identically distributed random errors, and 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑙𝑠𝑖𝑡 are the various independent variables that account for any extraneous factor that affect the parameter of interest. results overall, table ii shows strong empirical support for my hypothesis that countries with higher foreign investment inflows have lower access to potable water. the increase in water-intensive and wastewater-inducing production processes due to increases in fdi adversely affects the percent of the population with access to potable water. the first column in table ii reports the results of the baseline results of my model, which focuses on the unconditional and separate effects of fdi, column two reports the effects of fdi controlling for all factors but the inequality score, which limits the data due to data availability, and column three shows the effects of fdi controlling for all other factors. the effect of fdi is significant, it would be expected that for every increase in fdi, as a percentage of gdp, potable water access will decrease by approximately 1.4 percent, all other factors held constant (column 3). a one standard deviation increase in fdi leads to a decrease of about 13 percent of the population with access to potable water all other factors held constant in this model. thus, i find that fdi pressure by itself slows the improvements to water access, even in the presence of political, environmental, and other economic controls. fdi has more robust coefficients than domestic investment or trade. domestic investment has a positive effect, as predicted by the literature, and trade does not show any significant impact on potable water access (but as expected from the literature the sign is negative). they are also both smaller than fdi. this shows us that fdi is a better indicator of access to potable water in developing countries and has a stronger effect than other economic indicators. the model also shows the sensitivity of potable water access to gdp, population, level of democracy, inequality, and urban growth rates. the impact of trade is not as robust as previous studies have indicated, though it is in the direction expected. even when fdi was removed from the data, the impact of trade remains insignificant in this new data set. this shows us that fdi is a better indicator of access to potable politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 20 water in developing countries. fdi also has more robust and significant coefficients than domestic investment, which as expected has a positive effect on water access. (1) (3) (2) fdi flows -0.0008* -0.006*** -0.014** (percent of gdp) (0.00045) (0.0019) (0.007) lagged domestic investment 0.0011 0.005*** 0.012*** (percent of gdp) (0.0007) (0.0013) (0.003) gdp per capita -0.011 0.07* -0.33*** (logged) (0.031) (0.04) (0.10) freedom house polity 0.007* 0.03** (0.004) (0.01) trade 0.0003 -0.00032 (percent of gdp) (0.0003) (0.0007) rapid economic growth 0.02* 0.04 (logged) (0.01) (0.03) urban growth rate 0.12 0.45* (logged) (0.14) (0.23) population 0.10 -0.48** (logged) (0.17) (0.16) gini coefficient -0.007** (0.003) constant 4.32*** 1.40 12.81** (0.22) (3.00) (2.11) observations 567 275 68 r-squared 0.49 0.57 0.92 number of countries 136 98 47 standard errors clustered at country level in parentheses (*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1) findings on urban growth rates, gdp and population all confirm the literature. gdp has a significant and positive relations with water access, until inequality is controlled for, and then gdp has a negative effect. populations has a significant negative effect on water access, and urban growth rates improve the access that populations have to water. finally, as expected democracy has a positive table ii: impact of fdi on (logged) potable water access (with controls) source: author, data: qog standard dataset (teorell et al. 2013). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 21 association with potable water access. confirming the literature that democratic governments are more inclined to respond the demands of their population.13 to further assess the robustness of the negative effects of fdi, i also tested data on the percent of the total population with access to potable water from both the world development index and the environmental performance index. these indices provide alternative tests on the relationship between fdi and potable water. as the analysis in the article predicts, the coefficient was negative and significant, suggesting that greater flows of fdi lead to adverse effects on potable water access. the primary findings thus consistently remain stable and confirm the robustness of the results. regional variation due to variability in levels of development and political landscapes across regions, i further investigate my theory by looking at the regional variation of the effects of fdi in table iii, using the variables from model 2.14 foreign direct investment remains significant and has a negative impact in africa and south asia, it is only in latin america does the sign of fdi change but does not have a significant impact on water access. a one percent change in fdi (as a percent of gdp) can result in an approximate 0.44 percent change in access to water. while in south asia, each percentage increase in fdi can lead to decreases of 5 percent in potable water access. a majority of countries in south asia and africa are least developed countries supporting the literature that weaker institutions struggle to counter influxes of fdi in the manufacturing and extractive industries that use more water and produce more water pollution (grimes and kentor, 2003; jorgenson, 2006b, 2007). table iii also includes a few notable observations. domestic investment retains a positive effect, with significance in latin america and south asia, further confirming the literature that domestic investment is greener. variations on gdp and urban growth rates should be further explained as these may be related to different political landscapes and social factors. interestingly, 13 in the appendix you can find models that include a succession of relevant control variables that, as stated above, have their own effects on the ability of the population to access water. it also includes models using water as an absolute value, to differentiate from the logged value of water. these provide a robustness check for my model, by including tests of different controls that even when added do not change the significance of fdi. to further test my findings, i reduced all models to the same observations that appear in my earlier models and found that significant adverse effects of fdi remained consistent. 14 model 3 is not used because the gini coefficient reduces the observations down to a very small sample size that is untestable due to collinearity. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 22 trade is significant and positive in south america, which departs from the findings in the literature and is an area for further study (rudra, 2011). developed versus developing countries my regional models find that fdi is significant and has a negative effect in regions of the world that are the least developed, which leads me to ask if fdi has a unique effect only experienced by the least developed countries? fdi still largely goes to developed countries, only about 40% goes to developing countries, but this amount is steadily increasing (world bank, 2018). research contends that populations in the least developed countries will face undersupplied public goods (i.e. water (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) africa east and south east asia eastern europe latin america south asia lagged fdi flows -0.0044* -0.0046 -0.00005 0.0009 -0.05*** (percent of gdp) (0.00) (0.007) (0.003) (0.003) (0.01) lagged domestic investment 0.0023 0.007 0.0014 0.004** 0.01** (percent of gdp) (0.00) (0.004) (0.0015) (0.002) (0.003) trade 0.0007 -0.0003 -0.0012 0.0019*** -0.001 (percent of gdp) (0.00) (0.00) (0.0007) (0.0005) (0.0008) freedom house polity 0.013 -0.0015 -0.01 -0.002 0.01 (0.01) (0.01) (0.04) (0.01) (0.004) rapid economic growth 0.02 0.04 -0.02 0.040 0.002 (logged) (0.02) (0.05) (0.02) (0.01) (0.02) urban growth rate -0.12 0.41 -0.16 -0.29* 1.06 (logged) (0.19) (0.27) (0.25) (0.15) (0.61) gdp per capita 0.07 0.14 -0.06 -0.19** 0.23*** (logged) (0.06) (0.08) (0.05) (0.07) (0.05) constant 0.32 -15.94** 2.88 4.61** -10.89* (1.62) (6.67) (3.28) (2.04) (5.97) observations 145 30 28 43 24 r-squared 0.48 0.88 0.74 0.83 0.98 number of countries 51 10 14 14 6 table iii: impact of fdi on (logged) potable water access (with controls) by region source: author, data: qog standard dataset (teorell et al. 2013). standard errors clustered at country level in parentheses (*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1) politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 23 access) due to insufficient infrastructure, greater collective action problems, and less participatory governance institutions, i want to consider whether the effect of fdi on water access varies between levels of development, to do this i use the same country-year fixed effects regression model with an interaction between fdi and my measurement of development, the human development index (hdi): log⁡(𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟)𝑖𝑡 = 𝛼 + 𝛽1𝐹𝐷𝐼𝑖𝑡−1 + 𝛿0𝐻𝐷𝐼 + 𝛿1𝐹𝐷𝐼 ∗ 𝐻𝐷𝐼 + 𝛽𝑗𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑖 + 𝛽𝑘𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑙𝑠𝑖𝑡 + 𝑢𝑖 + 𝑖𝑡 all parameters and variables remain the same except the inclusion of the human development index as a continuous variable for development and the interaction term. the human development index (hdi) variable is a composite index that measures a country on the basic dimensions of human development (undp, 2018). includes all countries of the world that have data. this is a continuous measure that increases as a country becomes more developed. i interact fdi with the hdi to address the question “does the effect of foreign direct investment on water access vary on the level of development”. where, 𝛽1 the is the change in potable water access associated with a one-unit change in foreign investment (as a percent of gdp), and 𝛽1 + 𝛿1 is the change in potable water access associated with a one-unit change in fdi as hdi increases. in table iv, i evaluate the extent to which higher developed countries are able to counter the effects of foreign investment, because of better institutional development. i find that for each unit change in hdi, the slope of fdi’s effect on potable water access increases by 0.04. a positive value for the effect of the interaction term implies that the more developed a country is, the more positive the effect of fdi on potable water access. i can accept the hypothesis that fdi has a stronger positive relationship to potable water access as countries become more developed. these findings show that fdi at low levels of development will reduce access to potable water, but as nations develop, fdi can have more positive effects on water access. these results indicate that institutional change as a country develops could be moderating the negative effects of foreign investment seen in previous models. conclusions finding that fdi has a negative effect on potable water access has consequences for several different literatures, most particularly the “race to the bottom” literature. this paper finds further evidence to support the “race to the bottom” side of the ongoing debate over global economic expansion. i hypothesized that foreign direct investment would have a negative effect on public goods provision due to its impact on resource management institutions. the findings indicate that developing countries are unable to overcome the influence of global economic activities, and as a result parts of the population lose access to water. on average developing countries receive fdi equivalent to about politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 24 4% of their gdp, but this amount of fdi could have adverse effects for more than 1 percent of the population, rising to decreases of 4 percent in south asia. meaning that fdi is slowing infrastructure improvements that developing countries are making in providing potable water access and creating a “race to the bottom” in countries that are not equipped to manage public goods. this research also confirms the findings in the literature that development moderates the effects of fdi. as countries develop they see fewer negative effects from fdi, it is possible that their institutions are using increases in fdi to expand potable water access. i conjecture that this is related to the literature that indicates that developing countries are often prioritize economics over the environment, and that institutions in developing countries are unable to keep up with the water demands from development. further study into institution building as it relates to environmental resources management and globalization is needed in the case of potable water management. finally, this analysis points out how international sources of degradation can be more impactful than domestic sources and can have practically large effects on the conditions of the domestic population. domestic sources of investment have a positive association with potable water access, as would be expected in the literature, because they are connected to the local communities. it may be worth exploring how stronger connections (8) lagged fdi flows -0.03** (percent of gdp) (0.02) fdi*hdi 0.04** (interaction) (0.02) lagged domestic investment 0.002 (percent of gdp) (0.0013) trade -0.0005 (percent of gdp) (0.0004) freedom house polity 0.013 (0.009) rapid economic growth 0.02* (percent change) (0.01) urban growth rate 0.53*** (percent change) (0.18) gdp per capita -0.21*** (logged) (0.08) population -0.23 (logged) (0.15) inequality index -0.009*** (0.003) constant 8.05*** (2.51) observations 106 r-squared 0.87 countries 65 table iv: multiple regression interaction of the effect of fdi on (logged) potable water access dependent on developed or developing source: author, data: qog standard dataset (teorell et al. 2013). standard errors clustered at country level in parentheses (*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1) politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 25 between foreign investors and the local communities influence their impact on local resources and management. the logic of this argument may hold insights for other resources subject to overuse or pollution. arable land, forests and fisheries have attributes similar to water; they are consumable goods that impact the lives of the citizens in a state. for example, the recent increase in shale oil to replace depleted easy to access crude oil has led to the use of arable land for fuel supplies rather than food. the depletion of these resources in pursuit of economic growth could have lasting effects on the livelihood and future employment of citizens. expanding multinational corporations provide incentives to governments to increase the use and depletion of these resources beyond what is sustainable for the population in the absence of an effective management regime. it may be worth exploring whether increasing fdi in developing countries with ineffective domestic institutions affects availability of other natural resources. bibliography15 acemoglu, daron et al. 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(1997): 'rights, rules, and resources in world affairs', in oran r. young (ed.) global governance: drawing insights from the environmental experience. cambridge, ma: mit press. pp. 1–23. http://databank.worldbank.org/ddp/home.do http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.pop.totl http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.pop.grow http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ny.gdp.mktp.kd http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ny.gdp.mktp.kd.zg http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ny.gdp.pcap.kd http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ny http://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-1175-3 https://ideas.repec.org/p/iwt/rerpts/h044740.html politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 33 appendix data all data used can be found on the qog standard dataset website (teorell et al., 2013): https://qog.pol.gu.se/data/datadownloads/qogstandarddata. developing countries included in all models when data is available afghanistan angola bangladesh benin bhutan burkina faso burundi cambodia central african republic chad comoros congo, democratic republic djibouti eritrea ethiopia gambia guinea guinea-bissau haiti kiribati korea, north laos lesotho liberia madagascar malawi mali mauritania mozambique myanmar nepal niger rwanda sao tome and principe senegal sierra leone solomon islands somalia sudan tanzania timor-leste togo tuvalu uganda vanuatu yemen zambia zimbabwe armenia bolivia cameroon cape verde congo cote d'ivoire egypt el salvador georgia ghana guatemala honduras india indonesia jordan kenya kyrgyzstan moldova mongolia morocco nicaragua nigeria pakistan papua new guinea philippines sri lanka swaziland syria tajikistan tunisia ukraine uzbekistan vietnam albania algeria antigua and barbuda argentina azerbaijan belarus belize bosnia and herzegovina botswana brazil bulgaria china colombia costa rica cuba dominica dominican republic ecuador equatorial guinea fiji gabon grenada guyana iran iraq jamaica kazakhstan lebanon libya macedonia malaysia maldives marshall islands mauritius mexico micronesia montenegro namibia palau panama paraguay peru russia samoa seychelles south africa st kitts and nevis st lucia st vincent and the grenadines suriname https://qog.pol.gu.se/data/datadownloads/qogstandarddata politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 34 thailand tonga turkey turkmenistan united arab emirates venezuela developed countries in interaction model united states canada bahamas trinidad and tobago barbados chile uruguay united kingdom netherlands belgium luxembourg france monaco switzerland spain andorra portugal germany poland austria hungary czechoslovakia slovakia italy malta croatia slovenia greece cyprus romania estonia latvia lithuania finland sweden norway denmark iceland israel saudi arabia kuwait bahrain qatar oman korea, south japan singapore brunei australia new zealand politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 35 additional table table iv: robustness checks: impact of fdi on changes in potable water access (with controls) (source: author, data: qog standard dataset (teorell et al. 2013) ) (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) dependent variable: log(water) water water water log(water) lagged fdi flows -0.00** -0.07* -0.28*** -0.73** (percent of gdp) (0.00) (0.04) (0.09) (0.33) lagged domestic investment 0.00 0.05 0.11* 0.76*** 0.00 (percent of gdp) (0.00) (0.04) (0.06) (0.17) (0.00) trade (percent of gdp) 0.00 0.00 0.05 -0.00 (0.00) (0.02) (0.05) (0.00) freedom house polity 0.01* 1.36*** 0.02** (0.00) (0.43) (0.01) rapid economic growth 1.53 0.01 (percent change) (1.13) (0.03) urban growth rate 4.27 27.53** -0.19* (percent change) (6.34) (12.45) (0.11) gdp per capita (logged) 0.02 0.61 1.85 -18.65*** -0.32*** (0.03) (1.86) (2.09) (4.60) (0.11) population (logged) 0.23** -30.01*** -0.39* (0.11) (9.80) (0.22) inequality index -0.28 (0.18) constant -0.16 68.73*** -85.45 589.09*** 9.96** (1.90) (13.29) (98.26) (165.31) (3.74) observations 454 561 448 68 69 r-squared 0.56 0.55 0.61 0.94 0.90 number of coutnries 113 134 111 47 48 standard errors clustered at country level in parentheses *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 the role of foreign direct investment (fdi) in promoting access to clean water introduction potable water access and politics the effect of fdi on potable water access the moderating effect of the level of development methodology and variables dependent variable independent variable control variables the model results regional variation developed versus developing countries conclusions bibliography appendix politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 36 “not here nor elsewhere”: the local-global dialectic in locally unwanted land use (lulu) campaigns; the case of italy paola imperatore https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.39.2 paola imperatore, 27, from pisa (italy), is a ph.d candidate at the university of pisa. she holds a graduate degree in international relations from the university of pisa where she wrote her thesis on environmental conflicts and forms of protest practiced by local communities. she has additionally worked as a research assistant for various projects on the issue of social movements related with environment, city, refugee crisis and digital platforms. her current research fields mainly concern environmental movements and lulu (locally unwanted land use) campaigns. she is also a member of opi social movements, an observatory on conflict and democracy, as well as a member of poli.com where she worked on political communication across social networks during the italian election. e-mail: paola.imperatore@sp.unipi.it. abstract over the last decades, several local populations throughout italy have started to mobilize against the use of land to build infrastructure which is defined by its promoters as crucial to competitiveness in the global market. these challengers have been labeled by institutions and media as nimby (not in my back yard) and egoistic actors who operate in opposition to the public interest. local movements have created oppositional nope (not on the planet earth) or niaby (not in anyone's back yard) discourse to underline the local-global dialectic oriented toward broadly questioning the effects of globalization. using frame analysis, this paper examines nine italian lulu campaigns in order to investigate the presence of discursive strategies able to transcend the local dimension, the ability of the challengers to develop and spread a common key of interpretation to the different conflicts and, finally, the existence of recurring and successful frames despite the local peculiarities. keywords frame analysis; lulu campaigns; model of growth; niaby/nope, nimby https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.39.2 mailto:paola.imperatore@sp.unipi.it politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 37 introduction the nimby forum’s16 annual report published at the end of 2017 (nimby forum, 2017) noted and confirmed a significant growth in territorial protests against large-scale infrastructure projects in italy over the last decade. these environmental campaigns17 have more than redoubled un amount: from 130 contested installations in 2004 to 359 today (nimby forum, 2017). from an observation of the territorial allocation of these campaigns as is shown in the following map (figure 1), it is possible to point out that they are broadly dispersed all over italy. figure 1 – contested installations. source: nimby forum (2016). 16 the nimby forum is an observatory on nimby protests and it has been active in italy since 2004. the project is financed by government institutions, national environmental associations and private subjects which are involved in the construction of large-scale infrastructures in italy. though the body produces important data through the monitoring of these protests, it is also necessary to note the critical voices regarding the neutrality of the nimby forum due to the participation of private and institutional promoters of the contested infrastructures (balocco, 2011). 17 in this paper the environmental campaigns are understood as series of actions connected to each other in terms of issue and time, aimed toward a specific goal (della porta and rucht, 2002: 3), such as against the construction of an infrastructure. in this kind of campaigns participate several groups such as environmental associations, local committees, antagonistic groups and movements, radical left parties and other that can vary in relation to the conflict. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 38 labelled as “popolo del no” (people of the no) and defined as motivated by nimby reasons, these protest campaigns against several infrastructure projects have become important issues in local and national political agendas. to understand their origins, it is necessary to glance at how, since the 90s, neoliberalism has been restructuring economies in western countries by creating strong competition between cities and territories when it comes to obtaining private investments. globalization has thus imposed a “growth machine” (logan and molotch, 1987) along with related effects: welfare dismantling, gentrification, the privatization of public services and much more. one product of this process has been the promotion of infrastructure projects, portrayed in dominant rhetoric as fundamental for social and economic growth and legitimized as necessary to compete in a global market. as a result, different actors ranging from the no-global movement at the end of the 90s to the environmental movement have been mobilizing against this process. the latter aforementioned movement was strongly affected by the former in terms of its practices, and, over the years, environmental movements became more conflictual and more locally-oriented (della porta and diani, 2004). the relevance of the local dimension as a space in which conflict is expressed has become an object of study in political and social sciences (slater, 1997; routledge, 2003; leitner et al., 2008) and many researchers (della porta and andretta, 2002; della porta and piazza, 2008; caruso, 2010; piazza, 2011) have started to investigate the nimby nature of local protest campaigns. although this existing work represent an essential point of departure for any analysis of the topic, two gaps can be observed in the studies. first, the empirical evidence from which some hypotheses are elaborated stems from a small number of cases (such as one or two campaigns) or focuses only a single-contentious network (such as campaigns against fracking or incinerators). the second gap is related to a single-issue analysis of the contents within the framework of local protests (such as environmental and lulu campaigns, anti-corruption and nimby protests, etc.) being the most typical. this paper does not aim to fill these gaps but rather aims to contribute to the debate on nimby/not nimby using a wide comparison of cases and through a broader analysis of the contents in local actors discourses in order to be able to track a generic counter-frame if one exist. the research aims to discuss the issue by addressing the following research questions from an empirical point of view: 1. what are the real reasons for this broad phenomenon? is it really the “popolo del no” that wants to obstruct progress? 2. what are the issues in the italian lulu (locally unwanted land use) protests that allow for the spreading of common frames among these campaigns? 3. if they exist, what are the more successful and recurring frames? politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 39 framing the conflict: a cultural perspective on social movements in the 80s, the concept of frame, elaborated by goffman in 1974, became and has since remained a highly successful methodological tool for analysing social movements. frame has been conceptualized as an interpretative model based on the production of discourses, ideas, and arguments through which actors of a movements give common and shared meaning to reality (snow and benford, 1992). therefore, by using frame analysis it becomes possible to focus on the interaction between collective action and symbolic production. as argued by snow and benford (1988), the frame is able to mobilize public opinion in support of social movements demands. inso-far as a movement’s actors can influence decision-makers only through a broad mobilization of civil society, the frame represents not only an important element of this mobilization but also a key factor in its potential success (gerhards and rucht, 1992). snow and benford (1988) have identified three main steps that take place in a framing process: the diagnosis, which occurs when challengers of a phenomenon indicate its problems and causes, the prognosis which takes place through the elaboration of solutions and, at the end, the process of the production of motivations which incentivize action. at the same time, gamson (1988) has stressed that the process of meaning-attribution is a conflictual process in which every actor tries to convince public opinion of their reasons. in this sense, while social movements will try to influence the public opinion and convince others about the reasons behind their protests, counter-movements will also operate in order to defend their interests. the concept of frame makes it possible to capture the cultural dimension of political conflict and to observe culture as an arena of action and disputes between the different parts. in this arena, each challenger defines discourses, languages, symbols and strategies which are considered able to mobilize (williams, 2004). this cultural arena can also be transformed by the protests (williams, 2004) which can produce new discursive opportunities more favourable for their claims. if every collective actor can develop a different frame according to their identity, they also have to consider that there are frames which can have more resonance (snow and benford, 1988) and that is more probable that such frames will have more potential to convince public opinion and in generalize a protest. whilst considering political conflict also as cultural conflict between different perspectives in which each actor tries to legitimize itself and to discredit the adversary, the next paragraph discusses the relationship between the framing process and lulu campaigns. nimby or not? the local-global dialectic in lulu campaigns there are two main antagonistic coalitions in conflicts related to the use of the territory to build new infrastructures. on one hand, there is the environmental coalition, in which a very politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 40 heterogeneous network generally composed of local committees, associations, antagonistic left groups, radical-left parties and, sometimes, local institutions frame their opposition to a project as a defence of the environment (della porta and andretta, 2002). on the other hand, there is the economic coalition, often composed of industries, unions and local institutions, which promotes the same project being contested by the respective environmental coalition and frame it as an opportunity to generate economic benefits for the given the territory as well as to raise employment levels (della porta and andretta, 2002). since their origin in the 90s, lulu protests have been labelled by institutions, media, and infrastructures promoters as nimby (not in my back yard), parochial and localistic mobilizations with egoistic interests. as is pointed out by neville and weinthal (2016:570) “industry sees the phenomenon as stifling development, and governments view it as hindering social progress” and public good. the media’s construction and story-telling regarding these protests is mainly oriented towards devaluing them (lake, 1993; jobert, 1998; mcleod, 2007) by using a diversionary reframing (freudenburg and gramling, 1994) aimed at diverting attention from the pivotal problem and toward redefining the issue on the basis of the unreasonableness of the challengers (freudenburg et al., 1998). broad use of the nimby label allows for the discrediting of actors labelled as such as adverse to development and the common interest, and so undermines their legitimacy (wolsink, 2006). hence, the lulu mobilizations are identified as enemies in-so-far as they are seen as obstacles stemming from the rejection of a few people to pay the necessary costs to create public good useful for the society as a whole (della porta and piazza, 2008). these challengers are often charged as anti-democratic actors who paralyze public policies (mannarini and roccato, 2011). facing a framing process which negatively affects lulu actors, scholars examining these movements have begun to investigate the issue more deeply. the contributions of bobbio (1999; 2011), della porta (1999), della porta and piazza (2008) caruso (2010) and piazza (2012) in italy, as well as those of mcadam and boudet (2012), rootes (2013), and neville and weinthal (2016) in other countries have focused attention on the discursive evolution of local protest campaigns. they found that local actors have started to engage even more frequently in the challenge of broadening their frames to encompass other issues – environment, wealth, the model of growth, and participation – which are strongly connected with the main claims of their protests. for example, schlosberg (2004) has examined the attempt to reclaim participation in environmental policy processes. meanwhile, della porta (1999) has observed how campaigns are linked to a more general demand for democracy from below. this is something she has defined as a meta-discourse of democracy. through their actions, local challengers question and reject the institutional dad (decide, announce, defend) approach to decision-making (kemp, 1992). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 41 by focusing their opposition not against the localization of but on the same existence of large-scale infrastructure, the campaign actors have redefined the debate. they have tried to overcome the nimby label by elaborating nope (not on the planet earth) (trom, 1999) or niaby (not in anyone's back yard) (lesbirel, 1998) frames in which the local-global dialectic is pivotal. in the context of globalization, the local protests are related to global topics and have become an opportunity to question the overall development model (owens and cowell, 2011). caruso (2010) has argued that lulu movements are thus contributing to the building of an ideological discourse around specific themes of reflection. these include the use of the commons, lifestyles, the relationship between the centre and periphery, as well as that between homogenisation and multiplicity, and, in particular, the dominant concept of progress. in this discourse, globalization is considered to be a process responsible for producing centralization, homogenization and commodification (caruso, 2010). in order to capture the process through which lulu actors can develop their frame, walsh, warland and smith (1997) have elaborated the concepts of frame expansion and frame bridging. these processes can take place when a particular frame of collective action is successfully applied to a seemingly separate issue or conflict (walsh et al., 1997). in this case, a scale shift of the lulu campaigns occurs and bridges “claims and identities” (mcadam et al., 2001: 331) and, at the same time, affects spatial/geographic dimensions because mobilization grows beyond its localized beginnings. social movement researchers have agreed on considering the development of a generalized frame as a strategy for gaining consensus by searching for external allies (roots, 2007; neville and weinthal, 2016). they have also agreed that by elaborating a transformation frame (berbrier, 2002), the movement’s actors are able to avoid the stigma with which they are often labelled. through such frame re-development, they thus try to reposition themselves in cultural space. however, what was initially only a tactic has over time become a real process in which local actors develop and internalize a universal frame (rootes, 2013), and, finally, share a common and cohesive identity with other subjects. the final point concerning existing studies on the topic related to the master frame (snow and benford, 1989; 1992), that is the more recurring frames in local campaigns. based on his study on anti-incinerator campaigns in england, rootes (2013: 110) has argued for climate change as being a successful master frame concerning his particular case, having stated that it “provides local environmental campaigners with a new frame that provides effective bridging not merely between the local and the national but between the local and the global”. whereas the case of italy is concerned, della porta and andretta (2002) have identified four master frames in relation to the identities of involved actors: politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 42 1. local communities which reject bearing the disadvantages generated by large-scale infrastructure support the nimby frame 2. environmental associations which argue that their opposition is grounded in defending the ecosystem mainly use the frame of environmentalism 3. further actors see large infrastructures as a source of public waste and corruption 4. and, finally, there are actors that consider decision-making related to the building of largescale infrastructures as demonstration of centralized and non-democratic decision-making procedures. by using this theoretical framework as a departing point, this paper will investigate the discursive strategy put in place by different lulu campaigns across italy, if and how they develop a local-global dialectic and the existence of master frames in movements related to opposing largescale infrastructure projects. conceptualization and operationalization in this paper, the nimby frame is referred to as the dominant frame which is used by institutions, private investors and the media to portray protest campaigns against large-scale infrastructure projects. on the other hand, a generic niaby frame developed by local challengers is considered as the counter-frame. the research therefore revolves around the pivotal question of how a frame can be defined as nimby or niaby. in order to investigate the local-global dialectic in protest campaigns against large-scale infrastructure projects, several indicators have been chosen, each related to its own respective issue: 1) not here; 2) uselessness; 3) health of local residents; 4) right to health; 5) environment; 6) public spending; 7) democracy and participation; 8) model of growth and social justice; 9) repression and war; 10) anti-corruption; 11) civil rights. i assume that in the cases in which only the “not here”, “uselessness” and “health of local residents” frames are used, the protest is locally-oriented and so the nimby label is confirmed. this does not mean that they have less legitimacy, but that the discourse is based on specific local claims and that networks with other collective actors and topics are narrow. when campaigns start to politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 43 interconnect their protests with more generic issues, ranging from the right to health (point 4) to civil rights (point 11), we may consider that these campaigns are engaged in a local-global dialectic. the more the issues are elaborated by the actors, the deeper the link between specific and universal or local and global concerns will be. in such cases, we can encounter a niaby counter-frame. the comparison can reveal to us how different actors frame the same issue and it also allows us to verify the presence of a master-frame which may be shared by several campaigns. moreover, the comparison makes it possible to answer the following important question: what types of issues and claims are there behind a niaby frame? methodology and data in order to investigate the building of counter-frames by opponents to large -scale infrastructure projects, a qualitative approach based on frame analysis is used. as della porta and diani (2006: 74) have argued, frame analysis allows us “to capture the process of attribution of meaning which lies behind the explosion of any conflict”. through the close examination of protest campaign manifestos and written texts such as articles and public statements in campaign blogs or other digital sources, the aim is to reconstruct the local actors frames. through such methodology, the aim is to pass “from the text to the frame” (johnston, 1995: 219). to evaluate and compare frames across different campaigns, i have used a standardized codebook. it includes qualitative indicators related to protest issues (as aforementioned) which make a more systematic analysis possible. when argumentations related to specific issues are found, a transference is made in the codebook to indicate the presence of these issues in the respective campaigns. by proceeding in this manner for each campaign, a table which denote the campaigns and their issues is produced and this data is consequently visualized and discussed in the “analysis and findings” section of this paper. in order to investigate the construction of a universal counter-frame elaborated by protest actors in opposition to the dominant one, nine local protest campaigns in italy are compared. the focus on a single country is for two main reasons. on one hand, it facilitates the selection of campaigns and also the understanding of the collected documents due to the contextual situation of myself as the paper’s author. on the other hand, since large-scale infrastructure projects are strongly debated in italy as is shown by the nimby forum’s data (nimby forum, 2017) a deeper analysis of this phenomenon in italy is particular useful. to collect data, i have selected campaigns with at least a basic level of structuring, in different areas of the country, of different duration with different histories, and related to different contested infrastructures projects. by combining most similar system design (mssd) and a most different system design (mdsd) (przeworski and teune, 1970; faure, 1994), i compare cases with common features (geographic area, national structure of opportunity, mobilization issues, etc.) but also with politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 44 specific and local peculiarities (political culture, occupation, growth levels, local structure of opportunity). in fact, the use of both mssd and mdsm allows for a comparison of cases with common features but also with dissimilarities by showing how some variables can impact a phenomenon. if, in this study, the analysed campaigns have several similarities in terms of actors, aims, and national context, the territories in which these protests take place present different characteristics. in particular, there is a macro-level difference between the south, with high unemployment and underdeveloped infrastructures, and the north which is more competitive in the global market thanks to high-level of investments and well-developed infrastructures. it can be hypothesized that the dominant rhetoric can have different effects on local populations depending on the local context and, consequently, local actors can produce different counter-frames rather than a common and universal one. in fact, infrastructures policy is portrayed as able to encourage economic and employment growth by improving the integration and the competitiveness of territories in the global market. taking into account these factors, the following protest campaigns are analysed in this paper: no tav terzo valico, no expo, no grandi navi, no cave and piana contro le nocività in northern or central-northern italy, and no tubo, no tap, no muos and no triv in central-southern or southern italy. selected lulu campaings northern italy no grandi navi no grandi navi is a campaign supported by the residents of venice to oppose the dangerous industry of tourist cruisers. the campaign has been active since 2012. no tav terzo valico the no tav terzo valico is a campaign against the construction of a high-speed train between genoa and milan which started in the 90s but has been gaining traction since 2012. no expo the no expo campaign was born in 2007 in milan to oppose the project of a universal exposition in 2015 (expo 2015 milano). during the next years no expo became popular in italy with events on the issue happening all over the country. no cave the no cave campaign arose in 2014 to contest the intensive extraction of marble from the apuan alps. the extraction that produces recurring floods and it is responsible for environmental destruction and poor socioeconomic situation. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 45 central italy piana contro le nocività piana contro le nocività is a campaign that has joined the residents of three main cities (florence, prato and pistoia) in opposition of the construction of a new incinerator and also of the enlargement of florence airport. it began in 2012. no tubo no tubo is a campaign against the construction of a gas pipeline through different territories of central-italy which are seismic areas. southern italy no tap no tap campaign arose in 2013 to oppose the landing of a pipeline in a territory with a fragile ecosystem and aims to safeguard the environment and local activities. no muos no muos is a campaign which began in 2008 against the installation of antennas into the usa military base arguing this is dangerous for the environment and for health. no triv no triv is a national campaign that joins together several local actors in opposition to the perforation of their territory with drills in order to exploit oil. table 1 – selected lulu campaigns. source: author. analysis and findings on the one hand, there are institutions and private investors that try to encourage socioeconomic development while, on the other hand, there are local communities that reject progress. these opposing positions behind the issue of large-scale infrastructure projects have often been represented in public debate in this manner. the media, in accordance with both public and private promoters, have simplified protest front ideas by referring to local actors as nimby subjects. this label has portrayed movements against infrastructure projects as irrational, emotional, ignorant, and anti-modern (mannarini and roccato, 2011), motivated by reasons of self-interest and lacking in civic orientation (freudenberg and pastor, 1992) thus obstructing the public good. data collected by the nimby forum concerning the reasons of the protests shows that the two main motives behind them are related to the residents’ health and the conservation of the environment (nimby forum, 2017). these aspects seem to have remained pivotal over the years covered by this analysis (20042017) with growth having taking place for the environmental issue, where it is concerned from 17% in 2004 (nimby forum, 2005) to 30% in 2017 (nimby forum, 2017), and having peaked at 38,9% in 2014 (nimby forum, 2015). the problem of lack of participation entered the foray in 2010 and gradually increased in prominence through to 2017 (nimby forum, 2017). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 46 though these data offer a first glance at the reasons behind nimby campaigns, they are limited. this is because the information is collected from newspapers which, as has been argued by mannarini and roccato (2011: 809), “contribute to spreading a negative and stigmatising representation of local oppositions” and rarely report in depth on the reasons behind the protests. a deeper comparison of documents produced by local campaign actors has allowed for the development of an understanding of the topics on which the mobilizations are and have been based. not here figure 2 below shows the first meaningful finding of the analysed cases: none of the analysed cases are related to a “not here” claim. there are no documents in which local opponents, as the reasons behind their protests, argue that the infrastructure projects should be realized in other locations. by observing the discourses produced by local actors, what emerges is that the protest campaigns have problematized infrastructure policy and related rhetoric. in fact, the contention does not concern the location of the infrastructure but, rather, its very existence, as is shown by the recurring use of the “nè qui nè altrove” (not here nor elsewhere) slogan. figure 2 – protest campaign issues. source: author. each one of the analysed campaigns sees the intersection of at least four topics among the selected indicators in an explicit way. the no triv campaign seems to be a particular case involving less issues. however, if we analyse which issues are involved in this case, we can immediately perceive a universal dimension to it as well as it covers: the right to health, environment, democracy, and also the model of development. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 no cave no tubo no expo no grandi navi piana contro le nocività no tap no triv no tav terzo valico no muos politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 47 environment and health as reported by the nimby forum (2017), environmental and health issues are both fundamental topics across the campaigns. contrary to the mainstream label that portrays these local actors as irrational, the reasons behind the campaigns are often strongly supported by scientific studies (bobbio, 1999). as has been pointed out by bobbio (1999), the residents’ fear for their health and territories in relation to the construction of large-scale infrastructures finds confirmation in the reports that scholars and associations produce to reinforce their arguments. these topics can be included into the environmentalist frame (della porta and andretta, 2002), defined as a frame in which groups oppose themselves to an infrastructure project because it is considered as dangerous for the ecosystem as well as for humans and animals living in the territory that is to be affected. in other words, the claim is related to the potential impact of the infrastructure on the surrounding landscape and environment. can this frame be defined as egoistic, localistic and unfounded? by seeking to reclaim a healthy environment, the campaigns actors are fighting not only for the interest of local residents, but they are also defending the interests of future generations (comitato no tap, 2016). this represents a key element in the discourse of local opponents and, in particular, in groups such as mamme no muos (la sicilia, 2015) or mamme no tap (comuneinfo, 2017) which join mothers in defence of their sons and future generation. at the same time environmentalism as a frame is not just usable within specific territorial borders but may be extended. this is because environmental realities have far-reaching effects and that what happens in one location can produce effects in other territories. in brief, environmentalism can be considered a universal frame. together with the safeguarding of the environment and public health, figure 2 shows that other “popular” issues are democracy (in 8 of the 9 cases), public spending (in 5 of the 9 cases), and the growth model (in all cases). behind each one of these issues lies a radical conflict as concern values that i will proceed to analyse. democracy, legality, corruption from the comparison in this paper, evidences emerge of what della porta (1999) has referred to as meta-discourse of democracy. as has been argued by bobbio (1999), during a campaign, local actors question not only the environmental and socio-economic impacts of an infrastructure project, but also the decisional-making process in which the local population is typically not included. additionally, the nimby forum’s data shows that this lack of inclusion in decision-making arenas is an important issue for local campaigners; during 2017, 21,7% of people opposed projects due to the lack of their ability to participate in them (nimby forum, 2017). what the nimby forum’s data doesn’t show nor explore, however, are the radical differences between infrastructures promoters and opponents has regard their understanding of the concept of democracy. what is explicitly politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 48 illustrated by the results of the analysis is a conflict between top down democracy the dominant model based on liberal democracy and bottom up model in which there is a more interactive relationship between institutions and citizens in the decision-making process. the latter do not necessarily reject the conventional modality of participation but additionally supports the necessity for more frequent, incisive. and inclusive democracy from below. from the analysis of the discourse across the various campaign documents, it appears evident that the defence of democracy constitutes part of the local actor’s frames. infrastructure opponents denounce a deficit of democracy (no expo, 2015), conflicts of interests (ibid.) and the top down approach of institutions completely excluding local populations from decision-making processes (no tap, 2018). through their protests, opposing actors critically discuss mechanisms of delegation which are considered responsible for the progressive estrangement of institutions from citizens (assemblea permanente carrara, 2014). some actors underline the necessity to defend democracy through respecting the italian constitution (coordinamento nazionale no triv, 2015) and law (comitato no tubo, 2013). in this sense, it is interesting to observe how divergent ideas can exist behind the same terms. in fact, infrastructure promoters often appeal to the law to impose a project, invoking public interest and the observance of the law. the opponents, meanwhile, make use of the law to counter decisions about a project. this appears particularly true when examining the anticorruption frame (piazza and sorci, 2017) which local actors often support and it seems prevalent in 5 out of the 9 examined cases. by thus linking large infrastructure projects to corruption, lulu challengers strategically used the respect of legality against the project promoters. a telling example of anti-corruption frame is the no tav campaign. this campaign is symbolic to movements against large infrastructure projects, having resulted in the use of the “no tav no mafia” slogan to underline anti-corruption issues as part of their protest. the no muos (2012), no tav terzo valico and no expo (2015) campaigns have been framed by local actors as movements against mafia, corruption, the exploitation of illegal labour (in the construction sites), and collusion between political parties and investors. large-scale infrastructures projects seem to provide a “hummus for the mafia” (no tav terzo valico, 2012), so much so that no tav terzo valico activists have nicknamed the high speed train project as a high speed mafia (ibid.) opportunity. along such and similar lines, lulu challengers invoke the respect of the law in order to stop the construction of large infrastructure projects and to fight related mechanisms of corruption and illegality that characterize them. in so doing, they also bring attention, once again, to the issue of participation in decision-making processes related to the projects. it is therefore possible to observe that local actors have introduced a fundamental element into their discourses, that of a call for a more de-centralized and participative mechanisms of democracy. several actors argue for politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 49 the necessity of a new relationship between the national/transnational and local levels whereby decision-making processes should shift from the local to the global, i.e. from citizens to institutions. the no triv manifesto is explicative of this demand: it declares that the activist’s action is meant to “defend commons, democracy and the local communities’ interests from power centralization” (coordinamento nazionale no triv, 2016). additionally, other actors denounce national and transnational institutions for lacking capacity to pay attention to the voices of territories (re:common, 2014) from which a demand for democracy is strongly emerging. the want for direct participation has become a key protest element in several campaigns. on one hand, some campaigns request and suggest the institution of concrete tools of direct democracy (assemblea permanente carrara, 2015; lucca libera, 2015). meanwhile, on the other hand, a will is expressed to take part in polis activities through horizontal, inclusive, and consensual practices and spaces (assemblea permanente carrara, 2014). the vision of democracy that emerges in these campaigns does not exclude representative one (della porta and piazza, 2008), but rather stipulate that representation cannot be exhausted merely through administrative functions (allasino, 2004). instead, the request for democracy from below seems to embody a vision of local and direct participation. altogether, the centralized and non-democratic decision-making procedure frame (della porta and andretta, 2002) seems to be a key-point of interpretation of the conflict for lulu actors that are promoting decentralized models of participation from below. public spending: what is the public interest? the issue of public investments is one which recurs frequently in the analysed texts. several campaigns frame the large infrastructure projects as high public spending ventures that steals economic resources from social welfare. for instance, the no tav terzo valico protest denounces a mechanism that cuts public spending on social services while simultaneously increasing spending on infrastructures (no tav terzo valico, 2012). this divestment of funds is apparent from reported data which demonstrate an allocation of 6 billion euros to infrastructure projects and an in tandem retraction of the same value from government spending on retirement (ibid.). no tap activists, for example, support redirecting these amounts towards social incomes, public schools and research (chirenti, 2014). several campaigns explain their oppositions to infrastructure projects through a public waste frame denouncing a bad use of collective resources in time of crisis and austerity (no expo, 2015). in denouncing policies regarding large-scale infrastructure projects, they are denouncing a model in which public resources are used for private interests and in which few people profit to the disadvantage of the collective good. activists of both the no tap (re:common, 2014) and no expo (equal, 2014) campaigns define the different projects they are opposed to as profitable for businesses politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 50 and investors, but detrimental for contributors. no tubo activists further denounce a policy aiming to subjugate the territories in question to the creation of the profits for infrastructure promoters and builders while local communities accrue considerable debt (comitato no tubo, 2018b). so framed by the challengers, these mobilizations are seen as an action of defence of the general interests against the particular interest of investors (bobbio, 2011). from these cases, the use of a “public spending, private profits” counter-frame aiming to critically discuss these projects seems to emerge. at the same time, the conflict between the dominant “public interest” frame and the “public spending, private profits” counter-frame reveals a deeper rift as regards the concept of the public. no tav terzo valico actors have argued that “something is broken in our own language and in our own common feeling. something that has to do with the same idea of general interest and of being a community. the logic of large infrastructure projects, in particular of the high-speed train, dramatically underlines this rift” (no tav terzo valico, 2013c). it is evident that the attempt to question and redefine the idea of the public relates to the collectivity as a whole and not just to a single campaign. these reflections around the concept of the public demonstrate a process of “remontée en généralité” (lolive, 1999), understood as a discursive strategy that moves from the particular to the general. lulu actors have thus taken the accusation pointed by them by infrastructures promoters, of obstructing the public interest in a nimby sense, against them (comitato no tubo, 2018a). for the opponents, in fact, those who are pursuing private and egoistic goals to the detriment of local communities and the public good are in general infrastructure supporters, .in so doing for personal profit. what kind of growth model? along with concerns for the environment, a main issue in the studied lulu campaigns, according to the peculiarities of the specific contested projects, seems to be a worry about the potential consequences of the model of economic progress accompanying large infrastructure projects. each local community respective to each campaign, has developed this topic in a different way. the no triv (coordinamento nazionale no triv, 2016), no tap (re:common, 2014; comitato no tap, 2014), and no tubo (comitato no tubo, 2018a) campaigns (all concerning the exploitation of oil and gas) frame their protests along the lines of the necessity to convert the economic model from the use of fossil fuels to renewable ones in order to have a more sustainable economy. no cave is opposed to the intensive theft of marble from local mountains and suggests basing local development on responsible and sustainable tourism and also on the artistic use of marble (salviamo le apuane, 2014). other campaigns such as no expo (2015) and no tav terzo valico (2013b) demand a fair and sustainable growth model by denouncing the overbuilding due to the construction of large-scale infrastructure. at the same time, the no grandi navi (2017a) politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 51 campaign frames its protest along a critical stance to mass tourism and related effects such as gentrification, the cruiser business and more. all these campaigns also question the social consequences of infrastructure policy, particularly as regard the exploitation of workers and social aggregation. what these campaigns share is a common critical stance to an economic model based on the intensive exploitation of resources and also on activities which negatively impacts on socioeconomic development and on environment. the demand for a sustainable growth model is strongly connected to a demand for social justice. a good example of this is the no tap campaign, which doesn’t only question the construction of a pipeline on the territory it seeks to defend, but also recognizes the right of other communities invested in the pipeline to decide about their resources for themselves (the pipeline is part of a european project but concerns the territories of albania, greece, turkey, azerbaijan and other countries) (re:common, 2014). through denouncing the prevalent growth model, the no expo activists, as another example, denounce a neoliberal economy based on the exploitation of resources of southern countries and oppressed people. as concerns this hegemonic frame and the labelling of the neoliberal model of development as a categorical imperative to protest, lulu campaigns have introduced a counter-frame able to critically discuss the idea of progress. protest actors argue for the necessity to perform other “better practices” (ibid.), in order to guarantee a future for next generations. with a “there are other alternatives” (piana contro le nocività, 2012) slogan, these actors support a model oriented towards recycling, reusing, and reconverting intensive activities into more sustainable ones, for example by diffusing post-extractivism values (coordinamento nazionale no triv, 2016). what emerges is that, more than a “people of the no”, these actors are a “people of no to this growth model”. in fact, these campaigns show in an evident way an aversion against the dominant model of development based on consumerism, energy wastefulness, and an unhindered reaching for profit (bobbio, 2011). in opposition to investments in large-scale infrastructure, the challengers propose to invest in what they consider the real priorities for the country. this claim strongly emerges through the slogan “only one great infrastructure, home, and income for everyone”18, which has become very popular in these kinds of movements and has been adopted by several campaigns that combine the lulu issues with other claims such as precariousness and right to housing. in short, this slogan is able to show the inversion of priorities in the frame adopted by local actors. it is important to underline that at the core of these campaigns it is possible to identify a key value which orients the mobilizations against the infrastructural projects. these actors adopt the concept of “commons” (caruso, 2010) and oppose a growth paradigm rooted in a global model 18 this slogan is common in italy among various actors and campaigns. here some examples: 'una sola grande opera. casa e reddito per tutti' (dinamopress, 2013) or 'una sola grande opera: casa, reddito, dignità per tutt*' (infoaut, 2014). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 52 based on the privatization, commodification and exploitation of local resources. as a matter of fact, the “safeguard of common goods” is one of the most popular counter-frame nimby actors utilize. as the no expo’s manifesto declares, the movement seeks to criticize “[this] model of city, of development, of use of territory and of commons” (no expo, 2015). at the end of their documents, the no grandi navi campaigners use the slogan “laguna bene comune” (laguna common good). the idea at the core of commons paradigm is that local communities can participate in the management of their territory and overcome the state-market dichotomy (ostrom, 1990). are the local communities which should be able to decide on their future rather than national/transnational subjects or corporations. as is argued by andretta and guidi (2017: 264), “the emphasis on the common goods […] signals the intent to democratize the land use”. the cleavage between the dominant model of growth and alternative growth (caruso, 2010; piazza, 2011) is at the core of these kinds of conflicts and essentially puts the same concept of progress into question. in the end, the request for a more sustainable growth model meets and joins up with the request for more inclusive and decentralized forms of democratic participation. other issues in lulu campaigns, topics such as repression and war (mentioned only twice across the 9 cases analysed) or the civil rights (mentioned only once) seem to have less resonance. it could denote the absence of such frame a lack of attention for the other issues and thus leading to a limited field of possible ensuing action? by discussing what results from this comparison, i argue that some campaigns, due to their specific contexts, face certain topics more head-on than others. as it so happens, no muos actors discuss the issue of war because they oppose the construction of a military base, yet their history is also ingrained with sicily having often been used as an outpost for various countries (no muos, 2012). for no tav terzo valico attention to repression is linked with the political repression of dissident peoples, in their case of campaign activists themselves (no tav terzo valico, 2013a). concerning civil rights, though it is true that almost all campaigns pay some attention to the issue of participation and democracy, there is a lack of elaboration upon other civil and human rights. the no muos campaign is an exception. it refers to anti-fascism, anti-racism, solidarity and equality among mediterranean populations. no other actors, however, have framed their action along the lines of a fight for civil rights. in particular, there are no campaigns that refer to lgbtq issues19. 19 lgbtq (lesbian, gay, bisex, transgender, queer). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 53 if this result can be evaluated in a sense of civil rights being an area in which the counterframe of lulu actors are lacking, it is also necessary to consider the networks in which these actors are engaged to understand how they interact with other subjects and topics. this is an important research mission which has not been explored in this paper due to the scope of the research. in the next paragraph, i only mention the relationships between individual lulu campaigns in order to underline the strong connections between them. networks what emerges from a reading of the documents produced by lulu actors is an attempt to get in contact with other similar campaigns in order to overcome the local connotations of the individual protests. nearly each analysed campaign has engaged in an effort to mobilize on a broader level. while no tap, no tav terzo valico, and piana contro le nocività activists have joined together multiple local communities over this greater project, no muos has become a regional campaign through the coordination of 14 local committees into the “coordinamento dei comitati no muos” (no muos, 2013). at the same time, others such as no triv and no tubo, have been successful in transforming the level of coordination from local to national one. no triv has therefore gained strength through coordination and organized collective action against the exploitation of oil in italy. no tap interacts closely with other campaigns such as no snam20 and no tubo. no tap activists have also organized a caravan all around italy to sensitize other communities to their struggle (pressenza, 2017). no grandi navi has launched a transnational campaign named “facciamo respirare il mediterraneo” (let’s breath the mediterranean) which aims to raise awareness about the environmental costs of the cruiser industry and to involve france, greece, and spain in a program reducing sulphur emissions (no grandi navi, 2017b). whereas these attempts to broaden the scope of individual mobilizations is concerned, it is important to take into consideration two meetings, one on the national level and one on the european level, which have occurred over the past two years. the first meeting, named “agorà of movements in defence of territories and for the environmental justice” (cdca, 2017), took place in naples in 2016. with mixed academic and activist participation, this event represented a first moment of confrontation on the issue among scholars and movement actors. on one hand this meeting represented an effort to give an empirical base to lulu claims, and on the other hand it gave birth to an interest in the construction of a broader network able to develop alternative 20 snam is a gas pipeline project of 700 km that aims to pass through the adriatic territories of italy. the project is strongly opposed by local communities that denounce the serious and dangerous impacts of snam for the environment and the health and safety of local population (tuttooggi, 2017). politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 54 strategies to the existing growth model. this latter goal was been confirmed by the convocation of a second meeting in venice at the end of 2017. on this occasion, a conference named “european days of movements for the defence of territories, environmental justice and democracy” (global project, 2017) was held. lulu actors were invited from all over europe, and democracy was added to the event as a pivotal topic of the meeting. by mentioning these meetings is possible to bring attention to the dynamics in which lulu actors are engaged in order to structure a local-global dialectic and to overcome the local dimensions of their protests by framing their opposition in terms of resistance against land exploitation and as a demand for a different model of growth (ibid.). conclusion by considering the data collected and discussed in this paper, it is possible to draw a series of conclusions. first, the label of nimby typically associated with lulu campaigns does not reflect the attitude of the local actors involved in the campaigns. the use of the nimby frame, considered dominant, appears to be a strategic diversionary reframing (freudenburg and gramling, 1994) choice made by the economic coalition (infrastructure supporters) to delegitimize these forms of protests. in so doing, infrastructure supporters seek to shift the focus of public opinion from the pivotal claims of the campaigns towards the irrationality and particularism of the challengers. local actors respond to this mainstream representation of them, by engaging in the development of a common counter-frame able to universalize the issues they protest by starting from a “not here nor elsewhere” slogan to underline the transversal relevance of their claims. this slogan represents the italian implementation of the so-called nope (trom, 1999) or niaby (lesbirel, 1998) discourse. by framing their actions as a request for social justice, welfare, a fairer working system, a more inclusive forms of local democracy and for a sustainable growth model, the local actors realize a scale-shift in their campaigns through the “geographic expansion of contention” (mcadam and boudet, 2012: 132). lulu actors have been successful in joining seemingly separate issues within a common interpretative scheme. this frame bridging (snow and benford, 1992) has allowed the actors of the analysed campaigns to interconnect issues such as democracy, the neoliberal model, globalization, social justice, anti-corruption, and others to the main claims of their protests. even though della porta and andretta (2002) distinguish between various frames in relation to the actors, in the selected campaigns these frames intersect and seem to have been generalized across all the campaigns independently by the acting groups. this does not mean that there aren’t actors who give privileges to one frame over an-other, but that these keys of interpretation spread across all the campaign's actors and become a shared discourse. the environmental frame, the public waste and corruption frame, and the centralized and non-democratic decision-making procedure frame act in unison and cross paths across the analysed campaigns. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 55 it is important to underline that the opposition to the hegemonic model of development is immediately connected with criticisms of the dominant model of progress and its notion that largescale public infrastructures increase competitiveness. in fact, in the diagnosis process (snow and benford, 1988), lulu activists identify as the cause of the problem the neoliberal model of growth positing that it imposes specific priorities and also the representative model of democracy which centralizes decision-making processes and so leave the local communities under-represented. in their diagnosis, private investors, often in collusion with public institutions, are subjects which pursue this faulty growth model through the construction of large-scale infrastructures. at the same time, in the prognosis phase (snow and benford, 1988), the challengers propose to overcome these problems by promoting an alternative economic and political paradigm based on participation from below and on the common and sustainable use of land. the motivations (snow and benford, 1988) used to persuade third parties to mobilize and to support the protests is related to the defence of the public/general interest. from this perspective, each person has to defend the collective good against private speculations. a second point worth discussing here concerns the presence of common frames despite the specific differences between campaigns, territories, and local subcultures. in fact, the features of all campaigns and their contexts do not in particular affect their frames. from the north to the south italy, the issues that characterize the protests are the same. in these italian cases, there seems to exist a master frame encompassing participation from below and the management of territory. a “commons, democracy and environmental justice” (cdej) frame bring issues to be closer to the meaning which italian lulu actors attribute to their protests. in parallel with an enlargement of frames, there is an apparent process of scaling campaigns up through the development of wider networks as a way of “bridging claims and identities” (mcadam et al., 2001: 331). in fact, the construction of national and transnational networks among lulu campaigns demonstrates their awareness of common global implications regarding how the dominant model of progress affects territories and, at the same time, their awareness that unification is necessary to organize against and resist this process. future research the analysis in this paper has sought to observe if the nimby label as a frame mirrors the attitude of lulu movements. it has been found that it does not. the analysis has led to a recognition of the development of an alternative counter-frame and it has pointed to the existence of common discourses and master frames among various campaigns with different contexts. nevertheless, there are 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https://www.pressenza.com/it/2017/11/carovana-no-tap-la-tutela-benessere-dei-territori/ politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 39 (december 2018) 63 salviamo le apune (2014): 'un piano programma di sviluppo economico alternativo per le apuane (pipsea)'. accessible at: http://www.salviamoleapuane.org/pdf/pipsea2014.pdf (12 august 2018) tuttooggi (2017): 'gasdotto snam dentro al sisma | le proteste dal salento a colfiorito'. accessible at: http://tuttoggi.info/gasdotto-snam-dentro-al-sisma-le-proteste-dal-salento-colfiorito/386036/ (12 august 2018) http://www.salviamoleapuane.org/pdf/pipsea2014.pdf http://tuttoggi.info/gasdotto-snam-dentro-al-sisma http://tuttoggi.info/gasdotto-snam-dentro-al-sisma-le-proteste-dal-salento-colfiorito/386036/ “not here nor elsewhere”: the local-global dialectic in locally unwanted land use (lulu) campaigns; the case of italy introduction framing the conflict: a cultural perspective on social movements nimby or not? the local-global dialectic in lulu campaigns conceptualization and operationalization methodology and data analysis and findings not here environment and health democracy, legality, corruption public spending: what is the public interest? what kind of growth model? other issues networks conclusion future research references primary online sources politikon_vol. 36_1.2 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 5 i always feel like somebody’s watching me. understanding the authoritarian tendencies of the u.s. national security state elizabeth wright https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.36.1 elizabeth wright, 22, has a bachelor of arts in political science from southwestern university and is a masters in security policy studies candidate at george washington university. he research centers on the intersection of constitutional law and surveillance, specifically examining privacy and civil liberties in the public sphere. outside of academics, she is part time contributor for the online initiative, middle east collective, providing monthly commentary on national security and foreign policy. abstract george orwell’s novel 1984 defined authoritarianism as a consequence of overarching surveillance in the modern state. nearly 70 years later, the threat of tyranny reemerges in the present surveillance state—the u.s. beyond the orwellian concept of big brother to examine the u.s. national security state, this research examines the expansion of domestic surveillance in the post-9/11 age. using a within-case comparative analysis of the presidencies of george w. bush and barack obama, it argues that institutional manipulation has forged the u.s. national security state into a surveillance heavy banopticon (bigo 2006). though the latter operates to maintain state and citizen security, it undermines citizens’ freedoms through invasive surveillance policies which embolden state repression, despotism, and unconstitutional policy. such authoritarian tendencies can be seen in the creation of surveillance under bush and the expansive development of surveillant assemblages, surveillant culture, and surveillance capitalism (zuboff 2015) during the obama era. keywords authoritarianism; banopticon; barack obama; george bush; national security state; orwell; surveillance https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.36.1 politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 6 introduction “do not confuse sécurité, the feeling of having nothing to fear and sûreté, the state of having nothing to fear.” — marguerite-marie dubois “modern tyranny is terror management. when the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power.” — timothy snyder in a speech to the muslim public affairs council, brookings senior fellow and hoover institute task force on national security, technology, and law co-chair, benjamin wittes spoke of the role of national security amidst the growing global trend toward authoritarianism. while very understanding of the fear that united states’ surveillance and security techniques are susceptible to the corruption of demagoguery, wittes ensured the audience that it is the duty of every public servant to protect institutions and individuals from political processes that would seek to abuse them and undermine democracy. true national security [is] the security of a liberal society that protects individuals and minority groups in the exercise of their freedoms… in the security of a liberal democracy, the security you’re defending is the security of liberalism itself (wittes 2017). here is the primary contradiction that plagues the national security state — if national security is meant to secure liberalism itself, can it ever truly protect the people? several scholars (monahan 2010; raskin 1976) have made the case against mass surveillance and national security practices, fearing that the lack of legitimate justifications for observation provide an opening for exploitations of democratic power. few have examined the possible correlation between emerging trends in western authoritarianism and surveillance-based democracies (cooley 2015; morozov 2012). building off plato’s concept that “tyranny is an outgrowth of democracy” (plato 1955: 299), as well as lyon’s research of intersecting power dynamics between surveillance and bureaucracy (lyon 1994), this study will explore the role of the modern national security state in shaping current u.s. tendencies toward “new” authoritarianism. in a post-9/11 culture, how does the national security state utilize security and surveillance processes, therefore rendering the united states susceptible to authoritarianism? this text hypothesizes that the u.s. national security state has become a banopticon — a term coined by bigo to encompass the current preemptive profiling of citizens which prioritizes the securitization of the majority over the rights of the minority (bigo 2006) — therefore allowing for surveillance, state repression, and despotism in the face of the war on terror to foster authoritarianism. by analyzing the elements of politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 7 the national security state that are antithetical to liberal democracy, this research will establish the sequence of u.s. authoritarianization, or the “slow and incremental dismantling of democratic systems by democratically-elected leaders” (kendall-taylor et al. 2017: 9). in an age of emerging new authoritarianism, this is essential to reforming the relationship between the national security state and liberal democracy, before it is too late. in order to appropriately consider the ways in which the national security state “both exploits and presupposes the dominance of certain subjectivities,” this research design will feature three theoretical frameworks: structuralism, liberalism, and institutionalism (belletto 2009: 334-335). according to blackburn, structuralism encompasses, “interlocking combinations of political, economic, ideological, and theoretical structure and practices [that] form objective determinants of resulting social forces” (blackburn 2008: 16). in order to grasp the means in which the national security state develops surveillance subcultures within society (lyon 2007), it is importance to review how political structure can influence public opinion, ideology, and social inequality, potentially resulting in authoritarianism. for the purpose of this research, liberalism will be defined through freeden’s perspective of modern u.s. liberalism. he defines this theory as “a plastic, changing thing, shaped and reshaped by the thought-practices of individuals and groups… liberalism is the vehicle best encompassing the dynamic of individual and social life” (freeden 2005: 20-25). since this analysis will review national security and surveillance within the context of the united states liberal democracy, it’s necessary to consider how liberalism (and it’s alter-ego, illiberalism) functions within the national security state. institutionalism, defined by peters as how “the institution represents more of the individuals themselves — or at least their ideas and discourses — and their patterns of interactions,” offers insight into the relationship between states and constituents within the national security state (peters 2012: 116). this is essential to understanding how certain bodies, specifically legislative and economic, can redefine democracy through surveillance and security. by analyzing the nature of structuralism, liberalism, and institutionalism in relation to specific administrative actions regarding surveillance, this research intends to develop a course for the united states democracy’s path to a “new” authoritarian national security apparatus. conceptualizing authoritarianism, democracy, the national security state, and surveillance contrary to popular belief, surveillance is not merely present at the government level. according to numerous scholars, surveillance techniques have been a staple of the united states’ structure since its conception, often replicated within systems of education, healthcare, criminal justice, and the military to ensure order, classification, and security (lyon 1994; moore and currah politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 8 2015). surveillance will be understood here as modes of systematic monitoring “in which special note is taken of certain human behaviors that go beyond human idle curiosity” (lyon 2007: 13). though this definition of surveillance may appear broad or vague, it is meant to reflect the observation, classification, and enforcement techniques used by the state that deviate from perceptions of surveillance that are strictly militaristic entity or rooted in artificial intelligence (allen and chan 2017). systems of surveillance birthed the national security state, a system that he defines as a state that “emerges from war, from fear of revolution and change, from the instability of capitalism, and from the nuclear weapons and military technology” (raskin 1976: 189). the national security apparatus as it is conceived today originated from the national security act of 1947, a statute that would go on to shape the future of the national security council (nsc), central intelligence agency (cia) and various systems within the department of defense. a distinct perspective of both domestic surveillance and the national security state, in regards to united states politics, is imperative to understanding shifts from liberal democracy to authoritarianism. but what is democracy? schmitter and karl define democracy as “a system of governance in which rulers are held accountable for their actions in the public realm by citizens… [even though] no single set of actual institutions, practices, or values embodies democracy” (schmitter and karl 1991: 4 & 11). in the case of the united states, which operates within a “liberal” democracy, this term could be further understood as “governments and other democratic institutions [which are] responsive to the majority of the people, rather than only a narrow elite, or markets, unelected bureaucrats, or corporate interests” (berman 2017: 38). one could argue that these prescriptions for democracy are the foundation for understanding the potential trajectory from democracy to authoritarianism. de tocqueville noted, “i see clearly two tendencies in equality; one turns each man’s attention to new thoughts, while the other would induce him freely to give up thinking at all...the human spirit might bind itself in tight fetters to the general will of the greatest number” (de tocqueville 1966: 436). unlike the authoritarianism of old, which operates under typical totalitarian tropes (terror, indoctrination, social control and movement of the masses) mentioned in arendt’s origins of totalitarianism (1979), the “new” digital age of authoritarianism instead functions on the mere threat of terror replicated within the state of surveillance. hence, new authoritarianism could be branded as a pseudo-panopticon, a “mechanism, for it automatizes and individualizes power, [and] also a laboratory; used to carry out experiments, to alter behavior, to train or correct individuals” (foucault 1977: 7 & 8). using constant visibility, new authoritarianism seduces individuals to modify actions to fit within the confines of surveillance culture. methodology politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 9 to understand the relationship between authoritarianism and the post-9/11 national security state, this paper will compare surveillance techniques used within the years of george w. bush’s presidency (2001 to 2009) and the era of president barack obama (2009 to 2017). taking a qualitative approach, this research will operate using mill’s method of difference, a system which is essential to, “eliminat[ing] potential sufficient causes to conclude that a given factor is not (by itself) necessary or sufficient for the outcome of interest” (mahoney and villegas 2007: 75). while numerous democratic inconsistencies and intelligence infractions exhibited by presidents bush and obama ranged from defensive to preemptive, respectively, both endangered united states’ democracy, exploiting institutions and citizens to bolster a tyrannical national security apparatus. given the most different system determines varying factors which implicitly and explicitly shape outcomes in a case analysis, this research assumes that the presence of mill’s method will reflect how the increase of surveillance within the national security state, through institutional means, has contributed to the authoritarianization of the united states. this paper does acknowledge certain research constraints that stem from the clandestine nature of the topic. it is difficult to operationalize levels of surveillance when the majority of the information regarding covert counterterrorism operations and surveilled citizens is classified. by further examining the processes of domestic surveillance through evaluation of legislation, emergency status, and national security rhetoric within the bush and obama administrations, this paper will assess the validity of the causality between the surveillance-heavy national security state and new authoritarianism. shifts in democratic structure proponents of structuralism argue that the expansion of machine learning and social media amidst the digital age has contributed to widespread anti-democratization through surveillance, causing tendencies toward authoritarianism (giroux 2015; andrejevic 2007). not only do technologically advanced means of dataveillance establish a newfound power of the state, the current societal conceptions of surveillance have also shifted, no longer conflated with the past abuses of the national security state and instead romanticized by popular culture (giroux 2015: 108). there is a present merging of the private and public spheres that can be manipulated for tyrannical advantage. andrejevic views this as a “refeudalization of the public sphere,” noting how online culture is structured to “pervert the political process [by] privileging the vires of established political majorities at the expense of the interests and concerns of those who are already largely excluded” (andrejevic 2007: 198 & 208). coupled with consumer culture and the hollywood-ification of online branding, ratings and mass followings are viewed as a necessity—even at the loss of privacy, factual information, and values. authoritarianism comfortably fits into this social media structure, especially given the modern manifestation of authoritarian policies are increasingly becoming populist and politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 10 personalized in nature (kendall-taylor et al. 2017: 9). citizens are socialized into a regime of security through willing surveillance, eventually succumbing to “regime suppression” through “the most cherished notions of [online] agency” (giroux 2015: 111-112). rather than fully adhering to the authoritarian elements presented within the digital age, united states citizens are coerced into conformity, often ignorant to the debilitating effects of online culture and advanced observation. several scholars believe that increased technology is essential to the future of democracy (bryan et al. 1998: 5; rheingold 1993: 14). these arguments make the case that online culture is more participatory and accessible, effectively streamlining ideas and providing transparency. monahan argues for modes of dataveillance which assist democracy in universalizing power across varying demographies by providing equal access to information and policing legitimate threats without the assumption of danger based on socioeconomic, ethnic, or gendered means (monahan 2010: 103). this is faulty logic, however, for it fails to consider the algorithmic disparities riddled within surveillance systems. as eubanks notes, machine technology can in fact be biased. there are detrimental effects of assuming the objectivity of high-tech programming, especially in the united states where these “impartial” systems replicate current societal cleavages which contribute to democratic instability by “automating inequality”(eubanks 2018). the modern age of surveillance is structured to encourage various online monitoring techniques which are wholly antithetical to u.s. values. systems which breed discrimination, encourage censorship, and undermine privacy are weaponized against the general populace, causing many to weigh imperative first and fourth amendment rights against the need for national security. it is this “algorithmic authoritarianism” which undermines the political and begins to highlight the threat that surveillance systems pose to the future of u.s. democracy. illiberalism & the decline of u.s. democracy scholars have long debated the authoritarian possibilities of liberalism, or the lack thereof. within the national security state, the construction of the “ideal liberal citizen”, a liberal democratic model which is fundamentally exclusionary, streamlining national identity through concepts of superior versus inferior, civilized versus uncivilized, and legal citizen versus illegal (tebble 2006, 15), has been a primary source for democratic inconsistency. the politics of identity profit off of “xenophobic, ethnically exclusionary [and] territorially expansionist” polices (tebble 2015: 471) similar to that of early surveillance measures which transitioned from the management and profit of slaves to the invasive classification, organization, and punishment, of minorities (browne 2015; moore and currah 2015). similarly, efforts to authorize the executive order 9066 — president franklin d. roosevelt’s initiative to remove and intern “any or all people from military areas as deemed necessary or desirable,” specifically, americans of japanese ancestry — and its sister politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 11 initiative, the modern muslim ban — formally known as executive order 13769 or protecting the nation from foreign terrorist entry, this attempted to suspend entry of syrian refugees and travelers iran, iraq, libya, somalia, sudan, syria, and yemen — have exemplified the many ways in which democracy is exploited and undermined through the juxtaposition of surveillance and identity liberalism.though the politics of identity are central to notions of democracy, personal and national identity can become too radicalized, often inspiring authoritarianization. in the post-9/11 era, this has been most glaringly represented through the normalization of exclusionary and nativist national security processes. following the onslaught of online vetting initiatives, facial recognition programming, and heightened biometric screening, ”comfort with increased surveillance [has created] an internalized acceptance of a totalitarian tendency. this normalizing of the totalitarian is one of the more frightening features of willed and willing development of a surveillance society” (fiske 1998: 86).still, academics argue that illiberalism is not a direct sign of authoritarianism. berman provides an apt analysis for the liberalism and illiberalism presented by democracy, arguing that liberal democracy (as in the case of the united states) is not the model manifestation of democracy (berman 2017: 30). therefore, illiberal democratic practices are often the sign of flourishing democracy rather than democracy in decline. the problem with this perspective is that it fails to consider the illiberal to liberal trajectory within united states history. given that u.s. democracy became “fully democratic” in the 1970s (mickey et al. 2017), present shifts toward authoritarianism prove regressive, resembling the early illiberal struggles over civil liberties and power dynamics. oliker writes that illiberalism itself cannot be employed to demolish democracy. historically, illiberalism uses “democratic institutions to centralize power and limit civil liberties” (oliker 2017: 7). in harnessing the divisions brought on by illiberal democracy, the national security state assumes a mild authoritarian agenda, prioritizing the repression and surveillance of the few in order to protect the many. in the post-9/11 national security state, the surveilled are at the will of not simply the security apparatus itself, but the supposedly objective technological programmers which orient machine learning to determine everything from advertisements to defense. the threat of relying on a subset of individuals to create automated systems for political means, especially given the technology sector often reflects a homogenous demography like that of the ideal liberal citizen. there is a “coded gaze” imprinted within various surveillance programs, and “software is only as smart as the data used to train it” (buolamwini, qtd. in lohr 2018). given the 21st century is driven by automated systems, its essential to acknowledge how bias present in developmental stages can shift perceptions and outcomes outside of machine learning. according to eubanks, ”human bias in public assistance politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 12 systems has created deep inequalities for decades. specifically around the treatment of black and brown folks who have often been either overrepresented in the more punitive systems or diverted from the more helpful systems” (eubanks, qtd, in edes and bowman 2018). while the centralization of internet data may appear harmless and necessary to some, to others it manifests as a virtual stop and frisk or ijimcrow. the expansive and invasive surveillance machine that is the modern national security state, though said to be used as a means to “maintain” the economy, education, healthcare, and beyond, has simultaneously created a a pipeline from surveillance to incarceration, deportation, and authoritarianization. demolishing “ironclad” institutions though several scholars maintain that the national security state and democracy are always in opposition (shetterly 2013, belletto 2009), there is an assumption that institutions are incapable of corruption, effectively able to restrain abuses and shield democracy from tyrannical leaders. though it “may be tempting to assume that the united states’ centuries-old democracy is impervious to democratic erosion, such confidence is misplaced. those pinning their hopes on pushback from the bureaucracy are also likely to be disappointed (mickey et al. 2017).” specifically, the intersection of surveillance and national security, citizen and state, and democracy and authoritarianism in the united states is one that often features institutional manipulation within executive, legislative, and judiciary. though security and surveillance seek to maintain order in the name of public safety, they often operate within political means that are vague, allowing for unmonitored imperialism, secrecy, and illegality (raskin 1976, 198). just as foreign policy and intelligence seek to combat external threats, so does the domestic formation of the national security state in relation to internal threats. using surveillance techniques within the framework of “maximum flexibility,” security measures are justified as a means to diffuse supposed chaos and terror, even if preemptively screening nonthreatening actors such as lower class individuals, dark bodies, females, non-gender conforming citizens, immigrants, and opposing political operatives (raskin 1976: 199). this form of risk-averse surveillance, known as the banopticon (bigo 2006), exemplifies the tension between democracy and the national security state. the militaristic origins of security and surveillance, when coupled with neoliberal aspects of united states democracy, fail to produce effective democratic processes by creating a culture of “surveillance capitalism” (zuboff 2015). couldry writes, surveillance-heavy democracy are too “focused on data extraction rather than the production of new goods, thus generating intense concentrations of power over extraction and threatening core values such as freedom” (couldry 2016).through the harnessing of societal vulnerabilities, certain citizens are reduced to casualties of the state’s pursuit of security, deprived of many “human, legal and social guarantees and protection politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 13 of individuals.” hence, “those who govern can non-longer rely on the rhetoric of sovereignty [and] citizenship” (bigo 2006: 8 & 11). the relationship between the state and surveillance poses a direct threat to democracy by actively exploiting the citizenry, subverting constitutional rights, and minimizing of authoritarian tendencies, all at the institutional level. other research argues against the correlation of surveillance-heavy security states and authoritarianism. weiss rejects the “dichotomy” presented by many critiques of the national security state, contending assumptions that technology, neoliberalism, and capitalism threaten the stability and rationale of the national security state. her argument arguing is that security and surveillance can transcend democratic inconsistency to remain a strong force of united states democracy (weiss 2014: 19-21). in contrast, potter finds that though pervasive surveillance cultures are rarely studied within authoritarian regimes, current authoritarian states are much more vulnerable to the threats of repressive security than democracy (potter 2016: 2). both arguments are ignorant to the very real threat of abusive power within democratic states of surveillance. as jablonsky notes, “the new threat [of 9/11] assures the continued existence if not growth of the national security state and will certainly cause increased centralization and intrusiveness of the us government” (jablonsky 2002: 18). lyon agrees, finding that “surveillance enhances the position of those ‘in power.’ power, in this view, is not a possession, but a strategy” (lyon 2007: 18). the results from present examinations of the national security apparatus therefore present a significant case for the correlation between surveillance, security, and democratic shifts toward authoritarianism in the united states. case study: the birth of american authoritarianization to chart a trajectory for the authoritarianization of the united states, it’s essential to review the origins of institutional abuses perpetuated by the national security state. specifically, how has the presence of domestic surveillance under the bush and obama administrations signified a shift from liberal democracy to new authoritarianism in the u.s.? following the events of september 11, the bush administration was a catalyst for executive oversight and institutional manipulation, launching “the most sustained attack on democratic rights in modern american history. using the pretext provided by the september 11 terrorist attacks, it systematically constructed, through the usa patriot act, the homeland security bill and other reactionary measures, the framework for a police state” (giroux 2014). enacted only forty-five days following 9/11, the usa patriot act provided the initial legal validation for the state to monitor citizen communications without a warrant. when questioned regarding the paradoxical rule of law exhibited by the patriot act, the department of justice expressed the need for congress to “retrofit” the law in an effort to protect the wellbeing of american citizens (doj 2001). similarly, congress delegated nearly all powers to the executive, “casting aside longstanding constitutional limits on government investigators [by] politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 14 valuing secrecy over deliberation [while undermining the congressional] ability to identify—let alone stop—serious investigative abuses” committed in the name of national security (bendix and quirk 2013: 2 & 13). the legislature and judiciary’s endorsement of a culture of lawlessness and urgency allowed for the creation of various invasive means of protection such as the defense advanced research projects agency (darpa) information awareness office and the total information awareness program (tia). through a centralized system of information collection and sharing, the patriot act served as an extension of fisa, empowering the state to lower legal standards and increase abilities to wiretap, trace, and register citizens. beyond legislation, the bush years also emboldened the executive on an international arena, contributing to a mentality of u.s. exceptionalism domestically and abroad. after september 11, the united states embraced the role of a “lone hegemonic superpower” shifting “the mode of political regulation” (steinmetz 2003: 330). the bush administration resisted international law abroad while simultaneously enacting invasive and reactionary surveillance programming at home, an early signifier of authoritarianization. while institutional manipulation enacted during the bush administration developed the infrastructure for the post-9/11 national security state, the obama era ushered in a massive expansion of systems of surveillance. during his time in the senate, obama openly advocated against reauthorization of the patriot act, arguing that it was unlawful for congress to approve legislation that removed the right for citizen appeal against surveillance. when campaigning for president he maintained this perspective, vowing against the secrecy and intelligence illegalities committed by his predecessor. but by early 2008, the obama platform was seemingly aligned with the foreign policy and security interests of the bush administration. while the impression was that the “openly authoritarian” bush administration undermined the rule of law when enacting post-9/11 surveillance, “the supposedly civil libertarian obama administration had also aggressively implemented a massively intrusive security regime (bendix and quirk 2013: 2). under obama, international efforts to counter the war on terror engaged in the collection of citizen “vulnerabilities” ranging from sexual orientation to medical condition and financial record. in order to enhance the national security state and expose citizen-led terror-related activities, it was assumed that similar efforts could be lucrative for terror prevention within the united states. eventually, the obama administration opted to train citizens to serve as an extension of state enforcement and intelligence to minimize dissent, opposition, and inaccuracy. under the pretext of domestic counterterrorism, dhs launched if you see something, say something™ (2010) and eye on awareness™ (2011) in accordance with doj’s nationwide suspicious activity reporting initiative (2010) in an effort to expand upon the scrutiny of citizen vulnerabilities and threatening behaviors. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 15 moving beyond bush’s darpa and tia programs, data mining under president obama could obtain information of a financial, medical, and biometric nature without a warrant. using prism, an extension of the protect america act of 2007, surveillance also began to take on a new, non-militaristic purpose in the form of surveillance capitalism. the u.s. national security agency (nsa) developed prism in accordance with several technology conglomerates, namely google inc., in order to expand upon its internet monitoring and acquisition of “confidential” information. by july of 2013, the general populace began to learn of the reality of obama era surveillance. everything from private communications to facial recognition could be utilized and if deemed necessary to national security, all data could be compiled, shared, and deployed throughout the intelligence community. the global surveillance leaks from edward snowden were the first efforts to apply pressure on the obama administration, eventually shaping the usa freedom act. the freedom act was supposedly unique in that it protected civil liberties by ending bulk collection of data, improved transparency by requiring the publication of fisa decisions, and advanced national security objectives by increasing various means of surveillance and enforcement (judiciary committee 2015). however, this bipartisan effort to restrict the nsa and reform domestic surveillance still failed to remedy the tension between the state and citizen (cohn and reitman 2015). though the intelligence community was finally being held accountable for their various unlawful actions, the act failed to completely eradicate section 702 of fisa altogether—a reform effort that would symbolize the prioritization of the rights of citizens over the security of liberal democracy. building the banopticon after a legacy of warrantless spying, the implications of post-9/11 surveillance remain remain in u.s. politics and society, forever creating a strain between state and citizen. “this radical disembedding from the social is another aspect of surveillance capitalism’ s antidemocratic character. under surveillance capitalism, democracy no longer functions as a means to prosperity; democracy threatens surveillance revenues” (zuboff 2015, 86). the trajectory from bush to obama, which could be categorized as a transition from the early stage national security apparatus to the banopticon, is best described by the shift from bush’s reactionary, authoritarian surveillance policy in the wake of september 11 to obama’s full scale shift which had institutional and cultural consequences for the united states. the most unique aspect of obama era surveillance was the conflation of economy and surveillance, public and private, and citizen and national security state. something, say something™ (2010) and eye on awareness™ blurred many lines, forming surveillant assemblages who “feel for the state” in an effort to protect democracy. by forging citizen-spies, obama attempted to “produce [u.s.] subjects who would increase the productivity and efficiency politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 16 within structures [while] reproduce[ing] sovereign power rather than resist[ing] its mechanisms” (ritchie 2015: 181 & 182). but just as foucault writes of discipline and power, the regulation of u.s. society, even by subtle means, created a disciplinary national security state which was easily susceptible to manipulation. in building this u.s. banopticon, rhetoric has also stimulated an ideology of american nationalism that borders on tribalism. department of homeland security (dhs) initiatives contributed to u.s. authoritarianization by making the fight against terror a personal, visceral, and daily pursuit by means of profiling and affective assumption. the “terrorist” became coded not only as an omnipresent entity, but an invisible enemy hiding in plain sight. bodies were characterized as either transparent or opaque—transparent bodies were perceived as less threatening due to their visible conformity to the national security state’s aesthetics and values while opacity became synonymous with dissent and darkness (hall 2015). much like the anglo-american model that defined early american surveillance systems, the present national security state is inherently gendered and racialized to determine threat level by subjective means. hall writes, the capacity to risk and to have one’s risky ventures securitized is a marker of the privilege of transparency…white people are presumed innocent and people of color are presumed guilty…some enjoy the privilege of being presumed capable of demonstrating (the absence of) the threat of terrorism. others are presumed incapable, unwilling, or noncompliant (hall 2015: 75-76). in this way, rhetoric perpetuates american authoritarianization at various levels of u.s. society. from federally mandated wiretapping of assumed jihadists to the school-to-prison pipeline that often criminalizes black and brown bodies before an actual offense has occurred, the banopticon encourage unity through division, openly securing a subset of the population in an effort to once again prioritize state before citizen. this rhetorical nature of security and surveillance is a a primary sign of the tension between democracy and authoritarianism. “the national security state’s apparatus needs arbitrary power. such power has its own code, which is meant to govern or justify the behavior of the initiated—after the fact. it operates to protect the state apparatus from the citizenry” (raskin, qtd in shetterly 2013).directly following september 11, the reconceptualization of perceptions of security, intelligence, and surveillance occurred in the form of subliminal messaging. bush often spoke in coded language, or rhetoric disseminated through a reproduction of discourse influenced by institutional power relations in order to justify undemocratic and illiberal actions taken in the name of security and defense. the rhetoric of security and terrorism serves as “the dissolution of the civil relations obtaining within and among nations, particularly liberal nations, and thus portends the dissolution of civilization itself” (noorani 2005: 13). for example, consider the nature of the mnemonics used to legalize domestic surveillance. by referring to security policy as a means of patriotism and freedom, instead of spelling out the usa politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 17 patriotic act and usa freedom act as “uniting and strengthening america by providing appropriate tools required to intercept and obstruct terrorism” and “uniting and strengthening america by fulfilling rights and ending eavesdropping, dragnet-collection and online monitoring,” respectively, the state has found a means to advertise repression and invasion of privacy as genuine u.s. americanism. hall writes, “in this manner, the aesthetics of transparency lend a democratic veneer to sites where radically undemocratic practices thrive” (hall 2015: 66). the ability to reframe the narrative of national security by propagating the notion that a legislative defense of liberty and democracy is incapable of defying the constitution is a primary example of the minimization of american authoritarianism. beyond rhetoric, states of emergency sustain the constant culture of urgency and chaos needed to foster anxiety and terror within the national security state, an essential element of authoritarianism. the modern fear state is unique in that the mere threat of terror to be continuously replicated, even when no genuine threat exists. presently, the united states is in twenty-eight states of emergency, but it isn’t new—“this month marks the start of our 39th year in a continuous emergency state” (padhi 2017). since their conception, emergency powers have presented a threat to democracy and the rule of law. upon investigating president truman’s actions following the 1950 declaration of emergency (a mandate that would eventually lead to the war in vietnam), a committee report found that emergency powers to the executive “conferred enough authority to rule the country without reference to normal constitutional process” (padhi 2017). today, this committee warning is almost altogether ignored. as of 2014, fifty-two states of emergency have been placed into effect and thirty are still “active,” with a majority of them stemming from the bush era. the immediate reactivation of emergency status is detrimental to democracy, especially given the institutional tendency towards widespread surveillance in the postmodern age. through emergency status, the national security state weaponizes fear, producing “privatized citizens whose paramount concern is personal welfare, [therefore] rendering individuals particularly vulnerable to the crushing strength of institutions “(lyon 2007: 19). through the convergence of states of emergency and surveillant society, paranoia serves as a primary tool of panoptic control. though this perpetual fear state is an ineffective means of governance, it contributes to a “crimethink” culture—an orwellian concept referring to the encouragement of misinformation and post-truth in order to make the populace reliant on the state (orwell 1949)— which often encourages citizen disillusionment and societal longing for protection by any means. here, the state of emergency enables authoritarianization from the “new strongmen,” populist autocrats and democratically elected “everymen” who provide a “milder, less openly brutal” reign of tyranny (case 2017). given new authoritarianism is much more visibly reasonable than old school authoritarianism politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 18 of the twentieth century, liberal societies such as the united states are much more susceptible to its subtle anti-democratization. still, the national security state is not a new enemy of democracy. since it’s conception, the united states security apparatus has plagued society, promoting “lies and self-deception [that] have broken faith with the essential precondition for constitutional government in democracy" (raskin, qtd in shetterly 2013). however, security policies and surveillance practices alone cannot breed tyranny. lyon writes, “to detect totalitarian tendencies in specific practices is a far cry from declaring that the ‘ surveillance society has finally arrived” (lyon 2007: 87). in fact, state observance and management is necessary in that it ensures democratic capabilities — specifically by ensuring equal distribution of rights (lyon 1994: 31). the relevance of the september 11th attacks in shaping u.s. authoritarianization is also contested. for while, “the events of september 11 catalyzed a break with the established regulatory model [of united states democracy]… the response to september 11 has been a solution with significant precedents in post-1945 u.s. state history…” (steinmetz 2003: 325 & 335). research of bigo (2006), giroux (2015; 2016), lyon (2007), noorani (2005), and others contends this notion, finding that the institutional manipulation of the relationship between citizen and state, surveillant and surveilled, and the rule of law and public safety have heightened tensions in a post-9/11 era. regardless of twentieth century origins of american authoritarianism, the illiberalism and undemocratic manifestations of the national security state following the attacks of september 11 depict a unique shift toward “new” authoritarianism. the united states presently operates through “security in the disciplinary” modeled as “domestically authoritarian and geopolitically imperialist” state (steinmetz 2003: 338 & 341). looking forward to the future, citizens would do well to “be alert to the use of the words extremism and terrorism. be alive to the fatal notions of emergency and exception. be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary” (snyder 2017: 99). through countersurveillance measures and resistance of the national security state as it converges with capitalism, there is potential to reverse the effects of the authoritarianization of the united states. however, this can only occur given widespread societal pressure on the three branches by imploring reform of fisa 702. seeing as recent polling (eoyang, freeman, and wittes 2017) suggests a nationwide confidence in the power of the state to protect the people, by any means, there is little hope for a truly progressive and constitutionally sound implementation of the proposed 2017 usa liberty act, the most recent extension of the 2001 patriot act and 2015 freedom act. future research of public opinion will illuminate additional defenses against the united states’ authoritarianization that allows for increased state power in the name of security. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 19 conclusion the legacy left behind by actions taken within the bush and obama eras has brought the united states to its present predicament. in an era when the authoritarianism of old appears to be reinvigorated by demagoguery in the face of globalization and violent extremism, the revisionism, perpetual anxiety, and nationalism encouraged by national security rhetoric and states of emergency represents a distinct tendency towards authoritarianism. the blatant threats to u.s. constitutional values exhibited by legislative loopholes, also indicates this legacy of american authoritarianism. not only has the national security state enabled a culture of u.s. exceptionalism, giving intelligence agencies and presidential administrations too much power, it has also created a culture of surveillance, replicated throughout society, which trades heightened citizen visibility for decreased state repression. bush and obama’s jurisdictive misapplications of surveillance serve as a testament to the underlying united states security narrative that benjamin wittes (2017) referenced in his speech. the national security apparatus is continuously bolstered as the premier defense of liberalism, encouraging the convergence of security, surveillance, and democracy across partisan lines, while asserting that the security of liberalism and the security of u.s. citizens are mutually exclusive. this is the most glaring representation of the legacy of u.s. authoritarianism, for “people who assure you that you can only gain security at the price of liberty usually want to deny you both. you can certainly concede freedom without becoming more secure” (snyder 2017: 100). following the attacks on september 11, 2001, the administrations of presidents george w. bush and barack obama committed many oversights and abuses in the name of national security. in attempting to secure the fate of liberalism through legislative directives, recurrent emergency status, and the overall rhetoric of the war of terror, institutional manipulation within the national security state has fostered authoritarianization within united states—potentially signaling the end of liberal democracy, as we know it. references allen, greg and taniel chan (2017): ‘artificial intelligence and national security.’ belfer center for science and international affairs. accessed october 20, 2017. http://www.belfercenter.org/ andrejevic, mark (2007): ispy: surveillance and power in the interactive era. kansas: university press of kansas. arendt, hannah (1979): the origins of totalitarianism. new ed. with added prefaces. new york: harcourt brace & company. http://www.belfercenter.org/ politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 36 (april 2018) 20 bamford, james (2016): ‘every move you make.’ foreign policy. 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(4): 463-487. ttps://doi.org/10.1177/0090591706288519 “usa freedom act” (2015): judiciary committee: house of representatives. https://judiciary.house.gov/issue/usa-freedom-act/ accessed november 19, 2017. weiss, linda (2014): america inc.? innovation and enterprise in the national security state. new york: cornell university press. wittes, benjamin (2017): ‘national security and demagoguery: remarks to the muslim public affairs council.’ lawfare. https://www.lawfareblog.com/national-security-and-demagogueryremarks-muslim-public-affairs-council accessed september 28, 2017. zuboff, shoshana (2015): "big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization." journal of information technology. vol. 30 (1): 75–89. https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2015.5 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/42974#foot14 https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591706288519 https://judiciary.house.gov/issue/usa-freedom-act/ https://www.lawfareblog.com/national-security-and-demagoguery-remarks-muslim-public-affairs-council https://www.lawfareblog.com/national-security-and-demagoguery-remarks-muslim-public-affairs-council http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2594754 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2594754 https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2015.5 i always feel like somebody’s watching me. understanding the authoritarian tendencies of the u.s. national security state microsoft word vol 51 version 1 (2021 dec 17).docx politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 51 (december 2021) 55 populist government and constitutional democracy: radical incompatibility or possible coexistence? francesco maria scanni doi: https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.51.4 francesco maria scanni is ph.d in politics, culture and development at the department of political and social sciences of the university of calabria. he is the author of the monograph "differenziazione territoriale e qualità della democrazia" aracne, and his contributions have appeared in several international journals. his research interests lie in the field of political science and political theory. in particular, he works on populism, quality of democracy, political parties and voter analysis. email: francesco.scanni@unical.it. abstract until the first decade of the 21th century, scholars and reporters have identified contemporary populism as an element of anti-systemic revolt; furthermore, they have also recognized an incompatibility between populist phenomenon and government function. however, some recent cases of populist parties in power seem to be able to put into crisis more than one certainty regarding the nature and scope of the populist phenomenon. this observation raises the questions of this work: what harmful effects does populism in government produce on liberal institutions, pluralism, and representation in constitutional democracies? do these effects merely erode the liberal component, or do they extend to produce a degeneration of democracy as a whole? and finally: what are the risks for democracy? the article corroborates the diarchic theories of democracy and aims to demonstrate the lack of compatibility between the principles of liberal democracy and populist principles, which have a negative impact not only on the liberal component, but also on the quality of democracy in its entirety. keywords populism; government; democracy; liberalism; representation politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 51 (december 2021) 56 introduction the relationship between populism and democracy is problematic. although the two concepts have different elements in common, starting from the roots — demos and populus that refer to the same object (although, as we shall see, they do not express the same thing) — the two phenomena seem to be mutually exclusive: when democracy is healthy, populism shrinks; conversely, when the democratic system seems unable to provide adequate responses to the crises of the legitimacy of the actors that compose it, the populist push becomes impetuous. populism, therefore, grasps the ontological gap that exists between ideal democracy and real democracy and inserts itself in the incessant struggle to make the abstract people and the concrete people coincide. several scholars (among others see: tӓnnsjӧ 1992; kazin 1995; canovan 1999; arditi 2004; laclau 2005; urbinati 2019) have underlined the ambivalent nature of the relationship between the two factors. the explicit connection between populism and democracy is the motor of what nadia urbinati has defined as “maximal theory of populism” (urbinati 2019, 116-17), which offers not only a conception of it based on the characteristics consubstantial with the phenomenon (rhetorical style; manichean division, ideological core) but extends to the analysis of the relations it promotes within the democratic system and the effects that populist government produces on liberal constitutional democracy. examining the existing literature on the subject, there is no convergence line: some authors have described populism as an opportunity to relaunch the delegitimized democratic institutions (taylor 2016), otherwise, the rest have spoken of populism as the purest form of democracy (tӓnnsjӧ 1992) or as a counter-democratic demonstration that pushes the main actors of democracy to improve policies (rosanvallon 2017a). despite this, it is possible to find a majority tendency: that of the authors (diamond 1999; zakaria 1997; mudde and kaltwasser 2012) who identify populism as a problem for constitutional democracy. my concern is the relationship between populism in government and democracy, i.e., examining whether the populists, from the government, negatively affect pluralism and liberal institutions (or, as blokker 2018 argues, democratic constitutions) and how populists in power transform constitutional democracy. if these risks exist, which institutions, rules, practices, and actors do they address? this paper, using a methodology focused on conceptual analysis developed by comparing the various approaches and answers provided by various authors, aims to draw some theoretical coordinates on the relationship between populism in power and democracy. the purpose of the article is, therefore, to take into account the existing theories and provide some new conceptualizations useful to evaluate the relationship between populist principles and principles of modern liberal democracy, i.e. that system which guarantees individual freedoms, pluralism of politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 51 (december 2021) 57 representation, free elections, respect for third party powers, and guarantee of minority (sartori 1987). in the first section, i retrace the main scholarly contributions focused on the theme of populists in government; the second section concentrates on the two main interpretations of the relationship between democracy and liberalism: the diarchic and the dualistic one. furthermore, i examine the transformation of one of the pillars of modern liberal democracy that is the principle of representation and dwell on the essential characteristics of populist democracy as a disfigurement of the principles and norms of the democratic system. finally, i underline the risks of this transformation. there are several limits to an analysis of this kind: some generalizations could be contradicted by empirical observations and the absence of non-western perspectives could negatively affect the completeness of the conclusions. despite these weaknesses, a comprehensive theoretical framework could guide future empirical studies and will be specifically useful for scholars approaching the topic of populism in power with greater awareness of the salient issues that are at the center of the debate. theories of the populists in power until recently, contemporary populism has been interpreted as an “element of antisystemic revolt” (falter and schuhmann 1993; schedler 1996; tismaneanu 2000; engler, et al. 2019), that is, it has been postulated that between the populist phenomenon and the function of government there is a high degree of incompatibility and that populism is a charismatic phenomenon and therefore difficult to institutionalize. this trade-off would entail the inability of populists to reach power or, even when they succeed in doing so, to manage the institutions of democratic politics. however, some recent cases of new populist parties, such as the five star movement, podemos, syriza, or of parties whose leadership has been renewed in a populist sense (such as the trump-led conservative party, the renzian-led pd, and salvini's league) who came to the government, seem to be able to undermine more than one conviction concerning the nature and scope of the populist phenomenon, outlining an unprecedented “institutional populism”. as challengers, populist parties have shown, in various countries, that they can carry out a real rise to power, an element that, starting from 2008, required greater attention to the behavior of populist actors once came to power, as well as towards the potential effects that these actors could produce on democratic and liberal institutions with government action. the populist parties in power no longer seem to be confined to some countries of the world with an underdeveloped economy but have become a impetuous phenomenon that challenges even the advanced democracies of the developed world from within. despite reaching prominent positions in different countries, populist parties for several reasons face challenges on their journey to the government. firstly, their programs are designed politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 51 (december 2021) 58 to attract the widest possible part of the heterogeneous audience of discontent, by channeling disparate claims within them. secondly, to acquire increasing shares of trust from the opposition and undermine the political system, populist parties often propose overpromising programs (mény and surel 2000; aslanidis 2017) that amplify the direct and indirect costs of their potential implementation. another central problem can be found in the strong deiodination (tormey 2018) towards other political actors (channeled above all towards the mainstream parties), and in the codes of political relations based on one's moral superiority, elements that make the formation of governments of a post-electoral coalition. finally, the most difficult element to reconcile is the anti-elitist rhetoric and political identity defined by contrast and opposition (laclau 2005), which loses its position with the passage from the opposition to the government. against this backdrop, morlino and raniolo (2018, 140) pointed out the dilemmas of populist parties in the transition from opposition to government: a) the strategic one that refers to the choice between short-term and long-term responsiveness (or, to use a distinction proposed by sartori (1967), between personal responsibility, influenced by the political/electoral cycle, and functional responsibility, based instead on the realization of long-term interests taking into account systemic constraints); b) that of identity, which refers to the preference between economic and political responsiveness; c) the divergence between the aims declared in the electoral campaign and the concrete possibility of realizing the operational aims, that is the tension between the radicalism of the discourse (political propaganda) and the moderation of government practice (political action); d) the organizational one that derives from the constraints deriving from the transition light, post-bureaucratic and network-based on organizational models to institutionalization; e) the difference between anti-establishment propaganda that has a unifying effect when they are in opposition and the need to make specific decisions that have exclusive effects when they are in government; f) the absence of a professional political class, and the consequent need to rely on the old bureaucratic staff often in close relationship and continuity with the previous leaders (morlino and raniolo 2018, 181-82); g) having to deal with the spontaneous centralistic tendency of the national government that collides with their peripheral representation. according to some studies, the populist parties in power would follow the same dynamics as the other radical parties, reaching a growing political maturity following their entry into the institutions which would produce a normalizing effect on them. peter mair (2016) argued that in the transition from opposition to the government, populists try — at least strategically — to moderate their excesses to build an image of salonfähig, that is of “respectable ones” (morlino and raniolo 2018, 52). berman (2008) traced this dynamic back to the phase of approaching government, that is, to attempts to build political links with other actors to form potential politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 51 (december 2021) 59 government coalitions. similarly, according to krause and wagner (2019), a responsible and pragmatic approach takes over when these parties are called upon to demonstrate the ability to manage and resolve problems concerning public affairs, thus gaining credibility through acting. the transition from protest to institutional representation (with the consequent increase in institutional relevance) and, even more so, from opposition to the government (which involves a prior search for offices) could therefore lead to the reduction of the anti-establishment position and favor an adaptation behavioral to parliamentary procedures and customs (akkerman et al. 2016), or remodeling of the character and intensity of their rhetoric. ivaldi (2016) spoke in this regard of the external packaging of the message. other authors, instead, have argued that, by the commitment of these parties to appear reliable in the eyes of public opinion and other parties, the transformation could even extend beyond the communication style and behavior to transform even ideology and the content of programs and positions (heinisch 2003). an opposite line of thinking is that which sees populism as the potential for the creation of a new post-democratic or alter-democratic regime, and a specific type of government in the populists in power. a contrary line of thought (müller 2017; pappas 2019; levitsky and ziblatt 2019) is the one that sees in populism the potential for the creation of a new post-democratic or alter-democratic regime, and in populists in power a specific type of government. takis pappas (2019) identified the following elements to isolate some characteristics of “populism in office”: a) the strengthening of an extraordinary leadership compared to an ordinary / legal-bureaucratic one in the weberian sense (charismatic leadership); b) the relentless strategic search for political polarization. in this case, however, it is a question of competitive polarization without ideological polarization (political polarization); c)the adoption of a political program based on the hoarding of the main state institutions, on the strengthening of the executive and the consequent weakening of liberal check and balances and the imposition of illiberal constitutions (institutional onslaught); d) the strategic use of patronage tools, aimed at rewarding their supporters at the expense of the opposition and their supporters (patronage politics), is also useful as a rooting strategy. according to müller (2017), through the argument that they are the only morally legitimized representatives of the people, populists justify three main ways of managing power: a sort of colonization of the state; mass cronyism, also called “discriminatory legalism” and the systemic repression of civil society. blokker (2013) argues that, in some cases, populism to reify the principle of majority in majority power (see the distinction between majority principle and majority rule that we owe to sartori, 2007) could cross the distinction between ordinary legislative activity and constitutional, giving rise to a series of constitutional reforms indicated under the name of populist constitutionalism. according to levitsky and ziblatt (2019), whose work focuses politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 51 (december 2021) 60 particularly on the experience of the trump government, the modern populist government would be characterized by the production of a slow democratic decalage organized in two phases: initially, a legal (and nonviolent) subversion of conventional rules of behavior and political habits, and subsequently the implementation of structural changes to liberal institutions and even to the constitutional charters aimed at creating a new system of authority. undemocratic or illiberal? the dilemma of the populists in government within the theories that describe populism in terms of risk to democracy, it is possible to distinguish two approaches. the first is the one that theorizes the possibility of a theoretical disjunction between democracy and liberalism and sees in populism a phenomenon that negatively impacts liberal values: norms, procedures, inter-institutional accountability, and therefore respect for the balance of powers and principles of constitutionalism. to understand the theoretical basis of the distinction between the two traditions, we can take up the words of a staunch supporter of left populism, chantal mouffe (2000, 2-3), who maintained: “on one hand we have the liberal tradition constituted by the reign of law, from the defense of human rights and respect for individual freedom; on the other hand, the democratic tradition, whose main ideas are those of equality, of the identity between rulers and the governed and of popular sovereignty. there is no necessary articulation between these two different traditions, but only a contingent historical articulation”. according to this binary distinction, populism in power would give life, not to a new political regime, but the transformation of the form of state: from liberal democracy one would pass to illiberal/populist democracy, characterized by the ontological and irreducible opposition between the neat people represented by its leader and the corrupt elite; by the dominance of direct popular expression filtered by the conviction of the leader or the party – on the law and by the replacement of party representation with a type of direct bond between leader and electorate (urbinati 2019). already robert dahl, in 1956, proposed a distinction between the madisonian form and the populist form of democracy. while in the first version, the emphasis is placed on the limitations of the power of government and of democratic power itself, populist democracy accentuates the antagonism with the liberal principle of limitation to theorize the potential limitlessness of the power of the people. yasha mounk (2018) took up this distinction redefining the terms, respectively, the madisonian form and the rousseauian form of democracy to advance a comparison between two excluding models: democracy without rights (which would coincide with populist democracy) and rights without democracy (what the author calls undemocratic liberalism which characterizes, for example, the new european governance with the growing importance of non-majoritarian institutions). the various theorists of democratic dualism (zakaria 1997; politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 51 (december 2021) 61 diamond 1999; mudde 2004; mudde and kaltwasser 2012) therefore distinguished between democracy and liberal-democracy, defining the latter not as the only possible form of democracy, but only as one of the possible combinations. fared zakaria (1997) was the first to use the expression “illiberal democracy” to indicate regimes in which there is a combination of free elections and authoritarianism, in which the rulers “are democratically elected (only to ignore) the limits imposed on their power from the constitution (and depriving) citizens of fundamental rights” (zakaria 1997, 111). it could be said, in summary, that populist leaders accept electoral democracy but not liberal constraints (sartori 1987) on the exercise of political power: “if liberalism is a culture of delimitation and control of political power, the populist leaders who have emerged in recent years are knowingly anti-liberal or illiberal. they use their electoral legitimacy to question the liberal constraints of the rule of law” (fabbrini, preface to levitsky and ziblatt 2018, x). the second approach offers a different reading of modern democracies and consequently a different diagnosis of the effects that government populism has on the democratic system. one of the first authors to question the classic contrast between populist democracy and liberal democracy was margaret canovan (1999), who rejected the theories of total separation between the two terms and defined the liberal component as the mechanism that preserves the democratic system from prevarication by the tyranny of the majority (baldini 2014). liberalism, therefore, would not be one of the many sets of values that can accompany democracy, but the one that makes it possible in its complete form. modern democracies, according to canovan, are characterized by a “double face”, by a constant tension between the redemptive face and the pragmatic face. as baldini summarizes (2014, 12) “the two faces should not be seen as superimposable on the alternative liberalism/populism: in every country, politics alternates these phases, and populist waves present themselves as one of the clearest symptoms of the prevalence of redemptive face”. therefore, according to baldini (2014), there is no crystallized gap between the two moments, the popular one and the constitutional one, but there is a continuous tension in which an interpenetration alternates followed by an imbalance, and vice versa an imbalance followed by a rebalancing. more clearly, müller (2017) underlined the subversive and undemocratic potential that lies within the conceptual core of populism, the distinctive elements of which would produce a democratic disfigurement and the affirmation of an undemocratic principle of democracy. the interpretation offered by müller (2017) is the following: the rights of freedom of speech and assembly, pluralism and freedom of expression of the mass media, the protection of minorities, are not only values that fall within the sphere of competence of liberalism, but have to do with democracy itself. the rule of law and democracy are intertwined, and you can't have one politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 51 (december 2021) 62 without the other. the populist refusal of the delimitation of power, argues the author, is not reduced only to a formal element but ends up by affecting the democratic substance itself, because the same imbalance between the rule of the majority and the rule of law in favor of the former produces a loss of importance of minority rights and the guarantee of a balance of powers, undermining the very democratic substance itself. recently, nadia urbinati (2019) examined in depth the relationship between populism and democracy and the potential outcomes that populism can produce when it governs. urbinati (2019) found a tendency to distort the procedures (and, hence, the substance) of democracy in radical majoritarianism and in the effort to tolerate divisions of powers, an independent judiciary, and the statute of fundamental rights. in controversy with the theorists of democratic dualism, she argued that democracy cannot be reduced to the recurrence of electoral practices. the liberal components, such as the limitation of power, the existence of checks and balances, free information, guaranteed civil liberties, and legitimate multi-partism must be also considered integral characteristics of democracy, both in its procedures and its substance. moreover, it is precisely the institutional brakes and counterweights that are classified by the populists as obstacles that prevent the unfolding of the pure will of the people — one synthesized by a leader who embodies it. if we define democracy as that system that guarantees “the protection of fundamental civil and political rights by limiting the power of the governing majority” through pluralism, the separation of powers, and the independence of the judicial system (urbinati 2019, 16), populism according to the author, seems to transform this three pillars of modern constitutional democracy through three factors: the direct relationship between the leader and the part — considered just — of the people, the supreme authority of the audience and public opinion (manin 2014), and the intolerance shown towards opponents and democratic impediments. populism and representation: the “inner periphery” of democracy a point that partially unites these analyses, and that differentiates them from others that identify the populist government with a post-democratic government or as a prodromal step towards the establishment of an authoritarian system (we have seen pappas 2019; see also kellner 2016), is that both do not identify the populists in power with a leak from democracy, but as an extreme limit or as an “internal periphery” (arditi 2004) of democracy. the populist challenge, therefore, is not aimed at replacing representative democracy with direct democracy, but aims at establishing a direct representation of the people by the leader, translating the popular mandate into a plebiscitary sense. as for the theme of the transformation of representation, populism would distance itself from the principle of acting for (pitkin 1967) to address itself not towards direct democracy, but towards a “democracy of incarnation” (zanatta 2004) in which the direct link is politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 51 (december 2021) 63 that between people and party/leader. as in private law, direct representation promoted by populists differs from indirect representation based on the action of the representative which takes place not only “on behalf” but also “in the name” of the person represented. acting “in the name” as well as “on behalf” is one of the many stratagems used by populists to facilitate identification between them and the evoked people and suspend the latter's judgment of their activity. taking up the expression of decker (2003, quoted in giraudi 2017, 124-25): “populism postulates that the classic intermediary institution should be eliminated and replaced by a direct link between the government and the electorate”. according to these theories, populism in government disfigures democracy through incremental “process innovations” (schumpeter 1943) which unbalance institutional mechanisms and introduce new limit-tensions that alter institutional functioning and produce a subversion of the indices of the quality of democracy. according to morlino and raniolo (2018) the populist challenge intertwines with other critical factors both external (economic crises, international crises, migratory flows) and internal (corruption, decline of traditional channels of representation, lack of alternation, and dissatisfaction with the activities of governments) and hence puts democratic regimes under pressure. in fact, “the impact of the populist challenge [...) extends to all the main dimensions of democratic quality, even if not all the relevant dimensions and their secondary dimensions they are involved in the same way and with the same intensity. the result of the populist challenge can be a subversion of democratic quality, rather than the improvement or deepening of democracy” (morlino and raniolo 2018, 178). populist democracy is identified with a precise form of democracy that is based on a specific type of representation, which however is characterized by some limit-tensions which, contrary to the expressed intent to achieve democracy at its best, obtain democracy at its worst. as stated by weyland (2013), the populists in the government direct formulas that promote political disintermediation and simultaneously require a plebiscitary approval, making democracy no longer radically democratic but less democratic. modern democracy is based on the irreducible and necessary gap between the immediate will of the various popular sectors and the mediated political translation of the demands from below. this void, in a constitutional democracy, can be partially filled thanks to two mechanisms. firstly, the fictio juris of the majority as unanimity, which presents itself as the guarantor of the interests of all, also in light of the acceptance of the result by the opposition. secondly, the constant work of representation and mediation carried out by the parties reduces the distance between the institutions and the portions of the people they represent, between inside and outside. in this way, representative democracy, which unlike direct democracy does not collapse the moment of will and judgment in the very act of elections (or of the decision through deliberation arising from a politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 51 (december 2021) 64 direct consultation), keeps the political process open. populism, for its part, proposes a new mixed regime characterized by the oxymoronic formula of direct representation (urbinati 2019). in other words, there is a substitution of representation through parties with the incarnation of the part of the people deemed worthy by the leader. the direct component of populist parties, therefore, does not refer so much to the modalities of decision-making but the disintermediated relationship between the leader and his people. the aim is to obtain a “full” that resolves the original defect affecting representation, consisting of the distance between the political principle and sociological reality (rosanvallon 2006). the consequence of this interpretation of political authority which he believes he has based on popular legitimacy is that “with him, the evocative power of the incarnation prevails over the rationalized principle of representation” (diamanti and lazar 2018, 28). while according to classical democratic theory (kelsen 1981; dahl 1956; sartori 1967) this distance makes it possible to maintain the political space as a field that is always open to the reformulation of preferences, the populists demand through instruments that reinforce the idea of a perfect coincidence between the univocal popular will and populist representation — to seal it definitively. here lies the forcing of constitutional democracy to its extreme limit: populism does not inaugurate a new type of political regime but transforms the democratic system it uses to assert itself by presenting itself as an actor provided with a higher moral legitimacy than that of its competitors (united, in a single frame of discredit, under the discrediting label of elite or establishment), guilty of disfiguring the moral and political integrity of the one-people (tronconi 2018). therefore, it does not escape from representative democracy but transmutes its essence, verticalizing it; that is, replacing representation through parties with the incarnation of the part of the people deemed “deserving” by the leader. the interpretation of populism as a new type of representative government starts from the diarchic conception of democracy (canovan 1999), which is based on the idea of democracy as a mixed government of decision (i.e., political will and from which the decision-making process originates) and opinion (the sphere of extra-institutional political judgments). the aversion towards the culture of delimitation and control of political power, the change in the tenor of the institutional discourse, the continuous inter-institutional tensions, and the modification of behavioral, regulatory codes and consolidated traditional practices do not only produce a disfiguring impact on liberal institutions and do not damage only the liberal system, but also deeply affect the democratic system itself in its broad conception, producing a democracy of low quality (or, as ardeni (2020, 67) defined it, a “form degraded of democracy”). but paradoxically, by limiting themselves to contesting the traditional actors and forms of representation, by not politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 51 (december 2021) 65 extending the critique of the legitimacy of the regime itself, and by not proposing to radically change the system of government, the populists manage to present themselves as the only interpreters of the popular will and therefore as the only authentic democrats who oppose the factions and the privileged castes who hold, officially or secretly, the power, and intend to win power legally. also in this case, however, there is an element of friction to underline. populists tend to conceive the electoral process as revealing a truth that already exists (revelli 2018) and to consider themselves not a majority among the many possible, but the only just majority. by doing so, they drift away from sociological reality as a source of legitimacy (descriptive representation) to arrive at a type of symbolic representation, aimed at overcoming the interests’ part out to identify elements that transcend divisions and place the accent on concepts capable of uniting the social body. the populist challenge, therefore, fits into the ontological gap left empty by representation and takes advantage of the distance that separates representatives from represented. in that sense too, populism emphasizes the ideological and principled distance from the liberal tradition. hans kelsen (1981) argued in fact that the correspondence between the parliamentary majority and the popular will was impossible, a metapolitical illusion just like the identification of a precise popular will. people can never be grasped in its entirety; the identification of a single popular will is an act of pure fantasy (achen and bartels 2017). furthermore, while liberal democracy, particularly in the light of recent war conflicts, aimed to fragment power and distribute it among non-elected institutions (constitutional courts, tribunals, etc.), placed above electoral responsibility, to prevent recurrence of the risk of tyranny of the majority, populism interrupts this tradition and tries to reaggregate the lost power. this interpretation of political competition and government activity can therefore lead populism to clash with constitutional democracy, even if its fundamental principles are incorporated into the democratic universe. in summary, when the principles that populism presents are translated into acts of government — and even more so when the interpretation of them exasperates them — they can collide with the principles of constitutional democracy. from dr. jekyll to mr. hyde: a variant of democracy from what has been said so far, populism in power seems to establish a specific form of democracy, which differs from classical constitutional democracy to bring some transformations to democratic practices and substance while not escaping the system. like the figure of mr. hyde in stevenson-s novel, populist democracy appears to be the alter-ego of liberal democracy. populism, therefore, has a democratic derivation that acts as a genetic relationship: if it were to escape from the democratic order, it would renounce most of its founding principles (primarily horizontality and free consultation) and would turn into authoritarianism. for this reason, politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 51 (december 2021) 66 populism is described in terms of a particular interpretation of democracy, mainly centered on one of the elements that characterize modern democracy (the principle of popular sovereignty), which becomes overwhelming for the other principles and traditional institutional forms. according to mastropaolo (2005), the problematic aspect concerns the relations with democracy in speeches and the practice of government in the light of the contempt for minorities, for the opposition, for the diversity of ideas, disregard for human rights, and intolerance towards the pluralism that populism manifests from the government. it is a “democratic fundamentalism” on which populism relies, which gives democracy a plebiscitary twist and empties it (mastropaolo 2005, 76): when the populist parties win the elections and consider it a pronouncement of the people in their unity, and on these assumptions, they question the caution and uncertainty of the democratic regime, erode some fundamental principles at the basis of constitutional democracy. the myth of immediate democracy, in which the space which allows the “distance” essential for elaboration and judgment between the people and the leader is cancelled, substantially alters real democracy. the loss of distance in the name of identity and co-presence between leaders and voters has the aim of suspending judgment on the quality of the representation, the decisions taken and the policies promoted in defense of specific interests. since according to the populists all power emanates from the people and condenses in the figure of the leader who exercises it in their name, the discretionary space of it extends beyond measure, overwhelming the powers that do not depend directly on the judgment or the will of the people and the leader. the delegation is therefore rejected by the populists both in its principles (since any mediation would distort the integral and already formed will of the people) as in its effects (when it, favoring the creation of a political elite, represents the origin of every evil of contemporary democracy, the failures to which are all attributed to the degeneration of political elites). in the very construction of the people, then, the populist version of democracy challenges proceduralism and produces a distortion of the principle of democratic representation. the same people to which populism is addressed is not the result of the political/theoretical construction promoted by social actors based on a specific vision of the conflicts that cross society, but is a preexisting monolithic entity, which is built outside and against a political practice traditionally understood and recognizes itself as a unitary subject. with blokker (as cited in anselmi et al. 2018, 54) we could argue that with populism “the people are made identical to a populist, self-built majority”. however, the identification of the people “once and for all”, as well as the theorization of oneself as the only authentic and deserving representatives of it, is profoundly incompatible with the principle that informs the democratic space, which, to use the expression of pierre rosanvallon (2006, 83-84): “it always allows us to reopen and even put the question of the people politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 51 (december 2021) 67 in completely new terms (...) in this sense, it could also be said that democracy suffers from a permanent crisis of representation”. the populists, on the other hand, tend to propose an overlap between their enemies and enemies of the whole people, as well as the indisputable equivalence between the reforms they propose and the popular will. to question an action by the populist government is to question the will of the people. this is the main method that populists in power use to justify their decisions and it is precisely the logic that distinguishes the populists from other parties critical of the liberal system: the other party is decreed to be non-part of popular sovereignty, an illegitimate part and morally unworthy to govern. the coincidence between popular will and government activity distinguishes the populist governmental form from that of representative democracy: in the second, in fact, “the people” can appear only in an institutionalized way, that is, as a majority in parliament, while for populism the majority coincides with the integral people, therefore it is possible to speak in their name. representative democracy not only considers the fallibility of the decisions taken by the rulers but is willing to question the conformity of the will of the representatives concerning the political translation expressed in the form of a decision by the rulers, for which it accepts its contestability. for the populists, on the other hand, the general will they appeal to is an abstract will, not empirically verifiable; a sort of jacobin claim for the protection of a natural right independent of the actual will of the people. what populists consider the popular will is predetermined: its direction is not formed through the mediation between opposing heterogeneous wills nor does it derive from the inter-party political dialectic that occurs within the institutions of representation. the law loses its sovereignty in the presence of the general will that immediately manifests itself and unfolds all its hubris, refusing to control or limit. these acts and attitudes of the governing populists have become evident in several more or less mature democracies of europe and even in the archetype of democracy: the usa. in the “imperfect democracies” (see democracy index) of eastern europe these attacks have gone to the extreme, reaching a compromise with the weak resistance of non-majoritarian institutions. in hungary, for instance, president viktor orbán has fostered ongoing institutional tensions by denouncing the judiciary and other independent agencies, creating a “constitutional blitzkrieg” that weakens the separation of powers. kaczyński in poland has made consistent attacks on the constitutional tribunal and purged the supreme court by compelling rules on the designation of judges. former prime minister fico and his smer managed to fill the slovak constitutional court with loyal judges, de facto immunizing the smer’s policies from judicial control. likewise in the czech republic, prime minister babiš has envisioned a series of measures that decrease checks on the executive and weaken the separation of powers; he has also attempted to weaken parliament politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 51 (december 2021) 68 (by abolishing the upper house and reducing the number of mps in the lower house) to encourage greater centralization of power, with the support of president miloš zeman. in western mature democracies, however, these attempts have often been controlled by guarantee institutions and have been reduced to a “war of words” (levitsky and ziblatt 2019). in the italian example, for instance, the threats of filing magistrates guilty of rejecting the orders of the minister of the interior addressed by salvini to the courts and magistrates who opposed his decisions on landings and migrant control are paradigmatic. even in the usa, donald trump has launched a heavy institutional game by pushing his presidential prerogatives to the limit and violating established practices through the appointment of two judges of the us supreme court (scotus) (hawkins et al. 2019). in light of these assessments, we could affirm that modern populist parties distort the institutional rules of the state and rewrite the geometry of the powers within the state. in other words, they offer a peculiar interpretation of democracy interpreting the tension between the two poles as an antinomy between two incompatible principles: the liberal one which intends to weaken popular power and its discretion, and the democratic one which they interpret as a boundless increase in the power of the sovereign people. by merging democracy and representation, it establishes a form of democracy that is based on a direct relationship between the leader and the people and on the celebration of a subset of the people that fundamentally disfigures, without formally denying them, democratic principles. it is in this sense that nadia urbinati (2014) speaks of “disfigured democracy”: a conception of politics that introduces a fierce but internal tension and contestation to democracy stretches some principles, and unravels some rules of the democratic regime while continuing to formally operate in it. it is therefore an internal transformation of democracy that, however, facilitates the risk of authoritarian drift. in populism, the primacy of the interests of the majority overshadows the liberal guarantee of the rights of minorities and the balance of powers. hence the rejection of the legitimacy of those inherited rules and therefore not directly approved by the people: only popular ratification puts the seal on a decision. such an interpretation of the subject holding the decision-making legitimacy produces a distortion of the role of parliament and lays the foundations for a general rethinking of the delegation: it shows a preference for direct democracy instruments or for monitoring instruments of popular will. citizens’ preferences are translated into political measures which, precisely because they are in line with the wishes of the people, parliament must limit itself to ratifying. for instance, the 5 star movement promoted a series of institutional reforms from the government that, in addition to lowering the quorum for the validation of popular bills, erected the propositional referendum to a primary legislative source, binding the parliament to decide based on the politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 51 (december 2021) 69 indications provided by the outcome of the consultation. this risked an extra-parliamentarisation of decision-making and a transformation of the formal architecture of powers that the constitution designs. modern representative democracy assumes and cultivates the constant tension between the functional principle and the plebiscitary principle (bendix 1964), and tries to propose a decision-making synthesis that safeguards the division of constitutional powers (legislative, executive, and judicial power). in this dialectic, the formal abstraction of some principles subtracted from the discretion of the expression of the will of the majority is realized, which therefore limit it and act as a barrier to the potential drifts of arbitrary power, and the substantial dependence of the decision on the source of the will of the majority verified through the electoral mechanism. but this dualism is never transparent, for the fact that the immediate will of the people must always be contaminated with the democratic principles of the protection of minorities, pluralism, and the fundamental freedoms of the individual. we are within the concept of democracy as an empty and unbridgeable space, if not partially and using substitutes, proposed by lefort (1986). the indeterminacy of democracy depends on the impossibility of identifying once and for all the main agent of sovereign legitimacy: the people. populism tries to escape the necessary distance between pure will and representation, solidifying and absolutizing the concept of people which, instead, in the liberal-democratic conception remains mediated, open to reidentification, and never definitive. the means that populism uses, however, derive from the conception of popular involvement as individual involvement, without a previous work of the parties that organizes it in a stable and continuous form. the use of these means by a populist party, responds to the intention to unite inside and outside and overlap the moment of decision and that of opinion and risks to violate the need for the democratic game to always remain open, also through the self-limitation of government forces. this attempt can have the effect of compromising the indirect and representative form of democratic government in which distance and difference are regulated by representation and elections. conclusions: sand in the gears although it is possible to find empirical confirmation of the theories according to which populism in power does not establish a regime on its own and therefore does not change the democratic regime, its style of government changes the tenor of public discourse and the nature of relations between citizens and institutions. it is characterized by unscrupulous management of power that risks changing both the style and the content of public discourse, even when the constitution does not change. government populism when it does not deny the modern constitutional order tout court (favoring alternative constitutional projects supported by “legal politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 51 (december 2021) 70 skepticism” or “legal resentment” (blokker 2003), establishes an opportunistic relationship with constitutionalism and instrumental, often by reforming or ab-using existing constitutional structures. in power, populists establish a problematic relationship with constitutionalism as an expression of the legal-liberal doctrine. blokker (cited in anselmi et al. 2018, 50) argues, re-reading corrias (2016), that populist constitutionalism can be linked to the distortion of the tradition of radical constitutionalism, in which the constituent power of the people is understood in an absolute sense, and by affirming the superiority of politics over the law it insists on refounding the political system negating the liberal limitations that have the function of “taming politics” (corrias 2016, 15). by arguing that the rule of law and constitutionalism cannot be superior to the will of the people, constitutionalism for the populists in power “becomes [...) a tool for the populist project to rebuild the state and redefine the relationship between politics and law” (blokker 2003, 51). but at the same time, this construction denies the emancipatory promise of constitutionalism addressed to all the forces that make up the political/constitutional body of the state, excluding those social and political realities that are not considered by populists as being included in their delimitation of the concept of people. although we can trace this line of orientation common to the various populist governments, it must be recognized that not all the actors defined as "populists" behave in the same way when they govern. the differences, even those minimal, could produce significant effects if we take into account the fact that some measures institutional changes, ordinary laws, distributions of resources, regulations, and press campaigns that seem legal and reasonable, for how they are sewn together they can give life to real “institutional monsters” (raniolo 2019, 54). for this reason, the typological conception of populism, which distinguishes the different types of populism — in the plural (canovan 1999; sorice 2018) — rather than using a unitary concept of populism in the singular more account of the specific differences between different cases. a hypothesis that would require an important study of empirical confirmation, for example, could highlight that the risk of extra-democratic drift of the populist government is more accentuated in contexts in which the government is a single party led by a leader with monocratic powers, which hybridizes a populist approach with ideological elements marked by conservatism with a radical orientation (jenne 2018). another element to take into account would be the effect that these measures could have on the different democratic systems. in incomplete democracies, where legitimization of guarantee institutions is feeble and the culture of rights is not deeply rooted in public opinion, democratic backsliding should be more accentuated than in countries with mature democracies, where institutional respect and respect for fundamental rights have long since become part of the social culture. politikon: the iapss journal of political science vol 51 (december 2021) 71 in any case, the changes that populism introduces deeply affect the various indicators that constitute the indispensable elements for a “quality democracy” (morlino 2003, 21). populist democracy comes to be identified with a precise form of democracy that is characterized by certain limiting tensions that could produce a slide, through a gradual introduction of “sand in the gears” (beck 2005, 375) that guarantee the proper functioning of the system, towards authoritarian forms of political management. in this case, those “sliding backward realized through the progressive marginalization of democratic processes and institution” (raniolo 2019, 1) would therefore be favored, producing a democracy of low quality which over time may tend to transform itself into “other than itself”, favoring an authoritarian twist. the liberal components such as the limitation of power, the existence of checks and balances, free information, the guarantee of civil liberties, and the presence of other parties considered legitimate are inseparable both from form and from democratic substance. the imbalance towards some of the elements produced by the populists in government, the tension between the powers, and the extremization of some principles to the detriment of others represent a serious risk of slipping into a form of government in which the will of the people becomes refractory to institutional temperaments and can easily result in tyranny. references achen, cristopher and bartels, larry m. 2017. democracy for realists: why elections do not produce responsive government (vol. 4). princeton university press. akkerman, tjitske, de lange, sarah l. and rooduijn, matthijs, eds. 2016. radical right-wing populist parties in western europe: into the mainstream? routledge. ardeni, pier giorgio. 2020. le radici del populismo, roma-bari, laterza. arditi, benjamin. 2004. populism as a spectre of democracy: a response 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also highlights the importance of focusing more on the effects of corruption so that the systemic nature of the problem can be explored. the intention in this paper is not to come up with any grand theory of corruption but it only seeks to problematize the conventional and prevalent understanding of political corruption. conventionally, corruption has been considered as a moral, individual or social problem but recent approaches to study corruption have tried to establish link between corruption and democracy by focusing on the effects of corruption on democratic institutions and processes. these different understandings have made corruption a contested field of research as it affects economic, social, and political aspects of a political system almost equally. this exercise insists the need of looking at it from institutional perspective as it is engulfed in social, economic and political fields. the paper presents its arguments by acknowledging the link between reducing corruption and broader process of democratization. t politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 15 understanding political corruption: definitional debates orruption has always been present in society and structures of state but the theoretical as well as the practical understanding of corruption has evolved only in the recent past. corruption has either been understood as a structural problem of politics and economics or as a cultural and moral problem that makes the study of corruption multi-disciplinary. notwithstanding this complex understanding of political corruption, this paper identifies lack of accountability as one of the major reasons for explaining political corruption. in a democratic setting this implies the failure of political institutions in a society. it becomes important, hence, to examine why the present institutional set up has failed to tackle political corruption in india. the meaning, nature and definition of corruption have always been a matter of debate and have evolved over time, with classical conceptions of corruption focused mainly on the moral understandings, whereas modern conceptions conceiving it mainly in terms of specific actions of specific individuals.1 though corruption is 1 michael johnston, “the definitions debates: old conflicts in new guises”, in arvind kumar jain (ed.), the political economy of corruption, london, routledge, 2001, p. 11. always identified as a serious threat to any society, it never received due attention from the point of view of eradicating the problem. corruption has received serious attention only in the recent past. one of the reasons as to why corruption did not get due attention in the past is that corruption was seen as a universal and inevitable phenomenon which could not be tackled rationally. another reason is the argument put forward by the neo-liberal economists that corruption was considered as the result of proactive regulated state and its commitment to planned development. for them a socially corrupt act is only a result of scarcity conditions created by the state which can be tackled by addressing this issue of state’s role in economic management. another set of argument is given by the “revisionists” who believe that some form of corruption may prove to be helpful in governance and development.2 thus, there 2 the “revisionists” challenge the assumption that corruption has only negative effects and argue that it can perform some positive functions as well. at least three groups of writers can be identified who are the proponents of this view. first set of writers are inspired by the structural-functional school who believe that corruption serves positive functions, especially the function of social integration. robert k. merton’s study falls in this group. (see his social theory and social structure, new york, free press, 1957, pp. 72-82) another set of writers conceive corruption as a regulatory mechanism for the informal allocation of scarce licenses and services and can be c pawan kumar adressing political corruption in india 16 can be different ways to explain the causes and consequences of corruption. there is marxian perspective that conceives corruption as a system of general social principle and relation in a community which can be explained in terms of the interest of the dominant class, there is sociological perspective that considers corruption context specific with different societies experiencing different forms and degrees of corruption, there is techno-bureaucratic perspective which sees corruption as a result of over-regulated state and there is political perspective that tries to draw a distinction between bureaucratic corruption and political corruption and calls for the inclusion of the struggle against corruption in the political agenda. bureaucratic corruption in this view involves those acts of related to the market–centered definitions of corruption. v. o. key, for example, argues that corruption helps in regulating and controlling practices like prostitution and gambling because they are illegal and cannot be controlled through legitimate political means. third group of writers are institutionalists, identified with publicinterest definition of corruption, who view corruption as a better alternative for fulfilling demands during the periods of political degeneration and decay of institutions. samuel huntington argues that in periods of political degeneration, the possible alternatives for making demands upon the system are corruption and violence, the former being the better alternative as it poses lesser threat than the latter alternative. (see “modernization and corruption” in his political order in changing societies, new heaven, yale university press, 1968, pp. 59-71.) bureaucrats in which they accept bribes for illegal acts or for “speedy works” to meet their personal needs or greed. in political corruption, apart from the above acts, politicians try to seek legitimacy for their corrupt behavior as something that is an integral part of political competition and hence challenges the very essence of the political process.3 so corruption, viewed from this perspective, is damaging to the democratic institutions. trying to understand corruption in a democracy, mark e. warren points out that the topic of corruption has been absent from democratic theory and the reason behind this is that there have been missing links between concepts of corruption and democracy. warren argues that corruption is a form of harmful exclusion of those who have a claim to inclusion and hence involves an unjustifiable disempowerment.4 warren is trying to provide, what he calls a democratic conception of corruption and believes that corruption in a democracy usually indicates a deficit of democracy, breaking the link 3 devendra raj pandey, “governance and political corruption: a perspective on prospects of regional cooperation in south asia”, in k. k. bhargava and sridhar k. khatri (ed.), south asia 2010: challenges and opportunities, delhi, konark publisher, 2001. 4 mark e. warren, “what does corruption mean in a democracy?”, american journal of political science, vol. 48, no. 2, apr. 2004, pp. 328-343. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 17 between people and the state and reducing the domain of public action by adversely affecting peoples’ power to influence the collective decision-making process. he argues, “corruption in this way diminishes the horizons of collective actions and in so doing shrinks the domain of democracy. corruption undermines democratic capacities of association within civil society by generalizing suspicion and eroding trust and reciprocity.”5 the conceptual link between corruption and democracy can be identified if corruption is seen as “a form of duplicitous and harmful exclusion of those who have a claim to inclusion in collective decision and actions.”6 it has become a general practice that the politicians try to deflect criticisms on account of widespread corruption by arguing that corruption is not systemic but is accidental and try to socialize people in such a way that they start viewing corruption as a problem of just a few officials or leaders rather than a systemic problem. thus, “one plausible failure of the political market-place arises if the minimal relevant knowledge about corruption is not available.”7 people are not able to assess the effects of 5 ibid., p. 329. 6 ibid., p. 329. 7 oskar kurer, “why do voters support corrupt politicians?”, in arvind kumar jain (ed.), the political economy of corruption, london, routledge, 2001, p. 79. corruption properly and focus is generally on the individuals who perform the corrupt acts, which problematizes the general understanding of the nature of political corruption. in the cases of political corruption, attention is not given to the victims of the corrupt act i.e. those who get affected by the corrupt action and the focus is generally on those who perform the act and hence corruption is not seen as antipeople or anti-human, it is seen only as a violation of abstract principles.8 corruption sustains because people relate it to just few leaders or officers and do not consider it systemic and people believe that by getting the corrupt out of the office the task is completed, which is a false belief from which people need to come out. the different perspectives on political corruption makes it a complex phenomenon, which can be understood in different ways and help in understanding the causes and consequences of corruption from different stand points, making the task of defining corruption even more difficult and complex. political corruption has got a complex nature and cannot be defined through a single statement. however, it may be understood in terms of the actors involved and also in terms of the purpose of the corrupt behavior, which involves private 8 ratnakar tripathy, “corruption as privilage and violence”, lokayan bulletin, vol. 12.5, march-april, 1996, pp. 5-10. pawan kumar adressing political corruption in india 18 or group enrichment or power preservation. often these two forms are connected and sometimes political corruption involves both the processes, i.e. on the one hand there is accumulation of wealth and on the other hand there is misuse of public money for political purposes. when the public officials misuse their power to extract from private sector, government revenues and from economy in general, political corruption takes the form of accumulation. such processes of accumulation are called extraction, embezzlement, rent-seeking, plunder, kleptocracy (‘rule by thieves’), as the case may be. on the other hand, when the extracted resources are used for political purposes like power preservation, it takes the form of favouratism and patronage politics which may include distribution of these resources to build loyalty and political support that may involve buying votes and other benefits through favours in different forms. political corruption can be distinguished from administrative or bureaucratic corruption as it is witnessed at the highest level of political system. in a report on corruption research it is argued that “the distinction between political and bureaucratic corruption is rather ambiguous. it depends on the weberian separation of politics from administration, which has proved difficult to implement in most poor countries and hence is difficult to observe. the distinction is nevertheless important in analytical terms.”9 bureaucratic corruption takes place at the implementation side of politics, whereas political corruption usually takes place at the formulation end of politics, where policies regarding distribution of nation’s wealth are made. what can be more damaging is when these two work together to perpetuate each other. any attempt to understand political corruption must confront the task of defining the concept. varieties of definitions have been employed to explain corruption but none of them explains it in a holistic manner. contemporary social science definitions of corruption can be categorized within three strands explaining corruption by relating it to either public office, or to demand supply and exchange concepts of economic theory, or to the concept of public interest. these are called the pubic-office centered definitions, the market-centered definitions, and the public-interest centered definitions respectively. the public-office centered definitions define corruption as any deviation from normal duties of a public role because of private regarding gains. j. s. nye’s definition of corruption well illustrates the public-office definition which is as follows: 9 j. c. andvig (et al.), research on corruption: a policy oriented survey, commissioned by norad, final report, december, 2000, p. 19. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 19 corruption is behavior which deviates from the formal duties of a public role because of private regarding (personal, close family, private clique) pecuniary or status gains; or violates rules against the exercise of certain types of private regarding influence. this includes such behavior as bribery (use of reward to pervert the judgment of a person in a position of trust); nepotism (bestowal of patronage by reason of ascriptive relationship rather than merit); and misappropriation (illegal appropriation of public resources for privateregarding uses).10 the market-centered definitions consider a corrupt public official is the one who regards his/her public office as a business, trying to maximize the income and is reflected in robert tilman’s definition of corruption who states that: corruption involves a shift from a mandatory pricing model to a free-market model. the centralized allocative mechanism, which is the ideal of modern bureaucracy, may break down in the face of serious disequilibrium between supply and demand. clients may decide that it is worthwhile to risk the known sanctions and pay the higher costs in order to be assured of receiving the 10 cf. arnold j. heidenheimer (ed.), political corruption, new jersey, transaction books, 1970, p. 5. desired benefits. when this happens bureaucracy ceases to be patterned after the mandatory market and takes on characteristics of the free market.11 in the same vein van klaveren goes on to state that “a corrupt public servant regards his public office as a business, the income of which he will seek to maximize. the office then becomes a “maximizing unit”. the size of his income depends upon the market situation and his talents for finding the point of maximal gain on the public’s demand curve.”12 some theorists have argued that market-centered definition cannot be used to define corruption. mark philp argues that though the market-centered definition may be one way of understanding corruption, it is certainly not a way of defining it. according to philp “what defines an act as corrupt is not that it is income maximizing, but that it is income maximizing in a context where prior conceptions of public office and the principles for its conduct define it as such.”13 he is of the opinion that all the cases of income maximizing need not be corrupt and hence to consider any interest or incomemaximizing act as corrupt, it requires construction of public office and the public 11 ibid. 12 ibid. 13 mark philp, “defining political corruption”, in paul heywood (ed.), political corruption, u.k., blackwell publisher, 1997, p. 28. pawan kumar adressing political corruption in india 20 interest which are based on certain norms and values, which provide certain normative constraints on income maximizing. the public-interest centered definition conceives corruption as violations of common interest for special advantage. the public interest-centered definition is exemplified by carl friedrich who argues: the pattern of corruption can be said to exist whenever a power holder who is charged with doing certain things, i.e., who is a responsible functionary or office holder, is by monetary or other rewards not legally provided for, induced to take actions which favour whoever provides the rewards and thereby does damage to the public and its interests.14 these different understandings of corruption have made political corruption a complex phenomenon. a careful examination of the above definitions would reveal that public office and public interest are intimately connected. the open character of politics demands the politicians to be guided by public interest. politicians are not simply to fulfill promises made to electorate rather politics is also about the projection of conceptions of public interest. the idea, therefore, should not be to strive for formulating one line definition of political 14 heidenheimer, op. cit, p. 6. corruption, as it requires identifying proper conception of the public interest. thus, these definitions are vague until certain norms are identified to distinguish between corrupt and non-corrupt acts. any normative judgment about political corruption requires a point of view and a standard of “goodness” and the definition of political corruption should be based on certain conception of non-corrupt politics, which requires identification of proper standards to distinguish between corrupt and non-corrupt acts.15 in a democracy usually these standards are democratic principles and values which form the basis to identify politically corrupt acts. how does corruption thrives in a democracy? it is now clear that corruption in a democracy undermines democratic structures as well as democratic values. focus on effects of corruption in a 15 some theorists have argued that the market-centered definition of corruption seems to bypass this requirement of norm setting as market does not give importance to any norm since it is based on the principle of self-interest and profit. however, there are other theorists who argue that even market functions on certain rules applicable to the actors and there are certain characteristics that distinguish a “black market” from a “free market”. (for a detailed account of this debate see heidenheimer, 1970, op. cit.) politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 21 democracy helps in better conceptualization of the concept and in understanding the fact that there is a kind of inverse relationship between corruption and democracy which means that as corruption increases democracy is undermined and as democracy is strengthened opportunities of corruption are minimized.16 daniel. treisman is of the opinion that countries with freedom of press, vigorous civic associations, can have greater ability to expose corruption.17 but the question that emerges now is how corruption sustains in a democracy? india, which is one of the largest democracies in the world, is grappled with the problem of corruption which forces us to think whether there are some structural faults in the functioning of democracy that helps corruption to survive. this section is devoted to investigate this aspect from the indian perspective and examine whether india provides some special context as a breeding ground of corruption. 16 there are theorists who have contrasting opinion to this viewpoint and argue that the negative correlation between corruption and democracy is not very strong and is only statistical correlation.(see martin paldam, “the big pattern of corruption: economics, culture and the seesaw dynamics”, working paper, no. 1999-11, department of economics, university of aarhus, 1999.) 17 daniel triesman, “the causes of corruption: a cross national study”, journal of public economics, vol. 76, 2000, pp. 399-457. corruption in india can be attributed to the social situations that make corruption more likely. in india the governments in most of the cases acquired control over the disposal of posts and privileges and they had to face the electorates, mostly poor, who could be easily influenced by material incentives. india lacks well-developed structures for expressing and combining important political interests. the effect of this lack of interest structures is that political demands that originate outside the elite class have minimal influence on legislation, which is one of the reasons behind little or no influence of the public on the ‘output’ of the government. demands of the people or groups reach the political system only at the implementation stage and not before the laws are passed. the influence before the passage of legislation is called ‘pressure group politics’ and the influence at the enforcement stage often involves ‘corruption’. for example, agitation of peasant groups through their union for reduction in land tax is different than making an illegal monetary contribution to the concerned officer for avoiding their land taxes. the latter influences the outcome of government policy. in this sense corruption is not just a reflection of the failure of the formal political system to meet the demands of important sectors; it is also representative of the efforts of individuals and groups to mould the political system according to their pawan kumar adressing political corruption in india 22 wishes.18 people who feel that their interests are ignored by the formal political system often take up the informal ways to influence which is corruption. electoral competition is one area in a political system that widens the arena of political influence. since people’s vote makes a difference in the affairs of those who seek power and manage the state, the powerholders and power-seekers adopt different methods to influence the voters. in this sense the control over votes has proved ineffective in ensuring accountability of the political leaders. the major political resource today is control over coercive force and not control over votes. thus it is not always true that people vote because they want to replace the corrupt leader as there can be several other reasons why people vote in a democracy. sometimes people vote because 18 jeffrey witsoe while examining the ways in which politics of caste empowerment altered the ways in which the state was popularly imagined, came up with the finding that many people began to perceive state institutions as inherently corrupt sources of political patronage and that, having long served to perpetuate upper-caste dominance, could now be used in the same way by a new class of political leaders to empower lower-caste groups. within this context, corruption was tolerated, sometimes even celebrated, as a means to lowercaste empowerment.(jeffrey witsoe, “corruption as power: caste the political imagination of the post-colonial state”, american ethnologist, vol. 38, no. 1, 2011, pp. 73–85.) of the material incentives it supplies. the ordinary voters desire immediate material rewards and therefore they vote for those who can give them maximum favour. when voters think that their best interests are not being served by the political system, they may support a corrupt politician who serves their interest rather than an honest politician who represents others as well. such assumptions rest on the belief that voters are well aware about the nature of corruption as well as its effects, which is not true in reality because voters are ignorant about the effects of corruption and hence they are not able to assess the effects of corruption correctly which makes them falsely believe that corruption serves their material interest. with this understanding, democracy becomes a set procedures and institutions where people elect their representatives, whose accountability is ensured only periodically. participation, within this understanding, is restricted to the exercise of franchise by citizens of a country. thus, in a representative democracy like india, election becomes the only opportunity that people have to hold their leaders accountable. hasan suroor is critical of limited participation of people that is restricted to the voting process and draws attention to the fact that the belief of voters that elections empower them is actually a false belief. in most of the third-world countries, where vast majority of population is politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 23 excluded from decision making process, the ballot-box is the only means through which they can have their voices heard. he points out that despite the poor record of governance the very idea of electing government gives the voters a sense of power, which is actually illusory.19 robert dahl gave a lot of importance to participation and believed that citizens must have adequate and equal opportunity to express their preferences for the final outcome. he argues that denying any citizen the opportunity for effective participation means that their preferences are not considered because either they are unknown or incorrectly perceived. however, if their preferences are not taken into account, it means that the principle of equal consideration of interests is compromised. with this, it appears that ‘effective participation’ also takes into account the fact that the reason for lack of participation may be because of some form of control.20 dahl is of the opinion that ownership and control “contribute to the creation of great differences among citizens in wealth, income, status, skills, information…[and] differences like these help in turn to generate 19 hasan suroor, “looking beyond ballotbox democracy”, the hindu, wednesday, august 22, 2007. 20 neve gordon, “dahl’s procedural democracy: a foucauldian critique”, democratization, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 23-40, p. 26. significant inequalities among citizens in their capacities and opportunities for participating as political equals in governing the state.”21 thus, it may be argued that some form of large scale redistribution of resources is needed for ‘effective participation’. for dahl, if a person has sufficient resources and will, he or she can actualize the equal opportunity granted to him or her. consequently it may be argued that the procedures that ensure equal opportunity to participate depend upon the substantive equalization of resources. it is, however, important here to consider that merely ensuring equal distribution of resources cannot be enough to ensure participation and there can be various other factors that may affect ‘effective participation’ of the people. proceduralists cite election data to explain participation because of which they tend to slip into the “fallacy of electoralism”.22 their analyses overlook the socio-economic inequalities, which make formal participation difficult to be effective. it overlooks the fact that there can be different barriers to political participation like caste, patriarchy, and so on. the free exercise of franchise may be curtailed “when people do not have the power of independent decision making; 21 cf. ibid. 22 “introduction”, in niraja gopal jayal (ed.), democracy in india, new delhi, oxford university press, 2001, p. 3. pawan kumar adressing political corruption in india 24 when they have inadequate access to relevant information; when they are helpless in holding their representatives accountable; and, above all, when their franchise fails to yield a responsive administration.”23 the basic condition for effective political participation is something more than merely providing equal political rights and it cannot be ensured by just providing equal resources to people. the study by neve gordon brings out two main difficulties in the procedural model. firstly, he argues that the mechanisms that suppress freedom, undermine plurality and fosters inequality, can, in fact function within a ‘perfect’ procedural democracy and hence equality can be undermined within a procedural model. secondly, he is of the opinion that a ‘perfect’ procedural democracy cannot be divorced from existing power relations operating in a society that may greatly hinder people’s participation.24 in india, in particular, the obstacles to such meaningful participation are numerous, and certainly these are not just the result of unequal distribution of resources but also result from unequal power relations operating in the society. democracy in india is characterized by constitutional government with free and fair election, legislative assemblies and so on, 23 ibid., p. 4. 24 gordon, op. cit. which may draw one to the conclusion that india is a true democracy. this assumption rests on the procedural view of democracy which views democracy purely as a set of institutions. but to conceive indian democracy in its true sense, there is need to look at it from the glass of equality and see whether people are truly equal or not, whether citizens are actively engaged politically and have an equal voice in choosing their representatives and holding them accountable. on this account, indian democracy has to cover a long distance which makes it necessary to understand it in substantive sense. equality, being the foundational principle of democracy, was incorporated in the constitution of india in the form of equality before the law and equal protection of the law. however, it is also a stark reality that equality before the law is severely compromised for those who are unable to approach the courts for violation of their rights. it is also true that though civil liberties and personal freedoms are formally recognized, in actual practice there are severe violations of these rights. “despite the fact that elections have been regularly held, and have for the most part been free and fair, it is on the twin dimensions of accountability and responsiveness that democracy in india, judged even on limited procedural criteria, politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 25 has proved inadequate.”25 though it is true that voters have voted out corrupt or inefficient regimes, the structures of governance have always been inaccessible to the ordinary people.26 this, however, should not mean that procedural democracy is not required or is rejected out rightly. the above debate is presented only to highlight the fact that procedural democracy is necessary but not sufficient for making democracy meaningful. “the project of democracy is not accomplished by merely securing legal and political equality, it may be severely compromised by inequalities of wealth, power and social status, which deny many from having a truly equal opportunity to influence governmental decisions.”27 therefore, it may be argued that democracy should not be confined to the sphere of state and government. it should also be seen as the principle governing collective life in the society. it may, however, be argued that 25 ibid., p. 36. 26 it is in this context that some scholars have highlighted the role of intermediary institutions in ensuring accountable government in a representative democracy and argue that to have popular control over government in representative democracy the intermediary institutions play a vital role in facilitating transparency and accountability. (see marian sawer , “the democratic audit of australia: populism vs citizen rights”, paper presented at 20th ipsa world congress, july, 2006.) 27 ibid. to give so much emphasis on the substantive nature of democracy and to judge democracy on the substantive criteria is nothing but utopian, as no existing democracy would pass such a test. every society whether rich or poor has some kind of injustice. but it is important to realize that the issues of inequalities and injustices of any kind need to be addressed in any democratic theory. within this conceptual framework it is important to understand that political corruption is more a problem of substantive democratization. prevalence of political corruption despite the presence of various anti-corruption institutions and different constitutional safeguards clearly demonstrates that there is some problem in the functioning of democracy which is manifested in the form of lack of effective participation of people in political processes. it is because of lack of participation that people are not able to hold their representatives accountable, which ultimately leads to political corruption.28 in this sense, it becomes important to assess indian democracy on the basis of some clear principles that may help in conceptualizing 28 it is important here to consider that lack of participation is not the only reason for political corruption rather the paper tries to argue that one of the effective ways to effectively address political corruption is by ensuring participation of people. pawan kumar adressing political corruption in india 26 the link between reducing corruption and the process of democratization. popular approaches to tackle political corruption: a comparative perspective reasons for the existence of corruption are many and so are the ways suggested for tackling it. ades and di tella propose three possible approaches to reduce corruption. first, is a “layer’s” approach which talks about strengthening laws and their proper enforcement. layer’s approach increases the cost and risks associated with corruption, as it focuses on punishment of the corrupt. second, is a “businessman’s” approach which is in favour of giving proper incentives to public officials which would reduce their temptation to engage in corrupt activities. one way of providing such incentive is to provide higher wages. a businessman’s approach would reduce the incentives of corruption as the motivation for engaging in corrupt act is reduced by providing different kinds of incentives to the public officials. third, is an “economist’s” approach that advocates increasing competition so that opportunities for exploitation in different transactions can be minimised. economist’s approach would reduce opportunities for corruption, as competition reduces the chances of abuse of power.29 it is important to study some cases 29 a. ades, and r. di tella,, “the new economics of corruption: a survey and of successes and failures in the anticorruption reform process. the following sections provide an account of different approaches employed in different parts of the world to address corruption. it presents a comparative study of why certain reforms were successful in a specific country and why some countries could not successfully fight corruption which will help in providing a wider perspective to examine why democratic institutions fail to tackle political corruption in india. the power-sharing approach some theorists consider the idea of powersharing as one of the effective ways to check abuse of power, as they see mutual surveillance as a counterbalance to political decay, such as bribery and corruption. robert dahl preferred to call the powersharing democracy as “madisonian democracy” as it was madison who warned that if power is concentrated there is always a risk of its abuse and hence concentration of power must be avoided. he did not accept regular election and internal checks like conscience, attitudes and personality of individuals, as sufficient to provide necessary checks on the abuse of power, rather he insisted on external checks, through dispersion of power into different hands. some new results”, political studies, vol. 45 (special issue), 1997, pp. 496-515. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 27 arendt lijphart advocated powersharing model by bringing in the idea of “consensus democracy” to avoid abuse of power. different mechanisms that he thought would be instrumental in arriving at “consensus democracy” are “grand coalition”, “decentralisation”, “minority veto”, and “proportional representation.” it means that if everyone has a share in governmental power, there is delegation of power, minorities have a veto regarding issues concerning them and losers too have representation, the risk of abuse of power would be greatly minimised. he believed that if all are able to take part in government through their chosen representatives, then they would be able to ensure that no injustices are done to them. when different parties will be represented in the parliament and no party has a majority, they will form coalition to make the government and in this situation minorities will also have a say in the government. lijphart firmly claims that the proportional method would counteract political corruption and hence considers proportional representation as the most fundamental institutional value. though there is also a view that in a majoritarian democracy, the opposition in minority provides necessary check on the abuse of power and with regular elections people have the opportunity to throw out the corrupt and it is the best way to ensure accountability, lijphart is critical to this view, as for him, regular election is not an effective way to fight corruption, at least not as effective as would be in a case of “consensus democracy” having mutual oversight. according to him, abuse of power and corruption are less prevalent in consensus democracy than in majoritarian democracy. however, lijphart’s consensus democracy model does not seem to provide any mechanism for ensuring accountability because if everyone will have a say in decision making process then it is not clear who should be held responsible for the decisions. it seems that for lijphart what is more important is that the government should reflect popular opinion and whether people hold their leaders accountable or not is not important for him. though theorists have considered power-sharing as an effective method to check abuse of power, empirical evidence suggest just the opposite. one such case where the power-sharing model failed is the case of italy where both proportional and majoritarian systems were tested and proved to be ineffective in tackling political corruption. italy practiced proportionalism with a firm belief that dispersing power into many hands reduces the risk of abuse of power which proved to be wrong, as in early 1990s far-reaching corruption came to light in the italian politics. as a response to this crisis the italians made transition to majoritarian democracy hoping that this would clean up pawan kumar adressing political corruption in india 28 the politics but that too proved to be ineffective. in such a situation it becomes interesting to explain political corruption in italy because it was precisely to check such abuse of power that the principles of proportionalism and power sharing were incorporated into the constitution. the framers of the italian constitution had thought that by incorporating power-sharing they could guarantee a just and fair reflection of the popular will which was soon proved wrong by the developments that followed. even if the largest party could not achieve majority, it could secure power through negotiations with other parties. in this situation there was hardly any option for alternative government, as there was no fear of losing office. the leaders of the parties became the masters of the country and the negotiations took place within this “elite cartel” that decided the course of action and in this way the decisions taken were not the expression of popular will. governments were short lived but the same politicians returned to power on different posts. gradually the negotiation process started involving bribes and benefits and corruption became widespread. both voters and organisations could be bought with money or political benefits, the courts, police, and social insurance system were politicised, cooperation with organised crime deepened and the mafia became a political power factor.30 in february 1992, mario chiesa, a socialist politician, was arrested for taking bribes for offering contracts to several companies in exchange of political support and money. this scandal gradually grew big and became the biggest scandal in the political history of modern italy which resulted in the fall of the first republic and the end of consensus democracy.31 in a referendum in 1993 more than 80 per cent of voters wanted a change to majority 30 leif lewin, democratic accountability: why choice in politics is both possible and necessary, london, harvard university press, 2007, p. 105. 31 the investigation was carried out under antonio di pietro, a milan magistrate, and was called “operation clean hands”. operation clean hands succeeded because of di pietro’s minute preparations. di pietro used computer technology to trace bank transactions, which helped him to identify the link between politicians, mafia and common crime. those arrested were kept in san vittore prison in milan which had brutal, unhealthy and unsanitary conditions. those who were under suspicion were told that they would remain in prison unless they confess. those who were released due to lack of evidence, would immediately be arrested again until confession came. the politicians regularly tried to convince that political cooperation requires giving and taking. they argued that negotiations and coalition building cannot be done for free and “clean hands” was unrealistic. however, a reform movement had started with the aim of cleaning the politics from roots, that is, to change the electoral system. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 29 elections. thus, the second republic with a majoritarian system came into being. however, democracy under the second republic too was fragile and it was too marked by the tradition of corruption and authoritarian tendencies. italy’s case suggests that proportional representation is no guarantee for a clean government. the belief that if all had a share in power and kept watch over each other, politics could become cleaner, was proved wrong. the change into a majoritarian democracy too did not bring about any significant improvement. the abuse of power was part of both majoritarian and proportional system.32 the single-agency approach corruption occurs when there are sufficient incentives and opportunities to engage in corrupt acts and there is also very less probability of being caught and punished. so for some theorists effort should be to reduce or eliminate the incentives and opportunities and increase the risk of being caught and punished so that corruption could be controlled. in this regard government should 32 italy’s case is important to consider because it is an example to prove that such changes in indian democracy cannot be effective in tackling political corruption. it suggests that unless accountability of the leaders is ensured, political corruption is likely to re-emerge, as representatives themselves may not turn out to be an effective check on corrupt use of power, as they themselves tend to benefit from it. try to make corruption a “high risk and low reward” activity33, which can be possible, as some theorists argue, if a single-agency is created to look into the matters of corruption, which is operationally independent and able to function without fear or favour. it is often argued that in certain cases there can be political interference as it could be dictated from above regarding the cases it is going to investigate and also establishing an anticorruption agency with extensive legal powers in the absence of effective oversight procedures is questioned on the ground that such an agency can add another layer of (ineffective) bureaucracy to the law enforcement sector, divert resources from existing organisations, function as a ‘shield’ to satisfy donors and public opinion, and even operate as a political police force. countering such criticisms, supporters of single-agency approach argue that in order to overcome such difficulties and maintain public trust, the independence of such an agency needs to be enshrined in national legislation or the constitution, and it should be a criminal offence to interfere with its operational independence. in reality, such 33 su jing, “corruption by design? a comparative study of singapore, hong kong and mainland china”, discussion papers, crawford school of economics and government, australian national university, 2007, http://www.crawford.anu.edu.au/, accessed on 5th august, 2011, p. 11. http://www.crawford.anu.edu.au/ pawan kumar adressing political corruption in india 30 anti corruption agencies require the support of other structures to do their job properly. according to m. manion, properly-designed and timely interventions by government could successfully reduce corruption and improve credibility of the government and in order to shift the equilibrium from “widespread corruption” to “clean government” there is need to have proper design of government intervention.34 she studies this transformation in the case of singapore and hong kong, on the one hand, and mainland china on the other, where the former is an example of successful transformation and the latter gives an account of the difficulty in bringing out anti-corruption reforms. manion draws upon three fundamental differences in the approach of anti-corruption reforms in singapore and hong kong and that of mainland china. firstly, singapore and hong kong granted independent and absolute authority to an independent anticorruption agency, while in mainland china multiple agencies were granted partial and often overlapping authority. secondly, in singapore and hong kong corruption is addressed at multiple levels attacking corruption in all forms and in all places, while in mainland china corruption was addressed in a piecemeal manner. thirdly, 34 m. manion, corruption by design: building clean government in mainland china and hong kong, massacusetts, harvard university press, 2004. the difference lies in different constitutional design that has an important influence on constraints on power. thus, according to manion anti-corruption efforts can be studied by focussing on three things — anticorruption agency, anti-corruption strategy, and the context that puts constraints on power. anti-corruption agency anti-corruption agencies are responsible to enforce anti-corruption legislations. in a situation where there is widespread corruption with corrupt enforcers and there is scarcity of enforcement resources, there emerges various obstacles in the path of anti-corruption reform and an independent agency can play a vital role in these circumstances. according to manion, the icac (independent commission against corruption) in hong kong succeeded in overcoming these obstacles which enabled hong kong to make the “equilibrium shift” from widespread corruption to clean government. she further mentions that the key components of agency design that enabled icac in controlling corruption was its independence, its draconian power and adequate financial resources. all these three components were instrumental in efficient enforcement. the icac is independent in terms of structure, staffing, finances and power.35 similarly in singapore the poca 35 icac is directly responsible to the governor (the chief executive after politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 31 (prevention of corruption act) was strengthened and more powers were given to the officers of cpib (corruption practices investigation bureau) which greatly helped in the anti-corruption reform process. manion compares this with mainland china and points out that mainland china does not have any independent anti-corruption agency. the agencies that are functioning have overlapping jurisdictions and unclear division of labour which often leads to routine delay in transforming cases for criminal investigation and consequently people develop the believe that their government does not have the ability and credibility to control corruption. thus, the basic difference in the anti-corruption agencies in hong kong and singapore taken together and mainland china lies in their level of independence and effectiveness. the democracy assessment of philippines has a similar story to tell about corruption in philippines. philippines had a long history of widespread corruption, and after the restoration of democracy in 1986, a number of laws and policies were enacted to prevent and curtail corruption. the 1987 1997 take over) and can practically design anti-corruption policies. the commissioner is appointed by the chief executive and has a fixed term in the office. his staffs are recruited separately from the civil service and the police. officials are not transferred to other departments. constitution came up with a number of bodies to ensure integrity and accountability such as the office of the ombudsman was created to protect graft and corruption; sandiganbayan, a special court was created for senior officials for cases involving graft and corrupt practices; the civil service commission, and the commission on audit were also institutionalised. despite these laws and policies the problem persists, as the democracy assessment of philippines demonstrates, because of weak enforcement. the report of the democracy assessment of philippines came up with many findings to show various causes of persistence of corruption. these findings revealed that the range of responsibilities and functions are so wide that they often overlap and the environment of philippines too does not encourage integrity. the report further revealed that annual declarations of assets by public servants are just formalities and in actual practice the properties, income and assets are never disclosed. it went on to state that the nature of anti-corruption laws is dual, whereby high ranking officials are seldom investigated or convicted, which makes the enforcement of anti-corruption laws almost impossible. the report also highlighted the fact that election in philippines is the main economic activity for political players and it is used as a means to create and consolidate core constituencies. it was further pointed out that political parties pawan kumar adressing political corruption in india 32 do not provide strong internal checks and there is absence of external control on spending, which make elections quite expensive activities and hence the high cost of election together with other contributing factors build up a perfect context for corruption to flourish, as because of expensive campaign process the elected officers are forced to focus primarily on the recovery of this expense. the study revealed that the commission on election is ill prepared to police campaign overspending and other corrupt and illegal actions and there was an impressive gap between electoral laws and reality.36 thus, the experience of mainland china and philippines exemplify the failure of anti-corruption agencies in dealing with corruption, which exposes the fact that merely creating anti-corruption institutions cannot be an answer for corruption and hence brings out the need for an in-depth analysis of the problem. anti-corruption strategy a public servant while acting as an economic agent calculates the costs and benefits of engaging in corrupt activities. therefore, for a successful government intervention it is important that these interventions are aimed at reducing the corruption payoffs as well as the incentives to engage in corrupt activities. hong kong came up with a three-pronged 36 lim millard (et. al), philippines democracy assessment: minimising corruption, manila, ateneo university press, 2007. strategy to tackle corruption which involved enforcement, prevention and education. enforcement is to increase the probability of being caught and being punished; prevention reduces the opportunities for corruption; and education is to increase the moral cost of corruption. the purpose, in this sense, is to strike at the root causes of corruption. singapore’s anti-corruption strategy focuses on both the incentives and opportunities for corruption, which has been possible by strengthening enforcement through poca and cpib. the prevention work taken up by various departments also forms part of the strategy. the incentives of corruption are taken care by increasing the salaries and working conditions. thus, both singapore and hong kong emphasised on enforcement, to increase the cost of corruption and on prevention, to reduce the opportunities for corruption and at the same time they also emphasised on reducing the incentives of corruption. constraints on power it is important to realise that small-scale government interventions won’t be of much help unless there are some proper and systemic constraints on power. for anticorruption reforms to succeed it is important that government’s commitment is respected by people and this is possible only within a specific context with shared understanding of government’s responsibility, which is possible through a politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 33 constitutional design that provides constrains to all kinds of power operating within a political system. according to manion, one of the basic differences between hong kong and mainland china lies in their different constitutional designs. countries that uphold rule of law would be able to put constraints on corrupt actions more effectively, which was evident in the case of hong kong and singapore, than in countries having ambiguous laws and where legal authority is politicised, as was seen in the case of philippines. in such cases rule of law cannot become a meaningful constraint on the abuse of power. thus, both singapore and hong kong initiated a comprehensive anticorruption strategy which aimed at reducing both the opportunities and incentives for corruption.37 the anti-corruption efforts comprised of specific and non-specific 37 the case of singapore and hong kong show how corruption can be tackled from above. but these countries cannot be taken as examples because neither of these countries was a democracy and it functioned in the hands of autocratic leaders and it would throw an impression that democracy cannot become a tool to fight corruption. the reason for their inclusion in this research is that the intention is to study the anticorruption approach rather than the context in which it was operationalised. therefore, the focus is primarily on studying the technicalities of the approaches applied in both these countries and see if they can be effective in a democracy like india. measures.38 the specific measures involved activities carried out under the anticorruption agencies and the non-specific measures involved administrative measures taken by various government agencies which included, in the case of singapore, disciplinary proceedings by public service commission, scrutiny of government expenditure by the auditor general and so on.39 the “big-bang” approach often remedies suggested to tackle corruption is thought to be a well set mechanism and it is believed that once it is operationalized an incremental process of change is put into a path, where with every step the society is taken away from corruption and with some ‘initial steps’ or minor institutional changes the society is put into this “path” and it is taken out of the grip of corruption. according to world bank, for example, the implementation of anti-corruption policies requires an important entry point for anti corruption efforts. in one of the reports it is stated that “it is critical to begin at a point where the goals are feasible and tangible results can be realized within a time frame that builds support for further reforms. small gains can 38 a. t. r. rahman,. “legal and administrative measures against bureaucratic corruption in asia”, in l. v. carino (ed.), bureaucratic corruption in asia: causes, consequences and controls, quezon city, jmc press, 1986, p. 147. 39 ibid., p. 151. pawan kumar adressing political corruption in india 34 provide essential levers to sway public and official opinion.”40 within this approach small and minor changes are expected to bring big changes in the political system. the proponents of the “big-bang” approach are critical of this point of view and are of the opinion that corruption cannot be tackled through minor or small changes. bo rothstein, for example, is critical of the approaches that insisted for minor institutional changes and believes that there is no magical key or institutional device for fighting systemic corruption. he is of the opinion that small changes are likely to aggravate the problem and what is required is a “big bang” change. the problem with corruption, rothstein argues, is that it seems to be very “sticky”, which means that once a system gets corrupted it becomes very difficult to take it out from the grip of corruption and “once corruption becomes systemic and the existence of widespread corrupt practices becomes “common knowledge”, we seem to have a case of an extremely robust inefficient equilibrium.”41 corruption is a “sticky” problem, rothstein 40 world bank, "anti-corruption in transition: a contribution to the policy debate." washington d. c., the world bank, 2000, p. 75. 41 bo rothstein, “ anti-corruption – a big bang theory”, paper presented at the conference on corruption and democracy organized by the centre for the study of democratic institutions, vancouver, university of british columbia, june 8-9, 2007, p. 5. points out, because there is no good reason for corrupt to move out of the “game” because those who are at the bottom of the corrupt system believe that even if they, as individuals, start behaving honestly, nothing will change as long as most of their colleagues do not change their behaviour42 and in such situations collective action for the common good is impossible to establish as long as people try to maximize their expected utility. the implication of such an approach is that it develops an understanding that a corrupt system cannot be changed from below.43 despite regular efforts to fight corruption, the success rate is very low and one of the reasons is that while leaders do have the necessary means for launching successful policies against corruption, they usually have no incentives to do so as they are often the ones who stand to gain most from rents in a corrupt system.44 another reason for the difficulty in bringing about the change is that corruption has become a “standard way of life” and therefore “for the average citizen, it seems that corruption has 42 gunnar myrdal has made a similar point. (gunnar myrdal, asian drama: an inquiry into the poverty of nations, new york, pantheon, 1968, p. 409) 43 bo rothestein, social traps and the problem of trust, cambridge, cambridge university press, 2005. 44 michael johnston, syndromes of corruption: wealth, power, and democracy, cambridge, cambridge univ. press, 2005. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 35 broken down all barriers and dictates of the rules of life. that is not very different from saying that they interpret life in terms of corruption”45 and when life is viewed in terms of corruption, it takes the form of deeply entrenched belief system. according to rothstein, it is not easy to change such belief systems and hence in order to change such deeply held systems of beliefs, something “big” and “non-incremental” is necessary. rothstein is critical of those approaches that focus merely on the structural changes and on reducing the incentives of corruption. a society that is committed to tackle corruption must have to take up at least two important questions at the outset. first, what types of structural reforms are necessary in order to reduce corruption? second, which types of processes will be successful to operationalize such reforms? most research on corruption has mainly focused on the first, structural question suggesting to create new or to change existing institutions, while ignoring the second one about the change of processes. william easterly, for example, has suggested two measures to tackle corruption. “first, set up quality institutions…second, establish policies that eliminate incentives for corruption”.46 examining the effect of 45 undp, human development report 2002 bosnia and herzegovina, new york, united nation development program, 2002. 46 cf. rothestein, op. cit., 2007, p. 10. different types of political institutions on the degree of corruption in 38 african countries, alence in his political institutions and developmental governance in sub-saharan africa concluded that a combination of electoral competition and institutional checks and balances on executive power has a negative effect on the frequency of corruption. in other words, the study suggests that the ideas and the practices of liberal democracy work counter to corruption.47 sandholtz and koetzle have shown in their study that the presence of liberal democratic institutions minimizes the chances of corruption. they are of the opinion that formal democratic structures facilitate citizen oversight and control, and in a culture characterized by democratic values, it is against normal behaviour to act corrupt.48 according to rothstein, such examples of anti-corruption strategies suggest that the problem of corruption can be solved by merely “fixing the incentives”49 and when the institutions are created such that fear is greater than greed, corruption can be controlled. however, rothstein is of the opinion that creating such institution is itself a collective action problem and it won’t be solved unless a society ceases to be dominated by corrupt agents. he argues that explaining corruption and providing solutions to it on the basis of 47 ibid. 48 ibid. 49 ibid., p.11. pawan kumar adressing political corruption in india 36 some universal values and institutions such as transparency, democracy, independent judicial anti-corruption agencies or “good governance” is not enough because in societies where these institutions function effectively accountability will automatically be facilitated and problem arises only when there are systematically corrupt institutions. “in the search for universal theories on causes and solutions concerning corruption, many researchers do not recognize the inbuilt inertia (or path-dependency) of corrupt institutional systems”.50 rothstein further argues that if new institutions have to be created then the question of agency becomes central and the approach that advocates for structural changes often ignores the kind of agents that are present and what strategies they use. he insists that for a successful reform process research must start from identifying the roles and interests of agents and broadened his idea by arguing that the research must begin by identifying the groups that are expected to oppose the reform and how such opposition can be dealt with and identifying those who can support the change and finding out the way they can be involved in the struggle against corruption.51 50 ibid., p. 12. 51 it seems that rothstein is concerned about creating a support base for the struggle against corruption by identifying the interests of the agents i.e. whether they support the change or not. thus, a number of conditions are required to ensure that anti-corruption reforms in any context are effective, sustainable and not easily subverted. these conditions need to be backed by having the necessary data to inform policy and strategy; comprehensive legal and institutional safeguards to prevent corruption and protect public interest; and, the most difficult to secure, the necessary political leadership and will to tackle corruption credibly and put in place long-term reforms. it is clear that to be effective, national anti-corruption/integrity systems require more than a single agency approach and they need to be supported by an institutional matrix of legal and oversight systems to ensure effective prosecution of offenders. a partnership approach, including active engagement by civil society and the media, is also important. above all, the reforms need to be implemented by ethical leaders who scrupulously observe rule of law. the solutions suggested to tackle political corruption vary considerably as the perception of the problem and its causes differ. even when there is some agreement over the nature and cause of the problem, the solutions suggested from different however, he does not make it clear what kinds of changes he is talking about? the question of supporting or not supporting the change comes up only when there is some consensus on what the change is and hence this too can become a collective action problem. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 37 quarters might vary. this happens because, as raymond. w. pong argues, the debates about causality usually take place at a theoretical level while the solutions that are suggested are mostly outcome-oriented.52 politics of anti-corruption campaigns in india the big scams that have come to light since independence are enough to prove that corruption is deeply embedded in the indian political system and that anti-corruption measures taken so far have not been enough to curb corruption. these scams often triggered off anti-corruption campaigns. the anti-corruption campaigns in india have been essentially political phenomena as they serve as an instrument for the political leaders to strengthen their position and undermine that of the opposition.53 gillespie and okruhlik call this “corruption cleanups”.54 while various anti-corruption agencies are engaged in their anti-corruption efforts, some of the indian political leaders 52 raymond w. pong, “social problems as a conflict process”, in james holstein and gale miller (ed.), perspectives on social problems: a research annual, vol. 1, greenwich, ct: jai press, 1989, pp. 5976. 53 vinod pavarala, interpreting corruption: elite perspective in india, new delhi, sage, 1996, p. 196. 54 kate gillespie and gwenn okruhlik, “the political dimensions of corruption cleanups: a framework for analysis”, comparative politics, vol. 24, no. 1 (october), 1991, pp. 77-95. and governments believe that launching anticorruption campaigns or ‘clean-up drives’ at regular intervals may be politically advantageous for them. in 1989, the national front alliance led by v. p. singh, defeated the congress (i) government almost solely on the issue of corruption by waging a nation-wide campaign against the congress government. the bofors case55 was highlighted to such an extent that the national front went on to state in its election manifesto titled ‘root out corruption, save nation,’ that “bofors, corruption and rajiv gandhi are synonymous.”56 even during the 1991 elections, the leader of the opposition bhartiya janata party (bjp), a. b. vajpayee, criticised the election manifesto of congress (i) for not adopting a public stand on the issue of corruption and accused the congress (i) government for nursing a corrupt system. what is important to mention here is that the pre-election period provides ideal conditions for the political leaders to launch such campaign and can be termed as “preelection cleanups”.57 similarly there can be other ideal political contexts in which 55 bofors was a swedish arms company with which illegal defense deals were allegedly made by some of the top leaders of the congress (i) government. 56 national front, “lok sabha elections: manifesto”, 1989, pp. 1-2. 57 pavarala, op. cit, pp. 199-200. pawan kumar adressing political corruption in india 38 politicians initiate anti-corruption campaigns like incumbent, post-succession and postelection periods.58 in an incumbent context, those who hold power do not try to discredit the previous government but try to enhance their own legitimacy. the incumbent cleanups are also common in india which was evident when in 1990 the chief minister of orissa, biju patnaik, expressed his helplessness in running the administration because of widespread corruption and went on to make a call to the general public to beat up corrupt officials and make them accountable. though this step was widely criticized, the campaign started by patnaik was intended to stir up public support for his government and present him as an anticorruption crusader.59 the post-succession cleanups refer to the steps taken by the government that take forward the campaign of earlier government so that a perception of continuity is ensured among the public. in india, however, a slightly modified version can be seen as post-succession cleanups 58 gillespie and okruhlik on the basis of a survey of 25 middle eastern and north african countries delineated five political contexts in which politicians initiate anticorruption campaigns: post-coup, postrevolution, incumbent, post-succession, and post-election. (gillespie and okruhlik, op. cit) the post-coup and post-revolution contexts are not relevant for india. 59 “call to “beat up” corrupt officials: biju’s appeal catching on”, the indian express, 20th december, 1990, p. 11. have not necessarily been a continuation of the previous regime. in 1985, for example, when rajiv gandhi succeeded indira gandhi as prime minister of india, he was projected as the leader of a new generation with the image of ‘mr. clean.’ thus, in this case the cleanup campaign did not start when the succession occurred, rather, it started after rajiv gandhi came to power and was used to build a popular mandate around the issue of controlling corruption.60 during the post-election cleanups the government tries to fulfil its campaign promises and create conducive conditions for its re-election. such cleanups may be used by government to discredit the previous government. what is to be noted in all these cleanup campaigns is that they are meant to serve private political interests. gillespie and okruhlik argue that these cleanups are “a tool by which elites attempt to fulfil that most basic of political instincts, self-preservation.”61 thus, efforts by the political elite against corruption are usually used to highlight the problem merely for political gains associated with it without any intention of making the system free of corruption. in this context, different measures that are suggested to tackle political corruption often originate outside the political class. 60 pavarala, op. cit, p. 199. 61 gillespie and okruhlik, op. cit, p. 92. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 39 effectiveness of anti-corruption institutions: a critical appraisal there are theorists who have raised doubt over the effectiveness of the governmental agencies and also citizen group campaign in controlling corruption. among others, carino and guzman point out in their study of corruption in philippines that instead of presidential investigating offices, purges, agency cleanups, and citizen campaigns, a multi-pronged strategy involving procedural changes, reducing discretionary powers of officials, increasing transparency, effective monitoring system, salary reform is required to address the problem effectively.62 robin theobald, in the context of developing countries, discusses anti-corruption efforts in terms of purges and campaigns, legaladministrative measures, de-politicization, moral re-armament, accountability, and privatization.63 purges and campaigns are meant to discredit political opponents and gain support for the current regime. legal and administrative measures involve setting up of specialized bodies to fight corruption like that of icac (independent commission against corruption) in hong kong and lok 62 l. v. carino and r. p. de guzman, “negative bureaucratic behaviour in the philippines: the final report of the idrc philippine team”, philippine journal of public administration, vol. 23, no. 3-4 (july-october), 1979, pp. 350385. 63 robin theobald, corruption, development and underdevelopment, durham, duke university press, 1990. ayukta or the proposed lok pal in india. de-politicization refers to various activities undertaken by the government to eliminate or restrict competitive politics arguing that political pressures created on the administration causes corruption. moral rearmament means a kind of ethical or moral revolution like that of the cultural revolution in china intended to bring about far reaching changes in attitudes and morals. ensuring accountability through proper checks on abuse of power can be effective in fighting corruption. reliance on privatization for fighting corruption basically derives from the belief that corruption results from over regulated state and if state control over economy is reduced corruption would not follow. apart from this, the power-sharing approach and the big-bang approach, discussed in this study, also present useful methods for understanding anti-corruption efforts in a holistic manner. some of these approaches have been adopted either partially or fully in india but have produced limited results. the problem with anti-corruption efforts in india lies not much in the institutions created to tackle it but in the way this issue is approached. this ineffectiveness is due to lack of sufficient research on the subject. political corruption is under-theorised, especially in india, which has led to partial or distorted understanding of the problem. this has also created a gap in theoretical and empirical study of the pawan kumar adressing political corruption in india 40 problem and there is need to conquer this divide. it is important to see how connections can be drawn between theoretical and empirical study of corruption, lack of which has adversely affected systematic studies on corruption in india. new anti-corruption institutions are created and new reforms are introduced without doing proper research on the subject, which results in the introduction of inefficient institutions and reforms. existing indices of corruption too do not guide effective anti-corruption strategy. there is a dearth of effective anti-corruption strategy, without which no reform can work. in order to come up with effective anti-corruption reform process there is a need to draw connections between theory and empirical research, as both form important parts of the research on corruption. this becomes even more difficult in the case of corruption because of its hidden nature. in this context the paper brings out the need of democratic audit as a tool to bridge the gap between the theoretical and practical understandings of political corruption and emphasises on conducting proper research, probing causal relations, using efficient techniques and starting off processes of debates and awareness to enhance effective people’s participation, which is crucial for carving out an institutional mechanism of accountability best suited to tackle political corruption. in the indian context recent debates on constituting an independent institution, lok pal64, to fight corruption clearly spells out the gap between theoretical and empirical understanding of corruption in india. various studies have shown the ineffectiveness of a similar body, lok ayukta, constituted in some of the indian states. in a study of anti-corruption efforts in the state of andhra pradesh, vinod pavarala asserts that the lok ayukta constituted in the state as the nodal body to fight corruption, suffered with “a high degree of politicization, both instrumental and symbolic.”65 though the lok ayukta undertook investigations against some ministers, they had only symbolic consequences. pavarala has shown in his study that the effect of lok ayukta in controlling corruption was minimal.66 studying the history of indian political system in terms of the approaches discussed in this paper, it can be found that there are 64 the santhanam committee in 1964 had recommended that a permanent government body is important to be constituted to deal with the problem of corruption. in 1966 the administrative reforms commission recommended the establishment of a lok pal at the central level and lok ayaktas at the state level. a lok pal bill was introduced in the parliament in 1968 and since then it has been introduced several times but has failed to become a reality. 65 pavarala, op. cit, p. 190. 66 ibid., p. 188. politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 41 serious flaws in the anti-corruption approach adopted by the indian government. though institutions have been created to tackle corruption they often have overlapping jurisdiction and cannot function independently. the power sharing model in terms of decentralization and coalition politics too has not been effective in checking abuse of power by political leaders. recently one of the solutions for addressing corruption in india that received popular acceptance was the constitution of the lok pal, which is similar to the single-agency approach applied in hong kong and singapore. but there is a need to examine whether such institutional changes or the creation of a strong anti-corruption agency can become an effective tool to fight corruption in india. the lok pal is backed with an expectation to overcome the deficiencies of existing institutional setting, which is often charged with either inefficiency or lack of autonomy or both, to look into the matter of corruption. the huge support that the lok pal gathers is mostly because of the fact that the state or the system has not been efficient enough in punishing the corrupt especially in high profile cases and it is expected that the lok pal would bring in efficiency and effectiveness as it would be an autonomous body. it is, however, important to realise the fact that any institutional design cannot work effectively and efficiently by just bringing them into existence. it is equally important that it gets integrated into the domain of civil society. the popular support for lok pal lacks a sound conceptual base and is actually unstructured. it is important to understand that a successful fight against corruption is not in place not because there is any dearth of anti-corruption laws but because there is lack of political will. a successful fight against corruption requires a critical probe into the link between the political institutions and corruption and there is need to acknowledge the link between reducing corruption and the broader process of democratization. though the lok pal bill is a welcome initiative for the future of indian democracy, in the sense that the government and civil society has come together on an issue that requires urgent attention, it has lost its democratic fervour in whatever that followed thereafter. questions have been raised on the constitution of the drafting committee of the bill. it has been alleged that the “team anna” does not represent civil society and the government representatives in the drafting committee do not represent diverse opinions in the parliament. even questions have been raised on the democratic nature of the method of protest and agitation adopted by the “team anna” to push their demands. most importantly, questions have been raised directly on the democratic nature pawan kumar adressing political corruption in india 42 of the jan lok pal67 and it has been argued that the jan lok pal would be a kind of “super-institution” that will undermine the existing judiciary system whose accountability cannot be ensured. it is further argued that since it engulfs all existing anti-corruption agencies and brings within itself overriding powers, it becomes unsuitable for a functioning democracy like india. the purpose of the lok pal should be to improve governance and empower citizen but it is argued that such purposes would remain unfulfilled through the present lok pal, as there is centralization of power. in contrast to the above viewpoint regarding the authoritative nature of lok pal, there is another way to look at it which is demonstrated by those who have drafted the jan lok pal bill, who argue that the jan lok pal has powers to only investigate and start the prosecution and it has no judicial powers, as the judgment will be given by the ordinary courts. for them the proposed bill is intended to just keep the lok pal away from political pressures. the question of accountability of the lok pal is addressed by arguing that whatever order is passed can be reviewed in higher courts and the members of the lok pal will be answerable to the 67 the “team anna”, that strongly advocated for constituting a lok pal, drafted a lok pal bill and presented it to the government of india for consideration which was christened — “the jan lok pal bill”. supreme court and can be removed by a five-member bench of supreme court on charges of misconduct. in response to the sceptic’s idea of lok pal’s inability to undertake such extensive responsibilities, the supporters of the jan lok pal draw attention to the integrative nature of corruption and argue that since the matters relating to corruption are often interrelated and even several other matters are actually results of corruption, it would be pointless to have a separate institution to deal with different aspects of corruption. they have also focused upon the structural arrangement instituted in lok pal which will provide a systemic process to deal with the grievances of the people and these grievances will go through this structure and the lok pal will be restricted to administrative and supervisory control over this structure. the bottom line of the supporters of the jan lok pal bill is that leaving everything on the elected representatives is not democracy in the real sense of terms; true democracy exists when people take part in decision making and decisions reflect their true interests. in other words people should take decisions themselves. the discussion over having a new institution like lok pal led to the debate considering two things — whether there is actually a need of a new law to tackle corruption or the existing laws are sufficient and a new law is not required. the popular politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 43 perception, as well as according to the government, there is a need of a new law but at the same time it is also important to consider that if a new law on establishing a body to tackle corruption is required, is there any point in having a new law with old deficiencies? if the institution of lok pal is created, it has to have something more than the existing institutions responsible for tackling corruption because creating a new institution with old deficiencies won’t be of much help. if the lok pal is not empowered enough to prosecute the guilty then it will again develop the feeling of immunity among the corrupt, as it will again be the old legal process that does not give the desired results. the discussion so far raises few questions in this regard — will the lok pal be able to perform the huge responsibilities? will it not again fall into the web of institutions and would gradually start facing the same problems that other institutions face? will it actually serve the larger goal of preventing corruption or will it just reduce to a punishing authority? in other words, does it have the right kind of approach towards the problem of corruption? and finally, is there any other alternative to act upon? the above discussion demonstrates that a strong anti-corruption law is important but not sufficient to tackle political corruption in india. this view is also shared by simcha werner who argues that institutionalized or systemic corruption cannot be controlled effectively through legal and police measures and the objectives of anti-corruption effort should be to develop an atmosphere of reform that may be consolidated by law. 68 the present approach of the government and civil society to tackle the problem is subjective in nature, in the sense that it focuses on individuals who indulge in corrupt acts. the problem lies in the fact that corruption is seen as problem of individuals, which makes the approach to tackle corruption reactive and the solution that is generally provided is restricted to remove the official from the office and in some cases even legal punishments are given to the wrong doer. even the political class tries to socialise people in such a way that they start conceiving corruption as a problem of just few individuals and consider that justice is done when those individuals are punished or removed from the office that they hold, which is a false belief that people have. it is important to realise the fact that corruption results only when there are loopholes in the system and it is the system that provides opportunities for corruption making it a systemic problem. the popular approach overlooks the systemic nature and the effects of corruption. the present lok pal 68 simcha b. werner, “new dimensions in the study of administrative corruption”, public administration review, march-april, 1983, p. 151. pawan kumar adressing political corruption in india 44 or the jan lok pal is also based on the same flawed approach which focuses only on punishment of the corrupt and this approach is followed by the government, civil society and people, which actually highlights the fact that the way the nature of corruption is understood is problematic. corruption, within this understanding, is seen as a problem of just few leaders or officials and not as anti-people or antihuman which is one of the reasons for sustenance of corruption. it is important to understand that corruption takes away the rights of the people as citizen of the nation. corruption puts at stake the basic rights of life, liberty, equality and dignity, which constitute the basic human rights of people and hence it also becomes important to consider corruption as violation of human rights. considering corruption as a violation of human rights can positively work towards empowering the people and would add impetus to the on-going struggle against corruption in india. high levels of corruption in any society disable the state from fulfilling its duties to respect, protect and fulfill the human rights of its citizen. corruption undermines the ability of states to comply with its human rights obligations because it erodes the capacity and confidence of a state to deliver services to the public. corruption not only depletes the resources available for public spending it also weakens government’s ability to deliver on various other services like health, education and welfare services.69 in such a situation economically and politically disadvantaged suffer from the consequences of corruption as they are largely depended on public goods. various scandals and scams that have been exposed show that even when government actually spends money on social programs to benefit the poor, the possibility of such projects being hijacked by well to do indians is very high. a human rights perspective enables the policy makers to understand the impacts of the anticorruption policies from the point of view of the disadvantaged. though corruption affects all those who experience it, its impact on the disadvantaged is worst. for the groups like minorities, indigenous people, migrant workers, disabled people, refugees, prisoners and poor, corruption reinforces their exclusion and discrimination. it also happens that because of their vulnerability they become easy victims of corruption.70 with such consequences of corruption there can be no two opinions to the fact that its existence in a democracy makes a state less democratic. however, 69 james t. gathii, defining the relationship between human rights and corruption,2010, http://ssrn.com/, accessed on 11/09/2011 70 corruption and human rights: making connections, international council on human rights policy, switzerland, versoix, 2009. http://ssrn.com/ politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 45 whether there is a negative correlation between corruption and democracy is something on which theorists have different opinions. some recent studies of transparency international and freedom house on the effect of regime type on levels of corruption, revealed that there is a negative relationship between democratization and corruption but this correlation is not very strong as this is a statistical relationship and not necessarily a causal one.71 paldam too believes that direct effect of democratization on corruption is spurious. in his study he found that corruption would generally decrease with increasing levels of democracy, but this covariance depends upon the level of democracy or upon the stage of democratic transition. in the similar vein, through a cross national study on corruption, daniel treisman came up with the hypothesis that democratic countries with freedom of press and vigorous civil society can have greater ability to expose corruption and thus will have lower levels of corruption, as freedom of press and association help in monitoring public officials and exposing abuse of power. interestingly the study found that the relationship between democracy and corruption can be established not by just looking at the present condition of a 71 inge amundsen, “political corruption: an introduction to the issues”, working paper, bergen, chr. michelsen institute, 1999. country’s political system or by just looking at the fact that a country is democratic in the present time. how corrupt a country is, can be decided only by looking at whether or not it has been democratic for decades. he is of the opinion that countries with long duration of democracy had some impact on reducing corruption.72 in the recent past with growing social movements and nonparty political process, indian democracy is being challenged and is also being redefined. the established structures of governance are being questioned and there is a growing demand for bringing about basic structural changes in the indian political system. while there is wide consensus on the nature, causes and consequences on issues like poverty, hunger, and other social and political problems, there is no such consensus on the issue of corruption, which weakens any struggle against corruption, and hence demands concerning the anticorruption reform that originate outside the state structures have very little influence on the policy makers. the recent anticorruption movement led by anna hazare was a rare effort in the history of social movements in india since independence that spurred countrywide struggle against corruption. this movement can be seen as a positive effort in terms of raising awareness 72 daniel treisman, “the causes of corruption: a cross national study”, journal of public economics, vol. 76, 2000, pp. 399-457. pawan kumar adressing political corruption in india 46 among people regarding widespread corruption in the functioning of government, which was lacking till now. it is important to understand that without such consciousness raising, efforts to tackle corruption will have minimal effect. democratic audit as a conceptual toolkit in order to come up with effective anti-corruption reform process there is a need to draw connections between theory and empirical research, as both form important parts of the research on corruption. this becomes even more difficult in the case of corruption because of its hidden nature. this paper tries to bring the issue of corruption within the realm of democratic theory and emphasises that true democracy is when people have effective control over the decision making process. however, in a representative democracy like india decisions are taken by the representatives chosen by the people and hence for people democracy is realised when they are able to exercise control over these representatives and hold them accountable. in this context the need of fresh assessment of democracy is proposed. democratic audit is proposed as a tool to study and understand political corruption in india which can be instrumental to bridge the gap between the theoretical and practical understandings of political corruption. democratic audit is all about conducting proper research, probing causal relations, using efficient techniques and starting off processes of debates and awareness to enhance effective people’s participation, which is crucial for carving out an institutional mechanism of accountability best suited to tackle political corruption. the research comes up with the need for the desirability of democratic audit or assessment of indian democracy and contends that a well designed democracy assessment has the potential of finding out where reform is most needed and where exactly the loopholes are. it is argued that assessing democracy is a prerequisite for bringing about any effective changes in the working of democracy. recent research on corruption has proved that existence of corruption transcends all political systems and ideologies and causes of corruption cannot be associated with the level of development or the ideological systems that govern a nation. this paper questions the popular explanations for existence of corruption and argues that the basic problem with such explanations is that they assume that corruption can be studied as a ‘phenomenon’ overlooking the underlying complex ‘processes’ of corruption. the paper attempts to highlight the systemic nature of corruption by arguing that the politikon: iapss political science journal vol. nr. 20, june 2013 47 problem lies in the system itself and that corruption occurs because there are loopholes in the system. there is lack of a comprehensive strategy against corruption which is because of partial or inadequate research on the subject. democratic audit, as a conceptual toolkit, can contribute towards raising awareness about the problem. it is important to understand that the purpose of democratic audit is not to set out precise proposals or blueprints for change and the purpose of the audit is restricted to consciousness raising, influencing public debate, agenda setting for reform and program evaluation. apart from opening up new questions and considerations to be debated at practical level, the purpose of this paper is also to recommend a fresh direction for undertaking any anti-corruption policy and research.