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22. Russian Youth: Their Attitude to the Ruling Elite and Political Processes
- Author:
- Denis Volkov
- Publication Date:
- 05-2022
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Istituto Affari Internazionali
- Abstract:
- Young Russians are different from older generations. They are confident Internet users and thus have access to independent media and are exposed to free information and a variety of opinions. They show greater disillusionment with authorities, a greater degree of Westernisation of their tastes and more openness to the world. These differences are well observed in the results of the long-term sociological surveys undertaken by the Levada-Center, an independent polling centre in Moscow. Amidst the ongoing conflict between Russia and the West, Russian youth finds itself pressured between the Russian authorities on the one side, and sanctions from Western countries aimed at isolating Russia from the outside world.
- Topic:
- Sanctions, Public Opinion, Youth, Elites, and Russia-Ukraine War
- Political Geography:
- Russia and Eurasia
23. The Rise of a Rule-Based Transgressor Elite
- Author:
- Ronen Palan
- Publication Date:
- 01-2022
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- City Political Economy Research Centre (CITYPERC), University of London
- Abstract:
- Transnationally organised, rule-based transgressor elites are the wealthiest and most powerful elites today. The core of this group comprises managers of large multinational corporations and related ‘born global’ corporations, such as Tesla, eBay and the like, large investment houses, such as Blackrock, Blackstone and Vanguard, leading international investment banks and elite legal, consultancy and accounting firms. This elite core is joined by several ancillary groups. Arguably the most significant of those are midsize corporate groups, many of which are privately held. Numbering in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, they employ tactics perfected by large corporations to arbitrage rules and ensure corporate and other forms of taxation, rules specifying personal or group liabilities or other regulations, including protection of shareholders and the like, are either partially or fully avoided. To these, Ricardo de Soares adds another group; he argues elites from development countries latch onto existing institutional and professional providers serving those other elites; once they achieve their goal of transferring capital out of their own countries, they participate actively in the process of wealth and power concentration described in this paper (Soares, 2021) .
- Topic:
- Political Economy, Multinational Corporations, Elites, and Capital Accumulation
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
24. 'And Everything Became War': Warrap State since the Signing of the R-ARCSS
- Author:
- Joshua Craze
- Publication Date:
- 12-2022
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Small Arms Survey
- Abstract:
- In Warrap state, home to South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and much of the country's political and military elite, many hoped that the signing of a peace agreement in 2018 would bring an end to the violence that had scarred their country for the previous five years. Instead, in Warrap, violence intensified, and pitted communities against each other in increasingly brutal tit-for-tat attacks that targeted women, children, homes, and the very capacities of communities to sustain life. At the war's end, everything became war. Such clashes are often dismissed as 'inter-communal violence' delinked from the politics of the peace agreement. 'And Everything Became War': Warrap State since the Signing of the R-ARCSS—a report from the Survey’s Human Security Baseline Assessment for Sudan and South Sudan (HSBA) project—demonstrates that the conflict raging in Warrap is instead deeply political, and a consequence of the way that Kiir's regime maintains power by setting feuding elites against each other. In Warrap, the South Sudanese state has suffered an almost total collapse in political legitimacy, and cattle-guards have emerged as the only actors on the ground with genuine community support that can resist the predatory state, even if they are also instrumentalized by it. 'And Everything Became War' is the first in-depth study of conflict dynamics in Warrap state since the beginning of the South Sudanese civil war. Based on extensive fieldwork, the report makes one central conclusion: as South Sudan enters its fourth year of ‘peace’, everything has become war, and the South Sudanese government is the war’s cause rather than the solution.
- Topic:
- Security, Politics, Treaties and Agreements, Conflict, and Elites
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Sudan, and South Sudan
25. Corruption, Underdevelopment and the Masses in Africa
- Author:
- Ibrahim Bangura, Temitope Oriola, and Henry Mbawa
- Publication Date:
- 07-2022
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Brazilian Journal of African Studies
- Institution:
- Brazilian Journal of African Studies
- Abstract:
- The central argument of this paper is that ignoring the role of the masses makes for an incomplete understanding of the vignettes of corruption and the crisis of development in Africa. The paper argues that corrupt practices by elites and the actions, beliefs, expectations and demands of the masses on the elites are mutually reinforcing, co-referential and ultimately co-constitute the processual pro- duction of corruption and consequent underdevelopment in Africa. This is further reinforced in what we have couched as "the irony of the African masses" in the fight against corruption and underdevelopment in Africa. The irony is too compelling to ignore. The African masses demand their share of the national cake through appendages of, or association with political elites who loot the state — one of the major causes of poverty and underdevelop- ment in Africa.
- Topic:
- Corruption, Development, Poverty, Elites, and Underdevelopment
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Nigeria
26. Vengeful Citizens, Violent States: A Theory of War and Revenge, Rachel Stein
- Author:
- Peter Liberman
- Publication Date:
- 01-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Political Science Quarterly
- Institution:
- Academy of Political Science
- Abstract:
- By showing that mass vengefulness helps democratic leaders bring their nations to war, this wonderful book significantly advances our understanding of how cultural values affect international politics. Its most important contribution is demonstrating that democracies that retain death penalty laws were significant more likely to initiate the use of force than non-death-penalty democracies in the 1945–2001 period. The finding is robust to a variety of control variables and specifications, although skeptics may wonder whether it might be inflated by ethnocentrism, beliefs about the utility of violence, or other unmeasured potential covariates. Rachel Stein attributes the belligerence of death penalty states to cross-national differences in vengeful cultures, on the grounds that citizens’ vengefulness predicts both cross-sectional support for the death penalty and cross-national differences in the penalty’s retention. Her rigorous analysis greatly strengthens the case that the unusual bellicosity of retributivists, observed by Stein and other researchers, affects actual interstate conflict.
- Topic:
- War, Prisons/Penal Systems, Leadership, Book Review, Elites, and Capital Punishment
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Middle East, and United States of America
27. Surface Tension: ‘Communal’ Violence and Elite Ambitions in South Sudan
- Author:
- Dan Watson
- Publication Date:
- 08-2021
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED)
- Abstract:
- This report examines recent developments in South Sudan. The country has been experiencing a surge in ‘communal’ violence in the wake of a peace agreement signed in 2018, as the oil economy that has underpinned South Sudanese elite politics for over 15 years begins to disintegrate. This analysis re-interprets ‘communal’ violence in South Sudan, situating conflicts organized around ethnic or sub-ethnic lines in relation to national-level conflicts and inter-elite rivalries. These conflicts and elite dynamics are changing in response to the decarbonization of South Sudan, which is pushing elite ambitions away from the capital and back into provincial areas.
- Topic:
- Political Violence, Treaties and Agreements, Violence, and Elites
- Political Geography:
- Africa and South Sudan
28. Land governance and displacement in Zimbabwe: The case of Chilonga Communal Area, Chiredzi District
- Author:
- Malvern Kudakwashe Marewo, Senzeni Ncube, and Horman Chitonge
- Publication Date:
- 12-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Africa Governance Papers (TAGP)
- Institution:
- Good Governance Africa (GGA)
- Abstract:
- This article investigates the effect on rural livelihoods of the displacement of people in Chilonga communal area in Zimbabwe. Various studies in Africa, including Zimbabwe, have shown that land displacements happen where the political elite, in collusion with multinational companies and powerful individuals, take advantage of weak land governance systems particularly in communal areas to displace people. Lack of title over land, which is mostly vested in the state, makes communal areas most vulnerable to displacement. This is evident in the current case study of Chilonga, where various statutory instruments have been enforced to evict people. The Chilonga displacement, enforced by the state to accommodate large-scale lucerne farming, ignores that land is a source of livelihoods and identity for communal area dwellers. It has also shown that people from communal areas have limited freedom to resist displacement that curtails access and use of land. We argue that the Chilonga case study illustrates our contention that, where African land governance is weak, political elites and their connections use it to achieve narrow interests regardless of the impact on communal area dwellers through displacement and loss of livelihoods.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Governance, Displacement, Rural, Elites, Land Reform, Livelihoods, and Communal Areas
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Zimbabwe
29. Fast-track land reform, politics and social capital: The case of Rouxdale farm in Zimbabwe
- Author:
- Senzeni Ncube
- Publication Date:
- 12-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Africa Governance Papers (TAGP)
- Institution:
- Good Governance Africa (GGA)
- Abstract:
- This article investigates the effect of the politicisation of land on the social capital and agricultural livelihoods of beneficiaries of the A1 villagised model of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP). The model allocates individual arable and residential plots to beneficiaries, while they share grazing land, social infrastructure and services. Beneficiaries rely on social capital to access resources for agricultural production. Proponents of the FTLRP have portrayed the model as successful because it creates livelihoods. Missing in these studies is the politicisation of land through reallocation of land within the model to advance individual political interests, and its effect on livelihoods. The resultant strain on social capital negatively affects agricultural production, which depends on it heavily. The article argues that Zimbabwe’s top-down land governance system leaves it open to manipulation by politically connected individuals in the service of their own personal and political interests. It further argues that this weakness in the governance system is due to the fact that the state owns the land, which means that beneficiaries of the programme do not have the power to challenge the decisions of politicians and bureaucrats.
- Topic:
- Politics, Governance, Social Capital, Elites, Land Reform, and Livelihoods
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Zimbabwe
30. Sand Extractivism and Its Inequalities: Elite Scripts in the Singaporean Demand for Sand
- Author:
- Madhumitha Ardhanari
- Publication Date:
- 01-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- City Political Economy Research Centre (CITYPERC), University of London
- Abstract:
- Extractive industries must be rapidly scaled down to achieve the decarbonisation targets and climate justice demanded by the imminent climate emergency. However, existing academic literature presenting alternatives to growth lack practical, implementable pathways to degrow extractive industries. One critical extractive industry is often overlooked: sand. This is despite it being a key extractive industry that various critical supply chains in the urban economy rely on. Unlike other non-renewables such as coal and oil, sand has no mainstream commercial alternative. Sand extraction and dredging result in critical ecosystem and livelihood losses that reproduce and entrench existing inequalities. This paper focusses on Singapore – currently the world’s largest importer of sand. I will present my findings from interviewing critical proponents and opponents to Singapore’s use of sand in the country’s quest to reclaim land. These different scripts people hold on sand validate and legitimise sand extraction for land reclamation and how they might reproduce inequalities. Scripts developing around extractives are critical in pathways to scaling down extractives. In this essay, I argue that three scripts related to sand – scripts of growth, mutual benefit and silence – present critical barriers to scaling down Singapore’s sand demand. Resistors of these scripts are beginning to question specific elements within these scripts to question their dominance and hegemony. I also offer what scripts of hope in the case of sand in Southeast Asia can look like in achieving environmental and social justice, and explore the implications of these findings to alternatives-to-growth literature.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Inequality, Elites, and Extractive Industries
- Political Geography:
- Singapore and Southeast Asia