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511. TSG IntelBrief: The Iraqification of Yemen

Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Soufan Group
Abstract:
The horrific suicide bombings at Sana'a mosques, which killed at least 137 people, are the worst such attacks in 20 years and an omen of sectarian conflict that the beleaguered country has so far avoided With worsening sectarian violence, terrible governance, terrorist groups on the rise, meddling regional powers, and a tribal population awash with weapons but little else, Yemen resembles post-2009 Iraq, with significant differences but troubling similarities The Iraqification of Yemen will be a disaster for that country and an international community that is already unable to deal with Syria, Iraq, Libya, and other failing states The Houthi advance into the central town of Taiz, after calling for a general mobilization against the supporters of deposed/exiled president Hadi, and the fighting in Aden show the situation is escalating and could easily follow the path of Iraq, as more sectarian violence and regional demands tear the country apart.
Topic:
Governance
Political Geography:
Iraq, Yemen, and Syria

512. Moving beyond a Donor-Recipient Relationship? Assessing Partnership in the Joint Africa-EU Strategy

Author:
Karen del Biondo
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG)
Abstract:
The Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES), which was adopted in 2007, aimed to break with the traditional do¬nor-recipient relationship between the EU and Africa and to develop a true partnership. The concept of partnership has been central in EU-Africa relations ever since the Lomé Agreement (1975), but many have argued that it has been eroded by conditionalities and the end of special trade preferences. Ideally, a partnership is characterized by shared values, equality and trust, but are these principles reflected in the JAES? This study investigates this question by focusing on the thematic partnerships on peace and security and democratic governance and human rights. The paper argues that, despite the power asymmetries between the EU and Africa, the JAES has been characterized by equality in decision-making and by African ownership in capacity-building. However, while the JAES may objectively be based on shared values, the EU and the AU have often differed on how to apply those values in concrete situations, more particularly on the question which type of intervention is acceptable (conditionality, military intervention, etc.). Moreover, the analysis identifies a general feeling of mistrust amongst both parties in the partnership.
Topic:
Security, Human Rights, and Governance
Political Geography:
Africa and Europe

513. Shining Cities on the Hill? The Global City, Climate Change, and International Law

Author:
Helmut Philipp Aust
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Cities are beginning to assert themselves as internationally relevant actors. This is particularly noticeable in the climate change context. This development has so far not been accorded a great deal of attention by international lawyers. The review essay discusses four new books by political scientists which offer us a closer look at the political dimension of 'global cities', a term originally coined by sociologist Saskia Sassen. The four books under review as well as this essay pay particular attention to the C40 association – a movement of self-styled city leaders in climate change governance. This group of cities has developed numerous ties with international organizations and private corporations. The review essay analyses how cooperative endeavours such as C40 challenge our understanding of the relationship between the city and the state and assesses how international law as a discipline could come to terms with these developments. It is argued that international law should fulfil two functions in this regard: recognition and contestation. Whereas cities may not yet be recognized subjects of international law, they are moving closer to this illustrious circle. In any case, their law-making processes are beginning to have a significant impact on processes of global governance.
Topic:
Climate Change, International Law, and Governance

514. Migration, Urban Space and Diversity: A Case from Istanbul

Author:
Kristen Sarah Biehl
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
The growing flow of international migration to Turkey has serious implications for the social, economic and spatial transformation of recipient cities across the country. This paper highlights some of these implications by discussing findings from an ethnographic case study carried out in an inner-city locality of Istanbul. It raises four main points: 1) urban localities of migrant settlement are not accidental; 2) they are often highly diverse in new and complex ways; 3) space and difference are intricately intertwined in such urban localities; and 4) migration and diversification at the local scale can produce conflicted space narratives and governance systems. This paper aims to emphasize the importance of acknowledging the position and impact of migration to Turkey in the framework of larger processes of urban and societal transformation.
Topic:
Economics, Migration, and Governance
Political Geography:
Turkey

515. Rwanda: Progress or Powder Keg?

Author:
Filip Reyntjens
Publication Date:
07-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
While post-genocide Rwanda’s decent technocratic governance has led to strong economic recovery and good public service provision, its political governance is deeply flawed and may destroy these achievements. The ruling RPF has solidly established hegemony by eliminating the political opposition and autonomous civil society, massively violating human rights, and killing well over hundred thousand of its own citizens, abusing the legal and justice systems, and deploying skillful information management. This article addresses the way in which this hegemonic project was conducted, how this relates to regime achievements in the economic sphere, and how tradeoffs between political and technocratic governance have kept the international community at bay.
Topic:
Civil Society, Governance, and Economic Development
Political Geography:
Africa and Rwanda

516. Economics and the Near-Death Experience of Democratic Governance

Author:
June Sekera
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
Non-market public production makes up a quarter to a half or more of all economic activity in advanced democratic nation-states. Yet here in the United States the public economy’s ability to function productively on behalf of the citizenry is seriously imperiled. In this paper I trace the connection between mainstream, market-centric economics and what James Galbraith has called “the collapse of the public governing capacity.” Marketization and its confederate, privatization, have led, sometimes intentionally, to the evisceration of governmental capacity, the downsizing of democracy and the dismantling of traditions of responsible public administration that are grounded in law and the Constitution. Over the last decades, apostles of the market have intruded upon government a pseudo-market with outcomes ranging from the unfortunate to the disastrous. So-called “New Public Management” –“a child of neoclassical economics,” – has colonized and weakened every level of public administration. Hollowed out through the cathartic of a “competition prescription,” the public sector time and again seems to fail us, so systems of performance measurement transplanted from profit-driven business models are being imposed across government, ostensibly to improve results and better supply what the populace wants and needs, but instead often leaving harm in their wake. We find our most basic public services and rights in jeopardy: from clean air and water to unencumbered judicial due process. While government “reinventors” boast about shrinking government, in reality a “submerged state” mushrooms through an explosion of private profit- making contractors and behind the hidden hand of tax expenditures. Yet, as I argue in this paper, there is no viable explanatory theory of the public non-market economy or of production within it, nor any consensus about how to measure public purpose or assess results in the public domain. Instead, a market-centric economics prevails in textbooks, university teaching and public policy, while private, market-mimicking motivations and values displace public purpose in measurement schemes.
Topic:
Governance, Democracy, Public Sector, Private Sector, and Non-Market Economy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

517. Settler-State Political Theory, 'CANZUS' and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Author:
Kirsty Gover
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
When the UN General Assembly voted in 2007 to adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), only Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA cast negative votes. This article argues that the embedding of indigenous jurisdictions in the constitutional orders of these states via negotiated political agreements limits their capacity to accept certain provisions of the UNDRIP. Once the agreement-making process is set in motion, rights that do not derive from those bargains threaten to undermine them. This is especially true of self-governance and collective property rights, which are corporate rights vested to historically continuous indigenous groups. Since these rights cannot easily be reconciled with the equality and non-discrimination principles that underpin mainstream human rights law, settler governments must navigate two modes of liberalism: the first directed to the conduct of prospective governance in accordance with human rights and the rule of law and the second directed to the reparative goal of properly constituting a settler body politic and completing the constitution of the settler state by acquiring indigenous consent. Agreements help to navigate this tension, by insulating indigenous and human rights regimes from one another, albeit in ways not always supported by the UNDRIP.
Topic:
Human Rights, International Law, United Nations, and Governance
Political Geography:
Europe, Canada, United Nations, Australia, New Zealand, and United States of America

518. Tana Johnson. Organizational Progeny. Why Governments are Losing Control over the Proliferating Structures of Global Governance

Author:
Matthias Goldmann
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
According to mainstream functionalist theories of international law and relations, international organizations are vehicles of states, tied to their masters by meticulous legal instructions. As Jan Klabbers recently pointed out in this journal,1 functionalism was based on the idea of establishing peace by channelling international relations into the purportedly technical, a-political realm of international organizations. Research of the last couple of decades has profoundly rebutted the assumption that international organizations are a-political. They have been discovered, among others, to serve as platforms for the formation of epistemic communities, as agorae for political deliberation and contestation or to use their bureaucratic potential and the flexibility of their mandates to establish a degree of independence from their principals. The book by Tana Johnson, professor of political science at Duke University, adds another important perspective that has not been explored so far. She turns our attention to the fact that institutional design might matter for the international organization’s independence from member states. As chief witness for her thesis, she summons the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Originally a brainchild of the US government, it is today a fairly independent institution fallen from grace with its master. Johnson argues that it owes its independence to the influence of international bureaucracies – that is, staff of other international organizations, upon the process that led to its establishment. The thesis puts the spotlight on the fact that a majority of new international organizations that saw the light of the day during the last decades was fostered by pre-existing international organizations.
Topic:
International Relations, Climate Change, International Law, International Organization, and Governance
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

519. Concessions or Coercion? How Governments Respond to Restive Ethnic Minorities

Author:
Arman Grigoryan
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Destabilized multiethnic states and empires are environments that are highly susceptible to violent ethnonationalist conflict. Conflicts between states built on the ruins of such empires and their minorities are especially common. James Fearon has famously argued that these conflicts are the result of minorities' rational incentives to rebel, which in turn are the result of newly independent states' inability to guarantee that these minorities will not be discriminated against if they acquiesce to citizenship, as well as expectations that over time the balance of power will shift against minorities as states consolidate their institutions. States can, however, take steps to reassure their minorities. The puzzle is why they often fail to do so. In fact, states often adopt policies that confirm minorities' worst fears, pushing them toward rebellion. Such action may be precipitated by a state's belief that a minority is motivated by a separatist agenda rather than by the desire to have its concerns and grievances satisfactorily addressed. If secession is a minority's primary objective, then concessions intended to demobilize the minority will only make the state more vulnerable to future demands and separatist bids. The existence of third parties with incentives to support minority separatism exacerbates the problem. The violent and nonviolent minority disputes in post-Soviet Georgia illustrate these findings.
Topic:
Ethnic Government, Governance, Ethnicity, and Domestic politics
Political Geography:
Europe, Asia, Georgia, and Global Focus

520. La Protection des Données Personnelles dans le Cadre du Secteur de la Sécurité au Maroc (The Protection of Personal Data in Relation to the Security Sector in Morocco)

Author:
Cécile Guy, Alizée Henry, and Habib Belkouch
Publication Date:
10-2015
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
This report summarizes the discussions at the seminar on the protection of personal data in relation to the security sector in Morocco, held in Rabat on 19 and 20 October 2015. It aims to assess the situation of the protection of personal data in relation to the security sector in Morocco on the one hand, and to sensitize stakeholders to the importance of protecting citizens' privacy as an issue of major security governance in connected companies on the other hand.
Topic:
Security, Science and Technology, Governance, Privacy, and Surveillance
Political Geography:
Geneva, Europe, North Africa, and Morocco