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21. Pippa Norris, Making Democratic Governance Work: How Regimes Shape Prosperity, Welfare, and Peace

Author:
VIctoria Makulilo
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
The persistence of economic destitution particularly in the developing countries has raised an endless debate on its causes and the way forward. Different theories have been formulated and other theories perished. The present scholarship explains how regimes shape prosperity, welfare and peace. Using various theories Pippa Norris argues that democratic governance is capable of bridging the economic gap and spurring economic growth. Democratic governance assumes that development is most effective where regimes combine the qualities of democratic responsiveness and state effectiveness. Various premises have been put into consideration. First, institutions of liberal democracy encourage elected officials to pay attention to human security. However, in practice, liberal democracy often proves to be imperfect in each of these procedures. This is particularly so where party competition is limited. As a result electoral systems are manipulated or channels of participation are more skewed towards money than people. Second, democratic institutions are by themselves insufficient to achieve development goals. It is quite known that institutions of democracy can limit the abuse of state power but do not ensure the necessary capacity of leaders to implement effective public policies addressing social needs. Therefore, a merging of democracy and governance, particularly state capacity leads to achieving developmental goals.
Topic:
Economics and Governance

22. Sandipani Dash, Sudan's Oil Diplomacy, 1991-2003

Author:
Dinoj K. Upadhyay
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
As world is moving fast on swirling waves of globalization and, as the new economies of Asia have witnessed unprecedented economic growth, global competition for natural resources has entered into new phase of international politics. Although 'scramble for natural resources' has always been a defining theme of international economic structures, the rise of Asian economies and multinational companies has metamorphosed natural resources politics in the current discourse on world affairs. The African continent which has huge reserves of natural resources such as oil, gas and minerals, has acquired a renewed significance in world politics. Analysts fear that quest for natural resources can lead to potential new conflicts among nations. Today, new discoveries of coal, oil and gas across Africa generate great academic interest to predict how these resources will transform the course of global energy markets and development in those countries. In this context, Sandipani Dash, in his book Sudan's Oil Diplomacy, 1991-2003, has attempted to analyze oil diplomacy of an erstwhile undivided Sudan in the larger context of natural resource politics in Africa. The book aims to examine the importance of Sudan's oil reserve in the world oil regime, its oil production linkage with the Western and Asian countries, and its diversified approach to transnational oil production with Asian orientation.
Topic:
Economics and Oil
Political Geography:
Sudan

23. Samuel Bowles, The New Economics of Inequality and Redistribution

Author:
Nicolae Biea
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
Economists generally believe that societies face a trade-off between efficiency and equality. Arthur Okun famously expressed this view when he compared redistribution from the rich to the poor to carrying money in a “leaky bucket”. The leak, according to Okun and likeminded economists, is caused by the distortionary effects of taxation and the high administrative costs of redistribution. Samuel Bowles' latest book, The New Economics of Inequality and Redistribution, is chiefly an attack on this widespread view. Bowles argues that it is wrong to view efficiency and equality as competing goals and, moreover, that some redistributive policies will actually improve economic efficiency rather than damage it.
Topic:
Economics

24. Isabelle Delpla, Xavier Bougarel, and Jean-Louis Fournel (eds), Investigating Srebrenica. Institutions, Facts, Responsibilities

Author:
Patrick Hein
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb army invaded the enclave of Srebrenica, a UN safe area guarded by Dutch blue helmets, and murdered about 8,000 Muslim Bosniak civilians under the eyes of the international community. Reports say that even as of today as many as 2,306 victims from the massacre are still missing. The massacre of Srebrenica - the secret codeword of the operation was "Krivaja95" - became known as the largest genocidal massacre of a civilian population in Europe since World War II. It represents the deliberate killing of innocent people in the wake of a ferocious civil war in the former socialist republic of ex-Yugoslavia in the first place,
Topic:
United Nations
Political Geography:
Europe, Bosnia, and Yugoslavia

25. Tobias Endler, How To Be A Superpower: The Public Intellectual Debate on the Global Role of the United States after September 11

Author:
Scott Nicolas Romaniuk
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
From the great rift that has emerged between the United States (US) and much of the international community in a post-9/11 social and political landscape, a disquieting thread of schisms concerning America's political ideologies, democratic deliberation, communication and societal discourse, have seen the academy and public intellectuals seed the conditions for the adoption of the general view that the US is in decline. Establishing an edifying prism through which to engage with these and other problematic issues such as the reformulation of America's global role in the 21st century, Tobias Endler addresses the deep core of the matter by connecting with leading political thinkers and America's luminary intellectuals to consider America in the midst of an intellectual renaissance, and whether this might appropriately be taken as postmortem or rebirth.
Topic:
Communications
Political Geography:
United States

26. Mongolian Values and Attitudes toward Democracy

Author:
Mina Sumaadii
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
For most of modern history Mongolia has been isolated from the world due to the geopolitical struggles between Russia and China. As the Communist system collapsed and liberal democracy was established, many outsiders wondered why the country succeeded in democratization where other neighboring ex-Soviet states had failed. The odds were mainly against the country, due to high levels of poverty and geographical distance from established mature democracies. Nevertheless, in Mongolia the common answer is that the political culture was compatible with the principles of liberal democracy. This work is an empirical study of macro and micro developments based on modernization theory. It explores the values and attitudes of the general population in an effort to examine what makes it pro-democratic. The main finding is that the general claim of modernization theory is applicable to Mongolia, but in relation to political culture as a mediator between economic development and democratization.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Russia, China, and Mongolia

27. National Heroes vs. EU Benefits: Croatia and the EU Conditionality

Author:
Ana Jese Perkovic
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
With the powerful attraction of membership and conditionality, the EU has been encouraging democratic processes in the Western Balkans, however not always as successfully as in Central-Eastern Europe. This article looks at how the condition of full cooperation with the ICTY influenced political discourses and public opinion in Croatia by challenging national identity which was partially built on the patriotic war and national heroes from the 1990s. The question is why domestic political elites still complied with the ICTY condition although it clashed with national identity. The main argument is that even if the so-called 'ICTY condition' is unpopular with the public because it challenges national identity, domestic political elites still complied with it because the benefits of the European integration process are greater than its costs
Political Geography:
Europe

28. Intermingled Cycles of Hegemony-Building: Europeanization and Minority Policies in Greece During the Simitis Period

Author:
Umut Koldas
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
Drawing on the changes and continuities in Greek official discourse and state policies towards the Turkish speaking Muslim minority in the 1990s, this article discusses the impact of Europeanization process on the state-minority relations in Greece from the neo-Gramscian perspective. Referring to an upper cycle of hegemony-in-building process between the -EU and Greece in the late 1990s, the article addresses the discursive and/or practical changes and continuities in the minority policy framework during the 1990s as well as prospects of the Greek state\'s relations with the Turkish/Muslim minority. Within this context, it examines the likelihood of a hegemonic relationship between the Greek state and the Turkish/Muslim minority, based on the consent of the latter under the framework of a broader hegemonic structure of the European Union.
Political Geography:
Europe

29. Is Leviathan Back? Circassian Ethnic Mobilization After the 2012 Presidential Elections in Russia

Author:
Marat Grebennikov
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
This article explores the hypothesis that on-going instability in the North Caucasus can no longer be explained by its violent history of colonization. Instead, instability is carefully negotiated by ethnic elites, who do not see the North Caucasus as an indispensable part of the Russian Federation and who can only make a public show of action on the eve of crucial political campaigns: the 2012 presidential elections and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Focusing on the question of ethnicity and its relation to federal politics in the North Caucasus, the main argument of the article is while Circassian ethnicity and ethnic politics in general, have been partly the outcome of the authoritarian rule of the Russian Imperial and Soviet legacies, the way ethnicity has been and is being politicized by the ethnic, federal, and international actors, have created serious grounds for the rise and the consolidation of Circassian nationalism in the North Caucasus.
Political Geography:
Europe

30. Olivera Simic, Regulation of Sexual Conduct in UN Peacekeeping Operations (Berlin: Springer, 2012)

Author:
Rajeesh Kumar
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
Reports of sexual abuse and exploitation by UN peacekeepers were a black mark in the history of United Nations Peacekeeping. The metamorphosis of peacekeepers to perpetrators has been part of almost all the discussions on peacekeeping in the last two decades. In the 1990s the discussions centred on the absence of rules and procedures for preventing sexual exploitation by the peacekeepers. The discussions have forced the United Nations to make some regulatory measures to prevent such actions and to form laws to penalize peacekeepers who violate these codes of conduct. The culmination of all these developments was the formation of Secretary General's Bulletin (SGB) commonly known as Zero Tolerance Policy (ZTP) in the year 2003. In the meantime, the discourse over the sexual exploitation has taken a new shape by debating pros and cons of the new rule.
Topic:
United Nations
Political Geography:
Europe