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State Actors (state + actor)
Selected AbstractsState Collapse and its Implications for Peace,Building and ReconstructionDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 5 2002Alexandros Yannis At the beginning of the twenty,first century, terms such as state collapse and failed states are becoming familiar, regularly used in international politics to describe a new and frightening challenge to international security. The dramatic events of September 11 have pushed the issue of collapsed states further into the limelight. This article has two aims. Firstly, it explains the contextual factors that gave rise to the phenomenon of state collapse. In the early post,Cold War period, state collapse was usually viewed as a regional phenomenon, and concerns were mainly limited to humanitarian consequences for the local population and destabilizing effects on neighbouring countries. Now, state collapse is seen in a more global context, and concerns are directed at the emergence of groups of non,state actors who are hostile to the fundamental values and interests of the international society such as peace, stability, rule of law, freedom and democracy. Secondly, the article offers some observations about the normative implications of the phenomenon of state collapse for peace,building and reconstruction. [source] Family and nation: Brazilian national ideology as contested transnational practice in JapanGLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 4 2008PAUL GREEN Abstract Studies of Brazilian Nikkeis (Japanese emigrants and their descendants) living in Japan tend to conceptualize ,family' and ,nation' as two distinct entities. Such distinctions are filtered through mutually exclusive discourses and understandings of national and ethnic identity. In this article, however, I view national attachments and migrant experiences in Japan through the lens of ideology, embodied experience and kinship relations. Treating national ideology as lived process sheds fresh light on the dynamics of state,society relations in transnational social spaces. I suggest that the ability of Brazilian state actors to impose social, moral and economic regulation on its citizens in Japan is compromised by the extent to which such discourses are ontologically grounded in the social relations of migrant family life. It is through these kin ties, I argue, that people set the tone and rules of play for state interests to encroach or otherwise on their everyday lives in these transnational social spaces. [source] The Global Marketplace and the Privatisation of SecurityIDS BULLETIN, Issue 2 2009Jeffrey Isima The privatisation of security in the age of globalisation raises crucial concerns for global governance and development. Key among these are the impacts on the structures of poverty and inequality, and how these twin development issues shape global security privatisation. Equally important are the structural limits on public policy imposed by the promotion of the market as a powerful alternative mechanism for security provisioning. These concerns have become more urgent as the dominant neoliberal security governance paradigm has tended to avoid questions relating to poverty, social inequality and the dire condition of those who live on the margins of state protection. This calls for innovative policy changes for transforming security institutions and practices in a way that promotes security, not just for state officials and the wealthy, but most importantly, for the poor. This article attempts to explore these core development concerns in relation to the increasing outsourcing of security to non-state actors and how state actors, as leading agents of development, can protect and promote the wellbeing of vulnerable populations within the global market order. [source] Transnational organized crime in West Africa: the additional challengeINTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Issue 6 2007ANTONIO L. MAZZITELLI Despite its vast natural and human resources and the undisputed progress made in the last decade towards the establishment of democratic culture and governing systems, West African countries continue to occupy the bottom ranks of the UN Human Development Index. Similarly, many of them score poorly in World Bank and Transparency International indexes that measure good governance. The international mass media have recently highlighted the role played by the West African region in the transatlantic cocaine trade, as well as in the flow of illegal migrants to Europe. Drugs and migrants are, however, just two of the numerous illicit activities that feed the growth of local and transnational criminal organizations, and the establishing of a culture of quick and easy money that is progressively eroding the foundations of any sustainable and well balanced socio-economic development. The pervasive power of the corruption of criminal organizations, coupled with a general crisis by state actors in the administration of justice and enforcement of the rule of law, contribute towards the progressive diminishing of the credibility of the state as the institution entrusted with the prerogatives of guaranteeing security (of people and investments) and dispensing justice. In this context, the case of Guinea Bissau is probably the clearest example of what West African states may face in the near future if the issues of justice and security are not properly and promptly addressed. If primary responsibilities lie with West African governments and institutions, the international community as a whole should also review its approach to development policies by not only mainstreaming the issues of security and justice in their bilateral and multilateral agendas, but also by making it an essential cornerstone of policies and programmes aimed at supporting good governance and the establishment of states ruled by the law. [source] Engineered Migration and the Use of Refugees as Political Weapons: A Case Study of the 1994 Cuban Balseros CrisisINTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 4 2002Kelly M. Greenhill This paper presents a case study of the August 1994 Cuban balseros crisis, during which more than 35,000 fled the island and headed toward Florida in the span of a few weeks. It argues that Castro launched the crisis in an attempt to manipulate US fears of another Mariel, and in order to compel a shift in US policy, both on immigration and on a wider variety of issues. The paper further contends that from Castro's perspective, this exercise in coercion proved a qualified success , his third such successful use of the Cuban people as an asymmetric political weapon against the US. In addition, the paper argues that Castro's success was predicated on his ability to internationalize his own domestic crisis and transform it into an American domestic political and foreign policy crisis. Finally, it offers a novel explanation of how, why, and under what conditions, states and/or non,state actors may attempt to use refugees as coercive political weapons. Although dwarfed in size by the larger 1980 Mariel boatlift, the 1994 crisis is important for several reasons. First, despite its brevity, it had far reaching consequences for US,Cuban relations. Without warning or preamble, it catalyzed a shift in US policy vis,à,vis Cuban immigration that represented a radical departure from what it had been for the previous three decades. Second, it influenced US domestic politics on the national level, by expanding the scope and salience of the issue, and mobilizing not only Floridians, but also the larger public concerned about illegal immigration. Third, the crisis illustrated the potential potency of engineered migration as an asymmetric weapon of the weak. Finally, the brief, but significant, interactions of international and domestic actors in this case warrant examination because, although the 1994 crisis was limited, in its dynamics it resembles myriad other international refugee crises, large and small. Thus the case offers valuable lessons that may aid in dealing with future (real or threatened) crises. [source] Rules, Red Tape, and Paperwork: The Archeology of State Control over MigrantsJOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2008DAVID COOK MARTÍN How and with what consequences did state control over migration become acceptable and possible after the Great War? Existing studies have centered on core countries of immigration and thus underestimate the degree to which legitimate state capacities have developed in a political field spanning sending and receiving countries with similar designs on the same international migrants. Relying on archival research, and an examination of the migratory field constituted by two quintessential emigration countries (Italy and Spain), and a traditional immigration country (Argentina) since the mid-nineteenth century, this article argues that widespread acceptance of migration control as an administrative domain rightfully under states' purview, and the development of attendant capacities have derived from legal, organizational, and administrative mechanisms crafted by state actors in response to the challenges posed by mass migration. Concretely, these countries codified migration and nationality laws, built, took over, and revamped migration-related organizations, and administratively encaged mobile people through official paperwork. The nature of efforts to evade official checks on mobility implicitly signaled the acceptance of migration control as a bona fide administrative domain. In more routine migration management, states legitimate capacity has had unforeseen intermediate- and long-term consequences such as the subjection of migrants (and, because of ius sanguinis nationality laws, sometimes their descendants) to other states' administrative influence and the generation of conditions for dual citizenship. Study findings challenge scholarship that implicitly views states as constant factors conditioning migration flows, rather than as developing institutions with historically variable regulatory abilities and legitimacy. It extends current work by specifying mechanism used by state actors to establish migration as an accepted administrative domain. [source] Faith in Our Neighbors: Networks and Social Order in Three Brazilian FavelasLATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 1 2004Enrique Desmond Arias ABSTRACT After nearly 20 years of democratization, residents of Rio's favelas suffer high levels of civil and human rights abuse at the hands of both police and drug traffickers. The government is generally unable to guarantee the political order necessary to protect the rights of residents in these communities. Existing theories of democratization and advocacy networks offer little to explain how the types of endemic violence that affect poor neighborhoods in the developing world can be brought under control. Based on more than two years of participant observation and interviews in Rio de Janeiro, this article examines how democratic order can be extended to favelas. It argues that networks can link favela residents to organizations in civil society, and state actors can play a critical role in reducing violence and establishing democratic order. [source] The Impact of Legal Mobilization and Judicial Decisions: The Case of Official Minority-Language Education Policy in Canada for Francophones Outside QuebecLAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 3 2004Troy Q. Riddell The article investigates the impact of legal mobilization and judicial decisions on official minority-language education (OMLE) policy in the Canadian provinces outside Quebec, using the "factor-oriented" and "dispute-centered" theories of judicial impact developed by U.S. scholars. The Canadian Supreme Court's decision in Mahé v. Alberta (1990), which broadly interpreted Section 23 of the Charter of Rights to include management and control of OMLE programs and schools, along with federal funding to the provinces to implement OMLE policy, are important to explaining OMLE policy change as predicted by the factor-oriented approach. The dispute-centered approach, on the other hand, helps us understand how the Charter of Rights and judicial decisions shaped the goals and discourse of Francophone groups in the policy process and, more instrumentally, provided opportunity structures that Francophone groups exploited effectively. The article concludes that both approaches to explaining judicial impact could be accommodated within an institutional model of judicial impact that construes institutions as state actors, as sets of rules, and as frameworks of meaning and interpretation. Such an approach would allow for the development of a more comparative model of judicial impact. [source] Policing ambiguity: Muslim saints-day festivals and the moral geography of public space in EgyptAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 4 2008SAMULI SCHIELKE ABSTRACT In this article, I explore how the festive culture of mulids, Egyptian Muslim saints-day festivals, troubles notions of habitus, public space, and religious and civic discipline that have become hegemonic in Egypt in the past century and how state actors attempt to "civilize" mulids by subjecting them to a spectacular, representative order of spatial differentiation. I argue that habitus must be understood as a political category related to competing relationships of ideology and embodiment and that the conceptual and physical configuration of modern public space is intimately related to the bodily and moral discipline of its users. [veneration of saints, festivals, habitus, public space, state, Islam, Egypt] [source] Three weddings and a performance: marriage, households, and development in the highlands of Central Sulawesi, IndonesiaAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 4 2000Albert Schrauwers To Pamona couples are generally married in three ceremonies: traditional, church, and civil. Here, I treat each ceremony as a performative genre that constitutes the household differently. Both church and state actors see themselves as modernist reformers of tradition, which they view as a hindrance to development. I argue, however, that the traditional household form is the product of the modernizing efforts of church and state and hence points to a process of the development of underdevelopment. The wedding has become a key site of cultural contestation in which the constitution of the household is the outcome affecting livelihoods and the distribution of resources. The flows of performative elements from one genre of wedding ceremony to another are thus attempts to assert and resist hegemony. [wedding ceremony, development, household, gender inequality, performance] [source] Class, Agency and Resistance in the Old Industrial CityANTIPODE, Issue 1 2010Andrew Cumbers Abstract:, Recent left academic work on the consequences of economic restructuring and local labour market change in old industrial cities has been important in emphasising the role of local context and contingency in the shaping of labour market outcomes. However, in such accounts agency is often limited to capital and state actors, albeit working across scales from the local upwards. There is little sense of agency for individuals and communities in the midst of economic restructuring. Instead, they are usually treated as passive victims of deeper underlying processes. In this paper, our purpose is to highlight the autonomy and agency of workers, people and communities in old industrial cities. Rather than starting from the perspective of capital, our starting point is to emphasise how those experiencing economic change forge strategies and practices for "getting by". This leads us to call for a re-theorisation of labour agency, drawing upon the Autonomous Marxist tradition and the more recent work of Cindi Katz, in order to offer fresh insight into the agency of labour and the prospect for recovering a class politics based upon lived experience over reified abstractions. [source] Navigating fieldwork politics, practicalities and ethics in the upland borderlands of northern VietnamASIA PACIFIC VIEWPOINT, Issue 2 2010Christine BonninArticle first published online: 28 JUL 2010 Abstract In this article, I detail and evaluate the negotiations I had to broker to conduct ethnographic research on marketplace vendors and trade in the upland borderlands of northern Vietnam. Working with the analogy of the numerous ,lines' I was constrained by, had to manoeuvre around, and at times crossed over, I begin with a discussion of the ,official lines' or state regulations imposed upon my research and how I worked with, or negotiated these limitations. I then reveal the important ,border guards' or gatekeepers, such as local state actors and also field assistants, who enabled or constrained access to informants in numerous different ways. I also highlight the logistical and practical lines that I had to accept and indeed, often draw, to accomplish my study. I conclude with a consideration of how friendships in the field drew me beyond the lines I had originally drawn around my research. These relationships furthered my anxiety over the possibilities for conducting research that ultimately contributes towards social justice in a constrained political setting such as that which presently characterises Vietnam. [source] Cultural Politics, Communal Resistance and Identity in Andean Irrigation DevelopmentBULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH, Issue 3 2005Rutgerd Boelens This article uses two case studies to illustrate how Andean irrigation development and management emerges from a hybrid mix of local community rules and the changing political forms and ideological forces of hegemonic states. Some indigenous water-control institutions are with us today because they were consonant with the extractive purposes of local elites and Inca, Spanish and post-independence Republican states. These states often appropriated and standardised local water-management rules, rights and rituals in order to gain control over the surplus produced by these irrigation systems. However, as we show in the case of two communities in Ecuador and Peru, many of these same institutions are reappropriated and redirected by local communities to counteract both classic ,exclusion-oriented' and modern ,inclusion-oriented' water and identity politics. In this way, they resist subordination, discrimination and the control of local water management by rural elites or state actors. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||