scholarly journals Belarus in the Wake of a Revolution: Domestic and International Factors

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aram Terzyan ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
The Status

This paper explores the political landscape of Belarus in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential elections, with a focus on both domestic and international factors behind the ongoing crisis. Lukashenko’s regime has a long record of sustaining its power by preserving elite unity, controlling elections, and/or using force against opponents. Therefore, massive fraud characterizing the 2020 presidential elections and brutal suppression of peaceful protests in its aftermath came as no surprise. Against this backdrop, the anti-government protests following the presidential elections raised a series of unanswered questions regarding both their domestic and foreign policy implications. The biggest question is whether the Belarusian civil society and opposition will prove powerful enough to overcome state repression and change the status quo in Europe’s “last dictatorship”. Worries remain about the Belarusian opposition’s emphasis on foreign policy continuity, meaning that Belarus is bound to remain in the orbit of the Russian authoritarian influence. The total fiasco of post-Velvet Revolution Armenian government both in terms of domestic and foreign policies, among others, further reveals the excruciating difficulties of a democratic state-building within the Russia-led socio-political order.

Religion in Israeli Politics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Ben-Porat
Keyword(s):  
Political Leadership ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Status ◽  
Common Goals ◽  
Political Actions

Religion has played an important part in Israeli politics, and religious-secular contentions are likely to remain part of the political landscape. In the early years of Israel’s statehood religious politics was contained by common goals; secular ambivalence toward religion; and a political leadership able to create agreements, both formal and informal, known as the status quo. Beginning in the 1990s, however, economic, demographic, and sociocultural changes undermined the agreements, and religious questions became politicized. Israeli governments were unable to mediate between new demands of secular and religious groups, so subpolitics—political actions outside the formal political sphere—combined with traditional politics to become a way for Israelis to struggle for and against religious authority.

Religion in Israeli Politics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Ben-Porat
Keyword(s):  
Political Leadership ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Status ◽  
Common Goals ◽  
Political Actions

Religion has played an important part in Israeli politics, and religious–secular contentions are likely to remain part of the political landscape. In the early years of Israel’s statehood religious politics was contained by common goals; secular ambivalence toward religion; and a political leadership able to create agreements, both formal and informal, known as the status quo. Beginning in the 1990s, however, economic, demographic, and sociocultural changes undermined the agreements, and religious questions became politicized. Israeli governments were unable to mediate between new demands of secular and religious groups, so subpolitics—political actions outside the formal political sphere—combined with traditional politics to become a way for Israelis to struggle for and against religious authority.

How Predatory Informal Rules Outlast State Reform: Evidence from Postauthoritarian Guatemala

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Rachel A. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Process Tracing ◽  
Military Rule ◽  
State Reform ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Face ◽  
Informal Rules ◽  
Customs Administration

ABSTRACT The coexistence of predatory informal rules alongside formal democratic institutions is a defining, if pernicious, feature of Latin America’s political landscape. How do such rules remain so resilient in the face of bureaucratic reforms? This article explicates the mechanisms underlying the persistence of such rules and challenges conventional explanations through process-tracing analysis in one arena: Guatemala’s customs administration. During Guatemala’s period of armed conflict and military rule, military intelligence officers introduced a powerful customs fraud scheme that endured for more than 20 years, despite state reforms. Its survival is best attributed to the ability of the distributional coalition underwriting the predatory rules to capture new political and economic spaces facilitated by political party and market reforms. This illustrates that distributional approaches to institutional change must attend to how those with a stake in the status quo may continue to uphold perverse institutional arrangements on the margins of state power.

scholarly journals Narrating technonatures: discourses of biotechnology in a neoliberal era

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 186
Author(s):  
Myles Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Political ◽  
Effective Strategy ◽  
Economic Implications ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Status ◽  
Political Economic

This article considers the role played by discourses of nature in structuring the cultural politics of anti-GMO activism. It argues that such discourses have been successful rhetorical tools for activists because they mobilize widely resonant nature-culture dualisms that separate the natural and human worlds. However, these discourses hold dubious political implications. In valorizing the natural as a source of essential truth, natural purity discourses fail to challenge how naturalizations have been used to legitimize sexist, racist and colonial systems of injustice and oppression. Rather, they revitalize the discursive purchase of appeals to nature as a justification for the status quo, indirectly reinforcing existing power relations. Moreover, these discourses fail to challenge the critical though contingent reality of GMOs' location within the wider framework of neoliberal social relations. Fortunately, appeals to natural purity have not been the only effective strategy for opposing GMOs. Activist campaigns that directly target the political economic implications of GMOs within the context of neoliberalism have also had successes without resorting to appeals to the purity of nature. The successes of these campaigns suggest that while nature-culture dualisms remain politically effective normative groundings, concerns over equity, farmers' rights, and democracy retain potential as ideological terrains in the struggle for social justice.

scholarly journals Gestation, equality and freedom: ectogenesis as a political perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulia Cavaliere
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
Positive Case ◽  
The Political ◽  
Small Subset ◽  
Human Fetuses ◽  
Political Perspective ◽  
Women's Equality ◽  
The Status ◽  
Limited Scope

The benefits of full ectogenesis, that is, the gestation of human fetuses outside the maternal womb, for women ground many contemporary authors’ arguments on the ethical desirability of this practice. In this paper, I present and assess two sets of arguments advanced in favour of ectogenesis: arguments stressing ectogenesis’ equality-promoting potential and arguments stressing its freedom-promoting potential. I argue that although successfully grounding a positive case for ectogenesis, these arguments have limitations in terms of their reach and scope. Concerning their limited reach, I contend that ectogenesis will likely benefit a small subset of women and, arguably, not the group who most need to achieve equality and freedom. Concerning their limited scope, I contend that these defences do not pay sufficient attention to the context in which ectogenesis would be developed and that, as a result, they risk leaving the status quo unchanged. After providing examples of these limitations, I move to my proposal concerning the role of ectogenesis in promoting women’s equality and freedom. This proposal builds on Silvia Federici’s, Mariarosa Dalla Costa’s and Selma James’ readings of the international feminist campaign ‘Wages for Housework’. It maintains that the political perspective and provocation that ectogenesis can advance should be considered and defended.

scholarly journals The scope and limits of combatting violent extremism in the United Kingdom

2021 ◽  
pp. 155-174
Author(s):  
Tahir Abbas
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Social Engineering ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Social ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
The Status ◽  
British Muslims

This article situates the debate on the United Kingdom’s Prevent policy in the broader framework of the global paradigm for countering violent extremism (CVE), which appeared at the end of 2015. It argues that omission of a nuanced focus on the social, cultural, economic, and political characteristics of radicalised people has led to a tendency to introduce blanket measures which, inadvertently and indirectly, have had harmful results. Moreover, although Prevent has been the fundamental element of the British government’s counterterrorist strategy since 2006, it confuses legitimate political resistance of young British Muslims with signs of violent extremism, thus giving credence to the argument that Prevent is a form of social engineering which, in the last instance, pacifies resistance by reaffirming the status quo in the country’s domestic and foreign policy.

scholarly journals Regional position of Serbia in light of foreign policy relations with its “old neighbors”

2017 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-505
Author(s):  
Mladen Lisanin
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Western Balkans ◽  
Interested Party ◽  
Research Attention ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
The Status ◽  
Regional Position

Due to turbulent circumstances and controversial heritage in regard to the breakup of ex-Yugoslavia, regional position of Serbia is, within academic as well as the wider public, most often observed in the context of its relations with the ?new? neighbors - the states that have emerged from the breakup of the former common country. This is in part because of constant tensions in the relations with ex-Yugoslav states, but also due to the political agenda of Western actors, which sets the framework for regional integration processes through the concept of ?Western Balkans?. Foreign policy relations of Serbia with its ?old? neighbors (most notably, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, given that Albania has a distinct status as a de facto interested party in the dispute regarding the status of Kosovo and Metohija), nonetheless, remain at least just as important element of Serbia?s regional position. It is the author?s intention to point towards determinants of the foreign policy of Serbia, as factors that work, or are visible, through relations with Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. This will be observed in the context of bilateral and multilateral, formal and informal foreign policy connections and relations. The conclusion, in the form of a recommendation, is that international political dynamics in the ?Western Balkans? should not completely avert research attention away from Serbian relations with its non-Yugoslav neighbors.

scholarly journals Bodily abjection and the politics of resistance in Tom Paulin’s Greek tragedies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle Torrance
Keyword(s):  
Open Channel ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Political ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
The Status ◽  
Politics Of Resistance ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Political Groups ◽  
Political Actions

Abstract Tom Paulin’s Greek tragedies present extremes of bodily abjection in order to service of a politics of resistance that is tied, in each case, to the political context of the drama’s production. The Riot Act (1984), Seize the Fire (1989), and Medea (2010), share a focus on the degradation of oppressed political groups and feature characters who destabilize the status quo. Yet the impact of disruptive political actions is not ultimately made clear. We are left wondering at the conclusion of each tragedy if the momentous acts of defiance we have witnessed have any power to create systemic change within politically rigged systems. The two 1980s plays are discussed together and form a sequence, with The Riot Act overtly addressing the Northern Irish conflict and Seize the Fire encompassing a broader sweep of oppressive regimes. The politics of discrimination in Medea are illuminated by comparison with similar themes in Paulin’s Love’s Bonfire (2010). Unlike other Northern Irish adaptations of Greek tragedy, Paulin’s dramas, arrested in their political moments, present little hope for the immediate future. Yet in asking us to consider if individual sacrifice is enough to achieve radical change they maintain an open channel for political discourse.

Challenges to African incumbents will grow

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Status

Significance The continent’s trajectory is not a uniformly bleak one, however, as it also features the only two countries to move towards democracy during the COVID-19 pandemic: Malawi and Zambia. Furthermore, large majorities of people in many countries surveyed by Afrobarometer prefer democracy over other forms of government. Impacts Countries that are more democratic will, on average, experience more inclusive economic recoveries. Economic hardships generated in part by COVID-19 will make it harder for incumbents in Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe to retain power. Authoritarian governments will continue to see high levels of political and civic protest. Authoritarian countries such as Angola and Zimbabwe will resort to more state repression to maintain the status quo.

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