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| 1 |
ID:
098756
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2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The January 2010 earthquake in Haiti was a catastrophe not only for the loss of life it caused, but also because it destroyed the very thin layer of state administrative capacity that was in place in the country. This article argues that the fragility of the Haitian state institutions was exacerbated by international strategies that promoted NGOs as substitutes for the state. These strategies have generated a vicious circle that, while solving immediate logistical problems, ended up weakening Haiti's institutions. However, the article does not call for an overarching condemnation of NGOs. Instead, it explores two cases of community-based NGOs, Partners In Health and Fonkoze, that have contributed to creating durable social capital, generated employment and provided functioning services to the communities where they operated. The article shows that organisations that are financially independent and internationally connected, embrace a needs-based approach to their activities and share a long-term commitment to the communities within which they operate can contribute to bringing about substantial improvement for people living in situations of extreme poverty. It concludes that in the aftermath of a crisis of the dimension of the January earthquake it is crucial to channel support towards organisations that show this type of commitment.
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| 2 |
ID:
098753
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2010.
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Revisiting the critique of participatory development and one of its core political technologies, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), this paper suggests that participation in the form of PRA creates 'provided spaces' that dislocate 'development' from politics and from political institutions of the postcolonial state. PRA thereby becomes what Chantal Mouffe calls a post-political aspiration through its celebration of deliberative democracy (although this is largely implicit rather than explicit in the PRA literature). What makes this post-political aspiration dangerous is that its provided spaces create a time-space container of a state of exception (the 'workshop') wherein a new sovereign is created. In combination with other developmental techniques, PRA has become a place where a new order is being constituted-the state of exception becomes permanent and nurtures the 'will to improve' that undergirds 'development'.
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| 3 |
ID:
098752
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2010.
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This article begins by questioning the transferability of Western conceptualisations of the 'state' to the developing world, particularly to those areas in which security concerns are extreme. It proposes that the complicated relationship between security and political liberalisation produces a reform-security dilemma, which in turn may result in dual-governance structures consisting of an autonomous 'state' bureaucracy and a relatively newer, political 'government'. The dynamics of such a duality are explored through a longitudinal comparison of two critical cases: Iran and Turkey. Both cases reveal evidence of the 'state' and 'government' as distinct bodies, emerging over time in response to conflicting pressures for security and liberalisation. While the Iranian case remains entrenched in a static duality with an advantaged 'state', the Turkish case provides optimism that, under certain conditions, an eventual subordination of the state to the political government can take place.
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| 4 |
ID:
098759
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2010.
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Hezbollah has acquired a dual and contradictory reputation: as a legitimate political actor in Lebanon and as a terrorist organisation in the USA and Israel. This duality can be explained if we understand that Hezbollah is a nationalist entity that defines itself primarily within the Lebanese polity, as well as an anti-imperialist party intent on countering the regional hegemony of Israel and the USA. Forming alliances with Hamas, Iran and Syria, Hezbollah has become part of a 'rejectionist' axis that seeks to oppose perceived imperialism in the Middle East; this stance has become increasingly entrenched in the wake of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Characterisations that focus on Hezbollah as a military opponent confirm the organisation's perceived need for a rejectionist stance. International acceptance of Hezbollah as a legitimate political actor within the Lebanese polity, on the other hand, would help to bring the basis of the rejectionist axis into question.
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| 5 |
ID:
098757
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2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines the implementation of the Global Environment Facility's (GEF) Mexico-Mesoamerican Biological Corridor in Chiapas, Mexico, in order to explore how stakeholder participation is increasingly employed as a tool of conservation's neoliberalisation. This requires an understanding of participation via the corridor as productive, in that it facilitates the production of new, albeit fictitious, kinds of biodiversity in the commodity form, and of new modes of social reproduction increasingly mediated by market relations, as access to common property resources and the necessities of life are progressively restricted to one's ability to pay. In this way the corridor produces the conditions under which a 'market citizenship' can flourish, with participation re-imagined as a means through which this end is achieved.
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| 6 |
ID:
098755
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2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Rwanda is not a traditional provider of troops for peacekeeping missions, yet since 2004 it has been the second largest contributor to both the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) and its successor the hybrid African Union-UN Assistance Mission in Darfur (UNAMID). This paper analyses some of the key motives for Rwanda's contribution to these missions, situating its actions within a wider framework in which African states benefit in specific ways from being seen to contribute to 'African solutions to African problems'. Highlighting changing narratives on Africa's role in international security, I argue that Rwanda's ruling party has been able use its involvement in peacekeeping to secure its position domestically and to attract or retain the support of key bilateral donors. I briefly explore the implications of these dynamics for Rwanda's political development, suggesting in conclusion that the focus on building military capacity for peacekeeping purposes may contribute to future African, and Rwandan, security problems as much as to potential solutions.
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| 7 |
ID:
098758
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2010.
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In this article I investigate the role of the international community's policy in the national factionalism in Palestine. I attempt to illuminate how international policy has contributed to the sustaining of internecine Palestinian violence as Fatah, which lost the elections in 2005 and 2006, has been motivated not to hand over power. In the process of selecting allies in the fight against Islamist terrorism, the epitomic undemocratic feature of Arab political culture, clientelism, has been promoted over democracy. Hamas seizing power in Gaza in 2007 probably resulted from the need to tame unruly militant groups which were sponsored by leaders of the Palestinian Fatah party, which again were supported by Western powers. To understand the national splitting in Palestine there is a need to analyse the interconnection between warlords, local clientelism and international clientelism.
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| 8 |
ID:
098754
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2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article describes and explains the impact of the donor-driven Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and the aid modalities surrounding it in Ghana. It focuses on the period in which the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government was in power from 2001 until 2008, but places this within the broader context of aid dependence in Ghana since the 1980s. It is argued that the PRSP documents produced by the government had little impact on implementing policy actions, but rather their function was to secure debt relief and the continuation of foreign aid from official donors. The article examines what was actually implemented during the NPP government and the factors that influenced those actions. More generally it highlights the constraints Ghanaian governments have faced in pursuing economic transformation within contemporary domestic and international contexts.
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| 9 |
ID:
098751
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2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The validity of development has been cast into doubt by postmodern critiques that have highlighted its failings. Attempts to rehabilitate the idea of development have brought ethics into play. This paper examines attempts to identify a viable basis for development based on post-structuralist ethical theories developed by analysts such as Levinas and Derrida that privilege the concept of alterity, or respect for the other. This approach is contrasted with Badiou's influential critique of an alterity-based ethics, critically examining his alternative of an ethics of the same. The article concludes by incorporating some of Badiou's insights into a reformulated ethics of alterity.
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