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ID:
118966
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Four African leaders died in 2012. This article explores the constellation of factors that together led to a constitutional succession after President Bingu wa Mutharika's death in Malawi, despite plotting by the late President's allies to circumvent the constitution and install their own candidate over Vice-President Joyce Banda. We present data on executive deaths in office since 1961 and executive transfers of power 2010-12 in order to situate the Malawi transition within the broader African context, and draw especially on comparisons to executive successions that followed the death-in-office of presidents in Nigeria (2010) and Zambia (2008). We assert from these cases that constitutional provisions on executive succession are necessary in precipitating peaceful transitions, but also argue that periods of delay indicate that such provisions are insufficient on their own. We contend that presidential death is more likely to lead to transition than presidential incapacity. The Malawian case in particular illustrates how a constitutional transition requires support from key actors, particularly the Cabinet, military leaders, judiciary, civil society, and the independent media. Public rejection of military or authoritarian rule, and the growing precedent for constitutional succession in Africa, are additional drivers of peaceful transitions.
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| 2 |
ID:
117462
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
At the heart of the notion of the postsecular is an implied and largely under-theorised idea of resistance against the pathologies of modern secular formations. This is most notably exemplified by Jürgen Habermas's highly influential approach which argues that these pathologies can be resisted through a cooperative cognitive effort of secular and religious consciousnesses. This article contends that this understanding overlooks more embodied forms of resistance to the effect that it curtails our capacity to conceptualise postsecular resistance in international relations. Following a contextualisation of Habermas's approach in the broader Kantian tradition to which it belongs, the article develops a contending Foucauldian reading of the body as a locus of resistance and uses this framework to analyse some of the events leading to the 2011 Egyptian revolution. The focus is on the publication of images and videos of police abuses by Egyptian bloggers and independent media as a practice of resistance to the widespread and systematic use of torture. The emotional response to these images, it will be argued, contributed to unite Egyptians despite longstanding fractures, most notably that between secularists and Islamists, thus turning the body from an 'inscribed surface of events' into a postsecular locus of resistance. The article concludes by highlighting the main implications of this analysis for future research agendas on the postsecular in international relations.
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| 3 |
ID:
125295
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The early-summer protests in Turkey were not televised. Instead, Turkey's news networks aired penguin documentaries and cooking shows while all hell broke loose at the heart of Istanbul in Gezi Park, as what started out as an environmentalist movement quickly evolved into a major uprising against the Turkish government. But the networks remained mostly mute, intimidated by the prospect of reprisals from the country's hotheaded prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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