Politics in Crisis? 1443872652, 9781443872652

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Politics in Crisis?

Politics in Crisis? Edited by

Marie Paxton, Ekaterina Kolpinskaya and Jana Jonasova

Politics in Crisis? Edited by Marie Paxton, Ekaterina Kolpinskaya and Jana Jonasova This book first published 2015 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2015 by Marie Paxton, Ekaterina Kolpinskaya and Jana Jonasova and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7265-2 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7265-2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ................................................................................... viii Foreword .................................................................................................... ix Jana Jonasova, Ekaterina Kolpinskaya and Marie Paxton Acknowledgements ................................................................................... xii Part I. Institutions in Crisis? Chapter One ................................................................................................. 2 Responding to Crisis: Whitehall and the Politics of Austerity Patrick Diamond and Daniel Fitzpatrick Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 15 House of Lords Self-Restraint Fiona Williams Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 29 Towards a Comprehensive Theory of Party Competition and Electoral Change: From Party Identification to Riker’s Theory of Heresthetics and Rhetoric Berta Barbet Porta Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 41 The Link between Role Theory and Performance Studies: Sketching Political Crises through Role Conflict Bernardo Teles Fazendeiro Part II. Crisis in Action Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 56 Critiquing the Dominant Security Orthodoxy: Is Security Sector Reform a Viable Paradigm for Peace-Building/State-Building? Mustafa Tahani

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Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 68 At the Crossroad of Security and Human Rights: The Dilemma of the Sanctions Regimes Julija Kalpokiene Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 79 Changing Approaches to State-Building: The Politics of Crisis and the Crisis of Politics Elisa Randazzo Chapter Eight ............................................................................................. 91 Minorities and Politics in Indonesia: Towards Inclusive Justice Max Regus Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 101 The Role of Chinese Popular Nationalism over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Dispute Oana Burcu Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 113 From the Shadows of Silence and Shame to the Light of Voice and Dignity: Transnational Activism and the Contested Nature of the Historical Memory of the “Comfort Women” in Japan Sachiyo Tsukamoto Part III. Theorising Political Crisis Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 122 Inclusiveness, Adversarialism and Perfectionism: Exploring the Three Approaches to Agonistic Democracy Marie Paxton Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 133 The Liberal Concept of Citizenship and its Implications on the Challenges of Migration: A Radical Democracy Approach Gonzalo Cavero Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 142 The Line as a Basic Element of International Order Ignas Kalpokas

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Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 153 The Promise of Politics: The Radical Alternative of Arendtian Political Philosophy John Baxter Afterword ................................................................................................ 162 Professor Michael Freeden Contributors ............................................................................................. 169 Images from the Conference.................................................................... 173

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Photo 1. “Politics in Crisis?” Conference reception (Jana Jonasova) Photo 2. British Politics section (Stuart Fox) Photo 3. British Politics section (left to right: Ekaterina Kolpinskaya and Berta Barbet Porta) Photo 4. International Relations and International Political Economy section (left to right: Ruike Xu and Lan-Shu Tseng) Photo 5. International Relations and International Political Economy section (Oana Burcu) Photo 6. International Relations and International Political Economy section (Jana Jonasova) Photo 7. Political Theory section (Sachiyo Tsukamoto) Photo 8. Political Theory section (left to right: John Baxter, Marie Paxton, Gonzalo Cavero and Ignas Kalpokas) Photo 9. Political Theory section (left to right: Max Regus and Prof Michael Freeden)

FOREWORD

This volume includes fifteen conference papers presented at the postgraduate conference “Politics in Crisis?” held at the University of Nottingham in April 2013. The conference aimed to explore and interrogate the assumption that politics as we know it is in decline, or even crisis. Although this theme frequently features in public, political and academic debates, there is no single, comprehensive understanding of what the crisis of politics means, how it manifests, and whether (and how) it can be resolved. Moreover, the very assumption that politics is in crisis is a controversial and contested one. The conference attempted to explore this assumption from a variety of angles by providing three conference streams – International Political Theory, British Politics, and International Political Economy and International Relations. Papers across these themes offered critical insights into the structure and development of political institutions, international governance, and normative political theory, drawing upon the United Kingdom and international case studies as examples. Organised by postgraduate research students from the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham, the conference received generous financial and organisational support from the School’s research centres, including the Centre for British Politics, Centre for European Governance (now Centre for Comparative Political Research), Centre for Conflict, Security and Terrorism, Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice, Centre for Normative Political Theory and the Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies. Additionally, the Methods and Data Institute and the ESRC Doctoral Training Centre at the University of Nottingham provided invaluable support in organising the Research Methods Workshop that followed the conference. Without the involvement of these Centres and Institutes, “Politics in Crisis?” would not have been possible, and we would like to express our gratitude toward them. Altogether the conference attracted over sixty postgraduate and early career researchers from universities across the UK, as well as European universities, such as the Autonomous University of Madrid and the Institute of Social Studies at the Erasmus University. The quality of the papers was recognised by conference participants, discussants and the

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three keynote speakers: Professor Michael Freeden (University of Nottingham), Chris Leslie (Member of Parliament for Nottingham East and the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury) and Dr Nicola Pratt (University of Warwick). Finally, the quality of the conference was recognised in the postconference feedback survey conducted by one of the conference organisers, Stuart Fox. Respondents were almost unanimous in providing positive feedback about the conference. Over 80 per cent felt that there was sufficient information ahead of the conference to make arrival and registration easy, that the conference venue was appropriate, that the conference packs provided were useful, and that the dinner was an enjoyable success. The survey also included a number of questions asking respondents to rate how useful the conference was for their research and development as a scholar on a 0 – 10 scale; over a half of the participants gave a score of 8 or higher. In a further question, respondents were asked to rate how enjoyable and interesting the event was, and more than three fourth gave a score of 8 or higher. Finally, we asked how interested our participants would be in attending future events which matched the “Politics in Crisis?” format, and whether or not they would recommend such an event to their students and colleagues. Respondents were unanimous in expressing their interest in attending a future version of “Politics in Crisis?” with 97 per cent stating that they would recommend the event to their colleagues. This volume presents a selection of papers presented at the conference. All of the papers examine and challenge the idea of “politics in crisis”, whether through institutional analysis, reflection on case studies or theoretical exploration. The papers in the volume are grouped to reflect three broad topics. It begins with an analysis of recent developments in institutional politics, considering how traditional political institutions are shaped by empirical events, focusing particularly on British politics. It subsequently moves onto international case studies, exploring challenges to democratic development through, for instance, focus on human rights and conflict resolution in the Middle East and Asia. Finally, the volume provides critical discussion of normative democratic theory. The volume concludes with Professor Michael Freeden’s afterword, which rounds up the discussion and puts forward the idea that, in order to avoid crisis, students must bridge the gap between political philosophy and what actually happens in politics. Thanks to the diverse nature of the papers, the volume offers an exciting read for academics and practitioners interested in challenges to political systems, events, and theories both in the UK and the global realm.

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Written by early career researchers, the volume aspires to provide an accessible and engaging read for all – from undergraduate students, to senior academics, to political practitioners. All in all, we hope you enjoy reading the volume as much as we enjoyed preparing it.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to express our gratitude to all of the people who have supported the initiative and development of this publication. First and foremost, we would like to express gratitude to each author who has contributed to the volume. We really appreciate your patience and responsiveness, as well as the time and effort invested into this collection of papers. We are also extremely grateful to Professor Michael Freeden for tying the volume together with an insightful and thought-provoking afterword. We understand that weaving the multitude of papers together was no easy feat, and we truly appreciate how the afterword unites each of the contributions. The volume would not be complete without Esther Mana Akanya’s great photography, nor without Stuart Fox’s informative statistical data from the Politics in Crisis? conference – thank you both. Equally, this volume would not have been possible without the support of the School of Politics and International Relations Research Committee, the various School of Politics Research Centres, or the fantastically supportive academic staff there. We owe our deepest thanks to the Centre for British Politics, Centre for Comparative Political Research, Centre for Conflict, Security and Terrorism, Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice, Centre for Normative Political Theory and the Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies and their members for funding, support and encouragement along the way. In particular, we would like to thank Professor Michael Freeden, Professor Steven Fielding, Dr Mark Wenman, Professor Vivien Lowndes, Dr Mark Stuart, Professor Wyn Rees, and Professor Katharine Adeney for their help in reviewing papers for the volume, and providing invaluable advice in putting the volume together. We would also like to acknowledge the vital contribution of the School’s administrative team, especially postgraduate administrators, Gail Evans and Ailsa Mitchell, who – alongside the University of Nottingham Marketing Department – helped us to navigate through a whole range of administrative and marketing obstacles. Finally, we are hugely grateful to Carol Koulikourdi and to everyone else at Cambridge Scholars Publishing for providing continual support and guidance throughout the entire publication process.

PART I. INSTITUTIONS IN CRISIS?

CHAPTER ONE RESPONDING TO CRISIS: WHITEHALL AND THE POLITICS OF AUSTERITY PATRICK DIAMOND QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

AND DR DANIEL FITZPATRICK UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

Introduction This chapter is concerned with “crises” and how they are narrated by political elites. It argues that the case for reforming the British state has attained wider currency in the context of the Coalition government’s narration of the post-2008 financial crisis. The Coalition’s strategy has drawn on a critique of New Labour’s centralising approach to state-society relations, alongside the imperatives of fiscal consolidation and deficit reduction (Smith 2010). Somewhat paradoxically in the wake of the financial crash, it is the role of the state rather than the role of markets which has been most under scrutiny. As the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude argued in a speech to the think-tank Reform, “The era of big government has come to an end not just because the money has literally run out, but it is also shown to have failed”. The Conservative and Liberal Democrat agenda is concerned with harnessing the sense of crisis created by the near-collapse of the financial sector and the consequent pressures on the UK public finances to engineer a radical restructuring of the state. However, this imperative of overhauling the public management capabilities of the British state may undermine its “infrastructural power” at precisely the moment when it needs to strengthen collective capacities to provide an effective response to the “spill-over” effects of the most serious financial crisis in modern economic history (Midgal 2001). This chapter examines this paradox and explores whether the financial crisis has precipitated an institutional crisis in Whitehall. The implication

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of a “crisis of Whitehall” is not new. The concept of “crisis” has been periodically applied to the UK civil service since the 1970s, reflecting the decline of confidence in the British state’s ruling institutions. The fact that the language of crisis is a staple of the media’s commentary on the civil service can, therefore, be seen as a part of wider changes in British politics, as the traditional style of “club government” has been put under increasing exogenous and endogenous pressure (Marquand 1988). A key feature of “club government” is the relationships of trust that exist between its members, who can rely on each other “to observe the spirit of the club rules” (Marquand 1988, 178). Recurring “crises” in Whitehall can be seen as the outcome of the breakdown of this club model of governance while its informal and oligarchic nature is becoming increasingly pressured by Britain’s economic decline and calls for greater democratic accountability (Moran 2003). Interpreting the financial crisis and its impact on Whitehall is, therefore, critical to understanding the contemporary nature of the British state and its transformation. On one level, the financial crisis and a lack of capacity in the British state it has underlined reflect the exhaustion of the “club government” model and the associated “Whitehall paradigm” (Campbell and Wilson 1995). The following section explores how a lack of capacity – such as an absence of institutional memory; significant knowledge gaps in terms of financial expertise; and a lack of external commercial experience – accompanied by an avowed belief in a light-touch approach, led to the under-regulation of the financial sector. The chapter then goes on to consider what lessons have been learnt (although not necessarily heeded) in the half-decade since the start of the financial crisis. The chapter is, thus, explicitly concerned with the relative trends of change and continuity in Whitehall since 2008. The ability of the Coalition government to narrate the fiscal crisis strategically in order to pull back “the frontiers of the state” has been significant in transforming the size and scope of Whitehall. The impact of these changes, in the context of austerity, on the policy-making and the management capacity of Whitehall is examined through a case study of the Treasury. We must, however, be careful not to overstate the extent of change. The civil service has proved extremely resistant to change and reform throughout the post-war period despite sustained criticism of its culture, recruitment, and practices. A key barrier to change has been the dominant political tradition in the UK, which underpins the resources and power of ministers and mandarins as the key actors at the core of the British state. The final section of the chapter examines how the post-2010

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civil service reform process has been mediated by the dominant political and administrative traditions in the UK.

Governance after Crisis: from the Big State to the post-bureaucratic society One of the defining characteristics of any crisis is that it catches those in power off-guard. This was certainly the case with the Labour government and the onset of financial crisis in 2007. Just weeks before the run on Northern Rock in September 2007, Gordon Brown could be found eulogising about a “golden age for the City of London” (Brown 2007), apparently unaware that equity prices in the banking sector were about to fall by 80 per cent over the next 18 months (Haldane 2010, 1). In the wake of the crisis, the Labour government’s initial response took the shape of day-to-day “fire-fighting” rather than coherent and strategic planning. The failure to construct a coherent alternative growth strategy led to a political vacuum, which the Conservatives were able to exploit by interpreting the financial crisis as a crisis of (and not merely for) the British state (McCartney 2011). Froud et al. (2010) argue that the financial crisis opened a window of opportunity for substantively reforming the way in which markets are governed. They claim, however, that this opportunity has been “politically wasted” due to the institutionalisation of international finance and the long-established patterns of regulation in the UK (Froud et al. 2010, 25). However, while the financial crisis may have only led to a limited reordering of the governance of the markets, it has by no means been “politically wasted”. In the context of “austerity”, the Coalition government have been able to mount a sustained rhetorical attack on the “Big State”. The antipathy to the centralising state reflects separate but by no means contradictory strands of the British liberal tradition. On the one hand, the “Orange Book” tendency within the Liberal Democrats emphasises the need for decentralisation and local autonomy within a dynamic market economy. One of the book’s authors, David Laws, argues that the “Liberal belief in economic liberalism” ought to be rescued from “soggy socialism and corporatism” (Laws and Marshall 2004, 11). On the other hand, the “liberal conservatism” lauded by David Cameron prioritises social duty and compassionate paternalism over the centralising state claiming that “the old, top-down, big-government approach has failed”. The Coalition has sought to contrast Labour’s centralised, statist approach with an emphasis on decentralisation and notions of a post-bureaucratic society (Smith 2010; Norman and Ganesh 2006). Modernisers within the

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Conservative Party have argued that the state needs to reform in order to remain relevant in an age of transparency when technology enables individuals to access information with ease. At its core, post-bureaucracy is about the “transference of power from the centralised bureaucracy to the empowered individual” (Gove 2009). Prior to the crisis, Cameron’s Conservatives sought to challenge the legacy of “Whitehall knows best”, particularly in social policy (Bale 2010; Blond 2010). The principle of a post-bureaucratic state was about “bottom-up” solutions to social problems, breaking with the top-down, centralising approach adopted by the previous Labour governments. The legitimacy and power afforded by the centralised state is rejected in favour of mobilising civil society and the private sector (Smith 2010; Kenny 2009). The Conservatives insisted that state-driven models of social reform rarely succeeded, reinforcing passive dependency on the welfare state. The challenges of an ageing society require new delivery tools, reducing citizens’ reliance on state provision and forging “pro-social” attitudes, behaviours and incentives (Halpern 2010; Thaler and Sunstein 2008) (Halpern 2010; Thaler and Sunstein 2008). While Labour’s bureaucratic state allegedly “crowded out” voluntary initiative, the Conservatives advocated a strategy of decentralisation among local agencies and actors. The post-bureaucratic society appeared to fit rationally with the imperative of the post-2008 crisis moving towards fiscal retrenchment and a redrawing of the parameters of the state. Nonetheless, the Coalition Government was confronted by a strategic dilemma. Public opinion surveys indicated that the British electorate continued to support universal public services free at the point of use (Curtice et. al. 2010). The strategy was to reconcile retrenchment in the UK public finances with a commitment to social cohesion and a fairer society (Smith 2010). Ministers sought to portray the post-bureaucratic state as a necessary decentralising reform by challenging the nostrum that “the gentleman man in Whitehall knows best” and pointing out that government programmes had failed to ameliorate poverty and social deprivation (Norman and Ganesh 2006). Moreover, cuts in public expenditure were needed to maintain confidence in the British economy and to safeguard Britain’s status as a “safe haven” with international investors. The fiscal impact of the financial crisis on the British state was severe: the total UK public sector debt was 85.2 per cent of GDP, and Britain had the second highest level of debt among the industrialised nations.

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The scale of public debt created a rationale for the Coalition government to roll back “the frontiers of the state” aiming at eliminating the public sector deficit by 2015-16 (modified to 2016-17 since then), which would entail sharp reductions in year-to-year departmental expenditure. All Whitehall departments had to reduce administrative budgets by 34 per cent over the lifetime of the 2015 parliament, which led to dramatic headcount reductions in some key Whitehall departments (Institute for Government 2013, 8). The Institute for Government claimed the scale of the retrenchment would have far-reaching consequences for Whitehall (Paun and Halifax 2012). The Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, acknowledged that the process of fiscal consolidation required fundamental reforms of the state. The fiscal crisis and the imperative of a post-bureaucratic society entailed major changes in the machinery of government and the institutional apparatus of Whitehall. Some of these implications are discussed in the next section, which considers the impact of the financial crisis and the subsequent Coalition reforms on the Treasury.

The Financial Crisis – the view from the Treasury The fallout of the financial crisis has had important consequences for the British state. These consequences have been felt particularly acutely in the Treasury. The Treasury had to reduce its administrative spending by one third, including a 25 per cent reduction in headcount by cutting staffing levels to 1,000 in March 2014 from 1,350 in March 2010). The potential for loss of institutional capacity and collective memory had raised concerns prior to the crisis (Hood and Dixon 2012; Riddell 2006). Alistair Darling indicated that the Treasury struggled to cope with the fallout of the financial crisis following its “slimming- down” during the post2004 Gershon changes. There was not a single official who worked for the Treasury during the last major economic crisis following Britain’s exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) in 1992 (Darling 2010). The concern about the long-term erosion of civil service capability in Whitehall was confirmed in the recent Treasury report on the management of the financial crisis by a senior official, Sharon White (2012). The report noted the high turn-over of the Treasury officials led to the department’s struggle to retain staff with expertise in the financial services sector. When the financial crisis broke in 2008, the Treasury’s Financial Stability team comprised just three civil servants and was reliant on external secondments and advice – much of it provided by employees of the major

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investment banks in London and New York. Even after the collapse of Lehman Brothers the Treasury’s “scaling up proved to be inadequate and resources were thinly stretched” (White 2012). The unprecedented scale of the financial crisis and the subsequent response of the Treasury to maintain the stability of the banking system have fundamentally changed the scope of the department. During the height of the crisis in 2008-09 the Treasury’s assets increased from £2.3 billion to £44.8 billion due to the recapitalisation of the failing banks and other financial stability measures, such as the Credit Guarantee Scheme. The traditional role of the Treasury was transformed from a policy-based department focused on public expenditure, macroeconomics, and fiscal policy to “a major investor, or owner of a number of banks; guarantor of borrowings by banks in the wholesale markets; and insurer of assets owned by Royal Bank of Scotland” (NAO 2010, 15). The undertakings of the Treasury represented “...the largest UK government intervention in financial markets since the outbreak of the First World War” (Bank of England 2008). The scale of the task undertaken by the Treasury has been all the more astonishing given that those interventions followed a period in which banking had been the central foundation of the UK’s economic growth for a decade, which facilitated significant investment in the public sector combined with a low tax regime (Hay 2011). The expansion and structural transformation of the UK banking sector from the late 1990s was facilitated by a light-touch regulatory system premised on a “principlesbased” approach. Financial services policy was not a high-profile area of the Treasury’s business; and within the financial services division, financial stability was not the core focus. The lack of political saliency afforded to financial stability in the Treasury had been reflected in the number of dedicated staff working in that area in the years preceding the crisis. Historically, it was the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) that was responsible for regulating securities and insurance, whereas the Treasury focused on the banks and building societies. Responsibility for regulating securities and insurance was transferred to the Treasury in 1993 and 1997, respectively. The Treasury inherited a significant amount of specialist knowledge and expertise as staff initially moved over from the DTI, who were gradually replaced by the Treasury officials. Following the creation of the tripartite framework between the Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), and the Treasury in 1997, the Treasury started to scale back its capacity in financial services and financial stability. Much of the Treasury’s specialist knowledge and experience was lost as a consequence. Encouraged by a benign economic

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climate, in which “boom and bust” seemed to have been abolished, and alongside a strongly held belief that the “principles-based” approach to financial regulation had reduced the systematic risks in the financial sector, the Treasury was content to be a peripheral figure in the tripartite relationship, entrusting operational responsibility for financial stability to the “experts” at the Bank and the FSA. After 2003, when the Bank began to reduce its personnel covering financial stability, the Treasury chose not to increase its own capacity (White 2012). By the summer of 2007, just before the crisis hit, there was a team of just three officials. While explanations of the financial crisis are inevitably contested, the lack of institutional capacity within Whitehall – particularly, the Treasury as the competent department for financial stability – is critical for understanding its causes and origins. Although a lack of institutional capacity may seem to be a more prosaic explanation than the structural explanations found elsewhere in the literature (Streek 2011; Gamble 2009), the neo-liberal hegemony within financial services both reflected and reinforced the light-touch, arms-length approach adopted by the Treasury. The consignment of financial stability to the domain of “low politics” in the Treasury was exacerbated by other features of its departmental culture that served to reduce capabilities further in the years preceding the financial crisis. The most important of them was the high degree of staff turnover within the Treasury at the time (the highest in Whitehall at three times the Civil Service average). This staff “churn” peaked at 38 per cent in 2008, as capacity was “ramped up” at the height of the financial crisis and then stabilised at 28 per cent in 2011 (see Figure 1). To put this into context, the turnover rate of the 90,000 people employed by McDonalds in the UK is 35 per cent (Quinn 2013). The Treasury team who were assigned to manage the stabilisation of Northern Rock were led by three different people in the six months before nationalisation (White 2012). The increase in staffing levels, along with the crisis management experience accrued by Treasury officials since 2007 and the contingency planning driven by continued uncertainty in the Eurozone, has inevitably increased capacity as the staff have undergone a steep learning curve since the start of the crisis. How much of this capacity is retained will be critical to the resilience of the British state to manage economic shocks in the future. The figures suggest much of this crucial institutional memory will be lost (see Figure 2). Approximately half of the current staff (in March 2012) joined the Treasury after 2008; more than half of the policy advisers have three years or less length of service (White 2012, 43); of the 108 staff working in HM Treasury’s Financial Stability Unit in September 2009,

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only 41 rem mained emplooyed by either HM Treassury or UK Financial Investmentss Ltd on 22 October O 2012 (HM ( Treasuryy 2012). The upshot is that a large pproportion of the Treasury staff has no eexperience of the t 200709 crisis, lett alone earlier banking and fiscal f crises (ssee Figure 1 and a 2). The reviiew envisagedd “a scaling back” b on finaancial stability y and the winding dow wn of UK Fiinancial Investments Ltd ((UKFI) and the t Asset Protection Scheme (AP PA). However, weak ecconomic growth and continued uuncertainty in the Eurozonee put that deccision on holld (White 2012, 37). F Following the abolition of the FSA, demaands on the Treasury’s T capacity w will go beyond identifyin ng future crrises and deeveloping contingencyy plans, and thhe Treasury will w play a muuch more activ ve role in financial serrvices than it did d previously y under the triipartite regimee. Having overall respoonsibility for the new regulatory framew work, the Treaasury will be the key actor in im mplementing the reforms oof the bankin ng sector recommendeed by the Independent Commissionn on Bankin ng (ICB) including thhe “ring-fenccing” of rettail banking from wholeesale and investment activities; inccreasing the capital requirrement of baanks; and enhancing competition in the finan ncial sector. Moreover, reducing systematic rrisks in globaal financial markets m will reequire the Treasury to play a greaater role in innternational supervision annd cooperatio on. These responsibilitties will be added to maanaging existting interventtions and assets in thee banking sectoor, including oversight o of thhe APA and UKFI. U mber of staff woorking on financcial stability Figure 1 Num

Source: HM T Treasury

10 Figure 2 Lenggth of service

Source: HM T Treasury

Chapterr One

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Whitehall: Pathology without Crisis? The Coalition’s objective of reshaping public administration in the wake of the 2008 crisis meant it has sought to develop a consistent strategy for overhauling Whitehall and the civil service. Ministers narrate the “crisis” in terms of Britain’s perilous economic position while trying to reduce the cost of government to sustain the confidence of the financial markets. Whitehall will undoubtedly be smaller as a result of the Coalition’s reforms: the Thatcher’s governments took eleven years to shrink the civil service headcount by 10 per cent – a figure achieved in less than three years by the Coalition (Paun and Halifax 2012). As a result, there has been growing dissatisfaction within the civil service about the prevailing climate of reform. There are also unresolved questions about constitutional conventions and the impact on state effectiveness. The Coalition’s proposals seek to redefine civil servants as “delivery agents”. However, officials are rarely accountable directly to MPs. Margaret Hodge, Chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC), insists that civil servants should “unambiguously answer to Parliament”, which is opposed by the Whitehall mandarinate who fear that the Haldane principle of confidentiality between ministers and civil servants is being eroded (Foster 2005). Similarly, the outgoing Cabinet Secretary, Gus O’Donnell, has recently argued that Freedom of Information legislation is weakening the ability of ministers and civil servants to engage in a “free and frank” discussion of policy options within the government (Stratton 2011). There is no immediately obvious resolution of the conundrum over ministerial and parliamentary accountability at the moment. This chapter contends that the Coalition’s reforms perpetuate a historical pattern of “pathology without crises” (Hay 2011), as similar concerns about administrative capability have been expressed since the 1960s and 1970s, but without any fundamental overhaul of existing institutions and practices. During the New Labour years, ministers expressed disquiet about Whitehall’s performance, arguing that the civil service had too little capacity for delivery, while officials insisted that traditional nostrums of “good government” were being attacked and undermined. There seemed little prospect of a decisive resolution to the crisis, however. A crisis is usually defined as a moment of decision when medically the patient is either cured for good, or declines with no hope of recovery (Dunleavy 1993). The fundamental point of decision in Whitehall has never been reached, even in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. The vision of a post-bureaucratic society has yet to be realised.

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All crises have structural determinants, where a deadlock or impasse persists for a long period before resolution (Gamble 2009). While there are phases of stability and order, crises have the potential to erupt unpredictably leading to new regimes, “[n]ew institutions, new alignments, new policies, and new ideologies” (Gamble 2009, 7). However, the analysis of change in Whitehall and the core executive through the concept of “crisis” is rarely illuminating. More significant is how strategically calculating actors legitimate their position within the political system, operating within the dominant tradition of centralised statecraft, majoritarianism, and executive dominance.

Conclusion This chapter considered Whitehall reform in relation to contested conceptions of “crisis” in British politics. The argument is that since 2010 the Coalition government’s programme of reform is undermining state capacity in Britain by encouraging a retrenchment of public management and resources. Paradoxically, this is occurring at a moment when in the wake of the financial crisis state power is ever more necessary to put forward an alternative model for growth ensuring financial stability in the face of volatile European and global markets. Since 2010, ministers have seized a “window of opportunity” to enact reforms within the permanent bureaucracy in an attempt to initiate a post-bureaucratic society through the restructuring of the state. Although key pillars of the Whitehall model have endured, especially the symbiotic relationship between civil servants and ministers, the machinery of government has been significantly weakened. Over time, this may undermine the United Kingdom’s ability to initiate an effective long-term response to the crisis.

Bibliography Bale, T. (2010) The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron, Cambridge: Polity. Bank of England (2008) Financial Stability Report, October 2008, Issue no. 24, London: Bank of England. Blond, P. (2010) Red Tory: How Left and Right have broken Britain and how we can fix it, London: Faber and Faber. Campbell, C. and Wilson, G. (1995) The End of Whitehall: Death of a Paradigm? Oxford: Blackwells. Curtice, J. et. al. (2010) British Social Attitudes: the 26th Report, London: Sage.

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Darling, A. (2010) Back From the Brink: One Thousand Days at Number 11, London: Atlantic Books. Dunleavy, P. (1993) “Stability, Crisis or Decline?”. In Dunleavy, P., Gamble, A., Holliday, I. and Peele, G. (eds) Developments in British Politics 4, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Foster, C. (2005) British Government in Crisis: or the Third English Revolution, Oxford: Hart. Froud, J., Moran, M., Nilsson, A. and Williams, K. (2010) “Wasting a Crisis? Democracy and Markets in Britain After 2007”, Political Quarterly, 81, 25 – 38. Gamble, A. (1994) The Free Economy and the Strong State, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. —. (2009) The Spectre at the Feast: Capitalist Crisis and the Politics of Recession, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gove, M. (2009) The Democratic Intellect: What Do We Need to Succeed in the 21st Century?, Sir John Cass’s Foundation Lecture. Halpern, D. (2010) The Hidden Wealth of Nations, Cambridge: Polity Press. Hay, C. (2011) “The 2010 Leonard Schapiro Lecture: Pathology Without Crisis? The Strange Demise of the Neo-Liberal Growth Model”, Government and Opposition, 46, 1 – 31. HM Treasury (2012) “Annual Report and Accounts 2011–12”, accessed at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmpuba cc/659/659we01.htm on 28 August 2013. Hood, C. (2007) “What happens when Transparency Meets BlameAvoidance?”, Public Management Review, 9, 191 – 210. Hood, C. and Dixon, R. (2012) “A Model of Cost-Cutting In Government? The Great Management Revolution in UK Central Government Reconsidered”, Public Administration, 91, 114 – 134. Institute for Government (2013) Analysis of Public Sector Employment, Q1 2013, ONS. Kenny, M. (2009) “Taking the temperature of the UK’s political elite”, Parliamentary Affairs, 62, 149 – 161. Laws, D. and Marshall, P. (2004) The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism, London: Profile Books. Macartney, H. (2011) “Crisis for the State or Crisis of the State?”, Political Quarterly, 38, 193 – 203. Marquand, D. (1988) The Unprincipled Society, London: Fontana. Midgal, J. (2001) State in Society: Studying how States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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NAO (2010) The NAO’s work on HM Treasury: a short guide, London: NAO. Norman, J. and Ganesh, J. (2006) Compassionate Conservatism: What it is, why we need it, London: Policy Exchange. Paun, A. and Halifax, S. (2012) A Game of Two Halves: how Coalition governments renew in mid-term and last the whole term, London: Institute of Government. Quinn, J. (2013) “McDonald’s UK chief makes sure every customer has a happy meal”, The Telegraph, accessed at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/9858522/McDonalds-UKchief-makes-sure-every-customer-has-a-happy-meal.html on 28 August 2013. Riddell, P. (2006) The Unfulfilled Prime Minister, London: Methuen Politicos. Smith, M. J. (2010) “From Big Government to Big Society: Changing the State-Society Balance”, Parliamentary Affairs, 63, 818 – 833. Stratton, A. (2011) “FoI act has ‘hamstrung’ government”, The Guardian, accessed at http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/nov/23/freedom-ofinformation-act-government on 04 April 2014. Streek, W. (2011) “The crisis of democratic capitalism”, New Left Review, 71. Thaler, R. H. and Sunstein, C. (2008) Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness, Yale: Yale University Press. White, S. (2012) Review of HM Treasury’s management response to the financial crisis, London: HM Treasury.

CHAPTER TWO HOUSE OF LORDS SELF-RESTRAINT FIONA WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM

“If this House does not have a role as the watchdog of the Constitution, it has no role at all”, Lord Lawson commenting on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill on 16 February 2011 (Hansard 2011, 604)

Introduction The Second Chamber in a bicameral Parliament is usually considered to be the conservative brake against the populist lower chamber and the guardian of the constitution (Riker 1992, 101). The quote from Lord Lawson above shows that members of the House of Lords consider constitutional protection to be a major part of their remit. Whatever the validity of the argument, the presence of such views set the Lords up as a potential block to major constitutional reforms following the inconclusive outcome of the 2010 UK General Election. When the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats published their Coalition Agreement, it contained three key pledges: to reform the constitution relating to parliament, including a referendum on voting reforms, constituency boundary changes, and a reduction of the number of MPs; a move to fixed-term parliaments; and the introduction of an elected second chamber (Cabinet Office 2010). On all three points, there was a measure of compromise between the two parties, both deviating considerably from their manifestos published before the election. Up until 2010, the House of Lords had operated under the Salisbury Convention, which stated that the Upper Chamber would not block legislation that had appeared in the winning party’s manifesto. However, in 2010, no-one won the election, which raised the issue of whether the House of Lords was entitled to block the Government’s bills. The Coalition Agreement was based not on a manifesto endorsed by the British

16

Chapter Two

people at an election, but was drawn up “behind-closed-doors”. The House of Lords, therefore, found itself in a strong position vis-à-vis the Government, not least because the two Coalition parties could not guarantee a majority in the Upper Chamber because of the large number of unaligned Crossbenchers (Russel and Sciara 2009). Nevertheless, the House of Lords exercised considerable self-restraint in the first session of the new Coalition Parliament, which unusually lasted for two years between 2010 and 2012. That does not mean to suggest that “ping pong” did not occur. “Ping pong” refers to an exchange of amendments between the Commons and the Lords as a result of a disagreement between the two chambers (Russell 2012; Whitaker 2006). It is often characterised by repeated defeats of the Government in the Lords, although it aims to bring about a compromise acceptable to both sides (Erskine May 2011, 629). Both the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill and the Fixed-Term Parliaments Bill underwent four rounds of “ping pong”, with the Commons disagreeing with the suggestions of the Lords, the Lords insisting on their amendments, the Commons then offering a compromise, and the Lords accepting it. This chapter examines the evidence from such exchanges and illustrates how the House of Lords showed restraint during the “ping pong” exchange over these two bills. It begins with a brief background of the “ping pong” procedure of both bills, moving on to present a limited content analysis of the debates on the bills, along with a broader discussion of the Lords behaviour during the “ping pong” exchange, and explains why they exercised a considerable degree of self-restraint.

The Bills The awkwardly titled Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill represented an uneasy compromise between the Conservative party’s desire to redraw constituency boundaries and reduce the number of MPs sitting in the House of Commons and the long-held Liberal Democrat aim for the introduction of the Single Transferable Vote for Westminster general elections. The Conservative party’s policy outlined in the 2010 manifesto was to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 500, but following the Coalition negotiations that number was scaled back to 600 politicians (Conservative Home 2010; Cabinet Office 2010). The Liberal Democrats also compromised by changing their policy from the Single Transferrable Vote to the Alternative Vote (Liberal Democrat 2010; Cabinet Office 2010). By the time the House of Lords finished examining the Bill in detail, the Commons received no fewer than 104 Lords

House of Lords Self-Restraint

17

amendments, initiating the first round of “ping pong” on 15 February 2011 (Hansard 2011a). Of these, 98 amendments were accepted by the Government, while six were rejected (Hansard 2011b). In particular, the Government rejected Lord Pannick’s amendments, which gave the Boundary Commission a ±7.5 per cent leeway for population size when redrawing boundaries. The Government eventually gave way allowing the Isle of Wight to remain a single constituency. At the same time they dug their heels in over the Lords’ attempt to require a turnout of 40 per cent before any AV referendum result could be considered binding. “Ping pong” ensued when these Lords amendments were disagreed to by the House of Commons. On 16 February 2011, the Lords insisted upon their amendment by an increased majority, but when the Bill returned to the House of Commons, ministers offered an amendment in lieu and required the publication of turnout figures. At that point, their Lordships exercised self-restraint and gracefully gave way. The Bill received Royal Assent on 16 February 2011. The Fixed-Term Parliaments Bill was considerably shorter in terms of the length of its title and the number of clauses that cluttered up the complex Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. It sought to fix both the duration of the 2010-15 Parliament and all future parliaments to five years, to hold the general election on a pre-set day, and to codify the procedures for votes of no confidence (Hazell 2010). In total, the House of Lords returned nine amendments to the House of Commons. The Government rejected the Lords’ amendments that made the fixed-term principle renewable with each new parliament. After the summer recess of 2010, the Government continued to insist on its disagreement with the Lords by emphasising that fixed terms could be repealed by primary legislation if a future parliament so wished, but agreed to an amendment in lieu that required a report on the operation of a five year parliament. On 14 September 2010, the Lords debated whether to accept these amendments. Although Lord Butler of Brockwell, the former Cabinet Secretary, moved to insist on the original amendments, the Lords gracefully backed down again. The Bill received its Royal Assent on 15 September 2011. In neither of the cases summarised above did the government give meaningful ground to the House of Lords. In the case of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, the Government merely agreed to publish results, but did not concede to a threshold for the referendum, as that would have struck at the principle of the Bill. Similarly, the Fixed Term Parliaments Bill was passed only on the Lords’ insistence of a report on the operation of five year parliaments. Politically, the Coalition wanted to ensure that an AV referendum could be held in spring 2011. The

18

Chapter Two

Conservative ministers were also determined to give the Coalition five full years to implement a tough programme of austerity, while the Liberal Democrats felt they needed the full five years to demonstrate to the electorate that they were a serious party of Government, capable of taking tough decisions. However, the reasons for the Lords to exercise self-restraint are of more interest for this chapter. The first task is to attempt to measure the extent of that self-restraint.

Methodology The analysis is based on the Hansard Official Record transcripts of the debates that took place during “ping pong” in the Lords. They are divided into substantive contributions and leave out interruptions, or contributions explaining procedural matters. For example, because the House of Lords is a self-regulating Chamber, its members have to agree on the orders, in which speeches are made. The contributions have been classified based on the peer that made them, the motion to which they were referring, and the bill. The text has then been searched using the phrases that indicate when the House of Lords is referring to its rights to insist. These phrases have been compiled from extensive reading of the contributions to debates conducted as part of the author’s ongoing PhD research. The bills examined in the chapter have been chosen because they involved extensive “ping pong” between the two chambers. They include: the 1976 Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industry Bill, the 1983 Housing and Building Control Bill, the 1992 Railways Bill, the 1997 European Parliamentary Elections Bill, the 2003 European Parliamentary and Local Elections (pilot) Bill, the 2004 Terrorism Bill, the 2005 Terrorism Bill, the 2005 Identity Cards Bill, and the 2007 Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill. The frequency of the key words that indicate the instances of “ping pong” in the debate is shown in Table 1.Tablr 1 defines the word or phrase searched for, the number of times it occurs, and the number of separate interventions it occurs in (for example, the phrase “the other place” may be mentioned many times in one speech). The first column indicates whether a word or a phrase relates to the constitutional relationship between the chambers, or if is a request to ask again.

House of Lords Self-Restraint

19

Table 1 Frequency of Key Words by Contribution Category House

Keyword/Phrase Other Chamber

Frequency 185

Cases 49

Per cent 47.6

House

Other House

8

8

7.8

House

Elected Chamber

5

5

4.9

House

Debating Chamber

2

2

1.9

House

Revising Chamber

4

3

2.9

House

Elected

21

13

12.6

House

Unelected

4

4

3.9

Look

Request

5

3

2.9

Look

Ask

21

16

15.5

Look

Look once more

8

7

6.8

Look

Insist

15

11

10.7

Look

Accede

1

1

1

Look Look

Behave The will of

2 8

1 8

1 7.8

Look

Prevail

2

2

1.9

Look

Role

14

11

10.7

While around half the cases mentioned the other Chamber, and around one eighth mentioned that one chamber was elected, these numbers merely show that there was an awareness amongst the peers of the constitutional position of the Lords, as an unelected and unrepresentative second chamber, while there is no indication of the right of the Lords to insist on their amendments. Stage two of the analysis involves looking at the context, in which the key words appeared, and coding the sentence, in which they appeared. This includes the following phrases: “Lords to Insist” to indicate that the Lords were within their rights to continue to insist, and indeed had a duty to do so. Some of these stated reasons were both partisan and constitutional. For example, in the second round of debate on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, Lord Beecham said that the Lords should “invite the other place to think seriously about the direction in which it is taking this Country” (Hansard 2011, 783). No attempt has been made to distinguish between them at this stage, because the intention of the argument is the same, both

20

Chapter Two

are calling on the Lords to insist, and the result does not show selfrestraint. “Lords Right but unable” to indicate that the Lords should insist, but cannot because of its illegitimacy as the unelected Chamber. This is to reflect on an argument that the Lords should not insist and should exercise self-restraint in view of their constitutional position. For example, Lord Forsyth, in the first round of “ping pong” said “I am very conscious that I am not elected and therefore I do not want to challenge the elected House” (Hansard 2011, 670). “Failings of the Commons” to indicate that the Lords should continue to act because of the failings of the House of Commons, which covered a lack of scrutiny and partisan control through having a majority. A good example of this is Lord Higgins’ criticism of the Commons timetabling of the amendments to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill: “The amendments that we are discussing today were given four hours of debate, and on this important constitutional amendment the debate lasted for 45 minutes or rather less. It is difficult to see how the other place can consider our amendments and think again in the course of a debate of that length” (Hansard 2011, 665). “Concessions of the Commons” refer to arguments stressing that the House of Commons conceded on other points, and that it was time for the House of Lords to meet them part way. The Coalition Government minister, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, for example, argued that other points conceded by the Government “indicate[ed] that the Government ha[d] been willing to listen, and on these points the other place ha[d] recognised that this House ha[d] done its task as a revising Chamber and ha[d] agreed to these amendments” (Hansard 2011c, 1076). “Commons Right” reflects on the instance when the Commons was doing the right thing, and should have been allowed to continue. Those arguments encompassed both those of a constitutional nature, as the Commons is the elected primary chamber that has enshrined constitutional supremacy, and those that focused on the rights of the Government and the Coalition Agreement. The first two codes identify the peers who supported the House of Lords in their arguments, whereas the last two recognise the need to give in to the House of Commons. The middle category – “Failings of the Commons” – is more ambiguous as it suggests that without those failings the Lords might not be right to insist. For this reason, this category has not been included as an argument in favour of the Lords insisting on their positions. That is why the main focus of this chapter is on the first two sets of codes (key phrases). The first set of codes reflects on the desire to insist

House of Lords Self-Restraint

21

on an amendment, which indicates that there is no self-restraint, whereas the second set speaks to the arguments of self-restraint, which suggest that there would be insistence if not for the position of the Lords.

Quantitative Findings The frequencies of the categories of arguments described above are shown in Table 2, where “Count” refers to the number of sentences, in which each code is mentioned; “Cases” refer to the number of cases that contains at least one statement relating to the argument in question; and the last column refers to the percentage of total contributions the number of cases represents. Table 2 Frequency of Codes Code

Count

Cases

Lords to Insist Lords Right but Unable Failings of the Commons Concessions of the Commons Commons Right Total Cases

62 15 21 6 40

29 11 17 5 17 103

Per cent of cases 28.20 10.70 16.50 4.90 16.50

Table 2 shows that in 29 of 103 cases (28 per cent), there is a mention that the House of Lords should insist on their initial position whilst disagreeing with the House of Commons. Over a quarter of all contributions contains a form of such an argument. This is compared to only 11 of 103 contributions (11 per cent) that contain arguments that the House of Lords should exercise self-restraint. In this case, the “insistence” arguments are more dominant than self-restraint arguments. The “insistence” arguments were also more prevalent than either the arguments that the Commons had failed to provide full scrutiny, or the arguments that the Commons should have been allowed to have their way. The 29 cases that reflect on the “insistence” arguments that suggest that the House of Lords should continue to insist on their initial position are examined in more detail in Table 3. It provides the surname of the peer who made the contribution, his/her party group, whether he/is was a minister, if he/she recorded a rebellious vote in the subsequent division, the stage, in which the contribution was made, the bill it related to, and the motion it was on. This research was carried out using the software QDA

Chapter Two

22

Miner 4 Lite that allows for combining methods of quantitative and qualitative content analysis, as well as an in-dpeth analysis of the cases. In this research cases refers to a single contribution to debates. While agreeing with Lord Armstrong that the House of Commons is the primary chamber, Lord Elystan-Morgan, a Crossbencher, argued during the second phase of “ping pong” of the Fixed Term Parliaments Bill: “my submission is that in relation to this matter all such conventions and all such inhibitions are totally removed” (Hansard 2011d, 815). Similarly, Lord (Patrick) Cormack, a former Conservative MP, who rebelled against the Government, argued: “It is entirely right and proper to seek to improve and amend what many of us consider to be an ill-thought out, unnecessary and bad bill” (Hansard 2011c, 1087). And most forcefully of all, Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, argued: “if this House does not have a role as a watchdog of the constitution, it has no role at all” (Hansard 2011, 664). Table 4 shows the same information as Table 3 for the “selfrestraint” category of arguments. Table 3 Occurrence of Arguments for Insistence Code

Party

Peer

Minister

Rebel

Stage

Bill

Govt

Motion

Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist

Cross

Armstrong

NO

NO

First

Fixed

NO

A

Cons

Forsyth

NO

Yes

First

Fixed

Yes

A

Cross

Butler

NO

NO

First

Fixed

NO

A

Lab

Goldsmith

NO

NO

First

Fixed

NO

A

Lab

Howarth

NO

NO

First

Fixed

NO

A

Cross

Butler

NO

NO

First

Fixed

NO

A

Cross

Butler

NO

NO

Second

Fixed

NO

A

Cross

Pannick

NO

NO

Second

Fixed

No

A

Lab

Howarth

NO

NO

Second

Fixed

NO

A

Cross

Armstrong

NO

NO

Second

Fixed

NO

A

Cross

NO

NO

Second

Fixed

NO

A

Lab

ElystanMorgan Falconer

NO

NO

First

Vote

NO

A

Lab

Rooker

NO

NO

First

Vote

NO

A

Lab

Rooker

NO

NO

First

Vote

NO

A

House of Lords Self-Restraint Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist Lords to Insist

23

Cross

Lloyd

NO

NO

First

Vote

NO

A

Cons

Lawson

NO

Yes

First

Vote

Yes

A

Cons

Higgins

NO

Yes

First

Vote

Yes

A

Cross

ElystanMorgan Falconer

NO

NO

First

Vote

NO

A

NO

NO

First

Vote

NO

B

Lab Lib Dem Cross

Wallace

YES

NO

First

Vote

Yes

B

Pannick

NO

NO

First

Vote

Yes

B

Cross

Pannick

NO

NO

First

Vote

Yes

B

Cross

O'Neill

NO

NO

First

Vote

NO

B

Cross

Finlay

NO

NO

First

Vote

NO

B

Cons

Strathclyde

YES

NO

Second

Vote

Yes

A

Lab

Rooker

NO

NO

Second

Vote

NO

A

Lab

Beecham

NO

NO

Second

Vote

NO

A

Cons

Hodgson

NO

NO

Second

Vote

Yes

A

Lab

Falconer

NO

NO

Second

Vote

NO

A

Table 4 Occurrence of Arguments for Self Restraint Code Lords Right Unable Lords Right Unable Lords Right Unable Lords Right Unable Lords Right Unable Lords Right Unable Lords Right Unable Lords Right Unable Lords Right Unable Lords Right Unable Lords Right Unable

but but but but but but but but

Party

Peer

Min

Rebel

Stage

Bill

Govt

Motion

Lib Dem Cons

Wallace

YES

NO

First

Fixed

Yes

A

Cormack

NO

Yes

First

Fixed

Yes

A

Lib Dem Lab

Marks

NO

NO

First

Fixed

Yes

A

Howarth

NO

NO

First

Fixed

No

A

Wallace

YES

NO

First

Fixed

Yes

A

Rennard

NO

NO

First

Fixed

Yes

A

Forsyth

NO

Yes

First

Vote

Yes

A

Lib Dem Lib Dem Cons

Wallace

YES

NO

First

Vote

Yes

B

but

Lib Dem Cons

King

NO

NO

First

Vote

Yes

B

but

Cons

Strathclyde

YES

NO

Second

Vote

Yes

A

but

Cons

Hodgson

NO

NO

Second

Vote

Yes

A

24

Chapter Two

The presence of ministers’ statements is perhaps not surprising given the positions that they find themselves in the House. For example, Lord Wallace of Tankerness quoted a remark by Lord Armstrong, a Crossbencher, during the second stage of “ping pong” during the passage of the Fixed-Term Parliaments Bill stating that “[the] House of Lords can and does suggest revisions on draft legislation, but it cannot in the end enforce those revisions against the will of the House of Commons. We are a revising chamber and a debating chamber and valuable in both functions, but we cannot prevail against the House of Commons if it wishes to insist. The House of Commons is sovereign in the matter of law making” (Hansard 2011d, 807). Similarly, during the Second Reading of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, Lord Strathclyde, the Leader of the House of Lords argued: “We have asked the other place to think again, not just once, but twice and we have heard its emphatic answer. After due consideration, further debate and an increased majority in another place we have done our duty and we should let the bill pass” (Hansard 2011, 780-781). Ministers are, of course, likely to call for self-restraint to pass their Government’s legislation whilst still praising the work of the Lords. It is also perhaps surprising that 9 of 11 interventions with references to selfrestraint came during the first round of “ping pong”. Of those who contributed in the second round of “ping pong”, one was the minister, Lord Strathclyde, and another was Lord Hodgson, a previous rebel, who argued: “While I continue to have considerable and very grave doubts about the course on which the Government is embarking, I am afraid that I have now concluded, after two disobliging votes, that the time has come for members of the elected chamber to make the final decision” (Hansard 2011, 783). Both of these cases relate to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. In the first debate, six interventions in the Fixed-Term Parliaments Bill were made, while there were only three interventions in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. One intervention was made by the Liberal Democrat minister, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, and the other two were contributed by Lord King of Bridgwater and Lord Forsyth. Both of them were from the Conservative Party, and Lord Forsyth of Drumelean was a rebel. After the Commons reconsidered Lord Pannick’s amendment for the second time during the passage of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, Lord King of Bridgwater, a former Conservative Defence Secretary, argued: “I respectfully suggest that this amendment … is not the sort of issue on which we should challenge the other place for a

House of Lords Self-Restraint

25

second time” (Hansard 2011, 685). Meanwhile, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, the only crossbencher who spoke in either debate on the Pannick’s amendments to oppose them, argued: “If ever there was a bill on which we ought to yield to the elected House, seeing as it relates to the election of that House, it is this one” (Hansard 2011, 663). On the Fixed-Term Parliaments Bill, four of the interventions containing self-restraint references were from the Liberal Democrats, none of whom rebelled, in addition to one Conservative, Lord Cormack, who did rebel, and Lord Howarth, a Labour peer, who said: “In this unelected chamber, we accept, often with reluctance, that we should not oppose the central purposes of a government bill, and should not vote them down at Second Reading … Therefore, this House has conducted itself with restraint and responsibility” (Hansard 2011d, 815). The Salisbury Convention is perhaps the most obvious demonstration of the Lords’ self-restraint. The convention played a particularly important, yet controversial role during the debates on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, which was a hybrid of the plans of the two Coalition parties. The Convention was mentioned specifically six times during the initial Lords proceedings. Lord Lawson of Blaby said: “I confess within this private space that I do not regard the coalition agreement as holy writ and, although I am not the greatest constitutional expert, I do not believe that it is even protected by the Salisbury convention” (Hansard 2010, 709). His view was that the Coalition Agreement did not enjoy the same protection as party election manifestos in the House of Lords. Baroness D’Souza, then the Crossbench Convenor, raised the matter of the Salisbury Convention following the heated discussion on the running of the Lords, the supposed filibustering, and the perceived attempts to curtail the debate in committee stages that ran through the night. She said: “I think everyone would also agree that there is some legitimate question about whether the Salisbury/Addison convention really should apply to this Bill” (Hansard 2011e, 684). The uncertainty about the application of the convention to the Coalition characterised much of the second reading, committee and report debates on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. The Fixed-Term Parliaments Bill ran into similar problems, because although it had been in election manifestos, the length of such a parliament was not specified. The Salisbury Convention itself was not specifically named, but the speakers mentioned the difficulties presented for the Opposition and for the Liberal Democrats, with their support for fixed-term parliaments,

26

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albeit, fixed at four years. Of course, in both cases a second reading was granted, and the Lords eventually backed down.

Conclusion During the passage of both the Fixed-Term Parliaments Bill and the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, the Lords exercised self-restraint. However, the reasons behind it varied. Whilst in some cases there has been a concern about the applicability of the Salisbury Convention, it could be strongly argued that the Lords has a record of working around the Convention, and that it has ceased to have much meaning beyond giving a Government bill an unobstructed Second Reading (granted by the Lords in both cases). A Reasonable Time Convention also urged the Lords not to delay Government legislation unnecessarily. Although extensive filibustering by Labour peers during the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill stretched this Convention to near bursting point, it ultimately held firm on both bills. It could also be argued that partisan sentiment was what drove the Lords earlier assertions for amendments, for example, there were calls from for various different electoral systems to be considered, including supplementary voting, first-past-the-post, and the single transferable vote. These were merely given a chance without a real hope of them for being accepted even in the House of Lords, which contributed to the dissatisfaction with the Government’s policy in general. In that case, there was no action, with which to maintain self-restraint, as the Lords never intended to act on the motions that had been moved; it was merely a point for debate, and an instrument to get the Government’s response. Overall, the number of speaking contributions in the two debates that specifically mentioned self-restraint or the House of Lords’ relationship with the Commons has been relatively low, but the actions of the House of Lords in backing down after a few stages of “ping pong” suggest that selfrestraint has been highly prevalent, though not necessarily specifically mentioned. The preoccupation with the applications of the Salisbury Convention in that case was also notable, as an element of the Lords’ reasoning in opposing the Government on a manifesto bill. This is something that happens under single-party governments too, since the House of Lords appears to search for loopholes to avoid going against the Salisbury/Addison Convention. This study only utilises a small number of cases and looks at few debates, and while self-restraint is prevalent, there is a question as to whether this was due to actual self-restraint, or a stepping back until a

House of Lords Self-Restraint

27

bigger fight. From the beginning it was made clear that the Coalition Government had three bills as part of their Constitutional Reform agenda. Two of them have been discussed in this chapter, in addition to a bill on House of Lords reform, which is beyond the scope of this study. The analysis of these two bills suggests that the House of Lords was prepared for a fight on those topics, yet appeared to be a shrewd political institution, capable of self-restraint where politically expedient.

Bibliography Cabinet Office (2010) “The Coalition: A Program for Government”, accessed at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/78977/coalition_programme_for_government.pdf accessed 25/11/2013 on 03 December 2013. Conservative Home (2010) “An Invitation to Join the Government of Britain” Conservative Manifesto 2010”, accessed at http://conservativehome.blogs.com/files/conservative-manifesto2010.pdf on 03 December 2013. Erskine May (2011) Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usages of Parliament, London: LexisNexis. Hansard (2010) House of Lords Debate, 15th December 2010, London: HMSO, 709. —. (2011) House of Lords Debate, 16th February 2011, London: HMSO, 663-783. —. (2011a) “Lords Amendments to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill”, accessed at http://www.publications.parliament. uk/pa/cm201011/cmbills/147/2011147.1-6.html on 03 December 2013. —. (2011b) House of Commons Debate, 15th February 2011, London: HMSO, 907. —. (2011c) House of Lords Debate, 18th July 2011, London: HMSO, 1076-1087. —. (2011d) House of Lords Debate, 14th September 2011, London: HMSO, 807-815. —. (2011e) House of Lords Debate, 24th January 2011, London: HMSO, 684. Hazell, R. (2010) “Fixed Term parliaments”, accessed at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/public-policy/UCL_expertise/Constitution_Unit /150.pdf on 03 December 2013. Liberal Democrat (2010) “Liberal Democrat Manifesto 2010”, accessed at http://network.libdems.org.uk/manifesto2010/ libdem_manifesto_2010.pdf on 03 December 2013.

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Riker, W. H (1992) “The Justification of Bicameralism”, International Political Science Review, 13, 101 – 116. Russell, M. (2012) “A measurable Difference, Assessing the Westminster Parliaments Impact of Government Legislation 2005-10”, accessed at http://webpages.dcu.ie/~leg/Russell.pdf on 03 December 2013. Russell, M. and Sciara, M. (2009) “Independent Parliamentarians En Masse: The Changing Nature and Role of the ‘Crossbenchers’ in the House of Lords”, Parliamentary Affairs, 62, 32 – 52. Whitaker, R. (2006) “Ping Pong and policy Influence: Relations between the Lords and Commons, 2005-06”, Parliamentary Affairs, 59, 536 – 545.

CHAPTER THREE TOWARDS A COMPREHENSIVE THEORY OF PARTY COMPETITION AND ELECTORAL CHANGE: FROM PARTY IDENTIFICATION TO RIKER’S THEORY OF HERESTHETICS AND RHETORIC BERTA BARBET PORTA UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER

Abstract In his study about parties’ strategies, Riker defined a kind of heresthetic move which consisted in breaking the existing majorities by introducing a new issue that cuts across the existing alignments, dividing the social support of the electoral winner and, consequently, improving the situation of the electoral losers. However, its study in the electoral arena has been limited to specific case studies without any effort to include their use into a comprehensive theory of party competition. This article reviews the literature on party competition and the weakness of the different approaches in explaining electoral dynamics comprehensively. It also introduces Riker’s heresthetics theory and its potential to explain political competition and change in a comprehensive way, and sketches the way in which the different elements of party competition can be accommodated in a comprehensive theory that can explain electoral competition in all contexts.

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Introduction When studying elections and party competition, the literature has developed several models. These models have proposed different explanations based on things as diverse as party identification, ideological proximity, issue ownership or government performance that have led to very different conceptions of how party competition and elections work, evolve and change. Despite their strength to explain the behaviour of the different actors in certain settings, none of the approaches is able to explain electoral dynamics in all contexts. That lack of a comprehensive theory of party competition, limits the capacity of researchers to understand and predict electoral change. The thesis of this article is that all the approaches developed so far hit with the same problem: correctly explaining why, how and when do new issues appear. Party competition concerns political conflicts and identities, and, as heresthetics’ theory shows, depending on the issues on which parties compete, the equilibrium can change. That means that, a good understanding of the electoral dynamics cannot be reached without understanding the processes by which new issues appear in the agenda, the role parties have in determining them and the ways in which voters respond to changes to them. Without that knowledge, the understanding of political competition and, consequently, the political process cannot be complete. This article reviews the literature on party competition and the weakness of the different approaches in explaining electoral dynamics comprehensively. It also introduces Riker’s heresthetics theory and its potential to explain political competition and change in a comprehensive way, and sketches the way in which the different elements of party competition can be accommodated in a comprehensive theory that can explain electoral competition in all contexts.

Sociological Explanations of the Vote One of the traditionally most important debates around electoral behaviour theories is between those approaches that consider that the vote is driven by very fixed elements that cannot be changed or shaped, in the medium to short term; and those approaches that consider that there are some dynamic and volatile elements that can be shaped. Among theories that assume that factors explaining the vote are mainly fixed, sociological and identity models of vote clearly stand out.

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Those models consider that vote is mainly driven by a partisan attachment which in turn is closely related to social identities and social environments (Franklin 1985 and 1983, 8). Political and social attachments are considered to be: affective, durable, and pervasive (Norris 1997 and 1945:77). Hence most of the work is based on the study of socialization processes and the influence of family, school or neighbourhood in the development of political identities and party loyalties, and the ways in which those identifications affect voting behaviour. Sociological approaches were very powerful during the 1960s when social class seemed to be a good and strong predictor of voting (Franklin 1985 and 1983, 125; Norris 1997 and 1945, 86). However, and despite the fact that voting tends to be stable for most of the people most of the time, some complementary theories needed to be developed to understand voting behaviour in periods of great electoral volatility, where electoral changes and realignments take place (Norris 1997 and 1945, 52). That led researchers to the development of a critical elections literature and research on political dealignments and realignments in modern democracies. These perspectives follow a sociological perspective as they also consider that social identities and environments are the main drivers of voting, however, they include the possibility of a change in the identities that affect the vote under some circumstances (Norris 1997 and 1945, 85–92). Some social or political changes provoke periods in which citizens tend to lose their party attachments, which opens the door for new alignments and loyalties to appear (Franklin 1985 and 1983, 125–6). Realignment studies have helped in the understanding of the social contexts that facilitate changes in political elections and have successfully introduced the notion of dimension change into their study. However, those approaches tend to underestimate the role of parties in those phenomena (Loomes 2012, 5–7). Social dealignment and political dealignment do not always coincide (Franklin 1985 and 1983, 125; Norris 1997). Political parties have further roles than just representing social changes (Elff 2009), their strategic moves and actions have an impact on electoral behaviour fluctuations too (Kitschelt 1994; Loomes 2012, 2–5). Some broader conception of party competition, then, is needed to have a better understanding of voting behaviour which includes parties’ strategies.

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Political Competition: The Role of Parties in the Voting Decision For that reason, researchers began to study the effects of media, parties and other organizations’ actions on citizens’ opinion and voting behaviour. The resultant theories are mainly based on consumption theories of the vote (Norris 1997 and 1945, 151). That is, they assume that parties’ political offer has an impact and that vote is based on a choice among different options that will bring to citizens different levels of welfare. Hence, regardless of the impact of socialization and social structure, parties’ strategies and electoral competition have a very important role in determining the vote. However, and despite the interesting contributions of the different approaches, there is no consensus about how party competition in elections works and which are the tools that parties have to shape voters’ perceptions (Loomes 2012, 1). The debate can be divided into two big conceptions of party competition: (1) models based on spatial issues, and the notion that party competition takes place in a delimited (often linear) space in which actors and issues can be positioned; and (2) models that assume Stokes’ critique to spatial models (1963), and present a model of competition that relaxes the assumptions of unidimensionality, fixed structure and ordered dimensions of party competition scenarios.

Spatial Models According to spatial approaches party competition takes place in a space defined by different policy positions. As Enelow and Hinich put it, “The spatial theory of elections is based on the premise that the policy positions of voters and candidates can be represented by points in an issue space and that a voter’s evaluation of a candidate’s policy positions is measured by the distance between voter and candidate in this space” (1989, 101). Some variations have been included in the models that incorporate different elements that might interact with the spatial competition like partisan identification (Adams, Merrill, and Grofman 2005), valence issues (Ansolabehere and Snyder Jr 2000), perceived competence and the status quo (Kedar 2009), or uncertainty about candidates real positions (Enelow and Hinich 1981). Despite any variation, spatial models maintain the main assumption of ordered distribution of the policy positions and competition between actors in a delimited space and the notion that proximity between parties and voters is the main driver of party competition.

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The advantages of such models are obvious. First the understanding of the model is parsimonious and simple: all relevant elements of the voting decision can be included in the model and so the study of the voting decision can be easily undertaken. Besides, as surveys show, citizens from most developed countries seem capable of using a political dimension such as left- right in a consistent way (Mair 2007), which can be seen as a sign that voters do indeed perceive competition in that way. However, empirically it has not been proved that voters respond to parties’ moves along the dimension (Adams 2012). Evidence seems to show that parties might act following a spatial logic (Adams and SomerTopcu 2009), but is not clear whether or not voters perceive such moves, which would render the theory unable to explain voters’ decisions and consequently party competition. Actually, when compared with other approaches, spatial models do not stand out in terms of explanatory power (MacDonald, Rabinowitz, and Listhaug 1995). More importantly, spatial models construct their spaces of competition assuming fixed and known issues, but in reality issues evolve (Carmines and Stimson 1986) and spatial models cannot explain how and when that happens. Hence, as with sociological approaches, they provide a good understanding of electoral competition in normal times, but they are not suited to explain some radical changes in voting behaviour (such as that of voters moving from a left-wing to an extreme-right party observed in some countries) or other important and big realignments such as those observed in so called “critical elections”, in which there is a great change in voting patterns that cannot be explained by a change of similar scale in actors’ positions in the space.

Directional Theories Better suited to explain some of those changes are theories of party competition and voting behaviour that assume some of Stokes’ criticisms to spatial models assumptions (Stokes 1963, 370–6). Different conceptions have arisen in that line. First, we have the directional theory of party competition developed by Rabinowitz and MacDonald (1989). Directional models assume that, instead of spread along a space, voters only perceive issues in dichotomous terms. Using some of the findings of cognitive psychology the authors propose that political issues, like symbols, are better understood in terms of the feelings they trigger; feelings that can be catalogued in terms of the direction of the feeling (against or for) and the intensity of the feeling (1989, 94).Consequently, is not the proximity

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between parties’ positions and voters’ positions, but the interaction between the direction of the feelings and their intensity that drives party evaluation. Concretely, their formula to calculate the effect of an issue is determined by the interaction term: (candidate location - neutral point)* (voter location - neutral point) (1989, 97). The voting decision or party perception is nothing more than the sum of the different interaction terms (1989, 100). To complete the theory and explain why extremist parties are not usually popular among the electorate, they create the concept region of acceptability, beyond which parties are penalized for being too extreme (1989, 108). These modifications have important implications for the understanding of party competition. On one hand, parties can, by limiting the intensity with which they emphasize their position on an issue, limit the impact the issue has on the vote, avoiding being judged on that issue (MacDonald, Listhaug, and Rabinowitz 1991). On the other hand, convergence is not the equilibrium anymore: centrist positions only have the effect of avoiding intensity; but they are not necessarily the best strategic position (Rabinowitz and MacDonald 1989, 109). Party competition, then, should not be understood in terms of which exact position the party takes, but in terms of which issues they blur and which they emphasize, on which issues they take an extreme position and on which a moderate or blurred one (Lachat 2008). The model is clearly better than pure spatial models for explaining variation in the importance of issues and voting in multiparty contexts. Besides, it seems to fit better with other social theories such as psychologists’ cognitive studies (Rabinowitz and MacDonald 1989, 94). Nonetheless, the approach does not consider the differences between different types of issues and emotions. For example, it does not distinguish between ambivalence and indifference (Thompson, Zanna, and Griffin 2009) or between hard and easy issues (Carmines and Stimson 1980). By ignoring these differences, such models do not take into account the relations that might exist between the different issues or the different impacts issues might have. For example, it is likely that voters perceive some issues as being together, and hence may penalize parties who have contradictory positions on them. As noted above, voters do perceive some kind of underlying dimensions or basis of conflict; otherwise, it could be very difficult for them to combine their positions on all issues and make sense of all them. Furthermore, the combination of the different issue positions might create the gradation in the dimensions, making voters able to perceive more than one position, if not on each issue itself, by the combination of the different issues globally.

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Saliency and Issue Ownership Theories Beyond directional models, we found another set of theories that rejects any spatial distribution of issues and focuses exclusively on the role of what Stokes (1963) calls “valence issues”. The most relevant of which are issue ownership and issue saliency theories (Petrocik 1996; Budge and Farlie 1983).According to those theories, parties do not compete to find the best position on a dimension, but to impose an issue on which they have a competitive advantage, as they are seen as more capable of dealing with it than the rest of the parties. Electoral competition is based not on a comparison between parties’ positions on the different conflicts, but on which issues voters use to take the decision about how to vote, and which is the party that has the best reputation on that issue. Parties’ reputations on issues are determined by performance records in the cases of incumbents, but also by more long-term perceptions of who are the traditional voters and leaders of the parties and their traditional concerns (Petrocik 1996; Budge and Farlie 1983). Competition to impose some issues over the others is made by manipulating issue voting conditions through media or other communication channels (Bélanger and Meguid 2008). These theories fit nicely with research on public opinion formation studies (Zaller 1992) and the analysis of parties’ manifestos (Budge 1993). However, the assumption these theories make about issue ownership being something fixed and broadly accepted presents some problems. First, as some studies have shown, issue ownership is not fixed but can be disputed (Holian 2004). Actually, it seems that increases in the salience of an issue lower the ownership effect (Bélanger and Meguid 2008). Second, it is not always true that all voters agree on which party is the best at handling an issue. Voters and parties might not confront specific issue positions generally (Budge 1993, 154); however, when joined together in policy areas, there is confrontation about which program is better (van der Brug 2004). It might be true that conservative and socialist parties do not confront each other’s specific proposals say about economic development, but they do, in general confront different views on what kind of economy they are imposing. Consequently, although these theories present a good development for the understanding of party competition, they lack a good understanding of what happens with the issues that divide the population. Party competition around issues seems more complicated than it has been assumed so far. To sum up, we have up to three different theories about which tools parties should, and do indeed, use when competing for votes plus a model

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of party competition based on sociological theories, which reduces party competition to the search of social alliances with certain groups whose interests they represent (Kitschelt 1994). However, none of those theories separately is able to satisfactorily explain voting behaviour and electoral changes in a comprehensive way. As Green-Pedersen proposes, it is very likely that the different models of competition are combined, and that depending on the circumstances position-based or issue-based competition might be more or less important (Green-Pedersen 2006). Hence, we need a theory that combines the different approaches to understand electoral competition with all its complexity.

Towards a Comprehensive approach: Riker’s Theory of Party Competition Riker’s theory of party strategies is probably the most comprehensive effort made in political science to understand party competition. Riker differentiates between two elements of a party’s strategy: rhetoric or the activities directed at persuading citizens about a party’s position advantages, and heresthetics or those activities directed at manipulating the situation in a way that allows the heresthetician to win even without having persuaded the others (Riker 1996). The first one has been widely studied by those working on media studies, public opinion or even issue ownership theories. It fits well with ownership theories of voting and party strategy. By contrast, heresthetics has not been as widely and comprehensively studied. Riker (1986), defined three big sets of strategies that can be used by herestheticians to improve their chances to win: agenda control, or the capacity to set the issues that have to be voted in a way (or order) that brings about a situation in which the preferred option will win; strategic voting, or those activities consisting in not voting for the true preferred alternative in order to get a desired outcome; and manipulation of dimensions, or the use of new issues and dimension to create stronger majorities for oneself or weaker majorities for the opponents (Riker 1986, 147–51). It can be said that, in the context of an election, strategic voting and agenda control can only be used in terms of manipulating the issues that are included in the voting decision and the position parties defend, as suggested by the directional and spatial theories. Manipulation of dimensions, nonetheless, is not considered in any of the approaches of party competition, and it could be a source of great potential for parties as the number of political issues that could be introduced in an electoral choice is potentially infinite.

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In line with the literature (Baumgartner and Jones 1993, 15–6), we could hypothesize that in general political competition takes place in a fairly delimited and stable dimension or scenario. New issues are usually not included in the electoral space and if so, they are merged in the main dimension by parties without creating big movements in voters’ perceptions. That is, issues will generally be combined forming dimensions that voters use to simplify their understanding of the political scenario as spatial models assume. However, those dimensions and the issues inherent in them, could be, in some cases reordered by including a new issues (or set of issues) that cannot perfectly fit them, and hence that breaks things up. In Carmines and Stimson’s words, “by their very nature, all party alignments contain the seed of their own destruction. The various groups that make up the party may be united on some issues, particularly on those that gave rise to the alignment in the first place. But lurking just below the surface a myriad of potential issues divides the party faithful and can lead to dissolution of the existing equilibrium” (1989, 9). The use of this mechanism to improve parties’ electoral results can be considered the key element for a comprehensive theory of party competition. That way, and using Bonnie Meguid’s theory of party competition (2008), we can say that political leaders have three big instruments to improve their electoral support. First, they can try to persuade voters that their positions on the issues are the best ones by winning the persuasion battle and relating the issue positions to the values and concepts that benefit them, in a way very similar to what issue ownership theories argue and that can be easily equated with Meguid’s issue ownership alterations. Second, they can alter their positions to more beneficial ones as spatial models explain. Finally, parties can try to avoid talking about the existing issues and introduce new issues in which they have a competitive advantage which would be similar to what Meguid calls altering issue saliency in similar ways as those identified by directional theories. The effect of that last tool is not easy to predict as manipulating dimensions is not always possible due to the tendency of voters to think in terms of big dimensions and to link new issues to existing and familiar ones. However, is also an electoral tool, and should, therefore, be included in any good theory that tries to explain electoral competition, its dynamics and its changes. Summing up, any good theory of electoral competition should include an understanding of which issues structure the competition and why. However, none of the existing theories have successfully incorporated its study. They have, however, ignored the problem and taken issues as exogenously determined, as spatial or sociological theories have; or have

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taken too simplistic conceptions of how issues work which do not consider how voters and parties make sense of the issues, as directional or ownership theories have. An effort to study what determines the issues around which the electoral competition is held and the reactions that both, parties and voters, have to such competition is necessary if we want to have a complete understanding electoral dynamics.

Bibliography Adams, J. (2012) “Causes and Electoral Consequences of Party Policy Shifts in Multiparty Elections: Theoretical Results and Empirical Evidence”, Annual Review of Political Science, 15, 401–419. Adams, J., Merrill, S. and Grofman, B. (2005) A Unified Theory of Party Competition, New York: Cambridge University Press. Adams, J. and Somer-Topcu, Z. (2009) “Policy Adjustment by Parties in Response to Rival Parties' Policy Shifts: Spatial Theory and the Dynamics of Party Competition in Twenty-Five Post-War Democracies”, British Journal of Political Science, 39, 825-846. Ansolabehere, S. and Snyder Jr., J. M. (2000) “Valence Politics and Equilibrium in Spatial Election Models”, Public Choice, 103, 327–336. Baumgartner, F. R. and Jones, B. D. (1993) Agendas and Instability in American Politics, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Bélanger, É. and Meguid, B. M. (2008) “Issue Salience, Issue Ownership, and Issue-Based Vote Choice”, Electoral Studies, 27, 477–491. Budge, I. (1993) “Issues, Dimensions and Agneda Change in Postwar Democracies: Longterm Trends in Party Election Programs and Newspaper Reports in Twenty-Three Democracies”. In Riker, W. H. (ed.) Agenda Formation, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Budge, I. and Farlie, D. J. (1983) Explaining and Predicting Elections: Issue Effects and Party Strategies in Twenty-Three Democracies, London: George Allen and Unwin. Carmines, E. G. and Stimson, J. A. (1980) “The Two Faces of Issue Voting”, The American Political Science Review, 74, 78–91. Carmines, E. G. and Stimson, J. A. (1986) “On The Structure And Sequence Of Issue Evolution”, The American Political Science Review, 80, 901–920. Carmines, E. G. and Stimson, J. A. (1989) Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics, New Jersey: Princenton University Press.

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Elff, M. (2009) “Social Divisions, Party Positions, and Electoral Behaviour”, Electoral Studies, 28, 297–308. Enelow, J. M. and Hinich, M. J. (1981) “A New Approach to Voter Uncertainty in the Downsian Spatial Model”, American Journal of Political Science, 25, 483–493. Enelow, J. and Hinich, M. (1989) “A General Probabilistic Spatial Theory of Elections”, Public Choice, 61, 101–113. Franklin, M. (1985) The Decline of Class Voting in Britain: Changes in the Basis of Electoral Choice, New York: Clanderon. Green-Pedersen, C. (2006) “Long-Term Changes in Danish Party Politics: The Rise and Importance of Issue Competition”, Scandinavian Political Studies, 29, 219–235. Holian, D. B. (2004) He's Stealing My Issues! Clinton's Crime Rhetoric and the Dynamics of Issue Ownership”, Political Behavior, 26, 95– 124. Kedar, O. (2009) Voting for Policy, Not Parties, New York: Cambridge University Press. Kitschelt, H. (1994) The Transformation of European Social Democracy, New York: Cambridge University Press. Lachat, R. (2008) “The Impact of Party Polarization on Ideological Voting”, Electoral Studies, 27, 687–698. Loomes, G. (2012) Party Strategies in Western Europe: Party Competition and Electoral Outcomes, New York: Routledge. MacDonald, S. E., Listhaug, O. and Rabinowitz, G. (1991) “Issues and Party Support in Multiparty Systems”, The American Political Science Review, 85, 1107–1131. MacDonald, S. E., Rabinowitz, G. and Listhaug, O. (1995) “Political Sophistication and Models of Issue Voting”, British Journal of Political Science, 25, 453–483. Mair, P. (2007) “Left-Right Orientations”. In Dalton, R. J. and Klingermann, H.-D. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Political Behaviour, New York: Oxford University Press, 206–22. Meguid, B. M. (2008) Party Competition between Unequals: Strategies and Electoral Fortunes in Western Europe, New York: Cambridge University Press. Norris, P. (1997) Electoral Change in Britain since 1945, Oxford: Blackwell. Petrocik, J. R. (1996) “Issue Ownership in Presidential Elections, with a 1980 Case Study”, American Journal of Political Science, 40, 825– 850.

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Rabinowitz, G. and MacDonald, S. E. (1989) “A Directional Theory of Issue Voting”, The American Political Science Review, 83, 93–121. Riker, W. H. (1986) The Art of Political Manipulation, New Haven: Yale University Press. —. (1996) The Strategy of Rhetoric: Campaigning for the American Constitution, New Haven: Yale University Press. Stokes, D. E. (1963) “Spatial Models of Party Competition”, The, 57, 368– 377. Thompson, M. M., Zanna, M. P. and Griffin, D. W. (2009) “Let's Not Be Indifferent about (Attitudinal) Ambivalence”. In Petty, R. E. and Krosnick, J. A. (eds) Attitude Strength: Antecedents and Consquences, New York: Lawrnece Erlbaum Publishers, 361–386. Van der Brug, W. (2004) “Issue Ownership and Party Choice”, Electoral Studies, 23, 209–233. Zaller, J. (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, Los Angeles: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER FOUR THE LINK BETWEEN ROLE THEORY AND PERFORMANCE STUDIES: SKETCHING POLITICAL CRISES THROUGH ROLE CONFLICT BERNARDO TELES FAZENDEIRO UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS

Abstract By assuming that political crises have much of the theatrical, I seek to highlight the missing link between performance studies and role theory. I argue that the concept of role conflict captures much of the plot surrounding political crises and the means by which actors cope with unfolding contradictions. By considering the connections between sociology, performativity and roles, the essay suggests that all of those insights offer a basis from which to conceptualise political crises better. On the one hand, roles provide the key object of analysis and, on the other, performance sets up the conceptual background underscoring much of public politics. I call for the two perspectives to be integrated in order to show how political crises could result either from incoherence in the role sets of given persons or from conflicting roles existing between distinct characters. Political actors then attempt to represent themselves in a particular way, by adopting a “remedial act”, and thus mitigating role conflict.

Introduction A political crisis usually has something of the dramatic: actors seek to eliminate arising contradictions and reinforce their legitimacies through a variety of public performances. It is in this regard that role theory – and

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particularly the concept of role conflict – captures some of the dramatic and sociological features that envelop political crises. The very notion of “role”, on account of its etymology, is metaphorically connected to drama, suggesting a variety of insightful concepts like position, function and expected action. Many competing understandings of the term exist (see Biddle 1979, 55-58; 1986), but as a working definition for this essay, a role is a set of expectations that a specific audience has towards the occupant of a position. “Role”, therefore, depends on a complex interplay between the individual-occupant and the normative structure of a certain community. Considering the analogy between political theatricality and roles, the goal herein is to highlight the missing link between performance studies and role theory and show how the latter, particularly the concept of role conflict, captures much of the plot surrounding political crises and the means by which actors cope with unfolding contradictions. I begin this essay by making a case for understanding politics through drama and showing briefly the consequences this may have for some methodologies of political sociology. I then highlight that role theory has not been included in performance studies, mainly because of differences over what “role” means and the implications of performativity. Role theory is actually more a blend of approaches than a singular framework. It is rooted in the discipline of sociology, but if it were integrated with a theatrical understanding of performance, the contradictions giving rise to a crisis could be conceptualised better. Therefore, by briefly contrasting two different sociological “models” – one proposed by Jeffrey Alexander (2006a) and another by Erving Goffman (1969, 1971) – I finish the essay with a sketch of how the concept of “role conflict” captures some issues triggering political crises.

The Case for Studying Theatrical Performance and Performativity in Politics Jürgen Habermas (1976, 2) once suggested that a crisis may be likened to a dramaturgical situation, whereby the identities of actors are shattered or put into question. A crisis then is not completely sudden and overwhelming, like a natural disaster, but more a discontinuity calling for dramatic action. Political events, such as crises, are indeed full of theatricality, as actors carefully pick their stage, manage their physical appearance and decide which specific words and gestures to adopt. David Apter (2006, 218) argues that “the frequency of more or less memorable expressions of political theatre would suggest that as a phenomenon it is

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ubiquitous enough to be taken for granted as intrinsic to the public face of politics whatever form it may take.” Of course not all dramatic performances are instrumental or taken consciously, for they may result from deeply internalised rituals in particular political communities. Performances are so pervasive in a world of increased public openness and visibility that they can almost be considered negligible or uninteresting objects of study. Yet, they are far from being epiphenomenal. Theatrical features of politics “become in effect lifelike, if not as pure representation then something else – display, mystique, mimetics, code, metaphor, symbolic condensation, manipulation – to suggest only a few of the attributes of the world as a stage” (Apter 2006, 218). The fact, then, that dramatic performances are unavoidable and exist across so many different cultures is reason enough to warrant greater study. Without looking necessarily at politics, the appropriation of a theatrical metaphor is not new, as many scholars have explored the parallels between theatre and human action. Some of these perspectives are rooted in the works of Richard Schechner (1976, 2003) and Victor Turner (1969, 1974), both of whom underlined theatrical aspects of social action, such as rituals, symbols, roles and stage-sets – to name just a few. The notion of performance even impacted the philosophy of language, when John Austin’s (1975) critique of constative linguistics took speaking, by virtue of its illocutionary force, to be an action. Speech-acts were no longer to be viewed solely as descriptive endeavours but performative ones too, thereby enhancing the scope of performance studies and opening up the notion of performativity (Carlson 2004; Roberts 2009). The fact that scholarship has recognised some parallels between theatre and action has not had major repercussions for a sociological framework of politics and crises. This is not to say, however, that there are no influential works linking politics with performance. For instance, the notion of performativity, as shown below, has demonstrated how a surplus of meaning in action either perpetuates or contests established norms. Yet, with regard to sociology, the resistance to using theatrical concepts for the study of politics is due to a sort of neo-Platonic mind-set, whereby rhetoric and the arts are considered artificial and inconsequential (see Alexander 2006a, 78). That reluctance may also derive from a particular epistemological understanding of what drives, causes or determines action. In this regard, the 1984 debate between Paul Ricoeur and Algirdas Julien Greimas has much to offer (Greimas et al. 1989). Ricoeur criticised Greimas and what he labelled “the unfortunate distinction in Marx”, namely the idea of underlying structures determining the superstructure (Greimas et al. 1989, 553). Ricoeur thus expounded, through a number of

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examples, that the “textual surface” of “narrativity” is in itself irreducible to structure (553-554). In other words, stories themselves unfold according to the development of unique plots, rather than being determined by hidden semiotic structures. Much of Ricoeur’s point can be extended to studying theatrical performance in politics, particularly in periods of crisis, which is an alternative to analysing underlying structuralism and material reality. Yet, before developing some of these ideas, it is important to accentuate the disconnection between studies of political performance and role theory.

Studies of Political Performances without Roles and of Roles without Theatrical Performance A number of political studies have embraced the analogy of theatrical performance, despite neglecting much of role theory. This lack of correspondence results from competing or divergent understandings of performance and therewith the actual object of study. For a sociologist like Erving Goffman (1969, 26), who made ample use of theatrical metaphors in his studies of human interaction (without, however, studying the political), a performance is “an activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other participants”. Hence, according to Goffman, a performance can be seen as a one act-occurrence. However, Elin Diamond (1996, 2) would frame the idea of everyday performances differently, regarding them “as cultural practices that conservatively reinscribe or passionately reinvent ideas, symbols and gestures that shape social life”. Accepting the importance of repeated performances as opposed to the singular act meant opening the gates for performativity: “a reiteration of a norm or set of norms, and to the extent that it acquires an act-like status in the present, it conceals or dissimulates the convention of which it is a repetition” (Butler 1993, 12). On this matter, Judith Butler (1988, 1993, 1999) is a key figure, as her 1988 article, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”, opened the way for performative contributions to feminism (Case 1990; Aston and Case 2007), queer theory and cultural studies. The lack of correspondence between role and performativity is made clear by Butler, as the former is relinquished almost axiomatically, in so far as “gender cannot be understood as a role which either expresses or disguises an interior ‘self’, whether that ‘self’ is conceived as sexed or not” (Butler 1988, 528). This stance reflects Butler’s (1988, 1993, 1999) critique of “essentialising” categorisations of sex as opposed to gender that frequently presuppose a “real” self, such as a

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natural woman. Indeed, from a phenomenological standpoint, Butler posits a powerful argument, echoed by other sceptics of “roles”, for whom a private self versus a public persona reifies psychological determinism and subject-object duality (Jackson 1972; Wilshire 1982; Jenkins 2008, 53-54, 162-166). Still, a critique of excessive solipsism and “essentialisation” need not prevent a study of roles as central elements in a theatrical performance. Within certain situations, actors perform: they act according to the roles that they themselves and a public have constructed throughout interaction in a manner that seeks to persuade a certain audience. It is this particular type of political performance, closer to rhetoric, staging, manipulation and questionable authenticity that I seek to analyse. It is thus understandable why role theory is not central for scholars of performativity. What is more surprising, though, is how political sociology has not underscored the connection between theatricality and roles. Paradoxically, role theorists admit that role “suggests … a theatrical metaphor. If performances were differentiated because actors were constrained to perform ‘parts’ for which ‘scripts’ were written, then it seemed reasonable to believe that social behaviors in other contexts were also associated with parts and scripts and understood by social actors” (Biddle 1986, 68). However, for most role theorists, accepting that the term stems from drama is as far as the analogy goes. The appropriation of “role” in both sociology and the study of politics has been concerned more with showing how certain predetermined templates lead to action or identification (Parsons 1952; Turner 1956, 1990; Merton 1957; Ehrlich, Rinehart and Howell 1962; McCall and Simmons 1966; Stryker 1968; Holsti 1970; Backman 1970; Burke and Tully 1977; Biddle 1979, 1986; Van de Vliert 1981) than with understanding catharsis, audience, metaphor and representation. For example, the work of Talcott Parsons (1952) describes role as a sort of positional variable determining behaviour. His appropriation of role, usually coined functionalist (Biddle 1986, 69-73; Nabers 2011), has very little of the theatrical and could have been used interchangeably with social position, function or even identity. Sociology is, of course, diverse and not all are in agreement with how role could be appropriated or defined. For instance, an alternative reading of “role”, influenced by George Herbert Mead (1934), took a less deterministic stance, focusing more on how actors achieved self-consciousness and legitimated actions throughout interaction. Within this tradition – known usually as symbolic interactionism (Stryker 1968) – scholars like George McCall and Jerry Simmons manifested the need for greater improvisation, as “mechanistic conformity to a role script is observed only in unusual circumstances, as in tightly structured organisations in which roles in this

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sense are formally defined” (1966, 7). My argument is much closer to the aims of symbolic interactionism, albeit less concerned with selfidentification than with performance. These different sociological understandings of “role” were later appropriated by some political “scientists”. Kal Holsti (1970), for example, was the first scholar to introduce “role” as a key variable for the study of international politics and foreign policy when he created the notion of “national role conception”. He made it a sort of benchmark for explaining foreign policy decisions, as he assumed that they resulted from policymakers’ conceptions of their surrounding systems (Holsti 1970, 244245). This highly deterministic perspective influenced other role scholars of international politics in the 1980s and 1990s (Walker 1979, 1987; Wish 1980; Shih 1988; Barnett 1993; Chafetz, Abramson and Grillot 1996; Le Prestre 1997). Undoubtedly, there is little of drama in Holsti and the concept was appropriated in a manner similar to the functionalist school of sociology. More recently, Sebastian Harnisch (2011b, 2012) and David McCourt (2011, 2012) adopted a perspective closer to symbolic interactionism, focusing mainly on identification and gradual learning. However, roles in these cases also have little of the theatrical. Overall, the picture seems somewhat incomplete. Even though most of the aforementioned sociologists focused on roles, rarely were other theatrical features brought into their conceptualisations. Hence, if the dramatic metaphor is abandoned, roles could easily be substituted by other terms such as identity, function, position or status. The work of Jeffrey Alexander (2006a) and Erving Goffman (1969, 1971) may help cover this problem, but as final note, it is worth clarifying that much of the discussion hitherto focused on contrasting differences, in spite of the commonalities existing between all those perspectives.

Roles and Theatrical Performance: Jeffrey Alexander and Erving Goffman Recently, the edited volume by Jeffrey Alexander, Bernhard Giesen and Jason Mast (2006), entitled Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics and Ritual, was an excellent espousal of theatrical politics. Jeffrey Alexander’s (2006a) chapter, “Cultural Pragmatics: Social Performance between Ritual and Strategy”, sets much of the framework for his later research (Alexander 2006b, 2010, 2011a, 2011b). Curiously, though, throughout Alexander’s contributions and within that volume itself, little attention is given to role theory. The idea is certainly conceptualised, but many of the theory’s points are barely used.

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All in all, Jeffrey Alexander (2006a) questioned and analysed how political performances become successful. His sociological approach is especially valuable for framing the entire logistics of a complete performance, from the importance of cultural pragmatics to the identities of the actor and audience. His thesis is that a successful performance depends on the concept of fusion, whereby “audiences identify with actors, and cultural scripts achieve verisimilitude through effective mise-enscène” (Alexander 2006a, 29). Alexander hereby pays attention to the importance of authenticity and how performances, if they are to succeed, match with the roles ascribed by a specific culture (55-58, 72). He therefore concedes that an “actor tries to develop identity but can only do it through roles” (58, italics added). Indeed, much like Goffman (1969, 1971), he concentrates on the actor’s performance and highlights Constantin Stanislavski’s system of acting to account for how performance is to be legitimised: “in social dramas, actors perform a role they often do occupy, but their ability to maintain their role incumbency is always in doubt; their legitimacy is subject to continuous scrutiny; and their feeling for the role is often marked by unfamiliarity” (70). However, unlike Goffman, Alexander is concerned with developing a macro-model of performance and so, besides the actor and the role, he highlights a variety of other concepts, such as mise-en-scène, audience, the means of delivery, representation, and agonism, which eventually dilute the focal point of his analysis. Indeed, part of Alexander’s paradigm is built in opposition to Erving Goffman’s theories, which he charges with not taking cultural and linguistic sensitivities into account (Alexander and Mast 2006, 3). For that reason, the framework fails to give roles their pivotal salience. Roles are treated as one among many variables, but I would argue that the actor and roles make the very analysis of performance possible, and thus further insight into the notion of “role” is indispensable. Without a doubt, Alexander’s cultural pragmatics unfolds the full complexity of efficacious performances. Yet, central to acting is the actor, who inevitably personifies roles. The actor is not alone, of course, and often interacts with other actors in a performance. Though Alexander is not looking specifically at crises, much of his concept of fusion treats performances like a soliloquy: between an actor and the audience. Focusing more on roles would allow Alexander to frame not just how performances between actors and audiences fail or succeed, but also how competing roles may clash for the same actor or even how different performers conflict with one another. Such is the notion of role conflict, which could have opened the way for integrating role theory with performance studies. Goffman’s (1969, 1971) framework, in contrast, ignores culture, but

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has the advantage of focusing more on actors. In spite of his focus on instrumentality (Alexander and Mast 2006, 13) – almost to the point of espousing human interaction as cynical – he focuses more on the ways in which relationships develop according to specific roles. In his Relations in Public, Goffman (1971, xii) argues that people tailor their actions, either consciously or unconsciously, according to the specific situation. Whereas Alexander frames better the cultural contingency of a performance by bringing forth the importance of what Pierre Bourdieu (2005, 57) would call the surrounding “field” of production, Goffman looks more at the actor. He thus avoids the question of authenticity and delves into the consistency of the performance. So, taking into account both Alexander and Goffman’s insightful perspectives, a question comes to the fore: how do actors face contradictions arising throughout interaction? If both approaches are integrated with role theory and, by extension, role conflict, one can sketch how some political crises are constituted and managed by actors. As stated above, a role is the result of the interplay between the individual-occupant of a position and the expectations of a society. Hence, no role is essential or eternal. For instance, Barack Obama, at the time this essay is being written, is the individual occupying the Presidency of the United States, itself a complex society. For most “western” audiences Obama may invoke the roles of “reformer of health-care” and “charismatic leader” among others. And it is in the midst of these roles that contradictions arise, leading to a crisis. By contradiction I do not mean logical contradiction within statements, rather, as suggested by Jürgen Habermas (1976, 26-27), incongruence between distinct political claims. These contradictions, though, do not just stem from opposing ideologies, but from the manner in which those claims are performed. Ideology matters inevitably but any political agenda does not simply stay in the text, as it is advocated in a public arena. In other words, it is performed. Indeed, it goes almost without saying that ideas are introduced and implemented by individuals, who interact in a public sphere. For instance, a person who built a career in a socialist party, and therewith constructed a role of “implementer of socialism”, harms both his or her persona and also the legitimacy of the ideology itself, once the media leaks that he or she profited significantly from a stock market crash. The norms encapsulating the role of “implementing socialism” contradict those of “profiteer”, even if no malfeasance or crime occurred. Therefore, roles are a focal point of any performance and constitute much of the crisis as it is enacted. Only after locating the contradictions among roles may one discuss how or whether a performative crisis existed and if subsequent performances were

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successful. That said, it is now possible to sketch how some of role theory’s rich concepts can be integrated with performance studies.

A Brief Sketch of Role Conflict and its Impact on Political Crises Individuals are capable of complex actions and therefore have multiple roles that constitute an aggregate role set (Thies 2009, 5). This grouping of roles and multiple expectations requires a degree of role cohesiveness. In other words, two or more roles have to be more or less coherent with one another; otherwise the character becomes strained (Backman 1970, 314), in the sense that the individual defies the roles that he or she had built together with an audience. Cohesiveness means that roles may be consistently contested within a particular context, leading to other counter or complementary roles (Harnisch 2011a, 8; Cantir and Karbo 2012), which may instigate role conflict, that is contradictory meanings between different roles. Once possible contradictions between established roles are understood, the strategies of deliverance are easier to conceptualise. Role conflict is then a key concept and can be classified under two distinct types: intra-role conflict and inter-role conflict (see Michael Barnett 1993; Harnisch 2011a, 8). The former pertains to role divergence within a particular role set and the latter to incongruence between the roles of two different characters. With regard to the inner role set, its stability is based on avoiding the following situations (Nabers 2011, 76-77): - Role ambiguity – when the specificity of a role is low; - Role malintegration – when multiple roles do not interlock; - Role discontinuity – when different sequential contexts require disjointed roles; - Role overload – when too many role expectations exist. Goffman also suggests ways in which actors deal with contradictions. He calls this kind of role management “remedial act”, whereby the actor seeks “to change the meaning that otherwise might be given to an act, transforming what could be seen as offensive, into what can be seen as acceptable” (1971, 109). So, combining the ideas of some role theorists with Goffman’s take on public performance suggests that actors constantly face problems of “legitimation” (McCall and Simmons 1966, 95). A performance crisis arises from specific contradictions and actors are called to manage these legitimation problems. For instance, they may concede that there was no action; that the circumstances were misinterpreted; that

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the action was unforeseeable or the result of ignorance; that the competence was limited or unmindful of what would occur; or that an apology is needed (Goffman 1971, 109-111, 113). These different ways of justifying growing contradictions are contingent on each specific situation, for dialogue is hindered by the “fact that each participant must address himself not only to the virtual offense, but also this own role and the role of the other as participants in a system of control through which corrective work can be handled reasonably” (120). Other theorists propose similar ways of coping with role conflict (Ehrlich, Rinehart and Howell 1962; Van de Vliert 1983; McCall and Simmons 1966). For instance, George McCall and Jerry Simmons (1966, 95-101) develop a variety of legitimation mechanisms, of which the following is a sample: - Selectively tailor the audience’s response to one’s action, whereby the norms of “propriety and polite discourse … dictate that we ‘nicify’ the responses to the person”; - Withdraw from the interaction; - Enact another role within a role set; - Resort to scapegoating and thus blame someone else; - Resort to disavowal of a performance by claiming, for example, that the former statement was not wholly serious, but simply an instance of humour; - Condemn the audience that does not support the action.

Conclusion The sketch shows a degree of compatibility existing between a few role theories and performance studies. If the two were integrated, some of the issues instigating political crises could be better conceptualised. On the one hand, roles provide the key object of analysis and, on the other, performance sets up the conceptual background underscoring much of public politics. Political crises could result either from incoherence in the role sets of given persons or from conflicting roles existing between distinct characters. Political actors then attempt to represent themselves in a particular way, by adopting a “remedial act”, and thus mitigating role conflict. Of course, an approach centring on performance depends on whether one concedes that much of current public politics is influenced by performance management, whereby audiences, catharsis and adequate representation are deemed necessary. Such a perspective looks less at

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underlying materialism and structural constraints than the surface level contradictions existing in interaction. It obviously highlights instrumentality, but this is not to say that performances always determine the reasons for a crisis or even that being a politician is being an actor; merely that role conflicts are facets of current politics. One has to remain open to different interpretations of how crises develop and are managed by individuals. After all, how are events and crises to be interpreted? As far back as Thucydides, the puzzle was inconclusive. Based on the beginning of the History of the Peloponnesian War (2000), one could actually posit that the war was “caused” by an imbalance of power, leading to a sort of hegemonic conflict, as if the outcome was unavoidable. Such an interpretation, though, is insightful but condemned to be incomplete, since it would suggest that much of the remaining account is simply ornamental or teleological. The importance Thucydides gives to rhetoric, as in the cases of Pericles’ “Funeral Oration” and the “Mytilenean Debate”, demonstrates that performances do actually matter and affect the plot as it develops. It is on that note that roles offer much for the conceptualisation of political drama, making us aware of how politics can become theatrical and how actors deal with crises.

Bibliography Alexander, J., B. Giersen, and J. Mast (eds) (2006) Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics and Ritual, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alexander, J. and J. Mast (2006) “Introduction”. In Jeffrey, A., Giersen, B., and Mast, J. (eds) Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics and Ritual, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alexander, J. (2006a) “Cultural pragmatics: social performance between ritual and strategy”. In Jeffrey, A., Giersen, B., and Mast, J. (eds) Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics and Ritual, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. (2006b) “From the depths of despair: performance, counterperformance, and ‘September 11’”. In Jeffrey, A., Giersen, B., and Mast, J. (eds) Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics and Ritual, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. (2010) The Performance of Politics: Obama’s victory and the democratic struggle for Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —. (2011) Performative Revolution in Egypt: An Essay in Cultural Power, New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

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Apter, D. (2006) “Politics as theatre: an alternative view of the rationalities of power”. In Jeffrey, A., Giersen, B., and Mast, J. (eds) Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics and Ritual, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aston, E. and S. Case (eds) (2007) Staging International Relations, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Austin, J. (1975) How to do things with Words, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Backman, C. (1970) “Role Theory and International Relations: A Commentary and extension”, International Studies Quarterly, 14 (3), 310-319. Barnett, M. (1993) “Institutions, Roles and Disorder: The Case of the Arab States System”, International Studies Quarterly, 37 (3), 271-295. Biddle, B. (1979) Role Theory: Expectations, Identities and Behaviors. London: Academic Press Inc. —. (1986) “Recent Development in Role Theory”, Annual Review of Sociology, 12, 67-92. Bourdieu, P. (2005) Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press. Butler, J. (1988) “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”, Theatre Journal, 40 (4), 519531. —. (1993) Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, London: Routledge. —. (1999) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, London: Routledge. Burke, P. and J. Tully. (1977) “The Measurement of Role Identity”, Social Forces, 55 (4), 881-897. Cantir, C. and J. Kaarbo (2012) “Contested Roles and Domestic Politics: Reections on Role Theory in Foreign Policy Analysis and IR Theory”, Foreign Policy Analysis, 8 (1), 5-24. Carlson, M. (2004) Performance: A Critical Introduction, New York: Routledge. Case, S. (ed.) (1990) Performing feminisms: feminist critical theory and theatre, London: John Hopkins University Press. Castells, M. (2008) “The New Public Sphere: Global Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 616, 78-93. Chafetz, G., H. Abramson, and S. Grillot (1996) “Role Theory and Foreign Policy: Belarussian and Ukrainian Compliance with Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime”, Political Psychology, 17 (4), 727-757.

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Diamond, E. (ed.) (1996) Performance and Cultural Politics, London: Routledge. Ehrlich, H., J. Rinehart, and J. Howell (1962) “The Study of Role Conflict: Explorations in Methodology”, Sociometry, 25 (1), 85–97. Goffman, E. (1969) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Middlesex: Penguin Books. —. (1971) Relations in Public, London: Penguin Press. Greimas, J. et al. (1989) “On Narrativity”, New Literary History, 20 (3), 551-562. Harnisch, S. (2011a) “Role Theory: Operationalization of key concepts”. In Harnisch, S. (ed.) Role Theory in International Relations: Approaches and Analyses, London: Routledge. —. (2011b) “Dialogue and Emergence: George Herbert Mead’s contribution to role theory and his reconstruction of international politics.” In Harnisch, S. (ed.) Role Theory in International Relations: Approaches and Analyses, London: Routledge. —. (2012) “Conceptualizing in the Mineeld: Role Theory and Foreign Policy Learning”, Foreign Policy Analysis, 8 (1), 47-69. Holsti, K. (1970) “National Role Conceptions in the Study of Foreign Policy”, International Studies Quarterly, 14 (3), 233-309. Jackson, J. (ed.) (1972) Role. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jenkins, R. (2008) Social Identity, London: Routledge. Le Prestre, P. (ed.) (1997) Role Quests in the Post-Cold War Era, London: McGill-Queens University Press. McCall, G. and J. Simmons (1966) Identities and Interactions, New York: The Free Press. McCourt, D. (2011) “Roleplaying and identity affirmation in international politics: Britain’s reinvasion of the Falklands, 1982”, Review of International Studies, 37 (4), 1599-1621. —. (2012) “The roles states play: a Meadian interactionist approach”, Journal of International Relations and Development, 15 (3), 370-392. Merton, R. (1957) “The Role-Set: Problems in Sociological Theory”, The British Journal of Sociology, 8 (2), 106-120. Nabers, D. (2011) “Identity and Role Change in International Politics”. In Harnisch, S. (ed.) Role Theory in International Relations: Approaches and Analyses, London: Routledge. Parsons, T. (1952) The Social System, London: Tavistock. Roberts, B. (2009) “Performative Social Science: A consideration of Skills, Purpose and Contest”, Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, 34 (1), 307-353.

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Schechner, R. (1976) “From Ritual to Theatre and Back”. In Schechner, R. and Schuman, M. (eds) Ritual, Play, and Performance: Readings in the Social Sciences/Theatre, New York: Seabury Press. —. (2003) Performance Theory. London: Routledge. Shih, C. (1988) “National Role Conception as Foreign Policy Motivation: The Psychocultural Bases of Chinese Diplomacy”, Political Psychology, 9 (4), 599-631. Stryker, S. (1968) “Identity Salience and Role Performance: The Relevance of Symbolic Interaction Theory for Family Research”, Journal of Marriage and Family, 30 (4), 558-564. Thies, C. (2009) Role Theory and Foreign Policy, Tucscon: University of Arizona Press. Thucydides (2000) The History of the Peloponnesian War, London. Penguin Books. Turner, R. (1956) “Role-Taking, Role Standpoint, and Reference-Group Behavior”, American Journal of Sociology, 61 (4), 316-328. —. (1990) “Role Change”, Annual Review of Sociology, 16, 87-110. Turner, V. (1974) Dramas, Fields and Metaphors, London: Cornell University Press. Van de Vliert, E. (1981) “A Three-Step Theory of Role Conflict and Resolution”, The Journal of Social Psychology, 113, 77-83. Walker, S. (ed.) (1987) Role Theory and Foreign Policy Analysis, Durham: Duke University Press. Wilshere, B. (1982) Role Playing and Identity: The Limits of Theatre as Metaphor, Bloomington: John Wiley and Sons. Wish, N. (1980) “Foreign Policy Makers and their National Role Conceptions”, International Studies Quarterly, 24 (4), 532-554.

PART II: CRISIS IN ACTION

CHAPTER FIVE CRITIQUING THE DOMINANT SECURITY ORTHODOXY: IS SECURITY SECTOR REFORM A VIABLE PARADIGM FOR PEACE-BUILDING/ STATE-BUILDING? TAHANI MUSTAFA SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES

Abstract Security Sector Reform (SSR) has assumed an increased importance in recent years, as it is seen by Western donor states as critical for mediating the effective transition from war to peace in post-conflict states and thus, a key part of state-building processes. The rationale of SSR is to motivate donors to go beyond the mere capacity building of security forces and entrench principles of democratic governance and the rule of law. However, its operational success has been limited and thus far analysis has largely focused on the discrepancy between concept and implementation to improve the operational capability of SSR programs. This paper will argue that, although current discourse on SSR acknowledges its political dimension, it has ignored its implications. Contrary to the way it is commonly perceived, SSR is not a politically benign model. It is highly intrusive and has increasingly become the dominant framework for Great Power regulation of and intervention in non-western societies. The utilisation of concepts that appear politically neutral in the official rhetoric of SSR like security, human rights and good governance strip it of political content, and serve to legitimise the practice of power in contemporary international relations by making the exercise of that power appear as empowering rather than domineering. The occupied

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Palestinian territories (oPt) provide an apt case study, as the state-building project there has become synonymous with security sector reform.

Introduction Security Sector Reform (SSR) has assumed increased importance in recent years as Western donor states view it as critical for mediating the effective transition from war to peace in post-conflict states and thus a key part of state-building processes. The rationale of SSR is to motivate donors to go beyond mere capacity building of security forces and entrench principles of democratic governance and the rule of law. However, its operational success has been limited and thus far analysis has largely focused on the discrepancy between concept and implementation, to improve the operational capability of SSR programmes. Although current discourse on SSR acknowledges its political dimension, it has ignored its implications. This paper aims to address this issue. The occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) provide an apt case study, as the state-building project there has become synonymous with SSR. This paper will scrutinise current SSR discourse and the conceptual apparatus from which it draws much of its substance and legitimacy. It will then examine the conceptual and theoretical parameters of SSR in the oPt, looking at its implementation and the inherent socio-political paradox that has been created on the ground, which diverges substantially from conventional understandings of security and statehood.

Critiquing the Dominant Security Orthodoxy: Established SSR Discourse The term SSR refers to the provision of state and human security within a framework of democratic governance. It institutionalises and securitises a wide range of actors within a sovereign state, granting them responsibility for managing order. It is a highly intrusive operation that aims to reconfigure power in a society through restructuring a state’s security sector. However, this uneven power dynamic inherent in the paradigm has largely been shielded from academic scrutiny. This is largely due to the normative conceptualisation of SSR, which presents it as both moralistic and imperative. This is reflected in the existing literature on SSR and its application in conflict and post-conflict settings. The transformed security environment after the Cold War rendered the traditional security framework that took the state as its central ontology “static, and anachronistic”. New threats transcending state borders

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weakened Hobbesian assumptions about the relationship between state and society and have brought to the fore critical and emancipatory security perspectives. The common thread that tied these latter discourses together was the emphasis on shifting the referent from the state to the individual; it attempted to couple security with concerns of international humanitarianism and human development. However rather than discarding the state, the new human security framework tied state sovereignty to that of the individual and reinforced the link between state security and human development. The implicit assumption is that “the state’s first priority is the protection of its society. Without political order, social and individual values are meaningless; they cannot be realised nor protected from assault, violence and chaos.” Simultaneously, state security agents are recognised as potential sources of insecurity and conflict in themselves. Consequently, the imperative of the security sectors in recipient states during the transition from war to peace has situated SSR within the recent phenomenon of peace-building/statebuilding operations. Despite SSR’s rising popularity with various international agencies, its operational success has been limited. The SSR model has been unable to translate its ambitious principles into practical reform programmes. As a result, the current literature has thus far largely focused on explaining the discrepancy between concept and practice. Moreover, much of the literature tends to be written by or for current practitioners. Established SSR discourse views the issue in terms of imposing the hegemony of a state and its order on a society, but this view is deeply flawed as it ignores the ways in which external stakeholders can influence the implementation of an SSR project and structure it to suit their interests. Analysts have argued the model has failed to actualise its holistic peoplecentred aims, and have sought to improve its operational capability, even advocating its reconceptualisation to make it more conducive to the requirements of peace and stability. However, this view omits a fundamental element in the exercise of power, in that it is the very promotion of the idea of good governance which carries with it moralistic and depoliticised connotations which frame the SSR paradigm and allow for such a depoliticised technocratic approach. Consequently, the inherent dynamic of unequal power relations embedded in the SSR model has been largely shielded from academic scrutiny. Contrary to the way it is commonly perceived, it is argued here that SSR is not a politically benign model. I aim to move away from a policybased approach by scrutinising SSR not as a problem of a conceptual/contextual divide, but instead as a Foucauldian discourse. This

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places it within the broader structure of systems of meanings that justify the use of power in international relations.

Deconstructing the SSR Discourse: SSR, Civil Order and Neo-Colonialism Using Michel Foucault’s ideas of bio-power and the current liberal problematic of security, critics have attempted to scrutinise the current international problematisation of security. These programmes have been reconceptualised into a macro-structure dubbed “bio-political imperialism”, a programme of liberal rule and war whose ultimate purpose is the pacification of recalcitrant populations and their integration into the network of liberal governance. A range of dispersed practices has been deployed to defend against threats to the liberal peace. They are used for triage, to distinguish between lives that need to be promoted and lives that need to be destroyed, within spaces and populations that have already been designated as dangerous by the global triage of liberal governance. These divisions, Mary Kaldor asserts, are based on the distinction between good liberal cosmopolitans and their evil illiberal others, and can be easily colonised by more racialised discourses. The triage of targeted populations is thus conducted on the basis of orientalist modes of knowledge. These programmes are implemented through oppressive population-security measures that are derived from methods of imperial policing. When war is deemed to be fought in the name of humanity, it comes to be perceived as limitless in time and space but also constitutively reliant upon divisions of populations in terms of racialised or cultural profiles, even as the discourses of legitimisation surrounding them suggest a more general applicability. Boundaries do not disappear, but are perpetually re-inscribed upon the corporality of those constructed as “other”, as enemies and as existential threats. This securitisation of the international, particularly in the post-9/11 climate, has reinforced political closure in the international arena and an ethos of xenophobia “seeking legitimation” in a “clash of civilisations”. Foucault’s analytics of power suggests that governance takes place from a distance as the power to influence others. Governmentality is therefore defined as a liberal form of power engaged with but distinct from more centralised, territorialised and coercive forms of power. This does not mean a rejection of sovereign or state power but instead a new way of thinking about state and sovereign power alongside a range of other institutions and practices. Liberal discourse presents this realm as based on

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the rational conduct of individuals free from state interference; however this freedom and liberty is actually constructed through a particular set of social practices and normative discourse. This liberalism defines a problem space for government and appropriate forms of regulation. It is in this sense that the liberal peace seeks to governmentalise post-colonial societies. The human security framework serves to reinforce hierarchy in the international system through the distinction between those who can provide human security and those that cannot. Chandler argues that rather than human security posing a challenge to state sovereignty, state sovereignty is given substance by its ability to provide for human security; the failure to do so places it within the category of weak or failed states and provides justification for international intervention. This legitimises intervention in the affairs of other states. Importantly, the human security discourse allows for a depoliticised technocratic approach, which can be used to blame local practices and actors if things go wrong. The consequence, according to Chandler, is to integrate states into networks of external regulation while also denying ultimate responsibility for the relationship and obfuscating imperialist power by making the exercise of that power appear as empowering rather than domineering. Duffield argues that security-mediated development has been used to advance security agendas. These development programmes are not so much aimed at global peace and stability. Instead, they are tools of spatially and temporally indeterminate pacification, as by their direct intervention the forms of social order of the global centre are reproduced in the periphery. However, while the form is maintained, the substance is qualitatively different. Joseph argues that the dynamics of the international society in imposing neoliberal forms of governmentality are often quite different: hierarchical, coercive and directly disciplinary. In contexts where the social conditions for this governmentality are not present it is difficult to imagine governance taking place from a distance through the exercise of freedom. Interventions that appear to be based on governmentality may revert to more coercive forms of power in regulating populations. It is worth considering the relationship between coercive power, which SSR projects aim to marshal and control, and the civil order it enables by enforcing compliance to that order through the actual employment of state violence or merely through the implied threat of its employment. This civil order is embodied in the legal/bureaucratic channels of the state: the regulations and laws that define a certain social order and economic dispensation; the forms and purposes of association and political activity

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that are legitimate and those that are not; the punishments for transgressing these prescribed limits; and on an abstract level, values and a certain conception of the social order. Daniel Neep’s problematisation of the binary opposition of coercion and consent reinforces this argument. According to Neep, force does not need to be actually employed to coerce. The real or implied threat of force is enough to get people to consent, but this does not make their participation in any political project “consensual” in the sense of “free and un-coerced”. The binary distinction between coercion and consent is not an objective “truth”, it is a construction, moreover a construction that leads to a way of imagining the social order that excludes the very existence of the coercive power that constitutes it and guarantees it. Similarly, all SSR projects aim to establish a certain form of political order that appears to be consensual but is in fact based on coercion; but in the context of a neo-colonial state-building project, the political disposition it secures will likely reflect the interests, perceptions and values of the foreign powers that impose/support/fund/organise it rather than be aligned to any domestic constellation. So if SSR is the organisation of the potential for state violence to ensure the hegemony of a certain social order, the obvious question is, what sort of order? What internal and external interests have formulated or influenced the particular order that SSR enables? What conditionality, explicit or implicit, is there in the funding and material/technical assistance for SSR? What are the bureaucratic channels that have been empowered to create this social order? What forms of social order/political activity are enabled, and which are repressed/criminalised and by what mechanisms (economic, security, bureaucratic) is this achieved? Who are the state elite that the state building project and SSR has empowered, what are their interests and privileges and in what ways do they align or differ from those of the international community? What segment of the local population do they represent and how do they relate to the rest of the population? However, the key point here is that this order is imposed in such a way that it does not appear to be imposed at all; the coercive agency necessary to achieve this disposition is disguised, possibly even from the agents themselves, because of the ideal of “consensual” politics they have bought into and the way the coercive power guaranteeing it is hidden behind it. Power is more persuasive and pervasive when its action and function are disguised as something other than what they are. Foucault argues power is successful only in proportion to its ability to hide its own mechanism. Therein lies the hegemonic power of the international community: the

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forms of social order in the states of the global centre are reproduced by their direct intervention in the periphery in such a way that while the form is maintained, the substance is qualitatively different.

The Case of the oPt In contrast to more conventional cases where sovereignty clouds the power dynamics behind intervention, the oPt are an exceptional and rather extreme example of SSR. However, it is precisely because the oPt are such an extreme and atypical example of SSR that it lays bare the underlying discourse of power, on both the micro-level of Israeli colonialism and on the wider macro-level of the interaction between centre and periphery. SSR quickly became the cornerstone of the Oslo-declared statebuilding project in Palestine. It was the product of the security-first narrative that Oslo codified, in which the most urgent factor in the transition period and upon which the further resumption of negotiations would depend, was posited as addressing Israeli security concerns. The literature on SSR in the oPt focused on whether the environment there was conducive to reform. Rampant corruption and the nepotistic, unaccountable and repressive personalised style of politics favoured by the leadership has no doubt significantly hindered the SSR project as well as the broader process of state-building. The most thorough characterisation of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) is what Clement M. Henry and Robert Springborg describe as “a bully praetorian republic”. It is a system of governance in which the power of ruling elites rests almost exclusively on the operations of the military/security/party apparatus. These elites are not drawn from a particular identifiable societal group but instead are separated from the general population through the exclusivity of their access to and dependence on the institutions of the regime. These regimes rely heavily on coercion particularly in times of crisis, but are also dependent on co-optation and rent-seeking arrangements. These two factors have played out in both polities in the West Bank and Gaza and have resulted in a significant contraction of the political sphere. In 2007, after the PA lost control over Gaza, the rule of law deteriorated as it was determined to maintain its monopoly over politics in the West Bank. Israel, the US and the EU provided funding and training for the PA’s repressive security apparatus. President Mahmoud Abbas was provided with the means to clamp down on opponents to undermine the democratically elected government of Hamas, which controlled Gaza. The Palestinian Authority Security Forces (PASF) employed a myriad of tactics and practices that violated existing laws and internationally

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recognised human rights standards. They have also enforced a number of executive orders, which curtail freedom of expression in public spaces and crack down on protests against Israel. The security sector has effectively become the mediator between the population and the regime and has been pivotal in creating a widespread culture of fear with regard to political activity. The Palestinian–Israeli Declaration of Principles (DOP) led to the formation of a number of Palestinian state-like institutions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the largest and most resource-intensive of these being the Palestinian security establishment. These security institutions and the subsequent implementation of SSR formed part of what Neve Gordon terms Israel’s “outsourcing of the occupation to a subcontractor”. The PNA is a transitory regime designed to meet the needs of Israeli security. The Israeli goal when entering Oslo was to transform the Palestine Liberation Organisation into a set of institutional arrangements that would function as Israel’s proxy in policing the Palestinians, guaranteeing Israeli security. This outsourcing is akin to a technique employed by power to conceal its own mechanisms in an attempt to sustain itself. “It is not motivated by power’s decision to retreat but on the contrary by its unwavering effort to endure and remain in control.” It was a response to the first intifada and the need to find more resource- and cost-effective mechanisms of colonial control. This is what Mandy Turner has termed the “occupation subcontractor thesis”. Oslo was another era in the evolving structure of Israeli occupation, bringing about structural change and the reorganisation of Israeli power. The Oslo accords reinforced and strengthened the structural relationship between the occupier and occupied and the “gross asymmetries in power that attended it”. The Oslo agreement reflected this asymmetry, putting Israel’s security concerns first and the Palestinians’ ambitions for social and political emancipation second. While Yasser Arafat was opposed to reform of the security sector, the lynchpin of his personalised and patrimonial-style of rule, Abbas, was a vocal supporter of SSR. However, there were few differences in their style of rule and security reform under both periods made little headway. For Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza the dominant political reality is the occupation, which continues to perpetuate their material suffering. Continued Israeli incursions, settlement activity, and mobility restrictions, including those on Palestinian political and security personnel, compound the PA’s difficulty in carrying out its security obligation to the Israelis and its own constituents. Fiscal retrenchment, assassinations, raids and demolitions have aggravated the situation and significantly

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undermined the institutional capacity and legitimacy of the PA. PA security organisations are also forced to co-operate with the Israeli security establishment and this has significantly undermined the PA’s legitimacy amongst Palestinians. Moreover, Israel’s politico-military doctrine has traditionally been grounded in the realpolitik of pre-emptive action and determined Israeli foreign policy from its inception. Israel has reserved the right to act against a threat even if it is nascent. Threats can range from the microlevel, at the level of individual violence, to the macro, massing armies on Israel’s borders. Unilateral action is another element of Israel’s strategic thinking, and this explains Israel’s reluctance to join security frameworks and agreements or abide by them once it has joined. Simply put, Israel likes to be the master of its own fate. This makes the establishment of viable and stable governing institutions by the PA difficult, and this has compounded the difficulty of implementing SSR, when security personnel lack even the basic requirements for effective policing like freedom of movement. Importantly, the effective monopoly of violence was never devolved but remained with the occupier. The PASF failed to quell anti-colonial resistance in its early years and soon incurred the full force of colonial military power, which moved decisively to devastate the PA during the second intifada. Another demonstration of colonial might came in 2008, when Gaza was collectively punished after the electoral victory of Hamas, an organisation that prioritised anti-colonial resistance. These issues were never addressed, and SSR donors sought technocratic means to work around political problems, so as to protect their strategic relations with the various parties to the conflict. This was reinforced by the lack of international pressure over Israeli non-compliance and cooperation. SSR arguably served to depoliticise the most pressing issue of the conflict, the politics of security, reducing it to the level of a technicality. It also privileged the security needs of the more powerful state. Israel has and continues to set the agenda and determine the rules of the game. Anne Le More states that the agenda of SSR was and remains the preserve of the Americans and Israelis, with other donors footing the bill. The close diplomatic and military relationship that the Americans and Israelis share has ensured the latter has the backing of the global hegemon. General Dayton’s speech at the Washington Institute in 2009 confirms that SSR is both a tool to reinforce the paradigm of Israeli occupation and the macro-structure of neo-colonial global governance. Dayton heralds the success of the training and equipping of what he terms “new Palestinians” that now turn their guns not against Israelis (the occupying force) but on

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the real enemies from within Palestinian society. In particular, he hailed the ability of this new and improved force to restrain mass protest and mass uprisings, pointing to the performance of the West Bank PASF and their success in clamping down on demonstrations during Israel’s incursions into Gaza in 2007. The West Bank PASF have received donor-funded training worth $60 million annually since 2007. The two main organisations responsible for training and supplying equipment are the United States Security Coordinator (USSC) and European Police Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support (EUPOLCOPPS). Intelligence training and assistance has been left to the CIA. Increased US investment in training and supplying the PASF coincided with the rise of Hamas and Western counter-terrorism efforts aimed at weakening Hamas’ grip on power, and quelling any resistance in the West Bank by clamping down on groups considered suspect. The normative elements of SSR, with its focus on establishing the structures of good governance, have been pushed to the margins. However, while the US employs the rhetoric of good governance, it is clear that “the US does not do security sector reform” and limits its assistance to the operational component of the term. The moral elements have been reconfigured to match foreign rather than local perceptions of threats: those organisations that threaten or challenge the established international order.

Conclusion Scrutinising SSR as a discourse places it within the broader structure of systems of meaning that justify the use of power in contemporary international relations. Far from being timeless and neutral, like many critical conceptual building blocks of IR discourse SSR is situated within a historical context, and as such we must be alert to the purposes and interests it serves, the specific groups it dispossesses and empowers, and the acts of epistemic and physical violence it sets in motion.

Bibliography Bigo, D., Carrera, S., Guild, E., and Walker, R. B. J. (2010) Europe’s 21st Century Challenge: Delivering Liberty, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Company. Brzoska, M. and Law, D. (2007) Security Sector Reconstruction and Reform in Peace Support Operations, London: Routledge.

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Buzan, B. (1991) People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, Hemel: Hempstead. Call, C. T., Wyeth, V. H. (2008) Building States to Build Peace, Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Campbell, D. (1998) Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Chanaa, J. (2002) Security sector reform: Issues, Challenges and Prospects, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chandler, D. (2006) Empire in Denial: The Politics of Statebuilding, London: Pluto Press. —. (2008) International State Building: The Rise of Post Liberal Governance, London: Routledge. De Larrinaga, M. and Doucet, M. G. (2008) “Sovereign Power and the Biopolitics of Human Security”, Security Dialogue, 39 (5), 517-537. Dilloj, M. and Neal, A. (2007) Foucault on Politics, Security and War, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Dillon, M. and Lobo-Guerrero, L. (2008) “Biopolitics of Security in the 21st Century: An Introduction”, Review of International Studies, 34, 265-292. Duffield, M. (2002) “Social Reconstruction and the Radicalization of Development: Aid as a relation of Global Liberal Governance”, Development and Change, 44 (5), 1049-1071. —. (2007) Development, Security and Unending War: Governing the World of Peoples, Cambridge: Polity Press. Engnell, R. and Halden, P. (2009) “Laudable, Ahistorical and Overambitious: Security Sector Reform Meets State Formation Theory”, Conflict, Security and Development, 9 (1), 27-54. Fouacault, M (2008) The Birth of Biopolitics, Basingstoke: Palgrave. —. (2007) Security, Territory and Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-1978, New York: Palgrave. Hindess, B. (1996) Discourses of Power: From Hobbes to Foucault, Oxford: Blackwell. Hobson, J. M. (2012) The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics : Western International Theory, 1760-2010, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jones, B. G. (2006) Decolonizing International Relations, Rowman and Littlefield. Joseph, J. (2009) “Governmentality of what? Populations, States and International Organisations”, Global Society, 23 (4). Khalili, L. and Schwedler, J. (ed.) (2010) Policing and Prisons in the Middle East: Formations of Coercion. London: Hurst and Company.

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Kienscherf, M. (2011) “A Programme of Global Pacification: US Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the Biopolitics of Human (in)security”, Security Dialogue, 42, 517. Kiersey, N. J. and Stokes, D. (2010) Foucault and International Relations,: new critical engagements, London: Routledge. Lukes, S. (2005) Power a Radical View, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Neep, D. (2012). Occupying Syria under the French mandate: insurgency, space and state formation, New York: Cambridge University Press. Nikolaisen, T. (2001) “Security Sector Reform: A New Framework for Security Assistance? The Security Development Nexus Impact on Polices toward the South”, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. Raue, J. and Sutter, P. (2009) Facets and Practices of State-Building, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Richmond, O. P. (2010) Palgrave Advances in Peacebuilding: Critical Developments and Approaches, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Ryan B. J. (2011) Statebuilding and Police Reform: The freedom of security, New York: Routledge. Schnabel A. and Ehrhart, H.-G. (2005) Security sector reform and postconflict peacebuilding, Tokyo: United Nations University Press. Sedra, M. (2007) “Security Sector Reform in Afghanistan and Iraq: Exposing a Concept in Crisis”, Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, 3 (2), 7-23.

CHAPTER SIX AT THE CROSSROADS OF SECURITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS: THE DILEMMA OF THE SANCTIONS REGIMES JULIJA KALPOKIENE UNIVERSITY OF SALFORD AND UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM

Abstract The paper will look at the United Nations (UN) Security Council’s (SC) sanctions regimes. A sanctions regime can be imposed by SC acting under UN Charter Chapter VII when not resorting to military power. Especially, the paper will raise the questions of the legitimacy and legality of sanctions being imposed by the SC (hence this will include a discussion whether a sanction regime, especially targeted sanctions, are democratic) and also will analyse whether they can contribute to ensuring or restoring peace. Non forcible sanctions which are aimed at individuals, for example Al-Qaida sanctions list, raises serious human rights issues. The paper will look at the historical evolution of the sanctions regimes and will critically analyse whether legitimacy, legality and potential human rights violation problems have been addressed by the SC.

Introduction The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is tasked with maintaining peace and security. There has been a lot of debate as to whether the UNSC is bound by human rights (HR) obligations when acting under Chapter VII. Currently, and more than ever, HR are as important as preservation of peace and security. Indeed, HR and peace and security are not only very high on the political agenda but are equally needed in order to ensure long-lasting and stable peace. The importance of

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HR is especially emphasised when the notion of security is understood broadly and includes both state and human security. International decision making is, therefore, clearly at a crossroads. In exploring the tensions between maintenance of peace and security on the one hand and respect for HR on the other, the UNSC’s counter-terrorism sanctions regimes are particularly illustrative. For the purpose of this analysis, the UNSC’s role in maintaining peace and security is first briefly outlined. Then the development of the counterterrorism sanctions regimes is briefly reviewed. It is conceded that due to the evolution of the notion of security, respect for HR is instrumental in maintaining peace and security. Failure to respect HR could have devastating effects and preclude the achievement of the overall goal of peace and security.

Development of Sanctions Under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the UNSC can pass resolutions that are binding on states. According to Article 39, when there is “threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression” then the UNSC can act, invoking Chapter VII powers in order “to maintain or restore international peace and security”. Under Article 24 of the Charter, primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security is conferred by member states on the Security Council, so the UNSC can act on behalf of the states. UN member states agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the UNSC in accordance with the Charter (Article 25). Following Article 41, the UNSC can impose any punitive non-forcible measure (i.e. sanctions). Such measures being imposed under Chapter VII are binding upon states. Moreover, Article 103 provides that the obligations under the Charter prevail over conflicting norms. Thus, the obligations imposed by the UNSC and, for example, state’s obligations under HR instruments might conflict. But according to the UN Charter, a Security Council Resolution should take precedence. During the Cold War period few sanctions were imposed, but since 1990 the Security Council has invoked the power much more regularly (Chesterman, Franck and Malone 2008, 342-343). The rationale for sanctions is that political leaders’ behaviour could be modified by putting pressure on the state’s citizens. So, the sanctions should work through the political power of the sanctioned state’s citizens (Fishman 1999, 691), who should influence the political scene of their country. The problem is that for this model to work, the people have to be able to influence their

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government (van Bergeijk 1999, 106). However, the sanctioned states tend to be ruled by non-democratic regimes, so the amount of power that citizens can exert upon their governments is very limited. Comprehensive sanctions impose a blanket ban on trade and financial transactions with the sanctioned country. Such sanctions were imposed, for example, on Iraq in 1990, Somalia in 1992, and Haiti in 1994. Comprehensive sanctions usually hit the most vulnerable groups of people in society (the poorest and most disenfranchised) the hardest (Foran 2007, 136; Normand 1999, 28-29). In hindsight, comprehensive sanctions on Iraq and Haiti did not bring about the desired effect: the elite prevailed and black markets flourished (Chesterman, Franck and Malone 2008, 354355). There is even evidence of sanctions strengthening rather than weakening the regime (Reismann and Stevick 2008; Doxey 2000). These comprehensive sanctions have been compared to genocide (Halliday 2000) and a modern holocaust (Fishman 1999, 687) for having deadly effects on the population. Also, sanctions are often criticised for their low effectiveness and a high degree of politicisation (Brzoska 2003, 520). Some compare the sanctions to military power and claim them to be a tactical weapon (Fishman 1999, 690). The failures of sanctions regimes as in the case of Iraq clearly show the importance for the UNSC to be bound by at least minimal HR standards (Fishman 1999, 711). Later, smart or targeted sanctions were developed, which targeted specific sectors of the economy or specific individuals or entities (Genser and Barth 2010, 4). They were designed to avoid detrimental effects on the whole population, instead targeting the ruling elites who were the real decision makers (Cortright and Lopez 2004, 170). These sanctions work by freezing the funds and financial resources of identified individuals and entities that have been enlisted on a UN sanctions list, and by imposing travel bans and taking other necessary measures. There are lists targeting individuals and entities operating in certain countries, for example, Somalia and Eritrea (UNSC Resolutions 751 and 1907), Democratic Republic of Congo (UNSC Resolution 1533), Sudan (UNSC Resolution 1591) and others. Also, there are items lists maintained by the UNSC’s Sanctions Committee, as in the case of the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (UNSC Resolution 1718) and travel bans. Some of the sanctions regimes are aimed also at countering terrorism, among other things. These include the Somalia (UNSC Resolution 751), Sudan (UNSC Resolution 1054), and Hariri (UNSC Resolution 1636) sanctions regimes. However, these lists are aimed at a particular country only. UNSC Resolution 1373 is also aimed at combating terrorism and allows the freezing of funds and assets of persons and entities that are involved in the commission of

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terrorist acts. The scope of this Resolution is particularly broad, because it does not target a particular terrorist organisation. Also, although states are required to freeze the funds and financial assets of persons involved in terrorist activities, the names of the individuals are not placed on a UN sanctions list (Gurulé 2009, 31). The Taliban (UNSC Resolution 1988) and al-Qaida (UNSC Resolutions 1267 and 1989) sanctions regimes, which date back to the 1999 bombing of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, are not confined to a particular region or country, but are global. The UNSC Resolution 1267 regime was initially aimed at the Taliban as the de facto government of Afghanistan, but later evolved to include individuals and entities from all around the world that are deemed to be somehow related to the Taliban or Al-Qaida (Hoerauf 2012, 125216; van de Herik and Shrijver 2008, 333).

Counter-Terrorism Sanctions Regimes Although sanctions have extended the Security Council’s reach to nonstate actors, especially in the case of combating international terrorism, they have been criticised as primarily concerned with the pretence of doing something while in reality avoiding more politically and economically costly, but arguably more effective, alternatives (Stenhammar 2010, 124). There is an opinion that targeted sanctions are even worse than comprehensive ones owing to their global reach: potentially they can impinge the HR of anyone living anywhere in the world (Genser and Barth 2010). However, comprehensive sanctions target the whole of the population for the wrongs of the governing elite, whereas targeted sanctions target the particular person or entity that is threatening peace and security and, if proper checks and balances are implemented, innocent people’s HR are not affected. The practice is that a Sanctions Committee, established by the UNSC and comprising all 15 members of the Security Council, maintains a list of individuals and entities upon whom sanctions are to be imposed. A person is included on the counter-terrorism list upon a request from a state. Although UNSC Resolution 1526 (2004) recommended that states inform persons about the measures to be taken against them, there still is no obligation for the person concerned to be officially informed, either before or after the listing. Finally, UNSC Resolution 1617 (2005) set the requirement for states to submit a statement of case with evidence when requesting an inclusion of an individual or an entity in the list. Delisting is a very complicated and long process. A delisting request can only be successfully granted if all members of the Committee

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unanimously agree to fulfil the request. However, the delisting procedure has evolved over time and arguably developed in light of HR concerns. At first, delisting was only possible through diplomatic protection; thus, an individual had to address the state of their residence or citizenship for it to issue a delisting request to the Committee. In 2006 a focal point system was introduced by UNSC Resolution 1730. This enabled delisting requests from individuals who chose not to address their state of residence or citizenship to be received. Finally, in 2009 the Office of the Ombudsperson was created (UNSC Resolution 1904) and then its mandate was extended in 2011 (UNSC Resolution 1989). The Ombudsperson Office was introduced in order to make the delisting procedure fairer and more transparent and impartial (Prost 2012). Following Resolution 1989, the Ombudsperson receives delisting requests; then it is tasked with gathering information and liaising with concerned parties, and finally it provides a report to the Committee either supporting the delisting or not. Ultimately, the final decision as to what happens with the delisting request lies with the Committee.

UN Security Council’s HR Obligations The issue of how much (if at all) the Security Council is bound by HR obligations is a question of much debate and there are different positions. It is only worth noting that no explicit language commits UNSC to international law under its Chapter VII functions (Schachter 1991, 252). There are four main theories explaining why the UNSC is bound by HR obligations. The first one is concerned with the concept of external obligation: the UN as an organisation has not itself ratified any HR treaties, therefore it is not bound by any of them; however, as an actor in public international law it is bound by customary norms (Klein 2009, 113) or at the very least by jus cogens, that is, core international law norms from which no derogation is permitted (Fishman 1999, 709). The second view is based on the internal concept of obligation and its proponents argue that the UNSC is bound by HR obligations, because HR are explicitly mentioned in the UN Charter and because the Charter is the constitutive document of the organisation, hence the Security Council is bound by it (de Wet 2009, 144-145). The third theory is that the UN should be bound by its members’ obligations (Klein 2009, 113). This position could easily be criticised on the basis that different states are bound by different HR instruments and their obligations differ, not least because of various reservations and derogations (Klein 2009, 113). The last and the newest of the four theories is that the UN is bound by HR

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because of its unilateral declaration stating that UN personnel are bound by HR obligations (Klein 2009, 113). Still others see the UNSC as being bound by more than one source of international law simultaneously: the UN Charter, jus cogens norms, the Universal Declaration of HR, and others (Willis 2011, 744-745). There are, however, suggestions to treat sanctions as economic warfare, thus allowing derogations from HR. Then, as Stenhammar (2010, 128-129) argues, a blacklisted person becomes an enemy alien in relation to all UN members who consequently enjoy a wider discretion to take action against enlisted individuals than would normally be acceptable in times of peace. However, such views clearly remain in a minority.

HR vs Peace and Security The task of the Security Council is to maintain peace and security, and sanctions are imposed to this end. However, despite the positive developments in counter-terrorism sanctions regimes, the enlisting and delisting procedures are not transparent and fair enough, and thus potentially infringe individuals’ HR (Benvenisti 2010). Not only are the effects of being enlisted such that one’s life is put on hold by not being able to travel, use one’s funds, etc., but also no details are provided to the person as to why he/she was enlisted. Hence no evidence that could be contested is made public (Hoerauf 2012, 225). The review mechanisms currently in place fall far short of “fair trial” and due process requirements (Hoerauf 2012, 213). In fact, there is no trial, although the effects of sanctions are punitive (Tostensen and Bull 2002). Even though counterterrorism sanctions are designed to stop the funding of terrorists and are preventative, in reality their effects are more akin to punishment. The UN HR Committee has criticised the absence of checks and balances in the sanctions regime citing lack of counterweights to “exorbitant and oppressive executive action”. One of the major shortcomings of the enlisting and delisting procedure is that the Committee is not a judicial body but a political one and does not need to justify its decisions (Hoerauf 2012, 225). Although there is no clear consensus as to what extent the UNSC is bound by HR (if at all), most commentators agree that in one way or another HR should be observed. Moreover, the Security Council practice under Chapter VII powers has expanded, extending the meaning of security beyond state security. The end of the Cold War has paved the way for more decisive action. Most notably, the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was very important

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in expanding the range of actions that can be taken in maintaining peace and security (Meron 2011). Moreover, in recent years human security has been promoted within the UN in different ways ranging from the development of the notion of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) (Bain 2010), which was first seen in practice in Libya in 2011, to promoting human security in the Millennium Development Goals. Also, Kofi Annan in his report “In Larger Freedom” stressed the importance of ensuring both security and HR. Human security is thus seen as aiming to deliver “a postliberal peace” with an emphasis on “the protection of individuals over national or bloc security” (Martin and Owen 2010, 223), thus parting with the Westphalian paradigm. If human security is ensured, then internal disturbances, insecurity, and threat of armed attacks are less likely, thus diminishing the threat of escalating into an armed conflict or the use of force, which would in turn threaten international peace and security. Also, in ensuring human security, HR cannot be overlooked and are vitally important in the UNSC’s considerations. Hence, meaning of security, also in the context of counter-terrorism sanctions regimes, should be expanded to include not only state security in a strict sense, but human security as well. The move towards human security can be envisaged by looking at the historical developments of sanction regimes, which started with comprehensive sanctions and over time developed to be more humane and HR-compliant by evolving into targeted or smart sanctions. HR issues in counter-terrorism sanctions regimes have been brought up by different courts over time (Genser and Barth 2010, 4). Accordingly, the delisting procedure has developed to address at least some of the criticisms, albeit slowly (Benvenisti 2010, 464). All in all, the development is showing a move towards respecting HR. Therefore, HR cannot be overlooked if security is to be ensured, because the meaning of security is no longer confined to merely state security but also includes human security.

Directions for Development If sanctions regimes fail to adapt and move towards respecting HR, they might serve not as the means of maintaining peace and security, but may bring about quite the opposite effect. First, the current enlisting and delisting procedure is not fair and transparent and proper review mechanisms are lacking (Addis 2011). Secondly, the states might be violating their HR obligations by implementing the UNSC counterterrorism sanctions regime. As stressed in General Comment No 29 of the UN HR Committee, in a democratic society HR and freedoms should be

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respected and derogations should have time restrictions. After all, putting someone’s life on hold by restricting HR and freedoms can hardly be the right means of encouraging democratic development and preventing violence or terrorist attacks. Quite the opposite, such enlisting of people without proper checks and balances might cause insecurity and develop into unrest, even insurgency, which might lead to conflict and escalation in violence. Because the counter-terrorism sanctions lists are not restricted to a particular territory, if violence is triggered by the enlisting, it would definitely spill over the borders of one country. So, if no adequate review mechanism is devised, this potentially could lead to human insecurity and threaten peace. And at the moment, no one can ensure that innocent people are not enlisted if evidence is not provided and the person concerned cannot contest it. As already observed, UNSC counter-terrorism sanctions regimes have improved over the years and have developed towards HR compliance (Hoerauf 2012, 213). However, the al-Qaida and Taliban sanctions lists are the broadest in their scope compared with other sanctions lists and are being criticised for not being focused and targeted enough (van den Herik and Schrijver 2008, 333). Hence, there is a risk of a step backwards towards comprehensive sanctions. Thus, improvements are needed, but the only way to bring about any change is the Security Council itself, which should decide to move ahead with the changes. Outside organisations cannot impose their obligations on the UN or force it to comply.

Conclusion The UNSC’s responsibility to maintain and restore peace is not questioned here. However, the mandate has expanded over the years, especially since 1990. A milestone development was marked by the creation of ad hoc tribunals that penetrated state sovereignty (Cassese 2011, 273), thus the meaning of security has expanded not only to include state security in a strict sense but to encompass human security as well. The UNSC counter-terrorism sanctions regime has improved over the years. An especially notable development towards HR compliance is the evolution of the delisting procedures. The Security Council has not ignored the political pressures and has chosen to move in the right direction. However, states still find themselves in a dilemma: should Security Council obligations according to Article 103 take precedence over their HR obligations or not? There is no clarity as yet. After all, it is a convincing argument that the references to HR in the UN Charter are not incidental. And indeed, HR are instrumental to

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maintaining peace and security, especially owing to the evolving meaning of security, which is moving towards inclusion of human security. The danger of the Security Council’ non-compliance with HR is especially evident when analysing counter-terrorism sanctions regimes, because overlooking HR could prove to be a ticking bomb. If the maintenance of peace and security is not reconciled with HR, and if basic human rights are violated in the name of peace and security, this might have an opposite effect by creating insecurity, which in turn might trigger or enhance unrest.

Bibliography Addis, A. (2011) “Targeted Sanctions as a Counterterrorism Strategy”, Tulane Journal of International and Comparative Law, 19, 187-207. Bain, W. (2010) “Responsibility and Obligation in the ‘Responsibility to Protect’”, Review of International Studies, 36, 25-46. Benvenisti, E. (2010) “Bottom-Up Constitutionalization of International Law: The Targeted Sanctions Regime as a Case Study”, ASIL Proceedings, 104, 462-465. Brzoska, M. (2003) “From Dumb to Smart? Recent Reforms of UN Sanctions”, Global Governance, 9, 519-535. Cassese, A. (2011) “Reflections on International Criminal Justice”, Journal of International Criminal Justice, 9, 271-275. Chesterman, S. F., Thomas, M., and Malone, D. D. (2008) Law and Practice of the United Nations: Documents and Commentary, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cortright, D. and Lopez, G. A. (2004) “Reforming Sanctions”. In Malone, D. M. (ed.) The UN Security Council: From the Cold War to the 21st Century, New York: Lynne Riener Publishers, 167-180. de Wet, E. (2009) “Holding the United Nations Security Council Accountable for Human Rights Violations through Domestic and Regional Courts: A Case of ‘Be Careful what You Wish For?’”. In Farrall, J. and Rubinstein, K. (eds) Sanctions, Accountability and Governance in a Globalised World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 143-168. Doxey, M. P. (2000) “Sanctions through the Looking Glass: The Spectrum of Goals and Achievements”, International Journal, 55, 207-223. Fishman, A. K. (1999) “Between Iraq and a Hard Place: The Use of Economic Sanctions and Threats to International Peace and Security”, Emory International Law Review, 13, 687-728.

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Foran, P. (2009) “Why Human Rights Confuse the Sanctions Debate: Towards a Goal-Sensitive Framework for Evaluating United Nations Security Council Sanctions”, Intercultural Human Rights Law Review, 4, 123-174. Genser, J. and Barth, K. (2010) “When due Process Concerns Become Dangerous: The Security Council”s 1267 Regime and the Need for Reform”, British Columbia International and Comparative Law Review, 33, 1-42. Gurulé, J. (2009) “The Demise of the UN Economic Sanctions Regime to Deprive Terrorists of Funding”, Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, 41, 19-63. Halliday, D. J. (2000) “The Deadly and Illegal Consequences of Economic Sanctions on the People of Iraq”, Brown Journal of World Affairs, 7, 229-234. Hoerauf, D. (2012) “The United Nations Al-Qaida Sanctions regime after UN Resolution 1989: Due Process Still Overdue?”, Temple International & Comparative Law Journal, 26, 213-232. Klein, E. (2009) “International Sanctions from a Human Rights Law Perspective: Some Observations on the Kadi Judgement of the European Court of Justice”, Intercultural Human Rights Law Review, 4, 111-122. Martin, M. and Owen, T. (2010) “The Second Generation of Human Security: Lessons from the UN and EU Experience”, International Affairs, 86, 211-224. McFarlane, N. and Foong Khong, Y. (2006) Human Security and the UN: A Critical History, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Meron, T. (2011) The Making of International Criminal Justice: A View from the Bench, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Normand, R. (1999) “Human Rights Assessment of Sanctions: The Case of Iraq, 1990-1997”. In Genugten van, W. J. M. and Groot de, G. A. (eds) United Nations Sanctions: Effectiveness and Effects, Especially in the Field of Human Rights. A Multidisciplinary Approach, Antwerp: Intersentia, 19-34. Prost, K. (2012) “Fair Process and the Security Council: A Case for the Office of the Ombudsperson”. In Fries de, A. M. S., Samuel, K. L. H., and White, N. D. (eds) Counter-terrorism: International Law and Practice, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 409-424. Reismann, W. M. and Stevick, D. L. (2008) “The Applicability of International Law Standards to United Nations Economic Sanctions Programmes”, European Journal of International Law, 9, 86-141.

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Schachter, O. (1991) “United Nations in the Gulf Conflict”, American Journal of International Law, 85, 252-473. Stenhammar, F. (2010) “United Nations Targeted Sanctions, the International Rule of Law and the European Court of Justice’s Decision in Kadi and al-Barakaat”, Nordic Journal of International Law, 79, 113-140. Tostensen, A. and Bull, B. (2002) “Are Smart Sanctions Feasible?”, World Politics, 54, 373-403. van Bergeijk, P. A. G. (1999) “Economic Sanctions: Why do they Succeed; Why do they Fail?”. In Genugten van, W. J. M. and Groot de, G. A. (eds) United Nations Sanctions: Effectiveness and Effects, Especially in the Field of Human Rights. A Multidisciplinary Approach, Antwerp: Intersentia, 97-111. van den Herik, L. and Shrijver, N. (2008) “Eroding the Primacy of the UN System of Collective Security: Judgement of the European Court of Justice in the Cases of Kadi and Al Barakaat”, International Organizations Law Review, 5, 329-338. Willis, G. L. (2011) “Security Council Targeted Sanctions, due Process and the 1267 Ombudsperson”, Georgetown Journal of International Law, 42, 673-746.

UN Documents UN General Assembly (2005) World Summit Outcome: resolution / adopted by the General Assembly, 24 October, UN Doc A/RES/60/1. UN General Assembly (2005) In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All. Report of the Secretary-General, 21 March, UN Doc A/59/2005. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2010) The Millennium Development Goals Report, 15 June. United Nations Human Rights Committee (2001) General Comment No 29, States of Emergency, 31 August, UN Doc. CCPR/C/21/Rev.1 /Add.1

CHAPTER SEVEN CHANGING APPROACHES TO POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION: THE POLITICS OF CRISIS AND THE CRISIS OF POLITICS ELISA RANDAZZO UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER

Abstract The notion of post-conflict reconstruction remains a contentious one. The source of contention is the nature of the resulting outcomes, often questionable, unaligned and unsuccessful, as well as the equally questionable means employed, at times deemed illiberal, undemocratic, hegemonic and forceful. The paper explores current approaches to statebuilding and peace-building, particularly in reference to the assumption that over time the practice of liberal post-conflict engagement has opted for a radical shift in order to overcome the fallacies of past approaches. From the challenges to the process of rebuilding a state and its society after war, change is advocated to arise, as a phoenix, from the ashes of critique and crisis, bearing the fruits of promise and development for both the practice of state-building and the normative project of rebuilding “good” and peaceful states after a war. The crisis is thus believed to be resolved with a shift, a turn for the new. The paper seeks to question whether this is a substantially noticeable change, or merely a rhetorical one.

Introduction The paper explores the concept of crisis and the responses to this formulated within the liberal post-conflict engagement framework. The starting point of state-building as a means to address the root causes of

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conflicts is a basic belief in the existence of a crisis due to “inability” to rule and handle the autonomy that comes with the formal trappings of sovereign statehood. This is evident particularly in the post-cold war context, as liberal state-building became salient in identifying and addressing perceived sources of instability and war. The end of the Cold War is significant as the absence of great power patronage was considered to have triggered a wave of state-failure allegedly responsible for the rise in the number of intra-state conflicts. Failed states, exhibiting high levels of poverty, insecurity, lack of public services, ethnic tensions and wars (Carment 2003, 414; Feil 2002, 97) had in common a perceived inability to fit the picture of the good state. This assessment of failure derived from the belief that unbridled autonomy had left behind a trail of shell-like states, autonomous by law, albeit lacking the internal capacity for rule and authority necessary for the exercise of de facto sovereignty (Jackson 1990). This problematisation of autonomy was accompanied by a call for the international community to become involved in the development of newly independent, unstable, post-conflict, and transition states. This was done, initially, through the extension of substantive economic help, particularly aid and foreign investment, as part of the neo-liberal belief in the assumption that economic well-being would trickle down to all levels of the warring society, thus decreasing social unrest and, with it, the likelihood of recurrence of war (Kang 2006; Rotberg 2004, 39). As the projects of liberalisation began exhibiting consistent fallacies in their implementation and did not obtain the level of success expected, liberal state-building endeavoured to adopt a more hands-on approach in order to address the structural limitations of the governance systems in the states in question. The interventions initiated in the second half of the 1990s, including East Timor, Kosovo and Bosnia, whilst utilising a different method, privileging institutional reform before liberalisation projects, continued to be predicated on a fundamentally liberal understanding of crisis of governance and of the sources of instability and conflict. The paper seeks to explore the manner in which crisis is conceptualised within the liberal state-building framework in order to assess whether different approaches to post-conflict reconstruction bear considerable conceptual differences in motivations and means, or whether these shifting eras remain fundamentally attached to a problematic and unchanged problematisation of conflict territories. The paper begins with an exploration of the problematique of statebuilding as peace-building, in order to indicate the scholarship’s consensual vision of the liberal approach to post-conflict management. The second section discusses the crisis of state-building, namely, the

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negative outcomes that have been subject to extensive critique. The section provides a starting point to identify the liberal framing of solutions to the crisis. This will be engaged with in the third section, where localisation and good governance are discussed as the core of the shifting and “new” approach to post-war reconstruction in the mid-2000s. The fourth section will assess whether shifting approaches to state-building have been conducive to substantially different outcomes and recovered the project of state-building in itself from the crisis by which it has so far been engulfed. The paper finally argues that the notion of “shifting” eras of state-building has resulted in a deep crisis of politics exemplified by a loss of local political space, and by faltering accountability and legitimacy of the state-builders, whose position, privileges and power in the hierarchy of state-building remains untouched.

The Politics: Problematising Instability, Insecurity and Underdevelopment The track record of structural reforms and extensive liberalisations initiated in many countries undermined the initial hope in the ability of these strategies to bear the expected fruits of stability, recovery, peace and wealth. Evidence from Tajikistan, Sierra Leone, Haiti and other countries that had been subject to fast liberalisations in the early-to-mid-1990s demonstrated a lack of structural foundations that could transform the existence of a market economy into a stable socio-political reality (see Castañeda 2009, 236-7; Boijcic-Dzelilovic 2009, 202; Salih 2009, 134). The lack of results in the short term led to the reconsideration of the approach; in particular, wide scepticism was evidenced towards simple aid and poverty relief strategies (Von Einsiedel 2005, 26; Chesterman 2004, 202) as a means to address the structural faults that were deemed to be directly responsible for societal grievances, and thus conflict and statefailure. As a consequence, foreign involvement with post-conflict and unstable states in the mid-1990s took a different turn by attempting to rearrange the priorities of the project. If liberalisations had turned out to be aggravating the problem, the answer now seemed to lie in the vehicle for the spreading of economic well-being conducive to peaceful societies. Post-conflict engagement, thus, took a turn towards institutionalisation, beginning with the dismantling of institutions believed to be corrupted by and conducive to conflict. The ties to neo-liberal economic strategies, however, were never truly severed. The reconstruction of the institutions of the state was, in fact, believed to be essential to the promotion of a functioning market economy. Transforming institutions was also believed

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to infuse neo-liberal theory with the long-term adjustments required for sustainable development (North 1990). Institutionalisation evidenced a preference for democratic institutions, as democracy was believed to be the only sustainable form of governance capable of ensuring liberty, freedom and equality at a level which would ensure the healthy competition as the basis of economic liberalism (North 1990, 109). By the mid-to-late 1990s, it became customary for projects of liberalisation to overlap with social-political projects of transitions to a political system of liberal democracy (Tadjbakhsh 2009, 637). As democracy itself was believed to require radical institutional change to function correctly (Bueno de Mesquita 2006, 632; Ghani et al. 2005, 9), state-building and peace-building became central to the interventionist paradigm, with state-builders acquiring even more hands-on roles as seen in Bosnia and Kosovo. Institutionalisation was, however, not without its problems. It is precisely because of the wave of criticism that followed the extensive projects of democratisation in the Balkans first, and then in Afghanistan and Iraq, that state-building and peace-building found themselves in crisis once more. It is to this crisis and the consequent attempt at a solution that we now turn.

The Crisis: Critique and Self-Critique Critiques of liberal post-conflict strategies – both peace-building and state-building – are not lacking in the scholarship on the subject, yet it is important to take note of the role of critique as an instrument for the introduction of a “new” approach to state-building. In this, liberal statebuilding is particularly skilled. Michel Foucault noted how liberalism qualifies itself by rejecting the previous forms of government it tries to set itself apart from and the practices it opposed and wishes to limit (Foucault cited by Dean 1999, 49). Liberalism is thus intricately linked to the notion of critique; it uses it instrumentally by addressing it towards some of its own practices that have attracted negative feedback. An example of this is the acknowledgment, in the midst of a monumental state-building mission in Bosnia and the beginning of a new one in Kosovo in 1999, of the need to avoid extensive authority structures which may attract accusations of neo-colonialism (Wilde 2007, 42). In Kosovo, in fact, the state-builders noted the importance of not repeating Bosnia’s hydra-headed structure (Chesterman 2004, 132). One UN official was reported as saying, “We looked at the civilian structure in Bosnia and said whatever happens, don’t do that again in Kosovo” (O’Neill 2002, 37). Most recently, critiques of

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the neo-colonial behaviour of interveners have been met with a move towards local empowerment and capacity building. Further points of critique related to the by-products of the exercise of extensive authority. Bickerton, for instance, suggested that external statebuilding results in the limitation of the local population’s own political creativity and space (Bickerton 2007, 96). The marginalisation of the local political sphere was also considered to be attributable to the lack of accountability qualifying the work of the international actors in statebuilding in the mid-1990s to early 2000s. In Bosnia, Chandler argues, international administrators often underlined their position of authority as being above and beyond politics, and thus being unaccountable (Chandler 2007, 73). Consultation was also an issue, as Chopra discusses in the case of the international administration in East Timor, whereby during the planning phase of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) the local population was not meaningfully consulted; Chopra claims that “the idea of international accountability has not matured democratically, for it has not been subjected downwards to the will of a local population as a constituency” (Chopra 2007, 154). A problem of accountability is also identifiable, according to Caplan, in the extension of immunity to international personnel working in state-building missions, subject only to the jurisdiction of the organisation they serve under (Caplan 2007, 115); such immunity has come under attack after allegations of human rights abuses, as in the case of the accusations of rape, assault and torture brought against Canadian peacekeepers in Somalia in 1992 (Razack 2000, 127), or the case of international peacekeepers’ involvement in sex-trafficking in Bosnia (United States Department of State 2001). Whilst accepting the importance of the role of the international community’s intrusive policies to “get the ball rolling” in Bosnia, Donais also suggests that this has, to an extent, exacerbated the challenges to democracy-building in Bosnia, particularly as the elected officials became far more accountable to the international community than to Bosnian citizens (Donais 2012, 82). In Kosovo, similarly, Chesterman notes how the paradox of authority and accountability placed the international community in the position to dictate the terms of what was perceived as a “state of emergency” year after year, and thus to exercise executive powers such as the power of detention, whilst being unwilling to articulate this de facto policy of authority for fear of public resistance to the mission (Chesterman 2004, 151). Most of these critiques indicated the need to move beyond a top-down approach to post-conflict territories, towards strategies more attuned to the local conditions for peace and to the traditional local structures that needed

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to be a fundamental part of any locally grounded state-building effort. Localisation, thus, became a central issue of debate, offered as a potential solution to the fallacies of previous approaches.

The Solution: Localisation and the Hybrid As the problems associated with state-building in the late 1990s and early 2000s were perceived as having to do mostly with local resistance and problems with accountability and legitimacy, as discussed above, state-building and peace-building in the mid-2000s took a turn for the local (Freeman 2006, 174). The suggested solution was to design more inclusionary practices to include local actors in policy-making and implementation, as in the cases of the handing over of power to local police in East Timor, the rising numbers of local prosecutors and judges in justice systems in Kosovo (EULEX n.d.; O’Neill 2002, 82), and the inclusion of traditionally local elements in the political system such as in the case of the Loya Jirga in Afghanistan (Norchi 2004, 117; MacGinty 2008, 154-6). “Localisation” as a strategy, thus, serves a two-fold purpose: to reduce resistance and opposition from local actors, and to infuse the externally led project with a sense of dynamism and foresight. The first purpose is met by presenting localisation as the missing link between externally-led approaches and legitimacy. John Pender calls this a shift from coercion to partnership, characterised by a re-negotiation of the relationship between aid-recipient and aid-donor-states, and a reconceptualisation of the notion of development, now tied not only to economic growth but to governance (Pender 2007, 114). The second purpose is met through the construction of a narrative of development and improvement, possible through the framing of the changing approaches to state-building as being part of a linear and compartmentalised project of state-building, where the creation of a new paradigm would be hailed as a genuine departure from the mistakes of the past. The sequencing of state-building, peace-building and external intervention in post-conflict territories thus confers a sense of logical and causal relation to the developmental potentials of the “new” approaches. What the different “shifts” have in common is precisely this sense of evolution and belief in the redeeming capabilities of the new methods. The basic notion of the centrality of the liberal democratic transition is, however, not questioned; instead it is presented as essential and necessary for the success of the mission (Samuels 2006, 2; Kang 2006, 228; Van Roermund 2002, 85).

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The Outcome: Back to the Crisis Critiquing the logic of inherent development and evolution present in understandings of state-building and peace-building as perennially improving, should not be taken as a rejection of the possibility of change itself. Rather, the purpose of the critique advanced in this paper is to suggest that uncritically accepting the claim of liberal state-building’s ability to change and redress the mistakes of the past may result in a loss of responsibility and accountability. Deepening accountability gaps create extensive crises of politics in local contexts subject to peace and statebuilding. The crisis identified here is one consistently different from the one traditionally put forward by liberal state-builders and peace-builders (i.e. the crisis of autonomy); it is suggested that the newest approach to statebuilding, whilst professing itself as necessary to resolving the inconsistencies of the past, also inherently promotes the continuation of highly interventionist practices, albeit under different guises. Moreover, the role of the state-builders and peace-builders, whilst portrayed as being one of “facilitation” or “support”, remains highly interventionist and in control over the trajectory and manner of implementation of the transition from war to peace and from non-liberal systems to liberal democracies. Evidence of this is the retaining, despite considerable downsizing, of executive powers in the mandates of international organs such as the UN in Bosnia, and the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), European Union Rule of Law Mission (EULEX) and, until recently, the International Civilian Office (ICO) in Kosovo. The state-builders, by representing the liberal system they seek to promote, generate practices that aim to regulate and manipulate the existing governance system (which is the system to be changed, as it is deemed to be fundamentally problematic or conflict-prone) by designing missions that may differ in areas of expertise (from military, to judiciary, to legislative, to bureaucratic, and from support to monitoring, to integration in regional organisations, to overseeing reforms, to drafting legislation, etc.). This may be operationalised by fundamentally different methods (for instance, by avoiding neo-trusteeships, which used to be popular after 1945, all the way into the 1980s, a practice which is now considered obsolete and unnecessary), but yet, it is a practice that retains a particularly fixed relationship between the state-builders and the state-built, and which, therefore, often results in similarly problematic outcomes (i.e. whilst trusteeships no longer exist formally, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor, for a time, presented all the de facto trappings of trusteeship systems). Whilst

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“training locals” may seem unproblematic as a way to reorientate the governance style of a territory, the practice of “training” reproduces inequality, in that the external state-builders are not training the locals on an equal basis, as the locals are both, simultaneously, the subject of the empowerment and the subjects to be governed and regulated (Dean 1999, 22). The liberal principles promoted through state-building remain unchanged. Rather, they assume a stronger normative stance by virtue of their benevolent claim of redressing the mistakes of the past. Often, despite being promoted through fundamentally interventionist practices, they remain legitimate on the basis of the fact that they have been instituted with good intentions (Bain 2007, 170). These norms are promoted with the aim of embedding them in the recipient society to design the future of the problematic territory as a distinctively liberal and regulated, orderly and stable democracy. And whilst it is possible to evidence a consensual view that the transition to democracy is an inherently political matter, the process of becoming a democracy as driven from outside, despite its “new” and more locally attuned approach, remains driven by the logic of external and international politics. This is what causes the crisis of politics, as local politics remains the problematic source of instability and conflict. Simon Chesterman encapsulates this continued problematisation in his argument that, whilst local consultation is important, “… final authority remains with the international presence and it is misleading to suggest otherwise. If the local population had the military and economic wherewithal to provide for their security and economic development then a transitional administration would not have been created”. (Chesterman 2003, 143) In Bosnia, Chandler also notes, in an attempt to institutionalise border integrity, the international community created and enforced a law that prohibited the voting of any amendment to the borders to avoid partition or annexation of the territory. As Chandler notes, however, there is a consistent difference between criminalising the act of changing the country’s borders, and “making it an offence to even challenge or debate this” (Chandler 1999, 121-2). When the exercise of politics is the problem, and external state-building is reaffirmed as the solution, it is possible to argue that the real crisis does not necessarily stem from the original conflict that necessitated intervention, but from the unwillingness of the international state-builders to change their attitudes. Addressing this crisis of politics would allow the international community to look at the postconflict society not as a fixed source of conflict, but rather to consider local politics as a potential solution. Yet, it is in-built in the notion of

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liberal state-building that a transition to liberal democracy necessarily means putting the international agenda (be it human rights, market economy, multilateral diplomacy or nuclear non-proliferation) first. The promotion of liberal governance, even in its recent forms of “good governance”, capacity-building and local ownership, necessarily still implies the very same problematisation of autonomy and sovereignty as in the early 1990s, albeit presenting a solution that is re-packaged as “partnership” and not “temporary authority” as in past instances (Chandler 2009, 21).

Conclusion Post-conflict reconstruction as a paradigm of progress and development depends upon a notion of evolution, tied both to a critique of itself and its past experiences, as well as upon a faith in its inherent ability to identify the crisis and produce a solution. The latest shift towards hybridisation and local ownership represents the embodiment of this belief in the progressive nature of post-conflict engagement, based on different methods of operationalisation. However, failure to acknowledge certain underlying characteristics of state-building and peace-building may result in the fundamental denial of recurrent themes such as the hierarchical nature of the relationship between the state-builders and the state-built. Furthermore, whilst state-building’s initial aim is that of providing a solution to what the liberal international community recognises as a crisis of politics (failing states, ethnic conflicts, poverty and underdevelopment), it is precisely a crisis of politics that is generated as a result of the interventionist practices generated by the contemporary turn of state-building and peace-building towards the “new” method of local empowerment. What was once a traditionally coercive and problematic expression of external involvement in post-conflict sovereign territories now promises to overcome the crisis of accountability and legitimacy. Yet, coercion and domination do not disappear; behind the liberal paradigm, what is left to examine is not so much the crisis that external intervention claims to address, but the crisis it denies to be responsible for. Underneath the new paradigm’s notions of “partnership” and “empowerment” lies a deep and undisturbed sea of political crisis, a fundamental problematisation of local politics, unmoved by the rhetorical attempts of state-builders and peace-builders to reach out to local actors, and hidden by the promise of change.

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Samuels, K. (2006) “Post-Conflict Peace-Building and ConstitutionMaking”, Chicago Journal of International Law, 6 (2), 1-20. Tadjbakhsh, S. (2009) “Conflicted Outcomes and Values: (Neo) Liberal Peace in Central Asia and Afghanistan”, International Peacekeeping, 16 (5), 635-651. United Nations (2011) Resolution 1969. S/Res/1969. UNSC (2011) Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste, UNSC S/2011/64. United States Department of State (2001) “Trafficking in Women in Bosnia – Recent Events”, Information Memorandum S/S No. 200020567. United States Department of State. van Roermund, B. (2002) “Seizing Sovereignty: The Law of its Image”, Social Legal Studies, 11 (3), 395-403. von Einsiedel, S. (2005) “Policy Responses to State Failure”. In Chesterman, S. Ignatieff, M., and Thakur, R. (eds) Making States Work: State Failure and the Crisis of Governance, New York: United Nations University Press. Wilde, R. (2007) “Colonialism Redux? Territorial Administration by International Organizations, Colonial Echoes and the Legitimacy of the ‘International’”. In Hehir, A. and Robinson, N. (eds) State-Building: Theory and Practice, Oxford: Routledge.

CHAPTER EIGHT MINORITIES AND POLITICS IN INDONESIA: TOWARDS INCLUSIVE JUSTICE MAX REGUS TILBURG UNIVERSITY, THE NETHERLANDS

Abstract This paper will examine a critical situation that is experienced by religious minorities in Indonesia in the era of democratic transition after the fall of the totalitarian regime of President Suharto, who was in power between 1966 and 1998. This paper will attempt to answer several interconnected questions searching for inclusive justice for religious minorities in Indonesia. First, what social and political changes have come about after the reform era? Second, what is the contemporary status of religious minorities in Indonesia? Third, is the tyranny of the majority an important aspect that is affecting the position of religious minorities in Indonesia? Fourth, how do the state, civil society, and NGOs contribute to building a system of justice inclusive of religious minorities?

Indonesia: Post-1998 Indonesia is still facing numerous challenges and problems in implementing the principles of democracy, with the public largely holding a view that democracy in Indonesia is operating in a dangerous way (Davidson 2009). This perception is based upon their everyday life experiences that are not only associated with massive corruption involving democratically elected political institutions, but are also drawn upon the limited capacity of the democratic state to protect its minority citizens (CRCS 2009). In fact, much of the success story and positive achievements of democratisation after the end of Suharto’s authoritarian regime in Indonesia

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is a deception. Religious minorities, in particular, are experiencing outbreaks of violence and various restrictions imposed by radical groups and often supported by the local authorities and the national government. To combat this situation and get involved in a democratic process, they need a strong framework of protection and political support (Newman 2013). Indonesia has made significant progress in social, political, and economic aspects in the post-1998 era. This democratic transition promised many societal-political changes for the Indonesian people. The development of the multi-party system and devolution of powers at the regional level – alongside the establishment of civil liberties and freedom of press – are the most impressive manifestations of the social and political change in Indonesia that paint Indonesia as the democratic success story of the decade. A multi-party system offers a greater opportunity for people to participate in politics providing them with more opportunities for political self-expression. It also enables people to control and to evaluate public policies that are designed and implemented by the government. It gives a better chance for fairer political participation and wider representation. As a result, people increase their potential to influence policies to accommodate people’s interests and needs (Freeman and Tiburzi 2012). The enhancement of civil liberties and the freedom of press demonstrates a positive output of the post-1998 political reform. Conversely, this provides people with a variety of media for political selfexpression. Other important improvements have occurred in such areas as the freedom of movement, the freedom of assembly, and the freedom of speech that are growing rapidly (CIFP 2012). The centralisation of political system was the main trait of the Suharto regime, which enhanced inequalities in wealth and prosperity between different regions, which was a serious problem in the New Order era. The decentralisation of political development has become one of the main political outputs of the post-Suharto regime. As a result, local authorities have been given a greater autonomy and ability to manage their respective areas in accordance with specific conditions and circumstances. Altogether Indonesia’s transition to democracy has contributed to the developments in social welfare and civil liberties and freedoms and improved the political participation of all citizens, especially stimulating political engagement of the poor. Democratic transition now offers an opportunity for the wider public to have a say regarding the challenges facing Indonesia. However, the success of one aspect of Indonesia’s political development and transition to democracy – the contemporary status and treatment of religious minorities in Indonesia – is still uncertain.

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The Crying Minorities The oppression of religious minorities in Indonesia is caused by many factors. For instance, the capacity of religious minority groups to exercise their right for political self-expression is rather limited (Setara Institute 2011). Furthermore, the violence against religious minority groups is a widespread phenomenon in the country despite its democratic transition (Setara Institute 2012). Several (majority) groups habitually discriminate against religious minority groups. For instance, the Islamic Defenders’ Front (FPI) is one of the main organisations that is associated with violence against non-Muslim minorities in public spaces. FPI has a political intention to install and enforce the Islamic Sharia law across Indonesia. In doing so, they are guided by the Muslim principle amar amar nahi munkar, i.e. “moving towards good and away from evil”. FPI mobilises a collective (often violent) action against any sinful activity, which is often targeted at nonMuslim, religious minority groups. Differences in faith and religious beliefs are the reason for discrimination and oppression of religious minority groups (Wilson 2012). Such treatment is not limited to reducing the rights of religious groups to build and own any property, including places of worship, but threatens their very existence (Amnesty International 2011). Religious intolerance and discrimination on the grounds of belief that problematizes “majority-minority” relations in Indonesia is partly caused by the position of the national and local authorities. Local authorities, in particular, impose regulations that threaten the existence of religious minority groups and are partly responsible for the increasing violence against these groups, which is a reflection on a long-term trend of discrimination and oppression of these groups (Jakarta Post 2012). While some religious minorities are under attack from other groups, political institutions appear to be powerless in challenging the violence against them despite the fact that the protection of these groups is clearly within the remit of the national and local authorities, especially in the time of change of such a complex and divided society. Sadly, the democratic transition in Indonesia has been marked by the increasing violence and discrimination against religious minorities in recent years nonetheless. Such intolerance and discrimination has not only been manifested in verbal disagreements over different religious beliefs among various religious groups, but has also been expressed through violence against religious minority groups. There have been different restrictions introduced on the right of religious minorities to establish places of worship.

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This situation is deteriorating as the national and local authorities are failing to protect social and political rights of religious minorities in Indonesia. The increasing number of attacks demonstrates their inability to effectively protect religious minorities. Furthermore, they do not appear to be concerned about the legal protection of religious minorities and adopt a neutral position even when the violence against religious minorities is escalating. Conversely, there is little political awareness regarding the need to protect religious minorities and combat the violence against them. As a result, a number of religious groups have suffered from brutal attacks, detentions, and torture from other religious groups without receiving any state-guaranteed protection (Latimer 2013). The discrimination of religious minority groups is driven by the intolerance that is based on the imbalanced relations between majority and minority religious groups. It leads to the escalation of violence against and growing oppression of minority groups.

The Tyranny of the Majority The dominance of the majority religious groups is one of the main drivers of discrimination and violence against religious minorities. The majority groups dominate at local and national politics, and have judicial implications for the citizenship regime for religious minorities, for instance. Furthermore, the dominance of the majority group cements the supremacy of one group of the population over another, which challenges the principles of democracy and enhances the discrimination of religious minority groups (Salih 2000). A democracy that applies a “winner takes it all” principle threatens the presence and freedoms of religious minorities and their ability to exercise their political influence. Such democracy can no longer be considered fair to or considerate of the interests and needs of religious minorities. Rather, the majority will claim the benefits of the political process outputs and determine the structure of political opportunities in the country. The dominance of the majority religious groups reflects on the mechanism of political control in the democratic process. The majority groups dictate the political process and can cut off minority groups’ access to political processes and policy-making. Religious minorities are, therefore, excluded from the political process and the benefits of democratic transformation. The shifting of power within the democratic state also tends to support the majority by focusing on their interests at the local and national levels. In fact, these groups determine the outputs of the political process and are capable of cutting off religious minority groups

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from formal politics, namely from participating in policy-making and from receiving legal provisions and protection from the state. Such tyranny of the majority is not only of concern for minority groups, but is a challenge to the democratic system in general. A democratic political system should enhance and improve the quality of government and life for the entire country, rather than just accommodate the interests of the majority of the population. It is supposed to develop a framework that can provide protection for minority groups, including religious minorities. The dominance of the majority over minority religious groups, on the other hand, implies that the society is divided into those who initiate (or passively observe) the violence against religious minorities and those who are on the receiving end of these actions. The society is, therefore, losing empathy for religious minority groups and prompting a strong association between Indonesia’s recent democratic successes and the dominance of the majority, i.e. normalising the discrimination against minority groups. There are two aspects that are important in relation to democracy, politics and the status of religious minorities in Indonesia. First, the current electoral system tends to favour the majority religious groups who strongly influence the political process and policy-making. On the other hand, it marginalises religious minority groups posing serious challenges to fair representation of these groups. Second, political decentralisation plays a crucial role in determining the status and treatment of religious minorities. There is devolution of power from the national to the local level. The application of Sharia law has been a consequence of this change given that non-Muslim, religious minorities have been excluded from policymaking and the establishment of local regulatory systems. Nonetheless, ethnic minorities hope to control local resources for contextualisation of economic prosperity, as the main reason for devolution is to enhance equality between different regions and ensure the economic growth in poor areas (Duncan 2007). However, the most notable issue in the context of political devolution in Indonesia is an increase of violence against religious minority communities at the local level. The local authorities apply regulations, according to which the majority religious group has the social and political opportunity to influence the political. Although the local authorities have an obligation to manage social diversity, they are largely guided by the interests of the majority, while religious minority communities remain politically excluded. In this situation, religious minority communities have to fight to increase their political participation and receive a fair share of the benefits

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of the recent democratic transition and economic development. It is, therefore, worrying that the violence experienced by religious minority communities at the local level has been justified by the majority’s domination in those localities. Due to the local authorities being reluctant to increase the presence of religious minorities in politics, religious minority communities are unable to be actively involved in the political process (Rahman 2012).

Towards Inclusive Justice The violence against religious minorities is also related to a wider concern over the ability of the democratic state to ensure harmonious coexistence of different ethno-religious groups. Democratic states seem to have lost their ability to provide a comfortable social life for all citizens, under the pressure of the majority of their population. This highlights the severity of the challenge faced by both minority groups and democratic governments that are urged to ensure that strong protection is in place to guarantee equal rights and opportunities for all citizens. Talking about Indonesia in the context of current politics, it is important to stress the importance of Brenner’s argument (1998). He suggests that Indonesia has an excellent opportunity to build social prosperity. However, such prosperity would not be possible unless there is a system of political protection and social appreciation for religious minorities. The degree to which such a system has been installed is the most important aspect of the analysis of the status and treatment of religious minorities in Indonesia (Okin in Fisk 1993). The analysis is based on Rawls’ concept of justice (1971) that allows to interrogate if religious minorities in Indonesia are enjoying a fair and inclusive system of justice. A decade ago, when Indonesia started a wide range of political reforms following the collapse of the New Order (Suharto) regime, Cohen (1998) asserted that democracy guarantees all citizens freedom of political life and protection against violence, oppression, and poverty. Political efficacy is also linked to the issue of inclusive justice (Rothstein 2009). Thus, democracy should strongly promote interests of and protect religious minority groups regardless of the strength of their electoral performance. Rather, religious minority groups should be protected based on their democratic rights (Sen 2009). Inclusive justice is also associated with the wider structure of political opportunities for religious minorities that would enable them to contribute to the political process (Merle 2013).

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The framework of inclusive justice, in which religious minorities enjoy equal political opportunities and benefits of living in a democracy, can be built by triangulating several aspects. First, religious minorities have to voice their concerns constantly. By doing so, they will have an opportunity to get support from political institutions and activists within and outside the country. Second, a democratic state should develop and persistently implement the system of protection for religious minorities. Strong political protection can ensure political inclusion on minority groups. Third, civil society and NGOs should play a more active role in encouraging religious minorities to fully contribute to the political process and policy-making. The combination of these three ways to encourage minority groups’ political inclusion will determine whether the process of building inclusive justice is achieved. Inclusive justice requires three main aspects: the democratic state has to protect religious minorities, it must reduce the domination of the majority, and civil society must actively participate in supporting the existence of religious minorities. This argument will highlight one important point about the position that can be taken by the state against discrimination, violence, and exclusion of minority groups (Crouch 2012). The state and non-state actors, therefore, have to pursue this cause and build the case for protecting religious minorities and increasing their political engagement. This will encourage state actors to develop a more powerful system of justice and protection for religious minority groups. It could also be a main part of legal protection. In constructing strong protection for religious minority groups, the state has to provide the opportunity for non-state actors to be involved in the process. Coffey (2004) mentions at least four main elements that are essential for building such a system and ensuring the political protection for all citizens. First, such protection must be reflected in public policies that target issues of concern for minority groups. Second, the protection of citizenship of religious minority groups has to be ensured to protect individual, fundamental social and political rights, including their right to hold the government accountable. Third, equality must become one of the main principles of citizenship, whereby each citizen has a right for protection from the state. Fourth, the state has to exercise affirmative action to implement inclusive public policy and ensure fair representation of minority groups. These four dimensions will provide a constructive momentum in adjusting public policy for the needs of religious minorities and ensuring the accountability of the political system, as well as protecting religious

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minorities from discrimination in political and public space (Sarsfield and Echegaray 2006). There are two important aspects that must be taken into account by the state to create a strong system of protection for religious minorities. The first aspect that must be addressed by the state and by political actors is the political commitment in respecting the presence and rights of religious minorities. They have to demonstrate significant interest in exercising the rights of religious minorities, including how political and social rights are respected. The second aspect is concerned with the political responsibility of the government and its maturity that is essential for addressing the issues surrounding the treatment and status of religious minority groups. Although democratic achievements have been widely celebrated in Indonesia, the increasing discrimination of and violence against religious minorities suggest that the country needs more social solidarity. Without such strong solidarity among people, social groups, and the state, there will be no awareness, political will and resources to make the Indonesian democracy fair and inclusive.

Closing Comments Today, Indonesia is entering a historic era. The destruction of human rights is a real everyday experience for minority groups. The government has not shown effective political protection for minorities. The right of religious minorities in Indonesia to be protected by the state against violence is one of the key elements that describe inclusive justice. Inclusive justice is related to the practical level where the democratic state can guarantee the rights of religious minorities to enjoy the benefits of living in an equal and just democratic system. This concept is associated with the political and legal protection for religious minorities guaranteed and implemented by the state at the local and national levels.

Bibliography Brenner, R. (1998) “Land of Opportunity”, Forbes. CRCS (2009) “Annual Report on Religious Life in Indonesia”, accessed at www.crcs.ugm.ac.id on 10 January 2013. Coffey, A. (2005) Reconceptualizing Social Policy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cohen, M. (1998) “Indonesia: The Turning Point”, Far Eastern Economic Review.

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CIFP (2013) “Indicator Descriptions for Foreign Policy by country”, accessed at www4.carleton.ca/.../gdp_indicator_descriptions on 15 February 2013. Crouch, M. A. (2012) “Law and Religion in Indonesia: The Constitutional Court and the Blasphemy Law”, Asian Journal of Comparative Law, 7 (1). Davidson, J. S. (2009) “Dilemmas of Democratic Consolidation in Indonesia”, The Pacific Review, 22 (3), 293-310. Duncan, C. R. (2007) “Mixed Outcomes: The Impact of Regional Autonomy and Decentralization on Indigenous Ethnic Minorities in Indonesia”, Development and Change, 38 (4), 711 – 733. Fisk, M. (ed.) (1993) Justice: Key Concepts in Critical Theory, New Jersey: Humanitarian Press. Freeman, A. and Tiburzi, R. (2012) “Progress and Caution: Indonesia’s Democracy”, Asian Affairs: An American Review, 39 (3), 131-156. HRW (2010) “Support Justice to end atrocities”, France - Africa Summit. International Amnesty (2011) “Indonesia: Ahmadiyya killing verdicts will not stem discrimination”, accessed at https://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/indonesia-ahmadiyyakillings-verdicts-will-not-stem-discrimination-2011-07-28 on 15 February 2013. Merle, J.C. (2013) Spheres of Global Justice. New York: Springer Science and Business. Minority Rights Groups (2011) “Press release”, accessed at http://www.minorityrights.org/10071/press-releases/religiousintolerance-now-driving-persecution-of-acrossthe-new-worldreport.html on 10 May 2013. Newman, N. (2011) “Indonesia: Telling Lies”, accessed at http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/winter2011/indonesia-telling-lies on 08 May 2013. Jakarta Post (2012) “Shia Refugees Live in Uncertainty”, The Jakarta Post, November 26. Rahman, I. (2012) “Jeopardizing Transition: Freedom of Worship, the Power of Local Government, and Democratization in Indonesia”, accessed at http://www.janp.sfc.keio.ac.jp/JAHSS/2012/papers/3-A2.pdf on 30 June 2013. Rawls, J. (1971) A Theory of Justice, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Rothstein, B. (2009) “Creating Political Legitimacy: Electoral Democracy versus Quality of the Government”, American Behavioral Scientist, 53 (3), 311-330.

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Salih, M. (2000) “Majoritarian Tyranny in a World of Minorities”, Inaugural Address at the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands, September, 21, 2000. Sarsfield, R. and Fabián, E. (2006) “Opening the Black Box. How Satisfaction with Democracy and Its Perceived Efficacy Affect Regime Preference in Latin America”, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 18 (2), 153-73. Sen, A. (2009) The Idea of Justice, London: Penguin Books. Setara Institute (2011) “Report on Freedom of Religion and Belief”, accessed at http://www.setara-institute.org/en/content/report-freedomreligion-and-belief-2011-0 on 11 February 2013. UN-OHCHR, (2012) “Promotion and Protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, Including the right to development, Written statement submitted by the Asian Legal Resource Centre, a non-governmental organization in general consultative status”, accessed at www.ohchr.org on 12 March 2013. Wilson, I. D. (2012) “Continuity and Change: The Changing Contours of Organized Violence in Post-New Order Indonesia”, Critical Asian Studies, 38 (2), 265-297.

CHAPTER NINE THE ROLE OF CHINESE POPULAR NATIONALISM OVER THE DIAOYU/SENKAKU DISPUTE OANA BURCU UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM

Abstract With anti-Japanese popular sentiments on the rise in China, the question addressed in this article is, “What impact does popular nationalism have on the Beijing government’s ability to make foreign policy towards Japan in the Diaoyu/Senkaku case?” Popular nationalism exposes powerful nationalist sentiments, which are partly rooted in historical and cultural narratives, and partly in official propaganda. Driven by an agenda different from that of the government, popular nationalism proves to be challenging for Beijing. Three types of actors embody popular nationalism: organised non-governmental actors, unorganised netizens, and boycotters. By evaluating their actions in relation to the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, this article concludes that popular nationalism played a role in forming China’s policy towards Japan.

Introduction With an upsurge in anti-Japanese sentiment in China, the main research question that this article addresses is, “What impact does popular nationalism have on the Beijing government’s ability to make foreign policy towards Japan in the Diaoyu/Senkaku case?” In order to answer the question this article has to examine how popular nationalism manifests itself in China. First, it starts by discussing what nationalism is in general and in the Chinese context in particular, by drawing upon the instrumentalist

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and ethno-symbolist approaches to nationalism. This addresses a gap raised by Carlson (2009) in relation to the limited use of the broader literature when discussing Chinese nationalism. Second, it further discusses what Chinese “popular” nationalism means, how it is organised and how it manifests itself. Third, it examines the process of China’s foreign policy decision making in relation to Diaoyu/Senkaku islands disputes in 2010 and 2012, and demonstrates how popular nationalism affected the process. The article argues that popular nationalism influenced the way the government formulated and implemented its foreign policy, in the sense that individual and collective non-state actors, who uphold various nationalist views, played a role in forming China’s foreign policy towards Japan. This article focuses on three types of actors who embody popular nationalism, namely organised non-governmental actors, unorganised netizens, and boycotters, and it demonstrates the ways in which these actors affected Chinese government foreign policy.

Approaches to Understanding Nationalism One of the key debates in the literature on nationalism is between instrumentalists and ethno-symbolists. Instrumentalism focuses on the agential powers of intellectuals and elites who reinvent tradition and hence manipulate nationalism through language, religion, collective memories, public symbols and art for their own ends (Gellner 1983; Hobsbawn 1995; Anderson 1991). Intellectuals and elites do this because nationalism helps them maintain or strengthen their status and legitimacy, and gain other political and economic interests. This instrumental nationalism, which strives to make “culture and polity congruent” (Gellner 1983, 43), has been symbolically called by Anderson (1991) “an imagined political community” because nationalism exists only in the mind of the members of a community. Over the years these myths, symbols and ceremonies have subtly been incorporated into daily life with the aim of constantly reinforcing nationalism and they are now part of what Billig (1995) calls “banal nationalism”. Overall, in the modern state, elite manipulation is facilitated through education and media in ensuring popular compliance. For ethno-symbolists, nations have an “ethnie”, meaning “named units of population with common ancestry myths and historical memories, elements of shared culture, some link with a historic territory and some measure of solidarity” (Smith 1995, 57). Ethnies’ feelings of belonging are powerful and durable, especially at the collective level. This explains mass dynamic responses of nationalism to shrines, traditions and flags. Hutchinson elaborates the concept of cultural nationalism which is

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characterised by people who are united by their passions and their common goal of defence and reactivation of the historical community; for them the nation is a source of “unique charisma, or creative energy expressed in its origin myths, history, culture and landscape” (1999, 399). These theoretical approaches set the scene for the discussion of Chinese nationalism with a focus on the construction of Chinese identity in relation to Japan.

Chinese Nationalism in Relation to Japan’s Narrative Instrumental nationalism stresses the agential power of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) elites and the control they exercise over the nationalist discourse. This is prevalent through censorship, control of information and limited access to print and online publications. Also, the use of myths, memories, values, traditions and symbols have been the tools the CCP have used to serve their own ends – namely, to gain legitimacy and continue ruling unelected. Chinese history, as rewritten by the Communists, abounds with myths which led some scholars to believe that rewriting China’s history was “the most massive attempt at ideological re-education in human history” (Harrison 1972, 784). One of the well-known myths relevant in the construction of the Party’s legitimacy is the Long March, portrayed as a fight of resistance against the Japanese invaders, and then later in 1937 in Nanjing, Japan’s defeat by the Communists, which actually could not have happened without the Nationalists wiping out a great majority of Japanese troops. Seen as a hero of national liberation and unification, Mao brought to the CCP the clout of legitimacy that it still enjoys today. Collective memories are also revived every year through commemorations. This is the case in the Mukden incident of 18 September 1931, when a plot was engineered by Japanese military commanders as a pretext to allow their troops to enter and conquer Manchuria. Remembrance is significantly instrumentalised and history is never put to rest: “Nationwide, sirens wailed in more than 100 cities around the country on Sunday to observe the 80th anniversary of Japan’s invasion of China” (Wu and Liu 2011). Considerable attention was also given to reinstating public symbols after 1990 through programmes that rehabilitated and constructed museums, memory halls and other cultural and historical sites. In parallel, the Ministry of Broadcasting and the Ministry of Culture launched a joint art programme of “one hundred books” and “one hundred films”. One way or another, all the above have reinforced the anti-Japanese discourse.

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While this instrumental view of Chinese nationalism is true, it has unjustly dominated Western literature. By stressing that Chinese nationalism is orchestrated by the Party for its own ends, for consolidating its legitimacy or for gaining leverage in international negotiations, nationalists’ feelings are downplayed. Anti-Japanese protests, for instance, are simply reduced to instrumentally mobilised mass emotions which can be easily controlled by the government. This point requires further elaboration and a reading of Smith (1995) is merited for stressing the importance of the feelings of the masses and not only of the agency of elites, and for questioning the extent to which tradition can be reinvented. In the Chinese case, people’s feelings are rooted in China’s “glorious past” and in a “century of humiliation”. Chinese identity is based on “5000 years” of historical heritage dominated by universalism of Chinese culture where China saw itself situated at the centre of civilisations. At the turn of the 20th century under the Western powers and Japanese imperial forces, victimhood and national humiliation became a rich source of material for reconstructing national identity. Today “the rightful place of China on the world stage” informs Chinese foreign policy in both elite and popular discussions (Callahan 2004, 215). The feelings of humiliation are not just a communist or elitist invention. Chiang-Kai Shek wrote in his journal, every day for the next two decades after 1918 when China was forced to make concessions to Japan in Shandong, “wiping out national humiliation” (Wang 2013). The desire for respect and pride, stimulated by its distinctive civilisation and culture, became a major feature of contemporary Chinese national identity. Popular nationalist feelings are partly rooted in official propaganda, but more importantly they are inspired by cultural historical greatness and invasion, by pride and humiliation, by the theme of the victor and victim. Popular nationalism can challenge the legitimacy of the Party when their agendas differ and can constrain its policies (Zhang 2007, 24; He 2007, 18). When the government cannot hold under control its own deployment of nationalism, which is constantly stimulated by its “cultural and historical foundation” (Wang 2013), manifestations such as May the 4th and Tiananmen protests occur. Popular nationalism is a grassroots orientated movement and it is discussed in this article particularly in relation to those actively expressing nationalist feelings. The emergence of popular nationalism came with the pluralisation and commercialisation of media, the widespread use of the Internet and the development of a more vibrant society. The government is often compelled to accommodate popular nationalists’ requests because the Party’s legitimacy heavily relies on nationalism.

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How Can Nationalism Influence China’s Foreign Policy? Several studies discuss the relationship between nationalism and China’s foreign policy (Hughes 2008; Gries 2004; Downs and Saunders 1998; Deng and Wang 2005) but there is little agreement among them. Scholars remarked on the institutionalisation and pluralisation of Chinese foreign policy and the fractured chain of foreign policy authority (Jakobson and Knox 2010, 48). Not only state actors but also non-state actors such as academics, bureaucrats, the media and public opinion directly or indirectly contribute to the process of foreign policy making (Bhalla 2005; Glaser and Medeiros 2007; Fewsmith and Rosen 2001). Among this type of actors, this article maintains that popular nationalism expressed through activists, netizens and boycotters plays an increasingly important role in the making of China’s foreign policy towards the East China Sea dispute with Japan. Waltz (1993, 66) writes, “when a country receives less attention and respect and gets its way less often than it feels it should, internal inhibitions about becoming a great power are likely to turn into public criticism of the government for not taking its proper place in the world. Pride knows no nationality”. Wu further notes that “internally, China’s failure to exert more visible influence on world affairs has constantly frustrated the general public” (2001, 294). When “a golden culture” is correlated with “historical humiliation” and the perception of “territorial sovereignty” infringement by Japan arises, Chinese popular nationalism exacerbates and diverts the government’s policy into a more assertive request for reoccupying their “deserved role in the world” and bringing the era of “bullying” to an end. Several instances in which the Chinese government was forced into taking an assertive stance due to popular nationalist pressure are worth mentioning. In 1998 with the collapse of Suharto’s regime in Indonesia, the Chinese communities fell victim to violence and it was only when this news went viral online that the Beijing government took a more active stance (Hughes 2000, 122). In 1999 the CCP took a firmer stance against the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade when a serious outburst of nationalism occurred across China; the government was forced into rejecting the apologies of the US officials with the risk of alienating the US (Hao and Su 2005, 36). When considering the context exposed above and by taking into account the Sino-Japanese historical animosities, popular nationalism has the best chance of exercising an even stronger influence over China’s Japan foreign policy, as discussed next.

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The conflict over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands started in 1971, but only in the last decade did it trigger vast demonstrations which led to an escalation in Sino-Japanese tensions. The major anti-Japanese demonstrations in China in 2010 and 2012 should not be perceived as purely elite orchestrated because “to argue that Beijing used public sentiment as a diplomatic tactic, one needs to prove that the Chinese government was a unitary actor and impervious to public opinion” (He 2007, 12) and this would be a Sisyphean task. The anti-Japanese narrative in China, as discussed previously, has deep historical roots and is central both in defining Chinese identity and in explaining China’s Japan policy. The 2010 anti-Japanese protests started at the beginning of September after a Chinese fishing trawler collided with a Japanese Coast Guard vessel close to the Diaoyu islands; this consequently led to the arrest of the Chinese crew in what both Japan and China perceived as being an illegal breach of their sovereignty. On 18 September, the annual commemoration of the 1931 Mukden incident which led to the Japanese invasion of NorthEast China re-ignited protests across the country. A more active-reactive snowball effect was evident throughout the events of 2012. In April, Tokyo Municipality announced its intention of purchasing the disputed islands from their private owner. In July the Japanese PM expressed interest on behalf of his government in buying these islands, so that they avoid falling into the hands of Japanese nationalists. In August events were precipitated by the landing and subsequent arrest of several Chinese activists on the islands and so antiJapanese protests erupted. On 11 September, when Japan signed the purchase of the islands, protests peaked again in over 180 cities across China. Starting the next day China took more concrete actions towards Japan. Initially it submitted at the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) the baselines of the territorial sea of Diaoyu islands whereas it had previously abandoned such action. A week later China deployed two People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy frigates to the waters surrounding the islands, this being the first military deployment in the area. In the weeks following, the Chinese government published the first White Paper outlining China’s claim to the islands. As ethno-symbolists claim, historical memories form a shared culture within a group. The significance of the anti-Japanese discourse in relation to the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands lies in the fact that “maintaining” and “protecting” the sovereignty of the islands is pertinent to China’s historical memories. Sovereignty was partly built throughout the years of historical humiliation. Of course this also served well Party propaganda which saw it as an easy way to legitimise their rule by depicting themselves as the only

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rightful victors and protectors of the Chinese nation. This anti-Japan sentiment was further intensified over the years also through acts of “indirect aggression”, most notably the change of textbooks to minimise Japanese aggression during WWII and visits of several Japanese Prime Ministers to Yasukuni Shrine. Moreover, Billig (1995, 75) points out that for nationalists “it is not [only] the loss of territory tout court which provokes the special pain, but the loss of territory which is situated within the imagined homeland”. Hence, irrespective of the judicial side of this dispute, what “ultimately matters is not what is but what people believe is” (Connor 1994, xi), and the Chinese are convinced that they have historical jurisdiction over the islands. When all this is seen through the historical lens of victimisation and humiliation it is not surprising that that the small archipelago of the Diaoyu islands triggered such a national outrage. Popular nationalism has become an increasingly important factor in considering China’s foreign policy making in the last decade, but in order to understand why, one needs to ask “How does popular nationalism manifest itself?” The first category of actors considered is organised non-governmental actors such as activist organisations. Reilly (2009) specifically looks at the role of popular movements and civil society actors in shaping China’s Japan policy. The “redress movement” carried out a campaign for compensation for the abandoned Japanese chemical weapons in August 2003, which attracted considerable popular support and ultimately pressured the Chinese government into taking a firmer international stance towards Japan on this matter. In 2004 Chinese activists who landed on the islands forced the government to assert China’s sovereignty and “derailed” China’s peaceful rise (Reilly 2013, 11). Similarly, the activists who landed on Diaoyu in 2012 in reaction to Japanese “nationalisation” of the island forced the Chinese government to take a more aggressive stance than it would have preferred. Popular nationalism is also expressed by the second type of actors, namely, unorganised netizens. In the absence of an official space for public debate, their voice would have remained unheard had it not been for the Internet which provided a platform for them to express their opinions. Cyber-nationalism “not only challenges the state monopoly over domestic nationalist discursive production, but also opens up new possibilities for performing common people’s ‘public discursive right’” (Liu 2006, 144). This is similar to what Simon Shen (2007, 12) calls “politics of public diversity”, defined as “the unorganized voice of a group of people not aimed at lobbying the government” but more at expressing opinions indirectly and informally which ultimately can mould the nationalist

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discourse. In other words, facilitated by technology and the Internet “the party is slowly losing its hegemony over Chinese nationalism” (Gries 2004, 126) while popular nationalism gains ground. The Internet also played a significant role in organising, mobilising and disseminating information, particularly in the 2010 and 2012 antiJapanese protests. For example, in 2010 China took a back seat on the issue of Japan bidding for a seat on the UN Security Council. This governmental approach changed when an online petition opposing Japan’s bid gathered 30 million signatures from Chinese netizens and was followed up by anti-Japanese street protests. In September 2012 the Internet again played a key role as it was the first medium which spread the news regarding the existence of protests, while the state media initially blocked them out. The government wants to keep international negotiations out of popular sight for fear of unleashing protests which risk causing domestic instability and impact its foreign policy. Chien-Peng Chung’s study concluded that when away from public scrutiny and pressure, international agreements on matters of territorial sovereignty tend to be more successful (2007, 62). The government prefers to conceal international deals which risk provoking domestic uproar. The State Council Information Office itself admitted that “anti-Japanese and anti-American rhetoric in China’s domestic media was aggravating the country’s foreign relations” (Shirk, 2011, 238). More precisely, in 2006, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan Division Deputy Director Xue Jian also recognised in a Japan-China East China Sea Talk, which appears as a classified report on Wikileaks, that “both sides agreed at the end of the talks that it would be beneficial if information on the Chinese proposal stayed out of the press. Blaming the Japanese side for leaks and pointing out that China had kept the details of the previously proposed Japanese plan out of the press, Xue said the media reports left both sides little choice but to take strong public stances and reject the other’s proposal, thus making it appear that the talks failed” (2006). This stands as clear proof that popular nationalism is not only feared, but taken into account when making foreign policy. The third category of actors of popular nationalism considered in this article is the individuals who boycotted Japanese goods alongside more organised business owners who encouraged such boycotts. Boycotts made popular nationalist voices heard because of thier impact on China–Japan trade. In 2012 annual trade between China and Japan dropped by 3.3 per cent and exports from Japan to China dropped by 10.4 per cent (Japan External Trade Organisation 2013). The Japanese auto industry was hit the

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hardest and the US replaced China as Japan’s largest exporter. “Nationalism around the issue has resulted in lower demand for Japanese products in China and even Chinese firms sourcing products from Korean suppliers” (Bloomberg 2013). The liberal theory according to which the bigger the trade between countries, the less likely they are to conflict becomes more controversial when pitted against a huge wave of popular mobilisation. Boycotting Japanese goods may not be a sustainable strategy – and it surely is not beneficial for the Chinese economy either – but it was a means of making heard popular nationalists’ voice and strength of feeling over China’s foreign policy. In the light of the anti-Japanese events of 2010 and 2012, activists, netizens and boycotters not only contributed to the nationalist discourse traditionally placed under the hegemony of the Party, but it also contributed to the making of China’s Japan policy in the East China Sea.

Conclusion Over the last decade the pluralisation of China’s foreign policy became more evident through the actions of individual and collective nongovernmental actors such as activists, netizens and boycotters. These actors became significantly active in relation to the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands and they participated in the making of China’s Japan foreign policy. Despite the fact that the Party has managed to maintain control over the nationalist discourse through coercive and persuasive tactics, popular nationalism evolved and indirectly shaped the nationalist discourse. Hence, domestically, the influence of nationalism in China’s foreign policy leads to a wider discussion over the role that civil society could play in Chinese politics. Non-settlement of affairs over the disputed islands does not necessarily mean that the conflict will escalate into a war but that the tensions remain heightened. China showed a preference for shelving the dispute for decades but when a wave of protests arose, it was forced to bring the Diaoyu/Senkaku issue to the fore of its agenda and take a more aggressive stance. Frequent changes in China’s policy leads to threat perceptions and causes concern for its neighbours. If a more open space for debate is not permitted and Chinese nationalism is further allowed to assert itself, Chinese nationalism will have broader implications for regional stability and for China’s change of the status quo in international relations.

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Bibliography Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, London: Verso. Bhalla, M. (2005) “Domestic roots of china’s foreign policy and security policy”, International studies, 42 (3), 205-225. Billig, M. (1995) Banal nationalism, London: Sage. Bloomberg. (2013) “China-Japan Dispute Takes Rising Toll on Top Asian Economies”, accessed at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0108/china-japan-dispute-takes-rising-toll-of-asia-s-top-economies.html on 20 February 2014. Callahan, A. W. (2004) “National Insecurities: Humiliation, Salvation, and Chinese Nationalism”, Alternatives, 29, 199-218. Carlson, A. (2009) “A flawed perspective: the limitations inherent within the study of Chinese nationalism”, Nations and Nationalism, 15 (1), 20-35. Chung, C.-P. (2007) “Resolving China’s Island Disputes: A Two-Level Game Analysis”, Journal of Chinese Political Science, 12, 49-70. Connor, W. (1994) Ethnonationalism: the quest for understanding. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Deng, Y. and Wang, F.-L. (2005) China Rising: Power and Motivation in Chinese Foreign Policy, Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. Downs, S. E. and Saunders, P. S. (1998) “Legitimacy and the Limits of Nationalism: China and the Diaoyu Islands”, International Security, 23 (3), 114-146. Fewsmith, J. and Rosen, S. (2001) “The domestic context of Chinese foreign policy: does public opinion matter?”.. In Lampton, M. D. (ed.) The making of Chinese foreign and security policy in the era of reform 1978-2000. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Gellner, E. (1983) Nations and nationalism, Oxford: Blackwell. Gries, P. H. (2004) China’s new nationalism: pride, politics, and diplomacy, Berkeley: University of California Press. Glaser, B. and Medeiros, S. E. (2007) “The changing ecology of foreign policy-making in China - the ascension and demise of the theory of peaceful rise”, China Quarterly, 190, 291-310. Hao, Y., and Lin S. (2005) China’s foreign policy making: societal force and Chinese American policy. Aldershot: Ashgate. Harrison, P. J. (1972) The Long March to Power: A Political History of the Chinese Communist Party, 1921-1972, London: Praeger.

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Wang, Z. (2008) “National Humiliation, History Education, and The Politics of Historical Memory: Patriotic Education Campaign in China”, International Studies Quarterly, 52 (4), 783-806. He, Y. (2007) “Chinese nationalism and the emerging Sino-Japanese conflict”, Journal of contemporary China, 15 (50), 1-24. Hobsbawm,J. E. (1995) The age of Extremes, London: Abacus. Hughes, R. C. (2008) “Japan in the politics of Chinese leadership legitimacy: recent developments in historical perspective”, Japan Forum, 20 (2), 245-266. —. (2000) “Nationalism in Chinese cyberspace”, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 13 (2), 195-209. Hutchinson, J. (1999) “Re-Interpreting Cultural Nationalism”, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 45 (3), 392-409. Hutchinson, J. and Smith, A. D. (1994) Nationalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jakobson, L. and Knox, D. (2010) “New foreign policy actors in China”, SIPRI Policy Paper No. 26. Japan External Trade Organisation (2013) “JETRO survey: Analysis of Japan-China Trade in 2012 and outlook for 2013”, accessed at http://www.jetro.go.jp/en/news/releases/20130219452-news on 08 September 2013. Liu, S.-D. (2006) “China’s popular nationalism on the internet. Report on the 2005 anti-Japan network struggles 1”, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 7, 144-155. Reilly, J. (2009) “The Rebirth of Minjian Waijiao: China’s Popular Diplomacy toward Japan”, Japan Policy Research Institute Working Paper No. 115, accessed at www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/ wp115.html on 10 October 2013. Reilly, J. (2013) “A Wave to Worry About? Public opinion, foreign policy and China’s anti-Japan protests”, Journal of Contemporary China. Sakamoto, S. R. (2007) “‘Will you go to war? Or will you stop being Japanese?’: nationalism and history in Kobayashi Yoshinori’s”. In Heazle, M. and Knight, N. (eds) China-Japan relations in the twentyfirst century: creating a future past?, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 7593. Shen, S. (2007) Redefining nationalism in modern China: Sino-American relations and the emergence of Chinese public opinion in the 21st century, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Shirk, L. S. (2011) Changing media, changing China, New York: Oxford University Press,. Smith, D. A. (1995) Nations and nationalism in a global era, Cambridge:

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Polity Press. Waltz, N. K. (1993) “The Emerging Structure of International Politics” International Security. 18 (2), 44. Wang, Z. (2012) “Understanding Chinese Nationalism: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations”, accessed at http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/understanding-chinese-nationalismhistorical-memory-chinese-politics-and-foreign-relations on 10 January 2013. Wikileaks (2006) “Cables Beijing”, accessed at https://www.wikileaks. org/plusd/cables/06BEIJING4560_a.html on 11 October 2013. Wu, X. (2004) “Four Contradictions Constraining China’s Foreign Policy Behavior”. In Zhao, S. (ed.) Chinese foreign policy: pragmatism and strategic behavior, Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 58-66. Wu,Y. and Ce, L. (2011) “Bells toll to mark Japanese invasion”, China Daily, accessed at http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-09/19/ content_13728941.htm on 13 January 2013. Zhang, J. (2007) “The influence of Chinese nationalism on Sino-Japanese relations”. In Heazle, M. and Knight, N. (eds) China-Japan relations in the twenty-first century: creating a future past?, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 15-35.

CHAPTER TEN FROM THE SHADOWS OF SILENCE AND SHAME TO THE LIGHT OF VOICE AND DIGNITY: TRANSNATIONAL ACTIVISM AND THE CONTESTED NATURE OF THE HISTORICAL MEMORY OF THE “COMFORT WOMEN” IN JAPAN SACHIYO TSUKAMOTO UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE, AUSTRALIA

Abstract The fragile state of collective memory toward “comfort women” in Japan is attributable to the fact that collective memory is not the result of organic reflection; but the result of transnational activism facilitated by an active collaboration between international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) and domestic NGOs that has empowered the victims to break their silence. This transnational process has generated fierce contestation between state narratives which nurture a national sense of victim consciousness and the collective memory of moral activists who are attempting to restore dignity to the victim. Currently, a new state narrative of pre-1945 Japan constructed by new historical revisionists such as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has emerged and challenged the official state interpretation of its past. My research seeks to investigate the relationship between war memory and identity construction in Japan. This paper will explore the role and impact of transnational activism in foregrounding the historical memory of “comfort women” in Japan, thereby clarifying the interaction between the two conflicting aspects of the “comfort women” issue: the universal issue

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of human rights and the cultural particularism of the Japanese social fabric woven by the symbol emperor system.

Introduction This paper seeks to investigate the relationship between memory and history relating to “comfort women” within Japanese society by focusing on the interplay between transnational activism, the Korean “comfort women” victims and the victimising state, Japan. The overarching research question is “How did transnational feminist activism contribute to creating a war memory of ‘comfort women’ in Japan?” With the analysis of both the dominating and subjugated discourses of “comfort women”, this paper will examine the conditions under which Japanese collective memory has been created. The application of oral history theory (Abrams 2010; Perks and Alister (eds.) 1998) is also relevant to my analysis in the construction of collective memory to the extent that it employs a methodological stance by “following the actors”.

Who are the “Comfort Women”? “Comfort women” refers to young women and girls that were provided to the Japanese armed forces during war-time between 1931 (The Manchurian Incident) and 1945 (Japan’s surrender to the Allied Forces) timeframe. The then Japanese government explained that the aim of the “comfort women” system was to prevent Japanese armies from mass raping local citizens, including Chinese, Korean and other nationalities. Nevertheless, the real intention for the establishment of the “comfort women” system for the Japanese military lay in the protection of Japanese soldiers from coming into contact with unlicensed prostitutes thus preventing them from contracting sexually transmitted diseases. During the war, the Japanese government and army organized a wide scale trafficking system in collaboration with the police and the agents of occupied countries, including Korea, China, Malaysia and Indonesia. The “comfort women” system entailed girls and young women from poor families who were being “recruited” by deception or by force. It is estimated that approximately 200,000 young women and girls were “comfort women,” around 80 percent of them being Koreans. The disproportionate percentage of Korean females reflects the historical unequal relationship between Japan and Korea. In 1905, Japan’s process of the colonisation of Korea commenced after eliminating Russia, its rival for political control over Korean territory, in the Russo-Japanese War. By

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1910, Japan’s full-scale colonization of Korea was completed. By 1939, the Japanese government imposed a gendered system of labour throughout Korean society, where Korean men and women were systematically mobilized as manual labourers and “comfort women,” respectively. Between 1930 and 1945, as occupations by Japanese Imperial Army expanded its control throughout East Asia , the Japanese army established “comfort stations” in such occupied areas in which soldiers were “sexually serviced” by the “comfort women.” Within the “comfort women” system there was a diversity of nationalities which comprised “comfort women.” These nationalities included women not only from Japan, but also from Northeast and Southeast Asia as well as women from Russia and the Netherlands (Yoshimi 2000, 173-6). In this regard, the nationalities of the “comfort women” represented the spatiality of Japanese control throughout the region. When the war ended, the Japanese army abandoned the “comfort women” system and dismantled “comfort stations”. In many cases, “comfort stations” were burned or bombed by retreating Japanese military forces with little regard for their inhabitants which were still physically inside the affected “comfort stations.” Many of “comfort women” who were “fortunate” enough to escape the attacks with their lives, ultimately perished as a result of their long, hard journey back home. The “comfort station” survivors (hereafter referred to as the survivors) kept silent in the midst of the fear of social stigmatisation (Hicks 1994; Yoshimi 1996, 2000; Tanaka 2002).

Silence Breaking Forty-six years later, on 14th August 1991, Kim Hak-Soon, a sixtyeight-year-old Korean woman, broke the nearly half-a-century silence and provided personal testimony in a South Korean press conference that the Japanese Army had forced her to serve as a “comfort woman” during the Second World War. It was a monumental juncture in which Hak-Soon exposed the contested terrain of war-memory in Japanese society. It was also a moment when a voiceless victim transformed herself into a courageous activist. The deep physical, and psychological traumas through which the survivors went, prevented them from coming forward. The silence breaking was facilitated by feminist activists who empowered the survivors by listening to them, taking care of them on a day-to-day basis, encouraging them to restore their voices, and providing them the appropriate forums through which their voices were heard throughout Japanese society. All in all, the history of “comfort women” and feminist

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activism is a women’s history situated in East Asia, in which victims and activists from the victimized country and the victimizing country, worked together in cooperation so as to create an alternative history of the suppressed; that is, women.

The Relationship between Memory and Identity History is the platform on which individual persons, groups, even nations create their identities. Therefore, as many collective memories as the number of groups, exist in contestation, seeking for an elevation to “a place in history” (Sturkin 1997 in Olick and Robbins 1998, 126). “The quest for memory is the search for one’s history”, and one’s identity (Nora 1989). As a result, this competition generates a hierarchy of memory with dominant (or official) memory being privileged while “counter-memory” can be marginalised (Olick and Robbins 1998). The following phrase provided by Kerwin Lee Klein (2000, 136), describes the arrival of a new era in memory studies, “The new “materialization” of memory thus grounds the elevation of memory to the status of a historical agent, and we enter a new age in which archives remember and statues forget” While personal memory on the past, needs social contact with a person sharing the experiences to avoid fading away, collective memory on historical events such as war, is maintained and empowered by “social institutions” such as “commemoration and festive occasions” (Halbwachs 1992). As remembering the past is crucial in creating individual identity, historical memory of the society is critical in developing national identity. In the case where the official historical narratives reflecting the present state’s material aspirations are challenged by conflicting narratives; the state imposes its narratives on the nation by using a variety of political devices including commemoration or education. This sets the stage for “historical realism” as defined by Berger (2012, 2-4), where the state manipulates historical memory based on such state’s materialism rather than social justice. Orwell’s (1984, 32) dystopian account in his book 1984 precisely portraits the politics of historical memory in his passage: “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past”.

State Narratives and Symbol Emperor System It was the combination of the United States Occupation and the then Japanese government who took full control of a defeated Japan’s past and present after the end of the Second World War. This process of controlling

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Japanese collective memory was furthered by the introduction and enforcement of the symbol emperor system. While the post Second World War Imperial Court and Japanese government created a new Imperial narrative, whereby Hirohito became “the symbol of the state and the unity of the people” (The Constitution of Japan 1947). General MacArthur protected the emperor once respected as the divine ruler, from an indictment for his war responsibilities during the wartime (Dower 1999). On 15 August 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s loss of the war directly to his subjects through a speech delivered via a radio broadcast. While his speech did not allude to defeat or Japan’s war crimes; he mourned for the Japanese people who were brutally killed as a result of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He insisted on pointing out not only the significance of halting “the extermination of our race [Japanese], but also to the destruction of all human civilization,” in an aim to “open the way for a great peace for thousands of generations to come” (Bix 2000, 526-30). Thus, Hirohito’s script endowed him with the contested role of being the “deliverer of peace” (Kersten 2003, 19) as the national symbol of war victims. The 15th of August, 1945 witnessed a historical juncture when Hirohito’s postwar controversial transformation revised the prewar state narrative of his absolute authority, thus manipulating a vast array of individual Japanese memories. It was through this deliberate manipulation of memory that Emperor Hirohito also became the peace symbol of the nation before 1945. By consolidating a diversity of public memories into the state new narrative, the Japanese and United States governments collaborated in establishing this unbroken historical narrative between the prewar and the postwar period. This new narrative of the peace emperor had shielded Hirohito from being denigrated as a war criminal until his death in 1989. Thus, as will be shown in this paper, Japanese historical consciousness with respect to Hirohito’s war responsibility exerts a tremendous influence on the remembrance of the “comfort women.” Kersten (2003, 16) argues that in August 1945, a “positive fiction of post-war democracy” was created in Japan. The “positive fiction of postwar democracy,” suggests that Japan’s postwar democracy was distorted by a fictional narrative of the symbol emperor. “History was revised before it was ‘history’, when it was still ‘present’” (Kersten 2003, 16). Thus, the new official narrative of continuity of the symbol emperor system across the Second World War was established; this memoryrevision engine operates as a political device to enhance the officially revised narrative perpetuated by successive Japanese governments.

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Takahashi (2001, 108), one of the most prominent Japanese philosophers specializing in war responsibility, explains that it is “a community of victimhood” that has connected the whole nation to Emperor Hirohito since the end of the war. Takahashi argues that the whole Japanese society shared the same war victim consciousness with Emperor Hirohito who became to be regarded as “a victim of circumstance” (Takahashi 2001, 108). Bix’s (2000, 618) strident criticism was directed to the Japanese public as a complicit “with him [Hirohito] in waging war.” As Bix argues, “the nation as a whole came to feel that because the emperor had not been held responsible, neither should they” (2000, 618).

Emergence of contested historical memory regarding “comfort women” From an ethical and moral point of view, Japan’s “comfort women” system is one of the most notorious war crimes in Japanese history along with the Rape of Nanking in 1937/8; therefore, the sudden emergence of the collective memory of “comfort women” generated by the 1991 Korean silence breaker, created shockwaves throughout Japanese society (Yoshimi 2000, 49-51). 1991 saw another moment when the intact state narrative of victimhood, was challenged by a contested representation of the wartime past, whereby Japan became perceived not a “victim” but as a perpetrator. With the emergence of this counter-hegemonic narrative of the war time Japan, conditions were created by which more active cooperation between Japanese and non-Japanese NGOs has effectively lobbied the United Nations, European Union, and their respective state parliaments in pursuit of Japan’s official apology and payment of reparations to the survivors. Such transnational efforts produced several successes. Among the achievements of these transnational efforts was the 1993 Kǀno Statement, which has been widely known as a formal admission and apology to the survivors.

New historical revisionists’ narrative of pre-1945 Japan However, in December 2012, with a landslide victory of Liberal Democratic Party propelling an ultra-nationalist, Abe Shinzo back in the position of Japanese Prime Minister, a new state narrative of pre-1945 Japan has emerged and challenged the official state interpretation of its past. This new historical revisionism (Kersten 1999, 191-203) seeks elimination of “masochistic history” based on the negative side of Japan’s

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war time history, and the cultivation of “patriotic values” at school. Abe has rejected the counter narrative which identifies Japan as a perpetrator and the Japan’s conviction of International Military War Tribunal for the Far East (1946 to 1948) as “victors’ justice.” The new historical revisionists have created a discourse that views the Second World War as a war liberating Asia from the Western imperialism. Such changes in language and practices can be demonstrated in the re-characterisation of the Second World War as the Great East Asian War. Therefore, as a result of the new historical revisionism, the issue of the “comfort women,” as being one of the most unacceptable dark histories for Japan, has been under fierce attack.

Conclusion Since the emergence of collective memory of “comfort women” in Japan, there has always been contestation between the state narrative and the “comfort women” narrative. This conflict facilitates reconstruction of the individual self in the present society as well as the reproduction of national identity in connection to the past. Currently, the emergence of the new historical revisionists’ narrative at the political centre is challenging those existent remembrances of the past. While marginalising the survivors’ memory, this new narrative is pursuing its elevation to that of being the “official narrative.” Therefore, while previous efforts between Japanese civil society and transnational activists culminated in the historic adoption of the 1993 Kono Statement, it remains incumbent that these same forces reassert themselves in order to challenge historical revisionists, whereby retaining this interplay between history and memory with regards to “comfort woman.”

Bibliography Abrams, L. (2010) Oral History Theory USA, Canada: Routledge. Berger, U. T. (2012) War, Guilt, and World Politics after World War II, New York: Cambridge University Press. Bix, P. H. (2000) Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Dower, W. J. (1999) Embracing Defeat: Japan is the Wake of World War II, New York: W.W. Norton and Company/the New Press. Halbwachs, M. (1992) On Collective Memory, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

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Hicks, G. (1994) The Comfort Women, New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Hook, D. G. and McCormack, G. (2001) Japan’s Contested Constitution: Documents and Analysis, London: Routledge. Kersten, R. (2003) “Revisionism, Reaction and the ‘Symbol Emperor’”, Japan Forum, 15 (1), 15-31. —. (1999) “Neo-liberalism and the ‘Liberal School of History’”, Japan Forum, 11 (2), 191-203. Klein, K. L. (2000) “On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse”, Representations, Special Issue: Grounds for Remembering, 69, 127-150. Olick, J. K. and Robbins, J. (1998) “From ‘Collective Memory’ to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices”, Annual Review of Sociology, 24, 105-140. Orwell, G. (1949) 1984, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. Perks, R. and Alister, T. (eds) (1998) The Oral History Reader: Second Edition, New York: Routledge. Takahashi, T. (2001) “Bakushinchi ni tatsu tennǀ” [The Emperor standing at Ground Zero], Gendai Shisǀ, 16, 3-14. Tanaka, Y. (2002) Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation, New York: Routledge. Yoshimi, Y. (2000) .Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II, New York: Columbia University Press. Yoshimi, Y. (1996). Jugun Ianfu [Military Comfort Women], Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

PART III: THEORISING POLITICAL CRISIS

CHAPTER ELEVEN INCLUSIVENESS, ADVERSARIALISM AND PERFECTIONISM: EXPLORING THE THREE APPROACHES TO AGONISTIC DEMOCRACY MARIE PAXTON UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM

Abstract Exploring the work of William Connolly, James Tully, Chantal Mouffe and David Owen, this paper categorises agonistic democrats into three different types: the “inclusive”, the “adversarial” and the “perfectionist”. It argues that each of these employs agonistic themes of public contestation, contingency and necessary interdependency to different ends, considering the limitations of each.

An Introduction to Agonistic Democracy Agonistic democracy is a theory of conflict mediation encompassing thinkers such as William Connolly; James Tully; Chantal Mouffe; and David Owen. Although their work offers various agonistic accounts, three themes are central to each: the public contestation of values; contingency; and necessary interdependency. Agonistic democrats reject the liberal emphasis on neutrality and universality, arguing that these threaten the political nature of politics (Mouffe 2005, 143) and suppress diversity by rendering dominant values incontestable (Connolly 2002, 67). Rather, agonists demonstrate the impossibility of eradicating conflict from politics, emphasising instead the need to revive contest (Mouffe 2000, 32) and encourage positive engagement in order to either promote respect and understanding (Connolly 1993, 382), motivate citizens into engagement (Mouffe 2000, 32), or improve society through competition (Owen 1995,

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139). Agonists refute deliberative notions of rationality, arguing that this reproduces the dominant language games of a given society (Mouffe 2005, 143). Rather than accepting current standards, agonists call on us to “propel a fork in political time, throw a wrench into the established code of obligation, goodness, identity, justice, right, or legitimacy” (Connolly 2005, 122). They thus endorse contingency by questioning current norms and exposing their power relations (Tully 1995, 25). Additionally agonistic democrats abandon communitarian and group rights understandings of identity, aspiring to create unity by promoting necessary interdependency through principles of agonistic respect (Connolly 2005, 34); mutual recognition (Tully 1995, 7); legitimacy (Mouffe 2013, 13); and enlarged mentality (Owen 1995, 142).

Three Strands of Agonistic Democracy Although the work of contemporary agonists converge on the themes of public contestation; contingency and necessary interdependency, this paper will argue that we can categorise them into three different approaches. Connolly and Tully’s focus on overcoming domination and encouraging greater inclusion renders their approach “inclusive”. For Chantal Mouffe, conflict and competition are imperative to motivating engagement between collective identities, thus her approach is termed “adversarial”. Finally, David Owen employs a competitive ranking of values in order to improve societal standards, constituting a “perfectionist approach”. This paper will seek to outline the three approaches to agonistic democracy.

The Inclusive Approach First, let us explore the inclusive approach to public contestation. Both thinkers discuss the importance of diverse identities in consolidating one’s own. Connolly states that his personal identity as a white, male, American, sports fan “is further specified by comparison to a variety of the thing I am not” (Connolly 2002, xiv). Thus, identity acquires its meaning from alternate ethnicities; genders; nationalities and interests. This follows Michel Foucault who shows how the painting of Las Meninas is understood, not through the entity itself (which is absent), but through interconnected entities that represent it (Foucault 2006, 335). The discussion of this painting thereby demonstrates the way in which concepts are interconnected. Tully similarly emphasises interrelated identities in the assertion that one becomes a citizen through participation

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with others (Tully 2008a, 3). This echoes Hannah Arendt’s affirmation that “men attain their full humanity, their full reality as men, not only because they are (as in the privacy of the household) but also because they appear” (Arendt 1998, 21). Thus for Connolly and Tully, the formation and meaning of a citizen’s identity is reliant upon engagement with diverse others. As a result, they highlight the necessity of inclusive public contestation since without this one’s identity is incomplete. Tully recommends that such public contestation entails “rule by and of the people, in which citizens are involved in the actual formulation process of for and against positions, rather than simply having the right to vote on preformulated for or against positions” (Tully 2008b, 227). Connolly’s theory advocates an “ethos of respect” in which conflicting citizens are required to respect and engage with diverse views (Connolly 1995: xviii). Owen also suggests that Connolly’s focus on inclusive public contestation would be compatible with institutional practices such as participatory budgeting, citizens assemblies and juries, proportional representation voting and preferenda (Owen 2008, 224). Connolly and Tully also employ the concept of necessary interdependency to promote inclusivity. In so doing, Connolly promotes agonistic respect, which he claims differs from the liberal tolerance that “is bestowed upon private minorities by a putative majority occupying the authoritative, public center” (Connolly 2005, 123). Rather, agonistic respect aims for “a more ambiguous relation of interdependence and strife between identities over a passing letting the other be” (Connolly 1993, 382). For Connolly, not only are minority identities dependent on majority ones for recognition and respect, every identity is dependent on each other. Thus, agonistic respect attempts to enhance inclusion by rejecting the notion that majority identities have the power to choose whether or not to value inferior minority identities. Instead, it seeks to emphasise the interdependency of all identities in society, thereby enhancing inclusion. This resonates with Tully’s mutual recognition, which asks us to avoid recognising another culture “as something already familiar to us and in terms drawn from our own traditions and forms of thought... Rather, recognition involves acknowledging [someone] in [their] own terms and traditions as [they] want to be and as [they] speak to us” (Tully 1995, 23). Hence, Tully also challenges majority/minority power relations. The aim is to prevent minorities from being “silenced or [being] recognised and constrained to speak within the institutions and traditions of interpretation of the imperial constitutions that have been imposed over them” (Tully 1995, 24). In addition to emphasising the need to encourage inclusion in the present, Tully and Connolly also promote future inclusion through

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audi alteram partem and critical responsiveness respectively. Audi alteram partem encourages greater inclusivity through “a willingness to listen to […] culturally diverse spirits” (Tully 1995, 23). Tully asserts that in addition to respecting and recognising one another, citizens should “further enhance a critical attitude to one’s own culture and a tolerant and critical attitude towards others” (Tully 1995, 207). Likewise, Connolly’s critical responsiveness requires us to become more open to “render yourself better able to listen to new and surprising movements in the politics of becoming without encasing them immediately in preset judgments that sanctify the universality or naturalness of what you already are” (Connolly 1999, 146). Both thinkers argue that such behaviour will enhance “the late-modern politics of diversification, by which new rights, identities, and goods periodically push themselves into being, disrupting fixed conceptions of divinity, justice, faith, rights, identity, and the good” (Connolly 2011, 80). Thus Connolly and Tully encourage greater inclusivity, both with respect to present society and also regarding the potential for inclusivity in future societies. Rejecting universalism for contingency, Connolly and Tully both endorse contestability. Following Foucault’s affirmation that “truth isn’t outside power, or lacking in power” (Gordon 1988, 72), both thinkers claim that “no positive identity can be judged final in a world where identities are organized through the differences they regulate” (Connolly 1999, 58). They argue that universalism threatens difference since those who attach universality to their ideals “cannot recognise and respect any plurality of narratives, traditions or civilisations as equal yet different, and enter into a dialogue with them on equal footing” (Connolly 1999, 148149). Instead, they argue that beliefs “must appear profoundly contestable to others inducted into different practices, exposed to different events, and pulled by different calls to loyalty” (Connolly 2005, 32). They demonstrate how this can render politics more inclusive by enabling us to “connect positively through reciprocal confession that those in each group confront doubts, forgetfulness, or uncertainties in themselves that may invert those confronted by others” (Connolly 2005, 125). Hence, by sharing doubts about our position, we become more receptive to the views of others, thereby enhancing inclusion. Tully also employs contestability through his advocation of the concept “acting differently”, in which we “show what the effects [were], show that there were other rational possibilities, teach people what they ignore about their own situation, on their conditions of work, on their exploitation” (Tully 2008b, 15). Tully’s acting differently requires “an element of ‘non-consensuality’” (Tully 2008b, 144), promoting continual questioning and challenge. Through

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non-consensuality, Tully suggests that citizens can overcome the domination of universalism by recognising alternate positions (Tully 2008b, 144). Consequently, as Foucault argues, “a field of possibilities in which several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse comportments may be realized” (Foucault 1982, 790). Thus, by emphasising contingency over universality, Connolly and Tully seek to further enhance inclusion. Notions of interconnected identities, agonistic respect, mutual recognition, critical responsiveness, audi alteram partem and contestability appear to promote greater inclusion by encouraging consideration of a plurality of beliefs, preventing a couple of dominant citizens from taking over the democratic contestation. These concepts additionally seek to provide citizens with the autonomy, not only to be ruled, but also to rule themselves. However, I am concerned that Connolly and Tully’s focus on inclusivity does not sufficiently recognise the antagonistic nature of politics. Can citizens with fundamentally incompatible beliefs be expected to practice agonistic respect toward one another, or to exhibit contestability by demonstrating doubts about their own position?

The Adversarial Approach Mouffe’s adversarial approach employs public contestation in order to provoke conflicting citizens into engagement. Mouffe follows Carl Schmitt in condemning the depoliticisation of liberal democracy, informing us that “it is indeed the political which is at stake here, and the possibility of its elimination” (Mouffe 2005, 1). Observing “the current blurring of political frontiers between left and right”, she argues that when a clear distinction is lacking, citizens cannot identify with any collective identity, which “in turn fosters disaffection towards political parties and discourages participation in the political process” (Mouffe 2005, 6). Mouffe explains that such disengagement may have disastrous consequences since democratic identification “can too easily be replaced by a confrontation between non-negotiable moral values and essentialist identities” (Mouffe 2005, 5). Mouffe suggests, then, that public engagement takes the form of a contest between collective political identities. Claiming passion as the “driving force in the political field” (Mouffe 2013, 8), Mouffe asserts that “adversaries fight against each other because they want their interpretation of principles to become hegemonic” (Martin 2010, 186). Thus, public contestation takes on an adversarial contest which motivates citizens into engagement with one another by encouraging the creation of collective adversarial identities and provoking such adversaries into fighting for their interpretation of values.

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Like Connolly and Tully’s inclusive approach, Mouffe’s adversarialism also employs the notion of necessary interdependency. Mouffe echoes Connolly and Tully in asserting that identities “are always something more than the addition of their internal elements” (Mouffe 2000, 10). However, she parts from their approach through the division she emphasises between “them” and “us”. Stating that “the very condition for the construction of an ‘us’ is the demarcation of a ‘them’” (Mouffe: 2013, 8), Mouffe separates groups into “friends,” “adversaries” and “enemies.” Friends and adversaries constitute conflicting groups who deem one another as legitimate since they share values whilst disagreeing about how to interpret and implement these. Whereas enemies, on the other hand, are perceived as illegitimate as they either do not endorse liberal values of liberty and equality, or threaten the democratic process. In distinguishing between groups in this way, Mouffe aims to promote unity through a collective “friend” identity. As Stefan Rummens affirms, “the identity and unity of a ‘we’ can be established and guaranteed only by the demarcation of a ‘they’” (Rummens 2009, 382). Thus, in encouraging citizens to define themselves in relation to a conflicting other, Mouffe seeks to promote unity amongst “friends”. In addition to aspiring toward unity, she also aims to motivate citizens into engagement with diverse others by provoking adversaries into discussion. However, in order to demonstrate the legitimacy of the adversary and prevent the adversarial contest becoming one in which the other must be eradicated, Mouffe introduces the idea of the common enemy (Mouffe 2013, 7). Rummens explicates that “the creation of a political unity always requires an antagonistic opposition” (Rummens 2009, 382). Hence by alerting citizens to the illegitimate enemy who is to be excluded from democratic contestation, Mouffe thereby demonstrates the legitimacy of oppositional adversaries. Hence, Mouffe promotes necessary interdependency, seeking to encourage engagement and unity, by advocating an adversarial understanding of conflict. Echoing Connolly and Tully, Mouffe also endorses the principle of contingency. Rejecting the notion of a rational, all-inclusive consensus, she argues that “to present the institutions of liberal democracy as the outcome of a pure deliberative rationality is to reify them and make them impossible to transform” (Mouffe 2000, 32). Hence, by claiming dominant norms to be “rational”, minority groups cannot challenge them. Mouffe explains that this is dangerous since it leads to “the reduction of plurality and to its ultimate negation” ((Mouffe 2000, 19). This follows Schmitt’s concern that when one group justifies its ideals through “humanity”, the opposing side subsequently becomes “inhumane”, thereby negating diversity (Schmitt 2007, 55). Mouffe is concerned that this may “lead to

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apathy and disaffection with political participation” (Mouffe 2000, 104). In order to provoke adversaries into contest, any consensus must be contingent and “conflictual”. In maintaining an adversarial approach - in which the majority of citizens are included in the consensus and a minority are excluded - contingency prevents apathy by “forc[ing] us to keep the democratic contestation alive” (Mouffe 2000, 105). Thus, just as Mouffe’s notions of public contestation and necessary interdependency strive to motivate democratic engagement, so too does her emphasis on contingency. Unlike Connolly and Tully, Mouffe’s concepts of collective identity, adversarial contestation and conflictual consensus do recognise the conflictual, and often antagonistic, nature of politics in which disagreement is often incompatible. It is evident that Mouffe’s adversarial agonism explores how to motivate conflicting citizens into engagement with one another whilst also striving to promote unity between them. However, I question whether her focus on adversarialism may struggle to motivate certain citizens to partake in democratic politics: either those who are continually defeated by the hegemonic contest, or quieter citizens who are not motivated by conflict (or who may even be apathetic toward it). Additionally, whereas Connolly and Tully may not sufficiently account for oppositional positions, Mouffe may not sufficiently account for a diversity of positions. Whilst there is the potential for antagonism to arise between citizens, there may also be nuanced positions which do not fit easily into either of the oppositional groups. Also, I am concerned that commonality may fail to create unity between adversarial citizens if the citizens themselves either do not recognise their commonality, or perceive their conflict as greater than their commonality.

The Perfectionist Approach Owen also advocates public contestation, but for him it is a tool to improve society. Drawing on Nietzsche, Owen claims that our involvement in public contestation gives us nobility, and thus “the maintenance of our capacities for autonomous reflection and agency is dependent on communal practices” (Owen 1995, 138). To encourage autonomous reflection, Owen employs the Nietzschean notion of competition. Providing us with Nietzsche’s example of the envy of the second Eris, Owen illustrates how competition can turn a negative entity into a positive. He asserts that “it is through contestation that envy is directed towards the cultivation of virtue and the well-being of the state assured” (Owen 1995, 139). Owen demonstrates how competition

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motivates citizens to cultivate virtues and assure the state’s well-being, claiming that, “the public culture of Greek society cultivated human powers through an institutionalised ethos of contestation in which citizens strove to surpass each other and, ultimately, to set new standards of nobility” (Owen 1995, 139). Hence, for Owen, contestation does not focus on challenging dominant standards (as in Connolly and Tully), or in motivating citizens to engage (as in Mouffe) but, rather, seeks to enrich society by encouraging citizens to better their values. During public contestation, Owen promotes necessary interdependency through the concept of an “‘enlarged mentality’ (to borrow Hannah Arendt’s use of Kant’s phrase), that is, our capacity to entertain a plurality of competing perspectives within the process of coming to a judgement” (Owen 1995, 142). Under this principle, citizens tolerate the diversity of perspectives in society. Owen argues that, unlike agonistic respect, “one does not tolerate the views of others because this is the condition of reciprocal toleration of our views by them, one tolerates the views of others because this toleration is the condition of one’s own integrity” (Owen 1995, 161-162). Thus, to be noble citizens, we necessarily tolerate the views of others. As Owen affirms, “precisely because one’s integrity is tied to tolerance, this position commits citizens to a form of society which is characterised by the cultivation of the conditions of honest and just argument between free and equal citizens” (Owen 1995, 162). For Owen, truthfulness and justice are vital to the unity of society since these “are the prerequisites for reconciling contestation and community in a sense of solidarity, of being engaged in a common quest” (Owen 1995, 146). Hence, enlarged mentality unites citizens through a shared process of virtue cultivation, and necessary interdependency arises not from shared values, but from a common quest. Owen’s perfectionism mirrors the contingent nature of the previous thinkers through promotion of the principle of self-overcoming. Thomas Fossen explains that self-overcoming includes, not simply contestation around which virtues satisfy the standards of excellence of a given society, but also contestation of the standards of excellence themselves (Fossen 2008, 389). Owen refers to this process as the “becoming of what we are as opposed to the what we are which we become” (Owen 1995, 144). This resonates with critical responsiveness and audi alteram partem’s critical attitude toward existing values and standards. However, self-overcoming offers a different end goal. The former attempts to render society more inclusive whereas the latter aims to improve society. As Fossen states, “the aim is not only the achievement of greater excellence according to some specific measure, but to set a new measure of excellence to overcome the

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old” (Fossen 2008, 389). Thus, Owen highlights the importance of contingency whereby challenging standards encourages us to improve, current standards. As a result, Owen’s competitive process of contestation strives to encourage the evolution of citizens and their virtues to create a better society. It seems as though Owen’s focus on perspectivism does seek to improve societal values by striving to include a greater diversity of values into the ranking process. It also encourages citizens to develop autonomy and to question current society, thus enhancing society as a result. However, I am concerned that the combined emphasis on perspectivism and autonomy may enable apathy to arise between citizens. Additionally, I question whether this Nietzschean understanding of competition – which abandons the passion and provocation of Mouffe’s notion of competition – may fail to engage citizens in democratic discussions. Finally, one concern resonates with that of Connolly of Tully’s work: whether citizens would be able to express eternal recurrence - and thus reach a just and honest judgment about the extent to which their values fulfil the current excellence criteria – about issues which deeply divide communities.

Conclusion In sum then, this paper has sought to delineate the three strands of agonistic democracy. It seeks to demonstrate that Connolly and Tully employ public contestation, necessary interdependency and contingency in order to promote a more inclusive account of democracy. Whereas for Mouffe, these themes are endorsed in order to encourage a more adversarial account which provokes conflicting citizens into democratic engagement, and for Owen, these themes constitute a perfectionist account which seeks to enhance society. Whilst inclusive agonism promotes a more inclusive, less dominated version of democracy, it may be overly ambitious in expecting citizens to express doubts about their own position. Mouffe, on the other hand, does acknowledge the antagonistic nature of politics and uses this to motive democratic contestation. However, in requiring citizens to align with collective identities, her work may fail to represent the diverse and nuanced nature of politics. Owen considers, not only how to promote contestation, but also to ensure that it produces better outcomes. However, I am concerned that, as in Connolly and Tully’s work, perfectionist agonism is overly optimistic about the extent to which conflicting citizens will be able to honestly and justly assess their own values against those of others.

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Bibliography Arendt, H. (1998) The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Connolly, W. E. (2011) A World of Becoming, Durham: Duke University Press. —. (1993) “Beyond Good and Evil: The Ethical Sensibility of Michel Foucault”, Political Theory, 21 (3), 365-389. —. (2002) Identity\difference: democratic negotiations of political paradox, London: University of Minnesota Press. —. (2005) Pluralism, Durham: Duke University Press. —. (1995) The Ethos of Pluralization, London: University of Minnesota Press. —. (1999) Why I am not a secularist, London: University of Minnesota Press. Fossen, T. (2008) “Agonistic Critiques of Liberalism: Perfection and Emancipation”, Contemporary Political Theory, 7, 376-394. Foucault, M. (2006) Man and his Doubles. In The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, London: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1982) “The Subject and Power”, Critical Inquiry, 8 (4), 777795. Gordon, C. (1988) “Truth and Power”, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. New York: Random House. Martin, J. (2010) A post-secular faith: Connolly on pluralism and evil. In Democracy and Pluralism: The political thought of William Connolly, London: Routledge. Mouffe, C. (2013) Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically, London: Verso. —. (2000) The democratic paradox, New York: Verso. —. (2005) The Return of the Political, London: Verso. Owen, D. (1995) Nietzsche, politics and modernity: critique of liberal reason, England: Sage. —. (2008) “Pluralism and the Pathos of Distance (or How to Relax with Style): Connolly, Agonistic Respect and the Limits of Political Theory”, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 10 (2), 210-226. Rummens, S. (2009) “Democracy as a Non-Hegemonic Struggle? Disambiguating Chantal Mouffe’s Agonistic Model of Politics”, Constellations, 16 (3), 377-391.

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Schmitt, C. (2007) The Concept of the Political, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tully, J. (2008a) Public philosophy in a new key. Volume one: Democracy and Civic Freedom, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. (2008b) Public philosophy in a new key. Volume two: Imperialism and Civic Freedom, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. (1995) Strange multiplicity : constitutionalism in an age of diversity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER TWELVE THE LIBERAL CONCEPT OF CITIZENSHIP AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE CHALLENGES OF MIGRATION: A RADICAL DEMOCRACY APPROACH GONZALO CAVERO IHS IN VIENNA

Abstract The intention of the present paper is to call into question the link between the concept of citizenship and the frame of the nation-state. In order to do so, the analysis will depart from the shortcomings inherent in traditional liberal theory, at a time when the challenges brought about by cross-border migrations are threatening the alleged unity of national communities. As Stephen Castles pointed out, “If the principle of a “container model of society”, in which every social relation takes place inside the nation-state is not sustainable, then cross-borders fluxes become a crucial topic of investigation for social sciences”. On the one hand, the defence by a group of political theorists of the triumph of liberalism, between the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, seemed to have silenced the demands of identity recognition that were called for by some groups, mainly because liberalism was presented as a model of society able to eradicate all political conflicts (Del Águila 2000). On the other hand, plenty of authors began to point at the inconsistencies they observed inside the liberal project. In 1987, Joseph Carens asserted that “citizenship in Western liberal democracies is the modern equivalent of feudal privilege – an inherited status that greatly enhances one’s life chances” (252), specially emphasising the potential of oppression of liberalism. A decade later, Chantal Mouffe alleged that:

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The progressive blurring of differences between the notions of right and left […] has been accompanied by the disappearance of any different project […] There has been a shift towards a republic of the centre. In this way, the end of antagonism within the nation-state has given up ground to the resurgence of new political movements “which point at the articulation of political forces around national, religious, or ethnic identities”. The lack of investment in democratic and differentiated policies, which permits citizens to identify with them, might have resulted in the emergence of new models of antagonism. Within contemporary European democracies we find worrying examples, such as the ascendance of extreme right-wing parties. The blurring of a clear line of division between the traditional political parties left, in fact, a vacuum rapidly occupied by the extreme right. In order to achieve this, and helped by a xenophobic discourse, the far right has been able to activate something similar to a native-foreigner cleavage, giving way to a renewed social conflict. In this sense, the current events in Greece, where the two major parties (PASOK and New Democracy) aligned with the Troika in an attempt to save the country from default through austerity, show how traditional divisions on values and preferences over politics are put aside, thereby blurring political distinctions and giving way to the articulation of a nationalist and xenophobic discourse by the extreme parties on the right and, to a lesser extent, on the left too. To confront the challenge posed by the dissolution of politics through an overlapping consensus which silences the divergent conceptions of citizenship, Chantal Mouffe has proposed to revitalise the debate around the concept of citizenship, reinvigorating the concept of radical democratic citizenship, which presents some common characteristics with Joseph Carens’ proposal. The idea departs from a theory of citizenship in which membership is open to anyone wishing to adhere, even though this does not imply a distinction between members and non-members: “Those who choose to cooperate together in the state have special rights and obligations not shared by non-citizens”.

Introduction In 1988 Francis Fukuyama thought that: “What we [were] witnessing [was not] just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of the post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the

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universalization of Western liberal democracy as the form of human government” (Fukuyama 1989, 3).

The end of political antagonism, the end of ideologies and the end of confrontation between different political principles has been understood by Mouffe as a perfect scenario for the re-emergence of a new enemy, the other, the strange, specifically: the alien. The self-determination of individuals, as well as their own definition of themselves, requires a contrast to someone, an explicit opposition against “the others”. The necessary condition for the existence of “we” requires the existence of “them” and, therefore, every self-affirmation of what we are, of our identity, needs to make clear what we are not. Therefore, as Carl Schmitt reminds us, the condition of existence of the “Concept of the political” means the existence of a “specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced, that between friend and enemy”. Once the consensus over values ad intra arrived in the community, and there was a reasonable level of social peace, some individuals have decided to look outside their community for something which identifies them as different. The understanding by liberalism of the State as a “social unity” generates the problem of deciding, in case of conflict, who will be the one who determines the decisive grouping between friends and enemies. And such privilege has been attributed to the State as a “third superior party”. In short, against the arrival of an “overlapping consensus allegedly founded on a rational agreement, which does not know of exclusion” as the one defended by John Rawls, in this paper it is going to be argued that politics is essentially about conflict, and that therefore, the overcoming or denial of ideological conflict will always give way to a new one.

Political Community: Universitas or Societas? Chantal Mouffe’s approach to the political community presents a special interest for our topic, because at the same time that it criticises the traditional idea of citizenship linked to the nation-state, she moves away from the ideal of a cosmopolitan citizenship defended, among others, by David Held. Mouffe attempts to redefine the concept of citizenship in order to detach it from the nation-state, but without resorting to the other extreme of trying to pursue a cosmopolitan citizenship. The challenge, then, is to deconstruct the concept of citizenship in order to imagine new ways of bonding the citizens with political demos different from the nation-state. Her idea of radical democratic citizenship moves away from cosmopolitism because she understands that humankind cannot constitute

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a demos, such an all-inclusive category or definition, able to include “everything” will in fact define nothing at all. In her explanation of the concept of citizenship there is an attempt to highlight three fundamental elements. First, the necessity to stress the importance of the political, as something constituted by a pluralist conception of society which needs opposing claims about what we mean by citizenship, society, the individual, or the state. Second, the fact that the possibility of understanding any political question such as “What do we mean by the right to citizenship?” depends on the possibility to describe it in reference to other opposing concepts. Thus, denying opposition impedes the understanding of the concept. Third, the emphasis put on the existence of different political communities understood as modes of political association with an idea of commonality and a set of ethical-political principles that are able to bond the participants in the association. Precisely at this point we can find the main advancement that Mouffe represents with regard to Schmitt’s agonistic theory. Mouffe remarks how Schmitt was not able to go a step further and think of politics in terms of what she calls “agonism”. Such agonism implies transforming the Schmittian antagonism, the relationship with the enemy, in a relationship with an adversary. Departing from the inevitability of conflict “the agonistic confrontation, far from representing a risk for democracy, is in fact its condition of existence”. As a result, the idea of citizenship will never be able to do without antagonism, because collective identity formation requires the existence of a “them” to be able to understand what it means to be “us”. This is precisely why the principal question of politics is not how we can arrive at an “overlapping consensus”, but how can we imagine and adopt a project of “radical democratic citizenship”, which consists of a loyalty to a demos founded on a set of ethico-political principles. In sum, what is worth searching for is a compromise of a reciprocal loyalty from the citizens towards these set of ethic-political principles. Drawing on Michael Oakeshott’s ideas on societas, the practice of civility and the concerns about the common or public sphere, Mouffe emphasises the principal advantage of Oakeshott’s ideas: “It is a kind of human association which recognizes the disappearance of a single idea about the common good, leaving space for individual freedom. […] This modern form of political community does not hold together because of a substantial idea of the common good, but because of a shared bond, a concern about the public” (Mouffe 1999, 98).

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This conception of a political association and a res publica, closest to the ideal of the Greek polis, has its main virtue in overcoming what Juan Carlos Velasco called “the internal contradictions of the modern project of national citizenship”. The idea of a concept of radical citizenship allows us to overcome the shortcomings of the traditional concept of citizenship embedded in the nation-state. It is more adaptable and flexible in a context where identities have become more plural and complex, and when the static and statecentred concept of citizenship has been clearly overcome by the reality of migration. Coming back to the “Schmittian essences” of Mouffe, we should reconsider another of the main weaknesses found in Schmitt’s theory. The inability to think about a democracy on agonistic terms complicates the possibility of considering a pluralist model of democracy. Schmitt’s “standardising identity” is contested by Mouffe, who attempts to understand how in politics there has been a “huge process of redefinition of collective identities”. This way, the concept of the people (Volk), for Mouffe, needs to be redefined, in order to introduce those who were not considered part of it. Because we need to understand that “the people is something discursively constructed in a different way at different moments”. Nevertheless, the author keeps in mind that the mere idea of the existence of “the people” implies the need of an inclusion ad intra and an exclusion ad extra. As Carl Schmitt stated: “A world state which embraces the entire globe and all of humanity cannot exist. The political world is a pluriverse, not a universe. […] The political entity cannot by its very nature be universal in the sense of embracing all of humanity and the entire world. If the different states, religions, classes, and other human groupings on earth should be so unified that a conflict among them is impossible and even inconceivable and if civil war should forever be foreclosed in a realm which embraces the globe, then the distinction of friend and enemy would also cease. What remains is neither politics nor state, but culture, civilizati3n, economics, morality, law, art entertainment, etc.” (Schmitt 2006, 52)

Like Schmitt, Mouffe understands that the political world is, and has to be, a pluriverse. As mentioned, her understanding of the cosmopolitan liberalism which appeals to an international demos is terribly oppressive, because it does not leave more than one conception of democracy as legitimate, that of liberal democracy. Nevertheless, we must admit that there is a chance of finding more than one legitimate form of government. That is why Mouffe’s critiques are also directed towards those theoretical models which consider liberal democracy as the only legitimate form of

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political organisation. Both the Rawlsian theory, mainly redefined in The Political Liberalism, and the Habermasian communicative action, end by compelling the citizens to embrace the principles of liberal democracy as the only ones acceptable.

A Radical Democratic Citizenship Probably, the most interesting contribution of Chantal Mouffe might not be the answers given to the shortcomings of liberal democracy, but the weaknesses she finds. Mouffe decided to explore the Achilles heel of liberal democracy: the enunciation of some principles that grant a set of rights and duties which are in fact not accomplished in practice, and therefore, avoid pursuing a “rational plan of life”. This critique directed towards the citizen status in liberalism underlines the existing disconnection between what it means to be a citizen in theoretical terms, and the practices of citizenship that this category authorise individuals to do in reality. Grounded on the “right to have rights” of refugees, made popular by Hannah Arendt, Mouffe vindicates the importance of being citizen and of “making citizens” those who are not so yet. And here lies one of Mouffe’s principal contributions, when considering citizenship as a kind of political identity, instead of thinking about it as a mere legal status. What holds together the notion of citizenship is a shared political identity, as well as loyalty towards a set of ethic-political principles: “Citizenship is not just an identity among others, as it was for liberalism, neither the dominant identity ruling over the others, as it was for civic republicanism. It is a principle of articulation affecting the different subjective positions of the social agent, […] though recognizes a plurality of specific loyalties and the respect to individual liberty” (Mouffe 1999, 101).

In short, the radical democratic citizenship proposal advocates the deconstruction of national identities in order to overcome the oppressing categories of citizenship (foreigner, alien, national, stateless, etc.), helping the recognition and acknowledgment of new rights of those currently excluded by the categories of citizenship. Until now the predominant paradigm on the definition of citizenship has been the paradigm of rights and duties. The contractual model, prevailing in modern political theory seems to endorse this understanding. Nevertheless, today it is more pressing than ever to go beyond the classical

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paradigm, not to abolish the frame of rights and duties, but to guarantee its observance. There are many social groups that have seen their full citizenship recognized from a formal point of view and, however, still claim for the practical achievement of what is established by the citizenship contract. In this sense the concept of participation would come to deepen the full value of citizenship. Therefore, we should be able to recognise the merits of liberalism, whose contribution to the formulation of the concept of universal citizenship constituted an advancement in as far as it asserted that all individuals are born free and equal; but it should not distract us from formulating a project of radical democratic citizenship capable of overcoming the restriction of “citizenship to a mere legal status”. Like Jose Antonio Zamora, Mouffe states that the traditional concept of citizenship has to be superseded through the concepts of public responsibility, public activity and political participation in the community. The attempt to unmask relationships of power and oppression is not limited to the immigrants’ situation, but are made extensive to those groups traditionally exposed to discrimination and the logics of domination. As a result, she is reclaiming the recognition of division and antagonism as a way to evidence the discrimination suffered by immigrants as well as women. Those groups have been specially affected by the private/public division which recludes them in the private sphere. Mouffe’s approach is trying to overcome the situation first by recognising its existence and the antagonism inherent in it, and second, by the attempt to correct the situation through “agonism” as a relation between political adversaries.

Conclusion Throughout the process of deconstruction of the concept of citizenship, traditionally associated with the framework of the nation-state, the project of radical democratic citizenship defended by Chantal Mouffe appeals to the individuals in order to make them capable of taking part in the life of the democratic community in which they live, through the loyalty towards a set of ethical-political principles. In order to achieve it, it will be necessary to make individuals responsible for public affairs, and to devote time to public concerns. The purpose is to avoid that the citizens act as an Aristotelic idios (only preoccupied by personal matters) and to encourage them to take part in the community. In addition it is worth noting that the understanding of the world as a pluriverse, in which different conceptions of the good and varied forms of political organisation are acceptable, contributes to a higher liberty of

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organisation within the political community, helping to make it evolve through the passage of time. Thus, and inside the frame of the struggles for emancipation of the oppressed, whether because of gender, race or religion, Carole Pateman presents us with a definition of the liberal conception of citizenship as oppressing for women. This definition is very well suited for immigrant discrimination as well: “The idea of a universal citizenship is specifically modern and depends on the arising of an idea about all individuals born free and equal, or naturally free and equal among them. No individual is naturally subordinated to other, and all needed to be publicly recognized as citizens, which implies its self-determination condition. It is also inherent to individual freedom and equality the fact that ruling can only be done by agreement or consensus. We all are taught that an ‘individual’ is a universal category applicable to everyone or to each person, but is not like that in reality. ‘The individual’ is a male” (cited in Mouffe 1999, 32).

And we may add: “and a citizen national of a state”. The new concept of citizenship put forward by Mouffe “rejects the idea of an abstract and universal definition of difference and peculiarity. And considers that, even though the modern idea of citizenship was radical to the democratic revolution, nowadays is an obstacle to its extension.” As we are reminded by Marta Lois: “If signs are always subjected to strategic adjustments, and are the provisional result of codification rules which establish transitory relations, in the same way, the political cannot be conceived as harmony, as a unity, where there are breaches and diversity” (Lois 2009, 443).

Bibliography Arendt, H. (1981) Los orígenes del totalitarismo. Madrid: Alianza. Böhning, W. R. (1978) “International Migration and the Western World: Past, Present, Future”, International Migration, 16 (1), 11-22. Carens, J. (1987) “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders”, The Review of Politics, 49 (2), 251-273 Castles, S. (2010) “Comprendiendo la migración global: una perspectiva desde la transformación social”, Relaciones Internacionales, 14, 141168. Del Águila, R. (2000) La senda del mal. Política y razón de Estado. Madrid: Taurus. Fukuyama, F. (1989) “The End of history?”, The National Interest, 3-18.

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Habermas, J. (1987) A Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, Boston: Beacon Press. Held, D. (1995) Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance, Standford, Stanford University Press. Lois, M. (2009) “Ernesto Laclau y Chantal Mouffe: hacia una teoría radical de la democracia”. In Máiz Suárez, R., Del Águila, R., García Guitián, E., Vallespín Oña, F., and Rivero Rodríguez, Á. (eds) Teorías políticas contemporáneas, Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch, 433-454. Mouffe, C. (1992) “Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community”, Democratic Citizenship and the Political Community, London, Phronesis Series, 225-239. —. (1999) El retorno de lo político: comunidad, ciudadanía, pluralismo, democracia radical, Barcelona: Paidós. Mouffe, C., Deutsche, R., Joseph, B., and Keenan, T. (2001) “Every Form of Art Has a Political Dimension”, Grey Room, 2, 98-125. Pateman, C. (1989) The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press. Rawls, J. (1993) Title: Political Liberalism, Washington: Columbia University Press, —. (1997) La teoría de la justicia, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica. —. (1997) A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknar Press of Harvard University Press. Schmitt, C. (2006) El Concepto de lo Político, Madrid: Alianza Editorial. Velasco, J. (2009) “Transnacionalismo migratorio y ciudadanía en mutación”. Claves de Razón Práctica, 197, 32-41. Zamora, J. (2009) “Inmigrantes entre nosotros ¿Integración o participación?”, Foro Ignacio Ellacuría, 13.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE LINE AS A BASIC ELEMENT OF INTERNATIONAL ORDER IGNAS KALPOKAS UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM

Abstract This chapter traces the importance of lines in global politics as well as in the global imaginary in more general terms. It is argued that all order rests on exclusion, on a “not us” or “not here”. Every major civilisation that has succeeded to produce an order of its own has set itself a set of limits. A characteristic trait of these lines was that on “this” side order and civilisation prevails, while on the “other” side is anomie, calling for either appropriation or a civilising mission. At first sight, no lines can be drawn on our globe anymore. However, in completely appropriated world lines of exclusion divide the international “human” community from the inhuman pariahs, entities incapable of having a voice. As a result, they can be fought against with the self-righteousness of a just warrior even in a world in which war as such is abolished.

Introduction It could hardly be an exaggeration to state that land-appropriation is a founding moment of any settlement, any state or empire, any human order (Schmitt 2003, 48). A core instrument of this appropriation is drawing a line, both externally – by delimiting the end of the “own” – and internally – by diving the appropriated territory into manageable sub-units. At first it might appear counterintuitive to emphasise the importance of the line to the study of international relations, especially in the modern world which is supposedly characterised by the unity of entire humanity. However, the

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line today is as pertinent as ever or perhaps even more than ever before. The reason for such importance is that while previously the conduct of international relations was conditioned by an overt distinction between the “own” and the “alien”, the modern completely appropriated world retains the same divisions but in a more dangerous, covert, form. If the confrontation of the two superpowers during the Cold War still allowed lines to be drawn, then after the fall of the communist bloc, the world has supposedly become an increasingly integrated homogeneous whole. The issue is that the world (as a whole), appropriated by humanity (as a whole) does not in reality abolish lines and divisions. On the contrary, these distinctions acquire new intensity because any lines drawn in such world signal a distinction between humanity and inhumanity, thus leaving classical international thinking in crisis. For an analysis of the line, the ideas of the German legal and political theorist Carl Schmitt are especially potent.

The Line and War The line delimits the border between order, law, and prognostication on “this side” and anomie: disorder, anarchy, and mere chance beyond the line. On “this side” of the line a decision is possible which establishes and determines order, at the same time setting up an outside in which (legal, moral, political) order no longer applies. Thus “outside” is a permanent state of exception, both a negative projection of “inside” and its constitutive part in which all enmity is unleashed (Marder 2010, 22). What underlies this ordering and drawing of a line is an act of landappropriation, a primordial act of force that establishes new borders and, inside those borders, a new world order. In this way “measure, order, and form constitute a spatially concrete unity” (Schmitt 2003, 70). This order produces coherence of understanding and interpretation because only under a shared perception of space a constitutive distinction between “us” and “them” is possible. The shared space on one side and difference on the other is a conditio sine qua non of politics (Hooker 2009, 72). The first global lines drawn after the discovery of the Americas are paradigmatic examples: the Spanish–Portuguese rayas, drawn in the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, and the French–English “amity lines” of Cateau-Cambrésis from 1559. Both of them signalled a new world order after new vast territories were opened for appropriation. The difference between them is, nonetheless, fundamental: if the rayas had a distributive purpose whence two princes had divided the world, the “amity lines” were primarily agonal and, as a result, they delimited spaces that were open for

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contestation and where force could be used freely (Odysseos and Petito 2007, 5). Although the European political space was divided by state borders, these states still constituted a common order characterised by (at least theoretical) equality. As a result, even if, from the perspective of a European state, its neighbour was “outside”, they nevertheless coexisted within the same spatial-symbolic order, in contrast with the earlier borders as the frontiers of the (knowable) world, manifested by the pre-global civilisations. Fortified with defensive structures (such as the Roman limes or the Chinese Great Wall and “determined by mythical concepts, such as the ocean, the Midgard Serpent, or the Pillars of Hercules” (Schmitt 2003, 52), they were the lines of termination and/or containment and not the later lines of mutual respect (European borders) or starting points for free expansion (the outer borders of Europe). Since the formation of sovereign states (the so-called “Westphalian moment”), war has been exclusively an “armed struggle between state sovereigns” and any other military activity merely “criminal prosecution and suppression of robbers, rebels, and pirates” (Schmitt 2003, 153). The rules or war were formalised under the nascent international law, epitomised in its early form by Grotius. Thus only sovereigns could be just enemies, justi hostes (or hostes in general): “[t]o the essence of hostis belongs the aequalitas. Robbers, pirates, and rebels are not enemies, not justi hostes, but objects to be rendered harmless and prosecuted as criminals” (Schmitt 2003, 153). Self-defence and resistance were not only allowed but also natural among equal enemies, while pirates, brigands, or other outlaws were left out (Odysseos and Petito 2007, 7). Such developments meant a rationalisation and humanisation of war. There was no attempt to abolish war as such and it remained a viable option in international relations but a war between equal enemies was no longer a war of annihilation as it was the case with the earlier wars of conviction, creed, and religion (Odysseos and Petito 2009, 311). Meanwhile, new geographical discoveries made the newly-nascent European order the first truly global one. This world order rested on the distinction of three different elements: the already appropriated European land, free non-European land, and free sea. This distinction allowed preservation of stability and relative order on the European side of the border-line while at the same time unleashing violence “outside” (Hooker 2009, 93). As the major European powers were not capable in agreeing on a fair distribution of the new territories, they at least agreed that these lands were free for appropriation, and this appropriation could only be decided by force, because moral, juridical, and political norms did not apply “beyond the line” (Foisineau 2010, 175). Peoples “beyond the line”

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could not be enemies in the full sense of the term since they were hardly even considered human.

The Modern Global Lines Every epoch is characterised by its own dialectic of inclusion/exclusion. Despite the supposed inclusivity of modern universalism, it has, arguably, merely opened the possibility for new lines, bearing no concrete spatial implications and thus creating new kinds of enemies. These changes were not only political and legal but also technological. For Schmitt, characteristically, the airplane and the inception of air war marks a crucial paradigmatic shift, because it radically transformed military strategy, the spatiality of war, and even the distinction between firm land and sea (Dean 2007, 253). Today one could add a new dimension – the cyberspace (and, correspondingly, cyber warfare) which once again introduces a new relation to spatiality or, to be more precise, takes place in a no-space and yet has very material implications in every-space (Kalpokiene, Kalpokas 2012). Such changes have significantly contributed to the new global lines being drawn without reference to “material” space and even if they occasionally are drawn in the old way – i.e. on “firm land” – they have only temporal implications and are based on already pre-existing nonmaterial (ideological, economic etc.) lines. What characterises the modern era is the oscillation between technology and theology. On the one hand, we can see a rising institutionalisation of norms, obsession with concreteness and objectivity of norms, and a prime emphasis on effectiveness. On the other hand, there is a danger of being left with a political theology obsessed with creation ex nihilo. It is precisely in this context of a new form of political theology that a return of just war thoughts – humanitarian intervention, the war on terror, or intentional regime change – should be discussed (Burchard 2006, 31). Indeed, every new law and order has to arise from the exception, denying what has been before, exceeding the already existing order entirely as a miracle exceeds the understandable and therefore suspends it (Davis 2008, 41). In other words, “when illegality becomes extreme, it can convert itself into a new standard of legality” (Kalmo 2010, 114). This signals an attempt to cover the primordial gap, the void around which order is structured – the creation ex nihilo. The shift of attention from the international society of states and nations to the international society of humans is a fundamental one, affecting economy, conventional politics, and security issues. The question of security is both illustrative and highly relevant for the subsequent

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discussion. It is well known that security has traditionally been the concern of states. States have been the prime objects of security and also the most important (and often sole) actors in security dilemmas. However, from the modern global standpoint this is no longer true. The emphasis is now primarily on individual security and therefore military means are no longer in the spotlight – what now counts are “economic, social and political conditions for people to lead a dignified life” (Evans 2001, 1), and if previously these conditions were achievable by domestic policies, in modern globalised world, it is said, only the global level (and thus increasingly developed global governance) could fulfil the needs of the people. Human security is thus portrayed as foreign policy priority of a modern state – and not only the security of a state’s own citizens but the security of the human community as a whole. Correspondingly, the state is no longer seen as an end in itself, and therefore not a viable object of defence but only an instrumental institution designed to facilitate human security (Weiss 2012, 26). This is also the view that gives rise to the concept (and an aspiring norm) of Responsibility to Protect (RtoP), even if its concrete content still remains underdeveloped (Glanville 2012, 13). Furthermore, the very boundaries of modern states are being erased by economic, environmental, cultural influences, technology, and communication (Glanville 2012, 15-16). Therefore, sovereignty as an enclosed totality is no longer seen as possible. In this interpretation it becomes “some metaphysical or, better, theological conception of absolute identity” incompatible with the modern world (Bates 2012, 4). Then, a claim to sovereignty is no longer enough by itself – it has to be evaluated and certified by the international community to be valid. Moreover, this validation is not given once and for all but is constantly reaffirmed if the state behaves well and can be revoked if it does not (Forsythe 2004, 20). The vital interest of the norm-centred international community is to be seen as embodying the interests of the entire humankind. It is stated that the international community is not merely a community of subjects, but also an ensemble of norms, rules and practices (Fassbender 2009, 66-69). Consequently, “[t]he community is more than the sum of its constituent parts – it does not express a mere volonté de tous but a volonté générale” (Fassbender 2009, 70). Therefore, it comes as no surprise that deviation from these norms is almost impossible or at least intolerable. As a result, what remains of sovereignty is the “capacity to engage”, to maintain relations but not to act independently (Agnew 2005, 441). As far as war and peace are concerned, the notion of just war is of paramount importance. The formulation of just war theory, as a war fought to achieve peace, dates as far back as St Augustine. For Augustine,

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although peace was the desired state of affairs, war was the inevitable means to achieve it. War, even if it had to be “lamented” was a just one if fought with the aim to spread a unified culture, norms, and understanding as a bond for peace, at the same time implying that of the earthly cities, imperfect as they may be, there were some that could be seen as exemplary and worth emulation (Howard 2010, 130-131). Correspondingly, not every peace is worthy enough: “peace of unjust men is not worthy to be called peace in comparison with the peace of the just” (Augustine, City of God, 39). Diversity had to be unified and universal norms overtake particularities – by force if needed. And if somebody had to be forced to comply or be punished for not complying, it is only for the love of God and for the good of that neighbour (Howard 2010, 132-133). Or else, one could turn to even earlier Church Fathers, for example Eusebius of Caesarea, who saw just war as intended to save the barbarians from darkness and peril, and striving for the world to become “like one wellordered and united family” (Eusebius of Caesarea, A Speech on the Dedication of the Holy Sepulchre Church, 58-59). It is said that the current moral solidarity, contrary to the Christian one, knows no borders and no “others” as there no longer are “pagans” or “infidels” that reject the order. However, in today’s fully appropriated world, the exception is created only temporarily, only as an instance and this is precisely the instance of potential just war. Therefore, instead of resulting in unity, a completely appropriated world only allows for new kinds of enemies, while supposed inclusivity only masks a warfare continued by other means (Rasch 2003, 130). Just war is first and foremost police action combating criminals and wrong-doers. The very possibility to distinguish between war and peace is lost, because the police do not sign peace treaties with criminals who can only be convicted (de Benoist 2007, 79). Such war is a war on one side only: the police are fighting crime. Consequently, only one side is entitled to victory, in which case “the opponent becomes nothing more than an object of violent measures” (Schmitt 2003, 320). The enemy must not be simply defeated – it must be eliminated in order to remove the threat to the righteous part of the (national or international) society; in other words, it is an absolute war (de Benoist 2007, 80-81). The question is who decides on reason, on the definition of the human and human rights, on the distinction between decent and indecent, the police and criminals (Rasch 2003, 141-142).

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The Line and Universal Humanity Already in The Concept of the Political, Schmitt (2007, 53) wrote that “[t]he political world is a pluriverse, not a universe.” Consequently, what remains in a completely unified world is a possible set of many distinctions but no politics and, with the loss of a constitutive outside, no identity. The danger is that when a group usurps the category of “humanity”, the opponent is deprived of the very possibility of being human and turned into an outcast, a beast, a monster. As stated by Schmitt, “[w]hen a state fights its political enemy in the name of humanity, it is [...] a war wherein a particular state seeks to usurp a universal concept against its military opponent” (Schmitt 2007, 54). Therefore, humanity as such cannot have a just enemy since the inhuman cannot be fought against on equal grounds. Such enemy is the absolute enemy, which has to be destroyed: it is no longer a personal competitor or a political enemy but someone outside the human order and human existence, an enemy of the entire humanity (hostis humani generis). Quite clearly, the elimination of differences, which is unavoidable in a global “international community”, usually masks the fact that it is a particularity of a certain group posing as a universal norm and singular rationality. The presumed existence of “humanity” and of supposed neutrality which serves everybody’s benefit only tends to disqualify and stigmatise some. As a result, symbolic power and a monopoly of rationality belong to those (mostly Western) states that are able to define the “correct” ways to achieve the postulated ends. This treatment also comes close to the old understanding of “standard of civilisation” that Western countries used in order to defend their imperialist aspirations. Therefore, one could notice (more or less) the same set of players persisting during the previous centuries, only that “with the secularization of the Christian mission comes also the secularization of the Christian missionary” who still lovingly “corrects” the misdeeds of others (Rasch 2003, 138). There is little doubt that the end of the Cold War marked a turning point, because ideological dualism was replaced by (at least supposed) ideological homogeneity. Consequently, whereas previously conflicts were primarily seen from the perspective of superpower interests and ideological concerns, currently (in theory if not in practice) the treatment of the parties is dependent upon their compliance with universal norms of the “international community”. This also resulted in a change of approach to and treatment of the unfavoured: instead of being representatives of a competing worldview, they became rogues and outlaws (Feher 2000, 39)

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who are excommunicated in the full meaning of the term, most importantly, removal from the group, a (quasi-religious) condemnation, and the refusal to protect the status and life or, in this case, sovereignty. The international system, being a manifestation of the new order of completely appropriated earth, postulates the unity and integrity of a universalised humanity. Nevertheless, it still needs an outside to affirm itself: “rogue states”, “axes of evil”, “tyrants” etc., which either retain their sovereignty as a perpetual reminder, thus remaining in the “international community” as its negative side, or following their excommunication, face a “humanitarian intervention”, sanctions, or other similar action. This tendency has become especially important with the aforementioned RtoP, a yardstick for measuring the “level of civilisation”. Such a system is open to uses and misuses by the powerful (mostly Western) states, which are able to redefine the constitutive outside of the system. The rule and institutionalisation of singular norm and rationality helps to maintain the status quo and further stigmatise the outsiders, who are no longer adherents of a different position but “irresponsible”, “irrational”, and otherwise inferior. A clear line is drawn between meaning and nonmeaning, those who are capable of having a voice and those who are not. Correspondingly, such a system allows the dominant states to maintain hegemonic modes of thinking, especially in the fields of rights, governance, and economics. As such, the norms could both be claimed to be more objective (because seemingly disconnected from any human factor in their functioning) and be used and misused more readily (because anyone with sufficient power can claim to be the medium through which the law speaks). Also, any struggle against the rule of bare norm is much more difficult because there is no clear opponent (or, if a struggle could be waged, it would be a struggle against humanity and reason).

Conclusion The appropriation of land is only one part of the “ordering of space”, which is the basis of a global order; the other part is the appropriation of the outside, i.e. of exception. Now, when the entire world has been appropriated, the international system depends upon temporary zones of exception that appear or are created and then either eradicated or kept as a (more or less) perpetual reminder of the outside. In most cases, escalation and the ability to contrast the “own” and the “alien” is enough to exert and maintain influence as well as to integrate the “own” camp more closely. These exceptions both confirm the validity of the international system and provide a source of threat against which the global community has to be

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defended. In short, the status quo has to be contrasted with an inferior otherness in order to be constituted as worth protecting. This protection, in turn, is primarily the domain of power: as summed up by Morgenthau (1985, 53), “[t]he policy of the status quo aims at the maintenance of the distribution of power which exists at a particular moment in history”. However, it is only through the attachment of the “noble cause” of the “international community” or “society” as well the emphasis on “objective” pre-set order that the status quo can maintain its legitimacy and appeal.

Bibliography Agnew, J. (2005) “Sovereignty Regimes: Territoriality and State Authority in Contemporary World Politics”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95, 437-461. Augustine (1997) “The City of God”. In Ishay, M. R. (ed.) The Human Rights Reader: Major Polititcal Essays, Speeches, and Documents from the Bible to the Present, New York and London: Routledge, 3740. Bates, D. W. (2012) States of War: Enlightenment Origins of the Political, New York: Columbia University Press. Burchard, C. (2006) “Interlinking the Domestic with the International: Carl Schmitt on Democracy and International Relations”, Leiden Journal of International Law, 19, 9-40. Davis, K. (2008) Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization Govern the Politics of Time, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. de Benoist, A. (2007) “Global Terrorism and the State of Permanent Exception: The Significance of Carl Schmitt’s Thought Today”. In Odysseos, L. and Petito, F. (eds) The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War, and the Crisis of Global Order, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 73-96. Dean, M. (2007) “Nomos: Word and Myth”. In Odysseos, L. and Petito, F. (eds) The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War, and the Crisis of Global Order, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 242-258. Eusebius of Caesarea (1999) “A Speech on the Dedication of the Holy Sepulchre Church”. In O’Donnovan, O. and Lockwood O’Donnovan, J. (eds) From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought 100-1625, Grand Rapids and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 56-65.

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Fassbender, B. (2009) The United Nations Charter as the Constitution of the International Community, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Feher, M. (2000) Powerless by Design: The Age of the International Community, Durham: Duke University Press. Foisineau, L. (2010) “Security as a Norm in Hobbes’ Theory of War: A Critique of Schmitt’s Interpretation of Hobbes’ Approach to International Relations”. In Asbach, O. and Schröder, P. (eds) War, the State and International Law in Seventeenth-Century Europe, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 163-180. Forsythe, D. P. (2004) Human Rights in International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Glanville, L. (2012) “The Responsibility to Protect Beyond Borders”, Human Rights Law Review, 12, 1-32. Hooker, W. (2009) Carl Schmitt’s International Thought: Order and Orientation, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Howard, D. (2010) The Primacy of the Political: A History of Political Thought from the Greeks to the French and American Revolutions, New York: Columbia University Press. Kalmo, H. (2010) “A Matter of Fact? The Many Faces of Sovereignty”. In Kalmo, H. and Skinner, Q. (eds) Sovereignty in Fragments: The Past, Present And Future of a Contested Concept, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 114-131. Kalpokiene, J. and Kalpokas, I. (2012) “Hostes humani generis: Cyberspace, the Sea, and Sovereign Control”, Baltic Journal of Law and Politics, 5 (2), 132-163. Marder, M. (2010) Groundless Existence: The Political Ontology of Carl Schmitt. New York and London: Continuum. Morgenthau, H. J. (1985) Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, New York: McGraw-Hill. Odysseos, L. and Petito, F. (2009) “Carl Schmitt”. In Edkins, J. and Vaughan-Williams, N. (eds) Critical Theorists and International Relations, Abingdon: Routledge, 305-316. Odysseos, L. and Petito, F. (2007) “The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt”. In Odysseos, L. and Petito, F. (eds) The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War, and the Crisis of Global Order, Abingdon: Routledge, 1-18. Rasch, W. (2003) “Human Rights as Geopolitics: Carl Schmitt and the Legal Form of American Supremacy”, Cultural Critique, 54, 120-147. Schmitt, C. (2007) The Concept of the Political, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

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Schmitt, C. (2003) The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of Jus Publicum Europaeum, New York: Telos Press. Weiss, T. G. (2012) Humanitarian Intervention, Cambridge: Polity Press

CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE PROMISE OF POLITICS: THE RADICAL ALTERNATIVE OF ARENDTIAN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY JOHN BAXTER UNIVERSITY OF YORK

Abstract This paper argues that Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy offers crucial insights into the status quo of what could be called a “Politics in Crisis.” In particular, it shows that Arendt’s work offers an understanding of politics that is radically different to political settlements across the globe, including in Western liberal democracies, and that the limited choice between parties combined with the lack of opportunities for those outside of the political class to engage politically is both a denial of politics and consequently a denial of the aspect that makes us fundamentally human; therefore the crisis in politics can be seen as a crisis for humanity. While this paper notes that there are problems with and contradictions in Arendtian political philosophy, it concludes that her often neglected body of work provides both a critique of – and alternative – to a contemporary politics that has suffered a fundamental legitimation crisis in recent years.

Introduction This paper will argue that the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt offers both a way of diagnosing the problems of modern politics at the same time as offering a radical alternative to the contemporary forms of political practice in what are often termed to be liberal democracies. It will endeavour to show how Arendt’s work demonstrates the fundamental

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alienation of the individuals in modern politics–something central to any diagnosis of a crisis in politics–before going on to show how Arendt’s understanding of the concept of action offers a more persuasive, pervasive and inclusive way of grounding politics both despite and, in part, because of its refusal to make sweeping normative claims. In short, Arendt does not offer certainty or political prescriptions, but rather a radical way of viewing politics that both critiques contemporary politics and also offers an alternative way of grounding politics in view of the human condition.

Arendtian Political Philosophy Before the case for using Arendtian political philosophy to offer a radical alternative to contemporary politics is fully explained, it is worth pausing for a moment to consider the reasons why Arendt has perhaps fallen out of favour and fashion more recently, since in doing so some of the core criticisms of Arendt’s work can be dealt with head on and from the outset of this essay. Firstly, anyone who has read Arendt’s work will have noted that it is often densely written, with multiple strands and themes vying for attention across often complex and challenging central claims. This criticism is perhaps fair, although it is equally difficult to argue with Margaret Canovan’s claim that anyone finding themselves with this problem should simply re-read the texts in question (Canovan 1974: 4) Tying in with the question of complexity is the potential problem of the lack of a coherent or systematic plan for politics–there is no Arendtian equivalent of The Communist Manifesto, for example. As will be discussed below, this failure to deliver a normative and prescriptive plan for politics is not actually a failure of Arendtian philosophy, but one of its strengths. For now it is enough to note that Arendt’s concerns and thoughts about politics are all there in her work, and can be found by any patient and thorough reader. Another issue facing anyone who might champion Arendt’s philosophy is her ability to create controversy–perhaps most notoriously in her piece on school desegregation in the US and her book on the trial of Adolf Eichmann. There is not the space here to rehash the debates caused by those particular pieces of work; rather, it is worth nothing that anyone who does consistently write about politics is bound at some point to court controversy, since political issues are often controversial and there is perhaps more merit in a thinker being willing to attract criticism as they consistently expound their case than changing their views to fit with the popular views of the day or to conform to societal or peer pressure. Finally, there is the claim that Arendt’s use of history was often not that accurate–a criticism perhaps best summed up by Isaiah

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Berlin’s acidic remark that Arendt managed to write widely on Russia without getting a “single fact… right.” (Watson 1992: 11) There is some merit to this criticism, although it is worth noting both that Arendt is not alone as a political philosopher against whom this claim could be convincingly made and that Arendt’s political philosophy–especially in The Human Condition, a work pivotal to this essay–is not solely dependent on her powers of historical analysis. So while the criticism made by, among others, Berlin about her use of history is accurate, it is not fatal to her overall canon of work. Having addressed some of the more common critiques of Arendt’s work, it is now time to turn to the more positive task of explaining precisely why her work has something to offer when it comes to addressing the problems of a contemporary politics in crisis. In order to do so, a brief explanation of what her understanding of politics actually is becomes necessary. The central text here is, as noted above, The Human Condition, but there is a lot of merit to the argument–expounded among others by Canovan and Bergen (Bergen 1998: xi) –that Arendt’s work as whole is based on the understanding of politics explored in that particular book. It is here that Arendt makes the distinction between three different spheres of human activity–labour, work and action. All three are vital to human existence but only one-action–is fundamentally human. Labour, for Arendt, is all the activities involved in subsistence for humanity. As such, the products of labour are transient and designed for consumption. Thus labour offers no real permanence and is an activity that has to be constantly repeated in order for human existence to persist. Work offers more permanence, as it constitutes the fabrication of items designed to offer more stability to human existence. Thus the chopping down of a tree to create firewood would be labour, as the wood would be totally consumed in order to create warmth, while using the wood to create a chair would be action as there is more longevity associated with the activity undertaken. At this point it is crucial to note that animals undertake both labour and work as well as humans, since animals seek the means of subsistence in order to survive and also create more permanent edifices such as nests to ameliorate their on-going existence. What animals do not do–and what is, according to Arendt, fundamentally human in its nature–is action. Action occurs when humans come together in a public space and communicate with one another. Thus action is fundamentally intersubjective in the sense that it can only take place in a plurality of people, and it is not possible for a lone person to undertake action. It is also creative and unpredictable, since no-one can know what discussions will take place and what the outcomes of those discussions will be if they

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enter into a public space with an open mind and willingness to debate with others.

The Implication for Arendtian Thought At this point it is worth stressing this unpredictability, and what its implications are for Arendtian thought. Contrary to a common misrepresentation of Arendt’s philosophy, she is not passionately arguing for a return to the polis of Ancient Greece–that is merely one form of political forum where action can manifest itself on her account. There are other, very different examples of action, such as the work of the founding fathers of the United States of America in creating that country’s constitution and the workers councils that sprang up, albeit briefly, in the aftermath of the 1956 revolution in Hungary. The point is that neither the manifestation of action nor its outcomes are predictable; to undertake action is to take a leap into the unknown. The fact of this inherent and seemingly fundamental unpredictability is something Arendt understands and addresses through her reading of the concepts of promising and forgiveness–both of which she believes to be fundamental to the political process. Promising is necessary as it allows political actors to render at least some of the unpredictability of politics as moot since they are at least offering some sort of hope of consistency in their actions moving forward. However, a promise made today can be a promise broken tomorrow, and this is in part why Arendt makes forgiveness so fundamental to her account of politics. For her, forgiveness is essential to politics as it allows for individuals to move together beyond the sort of mistakes that will happen given action’s basic unpredictability. It is a creative act as it creates a future beyond the mistake made, and like all activities involved in action it is inter-subjective. After all, it is impossible to forgive another if one does not interact at all with that other. This basic and all too brief exposition of some of the key concepts explored by Arendt in The Human Condition then leads to the question of how these often idiosyncratic understandings of common concepts relates to contemporary politics and any crisis within it. The answer is two-fold. Firstly, Arendtian political philosophy allows for the critique of contemporary politics, while simultaneously offering an alternative view of how a healthier form of politics might be grounded. Exploring these fundamental insights offered by Arendt’s account of politics will form the basis of the rest of this essay, in particular stressing precisely how Arendt’s political philosophy is radical in relation to modern politics.

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In terms of critiquing the contemporary arrangement of politics, it is crucial to remember that action–what is both distinctly human and political according to Arendt–is inter-subjective, and is perhaps best understood as inter-subjective discussion between individuals in a public space. Contrast this notion of individuals entering a public space in order to debate with one another with what happens in politics in modern liberal democracies. In the latter, politics is primarily undertaken by elected individuals in some sort of legislative body. In order to be part of that legislative body, the vast majority of politicians are selected by party bureaucracies on the basis of conformity to some basic principles, such as the ideological fundamentals of that particular party. The elected representative is thus not necessarily coming to a public space to discuss their fundamental beliefs with others; rather, they have to deal with the hurdle of conformity before they are even allowed into that space. Indeed, there remains much merit in Arendt’s claim that party bureaucracies would rather lose an election with a safe, conformist candidate than risk letting a radical run on their behalf– as the failed candidacies of both John Kerry and Mitt Romney for their respective parties in the United States shows. Furthermore, the work undertaken by those elected representative is, for the most part, precisely that–work rather than action, since Arendt categorically claims that the fabrication of laws is not an example of action. Thus politicians in contemporary liberal democracies are only taking part in a flawed version of action at best. This critique becomes even more powerful when we consider that the fact that the politicians discussed above are among the most political of actors in contemporary liberal democracies, despite all the limitations on what they can do. Compared to the average citizen, they come far closer to the Arendtian idea of action than those they represent. For the majority of people in these liberal democracies, their primary opportunity to contribute to what is perceived to be the political process is once every four to five years when they enter the voting booth and put their cross next to their preferred candidate. One of the striking things about this activity is the fact that it is a fundamentally solitary one–what therefore passes for political activity for many cannot be classed as political in Arendtian terms, since it is not taking place in the presence of others. This critique becomes even more radical when it is remembered that action is not just about politics, but is the activity that is distinctly human. An Arendtian critic of contemporary liberal democracies could therefore make the claim that not only are the majority being denied meaningful political participation, they are also being denied access to the activity that affirms their basic humanity.

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A defender of those democracies might raise the counter argument that there is the opportunity for the majority to participate in the political process, for example through joining and campaigning for a political party. However many of the restrictions affecting elected representatives equally apply to those who might want to join political parties–it involves them joining an existing organisation with set principles. Their ability to impact and influence that party’s agenda is limited to say the least, just as their ability to choose which candidate they campaign for is equally constrained and often controlled by party hierarchies. At best, then, the structure of political parties therefore confines the opportunity for what Arendt calls action at best; at worst they are further examples of the denial of action to the majority within modern liberal democracies. It is tempting, in light of what Arendt calls action, to note that there is far more actual politics in the sort of debate that occurs in a university seminar room than there ever is in the House of Commons or the bodies that make up the federal government in the United States; the tragedy lies in the fact that the strength to implement policy lies with the latter rather than the former. In short, Arendtian philosophy shines a clear light on some of the key problems facing politics, namely the limited scope for political action for even the extremely small number of political actors in liberal democracies combined with the almost systematic alienation of the vast majority from meaningful political action; if politics is in crisis in liberal democracies then these problems are among those that clearly need to be addressed to create a more healthy political environment. At this point, the defender of those democracies might raise the question of what precisely is the Arendtian alternative to those political settlements. How can this particular political philosophy address those problems that are contributing to the crisis in politics? There is some merit in the idea expounded by the likes of Raymond Geuss that in order to have validity a theory does not have to offer an alternative to the status quo; it is enough simply to critique that status quo. However, a careful reading of Arendtian political philosophy would suggest that there are alternatives to that status quo, there is not just a single alternative. It is here that it is useful to draw a distinction between suggestion and prescription in relation to Arendt’s work. There is a sense in which her work defies political prescription, since the very act of arguing for and then trying to implement one single political settlement atrophies the possibility for individual action as it closes off fundamental political questions about the basis for politics within a society. Yet as anyone who has read The Origins of Totalitarianism should know, Arendt strongly implies at the very least what politics and society should avoid. So there is a sense in Arendt’s

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work that she is unable to offer positive political prescription–a single political agenda that can be pursued proactively – but she is happy to offer negative political prescription, in the sense of detailing what needs to be avoided. What she does offer, on the positive side of the coin, is suggestions and hints of what action has looked like in the past–be it the aforementioned examples of the polis, the activities of the founding fathers at the birth of the United States of America or the brief workers councils after the Hungarian Revolution–and therefore it can be inferred from those suggestions what action might look like as an alternative to the contemporary political arrangements. If Arendtian philosophy is going to be more than a critical theory and suggest, however tacitly, what politics could look like from the perspective of action, where do those hints and suggestions take the political actor who wishes to undertake action? The first point to note–as demonstrated by the examples cited above–is that action can manifest itself in very different ways. Those who enter politics wishing to pursue a rigid end goal are not involving themselves in action unless they are willing to concede that their political conclusions may change through inter-subjective debate with others. The second point about action that needs to be taken into account is that it would be a far more inclusive and proactive form of politics than the status quo in liberal democracies. The opportunities for meaningful political participation would be massively increased, but at the same time it has to be conceded that with this expansion the pressure for individual participation would massively increase as well if action is actually to occur. There would need to be a step change in how many individuals view politics. Furthermore, the forums for political participation would be drastically enlarged. The perception that politics can only take place in a legislature could be directly challenged. There is no reason why politics could not take place at differing levels within a nation and take on very different shapes and sizes depending on what the individuals involved want from politics. Just as there would need to be a radical rethink of what political participation is, there would need to also be a reimagining of what genuine political forums actually can be, and the potential diversity of those forums would need to be acknowledged and accepted across society. The final key point to note would be the caveat that comes with Arendtian action; it does not offer a utopian political future where disagreement, discord and political problems are ended once at for all–in fact, if anything, action is in part dependent on all those things continuing. Equally, given the outcomes of action are fundamentally unpredictable, there would be no guarantee that action would not generate future crises in politics. Indeed, this would remain a distinct possibility. Why, then, would

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action in the Arendtian sense be preferable to the perhaps safer but extremely limited politics of a liberal democracy? Why potentially swap one crisis in politics for another potential one, especially one whose shape and scope cannot currently be known? The answer to these questions lies in what underpins action; it allows for the participation of many more in meaningful politics, and therefore also allows for far more people to participate in shaping their own mutual future. The challenge of action lies in the fact that it cannot deny the possibility of future crisis owing to that action, but equally offers individuals the chance to involve themselves in success. The potential for failure is matched by the potential for greatness in a way that the muted political participation offered by liberal democracies simply cannot compete with.

Conclusion In conclusion, then, Arendtian political philosophy offers a radical alternative to the political status quo in two key ways. Firstly, it brings into sharp relief how the citizens of such societies have had the possibility of real politics negated for them, even in the cases of those considered to be actual political actors. The radical nature of this critique becomes even clearer when it is remembered that politics is, for Arendt, the fundamentally human activity and this – the denial of action to the majority is a denial of their humanity. Secondly, Arendtian political philosophy offers suggestions of what the alternative to the political settlements in liberal democracies might look like. It cannot offer a single alternative to those democracies without undermining its own foundations, but it can offer a form of politics that allows for far broader political participation from potentially all in society, and simultaneously offers the chance of political greatness rather than the political mediocrity that seems to be the resting place of the politics of liberal democracies. If politics in those democracies is in crisis, then those who wish to address that crisis could do far worse than consider what problems Arendt’s political philosophy highlights, and what politics might be if interpreted through the radical lens of Arendtian action.

Bibliography Allen, M.; Martin, J.; Thomas, E. and Thrush, G. (2012) Playbook 2012, New York: Random House. Arendt, H. (2006) Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought, London: Penguin Books.

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—. (1972) Crises of the Republic, London: Harcourt Books. —. (2006) Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, London: Penguin Books. —. (1994) Essays in Understanding: 1930-1945: Formation, Exile and Totalitarianism, New York: Schocken Books. —. (1973) On Revolution, London: Penguin Books. —. (1970) On Violence, London: Harcourt Books. —. (2005) The Promise of Politics, New York: Schocken Books. —. (2003) Responsibility and Judgement, New York: Schocken Books. —. (1998) The Human Condition (Second Edition), Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —. (1986) The Origins of Totalitarianism, London: Andre Deutsch. Bergen, B. J. (1988) The Banality of Evil: Arendt and the Final Solution, Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. Breen, K. (2012) Under Weber’s Shadow: Modernity, Subjectivity and Politics in Habermas, Arendt and MacIntyre, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited. Canovan, M. (1974) The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt, London: Dent. —. (1992) Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Geuss, R. (2008) Philosophy and Real Politics, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Honig, B. (1993) Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kaplan, G. T. and Kessler, C. S. (1989) Hannah Arendt: Thinking, Judging, Freedom, Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Thomas, E. (2005) Election 2004: How Bush Won and What You Can Expect from the Future, New York: Public Affairs. Villa, D. R. (1999) Politics, Philosophy, Terror: Essays On The Thought Of Hannah Arendt, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Watson, D. (1992) Arendt, London; Fontana. Young-Bruel, E. (2004) Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World (Second Edition), New Haven: Yale University Press. Young-Bruel, E. (2006) Why Arendt Matters, New Haven: Yale University Press.

AFTERWORD MICHAEL FREEDEN NOTTINGHAM

The indeterminacy of crises Crises used to be thought of as turning points of a disease and even now dictionaries see them, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, as “a state of affairs in which a decisive change for better or worse is imminent; now applied esp. to times of difficulty, insecurity, and suspense in politics or commerce”. But crisis has come to denote not the watershed point but the trouble, danger or suspense underlying it—a state of affairs that is itself the breakdown, the incapacity. Leon Trotsky famously talked about “permanent revolution”. Should we now be talking about permanent crisis? Or are we simply bowing to the fashion—well-established in Italy, for example—to console ourselves that crises are normal, an attitude that tends to render them endurable rather than treatable? As we are living through turbulent times, we should perhaps just batten our hatches and proceed as usual. But when do human beings not live through turbulent times? Much of Western Europe, for example, enjoyed 50 years of relative calm in the second half of the 20th century, yet most of that took place under the shadow of the cold war and the threat of impending nuclear catastrophe. Crises, significantly, have degrees of intensity and many of them cannot be identified with ease because their existence may only be assessed subjectively, or because the word crisis is heavy with ideological content. Or to put this in a different light: what exactly would a non-crisis situation look like? Would it be a complacent conservative adherence to safe social change, or a successful welfare state arrangement that supplied essentials to most sectors of the population, or a stable dictatorship in which dissent had few outlets? Are there ideological measures of crisis— when democracy fails or cannot be implemented? When religious beliefs clash with largely secular values? When social groups apply exclusionary ethnic or nationalist criteria of identity? When a reforming government

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rums out of steam or resources? When liberal internationalism becomes neo-liberal muscularity? There is always the danger that the term “crisis” be used too liberally. Every system of government lives through the need to manage the unexpected as a daily occurrence, and problematic flare-ups are the very meat of social and political life. There are economic crises, crises of war and terror, crises of poor government, crises of mass health. Some of them are then called, or can generate, humanitarian crises—whether caused through human agency or natural disasters. Crises can be categorized in terms of the magnitude of their effect on large numbers of people, their duration, their relative intractability, or the depth of the moral issues they uncomfortably raise. Some crises tick all those boxes; others only some. And some crises are imaginary or imagined but they generate much hyperbole. Societies are often manipulated rhetorically into seeing crises that do not exist. One may recall the false sense of crisis, recently manufactured by a British populist party, of foreseeing tens of millions of immigrants about to flood the UK from East Central Europe. In his chapter, Bernardo Teles Fazendeiro, following Habermas, suggestively remarks that not all crises are sudden and overwhelming but can be discontinuities calling for dramatic action. And, we may add, pumped up in dramatic rhetorical language. Not least, we should bear in mind that failure—a normal and ubiquitous social experience, the absence of which would be bizarre— does not always mutate into crisis. Not all failures in democratic institution-building are crises, given that they are currently sometimes unworkable in certain cultures, or that even so-called “Western” societies exhibit considerable democratic deficits. Some of those deficits are inevitable, as certain given features of democracy can only be enhanced at the expense of other democratic features. And, despite our moral repugnance, not all instances of state violence are crises, especially if evaluated selectively only on one of the criteria of crisis: fundamental state instability. Nor are all conflicts or disputes crises, though many have the capacity to mutate into them.

The state in crisis? The collection of chapters in his book is wide-ranging. It embraces crises of governmentality, crises in international relations, and crises identified by some current trends in contemporary political theory. In recent years a crisis of Western capitalist practices has caused major ructions in both the economy and in the perception of politics. If we

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examine it through British eyes, we may note that for the past century British domestic policy has been struggling to find the right balance between what Keynes regarded as the twin ends of economic efficiency and social justice. The welfare state, contrary to current belief, was conceived as a mode of achieving both, for a state that would invest in the quality of life of its members would create a more motivated and efficient citizenry. If there now is a perceived crisis of the state, it is worth considering its causes. State failure may not be due to an overgenerous justice-serving social policy or even to lack of respect for the initiativetaking individual, but to another kind of failure. The state has been unable, or unwilling, to manage, let alone regulate, the vast shift of political as well as economic power to the world of finance and multinationals. Putting it simply, the state has been surpassed by a new power map of the world. If centuries ago the state was attempting to emerge from the shadow of the church—and is still thwarted or subordinated in societies where state law continues to be subservient to religious law—now the state in the developed world is being eclipsed by a new shadow cast by finance and business. That rather shrinks British claims about loss of sovereignty to the European Union down to size, when the far more striking loss of sovereignty has been to banks, multinationals, digital technologists and arms procurers. Indeed, states themselves are encouraged to adopt the rules of the game of those new power centres and turn to investment and economic competition rather than production and distribution as one of their notable functions. Even universities, one may note with regret, have been colonised by an ethos of performance indicators and outputs, and they are consequently facing their greatest crisis in modern times through being assessed as income generators and complying with mechanical publication metrics, rather than experimental centres of knowledge and intellectual curiosity. Those who preach the transfer of power and decision-making to civil society or “big societies” are naively succumbing to that very tendency of abandoning citizens to the mercies of huge private operators on a scale that radicals from Marx onwards could never have envisaged. States no longer have the power to keep economic crises in check and, as Patrick Diamond and Daniel Fitzpatrick show with regard to the UK, the fallout of such crises weakens them further, with various branches of the civil service being slimmed down, triggering a consequent “lack of institutional capacity within Whitehall”. States seem to be equally inept at countering the massification of populist and sectarian political violence across the globe, or at wielding sufficient persuasive force to mitigate the kind of climate change that is exacerbated by the activities of big business who

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manipulate the consumption imaginations and appetites of large populations. All that is not because states are bad, but because states have lost out to other organizations in the race for controlling the political. That is not the only issue. Much of what we lay at the doors of states we should be laying at the doors of governments. The two are continuously being confused. No doubt state organizations and procedures have their own inefficiencies, remoteness, bureaucratic impenetrabilities, and inflexibilities but governments are those who behave irresponsibly, unaccountably, short-sightedly and often self-interestedly. It may well be that S.M. Lipset’s analysis from over half a century ago is still valid: a crisis of efficiency (of a government) can trigger off a crisis of legitimacy (of a state)—and vice versa, as the Indonesian case study investigated by Max Regus suggests. This applies on the international level as well, where a focus on peoples, people and populations has significantly increased a purview, as Ignas Kalpokas observes, from the international society of states and nations to the international society of human beings.

The local and the external As many of the chapters suggest, worldwide crises have domestic implications and domestic crises have external—though not necessarily global—consequences. What is more difficult to establish, let alone predict, is what accords a political event such a ripple effect. Indeed, it may well be that the uncontrollable proliferation of such an event is one form of crisis causation. There is also the plain fact that crises have become more visible in a world of instant communications and of growing sensitivity to humanitarian abuses as well as to spill-over dangers. Gone are the days when large-scale crises go entirely unnoticed, though it is still the case that rising and falling moral and political fashions dictate which crises command attention and which fly under the radar. Many crises have physical manifestations linked to immediate suffering and violence, while others are slow-burning. Three revealing analyses, by Tahani Mustafa, Elisa Randazzo, and Julija Kalpokiene argue that intervention based on liberal principles with the aim of improving governmental practices in other countries coerces those governments to adopt consensual forms of political order that override local understandings. Whether or not local understandings deserve prioritization merely because they are local puts questions of democratic participation under the spotlight. For Randazzo, the imposition of solutions from outside is the cause of crises, reflecting the view that local knowledge is fundamentally superior to external knowledge. And, as she implies, local

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knowledge may not, for example, be sympathetic to an international human rights agenda—a point evident in Regus’s chapter when local majorities violate the rights of minorities. In parallel, in her chapter, Kalpokiene highlights the tension between counter-terrorism sanctions and maintaining a positive human rights record in societies targeted by United Nations Security Council action. Demonstrably, these often involve a clash between two kinds of crisis—violence perpetrated by extremists and an already poor record in rights protection. How to handle crises when they are in a zero-sum relationship with each other remains deeply problematic. Questions such as these link the second and third sections of the book for, given that paternalistic or external intervention are of concern for theorists of democracy, it may nonetheless result in crisis mitigation. All intervention, even if requested, possesses ulterior motives, such as curtailing the effects of destabilization from spreading beyond the boundaries of the assisted state. But some intervention provides the kind of technical help necessary to tackle local problems and, strictly speaking, no intervention, assistance, or even humanitarian mission is ideology-free.

Democracy—an unattainable gold standard? A salient theme of some chapters revolves around the struggle for democracy. Here we are squarely in the sphere of normative evaluation. What we often confront is a hidden, or ignored, crisis of democracy as polities grapple with other kinds of crisis. Indeed, many chapters hold up democracy as the norm, or gold standard, by which states have to be judged. Thus in Randazzo’s contribution the crisis of democracy is reasonably applied to post-conflict reconstruction when it appears in the form of failures of accountability or of inclusiveness in newly formed or reconstructed states. Some would see that as the growing pains of a particular system of government superimposed on more visceral crises of secure living. Crises of governmentality are not identical to crises—if that is the mot juste—of ethics, although they inter-relate. Serious shortcomings in democratic procedures, as well as substantive value deficiencies concerning participation, equality and selfdetermination—all fundamental elements of the democratic package—are ipso facto deemed crises. Put more strongly, the majority of the states on this planet—whatever further crises they may suffer from—are experiencing a crisis of democratic absence or breakdown. But then of course accountability and inclusiveness failures are even more salient in mature democracies, precisely because they “should know better” from

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experience or because the level of sensitivity to infractions of democracy should be higher. So those remaining states are experiencing a crisis of flawed democracy. The danger is that we then take the sting out of the tail of crisis altogether.

Crises in, and of, political theory Crises are not merely occurrences on the ground, so to speak. Some of the chapters extend the notion of crisis to crises in political theory including, as Kalpokas notes, a crisis in classic international thinking. And it is also evident, as John Baxter argues, that twentieth century political theory has identified existential crises—as is the case with Arendt. Alienation and the analysis of alienation are among the most striking phenomena of the late modern world and its putative “post” modern successors. That concern is quite distinct from focusing on the normative crises of the societies political theorists explore. Indeed, the latest manifestations of alienation are embodied in the waves of populism and extremism of the past few decades. Is alienation as the increasing dehumanization of the human race the most fundamental crisis of our era, a crisis that goes way beyond those of capitalism or terrorism, or beyond a participation that can be hollow or nominal? One is reminded of Durkheim’s anomie, except that his crisis was a breakdown of social norms that sustained individuals, whereas this crisis is a failure of individual connectivity, a connectivity that enables individuals to live the lives of which they are capable and require in order to flourish. If we are to go down the route of crises in political theory rather than crises of the “good political life”, the two biggest are the crisis in conceptualizing the political and the stubborn gap between normative and realist political theory. Conceptualizing the political entails drawing crucial distinctions between formal and informal politics, between politics as a site of centralized governmentality and politics as a key mode of human interaction. The tendency to see politics as something that occurs mainly at the level of governing states and at the relationship dimension among states suggests a “crisis” in the discipline. For the study of politics simply hasn’t kept up with political and ideological micro-analysis, with anthropological and cultural insights, and with identifying political conduct and thinking as ubiquitous. In particular, the propensity to associate politics with one central feature (be that consensus, power, agonism, or rupture) distorts the multi-layered and multi-featured nature of the political. In her chapter Marie Paxton subjects Chantal Mouffe’s analysis of politics and agonism to a searching critique for falling into

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broad categories not unlike those Mouffe dismisses. Political systems are always suspended between conflict and commonality, argues Paxton. Cavero, on the other hand, sees the construction of strong social identities as undermining the democratic potential of antagonism. Unfortunately, Schmitt’s association of politics with antagonism and his consequent attempt to present liberalism as “anti-political” belongs to those unsubtle and patently false attempts to stipulate that politics possesses one attribute only. That rules out by definitional fiat the obvious political competition of liberalism as an ideology over the control of political language and over the determination of political values. As for the gap between normative political theory and a political theory of the existing world, that too has become worrying. Political philosophers do not on the whole engage with the actual features of political thinking, even in their critical and negative approach epitomized in recent “nonideal” theory, and their concerns have drifted away from political science. Normative thinking, immensely valuable as it is, is a branch of ethics. The crisis here is a reluctance to explore what actually happens in politics: the good, the bad, and the ugly; the just and the unjust; the inclusive and the exclusive; the democratic, the authoritarian, or the populist; the culturally near and the far; the successes and failures of political thinking. All these are central to the landscape of the political and all have equal claim on our curiosity as students of politics. It is incumbent on us as scholars to understand the patterns of the political long before we adopt condemnatory or congratulatory stances. The crisis of political theory is to find ways in which to reach maturity as a social science, not just as philosophy or as a highly selective history of political thought. For the study of the political is, above all, the study of social practices and social thought-practices.

CONTRIBUTORS

Berta Barbet Porta is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Politics and International Relations of the University of Leicester since 2012. Previously she studied a degree in Political Sciences and Public Administration at the University Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona and two masters: the first one in Political Strategy and Communication (Autonomous University of Barcelona), the second in Political Behaviour and Public Opinion (University of Essex). John Baxter is a PhD Candidate at the University of York. He is currently researching the impact on political philosophy and political theory of "the reality of pluralism". This concept centres on the notion that reality shows politics is based on disagreement rather than consensus based on universals. Through detailed analysis of the political thought of three very different pluralist thinkers - Hannah Arendt, Alasdair MacIntyre and John Gray - the research considers what form political philosophy might take if it respects this reality of pluralism. Oana Burcu is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham in the UK. She is currently working on the construction of nationalism in China and its influence on Sino-Japanese relations, especially in connection to Diaoyu/Senkaku islands. Her main interests lie in: Asia-Pacific region, especially China; traditional and non-traditional security threats; the effect of nationalism and public opinion on domestic and foreign policy; media and cultural studies. Gonzalo Cavero is a PhD Candidate at the IHS in Vienna within the Project “The Politics of Representation in Europe”. He holds a double degree on Law and Political Science and a master on "Goverment and Democracy" from the UAM. He spent a year at the University of Birmingham. His research interests are theories of representation and the role of social movements and political parties.

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Dr Patrick Diamond worked as a policy advisor under the Labour Party government of the United Kingdom in a role covering policy and strategy. He is now a Lecturer in Public Policy at Queen Mary, University of London, a vice-chair of the think-tank Policy Network, Gwilym Gibbon Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, and a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Politics at the University of Oxford. Dr Daniel Fitzpatrick is currently a Research Associate at the University of Manchester. Previously, he was a Research Assistant in the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield following the award of his PhD in 2011. Stuart Fox is an ESRC-funded PhD Candidate at the School of Politics and International Relations, and is an associate of the Centre for British Politics and the Methods and Data Institute. Stuart’s research studies the political participation and engagement of young people in advanced Western democracies, with a particular focus on the effects of social evolution - including globalization, the advancement of technology, and unprecedented developments in economic provision and education - on the way new generations of young people are relating to the structures and processes of politics, and what consequences this might have for their political behaviour. Professor Michael Freeden is a Professor of Political Theory at the University of Nottingham and founding editor of the Journal of Political Ideologies. His research interests include the nature of political thinking, ideologies, liberal thought, conceptual history, and comparative political thought. Having worked at Oxford University between 1978 and 2012, he has been awarded the medal for science by the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of Bologna, in addition to the Isaiah Berlin Prize of the UK Political Studies Association for lifetime contribution to political studies. Jana Jonasova is a PhD Candidate at the University of Nottingham. Her doctoral thesis explores the use of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) as a tool in the United States’ foreign policy. Her broader research interests lie in theories and strategies of modern warfare and their implications on the conduct of wars in the 21st century.

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Ignas Kalpokas is a PhD Candidate at the University of Nottingham. His main research areas include (1) tensions between the constituent and the constituted power in modern democracies; (2) international political theory, especially the history and practice of sovereignty and modern challenges to sovereignty; (3) cyber security, cyber regulation, and symbolic representations of cyberspace, again mostly concentrating on the issues of sovereignty and political ordering; 4) more generally, the role of political symbols, metaphors, and political naming. Julija Kalpokiene is doing a joint degree in LLB Law at the University of Salford and LLM in Public International Law at the University of Nottingham at the University of Nottingham. She is interested in commercial law and public international law, particularly in how international organisations affect business and people focusing on cyber regulation and the effectiveness of human rights mechanisms. Dr Ekaterina Kolpinskaya is an Associate Lecturer in Quantitative Methods at the Q-Step Centre at the University of Exeter. She has completed her PhD at the University of Nottingham focusing on the religious representation in the UK House of Commons and parliamentary behaviour of minority MPs. She also holds a Candidate in World History degree from Kemerovo State University and Tomsk State University (Russia). Tahani Mustafa is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Her research focuses on security sector reform in its neo-colonial context with a specific focus on the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt). She has previously published on the structural impediments to a Palestinian Spring as well as the dynamics of the security sector reform in the oPt. Marie Paxton is an ESRC-funded PhD Candidate at the University of Nottingham and a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Westminster. Her doctorate considers whether and how agonistic democratic practices might be applied to society in order to mediate multicultural, pluralist conflict. In so doing, her research combines an exploration of empirical and theoretical analysis, drawing on experimental design. Her research interests include multiculturalism, democracy, social unity and inclusion.

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Elisa Randazzo is a PhD Candidate and Visiting Lecturer at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster, in London, UK. She has presented her research at several international and national conferences such as International Studies Association and PRIO. She is Commissioning Editor at E-International Relations, working on the subject of IR and Security Studies. Her current research interests are post-conflict peace-building and state-building, with particular emphasis on Kosovo, where she has conducted several interviews and where she has also taught a graduate summer course, at the University of Prishtina. Max Regus obtained his Masters in the Sociology of Development from University of Indonesia. This paper is a small part of his doctorate project, which he is undertaking at The Graduate School of Humanities, Tilburg University, the Netherlands. It is funded by the Institute of Missiology, Aachen, Germany. Bernardo Teles Fazendeiro is a visiting Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of St Andrews. His research focuses mainly on role theory. He is interested in the notion of role; its impact on research methodology and how it affects recognition. Bernardo also studies the links between private and public politics in addition to the international politics of Central Asia. Sachiyo Tsukamoto is a PhD Candidate in politics at the Faculty of Business and Law at the University of Newcastle in Australia. She also works for one of the most active feminist NGOs in Japan, VAWW RAC (Violence Against Women in War Research Action Center). Her current research focuses on the politics of gender and memory of war-time Japanese "comfort women" for the Japanese military. Fiona Williams is a PhD Candidate in Parliamentary Government with the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham. Her research focuses on the legislative procedure in the House of Lords, but she takes a broader interest in British Politics and the broader work of second chambers around the world.

IMAGES FROM THE CONFERENCE

Photo 1. “Politics in Crisis?” Conference reception (Jana Jonasova)

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Photo 2. British Politics section (Stuart Fox)

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Photo 3. British Politics section (left to right: Ekaterina Kolpinskaya and Berta Barbet Porta)

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Photo 4. International Relations and International Political Economy section (left to right: Ruike Xu and Lan-Shu Tseng)

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Photo 5. International Relations and International Political Economy section (Oana Burcu)

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Photo 6. International Relations and International Political Economy section (Jana Jonasova)

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Photo 7. Political Theory section (Sachiyo Tsukamoto)

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Photo 8. Political Theory section (left to right: John Baxter, Marie Paxton, Gonzalo Cavero and Ignas Kalpokas)

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Photo 9. Political Theory section (left to right: Max Regus and Prof Michael Freeden)