State Collapse, Informal Networks, and the Dilemma of State Building in Somalia

2021 ◽  
pp. 219-262
Keyword(s):  
State Building ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
State Collapse

Governance without Government in Somalia: Spoilers, State Building, and the Politics of Coping

2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 74-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Menkhaus
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
State Building ◽  
Regional Governance ◽  
State Failure ◽  
Weak States ◽  
State Collapse ◽  
Political Access ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Governance Arrangements

Zones of state failure are assumed to be anarchic. In reality, communities facing the absence of an effective state authority forge systems of governance to provide modest levels of security and rule of law. Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in Somalia, where an array of local and regional governance arrangements have emerged since the 1991 collapse of the state. The Somalia case can be used both to document the rise of governance without government in a zone of state collapse and to assess the changing interests of local actors seeking to survive and prosper in a context of state failure. The interests of key actors can and do shift over time as they accrue resources and investments; the shift “from warlord to landlord” gives some actors greater interests in governance and security, but not necessarily in state revival; risk aversion infuses decisionmaking in areas of state failure; and state-building initiatives generally fail to account for the existence of local governance arrangements. The possibilities and problems of the “mediated state model,” in which weak states negotiate political access through existing local authorities, are considerable.

scholarly journals An Emperor by a Different Name: School Commemoration in Habsburg Austria and the Second Austrian Republic

2017 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott O. Moore
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
State Building ◽  
Austrian School ◽  
World War ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
State Collapse ◽  
Patriotic Education ◽  
The Way

This paper examines the connections between patriotic school celebrations in late-Habsburg Austria and similar celebrations in the Second Austrian Republic.  Similar to other states, Habsburg Austria utilized public schools as a vehicle for patriotic education.  One of the most obvious examples of this fact were the annual commemorations of the emperor’s birth. During these commemorations, schools across the Habsburg Monarchy would have students recite patriotic poems, sing patriotic songs, and listen to speeches detailing the virtues of their monarch. While these commemorations ended with the Monarchy, this paper illustrates that these events experienced a curious afterlife in postwar Austria.Even though Austria attempted to craft an identity independent of its former imperial past when the Monarchy collapsed, the legacy of imperial commemoration and state-building continued to influence the way Austria conceptualized patriotic celebration. This legacy was especially strong after World War II. Using previously unexamined speeches, programs, and organizational materials from Austrian school celebrations after 1945, along with similar sources from the Habsburg period, this paper will show that postwar Austrian schools used programs identical to those from the Habsburg period to develop the patriotism of students. This examination illustrates the legacy of the imperial administration on its remnants and the power of unconscious bureaucratic memory which can survive generations after border change and state collapse. As a result, it helps to develop our understanding of border memory in Central Europe and enhances our understanding of memory in states after changes to its constitution and lands.

Building a Proto-State on Quicksand: The Rise and Fall of the Palestinian State-in-Exile in Lebanon

2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-120
Author(s):  
Marina Eleftheriadou
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
State Building ◽  
State Collapse ◽  
Palestine Liberation Organization ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
The Creation

In the wake of its relocation to Lebanon, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) transformed from a guerrilla force into a state-builder. This article explores this transition and argues that the creation of the Palestinian protostate in Lebanon was largely guided by the country's civil war–induced state collapse after 1975, which created both opportunities and needs that forced the Palestinian movement to engage in state-building. Enticed by new opportunities and constrained by the Lebanese Civil War's volatility, the Palestinian movement shifted its strategic priorities from cross-border campaigns against Israel to fighting within Lebanon. These new opportunities and needs also encouraged the PLO to transform itself into a semi-conventional force, which led to its defeat in 1982 and the collapse of the Palestinian proto-state.

Organizing women migrants: The Filipino and Cape Verdean women’s associations in Rome

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-39
Author(s):  
Wendy Pojmann
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Women ◽  
Cape Verdean ◽  
Women Migrants ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
Women's Associations ◽  
Women's Organizing ◽  
Main Components ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Female Migrant ◽  
Migrant Groups

Migrant women’s associations in Italy did not simply emerge from informal networks. The Filipino and Cape Verdean women’s associations in Rome are examples of the results of multiple factors that contributed to the strategy of self-organization established by migrant women with the intention of empowering themselves. An awareness of their unique position as women from mostly-female migrant groups, a lack of institutional bodies prepared to assist them, and the leadership of individual women were key aspects in the formation of the first migrant women’s associations in Rome. Gender and nationality were the main components of migrant women’s organizing in the first mostly-female migrant groups. 

South Korea’s and Taiwan’s Territorial Disputes with Japan, 1990s to 2018

Asian Survey ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 583-606
Author(s):  
Christina Lai
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
State Building ◽  
Territorial Disputes ◽  
Maritime Disputes ◽  
Constructivist Perspective ◽  
Senkaku Islands ◽  
Taiwanese Government

South Korea and Taiwan are former Japanese colonies that have undergone similar processes of state-building since WWII. But they have chosen different rhetorical frameworks in their maritime disputes with Japan. In South Korea, negotiating with Japan can be viewed as threatening the country’s independence and pride, whereas in the Taiwanese government, cooperation with Japan is considered mutually beneficial. Why have these two countries taken such divergent stances toward Japan? This article examines the territorial disputes between South Korea and Japan over Dokdo, and between Taiwan and Japan over the Senkaku Islands. It sets forth a rhetorical framework of comparison, and it proposes a constructivist perspective in understanding South Korea’s and Taiwan’s legitimation strategies toward Japan from the late 1990s to 2018. This comparative study suggests that the differences between their legitimation strategies can be traced to their different colonial experiences with Japan.

Virtual Embodiment as/and the Threshold of Love

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Harris
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
State Building ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Empire State Building ◽  
Arcades Project ◽  
Performance Texts ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Stranger

This essay draws upon the author’s performance script Fall and Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project as a provocation for considering the ways performance texts provide a threshold for somatic inquiry, and for recognizing the limits of scholarly analysis that does not take up performance-as-inquiry. Set at the Empire State Building, this essay embodies the connections and missed possibilities between strangers and intimates in the context of urban modern life. Fall’s protagonist is positioned within a landscape of capitalist exchange, but defies this matrix to offer instead a gift at the threshold of life/death, virtual/real, and love/loss. Through somatic inquiry and witnessing as threshold experiences, the protagonist (as Benjamin’s flaneur) moves through urban space and time, proving that both scholarship and performance remain irrevocably embodied, and as such invariably tethered to the visceral, the stranger, risk, and death.

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