Neopatrimonialism in Afghanistan: Former Warlords, New Democratic Bureaucrats?

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weeda Mehran
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Framework ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Administrative Structures ◽  
Liberal Peacebuilding ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Shed Light

An indispensable part of the liberal peacebuilding package is rebuilding effective and meritocratic administrative structures. This paper analyses building state institutions in Afghanistan with a focus on the role of warlords in the process. The findings are based on in-depth interviews conducted from 2012 to 2016 in five different provinces of Afghanistan. The paper uses neopatrimonialism as an analytical framework to shed light on our understanding of warlords’ influence on building state institutions in a war-torn country such as Afghanistan. The paper argues that warlords have played a major role in the formation of neopatrimonialism in the country, a system that has proven pervasive, flexible and resistant to change. Additionally, this paper contends that neopatrimonial networks centred on warlords have been relatively effective in delivering services to those within the network while excluding others, nonetheless creating enough legitimacy and support to survive. Overall, this neopatrimonial system excludes some segments of the population and is very difficult to reform to make it more inclusive.

scholarly journals ‘Volunteering is like any other business’: Civic participation and social media

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 2186-2207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Kaun ◽  
Julie Uldam
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Civic Participation ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
Technological Affordances ◽  
Shed Light

The increased influx of refugees in 2015 has led to challenges in transition and destination countries such as Germany, Sweden and Denmark. Volunteer-led initiatives providing urgent relief played a crucial role in meeting the needs of arriving refugees. The work of the volunteers in central stations and transition shelters was mainly organised with the help of Facebook, in terms of both inward and outward communications. This article examines the role of social media for civic participation drawing on Swedish volunteer initiatives that emerged in the context of the migration crisis in 2015 as a case study. Theoretically, this article provides an analytical framework, including power relations, technological affordances, practices and discourses, which helps shed light on the interrelation between social media and civic participation.

scholarly journals The Role of the Court and the Constitution on Police Oversight in Zimbabwe: Prospects and Challenges

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 272
Author(s):  
Ishmael Mugari ◽  
Adewale A. Olutola
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Abuse Of Power ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Police Accountability ◽  
Legal Document ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Police Abuse

<p><em>The wide discretionary powers that are bestowed on the police necessitate the need for some mechanisms to curb abuse of these powers. The court, as an accountability institution, plays an important role in curtailing police abuse of power. This study explored the role of the court in police oversight in Zimbabwe, as well as examining the effectiveness of this important oversight institution in Zimbabwe. A total of 126 respondents drawn from institutions of accountability, were invited to participate through questionnaires and in-depth interviews. The study revealed that the court is an effective institution of police accountability, whose police oversight role is performed through: deciding on the propriety of police actions; presiding over criminal cases in which police officers are implicated; and presiding over civil suits against the police. However, despite the court’s effectiveness, the limited number of judicial officers and absence of a mechanism to implement court judgements against the police seem to militate against the court’s effectiveness. The constitution was widely viewed to be an effective legal document for enhancing police accountability, though its effectiveness largely depends on willingness of state institutions to adhere to constitutional provisions. Despite some obstacles, the court and the constitution are key independent mechanisms for curbing police abuse of power in the Republic of Zimbabwe.</em></p>

Trade Battles

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Kay ◽  
R.L. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Trade Policy ◽  
Public Access ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
International Policies ◽  
Using Data ◽  
First Time ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Public Opposition

How did activists create a dynamic broad-based movement during NAFTA negotiations that politicized trade, making it a contentious issue for the first time in history? And how did their NAFTA mobilization influence trade policy and set the stage for future battles over trade? Trade Battles answers these questions using data from over 200 in-depth interviews, contributing to a vibrant and burgeoning literature that tries to understand how civil society shapes state policy. Trade Battles shows how activists created a new set of institutionalized and disruptive strategies around trade that leveraged broader cleavages across state and nonstate arenas. Activists exploited these leverage points by mobilizing across them, which enabled them to politicize trade policy and influence the content of the agreement itself. So powerful was activists’ pushback against NAFTA that future administrations closed many state institutional channels in order to thwart public opposition, curtailing public access, participation, and input. This forced activists to try to kill many subsequent trade agreements whole cloth rather than improve them, as they did during the NAFTA struggle. The analysis in Trade Battles therefore shows that the NAFTA battle was less about trade policy than the role of democratic state institutions in policymaking. By exposing the linkages between institutional opportunities and democratic practices, Trade Battles reveals how critical state institutions are for activists’ efforts to shape not only trade policy, but a plethora of international policies from climate change to migration. When the state closes institutions, it effectively severs policymaking from democratic intervention.

All by Myself? Executives’ Impostor Phenomenon and Loneliness as Catalysts for Executive Coaching With Management Consultants

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 306-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shani Kuna
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Support ◽  
Executive Coaching ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Impostor Phenomenon ◽  
Management Consultants ◽  
Major Implication ◽  
Seeking Help ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Shed Light

The scholarly literature regarding executive consulting relationships, typically labeled as executive coaching, tends to focus on the issue of its effectiveness. The fundamental question regarding executives’ desire to engage in this kind of intervention, whose benefits are considered ambivalent, has been mostly overlooked. Addressing this theme was the purpose of this exploratory study, in which in-depth interviews were conducted with 46 Israeli executives. Despite the executives’ explanation of executive coaching in rational terms of knowledge acquisition, the findings shed light on two phenomena that, surprisingly, have received limited attention: executive loneliness and impostorism. These intertwined experiences have been executives’ implicit catalysts for seeking help from management consultants. The study highlights the significant role of executive coaching as a means of emotional support for executive impostorism and loneliness. A major implication is the importance of providing managers promoted to senior positions with preparation for the emotional distress associated with their role.

scholarly journals Nation-building, not “Resistance Radio”

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shayna Plaut
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Financial Independence ◽  
Saami People ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract Saami media are an important, if not invaluable, part of Saami society recognized as both a right and a service to the Saami people. In fact, the role of media and media outlets has often been referenced as a manifestation of self determination. However, whereas other Indigenous and ethnic minority media often seek clear financial independence from the state, my research shows that the Saami have a more nuanced and complicated approach. Based primarily on 25 in-depth interviews with Saami journalists, journalism educators and others who have been involved with communication I shed light on the evolving, robust and at times contested understandings of self determination as articulated, justified and practiced by Saami media makers. I argue that by not conflating self-determination with financial independence, Saami media practitioners are engaged in an evolving understanding and practice of media and self determination

Producing anti-regime protest news in a polarized and clientelistic media system: A frame building approach

Journalism ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146488492110366
Author(s):  
Lindita Camaj
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Frame Building ◽  
System A ◽  
Media System ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Depth Interviews

This study examines media coverage of the 2019 anti-government protests in Montenegro. Based on 13 in-depth interviews and a quantitative content analysis, the data shed light on ways in which democratization struggles are manifested via protest framing in a polarized media system. This paper argues that media clientelism, as manifested through political parallelism and media instrumentalization, provides a better theoretical and analytical framework to understand not only the influence of structural factors that determine protest coverage, but also the role of ideology and journalism cultures embraced at the individual level. This framework is helpful to understand the role of media in democratic struggle not only in emerging and defective democracies, but also in increasingly polarizing societies in the West.

scholarly journals The Rhetoric of Paintings: Towards a History of Balinese Ideas, Imaginings and Emotions in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Peter Worsley
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Visual Representation ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
Colonial Society ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Shed Light

Western historical scholarship has taught us much about Southeast Asia in the period between 1800 and 1940. This was a time when the insistent, intensifying and transforming influence of Dutch colonial society and its culture became widespread in Bali and more broadly in the archipelago. Much too has been written about the analytical framework of European histories of these times. In this essay I discuss Balinese paintings from this same period which shed light on how painters and their works spoke to their viewers both about how the Balinese knew, imagined, thought and felt about the world in which they lived and about the visual representation and communication of these ideas, imaginings and feelings through the medium of narrative paintings. In this paper I hope to draw attention to a number of historiographical issues concerning the reception of the ideas, imaginings and feelings conveyed in paintings. In particular I shall have some remarks to make about the role of philology in this regard.

scholarly journals Lifestyle entrepreneurs, hostels and backpacker tourism development: the case of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ludger Brenner ◽  
Jörn Fricke
Keyword(s):  
Tourism Development ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Business Owners ◽  
Business Strategies ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Shed Light

Drawing on the analytical framework of lifestyle entrepreneurs, this paper analyzes their motivation, objectives and business strategies in relation to the management of "hostels" in an effort to shed light on key agents of (scarcely investigated) backpacker-driven tourism development at San Cristóbal de las Casas. Based on in-depth interviews with owners and managers, we conclude that lifestyle entrepreneurs strive to meet the demands of contemporary backpackers by providing a specific ambience and outpacing more profit-oriented competitors. In addition, business owners work to sustain an explicitly hedonistic way of life to perpetuate their status as “senior” backpackers who offer customized, hard-to-imitate services. However, lifestyle entrepreneurs have also developed strategies to cope with increasing competition and recent demand-related trends.

Unpacking Journalists’ (Dis)Trust: Expressions of Suspicion in the Narratives of Journalists Covering the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 426-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tali Aharoni ◽  
Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt
Keyword(s):  
Information Sources ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Conflict Studies ◽  
News Production ◽  
Journalism Studies ◽  
The Media ◽  
Hostile Environments ◽  
Depth Interviews

Despite growing attention to notions of (dis)trust in both journalism studies and conflict studies, the role of suspicion and distrust in the dynamics of conflict coverage has not yet been investigated. This paper explores the various aspects of suspicion in the perceptions of journalists covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, drawing on twenty in-depth interviews with journalists and an interdisciplinary approach to the conceptualization of suspicion and (dis)trust. An inductive-qualitative analysis of journalists’ narratives identified three main aspects: suspicion of information sources, suspicion of peer journalists, and awareness of being under suspicion. The study demonstrates that through all stages of news production, journalists operate within a perpetual context of suspicion despite being required to generate trust. This dilemma culminates in hostile environments, where journalists must trust their sources in order to ensure their physical security yet are professionally required to epistemically suspect the information delivered by these same sources. Taken together, the manifestations of suspicion identified in this study provide an analytical framework for understanding (dis)trust within journalism and for further studying the processes through which these manifestations can contribute to public trust in both the media and conflict parties.

scholarly journals Ethics, empathy, and fear in research on violent conflict

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Shesterinina
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Research Participants ◽  
Research Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Shed Light

The discussion of ethics in the social sciences focuses on ‘doing no harm’ and ‘giving back’ to research participants, but does not explore the challenges of empathy and fear in research with participants in political violence and war. Drawing on 180 in-depth interviews on the Georgian–Abkhaz war of 1992–93 collected over eight months between 2010 and 2013 primarily in Abkhazia, but also Georgia and Russia, I argue that researchers can come to empathize with some but fear other participants in past and present violence. These emotional responses can influence researchers’ ability to probe and interpret interviews and respondents’ ability to surpass strong positions to explore dilemmas of participation in violence. By empathizing with not only ‘victims’ and ‘non-fighters’ as I had expected based on my pre-existing moral-conceptual categories, but also participants in the war, I found that individuals adopted multiple overlapping roles and shifted between these roles in the changing conditions of violence. In contrast, failing to empathize with and fearing those who continued to participate in violence after the war of 1992–93 limited my ability to fully appreciate the complexity of their participation, but shed light on the context of violence in contemporary Abkhazia. This analysis shows that reflection on the role of empathy and fear in shaping our interactions with research participants can help advance our understanding of participation in violence and this difficult research context.

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