Illicit Economies and Political Violence in Central Asia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence P. Markowitz ◽  
Mariya Y. Omelicheva
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Drug Trade ◽  
Weak States ◽  
Collaborative Relationships ◽  
Organized Violence ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Terrorist Violence

This chapter examines low levels of terrorist violence in Muslim-majority societies. Studies of terrorism have tended to view the relationship between religion and violence through the narrow lens of security, thereby overpredicting the extent of terrorist violence across societies. After reviewing the various explanations for terrorist violence, and applying them to Central Asia, this chapter explores the conditions under which a state’s involvement in illicit economies—specifically its collusion in the drug trade—can dampen levels of terrorist violence. Combining quantitative analysis (including GIS-enabled tools) with a series of in-depth expert interviews conducted in Central Asia, it emphasizes the complex political economy of security that defines infrastructurally weak states, where political and security apparatuses are often immersed in informal and illicit economies. This approach helps uncover the complex links between religion and organized violence, where state apparatuses are often drawn into collaborative relationships with nonstate actors.

Co-optation and Resistance in Thailand's Muslim South: The Changing Role of Islamic Council Elections

2010 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan McCargo
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Southern Border ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
Changing Role ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Islamic Organizations

AbstractDuring times of violent conflict, states may closely scrutinize the loyalty of those who lead minority religious communities. November 2005 saw elections for Islamic councils in Thailand's three southern border provinces. The Muslim-majority subregion had experienced escalating political violence since January 2004. Allegations of electoral manipulation were rife; the elections were proxy struggles between the Thai state and potential opponents. This article positions these elections within wider debates about the nature of the relationship between Islam and the state, in Thailand and beyond. It argues that politicizing Islamic organizations may be a dangerous game for states and elite actors to play.

Central Asia: A Decolonial Perspective on Peaceful Change

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timur Dadabaev ◽  
John Heathershaw
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
World Region ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Systemic Factors ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
External Powers

Central Asia has seen dramatic yet peaceful change since the end of the Soviet Union as it has once again become a world region of sovereign powers. The relatively low levels of political violence and the concomitant authoritarian stabilization of the region’s postcolonies are both remarkable and poorly understood. This chapter argues that IR theory is of little use in this regard because it is focused on external powers and systemic factors, be they material or normative, and fails to account for the Central Asian actors and transnational processes that have shaped the transformation. This weakness has been mirrored in scholarship that until recent years was produced overwhelmingly by scholars from outside Central Asia and in accordance with debates that have minimal relevance for the region. The largely peaceful decolonization of Central Asia is best understood from decolonial perspectives that emphasize the importance of the region’s particular ideas and practices and how these have been formed in conditions of globalization.

scholarly journals Criminal Politics: An Integrated Approach to the Study of Organized Crime, Politics, and Violence

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 967-987 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Barnes
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Criminal Violence ◽  
Organized Violence ◽  
Criminal Organizations ◽  
The Relationship

Over the last decade, organized criminal violence has reached unprecedented levels and has caused as much violent death globally as direct armed conflict. Nonetheless, the study of organized crime in political science remains limited because these organizations and their violence are not viewed as political. Building on recent innovations in the study of armed conflict, I argue that organized criminal violence should no longer be segregated from related forms of organized violence and incorporated within the political violence literature. While criminal organizations do not seek to replace or break away from the state, they have increasingly engaged in the politics of the state through the accumulation of the means of violence itself. Like other non-state armed groups, they have developed variously collaborative and competitive relationships with the state that have produced heightened levels of violence in many contexts and allowed these organizations to gather significant political authority. I propose a simple conceptual typology for incorporating the study of these organizations into the political violence literature and suggest several areas of future inquiry that will illuminate the relationship between violence and politics more generally.

What Does Human Development Index Rating Mean in Terms of Individualism/Collectivism?

2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria José Sotelo ◽  
Luis Gimeno
Keyword(s):  
Human Development ◽  
Human Development Index ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
General Idea ◽  
Development Index ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
The Relationship

The authors explore an alternative way of analyzing the relationship between human development and individualism. The method is based on the first principal component of Hofstede's individualism index in the Human Development Index rating domain. Results suggest that the general idea that greater wealth brings more individualism is only true for countries with high levels of development, while for middle or low levels of development the inverse is true.

Ups and downs on the roller coaster of task conflict: the role of group cognitive complexity, collective emotional intelligence and team creativity

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-37
Author(s):  
Andreea Gheorghe ◽  
Oana Fodor ◽  
Anișoara Pavelea
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Intelligence ◽  
Cognitive Complexity ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Task Conflict ◽  
Team Creativity ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Explanatory Mechanism ◽  
The Relationship

This study explores the association between task conflict and team creativity and the role of group cognitive complexity (GCC) as a potential explanatory mechanism in a sample of 159 students organized in 49 groups. Moreover, we analyzed the moderating effect of collective emotional intelligence (CEI)in the relationship between task conflict and GCC.As hypothesized, we found that task conflict has a nonlinear relationship with GCC, but contrary to our expectations, it follows a U-shaped association, not an inversed U-shape. In addition,the moderating role of CEI was significant only at low levels. Contrary to our expectation, the mediating role of GCC did not receive empirical support. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed.

PERSOALAN KEHIDUPAN KONTEMPORER: MENGGAGAS KAJIAN SACHEDINA TENTANG THEOLOGI PLURALISME

EMPIRISMA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Limas Dodi
Keyword(s):  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Common View ◽  
The Public ◽  
The People ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Religious Differences

According to Abdulaziz Sachedina, the main argument of religious pluralism in the Qur’an based on the relationship between private belief (personal) and public projection of Islam in society. By regarding to private faith, the Qur’an being noninterventionist (for example, all forms of human authority should not be disturb the inner beliefs of individuals). While the public projection of faith, the Qur’an attitude based on the principle of coexistence. There is the willingness of the dominant race provide the freedom for people of other faiths with their own rules. Rules could shape how to run their affairs and to live side by side with the Muslims. Thus, based on the principle that the people of Indonesia are Muslim majority, it should be a mirror of a societie’s recognizion, respects and execution of religious pluralism. Abdul Aziz Sachedina called for Muslims to rediscover the moral concerns of public Islam in peace. The call for peace seemed to indicate that the existence of increasingly weakened in the religious sense of the Muslims and hence need to be reaffi rmed. Sachedina also like to emphasize that the position of peace in Islam is parallel with a variety of other doctrines, such as: prayer, fasting, pilgrimage and so on. Sachedina also tried to show the argument that the common view among religious groups is only one religion and traditions of other false and worthless. “Antipluralist” argument comes amid the reality of human religious differences. Keywords: Theology, Pluralism, Abdulaziz Sachedina

Transnational Social Movements and Peaceful Change

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Milcíades Peña
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Global Civil Society ◽  
Dynamic Processes ◽  
Transnational Social Movements ◽  
Relational Perspective ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Interactive Dynamic ◽  
Dominant Treatment

The chapter discusses the relationship between social movements and peaceful change. First, it reviews the way this relationship has been elaborated in IR constructivist and critical analyses, as part of transnational activist networks, global civil society, and transnational social movements, while considering the blind sides left by the dominant treatment of these entities as positive moral actors. Second, the chapter reviews insights from the revolution and political violence literature, a literature usually sidelined in IR debates about civil society, in order to cast a wider relational perspective on how social movements participate in, and are affected by, interactive dynamic processes that may escalate into violent outcomes at both local and international levels.

Repressive Religious Regulation and Political Mobilization in Central Asia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dustin Gamza ◽  
Pauline Jones
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Religious Persecution ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Perceived Harm

What is the relationship between state repression of religion and political mobilization in Muslim-majority states? Does religious repression increase the likelihood that Muslims will support acts of rebellion against the state? This chapter contends that the effect of repression on attitudes toward political mobilization is conditional on both the degree of enforcement and the type of religious practice that is being targeted. When enforcement is high and the repressive regulation being enforced targets communal (rather than individualistic) religious practices, Muslims expect state persecution of their religious community to increase, and that this persecution will extract a much greater toll. They are thus more willing to support taking political action against the state in order to protect their community from this perceived harm. The chapter tests this argument with two novel survey experiments conducted in Kyrgyzstan in 2019. It finds that the degree of enforcement has a significant effect on attitudes toward political mobilization, but this effect is negative (reducing support) rather than positive (increasing support). The chapter also finds that repression targeting communal practices has a stronger effect on attitudes toward political mobilization than repression targeting individualistic practices, but again, these effects are negative. The chapter’s findings suggest that the fear of collective punishment increases as the degree of enforcement increases, particularly when it comes to repression targeting communal practices. Thus, while Muslims are motivated to protect their community from harm, it may be that the certainty of financial and physical harm outweighs the expectation of increasing religious persecution.

scholarly journals Terrorist campaigns and the growth of the Muslim population: a reply

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Clara Egger ◽  
Raul Magni-Berton
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Muslim Population ◽  
Terror Attacks ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract A recently published paper in this journal (Choi, 2021) establishes a statistical link between, on the one hand, Islamist terrorist campaigns – including terrorist attacks and online propaganda – and, on the other the growth of the Muslim population. The author explains this result by stating that successful campaigns lead some individuals to convert to Islam. In this commentary, we intend to reply to this article by focusing on the impact of terrorist attacks on religious conversion. We first show that Choi's results suffer from theoretical flaws – a failure to comprehensively unpack the link between violence and conversion – and methodological shortcomings – a focus on all terrorist groups over a period where Islamist attacks were rare. This leads us to replicate Choi's analysis by distinguishing Islamist and non-Islamist terror attacks on a more adequate timeframe. By doing so, we no longer find empirical support for the relationship between terror attacks and the growth of the Muslim population. However, our analyses suggest that such a hypothesis may hold but only in contexts where the level and intensity of political violence are high.

scholarly journals Spatiotemporal Variation of the Burned Area and Its Relationship with Climatic Factors in Central Kazakhstan

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 313
Author(s):  
Yongfang Xu ◽  
Zhaohui Lin ◽  
Chenglai Wu
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Relative Humidity ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Climatic Factors ◽  
Spatiotemporal Variation ◽  
Lower Atmosphere ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Circulation Index ◽  
Precipitation Anomalies ◽  
The Relationship

Central Asia is prone to wildfires, but the relationship between wildfires and climatic factors in this area is still not clear. In this study, the spatiotemporal variation in wildfire activities across Central Asia during 1997–2016 in terms of the burned area (BA) was investigated with Global Fire Emission Database version 4s (GFED4s). The relationship between BA and climatic factors in the region was also analyzed. The results reveal that more than 90% of the BA across Central Asia is located in Kazakhstan. The peak BA occurs from June to September, and remarkable interannual variation in wildfire activities occurs in western central Kazakhstan (WCKZ). At the interannual scale, the BA is negatively correlated with precipitation (correlation coefficient r = −0.66), soil moisture (r = −0.68), and relative humidity (r = −0.65), while it is positively correlated with the frequency of hot days (r = 0.37) during the burning season (from June to September). Composite analysis suggests that the years in which the BA is higher are generally associated with positive geopotential height anomalies at 500 hPa over the WCKZ region, which lead to the strengthening of the downdraft at 500 hPa and the weakening of westerlies at 850 hPa over the region. The weakened westerlies suppress the transport of water vapor from the Atlantic Ocean to the WCKZ region, resulting in decreased precipitation, soil moisture, and relative humidity in the lower atmosphere over the WCKZ region; these conditions promote an increase in BA throughout the region. Moreover, the westerly circulation index is positively correlated (r = 0.53) with precipitation anomalies and negatively correlated (r = −0.37) with BA anomalies in the WCKZ region during the burning season, which further underscores that wildfires associated with atmospheric circulation systems are becoming an increasingly important component of the relationship between climate and wildfire.

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