Intervensi Turki dalam Krisis Suriah (2011-2014)

This research aims to explain Turkey’s intervention in Syrian crisis due to the perception of threat toward its security or domestic stability. Syrian crisis has directed threat indirectly to Turkey related to the existence of Kurd rebel group Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK’s activity in Syria. Syria makes the PKK affiliated to Syrian Kurd group Democratic Union Party or PYD an important actor particularly in northern area of the state during the crisis. Amid the instability caused by armed conflict in Syria, Turkey believes both political and military force of the PKK-PYD’s can injure its security or domestic stability now that the PKK still demands either territorial secession or autonomy for Kurd’s southeastern area. The research applies the worldview of international relations realism to describe Turkey’s behavior as a state with its power in responding to its surrounding. To strengthen the approach used, the research applies intervention theory which can explain the relation of Turkey’s intervention to the threat toward its security or domestic stability which it perceives as a vital national interest. Indeed, the result of the research shows a finding that such perception of threat encourages Turkey to commit intervention in Syrian crisis. Turkey’s intervention aims to remove the leadership of Syrian current regime with that of Syrian opposition group in which it trusts to be capable of creating stability, controlling, and restricting the political and military movement of Kurd groups in Syria.

Authoritarian Regime Stability in Uzbekistan under Patronal President Islam Karimov

This paper investigates the nature of Uzbekistan’s political system under President Islam Karimov through the lenses of patronal presidentialism to explain the factors conducive to the durability of the current regime. The paper argues that the longevity of the authoritarian regime in Uzbekistan can be best understood by a methodology that reconciles the propositions of institutional analysis of authoritarian rule with conventional methods of maintaining power such as coercion and patronage. Revealing the limitation of mainstream literature that overemphasizes neopatrimonialism and informality to understand domestic politics, the paper asserts that patronal president Islam Karimov assumed multiple instruments of power at the intersection of state and economy, which ensured regime stability in Uzbekistan until his death in 2016.

Amusing Ourselves to Loyalty? Entertainment, Propaganda, and Regime Resilience in China

Is it possible to form “soft autocracy” that manages citizens by taking away their sense of resistance? This paper suggests that the rise of entertainment media in autocracies enables the rulers to maintain their resilience through a soft approach, thereby avoiding costly heavy-handed measures. Such a soft approach can work because entertainment media, like “fictitious pleasure drugs,” undo audiences’ sophistication so that people are susceptible to autocratic propaganda. By analyzing a Chinese data set, via instrumented regressions, this paper shows that a one standard deviation increase in people’s interest in entertainment media is associated with an increase of almost 20% in both their satisfaction with the current regime and their anti-Western hostility. Furthermore, the findings show a positive relationship between people’s entertainment media interest and their acceptation of indoctrination by state media. In short, entertainment media contribute to China’s regime stability through “amusing ordinary citizens to loyalty.”

Country Communication Regime as a Socio-Political Phenomenon

The article examines a new scientific category of communication regime, analyses its scope, socio-political significance and features. The author describes communication regime as a controlled (with varying degree of controllability), institutionalized (with varying degree of institutionalization), conventional (with varying degree of conventionality) system of norms, rules, principles, traditions, structures, and actors that regulates information and communication processes. The immanent components of the communication regimes are communications (the process and the result of establishing two- or multilateral contacts) and information (the messages transmitted in the process of communication or in a one-way, unidirectional process of informing). The social essence of the communication regime lies in the ordering of communication and information, and the political essence in ensuring the reproduction of the current government, which together allows the system to preserve itself. The social essence of the communication regime lies in the harmonisation of communication and information, the political essence is in ensuring the reproduction of the current government, which in aggregate allows the system to preserve itself. The construction of communication regimes occurs by: (1) institutionalizing the ideas of the subjects of power about the ideal model of organizing information and communication processes in society; (2) consociations regarding the historically established norms and traditions of communication; (3) taking into account the interests of large and significant social groups; (4) adaptation of the current regime to new communication practices. Communication modes have complex subject-object relationships in which objects can become subjects and change the current regime. The author reveals the paradoxes and contradictions of communication modes, the underestimation of which can lead to social and political destabilization. A model for a comprehensive analysis of country communication regimes is proposed, developed by the author under the influence of systemic, institutional approaches, the ideas of constructivists, and taking into account the possibilities of the empirical level of research, fixation and pooling of scientific facts.

Public Opinion of Winners and Losers

Chapter 10 analyzes public opinion data to identify individuals who were more and less likely to support transitional reforms. In the mid-1990s, significant numbers of disaffected Russians indicated a preference for the old Soviet regime when compared to the current regime or a Western democracy, which suggests evidence for a phenomenon termed “red nostalgia.” Public opinion data also suggest that market capitalism is more popular in Central and Eastern Europe, but that many of those who expressed support for reform did it out of self-interest. The beneficiaries of transition—mostly the wealthy, young, educated, urban, and men—were more likely to support markets and democracy than their demographic counterparts. The chapter shows that across the postsocialist world, differences in support for reform are indicative of widespread belief that transition was being led from above, and that political and economic reforms were being imposed on the socialist masses by liberal elites.

Political Transition and the Rise of Amhara Nationalism in Ethiopia

Ethiopia is currently undergoing a significant political transition, a transition that began with the ascendency of Abiy Ahmed as a new chairman of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and Prime Minister of the country. In a span of a little over a year, bold political reforms have been introduced. At the same time, these reforms have exacerbated ethnic tensions in the country. In a country that has experimented with ethnic federalism and where ethnicity is the main political organizing principle, the pressure towards ethno-national political movements is quite strong. This pressure has transformed the political identity of many groups, including the Amhara. Despite its longtime role as a major constituency for pan-Ethiopianist movements, many Ethiopians claim that the Amhara, the second largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, has recently exhibited a trend towards ethnonationalism. In this paper we explore two questions. First, is there evidence that an Amhara nationalism is emerging? And if so, what may be causing this? Using recent data from both the Afrobarometer and World Values Survey, we find a growing sense of defensive Amhara nationalism among Amhara respondents, although there is no indication of a general abandonment of the “Ethiopianist ( Ethiopiawinet)” ideal. We argue that this defensive nationalism is a product of a “security dilemma” dynamic facing the Amhara as the result of the continuation of the “Oppressor/Oppressed” narrative that has been adopted by the EPRDF regime. This ethnonational appeal resonates with young Amhara males, and those who believe that their group has been unfairly treated by the current regime.

Making and unmaking masculinities in Cairo through sonic infrastructural violence

This article explores the Egyptian state’s production of desired manhood and destruction of unwanted masculinities in relation to home and displacement through audio-focused analysis and a focus on sonic infrastructures. While sonic infrastructures can be used as a form of political control and violence, my work in Egypt also shows how people, through sound and sonic resistance, navigate and shape sonic landscapes of insecurity, violence and liminality, as well as resisting displacement and claiming space. In Cairo, where political unrest over the past decade has produced new imaginaries and maps of belonging, men opposing the politics of the current regime have been expelled by the state from their own city; deprived of rights, safety, status and dignity. The institutions of state power employ sound as a political representation, and control, monitor, limit as well as threaten the population through the sonic. All of these sound systems operate at auditory, corporeal and sociocultural frequencies. There are countless examples of how materialised sonic experiences are consciously constructed and used by the autocratic military regime in Egypt to discipline and ‘produce’ its subjects, through for example forbidding particular music; monitoring its residents and thereby employing control by listening; using unbearable loud sounds during torture; or closing downtown bars, cafes and bookshops and thereby sonically controlling and limiting parts of the cityscape of Cairo. These sonic materialised experiences are connected to how gendered bodies are excluded, un/remade, produced, expressed and negotiated.

The appearance of bias in international investment arbitrators and analysis of potential impediments to bias in the European Union’s proposal for a multilateral investment court

ESAANZ ESSAY PRIZE WINNERInternational investment arbitration is in a controversial state. While the systems put into place by various treaties allow an investor to protect their investments directly by initiating proceedings against a government, claims of arbitrator bias are supported by the fact that arbitrators are appointed by the parties. There are transparency concerns which contribute to arbitrators being biased towards investors from developed countries. The regime of international investment arbitration is heading towards either abolition or reform. The European Union, being the partner to more investment treaties than any other country, proposes the creation of a multilateral investment court. As a structured arbitration court, there may be less bias than the current regime of investment arbitration as proceedings would be more transparent and open to the public, binding precedent would leave less grey area in decisions and add consistency to rulings, and judges no longer being appointed by the parties removes any incentive to rule in favour of their appointing party to secure future appointments. Together with an appeals system, this proposed structure purports to be a positive change in ISDS. However as the essay will show, this approach is not likely to be attractive to the majority of states who are interested in protecting their right to govern. These issues will need to be addressed if the investment court proposal is going to gain support.

Parliamentary Elections in Bulgaria

The subject of this paper is the 2021 Bulgarian election to the National Assembly, which in fact turned into an electoral revolution. It scrutinizes its outcomes along with the reasons for the failure of all existing parties and the success of political newcomers. It considers the “stalemate” alignment of forces of an extremely fragmented parliament and forecasts possible developments. It resumes that the end of the ten-year tenure of Boyko Borisov was enforced by the new generation of the electorate that did not see life prospects under the current regime. The entry into politics of the showman Slavi Trifonov as a next idol of public opinion, is consistent with similar processes in neighboring countries and replicates the political cycle already observed twice in Bulgaria. This experience prompts caution in assessing the chances of a genuine renewal of the system of governance under new leadership.

Subverting Eurocentric Epistemology

Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) has a fundamental problem: its scholars don’t quite know how to relate to international law. This problem is constitutive of the theory, born as it was out of disillusionment with the failures of decolonisation and, of course, of international law. As a consequence, we find in TWAIL scholarship the juxtaposition of powerful critiques of international law alongside noisy calls for more international law. TWAIL’s aspirational projects are timid, constrained as they are by TWAIL’s overriding commitment to a legal regime its scholars bemoan. In this chapter, I propose to use counterfactuals to overcome the schizophrenia. I treat counterfactuals as a device that enables methodical explorations of alternative legal imaginaries. Contrary to Venzke, I propose exploring counterfactuals that are neither probable nor sensible within the current regime. For TWAIL, counterfactuals have value if they facilitate thinking beyond the rigidity of the status quo. And that’s the point: if TWAIL’s mission is to upend Eurocentric epistemology and practice, we must begin to imagine international law outside the parameters established by Europe.