Power and Politics
Global Power Movements, Uncertainty, and Democracy
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Selin Ece Guner
Guner (2015) argues that global uncertainty raised by power shifts in the global system are likely to impact authoritarian elite behavior leading to their concession to share political power and thus democratizations in the Middle East. In her article, Guner (2015) tests her hypothesis by looking at twenty countries in the Middle East. This study expands Guner (2015) and looks at 156 countries to test her hypothesis at the global level. In this study, I use cross-country panel data and country clustered logit regression models on 8628 observations, 156 countries ranging from 1815 until 2004. The results support Guner (2015)’s argument that global power transfers have short-term and long-term impacts on democratization.
Entrenching for Peace, Perpetuating Violence: The Turkish State and Changing Kurdish Politics in the Middle East
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kumru Toktamis
This paper develops the concept of (re-)entrenchment of Turkish state policies vis a vis Kurdish mobilizations to show that the peace/resolution process of 2009-2015 did not produce any results intended by any of the parties involved but re-configured the terms of violence from a security-coercive paradigm to a security-fraternity paradigm. A close reading of the minutes of negotiations indicate that with the collapse of this process, the Turkish state’s policy regarding the “Kurdish Question” as a vital security issue (rather than a democratic dialog) was restored, yet a new regime of violence was established, resolutely excluding former allies from new domestic and regional opportunities and at the same time impediments for all the parties involved. The minutes indicate that the crack within the power bloc played a significant role in this regime change which is a shift from a security-oriented coercive regime to a security-oriented yet a regime of seeking fraternity with Kurds based on religion. This study refers to these regimes as (re)-entrenchments; i.e. institutionalized policies and discursive strategies that are seemingly fixed, yet dynamic and fluid due to their transgressive qualities. Given the inadvertent consequences of contentions, agents of social change are (re-)entrenched in positions of their own making, but not necessarily their own choosing.
The Transformation of Russia-Japan Ties during the Second Putin Presidency
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Svetlana Vassiliouk
Because of the ongoing dispute over the four southernmost Kuril Islands and the consequential absence of a peace treaty, Russia and Japan are yet to fully normalize their relations. However, under President Putin’s personal leadership and due to his close relations with Japanese Prime Minister Abe, Russia-Japan ties have reached a high level of cooperation in political, strategic, economic, and cultural fields. However, given the persistent differences in the two countries’ official positions on the territorial dispute, it is difficult to envision a major breakthrough in the peace treaty negotiations at the present time. This paper will provide a thorough examination and assessment of Russia’s Japan policy during the second term of the Putin Presidency (2012-2018). It will provide an in-depth overview of the emerging changes in Russia’s policy toward Japan in the context of Russia’s strategy of the so-called “pivot” toward Asia and the “Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation” (released in 2016) that highlight the growing importance of Japan as Russia’s international and economic partner. In spite of the economic sanctions placed on Russia by Japan due to the 2014 Ukrainian crisis, the two countries’ economic, strategic and humanitarian cooperation has been expanding in recent years. As Russia-Japan international cooperation has also recently become more robust (particularly on the North Korean denuclearization, counterterrorism, and other issues of strategic stability), the paper will also discuss the future prospects for the full normalization of Russia-Japan ties in the context of the regional security and economic development in the Asia-Pacific.
Postdemocracy and Populism: A Case Study of “The Way of Courage” Political Party in Lithuania
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Karolis Jonutis
Populism has often been described as one of the greatest threats to XXI century European democracies. Critical examination of this situation rises two related questions: to what extent are national democracies in European Union still democratic and how such ideologically ambiguous phenomenon as populism could be conceptualized in this context. In this paper, I relate populist “surge” to postdemocratic condition – the depolitizing practices of modern technocratic policy-making described by Chantall Mouffe, Jacques Ranciere and Slavoj Žižek. My main argument is that proper politics cannot be reduced to social administration and that the ideological nivelation of traditional parties will necessarily bring new more radical political actors able to awake political imagination of masses. To conceptualize populism I use Ernesto Laclau’s discursive theory of populism, which is anti-descriptivist in that it does not seek to find some intrinsic characteristics of populism, but rather to define it as logic of political mobilization of various political movements by their common reference to “the people”. As an illustration of fertility of this approach – combination of descriptive postdemocratic analysis and formalist conceptualization of populism – in political research, I present the case study of Lithuanian political party “The Way of Courage” as a nearly ideal example of populist mobilization under postdemocratic conditions.
