Why Territorial Disintegration Has Not Occurred in Russia: Applying State Breakdown Theories to Explain Stability

Much has been written to explain the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Little attention, however, has been paid to understanding why post-1991 Russia has maintained stability despite continued economic and political turmoil throughout the 1990s. This paper attempts to answer this question by applying an integrated model of territorial disintegration to examine the political, economic, demographic, and geopolitical changes in the pre-1991 Soviet Union and post-1991 Russia. The integrated model is constructed by synthesizing Goldstone's demographic-structural model, Skocpol's and Collins' geopolitical model, and a modified version of Collins' argument of the destabilizing potential brought about by rapid market development as three alternative routes to territorial disintegration. It is found that improvement in Russia's geopolitical condition after 1991 is largely responsible for the decline in disintegrative potential. Slower population growth also rendered the demographic route less disintegrative during the 1990s. More effective taxation and the availability of foreign loans enabled the Russian state to handle its financial crises, thereby curbing the development of destabilizing forces through the dynamics proposed by Collins.     

Trajectories of Institutional Disintegration in Late-Soviet Russia and Contemporary Iraq

How might revolutions and other processes of institutional disintegration inform political processes preceding them? By mapping paths of agency through processes of institutional disintegration, the trajectory improvisation model of institutional breakdown overcomes "action-structure" binaries by framing political revolutions as possible outcomes of such disintegrative processes. The trajectory improvisation approach expands the trajectory adjustment model of social change developed by Gil Eyal, Iván Szelényi, and Eleanor Townsley. An overview of political revolution in Soviet Russia between 1989 and 1991 illustrates trajectory improvisation. The recent American invasion and occupation of Iraq shows alternative routes to institutional disintegration, indicating the independence of models of institutional breakdown from those of social movements. These cases illustrate both the diversity of situations the trajectory improvisation model speaks to, and the limitation of models of trajectory adjustment, improvisation, social movements, and invasions, illustrating why such models at best enable what are called "explanatory narratives" of actual historical processes.     

Economic liberalization and social values: Spain in the decade of the 1980s

Spain has experienced dramatic political and economic changes in the last several decades. In particular, joining the European Community in 1985 marked a point of economic policy change and acceleration of economic growth for Spain. Based primarily on the results of two national social surveys in 1981 and 1990, this paper examines changes in Spanish social values that corresponded to this period of economic liberalization. While necessarily speculative, the paper concludes that economic reform may have had both integrative and disintegrative influences on social values and that the extent of the country's economic growth in the last half of the decade was probably insufficient to capture additional social benefits of economic advancement.     

State Fragmentation: Toward a Theoretical Understanding of the Territorial Power of the State

In existing theories of revolution, the state is narrowly defined as an administrative entity, and state breakdown simply refers to the disintegration of a given political regime. But this narrow definition cannot deal with this question: Why, in a revolutionary situation, do some states become fragmented and others remain unified? I would therefore argue for the broadening of the concept of state breakdown to include the territorial power of the state and to treat the latter as a key analytical dimension in the study of state fragmentation. The dynamics of territorial state power involve the control of critical territories and valuable resources associated with the spatial position of a given state in the interstate system. A strong territorial state is able to maintain its organizational coerciveness and territorial integrity, whereas a weak territorial state is vulnerable to fragmentation. The overall state crisis derives from the accumulated effects of geopolitical strain by which territorial fragmentation unfolds.     

Crossing Boundaries: Legality and the Power of the State in Unauthorized Migration

Unauthorized migrants, often referred to as 'illegal aliens' or 'undocumented immigrants', are a burning political issue in many countries. This paper examines the complexities of unauthorized migration and addresses competing viewpoints on the subject as it relates to the power of the state. Despite the popular image of unauthorized migration as secret border crossing, migrants become 'illegal' in various ways, and the boundary between 'legal' and 'illegal' is more fluid than it may appear to be. Unauthorized migration is conventionally understood as evidence of the limited power of the state over immigration. This view, however, too narrowly focuses on the power of the state over entries of migrants. If we broaden our perspective and examine its power over migrants' lives and the way in which they are integrated into society, unauthorized migration in fact reveals the strong power of the state, which has a capacity to deprive migrants of their rights.     

Disrupting global disability frameworks: settler-colonialism and the geopolitics of disability in Palestine/Israel

In recent years, Israel has seen an increase in disability studies scholarship and disability rights activism. At the same time, critical disability studies scholars have begun calling attention to the role of colonization and neocolonial powers, too often obscured in disability studies work, in disabling oppressed nations. This article brings these critiques in conversation with disability studies scholarship regarding Occupied Palestine to argue that disability is inextricably intertwined with the settler-colonial project of the Israeli state. By highlighting the geopolitical production of disablement, this work suggests that social approaches to disability have largely effaced disability injustice rooted in geopolitical power imbalances.     

Youth and political economy: towards a Bourdieusian approach

Cotê has called for a focus on a political economy analysis, where young people should be thought of as ‘youth-as-class’. Cotê positions youth as having false consciousness, arguing that youth studies is too focussed on subjectivities and a potential apologist for neo-liberalism. While we acknowledge the central importance of economic considerations, this paper critically engages Cotê’s claims while developing an approach to political economy that recognises the importance of inequalities between young people. We engage with a number of Cotê’s claims arguing that his position underestimates the diversity of work in this area and the importance subjectivities to any analysis of political economy. We also identify a number of conceptual problems with ‘youth-as-class’ and the ‘false consciousness’ heuristic. We develop an alternative approach outlining a more integrative understanding of the relationship between the political and the economy highlighting the importance of subjectivity. We draw on ideas of political ecology; reflexivity and consciousness; and concepts from Bourdieu. Our approach recognises that young people's lives can be shaped by economic forces and by classed symbolic and moral forces. Young people are not passive dupes, but are in a constant reflexive struggle to respond to circumstances not always of their own making.     

Australian immigration between globalization and recession

"This report has given some idea of the wide-ranging discussions at the Second National Immigration Outlook Conference [held in Sydney, Australia, in 1993], and of the way they reflect vital political, economic, and social issues in a country built upon mass immigration. The strains of globalization, geopolitical reorientation, and economic restructuring are having decisive effects on policies of immigration and multiculturalism. The consequences of such changes are difficult to predict, but in the authors' opinion they could lead to the breakdown of the 'Australian model' which has been remarkably successful in incorporating very large numbers of newcomers from varied backgrounds. The result might be considerable hardship and social tension."     

Youth politics as multiple processes: how teenagers construct political action in Sweden

Alternative approaches to power in youth politics are needed to overcome the conceptual dichotomy between youth political action that is either linked to – or delinked from – state institutions. This paper offers an alternative drawn from a study that sought to empirically explore, and build theory upon, how teenagers construct their political action. Our qualitative study among 10 activists aged between 17 and 19 in a medium-size city in Northern Sweden found that youth constructed their political action as four different processes: moving from consciousness to action, moving from personal experience to shared goals, moving from social activities to political activities, and moving from single to multiple arenas. We integrated these processes in the concept Youth Politics as Multiple Processes. Youth efforts to bring about these processes were not always fruitful because, as their political action gained complexity, youth faced greater constraints for recognizing, addressing and challenging power from age-based exclusion, state-centered definitions of politics, and adult disinterest in youth demands. According to our findings, youth constructed political action based in an approach to power that was not state-centered. We linked our findings to youth politics research and social movement theory that similarly proposed alternative approaches to power.     

Cooperatives as the “enfants terribles” of economics: Some implications for the social economy

The cooperatives are too economically oriented to be included in the non-profit sector and too socially oriented to be considered as an economic for-profit organization. These “enfants terribles” are wholly depersonalized. They represent a broader phenomenon, going beyond the dominant global economy. As such, cooperatives are seen as a model based on dual components, an economic and a social. Here lies the source of the incompatibility between the hegemonic economic paradigm and an organizational rationale claiming to be based on the co-existence of two features, the social and the economic.Therefore, this article supports the idea of non-profit economy, the cornerstone of the social economy but facing outward offering competing goods and services which can facilitate the market economy and mitigate the tendency towards oligopoly.     

Brexit,Global Cities,and the Future of World Order

The emergence and role of global cities provide a rubric by which we can understand Brexit and illuminate the present tensions between those who favor open economic policies and those who favor closed economic policies. Economic inequality, political disenfranchisement, and social exclusion at the regional level are now driving a fresh interrogation of the relatively open world order that requires global cities—sites densely populated with institutions necessary for orchestrating global economic activity. While questions about the legitimacy of economic openness may undermine the economic output, political power, and cultural influence of global cities, those same cities may, if they harness economic output for broader regional benefits, demonstrate the potential of an alternative and newly legitimate open world order.     

A power rule for social choice

Recognizing that all social choice takes place in the context of some status quo, the social choice process is modeled as a sequence of challenges to the status quo. In order to mount a successful challenge, the proponents of change must generate sufficient power to overcome the status quo. Power is viewed as an amalgam of economic, political and more general social power — such as the ability to communicate and shape public opinion. Individual power expresses both the ability and the desire to influence outcomes and, as such, varies from individual to individual as well as from social state to social state for each individual.Existence of equilibrium under a power rule is established, and stability of equilibrium is discussed.     

Towards a political ontology of state power: a comment on Colin Hay's article

This article offers some critical realist, strategic‐relational comments on Colin Hay's proposal to treat the state as an ‘as‐if‐real’ concept. The critique first develops an alternative account of ontology, which is more suited to analyses of the state and state power; it then distinguishes the ‘intransitive’ properties of the real world as an object of investigation from the ‘transitive’ features of its scientific investigation and thereby provides a clearer understanding of what is at stake in ‘as‐if‐realism’; and it ends with the suggestion that a concern with the modalities of state power rather than with the state per se offers a more fruitful approach to the genuine issues raised in Hay's article and in his earlier strategic‐relational contributions to political analysis.     

后穆巴拉克时代的埃及穆斯林兄弟会

穆巴拉克政权倒台后,穆斯林兄弟会成为埃及政坛最具实力的政治力量。它通过组党、组建政治联盟、引导过渡期政治安排等措施,巩固了其在政治格局中的优势地位。由于穆兄会在组织结构、经济实力等方面的优势,加之埃及世俗政治力量的式微,它旗下的自由与正义党有望在议会选举中胜出。迄今为止,穆兄会的政治议程尚不明朗,但政治现实将促使其趋于务实。穆兄会的经济政策与穆巴拉克政权相似,使其难以领导埃及实现经济转型。与此同时,穆兄会的崛起将促进阿拉伯国家伊斯兰党派走向联合,引发阿拉伯世界地缘政治结构的变动。当然,穆兄会上台也为埃及与以色列和美国的关系带来较大的负面影响。     

Aid Effectiveness: On the Radar and Off the Radar

Poverty is a human construct, yet the Euro‐American development assistance programmes that aim to reduce poverty remain a function of systemic problems, profit and politics. Critics argue that widened global income inequality and neoliberalism's ineffectiveness in the Global South can be reflected in recent geopolitical and epistemic tensions. China's rise as an economic and military power and its authority in setting up the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank directly threaten Euro‐American dominance in development discourse. These changes can bring multiple perspectives in the aid effectiveness debate. While these views introduce alternatives to the business approach of poverty reduction, they also make the Sustainable Development Goals appear more significant than ever.     

Social Movements and Socio-Political Change in Africa: The Ufungamano Initiative and Kenyan Constitutional Reform Struggles (1999–2005)

This article analyses the Ufungamano Initiative, a broad-based movement involved in constitutional reform struggles in Kenya. By analysing the rise, operations, achievements, and challenges of the Initiative, I argue that contemporary constitutional reform struggles in Kenya were societal responses to an avaricious political and economic class. It is further argued that the movement resulted from a fragmented elite consensus that widened political opportunities for contentious politics and therefore forced concessions for popular engagement in re-defining the relationship between the people and the political class. Ultimately, the Ufungamano Initiative’s power eroded as a result of multiple competing parochial interests in the movement.     

Inefficiency of democratic decision making in an unstable society

The political power is said to be efficient if good results in decision making are achieved by moderate means. For example, if a large parliament makes the same decisions as a given president, the power efficiency of the president is better than that of the parliament. We study the efficiency of three forms of political power, president, cabinet of ministers, and the parliament, using the model from the author's earlier publications on the mathematical theory of democracy. We define an indicator of power quality, referring to the weight of the coalition whose preference is satisfied by each decision. We prove that a presidential power can be absolutely efficient when the society is divided by preferences into (almost) equal coalitions, which is interpreted as social instability, because a small change in preferences breaks the equilibrium. When the society is stable, i.e. there are predominant coalitions, the cabinet and the parliament provide a better power quality. For a model with a large number of independent individuals we derive approximation formulas of the indicator of the power quality which imply a geometric interpretation of optimal president, cabinet, and parliament as providing the greatest projections of their characteristic vectors on the characteristic vector of the society. We draw an analogy to the geometric interpretation of forces in physics. From our standpoint, democratic (collective) forms of power are efficient in a stable society. In an unstable society, a parliament and a cabinet are less efficient than personal power. Linking social stability to economic development, we conclude that a democratic political system is not the cause but rather a result of economic development which makes the society stable. We comment on the political development in the ex-Soviet Union. In particular, we justify the separation of the Soviet Union into independent states as a measure to make the power more powerful when its potential has been exhausted. However, we doubt that democratic transformations can contribute to solving economic problems and that real democratic systems will be established in the ex-Soviet republics before at least major economic difficulties have been overcome. We also outline some applications of our results to Gallup polls of public opinion and to multicriteria decision making.First version of the article is published as Discussion paper No. 185 at the Universität Hagen, Germany     

Bandits,Militants, and Martyrs: Sub-state Violence as Claim to Authority in Late Antique North Africa

Fourth Century North Africa was a site of intense religious and political conflict. Emerging from a period of persecution and newly legitimized by the Roman state, the Christian Church immediately fractured into two competing camps. Now known as the Donatist schism, this fracture was the result of competing claims to religious authority between two camps of bishops, but the doctrinal debate at its core precipitated a specific form of violence: attacks on clergy and property perpetrated by roving groups of militant bandits. Known as circumcellions, these bands acquired a perverse reputation for religious zeal, a desire for martyrdom, and what their opponents described as the ‘madness’ and ‘insanity’ of their violence. Here I analyze sources produced by both Donatists and Catholics to trace patterns of circumcellion violence. I draw on borderland theory and research on non-state violence to argue that such acts were not mad, but rather the result of strategic efforts to consolidate religious and political power. In this, Donatism and the sectarian violence that accompanied it provide important insights into how banditry and peasant rebellions can serve as alternate sources of social and political power, avenues through which heterodox movements challenge the power state and religious hierarchies alike.     

(The Graduate) School (of Social Work) and Society

A learning paradigm for teaching social work research is offered as an alternative to the consumership models, the researcher as technician models, and the integration of research into other curriculum areas. The model presented adheres closely to the principle of knowledge-guided practice and ties knowledge about knowledge to the practice demands of the profession. The result is a highly integrative experience for the student. The last course has become a model for an integrative seminar.