The African Union (AU), an international organization comprising all 54 independent states in Africa and Western Sahara, was established in May 2001 to, among other things, promote regional integration, interstate solidarity, peace, good governance and to enhance the African voice in the global system. Pan-African organization is like the proverbial forest that has bad trees dotted around its many good trees. The AU has been very successful in addressing the needs of the African political class but it is yet to make a significant difference in the lives of many ordinary Africans. The importance of the pan-African organization to African political elite is such that they would have created it today if it did not already exist. The AU has socialized African leaders to accept liberal values as the foundation of international cooperation in Africa; enhanced the agency of African political class on the world stage; and established progressive and innovative rules and norms for the African continent. It has also created many useful decision-making structures that have contributed to the prevention, management, and resolution of conflicts in Africa.
The AU has, however, been less successful in connecting its activities and programs to many ordinary Africans; providing common public goods and services valued by commoners in Africa; giving voice to the majority of young people in Africa; promoting intra-Africa trade, good governance, and financial independence of the African continent as well as struggled to address the expressed material needs and quotidian concerns of ordinary Africans.
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The African Union: Successes and Failures
Thomas Kwasi Tieku
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Arab Gulf States: Expanding Roles for the Military
Eleonora Ardemagni
Despite national differences, the military has usually presented a lack of political role and agency in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman. This development has occurred because state formation in these nations has been mainly driven by energy revenues and external security provision. The primary task of the armed forces, especially between the 1950s and the 1970s, was rulers’ protection and regime security; for the monarchies, keeping the armies small and detached from political power was a coup-proofing strategy. As a result, researchers used to stress the dependency linkage between tribal armies and royal families, underlining the prominence of kinship loyalties (for upper echelons) and foreign manpower (for lower ones) in political–military relations. But as in a prism, these militaries reveal three coexistent faces—praetorian, neopatrimonial, and performative—with one prevailing on the others depending on the time frame. In fact, starting from the 1990s, the gradual processes of state consolidation and modernization have fostered the expansion of the military sector in the Arab Gulf states, maximizing the neopatrimonial dimension of the military. Defense procurement burgeoned, with an emphasis on hard power, as the agreements with the United States and Western allies to establish defense pacts, troop stationing, and military facilities. In the context of state transformation, the 2010s represent a turning point for the militaries that showed a rising performative dimension, especially in the UAE, and, to a lesser extent, Qatar—performative because of greater operative performances and also because of the ability to influence nation-building. Arab Gulf states’ national strategies acquired a military shape, reflecting in some cases military-driven foreign policies. Autonomy and self-reliance became national guiding stars and military reform was no longer a taboo for Emirati, Qatari, and Kuwaiti rulers. In fact, this is now functional in the improvement of military capabilities through know-how transfer, local expertise, and forms of social mobilization (as conscription, parades, exhibitions, and official rhetoric). In this sense, Oman played a vanguard role in the 1970s as the first-ever example of a performative army in the Gulf monarchies. In the performative armies of the 2010s, soldiers embody a renewed model of post-oil citizenship, based on sacrifice, duty, and national pride. As a matter of fact, the 2015 unprecedented military intervention in Yemen has turned into a watershed for Gulf militaries’ tasks and capabilities (especially for the UAE). Therefore, the military has gradually become a tool of nation-building and governments have been betting on militarized nationalism to forge a sense of shared belonging, identity, and patriotism. In times of rising Middle Eastern arms races and multidimensional threats, the military dimension has been redrawing civil–military relations, especially in the UAE and Qatar, thus offering a new research agenda for future studies on the Arab Gulf states’ militaries.
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Australia’s History of LGBTI Politics and Rights
Noah Riseman
In the past 50 years, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) activism in Australia has grown from small, localized organizations to national campaigns calling on all Australians to affirm LGBTI people’s equality. While the issues and activist strategies have evolved over the past 50 years, there have been two persistent patterns: most organizations and activism have been state based and have drawn on international influences, especially from the United Kingdom and United States. In the 1970s the organizations CAMP (Campaign Against Moral Persecution) and Gay Liberation presented competing visions of LGBTI equality, but both recognized the importance of visibility in order to change societal attitudes and influence law reform. Campaigns to decriminalize male homosexuality began in the 1970s and continued across the states through the 1980s and even into the 1990s in Tasmania. After law reform, activists shifted their advocacy to other areas including anti-discrimination laws, relationship recognition, and eventually marriage equality. HIV/AIDS was another important cause that generated grassroots activism within LGBTI communities. State AIDS councils worked in partnership with the federal government, and Australia had one of the world’s best public health responses to the epidemic. Pop culture, international media, and visibility at events such as the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras gradually shifted public opinions in favor of LGB equality by the 2000s. Transgender and intersex rights and acceptance were slower to enter the public agenda, but by the 2010s, those two groups had attained a level of visibility and were breaking down preconceived stereotypes and challenging prejudice. Indeed, politicians lagged behind public opinion on marriage equality, delaying and obfuscating the issue as the major political parties grappled with internal divisions. In 2017 the Commonwealth government held a postal survey asking Australian voters whether or not they supported same-sex marriage. This was an unprecedented exercise in Australian polity that was divisive, but LGBTI activists succeeded in their campaign and secured an overwhelming victory. The postal survey’s outcome also set the stage for new political fights around LGBTI people’s rights: so-called religious freedom, transgender birth certificates and support for LGBTI young people.
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The Bangladesh Army: What It Costs to Remain Apolitical
Smruti S. Pattanaik
In any nascent democracy, the military as an organized force is a dominant factor in politics. The nature of the relationship between different institutions, especially in fledgling democracies, decides the position of the military in the state. Compared to the political parties, the military is a cohesive force with a command structure that ensures orders are dutifully implemented. Often the military becomes part of contested politics and remains a dominant factor in countries that were previously under military rule. This could be for two reasons. First, their regime remains a reference point and is often compared to democratic regimes thereby creating a legitimacy factor. Second, the military is seen as savior and often portrayed as a fall-back option if a civilian system of governance is not able to deliver. Though many argue that military regimes are a thing of the past and their role is in fact in decline, this may not be true. Military institutions have adapted to change and the nature of their interactions with civilian groups has undergone a shift. However, use of coercion by military authority does not explain military dominance. Much is determined by the structural factors within which both the civil and military agents operate. In some cases, the military’s preserve is not only ensuring state “sovereignty” and its territorial integrity but also preventing a political catastrophe from happening during political transition. They are often referred to as guardians of the state. Study of civil–military relations in South Asia tends to follow a narrative that synthesizes and combines the structural and agency-related issues. Agency, however, is a dominant factor that waits for structurally enabling factors to contemplate a military takeover. In South Asia, and particularly in Bangladesh, any study of civil–military relations within the theoretical framework of a structure-agency divide is inadequate. Challenges in studying the structure-agency divide can be attributed to the larger-than-life image of the military agency. Military agents as actors, their political motives appear to be more important than the societal structure that influences decision. Social class, macroeconomic situations, the society-governing class interface, and lopsided institutional developments also shape the role of agencies (civil and military) and determine the balance of power. Absence of coup does not imply “civilian control,” but rather the civilian government’s ability to decide on posting, promoting, and shaping the vision of the military regarding threat perception determines the extent of civilian control over the military. Political culture, agreement within the society on political structure, institutional checks and balances, and political socialization are important aspects of state structure that acts a constraint on Agency’s action.
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Belgium and the European Union
Edith Drieskens
Belgium is one of the six founding members of European integration, but it is often seen as a special one. In both policy and research, the country is widely known as the “heart of Europe.” It even sells itself to the outside world in this way. This metaphor has a double meaning, a literal and a figurative one. First, Belgium’s capital, Brussels, qualifies as the unofficial capital of the European Union. This meaning is strongly supported by facts, with the city hosting the most numerous and the most important institutions. The second meaning requires more detailed consideration. Indeed, and second, Belgium is perceived to be the most European of all European countries, even prepared to exchange sovereignty for supranationalism at any time and any price. A closer look at data, decisions, and developments shows, however, that while support for European integration is widespread, it is not omnipresent either in time or in place. Particularly in Flanders, the northern part of the country, support has been less obvious than elsewhere.
Indeed, to understand Belgium and/in the European Union, one also has to understand the functioning of Belgium as a federal state composed of communities and regions, thus as a system of multilevel governance. While it is not the only federation among European Union member states, it uniquely combines a wide variety of federal characteristics. Most importantly here, the gradual process of federalization that Belgium has experienced has given the federated entities a strong voice in European Union decision-making. Member states still need to speak with one voice, however, resulting in a complex system of coordination and representation. The possibilities and realities of this system have attracted quite a lot of scholarly interest. The same goes for the rather fundamental question of whether the European Union and federated entities should be seen as unintended partners in the hollowing out of the federal state or whether the opposite holds true and the European Union is coming to Belgium’s rescue. The jury is still out on this, though the answer seems to be growing more and more complex as time passes.
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Bolivia and the Challenges of a Plurinational Democracy
Waltraud Queiser Morales
Bolivia is in the process of consolidating 36 years of democracy amid important reforms and challenges. Despite a history of colonialism, racist oppression of the indigenous majority, and a national revolution and military reaction, the democratic transition to civilian rule and “pacted” electoral democracy among traditional political parties was established in 1982. The governments of pacted democracy failed to fully incorporate all of Bolivia’s citizens into the political process and imposed a severe neoliberal economic model that disproportionately disadvantaged the poor and indigenous. The constitutional popular participation reforms of 1994–1995 altered the party-dominated pacted democracy and opened up the political system to the unmediated and direct participation of indigenous organizations and popular social movements in local and national elections. Grassroots political mobilization and participation by previously marginalized and excluded indigenous groups and social movements, and the election of their candidates into office increased significantly. Indigenous and social movement protests erupted in the Cochabamba Water War in 2000 against the multinational Bechtel Corporation, and in the Gas War in 2003 against the export and exploitation of Bolivia’s natural gas. These mass demonstrations resulted in the turnover of five presidents in five years. The social and political agitation culminated in the game-changing, democratic election in December 2005 of Juan Evo Morales Ayma, as Bolivia’s first indigenous-heritage president.
In office for 14 years, longer than all previous presidents, Morales and the Movement Toward Socialism party launched the “Refounding Revolution,” and passed the new Constitución Política del Estado (CPE), the progressive reform constitution that established a multicultural model of plurinational democracy. The Morales-MAS administration provided unprecedented continuity of governance and relative stability. However, amid charges of interference, relations deteriorated with the United States. And disputes erupted over regional and indigenous autonomy, and extractive economic development in the protected lands of native peoples, especially over the proposed road through the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (Territorio Indígena Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure, TIPNIS). These conflicts pitted highlanders against lowlanders, and divided indigenous organizations and social movements, and the government’s coalition of supporters. Contested term limits for the presidency created another acute and ongoing challenge. President Morales’s determination to run for re-election in 2019, despite constitutional restrictions, further tested the process of change and the resilience of Bolivia’s indigenous and social movement-based democracy.
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Brazil’s Role in Latin American Regionalism
Javier A. Vadell and Clarisa Giaccaglia
The roots of Latin American regionalism blend together with the birth of the region’s states, and despite its vicissitudes, the integrationist ideal represents the most ambitious form of regional feeling. It is an ancient process that has undergone continuous ups and downs as a result of domestic and foreign restrictions.
In the early 21st century, the deterioration of the “open regionalism” strategy, along with the rise to power of diverse left governments, led to the development of a “physical-structural,” “post-liberal,” “post-neoliberal,” or “post-hegemonic” integration model. In this context, Brazil—governed by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva—constituted itself as a crucial protagonist and main articulator of the South American integrationist project. From this perspective, in addition to the existing MERCOSUR, UNASUR was created, and it encompassed the whole subcontinent, thus reaffirming the formulation of regional policies regarding the concept of “South America.”
At present, however, a new stage of these regionalisms has started. Today, the Latin American and Caribbean dynamics seem to bifurcate, on the one hand, into a reissue of open regionalism—through the Pacific Alliance—and, on the other hand, into a fragmentation process of South America as a geopolitical bloc and regional actor in the global system. Regarding this last point, it is unavoidable to link the regional integration crisis to the critical political and economic situation undergone by Brazil, considered as the leader of the South American process.
In short, the withdrawal of the Brazilian leadership in South America, along with the shifts and disorientations that took place in UNASUR and MERCOSUR, have damaged the credibility of the region’s initiatives, as well as the possibility to identify a concerted voice in South America as a distinguishable whole.
That regional reality poses an interesting challenge that implies, to a great extent, making a heuristic effort to avoid being enclosed by the concepts and assumptions of the processes of regionalism and integration that were born to explain the origin, evolution, and development of the European Union. From this perspective, the authors claim that the new phase experienced by Latin American regionalisms cannot be understood as a lack of institutionality—as it is held by those perspectives that support the explanations that they “mirror” the European process—but rather it answers chiefly to a self-redefinition process influenced by significant alterations that occurred both in global and national conjunctures and that therefore, have had an impact on the regional logic.
Given the regional historical tradition marked by vicissitudes, the authors believe that they can hardly talk about a “Sudamexit” (SouthAmexit in English) process, namely, an effective abandonment of regionalisms. Recognizing the distinctive features of Latin American and Caribbean countries, rather, leads us to think of dynamics that generate a complex and disorganized netting in which the political-institutional course of development of Brazil will have relevant repercussions in the future Latin American and Caribbean process as a whole.
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Cambodia: Armed Forces Under Personalized Control
Paul W. Chambers
The evolution of Cambodia’s armed forces has been incremental yet highly disjointed, reflecting the country’s post–World War II history itself. At the same time, there has been a legacy of military authoritarianism in Cambodia. Using the framework of historical institutionalism, this chapter looks at the evolution of Cambodia’s armed forces across time. The chapter points to a 1979 critical juncture which affected the military’s organizational history. It also stresses that especially since 1997 the armed forces has become increasingly concentrated under the personalized control of Prime Minister Hun Sen. The military in 2020 appears as a mechanism of Hun Sen’s, doing his bidding and following his preferences.
As such the armed forces in Cambodia should be viewed as an interventionist military that has acted as the junior partner in an asymmetrical relationship with Hun Sen. With Hun Sen’s 2018 appointment of his son Hun Manet to command the army, concurrent with being deputy supreme commander of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, it appears as though the military is becoming even further centralized under the Hun family. As a result, although civilian control over the military technically exists in Cambodia today, it is not an institutionalized, accountable form of control, but rather an unofficial, tool of violent power for the Prime Minister.
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Cameroon: The Military and Autocratic Stability
Kristen A. Harkness
The military plays a vital role in upholding Cameroon’s authoritarian government. Since independence, in 1960, the country has been ruled by a single political party and only two presidents: Ahmadou Ahidjo and Paul Biya. Both have gone to great lengths to secure military loyalty: counterbalancing rival forces, personalizing command hierarchies, ethnically stacking both the regular military and presidential guard, and providing extensive patronage benefits to soldiers. Ahidjo and Biya have both also repeatedly used the security forces to repress threats from below and stabilize their dictatorships. Combined gendarme, army, and paramilitary units have been deployed to defeat the southern maquis rebellion of the 1960s; the mass protests for democratization in the 1990s; the fight against Boko Haram, beginning in 2014; and the Anglophone separatist movement, which exploded in 2017. Whether facing nonviolent demonstrators or armed rebels, the military has never defected or refused to obey orders. Yet, as the 1984 coup attempt demonstrated, the bounds of military loyalty are not limitless. When Ahidjo retired, the northern Muslim Fulbe members of the elite Republican Guard attempted to prevent Biya—a southern Christian Beti—from rising to power.
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Central African Republic: Coups, Mutinies, and Civil War
Timothy Stapleton
Since independence from France in 1960, the Central African Republic (CAR) has experienced numerous military coups both successful and unsuccessful, mutinies by disgruntled soldiers and civil wars that have had terrible impacts on civilians. Three career military officers took power by force and led the country for a total of 36 years: Bokassa (1965–1979), Kolingba (1981–1993), and Bozize (2003–2013). From the 1960s to 1990s, both military and civilian rulers politicized, regionalized, and weakened the CAR military by packing it with supporters from their home areas and ethnic groups, and establishing alternative security structures and bringing in foreign troops to secure their regimes. In this period, the CAR military became a Praetorian force obsessed with the country’s internal political power struggles. In the 1990s, in the context of the post-Cold War political liberalization of Africa, the CAR’s transition to democracy was undermined by a succession of army mutinies over lack of pay and other grievances that fatally weakened an already fragile state. A series of civil wars in the 2000s and 2010s resulted in the near dissolution of the CAR military and the partition of the country into a network of fiefdoms dominated by antagonistic local armed factions separated from each other by beleaguered UN peacekeepers.
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Central Africa: Regional Politics and Dynamics
Andreas Mehler
The variety in climate, vegetation, and population density in Central Africa is enormous, but some of the main features of policymaking and informal rules of politics—at first sight at least—appear quite similar between N’Djaména and Kinshasa, between Libreville and Bangui, in a vast territory bigger than the European Union: clientelism, personalization of power, politicized ethnicity, the impact of external intervention, and a legacy of repeated political violence establish some constant features. On the other hand, the variable size of countries (from island states in the Gulf of Guinea to large territorial states) has also come with various challenges. Also, Central Africa features land-locked countries such as Chad and Central African Republic, which negatively impacts economic development, in contrast to countries located at the Gulf of Guinea with an easy access to maritime trade routes. At closer inspection all of the eight countries have a specific history, but this overview article rather stresses the commonalities. Featuring in this contribution are the countries of Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Equatorial-Guinea, Gabon, and São Tomé and Príncipe. The limited achievements of pro-democracy movements in Central Africa in the 1990s have enduring consequences on politics in Africa. Authoritarian regimes have consolidated their grip on power after surviving severe crises in most Central African states. Big man politics continue to prevail, only few opposition parties have upheld their initial strength and lack internal democracy. Enduring violent conflicts in DRC and CAR (and arguably to a somewhat lesser extent in Chad), have undermined conviviality between groups and state capacities in providing public goods with dramatic consequences on effectiveness and legitimacy of the state and its representatives. Prospects for a future allowing for more participation, truly competitive elections, and a peaceful change of government are therefore also grim. However, both violent and peaceful forms of contestation since about 2015 are also signs of renewed mobilization of citizens for political causes across Central Africa. New topics, including consumer defense and ecological issues, plus now-ubiquitous social media, may all be drivers for a new episode of engagement after two decades of frustration. The limited achievements of regional integration and the lack of dynamism of subregional organizations means that Central Africa is still a much less consolidated subregion compared to, for example, West Africa.
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Chad: Armed Presidents and Politics
Ketil Hansen
Politics in Chad was militarized at the time of colonial conquest and has remained so ever since. Except for the French-supported candidacy of François Tombalbaye for the presidency in 1960, all other presidents of Chad have been connected to a coup d’état. All presidents in independent Chad have relied heavily on armed support, creating ample armies, feared presidential guards, and terrifying secret services. Proxy wars, political mistrust, economic opportunity-seeking, and strategic ever-changing armed alliances characterize Chadian politics. Flexibility and fluidity have embodied the heart of armed resistance in Chad since the establishment of the first important politico-military rebel movement Frolinat in 1966. In fact, for rebels and powerholders alike, the state is at its best when it is most fragile (in a Western sense). With fragility comes blurriness and flexibility and thus predation opportunities.
During the Cold War, most of the various armed fractions were supported militarily and economically by either the United States and France or Libyan Colonel Gaddafi and the regime in Khartoum. During Habré’s regime (1982–1990), the Cold War heated Chad. Fearing to lose Chad to the communists or “crazy” Colonel Gaddafi, the United States and France supported a brutal and ruthless Chadian president who ruled with terror and force.
The current president, Déby, gained power in the wake of the Cold War and has managed to keep it ever since by cleverly changing his rhetoric from a hope for democracy to a fear of war, both internally and internationally. After starting to export oil in 2003, Chad has used petrodollars to upgrade its armed forces, both in numbers and in materiel. Since about 2010, Chad has been a prime EU- and US-financed antiterrorism force in the Sahel. With its courageous troops, especially the former Presidential Guard, transformed in 2005 to Direction Générale de Service de Sécurité des Institutions de l’État (DGSSIE) and from 2014 led by Mahamat Déby, son of President Déby, Chad’s army has gained international fame. The Chadian army has benefited largely from the tactical training and military equipment provided by the United States and France in the name of antiterrorism. Thus, by the end of the 2010s, Chad had one of the best-equipped and trained armies in Africa.
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Chile: Military and Politics in the 20th Century
Brian Loveman
Despite the common identification of Chile as “exceptional” among Latin American nations, the military played a key role in 20th-century Chilean politics and continues to do so in the first decades of the 21st century. Both 20th-century constitutions were adopted under military tutelage, after military coups: two coups—1924–1925 (the 1925 Constitution) and the military coup in 1973 (the 1980 constitution). A successful coup in 1932 established the short-lived “Chilean Socialist Republic.” Infrequent but sometimes serious failed military coups decisively influenced the course of Chilean politics: 1912, 1919, 1931–1932 (several), 1933, 1935, 1936, 1938, 1939, 1948, 1954, 1969, June 1973, 1986 (“coup within the coup” against Augusto Pinochet by air force officers), and others. Monographic and article-length histories of each of these events exist detailing their rationale and eventual failure.
Severe political polarization in the context of the post-Cuban Revolution Cold War wave of military coups (1961–1976) in Latin America resulted in the breakdown of the Chilean political system in 1973. U.S. support for a military coup to oust the elected socialist president exacerbated the internal political strife. When a military junta ousted socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973, the military leaders claimed that they had ousted the Allende government to rescue Chilean democracy from the threat of international communism and civil war, and to restore the 1925 Constitution and the rule of law
In 1973, the armed forces established a dictatorship that lasted almost 17 years and imposed a new constitution that is still in place in 2020 (with amendments). During this period (1973–1990), military officers occupied ministerial posts in the presidential cabinet, a military junta (Junta de Gobierno) acted as the legislature, and much of the public administration was militarized. Massive human rights violations took place involving all three branches of the armed forces and the national police (carabineros). After a plebiscite that rejected continued rule by General Augusto Pinochet and elections in 1989, the country returned to civilian government in March 1990.
From 1990 until 2020 the country experienced gradual “normalization” of civil–military relations under elected civilian governments. After 1998, the threat of another military coup and reestablishment of military government largely disappeared. Constitutional reforms in 2005 reestablished much (but not all) of civilian control over defense and security policy and oversight of the armed forces. Nevertheless, reorganization of defense and security policymaking remained salient political issues and the armed forces continued to play an important role in national politics, policymaking, and internal administration.
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Citizenship Law as the Foundation for Political Participation in Africa
Bronwen Manby
The question of membership and belonging is widely recognized to have been at the root of many political crises in Africa since independence. The legal frameworks for citizenship were largely inherited from the colonial powers and still show strong affinities across colonial legal traditions. However, most African states have enacted significant amendments to citizenship laws since independence, as they have grappled with issues of membership, aiming to include or exclude certain groups. Substantive provisions have diverged significantly in several countries from the original template. African states have shared global trends toward gender equality and acceptance of dual citizenship. In relation to acquisition of citizenship based on birth in the territory (jus soli) or based on descent (jus sanguinis), there has been less convergence. In all countries, naturalization is inaccessible to all but a few. Manipulation of citizenship law for political purposes has been common, as political opponents have at times been accused of being non-citizens as a way of excluding them from office, or groups of people have been denied recognition of citizenship as a means of disenfranchisement. Moreover, even in states where a substantial proportion of residents lack identity documents, it seems that the rules on citizenship established by law have themselves had an impact on political developments.
The citizenship status of many thousands of people living in different countries across Africa remains unclear, in a context where many citizens and non-citizens lack any identity documentation that records their citizenship. The content of the law is arguably therefore less influential than in some other regions. A rapid development in identification systems and the increasing requirement to show identity documents to access services, however, is likely to increase the importance of citizenship law.
In response to these challenges, the African continental institutions have developed, through standard setting and in decisions on individual cases, a continental normative framework that both borrows from and leads international law in the same field.
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Coercive Diplomacy as Crisis Management
Peter Viggo Jakobsen
In war-threatening crises, the contestants face a crucial dilemma: Should they yield to the opponent’s demands to avoid war or risk war to protect their interests? Coercive diplomacy is a holistic “stick-and-carrot” crisis management strategy devised to tackle this dilemma and enable policymakers to resolve crises by means of mutually acceptable compromises short of war. It is in focus here because it integrates the three principal strands of crisis management theory into a single strategy.
The first component is coercive. It involves threats to do harm (political, economic, or military) and action that would hurt the adversary in order to influence it to stop/undo its hostile activities. Hurting action may involve political, economic, and military measures, but actual use of force must be limited and serve signaling and influencing purposes only. Its purpose is to bring the opponent to the negotiating table, not to defeat it or render it incapable of continued resistance. The second component is conciliatory and accommodating. It involves the use of positive incentives for compliance with the coercer’s demands. Their purpose is to reduce the cost of compliance and thereby increase the prospects for finding a mutually acceptable solution to the crisis short of war. The third component is the use of assurances to convince the adversary that the coercer will keep three promises: (a) that it will stop hurting the adversary if it complies with the coercer’s demands, (b) that the promised compensation for compliance will be forthcoming, and finally, (c) that compliance will not result in new demands in the future.
This combination of coercion and accommodation situates coercive diplomacy in the middle of the crisis management continuum, which has winning at the one end and war avoidance at the other. It also sets coercive diplomacy apart from strategies relying solely on coercion, such as compellence and deterrence, or solely on accommodation and positive inducements, such as appeasement.
Coercive diplomacy is a hard-to-use, high-risk strategy with a low success rate—especially with respect to solving crises without any use of force. Success hinges on a favorable context, skillful diplomacy, and psychological factors beyond the coercer’s control. The many factors affecting its successful use and the holistic nature of the strategy involving coercion, positive inducements, and assurances have produced a rich but also fragmented and dichotomous literature, which has been marred by a number of theoretical, methodological, and definitional disputes. Since 2010, a new generation of scholars has taken promising steps to overcome some of these problems using sophisticated mixed-methods research designs. Significant progress can be made if scholars begin to use such designs to better understand how the interaction of coercion, positive inducements, and assurances affects the scope for resolving crises short of war.
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Colombia: Civilian Control and Militarized Repression
William Aviles
The relationship between the Colombian armed forces and civilian leaders within the state has been marked historically with the continuity of civilian control and the general avoidance of military coups or regimes. After a series of major civil wars during the 19th century, civil–military relations were guided by the need to preserve the power of economic and political elites, with the military consistently acting as a central pillar in the survival of this elite. Interestingly, in the context of civil–military relations in Latin America, Colombia has been a model of how a regime can pair formal “civilian control” with intensive levels of state repression and violence against opposing forces within civil society. This model has been maintained during periods of relative political stability as well as during periods of widespread internal conflict. Thus, illustrating the limits that formal institutional arrangements within the Colombian state have led to shifts in the behavior of its military.
Article
Colonial Rule and Its Political Legacies in Africa
Amanda Lea Robinson
European colonialism in Africa was brief, lasting less than a century for most of the continent. Nevertheless, scholars have enumerated myriad long-term political effects of this brief period of colonial rule. First, Europeans determined the number, size, and shape of African states through their partition of the continent, with contemporary implications for state viability, strength, and legitimacy. Second, colonial rule influenced the nature of ethnic boundaries and their salience for politics through the use of indirect rule, language and labor policies, and the location of internal administrative boundaries. Third, colonial rule significantly shaped the nature of postcolonial state-society relations by divorcing the state from civil society during the colonial era and by engendering deep mistrust of the state as a benevolent actor. Fourth, many colonial institutions were preserved at independence, including the marriage of state institutions and customary rule, with deleterious effects. Fifth, differential colonial investments across communities and regions generated significant inequality, with continued political implications in the 21st century. The identification of these long-term effects has largely resulted from empirical comparisons across different forms of colonial rule, especially comparing territories administered by different colonial powers. Future research should move beyond this blunt approach, instead pursuing more disaggregated and nuanced measures of both colonial rule and its political legacies, as well as more scholarship on the long-term interaction between colonial and indigenous political institutions.
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Communication Technology and African Politics
Sharath Srinivasan and Stephanie Diepeveen
From global amplifications of local protests on social media to disinformation campaigns and transformative state surveillance capabilities, digital communications are changing the ways in which politics works in Africa and how and with whom power accrues. Yet while digital information technology and media are relatively new, the role of communication in state power and resistance on the continent is not. The “digital revolution” provokes us to better account for this past to understand a rapidly changing present. From language and script, to print and broadcast, to mobile applications and digital databases, how information is circulated, processed, and stored is central to political power on the African continent. The story of political change in Africa cannot be told without attention to how power manifests with and through changes in the technologies that enable these communication practices. A communication technology perspective on the study of politics in Africa provides a more sober analysis of how power relations circumscribe the possibilities of political change than more normative approaches would. Even so, a communication approach allows for social and ideational factors to mix with material ones in explaining the possibilities of such change.
Communication technologies have been central to what political actors in Africa from the precolonial past to the early 21st century can and cannot do, and to how political change comes about. Explorations across time, political era, and technological development in Africa allow us to unpack this relationship. In the precolonial period, across forms of centralized and decentralized political organization, oral communication modalities reflected and enabled fluid and radial logics of authority and power relations. Changes in moral and practical ideas for political organization occurred amid early encounters with traders and Islamic scholars and texts and the movement of people to, from, and within the continent. Colonialism, which heavily focused on narrow extractive aims, required alien central authorities to overcome the vulnerability of their rule through knowledge production and information control. Equally, the same communication technologies valued by colonial authority—intermediaries, print, radio—became means through which resistance ideas circulated and movements were mobilized. In independent Africa, political aims may have changed, but communication infrastructures and their vulnerabilities were inherited. The predicament facing postcolonial governments had a communications dimension. Later, their ability to forge rule through control and allegiance had to contend with a globalizing information economy and demands for media pluralism.
A communications perspective on the history of power on the African continent therefore guides a fuller understanding of change and continuity in politics in a digital age by drawing attention to the means and meanings by which legitimacy, authority, and belonging have continued to be produced and negotiated. Transnational configurations of information flows, global political economy logics of accumulation and security, and communicative terrains for contesting authority and mobilizing alternatives have been shown to possess both distinctly new characteristics and enduring logics.
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Constitution-making has been a central political activity in the modern era. Enacting a new constitution was an essential ingredient in the foundation of republics, the creation of new states, the inauguration of democratic regimes, and the reequilibration of democracies during or after a political crisis. Constitution writing has also become a crucial part of the process of overcoming a legacy of violent internal conflict and a component of authoritarian regimes that seek to gain legitimacy by emulating the formalities of representative democracies. This article surveys the most important concepts and issues related to the comparative analysis of constitution-making. Although it draws examples from constitutions made in a wide variety of settings, special attention is paid to constitutional texts adopted or implemented under competitive conditions.
