Explaining Manipur’s breakdown and Mizoram’s peace: the state and identities in north east India

Material from North East India provides clues to explain both state breakdown as well as its avoidance. They point to the particular historical trajectory of interaction of state-making leaders and other social forces, and the divergent authority structure that took shape, as underpinning this difference. In Manipur, where social forces retained their authority, the state’s autonomy was compromised. This affected its capacity, including that to resolve group conflicts. Here powerful social forces politicized their narrow identities to capture state power, leading to competitive mobilisation and conflicts. State’s poor capacity has facilitated frequent breakdown in Manipur. In Mizoram, where state-making leaders managed to incorporate other social forces within their authority structure, state autonomy was enhanced. This has helped enhance state capacity and its ability to resolve conflicts. Crucial to this dynamic in Mizoram was the role of state-making leaders inventing and mobilising an overarching and inclusive identity to counter entrenched social forces. This has helped with social cohesion

Nationalist movements and the state in Canada and France : ethno-territorial protest movements in Québec and Corsica, 1960 to 1995

Since the early 1960s ethno-territorial movements have increasingly challenged established patterns of political integration in western democracies. The purpose of this paper is to compare the formation and different paths of development of such nationalist movements in Quebec (Canada) and Corsica (France). The paper presents a brief outline of an argument more fully developed in a study on the two cases. After a short introduction I will first discuss theoretical aspects of minority nationalism. Secondly, I will try to give an overview over major findings and conclusions of my study.Ethno-territoriale Protestbewegungen in Kanada und Frankreich bedrohen seit den 1960er Jahren die Muster der politischen Integration in den beiden politischen Systemen. Anhand der Untersuchung der nationalen Bewegungen in Québec und Korsika soll die Frage nach den Ursachen für die unterschiedlichen Entwicklungswege dieser regionalen Protestbewegungen untersucht werden. Im Fall Korsikas kann von einer klaren Radikalisierung der Bewegungen gesprochen werden, die z.T im Untergrund gewaltsam für ein unabhängiges Korsika kämpft. In Québec hingegen konnte sich die nationale Bewegung frühzeitig ins politische System der Provinz integrieren, um von dieser Basis aus den Zusammenhalt der kanadischen Föderation zu bedrohen. In vergleichender Perspektive wird dabei die Interaktion der Bewegung mit der Staatsmacht als zentrale Erklärungsvariable eingeführt.Mouvements de protestation territoriuax au Canada et en France menacent les modèles de l’intégration politique dans le deux sytèmes politiques depuis les annèe 1960. L’exploration des mouvements nationaux au Québec et en Corse, doit Ltre éxaminée les causes pour les développements différentes des ces deux mouvements. Dans la Corse, on peut parler d’un radicalisation du mouvement nationale qui combat en partie puissament dans le sous-sol pour une Corse indépendante. En Québec cependant, le mouvement national pouvait s’intégrer toutefois dans le systèms politique de la province, pour menace de cette base la cohésion de la fédération canadienne. L’interaction du mouvement avec le pouvoir d’ètat est introduit comme variable d’explication de cet évolution

Horizontal Inequalities: A Neglected Dimension of Development

Current thinking about development places individuals firmly at the centre of concern for analysis and policy. This paper explores why groups are important for individual welfare and social stability, and argues that horizontal inequalities (ie inequalities between culturally formed groups) is a very important but neglected dimension of development. Most attention is focussed on inequality between individuals. The paper recognises that groups are socially constructed and malleable, often with fluid membership. Nonetheless, group's relative performance in economic, social and political dimensions is an important source of individual welfare and can cause serious political instability. This is illustrated by nine case studies, in which horizontal inequalities have led to a range of political disturbances, in some cases modified by state action to correct the inequalities. The paper concludes by pointing to an array of actions that can be taken to correct horizontal inequalities, arguing that such policies should form an important part of development strategy, but currently do not in either economic or political conditionality.

The ussr and total war : why didn't the soviet economy collapse in 1942?

Germany’s campaign in Russia was intended to be the decisive factor in creating a new German empire in central and eastern Europe, a living space that could be restructured racially and economically in German interests as Hitler had defined them in Mein Kampf. When he launched his armies against the Soviet Union in 1941 the world had two good reasons to expect him to achieve a quick victory. One, for those with long memories, was the Russian economic performance in 1914–17: when faced with a small proportion of Germany’s military might, Russia had struggled to mobilise itself and eventually disintegrated. The disintegration was just as much economic as military and political; indeed, it could be argued that Russia’s economic disintegration had been the primary factor in both Russia’s military defeat and the Russian revolution. Another much fresher reason was that the Germans had just proved in battlefields from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean that they were the best soldiers in Europe. In the outcome these expectations were overturned. The Soviet economy did not disintegrate. The German army was overwhelmed by the scale and scope of Soviet resistance. The Soviet Union turned out to be the killing ground of Nazi ambitions. How did this come about? Production was decisive: the Allies outgunned the Axis because they outproduced them. Economic factors carried more weight in the Allied victory than military or political factors. For example, the Allies were not better soldiers. It is true that some of the Allies were more democratic, but being a democracy did not save the Czechs or the French and being a dictatorship did not defeat the Soviets. The Allies won the war because their economies supported a greater volume of war production and military personnel in larger numbers. This was true of the war as a whole, and it was also true on the eastern front where the Soviet economy, of a similar size to Germany’s but less developed and also seriously weakened by invasion, supplied more soldiers and weapons. In a recent essay on World War II, I asserted that “Ultimately, economics determined the outcome”.1 A friendly critic objected that this left no room for “a whole series of contingent factors — moral, political, technical, and organizational — [that] worked to a greater or lesser degree on national war efforts”.2 I accept this criticism in the following sense: determinism must make bad economics, for economics is about nothing if not choices. To take it into account I will proceed as follows. My paper begins by reviewing what is known about the outcomes of the choices that people made. Part 1 surveys the scale of Soviet war preparations and their possible motivations. Part 2 analyses the changing wartime availability and uses of Soviet resources. Then I will consider the context within which these choices were made and the outcomes were obtained, so part 3 offers a re–examination of the Soviet economy in comparison with the German economy. In part 4 I propose a framework for understanding the incentives that people faced in choosing to work with or against the national war effort. Part 5 applies this analysis to the risks facing the Soviet economy in 1942, and part 6 concludes.

Challenges in Modelling Social Conflicts: Grappling with Polysemy

This discussion paper originates from the preceding annual workshop of the Special Interest Group on Social Conflict and Social Simulation (SIG-SCSS) of the ESSA. The workshop especially focused on the need to identify and examine challenges to modeling social conflicts. It turned out that the polysemous nature of social conflicts makes it very difficult to get a grasp of their complexity. In order to deal with this complexity, various dimensions have to be taken into consideration, beginning with the question of how to identify a conflict in the first place. Other dimensions include the relation of conflict and rationality and how to include non-rational factors into conflict models. This involves a conception of organized action. Finally, guiding principles for model development are being discussed. We would like to invite readers of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation to 'sow the seeds' of this debate.Social Conflicts, Conflict Models, Modelling Challenges, Polysemy, Rationality, Emotions

Taking control: citizens, corruption and collective civic action in Africa

With the failure of state-focused anti-corruption reform packages to reduce systemic corruption, the role of citizens in anti-corruption efforts has gained traction in academia and policy-making quarters. Yet, some of the emerging literature questions the prospect of citizens’ demand for accountability in places where corruption is entrenched. In such settings, high perceptions of corruption can reinforce the notion that most people are likely to act corruptly, undermining belief in the ability and willingness of citizens as well as government to tackle corruption. Nevertheless, some of the countries perceived to be highly corrupt have experienced frequent episodes of collective resistance to abuses of power. This has raised a possibility that exposure to corruption can in fact provoke the willingness to get involved in efforts to bring it under control. Furthermore, it seems that there are contextual conditions (other than country-level corruption) that shape the impact of subjective perceptions as well as direct experience of corruption on propensity to engage in anti-corruption tactics based on collective action. Using analysis of nationally representative public opinion data covering 35 African countries, this dissertation examines individual and contextual level conditions under which perceptions of corruption and personal experiences of bribery might encourage ordinary people to support citizen-centred and collective action methods of curbing corruption. It is the first study to utilise a data set of this magnitude to study the mobilisation potential of exposure to corruption in the African context. One of the key findings is that across different statistical conditions, an increasing experience of paying bribes fosters the support for the use of citizen-centred and collective action methods of anti-corruption. Importantly, there is strong evidence that an increasing frequency of paying bribes is likely to have the same impact in different countries. The effect of the perception of corruption is more ambiguous and indeed strongly influenced by observed and unobserved country-level conditions. These contextual factors include country-level poverty and state-level clientelism. Apart from a focus on the effects of individual-level corruption, the analysis zeroes-in on the extent to which the collective action that arises in highly clientelistic societies represents a demand for impartiality — a lynchpin of good governance and anti-corruption civic engagement

Making sense of assets: Community asset mapping and related approaches for cultivating capacities

This working paper critically reviews some main aspects from asset based approaches highlights key strengths and weaknesses for future research/development. Drawing on a large body of reports and relevant literature we draw on different theoretical traditions and critiques, as well as practices and processes embedded within a broad range of approaches including, widely acknowledged frameworks such Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), Appreciative Inquiry (AI), Sustainable Livelihood Approaches (SLA) and Community Capitals Framework (CCF). Although these are presented as distinct approaches, there is a sense of evolution through them and many of them overlap (in terms of both theories and methodologies). We also include emerging frameworks, including geographical, socio-spatial, visual and creative approaches, stemming from a number of projects within AHRC’s Connected Communities programme and additional collaborations

Political Settlements: Issues paper

Why do similar sets of formal institutions often have such divergent outcomes? An analysis of political settlements goes some way to answering this question by bringing into focus the contending interests that exist within any state, which constrain and facilitate institutional and developmental change. It provides a framework to analyse how the state is linked to society and what lies behind the formal representation of politics in a state. The political settlement and the elite bargains from which it emerges are central to patterns of state fragility and resilience. The role of political organisation within the political settlement is crucial to both the stability of the settlement and the direction in which it evolves over time. The elite bargains that may lead to the establishment of what might be considered a resilient political settlement may also act as a barrier to progressive developmental change. Analysis of political settlements suggests that state-building is far from a set of technical formulas, but is a highly political process. Creating capacity within a state to consolidate and expand taxation is fundamentally determined by the shape of the political settlement underlying the state. This is true as well for the development of service delivery or any other function of the state. This analytical framework provides a window for donors to grasp the politics of a place in order to design more effective interventions

Modelling the Dynamics of Securizitating National Identities

Using the example of conflict escalation in former Yugoslavia, a common framework of the mechanisms leading to conflict escalation is developed in this paper. Escalation of ethno-nationalist violence is described as an endogenous feature of the nation. The principle of the nation may succeed in being an organising principle for integrating large-scale social groups. However, it may also generate the extreme event of ethno-nationalist violence. The architecture of a simulation model is described to test the extreme event hypothesis