Where Do Regimes Come From? Where Do They Go? The Philippines Between Neopatrimonialism and Oligarchy

Despite decades of experience with democratic institutions since the end of World War II, the quality of Philippine democratic development has been limited, at best. Even the successful civil societal mobilization against Ferdinand Marcos neopatrimonial regime did not generate a political framework in which an effective state apparatus is capable of backing democratic values associated with the formal institutional setting. Why is that the case? This paper attempts to answer this question by tracing the regime origins and dynamics of the Philippines since the late days of Spanish colonialism. It is argued that what ultimately determines institutional changes of contemporary regimes is not so much the age of democratization they currently live in, but the historically-grown conflict structures that constitute patterns of legimization and delegitimization

Where Do Regimes Come From? Where Do They Go? The Philippines Between Neopatrimonialism and Oligarchy

Despite decades of experience with democratic institutions since the end of World War II, the quality of Philippine democratic development has been limited, at best. Even the successful civil societal mobilization against Ferdinand Marcos neopatrimonial regime did not generate a political framework in which an effective state apparatus is capable of backing democratic values associated with the formal institutional setting. Why is that the case? This paper attempts to answer this question by tracing the regime origins and dynamics of the Philippines since the late days of Spanish colonialism. It is argued that what ultimately determines institutional changes of contemporary regimes is not so much the age of democratization they currently live in, but the historically-grown conflict structures that constitute patterns of legimization and delegitimization

The political economy of regional power : turkey under the AKP

The European Union membership of Bulgaria since January 2007 imposes higher requirements to the national waste management system and demands changes in the current waste management practices. In this context it is of great interest to study the contemporary and possible future development of the Bulgarian municipal solid waste management system. A systems analysis was carried out to provide better understanding of the Bulgarian municipal solid waste management and to analyze the possibilities for its future development in a sustainable way. Five different scenarios were constructed and compared using the ORWARE model which is a tool for environmental systems analysis that predicts ecological and economic impacts in a life-cycle perspective. The first describes the present municipal waste management system using landfilling as the only municipal solid waste treatment option. The other four describe possible future developments including business as usual and different combinations of municipal solid waste treatment options including landfilling, composting and incineration. Material recycling was included in all future scenarios. The results from the ORWARE simulations show that landfilling has the overall highest environmental impacts as compared to the other treatment methods. The introduction of composting and incineration proved to has a positive impact on the environment and provides different benefits in terms of recovered nutrients, heat and electricity production. Material recovery and recycling allows the recovery of different materials but is highly energy intensive. European and Bulgarian policies, legislation and different publications were studied to understand the factors that shape the current and future development of municipal solid waste management. Further, the application of tools incorporating life-cycle thinking, like ORWARE, was put in a broader perspective, i.e. their use in the policy and decision making process. The results from the research show that environmental policies in the European Union are changing and the focus has changed from managing specific pollutants or activities to managing resources in long term life-cycle perspective. The present concept of waste is outdated in a sustainable society and waste should be considered as a resource. In the future waste management will become a synonym to resource extraction. The present national environmental policy making does not consider global environmental consequences due to the fact that it is focused on achieving local environmental targets. The incorporation of global life-cycle perspective in the policy making process will allow the consideration of the environmental and social effects irrelevant of where they arise. Tools, like ORWARE, that incorporate life-cycle thinking are and will be used in environmental policy making. This is proved by many cases of their successful application in aiding local and national authorities to make their decisions. Even though problems may exist in terms of the required skills and knowledge, examples show that good cooperation between policy makers, scientists and other experts will be the key for their extensive and successful application.www.ima.kth.s

The political economy of regional power : turkey under the AKP

In 2006/2007 Turkey became a regional power in the Middle East, a status it has continued to maintain in the context of the Arab Spring. To understand why Turkey only became a regional power under the Muslim AKP government and why this happened at the specific point in time that it did, the paper highlights the self-reinforcing dynamics between Turkey's domestic political-economic transformation in the first decade of this century and the advantageous regional developments in the Middle East at the same time. It concludes that this specific linkage - the "Ankara Moment" - and its regional resonance in the neighboring Middle East carries more transformative potential than the "Washington Consensus" or the "Beijing Consensus" so prominently discussed in current Global South politics

Viel Chaos, kaum Kausalität: Literaturessay zu "Chaos und Covid: Wie die Pandemie Nordafrika und den Nahen Osten verändert" von Gilles Kepel

Gilles Kepel: Chaos und Covid - Wie die Pandemie Nordafrika und den Nahen Osten verändert. München: Verlag Antje Kunstmann 2021. 978-3-95614-460-

Hausdurchsuchung: Literaturessay zu "Das verfallene Haus des Islam: Die religiösen Ursachen von Unfreiheit, Stagnation und Gewalt" von Ruud Koopmans

Ruud Koopmans: Das verfallene Haus des Islam - Die religiösen Ursachen von Unfreiheit, Stagnation und Gewalt. München: C.H. Beck 2020. 978-3-406-74924-

The unsettledness of the world. Current violent conflicts and global order

Political science has only marginally worked on the most recent dynamics of war development in the Middle East and on the African continent. This article suggests an interpretation, based on the “Hamburg approach” to the study of war, which focuses on conflictive modernization processes and institutional legitimacy deficits. Whilst form and incumbency of state domination are at the center of these violent conflicts, their most visible product of the laboratories of multilateral intervention is rather an internationalization of political domination than what liberal approaches label as “global governance”. In order to grasp these changes, political science has to re-think the sociology of the state and to rediscover political violence as a subject of research and theory.53455957

The Social Question and State Formation in British Africa: Egypt, South Africa and Uganda in comparison

The paper explores governmental perceptions and reactions to “social questions” in British colonial Africa, c. 1880-1950. By comparing three different political entities, Egypt, South Africa and Uganda, we find that authorities across cases have been acutely aware of potentially destabilising social change. Some social problems actually resulted from colonial projects themselves, giving rise to rather contradictory interpretations and policies. However, the intensity of political reactions to social questions varied widely, ranging from a largely passive approach in Egypt to the introduction of modern welfare in South Africa. We argue that perceptions and responses to social dislocation had a long-term impact on patterns of state formation and social policy development.23726458