Petty Despots: Rethinking Human Rights Discourse After the Cold War

Flyer for Fall 2008 ICS Faculty Fellow Lecture by Neil Englehart.https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/ics_fellow_lectures/1069/thumbnail.jp

Democracy and the Thai Middle Class: Globalization, Modernization, and Constitutional Change

Although democratization in Thailand in the 1990s is commonly characterized as a classic case of modernization theory in action, economic globalization provides a better explanation for Thailand\u27s democratization process. Economic growth in the country has been based on foreign capital and has created a globalized economy sensitive to the confidence of world capital markets. Moreover, the Thai middle classes cannot be characterized as having coherent political preferences, and it is arguable that the 1992 middle class protests were more about suspicions of official corruption than about democracy

Rights and Culture in the Asian Values Argument: The Rise and Fall of Confucian Ethics in Singapore

The claim that cultural factors such as Asian Values really do militate against democracy and human rights is evaluated. The Asian Values claims of the Singapore government--both in its first incarnation, as Confucian Ethics, and its current form, as Shared Values--have actually been advanced for political and ideological reasons and have very little to do with the traditional mores of the population

Tale of Two Afghanistans: Comparative Governance and Insurgency in the North and South

Afghanistan is often depicted as a failing state, but its failures display distinctive patterns over time and space. Regional variations in governance have been important in shaping the ways the Afghan state has failed and the consequences of these failures. This article argues that a history of better governance in the north facilitated the disarmament of militia warlords and comparative stability. By contrast, the south has a long history of minimal formal governance, creating opportunities for increased Taliban insurgency

Is Regime Change Enough For Burma? The Problem of State Capacity

The U.S. and the EU employ sanctions to encourage regime change in Burma. This policy ignores serious problems of state capacity that impede a transition to democracy and would plague any transitional regime. Engagement with the current regime on issues of state capacity would improve the chances for a transition

Tale of Two Afghanistans: Comparative Governance and Insurgency in the North and South

Afghanistan is often depicted as a failing state, but its failures display distinctive patterns over time and space. Regional variations in governance have been important in shaping the ways the Afghan state has failed and the consequences of these failures. This article argues that a history of better governance in the north facilitated the disarmament of militia warlords and comparative stability. By contrast, the south has a long history of minimal formal governance, creating opportunities for increased Taliban insurgency

Two Cheers for Burma’s Rigged Election

Burma’s recent election was clearly not free and fair. However, it can also be seen as improving a uniquely unrepresentative government, creating greater pluralism, and institutionalizing differences within the ruling junta. Even the rigged election may have created opportunities for further opening in the future

Governments Against States: The Logic of Self-Destructive Despotism

Since the end of the Cold War, and particularly since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the study of state failure and collapse has become a field in its own right. Nonetheless, attempts to predict the occurrence of state failure continue to rely on off-the-shelf data collected for other purposes and have not been very successful. There is a need to find data that is more specific to the issue of state failure, and a better body of theory is needed to identify causal patterns. Case studies offer a promising way forward, and analysis of the failure of the Somalian and Afghan states suggest a pattern in which the collapse of the state is precipitated by rulers attacking the state apparatus in order to prevent opposition by the bureaucracy and military. The cases of Somalia and Afghanistan are discussed in detail and their implications for studies of state failure are considered

Resource Conflict and Ethnic Peace in Northern Thailand

Although northern Thailand has experienced both ethnic discrimination and resource conflicts, neither has produced significant organised violence. The relative absence of ethnically mobilised natural resource conflict in northern Thailand is due in part to the historical pattern of state formation, and in part to the Thai state\u27s capacity to deter and mediate conflicts before they escalate into organised violenc