Memory, historical responsibility, truth and justice: the Balkan wars

In 1998, during a fieldtrip in the former Yugoslavia, I interviewed members of associations of internally displaced persons (IDPs). They were petitioning the authorities to recover their homes and properties because they wanted to “go home”. They also wanted the truth told about their families, communities and the war. They presented me with photos of houses or farms, anonymous letters threatening them if they would not leave, photos of missing family members and legal papers. And they wanted justice. They wanted that those responsible for killing their kin and neighbors and driving them from their homes should be punished. Based on these and other experiences I investigate four institutions designed to learn the truth about contested historical events and their interpretation: the international criminal tribunal, the truth and reconciliation commission, the outsider commission, and political agreement between adversaries

The 2014 Gaza war and the elusive peace in Palestine

Neither Hamas nor Israel pay the cost of their episodic Gaza wars. Israel gets weapons and funds from the U.S. government and from the American Jewish community. Hamas gets weapons, funds and reconstruction funds from Iran, Qatar, and the international humanitarian community; i.e. the U.S., UK, EU, and Nordic states via the UN agencies they fund. Israel’s Gaza blockade has since 2007 allowed more than a hundred truckloads of food and humanitarian aid a week into Gaza, even during times of fighting. Israel has curtailed dual-use goods like cement and pipes which Hamas diverted for war purposes. In 2014, as previously, both sides repeatedly violated the Geneva Convention. To stop repetition of the Gaza wars, outsider financing for the adversaries has to be reduced and weapons must be removed and banned from Gaza. Gaza should be demilitarized in a “weapons-to-end-the-blockade” cease-fire deal. Israel should pay rent to the Palestine Authority for West Bank settlements, access roads, military bases and other occupied real estate. Suggestions are made in this paper about how to accomplish this goal

Contours of an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement

Israelis and Palestinians have off-loaded the cost of their conflict to outsiders. The massive subsidies for Palestinians should be gradually withdrawn and Israel should pay rent for the settlements and lands it occupies. This rent will fund the Palestinian economy and act as compensation in lieu of the right of return. The Palestinian state will be demilitarized and neutral, and become viable through economic ties to Israel and international aid. Two states will coexist along the 1967 Green Line, and East Jerusalem will be made part of “Jerusalem: one city, two capitals.” Peace-making will be backed by the major international stakeholders and the agreement will be legitimized by voters in both countries. No one is under any illusions about the obstacles to an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Yet ideas that seem far fetched in time become actionable: for decades no one expected that majority rule in South Africa would be peacefully achieved, and few anticipated that Franco-German cooperation and alliance after two bloody World Wars would give birth to the European Union

Two States in Palestine?

Israelis and Palestinians have off loaded the costs of their conflict to outsiders and lack incentives for peace making. Massive subsidies for the Palestinians should be gradually withdrawn and Israel should pay rent for the settlements and other land it occupies. The rents will fund the Palestinian economy and compensation payments in lieu of the right of return. The Palestinian state will be demilitarized and neutral, and become viable with economic ties to Israel and with international aid. Two states will coexist along the 1967 green line and East Jerusalem will be part of “Jerusalem: one city, two capitals”. Peace making will be backed by the major international stakeholders and the agreement will be legitimized by the voters in both countries

Protest Cycles and Political Process: American Peace Movements in the Nuclear Age

Since the dawn of the nuclear age small groups of activists have consistently protested both the content of United States national security policy, and the process by which it is made. Only occasionally, however, has concern about nuclear weapons spread beyond these relatively marginal groups, generated substantial public support, and reached mainstream political institutions. In this paper, I use histories of peace protest and analyses of the inside of these social movements and theoretical work on protest cycles to explain cycles of movement engagement and quiescence in terms of their relation to external political context, or the "structure of political opportunity." I begin with a brief review of the relevant literature on the origins of movements, noting parallels in the study of interest groups. Building on recent literature on political opportunity structure, I suggest a theoretical framework for understanding the lifecycle of a social movement that emphasizes the interaction between activist choices and political context, proposing a six-stage process through which challenging movements develop. Using this theoretical framework I examine the four cases of relatively broad antinuclear weapons mobilization in postwar America. I conclude with a discussion of movement cycles and their relation to political alignment, public policy, and institutional politics.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68552/2/10.1177_106591299304600302.pd

Embracing the Market: Entry into Self-Employment in Transitional China, 1978-1996

This paper introduces labor market transition as an intervening process by which the macro institutional transition to a market economy alters social stratification outcome. Rather than directly addressing income distribution, it examines the pattern of workers’ entry into self-employment in reform-era China (1978-1996), focusing on rural-urban differences and the temporal trend. Analyses of data from a national representative survey in China show that education, party membership and cadre status all deter urban workers’ entry into self-employment, while education promotes rural workers’ entry into self-employment. As marketization proceeds, the rate of entry into self-employment increases in both rural and urban China, but urban workers are increasingly more likely to take advantages of the new market opportunities. In urban China, college graduates and cadres are still less likely to be involved in self-employment, but they are becoming more likely to do so in the later phase of reform. The diversity of transition scenarios is attributed to rural-urban differences in labor market structures.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39897/3/wp512.pd

Populist Mobilization: A New Theoretical Approach to Populism*

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/112280/1/j.1467-9558.2011.01388.x.pd