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International Relations scholars and policy-makers are increasingly paying greater attention to a new category of fragile and failed states across Asia, Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Latin America and the Middle East. While effective policy responses are necessary to strengthen these politically fractured, economically collapsing and socially divided states, the category itself appears to be more politically and ideologically charged and less critically understood in the context of international relations. There is a general tendency to avoid examining how political and economic policies and military actions by the West contributed to the degeneration of these states. This article seeks to re-examine the causes of state fragility and failure, and critically reviews the current US strategies to rebuild the failed states of Afghanistan and Iraq. It argues that the US-led statebuilding strategies in both countries are based on a wrong diagnosis of the political and social problems, and the solutions offered are also ill-conceived. The article also contends that the Western liberal vision of the state, premised on the Weberian notion, commands less relevance to the fragile and failed states in the non-Western world.

Forest struggles and movements in India were a part of the rich tradition of anti-colonial struggle. In North Bengal, the recorded history of forest movements dates back to the 1960s and the movements themselves have been continuous ever since. However, despite the sincere efforts of those movements the livelihood opportunities of the forest dwellers worsened daily. The 1972 Wildlife Act together with the 1980 Forest Conservation Act strengthened further the oppressive structure of the forest bureaucracy. After the introduction of the Joint Forest Management Programme in the 1990s backed by the 1988 Forest Policy in India, it was expected that the forest dwellers would become more empowered economically and socially in lieu of their participation in the forest protection activities. But this failed miserably in the region and in 2000, against such a backdrop, a movement was started to demand land and livelihood rights for the forest dwellers. Following the Notification of the Forest Rights Act (2006) the movement has gained a new momentum while continuing its struggle against the biased implementation of the Act. This article presents a brief account of the movement in order to assess its significance and changing focuses over the years

The public demonstrations by Thailand's Red Shirts in early 2010 have been explained as a labour-based movement resisting Bangkok's entrenched elite, or as a mob mobilized by the deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in order to destabilize the current government. This profile looks into the protests' origins and nature. It argues that there are elements of truth to both explanations, but also that the protestors adopted powerful forms of symbolism of poverty and victimhood to draw attention to their needs, and to delegitimize the force used against them. This symbolism allowed both Thaksin and the protestors to gain political ground.

The first wave of academic writings on Islamists emerged in the Arab world after the war of June 1967 and the subsequent resurfacing of religious ideologies and religiously inspired social and political movements. Examples in this first wave include works by the Syrian philosopher Sadiq Jalal al-ʿAzm, the Egyptian philosopher Hassan Hanafi, and the Moroccan historian ʿAbdullah al-ʿArawi. These writings advanced three insights. First, the rise of "religious movements," "religious currents," and "religious ideologies"-the term islāmī or Islamist was yet to be coined-was seen by some writers as a serious challenge to the legitimacy of the secular state and the secular idea of Pan-Arabism. Second, other writers accused Arab ruling establishments in modernizing countries-the reference was primarily to post-1967 Egypt-of using religious currents and ideologies to enhance the state's popularity and legitimacy in times of crisis. Third, Wahhabism and petrodollars were held responsible by some for the resurfacing of religious currents and their increased appeal in the contest with secular ideas. Most of the writings of the first wave were Egypt centered and were clearly inspired by an antireligious sentiment that saw religious movements and currents as representing an existential threat to secular modernization and progress

The research for this article was motivated by a noticeable discrepancy between levels of participation and trust in post-socialist civil organizations. While civic participation in Central and Eastern Europe is almost nonexistent, levels of trust in post-socialist civil organizations compare favourably to those in Western Europe. The first aim of this article is to understand why citizens place relatively high trust in post-socialist civil organizations. The political context, within which civil organizations operate, reveals one explanation for the high levels of trust in civil organizations: government corruption dissuades citizens from relying on state institutions and creates a void that is filled by informal networks of association and civil organizations. Empirical evidence demonstrates that trust in civil organizations focused on socioeconomic and political development is higher among citizens who express concern about corruption in their country. The second aim of this article is to understand the discrepancy between levels of trust and civic participation. A novel interpretation of past findings suggests that civil organizations' effectiveness, professionalization, transactional capacity and orientation toward service provision may garner citizens' trust while parallel neglect of grassroots mobilization leaves civil organizations short of capitalizing on that trust. Civil organizations' limited focus on interest aggregation, mobilization and representation raises doubts as to whether observers of civil society in the region should look to these organizations as its core component.

The democratization literature commonly claims that democratic transitions require an independent civil society. However this view, which builds upon Tocqueville, reifies boundaries between state and society. It also over-predicts the likelihood that independent civil society organizations will engage in confrontation with the government. Drawing upon Hegel, I develop a two-dimensional model of civil society that clusters organizations according to goal orientation and autonomy. This illustrates how high levels of autonomy combined with goals that extend beyond an internal constituency are linked to democratization. I then examine Nigeria's civil society during the era of democratization between 1985 and 1998, and identify important changes in the political opportunity structure. I attribute changes in autonomy and goal orientation of organizations to three factors: transnational organizing, coalition building, and victimization. My findings question the assumption that autonomous organizations will challenge the state. Future research could explore links between the state mobilization during the 1990s and one-party dominance today.

The WTO system and democratic rights are unexpected bedfellows. The GATT/WTO requires governments to adopt policies that provide foreign products (read producers) with due process, political participation, and information rights related to trade policymaking. Because these nations also provide these rights to their citizens, a growing number of people are learning how to influence trade-related policies. As trade today encompasses many areas of governance, these same citizens may gradually transfer the skills learned from influencing trade policies to other public issues. Thus, the WTO not only empowers foreign market actors, but also citizens in repressive states. We use both qualitative and quantitative analysis to examine whether membership in the WTO over time leads to improvements in these democratic rights. Our qualitative analysis shows that these issues are discussed during accessions and trade policy reviews. Quantitative analysis examines how members of the GATT/WTO perform on these democratic rights over time. We use a cross-national time series design of all countries, accounting for selection issues of why countries become members of the GATT/WTO regime. We find that longer GATT/WTO membership leads to stronger performance on our metrics for political participation, free and fair elections, and access to information.

This study examines the role of the media in sustaining regime stability in an authoritarian context. The article engages the recent work on authoritarian resilience in comparative politics but goes beyond the standard focus on elections to other important institutions, such as the media and courts, that are used by authoritarian leaders to bolster legitimacy. The authors find that the Chinese media contribute to regime legitimacy and effective rule by propagandizing citizens' experiences in the legal system. However, unlike the "mouthpieces" of earlier communist regimes, the marketized Chinese media provide more convincing and sophisticated messages that continue to accord with state censorship demands while satisfying readers' interest in real-life stories and problems. The "positive propaganda" and the relative uniformity of information sources because of state censorship lead aggrieved citizens to the law as a realm for dispute resolution and rights protection. Statistical analysis of a randomly sampled survey conducted in four Chinese cities in 2005 demonstrates that exposure to media reporting about labor-law-related issues successfully promotes the image of a proworker bias in the law among citizens, thus encouraging them to participate in the legal system. The state is able to achieve its political goal because of the lack of conflicting sources of information and the lack of previous experience with the reformed legal system among citizens.

The possibility for transnational democratic representation is a huge topic. This article is restricted to exploring two unconventional aspects. The first concerns 'the representative claim', extending one critical part of previous analysis of the assessment of such claims, especially by largely unelected transnational actors. The second, which strongly conditions the account of the first, concerns 'slow theory' as the way to approach building democratic models and, in particular, to approach transnational democratic representation.

Everyday use of communication technologies within social networks for civic and civil behaviors The structure of people's social networks predicts democratic engagement. However, the relative contribution of different types of social ties to civic and civil behaviors is unclear. This paper explores the role of core networks - bonding social capital - to the role of overall network diversity - bridging social capital - for participation in formal civic institutions and informal civil behaviors. Emphasis is placed on the possible role of heterogeneity within core networks - political disagreement and the presence of nonkin ties - and on frequency of interaction, in-person and mediated: mobile phone and the Internet. This study finds that overall network diversity is a more consistent and substantive predictor of civic and civil behaviors than the size or heterogeneity of the small number of ties that make up the core network of most people.

Since the 1970s, China has changed from a centrally planned economy to a more open and globalized one. Within this context we ask how, under what circumstances and through what means are local governments able to make policy innovations in upgrading the business environment within their jurisdictions. Theoretically, it is possible to learn policy innovations from the past, from neighbours and from aboard. Leading development regions, like the Yangtze River Delta, are unlikely to learn from either their domestic neighbours or their past communist history. Therefore, they must learn from the experiences of other countries. We argue that this transnational learning process occurs through three different but interrelated mechanisms. These are (1) the personal networks of local officials interacting with foreign investors who are familiar with international business standards of global production networks; (2) institutional alliances in which local officials interact with foreign governments that have co-invested in development zones and joint interests; and (3) hegemonic discourse, wherein local officials interact with foreign consultants who have essential development knowledge. We examine this contention by analysing three empirical cases of local governments in the Yangtze River Delta - Kunshan, which demonstrates the personal network learning mechanism; Suzhou, demonstrating institutional alliance learning; and Shanghai, which exemplifies learning through hegemonic discourse.

Although history has shown us that the church plays a role in the political liberalization of non-democratic countries, the nature of the church's role and how it participates in politics has yet to be fully revealed. By revisiting the Polish Church's historic role in the collapse of communism, I argue that we have overestimated the church's effect on political liberalization in that case, which has led us to neglect or be prematurely disappointed in its role in the remaining communist countries such as in Cuba. Drawing from the Polish case, I conclude that the church's moral, self-limiting, and transnational character needs to be recognized and incorporated into a general theory of democratization. It is this aspect of the church that has helped it to remain active within remaining communist societies, and provide the moral support that is an integral part of political liberalization processes.

This study examines the impact of international administrations on the development and functioning of political parties in post-conflict settings, using Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo as case studies. These cases show how, next to the establishment of a functioning institutional framework, the development and maturity of local political elites are crucial factors of post-conflict democratization, as a genuine handover of power has yet to take place in both countries. Notwithstanding the international political relevance attached to the establishment of democratic governance in post-conflict areas, the local dimension of (enforced) democratization, especially the role and relevance of political parties, has been largely overlooked in academic research. This analysis therefore explores the institutional and cultural dimensions of 'external' democratization and international administrations' influence on political parties and politics in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.

"Several scholars argue that systemic global trends are pulling individuals not only upward toward the global level, but also downward to the local level; the result is a potential loss of authority for the state ( Ferguson and Mansbach 2004 32. Ferguson , Yale H. and Richard , W. Mansbach . 2004 . Remapping Global Politics: History's Revenge and Future Shock , Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . [CrossRef] View all references ; Rosenau 1990 82. Rosenau , James N. 1990 . Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity , Princeton : Princeton University Press . View all references ). Their theory of "fragmegration" can provide a causal mechanism for why longstanding grievances may erupt into civil war at a particular time. While increased global exposure does provide both states and individual citizens with tremendous benefits, sudden "shocks" of globalization can overwhelm a state's capacity to offset the negative impacts of globalization, thus weakening a state's capacity to deal with rival polities for the allegiance of its citizens. The present study conducts a cross-sectional logistic regression with discrete duration analysis to test the impact of globalization shocks on the onset of civil wars between the years 1970-1999. The results demonstrate that increasingly dramatic changes in the level of global integration are associated with an increased risk of civil war onset."

This paper considers what happens in advanced industrial economies like that of the US, where traditional redistributive economic policies and programs have fallen out of favor, yet forces of crisis, which radicals once predicted would usher in a new, more egalitarian and democratic era, are well attenuated. It is argued that, paradoxically, as the growth potential of corporate capitalism declines and traditional redistributive mechanisms weaken, new spaces are opening up in which new, democratized forms of ownership and control of wealth are slowly emerging. After describing these developments, the paper explores the long-run possibilities and prospects their evolution may entail.

"The nature of political power has changed with the advent of modern information technology while our theories and metaphors to understand it remain wedded to earlier periods. This article begins with a discussion of some of the work done by databases in domestic and world politics. In particular, it introduces the political effects of contemporary data-management practices through short examples of terrorist information databases, the 2008 Obama campaign's database, as well as biometric databases deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Liberia. This leads to a consideration of the finite applicability and relevance of the widespread metaphor of the Panopticon to these kinds of cases. Given the limitations of such an image, the concept of digital power and the political metaphor of Cuntz's Tower are proposed. Digital power foregrounds the importance of machines for contemporary sovereignty while moving beyond ocular-centric notions of surveillance. Cuntz's Tower illustrates the power of identification and sorting in addition to the Panopticon's emphasis on self-discipline. This article acts as an initial ground-clearing exercise for more extensive analyses of databases in domestic and world politics."

"This paper seeks to challenge the view that Indonesia's geographical and population size account for its rising regional and global profile. Instead, it makes three inter-related arguments. First, the manifestations of Indonesia's foreign policy and global profile have always been based on its ability to harness the country's normative and moral voice. Second, while democratization since 1998 has allowed Indonesia to restore its reputation in world affairs and provided it with a new source of "soft power", it has also complicated foreign policy-making. Third, Indonesia's large geographical size and population have been a source of persistent internal security threats, and because the government has been unable to meet national defence requirements, the growth in its defence diplomacy activities reflect the country's continuing strategic weakness rather than its strength."

"Legitimation of power through institutions is not new in world politics. Yet, the dynamics of the conferment or withdrawal of legitimacy through the work of international administrations in the context of contemporary statebuilding policies remains - to date - insufficiently explored. This article aims to narrow such a gap by analysing attainment of legitimacy and its deficit through the work of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo following the ending of hostilities in 1999. Emphasising the political complexities involved in domestic-international exchanges, the analysis shows that the international administration and the local elite have pursued alternative views with conflicting implications for the local society. The resulting disaccord related to priorities and expectations of the international administration and those of domestic actors has hindered the local population's acceptance of the international mission and benefited claims for self-governance. The dynamics of domestic-international interactions in the context of Kosovo resonate with those in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and East Timor. Given that domestic circumstances have had a key impact on the evolving relationship between the international and local actors, paying more attention to the domestic setting is likely to save more time, energy, and resources in achieving sought goals."

"Scholars of democratic theory and international political economy often disagree over the effects of globalization on state autonomy. Yet, each approach pays minimal attention to the contributions of the other to their common object of study. In an effort to remedy this situation, I identify the premises and procedural habits of each approach which tend to make it appear irrelevant to the other, and then adjust them to remove the appearance of irrelevance without impairing the integrity of each approach. The argument is illustrated by observations from Britain, France and Sweden in recent decades."

African countries should initiate dialogue between government, student leaders, and university managers and professionals on student development as a pathway to democratic citizenship-building on the continent, new research has proposed. There should be in-depth investigations into democratic best practice regarding student development, and especially student leadership development, with the findings presented in handbooks for use by student development professionals in African universities.