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"This essay considers recent critiques of postcolonial theory and proposes democracy as a theme likely to prove crucial for the future of the field. It argues that a properly postcolonial turn toward democracy demands a new philosophical, political, and ethical valuation of the concept of naïveté."

Fiji and Trinidad are similar in terms of their colonial and postcolonial historical experiences, yet their political outcomes are different. The argument put forth is that constitutional reforms that were adopted by Fiji were unsuccessful because of systemic conditions specific to the country. Sustained by structural features such as land rights and chiefly jurisdiction, and more intangible factors such as cultural identity and nationalism, ethnic identity is the lens through which most public discourse occurs. By contrast, Trinidad does not have these corresponding institutional structures, and the existence of public spaces for the contestation of ethnic identities together with the construction of hybrid identities at the local and national levels have contributed towards political stability.

Prominent postcolonial thinker Partha Chatterjee's concept of political society is an important one in understanding the vast domain of politics in the 'Third World' which falls outside hegemonic Western notions of the state and civil society. This domain

This address suggests some avenues through which IR scholars from a variety of methodological approaches and different geographical locations might better dialogue with each other in mutually respectful ways. It begins by briefly revisiting IR's great debates since they represent the way the discipline has traditionally defined itself. It claims that these debates have centred on challenging the predominance of a US-centred discipline and its commitment to neo-positivist methodologies. Drawing on postcolonial and feminist literatures, it then offers some suggestions as to how might envisage an IR that is built on more global foundations and on a more pluralist understanding of what we define as scientific knowledge. It concludes with some thoughts on possible paths towards placing different scientific traditions on a more equal and mutually respectful footing.

Why, since the late 1980s, have a number of European artists critiqued democracy as the political, critical and aesthetic frame within which to identify their work? How have they done this? And what aesthetic and political discourses have artists proposed

Weightless International Relations and the Burden of Unreduced Responsibility This essay is an attempt to outline an agenda and give a contemporary case example. It proceeds from two key foundations. The first is that recent western, particularly US, f

Recent scholarship on governmentality promises to reinvigorate literary critical analysis of how novels, poems, and plays help to organize the world's populations as they interact. In turn, literary criticism helps to illuminate the global implications of Michel Foucault's lectures at the Collège de France, published in English as Security, Territory, Population (2007) and The Birth of Biopolitics (2008). By privileging varied practice over unifying theory, Foucault's approach leads scholars to examine the circulation of governmental techniques in conjunction with the circulation of governable populations. An emphasis on mobility and exchange should appeal particularly to specialists in immigrant, imperial, and postcolonial literature. While considering a range of literary critical and social scientific scholarship on governmentality, this essay also shows how literature itself authorizes discrepant forms of administration. I contend that literature and literary criticism engage in imaginative reformulations and reinventions of the art of government, and in so doing contribute to debates about governing that are every bit as cross-disciplinary as they are transnational.

This article analyzes the topic of dictatorship, political violence, and popular struggle in two recent works that treat the rise and fall of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Alex Dupuy's The Prophet and Power: Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the

Jean-Bertrand Aristide was re-elected president of Haiti in 2000, with a massive parliamentary majority. My book Damming the Flood (2007) tried to explain how and why his government overthrown, several years later, in an internationally-sponsored coup-d'é

Political instability has been an enduring feature of the post-colonial landscape in Africa. The scholarly literature has offered various reasons for this phenomenon - the Cold War, ethnic antagonisms and rent-seeking behaviour, among others. However, thi

The contemporaneous publication of Alex Dupuy's The Prophet and the Power: Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Peter Hallward's Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment in 2007 marks a watershed in contemporary Haitian Studies. Together,

This paper makes a departure from the dominant formalistic approach to 'democratic consolidation' to explore a range of issues, especially mutual distrust and misperception, to analyse why Bangladesh's quest for democracy remains elusive. By taking a clos

Global apartheid, like globalisation, is a buzzword that has evolved to describe a new global paradigm. Put simply, global apartheid is an international system of minority rule that promotes inequalities, disparities and differential access to basic human

Shortcomings in the prevailing discourse of 'failed states' and the practical challenges of international state-building are examined in this article through a detailed case study of the Solomon Islands, a small independent Pacific island country that sin

This paper argues for an approach to researching citizenship and democracy that begins not from normative convictions but from everyday experiences in particular social, cultural and historical contexts. The paper starts with a consideration of the ways i

In an effort to reconceive the conduct of 'dialogue' within world politics, it is necessary for us to find new subject-positions from which to speak. This article develops a typology of six distinctive intellectual strategies through which 'decolonising' approaches to social theory can help rethink world politics by bringing alternative 'subjects' of inquiry into being. These strategies include pointing out discursive Orientalisms, deconstructing historical myths of European development, challenging Eurocentric historiographies, rearticulating subaltern subjectivities, diversifying political subjecthoods and re-imagining the social-psychological subject of world politics. The value of articulating the project in this way is illustrated in relation to a specific research project on the politics of the liberal peace in Mozambique. The article discusses a number of tensions arising from engaging with plurality and difference as a basis for conducting social inquiry, as well as some structural problems in the profession that inhibit carrying out this kind of research.

Notwithstanding the challenges of poverty and a political economy of underdevelopment, the post-colonial State in the Commonwealth Caribbean has been able to sustain a consistent record of commitment to democracy, 'free and fair' elections and open party electoral competition. However, the dominant view that the Caribbean represents an oasis of democratic stability in the developing world has suffered irreparable damage given widespread corruption, institutional inertia, open challenge to the State and clear structural deficiencies even while elections are conducted in an atmosphere of seeming freeness and fairness. It is clear therefore that democracy is under challenge in the region and that inadequate attention has been paid to bolstering its democratic content. However, recent decisions by the judicial system against sitting prime ministers and governments portend well for the overall health of democracy in the region in spite of its numerous challenges. Further, democratic consolidation is evident given the efforts that have been made to correct some of the democratic deficits.