L ’ apocalisse della democrazia italiana by and Cristiano Vezzoni aims to provide a wide range of potential beneficiaries – students, journalists, and, of course, academics – with a deep analysis of the reasons behind the two electoral ‘ earthquakes ’ that occurred in the last two Italian general elections (in 2013 and 2018). The authors – leading experts in electoral behaviour – consider the electoral turmoil that occurred in Italy between 2013 and 2018 not as a ‘ normal ’ electoral change, but as a deep systemic crisis, which occurred in two steps during the 2013 – 2018 electoral cycle. In this regard, most studies have addressed two issues separately: the collapse of both pivotal mainstream parties of the political system of the so-called Second Republic – Democratic Party (Pd) and People of Freedom/Go Italy (Pdl/Forza Italia) – and the success of challenger parties such as the Five Star Movement (M5s) and the new League (Lega) of Matteo Salvini. This book, conversely, aims to jointly analyse the two issues, trying to understand how the electoral collapse of Pd and Pdl/Forza Italia translated into consensus for M5s and Lega. To explain the uncommon nature of the 2013 and 2018 elections, several possible explanations have been proposed in the literature. On the one hand, the reaction of voters to the epochal transformations of our times was invoked: first, the effects of the Great Recession, globalization or the migration crisis would have changed voters ’ positions on specific issues related to these socio-structural transformations; then, this attitudinal change would have changed their habitual voting choices. This perspective, widely shared in the Italian public debate, focuses on the reasons for the success of M5s and Lega, that is, on the ‘ factors of
{"title":"‘L'apocalisse della democrazia Italiana. All'origine di due terremoti elettorali Hans Schadee, Paolo Segatti and Cristiano Vezzoni. Bologna: il Mulino, 2019. 170p. €16,00 (hardcover)’","authors":"N. Maggini","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2021.44","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2021.44","url":null,"abstract":"L ’ apocalisse della democrazia italiana by and Cristiano Vezzoni aims to provide a wide range of potential beneficiaries – students, journalists, and, of course, academics – with a deep analysis of the reasons behind the two electoral ‘ earthquakes ’ that occurred in the last two Italian general elections (in 2013 and 2018). The authors – leading experts in electoral behaviour – consider the electoral turmoil that occurred in Italy between 2013 and 2018 not as a ‘ normal ’ electoral change, but as a deep systemic crisis, which occurred in two steps during the 2013 – 2018 electoral cycle. In this regard, most studies have addressed two issues separately: the collapse of both pivotal mainstream parties of the political system of the so-called Second Republic – Democratic Party (Pd) and People of Freedom/Go Italy (Pdl/Forza Italia) – and the success of challenger parties such as the Five Star Movement (M5s) and the new League (Lega) of Matteo Salvini. This book, conversely, aims to jointly analyse the two issues, trying to understand how the electoral collapse of Pd and Pdl/Forza Italia translated into consensus for M5s and Lega. To explain the uncommon nature of the 2013 and 2018 elections, several possible explanations have been proposed in the literature. On the one hand, the reaction of voters to the epochal transformations of our times was invoked: first, the effects of the Great Recession, globalization or the migration crisis would have changed voters ’ positions on specific issues related to these socio-structural transformations; then, this attitudinal change would have changed their habitual voting choices. This perspective, widely shared in the Italian public debate, focuses on the reasons for the success of M5s and Lega, that is, on the ‘ factors of","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42356443","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Innovative practices based on the involvement of citizens as co-producers of welfare local services have been increasingly adopted by the public sector to effectively tackle emerging social problems. Despite the development in the literature on this subject, recent studies still do not clearly indicate which are the challenges for the institutionalization of such practices. By applying a governance lens to the analysis of co-production of local public services, this article aims to contribute to bridging this gap through the empirical analysis of the childcare experience in four European cities. More in detail, it debates the concepts of co-production and innovation in public service delivery within the context of the different waves of public administration reforms; and it investigates how three different sets of conditions – namely, state support and capacity; organizational cultures which support innovation; and integration with facilitative technologies – integrate to facilitate or hinder the institutionalization of co-production initiatives. The findings show that the enabling role of the state actor is a sine qua non to guarantee an institutionalization of these practices, particularly concerning the promotion of trust-building processes. Doing so, the article contributes to the international debate about the possible co-existing of the paradigms of public administration that are arising in the last decades to remedy the problems with the New Public Management; and it provides professionals working in public management and administration with key policy recommendations for the elaboration of new governance systems for the provision of social and welfare services.
{"title":"Institutionalizing innovation in welfare local services through co-production: toward a Neo-Weberian State?","authors":"Francesca Campomori, Mattia Casula","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2021.43","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2021.43","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Innovative practices based on the involvement of citizens as co-producers of welfare local services have been increasingly adopted by the public sector to effectively tackle emerging social problems. Despite the development in the literature on this subject, recent studies still do not clearly indicate which are the challenges for the institutionalization of such practices. By applying a governance lens to the analysis of co-production of local public services, this article aims to contribute to bridging this gap through the empirical analysis of the childcare experience in four European cities. More in detail, it debates the concepts of co-production and innovation in public service delivery within the context of the different waves of public administration reforms; and it investigates how three different sets of conditions – namely, state support and capacity; organizational cultures which support innovation; and integration with facilitative technologies – integrate to facilitate or hinder the institutionalization of co-production initiatives. The findings show that the enabling role of the state actor is a sine qua non to guarantee an institutionalization of these practices, particularly concerning the promotion of trust-building processes. Doing so, the article contributes to the international debate about the possible co-existing of the paradigms of public administration that are arising in the last decades to remedy the problems with the New Public Management; and it provides professionals working in public management and administration with key policy recommendations for the elaboration of new governance systems for the provision of social and welfare services.","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43106055","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
and of from the ‘ populist government of ’ Italian and European elites, rapid decline to the Conte II, featuring the collaboration of the Five Star Movement with its previous antipodal Democratic Party, and the installment of a technocratic government (Draghi), one after the beginning of the pandemic. seeking to understand these changes and related phenomena, among which populism and technocracy, read the brilliant book ‘ Neoliberal Transformations of The Italian State ’ by Cozzolino. In fact, the book provides an in depth theoretical and empirical analysis of the transformations of the Italian State in the last 75 years, with a focus on the period 1976 2015, featuring a transition from a parliamentary regime to a de facto presidential one, centered on the executive powers. The book has illuminating results on the unique Italian case, but also more broadly on state theory and its intertwined political and economic dynamics. Departing from the critique of func-tionalist, reductionist, and reifying approaches to state (typical of behaviorist, neo-positivist, and neo-Weberian approaches), the author underlines instead the importance of studying the state not as a thing , but as a social relation , or more specifically as a terrain for contestation. critical International political Cozzolino theoretical framework, dialectical Cozzolino the constructed. The theoretical empir-ically the
{"title":"Neoliberal Transformations of the Italian State: Understanding the Roots of the Crises By Adriano Cozzolino. Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2021, 216p. $110 hardback, $38 eBook","authors":"Gemma Gasseau","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2021.42","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2021.42","url":null,"abstract":"and of from the ‘ populist government of ’ Italian and European elites, rapid decline to the Conte II, featuring the collaboration of the Five Star Movement with its previous antipodal Democratic Party, and the installment of a technocratic government (Draghi), one after the beginning of the pandemic. seeking to understand these changes and related phenomena, among which populism and technocracy, read the brilliant book ‘ Neoliberal Transformations of The Italian State ’ by Cozzolino. In fact, the book provides an in depth theoretical and empirical analysis of the transformations of the Italian State in the last 75 years, with a focus on the period 1976 2015, featuring a transition from a parliamentary regime to a de facto presidential one, centered on the executive powers. The book has illuminating results on the unique Italian case, but also more broadly on state theory and its intertwined political and economic dynamics. Departing from the critique of func-tionalist, reductionist, and reifying approaches to state (typical of behaviorist, neo-positivist, and neo-Weberian approaches), the author underlines instead the importance of studying the state not as a thing , but as a social relation , or more specifically as a terrain for contestation. critical International political Cozzolino theoretical framework, dialectical Cozzolino the constructed. The theoretical empir-ically the","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42603894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Political claims concerning state territorial transformation, secessionism and separatism still constitute a relatively understudied issue in political science. Scholars such as Radan (2012) have debated at length whether the study of separatism belongs more to International Relations or to domestic politics. Different scientific approaches seeking to analyse similar phenomena are sometimes rigidly framed by geographical area and local contexts (such as decolonization in Africa or pro-independence demands in Western Europe), with no or little regard for trans-national aspects. They may apply the same scientific concepts but fail to bridge epistemic diver-gences. Independentism, separatism, secessionism, annexationism, irredentism are striking examples of such an epistemic confusion. Moreover, scholars seldom contextualize these very different political phenomena, in spite of important regional and international contextual factors. Nonetheless, crucial issues comparative politics nations nationalism, regionalism, sub-state ethnic identities, regional/national culture and language, crucial explana-tory or intervening factors for understanding independentism and secessionism in general.
{"title":"Conflitti separatisti. Caucaso meridionale, Europa orientale e Balcani (1991–2014) By Loretta Dell'Aguzzo. Roma: Carocci editore, 2020. 190 p., 21 Euros","authors":"C. Pala","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2021.41","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2021.41","url":null,"abstract":"Political claims concerning state territorial transformation, secessionism and separatism still constitute a relatively understudied issue in political science. Scholars such as Radan (2012) have debated at length whether the study of separatism belongs more to International Relations or to domestic politics. Different scientific approaches seeking to analyse similar phenomena are sometimes rigidly framed by geographical area and local contexts (such as decolonization in Africa or pro-independence demands in Western Europe), with no or little regard for trans-national aspects. They may apply the same scientific concepts but fail to bridge epistemic diver-gences. Independentism, separatism, secessionism, annexationism, irredentism are striking examples of such an epistemic confusion. Moreover, scholars seldom contextualize these very different political phenomena, in spite of important regional and international contextual factors. Nonetheless, crucial issues comparative politics nations nationalism, regionalism, sub-state ethnic identities, regional/national culture and language, crucial explana-tory or intervening factors for understanding independentism and secessionism in general.","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46086232","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract As manifest challenger of the United States (US)-led international order, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has inaugurated a revisionist strategy that encompasses a multifaceted spectrum of initiatives, including an ambitious naval military build-up. History has shown that revisionist and challenging powers tend to defy the established order through arm races. US Admiral Mahan and German Admiral Tirpitz theorized two different approaches to naval strategy, the former focusing on global maritime hegemony and the latter on regional counterbalance based on risk theory. This article attempts at explaining the puzzle of China's naval buildup through the lenses of geopolitics, adding a geopolitical dimension to the current debate. It suggests that the PRC's naval military development does not follow a Mahanian global maritime strategy aimed at challenging the US primacy worldwide, but rather a Tirpitzian regional approach focused on counterbalancing the US presence within the scope of China's sea power projection, that is, the Pacific region. To substantiate this hypothesis, the study compares diachronically contemporary Chinese naval arm race with Wilhelmine Germany's High Seas Fleet. The findings underscore that, in maritime terms, China's revisionism vis-à-vis the US somewhat resembles that of Imperial Germany vis-à-vis Imperial Britain, both aiming at regional counterbalance and anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) tactics rather than global maritime counterhegemony. Although Chinese sea power is still far from posing a serious threat to that of the US and its allies, an unrestrained continuation of Beijing's naval buildup could encourage arms races and direct confrontation due to regional security dilemmas.
{"title":"The legacy of Admiral von Tirpitz: a geopolitical understanding of China's naval buildup through sea-denial strategies","authors":"Paolo Pizzolo","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2021.40","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2021.40","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract As manifest challenger of the United States (US)-led international order, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has inaugurated a revisionist strategy that encompasses a multifaceted spectrum of initiatives, including an ambitious naval military build-up. History has shown that revisionist and challenging powers tend to defy the established order through arm races. US Admiral Mahan and German Admiral Tirpitz theorized two different approaches to naval strategy, the former focusing on global maritime hegemony and the latter on regional counterbalance based on risk theory. This article attempts at explaining the puzzle of China's naval buildup through the lenses of geopolitics, adding a geopolitical dimension to the current debate. It suggests that the PRC's naval military development does not follow a Mahanian global maritime strategy aimed at challenging the US primacy worldwide, but rather a Tirpitzian regional approach focused on counterbalancing the US presence within the scope of China's sea power projection, that is, the Pacific region. To substantiate this hypothesis, the study compares diachronically contemporary Chinese naval arm race with Wilhelmine Germany's High Seas Fleet. The findings underscore that, in maritime terms, China's revisionism vis-à-vis the US somewhat resembles that of Imperial Germany vis-à-vis Imperial Britain, both aiming at regional counterbalance and anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) tactics rather than global maritime counterhegemony. Although Chinese sea power is still far from posing a serious threat to that of the US and its allies, an unrestrained continuation of Beijing's naval buildup could encourage arms races and direct confrontation due to regional security dilemmas.","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42159644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
a volume which is a mosaic of ideas and angles about and around contemporary Europe and European Jewry. Both Israeli political scholars, members of the Contemporary European Studies Ben-Gurion of Negev, selected contributions from different scholars and practitioners of EU politics and Jewish affairs. The viewpoint adopted by the editors is resumed by the twofold assumption that, on the one hand, ‘ Jews were viewed by some as representing Europe ’ s first supranational and multicultural entity ’ (p. 1), depicted as the prototypal model of liberal cosmopolitan Europeanness. On the other hand, however, are Europe ’ s archetypal minority, a primordial otherness in a historically Christian[ized] European society which had eternalized the pejorative label of the so-called ‘ juif errant (the wandering Jew who has the wrong faith and no land). This dual prism, implying an abyssal distance between these two perceptions of Europe − Jewry relations is the challenging debate the volume seeks to disclose.
{"title":"The Jewish Contribution to European Integration Sharon Pardo and Hila Zahavi (Eds.). Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020. 196 p. € 92 (hardcover)","authors":"Alon Helled","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2021.21","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2021.21","url":null,"abstract":"a volume which is a mosaic of ideas and angles about and around contemporary Europe and European Jewry. Both Israeli political scholars, members of the Contemporary European Studies Ben-Gurion of Negev, selected contributions from different scholars and practitioners of EU politics and Jewish affairs. The viewpoint adopted by the editors is resumed by the twofold assumption that, on the one hand, ‘ Jews were viewed by some as representing Europe ’ s first supranational and multicultural entity ’ (p. 1), depicted as the prototypal model of liberal cosmopolitan Europeanness. On the other hand, however, are Europe ’ s archetypal minority, a primordial otherness in a historically Christian[ized] European society which had eternalized the pejorative label of the so-called ‘ juif errant (the wandering Jew who has the wrong faith and no land). This dual prism, implying an abyssal distance between these two perceptions of Europe − Jewry relations is the challenging debate the volume seeks to disclose.","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48981067","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
International observers have not been kind to Italy during the past two decades. The International Monetary Fund (IMF, 2016) wrote about the country's two lost decades, the Economist (19 May 2005) described it as the real sick man of Europe and eminent economists, such as Bruno Pellegrino and Luigi Zingales (Pellegrino and Zingales, 2017), tried to diagnose the Italian disease. Italy's GDP has barely grown since the mid-1990s and the past decade was the worst in the history of its economy, world wars included.
{"title":"Italy's Decline: A Political Economy Perspective","authors":"Igor Guardiancich","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2021.39","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2021.39","url":null,"abstract":"International observers have not been kind to Italy during the past two decades. The International Monetary Fund (IMF, 2016) wrote about the country's two lost decades, the Economist (19 May 2005) described it as the real sick man of Europe and eminent economists, such as Bruno Pellegrino and Luigi Zingales (Pellegrino and Zingales, 2017), tried to diagnose the Italian disease. Italy's GDP has barely grown since the mid-1990s and the past decade was the worst in the history of its economy, world wars included.","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47083031","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article deals with a question foregrounded by historian Willem van Schendel in his seminal 2002 article ‘Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance’: how do arms, arms flows, and associated regulatory practices reshape the geometries of authority and power in borderlands? The rich transdisciplinary literature on borderlands has fruitfully deployed van Schendel's insights to re-spatialise areas and states but has devoted scant attention to such question. Drawing from ‘new materialist’ scholarship in IR and the concept of scale in political geography, the paper argues that fluid and fractionally coherent combinations of weapons as technical objects that come from somewhere, rationalities, and techniques of arms control reproduce multiple scales of territorial authority and struggles over scaled modes of governing violence in borderlands. Such struggles of scales and about scale constantly reconfigure the territorial arenas of authority on violence at the edge of the state. Based on fieldwork in Ta'ang areas of northern Shan State, Myanmar, the article develops an empirical analysis of encounters between explosive devices/landmines and the subjects and spaces they target. Delving into the processes and practices of ‘making’ and controlling the ‘landmine’, I find that different socio-political orders confront themselves through rationalities, techniques, and practices of humanitarian arms control via which they navigate/jump across scales, forge new ones, or mobilise multi-scalar alliances. Different types of ‘dead’ and ‘alive’ landmines nonetheless defy these attempts at rescaling territorial authority over violence by acting in unforeseen manners at the scale of their own ecologies of violence.
{"title":"Ecologies of ‘Dead’ and ‘Alive’ landmines in the borderlands of Myanmar","authors":"F. Buscemi","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2021.37","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2021.37","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article deals with a question foregrounded by historian Willem van Schendel in his seminal 2002 article ‘Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance’: how do arms, arms flows, and associated regulatory practices reshape the geometries of authority and power in borderlands? The rich transdisciplinary literature on borderlands has fruitfully deployed van Schendel's insights to re-spatialise areas and states but has devoted scant attention to such question. Drawing from ‘new materialist’ scholarship in IR and the concept of scale in political geography, the paper argues that fluid and fractionally coherent combinations of weapons as technical objects that come from somewhere, rationalities, and techniques of arms control reproduce multiple scales of territorial authority and struggles over scaled modes of governing violence in borderlands. Such struggles of scales and about scale constantly reconfigure the territorial arenas of authority on violence at the edge of the state. Based on fieldwork in Ta'ang areas of northern Shan State, Myanmar, the article develops an empirical analysis of encounters between explosive devices/landmines and the subjects and spaces they target. Delving into the processes and practices of ‘making’ and controlling the ‘landmine’, I find that different socio-political orders confront themselves through rationalities, techniques, and practices of humanitarian arms control via which they navigate/jump across scales, forge new ones, or mobilise multi-scalar alliances. Different types of ‘dead’ and ‘alive’ landmines nonetheless defy these attempts at rescaling territorial authority over violence by acting in unforeseen manners at the scale of their own ecologies of violence.","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42452023","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The Global IR research agenda lays emphasis on the marginalised, non-Western forms of power and knowledge that underpin today's international system. Focusing on Africa, this article questions two fundamental assumptions of this approach, arguing that they err by excess of realism – in two different ways. First, the claim that Africa is marginal to international relations (IR) thinking holds true only as long as one makes the whole of IR discipline coincide with the Realist school. Second, the Global IR commitment to better appreciate ‘non-Western’ contributions is ontologically realist, because it fails to recognise that the West and the non-West are dialectically constitutive of one another. To demonstrate this, the article first shows that Africa has moved from the periphery to the core of IR scholarship: in the post-paradigmatic phase, Africa is no longer a mere provider of deviant cases, but a laboratory for theory-building of general validity. In the second part, the Sahel provides a case for unsettling reified conceptions of Africa's conceptual and geographical boundaries through the dialectical articulation of the inside/outside dichotomy. Questioning the ‘place’ of Africa in IR – both as identity and function – thus paves the way to a ‘less realist’ approach to Global IR.
{"title":"The place of Africa in international relations: the centrality of the margins in Global IR","authors":"Luca Raineri, Edoardo Baldaro","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2021.36","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2021.36","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Global IR research agenda lays emphasis on the marginalised, non-Western forms of power and knowledge that underpin today's international system. Focusing on Africa, this article questions two fundamental assumptions of this approach, arguing that they err by excess of realism – in two different ways. First, the claim that Africa is marginal to international relations (IR) thinking holds true only as long as one makes the whole of IR discipline coincide with the Realist school. Second, the Global IR commitment to better appreciate ‘non-Western’ contributions is ontologically realist, because it fails to recognise that the West and the non-West are dialectically constitutive of one another. To demonstrate this, the article first shows that Africa has moved from the periphery to the core of IR scholarship: in the post-paradigmatic phase, Africa is no longer a mere provider of deviant cases, but a laboratory for theory-building of general validity. In the second part, the Sahel provides a case for unsettling reified conceptions of Africa's conceptual and geographical boundaries through the dialectical articulation of the inside/outside dichotomy. Questioning the ‘place’ of Africa in IR – both as identity and function – thus paves the way to a ‘less realist’ approach to Global IR.","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46257926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic witnessed extreme forms of biopolitics, as well as the urgency to reconsider our relationship with the planet. Although biopolitics draws attention to the technologies of domination by public authorities, we cast the concepts of bios and politics in the wider framework of nonviolence. In this framework, bios is the set of practices (praxis) of ordinary citizens. And politics is power created by harm reduction, or actions in daily life that testimony the desire not to harm others or the planet. We leverage nonviolence at three levels, scaling up from the individual to social behaviour and to the planet. The first level concerns nonviolence as self-sufferance and as praxis to claim back the sovereignty of the body. In the second level, nonviolence is collective mobilization – building social capital, self-governance, and solidarity. The third level provides the vision of a diverse ecological citizenship with a sustainable relationship between human beings and the planet.
{"title":"Unity in fragility: nonviolence and COVID-19","authors":"Roberto Baldoli, C. Radaelli","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2021.38","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2021.38","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic witnessed extreme forms of biopolitics, as well as the urgency to reconsider our relationship with the planet. Although biopolitics draws attention to the technologies of domination by public authorities, we cast the concepts of bios and politics in the wider framework of nonviolence. In this framework, bios is the set of practices (praxis) of ordinary citizens. And politics is power created by harm reduction, or actions in daily life that testimony the desire not to harm others or the planet. We leverage nonviolence at three levels, scaling up from the individual to social behaviour and to the planet. The first level concerns nonviolence as self-sufferance and as praxis to claim back the sovereignty of the body. In the second level, nonviolence is collective mobilization – building social capital, self-governance, and solidarity. The third level provides the vision of a diverse ecological citizenship with a sustainable relationship between human beings and the planet.","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42599153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：