Journal of International Relations and Development最新文献

The study of power in IR has produced insightful typologies, but the persisting paradigmatic divisions induce problems that stifle further progress. The fungibility problem concerns the missing links between the categories in the typologies as well as between typologies. The fragmentation problem arises from the difficulties of analysing diffuse agency. This article proposes a closer dialogue with Gramsci’s work and embeds the resulting inputs into a process-centred conceptualisation of power that can accommodate the dialectic analysis of social transformations from the Prison Notebooks. The intellectual exchange engenders an understanding in which different modalities of power can be linked together as mechanisms interfering with each other in an iterative open process. The conundrum of fragmented agency is revisited through the perspective of an integral power process that entangles actor interests and identities. These interventions create opportunities for meaningful interaction between studies into the different faces of power.

Abstract

Can foreign aid foster democracy? This is a foundational question debated in development studies and donor circles. Within this debate, some scholars argue that aid is detrimental to democratic institutions via an aid curse. The foil to this aid curse, namely that taxation fosters representation, inspires much comparative political economy research. We bring these fields together and approach the aid-democratization and taxation-representation questions through a unique lens: how foreign aid given to assist with tax collection (i.e. tax aid) affects representation. Tax aid is a form of technical assistance associated with increased tax capacity that can be leveraged to assess how such a change impacts democracy. Our statistical estimations indicate that countries receiving tax aid see an improvement in democracy. Survey data analyses show tax aid is associated with increased voting, especially among the middle class, but not changes in government satisfaction. A case illustration of Kenya corroborates our results.

This article examines the overlap between European Union migration controls and internal counter-terror measures in the Kurdish populated region at the Turkey-Iran border. It highlights the development of an ‘externalisation creep’ in the context of this overlap. We discuss how the EU’s external measures aimed at people classed as ‘irregular migrants and smugglers’ creep into local internal border security, leading to the prioritisation, on the ground, of measures against people broadly labelled as supporting ‘terrorism’. This development has resulted in the expansion of borderwork, which is associated with unexpected border control outcomes beyond those originally intended by the EU. The article draws upon an ethnographic data collection at the Turkey-Iran border, a geographical area that has seldom featured in EU-supported border controls studies. Our analysis seeks to contribute to the academic literature on externalisation by moving away from an EU-centric perspective, and instead focusing on border governance dynamics that are situated in the local histories and domestic sites of conflict, as understood by diverse border crossing survivors. This approach allows us to foreground how EU migration externalisation co-opts domestic practices in the context of borders with pre-existing forms of insecurity, and targets migrants as well as residents.