The Political Economy of Lebanon Under Rafiq Hariri: An Interpretation

2006 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Talal Nizameddin
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Foreign Investment ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Direct Foreign Investment ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
International Consensus ◽  
State Sector ◽  
Point Of No Return ◽  
Financial Interests

International consensus supported Lebanon's effort to rebuild its shattered economy after the civil war and Rafiq Hariri, with Saudi and Western backing, took over as Prime Minister in 1992 to oversee the reconstruction program. Yet persistent Syrian efforts through Lebanese allies, including President Emile Lahoud, to undermine Hariri by blaming him for the country's economic woes raised suspicions that Damascus sought unrivalled influence in Lebanon. Hariri's efforts to privatize the corrupt state sector and attract direct foreign investment proved incompatible with Syrian hegemony. Complex factors were behind Syria's stance, relating to its insecurity in Lebanon, heightened by perceptions of Hariri's association with the West and the personal financial interests of leaders of the Syrian Ba'th regime in Lebanon's economy. The crisis crossed the point of no return with the extension of Lahoud's presidential term in September 2004.

The Problem of Liberal Empire Reconsidered

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 167-177
Author(s):  
Adom Getachew
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The Political ◽  
British West Indies ◽  
The West ◽  
Economic Violence ◽  
Liberal Political Economy ◽  
Liberal Imperialism

This review essay situates Christopher Taylor’s Empire of Neglect: The West Indies in the Wake of British Liberalism (2018) in the context of the two-decade-long debate about the emergence of a liberal imperialism during the nineteenth century. Through an examination of the political economy of emancipation in the British West Indies, Taylor recasts the problem of liberal imperialism by decentering its justificatory discourses in the metropole to examine its practical effects in the colonies. In this turn, he provides an important and missing “materialization” of liberal empire that makes the deep connections between free trade and freeing slaves legible. The practical and theoretical coincidence of these nineteenth-century developments as well as Taylor’s reconstruction of a West Indian tradition of political economy provide a new way of conceptualizing colonial economic violence elaborated as the product of a neglectful empire. It is in this tradition of critiquing and resisting a neglectful empire that we find critical and normative resources to think beyond the terms of our own entrapments within the terms of liberal political economy.

The Initial Soviet Reaction to the Events in China in and the Prospects for Sino-Soviet Relations

1991 ◽  
Vol 125 ◽  
pp. 119-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Lukin
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
East Germany ◽  
The Political ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Position ◽  
Litmus Test ◽  
Political Groups

The tragic events in China of June 1989 have had a considerable influence on the development of the international situation and have triggered a stormy reaction from public opinion in many countries. The stand on the Tiananmen tragedy has become a litmus test of the political position of governments, parties and groupings in a number of states. China's prime minister Li Peng declared in the wake of the events that they had demonstrated who was a true friend of China. A closer study of the issue would reveal that these events in fact led to a situation whereby “friends” and “enemies” (if we agree to identify China's “friends” and “enemies” with those of her premier) reversed roles. Whereas all governments and public and political groups in the west, including some orthodox communist parties, were united in their condemnation of Beijing, China's former opponents whom she used to label as “regional hegemonists,” such as Cuba and Vietnam, as well as East Germany and North Korea who have similar regimes, assured Beijing of their support for its actions.

Office, land and subjects in the history of the Manwere fekuo of Kumase: an essay in the political economy of the Asante state

1980 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. C. McCaskie
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
General Consideration ◽  
West African ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
Substantial Body ◽  
Material Basis ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Over Time

The fundamental reasoning underlying this paper is that, in seeking to advance our understanding of the material basis of political power in pre-colonial African polities, particular attention must be paid to the detailed reconstruction over time of the triumviral relationship between office, land and subjects. Acknowledgement is freely made of the fact that, for many (if not most) areas of Africa, this type of reconstruction is either exceptionally difficult or frankly impossible. This paper is concerned with the West African forest kingdom of Asante (Ghana) – a case evincing considerable institutional continuity and structural vigour, and one, moreover, sufficiently richly documented to permit the type and level of reconstruction posited. Specifically, and taking into account the substantial body of research already carried out on the general political history of Asante, this paper deals with patterns of authority over land and subjects as evidenced by the offices contained within the Manwere – one of the ten administrative/military fekuo of Kumase. The Manwere was created by Asantehene Kwaku Dua Panin (1834–67), and in seeking to account for the political imperatives underlying the foundation, the paper explores the context of the reign and the biography and career of the first Manwerehene, Kwasi Brantuo. Particular attention is paid throughout to the way in which the relationship between office, land and subjects within the Manwere was modified or otherwise altered by the nature of the political vicissitudes through which the Asante polity passed in the period between – broadly – the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Underlying the paper, and supplying context to its conclusions, is a general consideration of the philosophy of the Asante ethic concerning such matters as wealth and accumulation, the nature of authority, and the conceptualization of citizenship.

From outside the Imperium: Gandhi's Cultural Critique of the ‘West’

1981 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashis Nandy
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The West ◽  
Equitable Distribution ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Shifting Baseline ◽  
Modern Nation State

Gandhi considered the cultural gap between the modern and the non-modern cultures deeper than that between the West and the East. It is the modern culture he rejected, not only as a social ideal, but also as a framework within which one could struggle for an equitable distribution of the products of modernity. Thus, to him, the demonic aspects of the modern Western culture did not centre around only the political economy of modernity, but also around modern West's scientific secularism, technologism, overorganization, ideologies of adulthood and masculinity, giganticism, stress on normality and oversocialization, and cultural evolutionism. Such a critique allowed Gandhi to see the West as a differentiated structure and the Western man as a co-victim of the oppression of the modern nation-state system, centralized economy, mass media and technocracy, and an ethic which was openly ethnocidal. Traditional cultures also were not undifferentiated to him. He was a critical traditionalist, not an uncritical defender of faiths, and he believed in ‘negative’ relativism, not in the anthropologist's version of cultural relativism. No culture could be perfect in his model, not even a traditional one; it could only be useful as a shifting baseline for cultural criticism.

scholarly journals Mor Rusland - tur retur: mellem husmødre og kannibaler

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mette Bryld
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Homeless Women ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
Fallen Woman ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
New Mother ◽  
Gender Specific

The belief in women's "natural" predisposition to motherhood and domesticity was drastically strenghtened during the period of perestrojka, which has been characterized by Russian democratic feminists as "basically a male project". After the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the proclamation of a new Russia, the ongoing search for a national identity continued to nourish what was imagined to be a stable identity, i.e. a female body with a gender-specific mission. So magically promising did this bonding appear that, in 1995, it even influenced the naming of the political party of Prime Minister Chernomyrdin: "Our Home is Russia" ("Nash dom - Rossija"), which clearly links the vision of national identity to the femininity of mothering, nuturing and caring. Behind this image hovers the representation of the Soviet Union as a fallen woman. The article shows how some women internalize the paradigm of the new "mother nation" by constructing prostitutes, homeless women, lesbians, or even unfaithful wives as Soviet "others"; sometimes this deviant is so explicitly ostracized that she is situated beyond the borders, i.e. in the West (or simply in "Europe", i.e. non-Russia). However, this discourse of pathetic and nostalgic womanhood does not stand alone; it is countered by subversive self-representations of domesticity and maternity such as cannibalistic chaos and death (e.g. L. Petrushevskaya's The time - night.) I suggest that both strategies, each in their own way, mirror the collapsing cultural identities which make up the present period of "transition".

Tunisia Nidaa divisions will benefit Ennahda in 2019

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Investment ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Coalition Government ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Coalition Partner ◽  
Government Coalition

Significance Negotiations between coalition government parties and other major political players to agree on a new document outlining the government’s path forward (the ‘Carthage II Agreement’) stalled in late May over whether to replace Prime Minister Youssef Chahed and reshuffle the cabinet. A faction of the ruling Nidaa Tounes party led by its executive chairman, Hafedh Essebsi (son of Tunisia’s President Beji Caid Essebsi), called for the dismissal of the prime minister, who is also from Nidaa Tounes. Nidaa’s government coalition partner, the Islamist Ennahda, opposed the move. Impacts Insecurity over the government’s future will complicate key economic and security reforms. The political crisis will deter foreign investment. Friction between rival Nidaa Tounes factions will weaken popular confidence in politics.

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