Examining the ‘Post’ in Post-Democratization: The Future of Middle Eastern Political Rule through Lenses of the Past

Valbjørn, Morten; Bank, André

doi:10.1080/19436149.2010.514469

Cited by 38 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 41 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…A somewhat similar argument has been made by several scholars working on democratization and authoritarianism in the Arab World, including by EU policymakers themselves (see, for example, Brumberg ; Heydemann ; Valbjørn and Bank ). Yet the argument in this article is not that Arab governments enrolled into European democracy promotion initiatives are merely pretending or faking, making “superficial rather than deeps reforms” in the terminology of the European Union.…”

Section: Governmentality Counter‐conduct Analytical Strategysupporting

confidence: 59%

Free Us from Power: Governmentality, Counter-conduct, and Simulation in European Democracy and Reform Promotion in the Arab World

Malmvig

2014

Int Polit Sociol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

For over a decade, Arab governments have been enrolled into EU initiatives aimed at promoting democratic reform in the region. Common to these initiatives are their claims to be uninvolved with power and external imposition, professing instead to be based on voluntary notions of local demand and ownership. This article challenges this core liberalist assumption of the absence of power. Drawing on Foucault's reflections on liberal governmentality, it shows how power operates through a technology of “contractualization” which produces a distinct Arab subjectivity in the form of a lack (of reform will). Yet governing technologies are never complete, and possibilities of reversal and resistance always exist. In the second part, the article engages with the emerging debate on Foucault's concept of counter‐conduct, opening up the concept to more subtle and less spectacular forms of resistance. Drawing inspiration from Derrida's analysis of (in)hospitality and Baudrillard's logic of simulation, the article shows how the liberal assumptions of “invitation,” “ownership,” and “gradualism” inherent in European reform initiatives enable resistance in the form of: (i) selection of entry; (ii) setting conditions; and (iii) simulating reform.

show abstract

Section: Governmentality Counter‐conduct Analytical Strategysupporting

confidence: 59%

Free Us from Power: Governmentality, Counter-conduct, and Simulation in European Democracy and Reform Promotion in the Arab World

Malmvig

2014

Int Polit Sociol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As a methodological problem, post-democratisation has been used by several scholars to call into question mainstream accounts of democratisation that focus too narrowly on the regularity of democratic elections as the criterion for successful democratisation -as important as these may be -and on teleological, unilinear narratives of democratic consolidation that ignore the reverberation of past political struggles into the present (see Teti 2012;Valbjørn and Bank 2010;Valbjørn 2012). Here the term post-democratisation implies a sense of a duration of politics after "democratisation" or after a democratic event such as a popular uprising or accomplishment of electoral democracy, for democratisation is not simply a one-off event or unilinear transition to an isomorphic ideal-type.…”

Section: Uneven Geographies Of Post-democratisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea

Doucette

Koo

2015

Journal of Contemporary Asia

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article analyses the disputed election of President Park Geunhye and her administration's confrontation of left-nationalist politicians and other social movements during her first year in office. We argue that the Park administration's policies resonate with contemporary discussions of "post-democratisation," a process whereby social rights are increasingly subordinated to market logics and state power insulated from popular challenges. Under the conservative governments of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geunhye, this process has been animated by a mode of confrontation known in South Korea as "politics by public security." This politics targets social conflict and political dissent as threats to national security and has involved both illegal interventions by state institutions -such as the 2012 electoral interference by state agencies including the National Intelligence Service -and a cultural politics that affirms but revises the narrative of Korean democratisation by obfuscating the nature of the democracy movement and by attempting to restore the honour of conservative forces associated with former dictatorships. In order to better understand this conjuncture, we explore its origin within a tacit alliance between both former public security prosecutors-cum-conservative politicians and a movement of conservative intellectuals known as the New Right.

show abstract

“…Anstatt sich für Partizipation zu öffnen, entwickelten Regime in einem Prozess der Hybridisierung immer effizientere Kooptations-, Legitimations-und Repressionsmechanismen, die sie in die Lage versetzten, Dissens zu absorbieren, ohne den Zugang zu Herrschaftsstrukturen nennenswert zu liberalisieren (Hinnebusch 2006;Schlumberger 2007). Unter dem Dach der autoritären Resilienzforschung entstand eine fruchtbare Debatte um die mannigfaltigen autoritären "Upgrading"-Strategien (Heydemann 2007), die Einblicke in die Evolutionszyklen autoritärer Regime lieferte und 1 3 sich durch einen neuen "post-demokratischen" analytischen Realismus gegenüber der Region auszeichnete (siehe hierzu Valbjørn und Bank 2010). Die Elitenzentrierung dieser neuen Nahostforschung ging indes mit einer Vernachlässigung sozialer Akteure einher, deren Mobilisierungstendenzen bis 2011 als unbedeutende Randphä-nomene abgetan wurden (Rivetti 2015, S. 3).…”

Section: Die Forschung Zur Arabischen Welt Zwischen Zwei Paradigmenunclassified

Eine Schwalbe macht noch keinen Frühling: Die arabischen Umbrüche in der politikwissenschaftlichen Literatur

Grimm

2015

Z Vgl Polit Wiss

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Zusammenfassung Seit den Umbrüchen von 2011 ist der zuvor als stabil angenommene Arabische Raum zurück in den Fokus der Vergleichenden Regimeforschung gerückt, welche die Transformationsprozesse, die vielerorts Volksaufständen folgten, vorwiegend unter dem Gesichtspunkt von Demokratisierung betrachtet. Der Erkenntnisgewinn dieses Zugangs ist unter Regionalforschern allerdings umstritten, die auf die Multidirektionalität und -Dimensionalität der arabischen Umbrü-che hinweisen, die von Land zu Land äußerst unterschiedlich verlaufen sind. Dies ist nicht nur eine Folge verschiedenartiger struktureller Dispositionen, etwa hinsichtlich Regimetypus oder der Organisation von Machtzugängen. Vielmehr ist die hohe Varianz unter den Transformationspfaden, die die arabischen Gesellschaften eingeschlagen haben, vor allem das Ergebnis von Machtkämpfen zwischen Protestakteuren, Regimeeliten und ihren Sicherheitsorganen. Neben den Aktivisten der Volksaufstände haben sich in den vergangenen vier Jahren besonders die nationalen Armeen, und islamistische Vereinigungen als Kernakteure in den Transformationsdynamiken erwiesen. Dieser Beitrag präsentiert einen Überblick über die relevante Forschungsliteratur, die seit dem Arabischen Frühling innovative Perspektiven auf diese vielschichtigen Wandlungsprozesse geliefert und zu ihrem besseren Verständ-nis beigetragen hat.Schlüsselwörter Arabischer Frühling · Transition und Transformation · Akteure im Transformationsprozess · Autokratie · Mobilisierung 2 J. Grimm 3Abstract The upheavals of 2011 have catapulted the Arab World-once thought to be exceptionally stable-back onto the agenda of regime studies. Democratization quickly moved to become the dominant paradigm for comparative research on the transformation processes that followed the popular uprisings in many countries of the region. The insights generated by such a perspective are however limited. Region experts emphasize that the Arab transformations have unfolded in a very multidirectional and multidimensional way. In fact, trajectories of change differ significantly over the region. This diversity cannot be attributed solely to the divergent structural dispositions of the countries in question, such as varying regime types or different ways of organizing access to power. Instead, recent publications stress that the high variance in the preliminary outcomes of the Arab transitions is primarily a result of the contingent power struggles between protest actors, regime elites and security forces that have played out differently from country to country. During the past 4 years, apart from the revolutionary activists, especially the national Arab armies and Islamist groups have crystallized as key actors in the transition dynamics. This article provides an overview of the relevant scholarly literature that offers innovative perspectives and contributes to a better understanding of the Arab Spring.

show abstract

Examining the ‘Post’ in Post-Democratization: The Future of Middle Eastern Political Rule through Lenses of the Past

Cited by 38 publications

References 41 publications

Free Us from Power: Governmentality, Counter-conduct, and Simulation in European Democracy and Reform Promotion in the Arab World

Free Us from Power: Governmentality, Counter-conduct, and Simulation in European Democracy and Reform Promotion in the Arab World

Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea

Eine Schwalbe macht noch keinen Frühling: Die arabischen Umbrüche in der politikwissenschaftlichen Literatur

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About