Transformative Justice in Tunisia and Egypt

Professor Paul Gready has been awarded a three year ESRC research grant proposal on Transformative Justice in Tunisia and Egypt.

The Arab world was shaken in 2011 by a series of popular movements, collectively known as the 'Arab spring(s)', that have challenged long established authoritarian regimes. What will be the medium and long term impacts of these uprisings? Who is driving (and contesting) change, and what kind of change is being sought? This study addresses these issues in the context of the contested transitions in Tunisia and Egypt.

The research is based on the following premise: for these uprisings to deliver on their potential will require transformative change that emphasises local agency and resources, the prioritization of process rather than pre-conceived outcomes, and the challenging of unequal power relationships and structures of exclusion. Such change is here termed transformative justice. The overarching research question is: How is transformative change defined and delivered in the context of political transition (in Tunisia and Egypt), and which actors, institutions and structures drive and contest such change? The research will look at changing attitudes over time (conducting two sets of interviews, one year apart) and document a range of voices and perspectives (urban/rural, supporters/opponents of the revolutions).

The research includes a strong capacity building element - training local researchers - and the grant will also fund two PhD scholarships at the Centre for Applied Human Rights.

A dangerous game: Israel, Syria and US air strikes

In a piece for www.theconversation.com, Jacob Eriksson reflects on what a possible US strike on Syria might mean for Israel, and the problem of unspecified goals. Despite multiple threats being made against the Jewish state, the risk of unwanted conflict escalation makes such a retaliatory attack unlikely. Caution should, however, guide any American response.

Book Review: Party patronage and party government in European democracies

The eurozone debt crisis and subsequent economic reforms introduced across Europe have helped to expose endemic levels of corruption and party patronage in countries such as Greece. Party patronage and party government in European democracies uses more than 600 expert interviews to explore the nature of party patronage across fifteen European democracies. For Sofia Vasilopoulou, one of this timely book’s main strengths is in its investigation of patronage as an organisational resource for parties that are facing falling grass root support.  She finds that while the book does not explore the reasons behind cross-country variation in the scale and depth of patronage, it does open up a number of potentially fruitful areas for future research.

Read the full piece on the LSE blog.

Audra Mitchell secures funding for project 'Posthuman Security'

Audra Mitchell has been awarded a series of grants to support her new research and collaborative projects on the subject of ‘Posthuman Security’. 

"This project starts from the premise that harm does not happen to humans alone, but rather to complex ‘worlds’ composed of heterogeneous kinds of beings. From this perspective, it asks how, and in what way, these worlds and their nonhuman constituents can be subjects of ‘security’. In particular, it explores the kinds of ethical orientations humans should adopt towards nonhumans – including what protection they are owed, and how we can respond ethically to the threats they raise. This issue already poses significant challenges in international affairs. For instance, robots or ‘drones’ are involved in killing combatants and in humanitarian work such as mine-clearing; ecosystems such as forests can shelter refugees or combatant groups; historical and religious buildings are protected under international law; and climate change is contributing to conflict and refugee flows. New research within posthumanist philosophy, and ‘new materialist’ discourses in particular, suggests that attention to nonhumans can help to explain the sources of contemporary security threats. Yet ethics has not caught up, and important questions have yet to be answered. In particular, to what extent do we owe nonhumans protection? and, if we do owe them protection, then how should we respond to the threats they raise? For more information, please see Audra’s previous post on this blog.

To support this work, Audra has received an Early Career Fellowship from the Independent Social Research Foundation (£46892) which will allow her to pursue the project in 2014-15. She has also received a visiting fellowship for research collaboration at the University of Queensland Department of Political Science and International Studies ($5000 AUD). In spring 2014, she will take up this fellowship in order to develop the theoretical framework and empirical applications of the project in collaboration with Professor Roland Bleiker and other members of POLSIS. Finally, she has received a grant from University of York’s Research Priming Fund (£4657) to hold an international workshop which will explore the potential for collaborative research on this subject in and outside of the academic community".  

British Academy for the humanities and social sciences

Carole Spary has been awarded £7705 by the British Academy for a research project on 'Performing representation: women parliamentarians and political participation in India'. The research will investigate women’s political participation as elected representatives in the national parliament of India. It will focus on selected parliamentary debates as well as the Committee for the Empowerment of Women. The research aims to understand the dynamics of participating in debates, how women MPs are enabled or constrained by institutional norms and practices, and the representational claims they make as women MPs. The research is part of a larger project examining women’s participation as a minority group (less than 11%) in the Indian parliament. The grant will enable research trips to India to conduct elite interviews with MPs and to collect contemporary and archival documentary data from the national parliament.

Institutions must develop strategies to tackle online abuse aimed at female academics

Audra Mitchell argues that universities, funding councils and other academic bodies need to play a more supportive role in addressing online bullying aimed at women. Writing after a recent conference panel exploring the challenges and risks associated with being a female public intellectual in an era of widespread online sexual harassment, she argues that we need to think carefully about making an individual online presence a necessity for academic success.

Read the full piece at the LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog. 

Indifference and disillusionment in the Holy Land, despite John Kerry's efforts

Reflecting on his field research in the Middle East, Jacob Eriksson argues that, despite John Kerry's recent efforts, indifference and pessimism are pervading the latest chapter in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. 

With mistrust between the parties as high as ever, is it possible for the two sides to make progress?  

Jerusalem, 21 July 2013: 

"You’ve got to hand it to John Kerry, he’s a tenacious operator. He’s managed to overcome the formidable impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and has done well to get the parties back to the table. The respective teams are due in Washington some time next week for an initial meeting. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. As analyst David Makovsky put it, ‘Right now they’re in the very shallow end, and they’re going to have to swim in deeper waters — and they can be treacherous.’

After my many conversations over the last two weeks, it seems that Israeli public opinion regarding peace with the Palestinians is as divergent as it’s always been. Israel needs to withdraw from the occupied territories as soon as possible; yes, we need peace, but it’s hard and will tear the country apart; Israel is nice to those who are nice to us, and we are ready give up the West Bank and East Jerusalem for a Palestinian state if they prove they accept our Jewish state; all of Jerusalem, East and West, is Israeli, no doubt about it, and the Arabs (note: not Palestinians, but Arabs) can’t have it.

This, in itself, is nothing new. Opinion on peace and the Palestinians has always been divergent. What is remarkable, however, is the overwhelming feeling of indifference. Though this was present when I was last here in 2009, it now seems far more pervasive. Despite Kerry’s continuous efforts and the renewed commitment he’s managed to get, people remain very pessimistic. Mistrust between the parties is as high as ever, and questions to Israelis about what is required to change this are either greeted with a shrug, or the suggestion that the ball is in the Palestinians’ court. They need to make the first move to break the formidable psychological barrier, like Egyptian President Anwar Sadat did when he visited Jerusalem in 1977 and addressed the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.

Perhaps this opinion is also informed by the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu is unlikely to initiate any substantial moves towards the Palestinians. The man’s politics can be described in one hyphenated word: risk-averse. He is not a man whose unwavering conviction leads to big, bold decisions. Like many politicians, his main priority appears to be staying in power, navigating the political waters and keeping his head just above the surface. During his first period in office (1996-1999), he did it badly. Torn between the liberal left – who wanted to see progress in the peace process – and the conservative and religious right – who were against any territorial concessions to the Palestinians and in favour of settlement expansion – Bibi swung from one to the other and managed to alienate everyone. Too accommodating for the right and not accommodating enough for the left.

Given that his current government leans even more towards the right, it does not augur well, and he will no doubt try very hard to avoid a similar situation by standing his ground. There is an agreement to release a number of Palestinian prisoners, but that is all Kerry could get – there is apparently no Israeli acceptance of Palestinian pre-conditions, including using the 1967 Green Line as a basis for negotiations, and a settlement freeze which includes East Jerusalem.

The occupation of the West Bank is not palatable or pretty, nor does it reflect well on the Israelis, as the security experts I have spoken with admit, but they cannot realistically envisage an alternative at this stage. It is the best of a bad set of options. The firm conviction on my part that Israel needs to withdraw from all of the West Bank in order to ensure its long-term security is greeted with polite scepticism, and either a ‘OK, but how can that happen now?’ or ‘No, you don’t understand the Palestinians.’ Either way, it’s not particularly encouraging. The effective security cooperation that does exist with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and has been working for Israel’s benefit over the last four or five years is given short shrift. Without an Israeli presence, security is not guaranteed, and that’s the bottom line.

And what of the Palestinians? Disarray seems to be the word of the day. President Mahmoud Abbas (commonly known as Abu Mazen) is currently trying to shore up the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has come under severe criticism over the past year. Street protests over mounting economic problems were prevalent in September 2012, and quickly spread to broader political grievances over the Israeli occupation and the PA’s inability to improve their lives. A political battle between President Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the politically independent economist much loved in the West, was played out in all this, with Fayyad resigning in April this year. His successor, Hami Ramdallah, was in post for two weeks before submitting his resignation due to a disagreement over Abbas’ appointment of two deputy ministers. The composition of a new government is not yet clear. Meanwhile, reconciliation and the formation of a national unity government between Abbas’ main Fatah group in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip doesn’t appear to be on the cards either. The Muslim Brotherhood’s fall from grace in Egypt has weakened Hamas, and they won’t be keen to negotiate from such a position.

Predictions that a third intifada would erupt in 2013 have thus far proved incorrect. The Palestinian street is full of cynicism and mistrust towards all things political, but the prevailing opinion appears to be that political reform, not violence, is the key to their problems. Memories of the tremendous damage wrought by the second intifada are still fresh enough to deter them, not to mention the civil war between Fatah and Hamas in 2007. But how long will this last without progress in the political process and improved quality of life? One can only hope that continued disillusionment and frustration does not make violence seem attractive.

As a result of this, the process will have to be extremely carefully managed, as it may well be the last roll of the dice for Abu Mazen and the PA. Another failure to move decisively towards proper statehood may be too much for the Palestinians to bear. Kerry needs to study the lessons of previous failures very carefully, and use the six to nine months the parties have committed to – reports vary – wisely. He must try to manage expectations clearly from the outset, maintain secrecy, and try to officially establish the by now well known parameters of a two-state solution.

Despite Kerry’s initial achievement, scepticism remains the word of the day. We have seen this story many times before; at best it has ended in disappointment, and at worst, violence. Ultimately, there are two classic Middle Eastern negotiating positions that need to be overcome: ‘I’m weak, how can I negotiate?’ and ‘I’m strong, why should I negotiate?’ Let’s hope they can break this Gordian knot".