Entwicklung der Frauenarbeit in den Jahren von 1914 bis 1945.
Als Grundlage für die Erfassung der Frauenarbeit dienen vor allem die Ergebnisse der Volks-, Berufs- und Betriebszählungen zwischen 1907 und 1939.
Inhalt der Studie sind: - der Umschichtungsprozess der Frauenarbeit in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, vor allem der Auszug der Frauen aus den "häuslichen Diensten" und der Landwirtschaft; - die rapide Zunahme der Frauenarbeit in den Angestelltenberufen, die ihren Höhepunkt in den 1920er Jahren und noch einmal im Zweiten Weltkrieg erreichte; - die Ermittlung des Lohnverhältnisses zwischen gleichartigen bzw. vergleichbaren männlichen und weiblichen Arbeitskräften; - die Ermittlung der Lohnspanne - d.h. die prozentuale Differenz zwischen Männer- und Frauenlöhnen bzw. Frauengehältern und ihrer Veränderungen; - der gewerkschaftliche Organisationsgrad der weiblichen Arbeitnehmerschaft (gemessen an der Mitgliedschaft der Frauen in den Gewerkschaften).
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Sachliche Untergliederung der Datentabellen: A. Zahlenmäßige Entwicklung der Frauenarbeit (männliche, weibliche Erwerbspersonen). B. Männliche und weibliche Gewerkschaftsmitglieder, Arbeitslosigkeit unter erwerbstätigen Frauen und Männern. C. Die Minderbezahlung der Frauenarbeit in ausgewählten Industriezweigen; Entwicklung der Stundenlöhne, Lohnspanne zwischen Arbeitern und Arbeiterinnen.
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Mary Elizabeth King on Civil Action for Social Change, the Transnational Women's Movement, and the Arab Awakening
Nonviolent resistance remains by and large a marginal topic to IR. Yet it constitutes an influential idea among idealist social movements and non-Western populations alike, one that has moved to the center stage in recent events in the Middle East. In this Talk, Mary King—who has spent over 40 years promoting nonviolence—elaborates on, amongst others, the women's movement, nonviolence, and civil action more broadly.
Print version of this Talk (pdf)
What is, according to you, the central challenge or principal debate in International Relations? And what is your position regarding this challenge/in this debate?
The field of International Relations is different from Peace and Conflict Studies; it has essentially to do with relationships between states and developed after World War I. In the 1920s, the big debates concerned whether international cooperation was possible, and the diplomatic elite were very different from diplomats today. The roots of Peace and Conflict Studies go back much further. By the late 1800s peace studies already existed in the Scandinavian countries. Studies of industrial strikes in the United States were added by the 1930s, and the field had spread to Europe by the 1940s. Peace and Conflict Studies had firmly cohered by the 1980s, and soon encircled the globe. Broad in spectrum and inherently multi-disciplinary, it is not possible to walk through one portal to enter the field.
To me it is also important that Peace and Conflict studies is not wary of asking the bigger hypothetical questions such as 'Can we built a better world?' 'How do we do a better job at resolving conflicts before they become destructive?' 'How do we create more peaceable societies?' If we do not pose these questions, we are unlikely to find the answers. Some political scientists say that they do not wish to privilege either violence or nonviolent action. I am not in that category, trying not to privilege violence or nonviolent action. The field of peace and conflict studies is value-laden in its pursuit of more peaceable societies. We need more knowledge and study of how conflicts can be addressed without violence, including to the eventual benefit of all the parties and the larger society. When in 1964 Martin Luther King Jr received the Nobel Peace Prize, his remarks in Oslo that December tied the nonviolent struggle in the United States to the whole planet's need for disarmament. He said that the most exceptional characteristic of the civil rights movement was the direct participation of masses of people in it. King's remarks in Oslo were also his toughest call for the use of nonviolent resistance on issues other than racial injustice. International nonviolent action, he said, could be utilized to let global leaders know that beyond racial and economic justice, individuals across the world were concerned about world peace:
I venture to suggest [above all] . . . that . . . nonviolence become immediately a subject for study and for serious experimentation in every field of human conflict, by no means excluding relations between nations . . . which [ultimately] make war. . . .
In the half century since King made his address in Oslo, nonviolent civil resistance has not been allocated even a tiny fraction of the resources for study that have been dedicated to the fields of democratization, development, the environment, human rights, and aspects of national security. Many, many questions beg for research, including intensive interrogation of failures. Among the new global developments with which to be reckoned is the enlarging role of non-state, non-governmental organizations as intermediaries, leading dialogue groups comprised of adversaries discussing disputatious issues and working 'hands-on' to intervene directly in local disputes. The role of the churches and laity in ending Mozambique's civil war comes to mind. One challenge within IR is how to become more flexible in viewing the world, in which the nation state cannot control social change, and with the widening of civil space.
How did you arrive at where you currently are in your thinking about IR?
I came from a family that was deeply engaged with social issues. My father was the eighth Methodist minister in six generations from North Carolina and Virginia. The Methodist church in both Britain and the United States has a history of concern for social responsibility ― a topic of constant discussion in my home as a child and young adult. When four African American students began the southern student sit-in movement in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960, by sitting-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter, I was still in college. Although I am white, I began to think about how to join the young black people who were intentionally violating the laws of racial segregation by conducting sit-ins at lunch counters across the South. Soon more white people, very like me, were joining them, and the sweep of student sit-ins had become truly inter-racial. The sit-in movement is what provided the regional base for what would become a mass U.S. civil rights movement, with tens of thousands of participants, defined by the necessity for fierce nonviolent discipline. So, coming from a home where social issues were regularly discussed it was almost natural for me to become engaged in the civil rights movement. And I have remained engaged with such issues for the rest of my life, while widening my aperture. Today I work on a host of questions related to conflict, building peace, gender, the combined field of gender and peace-building, and nonviolent or civil resistance. At a very young age, I had started thinking as a citizen of the world and watching what was happening worldwide, rather than merely in the United States.
Martin Luther King (to whom I am not related) would become one of history's most influential agents for propagating knowledge of the potential for constructive social change without resorting to violence. He was the most significant exemplar for what we simply called The Movement. Yet the movement had two southern organizations: in 1957 after the success of the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56, he created, along with others, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The other organization was the one for which I worked for four years: the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pron. snick), which initially came into being literally to coordinate among the leaders of the student sit-in campaigns. As the sit-ins spread across the South, 70,000 black, and, increasingly, white, students participated. By the end of 1960, 3,600 would have been jailed.
SCLC and SNCC worked together but had different emphases: one of our emphases in SNCC was on eliciting leadership representing the voices of those who had been ignored in the past. We identified many women with remarkable leadership skills and sought to strengthen them. We wanted to build institutions that would make it easier for poor black southern communities to become independent and move out of the 'serfdom' in which they lived. Thus we put less prominence on large demonstrations, which SCLC often emphasized. Rather, we stressed the building of alternative (or parallel) institutions, including voter registration, alternative political parties, cooperatives, and credit unions.
What would a student need (dispositions, skills) to become a specialist in IR or understand the world in a global way?
One requirement is a subject that has virtually disappeared from the schools in the United States: the field of geography. It used to be taught on every level starting in kindergarten, but has now been melded into a mélange called 'social sciences'. You would be surprised at how much ignorance exists and how it affects effectiveness. I served for years on the board of directors of an esteemed international non-profit private voluntary organization and recall a secretary who thought that Africa was a country. This is not simplistic — if you don't know the names of continents, countries, regions, and the basic political and economic history, it's much harder to think critically about the world. Secondly, students need to possess an attitude of reciprocity and mutuality. No perfect country exists; there is no nirvana without intractable problems in our world. No society, for example, has solved the serious problems of gender inequity that impede all spheres of life. Every society has predicaments and problems that need to be addressed, necessitating a constant process. So we each need to stand on a platform in which every nation can improve the preservation of the natural environment, the way it monitors and protects human rights, transitions to democratic systems, the priority it places on the empowerment of women, and so on. On this platform, concepts of inferior and superior are of little value.
You also co-authored an article in 1965 about the role of women and how working in a political movement for equality (the civil rights movement) has affected your perceptions of the relationship between men and women. Do you believe that the involvement of women in the Civil Rights Movement brought more gender equality in the USA and do you think involvement in Nonviolent Resistance movements in other places in the world could start such a process?
From within the heart of the civil rights movement I wrote an article with Casey Hayden, with whom I worked in Atlanta in the main office of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and in the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964. Casey (Sandra Cason) and I were deeply engaged in a series of conversations involving other women in SNCC about what we had been learning, the lessons from our work aiding poor black people to organize, and asking ourselves whether our insights from being part of SNCC could be applied to other forms of injustice, such as inequality for women. The document reflected our growth and enlarging understanding of how to mobilize communities, how to strategize, how to achieve lasting change, and was a manifestation of this expanding awareness. The title was Sex and Caste – A Kind of Memo. Caste is an ancient Hindu demarcation that not only determines an individual's social standing on the basis of the group into which one is born, but also differentiates and assigns occupational and economic roles. It cannot be changed. Casey and I thought of caste as comparable to the sex of one's birth. Women endure many forms of prejudice, bias, discrimination, and cruelty merely because they are female. For these reasons we chose the term caste. We sent our memorandum to forty women working in local peace and civil rights movements of the United States. The anecdotal evidence is strong that it inspired other women, who started coming together collectively to work on their own self-emancipation in 'consciousness raising groups.' It had appeared in Liberation magazine of the War Resisters League in April 1966 and was a catalyst in spurring the U.S. women's movement; indeed, the consciousness-raising groups fuelled the women's movement in the United States during the 1970s. Historians reflect that the article provided tinder for what is now called 'second-wave feminism', and the 1965 original is anthologized as one of the generative documents of twentieth-century gender studies.
We have to remember that women's organizations are nothing new, but have been poorly documented in history and that much information has been lost. Women have been prime actors for nonviolent social change in many parts of the world for a long time. New Zealand was the first country to grant women the vote, in 1893, after decades of organizing. Other countries followed: China, Iran, later the United States and the United Kingdom. Women in Japan would not vote until 1946. IR expert Fred Halliday contends that one of the most remarkable transnational movements of the modern age was the women's suffrage movement. The movement to enfranchise women may have been the biggest transnational nonviolent movement of human history. It was a significant historical phenomenon that throws light on how it is sometimes easier to bring about social and political change now than in the past.
Nonviolent movements seem to be growing around the world, and not only in dictatorships but also in democracies in Europe and the USA. How do you explain this?
I think that the sharing of knowledge is the answer to this question. Study in the field of nonviolent action has accelerated since the 1970s, often done by people who are both practitioners and scholars, as am I. Organizing nonviolently for social justice is not new, but the knowledge that has consolidated during the last 40 years has been major. The works of Gene Sharp have been significant, widely translated, and are accessible through the Albert EinsteinInstitution. His first major work, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, in three volumes, came out in 1973 (Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers). It marked the development of a new understanding of how this form of cooperative action works, the conditions under which it can be optimized, and the ways in which one can improve effectiveness. Sharp's works have since been translated into more than 40 languages. Also valuable are the works and translations of dozens of other scholars, who often stand on his shoulders. Today there may be 200 scholar-activists in this field worldwide, with a great deal of work now underway in related fields. Knowledge is being shared not only through translated works, but also through organizations and their training programs, such as the War Resisters League International and the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, each of which came into existence in Britain around World War I. Both are still running seminars, training programs, and distributing books. George Lakey's Training for Change and a new database at Swarthmore College that he has developed are sharing knowledge. So is the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, which has built a dramatic record in a short time, having run more than 400 seminars and workshops in more than 139 countries. The three major films that ICNC has produced (for example, 'Bringing Down a Dictator'), have been translated into 20 languages and been publicly broadcast to more than 20 million viewers.
After its success, leaders from the Serbian youth movement Otpor! (Resistance) that in 2000 disintegrated the Slobodan Milošević dictatorship formed a network of activists, including experienced veterans from civil-resistance struggles in South Africa, the Philippines, Lebanon, Georgia, and Ukraine to share their experiences with other movements. People can now more easily find knowledge on the World Wide Web, often in their original language or a second language, and they can find networks that share information about their experiences, including their successes and failures.
I reject the Twitter explanation for the increased use of nonviolent action or civil resistance, because all nonviolent movements appropriate the most advanced technologies available. This pattern is related to the importance of communications for their basic success. Nonviolent mobilizations must be very shrewd in putting across their purpose, their goals and objectives, preparing slogans, and conveying information on how people can become involved. In order for people to join—bearing in mind that numbers are important for success—it is critically important to make clear what goal(s) you are seeking and why you have elected to work with civil resistance. This decision is sometimes hard to understand for people who have suffered great cruelty from their opponent, and who maintain 'but we are the victims', making the sharing of the logic of the technique of civil resistance vital.
What would you say is the importance of Nonviolent Resistance Studies in the field of International Relations and Political Science? And how do you counter those who argue that some forms of structural domination are only ended through violence?
In this case we can look at the evidence and stay away from arguing beliefs or ideology. Thanks to political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, who have produced a discerning work, Why Civil Resistance Works (2011), we now have empirical evidence that removes this question from mystery. They studied 323 violent and nonviolent movements that occurred between 1900 and 2006 and found that the nonviolent campaigns were twice as effective as violent struggles in achieving their goals, while incurring fewer costly fatalities and producing much greater prospects for democratic outcomes after the end of the campaign. They found only one area in which violent movements have been more successful, and that is in secessions. So, we don't need to dwell in the realm of opinion, but can read their findings. Other scholars have written about the same issues using qualitative data ― by doing interviews, developing case studies, and analytical descriptions ― but the work of Chenoweth and Stephan is quantitative, putting it in a different category due to its research methods.
Reading 'Why Civil Resistance Works' it caught my eye that nonviolent campaigns seem less successful in the Middle East and Asia than in other regions. Did you see that also in your own work? And if so, do you have an explanation for it? In addition, do you believe that the 'Arab Awakening' is a significant turn in history, or did the name arise too quickly and will it remain a temporary popular phrase?
What I encountered in working in the Middle East was an expectation, notion, or hope among people that a great leader would save them and bring them out of darkness. This belief seems often to have kept the populace in a state of passivity. Sometimes such pervasive theories of leadership are deeply elitist: one must be well educated to be a leader, one must be born into that role, one must be male, or the first son, etc. Such concepts of leadership discourage the taking of independent civil action.
I think that the Arab Awakening has been significant for a number of reasons. As one example, there had been a widespread (and patronizing) assumption in the United States and the West that the Arabs were not interested in democracy. We have heard from various sources including Israel for decades that Arabs are not attracted to democracy. As a matter of fact, I think that all people want a voice. All human beings wish to be listened to and to be able to express their hopes and aspirations. This is a fundamental basis of democracy and widely applicable, although democracy may take different forms. The Arab Awakening rebutted this arrogant assumption. This does not mean that the course will be easy. One of my Egyptian colleagues said to me, 'We have had dictatorship since 1952, but after Tahir Square you expect us to build a perfect democracy in 52 weeks! It cannot happen!'
Among the first concessions sought by the 2011 Arab revolts was rejection of the right of a dictator's sons to succeed him. The passing of power from father to son has been a characteristic of patriarchal societies, in the Arab world and elsewhere. Anthropologist John Borneman notes, 'The public renunciation of the son's claim to inherit the father's power definitively ends the specific Arab model of succession that has been incorporated into state dictatorships among tribal authorities'. In Tunisia to Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Yemen (not all of which are successes), such movements have sought to end the presumption of father-son inheritance of rule.
I believe that we are seeing the start of a broad democratization process in the Middle East, not its end. The learning and preparation that had been occurring in Egypt prior to Tahrir Square was extensive. Workshops had been underway for 10 to 15 years before people filled Tahrir Square. Women bloggers had for years been monitoring torture and sharing news from outside. One woman blogger translated a comic book into Arabic about the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, from the 1960s, and had it distributed all over Cairo. Labor unions had been very active. According to historian Joel Beinin, from 1998 to 2010 some 3 million laborers took part in 3,500 to 4,000 strikes, sit-ins, demonstrations, and other actions, realizing more than 600 collective labor actions per year in 2007 and 2008. In the years immediately before the revolution, these actions became more coherent. Wael Ghonim, a 30-year-old Google executive, set up a Facebook page and used Google technologies to share ideas and knowledge about what ordinary people can do. The April 6 Youth Movement, set up in 2008, three years before Tahrir, sent one of its members to Belgrade in 2009, to learn how Otpor! had galvanized the bringing down of Milošević. He returned to Cairo with materials and films, lessons from other nonviolent movements, and workshop materials. This all goes back to the sharing of knowledge. Yet the Egyptians have now come to the point where they must assume responsibility and accountability for the whole and make difficult decisions for their society. It will be a long and difficult process. And it raises the question of what kind of help from outside is essential.
Why do you raise this point; do you think outside help is essential?
I know from having studied a large number of nonviolent movements in different parts of the globe that the sharing of lessons laterally among mobilizations and nonviolent struggles is highly effective. African American leaders were traveling by steamer ship from 1919 until the outbreak of World War II to the Indian subcontinent, to learn from Gandhi and the Indian independence struggles. This great interchange between black leaders in the United States and the Gandhian activists, as the historian Sudarshan Kapur shows in Raising Up A Prophet (1992), was critically significant in the solidification of consensus in the U.S. black community on nonviolent means. I have written about how the knowledge moved from East to West in my book Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Scholarly exchanges and interchanges among activists from other struggles are both potentiating and illuminating. Most observers fail to see that nonviolent mobilizations often have very deep roots involving the lateral sharing of experience and know-how.
You have written a book about the first uprising, or 'intifada', in the Occupied Palestinian Territories between 1987 and 1993. The second Palestinian uprising did not contain much nonviolent tactics though. Do you foresee another uprising soon? If not, why? If yes, do you think that Nonviolent Actions will play again an important role in that uprising, or is it more likely to turn violent?
Intifada is linguistically a nonviolent word: It means shaking off and has no violent implication whatsoever. (This word is utterly inappropriate for what happened in the so-called Second Intifada, although it started out as a nonviolent endeavor.) In the 1987 intifada, virtually the entire Palestinian society living under Israel's military occupation unified itself with remarkable cohesion on the use of nonviolent tools. The first intifada (1987-1993, especially 1987-1990) benefited from several forces at work in the 1970s and 1980s, about which I write in A Quiet Revolution (2007), one of which came from Palestinian activist intellectuals working with Israeli groups, who wanted to end occupation for their own reasons. These Israeli peace activists thought the occupation degraded them, made them less than human, in addition to oppressing Palestinians. The second so-called intifada was not a 'shaking off'. For the first time, it bade attacks against the Israeli settlements, which had not occurred before.
Let me put it this way: in virtually every situation, there is some potential for human beings to take upon themselves their own liberation through nonviolent action. We may expect that such potential is dormant and waiting for enactment. Disciplined nonviolent action is underway in a number of village-based struggles against the separation barrier in the West Bank right now, in which Israeli allies are among the action takers. As another example, the Freedom Theatre in Jenin is using Freedom Rides, a concept adopted from the U.S. southern Civil Rights Movement, riding buses to the South Hebron Hills villages and along the way using drama, music, and giant puppets as a way of stimulating debate about Israeli occupation. Bloggers and writers share their experiences (see e.g. this post by Nathan Schneider). For the first time, as we speak, the Freedom Bus will travel from the West Bank to make two performances in historic pre-1948 Palestine (Israel), in Haifa and the Golan, in June 2013. A Palestinian 'Empty Stomach' campaign, led by Palestinian political prisoners in Israel, has had some success in using hunger strikes to press Israeli officials for certain demands. With the purpose of prevailing upon Israel to conform to international resolutions pertaining to the Palestinians and to end its military occupation, Palestinian civic organizations in 2005 launched a Boycott, Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaign, drawing upon the notable example of third-party sanctions applied in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. The Palestinian Authority has called for non-state observer status at the United Nations and supports the boycotting of products from Israeli settlements resistance.
More and more Palestinians are now saying, 'We must fight for our rights with nonviolent resistance'. Many Israelis are also deeply concerned about the future of their country. I recently got an email from an Israeli who was deeply affected by reading Quiet Revolution and has started to reach out to Palestinians and take actions to bring to light the injustices that he perceives. Tremendous debate is underway about new techniques, novel processes, and how to shift gears to more effective mutual action. The United States government and its people continue to pay for Israel's occupation and militarization, which has abetted the continuation of conflict, although it is often done in the name of peace! The United States has not incentivized the building of peace. It has done almost nothing to help the construction of institutions that could assist coexistence.
Also, it is very important for the entire world, including Israelis, to recognize intentional nonviolent action when they see it. The Israeli government persisted in denying that the 1987 Intifada was nonviolent, when the Palestinian populace had been maintaining extraordinary nonviolent discipline for nearly three years, despite harsh reprisals. Israeli officials continued to call it 'unending war' and 'the seventh war'. Indeed, it was not perfect nonviolent discipline, but enough that was indicative of a change in political thinking among the people in the Palestinian areas that could have been built upon. Although some Israeli social scientists accurately perceived the sea change in Palestinian political thought about what methods to use in seeking statehood and the lifting of the military occupation, the government of Israel generally did not seize upon such popularly enacted nonviolent discipline to push for progress. My sources for Quiet Revolution include interviews with Israelis, such as the former Chief Psychologist of the Israel Defense Force and IDF spokesperson.
Your latest book is about the transitions of the Eastern European countries from being under Soviet rule to independent democracies. You chose to illustrate these transitions with New York Times articles. Why did you chose this approach; do you think the NY Times was important as a media agency in any way or is there another reason?
There is another reason: The New York Times and CQ Press approached me and asked if I would write a reference book on the nonviolent revolutions of the Eastern bloc, using articles from the Times that I would choose upon which to hang the garments of the story. The point of the work is to help particularly young people learn that they can study history by studying newspapers. The book gives life to the old adage that newspaper reporters write the first draft of history. In the book's treatment of these nonviolent revolutions, I chose ten Times articles for each of the major ten struggles that are addressed, adding my historical analysis to complete the saga for each country. It had been difficult for Times reporters to get into Poland, for example, in the late 1970s and the crucial year of 1980; they sometimes risked their lives. Yet it's in the nature of journalism that their on-the-spot reportage needed additional analysis; furthermore newspaper accounts often stress description.
After the 1968 Prague Spring, when the Soviet Union sent 750,000 troops and tanks from five Warsaw Pact countries into Czechoslovakia, crushing that revolt, across Eastern Europe a tremendous amount of fervent work got underway by small non-official committees, often below the radar of the communist party states. This included samizdat (Russian for 'self published'), works not published by the state publishing machinery, underground publications that were promoting new ways of thinking about how to address their dilemma. Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Lithuania were the most active in the Eastern bloc with their major but covert samizdat. As it was illegal in Czechoslovakia for a citizen to own a photocopy machine, 'books' were published by using ten pieces of onion-skin paper interspersed with carbon sheets, 'publishing' each page by typing it and its copies on a manual typewriter.
The entire phenomenon of micro-committees, flying universities, samizdat boutiques, seminars, drama with hidden meanings, underground journals, and rock groups transmitting messages eluded outside observers, who were not thinking about what the people could do for themselves. The economists and Kremlinologists who were observing the Eastern bloc did not discern what the playwrights, small committees of activist intellectuals, local movements, labor unions, academicians, and church groups were undertaking. They did not imagine the scope or scale of what the people were doing for themselves with utmost self-reliance. In essence, no one saw these nonviolent revolutions coming, with the exception of the rare onlooker, such as the historian Timothy Garton Ash. Even today the peaceful transitions to democracy of the Eastern bloc are sometimes explained by saying 'Gorby did it', when Gorbachev did not come to power until 1985. Or by attributing the alterations to Reagan's going to Berlin and telling Gorbachov to tear down the Wall.
By December 1981, Poland was under martial law, which unleashed a high degree of underground organizing, countless organizations of self-help, reimagining of the society, and the publishing of samizdat. Still, even so, some people believe that this sweeping political change was top-down. It is indisputably true that nonviolent action usually interacts with other forces and forms of power, but I would say that we need this book for its accessible substantiation of historically significant independent nonviolent citizen action as a critical element in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
You also mention Al Jazeera as an important media agency in your most recent blog post at 'Waging Nonviolence'. You wrote that Al Jazeera has an important role in influencing global affairs. Could you explain why? And more generally, how important is diversification of media for international politics?
Al Jazeera generally has not been taking the point of view of the official organs of governments of Arab countries and has usually not reported news from ministries of information. Additionally, it often carries reports from local correspondents in the country at issue. If you are following a report from Gaza, it is likely to be a Gazan journalist who is transmitting to Al Jazeera. If it is a report from Egypt, it may well be an Egyptian correspondent. Al Jazeera also has made a point of reporting news from Israel, and utilizing reporters in Tel Aviv, which may be a significant development. Certainly in the 2010-2011 Arab Awakening, it made a huge difference that reports were coming directly from the action takers rather than the official news outlets of Arab governments.
President George W. Bush did not want Al Jazeera to come to the United States, because he considered it too anti-American. I remember reading at the time that the first thing that Gen. Colin Powell said to Al Jazeera was 'can you tone it down a little?' when asking why Al Jazeera couldn't be less anti-American in its news. To me, either you support free speech or you do not; it's free or it's not: You can't have a little bit of control and a little bit of freedom.
Until recently, Al Jazeera was not easily available in the United States, except in Brattleboro, Vermont; Washington, DC; and a few other places. It was difficult to get it straight in the United States. I mounted a special satellite so that I could get Al Jazeera more freely. This does not speak well for freedom of the press in the United States. This may change with the advent of Al Jazeera America, although we still do not know to what degree it will represent an editorially free press.
News agencies are important for civil-resistance movements for major reasons. Popular mobilizations need good communications internally and externally! People need to understand clearly what is the purpose and strategy and to be part of the making of decisions. Learning also crucially needs to take place inside the movement: activist intellectuals often act as interpreters, framing issues anew, suggesting that an old grievance is now actionable. No one expects the butcher, the baker, or the candlestick maker, and everyone else in the movement to read history and theory.
When news media are interested and following a popular movement of civil resistance, they can enhance the spread of knowledge. In the U.S. civil rights movement, the Southern white-owned newspapers considered the deaths of black persons or atrocities against African Americans as not being newsworthy. There was basically a 'black-out', if you want to call it that, with no pun. Yet dreadful things were happening while we were trying to mobilize, organize, and get out the word. So SNCC created its own media, and Julian Bond and others and I set up nationwide alternative outlets. Eventually we had 12 photographers across the South. This is very much like what the people of the Eastern bloc did with samizdat — sharing and disseminating papers, articles, chapters, even whole books. The media can offer a tremendous boost, but sometimes you have to create your own.
Last question. You combine scholarship with activism. How do you reconcile the academic claim for 'neutrality' with the emancipatory goals of activism?
To be frank, I am not searching for neutrality in my research. Rather, I strive for accuracy, careful transcription, and scrupulous gathering of evidence. I believe that this is how we can become more effective in working for justice, environmental protection, sustainable development, pursuing human rights, or seeking gender equity as critical tools to build more peaceable societies. Where possible I search for empirical data. So much has been ignored, for example, with regards to the effects of gendered injustice. I do not seek neutrality on this matter, but strong evidence. For example, since the 1970s, experts have known that the education of women has profoundly beneficial and measurable effects across entire societies, benefiting men, children, and women. Data from Kerala, India; Sri Lanka; and elsewhere has shown that when you educate women the entire society is uplifted and that all indicators shift positively. The problem is that the data have for decades been ignored or trivialized. We need much more than neutrality. We need to interpret evidence and data clearly to make them compelling and harder to ignore. I think that we can do this with methodologies that are uncompromisingly scrupulous.
Mary Elizabeth King is professor of peace and conflict studies at the UN-affiliated University for Peace and and is Scholar-in-Residence in the School of International Service, at the American University in Washington, D.C. She is also a Distinguished Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. Her most recent book is The New York Times on Emerging Democracies in Eastern Europe (Washington, D.C.: Times Reference and CQ Press/Sage, 2009), chronicling the nonviolent transitions that took place in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic states, Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She is the author of the highly acclaimed A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance (New York: Nation Books, 2007; London: Perseus Books, 2008), which examines crucial aspects of the 1987 uprising overlooked or misunderstood by the media, government officials, and academicians.
Related links
King's personal page Read the book edited by King on Peace Research for Africa (UNU, 2007) here (pdf) Read the book by King Teaching Model: Nonviolent Transformation of Conflict (UNU, 2006) here (pdf)
Print version of this Talk (pdf)
0 0 1 5902 33646 School of Global Studies/University of Gothenburg 280 78 39470 14.0
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Ann Tickner on Feminist Philosophy of Science, Engaging the Mainstream, and (still) Remaining Critical in/of IR
Feminist IR is still often side-lined as a particularistic agenda or limited issue area, appearing as one of the last chapters of introductory volumes to the field, despite the limitless efforts of people such as Cynthia Enloe (Theory Talk #48) and J. Ann Tickner. She has laboured to point out and provincialize the parochialism that haunts mainstream IR, without, however, herself retreating and disengaging from some of its core concerns. In this Talk, Tickner elaborates—amongst others—on the specifics of a feminist approach to the philosophical underpinnings of IR; discusses how feminism relates to the distinction between mainstream and critical theory; and addresses the challenges of navigating such divides.
Print version of this Talk (pdf)
What is, according to you, the central challenge or principal debate in International Relations? And what is your position regarding this challenge/in this debate?
I think the biggest challenge for IR is that it is relevant and helps us understand important issues in our globalized world. I realize this is not a conventional answer, but too often we academics get caught up in substantive and methodological debates where we end up talking only to each other or to a very small audience. We tend to get too concerned with the issue of scientific respectability rather than thinking about how to try to understand and remedy the massive problems that exist in the world today. Steve Smith's presidential address to the ISA in 2002 (read it here), shortly after 9/11, reminded us of this. Smith chastised the profession for having nothing to say about such a catastrophic event.
How did you arrive at where you currently are in your thinking about IR?
I've gone through quite a few transformations in my academic career. My original identity was as an International Political Economy (IPE) scholar; my first academic position was at a small liberal arts college (College of the Holy Cross) where I taught a variety of IPE courses. In graduate school I was interested in what, in the 1970s, we called 'North-South' issues, specifically issues of global justice, which were not the most popular subjects in the field. So I always felt a little out of place in my choice of subject matter. In the 1980s when I started teaching, IR was mostly populated by men. As a woman, one felt somewhat uncomfortable at professional meetings; and there were very few texts by women that I could assign to my students. I also found that many of the female students in my introductory IR classes were somewhat uncomfortable and unmotivated by the emphasis placed on strategic issues and nuclear weapons.
It was at about the time when I first started thinking about these issues, I happened to read Evelyn Fox Keller's book Gender and Science, a book that offers a gendered critique of the natural sciences (read an 'update' of the argument by Keller here, pdf). It struck me that her feminist critique of science could equally be applied to IR theory. My first feminist publication, a feminist critique of Hans Morgenthau's principles of political realism, expanded on this theme (read full text here, pdf).
Teaching at a small liberal arts college where one was judged by the quality of one's work rather than the type of research one was doing was very helpful—because I could follow my own, rather non-conventional, inclinations. So I think my turn to feminism, after ten years in the field, was a combination of my own consciousness-raising and feeling that there was something about IR that didn't speak to me. Later, I was fortunate to be hired by the University of Southern California, a large research institution, with an interdisciplinary School of International Relations, separate from the political science department. When I arrived in 1995, the School had a reputation for teaching a broad array of IR theoretical approaches. The support of these institutional settings and of a network of feminist scholars and students, some of whom I discovered were thinking along similar lines in the late 1980s, were important for getting me to where I am today.
What would a student need (dispositions, skills) to become a specialist in IR or understand the world in a global way?
It depends on the level of the student: at the undergraduate level, a broad array of courses in global politics including some economics and history. Language training is very important too, and ideally, an overseas experience. We need to encourage our students to be curious and have an open mind about our world.
At the graduate level, this is a more complicated question. The way you phrased the question 'to understand the world in a global way,' can be very different from training to become an IR scholar, especially in the United States. I would emphasize the importance of a broad theoretical and methodological training, including some exposure to the philosophy of science, and to non-Western IR if possible, or at least at a minimum, to try to get beyond the dominance of American IR, which still exists even in places outside the US.
Why should IR scholars incorporate gender in the study of world politics? What are the epistemological and ontological implications of adopting a feminist perspective in IR?
Feminists would argue that incorporating feminist perspectives into IR would fundamentally transform the discipline. Feminists claim that IR is already gendered, and gendered masculine, in the types of questions it asks and the ways it goes about answering them. The questions we ask in our research are never neutral - they are a choice, depending on the researcher's identity and location. Over history, the knowledge that we have accumulated has generally been knowledge about men's lives. It's usually been men who do the asking and consequently, it is often the case that women's lives and women's knowledge are absent from what is deemed 'reliable' knowledge. This historical legacy has had, and continues to have, an effect on the way we build knowledge. Sandra Harding, a feminist philosopher of science, has suggested that if were to build knowledge from women's lives as well, we would broaden the base from which we construct knowledge, and would therefore get a richer and more complex picture of reality.
One IR example of how we limit our research questions and concerns is how we calculate national income, or wealth—the kind of data states choose to collect and on which they base their public policy. We have no way of measuring the vast of amount of non-remunerated reproductive and caring labour, much of which is done by women. Without this labour we would not have a functioning global capitalist economy. To me this is one example as to why putting on our gender lenses helps us gain a more complete picture of global politics and the workings of the global economy.
Feminists have also argued that the epistemological foundations of Western knowledge are gendered. When we use terms such as rationality, objectivity and public, they are paired with terms such as emotional, subjective and private, terms that are seen as carrying less weight. By privileging the first of these terms when we construct knowledge we are valuing knowledge that we typically associate with masculinity and the public sphere, historically associated with men. Rationality and objectivity are not terms that are overtly gendered, but, when asked, women and men alike associate them with masculinity. They are terms we value when we do our research.
In one of the foundational texts of Feminist IR, 'You Just Don't Understand: Troubled Engagements between Feminists and IR Theorists' (1997, full text here, pdf), you highlighted three particular (gendered) misunderstandings that continue to divide Feminists and mainstream IR theorists. To what extent do these misunderstandings continue to inform mainstream perceptions of Feminist approaches to the study of international politics?
I think probably they still do, although it's always hard to tell, because the mainstream has not engaged much with feminist approaches. I've been one who's always calling for conversations with the mainstream but, apart from the forum responding to the article you mention, there have been very few. In a 2010 article, published in the Australian Feminist Law Journal, I looked back to see if I could find responses to my 1997 article to which you refer. I found that most of the responses had come from other feminists. The lack of engagement, which other feminists have experienced also, makes it hard to know about the misunderstandings that still exist but my guess would be that they remain. However I do think there has been progress in accepting feminism's legitimacy in the field. It is now included in many introductory texts.
The first misunderstanding that I identified is the meaning of gender. I would hope that the introduction of constructivist approaches would help with understanding that gender is social construction - a very important point for feminists. But I think that gender is still largely equated with women. Feminists have tried to stress that gender is also about men and about masculinity, something that seems to be rather hard to accept for those unfamiliar with feminist work. I think it's also hard for the discipline to accept that both international politics as practice and IR as a discipline are not gender neutral. Feminists claim that IR as a discipline is gendered in its concepts, its subject matter, the questions it asks and the way it goes about answering them. This is a radical assertion for those unfamiliar with feminist approaches and it is not very well understood.
Now to answer the second misunderstanding as to whether feminists are doing IR. I think there has been some progress here, because IR has broadened its subject matter. And there has been quite a bit of attention lately to gender issues in the 'real world' - issues such as sexual violence, trafficking, and human rights. Of course these issues relate not only to women but they are issues with which feminists have been concerned. Something I continue to find curious is that the policy and activist communities are generally ahead of the academy in taking up gender issues. Most international organizations, and some national governments are under mandates for gender mainstreaming. Yet, the academy has been slow to catch up and give students the necessary training and skills to go out in the world and deal with such issues.
The third misunderstanding to which I referred in the 1997 article is the question of epistemology. While, as I indicated, there has been some acceptance of the subject matter, with which feminists are concerned, it is a more fundamental and contentious question as to whether feminists are recognized as 'doing IR' in the methodological sense. As the field broadens its concerns, IR may see issues that feminists raise as legitimate, but how we study them still evokes the same responses that I brought up fifteen years ago. Many of the questions that feminists ask are not amenable to being answered using the social scientific methodologies popular in the field, particularly in the US. (I should add that there is a branch of IR feminism that does use quantitative methods and it has gained much wider acceptance by the mainstream.) The feminist assumption that Western knowledge is gendered and based on men's lives is a challenging claim. And feminists often prefer to start knowledge from the lives of people who are on the margins – those who are subordinated or oppressed, and of course, this is very different from IR which tends toward a top-down look at the international system. One of the big problems that have become more evident to me over time is that feminism is fundamentally sociological – it's about people and social relations, whereas much of IR is about structures and states operating in an anarchic, rather than a social, environment. I find that historians and sociologists are more comfortable with gender analysis, perhaps for this reason. I'm not sure that these misunderstanding are ever going to be solved or that they need to be solved.
Although Feminist methodology is often conflated with ethnographic approaches, in 'What Is Your Research Program? Some Feminist Answers to International Relations Methodological Questions' (2005, pdf here), you argued that there is no unique Feminist research methodology. Nonetheless, Feminist IR is well known for using an autoethnographic approach. What does this approach add to the study of gender in IR? What might account for the relative dearth of autoethnography in other IR paradigms?
I think it is important to remember that feminists use many different approaches coming out of very different theoretical traditions, such as Marxism, socialism, constructivism, postpositivism, postcolonialism and empiricism. So there are many different kinds of feminisms. If you look specifically at what has been called 'second-generation feminist IR,' the empirical work that followed the so-called 'first generation' that challenged and critiqued the concepts and theoretical foundations of the field, much of it, but not all, (discourse analysis is quite prevalent too), uses ethnographic methods which seem well suited to researching some of the issues I described earlier. Questions about violence against women, domestic servants, women in the military, violent women, women in peace movements– these are the sorts of research questions that demand fieldwork and an ethnographic approach. Because as I stated earlier, IR asks rather different kinds of questions, it does not generally adopt ethnographic methods. Feminists who do this type of ethnographic research tell me that their work is often more readily received and understood by those who do comparative politics, because they are more comfortable with field research. And since women are not usually found in the halls of power – as decision-makers. IR feminists are particularly concerned with issues having to do with marginalized and disempowered peoples' lives. Ethnography is useful for this type of research.
I see autoethnography as a different issue. While the reflexive tradition is not unique to feminists, feminism tends to be reflectivist. As I said earlier, feminists are sensitive to issues about who the creators of knowledge have been and whose knowledge is claimed to be universal. Most feminists believe that there is no such thing as universal knowledge. Consequently, feminists believe that being explicit about one's positionality as a researcher is very important because none of us can achieve objectivity, often called 'the view from nowhere'. So while striving to get as accurate and as useful knowledge as we can, we should be willing to state our own positionality. One's privilege as a researcher must be acknowledged too; one must always be sensitive to the unequal power relations between a researcher and their research subject – something that anthropology recognized some time ago. Feminists who do fieldwork often try to make their research useful to their subjects or do participatory research so that they can give something back to the community. All these concerns lead to autoethnographic disclosures. They demand a reflexive attitude and a willingness to describe and reassess your research journey as you go along. This autoethnographic style is hard for researchers in the positivist tradition to understand. While we all strive to produce accurate and useful knowledge, positivists' striving for objectivity requires keeping subjectivity out of their research.
Robert W. Cox (Theory Talk #37) famously distinguished two approaches to the study of international politics: problem-solving theory and critical theory. How does the emancipatory project of the latter inform your perspective of IR and its normative goals? And is this distinction as valid today as it was when Cox first formulated it, over 3 decades ago?
Yes I think it's still an important distinction. It's still cited very often which suggests it's still valid, although postmodern scholars (and certain feminists) have problems with Western liberal notions of emancipation. I see my own work as being largely compatible with Cox's definition of critical theory. Like many feminists, I view my work as explicitly normative; I say explicitly because I believe all knowledge is normative although not all scholars would admit it. What Cox calls problem-solving theory is also normative in the conservative sense of not aiming to changing the world. A normative goal to which feminists are generally committed is understanding the reasons for women's subordination and seeking ways to end it. It's also important to note that the IR discipline was borne with the intention of serving the interests of the state whereas academic feminism was borne out of social movements for women's emancipation. The normative goals of my work are to demonstrate how the theory and practice of IR is gendered and what might be the implications of this, both for how we construct knowledge and how we go about solving global problems.
Much of your work addresses the parochial scope and neopositivist inclination of International Relations (IR) scholarship, especially in the United States. What distinguishes other 'Western' institutional and political contexts (in the UK, Europe, Canada and Oceania) from the American study of IR? How and why is critical/reflectivist IR marginalized in the American context? What is the status of these 'debates' in non-Western institutional contexts?
With respect to the parochial scope of US IR, I refer you to a recent book, edited by Arlene Tickner and Ole Wæver, International Relations Scholarship Around the World. It contains chapters by authors from around the world, some of whom suggest IR in their country imitates the US and some who see very different IRs. The chapter by Thomas J. Biersteker, ('The Parochialism of Hegemony: Challenges for 'American' International Relations', read it here in pdf) reports on his examination of the required reading lists for IR Ph.D. candidates in the top ten US academic institutions. His findings suggest that constructivism accounts for only about 10% of readings and anything more radical even less. Over 90% of assigned works are written by US scholars. The dominance of quantitative and rational choice approaches in the US may have something to do with IR generally being a subfield of political science. Critical approaches often have different epistemological roots. And I stress 'science' because while IR is also subsumed in certain politics departments in other countries, the commitment to science, in the neopositivist sense, is something that seems to be peculiarly American. Stanley Hoffman's famous observation, made over thirty years ago, that Americans see problems as solvable by the scientific method is still largely correct I believe (read article here, pdf). I find it striking that so many formerly US based and/or educated critical scholars have left the US and are now based elsewhere – in Canada, Australasia, or Europe.
Biersteker sees the hegemony of American IR extending well beyond the US. But there is generally less commitment to quantification elsewhere. This may be due to IR's historical legacy emerging out of different knowledge traditions or being housed in separate departments. In France, IR emerged from sociological and legal traditions and, in the UK, history and political theory, including the Marxist tradition, have been influential in IR. And European IR scholars do not move as freely between the academy and the policy world as in the US. All these factors might encourage more openness to critical approaches. I am afraid I don't know enough about non-Western traditions to make an informed comment. But we must recognize the enormous power differentials that exist with respect to engaging IR's debates. Language barriers are one problem; having access to research funds is an enormous privilege. Scholars in many parts of the world do not have the resources or the time to engage in esoteric academic debates, nor do they have the resources to attend professional meetings or access certain materials. The production of knowledge is a very unequal process, dominated by those with power and resources; hence the hegemonic position of the US that Biersteker and others still see.
As methodological pluralism now retains the status of a norm in the field, John M. Hobson (Theory Talk #71) recently argued that the question facing IR scholars no longer revolves around the debate between positivist and postpositivist approaches. Rather, the primary meta-theoretical question relates to Eurocentrism, that is, 'To be or not to be a Eurocentric, that is the question.' To what extent do you agree with this statement? Why or why not?
Given my answer to the last question, I am not sure that methodological pluralism has reached an accepted status in the US yet. However, John M. Hobson has produced a very thoughtful and engaging book that asks very provocative questions. Unfortunately, I doubt many IR scholars in the US have read it and would be rather puzzled by Hobson's claim. But certainly the Eurocentrism of the discipline is something to which we should be paying attention. I find it curious how little IR has recognized its imperial roots or engaged in any discussion of imperialism. As Brian Schmidt and other historical revisionists have told us, when IR was borne at the beginning of the twentieth century, imperialism was a central preoccupation in the discipline. Race also has been ignored almost entirely by IR scholars.
To Hobson's specific claim that the important question for IR now is about being or not being Eurocentric rather than about being positivist or postpositivist, I do have some problems with this. I am concerned with Hobson's painting positivism and postpostivism with the same Eurocentric brush. Yes, they are both Eurocentric; but postpositivists or critical theorists – to use Cox's term – are at least open to being reflective about how they produce knowledge and where it comes from. If one can be reflective about one's knowledge it does allow space to be aware of one's own biases. Those of us on the critical side of Cox's divide can at least be reflective about the problems of Eurocentrism, whereas positivists don't consider reflexivity to be part of producing good research. Nevertheless, Hobson has made an important statement. He has written a masterful and insightful book and I recommend it all IR scholars.
Last question. Your recent work is part of an emergent collective dialogue that aims to 'provincialize' the Western European heritage of IR. In a recent article entitled 'Dealing with Difference: Problems and Possibilities for Dialogue in International Relations' you highlight the need for non-Eurocentric approach to the study of IR. In IR, what are the prospects for genuine dialogue across methodological and geographical borders? Where do you see this dialogue taking place?
This is a very tough issue. There are scholars like Hobson who talk about a non-Eurocentric approach, but given what I said about resources, about language barriers, and about inequalities in the ability to produce knowledge, this is difficult. As I've said at many times and in many places, the power difference is an inhibitor to any genuine dialogue. So, where is dialogue taking place? Among those, such as Hobson, who advocate a hybrid approach that takes other knowledge traditions seriously and sees them as equally valid as one's own. And mostly on the margins of what we call 'IR', where some very exciting work is being produced. Feminism is one such site. Feminist approaches are dedicated to dialogic knowledge production, or what they call knowledge that emerges through conversation. Feminists believe that theory can emerge from practice, listening to ordinary people and how they make sense of their lives. I also think that projects like the one undertaken by Wæver and Tickner (which is still ongoing) that is publishing contributions from scholars from very different parts of the world is crucial.
J. Ann Tickner is Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the American University. She is also a Professor Emerita at the University of Southern California where she taught for fifteen years before coming to American University. Her principle areas of teaching and research include international theory, peace and security, and feminist approaches to international relations. She served as President of the International Studies Association from 2006-2007. Her books include Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era (Columbia University Press, 2001), Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving International Security (Columbia University Press, 1992), and Self-Reliance Versus Power Politics: American and Indian Experiences in Building Nation-States (Columbia University Press, 1987).
Related links
Faculty Profile at American University Read Tickner's Hans Morgenthau's Principles of Political Realism: A Feminist Reformulation (Millennium, 1988) here (pdf) Read Tickner's You Just Don't Understand: Troubled Engagements between Feminists and IR Theorists (1997 International Studies Quarterly) here (pdf) Read Tickner's What Is Your Research Program? Some Feminist Answers to International Relations Methodological Questions (2005, International Studies Quarterly) here (pdf)
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NDI's Chris Fomunyoh is once again joined by Ambassador Johnnie Carson as they discuss the steps that can be taken to strengthen democracy. They continue their conversation with their thoughts on the key challenges and opportunities facing Africa this year. Find us on: SoundCloud | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS | Google Play Johnnie Carson: When female voices are not heard, the conversation is crippled, the policy is crippled, the institutions are crippled and the results are crippled. Chris Fomunyoh: I'm Chris Fomunyoh, senior associate and regional director for Central and West Africa at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, NDI. Welcome to this edition of DemWorks.
Again we're joined by Ambassador Johnnie Carson, a proud member of the board of directors of The National Democratic Institute, NDI with a 37 year career in the U.S. Foreign Service focus on Africa. In our previous episode, you spoke about the risk of back sliding. So for this episode, we will focus on the steps that can be taken to strengthen democracy in Africa.
I'd like us to pivot a little bit to the Sahel because in Tanzania we see the back sliding that's coming from political actors themselves, but there's something happening in the Sahel, which is a region in which we see a lot of political commitment to democratic governance, whether it's from the leaders and activists in Niger Republic, in Burkina Faso and in Mali, but at the same time these countries are coming under tremendous pressure from violent extremists who are coming across the desert and destabilizing what would be an emerging democracy and what concerns do you have and how do you think organizations like NDI, like USIP and others that have the self-power expertise, so to speak can contribute to the efforts to counter violent extremism like Sahel and also the whole of Africa?
JC: Chris you're absolutely right and we should all be concerned about outside forces that can come in and destabilize a country, its politics, its economy and its society and across the Sahel we in fact see this happening. The challenges to stability, to democracy to holding free and transparent and creditable elections and having democratic systems that work, are not only challenged by sometimes authoritarian leaders seeking to maintain power and control, we also can see this emerging as a result of exogenous forces coming in from outside, and here we see non-state actors undermining stability across the Sahel, which is creating tension for democracies and tensions for states.
I think one of the things that is absolutely critical in addressing the problems with the Sahel is for government to reconnect with their citizens, to put in place the kinds of services that citizens are looking for and are demanding and expecting. They need to be responsive to the needs that they, citizens believe are not there and they have to have these connections in order to build up resilience, to build up strength against the ideologies and to the negative forces that are brought in by extremist groups.
It is extremists groups across the Sahel are taking advantage of the absence of good services and good connectivity between government and citizens and one of the things that must accompany the security response is in fact a development and government response. Security alone cannot end the problems in the Sahel. It's an important ingredient but the most important ingredient is government going in and establishing responsible connections, providing services, education, healthcare, sanitation, water cattle feeding stations and services that citizens require and are being deprived of.
So one of the things that must be hand in hand and be out front is not the military response and the security response but the governance response, the social service response and if that is absent, the security response will be deficient and will not work.
CF: In fact, I'm so thankful you say that, because I know that you and other members of our board, Secretary Albright, in particular the chair of our board, you've been emphasizing reinforcing this message about democracy and development component as part of the toolkit in conquering violent extremism and in fact, that's the approach that NDI is taking to its work in the Sahel because we currently have ongoing programs in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, and our focus, the main focus of that piece of work is on people, processes and the politics and trying to create platforms where governments can reconnect with citizens at a grassroots level.
So in a number of cases we've set up platforms where civil society with legislatures and members of the executive branch, including representatives of the security services get together regularly to figure out what the challenges are in various communities and how to foster inter-communal dialogue and better relationships between the security services and the populations that they seek to serve, because you may remember there was a UN study that said that in many of the cases where violent extremism persist, that 70% of the people who join extremist organizations, are reacting to poor performance by security services and you have paid a lot of attention to Nigerian and the whole Boko Haram phenomenon.
I don't know how this would fit into our conversation with regards to the Sahel as well.
JC: I think it also very pertinent for Nigeria, and I too have seen studies of some very distinguished organizations, Mercy Corps and others that talk about why people are recruited and indeed, the authoritarian sometimes brutal nature of security forces towards communities that they should be protecting drives individuals away from the government and into the hands of Boko Haram.
Even the origin of the current violence in Northern Nigeria has its origins in the brutal extrajudicial killing of Boko Haram's first leader in 2009. His apprehension, his questioning, his interrogation, torture and mistreatment were all recorded on someone's cellphone and became widely seen throughout the country and throughout the north. Two years later, after that event in 2009 we saw and upsurge in 2011 and the activities of Boko Haram and indeed people continued to say that the brutal nature in which the security forces sought to root out Boko Haram, in fact generated more recruits for Boko Haram than it did for support for the government's efforts.
It is absolutely critical, it's absolutely critical that security forces recognize that they have a responsibility to protect the civil liberties and the human rights of the citizens of the state that they are protecting and that the way they treat the individuals in areas that they go into, may have an impact on their ability to ultimately win the conflict, but one thinks of Nigeria and particularly of the North East and there again weak institutions of corruption of lack of social services are all playing a major part in why the conflict in that region continues.
In the north east of Nigeria particularly and the three most affected states, Borno, Yobe and Adamawa. Those three states have the lowest social indicators of any of Nigeria's 36 states, less access to education, to healthcare, to water resources and to jobs and access and this all plays out as well. Governments needs to be responsive to their citizens and while a security response is important, governance and providing social services and the needs to citizens to build resilience is critical as well.
CF: This seems like a good place to take a short break. For well over 35 years NDI has been honored to work side by side with courageous and committed pro-democracy activists and leaders around the world to help contribute to develop the institutions practices and skills necessary for democracy's success.
I realize it's many countries to cover but in the few minutes that are left, I just see if you have any parting words for four countries that we haven't really focused that much on and those are Ethiopia, Kenya, The Democratic Republic of Congo and we'll exit with Cameroon. What are your thoughts?
JC: My thoughts on Ethiopia. It is absolutely essential that those of us who support a democracy and democratic progress lend all of our efforts to those of the Ethiopian government to ensure that the democratic experiment that is underway is successful. Prime Minister Abiy won the Nobel Prize for bringing about peace with Eritrea but the more important thing is that we, outside step up our effort to help him ensure that his legislative elections, this year, are successful and that we do what we can to strengthen his country's democratic progress.
He has appointed and outstanding leader, Birtukan, former opposition leader, spent many years in jail as his country's election commissioner. We need on the outside to provide the kind of technical and financial and advocacy support that she might need to put in place the architecture for running the country's elections. It will in fact be the first real serious elections in that country since the collapse of the Derg in the early 1990s. So it's important that we help do this.
Ethiopia is Africa's second most populous country behind Nigeria and it's important that we help democracy there. It's also a key and strategic state in the region bordering a number of other countries that will look to the success of what happens here. So we need to support.
Kenya, will have elections next year. It is important that there be a continuation in the improvement of the country's electoral agencies. The shadow of the flawed and failed and controversial and violent elections of 2007 and 2008 continue to be a shadow. The controversies associated with the last elections and court decisions there continue to hang over. It is important to continue to support civil society, support the electoral commission and work with the Kenyan government to ensure an outcome.
It appears very clearly that President Kenyatta wants to leave a positive legacy of progress, economically, politically and electorally. This will be a challenge but we should support the process moving forward. The features are still there.
CF: In fact, I should say before end up with the last two countries that for listeners, Ethiopia has got a parliamentary system of government. That's why the parliamentary elections are extremely important, the national elections for Ethiopia and also with regards to Kenya, as you say, President Uhuru Kenyatta would like to leave a good legacy. He's coming to the end of his second term and NDI working with partners on the continent has been very strong on the issue constitutionalism, respect for rule of law. In fact, we had a continent wide conference in Niamey, Niger Republic last October on the whole question of presidential term limits and we'll be having a second conference in Botswana in June to discuss term limits with former African heads of states and various other partners on the continent.
Just to say that, as leaders relinquish power when their terms come to an end, they help consolidate and strengthen democratic practices and institutions. So, with the two remaining countries-
JC: I applaud President Kenyatta for saying very early on that he would adhere to the constitution, he would serve two terms and step down. This is an important message for the most important country in East Africa, especially looking at the neighboring states, particularly Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda where leaders there have found ways to extend themselves in office. He recognizes the importance of transition at the top and allowing the citizens of the country to select new leadership on a constitutional basis rather than trying to alter the constitution to eliminate term limits, age limits and perpetuate themselves in power.
So I hope others in the region are in fact looking at Kenya's model. One jumps across to West Africa and looks at President Paul Biya who's been in power for three decades, plus shows no desire whatsoever to leave office. Here is a man who has lost touch with his citizens and the communities of his country and because he has lost touch with his citizens, because there have been structural deficiencies and weaknesses and the institutions that he is responsible for, we now see a country that is suffering from three or four major political crisis, crisis with the English speaking portion of this country in the south west, the emergence of Boko Haram and radicalism across the border from Nigeria in the north west and problems of herders and farmers driven by drought and climate conditions.
President Biya has lost touch with the needs of his citizens and his government has not been responsive to anyone but himself and a small political elite. I think it is important for the international community to point out the failures and the flaws of his governance, the corruption that underpins it and to support those internally who are pushing for a constitution and political policies that fundamentally change the nature and structure of society, political architecture in society.
CF: You're so right, because that's one country that it's got tremendous potential but that it's not pulling its weight at all and because of its strategic location, invariably weakens other countries in the central Africa sub region, as well as in West Africa too and it's now taking full advantage of what could be real opportunities to improve the wellbeing of its citizens.
We'll be right back after this quick message.
And let's end with the country right in the heart of the continent, The Democratic Republic of Congo. I was in Kinshasa in October and met with political leaders and opinion leaders across the board, civil society, religious leaders who are very powerful in the Congo, very influential and I came away, I should say, a little more optimistic than I was going in. I was quite apprehensive given what has transpired in the 2018 presidential elections but after talking to the Congolese, I got a sense that a genuine attachment to reform.
Everybody wants some reforms of the political process or the electoral process and the key question is whether they are going to be able to set aside their personal agendas and actually get together to help this country, which has got tremendous resources and tremendous potential get back on its feet. I was very impressed by the fact that most of the leaders in Congo are pretty young. I know that you and I have talked about Congo for many, many times and when you were still in the administration you had to deal with some of their crisis.
I don't know what you take is on the present leadership and the present challenges but also the opportunities that present themselves in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
JC: Let me say that The Democratic Republic of the Congo has more unrealized potential than any other large state in Africa and that potential has continued to be in held in check and not realized because of the poor nature of the politics that have occurred there since the 1960s.
The 2018 elections were deeply flawed and irregular and not representative, I think, of the vote of the people. The one thing that one can say about the process that it did lead to President Kabila stepping down and a new younger president, Tshisekedi coming into power. There was immediately after the election a strong feeling that Tshisekedi was going to be instrument of Kabila going forward in that his leadership and his authority and his ability to do things would be substantially constrained. Tshisekedi has shown some degree of independence.
It is again important to recognize that there is little we can do to rerun that election or to reverse it but there is something that all of us can do going forward, and that to put pressure on President Tshisekedi to ensure that the electoral commission is strengthened, it has more independence, more technical capacity and more of an ability to deliver a more responsible, fair and transparent election going forward.
It is also important that he continue the fight against corruption, that he begin to put in place the kind of economic reforms that are going to unleash the potential of the Congo and to provide the people, The Democratic Republic of the Congo an opportunity to realize so many of the opportunities that they have been denied in the past. He has shown more independence than I thought but it is important that he not stop, that he continue to move forward, that he open up political space and continue to open it up for civil society, for the opposition, for the media, that he not constrain but unleash the country's potential and that he continue to show both in reality and fact his independence away from Kabila and those who were around him in the past.
He will be judged on the next four years very keenly, but it's important that the institutions of democracy to the extent that we can help civil society strengthen them, that they be nurtured and pushed forward. Elections and democracy...Democracy doesn't depend essentially, solely on elections. It is institutions that must be strengthened and we can help the DRC and civil society move those forward.
Again, working effectively with religions groups, Catholic Church, a very powerful instrument, working with women's groups, with working youth groups across the DRC and working with an emerging entrepreneurial class of young Congolese as well. We have to nurture and strengthen and push them forward. These next elections will be able to tell us whether there's been progress. President Tshisekedi needs to continue to move forward.
CF: Thank you very much Ambassador Johnnie Carson. It's really been an honor to have you do this tutor for us on the entire continent. Of course there still would always be ground to cover. As you were speaking, I thought about what late President John F Kennedy said about democracy as a never ending endeavor, and so NDI and similar organizations will continue to work side by side with our African partners to make sure that we can support them, give them the support and share experiences that they need so that we can all collectively, continue to work to strengthen and support democracy in countries like the DRC, Ethiopia, Sudan and across the entire continent.
Thank you also for being a member of our board of directors. We are extremely proud of that and extremely proud of the partnership that NDI has with USIP and hope that our two organizations would continue to work together to support the growth of democracy across Africa and to our listeners, can I just say thank you for sharing in this edition of DemWorks, to follow our next podcast. Please check us out on our website www.NDI.org.
