Suchergebnisse

Introduction. US empire in the twenty-first century -- The rise of Hugo Chávez and the evolution of US-Venezuelan relations -- Theoretical perspectives on US democracy assistance -- Understanding Venezuelans, understanding Chávez : the endurance of racist-imperialist mentalities -- Coaching opposition political parties I : the International Republican Institute -- Coaching opposition political parties II : the National Democratic Institute -- Promoting free market economics and traditional labor unions in Chávez's Venezuela -- Funding anti-Chávez voices in civil society : the National Endowment for Democracy -- Transforming Chavistas, encouraging protest : the US Agency for International Development in Venezuela -- Chávez responds : terminating foreign funding for political parties and NGOs -- Conclusion. Making theoretical sense of US democracy assistance efforts in Venezuela.

"Since the end of World War II, the United States has come to dominate the world economically and politically, leading many to describe the United States as an empire. Scholars have analyzed how the US government has worked through international financial institutions, its Central Intelligence Agency, and outright warfare to achieve its will. In this book, Timothy M. Gill spotlights how the US government also worked through democracy promotion to undermine governments abroad, including in Venezuela. President Hugo Chávez, who ruled from 1999 until his death in 2013, was among the democratically elected Latin American state leaders who embraced socialism and challenged the idea of US global power. Gill shows how US government agencies funded and trained opposition parties and activists, and how such intervention often was justified in neocolonial and racist terms. Through analysis of documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, embassy cables, and interviews with US government and Venezuelan nonprofit members, Gill details such operations and the imperial thinking behind them"--

"With the rise of President Trump, many are coming to question where the United States (U.S.) is headed and, whether we might witness an imperial decline under Trump. Social scientists largely recognize the contemporary hegemonic position of the U.S. at the global level, but questions persist concerning the future of U.S. Empire. With the Trump Administration at the helm, these questions are all the more salient. Drawing on the expertise of a panel of contributors and guided by Michael Mann's model of power, this book critically interrogates the future of U.S. global power and provides insights on what we might expect from the U.S. Empire under Trump. Recognizing that U.S. imperial power involves an array of sources of power (ideological, economic, military, and political), the contributors analyze the Trump Administration's approach towards nine countries in the Western Hemisphere, and five sets of global policies, including inter-American relations, drugs, trade, the environment, and immigration. Each case presents a historical look at the trajectory of relations as they have developed under Trump and what we might expect in the future from the administration. The Future of U.S. Empire in the Americas will be of great interest to students and scholars of U.S. foreign policy, Foreign Policy Analysis, political sociology, and American politics"--

This work is a reassessment of black beauty salons as vital sites for social change. Looking through the lens of black business history, it shows how black beauticians in the Jim Crow era parlayed their economic independence and access to a public community space into platforms for activism. The author argues that the beauty industry played a crucial role in the creation of the modern black female identity and that the seemingly frivolous space of a beauty salon actually has stimulated social, political, and economic change. From the founding of the National Negro Business League in 1900 and onward, African Americans have embraced the entrepreneurial spirit by starting their own businesses, but black women's forays into the business world were overshadowed by those of black men. With a broad scope that encompasses the role of gossip in salons, ethnic beauty products, and the social meanings of African American hair textures, she shows how African American beauty entrepreneurs built and sustained a vibrant culture of activism in beauty salons and schools. Enhanced by portrayals of black beauticians and drawing on archival research and oral histories, this woork conveys the everyday operations and rich culture of black beauty salons as well as their role in building community

AbstractU.S. government leaders have long considered Latin America their proverbial backyard and have recurrently intervened in the region. In earlier periods of U.S. imperialism, U.S. government leaders justified such intervention with reference to allegedly scientific racial hierarchies, which placed White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) at the top of this artificial hierarchy. In more recent episodes of U.S. imperialism leading into the twenty-first century, however, U.S. leaders have publicly used the language of democracy and human rights to justify intervention. In the instance of contemporary Venezuela, while U.S leaders indeed use the language of human rights and democracy, they also draw on racist tropes of Latin Americans to justify their intervention. Through interviews with U.S. foreign policymakers and analysis of U.S. government documents, I find that U.S. leaders depict former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez as an irrational, uncivilized, and beastly leader, who manipulates ideas of racial inequality to maintain power. In addition, U.S. leaders understand him as manipulating an uncritical mass of Venezuelans who cannot think for themselves. U.S. leaders believe it thus their duty to intervene in order to promote democracy and show Venezuelans their true political-economic interests. I connect these dynamics with a history of U.S. intervention into the region and a history of racist and imperial thinking that continues to shape the logic of U.S. foreign policymaking into the present.

Many scholars assert that the U.S. state promotes free market economic policies abroad through the leverage it wields within international financial institutions (IFIs), such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Other scholars have focused on U.S. bilateral aid programs, such as those implemented by USAID, and their emphasis on free market economic policies. In many middle-income countries, though, IFIs and U.S. development agencies do not maintain economic development programs. If the U.S. state cannot promote free market policies through IFIs and its bilateral development agencies, how does it promote them at all in middle-income countries? In this paper, I provide a case study of U.S. foreign policy toward Venezuela, a middle-income country, under the government of President Hugo Chávez (1999–2013). I draw on interviews with U.S. state elites, including several former ambassadors and State Department employees, and U.S. state documents to show how the U.S. encourages free market economic reforms through its support for civil society organizations that embrace these reforms. In particular, I focus on the work of the Center for International Private Enterprise, which has explicitly linked political freedom with economic freedom. Through this organization, the U.S. works with free market think tanks and promotes free market initiatives, all in the form of political rather than economic assistance.

AbstractSome scholars have shown how the U.S. has deployed several traditional, imperial strategies to maintain global power, including military interventions, support for proxy governments, economic coercion, and the exercise of hegemony. In many countries, though, these strategies cannot effectively work. Some countries have elected leaders that defy U.S. influence, and, in middle‐income countries, the U.S. cannot use economic coercion. The U.S. also cannot militarily invade all countries that possess anti‐American governments. How, then, does the U.S. aim to confront and control anti‐American governments in the contemporary world? I examine U.S. foreign policy towards Venezuela under Hugo Chávez, who recurrently challenged U.S. global power during his time in office. Through interviews with U.S. state elites, who developed policy towards Venezuela, and through analysis of U.S. diplomatic cables, I show how the U.S. has moved away from traditional, imperial modalities and towards new imperial techniques aimed at frustrating political processes within particular countries, as well as containing their global influence. These techniques include pressuring the federal judiciary, utilizing state agencies to fund and support opposition political parties and NGOs, seeking to terminate particular pieces of legislation, and eliminating eligibility for global leadership positions. These efforts do not immediately aim to displace existing governments, but, in the least, they aim to frustrate the domestic efforts of particular governments, and ultimately cultivate conditions favorable for the political opposition to eventually attain political power.

Timothy M. Gill writes to add context to the Summer 2018 issue's policy brief and urge an interrogation of assumptions that democracy assistance is a benign form of foreign policy.

In his seminal text, The Power Elite, C. Wright Mills initially drew critical attention to U.S. state power, asserting that economic, political, and military elites flow through a revolving door, cycling in and out of positions of power. Following its publication, several social scientists began to examine the nature of the U.S. state, including individuals like G. William Domhoff and Michael Useem. One particular work by Peter Freitag examined the class composition of presidential cabinets. Freitag examined whether presidential cabinet members came from the elite corporate sphere, went into the elite corporate sphere following their tenure in office, the extent of interlocks among the Democratic and Republican Parties, and whether particular cabinet positions were more interlocked with the elite corporate sphere than others. In this article, I examine these same questions, looking at presidential cabinets between 1968 and 2018, that is, across the last half-century. In doing so, I find consistency with many of Freitag's initial findings: most presidential cabinets remain heavily interlocked, there is little difference between Democratic and Republican cabinets, and there is a significant amount of cabinet members that come from and enter the elite corporate sphere following their time in office.

Gill shows how Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's populist style of governance both inspired opposition to U.S. imperialism and drew the ire of many powerful domestic and foreign groups, contributing to the country's current economic malaise.

During the 1980s, the United States initiated an explicit policy of democracy promotion throughout the world. William Robinson (1996) more accurately described this initiative as "promoting polyarchy," whereby the United States supported moderate elite actors that promoted neoliberal economic policies to displace both right-wing and communist despots, such as General Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Soviet rulers in Eastern Europe. While much of Latin America remained characterized by polyarchies throughout the late 20th Century, Latin American citizens began to reject these political arrangements and to elect anti-neoliberal candidates that promoted participatory democracy by the turn of the 21st Century, particularly in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. How has the United States changed its democracy promotion strategies to respond to these new dynamics? The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the U.S. government, through agencies such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID, has altered the main thrust of its foreign policy in Latin America, from promoting polyarchy and displacing despotic leaders, to supporting opposition actors to unseat democratically-elected far leftist leaders that promote participatory democracy. This paper deploys a case study method involving recent U.S. foreign policy in Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and it utilizes both U.S. diplomatic cables and interviews with U.S. state elites to illustrate this shift.