In countries transitioning from military to democratic rule, authoritarian legacies often continue to influence politics. Whereas previous research has focused on the institutional causes of such deficiencies, there is a lack of studies examining the role ex-military leaders who re-emerge as civilian presidents have in sustaining authoritarian tendencies. In this article, we begin to fill this lacuna by investigating the question: how and under which conditions do ex-military leaders' political identity constructions affect their tendency to place themselves above politics (i.e. expressing the attitude and behaviour of being superior to democratic rules)? The literature on neo-patrimonialism and post-civil war politics points to the importance of the political identities of ex-militaries, and we propose a theory that highlights the role identity construction plays in shaping elites' decision-making processes. Based on a comparison of two Nigerian presidents, Olusegun Obasanjo and Muhammadu Buhari, we find that ex-generals' tendency to engage in politics from above is largely a function of to what extent they have diversified their political identities beyond their role as "militaries". In this process, the degree of democratic consolidation also seems to play a role; ex-militaries operating in newly established democracies appear to have more opportunities to place themselves above politics.
A. Introduction Given recent developments in relation to the prosecution of international crimes, it might be thought that one of the last bastions of sovereignty has been breached, and international criminal law has not only entrenched itself in international law. Indeed further to this, it has assumed a supranational position that stands entirely above States, promising justice for all and as a trump card over depredations committed in the name of State sovereignty. After all, Charles Taylor from Liberia is standing trial before the Special Court for Sierra Leone, Slobodan Milošević only escaped judgment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) by dying before the end of his trial, Saddam Hussein was prosecuted and sentenced to death before the Iraqi High Tribunal, and Omar al-Bashir has recently been the subject of a request for an arrest warrant from the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Surely international criminal law reaches its iconographic apogee with the prosecution of such leaders, brought down to size by the majesty of the law (if not the grandeur of the often aseptic courtrooms)? Of course, in fact, the picture is far more complicated. Although it is too early to come to any judgment on the Taylor case, his appearance before the Special Court was as much a function of States tiring of him continuing to meddle in Liberian politics than a commitment to seeing him stand trial. Milošević was for many years apparently kept beyond the reach of the ICTY for reasons of ensuring peace in former Yugoslavia, then domestic political reasons, and his trial was itself one from which we might admit, lessons can be learned. The trial and punishment of Saddam Hussein is largely seen as having been mishandled, and inconsistent with the relevanthuman rights norms,5 and possible proceedings against al-Bashir have led to considerable controversy, with the African Union requesting deferral of the International Criminal Court's (ICC) processes relating to him, and the Security Council finding itself somewhat torn on the matter. As such we must be careful not to present what Georg Schwarzenberger described as the chocolate box version of international law and society. Some of the difficulties are referable to the nature of the international legal order, some of which are referable, on the other hand, to insalubrious forms of politics. It remains the case that the international legal order is torn between two imperatives, what Hedley Bull would have described as the pluralist and the solidarist views, and the difference between an international society and an international community. Nonetheless, some are simply problems of political will, and others are overstated, and the simple fact that it is possible to speak of the problems attending bringing leaders to justice rather than dismissing its possibility is in itself a development from the position soon enough ago that most international criminal lawyers can still remember it. This piece will seek to explain some of those problems involved in prosecuting leaders (including those of States) and those who, if we agree that we will see it as the general thrust of international criminal law, bear the greatest responsibility for international crimes, those at the apex of the command structure, in particular, heads of government. In doing so, though, it will do so with an eye to remembering that while international criminal law cannot live up to all its promises, it still keeps at least as many as most leaders do, and they are not the only international criminals deserving of punishment. ; peerReviewed
This study aimed to explore the experiences of women leaders in politics and government, to identify their reasons for entering the political arena, to ascertain the factors/motivations that drive them to run and continue to be a public servant, and finally, to better understand how women's empowerment helps in shaping women's lives and how it helped in overcoming the barriers that came along their way as they entered politics. The researchers conducted an in-depth interview to gather the information needed for the study. Moreover, the data gathered from the interview was analyzed using narration and a thematic approach. Thus, the results of the study showed that there are qualities that a lady politician should possess: will, determination and love for service. A lady politician must have respect for constituents and colleagues, sincerity, dedication, and commitment to work, and also be a good follower. Being empowered made these women leaders carry out their duties well. However, they still encountered issues while in politics, like: crab mentality, passing of legislation, blame games, and little knowledge about something. Through the qualities that the female leaders possessed, they managed to overcome these issues.
International organizations make policy decisions that affect the lives of people around the world. We argue that these decisions depend, in part, on the political ideology of the organization's chief executive. In this study, we investigate the influence of the leader of one of the most powerful international organizations: the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). We find that when the Managing Director is politically left of center, the IMF requires less labor market liberalization from borrowing countries in exchange for a loan. We also find evidence suggesting that the Managing Director's influence on labor-related loan conditions is independent of the Fund's most powerful members, including the United States. While Managing Directors rarely engage in overtly political behavior, they appear to act as "partisan technocrats" whose ideology influences international financial rescues and specifically the conditions attached to countries' loans, which shape the distributive consequences of IMF lending.
This article explores images of high-level female politicians in France and Norway from 1980 to 2010, examining the ways in which they present themselves to the media and their subsequent reception by journalists. Women in French politics experience difficulties living up to a masculine heroic leadership ideal historically marked by drama, conquest, and seductiveness. In contrast, Norwegian female politicians have challenged the traditional leadership ethos of conspicuous modesty and low-key presentation. We argue that images of French and Norwegian politicians in the media are not only national constructions; they are also gendered. Seven images of women in politics are discussed: (1) men in skirts and ladies of stone, (2) seductresses, (3) different types of mothers, (4) heroines of the past, (5) women in red, (6) glamorous women, and (7) women using ironic femininity. The last three images—color, glamour, and irony—are identified as new strategies female politicians use to accentuate their positions of power with signs of female sensuality. It is thus possible for female politicians to show signs of feminine sensuality and still avoid negative gender stereotyping. ; Postprint version of published article
Post-war democratization has been identified as a crucial mechanism to build peace in war-ridden societies, supposedly allowing belligerents to compete through ballots rather than bullets. A byproduct of this process, however, is that military leaders often become an integral part of the new democratic system, using resources and networks generated from the previous war to dominate the emerging political landscape. The crucial and thus-far overlooked question to be addressed, therefore, is what effect the inclusion of ex-militaries into electoral politics has on post-war security. Can 'warlord democrats' make a positive contribution by shepherding their wartime constituencies to support the building of peace and democracy, or are they likely to use their electoral platforms to sponsor political violence and keep war-affected communities mobilized through aggressive discourses? This important volume, containing a wealth of fresh empirical detail and theoretical insight, and focussing on some of Africa's most high-profile political figures – from Paul Kagame to Riek Machar to Afonso Dhlakama – represents a crucial intervention in the literature of post-war democratization. ; CONTENTS: Introduction: Warlord democrats: wartime investments, democratic returns? / Anders Themnér -- 1. Pompier-pyromanocracy: Mbusa Nyamwisi and the DR Congo's inflammable post-settlement political order / Judith Verweijen -- 2. Apotheosis of a warlord: Paul Kagame / Lars Waldorf -- 3. Discourses of peace and fear: the electoral navigations of Sekou Conneh and Prince Johnson in post-war Liberia / Carrie Manning and Anders Themnér -- 4. Afonso Dhlakama and RENAMO's return to armed conflict since 2013: the politics of reintegration in Mozambique / Alex Vines -- 5. From warlord to drug lord: the life of João Bernardo "Nino" Vieira / Henrik Vigh -- 6. Shape-shifters in the struggle for survival: post-war politics in Sierra Leone / Mimmi Söderberg Kovacs and Ibrahim Bangura -- 7. Riek Machar: warlord-doctor in South Sudan / Johan Brosché and Kristine Höglund -- Conclusion: Ambiguous peacelords: the diminishing returns of post-war democracy / Anders Themnér
United States citizens like to believe they live in the best democracy in the world, providing political and legal equality. Yet, there is a paradox. In the United States women comprise over 50% of the population, but make up a mere 15% of the U.S. Congress. According to the U.S. Department of Education, women comprise 56% of all college students and have earned more bachelors degrees than men since 1982 (Johnson, Global News Wire, 2006). In fact, according to the Census Bureau estimate last year, there are more men than women ages 18-24 in the U.S., about 15 million men versus 14.2 million women, but the male/female ratio on college campuses today is 43/57 (Marklein, USA Today, 2005). Why then, in this country of democracy and equality has a woman yet to be elected president, considering the percentages of educated women compared to men in the U.S. This research project tries to answer this question. A comparative analysis of countries is conducted to explain the apparent paradox of why women are being elected to leadership positions internationally, but not in the U.S.
Presentations by three Canadian executives who influence healthcare policy and practice were reviewed to identify the kinds of sources these leaders use to draw their conclusions. All three speakers examined policies, practices and outcomes. Presentations were selected to cover activities in three provinces in three different calendar years, to avoid duplication or undue influence of a particular event or release of information. All three speakers drew heavily on data from government sources, especially the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).
Faculty Showcase Archive Article ; The Naval Postgraduate School's (NPS) Defense Resources Management Institute (DRMI) wrapped up its latest Senior International Defense Management Course (SIDMC) July 19, providing 35 high-ranking military and civilian leaders from 24 nations with an extensive educational experience in managing a department of defense. ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
A recent series of studies have been dealing with the dynamics behind the building of developmental states in Africa. This working paper is a contribution for that debate by looking at the experience of the Korean developmental state and the lessons that Africa can learn from this Asian country's experience seen as an outstanding model of economic development. Despite poor resource endowment and a large population, a colonial legacy, the devastation following a civil war, persistent political instability, and the lingering military confrontation with her northern neighbour, Korea's role in the international economic system has rapidly increased in importance since the 1960s. For nearly five decades, Korea has achieved a remarkable economic performance that transformed the country from a typical case of a developing nation trapped in a "vicious circle of underdevelopment", into one of the largest economies in the late 1990s. Beneath the economic success lied a system of "socialisation of private risk", a particular mode of organising the market, as the "visible hand" of a strong, bureaucratic and developmental state were able to accelerate the pace of economic growth by identifying strategic industrial sectors, making discretionary allocation of resources to those sectors, and minimising the collective action dilemmas pervasive in most developing countries. But the Korean state, as any other state, is a political realm that encompasses distinct, contending and at times colliding actors. In fact, the Korean developmental state provides us clues about the role that leadership play and what stands at the "heart of a politics of economic growth". Policy choices and implementation rest on the strategies designed by the rulers to boost their political legitimacy, to strengthen their power, and to guarantee regime survival. Strategies are not only a product of institutional opportunities and constraints, but also of history, context, coalition politics and ideological templates involving the actors at the time of action. This paper will discuss the role played by President Park Chung-Hee (1961-1979) in building a bureaucratic-developmental state and what African countries can learn from these leadership experiences in terms of its own development path.
Successful place-based leadership is based on functional networks, dialogue among stakeholders, political support and funding, and sharing power. The EU-funded Integrated Urban Development Plans (IUDPs) require the participation of citizens and local nonprofit organizations. When creating an opportunity for informal leadership, it is not clear whether the informal leadership fills the position of formal political leadership. On the data from the implementation of several IUDPs in the Czech Republic, we tested whether formal leadership becomes dispersed and informal place leadership fills the vacuum instead. Our research did not find differences in the change of civic political engagement at the local level related to the success and failure of the IUDPs strategies. Local civic engagement and nonprofit leadership are challenging formal local political leadership. Nevertheless, their success is limited as there is also missing dialogue among the local movements and nonprofit leaders when finding solutions to particular local problems.
Locating Africa on the global stage, this book examines and compares external involvement in the continent, exploring the foreign policies of major states and international organizations towards Africa. The contributors work within a political economy framework in order to study how these powers have attempted to stimulate democracy, peace and prosperity in the context of neo-liberal hegemony and ask whom these attempts have benefited and failed.
The problem of "Realism in Foreign Policy" is a special manifistation of a general philosophic and intellectual problem which has been with us almost since the beginning of Western civilization. There are two fundamental attitudes that a man can take toward a political problem and a social problem in general. Either he can start with the assumption that this problem is the result of some historic incident, of some faulty institution or deficient social arrangement, and that by changing this arrangement of by transforming the institution that is, by bringing about some kind of reform the problem can be solved once and for all.
The problem of women's access and participation in politics is extremely important today and has received considerable attention worldwide. Gender equality in politics is a fundamental indicator of a modern democratic society. According to international standards, both men and women should have equal rights and opportunities to fully participate in all aspects of the political process. In practice, it is difficult for women to gain access to the politics, and this is a violation of human rights. According to statistical data, states where number of women in political positions is equivalent to the number of men demonstrate stronger economy and successful development, as well as in domestic and foreign policy.
The contestation of international decision-making is one of the most pressing problems affecting both national institutions and international organizations. As the main arenas of communal decision-making, the involvement of parliaments may be a solution to the legitimacy shortages of international decisions and the institutional paralysis that this may ensue. This dissertation examines two distinct processes that reveal the current place of parliaments in international politics. In the first part of my dissertation, I focus on the role of national parliaments in the politicisation of European integration. Using original data on parliamentary debates and a large corpus of newspaper articles, I show that parliaments are channels for the politicisation of EU decision-making. I find that parliamentary debates on the EU have media attention, especially debates over EU institutions, and that news related to the EU in general are more likely to mention parliament than news unrelated to the EU. In the second part of my dissertation, I study international parliamentary institutions (IPIs). I present the first large n study on the parliamentarization of international organizations (IOs) and propose that IOs utilise IPIs to increase their democratic legitimacy. Specifically, IOs with a region-building objective seek to associate with an institutional design from a more legitimate example: national representative democracy. I support the conclusions of my quantitative analysis with a small n study of the creation of the Andean Parliament. Using original qualitative data, I argue that the transformation of the Andean institutions into a region-building project and the democratic transitions of military regimes at the time were conducive to parliamentarization. My results support the idea that parliaments can help to resolve the inherent tensions between national polities and international decision-making. At the national level, parliaments debating international decisions regain their democratic function of communicating policy alternatives. For IOs, empowerment of existing IPIs following the example of the European Parliament would alleviate the democratic deficit in which they operate.
