Suchergebnisse

Since the normalization of Sino-Vietnamese relations in 1991, Vietnam's China policy has been shaped by a combination of approaches which can be best described as a multi-tiered, omni-directional hedging strategy. The article argues that hedging is the most rational and viable option for Vietnam to manage its relations with China given its historical experiences, domestic and bilateral conditions, as well as changes in Vietnam's external relations and the international strategic environment. The article examines the four major components of this strategy, namely economic pragmatism, direct engagement, hard balancing and soft balancing. The article goes on to assess the significance of each component and details how Vietnam has pursued its hedging strategy towards China since normalization. (Contemp Southeast Asia/GIGA)

The article theorizes and presents normalization as a movement-level strategy available to social movements dealing with an internal threat. By defining themselves against an internal threat's abnormality through a process of normalization, social movement organizations assert how they and the movement operate within socially and politically respectable parameters. Drawing on ethnographic, interview, and newspaper data, I show how mainstream South African lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement organizations deployed normalization to marginalize and expel an internal threat, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance, between 1998 and 2006.

The article theorizes and presents normalization as a movement-level strategy available to social movements dealing with an internal threat. By defining themselves against an internal threat's abnormality through a process of normalization, social movement organizations assert how they and the movement operate within socially and politically respectable parameters. Drawing on ethnographic, interview, and newspaper data, I show how mainstream South African lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement organizations deployed normalization to marginalize and expel an internal threat, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance, between 1998 and 2006. Adapted from the source document.

This is the 18. article in our series Trouble on the­ Far-Right. When it comes to change in social environments, a parable of philosopher Charles Handy gets pulled out quickly. If you drop a frog in boiling water, it jumps out immediately; but placed in cold water slowly warming up, it acclimates itself and falls to sleep, unaware of being boiled alive. The parable reminds us of the perceptional relativity of change: Within communities creeping developments cause habituation, abrupt breaks an arousing shock. In terms of social movements this truism becomes apparent in a double way: On the one hand, erupting crises may destabilize social orders and create the necessary space for dissident actors to gain momentum – while they would fail to mobilize outside the scenario of an anxious community gasping for a new guarantor of order. On the other hand, the rise of a dissident actor with unconventional performances may work as a shock triggering withdrawal reflexes in the broader society – while dissidents with relative habitual sentiments can find resonance in communities disappointed by the ruling order. Does this perspective offer a potential to explain the rise of far right movements in Europe? Let's examine it by the example of Germany where, in the last two years, far right actors have experienced a remarkable gain in political acceptance – on the streets, in the booths and in the talk shows. In this case, it could be argued that their success in protest and electoral mobilizations as well as their disproportionate high presence in the media rests on communication politics that effect a normalization of far right positions previously disreputed in public discourse. Through this creeping habituation by society, they are able to gain momentum in situations of crisis, producing themselves successfully as a legitimate agent of the "anxious citizens" disappointed by the government. To test this little argument, a finger exercise in frame analysis seems to be proper, a tool common in social movement studies to explain why certain ideas in certain contexts are potent to mobilize audiences – and are not in others.

Is the European Union (EU) best seen as a 'normal' power in global politics and is the way the EU develops and implements foreign policy akin to other actors on the international stage? In this article we explore these issues in the context of EU-Central Asia relations and use the process of developing the EU strategy on Central Asia as a case. Grasping some of the mechanisms of what may be termed 'normalization' in EU foreign policy is of particular relevance in increasingly contested world regions such as Central Asia – Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan – where Chinese, European, Russian and US interests intersect, albeit in varying degrees. Drawing on a set of twenty-eight semistructured interviews conducted with members of the diplomatic service of the EU and its Member States in the capitals of Central Asian republics as well as in Brussels, we seek to gauge the scope of normalization at the stage of strategy formulation vis-à-vis this region. The article explores two internal dimensions which we distil from the concept of 'normal power Europe', namely hierarchical centralization of power and the pre-eminence of larger Member States in the making of EU foreign policy. The article challenges notions of the prominent role small states in European foreign policy making may assume. Exploring the development of the Central Asia Strategy, adopted in 2019, it finds first that the strategy-making process was highly centralized and led by the EU headquarters in Brussels; second that a set of larger EU Member States had considerable leverage in the strategy-making process in contrast to assumptions that small EU Member States could eventually punch above their weight.
European External Action Service (EEAS), Central Asia, EU Strategy for Central Asia, small states, EU normal power