Suchergebnisse

"The American South and LGBT Politics" published on by Oxford University Press.

Examines the dramatic increase in Mexican & other Latino immigrant residents that occurred in the rural Delmarva Peninsula region of Maryland & Virginia during the 1990's. The impact of local practices on immigrant rights is considered from both a human rights & a citizen theory perspective. Data were obtained from fieldwork conducted in 2000-02 that consisted of site observations & interviews with immigrants, social service providers, & local activists. Most of the immigrant respondents were poor, young, working-class Mexicans who were interested in permanent rather than temporary, seasonal work. Special attention is given to the immigrant's experiences with labor unions, social services, housing providers, & the political establishment. Even though many of the newcomers lack legal status, they have made significant gains, & local actors have often responded constructively to their presence. The isolated nature of the peninsula & the small size of the communities have led to more personal contact between residents & the immigrants whose rights have been expanded in such areas as labor, education, & legal assistance. Tables, References. J. Lindroth

Though highly visible, top corporate executives are not accessible. Surrounded by gatekeepers, leverage is often needed to gain access, & that done, the researcher is in foreign territory; unless fully prepared, inaccurate or scripted information can result. Personal or professional contacts, personalization of the research, & accommodating the interviewee's schedule can help lower barriers to access. The researcher can maximize the probability of obtaining useful information by: (1) having a clear agenda; (2) clarifying ground rules for the interview; (3) using a semistructured interview format; (4) supplementing the interview with other data; & (5) establishing the opportunity for follow-up access. 29 References. D. Generoli

"This article broaches the topic of stereotyping by discussing the fact that stereotypes are strongly connected to our social life. Hence, every individual tends to (re-)produce stereotypes in his or her mind, in order to find his or her own group identity as well as to establish personal boundaries. As a result of the wide spread notion that stereotypes are negative and able to cause unsettling ideologies and behavior, a general trend to tabooisation can be observed. However, simply discontinuing the conversation on stereotyping does not eliminate its negative problems. Following the aim to create a peaceful society across national borders, it is necessary to step beyond tabooing stereotypes and commence a process of reflection, discussion and most importantly, enunciation. In the long run, this is regarded as the only effective way to act against collective negative opinions on others. Especially when dealing with national stereotypes, this process can be used to emphasize their constructed character, as they can never be seen as valid for all citizens of a national state. By getting in contact with our neighbors we might realize that national borders are not as strong and separative as they may seem to be. Apart from the fact that every person is an individual and cannot be reduced to his or her nationality, both similarities of regions across national borders and considerable domestic differences can be elaborated. Eventually, some of the national stereotypes may simply be produced for economic reasons in order to present a country more attractively to tourists." (author's abstract)

Sergei Sivokho, Ukrainian peace activist, succumbed to chronic asthma and passed away on October 17. His name was not well known outside Ukraine, perhaps because, in these angry times, he sought to reconcile Ukrainians rather than drive them apart. One wonders if, in the end, this big bear of a man died of a broken heart.Sivokho rose to political prominence thanks to his close personal friendship with Volodymyr Zelensky. He was the creative producer of the comedy show Kvartal 95 and after Zelensky's unexpected victory, the newly minted president tried to get him to run for public office. Sivokho, originally a native of Donbass, asked instead to be appointed advisor to the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine with the remit of advising on humanitarian policies toward his native region. Very quickly, however, he came to the conclusion that peace in Ukraine had to be approached from a radically different perspective, namely by putting an end to what he termed "the war inside our own heads." According to Sivokho: "More terrible than the coronavirus is the virus of hatred. It is important to change not only the attitude of the state to its citizens, but the attitude of people to each other . . . What my team is doing is trying to incline people to mutual understanding . . . because the peace that we are all seeking begins in the hearts and minds of every Ukrainian "At first Sivokho's optimism was echoed by Zelensky himself. At the 2020 Munich Security Conference, and later at the Forum on Unity in Mariupol, Zelensky called for "a massive national dialogue," where people could discuss their common future face-to-face. To this end, he endorsed Sivokho's pet project — a National Platform for Reconciliation and Unity — which was formally presented to the public on March 12, 2020. That presentation, however, lasted just 20 minutes, because a gang of some 70 young people from the National Corps (the civilian wing of the Azov Battalion) stormed into the hall, and with shouts of "traitor," pushed Sivokho until he fell to the ground. Sivokho was fired from his advisory government position two weeks later.It may seem odd that even before Russia's invasion, merely mentioning reconciliation and dialogue could arouse so much anger, until one realizes that what Sivokho was actually asking for was a fundamental shift in Ukrainian political thinking. In his mind, Ukrainians had to recognize that they all bear some measure of responsibility for the conflict in Donbass, and specifically for dehumanizing the Other Ukrainians, those who do not think or talk the way they do. Such policies, he argued, began well before 2014. His words aroused intense anger among Ukrainian nationalists, who were further outraged by his assertion that, "the time has come to correct mistakes, to forgive and to ask for forgiveness . . . to talk to the people living in the uncontrolled territories." After being fired, and despite threats on his life, Sivokho persisted in his peace efforts until the very end. Over time, he became increasingly critical of government policy, though never of his longtime friend, Zelensky. He called for changes to the Ukrainian language laws that severely restrict the public use of Russian. He said that the government's refusal to implement the Minsk Accords had led Ukraine into a dark and isolated corner.He even revealed publicly that the rebels had made a formal proposal to return nationalized companies to their Ukrainian owners, and to have the contentious "special status" for Donbass end in 2050, and he rebuked the Ukrainian government for refusing to even talk to the rebels. Rather than prohibiting contacts between local officials across the contact line, Sivokho urged them to talk to each other. "Imagine," he says, "how they would rejoice and sorrow together. If they were only allowed to return there, they would restore their villages on their own, from both sides. What a fantastic example that would be!"His last public battle was to prevent passage of the draconian law "On the Basics of State Policy in the Transition Period," sponsored by then Minister for Reintegration of the Occupied Territories (later Minister of Defense), Oleksiy Reznikov. Sivokho complained bitterly that the Reznikov Plan, which was approved by the Cabinet of Ministers in August 2021, treated the Ukrainians in Donbass and Crimea as a conquered people.Rather than allowing animosities to subside, he said, this would ensure that they are passed on to future generations. The rebels themselves would be long gone, but like Banquo's Ghost, their spirit would still haunt Ukraine's future, an impertinent reminder of the Other, Russophone Ukraine, that Ukrainian nationalists would still be busily trying to erase.Some Ukrainian nationalists will rejoice at the demise of this inconvenient Ukrainian patriot who fought tirelessly to overcome the country's divisions by preaching mutual forgiveness. His personal quest for peace may now be over, but we should all hope, for Ukraine's sake, that his mission is taken up by others.

Political Economy Seminar
Together We'll Break These Chains of Love? The Community Ideal and the Multi-Criterial Economy
Presenter: Aaron Benanav, Syracuse University
Respondent: Dr Mike Beggs
Date: Tuesday, 24 October 2023
Time: 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm (AEDT)
Seminar via Zoom for University of Sydney staff, students and affiliates. For further information please contact John Clegg (j.clegg@sydney.edu.au) or Claire Parfitt (claire.parfitt@sydney.edu.au).
Community regulation has long been heralded as an alternative to market-driven rapaciousness. Communities pool resources, use them responsibly, and foster relationships rooted in trust and mutual support. From community gardens and communes to "the commons" and even communism, we find a widely shared sense that communities—especially when organized democratically—can manage or plan economic relations in ways that are more humane than markets. However, this community ideal has a darker side. Too often, communities maintain the peace through intense surveillance, threats of exclusion, and violence. Furthermore, individuals frequently invoke "the community" to further personal or sectional-group interests, to the detriment of those they claim to represent. Such concerns were central to neoliberal critiques of the left launched by Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman, all of whom claimed that socialist economies were intrinsically flawed precisely because they were organized around this ideal: the community regulation of production. This talk delves into the left’s enduring community ideal, especially as it relates to public ownership and public management of the economy, as well as the neoliberal critique of this ideal. The key claim is that the allure of community regulation was its promise to integrate larger numbers of people and multiple production criteria—beyond the efficient use of scarce resources—into the organization of the social provisioning process. While the inclusion of both politically marginalized populations and diverse social values promised to make economic coordination simpler and more harmonious, it actually heightened complexity and conflict in ways that communities were unable to manage on their own. This talk begins the work of reconstructing and rebuilding a vision of the multi-criterial economy, by explaining how we might rethink community, not as the organizing agent of a future society, but rather as one of its results.
The post Seminar: Aaron Benanav, ‘Together We'll Break These Chains of Love? The Community Ideal and the Multi-Criterial Economy’ appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

Last weekend I traveled back to Lawrence for a University of Kansas debate team reunion. I still have not flown since 2019, so this trip involved a roundtrip drive to St. Louis, an Amtrak across Missouri Friday and Sunday, and then short car trips to/from KU. The Friday night registration and banner hanging was on the top floor of a warm academic building. I wandered down to the trophy case on a (much cooler temperature) lower floor and snapped a shot of the national championship trophies on display. I found the trophy I helped win in 1983 as well as the others depicted on these bright banners. This is only a taste of all the banners as there are also markers for Final Four teams, top individual speakers, winners of other national tournaments, etc. On an sour note, I felt the registration area was overpacked with people. Since I had the sniffles by Sunday, mild fever and body aches by Monday, and a positive COVID test by Tuesday, then I guess my concerns were warranted. Hopefully I was not a superspreader. I masked in some circumstances, but most people were unmasked throughout the weekend. I've only heard of one other person testing positive, but who knows given the state of contact tracing in America? I think my case could have been transmitted from poor ventilation in a hotel. One of my neighbors Friday night was coughing loudly all night. The next event was a buffet-style dinner at a local catering venue with plenty of beer and food for everyone. There were some games, but the older alums that I hung out with on the balcony mostly sat around and talked. Lots of fun reminiscing.  On Saturday morning the debate alumni toured Allen Fieldhouse, home of the Kansas Jayhawks reigning national champion basketball team. They have nearly as many recent victory banners and trophies as debate does:There was an event remembering some of the KU debaters who have died in recent years (including Frank Cross) and then a cocktail hour and meal at the Eldridge Hotel in downtown Lawrence. I was in a wedding there in May 1983 and may not have been back in all that time. Before dinner, I managed to help organize this photo that includes 5 debaters from the 1976, 1983, 2009, and 2018 champions, plus the two head coaches.Left to right: Former Coach Donn Parson, Brett Bricker (2009), Robin Rowland (1976), Mark Gidley (1983), Quaram Robinson (2018), coach Scott Harris, and me (1983).Back in 2013, this photo included 5 of the same victors, plus a member of the 1954 team, Bill Arnold on the extreme left. Others pictured: Robin Rowland (1976), me, Dr. Parson, Brett Bricker (2009), and Mark Gidley (1983).
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Update 9/15: The Biden Administration announced Thursday that it will only withhold $85 million of its committed military aid to Egypt, releasing $235 million of aid that had been conditioned on improving human rights in the country. The administration had withheld $130 million in 2021 and 2022.Today, the State Department must decide whether to withhold some of the $1.3 billion in military support that the U.S. gives to Egypt each year. Under normal circumstances, this would have been an easy decision. Washington has given Cairo more than $50 billion in weapons aid since 1978, a testament to the long and close relationship between the two countries.But the past few years have been more complicated. As President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi has increasingly cracked down on dissent in the country, a growing group of Democratic lawmakers has fought to reduce aid to his government. The Biden administration withheld $130 million each of the last two years in response to heavy congressional pressure, and the State Department announced on Monday that it would block at least $85 million in aid this year. But lawmakers are determined to go further."Over the last year, Egypt's human rights record has continued to deteriorate, despite the Egyptian government's claims to the contrary," wrote a group of leading Democratic senators in July. "Therefore, we urge you to withhold the full amount of $320 million.""[T]he bilateral security relationship can be effectively sustained at a reduced level of assistance while upholding our values," argued the lawmakers, which included prominent progressives like Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as well as centrist leaders like Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).To better understand the factors influencing today's decision and the history of the relationship, RS spoke with retired Maj. Gen. F.C. "Pink" Williams, who served as the U.S. defense attaché to Egypt from 2008 to 2011. Williams recently wrote a chapter on the history of U.S.-Egypt military relations in an edited volume entitled "Security Aid in the Middle East." The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.RS: The State Department is set to decide whether it will withhold up to $320 million in military aid to Egypt, citing human rights concerns. How should the Biden administration think about that decision?Williams: It's a mixed bag whether this does any good or not. Over the years, we've threatened to withhold aid. Sometimes we've carried through with that; sometimes we haven't. My personal opinion is that it hasn't had any broad effect on governance or the human rights situation in Egypt.There are those that would argue that it's somewhat effective around the edges, and I could probably support that. When Sisi releases a few political prisoners, some people will say, "well, that's in part because of the pressure we applied on the funds." I think that's hard to assess, but I do believe that withholding of funds is not going to make any substantive change in how Sisi acts.RS: Something you talked about in your chapter in this recent book is this idea that Egypt and the U.S. have pretty different views of the military relationship. Can you spell that out a little bit?Williams: Given that the whole relationship was initially built around the Camp David Accords, Egypt decided that the funding was basically a reward, or a bribe, if you want to put it that way. They've never really moved away from that. They're not trying to change the world here. They're trying to, frankly, get money for their regime and their government.Now, we, on the other hand, began to move away from the Camp David [approach] as we saw that it was unlikely that another conflict would occur between the Israelis and the Egyptians. We don't see the aid anymore as needed to get the Egyptians to keep the peace because it's clearly in their best interest to do so anyway. So then we started coming up with other reasons why we're giving the aid. As human rights and democracy became tied more and more to foreign aid, it was only natural that we would go down that road. So we started with some differences anyway, but then they widened quite a bit over time.RS: In the long sweep, how has U.S. military aid in particular affected the shape of politics and the political system in Egypt?Williams: I don't think it's had very much effect. We tend to forget that nations and regimes act in their perceived best interest. It's only natural that they would do so. Of course, we see support for democracy and human rights as not just an altruistic goal but also something that's in our best interest. However, when you push those themes in other countries with other cultures and other backgrounds, I think you have to be careful. From the Egyptian point of view, the regime's going to do what it thinks it needs to to strengthen itself and to ensure its longevity. Unfortunately, many authoritarian regimes see repression as a tool for staying in power. It's just that simple. So the idea that, for any amount of money, a dictator is going to do something that he thinks is going to weaken his position is pretty far-fetched.RS: What most surprised you about the relationship during your time in Cairo? Did Egypt's military and that relationship meet the expectations you had going in?Williams: I'm a fighter pilot by trade, and when we sold Egypt the F-16 back in 1980, I was part of that program. They sent two of us to Egypt as instructors for a year. When I returned many years later, I was not surprised at the state of the Egyptian military or their ability to effectively use the equipment that we had provided because I had the background from early on.What surprised me quite a bit was the shallowness of the relationship. We really didn't — and do not, as far as I know, to this day — have any significant knowledge of the Egyptian planning processes, their strategic plans. We're still just giving them money and equipment, and they're keeping the peace. They are doing other things for us too that I shouldn't give short shrift in terms of intelligence, but I was very surprised that we didn't have a deeper relationship after all those years.RS: Can you talk more about what the U.S. does get out of the relationship? It's kind of striking that you're saying that our influence appears limited.Williams: Some of that comes back to expectations. The idea of influence is that we'll give them this money, and we'll guide them. Again, you go back to differences in culture and differences in perceived interest. This idea that you're going to have all this influence because you give them money — which is a very widespread opinion in Washington in my experience — is unrealistic.However, on a practical level, the intelligence situation is not something we can go into in any depth, but obviously they are positioned and have resources that we don't have that can provide some decent information to us. And on the counterterrorism front, I think they've been quite helpful. And the Suez Canal priority and the overflight [permissions] that they provide us save us all kinds of time and money.RS: You were stationed in Egypt during the Arab Spring protests. How did that political turmoil affect your work and affect the country's ties with the US?Williams: Everything didn't come to a complete standstill, but it really ground down. All the non-essential personnel were evacuated from the embassy. There were roughly 400 embassy personnel on a normal day, and we were down a little bit below 100.We had various bases scattered about Egypt, where we had small contingents of American pilots and maintainers and other advisers. We pulled all those people in from those bases, and they were either subsequently evacuated or they worked work for me in the embassy. So all the interaction and advising at the outlying sites came to a halt. From the point of normal day-to-day interaction, it was pretty much nil.Now there was a lot of interaction because there was, of course, great concern in Washington about what the Egyptian military was going to do with all this. If you recall, they weren't doing anything initially. They were trying to stay out of it initially. When people wanted to talk to the Egyptians, they generally would come through my office because they knew that we could get contact with them and access to them, and we could set up phone calls. The way they were doing it was that they would have a counterpart call their counterpart. In other words, they would have Robert Gates, who was secretary of defense, and he would want to talk to the Egyptian defense minister [Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein] Tantawi.They were trying to maintain this contact and get some assurances from these guys that there's not going to be a bloodbath out there in Tahrir Square. The majority of those contacts were negotiated and coordinated by the Office of Military Cooperation because we had the access. So what do we get for all this money? Well, we at least got them to take our phone calls. And they were not taking [other calls]. There were ambassadors from other countries calling me saying, "What do you know? What is happening?"That is not the same thing as me claiming that we materially influenced the actions of the [Egyptian Armed Forces] in that time. They are sitting there assessing the situation and saying, "What is in our best interest? How do we get through this and still be an intact military and an intact regime on the other side?"RS: That's a really good example of an acute moment where there's an attempt to have an influence in favor of democracy, in favor of human rights. Do you think over the long term that U.S. aid to Egypt has had a positive effect on human rights in the country?Williams: It's probably had some good effect in individual cases. In other words, we're bringing pressure, and Sisi or [former President Hosni] Mubarak is looking to get us off his neck, so he releases some political prisoners. For those people, that's a big, big outcome. Not being in Egyptian prison is a really good thing.I would not ever claim that it has resulted in some philosophical shift in the outlook of either the Mubarak regime or the Sisi regime or the [Mohamed] Morsi regime for that matter. They view things differently, and they run governments differently than we do.I'll give you an example. During the revolt, of course, we were right there. We were very close to Tahrir square. I walked into work one morning, and I get a photo. My staff says, "Look at this." It's a photo taken from the embassy looking out, and there's an Egyptian tank with some soldiers, and they've got this guy strung up by his heels on the gun barrel there. I don't know what he did or what caused the situation, but there he was, and he's alive and everything. So I take this over to the Egyptians and say, "Hey, guys, this is exactly the kind of thing that you don't need to be doing. You don't need to hurt yourself with this." And that was a theme we were talking to them about. We were talking to them about these stories coming through of interior forces abusing people, and that's bad. Frankly, [we told them] "That's bad press. It hurts your cause, and you should not be doing this." Well, I show him this photo, and what are they interested in? They were taken at night, right? What they're interested in is "How did you get that photo? What is that technology?" They didn't even blink about this guy strung up from his heels on this tank. It just kind of shows you the mindset.RS: How should we handle the future of US aid to Egypt?Williams: First, we need to stay engaged. When people say, "Why are we doing all that for Egypt?" I say, "look at a map. You can't change geography." Same reason we have to put up with Turkey. You can't change geography. So we need to stay engaged. Russian influence building, Chinese influence building, the perception throughout the region that we can't be trusted — all these things only make it harder to try to engage and have any influence at all. Nevertheless, I think we have to try.To the money, we're not talking about a ton of money here. I would continue to fund it. You can tie it to human rights, but I wouldn't go through this exercise of conditioning the funds or taking away the funds once a year. They know we're interested in human rights. We can have those discussions. But I don't know that tying the funds has had any substantive effect.So I would stay engaged, I would be careful about tying the aid to their human rights performance, and I would try to assure them that, as we have been there through the years for the long haul, we're still going to be there for the long haul.

Maya Ranganath (Associate Director, Global Networks and Inclusion) speaks to Ronald Mulebeke (2019 CEGA Fellow) about his reflections on a return to Berkeley four years after his fellowship. Mulebeke's fellowship was supported by the East Africa Social Science Translation Collaborative (EASST).Ronald Mulebeke outside the CEGA office in Berkeley, CA | Maya RanganathCEGA invests deeply in our fellows each semester, but the relationship doesn't end there. Fellows go on to join the Network of Impact Evaluation Researchers in Africa, a network of African scholars seeking to advance impact evaluations of development programs, conduct workshops at their home institutions, and receive funding to pursue the brilliant ideas they develop while at Berkeley. While we reunite yearly at the annual Africa Evidence Summit, staff also keep in touch throughout the year with fellows to follow their professional and personal developments, from new papers to new babies.It's a happy occasion when fellows come back to Berkeley for a visit. Recently, 2019 CEGA Fellow Ronald Mulebeke returned to campus to work with his faculty mentor, CEGA affiliated professor Stefano Bertozzi, on his CEGA-funded study "Implementing Supportive Supervision and Behavior Change Communication at Private Health Facilities in Uganda." I sat down with Ronald to talk about what originally attracted him to the fellowship, what brought him back to Berkeley, and his advice for future fellows.Maya: Ronald, it's great to see you back in Berkeley! It's special when we have a fellow return after a few years. To start from the beginning, can you tell me about what originally brought you to the fellowship, and what your experience was like?Ronald: When I joined the fellowship in 2019, my interest was to improve my skills in impact evaluation and cost-effectiveness analysis. The fellowship was an interesting time of learning. I loved the chance to network with people, organizations, and groups involved in diverse research activities. The seminars were so eye-opening; I came from a health background and quickly realized that impact evaluation concepts applied to many different sectors. I loved the opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration.It's great to hear that you expanded your thinking during the fellowship. Did your current projects start at that time? Could you tell me a little more about them?My work is about helping private health facilities provide better malaria treatment by improving their ability to "Test, Treat, and Track" malaria (a policy established by the World Health Organization). I submitted a concept note on this for the fellowship application and developed that into a full proposal with my mentors while at Berkeley. In 2020, I received a research grant from CEGA to conduct a feasibility study of our randomization process. We wanted to see if supportive supervision would work effectively in private health facilities owned by different individuals with varying capacities. We also wanted to test the best way to randomize. After the pilot study, we are planning to apply for a second grant. We implemented the project — with some disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic — — but, overall, it has progressed well.So what brings you back to Berkeley now?My current visit is primarily to finalize the initial results of the study and strategize with Stef [Stefano Bertozzi] for the next phase of the project. We needed the time in person to work together. This time around, the focus has been on collaborative work and building a strong research team. I have connected with other faculty members at Berkeley for their expert input on the project's future applications. This visit has been more study-focused and didn't involve coursework.Can you talk about the major changes in your life and career after the fellowship? How did the fellowship impact your work?After the fellowship, I maintained contact with CEGA staff and faculty and continued working with them on my main project. I also collaborated with CEGA researchers on a project to increase mask use in Uganda during the COVID-19 pandemic, and on the new initiative "Impact Evaluation for Evidence in Decision Making (IEED)."IEED is a joint program between CEGA and Makerere University in Uganda to improve capacity for impact evaluation within Makerere and connect with policymakers to start demand-driven studies. I have been able to ingrain impact evaluation in three institutions, working with the Office of the Prime Minister and two other government agencies. Because of the expertise I gained through the fellowship, I was also appointed a board member of the Mildmay Research Center, Uganda.Additionally, I have been involved in mentoring and training activities as a member of the Network of Impact Evaluation Researchers in Africa (NIERA).Did you learn anything specific during the fellowship that you are passing on to junior researchers?The fellowship emphasized the importance of networking, learning from mentors, and working in teams, which I've been able to apply in my career. I learned the importance of networking with policymakers and other stakeholders right from the beginning and involving them in a project's design, implementation, and dissemination stages. I have maintained a good working relationship with my mentor Stef, and I believe learning from experienced researchers and establishing collaborations is crucial for growth. When I work with junior researchers, I really emphasize how important this is.I have also mentored junior researchers and helped one successfully apply to the fellowship: I'm excited that Nneka Osadolor from the University of Benin in Nigeria is a resident fellow this fall.What advice would you give someone just starting their fellowship?I would give four key pieces of advice. First, be clear about your goals. Next, be open to new ideas (and to receiving constructive criticism!). Third, make sure you network proactively: connect with mentors, other fellows, and professionals, seek advice, have conversations, and build meaningful relationships. Last, keep in mind that it's important to balance technical skills and conceptual understanding.Looking ahead, what are your career goals?First and foremost, I aim to complete my PhD in Medical Sciences at the University of Antwerp this year. Beyond that, I'm passionate about doing more implementation science research. I want to delve deeper into how policies can be effectively implemented and scaled up through the application of research. I hope to contribute to discussions and make a meaningful impact in this area.That sounds like an important area of focus. Do you have any specific plans after completing your PhD?It's still a little early to say. I envision pursuing opportunities in academia or research institutions where I can continue my work in implementation research and impact evaluations. Ultimately, I want to contribute to improving the effectiveness of policies and their scalability. I'm grateful that the fellowship gave me a great foundation for this.A fellow returns to CEGA: Reflections, learning, and growth four years later was originally published in CEGA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

 Enter the DragonWhen I first read that Naomi Klein wrote a book about being confused for her doppelgänger, Naomi Wolf, I was initially amused. I had written earlier about the doppelgänger as the monster of our times, and it seemed that Klein was confirming that thesis. Klein dealing with Wolf seemed like it might be a fun distraction, but as I read the book, I was immediately struck with the fact that Klein is taking on more than a particular case of mistaken identity. Her book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, is in some sense an attempt to make sense of the world we are living in a world dominated by social media doppelgangers in which the work of political and social criticism has its own dark doppelganger in the world of conspiracy theories. It is not just that Naomi Wolf gets confused with Naomi Klein, both are women who wrote mainstream "big idea" books, The Beauty Myth and No Logo, have similar physical appearances, and their husbands are even both named Avi, but that this confusion reveals another doppelgänger, another double, our online or virtual self. As Klein writes, we live in "a culture crowded with various forms of doubling, in which all of us who maintain a persona or avatar online create our own doppelgängers--virtual versions of ourselves that represent us to others. A culture in which many of us have come to think of ourselves as personal brands, forging a partitioned identity that is both us and not us, a doppelgänger we perform ceaselessly in the digital ether as the price of admission in a rapacious attention economy." Klein's struggle with being confused with Wolf is also a recognition, that Klein, the author of No Logo, has another double, her "brand." This is what most people know her as, the author of critical books on the culture, politics, and economy of capitalism. Klein is aware that it is ironic to point out that the author of No Logo has a brand, but such a brand, an identity, are increasingly indispensable factors of living and working as a writer. As she puts it, the idea of a personal brand seemed like a dystopian future when it was proposed in the late nineties, but now it is a dystopian reality, anyone with a social media account has a double, a brand, that they can manage, and some need this brand to survive. The Lady From Shanghai Klein's book is not just about Wolf usurping her digital identity, but about Wolf's own descent into what Klein calls the "mirror world." the world of conspiracy theories, especially those that have metastasized in American culture since Trump and Covid. Wolf's descent into this world is very much a dive of the deep end. Wolf has tweeted about vaccinated people losing their smell, they no longer smell human, about the risk of the feces of the vaccinated contaminating drinking water, and most famously about vaccine passports and contact tracing being the end of human freedom. It is easy to mock all of this, but Klein does not play this for the laughs, she tries to understand the causes and crises underlying the paranoid fantasies. One common retort to the paranoid fears of contact tracing, vaccine passports, and even microchips hidden in vaccines is to simply say, "wait until they hear about cellphones," to point out that the surveillance that is feared is already here and for the most part broadly accepted. Klein supposes instead that they, those who spread such theories, already know about cellphones, already know about surveillance and the loss of a certain kind of anonymity and freedom. It is this awareness that appears backwards and distorted in the fears of vaccines laden with nanotechnology to monitor and control us. Their fears about vaccines, about being tracked and monitored, is in some sense a fantasy that they can do something about this increase of surveillance. They can refuse the vaccine, and thus opt out of what many of us find it impossible to opt out of, a world where our every motion, every transaction, is monitored. Klein's concept of a mirror world is both a reflection and refraction of our existing world. In some sense it reflects our world, but through a kind of distortion, shaped by our illusions and fantasies. Conspiracy theories are right to point to the control of a powerful elite, but wrong in thinking that this elite is secret, or that its motives are anything other than daily life under capitalism.  As Klein writes, "There was no need for histrionics about how unvaccinated people were experiencing "apartheid" when there was a real vaccine apartheid between rich and poor countries, no need to cook up fantasies about Covid "internment camps" when the virus was being left to rip through prisons, meat packing plants, and Amazon warehouses as if the people's lives inside had no value at all."The fears of the Covid alarmists of a dark future to come are the reality of existing life under Covid. What Klein proposes is in some sense a symptomatic reading of conspiracy theories, finding their points of reflection and refraction of the existing world. The Man With the Golden Gun(In case it is not clear I am illustrating this with Hall of Mirrors scenes from films)With respect to the latter, the refractions and distortions, reading Doppelganger  it is possible to find three causes or conditions underlying the distortions of the mirror world. Three aspects of existing ideology that distort and warp the way that this world responds to actual crises and problems. First, is idea of the individual, of the autonomous individual. This belief in autonomy and self reliance is the common core that connects the "wellness industry," yoga instructors, gym gurus, etc., who deny the need for vaccines and even masks for healthy people, with survivalists, who see them as an imposition by the state. Both insist on a purely individual response to a collective condition. Of course in doing so they are only acting on the basic premise of a capitalist society, which privatizes every social problem into a commodity.  During Covid many doubled down on this, insisting that one could get through the pandemic with everything from Vitamin D supplements and essential oils to horse medicine. Yoga instructors, vegans, and Fox News audiences might seem to be politically opposed, but they all are different expressions of what Klein calls hyper-individualism, responding to social collapse with individual responses of wellness and self-protection. As absurd as all of these homegrown cures and remedies were they were perhaps not as absurd as the notion that the US as a society could shift its entire economy and ethics, transforming all of those people we do not think about, the people who grow, ship, make, and deliver our food into essential workers. As Klein writes, "With no warning, the message from much of our political and corporate classes change diametrically. It turned out that we were a society after all, that the young and healthy should make sacrifices for the old and ill; that we should wear masks as an act of solidarity with them, if not for ourselves; and that we should all applaud and thank the very people--many of them Black, many of them women, many of them born in poorer countries--whose lives and labor had been most systematically devalued, discounted and demeaned before the pandemic."Many embraced conspiracies rather than adjust to this new concern for essential workers, the elderly, and the sick, but in doing so they followed to the letter the dominant image of our society, a society founded on isolation, self-interest, and competition. As Klein details, often suspicion of things like free vaccines stemmed from a deeper internalization of the fundamental idea of capitalism. Why would a society that charges for a visit to the emergency room give away a life saving vaccine?This idea of the individual has its own little doppelgänger, the child. A great deal of the opposition to vaccines, mask mandates, and shutdowns was framed as protecting children from the supposed threats these things supposedly represent, spectres like "learning loss" rather than the reality of a pandemic. These threats all stem from a particular idea of a child, a child as extension of the self, and possession of their parents. "So many of the battles waged in the Mirror World--the "anti-woke" laws, the "don't say gay" bills, the blanket bans on gender-affirming medical care, the school board wars over vaccines and masks--come down to the same question: What are children for? Are they their own people, and our job, as parents is to support and protect them as they find their paths? Or are they our appendages, our extensions, our spin-offs, our doubles, to shape and mold and ultimately benefit from? So many of these parents seem convinced that they have a right to exert absolute control over their children without any interference or input: control over their bodies (by casting masks and vaccines as a kind of child rape or poisoning); control over their bodies (by casting masks and vaccines as a kind of child rape or poisoning); control over their minds (by casting anti-racist eductions as the injection of foreign ideas into their minds of their offspring); control over their gender and sexuality (by casting any attempt to discuss the range of possible gender expressions and sexual orientations as "grooming")."If the focus on individual health and the wellbeing of one's offspring sounds like eugenics, that is not accidental. This brings us to the third condition for distortion, race. As Klein argues Naomi Wolf, like many of the anti-vaccination movement,  regularly invoke the holocaust or the civil rights struggle in their rhetoric. Wolf has even had her own sit-ins opposing vaccine mandates at lunch counters, her term, even as she singles out Black owned businesses for her protests. Throughout the mirror world there is a desire to appropriate the signs and images of ethnic exclusion, (remember the store that sold yellow stars that said "Not Vaccinated?" ) and racial justice, from sitting in at lunch counters to using Eric Garner's famous cry "I can't breathe" to protest mask mandates. In the mirror world it is white people who are both the true victims of discrimination and the real protagonists of social justice.Us This appropriation of the terms and history of racial justice is coupled with an absolute indifference to its current status. The year of shutdowns and mandates was also the summer of some of the largest protests of the "Black Lives Matter" movement. "If you were a person concerned that Covid marked the dawn of a new age of CCP inspired mass obedience, surely it would be worth mentioning that the largest protests in the history of the United States happened in the Covid era, with millions of people willing to face clouds of tear gas and streams of pepper spray to exercise their rights to speech, assembly and dissent. Come to think of it, if you were a person concerned with tyrannical state actions, you would also be concerned about the murders and mass denials of freedom to incarcerated people that drove the uprising. Yet in all the videos Wolf has put out issuing her dire warnings about how the United States was turning into a nation of sheeple, I have seen her acknowledge neither the existence of this racial justice reckoning nor the reality that if a Black person had pulled the same stunt that she did at the Blue Bottle or Grand Central Station, they very likely would have ended up face down in cuffs--not because vaccine rules were tyrannical, but because of systemic anti-Black racism in policing, the issue that sparked the protests she has so studiously ignored. I would argue that while Naomi Wolf might not have mentioned Black Lives Matter, she definitely noticed it. Her "lunch counter sit in" at a Blue Bottle Cafe would seem to reveal that. It was definitely noticed by the larger mirror world for which the site of millions of people in the streets protesting racism  when they could not go to the gym or to a restaurant was a wrong, a violation of the order of the world, that they could not tolerate. As Klein argues much Mirror World thinking is an attempt for white people to rewrite the history of the present--making them the true victims of repression and the true heroes. The real struggle was not in the streets fighting against police repression but screaming at the hostess at the restaurant asking for proof of vaccination. As much as Klein draws the lines of demarcation between "mirror world" thinking, between conspiracies and critical thought, any such division is going to be an unstable one. In the end it is not just that Naomi Wolf is confused for Naomi Klein but that theories about microchips in vaccines or vaccines rewriting our DNA are confused for criticisms of contemporary surveillance and the pharmaceutical industry. Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine has been appropriated and reappropriated by everyone from Second Amendment activists arguing about "false flags" to those that argue that global warming will produce a new global surveillance state. Klein's book ultimately is not just about her own struggle with a doppelgänger, but how any critical thinker, anyone on "the left," for lack of a better word, will always confront a doppelgänger. Every critic of the invasion of Iraq has to deal with "truthers" who claim that 9/11 was an inside job, every critic of the failure of the US to respond to the pandemic will ultimately have to deal with claims of microchips and genetic engineering. What starts out as one persons struggle with a very singular condition of mistaken identity ultimately is a story about all of us. We are all in the hall of mirrors now. Klein has also charted something of a path out, by showing the ideologies of individualism, the family, and the race, that distort any awareness of our conditions into its mirror world opposite. Lastly, Klein like Bruce Lee before her knew that you have to smash a few mirrors to escape a hall of mirrors, and this includes, for Klein, giving up on one's own image, one's brand, learning to think and act collectively rather than individually. 

Federal prosecutors unveiled charges against Sen. Bob Menendez (D–N.J.) on Friday that read like a combination of James Bond and The Sopranos. The indictment accuses Menendez of accepting bribes for a variety of favors, from helping local businessmen stay out of jail to green-lighting arms deals with the Egyptian military. Prosecutors allege that Menendez's wife Nadine Arslanian was paid, in the classic Sopranos style, through a no-show job at an Egyptian meat company. The FBI found hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gold at Arslanian's suburban home.The senator and his co-defendants pleaded not guilty during a Wednesday court hearing. He claimed at a Monday press conference that the indictment was a "limited set of facts framed by the prosecution to be as salacious as possible." While Menendez has stepped down from his post as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he vowed on Monday to stay in the Senate "on behalf of the 9 million people who call New Jersey home." However, a growing chorus of Democrats — including both national and New Jersey officials — has demanded that Menendez step down from his seat in light of the charges.The combination of local wheeling-and-dealing with international intrigue is nothing new in New Jersey politics. While the state is often known for its weird ambient smells, Mafia families, and party beaches, New Jersey also hosts some of New York City's wealthiest suburbs. Many well-organized diasporas have roots there, and many powerful foreigners park their money there. The career of a New Jersey politician is often intertwined with foreign policy.FBI agents raided Arslanian's home in Englewood Cliffs, 15 minutes away from the exclusive country club where Nikki Haley spoke to pro-Israel donors last week. The nearby town of Englewood had previously been the center of an international incident in 2009, when Libyan ruler Muammar Qadhafi was preparing to address the United Nations. The Libyan foreign ministry owns a mansion in Englewood for its UN ambassador, and sudden construction led to rumors Qadhafi was staying there.Qadhafi's next-door neighbor would have been Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a prominent pro-Israel activist with ties to settlers in the Palestinian territories. The rabbi waged a high-profile campaign to ward off Qadhafi, using his column in the Jerusalem Post to complain about the construction workers' treatment of his trees. Shmuley threatened to sue the Libyan foreign ministry so that "Libyan money will go toward peaceful projects like planting trees rather than blowing up planes," and offered to host Qadhafi himself if Libya recognized Israel.The Libyan delegation ended up renting property in suburban New York from Donald Trump, who took the money and kicked them out. Qadhafi was so enraged by his treatment that he scattered unsecured nuclear materials across a Libyan airfield. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lives close to the Trump property, had to talk Qadhafi down. All politics is local politics, as they say.Menendez started his political career within the Cuban community of Hudson County, the region of New Jersey just across from midtown Manhattan. The large Cuban diaspora there, traumatized by Fidel Castro's revolution, turned to militant anticommunist politics. The Weehawken Duelling Grounds, where Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton in 1804, now features a statue of Cuban national poet José Martí and a monument to Assault Brigade 2506, a force sent by the CIA to overthrow Castro during the Bay of Pigs incident in 1961.

The monument to the fallen from the CIA's Assault Brigade 2506, which fought against Fidel Castro's government at the Bay of Pigs. Photo: Matthew PettiDuring the Monday press conference, Menendez implied that he was also one of the many fleeing Communism. He called himself the "son of Cuban refugees," and said that the cash found by the FBI was "from my personal savings account, which I have kept for emergencies, and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba." But Menendez was born in New Jersey years before Castro's revolution, to a family of working-class immigrants who had left Cuba under the previous, capitalist dictatorship. Menendez's Senate office did not respond to a question about what confiscation his family faced.Menendez was surrounded by the politics of the anticommunist emigres nonetheless. In the 1970s, when Menendez was on the Union City school board, several rival Cuban-American guerrilla groups held rallies and ran extortion rackets. Union City brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo were convicted of killing Chilean leftist politician Orlando Letelier with a car bomb in Washington; their convictions were overturned on appeal. Menendez himself helped raise money for the legal defense fund of Eduardo Arocena, a Union City guerrilla leader convicted of murdering a Cuban diplomat in New York and organizing other bomb attacks, in the 1980s.Since branching out into statewide politics, Menendez cultivated ties with other diaspora groups. He's member of the Friends of the Irish National Caucus and the Armenian Caucus, and has touted Arslanian's Lebanese-Armenian roots. The senator is sure to show up at Hindu holiday festivals, and once condemned Time Magazine for making fun of Hindu believers in New Jersey. Rabbi Shmuley, himself a Republican, praised Menendez for being a non-Jewish friend of Israel. A local Greek diaspora newspaper simply described Menendez as "our guy."

Aerial photo of Englewood Cliffs just across the river from New York City. Photo: Matthew PettiThese diaspora ties have sometimes landed Menendez in legal trouble. The senator was indicted in 2015 for a scheme that involved Dominican-American doctor Salomon Melgen's attempts to score a contract in the Dominican Republic. (Menendez escaped jail time after a mistrial was declared in 2018, and successfully pressured the Trump administration to grant Melgen clemency.) Friday's indictment similarly involved immigrant businesspeople in Menendez's social circles.Two of the alleged bribe-givers were Lebanese-American real estate developer Fred Daibes and Egyptian-American meat merchant Wael Hana, whom Arslanian was friends with in the past. Like many things in New Jersey politics, the alleged favors to his associates mixed the local and the global. Menendez allegedly tried to protect Daibes and another local businessman, José Uribe, from fraud charges. He also allegedly tried to help Hana maintain his monopoly on halal meat exports to Egypt — a monopoly that caught the attention of Egyptian media in 2019.The most explosive accusations involve Menendez's contacts with Egyptian military and intelligence officers that he met through Hana. Menendez allegedly passed on sensitive data about U.S. Embassy staff and ghost-wrote a letter on behalf of an Egyptian general asking for military aid. Prosecutors also claimed that the Egyptians bribed Menendez to make sure American arms sales to Egypt went through smoothly.Menendez allegedly asked Arslanian to tell Hana that he had approved the sale of 10,000 tank ammunition rounds and 46,000 target practice rounds to Egypt, for use against the Sinai insurgency. Arslanian forwarded the senator's text message to Hana, who forwarded it to an Egyptian army officer, who responded only with a 👍 emoji, according to the indictment.The indictment also includes a photo of Menendez and Arslanian at the house of an unnamed "senior Egyptian intelligence official," whom researcher Amy Hawthorne identified as Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel. Menendez, on his return from Egypt, allegedly googled "how much is one kilo of gold worth." Hana also allegedly helped pay off the mortgage on Arslanian's Englewood Cliffs home. He returned to the United States and was arrested at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City on Tuesday.On Friday, news reporters showed up in Englewood Cliffs, looking for the Mercedes-Benz convertible that Menendez had allegedly bought with Uribe's bribe money. One reporter seemed surprised to see that Arslanian's house — the place where so much cash and gold were hidden — was an average-sized suburban bungalow. But looks are deceiving. Englewood Cliffs is an expensive area, and Arslanian's house is worth about $1.1 million.New Jersey, in a nutshell: global power hidden in plain sight.A version of this article first appeared on the author's Substack page, "Matthew's Notebook."

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Members of Congress go to Washington and establish
reputational styles which help explain to constituents the work that they do
while on Capitol Hill. There is no one way to "correctly" represent a place,
but a representational style chosen by a member reflects in part the priorities
of the geographic constituency the member represents and their own personal
inclinations born from their pre-congressional careers. Richard Fenno (1978), in his
book Home Style, documented the
various representational styles developed by members of Congress and used by
them when explaining their "Washington Work" back home. Fenno documents three
rough representational types: the constituent servant, the policy expert, and
the member of Congress as "one of us."




I discuss these in detail elsewhere (Parker 2015, Parker and Goodman 2009, Parker and Goodman 2013), so I'll be brief.. A constituent servant helps constituents with casework, policy experts
work on legislation and develop proficiency in a particular issue area, while "one
of us" representatives "work to display their
connectivity to a place and a group—and through that connection, demonstrate
trustworthiness" (Parker 2015: 15).





It is clear that Congressman Zinke is comfortably slipping
into a policy expert representational style—emphasizing his defense and foreign
relations credentials (which are bolstered by his membership on the House Armed
Services Committee). This makes sense for two reasons. First, it allows him to
draw upon a pre-political career, which is a considerable electoral and
governing asset. Second, it allows him to establish a representational
relationship without competing directly with Senator Jon Tester or Senator Steve
Daines. I wrote a blog some time ago noting how House members representing a
state share a representational space with two U.S. Senators (see also Wendy
Schiller's Partners and Rivals). Just
as U.S. Senators need to figure out how to craft their own distinctive reputations,
so, too, must House members representing a state. This is especially important
because media coverage and space are at a particular premium in these smaller
states; to get attention, you must be doing something different from the rest
of the delegation.



Members of the House face an additional complication
when they are the lone representative. Many House members develop constituent
service reputations in the House. But, as the work of Lee and Oppenheimer (1999)
demonstrate, constituents in small states are more likely to contact their
senators to solve problems and address casework concerns because senators are
just as accessible, if not more so, than the House members in small states. In
fact, the Montana's senators have nearly twice the personal staff as the House
member and have more offices back home. One of Congressman Denny Rehberg's
biggest challenges in his 2012 campaign was overcoming this official resource
disparity to compete successfully with Senator Tester—and it is this disparity
as much as other issues that was responsible for his loss.



Congressman Zinke, in choosing to develop a policy
expert representational style, is consciously avoiding the problem faced by
Congressman Rehberg and other House members representing entire states. He is
striking out in a policy area not clearly owned by either Tester or Daines, and
he can establish a favorable reputation among constituents without necessarily
being in the position to be unfavorably compared to the Senate delegation from the
get go. Congressmen simply cannot effectively compete as constituent servants
against their Senate delegation in big states. It is a losing proposition. 



But, Congressman Zinke is doing far more with his policy
expert representational style than becoming a statewide voice on national security
matters and simply settling into his House seat for the long haul. Indeed,
Congressman Zinke is consciously building a media presence well-beyond the
statewide Montana media. 



Congressman Zinke, unlike his fellow House freshman,
is getting noticed by national news outlets. He has appeared on CNN's State of
the Union, on the O'Reilly Factor, and on Fox News with Sean Hannity. He was
mentioned in a New York Times piece
on veterans in Congress, and had an op-ed published in the Washington Times. This is very unusual indeed for a freshman House
member.



How unusual? Let's
go to the data!



I searched Lexis-Nexis Academic between January 5 and
February 19, 2015 for each instance a freshman member of Congress' name
appeared in print, in the transcripts of national news broadcasts, or on blogs.
I then produced two quick scatterplots. Both scatterplots have each freshmen
house member, alphabetically listed by state, on the X Axis. 



The first scatterplot here has the number of mentions
in national broadcast news broadcasts on the Y axis. The black line is the mean
number of mentions, which is a bit more than one mention. The modal category is
zero—meaning most House freshman in the 114th Congress are simply
not mentioned by national news broadcasts. Congressman Zinke had five mentions—well
above the average. I also indicate the other House freshman who had more
mentions that Congressman Zinke. (Click on the plot for a larger version)










This actually underestimates, however, the attention
Zinke has received. Congressman Zinke was not just mentioned—he was an invited
guest on these programs on five occasions he shows up in the database. In each
instance, Congressman Zinke focused his remarks on national security and foreign
policy. 






Only Congresswoman Mia Love, a freshman Republican
from Utah, who is both Mormon and a Haitian-American, has received anywhere
close to the attention from the national networks. And while she has been
mentioned more than Zinke on national television, she has only been a guest on a
national news program twice. In fact, what seems to explain the attention given
to the other freshman are special descriptive qualities about them.
Congresswoman Elise Stefanik is the youngest woman ever to serve in Congress.
Congressman Curbelo is a Latino Republican who is becoming the party's face on
immigration. And Congressman Lee Zeldin is the only Jewish Republican in the
chamber and is a vocal critic of the administration from his perch on the
foreign relations committee.



In the second scatterplot, the Y-axis represents the
total number of mentions of each freshman House member of the 114th
Congress on national news and in non-home state newspapers and blogs. The mean
mention was seven (indicated by the bold black line). Again, Congressman Zinke
outperforms this by far, with a total of 16 mentions—more than twice the
average mentions across all three media platforms. (Click on the plot for a larger version)











(Quick side note: As other scholarship has shown,
members of the majority party seem to get a media attention bonus and that's
the case here—Republican freshman in the House have slightly higher mentions on
the web, in newspapers, and especially on television than Democratic freshmen).



Developing strong national defense credentials from
which to build a constituency beyond Montana helps Zinke both in terms of
reelection to the House and burnishes his credentials in a possible challenge
to Jon Tester in 2018. How?



First, national media attention is often seen as
desirable by constituents. In one study of national media exposure of U.S.
Senators, Barbara Sinclair (1990) found that the number of mentions in The New York Times is associated with
higher job approval ratings and feeling thermometer scores from individual
constituents. Second, national media attention can also lead to additional
power within the hall of Congress itself. Sinclair also writes that "within the
Washington political community, national media exposure serves as an indicators
that the senator is a player of consequence and, by showing she or he can
command an audience, it increases the senator's clout" (489). Zinke benefits by
seeking out and successfully obtaining national media coverage on the campaign
trail and in Washington.



But, thinking long term, developing a national media
attention brings an added bonus beyond the obvious exposure to a network of national
Republicans critical to raising the substantial sums necessary to fund a
competitive Senate bid against an incumbent. It helps craft the perception of an
activist representational style that constituents tend to expect from U.S.
Senators more so than from individual members of Congress.



I present two pieces of evidence in support. The first
is from Fenno's book on North Dakota Senator Mark Andrews, When Incumbency Fails (1992). In that book, Senator Andrews—elected
to his first term in 1980—is concerned about the prospect of facing a strong
challenge from the state's Democratic Congressman, Byron Dorgan. Dorgan, unlike
Andrews, received considerable positive publicity around the North Dakota and
was constantly holding forums with constituents. Andrews, on the hand, came
home less often and spent much of his time mired in policy detail behind the
scenes—while garnishing negative media attention due to a malpractice lawsuit
he and his wife had launched against the state's medical establishment in Fargo.
Fenno argues that Andrews was trapped by the constituent service, small ball
legislative politics style he developed as a member of the House Appropriations
Committee—a style which seemed too little for the expectations North Dakotans
had of their U.S. Senator.



The second is my own book, Battle for the Big Sky. In that book, I did three focus groups with
voters in Gallatin County. One of the questions I asked was whether they saw
senators and members of Congress playing different roles. On the whole, they
agreed that the two positions were qualitatively different. Here's what Nicholas,
a 60 year old retired policeman said on the subject:



"I tend,"
said Nicholas, to "see a senator as having the potential to be in the role as a
statesperson much more than a representative."62 Senators could "get
something done" because the House members are "one per­son in a sea." Not only
would the Senate get more done but it would be more careful, "more considerate.
[They] will more thoroughly look at something, be more educated on the topic"
(153-154).



In this vein, Zinke looks—in cultivating his
representational style and national media attention—like he's positioning
himself for a run at the U.S. Senate. Add to this the fact that he has been
openly critical of Senator Tester on more than one occasion (here and here) since taking
office, and I very much suspect that he will try to do what Denny Rehberg could
not: Unseat Senator Tester.









I asked Zinke about this on KBZK this morning. Watch the interview here.


He pooh-poohed the idea, saying that as a member of the "loyal opposition" it was his job to occasionally criticize the other side and that there's nothing amiss in his relationship with Montana's senior senator.



Will he run and, if he runs, will he succeed? I don't
know. I do know, however, that I will be paying careful attention in the months
and years ahead for hints and clues as to the Congressman's true intentions.

Niger's July 26 military coup, which ousted President Mohamed Bazoum, has created a volatile situation. While France and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) threaten military action against the Nigerien junta under the guise, respectively, of protecting French diplomatic and military facilities and restoring Niger's constitutional order, the crisis risks escalating into a regional conflict.Each of Niger's seven neighbors has a unique set of interests and perspectives on Niger's situation. Algeria, which shares a 620-mile border with Niger, is focused on promoting stability and a return to Niger's constitutional order while also preventing foreign powers from violating the country's sovereignty.Algiers is concerned about instability spilling into neighboring countries (including Algeria) and violent extremists exploiting the turmoil in Niger itself. Memories of Algeria's "Black Decade" (1991-99), in which a jihadist insurgency and a state-led crackdown led to much bloodshed, remain vivid in Algerian minds. No Algerian takes peace and stability at home for granted."National security officials in Algiers already have their hands full due to increasing tensions with Morocco to the west, continued instability in Libya to the east, and the worsening economic situation in Tunisia, also to the east," Gordon Gray, the former U.S. ambassador to Tunisia, told RS. "Uncertainty to the south, i.e., along the border with Niger, is yet another problematic development they will need to deal with."In 2012, three hardline jihadist terrorist groups — al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, and Ansar Dine — gained control of two-thirds of Mali, including territory bordering Algeria. Algerians worried about these armed extremists' ability to threaten Algeria's security. The 2013 In Amenas hostage crisis further informed Algeria's understandings of its vulnerability to transnational terror groups operating in neighboring countries. Today, Algerian officials have similar concerns about instability in Niger creating opportunities for the ISIS- and al-Qaida-linked terrorist groups operating in the country to wage attacks throughout the region.Algerian officials also worry about the devastating impact that the situation could have on Niger's 25 million people. ECOWAS-imposed sanctions on Niger in the wake of the July 26 coup do not include humanitarian exemptions, and Algeria's government worries that political turmoil and a worsening economic situation in Niger could prompt refugee flows into Algeria and other neighboring countries, further threatening regional stability.Algeria's concerns about Niger's crisis go beyond the threat of terrorism and worsening humanitarian disasters. Although in favor of restoring Niger's constitutional order, Algiers strongly opposes military intervention by foreign forces."Algeria opposes all kinds of external intervention in North Africa and the Sahel, whether it is military or political. Algiers stands firm by the principle of sovereignty and considers any foreign presence in its neighborhood as an infringement on the local countries' sovereignty, regardless of the nature of the foreign intervention or presence," Ricardo Fabbiani, North Africa project director for the International Crisis Group, told RS."For Algeria, a military intervention against Niger would be a catastrophe. The Algerians point out that the previous interventions in Libya and Mali have exacerbated pre-existing problems, rather than solving them," he added. "These operations have a significant political and security impact, with repercussions that can be felt for decades."In this sense, Algeria occupies a somewhat unique position — at odds with both France and ECOWAS threatening to wage a military campaign to reverse the coup on one side, and Burkina Faso and Mali vowing to militarily assist Niger's junta if ECOWAS attacks on the other.Seeing itself as a regional heavyweight, Algeria's sensibilities and principles guide the country's foreign policy. Having existed as a French colony before waging a war for independence (1954-62), Algerians view national sovereignty as sacrosanct. This history helps one understand the North African country's past opposition to foreign interventions in Libya, Iraq, Mali, and Syria.Viewing itself as a vanguard in anti-imperialist, pan-African, and Arab nationalist causes, Algeria will always oppose Western (especially French) military intervention in Africa, the Middle East, or anywhere in the Global South. Whereas many states evolve in their foreign policy strategies, Algeria's firm commitment to certain principles, concepts, and institutions has remained consistent over the decades, making Algiers' stance vis-a-vis Niger both predictable and characteristic.Within this context, Algeria is playing a leading role in advocating for a diplomatic solution to the Nigerien crisis that prevents any external military intervention. Last month, Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf visited three ECOWAS member-states — Nigeria, Benin, and Ghana — on orders from President Abdelmadjid Tebboune. After the visits, Attaf proposed a six-month transition plan to bring civilian rule and democracy back to Niger.He stressed Algeria's opposition to foreign military intervention and affirmed that external actors will be barred from transiting Algerian airspace as part of any intervention. The six-point plan's objective is to "formulate political arrangements with the acceptance of all parties in Niger without excluding any party" within the six-month-window, according to Algeria's top diplomat, who has also had contacts with junta members, as well as Nigerian civilian leaders. Overseeing this process should be a "civilian power led by a consensus figure."Before Attaf announced Algeria's plan, Niger's military leadership, backed by Burkina Faso and Mali, laid out its own very different plan. The junta called for a three-year transition period to restore constitutional order. ECOWAS has summarily rejected that plan, asserting that three years is much too long. Some members even called the junta's proposal a "provocation."Algeria is hoping that its proposal offers a middle ground that saves face on all sides but also leads to a restoration of democracy in Niger while preventing any military action against the landlocked and sanctioned country.Fortunately for Algeria, there is growing international support from foreign governments, such as Italy's, for its mediation efforts as the standoff over Niger intensifies. "If successful, this diplomatic effort could strengthen Algeria's role in the Sahel, which is one of Algeria's long-term goals in the area," said Fabiani.Washington has not yet taken a position on Algeria's plan and has generally followed a more cautious approach than Paris, a source of irritation between the two NATO allies. Despite an early unsuccessful mission by a top State Department official to engage the junta, the U.S. has thus far declined to label Bazoum's ouster a "coup," a legal determination that would require the U.S. to end military aid to Niamey, a key counterterrorism partner in the Sahel for years."The United States remains focused on diplomatic efforts toward a peaceful resolution to preserve Niger's hard-earned democracy," a State Department spokesperson told RS. "We all want a peaceful end to this crisis and the preservation of the constitutional order."Looking ahead, officials in Algiers understand that they must address the Nigerien crisis pragmatically while accepting the limitations of Algeria's influence in Niamey. Algerian policymakers are "working on a shortened timeline for the transition" and Algiers "thinks that the coup is difficult to reverse," which leaves them believing that "the quickest route out of this predicament is by accelerating the transition announced by the military junta and guaranteeing Bazoum's personal safety," explained Fabiani. "Yet, it is unclear what leverage Algeria has to make this happen and, most importantly, how willing to listen are the military authorities, given the regional polarization around this issue.""Today, Algiers doesn't want to antagonize the military junta in Niger, nor does it want to push for a military intervention," Dalia Ghanem, a Middle East and North Africa Senior Analyst at the European Union Institute for Security Studies, told RS. "Yet, Algiers learned that this noninterference stance is no longer efficient because it leaves the door open to foreign meddling like in Libya. The country's [leadership is] hence stuck between an old doctrine and the new regional realities. The country had no other [option] than [to] maximize security at its borders and this can't be done without hard choices being taken."In the public eye, Algeria will continue investing diplomatic energy into its six-month transition plan. Yet, as Gray told RS, "Behind the scenes, Algeria will be seeking ways to cooperate with the military junta to ensure the security of its southern border."