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The Boundaries of Justifiable Disobedience
The Boundaries of Justifiable Disobedience Tat Hang Henry Hung Abstract This thesis centers on the question of when, how, and how not to engage in political disobedience. It first explores the classical Rawlsian view on civil disobedience and points out its limitations with respect to the range of allowable actions and application in semi-liberal societies. It then discusses and motivates the use of “uncivil disobedience” as an alternative means of resistance, and points out two important gaps in current philosophical discussions about uncivil disobedience. Finally, it proposes and justifies a “Matching Principle”, which suggests that it is prima facie justifiable to violate a civic duty against the state in an act of resistance if one is systematically deprived of corresponding right(s) by the state or its affiliates. Thus construed, the principle provides both a set of rules about when it is appropriate to disobey in a certain way, as well as a set of rules that regulate conducts during acts of disobedience. 1 Table of Contents 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 3 1.1 Background and Motivation ............................................................................................ 3 1.2 Outline and Overview of Thesis ...................................................................................... 6 2. Civil Disobedience: The “Classical Theory” ..................................................................... 8 2.1 Origins -
The Colonial Origins of Coercion in Egypt
Internal Occupation: The Colonial Origins of Coercion in Egypt Allison Spencer Hartnett, Nicholas J. Lotito, and Elizabeth R. Nugent* April 10, 2020 Abstract Robust coercive apparatuses are credited for the Middle East’s uniquely persistent authoritarianism, but little work exists analyzing their origins. In this paper, we present an original theory regarding the origins of coercive institutions in contemporary authoritarian regimes like those in the Middle East. Weargue that post-independence authoritarian coercive capabilities are shaped by pre-independence institution-building, largely dictated by the interests of colonial powers who dictated state develop- ment projects. We depart from existing general theories about the origins of coercive institutions, in which authoritarian leaders have full autonomy in constructing coercive institutions when they come to power, and in which the military is the primary source of the state’s institution. Instead, we argue that authoritarian leaders coming to power in the twentieth century, after major state building occurred, inherit states with certain pre-determined resources and capabilities, and coercive institu- tions. We support our theory with district-level census data from Egypt. Matching districts surveyed in 1897, the rst census conducted under British rule, with those from the last pre-revolution census in 1947, we nd that districts with higher levels of foreigners in the rst decades of colonial rule are more heavily policed on the eve of independence. In later drafts, we will test our hypotheses that these early allocations of the coercive apparatus persisted under post-colonial authoritarian regimes using data on arrests from 2013. *Citations are welcome but please do not distribute without express permission from the authors. -
Civil Resistance Against Coups a Comparative and Historical Perspective Dr
ICNC MONOGRAPH SERIES Civil Resistance Against Coups A Comparative and Historical Perspective Dr. Stephen Zunes ICNC MONOGRAPH SERIES Cover Photos: (l) Flickr user Yamil Gonzales (CC BY-SA 2.0) June 2009, Tegucigalpa, Honduras. People protesting in front of the Presidential SERIES EDITOR: Maciej Bartkowski Palace during the 2009 coup. (r) Wikimedia Commons. August 1991, CONTACT: [email protected] Moscow, former Soviet Union. Demonstrators gather at White House during the 1991 coup. VOLUME EDITOR: Amber French DESIGNED BY: David Reinbold CONTACT: [email protected] Peer Review: This ICNC monograph underwent four blind peer reviews, three of which recommended it for publication. After Other volumes in this series: satisfactory revisions ICNC released it for publication. Scholarly experts in the field of civil resistance and related disciplines, as well as People Power Movements and International Human practitioners of nonviolent action, serve as independent reviewers Rights, by Elizabeth A. Wilson (2017) of ICNC monograph manuscripts. Making of Breaking Nonviolent Discipline in Civil Resistance Movements, by Jonathan Pinckney (2016) The Tibetan Nonviolent Struggle, by Tenzin Dorjee (2015) Publication Disclaimer: The designations used and material The Power of Staying Put, by Juan Masullo (2015) presentedin this publication do not indicate the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of ICNC. The author holds responsibility for the selection and presentation of facts contained in Published by ICNC Press this work, as well as for any and all opinions expressed therein, which International Center on Nonviolent Conflict are not necessarily those of ICNC and do not commit the organization 1775 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Ste. -
Religion in El Salvador
RELIGION IN EL SALVADOR Country Summary This is the smallest of the Spanish-speaking countries in Central America, bordered by Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua in the north, east and south, respectively. El Salvador, known as Cuscatlán ("Land of the Jewel") by the indigenous peoples, is a spectacular land of volcanoes, rolling hills and lakes, with a long uninterrupted beach along the Pacific coast. The country has an area of 8,124 square miles (21,040 km 2) and a population of 5,744,113 (2007 census). El Salvador has the highest population density in Central America. The nation is divided into 14 departments, which have a total of 262 municipalities. In 2004, approximately 3.2 million Salvadorans were living outside El Salvador, with the USA traditionally being the destination of choice for Salvadorans looking for greater economic opportunities. Many Salvadorans also live in neighboring Central American countries. The majority of expatriates emigrated during the civil war of the 1980s for political reasons and later because of adverse economic and social conditions in El Salvador. The nation’s largest city and its capital is San Salvador, founded in 1545. Today, there are 1,566,629 inhabitants in the San Salvador Metropolitan Area , which is composed of the municipality of San Salvador and the surrounding urban area of 18 municipalities in the Department of San Salvador. Spanish is the nation’s official language and is spoken by virtually all inhabitants. Only a few indigenous people still speak their native tongues, but all speak Spanish as well. An estimated 90 percent of Salvadorans are mestizo (mixed Amerindian and Spanish origin) and culturally known as ladino ; nine percent are reported to be White: this population is mostly of Spanish descent but it includes others of European and North American descent (mainly French, German, Swiss and Italian); and only about one percent is Amerindian. -
Review Essay
REVIEW ESSAY Patterns in Capital Punishment CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AND THE AMERICAN AGENDA. By Franklin E. Zimringt & Gordon Hawkins.tt Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Pp. xviii, 192. Reviewed by Welsh S. White$ Capital punishment in the United States seems to be gathering momentum. The population of death row has nearly tripled since 1980, climbing from 715 in December 1980 to 2021 in March 1988.2 The pace of executions is increasing as well: whereas there were only eleven execu- tions between 1977 and the end of 1983, there were eighty-two between 1984 and the end of 1987.1 Moreover, public enthusiasm for the death penalty has apparently never been stronger with public opinion polls indicating that an overwhelming proportion of people throughout the country approve of capital punishment.4 Recent California elections highlight the intensity and focus of public feeling on this issue: voters unseated three members of the state supreme court largely because they were perceived as reluctant to uphold death sentences.5 Perhaps most significantly, the current legal climate facilitates the application of the death penalty. Since 1983 the United States Supreme Court has gener- ally upheld death sentences and state death penalty statutes against con- 6 stitutional attack. Given these prevailing attitudes towards capital punishment in the t Professor of Law and Director, Earl Warren Legal Institute, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley. if Senior Fellow, Earl Warren Legal Institute, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley. : Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh; Visiting Professor, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley. -
Stalin and the Origins of Mistrust
A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Nikolova, Milena; Popova, Olga; Otrachshenko, Vladimir Working Paper Stalin and the Origins of Mistrust IZA Discussion Papers, No. 12326 Provided in Cooperation with: IZA – Institute of Labor Economics Suggested Citation: Nikolova, Milena; Popova, Olga; Otrachshenko, Vladimir (2019) : Stalin and the Origins of Mistrust, IZA Discussion Papers, No. 12326, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/196823 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten -
Stalin's Purge and Its Impact on Russian Families a Pilot Study
25 Stalin's Purge and Its Impact on Russian Families A Pilot Study KATHARINE G. BAKER and JULIA B. GIPPENREITER INTRODUCTION This chapter describes a preliminary research project jointly undertaken during the winter of 1993-1994 by a Russian psychologist and an American social worker. The authors first met during KGB's presentation of Bowen Family Systems Theory (BFST) at Moscow State Uni versity in 1989. During frequent meetings in subsequent years in the United States and Russia, the authors shared their thoughts about the enormous political and societal upheaval occurring in Russia in the 1990s. The wider context of Russian history in the 20th-century and its impact on contemporary events, on the functioning of families over several generations, and on the functioning of individuals living through turbulent times was central to these discussions. How did the prolonged societal nightmare of the 1920s and the 1930s affect the popula tion of the Soviet Union? What was the impact of the demented paranoia of those years of to talitarian repression on innocent citizens who tried to live "normal" lives, raise families, go to work, stay healthy, and live out their lives in peace? What was the emotional legacy of Stalin's Purge of 1937-1939 for the children and grandchildren of its victims? Does it continue to have an impact on the functioning of modern-day Russians who are struggling with new societal disruptions during the post-Communist transition to a free-market democracy? These are the questions that led to the research study presented -
University of Bradford Ethesis
University of Bradford eThesis This thesis is hosted in Bradford Scholars – The University of Bradford Open Access repository. Visit the repository for full metadata or to contact the repository team © University of Bradford. This work is licenced for reuse under a Creative Commons Licence. Striving for security State responses to violence under the FMLN government in El Salvador 2009-2014 Susan HOPPERT-FLÄMIG Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Social Sciences Division of Peace Studies University of Bradford 2016 Abstract Susan Hoppert-Flämig Striving for security: State responses to violence under the FMLN government in El Salvador 2009-2014 Keywords: El Salvador, security policy, ad hoc decision making, police professionalisation, prison reform, FMLN, gang violence This research focuses on the provision of intrastate security and on the question how states in the global South do or do not provide security for their citizens and do or do not protect them from physical violence. This thesis argues that while institutional conditions are an important aspect of security provision in the global South, more attention needs to be paid to policy processes. Institution building as set out in the literature about Security Sector Reform and statebuilding assumes that it is possible to provide security to all citizens of a state by building democratic state security institutions. However, this is only possible if the state is the predominant force of controlling violence. Research showed that this is rarely the case in countries of the global South. This thesis contends that statehood in the global South is contested due to power struggles between multiple state and non-state elites. -
The Political Culture of Democracy in El Salvador: 2006
……………………………………………………………………………………………………… TTHHEE PPOOLLIITTIICCAALL CCUULLTTUURREE OOFF DDEEMMOOCCRRAACCYY IINN EELL SSAALLVVAADDOORR ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… By: Ricardo Córdova Macías, FUNDAUNGO José Miguel Cruz, IUDOP-UCA Mitchell A. Seligson, Ph.D., Scientific Coordinator and Editor of the Series, Vanderbilt University ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… San Salvador, January 2007 This study was carried out thanks to the support of the Democracy and Governance Program of the United States Agency for International Development. The opinions expressed in this study belong to the authors and do not necessarily reflect the point of view of the United States Agency for International Development. The Political Culture of Democracy in El Salvador: 2006 Table of Contents List of Figures ..................................................................................................................................... vi List of Tables........................................................................................................................................ x Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................... xi Preface............................................................................................................................................... xvi Prologue........................................................................................................................................... xviii Introduction -
The Death Penalty in the Americas: a Problem of the Past?
BACKGROUND DOCUMENT Virtual meeting organized by the PGA National Group and the Parliamentary Group for Human Rights National Assembly of Ecuador The Death Penalty in the Americas: A Problem of the Past? The death penalty: an increasingly obsolete punishment The death penalty has always been a part of human history, dating as far as back as the Code of Hammurabi of Babylon (18th century BC). Today, some of the most populous and/or powerful countries – such as China or the United States of America (USA) - remain in the group of firmly 21 member states of the retentionist countries. Even so, in 2019 as in the years before the Organization of American States overwhelming majority of victims of the death penalty were (OAS) have abolished the death executed by a handful of States: China (for which public penalty for ordinary crimes or for all information is not available but estimated to thousands of other crimes. 14, mostly Caribbean executions), Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq were responsible for countries that have not carried out the vast majority of executions. executions in the last 10 years, continue to maintain capital However dark and alarming this observation is, it should not punishment in their respective overshadow the fact that the death penalty has indeed become criminal codes and laws. increasingly obsolete. Since the creation of the United Nations in 1945, the number of countries having formally abolished capital punishment has soared: from 8 then, they are now 106. A further 36 States have either partially abolished the death penalty (for ordinary crimes only) or have not carried out any execution over the past 10 years. -
Stalin's Terror and the Long-Term Political
Stalin’s Terror and the Long-Term Political Effects of Mass Repression Yuri M. Zhukov and Roya Talibova Department of Political Science University of Michigan November 29, 2016 Abstract Can the effect of repression endure for multiple generations and erode trust in future political institutions? Yes. We examine the impact of Stalin’s Great Terror on political participation in contemporary Rus- sia. Using millions of arrest records from archival documents, we con- struct local measures of repression and match them to precinct-level data on voting in national elections between 2003-2012. To identify the effect of repression on voting, we use an instrumental variable de- sign, exploiting exogenous variation in Soviet repression due to the structure of mid-century Soviet railroads, and travel distances from each locality to Gulag camps. We find that communities more heavily repressed under Stalin are significantly less likely to vote in Russian elections today. These results challenge emerging findings that expo- sure to violence has positive effects on political participation. 1 Reflecting on his years in correctional labor camps, Soviet writer and dis- sident Varlam Shalamov said, “He who has been there will never forget” (Hosking, 1991). Between 1929 and 1953, the Soviet secret police sent an estimated 15 million citizens to prison camps (Conquest, 1997). The num- ber of inmates increased from 400,000 in 1929 (Ivanova, 2000) to 2.5 million in the early 1950s (Gregory and Lazarev, 2013). The Gulag – an acronym for “Main Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps and Labor Settlements” – was among the defining institutions of the USSR (Adler, 2005). -
PROTEST in a LIBERAL DEMOCRACY by Brian Martin
PROTEST IN A LIBERAL DEMOCRACY by Brian Martin Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Wollongong Paper presented at the Seminar on the Right of Peaceful Protest, Canberra, 3-4 July 1986 PROTEST IN A LIBERAL DEMOCRACY Brian Martin Department of History and Philosophy of Science University of Wollongong P.O.Box 1144, Wollongong NSW 2500 Summary Rather than viewing protest solely as a legal or moral issue, it is better understood as part of a political struggle. Dominant groups, especially the liberal democratic state, use various methods to marginalise dissent. One way is to endorse a narrow conception of what is 'legitimate' political action. Others are to accept protest only so long as it is ineffective, and to defuse it through symbolic actions. Another is to restrict protest to the 'public' sphere, maintaining authoritarian power systems within corporations and state bureaucracies. There is a double standard in state responses to protest. Protesters are enjoined to use 'normal channels' and, if they must go beyond this, to remain nonviolent and accept the legitimacy of the state and its actions. By contrast, states regularly have used spying, censorship and force against dissident groups. Nonviolent direct action, far from being a threat to democracy, historically has been central to the introduction of most of the freedoms we enjoy. The challenge ahead is to expand the options for more people to use a variety of direct action techniques to pursue their political interests. This implies, among other things, developing alternatives to bureaucratic work structures, to entrenched technological systems, and to current military and police systems.