David Recondo (Dir.)
Amérique latine. L’Année politique 2023 est une publication de l’Observatoire politique de l’Amérique latine et des Caraïbes (Opalc) du CERI-Sciences Po. Il prolonge la démarche du site www.sciencespo.fr/opalc en offrant des clés de compréhension d’un continent en proie à des transformations profondes. Des informations complémentaires sont disponibles sur le site.
Didier Bigo, Emma Mc Cluskey & Félix Tréguer
Gayatri Jai Singh Rathore
In recent years, the Indian e-waste sector has undergone a process of formalisation through the implementation of E-waste Management Rules (2016), leading to the creation of what I call recycling regime. The upper and middle classes, along with NGOs and industry actors, are frontrunners in thinking about e-waste policies. They were prompted by a twofold motive: the desire for a “world-class”, clean, and pollution-free city; and seizing business opportunities by extracting value from e-waste. Rather than replacing the State, they co-opted the State so that it would legislate to safeguard the environment, and address toxicity and health problems associated with e-waste. Recycling regime relies on formalisation processes embedded in multiple technologies – technicity, capital-intensive facilities, certifications, authorisations, and licences – that work together to exclude the “informal” sector from the e-waste governance system. Recycling technologies act as “technologies of domination” that further contribute to sidelining the “informal” labour of scrap workers or e-kabadis, who as Muslims already find themselves on the margins of society. However, the recycling regime fails to safeguard the environment in the end as e-waste trickles down back to the informal sector via authorised actors.
This text analyses the conditions in which the Central African Republic, a failed state emerging from an existential crisis, is able to play on its own weaknesses and a particular regional and international configuration to coerce the political arena, terrorizing its own population by creating an enemy that is inevitably foreign, and using Russia as an instrument to perpetuate itself. The means and techniques of coercion are extremely modern, even if they are based on a repertoire of coercive practices already well established in Central Africa. Such authoritarianism is based on the construction of a specific threat (transnational armed groups), a lacklustre international community that is exhausting itself in implementing outdated solutions, and a security offer that relegates UN peacekeeping or European training missions to the sidelines: Russian and Rwandan military involvement reflects a desire to substitute the regional and international management of the crisis, while at the same time maintaining a concessionary economy in the mining and agricultural sectors, the primary beneficiaries of which continue to be the rulers in Bangui.
The Covid-19 pandemic in Oman was characterized by its coincidence with a political transition. The coming to power of Sultan Haytham in January 2020 after five decades of Qaboos’rule and the health crisis combined to transform the roles and functions of political and institutional actors. These two dynamics, apparently unrelated have modified the policies and boundaries of the state. The emphasis on the function of protection and the development of a scientific discourse based on efficiency breaks sometimes with the previous image of an Omani specificity marked by a principle of moderation. Moreover, the recomposition that is linked to the place granted to foreign workers, set up as an economic and social adjustment variable, indicates a process of relegation authorized and accelerated by the specific context of the pandemic and the necessity to find new sources of legitimacy.
Olivier Dabène (Dir.)
Amérique latine - L’Année politique is a publication by CERI-Sciences Po’s Political Observatory of Latin America and the Caribbean (OPALC). The study extends the work presented on the Observatory’s website (www.sciencespo.fr/opalc) by offering tools for understanding a continent that is in the grip of deep transformations.
Kevan Harris, University of California-Los Angeles
Tom Lavers, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester
Anne de Tinguy (dir.)
Looking into Eurasia : the year in politics provides some keys to understand the events and phenomena that have left their imprint on a region that has undergone major mutation since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991: the post-soviet space. With a cross-cutting approach that is no way claims to be exhaustive, this study seeks to identify the key drivers, the regional dynamics and the underlying issues at stake
Olivier Dabène (Dir.)
Amérique latine - L’Année politique is a publication by CERI-Sciences Po’s Political Observatory of Latin America and the Caribbean (OPALC). The study extends the work presented on the Observatory’s website (www.sciencespo.fr/opalc) by offering tools for understanding a continent that is in the grip of deep transformations.
Christophe Jaffrelot et Nicolas Belorgey
In 2009, India embarked on a scheme for the biometric identification of its people. This project was conceived by IT companies based in Bengaluru. The programme’s main architect, Nandan Nilekani, was in fact the head of one of these firms. The idea behind the project was to use digital technology – and the data it enables to collect – for economic ends. But to register the entire Indian population, the State had to be persuaded to be involved in the project, later named as "Aadhaar". The rationale that secured the government’s engagement was financial: using Aadhaar would help disburse aid to the poor while minimising the "leakages" caused by corruption and duplicates among beneficiaries. Yet, possessing an Aadhaar number gradually became necessary for a number of other things, too, including tax payment. When approached to rule on this matter, the Supreme Court dragged its feet and did not seek to decisively protect people’s privacy. As for the avowed aim of the scheme itself, Aadhaar did not improve the quality of the services rendered to the poor – far from it – and its economic impact, too, remains to be proven, even if operators who believe that "data is the new oil" consider benefits in a long term perspective.
Observatoire politique de l’Amérique latine et des Caraïbes de Sciences Po
Amérique latine - L’Année politique is a publication by CERI-Sciences Po’s Political Observatory of Latin America and the Caribbean (OPALC). The study extends the work presented on the Observatory’s website (www.sciencespo.fr/opalc) by offering tools for understanding a continent that is in the grip of deep transformations.
Observatoire politique de l’Amérique latine et des Caraïbes de Sciences Po
Amérique latine - L’Année politique is a publication by CERI-Sciences Po’s Political Observatory of Latin America and the Caribbean (OPALC). The study extends the work presented on the Observatory’s website (www.sciencespo.fr/opalc) by offering tools for understanding a continent that is in the grip of deep transformations.
Business and politics in India have been closely connected since the colonial era, when entrepreneurs financed politicians who, in exchange, spared them some of the bureaucratic red tape. This proximity has endured after independence, even if Nehru’s official socialism subjected it to some constraints. Far from mitigating corruption, economic liberalization during the 1990s actually amplified it when large investors, attracted by the opening of the Indian market, paid huge bribes to political leaders, who often became businessmen themselves and forced public banks to lend to industrialists close to them, while businessmen were elected to Parliament, increasing insider trading. As it is observed in the modern era under Narendra Modi, be it at the national level and in his state of Gujarat, crony capitalism is well illustrated by Modi’s relationship to Gautam Adani, the rising star of Indian business. Crony capitalism has a financial cost (due to the under-taxation of companies and dubious debts on the banks’ balance sheets), a social cost (due to underpaid work and a reduction of the expenditure of education or health for lack of fiscal resources) and the environment (crony capitalists disregarding the most basic standards).
Kevin Parthenay
In Latin America, as elsewhere in the world, regional and subregional organizations have multiplied recently. Scholars tend to focus on the variety of regionalisms or their ever changing nature (post-liberal, post-hegemonic...). This study, through a political sociology of regionalism approach, examines Latin American regions and their actors and goes beyond the first set of questions. In this perspective, scrutinizing the regional General Secretaries of the sub-continent is particularly useful to understand how regional powers emerge. With a specific focus on the Southern Common Market (UNSUR), the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR), the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) and the Central American Integration System (SICA), this research offers a more precise answer to the question of the configuration of power within Latin American regionalisms.
Elections have been trivialized in Iran. They allow for the expression of diversity, in particular ethnical and denominational, of historical regional identities, and prove the growing professionalization of political life. Paradoxically, such professionalization withdraws the Republic away into the levels of family, parenthood, autochthony, and even neighborhoods or devotional sociability, which are all institutions that instill a feeling of proximity, solidarity, communion; close to the notion of asabiyat. As the saying goes, the Islamic Republic has become a « parentocracy » (tâyefehsâlâri). The country’s industrial development isn’t at odds with such ponderousness since it lies on a web of very small family businesses. The analysis of the 2016 legislative elections in four wards reveals how important the issue of property is in political life, indivisible as it is of the various particularistic consciences. The connections with notables are still there, revealing lines of continuity with the old regime as well as longstanding agrarian conflicts that have not been erased by the Revolution and that are being kept alive through contemporary elections.
Laetitia Bucaille
Today, the creation of a Palestinian state appears to be a distant possibility: the international community rejected to manage the issue, and the leadership in these territories weakened because of its divisions, revealing their inability to advance. Both the political and the territorial partition between the Gaza strip, governed by the Hamas and the West Bank, under Palestinian authority in line with Fatah, reveal a profound crisis that questions the very contours of Palestinian politics. It also shows that Hamas’ integration in the political game made it impossible to pursue the security subcontacting system. Maintaining the system avoids reconstructing the Palestinian political community, and makes it difficult to develop a strategy that moves towards sovereignty. Since October 2015, the popular and pacific resistance project has been shelved by the return of the violence against Israeli civilians. The Palestinian leadership counts on internationalization of the cause, which has shown mediocre results. Will the replacement of Mahmoud Abbas by his competitors permit to leave the rut?
Leila Seurat
Yet there is ample literature devoted to the sociology of the police in the western world, little research focuses on Arab countries. This study tries to fill this gap by offering an ethnographic study of Ras Beirut police station, the first and the only police station in Lebanon that has been reformed according to the community policing model. The academic works focusing on the importation of this model in developing countries point out how difficult it is to implement and emphasize its negative outcomes due to the local characteristics of each country. Fragmented on a sectarian and a political ground, Lebanon remains a perfect field to explore this hypothesis. Indeed the divisions of the Lebanese state weaken the interactions between the public and the private security forces. Nevertheless, many others factors, beyond the religious and the political divisions, explain Ras Beirut’s failure. The internal dynamics at work inside the police station and the influence of the patronage networks reduce considerably the chances of its success.
Maxime Combes
François Damerval
Zaki Laïdi
Cornelia Woll
Richard Balme, Didier Chabanet
Sabine Saurugger
Didier Michal
Martial Foucault, Renaud Bellais
Daniel Perraud
Jean-Pierre Pagé
Pierre Duquesne
Sabine Saurugger
This article presents conceptual tools to analyse interest representation in the European Union. On the European level, no formal system of representation can be found, but rather a patchwork of representation modes. These modes are influenced by forms of political exchange specific for each country and each political domain, which interact with opportunity structures at the European level. Analysing interest representation in a system of governance, either national, European or international requires taking into account the relations which link interest groups with political and bureaucratic actors at the national level, acknowledging the changes in these relations and to insert all that in a system of governance where actors must find solutions to problems in the management of public policies and not to forget political power games and hierarchies amongst actors. The first part of the article analyses briefly the development of interest group studies in comparative politics as well as in international relations and presents the attempts to systematize these studies undertaken since the 1990. In the second part, I analyse more specifically the network approach, which allows to overcome the cleavage between pluralism and neocorporatism in the study of the relationships between interest groups and state actors. In presenting a critical analysis of the general ideas of the network approach, I propose specific conceptual instruments helping to structure research on interest groups in the European Union.
Laurent Scheeck
As the European Union has become ever more powerful in terms of political output, it has also turned out to be a potential source of human rights violations. While national governments have disagreed on setting up consequential control mechanisms for several decades, the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights pre-empted intergovernmental choice. The European courts’ paths unexpectedly crossed when they were both impelled to work out a way to deal with a twofold human rights conundrum situated at the EU level. Turbulent interaction between Europe’s two supranational courts has not only led to a relative improvement of the protection of human rights, but has also deeply transformed the course of European integration. The courts’ increasingly nested linkage has given rise to new forms of supranational judicial diplomacy between European judges. As a result of their evolving relationship, which is simultaneously underpinned by competitive and cooperative logics, the traditional opposition between an “economic Europe” and a “human rights Europe” has been overcome and the EU’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights is high on the political agenda. Yet, this process of integration through human rights remains a fragile and incomplete endeavour. Just as in co-operative binary puzzles where two players must solve the game together and where both lose as one of them tries to win over the other, solving Europe’s binary human rights puzzle has required of European judges a new way of thinking in which it’s not the institutions, but their linkage that matters.
Jean-Marie Bouissou
Jean-Pierre Pagé
Jean-Pierre Pagé
Jean-Pierre Pagé
Jean-Pierre Pagé
Irène Bono
In Morocco describing an activity as having a « participative » character vests it with all the virtues of civil society and implies it is a panacea. The launch in 2005 of the National Initiative for Human Development (NIHD), a program calling for the mobilization of everyone in the fight against poverty, can be considered a symbol of this « participation phenomenon ». By analyzing its norms and styles of action on which they are based it is possible to discover the internal logic of the participatory phenomenon and to see how it shapes politics. The promotion of certain styles of action, those combining the virtues of civil society with the technical support of participative policies, transforms the criteria of legitimation. Also, the moral values ascribed to participation justify the violation of other social norms, both economic and political, which have nothing to do with participation. Such an approach, developed here on the basis of the INDH at El Hajeb, brings to light the complex ideology on which the subject of participation is based as well as its active and creative role in the political configurations which draw their legitimacy from the value placed on participation.
Thierry Chopin et Lukáš Macek
The ratification of the Lisbon Treaty was, in the words of Jose Manuel Barroso, “an obstacle marathon”. Its entry into force marks the end of the debate over the future of Europe begun in December 2000 at the Council of Europe in Nice. Based on an analysis of this sequence of events the authors offer a diagnosis of the crisis of legitimacy gripping the European Union. They consider that the increase in certain forms of Euroskepticism is a result of the crisis of legitimacy and propose that it be addressed by the politicization of the European political system. This politicization would permit citizens to influence the political orientation of the European Union both in terms of substance and legislative process. Several avenues are available to encourage s pour fig 1b.jpg uch politicization, relating both to institutional practices and to the conduct of political actors.
Emilie Frenkiel
Jean-Pierre Pagé
Jean-Pierre Pagé
Jean-Marc Siroën
The latest WTO Round launched in Doha in 2001 has once again stalled. Even if an agreement were reached it is not certain it would be ratified by the US Congress. The latest delay is due in part to the changing economic context in which the negotiations are taking place, some of which changes are due to decisions made during the course of the negotiations. Governments and public opinion are increasingly in favor of bilateral negotiations in which it is possible to include new subjects rejected in the Doha multilateral negotiations. These include rules on labor and environmental standards, competition policy, investment, and government procurement. The assertiveness of emerging economies has upset the co-leadership positions of the US and the EU and argues for a new, as yet-to-be determined, negotiating process. The latest economic crisis has raised question about the objectives of the agriculture negotiations and has revealed the difficulties faced by an organization that thinks long-term of adapting to changes in the short term. This paper’s recommendations are aimed at improving the ability of the WTO to operate under current conditions and advocates the inclusion of new negotiating topics. If the principle of decision by consensus is not revised the rush to bilateralism is likely to continue, which is dangerous because of its discriminatory character.
“Natural” risks and catastrophes appeared in the international arena in the early 1990s. A real « world » of “natural” catastrophes has emerged internationally and has become more and more institutionalized. This study raises questions such as: how has this space been built? How do actors legitimize its necessity? What does it tell us about the way the contemporary world manages fears globally? A diachronic approach of this double process of internationalization and institutionalization allows the author to situate the phenomenon in the historical and global context, and notably of a context of transformation of the notion of security. The sociological analysis of the main multilateral organizations that contribute to forming this space invites us to apprehend the various lines of tension that cross over, and to foresee its complexity. Despite the many attempts to make this space appear as a “community” of sense and practices, strong disparities characterize the actors’ approaches.
Burcu Gorak Giquel
Cross-border cooperation in the EU policy of regional development is crucial for three reasons: it reinforces partnerships between, on the one hand, central, regional and local agents, and on the other hand, public, private, and associative actors; it rests on the decentralized structure of states, assigning to each level of intervention a unique role in the development process. Finally, it supports local initiative. Cross-border cooperation becomes a vehicle for the “multi-level governance” that the EU intends to promote, by linking organization of regionalized action, cooperation between actors, and solid territorial establishment. For Turkey the task represents a challenge and an opportunity. A challenge, because regionalization directly affects the unitary structure of the state. An opportunity, because the EU does not impose any model of decentralization. On the contrary, the EU gives national actors the chance to create their own public structures in function of their historical path and the negotiation between the centre and the periphery. This is what this study ultimately attempts to show, stressing two aspects of Turkish transformations: decentralization is not a precondition for membership and that different forms of cooperation exist at the borders with Bulgaria and Syria, as a proof of the Europeanization of the Turkish public administrations.
Jean-Pierre Pagé
Jean-Pierre Pagé
José Allouche, Jean-Luc Domenach, Chloé Froissart, Patrick Gilbert, Martine Le Boulaire
Alexandrine Brami Celentano, Jean-Marc Siroën
Since the 1970s, the world follows a triple evolution in favor of democratization, opening and decentralization. Brazil has been following this movement with a democratic and decentralizing constitution and by the adoption of market-friendly policies. However, since the Real Plan (1993), Brazil is recentralizing its fiscal policy. The huge increase of public expenses is predominantly at the profit of the Union, which imposes new fiscal constraints to the States and Municipalities. If the international integration is frequently associated to tax limitations and decentralization, Brazil would depart from this general trend. However Brazilian integration is recent and partial. Integration does not seem to increase inequalities what would justify a centralized transfer from the “winning” regions to the “losing” ones. The fiscal recentralization by higher public expenses might be therefore explained by the political will to reduce initial inequalities and to implement a better social protection. We show that fiscal recentralization is also the consequence of a distorted fiscal system notably in the nature of social security taxes and the type of VAT (ICMS) applied by States.
Jean-Pierre Pagé
Jean-Pierre Pagé
Isabelle Rousseau
Facing a very complex environment with many economical, geopolitical and climate uncertainties and risks, National and International Oil Companies have been looking for a more rationale organizational structure to hold out against competition. This is the problem Pemex – the Mexican National Oil Company - which is third-ranked in world oil production, has been facing with. The reform process is not easy: it implies changes to the Constitution. With the recent democratization of the political regime, none of the major political parties alone is dominant in the Congress and has the capacity to push through such changes. Since the beginning of the nineties, the teams who governed Pemex tried to reply the following questions: Which kind of organizational mechanisms would allow Pemex to conserve its condition as a National Company and, in the same time, to be managed with the private sector principles and criteria? More concretely, is it possible to stimulate a market context inside a state monopoly without modifying the text of the Constitution? How can a new labor culture be created when the very influential Oil Trade Union has been maintaining a corporatist logic of the ancien régime? How to introduce criteria for corporate social responsibility when secrecy has been part of the traditions in the management of the company? What kind of evaluation is it possible to make nowadays about the reforms those managers offered?
Chinese aid and investment in Cambodia have been soaring for the last ten years thus indicating the rising influence of the People’s Republic of China, especially in countries where the Chinese community is strong. Chinese aid, free of any democratic rhetoric, allows the governments benefiting from it to ignore the requirements generally imposed by lending institutions. As a matter of fact, Cambodia is highly dependent on public aid for development. An analysis in terms of historical contingencies reflects a conjunction of two processes of putting a grip on the economy, both in China and Cambodia. Chinese aid and investment thereby help to consolidate a political economy based on arbitrariness, increased inequalities and violence, as well as the overlapping of positions of power and accumulation. In this regard, the analysis must take into account foreign aid not only because it competes with Chinese aid, but also since the Paris Accords it has participated – indirectly – in reinforcing Prime Minister Hun Sen’s power.
