This chapter discusses the USSR’s activities in Antarctica as a continuation of the traditions of Russian/Soviet continental colonialism, particularly of the practices of exploring the far north. It shows how transfer of people, institutions, technologies and discourses from the Arctic to the Antarctic created an interpolar space of Soviet colonialism. On the other hand, the author examines the representations of the Soviet Antarctic programme within the context of the anti-colonial discourse of the Cold War period. Attention is drawn to the USSR’s particular focus on the mineral resources of the icy continent as a manifestation of its colonialist intentions. The chapter examines both the reflection of Antarctica in the resource imagination of the Soviet era and the history of specific research programmes for geological exploration of the continent and its shelf in the second half of the twentieth century. It employs the concept of extractive socialism to highlight the specificity of the Soviet response to resource challenges of the 1970s.
The chapter addresses the question of whether colonialism can be a useful concept to analyse the relationship of Argentina and Chile with Antarctica. To do so, it presents a historical analysis based on the perspective of international practices, examining territorial, scientific and economic approaches to Antarctica. The first section presents the concept of colonialism and relates it to the phenomena of imperialism and nationalism, raising some important analytical questions. The second section presents both countries’ territorial approach to Antarctica, considering these to be distinct from colonialist approaches. The third section contrasts the early scientific projects of Argentina and Chile with those of European powers during the heroic age of Antarctic expeditions, revealing some important differences. The fourth section explores the way in which both countries approached economic activities in the region as a means to ensure sovereignty in the face of what they regarded as imperialist ambitions, differentiating those approaches from the typical extractive approaches of European powers. The final section presents the chapter’s general conclusions, indicating that Argentina and Chile’s approaches should not be subsumed into Eurocentric concepts and perspectives, and that colonialism is not a useful concept to assess both countries’ attitudes toward Antarctica.
Aristotle is known as the founder of political science, the proto-scientific 'observer' who noted what he saw, collected his evidence, made his judgements and contributed to knowledge. This chapter examines the authorial search in The Politics for fixed points of certainty. These are read as tropes making up a concept of nature such that social distinctions (famously, the male citizen elite, women, barbarians and slaves) can then be read out again as natural. This results in a gender hierarchy in the wide sense (race/ethnicity, class, culture and sex) that establishes a hegemonic masculinity. Historically this Aristotelian 'ideal' has been widely admired and imitated as quintessentially 'Athenian' and 'Greek'. Femaleness, for Aristotle, functions as a point where human difference and hierarchy are at their clearest, whereas other boundaries and distinctions that he wishes to establish among males require recourse to animal and machine metaphors to make them visible to 'observation'.
This chapter turns to two contemporary political theorists, writing on Augustine, and putting their own answers to these questions - Jean Bethke Elshtain and William Connolly. It is a meditation, not on Augustine's political theory, but on what political theorists have made of Augustine, on what they want their theorists to be like, and on what does and does not give someone an authorial presence in our imaginations. The chapter views the surviving surfeit of autobiographical material about Augustine as a disadvantage to political theorists who generally need to conceptualise an 'author' for their readings of his texts. It is more about the way that biography is handled within the political tradition, than the political theory of Augustine himself, as we read it today. Reading Augustine for what he writes about himself as a man could make the vagaries of masculinity visible and problematic today in interesting ways.
The St Ermins Group of moderate trade union leaders was born on 10 February 1981. The power behind the St Ermins Group was the initial core (Chapple, Duffy, Grantham and Stanley) together with Golding and Turnock. But there were two other 'special ingredients' to whom all pay tribute and without whom the venture would have had little success: Roger Godsiff and John Spellar. Despite the Kogans' assertion that the union group had no pre-meetings, 49 meetings were held but kept secret. The unions never pressed for the changes promoted by the left which threatened the balance of the coalition groups inside the party by entrenching activist and National Executive Committee power to establish a left-wing hegemony. The 1980 conference was the final straw for many Social Democrats, though the failure to agree a formula for the Electoral College delayed the inevitable until after Wembley.
For German politicians as well as the public at large, Kosovo had remained in the shadow of other crisis-areas in the former Yugoslavia - particularly Bosnia, which absorbed a great deal of political, military and diplomatic attention. The Kosovo crisis provides a number of lessons useful in a more general assessment of German foreign policy in the late 1990s. The government's desire to be a reliable North Atlantic Treaty Organization partner is crucial for understanding the position taken by the Red-Green coalition. Kosovo marked a new plateau for German foreign and security policy since it intensified the discussion about the strategic orientation of the country's foreign policy and enhanced the instruments available for international action. The Common Foreign and Security Policy was among the first victims of the Iraqi crisis.
There can be no doubt about the huge impact that Tony Blair had on the Labour Party. Labour has always been a party which embodied a high degree of internal pluralism, based on its internal factions and tendencies, its federal relations with affiliated organisations, its divided central authority, and its changing amalgam of leadership and democratic internal arrangements. Under Blair, however, there was a new centralising managerial impetus behind the search to make 'New Labour' a united and effective political force and in doing so to undermine other centres of internal power. It was generally expected, therefore, that in creating and reinforcing the leader's supremacy there would be a uniformity and homogeneity to managerial activities on his behalf. The General Election result of 2005 left Blair with a reduced majority still seeking to push through controversial legacy legislation which was to the right of the Labour Party mainstream, and still attempting also to change party and union representation. 'The Blair supremacy', such as it was, is presented as an important example of highly motivated and focused political skills but it is also evaluated as an education in broader and longer term collateral and consequential damage. The book ends with an epilogue where the party management of the new Leader, Brown is examined in the light of the inheritance from Blair, including the problems exacerbated before an election result that became recognised as 'the end of New Labour'.
Canada travelled the roads to Kosovo and Kabul in partnership with the US and Great Britain but the Canadian government decided not to continue this journey to Baghdad. This chapter examines Canada's policy responses to proposals to use armed force against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq in 2003. The Canadian government provided military help and political support to the US in the first two instances but did not give help in the form desired in the third case. In an attempt to soften this refusal, the Canadian government hedged its policy responses with compensatory adjustments and avoided direct opposition to its superpower neighbour. The most significant aspect of the Canadian government environment during the trip from Kosovo to Iraq was executive domination of the foreign policy process.
This book aspires to contribute to the literature on the theory and practice of European political integration by providing a systematic theorisation of Union citizenship and European migration policy, and a set of proposals for institutional reform. The subject matter of this study is a thorough examination of the process of community-building in the European Union, that is, the politics of 'belonging' and 'exclusion', as they find their juridico-political expression in citizenship laws and immigration policies, from the standpoint of normative political theory. This entails an inquiry into: (a) the question of socio-political membership in the emerging European polity and the issue of European identity, (b) the theory and politics of EU citizenship and (c) the issue of immigration. The lens of normative political theory will enable the critical examination of constitutive categories and conceptual frameworks by highlighting the historicity of their construction and possibilities for their reconceptualisation. It will also facilitate the analysis and critical evaluation of European institutions and discussion as to how these may be reformed. The book wishes to partake in the newly emergent but fast-growing search for a new explanatory framework in the Union. Intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism - the two paradigms which have dominated integration theory literature since the mid-1960s - have yielded important insights about the process of European integration, but have been unable to capture the complexity of the political evolution of European governance.
This chapter provides evidence of colonialism in Antarctica through the enacting of different types of borders. Using a postcolonial geographical analysis, it unpacks how these borders manifest and influence human behaviour across space, identity/hybridity and knowledge. The analysis reveals multiple Antarctic spaces and identities, and a distinct gatekeeping of knowledge. These all contain a paradox: the effects of colonial borders linger within Antarctic Treaty System rules and rule-making, separating decision-makers from each other and from Antarctica. At the same time, humans going to Antarctica connect with the collective interest of Antarctica by performing these very rules. The chapter shows how the five main gateways to Antarctica – Hobart, Christchurch, Punta Arenas, Ushuaia and Capetown – are spaces where the enacting of this paradox can be seen most clearly. Gateways are bordering spaces where Gateway states can exert influence upon Antarctic governance; they are also transition spaces to Antarctica via collective bordering practices. The new term extracolonialism is coined to focus on the coexistence of these two dynamics and the different ways in which they are bordered. The chapter argues that the term does two things. First, it acknowledges the legacies of the colonial past instead of avoiding them, particularly in relation to borders; second, it incorporates the sense of performative power of action in new collective spaces where humans work in relationship with Antarctica as nature rather than objectifying it.