Annika E Poppe is Project Director and Postdoctoral Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt‘s (PRIF) department “Intrastate Conflict” and Coordinator of the Research Network External Democracy Promotion (EDP). Address: https://www.hsfk.de/en/no_cache/staff/employees/annika-elena-poppe/
A non-governmental organization (NGO) that is critical of the government's actions in the country... more A non-governmental organization (NGO) that is critical of the government's actions in the country at hand receives a letter from the local tax office, indicating that its public-benefit status has been revoked on the grounds of its involvement in political activities. The decision involves 90 percent of the organization's revenues, which, as a result, threatens its very existence. After a court has reviewed and closed the case in favor of the NGO, the central government intervenes, insisting that the judgment should be reviewed. For the time being, the organization's public-benefit status has been revoked. This story sounds familiar to anyone acquainted with the recent trend of closing space around civil society worldwide. Since the early 2000s, some 60 governments worldwide have used legal, administrative, and extra-legal measures to limit the capacity, autonomy, and/or space of civil society actors in their respective countries. Russia, Egypt, and Ethiopia, along with many other countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, are much-discussed examples of the phenomenon of closing civic space. The United States, Israel, Poland, and Hungary are also sometimes included in the list of countries that restrict space for civil society. Germany, however, is rarely considered problematic when it comes to the protection of civic space, yet the story outlined above takes place in Germany. The NGO in question is the German branch of ATTAC, a network of organizations that describes itself as “an international movement working towards social, environmental, and democratic alternatives in the globalization process.”
Eine Nichtregierungsorganisation, die regelmäßig durch regierungskritische Statements und Aktione... more Eine Nichtregierungsorganisation, die regelmäßig durch regierungskritische Statements und Aktionen auf sich aufmerksam macht, erhält ein Schreiben des für sie zuständigen Finanzamtes: Da sie sich über Gebühr politisch engagiere, werde ihr der Status als gemeinnützige Organisation entzogen. Die Entscheidung ist existenzbedrohend, stehen mit dem Verlust der Gemeinnützigkeit doch rund 90% der Einnahmen der NGO auf dem Spiel. Nachdem die Organisation vor Gericht Recht bekommt, interveniert die Zentralregierung und dringt auf eine Revision des Urteils. Bis auf Weiteres bleibt der Organisation die Gemeinnützigkeit verwehrt.
Whither to, Obama? U.S. democracy promotion after the Cold War, 2010
Democracy promotion is an issue at the heart of U.S. national identity and no U.S. president can ... more Democracy promotion is an issue at the heart of U.S. national identity and no U.S. president can afford to ignore or disregard it completely. Nevertheless, there has been considerable debate over how recent presidencies have addressed this issue. In this PRIF Report Annika E. Poppe assesses Obama and his most recent predecessors, Clinton and Bush, in terms of their democracy promotion policies and examines the future prospects of such policy. She concludes that the Obama administration is more sober and pragmatic in assessing democracy promotion’s chances and seems to be pursuing a new foreign policy valuing partnership and engagement - even with authoritarian governments - over normative dogmatism and unilateralism.
Quo vadis, Obama? US-amerikanische Demokratieförderpolitik nach dem Kalten Krieg, 2011
Die Demokratieförderung ist eines der Herzstücke der amerikanischen nationalen Identität. Kein US... more Die Demokratieförderung ist eines der Herzstücke der amerikanischen nationalen Identität. Kein US-Präsident kann es sich leisten, dieses Thema zu ignorieren. Allerdings gibt es deutliche Unterschiede, wie die amerikanischen Präsidenten in der Vergangenheit mit diesem Thema umgegangen sind.
Im PRIF Report Whither to, Obama? untersucht Annika E. Poppe, wie Präsident Obama mit der Bush Hinterlassenschaft – der internationalen Demokratieförderung – umgeht. Behält er den Kurs mit leichten Veränderungen bei oder schlägt er einen völlig neuen Weg ein?
Dieser HSFK-Report ist eine Übersetzung des 2010 erschienenen PRIF-Reports No. 96: Whither to, Obama? U.S. democracy promotion after the Cold War.
Paper presented at the 57th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association (ISA), 16-19 March 2016, Atlanta, GA.
External democracy promotion, while enjoying a honeymoon period in the 1990s, has recently run in... more External democracy promotion, while enjoying a honeymoon period in the 1990s, has recently run into trouble. Since the mid-2000s, observers talk about a "backlash" against democracy promotion, pointing to an increasing resistance to democracy promotion by a growing number of recipient or target countries. The paper focuses on the most widespread and, arguably , most important dimension of this resistance: the increasing limitations to the foreign funding of civil society groups. In analyzing the debate about this so-called closing space phenomenon both at the global level (UN Human Rights Council) and in an individual case (US-Egyptian relations), we show that the controversy over international civil society support includes significant normative contestation characterized, inter alia, by competing references to perceptions and claims of in/justice ("justice conflicts"). In this sense, the foreign funding debate reveals the fundamentally unsettled nature of the international norms that (are supposed to) legitimize the practice of external democracy promotion.
PRIF-Report No. 137 re-assesses current conflicts over international civil society support and ca... more PRIF-Report No. 137 re-assesses current conflicts over international civil society support and calls for a global debate about the international norms that regulate external civil society support. During the last ten years, a large number of states around the world have taken measures to restrict or openly resist the activities of foreign governments and non-state actors that support local civil society groups. Some governments have started to limit the amount of foreign funding a non-governmental organization is allowed to receive; others delegitimize, intimidate or openly harass groups that receive external support, or go after those foreign organizations implementing civil society aid. This phenomenon of increasing legal restrictions and political resistance on external civil society support has been dubbed “the closing space” and is part of a general trend in increasing challenges to, and open resistance against, the international promotion of democracy and human rights. In recent years, the closing space has received increasing attention by civil society activists, policy-makers and academics, resulting in a series of studies that map the phenomenon, identifying its scope and depth as well as its characteristics and evolution over time. Yet, what existing accounts largely, or deliberately downplay, is the normative dimension of the problem at hand. In PRIF-Report No. 137 “From Closing Space to Contested Spaces. Re-assessing Current Conflicts over International Civil Society Support”, Jonas Wolff and Annika Elena Poppe analyze the normative dimension of the phenomenon. In looking at the global debate in the UN Human Rights Council and at four cases (Ethiopia, India, Egypt, and Bolivia), they assess the normative claims brought forward in order to either justify or reject restrictions on external civil society support. The authors show that governments in the Global South have good reasons to be concerned about the foreign funding of domestic civil society groups and argue that a promising response to the spread of closing spaces cannot but include a serious engagement with these concerns.
"One of the most intriguing findings in the literature on WMD arms control is the particularly su... more "One of the most intriguing findings in the literature on WMD arms control is the particularly successful diffusion of the norm of non-use (e.g. Tannenwald, Price). While the destruction of two Japanese cities triggered a ‘nuclear taboo’ in the world as we know it, there is no such norm in the Battlestar Galactica (BSG) universe, although the 2003-2009 TV-series starts with a nuclear holocaust that destroys a whole civilization.
We argue that the failure of a taboo to develop in BSG can be attributed to three key factors: (1) Horrendous effects of nuclear weapons, crucial for the emergence of the taboo in our world, are, if present at all, significantly mitigated in the series. (2) In our international system, a tight web of discourses, regimes and institutions facilitated the emergence of strong norms against the use of nuclear weapons. The BSG universe does not know such institutions, not to speak of arms control or even comparable international interaction. (3) Both actors, Cylons and Colonials, socially construct each other as a ‘radical other’, which renders possible – and even calls for – the goal of destroying the enemy with no means precluded.
Using BSG as a science-fictional quasi-factual, we outline dangers to ’our’ taboo which, in contrast to BSG, are very real, especially since the Bush years: (1) technological progress and growing political inclination to develop ‘clean’ mini nukes, (2) continuous portrayal of opponents as ‘unjust enemies’ or rogues, and (3) arms control regimes under considerable strain.
"
The nuclear age has been characterized by an emerging and now well-established norm of nuclear no... more The nuclear age has been characterized by an emerging and now well-established norm of nuclear non-use, the ‘nuclear taboo’. In the realistic and naturalistic setting of the science-fiction TV series Battlestar Galactica, however, nuclear weapons are used frequently and at times massively. Claiming that science fiction can function as an illuminating ‘mirror’ for international relations scholarship and that we can learn something from ‘second-order’ (fictional) worlds, this article explores potential in-show reasons that render the absence of a nuclear taboo plausible within the universe of Battlestar Galactica. We turn to the central pillars of the nuclear taboo in the real world and find them reversed in the show: nuclear weapons are (depicted as) ‘clean’, international institutions are absent, and the enemy is socially constructed as a ‘radical other’, thus rendering the possibility, if not likelihood, of nuclear war plausible. With these insights, we return to our world and argue that, particularly during the years of the George W Bush presidency, the erosion tendencies of the nuclear taboo were indeed quite serious: technological progress and growing political inclination expedited plans to develop usable nuclear weapons, arms control regimes came under considerable strain, and opponents were portrayed as ‘unjust enemies’ or ‘rogues’.
This article makes the case for why we should turn to studying democracy promotion negotiation, o... more This article makes the case for why we should turn to studying democracy promotion negotiation, outlines the research questions guiding this special issue, identifies overarching findings and summarizes the individual contributions. After outlining the rationale for more attention to the issue of negotiation, which we understand as a specific form of interaction between external and local actors in democracy promotion, we outline three basic assumptions informing our research: (1) Democracy promotion is an international practice that is necessarily accompanied by processes of negotiation. (2) These negotiation processes, in turn, have an impact upon the practice and outcome of democracy promotion. (3) For external democracy promotion to be mutually owned and effective, genuine negotiations between ‘promoters’ and ‘local actors’ are indispensable; the term ‘genuine’ here being understood as including a substantial exchange on diverging values and interests. The article, then, introduces the three research questions for this agenda, concerning the issues on the negotiation table, the parameters shaping negotiation processes, and the results of democracy promotion negotiation. We conclude by presenting an overview of the overarching findings of the special issue as well as with brief summaries of the individual contributions.
This article presents an analytical framework that guides the contributions to this special issue... more This article presents an analytical framework that guides the contributions to this special issue and, in general terms, aims at enabling a systematic investigation of processes of negotiation in the international promotion of democracy. It first briefly introduces the rationale for studying democracy promotion negotiation, offers a definition, and locates the general approach within the academic literature, bringing together different strands of research, namely studies of negotiation in international relations as well as research on democratization and democracy promotion. The larger part of the article then discusses key concepts, analytical distinctions and theoretical propositions along the lines of the three research questions that are identified in the introduction to this special issue. More specifically, the article (1) offers a typology that facilitates a systematic empirical analysis of the issues that are discussed in democracy promotion negotiations; (2) takes initial steps towards a causal theory of democracy promotion negotiation by identifying and discussing a set of parameters that can be expected to shape such negotiations; and (3) introduces key distinctions and dimensions that help guide empirical research on the output and outcome of negotiations in democracy promotion.
Civil society organizations are facing increasing political restrictions all over the world. Freq... more Civil society organizations are facing increasing political restrictions all over the world. Frequently , these restrictions apply to the foreign funding of NGOs and thus curtail the space for external civil society support, which, since the 1990s, has become a key element in international democracy and human rights promotion. This so-called 'closing space' phenomenon has received growing attention by civil society activists, policymakers and academics. Existing studies (and political responses), however, neglect the crucial normative dimension of the problem at hand: As we show, the political controversy over civil society support is characterized by norm contestation, and this contestation reveals competing perceptions of in/justice and touches upon core principles of contemporary world order. Taking this dimension into account is essential if we are to academically understand, and politically respond to, the 'closing space' challenge. It is also highly relevant with regard to current debates on how to conceptualize and construct order in a world that is plural in many regards and in which liberal norms are fundamentally contested. Empirically, the paper combines an assessment of the global debate about closing space in the UN Human Rights Council with an analysis of a specific controversy over the issue in US-Egyptian relations.
Special Issue of Democratization (26: 5, 2019), coordinated by the German research network "Exter... more Special Issue of Democratization (26: 5, 2019), coordinated by the German research network "External Democracy Promotion "(EDP) and co-edited by Annika E. Poppe, Julia Leininger and Jonas Wolff. All articles are available open access at https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/fdem20/26/5.
A non-governmental organization (NGO) that is critical of the government's actions in the country... more A non-governmental organization (NGO) that is critical of the government's actions in the country at hand receives a letter from the local tax office, indicating that its public-benefit status has been revoked on the grounds of its involvement in political activities. The decision involves 90 percent of the organization's revenues, which, as a result, threatens its very existence. After a court has reviewed and closed the case in favor of the NGO, the central government intervenes, insisting that the judgment should be reviewed. For the time being, the organization's public-benefit status has been revoked. This story sounds familiar to anyone acquainted with the recent trend of closing space around civil society worldwide. Since the early 2000s, some 60 governments worldwide have used legal, administrative, and extra-legal measures to limit the capacity, autonomy, and/or space of civil society actors in their respective countries. Russia, Egypt, and Ethiopia, along with many other countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, are much-discussed examples of the phenomenon of closing civic space. The United States, Israel, Poland, and Hungary are also sometimes included in the list of countries that restrict space for civil society. Germany, however, is rarely considered problematic when it comes to the protection of civic space, yet the story outlined above takes place in Germany. The NGO in question is the German branch of ATTAC, a network of organizations that describes itself as “an international movement working towards social, environmental, and democratic alternatives in the globalization process.”
Eine Nichtregierungsorganisation, die regelmäßig durch regierungskritische Statements und Aktione... more Eine Nichtregierungsorganisation, die regelmäßig durch regierungskritische Statements und Aktionen auf sich aufmerksam macht, erhält ein Schreiben des für sie zuständigen Finanzamtes: Da sie sich über Gebühr politisch engagiere, werde ihr der Status als gemeinnützige Organisation entzogen. Die Entscheidung ist existenzbedrohend, stehen mit dem Verlust der Gemeinnützigkeit doch rund 90% der Einnahmen der NGO auf dem Spiel. Nachdem die Organisation vor Gericht Recht bekommt, interveniert die Zentralregierung und dringt auf eine Revision des Urteils. Bis auf Weiteres bleibt der Organisation die Gemeinnützigkeit verwehrt.
Whither to, Obama? U.S. democracy promotion after the Cold War, 2010
Democracy promotion is an issue at the heart of U.S. national identity and no U.S. president can ... more Democracy promotion is an issue at the heart of U.S. national identity and no U.S. president can afford to ignore or disregard it completely. Nevertheless, there has been considerable debate over how recent presidencies have addressed this issue. In this PRIF Report Annika E. Poppe assesses Obama and his most recent predecessors, Clinton and Bush, in terms of their democracy promotion policies and examines the future prospects of such policy. She concludes that the Obama administration is more sober and pragmatic in assessing democracy promotion’s chances and seems to be pursuing a new foreign policy valuing partnership and engagement - even with authoritarian governments - over normative dogmatism and unilateralism.
Quo vadis, Obama? US-amerikanische Demokratieförderpolitik nach dem Kalten Krieg, 2011
Die Demokratieförderung ist eines der Herzstücke der amerikanischen nationalen Identität. Kein US... more Die Demokratieförderung ist eines der Herzstücke der amerikanischen nationalen Identität. Kein US-Präsident kann es sich leisten, dieses Thema zu ignorieren. Allerdings gibt es deutliche Unterschiede, wie die amerikanischen Präsidenten in der Vergangenheit mit diesem Thema umgegangen sind.
Im PRIF Report Whither to, Obama? untersucht Annika E. Poppe, wie Präsident Obama mit der Bush Hinterlassenschaft – der internationalen Demokratieförderung – umgeht. Behält er den Kurs mit leichten Veränderungen bei oder schlägt er einen völlig neuen Weg ein?
Dieser HSFK-Report ist eine Übersetzung des 2010 erschienenen PRIF-Reports No. 96: Whither to, Obama? U.S. democracy promotion after the Cold War.
Paper presented at the 57th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association (ISA), 16-19 March 2016, Atlanta, GA.
External democracy promotion, while enjoying a honeymoon period in the 1990s, has recently run in... more External democracy promotion, while enjoying a honeymoon period in the 1990s, has recently run into trouble. Since the mid-2000s, observers talk about a "backlash" against democracy promotion, pointing to an increasing resistance to democracy promotion by a growing number of recipient or target countries. The paper focuses on the most widespread and, arguably , most important dimension of this resistance: the increasing limitations to the foreign funding of civil society groups. In analyzing the debate about this so-called closing space phenomenon both at the global level (UN Human Rights Council) and in an individual case (US-Egyptian relations), we show that the controversy over international civil society support includes significant normative contestation characterized, inter alia, by competing references to perceptions and claims of in/justice ("justice conflicts"). In this sense, the foreign funding debate reveals the fundamentally unsettled nature of the international norms that (are supposed to) legitimize the practice of external democracy promotion.
PRIF-Report No. 137 re-assesses current conflicts over international civil society support and ca... more PRIF-Report No. 137 re-assesses current conflicts over international civil society support and calls for a global debate about the international norms that regulate external civil society support. During the last ten years, a large number of states around the world have taken measures to restrict or openly resist the activities of foreign governments and non-state actors that support local civil society groups. Some governments have started to limit the amount of foreign funding a non-governmental organization is allowed to receive; others delegitimize, intimidate or openly harass groups that receive external support, or go after those foreign organizations implementing civil society aid. This phenomenon of increasing legal restrictions and political resistance on external civil society support has been dubbed “the closing space” and is part of a general trend in increasing challenges to, and open resistance against, the international promotion of democracy and human rights. In recent years, the closing space has received increasing attention by civil society activists, policy-makers and academics, resulting in a series of studies that map the phenomenon, identifying its scope and depth as well as its characteristics and evolution over time. Yet, what existing accounts largely, or deliberately downplay, is the normative dimension of the problem at hand. In PRIF-Report No. 137 “From Closing Space to Contested Spaces. Re-assessing Current Conflicts over International Civil Society Support”, Jonas Wolff and Annika Elena Poppe analyze the normative dimension of the phenomenon. In looking at the global debate in the UN Human Rights Council and at four cases (Ethiopia, India, Egypt, and Bolivia), they assess the normative claims brought forward in order to either justify or reject restrictions on external civil society support. The authors show that governments in the Global South have good reasons to be concerned about the foreign funding of domestic civil society groups and argue that a promising response to the spread of closing spaces cannot but include a serious engagement with these concerns.
"One of the most intriguing findings in the literature on WMD arms control is the particularly su... more "One of the most intriguing findings in the literature on WMD arms control is the particularly successful diffusion of the norm of non-use (e.g. Tannenwald, Price). While the destruction of two Japanese cities triggered a ‘nuclear taboo’ in the world as we know it, there is no such norm in the Battlestar Galactica (BSG) universe, although the 2003-2009 TV-series starts with a nuclear holocaust that destroys a whole civilization.
We argue that the failure of a taboo to develop in BSG can be attributed to three key factors: (1) Horrendous effects of nuclear weapons, crucial for the emergence of the taboo in our world, are, if present at all, significantly mitigated in the series. (2) In our international system, a tight web of discourses, regimes and institutions facilitated the emergence of strong norms against the use of nuclear weapons. The BSG universe does not know such institutions, not to speak of arms control or even comparable international interaction. (3) Both actors, Cylons and Colonials, socially construct each other as a ‘radical other’, which renders possible – and even calls for – the goal of destroying the enemy with no means precluded.
Using BSG as a science-fictional quasi-factual, we outline dangers to ’our’ taboo which, in contrast to BSG, are very real, especially since the Bush years: (1) technological progress and growing political inclination to develop ‘clean’ mini nukes, (2) continuous portrayal of opponents as ‘unjust enemies’ or rogues, and (3) arms control regimes under considerable strain.
"
The nuclear age has been characterized by an emerging and now well-established norm of nuclear no... more The nuclear age has been characterized by an emerging and now well-established norm of nuclear non-use, the ‘nuclear taboo’. In the realistic and naturalistic setting of the science-fiction TV series Battlestar Galactica, however, nuclear weapons are used frequently and at times massively. Claiming that science fiction can function as an illuminating ‘mirror’ for international relations scholarship and that we can learn something from ‘second-order’ (fictional) worlds, this article explores potential in-show reasons that render the absence of a nuclear taboo plausible within the universe of Battlestar Galactica. We turn to the central pillars of the nuclear taboo in the real world and find them reversed in the show: nuclear weapons are (depicted as) ‘clean’, international institutions are absent, and the enemy is socially constructed as a ‘radical other’, thus rendering the possibility, if not likelihood, of nuclear war plausible. With these insights, we return to our world and argue that, particularly during the years of the George W Bush presidency, the erosion tendencies of the nuclear taboo were indeed quite serious: technological progress and growing political inclination expedited plans to develop usable nuclear weapons, arms control regimes came under considerable strain, and opponents were portrayed as ‘unjust enemies’ or ‘rogues’.
This article makes the case for why we should turn to studying democracy promotion negotiation, o... more This article makes the case for why we should turn to studying democracy promotion negotiation, outlines the research questions guiding this special issue, identifies overarching findings and summarizes the individual contributions. After outlining the rationale for more attention to the issue of negotiation, which we understand as a specific form of interaction between external and local actors in democracy promotion, we outline three basic assumptions informing our research: (1) Democracy promotion is an international practice that is necessarily accompanied by processes of negotiation. (2) These negotiation processes, in turn, have an impact upon the practice and outcome of democracy promotion. (3) For external democracy promotion to be mutually owned and effective, genuine negotiations between ‘promoters’ and ‘local actors’ are indispensable; the term ‘genuine’ here being understood as including a substantial exchange on diverging values and interests. The article, then, introduces the three research questions for this agenda, concerning the issues on the negotiation table, the parameters shaping negotiation processes, and the results of democracy promotion negotiation. We conclude by presenting an overview of the overarching findings of the special issue as well as with brief summaries of the individual contributions.
This article presents an analytical framework that guides the contributions to this special issue... more This article presents an analytical framework that guides the contributions to this special issue and, in general terms, aims at enabling a systematic investigation of processes of negotiation in the international promotion of democracy. It first briefly introduces the rationale for studying democracy promotion negotiation, offers a definition, and locates the general approach within the academic literature, bringing together different strands of research, namely studies of negotiation in international relations as well as research on democratization and democracy promotion. The larger part of the article then discusses key concepts, analytical distinctions and theoretical propositions along the lines of the three research questions that are identified in the introduction to this special issue. More specifically, the article (1) offers a typology that facilitates a systematic empirical analysis of the issues that are discussed in democracy promotion negotiations; (2) takes initial steps towards a causal theory of democracy promotion negotiation by identifying and discussing a set of parameters that can be expected to shape such negotiations; and (3) introduces key distinctions and dimensions that help guide empirical research on the output and outcome of negotiations in democracy promotion.
Civil society organizations are facing increasing political restrictions all over the world. Freq... more Civil society organizations are facing increasing political restrictions all over the world. Frequently , these restrictions apply to the foreign funding of NGOs and thus curtail the space for external civil society support, which, since the 1990s, has become a key element in international democracy and human rights promotion. This so-called 'closing space' phenomenon has received growing attention by civil society activists, policymakers and academics. Existing studies (and political responses), however, neglect the crucial normative dimension of the problem at hand: As we show, the political controversy over civil society support is characterized by norm contestation, and this contestation reveals competing perceptions of in/justice and touches upon core principles of contemporary world order. Taking this dimension into account is essential if we are to academically understand, and politically respond to, the 'closing space' challenge. It is also highly relevant with regard to current debates on how to conceptualize and construct order in a world that is plural in many regards and in which liberal norms are fundamentally contested. Empirically, the paper combines an assessment of the global debate about closing space in the UN Human Rights Council with an analysis of a specific controversy over the issue in US-Egyptian relations.
Special Issue of Democratization (26: 5, 2019), coordinated by the German research network "Exter... more Special Issue of Democratization (26: 5, 2019), coordinated by the German research network "External Democracy Promotion "(EDP) and co-edited by Annika E. Poppe, Julia Leininger and Jonas Wolff. All articles are available open access at https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/fdem20/26/5.
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This story sounds familiar to anyone acquainted with the recent trend of closing space around civil society worldwide. Since the early 2000s, some 60 governments worldwide have used legal, administrative, and extra-legal measures to limit the capacity, autonomy, and/or space of civil society actors in their respective countries. Russia, Egypt, and Ethiopia, along with many other countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, are much-discussed examples of the phenomenon of closing civic space. The United States, Israel, Poland, and Hungary are also sometimes included in the list of countries that restrict space for civil society. Germany, however, is rarely considered problematic when it comes to the protection of civic space, yet the story outlined above takes place in Germany. The NGO in question is the German branch of ATTAC, a network of organizations that describes itself as “an international movement working towards social, environmental, and democratic alternatives in the globalization process.”
Im PRIF Report Whither to, Obama? untersucht Annika E. Poppe, wie Präsident Obama mit der Bush Hinterlassenschaft – der internationalen Demokratieförderung – umgeht. Behält er den Kurs mit leichten Veränderungen bei oder schlägt er einen völlig neuen Weg ein?
Dieser HSFK-Report ist eine Übersetzung des 2010 erschienenen PRIF-Reports No. 96:
Whither to, Obama? U.S. democracy promotion after the Cold War.
During the last ten years, a large number of states around the world have taken measures to restrict or openly resist the activities of foreign governments and non-state actors that support local civil society groups. Some governments have started to limit the amount of foreign funding a non-governmental organization is allowed to receive; others delegitimize, intimidate or openly harass groups that receive external support, or go after those foreign organizations implementing civil society aid. This phenomenon of increasing legal restrictions and political resistance on external civil society support has been dubbed “the closing space” and is part of a general trend in increasing challenges to, and open resistance against, the international promotion of democracy and human rights.
In recent years, the closing space has received increasing attention by civil society activists, policy-makers and academics, resulting in a series of studies that map the phenomenon, identifying its scope and depth as well as its characteristics and evolution over time. Yet, what existing accounts largely, or deliberately downplay, is the normative dimension of the problem at hand.
In PRIF-Report No. 137 “From Closing Space to Contested Spaces. Re-assessing Current Conflicts over International Civil Society Support”, Jonas Wolff and Annika Elena Poppe analyze the normative dimension of the phenomenon. In looking at the global debate in the UN Human Rights Council and at four cases (Ethiopia, India, Egypt, and Bolivia), they assess the normative claims brought forward in order to either justify or reject restrictions on external civil society support.
The authors show that governments in the Global South have good reasons to be concerned about the foreign funding of domestic civil society groups and argue that a promising response to the spread of closing spaces cannot but include a serious engagement with these concerns.
We argue that the failure of a taboo to develop in BSG can be attributed to three key factors: (1) Horrendous effects of nuclear weapons, crucial for the emergence of the taboo in our world, are, if present at all, significantly mitigated in the series. (2) In our international system, a tight web of discourses, regimes and institutions facilitated the emergence of strong norms against the use of nuclear weapons. The BSG universe does not know such institutions, not to speak of arms control or even comparable international interaction. (3) Both actors, Cylons and Colonials, socially construct each other as a ‘radical other’, which renders possible – and even calls for – the goal of destroying the enemy with no means precluded.
Using BSG as a science-fictional quasi-factual, we outline dangers to ’our’ taboo which, in contrast to BSG, are very real, especially since the Bush years: (1) technological progress and growing political inclination to develop ‘clean’ mini nukes, (2) continuous portrayal of opponents as ‘unjust enemies’ or rogues, and (3) arms control regimes under considerable strain.
"
This story sounds familiar to anyone acquainted with the recent trend of closing space around civil society worldwide. Since the early 2000s, some 60 governments worldwide have used legal, administrative, and extra-legal measures to limit the capacity, autonomy, and/or space of civil society actors in their respective countries. Russia, Egypt, and Ethiopia, along with many other countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, are much-discussed examples of the phenomenon of closing civic space. The United States, Israel, Poland, and Hungary are also sometimes included in the list of countries that restrict space for civil society. Germany, however, is rarely considered problematic when it comes to the protection of civic space, yet the story outlined above takes place in Germany. The NGO in question is the German branch of ATTAC, a network of organizations that describes itself as “an international movement working towards social, environmental, and democratic alternatives in the globalization process.”
Im PRIF Report Whither to, Obama? untersucht Annika E. Poppe, wie Präsident Obama mit der Bush Hinterlassenschaft – der internationalen Demokratieförderung – umgeht. Behält er den Kurs mit leichten Veränderungen bei oder schlägt er einen völlig neuen Weg ein?
Dieser HSFK-Report ist eine Übersetzung des 2010 erschienenen PRIF-Reports No. 96:
Whither to, Obama? U.S. democracy promotion after the Cold War.
During the last ten years, a large number of states around the world have taken measures to restrict or openly resist the activities of foreign governments and non-state actors that support local civil society groups. Some governments have started to limit the amount of foreign funding a non-governmental organization is allowed to receive; others delegitimize, intimidate or openly harass groups that receive external support, or go after those foreign organizations implementing civil society aid. This phenomenon of increasing legal restrictions and political resistance on external civil society support has been dubbed “the closing space” and is part of a general trend in increasing challenges to, and open resistance against, the international promotion of democracy and human rights.
In recent years, the closing space has received increasing attention by civil society activists, policy-makers and academics, resulting in a series of studies that map the phenomenon, identifying its scope and depth as well as its characteristics and evolution over time. Yet, what existing accounts largely, or deliberately downplay, is the normative dimension of the problem at hand.
In PRIF-Report No. 137 “From Closing Space to Contested Spaces. Re-assessing Current Conflicts over International Civil Society Support”, Jonas Wolff and Annika Elena Poppe analyze the normative dimension of the phenomenon. In looking at the global debate in the UN Human Rights Council and at four cases (Ethiopia, India, Egypt, and Bolivia), they assess the normative claims brought forward in order to either justify or reject restrictions on external civil society support.
The authors show that governments in the Global South have good reasons to be concerned about the foreign funding of domestic civil society groups and argue that a promising response to the spread of closing spaces cannot but include a serious engagement with these concerns.
We argue that the failure of a taboo to develop in BSG can be attributed to three key factors: (1) Horrendous effects of nuclear weapons, crucial for the emergence of the taboo in our world, are, if present at all, significantly mitigated in the series. (2) In our international system, a tight web of discourses, regimes and institutions facilitated the emergence of strong norms against the use of nuclear weapons. The BSG universe does not know such institutions, not to speak of arms control or even comparable international interaction. (3) Both actors, Cylons and Colonials, socially construct each other as a ‘radical other’, which renders possible – and even calls for – the goal of destroying the enemy with no means precluded.
Using BSG as a science-fictional quasi-factual, we outline dangers to ’our’ taboo which, in contrast to BSG, are very real, especially since the Bush years: (1) technological progress and growing political inclination to develop ‘clean’ mini nukes, (2) continuous portrayal of opponents as ‘unjust enemies’ or rogues, and (3) arms control regimes under considerable strain.
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