ISSN 1848-5782XIX (69) - 2013

No Synonyms: Global Governance and the Transnational PublicMaja Turnšek Hančič

Genetic Knowledge and Genetic Reproduction Technologies as New Modes of Governance – are We Witnessing a New Form of Eugenics?Lara Barberić

Sri Lanka: Physical Reconstruction and Economic Development as Conflict Prevention FactorsBoženko Đevoić

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Croatian International Relations Review - CIRR

Editor in Chief:

Senada Šelo Šabić, PhD Research Fellow, Department for International Economic

and Political Relations (IRMO)

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Daniel Dăianu,Professor, National School for Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest

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Gianni Bonvicini,Vice President, Institute for International Affairs, Rome

Milica Uvalić,Professor, School of Political Science,University of Perugia

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Contents

The Croatian International Relations Review – CIRR is published bi-annually by the Institute for Development and International Relations – IRMO. Its thematic focus is in political science and related fields. The journal is sponsored by the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia.

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ISSN 1848-5782 UDC 327(497.5)

No Synonyms: Global Governance and the Transnational Public........................................................................5

Genetic Knowledge and Genetic Reproduction Technologies as New Modes of Governance – are We Witnessing a New Form of Eugenics?....................................................................33

Sri Lanka: Physical Reconstruction and Economic Development as Conflict Prevention Factors............................................................55

Book Reviews........................................................................................77

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CIRR XIX (69) 2013, 5-31ISSN 1848-5782UDC 575:172.2:32DOI 10.2478/cirr-2014-0001

No Synonyms: Global Governance and the Transnational Public

Maja Turnšek Hancic

Abstract

Building on the classical literature of the public, the article critically analyses the current literature on global governance. After briefly presenting the classical understanding of the public the author goes on to argue that in global governance the effectiveness of collective problem-solving is seen as a compensation for its lack of inclusiveness which in turn makes it impossible to equate global governance with (transnational) public. The author criticizes the substitution of the term “the public” by “stakeholders” since the notion of stakeholders allows for economically powerful voices to intervene in public decision-making processes. The article furthermore criticizes ideas on global governance as “strong publics” on the basis that even if the decision-making seen in global governance was to follow the ideal of rational deliberation, this would not make it equal to the transnational publics, since the deliberations of transnational “strong publics” are per definition exclusive in nature.

KEY WORDS:

global governance, transnational communication, transnational public sphere, stakeholders

IRMO

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Introduction

In recent years, a new term has been coined to refer to the regulation of transnational public affairs: global governance. Finkelstein (1995: 369) defines global governance as governing - without sovereign authority - relationships that transcend national frontiers. Similarly, according to Dryzek (2000: 120), global governance is “the creation and maintenance of order and the resolution of joint problems in the absence of such binding decision structures”. The Commission on Global Governance describes global governance as “the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, manage their common affairs” (Report of the Commission on Global Governance 1995: 1)1. Global governance is thus presented as a process in which there is no central authority that would make binding decisions upon the global polity, yet the global community finds ways to resolve common problems. Such claims for global governance come very close to Dewey’s classical understanding (1927/1954) of an organised public – a process in which members of the public come together in order to regulate public affairs.

This article critically analyses such optimistic, positive accounts of global governance. Specifically, we analyse four explicit statements in current scholarship on global governance that evoke the idea that a transnational public should be sought within the developing processes of global governance:

a. in global governance, decision-making processes follow rational, deliberative practices (e.g. Lynch 2000, Eriksen and Fossum 2001, Kapoor 2005, Mitzen 2005);

b. global governance represents the transnational public sphere since it involves inclusive, deliberative consultations (e.g. Dryzek 1996, Nanz and Steffek 2004, Eckersley 2007);

1 It is important to note here that this article does not address all understandings of governance theory, but only those that (a) address global or transnational governance and (b) extend governance from a private affair into a public affair. The private here means that the subjects are understood as owners who regulate their property, as for example in the case of Carver’s conceptualisation of board governance theory which addresses “the direct process by which owners’ agents exercise ownership prerogatives over the corporate enterprise” (Carver 2010, 150).

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c. global governance is an inclusive phenomenon since it includes stakeholders (e.g. Held and Koenig-Archibugi 2004, Bäckstrand 2006, MacDonald 2008);

d. global governance is the process whereby transnational public is-sues are regulated and the effectiveness of this regulation provides it with legitimacy (e.g. Bäckstrand 2006).

By critically responding to these statements, we juxtapose the current literature on global governance with the classical literature on the public. The article is divided into five sections. In the first section we will present a classical, normative understanding of the public as a democratic ideal. Each of the following sections deals critically with one of the four statements presented above: (a) global governance as rational deliberation, (b) as deliberative consultation, (c) as including stakeholders, (d) as a process in which its effectiveness constitutes its legitimacy.

The public in its classical understanding

The public in its classical understanding was not understood to be solely a national phenomenon. Kant (1795/1957) proposed that publicity should extend national borders and serve the cause of world peace. A good century later, World War I led Tönnies (1922/1998: 433-444) and Dewey (1927/1954) to express similar sentiments. Tarde conceptualised the public as being composed around the printing press, and proposed that journalism has not only nationalised but also internationalised the “public mind” (Tarde 1989/1969: 303-304). Blumer (1946/1953: 46) specifically stressed that the public is not necessarily the same as the citizenry of a nation-state, since its outer boundaries are defined by the issue at hand. In criticising current literature on global governance, I build primarily on this classical literature about the public, drawing on writings from the European Enlightenment in the 18th century (Kant 1784, 1795/1957, Bentham 1791/1843, Mill 1832), as well as early 20th-century German (Tönnies 1922/1988) and American thinking about the public (e.g. Dewey 1927/1954, Park 1924/2007, Mills 1956, Blumer 1946/1953).

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This tradition conceives of the public as a democratic ideal with four dimensions: structural conditions, process, content, and efficacy. The first refers to the conditions under which the public is formed, the second to the conditions to which members of the public adhere while deliberating, the third to what the public is deliberating about and the fourth to the results of its deliberation.

(a) Structure: The public is a group of people who are confronted by a potentially public issue, are divided by their ideas as to how to address the issue and proceed to engage in deliberation (Blumer 1946/1953: 46). All those who are potentially affected are able to participate as peers in deliberations concerning the organisation of their common affairs (Fraser 2007: 20). The public is autonomous from and serves as a public check on public powers in authority (Bentham 1791/1843). Institutional authority, with its sanctions and controls, does not, therefore, penetrate the public (Mills 1956: 304). Nor could power and money influence its deliberation (Habermas 1996: 364). Finally, the information that members of the public need in order to become aware of some potential public problem and make the best decision possible is publicly accessible (in analogy with Bentham 1791/1843: n.p. Splichal 2002: 168, Gastil 2008: 20).

(b) Process: The public’s deliberation proceeds in such a way that in the public as many people express opinions as receive them and everyone has the opportunity to respond to an opinion without internal or external reprisals being taken (Mills 1956: 302–304). Deliberators provide mutually justifiable reasons for their assertions (Gutmann and Thompson 1996: 129).The authority of deliberators is built purely upon their deliberative proposals and not outside sources of power (Cohen 1989: 21). Every member of the public can put issues on the agenda, propose solutions and offer reasons in support or criticism of proposals (Cohen 1989: 21). Deliberators acknowledge the value and dignity of all human beings - those with whom they deliberate (“politeness” as suggested by Papacharissi (2004: 262) and also others who are not participating in deliberation (“civility” as suggested by Papacharissi (2004: 267). Nothing is to be taken for granted; everything could be subject to argument and evidence (Carey 1995: 381).

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(c) Content: Deliberators deliberate whether an issue is a matter of public affairs in that its potential consequences are extensive, long-term and serious (Dewey 1927/1954: 126-128). Members of the public thus realise how personal troubles relate to social problems and, conversely, how the community’s problems are relevant to its members (Mills 1956: 318). Second, members of the public deliberate whether an issue is outside the realm of necessity, or, in other words, whether it is possible to make the social changes the issue calls for, where the public is the primary agent in the process of politicisation (Gamble 2000/2006: 7, Hay 2007: 79)2.

(d) Effectiveness: The first important result of public deliberation is that participants “hear the other side” and know the opinions of other deliberators and understand their reasons for holding these opinions (Mansbridge 1983: 78, Graham 2008: 30). Furthermore, deliberators come to a common decision or they agree to disagree but continue to seek fair terms of cooperation among equals (Gutmann and Thompson 1996: 53). The opinion of the public is finally effective in the shaping of decisions with powerful consequences (Mills 1956: 302–304, Fraser 2007: 22), either by influencing the majority opinion or by influencing the assessment of public opinion that those in power take into account in the decision-making process (Splichal 1999: 4). Public officials are representatives of the public and are accountable to the public so that the interests of the public are preserved and protected (Dewey 1927/1954: 15-16). Finally, public powers are able to implement public decisions (Fraser 2007: 22).

Classical thought on the public has been disrupted by the English translation of Habermas’s (1962/1989) work on Öffentlichkeit3 as “the public sphere”, resulting in what Splichal (2010) terms the “eclipse of the public” in scholarly thought. Here, the term “public” refers to the agency of public deliberation - basically to the question of who deliberates. The public sphere refers to the question of conditions of deliberation. It is, however, difficult if not impossible to divide the normative conditions of

2 Gamble (2000/2006) sees the realm of the political narrowing, with diminished powers to imagine any alternatives to the current social position and the perception of social affairs as being subject to the influence of fate. The end of history, the end of the nation-state, the end of government and the end of the public sphere are presented as consequences of fate, as the end of the endeavour of humans to take their future in their own hands, according to Gamble. These modern “endisms” furnish visions of society in which people are seen as being held captive by the forces of modernity, trapped in the iron cages of the modern world: bureaucracy, technology and the global market (Gamble 2000/2006: 18).

3 See more on the consequences of this translation in Darnton (2000: n.p.), Kleinstüber (2001: 96 - 98) and Splichal (2006: 105).

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public deliberation so that each would separately belong to either the public or the public sphere— which is probably why the public sphere and the public are nowadays used in a simultaneous and inconsistent fashion (see for example Fraser 1992). The ultimate defining characteristic of the public sphere is whether it actually serves the organisation of the public. The public is, by definition—to borrow Darnton’s (2000: n.p.) words—“an active agent in history, an actual force that produces actual effects.” The public sphere by itself, Darnton (2000: n.p.) continues, could not be ascribed with any such agency.

Rational deliberation on its own does not constitute the public

There are a number of authors who identify the international public sphere with the rational deliberation of political representatives, such as state diplomacy (Mitzen 2005), the United Nations Organisation (Lynch 2000), the “strong publics” of the European Parliament and the European Union Committee (Eriksenn and Fossum 2001: n.p.). These authors argue that rational deliberation of public powers is a sufficient characterisation of the transnational public sphere (Lynch 2000, Mitzen 2005) and transnational publics (Eriksenn and Fossum 2001).

The ideas of the transnational “strong publics” reflect a broader, ongoing process of change in theoretical thought on the public, under the heading of deliberative democracy theories, in which the focus has been much more on rational deliberation than on inclusion (e.g. Habermas 1996, Gutmann and Thompson 1996, Bohman and Rehg 1997). The concept of “strong publics” was introduced by Fraser (1992: 134), who criticised Habermas’s early conception of the public for promoting weak publics whose deliberative practices function as a critical discursive check on the state, and consist exclusively of opinion formation but do not encompass decision-making. Fraser provides an example of direct decision-making processes as they happen in parliaments, where both opinion formation and decision-making are present. Paradoxically, in contrast to her own

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argument, which stresses that there should be as much inclusion as possible in decision-making processes, she terms the national parliaments as “strong publics” (Fraser 1992: 134). By doing so she creates a rupture in the critical tradition of theoretical thought on the public, whereby the public is conceptualised as sovereign over its public officials (Dewey 1927/1954), is autonomous from the public authorities it supervises (Bentham 1791/1843) and stands in opposition to institutional authority, which in turn does not penetrate the public with its sanctions and controls (Mills 1956).

In his later writings, Habermas (1996: 307) followed Fraser’s concept of “strong publics” and thus created a definition of the public in which rational deliberation and not autonomy and democratic inclusion became the most important defining concept of the public. Habermas argues for a distinction to be drawn between the “weak public sphere”, the sphere of opinion formation that is relieved of the need to achieve collectively binding decisions, and the “strong public sphere” of the political system. Yet the public, in its normative, classical understanding, is not “weak” – it is necessarily sovereign over its political representatives. By arguing for the distinction as a positive description of reality, Habermas himself retreats from the democratic ideals of combating political exclusion, as presented in his early work Structural Transformations of the Public Sphere (Habermas 1962/1998).

Writings that equate global governance to the transnational public sphere reflect this shift in theoretical thought on the public. Lynch (2000), for example, argues that since the public sphere exists when action is co-ordinated through a discourse focused on securing consensus, the international public sphere exists when states exchange interpretations and arguments in pursuit of international consensus. By applying Habermas’s (1981/1984: 284) distinction between communicative and strategic action, Lynch (2000: 317) thus sees the international public sphere developing in state diplomacy. If diplomacy as practised by the representatives of states is characterised by deliberation and communicative action and not the strategic pursuit of pre-defined interests, then this is, according to Lynch, the international public sphere. Similarly, Mitzen (2005: 402) borrows Habermas’s (1996: 307) distinction between “publics of parliamentary bodies” and the “weak public”. She proposes that governmental organisations and forms of deliberation between states are international

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public spheres. Eriksenn and Fossum (2001: n.p.) argue that the European Parliament should be considered a “strong international public”, since parliaments are decision-making deliberative bodies: “They embody this combination better and more explicitly than any other political body: they are quintessential strong publics” (Eriksenn and Fossum 2001: n.p.). Similarly, the committees of the European Union could also be regarded as the strong publics Eriksenn and Fossum (2001: n.p.) propose, since they deliberate and make decisions which influence EU states.

Yet even if the decision-making of global governance were genuinely to follow the ideal deliberative process, this would still not make it the equal of the transnational public, since the deliberations of transnational political actors are exclusive in nature. International bodies such as the European Commission and the committees of the European Union are precisely the types of bodies that need to be confronted by a transnational public, not presented as equal to it. Describing the deliberative processes of political authorities as “publics” inevitably adds to the confusion surrounding questions of the autonomy, efficiency and accountability of government in relation to the public.

Transnational deliberative consultations: lack of inclusion and autonomy

Global governance is said to be equal to the transnational public sphere when it involves top-down organised deliberative consultations, such as “discursive designs” (Dryzek 1990), “stakeholder democracy” (Backstränd 2006: 472) and “deliberative participatory publics” (Nanz and Steffek 2004: 315). Dryzek (1990: 106) argues that, at the international level, discursive designs promise authority based on consent and voluntary compliance and, as such, are ideally suited to the highly decentralised international system. Keane (2009: 695-747) optimistically argues that deliberative public consultations, together with the spread of a culture of voting, have become a new mode of “monitory democracy” – that since 1945 the world is in the form of the “deepest and widest system of democracy ever known” (Keane 2009: 698).

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Nanz and Steffek propose that global governance should be accompanied by “deliberative participatory publics” which “stimulate an exchange of arguments in which policy choices are exposed to public scrutiny” (2004: 315). According to Nanz and Steffek the “appropriate public sphere” of global governance is the “institutionalized arena for deliberative political participation beyond the limits of national boundaries” (2004: 315). Such a global governance regime would, they argue, draw its legitimacy from the “deliberative quality of their decision-making process: it is not designed to aggregate self-interests, but rather to foster mutual learning, and to eventually transform preferences while converging on a policy choice oriented towards the public interest” (Nanz and Steffek 2004: 319). Such international deliberative forums would involve a variety of actors (e.g. national officials, scientific experts, NGOs) and cooperatively address a specific global problem. The main public actors would be the organised civil society organisations, who “can give voice to citizens’ concerns and channel them into the deliberative process of international organizations” and “can make the internal decision-making processes of international organizations more transparent to the wider public” (Nanz and Steffek 2004: 323). Deliberative public consultations are therefore considered to be the most important democratic innovation involved in global governance, since they follow deliberative principles and include a wide variety of stakeholders.

Eckersley (2007) positions the transnational public sphere within global governance institutions such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The WTO, according to Eckersley (2007: 331), represents a step in the direction of the transnational public sphere, since it includes a mechanism, “amicus curiae brief”, by which “non-state actors have found a new space for the display of ‘critical public reason’ within the organs of the WTO” (Eckersley 2007: 331). He takes a positive view of this mechanism as a link between civil society and decision-makers.

Similarly, Bäckstrand (2006: 427) argues for more diverse and hybrid forms of inclusion of a wider range of stakeholder interests in deliberative procedures, both at the level of policy decision-making (through advisory, top-down initiated and organised multi-stakeholder deliberations) and at the level of policy implementation (in the form of partnerships between governmental, private and non-governmental organisations).

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The example of good practice that she provides is the 2002 United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development.

Compared to the discourse on strong publics, the idea of transnational deliberative designs is a step closer to democratisation: it argues for greater inclusion of civic voices. On the other hand, compared to the classic ideal of the public as being autonomous from political and economic powers (e.g. Bentham 1791/1843, Dewey 1927/1954, Mills 1956), the proposals on discursive public consultations neglect the question of autonomy in relation to top-down organisation. These proposals explicitly assume that public authorities will organise and finance transnational deliberative consultations. Yet such top-down organisation is problematic, since it does not guarantee the autonomy, inclusion, transparency and effectiveness of public deliberation, but directly serves the interests of political (and economic) “sponsors”. The most serious danger inherent in top-down organised discursive designs may be, as Dryzek (1996: 42) recognises, the co-opting of potential troublemakers and the use of those designs to justify decisions already made. To illustrate: the common conclusion of research on e-government public consultations carried out by means of new media has usually been that the main problem lies not in technologies but political representatives’ lack of will to listen (e.g. Jankowski and van Selm 2000: 158, Stanley and Weare 2004: 511, Hyeon-Suk 2008: 55-57).

An argument against the comparison of the WTO’s public consultations with the transnational public sphere is provided by Young (2001). In response to the criticism of the WTO as an exclusive forum dominated by corporate interests in the service of northern hemisphere economies, some of its officials, Young (2001: 680-681) reports, organised a meeting for the day before the official WTO meeting, to which representatives of non-governmental organisations were invited. Many protesters, Young claims, considered this gesture an absurd attempt to co-opt and dampen opposition to the WTO’s proceedings, and therefore chose not to attend. Some of the NGO representatives who decided to attend, however, found the agenda already decided and that they were passively listening to the WTO director-general, the US political authorities and other powerful figures, with only minimal time available to question their speeches or make speeches of their own.

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A similar critique can be applied to Bäckstrand’s (2006) suggestion that the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development is a model of good practice for the transnational public sphere. Inclusion in the World Summit was decided on by the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, who picked “focal organisations”, those whom it regarded as “obvious leaders” among the nine major groups (Bäckstrand 2006: 485): business, farmers, indigenous people, local governments, non-governmental organisations, the science and technology community, trade unions, women and youth. Bäckstrand does not question this decision, neither regarding the nine groups, nor regarding the “obvious leaders”, but merely assumes it to be a good example of inclusion on the transnational level. Regarding the nine groups selected, Willetts (2001: n.p.) claims that the choice of these groups was the arbitrary and incoherent outcome of negotiations at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. He argues that it is arbitrary since it singles out women but not men; the young but not the elderly; indigenous people but not other minorities etc., but he stresses that, above all, “it is analytically inconsistent to have NGOs as one of the nine major groups, when all other eight are represented in the UN system via the ECOSOC arrangements for consultation with non-governmental organisations” (Willetts 2001: n.p.). He claims that the selection was influenced by the personal concerns of the secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development and by the lobbying of NGOs who were accredited to the conference. According to Willetts, this incoherence came about because many of those in the other “major groups” participating did not wish to be labelled as NGOs and that by adding NGOs they met the requirement to have a special category which would encompass environmental and development NGOs.

How the process of inclusion to the World Summit on Sustainable Development operated was that “the CSD Commission on Sustainable Development Secretariat picks focal organizations, i.e. those whom it regards as obvious leaders among the major groups. Hence, the secretariat coordinates the dialogue process by identifying core organizing partners” (Bäckstrand 2006: 485). Bäckstrand (2006: 485) takes a positive view of the decision to include “obvious leaders” in the World Summit as a “bottom-up activity”. The criterion of “obvious leadership” is, however, far from “obvious”, since it could be interpreted in line with a large number

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of different criteria (e.g. the number of members, access to the mass media agenda, the duration of existence, etc.). These criteria relate to differences in resources much more than to differences in legitimate representation. Various groups, for example, do not necessarily even have a specific leadership and work much more like a network among which there is cooperation and competition to secure a voice within the global governance system. Furthermore, the top-down selection of participants could hardly be named a “bottom-up process”.

Yet another critical conclusion regarding a transnational deliberative design is provided by Cammaerts and Carpentier (2006) and Hintz (2007), who analysed inclusion in the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS). They concluded that accreditation for the WSIS process was geared towards large NGOs – applicants either needed to be an entity officially recognised by the UN, or they had to prove their credentials as formally established organisations with a headquarters, a democratically adopted constitution and annual reports (Hintz 2007: 4). Access for poorer countries and smaller NGOs was restricted due to the unequal distribution of resources (Hintz 2007: 4). Most importantly, some groups, such as Reporters Without Borders and Human Rights in China, were strategically excluded (serving the interests of powerful states) without any official explanation of why they were excluded. Similar measures were also put in place in respect of the opportunity to publish on the WSIS website (Cammaerts and Carpentier 2006: 30-31).

These analyses thus show that existing examples of transnational deliberative public consultations have fared badly in terms of autonomy and inclusion. As Young argues, participation in exclusive systems merely helps confer undeserved legitimacy on these processes and offers no representation to those who remain outsiders (Young 2001: 680). Merely thinking about financial support for non-governmental organisations from “developing” countries (e.g. Nanz and Steffek 2004: 335) is not enough. As long as there is no vibrant transnational public autonomous from political and economic powers, there is no legitimate way to extend inclusion in global governance, since there is no “base” from which inclusion can be secured.

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Stakeholders are not equal to the public

New actors, loosely labelled as “stakeholders”, are said to gain power as part of global governance processes. The United Nations Commission on Global Governance, for example, identifies four types of actors of global governance, in addition to national governments: “non-governmental organizations, citizens’ movements, multinational corporations, and the global capital market. Interacting with these are global mass media of dramatically enlarged influence” (Report of the Commission on Global Governance 1995: n.p.). Rosenau claims that, in the process of global governance, authority is relocated from the nation-state “upwards to transnational and supranational organisations, sidewards to social movements and NGOs, and downwards to subnational groups” (Rosenau 1999: 293). The concept of global governance thus seems to describe a reality in which the regulation of public affairs has become more democratic, since new voices are said to have been empowered within the international arena: non-governmental organisations (NGOs), citizens’ movements, multinational corporations and private firms.

The main “break” that the notion of global governance represents with the Westphalian model for the regulation of transnational affairs is a critique of state-centrism. According to Rosenau (2002: 71), global governance neither posits a highest authority nor anticipates that one is likely to arise. “Global governance is a summarising phrase for all the sites in the world where efforts to exercise authority are undertaken” (Rosenau 2002: 71). It is “governance without government” (Rosenau and Cziempiel 1992/1998).

Dewey’s classical understanding (1927/1954) of the public as all those affected by indirect transactions to such an extent that it is deemed necessary to systematically regulate those consequences has been replaced within the discourse on governance by the concept of stakeholders. The term stakeholder is “imported” from management theories and theories of corporate responsibility to thoughts on globalisation (e.g. Jones and Fleming 2003), global sustainability (e.g. Steurer et al. 2005, Sharma and Henriques 2004, Pratt 2003), global stakeholder democracy (e.g Backstränd 2006, MacDonald 2008) and “multistakeholder networks” (Held and Koenig-Archibugi 2004: 129). Although the stakeholder

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concept appears to be similar to Dewey’s understanding of the public, it is, nevertheless, different in an important way: the main subjects in the public are individuals and not corporations. Economic stakeholders’ theory has been, “released from the burdens” that the concept of the public encompasses, inherently associated with democratic ideals.

Freeman, who introduced the concept of stakeholders in economic management, defines a stakeholder as “any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organisation’s objectives” (Freeman 1984: 46 in Werhane and Freeman 2006: 502). In contrast to Dewey’s position on the public as those affected by public transactions, Freeman takes into account not the moral definition of the public (as all those who are affected), but the position of power: all those who can affect the organisation’s objectives. Freeman’s understanding leaves enough space for an interpretation which argues that managers should be responsible – but only to those who have enough power to affect the outcome of their outputs. The emphasis on stakeholders as those who have the means to influence the organisation is, for example, clear from Clarkson’s (1995: 106) differentiation between primary and secondary stakeholders. Judged from this perspective, the corporation should take into account stakeholders' claims only if they are primary stakeholders – if they manage to organize themselves in such a way to threat with potentially “significant damage to the corporation” (Clarkson 1995: 107). While there is no risk of pressure, there seems to be no responsibility for the corporation either.

Furthermore, management stakeholder theory is “manager-centric”. While the concept of the public emphasises democratic decision-making, the concept of stakeholders emphasises managers' decision-making. For Dewey (1927/1954), those who are seriously affected in the long term by the issue in question identify themselves as the public, while the stakeholders, on the other hand, are identified by those who affect (i.e. managers) and not those who are affected by their transactions. Mitchell et al. (1997), for example, identify stakeholders on the basis of the priority given to different groups by managers who take into account the perceived legitimacy, perceived power and perceived urgency of stakeholders' claims.

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Dewey’s focus was on final regulation by political authority (the state). The focus of stakeholder theory is on self-regulation between corporations and their social environment. Steurer et al. (2005: 264) argue that stakeholder theory gained momentum because relationships between corporations and societal groups are less likely to be the subject of active state interventionism than they were in the Keynesian era. According to Freeman, “creating value for stakeholders is important, if for no other reason than to avoid the folly of regulation and government expropriation” (Freeman et al. 2004: 366).

Finally, the concept of the stakeholder is “based on the idea that sustaining viable stakeholder-relations creates long lasting value for corporations” (The Global Stakeholder Strategies Program4 2009). As LaPlume et al. (2008: 1158) note, Freeman’s approach was “unabashedly strategic in content because the consideration of stakeholder interests was seen as playing an instrumental role in enhancing firm performance”. According to Jones and Fleming (2003: 434), stakeholder theory promotes, at best, more “enlightened” behaviour by firms (and other actors), but behaviour that remains fundamentally self-seeking.

Business ethics theories, according to Crane et al. (2004: 108), have successfully promoted the idea that corporations are citizens. Discussion of stakeholders and corporate responsibility is, according to Banerjee (2008: 51), an ideological movement that is intended to legitimise and consolidate the power of large corporations in global governance processes. Economic actors have been one of the loudest voices arguing for “global stakeholder democracy”, since they present themselves as important stakeholders of global governance. The “multistakeholder networks” proposed by Held and Koenig-Archibugi (2004: 130-131) and Benner et al. (2004) argue for the inclusion of corporations. In the last decade, powerful economic players have gained a seat in global governance procedures, especially within the United Nations Organisation’s conferences. To illustrate: the United Nations Global Compact has been proposed as a model of good practice for “harnessing corporate power” (Kuper 2004; Risse 2004; Zadek 2004). Similarly, at the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), according to Hintz (2007: 5), corporations were represented both individually and through their respective business associations.

4 http://www.business.gwu.edu/icr/global_stakeholder_strategies.asp, accessed 14 October 2009.

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The transnational consequences of economic actors, such as the externalisation of costs (Wallerstein 2004: 47-48; 81), tax evasion (Burbach et al. 1996: 60, Sassen 1996: 8, Scholte 2005: 138), and evasion of responsibility by creating global “flexible accumulation” (Harvey 1989: 141-173), emphasise the need for a transnational public to emerge in response to economic actors. The reality, on the other hand, is that economic power provides resources which allow economic actors to be the most organised and “loudest” actors within existing global governance processes. The economic actors who have pushed for the economic globalisation that we know today are the same actors who push for representation as stakeholders in global governance.

Effectiveness does not compensate for inclusiveness

Global governance “multisectoral networks” have developed, Benner et al. (2004: 192) argue, “in response to the failure of traditional governance mechanisms, and offered new and alternative ways of getting things done”. “Getting things done” is the implicit argument within conceptualisation of global governance as self-regulation of economic actors (e.g. Adobor & McMullen 2013), whereby those affected by self-regulation are understood to be only or primarily corporations. The main challenge for such economic global non-governmental regimes is according to Adobor and McMullen (2013: 11) their effectiveness while public inclusion is narrowed only to transparency by publicizing data on their operations.

The notion of global governance is implicitly interconnected with the idea that the effectiveness of regulation, not democratic inclusion, is the most important value of transnational organisation. Backstränd (2006: 473) identifies two types of legitimacy: “input” and “output” legitimacy. The first refers to inclusion in decision-making processes: it is “the participatory quality of the decision-making process and asks whether the process conforms to procedural demands, such as representation of relevant stakeholders, transparency and accountability” (Backstränd 2006: 473). The second refers to the effectiveness of the problem-solving capacity of the governance system (Backstränd 2006: 473).

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Backstränd (2006: 473) proposes that “high output legitimacy in terms of effective collective problem solving can, on some accounts, compensate for low input legitimacy”, or, in other words, she claims that the effectiveness of problem-solving can compensate for inclusiveness. Such negation of legitimacy in terms of democratic inclusion is very much in line with the overall neo-liberal approach to global governance, what Higgot and Erman (2008: 5) term the “economic theory of global governance”. This approach promotes “output legitimacy” by means of “public-private partnerships” beyond public oversight, such as the examples of credit rating agencies and ICANN.

Effectiveness, however, can never compensate for legitimacy. The criteria of what is effective need to be set by the “input legitimacy” of all those potentially affected – those who are potentially affected by the issue at hand know their problems best and can therefore be the final judge on whether a specific problem has been solved effectively. However, the actors who constitute the broad arena of global governance are not democratically selected, nor are their operations transparent. Furthermore, they are not held accountable by the people whose lives they affect (e.g. Benner et al. 2004; Scholte 2004; Bexell et al. 2006; Gupta 2008).

Splichal (2010) argues that global governance is characterised by a global democratic deficit, because new forms of governance often escape traditional mechanisms of accountability, while the new accountability mechanisms lack efficiency. In a democratic nation-state, civil society and the economy are regarded as spheres outside the political system, having the potential to influence the state, but not to be involved in governance. The notion of governance, however, blurs this differentiation between the state, economy and civil society (Splichal 2007: n.p.) and thus also the notion of accountability and legitimacy of representation. It results in a situation in which it is “extremely difficult if not impossible to know who decides what, and how it is decided” (Splichal 2009: 396).

Consider, for example, the European Union. Starting out as an organisation for economic regulation, it has become an important regional actor entrusted with powers to deliver political regulation of much more than just economic transactions. EU nation-states have transferred their regulatory powers and re-delegated their sovereignty to the political bodies of the

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EU in the process of denationalisation. The EU is criticised on account of its democratic deficit, most commonly for a lack of democratic mechanisms within the EU (Rumford 2003: 34) and thus a shortage of opportunities for its citizens to influence its decisions. As long as decisions within the EU are reached by experts who are not accountable to elected representatives, and the decision-making process has little transparency (e.g. Krašovec 2006), denationalisation within the EU will equate to depoliticisation (Hay 2007). In the face of such criticism, the EU has responded with highly public attempts to construct a European public sphere as a top-down process (e.g. Brüggemann 2005; Baisnée 2007). In 2001, the Commission of the European Communities issued a White Paper on European Governance, in which it argued for greater involvement and more openness with regional and local governments and civil society. Yet, as Höreth concludes in his analysis of the White Paper, this is not a means to reduce the EU democratic deficit, since the White Paper represents the expert-driven approach, where “participation and consultation can only be initiated and controlled by the institutions, should lead to enhanced governance capability, are limited to consultation and mainly directed to sectoral functional actors” (Höreth 2000: 13).

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Conclusion

In what she terms “activists challenges to deliberative democracy”, Young (2001: 688) provides an important guideline for modern democratic theory: it should keep a distance from democratic practices in existing structural circumstances and should understand itself primarily as a critical theory, which exposes the exclusions and constraints in supposed fair processes of actual decision making, which make the legitimacy of their conclusions suspect. The main thread that was guiding the analysis presented here was the critical stance that democratic theory should refrain from loosening the rules of classical democratic ideals, such as the public, but to defend them even more rigorously. Having such a critical stance in mind, we have drawn here upon the classic ideal of the transnational public as democratically inclusive and autonomous from political and economic power (e.g. Bentham 1791/1943; Dewey 1927/1954; Mills 1956).

If we are serious about democracy at the international and transnational level then one of the first steps towards this ideal is establishing clear conceptual differences in theories on transnational regulation, where global governance, stakeholders and the public are not concepts used as synonyms, nor are they used as concepts that freely overlap. Each of these three concepts has its own historical roots and with that not only explicit but also implicit meaning. In this sense the article is meant as a revitalisation of the “old” concept of the public since it normatively provides an important, albeit highly normative, “benchmark” for evaluation of democratic nature of global governance, both on a conceptual level, as was analysed here, and on an empirical level – which is left for future research.

At the policy level the main proposal taken from this paper would be that the term “the public” needs to be reinvigorated in policy discourse, both at the national and the transantional level – it has been all too easy to substitute it with the term “stakeholders” and thus with the economic “neospeak”. The term “stakeholders” has been employed in order to legitimise and consolidate the power of large corporations in global governance processes. Instead of supporting those who are affected by the transactions with grave and long term transnational consequences, the process of global governance – under the heading of stakeholders

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– includes the perpetrators of such transactions in whose interests it is to oppose the transnational regulation of their activities.

The second conclusion for the policy level is the question of autonomy in relation to top-down organisation. Most global governance proposals assume that public authorities will organise and finance transnational deliberative consultations. Such top-down organisation is problematic, since it does not guarantee the autonomy, inclusion, transparency and effectiveness of public deliberation, but is prone to directly serve the interests of political (and economic) “sponsors” – as critical analyses of existing consultations have shown (e.g. Young 2001, Cammaerts and Carpentier 2006; Hintz 2007). The ideal of the public is that the public, whether transnational or national, becomes aware of the issues that affect it and starts to organise itself around these issues. In policy terms this means that the information structures for transnational publics to be informed, to organise and to communicate, need to be supported. At the national level these ideals were traditionally seen to be safeguarded by national public media. Similarly, if any talk about global governance is to be taken seriously in terms of its democratic potential, it should first be accompanied by talk about transnational public media.

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Maja Turnšek Hančič, PhD, is an Assistant Professor and Vice Dean for International Cooperation at the Faculty of Tourism, University of Maribor, Slovenia. She finished her PhD thesis at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, where she was employed as a researcher in various research projects, most notably: (a) “Young people, the Internet and Civic Participation”, 6th Framework Project, and (b) “Political Communication Cultures in Western Europe”, European Science Foundation. Her research interests include international communication, globalization, social media and tourism.

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CIRR XIX (69) 2013, 33-54ISSN 1848-5782UDC 35:327DOI 10.2478/cirr-2014-0002

Genetic Knowledge and Genetic Reproduction Technologies as New Modes of Governance – are We Witnessing a New Form of Eugenics?

Lara Barberic

Abstract

This article aims to examine whether there is continuity between eugenics as employed in Nazi Germany and modern-day medical genetics. Drawing on Foucault’s conceptualization of the relationship between power and knowledge, it draws the conclusion that despite the differences in the means employed and underlying motivations, both may serve as disciplinary tools and shape human behaviour. Finally, it addresses ethical issues that arise during genetic reproduction counselling. Namely, it reviews how genetic information during genetic reproduction counselling is presented to those being counselled and puts forward the idea on how to stay committed to the principle of non-directiveness.

KEY WORDS:

eugenics, genetic knowledge, disciplinary tools, reproduction counselling

IRMO

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Introduction

Today, the increased knowledge about genetics and reproductive technology has opened the door for manipulating an individual’s genetic makeup (genotype) with the aim of repairing faulty genes. Genetic technologies undoubtedly have a great promise to treat, but may also serve as a tool for “normalizing”1 and controlling individuals.

This paper will seek to examine whether there is a continuity between the eugenics ideology and what we today call genetics, or using Fraser’s words: “whether there is continuity of parts of Nazi medical and legal ideology within today’s institutional discourses and practices” (Fraser, 2005, 419). Its aim is to review how genetic information is dealt with today, especially during the genetic reproduction counselling. It will not suggest that increased knowledge about genetics and the way such knowledge is employed today will lead to another Holocaust. However, I believe there are certain similarities in ideologies which surrounded Nazi eugenics and the genetics ideologies that exist today, even though those ideologies are implemented through different strategies. The paper will argue that today, although there are no laws prohibiting procreation of people with genetic disorders, the genetic knowledge itself shapes the agency of designated persons. Thus, it could be argued that medical knowledge became part of a social policy. If genetic knowledge has a capacity to govern a subject’s agency, an important question arises: namely, what are the moral issues that we should be worried about with respect to this governing power knowledge? Despite there being concerns with regard to the use of genetic test results in the employment and insurance contexts, the purpose of this essay is to flash out the issues arising from informal ways of regulating acts of counselees during the genetic reproduction counselling.

The paper has been organised in the following way. The first part gives an overview of the eugenic practices and laws during the Nazi era.

1 Throughout this paper the term normalization will refer to processes and means of compelling people to conform to social norms. For more general remarks on the topic of what is considered normal in our society and how social norms induce people to conform with them see L. Fiedler (1984) ‘The Tyranny of the Normal’, The Hastings Centre Report, vol. 14, no.2, 40-42.

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The second part will examine new modes of governance arising from contemporary medical knowledge and their ability to regulate the acts of designated individuals. This analysis will draw on Foucault’s insights about the power and knowledge. The third part will deal with reproduction counselling ethics and policy as a core genetic worry, and it will seek to address the ethical dilemmas arising from the use of genetic information in reproduction counselling.

Historical Perspective - Eugenics During the Nazi Era

The idea of eugenics was created in the United States, long before Hitler came to power in Germany. Francis Galton coined the term eugenics in the mid-19th century and claimed that breeding between only talented persons would result in better offspring (Black, 2003). Black describes eugenics as a racist pseudoscience, determined to wipe away all human beings deemed “unfit” (ibid), while it can be argued, one of Hitler’s goals was to create a uniform, homogenous society. Hitler’s vision of homogenous society meant that only those genetically and physically healthy citizens are deemed to be a part of society. Conversely, this meant that he targeted not only minorities, but the whole of society. It was held that the future of German people depended on the preservation of German blood. This preservation was done on two levels – through “positive” eugenic measures encouraging the breeding of “pure” Aryans and “negative” eugenics measures aimed at removing elements of society that were either considered to be “alien” or genetically disabled.

Since the aim of this essay is to assess how modern genetic technologies are applied today, and to depict potential dangers that genetic screening generates, this chapter will focus on outlining the laws and practices during the Nazi era that had been designed to discourage those who did not have good blood from having children, namely the negative eugenic policies which discriminated against the individuals deemed hereditarily ill. This inquiry is the basis in trying to reach a conclusion whether it is possible to identify the continuity between parts of Nazi medical and legal ideology and the way society today deals with genetic information.

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During the Nazi era, law2 was generally used as a central mechanism for the construction of a uniform society and achieving social goals. Thus, in 1933 the “Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases” was enacted introducing mandatory sterilization in cases of genetic disorders. Fraser argues that the very core ideas of the Nazi state, the protection of the German Volksgemeinschaft and the elimination of its racial enemies, could only be achieved in and through law (Fraser, 2005, 29). According to Fraser, “Volksgemeinschaft is the community based on blood and written in the body of law, and the law delimits the subject not just in terms of merit and obligation, but also in the foundation of the blood and the body” (Fraser, 2005, 16). The law created a strong distinction between “us” and “them”, meaning that “them” were “those deemed to be “hereditary ill”, ”alien” or “asocial”” (Bureligh and Wippermann, 1991, 305-306) . Thus it could be argued that Hitler was trying to legitimize anti-Semitism by medicalizing it. Fraser notes that the whole Nazi worldview was a eugenic one, informed by what was for them a scientific ideal of racial purity (Fraser, 2005, 31). An individual whose ability to procreate was deemed to pose a threat to the well-being of society was singled out (Fraser, 2005, 118). Furthermore, a special two-tier hereditary court system was established. In the first instance, the Hereditary Health Court was operating and consisted of a judge and two physicians. In the case of the appeal, the Hereditary Health Court of Appeals would reach the final decision about the application for sterilization. The sterilization could be undertaken even against a person’s will if the Court decided that it had to be done.

In addition to the regulation of peoples’ behaviour through law as a coercive mechanism, “law under National Socialism operated also as a kind of “taxonomical practice” that helps organize society into races that seem natural and biologically real” (Szobar, 2002). Law was thus not only used for regulating behaviour through punishment, but was also deployed for enforcing social hierarchies. Therefore, theorists like Ian Haney Lopez

2 I find it important to note that even though the inquiry into whether Nazi law was law in the first place is of a vital importance and at the heart of the debates about the Holocaust, such an inquiry is beyond the scope of this paper and I shall not deal with it. For the purposes of this paper, I will accept the argument of David Fraser that Nazism was perpetrated through and under law and that, as Fraser notes: ‘Auschwitz was not a lawless time or place. Auschwitz was lawful, it was full of law - lawful prescriptions of „Aryan“ and „Jew“, lawful sterilizations and euthanasia to protect the blood, lawful orders, from lawyers to doctors, for the removal, isolation, and then extermination of those enemies of the State, those parasites who would infect the Volksgemeinschaft.’ He also specifically refers to compulsory eugenic sterilization, claiming that it was in fact ‘lawful’. (See D. Fraser (2005), ‘Law after Auschwitz: Towards the Jurisprudence of the Holocaust’).

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emphasize that law during National Socialism also had a role of disciplining people in the field of gender and sexuality, functioning as a system of rules as well as a system of knowledge (Szobar, 2002).

It appears that in the sphere of reproduction, which presents the most intimate aspect of one’s life, the power of decision-making was taken away from an individual and put into the hands of the state, which resulted in a blurred line between public and private lives. In such a way breeding became a privilege to benefit the Volk, and ceased to be the right to be exercised by all adults. It was not an individual who was important but the community. Ingo Müller, in his book “Hitler’s Justice” mentions the case of an architect with suicidal tendencies, who was subject to sterilization despite being a father of healthy children and other obvious evidence pointing that the cause for his state was not hereditary (Műller, 1991, 124). In this case, Müller pinpoints to the ease with which a decision to sterilize someone was made. I refer to this case because it also reveals how insignificant the benefit of the individual in Nazi Germany was. Namely, in this case, the Hereditary Health Court of Appeals found that having suicidal tendencies was enough to conclude that sterilization was necessary because the purpose of the law was not to protect the individual, but the German people (Műller, 1991). It is precisely this notion of an overriding community importance and its “advancement” wherein a link between Nazi eugenic policies and laws and contemporary genetic interventions subsist.

Knowledge as a New Disciplinary Tool

My claim is that there are points of parallels between eugenic ideology and today’s medical genetic ideologies and that certain aspects of medical care and practices can sometimes be accused to be potentially eugenic (Ledley, 1994). This continuity is apparent in the way medical genetics strives to “normalize” an individual body. Despite there being no laws today that expressly proscribe who should breed and who should not, I believe that genetic knowledge and genetic technologies, such as genetic reproduction counselling have the ability to shape our behaviour

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in accordance with what is perceived to be normal given the prevailing social standards. Before examining the ethical concerns arising from these attempts to “normalize” individuals, with which I will deal in the next chapter of this paper, I wish to outline an important distinction between eugenics and medical genetics. Notwithstanding that “medical genetics, unlike eugenics, does not presuppose the existence of any form of institutionalized social control” (Ledley, 1994), such as laws that govern our bodies, the increased availability of the genetic information and advancements in genetic technologies manage to shape our actions and have an effect on the ways in which we make decisions about our bodies and ourselves. The question then is, if not through law, how does medical knowledge manage to regulate human behaviour? Michel Foucault’s analysis of governance and knowledge informs an answer to this question.

Foucault distinguishes several regimes of power, i.e. normative power (power over life), which is located in unofficial institutions, and juridical power (threat of death coming from the sovereign) (Foucault, 1981). Juridical power functions through prohibitions and punishments, coercion and constraints, and it prevents the individual from doing something. This power “operates mainly as a means of deduction” (Foucault, 1981, 136), meaning it punishes by taking away something. In contrast to juridical power, normative power is about social norms, not laws, and it strives to stabilize and normalize society through subjects’ active engagement. For the present purposes, this normative power, and its two aspects, biopower and disciplinary power are of great importance. Normative power is an informal power which consists of unwritten rules, social norms as well as of fear of pressure, and is enforced but not by anyone particular. The first aspect of normative power – biopower - targets the population as a whole, and it is the way in which capitalist states exercise power over all aspects of peoples’ lives; “biopower analyses, regulates, controls, explains and defines the human subject, its body and behaviour” (Danaher, Schirato and Webb, 2000). Biopower classifies normality and abnormality (Koch and Svendsen, 2005) by collecting data, evaluating successes and failures. Foucault claims that today we witness a shift from sovereign power to normative power, a shift from law to the norm as an instrument of social control. The second aspect of normative power - disciplinary power – targets the individual body and was, according to Foucault, at first apparent only in institutions such as prisons, but later it became a

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technique of social regulation and control. The author of this normative power is a capitalist society which strives to administrate life3. The primary interest of power ceased to be a defence of the sovereign and came to be the improvement and managing of life. Foucault does not state that there is no juridical power anymore, but it is not the only or primary way in which the power works. It is important to note that Foucault believed that the individual could resist this power. However, the limits of his theoretical framework come from the fact that he never elaborated on mechanisms that individuals had on their disposal in resisting this power4.

In line with Foucault’s thoughts, it could be said that it is precisely this normative power that opens the possibility for new ways of regulating peoples’ behaviour according to available genetic information. In contrast to Nazi eugenic measures that were expressly embodied in the legal prohibitions, which then also led to self-policing of the individuals, today, more horizontal modes of power are employed for achieving social goals. While the top-down mode of governance was a concept applied for pursuing eugenic policies during the Nazi era, contemporary policing of human behaviour in relation to their genetic makeup is done in the name of human health, through self-regulation and self-censorship. Koch points out that despite there being no legal coercion, coercion is still present and exercised through informal means (Koch, 2004). Individuals are induced to behave in accordance with standards set by society. They self-regulate and become agents of their own normalization.

It is interesting to note that there is also a point of overlap between how internal conformity was achieved in Nazi Germany and today. Szobar notes that “even in Nazi Germany, the law had a constitutive function as well as a coercive one in that it enabled the formation of racial identity and the enforcement of racial policy” (Szobar, 2002). She notes that the informal pressures, such as community disapproval of relationships between Jews and Germans as well as social and economic discrimination encouraged

3 Foucault sees normative power as “an indispensable element in the development of capitalism and the one that is constantly exercised by means of surveillance rather than in a discontinuous manner by means of system of levies and obligations distributed over time”. See M. Foucault, ‘The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality, Volume One, Harmonsdworf: Penguin 1981, 140.

4 For example, notwithstanding the significant overlap between Foucault’s and feminist thoughts on power, some feminist theorists such as Nancy Fraser argue that by reducing individuals to docile bodies and the effects of power, Foucault fails to acknowledge who resists the power. See Nancy Fraser, ‘Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory’, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 1989.

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mixed couples to end their relationship (Szobar, 2002). In the sphere of sexual and family relations it had an effect of shaping and governing peoples’ behaviour in the way that was in conformity with the norms of National Socialism. In my view, genetic knowledge performs such a role. This suggests that in National Socialism, law was used to encourage individuals to self-discipline themselves, and today, the increased knowledge about our genetic makeup is doing the same task. Those social norms capable of regulating behaviour are not written down, but everybody knows them and shapes his or her behaviour according to them.

How then, if not through the law, do social norms manage to adjust subjects’ behaviour according to the available genetic knowledge? I believe that the knowledge about the genetic code is enabling society to socialise people by using ‘genetic risk’ as a new mode of governing and disciplining lives (Rouvroy, 2008). I wish to unpack what this notion of the “genetic risk” means because it is important in ascertaining how a subject’s behaviour is shaped according to the predictions about such risks, and to explain my claim about continuity. Understanding the genetic risk is also central for assessing ethical questions arising in genetic reproduction counselling which I will be discussing in the following chapter. In general terms, risk is an expression of probability, and in the effort to regulate the anticipated risks, we make risk assessments and modulate our behaviour according to those assessments. Risks can be regulated in different ways, from commands to encouragement to self-regulation. In the sphere of “genetic risks”, many authors, such as Rouvroy argue that risk governance responsibility is ascribed to individuals (Rouvroy, 2008). Rouvroy explains that “genetic risk” functions as a ”‘technology of the self”, encouraging people to get the most information they can about their genetic status, which then enables them to act “responsibly” towards their health and genetic health of their blood relatives (Rouvroy, 2008). Genetic tests make it possible to gather extensive information about the genetic profile of the individual, and, it is claimed that according to the information gathered, genetic risk can be calculated and genetic diagnosis established. Lemke argues that genetic diagnosis can offer possible interventions to minimize or avoid risk (Lemke, 2005, 97). I would disagree with Lemke in this latter part. Namely, I do not think risk can be completely avoided. Or to put it this way: avoiding one risk creates new risks. For example, if a woman

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with a genetic condition decides not to reproduce in order not to pass her “bad” genes, this will surely avoid the risk of passing them on, but could create a new risk such as emotional distress of not experiencing motherhood. In the context of regulation of genetic (and any other) risk, people and society engage in balancing loses and gains, and in deciding what is acceptable and what is unacceptable they take risks. In striving to normalize society by avoiding genetic risks, there is a danger of creating new risks, especially if the genetic results are taken at their face value5.

What lies behind this idea of genetic risk is, firstly that individual identity is reduced to the genome of the individual, and secondly that every individual seeks to have maximum information about his or her genetic make-up. The individual with a genetic disorder becomes a target audience, and is expected to make informed decisions and act as a responsible agent. It could also be the case that the individual does not want to know his genetic profile. Deftos warns that in contemporary society which puts so much value on the knowledge about our genetic make-up, individuals who do not want to have information about their genetic status could be regarded as “lacking moral competence” (Deftos, 1998). On the other hand, some authors, like Harris and Keywood argue that the right not to know does not even exist, that there is “no prima facie entitlement to be protected from true information about oneself” (Harris and Keywood, 2001). It follows that in the genetic era, Foucault’s model of disciplinary power is exercised through the notion of a “genetic risk” as a new mode of governing lives, whereby discipline is enforced through the internalization of surveillance6. As a consequence, governing through genetic risks increases personal responsibility and accountability for bad luck on the one hand and absolves formal institutions from their responsibility in causing diseases and disabilities on the other hand (Rouvroy, 2008). In this sense Foucault claims that “society is designing unbound and subtle power mechanisms and that power is relying on techniques rather than law, on normalizing rather than statues, on control rather than punishment, and it is implemented at levels and in forms that spill over the state and its apparatus” (Rouvroy, 2008, 84).

5 Rouvroy argues that genetic truth discourses are often taken at face value, see Rouvroy, ’Human Genes and Neoliberal Governance: the Foucauldian Critique’, New York: Routledge 2008, 3.

6 Foucault uses the idea of Bentham’s model prison, Panopticon, as a metaphor to explain how the automatic functioning of power can be assured. The idea is that the individual knows he or she has been watched all the time so even if the individual has not actually been watched, he or she could be watched and thus behaves as though someone has been monitoring. The individual internalizes the norms and behaves according to them: See generally Michele Foucault, ‘Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison’, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.

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Ethical Dilemmas in Reproduction Counselling Arising from Developments in Genetic Knowledge and Practice

I believe that discussing ethical questions that arise from genetic reproduction counselling is first and foremost important because it involves a very intimate and central aspect of individual’s right. In addition, the accumulation of knowledge about human genetics and transformation of what is perceived normal has a consequence that, as Emily Jackson notes, genetic testing is being applied today to a wider population then it was the case before (Jackson, 2010, 427). Namely, we all have faulty genes and thus genetic testing could be “potentially relevant to all of us” (Jackson, 2010, 427). Moreover, Khoury, Linda McCabe and Edward R.B. McCabe point out that genetic screening will more frequently be used to determine individual susceptibility to common disorders. Consequently, this will result in widening the net of potential users of genetic screening and counselling. Due to the fact that many fertility clinics acknowledge the importance of their role in assessing any7 kind of genetic risk, more and more individuals will be under social pressure to engage in genetic screening and counselling8. It could of course be argued that this only gives more options to potential users, who are then free to decide whether they want to engage in risk assessment procedures. However, the question is whether they are truly free in deciding whether to use or not these genetic technologies. Furthermore, the knowledge of the human genome also has the capacity to shape identities, behaviours and expectations, and to alter the identity of the individual.

7 I put an emphasis on the word “any” because it struck me that some fertility clinics do really engage in assessing any kind of genetic risks. Bearing in mind that we all have faulty genes, such a broad concept of genetic risk strengthens the argument that we are all potential users of genetic screening and genetic counselling services. Consequently, as Ettorre notes, “this changes our status of being healthy to being an asymptomatic ill person who self-enrols in continuous medical surveillance and monitoring process (Elizabeth Ettorre, ‘The Sociology of the New Genetics, Conceptualizing the Links Between Reproduction, Gender and Bodies in A. Petersen and R. Bunton, ‘Genetic Governance: Health, Risk and Ethics in the Biotech Era, Routledge 2005). See for example Fertility Clinic IVF Australia, http://ivf.com.au/fertility-specialists/ivf-australia-genetic-counsellors - accessed November 18, 2013.

8 It is also possible that fertility clinics will be exposed to an increased number of litigations for not warning their clients about genetic risks, especially with regard to donated gametes.

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All those factors contribute to the importance of assessing the ethical implications9 that genetic reproduction counselling has in contemporary society.

Lemke claims that “Liberal “eugenism”, despite its rejection of authoritarianism and its proclaimed respect for individual choice and human diversity, shares several features with “old” eugenism. Liberal eugenism efficiently “imposes” specific expectations of human normality and functioning that are unconsciously or consciously endorsed by individuals disciplined by the imperative of genetic self-knowledge, genetic risk avoidance etc.”(Lemke, 2002). Following Lemke’s argument, it could be said that the genetic knowledge we possess today, the burgeoning thrust of society to know even more about our genes and this new mode of governance – governance through knowledge, which I discussed in the previous chapter, opened up the scope for potential abuses given its effects on the ways in which we make decisions about our bodies and ourselves. In this section, I want to address the ethical concerns arising from those “expectations of human normality and functioning” that Lemke talks about. I wish to explore those issues in connection with genetic reproduction counselling10.

In the sphere of reproduction, genetic testing followed by genetic counselling is currently being used to detect genetic disease either prior to or during pregnancy. Thus, in my opinion, it is essential to consider what the aims of genetic counselling are and what significance is attributed to the individual voice in deciding whether to engage in genetic reproduction counselling, as well as during genetic counselling.

9 It is worth noting that there is an important distinction in the approach to bioethics between postmodernism and mainstream bioethics. Namely advocates of postmodernism criticise the mainstream bioethics on relying too much on clear and distinct divisions such as right and wrong, health and disease, normal and abnormal as well as on individuality and rationality. Postmodernism on the other hand claims that there are multiple truths, none of which have the ultimate authority, and that there is no possibility of reaching a definite solution. Further discussion on this issue is beyond the scope of this paper but for deeper insight into the differences between mainstream and postmodern bioethics see Margit Shildrick, ‘Beyond the Body of Bioethics: Challenging the Conventions’ in Margit Shildrick and Roxanne Mykitiuk, ‘Ethics of the Body Postconventional Challenges’, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005.

10 It should be noted that the fears that genetic information could be misused is present to a large extent in relation to health insurance and employment. Namely, based on the genetic information, individuals deemed to have genetic diseases could be denied access to employment and insurance. However, those issues extend beyond this paper and I shall not deal with them in the following sections. See for example A. Rouvroy, ‘Human Genes and Neoliberal Governance: A Foucauldian Critique’, New York: Routledge, 2008, Chapter 2.

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Fertility clinics around the world offer genetic counselling services to those who are deemed to be at risk of reproducing genetically “abnormal”11 children. They make promises of bringing healthy beautiful babies into this world12. I wonder what kind of messages those promises send. I surely do not assert that having a healthy baby is a bad thing but I do believe that such messages and invitations to undergo genetic screening do increase the pressure on those with genetic conditions either to undergo genetic screening or not to have children. Clark for example claims that even “an offer of prenatal diagnosis implies a recommendation to accept the offer” (Clark, 1991). On the other hand, Jackson claims that “it is not obvious that the existence of external influences necessarily undermines the legitimacy of a particular choice” (Jackson, 2001). I do agree that external influence does not undermine the legitimacy of decision making per se. However, since in practice it is hard to distinguish when the external influence did diminish the legitimacy of an individual’s decision, I believe that counsellors should strive to be ethically neutral in order not to jeopardize the counselees’ freedom of choice. We should surely not underestimate the capacity of social norms to govern our behaviour. It is not uncommon that genetic teams in infertility clinics emphasize the importance that those individuals who are aware of the presence of certain family health conditions undergo genetic testing and act according to the results of those tests. Petersen argues that individuals are not only expected to want to use genetic reproduction technologies in order to make socially responsible decisions, but that prenatal genetic technologies are even seen as “driven by consumer demand” (Petersen, 2003). Thus individuals designated as being at risk are expected to behave as responsible agents and engage in the offered genetic screening services. This will inevitably result in changing individual’s self-perception and put pressure on women with genetic conditions not to have offspring. Ettorre notes that genetic counselling has a similar function as psychoanalysis in that “it makes visible genetic elements of an individual and makes one’s biological destiny evident.” In making those genetic elements visible, individuals perceived as being at risk are expected to exert their responsibility and to take steps in order to mitigate and minimise genetic risks (Ettore, 2005). If they do not act according to those expectations, it is very likely that they will be

11 When referring to abnormal, I mean that which is considered different from what is usually founded in communal beliefs and is not normal according to today’s society standards.

12 See for example IVF Australia, http://ivf.com.au/fertility-specialists/ivf-australia-genetic-counsellors, accessed November 20, 2013.

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deemed irresponsible members of society13.

Once engaged in the genetic counselling session, it is undisputable that counselees should be provided with the information about genetic risks. Nonetheless, the way in which such information is presented to those being counselled risks, as Nagl points out, that development in genetic technology could have the implication of “silencing of the patient’s voice in medical discourse” (Nagl, 2005). The proclaimed principle in genetic reproduction counselling is the principle of non-directiveness14. It is broadly accepted that genetic counselling should be non-directive and guarantee that the informed decisions of those being counselled are made on a voluntary basis. Yet, I believe that the capacity of genetic information to regulate our behaviour in an informal way through social pressure questions the proclaimed freedom of choice.

In contemporary society, the proximity to the standards of normality and perfection became an important aspect of social acceptance, and in my belief, this is where the most obvious link between the practices of eugenics and medical genetics today can be recognised. A lot of emphasis is put on the “progress” and “normalization” of the individual body, resulting in the transformation and categorization of society according to available knowledge about human genetics15. Fraser’s argument that the Nazi regime and its medical professionals perceived eugenic practices, which brought enormous suffering and death, not as self-professed barbarism but as an advancement of civilization and “progress”, supports my claim about the continuity of the two ideologies. Clearly, the greater knowledge about human genetics we possess nowadays has opened the potential not only for prejudices and discriminatory practices of those with sub-optimal genetic material, but has also influenced the ways in which we are expected to relate to our bodies and society. Thus, the proclaimed

13 Abby Lippman, for example, claims that in North America it is generally assumed that women are obliged to produce a healthy child, which makes it hard for women who are told to be at risk “to refuse measures that are advertised to be risk-reducing”. See A. Lippman, ‘Prenatal Genetic Testing and Screening: Constructing Needs and Reinforcing Inequities’, American Journal of Law and Medicine, Vol. 17 NOS.1&2, 1991.

14 For example, the Ethical Guidelines of Australian Health Ethics Committee, which identify ethical principles that must inform the conduct of clinicians and researches and the procedures in the use of assisted reproductive technologies, inter alia proscribe that clinics should provide and discuss information in a way that is appropriate to, and sufficient for informed decision making, and more importantly that the information should be given without any unnecessary inducement. See http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/guidelines/publications/subject/Genetics%20and%20Gene%20Technology, accessed 20 November 2013

15 Foucault noted that eugenics was integral to the effort to transform life. See M. Foucault, ‘The History of Sexuality, Volume One: An Introduction’, Harmonsdworf: Penguin, 1981.

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principle of non-directiveness and the freedom of choice do not mean absence of power. On the contrary, power has just changed its shape and functions in a different way, through disciplinary practices which require us to meet standards imposed on us by society and then being internalized.

I do not deny that we are necessarily connected and dependent on other people and community, but as Isabel Karpin notes “the only question is where power resides in these interconnected selves” (Karpin, 2010, 151), and what does power aim to achieve. In emphasizing the importance of the informed choice and proclaiming non-directiveness as its main principal, genetic counselling seeks to protect itself from being accused of having eugenic motivations. However, it seems that by declaring the non-directive model of genetic counselling as a prevailing model, our society only appears to be liberal in dealing with issues of reproduction. Despite such a proclamation, it can be argued that our society is repressive and ascribes more importance to the welfare and the “normalization” and stabilization of society then to the individual needs, rights and values. For instance, it appears to me that in genetic reproduction counselling, fertility clinics are more in favour of eliminating any genetic disorder and achieving the ultimate goal of “normalizing” society then providing help and support to the individual.

Patterson and Satz note that the overriding assumption is that being born with a disabling genetic condition is a bad thing and that the task of genetic counselling is to give information to those deemed to be at risk and encourage them to take steps that would minimize or remove those risks. If this is truly the overriding assumption of our society, it is hard to imagine that counsellors could detach themselves from such beliefs and truly act according to allegedly embraced principle of non-directivenes. Patterson and Satz give an example of the couple with Achonodroplasia who did not perceive their “condition” as negative and wanted to have a child with Achonodroplasia. The case depicts how hard it is for counsellors to step aside and start thinking in a way that is different from their usual way of thinking, and how the model of non-directiveness in actually problematic in practice. Counsellors regularly present only negative images of disability in initial prenatal counselling sessions, which present a “constructed reality grounded in the scientific and medical definition of

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a given genetic condition” (Patterson and Satz, 2005). Consequently, this necessarily significantly influences the decision of counselees. Moreover, Patterson and Satz observe that during their training, counsellors rarely have the opportunity to experience disability from different perspectives (Patterson and Satz). Thus they hold on to their beliefs which mirror the prevailing beliefs of society, according to which a disabling genetic condition is necessarily a bad thing. Wendell suggests that we should value disabilities as differences, which would enable people to see that not every disability is necessarily a bad thing (Wendell, 1996, 84). However, Gilligan warns that since our society is fixated at normality, difference easily becomes deviance, which is often perceived as a sin (Gilligan, 1982). This indicates that even though evaluating disabilities as differences is more neutral, the reluctance of our society to appreciate differences and its obsession with normality and perfection does not create an environment in which choices about reproduction are ultimately one’s own choices.

If the fundamental bias of the counsellors is against abnormality, it means that they strive to achieve “normality”. Jackson argues that women whose fertility is perceived to be a social problem often receive strong messages from the negative attitudes of health professionals not to reproduce. It could be argued that by sending messages to people with genetic disabilities not to reproduce, society is aiming to reduce social problems by reducing the number of people with disabilities. Even though decisions were meant to be made on an informed and voluntary basis, the emerging genetic knowledge has the effect of putting the individual under pressure to make socially desirable decisions, and, as Lemke states, to produce “normal” children.

I am not suggesting that the countries which use genetic screening today are like Nazi Germany, but there are some points of continuity in the ideas of advancement, improvement of nature and of science as a way to a better future. The conditions in which reproduction decisions are made are capable of creating an environment in which individual autonomy and choice are sacrificed for the communal good. Petersen notes that “with increased surveillance and intervention, the notion that genetic counsellors can, and should be value-free and non-directive will be more and more difficult to sustain” (Petersen, 2007). I wonder how explicitly counselees are informed about positive experiences of the people who

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live with disabilities. In a society such as ours, where being born with a disability is seen as a tragedy, those positive experiences are easily overlooked. Thus, I believe that only by striving to understand and respect perspectives of people with genetic conditions and disabilities would free our society from the quest of “normalization” and perfection of human body and we could then say that the principle of non-directiveness is truly embodied in the genetic counselling practices. Otherwise, as the law was used to “protect” society during Nazism from those deemed “unfit”, so today it could be said that the increased genetic knowledge requires individuals to sacrifice their beliefs, convictions and wishes for the collective good. If not on a conscious level, then surely at the level of the subconscious.

I believe that acting upon the unfavourable opinion of someone, rather than using a straight-forward prohibition, is potentially more dangerous from traditional command-and-control projection of power. It does not only bring uncertainty but also creates the notion of the genetic risks that are not beyond the control of the individual (Rouvroy, 2008, 67). I agree with Douglas who notes that “the construction of risk individuals, risk couples, risk pregnancies etc. makes it easier to moralize on deviant behaviour and to assign guilt and responsibility”. This corresponds to the idea that Koch and Svendsen have put forward (Koch and Svendsen, 2005). They assert that the wish for the proper use of genetic knowledge has created a notion of ethical responsibility which individuals exert towards themselves and their relatives. However, I disagree with their claim that precisely genetic information passed to counselees makes them autonomous individuals who voluntarily make responsible choices about their health and the health of their relatives16. Biomedicine is powerful in creating social identities and Shildrick rightly notes that health care today “is as much about control, containment, and normalization as it is about treatment” (Shildrick, 2005, 17). The actions of the designated individual are expected to conform to the expectations of society which attaches great importance to the normalization of the human body. Rouvroy argues that “when the social or the “average man” becomes the standard against which normality and deviations are articulated, the “normal” is increasingly defined by reference to standards external

16 Koch and Svendsen draw their conclusion from observing the practice of cancer genetic counselling. Thus, their observations necessarily have limited application to reproduction genetic counselling, where the fears of associating such practices are far greater.

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to the individual” (Rouvroy, 2008, 103). It seems that despite not having laws proscribing sterilization and special courts that would apply them, society is still capable of preventing those who are “unfit” from continuing its kind. And again, medical science is taking part in the construction and maintenance of this taxonomy (Fraser, 1989, 30) creating classes of “us” and “them”. Rouvroy claims that despite the claim that genetic counselling is left to individual choices, those choices become the precise medium through which a new form of governance is exercised, taking citizens’ bodies as both vectors and targets of normalization (Rouvroy, 2008, 82). Instead of using prohibition, we use unofficial channels to regulate, and society sends strong messages that there are those who are “normal” according to its standards and “abnormal”, and that we should do whatever is possible to prevent spreading the genes of those deemed to be “abnormal” or at least help them mitigate the abnormalities.

The nature of the counsellors’ advices is inevitably value-laden but what is needed in my opinion is the following: firstly the acknowledgement that many factors shape the representation and perception of genetic information, and secondly critical questioning of the basis on which their beliefs are made. Society should foster an environment in which exercise of reproductive choice is practically possible and effective, not just illusory and theoretical. As Shildrick argues, “the real test of bioethics is whether it is able to operate adequately in practice” (Shildrick, 2005). Thus genetic counsellors should be appropriately trained how to communicate genetic information, and should be given the opportunity to listen to the views of people living with what most counsellors would call abnormalities. This would give them another perspective and understanding of the needs of those to whom they offer their services, and would result in responding to counselees with greater respect. I agree with Wendell’s viewpoint according to which “not every disability is a tragic loss and that not everyone with the disability wants to be cured” (Wendell, 1996, 88). Besides, implementing social measures that would improve care of those with disabilities, instead of offering genetic screening programmes and solutions, seems to me as a more humane approach.

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Conclusion

The aim of both eugenics and genetics is to control and regulate the behaviour of the population either through formal channels e.g. law, or informal, i.e. encouraging designated persons to self-discipline and behave in the way society expects them to. The aim of this paper was to depict how genetic knowledge as a disciplinary device, challenges the population to be healthy and, to show its capacity to control and influence self-perception. Such control does not conform to our ideas about democracy and equality, and we must ensure that our rights to make final decisions on such matters as reproduction are respected. If humanity is not ready to respect those rights, we are surely not ready for the ever increasing genetic knowledge we are coming to possess. If we are to learn from past mistakes, we should be cautious in the way genetic reproduction technologies are deployed. We should also be aware and openly discuss their potential ramifications, and the ways they influence choices about our bodies. In order not to generate stigmatization and discrimination based on genetic makeup of the individual, open debate, fostering tolerance and an honest dialogue between scientists, counsellors, practitioners, counselees and the public about ethical questions arising from the use of the genetic information is highly needed17. Commitment to the principle of non-directiveness and ensuring that decisions about our bodies are made on a voluntary basis is of the utmost importance. In addition, raising public awareness and awareness of counsellors that their decisions are often value-laden is crucial in ensuring this goal. Insights from people with genetic conditions or disabilities could be of a great value in raising such awareness and it would take us closer to the goal we should be striving to achieve. Namely that decisions we make about our bodies are not imposed on us as duties we have to bare but are reflections of our own value systems and choices.

17 An idea of using theatre to encourage engagement and discussion of broader public on ethical and other implications of genetic testing applied in Canada in 2005 seems like a good example of how the goals of tolerance and mutual understanding can be fostered. For more details on Canadian theatre, see Isabel Karpin, ‘Taking care of the ‘health’ of preconceived human embryos or constructing legal harms’ in Isabel Karpin ‘ The ‘Healthy’ Embryo: Social, Biomedical, Legal and Philosophical Perspectives’, Cambridge University Press, 2010, 154-156.

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Lara Barberić, LL.M., is a Deputy Municipal State Attorney in Zagreb, currently appointed as a Senior Advisor at the General State Attorney’s Office of the Republic of Croatia in the Department for International Legal Assistance and Cooperation. She graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University of Zagreb and since 2009 is a fully qualified lawyer in Croatia. She holds a Master’s Degree in Law from the London School of Economics and Political Science. During her LL.M studies she focused on human rights and international law, fields of her research interest.

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CIRR XIX (69) 2013, 55-75ISSN 1848-5782UDC 323.1:316.48:338.2 (548.7)DOI 10.2478/cirr-2014-0003

Sri Lanka: Physical Reconstruction and Economic Development as Conflict Prevention Factors

Boženko Đevoic

ABSTRACT

This article gives an overview of the 26 year long ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka and examines physical reconstruction and economic development as measures of conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction. During the years of conflict, the Sri Lankan government performed some conflict prevention measures, but most of them caused counter effects, such as the attempt to provide “demilitarization”, which actually increased militarization on both sides, and “political power sharing” that was never honestly executed. Efforts in post-conflict physical reconstruction and economic development, especially after 2009, demonstrate their positive capacity as well as their conflict sensitivity. Although the Sri Lankan government initially had to be forced by international donors to include conflict sensitivity in its projects, more recently this has changed. The government now practices more conflict sensitivity in its planning and execution of physical reconstruction and economic development projects without external pressure.

KEY WORDS:

Sri Lanka, post-conflict sensitivity, conflict prevention, physical reconstruction, economic development, LTTE, Tamil Tigers.

IRMO

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Introduction

Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa declared the end of the long lasting war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)1 on 19 May 2009, which initiated a celebration throughout Sri Lanka. Nobody mentioned the fact that the “final solution” to the Tamil conflict was bloody and included thousands of casualties, caused devastation to infrastructure, and included many violations of human rights carried out by both sides. Even the international community of that time supported a military conclusion to the Sri Lankan conflict against the “declared terrorists”, LTTE (Weaver and Chamberlain, 2012).

During the 26 years of conflict, the Sri Lankan government performed several conflict prevention measures with mixed outcomes, while some of them even produced counter effects. The first measure, “demilitarization” has been used to counter increased militarization on both sides, which caused a much higher scale of violence. The second measure, “political power sharing”, was never honestly or effectively executed by the Sri Lankan government. Additionally, the Tamils had an unrealistic independence strategy and did not have strong political representatives which finally led to the overall failure and limited political engagement between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamils. The third measure, “justice and reconciliation” never had any significant success and even today, after the defeat of the LTTE, the government manages to engage only in a narrow and non-transparent reconciliation process. The fourth conflict prevention measure – physical reconstruction and economic development – was exercised with more success than failure, and after the end of the conflict became the government’s primary pillar for ensuring long lasting peace (Höglund and Orjuela, 2011).

The international community (especially UN agencies), the World Bank, different investment or development funds and many states have been involved in conflict resolution since the beginning of the conflict in 1983. Nevertheless, these organizations did not achieve much in any aspect of

1 The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), known also as Tamil Tigers, were founded in 1976 as one of the newly formed youth Tamil movements that believed in militancy and separation from Sri Lanka as the only way to protect the interests of the Tamil minority.

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conflict prevention, except for the physical reconstruction and economic development, because this was of interest to the Sri Lankan government. On a number of occasions, when the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE achieved a truce or violence decreased, reconstruction and development activities started, but did not last long. The longest period of meaningful reconstruction and development lasted three years from 2002 to 2005. So, the question is: will this “final solution” provide enough time for long lasting reconstruction? The Sri Lankan president Rajapaksa seems to support a “yes” answer to this question. He demonstrated this intent in his speech to the Sri Lankan parliament on 19 May 2009, speaking in the native Tamil language, when he stated: “Our intention was to save the Tamil people from the cruel grip of the LTTE. We all must now live as equals in this free country. We must find a homegrown solution to this conflict. That solution should be acceptable to all the communities” (Weaver and Chamberlain, 2012).

This article examines physical reconstruction and economic development as measures of conflict prevention and reconstruction after the conflict in Sri Lanka and following the promises of the Sri Lankan President. The outcomes are mixed, but mostly successful and with elements of conflict sensitivity.

Conflict sensitive actions and programming seek to consciously avoid or minimize negative impacts (‘do no harm’) and equally consciously try to create positive impacts on the conflict dynamics. Conflict sensitivity has started to be promoted out of concerns of the inadvertent negative effects of interventions, projects, efforts that remained ‘conflict blind’ (Brabant, 2010, p.1).

Although in most cases the Sri Lankan government initially did not include conflict sensitivity in its projects, more recently that has changed and it now practices more conflict sensitivity in the planning and execution of physical reconstruction and economic development projects (Höglund and Orjuela, 2011). In the beginning, these changes in its approach were forced by international donors, but there are many examples today of the Sri Lankan government’s sensitivity for reconstruction without external pressure.

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Sri Lanka

(“The World Factbook, Sri Lanka”, 2013)

The Origins of Ethnic Conflict and the Eelam Wars

The largest ethnic group are the Sinhalese (predominantly Buddhists) that make up 74% of the more than 21 million of Sri Lanka’s citizens. The Tamils (Indian and Sri Lankan) are the largest minority ethnic group estimated between 14%-18% due to differences in official data on ethnic groups and the use of languages (The World Factbook, Sri Lanka, 2013). Although there are other ethnic groups with diversities in religion or language these two groups have been the main rivals on the island for centuries. The latest conflict in Sri Lanka became widely known in the 1880s, but in order to explain the real reasons for the conflict it is necessary to

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look back and understand the long lasting animosities and differences among these two ethnics. The first Sinhalese arrived in the 6th century B.C. and later on established a kingdom that with some breaks existed until the 13th century A.D. The Tamils, who claim to have been on the island before the Sinhalese arrived, also have statehood roots through the Tamil’s kingdom of the 14th century (The World Factbook, Sri Lanka, 2013). Later, after periods when the coastal areas were controlled by the Dutch (16th century) and the Portuguese (17th century), the British occupied the island at the end of the 18th century and a few years after in 1802 Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon) became a British colony (The World Factbook, Sri Lanka, 2013). The British Crown applied the system of ruling colonies by favoring minority ethnic groups, and therefore the majority of English language schools were opened in Tamil areas. Later, Tamils filled main administration and security service positions. In the early twentieth century, the Sinhalese discontent led to a movement that demanded independence from the British Crown. In 1948, after peaceful negotiations, Sri Lanka was granted independence just a few months after India’s independence. The following few decades were characterized with strong Sinhalese political mobilization, and the parallel process of Tamil disenfranchisement from the state administration, especially from courts and police forces. That was the beginning of the frictions between the Sinhalese and Tamil ethnic groups that later escalated and developed into a large scale conflict. Thus, the Sinhalese majority began to shape the new state according to its preferences. According to a number of authors, the decisive points in the escalation of the conflict were: the Buddhist Committee of Inquiry and its effects on the elections of 1956; The Sinhala Only Act, which banned the Tamil language from official use; and the constitutional reforms of 1972, which recognized Sinhala as the official language of Sri Lanka and declared Buddhism as having a primary place over other religions (Manage, 2012, p.14). Although the reactions of Tamil politicians were only mild and manifested as peaceful political protests (1956, 1958, 1961, 1974, 1977, 1979, and 1981), most of the time the Sinhalese majority answered with violent riots against the Tamil population that were allowed by government forces and with political actions/documents that just reinforced tensions (Ranasinghe, 2009, pp.12-13). For example, in 1979 Sri Lanka’s Parliament with a Sinhalese majority passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act as a reaction to the emerging separatist movement in the Tamil populated area, especially in the North of Sri Lanka. Instead of preventing conflict, this Act had the opposite effect, and

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alowed the security forces additional authorities, such as “extra-judicial killings“ in response to violence against them (Manage, 2012, p.15). Thus, an “unusual“ approach in managing Sri Lankan ethnic friction caused a transformation of Tamil civil and peaceful protests into more violent ones and to the creation of several “small but tight-knit youth movements that became convinced of militancy, and separation from the state, as the only way to protect Tamils“ (Manage, 2012, p.15). The most important and probably the main trigger in the 26 year long ethnic conflict were the riots which occurred in July 1983. At that point, the response of Sinhalese mobs to the death of 13 Sri Lankan soldiers in conflict with LTTE was the destruction and burning of Tamil homes and businesses, as well as killings that ended with hundreds of dead Tamils (Fair, 2005). Furthermore, there are many published reports that members of the Sri Lankan security forces actively participated in these atrocities and killings. Since 1983 as violence started, the number of Tamil refugees began to increase and that trend ended just recently. They were first placed in refugee camps, but later many of them emigrated abroad to more than 40 countries, such as India, Australia, the United States and some Western European countries. Additionally, especially large communities of Tamils can be found in Canada and the UK (De Votta, 2004). This trend developed a strong Tamil Diaspora that together with Indian Tamils (more than 60 million) directly blamed the Sri Lankan government for the violence and atrocities, but as a side effect the Tamil Diaspora came to accept and support the LTTE’s armed response as the right way to protect the Tamils in Sri Lanka. However, the voices calling for a more militant approach to the formation of a Tamil State (Eelam) became louder than the peaceful ones within Tamil youth organisations, which together with a large financial and political support of the Diaspora, led to long lasting and bloody armed conflict2. During the 80s and 90s, the LTTE carried on violent tactics and finally suceeded in military dominance over all other Tamil separatist movements in Sri Lanka, sometimes by ruthlessly eliminating their key personnel, forcing them to leave the island, or exerting strong pressure that many crossed over to support the government (e.g. Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO), Tamil National Alliance (TNA), and Peoples Liberation of Tamil Eelam (PLOT)).

2 During the 1990s and 2000s the Tamil Diaspora raised and supplied 200 - 300 million USD annually to the LTTE and other separatist Tamil groups (O’Balance, 1990, p.22).

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The decades of the civil war in Sri Lanka can be described through four periods, the Eelam wars I – IV, which were marked by several different cease-fire agreements3:

● Eelam War I started with bloody riots during the “Black July“ of 1983 and continued with four years of guerrilla-like warfare by Tamil militant groups that at one point even controled the Vadamarachchi area on the North of the island. Eelam war I ended in 1987 after the signing of the India-Sri Lanka peace accord and India deploying several thousand peacekeepers to Sri Lanka (Indian Peace Keeping Force - IPKF). The Accord offered a degree of autonomy for Tamil majority areas in the North and East, but not independence.

● Eelam War II started in 1990 after IPKF left the country because the attempt to prevent violence of LTTE failed. LTTE got control of the North and East areas of the island and armed conflicts with Sri Lankan armed forces escalated as LTTE became stronger. Although in 1993 President Premadasa was killed by LTTE, the second Eelam War ended when the newly elected president Kumaratunga opened peace talks with LTTE in 1994.

● Eelam War III began in 1995 after LTTE sank governmental naval craft. During the next few years, LTTE developed their capabilities and executed many suicide attacks, as well as launched numerous air missiles on aircrafts and helicopters of the Sri Lankan Army. So, during that time severe armed conflict across the North and East of the island lasted until the end of 2001. LTTE succeeded to capture some regions, which were previously controlled by the Sri Lankan Army. Among others, the most significant attacks were when LTTE bombed Sri Lanka’s holiest Buddhist site, the bomb attack on president Kumaratunga when he was wounded, and the devastating suicide attack on Colombo’s international airport. A new Norwegian-mediated ceasefire was signed by the Sri Lankan government and LTTE in February 2002 and negotiations on a political solution continued. Meanwhile, LTTE achieved new military power on land, air, and sea, as well as collecting enormous amounts of money through taxation in controlled regions and from

3 The following overviews of the Eelam Wars I-IV compiled from Manage (2012, p.20-24), “Sri Lanka Profile, Timeline”, and Lunn, Taylor and Townsend (2009).

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their diaspora. One of the most important and decisive points in the Sri Lankan war was when LTTE East regions commander Colonel Karuna divided LTTE with 6000 soldiers and supporters because of unfair treatment of the LTTE supreme commander Prabhakaran. So, conflict between two fractions of LTTE reinforced with the tsunami in 2004, finally resulted in losing a great part of the LTTE military power.

● Eelam War IV began after the peace negotiation process was shadowed in 2006 due to the cold attitude toward peace negotiations of the newly elected Sri Lankan president and government, and several bloody attacks of LTTE on the Sri Lankan security forces (especially on the Navy). Also, LTTE in the North region arrested, tortured, and murdered numerous Tamils under suspicion that they were supporters of Colonel Karuna’s fraction of LTTE. These LTTE activities as well as their bomb attacks and Sri Lankan counter activities in the north, east and around Colombo’s area resulted with hundreds of thousands of new internally displaced persons. Although some observers suspected the government security forces for several of the attacks and assassinations rather than the LTTE, the international community changed its attitude and leaned towards supporting the government side. That resulted with wide international support for calls that LTTE should be declared a terrorist organization, first done by the U.S., UK and India, and followed in the summer of 2006 with the most important player in the peace negotiations, the European Union. Reinforced with these decisions and after Karuna’s LTTE fraction that controlled the Eastern regions crossed over to support the government, the Sri Lankan security forces started wide operations focused on the Northern region of the island. The following fights were accompanied by growing reports of violations of human rights and the international humanitarian law from both sides in conflict. Concurrently, as the Sri Lankan security forces advanced in their final operation against LTTE they rejected international calls to protect civilians or for a new ceasefire, and finally on 19 May 2009 Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa declared the end of the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

At least 7000 people are estimated to have been killed during the last few months when the LTTE and Tamil civilians under their control were squeezed into a narrowing stretch of land in north-eastern Sri Lanka -

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making the Sri Lankan conflict one of the major conflicts in recent years (Höglund and Orjuela, 2011, p.19).

Sri Lanka Historical Timeline

Since an end to a war does not guarantee a sustainable peace, the risk of new violence in the post-war years requests urgent and comprehensive conflict prevention measures. Because of the brutality of Sri Lanka’s war, especially in the final operations on both sides, the Sinhalese domination in the political system, the lack of interest in its reform and numerous violations of human rights, the May 2009 victory was an opportunity to focus on the problems that caused the conflict. Under limited international pressure (U.S., EU, UN, etc.) in the last few years, the Sri Lankan government implemented a number of post-conflict reconstruction measures, however most of them ended with little positive effects.

First, the process of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) had been executed only unilaterally, toward Thamil Makkal Vidudal Puligal (TMVP) militia and 8500 released suspected LTTE, but not including the Sri Lanka Armed forces personnel4. DDR started immediately after the final

4 DDR in Sri Lanka supported (but not led) by: India, Norway, the Netherlands, Japan, AusAID, USAID, World Bank, IOM, European Commission, UN CERF, UNDP.

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operations, but screening of IDPs for suspected LTTE had been executed without any transparency or external scrutiny and with complaints of torture, raping of women, killings, and terrible living conditions of IDPs. Recently, limited results have been achieved in the education of DDR managers (military officers), which were followed by positive results in agriculture training, computer training, handwork training, preschool teachers training, and industrial training.

Second, limited reconciliation efforts have been overshadowed by Sinhalese triumphalism after the great victory. Although the government has portrayed itself as the Tamils’ savior and the state as a multi-ethnic society, reconciliation is “conditioned on the recognition of the Sri Lankan government as the victor and the Sinhalese armed forces as heroes”5 (Höglund and Orjuela, 2011, p.31).

Third, security sector reform (SSR) has not been executed even after unprecedented levels of militarization in the years before final operations were expected (40% increase of the security forces). Furthermore, after May 2009, the Army became a hero, the demilitarization of security forces failed, the military budget increased, and finally the whole Sri Lankan security sector (coastguard, police and intelligence) fell under the supervision of the Ministry of Defense.

Fourth, the repatriation of internally displaced persons (IDPs) has had a positive trend, but most of the positive activities have been executed under international pressure (EU, UN). Although during the years of conflict the number of IDPs constantly increased, the situation was additionally complicated after final operations when LTTE used civilians (around 300.000) as hostages/buffer zone. Although these IDPs have recently been “detained” after the initial operations at 21 sites and secured as “concentration camps”, they were later released and around 400.000 have already returned home (many to temporary shelters).

Finally, although justice and reconciliation, as well as political reforms have been weak in the Sri Lankan post-conflict reconstruction process, the improvement in physical reconstruction and economic development is valuable.

5 For example, some reconciliation posters show three children (Tamil, Muslim, Sinhalese), but at the same time all of them show their respect to a Sri Lankan soldier.

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Physical Reconstruction and Conflict Sensitivity

The end of the 26 year war brought about 800,000 internally displaced people in the North and East of Sri Lanka. Most of these people are waiting to be resettled back, but their home areas are still without basic services, public facilities or infrastructure and more than 350,000 houses are damaged or destroyed (UN HABITAT Sri Lanka 2013b). So, the end of war provided opportunities for large physical reconstruction and economic development initiatives in the areas of North and East Sri Lanka. Although many national and international projects were started, a majority of them today are carried out under strong central government control without influence from local authorities. Furthermore, government security and economic activities in the North and East of Sri Lanka influenced limited inflow of Sinhalese returnees, which can further destabilize these traditionally Tamil areas. The state has exercised centralized control over a majority of the physical reconstruction projects both in the past and today, and its overall success is based on the government’s realization that if they engaged fast in rebuilding family houses and local infrastructure, this would provide a great positive impact for conflict prevention in the traditionally agricultural Tamil area (Sri Lanka Country Strategy Paper 2011 – 2013). The government’s large role in conflict prevention through physical reconstruction of the North and East was not the case from the beginning. What happened and why did the government change its approach? Over the last two decades several Asian countries (China, Pakistan, and India) have provided assistance in post conflict reconstruction and development in Sri Lanka, but they do not pay attention to conflict-sensitivities. Similarly, many other international donors after 1990 just transferred funds to the Sri Lankan government and left them to proceed without direction. That system was counterproductive and sometimes led to the funds being used for the further armament of security forces, and not for reconstruction. Nevertheless, positive changes happened when the European Union (EU) threatened to end the trade agreement (GSP+, 2004)6 if the Sri Lankan government did not apply conflict-sensitivity in the planning and execution of its post-conflict reconstruction activities. Because the GSP+ helped a lot in the country’s economic development

6 In 2004, the EU opened their market through the EU’s Generalized System of Preferences (GSP+) trade agreement with 17 countries devastated by the Tsunami.

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through opening the EU market for Sri Lankan products, the Sri Lankan government reacted positively and made moderate improvements in human rights, especially as related to the treatment of the internally displaced Tamils. Later on, many other organizations and states which participate in post-conflict reconstruction and development projects in Sri Lanka introduced conflict-sensitivity clauses. For example, the World Bank (WB) has developed a ‘conflict lens’ for its 2009-2013 strategy and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) designed ‘seven rules for conflict sensitivity’ in its strategy for 2009-2011 (OECD, 2008, pp.102-106).

Even though some large reconstruction projects started in 1999 (World Bank), the majority of the hundreds of international donor activities began after the signed peace agreement in 2002. Japan, as the biggest official reconstruction and development assistant in Sri Lanka, organized a donor conference in 2003, which was attended by the world’s most important donors, development banks and private funds, as well as many UN agencies, NGOs and states (Sugiur, 2011).

This conference influenced a new era of physical reconstruction and development in Sri Lanka (2003-2008) which was reinforced after 2004 and the devastating Tsunami. Regarding the influence of the EU, a majority of the projects have been executed all over Sri Lanka and have included conflict sensitivity, but just a few of them (influenced by top ten donors) in the North province before 2009. Several large physical reconstruction projects have had great influence on the population and conflict prevention in the North and East of Sri Lanka, especially through the repatriation of internally displaced persons and poverty reduction. The reconstruction projects that were of the most influence are (OECD, 2008, pp.92-101):

● North East Housing Reconstruction Program (NEHRP) executed with the World Bank and the EU (2004 – 2011). During its execution, 97% of the planed heavily damaged 50.091 houses were reconstructed. An estimate for the total number of damaged houses (all levels) for reconstruction is more than 300.000.

● North East Irrigated Agriculture Project (NEIAP) executed with the World Bank (1999 – 2005). This oldest large reconstruction and development project in Sri Lanka rehabilitated 369 irrigation systems

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and formed 1057 new ones, as well as worked on 1294 km of roads and 754 wells related to these projects. In total, more than 2.750,000 people benefited.

● Country Assistance Programs (4) in reconstruction of infrastructure, and the restoration of community livelihoods executed with ADB, the EU, OPEC, Germany, and the Netherlands (2002 – 2009): (1) North East Community Restoration and Development Project (NECORD) benefited more than 700,000 people, (2) North East Community Development Project (NECDP) executed through 40,000 health and human services, (3) Conflict Affected Areas Rehabilitation Project (CAARP) benefits potentially more than 2 million people, (4) Tsunami-Affected Areas Rebuilding Project (TAARP) benefits more than 3 million people. All projects were executed with a budget of $325 million.

Official Development Assistance (ODA) during the conflict in Sri Lanka was of significant importance in reconstruction and development with 2-4% of national GDP, but since 2010 that changed and ODA decreased to 1,2% of GDP (2009-2010 official development assistance US$ 1.3 billion, -28%). The top ten donors through ODA in Sri Lanka are: Japan (358), World Bank (174), ADB (147), U.S. (63), EU (54), Australia (52), France (37), Korea (34), Norway (32), and Germany (31), (“Aid Statistics, Recipient Aid Charts: Sri Lanka,” 2012).

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International direct assistance programs in Sri Lanka

(UN HABITAT Sri Lanka, 2013)

In comparison with other conflict-prevention areas (DDR, human rights, political reforms, SSR) the physical reconstruction and regional development is the one area where the Sri Lankan government has made the most effort. Although the first projects and application of conflict sensitivity were initiated (enforced) by the European Union and followed afterwards by other donors, in 2011 and 2012 there were positive examples initiated and executed by the Sri Lankan government itself. After the NEHRP program of housing reconstruction in the north and east provinces concluded in 2011, the government developed a new strategy

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and continued the program through providing cash grants for the repair of damaged houses and temporary housing solutions (WB and EU financial support). Furthermore, several non-governmental organizations are allowed (without government as a mediator) to execute direct housing reconstruction programs with all related infrastructure. Through these programs the Sri Lankan government has supported conflict-prevention in several points: returnees to the Tamil area were provided the opportunity to rebuild their houses faster, the local economy was revitalized through the employment of private construction companies, the unemployment rate was reduced (construction workers are 100% local Tamils), and agriculture as a primary business in the North can be revitalized7.

A University of York (UK) public opinion research project carried out in Sri Lanka in 2011 found that the Tamil population is very satisfied with the dynamic and quantity of physical reconstruction. The only item mentioned as a problem is the necessity to revitalize a local public transportation system and the sea ports. Moreover, during the almost three years since the end of the conflict, the government self-financed and executed many small local infrastructure rebuilding projects. During these projects they used interesting and useful conflict-prevention techniques through employing local Tamil construction companies and engaging the Sri Lankan military forces. The Sri Lankan Army situated in the North of the island (since May 2009) have carried out different construction projects, from large ones oriented at communities (rebuilding bridges, roads, irrigation systems, wells, de-mining) to small ones oriented toward families (Barakat and Class of 2011, 2011).

Construction works conducted by Army troops (Sri Lanka Army, 2012)

7 Information collected by the author in interviews with Sri Lankan military officers in Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, US, March, 2012.

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These physical reconstruction projects with strong roots in military information operations played a great role in conflict prevention and since May 2009 there has been no reported violence against the Sri Lankan Armed forces. Furthermore, in that period, only a few riots have occurred in the north of Sri Lanka, regarding the prohibition of celebrating Tamil national holidays, but all were suppressed by police without heavy casualties8.

Nevertheless, the Sri Lankan government still keeps under direct control all international reconstruction efforts and allows for occasional and limited oversight and control. It is interesting that the majority of the top ten donors execute their projects almost 100% through the Sri Lankan government, and only Asian donors including China, Pakistan, and India (not in the top 10) execute 60% of their projects through direct payments to the contractors or local authorities (Höglund and Orjuela, 2011).

Finally, the Sri Lankan government has executed many physical reconstruction projects with conflict sensitivity (some enforced). The majority of these projects is a great success, and is accepted well by the Tamils; allowing reconstruction to become the main pillar for conflict prevention.

Conflict Prevention Through Economic Development

Although many international investors labeled opportunities in Sri Lanka as ‘wonderful opportunities’, claiming that Sri Lanka ’may become the Hong Kong of India’, and that Sri Lanka provided a ‘huge opportunity to do a lot’, some investors were also very cautious and commented that “the future depends upon the government’s initiative to satisfactorily address the root causes of the conflict” (First Private Equity Fund from Sri Lanka, 2012).

8 Information collected by author in interviews with Sri Lankan military officers in Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, US, March, 2012.

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Nevertheless, despite the latest long conflict, the Tsunami of 2004, and the World economic crisis, over the last two decades Sri Lanka’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth average rates have been 5.5%, which is an excellent result (Sri Lanka has been in the world top 10 according to GDP growth rates over the last ten years). During 2009 and the final operations of Sri Lankan armed forces the growth rate dropped to 3.5%, but then only a year after it rapidly increased to 8.0%. Today, the GDP growth rate looks positive at 8-10%, but if it is examined in detail, economic development so far is unequal. Until 2010 most of the growth rate was related to the Western part of Sri Lanka, especially areas around the capital city of Colombo, which contributes 50% to the national GDP. Although the end of the conflict resulted in decreasing activities of international donors, many new international companies and funds find Sri Lanka an excellent place for investments, which the government tries to maximize (Sri Lanka Country Strategy Paper 2011 – 2013). In order to change the inequality in the country’s economic development and further stimulate conflict prevention, the Sri Lankan government in cooperation with the Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED) developed a Strategy for 2011-2013 with four pillars: (1) large housing and public facilities reconstruction in Tamil areas (being a joint effort with the private sector), (2) government led reconstruction of main infrastructure (in order to support businesses), (3) direct business investments (support funds), and (4) real-estate investments (in order to help the real-estate market emerge) ( Sri Lanka Country Strategy Paper 2011 – 2013).

Regarding poverty as one of the indicators of the country’s economic development, Sri Lanka has reached lower-middle income status and has shown a very positive trend. The overall poverty ratio, in spite of conflict, was significantly improved during the last decade and decreased from 23% in 2002, to 15% in 2006, and 15% in 2009, and finally reaching the remarkable level (for Asia) of 7.6% in 2010. Even given these improvements countrywide, the presence of poverty is higher in rural areas, as well as in the Tamil populated areas, which are influenced by several factors including: the former state favored investment in the Western area, the long lasting conflict in the Northern and Eastern areas (destroyed local businesses and infrastructure), and the Tsunami in December 2004 which worsened the situation and further destroyed the East and South of the country. Nevertheless, even during the conflict some modest

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improvements in poverty reduction have been done in the Tamil areas. The largest activity was the Project for Rehabilitation through Education and Training (PRET), organized by the Canadian Investment Development Agency (CIDA) during 2003-2008, which covered 14 districts and was executed in relationship with 46 international and national partner organizations (OECD, 2008; World Bank ‘Sri Lanka’, 2012).

There have been many recent changes in the government’s approach to regionally oriented poverty eradication and economic development. The most significant influence on overall development and government conflict prevention behavior nowadays is a program announced during the elections in 2010 by president Rajapaksa called the “Mahinda Chintana - Vision for the Future” (2010-2020). The main ideas include an open call for building of the Sri Lankan economy, involving the public and private investors, encouraging business competition, building new infrastructure necessary for business (airports, seaports, roads), and large scale investments in Tamil areas. The Vision explains four economic development programs, (1) Dry zone livelihood support and partnership program, (2) Smallholder plantations entrepreneurship development program, (3) Post Tsunami coastal rehabilitation and resource management program, and (4) National agribusiness development program. The Sri Lankan government recently signed several agreements in support of the Vision for a total amount of $137 million, which included the involvement of many private companies, as well as international organizations (IFAD - International Fund for Agricultural Development, USAID – US Agency for International Development, CIDA – Canadian International Development Agency, JBIC - Japan Bank for International Cooperation, WFP – World Food Program, and UNDP – UN Development Program) (Mahinda Chintana - Vision for the Future, 2010).

With a new strategy and devoted investments in economic development to maximize conflict prevention, the Sri Lankan government is finally making a strong attempt to counter underdevelopment, one of the roots of the conflict, and in spite of a failure in other post conflict reconstruction areas, they deserve recognition that this area is a success.

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Conclusion

Generally, post conflict reconstruction in Sri Lanka is characterized by limited or nonexistent progress in judicial, political and security sector reforms, reconciliation, and the protection of human rights. Nevertheless, post-conflict physical reconstruction activities and most of the activities related to economic development have been executed well and influenced very positively Tamil - Sinhalese relations. Although the Sri Lankan government has failed or has achieved limited positive effects with various conflict prevention measures in the preceding decades, the fast de-mining, new housing programs, the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of IDPs, and a number of massive infrastructure projects with special emphasis on the North and East of the island (Tamil areas) had significant positive effects. At the beginning, this success was enforced by international players such as the EU, the UN or the US. On the other hand, today there are many examples of the Sri Lankan government’s sensitiveness in reconstruction without external pressure.

Many of these physical reconstruction projects, along with projects for the reduction of poverty or decreasing unemployment rates, have become very important Sri Lankan conflict prevention measures. The future will show if they can create a sustainable peace. Such peace is not far away for Sri Lanka, especially if the key international players (EU, UN, US, and Japan) would support the government of Sri Lanka, after economic development, to focus on reforms in the judicial, political and security sectors as well as on the protection of human rights, .

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Barakat, Sultan and Class of 2011. (2011). “Field Study Report, An Evaluation of Post War Recovery in Eastern Sri Lanka Batticaloa District,” (York: University of York, 2011) http://www.york.ac.uk/media/politics/prdu/documents/Sri%20Lanka%20Report%20-%20Publish.pdf (March 1, 2012).

Brabant, Koenraad Van. (2010). “What is peacebuilding? Do no Harm, Conflict-Sensitivity and Peacebuilding”. (Geneva:Interpeace, 2010). http://www.interpeace.org/publications/cat_view/8-publications/23-peacebuilding-and-policy-resources (November 29, 2013).

Höglund, Kristine and Camilla Orjuela. (2011). “ Winning the peace: conflict prevention after a victor’s peace in Sri Lanka.” Contemporary Social Science: Journal of the Academy of Social Sciences. Vol. 6, No. 1: 19-37.

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Lunn, Jon, Claire Taylor and Ian Townsend. (2009). “War and peace in Sri Lanka.” UK House of Commons: Research Paper 09/51.

Manage, Nishantha. (2012). „Counterinsurgency Principles for Contemporary Internal Conflict.“ Monterey: Naval Postgraduate School.

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Pavey, Eleanor and Chris Smith. (2009). “Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Security Sector Reform in Sri Lanka.” Security Sector Reform in Challenging Environments. Geneva: DCAF. Chapter 8. http://www.isn.ethz.ch/ isn/Digi ta l -L ibrary/Publ icat ions/Detai l /?ots591=eb06339b-2726-928e-0216-1b3f15392dd8&lng=en&id=112727. (March 2, 2012).

Sri Lanka Ministry of Finance and Planning. (2010). Mahinda Chintana - Vision for the Future. Colombo. http://www.treasury.gov.lk/publications/mahindaChintanaVision-2010full-eng.pdf. (March 2, 2012).

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Sugiur, Mikiko. (2011). “Infrastructure and peacebuilding in Sri Lanka: Lessons from Japan’s post-conflict support.” Tokio: Environmental Law Institute. http://www.eli.org/pdf/CGP%20Chapters/CGP_008_Sugiura.pdf. (March 2, 2012).

UN HABITAT Sri Lanka. (2013). “Direct Assistance Programmes” http://www.unhabitat.lk/downloads/ActivityMap.pdf . (November 25, 2013).

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Boženko Đevoić, MA and LTC, is a Staff Officer for Military Education Development at the Croatian Armed Forces General Staff in Zagreb. He has a Master’s Degree in Security Studies (Counter-Terrorism Policy and Strategy) from Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, USA. During 2008 - 2009 he has worked as a full-time lecturer at International Peace Support Operations Training Center, Sarajevo, BiH. He has been a guest lecturer at a number of national and international conferences and seminars and has published several articles. His research interests include Peace Support Operations, EU Counter-Terrorism, International Relations, South East European Security Issues, etc.

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Book Reviews

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Peter LUNT and Sonia LIVINGSTONE

Media Regulation. Governance and the Interests of Citizens and ConsumersSage Publications Ltd., Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore/Washington DC, 2012-11-28, ISBN: 978-0-85702-570-8

In this book the analysis of media regulation theories and practices are motivated by the authors’ efforts to see what citizens need from the media and how this can be guaranteed. Media regulation is examined in the context of the global mediated sphere. A review of regulatory theory is blended with an analysis of globalisation and governance structure within which the interests of consumers and those of citizens are researched. The media and communications regulation is discussed in relation to the public interest and anchored in analyses (case studies) of the UK regulatory agency Ofcom work.

Ofcom’s organisation and functioning are illustrated through its involvement with public service television, media literacy, regulation of advertising to children’s obesity and the community radio. Conclusions offer observations of the change of direction in media development and regulation, policy making and the role of independent regulators. The authors, leading British scholars of the media, declare that they write ‘as researchers of television audiences and mediated publics rather than as scholars steeped in the legacy of media policy research’ (p.VIII). Their main focus is therefore on public representation within the new culture of regulation and Ofcom’s role in relation to the public interest (p.VIII).

The public interest is extensively discussed in the first (Media and Communications Regulation and the Public Interest) and second (Regulation and the Public Interest) chapter of the book. The increased globalisation of the media and communications technologies that contribute to the emergence of a complex transnational culture, a rapid development of a global media market, extensive movements of peoples and a number of other characteristics of the new phase of late capitalism set up the scene in which the interests of citizens and those of consumers are pointed out and analysed. Key actors – state, civil society - that play

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a role in the design and practice of regulation in this new context are identified. The main values that they stand for are presented through the opposition between market (liberal) and social (democratic) values.

Regulation in relation to the public interest encompasses discussion of the opposition between government and governance; presents the theory and strategies of regulation and discusses them in the context of political parties’ ideological orientations (new labour, social democracy), in both, the European and the UK context. In the European context it is about connecting national to regional media governance. The European approach that was consolidated around the Audiovisual Media Services Directive in 1997 coincided with the New Labour broader commitment to constitutional reform and the regulatory reform in UK. This context adopted a ‘broad definition of a converged regulator, with a range of powers, responsibilities and modes of regulation’ (p.33). A dual European approach (top-down economic harmonisation and a dispersed, soft approach to cultural and citizen issues), ‘replicated in Ofcom’ was submitted to a unified, consistent approach to regulation in the UK. ‘Intended as a converged regulator for a converging media and communications sector, Ofcom was meant to solve the problem of regulatory confusion…’ (p.33)

The problem of regulatory effectiveness became interlinked with the need to ‘develop broad policies and strategies’, which also implied ‘a mix of activities within an independent body combining adjudication, policy making and enforcement’ (p.34). Ofcom was established by the New Labour government in 2003 as a body ‘that integrated the previously separated spheres of regulation (public sector broadcasting and commercial broadcasting, telecommunications and broadcasting, consumer and citizen interests)’ (p.35). Apart from the particular Ofcom case, debate concerning forms of regulation was related to academic theories of regulation as it ‘represents an intervention in markets and society’ (p.36) and furthers the interests of citizens and consumers that are discussed in the framework of public interest. However, no single definition of the public interest can be offered. It is difficult to define. When interpreted as a ‘core statutory duty of media regulators’(p.39) it remains vague and therefore problematic. In this book it is discussed in the context of different democratic practices and theoretical approaches to democracy visible in the UK.

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Notwithstanding the differences in interpretation and definitions of the public interest, regulation becomes softer, more dispersed and operates through ‘multi-stakeholder negotiation and cooperation’. Assessing its effects becomes ever more difficult, ‘…and attention tends to focus on mechanisms more than on the evaluation of outcomes’ (p.39). All this is further illustrated through the case studies of Ofcom (Ofcom’s Core Purposes: A Discursive Struggle; Ofcom as a Regulatory Agency; Ofcom’s Review of Public Service Television; Media Literacy; Advertising Regulation and Childhood Obesity ; Community Radio). Ofcom appears to have been able to balance competition policy and consumer protection, and has prioritised, in terms of regulatory effectiveness, the consumer dimension of the public interest, although it declares that the consumers and citizen interests intersect (p.187).

Even if the discussion of media and communications regulation and Ofcom is strongly related to the UK regulatory practices, media policies and the media, it serves as an excellent and inspirative incentive for any analysis of media regulation. The case studies of media and communication regulations ‘speak to a subtler mode of governance through engagement and self-regulation rather than determination through command and control’ (p.180), and,‘… it has been our contention that the citizen interest is best served by an independent regulatory agency using a variety of proactive methods to engage a wide range of stakeholders…’since ‘… such an approach legitimates media and communications policy in a dynamic and fast moving environment’ (p.184).

In conclusion, the authors state that they have ‘conjoined academic theories of regulation with governmental responses to the growing challenges of globalisation and the network society’ so as to invoke the idea of a regulatory agency that would take the role of public institution in addition to ‘its instrumental and administrative tasks’ (184). Combining regulator’s effectiveness with the promotion of public engagement with media policy proved to be a difficult task, although Ofcom has played its role ‘with originality, energy and expertise’(185). As it is easier to take account of consumer interests than the citizen interests the relations between the regulator and industry may be easier to define than those between the regulator and citizens’ public interest in regulation. Governments still determine the powers, responsibilities and functions

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of regulators and the nature of regulation itself. This is reflected in ‘the vulnerability of regulatory agencies’ (p.186) and generally in difficulties to deliver an effective media policy that would follow democratic standards and meet the citizens’ needs compatible with such standards.

‘In practice, the distinction between competition policy, consumer interests and market liberalism on the one hand, and social and cultural policy, citizen interest and civic republicanism (or social democracy) on the other hand, is often blurred and each shapes regulation and policy making. Yet only occasionally is this process conflictual’, while ‘… the process of developing policy is more pragmatic than oppositional…’ (p.192)

Media Regulation offers an excellent, well-grounded analysis of media governance and its dilemmas. It particularly points out regulatory aspects of media policies and shows how these are related to democratic political contexts. At present times when the increased interest in self- and co-regulatory processes has become a key issue in any discussion of media policies, this book offers a wealth of thought and inspiration to those who either research or regulate the media.

Nada Švob-Đokic

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William Bartlett, Sanja Maleković and Vassilis Monastiriotis, Eds.

Decentralization and Local Development in South East EuropeStudies in Economic Transition, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK, February 2013, ISBN: 978-0-230-35563-7

Decentralization and Local Development in South East Europe provides a very useful and interesting analysis of the impact of policies of decentralization and regional development in several post-communist countries in South East Europe (SEE). The Research Programme “Decentralization and Regionalisation in South East Europe: Political, Economic, Social, and International Relations Aspects” is initiated by LSEE with the support of the Latsis Public Benefit Foundation. The book is an edited collection of research papers by leading scholars from around the region. Many of them were originally presented at a conference organized as part of the research project by LSEE and IRMO in Zagreb in May 2010.

In the fourteen chapters of this book, sixteen authors from different disciplines discuss various issues of decentralization and local development, decentralization in ethnically divided societies, implementation deficits and spatial inequalities. It represents a very good example of a multidisciplinary approach and brings together researchers from different disciplines and geographical origins engaged in economic, political, legal and administrative aspects of decentralization and regional development.

The editors, Will Bartlett (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK), Sanja Maleković (Institute for Development and International Relations, Zagreb) and Vassilis Monastiriotis (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK), divided the book into five parts. In the introductory chapter they give a brief overview of the decentralization process in formerly centralized countries: Albania, Bulgaria and Romania. In former Yugoslavia, the successor states recognized the importance of decentralization legislation after the democratic changes, which led to a greater commitment to the consolidation of democracy. The EU

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enlargement and accession processes had a great influence on the process of regionalization in both the EU member states in the region (Bulgaria and Romania) and the countries of the Western Balkans. Through this edited collection of research papers, the editors indicate that decentralization as a policy instrument is often seen as making an important contribution to the mobilization of local resources for economic development. Yet, its impact is important but not decisive in promoting local economic development in SEE. The editors emphasize how decentralization often failed to remove the element of political interference and political connectedness of the state and the new business elites. Their observations indicate several potential solutions in response to the aforementioned drawbacks. Emphasis is placed on greater empowerment of the local level of government through enabling and supporting intermunicipal cooperation and the development of cooperation between the public and private sector at the local level.

Part II addresses the role of decentralization in promoting local economic development in SEE. In this part, attention is given to the relationship between decentralization and economic growth and the promotion of political freedom in the transition countries of SEE. Dallago in his chapter analyzes potential threats for the sustainability of transformation, pointing out some cases in the Balkans where local development led to a segmentation of territory, society and the economy. Jurlina Alibegović presents an analysis of decentralization reforms and their effects on the regional and local development process in Croatia that initiated a partial decentralization of its public functions in 2001. In the following chapter, Bartlett and Šišević focus on the less developed North East region of Montenegro. In their analysis, the authors investigate the effects of decentralization policies on the development of municipalities within the context of deindustrialization, which led to widespread unemployment and closed factories.

Part III discusses the role of decentralization in ethnically divided societies and its usage as a tool of peace building and conflict reduction (the Dayton Peace Agreement, the Ohrid Framework Agreement and the Ahtisaari Plan). There are different views as to whether decentralization can be successful as an effective way to the resolution of ethnic conflict

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and its sustainability or if it might promote discrimination against minorities.

Several chapters discuss how the structure of local government can be a crucial factor in resolving conflict, because the strengthened cooperation between political and economic factors can result in a faster recognition of the needs and interests of the local community. The case of Bosnia and Herzegovina is analyzed by Bojčić-Dželilović who aims to map the process of decentralization. The author is of the opinion that regardless of numerous reforms some progress has been made in modernizing the legislative framework of decentralization. Yet, lack of political consensus and commitment for effective public services delivery negatively affects the most vulnerable groups. In the following chapter, Burema provides a summary of the historical context of decentralization in Kosovo and its role as a potential mechanism for resolving some of the ethnic differences. Through his analysis, focused on the Kosovo Serb community, he discusses the factors of potential danger to the success of decentralization as a mechanism for defusing ethnic tensions. Chapter VII provides a comparative analysis of two cases previously discussed: the experience of post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina in comparison to that of post-independence Kosovo. Srzić in this chapter argues that the existing models of decentralization in both Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina have caused deadlock, a serious obstacle to economic development and to ethnic conflict resolution.

Decentralization has several potential drawbacks, such as weak administrative capacity of local governance, corruption and elite capture. Part IV of this book presents a number of case studies that address the problem of an absence of administrative capacity at the local level and the difficulties of overcoming the problems that local governments are facing in responding to the needs of local economic actors.

Matiuta compares key elements of the legal framework governing decentralization in Bulgaria and Romania with a focus on those factors that led to weak administrative capacity, the problem of human resources, corruption and central political interference in the activities of local public administration. In her chapter, Gjini examines the integration of administrative and fiscal decentralization in Albania and provides a

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critical review of the main obstacles related to the implementation of decentralization. She underlines the need for a greater political commitment, a new institutional design, effective coordination and devolved fiscal responsibilities in order to realize and succeed in decentralization reform. Kolin provides an analysis of social sector reform in Serbia and seeks to identify and explain the numbers, types, regional distribution, activities and functions of third sector entities focusing on civil society organizations dealing with the provisions of social services. She emphasizes that the crucial problem in Serbia’s less developed regions is the weak capacity of local public administration and a lack of financial resources, which leaves a wide range of beneficiaries in need out of reach. In chapter 11, Mijačić provides an overview of the strategic planning process of local economic development in Vojvodina and presents the results of field research on the subject of the extent to which strategic planning contributed to the dialogue between public and private sectors. Risteka assesses how the decentralization process affects policy entrepreneurship at the Macedonian local level since the decentralization reform of 2005 and examines local policymakers’ potential to engage in policy entrepreneurship in the social sector, especially in childcare services.

The last part of the book provides empirical evidence on the relationship between decentralization and spatial inequalities in three countries in SEE: Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria. Monastiriotis investigates the extent and evolution of spatial disparities in Serbia and Bulgaria and identifies significant differences in the patterns of spatial inequality of two countries that are relatively similar in size and level of development, but with different positions in relation to EU accession and at different points in the transition process. In chapter 14, Bičanić and Pribičević examine the presence of regional disparities and seek to identify the reasons and barriers that hinder their reduction. They use an updated version of the same database from an earlier paper but instead of concentrating on the county level they take the NUTS2 level as the basic unit of their analysis. The focus is on Croatia’s shocks and trends from a spatial point of view during an almost 40-year period.

The essential aims of decentralization are removing the power of the central state, providing support to local economic development and

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contributing to the creation of a competitive market economy. Taking all abovementioned facts into account, one may conclude that besides a positive impact, decentralization has several potential disadvantages; worsening of the efficiency of public administration due to the lack of administrative capacity and widening spatial disparities. This book draws attention to the persistence of such drawbacks in a region that calls for dynamic economic growth, strengthened social welfare and for the sustainable continuation of peaceful conflict resolution.

In sum, this book is of great importance and can be highly recommended as a valuable source of information to researchers interested in further research on the impact of decentralization in South East Europe and to the design of appropriate policies that could contribute to the consolidation of democracy, and the improvement of local economic and social development.

Ivana Keser

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Arolda Elbasani, ed.

European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans: Europeanization or business as usual?London and New York: Routledge, 2013. 215 pp ISBN 978-0-415-59452-3

The Thessaloniki Summit of 2003 offered perspective to all countries of the Western Balkans to become members of the European Union once they meet necessary conditions. To facilitate the Western Balkans’ accession, the EU has devised specific instruments in addition to those already part of the enlargement strategy. The reason for tailor-making efforts stems from concerns over stability in the region as a result of the violent break-up of the former Yugoslavia, as well as from the fact that Western Balkans countries are overwhelmingly economically poor and democratically weak. Unlike former communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, in the Western Balkans one finds unfinished, fragile, or contested states. This makes the enlargement approach and Europeization efforts more volatile, less comprehensive and generally exceptionally challenging.

This book promises to focus on domestic factors that are crucial if enlargement into this region will eventually take place. This is carried out through a series of case studies analysing Europeization processes in a range of policy areas in specific countries. Although each case study speaks for itself, it also feeds into the broader argument of complex legacy and multiple transitions the states of the Western Balkans are going through. Such a ‘heavy load’ makes Europeization efforts, even where they are genuinely supported by local elites, perplexing.

Case studies analyse key areas of institutional and policy reform, including state bureaucracy, rule of law, electoral management, environmental governance, cooperation with the International Court of Justice, economic liberalization and foreign policy in Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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The book is divided into three parts and eleven chapters. Part one is entitled Europeanization Travels to the Western Balkans and contains two chapters. Chapter one is written by Arolda Elbasani and it deals with the issue of contested stateness which the author argues is the crucial missing link between the transformation power of the EU enlargement, domestic structural obstacles and the scant will to reform in targeted countries. Chapter two is written by David Phinnemore and it provides a general background on the EU enlargement strategy in the Western Balkans. By drawing parallels with the frame of enlargement utilized in CEE, the author emphasizes the ambiguous nature of the EU commitment in the Western Balkans and the increasing fatigue on the EU side to absorb a new wave of enlargement. The chapter shows that the Stabilization and Association Process draws on the tools and mechanisms that the EU developed in its relations with Central and Eastern Europe, but it cautions against the assumptions about the SAP based exclusively on the CEE countries experience.

Part two is comprised of five chapters and discusses the Europeanization in Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia and Albania which are more or less consolidated states. Chapter three is written by Mieczyslaw P. Boduszynski and is entitled The Trials and Triumphs of Europeanization in Croatia. Boduszynski shows us how ’heavy‘ legacies, including economic structure and state-building, have cast a long shadow on post-communist transition. Croatians have impeded Europeanization in key areas of conditionality: economic liberalization, rule of law, foreign policy and cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Preoccupations with nation and state-building have come into conflict with the EU’s conditions on regional integration and cooperation with the ICTY. However, a credible offer of membership and a change in elite and public attitudes have helped Croatia become an example of how the burden of structure can be made more bearable through a determined course of Europeanization.

Chapter four is written by Jelena Stojanović who writes about EU political conditionality towards Serbia where membership prospects are faced by domestic constraints. Stojanović analyses Serbia’s cooperation with the ICTY as the single most important condition for the country until very recently. The fifth chapter is written by Jessica Giandomenico who writes about EU

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conditionality as a transforming power in Macedonia and evidence from electoral management. The analysis of different electoral polls suggests that the EU’s pressure proved successful in improving the legal aspects of reform. Yet, domestic factors, including the lack of political will to adopt a fair game, but also the lack of administrative capacities and knowledge to implement the adopted rules, have distorted the working of new legal transfers. Persistent clientelism, where elites use personal rewards in return for votes is put forward as the node that links corrupt elites, ethnic divisions, weak administrative structures and a society which tends to support parties that deliver. The sixth chapter is written by the editor of the book Arolda Elbasani who writes about EU administrative conditionality and domestic obstacles with the example of slow, hesitant and partial reform in post-communist Albania. Elbasani traces the role of the EU in building a stable and professional civil service system in Albania against the many historical odds. Similar to the Macedonian case, the EU proved effective in fostering formal changes aimed at the creation of a professional bureaucracy. Yet, governing actors have used informal practices at the borderline of legality to take political control of the state and serve their socio-political clientele. The legacy of the one-party state regime and the continuity of elites related to that tradition explains why Albania’s consecutive governments have only paid lip service to the EU’s requirements by‚ talking the talk’ of reform, but refraining from changing informal rules of political control. The last chapter in part two is written by Martin Mendelski who follows the same line of research as the two previous chapters when analysing EU-driven judicial reforms in a comparative perspective. The analysis shows that the EU’s conditions have engendered change in almost all capacity-oriented aspects, but few real changes in the impartiality-related aspects and neutral enforcement of the law. The findings on partial and limited compliance with the rule of law requirements are explained by the inadequacy of the EU’s technocratic approach to tackle informal and illicit tactics, including clientelistic power structures, but also semi-mafia and criminal structures used by illiberal actors.

Part three deals with Europeanization in contested states and is divided into three chapters. Dimitris Papadimitriou and Petar Petrov write about the European Union’s strategy in Kosovo (1999-2010) and state-building without recognition. They investigate the capacity of the EU to orchestrate domestic reform in the context of incomplete sovereignty in

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Kosovo. Given the legal uncertainty surrounding the Kosovar state and the lack of a common EU position on its recognition, but also the EU’s involvement in all aspects of governance and state-building, the country presents a uniquely complex problem of Europeanization. Adam Fagan writes about building environmental governance in potential candidate countries and environmental impact assessment processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The analysis suggests that Europe’s transformative power is working at the level of formal compliance. Yet, substantial adoption of EU environmental rules is hampered by the poor capacity of non-governmental actors to engage in policy deliberation and the lack of state capacity to coordinate the various actors involved. Rafael Biermann writes about secessionism, irredentism and EU enlargement to the Western Balkans. Although secessionism has abated as a prevailing sentiment and a serious policy option compared to the previous decade, it remains a dormant problem able to disrupt contested and consolidated states in Kosovo, Bosnia, Macedonia and Serbia. Secessionism not only exacerbates uncertainties of nation-building, but it outright conflicts with the idea of integration.

The conclusion brings us a chapter written by Tanja A. Börzel who writes about Europeanization and Western Balkans as a test case for transformative power of Europe. She revisits the main theoretical arguments on the relationship between the EU and the factors mediating transformative power of Europe in the light of empirical analysis. In the Balkan context, not only is the misfit with the EU’s demands much greater than in the case of CEE, but also their willingness and capacity to implement the EU rules are far lower. Weak statehood is distinguished as the most important missing link between EU conditionality and the scant willingness and capacity to reform in the targeted countries. Unfavourable domestic conditions, including the breaks of stateness, have not prevented the formal adoption of the EU’s norms and rules, which have taken place at least to some degree in almost all of the countries under investigation. The main problem is effective application and enforcement.

This book expands knowledge on systematic analysis of Europeization processes in various policy areas in countries of the Western Balkans. It is a study of these countries, their historical legacies and complex realities, but this is also a study of the ‘enlarging’ EU at present time. By focusing

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on domestic factors, this book helps a reader better understand not only what the EU is trying to achieve in the Western Balkans, but why these efforts have only limited success. It also brings insight when and how pro-European domestic forces in the region can be identified and, ideally, empowered to join efforts with the EU in deeply transforming this region.

The book is recommended to students of enlargement studies, Europeization, Western Balkans and specific policy areas analysed in the book. It is also recommended to NGO activists and policy makers, both in Europe and in the Western Balkans.

Marina Funduk

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Eldar Sarajlić and Davor Marko, eds.

State or Nation? The Challenges of Political Transition in Bosnia and HerzegovinaSarajevo: Center for Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Studies, University of Sarajevo, 2011. 181 pp ISBN 978-9958-704-25-3

In this compilation of essays written by six different authors and edited by Eldar Sarajlić and Davor Marko, the state, society and culture in Bosnia and Herzegovina (henceforth BiH) are analyzed.

In the introduction of the book entitled: “Between State and Nation: Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Challenge of Political Analysis” Eldar Sarajlić explains why Bosnia and Herzegovina is selected as the subject of state or nation-building analysis. For him it is obvious, “In an almost ideal-type fashion, the country appears to embody most of the challenges the literature aims to understand and face: a difficult transition from socialism to democracy and the consequent problems in transformation of the social, political and economic spheres, ethnic diversity and ethnic conflict, revival of religion, low trust in institutions and an underdeveloped civil society.”1

It is said that the importance of the obvious failure of state building in BiH is not in the state itself, but in the values such as human rights, equality, freedom or prosperity, which can only be delivered through the state.Sarajlić says that nation and state are indeed inseparable, and that every talk about the state inevitably implies the nation.

The first two chapters of the book contained in Part One, entitled ”State”, explore the state/nation-building process in an endogenous and exogenous way, providing an overview and analyzing the factors which impact BiH from inside and outside the state in a nation-building process. Mateja Peter and Sead Turčalo give readers an insight into exogenous state-building in BiH and the role of the international community in it and an overview of externally driven nation-building practices. Sead Turčalo

1 Sarajlić and Marko, 2011, p. 9.

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provides a theoretical framework of the issue, not necessarily specific to BiH.

The first issue analyzed by Turčalo is the fragility of state and state-building in which he examines the distinctions between a stable and a fragile state, the elements from which each is built and the levels of fragility of a state. Security and the implementation of the rule of law, along with state territory, permanent inhabitants, sovereign government and international recognition are the basic elements considered to define a state. Consolidated states or those that are in the process of being consolidated, weak states, failing and failed states are the levels of fragility. Turčalo says that sometimes it is hard to assess the differences.

In the rest of his chapter he analyzes the phases and strategies of state-building. “The first phase is related to the post-conflict stabilization of existing structures and institutions, after which we then enter a phase of reformation and transformation of these institutions and the creation of new ones. The goal of the second phase, which is the most demanding and longest, is to make state institutions self-sufficient, especially those that can survive the withdrawal of foreign help. To a large extent, the third phase overlaps with the tasks of the second phase, and it involves the development of institutions and structures which did not previously exist.”2 According to Turčalo there are certain problems regarding externally driven state-building due to different strategies implemented by the international community, with evident differences between European and American conceptions and priorities of state-building.

In her chapter, “The Shifting Contour of International State-Building Practices in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, Mateja Peter also analyzes externally driven state-building in BiH, claiming that both exogenous and endogenous state-building is needed in BiH. The focus of Peter’s chapter is the Office of the High Representative and its effect on state-building related to its own degree of development or weakening.

Part two of the book is entitled “Society” and contains two chapters from authors Adnan Huskić and Ivana Howard. The chapter entitled; “Democratization Against Democracy: Accessing the Failure of State-

2 Ibid, page 29.

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Building in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” written by Adnan Huskić is about the failure of the democratization process in BiH, and how BiH embodies the difference between the process and its goal, democracy. Huskić states that the process of democratization collided with the process of post-conflict stabilization and thus resulted in a lack of democratic development. The post-war elections controversy of 1996 is what the author calls the beginning of the fall, stating that every other state-building attempt made after that proved to be unsuccessful and inadequate. One of Huskić’s theses is that the international community gave up too soon on BiH, and he claims that the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina (henceforth OHR) created some serious damage to the structure of the Dayton Peace Agreement and the post-war efforts by allowing the political elites to create ethnic divisions as a consequence of their poor decision making.

“Society”, the second part of the book, continues with the chapter “Building Civil Society in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Challenges and Mistakes”. Ivana Howard points out ten mistakes from a local perspective of NGO’s and to issues about the channeling of resources from donors to NGOs. She criticizes the amalgamation of NGO’s with civil society. In her essay Howard discusses the matter of civil society being strong enough to survive once the international community is set to go out of BiH. Additionally, she discusses if the foundations will be strong enough to provide a stable and secure society and whether war and violence will escalate after the departure of the international community. Howard also raises the question of donors and their policies, expectations, strategies, practices, communication and respect towards their local partners and offers her criticism on these issues.

The third part is entitled “Culture” and starts with an essay from Nataša Bošković, with the title “Happy Holidays for Whom? Ethno-Cultural Diversity and the Politics of the Regulation of Public Holidays in BiH.” She discusses how the political elites use public holidays to show the implications this has for human rights in BiH. She also poses a question: why are ethnic diversities such a big issue in South-Eastern Europe? She shows how public holidays and honoring them in BiH is extremely important for state-building and is a symbol of respecting human rights. In this chapter the identity of Bosnian citizens is questioned and she says that it remains unrecognized

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at the state level. The author admits that the issue of public holidays in BiH is not the biggest problem in the country, but it does reflect the general situation and it could generate further instability. Bošković analyzes possible solutions with reference to North America and its multiculturalism, even though she is well aware of the differences between the two and of the obstacles that do not allow the transfer of such a model to BiH.

In the final chapter, “Religion, Nation and State: The “Holy Trinity” of Disunity of post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina” authors Tatjana Ljubić and Davor Marko discuss the role of religious communities in state-building processes and the process of democratization of the country in each of them. Religious communities are often policy-makers and their frequent interventions into politics and education actually produce a status quo in the country. Their actions are presented through examples from textbooks used for religious education classes in schools. “This is important because these books promote particular values that have an impact on individual behavior, as well as on forming opinions, and even voting decisions.”3 In this chapter the authors try to answer why religious communities take these actions and why the importance of religion is increasing in BiH.

This book is highly recommended for social science students and researchers interested in South-Eastern Europe, especially in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Nikola Marijan

3 Ibid, page 152.

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Sandro Knezović

Consolidation in Southeast Europe - the Role of External and Internal FactorsZagreb: Politička kultura, 2012. 196 pp ISBN: 978-953-258-062-4

The book Consolidation in Southeast Europe – the Role of External and Internal Factors provides an overview of historical processes of the development of Southeast Europe from the period of the Ottoman Empire until the post-Dayton period, ending with predictions about upcoming trends for the region in the last chapter of the book. The analytical entry through which the author analyses the mentioned period are the role of external and internal factors as well as the time framework within which the analysis is made. By looking at different time periods, the author not only provides a detailed historical overview but also explains the causes which led to some specific events. At the beginning of the book the author explains the meaning of the term Balkan, often used instead of Southeast Europe, which from his point of view is mostly used in a negative sense. Due to the fact that the region of Southeast Europe was faced with numerous conflicts and challenges in the past, according to the author’s opinion it is seen as “a black hole of the European continent” by foreign observers. However, he points out that by doing only cursory historical analysis, one may conclude that these events are not only characteristic for Southeast Europe but also for other regions of the Old Continent.1

In the first chapter, the author touches upon the period of the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy and their influence on the economic development, culture as well as on the security picture of Southeast Europe. According to Knezović, the negative impact of the Ottoman’s domination in the mentioned region is unquestionable and even visible in the modern period. However, in the last subheading which is related to the Ottoman Empire, the author analyses the two historical interpretations of the Ottoman’s role in the Southeast region. According to the first one, the Ottoman Empire presented a religious, social and institutional foreigner which almost destroyed Christian society and

1 Knezović, p. 13.

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during its domination had a negative impact on the security, political, economic and cultural development of the region. On the other hand, the second group of authors define the Ottoman’s heritage as a symbiosis of Turkish, Islamic, Byzantine and Balkan traditions. The author does not define which of the two mentioned approaches is the most appropriate one, but he points out that it is necessary to take them both into account and to find a compromise approach. Besides the Ottoman Empire, the author also analyses the Habsburg Monarchy which had “a significant meaning and influence in the time of its existence”2. The centralistic intentions of the Viennese court on one side and the Hungarian nobility on the other greatly precluded the establishment of Croatian autonomy status with the Monarchy which additionally increased the tensions within its borders. Within this period it is important to mention the establishment of the ‘military border’ and decisions made at the Berlin Congress, which according to the author’s opinion were crucial factors in future conflicts within this region.

In the second chapter, the author presents a detailed analysis of the period between the Berlin Congress and the First World War, which according to Knezović, can be considered as a revolutionary one with significant influence on the strategic relations within the region. Moreover, the author finds the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, national movements and the influence of world powers as three key factors which had a significant impact on the developments within Southeast Europe. Besides the mentioned factors, it is also important to highlight the significance of the mutual interweaving of external and internal factors which determined to a certain extent the creation of national states at that time as well as their side in WWI. In this chapter, the author emphasizes the importance of the Treaty of Versailles that not only determined the world’s map but also had a significant impact on the world order as well. The domination of Western European countries was unquestionable and according to Knezović only Russia could have presented a potential threat to their domination. On the other hand, given the fact that the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes presented everything but the state entity in which all nations were equal, one may conclude that the anticoincidence of political elites from all sides once again indicated the turbulent period for Southeast Europe.

2 Ibid., p. 32.

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The third chapter touches upon the interwar period and the Second World War as well as their influence on the security picture of Southeast Europe. According to the author, the fact that the Second World War started only two decades after the Versailles Agreement was adopted shows its failure in establishment of the new world order. However, the main focus in this chapter is on the creation of the Kingdom SHS which undoubtedly had a significant impact on the states of which it consisted. By analysing the economic and foreign policy position of the Kingdom, the author presents the interweavement of external and internal factors which had a direct influence on the security picture of the region. Moreover, in this chapter the author also analyses the period of the largest war, the Second World War, which not only had a significant impact on the region at that time but also afterwards.

In the following chapter the author’s focus is on the period of the Cold War and on the rivalry of the two main actors, the USA and the USSR. Their differences in policies and incompatibilities did not have only a direct influence on them but also on other countries in the world and therefore on the region of Southeast Europe as well. The fact that the world at that time was divided between two pacts, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, leads to the conclusion that the security picture during the Cold War was formed according to the affiliation of countries to one of the mentioned pacts. Although, at the beginning, Yugoslavia was under the direct influence of the Soviet bloc, with the strengthening of the local communist movement it became more independent in its foreign policy which decreased the influence of external factors in favour of internal ones. The fact that Yugoslavia never became part of the Warsaw Pact leads to the conclusion that its leadership was oriented towards independent foreign policy, making it a unique case. The Non-Aligned Movement can be perceived as a confirmation of the abovementioned conclusion and even though it was not able to counteract the two blocs it “significantly contributed to Yugoslavian credibility at the international level”3.

The fifth chapter deals with the period after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the system for which “ it was believed that it hides elements of stability and continuity”4. However, under the new circumstances, the

3 Ibid., p. 119.

4 Ibid., p. 129.

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goal of new democratic countries was to become NATO members in order to ensure their security, as well as to become EU member states given the fact that the Union at that time had a significant economic role. The fall of communism had immensely influenced the situation in former Yugoslavia. Even though it is difficult to identify key factors that led to the dissolution of the mentioned country, the consequences of presidential elections in Serbia can be perceived as one that undoubtedly influenced the pace of the disintegration process at that time. The overall political situation at the end resulted with the conflict toward which external actors at the beginning were indifferent and qualified it as a “local” one. In this chapter, the author also provides an overview of the mutual relations of Europe and the USA through a comparative analysis of their approach to the conflict in Southeast Europe. The American involvement into the resolution of the conflict once again showed its international dominance, while on the other hand Europe was faced with the deficiency of its Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) mechanisms. Taking all abovementioned facts into account, one may conclude that this period of time is the best example of the influence of both internal and external factors, the first one whose influence had daunting consequences and the second one which at the end lead to the stabilization of the region.

In the last chapter, the author focuses on the post-Dayton period that cannot be perceived as a period of intensification of cooperation between the countries which were affected with the conflict, but according to Knezović represented a precondition for the redefinition of relations within it. Taking into account the existence of political confrontation at that time, one may conclude that the foundation for the intensification of relations between the countries were not achievable until the political elites changed. The period of political changes during the 2000s is what the author points out as precisely the period during which some improvements were made. However, the level of normalization of relations between the countries from the region was far from satisfactory. Europe, which was not able to stop the conflict, took over responsibility for the post-conflict stabilization of this part of Europe. Therefore, the European Commission has introduced the Stabilization and Accession Process with the aim to ensure the stabilization of the region which would afterwards bring countries closer to membership in the EU. The importance of this process was the fact that it defined regional cooperation as a conditio sine qua non in the post-conflict period

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and according to the author it represented a stimulating framework for changes. Taking all abovementioned facts into account, as the author claims the post-Dayton period can be undoubtedly perceived as a period in which the region transferred from a security consumer to being the region in the Euroatlantic accession process.

In the conclusion, the author points out that external actors had a decisive role in defining major parameters and trends of development of the region, but with a mostly negative impact on regional security. With the end of the Cold War, the interweaving of external and internal factors continued, but the internal ones got the opportunity to take over more responsibility. This is mainly visible during the process of regional consolidation and with democratisation of the countries during the last decade when internal actors got the important role in stabilization and further development of the region.

The book Consolidation in Southeast Europe – the Role of External and Internal Factors provides a very useful and interesting overview of the historical changes which had a direct impact on the security picture of Southeast Europe. The fact that this book systematically consolidates all important elements of the author’s multidimensional research, leads to the conclusion that it can be considered as very substantial material for understanding the security of Southeast Europe. Throughout the book the author not only analyses the issues from the past but also deals with current trends, providing thorough insight into possible future scenarios. Therefore, this book does not only represent a useful read for researchers from the mentioned field but also for everyone who wants to learn more about Southeast Europe and its security.

Zrinka Vucinovic