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CRITICAL STATE
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Your weekly foreign policy fix.
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If you read just one thing …
read about South African democracy!
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Sisonke Msimang, author of “Always Another Country” and “The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela,” is in Noema with an essay on Nelson Mandela’s legacy.
The piece looks at apartheid, and also at the ways in which its legacy is still felt: “Critics argue that reconciliation made too many concessions to white South Africans, allowing them to keep the land and assets they had accrued over centuries of colonization and racist supremacy, and that the constitution — the culmination of negotiations and the foundation for the society in which South Africans now live — enshrined their judicial and economic power,” writes Msimang.
While acknowledging that society in South Africa today is very different than it was when apartheid ended, Msimang notes that Mandela’s “more conciliatory approach” is rebuked by some now, who accuse him of “selling out of the revolution.” These critics say Mandela “tried too hard to appease white power brokers in the early 1990s. Today, these critics invoke the specter of ‘white monopoly capital’ to explain why the poor Black majority remains excluded from the economy.”
But Msimang reminds readers that Mandela did not act alone, nor did history end with him — and that, in fact, it’s still being written.
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Generation P for Protest
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Writing in The Nation, Soraya Chemaly argues that, at student protests, Generation Z is demonstrating the resilience many have said their generation lacks.
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Chemaly, author of “The Resilience Myth,” notes a certain irony: “students protesting the Israel-Gaza war grew up hearing that they were ‘coddled’ and ‘lack resiliency.’ Critics scolded Gen Z for ‘needing safe spaces’ and being ‘unable to cope’ without trigger warnings … And yet, here they are, many of them the most privileged students in the country, risking their physical safety, academic standing, and futures by demanding accountability from powerful administrators.”
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Chemaly argues that the generation’s critics conflate the idea of resilience as adaptation and with resilience “as a proxy for a worldview.” Chemaly argues that younger people adapt in a way that is relational, as opposed to individualistic. “Older pundits routinely ignore or minimize our entanglements with one another and our environments, but students who are protesting, like so many of their peers, cannot. To them, our interdependencies are undeniable. Why would they adapt in ways that ignore those interdependencies?”
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Eat Up
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In Hyphen Online, Zahra Al Asaadi takes a look at the impact of Uighur cuisine.
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Uighur restaurants aren’t on every street, but, as Al Asaadi puts it, they punch above their weight and have garnered a mighty reputation in the United Kingdom, offering Brits their “unique blend” of Central Asian and Chinese flavors. One Uighur restaurant, Etles, was recently named one of Time Out’s top five places to eat in London. Sadly, the Uighur expat and culinary community in London is developing because many of its members have had to flee government persecution in Xinjiang.
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One of the first to open was Karamay, in 2012 in Leicester. It has since expanded into London, where it now has a “casual dining spot.” The owners attribute the growth of Uighur restaurants to how much better known Uighur food now is to people. Al Asaadi also looks at another, slightly pricier spot, but the point of the piece is really not one restaurant or the other. Rather, it is that this community has expanded into the United Kingdom, bringing a cuisine along with them — and, in turn, expanding people’s horizons and appetites.
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Gender Quotas Are a Construct
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How does the application of gender quotas impact attitudes? That was the question before Ragnhild L. Muriaas and Yvette Peters in their new paper, “Attitudes to gender quotas: Why and where to adjust gender imbalance in leadership, recently published in the European Journal of Political Research.”
They were interested in what might make people more, or less, supportive of gender quotas. The authors noted that they know a lot about who supports quotas: women tend to be more supportive, and women’s equal presence legitimizes decisions. But, they said, they know less about the kind of information that might lead someone to support quotas, or not. To the best of their knowledge, this article was one of the first about support for gender quotas based on where and why they are applied.
The authors surveyed Norwegian citizens and elected officials to “examine the potential of new rationales and different areas of application to find out what makes (some) people more supportive of gender quotas.” They used Norway because political polarization on the issue of gender quotas was minimal, and lawmakers’ opinion studies found that political parties did not have coherent opinions on the matter (the authors also pointed out that “Norway, even if known for party pluralism and consensus on gender equality, does not have legislative gender quotas, and despite a quota for listed companies the proportion of women on boards in private firms is currently 20%”).
The authors used a citizen-elite paired survey experiment, wherein they tested whether support for gender quotas was impacted by the type of argument used; whether support was impacted by information about where the quota was applied; and whether citizens and elected representatives feel similarly.
Their study found that the why and the where did indeed matter. They found “an argument promoting common benefits without challenging men's capabilities is generally effective in promoting support, and that support for gender quotas in religious leadership tends to be relatively high.”
They found that citizens were impacted more by moral arguments than by elected officials. Additionally, emphasizing women’s insights helped boost support for the more undecided, whereas hinting at a woman’s untapped potential might hurt. They also found that, “unexpectedly … those on the right are more supportive of gender quotas in the leadership of religious institutions than elsewhere, and that this seems to be driven at least partly by skepticism against migrants.”
The authors propose that future research could look at the utility of different frames in greater detail and depth. What are understood to be the benefits? Who understands these to be the benefits? They also suggest scholars look at the strength of arguments promoting equality through means besides quotas. They are especially interested in movement on the right: what would it take for those who do not want to bend for gender quotas to break in favor of gender equality?
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Anne-Gaëlle Lissade looked at the erosion of cultural legacy in Haiti. Discussions on Haiti, Lissade wrote, often revolve around gang violence, political upheaval, or natural disasters. But to Lissade, to watch “the news today is to see the flames consuming significant fragments of this heritage — fragments that belong to us — obliterating commercial ventures and the core of a legacy meticulously handed down through generations.” Lissade considered architectural losses, as well as the overlap of identity and heritage, concluding, “With each fading tradition, a strand of Haiti’s identity unravels. The escalating crisis begs the question: Does the road Haiti now treads lead to a complete erasure
of its cultural lineage, the vibrancy of its past, present, and the promise of its future?”
Bob Dreyfuss wondered whether there is any future for a US-Iran nuclear deal. Former US President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA, while US President Joe Biden, “a traditional advocate of American exceptionalism, a supporter of the US-Iran agreement who promised to restore it upon taking office, only to ham-handedly bungle the job, while placating Israel.” Meanwhile, Iran has continued development of its nuclear research. Could a deal be “salvaged” next year after the presidential election? Or is the best anyone can hope for that the region doesn’t spiral even further into chaos and violence?
Daniel Ofman reported on how wartime production in Russia is fueling the Russian economy. Despite Western efforts to isolate Russia economically after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia’s economy has now stabilized. Russia’s key interest rate is 16%, but “the country’s interest rate remains manageable.” Ofman noted that Ukraine’s allies were not able to put a global coalition together, and Russia is still making billions selling oil and gas. Russia’s economy is expected to grow, not shrink, in the short term. However, that doesn’t mean the economy will remain strong. Ofman spoke to Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center: “Russia desperately needs
workers and three major powers — the army, the civil sector, and military manufacturers — are all competing now for workers on the Russian market, Prokopenko said. As a result, wages are growing, but this dynamic may not be sustainable.”
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Critical State is written by Emily Tamkin with Inkstick Media.
The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX and GBH.
With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”
Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
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