The aim of this research project is to increase our understanding of the boundaries of democratisation by identifying the mechanisms through which conflicts over political inclusion are being managed in the multi-ethnic state of Georgia.
A central point of departure is the established argument that democratisation requires a demos - the people can hardly rule until there is consensus as to who are the people. Transitions tend to be short-circuited, oftentimes violently, in the absence of such agreement. No nationality wishes to be subjugated to the will of the majority within a state dominated by another nationality. National democratisation processes therefore tend to awaken local ethnic conflicts, which often spill over into inter-state conflagrations.
Departing from post-Soviet Georgia, this project investigates how such questions of political inclusion are being contested between - and within - the central government and nation-building entrepreneurs in the peripheral ethno-regions of the country. It draws on interviews with representatives of the Georgian government as well as Armenian and Azerbaijani activists from the ethno-regions of Javakheti and Kvemo Kartli, respectively. However, the project also builds on socio-linguistic experiments (matched-guise tests) created to unearth inter-ethnic attitudes. Taken together, this data enables the research project to re-construct the incentives for integration in Georgia's Armenian- and Azerbaijani borderlands.
A decisive advantage, stemming from this data triangulation, is that the research project will be able to identify the social mechanisms through which conflicts over political inclusion are being managed.
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This project investigates a number of normative issues regarding so called climate migration. More specifically, it addresses questions about which moral obligations countries and individuals in the developed world have toward, first, individuals in developing countries who are forced to leave their homes for reasons of climatic changes, and, second, toward the home and destination countries of these migrants.
Climatic changes already cause migration and it is predicted that this problem will exacerbate rapidly. Developed countries carry the greater share of responsibility for climatic changes. At the same time, developing countries carry the greatest burdens. This asymmetry between responsibility and vulnerability quite obvioulsy triggers issues of fairness.
We usually think that a state has a right to control access to its territory and to decide whether particular immigrants will be allowed to stay or not. When it comes to climate migration however, a complication is added in that that the developed world is mainly responsible for creating the problem. We should ask then, whether it is really reasonable that wealthy states treat environmental migrants as they treat conventional immigrants?
We should also ask whether the developed world's role in creating the problem in the first place, has implications for the wider issue of global justice. Could perhaps the problem be construed as a breach of the territorial rights of the affected developing countries? If that is the case, would international redistribution be required for reasons of compensatory justice?
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The most important project I am working on now concerns tolerance and democracy. In colaboration with Sven Oskarsson (Department of Government, Uppsala University) and Karolina Hulterström (Sida) a project has been initiated which includes surveys in Uganda, India, Pakistan and Kenya. We are also preparing applications to carry out surveys in several European countries together with project collaborators from the Polish Academy of Sciences, Groningen University and Universität Konstanz. The project aims at determining what decides levels of tolerance and intolerance among citizens who live in areas where economic resources are very limited as well as where economic resources are more abundant, where there is a varying degree of ethnic pluralism, and in states which vary in the spectrums between authoritarian rule and democracy. Standard assumptions about tolerance will be tested, such as those relating to the influence of literacy, class, gender, membership of civic organisations, levels of social capital, indicators such as trust, and religious and political affiliation. We will also test for the influence of contextual variables such as the character of state institutions, their level of democratic performance, and varying degrees of cultural or ethnic pluralism. At this point, by using data collected in a project previously carried out in India, and by using data from World Values Survey, we have already published articles that indicate that at least two assumptions previously held by researchers focusing on modernization and development can be challenged. The first is that trust and tolerance always co-varies. They certainly can, but it also turns out in that in some areas, groups and individual who trust each other do not necessarily tolerate each other (in terms of granting each other equal political rights). Secondly economic growth does not automatically make citizens more tolerant (this is assumed implicitly or explicitly expressed by proponents of modernization theory). Consequently, we can draw the conclusion that simply advocating economic growth in combination with a ?vibrant civil? society consisting of many voluntary organizations, will not be enough to bring about a society which upholds core democratic and human rights oriented values. So, far we have found indicators showing that other factors usually classified as belonging to the sphere of political culture are more important in providing for tolerance which is a pillar for democracy and equality.
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This research project furthers our understanding of an often ignored but important and central part of modern politics; the dynamic relationship between territory and state. The republic of Syria, carved out of a much larger territory during the post World War I re-mapping of the Middle East, constitutes the empirical focus. The study analyzes Syrian policies towards three territories lost; Lebanon, Hatay and the Golan Heights. Through the examination of Syrian policies towards the three areas from the time of their loss until the end of 2010, the study argues that while special relations to these three cases are signaled through words or deeds or both, Syria clearly has different views of and ambitions for them. Although Syria, during the period under study, repeatedly disrespected the sovereignty of Lebanon it does not strive to incorporate it into Syria. The same goes for Hatay, despite the fact that Syrian maps depict it as part of Syria. The Golan Heights, on the other hand, is considered a necessary part of the Syrian national territory and therefore has to be returned to Syria. The study seeks to understand why certain territories lost remain on the agenda as something that has to be returned while the loss of others are possible to come to terms with. For this purpose, a theoretical and methodological framework for analyzing change and consistency in a state's perception of territories lost is developed. Further, five explanatory factors are discussed and applied to the Syrian cases. Of the five, only integrative state building and the existence of a contending élite with the ability to formulate an alternative version of an appropriate and right-sized national territory were concluded to have affected policies towards territories lost in the Syrian case. The project ended in May 2011.
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Our research project focusses on the boundaries between the peoples and the nation-states which were established in Western and Central Asia in this century by international actors (the mandate) or internal forces (nation-building), and the actions taken by individuals and groups as well as their perceptions of belonging and boundaries. These two aspects are studied partly in the period when the boundaries were formed and when what is seen as the modern nation-state was established and replaced the old dynastic, multi-national empires and partly in the contemporary period when nation-state borders are becoming more porous through transnationalisation, globalisation and the superpower constellation in the world is no longer inclined to freeze the situation in the area.
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