Redrawing the Boundaries:

Redrawing the Boundaries: Latvian Security in the Post-Cold War Period

Andres Kahar[1]

Abstract – In recent years, a recurring notion has dominated Western security debates; that security is no longer primarily a problem for the nation-state, but rather an agenda to be tackled at the regional and global levels. This shift was apparent during the 1998 crisis over Latvia’s restrictive citizenship law, which was the product of a security policy which aims to secure the Latvian nation-state above all else. While this nation-focused policy contributed to stability in the immediate post-Soviet period, this paper looks at how broader regional trends in the West have put pressure on Latvian elites to change their approach. The author argues that in the late 1990s Western regional norms changed the terms of Latvia’s security discourse, fundamentally regionalizing the country’s treatment of its citizenship issue.

The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms. —Antonio Gramsci

Introduction

In prize-fighting, there is a saying: everyone has a plan until the moment they get hit. That adage has some resonance in the realm of security policymaking in Latvia. In the autumn of 1991, when Latvian independence was restored after a half-century of Soviet occupation, the élites of this Baltic state set about rebuilding the nation-state that had existed prior to the 1940 Soviet occupation. In the years since the Soviet collapse, however, hard realities have driven home a point for many Latvian leaders: security is just as much about the supra- and sub-state levels as it is about the integrity of the Westphalian nation-state, if not more so. This has demanded a paradigm ‘re-think’ on the part of policymakers dealing with Baltic regional security. A change in Latvian strategy was in order. Since the end of the Cold War, Latvia’s security politics have been driven by a clash of countervailing ideational pressures — Western-inspired policies advocating new security models versus political resistance by élites in favour of older Westphalian models. This has been particularly evident in the realm of Latvian citizenship policy. This policy area has been a recurrent flashpoint in the Baltic country’s relations with both Russia and the West.

Security models in Latvia are inextricably linked to the ever-thorny world of ethnic politics. The central thesis of this paper contends that the relatively low level of inter-ethnic tensions in Latvia and the resolution of the country’s 1998 citizenship policy crisis is owing to two factors: firstly, specific Latvian security mechanisms in the immediate post-Soviet period were constituted on the basis of existing social dynamics among ethnic groups; and secondly, ongoing Western third party mediation has, over time, gained resonance among reform-minded Latvian élites, thereby promoting policy change. Western mediation has served gradually to alter many élite perceptions in Latvia. This paper will provide an overview of the strategies of Latvian and Western actors, identifying points of political resistance and points of acceptance during the Latvian citizenship crisis of 1998. The key mediating role played by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)[2] will be spotlighted.

The first factor cited above, that Latvian security has been partly constituted on the basis of societal realities — helps to explain why the Latvian security context is a unique one. This unique context owes much to Cold War politics. Western non-recognition of Soviet occupation in Latvia (as well as the neighbouring Baltic states of Estonia and Lithuania) handed post-Soviet Baltic élites an opportunity to put into place institutions and mechanisms that enshrine security for the titular nation. More specifically, various institutions and legal procedures relating to citizenship and language status were implemented. This allowed the titular Baltic nationalities to claim politico-cultural hegemony within their respective states. More to the point, Latvian élites were in an unprecedented position to set the security agenda in the political space of the state — this in an age when security agendas are often determined from above or below, at regional or subregional levels.[3]

Defining Latvian security

For Latvian élites, the state — or, more precisely, the nation-state — has been the primary referent of security. Before the restoration of independence, identity was a matter of insecurity for native Latvians: Soviet occupation set the stage for a half-century of Moscow-directed policies repressing Latvian culture and language. These policies included Russification, which involved the immigration of Russian-speaking immigrants from Russia and other parts of the Soviet Union.[4] In light of this, Latvian élites of the immediate post-Soviet period saw a state-led culturalization agenda as key to redressing the ethnic imbalance in their ancestral homeland. This was indeed a goal among many titular ethnic groups across the former Soviet Union. But, as will be discussed below, the Latvians (as well as the Estonians and Lithuanians), were uniquely positioned to put this agenda into action.

Gaining disproportionate ethnic control was key to securing the Latvian nation. In the words of Maris Grinblats, leader of the Latvian nationalist party For Fatherland and Freedom:

The crux of the issue is that, even with freedom, we continue to be an occupied country. There are up to 200,000 people somehow related to Soviet military, the Communist Party and the KGB, and many of them view Latvia as part of a Russian-dominated empire. For the Latvian language, the Latvian culture and the Latvian people to regain their rightful status here in Latvia, we need a Latvian-run political system. This is why we need a stricter citizenship law in Latvia.[5]

At the heart of Latvians’ ethnopolitically-motivated insecurity is the deep-seated fear that the sizeable non-Latvian population could end up a Trojan Horse for Moscow. That fear is not simply an outgrowth of paranoia or nationalist rhetoric either, for there is a precedent. In the late 1980s, as the Soviet state was losing legitimacy and the Baltic national movements edged their way toward independence, pro-Soviet and Kremlin-orchestrated Interfront movements bent on undermining independence agendas cropped up within all three Baltic states. These Soviet hard-line groups were behind coup attempts in each of the Baltic capitals in early 1990. Baltic anxieties did not dissipate in the immediate period following Baltic independence. Russia’s continued military presence and the Kremlin’s incendiary declarations about protecting Russia’s so-called “Near Abroad” further stoked Latvian suspicions about the possible disloyalty of local non-Latvians, the vast majority of whom are Russian or Russian-speaking. Those Latvian élites pressing for a tougher citizenship law have argued that, when naturalized, this Russophone population could knock Latvia off its market reformist tracks and come out in favour of integration into a Russia-led union.

As Horowitz underscores, even the mere suspicion of a domestic minority’s “external affinity” with a hostile state can breed intrastate conflict.[6] It is therefore little wonder that much of the domestic policy debate in the immediate post-independence years dwelled on one major question: Who should be a member of the Latvian political community? This issue boils down to a larger question of security: Who or what is to be secured? The answer to that question is bound to vary from region to region. After all, security means different things to different people. In Latvia, titular élites identified the nation-state as the object to be secured.

Beyond the state

From a theoretical standpoint, it is problematic to study Latvian security politics through an orthodox (or state-centric) lens. By orthodox security approach, I am pointing to what international relations theorists refer to as realist schools of thought. One key element in this orthodox approach is the principle that the inter-state or international realm is separate from the domestic. Accordingly, the state determines its interests based on rational calculations in an anarchic international arena.[7] A failing of such a state-centred approach to security is that it neglects to guide us to a full understanding of how people and communities weigh their range of choices. How do they decide what is important and what is worth securing? State interests do not explain everything that occurs at the sub- and supra-state levels.

A strictly state-centred approach glosses over a harsh post-Cold War reality: some of the greatest threats do not necessarily come from outside of the state, but rather from within. As Krause and Williams point out, the doctrine of state sovereignty — and consequently citizenship — can often become a source of insecurity.[8] In other words, does the state necessarily represent the security interests of all groups within that political space? In the case of post-Soviet Latvia, identified security interests are not always easy to disentangle.

On the one hand, by seeking membership in various Western organizations Latvia’s political élites have identified a series of apparently rational politico-economic interests that appeal to a broad swath of people, regardless of political leaning or ethnicity. For example, one 1997 survey found that more Russian-speakers in Latvia (66 percent) support the idea of EU membership than titular Latvians (52 percent).[9] But in Latvia the analyst also finds himself/herself wandering through the thickets of ethnopolitics — a landscape where politics and security are about identity. Here, the state is on the receiving end of the causality flow. Intangibles such as history, culture, language, national myths and attachment to territory tend to define the security discourse.[10] This is where Baltic and Western security models tend to clash.

This is precisely why it is important to consider identity as the source of both security and insecurity. As Weldes et al point out, identity and insecurity are mutually constitutive: the perceptions of difference and otherness created by self-identity both constitute and threaten the identity in question.[11] The idea of “titular ownership”[12] has indeed been a source of security for ethnic Latvians; but at the same time, the presence of a large non-Latvian population presents an identity threat. Latvia’s citizenship legislation was one mechanism used to address this insecurity. This ethnopolitical mechanism, however, has fed to new insecurities among Latvia’s Russian-speakers and the larger Baltic region. This scenario fits the traditional definition of a security dilemma.

The citizenship legislation enacted by Latvia in the early 1990s became a focus of Moscow’s ire. Consequently, these Latvian policies became points of concern for Western observers. Latvia’s 1994 citizenship legislation set naturalization limits for Soviet-era immigrants and their children, who account for nearly 700,000 in a total Latvian population of 2.7 million. The underlying aim of this restrictive citizenship law was to politically delegitimize the minority Russophone population by assigning it a legal category: illegal immigrant. Latvian legislators on the basis of legal continuity justified this legal regime. As most major Western powers never legally recognized the Soviet annexation, only those Latvian residents born before the 1940 takeover (and their children) are eligible for citizenship. The argument of legal continuity was a powerful one employed by pro-independence and anti-Soviet campaigners during the final years of Soviet rule. Western non-recognition was the legal root of titular Latvians’ sense of titular ownership in post-Soviet Latvia.

It was Western non-recognition — a fact that set the Baltics apart from other Soviet republics — that made post-independence Latvia partially exempt from certain multilateral pressures. Moreover, this legalistic approach to claiming politico-cultural hegemony for Latvian nationals ended up being sound strategy. Unlike the cases of Georgia and Moldova, where titular efforts to undo ethnopolitical realities led to civil war and Russian intervention, the “soft legal” approach adopted by Latvian élites appeared more procedural than explicitly anti-Russian. Russian-speaking observers in Latvia have noted how this allowed Latvian élites swiftly and quietly to implement ethnic controls for the creation of a “Latvian Latvia.” As Boris Tsilevich, a leading human rights activist in Latvia, put it to me:

It is not that the social and economic rights of non-Latvians are impinged upon here in Latvia — I can’t really say that is the case, especially when life is better for people here than in Russia. It is really more a matter of non-Latvians being politically marginalized. In a democratic state, it cannot be that way.[13]

‘Old’ security vs. ‘new’ security

This ethnopolitically-based security model, however, was eventually bound to clash with Western ideas about Baltic regional security. The clash happened in early 1998. That year’s Latvian citizenship imbroglio makes for a compelling case study. It was in spring 1998 that mounting tensions between Latvia and Russia over the Baltic country’s citizenship policy prompted Western mediators to press for a Latvian policy re-think. This case study highlights an implicit tension between the Latvian security framework and security notions being advocated by Western third parties.

As touched on above, Baltic security conceptions in the immediate post-Cold War period have involved a link between security and identity. More to the point, the nation has been identified as the primary referent of security. On the other hand, prevailing security conceptions laid out by Western policymakers — particularly Western European policymakers working through the OSCE and the European Union (EU) — have identified the individual and the market as referents of security. This evolving Western approach to security has translated into less emphasis on the state and a broadening of security to include other factors, such as economics, societal relations and the environment.[14]

Herein lies the division between old and new security notions. To return to the central thesis of this paper, it seems odd on the face of it to claim that tensions were kept at a low level for two apparently contradictory reasons — not only because Latvian élites were (initially) able to set the security agenda, but also because Western norms served gradually to change élite perceptions. Yet this is the point. In the immediate period following the Soviet collapse, Latvian nationalists’ access to peaceful, legal mechanisms for redressing the ethnic imbalance in their country precluded possible recourse to violence or social unrest. The post-Soviet years also marked a period of security transformation — from bipolar conflict to multilateralism. Latvia’s security has in part depended on the country’s political élites adapting to new norms of security policy and Western democratic expectations. And against that backdrop, the 1998 citizenship dispute represented a watershed in Latvian security policymaking: the point at which the security agenda of state élites was amended following pressures from regional and sub-regional actors.

As Latvia’s relations with Western organizations became increasingly tangled and involved through the post-Cold War years, the conflictual nature of Latvian security mechanisms became increasingly apparent. Latvia’s ongoing integration into Western structures — most prominently, a drive for memberships in EU and NATO, the Holy Grails of Latvian foreign policy — has given Western political norms increasing leverage over Latvian policymakers. Put plainly, the policy aim of Western European leaders has been to convince Latvian élites that regional security depends on the integration of Latvian society.

Russian policy, on the other hand, has repeatedly hit on what Moscow condemns as “human rights abuses” by Latvian authorities. Moscow has objected to Latvia’s citizenship policies, deeming them discriminatory. Kremlin policy pronouncements identify Russia’s security as being contingent on the security of Russophone populations in the so-called “Near Abroad,” or ex-Soviet territories. This is a claim that Latvian leaders interpret as Russia’s design on the Baltic region as its sphere of influence. Russian leaders have repeatedly challenged Baltic efforts to join NATO, warning Baltic and Western leaders that such a move would be viewed by Moscow as a security threat. Moscow’s strategy worked. In July 1997, the Baltic states were not included in the first wave of NATO’s eastward expansion precisely because of Russo-Western tensions over the matter.[15]

Russian pressures on Latvia to alter its Westward course have included Moscow’s cryptic offer of “security guarantees” in November 1997. More recently, Russian pressure tactics have included a mock invasion of the Baltics during Russian military exercises in June-July 1999 codenamed “West ‘99" — a simulated response to NATO action.[16] Such a regional flashpoint only deepened Western policymakers’ concerns about the future of the Baltic region, spurring them to diplomatic action. Yet despite this clash of new and old security conceptions — normative pressures on one hand and Cold War style rhetoric on the other — it would be a mistake to study this scenario as a conceptual dichotomy. This Latvian case study shows us how the policies of Latvia, Western organizations and Russia are all informed by the security problématique of old.

Citizenship and conflict

It was a chain of events in the Latvian capital of Riga in early 1998 that saw Baltic security conceptions come under direct Western challenge. The events were touched off by a confrontation between demonstrating Russian pensioners and Latvian police on March 3, 1998. The scuffle, caused by Latvian police dispersing an unauthorized demonstration by Russophone pensioners on a main Riga artery, drew Kremlin threats of economic sanctions against Latvia and angry Russian calls for an end to Latvia’s “longtime discriminatory” policies against Russian-speakers. This prompted OSCE and EU states to embark on an intensive round of emergency diplomacy during the spring and summer of 1998.

As Kremlin ire focused on Latvia’s alleged human rights abuses against Russian-speakers and its exclusionary citizenship law, OSCE and EU leaders pressured Latvian élites into reconsidering the OSCE’s recurrent recommendation to loosen citizenship requirements. These OSCE recommendations, which originally date back to 1994, called for the granting of automatic citizenship to all children of non-citizens born after independence and the abolition of a phased “windows” system of naturalization, which allows only certain age groups to naturalize each year. All of this sparked an emotional public debate across Latvia, which culminated at the start of October 1998 in a referendum on the citizenship law changes and a landmark general election. The referendum’s outcome saw the amendments passed by just more than a whisker (52 percent of voters in favour of the law changes). The amended law entered into force later that year.

Beyond the state

By putting store in the influence of Western norms, this study is taking a critical social constructivist approach to security analysis. While neorealist theories do indeed offer insight on security in the Baltic region — a region where the security discourse turns on small state actors’ bilateral tensions with an ex-imperial power such as Russia — such models fail to explain the view from below. Such theories privilege systems-level theses, neglecting the possibility that the greatest threats to security can come from within states. Neorealist theories also give short shrift to the power of norms, which they claim to emerge from material and structural conditions. Critical theorists, on the other hand, believe that ideas have a force of their own — that changes in thinking and perception can lead to changes in the system.[17]

This paper views the relationship between agency and structure as being mutually constitutive: states develop norms, which structure relations among states; in turn, the norms help to determine state interests. This is the principle on which EU and OSCE diplomacy in the Baltics has been based. Such a conceptual tack flies in the face of neorealism’s image of an international arena prone to anarchy — one in which the state-society relationship is separated from international relations. What is especially disconcerting about this conceptual view is the tendency to treat the domestic as static — as a dependent variable, which is affected by the independent variable (the international system). This appears to discount the possibility of domestic forces — say, Latvian policymakers — either accepting or resisting external pressures in bids to turn the situation to their own advantage.

Neorealists tend to view the state as a separate and neutral actor in the anarchical self-help system, functioning in a space between the domestic and international spheres.[18] However, as the Latvian case study bears out, states are often interested parties that either work with or against dominant societal forces. Moreover, international actors mediating in Latvia have repeatedly bypassed the state, working with sub-state/non-state actors to prevent intrastate conflict.

Enter the OSCE

The OSCE has been instrumental in changing the nature of security discourse in the Baltic region. The organization has been key to defusing numerous sub-state conflicts in post-Cold War Europe by confidence-building measures among conflicting groups within states. Western leaders became painfully aware of the need for preventive mechanisms in the early 1990s when wars broke out in the former Yugoslavia. Since the early 1990s, the OSCE has used its tools of “preventive diplomacy” in Latvia to help control relations between Latvian and non-Latvian groups. Establishing an OSCE mission in Riga in 1993 served this mandate.

As Latvia was seeking entry into various Western bodies, the OSCE gained a certain leverage in the Latvian security discourse. This political leverage was key in late 1994 as the Latvian parliament debated various citizenship bills. Among these bills was the nationalist proposal outlining a severely restrictive draft law that laid out terms for full-scale naturalization limits. The OSCE intervention (along with that of Swedish Premier Carl Bildt and a handful of EU diplomats) was enough to convince Latvian President Guntis Ulmanis to go over the heads of nationalists in parliament and veto the controversial law. A more liberal (but still restrictive) citizenship law was passed later in 1994.

Security policymaking involves a competition among notions: actors vie to define what security is all about.[19] The OSCE’s involvement in the Latvian policy discourse was a case of Western security norms challenging the Latvian status quo. During the 1998 Latvian citizenship debate, political actors not only took sides over citizenship policy but also over security agendas. While Western policy debates over recent years have tended toward the broadening of security agendas, Latvian élites endorsed a security model which holds the nation to be the primary referent of security. This Latvian security model was about more than foreign policy. Latvian security principles legitimated a certain model of social relations in post-Soviet Latvia — one in which the titular Latvian population was politically dominant.

In June 1998, Latvia’s nationalist factions, led by the right-wing party, For Fatherland and Freedom, resisted external pressure to amend the Latvian citizenship law. The nationalists’ response to external pressures was to mount a challenge in the form of a referendum and a doggedly nationalist general election campaign. Although a majority of MPs in the Latvian parliament had passed the amendments in late June, Fatherland invoked a constitutional loophole allowing for a referendum on the question. As leading Fatherland MP Juris Sinka commented:

As legislators, we feel pressured and restricted. International organizations are exerting great pressure on us to go along with certain norms. It seems only right that the Latvian people have a say in which direction the nation-state develops. Having their say in a referendum means that the political process is not just a matter of national leaders being rendered politically impotent before international organizations.[20]

For its part, Fatherland feared the Western pressure would alter socio-ethnic relations in post-independence Latvia — and alter the structures which nationalist élites viewed as having provided security for ethnic Latvians.

Following a month-long signature campaign, during which Fatherland collected a requisite number of signatures (one-tenth of all registered citizens), the stage was set for a referendum on whether or not the OSCE-recommended amendments should be passed. The referendum was scheduled for the same day as the general election (October 3). This ensured that the citizenship question became a dominant issue bandied about on the hustings. Because opponents to the Fatherland position invoked regionalist counter-arguments — essentially, that Latvia’s membership in various Western regional clubs obligates it to bring its legislation into line with Western expectations — “Europe” also emerged as a dominant theme on the campaign trail. Centre-right parties such as Latvia’s Way and the People’s Party took a firm stand on the referendum question: “a vote against the OSCE amendments is also a vote against Europe.”[21] Latvians’ sense of self-identity was at the heart of this security policy debate. For Baltic reformers such as Indulis Berzins of Latvia’s Way, pondering these future security scenarios was unsettling business:

I sometimes wonder if Latvia’s nationalist bloc thinks issues of societal integration and Latvian-Russian relations will fix themselves. It is absolutely obligatory that we consider our policies carefully, because political polarization in either society or the region is not a secure option for the future. There is no question — we must change the citizenship law. It is a Latvian security matter, and a matter of Latvia’s membership in Europe. If we want to be Europeans, we must learn to be Europeans. I worry that not all Latvian leaders are learning this quickly enough.[22]

The mounting tension in early 1998 also ensured the launch of a campaign to counter Fatherland’s referendum push. As the OSCE reiterated its amendment recommendations in early spring, the seeds of a pro-amendment campaign were planted with the publication of a letter in April 1998. The letter appeared in the Latvian daily Diena. The leaders of several Latvian NGOs and human rights groups signed the much-discussed document. Entitled “All of Latvia’s Children—to Latvian Citizenship!” the document listed a number of political and legal reasons for liberalizing the citizenship law. Foremost among the stated reasons was that of agreement with European Commission conditions for EU membership.[23] And there were other pro-amendment voices on the left-wing of Latvia’s political spectrum. Janis Jurkans, an ex-foreign minister and the leader of the leftist National Harmony party, has long argued that the nation-state is something of a misnomer:

So Latvia’s leaders are determined to secure the nation-state. But what is the nation-state when only 53% of the population is indigenous. Yes, we were crippled by World War Two. But does that mean we ignore demographics? We’ve been given a chance to integrate this society, so we should do it. We should help Russian-speakers here to become loyal citizens, to learn the language. If they don’t see the incentives to become loyal and functioning citizens in this society, they have older identities and another state to appeal to. By this I mean they can continue thinking of themselves as a Soviet population and they can look to Russia as their protector and fatherland.[24]

Such opposition within the Latvia’s political establishment underscores the importance of a critical security approach to the study of tensions between regional and state-conceived security models. Critical security studies underscore how the securing of state and society demands a shift in focus away from the nation-state to both the global and local levels.[25] To be sure, the state as referent is problematic, if for no other reason than the massive changes the state has undergone amid globalization. Global economic, social and environmental processes do not halt at state borders. The state is constantly being affected and altered by external forces.[26]

As Jurkans implies in the above quotation, the state does not even necessarily contain identities. That very notion is a point of departure for the OSCE’s mandate — to observe minority rights. The OSCE precedent stands as one proof among many that — contra realist theories — the state is no longer the main agent of instrumentalization in global affairs. Rather, the state is increasingly instrumentalized by external forces, such as the OSCE and EU.[27] For example, whereas international human rights legislation once maintained that government policies of a monitored state were beyond the purview of international bodies, the OSCE, EU and Council of Europe changed this by establishing a strong link between democratic government and human rights protection. This policy shift was already evident in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was during that period that the promise of EU membership prodded élites in post-authoritarian Spain and Portugal to initiate democratic reforms.[28] Yet while the state is being dramatically altered by forces of regionalism and globalism, the 1998 citizenship dispute made observers of the Latvian scene aware of countervailing reality: national and sub-national identities remain.

Security remains complicated in certain parts of the world — such as Latvia — where identity and culture are intimately bound to the nation, as opposed to the state. This is why Ole Waever’s concept of societal security offers insight into the Latvia’s security scenario. Since the security of the state can be undermined by certain groups within the state — particularly those which perceive their identity as being under attack — Waever raises the notion of societal security. This is a parallel concept to that of state security. While state security is tied up with matters of sovereignty, societal security is about the identity of groups. Waever defines these groups by the overarching social identities that manifest themselves at the national level.[29] This is an important point, for analysts should not assume an isomorphy between state and nation.

Many of the problems in post-Cold War Europe have not been as much about tensions between states as tensions among societal groups and states. Witness conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. Such realities have demanded an analytical and policy focus on the state’s reduced ability to make security for groups under threat. Since the time preceding the Soviet collapse, Latvian élites have defined security in terms of ethnic hegemony. A majority of political parties and groupings active in post-Soviet Latvia actually grew out of nationalist umbrella organizations pressing for sovereignty and eventually independence from the Soviet Union. This certainly vindicates Waever’s focus on the identity of societal groups. Whether the identity is real or constructed is of secondary importance; as long as the identity has an impact on security policymaking, the analyst does well to examine social particularities of the groups involved.

Regionalization of Baltic security

The OSCE’s involvement in Latvia’s 1998 citizenship imbroglio — a political dispute involving not only states, but also societal groups — was in keeping with the organization’s mandate. Whereas the Peace of Westphalia inscribed the norm of state sovereignty — that a state’s internal affairs were beyond the reach of other states — the OSCE’s mandate saw this long-standing principle of international affairs dramatically altered. The organization’s 1992 Helsinki Document called for the creation of a High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM), a mechanism that could be used to implement the OSCE’s preventive diplomacy agenda. The organization, then the CSCE, would no longer put the spotlight on governments, but instead would observe groups and communities within states.[30]

Respect for human rights within states was now viewed as a precursor and sine qua non for regional and global security. When the OSCE opened its mission in Riga, it was among the first regional organizations to set up in the Baltic country. By the time of the 1998 citizenship dispute, the mission had already forged extensive ties with NGOs in the country, most particularly those dealing with human rights advocacy and inter-ethnic affairs. This was viewed as problematic by Latvia’s nationalist leaders. As early as 1996, Aigars Jirgens, a leading MP of For Fatherland and Freedom, was inveighing against the OSCE’s involvement in citizenship affairs. He was disconcerted by the organization’s exertion of diplomatic pressure on Riga during a visit by Max van der Stoel, an ex-Dutch foreign minister and the OSCE’s HCNM. In Jirgens’ words:

There is no war here in Latvia. This is not Yugoslavia. There is no mass discrimination here. There is a citizenship law — independent and sovereign states have the right to determine who is and is not a citizen. And our law is in harmony with international law. When the OSCE puts pressure on Latvia to change this law according to its wishes, it is an invasion of sovereignty. This is a troubling development.[31]

Part of the reason Latvian nationalists were put off by the OSCE’s contacts with non-state organizations, including the pro-Russophone Latvian Human Rights Committee (led by former Soviet hard-liner Tatyana Zhadonoka), was that such contacts essentially legitimated the roles of non-state actors. As the citizenship debate was reaching its crescendo in June 1998, one Latvian nationalist MP, Aleksandrs Kirsteins, expressed concern over this development:

These individuals working in non-state organizations play an important role in democratic discussion. But they are not elected by the people — they should not be influencing the lawmaking process.[32]

In a July 1998 interview, Falk Lange, the deputy head of the OSCE Mission to Latvia, offered a more nuanced view of the OSCE’s involvement:

The OSCE inevitably gets drawn into the political process. That happens while we try to fulfill our function as a neutral observer and adviser, which is, of course, in the interests of Latvia and OSCE states. Some groups try to use us, for others we’re an object of criticism. But since we often end up criticized by both sides, I figure we must be doing something right.[33]

Stepping back to examine the countervailing trends influencing Latvian security politics, one can begin to understand the origins of the nationalists’ deep-seated distrust of OSCE involvement. While Latvian nationalism clearly exists and the concept of nation-statehood is a popular one among ethnic Latvians, these more time-honoured trends are running parallel to those of globalization and interdependence. While nationalists are wont to view identities as zero-sum relationships, Western organizations representing the emergent European system tend to favour the notion of multiple identities. In terms of security, organizations such as the OSCE tend to focus on sub-national groups because these identities are closest to people’s everyday lives.[34]

This is a view backed up by Nils Muiznieks, the head of the Latvian Center for Human Rights and Ethnic Studies, an NGO that spearheaded the pro-citizenship amendments campaign in the summer of 1998. According to Muiznieks:

It’s absurd to draw lines between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ People don’t live like that, but that’s what a radical nationalist position suggests. People have multiple identities, and these identities can evolve over time. If you block off Russian-speakers from might mean their identities will develop in another direction. It’s always better for a society to develop by the carrot, not the stick.[35]

Regional involvement during Latvia’s 1998 citizenship crisis was not limited to the OSCE. When it boils down to questions of security, a neighbouring state — whether out of altruism or self-interest — is often the one most interested in another state’s security. This may seem self-evident, but it is an important point. It should come as little surprise that the first visitors in Riga advising Latvian officials on how to deal with the mounting Russo-Latvian tensions were high-level representatives of Western organizations. Over the course of that spring and summer, Nordic leaders, US diplomats, European Commission delegates and NATO heads flew into the Latvian capital to press the quest for citizenship liberalization.[36] It was in August 1998 that Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari used a cultural celebration in northwestern Latvia as an opportunity to urge Latvian MPs to implement the OSCE-advised citizenship amendments. On behalf of Brussels, the Finnish president added that the EU would not make any more citizenship requirements as long as the OSCE amendments were made law.[37]

The EU, by virtue of its symbolic significance in the eyes of Latvian leaders, took a lead in this regional tactic of normative pressure. During a one-day trip to Riga in July 1998, EU Commissioner Hans van den Broek made it quite plain that Latvia’s failure to amend the citizenship law could be at the cost of future membership in the Union. The EU commissioner cited Latvian-Russian relations as a source of grave concern for the EU. But van den Broek’s arguments cut both ways: during a series of meetings in Moscow earlier that month, van den Broek told Russian leaders of the EU’s opposition to Moscow’s threat of economic sanctions against Latvia.[38]

Such pressure from the EU could be classified as “regionalism from above.” According to this regional model, political norms come down from above, originating at either a supranational level (e.g., the EU) or the state level. Such regionalism is therefore very much in line with orthodox state-centric and integration politics.[39] As the Latvian political debate continued apace through the summer of 1998, such orthodox levers of political pressure were used by the actors involved. Yet, as argued above, it was really the subregional component of the crisis that constituted the unique aspect of this case study. Regionalism from below was decisive during the citizenship crisis.

Subregionalization of security

There is a precedent for this kind of regionalism from below. Witness Southern Europe’s accession to the EU in the early 1980s: first the promise of EU membership and later the actuality of EU entry underpinned democracy in the region by a complex interdependence of transnational contacts. This interdependence involved numerous domestic actors, ranging from parties and interest groups to sub-national governments and university faculties.[40] The same sort of process unfolded in Latvia after the Soviet collapse. By 1998, nearly seven years of Latvian independence had spawned a comparable degree of transnational contacts, many of which engage domestic non-state actors in the process of democratization. Cooperation between the Latvian Center for Human Rights and Ethnic Studies together with the Soros Foundation, the OSCE and the Council of Europe serves up a classic illustration of this process.

This trend irrevocably changed Latvia’s political landscape. Another dramatic example of this knock-on effect resulting from external influences was the establishment in 1996 of the Latvian NGO Centre in Riga by the Danish government and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Denmark’s ambassador to Latvia, Michael Mark, was frank in his account of the project’s conception:

It was a blatant case of interference in the political sector by foreign agents, with the expressed purpose of pushing a non-governmental body down the throat of another government. It was all motivated by an explicit democratic argument.[41]

The clash of Latvian nationalist and OSCE citizenship models touches on a tension: the issue of whether a security discourse should be about consolidation or change. On one hand, proponents of the existing citizenship law adopted the position that an ethnopolitical system skewed in favour of ethnic Latvians constitutes security. This was a security discourse about consolidation of the status quo. Other groups took issue with that interpretation. Politicians on the centre-right and centre-left, together with Latvia’s human rights NGO leaders, came out in favour of the amendments. This latter position constituted a challenge to the ethnopolitical status quo.

Throughout the intense citizenship debate in the summer and fall of 1998, competing camps appealed to ideas rooted in opposing ends of the ideational spectrum. The nationalists of Fatherland and Freedom appealed to particularism, invoking ‘us versus them’ rhetoric. In a July 1998 edition of Nacionala Neatkariba, Fatherland’s weekly newspaper, a front page article outlining the party’s policy principles states that the future of “The Fatherland” and “its future generations” depends on tough citizenship regulations and “uncompromised national sovereignty.” Its slogan for the election campaign resounded: “Latvians: Don’t give in!”[42]

The rhetoric of the counter-campaign provided a stark contrast. An August 1998 campaign in favour of the citizenship law amendments was headed by the Latvian Center for Human Rights and Ethnic Studies. Its appeal to the public played on the more universalistic notion of multiple identities: posters tacked up around major city centres featured several pictures of cherubic children’s faces, with bold-faced print below each image that challenged passersby to differentiate between “communist” and “occupant,” “non-citizen” and “Latvian.”

The groundswell of opposition to the existing citizenship regime and system of cultural hegemony became evident in other quarters as well. In a dramatic development, one new political group, the National Bolsheviks, emerged on the Latvian scene, making its presence known by loud demonstration. Apparently emboldened by Russia’s hard-line stance vis-à-vis Latvia, the group’s demonstration was organized on May 14, 1998 in a central Riga park. It involved some 400-500 Russian-speaking youths, many of them declared members of the so-called Young Bolshevik Organization, and wearing hammer-and-sickle arm-bands to advertise the fact. The Young Bolsheviks were protesting against Latvian education and citizenship legislation. The event was the first of its kind in post-independence Latvia. It was also the first public showing by this new grouping of Russian-speakers, a self-identified chapter of a larger radical organization in Russia.[43]

OSCE observers such as Falk Lange were little surprised by the emergence of such a group as the National Bolsheviks. According to Lange, it all boiled down to identity politics: the identity of non-Latvians in Latvia is not a Russian identity, but rather a Soviet identity. This is key to understanding inter-ethnic relations in Latvia. According to Lange: “There are many non-Latvians, like the ones who protested under the National Bolshevik banner, who lack any real feelings for either Russia or Latvia ... a new political identity has yet to develop in the stead of old identities.”[44]

While the OSCE’s human rights mandate is seen by Latvian reformers as laying the groundwork for a new political identity, this mandate has also encountered resistance in Latvia. One of the bottom lines in orthodox security policymaking is that of who or what is being secured — and such a guideline most often involves identifying an Other, not evolving identities.[45] While the protection of human rights is viewed by Western policymakers as part and parcel of human security — essentially, the idea that basic human needs must be satisfied before any secure social order can be established — the notion of human rights has been subjected to a more cynical consideration among numerous Latvian élites and pundits.

This cynical view of human rights mandates is in part due to Moscow’s deployment of the concept. Time and again, Russia’s pronouncements on behalf of Russian-speaking minorities in ex-Soviet republics have been made in the name of human rights protection. To cite one such example, on March 4, 1998 — the day after the protesters-police confrontation in Riga — Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov criticized Latvia for its “outrageous violation of fundamental human rights.”[46] Viewed in this light, the concept of human rights protection was discredited among the titular Latvian population.[47]

That being the case, the human rights mandate of Western regional organizations was not necessarily viewed by all in Latvia as a security-boosting policy, but rather an unwelcome infringement on national sovereignty. Other cynical observers were given to denunciatory media characterizations of foreign observers as “angels of death” or “commissars.”[48] Juris Sinka, a leading member of the nationalist Fatherland faction in the Latvian parliament, spoke out against the perceived “interference” by regional advisers:

Frankly, I do tend to resent international organizations. As legislators, we get to feel restricted. We can’t get on with our jobs as MPs. We don’t interfere in the business of the [Russian] Duma or the British House of Commons. You know, I think we also have human rights as MPs [...] too much pressure from friends can’t be a good thing.[49]

The admonishments voiced by Sinka and fellow nationalists found a ready audience among the Latvian public in early 1998. Fatherland’s resistant message resonated when a letter from British Prime Minister Tony Blair to his Latvian counterpart Guntars Krasts was published in the national daily Diena that June. Blair’s letter admonished Latvian leaders to amend the citizenship law. Such nationalist concerns recall the arguments of Mohammed Ayoob, a self-described “subaltern” realist who warns against the Western folly of human rights mandates in the Third World. Like Sinka, Ayoob argues that such foreign involvement inevitably undermines the local élites in their state-making mandates.[50]

Then and now

Underlying Fatherland’s defiance in the face of Western diplomatic pressure was a historical and international precedent. It should again be noted that Latvia’s citizenship policy of recent years — the focal point of the 1998 Russo-Latvian dispute — owes much to international influence. After all, it was the Western policy of non-recognition which inspired the anti-Soviet, nationalist reformers who led the Baltic movements to independence in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Once independence was a reality, Western policymakers found themselves hamstrung by their Cold War policy position: Latvian nationalists’ persistent arguments about legal continuity were difficult to refute when that was the very argument sanctified by Western policymakers during the Cold War. Moreover, a number of Western policymakers believed that any move away from the legal continuity position would disadvantage the Baltic states vis-à-vis relations with Russia.[51]

Domestic politics in Latvia served to consolidate the ethnopolitical status quo. Since 1995, coalition party leaders had abided by a government coalition agreement to leave the citizenship law alone so as to avoid a repeat of the heated 1994 debate. Political divisions on this issue were papered over in the interests of societal calm and intra-coalition stability. But in 1998, the situation was changing. By this point, reform-minded Latvian politicians were increasingly discomfited by the status quo. Ethno-demographic realities convinced numerous Baltic and Western observers of an urgent need to reform the citizenship model. As of early 1998, only some 10,500 of the 148,000 eligible non-citizens had applied for Latvian citizenship. This left nearly 650,000 non-citizens in the country.[52] The chain of political developments after March 1998 provided the impetus for legal and political change.

Before March 3, 1998, the issue of citizenship had been (to use Ole Waever’s terminology) securitized.[53] That is to say that political élites had identified citizenship as a security issue, thereby preempting further debate on related policy matters. Securitizing citizenship allowed politicians to put their political vision on the agenda, at the same time excluding other policy notions. In other words, Latvian élites had become habituated to the ethnopolitical system in place. But the crisis in March of that year made it plain to Baltic reformers and Western policymakers that Latvia’s ethnic politics were not confined to a vacuum. Russia’s angry reaction to the Riga police crackdown raised the spectre of a domestic conflict becoming regionalized.

As EU Commissioner Hans van den Broek stated during a visit to Riga in April 1997, the EU’s concern over inter-ethnic relations in Latvia relates to the EU’s future eastward expansion: “Next century the Union will grow. There is no question — new member states must be stable and democratic societies.”[54] The EU paid more than just lipservice to this goal. During the early stages of the 1998 citizenship crisis (in May of that year), the European Commission’s delegation in Riga hosted a major conference on the theme of Latvia’s road to EU membership. The issue of citizenship loomed large in the conference discussions, which included top Latvian politicians, Western and Russian diplomats and academics. According to one conference participant, discourse on the subject was no longer a bounded one.[55]

Conclusion

The twin forces of globalism and regionalism/subregionalism have given rise to an order in Europe in which the boundaries between the international and national are blurred. Over time, new normative and legislative barriers against conflict are being erected in the stead of older Westphalian boundaries. The OSCE’s conflict prevention mechanisms and the EU’s regional diplomacy represent two examples of this millennial trend. There is a remarkable aspect to this process: there are new actors (regional organizations and NGOs) instrumentalizing change alongside traditional actors (states) in the global arena. And this is not only due to forces of globalization. At the end of the day, the state is a prime mover behind this reconceptualization of sovereignty and security. States, both large and small, have accomplished this by contributing to the construction of new normative frameworks that define security and interrelations among groups.

That said, orthodox security theories are still relevant. Russia’s influential role in regional and global affairs — albeit a downsized role from the Cold War period — attests to the continuing relevance of orthodox security paradigms that identify power as the main factor determining state behaviour and political change. To be sure, Russia’s power politics in Chechnya and the West’s subsequent response speaks more to realist frameworks than new post-Cold War security models. But in the case of the Latvian citizenship crisis of 1998, orthodox/realist explanations fall short. Although the Latvian political establishment set its face against changing the citizenship regime at the start of the year, political reformers played on Western norms to alter the political environment. Western organizations in the region, most prominently the OSCE and EU, impressed upon Latvian political élites what was at stake: regional stability. The norms of the “new Europe” convinced a majority of reform-minded Latvian élites that the security agenda must be changed — that the citizenship regime was a stumbling block to Latvia’s integration into Europe.

The amendments to the Latvian citizenship law were endorsed in the October 1998 referendum and brought into law later that year. Nevertheless, for Latvian policymakers the link between ethnic politics and Latvian security remained. Citizenship might be seen as the first in a continuing series of normative disputes over Latvia’s security agenda. Some months later, in 1999, Latvia’s language law became the next point of contention among Latvian élites and Western policymakers. Once again, the OSCE exerted diplomatic pressure on Riga to amend a controversial piece of legislation. During the 1999 language law dispute, the idea of Europe loomed large. This time, the start of EU membership negotiations in 2000 was on the line, prompting Latvian MPs to amend the bill’s controversial articles.

This suggests that Western norms are the primary counterpressures in Latvia’s ongoing ethnopolitical debates. But they are not the only counterpressures. During the 1998 citizenship crisis, non-state actors at the subregional level played key roles, often in conjunction with Western organizations. The political space in Latvia has opened up considerably since 1991 and the restoration of independence. Although there has been much continuity and nationalist resistance in the nearly ten years since the Soviet Union’s collapse, the points of policy change have been identified. The end of the Cold War forever changed global boundaries and the meaning of security. Latvia’s security plan is being redrawn to meet these new realities.

Welfare Reform in the United States: A Gesture of Symbolic Politics

Ryan Miske[56]

Abstract – When it comes to welfare policy in the United States, the concerns of the welfare population have been superseded by the symbolic needs of politicians. As the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 demonstrates, the welfare policy-making process is heavily influenced by public opinion and the scoring of political points than the evaluation of public policy options. Enacting a welfare-to-work model with strict work requirements and time limits ignores the findings of previous initiatives like the Baltimore Options Program and the San Diego Saturation Work Initiative Model which have been tested during the last several decades.

In the United States, effective welfare policy has been sacrificed for the symbolic needs of federal and state politicians. Welfare policy is by nature redistributive in that it seeks to reallocate resources of the more advantaged to the less advantaged. According to Randall Ripley and Grace Franklin, such policies tend to generate "high degrees of visibility and conflict" because they often involve deeply felt moral issues and there is the perception that one group gets something at the expense of another group.[57] In an effort to avoid such conflict, upper-level politicians often engage in symbolic politics: the technique of passing a symbolic gesture and redelegating the conflict to the local level.[58]

The most recent and far-reaching example of symbolic politics in the United States is the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act that the federal government enacted in 1996. When enacting the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, federal politicians were responding to (and catalyzing) public sentiment rather than creating policy that would effectively move welfare recipients into long-term employment.

When it comes to welfare policy, the concerns of the welfare population have always been superseded by the symbolic needs of politicians. As the most recent example demonstrates, the welfare policy-making process is heavily influenced by public opinion and the scoring of political points rather than the evaluation of public policy options. Turning to a welfare-to-work model with strict work requirements and time limits ignores the findings of previous welfare-to-work programs tested throughout the Unites States during the last several decades. The Baltimore Options Program and the San Diego Saturation Work Initiative Model (SWIM) discussed in this paper display the lackluster results of previous welfare-to-work programs. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act does not significantly deviate from previous welfare-to-work programs. However, there are several characteristics that make it even less promising: the caseload-reduction credit that will serve as a loophole for many states; the transferring of the operational burden to the local level without adequate support; the unwillingness of many states to scientifically evaluate their version of the welfare-to-work program; and the inability to address the lack of stable, decent-paying jobs in America. Even with these imperfections, the intensity of the welfare debate has waned, at least temporarily. National politicians have passed a few symbolic gestures to satisfy the general public for the time being.

Background

In the 1990’s, American public opinion had evolved from an endorsement of what conservatives have called "The Nanny State" to a more paternalistic approach, coined "The Daddy State."[59] While the "nanny state" was concerned with supporting people through entitlements, training, and education, the "daddy state" is more concerned with "reestablishing civic order" and enforcing a strong work ethic. This shift in the voice of the American people was captured in a national survey conducted for Time and CNN in May 1992. The survey found that 9 out of 10 Americans felt that the welfare system should be changed. "This opinion was held by Blacks (81%) and Whites (92%), conservatives (92%) and liberals (89%), and the more affluent (93%) and the less affluent (87%)."[60] A more recent survey, conducted in April 1995, found that 69% of those polled agreed with the statement that "the welfare system does more harm than good, because it encourages the breakup of the family and discourages work."[61] Approximately two-thirds of those polled also thought that too much was being spent on welfare.[62] When Americans were polled about specific reforms, "the clear public favorite...was work requirements which were supported by 90% of the public."[63] This strong shift in public opinion on a complicated issue provided fertile soil for symbolic politics.

In the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton engaged in symbolic politics by using bumper-sticker rhetoric that promised to "end welfare as we know it" with a policy of "two years and they're off."[64] In the process, Clinton responded to public opinion and distanced himself from his traditionally liberal roots in the Democratic Party, thus capturing the Presidency. Taking office in 1992, he presented his welfare reform proposal in June 1994 but did not receive much support from either party in Congress. But, once Republicans took control of the 104^th Congress, they took control of the policy debate, taking advantage of President Clinton’s weaker bargaining position.[65] President Clinton vetoed the first version of the Republican welfare plan in December 1995 and a second one in January 1996. In July 1996 and with less than four months before the presidential election, the Republican Congress sent Clinton a third and final welfare reform measure. By this time, the President was trapped by his own 1992 rhetoric, and signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act into law in August 1996. This act of symbolic politics was aptly summarized by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), who said, “He [Clinton] keeps his promise and he abandons his principles - or he keeps his principles and abandons his promise.”[66]

This confusion of promise and principle, known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, mandated states to enforce a 60-month lifetime limit on welfare benefits and a strict policy of recipient work requirements.[67] States were forced to conform to the mandates of the Act by either instituting a federally designed program or by utilizing a federally granted waiver to institute their own welfare program, which had to conform to the basic mandates of welfare-to-work as outlined in the Act. Each state legislature was required to have a state welfare-to-work plan in place by July 1997 to avoid losing millions of dollars in federal funding.

Previous Welfare-to-Work Programs: The Evidence

In contrast to the grand political rhetoric of federal politicians, previous welfare-to-work programs have consistently shown that low wage jobs are not a ticket out of poverty. According to Joel Handler:

Every time one [work program] is passed, it is hailed as a "new" reform that is going to set the poor to work. Instead, as we have seen, few recipients are enrolled and very few get jobs. Discretion is delegated to local offices that have to deal with hard-to-employ recipients but lack any control over local labor markets....The result, as we have seen, is that life changes very little.[68]

Over the decades, welfare-to-work programs in the United States have spanned different regions and local economic conditions. Some have focussed on training and education, while others have focussed on rapid job entry. None have been judged a success in terms of improving average employment rates, average yearly earnings, or the average Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) receipt rate. None have moved a significant portion of the welfare population into long-term employment. Even the most notable welfare-to-work programs in the United States (such as the Baltimore Options Program in Baltimore, Maryland; the Work Incentive (WIN) Program in Arkansas and Virginia; the Saturation Work Initiative Model (SWIM) in San Diego, California; and California’s Greater Avenues for Independence (GAIN) Program) have not justified their existence beyond a demonstration or trial period.[69]

All of the demonstration projects mentioned were analyzed by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, in terms of three indicators: average employment rate, average yearly earnings, and average AFDC receipt rate. The demonstration projects were all broad-coverage programs that included all eligible individuals in a particular target population, without selectively screening out potential enrollees. The Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation found that the results of the projects were similar in two important ways: first, the experimental groups’ indicators peaked within one to two years and second, the control groups caught up in all areas after three or four years.[70] This raises the question that those in the experimental groups may have been able to achieve comparable levels to the control groups without the help of the program services. That is, the project services merely accelerated what the control group was able to achieve on its own.

Baltimore Options

One of the best examples of the lackluster performance of welfare-to-work programs is the Baltimore Options Program that began operating in the fall of 1982. Families were eligible for the program if they were participating in or applying for AFDC and their youngest child was age six or older. The research sample consisted of 2,823 families that were randomly assigned to experimental or control groups.[71] Those assigned to the control group continued to benefit from the preexisting welfare services, which were in place before the Baltimore Options Program. The mission of Baltimore Options was to function as a multiservice program that provided job assistance, unpaid work experience, and opportunities for education and training.

The experimental group achieved a 13% higher average employment rate than the control group during year one. By the fifth year of follow-up, although the average employment rate for both groups increased, the control group was able to close the gap to within three percentage points. The Baltimore program seemed to accelerate effects that would eventually have occurred without its services. Interestingly, Daniel Friedlander and Gary Burtless found that although it took longer for controls to become employed initially, once employed they were more likely to remain employed than those in the experimental group. They calculated that controls remained employed in 66.5% of quarters after first becoming employed, while experimentals remained employed in 65.6% of quarters after first becoming employed.[72]

The average yearly earnings of the experimental group peaked during years two and three, when they earned 17% more than the control group. By the fifth year of follow-up, although both groups increased average yearly earnings, the difference was within 10 percentage points. As discussed below, this difference was not enough to remove significantly more experimentals from eligibility for AFDC. The experimental group was able to maintain higher average yearly earnings because they were more likely to be employed, and when employed they had somewhat higher quarterly earnings.[73]

The average number of families receiving AFDC in a given period is represented by the average AFDC receipt rate. Although experimentals were able to achieve higher average yearly earnings and a slightly higher average employment rate, the experimentals never achieved a significantly lower receipt rate than the control group. More of the experimentals were working and were earning slightly more money than controls, but they were not earning enough to make them ineligible to receive AFDC benefits.

San Diego SWIM

Another example of the lackluster performance of welfare-to-work programs is the SWIM program that began operating in San Diego, California in July 1985. This demonstration tested the feasibility and impact of requiring on-going participation in employment-directed activities. The activities consisted of a fixed sequence with program enrollees starting in job search activities followed by three months of community work experience and then education or training. SWIM was mandatory for heads of single-parent families (known in California as AFDC-Family Group or AFDC-FGs) who did not have children under the age of six, and for all heads, mostly male, of two-parent families (AFDC-Unemployed Parent or AFDC-U). Program enrollees were randomly assigned to either an experimental or control group. The experimentals were required to participate in SWIM and those who did not participate could be sanctioned with a partial, temporary AFDC grant reduction. Controls were not eligible for SWIM activities, but could enroll in community education and training programs on their own initiative.[74]

The average employment rate for controls steadily increased beginning with year one, while the employment rate for experimentals peaked during year two and gradually decreased. The 28% higher average employment rate of experimentals at year two diminished to only 5% by year five. The average yearly earnings of experimentals and controls increased steadily from year one to year five. The percentage difference between the experimentals and controls peaked during year two when the experimentals earned 30% more than controls. After year two, the earnings of controls grew more rapidly and, at year five, experimentals maintained only a 6% advantage. Experimentals had a 4% lower average AFDC receipt rate than controls in year one and in year six. However, during the years in between, the difference steadily grew to 12% and then slowly decayed back to 4%.[75]

Like other welfare-to-work programs, the SWIM program's impact peaked early and then deteriorated. By year two, the effects of the intensive job search strategy were quite noticeable. The experimentals had an advantage in all three areas studied. However, the controls began to catch up by year three, and they were able to close the gap to insignificant levels in all three categories by the end of the follow-up period. This suggests that the SWIM participants would have been able to achieve comparable levels without the help of the program services. The program services merely accelerated what the control group was able to achieve on its own.

Politics as Usual

Assuming that politicians were aware of the modest impacts of previous welfare-to-work programs, why did they continue to pursue them? According to Handler in The Poverty of Welfare Reform:

...reforming welfare by setting recipients to work seriously mischaracterizes the past and present behavior of welfare mothers, has been tried and found wanting for the past 25 years, and shows little promise for the future....In short, it is another exercise in symbolic politics at the expense of the welfare poor.[76]

One of the central themes that emerged in all of the welfare-to-work case studies Donald Norris and Lyke Thompson analyzed in their book The Politics of Welfare Reform was that "welfare reform was primarily about politics, not about poverty or welfare, and had distinctly ideological and symbolic overtones. At best, the problems and needs of the poor received secondary attention."[77] They found that "rational policy development, empirical data, and prospective policy analysis played virtually no role in welfare reform policy making."[78] Instead, politicians have been most concerned with the symbolic benefits of their policies.

The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was no different. Like most symbol-laden policies, the Act should affect relatively few people--only enough for ceremonial purposes..[79] The obscure "caseload-reduction credit" will serve as a "loophole" for many states.[80] This provision allows states to reduce their required work participation rate by one percentage point for every like decline in its total caseload. Therefore, a state such as Mississippi, which has seen its caseload fall by 10%, will only need to have 15% of its adults working this year, not the official 25% target in the law. Policy analysts estimate that a typical state will only have to have 18% of its caseload working in 1999, not 35% as prescribed in the law.[81] The work participation rates suddenly appear more realistic given that caseload reduction happens naturally, as can be seen by the average AFDC receipt rate reduction which the control groups in the previous case studies realized without the help of program incentives and services. The "caseload-reduction credit" also underscores the relative weight placed upon moving welfare recipients into paid employment and simply moving them off welfare. This clause encourages states to reduce their caseloads through restrictive admission standards, stringent sanctions, or alternative programs. Keeping your caseload numbers artificially low is more important than helping people find stable, decent-paying jobs.

The devolution contained in the federal welfare law is yet another characteristic of symbolic politics. The federal government passed a few symbolic mandates and then delegated the controversies to the local level. As Murray Edelman states in his book, The Symbolic Uses of Politics, “our political institutions constitute…a device for providing symbolic reassurance to threatened groups, and the device works admirably for most issues.”[82] As a result, Washington was able to satisfy national and local demands to respond to the welfare crisis, and state politicians will simply transfer the burden to the county or local levels.[83]

Laboratories for Welfare Reform

During deliberations prior to the passing of the Act, some policy analysts argued devolution would actually be an opportunity for states to serve as laboratories for welfare reform. Instead of testing one policy nationwide, there would be 50 laboratories that test different strategies and combinations. This theory is flawed for several reasons. The primary reason is that states have resorted to emulating each other or are testing hypotheses that have already been disproved.[84] Instead of experimenting with entirely new strategies, states tend to copy what another state is doing because its statistics are shifting by a couple of percentage points. States are likely to become even less innovative in their approach to welfare policy as they will risk fiscal penalties if their innovative concept does not yield the work participation rates mandated by the federal government.[85] Rather than multiple laboratories with diverse experiments, the states are beginning to look more like laboratories testing the same basic programs with only minor nuances; the same basic programs which have proved unsuccessful for decades.

Federal and state politicians have disregarded decades of evidence while arguing that every experiment may potentially contribute to the current body of knowledge on relief system strategies. However, scholars such as Daniel Friedlander and Gary Burtless assert that to effectively serve as laboratories, states must keep their projects intact and continue to evaluate them for at least three to five years. Without long-term data, it is impossible to dissect whether normal trends are merely accelerated by a welfare-to-work program or whether a program is having a significant and sustained impact on the welfare population. As found with the welfare-to-work programs described in this paper, the impact on the experimental groups usually decays and the control groups catch up to the experimental groups on the important indicators. However, states rarely follow the advice of Friedlander and Burtless, either because of subsequent changes in federal legislation, lack of funding, or changes in local politics. By bouncing from initiative to initiative without allowing long-term (3-5 years) evaluation, states do not effectively serve as laboratories of welfare reform. Also, by jumping from initiative to initiative, states are not able to see the full picture before making subsequent policy decisions.

Although many state laboratories do not conduct long-term evaluations, still others do not even set up formal evaluations of their demonstration projects. According to Handler, many states "do not even purport to meet social science criteria...[programs] may cover an entire state AFDC population [without a control group], may fail to test alternative hypotheses, and may repeat projects carried out elsewhere."[86] Many evaluations do not establish a control group because of limited funding. When the impacts of a program are not compared against a control group, they often appear significant. However, when the impacts of a program are compared against that which could have been achieved without the program, their true insignificance may be discovered. According to Kent Weaver and William Dickens:

It is likely that block grants will produce numerous - and loud - claims by governors about the success of their states in cutting caseloads and moving workers from welfare to work, but little in the way of useful evaluations that will allow us to judge those claims.[87]

Without the hindrance of a formal evaluation, politicians have the latitude to accent the indicators that shed the most positive light on their innovation, while attracting media attention and doing little to further welfare policy research.

Employment Opportunities

In the end, no matter what new strategies or combinations are tested in so-called laboratories throughout the nation, we will likely arrive at a similar conclusion: there is a lack of stable, decent-paying jobs in America. In the National League of Cities' 1995 survey, 70% of cities said they were either "not sure about jobs for welfare recipients, or they believed there would not be enough jobs available" if there was an effort to move a significant portion of the welfare population into jobs.[88] Indeed, analyses over the past 30 years have concluded "there were too few jobs for unskilled workers, and many of them did not pay wages and benefits adequate to support families."[89]

If these welfare recipients do find jobs, the question remains whether they will earn enough to leave welfare. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a research group in Washington, D.C., in spite of the booming economy, entry-level wages have their lowest earning power in 25 years.[90] Between 1979 and 1995, wages for people without a high school diploma or GED fell 23% (after adjustment for inflation) to an average of just $8.16 an hour. During the same period, wages for high school graduates dropped 11.8%, to $10.46 an hour.[91] The Census Bureau estimated in 1990 that "one in five full-time year-round workers failed to earn enough to bring a family of four above the poverty line ($13,359)."[92]

Women, who serve as the head of household for most of the single-parent families on welfare, face additional barriers to higher incomes. Most entry-level jobs in industries open to low-skilled women, such as retail, clerical, and child care, offer low wages and are not likely to provide health insurance and other benefits. Less than a third of retail workers have health insurance, and a lack of health insurance causes many of the working poor to eventually quit their jobs and go back onto welfare, simply to re-qualify for Medicaid.[93]

Finally, Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution, reminds us that if the new federal welfare law is able to move an estimated two million more low-skilled workers into the labor force, fierce competition for unskilled and semiskilled jobs will cause wages to decline even further.[94] The depression of wages that results from contracting the relief system is not a new phenomenon. Frances Piven and Richard Cloward argue that during times of economic stability business owners, who have considerably more political influence than the welfare population, are able to get reforms enacted that force people into the labor market (through workfare, time limits, or by making assistance abhorrent) and depress wages.[95] In effect, the government actually subsidizes the low wages, which benefit business owners through programs designed to "make work pay."

Piven and Cloward's position is supported by the fact that the strictest work requirement and welfare time limit was enacted during one of the longest economic booms in United States history. However, moving welfare recipients into the workforce does not mean they will be moved out of poverty. More stable, decent-paying jobs are necessary for that to be possible.

Conclusion

Based on evidence from welfare-to-work programs from around the United States that have operated during different time periods and economic conditions, it is easy to conclude that welfare-to-work programs have been unsuccessful in significantly reducing poverty in the United States. Although some programs have had an initial impact on employment, earnings, or AFDC receipt, none of the programs have been able to sustain any significant impact in the long term. MDRC President Judith Gueron admits that "alone, they [welfare training programs] will not solve the problem."[96]

Using these welfare-to-work initiatives as a backdrop, it is apparent that the new federal welfare law will not be any more successful in moving welfare recipients into stable, decent-paying employment. In the words of Handler, "If the economy continues to improve, welfare reform will begin to fade as an issue, much to the relief of state politicians. If the economy stagnates and high levels of economic insecurity remain, then welfare reform will continue to be a salient political issue, and we will go through yet another round of reform."[97] When the public demands it, the politicians will once again pass a few symbolic gestures that affect the lives of few people. At the same time, they will portray themselves as innovators and redelegate the controversy to the local level. When it comes to welfare policy making, symbolic needs of politicians seem to override the creation of effective policy. When the next round of reform comes, it will surely be laden with the symbolic politics that plague welfare policy.

Social Forces in the Maghreb: The Political Economy of North African Regionalism

Darryl Crawford

Abstract - This article examines the prospects of transnational economic/cultural regionalism supplementing traditional state-centric developmental strategies; with particular reference to the North African regional context. Regionalism represents a potential engine of economic growth if culturally rooted energies can be channelled into productive cooperation. However, in a global environment dominated by neo-liberalism, cooperative arrangements have proven difficult to sustain. North Africa’s difficulties stem from two variables connected with the neo-liberal ascendancy: domestic structural adjustment and the evolution of Fortress Europe. Both have encouraged state competition at the expense of regional cooperation. However, the environmental and social contradictions of such a strategy are intensifying and have made cooperation a necessity for long-term regional stability.

We can’t look for the future in the caves of the past, and we can’t make the future with ready-hewn stones.[98] Mahmoud Amin al-Alim.

The unifying force of Islam has played a prominent role in the imaginations of Oriental and Occidental theorists alike. Secular principles of nationalism and modernity, which emerged with vigour in the post-colonial Middle Eastern and North African contexts, have receded in the wake of developments in Beirut, Kuwait, Kurdistan and Algeria. Pan-Arab nationalism and the theocratic force of Islamic fundamentalism have risen to fill the theoretical vacuum and now define Middle Eastern and North African discourses. This misleading intellectual climate – particularly the momentum of a perceived Islamic civilizational threat – has skewed representations of the Muslim world, ensuring that the Middle East and North Africa continue to be cast as potential rivals to the North rather than as developing regions. In this respect, the nations of Islam suffer a fate similar to Russia: their image has been constructed in a context of conflict and thus Northern capacity for empathy has been limited.

Moreover, the Arab world has been conceptualised by, and seen through the prism of, the traditional security paradigm. This perspective has defined the Arab world in adversarial, rather than co-operative, terms. It has also ensured that solutions to the political volatility of the Middle East and North Africa have been dominated by after the fact military counterinsurgency rather than political-economic restructuring initiatives that might examine and address the motivations underlying Islamic radicalism. The latter perspective has been severely under-examined in the Arab context. Yet, it seems quite applicable – the resonance of Islamic fundamentalism has been rediscovered only in the context of economic subordination and the threat that such subordination poses to Muslim societies. Conflict at the sub-national level is, in part, a response to these global economic pressures. Far from containing Islamic radicalism, militaristic responses only intensify crises by undermining the political stability, and thus the investment stability, of Muslim states. In an era where fragile investor perceptions carry tremendous weight, political volatility is economically devastating. This devastation, in turn, adds fuel to the fundamentalist fire. Through these processes, a vicious cycle intensifies and accelerates.

Given the destructive momentum of these patterns, it is necessary for Middle Eastern and North African policy makers to adjust their strategies; they must attempt to break this destructive cycle by redirecting deeply rooted cultural antagonisms into productive relationships. In short, the energy of cultural solidarity must somehow be harnessed and channelled into poverty alleviation. Predictably, such initiatives have proven elusive; counterinsurgency has remained the solution of choice, being much easier to implement than broad social and economic reform. Fundamentalism may, however, have as much to do with global economic pressures as it does with indigenous motivation or inherent ethnic tension. Obviously, my immediate objective is to address this issue, particularly the prospects of Muslim societal co-operation in an overarching context of global economic liberalisation. In doing so, I hope to emphasise – and to provide ample proof of – the dialectical relationship that exists between local and global social forces.

Yet, it is important to note from the outset that pan-Arab development programs, embracing the nations of the Middle East and North Africa in a cohesive framework, are unlikely to emerge – this is not what I intend to propose. Splintering of the Arab world – a result of divergent historical circumstances and societal developments – has ensured diversity and erected regionally specific challenges to various Arab societies. Analyses that focus upon Pan-Islamic co-operation, by definition, gloss over significant sub-Islamic distinctions, obstacles and contradictions and therefore neglect significant facets of development for different regions. An analysis of potential co-operation rooted in the construction of networks at the regional level, however, will address regionally specific issues and obstacles to a greater degree. These relationships have the potential to facilitate co-operation. Given this distinction, my analysis will focus upon the prospects of societal co-operation via productive networks among Islamic states at the regional level; specifically, the North African region encompassing Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. Such an undertaking will require an analysis of the interaction between specific North African social forces and powerful global trends generally associated with the neo-liberal ascent, but more specifically embodied in structural adjustment programs and the evolution of ‘Fortress Europe’. These constitute the dominant variables in the contemporary context of North African regionalism. However, it is essential to first elaborate upon the historical trajectory of North African regionalism and the difficulties inherent to regional co-operation.

The Historical Trajectory of North African Regionalism

New regional patterns of culture, migration, entrepreneurial activity, finance and ultimately power have come to define the processes of regional development. Culturally rooted transnational networks constitute potent engines of entrepreneurship. For instance, the southern coast of China and the island rim surrounding the South China Sea have generated spectacular rates of growth. Overseas Chinese entrepreneurial relationships have evolved into webs of political agency, shaping the political economic foundation of Southeast Asia to an extraordinary degree. These networks, built on very specific co-operative and personal relationships – known as guanxi – have encompassed financial and service capacities in Hong Kong, industrial capacities in Taiwan, low-wage labour capacity of Guangdong and Fujian provinces in Southern China and vast pools of diaspora capital flowing from Southeast Asia in a network of interest rooted in common culture.[99]

A superficial examination of North Africa – with its shared cultural foundation in Islam, a pattern of worker’s remittance-diaspora capital flowing from Europe, tight familial and communal networks – would imply that such cultural networks could develop in this context; that North African aspirations for progressive economic reorientation might be addressed through a regional co-operative framework. However, one cannot simply wish this relationship into existence. The particular social order of the region has evolved over centuries and, as such, cannot be erased with policy or overcome by emulating a foreign model. History poses a major obstacle to any societal reorientation argument. Various social forces – including Islam, the legacy of north-south patterns of interaction, the colonial and the nationalist experiences – have worked to create the unique ‘international’ foundation of contemporary North Africa. This web of connected forces has determined the trajectory of the region. The purpose of this section is to trace the historic foundations of regional identity and to determine the likelihood of contemporary North African co-operation.

Islam: Collective Maghreb Consciousness?

The Muslim political community is, as emphasised in the Koran, a religious vision “divine and therefore perfect, perfect and therefore complete, complete and therefore final, final and therefore unalterable”[100]. Faith and the social foundations of the Islamic community are inextricably connected, unifying the religious and secular worlds. The principles of Islam, therefore, resonate throughout Muslim lifestyle, social organisation and patterns of co-operation. ‘His’ words cover with equal authority matters of worship, ritual, politics, economics and personal relations. However, Islam is by no means homogeneous; the western Arab world of North Africa – or the Maghreb – is an articulation of transnational social organisation rooted in Islam, but it is also the product of a particular regional legacy.

Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria lie at a cultural crossroads – at once the western wing of the Arab world, the southern shore of the Mediterranean and the northern tier of the inter-African diplomatic system.[101] Shared Islamic heritage among these states has provided the transnational links that ground the ‘Greater Maghreb’ idea. This idea, however, developed apart from the rest of the Islamic world and under very specific circumstances. The geographic location of North Africa has ensured that the articulation of Islam has been constantly modified and conditioned by the influences of Southern Europe and the Sudan.[102] As such, the Maghreb is a unique cultural amalgam undeniably rooted in the unity of common Islamic heritage, but simultaneously reflecting specific North African experiences. A distinct interplay of social forces – Arabo-Berber, African and European – has provided the basis of Maghrebian consciousness. This consciousness garnered societal momentum through nationalist struggle against the French colonial regime earlier this century:

The Maghreb – in this case, meaning states dominated by France – became almost a term of defiance. As a reaffirmation of the region’s deep attachment to Islam and the Arab world to the east, it provided a rallying cry for the shared national struggles of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia against French rule.[103]

The concept of the Maghreb combined the potent symbol of historical unity with a powerful political aspiration for its revival. Unity was rooted in a common mentality, a common religion and common feelings with the goal of restoring a oneness that had existed historically, yet had been undermined by the colonial policies of the French Empire. The linkages to Islam and Arab nationalism united individual states in an armed struggle against the colonial power and thus represented a powerful unifying force. If shared Islamic consciousness and Arabism were the only variables contributing to regional identity, then perhaps the development of co-operative relations among the Maghreb would be simply a matter of policy. However, this is not the case. Regional studies that rely exclusively upon Islamic identity are bound to be incomplete. Those social forces that have historically allayed unity must be taken into consideration if an accurate illustration of North African regionalism is to be created.

The Splintering of North African Consciousness

The image of a united Islamic civilization, despite the warnings of Samuel Huntington, is just that – an image. Historically, all Islamic efforts to fashion broader empires have engulfed unwilling participants, ultimately fuelling internal “rivalries and discontents, splintering Islam in the very task of creating unity.”[104] A simple examination of the geographic isolation of Islamic settlements in the Middle East and North Africa emphasises the difficulties inherent in such empire building:

The thin coastal oasis of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia was in its entire Islamic history of 1250 years united with the Arab Empire to the East for about 100 years; (yet) only once for about 120 years altogether, was it united within a single North African empire.[105]

The fact that North Africa has historically maintained a fragmented political structure does, to a certain degree, undermine the argument that borders were artificially imposed by colonial powers and that North Africans are inherently a unified people. Yet, does this invalidate the possibilities for regional co-operation or developmental networks? It is essential to examine the nature of the social forces that have historically militated against North African unity to answer this question. Three forces are considered: the ancient origins of North-South interaction, French colonisation and the national liberation movements.

Historic patterns have caused the western Arab world to evolve in significantly different ways than the eastern Arab world. Islam in North Africa was elaborated within the context of a predominantly Berber cultural framework which has stamped the region linguistically, sociologically, institutionally and perhaps intellectually. John Ruedy has argued that history has also conditioned separate evolutions within what became the four modern nations of North Africa. An ancient shift from east-west patterns of power and influence to north-south flows of culture, communication, political power, peoples, goods and wealth – most likely a consequence of naval and camel technologies and the attractiveness of the Mediterranean markets – altered the institutional underpinnings of the North African medieval system. As rival Berber kingdoms came to compete along the north-south axis, a framework for North African national organisation – not to mention a lasting pattern of dependence upon Europe – emerged. The possibilities of a truly unified Maghreb began to fade in this north-south context. [106]

The French deepened and institutionalised these fragmenting trends through colonial reorientation strategies in North Africa – the enlargement of Algeria’s border into traditional Moroccan and Tunisian territory, the repression of traditional Algerian leadership structures in favour of a French administration, the establishment of indigenously ruled protectorates in Morocco and Tunisia, and most importantly the channelling of all Inter-Maghreb relations through the Paris bureaucracy, all had effects detrimental to lasting North African co-operation and the translation of the Maghreb into a unified structure.[107] While these strategies obviously represented the immediate interests of French power, the societal imprints of these colonial initiatives have endured and have in fact garnered an independent momentum in the post-colonial context.

The borders imposed by the French have proven to be lasting sources of tension among North Africans, particularly with respect to Western Sahara and Moroccan-Algerian relations. Moreover, French efforts to isolate the three colonies – in order to undermine the emergence of a united Maghreb movement that might threaten French rule – ensured that no formal economic networks among the North African colonies could be fostered. In this context, colonial wedges – driven among the Maghreb to ensure its division – perpetuated the spirit of isolation and the north-south axis of power and dependence.

Yet, the North African liberation movements were defined by pan-Maghreb sentiment, motivated by the religious cohesion of Islam and rooted in a sense of common struggle against the French colonisers. By 1956, France had been forced to recognise the independence of Morocco and Tunisia so that it could concentrate its efforts on crushing the Algerian Revolution. Tunisia and Morocco, however, continued to support Algeria in its struggle until the French were compelled to abandon their North African ambitions altogether. Solidarity was rooted in this broader sense of community. However, the desire for broader regional union among the North African peoples could not overcome historic patterns of isolation. In fact, independent nationalist struggles deepened these patterns. Moroccan, Tunisian and Algerian liberation groups were forced to organise themselves in isolation on a local or national basis.[108] The process of organising local dissent required the development of a national consciousness and revolutionary spirit rooted in specific internal circumstances and struggles. Independent consciousness – stemming from divergent colonial experiences and the momentum of ‘national’ revolution – ultimately articulated itself in the distinct nature and structure of each post-colonial North African State.

The religious authority of the Moroccan monarchy remained politically central under the French protectorate. This allowed for political continuity between protectorate and post-colonial Morocco. The Sultan – performing as a kind of supreme arbiter over a series of disparate interests and thus remaining above the political system, playing one group against another– provided societal stability through the transition.[109] Moroccan post-colonial reform embraced liberal economic values – catering to the interests of its commercial classes – that were needed to bolster the monarchical regime of Hassan II. Thus, the leadership and general attitudes of the nationalist party were tailored to the interests of an established commercial class with capitalist interests.[110] As a result, Morocco’s economic structure changed much less in the post-colonial era than that of Tunisia or Algeria.

The socialist stance in Tunisia also responded to the ethos of Habib Bourguida’s main group of supporters which, when exhausted in political as well as economic terms, was replaced in 1969 with greater liberalism.[111] The system relied upon a relatively small group of elite administrators to propagate the values of the system and to convince the population that its maintenance was in everyone’s best interest. Yet, the overwhelming and dominant political presence of Bourguiba shaped the system. Thus, post-colonial Morocco and Tunisia inherited established structures of authority, with roots in the French protectorate, which provided a semblance of stability in the post-colonial context.

Algerians had no stable or experienced source of authority. The Algerian revolution was largely a peasant revolution. After eight years of brutal war and societal dislocation, Algeria adopted a radical and populist form of socialism, which responded to the administrative vacuum left by the retreating French and provided a much-needed psychological break with the colonial past. The general staff of the National Liberation Army had engineered the war and emerged in its wake as the supreme source of societal authority; weak governments have continued to implement the policies of the Army into the present era. Contemporary civil struggles between Islamic factions and a military caste that considers itself above civil law are partially a consequence of the colonial legacy. The initial destruction of indigenous leadership structures and the withdrawal of French authority left a power vacuum, which the Military immediately filled.[112] Algeria’s present civil war is an articulation of this colonial legacy. Divergent historical circumstances and nationally rooted ideas have thus intensified the divisions among the Maghreb. In this context, the prospects of co-operation have been undermined by the evolution of three distinct societies.

Significant historical obstacles stand between the independent states of North Africa and the realisation of Maghreb unity. Islam has not succeeded in developing sufficient spiritual or material resources to ensure regional solidarity or co-operation.[113] In fact, competition for scarce resources has perpetuated a spirit of separatism and rivalry which, in most relations, has elevated the kinship of nationhood over the kinship of faith. However, we cannot simply make deterministic connections between historical legacy or culture and contemporary societal expression. If isolation has persisted, contemporary social forces must be at work. Obviously, culture and history cannot be omitted, but how much weight should we attribute to the past? Barrington Moore provides part of the answer:

There is always an intervening variable, a filter, one might say between people and an objective situation, made up of all sorts of wants, expectations, and other ideas derived from the past. This intervening variable, which is convenient to call culture, screens out certain parts of the objective situation and emphasizes other parts…what looks like an opportunity or temptation to one group of people will not necessarily seem so to another group with a different historical experience and living in a different form of society.[114]

However, one cannot assume cultural or social inertia either. While the pull of tradition is certainly strong, values change in response to immediate circumstances. Something must force the individual to re-invent or resurrect traditional patterns; often revivals of this sort emerge in a context of great societal pain and suffering. Support for communism has resurfaced in Russia in the wake of ‘really existing capitalism’. Fundamentalism has emerged in instances of severe societal dislocation – unemployment, overpopulation, and political repression – which have overwhelmed forms of secular identification. The question of relevance to this paper is this: which forces have perpetuated contemporary North African fragmentation? The global social force embodied in neo-liberal ideology must be considered a prime suspect. Thus, it is essential to examine the relationship between the force of neo-liberal legitimacy and the structure of North African regionalism.

Neo-Liberal Ascent: Debt, Structural Adjustment and Fortress Europe

To argue that “the market has burst free from the bonds of national societies, subjecting global society to its own laws” is no longer novel or particularly contentious.[115] Very few would deny the global resonance of neo-liberal ideology or contend that consumer incentive and therefore market principles have not come to define social life. The power of this emergent ‘market civilisation’ lies in the extent to which its logic has been internalised, regenerated and has remained – until very recently – undisputed.[116] The question remains as to how such an order has come to seem so natural. Concrete answers have proven to be elusive, but one can safely assume that no single source is responsible.

A synergistic relationship between leadership structures and institutions, material capabilities, and ideas – as proposed by Robert Cox – seems to provide the most persuasive account of market/neo-liberal ascent and hegemony. The moral and ideological leadership of neo-liberal institutions (conservative western governments, the Washington Consensus, neo-liberal facets of civil society) has been reinforced by material capabilities (the mobility of capital and the flexibility of production) and complemented by the pure aesthetic of consumption (as depicted in the global media and the lifestyles of the wealthy) to cast a sense of inevitability and thus legitimacy upon the neo-liberal social order. In this context, the ideals of market society – the ascent of capital vis-à-vis labour, the elimination of ‘inefficient’ welfare structures or any other restraints to the free workings of ‘the market’ and structural adjustment when societies fail to provide these basic conditions – are projected not only as inevitable, but also as desirable. The neo-liberal trend constitutes a global social force which has interacted with and has thus redefined the context of North African regionalism, actually intensifying the spirit of isolation and competition – directly, through the implementation and ramifications of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) and indirectly via its influence upon the evolving nature of the European Union.

The Political Economies of North Africa: Debt and Structural Adjustment

It is generally assumed that the political economies of Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria suffer from similar structural flaws: a legacy of rentier economic orientation, insufficient economic diversification and an economic past rooted in the centrality of authoritarian state complexes. This interpretation emphasises North Africa’s historic dependence upon global financial markets, natural resource revenues, worker’s remittances, strategic rents from the cold-war superpowers and the role these strategies have played in undermining deep, diversified economic strength.[117] According to this line of logic, the Maghreb became addicted to foreign credit and dependent upon, what proved to be temporary, inflows of Northern capital during the 1970s. Pumping capital into natural resource infrastructure – the Tunisian phosphate and oil industries, the Algerian hydro-carbon reserves, and Moroccan phosphate sector – at the expense of other sectors proved to be short-sighted and fatal. In an environment where the basic means of subsistence were imported and paid for with revenue from natural resource sales, any threat to that revenue would represent a potential social crisis. Such crises emerged when natural resource prices and thus terms of trade deteriorated in the early 1980s. Extensive structural adjustment in consultation with the IMF and World Bank represented the logical solution for neo-liberal theorists.

This interpretation implies that global social forces have unilaterally shaped the political economies of North Africa; that these forces have, in essence, painted upon a blank canvas. And that internal national structures or characteristics have had no role in shaping the present context. Deep historical and structural differences among the states of North Africa are considered only of marginal significance relative to the influence of global trends. A natural resource boom, an expansion of global credit, a retraction of credit and debt crises – these forces have shaped the nature of the region from the top down, as it were. This, of course, follows the contours of neo-liberal thought: if crisis is the result of global social forces which interact with and affect each developing society in the same way, then there is no need to shape reform to the particular structure of each society. A homogenous agenda will yield favourable results in every context. This stance has proven quite destructive.

Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria have reacted differently to the pressures emanating from the global economy as a result of different indigenous social structures, forces and tendencies, characteristics which have evolved independently and are rooted in historical experience. For instance, Algeria – whose internal political economy most resembles the generalisations made above – actually reduced its debt through the 1980s. Long term external debt to GDP ratios in 1978 stood at 42%, 45% and 55% for Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria respectively. By 1987 Morocco’s debt had leapt to 115.6% of its GDP, Tunisia’s had risen to 74.4%, while Algeria’s had dipped to 37% despite falling hydrocarbon prices.[118] How can we account for this? Quite simply: the internal structure of Algerian society and the ideology of its ruling elite mediated between global forces and domestic realities. An analysis of particular national reactions to the force of neo-liberalism is, therefore, necessary if we hope to accurately assess the prospects of regional co-operative arrangements.

Laissez-faire has a deep tradition in the Moroccan political economy. At the core of the nationalist revolutionary party Istiqlal were merchants or Fassi, liberal professionals and landed proprietors. The leadership and general attitudes of the nationalist party were oriented towards the interests of the established commercial class. In this context, an economic elite tailored Morocco’s economic policies; as a result Morocco’s economy acquired a decidedly liberal texture relative to its neighbours. This tradition has strengthened its ability to cope with structural adjustment in the contemporary context and to attract foreign investment. So too has the constant flow of workers’ remittances from European communities, export promotion and diversification. Morocco has also benefited from the government’s role in the international system – its willingness to make peace with Israel – which has encouraged international lenders and donors to provide Morocco with aid and debt relief. Thus, during periods of austerity, Morocco has benefited from infusions of aid and international capital on concessional terms – specifically through the World Bank’s Brady Plan.

Yet, the Moroccan economy continues to be highly dependent upon foreign investment and SAPs – initiated first in 1983 – have been highly destructive. Whether government induced or undertaken as a condition of IMF assistance, austerity has – in its attempt to reduce fiscal and trade deficits, curb foreign exchange and debt servicing crises and reduce inflation – undermined economic growth via reductions in investment.[119] These programs have discouraged import substitution policies, the protection of infant industries and the development of any industry that Morocco does not possess a comparative advantage in. This basically eliminates any technologically advanced or knowledge intensive industry and ensures an economy dependent upon volatile international resource markets. Moroccans will, thus, continue to exploit their comparative advantage in labour intensive manufacturing, agriculture and phosphate products. Perpetuation of indebtedness – which stood at US $ 78.5 billion in 1997 – has ensured that approximately 20 percent of export revenues are not available for reinvestment or productive purposes.[120] Yet, it is obvious that Morocco has enjoyed certain advantages with respect to aid and strategy; in this sense, Morocco’s internal political economic structure and traditions have certainly shaped its particular reaction to the global force of neo-liberalism.

President Bourguiba of Tunisia initially shared with King Hassan of Morocco the same liberal philosophy with regard to economics. Indeed, the nationalist party Neo-Destour, which had its intellectual origins in the liberal bourgeoisie, defined the liberation movement and post-colonial structures. However, Tunisia quickly moved towards state control. Its policy of replacing government positions vacated by Europeans with urban unemployed slowly reoriented the ideological disposition of the Tunisian administration and eventually the elite. Once committed to this socialist road, the movement was carried by its own momentum until an ideological reversal back to liberalism in 1969.

The Tunisian economy as a whole grew at a relatively fast pace of 6.4% a year between 1973-1980, fuelled by increases in the price of oil and growth in phosphate markets.[121] Yet, Tunisia was not as dependent upon its natural resource sector as, for instance, Algeria proved to be. A relatively diversified economy rooted in textiles, manufacturing and agricultural products, not to mention tourism, and complemented by high domestic savings rates and private investment reinforced Tunisia’s relative economic prosperity. However, as Tunisia’s economic success progressed, its ability to borrow on concessional terms deteriorated, and it was forced to turn to commercial sources. As a result, debt levels rose sharply – US $53.5 billion in 1997– and structural adjustment programs were implemented. [122] During the past decade Tunisia has adopted an economic reform strategy aimed at establishing a market based and private sector driven economy that is increasingly open to world goods and capital markets in accordance with IMF conditions.

In June 1995, Tunisia concluded a Partnership Accord with the EU, which provided for far-reaching liberalisation of trade relations and enhanced financial as well as technical co-operation. Thus, despite significant debt (US $53.5 billion in 1997), unemployment (conservatively estimated at 16% by the World Bank) and dependence on foreign goods and services (43.2% of consumption), the Tunisian economy developed outside the parameters of the classic rentier state and reacted to the force of the global economy favourably as a product of its ‘Europeanised’ internal industrial structure. [123]

Without a powerful feudal or commercial class at independence, the origins and style of Algerian economic nationalisation came to acquire a radical orientation. Algeria was both more intensively colonised and ‘proletarianised’ through the brutal conditions of colonial agriculture and via the influence of Algerian workers returning from France.[124] From its inception, the Algerian nationalist movement was very much a workers’ and peasants’ movement. The military-government that emerged found itself from the outset committed to a radical socialist agenda. In order to industrialise following the war of independence, Algeria had few alternatives but to follow the rentier development model – financing imports with hydrocarbon revenue. Concentration in the natural resource sector was justified by the long-term offshoot that heavy industry would supposedly offer. Shortages in consumer goods and domestic agriculture would be covered by imports from Europe and paid for with natural resource revenue.[125] A restrictive European stance on North African manufactures and agriculture – the result of economic stagnation on the continent – also discouraged economic diversification; EU trade restrictions quickly choked burgeoning labour intensive industry as well as the traditional agricultural industry.

However, the Algerian government did reinvest in its economy – particularly in alternative hydrocarbon technologies: i.e. liquefied natural gas facilities – and did attempt to diversify its economy. Nevertheless, national development continued to hinge upon a sustained demand for energy. As the 1980-82 recession deepened, demand evaporated. Fixed investment, national income and domestic consumption levels fell sharply. Escalating debt service responsibilities (in contrast to Morocco and Tunisia, Algeria received virtually no aid in the 1980s despite the fact that Algeria has never defaulted on a debt service payment) pushed the economy into recession in 1986, devastating Algerian society. [126] In consultation with the IMF, liberalisation reforms were initiated in 1994. Privatisation and decentralisation of economic planning have proven to be particularly dislocating in terms of Algeria’s political economic structure, since they took place in a context of rapid population expansion (approx. 3% per year between 1970 and 1990) and already significant unemployment (24% in 1991)[127]. Unemployed, marginalised and frustrated young men – an offshoot of the SAPs – represent the base of support for the Islamic Salvation Front, an insurgent organisation committed to the overthrow of military rule in Algeria. Along with severe political repression and the overthrow of the democratically elected Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 1999 – which, incidentally, incited no serious opposition from the West – the effects of global economic pressures have fuelled civil war, undermining societal stability and encouraging mass emigration.

From these brief abstracts one can deduce that indigenous social underpinnings have influenced the particular path each North African State has followed in reaction to global market forces. However, neo-liberal reform has undeniably garnered powerful momentum – it is a dominant force at the end of the 20^th Century – and has worked to limit the options available to Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. Through the pursuit of economic austerity and global economic reintegration strategies, the fabric of these societies has been weakened and rendered extremely fragile. Statistics complied by the United Nations Development Programme indicate the emergence of stark inequalities between the countries of North Africa and Europe, and suggest that further pressures could prove explosive.

TABLE 1: The Human Development Indexes of Select Mediterranean Countries

Country (HDI Rank)	Life Expect-ancy	Adult Literacy (%)	Real GDP per Capita (US$)	Annual Pop. Growth (%)	Pop. Above 65 (%)
France (11)	78.1	99.0	22,030	0.5	15.4
Italy (19)	78.2	98.3	20,290	0.2	17.3
Spain (21)	78.0	97.2	15,930	0.5	16.1
Tunisia (102)	69.5	67.0	5,300	2.2	5.7
Algeria (109)	68.9	60.3	4,460	2.8	3.6
Morocco (126)	66.6	45.9	3,310	2.0	4.3

Source: United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1999, 134-99.

The Northern Mediterranean countries of France, Italy and Spain rank 11^th, 19^th and 21^st respectively according to the UNDP human development index, while the Southern Mediterranean countries of Tunisia (102^nd), Algeria (109^th) and Morocco (126^th) remain firmly in the lower development strata.[128] Vast disparities in literacy and per capita GDP imply that the level of productivity and skill of the Maghreb economies is significantly lower than those of Southern Europe, and that North Africa will continue to be locked out of the profitable knowledge and technology intensive sectors necessary to thrive in the new global economy.

Perhaps the most disturbing development in the region, however, is its demographic transformation. By far the greatest resource of, and potentially the greatest threat to, all North African states are their populations. Life expectancy has risen dramatically since the 1970s, the populations of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco are growing between 2.0 and 2.8 percent a year and the proportion of the region’s population under the age of 65 is much greater than that of ageing Europe. The major problem faced by governments is educating and employing these predominantly youthful citizens. Unemployment reached dangerously high levels in Morocco (20-25%), Tunisia (13%) and Algeria (22.9%) between 1989 and 1991.[129] It would be overtly deterministic, however, to place exclusive blame on SAPs for all the development ails of North Africa since civil war, volatile international resource markets and droughts have all played significant roles. Nonetheless, neo-liberal restructuring has left the nations of North Africa exposed to the harsh vagaries of the market and has ensured dependence upon foreign investment, markets and technology. The most obvious source of these assets is the most proximate: Europe. Access to the EU is now a matter of survival for North Africans. However, the EU represents an exclusive club; one that has evolved in the context of global economic transformation and its explicit neo-liberal character as well.

Fortress Europe

In the era of globalization and migration, Europe’s ‘Other’ has finally come home to roost…The one-way ticket and the charter flight have brought Europe within reach of its ‘Others’…The barbarians are already within the gate.[130]

The history of European integration is one of deep ambiguity and continuous conflict between two alternative political-economic approaches: a regional free trade initiative favoured by business and in support of continued American involvement in Europe and a supranational welfare state building project, which has called for self-assertion against the US in the form of a supranational social-political institution.[131] Yet, the structural and intellectual formation of the EU has not taken place within a vacuum; neo-liberal global ascent has thus deeply influenced the nature of the Union as well. As such, the EU seems to be locked within a framework of deregulation and removing internal obstacles to economic liberalism, yet is simultaneously committed to erecting barriers to those outside the Union.

The internal structure of Fortress Europe has been tailored to the market driven processes of economic internationalisation; not just of trade, but more importantly, of capital markets, technologies, and production systems. Economic integration has therefore proceeded rapidly. A significant step towards the realisation of Maastricht – the first round of monetary harmonisation – was initiated in January 1999 with the purpose of lubricating the common market for goods, services and capital that is already in place. The potential strength of the Euro – providing an “island of stability to protect the integrated economies of the member states from the vicissitudes of volatile global exchanges”[132] – as well as extensive continental integration in industry and in transportation and communication infrastructures have solidified Europe’s economic pre-eminence.[133] With arguably the world’s most affluent market, access to the Union is of high priority not only for North Africa, but also for the transitional states of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

However, with economic, demographic and environmental crisis on the peripheries of Western Europe and recession looming within, the tendency to restrain access – both in terms of foreign migrants and specific imports – has been heightened.[134] Underlying these trends has been the pursuit of austerity throughout the EU, specifically social welfare and government expenditure reductions, in order to meet the fiscal and monetary criteria of the Maastricht Treaty as well as sweeping corporate restructuring. The latter trend has ironically heightened the demand for inexpensive illegal labour in Europe. Liberalisation has, in this sense, unleashed protectionist and nationalist forces that have taken the form of revived concern over European identity and, more ephemerally, employment. As one analyst notes:

...there is a ‘respectable xenophobia mushrooming all over the continent that is pushing some of the collective dreams for 1992 to cluster around a concept of Europe which is white, racist and much more powerful than any post-war individual state’ National identities are being transformed into a “white continentalism”. European unity is being defined against ‘alien’ culture and around a self-image of European superiority.[135]

Demands to lock the gates of ‘Fortress Europe’ thus stem from changes in the world economy and the growing intensity of demographic pressure emanating from the southern shores of the Mediterranean – both are in no small part related to global neo-liberalism. Despite a long history of migration between the two shores, the scale of potential future migration from the Maghreb to Western Europe is unprecedented.[136] As emphasised above, North Africa is impoverished, rapidly expanding and is dominated overwhelmingly by a youth – as opposed to a dramatically shrinking and ageing Western European populations – who are dissatisfied with their lot and have, via mass media, visual and cultural access to the wealth of Europe. This demographic shift as well as the prospect of mass migratory pressure has put the fear of Allah into the hearts of right wing Europeans. When an official at the European Commission was asked what the prospects were for Moroccan membership in the EU, he responded quite frankly: “No chance. After all, they’re Muslims”.[137]

Clash of Regional Social Pressures?

Therefore, two powerful regional social forces – an ‘offensive’ pressure emanating from North Africa across the Mediterranean and a ‘defensive’ force arising from Europe against North African pressures – have emerged in response to the global demands of neo-liberalism and constitute a potentially explosive dialectic. It would seem that co-operation between the EU and North Africa represents the only viable option; economic growth and development in North Africa – which would ease political instability, ensure stable growth and reduce North African migration – are in Europe’s interests. Responding to this logic, the EU committed approximately US$ 6 billion in development aid and established a multilateral trade framework for the region at the 1995 Barcelona Conference. Yet, despite Barcelona’s efforts to improve North Africa’s economic foundation, aid to Eastern Europe may dwarf the Mediterranean package by as much as 200 times, immigration remains tightly restricted and full access to the European market is twelve to fifteen years away; even then, agricultural products – a crucial North African export sector – are excluded from the agreement.[138]

Regardless of these shortcomings and contradictions, the EU and the international community continue to press for greater internal economic liberalisation in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. For instance, a team of IMF analysts recently concluded that while,

(North Africa has) undertaken commendable macroeconomic policy reforms in recent years…(t)here nevertheless remains a clear need for sustained reform efforts…Adjustment will inevitably involve short-term costs, given the resource allocation requirements.[139]

Unbridled liberalisation in North Africa poses an undeniable competitive threat to indigenous industry – mainly from more sophisticated European enterprises – and could undermine the limited vitality of Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria’s domestic economies even further. Such initiatives ignore the selective liberalisation of the EU and suggest that Europeans are negotiating with North Africans in an overarching framework rooted in self-interest, competition and short-term calculation. The principles behind this worldview militate against co-operation; competition (even unfair competition) will weed out the weak and the world will be a better, more efficient place because of it.

Of potentially greater concern is the imprint that competition at the inter-regional level may leave on prospects for North African co-operation. Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria – under the logic of liberalism – have a responsibility to attract foreign investment to aid their industrialising economies and to generate employment for their rapidly expanding populations. In order to do so, each North African government must demonstrate the stability and profitability of its investment climate relative to other capital poor states; namely, other North African States, who represent their primary ‘competitors.’ Herein lies the structural power of the neo-liberal system: it can create bitter competition in contexts where co-operation should logically emerge. For instance, Morocco – arguably the Maghreb’s most market-friendly nation – has consistently projected itself to the world as a potential Mediterranean ‘tiger’ while playing its stability card. The government has often pointed to the severe societal instability of its neighbour Algeria as justification for investment and support, ultimately propping itself up as the ideal regional investment haven. These strategies may push the states of the Maghreb further and further apart, fueling competition rather than co-operation. The global resonance of neo-liberalism and the local forces that it has unleashed therefore have the potential to intensify the spirit of isolation and competition within North Africa.

Conclusion: Competition or Co-operation in the Maghreb?

Having elaborated upon the context of North African regionalism – its historic trajectory and the web of social forces that constitute its contemporary foundation – the prospects of regional co-operative development strategies or networks seem somewhat limited. The dialectical interaction between North African social forces and powerful global trends, generally associated with the neo-liberal ascent, have intensified divisions among the states and peoples of North Africa. Neo-liberal momentum has pitted nation against nation, region against region and has sold this as an exercise in efficiency. In reality, neo-liberal ideology constitutes nothing more than an exercise in power.

This assertion is supported by the great disparity that continues to characterise the world economy. Rather than narrowing the gap between rich and poor, twenty years of neo-liberal economic reform has deepened inequality globally. The world’s 200 wealthiest individuals hold assets that exceed the combined income of 41 percent of the planet’s people, approximately 2.4 billion individuals. Equally telling, the distance between the richest and poorest country expanded from around 44 to 1 in 1973 to 72 to 1 in 1992, figures that suggest further disparity in the future.[140] While it is certainly true that a number of Southern and Post-Communist countries have capitalised on the opportunities of globalisation, the vast majority have not. More than 80 percent of FDI and some 94 percent of portfolio investment to the developing and transitional worlds in the 1990s went to just 20 countries’; a process that has spawned some very attractive ‘emerging markets’, but nonetheless multiple of economic ‘basket cases’. In this context of polarisation and fierce competition, it is not difficult to fathom underdeveloped nations coming to perceive one another as competitors for scarce resources, and ultimately as enemies.

Yet, this article is less a final word on the effects of neo-liberalisation in North Africa than a conceptual exploration – a framework for understanding the various competitive dynamics at work in the global political economy and how they interact. Empirically to prove the primacy of competitiveness over co-operation in the Maghreb one would have to calculate and compare patterns of trade and finance between each North African State and the EU with intra-regional patterns. Moreover, qualitative analyses of multilateral negotiations among North African leaders and policy-makers would shed light on the level of co-operation prevalent in the region. If each state proved to be integrated with Europe to a greater degree than with the rest of North Africa and relations among key decision-makers were acrimonious then one could deduce that bilateral relations with the EU take primacy in the region and that competitive pressures may supersede co-operative regional arrangements in the drive to develop. While such comprehensive data collection and analysis is beyond the scope of this article, similar studies have been undertaken with respect to trade by the International Trade Centre (ITC) in Southern Africa with interesting results.[141]

South Africa (SA) is, of course, a regional economic giant whose industries export extensively to neighbouring markets. Yet, South African industry has developed few regional commercial partnerships and imports very little from the rest of the region. While this disparity is generally attributed to SA’s relatively advanced economy, research undertaken by ITC uncovered almost a thousand products which Southern Africa (excluding SA) currently exports and SA imports from countries outside the region. The Southern African regional economy has clearly been fragmented by SA’s preoccupation with the major Northern trading blocs, particularly the EU. ITC’s regional trade promotion strategy – including regional trade flow analyses identifying potential partnerships as well as meetings which link buyers and sellers from specific sectors – is contributing to a reorientation of South African trade policy. This type of exercise, if extended beyond trade, could lay the basis for greater co-operation in North Africa.[142] Contemporary necessity – most obviously, the urgency of regional responses to economic, societal and environmental pressures in North Africa – may have the capacity to over-ride historical experience if the fragment-inducing spirit of global economic competition can be contained. Survival for the broader region hinges upon realising some form of co-operative sustainable development, and ethnic affinities should be utilised to revive trust as well as a spirit of solidarity. Put more elegantly: “We can’t look for the future in the caves of the past, and we can’t make the future with ready-hewnstones.”

The Chronopolitics of Decision-Making

James F. Pasley

Abstract – This study aims to show that scientific knowledge of circadian rhythms can be applied to political science. In particular, it examines the effect of circadian rhythms upon decision-making at the individual level, with particular attention to levels of aggressiveness. The question was tested through a quasi-experimental study of political science undergraduates. The findings suggest that for those who are most active in the evening, the time of day appears to be useful as a predictor of aggressiveness.

Background

Does the time of day affect the type of decisions people make? This study attempts to answer that question through the implementation of a quasi-experimental design intended to test the effects of decision-making on circadian rhythms.

What are circadian rhythms? Used mostly in studies in the biological sciences, circadian rhythms refer to the daily rhythms all living organisms experience in response to the alternation of day and night. For example, humans are considered to be diurnal creatures, or, active in the daytime and asleep at night. This is opposed to nocturnal creatures, who are active at night and sleep during the day.

Most previous studies of circadian rhythms have focused on their effects upon performance. Studies have included the optimal time for athletes to compete; the influence of mood states; and the effects of jet-lag and time of day on performance.[143]

The field of psychology has applied knowledge of circadian rhythms to the study of memory and impulsivity[144] (White 1994). Findings have included that "psychological events of forgetting are circadian stage-dependent processes"[145]; memory performance is directly linked to circadian rhythms; and the psychological function of emotional reactivity "could respond to circadian processes"[146].

This study is notable in that scientific knowledge of the existence of circadian rhythms has never been applied to the field of political science. This is the case for probably at least two reasons. First, the fact that the concept of circadian rhythms is taught primarily, if not exclusively, in the biological sciences makes it a concept of which political scientists are most likely unaware. Second, the primary area of study in which circadian rhythms might be applied in politics is that of decision-making, which is difficult to quantify.

This study, nevertheless, attempts to break this trend and applies knowledge of circadian rhythms to the investigation of political decision-making. By doing so, a new area of political research is created, to be referred to as the study of "Chronopolitics."

The importance of Chronopolitics to the study of elite decision-making can be evidenced simply by reviewing the exploits of former world leaders. For instance, Henry Kissinger appreciated the perils of jet lag and was careful to plan his itineraries for international negotiation so as to be well rested[147]. Both Lyndon Johnson and Winston Churchill have been described as staying up all hours of the night to strategize military maneuvers[148]. Might their apparent propensity towards evening aggressiveness be explained by their individual circadian rhythms? If so, then it could be asserted that the course of some world events is linked to the time of day during which political decisions are made. If this is the case, the world of foreign policy decision-making might never look the same again. If the time of day affects decision-makers' level of passivity or aggressiveness, new support for attempting to understand international politics from the individual level of analysis would emerge.

Just as world-class athletes have employed knowledge of circadian rhythms to assist them in excelling in physical endeavor, so might political decision-makers use circadian rhythms to achieve optimum cognitive aptitude. Important, non-crisis decisions might be scheduled to be decided during an individual's peak circadian time. Also, negotiation times might be altered to reflect the circadian types of the chief state officials doing the bargaining. Might the Reykjavik Summit between the United States and the Soviet Union have had a different outcome if the final negotiations had been conducted exclusively in the morning or evening? Would President Kennedy have responded more aggressively in the Cuban Missile Crisis had his decision been forced during his non-peak time? These questions and others might be fascinating to research if time of day is shown to have a significant impact on an individual decision-makers' level of aggression.

Methods

This study seeks to understand the effect of circadian rhythms upon decision-making at the individual level. The following question is examined: Does the time of day effect the level of aggressiveness of an individual's decision-making? This is an important question to consider because nation-state leaders are often called upon to make abrupt decisions, especially in the area of national security, during a range of times. If the time of day a decision is made influences the level of aggressiveness of the decision-maker, then this would have strong implications for the direction a state's foreign policy may take.

Seven hypotheses are tested in this study. First, "morning-people," that is, those persons quantitatively shown to function better in the morning, should exhibit more aggressive decision-making at the opposite time from "evening-people." Second, "evening-people," that is, those persons quantitatively shown to function better in the evening, should exhibit more aggressive decision-making at the opposite time from "morning people." Morning-people and evening-people are believed to peak at different times of the day leading to divergent periods of aggression.[149] Third, those people shown to exhibit no morning or evening preference are not believed to display more or less aggressive decision-making tendencies based upon the time of day. These hypotheses are derived from chronobiogical data which indicate that factors such as memory, performance, and personality all are affected by time of day.[150]

Additionally, both circadian classification and time of day are separately hypothesized to influence levels of aggressiveness in political decision-making. Previous studies have shown a significant relationship between time of day and mood states (including anger).[151] Therefore, as a fourth hypothesis, it is suspected that as individuals move from morningness to eveningness, their level of aggression will increase. This is based on an evolutionary notion that those persons who have evening traits have evolved them for some sort of evening activity.[152] Because evening provides stealth it might be assumed that one such activity might be acting aggressively, for whatever reason, against other people. Thus, it is surmised that evening persons in general will be shown to be more aggressive than morning persons.

As a fifth variable, level of impulsivity will be considered. A large number of models have posited a relationship between impulsivity and decision-making.[153] The available data suggest that high-impulsive subjects are less aroused than low-impulsive subjects during the morning, but that the reverse is true in the evening, when high-impulsive subjects are more aroused than low-impulsive persons.[154] It is further hypothesized that gender and political affiliation also will influence the level of aggression in political decision-making. Both of these independent variables have been shown in a number of political studies to significantly impact decision-making.[155]

These seven hypotheses were tested through the means of a quasi-experimental design. A group of participants formed from the ranks of political science undergraduates was administered three questionnaires. The original group of 1000 and 2000 level undergraduates at Lousiana State University in Baton Rouge totaled 139 persons, fifty-two of whom were females. This original group of 139 all were administered an initial questionnaire called the Horne and Ostberg self-report questionnaire. This questionnaire classifies people along a dimension of morningness-eveningness. There are ten questions contained in the questionnaire with possible scores ranging from ten to forty-two. An example of one of the questions is: "At what time of day do you feel best? A. 08:00-10:00; B. 11:00-13:00; C. 15:00-17:00; D. 19:00-21:00."

Higher scores on the questionnaire indicate a greater degree of morningness and lower scores indicate a greater degree of eveningness. Horne and Ostberg[156] classified 45% of adults as moderate to extreme morning types (scores of 10-22) or moderate to extreme evening types (scores of 30-42). Those respondents scoring between 23 and 29 were classified as not displaying a strong morning or evening preference. These same classification procedures were employed in this study.

The distribution of respondents across circadian preference levels in this study was similar to that of the Horne and Ostberg study. Of the 139 students who were administered the first questionnaire, 34 were classified as "morning-persons"; 31 were classified as "evening-persons"; and 74 were classified as displaying no preference. Thus, 46.8% of the respondents were shown to have either a morning or evening preference, only 1.8% more than the original Horne and Ostberg study. The lowest score received was a 14, while the highest was a 39. The mean score was a 25.3.

Respondents were also asked to identify their gender and political preference. These two responses were used later as independent variables in determining aggression levels and served as the final two hypotheses for this study. Males were hypothesized to make more aggressive political decisions based on the fact that by their very nature, they have higher levels of testosterone in comparison with females.

The political affiliation self-response was a five-point scale ranging from 1=Liberal; 2=Moderate Liberal; 3=Independent; 4=Moderate Conservative; and 5=Conservative. It was hypothesized that as respondents moved from the Liberal classification to the Conservative classification, their foreign policy decision-making would become more aggressive. This is based on the tendency for liberals to be more "idealistic" or "dovish" in terms of their foreign policy thinking, often seeking compromise over conflict.[157]

Respondents were then separated based on their circadian type and gender and randomly selected to return at one of two times on a Saturday. Sixty-nine of the respondents were assigned to come for the second treatment of the study at 8am, while seventy were assigned to take it at 8pm. 37 of the 69 returned to take the morning treatment, while 42 of the 70 returned to take it in the evening. Thus, a total of 79 students completed both sections of the experiment.

The second half of the experiment was made up of two brief questionnaires. The dependent variable in this study, level of aggressiveness, was measured by means of a ten-question "issue sheet" administered at the two time periods. This second questionnaire focused on participant decisions based on their administration of the fictional country of "Pseudornia." Participants received the following instructions regarding their reign: "You are the head of state of Pseudornia. It is your objective to ensure the survival and prosperity of your state through whatever means you deem necessary. You will be asked to respond to matters of state. All that is asked is that you answer by choosing the course of action you feel is the best for your country." These answers were then scored according to level of aggressiveness. The possible score range was from 10 to 40 with the minimum score received being a 14 and the maximum score received being 35. The mean for all scores was a 23.7.

Next, a ten-point sample of the Eysenck Impulsiveness Scale was administered as an exit questionnaire. This is a self-report questionnaire measure of impulsive behavior. It consisted of ten items that assess impulsive behavior. Each question is scored as a "yes" or "no." Positively coded items are summed to create an index of the subject's impulsivity. A sample question is: "Do you often do things without planning?" The results of this questionnaire constitute an independent variable for this study. It is believed that impulsive persons are more likely to respond aggressively, regardless of the time of day. The minimum score was a 2, while the maximum score was a 10. The mean was a 5.4.

Participant's identification was used merely to assign them to one of the two time periods based on their morningness-eveningness scores. Strictest confidentiality was maintained at all times during this study to ensure the privacy of the participants.

Results

Both an analysis of variance (ANOVA) and a multiple regression analysis were run in order to determine if the above independent variables influenced the level of aggression of respondents as well as to determine if there were differences based upon circadian type and time of day.

It was hoped that through the analysis of variance procedure a clear distinction would be able to be drawn between morning and evening persons based on the time of day during which they answered the political choice questionnaire. The data (see Table One) indicate there are differences. The ANOVA displays clearly that morning and evening persons are more aggressive at the peak times in their circadian cycles. That is, morning persons are more aggressive in the morning (24.4) and less aggressive at night (22.5). Evening persons are less aggressive in the morning (21.8) and more aggressive at night (26.7). Examining the means of each of the three circadian classifications, aggressiveness declines when comparing eveningness to morningness.

Persons not displaying a preference toward morningness and eveningness did not show a wide range of difference between their aggression levels in the morning (22.8) or the evening (23.9). Notable, however, is the fact that the overall mean scores for morning persons and those with no circadian preference are virtually identical. The mean aggression score for all morning persons is 23.32, while the mean aggression score for all no-preference individuals is 23.31. This is in stark contrast to the evening types whose overall mean aggression score was 25.1.

In other words, as a whole, evening persons are more aggressive than all others on average. Also notable is the fact that the average aggression score for all those participants taking the political choice questionnaire in the evening (24.1) was shown to be higher than the average score of those taking it in the morning (23.1). This seems to suggest that evening hours lead to higher levels of aggression in all humans.

However, the impact of sleep-wake cycles seems to play a larger role in the moods of evening persons. Analysis of the simple effects of time of day assignment within circadian classification (see Table Two) reveals that there are only significant differences in the aggression scores of evening persons (p = .003). This suggests that aggression differences are most strongly linked to sleep-wake cycles within evening circadian types. That is, the level of aggression of only those persons displaying an evening preference was significantly affected by the time of day. Of the three regressions provided in table two, only the third one (Class 3) has a statistically significant F value. This suggests that time of day is a good predictor of aggressiveness amongst those considered to be evening-people, otherwise it is not.

The results of the multivariate regression (see Table Three) also reveal somewhat of a linkage between time of day and level of aggressiveness. In the original five-variable model, time of day assignment (p = .0527), Sex (p = .0026), and Political Affiliation (p = .0198) all are shown to have a significant effect on levels of aggressiveness using a one-tailed test. Circadian Type also becomes significant in a two-tailed test (p = .0609). Impulsivity was shown to be insignificant (p = .2478).

These results indicate that men tend to be more aggressive in political decision-making, therefore confirming this study's sixth hypothesis. With respect to political affiliation, again the original hypothesis is confirmed as the regression shows that as respondents move from liberalism to conservatism the level of their foreign policy aggressiveness increases. Also, as individuals' circadian classification increases, so too does their level of aggressiveness. That is, moving from morningness to eveningness, people tend to become more aggressive in nature. Thus, evening-people can be generally assumed to be more aggressive than morning persons.

Next, the time of day at which respondents took the second questionnaire also influenced their level of aggressiveness. Respondents during the evening portion are shown to have slightly higher aggression scores than those who took it in the morning. Finally, impulsiveness levels are shown to be insignificant in determining an individual's level of aggression (at least in terms of political decision-making).

However, it should be noted that when impulsiveness is removed from the model (see Table Four), the two strongest variables in predicting level of aggression remain Sex (p = .0016), and Political affiliation (p = .0179). Time of day is then significant only in a two-tailed test (p = .0782) while circadian type drops from significance (p = .3969). This suggests that circadian type may not be as strong a forecaster of levels of aggression as the original model suggests when separated from time of day. For as the ANOVA revealed, when circadian type and time of day are considered together, evening types are clearly more aggressive during their peak period.

Finally, a Cronbach's measure of internal consistency procedure was run to analyze the reliability of the abbreviated Horne and Ostberg circadian survey, as well as the political choice questionnaire. The alpha level for the Horne and Ostberg survey was .7632 (see Table Five). This relatively high score suggests that the Horne and Ostberg survey was reasonably successful in providing as accurate a quantification of circadian type as possible. The alpha level for the questionnaire measure of the dependent variable was .5714 (see Table Six). Removal of two questions would have raised the alpha level to .5999, but obviously this would not have been a significant improvement.

Conclusions

The data indicate that there is a relationship between time of day and political decision-making. Specifically, both morning and evening persons are shown to behave more aggressively during their peak times, though the difference between morning and evening aggression scores is shown to be significant only for evening types. The implications for this and human nature are intriguing. Generally, this data might somewhat explain the classical realist notion that people are naturally self-promoting, seeking to better their own situation by aggressively reacting to others when they are at their best.[158] More specifically, the data indicate that evening persons are those who are significantly affected by the time of day. This suggests an evolutionary sensitivity of these types of people to the presence or absence of daylight. Because one's geographic locale impacts the amount of light exposure one receives throughout the seasons, it would be interesting to assess how evening types would respond to winter or northern climates. Might persons from such regions behave more aggressively?

Other implications for political research would be that this study seems to indicate that less aggressive decision-making, especially for evening-types, will occur for leaders making choices during their non-peak times. Of course it may be that individuals are more inclined to make decisions during their peak periods, when they feel they are functioning at their best. If the latter statement is the case, then this would lead to the more dangerous and chaotic international system envisioned by realist thinkers where aggression is used to ensure state survival. The key, then, for those interested in conflict resolution would be to promote elite decision-making during their non-peak times. Admittedly, however, this would be most effective in situations where there are only two elite decision-makers (as in the instance of Reagan and Gorbachev's Rejkavik summit) as dyads produce the best opportunity to arrange negotiations for non-peak times.

The potential applications of this research would seem to be many. Conflict resolution, decision-making, and individual level studies could possibly all benefit from chronopolitical considerations. Indeed, the coming millennium heralds a new biological age where the impact of physiology and genetics will revolutionize not simply the health care fields, but the very way we view ourselves. With this in mind, this paper has endeavored to do more than simply provide experimental results. This paper has hoped to spur an interest in biopolitical investigation while displaying such research efforts are not only possible, but potentially fruitful. Taoist teachings argue that the road to a thousand-mile journey begins with but a single step. Thus, let us be bold and edge foreign policy analysis into the new millennium with a creative step toward understanding elite decision-making through a growing awareness of the physiological processes which influence our actions. As only by appreciating the internal workings of individuals can the external environment in which they operate be seen in the clarity which its wide range of colors deserve.

TABLE ONE: ANOVA OF TIME OF DAY AND CIRCADIAN CLASSIFICATION ON LEVEL OF AGGRESSION

Anova table for a 2-factor Analysis of Variance on Y

1: Aggression

Source	df:	Sum of Squares:	Mean Square	F-test:	P value:
Assign (A)	1	31.474	31.474	2.824	.0972
Class (B)	2	8.36	4.18	.375	.6886
AB	2	101.108	50.554	4.535	.0139
Error	73	813.669	11.147

There were no missing cells found

The AB Incidence table on Y 1: Aggression

Class:

level 1

level 2

level 3

Totals

Assign level 1

24.364

22.762

21.8

23.108

Assign level 2

22.5

23.944

26.7

24.119

Totals

23.32

23.308

25.067

23.646

Level 1 Class: Morning Person

Level 2 Class: No Preference

Level 3 Class: Evening Person

Level 1 Assign: AM Treatment of questionnaire

Level 2 Assign: PM Treatment of questionnaire

TABLE TWO: SIMPLE EFFECTS FOR ASSIGN WITHIN CLASS 1-3

Source of Variation SS DF MS F Sig. of F

WITHIN+RESIDUAL 943.05 77 12.25

ASSIGN WITHIN 14.73 1 23.02 1.88 .174

CLASS (1)

(Model) 23.02 1 23.02 1.88 .174

(Total) 966.08 78 12.39

R-squared: .024 Adjusted R-squared: .011

Source of Variation SS DF MS F Sig. of F

WITHIN+RESIDUAL 951.34 77 12.36

ASSIGN WITHIN 14.73 1 14.73 1.19 .278

CLASS (2)

(Model) 14.73 1 14.73 1.19 .278

(Total) 966.08 78 12.39

R-squared: .015 Adjusted R-squared: .002

Source of Variation SS DF MS F Sig. of F

WITHIN+RESIDUAL 858.35 77 11.15

ASSIGN WITHIN 107.73 1 107.73 9.66 .003

CLASS (3)

(Model) 107.73 1 107.73 9.66 .003

(Total) 966.08 78 12.39

R-squared: .112 Adjusted R-squared: .100

TABLE THREE: THE EFFECT OF SEX, POLITICAL AFFILIATION, CIRCADIAN CLASSIFICATION, TIME OF DAY, AND IMPULSIVITY ON LEVEL OF AGGRESSION

Variable	Estimate	t-Score	Significance
INTERCEPT	17.783
Assign	1.380	1.973	.05
Chrono Type	.109	1.568	.12
Sex	2.209	3.125	.01
Pol Affil	.753	2.590	.01
Impulsivity	.350	1.166	.25

N=71 R–squared = .28

TABLE FOUR: THE EFFECT OF SEX, POLITICAL AFFILIATION, CIRCADIAN CLASSIFICATION, AND TIME OF DAY ON LEVEL OF AGGRESSION

Variable	Estimate	t-Score	Significance
Intercept	19.828
Assign	1.043	1.432	.15
Chrono Type	.109	1.568	.40
Sex	2.209	3.125	.01
Pol Affil	.753	2.590	.001

N=78 R-squared=.22

TABLE FIVE: CRONBACH RELIABILITY MEASURE OF INTERNAL CONSISTENCY FOR CHRONOTYPE

Question #	Mean if Item Deleted	Variance if Item Deleted	Corrected Correlation	Alpha if Item Deleted
One	21.5063	20.4070	.4523	.7407
Two	22.5949	21.3466	.2566	.7510
Three	22.8481	20.4125	.4007	.7414
Four	21.5949	20.9877	.2379	.7735
Five	22.4051	18.5261	.0552	.7209
Six	22.7215	20.4086	.2256	.7441
Seven	22.3038	20.2655	.2797	.7521
Eight	22.6709	21.3262	.3620	.7505
Nine	22.0759	19.1480	.0947	.7338
Ten	22.3418	18.5355	.2022	.7218

N of cases=79 N of items=10 Alpha=.7632

TABLE SIX: CRONBACH RELIABILITY MEASURE OF INTERNAL CONSISTENCY FOR AGGRESSION

Question #	Mean if Item Deleted	Variance if Item Deleted	Corrected Correlation	Alpha if Item Deleted
One	21.0253	9.4096	.4306	.4925
Two	21.5696	10.6842	.2566	.5449
Three	21.3797	10.4950	.4007	.5178
Four	20.9114	10.6203	.2379	.5494
Five	20.8608	11.7111	.0552	.5881
Six	21.1139	10.7689	.2256	.5523
Seven	21.3924	9.4979	.2797	.5414
Eight	21.1266	9.3940	.3620	.5116
Nine	21.4684	11.5342	.0947	.5801
Ten	21.9620	10.9857	.2022	.5576

N of cases=79 N of Items=10 Alpha=.5714

[1] The author would like to thank Dr. Pierre Lizéeee and Sanita Jemberga for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

[2] Formerly the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). The organization changed its name to the OSCE in 1995.

[3] Richard Falk, “Regionalism and World Order After the Cold War,” in Globalism and the New Regionalism (London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1999), 228-249.

[4] See Romuald J. Misiunas and Rein Taagepera, The Baltic States: Years of Dependence 1940-1980 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).

[5] Maris Grinblats, (leader of For Fatherland and Freedom), interview by author, Riga (Latvia), November 17, 1995; see also, Andres Kahar, “Grinblats builds bridges,” The Baltic Independent, November 24-30, 1995: 3.

[6] Donald L. Horowitz, “Making Moderation Pay: The Comparative Politics of Ethnic Conflict Management,” in Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies (New York: Lexington Books, 1991), 455.

[7] For example, see Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 4th ed. (New York: Knopf, 1966); Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979); J.J. Mearsheimer, “Correspondence: Back to the Future, Part II: International Relations Theory and Post-Cold War Europe,” International Security 15:2 (1990).

[8] Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams, “From Strategy to Security: Foundations of Critical Security Studies,” Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 44-45.

[9] Richard Rose, New Baltic Barometer III: A Survey Study (Studies in Public Policy, Number 284) (Glasgow: Centre for the Study of Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde, 1997), 44.

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