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Behind the Glass Fortress: When Gender Justice Meets Bureaucracy at the ICC

September 3, 2026
By 32267

SRG-supported fieldwork in The Hague led Bhavya Gupta (Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2023) beyond court judgments and legal texts into the inner workings of the International Criminal Court, revealing how institutional structures and bureaucratic processes shape the pursuit of gender justice.

* * *

The first thing I noticed during my fieldwork in The Hague was not a judgment, a courtroom argument, or a legal document. It was a building.

For much of modern history, sexual violence committed during armed conflicts was not considered an international crime. It was often treated as an unavoidable by-product of war or as a tactic of warfare, leaving prosecution largely to the domestic courts under each country’s criminal laws. The atrocities committed during the armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda changed this understanding in the 1990s. The United Nations established the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which legally recognized conflict-related sexual violence as an international crime for the first time.

However, because these courts were ad hoc, being created specifically for those conflicts, they did not have jurisdiction elsewhere. They also did not have a police force of their own and relied on state cooperation to apprehend suspects. Consequently, when alleged criminals were high-ranking officials or war heroes in their own countries, such as Ratko Mladić or Radovan Karadžić, governments often actively obstructed the tribunals’ work for years.

In 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) was established as the first permanent institution empowered to prosecute the most heinous international crimes committed by individuals. Unlike the ICTY and ICTR, which were temporary tribunals created in response to particular conflicts, the ICC became a treaty-based, proactive, and permanent court independent of the United Nations. For the first time, the Rome Statute establishing the ICC codified specific forms of sexual and gender-based violence: rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, gender persecution, and other similar crimes.

Initially, as a Global South scholar at a public university in India, I never imagined it would be possible to visit the Netherlands for field research on the ICC. Fortunately, I received a Sylff Research Grant, allowing me to spend two months in The Hague. I arrived hoping to understand how sexual and gender-based crimes are investigated and prosecuted by the ICC. What I found changed the way I understood the court itself.

From Court to Bureaucracy

The Rome Statute is regarded as a progressive legal instrument because it criminalizes specific forms of sexual violence committed during or in connection with armed conflict. But despite the comprehensive nature of the legal framework and important recent developments, prosecution outcomes remain uneven.

Several ICC cases provide some striking examples of this challenge. In the Bemba case, the Trial Chamber convicted Jean-Pierre Bemba, including for rape, but the Appeals Chamber subsequently acquitted him of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In Katanga, the Trial Chamber found that rape and sexual slavery had been committed but concluded that the evidence did not establish Katanga's responsibility for those crimes beyond a reasonable doubt. More recently, in Al Hassan, the Chamber found that acts of sexual violence had taken place but acquitted the accused of rape, sexual slavery, and forced-marriage charges due to insufficient evidence of his responsibility (International Criminal Court 2014, 2018, 2024).

These cases demonstrate that the problem cannot be understood simply as a matter of low conviction rates. Sexual and gender-based crimes can encounter obstacles at different stages of the criminal process, even when the underlying violence is established.

This observation led me to a different question. Existing scholarship has largely examined the ICC through legal doctrine, judicial decisions, and interpretations of the Rome Statute. I wanted to understand what happens inside the institution itself. Could organizational practices explain part of the gap between progressive legal norms and uneven outcomes?

My field research suggests that this is not just a question of low conviction rates. There appears to be systematic attrition at different procedural stages before a final judgment is delivered.

Seeing The Hague Through Its Buildings

During my fieldwork, the first thing that stood out was the architecture of The Hague’s international judicial institutions. Architecture is never neutral, and the relationship between the judge and the judged can be analyzed through the physical spaces where justice is performed.

For instance, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), housed in the Peace Palace, is unapologetically European, colonial, and regal. It embodies an old-world vision of diplomatic engagement among states. It does not try to be relatable to individual citizens and is a monument to Western legal tradition.

The traditional European institutional design of the International Court of Justice (Peace Palace) in The Hague visually reflects the historical Western origins of international legal structures. (Photo by the author)

In contrast, the Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC) feels almost like a prison and has a distinctly carceral atmosphere. That is because it is housed in the former headquarters of Europol and was repurposed as a criminal court in 2016.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers was formerly Europol’s headquarters and later repurposed as a criminal court. The carceral aesthetic is visible in the security fencing and gated entrance. (Photo by the author)

The ICC, on the other hand, appears visibly different. Composed of several interconnected structures dominated by glass and natural light, it projects an image of transparency and accessibility. The design appears intended to signal a break from the past and to present itself as a court closer to the people.

In practice, however, I encountered a paradox. The vast empty spaces, multiple layers of security glass, and clinical atmosphere actually create what might be described as hyper-distance. While the ICJ can feel distant because of its history, the ICC feels distant because its securitized environment gives it the character of a “glass fortress.”

Designed to signal transparency through glass and light, the International Criminal Court instead creates a semblance of a “glass fortress”—clinical, securitized, and distant from the survivors it purports to serve. (ICC official photo)

For women from conflict zones in Africa or the Middle East, such a physical environment can feel worlds apart from their everyday reality, mirroring the procedural distance where trauma-shaped testimony is filtered through a cold, bureaucratic lens.

During my fieldwork, I also conducted archival research as a visiting researcher at the ICC Library and observed courtroom proceedings. These experiences helped me to understand the day-to-day dynamics of sexual and gender-based crime cases. Although it required patience and persistence, I was eventually able to interview a range of professionals, including ICC judges, members of the Prosecutor’s Office, defense lawyers, and civil society representatives.

The Hague therefore gave me something that legal research alone could not: an opportunity to observe the institution behind the judgments.

Inside the Machinery of Gender Justice

ICC premises rules displayed at the public entrance. The level of regulatory control communicated even before entry reflects the institution’s securitized character. (Photo by the author)

A key finding of this research is that the ICC is a complex international bureaucracy whose organizational structure and resource allocation influence how sexual and gender-based crimes are investigated and prosecuted. It is a multilayered organization with over 900 staff members and a substantial budget funded by member states and supplemented by voluntary contributions.

First, the prosecution of sexual and gender-based crimes is shaped by multiple institutional actors, not just judges. At the top of the organizational hierarchy sits the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) comprising all member states. The ASP elects prosecutors and judges. The Office of the Prosecutor is responsible for collecting evidence and determining charges. Judges assess and adjudicate the evidence presented by both the prosecution and defense. The Registry manages victims and witnesses under the leadership of the registrar. And finally, the Presidency, composed of three senior judges, oversees the administration of the court and represents it in external relations.

This matters because gender justice does not emerge at a single moment in a courtroom. It is produced through a chain of decisions made by different actors across the institution.

Second, resources matter. The court’s budget comes from two main sources: mandatory assessed contributions from member states and voluntary funds, such as the Trust Fund for Victims (TFV), to which nonmembers may also contribute. This resource allocation shapes investigative capacity and prosecutorial priorities, as budgetary constraints can affect the number of investigations, field presence, witness protection, and forensic capacity.

Third, charges of sexual and gender-based crime must pass through multiple “decision filters” within the ICC hierarchy. From preliminary examination and investigation to confirmation of charges and trial, different actors determine which situations and crimes receive attention, what evidence is collected, how charges are framed, and what evidence is considered sufficient to establish individual criminal responsibility. This process determines who controls investigations, evidence, and charging decisions, which in turn affects which crimes are prosecuted and which are not.

The researcher’s designated desk at the ICC Library, under a surveillance camera. On the desk are books—including Rape in Wartime; Our Bodies, Their Battlefields; and compilations of feminist civil society reporting from the Rome Statute negotiations—and a visitor badge. (Photo by the author)

These filters create multiple points of institutional gatekeeping. Sexual and gender-based crimes can therefore experience attrition before a judge delivers a verdict. What appears at the end of the process as a low conviction rate may be the cumulative effect of decisions made much earlier.

In this sense, outcomes in sexual and gender-based crime cases are stage-dependent, being institutionally negotiated rather than purely legal. The very design of the institution shapes how such crimes are prosecuted. This means that the ICC is not merely a court, and crimes are not just legal issues. Further, gender expertise is not automatically institutionalized; it requires training, leadership, and organizational commitment.

What The Hague Changed for Me

Before going to The Hague, I approached the ICC primarily as a legal institution. My questions emerged from judgments, treaties, statutory provisions, and the existing scholarship on international criminal law.

The fieldwork changed my understanding.

Standing inside these institutions, observing their spaces, watching proceedings, and speaking to people who work within and around them made the institution itself visible. I began to understand that law does not operate in isolation. It operates through people, teams, offices, budgets, routines, forms of expertise, and institutional priorities.

This realization was particularly important for my understanding of gender justice. A progressive legal framework is necessary, but it is not sufficient. A provision in the Rome Statute does not automatically lead to a gender-sensitive investigation. A charge does not automatically result in a conviction. And a victim-centered mandate does not automatically eliminate the institutional distance between an international court and the people whose experiences it is meant to address.

The Hague therefore changed not only what I was studying but also how I was studying it.

It made me more attentive to the less visible aspects of international justice: the meeting rooms, investigative teams, administrative decisions, and institutional routines that rarely appear in judgments but can profoundly influence what eventually reaches the courtroom.

Beyond the Courtroom

My dissertation, which grew out of this research, has now been submitted, and I hope to develop it further into a monograph and a series of journal articles. But I also see that the framework developed through this research has relevance beyond the ICC.

International organizations are often evaluated through their formal mandates, treaties, and final decisions. Yet institutions are also organizational spaces. Their structures and everyday practices can enable or constrain the realization of the rights and protections they formally promise.

This is why empirical research matters. It makes institutions more relatable. It allows us to move between formal rules and lived institutional practices and to triangulate what legal texts say with what people inside institutions actually experience and observe.

My experience in The Hague reminded me that international criminal justice is not shaped only by judgments and treaties. It is also shaped through discussions in meeting rooms, investigative teams, institutional routines, and everyday administrative decisions.

Understanding these less visible dimensions is essential if international institutions are to deliver on their promise of gender justice.

References

Assembly of States Parties. 2018. Report of the Court: The Registry. International Criminal Court.

Assembly of States Parties. 2025. Regulations of the Trust Fund for Victims. International Criminal Court.

International Criminal Court. 2014. Judgment Pursuant to Article 74 of the Statute: The Prosecutor v. Germain Katanga. International Criminal Court.

International Criminal Court. 2018. Non-Authoritative Summary of the Appeal Judgment: Bemba Case. International Criminal Court.

International Criminal Court. 2021. Appeals Judgments in the Ntaganda Case at the ICC. International Criminal Court.

International Criminal Court. 2022. Judgment Summary: The Prosecutor v. Dominic Ongwen. International Criminal Court.

International Criminal Court. 2024. Questions and Answers: Judgment in the Al Hassan Case. International Criminal Court.

International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. n.d. Crimes of Sexual Violence. United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals.

United Nations. 1998. Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. United Nations.

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Whoosh: China-Japan Infrastructure Competition in Indonesia’s Rail Sector

August 21, 2026
By 33009

Indonesia’s first high-speed railway emerged from intense competition between China and Japan. Through interviews and archival research, Caixia Mao (Columbia University, 2024) shows how their contrasting financing models create different forms of political, institutional, and commercial engagement in Indonesia.

* * *

On October 17, 2023, the first high-speed railway (HSR) in Southeast Asia was launched between Jakarta and Bandung. With a maximum operating speed of 350 km per hour, it became the fastest commercial HSR available at the time, matched only by services in China. The event was commemorated at a ceremony in Beijing, attended by Indonesia President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Jokowi named the HSR “Whoosh,” inspired by the sound of the train. The project was developed with financial and technological support from China, and Xi described it as a “Golden Sign” of high-quality China-Indonesia cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) (Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2023).

The project received unprecedented attention from policymakers, the media, and scholars worldwide due to the intense donor competition between Japan and China. In fact, the project was initially proposed by Japan in 2007 during the administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) as a showcase for its signature Shinkansen technology. When Jokowi came to power in 2014, however, he expressed concerns about the project’s high cost. China then entered the competition, and Jokowi successfully leveraged donor rivalry to engage with the highest levels of the two countries’ political leadership.

The primary data collection method of my research—supported by an SRG award—was expert interviews in Chinese, Japanese, and English. I also conducted archival research in Tokyo, Jakarta, and Leiden to revisit the origins of railway development in Japan and the former Dutch East Indies, as well as broader infrastructure development in post-independence Indonesia. The findings from interviews and archival research were triangulated with policy documents, media reporting, and official statistics in Chinese, Japanese, English, and Bahasa Indonesia.

Chinese B-to-B Versus Japanese G-to-G Approaches

When Indonesia eventually awarded the project to China in October 2015, media and political narratives emphasized that Chinese business-to-business (B-to-B) financing between Indonesian and Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) better suited Indonesia’s needs than Japan’s government-to-government (G-to-G) proposal. Yet, at the time, political leaders in all three countries knew little about the practical implications of B-to-B versus G-to-G arrangements.

To unpack these differences, I examined another flagship railway project, funded by Japan: the Jakarta mass rapid transit (MRT) system. As one Indonesian ministry official in charge of Jakarta MRT project explained, “You cannot say that Japan does the MRT better than China, because the terms and conditions of the two projects are totally different.” What are the differences between the two financing arrangements? What do these differences reveal about Chinese, Japanese, and Indonesian objectives?

I applied a techno-politics theoretical framework to understand how the railway technologies are used as a tool to achieve political goals by Indonesian, Chinese, and Japanese governments and political-economic elites. Rather than focusing solely on state-of-the-art railway technologies, I examined the political and economic relationships behind the Jakarta-Bandung HSR and Jakarta MRT and how technologies alter such relationships. Specifically, I focused on donor-recipient relations between China and Indonesia and between Japan and Indonesia, as well as donor competition between China and Japan.

In the short term, the HSR project served Jokowi’s political goals. From a longer-term perspective, however, by connecting contemporary diplomacy with the colonial history of the Dutch East Indies and Japanese wartime rule, I argue that railway technologies have long been used as instruments of imperial expansion. I also examined the extent to which China continued or departed from the practices of former colonial powers.

At the same time, launching expensive and highly publicized railway projects entails high political and commercial risk and requires sustained political and financial commitment. Comparing Chinese B-to-B with Japanese G-to-G arrangements reveals contrasting institutional strategies among Chinese and Japanese infrastructure assemblages for becoming entangled with or disentangled from political, commercial, and financial risks embedded in Indonesian society.

Railway Technologies as Symbols of Colonial and Industrial Power

My research traces how railway technologies were historically used as representations of state military and engineering power in Japan’s former colonies and how such symbolic functions became mobile in both state and business spheres. Elements of this logic can also be observed in today’s Chinese and Indonesian efforts to promote the Jakarta-Bandung HSR.

One historical example is the Asia Express train built by Japan in occupied Manchuria in 1934. The train traveled at an average speed of 83 km per hour and reached a maximum speed of 130 km per hour (Yamanouchi 1999). Its technological sophistication and luxurious amenities exceeded those of railways operating in Japan and served as a showcase of Japanese imperial power and industrial capacity for both foreign and domestic audiences (Matsusaka 2001).

Fashionably dressed passengers relaxing inside Manchuria’s Asia Express train, which served as a showcase of Japanese industrial power. (Photo taken by the author at the Railway Museum in Japan.)

When Japan captured the world’s attention with the launch of the Shinkansen in 1964, operating at speeds of 200 km per hour, railways again became a powerful symbol of national achievement. Introduced in conjunction with the Tokyo Olympics, the Shinkansen helped rebrand Japan’s global image and supported the promotion of Japanese goods and services in global markets (Abel 2022).

This emphasis on technological superiority continues to shape Japan’s overseas railway projects. The Jakarta MRT was promoted under the banner of “All-Japan” technologies and based on Tokyo’s Yamanote Line. The project was financed through Special Terms for Economic Partnership (STEP) loans, which are tied to the procurement of Japanese goods and services but at highly concessional interest rates.

Yet, Japanese dominance in Indonesian infrastructure sector has been challenged since China’s successful bid for the Jakarta-Bandung HSR. As a latecomer in the HSR sector, China has expanded its HSR network at an astonishing pace over the past few decades. Today, it has become a major exporter of HSR technology, competing directly with Japan, and it has promoted HSR as a key industry through which China seeks global recognition for technological innovation.

Like the Japanese experience after the launch of the Shinkansen, Chinese success in HSR innovation—based on a strategy of “introduction, digestion, absorption, and re-innovation”—has become part of a broader effort to rebrand the country’s image from “Made in China” to “Create in China” (Gao 2020). This rebranding as an HSR innovator attempts to wipe away the perception of China as a low-cost factory and position it instead as an industrial power capable of producing high-quality technologies and products. Most importantly, by successfully launching the Jakarta-Bandung HSR, China has demonstrated to Indonesian political and economic elites, as well as the general public, that China is able to deliver infrastructure projects as Japan has done so far.

(Dis)entanglement of Chinese and Japanese Infrastructure Assemblages

When examining the loan conditions under the B-to-B and G-to-G arrangements, two very different pictures emerge of the Jakarta-Bandung HSR and Jakarta MRT projects.

Under the Japanese G-to-G framework, a key loan condition is the provision of an Indonesian government guarantee. This means that in the case the project itself is unable to repay its loans, the Indonesian Ministry of Finance—or in the case of Jakarta MRT, the Jakarta provincial government—is responsible for repayment. Moreover, as the main implementation and project management agency on the Japanese side, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) requests the Indonesian government to bear the financial costs and administrative burden of land acquisition.

The author visiting the Phase 2A tunnel construction site near Monas, Jakarta, in December 2024 as part of a public tour organized by Jakarta MRT.

Japanese companies, in this arrangement, act primarily as contractors and receive payment through JICA. Most importantly, they do not assume any political, financial, or commercial responsibility for the operation of the project. In other words, once construction is completed and the project enters operation, Japanese companies largely conclude their involvement and leave operations and management to their Indonesian counterparts.

Another important implication of the state guarantee is that Indonesian central and local governments are expected to provide financial support where necessary, such as fare subsidies, to ensure that services can continue until ridership increases and the system becomes financially sustainable. Currently, the Jakarta MRT continues to receive subsidies from the Jakarta provincial government to keep fares affordable and encourage higher ridership.

The Chinese B-to-B arrangement for the Jakarta-Bandung HSR differs significantly. Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) participate not only as contractors but also as investors through the joint Indonesia-China consortium Kereta Cepat Indonesia China (KCIC), established with Indonesian SOEs. Compared with the Japanese model, a key feature is that Chinese SOEs share responsibility for the project’s financial and commercial risks (excluding land acquisition) even after operations begin.

In theory, the absence of a state guarantee means the Indonesian government is not responsible for loan repayment or operating subsidies while the new line builds ridership. In practice, however, the application of a purely B-to-B model to a high-cost HSR project proved to be unrealistic. Indonesian SOEs participating in KCIC subsequently requested support from the Indonesian government, including capital injections to cover approximately US$1.24 billion in cost overruns and other operational expenses.

Finally, the comparison reveals different approaches to risk management and institutional engagement. While Japan attempts to disentangle itself from risks associated with local political and economic conditions, including exchange-rate fluctuations, land acquisition disputes, corruption, and questions of financial viability, it simultaneously becomes entangled with Indonesia’s administrative and regulatory systems through institutional coordination and extensive due-diligence procedures.

On the other hand, China seeks to accelerate implementation by disentangling itself from local administrative burdens through top-level political negotiations and strategic alliances that can bypass local bureaucratic procedures. Yet this approach can create deeper entanglement with top political leadership, which can make projects potentially more vulnerable to changes in government and shifting political priorities. By assuming greater financial and business risk, Chinese actors become more closely connected to local political elites and to long-term business cooperation.

Overall, the findings suggest that Chinese and Japanese infrastructure assemblages become entangled with Indonesian society in different ways. Japan’s model relies on institutional and administrative entanglement while minimizing direct commercial exposure. China’s model relies more heavily on political and business entanglement through investment and risk-sharing. These contrasting approaches offer important insights into how contemporary infrastructure competition is reshaping relations among China, Japan, and Indonesia.

References

Abel, Jessamyn. 2022. Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World’s First Bullet Train. Stanford University Press.

Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 2023. “Xi Jinping Holds Talks with Indonesian President Joko Widodo.” October 17, 2023. https://www.mfa.gov.cn/zyxw/202310/t20231017_11162415.shtml.

Gao, Bai. 2020. “Three Theoretical Issues Concerning China’s HSR Innovation System.” In High-Speed Rail: An Analysis of the Chinese Innovation System, edited by Bai Gao, Guodong Li, and Zhibing Zhen, 1-34. World Scientific.

Matsusaka, Yoshihisa Tak. 2001. The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904-1932. Harvard University Asia Center.

Yamanouchi, Shuichiro. 1999. If There Were No Shinkansen: High-Speed Rail Experience from Its Birth to Today in Japan. Springer.

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Democratic Regression and Impunity for Human Rights Violations in Indonesia

March 5, 2026
By 26719

Indonesia’s post‑1998 reforms promised justice, democratic consolidation, and a break from authoritarian rule. Prabowo’s ascent to the presidency, however, raises questions about accountability and human rights protections, writes Yance Arizona (University of Indonesia, 2011), even as formal democratic procedures remain intact.

Introduction

Indonesia’s democratic transition following the collapse of Suharto’s New Order in 1998 was widely regarded as one of the most successful reform experiences in Southeast Asia. Constitutional amendments, direct elections, decentralization, and the establishment of independent institutions—notably the Constitutional Court and the strengthening of the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM)—marked a decisive break from authoritarian rule. These reforms were expected not only to institutionalize democracy but also to address the legacy of gross human rights violations committed during the New Order, particularly the escalation of state-sponsored terror in its final years.

Indonesian President Suharto announces his resignation in May 1998 amid student-led protests and widespread riots. (© Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

More than two decades later, however, the promise of accountability remains largely unrealized. Instead of democratic consolidation, Indonesia is experiencing a gradual democratic regression, as recorded by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index (2024). This aligns with the normalization of impunity for serious human rights violations. The election of Prabowo Subianto, the former son-in-law of Suharto, as president in 2024 represents a critical juncture in this trajectory. Although achieved through democratic procedures, his victory carries profound symbolic and political implications. Prabowo’s alleged involvement in the kidnapping and enforced disappearance of pro-democracy activists in 1998 has never been meaningfully addressed through judicial or non-judicial mechanisms. His ascent to the presidency thus raises fundamental questions about the substance of democracy, the integrity of transitional justice, and the future of human rights protection in Indonesia.

This article argues that Prabowo’s presidency not merely reflects unresolved failures of past accountability but actively consolidates a political environment in which impunity becomes normalized. Democratic procedures increasingly operate without democratic substance, while the state’s approach to security, governance, and dissent reveals a return to authoritarian logic reminiscent of the Suharto era. In this context, prospects for resolving gross human rights violations in Indonesia appear increasingly bleak.

Democracy Without Accountability

Formally, Indonesia continues to function as an electoral democracy. Elections are held regularly, political parties compete, and leadership changes occur through constitutional mechanisms. Yet democracy in its substantive sense requires accountability, the rule of law, and the prevention of abuses of power. The persistence of impunity for gross human rights violations represents a fundamental rupture in this framework.

Since the Reformasi (post-1998) period, successive governments have failed to ensure accountability in major cases, including the 1965–66 mass killings, enforced disappearances in the late 1990s, the Trisakti and Semanggi shootings, and systematic abuses in Papua. Despite extensive investigations conducted by Komnas HAM, these cases have consistently stalled at the prosecutorial stage. The Attorney General’s Office has repeatedly refused to pursue them, reflecting not technical incapacity but political reluctance to confront powerful military and political elites.

Prabowo’s election must be understood against this background of structural impunity. His political rehabilitation was possible precisely because the process of transitional justice remained incomplete. The absence of legal consequences enabled his return to formal politics, his normalization as a public figure, and eventual rise to the presidency. This trajectory demonstrates how impunity perpetuates itself across generations of power.

Electoral Victory and the Normalization of Impunity

A visual contrast in the political career of Prabowo Subianto: on the left, his 1998 dismissal from the military following allegations of involvement in the abduction of pro-democracy activists; on the right, his 2024 receipt of an honorary general badge from President Joko Widodo, shortly after winning the presidential election with Gibran Rakabuming Raka—Jokowi’s son—as his running mate.

Supporters of Prabowo often argue that his electoral victory confers democratic legitimacy and should put past allegations to rest. This argument conflates electoral success with moral and legal exoneration. Democratic elections determine who governs, but they do not absolve responsibility for serious crimes. When democratic mandates are used to shield unresolved allegations of gross human rights violations, democracy itself becomes an instrument of impunity.

The political narrative surrounding Prabowo’s presidency emphasizes reconciliation without truth, stability without justice, and development without rights. Human rights violations are reframed as historical controversies, national security necessities, or unfortunate excesses of the past that should not impede national unity. This narrative undermines the principle that crimes against humanity are not subject to political compromise or historical amnesia. Elevating a figure associated with an unresolved past to the highest executive office sends a powerful message that accountability is optional and that power can erase responsibility.

Militarization of Civil Governance

One of the clearest indicators of democratic regression under Prabowo is the expanding role of the military in civilian governance. Although Suharto’s central doctrine of dwifungsi ABRI—the “dual function” of the military in both the defense and civilian spheres—was abolished under Reformasi, its logic is re-emerging through legal and institutional practices. Revisions to the Military Law in 2025 now permit active officers to occupy several civilian posts, while retired and active military figures increasingly dominate ministries and state-owned enterprises.

This militarization has profound implications for human rights. Military institutions prioritize command, hierarchy, and security rather than democratic deliberation and rights protection. When military actors dominate civilian spaces, governance tends to privilege order over accountability.

In regions such as Papua, this approach has intensified repression. Militarization there aligns with government projects to clear approximately 2 million hectares of land for food production through deforestation, despite opposition from Papuan indigenous communities. Security operations continue to be framed as responses to separatism rather than potential sources of human rights violations. The normalization of military involvement reinforces institutional cultures that historically enabled impunity.

Criminalization of Dissent and Reversal of Direct Local Elections

Another telltale sign of democratic regression is the systematic narrowing of civic space. Activists, students, and civil society organizations increasingly face surveillance, intimidation, and criminal prosecution for protests and expressions critical of government policy. Demonstrations are frequently met with excessive force, arbitrary arrests, and charges under vague criminal provisions. After the mass protest in August 2025, 13 people died due to violence by security forces, and 703 individuals were detained and prosecuted. They are political prisoners who were tried for their legitimate expression in public. This pattern reflects a governing philosophy that treats dissent as a threat rather than a democratic resource. Laws on public order, electronic information, and national security are used to silence critics, creating a chilling effect on political participation. Many targeted activists are those who consistently demand accountability for past human rights violations. By criminalizing their actions, the state suppresses both contemporary dissent and collective memory of past injustices.

Protestors in Surabaya clash with police in August 2025. Government buildings were torched and the homes of parliament members were looted in Indonesia following a violent crackdown on civil dissent. (© Robertus Pudyanto/Getty Images)

The proposal to revert the selection of regional heads from direct elections to appointments by regional legislatures represents another significant democratic setback. Direct local elections were one of the most tangible achievements of Reformasi, enhancing political participation, accountability, and local autonomy. While the system has its flaws, its abolition would concentrate power within political elites and weaken popular control over local governance.

The justification for this reversal often rests on efficiency, cost reduction, or political stability. Yet these arguments obscure the broader democratic implications. Removing direct elections diminishes citizens’ ability to hold local leaders accountable and reinforces oligarchic control over political processes. It also aligns with a broader trend toward centralization and elite-driven decision-making.

In the context of human rights, this shift is particularly concerning. Local elections have often provided avenues for marginalized communities to influence governance and challenge abusive practices. Their removal would further distance decision makers from affected populations, reducing opportunities for rights-based advocacy at the local level.

Rewriting History and the Failure of Transitional Justice Mechanisms

The rehabilitation of authoritarian figures illustrates the depth of democratic regression. President Prabowo’s decision on November 11, 2025, to grant national hero status to former President Suharto represents an official rewriting of history. Suharto was forced to resign in 1998 amid mass protests against corruption, repression, and widespread human rights violations. Honoring him erases victims, understates suffering, and legitimizes authoritarian governance.

This revisionism reshapes collective memory and signals that justice is subordinate to political power. It also reflects the broader failure of Indonesia’s transitional justice framework. Judicial mechanisms have been ineffective, while non-judicial initiatives have been delayed or diluted. Under Prabowo’s leadership, meaningful accountability appears increasingly unlikely, given his personal history and reliance on military and elite support. Without accountability, the structural conditions that enabled past abuses persist, embedding impunity within political culture.

Indonesia’s experience reflects a broader global trend in which democratic procedures are used to legitimize authoritarian practices. Elections and constitutional forms remain intact, but their substance is hollowed out. Democracy becomes a shield for power rather than a constraint upon it. Under Prabowo, democratic mandates coexist with policies that weaken civilian control, suppress dissent, and reinvent authoritarian legacies. As a result, Indonesia risks consolidating an illiberal democracy in which elections legitimize authority while justice remains perpetually deferred.

Bibliography

Aspinall, Edward, and Ward Berenschot. Democracy for Sale: Elections, Clientelism, and the State in Indonesia. Cornell University Press, 2019. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctvdtphhq.

Crouch, Harold. The Army and Politics in Indonesia. Cornell University Press, 1988. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctvv417br.

Power, Thomas P. “Jokowi’s Authoritarian Turn and Indonesia’s Democratic Decline.” Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 54, no. 3 (2018): 307–38. doi:10.1080/00074918.2018.1549918.

Robinson, Geoffrey B. The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965–66. Princeton University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvc774sg.

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Guatemalan Farmworkers in Canada: Migration, Land Inequality, and Development

December 12, 2025
By 30645

Guatemalan participation in Canada’s Agricultural Stream program has surged nearly 200% since 2016, highlighting migration’s role in rural survival and development. But Chris Little (York University, 2019–21) reports that growing uncertainty over migration pathways is raising questions about sustainability and inequality.

A rural Guatemalan community with high levels of out-migration. Author’s own work.

Guatemalan participation in the Agricultural Stream (AS) of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) has increased by 194% since 2016, a pace far outstripping the 77% growth in migrant farmworker numbers overall (Statistics Canada 2025).

With almost 20,000 Guatemalan AS participants in 2024, this migration flow is small compared to the huge flow of irregular migrants from Guatemala to the United States but is still a significant component of the 19.1% of Guatemalan GDP made up by remittances in 2024 (World Bank 2025).

Yet in the current hemispheric political context, with migration pathways being called into question and in some cases curtailed, the role of migration in Guatemala’s development may be changing.

Most workers who migrate from Guatemala under the AS are smallholder farmers, or campesinos, in their home communities. In my doctoral dissertation, tentatively titled Finca Logic: Hemispheric Agrarian Change and Guatemalan Migrant Farmworkers in Ontario, I am exploring the relationship between agrarian change and labor migration in the Americas through the case study of the growing population of Guatemalan migrant farmworkers in Ontario greenhouse agriculture.

Drawing on over 100 interviews, I take a labor-centered approach to analyzing the impact of transnational labor migration on the organization of agricultural production at both ends of the migration journey—Ontario and Guatemala.

Interrogating the “Triple Win” Paradigm

Temporary migrant labor programs are often posited to be beneficial to the sending country, the receiving country, and the migrants themselves—so-called circular or “triple win” migration (Rannveig Agunias and Newland 2007; Castles and Ozkul 2014; Wickramasekara 2011).

While there are undoubtedly benefits to all parties engaged in migration—remittances for the migrant, foreign exchange for the sending country, labor for the receiving country—the results of participation for the migrant workers themselves appear to be much more complex and contradictory than this framework might suggest.

My doctoral dissertation research critically interrogates the “triple win” paradigm. It investigates the socioeconomic conditions that shape Guatemalan campesinos’ migration practices and the developmental impacts of participation in the AS, particularly with regard to land distribution. I seek to understand the Guatemalan side of the temporary migration story, which is under-researched compared to the AS and its sister program, the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) in general, and where much more attention has been paid to the specific experiences of the more longstanding participant nationalities, particularly Mexican and Jamaican.

Through my research, I find that the developmental possibilities for participants in the program are often mixed and frequently severely constrained by the immediacy of day-to-day subsistence needs for workers and their families and the effects of the highly unequal distribution of land in Guatemala.

This situation is compounded by two other factors: the vulnerability of temporary migrant workers to losing access to employment through the program and, in a wider respect, the limited number of spaces relative to demand for the program, even amidst the significant growth in Guatemalan participation and the AS overall.

Often, participants compared their experiences to the nature of irregular migration to the United States, which was generally framed as offering increased possible reward but at much greater possible risk.

The “Land Question”

Guatemalan participants in the AS face deeply unequal land distribution as campesinos in their home country. This “land question” is demonstrated by the fact that just 2.5% of the total number of farms control some 65% of arable land, while another 88% of farms share a mere 16% of arable land (Lopez-Ridaura et al. 2019).

In other words, a huge number of campesinos have access to a remarkably small proportion of arable land, while a small number of large landowners predominate. Unequal land distribution in Guatemala, compounded by extractive projects and the dispossession and repression associated with them (Alonso-Fradejas 2012; 2021; Konforti 2022; Little 2024; Nolin and Russell 2021), is the crux upon which rests a society profoundly unequal in broader economic and political terms as well.

Due to constrained possibilities for rural development and sustainable livelihoods, Guatemalans turn to labor migration as a survival strategy—both through participation in the AS and in the much larger irregular flows to the United States. My doctoral dissertation research historically situates this dynamic, placing the interview data collected within the lineage of campesino labor regimes in Guatemala and the different ways in which the struggle over the means of social reproduction has taken place between campesinos and the ruling class.

In the twentieth century, violent repression of land reform efforts was the basis for the 36-year-long Guatemalan Civil War. Following the peace accords signed in 1996, the land question has remained unresolved and a key area of social conflict and inequality within the country, with the individualized form of land reform pursued through the accords criticized as insufficient to change the dynamics of land distribution in any substantive way (Gauster and Isakson 2007; Granovsky-Larsen 2013; Palma Murga 1997; Short 2008).

Floriculture in a campesino community with high out-migration. Author’s own work.

Fieldwork and Emerging Concerns

The 2024 SRG award enabled me to return to Guatemala in June–July 2025 to follow up on some of the threads that had emerged from my primary round of fieldwork in 2024. I have been able to speak with government representatives, social movement actors, and people from communities that have been impacted by high rates of out-migration. This process involved targeted engagement with participants who could deepen the findings from my first round of fieldwork, which have demonstrated the heterogeneity of experiences for Guatemalan campesino participants in Canada’s TFWP-AS.

In particular, I found that government actors and social movement representatives shared concerns regarding the sustainability of Guatemala’s reliance on migration as a mode for development. These concerns were bolstered by interviews with workers and members of communities with high rates of TFWP-AS participation.

These participants recognized the need to look for alternatives given the uncertainty over migration possibilities in general and the limited availability of places in documented migration programs such as the TFWP-AS.

This underscores the importance of conducting labor-centered research on temporary migration programs, as the heterogeneity of experiences and the impact of remittances could be missed without developing a more granular picture of the community level. I am currently in the process of continuing to review and process the findings from this round of fieldwork and to integrate them in a process of comparison with prior findings. These will allow me to understand the potential developmental impacts of changes or limitations in migration possibilities for Guatemalan campesinos, both with regard to migration to Canada and also to the United States.

The SRG grant has also enabled me to strengthen my working relationship with Guatemalan research assistants, with whom I intend to collaborate on further projects that will follow a participatory research approach. One key aspect of the research—confirmation that workers understand their situations and prospects in ways that outsiders cannot—is the driving force behind my plans for further research beyond the doctoral dissertation that I am currently working on completing.

Toward Food Sovereignty

I returned to Guatemala in late October to visit two organizations working to defend land rights and promote food sovereignty for campesinos. With this experience, I am in the process of developing ideas for dissemination of my dissertation findings in a manner that can inform and support movements toward food sovereignty and providing alternatives to temporary labor migration for campesinos where communities seek such alternatives.

Support from the Sylff Association has been integral to deepening my understanding of the complex and shifting reality of rural life in Guatemala amid temporary migration flows. It will continue to bear fruit as I conclude this portion of my research and utilize it as a foundation for further investigation and action.

References

Alonso-Fradejas, Alberto. 2012. “Land Control-Grabbing in Guatemala: The Political Economy of Contemporary Agrarian Change.” Canadian Journal of Development Studies 33 (4): 509–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2012.743455.

Alonso-Fradejas, Alberto. 2021. “Life Purging Agrarian Extractivism in Guatemala: Towards a Renewable but Unlivable Future?” In Agrarian Extractivism in Latin America, edited by Ben M. McKay, Alberto Alonso-Fradejas, and Ezquerro-Cañete. Routledge.

Castles, Stephen, and Derya Ozkul. 2014. “Circular Migration: Triple Win, or a New Label for Temporary Migration?” In Global and Asian Perspectives on International Migration. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08317-9_2.

Gauster, Susana, and S. Ryan Isakson. 2007. “Eliminating Market Distortions, Perpetuating Rural Inequality: An Evaluation of Market-Assisted Land Reform in Guatemala.” Third World Quarterly 28 (8): 1519–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436590701637375.

Granovsky-Larsen, Simon. 2013. “Between the Bullet and the Bank: Agrarian Conflict and Access to Land in Neoliberal Guatemala.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 40 (2): 325–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2013.777044.

Konforti, Lazar. 2022. “‘Nosotros No Comemos Caña’: Defence of Territory and Agrarian Change in the Polochic Valley, Guatemala.” Thesis, University of Toronto. https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/125620.

Little, Chris. 2024. “The Extraction of Migrant Labor-Power.” In The Labor of Extraction in Latin America, edited by Kristin Ciupa and Jeffery R. Webber. Latin American Perspectives in the Classroom. Rowman & Littlefield.

Lopez-Ridaura, Santiago, Luis Barba-Escoto, Cristian Reyna, Jon Hellin, Bruno Gerard, and Mark van Wijk. 2019. “Food Security and Agriculture in the Western Highlands of Guatemala.” Food Security 11 (4): 817–33. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-019- 00940-z.

Nolin, Catherine, and Grahame Russell. 2021. Testimonio: Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala. Between the Lines.

Palma Murga, Gustavo. 1997. “Promised the Earth: Agrarian Reform in the SocioEconomic Agreement.” In Negotiating Rights: The Guatemalan Peace Process. Accord 2. Conciliation Resources.

Rannveig Agunias, Dovelyn, and Kathleen Newland. 2007. Circular Migration and Development: Trends, Policy Routes, and Ways Forward. MPI Policy Brief. Migration Policy Institute.

Short, Nicola. 2008. The International Politics of Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Guatemala. Palgrave Macmillan. http://www.vlebooks.com/vleweb/product/openreader?id=none&isbn=978113704 0848.

Statistics Canada. 2025. “Table 32-10-0221-01 Countries of Citizenship for Temporary Foreign Workers in the Agricultural Sector.” Table 32-10-0221-01. May 9. https://doi.org/10.25318/3210022101-eng.

Wickramasekara, Piyasiri. 2011. “Circular Migration: A Triple Win or a Dead End.” SSRN Scholarly Paper No. 1834762. Social Science Research Network, February 1. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1834762.

World Bank. 2025. “Personal Remittances, Received (% of GDP).” BX.TRF.PWKR.DT.GD.ZS. World Bank. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.TRF.PWKR.DT.GD.ZS.

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Doctor Knows Best? Medical Authority and Maternal Roles in Socialist Hungary

November 27, 2025
By 33043

How did medical authority shape motherhood in twentieth-century Hungary? Fanni Svégel (Eötvös Loránd University, 2025) explores the rise of “scientific motherhood,” tracing how expert-driven childcare practices redefined maternal roles and reinforced gendered expectations through state policy.

* * *

My brother Pali’s development was recorded in a diary, a large squared notebook, with special attention devoted to his movements. He was left unbound, free to kick without swaddling—something I later learned had also been done with me. By now it is clear that they [the parents] were followers of Emmi Pikler’s method of infant care.[1]

Péter Nádas, an internationally renowned contemporary Hungarian writer, recalled in his novel how such practices were common among the Budapest middle class in the 1940s. His personal memory reflects a broader trend: the professionalization of child-rearing and motherhood in mid-twentieth-century Hungary. What had once been a marginal practice of the interwar elite—keeping detailed records of a newborn and encouraging free movement and exploration—became widespread under state socialism, due in part to Emmi Pikler’s influential childcare manuals. This model of “scientific motherhood” established a medicalized framework of childcare that helped define the ideal of “righteous motherhood.”[2]

This article examines how medical knowledge production influenced the normative concept of the good mother in twentieth-century Hungary, turning previously marginal practices into mainstream norms. It also examines how family mainstreaming came to place primary responsibility for care work on women, tracing the historical roots of “righteous motherhood” at the intersection of state population policy and medicalization.

Family Mainstreaming and the Rise of Medical Authority

In recent years, Hungary has taken a prominent role globally as an initiator of international treaties and conferences aimed at reframing human rights and serves as a laboratory for “family mainstreaming.” In these “pro-family” narratives, child welfare becomes a powerful rhetorical tool justifying the illiberal government’s actions.[3] But what are the historical roots of family mainstreaming, and why has the prioritization of the family often come at the expense of gender equality?

State population policy is closely intertwined with dominant narratives of motherhood. Cross-regime examinations of twentieth-century family policy reveal the continuity of expectations placed on women as primary caregivers. Hungary has a long history of state-provided maternal benefits, and from 1967 onward, working mothers were allowed to stay at home with their babies for up to three years. The childcare allowance—which is still offered today—reinforced traditional gender roles, placing a double burden on women as both workers and caregivers.[4] At the same time, the concept of appropriate care work evolved under the influence of medicalization.

The pediatric ward at the National Social Security Institute (OTI), Áruház Square, Csepel, 1949. ©Fortepan / Kovács Márton Ernő

The construction of expert knowledge in child-rearing intersects with medical knowledge production and the prevailing power structures. This framework assumes that knowledge originates from trained professionals, interpreting it as reliable and scientific. In contrast, the concept of authoritative knowledge is more permissive regarding the source of knowledge, acknowledging the agency of laypeople in shaping childcare practices.[5]

This raises the question: who owns knowledge? At the beginning of the twentieth century, the image of the good mother became increasingly tied to expertise, as child welfare and caregiving professions evolved, opening space for women as professionals in medical environments.

These women—midwives, nurses, and physicians—occupied intermediate positions within the power hierarchy, bridging the state and ordinary people. These lower-level agents, with varying degrees of autonomy, helped shape the notion of expertise.[6] Consequently, the twentieth century marked the first time in modern history that women could emerge as authorities on matters concerning the female body, influencing both public and private reproductive discourse. This professionalization tendency was caught between inherited knowledge, folk medicine, customs, and highly medical approaches.[7]

The differences in types of knowledge lead to a second question: what is the source of knowledge? With professionalization, knowledge about pregnancy, childbirth, child-rearing, and intimacy moved beyond the personal spheres of family, kinship, and friendship, and books became a central medium for its transmission. This shift signaled modernization, generating tensions as it distanced individuals from the knowledge and customs of previous generations. The consolidation of medical authority, alongside the widespread distribution of books, transformed women’s relationships with their bodies. On one hand, they became more vulnerable within healthcare institutions; on the other, they gained access to more reliable information about pregnancy, childbirth, and infant care.

Emmi Pikler and the Scientific Turn in Childcare

In the twentieth century, child-rearing was transformed into a scientific enterprise, managed by experts. Among them was Emmi Pikler (1902–1984), a pioneering pediatrician whose work in postwar Hungary reshaped infant care under socialism and beyond. As a physician and childcare specialist, Pikler played a significant role in developing infant care practices and institutions in the post–World War II era. Of Austro-Hungarian Jewish origin, Pikler was connected to interwar reform education and left-wing intellectual circles. Upon receiving her medical diploma in Vienna, Pikler returned to Hungary and opened a private practice in Budapest. After World War II, she was appointed director of the Lóczy Residential Infant Home—an institution built on socialist state ideals—where she developed her distinctive caregiving model.[8]

Pikler’s first book, What Does the Baby Already Know?, was published in 1940, providing advice for young mothers on early development. Her second childcare manual, Mothers’ Book, was first published in 1956 and reissued several times until 1985, thus spanning almost the entire socialist period. Based on the narrative analysis of these volumes, this article examines two debated aspects of her method: the “cry-it-out” approach and scheduled breastfeeding.

What Does the Baby Already Know? devoted particular attention to what Pikler termed “raising children to cry,” by which she referred to the tendency of inexperienced parents—especially mothers—to respond to an infant’s crying with immediate soothing, rocking, or holding. In her view, such practices unintentionally conditioned children to cry more often and therefore represented an inadequate way of addressing infant behavior.

She argued that infants who were allowed to cry until about six months of age later developed greater autonomy and problem-solving abilities. During this early stage, Pikler regarded caretaking practices such as prolonged holding or “unwarranted” rocking—unless driven by a physical need—as a form of spoiling. Her position on crying was not exceptional in its time but rather aligned with prevailing conceptions of the child as an individual requiring discipline and order.[9]

An infant home in Stalin-City, 1959. ©Fortepan / Peti Péter

Maternal Love versus Caregiving Skills

In Mothers’ Book, Pikler distinguished maternal love from caregiving, framing the latter as a skill to be learned rather than an instinct directly tied to affection. She argued that the consistent presence of a primary caregiver—ideally the mother—was most beneficial for the infant, enabling the formation of a secure and intimate bond. She emphasized regularity and precision in routines of feeding, bathing, and sleeping, thereby promoting a stable and predictable daily rhythm for the child.[10] Although, from the late 1940s, Pikler served as the head of a residential infant home for children who lacked family care, her manual was directed at parents rather than institutional caregivers.

The second debated issue in Pikler’s book concerned scheduled breastfeeding. From the early twentieth century onward, medical literature recommended feeding infants five to six times a day at three-hour intervals—a practice justified by concerns for health preservation and hygiene.[11] In this framework, the physician decided what was beneficial for the child’s well-being, and the “good mother” was one who followed medical instructions. Mothers’ Book also placed particular emphasis on the necessity of medical supervision. In the 1963 edition, scheduled feeding (every three hours) was still recommended; by the 1980s, however, revised editions advocated feeding on demand, thereby aligning with the prevailing scientific consensus.[12] In Pikler’s view, infants were calmer within a stable and predictable routine.

In both books, motherhood was framed as a learnable ability grounded in expert knowledge, explicitly distancing care from instinct or “natural” affection. Drawing on the concept of “rational love,” What Does the Baby Already Know? advanced the view that learning proper caregiving was the mother’s duty, since only through such acquired competence could an infant’s needs be adequately recognized and met.

Caring labor was conceived as both an integral aspect of motherhood and a learnable process, regarded as essential for the construction of socialist society. Emmi Pikler thus sought to institutionalize a new, medically informed model of child-rearing, in which maternal competence was subordinated to the authority of medical expertise. In doing so, she built on the historical legacy of maternalist policies that linked caregiving to motherhood, while simultaneously promoting a professionalized form of caregiving.

[1] Péter Nádas, Világló részletek I (Budapest: Jelenkor, 2017).

[2] Risa Cromer and Lea Taragin-Zeller, “Reproductive Righteousness of Right-Wing Movements: Global Feminist Perspectives,” Women's Studies International Forum 105 (2024): 102947, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2024.102947.

[3] Andrea Pető and Borbála Juhász, “Legacies and Recipe of Constructing Successful Righteous Motherhood Policies: The Case of Hungary,” Women's Studies International Forum 103 (2024), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277539524000232.

[4] Éva Fodor, The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary (Palgrave Pivot, 2020).

[5] Brigitte Jordan, “Authoritative Knowledge and Its Construction,” in Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, eds. Robbie E. Davis-Floyd and Carolyn Fishel Sargent (University of California Press, 1997), 55–79.

[6] Zita Deáky and Lilla Krász, “Lészen az Istennek áldásábúl magzattyok…” Születés és anyaság a régi Magyarországon, 16. század – 20. század eleje (Budapest: Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont Történettudományi Intézet, 2024).

[7] Fanni Svégel, “The Role of Women as Agents and Beneficiaries in the Hungarian Family Planning System (1914–1944),” Journal of Family History 48, no. 3 (2023): 338–353, https://doi.org/10.1177/03631990231160222.

[8] Fanni Svégel, “Anyaság és gyereknevelés a professzionalizáció és a politika szorításában: Pikler Emmi munkássága,” Opuscula Theologica Et Scientifica 3, no. 1 (2025): 231–260, https://doi.org/10.59531/ots.2025.3.1.231-260.

[9] Emmi Pikler, Mit tud már a baba? (Budapest: Medicina Könyvkiadó, 1959), 9–13.

[10] Magda László and Emmi Pikler, Anyák könyve (Budapest: Medicina Könyvkiadó,1963).

[11] Zsuzsa Bokor, “‘Separation Is Required in Our Special Situation’: Minority Public Health Programs in Interwar Transylvania,” Hungarian Historical Review 12, no. 3 (2023): 395–432, https://doi.org/10.38145/2023.3.395.

[12] László and Pikler, Anyák könyve.

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Struggling for the Algorithm: Far-Right Communication and Youth Political Participation

July 1, 2025
By 32202

Mónica Catarina Soares (University of Coimbra, 2016) argues that far-right movements in Portugal and Argentina are reshaping youth political attitudes through meme-savvy digital strategies and populist messaging that reframe exclusionary nationalism as culturally attractive rebellion.

* * *

Over the past two decades, the world has witnessed a steady and alarming rise in far-right political influence. This phenomenon is not confined to any one region but has emerged as a transnational trend. Portugal and Argentina, two countries with relatively young democracies shaped by recent histories of dictatorship, have both seen a significant increase in far-right support.

In Portugal, the legislative elections held on May 18, 2025, followed the dissolution of a conservative coalition government that came to power in 2024, but which quickly collapsed amid a corruption scandal. The scandal implicated Prime Minister Luís Montenegro and revealed alleged bribery schemes involving a family enterprise currently connected to his wife and son.

Despite the political turmoil, the ruling coalition Aliança Democrática secured 91 of 230 seats in the Assembly of the Republic with the largest vote share of 31.21%. However, the most notable outcome of the election was the continued ascent of the far-right party Chega, which obtained 22.76% of the vote and 60 parliamentary seats—surpassing the Socialist Party (Partido Socialista), which secured only 58 mandates.[1]

Chega has thus become the second-largest political force in Portugal, significantly altering the country’s traditional party system, undermining democratic pluralism, and advancing an exclusionary nationalist agenda.

On the same day, May 18, in Argentina, the far-right coalition La Libertad Avanza won the legislative elections in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires with 30.1% of the vote. This victory consolidated the position of Javier Milei, an economist-turned-media-personality who became president in 2023 with 55.69% of the vote (14,476,462 ballots cast in his favor).[2] Milei’s rapid rise has transformed Argentina’s political landscape, positioning radical libertarianism as an outlet for social discontent.

Although support for the far right extends across all age groups, it was young people in both Portugal and Argentina who initially structured this rise and who continue to play a central role in far-right discourse. In Portugal, exit polls conducted by Pitagórica^[3] in 2025 showed—as in the 2022 and 2024 elections—that individuals aged 25–34 were the most likely to vote for Chega, with approximately 33% backing this party. Similarly, in Argentina, Milei’s support base includes a significant proportion of young people from working-class backgrounds affected by job insecurity and limited educational opportunities.^[4]

These patterns raise important questions regarding the ideological realignment of younger generations and the communicative mechanisms employed by far-right movements to engage with them. Since November 2024, I have been conducting research in both countries to explore how digital culture and far-right discourse influence youth political behavior. Specifically, I examine the narratives that resonate with youth sensibilities, the communication styles used by official and unofficial far-right actors on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, and the extent to which these strategies reshape political imaginaries.

This research uses two primary methods for data collection: (1) expert interviews with political analysts and scholars and (2) a critical digital discourse analysis of far-right content disseminated across social media platforms. While the research is ongoing, the following sections present preliminary findings and interpretive reflections.

The Aesthetic of Rebellion: Why the Far Right Resonates with Youth

A central finding of this study is the far right’s effective appropriation of the aesthetic of rebellion. In contrast to its traditional image as a “dangerous relic of the past,” contemporary far-right communication rearticulates its message through formats that align with styles perceived as attractive and relevant by youth audiences.

On TikTok, Instagram reels, and YouTube shorts, far-right influencers frequently employ irony, irreverent humor, memes, and popular music to attack “woke” values, feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, and progressive causes, which they portray as hegemonic and oppressive. Today, the far right is increasingly perceived as amusing, disruptive, confrontational, and engaged with ordinary people—all characteristics that hold strong appeal for younger audiences.

In Argentina, libertarianism—once marginal in a country shaped by Peronism and progressive social movements—has been reframed as a form of generational rebellion. For many young supporters, Milei’s rhetoric offers a way of rejecting the status quo and challenging the political and social groups that have long held power. As one young supporter stated, “We’re not the spoiled elites of the Propuesta Republicana. We’re spicy—we’re like the Peronists of liberalism” (free translation).[5] This rhetorical positioning casts ultraliberalism as a form of authentic, anti-systemic resistance.

Who, then, embodies all that must be rejected? In Argentina, the answer, according to far-right imaginaries, is a demonized and composite figure referred to as the casta. This term refers to a deliberately vague and malleable amalgam of political elites, public-sector workers, social activists, intellectuals, and welfare recipients—groups portrayed not merely as disconnected from “the people” but as active agents in the nation’s decline.

Meme retrieved from Javier Milei’s official Instagram account. The text reads: “Crystal Clear: Clean Record, The Casta.”

The so-called elites are presented as socially and politically homogeneous, with internal conflicts and tensions deliberately obscured. This homogenized group is then accused of having systematically deceived the population: by obscuring the structural roots of persistent economic crises, by defending redistributive policies that allegedly reward idleness and their privileges, and by imposing victim-centered narratives of past dictatorships that distract people from the supposed historical truth.[6]

Within this revisionist and populist framework, the casta is seen not just as a privileged minority but as a treacherous force—one that has hijacked state institutions for its own benefit and corrupted the moral fabric of the nation.

These tropes are echoed in Portugal with striking consistency in Chega’s messaging. The party persistently calls for a moral and institutional “cleansing” of Portuguese society, targeting those it designates as unproductive or parasitic, a kind of Portuguese casta—namely, immigrants, welfare beneficiaries, and political opponents,[7] among others.

These proposals are framed not as acts of cruelty but as necessary corrections that reflect the frustrations of the “clean record”—especially young men—who feel abandoned, dishonored, and rendered invisible by mainstream institutions. In this way, punitive and exclusionary measures are reframed as moral imperatives and necessary practices, restoring a lost sense of fairness and social hierarchy under the guise of economic and national regeneration.

The TikTok Algorithm

TikTok’s algorithm, like those of other platforms, privileges content that is emotionally engaging, visually dynamic, and easily consumable. Far-right communicators have mastered this environment by crafting charismatic digital personas—sometimes embodied by political figures such as Chega founder André Ventura and Milei themselves—and embedding ideological messages within entertainment-oriented formats. In this context, politics is transformed into a form of micro-entertainment and seamlessly integrated into users’ everyday scrolling practices.

The COVID-19 pandemic played a pivotal role in this transformation. It provided fertile ground for conspiracy theories, anti-state rhetoric, and libertarian fantasies of self-regulation. In Portugal, Chega took advantage of public frustrations with lockdowns and vaccination campaigns, framing state-imposed health measures as authoritarian overreach.[8] In Argentina, Milei released a film titled Pandemonics in which he portrays the pandemic response as an orchestrated scam. The movie ends with a punk-style anthem by Los Pibes Libertarios featuring the following credit lyrics:[9]

To hell with the damn “entrepre-losers”
To hell with the sodomites of capital
No more Keynesian trash
The liberal moment has arrived

We have a leader, a true icon
Who always manages to rattle the state
Javier Milei, future president
Javier Milei, the last punk

Always against the tax-funded pensions
Always against abusive statism
Fighting for a libertarian Argentina
And for the freedom of the working people (free translation)

This narrative resonated with young audiences who experienced the pandemic as a time of frustration, missed opportunities, and alienation. Moreover, far-right content consistently emphasizes that salvation will come through the party leader, who at this time was already portrayed as the president and the last hope in the fight for the country.

In Portugal, too, besides the use of fake news that supports his political views, Ventura’s online presence blends nationalist messaging with casual, trend-aware content—a strategy designed to normalize and sublimate violent political discourse. He shares images featuring a cat from the Chega central office, posts reaction videos, and comments on trending topics in a tone resembling that of a close friend. This form of political parasocial interaction—one-sided emotional bonds between followers and public figures—fosters a sense of intimacy and identification: Ventura appears approachable, authentic, and continuously present in the digital lives of his followers.

Photo retrieved from André Ventura’s official Instagram account.

In a context marked by widespread political disaffection—especially pronounced among working-class youth—far-right digital strategies have successfully cultivated a sense of proximity, immediacy, and responsiveness. Unlike mainstream political parties, which often appear distant, technocratic, and reliant on traditional media or complex political discourse, far-right actors leverage social media platforms to simulate a continuous, direct, and informal dialogue with their followers. This mediated intimacy cultivates a perception of accessibility and responsiveness that traditional political parties often fail to provide, fostering among followers a sense of being heard and represented in real time.

It is important to note that digital engagement is not confined to official politicians or party figures. The far-right online presence often comprises a diverse ecosystem of actors: influencers who engage audiences through more casual or lifestyle-oriented content, thereby broadening the movement’s appeal beyond explicitly political arenas, alongside smaller, fragmented groups, some of which openly promote neo-Nazi ideologies, for example. This multilayer network fosters an environment where radical ideas circulate across both overtly political and seemingly apolitical contexts.

No Future? Rebuilding Hope and Meaning

A recurring theme emerging from my fieldwork is the pervasive sense among young people of being trapped in a present devoid of a future. For many, democratic regimes and progressive political projects have failed to deliver promises of social mobility, dignity, or collective well-being. This widespread frustration, stemming from precarious employment, lack of affordable housing, and a profound sense of systemic marginalization, has driven many youths to seek new sources of meaning that provide both existential purpose and symbolic repositioning within society.

But what exactly do these movements offer to improve the lives of young people? On the surface, they promise status, success, and recognition in a world fraught with insecurities. However, such promises are often deliberately intertwined with ambiguous or confusing prospects for a better life. Notably, the far right does not advocate collective egalitarianism regarding these aspirations for a better life. Instead, its message emphasizes that positive social status depends on becoming an individually productive worker—more disciplined, resilient, but also more ruthless. The fierce struggle against the “caste” demands this stance, as this group is portrayed as perpetually attempting to game the system.

In both countries, young people are urged to rectify the perceived mistakes of their parents and grandparents, who are blamed for creating and sustaining the “caste”—generations allegedly seduced by the false promises of democracy, socialism, communism, or egalitarian reformism, and now dismissed as “things from old people.” It is now their historical mission to finally play the “right card” to overcome exploitation, not by rejecting it but by embracing its most radical and unrestrained form.

The core message is clear: the failure of the past was not capitalism but the resistance to its unrestricted development. The only barrier standing between young people and their dreams of economic and national development is a “leftist impoverishing state” that allegedly hindered the true flourishing of capitalism and compromised their generation. Therefore, the proposed solution is not revolution or reforms but purification: capitalism beyond contestation, legitimized by the fantasy of a liberated, unburdened, neoliberal subject. This vision is framed through masculinized archetypes—the self-made entrepreneur, the tax-resisting hero, the “clean record” citizen, among others.

The Entrenchment of Right-Wing Frameworks

Preliminary findings suggest that we are not witnessing a passing fad but a profound shift in political culture. Far-right movements have succeeded in establishing new common-sense frameworks among youth, particularly through digital media. These frameworks offer emotional gratification, inclusion, and a sense of belonging in a world otherwise experienced as unstable and unjust. Their success is underpinned by effective marketing strategies, often internationally funded and professionally managed, which blend ideological content with viral aesthetics.

While resistance remains—from street protests to media critiques—progressive forces have largely failed to offer compelling counter-narratives capable of matching the emotional and communicative resonance of the far-right.

Graffiti proclaiming that the homeland is not for sale and that people must choose between the homeland and the IMF, painted on barricades near the Casa Rosada, Buenos Aires, April 2025.

This research underscores the need for renewed attention to the ways digital communication reshapes political imaginaries and for urgent rethinking of civic education, digital literacy, and youth political engagement. If far-right discourse has become “the new punk,” then progressive movements must respond not only with better arguments but with more compelling affective and cultural strategies.

The stakes are high. The far right’s caricatured, shallow, and laughable nature have led many to underestimate its power and allowed them to grow enormously, without their true danger being fully acknowledged, in Portuguese and Argentine society, as well as worldwide. However, the history of the twentieth century serves as a stark reminder that this familiar path leads not merely to instability but to the erosion of democratic institutions and the exponential rise of political barbarism. And it is already happening.

Notes

[1] Ministry of Internal Administration, Resultados globais, 2025, accessed June 4, 2025, https://www.legislativas2025.mai.gov.pt/resultados/globais.

[2] National Electoral Directorate, Elecciones 2023: Segunda Vuelta, 2023, accessed June 5, 2025, https://resultados.mininterior.gob.ar/resultados/2023/3/1/0.

[3] Pedro Magalhães and João Cancela, As bases sociais do novo sistema partidário português, 2025, accessed June 4, 2025, https://www.pedro-magalhaes.org/as-bases-sociais-do-novo-sistema-partidario-portugues-2022-2025/.

[4] Ezequiel Ipar, “La rabia grita derecha,” Le Monde Diplomatique (edición 289), 2023, accessed June 6, 2025, https://www.eldiplo.org/283-por-que-la-derecha-conquista-a-los-jovenes/la-rabia-grita-derecha/.

[5] Melina Vázquez, “Los picantes del liberalismo: Jóvenes militantes de Milei y ‘nuevas derechas,’” in Está entre nosotros: ¿De dónde sale y hasta dónde puede llegar la extrema derecha que no vimos venir? edited by Pablo Semán, 2023, 81–122.

[6] Hernán Confino and Rodrigo Tizón, Anatomía de una mentira: Quiénes y por qué justifican a la represión de los setenta, Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura, 2024.

[7] Mariana Mendes, “Enough of What? An Analysis of Chega’s Populist Radical Right Agenda,” South European Society and Politics 26, no. 3 (2021): 329–353.

[8] Mónica Soares and Marcela Uchôa, “Is It Just about a Renewed Conspiracy? Endorsement of a Far-Right Subjectivity in Portuguese Movements against Covid-19 Sanitary Control Measures,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism 18, no. 1 (2024): 181–208.

[9] Valentina Di Croce, El Arca de Milei: ¿Cómo y con quién construyó su poder? Buenos Aires: Futurock Ediciones, 2024.

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Populism’s Mitigated Potency in Japan and Implications for Mature Democracies

February 25, 2025
By 31407

Despite Japan’s economic struggles, populism has made limited electoral impact. Jiajia Zhou (Columbia University, 2017) explores how the local organizational strength of incumbent parties mitigates the effectiveness of populist rhetoric and, in doing so, may facilitate the pursuit of electorally challenging policies.

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Populism is an endogenous offshoot of representative democracy. It is a rhetoric that appeals to shared grievances among the electorate, blames representative elites, and in this process “[takes] advantage of democracy’s endogenous discontent with the domineering attitude of the few over the many” (Urbinati 2019, 119).

What is surprising about populism today is not its presence but its potency—that the basic claims of extreme majoritarianism capture the hearts of enough voters to make waves in electoral outcomes. Some scholars have opted to view populism as a strategy employed by political actors to mobilize “large numbers of mostly unorganized followers” (Weyland 2001, 14). This aligns with the origin of populism as a concept coined to differentiate electoral politics dominated by charismatic leaders in Latin America from class-based mobilization in European democracies (Roberts 2015, 144).

However, this definition magnifies the present condition while overlooking a key question, that is, why has the anti-elite claim come to amass so much electoral influence in democracies where elections used to be anchored in various loci of organized support? Part of the answer lies in the weakening geographical strength of political parties in mature democracies.

Resisting Populism at the Local Level

Japan serves as a case study to test this theory. Japan, in particular, is a democracy where populism has the potential to succeed. Since the 1990s, Japan’s economy has observed at best tepid growth. More recently, South Korea, whose economy developed later than Japan, has achieved a higher nominal GDP per capita. Not only has Japan’s economic status been shaken, but its weakening yen has also spurred an unfamiliar and trying experience of inflation for its electorate.

Although Japan lacks the presence of an immigrant population large enough to fuel nativist sentiments, democracies with similar ethnic compositions, such as Hungary, show that this alone does not preclude the influence of populism; economic ills can suffice to trigger populist support. Why, then, has populism had a relatively limited impact on elections in Japan?

One factor may be that local, organized support retains its electoral clout. My SRG research identified two sources of evidence for this. First, I revisited an episode of populism in national politics in 2005, when then Prime Minister Jun’ichiro Koizumi from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) dissolved the lower house of the National Diet and called for an electoral referendum to overturn the upper house’s rejection of his postal privatization bill. The landslide victory demonstrated the potential for populism in Japan, as Koizumi’s anti-elite framing of opposition within his own party—as “forces of resistance” (teiko seiryoku) pursuing “vested interests” (kitokuken)—succeeded in reversing trends in falling voter turnout and secured a two-thirds majority for the LDP and coalition partner Komeito.

Prime Minister Koizumi announcing his party’s election platform calling for the privatization of postal services. ©Junko Kimura / Getty Images

Notably, though, the contests were especially challenging in divided districts where LDP candidates, mostly new blood, were assigned to compete against ex-LDP incumbent candidates who had opposed the postal bill and been stripped of their party’s endorsement.

Even though 51 LDP lower house members resisted Koizumi’s postal bill, only 37 members voted against it, and they were either expelled or ordered to leave the party. The 14 others who abstained or were absent from the vote retained their party affiliation (Shukan Asahi 2005; Asano 2006). Among the 37 who lost their LDP affiliation, 34 ran in the election, and exactly half were reelected.

Analyzing voting patterns across municipalities, I found a negative relationship between the LDP’s organizational strength and its vote gains. Specifically, in areas where the LDP was organizationally stronger, countermobilization by politicians in those districts drew significant votes away from the party. Even though Koizumi’s market-oriented postal privatization policy aimed to benefit urban voters by promoting productive investment, postal opposition candidate Seiko Noda, for example, successfully drew votes away from the LDP, winning reelection in Gifu’s first district covering the prefectural capital of Gifu City.

In another case, Ryozo Ishibashi, an LDP prefectural assembly member in the city of Hiroshima, entered the lower house race to oppose postal privatization and split LDP votes, drawing support away from the party in his district.

By contrast, in districts where the LDP was organizationally weaker and local conservative politicians had for several years been distancing themselves from the LDP, the decisions by these local mobilizers to support postal reform led to large increases in vote share, such as in Shizuoka’s seventh district.

Populism’s Impact on the 2024 Election

Second, I examined populism’s potency in the most recent lower house elections in October 2024 through an online survey experiment involving respondents from all 47 prefectures in Japan. In the survey, respondents were presented with a description referencing recent episodes of the political funds scandal, followed by hypothetical campaign excerpts from a non-LDP conservative candidate.

Respondents were randomly assigned one of two possible campaign messages. The first adopted a populist frame linking current economic woes to the collusive and corrupt LDP politicians who served vested interests over the interests of the people. The second similarly emphasized current economic woes but stressed party turnover and a change of government to strengthen policies as the solution. After reading the message, respondents were asked to indicate their support for the hypothetical candidate.

The experiment yielded evidence for the strong role played by local party representation, that is, the incumbent party’s organizational reach in local areas and role in politically fulfilling local needs.

First, the experiment found higher candidate support when respondents were exposed to populist messaging. This trend was stronger among respondents reporting weaker trust in political institutions, a pattern similar to that of populist support in European countries. However, unlike in Europe, populist support was not particularly strong among respondents residing in areas facing demographic decline or among those reporting economic insecurity in rural areas.

Instead, populist support was stronger among respondents reporting stronger feelings of representation at the municipal level and whose municipal representatives were non-LDP politicians. It was also stronger in prefectures with lower ratios of LDP party membership for each single-member electoral district.

Additional questions examining respondents’ attitudes revealed higher levels of nativist sentiments—where respondents perceive foreigners as a threat to local culture—in municipalities with higher ratios of foreign to local residents. This relationship is distinct from the inflow of tourists, which does not fuel nativist sentiments.

Importance of Local Organizations in Resisting Populist Rhetoric

These results suggest that the lack of populist support in Japan is not the result of unique resistance against the phenomenon but the geographical strength of its incumbent party organization. The idea that political party organization matters is not new to political science research (e.g. Katz and Mair 2018). But the results here reveal how, and in what ways, the incumbent party organization matters against the populist challenge.

My research also shows that the penetration of political party organizations in local electoral districts facilitates countermobilization and increases voter-level resistance against empty populist rhetoric that is devoid of policy relevance. This finding complements studies in other democracies that have identified the important effects of local mobilization but have emphasized the mobilizational effects of populist forces, such as in Sweden (Loxbo 2024).

The local electoral arena remains a salient theater for competition between incumbent and challenger parties. Ideological competition among central parties using party platforms and ideology is not a democratic ill. However, vulnerability to populism grows when attention at the center eviscerates the party of its local organization and overlooks the local arena.

This is not to imply that Japan presents a model of healthy democracy. Rather, it shows that populism, as an anti-elite appeal to majoritarianism, arises from not only commonly cited economic factors but also weak incumbent political party organization.

More broadly, there has been increased scholarly attention to the role of social media, warranted by increased reliance on information received through these platforms. Yet, even if social media has become the primary battleground for the electoral offensive, local areas remain critical flanks where electoral organization and representation matter. Strengthening these local organizational structures is essential if mainstream parties in countries like Japan wish to pursue electorally challenging policies, such as expanding immigration inflows.

References

Asano, Masahiko. 2006. Shimin shakai ni okeru seido kaikaku: Senkyo seido to kohosha rikuruto. Keio University Press.

Katz, Richard S., and Peter Mair. 2018. Democracy and the Cartelization of Political Parties. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199586011.001.0001.

Loxbo, Karl. 2024. “How the Radical Right Reshapes Public Opinion: The Sweden Democrats’ Local Mobilisation, 2002–2020.” West European Politics 0 (0): 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2024.2396775.

Roberts, Kenneth M. 2015. “Populism, Political Mobilizations, and Crises of Political Representation.” In The Promise and Perils of Populism: Global Perspectives, edited by Carlos de la Torre, 140–58. University Press of Kentucky.

Shukan Asahi. 2005. “Jiminto zohan 51 giin, kaisan de konaru: Koizumi dokatsu hatsugen no daigosan.” August 5.

Urbinati, Nadia. 2019. “Political Theory of Populism.” Annual Review of Political Science 22 (1): 111–27. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-050317-070753.

Weyland, Kurt. 2001. “Clarifying a Contested Concept: Populism in the Study of Latin American Politics.” Comparative Politics 34 (1): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.2307/422412.

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Rightly Guided Leaders: The Role of Religion in the Political Ideology of Viktor Orbán and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

January 8, 2025
By 29256

Viktor Orbán and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have strategically used religion to shape their political ideologies and establish unchallenged power in Hungary and Turkey. Tamas Dudlak (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2021) introduces his groundbreaking comparative study on how their religious discourses reflect and influence their political systems.

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As part of my SRG 2023 research project, I compared the role of religion in the political ideology of contemporary Hungary and Turkey. Over the last decade, there has been a growing interest in illiberal governance systems, primarily concerning Hungary and Turkey (Bremmer 2018; Economist 2018). Beyond superficial comparisons of these illiberal states, however, the similarities and differences between the lengthy political careers of Viktor Orbán and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and their respective ideologies have not gained much academic attention.

Recently, both Orbán and Erdoğan have utilized the same power techniques to maintain their unchallenged leading position in their respective countries: their strategy can be characterized by changes to the electoral system, excessive media control, defamatory campaigns against political competitors (Jobbik and HDP parties, respectively), aggrandizement of internal-external enemies (Soros-Brussels and Gülen-Washington, respectively), and emphasis on identity politics (nationalism and religious mobilization).

The careers of the two leaders represent the main patterns of political evolution in Hungary and Turkey after the Cold War. Both Orbán and Erdoğan followed global political ideologies (liberalism and nationalism, though in different forms) and utilized them in different periods of their careers. And then, around the economic crisis in 2008, they shifted their political focus to populism, nationalist ideals, and religiosity (Christianity and Islam, respectively), thereby challenging the foundations of the liberal and secular democratic systems in their respective countries.

While attempts have been made in the literature to define the religious foundations of the two systems (institutions, movements, parties, and belief systems), the religious discourse of Orbán and Erdoğan has not been addressed in depth and comparatively. Despite the growing literature on populism, illiberalism, and authoritarian tendencies in the “Western periphery,” there is a lack of context-sensitive analysis of the religious ideas expressed by Orbán and Erdoğan.

The Shaping of the Religious Narrative

To fill this gap, I conducted research to compare the circumstances that shaped the religious narrative of the two leaders. The goal was to acquire an empirical understanding of how religious discourses have been formulated by politicians in Hungary and Turkey over the last decade and a half and what underlying factors (historical and geopolitical) and current circumstances (legislative background and the domestic and foreign political environment) shape the outcome of governmental decisions (political practice) and discourses (political theory).

By explaining the differences and similarities, I hope to shed light on the essential characteristics of these systems and to arrive at a better understanding of the evolution of the religious discourses utilized.

St. Stephen’s Basilica, completed in 1906, is the largest church in Budapest.

I focused on the Hungarian and Turkish governmental “mainstream” religious discourse after 2010 to determine how the leaders of these political systems thematize Christianity and Islam in their political agenda (identity, national goals, moral values, and humanitarianism). The empirical part of the research examined how the two leaders, Viktor Orbán and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, perceived the role of religion in their formative years and how religion later came to inform their political views.

As a matter of general or theoretical inquiry, I compared how illiberal governments conduct their religious discourses. Are Turkey and Hungary going in the same direction in their respective religious policies, for example, utilizing religion for counter-Europeanization or anti-Westernism and supporting a distinctive civilizational identity?

The underlying narratives were examined by discourse and content analysis. For this purpose, I focused on the official statements and speeches of Orbán and Erdoğan. The central position of the leaders can be explained by their dominant role in constituting the current political systems in Hungary and Turkey. In countries where populist politics thrive, the charismatic leader gains greater importance in the political arena.

Similar Patterns

Commonalities between the careers of Viktor Orbán and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are evident. Both grew up in the peripheries (countryside) of secular political systems with nondemocratic characteristics (socialism and Kemalism, respectively), yet religiosity played an essential role in their early lives. Later, their success was related to their ability to mobilize critical voices against these secular regimes; consequently, they were elected as reformists and became advocates of liberal democracy during their early political life (in the 1990s and 2000s).

Around the economic crisis in 2008, though, they gradually shifted their political focus to populism, nationalist ideals, and religiosity (Christianity and Islam, respectively), thereby challenging the foundations of the liberal and secular democratic system. Instead of following the path for which they had previously advocated, both leaders launched a rhetorical campaign against the West and its institutions and, at the same time, started to give greater attention to the East and South in their foreign and identity policies.

Two paradigm shifts can be identified in the political careers of Orbán and Erdoğan. These brought a new set of views and political theory to political practice. To put it differently, both leaders reorganized and rephrased the basis of their political legitimacy many times, using similar patterns, as follows:

Erdoğan	Orbán
Shifted first from an Islamist politician to a moderate Islamist (with liberal elements) and then transformed into a Muslim nationalist (with authoritarian elements).	Was a petty bourgeois with a conservative background (prior to embarking on political career), embracing liberal thinking as a university student and initially as a politician. After becoming well-established, he drove his party to conservativism and religiousness and bracketed the issue of democracy in practice (illiberalism).

Orbán’s party, Fidesz (originally Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége, or Alliance of Young Democrats), came to power in 2010 with a firm policy against the liberal elite, having earlier led a coalition government between 1998 and 2002. Once in power, Orbán continued the fight against external and internal elites. After weakening the domestic liberal elite, Orbán’s political struggle has increasingly transformed into a campaign against the influence of foreigners. The most striking example is his ongoing confrontation with the EU and the so-called “values of the Western elites.”

A similar pattern can be observed in the case of Erdoğan. Even though Erdoğan’s party, the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or Justice and Development Party), has been in power since 2002, he increasingly emphasized the unifying nature and cultural importance of the Turkish identity and Islam to a Turkish public disillusioned with the EU accession process. Although initially popular with Western leaders, Erdoğan’s rhetoric toward Turkey’s Western allies slowly gave way to criticism as Turkish democracy failed to consolidate, and authoritarian tendencies in Turkey deepened. And as Erdoğan fell out of grace, he increasingly interlinked the domestic opposition to certain external forces of the West that allegedly tried to overthrow him as Turkey’s “legitimate leader.” This anti-liberal and anti-Western narrative created a revanchist style of populism based on the dichotomic worldview that Western civilization and Islam are incompatible (Kaya et al. 2019, 7–8).

Geopolitical Liminality

Beyond the direction of political development, the geopolitical status of Hungary and Turkey also has some similarities. Geopolitical liminality is the main characteristic of the two, even if Hungary became an “insider” as an EU member while Turkey remained a relative “outsider” of the European project and the continent itself (ww and Kutlay 2017, 1). Therefore, it might be more precise to say that while Hungary is on the periphery of the West, Turkey is on the periphery of Europe. Turkey is on the periphery of the Middle East and the Islamic civilization, while Hungary is on the southeastern flank of Western Christianity (Roman Catholicism, Calvinism, and Lutheranism), surrounded by the “Orthodox civilization.”

The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was originally built as a church, then converted to a mosque before serving as a museum between 1935 and the summer of 2020. Since then, it has been reconverted to a mosque.

This in-betweenness makes these cases interesting from a religious point of view, since the geopolitical positions of Turkey and Hungary postulate highly contested and confrontational identity formations.

Despite the commonalities between the two leaders and their respective political systems, the crucial question is why and how Orbán and Erdoğan sometimes departed on a different path. In the light of global political tendencies, the interesting puzzle lies in how the two leaders define the nature and aims of their respective political systems through the language of religion.

My research, I believe, can contribute to the literature in two ways. The comparative work is the first of its kind and can thus shed light on the essential characteristics of these political systems and better identify the main themes of the respective religious discourses. The findings can also open a new area of research, leading to a fuller understanding and theorization of how illiberal governments design their religious discourses and build policies around certain religious ideals.

References

Bremmer, Ian. 2018. “The ‘Strongmen Era’ Is Here. Here’s What It Means for You.” Time, May 3. https://time.com/5264170/the-strongmen-era-is-here-heres-what-it-means-for-you/.

Economist. 2018. “How Democracy Dies. Lessons from the Rise of Strongmen in Weak States,” June 16. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/06/16/lessons-from-the-rise-of-strongmen-in-weak-states.

Kaya, Ayhan, Max-Valentin Robert, and Ayşe Tecmen. 2019. “Populism in Turkey and France: Nativism, Multiculturalism and Euroskepticism.” Turkish Studies 21 (3).

Öniş, Ziya, and Mustafa Kutlay. 2017. “Global Shifts and the Limits of the EU’s Transformative Power in the European Periphery: Comparative Perspectives from Hungary and Turkey.” Government and Opposition 54 (2).

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World War I Initiative to Advance France’s Diplomatic Interests through Music

November 1, 2024
By 29373

French musicians toured the United States during World War I as part of an effort to strengthen diplomatic ties through the universal language of art. This initiative, writes Gabriele Slizyte (Conservatoire de Paris, 2019), was led by the French government but was also aided by American philanthropists, helping lay the groundwork for ongoing cultural exchange between the nations.

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During World War I, French musicians travelled to the United States under the auspices of the French government as representatives of their country to promote classical music. These “concert tours” were part of a detailed and well-organized government plan to persuade the United States to join the war as an ally. With these diplomatic and cultural initiatives, the French government was able to not only bolster its military position but also keep the “French spirit” intact. Following the war in 1922, the Association française d’action artistique (AFAA) was created by the Ministry of Fine Arts and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to maintain and develop these cultural actions through concert tours.

I am currently conducting research on the AFAA and French musicians in the United States as part of my PhD thesis. Because this topic involves a transatlantic relationship, I needed to visit both French and American archives to conduct an impartial analysis of this cultural and diplomatic initiative encompassing such various disciplines as music, history, sociology, and politics. With the help of an SRG award, I was able to conduct a three-part research project between April 1 and September 11, 2024.

Personal, Rather Than an Institutional, Approach

The first phase of this project was decrypting the daily work of the AFAA as an administrative agency. I wished to go beyond a surface understanding based essentially on an investigation of the institutional archives located near Paris. I thus conducted domestic fieldwork at the Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine, situated in the Ardenne Abbey near Caen, France, to study the personal records of the AFAA’s founding director Robert Brussel (1874–1940). During a four-day archival residency, I became immersed in his correspondences with sponsored artists and also learned about his daily work routine as director through his drafts and written reports of the association’s activities. This personal approach led to a better understanding of the work-based relationship between AFAA staff, government workers, and artists.

The second phase was conducting international fieldwork, visiting notable archival collections of libraries,[1] universities, and symphonic orchestras in the Northeastern United States:

Philadelphia Orchestra Association records, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania
• Otto H. Kahn Papers; Manuscripts Division, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library
• Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York
• Boston Symphony Orchestra Archives, Boston
• Yale University, Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, The Virgil Thomson Papers
• New York University Archives, Records of Town Hall
• New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division, James Hazen Hyde Papers
• New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Gabriel Astruc Papers

At the Rockefeller Archive Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

The data I collected included correspondences, oral histories, business and institutional documents, memorabilia, printed materials, photos, and personal files. In addition to using this information to ascertain the frequency of concerts featuring French musicians, their repertoire, and what they earned, I was also interested to learn how, once financed by the government, they assimilated themselves in a foreign country and became ambassadors of French culture. In this endeavor, the Boston Symphony Orchestra Archives was the most interesting source of information. Since the orchestra’s founding, many French musicians have joined its ranks with the help of the French government. Their oral archives and memorabilia gave me fuller insights into their American careers and helped me to better understand the implications of the AFAA.

Even though the methodology of this project was aimed at obtaining quantitative data of French artists’ performances and spatial data of their tour circuits in the United States, I realized that this would not be complete without a third component. While studying the archives of prominent American financial figures who supported the AFAA’s actions, such as the Rockefeller family, Otto H. Kahn, and James Hazen Hyde, I discovered that philanthropic work represented a key component of defending cosmopolitan ideals during times of conflict. In that regard, the AFAA was not alone in defending and promoting French culture; there was a group of important figures that included artists, sponsors, politicians, and many others.

Cosmopolitan Attempt at Universalizing the Arts

Before starting my project, I hoped to advance the hypothesis that the AFAA, through the dispatch of artists and musicians to the United States, enhanced Americans’ appreciation of French culture and improved France’s image after World War I and World War II. As a result of my international fieldwork, I came to realize that the creation of AFAA in 1922 was not the start of such an endeavor but the consequence and institutionalization of the work initiated by French and American figures prior to World War I. As such, the war represented not the beginning but an acceleration of the process of universalizing the arts. Rather than attempting to impose French culture on a different country as a form of nationalism, the AFAA was a cosmopolitan attempt to make it a universal language and a tool of communication.

Even though the primary focus of my research was on musicians, some of the consulted archives, such as the James Hazen Hyde Papers at the New York Public Library, pointed to the importance that theater and language can also play as vehicles of cultural dialogue. I hope to explore and analyze these documents in an upcoming article on the international tours of theater companies.

The New York Public Library.

During both my domestic and international fieldwork, I wished to go beyond an examination of the roles played by institutions. Thus it was crucial to gain a better understanding of the work of key figures in Franco-American relations. The philanthropic work of the Rockefellers, the participation in the Red Cross and collaboration with the Alliance Française by James Hazen Hyde, and the support extended to artists by Otto Kahn and Gabriel Astruc were given structure and augmented multifold by the creation of the AFAA.

The Sylff Research Grant has also enabled me to start a series of language translations of my work from French to English, which will allow me to communicate my findings to a broader audience.

The documents in the archives that I examined during this project testified to and reaffirmed the important role that artistic and cultural exchange played during wartime. Over the past century—and even now in our increasingly conflict-ridden world—musical, artistic, and cultural expressions can become powerful tools of personal identification and resistance, which are among the most significant and meaningful of human expressions.

I am very grateful to Mr. Yohei Sasakawa and all members of the Sylff Association secretariat for the Sylff fellowship and the SRG award. With your help since 2019 and later during the COVID lockdown, I was able to finish my studies at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris and to start my PhD degree at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. Your support and encouragement have allowed me to pursue my academic project. Thank you for letting me be a part of the Sylff community.

[1] As part of the project, I intended to visit the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library of the New-York Historical Society, but it was temporarily closed to researchers while it was preparing for the groundbreaking and construction of its new wing. However, I was able to obtain a limited number of reference scans from the James Hazen Hyde Papers.

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The Age of Uncertainty and Nuclear Proliferation

October 24, 2024
By 32081

In an article that was originally published in Turkish in Gazete Duvar, Mühdan Sağlam (Ankara University, 2015–16) discusses the dysfunction of the liberal global system, citing the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Nihon Hidankyo to highlight heightening nuclear proliferation risks and the need for disarmament.

* * *

The deadlock in the liberal global system has of late become clear for anyone to see. The system has long been marked by imbalances, double standards, and the disproportionate decision-making clout of the Security Council’s five veto-wielding countries. In fact, these inequalities have been pointed out since the United Nations was founded in 1945, as suggested in the speech by its second Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld that the “UN was not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell.”

Although international relations experts point to different dates and events as to when the system reached a standstill, almost all agree that it has now become dysfunctional. There is no telling what a new replacement system would look like, but there are expectations.

Some experts posit the possibility of a new bipolar order, while others caution against the potential for Chinese hegemony. There are also those suggesting that we may enter an “age of disorder” and that we need to take a broader look at history.

The current uncertainty and lack of direction serve to highlight the significant risk of a major conflict. One fundamental question that must be addressed is whether war will accompany the transition to a new order (or disorder). Providing a definitive answer at this time would be difficult, but we can nonetheless examine the pertinent issues, particularly the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons. The focus of my article will be on nuclear armament and its potential for creating a state of perpetual conflict.

“Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds”

Toward the conclusion of World War II, a considerable number of experts hypothesized that the atomic bombing of a nation that was already prepared to capitulate altered the trajectory of global history, if not the war itself. The bomb was developed as part of the US Manhattan Project and dropped first on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, causing unprecedented suffering to the civilian population and destruction of infrastructure.

The world gained its first glimpse of the concept of nuclear weapons through this devastating and inhumane attack. Indeed, in response to the devastation he had unleashed, the head of the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer, stated in an interview in the 1960s that he recalled a line from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” The contradictions, dilemmas, and remorse felt by the physicist are portrayed in Christopher Nolan’s award-winning 2023 biopic. Nolan did not include images of the people who died in Japan; instead, he allowed their screams to resonate. Those screams have done little, however, to prevent the world from moving ahead with nuclear armament.

The Nobel Peace Prize in 2024 was bestowed upon the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo in recognition of its contributions to the global effort toward nuclear disarmament. The official announcement of the Norwegian Nobel Committee states, “This grassroots movement of atomic bombing survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, is receiving the Peace Prize for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”

Members of Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots Japanese organization of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hold a press conference after winning the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. ©Tomohiro Ohsumi / Getty Images

The organization states on its website, “We hibakusha have been describing the realities of the damage of the atomic bombing and appealing on our suffering, because we want that no one else should ever suffer the hell we have experienced.” Following the award, the co-chair of the group has drawn parallels between the experiences of hibakusha 80 years ago and people in Gaza today. “Children are being covered in blood and living every day without food.”

This serves to remind us of the gravity of the current situation and the necessity of pursuing a path to peace and disarmament. The formation of a mushroom cloud and the subsequent blinding ball of flames are not prerequisites for creating hell on earth. In the period since 1945, what actions have been taken on the global stage to prevent human suffering?

As Nihon Hidankyo maintains its stance against nuclear weapons, it appears that for some, anti-nuclearism has become a mere rhetorical device employed in ostentatiously decorated halls of power. Let us now examine the sequence of events and the current situation.

Embracing the Bomb to Win the Arms Race

The global landscape during the Cold War was characterized by the coexistence of two distinct centers of economic and political influence: the USSR and the Eastern bloc on one side, and the US and the Western camp on the other. Common to both systems, however, was that they were engaged in the arms race, which meant that the path to being first required a focus on developing and utilizing weapons of mass destruction.

In 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, which the Soviet Union interpreted as a message directed at itself. In response, the Soviet Union accelerated the development of nuclear weapons. When the USSR successfully tested its first atomic bomb in 1949, the United States, which had been developing nuclear weapons since the 1930s, was still in the lead. Two years later, the United States proceeded to test a hydrogen bomb.

In 1953, the USSR, too, conducted a nuclear test involving a hydrogen bomb. And the 1957 launch of the Soviet Union’s artificial satellite, Sputnik, into space had a profound impact on the global landscape, intensifying the already palpable sense of dread surrounding an impending nuclear conflict and the underlying geopolitical tensions.

The launch of Sputnik conveyed a clear message: If one possessed the capability to launch an artificial satellite into space, it would be possible to attach a nuclear warhead to the satellite’s head, transform it into a missile, and subsequently target US territory. One of the world’s superpowers was now confronted with the imminent threat of a potential nuclear attack.

In response to the perceived threat of imminent nuclear attack, the United States increased its nuclear weapons arsenal. This process resulted in a significant strategic transformation within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which had been established by the United States. The deployment of “medium-range guided missiles” on the territories of allied nations in close proximity to the Soviet Union was initiated. The world was gradually becoming an unparalleled arsenal.

Disarmament Treaties: Short-Lived Period of Prudence

The concept of the “balance of terror,” which was used to describe the arms race during the Cold War, is no longer a suitable description, as it does not reflect the rational limits of the situation. Instead, it better describes the intense emotions that are generated by this race. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis served as a stark reminder to both parties that they were on the verge of a catastrophic outcome. After this crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union entered into the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), which resulted in the signing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I and SALT II) and the subsequent Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). These treaties sought to limit the deployment of ballistic nuclear missiles. This was followed by the signing of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) in 1972. Notwithstanding these agreements, the budgets allocated by both parties for armaments continued to rise.

The nuclear threat, which reached its peak during the Ronald Reagan administration, entered a new phase with the USSR’s economic and social exhaustion. Mikhail Gorbachev’s “new thinking” (novoye myshleniye) policy facilitated the resumption of nuclear disarmament negotiations in 1985. Following negotiations between Reagan and Gorbachev, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was concluded in 1987, resulting in the destruction of approximately 2,700 missiles. This collaborative approach to nuclear disarmament was further extended to encompass restrictions on conventional weapons in Europe. However, this period of reason and prudence was not to last long.

Appealing for an End to the Cycle of Violence

Some of the agreements concluded were subsequently nullified as a result of changes in circumstances. These actions were taken with a degree of audacity that demonstrates a lack of awareness of historical precedent. This approach showed a disregard for the concept of historical continuity, as encapsulated in the phrase was prevalent in the early 2000s, “Yesterday was yesterday, and today is today.”

In 2019, the United States withdrew from the INF Treaty. In the context of the war in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the suspension of START, which had been extended for five years in 2021. He stated, “Today I have to announce that Russia is suspending the START treaty,” adding, “Of course, we won’t be the first, but if the United States conducts nuclear tests, so will we.”

While tensions escalated between the United States and Russia, the rest of the world remained in a state of vigilance, anticipating potential outcomes and seeking to ensure a well-prepared response. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)’s 2024 yearbook, Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, indicates that as of January 2024, nine states, namely, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel, possessed a total of 12,121 nuclear weapons, of which 9,585 were operational. Approximately 4,000 of these were deployed and under the control of operational forces.

The aggregate data suggests a decline in the number of nuclear warheads, but this is merely a consequence of the dismantlement of retired warheads by Russia and the United States. By contrast, numerous states with relatively modest nuclear arsenals, including China and the United Kingdom, are either augmenting or intending to expand their nuclear capabilities.

In the United States, several polls conducted in the weeks preceding the presidential election indicate that the two candidates are in a statistical tie. It is unfortunate that we are not yet in a position to determine the extent to which the situation could potentially be worse than the damage caused by the Joe Biden administration.

We are at a critical juncture where all the available options seem unsatisfactory. And it would be untenable to frame the least unfavorable outcome as being the optimal one. The global system is currently at a standstill, the world has become a veritable arsenal, and the future is fraught with potential for further conflict. In the light of these circumstances, Nihon Hidankyo and the civilians who have suffered as a result of the ongoing war and terrorist attacks in the Middle East are once again appealing to humanity to put an end to this senseless cycle of violence.