Politeia

Unravelling the US-ROK Alliance: Decoding North Korea’s Strategy within the Six-Party Talks

2023-10-17T06:53:52+00:00

Alliance formation is a calculated decision by parties to determine and affect the outcome of negotiations. Its success depends on several factors, most notably alliance members’ cohesion and convergence of common interests, objectives, and tactics. The focus here is on the United States and South Korea’s alliance during the Six-Party Talks on North Korea’s nuclear programme. Despite early progress in the alliance’s favour, the internal cohesion of the US-South Korea alliance was disrupted due to divergent interests, approaches, and positions regarding North Korea. This research provides a comprehensive analysis of the US-ROK alliance’s impact on the Six-Party Talks. While previous studies have explored the negotiations, little attention has been given to the alliance’s role and how it evolved over time, especially in the context of North Korea’s manipulation and its consequences on negotiation outcomes. We assess the success of the alliance and its impact on the negotiation process, considering factors such as cohesion, common interests, objectives, and tactics. Our study adopts a qualitative research approach, utilising an extensive review of relevant literature, official documents, historical records, and primary sources from the Six-Party Talks. The findings underscore the importance of robust and well-coordinated alliances in addressing critical global security challenges. To achieve lasting success in future negotiations, it is imperative for allied parties to forge a shared understanding and strategic convergence in dealing with adversaries like North Korea. Moreover, this research calls for a re-evaluation of alliance dynamics and tactics to strengthen the collective resolve in pursuing international peace and security.

Class Dynamics, a Declining ANC and the Failure of Policy Implementation

2023-11-21T07:51:36+00:00

While conditions for the majority in South Africa have worsened and delivery has become more important politically, the ANC is increasingly unable to deliver and address national issues. At the same time, the state is failing to resource, manage, coordinate and skill its departments, institutions and programmes. While the imperative of improving the state is recognised, and issues of skill and leadership are flagged, this article focuses on two interrelated causes of implementation failure: an ANC that is the site of dire struggles for state power while manifesting endemic corruption and a dangerously anti-public vision; and racialised elite and subaltern class dynamics that often escape state mediation. The limits of government in its overarching economic policy are considered as a brief case. The article concludes that given the problems in these areas, particularly in the management of the capitalist economy and class contradictions, a restructuring of the political field and a renewal of popular public involvement are necessary for improved welfare and development in the future. There are also imperatives of civil service reform. However, these changes will have no chance of taking root unless firm steps towards a dynamic and inclusive economy are taken.

Did Aid Promote Democracy in Africa? Critiquing Gibson, Hoffman, and Jablonski

2023-11-21T07:51:33+00:00

This paper critiques Gibson et al.’s (2015) study on the relationship between technical assistance and patronage spending in sub-Saharan Africa after the Cold War. It identifies errors in the authors’ methods, including severe collinearity, exclusion of available data, undue use of the logarithm transformation, and missing values in key variables. After making the necessary corrections, the paper finds that technical assistance was positively and significantly related to political concession, as originally claimed by the authors, but negatively and insignificantly associated with the proxies for political patronage. This suggests that while technical assistance may have promoted political concession, it cannot be confidently held that it reduced patronage spending in the region post-Cold War. This raises concerns as the authors’ conclusion in this regard is central to the belief, in both literature and aid projects, that technical assistance from donors and institutions contributed to reducing political patronage in sub-Saharan Africa post-Cold War.

Gerrymandering in Municipal Demarcation Processes in South Africa: Selected Cases of the Collins Chabane and JB Marks Local Municipalities

2023-10-17T06:53:55+00:00

This article focuses on political processes, specifically redistricting, which is the political process of redrawing electoral boundaries within which people contest local government elections. It has, however, become common practice for the political party in power to review electoral boundaries in its favour, a practice known as gerrymandering. In South Africa, municipal boundary review, which takes place every five years to either determine new boundaries or re-determine existing boundaries for the purposes of municipal elections, has always given rise to objections. The reasons for such objections range from the lack of public participation in the demarcation process to public perceptions of the value of belonging to one municipality as opposed to another, tribalism, and service delivery concerns. The main findings emanating from the scrutiny of literature on municipal boundary determination protests and the two municipal case studies in South Africa revealed elements of gerrymandering motivated by the political aspirations of those in power.

Investigating Small-scale Farmers and Barriers to Entry in Cannabis Cultivation in South Africa

2023-10-26T11:50:25+00:00

The legalisation of the prodigal green crop has left the most vulnerable small-scale cannabis farmers high and dry. In 2018 the South African constitutional court legalised the use of cannabis for personal and medical use. The 2018 regulations on cannabis were welcomed and a new lifeline in the eradication of poverty. However, in the haste to join the global urgency in cultivating cannabis, small-scale farmers were left behind and prevented in the bid of the green-gold rush. The cannabis legislation and laws that were created to enable South Africans to participate in the lucrative cannabis market has done the opposite and has crafted barriers of entry. Using a desktop study, this article explores how the 2018 regulations on cannabis cultivation prevent small-scale farmers in participating in the l market in South Africa. The aim of this paper is to highlight the challenges that small-scale cannabis farmers face in South Africa and how their participation in the newly opened market would benefit the communities they live and operate in. The main findings of the research indicate the challenges for small-scale farmers of no support system and transformational issues persist even after the 24 years of democracy in South Africa.