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Pyongyang's Survival Strategy: Tools of Authoritarian Control in North Korea
Abstract
Speculation about the future of the North Korean regime has been intense for nearly two decades. In the 1990s, economic crises and famine led to predictions of the Kim regime's imminent downfall. Today analysts highlight impending famine as well as threats to the regime's position brought by eroding information control. Several theories of authoritarian control help to explain how Kim Jong-il and his family have remained in power and how this might change over time. The Kim regime has employed a variety of authoritarian tools to protect itself both from popular revolt and from internal coups. Its social policies, reliance on certain ideas and nationalism, and use of force prevent the onset of revolution. Through numerous other tools (elite co-optation, manipulation of foreign governments for financial aid, and the coupproofing of domestic institutions), the regime protects itself from coups d'état and elite unrest. This framework not only helps to explain the past resilience of the regime, but it suggests that the regime is not in danger of being unseated by coups or revolution. Yet it also suggests that the regime has not adequately prepared for succession after Kim's death. This analysis has implications for policy planning about the future of the Korean Peninsula, as well as for negotiations with and coercive strategies toward Pyongyang.
... The North Korean people have already adapted to life with little, and under a totalitarian regime they are subject to the regime's propaganda. Western powers are seen as the enemy (Byman and Lind, 2010). International sanctions have fuelled the belief that the continuation of North Korea's nuclear program is the only way to get the sanctions lifted. ...
... That is why he continues to pour his money into his nuclear program, as opposed to feeding his people. Military power is seen as more important than the working class, and nuclear weapons are believed to be the only way to protect the country from larger powers (Byman and Lind, 2010). To Kim and his advisors, the only way to secure legitimacy and to maintain stability for the country is through a nuclear weapons program. ...
... The North Korean people have already adapted to life with little, and under a totalitarian regime they are subject to the regime's propaganda. Western powers are seen as the enemy (Byman and Lind, 2010). International sanctions have fuelled the belief that the continuation of North Korea's nuclear program is the only way to get the sanctions lifted. ...
... That is why he continues to pour his money into his nuclear program, as opposed to feeding his people. Military power is seen as more important than the working class, and nuclear weapons are believed to be the only way to protect the country from larger powers (Byman and Lind, 2010). To Kim and his advisors, the only way to secure legitimacy and to maintain stability for the country is through a nuclear weapons program. ...
... Sarantakes explores the volatile nature of the liminal space between the two Koreas just after the conclusion of the Korean War with various low-level conflicts. Therefore, Sarantakes shows the early DMZ as a place of internal division and a space of unstable territory with two geopolitical powers involved which aligns the DMZ with Hartshorne's (1944) 'Pyongyang's survival strategy' by Byman and Lind (2010) argues that previous scholars have predicted throughout history the collapse of the North Korean government and state. Yet this has never happened despite the domestic issues such as the economic decline in the 1970s, the arduous march famine in the 1990s and the missile testing in the 2010s. ...
The Korean Demilitarised zone has become one of the most infamous borders in the world known beyond the field of Geography, being heavily fortified and extremely restrictive. It has also had large geopolitical repercussions and influence within Korea and Asia with the sphere of influence reaching a global level at periods of hostility between the two Korean nations such as failed talks, disagreements, and recent nuclear tests. The study of geopolitics is making a return in the last ten years with the notion of famous 'Shatterzones' of the 20 th century explored by academics such as Cohen and Hartshorne returning, it brings the topic of Shatterzones to the contemporary climate. With hard borders increasing in notoriety via political discourse of walls and recent imperial-like conflict the idea of Shatterzones may be returning to the current world system. The Korean DMZ is a signal post for these new borders emerging in a world formally focused on open borders and freedom of travel. The DMZ continues to act as a Shatterzone according to theory of the early age of Geopolitics with profound impacts on the Korean people. This includes, social bounds, environmental impacts, and economic effects, impacting all facets of the peninsula and holding a large geopolitical weight. Main body of text word count: 10,411 3
... The absolutely critical mission of this forces is to ensure the survival and security of the Kim family's regime. This includes both a domestic regime security function (performed alongside internal security forces) and external defence of regime's crucial interests (McEachern 2008;Byman & Lind 2010). In the Cold War years the latter amounted to being prepared for a full-scale invasion and conquest of the rival state south of the 38th parallel. ...
... Incumbent regimes in neo-patrimonial OPCs increase neo-patrimonial mechanisms to reconfigure their ruling coalitions by making state expenditure more exclusionary (Byman and Lind 2010). Such political restructuring promotes 'personal loyalists to top party and government posts while purging rivals, thereby converting institutional constraints into institutional weapons,' effectively prioritizing those stakeholders whose support is deemed crucial for their ongoing survival (Slater 2003: 88). ...
Most scholarship on major oil-producing countries (OPCs) focuses on their illiberal characteristics, but scant research explores how these regimes react to periodic oil price collapses, particularly neo-patrimonial OPCs with relatively low state capacity, herein termed gatekeeper OPCs. These OPCs should be extremely vulnerable to regime change during economic crises. However, since the most recent collapse in international oil markets in 2014, almost all neo-patrimonial OPCs have managed to weather the ensuing fallout, thereby begging the question of how these seemingly vulnerable regimes manage to survive extended periods of economic crises. We hypothesise that the likelihood of regime survival in neo-patrimonial OPCs depends on a strategic calibration of domestic neo-patrimonial policies, such as clientelism and executive aggrandisement, and the skilled navigation of global geopolitics. We find evidence that incumbent governments leverage international geopolitical tensions during economic crises to secure valuable foreign aid from key allies, which allows them to maintain the domestic neo-patrimonial strategies required to safeguard their power. We reached the above finding through a nested mixed-methods research design combining quantitative analysis of 35 major OPCs from 2011 to 2018 using Cox proportional hazards models with the qualitative comparison of two gatekeeper OPCs—Chad and Venezuela.
... Other literature concentrates on the progressive and conservative ROK and the US administrations' policies toward DPRK and how they have affected the ROK-US alliance (Joo 2006;SH Lee 2008;TH Kim 2013;YG Kim 2013;HR Park 2019). Besides these, other studies examine the strategies and approaches that the ROK and the US should adopt to address DPRK's missiles and nuclear weapons (SW Cheon 2007, 2011TH Kim 2008;CK Park 2010 reasons for developing nuclear weapons are to gain deterrence capability against the ROK-US alliance (Roehrig 2016), to destabilize the region and gain bargaining leverage in exchange for its aggressive behaviors (Nah 2013), or to use as means to ensure the survival of the DPRK's Kim family regime by strengthening its authority and legitimacy (Byman and Lind 2010;Ahn 2011;SY Park 2016). The DPRK has also sought to develop and gain nuclear weapons to secure its independence from China, its traditional ally that could also restrict its autonomy (MH Kim 2021a). ...
... Для військових вони є джерелом сили, що відкриває потенційний шлях до об'єднання, зміцнення морального духу і, таким чином, підтримки збройними силами режиму Кіма. Є також свідчення того, що кризи, викликані його ядерною програмою, можуть спровокувати внутрішню підтримку режиму, підживлюючи внутрішній наратив про те, що він є єдиним захисником від імперіалізму США [Byman and Lind 2010]. ...
Дослідження присвячено розгляду інструменталізації ядерного потенціалу як засобу зовнішньої політики Північної Кореї. Методологічною призмою дослідження є технологічний підхід. Автор доводить, що інструменталізація ядерного потенціалу є однією із провідних технологій зовнішньої політики Північної Кореї, яка є ефективним багатовимірним засобом використання наявності ядерної зброї для реалізації національних інтересів цієї країни на міжнародній арені. Технологія інструменталізації ядерного потенціалу Північної Кореї має декілька цілей. У цілому, можна виділити три основні цілі технології інструменталізації ядерного потенціалу. Це безпека, дипломатія та політика. Північнокорейські лідери розглядають технологію інструменталізації ядерного потенціалу як центральний засіб досягнення безпекових завдань щодо Південної Кореї. Ядерна зброя розглядається як інструмент для примусу супротивників, а не лише для їх стримування. I навіть вона здатна допомогти об’єднати півострів силою, якщо це необхідно. Завдяки використанню технології інструменталізації ядерного потенціалу Північна Корея здійснює реалізацію своїх дипломатичних завдань, домагається прямих та гучних переговорів з великими державами. КНДР вже давно використовує ядерну дипломатію в своїх економічних інтересах. Північна Корея має глибоко вкорінену «дипломатію отримання данини», в якій вона використовує стратегію ядерного вимагання та загроз для отримання грошових, енергетичних та продовольчих трансфертів від інших країн. Здійснення технології інструменталізації ядерного потенціалу пов’язане з реалізацією національних цілей. Розгортання цієї технології включає три компоненти: 1) доктрина, 2) командування та контроль, 3) можливості. Можна виділити чотири альтернативні стратегії розгортання технології інструменталізації ядерного потенціалу, які реалізує Північна Корея. Перша – демонстративна стратегія. Вона спрямована насамперед на досягнення політичних, дипломатичних або економічних національних цілей. Друга стратегія – провокуюча. Вона призначена для використання примари ядерної війни для інтернаціоналізації локальної кризи або істотного підвищення глобальних ставок потенційного конфлікту, щоб «провокувати» дії третіх сторін. Третя стратегія – це стратегія гарантованої відплати. Вона спрямована на стримування висококласних, загрозливих режиму нападів та примусу. Четверта стратегія - стратегія ведення війни. Вона призначена для стримування загрозливих режиму нападів, а також для примусу та навіть поразки збройних сил противника шляхом загрози застосування ядерної зброї першими.
... El régimen Kim se sustentó en la mitología de la anti-insurgencia japonesa en Manchuria, como mencionan Byman y Lind (2010): "La mitología sirve como el "Génesis" de Corea del Norte, justifica la posición de Kim como "suryong", y legitima el estatus exaltado de la élite guerrillera, sin la cual Corea del Norte no podría haber expulsado a los imperialistas ni logrado su liberación" (Byman & Lind, 2010). En relación a esto último, para sostener un sistema político como el instalado en la RPDC se hizo necesario contar con legitimación en torno a la figura de un líder con características únicas y excepcionales. ...
El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar las bases epistemológicas de la ideología Juche como eje de la política exterior de la República Popular Democrática de Corea para alcanzar autonomía internacional. Esta propuesta teórico-prác-tica posee características únicas y emerge como alternativa al conocimiento producido desde Occidente. Fue instaurada en un período dominado por la lógica bipolar de la Guerra Fría y dio sustento al régimen de Kim Il Sung, convirtiéndose, hasta la actualidad, en el eje principal de la política exterior. Abordare-mos cómo la idea de autonomía internacional se ve tensionada por la noción de poder y dominación en los términos de Michel Foucault, reflexionando sobre el desarrollo de esta ideología, los principales aspectos del Juche y sus implicancias para los estudios internacionales.
... En regímenes personalistas -aquellos que concentran el poder en la figura del dictador, particularmente a través del control de los nombramiento en las fuerzas de seguridad, las estructuras de gobierno (Geddes, Wright, Wright, & Frantz, 2018)-, los autócratas poseen menos constreñimientos de su élite para tomar decisiones en materia nuclear (Way & Weeks, 2014), limitando el margen de acción de actores internos y externos para el cambio de régimen. En el caso norcoreano, la búsqueda del arma nuclear ha servido para cohesionar a la sociedad y a la élite autoritaria detrás del liderazgo de la dinastía Kim, mediante la exaltación del prestigio que otorga la proliferación nuclear y evitando intentos de cambios de régimen al crear incertidumbre sobre el futuro de la posesión de armas nucleares en un eventual proceso de transición política (Byman & Lind, 2010). Sin embargo, en los casos de Irak y Libia, el personalismo generó varios efectos adversos para la proliferación nuclear y, por consiguiente, en la supervivencia del régimen (Braut-Hegghammer, 2016). ...
En el presente artículo se afirma que la tenencia de armas nucleares en los regímenes autoritarios puede convertirse en garantía para la sobrevivencia política de los líderes y su élite. Con base en el análisis de rastreo de procesos de cuatro casos de estudios representativos (Corea del Norte, Irak, Irán y Libia), este articulo expone que los programas nucleares configuran dispositivos en los que el cambio de régimen se entiende como una amenaza a la seguridad. Estos han sido exitosos cuando los regímenes autoritarios han transformado sus recursos en armas nucleares o cuando han acumulado capacidades que generan una percepción de riesgo frente a los actores que buscan la democratización. Palabras clave: Regímenes autoritarios-Armas nucleares-Proliferación nuclear-Seguridad-Cambio de régimen.
... Para entender esta tensión permanente es necesario considerar que, como un régimen autoritario, el norcoreano, necesita legitimarse constantemente tanto en su política nacional como exterior. En este sentido, la familia Kim ha utilizado tres herramientas de legitimación claves: políticas sociales restrictivas destinadas a evitar el surgimiento de clases potencialmente peligrosas, manipulación de ideas e información para fomentar la legitimidad interna del régimen e intensivo uso de la fuerza para eliminar cualquier potencial resistencia (Byman & Lind, 2010). Para esto el régimen de la familia Kim ha construido un aparato ideológico a través del pensamiento "Juche", que puede ser definido como "autosuficiencia" (French, 2007) fue una creación de Kim Il Sung en 1955 y se ha articulado a través de tres ejes: independencia en la política (chaju), independencia en lo económico (charip) e independencia en lo militar (chawi), esto último hace referencia directa al ejercicio de la autodefensa. ...
RESUMEN Este trabajo analiza y reflexiona sobre la tensión que sigue vigente en el proceso de proliferación y desarme nuclear de Corea del Norte. Luego de un momento de alta tensión en 2017 y una detonante en 2018, es necesario volver a explorar lo que sucede con el programa nuclear de los norcoreanos. Él mismo, no solo genera una problemática en la arquitectura nuclear global, sino que además, se ha transformado en una cuestión de balance de poder entre Estados Unidos y China. Para desarrollar esta temática, a través de fuentes primarias y secundarias, se desarrolla un trabajo de carácter descriptivo, que permite observar por qué los Estados proliferan o no lo hacen; la justificación de Corea del Norte para proliferar; la tensión histórica y actual entre Estados Unidos y Corea del Norte y el rol que hoy China adquiere en el proceso de contención, proliferación y/o eliminación del programa nuclear de los norcoreanos.
... Present-day versions of these older forms of state-imposed collective listening still persist in countries like North Korea. 11 Since economic liberalization began in China in the 1980s, these state-mandated collective listening practices have become more individualized and privatized. This has coincided with the mobility many citizens have been affforded within a rapidly urbanizing society. ...
... The prevailing thought is that authoritarian polities aim to restrict, and control, access to information in order to legitimize government action and decision-making (see e.g. Byman and Lind 2010). ...
This article explores how discourse, deliberation and difference – classically advanced by Jurgen Habermas and Iris Marion Young within a Western democratic context – functions in an authoritarian environment, with an emphasis on the experiences of contemporary China. The article suggests why authoritarian discourse and deliberation is more limited than its Western democratic counterpart. It further suggests that the incorporation of difference into authoritarian discourse and deliberation is difficult due to the inherent tensions between the ‘Other’ and the ruling elite in authoritarian polities. Nevertheless, these constraints do not invalidate the notion that discourse and deliberation is theoretically possible and has a practical function in authoritarian regimes.
... Sanctions are a perennial topic of debate among North Korea analysts and policymakers. Much of our analysis of the impact of economic sanctions has focused on evaluating how they affect internal support for the regime (Byman & Lind, 2010;Haggard & Noland, 2017). Sanctions are, after all, about sending a messageboth to the people of a country and its rulers. ...
This article examines the ways in which the North Korean regime filters and re-interprets various ‘messages’ from the outside world for its domestic audience through the lens of state-produced literature. In broad strokes, I identify three main types of foreign interactions purported to send a ‘message’ to North Korea – economic sanctions, summit diplomacy and military exercises/fleet movements – and examine how these are treated in North Korean fiction produced by the Korean Writer’s Union, an important arm of the Party’s Propaganda and Agitation Department. Each of the three interaction types represents a formal effort by an outside government – typically the United States or its allies – to send a message to the regime or its people and thereby shape their behavior and/or perception of the outside world. By examining how these ‘messages’ are portrayed in North Korean fiction, we can gain insight into how the regime shapes internal narratives about foreign affairs, as well as what sort of alternative narratives it is most anxious to intercept or disrupt.
... In all these discussions, the will of the DPRK has often been left aside, and North Korea treated as an object within this particular security dilemma, a problem to be tackled and solved, with the immutable belief that the state of Korean affairs should return to a pre-division era, and with North Korea's system and survival being described as an anomaly in our international system. It is only recently that a more critical reading of Korean affairs has entertained the idea that the DPRK was not nearly as irrational as previously depicted, and not nearly as on the brink of collapse as it might have been in the 1990s (Smith 2000;Byman and Lind 2010;Frank 2012). In the end, hard power has been discussed, but soft power only marginally considered in the context of the DPRK as being the target of soft power efforts, for it was not quite conceivable that an alienated, rogue and violent regime might have the means and the will to consider using soft power in any way, shape or form. ...
North Korea is notable for its isolation, yet the Korean Central News Agency’s daily editions are filled with articles outlining international admiration for Pyongyang and its leader. Is Pyongyang actively promoting soft power as an integral part of not only its survival, but its development strategy? While scholarship on North Korea tends to focus on Pyongyang’s “high profile” relations with China or Russia (Shambaugh 2003, McCormack 2004, Wu 2005) or with nations seeking to cooperate on weapons of mass destruction (Henriksen 2001), little attention has been paid to how the DPRK engages in seemingly peaceful ways with the world. This article examines the notion of hard, soft, smart and other power declensions, and applies a soft-power framework to investigate DPRK rhetoric and the development of partnerships with both states and non-state actors. It suggests that the DPRK has long pursued a strategy of diplomatic diversification, which includes a more sophisticated understanding of power than previously considered in the literature.
Son 30 yılda, Kuzey Kore'nin nükleer sorunu, Kuzeydoğu Asya'daki güvenlik, kalkınma ve istikrara yönelik en önemli ve doğrudan tehditlerden birini oluşturmuştur. Üçlü ve altılı görüşmeler, yaptırımlar, diplomatik çabalar ve daha yakın tarihli Singapur ve Hanoi Zirveleri dahil olmak üzere uluslararası toplumun çabaları, şimdiye kadar herhangi somut bir sonuç üretememiştir. Kuzey Kore'nin temel amacı nükleer programını geliştirmek ve açıkça nükleer silah üretmek olmuştur. Uluslararası toplum, Çin'in Kuzey Kore'ye baskı yapma ve nükleer sorunu kolayca çözme yeteneğine aşırı derecede güvenmiştir. Çin, Kuzey Kore'yi nükleer programının geliştirilmesinden vazgeçirmeye çalışırken, Kuzey Kore'nin nükleer bir güç olmasına da yardımcı olmuştur. Bu makale, Çin'in caydırıcılık stratejisinin bir müttefik olarak Kuzey Kore üzerinde güvenilir olup olmadığını incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Çin caydırıcılık stratejisi kapsamında birinci ve ikinci vuruşları gerçekleştirmeme ilkesine bağlı kalmaktadır. Rakipleri bu garantiyi müttefiklerine sağlarken, Çin Kuzey Kore'ye herhangi bir nükleer garanti sunmamıştır. ABD-Çin rekabeti bağlamında Çin, Tayvan, Güney Kore ve Güney Çin Denizi'ndeki çıkarlarından endişe duymaktadır. Çin için Kuzey Kore nükleer krizi hiçbir zaman birinci öncelik olmamıştır. İki ülke arasındaki ittifak ilişkisindeki güven eksikliği, Çin'in Kuzey Kore'yi nükleer silahlardan arındırma sürecini tamamlamaya ikna etmesini imkânsız hale getirmiştir. Bu nedenle, Çin'in caydırıcı gücü sonuçsuz kalmıştır. Bu güven eksikliği, Kuzey Kore'nin nükleer programını geliştirme motivasyonunu daha net olarak açıklamaktadır.
The rise of China fundamentally altered the balance of power in East Asia against the United States. Although North Korea-U.S. relations have been poisonous for decades, this paper makes the case that the United States can and should engage with North Korea to correct that degrading balance of power. First, I explain the rationale for working with the North Koreans and argue that North Korea is a formidable asset for great power competition with China. Second, I show that current policies toward North Korea are utter failures and should be abandoned. Third, I demonstrate by using the declarations of leaders and other N. Korean materials that Pyongyang, too, is deeply worried by Chinese power and would welcome U.S. and allied overtures to form a balancing coalition against Beijing. Finally, I propose a few policies both realistic and riskless to kick-start the process of rapprochement.
We argue that authoritarian regimes engage in subnational propaganda targeting in pursuit of political survival. Drawing on an original dataset of visual and text propaganda collected inside North Korea, we show that the regime in Pyongyang tailors messaging to elites and masses differently. We outline a schema of four strategies and seven themes that authoritarian regimes commonly utilize when crafting propaganda, theorize variations in their use, and test these variations empirically, using a combination of qualitative analysis, regression, and machine-learning-based text analysis. We demonstrate that the North Korean regime targets Pyongyang-based elites with co-optational messages promising prosperity, modernization, and economic benefit, while the masses outside of Pyongyang are more likely to receive mobilizational messages focused on agricultural productivity. North Korean propaganda also legitimates the regime differently based on audience: legitimation messages to elites emphasize ideological themes related to the party, reassuring elites of the regime's commitment to preserving their privileged status. By contrast, legitimation messages in rural areas emphasize security themes, reminding the masses of why their sacrifices are necessary. The manuscript contributes to scholarly understanding of authoritarian propaganda by providing a theoretical logic for subnational propaganda targeting in non-democracies, and showing that this logic is empirically substantiated.
North Korean studies is an established subfield within Korean studies. The current article reviews methodological trends in North Korean studies, mainly in social sciences, over the past two decades. It aims to demonstrate the evolution of data and methodologies employed by scholars in the field by focusing on three methods—statistical analyses, interviews, and theory testing—as well as to examine benefits and challenges associated with each methodology. The study finds that data and methodologies have become significantly diversified and sophisticated with increased accessibility to digitized North Korean materials, multidisciplinary eclectic methods, and computational analytical tools used by a new generation of scholars. At the core, it is the validity of data that can genuinely contribute to evidence-based scientific investigation. It also highlights that researchers’ epistemological barriers can seriously undermine the transparency in data and research design. Self-reflection, cross-examination, and rigorous peer review can further advance the quality of North Korean studies.
How does war affect states’ tolerance toward foreign culture? It is well documented by historians that democratic countries, despite their heralded values of liberty and diversity, acquiesce and even promote the practice of cultural intolerance in wartime. The available evidence, however, remains either anecdotal or limited to a specific context, and the extent to which war-induced cultural intolerance persists has so far rarely been examined. In order to investigate the short- and long-term effects of war on the degree of foreign cultural acceptance, this article focuses on patterns of classical music performances before, during, and after the two World Wars, based on a novel dataset assembled from concert program notes of ten renowned symphony orchestras from five countries (Austria, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) between 1900 and 1960, covering 29,135 concerts and 125,530 pieces. Quantitative analysis suggests that the rate of performing pieces originating from belligerent countries in wartime declines markedly for music written in relatively modern times and that the defeat in wars led to a swift recovery of the exclusionary tendency against former enemy music. These findings demonstrate that states’ security concerns and relative power, rather than political regime types, dictate international transaction patterns, including cultural flows across sovereign state borders.
Soft power can be effective as a standalone strategy, but such efforts only succeed when consistent with the sponsoring state's underlying culture and characteristics. Historically, soft power initiatives have not received the focus, priority , or resources that hard power initiatives have, largely because it is more difficult to see and measure how effective soft power strategies are. To understand how well soft power strategies can work, it is necessary to see how they have been executed-successfully and otherwise. The soft power strategies enacted by North Korea and Libya offer the necessary study in contrasts, with the former's Arirang festival a strong case in how to use soft power effectively and the latter's hopes of becoming a tourism destination illustrating the flaws of building a soft power strategy on a weak foundation. Hard power will always be a staple of security strategy, but fighting is expensive. Integrating soft power into the strategic mix can make security more cost effective and more reliable.
This article concerns a core distinctive representation portrayed in North Korean films, namely statism grounded in Juche ideology in the context of the evolution of cinema on North Korea. The paper examines, from an outsider's point of view, how the cinema represents statism that is embedded in the daily life of North Korean people, paying greater attention to two films, Comrade Kim Goes Flying and A School Girl's Dairy, by exploring the patterns of the plot, storylines, texts, and main messages. Furthermore, it discusses the disparity between foreign and domestic films on North Korea that exists in such representation. The evolution of North Korean cinema demonstrates noticeable adaptation, a gradual move away from overt propaganda, despite the fact that autonomous cultural space is extremely limited due to the oppressive political system and ideological rigidity. Such dynamics, albeit limited, occurred throughout the Kim Jong Il era in parallel with an effort to strengthen the foundation of statism lain by Kim Il Sung. More recently, it has continued in the Kim Jong Un era, due to an increasingly uncontrollable influx of external culture and ideas, as well as geographical diversification in North Korean cinema production, from the US to Europe and the rest of the world. More communication and interaction may contribute to the modernization of filmmaking in North Korea, which may in turn enhance understanding of the country and people.
In this study, we analyze government-level inter-Korean disaster diplomacy in order to assess the impact of the North Korean famine (1994–1998) on inter-Korean relations. By considering disasters as political shocks, we explore how the dynamics of change unfolded over time and, accordingly, whether or not the North Korean famine marked a moment of profound political change in South Korea-North Korea relations. Our study examines disaster aid as a diplomatic instrument both historically and politically, offering the first comprehensive analysis of inter-Korean disaster diplomacy. Based on a qualitative analysis of South Korean aid policies and North Korea's responses between 1995 and 2010, it is argued that despite the North Korean famine triggering a momentary rapprochement, inter-Korean relations have not changed much over the long term. Instead of focusing on spontaneously occurring calamities, such as earthquakes or tsunamis, this study presents the first examination of the long-term implications of a slow-onset, prolonged disaster: famine. By this, we contribute an underexplored perspective to disaster diplomacy literature and a new angle on the research of inter-Korean relations.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) looms large in international political and security spheres because of its harsh domestic dictatorship as well as its pursuit of nuclear weapons. It is a country that is difficult to access physically because of its controlled borders, and the evolution of North Korean society is clouded by the propaganda that is routinely dispatched by the government. As a result of the state’s focus on militarization and regime survival, specific population groups are often ignored in broader debates about North Korean society, yet they provide important insights into the paradoxical nature of the North Korean society; children are one such group. While there is plenty of evidence, gathered by NGOs and IGOs, that North Korean children suffer from both physical and emotional violence in North Korea, they are also celebrated and revered by the government: the Mangyongdae Children’s Palace in Pyongyang, for instance, is seemingly dedicated to children’s after-school activities and well-being. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the DPRK during International Children’s Day in 2019, this article examines the place of children in the construction of North Korean national identity and exposes how children are both celebrated and utilized to become “memorable,” supporting the North Korean government’s survival goals via large-stage installations such as the gymnastic Mass Games.
This study analyzes the challenge of North Korea, which has managed to have a strategic level of nuclear weapons and suggests a few options for the United States and South Korea to address this challenge. For this purpose, it examines the theoretical backgrounds of the extended deterrence and minimal deterrence strategies, as well as the contrasting perceptions of North Korea's nuclear armament. Then, it analyzes the competition between U.S. extended deterrence and North Korea's minimal deterrence strategy and evaluates a few possible options to deal with the current strategic level of the North Korean nuclear threat. Through its analysis, this study ascertained that North Korea developed its nuclear weapons to make the United States leave South Korea and to reunify Korea on its terms. North Korea adopted a minimal deterrence strategy to counter-deter the U.S. extended deterrence and came to have considerable capabilities to implement the strategy, such as ICBMs, SLBMs, and potentially SSBNs. The United States and its allies in Northeast Asia should clearly recognize the opportunity cost of failed denuclearization negotiations and consider more options than strengthening the current U.S. extended deterrence posture. They need to seriously discuss the establishment of another nuclear-sharing system in Northeast Asia and should not exclude the nuclear weapons development option of South Korea.
What is the role of emotions in conflict resolution, and how can a reconceptualisation of emotions in international relations beyond the discipline be used to understand North Korea’s state conduct and conflict on the Korean peninsula? Drawing on the ontology and epistemology of East Asian medicine, this research explores the role of emotions in conflict resolution by using insights from Wuxing, the medical theory of the five elements/phases, its modus operandi of healing emotional imbalance with counter-emotions, and the principles of harmony and proportionality. I propose the following ‘treatment’: uncovering counterproductive roles and relations of American, South Korean and North Korean actors, given the attention to pathogenic factors in East Asian medicine; reconceptualising emotions in non-binary terms and accounting for suppressed and disproportionally expressed emotions and their effect on relations; strengthening the North Korean corpus to increase resilience; and countering emotional imbalance with counter- emotions. East Asian medicine addresses a system of disharmony, relocates misplaced radicals, and re-adjusts roles, powers and responsibilities. Given philosophical and conceptual differences between mainstream/scientific and endogenous academic approaches, the ontology and epistemology of East Asian medicine complement and go beyond existing understandings about the role of emotions in international relations and conflict resolution.
The purpose of this article is to ascertain North Korea’s ‘real’ nuclear strategy. This article uses the ‘Strategy = Ends + Ways + Means’ construct for the ascertainment, and it makes comparisons to Pakistan’s nuclear strategy. This article found that North Korea’s goal of its nuclear armament was as ideological and aggressive as Pakistan’s, and that its nuclear strategy is closer to the ‘minimal deterrence strategy’ than Pakistan’s. North Korea seems more desperate than Pakistan because of its dire economic situation and the uncertain future of the Kim family dynasty. It could, therefore, try to achieve its goal, the reunification of South Korea, as soon as it has sufficient capabilities for the strategy. The United States and South Korea should be prepared for the worst-case scenario, which is North Korea’s reunification war against South Korea under the threat of nuclear attack on the US mainland and South Korea.
Northeast Asia is usually associated with conflict and war. Challenging this prevailing view, this article shows that the sub-region has achieved minimal peace since its peaceful transition from the Cold War to the post-Cold War period. The questions posed are: (a) what factors are responsible for Northeast Asia’s minimal peace?; and (b) how will these factors respond to the worsening US-China competition since 2010? This article’s argument is two-fold. First, Northeast Asia’s minimal peace is explained by three realist-liberal factors: America’s hegemony; strong economic interdependence among the Northeast Asian states; and a stable institutional structure in East Asia, including Northeast Asia. These factors kept a stable balance of power, ensured development and prosperity, and mitigated the political and strategic tensions between the states. Second, Northeast Asia’s minimal peace would be durable to counter the negative effects of the Sino-US competition in the coming decades. While the economic interdependence and institutional building factors have shown resilience, the US hegemony faces a robust challenge from China. Nevertheless, the US hegemony is durable because of America’s enduring relative strategic and economic advantages over China, the expanded role of America’s regional allies to preserve US preponderance and China’s problems in building an alternative regional order.
North- and South Koreans share the same historic and ethno-cultural background. However, North Korean defectors in South Korea are made into a socially marginalized group “other” to South Koreans. A growing number of defectors who settled in South Korea have therefore turned to self-employment to seek economic independence. As research on North Korean defector entrepreneurship is still in its infancy, this dissertation contributes to the state of art by answering the research question “what are the entrepreneurial strategies of North Korean defectors and how are they shaped by personality and socio-economic infrastructure?” By applying the mixed embeddedness model, analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data suggests that North Korean defectors are highly versatile in recognizing and implementing opportunities. The interviewees proved entrepreneurial in the classical sense of entrepreneurship theory, as opportunity-seeking beings with a high entrepreneurial spirit. Their experience as defectors contributes to an enhanced commitment to overcoming structural inequalities and personal deficiencies. All kinds of resources are used to find support and be successful. The South Korean government provides sound structural opportunities to open a business; however, tailored services for North Korean defectors are moderately adequate. One resource that stands out is that church communities become centers for comprehensive support of North Korean defectors. Therefore, the key to understanding the entrepreneurial strategies of North Korean defectors is realizing that their entrepreneurial spirit is shaped by their experience as defectors as well as their opportunity-seeking personality.
https://ubdata.univie.ac.at/AC16490054
Increased geopolitical competition, nuclear multipolarity, and emerging technologies are steadily undermining strategic stability as well as the existing arms control and non-proliferation regime architecture. The 1980s and 1990s were a high-water point in terms of the normative and legal institutionalization of arms control and non-proliferation regimes, including, but not limited to, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (START) and the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the Open Skies Treaty (OST), the Vienna Document (VD), and the Wassenaar Arrangement. We are seeing a disintegration of these regimes.
This report first offers an in-depth analysis of how both geopolitical and technological developments affect strategic stability. It then looks at the arms control, non-proliferation and deterrence policy measures that states have at their disposal to contain and prevent the production, proliferation, deployment and employment (PPDE) of weapon technologies that threaten strategic stability, to provide new solutions for a new generation of durable arrangements. While arms control and non-proliferation efforts are aimed at countering the production, the proliferation and the deployment of such capabilities, deterrence seeks to prevent their actual employment. Rather than singling out one weapon technology or one specific arms control regime, it introduces a new analytical framework that assesses the feasibility of policy measures to control weapon technologies along the PPDE-chain. Applying this framework to ten emerging weapon technologies, the report identifies specific policy measures to curtail the risks associated with each of them. The overview of measures offers European and Dutch policymakers a blueprint for a broader integrated arms control agenda, and facilitates careful consideration of the appropriate balance of policy mixes along the PPDE-chain included therein. On that basis the report offers a set of policy recommendations to policymakers to bolster strategic stability.
The ascension of Kim Jong Un to the leadership of North Korea signifies the emergence of a unique political entity: a Communist regime led by, what is in effect, a hereditary monarchy. With the transition from Kim Il Sung to Kim Jong Il in 1994, and from Kim Jong Il to Kim Jong Un in 2011, the political philosophical outlook of the North Korean state has evolved in response to the leadership’s identification of the challenges to its rule of the country. This is reflected in the adoption of Juche by Kim Il Sung, of Songgum as adopted by Kim Jong Il, and of Byungjin as adopted by Kim Jong Un. This paper will examine how these respective political philosophies may be seen as a reflection of the policy priorities of the North Korean state in its efforts to retain power amidst growing isolation and pressure from the international community.
The relationship between the ROK and DPRK is bound to be affected by the two great powers—the US and China. Especially in recent decades, the power gap between the two great powers has continued to narrow. Given this, how is the geopolitical situation surrounding the Korean Peninsula shaping inter-Korean relations? This study uses event data and statistical analysis to explore the geopolitical factors that shaped inter-Korean relations from 1993 to 2019. We find that DPRK–ROK relations deteriorated as the power gap between the US and China narrowed. Also, inter-Korean relations were positive when DPRK–US relations were positive. In short, we conclude that during the shift in the US–China power distribution, maintaining positive DPRK–US relations while also managing inter-Korean relations peacefully is necessary for peace on the Korean Peninsula.
Two events have brought the social movement in Bahrain to light yet again: the temporary detention of the football player Hakeem Al-Araibi in Thailand for alleged ‘terrorist’ acts and the imprisonment of the activist Najah Yusuf because of her criticism of the hosting of a Formula One Grand Prix. This paper sheds light on the nexus between sports journalism and politics in Bahrain. It highlights the weaponizing of sports journalism during the first few weeks of the 2011 uprising to protect the regime. The coverage of the demonstrations is analysed to inspect how the 2011 uprising was reported on by the pro-regime sports newspapers. This paper argues that sports journalism played an unprecedented political role during the uprising when it was used by the regime as a weapon to confront the protests and in the process reinforce the regime's control over the country.
Background:
Research outcomes on intellectual development and related disabilities in North Korea are not widely known. Therefore, the current scoping review aimed to provide preliminary insight on research topics concerning intellectual disabilities in North Korea.
Method:
A six-stage framework for scoping review was adopted to examine research trends. Articles were categorised based on the era of supreme leader and research topic.
Results:
There is a greater amount of research regarding intellectual disabilities in the recent Kim Jong-un era compared to the period of the previous leader where research outcomes on general intelligence were the focus. Significant qualitative progress was similarly found.
Conclusions:
The current analysis on research outcomes provides meaningful insights to aid in understanding the atmosphere in North Korea surrounding intellectual disabilities. Follow-up studies and open discussions are necessary for further progress.
Is it possible to form “soft autocracy” that manages citizens by taking away their sense of resistance? This paper suggests that the rise of entertainment media in autocracies enables the rulers to maintain their resilience through a soft approach, thereby avoiding costly heavy-handed measures. Such a soft approach can work because entertainment media, like “fictitious pleasure drugs,” undo audiences’ sophistication so that people are susceptible to autocratic propaganda. By analyzing a Chinese data set, via instrumented regressions, this paper shows that a one standard deviation increase in people’s interest in entertainment media is associated with an increase of almost 20% in both their satisfaction with the current regime and their anti-Western hostility. Furthermore, the findings show a positive relationship between people’s entertainment media interest and their acceptation of indoctrination by state media. In short, entertainment media contribute to China’s regime stability through “amusing ordinary citizens to loyalty.”
Although the issue of elite purges has long been a field of North Korean studies that attracted much attention from scholars and specialists interested in North Korea, there has not been a comprehensive, single-volume study on the subject. Thus, this paper is designed to fill some of the gaps by examining the cases of elite purges that frequently emerge in North Korea’s political arena. To examine the change and continuity of different aspects of elite purges under the three leaderships (Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and Kim Jong Un), I use a wide range of primary and secondary sources, such as books on political theories and history of North Korea, Kim Il Sung’s memoir, documents retrieved from government archives and articles published by different news outlets.
After a thorough review of historical cases, some of the major findings can be summarized as follows. First, North Korea defines factionalism as a pretext for the regime to eliminate certain undesirable individuals from the political arena. Over the past seven decades, countless elites have been accused of practicing factionalism and punished. Second, one constant that is readily apparent in all three leaderships is that the power elites were scapegoated for leaders to evade the responsibility of national crisis or soothe the aggravated public sentiment. Third, in contrast to elite purges in the Kim Il Sung era, which were tied to foreign powers and heavily influenced by factors outside North Korea, factional behavior among elites in the latter two leaderships occurred within the regime either in the form of struggle between the top leader and the opposition group or rivalry between the elite factions. In particular, one distinctive characteristic of elite purges under Kim Jong Un is that the crimes charged against elites were much more preposterous, and the methods employed in eliminating the elites became extremely violent and more barbaric compared with those of previous leaderships.
Under Kim Jong-un, North Korea has experienced growing economic markets, an emerging 'nouveau riche,' and modest levels of urban development. To what extent is North Korean politics and society changing? How has the growth of markets transformed state-society relations? This Element evaluates the shifting relationship between state, society, and markets in a deeply authoritarian context. If the regime implements controlled economic measures, extracts rent, and subsumes the market economy into its ideology, the state will likely retain strong authoritarian control. Conversely, if it fails to incorporate markets into its legitimating message, as private actors build informal trust networks, share information, and collude with state bureaucrats, more fundamental changes in state-society relations are in order. By opening the 'black box' of North Korea, this Element reveals how the country manages to teeter forward, and where its domestic future may lie.
Kevin Gray and Jong-Woon Lee focus on three geopolitical 'moments' that have been crucial to the shaping of the North Korean system: colonialism, the Cold War, and the rise of China, to demonstrate how broader processes of geopolitical contestation have fundamentally shaped the emergence and subsequent development of the North Korean political economy. They argue that placing the nexus between geopolitics and development at the centre of the analysis helps explain the country's rapid catch-up industrialisation, its subsequent secular decline followed by collapse in the 1990s, and why the reform process has been markedly more conservative compared to other state socialist societies. As such, they draw attention to the specificities of North Korea's experience of late development, but also place it in a broader comparative context by understanding the country not solely through the analytical lens of state socialism but also as an instance of post-colonial national development.
Kevin Gray and Jong-Woon Lee focus on three geopolitical 'moments' that have been crucial to the shaping of the North Korean system: colonialism, the Cold War, and the rise of China, to demonstrate how broader processes of geopolitical contestation have fundamentally shaped the emergence and subsequent development of the North Korean political economy. They argue that placing the nexus between geopolitics and development at the centre of the analysis helps explain the country's rapid catch-up industrialisation, its subsequent secular decline followed by collapse in the 1990s, and why the reform process has been markedly more conservative compared to other state socialist societies. As such, they draw attention to the specificities of North Korea's experience of late development, but also place it in a broader comparative context by understanding the country not solely through the analytical lens of state socialism but also as an instance of post-colonial national development.
Between the mid-1990s and the mid-2010s, the Chinese government was distinctly open to the Western offer of democracy-assistance programs. It cooperated with a number of Western organizations to improve the rule of law, village elections, administrative capacity, and civil society in China. Why did the Chinese government engage with democracy promoters who tried to develop these democratic attributes within China? The author argues that the government intended to use Western aid to its advantage. The Chinese Communist Party had launched governance reforms to strengthen its regime legitimacy, and Chinese officials found that Western democracy assistance could be used to facilitate their own governance-reform programs. The article traces the process of how the government’s strategic intention translated into policies of selective openness, and includes evidence from firsthand interviews, propaganda materials, and research by Chinese experts. The findings show how democracy promoters and authoritarian leaders have different expectations of the effects of limited democratic reform within nondemocratic systems. Empirically, reflecting on the so-called golden years of China’s engagement with the West sheds new light on the Chinese Communist Party’s survival strategy through authoritarian legitimation.
In: E-International Relations, 22 May 2021. Summary: So-called ‘hybrid’ security strategies, sometimes also labelled ‘hybrid warfare’, are much discussed among military and security experts in recent years. Russia is often mentioned as employing such hybrid security strategies, yet there are more states that use them successfully, and, in some cases, for many decades already. North Korea is one of those examples. If one defines a hybrid security strategy as the integrated deployment by states of various means and actors in order to influence or coerce other states with the aim of achieving strategic objectives while avoiding actual armed conflict, North Korea offers an interesting example of how successful such strategies can be in the longer term. This article concisely analyses the North Korean experience with hybrid security strategies. First, the aims of the North Korean strategy will be discussed. Next, the evolving set of policy tools being used will be described, as well as some special characteristics. The article will conclude with a few general observations and lessons that could be learned from the North Korean case.
Pyongyang has been described as a center of evil that threatens the world with nuclear weapons. The city is perceived as both aggressive and controlled. This study explains those particularities of Pyongyang utilizing Wagner, Rudolf (2000) (“The moral center and the engine of change. A tale of two Chinese cities”. In: Peking Shanghai Shenzhen. Städte des 21. Jahrhunderts. Beijing Shanghai Shenzhen. Cities of the 21st Century . Vöckler, K and Luckow, D (eds.). Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, Edition Bauhaus, vol. 7, 452–459) theory of the Northeast Asian city as a moral center under the ongoing Korean War (although a ceasefire has been called, the war has not officially ended). This study starts by drawing similarities between Pyongyang and Hanyang, the capital of the Joseon Dynasty, which was established as a moral center according to the Rites of the Zhou Dynasty. I also look at the influence that the Korean War had on Pyongyang and find that Pyongyang was constructed to express the North Koreans socialist Juche ideology (self-reliance, subjecthood), while Hanyang expressed Confucian ideology. Pyongyang is more than just a moral center; it is “the Holy Land of Revolution” according to the “Administration Act of the Capital City Pyongyang”, where the war still takes place to defend the Juche Ideology and its supreme leader. The Korean War justifies the control in North Korea. The country utilizes the five-family control system inherited from the Joseon Dynasty. Its origin is legalism during the Warring States period (770−221 BC) in China. Control in Pyongyang has been strengthened because of the need for military operations in the unfinished Korean War, compared to Hanyang. Having relaxed political tensions in 2019, North Korea offers a vision for the future of Pyongyang as a “socialist fairyland” ( seongyeong 仙境), which is related to Korea’s own Taoism ( sinseon sasang 神仙思想). Developing Pyongyang with the Juche ideology from a Confucian tradition in the war, the city now reveals a unique means of cultural entanglement.
Introduction
This chapter examines three anomalous cases that are all intimately relevant to China’s non-intervention policy to test the propositions posed in Chap. 3. China’s reactions to the international interventions regarding the Iraqi-Kuwaiti conflict, antiterrorism in Afghanistan, and North Korean nuclear development are discussed to demonstrate how China’s non-intervention policy is applied in light of competing interests with these countries.
Conclusion
China was cooperative with the majority of countries in the international community in the three cases. Despite different concerns China harbored, the huge amount of international pressure made it concede. China’s cooperation and compromises in these cases also have proved that its foreign policy regarding the interventions either ensured its domestic interests or reduced the threat to its domestic vulnerabilities.
In conversation with other essays in this collection but with a focus on Vietnam within a regional East Asian perspective, this essay explores the great significance of Marxist and Leninist legacies by reviewing the historical contexts in which Marxist and Leninist movements emerged as contenders in national politics, and the creation and evolution of socialist institutions where communists took power. Those institutions helped communist regimes dominate their societies for decades and remain important today. Yet how long these regimes can survive in the face of rapidly growing demands for political freedom is an open question.
This article examines the political consequences of widespread social changes in North Korea to illuminate how, if at all, shifts in everyday life influence the power of an autocratic government. Our study is based on 23 interviews with North Korean defectors in 2017 and supplemented by interviews conducted in previous years. The main finding is that social practices associated with marketisation, flows of information, and increased corruption have not yet provided the foundation for collective challenges to the regime. It is, however, also clear that official norms, rules, and institutions have been significantly weakened to adapt to new social realities.
This article seeks to provide a theoretically compelling account for North Korea’s strategic choice to go nuclear and explores its implications for East Asian security. Its main research question is as follows: despite the obvious risks of going nuclear, what makes North Korea so desperate in its pursuit of nuclear capabilities? Contrary to the extant accounts that only emphasize either nonsecurity variables or an “external security” factor, this article conceptualizes North Korea’s security considerations as “regime survival” and explains its strategic choice from it. The central thesis of this article is that North Korea’s decision to go nuclear is a strategic choice, of which the purpose is to achieve its goals of safeguarding independence from external powers as well as ensuring regime security. North Korea pursues nuclear weapons because they not only protect Pyongyang’s regime from foreign aggressions but also help to consolidate Kim Jong-un’s domestic power. North Korea also seeks nuclear weapons in order to safeguard its independence and autonomy from China because the removal of China’s influence is critical to ensuring its regime survival in the long run. North Korea’s strategic choice to go nuclear and its emergence as a de facto nuclear power have significant implications for East Asian security.
Can North Korea implements Chinese-style reform and opening-up policies? This is an important question, directly relevant to the policy debate on North Korea’s nuclear challenges. Through comparative historical analysis, I argue that Pyongyang has failed to adopt the Chinese-style reform and opening-up for the internal and structural restraints. The Chinese experience shows that the economic reform and opening, to be successful, requires a certain degree of political reform and openness to be executed together. North Korea could not implement the economic reform and opening policies as effectively as China did, not because of the external conditions like international sanctions or security threat to the country, but more for the internal contradiction that North Korea’s own economic development is likely to endanger the stability of the political system more rapidly and widely than China has experienced. For this analysis, I rely on North Korea’s published laws and economic policies, previous survey works and scholarly works published in Korean and Chinese.
Although the massacre at Tiananmen Square in China and the democratic revolutions in Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic started similarly as nonviolent, mass protests against hardline regimes, they appear to have left little in common. Why did events in 1989 in Berlin and Prague not end as in Beijing? Four answers—party legitimacy, societal modernization, leadership behavior, and opposition strategies—have been offered, yet they neglect the common posttotalitarian regime type as well as important differences between subtypes. Early posttotalitarianism in China enjoyed strong party legitimacy and decisive leadership in the face of a weak civil society and revisionist opposition and survived crisis through repression. Czechoslovakia and East Germany had frozen posttotalitarian regimes that lacked legitimacy and suffered from leadership paralysis while confronting stronger societies and opposition dissidence; they collapsed during crisis. In suppressing protest, the Chinese regime has become frozen and thus vulnerable to regime collapse in another crisis.
Things may look bad, but North Korea can stagger on for a long time before it collapses. The famine there, limited information seems to reveal, is due not to shortages of food but to political decisions in Pyongyang. But unification would be so costly for South Korea - about $1 trillion over 10-25 years - and a mass southward exodus so debilitating that the South will instead qv to prop up the North. China will provide food, and the United States fuel, while the North muddles through with a form of apparatchik capitalism similar to Romania's in the 1980s, in which officials channel resources to favored groups.
The article attempts to re-construct the motivation behind the current North Korean policies, especially in the domestic sphere. It is argued tht North Korean leaders have valid political reasons not to imitate the Chinese-style reform, and are likely to limit themselves to moderate changes which would not jeopardize political stability and the domination of the present-day elite. The most critical factor is the maintenance of control over the access to information.
This article develops a theory of single-party regime consolidation to explain the dramatic variation in longevity among these regimes. The strength of the opposition and rent scarcity during party consolidation, it argues, structure the choices available to elites as they decide how to build a support base. A weak opposition and ready access to rents makes a low-cost consolidation possible, but these conditions provide little incentive to build a robust coalition or strong party organization; this trajectory generates weak single-party rule that is likely to collapse in a crisis. Conversely, elites who face a powerful opposition and scarce rents have no choice but to offer potential allies access to policy-making and have powerful incentives to build a strong and broad-based party organization. Ruling parties that emerge from initial conditions like these prove more resilient during later crises. The author conducts an initial test of the argument against paired comparisons of Guinea-Bissau and Tanzania and of Indonesia and the Philippines.
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Explanations of the robustness of authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa have focused on absent prerequisites of democratization in the region, including weak civil society, state-dominated economies, poor socioeconomic performance, and nondemocratic culture. By contrast, the region's enduring authoritarianism can be attributed to the robustness of the coercive apparatus in many Middle Eastern and North African states and to this apparatus's exceptional will and capacity to crush democratic initiatives. Cross-regional comparison suggests factors both external and internal to the region that account for this exceptional strength.
Unraveling the nexus between agents and structures is fundamental to an understanding of political and social change. The two most prominent methodological approaches to explain revolutionary collective action involve either individual reductionism or structural reductionism. Both approaches result in theoretical inconsistencies and/or explanatory anomalies. An alternative proposed here utilizes the concept of framing developed in behavioral decision theory primarily by Quatrone and Tversky. It directly addresses the agent-structure problem by developing the proposition that individuals evoke alternative decision rules in different structural contexts. The result is greater theoretical coherence and resolution of anomalous cases. Additionally, this model begins to define a new role for ideology in explanations of revolutionary collective action.
Michael O'Hanlon is a fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution and is Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. His most recent book is How to Be a Cheap Hawk: The 1999 and 2000 Defense Budgets (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, forthcoming 1998); he also contributed two chapters to a recent volume edited by Mike Mochizuki, Toward a True Alliance: Restructuring U.S.-Japan Security Relations (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1997).
The author thanks Nick Beldecos, Stephen Biddle, Kurt Chicowski, Robert Crumplar, Tom Davis, Richard Dunn, Joshua Epstein, Julien Hartley, Eric Heginbotham, Payne Kilbourne, Christina Larosa, Frances Lussier, Mike Mochizuki, Eric Nyberg, and John Steinbruner for their invaluable assistance.
1. Statement of Lieutenant General Patrick M. Hughes, Director, U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, "Global Threats and Challenges to the United States and Its Interests Abroad," February 5, 1997, p. 11.
2. Reportedly, Pentagon models estimate about 50,000 U.S. and 500,000 South Korean military casualties during the first three months of war. See Don Oberdorfer, "A Minute to Midnight," Newsweek, October 20, 1997, p. 18.
3. Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, Report on the Bottom-Up Review (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Defense, October 1993), pp. 13-22; and Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Defense, May 1997), pp. 12-13, 24-26, 30.
4. Michael O'Hanlon, How to Be a Cheap Hawk: The 1999 and 2000 Defense Budgets (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1998).
5. The QDR reportedly varied this assumption about warning time in its sensitivity studies, but the standardized vision of regional war assumes some five to seventeen days of warning. See "Final Draft of Mobility Requirements Study Update to Go to Services," Inside the Pentagon, Vol. 10, No. 44 (November 3, 1994), p. 3; and Cohen, Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review, p. 24.
6. See, for example, Paul K. Davis and Richard L. Kugler, "New Principles for Force Sizing," in Zalmay M. Khalilzad and David A. Ochmanek, eds., Strategy and Defense Planning for the 21st Century (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1997), pp. 95-140.
7. See, for example, Ministry of National Defense, ROK, Defense White Paper 1996-1997 (Seoul: Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, 1997), p. 213; Ministry of National Defense, ROK, Defense White Paper 1995-1996 (Seoul: Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, 1996), p. 72; former Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, quoted in Lawrence J. Korb, "Our Overstuffed Armed Forces," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 6 (November/December 1995), p. 25.
8. For a concurring view, see Marcus Noland, "Why North Korea Will Muddle Through," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 4 (July/August 1997), pp. 105-118.
9. For example, North Korea may have a total of as many as 250 metric tons of chemical munitions, in nonpersistent and persistent forms, deliverable by a wide range of systems ranging from artillery to aircraft to missiles. See Defense Intelligence Agency, North Korea: The Foundations for Military Strength (October 1991), p. 60.
10. See, for example, Fran Lussier, U.S. Ground Forces and the Conventional Balance in Europe (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Congressional Budget Office, June 1988), pp. 7-28, 91-99. About one-fourth of the total NATO and Warsaw Pact forces were either deployed in the Germany-Poland-Czechoslovakia area or immediately deployable to that zone using prepositioned stocks. That made for a total of roughly 2.5 million troops and 60,000 armored vehicles in a zone with a front three times the length of the Korean DMZ—similar numbers, per kilometer of front, to what prevails near the DMZ. But forces in the Germanys, Poland, and Czechoslovakia were based as far away as 200 to 300 kilometers from the intra-German border, whereas most of those in the Koreas are within roughly 100 kilometers of the front.
11. James C. Wendt, "U.S. Conventional Arms Control for Korea: A Proposed Approach," RAND Note (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1993), p. 14; Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1997), p. 313...
V.P. Gagnon, Jr., is an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation post-doctoral fellow in Peace and Security in a Changing World in the Peace Studies Program, Cornell University. In the current academic year, he is a visiting scholar at Zagreb University in Croatia and Belgrade University in Serbia.
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the September 1992 APSA meeting in Chicago. For helpful suggestions and criticisms, thanks to Dominique Caouette, Roger Petersen, Liz Wishnick, and Peter Katzenstein. Funding for revisions of this paper were provided by the Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Foundation Post-doctoral Fellowship in Peace and Security in a Changing World, and the Department of State Title VIII program in Russian and East European Studies, administered by the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
1. See, for example, John Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War," International Security, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Summer 1990), pp. 5-56; Stephen Van Evera, "Hypotheses on Nationalism and War," International Security, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Spring 1994), pp. 5-39; Jack Snyder, "The New Nationalism," in Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein, eds., The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 179-200; Michael E. Brown, ed., Ethnic Conflict and International Security (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993).
2. The best English-language sources on the Yugoslav wars include Lenard Cohen, Broken Bonds: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993); James Gow, Legitimacy and the Military: The Yugoslav Crisis (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992); Rabia Ali and Lawerence Lifshutz, eds., Why Bosnia? Writings on the Balkan War (Stony Creek, Conn.: Pamphleteers Press, 1993).
3. Examples include Greece-Turkey (1922), Ireland (1921), the Sudetenland (1938), India-Pakistan (1947), South African apartheid (1948), Palestine (1948), and Cyprus (1974). John Mearsheimer and Robert Pape, "The Answer: A Partition Plan for Bosnia," The New Republic, June 14, 1993, pp. 22-28, argue for partition of Bosnia-Hercegovina as the best solution to the current conflict.
4. One of the shortcomings of the literature on ethnic and nationalist conflict is the lack of a precise conceptual definition. The term "nationalism" (or "hypernationalism") is commonly used, either implicitly or explicitly, to mean simultaneously (and confusingly) ethnic national sentiments or beliefs; political rhetoric that appeals to ethnic nationalist sentiment; and violent conflict that is described and justified in terms of ethnicity. To avoid this confusion, and to clarify the dependent variable (violent conflict, rather than ethnic sentiment) "ethnic nationalism" in this article refers to the rhetoric by which political actors describe, justify, and explain policies with reference to the interest of the "nation" defined in ethnic terms. It does not refer to sentiment or belief. This definition also makes clear that the root causes of a conflict that is described as ethnic may have little to do with ethnicity per se, and thereby points to the questions that must be answered to understand ethnic nationalist conflict: when do political elites resort to conflictual definitions of ethnic national interest? When and how do such definitions come to dominate the policies of the state? What are the goals of this conflictual behavior?
5. Examples of international relations works which look to ethnic sentiment as the key to understanding the link between nationalism and foreign policy include Alexis Heraclides, The Self Determination of Minorities in International Politics (Portland, Ore.: Cass, 1991); William Bloom, Personal Identity, National Identity and International Relations (London: Cambridge University Press, 1990). For those that look to external security concerns, see Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future"; and Barry Posen, "Nationalism, the Mass Army, and Military Power," International Security, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Fall 1993), pp. 80-124. The literature on ethnic conflict also tends to explain violent conflict as a response to external threats to or opportunities for the ethnic group vis-à-vis other groups. The most prominent such work is Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
6. One work that explores the domestic roots of conflictual nationalist policy is Snyder, "The New Nationalism." For a review of earlier works that look at domestic sources of international conflict, see Jack Levy, "The Diversionary...
Since the death of Great Leader Kim II Sung in 1994, perceptions of North Korea's future have become at once more optimistic and pessimistic; both the demise of the hardline successor regime of Dear Leader Kim Jong II and prospects of economic and political reform now appear less imminent than in 1994. The leadership in Pyongyang may have stumbled on a plan just good enough for survival but not good enough for recovery. Now, five years after the Great Leader's death, we can gain a new perspective on North Korea's prospects that lie ahead. Predicting the future is not simply an academic exercise. Policy makers, especially in the United States and the states bordering the DPRK, face the dilemma of whether to extend a helping hand to the North Korean people, perhaps simultaneously prolonging the life of their repressive government, or pursue a policy of containment or even confrontation with the hope that the society will implode and bring an end to the Kim regime. More specific policy decisions also are linked to estimates of North Korea's longevity. The deal brokered by Washington to supply modern nuclear reactors to the DPRK was based in part, on the implicit expectation that the Kim Jong II government would collapse before the reactors were to be delivered. Future rounds of negotiations on North Korean nuclear and missile production may be similarly affected by estimates of North Korea's future. Three scenarios are investigated: reform, collapse, and stability. Viewing North Korea's future in such simplistic terms may be misleading. Taewoo Kim has considered nine scenarios; Jin Young Suh has offered four, each with further refinements; Pan Suk Kim adds 'decay' to our three basic scenarios, consistent with Selig Harrison's prediction that North Korea will continue to erode rather than collapse. But limiting our survey to three basic scenarios should be sufficient to communicate the basic problems that North Korea faces and the factors that will decide its fate.
Since public disclosure by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) of its uranium enrichment program in 2002 and the subsequent restarting of its plutonium reactor, policymakers and academics have expressed concern that the DPRK will one day export nuclear material or components. An examination of North Korea's involvement in nonnuclear criminal activities shows that the DPRK has established sophisticated transnational smuggling networks, some of which involve terrorist groups and others that have been able to distribute counterfeit currency and goods on U.S. territory. These networks provide North Korea with a significant amount of much-needed hard currency, but the DPRK regime's control over them has decreased over time. These developments suggest that North Korea has both the means and motivation for exporting nuclear material, and that concerns over nuclear export from the DPRK, authorized or not, are well founded. When placed in the context of the global nuclear black market, the North Korea case suggests that criminal networks are likely to play an increased role in future proliferation. In addition, it raises the concern that proliferation conducted through illicit networks will not always be well controlled by the supplier state. It is therefore imperative to track and curtail illicit networks not only because of the costs they impose, but also because of the deterrent value of countersmuggling efforts. New strategies that integrate law enforcement, counterproliferation, and nonproliferation tools are likely to have the greatest success in addressing the risks posed by illicit proliferation networks.
The author is a Senior Analyst at the RAND Corporation. The opinions expressed are solely the author's and do not represent those of RAND or any of its sponsors.
The author is grateful for comments from Daniel Byman, Russell Glenn, Thomas McNaugher, Bruce Nardulli, Kenneth Pollack, Thomas Szayna, Barry Watts, and two anonymous reviewers on an earlier version of this article.
1. Edward Luttwak, Coup D'Etat: A Practical Handbook (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969). There is a large literature on the coup and military interventions in politics, and Arab politics in particular. See S.E. Finer, The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics, 2d ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1988); Eric A. Nordlinger, Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1977); Claude E. Welch Jr. and Arthur K. Smith, Military Role and Rule: Perspectives on Civil-Military Relations (North Scituate, Mass.: Duxbury Press, 1974); J.C. Hurewitz, Middle East Politics: The Military Dimension (New York: Praeger, 1969); Eliezer Be'eri, Army Officers in Arab Politics and Society (New York: Praeger, 1970); and Amos Perlmutter, The Military and Politics in Modern Times: On Professionals, Praetorians, and Revolutionary Soldiers (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977).
2. The "how-to" format seems inevitably to lead to such a tone. An earlier book by Curzio Malaparte has a tone similar to Luttwak's, as do later handbook-style volumes. Malaparte, Coup d'Etat: The Technique of Revolution, trans. Sylvia Saunders (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1932); and Gregor Ferguson, Coup D'Etat: A Practical Manual (Poole, Dorset: Arms and Armour Press, 1987).
3. Luttwak, Coup D'Etat, p. 12.
4. Kermit Roosevelt, Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979).
5. Eliezer Be'eri, "The Waning of the Military Coup in Arab Politics," Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1 (January 1982), pp. 69-81.
6. This list replicates the recommendations and terminology of Donald L. Horowitz's section on coup prevention in ethnic conflicts. As Horowitz points out, these recommendations replicate many of the principles long used by colonial powers to recruit colonial forces. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). The techniques fit easily in the pattern of "pervasive division and personal rivalry" inherent in patrimonial leadership in the Middle East. James A. Bill and Robert Springborg, Politics in the Middle East, 4th ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 166. These methods also bring the "traditional bonds" that complicate coup-making into more advanced bureaucratic states. Luttwak, Coup D'Etat, pp. 4-5.
7. S.E. Finer, "Foreword," in Luttwak, Coup D'Etat, p. xv.
8. Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq's Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of Its Communists, Ba'athists, and Free Officers (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978); and Charles Tripp, "The Future of Iraq and Regional Security," in Geoffrey Kemp and Janice Gross Stein, eds., Powder Keg in the Middle East: The Struggle for Gulf Security (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995), pp. 133-159.
9. Nikolaos van Dam, "Middle Eastern Political Clichés: 'Tikriti' and 'Sunni Rule' in Iraq; 'Alawi Rule' in Syria: A Critical Appraisal," Orient, January 1980, pp. 42-57.
10. It is difficult to obtain reliable population figures for these countries. Saudi Arabia has long been known as a state in which demographic measurements are suspect if public, secret if accurate, and always controversial. Syria and Iraq are just as sensitive. Iraq's last publicly available census was conducted in 1977. The Iraqi census of 1987 may be unique in making failure to register for the census punishable by death. The 1987 census helped identify the location of Kurds for later extermination campaigns. Middle East Watch, Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign against the Kurds (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993), pp. 10, 87. Completed forms from the 1987 census were provided to local offices of the General Directorate of Security together with directions on maintaining the files as a regular information source. Middle East Watch, Bureaucracy of Repression: The Iraqi Government in Its...
After the historic summit between Pyongyang and Seoul last June, the Koreas could be on their way to eventual reunification. To ensure such progress, Washington should consider making military and economic concessions-including the possible withdrawal of U.S. forces-to formally end the Korean War.
Researchers attribute factionalism and schism in social movement organizations (SMOs) to organizational factors and overlook
the influence of the environment on internal conflict. This article explores the ways in which an SMO's external environment
facilitates internal conflict leading to schism. I present a framework outlining influential environmental elements and examine
their impacts on the conflict and schism in four SMOs: Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC), the American Federation of Labor (AFL), and Earth First! (EF!). Applying the framework to the four cases
provides a systematic analysis of the impact of the environment and suggests the elements that are necessary for building
a process theory explaining how conflict between factions develops and leads to schism.
Rethinking Civil Society TOWARD DEMOCRATIC CONSOLIDATION Larry Diamond Larry Diamond is coeditor of the Journal of Democracy, codirector of the International Forum for Democratic Studies, and a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Among his recent edited works on democracy are Political Culture and Democracy in Developing Countries (1993) and (with Marc F. Plattner) Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and Democracy (forthcoming, 1994). In this third wave of global democratization, no phenomenon has more vividly captured the imagination of democratic scholars, observers, and activists alike than "civil society." What could be more moving than the stories of brave bands of students, writers, artists, pastors, teachers, laborers, and mothers challenging the duplicity, corruption, and brutal domination of authoritarian states? Could any sight be more awe- inspiring to democrats than the one they saw in Manila in 1986, when hundreds of thousands of organized and peaceful citizens surged into the streets to reclaim their stolen election and force Ferdinand Marcos out through nonviolent "people power"? In fact, however, the overthrow of authoritarian regimes through popularly based and massively mobilized democratic opposition has not been the norm. Most democratic transitions have been protracted and negotiated (if not largely controlled from above by the exiting authoritarians). Yet even in such negotiated and controlled transitions, the stimulus for democratization, and particularly the pressure to complete the process, have typically come from the "resurrection of civil society," the restructuring of public space, and the mobilization of all manner of independent groups and grassroots movements. 1 If the renewed interest in civil society can trace its theoretical origins to Alexis de Tocqueville, it seems emotionally and spiritually indebted to Jean-Jacques Rousseau for its romanticization of "the people" as a force for collective good, rising up to assert the democratic will against a narrow and evil autocracy. Such images of popular Journal of Democracy Vol. 5, No. 3 July 1994 Larry Diamond 5 mobilization suffuse contemporary thinking about democratic change throughout Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa -- and not without reason. In South Korea, Taiwan, Chile, Poland, China, Czechoslovakia, South Africa, Nigeria, and Benin (to give only a partial list), extensive mobilization of civil society was a crucial source of pressure for democratic change. Citizens pressed their challenge to autocracy not merely as individuals, but as members of student movements, churches, professional associations, women's groups, trade unions, human rights organizations, producer groups, the press, civic associations, and the like. It is now clear that to comprehend democratic change around the world, one must study civil society. Yet such study often provides a one-dimensional and dangerously misleading view. Understanding civil society's role in the construction of democracy requires more complex conceptualization and nuanced theory. The simplistic antinomy between state and civil society, locked in a zero-sum struggle, will not do. We need to specify more precisely what civil society is and is not, and to identify its wide variations in form and character. We need to comprehend not only the multiple ways it can serve democracy, but also the tensions and contradictions it generates and may encompass. We need to think about the features of civil society that are most likely to serve the development and consolidation of democracy. And, not least, we need to form a more realistic picture of the limits of civil society's potential contributions to democracy, and thus of the relative emphasis that democrats should place on building civil society among the various challenges of democratic consolidation. What Civil Society Is and Is Not Civil society is conceived here as the realm of organized social life that is voluntary, self-generating, (largely) self-supporting, autonomous from the state, and bound by a legal order or set of shared rules. It is distinct from "society" in general in that it involves citizens acting collectively in a public sphere to express their interests, passions, and ideas, exchange information, achieve mutual goals, make demands on the state, and hold state officials accountable. Civil society is an intermediary entity, standing between the private sphere and the state. Thus it excludes individual and family life, inward-looking group activity (e.g., for recreation, entertainment, or spirituality), the profit-making enterprise of individual business firms...
In almost 40 years since the publication of Samuel Huntington's The Soldier and the State (1957), the literature on civil-military relations has focused primarily on explaining why different patterns of relations emerge, secondarily on the effect of civil-military relations on the propensity for war, but almost not at all on how such relationships affect the outcomes of wars. While the importance of differing patterns of relations for military security is often noted, the connection is rarely more than an assumption, and often an implicit one at that. In effect, the existing literature treats civil-military relations essentially as a dependent variable - the importance of this variable as a cause of other outcomes of importance has received little systematic attention. The purpose of this article, by contrast, is to contribute to an understanding of civil-military relations as cause, rather than just as effect. In fact, we will argue that an understanding of this causal role is essential both for formulating sound national security policy, and for understanding the underlying phenomena of armed conflict generally. To do this, we will focus on one issue to demonstrate the potential importance of civil-military relations for explaining the outcomes of armed conflicts, namely the effectiveness of advanced weapon technology in the developing world.
Since 1989, civil society theory within the literature on democratization reflects the hold exerted by the model of actually existing liberal democracy over political studies. Thus civil society is viewed in largely instrumental terms ‐ as a support structure for democracy at the state level ‐ and earlier, more radical, models ‐ which understood civil society to be a democratic end in itself ‐ are forgotten. Liberal‐democratic conceptualizations of civil society, therefore, remain largely unchallenged as to their normative assumptions; increasingly, the category civil society is seen as a neutral tool for social science analysis. This essay seeks to complicate this picture, and to expose the current civil society orthodoxy as rather less than value‐free. It does this via a critical exploration of the boundaries of the new thinking, and by juxtaposing it with more substantive models from the 1970s and 1980s.
Domestic politics and international relations are often inextricably entangled, but existing theories (particularly “state-centric” theories) do not adequately account for these linkages. When national leaders must win ratification (formal or informal) from their constituents for an international agreement, their negotiating behavior reflects the simultaneous imperatives of both a domestic political game and an international game. Using illustrations from Western economic summitry, the Panama Canal and Versailles Treaty negotiations, IMF stabilization programs, the European Community, and many other diplomatic contexts, this article offers a theory of ratification. It addresses the role of domestic preferences and coalitions, domestic political institutions and practices, the strategies and tactics of negotiators, uncertainty, the domestic reverberation of international pressures, and the interests of the chief negotiator. This theory of “two-level games” may also be applicable to many other political phenomena, such as dependency, legislative committees, and multiparty coalitions.