Crime, violence, and insecurity are perceived as society's biggest problems in contemporary Costa Rica. This degree of priority is especially remarkable because the country has always been considered the peaceful exception in the violent Central American region. In this paper I analyze four...

The Chinese Communist Party has chosen to base the legitimacy of its rule on its performance as leading national power. Since national identity is based on shared imaginations of and directly tied to territory - hence place, this paper analyses both heterodox models for identification on the...

Albert O. Hirschmans Modell von "Abwanderung und Widerspruch" ("exit and voice"), das lange ein klassischer Ansatz für Studien zu den politischen Implikationen von Migration war, wurde im Rahmen des "methodologischen Nationalismus" entwickelt. Der zunehmend transnationale Charakter...

Since 1990 the banning of ethnic and other identity-based parties has become the norm in sub-Saharan Africa. This article focuses on Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda as three East African countries that have opted for different ways of dealing with such parties. Using case studies, it traces the...