Federal or Unitary? The Power-sharing Debate in Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT

Sri Lanka’s power-sharing debate is focused on the labels ‘federal and ‘unitary’. A recent Judgment of the Supreme Court recognising the fluidity of these terms, and a creative reform proposal defining Sri Lanka as a ‘aekiya rajyaya/orumitha nadu’, present opportunities for consensus. Yet there are also powerful obstacles, including the virtual collapse of Sri Lanka’s coalition government and exclusivist nationalist ideologies. Regardless of the outcome of this round of reform, however, reformers must focus on the political if Sri Lanka is to ever reach a just and equitable solution to the ethnic conflict.     

Elite patronage over party democracy – high politics in Sri Lanka following independence

When Sri Lanka became independent in February 1948 it lacked a well-established party system and instead relied upon patronage and elite social relationships. Though it had a long pre-independence history of constitutional development and evolving democracy, party politics was not deep-rooted and political power continued to be wielded by an elite that had an almost feudal relationship with the masses. The convention based Westminster model Sri Lanka adopted engendered a local system that relied more on relationships than rules. Political parties and institutions were often unable to check and balance the Executive's conduct of power. Sri Lanka's elite operated British institutions in an anachronistic eighteenth-century manner such as in having a patronage-based Cabinet dominated by its prime ministerial leader/patron rather than by collegial attitudes or values. The weakness of party institutionalisation and the ambiguity in the constitutional arrangements laid the foundations for future political conflict and marginalisation of segments of society. The continuity of affairs of state from the colonial era and the known and reassuring leadership of D.S. Senanayake and his ‘Uncle-Nephew Party’ masked the democratic tensions and institutional fragility within the Sri Lankan state that would come to the fore violently only years after what was then seen as a model transfer of power.     

Constitutional Contestation of Religion in Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT

Sri Lanka’s constitutional policy regarding religion affords the ‘foremost place’ to Buddhism and obligates the state to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana, whilst assuring the rights and freedoms of the other religions. By explicitly creating a special status for Buddhism, the constitution has produced the category of the ‘Other’ that has the potential to discriminate against minorities in a pluralistic society and to undermine the fundamental principle of equality. The creation of this distinction generated contestation during constitutional reforms. By examining reform proposals on religion, interview material and comparing the debates of the Constitutional Assembly (October/November 2017) with the Constituent Assembly debates (1970–71), this study retraces the evolution of the Buddhism Chapter and identifies the present contestations and their role in deciding a constitutional arrangement for religion.     

The Executive and the Constitutional Reforms Process in Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT

The debate on whether the executive presidential system which was introduced to Sri Lanka in 1978 should be retained, reformed or abolished is not a new one. It is a topic which is central to constitutional reformation in Sri Lanka, but one which always carries the potential of either making or breaking any attempt made at reforming the Constitution. This article examines the character of the post of executive president in Sri Lanka and how the most recent constitutional reforms process (initiated in 2015–2016) has sought to engage with the topic of executive presidency. Departing from the more popular trend of unconditionally critiquing the executive presidency, this article calls for a more realistic and dispassionate assessment of not only the possibility of abolishing the executive presidency but also of the viability of a prime ministerial system in Sri Lanka.     

Significant in Isolation: Sri Lanka’s Right to Information Regime in Enactment and Operation

ABSTRACT

Over 2015 and 2016, Sri Lanka enacted a comprehensive right to information (RTI) regime by constitutionally recognising the RTI and passing enabling legislation. Taking into account the context of the country’s political and bureaucratic culture, its history of RTI jurisprudence and repeated legislative attempts and the particularities of the enacted provisions themselves, this article argues that the RTI regime represents a significant constitutional advance in Sri Lanka. The regime’s operationalisation has unearthed a number of operational difficulties as well as promising advances, underscoring both the challenges and the potentials of effectively providing for the RTI. As one of the few governance reforms enacted by the national unity government, however, the RTI regime’s lone operation within a deficient and unreformed architecture of transparency and accountability places a particular and heavy burden on it, one which may also adversely impact its future sustainability.     

Sri Lanka’s Long Constitutional Moment

Constitutional change in Sri Lanka has been a vexed issue and one mired in party politics for many years now. Particularly intractable difficulties have surfaced over whether the country should jettison the semi-presidential form of government, introduced in 1978, in favour of a Westminster model under which the prime minister would enjoy greater powers. The recent presidential and parliamentary elections, which saw a decisive shift in the popular mood, have brought the debate over constitutional reform into sharp focus and have already led to a number of important initiatives by the new government headed by President Maithripala Sirisena. This article assesses the implications of those initiatives and examines the key challenges that remain to be addressed. It argues that the ‘constitutional moment’ created by the combined outcome of the two recent elections has the potential for further, far-reaching reform.     

Parties,political decay,and democratic regression in Sri Lanka

Among states that gained independence following World War II, Sri Lanka was widely considered to have a good chance of succeeding democratically. This promise was sundered when successive leaders embraced ethnocentric policies that were geared towards empowering the majority Sinhalese Buddhists at the expense of minorities. This ethnocentrism contributed to civil war and adversely affected the country's institutions – including the island's political parties. The attendant political decay has not only led to malgovernance and democratic regression, it has pushed the country in an authoritarian direction. Sri Lanka thus represents a classic case of how ethnocentrism can undermine democratic institutions and of the long-term negative consequences.     

Proposals for a New Bill of Rights in Sri Lanka: Narrow Debates,Unmarked Challenges

ABSTRACT

This article makes two claims about the current proposals for reforming Sri Lankan’s fundamental rights chapter. One is that the complex challenges in seeking judicial enforcement of fundamental rights largely remain unmarked in the narrow and limited debates that have taken place on these proposals. Thus far, these proposals have attracted minimal debate and discussion except in relation to the judicial enforcement of economic and social rights. The second and related claim is that the transformational reach of the proposals is yet to be evaluated against Sri Lanka’s actual experiences in the enforcement of a Bill of Rights in its republican era. Critical reflection and debates that mark and engage the challenges posed by the current proposals for a new Bill of Rights are essential if these proposals are to be effective in implementation.     

Between Scylla and Charybdis: Social Media in Sri Lanka’s Constitutional Referendum

ABSTRACT

Social media use around those aged 18–34 will significantly impact the prospects for the public validation of a new constitution in Sri Lanka, especially the planning and conduct of a referendum. This paper examines key developments in the consumption of and perceptions around social media, and how a networked society within a context of democratic deficit and plunging faith in electoral processes can pose a greater risk for public faith in constitutional reform.     

Can a rentier state evolve to a production state? An ‘institutional upgrading’ approach

ABSTRACT

Can a rentier state evolve to a production state? This article attempts to answer this question by analysing how historically states evolved to production states and by comparing their experience with today’s Gulf states. Although the Gulf states show some productive traits today, their mode of production largely remains ‘production with rentier characteristics’, that is reliant on oil-driven advantages. Their further economic diversification requires improved governance capabilities that enable their government to enhance human capital. Production states around the world acquired such governance capabilities through ‘institutional upgrading’, a replacement of clientelistic institutions with meritocratic ones. While clientelistic institutions tend to persist, such institutions were significantly reduced in these states through the exit of vested-interest players from major fiscal and organizational spaces. The exit appears to occur when these vested-interest players accept pain-sharing to ensure their protection in the context of the revealed vulnerability of their patron regime and when alternative productive gains are offered to them in lieu of conventional distribution. Presently neither condition is in existence in the Gulf states, which continue to be characterized by their direct and extensive distributional regimes. Without a prospect for immediate governance improvement, a realistic reform possibility lies in agency under institutional constraints.     

What Money Can’t Buy: The Security Externalities of Chinese Economic Statecraft in Post-War Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT

China’s growing trade, investment, and aid links are commonly believed to constitute a potent instrument of statecraft, generating important security externalities. Yet there is insufficient research tracing the precise mechanisms linking economic relationships between a “sender” and “target” state to actual influence in the security domain. We offer three contributions. First, we map out the theoretical mechanisms of influence in a sender–target relationship. Second, we empirically investigate these mechanisms through a case study of China’s economic influence in Sri Lanka since 2009. Third, we use our findings to generate new insights on the mechanisms of influence in the economic statecraft literature and the dynamics of great-power competition in South Asia. Beijing’s ability to convert its considerable economic resources into strategic influence in Sri Lanka is currently hampered by the poor planning and implementation of infrastructure projects, domestic politics, and Sri Lanka’s relationship with India, a regional competitor and rising power.     

An exploratory study of constitutional design in three island states: Seychelles,Comoros, and Mauritius

This article explores the effects of constitutional design on conflict management and democratisation outcomes in three African island states: Seychelles, Comoros, and Mauritius. As an exploratory framework, the article reflects upon Arend Lijphart’s theory of accommodative constitutional design in view of political developments in the three cases, beginning around their independence and continuing into recent times. The case studies provide some general support to Lijphart’s accommodative theory, and particularly to the need to facilitate broad representation and an overall sense of political inclusion, but they also raise critical questions regarding the effects of his institutional recommendations. Contrary to Lijphart’s approach, majoritarian legislative elections might under certain conditions facilitate greater inclusion than proportional representation, and direct presidential elections could sometimes be more inclusive than a parliamentary executive. The findings on Lijphart’s recommendations of group autonomy are less clear, particularly regarding the question of whether territorial autonomy might increase risks of secession.     

Between indifference and hesitation: France and EU enlargement towards the Balkans

Abstract

France’s hesitant stance on EU enlargement towards the Balkans is illustrative of a broader ambivalence among both French elites and citizens towards the European project. Despite principled support for the Balkans’ EU membership, achieving this step is no strategic priority for France. The official approach emphasizes strict conditionality and a rigorous monitoring of reform progress in aspirant countries. A hostile public opinion and superficial media coverage further strengthen the country’s reluctance to admit new, possibly unprepared candidates into the Union. Analysing the historical evolution of the French position on EU enlargement as well as its current political, institutional and societal expressions, this article construes France’s disinvestment from the Balkans’ EU perspective as the result of failed expectations and a growing disillusionment with the EU’s international role and its political future more broadly.     

Are Sri Lanka's Relations with China Deepening? An Analysis of Economic,Military, and Diplomatic Data

Abstract

During the past few years, Sri Lanka appears to have forged closer relations with China. Sri Lanka welcomed Chinese investment in building a port in Hambantota, arms from China for use in its civil war, and “dialogue partner” status in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Such high-profile moves have unnerved analysts fearing the rise of Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean region. A first-time, systematic analysis of the trends in Sri Lanka's economic, military, and diplomatic relations with China reveals that ties have indeed been strengthening. However, Sri Lanka is neither bandwagoning with nor balancing China, as structural realism predicts. More attention should be devoted to explaining the security thinking of small states that are not following such predictions in response to the emergence of a regional hegemon.     

Making the ‘empowered woman’: exploring contradictions in gender and development programming in Kyrgyzstan

This article examines the complexities of women’s increasing participation in international development programming for gender equality. Taking a specific setting in rural Kyrgyzstan where one such project has been operating, the researchers discover adverse effects on the local women’s livelihoods, status and health. Women’s contradictions are attributed to the women’s own failures and lacks, creating confusion and frustration among them. Adopting Smith’s institutional-ethnography approach, we explicate and map out the hidden processes which must be held accountable for these reactionary outcomes, taking women’s experiences as entry points to inquiry. We find that the reactionary effects are not accidental but organized, powerfully, systematically but invisibly, by taken-for-granted institutional practices serving the purposes of global development institutions, where women are seen as instruments of global economic growth. The analysis provokes critical discussion of ‘how’ and ‘what’ it takes to transform Central Asian women into ‘empowered’ people.     

Concession or compromise? The politics of abortion in United Germany

Most GDR policies instituted to secure women's equality between 1949 and 1989 have been dismantled in the name of German unity, including freedom of choice regarding abortion. That right ceased to exist in May 1993, when the Constitutional Court imposed a number of western restrictions on eastern women as the new law of the land. This study addresses the post‐unity search for an acceptable compromise between the western constitutional mandate of foetal protection and the eastern guarantee of a woman's right to choose. It argues that a three‐year reform process which should have provided a positive introduction to the art of democratic compromise served instead as a negative socialising experience for Germans in the new Lander. Besides denying them a chance to render a meaningful policy contribution to their new state, the nature of the process has distorted East German perceptions of the quintessential ‘balance of power’ between legislative and judicial institutions under democracy. ‘Compromise’ has been attained, but consequences for the German Rechtsstaat are not all positive.     

Acute and Everyday Violence in Sri Lanka

Police torture in Sri Lanka has been subject to extensive investigation and condemnation but remains a widespread and seemingly entrenched practice. Seeking to understand the resistance of such practices to existing interventions, this article locates the police’s use of torture within a broader geography of social violence in Sri Lanka. We discuss the findings of extensive fieldwork conducted in the north-west of Sri Lanka where we examined not only police behaviour and interactions between police and the broader community but also the social dynamics relationships more generally. One significant finding was that violence against certain types of people, including police use of torture against such people, is generally accepted, even as the police are broadly criticised in the community for their unethical and ineffective behaviour. Another significant finding was that the society is riven with social hierarchies and that patterns of domination are embedded in social, political and symbolic systems. We conclude that police torture needs to be understood against the background of broader cultural practices whereby social subjects are disciplined and policed to produce appropriate citizens and punish social boundary violations.     

Bemerkungen zur reform des Reichsjustizwesens in der Zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts

Summary

Voltaire and the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688

From the start of his career Voltaire was pro‐English. Britain was for him the country of a ‘sage liberté’ which was the beneficial result of the civil wars. His contacts with the British community in Paris and the exiled Lord Bolingbroke help explain why he sought refuge in London after his imprisonment and his subsequent passion for English institutions. Voltaire's view of institutions was not always very accurate; he only saw the positive side and, intentionally or not, concealed a great deal. The religious foundation of the English character escaped him, as did the agrarian problems. For him the regime of 1689 constituted a constitutional ideal; the balance it achieved was a perfection to whose defects he was blind.

Voltaire had always been split between his admiration for the English system and his respect for the ‘enlightened’ work of Frederick the Great and Catherine Il. He inclined, especially towards the end of his life, towards England. He was one of the originators of a current, still very much alive in France, of an anglophilia of the left’. But the undeniable weakness in Voltaire's thought was his failure ever to ask how far the representative government he so admired was capable of being practised by the French.     

Representation By Consultation? The Rise of Direct Democracy in Latin America

Most of the countries of South America experienced two notable institutional phenomena during the 1990s: the reform or rewriting of constitutions and the emergence of direct democracy mechanisms. This paper examines the latter process through a cross-national comparison. The introduction of direct democracy mechanisms is typically driven by traditionally excluded political interests. It takes two forms, both involving the failure of representative democratic institutions. In most cases, these traditionally excluded interests win control over the constitutional reform and rewriting process, although this is not a necessary condition for the emergence of direct democracy. Drawing illustrations from 12 cases of constitutional reform, this paper links arguments about direct democracy in the United States and Western Europe, institutional change, neopopulism, and the decline of the party system in Latin America.     

Representation and governance in the Netherlands, 1250–1983: materials for a comprehensive history of politics

SUMMARY

Traditionally political history tells the factual story of those who are in power and of those who want to be, often accompanied by studies of the formal expressions of power in the state and its institutions. During the past two decades this ‘old’ history of politics has been renewed and enriched by research from the perspective of political culture. Both in the Netherlands and abroad pioneering studies of political practices, concepts and styles of leadership have resulted from this new approach. In the next few years this cultural angle in the history of politics will be intensified, for instance in research of the understanding and institutionalization of democracy. The recently established research programme ‘Representation and Governance in the Netherlands’ (RGN) at the Institute of Netherlands History wants to take on board this ‘new’ type of political history as well as the ‘old’ variety in order to facilitate both the efforts of those scholars who want to explain cultural traditions and inherited appreciations in the day-to-day routines of politics as well as the work of historians who want to intensify the study of the formation and reach of the state. The RGN project ventures far back through the ages to explore the historicity of political institutions and bureaucratic procedures by opening up materials for analysing both the culture of governance and the practices of politics. In projects that link up the Middle Ages with the twentieth century, from the administrative organization of the counties of Holland and Zeeland during the Hainault period up to and including the establishment and reform of the constitutional state, sources will be recorded and made accessible. The interaction between society and government, often personified by intermediaries such as office-holders, civil servants, journalists, political advisers and the like, will become visible in the many documents to be edited. Upon their publication these sources will enable future researchers to study not only the history of the governing bodies, but also the role that subjects or citizens played or wished to play in shaping the state.