How to Do Things With Words

In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

Thanks to the ready availability of political news today, informed citizens can protect and promote their own interests and the public interest more effectively. Or can they? Murray Edelman argues against this conventional interpretation of politics, one that takes for granted that we live in a world of facts and that people react rationally to the facts they know. In doing so, he explores in detail the ways in which the conspicuous aspects of the political scene are interpretations that systematically buttress established inequalities and interpretations already dominant political ideologies.

Constructing the Political Spectacle

1. From the impossible to the inevitable 2. The tide and the mobilizational cycle 3. Structuring nationalism 4. 'Thickened' history and the mobilization of identity 5. Tides and the failure of nationalist mobilization 6. Violence and tides of nationalism 7. The transcendence of regimes of repression 8. Russian mobilization and the accumulating 'inevitability' of Soviet collapse 9. Conclusion: nationhood and event.

Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State: STRUCTURING NATIONALISM

This article proposes a framework for considering materiality in the field of geopolitics: assemblage and complexity theories. Drawing on literatures beyond the field to imagine a posthuman geopolitics, this article argues for a relational ontology that emphasizes the complex interactions among the elements of an assemblage. These interactions produce emergent effects which themselves reshape the assemblage’s elements. This has implications for understandings of agency, subjectivity, and systemic change. The article concludes by highlighting the methodological and ethical challenges that such a project would face.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0309132513501405

Geopolitical assemblages and complexity

Testing claims about a region often glibly described by outsiders, thus checking assumptions upon which policy recommendations are based, this article examines residents' attitudes in the de facto state of Abkhazia. The results of a nationally representative social scientific survey in Abkhazia in March 2010 are presented in five themes—security and perceived well-being, the life-world identifications of respondents, views of state-building principles, the state of reconciliation between the divided communities and the potential for displaced-person returns, and views on current and future geopolitical relations with Russia and Georgia. The findings shed light on the broad contours of the internal legitimacy of the Abkhazian state and society.

Inside Abkhazia: Survey of Attitudes in a De Facto State

In the wake of the Ukrainian crisis in 2013–2014, renewed attention has been given to the earlier so-called “frozen conflicts” of the successor states of the Soviet Union. In Georgia, Moldova, and Azerbaijan, national conflicts of the early 1990s resulted in establishment of four breakaway regions, the de facto states of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, and Nagorny Karabakh. While the first three are supported by Russia, the latter is supported by Armenia. Such support as well as growing internal legitimacy has enabled these republics to retain separate status for almost 25 years. Though appearing quite similar from an external perspective, the populations of the de facto states are quite diverse in composition, geopolitical preferences, and support for political institutions and persons. Large representative public opinion surveys conducted by the authors in 2010–2011 in the four de facto states allow a deeper comprehension of internal political and social dynamics. Three main dimensions of their c...

Inside the post-Soviet de facto states: a comparison of attitudes in Abkhazia, Nagorny Karabakh, South Ossetia, and Transnistria

Gerard Toal. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017. xx and 387 pp., photos, maps, graphs, tables, notes, index. $29.95 cloth (ISBN 9780190253301).Territorial struggles in Ukraine and the Caucas...

Near Abroad: Putin, the West and the Contest over Ukraine and the Caucasus

De facto states, functional on the ground but unrecognized by most states, have long been black boxes for systematic empirical research. This study investigates de facto states’ internal legitimacy—people's confidence in the entity itself, the regime, and institutions. While internal legitimacy is important for any state, it is particularly important for de facto states, whose lack of external legitimacy has made internal legitimacy integral to their quest for recognition. We propose that the internal legitimacy of de facto states depends on how convincing they are to their “citizens” as state-builders. Using original data from a 2010 survey in Abkhazia, we examine this argument based on respondent perceptions of security, welfare, and democracy. Our findings suggest that internal legitimacy is shaped by the key Weberian state-building function of monopoly of the legitimate use of force, as well as these entities’ ability to fulfill other aspects of the social contract.

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Gerard Toal

Papers

Inside Abkhazia: Survey of Attitudes in a De Facto State

Inside the post-Soviet de facto states: a comparison of attitudes in Abkhazia, Nagorny Karabakh, South Ossetia, and Transnistria

Near Abroad: Putin, the West and the Contest over Ukraine and the Caucasus

Convincing State-Builders? Disaggregating Internal Legitimacy in Abkhazia

The Improvised State: Sovereignty, Performance and Agency in Dayton Bosnia