International Area Studies Review

Why did whites in South Africa come to support the dismantling of the apartheid system that gave them a monopoly of political power? We use a reformulated version of symbolic politics to address this puzzle, showing that white attitudes toward political change were primarily driven by symbolic predispositions regarding race, ideology, party, and specific leaders, as well as various sorts of threat perceptions. Strong attachments to the National Party and de Klerk, low perceptions of threat, more tolerant racial attitudes, and more socially and politically liberal values increased the likelihood of whites supporting policies consistent with the ending of apartheid. We also find that assessments of the economy, both personal and national, have no influence on this attitude. We use South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council data collected during the crucial 1991–1992 period.

Do various bureaucratic characteristics explain different levels of public trust in civil service? While studies have suggested various desirable traits for public administration in democratic societies, including political responsiveness, representativeness, and professionalism, their possible linkages to public evaluations of government bureaucracies are insufficiently investigated. This article examines how such attributes are related to citizens’ evaluations of civil service using a multilevel analysis across 18 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member nations. The bureaucratic characteristics are measured using data from the Quality of Government (QoG) Expert Survey and the OECD statistics. The survey data from the 2004 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) are used to capture individual perceptions of public administration. The empirical results show that levels of citizens’ trust in bureaucracies is higher when an impartial and gender representative public administration exists. The findings contribute to our understanding of the correlates of public trust in government agencies, as well as consequences of emphasizing different bureaucratic traits across nations.

In October of 2009 the United Nations (UN) General Assembly accepted the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) application for Permanent Observer status. This is an honour usually reserved for non-Member States and intergovernmental organisations; very rarely do non-governmental organisations (NGOs) obtain this position. The position enables the IOC to directly influence General Assembly policy decisions. This paper examines how the IOC was able to obtain such a unique status when other NGOs have had their applications rejected, and asks: what does this appointment mean for the involvement of broader civil society at the UN? The paper argues that there are various factors at play that have influenced the relationship between a global sports organisation and an international development organisation, including the neoliberalisation of development, the global power of sport, and processes of legitimation for both the IOC and the UN.

It goes without saying that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has put his mark on the last 14 years of Turkish politics. The main argument of this study is that the case of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan provides an illustrative example to make sense of populism as a medium of mass mobilization. Furthermore, it is argued that Erdoğan’s leadership can be best understood by taking into account how he manages political crises. Accordingly, through the examples of 2007, 2013 and 2016, which mark critical periods in Turkish politics, the article attempts to highlight the major characteristics of Erdoğan’s populist leadership.

In her article, ‘Measuring extraordinary rendition and international cooperation’, Rebecca Cordell seeks to subject the Rendition Flights Database to a model-based, statistical analysis. She argues that her analysis suggests that more countries were involved in the CIA’s rendition programme than our work has previously established, and that many more flights in the database are likely to be connected to rendition operations than we have identified. While we would not dispute the likelihood that both of these statements are correct, and we have always presented our findings with an acknowledgement that they provide a necessarily limited account of the rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) programme, we suggest that Cordell’s work should be approached with some caution. This is so for two reasons. First, her findings – although derived through a different mode of analysis from our own – do not appear to move beyond those we have already published. Second, because Cordell has not triangulated her analysis with either data relating to transfers of specific prisoners, or with evidence relating to which countries hosted prisons for the CIA and the operational dates for these prisons, we question her claim that the flights she has identified from the Database are ‘likely rendition flights’. We aim to demonstrate the importance of having a clear understanding of the limitations of big data when researching violations of human rights, especially where such data is related to covert operations. We also seek to show why the Renditions Flights Database only has merit when it is triangulated with a wide range of supplementary sources, including first-hand accounts by prisoners themselves, declassified documents from the US Government, and the findings of parliamentary, journalist and legal investigations. It is this process of triangulation which gives the flight data meaning and which makes it of value for establishing the facts of human rights abuses.

In my article, “Measuring extraordinary rendition and international cooperation” I present a model that can be used to measure extraordinary rendition and identify international cooperation in the Central Intelligence Agency’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program using public flight data and information on rendition flight characteristics. My analysis identifies 307 new likely rendition flights and 15 previously unidentified countries potentially involved. In response, Blakeley and Raphael argue that these results do not move beyond what they have already published, and also challenge the claim that these flights are “likely rendition flights” as they have not been triangulated by further evidence. However, it seems inconsistent to claim both that: (a) the findings are not new; and (b) the findings are wrong. I respond to their concerns by providing a detailed evaluation of my results in relation to their own findings. I demonstrate that there are important differences between the results in Blakeley and Raphael’s previous work and my own. I reinforce my earlier claim that triangulating these new results with reliable qualitative evidence is a crucial step.