Letter from the Editor:

INTRODUCTION

This edition represents the tenth instalment and fifth year of our biannual journal. Throughout this edition in particular, we have seen yet another strong showing in terms of popularity and interest, with the total number of submissions standing at nearly sixty. From this, we have selected a total of fifteen submissions, noted for their academic rigour, originality, and insight. I hope that this edition provides those interested in political academia with new insights and those who are new to the discipline with a foundation to build upon.

These articles address a wide range of issues in politics and have been categorised into five sections. This categorisation showcases the interdisciplinary nature of studying political affairs but also enables readers to easily identify the subfield that is most suited to their interests. As such, the following sections, which had separate editorial teams working within them, form the structure of this edition. These are: International Relations, Comparative Politics, Political History, Political Thought and Political Science. Whilst many of the articles do indeed belong to multiple sections and disciplines, their final grouping as displayed here is based on which section their research has the most profound impact on.

Given the sheer diversity of submissions in this edition, it is difficult to isolate a single running theme to link them together. It is perhaps best not to do so, given the danger of crafting a superficial summary of them. They certainly do stand exceptionally well in isolation. What may be helpful, however, is to identify links between submissions in each subfield, to emphasise how they provide a holistic and cohesive display of the discipline they represent. Therefore, the following summary attempts to find ways to bind sections together by identifying common themes and issues among the articles in them.

THE ARTICLES

We start this edition with the International Relations section of the Journal – both the most populated field in terms of final published articles (four in total) and also the subfield that received the most prospective submissions. The popularity of IR perhaps stems from its sustained relevance in foreign policy, for both states and international organisations, and its attempt to theorise about and contend with some of the most salient global political issues today: Climate Change, Peace and Conflict, Economic Interdependence and Human Rights.

This section begins with James Loftus’ piece, exploring France’s ongoing policy tilt towards the Indo-Pacific region. The article originally picks apart this strategy of forging stronger bilateral policies with ‘middle powers’ to strengthen French security. Whilst this policy is certainly not a unique strategy (other European powers, including the UK, have completed similar shifts), the focus on France is useful in highlighting some of the risks associated with the policy. In particular, Loftus concludes the article by arguing that France’s ‘third way’ in the Indo-Pacific has largely failed, which provides us with evidence of the potentially low returns involved with such a strategy. Yet, the piece is an excellent indication of the willingness many Western states now have to reorient their foreign policy strategies as global relations become more uncertain.

Whilst Loftus focuses on bilateral policy in terms of inter-state relations, Lisa Lefebvre-Risso analyses securitisation in a regional context. The article explores a changing EU approach, which has increasingly shifted its aid policy in Africa (specifically the European Union Emergency Trust Fund) towards securitisation rather than exclusively humanitarian concerns. This follows archetypal, critical development discourses such as those provided by Arturo Escobar and Mark Duffield, finding a link between development and security wherein underdeveloped regions are thought of as ‘dangerous’. The findings Lefebvre-Risso presents in her article provide a great formulation and study of this, using official reports as the analytical basis and focusing specifically on the attempt to manage migration in a governmentality sense.

The next article in this section, ‘Remote Warfare: A Politically Expedient but Conceptually Flawed Construct’, explores how remote warfare is used as a political tool to create a sense of ‘cleanness’, in many cases unsuccessfully, both in military and democratic integrity terms. By employing concrete examples and problematising concepts regarding such warfare, Castellón Ramiro provides us with insight into how remote warfare should not simply be seen as revolutionising warfare in military and strategic terms, but as a ‘politically convenient alternative’ for politicians to remove risk and increase political military mandates.

The final article in this section moves to a local-level context. Zoe Carver illustrates themes of integration, legitimacy and local dynamics in the context of the forcible expulsion of Mauritanians to neighbouring Senegal. She investigates how interstate migration is experienced differently depending on a range of social factors, including kinship ties, discrimination, as well as political factors such as government policy. Carver’s work ties ethnography to broader implications about post-conflict states, highlighting that belonging is always a negotiated privilege rather than a given right in such contexts. This piece is uniquely placed in the international relations section, as it underlines how different methodologies of political research (in this case, ethnography) can be used in the IR discipline. This, along with the other pieces in the IR section, demonstrates well the breadth of IR as a field, and equally the importance of our study of it. I hope this section provides readers with new knowledge and motivation to study these topics further.

Next, the edition moves on to Comparative Politics, for which two articles have been published, both representing excellent examples of what this unique field has to offer. Despite focusing on drastically different substantive and geographical areas, these articles illustrate how political structures, narratives and agency intersect. Firstly, Tannishtha Sethi’s piece focuses on the success of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) programmes in Rwanda, comparing them to the fragmented system in Uganda. She argues through the use of quantitative analyses that UHC reduces economic insecurity amongst a population and drastically improves their overall health. On its own as a concept, however, the benefits would not be visible – Sethi instead cites the need for rigorous long-term institutional planning to ensure a successful programme. This work therefore provides important implications for government health policies and strategies, especially in Uganda.

Secondly, and to conclude this section, Luciana Barreto looks into a different side of comparative politics, qualitatively analysing the different strategies and techniques used by Fujimori and Castillo in the 2021 Peruvian election. The study uncovers how social and identity divides within Peru were used to steer strategy, with either side building on domestic polarisation to ‘disqualify’ and claim illegitimacy for the other candidate. Rather than providing recommendations for better health policy governance, Barreto’s study illustrates implications for democratic processes in Latin America, arguing specifically that social divides can be exploited by campaigners.

From this, the edition proceeds to Political History, a section containing three articles, ranging in both temporal and geographical scope. From the experiences of localised histories of colonial subjugation in Ghanaian public schools, to theorisations about the formation of the early-modern European state, to debates about what post-Ottoman Turkey would look like, these pieces were selected for their originality, wide-ranging issue-framing, and academic rigour. Readers will enjoy the breadth of research in this section, which, despite their differing foci, all highlight the deep intertwining of current political governance structures, experiences, and agendas with past events, processes, and decisions. Indeed, they all underline how the past continues to dictate and manifest within the politics of today and will continue to do so.

The first of these pieces is written by Francesca Arkorful, who studies the ongoing experience of indirect colonial subjugation in Ghanaian public schools, specifically surrounding hair regulations. This piece crafts an excellently nuanced and researched argument, which traces current school policies in Ghana to historical cultural suppression and identity enforcement. Whilst this work is situated in a specific and localised context, Arkorful uses this to make convincing claims about the need to decolonise ‘educational practices’ and to affirm, rather than suppress and police, cultural expressions of identity in postcolonial states generally.

From this, the section moves on to Arthur Krön’s article, which focuses on what factors led to the resilience of representative parliaments when the early modern European state was being consolidated. Whilst a vastly different context to Arkorful’s work, Krön illustrates similarly how pre-modern political institutions survive even when their original function becomes obsolete, due to complex historical continuities involving conflict and negotiation. Whilst there was a drastic change in this period of European history, Krön illustrates how some seemingly obsolete institutions survive – the parliamentary governance structure is one such phenomenon. Instead of simply observing this phenomenon, however, Krön provides a detailed analysis of why this was the case, arguing that military success was a key driver of parliamentary survival.

Finally, the section concludes with Jude Konyar’s study of the impact and relevance of Atatürk’s speech ‘Nutuk’, as he became the first president of the Republic of Turkey. This speech was massively influential in writing the historical narrative of Turkish history. In spite of this, Konyar argues that Nutuk needs to be understood in a more nuanced way, which is argued very clearly and poignantly throughout the piece. This, along with the other two pieces in this section, have been drawn together to highlight how political history is as much about the stories we tell about the past as it is about the structures we inherit from it.

Moving on, the Political Thought section includes three vastly different studies tackling broader interdisciplinary issues and themes. Firstly, Kerem Mumyakmaz provides us with a detailed insight into the political thought of Ziya Gökalp (1876-1924). Specifically, this study successfully highlights misrepresentations of Gökalp, which often ignore historical context or employ conflated logic. As opposed to this, Mumyakmaz attempts to place Gökalp as a tactician in the Turkish sociopolitical context. This original account has implications for modern tensions between secularism and religion, as it uses Gökalp’s thought to highlight Islam as a ‘sociopolitical tool’ rather than ‘strictly theological’.

Whilst Mumyakmaz provides a detailed account in the tradition of political thought of the link between historical thought/developments and contemporary policy, Shiqing Xiao, in a somewhat similar vein, attempts to analyse the extent to which historical Chinese tradition will impact contemporary Chinese foreign policy. Whilst this is based in an International Relations subcategory, Xiao attempts to reconcile the importance (or indeed unimportance) of countries’ philosophical positions and traditions with ‘amoral principles of Legalism’. Again, this has contemporary implications for analysts of Chinese foreign policy and also contemporary realpolitik scholarly works.

Finally, the section concludes with a collaborative piece from Lorenzo Silvestri, Oskar Steiner, and Paul Janson, focusing at a local level on the ‘intersection of personal issues with socio-political themes through Stand-Up comedy in Paris, France. Overall, they find this form of comedy to be a vehicle and outlet for political expression. Similarly to the two other articles in this section, these authors highlight the importance of prioritising a contextual rather than essentialist reading of political thought and themes, using Paris in this case, to further their thesis. Overall, these articles shed light on how identity-making, as evidenced through changes and developments in political thought, is always negotiated, contested, processual and context-driven rather than simply inherited.

The concluding section of the journal is ‘Political Science’, a fairly recent tradition in political thinking and yet one of the most populated in political academia. This, along with ‘International Relations’, as mentioned above, were the two most submitted works. After considering all the submissions and ranking them thoroughly, the three pieces published here showcase the breadth and depth of this field, and crucially, the impactful policy influences the field can create. Across these three articles, the authors touch on themes of visibility and the construction (and contestation) of narratives. The following touches on what each article contributes to the journal.

The first article, written by Angela Gutierrez, explores how TikTok has been used by Palestinians as a form of resistance, especially through the documentation and sharing of the realities these civilians are facing in conflict. Whilst political communication and resistance are not new, many have debated around how or whether social media has concretely changed such movements. This piece is therefore an insightful, original and contextually grounded work that answers that question. Gutierrez argues overall that social media has transformed methods of political engagement as well as ‘democratic participation’.

This is therefore a much-needed piece to help scholars and policymakers orient the topic of political communication through social media.

Moving on from this, Adam Hamdan turns from digital platforms to institutional power, offering an extensive quantitative evaluation of Supreme Court cases regarding religion. Hamdan investigates whether there is ‘religious preference’ on the court, and if so, which religious groups is this preference given to. The key aim here is to understand the impact of the trends towards increased ‘religious fervour’ evident through court rulings. As discussed, this work of political science research demonstrates key implications for what religious freedom is increasingly looking like from a legal perspective. This is even more important given that the literature surrounding religious-liberty cases is very much still qualitative, rather than quantitative. The incorporation of variables and 105 Supreme Court cases in the dataset, therefore, importantly reorientates the scholarly debate towards statistical analysis.

Finally, rounding off both this section of the journal and the journal as a whole, is Malak Afifi’s piece, which discusses how during parliamentary elections in Slovakia, AI fabricated audio clips falsely implicating the opposition ostensibly boosted voter support for populist leader Robert Fico. Although research into the politicisation of AI is relatively new, Afifi demonstrates that it is perhaps one of the most vital fields of study. The conclusion underscores this, highlighting how AI was indeed used to amplify what is termed the ‘Trump Effect’, wherein many voters, previously ambivalent to the Slovakian parliamentary elections in 2023, were impelled to participate. Like Gutierrez in the first piece of this section, Afifi notes the powerful effect that technological developments are having on political communication and, therefore, similarly calls for the need to increase the study of it.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The Cambridge Journal of Political Affairs aims to provide a platform for young scholars to showcase their skills, develop their editing skills and become involved in the process of a journal publication. However, the longer-form journals, such as this one, are not the only work the CJPA produces. Indeed, the continuation of our seminars, the short-form content, and essay competitions all form the broader ethos of the CJPA – to nurture young talent and involve them in the academic world.

Whilst not all of our authors in this edition of the long-form journal are undergraduate students (which was the case for previous volumes), all submissions were initially written for university-assessed coursework, both for undergraduate and postgraduate study. The authors are diverse not only in their academic backgrounds but also in the range of institutions they represent. Indeed, out of the 59 total prospective submissions, only 7 (11.9%) studied at the University of Cambridge, highlighting how the vast majority of submissions were from external students.

The editorial team, listed at the beginning of the journal, have been working alongside me since January to deliver this edition of the CJPA, and the whole executive team and I are grateful for their contributions. The team for this year was our largest yet, with a total of 35 editors at all levels. All teams in each section worked very well throughout the process, and the success of the journal is thanks to their efforts.

There were also some changes to the editorial process, most important of which was the scrapping of both the ‘test-run’ practice in January and junior editor forms. This meant that junior editors could directly suggest edits on the initial manuscripts instead of writing up a form with suggestions. This decision was made to increase the efficiency of the process, and overall, this seemed to help ease the copy-editing workload in the later stages of the publication process. Apart from this, the pre-review process remained the same, bar the addition of a criterion ‘referencing quality’ to judge submissions by. Another stipulation for submitted pieces we had, as mentioned above, was that they must be university-assessed coursework. This was to ensure that plagiarism would be of a much lower risk and that the quality of submissions was higher.

For their contributions to this improvement in our review processes, we are also thankful to the members of our Oversight Board, composed of academics from the Department of Politics and International Studies here at the University of Cambridge. We sincerely wish to thank Duncan Kelly, Ayşe Zarakol, and members of Cambridge University Press and the Cambridge Review of International Affairs for their patience and support.

We hope that this edition of the journal offers readers well-versed in politics some new angles to move their thinking towards, or offers those new to academia in political affairs, a good entry point to spark future interest. The articles published here are evidence of what each subfield has to offer. With their varying methodology, contextual bases, theories, conclusions and recommendations, these pieces come together to form an excellent exemplar of what studying politics can achieve. They also serve as a reminder of why the study of politics remains essential, both for understanding the present and shaping the future.

Max Fullalove

Editor in Chief

Volume 6, Issue 1