Patrick Furlong

The Awkward Embrace: One-Party Domination and Democracy

Democracies derive their resilience and vitality from the fact that the rule of a particular majority is usually only of a temporary nature. By looking at four case-studies, The Awkward Embrace studies democracies of a different kind; rule by a dominant party which is virtually immune from defeat. Such systems have been called Regnant or or Uncommon Democracies. They are characterized by distinctive features: the staging of unfree or corrupt elections; the blurring of the lines between government, the ruling party and the state; the introduction of a national project which is seen to be above politics; and the erosion of civil society. This book addresses major issues such as why one such democracy, namely Taiwan, has been moving in the direction of a more competitive system; how economic crises such as the present one in Mexico can transform the system; how government-business relations in Malaysia are affecting the base of the dominant party; and whether South Africa will become a one-party dominant system.

Ethnic nationalism and state power : the rise of Irish nationalism, Afrikaner nationalism and Zionism

Preface Acknowledgements Introduction An Analytical Framework Ethnicity and Ideology Economy and Organisation Ethnic Conflict and State-Making The International System and Legitimacy Conclusions Bibliography Index

Germany and the Union of South Africa in the Nazi Period.

Preface German-South African Relations before 1933 Early Tensions Domestic Developments, 1936 Domestic Developments, 1937 Domestic Tensions, 1938 Pre-War and War Bibliography Index

Apartheid, Afrikaner Nationalism and the Radical Right: Historical Revisionism in Hermann Giliomee's The Afrikaners

The Afrikaners is an impressive book, daunting in length and sweeping in scope. Professor Giliomee claims ‘empathy but without partisanship’ @. xiii), yet tellingly quotes Irish historian Roy Foster: ‘apology is easier than explaining’ (p. xvii), thereby pointing to the controversial perspective on Afrikaner nationalism and apartheid that underpins this book, in which explanation at times becomes defence. The author, striving to correct the unfairness and distortion of many previous accounts, suggests that too often these overlook the Afrikaner’s legitimate struggle for what N.P. Van Wyk Louw called ‘survival in justice’ (pp. xviii-ix, 663), a concept that is difficult to reconcile with the experience of apartheid. It may seem surprising that the author, a noted critic of apartheid, appears to have embraced Afrikaner nationalism of a sort. Yet recently as a leader of the ‘Group of 63’ he has become an outspoken champion of the Afrikaans language and culture, and has been invited to address the Afrikanerbond the non-racial successor to the Afrikaner Broederbond (AB) and the Federasie van Afiikaanse Kultuuwereniginge (FAK), formerly the chief AB cultural ‘front organisation’.’ Disillusioned with many aspects of the ‘new’ South Africa (including high crime, the declining status of Afrikaans and reduced job prospects for whites), he argues that in the transition from apartheid to democracy, F.W. de Klerk ‘lacked the

The National Party of South Africa: A Transnational Perspective

The National Party (NP) dominated South Africa’s modern Right. Founded in 1914 to defend the interests of Afrikaners (descendants of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch, German, and French colonists), it ruled from 1924 to 1934 and 1948 to 1994. In the years it was not in power, it led the opposition in an all-white parliament. In this period, its embrace of hard Right ideas peaked. From 1948 on, it moderated its stance on, for example, anti-Semitism but increased repression and segregation (“apartheid”). The NP distanced itself from “foreign ideologies,” claiming roots in the nineteenth-century Afrikaner “Boer” republics1 yet had a complex relationship with the international Right.