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Shock and Awe: Interpretations of the Events of September 11

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Lisa Anderson
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Abstract

Scholars have usually understood the problem of democratic consolidation in terms of the creation of mechanisms that make possible the avoidance of populist excesses, polarized conflicts, or authoritarian corporatist inclusion that undermined free politics in much of postwar Latin America. This article makes the case that, under contemporary liberal economic conditions, the nature of the challenge for democratization has changed in important ways. Earlier problems of polarization had their roots in the long-present statist patterns of economic organization. By contrast, under free-market conditions, democratic consolidation faces a largely distinct set of challenges: the underarticulation of societal interests, pervasive social atomization, and socially uneven political quiescence founded in collective action problems. These can combine to undermine the efficacy of democratic representation and, consequently, regime legitimacy. The article utilizes data from the Latin American region since the 1970s on development, economic reform, and individual and collective political participation to show the effects of a changing state-economy relationship on the consolidation of democratic politics.

Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2004

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References

1 Phil Scraton was in a hotel room in Verona, watching the news on television (p. 1); Craig Calhoun was across the street from the World Trade Center (p. 1).

2 As Abbas Amanat points out: “Since the end of the Second World War, the area extending from Egypt and Turkey in the west to Afghanistan in the northeast and Yemen in the south has suffered at least ten major wars—and that's not counting the U.S. engagement in Afghanistan after September 11”; Amanat, “Empowered through Violence: The Reinventing of Islamic Extremism,” in Talbott and Chanda, 28. The gun statistic is cited in Mick North, “Dangers of the Armed Response at Home,” in Scraton, 163.

3 Robert Jervis, “An Interim Assessment of September 11: What Has Changed and What Has Not?” in Caraley, 180. Caraley's own remarks are in the forward, x.

4 Jervis (fn. 3), 179; Talbott and Chanda, “Introduction,” in Talbott and Chanda, ix.

5 John Lewis Gaddis tells us “everything had changed”; Gaddis, in “And Now This: Lessons from the Old Era for the New One,” in Talbott and Chanda, 3. Paul Bracken tells us it was a “watershed”; Bracken, “Rethinking the Unthinkable: New Priorities for National Security,” in Talbott and Chanda, 174.

6 John Pilger, “An Unconscionable Threat to Humanity,” in Scraton, 27–28. “Fareed Zakaria, “The Return of History: What September 11 Hath Wrought,” in Hoge and Rose, 308.

8 Hoge and Rose, “Introduction,” in Hoge and Rose, be.

9 Berger and Sutphen, “Commandeering the Palestinian Cause: Bin Laden's Belated Concern,” in Hoge and Rose, 123.

10 Said, “Clash of Civilization .. . A Fateful Prophecy That May Come True,” in Kjok, 159.

11 Der Derian, “9/11: Before, After and In Between” in Calhoun, Price, and Timmer, 175.

12 Koh, “Preserving American Values: The Challenge at Home and Abroad,” in Talbott and Chanda, 168.

13 Fullinwider, “Terrorism, Innocence and War,” in Gehring, 28–29. “Readers should know that I was a member of the board of directors of the Social Science Research Council when these essays were commissioned and have subsequently become chair of that board. I was not involved in the decisions to create the website, solicit the articles, or publish them in these books.

15 Chomsky, “September 11 Aftermath: Where Is the World Heading?” in Scraton, 71.

16 Laqueur, “Left, Right and Beyond: The Changing Face of Terror,” in Hoge and Rose, 71.

1; Kaba, “Opening Speech,” in Kjok, 25.

18 Ajami, “The Uneasy Imperium: Pax Americana in the Middle East,” in Hoge and Rose, 28.

19 Armstrong, “Was It Inevitable? Islam through History” in Hoge and Rose, 56.

20 Barbara D. Metcalf, “‘Traditionalist’ Islamic Activism: Deoband, Tablighis, and Talibs,” in Calhoun, Price, and Timmer, 54.

21 Modood, “Muslims and the Politics of Multiculturalism in Britain,” in Hershberg and Moore, 195.

22 Juergensmeyer, “Religious Terror and Global War,” in Calhoun, Price, and Timmer, 29.

23 Riva Kastoryano, “The Reach of Transnationalism,” in Hershberg and Moore, 222.

24 Bresser-Pereira, “After Balance-of-Powers Diplomacy, Globalization's Politics,” in Hershberg and Moore, 109.

25 Kaldor, “Beyond Militarism, Arms Races and Arms Control,” in Calhoun, Price, and Timmer, 162.

26 Benhabib, “Unholy Wars: Reclaiming Democratic Virtues after September 11,” in Calhoun, Price, and Timmer, 244.

27 Keohane, “The Globalization of Informal Violence Theories of World Politics, and ‘the Liberalism of Fear,’” in Calhoun, Price, and Timmer, 81.

28 Zolberg, “Guarding the Gates,” in Calhoun, Price, and Timmer, 298.

29 Caraley and Cooley, “September 11: An Overview,” in Caraley, 6.

30 Jayasuriya, “September 11, Security, and the Postliberal Politics of Fear,” in Hershberg and Moore, 139,141.

31 Betts, “The Soft Underbelly of American Primacy: Tactical Advantages of Terror,” in Caraley, 36. As Paul Bracken put it: “The Department of Defense is, in a very real sense, misnamed. In the decade after the Cold War, it could have been named the Department of Regional Stability, or peacekeeping, or the Containment of Rogue States, or even what it had been called up until 1947—the Department of War. The term and concept of defense were stretched to absurd lengths.... The only thing left out was the defense of the American people”; Bracken, in Talbott and Chanda, 182.

32 Bishara, “The Impact of September 11 on Palestine,” in Kjok, 86.

33 Flynn, “The Unguarded Homeland: A Study in Malign Neglect,” in Hoge and Rose, 187.

34 Richard K. Berts, “Intelligence Test: The Limits of Prevention,” in Hoge and Rose, 154.

35 Luban, “The War on Terrorism and the End of Human Rights,” in Gehring, 51.

36 Mandelbaum, “Diplomacy in Wartime: New Priorities and Alignments,” in Hoge and Rose, 255.

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38 Held, “Violence, Law, and Justice in a Global Age,” in Calhoun, Price, andTimmer, 101.

39 Cumings, “Black September, Infantile Nihilism, and National Security,” in Calhoun, Price, and Timmer, 198–99.

40 Kuran, “The Religious Undertow of Muslim Economic Grievances,” in Calhoun, Price, and Timmer, 73.

41 Gaddis, “And Now This: Lessons from the Old Era for the New One,” in Taibott and Chanda, 20.

42 Bhargava, “Ordinary Feelings, Extraordinary Events: Moral Complexity in 9/11,” in Calhoun, Price, and Timmer, 323.

43 Meyers, “Terrorism and the Assault on Politics,” in Calhoun, Price, and Timmer, 269.

44 Stork, “The Human Rights Crisis in the Middle East in the Aftermath of September 11,” in Kjok, 42.

45 Kennedy, “Maintaining American Power: From Injury to Recovery,” in Talbott and Chanda, 78.