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This paper argues for conceptually dislocating national identity from the nation-state, so that we can recognise the risks and opportunities for global inclusion that national identity presents. The paper offers two arguments for this dislocation approach. First the origins of national identity lie in international mobility and exchange. Second, the contemporary experience with national identity frequently exceeds and may in fact be re-shaping the nation-state. The paper then considers two risks of this dislocation. One is that the strategic choices of individuals with multiple national identities will create unfairness or inequity, the other is that the interpenetration of national identity into the affairs of other states creates problems for democracy. Yet these practices can also provide avenues for representing complex patterns of mobility and attachment, as well as integrating the fates of disparate states, which means they present resources - as well as risks - for global inclusion. So if national identity does not neatly map on to the state structure, and is unlikely to ever do so without considerable conflict and alienation, then we should seek ways to bring out the inclusive potential of such dislocation, while minimizing its tendency to generate patterns of privilege or influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even as the Bush administration has adopted a distinctly unilateral and realpolitik approach to foreign policy, it has defended its actions on grounds of restoring democracy and respect for human rights in the states where it intervenes, going so far as to incorporate the language of political liberty into the title of the Iraqi invasion operation, Operation Iraqi Freedom. But what do we know more generally about the actual role of human rights and democracy in nations? foreign policies? In particular, under what conditions does the status of human rights in one state affect other states? policies toward it? And to what extent, if any, do aid donors take human rights into account in aid decisions relative to other criteria?Inconsistencies are often noted between public commitment to aid policy based on good governance and the often-made criticism that foreign assistance often seems to follow trade rather than democracy. My research demonstrates that under certain conditions, this inconsistency is not due to intentional prevarication at the level of public statements, but rather due to two key factors. First, a substantial gulf exists between the goals and perceptions of those who make foreign aid policy at the highest levels and those responsible for executing its disbursement. Second, in some conditions a sort of reverse logic exists that results in states with lower levels of democracy intentionally recieving more aid.Decisions about aid are fundamentally governed by a calculus on the part of states who want to maximize gains from trade with recipient states when there are sufficient gains to be had, but may nod to principle when there are not. In fact, there is a tipping point at which we can expect recipient democracy to come into play. These hypotheses are empirically assessed through detailed content analysis of correspondence surrounding aid decisions in both the UK and Canada over the past twenty-five years. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although violent threats are progressively more sophisticated, frequent, and deadly, this paper will argue that the root causes are not new. Ralph Bunche posited that to ensure peace, the principles and practice of true justice, equality, human rights, and democracy must be secured. However, instead of creating the foundation for enduring peace, we are witnessing the rise of inequality within and between nations. Indeed, even as the number of political regimes classified as ?democracies? increases, economic rights are deteriorating and social cleavages are growing within the current hegemonic order. Following Bunche?s intellectual tradition, which I argue is part of the historical materialist one, and using a critical realist method of analysis, I contend that the neo-liberal paradigm, now directing global transformation, is generating a complex supranational structure that compels states, competing in the global arena, to serve as conduit of global capital. States within this emergent global order move towards a common model, which consists of three mutually reinforcing elements. These are: a neoliberal economy, which aims at the ascendancy of market forces; a Weberian bureaucracy, reflecting processes of rationalization; and ?low-intensity democracy,? which focuses on formal electoral rights, with little consideration for the wider socioeconomic power structure. To elaborate, today?s global liberal market sustains a new strain of capitalism, one that concentrates an inordinate amount of power in the hands of corporations at the expense of ?democracy.? Contrary to what the neo-Marxist literature argues, the paper maintains that even though we will continue to witness opposition against this process, through different means, this will not result in the ?ultimate class struggle.? Instead we will see ?consensual? forms of social control with their mechanisms of ideological hegemony, and worldwide ?class warfare? among the poor, and between the poor and the middle class, whose members witness a decline in their standard of living. I argue that global capitalism, then, simultaneously creates integration at the structural level and fragmentation at the microlevel. Indeed, it exacerbates national, class, racial, and cultural disparities, interdicting the development of class solidarity. This study focuses on the emerging ?low-intensity democracy.? The research, through cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses, which employ both quantitative and qualitative methods, will examine the level of democracy in ?developing? (Bolivia and Uganda) and ?developed? states (Germany and Britain). Each states? level of democracy is then compared to the relative condition to one another and against itself over the previous decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the quantitative conflict literature employs data sets that draw a large portion of their cases from 1945-1990. This historical period coincides with the U.S.-Soviet bipolar competition and security arrangements associated with that competition. A debate within the democratic peace literature has emerged between those who view the democratic peace as a general phenomenon, and those who see democracy?s effect on international conflict as largely a function of the particular circumstances of the Cold War alignment. The critics of a general relationship between democracy and war focus specifically on the role of the United States as a leader of one of the bi-polar alliance blocks The possibility that observed relationships between democracy and war could be dependent on the particular historical circumstances of the Cold War raises the question: To what extent are other empirical findings about international conflict also a function of the hegemonic influence exercised by the superpowers during period? Using ordinal logistic regression to examine the pattern of third party joining this paper re-examines the extent to which the relationship between democracy and intervention as well as the relationships between variables commonly used to explain third party interventions in the conflict literature, such as proximity, power status, democracy, trade and alliances, are a function of the intervention choices of the United States during the Cold War. The paper finds that the intervention choice of the United States is by far the most important predictor of the intervention choices of other third parties to interstate wars. And that accounting for the intervention choices of the United States ?explains? away much of the general relationships observed in earlier studies. Interestingly enough though reduced in substantive importance, a statistical the relationship between shared democracy and joining remains even after accounting for U.S. intervention choice in this period. This finding suggests that the relationship between shared democracy and third party joining is not entirely dependent upon the exercise of American leadership during the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines writings on the subjects of international relations and lasting peace published by American, British and French citizens from the beginning of World War I through the foundation and reinforcement of the League of Nations (1914-1924). International relations is a relatively young academic discipline. It’s emergence coincides with the beginning of our short twentieth century and can be understood as one of the key consequences World War I’s impact on Western societies. The creation of international frameworks supposed to ensure a peaceful evolution of inter-state relations is a well-known subject. On the other hand, historians and international relations specialists have barely begun to study how citizens envisioned the forging of a new world order. Yet, citizens believed that both the tremendous human losses suffered during the war and the evolution of democracy in Western societies validated their participation in international affairs, traditionally the private domain of a small elite. From 1914 to 1924 hundreds of texts, pamphlets and academic monographs expressed such non-official views on international relations. These writings are surprisingly diverse in their interpretation of lasting peace and international relations. Beyond the conventional labels of idealist or utopian which are commonly used by their opponents to marginalize a discourse generally critical of the mainstream view, one discovers that the citizens who wrote on these topics were neither dreamers nor unaware of the realities of international affairs. Some points of view are based on religious or moral convictions, while others illustrate conservative, progressive or revolutionary political opinions. These authors are often defined as pacifists, although this qualification seems simplistic. For instance, several authors do not condemn war and recognize power politics as a fact. Most of them supported the Allied victory over Germany as a basis for redefining the international relations. Within the context of the ISA Conference on Hegemony and its Discontents, this paper will analyse the first major expressions of non-state actors aiming to challenge the established order of international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The name of the 45th Annual ISA Convention reminds of Joseph Stiglitz’s well-known book Globalization and its Discontents and makes one wonder whether globalization is synonymous, or is leading to, hegemony - of who, over whom, of what kind? The ongoing debates in the Russian social sciences are focusing on these issues, but the discourses they produce remain cloaked largely in mystery for much of the scientific maintream. This paper, based on the results of several large-scale research projects conducted at the initiative of Mikhail S. Gorbachev and his Foundation for Socio-Economic, International and Political Studies and carried out by a prominent group of Russian scholars, analyses the responses Russian political sociology and sociology of international relations provide to the challenges of globalization considered in the context of the New World Order, the transformation of power relations in world politics, and the emergence of new centers of hegemony in global governance. The paper demonstrates that the main thematic lines of analysis of the complexities of globalization in Russia are influenced by the need for the country which used to be a former world superpower to reassess its current position and role and to adjust to the drastic global transformations of which it has been one of the major causes. It provides evidence in support of the claim that the concepts of national sovereignty, self-determination, and political self-determination in particular, are the key instruments in the analysis of Russia’s role and place in the globalizing world. Drawing parallels between the Russian globalization studies and the seminal writings produced by Western authors, it addresses the issues of academic preponderance and diversity, domination and exclusion in the currents of international political sociology, considering the ways in which relations of ruling shape scholarly discourses. The three parts of the paper outline the major questions, or thematic blocks, connected to the study of globalization in Russia. The first part presents how globalization is defined, how it is linked to the issues of power and hegemony in global governance, and what are its main characteristics and contradictions as perceived in Russian contemporary social thought. The second part reveals the theoretical reaction to the globalization challenges resulting in the development of the concept of Russia’s political and economic self-determination, which is applied to the analysis of the country’s behavior in the globalizing world. The third part presents the critical analysis of Russia’s role and place in globalization. It elaborates on the theoretical debates about the forced integration into the international economic, political and informational structures, making an enormous effort and jumping into the wagon of the current winners, versus a messianic attitude declaring Russia’s necessity to take the lead of the losers of globalization, the discontents opposing the trends of global hegemony. Stressing the increasingly significant role of corporations and corporatism, which in Russia takes the form of oligarchic rule, it considers the impacts of Russia’s choice of authoritarianism or democracy on the future world order according to various scenarios developed by the Russian scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guatemala has been faced with a daunting set of issues since the signing of the country’s historical peace accords in December 1996. The prospects for consolidating peace and democracy have depended on the successful reform of political, legal, and military institutions as well as the re-negotiation of political participation, in particular equal and meaningful participation for historically marginalized groups. The hemisphere’s multilateral forum, the Organization of American States (OAS) has been supporting these reform efforts through various peacebuilding initiatives. Particularly relevant to the Guatemalan context is the fact that the OAS has recently expanded its peacebuilding and democracy strengthening agenda to include conflict prevention programs.  It is during the phase following the signing of peace accords that activities aimed at preventing a renewed outbreak of violent conflict are considered especially valuable. With this in mind, the Organization established a program to help Guatemalans address ongoing tensions and political disputes, particularly related to the implementation of the accords, before they spiral into destructive violence.  The program entitled Culture of Dialogue: Development of Resources for Peacebuilding in Guatemala (OAS-PROPAZ)  has focussed on strengthening the capacities of governmental, civic, and community institutions to manage and resolve disputes in collaborative ways. My paper argues that the PROPAZ programme represents an innovative and commendable initiative who’s achievements can be attributed to a confluence of factors: the right moment in time, the right staff, its fluid and adaptable nature. However, I conclude that it is unlikely that such a program can be easily replicated for a number of reasons which I outline in the last section of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early days of the Cold War, prominent students of American foreign policy firmly rejected the notion that the United States could initiate preventive wars against its adversaries. Preventive war is a persistent theme in the history of international politics. Unlike a conflict fought over a specific disputed issue, preventive war is fought to prevent the erosion of relative power to a rising adversary (even though that adversary does not pose an imminent threat). The logic of preventive war simply asserts that it is better to fight a war today under more favorable circumstances than to face a possible war in the future after an adversary has achieved military gains that raise the likely costs and risks of war for the dominant state. Despite the apparent rationality of initiating military conflict under these conditions, preventive war presents serious normative problems that have traditionally been considered too odious for a democratic state to overcome. Morgenthau, Kennan, Brodie, and Kissinger, among others, all argued that for democracies, launching preventive wars is taboo. More recent scholarship claims that no democracy has ever fought a preventive war because democratic public opinion simply considers preventive war, in the absence of a clear impending threat, to be morally abhorrent (even against a morally abhorrent adversary). ..ASA-Events of the past year, however, fundamentally challenge this claim about democracy and preventive war. Less than a year after President Bush declared that America would not tolerate unbalanced dictators seeking weapons of mass destruction, the United States was engaged in a preventive war against Iraq that ended with the destruction of the Iraqi regime and American occupation. Coupled with the president’s National Security Strategy of September 2002 that articulated a general vision of fighting pre-emptive wars in such cases, this event generated broad speculation and debate over whether America would turn its military might next against Syria, Iran or North Korea. In this period of weak international constraints on how America uses its power abroad, the potential for domestic constraints becomes crucial for understanding the degree to which American hegemony will be restrained in coming years. This paper examines several aspects of this issue. First, it measures the extent of anti-preventive war sentiment that actually exists in the United States as reflected in Congress and among the American public. Evidence for this question was generated from content analysis of the congressional debate over war with Iraq and public opinion surveys before the war. Second, it examines a related question: does congressional and public support for war with Iraq mean that the logic of preventive war has fully trumped the normative limits that may have prevented the United States from engaging in this particular form of war in the past? The paper presents evidence showing that domestic support for war cannot be explained outside the context of the terror attacks of September 11. It was not the purported threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction development that motivated majority support, but the link the administration drew between Iraq and terrorists that moved many to accept war. Third, the paper examines whether 9/11 has produced a shift in domestic attitudes about preventive war that extends beyond the Iraq case. To what extent do members of Congress and the public accept the general logic of preventive war as articulated in the administration’s pre-emption strategy? To what degree does anti-preventive war sentiment still exist in the U.S. after the Iraq war? To what extent are members of Congress and the public willing to support the logic of preventive war in other cases? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the post-Cold War period, democracy has come to be seen as virtually the only legitimate form of government in Latin America. This paper explores the role of international and regional organizations in promoting and protecting democracies, especially in moments of severe political crisis. Specifically, the paper looks at crises in Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina to understand how IGO’s react to different kinds of crises, the variations between regions, and the different roles assumed by different organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research examining the impact of democratic governance on the behavior of states in the international system has focused primarily on the contrast between democracies and non-democracies. Past research has demonstrated that democratic states are more likely to experience trade disputes at the GATT than are their non-democratic counterparts. This paper extends this research to examine the impact of different types of democratic institutions on the trade dispute propensity of states. By focusing on the community of democracies, this paper explores the effects of variations in domestic institutions on state behavior. Using a new dataset of trade disputes and the World Bank Database of Political Institutions, this paper demonstrates that variation in domestic institutions has a significant effect on the propensity of states to engage in trade conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using initial findings of an ongoing international comparative research project, this paper concludes that institution-building in post-conflict societies -strengthening the independence, accountability, transparency, influence and sustainability of recipient organizations- has received little attention in donor?s democracy programs. As a result, the long-term impact of international assistance on the process of democratization in these countries is limited. After exploring some of the historical roots of democracy promotion as a particular foreign policy and development cooperation objective, the paper highlights the major accomplishments and setbacks of electoral, human rights and media assistance to eight post-conflict countries: Cambodia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, El Salvador and Guatemala. Findings indicate several major problems with post-conflict assistance. Firstly, it is shown that despite the differing contexts, the international community has applied a similar assistance strategy, relying mainly on the motto ?after elections, civil society is our best bet for democracy?. Secondly, experiences in most countries seem to indicate that there is an ever-widening gap between the theoretical ?democracy template? and actual assistance on the ground. Finally, findings show that post-conflict democracy programs consist mainly of technical, material and financial assistance and dispersed, short-term project aid. This aid may have spurred the growth of many training activities and NGOs that excel in organizing workshops and seminars, but country case studies show that these initiatives have proven unsustainable and not very influential for the process of democratization in post-conflict societies. With the aim of improving future democracy assistance, the paper concludes with some tentative policy recommendations, ranging from parliamentary-controlled budget support to better institutional assessments and selective core-funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Never has humanity had so many instruments and mechanisms at its reach to protect human rights. Yet, the passage from a defensive attitude of negation of the state’s responsibilities for gross human rights violations to one of transparency and acceptance of monitoring by international multilateral bodies and civil society organizations has not come easily. Despite persistent high levels of human rights violations, Brazil enters the twenty-first century with an institutional structure that will promote the advance of a society more respectful of human rights. Indeed, the official recognition of the gravity and centrality of human rights for national development has broken the hegemony of the state in the realm of justice and engaged the participation of non-state actors in the construction of a more just and democratic Brazil. In a new context of shared responsibilities, the Brazilian government has argued that human rights norms are not against but rather complementary to sovereignty, reinforcing the idea that there is an effective gain in legitimacy attached to the norm. This paper will argue that there are concrete gains in following a human rights agenda, even in a country like Brazil. In this perspective, I suggest that there is now a political economy of human rights in the sense that a mosaic of actors have entwined norms and interests in promoting the cause. In Brazil, perhaps as in the case of other developing, emerging democracies, the interests are gains in international legitimacy (imported legitimacy), as well as the desire for development at home. The process is neither evident nor self-assuming, and this paper is aimed at retracing the sociology of power embedded in the construction of a human rights discourse and regime in Brazil during the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the movement for gender equality in contemporary Spanish politics. This movement, known as the democratic parity movement, is composed of a loose grouping of feminist activists in left-wing political parties and women’s groups in favor of greater numbers of women in state structures. It is a women’s movement for two reasons. First, its definition, content, development, and issues are specific to women. Second, it is part of a broader struggle for social change, in this case change of basic political institutions. As such, these activists revive claims advanced by the suffragists of the first wave women’s movement and the actions of the second wave to feminize these institutions. This paper examines this movement in two ways. First, it describes the reconfiguration of the Spanish state and asks what effects this reconfiguration might have on social movements in politics. Second, it examines the actual interactions between the parity movement and the reconfigured state, seeking to account for the movement’s strategies and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the nature and tensions within the vision of national identity produced and promoted in post-independence Algeria from independence in 1962 until the democratic opening of the late 1980s. It is argued that the Ben Bella, Boumedienne and Benjedid governments developed and pursued a vision of Algerian national identity that incorporated both socialism and Islam. This vision of Algerian national identity was promoted through discourse yet within the discourse there was an inherent tension or ambiguity that was reflected in the state’s actions towards and treatment of actors. The paper argues that this ambiguity of practice, combined with Islamic opposition to the vision of national identity promoted by the ruling regimes, helps explain the development of the Islamist movement specifically and the hostility and militancy of Islamic groups towards the state generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hunger strikes have been an important tactic in many well-known social movements of the last century as with Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, Irish nationalists, the student democracy movement in China and countless less-known instances. Examining current struggles in the world?from the Basque region of Spain, to Chechnya, Chiapas, Indonesia, Palestine, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Turkey, or Zimbabwe among others?reveals the continued significance of hunger strikes as a form of contentious politics. However, despite the widespread use of hunger strikes and their important place in contentious political activities, social movement scholars have made few empirical or theoretical contributions to understanding this phenomenon. Many rich biographical, historical, and journalistic accounts of hunger strikes exist, often focusing on cultural or psychological characteristics of the actors or the legal, ethical, and theological considerations of their actions. This paper extends this research by looking at the comparative trends in hunger strikes in the 20th century and emphasizing the socio-political motivations that challenge the existing social order?including demands for statehood, political recognition, democracy, economic and social justice, and human, civil, and political rights. Despite the significance of existing studies, there is little theoretical rigor that ties hunger strikes to other social movements research, nor is there any extension of hunger strikes beyond individual cases. This paper addresses these concerns, examining trends in hunger strike activities, developing typologies for their existence, and discussing them comparatively so as to determine how each fits at a broader level with regard to social movement theory. Using data assembled from the New York Times Index from 1900 to the present, this paper thus examines how, when, where, and why they hunger strikes have emerged, and by whom have they been utilized to seek social change. It expands the theoretical significance of hunger strikes and their importance to contentious politics and social movement dynamics, thus beginning to fill an important void in the empirical and theoretical literature. In this regard, this paper establishes an important foundation for analysis of this unique protest form, making a key contribution to understanding their complexities and relevance to contentious politics and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the gendered nature of economic development means the status of women must be included in an analysis of the link between economic development and democracy. Women do not participate in the process of economic development or benefit from its results in the same way men do. These differences impact structural and cultural changes that link economic development to democracy. Therefore, the status of women should be included in models linking economic development to democracy. In this paper, I discuss the literature linking development to democracy. Then, I demonstrate how economic development is gendered and theorize about the impact these differences will have on democracy. I conclude with some preliminary statistical support for my assertions and some thoughts on why gender matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial evidence supports the Democratic Peace, but little research has been conducted on the history of democratic nations acquiring overseas lands. This paper uses Goertz and Diehl’s Territorial Changes Dataset to find a relationship between distant territorial acquisitions and regime type. This paper finds a positive statistical relationship between democratic nations and overseas territorial holdings for all nations from 1815 to 1992. This evidence supports an institutional explanation for the Democratic Peace over a democratic norms explanation. A significant implication of this finding is that democratic nations might have more aggressive foreign policies under certain conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes the key developmental features of IR studies in three East Asian countries, Japan, Korea and China in terms of graduate training, academic professionalism and targeted audience. The comparison is sociological rather than directly relating the development of the discipline to the degree of feedom and democracy. Although the comparative description and analysis will be made of the three IR studies, the implicit object of comparison is the the development of IR studies in the United States. Major books and articles in local languages as well as in English will be used for this comparison. The time span that the paper covers is the last quarter of the last century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of democracy on terrorism is a subject of debate in the literature. Two theoretical arguments posit exactly opposite effects for democracy. One argument is that democracies offer access for citizens to seek recourse to their grievances and hence, resort to peaceful means to resolve conflicts of interest rather than violence terrorist acts. The other argument claims that democracies provide relative more freedom of movement, association, and access to government buildings, reducing the costs of conducting terrorist activities and hence, encouraging terrorism. The empirical evidence on the effect of democracy is mixed. In a series of papers, Eubank and Weinberg (1994, 1998, 2001) find that democracy is positively associated with terrorism. More important, terrorist attacks occur most often in the world’s stable democracies. Sandler (1995) challenges the early finding by Eubank and Weinberg (1994) on methodological grounds. In sharp contrast, Eyerman (1998) finds in a multivariate analysis that established democracies are less likely to experience terrorism than non-democracies, but new democracies are more likely to experience terrorist incidents than other types of states. In this paper, I re-assess the effect of democracy on transnational terrorism in a multivariate analysis. I argue that the mixed empirical evidence may have resulted from a number of reasons. First, all previous studies have not separated the causal mechanisms of democracy empirically. Hence, their findings capture at best the net effect of democracy, as both arguments possibly hold empirically. A better assessment of the effect of democracy needs to measure each of the causal mechanisms separately. Second, because data on terrorist incidents are collected from open sources and because democracies tend to have more press freedom, there exists an upward reporting bias of terrorist incidents for democratic countries. Without controlling for such bias explicitly, the validity of previous empirical evidence is most likely compromised. In this paper, I operationalize each of the causal mechanisms and the reporting bias explicitly to re-assess the effect of democracy on transnational terrorist incidents. I apply a multivariate analysis to a sample of about 127 countries from 1960 to 1999 using the ITERATE database. The findings have significant foreign policy implications for the war on terrorism and promoting democratic governance around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional wisdom has it that democracies wage counterinsurgent warfare in a less brutal fashion than their autocratic counterparts. While some scholars view this unwillingness to play rough as a source of weakness and democratic defeat, others argue that because winning the hearts and minds of the population is a more effective strategy than violence against civilians, nice guys finish first in anti-guerrilla warfare. This paper, while not uninterested in the relative effectiveness of these two strategies, focuses instead on the contention that democracies are less likely to respond to guerrilla insurgencies with deadly measures against noncombatants. To address this question, the study employs two complementary strategies. First, it uses statistical methods to examine a dataset of all colonial and imperial wars since 1815 to determine the relative frequency of intentional, systematic violence against civilians by democracies and autocracies, as well as to identify important predictors of civilian victimization. The principal finding is that there is little difference between democracies and dictatorships in their propensity to victimize civilians: when the opponent seeks to protract and raise the costs of war, this increases the likelihood that states of all regime types will respond by turning against noncombatants. Second, the paper examines in detail the case of the Riff Rebellion in Morocco in the 1920s. This case is well suited to answering questions about regime type, costs, and violence against civilians because Spain, the principal state involved, shifted from democracy to autocracy during the war. Moreover, later in the war, France?a democracy?joined the Spanish in the struggle to repress the rebellion. Close examination of the case reveals, however, more similarities than differences between Spanish conduct vis-à-vis civilians before and after the country’s regime change, and little difference between Spanish and French conduct. Together, the statistical and historical evidence lends support to the view that increasing costs motivate civilian victimization, and undercut the argument that democracies play nice in counterinsurgent warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an overview of the way in which international democracy assistance has supported the Electoral Commission (Electoral Tribunal) in Guatemala over the years since the democratic opening in 1985 and particularly since the signing of the peace accords in 1996. The Electoral Tribunal has been a key institution that has helped sustain the democratic process in Guatemala and survey data shows that it ranks among the highest rated democratic institutions in that country. The paper will assess the key areas that have been supported by international cooperation, highlighting the strenghts and the shortcomings that may have arisen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critical review of an interdisciplinary body of research on Islam and democracy and develops theory in order to explain the emergence of Turkey?s ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party) and to interpret to what extent this contributes to Turkey?s liberal-democratic consolidation. The paper shows that the AKP has so far featured a significantly more liberal-democratic and pro-West discourse and program than its predecessors have. It identifies the political-economic and institutional conditions that appear to have facilitated the AKP?s emergence, and places special emphasis on the EU as an external anchor and on the intended and unintended consequences of past secularist pressures. Political and theoretical implications of the case of Turkey are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the intervention of the international community ? and specifically the form of new multilateralism activated by the Organization of American States (OAS) ? to crises in Peru and Venezuela. Although from a comparative politics perspective, these two cases present striking contrasts, with respect to the study of global governance it is the commonalities in the response that attractions attention. Reshaping existing regional sovereignty norms and practices, both interventions contained extensive ?internal? as well as ?international? components in which the boundaries or barriers between diplomacy and domestic politics were blurred. The centrepiece of both initiatives was the establishment of a ?mesa,? an OAS-facilitated dialogue roundtable or forum involving key domestic political and civil society actors from government and opposition in a sustained collective effort to negotiate a consensual and peaceful solution to political crisis. In the body of the work the process of this ?tale of two mesas? is traced through three distinctive components: the actors at the table; the agendas; and, relative achievements. As our paper demonstrates, significant differences between the two mesa processes make it difficult to articulate a single, coherent model. Nonetheless, we conclude that both the Peruvian and Venezuelan mesas exemplify a promising mode of multilateral intervention: ?intervention without intervening.? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While political life in Africa remains volatile and complex, the end of the Cold War ushered in the collapse of authoritarian regimes and liberalization of governments. There was a hope that the new political systems would provide legal and political accountability. Western governments shared this hope, in light of their belief in democracy as a panacea for Africa’s political and economic woes. However, early euphoria gave way to disappointment because some incumbent regimes continue to show their reluctance to relinquish power. Although there is room for cautious optimism, the realities of Africa’s political and economic plight and foreign powers’ interests on the continent might undermine democratic efforts on the continent. If Africa’s past is any guide, the road to democracy will be long and painful. After several decades of mismanagement, corruption, and a lack of effective leadership, Africa finally embarked on a democratic path in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Thanks to civil society’s resilience but, more importantly, to the military’s cooperation, one-party regimes relaxed their grip on political and economic power. While they relaxed their grip, they have not relinquished it, and their tenacity has diminished early hopes in such countries as Togo, Guinea Republic, the Congo, and Mauritania. The thrust of the paper is that Africans took to the street to demand a peaceful and more accountable political setting that can trigger a fundamental change in their living conditions. But they are learning that unless persistent autocratic rule and declining social conditions are seriously dealt with, the ongoing democratization process on the continent will once again fail Africans. In probing democracy’s journey in Africa, the paper will mainly relate Demos’s painful pilgrimage to Kratia, by uncovering respective roles played by both civil society and the military and by exposing the Achilles’ heel of the democratization process in Africa: stable civil-military relations and widespread economic hardship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the impact of the Western system of values on the post-communist identity change process that has taken place in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) during the last 15 years. The main point is that an extended set of values has to be taken into consideration. To the classical democracy- and capitalism-related values it should be added a security-related set of principles originating in the Helsinki Final Act?s Decalogue. The paper starts by putting the CEE process of identity change in relation to the creation and functioning of a security regime. The origin and structure of the system of values associated with this regime are described. This is followed by a quantitative evaluation of its diffusion in former communist countries. Then, the causes of this uneven geographical distribution are analyzed. Finally, the concluding remarks summarize the main findings of the paper emphasizing the hegemonic role (in a Gramscian sense) of the Western system of values in CEE. All these steps use an approach inspired by Wendt?s identity-based constructivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although recent decades have witnessed a worldwide explosion in the number of democracies, the growth and consolidation of democracy are by no means a stable phenomenon, let alone a universal trend. The aim of this paper is to examine democratization in the post-communist block, and to compare this process to the Western European experience. This paper argues that the most important and necessary factor for consolidation of democracy is the adoption of democratic institutions in the polity and the establishment of liberal market institutions in the economy. However, this institutional factor alone is not sufficient. Successful consolidation of liberal democracy requires presence of macro-structural conditions facilitating democratization and support of civil society. By examining the dynamics of transitions to democracy and comparing it to the model countries in Western Europe this paper discloses persistent problems of institutional design, regime legitimacy, and political participation, compounded by economic difficulties, producing an uncertain future in the countries of post-soviet block. Notwithstanding the long and varied history of democratization in Western Europe, its experience is still comparable by showing what can and cannot be achieved through borrowing institutional designs. The results of this study show the need to reach an agreement on the specific institutional arrangement, where agreement on rules means agreement on procedures and not on outcomes. In the polity, it is the design or re-establishment of governmental institutions and electoral systems conducive to the legitimation of the new and fragile democracies. In the economy, it is the establishment or expansion of the institutional infrastructure of the market economy, including privatization, deregulation, and the opening up of the economy. In the society, it is respect to the rule of law, active participation, and development of culture of tolerance and negotiating. The overriding imperative for democratizing countries is to develop both the structure and culture of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how the existence of international institutions combined with domestic politics shape the behavior of democratic leaders. While it seems unsurprising that leaders who are truly concerned about foreign policy outcomes will consult international institutions, our results show that leaders with private agendas can also be forced to behave like the former because of their electoral concerns. As a result, there is a welfare gain for domestic audience when there are international institutions. The paper contributes to the literature on international institutions as well as the literature on democratic peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As many commentators have made the point, G.W. Bush’s War on Terrorism is an assault on democracy. One of the many effects of this assault within the U.S. is the recasting of the ideal American citizen. In an erosion of historical efforts to enlarge the legal and cultural definitions of citizenship to include non-white and non-male people, this current war, fought by what Arundhati Roy calls, a multi-tiered edifice of falsehood and deceit, coordinated by the U.S. government and faithfully amplified by the corporate media, is successfully reshaping the real American as embodiment of white masculinity primarily through its representations in mainstream news. This paper will consider the growing impossibility of multiracial and non-gendered citizenship in the U.S. through popular representations of the war on terror Joanne Nagel argues that an unseemly, sometimes hysterical resistance to diversity that clearly exists outside of military boundaries in regard to the entrance of Blacks, women and homosexuals into the military makes more sense when it is understood that these men are not only defending tradition but are defending a particular racial, gendered and sexual concept of the self: a white, male, heterosexual notion of masculine identity loaded with all the burdens and privileges that go along with hegemonic masculinity. Klaus Theweleit argues a similar point in his Male Fantasies: that the sense of the soldier self and the cohesion of soldiering units is produced in opposition to a feminized, lower race and lower class animal who must be excluded for fear of internal pollution and disintegration. Given these claims about soldiers and armies who battle for the nation whilst battling for their racialized masculinity, how might we understand President Bush’s celebration of green card soldiers and the accelerated naturalization process for them in relation to the growing impossibility of a multicultural US? This paper considers the production of a second tier of US soldiers, non-citizens whose precarious citizenship is acquired through the use of legalized national violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of western assistance in the process of East European transition has recently stimulated much research. However, determining the role such programs play in post-communist reform is not easy. A mixed record of foreign aid failure and success and growing discontent with transition to democracy and market economy among East Europeans make the usefulness of western assistance increasingly questionable. To undertake a critical analysis of transitional processes and to demonstrate how aid has shaped contemporary developments in the region, this paper will focus on transition as a strategy implemented by Western donors. It will demonstrate that even though aid consultants often acknowledged the distinctiveness of post-socialist world, they did not envision any alternative aid model. Despite the fact that Marshall Plan ideas prevailed in the rhetoric of donors at the early stage of transition, the Third World models were actually implemented. The attempts of western donors to (re)build/strengthen democracy and foster market reforms were clearly in line with popular aspirations in Eastern Europe. What went largely ignored amidst the democratization/marketization efforts was that liberal models of capitalism were themselves the products of a lengthy unique evolution of the western societies. When applied in societies with distinct cultural, socio-economic and political characteristics, they proved dramatically inadequate. I will analyze the fusion of abstract Western models with the real-world situation in the former socialist world from a critical constructivist perspective. The key argument to emerge is that by disregarding cultural frames and codes, especially those shaped by socialist legacies, aid proved incapable of performing many of the objectives it was intended to achieve. Values and perceptions, norms and implicit understandings are to be taken seriously. The paper will demonstrate that inter-subjective beliefs shared by the members of society may facilitate or constrain what they actually think and do, and thus lead to broader socio-political consequences. The reference will be made specifically to the case of aid experience in Ukraine. However, many of the lessons from this study may be transferable to the entire East European region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is to examine how international actors influence democratization by focusing on two leading states of recent democratization in East Asia and East Europe - Taiwan and Hungary. The paper seeks to challenge the classic domestically biased assumption that democratization is an exclusively domestic affair, aiming at the transformation of the internal political system, and external factors may play a secondary role. It aims to provide systematic accounts for why and how there are different external actors at different phases of democratization through a cross-regional comparison between the two regions. First, I will examine the dynamics of democratization and the interactions between external and domestic factors in each national case from the phases of transition to consolidation. Next, I will develop some explanatory factors for the international dimension of democratization from the two regions and compare their similarities and differences. For the country case studies, I will be attentive to internal-external linkages and to their own historically specific conditions. For the inter-regional comparison, I will compare Taiwan with Hungary, placing greater emphasis on their common elements across regions and differences shown in each region. My analysis supports following points: (1) in Central Europe, the Soviet presence was a decisive overriding obstacle to democratization, no matter how favorable domestic conditions may be in countries like Hungary. The constraint was gradually lifted under Gorbachev, finally opening the possibility for a successful transition to democracy. Furthermore, the policies of various European institutions like EU, OSCE, the Council of Europe, and NATO are becoming crucial stabilizing elements in the consolidating process. The integration into Western institutions began to act as an external democratic force. (2) in East Asia, the global trend toward economic liberalism did exert some positive impact on the transition to democracy in Taiwan. More fundamentally, unlike Central European cases, the political opening in both Asian cases was not triggered by any major socio-economic crisis, geopolitical change or external market shocks. In both cases, societal support for the regime-sponsored development program has been much more broadly based as compared to many Latin American countries at comparable level of industrialization. Lastly, the dominant characteristic of Taiwan is its inherited legacies of divided nations. Their nationhood problem makes the regime stability highly susceptible to external influences in the processes of democratic transition and consolidation. This paper will be a first effort to compare and distinguish international effects on East Asian patterns of democratization from what has been noted especially in East Europe. It attempts not only to refine current theoretical frameworks, but also to enhance the literature of democratization in both breadth and depth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the three predominant views on the latest war on Iraq--the anti-war perspective, the pro-Bush administration perspective, and the Arab world’s unique perspective--Operation Iraqi Freedom was about securing the U.S.’ oil supply, promoting democracy, and the re-colonization of the Middle East, respectively. Above all else, this war was about preserving the existing regimes of the Middle East and Gulf region as much as possible. The U.S. had other sources to compensate for the presumed loss of Iraqi oil, and has been instrumental in keeping repressive regimes in power. Similarly, the existing system has served the U.S. well, and a redesign would have entailed too great a risk to current U.S. interests. What is at stake for the U.S. is the stability of the Gulf region, which has been increasingly disturbed by three salient factors: the emergence of politically active Islamist organizations; more frequent challenges by democratic forces; and a genuine push to re-integrate Saddam Hussein’s Iraq into the world community. This paper explains American foreign policy from an Arab world perspective, taking into account recent regional developments with clear implications on the U.S.’ behavior. This paper discusses the nature of American foreign policy as a product of the socio- and political dynamics of the Gulf region; it is presented here as a reactive policy, but not a dependent policy. The U.S. has maintained control of its standing in the Arab world while adapting to new conditions to protect its national interest. In this context, this analysis is a departure from other studies emphasizing America’s global power, imperialism, and/or oil as the driving force of its foreign policy; the Arab world/Gulf region is treated as a unit of analysis, with its own internal dynamics eliciting changes in America’s foreign relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the intervention of Iraq, democracy has become one of the hottest issues within international relations. Whether, where and how the United States (and the international community) should promote democracy around the world have become central questions in the policy debates with regard to a host of countries including Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, and many others. While optimists see a democratic world order emerging, sceptics argue that democracy is a uniquely Western artefact that can never be successfully replicated in non-Western cultures. Especially Islam and democracy is considered to be incompatible with each other. This paper focuses on the relationship between culture and democracy. Can democracies be ?crafted? in different cultural settings, or are there certain preconditions and structural combinations that are needed for a progress toward democracy? To what extent can differences in democratic level be explained by civilizational differences? Based on two datasets on democratic performance (Polity IV, and the Freedom House Index) for the period 1973-1998, this paper concludes that the applicability of democracy ? defined by any of the measures ? is dependent upon civilizational belonging. Nevertheless, electoral democracies perform better in more civilizations outside the West than liberal democracies do. The Islamic and African Civilization is particularly resistant to democracy ? electoral or liberal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper takes its departure from recent discussions about the possibility of a cosmopolitan democracy. The paper responds to various crtiticisms leveled at this idea, while also proposing a number of structural changes or innovations which would render such a democracy more feasible and realizable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do private entrepreneurs in China support democracy? This paper finds that in general private entrepreneurs find democracy desirable, but their concerns with the feasibility of democracy predispose them toward maintaining the status quo. This research employs a mixed method. On one hand, it draws on a national survey to show that Chinese private entrepreneurs are more likely to have democratic values than the non-entrepreneurial middle class and working class, controlling the effects of relevant political, regional and demographic factors. In-depth interviews, on the other hand, suggest that capitalists who demonstrate democratic values tend to argue that democracy is infeasible in China, at least in the near future. As a result, they adopt a pro-government stance in their economic, social and political activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States contracts foreign democracy assistance work out to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Although this is a long-standing practice, rooted in development assistance norms, the efficacy of such delegation remains to be determined due to inconsistent and methodologically flawed evaluation practices. This paper examines the manner in which nongovernmental organizations - as democracy assistance contractors - seek to deliver on their commitments to donor states and evaluate the effectiveness of their democracy assistance endeavors. The paper finds that NGO democracy assistance practices seek direct impact in terms of capacity building at the individual level, yet report on impact at the state level. NGO evaluations that ignore individual level change undermine the ability of states to hold NGO contractors accountable. A new approach to democracy assistance evaluation is proposed that seeks to increase NGO accountability through a shift in focus to individual level analysis and data collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International efforts to promote peace and democracy in conflict areas create a great deal of local resistance. International and domestic actors enter into a bargaining relationship whereby each attempts to promote its own values, norms and practices, extract most concessions from the other side and resist giving in to pressures. The end result is a condition of hybrid peace governance, one in which liberal and illiberal norms, institutions and actors exist alongside each other in a context where violence, actual or potential, may continue to play an important role. Such a hybrid political, economic and social order is a far cry from the liberal idea of peace based on legitimate and accountable democratic institutions, the rule of law, human rights, free media, market economy and an open civil society. This paper accounts for the emergence of hybrid peace governance and develops a typology based on the war-peace and liberal-illiberal spectra. Furthermore, this paper discusses the implications of hybrid peace governance, and in particular whether it may avoid the pitfalls of top-down liberal peacebuilding and provide new opportunities for a more sustainable, locally engrained version of peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forty years ago, Arnold Wolfers and Hedley Bull skeptically argued that a world order characterized by overlapping systems of authority could eventually replace the sovereign state system with what is now called "fragmented sovereignty." In such a system, many states would exhibit the characteristics of Grotian sovereignty--stable international borders, a government with international recognition, a metropolitan core providing some public goods, and some semblance of a national military--but they would not necessarily exhibit Weberian sovereignty --a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence--over significant amounts of that territory. Instead, some of the internationally-recognized territory would be controlled by smaller but stable political units using some combination of economic, military and cultural means to remain in power for multiple generations. Our 2010 ISA paper focused on three emerging military challenges to Weberian sovereignty: gangs, warlords, and private military corporations. In this paper, we support our earlier arguments with a more systematic theoretical explanation of these changes. We use the McNeill- Olson-Strayer-Tilly (MOST) model to highlight a set of fairly idiosyncratic historical circumstances that led to the emergence of the European nation-state at the end of the medieval period, and argue that these are weakening, and consequently elements of fragmented sovereignty are reemerging. We consider four ideational changes that have contributed to this: the obsolescence of war, democratic/liberal peace, the delegitimization of elite violence, and the emergence of failed states. We also consider four material changes: economic globalization, the mass production of small arms, urbanization, and global communications. Due to these changes, the sovereign state is unraveling in some important aspects, though it is likely to remain relevant. However, far from being the ultimate and inevitable unit of global political organization, the system where the nation-state system is considered the sole important actor is probably transient. Fragmented sovereignty theory provides a means to transcend the constraints of IR theories that are overly reliant on the assumption of sovereignty and consequently will provide a better understanding of recent phenomena in world politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of UN peacebuilding efforts in post-conflict countries has grown dramatically in recent years. However the politics of contributing peacekeeping forces to these UN operations still tends to be taken for granted. Where do peacekeepers come from, and what is the politics involved in countries contributing armed forces to the UN? These are some of the questions that this paper sets out to answer. As the global deployment of UN peacekeepers is now famously second only to that of American armed forces, understanding the dynamics of peacekeeping contribution has become a necessity. This paper sets out to understand UN peacekeeping contribution in the aggregate, and to understand the place of such contributions in the context of global governance. This paper also offers a critique of existing theories of peacekeeping contribution. The implications of these massive new deployments of military personnel are sketched out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the declining Austro-Hungarian Empire, Otto Bauer's work "The Nationalities Question and Social Democracy" (1907) appeared, within the Marxist political thought about the concept of nation, as a theoretical proposal about the issue of peripheral nationalisms. On the eve of the First World War, the Habsburg monarchy was facing a crisis of identity, in which Czechs, Croats, Poles and others were aspiring to more autonomy, and in some cases, to independence. It was in this context that Bauer presented socialism as a solution to the question of nationalities, particularly in Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is the aim of this paper to analyse Bauer's theory of nation, not merely within Austro-Marxism thinking and the political context of the Habsburg Empire in early 20th century, but more particularly with the aspiration of highlighting constructive ideas of multiculturalism presented by this author, applied to potentially explosive situations in terms of ethnic or nationalist conflict. Furthermore, which features of his theory can be linked to political and institutional nation-building processes? Does Bauer's theory can still have interest for the study of the national question? These are the questions to which this paper will try to give an answer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern democracy centred on the nation-state has been invariably patriarchal. Men are viewed as the natural leaders of nations and continue to dominate in the political arena. Women's roles are relegated to the private sphere of the home and in supportive roles to men in the process of political decision-making. Thus the question arises how global democracy could and should be grasped as an opportunity to overcome patriarchy and work towards gender equity. Certainly there have been some promising developments to bring women's voices, participation and control into global politics, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing process. Such global initiatives have also furthered struggles for gender democracy in the Caribbean more particularly. However, full incorporation of gender into global democracy has been largely subordinated in global discourses. Instead, prevailing patriarchal methods of negotiation have insufficiently incorporated women into decision-making and treat gender as a marginal aspect of achieving democracy internally. While global imperatives required that Caribbean states ratify global conventions and draft national gender policies for gender equality and equity in all spheres, there is no commitment on the part of governments to accept and implement the policies that are drafted. This is highly regrettable, as the persistence of gender inequities undermine democracy in relation to global circumstances as women's voices and the ideas that they propose for change are viewed as incidental to growth and development of nations. What could be done to correct this situation? Perhaps recent experiences with national gender policies could offer important suggestions. In particular this analysis assesses the possible implications for global democracy that might be drawn from the formulation of national gender policies in the Cayman Islands, Dominica, and Trinidad and Tobago between 1999 and 2006. The value of gender policies might be that they stimulate change and initiate a democratic process of engaging women's and men's voices at the national and local levels without yet finding its way to feed back directly into global democracy. The paper has four main sections. The first section explores theoretically the existing relationship and future possibilities for enhancing gender democracy through global democracy. The second section reviews the experiences of the three national gender policies in the Caribbean, assessing how they have and have not advanced democracy in these contexts. The third section indicates how global circumstances have both furthered and frustrated strivings for gender democracy in the three societies of Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica and the Cayman Islands. The fourth and final section of the paper identifies and elaborates the key implications of the Caribbean experiences for ideas of global democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey's accession to the European Union has been the subject of much debate and controversy across regions. However, diverse governmental and non-governmental actors, interviewed by us in May 2010, emphasized the distinction between the EU accession process from actual membership and the profound impact that this process has already had on the country. This paper draws on interviews and meetings conducted with political officials and civil society actors at the national and local level and members to explore how the EU process affects democratization efforts in Turkey, particularly in the Kurdish region. The paper applies the two-level game to explore how domestic debates regarding identity issues, women's empowerment, the role of religion in politics and local development are all framed as essential to democratization in an effort to appeal to wider domestic and international audiences. While many different political and civil society actors coopt the term "democracy" in presenting their own demands, they are quick and forceful to downplay the democratic credentials of political opponents. We work to parse out the different stakeholders, their unique and shared perspectives on democracy, their individual investment in the EU process and commitment to actual accession. We focus on the following question: what is the impact of the EU accession process on democratization in Turkey? We present our argument using evidence from interviews conducted at the national and local level in Turkey, newspaper accounts, EU reports, and additional secondary sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper explores the Americanization process of the IDF, thus the process in which the IDF increasingly adopts US doctrinal ideas and operational practices. The paper argues that this process stands in contrast to the diverse sources and original learning's of the IDF in its first three decades of existence. The paper concludes with a word of cautious: While some of the emulation is unavoidable and other is justified, there are some areas that an indiscriminate copy - paste may become counter-productive, particularly on the strategic level which is so different between the countries. Indeed, since 2006 the IDF is more concerned with finding original solutions to its own particular problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the intellectual origins of NATO operational planning doctrine and how it has migrated to other international organisations such as the EU and the UN. It argues that some of the key concepts it contains - centres of gravity, decisive points, lines of operations and end-?states - are increasingly difficult to apply in the modern crisis response operations armed forces are tasked to undertake. In this sense, doctrinal ideas stretching back to the days of Clausewitz are coming near their point of culmination not because they are invalidated but because political guidance no longer allows for them. The paper concludes with some thoughts on the implications of this state of affairs in terms of the strategic instrumentality of crisis response operations and the structure of politico-?military relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the South Korean people's authoritarian experiences in developing and sustaining a popular New Community Movement since its creation in 1970. By analysing three key features of the initial stage of the NCM under the growth-oriented authoritarian Park Chung Hee state (1961-1979), the paper argues that the NCM experience provided the majority of Koreans, particularly rural peasants and women, hands-on-training in participatory village-community democracy, which in turn provided a wide range of social opportunities, even unwittingly, for their own empowerment. The paper also argues that the Korean people's training in village-community democracy also provided a self-awakening experience, through which they built their own set of ideas of self-identity as the people or minjung and of minjung democracy which was essentially an off-shoot of the NCM, more specifically, Park's idea of "Korean democracy". The paper suggests that the recent resurgence of the NCM may reflect the democratic legacy of the authoritarian Park era, epitomized in its "Can-do" participatory ethos and the fierce nationalism of the Koreans, albeit in a highly sophisticated and yet paradoxical way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper develops a two-dimensional typology of political reasons for governments to pledge referendums on European integration when they are not obliged to do so: the first dimension is about the political level at which the strategic use of referendum pledges is targeted and it distinguishes between domestic and European reasons; the second dimension attends to the strategic mode of governments when pledging EU referendums which can either be about avoiding political losses (the defensive mode) or about realising political gains (the offensive mode). In combination, the typology yields four ideal types of reasons for governments to commit to EU referendums: the depoliticising, plebiscitary, red-line and internationalist EU referendum pledges. In the empirical analysis, the paper applies this typology to classify 28 cases of discretionary government commitments to EU referendums and it presents the findings of an expert survey that has been conducted for this purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The specter of a long-term administrative role for the UN in post-conflict societies including Kosovo, Haiti, and Timor-Leste has led observers to dub such problematic arrangements 'neo-trusteeship.' The main supposition of this research is that 'neo-trusteeship' is primarily a by-product of the gap between Charter obligations to maintain peace and security and the resources committed to the UN to attend to those obligations. This paper draws upon the insights of the path dependency 'approach' (Pierson, 2004; Thelen, 2003) as well as two recent UN operations in the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste (UNTAET and UNMIT) in advancing the case that 'mechanisms of reproduction' common to the dynamic of path dependence are responsible for the emergence and reification of the 'neo-trusteeship' model in UN peace operations. In doing so, this paper seeks to demonstrate that the chief obstacle to the UN's ability to effectively deliver on its expansive mandates in post-conflict societies arises from a disjuncture between the increasing returns associated with (and accounting for) that agenda and the negative externalities of resource constraints and risk-averse decision making that characterize UN operations 'on the ground'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As global security concerns in which technology plays ambivalent roles are proliferating, it is timely to revisit the post-war decades when liberals and realists alike sought to grasp the impact of technology on international politics. Combining intellectual history, science and technology studies, political theory, and International Relations (IR) theory, this paper examines visions of technology in liberal and realist thought with a particular view to their role in bolstering arguments for global (security) governance. While liberals are often seen to emphasize the role of nonmilitary technological innovation in growing interdependence, which they interpret as both a motivation for and a harbinger of wider spatial security architectures, realism's engagement with (military) technology is often reduced to a weapons-astools approach. Recent scholarship has complicated these beliefs. Exploring the fertile but often disregarded overlap between the liberal and realist traditions, this paper analyses the conceptions and roles of technology in the political thought of Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) and John H. Herz (1908-2005). Particularly in the wake of the nuclear revolution, both scholars developed a distinct global orientation in which the interrelations between technology, modernity, democracy, freedom, and individuality were critical. It is argued that Russell and Herz's visions of technology and (global) politics are (i) insightful and of considerable contemporary relevance, (ii) that their resemblance and common liberal ancestry call for a less rigid attitude to the "isms" of IR theory, and (iii) that in important ways they anticipated contemporary critical and reflexive approaches to technology and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, there has been rising interest in candidate quality and characteristics among political scientists. Scholars have analyzed the impact of candidate quality on electorates' candidate evaluations and vote choice. Most of the often-cited work on candidate quality deals with candidates and elections in the U.S. with a lesser amount of work focusing on European countries. It is remarkable that very few of these studies on candidate quality focus on elections in new democracies. As new democracies have had relatively little time to develop candidate recruitment processes, candidate quality is probably low compared to the established democracies of Western Europe and North America. Therefore, new democracies can be fertile ground for the study of the lack of candidate quality and its impact on voting behavior. In this paper, we study candidate quality and elections in one of the new democracies, Korea. Previous studies of voting behavior in Korea and in new democracies, in general, usually look at the vote choice of the electorate along established and/or emerging social cleavages, such as class differences, regionalism, religion, as well as macro environmental factors, such as the national economy. We utilize survey data to analyze the impact of the specific quality of candidates (candidate characteristics) on the vote choice of the electorate. If the quality of political candidates does not keep pace with that of the sophisticated public, we may see apathy on the part of the electorate (low turnout) or a form of negative voting. The election we analyze is the latest presidential election in Korea held in December 2007. Our results show a high level of negative voting in response to the candidates' perceived negative traits. Our work is a testimony that voters in new democracies also pay attention to the individual candidate's quality or characteristics, and make their vote choice accordingly. Therefore, future studies of voting behavior in new democracies should include candidate quality (or characteristics, traits or whatever it is called) as an explanatory variable in their models. We end the paper by offering our conjecture about why the electorate's perception of candidate quality is so low in Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current research on democratization and peacebuilding tend to emphasize macro-level issues such as institutional arrangements or elite group formation and compliance. However, this paper suggests that we need to look at how these two parallel processes interlink at the micro-level. As a way to take on the challenge of how such policies feed into democratization, we should take a closer look at Demobilization, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) programs and their rarely studied political impact among excombatants. By doing so, we also address three major challenges within current DDR research, namely: 1) the normative challenge of how these programs structure and condition the ex-combatants' continued political voice has not been studied enough; 2) research in this field has approached this from the perspective of political reintegration, which suffers from several conceptual challenges; and 3) at present this research has lacked a theoretical framework in which to grapple and make sense of the political consequences of DDR, i.e. how do the programs shape the political outlooks of the ex-combatants. In this paper various types of reintegration programs are studied in terms of their political ramifications among ex-combatants in Liberia, as we need to take a closer look at the design of the programs in order to understand the varying impacts of these programs. This paper suggests that the work methods employed within the programs, as well as composition of beneficiaries matter for the ex-combatants' relation with politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]