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This article challenges International Relations to turn its view of war around and start not with states, militaries, strategies, conventional security issues or weapons, and not with the common main aim of establishing causes of war. The challenge is to conceptualise war as a subset of social relations of experience, on the grounds that war cannot be fully apprehended unless it is studied up from people who experience it in myriad ways and not only down from abstract places of International Relations theory. To study war as experience requires that the body come into focus as a unit that has war agency and is also a prime target of war violence. It also requires exploration of the concept of experience. Using an exemplary texts approach, the article briefly reminds us where the field is in its war concerns, before noting work on contemporary wars conducted under the flag of feminist International Relations, where experience and bodies have always been front and centre, and where a social war studies emphasis is developing. The discussion then raises definitional complexities that must be addressed and suggests areas where various International Relations traditions could collaborate with feminist International Relations and fields like anthropology to study the social relations of war. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mediation is one of the few mechanisms the international community can deploy that will affect civil wars. This article introduces the dataset on mediation in civil wars – termed the Civil War Mediation (CWM) dataset. This is the first dataset to focus solely on civil war mediation. These data contribute to the present state of quantitative research on mediation in three important respects: the data are collected for the period of 1946–2004, are organized by mediation cases and by civil war episode, and provide detailed information about mediation incidences. The article first presents a few variables included in the dataset that are motivated by theoretical arguments from the literature. After a presentation of summary statistics, attention is turned to using the CWM data to explore the determinants of mediation. Mediation is shown to be a function of war type (territorial and internationalized wars are more likely to be mediated), war duration (the longer the war the higher the probability of mediation), supply-side factors (the number of democracies in the world and the global polity average), and stratum (subsequent wars are less likely to be mediated). Battle-related deaths also seem to increase the chances of mediation, though the relationship is only weakly significant. The article concludes with suggestions for future research that can benefit from the dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Why and when do states take the burden upon themselves to send peacekeepers into a civil war, rather than relying on intergovernmental organizations to do so? While there are a few empirical studies on the conditions under which the UN sends peacekeeping missions, no such analyses of state-conducted peacekeeping exist. In this study, a theoretical framework on state-conducted peacekeeping in civil wars is developed and empirically tested. Not surprisingly, when acting outside international organizations, states are able to take their own interests directly into account and select those civil wars to which they send peacekeepers accordingly. States’ interests play a much greater role here than, for example, the interests of the major powers do for UN peacekeeping. When states send peacekeepers they are more likely to choose former colonies, military allies, trade partners, or countries with which they have ethnic ties. Yet, this does not mean that state-conducted peacekeeping occurs only where states see their own interests. Contrary to conventional wisdom, states also provide peacekeeping to ‘tough’ cases, the most challenging civil wars. These are long, ethnic wars. This tendency for states to provide peacekeeping holds when civil wars produce dire effects on civilians. States are more likely to send peacekeepers into civil wars that kill or displace many people. Finally, states react to opportunities: the more previous mediation attempts, the higher the chances for state-conducted peacekeeping. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is surprisingly little empirical scholarship on the spread of capitalistic economic policies under the rubric of 'globalization' and domestic peace. While the classical liberals saw free markets leading to social harmony because of self-interest of individuals, who cooperate for profit, Marxists and others viewed markets as anarchical, requiring state intervention for obtaining justice and peace. The authors argue from an opportunity-cost perspective that the payoffs to rebellion are structured by how an economy is governed. Closed economies are likelier than more open ones to accumulate 'rebellion specific capital' because of high payoffs to organization in the shadows. Using an index of economic freedom that measures how free people are to transact in an economy, the authors find that countries more favorable to free enterprise have a reduced risk of civil war onsets, a result that is robust to the inclusion of institutional quality, per capita wealth, and sundry controls. The results hold up despite a battery of specification changes, alternative data, and testing methods. The findings do not suggest that states under conditions of capitalism lose their autonomy to provide the public good of peace, as skeptics of globalization claim. Peacemakers will do well to build institutions that reward productive investment over rent-seeking, alongside democratic institutions that ultimately gain their legitimacy on the back of good economic performance and well-functioning markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the rising death toll among humanitarian aid workers suggests, saving strangers has become a dangerous occupation. In addressing the consequences of this increase, this article begins by placing the development-security nexus in its historical context. While it has long been associated with liberalism, two factors distinguish this nexus today: first, the global outlawing of spontaneous or undocumented migration; second, the shift in the focus of security from states to the people living within them. Reflecting these moves, policy discourse now conceives development and underdevelopment biopolitically - that is, in terms of how life is to be supported and maintained, and how people are expected to live, rather than according to economic and state-based models. The household and communal self-reliance that forms the basis of this biopolitics, however, has long been in crisis. Since the end of the Cold War, the destabilizing forms of global circulation associated with this emergency have been reconstituted as threats to the critical infrastructures that support mass consumer society. A new security terrain now links the crisis of adaptive self-reliance with risks to critical infrastructure within a single framework of strategic calculation. Rather than ameliorating the generic life-chance divide between the global north and south, the development-security nexus is entrenching it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Memory is a defining feature of the human condition. But the vectors and social dynamics of memory, the linkages between the individual and the collective, and the roles that traces of the past play in constituting identities and in shaping political life are complex, varied and contested. So too are the ethical demands that memory makes on us. What is clear, though, is that violence - its grim modalities, its diffuse consequences, its representation and comprehension - must stand at the centre of any understanding of memory and politics. The articles in forum explore some of the intersections between memory, politics and violence. In this introduction I set the scene for them, examining some of the relevant issues at stake and outlining some of the key positions in the scholarly literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many have noted how the Bush administration's linking of Iraq to the war on terror lent a certain degree of legitimacy to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Few scholars who have noted this linkage, however, have theorised about the specific discursive mechanisms that allowed Iraq to be incorporated and normalised within the war on terror. This article utilises the theoretical framework of Ernesto Laclau to analyse how 'Iraq' was (re)constructed as a threat through the war on terror. The productive power of the discourses constructing 'Iraq' is examined in the wording of poll questions as sites of reproduction and naturalisation of the dominant understandings of Iraq and the war on terror. Rather than tools used to measure public opinion that exists independently of them, this article argues that polls are better viewed as vehicles through which foreign policy and security discourses are stabilised and naturalised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely believed that the human impact of civil conflict in the present era is especially destructive. Proponents of the 'new wars' thesis hold that today's conflicts are fuelled by exclusive identities, motivated by greed in the absence of strong states, and unchecked by the disinterested great powers, resulting in increased battle severity, civilian death and displacement. The ratio of civilian to military casualties is claimed to have tilted, so that the overwhelming majority of those killed today are civilians. Using systematic data that are comparable across cases and over time we find that, contrary to the 'new wars' thesis, the human impact of civil conflict is considerably lower in the post-Cold War period. We argue that this pattern reflects the decline of ideological conflict, the restraining influence of globalization on governments, and the increasing rarity of superpower campaigns of destabilization and counter-insurgency through proxy warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2008, the number of active armed conflicts was 36, up by one from 2007. Over the past few years, the number of active conflicts has not seen any drastic changes from one year to the next. However, the number of armed conflicts has increased by nearly one-quarter since 2003, which was the year with the lowest number of active armed conflicts since the 1970s. While the number of conflicts continued to increase, the number of wars (i.e. conflicts with over 1,000 battle-related deaths) remained at a very low level, with only five recorded for 2008. Four conflicts listed in 2007 were no longer active in 2008, but during the year, two conflicts were restarted by previously recorded actors (in Burundi and in Georgia). Furthermore, three new conflicts erupted, one of which was fought between states (Djibouti—Eritrea). Thus, the record-long four-year interlude 2004-07 with no interstate conflict was broken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research in the civil war literature has focused on how and when external actors intervene. However, to date, systematic data have not existed on diplomatic efforts in conflict management. This article fills this gap and introduces a dataset on 438 diplomatic interventions in 68 conflicts stretching from 1945 to 1999. The authors briefly outline previous research on third-party interventions in civil wars, describe the dataset in some detail, including some initial patterns in the data, and describe how this dataset contributes to research into conflict processes. The authors also demonstrate how diplomatic interventions can be incorporated into other research agendas by merging this dataset with Doyle & Sambanis's peacekeeping data and replicating their analysis to examine the role of external diplomacy on peacebuilding success. These data on interventions, moreover, can be merged with commonly used datasets on intrastate conflicts, which promises a wide range of application in civil war studies. Developing a greater understanding of when and how civil wars end, scholarship needs to take into account efforts to arrive at diplomatic solutions. And if, as the results demonstrate, externally driven diplomacy facilitates the termination of civil wars, then the policy implications are quite important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007, 34 armed conflicts were active worldwide, up by one from 2006 and by five from 2003, the year with the lowest number of active armed conflicts since the 1970s. While the number of conflicts increased, the number of wars, i.e. conflicts with over 1,000 battle-related deaths in a year, dropped by one to four. Five of the conflicts from 2006 were no longer active in 2007, but during the year, two previously recorded conflicts (in Mali and Pakistan) were restarted by new actors and two (in Angola and Peru) by previously recorded rebel groups. For the first time since 2004, two new conflicts were recorded: a conflict over governmental power in Niger and a territorial conflict in DRC. A conflict may involve one or more dyads or pairs of warring parties. In the 236 conflicts active since 1946, 487 dyads have been recorded in the new UCDP Dyadic Dataset. While most intrastate conflicts involve a single rebel group fighting the government, in 30 of the conflicts two or more dyads were active simultaneously. In 2002 and 2003, over 30% of the active conflicts involved more than one rebel group. The number of active rebel groups and changes in the set of groups are important elements of the complexity of any armed conflict, and the study of these aspects should be greatly facilitated with the new dataset. By adding the dyadic dimension to the study of conflicts, the analysis of a range of phenomena that have hardly been captured by previously available data is made possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically discusses the permanent celebration and ‘omnipresence’ of the memory of the transition to democracy in Spain, or its power as a referent which makes sense of the present, helps to overcome periods of crisis, and legitimizes policies. It argues that its institution and power as well as the issue of memory and commemorations need to be rethought. Drawing on Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory, they are reconceptualized as ‘re-membering’ and the transition is accounted for as an ‘imaginary’. Its power is also illustrated by the fact that the projects which directly challenge it as the sole legitimate framework for the construction of democracy are criticized for threatening democracy itself. Two such projects are on the one hand the initiatives for the ‘recovery’ of the memories of the Civil War and Franco's dictatorship, and on the other the claim for increased regional autonomy. They are called ‘second transitions’. The article claims that the heated debates over them highlight the complex intertwining of legal, political and ethical dimensions in democratic society's constitution. It then discusses the very possibility of renegotiating the terms of the democratic political association, the issue which the second transitions reopen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the outset of his political activities propaganda was a crucial tool for Hitler and one which was clearly central to the success of his movement in finally achieving office. Whereas during the 1920s National Socialist propaganda had been aimed primarily at the German electorate, it subsequently developed an important external dimension, particularly in relation to Bolshevik Russia, in an attempt to influence international opinion against the purported ideological and military menace emanating from Moscow. The Anti-Komintern, a division of Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry, was at the forefront of this campaign. Set up shortly after the Nazi takeover, it quickly developed links abroad and, spurred on by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, sought to achieve in propaganda terms what its more famous namesake, the Anti-Comintern Pact, had been designed to deliver in the diplomatic arena. Drawing on new material from American and German archives, this article seeks to reconstruct and assess some activities of the Anti-Komintern and to place them within the broader context of Nazi ideology and the regime's foreign policy goals during the 1930s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International human rights language has swept across the landscape of contemporary world politics in a trend that began in the 1970s, picked up speed after the Cold War's end, and quickened yet again in the latter half of the 1990s. Yet, while this human rights 'talk' has fundamentally reshaped the way in which global policy elites, transnational activists, and some national leaders talk about politics and justice, actual impacts are more difficult to discern, requiring more nuance and disaggregation. Importantly, there may be substantial cross-regional variations, due to varying colonial and postcolonial histories, and different trajectories in state-society relations. In some instances, there are also important differences in tone between qualitative and quantitative researchers. While many case-study scholars tend to be rather optimistic about the potential for human rights change, statistically inclined researchers often lean towards greater caution and, in some cases, downright skepticism about the transformative potential of international human rights law and advocacy. Given that international human rights treaties, human rights reporting, democracy, and elections do not always influence state practice in expected ways, the authors call for more regionally disaggregated studies, coupled with greater efforts to combine qualitative and quantitative research techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the failure of the rich countries or the Group of Eight nations (G8) in meeting most of their targets related to international trade and international relations. According to the author, international conflicts such as the Israeli-Palestinian hostilities against Lebanese and the civil war in Iraq, have contributed to the failure of these countries in meeting their goals. He also noted the negative impact of these conflicts on international humanitarian services.

The article focuses on the emergence of globalization as a response to the crisis of the 20th century. The emergence of globalization is an indicator in the possible advent of a global civil society. The occurrence of the Second World War makes way for the organization of modern societies in a civil way. After the war, the victors are attempting to renew the realization of cosmopolitan peace. Along with the vision of the creation of a civil society is the forging of world peace and globalization.

The process of disarmament, demobilization, reinsertion and reintegration (DDRR) of former combatants plays a critical role in transitions from war to peace. The success or failure of this endeavour directly affects the long-term peacebuilding prospects for any post-conflict society. The exploration of the closely interwoven relationship between peacebuilding and the DDRR process also provides a theoretical framework for this article, which aims to present an assessment of various disarmament, demobilization and reinsertion (DDR) programmes planned or implemented in a number of countries over the last two decades. The assessment is conducted by focusing on three specific DDR issues: disarmament as a social contract; demobilization without cantonment; and the relevance of financial reinsertion assistance. The majority of these initiatives adopted a 'guns-camps-cash' approach that seems to provide only a limited perspective for dealing with a wide range of complex issues related to the DDR process. Therefore, the article questions whether there is a need for a more comprehensive consideration of disarmament by acknowledging and responding to its social, economic and political implications. In conjunction with the above-mentioned consideration, disarmament in terms of a social contract is proposed as an alternative to the current military-centred approach. Experience also indicates a tendency towards the inclusion of cantonment in the demobilization phase, regardless of whether it actually can have some negative impacts on the DDRR process in general. Subsequently, the article questions such implications and possible approaches to demobilization without cantonment. Finally, the article focuses on the effectiveness of cash payments during reinsertion as an easier alternative to the provision of other material assistance, since this tends to be the most controversial aspect of the reinsertion phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A total of 111 armed conflicts have been recorded for the years 1989-2000. Of these, 33 were active in 2000. This represents a decrease from 1999 and 1998, and it is the lowest number of armed conflicts recorded in the post-Cold War period. Seven interstate armed conflicts were recorded for the whole period, of which two were still active in 2000. The decrease in the number of armed conflicts is not sufficient to conclude that there will be a further decline. Conflicts have become increasingly complex in terms of number of actors and regional connections between those actors. There is a larger proportion of new and minor armed conflicts being resolved than long-running and complex major armed conflicts.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventionally in International Relations thought war is seen in instrumentalist terms, and in a reduction of Clausewitz's project, as merely the extension of (foreign) policy through other means. The ontological commitment that is the mainstay of this project is often unrecognised; a discursive commitment that war constructs masculinity, conceived in (uni)form terms, that through such construction, a nation emerges, separate, distinct, and sovereign. The paper argues that these seemingly unconnected themes which emerge from discourses on war are intimately related, that instrumentality is a commitment to a coherent and certain subjectivity, and that it is this commitment which produces the 'abject': targets of war, reviled on the one hand, and much needed for the continual structuration of war on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion piece focusses on the 'war' in Northern Ireland, which it claims has been ignored by International Relations. It illuminates the relevance of international relations to the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland. The article emphasises the role of the United States as a Third Party, the end of the Cold War, and the Irish entry into the European Union. It finally reiterates the need to reconsider the validity of realism in International Studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In interpreting the end of the Cold War as an implosion of familiar institutional arrangements, this article critically engages with particular liberal stories which claim a global victory for liberal values and institutional forms. Since the end of the 1950s, the foundations of a liberal international order have increasingly been questioned by the development of transaction flows which have largely been generated inside liberal institutions themselves. Thus, liberalism risks running past itself: claims of liberalism's victory paradoxically correlate with the dissolution of liberal values and institutions. In conclusion, the article reviews nostalgic and dialogic liberal strategies for arranging Post-Cold War international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]