The undoing of a unique relationship? Peace and security in the EU–South Africa Strategic Partnership

ABSTRACT

When the European Union (EU) and South Africa acceded to a strategic partnership, they expanded into new areas of partnership. One of these areas was peace and security, which is the focus of this article. The article argues that, although there appears to be a shared understanding of what security means, the strategic partnership has not been utilised significantly to further this understanding in practice. This is largely due to the EU's preferences for a continental, multilateral approach over the bilateralism of a strategic partnership. At the same time, South Africa sees its strategic partnership with the EU as being outside of its broader commitment to regional security. As a result the peace and security element of the strategic partnership has not been leveraged effectively despite several entry points for action. The article thus concludes that both the EU and South Africa need to re-think the current arrangement.     

Aid to the enemy: linking development and peacebuilding on the Korean peninsula

This article discusses the link between development and peacebuilding to analyze South Korean aid activities in North Korea in the context of the Korean conflict, where there are deep-rooted cycles of conflict episodes, and to explore the possibility of aid for peace on the Korean peninsula in the future. The Korean conflict is a large part of what makes South Korean aid to North Korea ineffective. For the past 20 years, South Korean aid to North Korea has fluctuated greatly, due to the context of the Korean conflict. The Korean conflict, once seemingly on the way to resolution, appears to have reverted to a time before the end of the Cold War. Many people in both the North and the South still see each other as the enemy. Most of the South Korean aid projects in North Korea have been suspended indefinitely and the fluctuation of aid to North Korea caused serious debates within South Korean society. At one point, the debates grew so heated that they were called the ‘South–South conflict’. Building on the conceptual framework of conflict sensitive development and strategic peacebuilding, this article argues that, to overcome the current impasse, all stakeholders must better understand the context of the Korean conflict and the interaction between the context and themselves, and develop a comprehensive strategy together, to encompass the multiple issues raised by the Korean conflict, as strategic peacebuilding proposes.     

The Sino–Japanese territorial dispute and threat perception in power transition

A territorial dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands has gained a high profile in Sino–Japanese relations. Since the 2012 escalation of the territorial dispute, there is no sign of any de-escalation despite economic interdependence, which previously helped ease the tension. Drawing on the constructivist understanding of threat perception and power transition theory, this article analyzes the way in which the deepening of threat perceptions associated with a perceived regional power transition prevents Japan and China from working beyond their subjective conceptions of justice associated with boarders and history. Since 2012, the Sino–Japanese territorial dispute has increasingly fitted into a larger picture of power-political conflict taking place in a power transition in which both Japan and China aim to return to ‘normality’ by propagating their territorial claims, strengthening their military capabilities, and strategic realignment. To that end, this article first introduces a theoretical framework on the centrality of threat perceptions in power transition. Second, it traces the ways in which Japan and China have developed a threat perception of each other since 1972. The third section deals with the escalation of the Sino–Japanese territorial dispute since 2010 and highlights the deepening of mutual suspicion and threat perception exemplified at the bilateral and multilateral levels. I conclude that the Sino–Japanese territorial debate entered a new stage of normative and power-political competition in earning international support for territorial claims in the East China Sea.     

Groupthink and Terrorist Radicalization

Why do groups adopt terrorism? Major theories of terrorist radicalization assume it to be a rational process whereby groups select terrorism as the policy most likely to advance their goals. Not all terrorism is rational, however, and these theories cannot explain cases when groups pursue terrorism despite it being self-defeating. We distinguish between rational and irrational terrorism, and explain the latter using social psychology's groupthink mechanism. Although terrorists are widely assumed to be vulnerable to groupthink, empirical work on the phenomenon has focused overwhelmingly on decision-making by national executives. We firmly establish the link between groupthink and terrorist radicalization by tracing groupthink's operation through the development of the Weather Underground, an American terrorist group that emerged in the late 1960s and conducted six years of bombings against the U.S. government. All of the antecedent conditions, symptoms, and decision-making defects predicted by groupthink are evident in the Weather Underground, providing valuable evidence of the dangers of irrational radicalization and offering lessons for its prevention.     

The European Union's human security discourse: where are we now?

The language of human security has been prominent in the European Union's (EU) official discourse for a number of years. However, whilst it has been promoted as a new approach for the EU in the development of its security and defence policy, the aim of this article is to assess the extent to which it actually features in the EU's contemporary strategic discourse and practice. It seeks to uncover where and how the concept is spoken within the EU's institutional milieu, how it is understood by the relevant policy-makers in the EU and the implication of this across key areas of human security practice. It is argued in the article that human security has not been embedded as the driving strategic concept for Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) in an era of crisis and change in Europe and beyond and that the prospects for this materialising in the near future are rather thin.     

中央苏区时期与毛泽东思想的初步形成

毛泽东等老一辈革命家在领导中央红军开辟赣南、闽西中央苏区时期,成功地解决了指导中国革命的四个重大问题即:走什么路,建什么党,建什么军,遵循什么样的思想路线?从而初步构建了毛泽东思想科学体系的基本内涵和框架。其主要内涵为:一是开辟了中国革命新路——提出农村包围城市的革命道路理论;二是制定了思想建党、政治建军的基本纲领及其各项原则;三是确立了红军反"围剿"作战的积极防御战略方针;四是提出了"中国革命斗争的胜利要靠中国同志了解中国情况"的独立自主、实事求是思想路线。     

中日双边互动的战略性思考

中国的和谐世界理念与日本外交战略的互动,表现为两国战略分歧与战略对话并存:中国坚持走和平发展道路与日本"普通国家论"阐释的大国化战略路径相异,导致两国业已存续的冲突与纷争时有显现、结构性矛盾日益突出,因而构筑基于共同战略利益的互惠关系成为发展双边关系的战略选择。寻求中日双边良性互动,要将两国关系置于国际体系的坐标中进行战略定位,在考量构建中日战略互惠关系相关因素的基础上,突破既往双边关系的局限性,理性调控中日战略互惠关系的互动及走向。     

战略劳动关系管理:内容、挑战及展望

劳动关系是劳资双方在劳动过程中构成的一种社会关系,它包括权利关系和利益关系两个方面,劳动争议中涉及的劳动关系是权利和利益兼有的关系.劳动关系包括三个范畴,即学术建设、解决实际问题、道德规范.劳动关系管理和人力资源管理对工作场所问题的研究都包含了雇主、员工和社会这三种视角,只是其侧重点不同.劳动关系管理是以上三种解决途径...     

公私部门战略管理影响机制的比较研究

战略管理的影响机制是指影响组织战略管理活动的各种因素,以及这些因素之间的交互关系。本文根据影响因素的来源和组织方式不同,具体分析了私营部门和公共部门战略管理的主要影响机制。通过公私部门战略管理影响机制的比较分析,旨在厘清公私部门战略管理的影响因素和过程机理的差异,进一步提升公共部门与私营部门战略管理的效率和水平。     

Polls,coalition signals and strategic voting: An experimental investigation of perceptions and effects

Polls and coalition signals can help strategic voters in multiparty systems with proportional representation and coalition governments to optimise their vote decision. Using a laboratory experiment embedded in two real election campaigns, this study focuses on voters' attention to and perception of polls and coalition signals. The manipulation of polls and coalition signals allows a causal test of their influence on strategic voting in a realistic environment. The findings suggest that active information acquisition to form fairly accurate perceptions of election outcomes can compensate for the advantage of high political sophistication. The theory of strategic voting is supported by the evidence, but only for a small number of voters. Most insincere vote decisions are explained by other factors. Thus, the common practice to consider all insincere voters as strategic is misleading.