Interventionary order and its methodologies: the relationship between peace and intervention

Abstract

¹Recently there have been calls from policymakers around the world for practically engaged research to produce evidence-based policy for peace, security and development. Policymakers aim to align three types of methodological approaches to knowledge about peace, security and development in international order: methodological liberalism at state and international levels, aligned with ‘methodological everydayism’ in order to constrain methodological nationalism. Policy operates through broad forms of intervention, spanning military, governmental and developmental processes, which scholarship is expected to refine. Critical scholarship is sensitive about the subsequent ‘interventionary order’, often connecting methodological everydayism with global justice frameworks rather than methodological nationalism or liberalism.

Sir Philip Mitchell, later colonial governor of Uganda, Fiji, and Kenya, responded to Malinowski’s claims [that the British government needed the support of anthropologists] with great scepticism, emphatically expressing a preference for the ‘practical man’ rather than the scientist.²     

Between morality and rationality: framing end-of-life care policy through narratives

This paper analyzes the nature of the debate generated prior to the implementation of the Act Respecting End-of-Life Care in 2015 in Québec (Canada). Including medical assistance in dying (MAID) along existing palliative care services, the act is an important policy change on a very sensitive issue. As such, MAID could be categorized as a morality policy issue, the latter being defined as a particular category of policy because of its specific features (issues of first principle, technical simplicity, high salience, public interest, and public participation). In line with Mucciaroni’s proposition, we rather analyze this issue by understanding morality policy as one of two framing strategies (moral and/or rational-instrumental frame). Our research reconstructs four public opinion framings as advanced and transmitted through the media between 2005 and 2015. It shows that although opponents to the bill unsurprisingly framed the debate in deontological terms, mostly referring to sanctity of life as one of the most important values in society, they also framed it on rational-instrumental grounds in a similar proportion, alleging the danger of a slippery slope and potential abuse. As well, if some of the proponents favored a moral framing centered on the argument that dignity and individual autonomy take precedence over all other values, others put forward a rational-instrumental one, where the slippery slope/abuse argument is used as a cautionary statement against the artificial prolongation of life. Our analysis reinforces Mucciaroni’s and Ferraiolo’s assertions that sensitive issues classified as morality policy cannot be apprehended solely through the unidimensional frame of morality.     

The emerging EU peacebuilding framework: confirming or transcending liberal peacebuilding?

The European Union (EU) is now emerging as a major actor in regional and global peacebuilding. Yet its peacebuilding approach and practices are subject to some significant and familiar contradictions. In this article, we identify the basis for what may become an ‘EU peacebuilding framework’ (EUPF), and argue that, while it aspires to a ‘just and durable peace’ including practical tools and a normative framework, these need to be set in critical relief. The EU's nascent approach to building peace is compared and contrasted with the evolving liberal peacebuilding consensus and the much criticized statebuilding project which has recently emerged. This is evaluated against recent research focusing on developing a more sophisticated form of contextually relevant peacebuilding. Finally, we assess how the embryonic EUPF might contribute to the development of a just and durable peace, and ask what sorts of issues and dimensions this raises.     

Preserving the Identity Crisis: Autonomy,System and Sovereignty in European Law

This article uses Hans Kelsen's theory of a legalsystem to take a fresh look at European Community law,and the relationship between the European Community,its Member States, and international law. It arguesthat the basis of the Community's legal legitimacy isindeterminate, and offers a model to accommodate thatindeterminacy. This model is founded on aconstructivist approach suggested to be particularlyuseful in the EC context. Using this approach, it isargued that the concepts of system, autonomy andsovereignty in the Community can only be understoodthrough the recognition of a plurality of viewpoints,and that it is crucial, in describing the Community,to distinguish between a concept per se and thechoice to adopt that concept.     

DAYLIGHT SAVING IN NEW SOUTH WALES: A CASE OF EMOTIVE SYMBOLIC POLITICS?

Abstract: This is a case study of the campaign over daylight saving in New South Wales from the mid-1960s. The period leading to the legislation making daylight saving a permanent feature in 1972 was marked by the involvement of various groups, media campaigns and inter-governmental negotiations. After the legislation was passed, the character of the campaign changed. Conflict was confined mainly to the rural sector, where large-scale citizen involvement occurred. Many anti-daylight saving bodies were created and a petition of over 40,000 names protesting about daylight saving was presented to the Premier. The Country Party was pressured sufficiently to promise during 1973, 1974 and 1975 that a referendum would be held, and this was achieved in May 1976. The results of the poll showed majority approval lay with continuing daylight saving. Until 1972 the policy area appeared to correspond to Theodore Lowi's "regulative" category, but from 1972 the policy arena altered to one which may be viewed in terms of T. Alexander Smith's "emotive symbolic" policy. The article assesses the Smith concept and its usefulness in explaining the issue of daylight saving as an example of intense community debate.     

Towards a New Ireland

Despite all the contemporary difficulties that we face on the island of Ireland, twenty-four years on from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, there is a clear sense of hope for a better future. We should be optimistic for our shared future, even if we do not agree on what form that should take. We cannot discuss Northern Ireland or its future without acknowledging that Brexit has significantly shifted the conversation. Not only has it brought Anglo-Irish relations to a low not seen in the past twenty-five years, but it has also damaged the reputation of the UK internationally and brought the topic of Irish unity back to the fore of our political discourse.