From a cosmopolitan to a fascist land: Adriatic irredentism in motion

This article explores Adriatic irredentism, a complex political, cultural, and social movement, by specifically analyzing the unique role it played in the legitimization of Italian territorial claims over “language frontiers” such as Trieste and its hinterland. Through a close reading of first-hand sources, it examines how Italian irredentist intellectuals, public press, and associations purposefully utilized anti-Slav and anti-German arguments to shape public perception of both the Italian nation as well as Trieste’s Italian identity or “Italianità.” Although recent historiographical interpretations have emphasized continuities in local understandings of “Italianità,” this article examines the discontinuities in the debate over its identity. It suggests that although Italian identity was first conceived as an expression of cultural and linguistic autonomy within the broader intellectual framework of Adriatic multi-nationalism, this idea gradually vanished amidst the structural crisis triggered by the Ausgleich or Compromise of 1867 and then inexorably faded on the eve of the Great War. Thus, notions of Italian national identity took an exclusionary and sometimes xenophobic meaning that was publicly used by a wide set of political actors to justify the territorial reincorporation of the “unredeemed” land within the borders of the new Italian state. The fascist regime, especially, utilized Italianness to further its aggressive and chauvinist agenda toward the Adriatic borderland. Consequently, Italian language and culture became instruments as well as symbols of repression and imperialism that were used to fulfill the regime’s ambitions of “fascistization” of the Slavic population living in the region.     

The Transformation of Soviet Industrial Relations and the Foundation of the Moldovan Dniester Republic

The debate about post-socialist internal conflict has overcome the ‘ethnic turn’ and increasingly focuses on actors. For the case of separatism in the Moldovan Dniester Valley, research has highlighted the crucial role of industrial factory directors. These managers mobilised their factories’ employees. To refine the knowledge of how collective conflict actors are formed, this article asks the question: what enabled directors to mobilise ‘their’ workers? The sources show that, on the one hand, the managers’ political power was rooted in typical Soviet enterprise structures; on the other, it was further strengthened by perestroika market reforms and the economic crisis entangled to them. These results suggest that separatist mobilisation and internal conflict were entangled to social transformation and functioned as a catalyst to the process of (re-)distribution of capital and power.     

The politics of the pipeline: The Iran and Afghanistan conflict

A war between Iran and the Taliban's Afghanistan was averted in September 1998. The roots of the animosity between the two sides go much deeper than the killings of Iranian diplomats in Afghanistan and the reported massacre of Afghan Shi'ites by the Taliban. As the Iranians see it, an Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban is a threat to Iran's national security and economic and political interests not only in Afghanistan but, more importantly, in oil-rich Central Asia. The article argues that at the heart of the conflict between Iran and the Taliban is the question of whether Iran or Afghanistan should be the route for the export of oil and gas from landlocked Central Asia to world markets, as well as Pakistan's plan to use Afghanistan as a corridor to Central Asia. As explained in the article, for commercial and political reasons the Afghanistan route is preferred by both Islamabad and Washington. However, international oil companies prefer the Iran route as it is the shortest, safest and most economical.     

Nagorny Karabakh conflict: prospects for conflict transformation

The article explores the current stalemate in the Nagorny Karabakh conflict, and perspectives for conflict transformation. As the conflict has remained dormant for more than 20 years, the political systems of the countries engaged in the conflict have adjusted to the conflict situation. The conflict is often used by the political elites in order to legitimize their power, consolidate support, marginalize opponents, and neutralize democratizing pressures. Since the status quo serves the interests of the authorities, the ruling regimes do not have strong incentives to seek conflict resolution. In these conditions, conflict transformation approaches are considered a necessary means to deal with the conflict. Given that political elites have little incentive to implement such transformation, civil society actors come increasingly to the fore. Only through multitrack initiatives supported by civil society actors, we argue, can conflict transformation practices advance and subsequently bring peace to the region.     

The ASEAN way of conflict management: Old patterns and new trends

In the current international environment, greater emphasis is placed on regional and international responses to conflict. ASEAN is widely regarded as one of the most successful regional organisations in this area. This paper identifies the principles and institutional mechanisms for conflict management in ASEAN, and examines the extent to which these have changed in the post‐Cold War era. It argues that ASEAN may face increasing challenges to its policy of conflict avoidance, as more and more conflicts take place within ASEAN countries rather than between them.     

Public executives: Actualization and conflict approaches

This study represents a test of Maslow's hypotheses that the management styles of self-actualized executives differ from those of less-actualized executives. The sample was drawn from among executives of seven state governments. The correlation of levels of actualization and executive behavior revealed that the more self-actualized executives were more willing to actively lobby for their decisional preferences than to simply accept decisions from superiors.     

The system of social identities in Tajikistan: Early warning and conflict prevention

The paper aims to explore the interconnections between social identities (ethnic, national, regional and religious) and conflict intentions in Tajikistan. Based on the analysis of the dynamics of identity-based conflicts, the paper emphasizes the importance of an early warning system that centers on social identity and shows what impact such factors as national identity building, religious identity revival, and regional identity reinforcement have on processes of conflict prevention, resolution, and reconciliation. Through the examination of the components of the model, including such factors as intergroup prejudice, outgroup threat, identity salience, ingroup primacy, forms of social identity, and modes of identity meaning, the author shows the main threats to peaceful co-existence in Tajikistan.     

Mugabe at war: The political economy of conflict in Zimbabwe

This paper employs a 'political economy of conflict' approach to explore the recent deterioration in the governance of Zimbabwe. It argues that this analytical approach, which has been applied by scholars such as William Reno to highly dysfunctional and/or collapsed states like Liberia and Sierra Leone, is appropriate for understanding the current actions of the Zimbabwean government as well, and especially their relation to the military's unpopular intervention in the recent conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While Zimbabwe's current crisis has been aptly described by various scholars as a failure of leadership, this paper argues that such failures of national governments in Africa need to be understood within the broader context of international political economy. Zimbabwe's lapses in governance extend beyond the state and the national border to features that have non-state and informal as well as international and transnational dimensions.     

The distribution of conflict and attention across energy infrastructure

Across the world, public administration and policy decisions are related to diverse levels of conflict and attention. However, the degree and variance of conflict and attention remain largely unspecified. This article examines how types of energy infrastructure and characteristics of project location are associated with the distribution of conflict and attention around the energy infrastructure siting process. Our empirical focus is on gas pipelines, electricity transmission lines, solar power projects, and wind power projects across the United States in 2018. Primarily relying on regression analysis and interviews, this article finds differences in the distribution of conflict and attention intensity within and between these energy infrastructure types, with gas pipelines and wind power projects presenting relatively higher conflict and attention intensities. However, conflict and attention are skewed to low intensities across infrastructure types. Characteristics of project locations that are positively associated with high conflict and attention intensity include the proportion of Democratic voters and the level of urbanization in the places where projects are sited. In contrast, the proportion of Black or Hispanic residents is negatively associated with high conflict and attention intensity.     

The composite approach: Research design in the context of war and armed conflict

Researching in contexts affected by armed conflict presents many challenges beyond those normally encountered by social scientists. Focusing on these special difficulties has, in the past, often obstructed the task of understanding the methods that are applicable to situations of armed conflict. This paper aims to suggest a means of rectification. First, it introduces some of the particular issues that relate to field research under conditions of armed conflict and, second, it suggests a possible strategic approach to mitigating these. Overall, it is argued that a creative combination of different methods and techniques, broadly termed 'the composite approach', represents the most effective way of dealing with the challenges that working in a conflict-affected situation presents.     

Water and international conflict

This article seeks to clarify the conceptual usefulness of the concept of complex political emergency (CPE) through an analysis of the Central American conflicts and post-conflict reconstruction. It argues that CPEs are a distinct category of conflicts of the 1990s, characterised by state collapse/failure in countries with historically weak states and where the dynamic of globalisation has undermined the relevance of state- and nation-building to owners of capital and power. In addition, they coincide with the collapse of universal mobilising principles into multipolar struggles around particular interests. Central America, like many of the countries where the term CPE is applicable, is on the periphery of the global economy. Its civil war in the 1980s, however, was driven by qualitatively different factors. Nevertheless, Central America has been affected in the 1990s by the same forces which currently affect CPEs. These forces have seriously undermined the post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding processes in the region, despite a considerable and in many respects creative set of initiatives by international donors, particularly at the micro level.     

Regulation of armed conflict: critical comparativism

Abstract

This paper calls for comparative analysis of international humanitarian law and Islamic laws regulating armed conflict by focusing on the underlying assumptions and interests informing both systems (rather than on rule-based comparison). It argues that examination of the biases inherent to each legal system can potentially inform scholars to understand better the paradigms shaping each of them. In doing so, the paper builds on contextual and critical interpretations of both fields of law to assert the need for ‘critical comparativism’ rather than functionalist comparativism. Unlike functionalist comparativism, which treats international law as the ‘objective’ benchmark against which other legal traditions are measured, ‘critical comparativism’ treats the two legal systems examined as alternative manifestations of power structures which, when contrasted against each other, help shed more light on the inherent bias in each legal system.     

The affective politics of sovereignty: reflecting on the 2010 conflict in Kyrgyzstan

This article examines the concept of sovereignty in elite and popular affection during the violent and turbulent events from April to October 2010 in the Kyrgyz Republic. Nationalist leaders promoted Kyrgyz ethnic values and ideals as the center of sovereignty held by some to be under threat. These events exemplify what we describe as the affective politics of sovereignty. We explore how emotion, in particular, serves as an important component of the constitution of sovereignty as both an international and popular institution. We explore how Kyrgyz identity has become intertwined with the sovereignty of Kyrgyzstan and clashes with Western multi-ethnic conceptions and practices.