From “partnership” to “principled pragmatism”: tracing the discursive practices of the High Representatives in the EU’s relations with the Southern Mediterranean

ABSTRACT

The EU’s relations with countries in the Southern Mediterranean have a long history as the region is of great strategic importance for the Union and its member states. The High Representatives of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy have been highly involved in shaping these relations, and this role has been officially strengthened with institutional changes brought about with the Lisbon Treaty. This article analyses the role of the HR/VPs in shaping the EU's foreign and security policy towards the region with an analytical focus on discursive practice. Drawing on insights from practice theory in IR and EU studies, the analysis traces continuity and change in how the Southern Mediterranean is described in the drafting of key strategic documents. The main finding is that EU foreign and security policy towards the Southern Mediterranean shows a high degree of continuity despite several crises and institutional changes, although the discursive practices have evolved. The article ends by highlighting a conundrum that the EU can be said to implicitly acknowledge: if authoritarian states in the Southern Mediterranean are inherently unstable, yet stable enough to quench the democratic aspirations of their people, then what should be the basis for EU actions?     

Conceptualizing Interstate Conflict: How Do Concept-Building Strategies Relate to Selection Effects?

An essential, but often overlooked, role of concepts lies in how they constitute or define populations. Explicit choices made by researchers about concept structure are tied inextricably to the selection rule for identifying cases to include in analyses. Concept construction issues are absolutely crucial because the concept structure used interacts in various, usually hidden, ways with theories and hypotheses that researchers want to test. The concepts used to select cases may be correlated with common dependent variables hence producing selection bias. We illustrate this potential by exploring international crises as they have been conceptualized by the ICB Project. We show that two alternative conceptualizations of “crisis” produce populations that correlate with common ICB dependent variables. Our empirical analyses pay particular attention to variables related to power because they are particularly susceptible to being influenced by these selection effects.     

The International Energy Agency after 35 years: Reform needs and institutional adaptability

Despite the mounting scholarly interest in processes of institutional change in international organizations, still very little is known about how and when such evolutionary dynamics occur. This article hopes to contribute to this young, yet growing body of literature by process-tracing the changes that have occurred in the institutional setup of the International Energy Agency (IEA). Founded during the first oil crisis of 1973–74, the IEA has had to deal with major environmental changes over its lifetime. In response, the agency has diversified away from its original raison d’être, namely managing an emergency oil sharing mechanism, to become a more proactive policy adviser guiding its member governments toward sustainable energy economies. The article seeks to explain the observed patterns of change and inertia, using a theoretic paradigm that builds on theories of “new institutionalism.” The paper argues that the agency’s institutional flexibility can only be fully explained by taking into account a combination of factors: (1) the member states’ choices, in particular the impulses of the G8-members of the IEA; (2) path dependency, especially the institutional link with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); and (3) agency by the secretariat and the executive bureau of the IEA.     

Can Business Development Services practitioners learn from theories of innovation and services marketing?

Business Development Services (BDS) programmes have become big business for international donors and NGOs. Focusing on small enterprises in developing countries, the current BDS approach assumes that the development of commercial markets is the key to success. Yet many of these programmes continue to have a limited impact. A review of modern theories of innovation and services marketing management suggests that this may be because current BDS support practice reflects a rather limited understanding of how new markets actually develop. Drawing on the insights that these theories offer, the authors suggest that BDS practice should develop a more evolutionary approach, recognising that service innovations develop through active, on-going interaction between suppliers and customers. The article concludes with practical policy guidelines and a discussion about tools that could help BDS to adopt this more successful approach.     

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.     

Strategy and Selection in International Relations

It is widely recognized that many of the samples we use for statistical analysis in international politics are the result of some selection process. Not surprisingly, selection models are becoming increasingly popular. At the same time, the role of strategic interaction has begun to play a more important role in statistical analyses. However, it has not been clear how statistical strategic models and selection models relate to each other, or what the effects are of employing one when the other is the more appropriate model. In this article, I 1) clarify why international relations scholars cannot shield themselves from selection bias simply by assuming their results are limited to a given sample; 2) show how recent statistical strategic models relate to traditional selection models and generalize the two sets of models by deriving a correlated strategic model; and 3) examine the effects of misspecifying either correlated errors or strategic interaction. My results indicate that failure to model the strategic interaction produces worse specification error than failure to account for correlated disturbances. In fact, traditional bivariate probit models appear to be superior only when states are almost completely uncertain about each others' preferences.     

Changing the Debate About “Success” in Conflict Resolution Efforts

This essay outlines a conceptual framework for discussing success in interactive conflict resolution and in conflict resolution efforts more generally. It first proposes reasons why evaluation is crucial for improving practice. An overview of the new framework and its development are then presented. This gives the reader a window into its construction and some of the challenges of evaluation in conflict intervention processes. Next, the uses of the framework are explained as well as how its use helps to change the debate about successful processes. Finally, this article discusses how the theoretician, practitioner, and researcher-evaluator can use this framework for their own purposes, and how evaluating processes based upon their goals helps to improve the theory, practice, and research of the field.     

Holy Trinities,Rivalry Termination,and Conflict

In this article we attempt to correct a number of gaps in the current literature on strategic rivalry. First, we argue that liberal and realist theories of conflict and cooperation have been generally ignored by scholars engaged in rivalry research. Secondly, we argue that current rivalry research fails to disentangle termination processes from conflict within rivalries, mainly due to problems with common operationalizations of rivalry. To bridge these gaps, we test the effects of liberal variables-manifested in the Kantian tripod (democracy, interdependence, and IGO membership)-and what we more loosely term the realist tripod (bipolarity, shared threat, and capability balance) on both rivalry termination and the probability that rivals will engage in a militarized conflict. We conduct this test utilizing a new data set of strategic rivalries compiled by Thompson (1999, 2001) which corrects the tautological operationalization of rivalry commonly used in rivalry research when conflict is the dependent variable. Overall, our results paint a variegated picture, underscoring the importance of rivalry as a special class of dyadic relationship. While realist variables better explain rivalry termination, the direction is opposite that predicted by some realist hypotheses; among liberal variables, only democracy is a robust predictor of both termination and conflict.     

安全焦虑、信号传递与中国对东南亚国家的战略安抚

对于崛起的中国而言,采取系统性战略安抚,树立自我克制的负责任大国形象有助于赢得周边国家信任。然而,在二十多年睦邻外交实践中,东南亚国家始终对崛起的中国的意图感到焦虑,这种担忧因地理邻近性与实力不对称而变得更加敏感。2008年以来,东南亚国家对中国"核心利益"话语、逐步增多的外交制裁以及多边倡议给予了较大关注。面对东南亚国家上升的安全忧虑,中国外交主动释放安抚信号增信释疑。与强制策略不同,安抚策略关注如何从正面激励换取他国的信任。立足于对现有文献的批判性整合,重新梳理善意信号的呈现形式(情感-物质)与成本来源(内生-外生)两大维度,可以从逻辑上生成四种睦邻安抚信号的表达路径:睦邻话语、相互依赖、无私援助与制度约束。面对中国的吸引与安抚,东南亚国家也会主动进行试探与甄别,以讨价还价、社会化、对冲试探和制度牵制四种方式,对中国释放的安抚信号进行评估。由于安抚信号的可信度评估具有主观性,东南亚国家对中国安抚信号存在不同理解,中国外交需换位思考并理解东南亚国家的试探心理。     

Military Alliances in the 21 Century: Still Relevant after all These Years?

While military alliances have always been important to the United States, some experts wonder about their future. In today's uncertain security environment, they question whether these alliances may have outlived their usefulness. The author argues that U.S. national security leaders face some difficult choices as they formulate strategy and determine the number and types of collective security arrangements the nation will require to secure its national interests in the future.     

The difficulty of measuring support for democracy in a changing society: evidence from Russia

Measuring support for democracy in societies where democratic institutions do not exist or do not function well is a challenge faced by many researchers around the world. In societies moving either toward or away from democracy, the very meaning of ‘democracy’ is often in question and institutions and practices that go by the label of ‘democratic’ may vary widely from accepted norms. As a result, respondents are likely to interpret survey questions on democratic concepts in unpredictable ways. This article examines some of the ways respondents in non-democratic or imperfectly democratic countries may misinterpret the meaning of survey questions and consequently how their answers may mislead researchers. Previous research has focused on problems with abstract concepts like ‘democracy’. Evidence presented here – from interviews with Russians – shows that the problem is broader and covers more kinds of questions than previously thought. A strong potential for miscommunication also exists with more concrete questions about institutions and values, forced choices that encourage respondents to change the meaning of questions, and questions about trust in institutions.     

Putting endogenous development into practice

The gap between theories and the actual practice of development is often great, but the gap between concepts of endogenous approaches and the practice of endogenous development may be hardest to bridge, particularly when the funding agency is a global actor. Nathalie Tinguery, Country Program Coordinator for US African Development Foundation (USADF) in Burkina Faso, reflects on her experience of incorporating values and goals into her development practice of working with communities and for an international funder. She describes how she remains focused on endogenous development, what this means in her development practice, and what it is about USADF policies and practice that make this brand of endogenous development possible. Views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official positions of USADF.     

Toward a Theory of Negotiation Precedent

It is remarkable that precedents and their use have not been well explored within the negotiation literature. In this article, I examine the sparse knowledge of precedents and offer a preliminary framework for understanding the role of precedents in negotiation, including how negotiators establish and apply them. Precedents can either evolve randomly or be created with strategic intent. Understanding precedents generally involves examining how negotiators build, adopt, avoid, and reject them. In this review of the existing literature, I identify twelve concepts and paradigms that are particularly relevant to our understanding of negotiation precedents. I also establish a research agenda and identify three methods for further developing our knowledge of precedents: applying path dependence theory from the field of international relations to a negotiation context; conducting experimental research in a laboratory setting involving subjects engaged in negotiation exercises that contain opportunities to apply precedents; and conducting field research with a focus on case methodology grounded in negotiation linkage theory and theories of negotiation dynamics. Finally, in this article, I formulate a two‐part framework on building and applying precedents, and offer managerial guidance for the negotiation practitioner. Precedents serve as a strategic technique and provide a source of power at that point in a negotiation when decisions are made.     

Selection Effects and Deterrence

The empirical question of how often deterrent threats issued during international disputes succeed has been hotly debated for years, with some researchers arguing that virtually no robust cases of success can be identified. I argue that what appears to be an empirical and methodological debate actually arises from the inadequacy of classical rational deterrence theory, which fails to comprehend the implications of states' strategic self-selection into international disputes. Rational self-selection is shown to imply that in a sample of crises, deterrent threats issued after an initial challenge will tend to fail in precisely those cases where they are relatively most credible signals of an intent to resist with force. The product of a selection effect, this paradoxical implication allows a resolution of the debate on the efficacy of deterrence in crises. And because selection effects can arise whenever a historical "case" is the product of choices by actors who also influence the outcome in question, this example from the study of deterrence has broad relevance for empirical research.     

A Bridge over Troubled Water: Managing Parties’ Mental Illness in Mediation

One in five individuals in society has or will have a mental illness at some point in his or her lifetime. Conflict resolution theory, however, largely assumes that all individuals operate within the range of behaviors considered mentally healthy. Evidence suggests that professionals who deal with conflict, however, may have to deal with individuals who have mental health problems more frequently than would be the statistical norm. Clearly then, new theories of practice and norms of mediator behavior are needed to respond to the distinctive challenges presented by engaging with those who face mental health difficulty. This paper surveys the research on how people with mental health challenges approach and respond to conflict and provides practical advice to conflict resolution professionals on how to recognize and tailor their approach to meet the needs of these individuals.     

Is Russia Sabotaging Democracy in the West?

While there may be some ideological components at stake in the Russian Federation undermining democracy in the West, the Kremlin primarily views interference as a tool to accomplish its strategic interests. Russia is less concerned about regime type (authoritarian versus democratic) and more concerned with how a foreign power advances its strategic interests. While many governments that advance Russia's interests tend to be authoritarian, this is not always the case. Russia does not view non-Western democracies as a threat because the Kremlin considers them predictable and consistent. However, the use of “sharp power” to interfere in the internal affairs of Western democracies is coupled to an assessment of how such interference either promotes Russian interests or decreases Western capabilities to interfere in Russian foreign and domestic policy.     

奥巴马政府全球战略调整及对我影响

奥巴马政府上台以后，美国政府的全球战略重心东移政策逐渐由隐性走向显性，并且呈现出与以往美国历届政府所不同的新特点。事实上，奥巴马政府的全球战略重心东移政策有其深刻的动因，并且已形成一套较为完整的“亚太新战略”。美全球战略重心东移也会在政治、经济等各方面对我产生深刻影响。     

Health and hygiene behaviour change: bottom–up meets top–down in Tibet

The Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund (TPAF) has been working in the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China since 1998 to increase the income and assets of rural Tibetans. From the beginning, TPAF recognised that high morbidity and mortality were a constraint on efforts of rural Tibetans to improve livelihoods. Early interventions to train township doctors and midwives were not sustainable. In 2005, in partnership with local health authorities, TPAF launched a Behaviour Change Communication (BCC) strategy to build villagers' capacity to improve health and hygiene practices and to make informed choices about using government-run primary and preventive health services. Results from counties and townships in three Prefectures are preliminary, but they show significant changes in health knowledge and practice, and growing links between village needs and government services. Next steps include strengthening implementation and institutionalising government support to extend and support the approach.     

Live-tweeting terror: a rhetorical analysis of @HSMPress_ Twitter updates during the 2013 Nairobi hostage crisis

With the advent of social media, terrorist organisations have seized an unprecedented opportunity to engage wider audiences with their ideologies and actions. This study aims to develop an understanding of this tactic by analysing its use in the 2013 Westgate Mall hostage crisis. During that event, the Twitter account @HSMPress_ provided continuous updates supporting the actions of the terrorist organisation Al-Shabaab. Situating the event within a framework of Jürgen Habermas’s theories of the Public Sphere and Andrew Mack’s theories of asymmetric warfare, this paper employs Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic pentad to perform a rhetorical analysis of the tweets using both artistic and inartistic factors. It does so in order to understand how they engaged the audience of the terrorist event, emphasising the performative nature of the text in accordance with behaviourist objectives. The results of this analysis will demonstrate how terrorist groups may use platforms like Twitter to achieve a strategic political goal by shifting viewer perspectives, with significant implications for future policy governing social media content and censorship.