Sudan and the Unbearable Lightness of Islamism: From Revolution to Rentier Authoritarianism

The regime ruling Sudan since 1989 represents a pioneering experiment in the field of Islamist politics, being the first case in which a movement affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood managed to conquer power and hold on to it for a considerable time. During the late 1990s, internal and external pressures threatened the survival of the regime, leading the ruling class to abandon its ambition to represent a model of revolutionary Islamic governance. Oil exports provided a catalyst for this pragmatic shift, intensifying patronage-based relations at the expense of ideological affiliation. Seen from a political economy perspective, the Sudanese experience proves the flexibility of Islamism as an ideology, but also its failure as a political practice to constitute a real alternative to the authoritarian dynamics that are widespread in the MENA region.     

From Cottage Industry to International Organisation: The Evolution of Salafi-Jihadism and the Emergence of the Al Qaeda Ideology

Al Qaeda after the invasion of Afghanistan can now be understood as not only an international terror organisation but an ideology which inspires groups with similar goals of a supranational caliphate. The Al Qaeda ideology draws from long standing historical Islamic concepts that date to the time of Muhammad. The ideologues of the organisation, most notably Ayman al Zawahiri, have cleverly used these ideas and the works of other Islamists to create not just a terror organisation but an ideology designed to unite disparate groups of Islamic radicals around the world.     

Islamism and the state after the Arab uprisings: Between people power and state power

This paper examines the trajectories of different Islamist trends in the light of the Arab uprisings. It proposes a distinction between statist and non-statist Islamism to help understand the multiplicity of interactions between Islamists and the state, particularly after 2011. It is outlined how statist Islamists (Islamist parties principally) can contribute to the stabilization and democratization of the state when their interactions with other social and political actors facilitate consensus building in national politics. By contrast when these interactions are conflictual, it has a detrimental impact on both the statist Islamists, and the possibility of democratic politics at the national level. Non statist-Islamists (from quietist salafi to armed jihadi) who prioritize the religious community over national politics are directly impacted by the interactions between statist Islamists and the state, and generally tend to benefit from the failure to build a consensus over democratic national politics. Far more than nationally-grounded statist Islamists, non-statist Islamists shape and are shaped by the regional dynamics on the Arab uprisings and the international and transnational relations between the different countries and conflict areas of the Middle East. The Arab uprisings and their aftermath reshaped pre-existing national and international dynamics of confrontation and collaboration between Islamists and the state, and between statist and non-statists Islamists, for better (Tunisia) and for worse (Egypt).     

Terroristic Narratives: On the (Re) Invention of Peace in Northern Ireland

This article shows how Hamas legitimized its policy choices during the Al-Aqsa intifada and the Gaza war. The organization's policy moved from violent during the initial stages of the uprising to more moderate during later years. While this entailed huge changes in the organization's course of action, Hamas nevertheless always managed to frame its choices in a way that seemed consistent with its long-held beliefs. The same occurred during the Gaza war, when Hamas moderated its discourse even further. This shows Hamas' flexibility and pragmatism but also that seemingly rigid ideological views can change quite dramatically when circumstances change too.     

Evaluating Claims of Social Connection to International Conflict Casualties

Recent studies examining the political impact of individuals' connections to the victims of international violence find these ties have a powerful effect on people's attitudes and feelings. How reliable, however, are self-reported claims of ties to a conflict's casualties? Using data from 9/11 and the Iraq War, I examine these claims, analyzing: 1) their influence on both public assessments of foreign policy and voting behavior, 2) whether critical demographic and political factors predict the likelihood of individuals reporting a tie to a conflict casualty, 3) the predicted, aggregate likelihood of survey respondents having connections to conflict victims, and 4) the theoretical distinction between actual vs. perceived casualty connections. The results strongly support the use of casualty connection data for understanding individuals' responses to international violence, and encourage future applications of social network approaches to the study of war and politics.     

A Structural Analysis of International Conflict: From a Communication Perspective

The study describes the structure of international conflict with the tools of network analysis to enhance the understanding of multilateral conflict-communication relations and to predict the conflict structure with existing international relations theories (liberal and realist) plus global communication variables. Using data obtained from the Correlates of War Project (http://cow2.la.psu.edu/), the structure of international conflict is described for the period 1993–2001 for 145 nations. The results indicate that this network is very sparse; 42 nations had no conflict, and 36 only one bilateral disagreement. The network is centered about former Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), Russia, the United States, Iraq, and China. Most conflicts are regional. The paper also evaluates both the liberal, expanded liberal (with communication variables included), and realist (including Huntington's Clash of Civilizations Theory) perspectives as predictors of conflict. The results indicate that communication variables substantially enhance explanatory power of a predictive model, but the effects of the communication variables are inconsistent. A multiple regression model including history of colonialism and prior conflict, physical proximity and contiguity, whether or not a nation is a democracy, and the communication variables—international telecommunication, freight, and exports—accounted for 30.0% of the variance in the structure of international conflict and each variable was significantly related to conflict. The need for further research is discussed.     

Hurdles to International Terrorist Alliances: Lessons From Al Qaeda's Experience

Despite the threat posed by international terrorist alliances, the conditions that foster and inhibit these relationships remain poorly understood. When seeking allies outside of their primary conflict and political market, groups struggle to forge credible commitments, particularly the requisite ‘shadows of the future’ and reputations conducive to cooperation, without third-party enforcers. Given their suspicious nature and strong in-group identities, terrorist groups sometimes balk at relinquishing independence for security. Alliances risk precipitating counterterrorism pressure, alienating constituents, and increasing the risk of betrayal. Even groups that enjoy alliance success, like Al Qaeda, experience these hurdles in their alliance. What helped to set Al Qaeda apart from most groups was its ability to navigate these obstacles, though some bedeviled its alliances efforts. This offers under-utilized opportunities for alliance disruption.     

The Evolution of International Conflict Resolution: From Cold War to Peacebuilding

Shaped by the changing nature of international conflict, the field of international conflict resolution evolved significantly throughout the latter years of the twentieth century and continues to be redefined. The end of the Cold War created space for a major transformation of the international conflict resolution field. This transformation was marked by three trends: (1) an expansion from a focus on superpower negotiating strategies to a wider peacebuilding agenda, (2) an increase in the role of nongovernmental actors as both disputants and third parties in international conflicts, and (3) a growing concern about human security in addition to state security, creating both tensions and opportunities for collaboration between governmental and nongovernmental bodies. This article presents a brief overview of each trend, as well as some concluding questions to frame the field's further development at this important juncture.     

The United States' approach to Algeria's civil conflict: Implications for democratization,internal peace and anti-American violence

The United States' approach to Algeria's civil conflict has been based on the stringent assumption that a choice must be made between a secular government that is prowestern (although corrupt and repressive) and an Islamist regime that is anti-western (although equally repressive if allowed to govern). The article shows that this approach not only works to sustain authoritarianism in Algeria and reinforce a vicious cycle of poverry and civil violence, but also ignores the causal links between the practice of dictatorship in the country and the rise of anti-American violence. In this sense, America's foreign policy towards Algeria is a contributory factor to transnational terrorism. An alternative approach that is based on economic development and democracy promotion is proposed here to achieve sustainable democracy and internal peace in Algeria and weaken the forces that give rise to antiAmerican violence.     

Rethinking the repression-dissent nexus: assessing Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood's response to repression since the coup of 2013

This article examines the repression-dissent nexus in Islamist social movements. Several studies have overwhelmingly focused on the effects of repression on protest volume, level, and tactics. However, understanding the responses of individual members to regime repression and how they relate to the movement's collective response is rarely discussed. By analysing the response of the Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood to regime repression since the coup of 2013, this article explains the effects of repression on opposition movements. It argues that to understand the impact of repression on these movements, we need to differentiate between the collective and individual responses to repression. These two levels of analysis are crucial to better understand the repression-dissent nexus. Also, the article contends that collective and individual responses to repression cannot be explained by focusing solely on the structural and institutional factors (i.e. organization, ideology, leadership, etc.). Members’ personal experiences, memory, emotions, and trauma play a key role in shaping their response to repression. The article thus accounts for both the formal and informal effects of repression on Islamists.     

International Integration and Democratization: An Event History Analysis

This article examines the relationships between transitions to and from democracy and membership in major intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), ratification of key human-rights treaties, and integration into the global economy while controlling for a variety of domestic factors. The findings show that for the most part, participation in the major IGOs and the United Nations' human-rights regime has made little difference to the chances that countries would attempt or sustain democracy. Participation in regional human-rights treaties in Africa and the Americas is linked to better prospects for democracy, but this association appears to stem from regional trends of which those pacts are emblematic, rather than mechanisms specific to the pacts themselves. Finally, entanglement in the global economy – as indicated by thicker trade flows and membership in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and then World Trade Organization (WTO) – seems to have had a stronger effect on the prospects for democracy than these other forms of international integration, but not always in the beneficent direction posited by liberal theorists. While participation in the GATT/WTO is associated with better prospects for the establishment and persistence of democracy, foreign trade itself is linked to the persistence of domestic political regimes of either stripe, democratic and non-democratic.     

From Lab Experiments to Real Negotiations: An Investigation of International Iron Ore Negotiations

Negotiation researchers have conducted a large number of experimental lab studies to identify the factors that affect negotiation outcomes, but it remains unclear whether those results can be generalized to real‐world negotiations. To explore this question, we analyzed the dynamic international iron ore annual negotiations that took place from 2005 to 2009. We found evidence that supports two important findings from previous experiments. Specifically, we focused on the impact of negotiators’ best alternatives and first offers on negotiation prices using multiple case study analysis. We found that iron ore prices increased more when the gap between the previous year's negotiated price and the price on the alternative spot market, a public market in which commodities are traded for immediate delivery, was larger, which suggested that buyers were sensitive to the strength of this alternative, supporting the literature on the role of alternatives. We also found that the first offer price significantly influenced the final price. Our findings extend two important experimental findings from the negotiation literature to large‐scale business negotiations in the real world.     

Towards an Acceptable Level of Violence: Institutional Lessons From Northern Ireland

Institutional and economic development has recently returned to the forefront of economic analysis. The use of case studies (both historical and contemporary) has been important in this revival. Likewise, it has been argued recently by economic methodologists that historical context provides a kind of “laboratory” for the researcher interested in real world economic phenomena. Counterterrorism economics, in contrast with much of the rest of the literature on terrorism, has all too rarely drawn upon detailed contextual case studies. This article seeks to help remedy this problem. Archival evidence, including previously unpublished material on the DeLorean case, is an important feature of this article. The article examines how an inter-related strategy, which traded-off economic, security, and political considerations, operated during the Troubles. Economic repercussions of this strategy are discussed. An economic analysis of technical and organizational change within paramilitarism is also presented. A number of institutional lessons are discussed including: the optimal balance between carrot versus stick, centralization relative to decentralization, the economics of intelligence operations, and tit-for-tat violence. While existing economic models are arguably correct in identifying benefits from politico-economic decentralization, they downplay the element highlighted by institutional analysis.     

New Philosophical Foundations for International Law: From an Order of Fear to One of Respect

The international legal order is dominated by a concern for security, whether national or individual, an explicit fear of the Other, towards whom one exists in no moral relation. This is not a recent phenomenon but goes back to the origin of modernity in a Hobbesian rejection of classical and medieval natural law. This fear is not marginal to liberalism; rather, the amorality vacuum affecting personal relations is integral to liberal contractarianism. This fear-inducing vacuum has to be countered through a phenomenology of the person in community, following Paul Ricouer, which restores the ethical dimension of society. At the same time, a critical phenomenology can expose the pathologies of fear, the use of force to dominate, and the consequences of the absence of respect. The whole subject-matter of international law is inherently vulnerable to these negative contradictions, and not just recent tragedies, such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States and Britain. An exit strategy from a world of fear to one of respect has still to recognise the limits imposed not so much by the difference of the Other, as by the perplexity of one's own opaqueness. The destructiveness of fear remains at this initial stage. However, one can never completely overcome it by coming out of the modernity of the isolated self. We are equally opaque to one another.     

Intergovernmental Organization Memberships: Examining Political Community and the Attributes of International Organizations

Why are states jointly members in certain intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) but not others? Despite the proliferation of IGOs and renewed interest in this topic, we lack systematic research to answer this question. Our theory of political community explains why dyads of states are likely to be common members in particular types of IGOs. We analyze and compare functionalist and Deutschian communitarian perspectives about IGO memberships. We test our theory using newly available data on IGO mandates and institutional structure, which allows us to make specific predictions about the types of IGO to which dyads become members. We show that dyads that are economically dependent, and/or democratic and enjoying enduring peace, are more likely to join those IGOs that possess high levels of institutional structure. Militarized interstate conflicts reduce the likelihood of states sharing membership in common IGO, but not substantially, whereas development and alliances also increase IGO memberships between states. Trade ties, however, are the most important determinant of joint membership between states in the most institutionalized IGOs, which is congruent with security communities.     

International news as a reflection of cosmopolitan ideology: Coverage of the Ivorian crisis by CNN and the BBC

Abstract

International news discourse is often framed with ideological underpinnings. Ideology as a system of ideas or beliefs or ways of thinking not only helps, defines and explains, but also makes value judgements about that world (Croteau 2012; Van Dijk 1995). The author 's aim was to find out to what extent international news discourse reflects a cosmopolitanist ideology. The article looks at the extent to which the discourse of international news meets Tomlinson's (1999) postulation that cosmopolitanism should involve an intellectual and aesthetic stance of ‘openness’ towards people, places and different cultures – especially those from different ‘nations’. Using framing theory and critical discourse analysis as the theoretical basis for examining international news, the aim is to determine whether international news encourages or discourages a cosmopolitanist outlook during periods of political crisis. The author argues that Western media reportage on events in Ivory Coast to a large extent reflected a cosmopolitanist outlook.     

From Journeymen Envoys to Skilled Diplomats: Change in Canada's Education-Related International Activities, 1815-1968

For much of the nineteenth century, Canadian education-related international activities resided outside the realm of traditional diplomacy. This situation was exacerbated by Canada's colonial link with Great Britain. Obstacles that prevented educationalists from playing a more substantive role in diplomacy were local, imperial, and ecclesiastical in origin. Educational activities were also a tool in the service of governments in the era between the zenith of British Imperialism in the 1890s and the founding of the United Nations in 1945. In the post-1945 era there was greater collaboration between the federal Ministry of External Affairs and provincial ministries of education. Education also emerged in the late twentieth century as part of the new diplomacy. A flowering of new international governmental organizations dedicated to furthering creative diplomacy brought new energy to this field.     

中国社会科学院国际论坛“从哥本哈根到坎昆:新挑战、新选择、新机遇”研讨会综述

<正>2010年10月19日,中国社会科学院国际论坛从哥本哈根到坎昆:新挑战、新选择、新机遇在中国社科院拉丁美洲研究所举行。会议由中国社科院国际学部主办,由拉美所、美国美洲协会和中国社科院研究生院国际能源安全研究中心共同承办。