Maintain Peace in Asia and Promote Common Development

(Speech by Mr. Li Chengren, Executive Vice-President ofCAFIU at the Sino-Japanese Symposium)Respected Mr. Suzuki Tsuneo and other Japanese friends,Respected Chinese colleagues:First of all, I’d like to express warm welcome to the Japanese delegation head…     

British Peace Activism and ‘New’ Diplomacy: Revisiting the 1899 Hague Peace Conference

This analysis provides a re-appraisal of the 1899 Hague Conference by looking more closely at how citizen activists—notably in Britain but also transnationally—used it as a forum through which to press their agenda onto politicians and diplomatists. In so doing, this assembly existed as a stepping-stone between the ‘old’ diplomacy of the nineteenth century and the ‘new’ diplomacy of the twentieth. Peace activists identified and harnessed a growing body of progressive public opinion—on both a domestic and international scale—in the hope of compelling governments to take the necessary steps towards realising their ambitions of peace, disarmament, and international arbitration. Although the tangible outcomes of the 1899 Conference were limited, the precedents it established not only paved the way for further advances in international law, but also facilitated ever closer public and press scrutiny of international affairs into the twentieth century.     

Calling for Peace and Seeking Development ——New Year Wishes

Astheyear２００２fadedawayquietly，theyear２００３isjustaroundthecorner．Reviewingwhathap－penedinthepastyear，wefindtheworldisstillnottranquil．TheimpactofSeptember１１thIncidentstillexists．ThehostageincidentemergedinMoscow．TheviolentconflictsbetweenIsraelandArabiancoun－trieshaveescalatedtoanewlevel．TheU．S．A．isstationingmassiveforcesinthegulfregion．AndthenuclearissueintheKoreanPeninsularhasdrawntheattentionofthewholeworld．Inaddition，asitua－tionofrecessionandinstabilityisemerg…     

Women’s Participation in Peace Negotiations and the Durability of Peace

There is an emerging consensus that women’s participation in peace negotiations contributes to the quality and durability of peace after civil war. However, to date, this proposition has remained empirically untested. Moreover, how women’s participation may contribute to durable peace has not been systematically explored. This article uses a mixed method design to examine this proposition. Our statistical analysis demonstrates a robust correlation between peace agreements signed by female delegates and durable peace. We further find that agreements signed by women show a significantly higher number of peace agreement provisions aimed at political reform, and higher implementation rates for provisions. We argue that linkages between women signatories and women civil society groups explain the observed positive impact of women’s direct participation in peace negotiations. Collaboration and knowledge building among diverse women groups contributes to better content of peace agreements and higher implementation rates of agreement provisions. We substantiate this argument with qualitative case study evidence and demonstrate how collaboration between female delegates and women civil society groups positively impacts peace processes. Our findings support the assumption that women’s participation in peace negotiations increases the durability and the quality of peace.     

Revisiting DDR in Liberia: exploring the power,agency and interests of local and international actors in the ‘making’ and ‘unmaking’ of combatants

The understanding that disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes are essential in helping to prevent war recurrence in post-conflict situations is at the heart of current international aid practice and the academic literature on peacekeeping and stabilisation. However DDR programmes are often launched on the basis of untested assumptions. This article considers the DDR programme in Liberia and analyses the complex relationship between the programmatic efforts to disarm and reintegrate combatants and the programme's actual effects. If we are to understand how DDR works as a tool of post-conflict governance, it is essential to explore the mechanisms of authority and power at stake. The focus is therefore not on whether combatants were successfully disarmed and reintegrated, but rather on exploring unfolding processes and the field of forces within which DDR programmes are implemented. It critically assesses the ideas of disarmament and reintegration and the basic assumptions behind current DDR policy through an analysis of the Liberian case, emphasising the agency and interests of local and international actors in the ‘making’ and ‘unmaking’ of combatants.     

‘Not a heap of stones’: material environments and ontological security in international relations

Extant scholarship on ontological security in international relations has focused on the significance of social environments for state identity. In this article, I argue that material environments also provide an important source of ontological security for states. In order to assume this role material environments need to be discursively linked to state identity through either projection or introjection. Once incorporated into state identity narratives, material environments become ‘ontic spaces’: spatial extensions of the collective self that cause state identities to appear more firm and continuous. However, ontic spaces are inherently unstable and require maintenance, especially during periods of crisis or transition. States bear agency in this process but they never achieve full control, as identity discourses are continuously contested both domestically and internationally. I illustrate these claims by looking at the role of the General Staff Headquarters in Belgrade, destroyed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1999, in the ontological security of Serbia.     

The European ‘Other’ in Poland’s Conservative Identity Project

Since taking office in November 2015, Poland’s conservative government has pressed for a sweeping reinterpretation of the past, and a re-envisioning of the future, of the political community. This conservative identity project idealises the allegedly fully sovereign Poland of the interwar period and repudiates the normative commitments underpinning Poland’s accession to the European Union. The worldview of the conservative government’s liberal critics, by contrast, represents a fusion of the inclusive nationalism asserted in opposition to communist rule with the affirmation of a European identity. The reawakening of historically resonant debates about the nature of Poland’s European-ness, emphasizing the centrality of the (Western) European ‘other’ in Poland’s national idea, carries significant implications for its relations within the international environment.     

‘Communities of practice’: prospects for theory and action in participatory development

‘The myth of community’ permeates both the understanding and the practice of participatory development. Yet the idea that communities exist as coherent units of people who inhabit bounded geographic spaces and are ready to be mobilised for development restricts the very agency that participation promises. This article offers an alternative model of community: one that is more compatible with the ideal of people-centred, participatory development. Using Etienne Wenger's concept of ‘communities of practice’, and drawing on narrative theory and cognitive approaches to policy analysis, the article argues that community should be created and sustained around shared meanings.     

‘Communication’ in the era of ‘Empire’ and ‘multitude’

SUMMARY

Politics has been described as “an aggregate of persons in a power perspective of elaborated demands and expectations”. From this the collective nature of politics can be clearly seen. Without communication, however, no collective action is possible and consequently no political action. Based on this politics can be seen as the continuous defining of collective action in the context of mutual power relations in which there are differences (inter alia of objectives and methods) and consequently conflict over the allocation of scarce resources. Even though there has been an early interest in the relationship between politics and communication, e.g. Aristoteles and Julius Caesar with his Acta Diurna, systematic study of the relationship between communication and politics and the generation and regulation of conflict is of recent nature. A review of the literature on the theory and research in the field of political communication indicates it to be of original interest to researchers from fields such as journalism, mass communication, political science and speech communication. Recently, however, political communication emerged as a field on its own worthy of its recognition as a subdiscipline of communication science: it is recognized by professional bodies like the International Communication Association it is a separate area for research, teaching and for publication of journals devoted to it.     

Extreme nationalism and violent discourses in Scandinavia: ‘the resistance’, ‘traitors’, and ‘foreign invaders’

This is a comparative analysis of neo‐Nazis and anti‐immigration activists in Norway, Denmark and Sweden with regard to their rhetoric and justifications for violence against ‘foreigners’ and political opponents, and actual patterns of violence and harassment. Different traditions of nationalism in the three Scandinavian countries, and highly dissimilar historical experiences ‐ especially during World War II ‐influence the rhetorical strategies of the two types of extreme nationalists, and their respective abilities to appropriate national symbols. However, based on divergent historical analogies, most extreme nationalist groups present themselves as a ‘resistance movement’ fighting ‘foreign invaders’ and ‘traitors’.     

‘The camp’ and ‘the lesser evil’: humanitarianism in Sri Lanka

This article examines the 2009 humanitarian disaster in Sri Lanka through fieldwork conducted at the time and through theoretical lenses supplied by Arendt, Foucault and Agamben. The article suggests that this catastrophe represents a salutary example of the consequences of promoting a ‘lesser evil’ in the context of a government-fuelled human rights disaster. In line with Arendt's critique of the ‘lesser evil’, the case illustrates the limits to prioritising compromise, quietude and ‘access’. At the same time, while ‘democracy’ and ‘terror’ have frequently been posed as opposites, this tragedy shows how democratic forces, nationally and even internationally, can embrace something that approximates to Agamben's ‘camp’, a state of emergency in which entire groups of people lose their rights and can, at the extreme, be killed with impunity. Meanwhile, a pervasive official language of ‘care’ and ‘humanitarianism’ (corresponding to Foucault's politics of ‘life’) not only proved entirely consistent with ethnic cleansing and the large-scale killing of civilians; it also actively assisted in this endeavour by creating a smokescreen behind which massacres could be carried out.     

Small states and the ‘throughput’ legitimacy of international organizations

Abstract

The unequal participation of member states in international organizations (IOs) undermines IOs’ legitimacy as global actors. Existing scholarship typically makes this assessment by referencing a combination of input—the interests IOs serve—and output—the decisions they take. This scholarship does not, however, pay enough attention to how IOs have responded to these concerns. We argue that IOs have used the participation of small states—whose membership most studies typically ignore—as an important means of generating what Vivian Schmidt calls ‘throughput’ legitimacy for their operations. We organize our analysis of ‘throughput’ legitimacy in IOs around four institutional mechanisms—(1) agenda setting; (2) leadership (s)election; (3) management and operation; and (4) service delivery—in which all states seek to exert influence. What emerges is an account of IOs seeking to balance ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’ by way of ‘throughputs’. We conclude by arguing for an expanded focus on the means by which IOs generate ‘throughput’ legitimacy in future research.     

What wars and ‘war bodies’ know about international relations

What happens when the ‘international’ as a distinct social space is approached from the perspective of war rather than war from the perspective of the ‘international’? Tarak Barkawi's question (Millennium, 39:3, 2011, 701–706) is best answered by attempts to understand war not as part of inter/intra-state relations but as a socio-cultural, trans-historical institution that impacts on the ‘everyday’ lives of men, women and children. In this article I argue that war is not a disruption of the ‘everyday’, an abstraction that has a definite beginning and end, something we enter into and exit. Instead, it can be captured in daily and mundane lived experiences of people and in powerful emotions that constitute ‘self’, community and the ‘other.’ Drawing upon my research on wars in South Asia, I particularly reflect on how war shapes the banal and the fervent and how cultural and political narratives of ‘war bodies’ perform the ‘international’ in a variety of ways. Most significantly I want to draw attention to how international relations as a scholarly discipline is so deeply engaged with war and yet seems to have an estranged relationship with it.     

Embracing subjectivities in the collaborative teaching of terrorism: pedagogy in a ‘critical’ learning environment

This article seeks to reflect on the experiences of the authors as creators and instructors of a unique course on terrorism. It will reflect on how dynamics of cross-cultural and interdisciplinary interaction have been facilitated in a blended learning environment which prioritises students' subjective engagement with ‘terrorism’ to form the very core of their learning experience. It will also reflect on how ‘orthodox’ and ‘critical’ components can symbiotically interact to mutual benefit in the study of terrorism.     

Identity and anxiety: Germany’s struggle to lead

At a time when calls for German leadership abound, we need to ask what kind of leadership Berlin is likely to offer. This paper builds on scholarship that presumes identity as an essential precondition for orderly social life. My focus is on how identity is secured through ontological security-seeking. Ontological security theory reveals how Germany is responding to rising calls for leadership in Europe and beyond and traces these responses to an increasingly stressed identity narrative. It explains both Germany’s reluctance to lead and, being pressed to lead, how leadership is legitimated through discursive adaptation. Whether “leading from the center” or exercising “servant leadership”, ontological security theory exposes the specific interactions between a national self-narrative and a rapidly changing environment. I show how these interactions challenge Germany’s identity and its ability to adapt; how they cause ontological anxiety, and how the scope and direction of adaptation to structural change account for the kind of leadership Germany is able to offer. What we observe is a determined effort to position the country between a traditional culture of restraint that can no longer meet Germany’s responsibilities and a position of hegemony that speaks of self-serving behaviour and dominance.     

‘Bread and butter’ human rights: NGOs in Fiji

While ‘rights-based’ approaches to development – those in which development and poverty alleviation are viewed through the lens of human rights – have become the language of choice among the international development community, less is known about how human rights are used for development at the local level. Using a case study of Fiji, this research investigates how local NGOs understand and use human rights for development. It demonstrates some of the tensions involved in translating broad and supposedly universal approaches to human rights into local contexts.     

‘No‐party’ politics and local democracy in Africa: Rawlings’ Ghana in the 1990s and the ‘Ugandan model’

Ghana's decentralised form of administration run by elected District Assemblies was created in 1989 by Jerry Rawlings’ military government. As in Uganda under Museveni's National Resistance Council regime, it was inspired by populist theories of participatory, community‐led democracy which idealised the consensual character of ‘traditional’ village life and rejected the relevance of political parties. The Assemblies remain by law ‘no‐party’ institutions, notwithstanding Ghana's transition to multi‐party constitutional democracy in 1992. Their performance since 1989 is examined in the light of the question: to what extent can the Ugandan ‘no‐party’ model continue within a context of party competition, given that it assumes the all‐inclusive and non‐conflictual character of community politics? The conclusion is that the contradictions between the no‐party consensual model, de facto ruling party domination and the reality of local conflict have created significant difficulties for the Assembly system. Participation has declined and conflict‐resolution been made more difficult, whilst the legitimacy and transparency of resource decisions have been undermined.