Humanitarian Intervention and Communal Civil Wars:

How do policymakers in democratic nations mobilize support for hard-line strategies? Existing answers to this question emphasize the exaggeration of external threats. Yet this overlooks an important dilemma: because democratic citizens expect their leaders to explore peaceful solutions or less aggressive alternatives when foreign dangers are ambiguous, the same conditions that make threat inflation necessary also make it difficult to employ successfully. To mobilize support for hard-line measures when the public wants its leaders to demonstrate restraint, policymakers may therefore attempt to shift blame onto an adversary by using “counterfeit diplomacy.” Specifically, democratic leaders may adopt more cooperative or less coercive options than they believe are necessary, but which they anticipate will fail. This approach can be a risky one, however, because an opponent might accept a nation's demands, accede to its conditions, or offer counterproposals in the hope of diffusing support for more confrontational measures.     

Fragmentation,Conflict, and Competition: Islamist Anti-civilian Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT

In spite of the shared high profile of recent Islamist attacks on civilians in sub-Saharan Africa, patterns of anti-civilian violence differ across and within violent Islamist groups, and the countries in which they are active. This research seeks to explain this variation by situating Islamist violence within the sub-national spaces in which such groups operate, and the wider conflict environment in which they choose to use, or limit the use of, anti-civilian violence. Drawing on data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Dataset, the research finds that violent Islamist groups are more likely to target civilians where they are the most active conflict agent, even when other conflict agents are active in the same spaces; but less likely to do so when they are relatively weak and in competition with other non-state armed groups. Anti-civilian violence is thus deployed strategically by violent Islamist groups, while its function as a signalling or retributive policing tool depends on the relative strength of groups in relation to actors in the wider conflict arena.     

Islamist Versus Islamist: Rising Challenge in Gaza

Islam's diversity is a direct result of centuries of schism and factionalism, and presents a challenge to the original spirit of unity as envisaged by its founder, the Prophet Mohammed. Rivalry within Islam undermines the precedent notion of unity through communal belonging (tawhid and ummah). Yet in the twenty-first century this diversity is ignored, and political Islam is represented as being more of a monolith than a spectrum of ideas and aspirations. Generally, the materialization of new Islamist groups is a challenge to those who hold that unity is all. In the Gaza Strip, specifically, the dominant Islamist actor, Hamas, is facing internal challenges from other Islamist elements. These rival Islamists are also influenced by events across their border in post-revolutionary Egypt where a plethora of new Islamist actors are vying for political space and power. This article deals with Hamas's Islamist rivals, and the effects they have had on Hamas's governance of the Gaza Strip, and political and religious legitimacy within it. It will focus on ideological and violent disputes between the Islamist elements in Gaza, and the means by which Hamas and its security elements have tackled newly emerging rivals.     

Post-Jihadism: Libya and the Global Transformations of Armed Islamist Movements

This article analyzes the global transformations of jihadist movements towards abandoning and de-legitimizing political violence in general and terrorism in particular. It focuses on the de-radicalization process of Libya's largest armed Islamist movement: the Islamic Fighting Group. It analyzes the causes behind those transformations and outlines the necessary conditions for, and policy implications of, successful de-radicalization. The article is mainly based on primary sources, field work, and interviews with former jihadist leaders, mid-ranking commanders, grassroots activists, security and intelligence officers, and state officials.     

全球市民社会与当代国际关系(下)

三、对全球市民社会国际政治地位的反思　　尽管全球市民社会的兴起已经对国际政治的发展产生了积极影响 ,但由于全球市民社会还仅仅是初见端倪 ,其组织网络的发展 ,无论是在地域分布上还是活动领域上都还极不均衡。因而 ,对于全球市民社会在当前国际关系中所发挥的各种作用 ,我们还必须保持清醒的认识。全球市民社会在国际政治的运作中要真正实现其所宣称的各种价值目标 ,还有待于其自身的不断完善。1.从目前来看 ,全球市民社会对世界政治发展的影响还只是一种趋势 ,其作用的充分发挥还有赖于能力建设的进一步加强。当前 ,全球市民社会发挥…     

全球市民社会与当代国际关系(上)

全球市民社会是 2 0世纪 80年代以来人们在应对日益严重的全球性危机、克服日益突显的全球化弊端以及探寻冷战后世界新秩序的重建过程中迅速兴起的。自产生之日起 ,其在经济与社会、国际和平与安全及环境人权等国际政治领域的活动和网络密度就不断增强。全球市民社会的兴起及其广泛活动对于推动国际关系朝着整体化、民主化、法治化和多中心的方向发展具有重要作用 ,同时 ,它也意味着国际政治中伦理价值的回归。当然 ,目前全球市民社会对国际关系的影响还只是一种趋势 ,其作用的充分发挥有赖于在自身能力建设、民主化建设和管理制度等方面的不断完善。此外 ,发展中国家还要大力推动自身社会力量的发展 ,以防止全球市民社会成为西方的意识形态和霸权工具。     

Incentives for Talking: Accepting Mediation in International and Civil Wars

This paper examines the conditions under which warring parties will accept an outside party's offer to mediate. Specifically, we explore variation in the incentives for accepting third-party offers in interstate conflicts as compared to civil wars. We argue that since mediation in civil wars transfers legitimacy to the non-state actor and can generate a precedent of exceptions to the norm of sovereignty, the political cost associated with accepting international mediation will be substantially higher in civil wars compared to international conflicts. States should therefore only accept mediation in the most serious disputes, or when the costs of legitimizing an opponent are outweighed by the benefits of conflict resolution. Building on this theoretical reasoning, the paper analyzes the implications of differences in incentive structures between inter- and intrastate conflicts for offer and acceptance of mediation. We find an empirical discrepancy between interstate and civil wars in regard to demand-side (acceptance) of mediation, and to a somewhat lesser extent the supply-side (offer) of international mediation. In line with our argument, we find that the historical ties between the potential intermediary and at least one of the disputants play different roles in regard to acceptance of mediation in interstate compared to civil wars. This is important to take into consideration in the emerging debate on mediation bias.     

Resource Curse in Reverse: How Civil Wars Influence Natural Resource Production

Conflict scholars have argued that natural resources, such as oil, diamonds, and gemstones, may increase the chances for civil wars because rebels can sustain their organizations by looting resources and because certain types of resources, such as oil, create weaker state governments that are less capable of putting down insurgencies. Natural resources like oil also raise the value of capturing the state through war. However, empirical studies typically treat natural resources as exogenous variables, failing to consider the possibility that war alters the production levels of various natural resources. This endogenous relationship may help to explain the inconsistent empirical results linking natural resources and civil war onset. This article examines the two-way relationship between natural resources and civil war, focusing on oil, diamonds, and fisheries. The empirical findings suggest that most of the relationships run in the direction from war to resources, with no significant effects of resources on the onset of civil war. States with civil wars experience lower oil and diamond production, while marine fisheries production recovers in civil war–torn states.     

Terrorism and External Audiences: Influencing Foreign Intervention Into Civil Wars

This article evaluates the effects of terrorism on interventions into civil wars. Considering civil wars from 1970–1999, this study analyzes how the use of terrorism as a tactic affects external interventions on behalf of opposition groups, interventions on behalf of governments, and diplomatic interventions. While some authors would suggest that groups might utilize terrorism as a tactic to gain external support, this study finds little evidence that groups are actually successful in gaining such support. In fact, terrorism that targets civilians appears to actually decrease the likelihood of military interventions on behalf of opposition groups. Furthermore, in civil wars with high numbers of terrorist attacks there is a greater likelihood of economic intervention on behalf of governments, further weakening the potential benefit for groups in utilizing terrorism as a tactic. While this is certainly a welcome finding, a consideration of five case studies of suicide terrorism (Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Iraq, India, and Turkey) provides evidence that the use of suicide terrorism within civil wars may have decreased the likelihood of external interventions on behalf of the government and of diplomatic interventions. These results are more troubling and suggest potentially grave consequences for mediating many of these conflicts.     

Evidence-Informed Prevention of Civil Wars and Mass Atrocities

Abstract

The prevention discourse in all its forms has tended to ignore or at least downplay the epistemic problems with prevention. Forecasting political violence is not as easy as the debate on early warning often assumes. Effectively forestalling political violence and mass atrocities is much more difficult than the often used rhetoric of a ‘tool box’ implies, which creates the impression that one knows what works. An evidence-informed prevention policy needs to be aware of the limits of our knowledge, but at the same time knowledgeable of what social science research can provide – even if the results are provisional, often controversial and fraught with methodological problems.     

Chinese NGOs Going Global: Status quo and Challenges

Status quo Only a small percentage of China’s mainland NGOs are foreign-related organizations with international practice. According to the Development Report of Social Service issued by Ministry of Civil Affairs in 2011, there are 582 foreign-related NGOs, accounting for 0.13% of the total 4.62 million NGOs; there are 519 mass     

Military Culture and Restraint toward Civilians in War: Examining the Ugandan Civil Wars

What explains armed-group conduct toward civilians in war? The National Resistance Army (NRA) of Uganda demonstrated notable restraint toward civilians during its wars in northern Uganda in the 1980s, restraint that is puzzling given the overdetermined predictions for mass atrocity under rationalist, identity, and regime-type theories. Instead, the NRA case demonstrates that military culture—the organizational norms underlying combatant socialization—is a primary determinant of armed-group behavior, influencing combatant conduct in ways not conceptualized under existing theories of victimization. This review of the NRA case, based on field interviews with Ugandan military officers and examinations of Ugandan documentary archives, reveals three key points regarding the role of military culture in effecting restraint. First, the NRA case shows that organizational factors like military culture can determine military behavior toward civilians. Second, it reveals that theories of military culture, incorporating both formal and informal mechanisms of combatant socialization, can provide a more complete theoretical account than existing theories of armed-group conduct. Finally, the NRA provides potential hypotheses for mechanisms through which culture influences military behavior. I analyze the effect of culture on the NRA's conduct as a plausibility probe, generating inductive insights drawn from detailed field research to shed light on the organizational drivers of armed-group restraint. The NRA case thus points the way to a reconceptualization of military culture and the role of organizational factors that influence conflict behavior.     

全球公民社会与国际政治中的正义问题

随着经济全球化在社会各方面的展开,全球正义逐渐成为学术界全球范围内的话题.通过剖析思想家们对于全球正义的理论和逻辑,我们发现,对全球正义的理解必须从历史演变的社会生产和交往结构中去加以说明,全球正义是历史的正义体系.在全球化背景下,全球公民社会的发展是理解未来全球正义秩序实现的关键.因此,在全球公民社会创造的平台上,积极推进全球政治民主化,谋求实现全球正义,是当今时代的一个极其重要的历史任务.     

Monetary Orientalism: Currency Wars and the Framing of China as Global Cheater

China stands as a paradigmatic sign of deep angst for the United States in late stage capitalism, a menacing spectre of foreignness and otherness that organises Western popular anxieties at a time where nothing is fixed within international markets. Focusing on the so called “currency wars” debate that erupted in the early twenty-first century, when the PRC was accused of devaluating its currency, this article contends that PRC’s representation as a prime currency manipulator and cheater can be conceptualised through what I am calling monetary Orientalism or the ways imperialising thoughts circulate around monetary flows in relation to a rising Asiatic superpower. This framework serves as a prime lens for situating US nationalist sentiment and its sense of an exceptional global self against what it perceives as a global other.     

Islamist moderation in perspective: comparative analysis of the moderation of Islamist and Western communist parties

What forms do Islamist moderation take, and which factors underlie each form of moderation? Although a prevalent question in recent years, less is known about the causes and forms of Islamist moderation in a systematic fashion. By building on the findings of Communist moderation literature, we introduce a two-stage framework to explain variation in Islamist party moderation over time and across space: tactical vs. ideological moderation. Tactical moderation refers to the kind of moderation where radical parties make a decision on whether to accept electoral democracy as a means to achieve ideological goals without compromising their platforms. Structural factors such as political liberalization, international factors and state repression are causes of tactical moderation. Ideological moderation pertains to shifts in a platform from a radical niche to more moderate lines to respond to societal changes (economic liberalization, economic growth, electoral loss and changing voter preferences) to gain greater popular support. Empirically, we analyse the Italian Communist Party and the Party for Justice and Development in Morocco in a comparative perspective. In providing evidence through structured comparisons and field interviews, we hope to advance a more universal, generalizable theory of radical party moderation.     

Islamist militancy in Sierra Leone

This article examines the contemporary Islamic trends in post-conflict Sierra Leone (through 2009) against the background of international concerns that the country might become a haven for religiously-inspired violence. It argues that there is some evidence that prolonged economic impoverishment and foreign religious influences, especially from Saudi Arabia and Iran, have led to a reinvigoration of Islam in post-war Sierra Leone. Though this reinvigoration has resulted in the visibility of more purist strains of the religion, there are no indications that the Sierra Leonean Muslim groups are actively participating in any worldwide jihadist network or will engage in large-scale religiously-inspired extremism and violence. The recent history of the country indicates that attempts to mobilise religious sympathies for political ends in Sierra Leone have been short-lived and largely unsuccessful