Do Health Interventions Support Peace Through “Disaster Diplomacy?”

Health problems and health interventions do not stop in conflict zones. Conversely, many health-related topics fail to be addressed adequately because conflict interferes with health systems, health personnel, and health-related actions. Based on these experiences, health diplomacy, medical diplomacy, and vaccine diplomacy have developed as fields of research, policy, and practice. From the Journal of Health Diplomacy, initiated in 2013 to the United Nations World Health Organization’s (WHO) “Health as a Bridge for Peace” program, academics, decision makers, and practitioners have been examining and trying to apply health work for diplomatic, peace-related, and conflict resolution endeavors.     

Acting in a tight spot: Homi Bhabha's postcolonial politics

Homi Bhabha's writing on postcolonial agency foregrounds discursive subjection, yet retrieves subaltern subterfuge. It reconstructs a critical politics despite and because of hegemonic and orientalist representational systems. And it demonstrates the (im)possibility of a stable subject, but still manages to assert creative and performative agency. The article endeavours to analyse these feats and paradoxes, relying both on Bhabha's work and on some of the criticisms and controversies surrounding it.     

Toxic chemical regulation in Canada: preliminary estimates of costs and benefits

Abstract. This paper makes an assessment of the impact of toxic chemical regulation in Canada. Ranges of costs and benefits, supplemented by survey information, analogous American data, interviews and case studies have been used to demonstrate the general usefulness of a cost-benefit framework for public sector decision-making even where information availability is constrained and complete analysis is not feasible. It is concluded that, with few exceptions, the impact of environmental regulation on chemical producers in Canada is neither excessive nor unduly onerous. Sommaire. Les auteurs de cette étude évaluent l'impact de la réglementation se rapportant aux produits chimiques toxiques au Canada. Des gammes coûtsrendements, étoffées par une enquête, des données américaines de même nature, des entrevues et des études de cas ont servi de base pour démontrer l'utilité générale d'un cadre coêts-rendements au niveau de la prise de décision dans le secteur public, même lorsque l'information est limitée et qu'une analyse complète est impossible. lls concluent qu'à quelques exceptions près, les règlements sur la protection de l'environnement ne sont, pour les fabricants de produits chimiques au Canada, ni excessifs ni trop onéreux.     

The Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding Ten Years on: Critical Reflections and Stimulating Ideas on an Evolving Scholarship

ABSTRACT

The Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. This special volume opens up with a selection of nine of the most influential articles published in the journal. JISB's editorial team has asked the authors for their reflections on their original articles, telling us more about the writing process at that time, what they would do differently (with hindsight), or how they see their articles contributing to current debates on intervention and statebuilding. We have selected one article per volume, and we have ordered the contribution starting from volume 1 (2007) to volume 9 (2015). The articles will be made open access for the year, and we highly recommend (re-)reading the original articles along with the comments from the authors.     

The Indivisibility of Human Rights

This article defends a novel, normative conception of the indivisibility of human rights. Human rights are indivisible because normative commitment to one mutually entails normative commitment to another. The normative conception enables us to defend three important theoretical and practical corollaries. First, as a conceptual thesis normative indivisibility lets us see how human rights constitute a unified system not liable to the typical counter-examples to indivisibility as mutual indispensability. Second, as a dialectical thesis, normative indivisibility can support linkage arguments in defense of controversial human rights. And third, as a political thesis, normative indivisibility can show why the political thesis of indivisibility means that states lack discretion to ‘pick and choose’ which human rights to implement.     

A classification of terrorist groups

In contradistinction to existing typologies of terrorist organizations by ideology or intent, a functional classification is suggested. By analyzing terrorist groups according to their target population and base of operation, four basic types of organizations are delineated: Domestic‐based xenofighters, foreign‐based xenofighters, domestic‐based homofighters, and foreign‐based homofighters. On the basis of the operational objectives and specific limitations of these types of terrorist groups, it is proposed that xenofighters tend to adopt more indiscriminate tactics than homofighters, and that foreign‐based groups tend to perpetrate international terrorism, and are dependent on foreign countries’ support. Whereas the struggle against foreign‐based terrorists must focus on reducing the sponsoring countries’ motivation to support them, the battlefield regarding domestic‐based groups is home public opinion.     

Towards prestige mobility? Diplomatic prestige and digital diplomacy

This article responds to previous efforts to calculate diplomatic prestige while adapting these methodologies to the exigencies of digital diplomacy. In particular, we are interested in how digital diplomacy provides opportunities for diplomatic actors lacking in material resources to overcome prestige deficits. We adapt approaches used in earlier studies to calculate the material and ideational components of diplomatic prestige to the online sphere—in terms of presence, centrality and perceptions. By analysing the twitter accounts of 67 foreign ministries and 33 United Nations missions, we find that the traditional markers of diplomatic prestige do not automatically translate online, and that significant effort is required to maintain prestige in online diplomatic networks. We also find that the flexibility and transience of online networks do allow diplomatic actors a degree of prestige mobility. Hence, this study is highly significant for understanding how prestige is managed and strategically influenced in digital diplomacy.     

From Munich to Boston,and from Theater to Social Media: The Evolutionary Landscape of World Sporting Terror

Modern terrorist attacks are usually characterized by intentionally extreme public displays of massive violence to get wide propagation, courtesy of the media. This article uses large-scale, world sporting events, from the 1972 Munich massacre to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing to document and analyze how terror acts grew and acclimatized into a reality in which the symbiotic, massive linkage between two gigantic entities—sports and the media—allows terrorism to prosper.     

Using Fact Checking to Improve Information Systems in Argentina

Chequeado is an NGO that was the first fact-checking initiative in Latin America. It began its work in 2010 and aims to improve the quality of public discourse and to raise the cost of lying and spreading misinformation, with a main focus on Argentina. It also leads the Latam Chequea network in the region. The organisation produces regular fact checking articles and explainers, partners with key actors to stop the spread of misinformation on social media, develops state of the art applications and software, and teaches media literacy and data journalism, among other activities. This article outlines anecdotal evidence for the impact of this work, which it is seeking to build on with more research to measure its impact and understand how fact checking can be more effective.     

Risk Exposure,Humanitarianism and Willingness to Pay for Universal Healthcare: A Cross-National Analysis of 28 Countries

Social Justice Research - In this article, we explore the associations of people’s valuations of universal healthcare with risk exposure and humanitarianism across diverse institutional...