Saving the league: V.K. Wellington Koo, the league of nations and Sino-Japanese conflict, 1931-39

In 1919, VK. Wellington Koo, the most famous Chinese diplomat of the early twentieth century, participated in the creation of the League of Nations at the Paris Peace Conference. Little over a decade later, as Japanese forces expanded into Manchuria and North China, Koo struggled to save the League he had helped found. He argued that inability or refusal to brand Japan as an aggressor would sound the League's death knell. In vain, Koo tried to convince European statesmen that the Far Eastern Crisis was a litmus test of the League's viability as a collective security organization. From 1936 on, League inaction in the face of Japanese, German and Italian expansion left Koo thoroughly disillusioned. The lessons of the League were not forgotten during World War II, when Koo argued that a more effective collective security organization, in the form of the United Nations, be created on a basis similar to Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Policemen concept.     

A retrospective study of drugged driving in Norway

The National Institute of Forensic Toxicology, Oslo, receives blood and urine samples from all Norwegian drivers apprehended on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. In 1983 we received samples from 1446 drug-suspected drivers, out of which 445 underwent toxicological analysis. The drugs found most frequently were tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) (n = 199), diazepam (n = 166) and amphetamine (n = 102). A cautious interpretation of the data indicate that about 200 of the 445 subjects selected for toxicological analysis drove under severe influence of drugs. Because of the high percentage of submitted cases not analysed for drugs, this figure represents a minimum estimate. Compared with the results from 1978, we found a several-fold increase in detections of THC and amphetamine in 1983. The number of diazepam detections did not increase in a similar way, but we estimated that the diazepam detections would have increased 3-fold if we had analysed as frequent for this drug in 1983 as in 1978.     

How practices do not matter

Abstract

In his most recent work, Sangiovanni has retreated from his stronger claims about practice-dependence. Instead of claiming that principles of justice must be practice-dependent, he now expresses his claim in a modal form, arguing that there are several ways in which practices may matter. While merely mapping out the logical space of possibilities seems to look like a modest ambition, the conditions for when practices do matter according to Sangiovanni’s analysis are easily met in actuality. Consequently, if he is right, the practice-dependent approach covers a significant number of political theories. Sangiovanni’s main claim is that higher-level principles with an open texture, which include most higher-level principles in political philosophy, justify a practice-dependent method in the form of a mode of application called ‘mediated deduction,’ according to which a thoroughgoing investigation is made of the nature of the target practice. Our task in this paper is to reject this claim. This is done in two steps. First, we question Sangiovanni’s distinction between instrumental application and mediated deduction, arguing that it remains unclear whether it marks out two sufficiently distinct ‘modes’ to do any theoretical work. Second, we argue that the practice-dependent method is not required even if two such modes are established.     

Violence in the city that belongs to no one: urban distinctiveness and interconnected insecurities in Nairobi (Kenya)

ABSTRACT

Rapid urbanisation in the global South has prompted attention to the causes and dynamics of urban violence. Yet, much research tends to either analyse urban violence without attention to the broader conflict complexes of which it forms a part, neglecting linkages between different forms of urban violence and between urban and rural dynamics, or conversely study violence in cities without acknowledging the particularities of the urban context. In this article, we conceptualise urban violence, theorise how it is shaped by urban dynamics and explore its manifestations in Nairobi, Kenya. We find that while Nairobi is not uniquely violent inside Kenya, violence takes on distinct urban forms given city-level processes, and also that urban violence has led to policies that increase securitisation and militarisation of the city. Our analysis thus improves knowledge of how criminal and political violence is shaped by and shapes the stability of developing cities.     

Quality of democracy in unrecognized states: lessons from Northern Cyprus

Scholars have recently debated whether non-recognition is a blessing or a curse for democracy. Some suggest that lack of recognition forces political elites to democratize and acquire internal legitimacy to compensate for the lack of external legitimacy. Others suggest that democratization is used as a strategy by which to acquire international recognition. Still others claim that non-recognition obliges unrecognized states to rely on a patron state which, in turn, hinders the quality of democracy. To contribute to this discussion, we have conducted an in-depth case study. Focusing on democratic quality in Northern Cyprus from 2010 to 2016, it is observed that reliance on a patron state leads to dynamics of tutelage, in turn hindering the quality of democracy.     

Unexpected Persistence Amidst Enlargement Stasis: Usages of Europe in Turkey’s Nuclear Energy Debate

Recent studies on European Union (EU) Enlargement have emphasised the importance of usages of ‘Europe’ by domestic actors as a necessary condition for the EU to have an impact on domestic politics. We study the usages of Europe in the critical case of Turkey’s nuclear energy policy. We analyse the narratives and actions of domestic actors in Turkey to identify if they use ‘Europe’ (the EU and the idea of Europe). We reach the counter-intuitive finding of usages by both state and non-state actors, which illustrates that usages of Europe can persist despite enlargement stasis in candidate states.     

Political Parties and Grassroots Clientelist Strategies in Urban Turkey: One Neighbourhood at a Time

Both principal Turkish political parties make extensive use of patron–client networks, but in very different ways. The CHP relies on competing local brokers and synchronous vote buying. The AKP is at the centre of a network of public and private funding turning social policy to clientelist ends. Socially anchored AKP activists link the party to voters, allowing it to target social assistance for political advantage and take credit for improvement in local conditions. The case presented in this paper provides a natural experiment suggesting that this distinction is an important explanation for the AKP’s electoral success in low-income urban areas.