Conclusion: Mental health and legal responses to the adolescent mental health crisis: Raising the bar on best interests and promoting family connectedness in divorcing families

We are currently facing an unprecedented increase in adolescent mental health problems resulting in alarmingly high levels of depression, anxiety, and suicidality. Significant mental health problems among youth pose unique challenges to families in the process of separation and divorce, as well as to family law professionals across all disciplines. The current adolescent mental health crisis calls for new ways of approaching our work with high conflict families to promote family connectedness and shift away from adversarial approaches that may exacerbate conflict and further destabilize families. As a conclusion to the special issue on adolescent mental health needs, the authors make multidisciplinary best practices recommendations and advocate for systems level changes in recognition of the needs of youth in crisis at this pivotal developmental stage.     

The expanding role of expert psychological evaluations and testimony in Hague child abduction litigation

Hague Convention cases are a growing niche in forensic assessments. These cases focus on returning children, or preventing their return, after international abductions, by one of the parents, has occurred. This article focuses on the legal underpinnings of the Hague Abduction Convention, the “affirmative defenses” that may be invoked to prevent a return order, including “grave risk of harm,” “mature objection”, and the “well settled defense.” The article will also focus on the increasing roles that forensic evaluators play in these matters, the distinction between the role of forensic experts in custody proceedings and Hague cases, and the inherent limitations present in these unique kinds of evaluations.     

Arrested conflict: transnational place-making in Polish-German border towns

This paper studies the role of cross-border interactions and public spaces in the local mediation of national conflicts in three Polish-German border towns. It draws on Luc Boltanski's pragmatic sociology in order to address questions raised in the recent literature on urban conflict and borders. Our analysis traces transformations under Schengen in relation to Boltanski's concepts of uncertainty, justification and tests. We investigate ordinary inhabitants' everyday experiences through different place-making strategies in the context of a shifting border. Recent transformations challenge a longstanding situation of “arrested conflict” rooted in blocked local networks, disconnected from supranational discourses of cooperation.     

Journeys to the limits of first-hand knowledge: politicians’ on-site visits in zones of conflict and intervention

ABSTRACT

This article explores the practice and political significance of politicians’ journeys to conflict zones. It focuses on the German example, looking at field trips to theatres of international intervention as a way of first-hand knowledge in policymaking. Paying tribute to Lisa Smirl and her work on humanitarian spaces, objects and imaginaries and on liminality in aid worker biographies, two connected arguments are developed. First, through the exploration of the routinized practices of politicians’ field trips the article shows how these journeys not only remain confined to the ‘auxiliary space’ of aid/intervention, but that it is furthermore a staged reality of this auxiliary space that most politicians experience on their journeys. The question is then asked, second, what politicians actually experience on their journeys and how their experiences relate to their policy knowledge about conflict and intervention. It is shown that political field trips enable sensory/affectual, liminoid and liminal experiences, which have functions such as authority accumulation, agenda setting, community building, and civilizing domestic politics, while at the same time reinforcing, in most cases, pre-existing conflict and intervention imaginaries.     

Violence and Statebuilding in a Borders Conflict Context: A Study of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

Violence, while conceived of and defined as objective, is in reality a subjective phenomenon that takes on myriad forms (political, physical, and psychological). From a constructivist perspective, the identification of violence is contingent on conflicts to signify actions as legitimate; in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the experience of different forms of violence has meant that violence has come to acquire multiple meanings. This violence is legitimate from both Israeli and Palestinian points of view, and it creates and fulfils a cycle that perpetuates intractable conflict. This article aims to demonstrate how strongly this culture of violence has affected the state-formation process in this area, and it calls attention particularly to ongoing statebuilding processes in Palestine. The paper will also explore the intricacies related to violence and border definition in terms of ‘mapping practices’ and territoriality, and examine how, in the wake of the Oslo agreement, the Palestinian statebuilding process is created under the ruling power of the Israeli military force, restraining Palestinian capacity to create state bodies capable of establishing and retaining the monopoly of violence.     

Fuel to the Fire: Natural Disasters and the Duration of Civil Conflict

Do natural disasters prolong civil conflict? Or are disasters more likely to encourage peace as hostilities diminish when confronting shared hardship or as shifts in the balance of power between insurgents and the state hasten cessation? To address these questions, this study performs an event history analysis of disasters’ impact on the duration of 224 armed intrastate conflicts occurring in 86 states between 1946 and 2005. I contend that natural disasters increase conflict duration by decreasing the state’s capacity to suppress insurgency, while reinforcing insurgent groups’ ability to evade capture and avoid defeat. First, disasters’ economic impact coupled with state financial outlays for disaster relief and reconstruction, reduce resources available for counterinsurgency and nation building in conflict zones. Second, the military’s role in administering humanitarian assistance can reduce the availability of troops and military hardware for counterinsurgency, prompt temporary ceasefires with insurgents, or both. Third, natural disasters can cause infrastructural damages that disproportionately hinder the state’s capacity to execute counterinsurgency missions, thereby making insurgent forces more difficult to capture and overcome. The combination of these dynamics should encourage longer conflicts in states with higher incidence of disaster. Empirical evidence strongly supports this contention, indicating that states with greater disaster vulnerability fight longer wars.     

Oil,Natural Gas,and Intrastate Conflict: Does Ownership Matter?

The impact of natural resources on intrastate violence has been increasingly analyzed in the peace and conflict literature. Surprisingly, little quantitative evidence has been gathered on the effects of the resource-ownership structure on internal violence. This article uses a novel data set on oil and natural gas property rights, covering 40 countries during the period 1989–2010. The results of regression analyses employing logit models reveal that the curvilinear effect between hydrocarbon production and civil conflict onset—often found in previous studies—only applies to countries in which oil and gas is extracted by state-owned companies. The findings suggest that only state-controlled hydrocarbon production might entail peace-buying mechanisms such as specific clientelistic practices, patronage networks, welfare policies, and/or coercion. At the same time, it seems that greed and grievance are more pronounced whenever resources lie in the hands of the state. Exploring the within-country variation, further analyses reveal that divergent welfare spending patterns are likely to be one causal channel driving the relationship between resource ownership and internal violence.     

“Us” and “Them”: Ulster Loyalist Perspectives on the IRA and Irish Republicanism

This article draws on data from one-to-one interviews with members and former members of the Ulster Volunteer Force, Ulster Defence Association, Red Hand Commando, Ulster Political Research Group, and the Progressive Unionist Party to explore the dynamic and fluid perceptions of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Sinn Féin among Ulster loyalists. The article will explore how attitudes and perceptions are influenced by the shifting political landscape in Northern Ireland as Ulster loyalists come to terms with the new realities created by the peace process, security normalization, decommissioning, and the rise in the threat of dissident republican violence. The article will also demonstrate that these perceptions are not purely antagonistic and based on the creation of negative, stereotypical “enemy images” fuelled by decades of conflict, but pragmatic, bound to societal and local events, and influenced by intragroup attitudes and divisions, in addition to the expected conflictual ingroup vs. outgroup relationships. Finally, the article will explore how loyalists employ republicanism and the transformation of the Provisional IRA in particular, as a mirror or benchmark to reflect on their own progress since 1994.     

Europe under occupation: the European diplomatic community of practice in the Jerusalem area

ABSTRACT

This article shows how the existence of a community of European practitioners in the Jerusalem area gives substance to the European stance on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The often-stated European Union (EU) support for a two-state solution could appear meaningless in the absence of peace negotiations. However, European diplomats (i.e. diplomats of EU member states and EU officials) in the East Jerusalem–Ramallah area are committed to specific practices of political resistance to Israeli occupation and recognition of Palestinian institutions. These practices have led not only to a specific political geography of diplomacy, but also to a community of practice, composed of European diplomats and based on their daily experience of resisting occupation and bestowing recognition. It is this group of officials who represent and actively “do” Europe’s position and under occupation.     

A test of European Union post-accession influence: comparing reactions to political instability in Romania

The positive role of the European Union (EU) in the democratization process in post-communist countries has been amply documented. The pre-accession conditionality was to a large extent the tool used to enhance adoption of norms, and implementation of policy. In this context, it is less clear what happens after countries join the EU and conditionality is no longer an option. This article seeks to provide an answer by analysing how the EU can influence democratic governance after accession of a new member state. In particular, it focuses on the reactions of EU actors in two institutional conflicts (the 2007 and 2012 presidential impeachment referendums) in Romania. The main findings indicate how EU leverage on domestic politics remains possible, though the effectiveness of involvement, monitoring and evaluation of respect for democratic principles depends on a complex interaction of international and domestic actors.