The CPGB,the Connolly Association and Irish communism, 1945–1962

This article examines the relationship between the Communist Party of Great Britain and Irish communists in both Ireland and Britain in the post-war era. It argues that the British party’s strategic interest in Ireland gradually waned as it became apparent that Irish communism would remain divided by the border. The article also argues how, in Britain, competition between the nationalist Anti-Partition League and the communist dominated Connolly Association led the latter to abandon cold war sectarianism and to adopt a ‘broad strategy’ championing civil rights in Northern Ireland. The article draws out the key role played by Charles Desmond Greaves in this process, whilst noting the importance of factionalism and external factors, notably the Irish Republican Army’s Border Campaign.     

Grasping the Syrian War,a view from Albanians in the Balkans

Reactions to the brutal Syrian War from European governments and Europe’s Muslims have been diverse and subject to many shifts over the past few years. This paper focuses on how Albanian political and Islamic religious figures living in the Balkans have come to interpret the war. I focus on discourse, the ways in which these different agents communicate with their audience, and the wider contexts they evoke. Government sources and religiously themed lectures delivered by prominent imams on the social networking site YouTube are used to assess these trends. The most obvious aspect of these debates is the ways in which these agents use the war to press their own agendas, the government to affirm their commitment to the “West” and an ethnicized view of Islam, while Islamic religious leaders use it to reconnect their audiences to a more cosmopolitan vision of their past. War thus becomes a catalyst for a resurgent contestation between different groups vying for control over what it means to be “Albanian” and “Muslim” in the twenty-first century.     

Authority in rebel groups: identity,recognition and the struggle over legitimacy

This article asks how rebel leaders capture and lose legitimacy within their own movement. Analysing these complex and often uneasy relations between elites and grassroots of insurgency is important for understanding the success or failure of peace processes. This is because internal contestation over authority between rival rebel leaders can drive a movement’s external strategy. Based on ethnographic research on the Karen and Kachin rebellions in Myanmar and insights from Political Sociology, the article suggests that leadership authority is linked to social identification and the claim to recognition among insurgent grassroots. If rebel leaders manage to satisfy their grassroots’ claim to recognition, their insurgent orders are stable. Failing this, their authority erodes and is likely to be challenged. These findings contribute to understanding insurgency and peace negotiations in Myanmar and civil wars more generally by showing how struggles over legitimacy within rebel groups drive wider dynamics of war and peace.     

One anthropologist’s answer to Glenn D. Paige’s question challenging peace studies

ABSTRACT

Glenn D. Paige pioneered in the revolutionary development of a far-reaching transformation of science, academia, and society from a killing to a nonkilling worldview, values, and attitudes. For six decades, anthropology has been accumulating scientific empirical evidence and rational arguments demonstrating that nonkilling societies exist, thereby rebutting the simplistic biological determinist myth that human nature inevitably and universally generates violence and war. Nevertheless, Hobbessians persist in their echo chamber advertising and celebrating the innate depravity of the human species as apologists for war and peace resisters. This systemic bias operates in synergy with the American industrial-military-media-academic complex and culture, the latter exemplified by a revealing comparison of war and football. With great intellectual courage and creative thinking, Paige critically challenges the anachronistic Hobbesian paradigm and offers a far more compelling and positive alternative for sustainable peace in the future.     

Wars of Succession

I analyze a model of bargaining, war, and endogenous leadership turnover in which (1) leader attributes affect war outcomes and (2) war can insulate settlements from renegotiation. Shifts in bargaining power caused by leadership turnover are endogenous and discontinuous, but sufficiently decisive war outcomes can solve the associated commitment problem. In contrast to other models where the shadow cast by a hawkish successor encourages moderation toward a dovish incumbent, the foreign state attacks instead—despite a dovish incumbent’s known preference for peace—using war to lock in a settlement that would otherwise be lost to future leadership turnover. I discuss the theory’s implications for widening the empirical scope of the commitment problem explanation for war to limited wars over relatively lower stakes and for integrating the politics of leadership turnover with the study of strategic rivalries.     

Regulation of armed conflict: critical comparativism

Abstract

This paper calls for comparative analysis of international humanitarian law and Islamic laws regulating armed conflict by focusing on the underlying assumptions and interests informing both systems (rather than on rule-based comparison). It argues that examination of the biases inherent to each legal system can potentially inform scholars to understand better the paradigms shaping each of them. In doing so, the paper builds on contextual and critical interpretations of both fields of law to assert the need for ‘critical comparativism’ rather than functionalist comparativism. Unlike functionalist comparativism, which treats international law as the ‘objective’ benchmark against which other legal traditions are measured, ‘critical comparativism’ treats the two legal systems examined as alternative manifestations of power structures which, when contrasted against each other, help shed more light on the inherent bias in each legal system.     

九一一事件以来美国反恐过程中的主导性隐喻及其后果

九一一事件后,国际反恐行动似乎已陷入"越反越恐"的怪圈,这与人们对恐怖主义的"越描越恐"密切相关,而隐喻的存在及广泛使用是导致"越描越恐"的重要原因。在恐怖主义的治理中,作为必不可少的思维方式,涉恐隐喻具有启发性,但也因其随意性、凸显与隐藏的特征,限制了人们关于恐怖主义的思想和行为。在美国涉恐的政治、媒体和学术话语中,"恐怖主义是战争""恐怖主义是野蛮的东西""恐怖主义是疾病"和"恐怖主义是不受欢迎的植物"是占主导地位的隐喻。这些隐喻深植于历史、人们的恐惧、社会系统和舆论中,很大程度上代表了人们对恐怖主义的正统看法。进行隐喻分析,使用多种隐喻,一定程度上能缓解隐喻陷阱,但仍不能消除它。因此,在恐怖主义治理的过程中,坚持"犯罪"隐喻为主导、灵活使用多种措施、重建受损的政治秩序、减少对无辜平民的伤害和对穆斯林的歧视尤为重要。     

武装组织治理制度与反叛成功

当前武装组织治理制度建设成为内战研究的重点。武装组织治理制度是武装组织对其控制区域和民众管理的相应制度与规则体系。以反叛成功为分析对象,通过系统评估武装组织治理制度建设对其内战中获得冲突优势的影响,可以看到,武装组织的反叛成功并不直接由武装组织治理制度决定,而是取决于武装组织治理制度在内部与外部产生的效果。在内部维度,武装组织治理制度需要取得良好的相对治理绩效;在外部维度,武装组织治理制度需要一个有利的国际战略环境并可对其进行塑造。而武装组织治理制度并不能确保相应效果的实现。通过混合研究的模式对以上观点进行检验:在定量研究方面,通过两个不同层次的数据库对于武装组织治理制度与反叛成功的关系进行检验,发现武装组织治理制度与反叛成功之间无直接的联系;在案例比较研究方面,通过两个具体武装组织的实践案例(阿富汗塔利班和"伊斯兰国"组织)进行分析,可以发现武装组织治理制度与反叛成功之间的关系并不确定,因此并不存在简单的正向促进关系。     

略论南方三年游击战争对主力红军长征胜利的历史贡献

南方三年游击战争不仅本身意义重大,事迹悲壮,可歌可泣,而且为主力红军长征的胜利作出了重要贡献。南方红军游击队打击、消耗了进犯各苏区和游击区的国民党军队,保存了革命骨干力量,保持了党在南方八省的战略支点,为在南方开展革命斗争准备了基本条件,同时掩护和保证了主力红军的战略转移,箝制和吸引了几十万国民党军队,在战略上配合了主力红军的行动,并与主力红军长征形成相互策应的两大战场。     

爱国妇人会的战争宣传一窥

文章简述了日本爱国妇人会的创立背景和思想渊源,对该会的宣传教化执行机构和意识形态工作进行了梳理。通过对该会在日俄战争、九一八事变、全面侵华战争(前期)这三场大规模侵略战争中的宣传内容、策略和目的加以分析,进一步从微观上勾勒出日本裹挟妇女走向战争深渊的必然路径。