We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
The changing nature of conflicts, especially since the end of the Cold War, has ledto the rising prominence of non-state actors in myriad forms involved in securityprovision at multilayered levels, vigilante groups being quite prominent amongstthem. Non-state actors, in fact, increasingly control security initiatives, whichgive them increasing ownership of contemporary warfare and internal securityprovision through their ability to use violence to achieve the primary goal oftargeting perceived threats to the stability of the state. Vigilantism, however, asa social phenomenon, has its own independent historical roots and has evolved asone of the many tools being used by the postmodern state to control and mediateviolence in order to retain order and control. The process itself makes the state gobeyond the traditional ‘statist’ institutions for security provision, which runs therisk of diluting the nature of the Westphalian state, affecting its policymaking andimplementation capacity in providing security to its citizens as well as other aspectsof economic and social policymaking.
More...
For more than a decade the countries of the European Union (EU) have been chasing their ambition to make Europe a centre of excellence’. In 2000 they formulated their common goal of making the EU the most competitive and dynamic knowledge economy of the world in the Strategy of Lisbon. The European Recovery Plan of the European Commission, which aimed to combat the most recent economic crisis, emphasized the importance of the innovative knowledge economy and scientific research (European Parliament, 2010). To fulfil the targets of the Europe 2020 Strategy (e.g. increasing productivity, competitiveness, economic growth, solving the problem of labour shortage in sectors of innovation), stimulating intra EUlabour mobility or needs-based migratory flows were named as relevant policy tools. Similarly, encouraging highly skilled immigration from non-EU countries was considered to be essential. In the EU, the share of the highly educated among migrants born outside the EU was almost negligible - only 2% - compared with 4.5% in the USA, 8% in Australia and almost 10% in Canada. As a consequence, the EU-countries got engaged in a global ‘battle for brains’, not only as a union, but at the same time among themselves in order to attract the ‘best and the brightest’ and to reach sustainable economic growth.
More...
The ICG’s new report on Macedonia suggests that local authorities are prematurely patting themselves on the back and making EU plans.
More...
Dead 23 years, worshipped, then scorned, and now worshipped again, the communist leader of the former Yugoslavia is making a comeback.
More...
Croatian Army General Ante Gotovina, an indicted war criminal who has been on the run since July 2001, turned up for an interview with the Zagreb weekly Nacional, saying that after hiding out for nearly two years he is ready to cooperate with international investigators--but only as a suspect, not as an indicted war criminal.
More...
Review of: ‘We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us’. An analysis of NATO Strategic Communications: The International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, 2003–2014 Brett Boudreau. Publisher: NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence
More...
The Croatian government has been dragging its feet in announcing whether it plans to sign off on 1 July on a U.S. demand that it grant immunity from prosecution at the International Criminal Court (ICC) to American peacekeepers on its territory.
More...
How did North African states depict their nomadic minorities to the US during the War on Terror in the 2000s? How did this shape American policy in the region?Focusing on Malian-American diplomacy and drawing on post-structuralist analytics of identity-formation, this paper first examines how Malian diplomacy represented nomadic minorities in communication with US diplomatic and military envoys during the period 2002–2010. It is found that Mali consistently branded Saharan nomads as lawless subjects that make territory ungovernable, compromise security, and facilitate terrorism. Second, this paper deploys intertextual analysis to measure the success of these strategic communications efforts. It is found that, despite the advice of some American diplomats on the ground, by the end of 2008 Mali’s depiction of Saharan nomadism had been absorbed into US diplomacy. This subsumed Northern Malian subjects into the categories of the War on Terror, which privileged military control of subjects and territory over development and reconciliation efforts. This policy shift granted Mali influence over US policy and diplomatic support to ignore nomadic grievances. Analysis reveals the key role of identity-making and name-calling in Mali-US relations and in diplomatic communication more broadly, showcasing the potential of textual analysis methods to evaluate strategic communications outcomes.
More...
“16+1” forum was proposed by China for the implementation of “Belt and Road” initiative. Since the establishment of 16+1, the trade between China and CEE countries increased significantly. It aroused warm response of CEE countries which actively supported the cooperation with China. However, the cooperation between China and CEE countries aroused doubts of EU, which considered that “16+1” is a challenge of unity of EU. Based on the theory of neoliberalism, and use the method of case studies, the thesis is to analyze China’s motivation towards cooperation with CEE countries and find out “16+1” is an opportunity rather than a challenge of EU.
More...
In the context of twenty-first century global conservatism, where antiimmigrant sentiment is everywhere apparent, the importance of Ishiguro’s writing arguably lies in its on-going challenge to this perspective’s faulty logic and its capacity to reveal the radical violence behind nationalist political attacks on minority and immigrant populations. In this article I explore this challenge explicitly through a politically-oriented reading of The Remains of the Day (1989), highlighting this novel’s joint critique of Thatcherite nationalism and late twentieth century global entrepreneurialism. While this focus obviously represents a response to an earlier sociopolitical moment, defined by its own unique amalgam of ideological anxieties, nevertheless what emerges most prominently through this reading is the novel’s topical condemnation of cultural essentialism and its attendant hierarchies, concerns which remain of utmost critical significance within the twenty-first century. Thus, by making this assessment explicit, highlighting British conservatism’s devastating psychological and material implications for affected individuals, ranging from repressed and traumatised psychologies to radical economic precarity, this novel can be seen to register Thatcherite prejudice in a poignantly relevant manner. Indeed, the pseudo-respect granted to the ‘genuine old-fashioned English butler’ in this novel might also be seen as comparable to Trump’s pseudo-populism or Brexit nostalgia, both of which likewise ignore the pressing reality of imperialism’s historical violence.
More...
Estonian community houses were built in towns and the countryside by the local people, who had been joining cultural and other societies since the second half of the 19th century. These cultural centres supported the process of building the Estonian state. The space for culture became basis for the lifelong learning system of informal education, which later was regulated and developed according to the politics of culture and education in the Estonian nation-state (1918–40) and the Soviet Union (1940–91). After the invasion of the Baltic States by the Soviet Union in 1940, extensive restructuring or sovietization of the Estonian public administration, economy and culture began. The article examines the sovietization process of Estonian community houses, i.e., how they were turned into the ideological tools of Soviet totalitarian propaganda.
More...
From the time of its introduction, the concept of ‘transition’ has effected a tectonic shift in our understanding of post-socialism. In the process which has taken place during the last couple of decades after the collapse of East European socialist regimes, it has become transformed from one of the signifiers of the political and social change which occurred into a cornerstone for thinking, analyzing and predicting the future of post-socialism. Furthermore, in this article it is posited that all the political and social processes occurring in the ex-socialist countries are defined in relation to transition as an all-encompassing form of post-socialist experience. Relying on the discursive theory of Ernesto Laclau, this article attempts to consider together the usually separated questions of epistemology and ontology, and to ask what is the connection between scientific origins of the concept of transition and its political legitimacy. We claim that transition is a “sutured“ structure composed of various social experiences and political strategies, which naturalizes and universalizes the contingent power struggles that are taking place and will take place in the future of post-socialist countries. Therefore, severing the existing bonds between transition and the actually existing post-socialism is a necessary precondition for creating a more complex and productive understanding of the societies of East and South East Europe.
More...
The forthcoming Warsaw summit will be the time to assess the Enhanced Opportunities Program (EOP), which was introduced at the Wales summit in 2014. In the following it is argued that, due to the high degree of security interdependence in the Baltic Sea area, and the degree of interoperability gained by Sweden and Finland, regional cooperation between NATO, Sweden and Finland should be deepened further, thereby strengthening security and stability in a strategically crucial region for the Alliance. Given that neither Sweden nor Finland is likely to apply for NATO membership any time soon, NATO should develop “extended cooperative security.” Such cooperation includes not only the military dimension, such as common situational awareness, exercises and improved partner representation in the military structure, but also elaboration of political consultation mechanisms, to assure common assessments and a rapid response to situations that may arise.
More...
Palestinian-Israeli conflict is accepted as one of the most important and complicated problems of the Middle East. No doubt, Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli conflict was not immune to the wave of Arab Spring that began with the popular demands for justice and freedom in Tunisia in the late 2010. In this framework this study will examine the reflections of the Arab Spring on Palestine, UN recognition of Palestine as an “non-member observer state” as a result of Palestinian administration’s internationalization strategy, and the impact of all these developments on Palestinian Israeli conflict.
More...
In 1954, after almost sixty years of tolerating the separate-but-equal doctrine shaped in Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to reject the unequal policy of the government in educational system, and thus to initiate changes in the status of racial segregation. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision ignited both positive and negative feelings and emotions of Americans, who began to show two types of civil disobedience. The first type of disobedience was addressed against the Court and its controversial precedent, and could be visible mainly in Southern states among white citizens and some state authorities. Despite the fact that the Court’s decision was binding, Southern judges, politicians as well as ordinary people showed their disobedience towards the highest judicial institution in the country and its notion of desegregation. The second type of civil disobedience was addressed towards these institutions which neglected the necessity of social change and promotion of equality, and could be observed in actions undertaken by various individuals and organizations aiming at broadening the constitutional protection of black Americans. The purpose of the article is to analyze both types of civil disobedience which were initiated by the same source – a judicial precedent, and had an enormous impact on American society of the late 1950s and early 1960s, leading to final change in the perception of the equality principle as well as the status of civil rights. The article proposes a thesis that the scope and character of civil disobedience may depend on the ideology of certain social groups and therefore influence their attitude to the direction of changes in law.
More...
The article signals the need for a deepened theoretical analysis of environmental issues in International Relations studies. It initializes the idea of “Greening” the Critical Theory of International Relations with critical concepts from other sciences. Thus it proposes the scope of Critical Theory of IR to be expanded to cover not only the relations between power and capital, but the relations of power-capital-nature. It shows common points between the Critical Theory of IR and the concepts of world-ecology and the Capitalocene by Jason W. Moore and proposes reforming some founding definitions that the Critical Theory of IR is based on. This includes re-conceptualizing the critique of capitalism as a way of organizing nature, but also distancing oneself from the Cartesian dichotomy of Society + Nature, which is an obstacle to properly including environmental issues in IR research.
More...
Every attempt to understand the concept of “power” inevitably is related to the concept of “resistance”. Therefore, new understandings about the power pave the way for new approaches to resistance. Michel Foucault’s thoughts about the concept of power offer new opportunities to an understanding of resistance. However, this expansion of the scope of the resistance makes it difficult to conduct a discussion about it on a sound basis. This expansion has led to the emergence of new concepts and fields. Now, we called “resistance studies” to this new area and one of the most important concepts of this area is “everyday resistance”. This concept is used by different social scientists in different meanings, but there is no consensus on its definition. The first aim of this article is to evaluate the works of James C. Scott, who follows Foucault’s theoretical attempt and who introduced the concept of “everyday resistance”. For this purpose, the historical trajectory of his main works will be examined. Then, the basic concepts such as public transcript and hidden transcript will be explained. Following part, the thinkers who follow Scott’s conceptual model will be evaluated and the coordinates of resistance will be determined. Thus, we aim to take a step closer to defining the concept of “everyday resistance” in conclusion.
More...
Journalists from Bulgaria's largest private radio station have been accused of "media hooliganism" and questioned by police after allegedly spreading false information about the status of Prime Minister Simeon Saxecoburggotski’s citizenship.
More...
Even though Article 5 is NATO’s ultimate security guarantee, it is only the very last in a long chain of measures that need to be functioning in order to respond to today’s most probable and lethal threats. The Alliance has spent the last two years implementing the agreed Readiness Action Plan and reassuring eastern members not only with rhetoric, but also by taking more action and putting more troops on the eastern border. This is all what one would expect a political-military alliance to do when it is threatened. The evolution of NATO’s posture towards Russia has proven to NATO members, and, arguably, to their adversaries, that the Alliance still has a mission
More...