Since the creation of the United Nations in 1945, over 100 major conflicts around the world have left some 20 million dead’[1]. In An Agenda for Peace, Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali set out visions for preventive diplomacy and strategies to strengthen the United Nations’ (UN) capacity to maintain the peace. The collapse of Cold War bipolarity has seen a surge in demand for UN involvement. The UN has cast its net wide, beyond narrow conceptions of collective security, into human rights, environmental politics and human security. The response from the Security Council, General Assembly and member states to An Agenda for Peace was cautiously optimistic; the rhetoric, asserts Chesterman, ‘was euphoric, utopian, and short’.
The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) came into being in 2004 after the last round of accessions where decided. As the EU’s borders went eastward and southward, the EU came more and more into contact with areas of instability. The ENP thus is the policy aimed at stabilising the EU’s new neighbours through a normative agenda. This essay will look at the historical and institutional context in which the ENP appeared, what the ENP is and then assess the challenges that it faces.
This article applies and discusses a historical institutionalist approach and a contextual approach to domestic receptiveness in Estonia and Romania on minority issues to leverage applied by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the European Union. It concludes that in this case a historical institutionalist approach provides a better explanation of receptiveness and offers more predictive power. The historical dimension of the country and its minority issues is better discussed by this structural approach.
The paper will proceed in four parts. First it, will briefly explore the general situation of Mexico’s Indigenous peoples. This will be followed by a discussion of the effects of NAFTA on the agricultural sector, paying close attention to the case of corn as it relates to the plight of Indigenous peoples. Third, it will explore the connections between the degradation of the agricultural sector, migration and Indigenous communities. Finally, it will conclude with a brief examination of the major resistance movement that opposes NAFTA in the name of Mexico’s Indigenous peoples, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) of Chiapas, and look at the human rights abuses that have occurred in connection with this uprising.
When the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was negotiated between Canada, the United States, and Mexico, Chapter 11 of the treaty was included to protect investors from state appropriation or ‘taking’ and, in theory, requires that the same treatment be given to foreign companies as domestic companies. In American law, the Fifth Amendment to the Bill of Rights prevents the government from seizing private assets without due compensation. A ‘taking’, also referred to as eminent domain in Californian law, is a legal principle that governs how and why the federal, state, or local government can ‘take’ private property.
In “Theorizing European Integration: The Case for a Transnational Critical Approach,” Apeldoorn, Overbeek, and Ryner argue that orthodox approaches to European regional integration, such as realism, liberalism, constructivism, and traditional Marxism, overlook the diffused power of elite consensus. They believe Neo-Gramscian approaches can reveal the agency of elite interests, and their formation of a neo-liberal hegemonic bloc supporting integration schemes. Stephen Gill has applied this perspective to explain regional integration schemes with the theoretical framework of New Constitutionalism. Yet other Neo-Gramscians contend that New Constitutionalism is pessimistically determinist, focusing solely on the agency of a liberal elite while overlooking the agency displayed by progressive social forces in formulating regional integration policy.
NGOs have often been lauded for their efforts in international development. It was long assumed that aid money given to an NGO would be more efficient, more accountable democratically to local civil organizations, and more likely to reach the intended people and not a foreign bank account. As many states democratized, the NGOs assisting them became increasingly dependent on funding from neoliberal donors. Critics, such as Zaidi, Petras, and Kamat, have begun to argue that the NGOs themselves have become unaccountable and undemocratic. They propose bringing the state back into the development process. Yet would this solution be truly effective in light of the massive debts, dependence, and global structural imbalances faced by many developing states?
In 1996, leaders came together at the World Food Summit in Rome to address the rising level of malnutrition throughout the world. They feared that if no action were taken, the amount of hungry people in the world in 2010 would reach 680 million, and set a commitment to halve the amount of undernourished people by 2015. Yet ten years after the summit, the World Food Program reported[1] the amount of hungry people has surpassed the 2010 estimate of 680 million and is already at 842 million.
This essay will begin with a detailed analysis of how NAFTA fits into the concept of regionalism and addressing the international political economy theories that inform it. It will then move on to a thorough critique of the economic and political motivations of the United States, Canada and Mexico and the theories that explain them, before bringing the NAFTA debate up to date with a brief summary of where we stand now. It will argue that NAFTA primarily serves an economic function, but was brought about by a ‘confluence of many factors’ which helped to shape NAFTA into the free-trade agreement that today appears irreversible.
In Darfur aid keeps over 2 million people alive amidst huge insecurity and the mobilisation of extremist politics. However, the humanitarian effort appears to be having unintended political consequences. There is some evidence that humanitarian access is being manipulated to suit government interests; IDP camps have become integrated into the conflict dynamic through the manipulation of population movements; aid is being diverted by military factions; and inter-tribal tensions are being exacerbated. Further research is required to determine the extent of these processes and exactly how they are affecting the course of the conflict.
Before you download your free e-book, please consider donating to support open access publishing.
E-IR is an independent non-profit publisher run by an all volunteer team. Your donations allow us to invest in new open access titles and pay our bandwidth bills to ensure we keep our existing titles free to view. Any amount, in any currency, is appreciated. Many thanks!
Donations are voluntary and not required to download the e-book - your link to download is below.
