The belief that we can teleologically strive towards dissolving all societies’ ills has been diverted to a quest to live in a world of tolerable risks. Furthermore, Ulrich Beck’s thesis that we live in a risk society has now been transposed into a world of globalisation. Where we used to deter dangers and threats, we now perpetually manage strategic risks.
This paper will evaluate and analyse the poverty alleviation strategies manifested by the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), explaining how they have converged over time. With the use of case studies it will argue that, whilst it might seem that the convergence has benefited poverty reduction, this is in fact not the case.
Proponents of “responsibility to protect” or “R2P” have been linking their concept in recent weeks to the waning civil war in Sri Lanka. Are they right to do so? Talk of R2P may well distract from what should be a clear and unified demand to both sides: Cease fire.
When Asian leaders attending a summit meeeting – including the prime ministers of China and Japan – had to be whisked out of a besieged luxury Pattaya hotel by helicopter on 11 April, it was official: Thailand is in deep political trouble.
The Sri Lankan government is losing the ideological battle while it is winning the military battle. This has tremendous implications for policymaking. Even if the government completely vanquishes the LTTE, the government could be pressured into an unfair and unsustainable political settlement due to the deeply entrenched ethnic analysis.
Of all the visible symbols of China’s rise to global prominence, perhaps the most compelling was the Opening of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. But what did the Games reveal about the nature and character of the “new” China, and-equally importantly-what did they seek to conceal from view?
The international system, comprised as it is of a society of sovereign states, necessarily stands as a barrier to universal morality. The ideal of cosmopolitanism, envisioning humanity as a singular and unified moral community, is impossible in a world where the primary political unit is the state.
American aversion to counterinsurgency is deeply ingrained in the American way of warfare. Since the 1940s the US Army has trained, equipped, and organised for large-scale conventional operations against like adversaries. They have traditionally employed conventional military operations even against irregular enemies. I hope to show that America’s conventional supremacy and in particular their approach to war may prove to be counterproductive in this new century of small wars.
In looking at the cases of Angola, Indonesia and Zaire it can be clearly demonstrated that though minerals are of significance they are only so because of political decisions. The discussion begins with an evaluation of the ‘resource curse’ argument looking closely at its empirical grounding and two main explanatory models: rent seeking and the rentier state. The robustness of this analysis is then questioned and the relationship of mineral resources and politics to the root of violent conflict is assessed through the use of detailed case studies.
Liberal fire-brand William Gladstone launched his election campaign to become British Prime Minister in 1880 during what was being described by contemporaries as the ‘Great Depression’. The ‘People’s William’ was elected primarily on the back of his promise to reverse the Conservative Party’s jingoistic, imperialist foreign policy under Benjamin Disraeli’s tenure.
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