Barack Obama’s Democracy Promotion after One Year
It is wrong to say that Barack Obama rejects the democracy tradition in American foreign policy. His record, appointments and first-year budget requests show that democratization is not being jettisoned as a US goal. To varying extents, the president and his foreign policy principals are liberal internationalists. However there has been a stark rhetorical break from the Bush era.
Piracy Jure Gentium & International Law
Piracy seems to be a notion of ages ago yet it is far from gone. News reports over the last couple of years show that pirates are far from extinct and that they are still very active. This paper discusses some of the actual items on the news today regarding piracy and international law, analyzing piracy today and providing a common understanding of piracy, before looking at its relation to International Law and law enforcement.
The Centre and the Regions in Contemporary Russia
There is widespread acknowledgement that Putin’s federal reforms have had considerable success in subordinating regional authorities to the will of central government. And undoubtedly, Putin believed that such reforms were a necessary aspect of reigning in the “emotionalism” and resultant chaos of the Yeltsin years.
Africa through a Diaspora Lens
Even though we cannot dismiss the nation as a unit of analysis of identity, it is evident that posing the question of identity in the world today cannot be done exclusively through a nationalist lens. The sooner we take seriously the significance of the constitutive mixing of peoples, the sooner we will be able to come to a better sense of what work identities perform in the world today
Gender Matters in International Relations
Whether the issue at hand is security, global governance, nuclear proliferation, peacebuilding or international law, feminist scholars have written extensively about (how) gender matters in global politics and, further, argued that paying analytical attention to gender allows us a range of insights that ‘gender-blind’ approaches do not access.
Deterring Terrorists and Deterring States: Fundamentally Different Tasks?
In this paper I will argue that the idea that there is a New Terrorism, which “requires bold new strategies because of its shadowy character and its incalculable dangers”, should be contested to avoid the possibility of ‘non-knowledge’ being taken as an excuse to justify extreme counter-terrorism policies.
Where next for gender in international development?
Thanks to decades of feminist activism within and outside international institutions, the issue of gender inequality is now firmly embedded within contemporary development policy and practice. In this essay I offer a brief overview of some of the debates and policies that inform feminist approaches to development policy and practice.
The many roles of Fair Trade
There is a growing body of literature on the impact of Fair Trade, and research suggests that Fair Trade improves the economic conditions of producers, communities receive important benefit from the social premium, and the partnership model allows for the development of sustainable cooperatives and craft enterprises. It makes a significant contribution at many different levels: the individual, the household, the organization, the wider business community, and to more equitable national development.
Compare and contrast the British government’s use of propaganda in the Suez crisis and the Falklands war
The 1956-1957 Suez Crises/Tripartite Aggression and the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas War each provide a rich insight into the use of propaganda by the British establishment in advancing its national and international aims, but with almost diametrically opposite consequences.
The Political Realism of Thucydides and Thomas Hobbes
The Realist school of thought in International Relations has claimed both Thucydides and Hobbes as two of their intellectual forefathers and in doing so has suggested that the core beliefs and views of these two political thinkers can be classified as Realism. Although the key realist ideas can be found in both authors, there are significant differences that need to be addressed.
