This election is not principally a social mobilisation, but rather, a media event. Today, we see a plethora of contentless neoliberal television polls determining who will succeed and fail in the characterological eyes of the audience of reality TV and talent-show audience. Is the UK general election much more than these televotes? There seems to be a lack of enthusiasm in the public mood for any candidate.
Several scholars have emphasised the apparent ‘Eurocentricity’ of modern international law and have hence argued that its development has been “a European story”. Is the realm of international law like a play that is being performed, in which the Western or European states are the actors on stage and their colonies, the Third World states, are only the spectators who are affected by what is happening on stage but do not have any real possibility of participating?
This paper will focus on the question whether the emergence of democracy in Colombia can be explained based on the assumptions of the ‘sequentialist’ or ‘preconditionist’ theories as suggested, amongst many others, by Fareed Zakaria or Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder, or if, by contrast, the views of ‘gradualists’ or ‘universalists’ such as Sheri Berman or Thomas Carothers are more indicated to explain and analyze Colombia’s democratic past, present and future.
Science should ideally provide the basis of non-ideological environments for the participation and free exchange of ideas. However, science has been, and will continue to be, used for political gain with the express aim of furthering a particular ideology and proving its superiority. Despite the negatives, science diplomacy has been effective for many years and led to coalition building and conflict resolution.
This essay suggests that ‘Europe’ cannot be primarily identified in terms of shared histories, cultures, or even geographies. Consequently, attempts to define the EU supranational paradigm as a teleological institution have failed, no European grand narrative of ‘unity in history’ (or culture, or religion) exists, nor can it exist.
Warnings against the political construction of the Self through opposition to a negative-valued, dangerous or threatening Other are common at a time when the discourses of the clash of civilisations have acquired a worryingly prominent place in the public spheres of many different countries. But do we actually need ‘more’ religious and cultural traditions rather than less in order to oppose religiously-inspired political violence?
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.
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.
Terrorism did not begin in 2001, nor is it confined to extremists in the Middle East. Often, those who wish to point out the difficulty in defining terrorism like to refer to an old, now-famous quotation: “One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.” Within the complex international system, the line drawn between the two can regularly become blurred or difficult to see: nonetheless, this line still exists.
Chinese nuclear policy serves their grand strategy aimed at maintaining a calm international strategic environment. China’s nuclear policy is inherently defensive and, excluding proliferation concerns, practically benign. However, one should remember that this does not mean it isn’t based on self-interest.
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