When making sense of the weird things currently happening in the northern hemisphere, such as the London riots, one trend should not escape our notice: a deepening crisis caused by bankers’ greed is beginning to rip the guts out of democracy. Four years into the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression, governments of vital parts of the capitalist world are running on empty.
While Lisbon may narrow the material differences between small and large states in terms of involvement, it is likely to sustain the differences between states in terms of influence. A strengthened global EU presence will primarily favor the large states given their more extended capacities to cope with the EU’s expanding role in matters of foreign policy.
The intransigence of the Tea Party Republicans during the recent US debt ceiling negotiations has apparently saved the US defense budget from deep cuts that had seemed almost certain a month ago. The negotiations pushed a full agreement onto a special legislative committee which is to report in the fall.
It is time the U.S. and other governments took a more nuanced approach to politics in the Horn of Africa and followed the lead of international aid agencies on the ground in dealing with local leaders and communities, rather than seeking to impose a top-down central government. The solution to famine in East Africa lies in employment-generating development. It will not offer an instant fix, but it’s a start.
Theorists conceive of knowledge and its relations to reality differently. Knowledge of the world is ‘reality’, yet this ‘reality’ is socially constructed through discourse. Looking through the Realist lens, the Cuban Missile Crisis becomes an affair of two rationally acting Great Powers locked in a power struggle owing to the inducements of a bipolar anarchic international system.
Sex tourism has become a significant contributor to the income of the tourism industry in recent years. Yet, how have we come to define it? In what ways has postcolonialism assisted in constructing our understanding of it? And, how might we extend the application of postcolonial discourses to assist in developing that comprehension?
On July 9th diplomats celebrated the birth of Africa’s newest country, South Sudan, like over-stimulated toddlers at a party. The media followed suit, with trivial and sometimes patronising stories about the new national anthem and flag, and the admittedly strange plan to create cities in the shapes of African animals. Sadly, those involved should have focused on the agenda items they failed to address before sending out the independence day invitations.
Religion has frequently shaped and reshaped state and interstate systems in various degrees. It will continue to be a valuable subject of academic debate among political scientists. In this downloadable collection, you will find seven articles, written by academics who tackle the subject of religion in international politics with diverse approaches.
The demobilisation of combatants during or after conflict is a crucial step towards achieving sustainable peace. This essay draws on the case of Colombia to illustrate the difficulties that this task poses.
Changes in the production and consumption of pop music have shown the Globalization of Culture in its most effective form. Changes in the Korean pop industry illustrate a process whereby ‘foreign’ pop music is internalized, adapted and then pushed back into the wider world as a new style of pop which has been culturally filtered.
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