Domestic politics is naturally important in ethnic policies. However, in spite of their potency, domestic political factors are not always the most decisive. International organizations have influenced the Latvian and Estonian governments, and at times the Slovak and Romanian governments. However, the ability of different organizational strategies to overcome domestic opposition and thus bring about their desired policy varies widely. In most cases, actors need to use conditionality and aim it at the appropriate decision makers. (...) In spite of their widespread use, efforts that rely solely on persuasion and diplomacy tend only to work when the domestic opposition is initially quite low or when ethnic minorities themselves have some bargaining power in the government.The key policy implication is that domestic factors do not make failure, or success for that matter, a foregone conclusion. For example, ethnic minority representation within the government coalition is not in itself a guarantee of passage of the policy preferences of the minorities. Conversely, the presence of authoritarian-style leadership does not automatically mean a rejection ethnic minority accommodation either, if organizations present their suggestions so that such leaders view it as being in their greater interests to maintain power. Conditionality that targets incentives to fit goals of the leadership can work. External actors are thus not justified in backing off from action based purely on a domestic analysis. (shrink)

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) boasts one of the strongest oversight systems in international human rights law, but implementing the ECtHR’s rulings is an inherently domestic and political process. This article begins to bridge the gap between the Court in Strasbourg and the domestic process of implementing the Court’s rulings by looking at the domestic institutions and politics that surround the execution of the ECtHR’s judgments. Using case studies from the UK and Russia, this (...) article identifies two factors that are critical for the domestic implementation of the Court’s rulings: strong domestic, democratic institutions dedicated to implementing the ECtHR’s judgments and an overarching sense of responsibility to set a good example at home and abroad for respecting human rights and the rule of law. This article concludes with a discussion of the steps necessary to facilitate better implementation of the ECtHR’s rulings. (shrink)

In 2013-2022, the Ukrainian ethnic group faced numerous external and internal challenges, which were largely the result of its previous historical development and profound transformations in the public consciousness.These changes, in turn, have become a natural reaction to a number of historical processes and phenomena that have taken place in the territory of the people from ancient times to the present. In this article, the author aims to analyze some factors of stress genesis of the ethnic legal mentality of (...) the Ukrainian ethnic group and show their impact on the content of its behavioral stereotypes. The methodology of this study is comprehensive and is based on socio-philosophical and philosophical and legal analysis of behavioral attitudes of Ukrainians in the field of legal understanding.Results. In the course of analyzing the scientific works of a number of researchers, we found that during its historical existence, the Ukrainian ethnic group has experienced a number of events, phenomena and processes of objective reality, which led to the transformation of the content of its behavioral stereotypes. Factors of stress genesis can be divided into endogenous and exogenous. Exogenous sources of Ukrainian ethnopsychologists include, for example, continuous invasions of various aggressors (Tatar, Polish, Russian, German) and various attempts to acculturate Ukrainians.According to them, endogenous factors include various migration processes that have generated marginality and betrayal by Ukrainian leaders of their people. In the future, the established guidelines play or may play a destructive role in the process of nationbuilding.Conclusions. We found that the stress genesis of domestic political and legal can be defined as the process of creating political and legal mentality of the Ukrainian ethnos under the influence of events, phenomena, processes of its sociohistorical development, as well as factors of geographical location and environmental conditions. community and, as a consequence, cause transformations in the content of its guidelines. In addition, the border situation of Ukrainian lands, long statelessness of the ethnic group, serfdom in the homeland and other factors of socio-historical development of the national ethnic group have led to the emergence or deepening in the people’s consciousness such destructive stereotypes as anarchism, legal nihilism, freedom “, absenteeism and civic passivity, deep corruption traditions and nepotism, low status of state property, etc. (shrink)

This study examines the complex and dynamic relationship between Kosovo and NATO. It argues that Kosovo’s prospects for NATO membership are shaped by an array of contradictory and often confusing international and domestic political forces. It draws on theoretical sources, media reports, and descriptive statistical data to the factors shaping expectations for NATO membership. The study relies on theories and concepts from the established and evolving literature on alliance formation and expansion to explain how states aspiring for (...) membership in security organizations must navigate a pattern of political and security hurdles in their quest for membership accession. It then explores Kosovo’s case for NATO membership by examining whether Kosovo has met key political and security benchmarks and devotes significant attention to the settlement dispute with Serbia, the roles played by the U.S. and E.U., and identifies alternative paths for Kosovo’s membership in NATO. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to analyze the identity policy implemented within the Union State of Belarus and Russia and determine the ways of its improving. Methods and materials: materials include acts of the Union State of Belarus and Russia and materials from Russian and Belarusian media; the methodological basis was laid by general scientific methods (system analysis, ascent from the abstract to the concrete, ascent from the individual to the general, synthesis, comparative method) and special legal and (...) class='Hi'>political science scientific methods (formal legal method, method of legal hermeneutics, institutional-functional and system-structural approaches, content analysis method). Results and conclusions: the formation of the Union State of the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation is inscribed in a complex multilevel context of international and domestic political processes, which co-determine opportunities and settle limitations for the unification strategies. The authors analyze the international and domestic factors that determine the slow character of the integration process. The authors propose one of the possible integration vectors. This vector assumes implementing a multi-level identity policy, which aims at forming a coherent political community at the heart of the Union State and needs today comprehensive development and legal and institutional support. The authors show that implementing this policy is possible only within the framework of the citizenship development. The article formulates some directions of this policy, which currently have not fully revealed their unifying potential and need further improvement. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, 'oversimplification'. The fallacy of oversimplification occurs when we attempt to make something appear simpler by ignoring certain relevant complexities. Sometimes oversimplification makes sense. The world can be a convoluted place, and we may need to ignore certain factors in order to get our heads around certain thorny ideas. But in other cases, oversimplification can be used deliberately to deceive or divide people. In order to avoid the fallacy, (...) we need to become comfortable with accepting complicated answers to certain questions. When we obscure, ignore, or simply fail to identify certain factors, we run a high risk of misunderstanding reality. If we try to address an issue on the basis of this mistaken understanding, there is a good chance our actions will ‐ at best ‐ be ineffective, or ‐ at worst ‐ exacerbate the very problem we are trying to solve. (shrink)

Japan's remarkable economic success especially from the 1960s to the 1980s has attracted extensive worldwide attention. However, the world's admiration has plummeted since the 1990s, when the Bubble Economy burst, bringing on chronic stagnation. Since then, the world has regarded the Japanese economy less as a desirable model and more as an evident failure with many lessons for other economies. These external judgments, positive and negative, have also affected how the Japanese perceive their own economy. This article reviews how these (...) domestic and international perceptions of Japan's economy have varied. It situates the companion articles by Hwang (2012) and Harada (2012) in the historical context of studies of the Japanese economy. This article especially discusses one recurring fixation that muddles comprehension of factors underpinning Japan's economic success and failure: the tendency to overestimate characteristics that supposedly are specific to Japan and different from other market-oriented economies. From the 1960s through the 1980s, scholars, commentators, policy-makers, and the public insisted these characteristics were singular and significant contributors to Japan's remarkable economic development. Since the 1990s, they have considered them the root causes of Japan's remarkable stagnation. Both are exaggerations. Although some singularly Japanese attributes perhaps contributed to Japan's economic ascent and decline, it is equally plausible they did not. It is more likely that poorly conceived and executed macroeconomic policies, especially monetary policy, had greater influence on Japan's post-1990s stagnation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Since World War II, American presidents have consistently advanced a world free‐trade agenda, despite the fierce opposition of domestic interests threatened by free trade, and despite these interests’ ability to mobilize local pressure and nationalist sentiment against free trade in Congress. A theoretical resolution of these paradoxes would consider both the countervailing pressure of domestic interests that benefit from free trade and an international factor: namely, America’s dominance of world trade. This global dominance gives the United States (...) “superpower” status not only economically, but politically, enabling American presidents to get most of what they want in international trade negotiations. Consequently, they can afford to make tactical concessions to American mercantilist interests—defanging congressional opposition to free trade—because in international negotiations, these concessions can be turned into powerful levers against the barriers to free trade that are erected by countries desiring access to the immense American market. (shrink)

PurposeThis paper scrutinizes the impact of socioeconomic, political, legal and religious factors on the internal ethical values of human rights organizations worldwide. The authors aim to examine the Code of Ethics for 279 HROs in 67 countries and the social and legal settings in which they operate.Design/methodology/approachUsing the framework of protect, respect and remedy, the authors look for keywords that represent the human rights lexicon in these three areas. In the protection of human rights, the authors select the (...) terms: peace, transparency, freedom and security. For the respect of humans, the authors use the terms: dignity, equality, respect and rights. Sources of remedies come from justice and ethics. The analysis seeks to determine what political economy settings drive the ethical value choices of the organizations. Those choices are proxied by those keywords they mention in their Code of Ethics.FindingsThe analysis show that the scope of ethical values mentioned are higher when the HRO is in a country with more domestic violence, lower income inequality, French civil or Islamic legal origin and higher trust in politicians. In regard to the determinants of the ten keywords individually, the authors conclude that the status of the socioeconomic, political, religious and legal settings impact with local HROs mention each of the keywords: peace, justice, transparency, dignity, equality, ethics, respect, freedom, security and rights.Research limitations/implicationsThe analysis is based on HROs that have a webpage in English and list the employee Code of Conduct.Originality/valueThis study is the first to examine the Code of Ethics for HROs. The authors demonstrate that country-specific characteristics help to drive their internal ethical values. (shrink)

This article describes political discourse on domestic violence that obscures men's violence while placing the burden of responsibility on women. This perspective, which the author calls patriarchal resistance, challenges a feminist construction of the problem. Using a qualitative analysis of men's and political magazines, the author describes two main discursive strategies used in the resistance discourse: degendering the problem and gendering the blame. These strategies play a central role in resisting any attempts to situate social problems within (...) a partiarchal framework. It is argued that this is a political countermovement to the feminist constructions of domestic violence as opposed to a serious concern about women's violence and male victims. Three major implications this resistance discourse has are the normalization of intimate violence, the diversion of attention from men's responsibility and cultural and structural factors that foster violence, and the distortion of women's violence. (shrink)

The boundaries between medicine, religion, nursing and domestic service were fluid in mid‐nineteenth‐century England. The traditional religious understanding of illness conflicted with the newer understanding of anatomically based disease, the Anglican sisters were drawing a line between professional nursing and the traditional role of nurses as domestic servants who looked after sick people as one of their many duties, and doctors were looking for more knowledgeable nurses who could carry out their orders competently. This prosopographical study of the (...) over 200 women who served as government nurses during the Crimean War 1854–56 describes the status of nursing and provides a picture of the religious and social structure of Britain in the 1850s. It also illustrates how religious, political and social factors affected the development of the new nursing. The Crimean War nurses can be divided into four major groups: volunteer secular ladies, Roman Catholic nuns, Anglican sisters and working‐class hospital nurses. Of these four groups I conclude that it was the experienced working‐class nurses who had the greatest influence on the organization of the new nursing. (shrink)

While a substantial amount of the literature describes corporate benefits of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, the literature is silent concerning why some companies announce CSR initiatives, yet fail to implement them. The article examines company delistings from the UN Global Compact. Delistings are surprising because the CSR agenda is seen as having won the battle of ideas. The analysis proceeds in two parts. I first analyze firm-level characteristics focusing on geography while controlling for sector and size; I find that (...) geography is a significant factor while small firms are more likely to be delisted than large firms and some sector characteristics determine delistings. Next, I proceed to uncover country-level characteristics including the degree of international economic interdependence as well as the quality of governance institutions. Multivariate regression analysis shows that companies are less likely to be delisted from countries where domestic governance institutions are well-functioning. To a lesser extent, I find that firms from countries with international economies are more willing to comply with the UN Global Compact requirements. Countries with a high share of outward FDI/capita have a lower share of delisted firms as do countries that are internationally competitive. (shrink)

What is the relationship between Thailand’s human rights crisis during Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s leadership and the USA-led post-9/11 war on terror? Why did the human rights situation dramatically deteriorate after the Thaksin regime publicly supported the Bush administration’s war on terror and consequently received US counterterror assistance? This article offers two conceptual arguments that jointly demonstrate a constitutive theoretical explanation, which shows that counterterror and militaristic transnational and national discursive structures enabled the strategy of state repression in Thailand under (...) Thaksin. The first concept refers to strategic localization, which refers to how the Bush administration’s global war on terror—and its consequent overarching emphasis on military security—provided an opportunity for the Thaksin administration to strategically localize the global threat of terrorism in ways that could seem relevant to the local Thai context. The second concept pertains to resource mobilization, which shows how converging US and Thai discourses on military security facilitated Thaksin’s strategy of increased state repression that led to the proliferation of state-led human rights abuses. This research article contributes to the human rights literature in two ways: by highlighting how foreign aid programs and its constitutive political discourses shape recipient countries’ domestic human rights situation and by tracing the macro-political factors that lead to the eventual democratic decay of contemporary Thailand. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to continue the discussion on Europe’s converging criminal justice systems. In particular, I test a hypothesis that has recently appeared in the literature, which sees the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights as one of the most significant factors that encourage a harmonization process between the adversarial and inquisitorial criminal justice systems of Europe. This claim is supported by examining the Court’s jurisprudence to identify decisions that led to legislative and policy (...) amendments in the domestic legal orders of the 46 member states of the Council of Europe. This account shows how an interplay currently taking place between judicial, policy, and statutory powers is marking the end of the adversarial-inquisitorial era. Finally, the conclusion identifies the three most important impediments that are likely to hamper this harmonization process. (shrink)

Cosmopolis A Review of Cosmopolitics -/- 2015/3-4 -/- Editorial Dominique de Courcelles & Paul Ghils -/- This issue addresses the general concept of “spirituality” as it appears in various cultural contexts and timeframes, through contrasting ideological views. Without necessarily going back to artistic and religious remains of primitive men, which unquestionably show pursuits beyond the biophysical dimension and illustrate practices seeking to unveil the hidden significance of life and death, the following papers deal with a number of interpretations covering a (...) wide field extending from belief to theory, from emotions to concepts, from the wisdom of personal experience to the most sophisticated doctrines. Spirit and spirituality are indeed many-faceted notions. They may refer to the intricate world of the interacting spirits which inhabit living beings in animistic traditions, without excluding a “grand force” linking human beings within a dynamic whole on which their very existence rely . They also bear upon more atomistic and either/or approaches of Western philosophy, which have become embodied in Cartesian dualism against a monotheist background, to the point of freezing the essence of individuals and culminating in the extreme individualism that characterizes our contemporaries. However, this equally refers to the opposite conception of materialism, across times and cultures, from ancient India and Greece (Cārvāka, originally known as Lokāyata, or some Buddhist doctrines for the former, Democritus or Lucretius for the latter) to more contemporary materialistic schools, whether modern or postmodern. -/- The following papers look at the contrasting forms of the philosophy and spirit of the human factor set into a whole, with no artificial disjoint between the psychical and the physical levels, as Wittgenstein put it: “And how can a body have a soul?”. This approach is not unrelated to the notion of anthropocene examined in a recent issue of Cosmopolis, with provides another comprehensive framework open to a spiritual life emerging from the very environment that generated it. -/- *** The first section of this issue was edited by Dominique de Courcelles, director at the National French Research Centre (CNRS), whom we wish to thank for collecting relevant studies relating to the religious and political questions, with a view to focusing on the war of ideas inevitably waged behind images, concepts and perceptions, taking an asymmetrical approach. To the extent that they are mindful of global/local interactions and include representations, opinions and beliefs, such disciplines as philosophy, philology, history and social sciences can provide useful studies accounting for new practices in geopolitics and a fair diplomacy. -/- In her introduction, Dominique de Courcelles first poses the question of how the religious and political spheres interrelate, with their corresponding religious demands and humanistic values. She then suggests that the right question today may be breaking with the philosophy of human rights concerned with the defense of human beings against the hazards of arbitrary politics or the instrumental use of religion, in favour of a fair philosophy of humankind, a new humanism. This would consist in recognizing a common loyalty of all towards one interhuman, not only interstate community, to protect it from both the autonomy demanded by individuals and the instrumental use of minorities. -/- Considering the fact of diversity, so important today in terms of both politics and religion, Abdelhai Azarkan looks at the conditions under which tolerance could obtain the double status of right and duty. He revisits to two philosophers, John Locke and Voltaire, who thought about it from the historical reality of religious wars. The former made tolerance into a right, basing his analysis on the political-legal level, while the latter saw tolerance as a duty, from an analysis based on ethical-political criteria. -/- Mathieu Guidère examines what he calls semantic denominationalism, a term which implies religious attributes and identities, whichever national loyalties or personal belonging they may have at the same time. Since the early 2000s, thie phenomenon has expanded tremendously, compounded by the “war on terror” and the over media-oriented terrorist actions. Denominational expressions act as formal names for ordinary and high-profile players in domestic and foreign policies of democratic states. These systems reveal a receding secularization, while the powerful comeback of religious identities signals the failure of nation-states and the weakening of the humanist spirit. -/- Barbara De Poli retraces the history of a contemporary jihadism claiming its Islamic essence and asserting the truth of genuine coranic principles via the war on infidels, with a view to restoring the Caliphate. After defining the term jihad, she shows that even if this contemporary jiadism is spreading in the Muslim world, it radically departs from Islamic law and the received use of the term jihad, in so far as it is rooted in the early radical thinking of Islamic ideologues in the 20th century, starting with with Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. This current has been fueled by by international conflicts since the outbreak of the war in Afghanistan, in which the so-called Western countries bear a major responsibility. -/- Abderrazak Sayadi starts from the Tunisian experience to ask the question of humanist values and democracy within the relationships between the religious and political spheres. As a historian of religion, he is brought to demystify certain islamic principles and to paying attention to the reform of law, seeing the separation of religion and politics as a precondition to a successful democratic gamble and the establishment of a renewed humanism. -/- Dominique de Courcelles reminds us that getting a better knowledge of narrations and words makes it possible to better understand how logical and rhetorical thinking works for those who wage an asymetriccal war, re-enchanting and mystifying the world to better take control. As soon as 1932, an exchange of letters between Einstein and Freud made it clear that, in order to free man from fatality and war, education understood as culture was fundamental. Such illustrations as the exécution of Oussama ben Laden and the Caliph’s speech in Mossoul show that a premiminary analysis of images and words is essential to a fair diplomacy conducted by people from civil society, whose culture and wisdom allow justice and force to speak together and better resist war. -/- Marcel Boisard thinks that on the day the guns fall silent, exhausted by war, we will not return to the state borders that have prevailed for a century as an outcome of the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. It is time to prepare the “day after”, which will be a huge challenge. To this end, a summit of Middle-East nations is urgently needed to globally decide the fate of those peoples. On the condition that we know who the enemy is and accept to name it, to understand the history of the countries, groups and alliances, and to question any false or self-interested sense of certainty. -/- *** In the second section, Paul Schafer provides the author’s experiences to explain how culture, from the artistic to the biological, has the power to to open the doors to spirituality, from the inner self to the global environment. He asks himself whether a relative permanence of spirituality can arise from the specific moments that characterize it. Laurent Ledoux synthesizes the conclusion of a symposium held on 22 January 2015 on the links between philosophy and management, on the basis of the spiritual dimension conceived as “natural” and the answers it may suggest to the issues that face the organizations in a “contemporaniversal” world. Jacques Rifflet makes that question in a secular perspective, based on the wellsprings of personal commitment before it can be caught by any religious creed or scientific theory. In this sense spirituality, in alliance with reason, both inspires human consciousness and illuminates its destiny. Sami Aldeeb asks himself whether Islam can be reconciled with human rights. Caught between the belief in an absolute and final Word descended from the sky, and evidence showing that any religion is the creation of a given culture and a society situated in time and space, the Makkan and … contexts et médinois call for differentiated, if not opposite answers and exegeses. Bernard Carmona provides the outline of a dialogical framework, which is known to be a feature of debates between the various philosophical schools of classical India, exemplified here by the transdisciplinary perspective of debates within a Buddhist context. *** The articles not focused on the previous topic include a study by Landry Signé on China’s strategy, competing with the United States to control African resources. The author deals with the specific case of China’s rapprochement with Southern Sudan since Sudan was broken up. In the last paper, Goran Fejić and Rada Iveković, return to the essential role that women should play, and comments upon the role of some international legal instruments related in particular to the elimination of all forms of discrimination. The perspective is transnational and transethnic and is based on secular criteria, as regards nation-building and more generally society-building. Considering the persistence of widespread violence, whether in times of armed conflict or in times of peace, the question remains whether it is possible to fully implement rights and justice instruments. (shrink)

B a c k g r o u n d. This scientific investigation conducts a constructive-critical, comprehensive, and systematic analysis of the state, paradigms, and trends in the development of Ukrainian and European fundamental science. It highlights, at a synthetic level, the epistemological and social functions, historical mission, and vision of domestic science in shaping the traditions and values of European culture. The article draws attention to the significant contributions made by domestic scientists to the research of theoretical-methodological, (...) epistemological, and worldview foundations of Ukrainian fundamental science as an intellectual phenomenon. This topic is covered in extensive monographic works, articles, discourses, and scientific investigations by such scientists as B. Paton, A. Zahorodnii, A. Naumovets, D. Zerbino, O. Habovych, V. Kuznietsov, L. Kurylo, N. Semenova, S. Honcharenko, A. Pavko, Z. Partiko, A. Filipenko, and others. Valuable, little-studied, and debatable aspects of this issue have also been highlighted in the works of foreign scientists. Among them, the author of the article includes interdisciplinary publications by J. Barroso, J. Gorgon, V. Humboldt, K. Popper, and other Western thinkers and researchers. At the same time, there are practically no professional generalizing works in domestic socio-humanitarian thought that consider Ukrainian fundamental science from a comprehensive, synthetic perspective as a powerful intellectual factor in shaping the traditions and values of European culture. M e t h o d s. The article uses a set of methods (analysis, synthesis, inductive and deductive methods) as well as general scientific approaches such as dialectical, systematic, and interdisciplinary methods to study this socio-humanitarian problem. This has led to the revelation of the internal contradictory nature of trends in the development of fundamental science, the evaluation of Ukrainian science in the system of European values and culture. Meanwhile, the dialectical method provides the theoretical and methodological foundation for a deep, essential understanding of the intellectual potential of fundamental research. In contrast, the systematic approach used in the article is extrapolated to conduct a correct, comprehensive analysis of the integral components that determine the regularities and features of the development of domestic science in modern conditions. The interdisciplinary approach, creatively applied in the article, made it possible to combine achievements in the field of social humanities, which significantly determine the determinants of the methodological culture of scientific analysis, critical thinking in the process of producing and assimilating scientific knowledge. R e s u l t s. The article identifies the following trends in the development of Ukrainian fundamental science as an institutional factor in shaping the traditions and values of European culture: Powerful, systematic development of fundamental science is a necessary condition for improving the mechanisms of deepening European integration processes in Ukraine. Modern fundamental science is one of the components of the socio-cultural progress of humanity and defines such important characteristics as the differentiation and integration of science, computerization, and humanization of each of them. The historical experience of the development of European civilization shows that science, both in the past and in the present, has been and remains an important intellectual factor, a reliable rational foundation of strong states and nations. C o n c l u s i o n s. The conclusion establishes that the scientific potential of the state is an integral component of European culture and the intellect of the modern Ukrainian nation. It is important to consider that European values should have a profound and irreversible nature for domestic science rather than a temporary one. The preservation and modernization of national intellect, intellectual capital are essential conditions for its integration into the educational, scientific, and cultural space of Europe, and for the preservation and development of Ukraine as a modern, scientifically powerful democratic state with established civilizational traditions. The article emphasizes that the constant pursuit of intellectual and political freedom, patriotism, tireless industriousness, intelligence, education, creativity, intellect, healthy pragmatism, persistence, courage, ingenuity, and a sense of humor are precisely the universal, distinctly defined, characteristic traits of our compatriots that make them resilient and open up a unique intellectual space in Europe, a wonderful European world of existence. (shrink)

Although the use of truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs) has grown considerably over the last 3 decades, there is still much that we do not know concerning the choice and the structuring of TRCs. While the literature has focused primarily on the effects of TRCs, we examine the domestic and the international factors influencing the choice of a commission in sub-Saharan Africa from 1974 to 2003 using pooled cross-sectional time series. We find that states which adopted a TRC (...) prior to South Africa were generally repressive centralized regimes which used the truth commission as political cover. However, since South Africa’s TRC, democratizing states have been more likely to adopt a truth commission as a form of transitional justice. (shrink)

The article delves into Kazakhstan’s policies vis-à-vis the European Union, focusing on their driving motives and enabling conditions. Drawing upon published papers and, to a lesser degree, primary sources, the author argues that friendship with the EU largely serves the Kazakhstani elite as means of economic modernisation as well regime legitimation, perfectly fitting Kazakhstan’s dominant domestic discourse which portrays the country as Eurasian and its foreign policy—as multi-vector. The study also shows that Astana’s partnership with Brussels is to a (...) large degree possible because the EU holds a simultaneous positive attitude to such partnership regardless Kazakhstan’s authoritarian regime. According to the article, such reflects the great instrumental value collaboration with Astana gives Brussels, the EU’s general inactivity on democracy promotion in Central Asia and Kazakhstan’s looking more pro-European and economically/politically advanced against the background of its post-Soviet and Central Asian autocratic fellows. The paper concludes by reflecting on the configuration of pragmatism and identity in Astana’s approach to the EU and discussing the peculiarities of the bloc’s power over Kazakhstan. (shrink)

This study explores the role that news coverage plays in the allocation of Japanese development aid. Conceptually, it is expected that democratic foreign policy officials, including those working in bureaucratic governmental structures will try to match the magnitude of their actions with what they expect is the public's perception of the importance of the recipient. News media salience serves an easily accessible indicator of that domestic political importance and, in the case of foreign aid, this suggests that higher (...) levels of news coverage of a less-developed country will lead to higher aid commitments. The statistical analysis demonstrates that the level of news coverage is a statistically significant factor in Japanese aid distributions. More significantly, the analysis demonstrates that separating grant aid from other forms of aid is critical for the empirical examination of the determinants of Japanese aid. (shrink)

This case study examines the relevance of taking social and political factors into consideration when a corporation is making a key business decision. In September 2009, Simon Beresford-Wylie, the outgoing CEO of Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), was reviewing the company’s achievements – while acknowledging the latest public criticism regarding NSN’s business relationship with the Iranian government. In the summer of 2009, NSN was accused of complicity in human rights violations linked to Iran’s presidential election. The company sold network (...) infrastructure and software solutions to the Iranian government, which then used this technology to observe, block, and control domestic communications. Should NSN have acted differently? Students are asked to examine the economic and moral arguments for and against selling products to an oppressive regime that might then use those products to violate human rights. In such a case, does the corporation bear co-responsibility for human rights violations committed by an oppressive regime? (shrink)

Introduction. The scientific literature notes that in countries with significant revenues from oil and gas production, there is less economic growth. This paradox has been called the «resource curse». The abundance of hydrocarbons negatively affects the domestic political situation: it worsens the quality of public administration, preserves autocratic rule and corruption. The presence of such natural resources significantly increases the threat of armed conflict, civil war. M. Ross stated that the country’s oil and gas wealth prevents women from (...) participating in the official workforce and reduces their political influence. His argument is based on three statements: in low- and middle-income countries, women usually get jobs in low-paid export-oriented factories; preserving these jobs can expand women’s opportunities for self-realization in social and political terms; the presence of significant reserves of oil (or other minerals) in the state makes such traditional branches of industrial industry unprofitable and, more broadly, does not encourage women to work outside the home. As a result, hydrocarbon wealth in low- and middle-income countries tends to close an important path to gender equality. -/- The purpose of the work is to test M. Ross’s hypothesis. The author seeks to get an answer to the following research question: what impact do hydrocarbons have on the level of representation of women in the labor force and the deputy corps of legislatures of the subjects of the Russian Federation? Is there a «gender resource curse»? -/- Methods. Regression analysis has become the method of data analysis. The source of information for panel data is Rosstat data. -/- Scientific novelty of the research. This study contributes to the academic debate on the factors of women’s representation in politics and the economic sphere. -/- Results. The conducted research showed that M. Ross’s thesis about the «oil patriarchy» and the «gender Dutch disease» on the statistical data of the subjects of the Russian Federation has not been empirically verified. -/- Conclusions. The author has outlined several explanations for this result. It is shown that this is due to the difference in the operationalization of the independent variable. Secondly, the analysis is carried out at the subnational level, when revenues from the activities of oil and gas companies go to the federal budget. Finally, there is an impact of socio-cultural factors. (shrink)

This article examines Thai policy towards Malaysia and Myanmar in the post-Cold War period and argues that bilateral relations between Thailand and these countries have deteriorated considerably. The immediate reason for the change is the collapse of structural arrangements associated with the Cold War, in particular the Indochina Security Complex and domestic political developments in Thailand and Myanmar. Whereas a number of issues like illegal migration, fishing and insurgency have contributed to the deteriorated relations, the situation has been (...) reasonably well managed. Factors contributing to the stability of the situation include regular bilateral dialogue and exchanges as well as common membership in a number of multilateral fora like ASEAN, ARF, AFTA and APEC. (shrink)

In the last years of its history, the Ukrainian ethnic group faced numerous external and internal challenges, which, to a large extent, were the result of its previous genesis and profound transformations in public consciousness. At the same time, one of the central stereotypes of the domestic political and legal mentality is the idea of truth and justice as a basic social ideal and the basis of the legal order. Analysis of research and publications. The problem of mentality (...) and the formation of behavioral stereotypes has been of interest to domestic and foreign scientists for a long time. The concept of «mentality» is most widespread in the writings of the French historical school «Annals». The scientific work of M. Blok, F. Braudel, M. Vovel, J. Le Hoff, J. Lefebvre, L. Fevre, R. Mandr and other scientists reveals the content of mentality and its structures, as well as the peculiarities of their influence on everyday life and activities of individuals who lived in different historical eras. The purpose and objectives of the article. In this article, the authors aim to analyze the idea of truth-justice as a tool for transforming the legal mentality of the Ukrainian ethnic group and to show its influence on the content of its behavioral stereotypes. Research methodology. The methodology of this research has a complex nature and is based on a socio-philosophical and philosophical-legal analysis of the behavioral guidelines of Ukrainians in the field of legal understanding. The results. The social ideology, developed on the basis of ancient social ideas and stereotypes of the national legal mentality, should become a tool for correcting such destructive phenomena in the state-building discourse as legal nihilism, anarchism, civic passivity, corruption, nepotism, etc. At the same time, the concepts of truth-justice, will-freedom and fraternity-equality are key in Ukrainian legal culture. Discussion. The interpretation of this idea in scientific opinion is not unambiguous. This idea clearly manifests itself in the context of the opposition between Truth and Evil in the national culture. Truth is inseparable from human existence and daily activities. The idea of truth is closely related to the idea of justice, which, according to many researchers, is a later, more rational and clearly defined phenomenon derived from truth. Justice as a socio-philosophical phenomenon is intended to act as a kind of moral measure of relations between individuals in society. It is considered as an authoritative criterion for establishing the correspondence between the nature of human activity and its assessment by the social community. Conclusions. Destructive behavioral stereotypes of the Ukrainian ethnic group that were formed, among other things, under the influence of factors of stressogenesis can be corrected with the help of the legal ideology of state building, which should be based on the content of the idea of truth and justice. The developed ideology should be based on the most stable constructive guidelines of the national legal mentality, organically complementing and ideologically justifying them. (shrink)

In the First Action of the Verrines Cicero highlights the issue of judicial corruption, which appears to be leading to the passage of legislation ending the senatorial monopoly on composition of the juries in the quaestio de repetundis. The work might theoretically, therefore, furnish an important study of how Cicero publicly positioned himself on a key political issue at a crucial point in his career. Historians, however, often dismiss the political impact of the work, arguing that jury reform (...) was essentially a fait accompli before the trial began. Rhetoricians likewise tend to understate its political importance, both because of its status as a substitute for a longer and fully elaborated oration and because of a pronounced tendency in recent scholarship to subordinate political comment in the judicial speeches to the immediate practical goals of legal advocacy. Cicero's prosecution of Verres, however, involved an unprecedented move in the orator's career. Through the trial he injected himself forcefully, and for the first time, into a contemporary political debate and thereby created for himself a new space from which to operate within the political landscape. (shrink)

The article analyses ethnonational conflicts in Belgium and Canada during the period 1960-1989. Using the most similar case design, it is argued that the different policy performances in Belgium and Canada can be accounted for by the institutional context in which the conflicts occurred. The institutional setup in Canada and Belgium created different modes of joint decision making. Through an analysis of three joint decision variables, namely, decision rules, preferences and default conditions, two empirical cases are scrutinized. The Canadian Pension (...) Plan in Canada and the institutional reform efforts in Belgium highlight the importance of institutional default conditions. On the basis of these empirical cases it is argued that the different conditions of joint decision making in the two states lead to a continuous production of compromises in Belgium and a genuine absence of mutual agreement in Canada. (shrink)

La relación entre la teoría y la práctica en el derecho islámico puede ser examinada desde distintos puntos de vista. Por lo que se refiere a la sustancia del derecho islámico, se puede plantear la pregunta de cómo las normas de la šarī‛a son o pueden ser aplicadas. Otra pregunta relativa a los aspectos externos de la šarī‛a es hasta qué punto la situación política, la administración judicial, el sistema educativo y otros factores sociopolíticos permiten la existencia de una jurisdicción (...) conforme a la šarī‛a. Los cadíes que no tienen las cualificaciones necesarias, cuya competencia se ve limitada por los gobernantes o cuyos juicios se ven influidos por los intereses políticos, no pueden ejercer el cadiazgo en el contexto de la šarī‛a. El análisis llevado a cabo en este artículo tiene como objetivo reconstruir el contexto socio-político de los cadíes en Siria durante los siglos VIII/XIV. A partir de los datos de varios diccionarios biográficos que contienen descripciones auténticas y detalladas de más de doscientos cadíes sirios, se demuestra que existían las pre-condiciones esenciales para ejercer el cadiazgo en aquella época y región. Se argumenta que los cadíes, junto con otros ulemas, formaban un cuerpo específico dentro del sistema estatal mameluco que, por una parte, era lo suficientemente fuerte como para resistir intervenciones políticas y, por otro lado, suministraba un alto nivel de formación legal y se beneficiaba al tiempo de él. (shrink)

In this article, I show that women are depicted in the early Confucian texts not primarily as undertaking household duties or nurturing children but rather as partaking in rituals of mourning and ancestor worship. To make the argument, I analyze, besides the more philosophical texts like the Analects and the Mencius, texts known as the “Five Classics,” which describe women in their social roles in much more detail than the former. What women’s participation in rituals reveals, I contend, is that (...) the domestic-political distinction does little to illuminate the philosophical vision offered by the early Confucian texts. Relatedly, while women’s involvement in communal religious rituals has also been noted about early Greece, the political import of such participation is even more pronounced in the Confucian case. Specifically, I show that, by embodying intergenerational continuity, the mourning and ancestor rituals that women partake in are foundational to the Confucian state. (shrink)

In the mid-2000s, rising gas prices, political instability, pollution, and fossil fuel depletion brought renewable domestic energy production onto the policy agenda. Biofuels, or fuels made from plant materials, came to be seen as America’s hope for energy security, environmental conservation, and rural economic revitalization. Yet even as the actual environmental, economic, and energy contributions of a biofuels boom remained debatable, support for biofuels swelled and became a prominent driver of not only US energy policy but of US (...) farm policy as well. This paper asks why biofuels became such a powerful force in farm policy debates, and draws on policy windows theory and discourse analysis to analyze biofuels’ contributions to the passage of the 2008 farm bill. It finds that budgetary and political factors combined with a particular set of patriotic biofuels-oriented discourses to carry energy policy debates into farm policy. It also comments on the implications of biofuels policies for conservation and sustainable land use in 2008 and beyond. (shrink)

Several scholars have asserted strategic fit to nonmarket factors is positively related to economic performance. Political strategic fit has traditionally been conceptualized as an incremental decision: firms engage in political activities to the extent nonmarket factors suggest firm political actions will improve economic performance. However, the decision to engage in political activity is more of a dichotomous decision (political activity versus free riding). Both incremental and dichotomous political strategic fit are empirically evaluated (...) in the U.S. coal industry from 1986 to 2000. Empirical evidence suggests that political strategic fit should be modeled as a dichotomous decision and that engaging in political activity is positively related to economic performance. Under investing in political activity or pursuing a free riding strategy was negatively related to economic performance. (shrink)

The September 2006 military coup against the Thaksin government in Thailand has had a profound impact on Thai politics. It has arrested the process of democratic consolidation that was set in motion in the country in the 1990s. Although many of Thaksin's policies lacked the spirit of democratic governance, he was democratically elected and was ousted from power unconstitutionally. The entire tenure of Thaksin has brought to the fore two deep cleavages in Thailand. The first of these is the deep (...) divide between the rural and urban electoral constituencies. The former provided a major vote bank with little bearing on the dispersion of power and resources that was effectively dominated by the latter. Thaksin and his populist policies effectively undermined the urban electorate and strengthened the rural constituency. The second and perhaps structurally more significant tension is that which has developed between the new business elite and the old establishment elite that comprise the monarchy, military, and the bureaucracy. This old elite has been at the forefront of displacing Thaksin through its fear of loss of control over the domestic political process. The drawn out confrontation that has spawned two social movements has significantly raised the country's political temperature and there is the real potential for the situation to deteriorate into violence. Despite these changes, a number of continuities unique to the Thai political situation continue to obtain as well. (shrink)

In November 1989, the Berlin Wall, the symbol of the Cold War between the West and the East, came tumbling down. In December 1991, a superpower, the Soviet Union, ceased to exist. In the face of such dazzling and monumental change in the global situation, an American "Kremlinologist" acknowledged, bitterly: "We were wrong; we were all wrong." Indeed, it was perhaps the greatest irony of all.

The N ational Assembly held in the Frankfurt Paulskirche in 1848, which opened w ith high hopes for the unification o f Germ any on parliam entary constitutional principles, was left to die a year later, in the telling phrase o f D onoso Cortes, ‘like a street w om an in the gu tter’. In the period o f reaction that followed, during w hich the Paulskirche convention came to be described as the ‘parliam ent o f pro­ fessors’, (...) one o f its m em bers, Georg G ottfried Gervinus, was accused, in a trial for high treason, o f attem pting to prove the historical inevitability o f the supersession o f monarchical forms by republican forms. This was Gervinus’s second experience as a professorial m artyr. In 1837 he had been one o f the professors at the U niversity o f G ottingen, the ‘Gottingen Seven’, w ho protested the revocation o f the H anoverian constitution. For this he had been banished and given three days to leave the kingdom. The lesson he, and m any other liberal thinkers, learned from these experiences was that the Germ an middle classes were incapable o f perform ing the historical role assigned to them; they lacked the political will to establish a republican order. (shrink)

In studies on political decision-making, attention is often limited to domestic factors. However, this study demonstrates that international considerations can play a key role in the decision-making process. Since 1980, competence for environmental policy in Belgium is shared by the national government and the three autonomous regions. The 134 most important environmental measures which have been issued in Flanders since 1980, were studied, and international influence proved to be considerable. In 78 cases, the measure was brought into (...) being due to the environmental policy of the European Community. In 39 cases, there were influences from other sources of international environmental policy. This left only 17 measures which had no clear connection with international environmental policy. It seems that policy scholars have not yet fully realized the extent of this shift of power from the national to the international level, and have rather neglected the international decision-making process. (shrink)

Domestic and foreign scientific circles have long been discussing the affiliation of Ukrainian ethnic lands to civilized Europe. An important aspect in this context is the attribution of the national political and legal mentality to the family of European mentalities. For example, it should be noted that Orthodoxy, contrary to the opinion of many authors, is a European religion, the attitude of Ukrainians to private property is approximately identical to the European one. And based on the nature of (...) the historical development of Ukrainian ethnic lands, the long stay of their part in European states (Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Commonwealth, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Poland, Hungary, etc.), the spread of Christianity (even in its Eastern Orthodox form), area the residence of the Ukrainian ethnos can rightly be attributed to the European space of civilization. It should also be emphasized that the mental diversity of Ukraine can play a positive role in the European integration processes of domestic society.At the same time, we must state significant differences between the content of domestic and Western automatisms. This, in particular, the difference in the attitude to work and its results, the institution of the state and law enforcement agencies, state property. And the concept of law in the Ukrainian legal mentality, in contrast to the European, is often replaced by notions of truth-justice, which on the one hand is a source of legal nihilism of Ukrainians, and on the other, gives the law a certain sacred meaning and «revives» it, preferring « spiritual law «before its» letter «Therefore, it is natural to conclude that domestic behavioral guidelines, including legal, are essentially European, but marked by certain specifics due to the» marginal position «of our people and other factors of stress genesis of domestic legal mentality.Thus, we can conclude that Ukraine is an integral part of the European civilization space, and national and Western legal mentalities in the process of interpenetration do not cause loud dissonance. It is also important that the interaction of Ukrainian and European mentalities results in a constructive transformation of the Ukrainian national character, overcoming the consequences of its stress genesis and creating a psychological basis for Ukrainians to build an effective rule of law. (shrink)

The ideas of Hans Morgenthau dominated the study of international politics in the United States for many decades. He was the leading representative of Realist international relations theory in the last century and his work remains hugely influential in the field. In this engaging and accessible new study of his work, William E. Scheuerman provides a comprehensive and illuminating introduction to Morgenthau’s ideas, and assesses their significance for political theory and international politics. Scheuerman shows Morgenthau to be an uneasy (...) Realist, uncomfortable with conventional notions of Realism and sometimes unsure whether his reflections should be grouped under its rubric. He was a powerful critic of the existing state system and defended the idea of a world state. By highlighting Morgenthau’s engagement with the leading lights of European political and legal theory, Scheuerman argues that he developed a morally demanding political ethics and an astute diagnosis of the unprecedented perils posed by nuclear weaponry. Believing that the irrationalities of US foreign policy were rooted partly in domestic factors, he sympathized with demands for radical political and social change. Scheuerman illustrates that Morgenthau’s thinking has been widely misunderstood by both disciples and critics and that it offers many challenges to contemporary Realists who discount his normative aspirations. With the advent of the cosmopolitan goal of international reform, Morgenthau’s work serves up an unsettling mix of sympathy and hard-headed skepticism which remains crucially important in the development of the field. Lucidly and persuasively written, this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars seeking to understand the continued importance of Morgenthau’s thinking. (shrink)

In this paper, we will report results of two sets of cross-linguistic studies about truth judgments and correctness judgments by speakers of English and Japanese, which will show a significant influence of a moral-political factor in an utterance on Japanese truth/correctness judgments. Following up Mizumoto (2022), which demonstrated such an effect on Japanese truth judgments and correctness judgments about utterances containing a contrastive conjunction (such as “but”), Study 1 shows the same effect on Japanese correctness judgments about utterances containing (...) a pejorative. Study 2 then shows that a moral-political factor in utterances can affect Japanese truth/correctness judgments about them even if they are simple utterances containing neither a contrastive conjunction nor a pejorative. In conclusion, we will briefly discuss whether this effect is linguistic or psychological, and present three hypotheses: the semantic hypothesis, pragmatic hypothesis, and error theory hypothesis, to account for the data, which we leave open for future studies. (shrink)

I wish to consider the possibility that a good part of the opposition to the main lines of American foreign policy is based on deep-seated objections to the political and economic systems of the United States. This is not to say that existing policy is necessarily wise or that there may not be good and sufficient reasons for wishing to change it. Indeed, at any time and place, the United States might well be overestimating the threat from the Soviet (...) Union or using too much force. What I wish to suggest is that across-the-board criticism of American policy as inherently aggressive and repressive, regardless of circumstance – a litany of criticism so constant that it does not alert us to the need for explanation – has a structural basis in the rise of a political culture that is opposed to existing authority. To the extent that this criticism is structural, that is, inherent in domestic politics, the problem of fashioning foreign policies that can obtain widespread support is much more difficult than it is commonly perceived to be. For if the objection is to American ways of life and, therefore, “to the government for which it stands,” only a transformation of power relationships at home, together with a vast redistribution of economic resources, would satisfy these critics. If the objection is not only to what we do but, more fundamentally, to who we are, looking to changes in foreign policy to shore up domestic support is radically to confuse the causal connections and, therefore, the order of priorities. (shrink)

The loss of life that resulted from the sinking of the fisheries training vessel EhimeMaru by the nuclear submarine USSGreeneville off Hawaii in February 2001 exemplifies the risks to United States–Japan alliance relations posed by US global military deployments. Following a pattern of incidents involving the US military in Japan itself, the collision violated Japanese expectations of benevolence from its stronger partner and put considerable pressure on the government to seek public apology and reassurance. This article examines the interplay of (...) culture, national security interests and domestic politics in framing both perceptions and diplomacy during the crisis. While differences at both the cultural and security levels complicated diplomacy, asymmetry in the respective domestic political stakes, combined with overriding and largely congruent security interests, helped the United States to provide Japan with the requisite reassurance. After a decade of alliance drift, both Japan and the United States were determined to forestall defection by their alliance partner. (shrink)

The two important factors in science development are the social economy (gross domestic product, GDP) and freedom. In order to follow the development of science for both old Arabic-Islamic and Western civilizations, a statistical method is used to trace the variation of scientists' population with time. The analysis shows that: 1- There is a growth in Arabic-Islamic sciences for a period of three centuries (AD 700-1000). Then it is followed by period of declination. The decay time is about (...) of eight centuries. Major factor behind that decay in science activities and the block of the science thoughts may be attributed to religious thoughts domination, and cultural or thoughtful problems, in addition to the normal social problems like wars, disasters..etc. 2- The growth in western civilization started approximately in AD 1200 and remains in its growing. It looks that the wars, political problems have no serious effect in western sciences growth. The growth behaviour has a natural growth form. That may prove that, the secular society is quite perfect for such activities. For present time Arab-Islam societies have no distinguished contributions. The most important factor for that catastrophic retardation is the absence of the freedom of thought and believes. The obtaned curve has similarities with world GDP curve. (shrink)

In ‘Listening to Music Together’, Nick Zangwill offers three arguments which aim to establish that listening to music can never be a joint activity. If any of these arguments were sound, then our experiences of music, qua object of aesthetic attention, would be essentially private. In this paper, I argue that Zangwill’s arguments are unsound and I develop an account of shared musical experience that defends three main conclusions. First, joint listening is not merely possible but a common feature of (...) our socially situated experiences of music. Second, when listening with others our experience of the music and our sense of community with our fellow listeners often reciprocally enhance one another. Third, how deeply and intimately we share a musical experience with others depends upon such factors as our respective backgrounds, interests, and levels of expertise. (shrink)