Showing papers on "Sovereignty published in 2017"
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the provision of services legitimates insurgent claim of sovereignty to domestic and international audiences, and thus is a strategic tool secessionist rebels use to achieve their long-term goal of independence.
Abstract: Why do some rebel groups provide governance inclusively while most others do not? Some insurgencies divert critical financial and personnel resources to provide benefits to anyone, including nonsupporters (Karen National Union, Eritrean People's Liberation Front). Other groups offer no services or limit their service provision to only those people who support, or are likely to support, the insurgency. The existing literature examines how insurgencies incentivize recruitment by offering selective social services, yet no research addresses why insurgencies provide goods inclusively. I argue that inclusive provision of services legitimates insurgents’ claim of sovereignty to domestic and international audiences, and thus is a strategic tool secessionist rebels use to achieve their long-term goal of independence. With new and original data, I use a large-N analysis to test this hypothesis. The results of the analysis support the hypothesis, underscoring the importance insurgent nonviolent behavior and addressing key issues such as sovereignty and governance.
129 citations
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TL;DR: Landau and E. Tendayi Achiume United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division International Migration Report 2015: Highlights. Geneva: UNHCR, 2016. as mentioned in this paper The past year's events acutely illustrate the power of human migration.
Abstract: M ISREADING M OBILITY ?: B UREAUCRATIC P OLITICS AND B LINDNESS IN UN M IGRATION R EPORTS Loren B. Landau and E. Tendayi Achiume United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division International Migration Report 2015: Highlights. New York: UNDESA, 2016. UNHCR Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2015. Geneva: UNHCR, 2016. INTRODUCTION The past year’s events acutely illustrate the power of human migration. Movements across and within borders can reshape lives and families. The popular and political responses they engender can also catalyse fundamental political reorderings (see Bremner 2015; Kanter, 2015). Few will deny such power in countries bordering Syria, Iraq and Somalia that face millions of new arrivals who are actively, if unwittingly, reshaping their populations (see Aziz 2016; Yarnell, 2016). Yet across all world regions, people’s movements are at the centre of political debate and policy making in ways previously unseen: the Brexit vote; challenges to Angela Merkel’s tenure; promises to build ‘an impenetrable and beautiful’ wall between the United States and Mexico (ITV, 2016a); riots in Singapore; and South Africa’s de facto withdrawal from its obligations under the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention (Smith, 2016). All reflect reassertions of exclusive nationalism as bulwark against migration’s perceived cultural, economic and physical threats. Simultaneous mobilizations for immigrant inclusions and rights reveal hardening battle lines over the future of sovereignty and society (Edwards, 2015; ITV, 2016b). Two major annual reports from the United Nations could not come at a more propitious time. The first, by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), Population Division, is intended to provide ‘the international community with timely and accessible population data and analysis of population trends and development outcomes for all countries and areas of the world’ (UNDESA, 2016). UNDESA’s International Migration Report 2015: Highlights focuses broadly on movement across international borders irrespective of the motivations or causes of that movement. The second is by the United Nation’s Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and focuses on sub-
118 citations
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TL;DR: Though focusing on different modes of algorithmic security, each of the contributions to the special issue shares a concern with what it means to claim security on the terrain of incalculable and uncertain futures.
Abstract: Amid the deployment of algorithmic techniques for security – from the gathering of intelligence data to the proliferation of smart borders and predictive policing – what are the political and ethical stakes involved in securing with algorithms? Taking seriously the generative and world-making capacities of contemporary algorithms, this special issue draws attention to the embodied actions of algorithms as they extend cognition, agency and responsibility beyond the conventional sites of the human, the state and sovereignty. Though focusing on different modes of algorithmic security, each of the contributions to the special issue shares a concern with what it means to claim security on the terrain of incalculable and uncertain futures. To secure with algorithms is to reorient the embodied relation to uncertainty, so that human and non-human cognitive beings experimentally generate and learn what to bring to the surface of attention for a security action.
115 citations
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05 Oct 2017
TL;DR: The relationship between positivism and colonialism is examined in this paper, where the authors focus on the way in which positivism dealt with the colonial confrontation and how positivism sought to account for the expansion of European Empires and for the dispossession of various peoples stemming therefrom.
Abstract: This chapter focuses on the relationship between positivism and colonialism. It examines the way in which positivism dealt with the colonial confrontation. The chapter shows how positivism sought to account for the expansion of European Empires and for the dispossession of various peoples stemming therefrom. It seeks not only to outline an architecture of the legal framework, but also to question extant understandings of the relationship between colonialism and positivism and the significance of the nineteenth-century colonial encounter for the discipline as a whole. The sovereign is the foundation of positivist jurisprudence, and nineteenth-century positivist jurists essentially sought to reconstruct the entire system of international law based on their new version of sovereignty doctrine. A further central feature of positivism was the distinction it made between civilized and uncivilized states. The task of defining sovereignty was fundamental to positivist jurisprudence—and not merely because definition was such an integral part of positivist reasoning and methodology.
113 citations
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TL;DR: The Brexit vote was a singular event that is one symptom of a continuing organic crisis of the British state and society and a stimulus for further struggles over the future of the United Kingdom and its place in Europe and the wider world as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The Brexit vote was a singular event that is one symptom of a continuing organic crisis of the British state and society and a stimulus for further struggles over the future of the United Kingdom and its place in Europe and the wider world. This crisis previously enabled the rise of Thatcherism as a neoliberal and neoconservative project (with New Labour as its left wing) with an authoritarian populist appeal and authoritarian statist tendencies that persisted under the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition (2010–2015). The 2015 election of a Conservative Government, which aimed to revive the Thatcherite project and entrench austerity, was the immediate context for the tragi-comedy of errors played out in the referendum. The ensuing politics and policy issues could promote the disintegration of the UK and, perhaps, the EU without delivering greater political sovereignty or a more secure and non-balkanized place for British economic space in the world market.
89 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors unpacked the Chinese discourse of Internet sovereignty and found that despite significant interest in promoting it as China's normative position on cyberspace, they find that Chinese formulations of internet sovereignty are fragmented, diverse, and underdeveloped.
Abstract: Under Xi Jinping's leadership, China has actively promoted “Internet sovereignty” as a means to reshape the discourse and practices of global cyber governance. By analyzing Chinese-language literature, this article unpacks the Chinese discourse of Internet sovereignty. Despite significant interest in promoting it as China's normative position on cyberspace, we find that Chinese formulations of Internet sovereignty are fragmented, diverse, and underdeveloped. There are substantial disagreements and uncertainty over what Internet sovereignty is and how it can be put into practice. This is principally due to the evolving pattern of Chinese policy formation, whereby political ideas are often not clearly defined when first proposed by Chinese leaders. This article argues that an underdeveloped domestic discourse of Internet sovereignty has significantly restricted China's capacity to provide alternative norms in global cyberspace. Appreciating this ambiguity, diversity, and, sometimes, inconsistency is vital to accurate understanding of transformations in global cyber governance occasioned by China's rise.
Related Articles
Glen, Carol M. 2014. “Internet Governance: Territorializing Cyberspace?” Politics & Policy 42 (5): 635-657. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12093/full
Hellmeier, Sebastian. 2016. “The Dictator's Digital Toolkit: Explaining Variation in Internet Filtering in Authoritarian Regimes.” Politics & Policy 44 (6): 1158-1191. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12189/full
Holbig, Heike, and Bruce Gilley. 2010. “Reclaiming Legitimacy in China.” Politics & Policy 38 (3): 395-422. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2010.00241.x/full
82 citations
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TL;DR: More than 40,000 people died attempting to cross a border from 2006 to 2015 and a record 65 million people were displaced by conflict around the world in 2015 (http://missingmigrants.iom.int/).
81 citations
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20 Sep 2017
TL;DR: Reclaiming the State as discussed by the authors is a strategy for revitalizing progressive economics in the 21st century. But it is not a comprehensive strategy for the 21-century. And it does not address the challenges of the current crisis of the neoliberal order.
Abstract: "The crisis of the neoliberal order has resuscitated a political idea widely believed to be consigned to the dustbin of history. Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the neo-nationalist, anti-globalisation and anti-establishment backlash engulfing the West all involve a yearning for a relic of the past: national sovereignty. In response to these challenging times, economist William Mitchell and political theorist Thomas Fazi reconceptualise the nation state as a vehicle for progressive change. They show how despite the ravages of neoliberalism, the state still contains resources for democratic control of a nation's economy and finances. The populist turn provides an opening to develop an ambitious but feasible left political strategy. Reclaiming the State offers an urgent, provocative and prescient political analysis of our current predicament, and lays out a comprehensive strategy for revitalising progressive economics in the 21st century."
77 citations
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TL;DR: The authors explored the limitations of a settler colonial analysis in writing Palestinian history and showed that it is difficult to capture the complexity of the subjectivity of the history of the state of Palestine.
Abstract: This essay explores the limitations of a settler colonial analysis in writing Palestinian history. While the past decade has witnessed a plethora of interventions exploring this very concept, this ...
70 citations
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05 Jul 2017
TL;DR: Bodin's theory of ruler sovereignty as discussed by the authors was a major event in the development of European political thought and it helped turn public law into a scientific discipline, but it was also the source of much confusion, since he was primarily responsible for introducing the seductive but erroneous notion that sovereignty is indivisible.
Abstract: The account of sovereignty in the work of Jean Bodin was a major event in the development of European political thought. Bodin's precise definition of supreme authority, his determination of its scope, and his analysis of the functions that it logically entailed, helped turn public law into a scientific discipline. And the vast system of comparative public law and politics provided in his Les Six Livres de la Republique (1576) became the prototype for a whole new literary genre, which in the seventeenth century was cultivated most in Germany. But Bodin's account of sovereignty was also the source of much confusion, since he was primarily responsible for introducing the seductive but erroneous notion that sovereignty is indivisible. It is true, of course, that every legal system, by its very definition as an authoritative method of resolving conflicts, must rest upon an ultimate legal norm or rule of recognition, which is the guarantee of unity. But when Bodin spoke about the unity of sovereignty, the power that he had in mind was not the constituent authority of the general community or the ultimate coordinating rule that the community had come to recognise, but the power, rather, of the ordinary agencies of government. He advanced, in other words, a theory of ruler sovereignty. His celebrated principle that sovereignty is indivisible thus meant that the high powers of government could not be shared by separate agents or distributed among them, but that all of them had to be entirely concentrated in a single individual or group.
67 citations
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27 Apr 2017TL;DR: In this paper, the challenges of scarcity, sovereignty, and territorial temptation in the ageless age of scarcity are discussed, and the tendency among states to share resources but only when necessary is examined.
Abstract: This powerful book stands on its head the most venerated tradition in international law and discusses the challenges of scarcity, sovereignty, and territorial temptation. Newly emergent resources, accessible through global climate change, discovery, or technological advancement, highlight time-tested problems of sovereignty and challenge liberal internationalism's promise of beneficial or shared solutions. From the High Arctic to the hyper-arid reaches of the Atacama Desert, from the South China Sea to the history of the law of the sea, from doctrinal and scholarly treatments to institutional forms of global governance, the historically recurring problem of territorial temptation in the ageless age of scarcity calls into question the future of the global commons, and illuminates the tendency among states to share resources, but only when necessary.
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15 May 2017
TL;DR: In this article, it is shown that a strange asymmetry prevails in modern writings on Thomas Hobbes's theory of the relations between states, and it is necessary to turn from the international relations specialists to the Hobbes specialists, one finds that such disregard is perfectly normal.
Abstract: A strange asymmetry prevails in modern writings on Thomas Hobbes's theory of the relations between states. For specialists in international relations theory, Hobbes is a canonical figure, a key representative of one of the major traditions. One influential modern text, Charles Beitz's Political Theory and International Relations, takes what it calls 'the Hobbesian conception of international relations' as the basis of 'skeptical' or 'Realist' theory, and devotes twenty-three pages of detailed argument to refuting it. And yet, if one turns from the international relations specialists to the Hobbes specialists, one finds that such disregard is perfectly normal. In Hobbes's theory 'salus populi', the safety and benefit of the people, is the aim of the sovereign's foreign policy. Overall, Hobbes's account contains many of the ingredients of what modern theorists describe as an 'international society': shared practices, institutions, and values. It is necessary to reject Charles Beitz's assertion that, in Hobbes's theory, the only actors in international relations are sovereign states.
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TL;DR: Whether international fears of China's new Cyber Security Law are justified is focused on, and why China needs a cyber security regime is analyzed.
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01 Jul 2017TL;DR: In this paper, a comparative analysis of constructions of gas security in the UK and Poland is presented, and it is shown that although gas has been elevated on the security agendas of both states, the specific logic of insecurity underpinning these constructions differs substantially, and is conditioned by distinct modes of governance in each Member State.
Abstract: Fears about the security of supplies have been central to debates about the development of an integrated EU energy policy over the past decade, leading to claims that energy has been ‘securitised’. Previous analyses have found, however, that although shared security concerns are frequently used as justification for further integration, they can also serve as a rationale for Member States to resist sharing sovereignty. Transcending this apparent paradox would require not just agreement about whether energy supplies are security concerns, but also agreement about what kind of security concern they are. In this article, we examine whether such an agreement could emerge through a comparative analysis of constructions of gas security in the UK and Poland. Utilising a framework that draws from both the philosophical and sociological wings of Securitisation Studies, we demonstrate that although gas has been elevated on the security agendas of both states, the specific logic of insecurity – securitisation or riskification – underpinning these constructions differs substantially, and is conditioned by distinct modes of governance in each Member State. This, we contend, limits the potential for further integration of EU energy policies in the context of the European Commission’s proposals for an ‘Energy Union’.
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05 Jul 2017
TL;DR: The relationship between revolution and constitution is extremely ambivalent as mentioned in this paper, and there is no question that the constituent power of the sovereign nation could not be restricted, much less abolished by the constitution, but the implementation of Sieyes's doctrine during the deliberations of the National Assembly required concessions to the necessities of practical life.
Abstract: The power to make a constitution is the power to create a political order ex nihilo. Constitution making involves the idea of an authority and an author whose willpower is the ultimate cause of the polity. The foundation of a new polity requires more than just the superiority of the society over the bureaucratic sphere of the state. The concept of a constituent power invented by a theologian, is a famous example of what has been called political theology: The constituent power is the secularized version of the divine power to create the world ex nihilo, to create an order without being subject to it. The relationship between revolution and constitution is extremely ambivalent. For Abbe Sieyes there was no question that the constituent power of the sovereign nation could not be restricted, much less abolished by the constitution. The implementation of Sieyes's doctrine during the deliberations of the National Assembly required concessions to the necessities of practical life.
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TL;DR: The authors argued that manipulations adopted by electoral authoritarian governments have become increasingly common in Hong Kong today and the city state is now situated in the political grey zone between liberal authoritarianism and electoral authoritarianism, and its transition into a full democracy remains nowhere in sight.
Abstract: On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the handover, Hong Kong’s transition towards a full democracy remains unsettled. Drawing upon the contemporary theories of hybrid regimes, this article argues that manipulations adopted by electoral authoritarian governments have become increasingly common in Hong Kong today. As Hong Kong’s elections, opposition activities, and media have been increasingly put under electoral authoritarian-style manipulations, the city-state is now situated in the “political grey zone” in-between liberal authoritarianism and electoral authoritarianism and its transition into a full democracy remains nowhere in sight. The case study of Hong Kong will help enrich the existing comparative literature on hybrid regimes by developing a new “in-between category” and offering an interesting case of democratization of sub-national polity.
01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: In this paper, thesis certificate and the acknowledgement of the author's work are discussed. Table of Table 1 shows how to obtain the certificate and acknowledgements of the work. But
Abstract: ...................................................................................................................... i Thesis Certificate ...................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................... iv Table of
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TL;DR: A recent turn of events exposes the hollowness at the core of mainstream international law scholarship, for which the expansion of international law and the erosion of sovereignty have always been a forgone conclusion as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: A populist backlash around the world has targeted international law and legal institutions. Populists see international law as a device used by global elites to dominate policymaking and benefit themselves at the expense of the common people. This turn of events exposes the hollowness at the core of mainstream international law scholarship, for which the expansion of international law and the erosion of sovereignty have always been a forgone conclusion. But international law is dependent on public trust in technocratic rule-by-elites, which has been called into question by a series of international crises.
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21 Nov 2017
TL;DR: Nadasdy argues that the Yukon Final and Self-Government agreements began as an effort to protect First Nations ways of life, but have instead resulted in fundamental changes to how First Nations people understand themselves and interact with each other and their environments as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Land claims in the Yukon are not often described in the terms that Paul Nadasdy uses in his 2017 book, Sovereignty’s Entailments: First Nation State Formation in the Yukon. Commonly referred to as achievements on the path to reconciliation, Nadasdy instead concludes that these agreements are “extensions of the colonial project.” Based on his immersion in a Yukon community, both during Final Agreement negotiations and afterward, Sovereignty’s Entailments is a detailed anthropological examination of the cultural impacts resulting from land claim negotiations. Studying the terms sovereignty, territory, citizenship, nation, and time, Nadasdy argues that the Yukon Final and Self-Government agreements began as an eff ort to protect Yukon First Nation ways of life, but have instead resulted in fundamental changes to how First Nations people understand themselves and interact with each other and their environments. Th ese descriptions sit uncomfortably alongside the agreements’ more mainstream narrative. Ultimately, this contrast inspires refl ection, placing big questions in front of the reader, asking them to consider the cultural impacts of these projects and whether the work can be done diff erently. Nadasdy’s argument that the Final Agreements have had a radical transformative impact in the territory is persuasive. Th ough the theory behind his reasons may not always be accessible to non-academic audiences, Nadasdy makes a strong case for the idea that the Yukon’s land claims are not neutral descriptions of First Nations life prior to contact with Europeans. Rather, Sovereignty’s Entailments argues that land claims have created new concepts and vocabularies
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors trace the evolution of the relationship of exception and its mutual links with the production of hybridity in Lebanon's sovereignty from 1948 until today, focusing particularly on the key period from 1968 to 1982 when Palestinian militancy led to a formal recognition of Palestinian autonomy in the camps.
Abstract: This article traces a genealogy of sovereignty and exception in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon that highlights their mutual connections and contaminations with the mechanisms of Lebanese state sovereignty from 1948 onward. Drawing together two theoretical approaches emerging from the work of Giorgio Agamben and recent political geographical work on sovereignty, we explore the refugee camps as spaces of exception characterized by hybrid sovereignties. Drawing on original fieldwork, we trace the evolution of the relationship of exception and its mutual links with the production of hybridity in Lebanon's sovereignty from 1948 until today, focusing particularly on the key period from 1968 to 1982 when Palestinian militancy led to a formal recognition of Palestinian autonomy in the camps. Rather than simply undermining Lebanon's sovereignty, the camps' fragmented security and territoriality have instead reshaped Lebanon's state sovereignty in complex ways and forged hybrid spaces for refugee politica...
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TL;DR: The Strangers in Our Midst: The Political Philosophy of Migration by David Miller argues for a realist approach to migration, an approach that takes into consideration not just what we ought to do, but also the actual possibilities of implementing justice.
Abstract: Migration challenges how we think about justice and state sovereignty. This is no less the case for political theorists, and this review symposium focuses on the work of one of the foremost political theorists working on these questions today. In his latest book – Strangers in Our Midst: The Political Philosophy of Migration – David Miller argues for a realist approach to migration, an approach that takes into consideration not just what we ought to do, but also the actual possibilities of implementing justice. In this regard, the relationship between (im)migration and state sovereignty and democracy is central. Miller’s approach is a ‘political’ one that seeks to take into consideration the fact that we live in political communities with (more or less) shared values, and that these political communities cannot easily be disentangled from the liberal democratic institutions of these states. In their reviews of Miller’s book, Sarah Song, Annie Stilz and Kieran Oberman all take issues with particular aspects of Miller’s approach, while also accepting the general thrust to think about migration in the context of state and popular sovereignty.
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TL;DR: A serious problem is identified with so-called global health partnerships in which nation states and international organizations remain key actors in conflict-affected areas that are under the de facto control of rebel organizations.
Abstract: States and the World Health Organization (WHO), an international organization that is mandated to respect the sovereignty of its member states, are still the leading actors in global health. This paper explores how this discrepancy inhibits the ability of global health partnerships to implement programmes in conflict-affected areas that are under the de facto control of rebel organizations. We concentrate on a single crucial case, the polio outbreak in Syria in 2013, analysing a variety of qualitative data-twenty semi-structured interviews with key actors, official documents, and media reports-in order to investigate the events that preceded and followed this event. The WHO's mandate to respect the Syrian government's sovereignty inhibited its ability to prevent, identify and contain the outbreak because the Assad regime refused it permission to operate in rebel-controlled areas. The polio outbreak was identified and contained by organizations operating outside the United Nations (UN) system that disregarded the Syrian government's sovereignty claims and cooperated with the militants. Thus, we identify a serious problem with so-called global health partnerships in which nation states and international organizations remain key actors. Such initiatives function well in situations where there is a capable state that is concerned with the welfare of its citizens and has exclusivity of jurisdiction over its territory. But they can encounter difficulties in areas where rebels challenge the state's sovereignty. Although the response to the Syrian polio outbreak was ultimately effective, it was reactive, ad hoc, slow and relied on personnel who had little experience. Global health partnerships would be more effective in conflict-affected areas if they put in place proactive and institutionalized plans to implement their programmes in regions outside government control.
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TL;DR: The authors defend state sovereignty as necessary for a form of popular sovereignty capable of realising the republican value of non-domination and argue it remains achievable and normatively warranted in an interconnected world.
Abstract: This article defends state sovereignty as necessary for a form of popular sovereignty capable of realising the republican value of non-domination and argues it remains achievable and normatively warranted in an interconnected world. Many scholars, including certain republicans, contend that the external sovereignty of states can no longer be maintained or justified in such circumstances. Consequently, we must abandon the sovereignty of states and reconceive popular sovereignty on a different basis. Some argue sovereignty must be displaced upwards to a more global state, while others advocate it be vertically and horizontally dispersed to units below, across and above the state. Each group offers a related vision of the European Union to illustrate their proposals. Both these arguments are criticised as more likely to produce than reduce domination because neither can sustain a form of popular sovereignty capable of instantiating relations of non-domination. This article proposes the alternative of a repub...
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TL;DR: Reclaiaming the state as a vehicle for change was proposed by Mitchell and Fazi as discussed by the authors, who offer a progressive view of sovereignty based not on the demonization of the other, but as a way to bring the economy back under democratic control.
Abstract: Trump. Brexit. The alt-right. It’s increasingly apparent that old political notions—believed to be consigned to the dustbin of history—are now resurrected. The neonationalist, anti-globalization, and anti-establishment attitude engulfing the United States and United Kingdom hints suspiciously at a yearning for national sovereignty. Reclaiming the State offers an urgent and prescient political analysis and economic program for the Left who are strategizing for these uncertain times. Many of our assumptions—about ideology, democracy, trade, and globalization—are being thrown into doubt, deposed by populism, nationalism, and racism. In response to these challenging times, economist Bill Mitchell and political theorist Thomas Fazi propose a reconceptualization of the sovereign state as a vehicle for change. They offer a progressive view of sovereignty based not on the demonization of the other, but as a way to bring the economy back under democratic control. With nationalism gaining support across the United States with each passing week, Reclaiaming the State provides innovative ideas to mobilize and reenergize a tired, divided Left.
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TL;DR: A genealogy of extractivismo discourse in South America can be found in this paper, where the authors recover the source discourses from 14 months of archival and ethnographic research.
Abstract: This article provides a genealogy of extractivismo discourse. In South America, the critical discourse of extractivismo has shifted political horizons and fomented a protracted intraleft dispute. Decades of neoliberalism unified popular movements to resist austerity and recuperate national sovereignty, but the ascendency of leftist administrations across the continent fragmented the field of radical politics. Ecuador exemplifies this internecine conflict: environmental and indigenous activists and allied intellectuals crafted the discourse of extractivismo to resist President Rafael Correa’s ‘21st century socialism’. State actors assert that oil and mining revenues will trigger economic development. But anti-extractive activists contend that ‘the extractive model’ pollutes the environment, violates collective rights, reinforces dependency on foreign capital, and undermines democracy. Drawing on 14 months of archival and ethnographic research, I recover the source discourses of extractivismo and ou...
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the effects of UN peacekeeping and international counterterrorism operations upon the possibilities of peace in Mali, and point out that the division of labor between war and peace, and of intervention and sovereignty, are no longer opposites, but blurred into an emerging "new normal" of permanent military intervention.
Abstract: This article examines the effects of UN peacekeeping and international counterterrorism operations upon the possibilities of peace in Mali. Following the January 2013 French operation Serval, the international intervention was divided between two military missions: UN peacekeeping in Mali and French-led counterterrorism. The article explores what it means to distinguish between peacekeeping and counterterrorism for international conflict management and Malian conflict resolution dynamics. It is argued that the binaries of war and peace, and of intervention and sovereignty, are no longer opposites, but blurred into an emerging ‘new normal’ of permanent military intervention. The construction of a regional counterterrorism governance or militarisation is shown to circumvent the fundamental questions about Malian peace, state sovereignty, and nationhood. The article points to how the international ‘division of labour’ between peacekeeping and counterterrorism defines the possibilities of peace in Mal...
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TL;DR: A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order? by Richard Haass Penguin Press, 2017 312 pp., $28.00 ISBN-13: 978-0-39956-236-5Richard Haass, former head of the Council on Foreign Relations, is an innovative thinker in the field of American foreign policy and international relations as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order? By Richard Haass Penguin Press, 2017 312 pp., $28.00 ISBN-13: 978-0-39956-236-5Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, is an innovative thinker in the field of American foreign policy and international relations. In his recent work, A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order, Haass proposes updating the current world order-that has been with us seemingly since time immemorial, having originated with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648-to help alleviate world disorder.In this new world order, respect for sovereignty and the inviolability of borders would be supplemented by "sovereign obligation," whereby states would be responsible for developments within their borders that affect other states, such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation, climate change, and cyberhacking. Haass views sovereign obligation as a form of realism, the emphasis of which is "less on what another country is (or does within its borders) as it is on what it chooses to do beyond its borders, that is, in its foreign policy." Governments would be "expected not just to live up to agreed upon behaviors but also [to] make sure that no third party carried out prohibited actions from their territory and that any party discovered to be so doing would be stopped and penalized."It is indisputable, as Haass argues, that "states individually or collectively have not just the right but the obligation to act against terrorism as well as against states that harbor or otherwise support terrorists." There is an element of common benefit that will work- and which sounds very much like the concept of collective security. In the context of international organizations, and establishing coalitions to deal with vexing and dangerous cross border issues, states can work together effectively without giving up sovereign rights.Haass believes that for countries to implement sovereign obligation, governments need to forge coalitions of countries as well as nonstate actors. The United Nations is not a practical venue because its concept of sovereign equality-one country one vote- at the General Assembly is not representative of global strength and power. Furthermore, the Security Council excludes not just nonstate actors but also significant countries, such as India and Germany, and no major power will submit a matter for disposition by the Council that would, in effect, diminish that major power's sovereignty. Haass instead advocates the use of consultations to help build legitimacy for sovereign obligation. For example, Haass suggests that it would be essential to include Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook as participants on cyber issues, as well as involving nonstate actors such as major domestic pharmaceutical companies and nongovernmental organizations on global health issues.In a world in which Russia regularly violates the sovereignty of other states, including by cyberhacking and outright invasion, and North Korea brazenly launches missiles in contravention of international law, it is difficult to see how sovereign obligation can be implemented or enforced. Arguably most states would perceive sovereign obligation as a limitation on their sovereign rights, and regretfully in failed states such as Syria sovereign obligation does not have efficacy. Further, one wonders how these ideas can be applied to nonstate actors such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. …