Sovereignty

About: Sovereignty is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 25909 publications have been published within this topic receiving 410148 citations.

The Politics of Sin: Drugs, Alcohol and Public Policy

Abstract: This exploration of the Jewish political tradition elucidates a long, rich, and diverse experience of both sovereignty and dispersed statelessness. It holds insights, as Zvi Gitelman points out in his introductory chapter, for anyone interested comparative and ethnic politics, Jewish history, and the prehistory of contemporary Israeli politics. Stuart Cohen analyzes the "covenant idea" and the constitutional character of ancient Israel, which had a profound influence on Western political thought through the medium of the Bible. Gerald Blidstein examines rabbinic strategies for accommodation to the realities of Jewish dispersion in the middle Ages, while Robert Chazan focuses on communal authority and self-governance in the same period. Jonathan Frankel and Paula Hyman move the study into modern times with attempts to characterize the diverse patterns of Jewish political culture and activity in different parts of Europe, in the process revealing the dynamics of political cultural influence. Finally, Peter Medding looks at the "new politics" of contemporary American Jews - as voters, as public officials, and as organizational actors.

Native American Feminism, Sovereignty, and Social Change

Abstract: W H E N I w o R K E D as a rape crisis counselor, every Native client I saw said to me at one point, "I wish I wasn't Indian" My training in the main stream antiviolence movement did not prepare me to address what I was seeing-that sexual violence in Native communities was inextricably linked to processes of genocide and colonization Through my involvement in organizations such as Women of All Red Nations (WARN, Chicago), Incite! Women of Color against Violence (wwwincite-nationalorg), and various other projects, I have come to see the importance of developing organizing theories and practices that focus on the intersections of state and colonial violence and gender violence In my ongoing research pro jects on Native American critical race feminisms, I focus on documenting and analyzing the theories produced by Native women activists that inter vene both in sovereignty and feminist struggles' These analyses serve to complicate the generally simplistic manner in which Native women's activism is often articulated within scholarly and activist circles

The End of Secrecy

Abstract: Two standards of behavior are slugging it out around the world. Advocates of well-established norms such as corporate privacy and national sovereignty want to hide information from prying eyes, while promoters of transparency tout it as the solution to everything from international financial crises to arms races and street crime.

National Incorporation of Global Human Rights: Worldwide Expansion of National Human Rights Institutions, 1966–2004

Abstract: Using an event history framework we analyze the adoption rate of national human rights institutions. Neo-realist perspective predicts adoption rates to be positively influenced by favorable national profiles that lower the costs and make it more reasonable to establish these institutions. From a world polity perspective adoption rates will be positively influenced by a world saturated with human rights organizations and conferences, by increasing adoption densities, and by greater linkages to the world polity. We find support for both perspectives in the analysis of the human rights commission. Only the changing state of the world polity is consequential for the founding of the classical ombudsman office. We discuss the national incorporation of international human rights standards and its relevance to issues of state sovereignty and national citizenship.

Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied

Abstract: If we think there is a fast solution to changing the governance of Iraq, warned U.S. Marine General Anthony Zinni in the months before the United States and Britain invaded Iraq, "then we don't understand history." Never has the old line about those who fail to understand the past being condemned to repeat it seemed more urgently relevant than in Iraq today, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the Iraqi people, the Middle East region, and the world. Examining the construction of the modern state of Iraq under the auspices of the British empire—the first attempt by a Western power to remake Mesopotamia in its own image—renowned Iraq expert Toby Dodge uncovers a series of shocking parallels between the policies of a declining British empire and those of the current American administration. Between 1920 and 1932, Britain endeavored unsuccessfully to create a modern democratic state from three former provinces of the Ottoman Empire, which it had conquered and occupied during the First World War. Caught between the conflicting imperatives of controlling a region of great strategic importance (Iraq straddled the land and air route between British India and the Mediterranean) and reconstituting international order through the liberal ideal of modern state sovereignty under the League of Nations Mandate system, British administrators undertook an extremely difficult task. To compound matters, they did so without the benefit of detailed information about the people and society they sought to remake. Blinded by potent cultural stereotypes and subject to mounting pressures from home, these administrators found themselves increasingly dependent on a mediating class of shaikhs to whom they transferred considerable power and on whom they relied for the maintenance of order. When order broke down, as it routinely did, the British turned to the airplane. (This was Winston Churchill’s lasting contribution to the British enterprise in Iraq: the concerted use of air power—of what would in a later context be called "shock and awe"—to terrorize and subdue dissident factions of the Iraqi people.) Ultimately, Dodge shows, the state the British created held all the seeds of a violent, corrupt, and relentlessly oppressive future for the Iraqi people, one that has continued to unfold. Like the British empire eight decades before, the United States and Britain have taken upon themselves today the grand task of transforming Iraq and, by extension, the political landscape of the Middle East. Dodge contends that this effort can succeed only with a combination of experienced local knowledge, significant deployment of financial and human resources, and resolute staying power. Already, he suggests, ominous signs point to a repetition of the sequence of events that led to the long nightmare of Saddam Hussein’s murderous tyranny.