Domestic Debate Research Articles

Poznámky k označení „moderní české“ v rané umělecké kritice

The paper offers a brief summary of the period debate on the topic among leading national-minded commentators on the local and international art scene in Prague. It recalls the links of the label “national” to various contemporary concepts of patriotism and traces the articulation of the art scene in traditional and innovative contexts. The use of the label “modern Czech” for period visual culture has undergone many transformations, culminating at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. At the time, local spokesmen for modernism asserted the difference between modern and period work. In doing so, however, they adapted some of the thought patterns from earlier domestic debates about art.

The Externalisation Gamble: Italy and Spain at the Forefront of Maritime Irregular Migration Governance

Irregular migration is rapidly becoming a permanent feature of the twenty-first century. Amid the European “refugee crisis”, Italy and Spain represent two major destination countries that are affected by substantial irregular flows. Despite this comparable condition, and notwithstanding the significance of their relevant policies, they have rarely been compared, a gap in the literature that this research addresses through a novel comparative analysis of their irregular migration governance. Following a broad contextualisation of destination countries’ strategies against irregular migration, this article delves into the two case studies’ external dimension of control policies from the 1990s to 2024 inclusive. In doing so, it assesses the nature of their foreign policy on irregular migration, their specific measures, and their geographical scope. It finds that there is a noticeable convergence towards readmission measures and externalisation, along with the growing use of informal deals. In terms of differences, the article highlights Italy’s much higher number of irregular arrivals compared to Spain, and the impact that this has had on domestic debates, priorities, and relevant policy formulation processes. As a novel investigation of two influential case studies, this article therefore contributes to the literature on both externalisation and Italy’s and Spain’s foreign policy.

Quran Desecration Rallies in Scandinavia and the Netherlands: The Formation and Transnational Diffusion of an Anti-Muslim Protest Tactic

ABSTRACT Since 2019, Quran desecration rallies have proliferated across Northern Europe, leading to geopolitical tensions with Muslim-majority countries and domestic debates about freedom of speech. This article traces the diffusion trajectories of Quran desecration acts from their initiation in 2019 until November 2023 across Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Combining protest event analysis and process tracing based on mainstream media reporting and far-right social media, it shows how the desecration tactic spread from Denmark to remnants of the transnational Counter-Jihad Movement through a within-movement diffusion process involving both indirect and direct channels. Following Rasmus Paludan’s Quran-burning outside Turkey’s Embassy in Stockholm in January 2023, the tactic attracted massive international media attention. In Denmark and Sweden, the tactics’ repurposing toward geopolitical issues led to a spillover to actors unaffiliated with the far right, while in Norway and the Netherlands, the tactic hardly diffused beyond the anti-Islam activists. Drawing on far-right transnational diffusion literature, the article provides an empirically grounded and theoretically informed mapping of the recent wave of Quran desecration rallies, showing the various ways the same tactic spread throughout and into different domestic settings.

Designing around NATO’s deterrence: Russia’s Nordic information confrontation strategy

ABSTRACT This article examines Russia’s evolving information confrontation strategy in the Nordic region between 2022–2023. It assesses Russia’s approaches toward NATO members Norway, new member Finland, and prospective member Sweden. Despite decreased regional influence, the article finds that Russia persists with sub-threshold information confrontation tactics to bypass NATO deterrence. The strategy aims to shape NATO’s presence, undermine Western cohesion, and reduce support for Ukraine. These sub-threshold activities underscore the coercive utility of Russia’s information confrontation strategy in Russian strategic thinking. As tensions escalate due to the Ukraine conflict, Moscow will continue seeking to influence domestic debates in Nordic and European countries.

Securitising Biotic Risk: Reframing Biosecurity in China

AbstractThis article offers an in‐depth analysis of the meaning and scope of biosafety and biosecurity in China, thereby relating domestic debates to global developments, exploring notions of safety and security in public policy more broadly and embedding a key policy initiative, Chinaʼs new Biosecurity Law, into attempts by Chinaʼs leadership to develop a holistic national security strategy. The article finds that biotic threats have more recently been reframed as matters of national security, in ways that undeniably go beyond conventional understandings of biosecurity and that blur the boundaries to more accident‐focused biosafety measures. Given Chinaʼs political and economic importance this apparent trend to securitise biotic risks is likely to impact on global trade relations, international transport and passenger traffic, not the least in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Making Markets Through Coalitions: The European Union and the Debate Over Ukraine's National Resources

AbstractThis article studies how the European Union (EU) influences the dynamics between supporters and opponents of market liberalization in partner countries. We focus on Ukraine's attempts to safeguard timber trade and agricultural land sales from international markets through moratoria before 2022. We find that the EU intervenes in domestic debates both directly and through domestic pro‐market coalitions to frame these moratoria as expressions of ‘vested interests’ and instances of state weakness. The EU effectively linked the free trade argument with protecting the environment (as the moratorium tolerated illegal logging) and human rights (as the land moratorium denied landowners their property rights). The EU thus fostered discourses and coalitions prioritizing liberalization over protectionist interests and environmental concerns. This article implies that the EU should encourage debates around market liberalization rather than de‐legitimize opponents, as reconstruction in Ukraine following Russian aggression will require both EU assistance and broader internal coalitions.

The Impact of Soft Tools of EU Rule of Law on Member States: The Case of Spain

This article aims to analyze the interaction between the European Commission and a member state, Spain, in enforcing the rule of law. The case in point is the General Council of the Judiciary (Consejo General del Poder Judicial, CGPJ), whose composition has not been renewed for five years as a result of disagreements between the main political parties, the People’s Party (Partido Popular, PP) and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español, PSOE). This situation has raised doubts about the judicial independence in the country. In this context, the article addresses the following research questions: How has the European Commission influenced political actors to remedy the situation regarding the CGPJ? And how have Spanish political actors used EU actions in the domestic debate on the renewal and reform of the CGPJ? The Spanish case shows that in a pro-European context, political actors strategically use the EU to justify their approach in a given situation. The EU is also perceived as a safeguard against a possible deterioration of the situation. In addition, the visibility of the problem due to the involvement of the EU level makes the politicians concerned about the international image of the country.

Domestic Debate and International Office: Sweden in the UN Security Council 2017–18

Abstract Through an explanation of the domestic political controversy that surrounded the most recent Swedish candidature and subsequent membership of the UN Security Council 2017–18, this article contributes to our understanding of the domestic–foreign policy nexus in two respects. First, it conceptualizes a domain of foreign policy priorities. Issues within this domain are likelier to deviate from a consensual pattern of foreign policy by sparking conflict, as they provoke competing national role conceptions among the foreign policy elite. Second, it refines results from previous study on the executive–legislative relationship in foreign policy. It confirms the association between party conflict on substantive foreign policy and a higher level of parliamentary control on the government. The conflict on substance leads to a decline in trust among members of parliament in opposition, which may motivate the continuation of parliamentary control through available instruments also after the conflict on substance is settled. The analysis is conducted in three descriptive steps: (1) the domestic-institutional context of decision-making, (2) partisan divides, and (3) the executive–legislative relationship. It utilizes a variety of sources, including parliamentary debates, governmental and parliamentary assessments, and interviews with diplomats and senior officials.

Battle for the European Union in the periphery: contestation dynamics and domestic debates

ABSTRACT Connected by a shared endeavour to enhance understanding of the forces that shape contestation toward the EU in its peripheries and unprohibited in approach, this special section explores the concepts of contestation and periphery. Using various methodological approaches, the section showcases a series of overlapping and cross-cutting themes which contextually strengthen the phenomenon and experiences of contestation in peripheral states. In aggregating these themes, the authors attribute contestation to the growing ‘absence’ of the EU’s normative interest in peripheral states and the growing transactional/functional features that define peripheral state relationships with the EU. The authors draw attention to the opportunities for regional rivals, such as Russia and China to capitalize on the absence of the EU’s transformative power in peripheral states, the role of domestic forces in utilizing contestation as a means to preserve regime type and satisfy sovereignty concerns, and the incidences of peripheral states in shaping/reshaping their foreign policy positions in response to the Russia-Ukraine War. Taken together, our special section shows that contestation in Europe’s periphery is less an overt normative resistance against the EU and more an absence of EU normative efforts in peripheral states and the increasingly functional features which define peripheral states’ relationships with the EU.

Filling the “Decency Gap”? Donors’ Reaction to US Policy on International Family Planning Aid

Abstract The impact of US allocation of family planning aid on other donors is studied in order to gain new insights into donor interactions. Within this context, the dominant player in the sector is the United States, whose policies on family planning undergo changes influenced by domestic debates surrounding abortion. By utilizing the Mexico City Policy and considering exposure to this particular policy as an instrumental factor, it has been observed that other donors do not immediately react to policy changes made by the United States, either contemporaneously or within one year. However, a noticeable shift occurs after a two-year period, indicating that these donors eventually align their allocation strategies with those of the United States. Further analysis of this phenomenon reveals varying patterns among different types of donors. While smaller donors exhibit a clear intention to compensate for US policy changes, larger donors display a mix of competitive tendencies and herding behavior, thereby reinforcing the impact of the Mexico City Policy after the two-year time frame.

Export Controls and the Junction of Economics and National Security: A Review Article

Abstract Mario Daniels and John Krige's Knowledge Regulation and National Security in Postwar America is a detailed history of the U.S. use of export controls and domestic debates over that use. Their account describes how issues of trade and commerce increasingly have been viewed in terms of security. Their history, which ends in 2020, does not directly address the current use of export controls and other measures to restrict the transfer of knowledge but is highly relevant to issues surrounding that use. Such controls represent a retreat from globalization and raise questions about their economic costs to the United States, their ultimate political impact on the targeted country, and their consequences for scientific inquiry.

The politicisation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in the British domestic debate on Brexit: a challenge to EU-UK foreign and security cooperation

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to study the evolution of Britain’s involvement in the EU’s foreign and security policy in order to highlight the reasons that led the issue to be left out of talks on the post-Brexit future relation. The paper argues Europeanisation or de-Europeanisation largely depends on the degree of politicisation of issues both in the EU, the EU-27 and in the UK. As long as foreign and security issues remained relatively low key, the UK was able to enjoy the magnifying effect of its participation in the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and contributed to the decision-making process in order to successfully influence EU policies. Politicisation of foreign and security issues was due both to developments in EU-led or national initiatives and to the reaction they provoked in the UK. The EU insisted the UK was to be considered as a ‘third country’ and stressed the need for future cooperation to be institutionalised. On the contrary, in the UK, public distrust against a putative European ‘super state’, led successive governments to avoid any formal commitment to new EU initiatives.

Ukrainian Discourses on NATO: Securitization, Otherness, and Their Effects on Russo-Ukrainian Relations

Abstract Ukraine’s aspirations for NATO membership have been a source of contention between Russia and Ukraine for decades. At the same time, domestic debates in Ukraine on relations with NATO have also been a divisive issue for Ukraine’s ruling political elites. These conflicts culminated in 2022, when Russia launched a military offensive against Ukraine claiming that its movement towards NATO was an existential threat to the Russian state. This paper summarizes some of the results of my longitudinal research of ruling elite discourse on NATO in Ukraine between 1997 and 2018. It focuses on the changes in national identity discourse and contestation, pinpointing their constitutive role for Ukrainian foreign policy.

From Kosovo Rush to Mass Atrocities’ Hush. German Debates since Unification

Abstract Germany’s involvement in the Kosovo War marked its first active participation in combat operations since the Second World War. For many observers at the time, the intervention represented a fundamental policy shift in the West, and in Germany in particular. Mass atrocities, no longer to be observed from the sidelines, were now to be actively prevented. Twenty years later, this stance seems rather puzzling. Mass atrocities continued to be committed; Germany has neither championed efforts to prevent such acts, nor has it been proactive in this regard. In this article, the authors develop three proxies that serve to indicate whether mass atrocities were highly politicised: the existence of parliamentary debates, media coverage, and church statements. They show that Kosovo is an outlier within an otherwise clear continuity of German political silencing in the face of mass atrocities. To prove this claim, they turn to German domestic debates on twelve mass atrocity cases abroad since the country’s unification in 1990.

Institutional Design, Information Transmission, and Public Opinion: Making the Case for Trade

Domestic debates about trade have increased the salience of international economic cooperation among the public, raising the question of whether, and how, domestic support can be rallied in support of international trade agreements. We argue that institutional features of trade agreements provide important cues to domestic audiences that shape support, particularly the membership composition and voting rules for multilateral deals. We use two survey experiments to show that the US public is more supportive of trade when it is negotiated with like-minded countries. We also find that the voting rules shape support for trade agreements, but differently across partisan audiences. Republican voters strongly favor the home country having veto power, whereas Democrats prefer agreements with equal voting rules. These differences are largely driven by perceptions of the agreement’s benefit for the nation and the public’s trust of the negotiators and perceived fairness of the rules.

A Small State’s Campaign to Get Elected to the UNSC: Iceland’s Ambitious Failed Attempt

Summary This article provides a case study of a small state, Iceland, and its motives for running for a seat on the UN Security Council for the 2009-2010 term, the domestic dispute about the affair, key campaign messages and the campaign strategy. The article fills a gap in the international relations and small state literature on small states’ campaign strategies in UNSC elections. We conclude that the decision to run for a seat and the core message of the campaign were largely based on the quest to enhance Iceland’s status among international actors. However, the country’s lack of resources, limited international engagement and domestic debate about the candidacy became a hindrance. Iceland succeeded in using its smallness to build good momentum for its candidacy but in the end it failed due to weaknesses associated with its small size and its lack of contributions, competence and ideational commitment in the UN.

Crimefighting and Warmaking since the Vietnam War

In the growing domestic debate about police brutality and mass incarceration in the United States, scholars of U.S. foreign relations hear echoes of the antiwar movement, from the Vietnam War to current preoccupations over Washington’s “forever wars.” This has been a welcome development, particularly as historians develop revisions of the well-worn thesis regarding U.S. imperial wars coming home to produce cycles of crime and punishment from the late 1960s onward. Pushing back on this argument, some of the more innovative literature contextualizes punitive blowback within longer transnational histories of U.S.-led global policing: the pursuit of runaway enslaved people in Indian Country, the hounding of overseas fugitives at the turn of the century, the interwar training of Caribbean national guards, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s World War II activities in Latin America, and the late 1950s launch of overseas police training programs through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of Public Safety.1 According to much of the new work, the United States’ punitive approach to crime is well-rooted in the country’s political culture, and its exponential growth after the Vietnam War represented less of a fall from grace than a return to form. Of the recent contributions to historical literature connecting U.S. approaches to warfare and to domestic criminal justice, including counterterrorism and immigration enforcement up to the present day, Michael Sherry’s wide-ranging book comes closest to the traditional thesis of foreign wars coming home.

The bachelor’s degree in college systems: history, evidence and argument from England

Across major anglophone college systems, institutions in various jurisdictions have gained the authority to award the bachelor’s degree. That prospect has come late to further education colleges in England. With its long history of teaching for the bachelor’s degree, the English road to awarding powers has features in common with and different from those in North America and Australia. In the modern-day literature on college higher education in England, little attention has been given to the bachelor’s degree in its own right. Accordingly, a summary history and a digest of quantitative and qualitative evidence are assembled. Domestic debates are reviewed. Issues for policy and research are signalled. In this way, a platform is provided by which to better connect with international debates and comparisons.

The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis by Lauren Working

Reviewed by: The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis by Lauren Working Abigail L. Swingen (bio) The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis lauren working Cambridge University Press, 2020 254 pp. However much colonial Virginia or Massachusetts Bay have played outsized roles in the history of the United States, for scholars of English imperialism, the early seventeenth century tends to be overlooked. There was no coherent imperial policy driving colonialization, and James I has traditionally been portrayed as uninterested in empire. Lauren Working's exceptional book, The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis, offers a compelling case as to why we should pay greater attention to the early 1600s when exploring questions about the significance of the early English empire. The book focuses on how imperial experiences in the Americas transformed concepts and practices of civility and sociability among elites in the metropole during the early decades of the 1600s. This is a London-based story, not one of colonial encounter, but rather of colonization's broad cultural influence [End Page 297] on the colonizers, even those who had little or no experience in North or South America. The book offers a fresh analysis of some familiar material, such as popular sermons, poems, moralizing prescriptive literature, and records of the Virginia Company, reading both print and manuscript sources against the grain to analyze the contested cultural meanings of American events and "things" and their broad and transformative impact on Jacobean political culture. Working focuses on the "concepts, motifs, and objects that animated and spurred domestic debates over conformity and social order, rituals of violence, and political participation" (27). Colonization influenced not only how gentlemen understood imperial pursuits or their desire to take up tobacco smoking, for example, but also how they interacted with each other and presented themselves as "civilized." Working persuasively argues that early seventeenth century debates about the meanings, violent experiences, and tangible consequences of colonization transformed metropolitan concepts of civil society, which became deeply inflected with imperial ideas. Such transformations were inextricably linked to the reigning monarch and his court. Working convincingly shows that James I, who was allegedly disinterested in colonization of the Americas because of his fear of angering the Spanish, was far more concerned with empire than we might think. Working presents James I as both deeply ambivalent about and interested in colonization in America: he was certainly wary of war, but he was also anxious to use empire to promote his philosophical agenda about royal authority and indivisible sovereignty. The book begins with a consideration of the concepts of planting and cultivation and explores the significance of the violence inherent in trying to establish "civil" societies in the Americas. There are familiar tropes here, such as the fact that America was widely understood to be "uncultivated" and therefore uncivilized or "savage" by Europeans. This also related to English experiences in Ireland and certain parts of Scotland, where violence was seen as necessary to successfully impose English education as well as enclosure, architecture, and mapmaking to demonstrate supremacy. As Working writes, through the building of English-style estates, for example, "gentlemen expressed their status while using plantation management as a stated means of extending the authority of the state" (58). The English understood the cultivation of land as both a civilizing project and a violent colonizing process and did not see much contradiction between the two. [End Page 298] The concepts worked together to demonstrate the power of individuals and the state/monarch they represented. In some ways these concepts became amplified through direct experience with Indigenous people in the Virginia colony, which as Working demonstrates, was viewed by English gentlemen through a Protestant "providential framework" that required the enforcement of a uniform "religious orthodoxy" (69). These perspectives reflected deep concerns about domestic society as much as they did about the religious practices of Indigenous Americans. Similar to how religious heterodoxy threatened stability in England, violent confrontations with Indigenous people in Virginia were seen as "a struggle for the preservation of English values among an onslaught of horrors" (76). Chief among those horrors for the English...

Japan and Foreign Territory Strike: Debate, Deterrence, and Defense Strength

The increased frequency of debate in Japan over foreign territory strike points to it being officially affirmed as a Japanese Self-Defense Force (SDF) mission in the near future. This article explores the foreign territory strike debate through the lens of the four key questions that have structured the post-war debate on all new overseas SDF operations: is it constitutional?; is it (militarily) plausible?; is it (strategically) wise?; and, is it (politically) acceptable? After discussing the contours of the Japanese post-war legal and policy debate on the use of force in foreign territory, the article describes contemporary doubts over the tactical effectiveness and strategic opportunity cost of configuring the SDF to conduct overseas strike operations—especially for missile defense purposes. Foreign territory strike would divert scarce fiscal resources and political attention from adaptations that enhance the US-Japan alliance’s posture resilience and enable it to sustainably generate force even after an initial attack, thereby augmenting regional deterrence. The article concludes by noting that political barriers could also still prevent the mission from being substantively and credibly implemented. Acrimonious domestic debate on foreign territory strike could also hamstring government attempts to attract public buy-in for future defense transformation in areas of greater priority and that add more to deterrence than the acquisition of modest strike capabilities.