Domestic Tensions Research Articles

The Heroic Slave/Frederick Douglass: A Cultural and Critical Edition ed. by Robert S. Levine, John Stauffer, John R. McKivigan

Reviewed by: The Heroic Slave/Frederick Douglass: A Cultural and Critical Edition ed. by Robert S. Levine, John Stauffer, John R. McKivigan John Ernest (bio) The Heroic Slave/Frederick Douglass: A Cultural and Critical Edition Edited by robert s. levine, john stauffer, and john r. mckivigan New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015 267pp. It’s strange to be applauding the first critical edition of Frederick Douglass’s The Heroic Slave, originally published in 1853, in 2016. How is it possible that no one has produced a critical edition, or even a stand-alone edition, of this novella before now? The Heroic Slave is the only work of fiction by the most celebrated and widely read African American writer of the nineteenth century; it is the story of one of the most publicized and influential slave narratives in US history; it offers an extraordinary example of African American literary culture at a time that most people associate only with slave narratives; and it is short enough, at roughly fifty pages, to fit neatly into any syllabus, while rich enough that any teacher will want to devote more than a single class to it. This could and should be a centerpiece of any number of courses on American literature and history, and it would be a reasonable and productive addition to a number of other courses as well. In fact, though, The Heroic Slave was largely forgotten until 1975, when Philip S. Foner included it in the Supplement to his five-volume The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass. Of course, Douglass’s most famous work, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, was itself largely forgotten for many years until it was reprinted in 1960. But whereas now there are dozens of editions of the Narrative, it has remained impossible to include The Heroic Slave in a course without using an edition that also brings in other texts, either by Douglass or by other writers. Even if it were only a reasonably competent edition, then, a scholarly stand-alone edition of The Heroic Slave would be a welcome event, but [End Page 473] the one before us is much more than merely competent. Emerging from the ongoing Frederick Douglass Papers project at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, this edition of The Heroic Slave has benefited from the collaborative efforts of three of the best Douglass scholars working today: Robert S. Levine, John Stauffer, and John R. McKivigan. With an authoritative text, informative introduction, expert annotations, and a rich selection of contextual and critical materials, this edition of The Heroic Slave should finally establish Douglass’s brilliant novella as one of the must-read texts of American literary history. In doing so, this edition will make it possible for The Heroic Slave to have the provocative and illuminating influence over current discussions of race and history that it is capable of having. Like other African American writers of his time, Douglass realized that fiction could get at truths that might otherwise never enter the historical record, and the story of the Creole mutiny, to which The Heroic Slave is devoted, is a perfect example of why a reliance on fiction was necessary. In 1841, the slaves aboard the Creole, being shipped from Richmond, Virginia, to the slave-trading market in New Orleans, rose in revolt, took control of the ship, and took refuge in the Bahamas, where eventually all of the slaves aboard, including the mutineers, were freed by British authorities. The most successful slave revolt in US history, and with the Amistad (1839) case so recently behind, the Creole rebellion focused international and domestic tensions over slavery that played out in part in the press. The fact that the leader of this mutiny, Madison Washington, carried in his name the echoes of the nation’s founding only further charged the developing narratives. Hero, or threat to the social order? How is this story to be told? And how might one account for the many biased perspectives, the misinformation, the partial truths and flat-out misrepresentations that characterized an event that was, like virtually all controversial events, both spectacularly known and still somehow unknowable? Douglass’s response was to...

The American President: From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton by William E. Leuchtenburg

Reviewed by: The American President: From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton by William E. Leuchtenburg Daryl A. Carter The American President: From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton. By William E. Leuchtenburg. ( New York and other cities: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xvi, 886. $39.95, ISBN 978-0-19-517616-2.) There are many people and institutions that can impact society. Private actors, such as protesters, researchers, and businesspeople, can push and pull society. Institutions, such as Congress, the courts, and universities, can bring both progress and regression. Since the beginning of the twentieth century no entity has arguably been as influential as the American presidency. The modern presidency has often been at the center of important moments in American history. Its importance has been seen in both domestic affairs and international relations. In this new addition to the literature on twentieth-century American [End Page 723] political history, the preeminent historian William E. Leuchtenburg underscores the importance of the American presidency in the life of the United States. In the 1960s, historians began focusing on other aspects of history. Social and cultural history—from the bottom up—replaced much of the focus academic historians had given to great white men and politics. Over the next several decades studies in gender, race, social movements, civil rights, and world history reflected a growing shift in focus and in employment opportunities. As political scientists became obsessed with quantitative research and increasingly jettisoned political theory, political history went out of vogue. But over the course of the last twenty years political history has begun a comeback. And the growing political instability over the last ten years, both in the United States and globally, has brought attention back to the importance of politics, especially the role of the American president. Leuchtenburg has performed a valuable service to the historical profession with this volume. The author began this work after attending a meeting at the University of Pennsylvania in 2004. After a colleague approached him about writing a history of the American presidency, Leuchtenburg agreed and devised a two-volume study. Currently he is working on the second volume, which will cover the Constitutional Convention through the end of the nineteenth century. The main undercurrent of this work is the author's contention that American presidents shaped the twentieth century. Leuchtenburg examines every president from Theodore Roosevelt to Bill Clinton in detail. The book is designed to appeal to a broad audience. In doing so, the author presents a highly readable and informative history of the twentieth century. Leuchtenburg proceeds in a chronological fashion, beginning with the assassination of President William McKinley in September 1901. The death ushered in a new president whose political prowess defined the presidency for a generation: Theodore Roosevelt. The author notes that Republican Party power broker Mark Hanna thought it was a "mistake" nominating Roosevelt to be vice president because of his reputation for political troublemaking (p. 23). When Roosevelt became president, the nation was entering not only a new century but also a new era in which American power would be increasingly on display. Consequently, the office of the president would have to modernize, too. By noting the developing importance of the chief executive, Leuchtenburg underscores the fact that as industrialization and modernity transformed the United States, the nation's highest leader would have to be transformed as well. Every subsequent president built a myth around himself and sought to push a national agenda. The only exceptions were the Republican presidents of the 1920s—Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. The author explains how Woodrow Wilson expanded on the developments in the changing nation. He held a Ph.D. and had been a professor, president of Princeton University, and governor of New Jersey. Wilson brought a certain idealism attractive to Progressives. Yet President Wilson's achievements, such as the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, the Nineteenth Amendment, and others, failed to inspire confidence as World War I and the restraints [End Page 724] brought on by the war and domestic tensions drove a great many Americans into the Republican camp by 1920. Leuchtenburg notes correctly the vast importance of Franklin D. Roosevelt to Americans' shifting dependence...

Relations between China and Latin America: From Market Opportunities to International Political Economy

We perceive that a period of instability, structural change, and superpower competition is developing in the world economy and particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, following the end of the boom of Chinese growth, investment and trade (2003-2012). This boom significantly benefitted China and a number of emerging economies which sold commodities to, and hosted investment from, the PRC. The comparative stability of the former period produced in Latin America the image of economic relations with China as a relatively uncontentious issue area characterized by clear market opportunities that could be tapped largely by means of conventional diplomacy and trade expertise. There were, of course, some concerns that a new center-periphery subsystem was being established and that a small number of small or middle-size countries of the region were becoming too close to China, but these issues seldom transformed into international or domestic tensions or crises.

Strangers on the Doorstep: Hostility and Hospitality in A Distant Shore

Abstract This article focuses on the rising hostility against immigrants / refugees and growing demand for hospitality, in both regional and transnational senses, in Caryl Phillips’s novel A Distant Shore, set in a local place in North England. I think that the author, in examining the parallel conditions of being a stranger in a village and an outsider to the nation, shows that the demands of hospitality are similarly urgent whether sought by nationals or foreigners though these are calibrated differently in terms of scales of belonging. My broader argument is that hospitality is an ethical practice of everyday life that requires continual renegotiation. Inspired by Levinasian ethics, I turn to Derrida’s and Rosello’s meditations on hospitality, which emphasise the metaphorical nature of the host-guest relationship and the tension it inscribes between the finiteness of politics and the infinity of ethics. By exploring the complex relationship between politics and ethics as this is made manifest in the literary representations of ordinary British citizens’ everyday practices, I suggest that this novel not only deals with the UK’s domestic tensions of multiculturalism and ethnic conflict, but also critically reflects on its bewildered (but hardly new) attitude toward the ongoing transnational integration of the new Europe in the postwar period.

THE HEART OF THE MATTER: INTERPRETING BLOODSUCKING ACCUSATIONS IN MAURITANIA

AbstractThis article examines events involving accusations of bloodsucking in the southwestern Sahara. French colonial archives allow researchers to identify specific cases in time and location; however, this article seeks to address but then move beyond histories of colonial governance. To highlight how communities in the Saharan desert dealt with crises provoked by environmental and social change, this investigation also relies on locally-produced written legal opinions and oral testimony. Emerging from these Saharan sources is one facet of how desert communities envisioned the enchantment of their social worlds and understood difficult periods caused by famine, weak economies, and domestic tensions.

Prospects for Peace: The View from Beijing

One hundred years ago, on the eve of our entry into World War I, Americans faced a troubling set of developments at home and abroad that bear an eerie resemblance to today's challenges. While 21st-century home-grown terrorists are associated with the Muslim faith, at the dawn of the 20th century anarchists and leftists of European and, particularly, Jewish descent were committing acts of violence against innocent civilians on US soil. This period was the last time immigrants made up such a large proportion of the US population, and the country was riven not only by domestic unrest, but also by disagreement over whether to intervene in conflict on the other side of the ocean. Woodrow Wilson prevailed in the 1916 election on the platform, He kept us out of war, but ultimately, even the most cosmopolitan occupant of the Oval Office before President Obama could not avoid sending American troops to defend US allies and interests overseas. Then, as today, it was tempting to view the use of force through the prism of what it would mean for progressive American ideals. Opponents of intervening in World War I argued it would unleash nationalist, industrialist, profiteering tendencies at home, and thus the wise course was to refrain. Humanity would eventually converge on peace. Confronted with imperial Germany's ambition to conquer Europe, President Wilson had to disabuse his own supporters of the notion that international comity was on the march. And though Wilson propounded peace without victory, Americans would have to give their lives to oppose German expansionism, not once, but twice over the next two-and-a-half decades. At a time when domestic terrorism and tensions with immigrants appear to be returning to the fore, Americans would do well to remember this history. When we have turned inward in the face of domestic tensions and hoped international developments would go our way, we have been bitterly disappointed. While it is tempting to think we can retreat back within our borders and await the end of history, the other guys get a vote, and as it turns out they frequently have other plans. For this reason, it is important for national security planners to perform emulative analysis--to try to think like the decision-makers of our rivals or adversaries, who may not share our cosmopolitan, progressive ideals. The recent record suggests today, as in the World War I period, we may be so caught up in domestic deliberations--or what the president calls nation-building at home--we have neglected the emulative analysis mission. The shock of 9/11 can, in part, be traced to the paucity of national security professionals who had read and internalized the writings of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. The missing nuclear arsenal of Saddam Hussein after the Second Gulf War seems to have reflected a perspective few, if any, American national security experts considered--Saddam was bluffing because he wanted his near enemies, the Shia, to believe he was nuclear-armed and assumed the United States had sufficient intelligence to understand this. And while the sinister creativity of Putin's Crimea incursion may have stymied even the most sincere effort at emulative analysis, it would be more reassuring today if we could look back and cite indicators we had been tracking, but had discounted. None of these episodes rises to the level of World War I, of course. We currently consider ourselves to be the beneficiaries of a long peace, one that has kept the world free of global conflict since the Korean War. But from 9/11 to Russia's forays into Ukraine and Syria, we have at least learned important lessons about taking seriously the perspectives of decision-makers from Raqqa and Baghdad to Moscow. We may not be so lucky with Beijing. Of all our global interlocutors, the People's Republic of China (PRC) seems most adept at employing a salami slicing or silkworm strategy; it is confronting our allies and partners in a way that does not breach the threshold of alarming us, even as the balance of power in contested areas, such as the South China Sea, now tilts in its favor. …

RUSIŠKASIS KONSERVATIZMAS: NACIONALINĖS IDEOLOGIJOS PAIEŠKA IR SANTYKIS SU RUSIJOS UŽSIENIO POLITIKA

The article analyses the impact of present-day Russian internal structural factors, searching national ideology and shaping “Russian conservatism” line formation marked the links between this ideology and Russian foreign policy. The main focus is designated to Russia’s politics after the Russia-Georgia conflict in 2008, highlighting the response of Vladimir Putin’s regime to several domestic policy tensions related with: 1) the structure of the Russian regime and the domination of siloviki group in the power structures; 2) the etno-federalist structure of Russia and the growing nationalism; and 3) the competition of several ideologies, which increasingly turns to the support of Eurasianist ideology line and its transformation into “Russian conservatism”. Theoretically, this analysis is based on the internal and external factors that have an impact on the state’s policies (e.g. Walter Carlsnaes concepts), as well as on the theories analysing Russian etno-federalism and informal networks/relations. This article argues that Russian internal structural factors strongly support the Russian Eurasianist direction as the dominant policy doctrine, and this doctrine defines the Russian foreign policy, limits its balancing and influences the dynamics of foreign policy. It shows how, during the recent years, Russia’s assertive foreign policy has become influenced by neo-imperialist vision of a strong, conservative, and alternative Russia, which actively uses the “Russian conservatism” as an ideological justification, supports active protection of Russia’s interest in the post-Soviet region (e.g., war with Ukraine) increasing the use of foreign policy in the post-Soviet region (e.g., war with Ukraine) or raising the question about the multipolar world order. Other competing ideological lines (pro-Western liberalism and Slavic nationalisms) are still included in the balancing if there is demand, however, it remains non-typical forms of current Russia’s ideological framework. Since the Russia-Georgia war in 2008, the aggressive Russian foreign policy depends not only on the external factors, but it also increasingly reacts to internal factors, especially to Putin’s interest to maintain the vertical power and ensure further legitimacy of the regime. Russia’s “electoral authoritarianism”, which actively used the concept of “sovereign democracy” last decade, faced serious challenges in 2011– 2012. After public protests for electoral fraud, Putin’s circles have perceived that Russia’s ruling elites need to initiate a new turn for the country, either to a wider democracy development or to find other resources to mobilise society. By reacting to the interest of siloviki group and seeing the confrontation between Russian ethnic and minorities’ nationalism manifestations, Putin’s regime strengthened its orientation towards the new Eurasianism, which emphasized the special path of Russia’s civilization: being alternative to the Western world, adjusting only “appropriate for Russia” democracy standards, opposing human rights development, and seeing it as a harmful foreign influence. State patriotism was framed under the new “Russian conservatism” line, which emphasized strong authority of central power, Russian imperial identity, Russia’s interest in Eurasian regions, support for multipolar world, and the spread of conservative values as opposition to Western cosmopolitism. It helped to mobilise Russian society, integrate the great old and the new military victories of Russia’s state and received a new support and greater legitimacy for Putin’s regime. This ideology leaves room for integration of separate narratives from various ideological lines (from the Soviet nostalgia and technocratic modernisation to “old Russia” traditionalism). Military actions in Ukraine in 2014–2015 have illustrated that imperial approach effectively mobilises not only the Russian society but a certain part of the other post- Soviet societies (e.g., the idea of the Russian world). This “Russian conservatism” also attempts to respond to other internal tensions, such as ethnic conflicts, by promoting a more intensive Russian state identity instead of an ethnic identity. The situation, when various ethnic minorities and their leaders (e.g., R. Kadyrov) actively supported Russia’s actions in Ukraine and the new Putin’s activism, revealed that under this ideological umbrella, such local actors as in Putin’s circle, leaders of ethnic regions, Orthodox church, and media authorities find themselves in the state’s ongoing narratives. Under this situation, Putin’s regime effectively marginalises their opponents. Non-systemic liberal-democrats are presented as acting against Russia’s interests. The discourse for keeping the relationship with Western partners, which emphasizes the modernisation or stresses the importance of economic developments, is still valid, and it is still used for balancing, but current ideological trend has clearly prioritised the imperial identity over democracy development.

What is Othello’s Secret?

Explicitly written from the perspective of a second-generation British Cypriot, this article examines the relevance of Shakespeare’s Othello to the modern troubles of Cyprus. Drawing on the recurrent imperialist and nationalist struggles to control Cyprus, in Shakespeare’s day and our own, the article explains how the author’s upcoming book, Othello’s Secret: The Cyprus Problem, radically reinterprets the domestic and military tensions of Othello as precursors to the island’s more recent wars and divisions. Insight into the way an English writer in the early modern period understood Cyprus can contribute to the way scholars in the British academy understand the bard both in his context and in ours. Consequently, the article challenges the conventional Anglophone scholarly focus on Venice, highlighting a surprising academic blindspot given Britain’s historical and ongoing colonial presence on Cyprus. In so doing, it reframes Othello as a play about Cyprus, offering a more personal account of how research on Shakespeare can purposefully contribute to geopolitical debates.

The 1922 Anglo-Iraq Treaty: A Moment of Crisis and the Role of Britain’s Man on the Ground

The article offers a fresh perspective on the critical significance of ratifying the Treaty of Alliance between Great Britain and Irak (the 1922 Anglo-Iraq Treaty) for British policy on Iraq, and for that country’s evolution from mandated territory to independent state. In contrast with existing accounts, it considers the treaty primarily in the context of domestic tensions over Britain’s future role. The strength of the ‘Quit Mesopotamia (subsequently Iraq)’ movement in Britain meant that Iraqi failure to ratify could have led to British withdrawal from Iraq, with far-reaching implications for the region. The article also reveals for the first time the considerable contribution to securing ratification made by the British representative on the ground, the High Commissioner, Sir Henry Dobbs. He took full advantage of distance to make decisions and act in line with his own, not London’s approach. The source for these new perspectives is Sir Henry Dobbs’ recently discovered letters and private papers—never previously available to historians.

Types and Beauties: Evaluating and Exoticizing Women on the Midway Plaisance at the 1893 Columbian Exposition

ON THE MIDWAY PLAISANCE OF THE 1893 Columbian Exposition, outside parameters of White City and just a short jaunt from iconic Ferris Wheel, stood a theater patronized by old men and wicked youths who watched, in a bleary-eyed ecstasy, Oriental athletes of stage as they danced, toyed with cigarette, and by their smiles gave a Persian Parisian charm to anomalous entertainment.1 Colorful descriptions of Midway Plaisance heavily populated souvenir books commemorating Chicago Worlds Fair. Filled with photographic portrait types, landscape scenes, and ebullient commentary, souvenir books simultaneously reproduced and shaped experience of fairgoer (See Figure 1). As a cultural text constructed by and for a white, masculine American subject, souvenir book reveals objectives and weaknesses of hegemonic projects in United States during nineteenth century. In particular, representations of female bodies on Midway Plaisance illuminate intersecting discourses of race and gender.As a combination and juxtaposition of White City and foreign villages of Midway Plaisance, Columbian Exposition functioned as an expression of national identity. Hegemonic forces in Chicago and United States at end of nineteenth century shaped imagining of nation, and Exposition served as a powerful tool for their project.2 Robert Rydell asserts that Worlds fairs propagated ideas and values of country's political, financial, corporate, and intellectual leaders and offered these ideas as proper interpretation of social and political reality.3Alan Trachtenberg identifies powerful perpetuators of national as established, propertied, and wealthy elite who aimed to subsume subaltern under banner of 'peace, prosperity, progress and patriotism.'4 Indeed, Chicago business interests and financial leaders who lobbied to bring fair to city elected Exposition's board of directors. In turn, fair's administration used White City to showcase a grand vision of American and human progress.5While operating as mechanisms of hegemony, expressions of national unity like Columbian Exposition nevertheless belie internal contradictions. Lauren Berlant cautions that a national still inherits tensions that exist in national space. Although political legitimacy depends upon the cultural expression of national fantasy, narratives of national identity mask inherent conflict.6Indeed, numerous domestic tensions plagued last decade of nineteenth century. Lingering cultural and economic differences between North and South frustrated post-Reconstruction politics. Rural America engaged in widespread political mobilization as Populist movement gained ground. Meanwhile, labor skirmishes erupted in United States cities; Chicago itself would serve as site of infamous Pullman strike year following Fair. The social climate was further exacerbated by racial anxieties surrounding influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. To top it off, a severe economic depression overcame United States very year of Columbian Exposition.7 Economic instability, racial anxiety, and political uncertainty contributed to a contentious national environment.Frank Ninkovich contends that domestic issues and United States' uncertain role in international arena combined to create significant identity crisis during 1890s. The resulting anxiety took form of hyper-aggressive nationalist public opinion known as jingoism.8 Trachtenberg similarly argues that late nineteenth century elites in business, politics, and culture were working to win hegemony over dissident but divided voices of labor, farmers, immigrants, blacks and women.9 The ruling class during final years of nineteenth century, therefore, fashioned dominant narratives of national identity as a way of dealing with nation's internal tensions. …

Pawns in Central Asia’s Playground: Uyghurs Between Moscow and Beijing

In this article, I would like to show that China’s rough treatment of Uyghurs is related not only to domestic tensions in Xinjiang but also to the legacy of Uyghurs’ association with the Soviet Union and Russia against China’s nationality policy. Both, but particularly Moscow, used the Uyghurs in their virtual propaganda and, moreover, also in actual acts of organizing outfits—mainly civilian but also military—including espionage, sabotage, and even preparations for invasion. While most—if not all—of these attempts failed, the memories of these actions still survive. Behind the apparent friendship between China and Russia today are hidden mutual suspicions as well as unsettled accounts going back as far as the seventeenth century. Given these potential, and occasionally actual, tensions and China’s growing economic advantage over Russia, a future conflict is an eventuality that should be taken into consideration, meaning that Uyghurs may become pawns in this playground yet again.

Political data in 2013

Although countries had succeeded by 2013 in putting economic crisis behind them, others continued to struggle with austerity, high unemployment and cumbersome debt. While the economy remained a dominant theme of the year, it was certainly not the only one. Some countries turned their attention to cultural issues such as gay marriage and women’s rights, while others tried to tackle the endemic problem of corruption. There was a new round of scandals, and a growing indication of widespread disillusionment with politics. In several countries, voters rejected seasoned politicians in favour of nonpartisan experts, and in some countries, frustration with politics spilled over into violence. On the international scene, the credibility of the Eurozone remained weakened by a series of bail-outs, the crisis in Syria created domestic tensions concerning refugees, and the documents leaked by Edward Snowden about the United States National Security Agency turned into an international diplomatic row.

Le Liban, entre révoltes arabes et conflit syrien: un exercice de flexibilité

Since the beginning of the Syrian uprising in Spring 2011, the social, economic and political Lebanese landscape – described as one of the most unstable and fragile of the Middle East – has unexpectedly showed a great ability in absorbing the effects of the crisis. The massive influx of Syrian refugees and the prolonged status of war in Syria have indeed exacerbated the pre-existent domestic political and sectarian tensions in various Lebanese regions. But the country appears far from being on the brink of a new nationwide ‘civil war’. This paper intends to discuss the exceptional flexibility of the Lebanese system in the light of its modern and contemporary history and to examine the crucial role played by local actors in the current transition.

Afghanistan's Geographic Possibilities

Afghanistan's geostrategic potential is hampered by domestic weakness, regional tensions and major-power competition.

Navigating US greenways: US political reflections in An Inconvenient Truth

Environmental discourses resonate with certain intrinsic values over others and shape environmental behaviours. Political ideology offers a powerful values-based heuristic for evaluating environmental messaging. The USA is a major global producer of greenhouse gases and the greatest industrialized nation holdout to political reform. A deeper understanding of the specific political-ideological forces at play in the US environmental debate can yield greater understanding of domestic ideology-based tensions and international US intractability by offering insight to the evolution of the US environmental movement and its political supporters and adversaries at home. Understanding what occurs within the US mindset in environmental discussions can help representatives of other nations frame more effective arguments and lead to policy reform. A textual analysis of a US environmental artefact deemed key to raising US global warming awareness, the documentary An Inconvenient Truth (2006), reveals that US politician/creator Al Gore simultaneously appeals to each of the three disparate – and conflicting – US political ideologies (liberalism, traditionalist conservatism, and individualist conservatism). The result is a transcendence of global warming from its entrenched liberal identity to moral identity, beyond political ideology, making it more comfortably accessible by members of multiple political ideologies rather than just liberals. Understanding the inherent US political-ideological dynamics of global warming can help the progress of this movement by informing framing of policy-shaping arguments.

Land Reclamation in the Arabian Gulf: Security, Environment, and Legal Issues

This paper provides an overview of reclamation developments constructed in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain during the past decade. Although the effects of land reclamation have been studied from an environmental perspective, the potential for land reclamation to contribute to domestic and inter-state tensions in the Gulf has been under-researched and therefore has not been factored into policy decisions governing the scope and scale of offshore expansion. The paper draws on international legal precedent and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to consider the legality of land reclamation in enclosed maritime areas and to argue in favour of the modernization and enforcement of existing legal standards as a means of restricting the practice.

Peace as a Transnational Theme

Peace is normally understood as the absence of war among nations. But that definition presupposes the overarching importance of nations as the key units of human association. There are, however, many other non-national entities, such as races, ethnic communities, religions, cultures, and civilizations. These entities, too, engage in conflict from time to time, as exemplified by the interracial violence and religious antagonisms in various parts of the world today and, of course, that which took place in the past. Yet why do we preserve the terms “war” and “peace” only for interstate relations? This is a very limited perspective, inasmuch as wars are a phenomenon whose appearance long preceded the formation of nations in the modern centuries; and besides, a presumed state of peace among countries can conceal serious hostilities between races or religions within and across national boundaries. Nazi Germany was technically at peace with all countries till 1939, and yet violent acts were committed there against groups of people domestically who were not considered racially acceptable. In today's world, there are no large-scale international wars, but domestic tensions and physical assaults occur daily within many countries. Terrorists wage war against states and their citizens alike, but they are not nations. To counter their threat, war preparedness in the traditional sense may be useful, perhaps, but it is much less effective than the coming together of individuals and groups to create a condition of interdependence and mutual trust. World peace must fundamentally be founded on a sense of shared humanity, regardless of which country people happen to live in. To consider war and peace purely in the context of international relations, therefore, is insufficient, even anachronistic. What we need is less an international than a transnational idea of peace.

Dilemmas of Democratisation from Legal Revolutions to Democratic Constitutionalism?

The ideas of the rule of law and constitutionalism have become an intrinsic part of any process of democratisation around the world. This was equally the case in the radical changes that occurred in East-Central Europe (ECE) around the year of 1989. The adherence in the region to a form of “new constitutionalism” has been frequently seen as an indispensable contribution to the processes of democratisation. However, in this too little attention has been paid to the dilemmas, tensions and perverse effects that may emerge in the institutionalisation and practice of new constitutionalism, not least in terms of an enduring tension between constitutionalism as an ordering and stabilising device and democracy as an uncertain and indeterminate process of verification of public views on the common good. The experiences in ECE since 1989 with regard to new constitutionalism are ambiguous. It is undeniable that an emphasis on a higher law with entrenched rights and robust constitutional review has involved important “corrections” of certain outgrowths of democratic politics and in this prevented forms of “tyranny of the majority” or the endangering of the guarantee of universal rights. But it is equally true that new constitutionalism has been adopted at a price, not least with regard to the emergence of more widespread, publicly shared constitutional cultures as well as in terms of underexplored potentials of democratic constitutionalism and endorsement of civic engagement in the region. Democratic dilemmas and perverse effects have emerged in terms of domestic tensions, in particular regarding democratic debilitation, but also stem from tensions with legal orders beyond the national arena.

Toward an International Relations Theory of National Innovation Rates

The ability of nations to innovate technologically plays an important causal role in both security studies and international political economy. Explanations for national differences in technological capabilities, however, have had little place in international relations theory. This gap is partly the result of assumptions made by scholars that the rate and direction of technological change are determined by a state's domestic institutions and policies. This article will bring together recent findings about the political economy of technological innovation in order to show that much of this conventional wisdom is incorrect. Instead, it will be shown that, due to the distributive nature of technological change, different combinations of domestic tensions and external security concerns motivate elites to pursue or eschew a technologically competitive economy. Institutions are not causal, they are merely instrumental. Recent findings in the economic development literature therefore have important implications for security studies.

Realist-normative power Europe? Explaining EU policies toward Lebanon from an IR perspective

This article seeks to explain the relationship between the European Union (EU) and one of its Middle Eastern neighbors: Lebanon. By conducting an in-depth empirical single case study and engaging in competitive theory testing, this article shows that the EU in Lebanon behaves at the same time as a normative and a realist power. This article challenges both the scholarship on the EU that sees the EU as a normative power as well as scholarship that focuses on structural neorealism to explain the EU's role in its neighborhood. This article adopts an approach that is different from the mainstream approaches in two ways. First, it focuses on the entire set of policies that the EU has implemented or not in Lebanon. Second, it provides an in-depth case study centered on the interaction between the EU and Lebanon, while also looking at the regional dynamics and at the domestic tensions within Lebanon. By doing so, it shows that the EU is a ‘realist-normative’ power in the specific case of Lebanon. Thus, these two frameworks are a false dichotomy and the argument shall be tested on other cases to make it generalizable. This suggests that the constructivist-realist divide coexists in practice.