External Agenda Research Articles

Contexto contiguo y operaciones de mantenimiento de la paz en Argentina, Chile y Venezuela: ¿alianzas estratégicas?

Este artículo examina la relevancia del contexto contiguo y la visión y participación en operaciones de mantenimiento de la paz en las agendas externas de Argentina, Chile y Venezuela durante la primera década del siglo XXI. Para ello, se utilizan las categorías de percepciones de amenaza y conflictos territoriales, gastos militares, posiciones sobre medidas de confianza mutua y participación en misiones de paz. Se parte de que los gobiernos pueden anunciar la conformación de una alianza estratégica; cabe preguntar si el anuncio es una condición necesaria y suficiente para la existencia de esta forma peculiar de relación entre Estados. Se espera que este estudio permita identificar la relevancia y la existencia o no de espacios de complementariedad en esta área temática para reflexionar acerca de cuán próximos se encuentran Argentina-Chile y Argentina-Venezuela de la conformación de una alianza estratégica.

An insight into the Sudanese NSR regime foreign policy decision-making (1989–1999)

ABSTRACTThe paper examines the Sudanese National Salvation Revolution (NSR) regime foreign policy decision-making in the initial years. It provides an overview of formal and informal policy structures that carried out the National Islamic Front’s (NIF) external agenda, and the way state institutions were undermined in their pursuit to formulate or contribute in foreign policy direction. It offers an insight into Dr Hassan al-Turabi’s dominant role and influence in policy-making as the éminence grise of the NIF in power. The paper deliberates the implications of the form and shape of policy-making set up that led to the fragmentation of the NIF and the ejection of al-Turabi from the regime power formula. The Sudanese present political landscape shaped largely by this period and the intervention of ideology in the external affairs of the state. The paper reflects on the outcome of that phase on current Sudanese political context on issues related to the regional and international arena, domestic sphere and institutions.

Making Space to Engage

Designing for older adults can be complex. Often, designers struggle to understand people who share a very different life context. At the same time, older adults can have difficulties imagining future technologies for themselves. This creates challenges for design processes bounded by time and outcome expectations. In this paper, the authors explore a long-term, loosely structured and open-ended research process where they provided participants with prototypes to use for as long as they wanted, and only as they wanted to. By working with their own relatives and friends and moving away from structured procedures and external agendas, the authors made space for both participants and designers for deep engagements with the artifacts and process. Participants were able to better understand technology and shape it to their needs. Researchers were better able to understand and iterate on the technology designs. The authors' findings suggest that this approach might be especially appropriate for designing for and with older adults.

Framing built environment change through materials, agency and influence

Place-keeping urges design and management professionals to collaborate towards sustaining quality places for users. However, local life, maintenance and contextual aspects contribute to places changing in unexpected manners. The current place-keeping conceptualisation focuses on the organisations behind space provision and management, leaving a knowledge gap in tying their work to the material dynamics of places’ built environments. This article translates the Actor Network Theory (ANT) approach to analyse formal and informal built environment changes, seeking to understand specific actors that affect change in an environment beyond formal institutions. The approach focuses upon the action mechanisms behind, contributing to and preventing specific material changes, holding the potential to reflectively inform practice.A case excerpt is analysed to illustrate the proposed ANT methodology. It reconstructs the changes to a hedge line and related repercussions upon the life and management of an urban residential space in Oslo. The analysis demonstrates how maintenance, use and material adjacencies affect built environment change, together with how relationships to external agendas, adjacent programming, municipal budgeting and climatic forces can limit spatial management’s response capabilities.The ANT approach can contribute the following to place evaluation and place-keeping thought:•Understanding change in the built environment as the output of multiple, heterogeneous factors;•Recognizing that intentional and unintentional actions contribute to place changes;•Tracing place dynamics across established boundaries of discipline, property and responsibility;•Re-conceptualizing place-keeping based on the mechanisms that a place’s perceivable, material quality.This article offers a perspective of understanding place use and spatial management work through the mitigating agency materials have upon practice. Offering an adaptable framework for reflective place evaluation and a material-focused re-conceptualisation of place-keeping, this article encourages relational research into the mechanisms that link spatial management and use dynamics.

Las cláusulas de elementos esenciales de los acuerdos comerciales de la UE: ¿Contribuye la política comercial de la UE a la protección de los Derechos Humanos?

<p>Este artículo examina de una manera crítica la política europea de incluir cláusulas de ‘elementos esenciales’ en acuerdos comerciales, como principal medio para la realización del nexo comercio-derechos humano exigido por la obligación de la UE de articular sus relaciones externas para la promoción de sus valores fundamentales. Después de estudiar la anatomía de dichas cláusulas, el artículo se propone analizar las críticas que estas cláusulas han generado en relación con (i) el hecho de que no todos los acuerdos comerciales de la UE contienen estas cláusulas, (ii) su redacción y alcance, y (iii) su evaluación e implementación. El artículo concluirá con una valoración de la efectividad y legitimidad de esta política y de la manera en la que influye sobre la credibilidad del programa normativo de las relaciones exteriores de UE.</p><p><strong>Recibido</strong>: 17.04.2015<strong><br />Aceptado</strong>: 11.06.2015</p>

Do local needs matter?: the relevance of women’s NGOs in sub-Saharan Africa

This article focuses on the potential of women’s non-governmental organizations (WNGOs) for effectively addressing gender inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa. As the mainstreaming of gender and women’s issues continues to pervade global governance, scholars, and practitioners have questioned whether local WNGOs are capable of formulating projects that are relevant to the communities in which they work. One important challenge is local WNGOs’ dependence on external funding and agendas. The extensive literature on women and development indicates that there is a critical need to develop a more radical, transformative feminist agenda for women’s empowerment. The objective of this quantitative study is to test the association between WNGOs’ emergence and measures of gender inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that while there is evidence that WNGOs’ formation represents a legitimate response to African countries’ challenges in terms of gender inequality, the institutionalization of gender within NGOs does not automatically translate into greater gender equality and women’s empowerment. This article identifies some of the gaps and limitations of gender mainstreaming initiatives within African WNGOs. Examining the heterogeneity of women’s organizing and WNGO formation in the region and gaps in development activities, this study highlights the importance of place and space in developing a progressive feminist agenda. The quantitative analysis used in this study, which highlights the uneven geographies and scales of WNGO intervention in Sub-Saharan Africa, contributes to, and calls for more geographic studies on development and gendered activism.

REDD+ and community forestry: implications for local communities and forest management- a case study from Nepal

SUMMARY The REDD+ policy proposes to deliver multiple outcomes including emissions reduction, livelihood support and sustainable forest management, and thus appears largely compatible with Community Forestry (CF). However, the addition of a new value (carbon sequestration) to traditional values of CF (local livelihoods and ecological resilience) may have implications for communities and CF management approaches at local level. Based on primary data collected from three Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs) in Nepal, this paper explores local effects of REDD+ in pilot sites, where the program has been implemented since 2009. Data from in-depth interviews, focus groups and household survey indicates that REDD+ has generated both positive and negative outcomes. CF condition, CFUGs activities and network, and sources of CFUGs income appeared to be improved, whereas autonomy of CFUGs as independent decision making institutions and customary access rights to forests are both limited, and external political agendas are seen to be replacing the needs and interests of forest users.

Building health research infrastructure in Rwanda.

Building health research infrastructure in Rwanda.

The Faroe Islands and the Arctic: Genesis of a Strategy

The Faroe Islands, a non-sovereign nation within the Kingdom of Denmark, have become the latest actors in the extended Arctic region to prepare their own strategy on Arctic affairs. A working group report of April 2013 predicts peaceful Arctic development that could bring profit for the Faroes but also new challenges notably in the field of civil security. Its detailed sections contain recommendations on economic opportunities especially linked with increased shipping and fisheries; research and education; the environment; and maritime safety and emergency response. The report is a professional product, reflecting years of Faroese engagement in Arctic research, fisheries, and international cooperation in the Arctic Council and elsewhere. It shows how Arctic considerations are pushing the Faroes towards acquiring more independent capacities, including new legal rights and institutional participation, given their already extensive relevant competences and the differences between their needs and Denmark’s. Further, some features of the Faroes’ response to the challenges facing them mirror the finds of ‘small state’ studies and confirm that non-sovereign entities having reached a certain level of autonomy can (mutatis mutandis) have similar external agendas, and seek similar solutions, to states of comparable size. While the report’s conclusions have already been accepted by the Faroese Parliament, some question-marks remain over Faroese capacity to realize its potentially costly recommendations.

Soft power, o brilho da espada:o Brasil e a ordem internacional pós 11 de setembro

O objetivo deste artigo é examinar em que medida os eventos de 11 de setembro de 2001 contribuíram para a revisão da inserção internacional do Brasil e de como estes influíram na elaboração de uma nova estratégia no governo Lula da Silva (2003- 2010). Entre as principais mudanças na agenda externa do País figuram a derrocada das negociações da ALCA, a busca de uma inserção soberana e o fortalecimento de uma ordem multipolar. Para isso, os eventos de 11 de setembro são discutidos à luz do conceito braudeliano de longa duração, que separa os acontecimentos de curta duração (os episódios) daqueles que ressoam e acabam por mudar os rumos da história dos povos e das nações.

Is MERCOSUR's External Agenda Pro-Poor? An Assessment of the European Union-MERCOSUR Free-Trade Agreement on Poverty in Uruguay Applying MIRAGE

In 2010, after several years of being stalled, negotiations between MERCOSUR (the Common Market of the Southern Cone) and the European Union (EU) to build a free-trade agreement (FTA) were resumed. This FTA is expected to have an important impact on MERCOSUR economies, especially if both blocs reach an agreement regarding the agricultural sector. This paper analyzes the impact of an FTA between MERCOSUR and EU, with a special focus on distributional impacts on Uruguay. For this we apply an improved version of MIRAGE (Modeling International Relationships in Applied General Equilibrium) with household heterogeneity. The representative agent in the standard version of the MIRAGE model is decomposed into a private and a public agent for all regions, and into a high number of households for Uruguay. Results show that a trade agreement between MERCOSUR and EU would have a significant impact on trade flows between both blocs. MERCOSUR economies would increase agriculture exports to EU and industrial imports from EU. Welfare increases in all countries participating in the agreement but is more pronounced for the two small countries of MERCOSUR: Paraguay and Uruguay. In Uruguay, welfare increases for different categories of households, but the richest households benefit the most. In spite of this, inequality decreases as a consequence of the agreement, and poverty rates decrease throughout the country.

‘A Gap in the Bridge?’: European Union Civil Society Financial Assistance in Turkey

While external programmes developing civil society receive criticism for adhering to a Westernised, neo-Tocquevillean development model, the case of the European Union (EU) and Turkey is different. Turkey's European aspirations legitimise the efforts to ‘democratise’ its civil society, and the EU-propelled political reform programme has helped to expand the variety of voices in Turkish civil society. The impact of external funding on civil society, however, is contingent on the way the aims of this assistance are interpreted in the context of domestic political debates. This article uses examples from the Turkish women's movement to illustrate the complex socio-political debates about religion and secularism that inform NGO behaviour. By implementing an external agenda that draws on the European model of civil society, and which steers away from the government's domestic agenda for civil society, the EU policy has the potential to undermine the successes of the broader political reform process.

<b> O Brasil e a não-indiferença à crise haitiana: solidariedade ou retórica do discurso? </b> 10.5102/uri.v9i1.1388

After the fall of Berlin wall, Brazil has centered efforts to develop a policy of prestige to interpose the neoliberal from the North. Notwithstanding, the country has sought established itself as a leader in its region, and also has placed in its external agenda an approximation to Arabian countries, as well as with Latin-American and African ones, underpinned on dialogue and cooperation. Moreover, has pleaded incisively for the reform on the ONU Security Council, arguing that this space should correspond to a new order which implies a more active participation of developing countries, not exempting itself to eliminate the imbalances between the industrialized and the developing countries. This way, Brazil projects itself as a moderator on the north-south relations, seeking to affirm the sovereignty of the nations. In April 2004, accepted the mission to lead the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), an opportunity that allowed the country to apply its pacific and mediation policy. On this sense, adopting the MINUSTAH as a study case, the present article has as its objective to analyze if the Brazilian performance, face this peace operation, correspond with its non-interfering speech, and then, bring questions that might course through this performance.

Mainstreaming gender in European Commission development policy: Conservative Europeanness?

Synopsis This article examines gender mainstreaming in European Commission development aid through quantitative and qualitative analysis of policy documents. The research aim is twofold. First I evaluate whether a genuine shift has been made from a conservative Women in Development paradigm to a transformative Gender and Development paradigm. Secondly I examine whether the European Commission advocates a Europeanness in its gender policy towards developing countries. The quantitative analysis assesses language, format and budgets. Next, qualitative analysis embarks on a deeper reading of how gender (in)equality is approached. I conclude that the shift towards a transformative Gender and Development paradigm has only partly been made and that the Commission promotes a Europeanness in its gender policies, which links the internal and external agenda.

The Link between National Foreign Policy and the Performance of a Country in the European Union: The Polish Case

This article examines the link between the adaptation of national executives and diplomats to the EU and the capacity of a state to influence EU foreign policy outcomes. It argues that, in the case of Poland, the politicization of the domestic administrative structures before 2004 constrained the ability of the state to impact on the EU’s external agenda after the enlargement. It also claims that a rapid adaptation to the EU occurred only after the Polish accession to the EU, as the will to influence the EU’s policy towards Eastern Europe was a main driver for changes in the national diplomacy.

Anti-corruption interventions in Georgia

The article aims at analysing the transfer of anti-corruption norms and standards as well as the instrumental use of anti-corruption efforts in Georgia. Drawing on the literature on anthropology and development, I use Georgia as a case study to analyse how an anti-corruption discourse is translated into local agendas. In the first part, I analyse three different perspectives on the fight against corruption in Georgia. In the second part, I examine three different types of anti-corruption interventions to illustrate the various agendas pursued by actors in the anti-corruption field. First, I study the implementation of the national anti-corruption strategy as an example of a conflict between two actors (government and international organisation) to assert the pre-eminence of a particular anti-corruption expertise. Second, I examine the reform of the Chamber of Control of Georgia (CCG), in particular the confrontation between the CCG and the Ministry of Education (MoE) in 2007, as an example of how an external anti-corruption agenda is adapted to local political struggles. Third, I analyse civil society anti-corruption projects as examples of the attempt to maintain a particular donor discourse.

Quality assurance in post‐secondary education

PurposeThe common approaches to quality assurance (QA), as practiced by most post‐secondary education institutions for internal quality monitoring and most QA authorities for external quality monitoring (EQM), have been considered by many researchers as having largely failed to address the essence of educational quality. The purpose of this paper, although not meant to be exhaustive, is to review some of these approaches.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reviews the relevant issues concerning total quality management, performance indicators and EQM, the three common approaches to the QA of post‐secondary education have been reviewed.FindingsWhile from a pragmatic perspective these approaches have their respective reasons for existence, they can all be criticized as lacking rigorous theoretical foundations and being mainly driven by demands of satisfying external agendas (e.g. to enforce institutional accountability or compliance) instead of academic considerations (e.g. to facilitate student learning). As a result, a mismatch between the rhetoric and reality of educational quality has become a common experience of most practitioners, not only in western contexts from which these approaches were originated, but also in other cultural contexts that have adopted them uncritically. It is undeniable that the overall quality culture within most post‐secondary education systems worldwide, as currently manifested, tends to favor the institutional aspects rather than the student aspects of the quality issues, and tends to lean more on the accountability‐led view rather than the improvement‐led view of quality assurance.Originality/valueThe paper sheds some light on the quality debate in post‐secondary education.

The EU and Southeastern Europe: the rise of post-liberal governance

This article suggests that EU governance in Southeastern Europe reproduces a discourse in which the failures and problems which have emerged, especially in relation to the pace of integration and the sustainability of peace in candidate member states such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, have merely reinforced the EU's external governance agenda. On the one hand, the limitations of reform have reinforced the EU's projection of its power as a civilising mission into what is perceived to be a dangerous vacuum in the region. On the other hand, through the discourse of post-liberal governance, the EU seeks to avoid the direct political responsibilities associated with this power. Rather than legitimise policy making on the basis of representative legitimacy, post-liberal frameworks of governance problematise autonomy and self-government, inverting the liberal paradigm through establishing administrative and regulatory frameworks as prior to democratic choices. This process tends to distance policy making from representative accountability, weakening the legitimacy of governing institutions in Southeastern European states which have international legal sovereignty but lack genuine mechanisms for politically integrating society.

Logros y límites de la integración andina: 1989-2005

This article examines the achievements and limits of the economic integration process in the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) subregion during the period 1989-2005. In accordance to the «open regionalism» approach embraced by CAN along that period, progress is assessed both in regards to the «internal agenda» and to the «external agenda» of Andean integration. Main achievements are the full completion of the subregional free trade zone and successful negotiations with the United States, the EU and Mercosur. Whereas main limitations are found in the incapability to establish a customs union among all CAN members and to conduct community trade negotiations with third countries. Both short comings reflecting difficulties yet to be overcome to duly adopt the exigent European model of integration, as well as unequal national capacities to take profit from the subregional market benefits. Reasons why CAN seems to be evolving towards and hybrid model of integration, incorporating some mechanisms inspired by US’s recent trade agreements while trying to keep the institutional arrangements of European inspiration.

Economic calculation, market incentives and academic identity: breaking the research/teaching dualism?

This article argues that as institutions, universities are being recast in policy discourse as serving particular external agendas shaped by economic calculation and market incentives. The result has been that a wedge has been driven between research and teaching, and that both are mis-described in utilitarian terms as serving the market and 'employability'. The article makes the case for more careful descriptions of the purposes of research and education based on the unity of academic identity and the value of intellectual enquiry. Such a model has implications for the organisation, for universities, and for their broader civic functions.