Search results for " social sciences"

The changing functions of the mass media: A historical perspective

1989

The Challenge of Coexistence in Socially Vulnerable Schools

2017

Abstract Society in general and schools in particular continue to express their concerns with regard to the many challenges posed nowadays by living in a globalized world, where learning to coexist involves knowing oneself and those around us. Therefore, the professionals from the education sector and specially from the most vulnerable contexts demand the necessity to know strategies and initiatives which enable them to build a democratic school, where learning to coexist is the key to educate engaged citizens living in an increasingly intercultural, changing world. The study presented here has been conducted in two differentiated, but complementary, phases. During the first phase a documen…

State effects and the effects of state building: institution building and the formation of state-centred societies

2016

AbstractThis article discusses the assumptions underlying state-building efforts and the effects of these efforts. It addresses two main questions: why has state building not led to the establishment of effective states? And what are the effects of statebuilding? It is argued that these efforts have been based on an institutionalist model of the state derived from a Weberian framework, and that the basic reason why state building has failed is that the creation of effective states requires the creation of state-centred societies, where both material and symbolic resources are concentrated in the state. This is very difficult to achieve for external actors. But, although state building has n…

The Impact of Regionalism on Democracy Building: An Examination of the Southern African Development Community (SADC)

2017

Since the early 1990s, the world has witnessed a new wave of regionalism and a mushrooming of regional integration organizations, particularly in the global South. Focusing on Africa, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) ranks among the most promising examples of regionalism on the continent. The SADC explicitly aims at building and advancing democracy in the region and its member states as part of its broader agenda on regional development. From a political science perspective, there is general agreement that regional integration and parallel institution building can be useful measures to promote and strengthen democratic rule, since an appropriate institutional “lock-in” impl…

Cognitive biases in humanitarian sensemaking and decision-making lessons from field research

2016

Time and again, humanitarian decision-makers are confronted with stress and pressure, distorted, lacking and uncertain information, and thus they are working in conditions that are known to introduce or enforce biases. Decision analysis has been designed to overcome such biases, and a network of “digital responders” organized over the Internet has set out to improve judgments by providing better information. However, without any structured support to determine objectives, goals and preferences and detached from the context of operational decision-makers, remote analysts may face the very biases they are trying to help overcome. This article sets out to identify biases that matter for humani…

Young People and Political Activism in Moldova

2020

The election of a Socialist and pro-Russian candidate in December 2016 as president of Moldova marks a new turn in Moldovan politics. This is in contrast with the pro-Western attitudes of the previous government. Political instability and changing international orientations, as emphasized by this article, are partly due to political alternative victories of parties supported by different social groups. Focusing on young people's activism, the article underlines the differentiation between the political success made possible by street protests in April 2009 and the political failure in December 2016. The findings may add a new explanation to Moldova's permanent instability.

Connecting theories of cascading disasters and disaster diplomacy

2018

Abstract Disaster diplomacy examines how and why disaster-related activities (disaster risk reduction and post-disaster actions) do and do not influence peace and conflict processes, especially whether or not a causal chain can be established between dealing with disaster risk or a disaster and outcomes in peace or conflict. Cascading disasters might provide a useful theoretical framing for mapping out causal pathways for disaster diplomacy. In conceptually exploring the intersection between disaster diplomacy and cascading disasters, this paper concludes that both disaster diplomacy and cascading disasters have limitations because they try to develop focused causal chains which, when exami…

The Role the Static Maximization Approach Plays in Neoclassical Analyses

1994

This is an article on the methodology of economic thought. The critical assessment of the neoclassical research programme contained here basically comes from the contributions of J.M. Buchanan, Nobel prize winner in Economics 1986. These comments are aimed at pointing out the role that the static maximization approach plays in neoclassical analyses since L. Robbins and P. Samuelson’s influential contributions came about after World War II. Just to complement this basic purpose, I present in section 4 the alternative methodological foundations J.M. Buchanan proposes and uses to replace the static maximization approach when building public choice analyses and I sketch in section 5 several pe…

Russia-Ukraine balance of military power

2017

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is the most serious test of European security in the 21st century and the forgone conclusion is that Russia can easily prevail in the conflict, but this has not been the case. This article uses balance of military power analysis to report findings on the plausible outcome of a war between Ukraine and Russia. I report findings based on realist theoretical perspectives that indicate Russian victory is unlikely because of relative balance of power where Russia has to face multiple threats diverting its military power while Ukraine can concentrate its military power for a single purpose. The findings suggest implication for policy in Russia, Ukraine, EU and the Unite…

From Neo-Functional Peace to a Logic of Spillover in EU External Policy: A Response to Visoka and Doyle

2017

In their recently published JCMS article, Gezim Visoka and John Doyle have proposed the concept of ‘neofunctional peace’ as a means to conceptualize the EU's peacemaking practices in the case of the EU-facilitated Belgrade-Pristina dialogue. This article challenges the ‘neo-functional peace’ on conceptual and empirical grounds. We critically discuss Visoka and Doyle's (2016) reading of neofunctionalism and question parts of their empirical evidence given for the existence of a ‘neo-functional peace’. Going beyond a mere critique of the article by Visoka and Doyle and arguing that the authors may not have fully exploited neofunctionalism's potential for theorizing EU external policy, we stip…