Search results for "Political Science and International Relations"
showing 10 items of 556 documents
Disintegration of Italian rural landscapes to international environmental agreements
2015
In Italy, the first law that puts landscape and historical buildings under public control was implemented in 1922. While this represents a significant achievement for those times, for that law landscape essentially has an historical and aesthetic connotation, without any explicit reference to the components of flora, fauna and geology. Today, many protection policies and initiatives are still biased by the lack of reference to the intrinsic value that biodiversity and ecosystem services have for the maintenance of traditional landscapes, as well as for the survival of the human species. The priority accorded to historical and aesthetic values can lead to a lack of attention to the complex r…
Do terrorism, organized crime (drug production), and state weakness affect contemporary armed conflicts? An empirical analysis
2015
ABSTRACTIn 2014, the UN Security Council emphasized the dangers of terrorism, criminal activity (especially drug production and trafficking), and state weakness in conflict areas. However, neither policy debates nor scholarly analyses have focussed on the potential impact of these elements on conflict dynamics and characteristics, and the investigated partial relationships have led to inconclusive results. This article explores the presence in armed conflicts of terrorist groups among fighting parties, major drug production (indicating the presence of activities typical of criminal organizations), and state failure in the period 1990–2011. Focussing on intrastate conflicts, this article hig…
The ‘Open Garden of Politics’: The impact of open primaries for candidate selection in the British Conservative Party
2016
International audience; Since 2003, hundreds of open primaries for the selection of parliamentary candidates have been held by the British Conservative Party as a means of democratising party organisation and enhancing representativeness. In the run-up to the 2015 general election, only 26 primaries could be identified. This article will apply the analytical framework provided by Hazan and Rahat to demonstrate that the relative failure of the experiment in terms of intra-party competition, participation, representation and responsiveness is counterbalanced by the benefits brought by this procedure, both as a tool of party branding at the national level and as a strategy for raising the prof…
Miracles in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt and Refugees as ‘Vanguard’
2019
AbstractThe radical uncertainty that refugees face because of war, flight and exile often dramatically shapes their participation in society. Violent conflict and human rights abuses are not just disproportionately experienced by, but can also create, political subjects. Such life events can transform the motivations, sense of responsibility and political actions of individuals with refugee backgrounds. In this article, we explore the links between civil–political engagement and the life stories of such individuals, analysing our empirical data through themes in the work of Hannah Arendt. We make three central points. First, we highlight the possibility of refugees as ‘vanguard’, playing a …
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…
The 2015 Spanish election: the times they are a’ changing
2016
ABSTRACTThe Spanish legislative election of 2015 speaks of change. This is the end of the traditional two-party system and the beginning of a new political era marked by institutional renewal. The Socialist Party and the Partido Popular have both lost significant parliamentary force, whereas two new parties (Podemos, and Ciudadanos) are now crucial to ensure stable government majorities. This new parliamentary scenario seems to better mirror the political pluralism of a changing society which has already demonstrated for change in striking events such as the 15-M Movement. However, political parties are far from showing conciliatory aspirations, possibly because a new election is suddenly a…
When Peace Leads to Divorce: The Splintering of Rebel Groups in Powersharing Agreements
2017
While research has already focused on power-sharing agreements by assessing specific effects of political, economic, territorial and military provisions, some provisions might be more important tha...
The privatization of death: the emergence of private cemeteries in Romania’s postsocialist deathscape
2020
Private cemeteries constitute a new development in the Romanian postsocialist death system that poses a challenge to the traditional burial culture. This paper charts the emergence of privately own...
Committee Parliamentary Specialization Index. Explaining MPs’ specialisation in the Spanish Congreso de los Diputados
2019
Nowadays legislatures are largely based on committee systems. This enables a division of work and specialisation, in the context of highly complex politics and policy development. It seems clear that MP specialisation in the field of the committee they serve on is an important political asset, both for MPs and their parliamentary party group. This paper presents the Committee Parliamentary Specialization Index. This index measures the degree an MP is specialised in the jurisdiction of the committee they serve on. In the second part of the paper, the index is applied to the Spanish Congreso de los Diputados, an interesting case for testing this multi-faceted index, to find institutional, pol…