scholarly journals The Dominion model of transitional constitutionalism

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 1283-1300
Author(s):  
Mara Malagodi ◽  
Luke McDonagh ◽  
Thomas Poole
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
British Empire ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
Political Transitions ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Design And Practice ◽  
Transitional Constitutionalism

Abstract This symposium has explored New Dominion constitutionalism inductively and contextually, placing the phenomenon within a historically nested set of ideas and practices from the Old (Settler) Dominions, through the “Bridge Dominion” of Ireland, before giving detailed attention to the South Asian New Dominions of India, Pakistan, and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The articles collectively form a basis from which to analyze the legal configuration of New Dominion status and its legacy by exploring links between New Dominion constitutional framing and post-independence design and practice. Building on the case studies, the principal contention of this summative contribution is that New Dominion constitutionalism should be understood as the first constitutional model of note designed to manage political transitions on a global scale. A product of the twilight of the British Empire, New Dominion constitutionalism represents a model for decolonizing nations and an important antecedent to later post-Cold War transitions. Both transitional and transnational, New Dominion status offered an interim frame of government for political transitions, the fuzzy center of which derived from Westminster-style conventions of political constitutionalism, as well as a template establishing the legal basis for constituting the fully independent state.

Peacekeeping and the Responsibility to Protect

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 134-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Hassler
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
International Community ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
International Solidarity ◽  
Primary Responsibility ◽  
Peacekeeping Forces

This article examines the debate surrounding the responsibility to protect [R2P] with particular reference to the use of peacekeeping forces in that regard. Post-Cold War, human protection had expanded into a matter of international concern. Yet, where formerly humanitarian intervention was the mot du jour, a change in conceptual vocabulary led to the introduction of R2P and to a redefinition of sovereignty. Accordingly, the primary responsibility to protect its citizens rests with the sovereign state but, owing to international solidarity, the residual responsibility rests with the international community. Contextually, R2P is embedded in a continuum of responsibilities: prevent, react and rebuild. Proponents of the concept already see a norm in development. Still, divisions and confusion remain concerning the concept’s legal basis, its scope and its parameters. This is particularly relevant in view of peacekeeping forces, which have been increasingly deployed for humanitarian purposes. Because of ill-defined mandates and an overextension of resources, however, traditional peacekeeping is no longer suitable, lacking the resources, the personnel and the necessary expertise. To be able to fulfil the goals of R2P, peacekeeping will have to be redefined and the forces equipped with more robust mandates or fail.

Part 2 The Post-Cold War Era (1990–2000), 38 The Gulf War—1990–91

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
de Wet Erika
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gulf War ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
United Nations Charter ◽  
The Military

This contribution discusses the Gulf War of 1991-1991. It sets out the facts and context of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, followed by the adoption of United Nation Security Council Resolution 678 (1990) and the subsequent military reaction by the United States-led international coalition. It assesses the reaction of the main protagonists and that of the broader international community to these events. In doing so, it also assesses the legal basis of the military response by the international coalition of the ‘willing and able’ against Iraq. It determines whether it was based on Article 42 of the United Nations Charter, or collective self-defence in terms of Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. The final section examines if and to what extent this case has had an impact on (the legal basis) of military measures taken in the interest of collective security in the post-Cold War era.

scholarly journals New Dominion constitutionalism at the twilight of the British Empire: An introduction

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 1166-1172
Author(s):  
Mara Malagodi ◽  
Luke McDonagh ◽  
Thomas Poole
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
World War ◽  
Halfway House ◽  
Political Transitions ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
British Colonies

Abstract This introduction to the symposium on New Dominion constitutionalism sketches the legal configuration of New Dominion status and the intellectual context from which it emerged. Dominionhood originally represented a halfway house between colonial dependence and postcolonial independence, as developed in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. By contrast, New Dominion constitutionalism refers to the transitional constitutional form developed after World War I in Ireland (1922–1937)—the “Bridge Dominion”—and the post-World War II “New” Dominions of India (1947–1950), Pakistan (1947–1956), and Ceylon (later Sri Lanka, 1948–1972). New Dominion constitutionalism represents the first model designed to manage political transitions on a global scale. Both transitional and transnational, New Dominion constitutions served as a provisional frame of government and the juridical basis for the independent constitution. Although the notion of Dominion fell into disuse, it reemerged as the concept of Commonwealth Realm through which the majority of the remaining British colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean acquired independence.

scholarly journals From Land-Locked to Land-Linked?

2021 ◽  
pp. 37-56
Author(s):  
Ashley Scott Kelly ◽  
Xiaoxuan Lu
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Political Transitions ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Mekong Region ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Historical Periods

AbstractThis chapter, From land-locked to land-linked? Laos within a continuum of connectivity in the Mekong region, constructs a history of infrastructure-building in Laos understood through economic connectivity. This chapter challenges the dominant narrative of a de-historicized, often linear progression from land-locked to land-linked or from isolation to integration by contextualizing the contemporary imaginations and developments of Laos within the broader social, economic and political transitions across the Mekong region. We examine the malleable identities of “Laos,” “border” and “infrastructure” in the strategic importance of the Mekong region and the struggles to control and reshape its interconnectivity, especially during the period between colonial-era obscuration and more recent revitalization of the Southern Silk Road. Rather than comprehensive or strictly chronological, this chapter focuses on three loosely defined historical periods: the colonial period from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, the Cold War period from the mid-twentieth century to late 1980s, and the post-Cold War period from the late 1980s until the present day. We ground the distinct histories of these periods in discourses specific to their times and places, each with their own geographic conception of the Mekong region and particular combination of socioeconomic and geopolitical imperatives driving investment in large-scale infrastructure projects.

scholarly journals Some Remarks on the Dynamics of Strong Actor / Weak Actor Interaction

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-117
Author(s):  
Zoltan Jobbagy ◽  
Goran Boros ◽  
Levente Sandor Kovats
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Significant Challenge ◽  
Low Intensity ◽  
Long Period ◽  
The Many ◽  
Globalized World

Abstract The emergence of weak actors on global scale is one among the many undesired consequences of the post Cold War period. In a globalized world, weak actors increasingly possess the capability and will to challenge the existing status quo set earlier by strong actors. The complexity of the international theatre provides weak actors with an abundance of opportunities to become successful over a long period. From a military point of view strong actor / weak actor interaction becomes manifest when the latter prosecutes a special type of war. This war is asymmetric, irregular and of low intensity. It poses a significant challenge to the strong actor and can bog him down into confusing and ambiguous military actions. In these actions the strong actor often finds himself in messy situations he can mostly master by improvisation. To better understand the strong actor / weak actor interaction and the resulting special type of war the authors suggest to reject the classical theorizing of war and advocate a different sort of thinking instead.

scholarly journals The Limits of Foreign Authority: Publicity and the Political Logic of Ambivalence in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina

2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 415-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Independent State ◽  
International Intervention ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Comparative Study

AbstractThis article explores the ambivalent forms of authority and legitimacy articulated by the Office of the High Representative of the international community in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina. The High Representative exercised quasi-sovereign powers that placed his position at the center of two contradictions: a democratization paradox of “imposing democracy,” that is, promoting democracy through undemocratic means, and a state-building paradox of building an independent state by violating the principle of popular sovereignty. I analyze the Office's use of mass-mediated publicity to show how the High Representative sought to legitimize his actions in ways that both sustained the norms of democracy and statehood he advocated and suspended the contradictions behind how he promoted them. In doing so, he claimed that Bosnia was caught in a temporary state of exception to the normal nation-state order of things. This claim obliged him to show that he was working to end the state of exception. By focusing on one failed attempt by the OHR to orchestrate an enactment of “local ownership” that was aimed at demonstrating that Bosnia no longer required foreign supervision, this article identifies important limits to internationally instigated political transformation. It offers a view of international intervention that is more volatile, open-ended, and unpredictable than either the ordered representations of the technocratic vision or the confident assertions that critique international intervention as a form of (neo)imperial domination. It also demonstrates the analytic importance of publicity for the comparative study of international nation-building and democratization in the post-Cold War era.

The Emerging China, Pakistan, and Russia Strategic Triangle: India’s New Gordian Knot

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parvaiz Ahmad Thoker ◽  
Bawa Singh
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
The West ◽  
Problematic Situation ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Great Game

The primary cause for the emerging triple axis including China, Russia, and Pakistan in South Asia has been to curtail the Indo-US extended political, economic, and military connections. India in the post-Cold War era tilted significantly toward the West, the move which has been equally ostracized by the triumvirate. Hence, in reprisal, Russia’s recent rapprochement with the duo further solidified the Sino-Pak geostrategic bond. India’s wide-ranging collaboration with the US, primarily in the post-civil nuclear deal, led to the budding fusion of three atomic powers. Under such circumstances, the region has been enticing the major global powers and latterly various extra-regional players exhibited profound interests in the entire South Asia. Therefore, under the formation of power blocks, a new geopolitical great game has been emerging in the region. India, the leading South Asian player, therefore, has been facing an extremely problematic situation while making a balancing choice amongst the two hostile powers, China and the US. Against this backdrop, the study will primarily focus on the rise of South Asian Triple Axis and its possible consequences upon the rising Indo-US strategic leverage.

International Territorial Administration and the Limits of Law

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 437-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMON CHESTERMAN
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
State Building ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
East Timor ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Timor Leste ◽  
Mandate System ◽  
Building Project ◽  
The Great War

The year 2009 was one of many anniversaries for the state-building project. It marked ten years since the United Nations began its bold experiments of state-building in East Timor and Kosovo, now the independent state of Timor-Leste and the embryonic Republic of Kosovo respectively. It was twenty years since Namibia held elections in the course of becoming independent, heralding a new post-Cold War activism. It was also ninety years since the League of Nations established the mandate system, which – even though it applied only to the colonies of enemy states defeated in the Great War – marked the beginning of the end of colonialism.

scholarly journals Sergiu Musteață, Rolul anului 1991 în destinul Republicii Moldova / 1991: A Chronology of Moldova’s Independence

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-140
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Annus Mirabilis ◽  
Former Soviet Republics

The year 1991 proved to be crucial for the Soviet republics, including for Moldova, and in result of incremental democratic transformations and the collapse of the USSR, the Republic of Moldova became an independent state. The year 1991 was the common starting point of independence for most of Soviet Union republics. After the events of August 1991, most of the world believed that the collapse of the Soviet Union meant a departure from the totalitarian past for the former Soviet territories, but the reality proved to be different for most of the former Soviet republics. However, the transition from a totalitarian to a democratic regime proved to be different for each postSoviet state. If the 1989 year is considered the annus mirabilis or the collapse of a utopia, then the year 1991 is the beginning of the post-Cold War era. This paper highlights the most important events of the year 1991 and their impact on the Moldovan society.

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