The Colombian Private Sector in Colombia’s Transition to Peace

Author(s):  
Angelika Rettberg

During the Colombian civil war, businesses undertook both civil and uncivil actions, but the civil action of a “pro-peace coalition” was among the many factors moving the conflict toward its (uneasy) settlement in 2016. This chapter documents the civil action efforts of a pro-peace coalition, explores how support for these efforts changed over time—particularly in the last two attempts to negotiate peace, in Caguán (1998–2002) and in Havana, Cuba (2012–2016), and focuses on the motivations behind them. Contrary to simplistic analyses, it demonstrates that the profit motive alone cannot explain business strategies in contexts of conflict and peacebuilding. Contextual factors, the type of organization, and access to politics are important in understanding how business factions respond to armed conflict, including those participating in civil action within the “pro-peace coalition” and those aligning themselves with armed actors. The explanation of Colombian business strategies to address armed conflict holds lessons for understanding business-led civil action in other countries.

2019 ◽  
pp. 489-499
Author(s):  
Mircea Gherghina ◽  
Sandra McNeill ◽  
Khadir Abdi

This chapter uses network analysis to reveal the dynamics and intricate relationships between business, political elites, and armed actors in Somalia. The prolonged civil war has fostered cooperation, in the form of loose networks between the private sector and those holding power. Network analysis could help uncover informal relationships not necessarily otherwise exposed. By modelling an interpretation of the information which can be generated in this way, it considers the interactions between key actors and shows how network analysis can map a topology of those interactions to unravel how groups interact or diverge in terms of ideological positions or different interests. Through the modelling of an anonymized network, the chapter first assesses the method itself and the often-concealed ties as they exist or otherwise. Then, adding context and analysis from qualitative methods, it considers the implications and applications of the data; finally, it recommends to apply the findings to policy-making.


Author(s):  
Christopher Tuck

This chapter charts the key developments in European land warfare since 1900. On the one hand, it is possible to identify overarching explanatory ideas, metanarratives, that can be used to identify continuities in development over time across Europe’s armies. These include the concept of ‘modern system’ land warfare and the ‘transformation paradigm’. However, as this chapter also shows, these two points of continuity do not mean either that European armies are homogenous, or that their conceptual assumptions are uncontested. European land warfare remains a heterogeneous phenomenon, shaped by the variety in national contexts and by contending debates on how appropriate Europe’s armies are to the actual challenges of contemporary and future armed conflict.


Author(s):  
Mikael Rask Madsen

Identifying the “varied authority” of international adjudicators as a common object of inquiry, this book develops a framework to conceptualize and analyze international court authority with the goal of assessing how contextual factors affect international courts’ authority, and therby their political and legal influence. Scholars drawn from a range of academic disciplines—namely law, political science, and sociology—have contributed to this book and examine the varied authority of thirteen international courts with jurisdictions that range from economic to human rights, to international criminal matters. Interdisciplinary commentaries reflect on what the framework and findings imply for the study of international court authority and legitimacy. Focusing on both global and regional adjudicatory systems, the chapters explore different ways in which contextual factors contribute to the fragility of each court’s authority over time and across the breadth of their jurisdiction. A conclusion pulls together the collective insights of how context shapes the authority of international courts.


Author(s):  
Tilman Rodenhäuser

Analysing the development of the concept of non-state parties to an armed conflict from the writings of philosophers in the eighteenth century through international humanitarian law (IHL) treaty law to contemporary practice, three threads can be identified. First, as pointed out by Rousseau almost two and a half centuries ago, one basic principle underlying the laws of war is that war is not a relation between men but between entities. Accordingly, the lawful objective of parties cannot be to harm opponents as individuals but only to overcome the entity for which the individual fights. This necessitates that any party to an armed conflict is a collective, organized entity and not a loosely connected group of individuals. Second, de Vattel already stressed that civil war is fought between two parties who ‘acknowledge no common judge’ and have no ‘common superior’ on earth....


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anette Granberg ◽  
Marie Matérne ◽  
Lars-Olov Lundqvist ◽  
Anna Duberg

Abstract Background Effective implementation processes play a central role in health care organizations and affect the care of patients. Managers are pivotal in facilitating the use of new practices, but their experience and how it affects the implementation outcome are still largely unknown. In the field of disability health care in particular, managers experiences have scarcely been investigated. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore managers’ experiences of the implementation process when transferring new practices into disability health care settings. Methods Semi-structured individual telephone interviews were conducted with managers at disability health care organizations in four administrative regions in central Sweden. A total of 23 managers with formal managerial responsibility from both public and private health care were strategically selected to be interviewed. The interviews were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis with an inductive approach. Results The analysis resulted in two themes about factors influencing the implementation process: firstly, Contextual factors set the agenda for what can be achieved, which highlighted aspects that hinder or enable the implementation process, such as internal and external conditions, the workplace culture, the employees and managers’ attitudes and openness to change: secondly, Leadership in the winds of change, which described the challenges of balancing managerial tasks with leading the change, and the importance of a leadership that involves the participation of the employees. Conclusions This study explored how and to what extent managers address and manage the implementation process and the many associated challenges. The findings highlight the importance of leadership support and organizational structure in order to transfer new practices into the work setting, and to encourage an organizational culture for leading change that promotes positive outcomes. We suggest that identifying strategies by focusing on contextual factors and on aspects of leadership will facilitate implementation processes. Trial registration The SWAN (Structured Water Dance Intervention) study was retrospectively registered on April 9, 2019 and is available online at ClinicalTrials.gov (ID: NCT03908801).


2021 ◽  
Vol 102 (5) ◽  
pp. 8-11
Author(s):  
Sam Wineburg

History textbooks are less likely to be complete renderings of the truth than a series of stories textbook authors (and the many stakeholders who influence them) consider beneficial. Sam Wineburg describes how the process of writing history textbooks often leads to sanitized and inaccurate versions of history. As an example, he describes how the story of Crispus Attucks and the Boston massacre has evolved over time. The goal of historical study, he explains, is not to cultivate love or hate of the country. Rather, it should provide us with the courage needed to look ourselves unflinching in the face, so that we may understand who we were and who we might aspire to become.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-106
Author(s):  
Ryan Scoats ◽  
Eric Anderson ◽  
Adam J. White

Although there is abundant research regarding group sex between men, much of the current literature constructs group sex as homogenous and overlooks the nuance of how and why men engage in particular sexual behaviors. Accordingly, this research expands our understanding of group sex by focusing on a specific type of sex: the threesome. The results demonstrate how perspectives on threesomes may develop over time; at first appearing exciting before becoming relatively normalized and indistinct from dyadic sex. Encounters and exposure are fostered through the sexual opportunities available, in particular, geo-social networking apps. Despite their normalization, threesomes are not necessarily viewed as risk free. Thus, this research offers insight and understanding into how gay men engage in group sex and the contextual factors which make it possible.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Subira Onwudiwe

A civil war marked by the intervention of foreign military troops is known as an internationalized non-international armed conflict.' This type of armed conflict happens often and presents a number of issues of concern to international lawyers. The scope of this article is confined to the application of international humanitarian law in such circumstances, and it does not address the validity of foreign involvement in a civil war. In civil conflicts involving foreign intervention, the sides seldom agree on the facts or their interpretation. As a result, this article is dependent on certain factual assumptions, assumptions for which evidence cannot always be provided.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle O'Brien

Armed conflict is socially transformative. Although migration research has established the proximate relationship between armed conflict and increases in migration, much less attention has been paid to the long-term, or distal relationship. This research leverages the case of the 1992-1997 Tajikistani Civil War to examine the distal relationship between armed conflict and migration decisions nearly a decade after the war had ended. Using a series of logistic regression models and a selection-based endogeneity correction, I estimate the likelihood of migrating in 2006, given the intensity of conflict experience at the district level. I find that, controlling for individual, household, and district-level indicators, the legacy of conflict continues to influence migration – for men and for ‘stayers’ – nearly a decade after the peace accord was signed. Some evidence suggests that certain kinds of development projects can moderate this relationship. In conflict-affected countries, incorporating the legacy of conflict into empirical research can help scholars and policy-makers better understand migration in the aftermath of war.


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