Politics and Populists

2021 ◽  
pp. 94-122
Author(s):  
Jussi M. Hanhimäki

Chapter 4 examines the transatlantic political space, with special attention to the rise of populism. Particularly since 2016, analysts have been obsessed with the dawn of a new era of post-truth politics and illiberal democracy. Refusing such pessimism, the chapter asserts that the rise of transatlantic populism is part and parcel of the reshuffling of democratic politics after 1989, when labels like “left” and “right” no longer carried the meaning they once had. Moreover, the transatlantic nature of populism—like the rise of the so-called Third Way in the 1990s—speaks volumes of the degree of interconnectivity between Europe and America in the post–Cold War world. While each country’s domestic politics can be idiosyncratic, the “macro” trends have grown increasingly similar in the past three decades. There is, the chapter contends, a transatlantic political space in which ideas resonate and “travel” at increasing speed.

Born in 1945, the United Nations (UN) came to life in the Arab world. It was there that the UN dealt with early diplomatic challenges that helped shape its institutions such as peacekeeping and political mediation. It was also there that the UN found itself trapped in, and sometimes part of, confounding geopolitical tensions in key international conflicts in the Cold War and post-Cold War periods, such as hostilities between Palestine and Iraq and between Libya and Syria. Much has changed over the past seven decades, but what has not changed is the central role played by the UN. This book's claim is that the UN is a constant site of struggle in the Arab world and equally that the Arab world serves as a location for the UN to define itself against the shifting politics of its age. Looking at the UN from the standpoint of the Arab world, this volume includes chapters on the potential and the problems of a UN that is framed by both the promises of its Charter and the contradictions of its member states.


Focaal ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 (66) ◽  
pp. 25-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Ringel

Hoyerswerda, Germany's fastest-shrinking city, faces problems with the future that seem initially unrelated to the past and yet excite manifold conflicting accounts of it. The multiple and conflicting temporal references employed by Hoyerswerdians indicate that the temporal regime of postsocialism is accompanied, if not overcome, by the temporal framework of shrinkage. By reintroducing the analytical domain of the future, I show that local temporal knowledge practices are not historically predetermined by a homogenous postsocialist culture or by particular generational experiences. Rather, they exhibit what I call temporal complexity and temporal flexibility-creative uses of a variety of coexisting temporal references. My ethnographic material illustrates how such expressions of different forms of temporal reasoning structure social relations within and between different generations. Corresponding social groups are not simply divided by age, but are united through shared and heavily disputed negotiations of the post-Cold War era's contemporary crisis.


Author(s):  
Patrice C. McMahon

This chapter provides evidence of what can only be called the “NGO revolution.” It documents the growth of NGOs and measures their power. This chapter not only describes how NGOs have changed as they have grown in number, but it explains what is new about their behavior in the post-Cold War period and how their involvement in post-conflict countries differs from the past. This chapter also exposes the disjuncture between the discourse Western actors use when they talk about peacebuilding and international assistance and the realities on the ground. With their numbers, money, and access, it is clear that NGOs had significant sway in Bosnia's rebuilding. Yet, there is little evidence that the NGO boom had much to do with empowering locals or advancing peace.


2007 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 137-143
Author(s):  
Roger Chapman

This article reviews two recent collections of essays that focus on the role of popular culture in the Cold War. The article sets the phenomenon into a wide international context and shows how American popular culture affected Europe and vice versa. The essays in these two collections, though divergent in many key respects, show that culture is dynamic and that the past as interpreted from the perspective of the present is often reworked with new meanings. Understanding popular culture in its Cold War context is crucial, but seeing how the culture has evolved in the post-Cold War era can illuminate our view of its Cold War roots.


1999 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 132-136
Author(s):  
Francis Robinson

The relations between Muslim peoples and the West, and between Muslimpeoples and forms of modernity, have become increasingly pressing issues ofscholarly and political concern over the past twenty-five years. In part, this isdue to the growing power of Islamism in the lives and politics of many Muslimsocieties and, in part, to the fact that some fonns of Islamism can appear to beprofoundly hostile to all that the West represents. The growing presence ofMuslim peoples in Western societies and the many assumptions which thatpresence calls into question has also caused scholars and politicians to focus onthese relations. Add to this the fact that some leading members of the Westernpolicy establishment, most notably the US political scientist S. P. Huntington, have come to talk in the post-cold war era of a “clash of civilizations” in whichthe clash between Islam and the West is the most profound and the most dangerousfor world p e .This book, which contains sixteen essays by Muslim and non-Muslim scholars,mainly from institutions in Europe and the Arab world, sets out to addresskey issues in the relations between Muslims, modernity, and the West. It is theoutcome of a symposium held in Toledo, Spain, in April 1996, which wasprompted by the Eleni Nakou Foundation for the promotion of cultural contactand understanding among European peoples, and held under the auspices of theJose Ortega y Gasset Foundation. &ma Martin Muiioz, professor of Sociologyof the Arab and Islamic World at the Autonoma University of Madrid was theintellectual “playmaker” of the occasion. Due to its Islamic past and the fundamentalrole it played in transmitting Islamic learning and culture for thedevelopment of Christian Europe, Spain was a goad choice of location for theaonference ...


2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-121
Author(s):  
Hasan Kösebalaban

Philip Robins contends that Turkish foreign policy has faced four challengesin four distinct periods of its history: (1) consolidating the emergentTurkish Republic through external recognition (1930s), (2) remainingneutral during the Second World War (1940s), (3) confronting thechallenge of Soviet expansionism (the cold war era), and (4) respondingto the end of bipolarity (post-cold war era). Robins examines these foreignpolicy issues in the last period.The main thesis of this work is threefold: First, Turkey is a status quopower in the way that its foreign policy elites have fastened their thinkingand practice to the framework of “the sanctity of borders, of states, ofmultilateral institutions and of norms of conduct, even when it becameclear that systemic changes had rendered some of these continuities nolonger tenable” (p. 6). Second, Turkey continues to be firmly orientedwestwards in terms of its foreign relations, which are characterized by itsstrong commitment to NATO as well as its desire to join the EuropeanUnion (EU). Finally, Turkish foreign policy has been characterized moreby “caution than daring,” quoting Malik Mufti. Despite the increase in itspower relative to its neighbors, Turkey has avoided an interventionist foreignpolicy by emphasizing the formation of multilateral frameworks forconflict resolution.Robins defends these arguments by analyzing the international systemicand domestic politics context in which Turkish foreign policy is ...


2009 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-426
Author(s):  
Jasminka Simic

During the entire post Cold-War era numerous security challenges were pushing NATO in search of a new mission. Although redefined several times in the past, NATO's mission is still not steady and in its final shape. NATO's framework is not final yet for several reasons: lack of internal balance; NATO is moving towards rather 'loose' formula of Trans-Atlantic relations, through a 'Coalition of the Willing', in which countries accept the level and scope of military engagement in war missions (Afghanistan and Iraq) according to their own interests. This certainly has influenced the character of NATO mission in the 21st Century. Therefore, NATO countries do not speak with 'one voice' and they do not equally participate in military missions. Instead, specific countries are engaged in specific issues, in compliance with UN Security Council resolutions. NATO deepening and widening process is continuing in the 21st Century. .


1995 ◽  
pp. 445-482
Author(s):  
Brigitte Schulz

With the end of the Cold War, much attention has been paid to the nature of the emerging new world order. By what criteria will power and influence be measured in this new era? Who will be the winners and losers? What types of allegiances will develop? Or is Francis Fukuyama's argument correct that, with the collapse of communism, we have reached the "...endpoint of man's ideological evolution" and thus "the end of history". Unlike Marx, who saw socialism at the end of humanity's arduous journey, Fukuyama tells us that the search is off because we have already arrived at our evolutionary destination: liberal capitalism...Other analysts envision less optimistic scenarios...One of the most popular scenarios over the past few years has been to anticipate growing tensions between the three main core powers: the US, Germany, and Japan... The first task of this paper, then, is to look at Germany within the context of the radically altered post-Cold War period... We argue that Germany, based on a multitude of factors which will be outlined below, is not now, nor will it ever become in the foreseeable future, a global hegemon... Indeed, as will be asserted in the second part of this paper, Germany will enter into a close alliance with the United States to form a reinvigorated trans-Atlantic marriage in which the common bonds of "culture and civilization" will replace a virulent anti-communism as the common vow.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Radoslav Yordanov

This paper offers a broad historical overview of US economic sanctions against Cuba, starting with the imposition of the partial trade embargo on 19 October 1960, taking the story up to the present day. Additionally, it develops a comprehensive survey of the numerous scholarly and policy debates which closely follow the changes in United States’ post-Cold War attitudes and actions towards its southern neighbor and which demonstrate the thinking behind centers of power in Washington and Miami related to US’ Cuba policies. The paper also glances over the latest developments under Cuba’s new President Miguel Díaz-Canel and the notable return to the harsh Cold War rhetoric, which transcends the boundaries of the localized Washington-Miami-Havana axis of the past thirty years. Referring to historic patterns, the paper concludes that the conjecture between the recent complication in the US-Cuba relations and Moscow’s ambition to reinstate its erstwhile position as an unavoidable international factor would afford Havana with the opportunity to reclaim once again the dubious honor of becoming one of the focal points in the renewed competitive coexistence between the United States and Russia.


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