scholarly journals Democracy, Democratization, and Development in Post-Cold War Africa (1990-2012)

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 60-67
Author(s):  
ADRIEN M. RATSIMBAHARISON
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Income ◽  
Development Program ◽  
United Nations Development Program ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Statistical Correlations ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Cold War

This research project addresses the question of whether democracy would be better than any other political systems to promote development. It attempts to find out whether democracy and democratization have led to a better economic performance in democratic and democratizing countries in Africa. Using data on development from the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in combination with data on regime characteristics from the Polity IV Project and Freedom House, this research project finds that democracy has weak statistical correlations with development, as indicated by the Human Development Index (HDI) and the gross national income (GNI) per capita of the fifty and so African countries since the end of the Cold War. Nevertheless, this study also finds that democratizing countries seem to have better economic performances than the other African countries.

Why Are Developed Countries Giving Aid to India?

Asian Survey ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-323
Author(s):  
Youngwan Kim ◽  
Daniel Connolly
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Panel Data Analysis ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Arms Transfers ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
External Conditions ◽  
Realist Interpretation ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Structural Shifts

India is the recipient of substantial aid flows but also a nuclear-armed power and an emerging donor. Why have developed countries provided aid to one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world? Answering this question requires understanding the underlying determinants of these aid flows. Using data from 1960 to 2015, the domestic conditions of India and the external conditions of donors are empirically explored with time-series analysis and panel-data analysis. We find that during the Cold War India received more foreign aid from donors with a larger volume of trade and arms transfers, but from 2000 to 2015 the effect of arms transfers declined while countries with high trade volumes continued to give more aid. Although these findings broadly support the realist interpretation of aid, we conclude that post–Cold War structural shifts in the international aid regime and defense industries need to be considered by future researchers.

scholarly journals The Long March from Bandung: The Ghost of the Bandung Spirit in Contemporary Relations between China and Africa

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 115
Author(s):  
Vera Leigh Fennel
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Strategic Partnership ◽  
Strategic Partnerships ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Continuous Progress ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Industry Investment ◽  
Opening Address

When Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡锦涛) gave the opening address at the Jakarta reception of the Asian-African Business Summit (亚非商业峰会) in 2005, he characterized contemporary relations between China and various African states thusly “[In] the world today, economic globalization is further developing…[this] presents Asian and African countries with rare opportunities as well as severe challenges…. [We] must…develop a new type of strategic partnership between Asia and Africa...to carry on the Bandung spirit and contribute to the continuous progress in Asia and Africa”. The importance of the Bandung Conference in the Cold War era is beyond debate; what has been debated is its lasting relevance. This paper examines the global economic rise of post-Cold War China and its “new strategic partnerships” (新型战略伙伴关系) with various African states and argues that the “partnerships”, which specifically promote pragmatic cooperation and mutual benefits between the two regions in trade, industry, investment, finance, embody the “Bandung Spirit” (万隆精神). It argues that what we are seeing now in China’s relationship with Africa is the culmination of a process begun by Premier Zhou Enlai (1898-1976) at the Bandung Conference of 1955.

Land of Blue Helmets

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Arab World ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
Member States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Mediation

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.

Worse Than a Monolith

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Burden Sharing ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Coercive Diplomacy ◽  
Regional Conflicts ◽  
Security Relations ◽  
Opposing Camp ◽  
The Cold War

In brute-force struggles for survival, such as the two world wars, disorganization and divisions within an enemy alliance are to one's own advantage. However, most international security politics involve coercive diplomacy and negotiations short of all-out war. This book demonstrates that when states are engaged in coercive diplomacy—combining threats and assurances to influence the behavior of real or potential adversaries—divisions, rivalries, and lack of coordination within the opposing camp often make it more difficult to prevent the onset of regional conflicts, to prevent existing conflicts from escalating, and to negotiate the end to those conflicts promptly. Focusing on relations between the Communist and anti-Communist alliances in Asia during the Cold War, the book explores how internal divisions and lack of cohesion in the two alliances complicated and undercut coercive diplomacy by sending confusing signals about strength, resolve, and intent. In the case of the Communist camp, internal mistrust and rivalries catalyzed the movement's aggressiveness in ways that we would not have expected from a more cohesive movement under Moscow's clear control. Reviewing newly available archival material, the book examines the instability in relations across the Asian Cold War divide, and sheds new light on the Korean and Vietnam wars. While recognizing clear differences between the Cold War and post-Cold War environments, the book investigates how efforts to adjust burden-sharing roles among the United States and its Asian security partners have complicated U.S. security relations with the People's Republic of China since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Truth to Power

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
Intelligence Community ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Intelligence Support ◽  
The Cold War

This first-ever history of the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) is told through the reflections of its eight chairs in the period from the end of the Cold War until 2017. Coeditors Robert Hutchings and Gregory Treverton add a substantial introduction placing the NIC in its historical context going all the way back to the Board of National Estimates in the 1940s, as well as a concluding chapter that highlights key themes and judgments. The historic mission of this remarkable but little-understood organization is strategic intelligence assessment in service of senior American foreign policymakers. It has been at the center of every critical foreign policy issue during the period covered by this volume: helping shape America’s post–Cold War strategies, confronting sectarian conflicts around the world, meeting the new challenge of international terrorism, and now assessing the radical restructuring of the global order. Each chapter places its particular period of the NIC’s history in context (the global situation, the administration, the intelligence community) and assesses the most important issues with which the NIC grappled during the period, acknowledging failures as well as claiming successes. With the creation of the director of national intelligence in 2005, the NIC’s mission mushroomed to include direct intelligence support to the main policymaking committees in the government. The mission shift took the NIC directly into the thick of the action but may have come at the expense of weakening its historic role of providing over-the horizon strategic analysis.

Italy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Coticchia
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
First Century ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

Since the end of the bipolar era, Italy has regularly undertaken military interventions around the world, with an average of 8,000 units employed abroad in the twenty-first century. Moreover, Italy is one of the principal contributors to the UN operations. The end of the cold war represented a turning point for Italian defence, allowing for greater military dynamism. Several reforms have been approved, while public opinion changed its view regarding the armed forces. This chapter aims to provide a comprehensive perspective of the process of transformation that occurred in post-cold-war Italian defence, looking at the evolution of national strategies, military doctrines, and the structure of forces. After a brief literature review, the study highlights the process of transformation of Italian defeshnce policy since 1989. Through primary and secondary sources, the chapter illustrates the main changes that occurred, the never-ending cold-war legacies, and key challenges.

Peaceful Change in Northeast Asia: Maintaining the “Minimal Peace”

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bhubhindar Singh
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Northeast Asia ◽  
Institutional Structure ◽  
Economic Interdependence ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Liberal Internationalism ◽  
The Us ◽  
Regional Order ◽  
The Cold War

Northeast Asia is usually associated with conflict and war. Out of the five regional order transitions from the Sinocentric order to the present post–Cold War period, only one was peaceful, the Cold War to post–Cold War transition. In fact, the peaceful transition led to a state of minimal peace in post–Cold War Northeast Asia. As the chapter discusses, this was due to three realist-liberal factors: America’s hegemonic role, strong economic interdependence, and a stable institutional structure. These factors not only ensured development and prosperity but also mitigated the negative effects of political and strategic tensions between states. However, this minimal peace is in danger of unraveling. Since 2010, the region is arguably in the early stages of another transition fueled by the worsening Sino-US competition. While the organizing ideas of liberal internationalism—economic interdependence and institutional building—will remain resilient, whether or not minimal peace is sustainable will be determined by the outcome of the US-China competition.

scholarly journals Sad delusions: The decline and rise of Greater Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 187936652199975
Author(s):  
Richard Sakwa
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Order ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Fundamental Tension ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
West European

The end of the Cold War was accompanied by the idea that the fall of the Berlin Wall represented the beginning of the unification of Europe. Mikhail Gorbachev talked in terms of a “Common European Home,” an idea that continues in the guise of the project for a “Greater Europe.” However, right from the start, the transformative idea of Greater Europe was countered by the notion of “Europe whole and free,” whose fundamental dynamic was the enlargement of the existing West European order to encompass the rest of the continent. This was a program for the enlargement of the Atlantic system. After some prevarication, the enlargement agenda proved unacceptable to Moscow, and while it continues to argue in favor of transformation its main efforts are now devoted to creating some sort of “greater Eurasia.” There remains a fundamental tension between Atlanticist and pan-continental version of the post-–Cold War international order in the region. This tension gave rise to conflict and war: in 2008 (the Russo-Georgian War) and again from 2014 (Ukraine), and to what some call the Second Cold War. The continent is once again divided. However, pan-continentalism is far from dead, and although Greater Eurasian ideas have thrived, some sort of Greater European continentalism remains on the agenda. Is this, though, no more than a “sad delusion” or a genuine possibility?

Cold-War Commons: Tragedy, Critique, and the Future of the Illiberal Problem Space

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 457-488
Author(s):  
Monica Eppinger
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Problem Space ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Property Regimes

Abstract Major twentieth-century social theories like socialism and liberalism depended on property as an explanatory principle, prefiguring a geopolitical rivalry grounded in differing property regimes. This article examines the Cold War as an under-analyzed context for the idea of “the tragedy of the commons.” In Soviet practice, collectivization was meant to provide the material basis for cultivating particular forms of sociability and an antidote to the ills of private property. Outsiders came to conceptualize it as tragic in both economic and political dimensions. Understanding the commons as a site of tragedy informed Western “answers” to the “problem” of Soviet collective ownership when the Cold War ended. Privatization became a mechanism for defusing old tragedies, central to a post-Cold War project of advancing “market democracy.” Meanwhile, the notion of an “illiberal commons” stands ready for redeployment in future situations conceived as tragically problematic.

The Humdrum Use of Ultimate Authority: Defining and Analysing Chapter VII Resolutions

2009 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrik Johansson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Security Council Resolution ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Standard Definition ◽  
The Status ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Business As Usual

AbstractUnder Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, the Security Council has the unique authority to make decisions that are binding on member states. However, the lack of a standard definition of what makes a Security Council resolution "a Chapter VII resolution" has caused disagreement regarding the status of several resolutions. This is unfortunate as the international community should never have to doubt whether a Security Council resolution is in fact adopted under Chapter VII or not. It is also unnecessary. This article addresses this problem by proposing a definition of Chapter VII resolutions, based on two criteria referred to as "Article 39 determinations" and "Chapter VII decisions". On the basis of the proposed definition, the article describes and analyses a dramatic increase in the use of Chapter VII during the post-Cold War era. It concludes that as Chapter VII has come to constitute the majority of Security Council resolutions in recent years, the resort to Chapter VII no longer signifies exceptional determination and resolve, which it did during the Cold War; instead Chapter VII today implies business as usual. An appendix lists all Chapter VII resolutions from 1946–2008.

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