scholarly journals Guerra y paz al sur del Sahara. Nuevos abordajes conceptuales, frente a un escenario cambiante

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. 308-330
Author(s):  
Diego Buffa ◽  
María José Becerra
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Peace Processes ◽  
Sub Saharan

En este artículo nos proponemos presentar nuevas corrientes y abordajes conceptuales, que nos permitan comprender problemáticas capitales del África subsahariana, como lo son los conflictos intra-estatales, las emergencias políticas complejas, el intervencionismo humanitario y los procesos de paz, gestados durantela Posguerra Fría; portadores de inéditas lógicas y parámetros rectores. Palabras Claves: conflictos, procesos de paz, África subsahariana.War and Peace South of the Sahara. New Conceptual Approaches,  Facing a Changing ScenarioAbstractIn this paper we present new trends  and conceptual approaches that will help us to understand some capital issues for Sub-Saharan Africa, such as the intra-state conflicts, complex political emergencies, humanitarian interventionism and peace processes, that were gestated during the Post-cold War and with its own original logics and guiding parameters.Keywords: conflicts, peace processes, Sub-Saharan Africa.

Conceptualizing Militias in Africa

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Tapscott
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Cumulative Effect ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Analytic Elements ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Legitimate Violence

Although militias have received increasing scholarly attention, the concept itself remains contested by those who study it. Why? And how does this impact contemporary scholarship on political violence? To answer these questions, we can focus on the field of militia studies in post–Cold War sub-Saharan Africa, an area where militia studies have flourished in the past several decades. Virtually all scholars of militias in post–Cold War Africa describe militias as fluid and changing such that they defy easy definition. As a result, scholars offer complex descriptors that incorporate both descriptive and analytic elements, thereby offering nuanced explanations for the role of militias in violent conflict. Yet the ongoing tension between accurate description and analytic definition has also produced a body of literature that is diffuse and internally inconsistent, in which scholars employ conflicting definitions of militias, different data sources, and often incompatible methods of analysis. As a result, militia studies yield few externally valid comparative insights and have limited analytic power. The cumulative effect is a schizophrenic field in which one scholar’s militia is another’s rebel group, local police force, or common criminal. The resulting incoherence fragments scholarship on political violence and can have real-world policy implications. This is particularly true in high-stakes environments of armed conflict, where being labeled a “militia” can lead to financial support and backing in some circumstances or make one a target to be eliminated in others. To understand how militia studies has been sustained as a fragmented field, this article offers a new typology of definitional approaches. The typology shows that scholars use two main tools: offering a substantive claim as to what militias are or a negative claim based on what militias are not and piggy-backing on other concepts to either claim that militias are derivative of or distinct from them. These approaches illustrate how scholars combine descriptive and analytic approaches to produce definitions that sustain the field as fragmented and internally contradictory. Yet despite the contradictions that characterize the field, scholarship reveals a common commitment to using militias to understand the organization of (legitimate) violence. This article sketches a possible approach to organize the field of militia studies around the institutionalization of violence, such that militias would be understood as a product of the arrangement of violence. Such an approach would both allow studies of militias to place their ambiguity and fluidity at the center of analyses while offering a pathway forward for comparative studies.

Response to Slater review ofCompetitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 388-389
Author(s):  
Steven Levitsky ◽  
Lucan A. Way
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
Hybrid Regimes ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
International Environment ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Cold War

Dan Slater offers thoughtful and incisive comments. We respond here to three of his points. The first is that by limiting our study to the post–Cold War period, we convert it into a “period piece,” akin to studies of fascist and communist regimes. Although this may be true, a historically bounded analysis is essential because of the changing character of the international environment. World historical time powerfully shapes regime outcomes. The prospects for democracy and authoritarianism during the Cold War, which was marked by global superpower rivalry, differed dramatically from those during periods of Western liberal hegemony. During the Cold War, for example, nearly all military coups ushered in authoritarian rule; after 1989, nearly 70 percent of coups led to multiparty elections In 1989, single-party rule predominated in Eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa; five years later, it had disappeared.

The Logic of Violent Ethnic Competition

2019 ◽  
pp. 102-118
Author(s):  
Manuel Vogt
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Ethnic Inequality ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Ethnic Organizations ◽  
Ethnic Competition ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Group Mobilization ◽  
Infrastructural Power

This chapter provides both quantitative and qualitative evidence from post–Cold War sub-Saharan Africa for how ethnic organizations affect outcomes of equality and peace in decolonized states. It first addresses the group-level relationship between ethnic organizations and ethnic inequality. These analyses show that groups that are politically mobilized through an ethnic party are more likely to become politically dominant than groups that lack the infrastructural power that such parties provide. The following part then moves to the systemic level to analyze the effect of group mobilization on the risk of ethnic civil conflict. The results reveal that it is the concurrence of group mobilization and ethnic inequality that makes the outbreak of violent conflict most likely in Africa’s decolonized states.

The ODA Charter and changing objectives of Japan's aid policy in Sub-Saharan Africa

1999 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 409-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bolade M. Eyinla
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
International Peace ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Aid Policy ◽  
East West

The end of the Cold War freed donors' aid policies from the co-ordinate system of East/West competition around the world. As a result, it was no longer necessary for the United States and its allies to continue providing aid on ideological grounds and/or geo-strategic needs. In the post-Cold War era, it became necessary for donor countries to evolve new rationales to convince their sceptical publics of the continued necessity for aid. One such new rationale was the imperative of promoting democracy and good governance as a way of guaranteeing international peace and security. This article examines the Japanese response to this development by identifying the factors that led to the inauguration of the ODA Charter. Thereafter, the content and intent of the Charter is examined and its application in Sub-Saharan Africa is analysed to highlight the changing objectives of Japanese aid policy in the continent.

A post-liberal peace: Eirenism and the everyday

2009 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 557-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
OLIVER P. RICHMOND
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Critical Research ◽  
Double Standards ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Peace Processes ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Liberal Peace ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Basic Goal ◽  
Hybrid Forms

AbstractThe ‘liberal peace’ is undergoing a crisis of legitimacy at the level of the everyday in post-conflict environments. In many such environments; different groups often locally constituted perceive it to be ethically bankrupt, subject to double standards, coercive and conditional, acultural, unconcerned with social welfare, and unfeeling and insensitive towards its subjects. It is tied to Western and liberal conceptions of the state, to institutions, and not to the local. Its post-Cold War moral capital, based upon its more emancipatory rather than conservative claims, has been squandered as a result, and its basic goal of a liberal social contract undermined. Certainly, since 9/11, attention has been diverted into other areas and many, perhaps promising peace processes have regressed. This has diverted attention away from a search for refinements, alternatives, for hybrid forms of peace, or for empathetic strategies through which the liberal blueprint for peace might coexist with alternatives. Yet from these strategies a post-liberal peace might emerge via critical research agendas for peacebuilding and for policymaking, termed here, eirenist. This opens up a discussion of an everyday ‘post-liberal peace’ and critical policies for peacebuilding.

Women’s Organizations and Peace Initiatives

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aili Mari Tripp
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Regional Organizations ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Peace Movements ◽  
Peace Negotiations ◽  
Peace Processes ◽  
Peace Initiatives ◽  
Successes And Challenges

Women’s peace movements in the post–Cold War era frequently share three common characteristics: a grassroots and local focus due to exclusion from formal peace negotiations; an early and sustained commitment to bridging differences between factions; and the use of international and regional pressures to create success on the local level. This chapter reviews each of these characteristics through case studies. Examples from Sri Lanka, Somalia, and Nepal illustrate the successes and challenges of grassroots or local peace movements led by women. Peace processes in Burundi, led by women activists, exemplify a commitment to unity across ethnic lines. The chapter concludes with examples from Liberia and Sierra Leone, demonstrating the efficacy of international and regional organizations supporting local peace movements.

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