State Failure and the Political Violence Phenomenon: A Comparative Analysis of Iraq and Syria Cases

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 170 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Eylem Özkaya Lassalle
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
State Failure ◽  
The Political ◽  
Collective Violence ◽  
Short Run ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War

The concept of failed state came to the fore with the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the USSR and the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Political violence is central in these discussions on the definition of the concept or the determination of its dimensions (indicators). Specifically, the level of political violence, the type of political violence and intensity of political violence has been broached in the literature. An effective classification of political violence can lead us to a better understanding of state failure phenomenon. By using Tilly’s classification of collective violence which is based on extent of coordination among violent actors and salience of short-run damage, the role played by political violence in state failure can be understood clearly. In order to do this, two recent cases, Iraq and Syria will be examined.

State Failure and the Political Violence Phenomenon: A Comparative Analysis of Iraq and Syria Cases

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 170
Author(s):  
K. Eylem Özkaya Lassalle
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
State Failure ◽  
The Political ◽  
Collective Violence ◽  
Short Run ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War

The concept of failed state came to the fore with the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the USSR and the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Political violence is central in these discussions on the definition of the concept or the determination of its dimensions (indicators). Specifically, the level of political violence, the type of political violence and intensity of political violence has been broached in the literature. An effective classification of political violence can lead us to a better understanding of state failure phenomenon. By using Tilly’s classification of collective violence which is based on extent of coordination among violent actors and salience of short-run damage, the role played by political violence in state failure can be understood clearly. In order to do this, two recent cases, Iraq and Syria will be examined.

Prologue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter D. McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Intangible Heritage ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Print Literacy

The section introduces Part II, which spans the period 1946 to 2014, by tracing the history of the debates about culture within UNESCO from 1947 to 2009. It considers the central part print literacy played in the early decades, and the gradual emergence of what came to be called ‘intangible heritage’; the political divisions of the Cold War that had a bearing not just on questions of the state and its role as a guardian of culture but on the idea of cultural expression as a commodity; the slow shift away from an exclusively intellectualist definition of culture to a more broadly anthropological one; and the realpolitik surrounding the debates about cultural diversity since the 1990s. The section concludes by showing how at the turn of the new millennium UNESCO caught up with the radical ways in which Tagore and Joyce thought about linguistic and cultural diversity.

scholarly journals Istota totalitaryzmu. Wokół teorii Zbigniewa Brzezińskiego i Carla Friedricha

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-199
Author(s):  
Adam Wielomski
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
West Germany ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Famous Book ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War

The aim of this text is a contemporary estimation of the thesis formed in a famous book by Zbigniew Brzeziński and Carl Friedrich, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (1956). This is a classic text of Western political science about totalitarianism, simultaneously scientific and political. Scientific, because it presents the idea of three types of political regimes in the 20th century: totalitarian, authoritarian, and liberal-democratic. Political, because the term “totalitarianism” was very useful in the time of the Cold War. This term presents the old (Nazi Germany) and new (Stalinist Russia) totalitarian states as equal political enemies of the USA, equal in their hostility to political and individual freedom, i.e. America’s creed. By using this term, the Americans can create a horrible picture of Russian communism as totalitarian, the same as Hitler’s regime, while presenting old enemies (West Germany, Italy, and Japan) as good friends of both the USA and freedom, because in this moment these states are democratic and liberal. The new term ended the old line of the delimitation between fascist or pro fascist and antifascist states and legitimates the new alliance between the USA and Franco’s Spain. The author analyses the definition of totalitarianism by Brzeziński and Friedrich as well as the political and ideological accusations made against this book by leftist critics.

scholarly journals The Political Economy of Violent Conflict Within States

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Achim Wennmann
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Criminal Violence ◽  
The Cold War

The political economy of violent conflict is a body of literature that investigates how economic issues and interests shape the dynamics associated to violent conflict after the Cold War. The literature covers an area of research focusing on civil wars—the predominant type of conflict in the 1990s and early 2000s—and an area of research focusing on other types of violent conflict within states, such as permanent emergencies, criminal violence, and political violence associated to turbulent transitions. The first area involves four themes that have come to characterize discussions on the political economy of civil wars, including research on the role of greed and grievance in conflict onset, on economic interests in civil wars, on the nature of conflict economies, and on conflict financing. The second area responds to the evolution of violent conflict beyond the categories of “interstate” or “civil” war and shows how political economy research adapted to new types of violent conflict within states as it moved beyond the “post-Cold War” era. Overall, the literature on the political economy of violence conflict emphasizes the role of informal systems behind power, profits and violence, and the economic interests and functions of violence underlying to violent conflict. It has also become a conceptual laboratory for scholars who after years of field research tried to make sense of the realities of authoritarian, violent or war-affected countries. By extending the boundaries of the literature beyond the study of civil wars after the Cold War, political economy research can serve as an important analytical lens to better understand the constantly evolving nature of violent conflict and to inform sober judgment on the possible policy responses to them.

Turf Wars in Colombia’s Red Corner

2020 ◽  
pp. 35-58
Author(s):  
Teo Ballvé
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Social Space ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Powerful Effect ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
State Projects ◽  
Turf Wars

This chapter shows how, in the 1970s and 1980s, the Cold War drew Urabá's economies of violence into the vortex of insurgency and counterinsurgency, reinforcing the region's reputation as a stateless frontier. The political violence wracking Urabá had clinched its position in the minds of locals and outsiders alike as a lawless, stateless frontier zone. While critical of these discourses of statelessness, the chapter demonstrates how they had a powerful effect on local political struggles. The frontier effect enabled the proliferation of competing state projects, turning the region into an even more fractious social space—a jagged mosaic of rival territorialities. But the violent clashes between insurgency and counterinsurgency that made Urabá into the “red corner” of Colombia were not caused by the absence of the state; they were conflicts over the form and content of statehood itself. None of these struggles played out in the absence of governmental structures and practices.

Espionage and Exile

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phyllis Lassner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Crises ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
John Le Carre ◽  
The Cold War

Espionage and Exile demonstrates that from the 1930s through the Cold War, British Writers Eric Ambler, Helen MacInnes, Ann Bridge, Pamela Frankau, John le Carré and filmmaker Leslie Howard combined propaganda and popular entertainment to call for resistance to political oppression. Instead of constituting context, the political engagement of these spy fictions bring the historical crises of Fascist and Communist domination to the forefront of twentieth century literary history. They deploy themes of deception and betrayal to warn audiences of the consequences of Nazi Germany's conquests and later, the fusion of Fascist and Communist oppression. Featuring protagonists who are stateless and threatened refugees, abandoned and betrayed secret agents, and politically engaged or entrapped amateurs, all in states of precarious exile, these fictions engage their historical subjects to complicate extant literary meanings of transnational, diaspora and performativity. Unsettling distinctions between villain and victim as well as exile and belonging dramatizes relationships between the ethics of espionage and responses to international crises. With politically charged suspense and narrative experiments, these writers also challenge distinctions between literary, middlebrow, and popular culture.

‘There shall be no musical servitude’: Towards a Multitudinous Shostakovich in the West

2020 ◽  
Vol 145 (2) ◽  
pp. 495-505
Author(s):  
EIRINI DIAMANTOULI
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

Ideologically motivated attempts to elucidate Shostakovich’s political views and to determine whether and how they may be coded into his compositions have come to characterize the Western reception of the composer’s works since his death in 1975. Fuelled by the political oppositions of the cold war, Shostakovich’s posthumous reputation in the West has been largely shaped by two conflicting perspectives. These have positioned him on the one hand as a secret dissident, bent and broken under the unbearable strain of totalitarianism, made heroic through his veiled musical resistance to Communism; and on the other hand as a composer compromised by his capitulation to the regime – represented in an anachronistic musical style. Both perspectives surrender Shostakovich and his music to a crude oversimplification driven by vested political interests. Western listeners thus conditioned are primed to hear either the coded dissidence of a tragic victim of Communist brutality or the sinister submission of a ‘loyal son of the Communist Party’.1 For those prepared to accept Shostakovich as a ‘tragic victim’, the publication of his purported memoirs in 1979, ‘as related to and edited by’ the author Solomon Volkov, presents a tantalizing conclusion: bitterly yet discreetly scornful of the Stalinist regime, Shostakovich was indeed a secret dissident and this dissidence was made tangible in his music.

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.

Od politycznej współpracy do gospodarczej konkurencji – przemysł obronny krajów Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej po upadku ZSRR

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-98
Author(s):  
Mieczysław Szlachta ◽  
Andrzej Ciupiński
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
Defense Industry ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Sectors ◽  
Central Eastern Europe ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Cold War

The paper presents the scope and scale of transformation of the defense industries of Central Eastern Europe (CEE) countries after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR. The starting point is the role and position of the armaments economy sector (armaments economy environment), embedded in the realities of the centrally planned economy, and its submission to the politics of the USSR. The turn of the centuries was a period of political and economic transformation conducted during the conditions of a deep economic recession. The defense industry was one of the economic sectors most affected by the crisis. The economic and defense policy of CEE countries was aimed at preserving the capabilities of the armaments sector. Restructuring activities initiated and forced by the change of the political and economic environment have already brought noticeable effects, even though the process has not yet been completed. Defense industry enterprises have become entities operating on the same terms and conditions as other companies on the competitive market. The method of comparative analysis and a case study supplemented with elements of descriptive statistics were used to evaluate the course of the processes. The study has been focused on the analysis of the course of the changes and examination of effects of the analyzed phenomena for the economy and defense of the CEE countries, taking into account primarily their scale and scope.

scholarly journals From Iron Curtain to Velvet Curtain? Peter Brook's Hamlet and the Origins of British–Soviet Cultural Relations during the Cold War

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARAH DAVIES
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Divide

The article assesses the significance of the Moscow tour of Peter Brook's Hamlet. It considers how far the tour succeeded in overcoming the symbolic iron curtain by examining what Hamlet meant for contemporaries on both sides of the political divide. It argues that the Hamlet tour served at once to perpetuate and undermine the divisions between East and West, confirming Iriye's observation that on one level the Cold War intensified antagonism between states, while on another it helped to foster the growth of internationalist sentiment.

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