Many Secessionist Movements, One International System

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Ryan D. Griffiths

This chapter focuses on the strategy and tactics of secessionist movements, and the game they play with states and the international community to win their sovereignty. The chapter provides a conceptual theoretical treatment of the sovereignty game. It assesses six identifiable kinds of movements: democratized, indigenous legal, weak combative, strong combative, decolonial, and de facto, through an analysis of all contemporary movements. The chapter brings together three research areas that are usually treated separately: the work on de facto states, the scholarship on secessionist political parties in advanced democracies, and the study of secessionist conflict. Ultimately, the chapter clarifies the behavior of diverse secessionist movements and accurately predicts the tactics they adopt. It focuses on what they do to achieve independence, which is a neglected area of research, and a vital one given that secessionist behavior is destabilizing and sometimes violent.

Author(s):  
James Ker-Lindsay

There are few questions more interesting and more important for the international community than the issue of how new states are created and accepted into the wider global system through the process of recognition. While there are thousands of ethnic groups around the world, there are just 193 member states of the United Nations. And yet, for many years, the foreign policy aspects of secession and the recognition of seceding territories have received relatively little attention by scholars in the field of politics and international relations. This was largely because the subject was seen to be a marginal interest. Few territories managed to stage a credible attempt at secession. Almost none managed to gain widespread acceptance. However, over the past decade, there has been a significant growth in the attention given to secession and recognition in international relations. This has been particularly apparent since Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia, in 2008, and because of heightened secessionist tensions in the former Soviet Union. To date, the question of de facto states—territories that are unrecognized or partially recognized—has been at the heart of studies into secession and recognition in the field of politics and international relations. Attention in this area has tended to focus on the nature, structure, and international interaction of unrecognized territories. However, the scope of research is now widening. As well as interest in the historical development of attitudes towards secession and recognition practices, scholars are now looking at the way in which parent states—as the territories they have broken away from are generally known—attempt to prevent de facto states from being recognized or otherwise legitimized by the international community. Meanwhile, increasing attention is also being given to the role of external parties, such as great powers, as well as to the efforts of secessionist territories themselves to find ways to encourage recognition, or at least to participate more widely in the international system. Therefore, while the community of scholars working in the field of secession and recognition is still relatively small, the subject itself is undergoing rapid growth.


Author(s):  
Harold A. Trinkunas

Latin America has long aspired for an interstate system based on the principles of nonintervention and adherence to international law. Over time, the region has become increasingly free of war, and interstate disputes are frequently settled via diplomacy or by international courts. But it has achieved a largely “negative” peace as peaceful relations in the region are neither the result of nor have produced deeper commercial integration, effective regional organizations, or epistemic security communities. This chapter examines realist, liberal, and constructivist explanations to explain the sources of peace and peaceful change in Latin America, as well as how structural changes in the international system have affected the region. In particular, it analyzes how Latin America’s relative weakness in terms of material capabilities has led it to rely on diplomacy, “soft balancing,” and norms entrepreneurship in international law to secure its interest in a progressively more peaceful and rule-bound international order.


1998 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 475-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Ertman

Almost none of the conditions that, according to the latest research, favor democratic durability were present in Western Europe between the world wars. Yet only four Western European states became dictatorships during this period, whereas the others remained democratic despite economic crisis, an unhelpful international system, and the lure of nondemocratic alternatives. Several recent works offer new explanations for this pattern of interwar outcomes. Insofar as these works analyze the entire universe of Western European cases, they represent an important methodological advance. However, they remain too wedded to a class-coalitional framework to provide both a parsimonious and a historically accurate account of why democracy collapsed in some states but not in others. This article proposes an alternative explanatory framework that focuses on how political parties can shape association life in such a way as to support or undermine democracy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 675-684
Author(s):  
Johannes Krause

Despite the 2020 reform of Germany’s national parliament voting law, the debate about a robust voting system has not ended . Träger and Jacobs have convincingly shown that Naun­dorf’s suggestion to introduce a parallel voting system creates more problems than it solves, and thus more far-reaching approaches have to be considered . One way to stop the Bunde­stag from growing is to reject the two vote-system . Comparable to the system of Thuringia’s local elections, with open lists and three votes per voter, both the standard size of the Bun­destag can be safely adhered to and at the same time a personalized proportional represen­tation can be maintained . Among other advantages, the voters would have greater influence on the personalized composition of the Bundestag . In particular, reservations on the part of the political parties could stand in the way of such a sustainable solution to the ongoing problems with the German electoral system .


Does political Islam have a specific vision of global politics? How has the foreign policy of Islamist forces developed in order to impose their ideas onto the diplomatic agenda of other countries? How do these actors perceive the world, international affairs, and the way Islamic countries should engage with the international system? Eager to break with the dominant grammar of international relations, and instead to fuse Muslim states in a unique religious and political entity, Muslim actors have had to face up to the realities that they had promised to transform. Drawing on a series of case studies, this collective work sheds light on six national trajectories of Islamism: in Morocco (the Party of Justice and Development), Tunisia (Ennhada), Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood), Palestine (Hamas), Lebanon (Hizbullah) and Turkey (AKP). It looks at what has been produced by the representatives of political Islam in each case, and the way these representatives have put their words and their ideological aspirations into action within their foreign policies.


Author(s):  
DAVID SCOTT

By examining the strategic dialogue process, this chapter conducts a wider evaluation across time and the issue areas of the relationship. It provides a careful textual analysis of the discourse mechanisms that Europe and China are using to develop their political language; but it also points to the gaps, inconsistencies, and slippages between what is being said and what is being understood. The discussion considers the emergent actors to be seeking pathways in a fluid international environment, in which they sometimes seem to be on parallel paths, at other times on divergent ones, with the result that it cannot easily be deduced at this stage whether these pathways will lead to a common end destination or not. Still, if liberalism-functionalism has any credence, then EU multilateralism may also be encouraging similar multilateralism trends in China.


UK Politics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 121-143
Author(s):  
Andrew Blick

This chapter switches the focus to political parties. It looks at their individual roles and how they operate. The chapter discusses the parties that constitute the ‘party system’. It considers the two main parties operating at the UK level: the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. It also looks at the smaller parties, such as the Liberal Democrats. The chapter considers the political approach of the various parties and the type of support they attract. It also looks at how parties are funded. The chapter provides a number of theoretical perspectives to help with an analysis of political parties. These are: the extent to which parties pursue values or power; the respective roles of their members and leaders; groupings within parties; how far the UK has a two-party system or whether our definition of the party system should be revised; and the relationships between the various parities. The chapter then gives examples of how these ideas play out with specific focus on recent events involving the Conversative and Labour parties. The chapter asks: do members have too much influence over their parties? The chapter ends by asking: where are we now?


Author(s):  
Martin Dixon ◽  
Robert McCorquodale ◽  
Sarah Williams

International law is a description of an entire legal system: the international legal system. It is an international legal system by which legal rules are created in order to structure and organise societies and relationships. It acknowledges the influence of political, economic, social and cultural processes upon the development of legal rules. This chapter discusses the relevance of international law; the international community and international law; theories of international law; and the practice of international law.


2019 ◽  
pp. 111-139
Author(s):  
Charlie Laderman

This chapter examines Woodrow Wilson’s pragmatic decision not to declare war on the Ottoman Empire after American entry into the First World War. It explains why this policy choice offers important insights into Wilson’s attitude toward the Allied powers, particularly the British Empire. It evaluates Wilson’s broader attitude to Britain and his attitude toward an Anglo-American alliance. The chapter emphasizes the clash between Wilson and Roosevelt over whether the United States should declare war on the Ottoman Empire, and what this reveals about their humanitarian visions and broader conceptions of international order. In doing so, it traces the emergence of Wilson’s own solution to the Armenian question as part of a reformed, American-led international system.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-222
Author(s):  
Ali AbolAli Aghdaci

The foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the administration of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, due to its importance and its not so in significant achievements, from the structuralist point of view, created a different identity and role in international relations and a special approach in relation to foreign and international systems. The author’s main question is that what impact has the foreign policy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had in the international community? It seems that the role of domestic norms that came from the international community was damaged by internal policies due to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s policies, which, from the structuralist point of view, had a profound effect on the declining of Iranian foreign policy during the Ahmadinejad era in the international system. Direct conflict with the global system, presenting incorrect policies of foreign policy of the Islamic Republic, the lack accepting common understanding minds of the international community, non-convergence in foreign policy, the adoption of irrational foreign policy, are all important factors that could undermine the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the public opinion of the international community.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document