Health Diplomacy as an Instrument of Indonesian Foreign Policy

Indonesia’s foreign policy is dynamic, especially in the COVID-19 Pandemic Era. When Indonesia experienced an increase in COVID-19 cases, it identified it as a foreign policy issue requiring attention. It focused on promoting national health resilience in health care as one way to protect the Indonesian state during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this paper is to explain and analyze Indonesia’s health diplomacy as an instrument of Indonesia’s foreign policy in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. It argues that, so far, the results of Indonesia’s health-focused approach are good and in line with Indonesia’s national interests. Indonesia’s active role and involvement in international forums has a diplomatic purpose but has also helped other countries. This indicates that the health diplomacy carried out by Indonesia has had a major impact on regional and global stability. In addition, Indonesia’s health diplomacy has resulted in it receiving assistance in the form of medical devices and vaccines provided by other countries for handling COVID-19 in Indonesia. Indonesia was also the driving force in the initiation in the 75th United Nations General Assembly of measures giving voice to the availability of medical devices and vaccine equality for all countries in the world.

Foreign policy change as rhetorical politics: domestic-regional constellation of Global South states

Although the recent advancements in critical constructivist IR on political rhetoric has greatly improved our understanding of linguistic mechanisms of political action, we need a sharp understanding of how rhetoric explains foreign policy change. Here we conceptualize a link between rhetoric and foreign policy change by foregrounding distinct dynamics at the regional and domestic institutional environments. Analytically, at the regional level, we suggest examining whether norms of foreign policy engagement are explicitly coded in treaties and agreements or implicit in conventions and practices of actors. And at the domestic level, we suggest examining whether a particular foreign policy issue area is concurrent or contested among interlocutors. In this constellation, we clarify how four different rhetorical strategies underwrites foreign policy change – persuasion, mediation, explication and reconstruction – how it operates, and the processes through which it unfolds in relation to multiple audiences. Our principal argument is that grand foreign policy change requires continuous rhetorical deployments with varieties of politics to preserve and stabilize the boundaries in the ongoing fluid relations of states. We illustrate our argument with an analysis of Brazil’s South-South grand strategy under the Lula administration and contrast it against the rhetoric of subsequent administrations. Our study has implications for advancing critical foreign policy analysis on foreign policy change and generally for exploring new ways of studying foreign policies of nonwestern postcolonial states in international relations.

Part I International Refugee Law— Reflections on the Scholarly Field, Ch.5 The Politics of International Refugee Law and Protection

This chapter evaluates how politics and power dynamics permeate the story of international refugee law and protection. Historically, scholars of politics have been more likely to study the causes of displacement; there have been fewer studies focused on the politics of reception, that is, how displaced people are treated, processed, and categorized when they flee. Part of the explanation for this puzzling feature of the scholarly literature is that the discipline of political science has tended to study immigration politics as part of domestic politics, assuming immigrants are economically motivated, and bracketing refugees as a niche foreign policy issue. A further explanation is that international refugee protection is often assumed to be simply a legal matter, not shaped by politics. The chapter argues that the global refugee regime looks the particular way it does because powerful political forces and dynamics have shaped and constrained it. In order to understand the politics of international refugee law and protection, one cannot just look at the law itself. To understand what the law means in practice, one must examine protection law in the context of both international geopolitics and the domestic politics of border control, state formation, and ongoing nation-building. The chapter then outlines seven key facets of the politics of international refugee law and protection.

Effects of Biased Media on Foreign Policy Preferences: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

The expansion of globalization has made a country's prosperity increasingly dependant on foreign politics. This article shows how Russian television's inflammatory coverage of European politics affected the vote during the European Union membership referendum in Latvia. For identification, I use plausibly exogenous variation of the signal from Russian analog TV towers that was available during the referendum to Latvian counties located close to the Russian border. The analysis of the electoral data showed that in counties with the Russian television reception, votes "for" outperformed votes "against" joining the European Union compared to counties without the reception. Moreover, the effect of Russian television persisted even in counties densely populated by ethnic Russians. Contrary to previous experimental studies, the evidence suggests that specifically in the context of foreign politics, foreign biased media increase the salience of foreign policy issue but is unable to shift the direction of the public response.

Japan joining Five Eyes would mean tough compromises

Significance The possibility of Japan joining the alliance is now seriously discussed in Tokyo and the capitals of the Five Eyes members -- the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Joining Five Eyes would signal Japan’s even deeper integration into US alliance structures, regionally and globally, and raise expectations for Japan to act as a fuller ally in all sorts of contingencies. Impacts Japan’s greatest potential contribution to allies is probably in signals and imagery intelligence, especially vis-a-vis China. The prime minister will avoid opening up a controversial foreign policy issue so close to a general election; his successor may be bolder. Japan’s partners still run a risk of leaks due to Japan’s lag in cybersecurity and institutional arrangements, but this is decreasing.

The press and Brazilian Foreign Policy: Brazil’s participation at the 1962 Punta del Este Conference

This paper seeks to comprehend how a portion of the Brazilian public opinion, specifically the press, understood Brazil’s participation in the Eighth Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, held in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in January 1962 – the Punta del Este Conference. This was a decisive meeting since it culminated in the expulsion of Cuba from the Organization of American States (OAS), because of the pressure exerted by the United States. Brazil distinguished itself for leading a group of countries against Cuba’s expulsion, based on the principle of self-determination and non-intervention. Although some authors believe the Punta del Este Conference to be the first event to massively mobilize the Brazilian public opinion around a foreign policy issue, they are not clear about what they understand as the concept of public opinion or how it positioned itself about Brazil’s participation in the Conference. Thus, this paper focuses on the coverage of three newspapers of national circulation (Jornal do Brasil, O Estado de São Paulo and Última Hora) between November 1961 and March 1962 to understand, through a content analysis method, how the press evaluated Brazil’s participation in the Punta del Este Conference. The results point to a bigger support of the Brazilian position and the Independent Foreign Policy. Recebido em: Agosto/2019. Aprovado em: julho/2020.

Popular conspiracy theories in Slovakia and the Czech Republic

The study presents popular conspiracy theories spread within the Czech and Slovak language milieu. Along with the growth in the number of internet portals disseminating this type of texts, their reflection in public opinion is also visible in the way almost every major foreign policy issue or domestic case is commented upon in public internet discussions. The authors seek to identify the narrative and rhetorical sources of conspiracism in these countries since the rise of modern nationalism in the 19th century, focusing on the events accompanying the creation of the common state of the Slovaks and Czechs, the period of the Second World War, the rule of the Communist regime, the events related to the fall of the Iron Curtain and the “Velvet Revolution” in 1989 up to the present. The paper focuses attention on group-shared images of the enemies and on mutual interactions between the interpretations of local events and global conspiracy theories, as well as updates or later reinterpretations of older conspiracy motifs.

Refuge beyond Reach

The core of the asylum regime is the principle of non-refoulement that prohibits governments from sending refugees back to their persecutors. Governments attempt to evade this legal obligation to which they have explicitly agreed by manipulating territoriality. A remote control strategy of “extraterritorialization” pushes border control functions hundreds or even thousands of kilometers beyond the state’s territory. Simultaneously, states restrict access to asylum and other rights enjoyed by virtue of presence on a state’s territory, by making micro-distinctions down to the meter at the borderline in a process of “hyper-territorialization.” This study analyzes remote controls since the 1930s in Palestine, North America, Europe, and Australia to identify the origins of different forms of remote control, explain how they work together as a system of control, and establish the conditions that enable or constrain them in practice. It argues that foreign policy issue linkages and transnational advocacy networks promoting a humanitarian norm that is less susceptible to the legal manipulation of territoriality constrains remote controls more than the law itself. The degree of constraint varies widely by the technique of remote control.

Partisan Cues and Opinion Formation on Foreign Policy

How does the extension of party conflict to a foreign policy issue affect the ability of Americans to form an opinion about the issue? We test this using elite references and longitudinal public opinion data about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, a salient foreign policy issue in the United States that is increasingly characterized by partisan divisions. Our findings demonstrate that since the turn of the 21st century, the availability and clarity of party cues have increased, as well as the share of Americans who hold an opinion about the issue. Applying regression models to individual-level data, we reveal that the extension of party conflict to this issue has made it easier for more Americans to form an opinion.