Re-Inhabiting Inner Areas Triggering New Regeneration Trajectories: The Case Study of Sicani in Sicily

The Italian debate on the so-called ‘inner areas’ has received a much-needed boost, following the COVID-19 pandemic, which has further highlighted the differences between metropolitan and inner areas. While the progressive depopulation of inner areas is a worrying phenomenon, the limits of incessant urbanisation and the concentration of settlement and infrastructure policies in large conurbations have become evident. Departing from the framework of the B4R-Branding4Resilience research project of national interest and, by continuing in the furrow initiated by the SNAI, but also surpassing it, the aim of the University of Palermo’s research is to define the requirement for a more inclusive settlement model in the Sicani area in Sicily (Italy) to re-balance existing asymmetries by recharging peripheral areas with new centrality. The aims of the research are to demonstrate that inner areas could be an engine for innovation, thereby outlining a roadmap through which to encourage the resilience of new sustainable lifestyles. These aims would be achieved by working on new perspectives and projects, which are capable of radically modifying production, consumption, and tourism dynamics and work/life models, and which are gleaned from a study regarding the Sicani area in Sicily. The paper discusses case study quantitative and qualitative analyses and first results.

From Kyoto to Paris

The Earth Summit of 1992 held in Rio de Janeiro awakened the consciousness of the world to the danger of climate change. The establishment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change provided the platform for parties to negotiate on ways of moving forward. The global acknowledgement of the weightiness of the climate change and the future of the planet galvanized international agreements to this regard. Consequently, a landmark agreement was brokered in 1992 at Kyoto, Japan and 2015 in Paris, France. However, the strong issues of national interest tend to bedevil the implementation that would take the world forward on climate change. The chapter therefore examined multilateralism from the platform of climate change conferences and analyzed the political undertone behind disappointing outcomes even when most of the negotiators realized that the only way to salvage the impending doom is a multilateral binding agreement when nation-state can subsume their narrow interest.

Game of Thrones and International Politics in Realism Perspective

Since the Second World War realism paradigm has been most prominent and successful in the discipline of international relations. Realist theory interprets the role of the state in world politics in which the state's national interest is the primary variable. To attain the state's national interest power (in military and economic terms) is a very essential tool. The element of power has shaped the anarchic political system. HBO's Season' Game of Throne' is most compatible with the approaches of the international political system, especially to understand the realist paradigm. In this season different power centers were playing the game of power politics. Iron Throne had a hegemonic status and was considered as a supreme power in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, which created the anarchy. Competing for the power, losing the power, and attaining the power was creating the an archical situation in the whole season in which different actors and kingdoms made their strategies and joined uneven alliances. So Game of Throne is providing a better way to comprehend the international anarchy and political realism.

CONCEPTUAL THEORETICAL AND LEGAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE THEORY OF NATIONAL INTEREST

The analysis is based on a systematic and comprehensive theoretical and legal study of the legal provision of national interests. The study of its conceptual foundations in dialectical unity and interrelation of all aspects of this legal phenomenon is carried out. The conceptual theoretical foundations of the legal provision of national interests are defined, including the genesis, nature, concept, signs, essence and content of national interests, their classification and correlation with law, the model of legal provision of national interests is considered and characterized, including the stages of their awareness, formulation, coordination, formation and implementation by appropriate mechanisms, directions for its improvement.

Varieties of international reconciliation: the configuration of interest and reflection after conflict

After conflict, states occasionally succeed in reconciling with former adversaries. When they do, they do so in different ways. Some grudgingly sign a treaty to signal the end of a conflict. Others provide for not only reparations and compensations but also economic assistance as material evidence of reconciliation. Yet others offer apologies, official and unofficial, and engage their former adversaries in reflective dialog that transforms their relationship from enmity to amity. Is there a way to systemically organize different ways in which states reconcile? Can different types of reconciliation be identified? If so, what explains the types? We address these questions in this article. Based on our survey of war terminations in the post-World War II period, we identify four different types of reconciliation that former injurious states have made with their victim states – procedural, material, ideational, and substantial. We hypothesize that their choice of a reconciliation type can be explained in terms of a configuration of national interest and national reflection. In this article, we engage in a structured comparative analysis of the cases of reconciliation between France-Algeria, Japan-Korea, Germany-Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, and Germany-Poland – that we argue closely resemble the four ideal types – and demonstrate that our hypotheses are confirmed. We conclude with a consideration of how likely it is for ideational and material reconciliation to develop into substantial reconciliation

The Wilmot Committee: Redefining Relief and National Interest in Britain during the French Revolution

Although anti-Catholicism and anti-Jacobinism primed many Britons to fear what one observer called “the hordes of vagabond French” who reached their shores in the fall of 1792, others launched widespread relief efforts. Among the more remarkable was the Wilmot Committee. This subscription charity convened in September 1792, channeling donations from the public to destitute French priests at a time when the British government remained hesitant to directly aid refugees from revolutionary France. This article situates the committee's particular structures in both their eighteenth-century philanthropic contexts and Britain's history of aid to foreign refugees. It then traces interconnections between charitable giving and wartime exigencies, arguing that the Wilmot Committee, which managed relief efforts first to clergy and then also to laity throughout the subsequent war years in an evolving partnership with government, played a crucial role in shaping and shifting attitudes toward foreigners during an era of ideological revolution. Ultimately, the committee worked alongside legislation like the Aliens and Emigrant Corps Acts to underline that foreigners of different religious persuasions—provided their loyalties were confirmed, their principles appropriate, and their backgrounds appealing—might be mobilized to strengthen national interests. By the 1790s, shared opposition to revolutionary republican ideology came to supersede shared Protestantism in predicting foreigners’ utility to Britain.

Global Eclectic Treatment of Covid-19: Global, Regional, and National Perspectives on Common Enemy

After being called the UN's, COVID-19 has become a global common enemy today. The escalation of the pandemic has been responded to nationally, regionally, as well as globally. However, the efforts of the United Nations as the most significant international organization are interpreted differently at the regional and national levels. That way, there will be a gap in understanding between the handling of COVID-19 at the global, regional, and national levels. Therefore, this paper discusses further how the COVID-19 as a common global enemy is reflected in regional and national actions against this pandemic? The global eclectic theory is explored to explain how global concepts relate to more specific concepts. Comparing the COVID-19 handling policies in ASEAN, SAARC, and the EU is needed to deeply explain the differences in handling the outbreak in each region. The result shows that common enemies do not automatically reflect joint regional action. National interest is still challenging to consolidate at the regional, furthermore global level. Moreover, cultural differences between countries cannot be reduced quickly in global matters.

Review of Kenneth W. Thompson, Political Realism and the Crisis of World Politics: An American Approach to Foreign Policy (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press; London, Oxford University Press, 1960)

Wight described this book as a ‘primer or introduction’ to American realism concerning international politics, with attention to the views of Halle, Kennan, Lippmann, Morgenthau, Niebuhr, Nitze, and Spykman, among others. Thompson highlights continuities with traditional diplomatic theory, illustrated notably by Churchill’s statesmanship and political philosophy. In Wight’s view the book presents ‘original thinking of a high order’. Moreover, Thompson ‘brings out more clearly than some realists the limitations of the “national interest” principle’. Wight concludes that Thompson stands out as ‘a realist of the centre, likely neither to be accused of disparaging morality, nor to be so emotionally disturbed by the consequences of clear vision that he emigrates for Utopia.’

Review of Hans J. Morgenthau, Dilemmas of Politics, and Correspondence (University of Chicago Press; and London, Cambridge University Press, 1958)

In Wight’s view, ‘Perhaps the most interesting thing about this book is that it does not mention Morgenthau’s colleague at Chicago, Leo Strauss [ … ] Agreed in their concern about the retreat of political science into “the trivial, the formal, the methodological, the purely theoretical, the remotely historical”, they are divided by the gulf of natural law.’ Morgenthau asserted, however, that Wight in his review had made ‘a factual error’. Morgenthau quoted another one of his books, In Defense of the National Interest: ‘There is a profound and neglected truth hidden in Hobbes’s extreme dictum that the state creates morality as well as law and that there is neither morality nor law outside the state. Universal moral principles, such as justice or equality, are capable of guiding political action only to the extent that they have been given concrete content and have been related to political situations by society.’ Morgenthau wrote in criticism of Wight’s review: ‘To say that a truth is “hidden” in an “extreme” dictum can hardly be called an endorsement of the dictum. To call a position “extreme” is not to identify oneself with the position but to disassociate oneself from it. In the quoted passage I was trying to establish the point, in contrast to Hobbes’s, that moral principles are universal and, hence, are not created by the state.’ Wight replied: ‘I am sorry to have misinterpreted Professor Morgenthau, but I rejoice that my error has evoked an authoritative exegesis of a disputed passage.’

Is There a Philosophy of Statesmanship?

This essay assumes that readers will be familiar with Wight’s analysis distinguishing three traditions of thinking about international politics and will therefore recognize ‘three types’. The ‘three groups’, Wight observes, consist of (1) ‘idealists’ and ‘revolutionaries’ and ‘Utopians’ committed to serving the ‘general will’ and ‘the cause’; (2) ‘moralists’ and ‘Grotians’ dedicated to upholding treaties and the rule of law; and (3) ‘realists’ and ‘Machiavellians’ concerned with calculating how to defend and advance ‘the national interest’. With regard to survival imperatives, however, Wight holds that ‘all statesmen are realists’. He also qualifies this exposition of three traditions of thinking about international relations by pointing out that some Grotians and moralists have championed ‘a different Utopia’, an ideal distinct from the revolutionary uniformity sought by certain religions and ideologies. This different Utopia was the League of Nations, an institution designed to bring about a peaceful universal legal order. The League’s advocates expected a majority of nations, backed by world public opinion, to maintain peace and order through rational appeals and, if necessary, economic sanctions, with war as a final recourse to restore international amity.