Search

Begin New Search Topic Sovereignty Author Tobias Debiel

1. State Failure Revisited I: Globalization of Security and Neighborhood Effects, INEF-Report 87

Author:
Tobias Debiel and Daniel Lambach
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Development and Peace
Abstract:
'State failure' has become a part of the global post‐9/11 security calculus. Faltering states are presented as dangers to international stability, as terrorist safe havens and as 'black holes' of global politics. However, the political and academic debate about this phenomenon still leaves much to be desired. This working paper and its companion piece (INEF Report 88/2006) try to revisit the phenomenon from new perspectives. The focus of “State Failure Revisited I” is on the globalization of security and neighborhood effects.
Topic:
Security, International Political Economy, Sovereignty, and Terrorism

2. Towards a New Profile? Development, Humanitarian and Conflict-Resolution NGOs in the Age of Globalization

Author:
Tobias Debiel and Monika Sticht
Publication Date:
01-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Development and Peace
Abstract:
Both the significance and the profile of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have undergone a fundamental transformation in the past twenty years. In development cooperation new fields such as ecological sustainability and the promotion of democracy have emerged besides 'traditional' issues like poverty reduction. Furthermore, confronted with the realities of war and state decline, developmental NGOs pay increasing attention to crisis prevention and the resolution of conflicts; even a new type of nongovernmental organization has appeared, conflict-resolution NGOs. The change has been particularly dramatic in the area of humanitarian aid: even before the end of the Cold War some NGOs – Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) at the head of all of them – freed themselves from the “straitjacket” of only conducting humanitarian operations with the permission of the (often illegitimate) local government; meanwhile the concept of sovereignty has been substantially redefined. NGOs, however, also con- formed to the imperatives of globalization and commercialization, and formed oligopolies on the market for humanitarian aid. At the same time, they are also confronted with their own “powerlessness” in conflict zones: actors of violence and power-holders successfully attempt to instrumentalize humanitarian aid for their own purposes, and western military forces threaten the independence of humanitarian work by demanding subordination to political and strategic goals.
Topic:
Globalization, Government, Humanitarian Aid, Non-Governmental Organization, Privatization, and Sovereignty