Search

Begin New Search Political Geography Global Focus Publication Year within 10 Years

5481. The Role of U.S. Elite Military Schools in Promoting Intercultural Understanding and Democratic Governance

Author:
Carol Atkinson
Publication Date:
07-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
Educational exchanges at the U.S. military’s war and staff colleges promote intercultural understanding, international security, and help the United States achieve its foreign policy goals. This article provides an overview of the different types of U.S. military education and training programs that are open to foreign participation, and explores the differences between these and civilian exchange programs. It looks at the impacts of military educational exchange programs on their participants, and also draws lessons learned for the design and administration of exchange programs.
Topic:
Education, Governance, Military Affairs, Democracy, Soft Power, Constructivism, and Socialization
Political Geography:
North America, Global Focus, and United States of America

5482. Exchanges and Peacemaking: Counterfactuals and Unexplored Possibilities

Author:
Ilain Wilson
Publication Date:
07-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
We may expect international exchange programmes to contribute to peaceful international relations, but how strong is the evidence that they actually do? In addition to the intercultural education discussed elsewhere in this issue, I classify mechanisms by which exchanges might contribute to peace into four categories – signaling, attitude change, network formation and institutional transfer – and assess the evidence that exchanges affect international relations through each of these mechanisms. Despite considerable research there are still important gaps in the evidence, and these gaps may have significant consequences for how we organize exchanges and what kinds of mobility we support.
Topic:
Research, Institutions, Peace, and International Exchange
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5483. Knowledge, Repetition and Power in Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Thought: Some Preliminary Comments on Methodology

Author:
Ali Balcı
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
This paper’s major motivation is to contribute to the debate on how international relations (IR) scholars can develop an alternative method for studying power. A focus on Islamic Sufi thinker Ibn Al-‘Arabi is suggested to demonstrate the early philosophical conceptualization of power relations in a non-Western context. For Ibn Al-‘Arabi, in a world in which unrepeatability is the rule, creating repeatability and fixation through interpretation is certainly done for worldly purposes. His work suggests that any attempt to understand “the cosmos” is an arbitrary intervention, which strictly reflects power relations among actors. Therefore, Ibn Al-‘Arabi’s work can trigger scholarly questions on not only methodology but also on the sociology of the IR discipline and foreign policy in a non-Western context. His arguments can be utilized in critical and poststructuralist conceptions of power in IR.
Topic:
International Relations, Islam, Power, Knowledge Systems, Ibn al-'Arabi, Interpretation, and Delimitation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5484. An Inter-Subsystemic Approach in International Relations

Author:
Haluk Özdemir
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
The main point of departure for this article is the incapacity of current international relations theorizing to explain both change and continuity without shifting between levels of analysis. The previous research agenda on system studies was renounced before it realized its potential. The concept of a subsystem has great potential for resolving this challenge. This article argues that the properties of the international system, including anarchy, are not constant, and show variation. To factor in this variation, first we need to identify subsystems (e.g. geographical or functional) that diverge across issue areas and functions. Then we need to look at the interactions between subsystems, which is a neglected aspect of the literature on subsystems. This article contributes to the debate by setting out a new research agenda to study the interactions between subsystems and their effects on the general system; that is, to identify when the system is stable and when it changes. This agenda suggests a particular focus on the inconsistencies, contradictions, and challenges that lie at the intersections of different subsystems.
Topic:
International Relations, Crisis Management, Strategic Culture, and Subsystem
Political Geography:
Turkey and Global Focus

5485. Social Institutions and Gender Inequality in Fragile States: Are They Relevant for the Post-MDG Debate?

Author:
Boris Branisa and Carolina Cardona
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD)
Abstract:
We focus on an issue that appears particularly relevant for fragile states and which has received little attention: social institutions related to gender inequality, defined as societal practices and legal norms that frame gender roles and the distribution of power between men and women in the family, market, and social and political life. We show empirically that fragile states perform worse than other non-fragile developing countries when considering these social institutions. We suggest that a special set of indicators reflecting social institutions related to gender inequality in both fragile states and non-fragile states should be considered in the post-MDG agenda.
Topic:
Development, Inequality, Millennium Development Goals, Fragile States, and Institutions
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5486. The Bounty of the Sea and Long-Run Development

Author:
Carl-Johan Dalgaard, Anne Sofie B. Knudsen, and Pablo Selaya
Publication Date:
09-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD)
Abstract:
What is the long run impact on development from di§erences in subsistence strategies during preindustrial times? Whereas this question has been explored from the point of view of agriculture, remarkably little attention has been paid to the complementary strategy of relying on marine resources. As a step towards closing this gap, we construct an index ñìthe Bounty of the Sea index ñwhich captures the potential abundance of exploitable marine Ösh that individual countries have had access to, and proceed to explore its correlation with economic development. Our analysis reveals that a greater Bounty of the Sea stimulated pre-industrial development, and that countries inhabited by people with ancestry in regions with abundant marine resources are richer today. Probing possible underlying reasons, we Önd that populations with ancestry in regions rich in marine resources di§er from societies with a purely agrarian legacy in terms of institutions, cultural values and average personality traits.
Topic:
Culture, Institutions, Economic Development, Fishing, and Personality
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5487. An Experimental Game on Entrepreneurship and Labour Protection Policy

Author:
Beatriz Muriel and Marcelo Gutierrez
Publication Date:
12-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD)
Abstract:
We developed a game, in the line of experimental economics, using an expected utility framework, applied to 108 participants. Specifically, we evaluated the hypothesis that, facing uncertainty over potential employees’ skills, employers prefer a flexible labour policy rather than a protectionist one, and when the option of flexible labour contracts is not available, they choose not to undertake a business, reducing job creation. The empirical results show that 79.3% of participants prefer a flexible labour policy, as well as that when this option is excluded, some participants abstain from business undertakings---reducing job creation---, and instead become workers.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, Risk, and Flexibility
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5488. Why Give Aid to Resource-Rich Autocrats?

Author:
Mare Sarr, Chiara Ravetti, and Tim Swanson
Publication Date:
11-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
Why give aid to resource-rich autocrats? We find that the interaction between natural resources and most forms of international aid results in enhanced political instability in most autocratic countries. Interestingly, some types of government aid (notably humanitarian aid) do not have this effect, indicating that the impact of aid varies with its form. Furthermore, we find that only aid structured in the form of loans (rather than grants) is more likely to flow toward resource-rich autocracies. This combination of loans with any political instability they may induce, can create speculative rights (for the donor) in the resource-riches of the recipient country. This potential claim on resources provides one important strategic reason to give aid to resource-rich autocrats. Aid can act as a form of foreign intervention in the pursuit of regime change, and claims on resources.
Topic:
Foreign Aid, Economic Growth, Dictatorship, Autocracy, Resource Management, and Looting
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5489. Using discrete choice experiments to regulate the provision of water services: Do status quo choices reflect preferences?

Author:
Bruno Lanz and Allan Provins
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
Discrete choice experiments (DCE) are increasingly used to quantify the demand for improvements to services provided by regulated utility companies and inform price controls. This form of preference elicitation, however, often reveals a high frequency of status quo (SQ) choices. This may signal an unwillingness of respondents to evaluate the proposed trade-offs in service levels, questioning the welfare theoretic interpretation of observed choices and the validity of the approach for regulatory purposes. Using the methodology for DCE in the regulation of water and sewerage services in England and Wales, our paper contributes to the understanding of SQ choices in several novel dimensions. First, we control for the perception of the SQ and the importance of attributes in day-to-day activities. Second, we use a split sample design to vary both the description of the SQ and the survey administration mode (online vs. in-person). Third, the service attributes can both improve or deteriorate, so that the SQ is not necessarily the least-cost option. Fourth, we examine SQ choices in individual choice tasks and across all tasks so as to identify the determinants of serial SQ choices. Our results suggest that individual SQ choices mostly reflect preferences and thus represent important information for the regulator. However, serial SQ choices are mainly driven by cognitive and/or contextual factors, and these responses should be analysed as part of standard validity tests.
Topic:
Regulation, Economy, Decision-Making, Utilities, Cost-Benefit Analysis, and Status Quo
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5490. Emissions Trading in the Presence of Price-Regulated Polluting Firms: How Costly Are Free Allowances?

Author:
Bruno Lanz and Sebastian Rausch
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
We study whether to auction or to freely distribute emissions allowances when some firms participating in emissions trading are subject to price regulation. We show that free allowances allocated to price-regulated firms effectively act as a subsidy to output, distort consumer choices, and generally induce higher output and emissions by price-regulated firms. This provides a cost-effectiveness argument for an auction-based allocation of allowances (or equivalently an emissions tax). For real-world economies such as the Unites States, in which about 20 percent of total carbon dioxide emissions are generated by price-regulated electricity producers, our quantitative analysis suggests that free allowances increase economy-wide welfare costs of the policy by 40-80 percent relative to an auction. Given large disparities in regional welfare impacts, we show that the inefficiencies are mainly driven by the emissions intensity of electricity producers in regions with a high degree of price regulation.
Topic:
Climate Change, Regulation, Electricity, Pollution, and Price
Political Geography:
Global Focus