Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI)
Abstract:
Müsiad International Fair held in Istanbul in 2014 aroused great public interest due to the strong
presence of political elites as well as to the mobilization of a large network of institutions, firms and
media partners. International exhibitions are relevant fields to explore the formation of trade circuits
and the creation of sociabilities, as well as to question the political and international issues central
to the construction of trade networks and markets. This event appears as the representation of the
Turkish state as it is formed under the AKP power. We witness a double trend of reconfiguration
and of internationalization of the state constituting processes through the phenomena of increased
interactions between private enterprise and public action on one side and the shrinkage of patronage
networks on the other. Participating to this event therefore becomes a question of legitimization
and delegitimization for private actors regarding these networks of power, the production of which
is based on the presentation of economic and industrial productions and goes together with the
creation of Imaginaries. The ethnographic study of the fair shows how industrial, cultural and symbolic
representations bring about the production of two types of Imaginary, one related to the reinvention of
the idea of the ummah across merchant networks and the other referring to the supremacy of Turkey
as the carrier of this project.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Sociology, Political Science, Networks, State, and Ethnography
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI)
Abstract:
Since the Kuomintang returned to power in 2008, Beijing has adjusted its communication strategy towards Taiwan, while maintaining the same long-term goal of reunification. This strategy of rapprochement by seduction rather than by threat promotes the rapid growth of exchanges between the Chinese and Taiwanese populations at all levels: students, tourists, farmers, businessmen, academics, retired diplomats and military, politicians, etc. Especially, the multiplication of meetings between academics of both countries is creating new channels of communication over the Strait, allowing on the one hand to compensate for the lack of formal diplomacy between Beijing and Taipei, and on the other hand to compete with informal diplomatic links existing between Taiwan and several of its partners (US and Japan, mainly). These communication channels could ultimately reinforce Beijing’s strategy – and China keeps investing heavily in their development – but could also be used as a conduit to prevent and to manage crisis would tensions reappear in the Strait.
Topic:
Nationalism, Sovereignty, Borders, Identities, and State
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI)
Abstract:
One week before the third Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius on November 28-29, 2013, Ukraine suspended the preparation of an association agreement with the European Union, which had been under negotiation since 2007. When the agreement was finally signed in June 2014, President Yanukovych had fled the country under people’s pressure, and the integrity of Ukraine was challenged in the East by separatists and their Russian allies. These events came paradoxically at a time when the country's cohesion seemed stronger than in the 1990s. Far from being divided into two parts, Ukraine consists of the pieces of broken empires that all have good reasons to join in the state, as recent as this one may be. Indeed, its geography, electoral or economic, does not show a split between two blocks, but various lines of division that do not necessarily herald the breaking up of the state. Since the independence, this diversity had never been translated into new institutions: for several reasons, the reshaping of the centralized regime inherited from the Soviet era was deemed untimely by the country’s political forces. Presented as a priority by the members of the Parliament elected in 2014, the reform of territorial government is being implemented while Ukraine’s driving regions are either paralyzed or threatened by war.
Topic:
Nationalism, Sovereignty, War, Territorial Disputes, Europeanization, Memory, Borders, and State
Political Geography:
Russia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and European Union
Center for Global Legal Challenges, Yale Law School
Abstract:
This paper investigates whether the “to ensure respect” clause of Common Article 1
of the 1949 Geneva Conventions creates third state obligations. Third state obligations
could impose both negative and positive duties on states to ensure that other states and
some non-state actors comply with the Conventions. This issue has gained salience in
light of the imminent publication of new set of commentaries on the Conventions by the
International Committee for the Red Cross. The new commentaries will likely suggest
that third state obligations under Common Article 1 are robust.
This paper assesses the anticipated ICRC position in light of both the drafting history
of Common Article 1 and subsequent interpretations by major international tribunals and
states. It concludes that Common Article 1 provides for some third state obligations, but
that their scope and content remains underspecified and highly contested.
Topic:
International Law, Non State Actors, State, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), Geneva Convention, and ICRC