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1442. Colombia: Presidential Politics and Peace Prospects
- Publication Date:
- 06-2005
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Crisis Group
- Abstract:
- President Álvaro Uribe's quest for re-election in 2006 by amending the constitution so a sitting president can run is a risky endeavour that could weaken democratic institutions. In the face of unabated armed conflict with two insurgent groups, pending demobilisation of thousands of paramilitary fighters, and a flourishing narcotics industry, Colombia must sustain its military and police defences beyond the forthcoming election. However, it must also consolidate the rule of law by ending impunity and make strong headway in rural development and in protecting especially vulnerable groups in order to engage the insurgents on political grounds.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Peace Studies, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Colombia and South America
1443. Towards a Lasting Peace in Nepal: The Constitutional Issues
- Publication Date:
- 06-2005
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Crisis Group
- Abstract:
- Nepal is in the grip of a constitutional crisis. The drafters of the 1990 Constitution hailed it as "the best constitution in the world", ending three decades of absolute monarchical rule by enshrining a multi-party system under a constitutional monarchy. But the nine- year-old Maoist insurgency has cruelly exposed the inherent weaknesses in that settlement, and the royal coup of 1 February 2005 has dealt it a near fatal blow. Constitutional change is a necessary, if not sufficient, element for producing lasting peace. The conflict's root causes can only be addressed by structural change in the state and its governance system. Constitutional issues and the political means by which they are dealt with are crucial to a peace process.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Government, and Peace Studies
- Political Geography:
- Asia, Nepal, and Guinea
1444. A Crowded Field: Groups of Friends, the United Nations and the Resolution of Conflict
- Author:
- Tessa Whitifield
- Publication Date:
- 06-2005
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation (CIC)
- Abstract:
- This paper traces the evolution of groups of Friends—understood as informal groups of states formed to support the peacemaking of the United Nations—from the emergence of Friends of the Secretary-General on El Salvador in 1990, at a moment of post-Cold War optimism regarding the UN's peacemaking capacity, to the more complex (and crowded) environment for conflict resolution of the mid-2000s. The intervening fifteen years saw an explosion of groups of all kinds to support peacemaking, peacekeeping and post-conflict peacebuilding, a mirror of the extraordinary upsurge in a range of efforts to address global security in this period. Analysis of the groups is complicated by the great diversity they represent, including in the impact they have had on the processes with which they have been engaged. Indeed Annex I distinguishes four different categories of groups engaged with the UN in conflict resolution: Friends of the Secretary- General, Friends of a country, Contact groups and Implementation and/or monitoring groups. This paper's primary focus is on groups that have supported UN-led mediation efforts; however its analysis and conclusions embrace both issues specific to UN leadership, and broader considerations of the efficacy of group engagement in conflict management.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, International Cooperation, Peace Studies, and United Nations
1445. Building a democratic Palestine: an Australian contribution to legal and institutional development in the Palestinian territories
- Author:
- Anthony Bubalo
- Publication Date:
- 05-2005
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Lowy Institute for International Policy
- Abstract:
- The current fragile ceasefire between Palestinian militants and Israel has raised hopes of an end to four years of violence. To sustain that ceasefire both Israel and the Palestinian Authority must meet their respective commitments under the "Road Map for Middle bast Peace". For the PA this means preventing terrorist attacks against Israel and undertaking political, legal and security reforms. These reforms are also critical to meeting the Palestinian public's own demands for an end to lawlessness and corruption. Given Australia's expertise in legal and institutional development, the Australian government's commitment to promoting democracy and peace in the Middle bast and its sound relationship with both the PA and the government of Israel, Australia should lend what support it can to the Palestinian effort to establish strong foundations for a stable, prosperous and democratic Palestinian state.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, International Relations, and Development
- Political Geography:
- Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and Australia
1446. Beyond Arafat
- Author:
- Anthony Bubalo
- Publication Date:
- 11-2005
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Lowy Institute for International Policy
- Abstract:
- Arafat may have suffered a lingering physical demise, but politically he has long been in decline. He lost much of his international credibility over his unwillingness to rein in Palestinian terrorism against Israel, and domestically his authority had gradually been eroded. While lacking an anointed heir, a succession plan is more or less in place. Political infighting is a possibility, though a desire for unity will probably prevail in the short term. But Arafat's successors will struggle to end the chaos and lawlessness into which the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have descended. Over the longer term Arafat's passing will remove the main obstacle to internal Palestinian reform. It has the potential to re-invigorate the peace process although it will not solve the fundamentals of the current impasse. It will also complicate Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plans for a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, even if his instinct will be to press ahead.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Development, and Government
- Political Geography:
- Middle East
1447. Global and National Trends Affecting the Protection of Human Rights: Discussion Document
- Publication Date:
- 05-2005
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Carter Center
- Abstract:
- This represents a summary of major issues discussed by participants in the Human Rights Defender Policy Forum organized by The Carter Center and Human Rights First in Atlanta. It is not an exhaustive review of the discussions, nor does it necessarily represent the views of any of the individual participants in the meeting or the organizations they represent. A full report of the meeting will be issued later this year.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, International Relations, Globalization, and Human Rights
1448. The Powers and Pathologies of Military Networks: Insights from the Political Cybernetics of Karl W. Deutsch and Norbert Wiener
- Author:
- Hayward R. Alker
- Publication Date:
- 04-2005
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
- Abstract:
- Probably best known nowadays as a distinguished political scientist, a scholar of nations, nationalism and the formation of international security communities, Karl W. Deutsch also wrote a lot about networks before they were popular subjects for strategic analysis Indeed, Deutsch's title for The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control explicitly parallels Norbert Wiener's specificational subtitle of his subject-defining book on cybernetics: Cybernetics: or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. One of Deutsch's greatest passions was the development and application of cybernetic theories to the “nerves” or “neural networks” of social, including governmental and inter-governmental, entities and processes, including the development and disintegration of nations and international communities. So conceived, they can have important human-like capacities. For example, “will may be defined in any sufficiently complex net, nervous system or social group [e.g. a nation] as the set of … internally labeled decisions and anticipated results, proposed by the application of results from the system's past and by the blocking of incompatible impulses or data from the system's present or future.” Indeed, Deutsch defined a nation as a special kind of people -- “a large, general-purpose communication net of human beings.” Like some states, pluralistic, multi-national security communities -- whose prevalence in the modern North Atlantic Area is perhaps the most often noted discovery of Deutsch's collaborative work on international community formation -- develop in adaptive, feedback-governed “learning nets,” “networks” or in part anticpatory “communication grids” with multiple, interdependent nodes. Perhaps, he argues in rather cybernetic language, such developments require “the development and practice of habits and skills of mutual attention, communication, and responsiveness, so as to make possible the preservation of the autonomy and substantial sovereignty of the participating units, and the preservation of stable expectations of peace and peaceful change among them”, all processes taking place within networks of human social communication.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, International Organization, Politics, and War
1449. Peacekeeping and the Peackept: Where Peacekeepers Go
- Author:
- Virginia Page Fortna
- Publication Date:
- 03-2005
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
- Abstract:
- Because peacekeeping is not distributed to conflicts at random, to understand its effects, we need to understand where it tends to be used. This chapter investigates the question of where peacekeepers get sent – what distinguishes conflicts that receive international peacekeeping from those that do not? Why were peacekeepers sent to El Salvador and Namibia but not to the Philippines or Palestine? Why no peacekeeping in Northern Ireland, monitors to South Africa, traditional peacekeepers to Papua New Guinea, a multidimensional mission to Cambodia, and an enforcement mission to Liberia? Why peacekeeping in Mozambique and, eventually in Sierra Leone, but not in Bangladesh? What explains this variation across civil war cases?
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, International Organization, Politics, and War
- Political Geography:
- Bangladesh, South Africa, Philippines, Palestine, Cambodia, Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Ireland, and Papua
1450. Two-Level Theories and Fuzzy-Set Analysis
- Author:
- Gary Goertz and James Mahoney
- Publication Date:
- 03-2005
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
- Abstract:
- Two-level theories explain outcomes with causal variables at two levels of analysis that are systematically related to one another. Although many prominent scholars in the field of comparative analysis have developed two-level theories, the empirical and methodological issues that these theories raise have yet to be investigated. In this article, we explore different structures of two-level theories and consider the issues involved in testing these theories with fuzzy-set methods. We show that grasping the overall structure of two-level theories requires both specifying the particular type of relationship (i.e., causal, ontological, or substitutable) that exists between and within levels of analysis and specifying the logical linkages between levels in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. We argue that for the purposes of testing these theories, fuzzy-set analysis provides a powerful set of tools. However, to realize this potential, investigators using fuzzy-set methods must be clear about the two-level structure of their theories from the onset. We illustrate these points through an empirical, fuzzy-set test of Skocpol's States and Social Revolutions.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Political Economy, Politics, and War