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Begin New Search Topic Conflict Resolution Publication Year within 25 Years

1501. Post-Conflict Recovery: Does the Global Economy Work for Peace?

Author:
Tony Addison
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Angola, and Sierra Leone are now attempting to recover from major wars, often amidst continuing insecurity. The challenge is to achieve a broad-based recovery that benefits the majority of people. The economic and social recovery of conflict-affected countries cannot be separated from their interaction with the rest of the world through flows of finance, goods, and people. Unfortunately, the global economy is not working well for peace. Trade reform, in particular, must take account of the need to create better, and non-violent, livelihoods for the world's poor: rich-country protectionism in agriculture hinders broad-based recovery and thereby harms the new international security agenda. Post-conflict economies also need more external finance to support early institutional development and reform, thereby increasing the effectiveness of longer-term aid inflows.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Economics, and Globalization
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Middle East, Sierra Leone, and Angola

1502. Silencing Guns: Local Perspectives on Small Arms and Armed Violence in Rural Pacific Islands Communities

Author:
Emile LeBrun and Robert Muggah
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Small Arms Survey
Abstract:
At a time when the funding for weapons reduction and armed conflict prevention work is at an all-time high and still growing, the lack of accessible, standard evaluative tools is becoming more and more conspicuous. Though this partly stems from a debate within the disarmament community as to what the right set of measures should be, it is also a reaction to the practical difficulty—in some cases, outright impossibility—of collecting quantitative data on armed violence, especially in rural areas. Clearly, there is a great need for alternative means of assessing and reporting on the impacts of both small arms availability and misuse, and efforts to reduce those impacts.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Relations, and Arms Control and Proliferation
Political Geography:
Australia/Pacific and Island

1503. The Impact of RMA on Conventional Deterrence: A Theoretical Analysis

Author:
Manjeet S. Pardesi
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Abstract:
This research aims to theoretically study if deterrence will prevail if and when states with RMA-ed militaries are faced with the prospect of conventional war. To answer this question, this study analyzes the impact of transformation on conventional deterrence in the event of a military standoff for three theoretical scenarios–(1) RMA capable conventional military vs. RMA-incapable conventional military (with the former state being nuclear or non-nuclear and with the latter being non-nuclear), (2) two RMA-capable conventional militaries (both states non-nuclear), and (3) two RMA-capable conventional militaries (both states nuclear). The study concludes that the current defense transformation is revolutionary simply because it permits the possibility of a limited conventional armed conflict between two nuclear weapons states (including great powers) and as such attempts to resuscitate the role of conventional military power in international politics. On the other hand, analogous to the nuclear revolution, the possession of RMA capabilities by two non-nuclear belligerents is likely to render large-scale conventional armed conflicts with unlimited military objectives between them unthinkable. However, this study warns that deterrence is weakened when only one state in an adversarial dyad is RMA-capable. Moreover, in any dyad involving RMA-capable states, deterrence is weakened when the RMA-capable state contemplates a strategy of limited aims (political and/or military) vis-à-vis its adversary. This tendency is all the more pronounced when it is contemplating a limited war waged with air power and missile strikes (low-cost, low-risk) than a limited war for territorial gains.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Defense Policy, Development, and War

1504. A Long Road to Damascus. Syria and the Peace Negotiations with Israel

Author:
Marwa Daoudy
Publication Date:
11-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Abstract:
From 1991 to 2000, Syria and Israel, two of the key actors of the Middle-Eastern conflict, entered into extensive peace negotiations. What lessons can be drawn from the process in terms of Syria's objectives, motivations and perceptions, considering that this actor remains largely unknown? Such concerns will be addressed by identifying the major issues at stake: territory, security, and water resources. By analyzing all the obstacles on the road to peace, we will evaluate the potential for a resumption of peace talks in the new regional context. The death of President Hafez al-Asad in June 2000 and the rise to power of his son Bashar, the deterioration of the Israeli-Palestinian situation since the start of the Intifada and Ariel Sharon's election in Israel, the war launched by the United States in Iraq, the assassination of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon in April 2005, and the meeting of the 10th Baath Party Congress in June have all drastically impacted on domestic and regional dynamics. The purpose of the study is to shed new light on Syria's constraints and opportunities, and their impact on her bargaining position.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Relations, and Security
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Syria, and Damascus

1505. Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential

Author:
Gene Sharp
Publication Date:
01-2005
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia International Affairs Online
Abstract:
We live in a world of many conflicts, and we have a responsibility to face many of them. Not all conflicts are equal. Some are much more important than others, and in some conflicts the issues at stake are more difficult to resolve in acceptable ways than are those in other conflicts.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Conflict Prevention, and Peace Studies

1506. CATO Institute: Downsizing the Federal Government

Author:
Chris Edwards
Publication Date:
06-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The federal government is headed toward a financial crisis as a result of chronic overspending, large deficits, and huge future cost increases in Social Security and Medicare. Social Security and Medicare would be big fiscal challenges even if the rest of the government were lean and efficient, but the budget is littered with wasteful and unnecessary programs.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
United States

1507. CATO Institute: Can Tort Reform and Federalism Coexist?

Author:
Robert A. Levy and Michael I. Krauss
Publication Date:
04-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Critics of federal tort reform have usually come from the political left and its allies among the trial lawyers, who favor a state-based system that can be exploited to redistribute income from deep-pocketed corporations to "deserving" individuals. We offer a totally different criticism—constitutional in origin—that embraces the need for reform but reaffirms this principle: The existence of a problem, however serious, does not justify federal remedies outside the scope of Congress's enumerated powers.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Government, and Nationalism
Political Geography:
United States

1508. Copying the Nasdaq Stock Market in Europe: Supranational Politics and the Convergence-Divergence Debate

Author:
Elliot Posner
Publication Date:
04-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies (IES), UC Berkeley
Abstract:
Financial arrangements reflect political bargains. Like national labor regimes, the formal and informal rules and relationships governing the allocation of financial resources distinguish one type of capitalist society from another. How firms are financed shapes companies and industries and affects the risks citizens must bear, how they save for retirement, where they work, their job security and ability to buy homes, and the disparity between rich and poor. Leading theories provide increasingly inadequate explanations for changing institutional arrangements in western European finance. They emphasize convergence to global standards and the causal effects of either increased levels of mobile capital or the diffusion of ideas. Or else they describe change within a national trajectory and attribute it primarily to domestic politics, national historical institutions and path dependency. They exclude the possibility of independent regional-level causes. My empirical study of changing financial arrangements for smaller European companies between 1977 and 2003 reveals causes rooted firmly in European Union politics. Neither global forces nor national institutions were primarily responsible for drawing the stock exchanges of Europe into cross-border competition and prompting them to create new US-style markets. Instead, supranational political entrepreneurs, acting with relative autonomy, largely drove this pattern of institutional change. In pushing beyond the international-domestic dichotomy and emphasizing the independent effects of European-level politics, my argument contributes to a growing body of detailed empirical research on the national and global impact of the EU. It also provides more sustained analysis of the causes, mechanisms and effects of adopting US institutional forms outside American borders.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Economics, and Politics
Political Geography:
America and Europe

1509. Discourse of Silence in Alcanfor and "Te deix, amor, la mar com a penyora"

Author:
Kathleen M. Glenn
Publication Date:
03-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies (IES), UC Berkeley
Abstract:
Contemporary Spanish literature abounds in narratives where silence has an important function. In the fiction of Cristina Fernández Cubas it has epistemological implications. Mercè Rodoreda and Maria Barbal employ a rhetoric of silence to call attention to the situation of women who are obliged to remain silent and suffer without protest. Carme Riera and Dulce Chacón utilize silences, and acts of breaking silence, to emphasize the lack of voice of marginal beings and to highlight sexual, socioeconomic and political inequalities. In the present paper, I focus on the role of silence in a novel by Barbal and a story by Riera.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Gender Issues, and Human Rights
Political Geography:
Europe and Cuba

1510. Identity Crisis: Israel and Its Arab Citizens

Publication Date:
03-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
For much of its history, Israel has focused on the neighbouring Arab states and Palestinians living in the occupied territories. Too often overlooked has been the status of those Israeli citizens who are Arab. They have attracted national attention only at times of heightened crisis, and even then in a highly reactive fashion. Unless systemic inequities facing Arab Israelis are addressed and an inclusive process is launched to define the state's long-term attitude towards this segment of its citizenry, prospects for internal strife and instability will remain high.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Ethnic Conflict, Politics, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Israel and Arabia