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422. The 2012 Armenian Parliamentary Elections: Implications for Armenian Foreign Policy
- Author:
- Marilisa Lorusso
- Publication Date:
- 05-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Istituto Affari Internazionali
- Abstract:
- Armenian parliamentary elections were held on 6 May 2012. Five parties and a coalition won seats in Parliament. Three of them are opposition parties, two in the previous legislature were allies of the presidency party, the Republican Party. The latter comfortably won the elections. With 45% votes through the proportional system and 29 seats through the majoritarian one, the Republican Party has the absolute majority of seats, 69 out of 131. So the two main issues in Armenian foreign policy - the protracted conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh and relations with Turkey - will be addressed in continuity with the policy expressed so far by President Serzh Sargsyan, unless the regional counterparts change their strategies. With the party he chairs being confirmed as the leading political force of the country, Sargsyan will run for his second term in the upcoming presidential elections.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Development, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Turkey and Caucasus
423. What It Will Take to Secure Afghanistan
- Author:
- Max Boot
- Publication Date:
- 06-2012
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- Afghanistan is approaching a major inflection point in its long and turbulent history. In 2014 most of the foreign military forces are due to pull out. With them will go the bulk of foreign financing that has accounted for almost all of the state's budget. Twenty fourteen is also the year that Afghanistan is due to hold presidential elections. Hamid Karzai, the only president the country has known since the fall of the Taliban, has said he will not seek another term in office. Thus Afghanistan is likely to have a new president to lead it into a new era. This era will be shaped by many factors, principally decisions made by Afghans themselves, but the United States has the ability to affect the outcome if it makes a sustained commitment to maintain security, improve the political process, and reduce Pakistani interference so as to build on the tenuous gains achieved by the U.S. troop surge since 2010.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Foreign Policy, Democratization, Islam, Terrorism, War, and Counterinsurgency
- Political Geography:
- Pakistan, Afghanistan, United States, and Taliban
424. Aid and Conflict in Pakistan
- Publication Date:
- 06-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Crisis Group
- Abstract:
- International, particularly U.S., military and civilian aid has failed to improve Pakistan's performance against jihadi groups operating on its soil or to help stabilise its nascent democracy. Lopsided focus on security aid after the 11 September 2001 attacks has not delivered counterterrorism dividends, but entrenched the military's control over state institutions and policy, delaying reforms and aggravating Pakistani public perceptions that the U.S. is only interested in investing in a security client. Almost two-thirds of U.S. funding since 2002 ($15.8 billion) has been security-related, double the $7.8 billion of economic aid. Under an elected government, and with civilian aid levels at their highest in decades, the U.S. and other donors can still play a major part in improving service delivery, supporting key reforms and strengthening a fragile political transition vital to internal and regional stability. Re-orientation of funding from military security purposes to long-term democracy and capacity building support is the best way to guarantee the West's and Pakistan's longterm interests in a dangerous region. But aid policies must be better targeted, designed and executed.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Terrorism, Foreign Aid, and Counterinsurgency
- Political Geography:
- Pakistan, United States, and South Asia
425. Learning from Women's Success in the 2010 Afghan Elections
- Author:
- Scott Worden and Nina Sudhakar
- Publication Date:
- 06-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United States Institute of Peace
- Abstract:
- Afghan women made small but significant gains in participation in Afghanistan's September 2010 parliamentary elections. But their status in Afghanistan's electoral system is precarious, and significant effort is needed to preserve gains during the next election cycle in 2013–15. In the 2010 parliamentary elections, seventy-eight more female candidates ran than in the 2005 elections, a 24 percent increase. One additional woman was elected to Parliament over the sixty-eight-person quota stated in the constitution, and in four provinces, a woman received the highest number of votes out of all candidates. Women continued to face significant obstacles to campaigning, however, with female candidates and their campaign workers receiving a disproportionate number of threats or attacks reported during the elections. In less secure areas, cultural restrictions on women's access to public spaces increased, leaving many female candidates unable to effectively communicate with voters. Women made up 40 percent of the electorate in 2010, but women's access to the electoral process as voters often depends on having women hired as election workers by the electoral administration, candidates, and observer groups. Without female counterparts working at the polls, many women will stay home due to cultural concerns over interacting with men in public places. A significant finding from the 2010 candidate statistics is that women face less competition for seats than men do, making it attractive for political parties or coalitions to recruit powerful women to run on their platforms.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Democratization, Gender Issues, Politics, and Regime Change
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan
426. Sexual Violence and Justice in Postconflict Peru
- Author:
- Jelke Boesten and Melissa Fisher
- Publication Date:
- 06-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United States Institute of Peace
- Abstract:
- Wartime sexual violence in Peru is linked to peacetime gender inequality, which is strongly influenced by inequalities based on race and class. These inequalities perpetuate the exclusion of victim-survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in the country's current postconflict transitional justice period, subject victim-survivors to postconflict violence, and reinforce tolerance for sexual violence in peacetime. If the international community and the Peruvian government recognize and address these inequalities, then Peru may witness a reduction in sexual and gender-based violence. Wartime rape can involve a range of acts, motivations, meanings, perpetrators, and victims. Peruvian legal and social definitions of sexual violence need to be inclusive of such variations and recognize that the internal conflict produced victim-survivors among women, men, and children. Domestic institutions should stop dismissing rape as a common crime and start prosecuting rape in war as a crime against humanity, as Peru formally recognized when it signed the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Building on existing legislation would send signals to the international community and to victim-survivors of the war that Peru takes its citizens\' rights in both war and peace seriously. Sexual violence precedes and survives conflict, which creates a continuum of violence. National policies framed within an understanding of this continuum would be better able to guide international, nongovernmental, and community-based organizations operating in Peru regarding programs that address intimate partner and family violence. Such programs are essential for breaking cycles of violence. Reparations and criminal justice are tools of redress that recognize suffering, resilience, and citizenship. While Peru is currently using these tools, they do not seem to apply to victim-survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. An inclusive politics of justice would break through this historical marginalization.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Gender Issues, Human Rights, and War
- Political Geography:
- Latin America and Peru
427. Moving the EU from a Laggard to a Leader in Democracy Assistance: The Potential Role of the European Endowment for Democracy
- Author:
- Hrant Kostanyan and Magdalena Nasieniak
- Publication Date:
- 06-2012
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
- Abstract:
- The EU has consistently stressed the primacy of democracy assistance in its pronouncements on EU external policy, but its actions have noticeably lagged behind. At the heart of the problem are the absence of available appropriate instruments, incoherent external action and convoluted decision-making procedures that require the mobilisation of unanimity and the political backing of all 27 EU member states. The Arab Spring once again highlighted the EU's inability to react swiftly and decisively to the extraordinary events unfolding in its neighbourhood.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Development, and Foreign Aid
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Arabia
428. Lessons for UN Electoral Certification from the 2010 Disputed Presidential Poll in Côte d'Ivoire
- Author:
- Lori-Anne Théroux-Bénoni
- Publication Date:
- 06-2012
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
- Abstract:
- After the November runoff of the 2010 presidential elections in Côte d'Ivoire, the country's Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) announced that in the preliminary results, Alassane Ouattara, candidate of the Rassemblement des Républicains, had won. The Constitutional Council cancelled the results from several northern electoral areas favourable to Ouattara, however, and declared Laurent Gbagbo, the incumbent president who ran for La Majorité Présidentielle, the winner.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Democratization, United Nations, and Peacekeeping
- Political Geography:
- Africa
429. Continuity and change in Tanzania's ruling coalition Legacies, crises and weak productive capacity
- Author:
- Ole Therkildsen and France Bourgouin
- Publication Date:
- 06-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
- Abstract:
- This paper presents analyses of the current composition of Tanzania's ruling coalition, comprised mainly of the ruling party (the CCM), the bureaucracy and the military, of how it has changed over time and of how its funding has evolved. Specifically, it discusses how historical legacies, structural changes in the economy and specific crises have influenced the composition of the ruling coalition, the holding power of its factions and the strategic use of resources to maintain its power. The paper concludes that Tanzania's ruling coalition is presently characterised by conflicts and bargaining among strong factional elites within the ruling coalition and by the increasing power of its lower level factions. Opposition parties are largely excluded from influence and remain weak. Economic entrepreneurs in the formal productive sectors are few and poorly organised. Their relations with the ruling coalition are ambiguous and largely informal, although exchanges of money and rents are of increasing importance in the relationship. Moreover, informal sector entrepreneurs and smallholders in agriculture are largely excluded from the ruling coalition. There is little evidence that the ruling coalition – despite decades of political stability – has used its position to build and strengthen the productive capacity of domestic entrepreneurs.
- Topic:
- Corruption, Democratization, Development, and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Tanzania
430. Is There a Link Between Media and Good Governance? What the Academics Say
- Author:
- Mary Myers
- Publication Date:
- 06-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- National Endowment for Democracy
- Abstract:
- Is there a link between a free media and good governance? Does the existence of a responsible, balanced press reduce corruption? Is the state more accountable in countries with a pluralistic media? Is the media democracy's magic bullet?
- Topic:
- Corruption, Democratization, Development, Mass Media, and Governance