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1512. Issue Brief: What Army for Haiti?
- Author:
- Arthur Boutellis
- Publication Date:
- 11-2011
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- International Peace Institute
- Abstract:
- President Michel Martelly of Haiti was widely expected to make the creation of a new Haitian army official on November 18, 2011, on the anniversary of the last major battle for Haitian Independence in 1803. Instead, he announced the creation of a civilian-led commission that will have forty days to finalize a plan for the creation of the new army, which should be presented by January 1, 2012. The newly elected president has made reinstating the army, which was disbanded in 1995, a priority. A draft of the “Martelly plan,” dated August 2011, called for building an army of 3,500 troops that would be operational within three years and progressively take over as the UN peacekeeping force MINUSTAH withdraws.
- Topic:
- Security, Politics, and International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Caribbean
1513. Know Your Enemy: An Overview of Organized Crime Threat Assessments
- Author:
- Mark Shaw
- Publication Date:
- 10-2011
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- International Peace Institute
- Abstract:
- There is increasing awareness within police forces and international organizations that organized crime is a growing threat to security. However, due to a lack of data and insufficient knowledge about illicit activities, criminal justice experts are often left chasing shadows. To rectify this problem, more attention has been devoted to developing and using organized crime threat assessments in recent years, particularly for use in vulnerable states that are less resistant to infiltration by criminals. This paper briefly considers the history of organized crime threat assessments, the process in which they have been produced and used, and criticisms that have been leveled against them. Finally, it considers their applicability to fragile and postconflict countries and the kind of requirements that would need to be fulfilled for threat assessments to be an effective tool against organized crime in such contexts.
- Topic:
- Security, Crime, International Law, and International Affairs
1514. Mechanism-Based Thinking on Policy Diffusion. A Review of Current Approaches in Political Science
- Author:
- Torben Heinze
- Publication Date:
- 12-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG)
- Abstract:
- Despite theoretical and methodological progress in what is now coined as the third generation of diffusion studies, explicitly dealing with the causal mechanisms underlying diffusion processes and comparatively analyzing them is only of recent date. As a matter of fact, diffusion research has ended up in a diverse and often unconnected array of theoretical assumptions relying both on rational as well as constructivist reasoning – a circumstance calling for more theoretical coherence and consistency. Against this backdrop, this paper reviews and streamlines diffusion literature in political science. Diffusion mechanisms largely cluster around two causal arguments determining the desires and preferences of actors for choosing alter¬native policies. First, existing diffusion mechanisms accounts can be grouped according to the rationality for policy adoption, this means that government behavior is based on the instrumental considerations of actors or on constructivist arguments like norms and rule-driven actors. Second, diffusion mechanisms can either directly impact on the beliefs of actors or they might influence the structural conditions for decision-making. Following this logic, four basic diffusion mechanisms can be identified in mechanism-based thinking on policy diffusion: emulation, socialization, learning, and externalities.
- Topic:
- Education, International Affairs, Political Theory, and Sociology
1515. Multilateralism in Trade at Risk: Should and Can we Rescue the Doha Round?
- Author:
- Jagdish Bhagwati, Pascal Lamy, Michael Moore, and Leif Pagrotsky
- Publication Date:
- 12-2011
- Content Type:
- Video
- Institution:
- Columbia University World Leaders Forum
- Abstract:
- This World Leaders Forum program will feature an introduction by: - Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organization Followed by a panel discussion with: - Jagdish Bhagwati, University Professor of Economics Law, Columbia University; Economic Policy Adviser to Director General of GATT (1991-1993) - Michael Moore, Former Director General of World Trade Organization and Prime Minister of New Zealand; Ambassador of New Zealand to the United States - Leif Pagrotsky, Swedish Minister for Trade(1997-2004); currently member of the Swedish Parliament and of the Executive Board of the Social Democratic Party.
- Topic:
- Economics, Emerging Markets, International Trade and Finance, International Affairs, and Financial Crisis
- Political Geography:
- United States and New Zealand
1516. Criminal Insurgency in the Americas and Beyond
- Author:
- Robert Killebrew
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- PRISM
- Institution:
- Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
- Abstract:
- Even before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the global context for American security policy was changing. While the traditional state-based international system continued to function and the United States reacted to challenges by states in conventional ways (for example, by invading Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11), a cascade of enormous technological and social change was revolutionizing international affairs. As early as the 1990s, theorists were writing that with modern transnational communications, international organizations and corporate conglomerates would increasingly act independently of national borders and international regulation. What was not generally foreseen until about the time of 9/11, though, was the darker side: that the same technology could empower corrupt transnational organizations to threaten the international order itself. In fact, the globalization of crime, from piracy's financial backers in London and Nairobi to the Taliban and Hizballah's representatives in West Africa, may well be the most important emerging fact of today's global security environment.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, United States, and Iraq
1517. Wars of the Future
- Author:
- Armen Oganesyan
- Publication Date:
- 10-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations
- Institution:
- East View Information Services
- Abstract:
- Unfortunately, the new millennium has not brought peace to mankind. The global agenda still includes the security problem, the resolution of armed conflicts and the prevention of new wars. Realizing the importance of the subject, the International Affairs' editorial board and the institute of international studies at the Moscow State Institute (University) of international Relations invited experts and analysts to discuss the military concepts that are being developed in the world today and the weapons that could be used in future armed conflicts.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Russia, United States, and Moscow
1518. Interparliamentary scrutiny of the CFSP: avenues for the future
- Author:
- Corine Caballero-Bourdot
- Publication Date:
- 10-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- European Union Institute for Security Studies
- Abstract:
- This report examines a number of possible future orientations with regard to the interparliamentary scrutiny of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). It sets out the democratic challenges facing European integration and the new context surrounding the CFSP in the wake of the Lisbon Treaty, focusing in particular on the existing legal provisions for the interparliamentary scrutiny of the CFSP. The paper surveys previous initiatives as well as current discussions regarding the future interparliamentary scrutiny of the CFSP. The author analyses the various options on the table and makes a number of recommendations for the best possible organisation of such interparlamentary scrutiny in the future.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, Regional Cooperation, International Affairs, and Governance
- Political Geography:
- Europe
1519. International Journal of Korean Studies
- Author:
- Hugo Wheegook Kim
- Publication Date:
- 05-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Journal of Korean Studies
- Institution:
- International Council on Korean Studies
- Abstract:
- There is a vast literature that examines the American containment approach to communism throughout the Cold War era. However, few authors focus on the flip side of U.S. Cold War policy: constraint. In addition to their distaste for communism, Americans also feared "rogue" anti-communist allies dragging the U.S. into a larger-scale war with their common communist enemies. This fear especially applied to the South Korean authoritarian state under Syngman Rhee, who harnessed rabid anti-communism both to legitimize his rule and to try to embroil the U.S. in further conflict on the Korean peninsula. In order to exercise greater influence over such "rogue allies" as Syngman Rhee's South Korea, the U.S. opted to pursue strong bilateral alliances in East Asia, where they feared entrapment the most. As a result, solid relationships like the U.S.-ROK alliance came to dominate the East Asian security architecture, leaving little space for East Asian multilateralism to take root.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Cold War, and International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- United States, East Asia, South Korea, North Korea, and Korean Peninsula
1520. A new panel dataset for cross-country analyses of national systems, growth and development (CANA)
- Author:
- Fulvio Castellacci and Jose Miguel Natera
- Publication Date:
- 02-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
- Abstract:
- Missing data represent an important limitation for cross-country analyses of national systems, growth and development. This paper presents a new cross-country panel dataset with no missing value. We make use of a new method of multiple imputation that has recently been developed by Honaker and King (2010) to deal specifically with time-series cross-section data at the country-level. We apply this method to construct a large dataset containing a great number of indicators measuring six key country-specific dimensions: innovation and technological capabilities, education system and human capital, infrastructures, economic competitiveness, political-institutional factors, and social capital. The CANA panel dataset thus obtained provides a rich and complete set of 41 indicators for 134 countries in the period 1980-2008 (for a total of 3886 country-year observations). The empirical analysis shows the reliability of the dataset and its usefulness for cross-country analyses of national systems, growth and development. The new dataset is publicly available.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Government, International Affairs, and Infrastructure