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21. Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict

Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
The authors of Why Civil Resistance Works present empirical evidence that, contrary to conventional wisdom, nonviolent resistance campaigns succeed at overthrowing regimes twice as often as violent campaigns, even in cases of a highly repressive state. Erica Chenoweth, an assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University, and Maria Stephan, a strategic planner with the U.S. Department of State, raise an original question and then employ quantitative and qualitative methods to reach their surprising findings. Unlike previous studies that focus solely on either violent or nonviolent campaigns, this book asks which type of campaigns are more successful at overthrowing regimes, ousting occupations, or facilitating secessions. The authors analyze 326 violent and nonviolent campaigns between 1900 and 2006 , and they offer more in-depth study of the Iranian Revolution ( 1977 – 1979 ), the First Palestinian Intifada (1987 – 1992 ), the Philippine People ' s Power Movement ( 1983 – 1986 ), and the Burmese Uprising ( 1988 – 1990 ) — providing a range of scenarios where violent and nonviolent campaigns succeeded, partially succeeded, or failed. The authors de fi ne a successful campaign as one that discernibly results in the achievement of its own stated goals of regime change, anti-occupation, or secession within a year of peak activities.
Political Geography:
United States and Iran

22. How Academics Can Help People Make Better Decisions Concerning Global Poverty

Author:
Keith Horton
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
As other contributions to this special issue amply demonstrate, there is a variety of ways in which academics could have a greater impact on global poverty than they do today. In this essay I focus on just one of those ways: by doing more to help people make wise decisions about issues relevant to such poverty. Many different groups of people have to make such decisions, including those who work for certain international organizations, policy-makers and government employees of various kinds, and the global poor themselves. Many of those decisions involve difficult issues that academics generally have more time and other resources than others to study. If academics conduct the right kind of research on those issues, then, and share what they have learned with the relevant decision-makers in accessible ways, those decision-makers should be able to make better decisions. And this in turn should have a positive impact on global poverty. Moreover, given that doing so would only require academics to perform activities that are already taken to be a standard part of their role — conducting research and disseminating what they have learned — this seems one of the most straightforward and least controversial ways in which academics could have a greater impact on global poverty.
Topic:
Poverty
Political Geography:
United States and United Kingdom

23. The Arc of the Moral Universe and Other Essays

Author:
Michael Blake
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
This volume collects eleven of Joshua Cohen's essays, each of which deals in some way with the nature and role of political justice and its relationship to ideals of democratic self-government. Within this general set of interests, the essays range over a variety of topics, from commentary on specific democratic thinkers to the morality of international political institutions. If the essays are diverse in their subject matter, they are linked by the sensibility of the author, who is rightly celebrated as one of our most insightful and subtle political thinkers. Although I disagree with parts of Cohen's argument, none of these disagreements diminish my admiration for his project; those of us who care about justice, whether at home or abroad, would do well to give his ideas a closer examination.
Political Geography:
United States

24. Hegemony in International Society

Author:
Barry Buzan
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
This book is the third in a series, following Legitimacy in International Society (2005) and International Legitimacy and World Society (2007), in which Ian Clark has applied the concept of legitimacy to the English School's way of thinking about both international society (the society of states) and world society (global civil society mainly in the form of nonstate actors). For Clark, legitimacy is what defines both rightful conduct and rightful membership in society. Following the English School tradition, his main focus in terms of rightful conduct is on the primary institutions of international society: such deep practices as sovereignty, nationalism, diplomacy, the balance of power, great power management, and the like that constitute both the actors and the rules of the game of international society. This approach contrasts with the focus on secondary institutions—intergovernmental organizations, regimes, and other consciously constructed, instrumental entities—that is characteristic of liberal approaches to International Relations.
Topic:
International Relations and Diplomacy
Political Geography:
United States

25. Face Reality? After You!--A Call for Leadership on Climate Change

Author:
Henry Shue
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
In Joseph Heller's comic war novel, Catch-22, the catch-22 of the title refers to a supposed military regulation that allowed one to be relieved of military service if one was insane, but further provided that no one who realized he would be better off out of military service could possibly be insane. Humanity's so far leaderless approach to dealing with rapidly accelerating climate change embodies a similar, but profoundly tragic, catch-22 that has, among other twists and contradictions, transmuted justice into paralysis. Many thought that the natural global leader of the effort to gain control of global climate change would be the United States, with its splendid cadre of scientists and its history of technological innovation. But our politicians have failed to be worthy of our scientists or of the trust we citizens have placed in them. Facing reality appears to be increasingly unpopular among those who pass as our national political leaders. Those who refuse to face reality often find that what they ignore may come back to bite them, and worse, it may hurt others who trust them with their well-being. It is unclear which members of the U.S. Senate have sold their souls to the fossil-fuel interests and which have simply closed their minds. But the effect is the same: the facts on the ground—and in the air, water, and ice of the planet—are racing further and further ahead of the faltering U.S. political efforts to respond to them. And the American failure of political leadership is one major factor that is crippling efforts to negotiate multilateral action at the international level.
Topic:
Climate Change
Political Geography:
United States and America

26. "Protectors of Privacy: Regulating Personal Data in the Global Economy" by Abraham L. Newman

Author:
Judith Wagner DeCew
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Abraham Newman has written a thoughtful and provocative book about the protection of privacy and how it has evolved in two dramatically different ways in the European Union and the United States over the past 50 years.
Topic:
Intellectual Property/Copyright
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

27. Security Council Reform: Past, Present, and Future

Author:
Shashi Tharoor
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Even though it has been more than a year since I left the service of the United Nations, the one question people have not stopped asking me here in India is when our country, with 1.2 billion people and a booming economy, is going to become a permanent member of the Security Council. The short answer is "not this year, and probably not the next." But there are so many misconceptions about this issue that a longer answer is clearly necessary.
Topic:
Security and United Nations
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and China

28. Excesses of Responsibility: The Limits of Law and the Possibilities of Politics

Author:
Kirsten Ainley
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
The twentieth century saw the unprecedented individualization, legalization, and criminalization of responsibility in international relations. At the start of the century, if any agent was held responsible in the international sphere for harm resulting from conflict or war, it was the state, and states were held politically (rather than legally, for the most part) responsible for their acts by other states. By the end of the century individuals were held legally (often criminally) responsible for such harm, now defined as "war crimes" or "atrocities." Individuals were increasingly held responsible by international or hybrid tribunals set up under the auspices of the most powerful international institution in the post-1945 system, the UN Security Council, and with significant financial support from the world's most powerful states, foremost being the United States. Only a few years into the twenty-first century, trials of individuals were under way at an independent International Criminal Court (ICC). Our first reaction when we see news reports of war or civil conflict is frequently to ask which individuals are responsible and how they are to be punished. The drive toward individual accountability can be seen in, for instance, the 2009 report by the Goldstone Commission into alleged war crimes committed in Gaza, which led to subsequent calls for the ICC to take up the case; the 2011 report by the Panel of Experts set up by the UN secretary-general to advise on accountability in Sri Lanka; and the swift referral of the situation in Libya to the ICC in February 2011.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
United States, Libya, Sri Lanka, and United Nations

29. "The Practice of Global Citizenship"

Author:
Mark Gibney
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Human rights are (universally) declared to be universal, yet we continue to live in a world where it is seemingly quite natural to limit human rights obligations to a state's own territorial borders. No doubt, many will accuse me of overstating matters when I say that territorial constraints constitute the single greatest impediment to the protection of human rights. What the territorial approach has done is to perpetuate a world of haves and have-nots among states, in which human rights protection is in large part dependent on the accident of birth. By rejecting the universality of duties, we have made a mockery of the universality of human rights.
Topic:
Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid
Political Geography:
United States

30. "Global Justice and Due Process"

Author:
Eric Posner
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
In his latest book, Larry May argues that two rights—the right to habeas corpus and to non-refoulement—should be incorporated into international law as jus cogens norms. Habeas corpus, which is recognized in the United Kingdom, the United States, and a few other countries with U.K.-derived legal systems, is a legal procedure in which a prisoner can appear in court and challenge the basis of his detention. Non-refoulement is the principle that states should not deport aliens who are unlawfully on their soil if the aliens will be persecuted or abused in the state to which they will be returned. There is currently no right to habeas corpus in international law; most states have agreed to recognize limited rights of non-refoulement. Jus cogens norms are norms of international law that bind states even if they reject them, in contrast to ordinary international legal norms, which require states' consent. Torture, slavery, genocide, and aggressive war are generally thought to be on the list of jus cogens prohibitions, and it is to this group that May wants to add the failure to offer habeas corpus and the deportation of aliens to states where they are likely to be abused.
Topic:
Human Rights
Political Geography:
United States and United Kingdom