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721. 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

722. 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

723. Editor's Note: Politics of Nuclear Negotiations

Author:
Seyed Kazem Sajjadpour
Publication Date:
06-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Center for Strategic Research (CSR)
Abstract:
The recent round of nuclear negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 in Istanbul, Baghdad and Moscow has attracted the attention of Iran–watchers with a colorful set of expectations, predictions, hopes and frustrations. How can we analyze this perplexing situation? "Players", "perceptions" and "politics" are suitable conceptual frames through which the dynamics of the new round of talks may be understood.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
Iran, Baghdad, Moscow, and Istanbul

724. Counter-State Zionism and Political Zionism

Author:
Ephraim Nimni
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Zionism: One or many? Obsolete? Irreconcilably divided? Ethnocentric? Is there a Zionism compatible with nondiscrimination of Palestinians? These two books, Nation and History: Israeli Historiography between Zionism and Post-Zionism by Yoav Gelber and Zionism and the Roads Not Taken: Rawidowicz, Kaplan, Kohn by Noam Pianko, present opposite points of view, one backward looking and abortive, the other forward looking, expressing hope for change. Both are grounded in historical discussions with considerable relevance to the present. Both draw legitimacy by adhering to a Zionist dream. The two opposing dreams, however, negate each other.
Topic:
Security and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, Israel, Soviet Union, Palestine, and Arabia

725. Toward a Global Ethic

Author:
David Rodin
Publication Date:
04-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
We are one humanity, but seven billion humans. This is the essential challenge of global ethics: how to accommodate the tension between our universal and particular natures. This tension is, of course, age-old and runs through all moral and political philosophy. But in the world of the early twenty-first century it plays out in distinctive new ways. Ethics has always engaged twin capacities inherent in every human: the capacity to harm and the capacity to help. But the profound set of transformations commonly referred to as globalization-the increasing mobility of goods, labor, and capital; the increasing interconnectedness of political, economic, and financial systems; and the radical empowerment of groups and individuals through technology-have enabled us to harm and to help others in ways that our forebears could not have imagined. What we require from a global ethic is shaped by these transformative forces; and global ethics-the success or failure of that project-will substantially shape the course of the twenty-first century.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, and Politics

726. Myanmar: The Politics of Economic Reform

Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
Myanmar has embarked on an ambitious program of sweeping reforms to end its isolation and integrate its economy with the global system. Closely entwined with its dramatic political transition, the end of longstanding Western sanctions is supporting this reconfiguration. If the reforms are done well, many across the country stand to benefit, but those who profited most from the old regime's restrictions and privileges will lose access to windfall profits and guaranteed monopolies. The crony businessmen, military and party elite will still do well but will need to play by new rules, meet domestic and foreign competition and even pay taxes. Perhaps recognising the opportunities a more vibrant economy in a fast-growing region will bring for all, there is no major pushback to these changes, rather attempts to adapt to the new economy. The challenges and risks are numerous for a government with little experience juggling the many changes required, but it cannot resist the pent-up political pressure for change it has already unleashed.
Topic:
Democratization, Economics, Globalization, Government, International Trade and Finance, and Politics
Political Geography:
Southeast Asia and Myanmar

727. The domestic politics of international hierarchy: Risk management and the reconstitution of international society

Author:
William Clapton and Shahar Hameiri
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Recent work has identified new hierarchical relationships within international society. However, few scholars have provided a satisfactory account of what informs their formation, reproduction or constitutional effects for international society. We argue that underpinning the emergence of a more hierarchical international society is a new social logic of risk, which constructs illiberal and/or fragile states as potentially dangerous sites of instability and disorder that pose particular security risks for Western states. We proceed to argue that such risk-based hierarchies are transformative of both inter-state and intra-state relations, by stripping equal political agency from 'risky' actors within and without the state. We demonstrate these claims by drawing on examples of international state building in Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific.
Topic:
Politics

728. The Best Scenario: Japan's Political Crisis as a Reform Driver

Author:
Kiyoaki Aburaki
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
“Decide when it is time to decide, draw a conclusion, don't postpone; this is the type of politics I want to create.” Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda made this declaration in a press conference on June 26 immediately after the passage of the consumption tax-hike bill in the Lower House of the Diet. Noda's conviction to pass a tax increase had a political cost: 57 lawmakers of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) voted against the bill, while 15 DPJ members abstained. Former DPJ president Ichiro Ozawa, who leads the anti-tax-hike movement, and his followers created a deep rift within the ruling party over the tax legislation and subsequently damaged Noda's political power base by defecting from the party on July 2.
Topic:
Democratization, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
Japan and Israel

729. Geopolitics and Russian foreign policy

Author:
John Berryman
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
The article provides a broad overview of the fluctuating connections between the controversial and ambiguous field of modern geopolitics and Russia. Given the pivotal significance of the Russian challenge within the early hypotheses of Mahan and Mackinder, the article first explores those distinctive geographical and spatial considerations that helped shape the development of the Russian Empire. The place of geopolitics in the Cold War is then reviewed, including both its policy orientation and the exchanges between the proponents of geopolitical realism and liberal internationalism. In conclusion, the article examines the post-Cold War renaissance of geopolitics, reviewing both theoretical developments and policy implications for Russian foreign policy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy and Politics
Political Geography:
Russia

730. Libertarian Roots of the Tea Party

Author:
David Kirby and Emily McClintock Ekins
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Many people on the left still dismiss the tea party as the same old religious right, but the evidence says they are wrong. The tea party has strong libertarian roots and is a functionally libertarian influence on the Republican Party.
Topic:
Democratization, Economics, Politics, Insurgency, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
United States