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Israel and Turkey: From Realpolitik to Rhetoric?
Issue:
2014 - Volume 8, Issue 2
ABSTRACT: This article analyses the media discourse on Israel in Turkey during the crisis period that followed Israel’s Operation Cast Lead (2008) and culminated in May 2010, when Israeli armed forced attacked the Mavi Marmara, a ship operated by a Turkish Islamic NGO, leaving nine Turkish activists...
The British Broadcasting Company (BBC): Half a Century of Covering Bahrain
Issue:
2014 - Volume 8, Issue 2
ABSTRACT: Until 1968, Bahrain was a protectorate of the British government during its days of imperial glory, and home to its political agent in the region. Research shows that the first television programme covering events in Bahrain dates back to the 1950‘s making, the British Broadcasting Company...
Yet Another Version of the ‘Arab Spring:’ Ramifications of the Syrian Conflict on the Existing Arab Order and Beyond
Issue:
2014 - Volume 8, Issue 3
ABSTRACT: At the start of 2011, events began to unfold in some of the most stable Arab countries betraying signs of an unpredictable phase in local, regional and even international political life. Nine of the 22 Arab League members were, to varying degrees, undergoing unprecedented mass gestations promising...
Changes in Turkish-Israeli Relations and Implications for Regional Security Environment
Issue:
2014 - Volume 8, Issue 1
ABSTRACT: This work looks at how changes to global, regional and national political landscapes played a role in shaping Turkish-Israeli relations and how this, in turn, affected regional security and development in the Middle East. Specifically, I illustrate how Turkish political actors from the Islamic...
European Civil Society’s Conundrum: Public Spheres, Identities and the Challenge of Politicisation
Issue:
2014 - Volume 8, Issue 1
ABSTRACT: This work draws upon the novel theoretical framework of European civil society which is based on the complementary concept of civil society. It claims that relations between the Europeanised public spheres, political identities and the politicisation of the EU present an intricate and crucial...
‘I am Georgian and therefore I am European:’ Re-searching the Europeanness of Georgia
Issue:
2014 - Volume 8, Issue 1
ABSTRACT: ‘I am Georgian and therefore I am European.’ These words spoken by the late Georgian Prime Minister, Zurab Zhvania, in front of the Council of Europe in 1999. During the speech, he expressed Georgia’s EU aspirations and outlined the country’s foreign policy agenda for the next decade. Since...
Deconstructing and Defining EULEX
Issue:
2014 - Volume 8, Issue 1
ABSTRACT: Hailed as the greatest European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) mission to date, the European Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) has been oscillating between fulfilling its mission statement crafted in Brussels, while managing the controversial ethnic expectations of the local population...
The Fading Halo of Religious Elites: A Comparative Study of the Effects of Religious Motivation on Nonviolence and Democratic Stability in Poland and Egypt
Issue:
2014 - Volume 8, Issue 1
ABSTRACT: Why has the democratic transition in Egypt stalled? The nonviolent nature of successful uprisings may be an important cause of the subsequent religious radicalisation and volatility of the new regimes. Nonviolent opposition can attract, and be sustained by, the involvement of religious elites....
Clientelism within Arabian Gulf States and Beyond: A Comparative Study
Issue:
2014 - Volume 8, Issue 1
ABSTRACT: Clientelism is a widespread phenomenon, often resulting from preexisting socioeconomic conditions such as inequalities, government dominance over the economy, and deficiencies in political institutions. State formation ushered vote buying into clientelistic behaviour and reinforced brokerage...
Is Regime Change a Solution For the Iranian Nuclear Crisis?
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 4
ABSTRACT: Since 2002, the Iranian nuclear crisis had drawn the attention of the international community and – despite renewed negotiations in the 5+1 formula – remains one of the most salient threats to international security. The ineffectiveness of preventive means already deployed in a bid to solve...
Developing the Methods of Estimation and Forecasting the Arab Spring Events
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 4
ABSTRACT: An assessment of the current state, and a forecast, of the social instability in the Arab world – re: in the Arab Spring processes – is an important, relevant and daunting task. Difficulties are related to the variety of factors affecting social instability, to individual peculiarities of historical,...
Overcoming the State Centred Theory of International Sanctions: Non-State Actors’ Strategies towards the Implementation of International Sanctions
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 4
ABSTRACT: In this article I argue that non-state actors (NSAs) can play an important role in international sanctions politics, which has been underestimated due to the state-centred view of international sanctions theory. Even though NSAs do not have access to the decision making process and, until the...
Interwar Views on ManagingEastern European Space: Exploring Lypa’s Conceptualisation of theBlack Sea States Union
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 4
ABSTRACT: Few people realise that the idea of establishing a Black Sea Union (BSU) – a regional bloc along the Black Sea littoral – was proposed in the immediate aftermath of WWII. This idea was primarily developed and advocated by Yuriy Lypa, a Ukrainian inter-war political thinker (1900-1944). In his...
Dynamics of Eastern Europeanisation and the Impact of “Membership Credibility” in EU Enlargement Rounds
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 4
ABSTRACT: Research on EU enlargement-led Europeanisation has extensively focused on countries from Central Eastern Europe (CEE) and only recently enriched with studies dealing with specific issues and/or countries of the Western Balkans. Yet, a more comprehensive study across current and previous potential...
Western Imaginary and Imagined Defense Strategies of Eastern Europe and its Borderlands
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 4
ABSTRACT: This work discusses how the Western imaginary or the way “the West looks East” reinforces the construction of “unstable” or ambivalent identities in the new European countries, as well as the margins of Eastern Europe. Particularly, it deals with the Western discourses that locate Eastern Europe...
Politics and Religion in Europe: The Case of the Roman Catholic Church and the European Union
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 4
ABSTRACT: The rise of religion in international politics is often treated as a self-evident trend of recent decades. But what exactly is new about religion in global affairs that it deserves such focused attention? Is it the growing numbers of believers of major religions, or the increasing fundamentalist...
Arms for Arbenz. Czechoslovakia's involvement in the Cold War in Latin America
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 3
ABSTRACT: This article introduces an under-researched historic problem about the relationship between Czechoslovakia and Guatemala during the protracted Guatemalan Revolution (1944-1954). Czechoslovak relation with Guatemala were already established during the interwar period when the (relatively) small...
Czechoslovakia and Brazil 1945-1989; Diplomats, businessmen, spies and guerrilheiros
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 3
ABSTRACT: This work summarises political, economic and security relations be- tween Czechoslovakia and Brazil from 1945 to 1989. During this pe- riod Brazil adopted different approaches towards the Eastern bloc. In this context, despite some difficulties, Czechoslovakia not only main- tained diplomatic...
Czechoslovak-Latin American Relations 1945-1989: The Broader Context
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 3
ABSTRACT: After 1945, Czechoslovakia resumed its diplomatic and economic rela- tions with Latin American countries; disrupted during the occupation of the Second World War. At that time, Czechoslovakia had the most diplomatic offices in the region of the entire Soviet bloc. Communi- cation between Prague...
Political and Economic Relations between Czechoslovakia and the Military Regimes of the Southern Cone in the 1970s and 1980s
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 3
ABSTRACT: Based on unpublished archival documents, this work analyses the relations between Czechoslovakia and the military regimes in Argentina (1976–1983), Uruguay (1973–1985) and Chile (1973–1989). Besides Czechoslovakia, attention is also devoted to the Soviet Union which had a significant influence...
Turbines and Weapons for Latin America: Czechoslovak documentary film propaganda in the Cold War context 1948-1989
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 3
ABSTRACT: This article focuses on the Czechoslovak documentary film production concerning Latin America in the context of the Cold War. It is analysed as a crucial means of domestic propaganda, promoting involvement in a distant region before a wider public. This was achieved by creating a matching discourse...
Czech Tractors, Cuban Oranges: An Outline of Economic Relations between Socialist Czechoslovakia and Revolutionary Cuba
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 3
ABSTRACT: This work deals with the economic relations between Cuba and social- ist Czechoslovakia from the early years of the Cuban Revolution until the fall of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe (cee). This work suggests that economic relations constituted the backbone of the Czechoslovakia’s...
Uncovering Romania by Geography: How Geography Cultivated Lands and Romanians
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 2
ABSTRACT: This work contributes to the understanding of how the institutionalisation of geography as a science and discipline empowered the Romanian elites’ nationalist discourse before World War Two. Far from being an objective, neutral and value-free science, geography invented new worlds and served...
Misadventure or Mediation in Mali: The EU’s Potential Role
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 2
ABSTRACT: With a humanitarian crisis mounting in the West African state of Mali, the Council of the EU has called on the Economic Community of West African States to deploy a stabilisation force to the northern regions of the country. But such a military intervention would have to contend with a plethora...
Alternative Futures for the EU-Turkey Accession Negotiations
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 2
ABSTRACT: This work proposes a simple two-period interaction model to study EU-Turkey accession negotiations. Turkey perceives the EU as composed of two distinct groups with respect to its accession: traditional supporters and objectors. Supporters opt for either cooperation or defection in period one...
Improving the ENP and Establishing the Eastern Partnership Initiative: A Czech Perspective
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 2
ABSTRACT: The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) is among the most important external policies of the EU. Unfortunately, it has not substantially influenced EU member states as was intended. This led to other regional EU initiatives that have similar aims but took a more differentiated and country-specific...
In Every Zealot is Deep Doubt: Islamism and the Role of Psychology amongst British Muslim Students
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 2
ABSTRACT: Drawing on Razzaque’s seminal book, From Human Being to Human Bomb which identifies patterns of extremist thought processes amongst young British Muslims, this study is the very first attempt at empirically testing such a concept and establishes a precedent for the study of the links between...
Cyberspace in Canadian Security Policy
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 2
ABSTRACT: The phenomenon of cyber terrorism, cyber espionage, or even the first examples of using cyberspace to conduct military operations has convinced decision-makers that new solutions to security challenges need to be implemented. Cyber attacks in Estonia and Georgia, multiple incidents in the United...
Agenda Setting of the EU mission in Kosovo – A constructivist read
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 1
ABSTRACT: The EU’s paradigmatic conceptual relationship to Kosovo is based on a post-conflict agenda, which seeks the development of a sustainable democracy. According to Laidi, a democracy building agenda in the Balkans gives the EU great leverage and accountability on nation state building. Yet, the...
National Parliaments in the Council: Parliamentary Scrutiny Reserves
Issue:
2013 - Volume 7, Issue 1
ABSTRACT: This research compares the activity of different groups of national parliaments in European decision-making as reflected by the use of parliamentary scrutiny reservations by Member States in the Council. It aims to contribute to the comparative literature on national parliamentary scrutiny...