Suchergebnisse

International sport is inherently political. Its governance structures are complex involving a multiplicity of actors. Its foundation is traditional, centred on ideas about self-governance and autonomy while simultaneously challenged by the contradictory requirements to promote and regulate sport. The politics of international sport can be seen in the authoritative allocation of values, the collective action necessary to determine who gets what, when and how, and ultimately being clear about who cares about what, where and why. It is in this setting where the concept of power and the ability of agents to exercise power is particularly insightful in garnering a more nuanced understanding of the systemic governance of international sport. To this end, this study examines power relations in international sport by applying Bergsgard's analytical framework, which adapts Lukes' three faces of power and Bourdieu's ideas about symbolic power, to the Russian Doping Scandal. Documentary analysis is used as the primary method of exploration. Our analysis illustrates how the deep structures of the Russian state and the structural conditions of the international sport governance field permitted the case to evolve to scandalous proportions. The paper also reveals the power dynamics between various stakeholders involved in the scandal and how these power dynamics led to failings in the governance of international sport.

Das letzte Jahrzehnt brachte große Veränderungen in der Anpassung von Minderheitsgemeinschaften in Südost- und Mitteleuropa. Neue, von diesen Ländern adaptierte Maßnahmen und Instrumente beruhen häufig auf internationalen Standards und den Empfehlungen von internationalen Organisationen. Eine neue Phase der EU-Konditionalitätspolitik ist nun für Länder eingetreten, die die EU-Mitgliedschaft anstreben. Neben der Konditionalitätspolitik von Europarat und EU-Mitgliedschaftspolitik hatte in den Fällen Kosovo und Mazedonien das Eingreifen von internationalen Gremien einen direkten Einfluss auf die nationale Minderheitenpolitik. Neue Institutionen der Minderheitenselbstverwaltung, von gewählten und nicht gewählten beratenden Gremien und neue Lösungen für eine parlamentarische Repräsentation haben sich herausgebildet. Das Buch befasst sich mit diesen Themen und bietet eine Analyse verschiedener Formen der "effektiven Teilhabe" von Minderheiten im öffentlichen Leben, den Effekten der europäischen Integration und ausführliche Fallstudien der verschiedenen von den Staaten angenommenen Modelle.

THERE is no lecture which I could feel more honoured to have been asked to give than one which commemorates the name of Martin Wight. Just twenty years ago I made the same journey I have just made – from Oxford to the London School of Economics – to take up a position as assistant lecturer in the Department of International Relations. I had not done a course of any kind in International Relations, nor made any serious study of it, and as I arrived in Houghton Street I wondered how I was to go about teaching the subject and even whether it existed at all.

The analysis of business cycle synchronization levels has become a key point in the discussion of the processes of international economic integration. Economists show a particular interest in analyzing the frequency of processes of business cycle convergence and divergence (decoupling) in the European Union, especially in the Euro Zone. One of the factors determining business cycle convergence in economies is the intensity and structure of international trade. The aim of this paper is to analyze the influence exerted by international trade over the synchronization of business cycles in Poland, the European Union and the Euro Zone from 1995 to 2011. The analytical methods employed here encompass a review of the literature on macroeconomics and international finance, as well as econometric models (such as the Vector Autoregression Model). The results of empirical research indicate that an increase in trade turnover does not necessarily lead to greater business cycle synchronization in the economies under analysis. In fact, the impact of an increase in countries' turnover on the synchronization of their business cycles depends predominantly on the structure of trade turnover and not solely on the intensity of trade.

Who does what and when during an impact evaluation has an important influence on the credibility and usefulness of the evidence generated. We explore such choreography from technical, political and ethical perspectives by reflecting on a case study that entailed collaborative design of a qualitative impact evaluation protocol ('the QuIP') and its pilot use in Ethiopia and Malawi. Double blind interviewing was employed to reduce project-specific confirmation bias, followed by staged 'unblindfolding' as a form of triangulation. We argue that these steps can enhance credibility of evidence, and that ethical concerns associated with them can be addressed by being open with stakeholders about the process. The case study illustrates scope for better use of qualitative impact evaluation methods in complex international development contexts.

How did South Sudan become one of the most striking examples of state-building failure and state collapse after years of international support? What went wrong in the state-building enterprise? How did external intervention overlap and intertwine with local processes of accumulation of power and of state formation? This book addresses these questions analysing the intersection between international and local actors and processes. Based on original ethnographic and archival data, it provides a unique account of how state-building resources were captured and manipulated by local actors at various levels, contributing to the deepening of ethnic fragmentation and the politicization of ethnicity.

This study asserts that cohesionary — rather than diversionary — motives primarily influence the propensity of political leaders to use external force in international crises in times of domestic turmoil. Specifically, I contend that mass violence leads political leaders to engage in cohesionary tactics to achieve and maintain social order in their country for political survival. Employing random effects probit analyses with International Crisis Behavior (ICB) data for 139 countries from 1918 to 2005, I find that increased mass violence is more likely than other forms of domestic problems (be it an economic downturn or government instability) to instigate the external use of force during international crises. I also find that the impact of mass violence on the external use of force is contingent on ethno-religious heterogeneity and regime type.