Suchergebnisse

Persistent tensions between the international norm of state sovereignty and emerging human rights norms, including the Responsibility to Protect and the protection of civilians during international peacekeeping, raise the question of when and under what circumstances local and regional actors are more likely to respect global norms. These tensions are particularly stark in Africa. On the one hand, African states and regional organizations were among the first proponents of liberal protection norms in the non-Western world. On the other hand, many African leaders view state sovereignty as indispensable. Building on established empirical justice research in neighboring fields, this article makes an important contribution to the literature by demonstrating that African states are more likely to accept interventionist human rights norms when standards of procedural justice have been observed. The article demonstrates the relevance of procedural justice by examining the puzzle of divergent African reactions to two similar instances of regime change in Libya and the Ivory Coast that were enforced by extra-continental actors in the name of global protection norms.

Despite abundant debates on humanitarian military interventions, there is yet little empirical knowledge about these operations and their effects due to a lack of systematized data. To stimulate the necessary comparative research, this article introduces a new data set on all humanitarian military interventions between 1946 and 2015. The data set outlines the interveners' proclaimed aims, mandates, and activities. Documentation of events in the target countries prior to, during, and after the interventions facilitates their evaluation. The data set consists of data matrices and structured case descriptions that document all coding decisions. A review of the spatial and temporal distribution of interveners and interventions refutes the prevalent view that the vast majority of humanitarian military interventions are conducted by Western states and that such missions subsided after the interventions in Afghanistan and Libya. The data set enables a wide range of quantitative and qualitative research. Despite its limited number of cases, it can reveal whether humanitarian military interventions generally decrease the duration and intensity of violence. Among other applications, it can help identify the conditions under which such interventions lead to an escalation or de-escalation of deadly violence.

Vor dem Hintergrund der aktuellen Krisensymptome liberaler Friedensstrategien entwickelt dieser Beitrag die Konturen eines Forschungsprogramms, das Krisen institutioneller Ordnungen und Prozesse der Dissoziation in den Blick nimmt. Es geht davon aus, dass das Ausscheren von Staaten aus institutionalisierten Ordnungen oft mit hohen Spannungen einhergeht. Die Aufgabe eines solchen Forschungsprogramms besteht folglich darin, die Dynamik derartiger Prozesse besser zu verstehen und zu prüfen, ob und wie sich Dissoziation weniger spannungsreich organisieren lässt.

Egon Bahr's 1963 speech outlined ways to achieve rapprochement with the Soviet Union through mutual recognition. The article asks in how far this approach can be useful for the current crisis in Russian-Western relations. It demonstrates that the policy-of-strength-approach has not reached the desired results so far, so that a change in strategy is needed. Along Bahr's line of argument, it shows that functional separation can help to reduce tensions. If this strategy succeeds, cooperation in fields of mutual interests - that has been low in the past years - should be revived. However, unlike the 1960s, there is a lack of international support for rapprochement with significant divides both within the transatlantic relations and within the European Union.

Das Konzept des gerechten Friedens wird breit diskutiert. Reflexionen erfolgen vor allem im Hinblick auf drei friedensethische Kategorien: Recht, Gerechtigkeit und Gewalt. Vernachlässigt werden dagegen häufig Fragen von Herrschaft und Herrschaftsverhältnissen. Diesbezüglich ist der gerechte Frieden jedoch in doppelter Weise herausgefordert: Zum einen stellen sich Fragen zur Herrschaft jenseits des Staates. Globalisierung und Global Governance erfordern ein vertieftes Nachdenken über neue weltpolitische Strukturen. Zum anderen ist der gerechte Frieden mit Konstellationen jenseits von Demokratie und Rechtsstaatlichkeit und der Frage des Umgangs mit autoritären Regimen konfrontiert. Bei beiden friedensethischen Herausforderungen kommt der Zivilgesellschaft eine Schlüsselposition zu. Damit gerät zugleich die Rolle transnationaler religiöser Akteure und der Beitrag der Kirchen als Akteurinnen der Zivilgesellschaft in den Blick.