Search results

"What has been the role of rising powers in the Arab–Israeli conflict? What does this tell us about rising powers and conflict management as well as rising powers' behavior in the world more generally? This book studies the way that five rising powers—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the BRICS countries—have approached the conflict since it first became internationalized in 1947. - Conflict management consists of different methods, from peacekeeping to mediation and the use of economic incentives and sanctions and (non)enforcement of international legal decisions. What distinguishes them is whether they are active or passive: active measures seek to transform a conflict and resolve it; passive measures seek to ameliorate its worst effects, but do not change their underlying causes. Since 1947 rising powers' active or passive use of these methods has coincided with their rise and fall and rise again in the international system. Those rises and falls are tied to global changes, including the Cold War, the emergence of the Third World, economic and ideological retrenchment of the 1980s and 1990s and the shift from unipolarity to multipolarity after 2000. - In summary, rising powers' management of the Arab–Israeli conflict has shifted from active to more passive methods since 1947. Their actions have occurred alongside two key changes within the conflict. One is the shift from a primarily state-based conflict between Israel and the Arabs to one that is more ethnic and territorial in scope, between Israel and the Palestinians. The other the emergence of the Oslo framework which has frozen power imbalance between Israel and the Palestinians since 1993. By pursuing the Oslo process, rising powers have separated conflict management from developing 'normal' diplomatic and economic exchanges with Israel and the Palestinians. In adopting this more passive conflict management approach, rising powers are disregarding both emerging alternatives that may potentially transform the conflict's dynamics (including involvement with civil society actors like the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement) and undertaking more active efforts at conflict resolution—and presenting themselves as global powers." (Publisher's description)

The article presents a framework by which the approaches taken in educational policies by the Left in Latin America may be understood. This framework takes the form of a continuum by which left-wing or progressive education, between deep and shallow poles, drawing at an abstract level the continuum on the equalitydifference features associated with Bobbio's (1996) Left-Right political spectrum. Presenting the Cuban (and to a lesser extent) the Sandinista Revolutions as the main source of progressive education in the region prior to the 1980s, the article examines the neo-liberal and neo-conservative features associated with the New Right and the Left's response. This took several forms in the 1990s and 2000s: traditional communists (Cuba), Third Way reformers (e.g. the PSDB in Brazil and the Concertacion in Chile) and between first generation (e.g. PT, Frente Amplio, Izquierda Unida, Causa R, Sandinistas since 2007) and second generation (e.g. the Chavez, Morales and Correa governments) radicals. The educational approaches of each are then placed tentatively along the progressive education spectrum.

As a 'rising power', China is expected to play a greater global role. But current Chinese involvement in the long-running and internationalised Arab-Israeli conflict is limited. How to explain this? What does it suggest about China's regional and global role? Studying Beijing's involvement since the 1950s, I note Chinese military assistance to the Palestinians during the 1960s-70s and strong criticism of Israel. But from the 1980s Beijing adopted a more diplomatic approach and endorsed the two-state solution. The change was due to China's broader regional and international relations. During the Cold War Beijing's 'active' pro-Palestinian stance was associated with being 'outside' the superpower-dominated international system. By the end of the Cold War Beijing was 'inside' the international system and increasingly integrated into the global economy. Commercial considerations trumped political ones, emphasising diplomacy. This suggests China's exercise of global power may be more nuanced and less overt than otherwise assumed.

Using a comparative history approach, Presidential Leadership in the Americas since Independence analyzes the presidents and their ability to bring change to their polities, societies, and economies across four different periods: during and after independence; during national consolidation in the nineteenth century; the expansion of the state in the twentieth century; and the turn towards neoliberal globalization since the 1980s.