Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article explores the intersection of policy implementation, conflict/peacebuilding, and the role of the EU PEACE program in Northern Ireland (NI). Conflict societies see a great investment of external funds, attempting to promote conflict resolution. Specifically, this article analyses the fourth wave of such funding in NI to examine why the EU PEACE program has not fully brought about its intended policy outcomes. Using Matland's conflict‐ambiguity model of policy implementation, we identify how EU funds can be skewed to support local political interests. Simultaneously, the EU PEACE program continues to adhere to strict implementation criteria that makes little sense given the local context. Therefore, contrary to its objectives, the implementation of EU funding can compound rather than ameliorate divisions in postconflict NI. Instead of prescribing strict implementation criteria, EU policy could focus on improving the administrative capacity and discretion of local administration in devising locally relevant implementation strategies.

By examining geopolitical factors, Hafiz al-Asad's overall political goals and strategies, his domestic and international constraints, and the evolution of his policies on peace with Israel, the author argues that Syria has always sought a just peace based on return of the Golan. The author is pessimistic, however, that the new Israeli government under Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu will accept such a settlement.

Peace, War, and Liberty traces the history of United States foreign policy and the ideas that have animated it, and considers not only whether America's policy choices have made the world safer and freer but also the impact of those choices on freedom at home.

In theoretical terms 'peace' remains a largely contested concept. Academics propose competing definitions and conceptualizations, which possess their own normative and analytical advantages or disadvantages. Yet despite heated academic and theoretical debates, studies looking at the empirical understandings of peace and conflict-settlement strategies of different states are largely missing. The paper set out to cover this gap and ask how similarities and differences in the actors' conceptual understandings of peace play themselves out in their agreement and disagreement over the advocated 'peace strategies'. Employing qualitative/ quantitative content analysis of the statements made by the representatives of the Russian Federation and the United States at the UN Security Council, Evgeniya Bakalova and Konstanze Jüngling analyze the debates around four recent and/ or ongoing conflicts (Georgia 2008, Libya 2011, Syria 2011-2014 and Ukraine 2014). The study reveals that while agreement over the conceptualization of peace does not impede further disagreement as to the advocated peace strategies, disagreement at the conceptual level breeds deeper disagreement.

Untersucht werden Probleme des "Friedensaufgebotes" der FDJ. Dazu wurden im Winter 1983 drei schriftliche Gruppenbefragungen bei ca. 2.500 Jugendlichen durchgeführt. Die offene Hauptfrage lautete: "Auf welche ganz persönliche Art und Weise würden Sie Ihre Zustimmung zur Friedenspolitik der DDR in der Öffentlichkeit zum Ausdruck bringen?" Bei einer Antwortquote von sechzig v.H. wurden vielfältige friedenssichernde Aktivitäten genannt, von ca. 170 Jugendlichen aber auch negative Positionen vorgetragen. Insgesamt wurde deutlich, "daß die Identifikation der Jugendlichen mit der Friedenspolitik von Partei und Regierung" (der DDR) "in einem sehr umfassenden Maße ausgeprägt ist", was vom Verfasser als Argument gegen eine unabhängige Friedensbewegung in der DDR angeführt wird. (pbb)

In the last fifteen years, Colombia's rapidly growing peace movement has produced activists who fervently work to create peace in a country that has been in conflict for more than forty years. These activists and the organizations that support them represent a heterogeneous group of people who use a diverse array of peace initiatives (or peace actions) to achieve their peace goals. Their work has attempted (and often succeeded) in influencing and impacting Colombian citizens, the government and foreign entities. This thesis focuses on how civil society peace initiatives have influenced and reacted to a changing political climate between 1997-2008 as the Colombian government shifted strategies from a negotiated settlement to a more militaristic approach. In this study I first examine the birth, decline, and rebirth of citizen participation in the Colombian peace movement. I demonstrate how the rise of citizen peace activism strongly influenced the government to sit at the negotiating table with non-state armed actors and how citizen frustration and the decline in participation caused the government to end negotiations and begin a new policy of Democratic Security. Next I analyze how peace organizations, especially at the national level have changed strategies in response to less citizen support and a governmental policy that has shifted away from a peaceful settlement. I suggest that these organizations have relied more heavily on public education, awareness, and networking than in previous years, and that these changes have made them more successful in fulfilling their missions.