Suchergebnisse

This paper is an effort to overcome a major obstacle to a creative system orientation in international relations—a dearth of knowledge about system-level change. To accomplish this goal two tasks are necessary. First, building upon earlier contributions, a new definition of international system is offered and its essential properties—structure, process, equilibrium, stability—are discussed. The second requirement is to create a new approach to crisis and to forge links between its unit and system levels, the focus of the rest of the paper. This, in turn, will facilitate the analysis of crises as catalysts to system change, that is, as international earthquakes.

Abstract
To understand the concerns and issues related to Muslims and Islam in Europe, this article makes use of a framework that qualifies 'Islam' as two manifestations of 'physical' and 'virtual' Islam and 'Europe' as two discourses defined as the political-legal and cultural-religious discourse. The resulting matrix of these four dimensions will be applied to several of the main issues of the interaction between Islam and Europe: the numerical presence of Muslims, their visibility, the legacy of centuries of European-Islamic interaction, and the (in)compatibility of Islamic and European values. Based on these examples, the author observes that the European concerns regarding 'Islam' mostly relate to virtual Islam and are dominated by cultural-religious discourse. The author therefore questions the often-heard two-choice question between 'Europanization of Islam' or 'Islamization of Europe', arguing that the real choice to be made in Europe is whether it will adhere to its political-legal values, such as liberalism, equalit and human rights, or will prefer its cultural-religious values.

Thomas Hobbes is one of the most important figures in the history of political philosophy. Yet a great deal of his political thought was motivated by the need to address distinctively religious problems. This is the first collection of essays dedicated to the complex and rich intersections between Hobbes's political and religious thought.

This book highlights the relationship between the state and religion in India and Europe. It problematizes the idea of secularism and questions received ideas about secularism. It also looks at how Europe and India can learn from each other about negotiating religious space and identity in this globalised post-9/11 world.

Evidence use from a political perspective -- The "what" - types of evidence used in the policy process -- The "who" - producers, entrepreneurs, and intermediaries -- The "how" - evidence use across stages of the policy process -- Adopting and implementing the common core at the state level: four comparative cases -- Evidence use in the children's health insurance program: a cross-sector case study -- Creating political incentives for the use of evidence.

Review

Recent literature attributes the relative scarcity of open international markets to the prisoner's dilemma structure of state preferences with respect to trade. We argue that the prisoner's dilemma representation does not reflect the most critical aspect of free trade agreements in an anarchic international system, namely, their security externalities. We consider these external effects explicitly. Doing so leads us to two conclusions: (1) free trade is more likely within, rather than across, political-military alliances; and (2) alliances are more likely to evolve into free-trade coalitions if they are embedded in bipolar systems than in multipolar systems. Using data drawn from an 80-year period beginning in 1905, we test these hypotheses. The results of the analysis make it clear that alliances do have a direct, statistically significant, and large impact on bilateral trade flows and that this relationship is stronger in bipolar, rather than in multipolar, systems.

"Presenting a political history and sociology of Moroccan Sufism from colonialism to the modern day, this book studies the Sufi model of Master and Disciple in relation to social and political life, comparing the different eras of acquiescent versus dissident Sufism. This comparative fieldwork study offers new perspectives on the connection between the monarchy and mystic realms with a specific coverage of the Boutchichi order and Abdessalam Yassine's Al Adl Wal Ihsane, examining the myth of apolitical Sufism throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Drawing on Michel Foucault and James Scott, this book fuses thinking about the political dimension of Sufism, a "hidden transcript," involving power struggles, patronage and justice and its esoteric spiritual ethics of care. Addressing the lacuna in English language literature on the Boutchichi Sufi order in Morocco, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Islamic Studies, Comparative Politics and the MENA region"--

Intense ethnic conflicts bring to the surface important paradoxes about the function of memory in politics. The capacity to remember is vital for political success, but too much memory, or the wrong kind of memory, stokes the fires of revenge. Successful political action demands both the capacity to remember and the capacity to forget. How and when each comes into play is difficult to formulate conceptually. A classic text in which the politics of memory plays a central role elucidates these issues and suggests central political dimensions of remembering and forgetting. This essay uses the story of Joseph in the Hebrew Bible to explore the politics of memory and to suggest factors that produce constructive and destructive results. It examines two principal forms: prudential and mythic, the qualities of which differ importantly. It concludes with an account of a third form: memory as a step toward political reconciliation.The conundrum of memory: Healthier to remember? Surely it is best sometimes to forget–though not to forget Kosovo now. Eventual obliviousness may equally free all sides from the hereditary obligation to hate. ... What's happening there now amounts to a religious war between the future and the past. Beware: in that place, the past is a black hole." –Lance Morrow1

"In 2002 the Islamist Justice and Development Part (AKP) swept to power in Turkey. Since then it has shied away from a hard-line ideological stance in favor of a more conservative and democratic approach. M. Hakan Yavuz, a premier scholar of Turkey, negotiates this ambivalence, asking whether it is possible for a political party with a deeply religious ideology to liberalize and entertain democracy or whether, as he contends, radical religious groups moderate their practices and ideologies when forced to negotiate a competitive and rule-based political system. While the author explores the thesis through an analysis of the rise and evolution of the AKP and its more recent 2007 election victory, his conclusion - that everyday political realities ultimately override ideology and dogma - can be comparatively applied to other Muslim countries facing similar challenges. The book, which tackles a number of important issues including political participation, economics, internal security, the Kurdish question, and Turkey's bid to enter the European Union, provides a masterful survey of modern Turkish and Islamic politics, which will be of interest to a broad range of readers from students to professionals and policymakers."--Jacket

The struggle for power in the state takes place most often in the field of politics. In a democratic state, it is not permissible to usurp political power by brachial force. All political actors should have the same chance to engage in political competition. Present their policies publicly and succeed in the elections. However, during political competition in practice, various distortions occur. Politics becomes the subject and object of criminalization. Its purpose is to disqualify political competition. The aim of the paper is to point out the initial manifestations and social danger of criminalization of politics and politics of criminalization.

Background: The purpose of this article is to examine how different views on power and politics manifest in organizational change, and how they can be integrated into a single model. Methods: Our research was based on an extensive literature review about power and politics and their relationship with organizational change. We used the systems model of organizational change developed by Maes and Van Hootegem to map the different views on power and politics in organizational change. This systems model integrated different change discourses and allowed us to post the various aspects of power and politics in organizational change. Results: Using the systems model as a reference to look at power and politics from different angles led to a better understanding of the role they play in organizational change so that actors can enter the political arena of change better prepared and play the game of change at a tactically higher level. Conclusions: The analysis contributes to the study of power and politics in three respects. First, using the metamodel of organizational change to map the different views on power and politics offers a more detailed and varied understanding of the use of power and politics in organizational change. Second, looking at power and politics from different discourses can accommodate greater complexity and nuance. Third, it shows that change projects rarely run smoothly but are constantly traversed by all kinds of obstacles and barriers that require specific political astuteness. Members of an organization, who have been introduced to political skills, will be better able to navigate the pitfalls of organizational change and its rhetoric and thus be better agents of change or better able to resist unreasonable change.