Suchergebnisse

The conflict over Transnistria is a territorial dispute in which one of the conflict parties (Transnistria) seeks independence while the other (Moldova) aims to restore its full sovereignty and territorial integrity. For close to two decades, the situation has been stagnant: a cease-fire agreement signed in 1992 in Moscow between the Russian and Moldovan presidents at the time – Boris Yeltsin and Mircea Snegur – established a trilateral peacekeeping mission (Russia, Moldova, Transnistria) and a buffer zone along the Dniestr/Nistru River. Protected by these arrangements and an additional Russian military presence, Transnistria has developed into a de facto state of its own, albeit without international recognition and heavily dependent on Russia.

Territorial accommodation in the management of ethnic conflict, while widely practised, has also been the subject of much academic debate which has failed to reach a conclusive verdict on its utility to contribute to sustainable conflict settlements. Reviewing three recent volumes on the role of institutions in conflict management processes, I focus on their central argument in relation to the question of whether territorial accommodation is a viable strategy for conflict management. While none of the volumes offers a conclusion to the debate over the merits of territorial approaches, they all provide sophisticated answers to some of the key questions continuously raised in this debate and all have significant potential to inform its policy dimension and to shape future research.

The academic and policy debate on state failure reaches back to the early 1990s. Since then, its empirical and analytical sophistication has grown, yet the fact that state failure is a regional phenomenon, that is, that it occurs in clusters of geographically contiguous states, has largely been overlooked. This article first considers the academic and policy debates on state failure in the Political Science/International Relations and Development Studies literatures, and offers a definition of state failure that is derived from the means of the state, rather than its ends. Subsequently engaging with existing scholarship on the concept of 'region' in international security, the article develops a definition of 'state failure regions'. Further empirical observation of such regions and additional conceptual reflections lead to establishing an analytical model for the study of state failure regions and allow indentifying a number of concrete gains in knowledge and understanding that can result from its application. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractThe academic and policy debate on state failure reaches back to the early 1990s. Since then, its empirical and analytical sophistication has grown, yet the fact that state failure is a regional phenomenon, that is, that it occurs in clusters of geographically contiguous states, has largely been overlooked. This article first considers the academic and policy debates on state failure in the Political Science/International Relations and Development Studies literatures, and offers a definition of state failure that is derived from the means of the state, rather than its ends. Subsequently engaging with existing scholarship on the concept of 'region' in international security, the article develops a definition of 'state failure regions'. Further empirical observation of such regions and additional conceptual reflections lead to establishing an analytical model for the study of state failure regions and allow indentifying a number of concrete gains in knowledge and understanding that can result from its application.