Suchergebnisse

A norm of special treatment for LDCs, created by the UN, has spread to various international organisations including the WTO. Within the WTO evidence of the institutionalization of the norm can be found both in the agreements and legal documents and the way in which the LDCs have been treated by other states. Helen Hawthorne investigates how norms impact on negotiations in international organisations. She shows that few studies of international organisations focus on the role of the weaker states in the organization, the majority focus either on the major states or the emerging economies. By ignoring the role of the poorer, weaker states in the GATT/WTO we are ignoring the history of these states in the organisation and do not get a true picture of the organization, how it operates in relation to them and their impact on the organisation.

An important new discussion of Africa's place in the international system. This volume discusses Africa's place in the international system, examining the way in which the Westphalian system, in light of the impact of globalization and transnational networks, continues to play a major role in the structuring of Africa's international relations. The book provides a solid empirical analysis of key global players in Africa - France, the UK, the US, Japan, Germany, the EU and the UN - and of their policies towards the region. In the context of the 'war against terrorism', African political stability becomes a consideration of increasing importance. By analyzing the relevance of the states in the North, this book challenges conventional wisdom in recent international relations thinking. It applies the concept of an 'international policy community' to bridge the gap between the 'domestic' and the 'international', explaining why Africa retains a role in global politics out of any proportion to its economic weight.

This volume is an inter-disciplinary scholarly resource bringing together contributions from writers, experienced academics and practitioners working in fields such as human rights, humanitarian law, public policy, psychology, cultural and peace studies, and earth jurisprudence. This collection of essays presents the most up to date knowledge and status of the field of transitional justice, and also highlights the emerging debates in this area, which are often overseen and underdeveloped in the literature. The volume provides a wide coverage of the arguments relating to controversial issues emanating from different regions of the world. The book is divided into four parts which groups different aspects of the problems and issues facing transitional justice as a field, and its processes and mechanisms more specifically. Part I concentrates on the traditional means and methods of dealing with past gross abuses of power and political violence. In this section, the authors also expand and often challenge the ways that these processes and mechanisms are conceptualised and introduced. Part II provides a forum for the contributors to share their first hand experiences of how traditional and customary mechanisms of achieving justice can be effectively utilised. Part III includes a collection of essays which challenges existing transitional justice models and provides new lenses to examine the formal and traditional processes and mechanisms. It aims to expose insufficiencies and some of the inherent practical and jurisprudential problems facing the field. Finally, Part IV, looks to the future by examining what remedies can be available today for abuses of rights of the future generations and those who have no standing to claim their rights, such as the environment. Since the late 1980s massive political and legal transformations have taken place in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America and Southern Africa, which has challenged many of the presumptions of legal and political foundations of a nation-state including the questions of how to build a nation-state in divided societies or the role of law in democracy building in the face of such massive societal changes driven by a holistic mix of players. This process is by no means over as one can judge but the most current 'Arab Spring' or even the 'Occupy Wall Street' type of movements across the world, including in the developed states. Participators of these events call for their rights to be upheld and protected; some others lobby for new rights to be recognised and realised. These worldwide phenomena challenge the existing international (legal and political) system and call for some novel and innovative means by which the new challenges can be addressed. Despite the vastness of research done on the subject matter this monograph suggests an innovative, if not challenging, way of utilising what the field of transitional justice has acquired in the process of examining how societies deal with past abuses to meet victims' legitimate expectations of justice, truth and reparation. This manuscript will look to expand the field even further by suggesting that there are emerging fields which will, and in some instances already have, influenced the way we think about human rights in a global context. It will set forth new dimensions in conceptualising human rights and how their current and future instances of abuse can be addressed. This is a call to look ahead and into the future by trying to define the inadequacies of the current international system in recognising emerging trends. Understanding the world-wide developments, even if not yet fully legally defined, contributes to the work on combating impunity and ensuring respect for victims' rights. As it is widely accepted that societies have different means of dealing with past (human) rights abuses thus it would be sensible to suggest that widening understanding of the relationship and cross-reference between the different fields and branches of international legal and political scholarship (all which affect human rights field) should also be encouraged. The Changing International Landscape of Transitional Justice: Emerging Trends and Issues will be a scholarly resource bringing together current knowledge and debates in the field and developing the many areas that are currently underdeveloped in the literature. The book will provide full coverage of the arguments relating to hot topics and controversial issues (e.g. hybrid threats, ecocide, ecological jurisprudence, case studies by practitioners from the human rights field). The invited contributors are all experienced academic writers and practitioners in their respective areas of expertise (law, politics, public policy, cultural studies).

A highly readable account of the collision between sovereign states and global economic forces for the control of money. Throughout the ages money was a prerogative of national sovereignty and currency management was the responsibility of governments. Bretton Woods provided the post-war framework for intergovernmental monetary cooperation until the banking community, using the Eurodollar as an international medium of exchange, forced governments to adopt a regime of floating rates in the 1970s. The book describes the development of the Eurodollar market and the consequences for world finance as a new breed of financiers and currency traders radically changed the nature of international banking.

I Risk: A General Overview -- 1 Differences of Opinion in Financial Markets -- Commentary by V. V. Chari -- 2 Risk, Exchange Market Intervention, and Private Speculative Behavior in a Small Open Economy -- Commentary by Charles I. Plosser -- II Risk: A Domestic Overview -- 3 Risk and the Economy: A Finance Perspective -- Commentary by A mold Zellner -- 4 Management versus Economic Conditions as Contributors to the Recent Increase in Bank Failures -- Commentary by George G. Kaufman -- III Risk: An International Overview -- 5 Empirical Assessment of Foreign Currency Risk Premiums -- Commentary by Maurice Obstfeld -- 6 Country Risk and the Structure of International Financial Intermediation -- Commentary by Thomas D. Willett.

This paper explores why international economic cooperation is both potentially beneficial & difficult to attain in practice. Taking nation states as unitary actors the paper uses game theory to explore the difficulties states face to sustain cooperation over time. Specifically, the analysis focuses on the incentives for following non-cooperative behavior, as well as on problems of time inconsistency. The paper also discusses how the existence of economic hegemones can facilitate cooperation, as well as how the existence of international regimes & institutions fosters cooperation by modifying the incentives different states face. Thus, cooperation can be facilitated but never ensured. Tables, References. Adapted from the source document.

Das Internationale Übereinkommen zum Schutz aller Personen vor dem Verschwindenlassen verpflichtet die Vertragsstaaten zur Suche nach verschwundenen Personen. Der Aufenthaltsort und die Umstände ihres Verschwindens müssen ermittelt und im Todesfall die sterblichen Überreste identifiziert und an Angehörige übergeben werden. In der Praxis gestaltet sich die Suche vielerorts als schwierig, oft fehlen der politische Wille und/oder technische Möglichkeiten. Mit internationalen Eilaktionen können in solchen Fällen Betroffene bei der Suche nach Verschwundenen unterstützt werden.

Conventional wisdom suggests that cultural differences make conflict more likely. Culture can unite and divide, but there exists little agreement among scholars over how identity forms among states, what distinctions are most salient, and when conflict is more likely. Researchers have tended to 'confirm' the role of identity in an ex post facto fashion, looking only at actual conflicts with cultural differences, without considering the opportunities for conflict among groups. We address a series of problems with existing conceptions of identity and ethnicity. We distinguish between shared and different culture by religion, language, and ethnicity. Rather than equating states with just the dominant groups, we also consider how relations involving secondary groups present in other states can give rise to conflict. We examine empirically the relationship between cultural similarities and differences and international dispute behavior in the post-World War II era. Our results suggest that culture and identity influence dispute patterns, but in ways that run counter to conventional beliefs. We find little evidence that conflict is more common between states where the dominant groups come from different cultural affiliations. If anything, our results suggest that violence is more likely among states with similar cultural ties, even when controlling for other determinants of conflict. Moreover, dyads where a group is politically privileged in one state but a minority in another tend to be particularly conflict prone. We conclude with suggestions for reorienting the study of identity and conflict in more constructive ways than the clash of civilization thesis.

Der Institutionalismus bildet keine kohärente Theorie der Internationalen Beziehungen, sondern ist vielmehr ein Überbegriff verschiedener institutionalistischer Theorievarianten bzw. Ansätze, die sich jedoch durch einige Gemeinsamkeiten auszeichnen. Dazu zählt zuvorderst die Grundannahme, dass Institutionen eine eigenständige Bedeutung in der internationalen Politik haben und in diesem Sinne über eine gewisse Widerständigkeit gegenüber den agierenden Individuen und Gruppen verfügen. In dem Beitrag wird zunächst der Institutionenbegriff geklärt, die wesentlichen Varianten des Institutionalismus dargestellt und relevante theoretische Einordnungen und Abgrenzungen vorgenommen. Dabei wird auf eine Dreiteilung zurückgegriffen, dies sich inzwischen in der politikwissenschaftlichen Debatte durchgesetzt hat, nämlich in den rationalen, den historischen und den soziologischen Neo-Institutionalismus. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf der rationalen Variante. Sie hat zum einen die Entwicklung der wissenschaftlichen Auseinandersetzung mit internationalen Institutionen im angelsächsischen Kontext beherrscht, was dazu führte, dass einige von einem "institutional turn" sprechen, zum anderen dient der rationale Institutionalismus bis heute zumeist als Referenztheorie für die historische und die soziologische Variante. (ICB2)