Suchergebnisse

The ongoing conflict in Thailand's Muslim-majority southern border provinces has claimed more than three thousand lives since 2004. To date, successive governments have sought to control the violence mainly through the use of enhanced security measures, and by arresting and prosecuting insurgent suspects. Yet despite some limited successes in reducing the number of violent incidents, the underlying causes of the conflict have not been addressed. The Thai state suffers from a legitimacy deficit in the region, and many Malay-Muslims would like greater control over their own affairs. The insurgency is ultimately fuelled by political frustrations. Yet all suggestions that the region might be granted some form of special administrative status have been consistently rejected by the authorities. This article examines proposals in a recent report by a team of Thai academics based in the region, who have advocated the creation of a new ministry to oversee the administration of the Deep South. These controversial proposals offer a compromise political solution, one which recognizes the distinctive nature of the region while preserving the core principle of a unitary Thai state. Adapted from the source document.

We verify the predictions of the theoretical literature on the relationship between political competition and economic performance, holding that, when the predominance of an ideological dimension creates a political rent, the party exploiting it selects lower quality politicians whose policy choices worsen economic performance. We examine the sample of 15 Italian Regions from 1980 to 2002 that exploits the institutional reforms of 1995 as an exogenous shock to pre-existing rents. We find evidence that higher political competition improves economic performance, through the choice of more efficiency-oriented policies. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractThis article takes up the invitation extended by the co‐editors of the recent IJURR debate on city‐regions for others to join them in 'a wider dialogue over the constitutive role of politics in the brave new world of 'city‐regions'. It begins by considering the extent to which the collection was successful in describing this 'brave new world' and in populating it with the variety of social and environmental concerns which, the co‐editors claimed, have so far been neglected in recent debates about the significance of city‐regions. Adjudging the debate to have been only partially successful in these respects, the article goes on to argue that the goal the co‐editors strove for — effectively to liberate 'city‐regionalism' from its ostensible captors — is unlikely to be achieved unless and until its critics (1) engage more explicitly and seriously with claims that are made for the significance of changes in the material circumstances of city‐regions, and (2) recognize that there is nothing inherently 'neoliberal' or regressive about the concept of the city‐region or the way it is used. These arguments are illustrated with reference to the economics of city‐regions and the politics of city‐regionalism in England.RésuméRépondant à l'invitation des co‐responsables du dernier débat publié dans IJURR sur les régions métropolitaines, cet essai vient 'élargir le dialogue sur le rôle constitutif de la politique dans l'univers idéal des régions métropolitaines'. Pour commencer, il étudie dans quelle mesure cet ensemble d'articles a réussi à décrire ce 'meilleur des mondes' et à le nourrir de diverses questions sociales et environnementales qui, d'après les co‐responsables, ont jusqu'alors été ignorées dans les récentes discussions sur l'importance de ces régions. Etablissant que le débat n'a qu'en partie atteint ces objectifs, l'article affirme ensuite qu'on ne parviendra probablement pas au but poursuivi — libérer le 'régionalisme métropolitain' de ses entraves apparentes —à moins que ses critiques (1) ne s'attachent plus explicitement et sérieusement aux arguments sur l'importance des changements apportés aux situations matérielles des régions métropolitaines, et (2) ne reconnaissent qu'il n'y a rien d'intrinsèquement 'néolibéral' ni régressif dans le concept de région métropolitaine ou dans son exploitation. Cette démonstration est illustrée à partir de l'économie des régions métropolitaines et de la politique de régionalisme métropolitain en Angleterre.

The objective of this literature review is to understand where Graphical Information Systems (GIS) can be useful to address security issues and how it has been used until now. While the geographic drivers of territorial conflicts have been extensively described by a number of political studies, the quantitative analysis of these drivers is quite new. This study traces an evolution from conceptual research to quantitative development. It then discusses the advantages and challenges of applying new geographic techniques to analyze spatial drivers of conflict. We identify the main spatial components in conflict and security, the existing types of information/data and the quantitative methods used. We describe the spatial component of security by looking at: (i) the main sociopolitical concepts linked to territory, (ii) the kind of geographic concepts linked to territory, (iii) measures used to describe such geographic concepts; and (iv)the issues raised in any attempt to integrate geographic concepts into a GIS. We conclude that GIS tools can be useful in the analysis of civil disputes, particularly where subnational level data exists. This paper shows that spatial processing tools in GIS allow us to represent some spatial components and to address new issues such as the fuzzy complexity of border permeability. Adapted from the source document.

This article assesses the robustness of the liberal or 'Kantian' peace propositions by challenging two common practices: pooling data for different geographic regions, and using conflict at any level as a proxy for interstate war. The findings indicate that there are substantial differences between regions in the effects of democracy, economic interdependence, and international organizations. Conflict (all MIDs) and war have considerably different relationships to these key variables, and to each other, across regions. While I do not argue that these results undermine the general Kantian peace propositions, they do represent powerful qualifications that provide insight into theoretical foundations and raise related questions of specification error. They also point to the continuing importance of concepts such as security communities and norms as liberal factors distinct from the Kantian variables.