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In recent years, scholars of international relations have realized how poor have been their predictions, based on relative military or economic strength, of the outcome of negotiations or disputes. The strong often do not prevail or must compromise to a surprising extent. The Soviet Union's relations with its six East European allies have also exhibited this phenomenon. Even during the period when Soviet leaders were committed to maintaining control over Eastern Europe as a vital underpinning of Soviet security, and despite the Soviet Union's disproportionate strength in the region, the East European states departed from Soviet wishes in a variety of ways. In the late 1980s, this departure, for a while, took the ironic form of Romania, the GDR, and Czechoslovakia flouting Soviet calls for reform.

Soweto, Rhodesia, and Umtata in 1976 are poignant and pointed symbols of change and continuity in Southern Africa. Regional politics here as in other international subsystems are characterized by the tension between order and continuity on the one hand and opposition and change on the other. This trinity of symbols consists, in part, of a revival of the violence of Sharpeville, earlier diplomacy over Zimbabwe and Afrikanerdom's continued ambivalence towards the demands of African nationalism. But clearly it also embodies new features, especially the apparent inexhaustibility of black anger, the greater imperative of a settlement, and the unacceptability of "separate freedoms" respectively. Moreover, both the regional and global environments have evolved significantly in the last decade so that apparently similar events in Southern Africa may now have new meanings, implications, and results.

While pre-modern China's relations with her Sinic neighbours have been described as a distinctive variant of the English School's international society based on a shared Confucian culture and a China-centred tributary system, her relations with her nomadic neighbours, including the Hsiung-nu, Turks, Uighurs and Mongols, have often been characterized as purely power-political, Hobbesian and lacking any societal foundation. This article argues that China and the nomads formed an international society for much of their history, one based not on a common Confucian heritage or China's immutable centrality, but on the principle of an adaptable hierarchy based on common diplomatic norms and practices that allowed its members to affirm and contest their status within this hierarchy. The case of China and the nomads extends and enriches the concept of international society in three ways. First, it is a historical example of a non-European international society not composed of sovereign states or based on the principle of sovereign equality, but based on the principle of adaptable hierarchy and the ranking of powers. Second, it shows that international society can exist and develop between units as culturally and politically dissimilar as China and the nomads. Finally, it provides us with a unique model of how pre-modern international society in East Asia was stratified, which markedly differs from how modern international society is stratified. This last point has contemporary relevance in relation to China's rise as a great power, and its frustration at what it feels is the unfair denial of a status commensurate with its growing power and influence by the US and the West.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is presently confronted with the most severe crisis since its independence. It has been transformed into a battlefield where several African states & national armed movements are simultaneously fighting various wars. Confronted with this acute political emergency, the international community, which has a responsibility in promoting peace & security, has given an ambiguous message. In the absence of a clear response, the Southern Africa Development Community played a leading role in the mediation process that ultimately led to the Lusaka Agreement of 10 July 1999. The agreement was, however, signed in a totally different context from the present one. Moreover, the primary objective of the Lusaka Agreement, to topple Laurent Desire Kabila, has lost its relevance since his assassination & replacement by a (more Western-friendly) government led by Joseph Kabila. With the Lusaka Agreement signed by most of the belligerents, the international community had a framework through which to channel its growing involvement. However, confronted by the signatories to the Lusaka Agreement who were not ready for peace, & therefore continuously violated established rules of international law & found pretexts to not observe the agreement, the international community remained divided & unwilling to become more involved -- particularly in light of the Somalia & Rwanda debacles. In the absence of this commitment, however, the whole idea of African renaissance could be put in jeopardy. 27 References. Adapted from the source document.

International contexts provide social work students with the opportunity to develop knowledge of international social work, global citizenship and cultural competency. While these contexts are powerful sites of learning, there is a need to ensure that this occurs within a critical framework. The paradigm of critical reflection is used to facilitate this and has been popular in international programs. In this article, we develop this further by describing critically-reflective techniques and providing examples used in a pilot exchange program between a social work school in the UK and in India. The potential implications of these strategies for social work education are discussed.

We investigate the effect of domestic politics on international environmental policy by incorporating into a classic stage game of coalition formation the phenomenon of lobbying by special-interest groups. In doing so, we contribute to the theory of international environmental agreements, which has overwhelmingly assumed that governments make decisions based on a single set of public-interest motivations. Our results suggest that lobbying on emissions may affect the size of the stable coalition in counterintuitive ways. In particular, a powerful business lobby may increase the government's incentives to sign an agreement, by providing it with strong bargaining power with respect to that lobby at the emission stage. This would result in lower total emissions when the number of countries involved is not too large. We also show that things change radically when lobbying bears directly on the membership decisions, suggesting that both the object and timing of lobbying matter for the way in which membership decisions, emissions and welfare are affected.

Description : L'Observatoire international sur le racisme et les discriminations publiait un bulletin annuel faisant état de l'actualité et des développements dans le domaine du racisme et des discriminations*. Lancé en mars 2003, l'Observatoire international sur le racisme et les discriminations avait pour but premier d'établir un pont entre la recherche universitaire sur le racisme et les discriminations, et la réflexion publique sur ces questions, dans les milieux d'intervention, tant gouvernementaux que non-gouvernementaux. Dans ce numéro : - Le devoir de mémoire et les politiques du pardon - Le lourd tribut du passé - Deux débats-midi du CRIEC - Stratégie pour la réparation - Africville *Les bulletins de l'Observatoire international sur le racisme et les discriminations étaient hébergés sur le site du Centre de recherche en immigration, ethnicité et citoyenneté (CRIEC) de l'UQAM. Ce dernier a cessé ses activités à l'été 2020.

A la demande de M. le député Peano, M. G. Wagnière, Ministre de Suisse à Rome, nous a envoyé le compte-rendu de la séance de la Chambre des Députés, du 16 juin 1918, où l'éloge de la Croix-Rouge internationale a été prononcé.Au sujet de la question des prisonniers de guerre, M. Peano a donné lecture de notre appel du 16 avril 1917, en vue du rapatriement des prisonniers, et demandé à la Chambre d'exprimer sa gratitude au Comité International pour ses efforts en faveur de ceux-ci.

SummaryThis comment takes a critical look at the method used by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in its study of customary humanitarian law. It argues that the ICRC study reduces the concept of international custom to its definition under Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice. It also argues that the study overlooks some of the problems raised by the application of Article 38. It contends that the positions taken by the ICRC to identify customary rules of humanitarian law are somewhat ambiguous and even slanted. Finally, this comment suggests that, beyond questioning the ICRC study, it is the role of custom as a source of international law that is in question.

This paper uses a large panel of bilateral bank flow data to assess how institutions and politics affect international capital -bank in particular- flows. The following key findings emerge: 1) The empirical "gravity" model is the benchmark in explaining the volume of international banking activities. 2) Conditioned on standard gravity factors (distance, GDP, population), well-functioning institutions are a key driving force for international bank flows. Specifically, foreign banks invest substantially more in countries with i) uncorrupt bureaucracies, ii) high-quality legal system, and iii) a non-government controlled banking system. 3) Beyond institutions, politics exert also a firstorder impact. 4) The European Integration process has spurred cross-border banking activities between member states. These results are robust to various econometric methodologies, samples and the potential endogeneity of institutional characteristics. The strong institutions/politics-bank flows nexus has strong implications for asset trade and international macro theories, which have not modelled these relationships explicitly.