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Over the past few decades, Political Science has seen an increasing institutionalization of Scholarship on Teaching and Learning (SoTL) through journals, book series, and professional associations. Over at PS: Political Science and Politics, we add to this body of literature by making the case for a pedagogical practice borrowed from Professional Military Education (PME)—the staff […]

Anke Reinhardt International governmental organizations are not, at least not primarily, research organizations. There are exceptions: For example, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI) were both created to conduct research. But the vast majority of international organizations have other functions: facilitating international cooperation, regulating international […]
The post Explaining Research Activities of International Organizations appeared first on Europe of Knowledge.

Anke Reinhardt International governmental organizations are not, at least not primarily, research organizations. There are exceptions: For example, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI) were both created to conduct research. But the vast majority of international organizations have other functions: facilitating international cooperation, regulating international […]
The post Explaining Research Activities of International Organizations appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Jean d'Aspremont (University of Manchester - School of Law; Sciences Po Law School) has posted The Love for International Organizations ((2023) 20 Int Organ Law Rev 111 (forthcoming)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Albeit the object of compelling criticisms...

Yesterday, a bluesky discussion focused on whether the Federation of Planets was essentially the UN with US domination or something else.  While I have written far more here about Star Wars, I have actually used Star Trek more in my teaching, and I have watched far more Trek (there is simply many more hours of Trek content).  Plus having written about NATO (the ebook is less than $18!), I have a few views on the matter.To start, what is the United Federation of Planets and what is Starfleet?  The Federation is an alliance of planets, more so than it is a true federation a la the US.  Not even a confederation like Canada.  How so?  The planets still have their own foreign policies--we see plenty of meetings of diplomats from members to various proceedings.  Note, diplomats, not just leaders or representatives.  Just as I always like to make fun of Texas secessionists for having their embassy in Texas when it should be in Washington, DC or London or some place beyond the territory of the "country" it is representing, federal units (with the funky exception of Quebec) don't have embassies and ambassadors.  This is a short cut, a bit of evidence, for the basic idea that the units in the federation are more independent, more akin to nation-states than they are to units in a federal country.  So, yeah, the name is deceptive.  Starfleet adds to the confusion because it is the military (despite denials) of the Federation.  This would make the Federation appear more like a country if it had a monopoly--if Starfleet was the only armed force within the federation.  However, I seem to remember various planets within the fed having their own armed starships including Vulcan.  So, despite the name, the Federation is not akin to a single country.  It is easier to dispense with the idea that the Federation is the European Union.  How much of the series and movies are about economic regulations and subsidizing agriculture?  Ok, more directly, the European Union, despite many attempts, does not really have a military, and it does not have a common foreign policy.  The EU forces that have shown up in Bosnia and elsewhere only do so (this will be brutal, sorry) after NATO has done all of the heavy lifting. It was NATO that ended the Bosnia conflict, it was NATO that compelled Serbia to let peacekeepers into Kosovo, it is NATO deterring the Russians from attacking the Baltics, and so on.  In trade negotiations, the EU acts as a single actor and with great power.  In other stuff?  Not so much. Which leaves the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.  Clearly, from the name and from Gene Roddenberry's idealism, the United Federation of Planets is just a spacey UN, right?*  The stuff above that makes the Federation not a country but many countries or nation-states works toward the UN idea--a bunch of different sovereign entities constantly negotiating, sending diplomats hither and yon to settle all kinds of issues.  The big questions are what is the Federation for and what is Starfleet for?  The classic answer is collective security: to deter aggression by any member against any member by providing assurances that any target of aggression will receive assistance from the rest of the community.  Until Alexander Wendt has his way, the entire imagination of the role of the UN is focused on members.  The UN is a universal organization...on Earth--the only countries that are not in the UN are Taiwan and ... depending on how you count the Vatican and Palestine and various unrecognized separatist folks.  The key things about this notion of collective defense are that no member is excluded from its protection, and it is not aimed at any particular aggressor.  The UN does not have a standing military, but has "sent" massive interventions when the membership have agreed, to thwart North Korea's aggression in 1950 (because the Soviet diplomats were stupidly boycotting the UN Security Council at the time) and Iraq's in 1990-91.  In both cases, it was really the US military and some allies under a UN banner in the former and nearly so in the latter.  One could argue that Starfleet is mostly a Terran/American endeavor and its activities are simply under a federation banner.  But again, the aim is at members.  In the original Trek, maybe some of it was aimed at fostering peace among members, but for most of Trek's history, Starfleet was aimed at protecting its members from non-members.Which gets us to NATO, which is not really a collective security organization, but a collective defense organization.  It is not so much aimed at protecting Greece from Turkey, but all of the members from external threats--mostly the Soviet Union/Russia but also terrorism, maybe China, etc.  "An attack on one is an attack on all", Article V, the heart of the alliance, is aimed at outsiders. All of NATO's military endeavors have been on the border of or entirely outside the territory of its members.  Kind of like how much of Starfleet's activities are at the borders, patrolling nearby neutral zones, or going beyond to intervene, despite the Prime Directive, in non-members.  How many episodes are akin to the Kosovo effort?  A boodle. Of course, the parallel is not perfect, since Starfleet is a coherent military organization from the academy to the command staff and in between, which NATO is not.  Its captains may buck orders (Kirk more so than others, but all of them did so), but not because their home country/planet had different rules than the Federation for operating in place x or y.  That is, the Steve and Dave book on the Federation would focus far less on the political systems of members states and far more on the personalities of individual ship captains, compared to our work on NATO (our book and articles focused mostly on whether countries had coalition governments or not, what kinds of coalitions they had, and personality of presidents and prime ministers only kicked in if there were no coalitional bargaining).Of course, there is no perfect parallel between the Federation and an existing Terran international organization, but given the focus of the Federation and the activities of Starfleet, NATO appears to be the closest, and I didn't even discuss enlargement.   *  I'd argue that Babylon 5 comes a lot closer to that, but that is a post for another day.   

The Biden administration's executive order on outbound investment finally appeared, continuing a process that began in July 2021. Thanks mainly to the Treasury Department ignoring the national interest and partially to congressional inaction, the executive order does little.
The post Outbound Investment Executive Order: Waste of Time appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

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Continue reading "Interview: Inken von Borzyskowski on suspension and withdrawal from international organizations"
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In this new episode of our interview series, our host Jakob Angeli talks to Prof. Dr. Jonas Tallberg, professor of Political Science at Stockholm University. Listen in, as they discuss …
Continue reading "Interview: Jonas Tallberg on the legitimacy of international organizations and the perceived crisis of global governance"
The post Interview: Jonas Tallberg on the legitimacy of international organizations and the perceived crisis of global governance appeared first on Orders Beyond Borders.

Plus: Abortion will be on the ballot in Ohio, CANSEE Act "would continue the erosion of financial privacy," and more...

The Kremlin's reaction to the pandemic is part of a blame game. However, it remains to be seen whether Putin...

The post Jindal Society of International Law Blog: International Legal Consortium appeared first on Völkerrechtsblog.

With a wealth of international collaboration, who can lead on religious freedom advocacy, and what is the Organization of American States (OAS) doing to protect the right to Freedom of Religion or Belief? In this article, Emily A. Cole outlines the importance of the right to express oneself, to think freely, to openly share one's … Continued