Suchergebnisse

Manuscrit terminé en juillet 2004 ; Vorstellung des Themas: Die von Prälat Adam Franz Lennig 1848 zur Verteidigung der Religionsfreiheit gegründeten Katholikentage sollten anfangs lediglich die Vertreter der wichtigsten katholischen Verbände sowie bedeutende Persönlichkeiten versammeln. Im Laufe der darauf folgenden zwanzig Jahre spielten sie eine zentrale Rolle bei der politischen Mobilisierung der Gläubigen. Der preußische Kulturkampf festigte die Bande zwischen dem im Jahre 1870 gegründeten Zentrum und den Katholikentagen, die sich allmählich zu dessen offiziellem Parteitag entwickelten. Gegen 1900 wurden sie dann zu Massenveranstaltungen mit mehreren tausend Teilnehmern, die die Solidarität der Bevölkerung mit der höheren Geistlichkeit einerseits und der Spitze des Zentrums andererseits demonstrieren sollten. Nach einer achtjährigen Unterbrechung wurde 1921 der erste nationale Katholikentag nach dem Krieg in Frankfurt am Main abgehalten. Danach wurden die Kongresse bis 1933 wieder regelmäßig jedes Jahr durchgeführt (außer 1923). In der Weimarer Republik waren die Kongresse die größten Massenveranstaltungen, die regelmäßig stattfanden: 1932 nahmen in Essen etwa 250.000 Katholiken an dem Festgottesdienst teil. Ihr Einfluss ging sogar, dank der Unterstützung durch die Geistlichkeit auf lokaler und nationaler Ebene, durch das Netz der katholischen Vereine sowie dank der Berichterstattung in der Presse erheblich über die zahlenmäßige Bedeutung hinaus. Aktueller Stand der Forschung und Problemstellung: Während das Zentrum bereits Gegenstand zahlreicher Monographien war, wurden die Katholikentage durch die Historiker vernachlässigt. Die wenigen Artikel, die sich mit dieser Frage beschäftigen, behandeln nur die Zeit vor dem Ersten oder nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Dabei wird der demokratische Charakter der Kongresse, die als Vorläufer der von Konrad Adenauer nach 1945 verkörperten Christdemokratie gelten, hervorgehoben. Ziel meiner Dissertation ist es, die Ambivalenzen, welche mit der offiziellen Entpolitisierung der Katholikentage in der Weimarer Republik verbunden waren, aufzuzeigen. Sie hinterfragt die Interpretation, wonach in Europa die autoritären Regime zwischen den Kriegen keine Anziehungskraft auf die deutschen Katholiken, und zwar weder auf die Eliten noch auf den Rest der Bevölkerung, ausübten. Verwendete Archive und Quellen: Zunächst analysierte ich die veröffentlichten Protokolle der Katholikentage, die offiziellen Quellen. In einem zweiten Schritt wertete ich (ergänzend) die Nachlässe der wichtigsten Führungspersönlichkeiten der Kongresse und katholischen Vereine aus. Das Zentralkomitee verfügt für die Zeit vor 1952 über keine Dokumente. Daher musste ich mich auf Quellen in den bischöflichen und städtischen Archiven der Orte, in denen zwischen 1921 und 1933 ein Kongress stattfand, stützen. Insgesamt wurden für die Arbeit Dokumente aus 42 Archiven ausgewertet. Gliederung der Dissertation: Die Dissertation gliedert sich in drei Teile. Im ersten Teil werden die Wiederaufnahme der Kongresse nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg, ihre Organisation, Finanzierung und die Art der zeremoniellen Gestaltung analysiert. Im zweiten Teil werden Inhalt und Tenor der zwischen 1921 und 1924 gehaltenen Reden untersucht. Der dritte Teil beschäftigt sich mit den Aussagen der Redner zwischen 1925 und 1932. Zusammenfassung: In den zwanziger Jahren trugen der Episkopat und Alois zu Löwenstein, seit 1920 an der Spitze des Zentralkomitees mit der Organisation der Kongresse betraut, durch die Katholikentage gegen ihren Willen zur Konsolidierung des republikanischen Systems bei, indem sie die Errungenschaften für die katholischen Minderheit durch die Weimarer Verfassung bewahren und ausweiten wollten. Die Aussagen vieler Redner gegen die Wirtschafts-, Sozial- und Kulturpolitik der Regierung waren allerdings eine kaum verhüllte Kritik des Zentrums. Durch die verwendete Symbolik wurde der Transzendenz in der Politik eine zentrale Stellung eingeräumt. Diese Symbolik stellte ein universales System der Interpretation der Welt vor, die nach dem Absoluten strebte, und brach damit mit dem republikanischen Pluralismus: Die Einheit sollte in Christus verwirklicht werden und nicht auf dem Wege des Konsens. In der Praxis gab es jedoch keine Opposition. Bei den Kongressen bemühte man sich, wie schon vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg, das Bild der Einheit zu wahren. Um diese Einheit aufrecht zu erhalten, unterstrichen die meisten Redner die Bedeutung der Wahrung der christlichen Werte. Zu Beginn der dreißiger Jahre half diese Haltung ihnen einerseits sich gegen die Verführung durch die Nationalsozialisten zu wehren. Andererseits hinderte sie sie daran, sich dauerhaft mit anderen politischen Kräften, insbesondere den Sozialisten, zu verbünden, um die Nationalsozialisten wirksam zu bekämpfen. My Ph.D. thesis, Les catholiques allemands et la République de Weimar: les Katholikentage, 1919 – 1932, is about the Catholic Congresses (Katholikentage) during the Weimar Republic. These unique congresses, which have been neglected by historians, gathered together both laic and clerical forces within the German Catholic Church and were held annually from 1848 throughout Germany. The Catholic Congresses' ecclesiastical and political functions were intended to demonstrate Catholic power and present specific demands to the State. During the Weimar Republic, the organization of the Catholic Congresses depended on the balance of power between laity and clergy, national and local leaders, the Centre Party and other political trends and finally between the various Catholic associations representing different social and economic groups. The Catholic Congresses were thus an exceptional means of assessing the mentality of German Catholics during this era. In my thesis, I shed light on the internal character of German Catholic life as well as its interaction with the political and economic crises, which led to the rise of Nazism. My aim was to answer the following major questions: How did German Catholic leaders view themselves, the laity, the Protestants, and the State? What did German Catholics think about the rapid industrialization of their country, about liberalism and communism, modern values, and democracy? How far did German Catholics follow the political and social teachings of the Papacy? In comparison to right-wing and left-wing extremists, how different or similar were the ideas of German Catholics? ; Fondés en 1848 à Mayence par un ecclésiastique, Mgr Adam Franz Lennig, afin de défendre les libertés religieuses, les Katholikentage – littéralement « Congrès des Catholiques » ou « Journées des Catholiques » – rassemblaient à l'origine les représentants des principales associations catholiques et des personnalités en vue. Au cours des quelque vingt années suivantes, ils jouèrent un rôle majeur dans la mobilisation politique des laïcs. Le Kulturkampf prussien (1872-1878) resserra les liens entre le Zentrum, créé en 1870, et les Katholikentage qui firent progressivement office de congrès annuel du parti. Vers 1900, ils devinrent des assemblées de masse groupant plusieurs dizaines de milliers de participants dans le but de démontrer la solidarité des populations à la fois avec la hiérarchie ecclésiastique et avec les dirigeants du Zentrum. Après une interruption de huit ans, Francfort-sur-le-Main accueillit en 1921 le premier Katholikentag national d'après-guerre et inaugura la reprise des Congrès, organisés ensuite annuellement jusqu'en 1933, à l'exception du Katholikentag prévu en 1923 à Cologne et interdit par les forces d'occupation. Sous la République de Weimar, les Congrès furent les plus grandes assemblées de masse ayant lieu régulièrement : 250.000 personnes assistèrent à la messe dominicale de celui d'Essen, en 1932. Leur influence dépassa largement le nombre de participants, grâce au soutien du clergé au niveau local et national, ainsi qu'à celui du réseau d'associations catholiques et à la presse. Alors que le Zentrum a fait l'objet de nombreuses monographies, les Katholikentage ont été jusqu'à présent négligés par les historiens. Les quelques articles consacrés à la question ne retiennent souvent que la période antérieure à 1914 ou celle postérieure à la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Ils mettent en avant le caractère démocratique des Congrès considérés comme les précurseurs de la Démocratie chrétienne incarnée par Konrad Adenauer après 1945. L'un des objectifs de cette thèse est de montrer les ambiguïtés liées à la dépolitisation officielle des Katholikentage sous la République de Weimar, période qui a été jusque-là soigneusement ignorée. Elle cherche à vérifier entre autre l'interprétation selon laquelle la séduction exercée par les régimes autoritaires sur les élites et les populations notamment européennes pendant la période de l'entre-deux-guerres n'aurait pas influencé les catholiques allemands avant le 30 janvier 1933. Les comptes rendus publiés des Katholikentage sont des sources officielles qui ont constitué la première étape de mon travail. Celui-ci a ensuite été complété par les archives privées des principaux dirigeants des Congrès et des associations catholiques. Comme le Comité central ne possède aucun fonds pour la période antérieure à 1952, j'ai dû rassembler des sources réparties dans les archives ecclésiastiques et civiles de chacune des villes où un Congrès a été organisé entre 1921 et 1933. Au total, 42 fonds d'archives différents ont été consultés. La thèse est divisée en trois parties. La première a pour objet d'analyser la reprise des Congrès au lendemain de la Première Guerre mondiale, leur organisation, leur financement et la nature de leur cérémonial. La seconde partie étudie le contenu et l'esprit des discours tenus aux Katholikentage de Francfort-sur-le-Main en 1921, de Munich en 1922 et de Hanovre en 1924. La troisième partie est consacrée aux messages délivrés par les conférenciers à partir du Katholikentag de Stuttgart en 1925 jusqu'au Katholikentag d'Essen en 1932. Pendant les années vingt, aux Katholikentage, l'épiscopat et le prince Alois zu Löwenstein, à la tête du Comité central chargé de l'organisation des Congrès, contribuèrent contre leur gré à la consolidation du système républicain car ils cherchèrent avant tout à préserver et à étendre les acquis obtenus par la minorité catholique grâce à la Constitution de Weimar. Certes, les propos tenus par de nombreux conférenciers contre la politique économique, sociale et culturelle du gouvernement étaient des critiques à peine voilées du Zentrum. De plus, la symbolique utilisée accordait une place centrale à la transcendance en politique. Elle proposait un système global d'interprétation du monde tendant vers l'absolu, en rupture avec le pluralisme républicain : l'unité était à réaliser en Christ et non sur le terrain du consensus. Cependant, cette opposition ne s'incarna pas dans la pratique car les Congrès s'efforcèrent de préserver l'image de l'unité comme ils l'avaient fait avant la Première Guerre mondiale. Pour préserver cette unité, la plupart des intervenants aux Katholikentage adoptèrent une attitude de repli, arc-boutés sur la défense des valeurs chrétiennes. En un sens, cette attitude les protégea au début des années trente de la séduction exercée sur beaucoup par les nationaux-socialistes. Toutefois, elle les empêcha de s'allier durablement à d'autres forces politiques, en particulier aux socialistes, pour lutter efficacement contre les nationaux-socialistes.

Manuscrit terminé en juillet 2004 ; Vorstellung des Themas: Die von Prälat Adam Franz Lennig 1848 zur Verteidigung der Religionsfreiheit gegründeten Katholikentage sollten anfangs lediglich die Vertreter der wichtigsten katholischen Verbände sowie bedeutende Persönlichkeiten versammeln. Im Laufe der darauf folgenden zwanzig Jahre spielten sie eine zentrale Rolle bei der politischen Mobilisierung der Gläubigen. Der preußische Kulturkampf festigte die Bande zwischen dem im Jahre 1870 gegründeten Zentrum und den Katholikentagen, die sich allmählich zu dessen offiziellem Parteitag entwickelten. Gegen 1900 wurden sie dann zu Massenveranstaltungen mit mehreren tausend Teilnehmern, die die Solidarität der Bevölkerung mit der höheren Geistlichkeit einerseits und der Spitze des Zentrums andererseits demonstrieren sollten. Nach einer achtjährigen Unterbrechung wurde 1921 der erste nationale Katholikentag nach dem Krieg in Frankfurt am Main abgehalten. Danach wurden die Kongresse bis 1933 wieder regelmäßig jedes Jahr durchgeführt (außer 1923). In der Weimarer Republik waren die Kongresse die größten Massenveranstaltungen, die regelmäßig stattfanden: 1932 nahmen in Essen etwa 250.000 Katholiken an dem Festgottesdienst teil. Ihr Einfluss ging sogar, dank der Unterstützung durch die Geistlichkeit auf lokaler und nationaler Ebene, durch das Netz der katholischen Vereine sowie dank der Berichterstattung in der Presse erheblich über die zahlenmäßige Bedeutung hinaus. Aktueller Stand der Forschung und Problemstellung: Während das Zentrum bereits Gegenstand zahlreicher Monographien war, wurden die Katholikentage durch die Historiker vernachlässigt. Die wenigen Artikel, die sich mit dieser Frage beschäftigen, behandeln nur die Zeit vor dem Ersten oder nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Dabei wird der demokratische Charakter der Kongresse, die als Vorläufer der von Konrad Adenauer nach 1945 verkörperten Christdemokratie gelten, hervorgehoben. Ziel meiner Dissertation ist es, die Ambivalenzen, welche mit der offiziellen Entpolitisierung der Katholikentage in der Weimarer Republik verbunden waren, aufzuzeigen. Sie hinterfragt die Interpretation, wonach in Europa die autoritären Regime zwischen den Kriegen keine Anziehungskraft auf die deutschen Katholiken, und zwar weder auf die Eliten noch auf den Rest der Bevölkerung, ausübten. Verwendete Archive und Quellen: Zunächst analysierte ich die veröffentlichten Protokolle der Katholikentage, die offiziellen Quellen. In einem zweiten Schritt wertete ich (ergänzend) die Nachlässe der wichtigsten Führungspersönlichkeiten der Kongresse und katholischen Vereine aus. Das Zentralkomitee verfügt für die Zeit vor 1952 über keine Dokumente. Daher musste ich mich auf Quellen in den bischöflichen und städtischen Archiven der Orte, in denen zwischen 1921 und 1933 ein Kongress stattfand, stützen. Insgesamt wurden für die Arbeit Dokumente aus 42 Archiven ausgewertet. Gliederung der Dissertation: Die Dissertation gliedert sich in drei Teile. Im ersten Teil werden die Wiederaufnahme der Kongresse nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg, ihre Organisation, Finanzierung und die Art der zeremoniellen Gestaltung analysiert. Im zweiten Teil werden Inhalt und Tenor der zwischen 1921 und 1924 gehaltenen Reden untersucht. Der dritte Teil beschäftigt sich mit den Aussagen der Redner zwischen 1925 und 1932. Zusammenfassung: In den zwanziger Jahren trugen der Episkopat und Alois zu Löwenstein, seit 1920 an der Spitze des Zentralkomitees mit der Organisation der Kongresse betraut, durch die Katholikentage gegen ihren Willen zur Konsolidierung des republikanischen Systems bei, indem sie die Errungenschaften für die katholischen Minderheit durch die Weimarer Verfassung bewahren und ausweiten wollten. Die Aussagen vieler Redner gegen die Wirtschafts-, Sozial- und Kulturpolitik der Regierung waren allerdings eine kaum verhüllte Kritik des Zentrums. Durch die verwendete Symbolik wurde der Transzendenz in der Politik eine zentrale Stellung eingeräumt. Diese Symbolik stellte ein universales System der Interpretation der Welt vor, die nach dem Absoluten strebte, und brach damit mit dem republikanischen Pluralismus: Die Einheit sollte in Christus verwirklicht werden und nicht auf dem Wege des Konsens. In der Praxis gab es jedoch keine Opposition. Bei den Kongressen bemühte man sich, wie schon vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg, das Bild der Einheit zu wahren. Um diese Einheit aufrecht zu erhalten, unterstrichen die meisten Redner die Bedeutung der Wahrung der christlichen Werte. Zu Beginn der dreißiger Jahre half diese Haltung ihnen einerseits sich gegen die Verführung durch die Nationalsozialisten zu wehren. Andererseits hinderte sie sie daran, sich dauerhaft mit anderen politischen Kräften, insbesondere den Sozialisten, zu verbünden, um die Nationalsozialisten wirksam zu bekämpfen. My Ph.D. thesis, Les catholiques allemands et la République de Weimar: les Katholikentage, 1919 – 1932, is about the Catholic Congresses (Katholikentage) during the Weimar Republic. These unique congresses, which have been neglected by historians, gathered together both laic and clerical forces within the German Catholic Church and were held annually from 1848 throughout Germany. The Catholic Congresses' ecclesiastical and political functions were intended to demonstrate Catholic power and present specific demands to the State. During the Weimar Republic, the organization of the Catholic Congresses depended on the balance of power between laity and clergy, national and local leaders, the Centre Party and other political trends and finally between the various Catholic associations representing different social and economic groups. The Catholic Congresses were thus an exceptional means of assessing the mentality of German Catholics during this era. In my thesis, I shed light on the internal character of German Catholic life as well as its interaction with the political and economic crises, which led to the rise of Nazism. My aim was to answer the following major questions: How did German Catholic leaders view themselves, the laity, the Protestants, and the State? What did German Catholics think about the rapid industrialization of their country, about liberalism and communism, modern values, and democracy? How far did German Catholics follow the political and social teachings of the Papacy? In comparison to right-wing and left-wing extremists, how different or similar were the ideas of German Catholics? ; Fondés en 1848 à Mayence par un ecclésiastique, Mgr Adam Franz Lennig, afin de défendre les libertés religieuses, les Katholikentage – littéralement « Congrès des Catholiques » ou « Journées des Catholiques » – rassemblaient à l'origine les représentants des principales associations catholiques et des personnalités en vue. Au cours des quelque vingt années suivantes, ils jouèrent un rôle majeur dans la mobilisation politique des laïcs. Le Kulturkampf prussien (1872-1878) resserra les liens entre le Zentrum, créé en 1870, et les Katholikentage qui firent progressivement office de congrès annuel du parti. Vers 1900, ils devinrent des assemblées de masse groupant plusieurs dizaines de milliers de participants dans le but de démontrer la solidarité des populations à la fois avec la hiérarchie ecclésiastique et avec les dirigeants du Zentrum. Après une interruption de huit ans, Francfort-sur-le-Main accueillit en 1921 le premier Katholikentag national d'après-guerre et inaugura la reprise des Congrès, organisés ensuite annuellement jusqu'en 1933, à l'exception du Katholikentag prévu en 1923 à Cologne et interdit par les forces d'occupation. Sous la République de Weimar, les Congrès furent les plus grandes assemblées de masse ayant lieu régulièrement : 250.000 personnes assistèrent à la messe dominicale de celui d'Essen, en 1932. Leur influence dépassa largement le nombre de participants, grâce au soutien du clergé au niveau local et national, ainsi qu'à celui du réseau d'associations catholiques et à la presse. Alors que le Zentrum a fait l'objet de nombreuses monographies, les Katholikentage ont été jusqu'à présent négligés par les historiens. Les quelques articles consacrés à la question ne retiennent souvent que la période antérieure à 1914 ou celle postérieure à la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Ils mettent en avant le caractère démocratique des Congrès considérés comme les précurseurs de la Démocratie chrétienne incarnée par Konrad Adenauer après 1945. L'un des objectifs de cette thèse est de montrer les ambiguïtés liées à la dépolitisation officielle des Katholikentage sous la République de Weimar, période qui a été jusque-là soigneusement ignorée. Elle cherche à vérifier entre autre l'interprétation selon laquelle la séduction exercée par les régimes autoritaires sur les élites et les populations notamment européennes pendant la période de l'entre-deux-guerres n'aurait pas influencé les catholiques allemands avant le 30 janvier 1933. Les comptes rendus publiés des Katholikentage sont des sources officielles qui ont constitué la première étape de mon travail. Celui-ci a ensuite été complété par les archives privées des principaux dirigeants des Congrès et des associations catholiques. Comme le Comité central ne possède aucun fonds pour la période antérieure à 1952, j'ai dû rassembler des sources réparties dans les archives ecclésiastiques et civiles de chacune des villes où un Congrès a été organisé entre 1921 et 1933. Au total, 42 fonds d'archives différents ont été consultés. La thèse est divisée en trois parties. La première a pour objet d'analyser la reprise des Congrès au lendemain de la Première Guerre mondiale, leur organisation, leur financement et la nature de leur cérémonial. La seconde partie étudie le contenu et l'esprit des discours tenus aux Katholikentage de Francfort-sur-le-Main en 1921, de Munich en 1922 et de Hanovre en 1924. La troisième partie est consacrée aux messages délivrés par les conférenciers à partir du Katholikentag de Stuttgart en 1925 jusqu'au Katholikentag d'Essen en 1932. Pendant les années vingt, aux Katholikentage, l'épiscopat et le prince Alois zu Löwenstein, à la tête du Comité central chargé de l'organisation des Congrès, contribuèrent contre leur gré à la consolidation du système républicain car ils cherchèrent avant tout à préserver et à étendre les acquis obtenus par la minorité catholique grâce à la Constitution de Weimar. Certes, les propos tenus par de nombreux conférenciers contre la politique économique, sociale et culturelle du gouvernement étaient des critiques à peine voilées du Zentrum. De plus, la symbolique utilisée accordait une place centrale à la transcendance en politique. Elle proposait un système global d'interprétation du monde tendant vers l'absolu, en rupture avec le pluralisme républicain : l'unité était à réaliser en Christ et non sur le terrain du consensus. Cependant, cette opposition ne s'incarna pas dans la pratique car les Congrès s'efforcèrent de préserver l'image de l'unité comme ils l'avaient fait avant la Première Guerre mondiale. Pour préserver cette unité, la plupart des intervenants aux Katholikentage adoptèrent une attitude de repli, arc-boutés sur la défense des valeurs chrétiennes. En un sens, cette attitude les protégea au début des années trente de la séduction exercée sur beaucoup par les nationaux-socialistes. Toutefois, elle les empêcha de s'allier durablement à d'autres forces politiques, en particulier aux socialistes, pour lutter efficacement contre les nationaux-socialistes.

How a new breed of dictators holds power by manipulating information and faking democracyHitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian rule for a more sophisticated, globally connected world. In place of overt, mass repression, rulers such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Viktor Orbán control their citizens by distorting information and simulating democratic procedures. Like spin doctors in democracies, they spin the news to engineer support. Uncovering this new brand of authoritarianism, Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman explain the rise of such "spin dictators," describing how they emerge and operate, the new threats they pose, and how democracies should respond.Spin Dictators traces how leaders such as Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew and Peru's Alberto Fujimori pioneered less violent, more covert, and more effective methods of monopolizing power. They cultivated an image of competence, concealed censorship, and used democratic institutions to undermine democracy, all while increasing international engagement for financial and reputational benefits. The book reveals why most of today's authoritarians are spin dictators—and how they differ from the remaining "fear dictators" such as Kim Jong-un and Bashar al-Assad, as well as from masters of high-tech repression like Xi Jinping.Offering incisive portraits of today's authoritarian leaders, Spin Dictators explains some of the great political puzzles of our time—from how dictators can survive in an age of growing modernity to the disturbing convergence and mutual sympathy between dictators and populists like Donald Trump

An eye-opening portrait of the gun sellers who navigated the social turmoil leading up to the January 6 Capitol attackGun sellers sell more than just guns. They also sell politics. Merchants of the Right sheds light on the unparalleled surge in gun purchasing during one of the most dire moments in American history, revealing how conservative political culture was galvanized amid a once-in-a-century pandemic, racial unrest, and a U.S. presidential election that rocked the foundations of American democracy.Drawing on a wealth of in-depth interviews with gun sellers across the United States, Jennifer Carlson takes readers to the front lines of the culture war over gun rights. Even though the majority of gun owners are conservative, new gun buyers are more likely to be liberal than existing gun owners. This posed a dilemma to gun sellers in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election: embrace these liberal customers as part of a new, perhaps post-partisan chapter in the American gun saga or double down on gun politics as conservative terrain. Carlson describes how gun sellers mobilized mainstays of modern conservative culture—armed individualism, conspiracism, and partisanship—as they navigated the uncertainty and chaos unfolding around them, asserting gun politics as conservative politics and reworking and even rejecting liberal democracy in the process.Merchants of the Right offers crucial lessons about the dilemmas confronting us today, arguing that we must reckon with the everyday politics that divide us if we ever hope to restore American democracy to health

Why your political beliefs are influenced by the language you speakVoicing Politics brings together the latest findings from psychology and political science to reveal how the linguistic peculiarities of different languages can have meaningful consequences for political attitudes and beliefs around the world. Efrén Pérez and Margit Tavits demonstrate that different languages can make mental content more or less accessible and thereby shift political opinions and preferences in predictable directions. They rigorously test this hypothesis using carefully crafted experiments and rich cross-national survey data, showing how language shapes mass opinion in domains such as gender equality, LGBTQ rights, environmental conservation, ethnic relations, and candidate evaluations.Voicing Politics traces how these patterns emerge in polities spanning the globe, shedding essential light on how simple linguistic quirks can affect our political views. This incisive book calls on scholars of political behavior to take linguistic nuances more seriously and charts new directions for researchers across diverse fields. It explains how a stronger grasp of linguistic effects on political cognition can help us better understand how people form political attitudes and why political outcomes vary across nations and regions

Unter hohem Druck sucht die EU ihre Rolle in einer Welt des Großmächtewettbewerbs. Überkommene Mechanismen blockieren ihr herausragendes Potenzial. Elemente einer Strategie. (IP)

This paper analyzes a shifting landscape of intellectual freedom (IF) in and outside Florida for children, adolescents, teens and adults. National ideals stand in tension with local and state developments, as new threats are visible in historical, legal, and technological context. Examples include doctrinal shifts, legislative bills, electronic surveillance and recent attempts to censor books, classroom texts, and reading lists. Privacy rights for minors in Florida are increasingly unstable. New assertions of parental rights are part of a larger conservative animus. Proponents of IF can identify a lessening of ideals and standards that began after doctrinal fruition in the 1960s and 70s, and respond to related occurrences to help mitigate the impact of increasingly reactionary social and political currents. At the same time, progressive librarians can resist erosion of professional independence that comes when censorship pressures undermine core values. This paper is a post-imprint of an article originally published in the Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy (Winter, 2017), with minor edits from the original published article. Some end notes (1, 30, 41 and 51) have been added – re-ordering original numeration to link the reader to subsequent articles, websites and/or occurrences.

"Liberal states are different. They are indeed peaceful". (1)Michael Doyle. IntroducciónComo es materia sabida, la disciplina de las Relaciones Internacionales se ha desarrollado a lo largo del siglo XX a través de una serie de grandes escuelas de pensamiento. Realismo, Liberalismo, Marxismo y más recientemente Constructivismo, entraron en competencia para explicar la complejidad de la política mundial, en un proceso por el cual han puesto a prueba sus fortalezas y debilidades y apuntalado su respectivo refinamiento (Walt, 1998). La influencia de buena parte de estas concepciones intelectuales, asimismo, ha ido mucho más allá del mero ámbito de las aulas universitarias para impregnar también la cosmovisión y el proceso decisorio de los responsables políticos de los principales Estados en el sistema internacional (Snyder, 2005).Un caso muy particular donde se advierte un importante debate por parte de la academia, así como una materialización marcada en el discurso y enfoque de ciertos gobiernos, es el de la Paz Democrática. Considerada como "lo más cercano a una ley empírica en las Relaciones Internacionales", la Paz Democrática resulta aún en el nuevo siglo materia controvertida y de amplio interés precisamente por esta doble dimensión científico-política. En este sentido, el presente trabajo aborda el tópico con el objetivo de repasar y reflexionar sobre su sentido y su contenido, sobre la evolución de su estudio y sobre su manifestación concreta en la política exterior de Estados Unidos y los dilemas que esto entraña.La Paz DemocráticaEn su noción más general la idea de la Paz Democrática es bien simple y consiste en la sencilla afirmación de que "las democracias no hacen la guerra entre sí". Esta presunción se complementa a su vez con otros dos postulados: el primero que las democracias liberales no son más propensas a la guerra que los Estados no democráticos, pero tampoco lo son menos y, el segundo, que aunque las democracias liberales no se hacen la guerra entre ellas, sí han tenido conflictos armados con los Estados no liberales (Peñas, 1997: 120). Puesta de otra forma, la Paz Democrática implica una variable independiente, el carácter democrático de un régimen estatal, y una variable dependiente, la ausencia de guerras entre las democracias (Ibíd.: 126). En las formulaciones más contemporáneas, pueden identificarse dos grandes variantes fundamentales de la Paz Democrática. Como señala Mónica Salomón (2001), se encuentran: la "tesis monádica", que sostiene que siempre las democracias son más pacíficas en sus relaciones con los demás Estados que los Estados no democráticos, yla "tesis diádica", menos ambiciosa en términos predictivos, que entiende expresamente que las democracias nunca (o rara vez) hacen la guerra a otra democracia.Aceptando esta postulación de que el tipo de régimen democrático determina la no propensión a la guerra contra otras democracias, la explicación de sus causas ha discurrido también en dos direcciones: por un lado, la dimensión institucional y por el otro, la dimensión normativa. En la primera se entiende que son los controles democráticos que penden sobre los gobernantes, como la opinión pública o las contiendas electorales, los que determinan este pacifismo. Precisamente, su punto débil es su incapacidad para explicar la frecuencia observada de las guerras entre democracias y países no democráticos. En la segunda, se sostiene en cambio que la política exterior de una democracia está regida por los mismos principios de conciliación y moderación que rigen la política interna, o bien, en la versión constructivista, que son las percepciones de los estadistas y decisores de política exterior (amistosas hacia otras democracias) lo que determina el comportamiento internacional singular de las democracias (Risse-Kappen, 1995; Peceny, 1997).En general se ha reconocido como el origen de la tesis de la Paz Democrática a las obras de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Paine y especialmente la de Immanuel Kant (Schwartz y Skinner, 2002: 159). Fue el filósofo prusiano quien escribió en 1795 el clásico La Paz Perpetua, en tiempos en que la Revolución Francesa se debatía entre jacobinos y girondinos, y sólo Francia, Suiza y Estados Unidos podían ser considerados como democracias. Su punto de partida es la convicción en que el hombre es irrevocablemente empujado hacia la paz a causa de la razón práctico-moral. La paz mundial requiere de un Estado mundial y cosmopolita regido por un derecho mundial, desarrollo que Kant percibe sin embargo como irrealizable. Ello no lo desanima de todas formas para sugerir el camino hacia la paz consistente en un proyecto (cuya estructura es la de un tratado de paz) que contiene seis condiciones preliminares y tres definitivas para alcanzar (o tender a alcanzar) la paz perpetua (Salomón, 2001: 257), a saber:Bases previas:No debe considerarse válido un tratado de paz al que se haya arribado con reservas mentales sobre algunos objetivos capaces de causar una guerra en el futuro.Ningún Estado independiente, sea cual fuere su tamaño, puede pasar a formar parte de otro Estado por medio de trueque, compra, donación o herencia. (El Edo. es una sociedad de hombres que dispone sobre sí misma.)Los ejércitos permanentes deben desaparecer permanentemente.El Estado no debe contraer deudas que tiendan a mantener su política exterior.Ningún Estado debe inmiscuirse por la fuerza en la constitución y el gobierno de otro Estado.Un Estado que esté en guerra con otro no debe admitir el uso de hostilidades que impidan la confianza mutua en una futura paz. (Proscripción de la guerra de exterminio.)Bases definitivas:En todo Estado, la constitución política debe ser republicana (entendida como separación de poderes y en oposición al gobierno despótico).Principio de la libertad de los componentes de una sociedad, como hombres.Principio de la dependencia de todos, de una legislación común, como súbditos.Principio de la igualdad de todos, como ciudadanos.El derecho de gentes se debe basar en una Federación de Estados Independientes. (Referencia a una Sociedad de Naciones o Federación de Paz.)El derecho de la ciudadanía mundial debe limitarse a las condiciones de una hospitalidad universal.De esta forma, republicanismo (entiéndase aquí democracia), federación internacional (foedus pacificum) y derecho de gentes universal se articulan en La Paz Perpetua con el respeto por la soberanía ajena, la proscripción de ejércitos permanentes y la guerra limitada. Ciertamente Kant cifra sus esperanzas en una nación que sea puntal de estos valores y que a través de la irradiación de su ejemplo, no así de la promoción violenta de los mismos, vaya generando una creciente zona de paz mundial. Debe señalarse al respecto que, como afirma Peñas (1997: 121), "la herencia de Kant, de su concepción del individuo, de la historia y del tipo de régimen que permita al individuo llevar una vida racional y moral impregna" la tesis de la Paz Democrática.En gran parte, este vínculo se debe al rescate de su obra por Michael Doyle en 1983, a partir de cuándo se volvió moda referenciar a la Paz Perpetua como el basamento de partida para el análisis de la Paz Democrática. Asimismo, ha sido este trasfondo kantiano lo que ha facilitado la conexión estrecha entre la discusión filosófico-normativa y la teoría.El debate académicoPlanteada su esencia y sus orígenes, repasemos ahora el discurrir contemporáneo de esta tesis por el ámbito académico occidental. El primer estudio directo sobre la correlación positiva entre regímenes políticos democráticos y ausencia de conflictos armados interestatales es el de Dean Babst, publicado en 1964, que utilizaba la base de datos sobre guerras modernas elaborada en 1942 por Quincy Wright. Esta primera aproximación fue retomada luego por Melvin Small y David Singer (1976) quienes sometieron a verificación sus postulados y hallaron que, por un lado, si las democracias casi no habían combatido entre sí en el período 1816-1965 ello se debía a la distancia física entre ellas —y a las escasas fronteras compartidas—, y por el otro, que las guerras en que habían participado las democracias tenían en promedio la misma duración y causaban el mismo número de víctimas que las guerras internacionales en general. De esta forma, fueron los primeros en presentar argumentos causales distintos al tipo de régimen y en llamar la atención, en el marco del posterior debate,a la belicosidad normal de las democracias.El trabajo de Small y Singer le sirvió de insumo a Michael Doyle para su artículo Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs (1983), el cual dio el puntapié definitivo al debate más reciente sobre la Paz Democrática. Allí, este autor pretendía demostrar que las instituciones y los principios liberales llevan a los Estados liberales a tener políticas exteriores bien distintas a las observadas en Estados no liberales. Estos Estados liberales se definían a partir de cuatro condiciones: i) Economías de mercado, ii) autonomía en política exterior, iii) derechos jurídicos para los ciudadanos y iv) gobierno representativo y separación de poderes. Para Doyle, el liberalismo alcanzó "un éxito extraordinario" en las relaciones entre Estados liberales en la medida en que éstos nunca entraron en guerra entre sí, pero condujo simultáneamente a "una confusión excepcional" en las relaciones entre Estados liberales y no liberales. Lo interesante de su aporte fue, como ya se anticipó, la (re)introducción de los postulados de Kant sobre la Paz Perpetua, al considerar que las relaciones internacionales liberales conformaban una "unión pacífica" semejante a la "federación de paz" de Kant. Ese mismo año, Rudolph Rummel publicó también su investigación en la que defendía la tesis monádica de la Paz Democrática. En este contexto, otros investigadores (Chan, 1984; Weede, 1984; Maoz y Abdoladi, 1989; Bremer, 1992) se lanzaron a comprobar estadísticamente los postulados y se llegó a la conclusión general a favor de que las democracias no tienden a combatir entre sí. Fue entonces que Jack Levy (1988) afirmó: "la ausencia de guerra entre democracias es lo más cercano que tenemos a una ley empírica en Relaciones Internacionales".Ahora bien, la formulación teóricamente más refinada de la Paz Democrática vino unos años después con Bruce Russett y su libro Grasping the Democratic Peace (1993). Allí sostenía que:1. Los sistemas políticos organizados democráticamente actúan, en general, bajo restricciones que los hacen más pacíficos en sus relaciones con otras democracias. Sin embargo, las democracias no son necesariamente pacíficas en sus relaciones con otras democracias.2. En el sistema internacional moderno, las democracias tenderán menos a usar violencia letal contra otras democracias que hacia Estados gobernados autocráticamente o que los Estados gobernados autocráticamente entre sí. Además, no hay casos claros de guerras entre democracias soberanas estatales en el moderno sistema internacional.3. La paz relativa entre democracias es, fundamentalmente, consecuencia de determinados rasgos de la democracia, y no se debe exclusivamente a las características económicas o geopolíticas correlacionadas con la democracia (Peñas, 1997: 128; Salomón, 2001: 243).La formulación de Russett coincide con el "optimismo liberal" despertado por el colapso soviético y el fin de la guerra fría. Fue entonces que la tesis de la paz democrática suscitó gran entusiasmo, sobre todo entre aquellos estudiosos de las Relaciones Internacionales que ansiaban acabar con la hegemonía teórica del realismo-neorrealismo en la disciplina (Salomón, 2001: 242).La importancia de la obra de este autor yace en que la corroboración afirmativa de la tesis entraña la responsabilidad política de adoptar las medidas oportunas para conseguir el fortalecimiento tanto de las condiciones que hacen posible la democracia en otros estados, como promover su expansión —preferentemente desde una óptica multilateral y pacífica. Asimismo, se deben fortalecer las normas que hacen posible una comunidad de paz, haciendo frente a amenazas como el nacionalismo o el fundamentalismo. Como se puede ver, es una idea que en principio aparece como pacífica, inocente e incluso en ciertos aspectos algo cándida. Sin embargo, a la luz de las críticas realizadas por autores como Waltz, puede convertirse en el instrumento de una política mesiánica e incluso de una cruzada para expandir la democracia (Tovar Ruíz, 2009: 13). Tal evolución se distancia abiertamente de la formulación kantiana original que es más bien pro-soberanía,como se ha mencionado.Ya en el nuevo siglo, la Paz Democrática ha recibido el aporte de los nuevos desarrollos teóricos en la disciplina de las Relaciones Internacionales, en particular del Constructivismo. En un número de International Politics dedicado exclusivamente al tópico, Ewan Harrison (2004) por ejemplo explora el vínculo entre la paz democrática, las estructuras domésticas de política exterior y los procesos de socialización de los Estados en la política internacional desde lentes constructivistas, mientras que Matthew Rendall (2004) testea la tesis en un caso concreto: la crisis franco-británica de 1840 sobre Siria, en la que demuestra la importancia de las percepciones en las relaciones internacionales, antes que la fuerza causal de la Paz Democrática.Pero esto representa sólo una de las líneas evolutivas del debate académico. En todo caso, lo que parece imperar en la actualidad es el reconocimiento de que no existe una única versión, científicamente autenticada, de la Paz Democrática, sino varias lecturas de la relación entre liberalismo-democracia y paz-guerra (MacMillan, 2004), entre las cuales la versión más difundida es aquella articulada por Doyle y Russett, perteneciente al ala más conservadora del Liberalismo, avocada a las cruzadas.•* Candidato doctoral, Universidad Nacional de General San Martín (UNSAM, Argentina). Investigador del Centro de Estudios Interdisciplinarios en Problemáticas Internacionales y Locales (CEIPIL-UNCPBA).(1) "Liberalism and World Politics", The American Political Science Review, Vol. 80, No. 4., Dec. 1986.Referencias BibliográficasBabst, Dean: "Elective Governments - A Force for Peace", The Wisconsin Sociologist, No. 3 (1964), pp. 9-14.Barceló Sasía, Alejandra: Anti-americanismo: ¿Problema de percepción o de formulación de política exterior? (Puebla: Universidad de las Américas Puebla, 2006). Bremer, Stuart A.: "Dangerous Dyads: Conditions Affecting the Likelihood of Interstate War, 1816-1965", Journal of Conflict Resolution, No. 36 (1992), pp. 309-341.Chan, Steve: "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall. Are the Freer Countries More Pacific?" Journal of Conjlict Resolution,No. 28 (1984), pp. 617-648. Cohen, Raymond: "Pacific unions: a reappraisal of the theory that 'democracies do not go to war with each other'", Review of International Studies, No. 20 (1994), pp. 202-232.Deutsch, Karl: Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).Doyle, Michael: "Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Affairs, Part I & Part II", Philosophy & Public Affairs, No.12 (1983), pp. 205-235 y 323-353.Doyle, Michael: "Liberalism and World Politics", The American Political Science Review, Vol. 80, No. 4 (Dec. 1986).Elman, Miriam Fendius (ed.): Paths to Peace. Is Democracy the Answer? (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1997).Farber, Henry & Joan Gowa: "Polities and Peace", International Security, No. 20 (1995), pp. 123-146.Harrison, Ewan: "State Socialization, International Norm Dynamics and the Liberal Peace",International Politics, No. 41 (2004), pp. 521-542.Hewitt, J. Joseph, Jonathan Wilkenfeld & Ted Robert Gurr: Peace and Conflict 2008. Executive Summary (College Park, MD: CIDCM, University of Maryland, 2008).Ikenberry, John: "Why Export Democracy?: The 'Hidden Grand Strategy' of American Foreign Policy", The Wilson Quarterly, Vol. 23, no. 2 (Spring 1999).Kant, Immanuel: La Paz Perpetua (Buenos Aires: Longseller, 2001).Kegley, Charles & Margaret Hermann: "How Democracies Use Intervention: A Neglected Dimension in Studies of the Democratic Peace", Journal of Peace Research, No. 33 (1996), pp. 309-322.Kissinger, Henry: La Diplomacia (México: Fondo de cultura económica, 1995).Levy, Jack: "Domestic Politics and War", Journal of Interdisciplinary History, No. 18 (1988), pp. 653-673.MacMillan, John: "Whose Democracy; Which Peace? Contextualizing the Democratic Peace",International Politics, No. 41 (2004), pp. 472-493.Maoz, Zeev & Nasrin Abdolali: "Regime Types and International Conflict, 1817-1976", Journal of Conflict Resolution, No. 33 (1989), pp. 3-35.Maoz, Zeev: "The Controversy over the Democratic Peace", International Security, No. 22 (1997), pp. 162-198.Peceny, Mark: "A Constructivist Interpretation of the Liberal Peace: The Ambiguous Case of the Spanish-American War", Journal of Peace Research, No. 34 (1997), pp. 415-430.Peñas, Francisco Javier: "Liberalismo y relaciones internacionales: la tesis de la paz democrática y sus críticos", Isegoría, Núm. 16 (1997), pp.119-140.Rendall, Matthew: "'The Sparta and the Athens of our Age at Daggers Drawn': Polities, Perceptions, and Peace", International Politics, No. 41 (2004), pp. 582-604.Risse-Kappen, Thomas: "Democratic Peace - Warlike Democracies? A Social Constructivist Interpretation of the Liberal Argument", European Journal of International Relations, No. 1 (1995), pp. 491-517.Rummel, Rudolph: "Libertarianism and Interstate Violence", Journal of Conflict Resolution, No. 27 (1983), pp. 27-71.Russett, Bruce: "A neo-Kantian perspective: democracy, interdependence, and international organizations in building security communities", en Emanuel Adler & Michael Barnett (eds.):Security Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).Russett, Bruce: Grasping the Democratic Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).Salomón, Mónica: "El debate sobre la «paz democrática». Una aproximación crítica", Revista de Estudios Políticos (Nueva Época), Núm. 113 (Julio-Septiembre 2001), pp. 237-265.Schwartz, Thomas & Kiron K. Skinner: "The Myth of the Democratic Peace", Orbis (Winter 2002), pp. 159-172.Small, Melvin & David Singer: "The War-Proneness of Democratic Regimes", Jerusalem Journal of International Relations, No. 1 (1976), pp. 50-69.Snyder, Jack: "Un mundo, teorías rivales", Foreign Policy edición española (dic.-enero 2005).Tovar Ruíz, Juan: "De Königsberg a Kosovo. La Paz Democrática: del planteamiento filosófico al discurso político y su aplicación en el régimen de los protectorados internacionales", Revista Académica de Relaciones Internacionales, núm. 10 (febrero de 2009). Van Tijen, Tjebbe: "NATO's collateral tyrannicide", Open Democracy (7 May, 2011). Walt, Stephen M.: "International Relations: One World, Many Theories", Foreign Policy(Spring 1998), pp. 29-46.Weede, Eric: "Democracy and War Involvement", Journal of Peace Research, No. 28 (1984), pp. 649-664.Wright, Quincy: A Study of War (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1942).

For the Arab Gulf kingdoms, the Horn of Africa is a strategic perimeter. They want to minimize political threats — some are hostile to Islamists, all want to suppress democracy movements. Anticipating a post-carbon and food insecure world, the Gulf States want to possess rich farmlands. Each has its own vision of African client states that will do their bidding. This is a recipe for proxy wars, state fragmentation and autocracy in northeast Africa.For the Horn of Africa, today's crises are existential. War, dictatorship and famine are causing state collapse. The African Union is compromised, its peace and security system unravelling. The United Nations is retreating from peacemaking, increasingly reduced to a bare-bones humanitarian provider.The dangers were illuminated by the surprise New Year's Day deal between Abiy Ahmed, prime minister of Ethiopia, and Muse Bihi, president of the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, a breakaway region of northwest Somalia. Ethiopia has been renowned for careful diplomacy, including championing the inviolability of existing boundaries. After fighting wars with Somalia in the 1960s and '70s, Ethiopia had learned to be circumspect and consultative in its dealings with Mogadishu.Last week, Ethiopia upended that tradition. It promised to recognize Somaliland as an independent sovereign state, in return for Somaliland leasing it a 12-mile stretch of land, including a seaport, that will allow Ethiopia to establish a naval base. This in turn unleashed strong words from Somalia — which had not been informed ahead of time. The AU called for Ethiopia to treat Somalia with respect. Fears of new conflicts were stirred. Unsaid in public is that the UAE is widely suspected to be the patron of the deal.For the United States, crises in the Horn of Africa are a sidebar to the ongoing Israel-Gaza war and the confrontation with Iran. Gunboat diplomacy in the Red Sea — the warships deployed under Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect shipping from attacks from the Houthis in Yemen — is the priority.The narrow strip of water carries 12 percent of world seaborne trade. For sailors, the Red Sea is "a sea on the way to somewhere else," its shores at best an inconvenience, at worst a security threat.There's a global consensus on keeping the shipping lanes open. If the Red Sea shuts down — as happened following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war— the knock-on effects on trade between Europe and Asia would be economically severe. The EU-run Operation Atalanta runs an anti-piracy flotilla involving warships from 13 European nations, (including the UK, which provided the flagship until Brexit), working with ships from Ukraine, India, Korea and Colombia.After a few years the flotilla commanders concluded that the solution to piracy lay onshore, in the form of diplomacy to resolve Somalia's conflicts and economic assistance to provide livelihoods to impoverished fishermen. That was a step in the right direction.Saudi Arabia chairs a Red Sea Forum that includes eight littoral states (all except Israel), to tackle piracy, smuggling and marine resources — not political issues.Six years ago, Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa who chairs the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel for the Horn of Africa, introduced the term "Red Sea Arena." The idea was to create a diplomatic forum that would include not just the littoral states, but all the other countries with vital interests in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden or with political and commercial links across the narrow strip of water.The former AU Commissioner for Peace and Security, Ramtane Lamamra explained: "The Red Sea has historically been a bridge rather than a divide, with the peoples on the two shores sharing culture, trade, and social relations." Egypt has millennia-old interests in the Nile Valley and both shores of the Red Sea. Ethiopia has a vital interest in access to the sea. The UAE, Qatar, Oman, and Turkey all have historic or current interests.Regional and global power struggles are played out in the Red Sea Arena. Seven nations including the U.S., China, Turkey and the UAE have naval bases there. Others, including Iran and Russia, have warships in the vicinity and are actively seeking bases. The port of Eilat in the Gulf of Aqaba is Israel's strategic back door, as the Houthi attacks on shipping have dramatically shown.The plan for a standing conference of Red Sea Arena states built on proposals contained in the World Peace Foundation report to the AU, "African Politics, African Peace" — for which Mbeki and veteran UN diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi co-authored the preface. The idea was that Middle Eastern states should sign on to the principles of the AU's peace and security architecture and establish joint mechanisms for cooperation.The AU failed to act on these proposals. Nor were they raised at the UN Security Council.Instead, Arabian Gulf states are increasingly assertive in the Horn, and they're bringing an aggressive form of transactional politics, including funding proxies to fight wars. The U.S. — whose security umbrella sheltered the Red Sea for decades — seems uninterested.Saudi Arabia has long seen the African shore of the Red Sea as part of its security perimeter. Qatar and Turkey sought influence in Sudan and Somalia, especially among the Islamists. Israel has discreetly sought a determining role in the region.But the key actor is the UAE. A small, rich state, it uses proxies to project power, and supports separatists in disregard of international norms. Abu Dhabi's clients include key players in Libya and Chad, and it is positioning itself as kingmaker in the Horn. The UAE supports and arms Ethiopia. It already controls many ports in the region — including, it is suspected, the proposed Ethiopian port and naval base in the land leased from Somaliland. But Abu Dhabi has yet to clarify its strategic goals for the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.The UAE has long had a free pass in Washington. Only recently has the U.S. begun to criticize Abu Dhabi's adventurism in Sudan, calling out its arming of the murderous Rapid Support Forces there.The last decade has been a rollercoaster of hope and horror for the peoples of the Red Sea Arena. Popular uprisings in Yemen, Ethiopia and Sudan all descended into lethal brews of autocracy, war, atrocity, and famine, with local conflicts escalating into proxy wars. Guided by the short-term imperative of staying in power — and by the ambitions of cash-rich foreign sponsors — today's leaders are too often short-sighted and transactional.Under UN and AU guidance, a raft of peace agreements was crafted to serve as the threshold for democracy. Today a peace pact, such as the threadbare "Permanent Cessation of Hostilities" that ended Ethiopia's war in Tigray, may be no more than a truce. The principle of the primacy of politics — that served Africa's peace agenda well — has come to mean short-term transactionalism rather than a commitment to democracy, good governance, and inclusivity.A key African norm was "sovereignty as responsibility," developed by the Sudanese/South Sudanese lawyer and diplomat Francis Deng. Today we have its antithesis, decried as "neo-sovereigntism" by the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe.Today's regression means that Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki is being rehabilitated. For 30 years, Isaias has ruled an iron fist, with no constitution let alone political parties or an open media, hoping that the tide of global liberalism would recede. He looks to be proven correct.Sudanese General Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, known as "Hemedti," commander of the Rapid Support Forces, the insurgent paramilitaries notorious for their human rights abuses, is touring Africa in a Royal Jet airplane (an Emirati airline). He arrived in Addis Ababa last week where he met Prime Minister Abiy. Extending protocol to Emirati-backed disrupters is the new normal in the region.To the extent that it functions at all, the AU is becoming the face of illiberal multilateralism, veering away from its founding principles. The UN's practice of deferring to its regional partners leaves it eviscerated. The InterGovernmental Authority on Development — the eight-member northeast African bloc — is now deeply divided and approaching paralysis.With the Horn of Africa and Yemen slipping far down the priority list in Western foreign ministries, America and Europe are sending mid-ranking diplomats into the snake pit, woefully under-armed for the perils they encounter. Too easily intimidated by swaggering local despots, perhaps swayed by zombie "Pan Africanist" slogans that challenge their right to talk about human rights, they have left their countries irrelevant in the face of ruthless Gulf power-broking.Recent developments could not have been anticipated in detail. But American diplomats saw the broader challenge some years ago. In 2020, a bipartisan "senior study group" on the Red Sea convened by the United States Institute of Peace, prioritized a broad diplomatic strategy for the Red Sea Arena. The USIP report warned that conflicts in the region could threaten U.S. national security and proposed a high-level envoy with a broad mandate.The Biden administration quickly appointed a special envoy for the Horn of Africa, but the Africa Bureau at the State Department soon downgraded the position. The cost of this strategic neglect is becoming clear today.There's still a chance for a diplomatic forum that promotes collective security. Washington has lost its best opportunities to take a lead — any U.S. initiative today will arouse deep suspicions among others. Middle Eastern powers don't, as a rule, propose collective action, and the Gulf states are divided. The Europeans will follow, not lead.The onus of leadership then falls on Africa and on the United Nations. Acting together, they can create a consensus that brings on board America, Europe, China, and Russia in a forum framed by the agenda of a stable and cooperative Red Sea Arena.

 Elizabeth Anderson is always an interesting author for me to read because as much as we are both concerned with the same issues, namely,  the politics of work, and the domination of the work ethic over our lives, we approach these issues from fundamentally different philosophical perspectives. Anderson is for the most part working on these issues from within the liberal tradition, construed broadly, while my approach is framed in large part by the traditions of Marxism and Marxist Spinozism. Determination is negation, as Marx cited Spinoza as saying, and it is through reading Anderson that I get a deeper sense of my own philosophical commitments and perspective.Anderson's latest book is, as the title and subtitle make clear, about the work ethic and how it has been reworked by neoliberalism. Her critique is in some sense an immanent one, demarcating a division between a progressive and conservative work ethic. In some sense this division draws a line of demarcation that can be traced back to such thinkers as John Locke. It is a question of asking who or what was being referred to when Locke argued that, "God gave the world to men in common…He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational (and labor was to be his title to it) not to the fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious." Where the quarrelsome and contentious that Locke was arguing against the lower classes, the rabble, who begged rather than worked, or were they the landed gentry and aristocratic classes, that lived off of their inheritance rather than laboring? Anderson makes the claim that it is as much the latter than the form, that the central line of demarcation in Locke's writing is between idle and industrious and this line of demarcation cuts against the wealthy as much as the poor. As much as Locke can be understood as arguing for inequality and the accumulation of a few, it is only because those few are proven to be more industrious. Anderson rejects the interpretation put forward by C.B. Macpherson and others that Locke is developing the philosophical foundations for capitalism. For her the line "turfs my servant has cut" is less a symptom of an emergence of wage labor than a residue of the disappearing world of indentured servitude. Locke is positioned as a starting point of a division between the progressive and conservative work ethic, a disagreement "within economic liberalism," as Anderson puts it.  As she argues, "The progressive work ethic includes the virtues of industry, saving for investment, and prudential planning. As a secularized ideal, it aims to bring the rewards of following the work ethic from the next life into this one." In contrast to this the conservative work ethic focuses on work itself as a source of discipline primarily for the poor and working classes. The meaning of the work ethic does not end or begin with Locke. After Locke it continually vacillates between its progressive meaning, critical of the idle rich as much as the unemployed, and its conservative meaning, focused on the idleness of the poor. Caught between these two interpretations is the question of how unemployment is understood, is it structural, an effect of the capitalist division of labor, or is it an individual issue, a failure of resolve, dedication, and industriousness? As Anderson writes, "Poor law reforms at turn of the seventeenth century had been drafted partially in response to the discovery of a large class of poor who were neither the impotent deserving poor (unable to work) nor the able-bodied underserving poor (unwilling to work). This third class of poor--the "laboring poor" for whom Adam smith had great sympathy, and Burke such contempt--consisted of the involuntary under- and unemployed."In other words, namely Hegel's (cited above) the problem of capitalism is that of the rabble. By and large the response to the rabble, to those able to work but unable to find work, has been to double down on the "ideology of the conservative work ethic." Anderson defines ideology as follows, "By 'ideology' I refer in part to a set of explicit beliefs that rationalize some social or political ideal and its associated institutions and policies. I also refer to a system of representations, cognitive biases, attitudes, emotional and epistemic dispositions, and values embodied in the social practices associated with those ideologies."In the conservative work ethic it is work itself that becomes the central ideology. Work, wage labor, is ideological when it is in excess of its economic function. As Anderson writes, "British welfare reform and famine-relief policies in the nineteenth century reflected the key features of poverty policies informed by the conservative work ethic. They offer extremely stinting levels of relief, typically insufficient to enable recipients to escape poverty, and sometimes even to survive. They observe the principle of "less eligibility," insuring that recipients, even if blamelessly unable to work, are worse off than the lowest paid worker. They prefer to condition relief on the performance of wage labor, even if the recipient's activities would better promote social welfare directed to education, self-employment, or dependent care. Work requirements are often imposed without regard to their interference with recipient's ability to fulfill duties provide direct care for dependents."Following Anderson's understanding of ideology, it is possible to say that the conservative work ethic is attached to the idea of work as discipline and virtue, what Hegel understood as the ethical and formative dimension of work.  In some sense this ideological dimension is at tension with the economics of work, as workhouses and even modern work programs prove to be more costly than just giving people what they need to survive. It is not always in tension, however, and the overall emphasis on work as discipline and virtue has proven to be a beneficial tool of discipline and control--this is part of what Anderson means by neoliberalism. As with her earlier book on the corporation, one is left wondering where Marx fits into this divide between progressive and conservative work ethics. In some sense Anderson sees Marx as the most radical of the advocates of the progressive work ethics, "from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs" can be understood as a statement of a general imperative of productivity and industriousness. Marx went further than Mill and other advocates of the progressive work ethic in that he thought that a realization of this ideal would mean eliminating private property and markets. Anderson generally interprets Marx through the lens of Lenin and even Stalin rereading the young Marx discussion of labor as a human activity as a testament to productivity as an ideal.  Her exclusion of any other aspect of Marx, of an anti-work Marx gets the strangest dismissal. As Anderson writes,"This view draws inspiration from nascent attempts of revolutionary workers to spontaneously organize society, as in the Paris Commune of 1871, and the soviets (workers' councils) of Russia's February Revolution. However, these attempts were rapidly crushed wherever they appeared. For this reason I shall set it aside."It is a strange formulation, and if I wanted to follow through with the symptomatic reading of Locke linked to above (and expanded upon here), one could argue that she takes repression, a historical and political process,  to be a refutation, a philosophical argument. It is a confusion of defeat and failure, to draw on a distinction made by Michael Hardt in his latest book.  When it comes to all of the other positions considered, from Adam Smith to the Levellers and Diggers, Anderson considers their argument, how they understand work, its value, and its ethic. When it comes to Marx, or at least a strain of Marxism understood as a radical critique of work, another factor is introduced, how they were defeated. There arguments and positions are refuted not in theory but in the practice of history.  Of course one could argue that such a dismissal of the revolutionary tradition is almost required to be discussed in the circles of the New York Times, NPR, etc. Lest that seems too harsh I should add that I appreciate Anderson's attempt to revive the reputation of Eduard Bernstein, to at least be open on her commitment to Marx as part of liberal project of reform even if, at the moment she makes that choice, she sets aside the radical tradition of Marxism for the odd reason of its repression. More could be said about this, much more, but in closing I would like to say that she misses perhaps the most important aspect of Marx's critique of capitalism and his most important point about ideology. The true "highjacking" of the work ethic is the idea of capitalist productivity itself in that it identifies as productive, as valuable, primarily that which produces surplus value, and not that which is aimed or oriented towards human needs. What Anderson calls the "progressive work ethic" is predicated on the idea, often unstated, that work, wage labor, always fulfills some social need. Capitalism refutes this daily, not just in dismissing the important work of care, as Anderson acknowledges, but in elevating pernicious and harmful work to value creating activity. A work ethic presupposes a connection between work as an activity and some social good as a result, and that does not exist under capitalism. 

Global Governance has been increasingly used in the study of International Relations which, thanks to its versatility and utility, has generated an expansion of its conceptual, methodological, and practical scope. Regional governance is a useful derivation because it makes it easier to understand, from a more precise perspective, how global issues with local repercussions are solved. In this sense, the article shows that security governance in Latin America is characterized by enduring balance of power practices, geopolitics, and mistrust between different parties. At the same time there is coexistence between the historical intention to establish security communities, to find resolutions to controversies, and to solve disputes through institutional instruments, principles, and values that favor peaceful means. In other words, in the region we are in the presence of a hybrid security governance, with practices that evolve over time in accordance with three key factors: the behavior of States and other agents, the capacity of institutions to overcome structural and conjunctural challenges, and finally, the effects of changes in perceptions of organized crime and other ideological and political challenges. Therefore, this article consists of three parts. In the first, the definitions and scope of global governance will be reviewed. Subsequently, its utility will be validated for the comprehension of regional orders and the characteristics that are forged there. Finally, it will be used to expose the hybrid characteristics in Latin America throughout the 21st century. Traditionally, since its inception as a scientific discipline, the explanations provided by International Relations,have been the subject of multifaceted debates. In fact, it was through these great debates, sometimes theoretical and in other cases methodological, that the discipline grew in terms of academic and research production, as well as in the political scope for decision-making. This led to the creation of a true field of study, which took as its initial object of study the area of war and peace between nations, before later moving on to cooperation, the environment, and other issues of the contemporary international agenda. Likewise, governance has been an ideal vehicle to give greater scope and heterogeneity to explanations of processes and empirical events, ones which go beyond traditional theoretical approaches such as realism, institutional liberalism or constructivism. Along the same lines, this progressive academic production has stimulated the specialization and concentration of governance in regional orders, since it allows a clearer reflection on the historical patterns of behavior among the members. This offers a more nuanced explanation of the challenges present,the responses required for structural or conjunctural issues, and the eventual emergence of distinctive elements between different groups. Security governance has mainly focused on four challenges to solve. First, the expansion of the research agenda to specific contexts; second, the greater attention that academic production should give to the relationship between intergovernmental organizations and other non-state actors in defined spaces; third, the predominance of explanations on security in the Euro-Atlantic region and, finally, the need to further link the security governance agenda to debates on region and regionalism. In the same way, the construction and specific behaviors developed in the regions cannot be detached from global dynamics. In this sense, regardless of the geographical character of a region such as Europe or South America, these are mainly political factors, as Hurrell well recognizes, that regional dynamics are a historical social construction, which has been politically contested and criticized. with the intention of recognizing patterns of continuity and transformation, which facilitate the identification of dynamics that particularize and distinguish between them. In this sense, Latin America has not neglected the use of governance, as a concept and as a valid analysis methodology to understand the distinctive characteristics that have made up a particular set of elements that, on the one hand, endure over time and, on the other hand, have recently changed. When referring to security, the opposing points of view show the emergence and incipient development of a heterogeneous, incomplete, and controversial governance. The main objective of this article, based on a hybrid and eclectic approach, will be to understand the evolution of the concept of governance and establish the characteristics of security for Latin America. Thus, in matters of security governance, this article highlights the hybrid character from two lines of argument; on the one hand, there are defenders of a vision based on geopolitics, the balance of power and the latent tension between states; and on the other, there is one more oriented to analyze security characteristics from a constructivist, associative and cooperative perspective. Indeed, Adler and Greve presented an interesting initial reflection on the subject, in the sense that both are necessary for the holistic understanding of the movements, not always ascending, that states carry to equip themselves with instruments and mechanisms that enable them. They allow you to live together in a more harmonious and peaceful way. First, some authors situate regional governance in mainly realistic terms, in which the dynamics of balance of power between states continue to prevail two hundred years after independence. They underline, for example, realities of ungovernability, while a series of specific variables, among which at least five stand out: first, the old geopolitical tensions between states continue to determine situations of conflict and mistrust; secondly, the competencies of individual and personal leaders in provision of common goods and dispute resolution stand out. Third, regional disputes have continued to be fueled both by internal competition - that is, between the states of the region - and, at the same time, by permissiveness in the face of the influence of external powers; Fourth, the importance of the quality of democracy for the countries of the region, which facilitates internal governance processes and strengthening the rule of law and, finally, the link between security and the economy in terms of economic development, that is, the effect of economic independence and economic autonomy in strengthening state security. Second, there is the most interpretive line of reflection on reality, highlighting that beyond the instruments of power and geopolitical, political processes and new ideological realignments must be understood, in which the following variables can be highlighted: first, the internal factors that condition or reinforce the international action of the States; second, the regional redefinition based on the creation of alternative multilateral forums, beyond the OAS, such as CELAC, UNASUR or ALBA, in which there are also components not only of trade and integration, but also of security and, finally, the little regional cooperation in security with low institutional, political and budgetary density. ; La gobernanza global es un enfoque que se incorpora con mayor interés en el estudio de las Relaciones internacionales. Su versatilidad y utilidad amplían el alcance conceptual, metodológico y práctico de la disciplina, lo cual permite investigar y explicar las interacciones y procesos en ocasiones poco claros que se producen entre actores de distinta naturaleza. Desde esta aproximación, la Gobernanza se ha erigido como una herramienta que amplía las explicaciones de los enfoques conceptuales y metodológicos tradicionalmente utilizados, en otras palabras, la gobernanza es un enfoque multidisciplinario y reflexivo que logra desvanecer fronteras interpuestas por los lentes teóricos convencionales y adicionalmente genera nuevas comprensiones entre lo global y lo local. Con base en lo anterior, se ha abierto y estimulado la utilización de la gobernanza al estudio de los órdenes regionales, pues aquellos se encargan de gestionar la agenda internacional, variada y compleja, ubicándose en un punto medio entre dinámicas globales y afectaciones locales. En ese sentido, ha contribuido a fortalecer una comprensión holística de los patrones históricos de comportamiento entre los miembros que los conforman, otorgándole mayor profundidad, ampliación y reflexividad a los procesos y desafíos allí presentes, así como a las respuestas requeridas a disyuntivas estructurales y coyunturales que evolucionan o emergen. En ese sentido, América Latina ha vivido en los últimos veinte años importantes transformaciones en la forma en la que se relacionan los estados y otros actores. La agenda de seguridad no ha sido ajena al fenómeno, por el contrario, el estudio de la gobernanza de seguridad se ha insertado como una categoría adicional de estudio. Así las cosas, la seguridad contemporánea emerge de una combinación entre estructuras políticas, sociales y culturales, que reflejan tendencias históricas, así como nuevos marcos de comprensión analítica, generando un espacio gris, híbrido y heterogéneo. El objetivo central de este artículo es establecer aquellas variables teóricas y prácticas necesarias para el estudio de la gobernanza híbrida de seguridad en América Latina a lo largo del siglo XXI a partir de un enfoque metodológico analítico, ecléctico y situado que señale los elementos distintivos y al mismo tiempo disputados o enfrentados que le han dado forma a la región. Se señala entonces que, la gobernanza híbrida seguirá alterando las definiciones tanto de seguridad como de región, conforme se alteren las dinámicas de poder, los principios y valores que guían el comportamiento de los agentes involucrados y la eficacia que tengan las organizaciones regionales para la gestión de los desafíos presentes y futuros. Para lo anterior, este escrito consta de tres partes. En la primera, se hará una revisión exhaustiva de las definiciones y alcance de la gobernanza global para así facilitar la comprensión sobre su utilidad teórica, revisando algunas críticas. Posteriormente se validará su beneficio para formular nuevos marcos de comprensión acerca de los órdenes regionales y las características que allí se forjan y, finalmente, se empleará para mostrar cómo ha consolidado una estructura heterogénea, disputada y conflictiva que no se ha terminado de completar o de desarrollar en América Latina.

El artículo analiza las dinámicas fronterizas desde el comienzo del siglo XX a través de una revisión bibliográfica apoyada en el análisis de datos cuantitativos y dos casos de estudio. La tesis central es que existe un conflicto entre las fronteras culturales y las político-territoriales, desafiando los límites geográficos reconocidos oficialmente. La frontera político-territorial es un fenómeno jurídico, una demarcación lineal que establece los límites espaciales dentro de los cuales el estado nación ejerce la soberanía de forma exclusiva, eficaz, autónoma respecto al exterior y bajo el reconocimiento de la legislación internacional. La frontera cultural es un fenómeno histórico que responde a hechos vitales y no a una construcción jurídica ni política ni intelectual. Podemos definirla como un área sociocultural habitada por una población que comparte una serie de elementos simbólicos, costumbres y valores. La gestión del conflicto entre los dos tipos de frontera depende de los desarrollos históricos que tienen lugar en el ámbito de las relaciones internacionales Nuestra tesis muestra que dichas dinámicas pueden articularse en torno a tres ejes. El primero está guiado por el auge del proceso globalizador y la consecuente apertura de fronteras. La apertura de fronteras puede definirse como el aumento en la porosidad de los símbolos, costumbres y valores compartidos en un área sociocultural respecto a los del exterior y/o la disminución de barreras al tránsito físico. Se le contrapone otro eje que lleva al cierre de fronteras, espoleado por los procesos de descolonización, la disolución de la URSS y el resurgir del nacionalismo. El cierre de fronteras se define como la disminución de la porosidad fronteriza o el aumento de las barreras al tránsito físico. El tercer eje está marcado por las disputas territoriales, fundadas sobre diferencias culturales, que llevan a intentar modificar las fronteras oficiales. La modificación de fronteras se da bien cuando un estado nación busca alargar la línea fronteriza que delimita el área bajo su soberanía o un grupo sociocultural trata de delimitar un territorio soberano frente al exterior, bien cuando un área sociocultural definida se expande o retrae sea por el auge o decline de su cultura sea por el del grupo humano que la representa. Los acontecimientos históricos para el análisis de los tres ejes citados provienen de fuentes bibliográficas, periodísticas y de bases de datos. Además, mostramos como la teoría se plasma en dos casos de estudio actuales, el independentismo catalán y el intento venezolano de crear un nuevo poder regional en el Caribe. ; The article analyses border dynamics since the beginning of the 20th century through a literature review supported with the analysis of quantitative data and two case studies. The central thesis is that there is a contradiction between the cultural and the geopolitical borders, challenging the official territorial limits. The geopolitical border is a legal phenomenon, a lineal boundary that establishes the territorial limits within which the nation-state exercises its sovereignty in an exclusive and effective manner, autonomous with respect to any foreign authority and under the recognition of the international law. The cultural frontier is a historical phenomenon shaped by emotional developments and not a legal, political or philosophical construction. It can be defined as a sociocultural area occupied by a population that shares a series of symbolic elements, customs and values. The management of the conflict between both types of borders depends on the historical developments that have taken place within the international relations' field. In order to analyse how geo-political borders and cultural frontiers interact between them we apply a hypothetic-deductive method. Firstly, we establish a theoretical framework that defines five basic analytical concepts shaping border dynamics. Those concepts are cultural frontier, geo-political border, closure axis, opening axis and modification axis. We design a model that explains how such concepts interact between them and we gather and analyse the evolution of a series of quantitative variables that allow us to empirically introduce their relationship along time. The construction of the theoretical framework, as well as the selection and interpretation of quantitative variables, comes together with the introduction of quotations and bibliography that back it up. Moreover, we apply the conclusions deducted from the global analysis to two case studies. The similarities and differences between both case studies are pointed out and we summarize the dynamics shaping the current management of borders. Finally, we offer some recommendations in order to design an effective and efficient geostrategy.The management of borders is articulated around three axes: closure, opening and modification. In other words, nation-states aim to achieve their geostrategic objectives through the modification, closure or opening of their cultural frontiers or/and geopolitical borders. The opening of borders/frontiers can be defined as the increase in the porosity to the outside world of the symbols, customs and values that are shared within a sociocultural area; and/or the wave of barriers to physical transactions —people, goods, capital flows, etc.—. On the other hand, the closure of borders/frontiers happens when the aforementioned porosity decreases or the barriers are strengthened. Finally, the modification of borders/frontiers can be either expansive or contractive as well as happening in the geopolitical dimension or the cultural one. Regarding the geopolitical dimension, the nation-state aims to expand the lineal boundary that mark out the area under its sovereignty or the sociocultural group aims to delimit to the outside world a territory under its exclusive sovereignty. Concerning the cultural dimension, a specific sociocultural area enlarges or retracts either as a consequence of the rise or decline of its culture or of the human group that embraces it. The evolution of the three axes is proxied by a series of variables and their trends. Moreover, the historical events laying down the foundations of the analysis of the three axes are gathered from different sources: bibliography, newspapers and data bases. Moreover, we show how the theory is captured in two current case studies, the independentism in Catalonia and the Venezuelan attempt to create a new regional power in the Caribbean. While the globalization process fosters the opening of borders, the will of the nation-state to safeguard its historical rights and the international status quo drives its closure. On the other hand, the modification of borders is marked by territorial disputes arising from the contradictions between geopolitical borders and cultural frontiers, often exacerbated by the dynamics related to the two previous axes. The territorial dispute between Venezuela and the Cooperative Republic of Guayana is an example of such a dynamic. On the one hand, the State of Venezuela tries to safeguard its traditional rights presenting the dispute as a national question. At the same time, globalization lengthens cultural boundaries while Venezuela revives the ideological division between a capitalist and a socialist world. The closure of borders and frontiers, marked by the nationalist revival, and the opening, driven by the globalization process, act as a catalyser of borders modification. The article is structured by an introduction and six sections. The introduction defines the concepts of geopolitical border and cultural frontier. Moreover, it establishes the theoretical framework used to analyse the evolution of both types of borders and how the interaction between them shapes international relationships during the 20th and 21st centuries. The first section introduces the three axes —closure, opening and modification— along which the management of borders develops during the period under analyses and the relationships arising between them. The second section analyses the closure axis that is driven by the rise of nationalism, the Cold War and the decolonisation process. We use a series of variables to proxy how such an axis evolved along time: total number of international organizations, creation and end of international organizations, net foreign direct investment flows, international trade of goods, attitude of the government towards immigration and number of United Nations peacekeeping missions. The third section does the same for the opening axis. The opening of borders is fostered by the expansion of economic and political liberalism through the globalization process. We use the same variables as in section two to empirically assess the evolution of the opening axis. Section number four introduces the modification axis and how the changes of borders and frontiers are related to events linked to the opening and closure axes. The section analyses three types of modifications (territorial concessions, declarations of independence and annexations). Data about modifications are gathered from The Correlates of War Project and The World Factbook data bases. Section number five shows how the tension between cultural and geopolitical borders determines the management of borders nowadays, following the three axes of closure, opening and modification outlined above. Firstly, we introduce the case study of Catalonia, which is mainly related to the closure axis. Secondly, we analyse the case study of Guayana Esebequio and the territorial dispute between Venezuela and the Cooperative Republic of Guayana. Finally, we compare the differences and similarities between both case studies. The last section consists of the conclusions and political recommendations that we extract from our research so that policy makers can implement efficient and effective policies on borders managements. ; Border dynamics in the 20-21st Century : a mirror of the world order evolution

Rad koristi interdisciplinarni pristup u okviru kulturne politike, kako bi predstavio potrebe za decentralizacijom kulturnog sistema u Srbiji i istovremeno predložio model decentralizacije kulture koji može biti primenjen. Uvodni deo prvo predstavlja značaj decentralizacije u kulturi za Srbiju, ali istovremeno i naglašava prepreke koje su vezane za tranzicioni period u kome se zemlja nalazi. Takođe, u teoretizaciji same decentralizacije u kulturi, rad uvodi nove ključne aspekte – jednakost, ravnopravnost i pravednost, koji se predstavljaju kroz političko – ekonomske teorije poput liberalizma, socijalizma, anarhizma i feminizma, da bi se socijalna pravda uvela kao glavni princip. Iz toga proizilazi i glavna hipoteza - uz primenu principa pravednosti u modelu, može se ostvariti i princip jednakosti/ravnopravnosti u decentralizaciji kulturnog sistema Srbije. Metodološki postupak zasnovan je na interdisciplinarnim teorijsko-empirijskim istraživanjima koja obuhvataju kulturnu politiku, menadžment u kulturi, teoriju upravljanja, političke nauke, ekonomske nauke, pravne nauke i sociologiju. Cilj istraživanja je modelovanje novog kulturnog sistema decentralizacije u Srbiji, zasnovanog na principu pravednosti. Oslanjajući se na evropske primere decentralizacije kulture, kojima se teži kao pripadajućem prostoru države, rad predstavlja i istorijski pregled decentralizacije u širem smislu, političke i fiskalne, kao preduslova pune decentralizacije u kulturi. U opštem teoretisanju decentralizacije, istovremeno se i sama decentralizacija terminološki odvaja od pojmova poput dekocentracije, demetropolizacije, devolucije i delegacije, a predstavljaju se i suplementarni poput regionalizacije i supsidijarnosti, kao i međusobna uslovljenost navedenih oblika decentralizacije (političke, ekonomske i kulturne). Polazne definicije decentralizacije, trodelna definicija uslovljenosti decentralizacije u kulturi Nobuko Kavašime kao "fer distribucija resursa" i Meklijeva "decentralizacija odlučivanja", odnosno dva principa – top down demokratizacije kulture i bootom up kulturne demokratije, u radu se ne isključuju nego zajedno koriste u susretnom smislu. Rad analizira i teorije o decentralizaciji kulture (Malro i Mekli u Francuskoj, Kavašima u Engleskoj, kao i regionalne poput Dragojevića u Hrvatskoj), kao i teoretske pojmove koje smatra neophodnim za primenu decentralizacije u kulturi poput socijalne (shvatanje Džona Rolsa) i tranzicione pravde, društvene sektore sa posebnim naglaskom na civilni sektor u kulturi, populistički diskurs decentralizacije koji koristi politika, participaciju kao neophodan element decentralizacije kulture, commons i spillover efect. Analiza je obuhvatila i praktične, nekadašnje i sadašnje modele decentralizacije u kulturi u Evropi (sa posebnim naglaskom na Francusku i Englesku), nekadašnjoj Jugoslaviji (sa posebnim akcentom na samoupravni sistem), država u regionu (Hrvatska posebno) i samoj Srbiji (Nacrt strategije Komisije za decentralizaciju kulture), kako bi se predstavile strategije koje se mogu iskoristiti za predloženi model. Utvrđujući putem empirijskog istraživanja (stavovi kreatora kulture u unutrašnjosti Srbije), finansijske analize javnih izdvajanja za kulturu, strateških planova i medijske vidljivosti, visok stepen centralizma, rad predlaže i konkretne mere za ostvarivanje decentralizacije u kulturi. Poseban segment istraživanja je utvrdio i potencijalnu ulogu civilnog sektora u kulturi u decentralizaciji kulture, gde se merio njegov potencijal, održivost, povezivanje (poput Asocijacije nezavisne kulturne scene Srbije i njene uloge) i prevashodno primeri dobre prakse u svetu (omladinski centri Estonije) i kod nas nekada (Otvoreni klubovi Savezne republike Jugoslavije) i danas. Glavni rezultat ovog rada je predlog modela za implementaciju decentralizacije u kulturi Srbije, koji je adekvatan specifičnim uslovima sredine i realno primenljiv. Model je nazvan "susretno-pravednim" jer u sebi sadrži više pristupa koji nisu samostalni nego upravo povezani uslovljenim obligacijama odlučivanja koje dvosmerno dolaze vertikalno (nivoi vlasti) i horizontalno (korisnici i sektori) uz primenu načela pravednosti kao glavnog kriterijuma. Model je trostepeni (kulturna decentralizacija bez političke i fiskalne, kulturna i fiskalna decentralizacija i sva tri vida zajedno) sa trogodišnjim trajanjem svake faze. On predlaže mere i strategije poput regionalizacije (politička decentralizacija), "skandinavskog modela finansiranja" lokalnih samouprava (fiskalna decentralizacija) i kao najbitnije za kulturnu decentralizaciju: jačanje regionalnih i lokalnih resursa (razvoj kadrova i publike, departizaciju, deinstitucionalizaciju, izgradnju i revitalizaciju infrastrukture i obavezne lokalne i regionalne strategije kulture), "kapilarnu decentralizaciju" kulture putem jačanja uloge civilnog sektora, obavezni "lokalni spillover" za manifestacione kreativne industrije i primenu faktora socijalne pravde u finansiranju kulture, difuziji institucija i manifestacija od nacionalnog značaja i u nacionalnoj medijskoj promociji. Naučni doprinos rada je dalja teoretizacija pojma decentralizacije u kulturi sa stanovišta principa jednakosti, ravnopravnosti i pravde. U oblasti kulturne politike, vrednost dizajniranog modela je u tome što može imati i potencijalnu praktičnu primenu, kako od strane nacionalnih, tako i lokalnih subjekata u kulturi Srbije. ; The paper uses an interdisciplinary approach within cultural policy to present the needs for decentralization of the cultural system in Serbia and at the same time propose a model for decentralization of culture that can be applied. The introductory part first presents the importance of decentralization in culture for Serbia, but at the same time highlights the obstacles that are associated with the transition period in which the country is located. Also, in the theorizing of decentralization in culture, the paper introduces new key aspects - equality, equal and justice, which are presented through political - economic theories such as liberalism, socialism, anarchism and feminism, to introduce social justice as the main principle. This leads to the main hypothesis - with the application of the principle of equity in the model, the principle of equality in the decentralization of the cultural system of Serbia can be realized. The methodological procedure is based on interdisciplinary theoretical and empirical research covering cultural policy, cultural management, management theory, political science, economic sciences, legal sciences and sociology. The aim of the research is to model a new cultural system of decentralization in Serbia, based on the principle of equity. Drawing on European examples of decentralization of culture, which strives as belonging to the state space, the paper also presents a historical overview of decentralization in the broad sense, political and fiscal, as a precondition for full decentralization in culture. In the general theorizing of decentralization, decentralization itself is terminologically detached from concepts such as decocentiation, demetropolisation, devolution and delegation, and they are also complementary such as regionalization and subsidiarity, as well as the interdependence of these forms of decentralization (political, economic and cultural). The initial definitions of decentralization, the three-part definition of the conditionality of decentralization in the culture of Nobuko Kawashima as a "fair distribution of resources" and Moeckli's "decentralization of decision-making", that is, two principles - top down of culture democratization and bootom up of cultural democracy, are not mutually exclusive but used together. The paper analyzes the theories of decentralization of culture (Malro and Moeckli in France, Kawashima in England, as well as regional ones like Dragojevic in Croatia), as well as theoretical concepts that he considers necessary for the application of decentralization in culture such as social (John Rolls' understanding) and transitional justice, social sectors with particular emphasis on the civil sector in culture, a populist discourse of decentralization used by politics, participation as a necessary element of cultural decentralization, commons and spillover efect. The analysis also included practical, former and current models of decentralization in culture in Europe (with special emphasis on France and England), former Yugoslavia (with particular emphasis on the self-governing system), countries in the region (Croatia in particular) and Serbia itself (Draft Commission Strategy to decentralize culture), to outline strategies that can be used for the proposed model. By establishing through empirical research (views of cultural creators in the interior of Serbia), financial analysis of public appropriations for culture, strategic plans and media visibility, a high degree of centralism, the paper also proposes concrete measures for achieving decentralization in culture. A specific segment of the research identified the potential role of the civil sector in culture in decentralizing culture, measuring its potential, sustainability, networking (such as the Association of the Independent Cultural Scene of Serbia and its role) and, above all, examples of good practice in the world (Estonian youth centers) and in Balkan once (Open clubs of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) and today). The main result of this paper is the proposal of a model for the implementation of decentralization in the culture of Serbia, which is adequate to the specific environmental conditions and realistically applicable. The model has been called "counter-righteous" because it contains more approaches that are not standalone but just linked by conditioned decision-making obligations that come two-way vertically (levels of government) and horizontally (users and sectors), by applying the principle of fairness as the main criterion. The model is three-stage (cultural decentralization without political and fiscal, cultural and fiscal decentralization and all three aspects together) with a three-year duration of each phase. It proposes measures and strategies such as regionalization (political decentralization), the "scandinavian financing model" of local governments (fiscal decentralization) and as essential to cultural decentralization: strengthening regional and local resources (development of staff and audience, depoliticization, deinstitutionalization, construction and revitalization of infrastructure and mandatory local and regional cultural strategies), "capillary decentralization" of culture through strengthening the role of the civil sector, mandatory "local spillover" for creative industries and the application of social justice factors in the financing of culture, diffusion of institutions and events of national importance and in national media promotion. The scientific contribution of the paper is further theorization of the concept of decentralization in culture from the standpoint of the principles of equality and justice. In the field of cultural policy, the value of the designed model is that it can have potential practical application, both by national and local subjects in the culture of Serbia.

Rad koristi interdisciplinarni pristup u okviru kulturne politike, kako bi predstavio potrebe za decentralizacijom kulturnog sistema u Srbiji i istovremeno predložio model decentralizacije kulture koji može biti primenjen. Uvodni deo prvo predstavlja značaj decentralizacije u kulturi za Srbiju, ali istovremeno i naglašava prepreke koje su vezane za tranzicioni period u kome se zemlja nalazi. Takođe, u teoretizaciji same decentralizacije u kulturi, rad uvodi nove ključne aspekte – jednakost, ravnopravnost i pravednost, koji se predstavljaju kroz političko – ekonomske teorije poput liberalizma, socijalizma, anarhizma i feminizma, da bi se socijalna pravda uvela kao glavni princip. Iz toga proizilazi i glavna hipoteza - uz primenu principa pravednosti u modelu, može se ostvariti i princip jednakosti/ravnopravnosti u decentralizaciji kulturnog sistema Srbije. Metodološki postupak zasnovan je na interdisciplinarnim teorijsko-empirijskim istraživanjima koja obuhvataju kulturnu politiku, menadžment u kulturi, teoriju upravljanja, političke nauke, ekonomske nauke, pravne nauke i sociologiju. Cilj istraživanja je modelovanje novog kulturnog sistema decentralizacije u Srbiji, zasnovanog na principu pravednosti. Oslanjajući se na evropske primere decentralizacije kulture, kojima se teži kao pripadajućem prostoru države, rad predstavlja i istorijski pregled decentralizacije u širem smislu, političke i fiskalne, kao preduslova pune decentralizacije u kulturi. U opštem teoretisanju decentralizacije, istovremeno se i sama decentralizacija terminološki odvaja od pojmova poput dekocentracije, demetropolizacije, devolucije i delegacije, a predstavljaju se i suplementarni poput regionalizacije i supsidijarnosti, kao i međusobna uslovljenost navedenih oblika decentralizacije (političke, ekonomske i kulturne). Polazne definicije decentralizacije, trodelna definicija uslovljenosti decentralizacije u kulturi Nobuko Kavašime kao "fer distribucija resursa" i Meklijeva "decentralizacija odlučivanja", odnosno dva principa – top down demokratizacije kulture i bootom up kulturne demokratije, u radu se ne isključuju nego zajedno koriste u susretnom smislu. Rad analizira i teorije o decentralizaciji kulture (Malro i Mekli u Francuskoj, Kavašima u Engleskoj, kao i regionalne poput Dragojevića u Hrvatskoj), kao i teoretske pojmove koje smatra neophodnim za primenu decentralizacije u kulturi poput socijalne (shvatanje Džona Rolsa) i tranzicione pravde, društvene sektore sa posebnim naglaskom na civilni sektor u kulturi, populistički diskurs decentralizacije koji koristi politika, participaciju kao neophodan element decentralizacije kulture, commons i spillover efect. Analiza je obuhvatila i praktične, nekadašnje i sadašnje modele decentralizacije u kulturi u Evropi (sa posebnim naglaskom na Francusku i Englesku), nekadašnjoj Jugoslaviji (sa posebnim akcentom na samoupravni sistem), država u regionu (Hrvatska posebno) i samoj Srbiji (Nacrt strategije Komisije za decentralizaciju kulture), kako bi se predstavile strategije koje se mogu iskoristiti za predloženi model. Utvrđujući putem empirijskog istraživanja (stavovi kreatora kulture u unutrašnjosti Srbije), finansijske analize javnih izdvajanja za kulturu, strateških planova i medijske vidljivosti, visok stepen centralizma, rad predlaže i konkretne mere za ostvarivanje decentralizacije u kulturi. Poseban segment istraživanja je utvrdio i potencijalnu ulogu civilnog sektora u kulturi u decentralizaciji kulture, gde se merio njegov potencijal, održivost, povezivanje (poput Asocijacije nezavisne kulturne scene Srbije i njene uloge) i prevashodno primeri dobre prakse u svetu (omladinski centri Estonije) i kod nas nekada (Otvoreni klubovi Savezne republike Jugoslavije) i danas. Glavni rezultat ovog rada je predlog modela za implementaciju decentralizacije u kulturi Srbije, koji je adekvatan specifičnim uslovima sredine i realno primenljiv. Model je nazvan "susretno-pravednim" jer u sebi sadrži više pristupa koji nisu samostalni nego upravo povezani uslovljenim obligacijama odlučivanja koje dvosmerno dolaze vertikalno (nivoi vlasti) i horizontalno (korisnici i sektori) uz primenu načela pravednosti kao glavnog kriterijuma. Model je trostepeni (kulturna decentralizacija bez političke i fiskalne, kulturna i fiskalna decentralizacija i sva tri vida zajedno) sa trogodišnjim trajanjem svake faze. On predlaže mere i strategije poput regionalizacije (politička decentralizacija), "skandinavskog modela finansiranja" lokalnih samouprava (fiskalna decentralizacija) i kao najbitnije za kulturnu decentralizaciju: jačanje regionalnih i lokalnih resursa (razvoj kadrova i publike, departizaciju, deinstitucionalizaciju, izgradnju i revitalizaciju infrastrukture i obavezne lokalne i regionalne strategije kulture), "kapilarnu decentralizaciju" kulture putem jačanja uloge civilnog sektora, obavezni "lokalni spillover" za manifestacione kreativne industrije i primenu faktora socijalne pravde u finansiranju kulture, difuziji institucija i manifestacija od nacionalnog značaja i u nacionalnoj medijskoj promociji. Naučni doprinos rada je dalja teoretizacija pojma decentralizacije u kulturi sa stanovišta principa jednakosti, ravnopravnosti i pravde. U oblasti kulturne politike, vrednost dizajniranog modela je u tome što može imati i potencijalnu praktičnu primenu, kako od strane nacionalnih, tako i lokalnih subjekata u kulturi Srbije. ; The paper uses an interdisciplinary approach within cultural policy to present the needs for decentralization of the cultural system in Serbia and at the same time propose a model for decentralization of culture that can be applied. The introductory part first presents the importance of decentralization in culture for Serbia, but at the same time highlights the obstacles that are associated with the transition period in which the country is located. Also, in the theorizing of decentralization in culture, the paper introduces new key aspects - equality, equal and justice, which are presented through political - economic theories such as liberalism, socialism, anarchism and feminism, to introduce social justice as the main principle. This leads to the main hypothesis - with the application of the principle of equity in the model, the principle of equality in the decentralization of the cultural system of Serbia can be realized. The methodological procedure is based on interdisciplinary theoretical and empirical research covering cultural policy, cultural management, management theory, political science, economic sciences, legal sciences and sociology. The aim of the research is to model a new cultural system of decentralization in Serbia, based on the principle of equity. Drawing on European examples of decentralization of culture, which strives as belonging to the state space, the paper also presents a historical overview of decentralization in the broad sense, political and fiscal, as a precondition for full decentralization in culture. In the general theorizing of decentralization, decentralization itself is terminologically detached from concepts such as decocentiation, demetropolisation, devolution and delegation, and they are also complementary such as regionalization and subsidiarity, as well as the interdependence of these forms of decentralization (political, economic and cultural). The initial definitions of decentralization, the three-part definition of the conditionality of decentralization in the culture of Nobuko Kawashima as a "fair distribution of resources" and Moeckli's "decentralization of decision-making", that is, two principles - top down of culture democratization and bootom up of cultural democracy, are not mutually exclusive but used together. The paper analyzes the theories of decentralization of culture (Malro and Moeckli in France, Kawashima in England, as well as regional ones like Dragojevic in Croatia), as well as theoretical concepts that he considers necessary for the application of decentralization in culture such as social (John Rolls' understanding) and transitional justice, social sectors with particular emphasis on the civil sector in culture, a populist discourse of decentralization used by politics, participation as a necessary element of cultural decentralization, commons and spillover efect. The analysis also included practical, former and current models of decentralization in culture in Europe (with special emphasis on France and England), former Yugoslavia (with particular emphasis on the self-governing system), countries in the region (Croatia in particular) and Serbia itself (Draft Commission Strategy to decentralize culture), to outline strategies that can be used for the proposed model. By establishing through empirical research (views of cultural creators in the interior of Serbia), financial analysis of public appropriations for culture, strategic plans and media visibility, a high degree of centralism, the paper also proposes concrete measures for achieving decentralization in culture. A specific segment of the research identified the potential role of the civil sector in culture in decentralizing culture, measuring its potential, sustainability, networking (such as the Association of the Independent Cultural Scene of Serbia and its role) and, above all, examples of good practice in the world (Estonian youth centers) and in Balkan once (Open clubs of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) and today). The main result of this paper is the proposal of a model for the implementation of decentralization in the culture of Serbia, which is adequate to the specific environmental conditions and realistically applicable. The model has been called "counter-righteous" because it contains more approaches that are not standalone but just linked by conditioned decision-making obligations that come two-way vertically (levels of government) and horizontally (users and sectors), by applying the principle of fairness as the main criterion. The model is three-stage (cultural decentralization without political and fiscal, cultural and fiscal decentralization and all three aspects together) with a three-year duration of each phase. It proposes measures and strategies such as regionalization (political decentralization), the "scandinavian financing model" of local governments (fiscal decentralization) and as essential to cultural decentralization: strengthening regional and local resources (development of staff and audience, depoliticization, deinstitutionalization, construction and revitalization of infrastructure and mandatory local and regional cultural strategies), "capillary decentralization" of culture through strengthening the role of the civil sector, mandatory "local spillover" for creative industries and the application of social justice factors in the financing of culture, diffusion of institutions and events of national importance and in national media promotion. The scientific contribution of the paper is further theorization of the concept of decentralization in culture from the standpoint of the principles of equality and justice. In the field of cultural policy, the value of the designed model is that it can have potential practical application, both by national and local subjects in the culture of Serbia.

The article analyses border dynamics since the beginning of the 20th century through a literature review supported with the analysis of quantitative data and two case studies. The central thesis is that there is a contradiction between the cultural and the geopolitical borders, challenging the official territorial limits. The geopolitical border is a legal phenomenon, a lineal boundary that establishes the territorial limits within which the nation-state exercises its sovereignty in an exclusive and effective manner, autonomous with respect to any foreign authority and under the recognition of the international law. The cultural frontier is a historical phenomenon shaped by emotional developments and not a legal, political or philosophical construction. It can be defined as a sociocultural area occupied by a population that shares a series of symbolic elements, customs and values. The management of the conflict between both types of borders depends on the historical developments that have taken place within the international relations' field. In order to analyse how geo-political borders and cultural frontiers interact between them we apply a hypothetic-deductive method. Firstly, we establish a theoretical framework that defines five basic analytical concepts shaping border dynamics. Those concepts are cultural frontier, geo-political border, closure axis, opening axis and modification axis. We design a model that explains how such concepts interact between them and we gather and analyse the evolution of a series of quantitative variables that allow us to empirically introduce their relationship along time. The construction of the theoretical framework, as well as the selection and interpretation of quantitative variables, comes together with the introduction of quotations and bibliography that back it up. Moreover, we apply the conclusions deducted from the global analysis to two case studies. The similarities and differences between both case studies are pointed out and we summarize the dynamics shaping the current management of borders. Finally, we offer some recommendations in order to design an effective and efficient geostrategy. The management of borders is articulated around three axes: closure, opening and modification. In other words, nation-states aim to achieve their geostrategic objectives through the modification, closure or opening of their cultural frontiers or/and geopolitical borders. The opening of borders/frontiers can be defined as the increase in the porosity to the outside world of the symbols, customs and values that are shared within a sociocultural area; and/or the wave of barriers to physical transactions —people, goods, capital flows, etc.—. On the other hand, the closure of borders/frontiers happens when the aforementioned porosity decreases or the barriers are strengthened. Finally, the modification of borders/frontiers can be either expansive or contractive as well as happening in the geopolitical dimension or the cultural one. Regarding the geopolitical dimension, the nation-state aims to expand the lineal boundary that mark out the area under its sovereignty or the sociocultural group aims to delimit to the outside world a territory under its exclusive sovereignty. Concerning the cultural dimension, a specific sociocultural area enlarges or retracts either as a consequence of the rise or decline of its culture or of the human group that embraces it. The evolution of the three axes is proxied by a series of variables and their trends. Moreover, the historical events laying down the foundations of the analysis of the three axes are gathered from different sources: bibliography, newspapers and data bases. Moreover, we show how the theory is captured in two current case studies, the independentism in Catalonia and the Venezuelan attempt to create a new regional power in the Caribbean. While the globalization process fosters the opening of borders, the will of the nation-state to safeguard its historical rights and the international status quo drives its closure. On the other hand, the modification of borders is marked by territorial disputes arising from the contradictions between geopolitical borders and cultural frontiers, often exacerbated by the dynamics related to the two previous axes. The territorial dispute between Venezuela and the Cooperative Republic of Guayana is an example of such a dynamic. On the one hand, the State of Venezuela tries to safeguard its traditional rights presenting the dispute as a national question. At the same time, globalization lengthens cultural boundaries while Venezuela revives the ideological division between a capitalist and a socialist world. The closure of borders and frontiers, marked by the nationalist revival, and the opening, driven by the globalization process, act as a catalyser of borders modification. The article is structured by an introduction and six sections. The introduction defines the concepts of geopolitical border and cultural frontier. Moreover, it establishes the theoretical framework used to analyse the evolution of both types of borders and how the interaction between them shapes international relationships during the 20th and 21st centuries. The first section introduces the three axes —closure, opening and modification— along which the management of borders develops during the period under analyses and the relationships arising between them. The second section analyses the closure axis that is driven by the rise of nationalism, the Cold War and the decolonisation process. We use a series of variables to proxy how such an axis evolved along time: total number of international organizations, creation and end of international organizations, net foreign direct investment flows, international trade of goods, attitude of the government towards immigration and number of United Nations peacekeeping missions. The third section does the same for the opening axis. The opening of borders is fostered by the expansion of economic and political liberalism through the globalization process. We use the same variables as in section two to empirically assess the evolution of the opening axis. Section number four introduces the modification axis and how the changes of borders and frontiers are related to events linked to the opening and closure axes. The section analyses three types of modifications (territorial concessions, declarations of independence and annexations). Data about modifications are gathered from The Correlates of War Project and The World Factbook data bases. Section number five shows how the tension between cultural and geopolitical borders determines the management of borders nowadays, following the three axes of closure, opening and modification outlined above. Firstly, we introduce the case study of Catalonia, which is mainly related to the closure axis. Secondly, we analyse the case study of Guayana Esebequio and the territorial dispute between Venezuela and the Cooperative Republic of Guayana. Finally, we compare the differences and similarities between both case studies. The last section consists of the conclusions and political recommendations that we extract from our research so that policy makers can implement efficient and effective policies on borders managements. ; El artículo analiza las dinámicas fronterizas desde el comienzo del siglo XX a través de una revisión bibliográfica apoyada en el análisis de datos cuantitativos y dos casos de estudio.La tesis central es que existe un conflicto entre las fronteras culturales y las político-territoriales, desafiando los límites geográficos reconocidos oficialmente. La frontera político-territorial es un fenómeno jurídico, una demarcación lineal que establece los límites espaciales dentro de los cuales el estado nación ejerce la soberanía de forma exclusiva, eficaz, autónoma respecto al exterior y bajo el reconocimiento de la legislación internacional. La frontera cultural es un fenómeno histórico que responde a hechos vitales y no a una construcción jurídica ni política ni intelectual. Podemos definirla como un área sociocultural habitada por una población que comparte una serie de elementos simbólicos, costumbres y valores. La gestión del conflicto entre los dos tipos de frontera depende de los desarrollos históricos que tienen lugar en el ámbito de las relaciones internacionalesNuestra tesis muestra que dichas dinámicas pueden articularse en torno a tres ejes. El primero está guiado por el auge del proceso globalizador y la consecuente apertura de fronteras. La apertura de fronteras puede definirse como el aumento en la porosidad de los símbolos, costumbres y valores compartidos en un área sociocultural respecto a los del exterior y/o la disminución de barreras al tránsito físico. Se le contrapone otro eje que lleva al cierre de fronteras, espoleado por los procesos de descolonización, la disolución de la URSS y el resurgir del nacionalismo. El cierre de fronteras se define como la disminución de la porosidad fronteriza o el aumento de las barreras al tránsito físico. El tercer eje está marcado por las disputas territoriales, fundadas sobre diferencias culturales, que llevan a intentar modificar las fronteras oficiales. La modificación de fronteras se da bien cuando un estado nación busca alargar la línea fronteriza que delimita el área bajo su soberanía o un grupo sociocultural trata de delimitar un territorio soberano frente al exterior, bien cuando un área sociocultural definida se expande o retrae sea por el auge o decline de su cultura sea por el del grupo humano que la representa.Los acontecimientos históricos para el análisis de los tres ejes citados provienen de fuentes bibliográficas, periodísticas y de bases de datos. Además, mostramos como la teoría se plasma en dos casos de estudio actuales, el independentismo catalán y el intento venezolano de crear un nuevo poder regional en el Caribe.