Suchergebnisse

Introduction -- Language: Approach and Key Concepts -- Legitimacy and the Domestic Use of Force: Charting a Theoretical Approach -- The Sri Lankan Conflict (2006-2009): Justifications -- The Aceh Conflict (2003-2005): Justifications -- The Sri Lankan Conflict (2006-2009): Audience Responses -- The Aceh conflict (2003-2005): Audience Responses -- The Politics of International Legitimacy -- Conclusion.

Introduction -- Language: Approach and Key Concepts -- Legitimacy and the Domestic Use of Force: Charting a Theoretical Approach -- The Sri Lankan Conflict (2006-2009): Justifications -- The Aceh Conflict (2003-2005): Justifications -- The Sri Lankan Conflict (2006-2009): Audience Responses -- The Aceh conflict (2003-2005): Audience Responses -- The Politics of International Legitimacy -- Conclusion.

"This book examines how states justify the domestic use of military force to foreign audiences. By deploying a sociological approach to legitimacy and drawing on conceptual tools which deal directly with the dynamics of justification, it offers a novel framework for understanding the politics of international legitimacy and domestic armed action. The framework is grounded in detailed qualitative analyses of civil wars in Sri Lanka (2006-09), and Aceh, Indonesia (2003-2005). The book shows that the meaning of legitimacy in a particular context does not flow directly from a menu of relevant rules, norms and ideas. Rather, legitimacy is always politically contested. When states justify fighting at home, the success of their claims is determined by their capacity to appeal to rules and norms but also to frame their action in ways that their audiences find compelling. Therefore, the framework offered in this book draws attention to the crucial but largely neglected role of audiences in the constitution of legitimacy. This book will be of interest to students of security studies, law, human rights and International Relations"--

Abstract
In recent years, International Relations theorists have observed a resurgence in geopolitical rivalry, much of which is coalescing around cases of contested statehood. Yet, while there is a considerable volume of work on state recognition, the field would benefit from incorporating alternate approaches to geopolitics. A common approach entails treating geopolitical interests as independent variables for comparison against other factors. However, in prioritizing the comparison of variables, such work tells us less about how particular geopolitical interests arise in connection to cases of contested statehood. This paper therefore instead proposes a discursive approach to geopolitical interests. Following this approach, theorists will be able to treat grand strategies in a similar manner to the way the recognition scholarship already treats norms—as ideas that shape the dynamics of recognition but seldom point directly to specific recognition stances. By enabling theorists to account for the role of choice, contingency, and contestation in mediating grand strategies, this approach yields more comprehensive explanations of geopolitical interest and state recognition. In advancing its discursive approach to geopolitics and state recognition, this paper engages and extends recent constructivist work on grand strategy. The paper then illustrates the approach using the example of US policy toward the 1971 East Pakistan Crisis.

During the final months of Sri Lanka's 2006–2009 civil war, Sri Lankan armed forces engaged in a disproportionate and indiscriminate shelling campaign against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which culminated in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. Conventional wisdom suggests that Sri Lanka undermined international humanitarian law (IHL). Significantly, however, the Sri Lankan government did not directly challenge such law or attempt to justify its departure from it. Rather, it invented a new set of facts about its conduct to sidestep its legal obligations. Though indirect, this challenge was no less significant than had Sri Lanka explicitly rejected those obligations. Drawing on Clark et al.'s concept of denialism, this article details the nature of Sri Lanka's challenge to the standing of IHL. At the core of its denialist move, Sri Lanka maintained that while the LTTE was using civilians as human shields, government forces were adhering to a zero civilian casualty approach. With this claim, Sri Lanka absolved itself of any responsibility for the toll inflicted on civilians and sealed its conduct off from the ambit of IHL. This case illustrates how actors can considerably undermine the law using strategies of contestation far more subtle than direct confrontation.

Abstract
Under the Convention against Torture, if states know of torture having taken place, they have obligations to provide redress and rehabilitation for victims and pursue prosecution of those responsible. Despite this, the United States continues to detain prisoners who were subjected to years of CIA torture in Guantánamo Bay. The United States is pursuing the death penalty through the Military Commissions (MC) system which falls far short of any international standards for fair trial. Ongoing systematic physical and psychological abuse prolongs torture's effects. We argue that the ongoing arbitrary detention, abuse, denial of healthcare, and the MCs constitute a regime of torture that persists today, with the acquiescence of successive US administrations, and with the collusion of multiple agencies of the US state. This regime is deliberately intended to keep CIA torture victims incommunicado as long as possible to prevent evidence of the worst excesses of CIA torture from ever coming to light. This regime has profound implications for human rights accountability and the rule of law. Our argument offers an opportunity to revisit the prevailing narrative in International Relations literature, which tends to view the CIA torture programme as an aberration, and its closure an indicator of the restoration of the anti-torture norm.

AbstractQuantitative analyses have the potential to contribute to transitional justice mechanisms, via empirical evidence supporting the memory of victims, allocating proportional responsibility among perpetrators, determining legal responsibility, and supporting historical memory and clarity. However, most data available in transitional justice settings are incomplete. Conducting quantitative analyses relying solely on what is observable and knowable leads to not only incomplete but often incorrect analytical results. This can harm rather than contribute to transitional justice mechanisms. This article outlines different types of data, the ways in which observable data, on their own, are insufficient for most quantitative analyses of interest, presents these limitations via a case study from Syria, and introduces statistical methods to overcome these limitations.

We address weaknesses in the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) Battle Deaths Dataset, and as a result draw contradicting conclusions to those presented by Lacina and Gleditsch. Our analysis focuses on the availability of data on battle deaths within specific conflict-years and problems encountered when data from multiple types of sources are combined. We repeat Lacina, Gleditsch, and Russett's analysis of battle deaths over time, with an attempt to provide a more robust model and incorporate an estimate of the uncertainty present in the PRIO Battle Deaths Dataset. This reanalysis reveals that the data used to establish the PRIO Battle Deaths Dataset does not offer a clear answer as to whether battle deaths have decreased or increased since the end of the Second World War. We contend that while the PRIO Battle Deaths Dataset offers the most comprehensive assembly of battle deaths data available to date, it is not suitable for analysis across countries or over time. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]