Suchergebnisse

The combination of pessimism regarding the possibility of a negotiated settlement and a recognition that maintaining the status quo in the Occupied Territories is impossible has led leading Israeli policymakers to advocate a policy of unilateral withdrawal. This policy is at
least partially based on the assumption that nationalist movements inevitably adapt to externally imposed realities. However, as this article demonstrates, even the famously pragmatic Labor Zionist movement did not shift its vision of the appropriate borders of their state in response to externally
imposed territorial limits. Rather, when such ideological transformations took place, they were more closely linked to the contingencies of domestic and intra-movement politics. Unilateral withdrawals are thus unlikely to contribute to a resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians,
in part, because they are animated by a faulty assumption about the mechanism of ideological transformation.

Evolving Nationalism examines how the idea of Israel as a nation-state has developed within Zionist and Israeli discourse over the past eight decades. Nadav G. Shelef focuses on the changing ways in which the main nationalist movements answered three distinct questions in their private and public ideological articulations between 1925 and 2005: Where is the "Land of Israel"? Who ought to be Israeli? What should the Zionist national mission be?Framed within broader debates about how and why changes in foundational definitions of the nation occur, Shelef's analysis centers on the mechanisms of ideological change and then subjects them to empirical scrutiny. He thus moves beyond the common but problematic assumptions that such transformations must be either a rare, rational adaptation to traumatic shock or a relatively constant product of manipulation by power-hungry elites. He finds that nationalist movements, including radical and religious fundamentalist ones, can and do change cardinal components of their ideological beliefs in both moderating and radicalizing directions.These changes have more to do with the unguided consequences of engagement in day-to-day politics than with strategic reaction to new realities, the use of force, or the changing incentives of leaders. Engaging with some of the most contentious debates about the nature of Israeli nationalism and the geographic, religious, and ethnic definition of the state of Israel, Shelef has made signal contributions to our understanding of Middle East politics and of the ideological underpinnings of nationalism itself

Under what conditions do nations give up parts of their national homeland? This article answers this question using novel data that traces systematically the inclusion of lost homeland territory in discursive definitions of the homeland for all ethnic nationalist homelands truncated between 1945 and 1996. A survival analysis of the continued homeland status of lost lands shows that longer-lasting democracies are significantly less likely to continue to include lost lands within the homeland's scope, even after controlling for other factors thought to shape the inclusion of territory in the homeland. Since the desire for the control of territory is at the heart of much international conflict, understanding the conditions under which the scope of that territory is redefined contributes to addressing an especially refractory aspect of international politics.

Under what conditions do nations give up parts of their national homeland? This article answers this question using novel data that traces systematically the inclusion of lost homeland territory in discursive definitions of the homeland for all ethnic nationalist homelands truncated between 1945 and 1996. A survival analysis of the continued homeland status of lost lands shows that longer-lasting democracies are significantly less likely to continue to include lost lands within the homeland's scope, even after controlling for other factors thought to shape the inclusion of territory in the homeland. Since the desire for the control of territory is at the heart of much international conflict, understanding the conditions under which the scope of that territory is redefined contributes to addressing an especially refractory aspect of international politics.

AbstractAlthough there is a deep and wide consensus that international conflict over territory is especially common and destructive, there is less agreement over what it is about territory that leads to these outcomes. Understanding the role of territory in international conflict requires complementing realist and materialist understandings of the value of territory with one grounded in the constructivist theories that dominate studies of nationalism and geography. Doing so recognizes that homeland territoriality, because it raises the value of a specific territory and provides an imperative to establish sovereignty over it, plays a distinctive role in driving international conflict. This article presents a systematic, replicable operationalization of the homeland status of territory that, because it is consistent with constructivist theories of nationalism, can be used to integrate constructivist understandings of the role of territory into quantitative studies of territorial conflict. This measure is then used to test the implication that the loss of subjectively defined homeland territory increases the likelihood of international conflict relative to the loss of nonhomeland territory. The findings that dividing homelands is especially likely to lead to conflict are corroborated by a second novel measure of the homeland status of territory that is based on the identification of co-ethnics in a territory before the border was drawn.

What reduces individual support for the use of violence among groups seeking self-determination? This article advances a new explanation for changes in popular support for violence – international recognition – and evaluates this explanation using a survey experiment of Palestinians priming the 2012 UNGA recognition of Palestine. The analysis shows that priming recognition reduces support for violence among a key segment of the population, nonpartisans, who have weaker and more fluid prior beliefs about the use of violence than partisans. The article argues that recognition reduces support for violence among nonpartisans by conveying new information that shifts the expected payoffs of violent and nonviolent strategies. This article deepens the incorporation of party politics into the study of conflict and demonstrates that international diplomatic engagement can reduce popular support for violence in an ongoing conflict. This is important because most previously identified determinants of support for violence are either very difficult to change or change very slowly.