Migrant crisis which escalated in 2015 represents humanitarian and security challenge for European Union (EU) member states. Protection of the EU outer borders, as well as national one, has become priority task for all EU member states in order to preserve their political and cultural identity. This paper analyses the Croatian Navy (CN) capabilities in case of the migrant crisis escalation at sea, in order to protect national waters. The expected effect is to indicate that, considering their capabilities and experience, the Croatian Navy is capable of fulfilling the mission. Authors of the article investigated potential security threats in the area of responsibility of the Croatian Navy. This paper presents the possibility of an efficient response to possible challenges.
Transformational changes have been taking place in the political systems in many countries of the world over the last few decades. This issue arouses the great interest of scientists and researchers. In the article, I pay particular attention to the study of the "traditional" and "new" party systems and their role in the country's contemporary political life. Given the challenge of the day, I see populism as a problem with its impact on democracy along with such issues as the role of populist parties and the citizens' attitude to them; the analysis of problems developing in the political process, particularly, in parties and movements of the populist type; the formation and development of multi-party systems and democracy as a whole.Populism is considered in the article as a political ideology. This phenomenon is investigated as a component of the political parties' activities, especially, of the Ukrainian parties. A comparative analysis of populist parties in the European Union and Ukraine has been carried out.I analyze the main factors of populism's influence on the party-political system on the examples of the European countries and Ukraine. I also prove that populism has always occupied a special place in the implementation of programs of political leaders and parties. It is noted that populism remains the current day phenomenon of both the party-political system and the socio-economic life of the countries in the world. Having a considerable influence over the politics of the countries, where functioning of democratic institutions is relatively inexperienced, populism has a rather clear manifestation in the modern political space and the "old" democracies. There is a clear link between increasing populism and exacerbating socio-economic problems. The inability of the political establishment, including the democratic one, to respond effectively to new problems and challenges is an important factor contributing to the emergence and growth of populist influence.The in-depth analysis of the populist rhetorical and political effects on the development of modern democracy is particularly important, i. e. the margins between the reality and virtuality, truth and falsehood are leveling; facts lose their value; deconstruction of truth takes place; traditional ideologies are destroyed; moral relativism, hypocrisy and double standards are spreading out. ; Обґрунтовується, що за останні кілька десятиліть у політичних системах багатьох країн світу відбулися і продовжують відбуватися трансформаційні зміни, які викликають неабиякий інтерес науковців, дослідників цієї проблематики. Особливо зосереджується увага на дослідженні «традиційних» та «нових» партійних систем, на їх ролі у сучасному політичному житті країни. Враховуючи виклик сучасності, наголошується на проблемі популізму, його впливу на демократію, ролі популістських партій і відношення до них громадян країни, на аналізі проблем розвитку політичного процесу, зокрема партій та рухів популістського типу, становлення та розвитку багатопартійних систем і демократії в цілому.Розглянуто популізм як політичну ідеологію, досліджено це явище, як складову діяльності політичних партій, зокрема, українських. Здійснено порівняльний аналіз популістських партій країн Європейського Союзу і України.Проаналізовано основні чинники впливу популізму на партійно-політичну систему на прикладах європейських країн і України. Доведено, що популізм завжди займав особливе місце в реалізації програм політичних лідерів та партій. Зазначено, що популізм залишається актуальним феноменом як партійно-політичної системи так і соціально-економічного життя країн світу. Здійснюючи значний вплив на політику країн із порівняно малим досвідом функціонування демократичних інститутів, популізм досить помітно виявляє себе у сучасному політичному просторі й «старих» демократій. Існує очевидний зв'язок між посиленням популізму і загостренням соціально-економічних проблем. Важливий чинник, який сприяє появі та зростанню впливу популістів, є нездатність політичного істеблішменту, зокрема і цілком демократичного, ефективно реагувати на нові труднощі та виклики.Особливої ваги набуває глибинний аналіз впливів популістської риторики і політики на розвиток сучасної демократії: нівелюються грані між реальністю і віртуальністю, правдою і неправдою, факти втрачають значення, відбувається деконструкція істини, руйнуються традиційні ідеології, ширяться моральний релятивізм, лицемірство й подвійні стандарти тощо. ; Обґрунтовується, що за останні кілька десятиліть у політичних системах багатьох країн світу відбулися і продовжують відбуватися трансформаційні зміни, які викликають неабиякий інтерес науковців, дослідників цієї проблематики. Особливо зосереджується увага на дослідженні «традиційних» та «нових» партійних систем, на їх ролі у сучасному політичному житті країни. Враховуючи виклик сучасності, наголошується на проблемі популізму, його впливу на демократію, ролі популістських партій і відношення до них громадян країни, на аналізі проблем розвитку політичного процесу, зокрема партій та рухів популістського типу, становлення та розвитку багатопартійних систем і демократії в цілому.Розглянуто популізм як політичну ідеологію, досліджено це явище, як складову діяльності політичних партій, зокрема, українських. Здійснено порівняльний аналіз популістських партій країн Європейського Союзу і України.Проаналізовано основні чинники впливу популізму на партійно-політичну систему на прикладах європейських країн і України. Доведено, що популізм завжди займав особливе місце в реалізації програм політичних лідерів та партій. Зазначено, що популізм залишається актуальним феноменом як партійно-політичної системи так і соціально-економічного життя країн світу. Здійснюючи значний вплив на політику країн із порівняно малим досвідом функціонування демократичних інститутів, популізм досить помітно виявляє себе у сучасному політичному просторі й «старих» демократій. Існує очевидний зв'язок між посиленням популізму і загостренням соціально-економічних проблем. Важливий чинник, який сприяє появі та зростанню впливу популістів, є нездатність політичного істеблішменту, зокрема і цілком демократичного, ефективно реагувати на нові труднощі та виклики.Особливої ваги набуває глибинний аналіз впливів популістської риторики і політики на розвиток сучасної демократії: нівелюються грані між реальністю і віртуальністю, правдою і неправдою, факти втрачають значення, відбувається деконструкція істини, руйнуються традиційні ідеології, ширяться моральний релятивізм, лицемірство й подвійні стандарти тощо.
This article investigates the relationship between the borrowing activity of Russian households and their current conumer expendatures in the period of escalation of the social and economic crisis. The analysis was conducted on the basis of data provided by the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, RLMS-HSE for 2015. The paper proposes and implements an approach that makes it possible to assess the impact of borrowings on inequality in consumption and poverty among households. It was revealed that the need of repayment results in saving on food, medical treatment and other vital needs for an overwhelming number of households. This is especially acute among families being beyond the poverty threshold. ; peer-reviewed
FY: 2014-2015. Principal Investigator: Feroz Khan ; This exercise builds upon the findings of the first iteration of the event, held March 19-22, 2013, in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The project will explore the fundamentals of regional military crises and escalation thresholds, as well as the role of the international community in crisis management and prevention. Lessons learned from this event will help identify escalation ladders, bridge strategic communication gaps, and nurture areas of cooperation among the United States, India, and Pakistan. The simulation will be set in a conjectural geopolitical scenario in the year 2020. The scenario will emphasize cross-domain crisis escalation (land, sea, and air) and examine nuclear force deployment and employment pressures. Discussions and deliberations will take place at the operational/strategic level, as opposed to the tactical level.
Purpose of the study: The article describes the comparative analysis of the main parameters of the Arab Spring Revolution. The Arab world is the ethnic core of the Middle East. These countries faced an acute problem of choosing their political strategy. Globalization has largely discounted the idea of national sovereignty and a self-sufficient economy with the leading role of the public sector. Methodology: The main methodological approaches are defined using the basic principles reflected in leading researchers' works in political, historical, and social sciences. The complete application of comparative historical analysis allowed us to determine the main stages and trends in developing political processes within the "Arab spring" framework. The use of modeling and forecasting methods allows determining options for further development of these processes. Main Findings: The Middle East and North Africa took part in the forced revolutionary transformation of political regimes, called the Arab spring. The growth of protests in the region is due to internal and external reasons. Each country depends on the specific socio-political, economic, religious situation, and the characteristics of states' historical development. Applications of this study: Based on the results of this study, it is possible to develop new recommendations for the foreign ministries of countries that are neutral in relation to the processes of socio-political transformations in the Arab countries. Novelty/Originality of this study: This study is one of the first attempts to consider the socio-political processes that took place in the countries of the Arab East through the prism of Kazakh diplomacy, as a country that does not have certain geopolitical goals and benefits, as a country that does not have a direct or indirect relationship to the events of the Arab spring.
Preventing the use of performance enhancing drugs in sport has long been a concern for policymakers. In the United States, amidst national attention the state of Texas constructed the country's largest steroid testing program for high school athletes. However, resource allocation steadily declined until the program was defunded in 2015. Using escalation of commitment theory as a framework, this conceptual paper examines the critical, but less studied, role of politics and de-escalation behavior that directed this distinct sport situation. By combining policy and media documents with the academic literature, this paper allows for a greater understanding of how the steroid testing program was formulated and implemented, which may influence how policymakers address steroids among amateur athletes in the future. This paper also offers new opportunities for future research by highlighting a new sport context in which escalation of commitment theory applies and specifically noting the significant role politics can play in escalation or de-escalation decision making.
The ongoing Burundi crisis offers a unique opportunity to scrutinize the changing political economy of preventive framing of violence, and particularly genocide as a representational resource in prevention. The paper shows that labels and labeling practices are not disconnected from the local dynamics of conflict, and might have counterintuitive effects in this respect. The portrayal of Burundi's crisis— the frequent intimations that the recent crisis can lead to genocide, the invocations of the ethnic frame, and the repeated comparisons with Rwanda and Burundi's own past— has proceeded through a problematic analysis-by-analogy and has served to obscure the core drivers of the recent violence and the dynamics of escalation on the ground. Further to this, the portrayal has not only proven ineffective in translating increased attention into action, it also has had three unintended and potentially perverse effects on the conflict itself, together fueling the political standoff rather than helping to resolve the crisis.
The ongoing Burundi crisis offers a unique opportunity to scrutinize the changing political economy of preventive framing of violence, and particularly genocide as a representational resource in prevention. The paper shows that labels and labeling practices are not disconnected from the local dynamics of conflict, and might have counterintuitive effects in this respect. The portrayal of Burundi's crisis— the frequent intimations that the recent crisis can lead to genocide, the invocations of the ethnic frame, and the repeated comparisons with Rwanda and Burundi's own past— has proceeded through a problematic analysis-by-analogy and has served to obscure the core drivers of the recent violence and the dynamics of escalation on the ground. Further to this, the portrayal has not only proven ineffective in translating increased attention into action, it also has had three unintended and potentially perverse effects on the conflict itself, together fueling the political standoff rather than helping to resolve the crisis.
Since the early 2000s, Indian strategists have wrestled with the challenge of motivating Pakistan to demobilize anti-India terrorist groups while managing the potential for conflict escalation during a crisis. The growing prominence of nuclear weapons in Pakistan's national security strategy casts a shadow of nuclear use over any potential military strategy India might consider to strike this balance. However, augmenting its nuclear options with tactical nuclear weapons is unlikely to bolster Indian deterrence in convincing ways. ; Naval Postgraduate School's Project on Advanced Systems and Concepts for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction via Assistance Grant/Agreement No. N00244-15-1-0024 awarded by the Naval Supply Systems Command's Fleet Logistics Center San Diego, California
Russia and the West apply diametrically opposed interpretations of the crisis in Ukraine and the role of international actors. This lack of a shared understanding of events hampers international efforts to resolve the crisis through negotiations. The differences are rooted in opposing narratives about the development of regional and international relations during the past two decades. When formulating Western policy it is important to take account of the Russian narrative and the logic it creates. (SWP Comments)
The twentieth century is an era of pervasive turmoil. There were two cataclysmic full-scale wars and many wars and conflicts of lesser importance in all parts of the world. The term crisis is among the most widely used verbal symbols of turmoil in politics among nations. Scholars and journalists, too, often write about such things as incidents, disputes, riots, and rebellions etc. as crisis. In short, crisis is a pervasive term to describe dis ruption and disorder in the global arena. Many political scientists have been researching this phenomenon of international system but there is still a need for new researches and analysis of crisis in world politics. New technological tools and data-sets enable further development of analytical aspects of crisis theory: eruption of conflictual situations, context and reasons of crisis escalation and de-escalation, decision making process etc. The main reason impelled to write this article is the lack of integral theory on crisis issues. That is why the main objective of this study is to make a quantitative and comparative research of the crisis in the 20th century in order to highlight the main influential factors of this process in different time and space dimensions. A quantitative and comparative analysis in this article was performed using International Crisis Behavior (ICB) data-set of international crisis (by the SPSS 12.0 package). The results of the research confirm the presumption that the analysis of different "levels" provides different outcomes.[.].
The twentieth century is an era of pervasive turmoil. There were two cataclysmic full-scale wars and many wars and conflicts of lesser importance in all parts of the world. The term crisis is among the most widely used verbal symbols of turmoil in politics among nations. Scholars and journalists, too, often write about such things as incidents, disputes, riots, and rebellions etc. as crisis. In short, crisis is a pervasive term to describe dis ruption and disorder in the global arena. Many political scientists have been researching this phenomenon of international system but there is still a need for new researches and analysis of crisis in world politics. New technological tools and data-sets enable further development of analytical aspects of crisis theory: eruption of conflictual situations, context and reasons of crisis escalation and de-escalation, decision making process etc. The main reason impelled to write this article is the lack of integral theory on crisis issues. That is why the main objective of this study is to make a quantitative and comparative research of the crisis in the 20th century in order to highlight the main influential factors of this process in different time and space dimensions. A quantitative and comparative analysis in this article was performed using International Crisis Behavior (ICB) data-set of international crisis (by the SPSS 12.0 package). The results of the research confirm the presumption that the analysis of different "levels" provides different outcomes.[.].
The twentieth century is an era of pervasive turmoil. There were two cataclysmic full-scale wars and many wars and conflicts of lesser importance in all parts of the world. The term crisis is among the most widely used verbal symbols of turmoil in politics among nations. Scholars and journalists, too, often write about such things as incidents, disputes, riots, and rebellions etc. as crisis. In short, crisis is a pervasive term to describe dis ruption and disorder in the global arena. Many political scientists have been researching this phenomenon of international system but there is still a need for new researches and analysis of crisis in world politics. New technological tools and data-sets enable further development of analytical aspects of crisis theory: eruption of conflictual situations, context and reasons of crisis escalation and de-escalation, decision making process etc. The main reason impelled to write this article is the lack of integral theory on crisis issues. That is why the main objective of this study is to make a quantitative and comparative research of the crisis in the 20th century in order to highlight the main influential factors of this process in different time and space dimensions. A quantitative and comparative analysis in this article was performed using International Crisis Behavior (ICB) data-set of international crisis (by the SPSS 12.0 package). The results of the research confirm the presumption that the analysis of different "levels" provides different outcomes.[.].
In late January 2000, the EU14 initiated a protest co-ordinated by the Portuguese EU Presidency against the coalition between Wolfgang Schüssel's ÖVP and Jörg Haider's right-wing extremist/populist FPÖ, accused of violating EU fundamental values expressed in Article 6(1) TEU. When the government took office on 4 February diplomatic 'sanctions' were launched. During spring, the EU14's wider interpretations of the sanctions, clumsy handling of Austrian countermeasures and deficient strategy on dismantling the protest contributed to crisis escalation. The solution was the appointment of so-called 'wise men' to evaluate the political nature of the FPÖ and the effects of the EU14's 'diplomatic whipping' on government policies. Shortly after the Wise Men Report was published the EU14 lifted the 'sanctions' unconditionally, but insistent question marks remained. At the informal European Council meeting in Biarritz 13-14 October, the EU14 and the Austrian government agreed on amendments to the trigger mechanisms for the 'sanctions article', Article 7 TEU, incorporated in the Nice Treaty from December 2000. This study argues that the EU14's interests and preferences concerning Article 6(1) TEU, coupled with a consensus-reflex and imagined and 'real' time pressure manifested in groupthink and 'tele groupthink', a concept including telephone diplomacy, affected the norm during its 'journey' through five stages: warning, implementation, crisis escalation, crisis de-escalation, and consequences. A central claim is that both self-interested behaviour and ideational/normative motives guided the EU14, but in a 'more or less' way. Mutually complementary arguments from both the rationalist and constructivist paradigms prove compelling in investigating this particularly complex and multi-faceted case. This study concludes that the EU14-Austria crisis resulted not in a rupture in the integration process, but in consolidation of EU fundamental values expressed in Article 6(1) TEU. Thanks to mixed experiences with the EU14's 'diplomatic whipping' of the FPÖ-ÖVP government, the Union took another step towards tighter monitoring of Member States' compliance with its constituent values. This step was reflected in amendments to Article 7 TEU. The EU14-Austria crisis, as here presented, illustrates the claim that Union-wide crises can have a positive effect on its normative foundation.
From 1995 to 2001 Russia witnessed an asset market boom, a deep financial crisis, and a surprisingly forceful recovery. An event study of this episode provides important insights for Emerging Market investment and Russia's medium-term prospects. The initial surge in bond and stock prices in 1995-97 owed to a highly ambitious monetary stabilization program, which compressed inflation much faster than other transition economies. Due to high dollarization, disinflation was based on the exchange rate. The program produced rapid real appreciation and a persistent need for capital inflows, while weak economic structures and lack of domestic political support prevented accompanying fiscal consolidation and foreign direct investment. The gap between stabilization ambition and structural reality made the currency increasingly vulnerable. Also, the program did not provide a politically viable "emergency exit" from the exchange rate target corridor. Devaluation was postponed through heavy international support. The ultimate crisis escalation in August 1998 resulted in a partial government default and steep devaluation. However, the economy responded from 1999 with relief to the real depreciation, entering a phase of sustained expansion. Also, the crisis escalation united the political spectrum around a new fundamental consensus on economic policy. Post-crisis governments prioritized fiscal consolidation over disinflation. The more stable political and economic environment spurred broader economic reform from 2000, particularly in the areas of public finances and investment conditions. Together with persistent commitment towards international integration this heralds a long-term convergence of Russia's economic structures with those in Central and Western Europe.