Suchergebnisse

Since the momentous events of the late 1980s, democratic transition has been a widely studied phenomenon. Most scholars who have investigated the causes and implications of the global trend to democracy have argued that domestic politics is the leading determinant in the success or failure of transitions to democracy. In this book, Jon Pevehouse argues that international factors, specifically regional organizations, play an important role in the transition to and endurance of democracy. Domestic elites use membership of regional organizations to advance the cause of democracy since these organizations can manipulate the costs and benefits of democracy to important societal groups such as business elites or the military. Six cases (Hungary, Peru, Greece, Paraguay, Guatemala, and Turkey) examine the causal processes behind the statistical association between regional organizations and democratization. These findings bridge international relations and comparative politics while also providing guidelines for policy-makers who wish to use regional organizations to promote democracy

This paper argues that success in the struggle for regional integration hinges foremost on the degree of heterogeneity among regional states. Regional organizations therefore must consider how to optimize their leverage to forge convergence that will foster agreement and cooperation. To do so, regional organizations can rely on inclusive designs that admit member states and then seek to mold their behavior ex post, or they can use exclusive designs that condition membership on ex ante changes in state behavior. This paper examines the success of these designs in using various ex ante versus ex post tools in soliciting cooperative behavior among regional states, arguing that ex ante tools generally have greater advantages. However, because the advantages vary by issue areas, regions may benefit from creating layers of institutions with different designs. Finally, even after admitting states, regional organizations have options for varying membership rules across different areas of cooperation. Drawing especially on the European experience, the paper considers these various forms of differentiated rules that organizations can use to forge cooperation among different groups of member states despite remaining differences.

The article analyzes the international legal framework for the participation of regional organizations in peacekeeping operations. Based on a review of scientific literature, the author examines the evolution of the legal approaches of the United Nations to international peacekeeping operations, considering the changes in their content in recent decades. The author explores the coupling between the peacekeeping mechanisms of the UN and regional organizations. The main object of the study is the peacekeeping activity of the Collective Security Treaty Organization based on the relevant international treaty. The article is an attempt to assess the political capabilities of a regional organization to expand its influence in the world using formal legal research methods. Three possible formats of a peacekeeping operation based on the Agreement on Peacekeeping Activities of the CSTO are revealed by the author. First, a peacekeeping operation by decision of the Organization within the borders of its member states. Its parameters correspond to the traditional (first generation) peacekeeping missions. Secondly, a peacekeeping operation by decision of the UN Security Council. Its deployment requires a mandate of the international community to endow the CSTO, which allows the implementation of multidimensional (second generation) peacekeeping operation by the forces of a regional organization. The third format of the CSTO peacekeeping operations is the participation of the CSTO in UN peacekeeping operations. The necessary legal framework is established by the recent Protocol on Amendments to the Agreement on the Peacekeeping Activities of the CSTO. The Organization is to endow one of the member states with the mandate to apply its multinational (consolidated) peacekeeping forces to the UN Peacekeeping Capability Readiness System. Thus applied CSTO peacekeeping forces can be involved in solving tasks during the UN peacekeeping operations under the CSTO flag. Based on the analysis of the legal framework for interaction between the United Nations and regional organizations in the field of peacekeeping, the author concludes that the potential for regional organizations to independently conduct multidimensional peacekeeping missions without direct violating state sovereignty or the UN Security Council mandate is significantly limited. The main opportunity for the collective use of the CSTO peacekeeping potential lies in its involvement in UN peacekeeping operations based on the approaches applied within the UN system to the organization of international peacekeeping activities.

What is a region and how can we best understand a state's eligibility for membership in a regional political community? Scholars have sought to answer these questions in terms of geographic proximity and social-psychological identity, but neither concept can accommodate the contestation and change that characterize the social construction of regions. Instead, this article argues that the limits of regions are defined within regional organizations by member states' governments plus supranational actors deliberating over a common definition of the characteristics that members and potential members are expected to share. The concept of membership norms thus offers powerful insights into how regional communities define who is eligible for membership, how these definitions change over time and the incentives they create for those seeking to promote or block an applicant state. The evolution of the European Union's membership norms since the 1950s illustrates this argument.

Democratic conditionality accession clauses have become increasingly common in certain international organisations. Similarly, provisions on suspension of membership because of breaches of democratic order have emerged. Why do regional organisations introduce these kin of clauses? In most cases, they developed after 1989 in a new geopolitical climate in which democratic ideals acquired normative hegemony. This does not exclude a purposive rational institutional design. On the one hand, accession clauses developed a posteriori of the creation of the organization being applied hence to new members rather to the ones creating them. These clauses have been used as an instrument for fostering clubness and imposing institutional features of applying states. On the other hand, in the case of suspension, institutional design serves to trade-off two competing principles: commitment to democratic conditionality and respect for sovereignty of member states and it does so by leaving wide discretion in implementing provisions for suspension clauses.