Search

Begin New Search Topic Government Content Type Journal Article

731. Building Counter-Terrorism Capacity Across Borders: Lessons from the Defeat of "Revolutionary Organization November 17th"

Author:
Christos Floros and Bruce Newsome
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Security Sector Management
Institution:
Centre for Security Sector Management
Abstract:
Since 2001, governments have made more resources available for building counter-terrorist capacity abroad, but performance has not matched the rhetoric. Lessons from the defeat of the November 17th terrorist organization in Greece suggest that political or material commitments are necessary but insufficient conditions of international counter-terrorist capacity-building. More important, but less acknowledged, are the organizational conditions. Governments should encourage more cooperative, less self-reliant cultures in their agencies, develop multi-laterally beneficial objectives, and prohibit activities unauthorised by the host country. Some of the lessons, such as adherence to the same rules of law by all stakeholders, confirm norms in security sector reform. Others, such as increased security sector powers, run counter to those norms.
Topic:
Security, Government, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
America and Greece

732. Uganda's Civil War and the Politics of ICC Intervention

Author:
Adam Branch
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
With its 2003 ''Referral of the Situation Concerning the Lord's Resistance Army'' to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Ugandan government launched a legal process that, it claimed, would bring peace and justice to war-torn northern Uganda. The ICC prosecutor officially opened an investigation in response to the referral in July 2004, and in October 2005 the ICC unsealed arrest warrants, its historic first warrants in its historic first case, charging five of the top commanders of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) with war crimes and crimes against humanity. For two decades, Uganda north of the Nile has been ravaged by a brutal civil war between the LRA and the Ugandan government, so any possibility of productive change is to be warmly welcomed. The sanguine predictions proffered by the Ugandan government and by the ICC's supporters, however, are called into question by doubts about the court's ability to achieve peace or justice in Uganda, doubts stemming from the specific way the ICC has pursued the Ugandan case, and because of more inherent problems with the ICC as a legal institution.
Topic:
Government and War
Political Geography:
Uganda

733. East Asian Environmental Co-operation: Central Pessimism, Local Optimism

Author:
Sangbum Shin
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
University of British Columbia
Abstract:
This paper examines the regional environmental co-operation in East Asia at the local government level, focusing on the intercity environmental co-operation between the two cities in Japan and China—Kitakyushu and Dalian—as a case. Theoretically, this case demonstrates the dynamic nature of local government level environmental co-operation in the sense that all the three levels—government, local government, and private—are closely interconnected, and the major actors—the firms—play a role in shaping the outcome of intercity co-operation. Also, in terms of policy implication, this case is important not just for East Asian but also global environmental politics because it is the co-operation between cities in China and Japan—the two most important countries in East Asia that affect regional and global environmental protections efforts seriously. In order to investigate the reasons of success, and the dynamic nature of intercity environmental co-operation, this paper suggests a framework for analysis on the relationship between multiple dimensions of regional environmental co-operation, and then, examines the historical process and the details of the case and explains why this case has been remarkably successful and produced significant outcome. Finally, it draws some theoretical as well as policy implications of this case in terms of possibilities for and limitations of East Asian regional environmental co-operation in the future.
Topic:
Environment and Government
Political Geography:
Japan, China, and East Asia

734. Red world, Blue world

Author:
Joshua Brook
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
Since the 2000 presidential election, political scientists, commentators, and intellectuals have seized on the "red state"/"blue state" divide to explain American politics. The United States is described as a single country with two distinct cultures. Red Americans tend to oppose abortion, regard homosexuality as moral deviance, respect the military, and look kindly on public displays of religious faith. Blue Americans, on the other hand, support environmentalism, abortion rights, gender equality, and gay rights, while opposing militarism and overt displays of patriotism and religious zeal.
Topic:
Globalization, Government, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States and America

735. Women in America: The Other Fifty Percent

Author:
Christina Bache Fidan
Publication Date:
04-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
ARI Movement
Abstract:
Historically, if you were not a property owning white male you did not have the right to vote in America. The decision to allow women the right to vote, after a long struggle, in 1920, was a key turning point in the transformation of the American democratic experience. The challenge from then on, of making this right meaningful across America, through changing mindsets and training women, was left, for the most part, on the shoulders of civil society. To secure a higher representation of the national congressional seats in Washington, the Federal Government must reinforce legislation such as affirmative action for gender mainstreaming in all policy areas. The inclusion and empowerment of women in the political arena is of utmost importance to achieving a government that is truly "by the people, for the people."
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
America and Europe

736. "I'm just talking about the law": Guantánamo and the Lawyers

Author:
Marten Zwanenburg
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Human Rights and Human Welfare - Review Essays
Institution:
Josef Korbel Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver
Abstract:
“Because the legal advice was we could do what we wanted to them there”. This is how a top-level Pentagon official, in David Rose's Guantánamo: The War on Human Rights, explains why detainees held by the United States have been detained at Guantanamo Bay. It is just one illustration of the important role that lawyers have played in the “War on Terror”—a role, along with factors that have or that may have influenced it, that forms the topic of this essay.
Topic:
Government, Human Rights, and Torture
Political Geography:
United States

737. Can Corruption Ever Improve an Economy?

Author:
Douglas A. Houston
Publication Date:
09-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Many in the world of developmental economics believe that corruption, the circumvention of the rule of law for private gain, leads to nothing but woe for any nation's economy, under any circumstances. Transparency International makes the elimination of corruption their mission, and many large multinational firms today echo that goal by building ethical codes that prohibit employees from engaging in practices deemed corrupt, regardless of local attitudes and customs toward the practices. The World Bank makes curbing corruption a linchpin in their campaign to improve governance. Reasons given for blanket condemnation of corrupt behavior are often utilitarian: Corruption is expected to increase the economic costs of doing business by undermining the laws of the land; this, in turn, reduces productive activities and investments, with negative consequences unfolding for human development and economic growth.
Topic:
Corruption, Economics, and Government

738. The Practical Origins Of The Rhetorical Presidency

Author:
Terri Bimes
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Critical Review
Institution:
Critical Review Foundation
Abstract:
As readers of The Rhetorical Presidency might expect, the Framers\' remarks at the Constitutional Convention revealed a deep concern about popular political ignorance—and a desire to shield the new government from it. However, when it came to designing the presidency, the Founders seem to have been less intent on insulating sitting presidents from the mass public than on guarding the presidents\' selection itself against elite factions that might take advantage of the public\'s ignorance. The resulting constitutional structure left the actual relationship between the president and the public open-ended. In short order, even the most restrained, patrician presidents took advantage of the opportunity to invoke, and to shape, public opinion—setting the stage for Andrew Jackson\'s, and his Democratic successors\', more aggressive presidential populism.
Topic:
Government

739. The Idea of An Unrhetoricla Presidency

Author:
Bryan Garsten
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Critical Review
Institution:
Critical Review Foundation
Abstract:
Jeffrey Tulis's The Rhetorical Presidency should not be read as a tale of decline. It is not a call for an “un-rhetorical” presidency so much as an exploration of the fundamentally uneasy place that popular rhetoric occupies in constitutional governments. Popular rhetoric is one way that executives exercise their prerogative power, and the dilemmas about rhetoric that Tulis exposes arise from a fundamental fact about prerogative power that all presidents must confront: Strong constitutional governments seem almost necessarily to grant their chief executives more discretionary authority than is consistent with the idea of constitutional government. Whatever rhetorical style or strategy a president adopts, he must respond in one way or another to this fact.
Topic:
Government

740. The Rhetorical Presidency and The Partisan Echo Chamber

Author:
Nicole Mellow
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Critical Review
Institution:
Critical Review Foundation
Abstract:
The rise of a partisan Congress can aggravate some of the pathologies of the rhetorical presidency identified by Jeffrey Tulis: reckless policy production, and the resulting public disillusionment with an overpromising government. In some cases, such as the debate over the invasion of Iraq, the unified ranks of the president's party amplify the president's simplistic rhetoric, reducing policy deliberation and aggravating public disappointment when reality turns out to be more complex. When combined with divided government, however, partisanship can work to produce deliberative compromises that mitigate these pathologies, as exemplified by the welfare-reform legislation enacted by a Republican Congress under a Democratic president in 1996.
Topic:
Government