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3081. European Debates on the Knowledge Institution:The Modernization of the University at the European Level

Author:
Peter Maassen and Johan P. Olsen
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Research Papers Archive
Abstract:
The European University, as a key institution, is under stress. It has become commonplace to argue that urgent and radical reforms are needed. The claim is that while environments are changing rapidly, universities do not learn, adapt and reform themselves fast enough. Reform plans comprise the purposes of universities, i.e. definitions of what the University is, can be and should be, criteria for quality and success, the kinds of research, education and services to be produced, and for whom. Reform plans also include the universities' organization and financial basis, their governance structures, who should influence the future dynamics of universities, and according to what principles. In contrast, it can be argued that the currently dominant reform rhetoric is only one among several competing visions and understandings of the University and its dynamics. What is at stake is “what kind of University for what kind of society” and which, and whose values, interests and beliefs should be given priority in University governance and reforms? The paper presents a framework for analyzing ongoing 'modernization' reforms and reform debates that take place at various governance levels, not least the European level. It is part of a forthcoming book on 'University Dynamics and European Integration'.
Topic:
Development, Education, and International Organization
Political Geography:
Europe

3082. Reconstructing Iraq

Author:
Jason Yossef Ben-Meir
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Foreign Policy In Focus
Abstract:
The new strategy of the United States in Iraq does not include an extensive overhaul of reconstruction efforts at this critical time. Very little money is now being appropriated for reconstruction. As the Iraq Study Group Report explains, of the $21 billion to date that has been appropriated for the “Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund” (IRRF), $16 billion has been spent and the remaining funds have been committed. The administration requested $750 million for 2007, and President Bush's new proposal is to add $1.2 billion to that.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and Economics
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and Middle East

3083. The Enduring Presence of Religion in Chilean Ideological Positionings and Voter Options

Author:
Nicolás Somma, Timothy R. Scully, and J. Samuel Valenzuela
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Analysts of Chilean politics assert that the Pinochet dictatorship created a new political cleavage characterized as “authoritarianism versus democracy.” It fostered the formation of two party coalitions that took positions for and against Pinochet's continuation as head of state in the plebiscite that he lost in October 1988. As a result, they argue, while the religious and class cleavages had powerfully shaped voter options and the party system in the pre-dictatorship past, these fissures have lost their salience in the current context.
Topic:
Development, Politics, and Religion
Political Geography:
South America and Chile

3084. Noble Human Rights Defender or International Band-Aid? On Contemporary Humanitarianism

Author:
Kurt Mills
Publication Date:
04-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Human Rights Human Welfare (University of Denver)
Abstract:
In David Forsythe's The Humanitarians: The International Committee of the Red Cross we see a microcosm of the internal and external struggles and dilemmas that human rights and humanitarian organizations face today. We see a picture of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as both the “heroic leader” and the “marginal social worker” (282). We see an organization at one time quite satisfied with its principles and ways of doing things, but also a movement which is internally divided and incoherent in many ways. We see an organization which is seemingly both incompatible and complementary with other human rights and humanitarian organizations. We see an organization firmly tied to states while also in opposition to them. We see an organization clinging to, and attempting to propagate, rules governing warfare in the face of many recalcitrant states, while at the same time setting aside the letter of the law when necessary.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, Human Rights, and Humanitarian Aid

3085. Conflict Prevention and Development Cooperation

Author:
Robert Picciotto and Sakiko Fukuda-Parr
Publication Date:
11-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
Violent conflicts are concentrated in the countries farthest behind in achieving the MDGs. Much work has been done to develop a better understanding of conflicts and their relationship to development, but the development community has yet to engage fully with the need for new policy approaches that can help prevent conflict. Structural conditions that increase vulnerability to political violence and conflict are rarely addressed by current conflict prevention policy work. Without addressing the root causes, sustainable peace cannot be achieved. Surprisingly few studies have analyzed the contribution of aid to the full human security agenda and the current aid policy framework still favors countries with institutional and policy characteristics that are deemed to generate good growth performance. As a consequence, many fragile states (who are also the most vulnerable) have ended up with limited little donor support. A systematic study of aid in relation to conflict prevention is proposed as a policy objective to help fill a significant dimension of the current knowledge gap. Specifically, this project will seek to demonstrate that only by targeting structural risks and state fragility will development cooperation achieve human security. Engagement with fragile states requires a coherent combination of aid and non-aid policies in areas such as international trade and debt.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Development, International Cooperation, and War

3086. Unequal Development in the 1990s: Growing Gaps in Human Capabilities

Author:
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and David Stewart
Publication Date:
05-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
This paper assesses poverty trends by using human development outcomes rather than by using income measures alone. It shows that the decade of the 1990s was a decade of prosperity and progress for the world but also of development disaster for many of the world's poorest countries where key indicators of human development not only failed to progress but began to register reversals based on both income and capability indicators. The paper goes on to identify the poorest performing countries and examines their characteristics. These characteristics suggest common constraints that they face, constraints that merit attention in the fight against global poverty.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Political Economy, and Poverty

3087. Justice and Developing Country Debt

Author:
Barry Herman
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
This paper draws on recent discussions by lawyers, theologians, philosophers and economists to reach some conclusions about the just international treatment of the government over-indebtedness and insolvencies that have occurred and recurred many times in many developing countries. It asks what should be considered “fair” expectations in the relationship of government borrowers and their lenders. It also considers some proposed reforms in the international treatment of sovereign borrowing and debt that are prompted by the ethical analyses.
Topic:
International Relations, Debt, Development, and Post Colonialism

3088. Global Political Violence: Explaining the Post-Cold War Decline

Author:
Andrew Mack
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
This paper reviews global trends in political violence since the end of World War II, focusing in particular on the decline in conflict numbers that followed the end of the Cold War. It argues that the single most compelling explanation for this decline is found in the upsurge of peacemaking and peacebuilding activities that started in the early 1990s,was spearheaded by the UN, but also involved many other international agencies, donor governments, and NGOs. The paper also examines trends in war fatalities, which have been declining unevenly since the early 1950s and reviews possible explanations for the change.Trends in civilian deaths from organized political violence—including genocides and terrorism—are also reviewed.
Topic:
International Relations, Cold War, Development, and Politics

3089. Peacemaking and Mediation: Dynamics of a Changing Field

Author:
Chester Crocker
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
The study of peacemaking and mediation blossomed in the immediate post-Cold War years and into the new millennium.The 2001 terrorist attacks on the US and subsequent attacks in Indonesia, Spain, and the UK, marked a significant watershed in world politics, raising the question of whether war-fighting against this new adversary would eclipse peacemaking and conflict prevention.While the jury remains out on the extent of the paradigm shift signaled by September 11, 2001, there is no question that today's environment features elements of both continuity and change for peacemakers. The threat to international security posed by certain forms of terrorism cannot be ignored. But the totality of challenges facing the international system today cannot be reduced to the terrorist threat, nor can the international community's response be reduced to a “war on terrorism.”1 In this section of the paper, we will identify important areas of consensus about peacemaking that have carried over from the late 1980s and early 1990s to the present, take note of continuing debates in the broader field of conflict management and resolution that affect the way practitioners and scholars think about their activities, and discuss certain “new emphases” in this field that can affect the way peacemakers operate, whether as state-based or unofficial actors.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Development, International Cooperation, and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
United States and Spain

3090. Small Arms and Light Weapons: Towards Global Public Policy

Author:
Keith Krause
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
Small arms and light weapons kill at least 300,000 people a year, in both conflict and non-conflict situations, and injure or disable thousands more. Small arms are the weapons of choice of warring parties— government armies, paramilitaries, rebel forces, or even terrorists—and in recent wars they account for between 60 and 90 percent of direct conflict deaths, depending on the nature and intensity of the fighting. In non-war settings small arms represent one of the leading causes of preventable death, and a major cause of mortality for young men—through, for example, armed violence, suicides, murders, and accidents. 1 In Rio de Janeiro the gun violence death rate is comparable to that of some war zones. El Salvador has a firearm death rate of thirty per 100,000, and Colombia suffers a rate of fifty-five per 100,000 people killed by gun violence. 2 The life expectancy of males born in Colombia in 2002 is reduced by more than three years as a result of the risk of armed violence. And in South Africa, homicides are the leading cause of death for males between fifteen and twenty-one years of age. Overall, the global burden of violence and violent conflict is one of the most important external causes of death and injury.
Topic:
International Relations, Arms Control and Proliferation, Development, and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
South Africa and Colombia

3091. The Middle East: Fragility and Crisis

Author:
Markus E. Bouillon
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
The Middle East is perhaps the world's most crucial region: economically and strategically, the Middle East occupies a top rank on the international agenda, with significance far beyond its geographical bounds.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Development, and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
Middle East

3092. Africa: Confronting Complex Threats

Author:
Kwesi Aning
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
Africa is grappling with several difficult security challenges. These difficulties result not only from the magnitude of these challenges, but also from the lack of capacity of African states and organizations to respond quickly and effectively to them. While wide swathes of Africa are compelled to deal with problems in an ad hoc manner, there are indications that some states, Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and the African Union (AU) are undertaking promising steps to respond. Some of Africa's core security challenges are (a) the legacy of historic notions of state sovereignty; (b) the rise of regionalism in the absence of common regional values; (c) the difficulty of managing hegemonic regionalism; (d) elitism in the form of regional integration occurring only at the level of leaders without permeating the consciousness of the people; (e) the creation of institutions with little or no capacity to manage them, resulting in a merely formal regionalism; and finally (f) the perception of regionalism as an externally driven project.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Development, and Economics
Political Geography:
Africa

3093. Asia: Towards Security Cooperation

Author:
Michael Vatikiotis
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
Asia has enjoyed a remarkable climate of peace and security in the post-Cold War era. However, there is much that could have gone wrong. Tensions on the Korean peninsula, in the Taiwan Straits, between China and India, India and Pakistan – the hot spots and fault lines of tension are well known and warily watched. Rarely has serious conflict erupted, though. The last major 'conventional' conflict in Asia was the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, though smaller wars have been fought between states in Kashmir and along the Chinese border with Vietnam. The region is also wracked by protracted internal disputes that generate sustained fears for internal security and destabilized inter-state relations. All the same, for a region that lacks the kind of sophisticated collective security arrangements that have kept the northern hemisphere at peace for the past sixty years, Asia's security environment is remarkably benign.
Topic:
Security, Development, and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, India, Taiwan, Asia, Soviet Union, Vietnam, Kashmir, Korea, and Korean Peninsula

3094. Central Asia and the Caucasus: A Vulnerable Crescent

Author:
Anna Matveeva and Thomas de Waal
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
The Caucasus and Central Asia – eight countries of the former Soviet Union stretching to the south of Russia and to the west of China – form a chain of weak states, vulnerable to conflict, extremism, and spillover from potential instability in the Middle East, Iran and Afghanistan. Once on the path of the Silk Road, these countries are still transit routes in the world economy rather than major economic players. The overarching problem for the Caucasus countries situated on the eastern fringe of Europe – Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, as well as the Russian North Caucasus – is unresolved conflicts that hamper development and poison politics. The Caucasus has become a field for latter-day Great Power battles of influence, in which competing policy agendas, sometimes even from within the same state, make for a fragmented international response that hampers regional integration and development. The autocratic states of Central Asia by contrast risk isolating themselves from the wider world, becoming a source of danger because of their deliberate remoteness. Here the globalized threats of drug trafficking and militant Islam are the biggest potential source of instability. Multilateral organizations such as the UN are still struggling to articulate a coherent response to the two regions as a whole, tending to make more narrow interventions that have limited impact.
Topic:
Security and Development
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Russia, China, Europe, Iran, Central Asia, Asia, Soviet Union, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia

3095. Europe: Crises of Identity

Author:
Shada Islam
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
The European Union's emergence as a leading global political and economic actor is an important, exciting and inspiring development in modern history. The signature in 1957 of the EU's founding Treaty of Rome, creating the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) and the European Economic Community (EEC) has been followed rapidly by a spate of initiatives designed to draw EU members into an ever closer economic and political union.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and Nationalism
Political Geography:
Europe and Rome

3096. Divergence and Convergence in Eastern Europe Eurasia: One Transition Path Or Two?

Author:
Robyn Murphy and Ron Sprout
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Agency for International Development
Abstract:
This paper attempts to assess the transition “divide” between Eastern Europe and Eurasia by examining and updating trends across the economic, political, and social transition dimensions. Is there evidence that the transition to market-oriented democracies between the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries and Eurasia is diverging along these dimensions? To what extent are the CEE countries taking one transition path and the Eurasian countries an alternative one?
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Markets
Political Geography:
Eurasia and Eastern Europe

3097. Labor Markets in Eastern Europe and Eurasia

Author:
Robyn Murphy, Ron Sprout, and Ayo Heinegg
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Agency for International Development
Abstract:
This research attempts to look systematically at the available data regarding labor market characteristics of the transition in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. A primary focus is the examination of the data in light of a World Bank working hypothesis that “there are signs of an emerging divide between labor markets in the transition economies of Eastern Europe and those of low-income Eurasian countries.” We find significant labor market gaps and differences between the CEE countries (particularly the Northern Tier CEE) and Eurasia but mixed evidence at best that these gaps are growing. We also find that there remain some key challenges and adverse trends in labor markets even among the Northern Tier CEE countries.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Markets
Political Geography:
Eurasia and Eastern Europe

3098. India's Future: It's About Jobs

Author:
Geoffrey N. Keim and Beth Anne Wilson
Publication Date:
11-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Projections of sustained strong growth in India depend importantly on the utilization of the huge increase in India's working-age population projected over the next two decades. To date, however, India's economic growth has been concentrated in high-skill and capital-intensive sectors, and has not generated strong employment growth. In this paper, we highlight the tension between India's performance in output and employment, describe the characteristics of India's demographic dividend, and discuss impediments to India's shift away from agriculture.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Markets
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

3099. The Role of China in Asia: Engine, Conduit, or Steamroller?

Author:
Beth Anne Wilson, Jane T. Haltmaier, Shaghil Ahmed, Brahima Coulibaly, Ross Knippenberg, Sylvain Leduc, and Mario Marazzi
Publication Date:
09-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
This paper assesses China's role in Asia as an independent engine of growth, as a conduit of demand from the industrial countries, and as a competitor for export markets. We provide both macroeconomic and microeconomic evidence. The macroeconomic analysis focuses on the impact of U.S. and Chinese demand on the output of the Asian economies by estimating growth comovements and VARs. The results suggest an increasing role of China as an independent source of growth. The microeconomic analysis decomposes trade into basic products, parts and components, and finished goods. We find a large role for parts and components trade consistent with China playing an important and increasing role as a conduit. We also estimate some regressions that show that China's increasing presence in export markets has had a negative effect on exports of some products for some other Asian economies, but not for other products, including those of the important electronic high-technology industry.
Topic:
Development, Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Asia

3100. Water, Conflict, and Cooperation: Lessons From the Nile River Basin

Author:
Patricia Kameri-Mbote
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Wilson Center
Abstract:
In 1979, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat said: “The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water.” In 1988 then-Egyptian Foreign Minister Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who later became the United Nations' Secretary-General, predicted that the next war in the Middle East would be fought over the waters of the Nile, not politics. Rather than accept these frightening predictions, we must examine them within the context of the Nile River basin and the relationships forged among the states that share its waters.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Development, and Environment
Political Geography:
Middle East and Egypt