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52. Book Reviews
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- German Politics and Society
- Institution:
- German Politics and Society Journal
- Abstract:
- Until German reunification in 1990, western social sciences had never been particularly interested in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as an object of research. The fact that western scholars refrained, for various political reasons, from researching GDR society, as well as its successful seclusion from external analysis, contributed to the marginalization of social research within West German academia on its eastern neighbor. With the collapse of the socialist German state in 1989, however, the situation changed completely. All of a sudden, there was an enormous demand for expert knowledge as the remains of an entire political system and the subjects that it left behind needed to be mapped, measured, and categorized.
- Political Geography:
- Germany
53. Negotiating Modernity and Europeanness in the Germany-Turkey Transnational Social Field
- Author:
- Susan Beth Rottmann
- Publication Date:
- 05-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Insight Turkey
- Institution:
- SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
- Abstract:
- In conversation with recent work on transnational social fields, this article explores how Germany and Turkey are linked through a “set of multiple, interlocking, networks of social relationships” . The article examines how the social field affects migrants returning from Germany to Turkey. Specifically, it describes how the transnational social field emerges through a concrete set of economic, political and cultural exchanges. It also illustrates that the social field is a space of imaginations of Germany and Turkey, reflecting and producing citizens' uncertainties about the “Europeanness”. For German-Turkish return migrants, the transnational social field exacerbates conflicts with non-migrants and fosters anxieties about migrants' “Germanization” and loss of “Turkishness.” Ultimately, this research shows that Turkish citizens remain deeply concerned about the meaning of modernity, Muslim citizenship in Germany, and Turkey's current and future position in Europe.
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Turkey, and Germany
54. Reut Yael Paz. A Gateway between a Distant God and a Cruel World: The Contribution of Jewish German-Speaking Scholars to International Law.
- Author:
- Robert Howse
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- This rich and erudite work provides a valuable scholarly apparatus for understanding the writing and teaching of four important figures in international law and international relations. Three of them, Hans Kelsen, Hans Morgenthau and Hersch Lauterpacht, are well known; the fourth, Erich Kaufmann, much less so. The general thesis of the book is that to understand fully the personal and intellectual trajectories of all of these figures, one needs to appreciate the specific German–Jewish experience, from emancipation through the Shoah, the particular situation of the Jews in the legal profession and the academy in Germany, and the responses of these thinkers to experiences of persecution, discrimination and exile due to their Jewish family backgrounds as well as to the establishment of the State of Israel.
- Topic:
- International Relations, International Law, Judaism, History, Intellectual History, and Zionism
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Germany, and Israel
55. How Should States Own? Heinisch v. Germany and the Emergence of Human Rights-Sensitive State Ownership Function
- Author:
- Mikko Rajavuori
- Publication Date:
- 07-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- State ownership is thriving. Emerging economies are extending their growing economic power outward through sovereign wealth funds. State-owned multinationals have become top sources of foreign direct investment. Bailouts have recreated powerful state ownership structures in regions where private ownership has traditionally prevailed. The state is back – in shareholder capacity. Approaching the rise of state ownership from a human rights perspective, this article submits that a new conceptualization of state ownership function is emerging. State ownership provides a strong link connecting corporate actions with the international human rights system. Yet the conventional methods used to integrate state ownership in human rights treaty bodies’ discretion seem unable to grasp the changing economic role of governments in the global economy. The article suggests that the notion of the ‘public shareholder’, introduced by the European Court of Human Rights in Heinisch v. Germany (2011), provides a useful lens for interrogating how states should govern the human rights performance of corporations through ownership. When exposed to the recent practice of a range of United Nations treaty bodies, internationalizing state ownership activity becomes framed in human rights terms. In this vision, the whole ownership function becomes a site for turning companies in the state’s portfolio into responsible corporate citizens who take the impact of human rights seriously. Specifically, treaty bodies should advise states to seek human rights governance through private mechanisms in the capacity of the shareholder. In the process, human rights’ checks and balances should constitute a counterweight for market-based initiatives that regulate state activity in the capacity of the shareholder.
- Topic:
- Human Rights, International Law, Treaties and Agreements, Foreign Direct Investment, Economies, and Courts
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Norway, and Germany
56. Isabelle Ley. Opposition im Völkerrecht: Ein Beitrag zur Legitimation internationaler Rechtserzeugung [Opposition in International Law: A Contribution to the Legitimation of International Law-Making]
- Author:
- Jan Klabbers
- Publication Date:
- 07-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- Isabelle Ley, in her exemplary dissertation defended at Humboldt University, takes the emergence of regulatory international law as her starting point and aims to investigate how its democratic legitimacy could be enhanced. For her, democracy is not just a matter of particular institutions or practices but, rather, of open and possibly oppositional politics. Building on the work of Claude Lefort and, in particular, Hannah Arendt, she develops a framework for discussing democracy in international law conceptualized as the possibility for opposition. A democratic polity is one where every participant has the possibility of helping to take care of the common world, as Arendt might have put it, and presupposes open politics. This politics is, so to speak, politics for the sake of politics or politics in the Olympic spirit: what matters is not so much winning but taking part; what matters is not so much which policies will be adopted but the political process itself. Following Aristotle, taking part in public affairs is viewed as the most salient manifestation of human excellence: man being a political animal, he can do no better than take part in the political process – this is where individual happiness is achieved and, therewith, the ultimate justification of democracy.
- Topic:
- International Law, International Organization, Political Theory, and Democracy
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Germany
57. Alliance Coercion and Nuclear Restraint: How the United States Thwarted West Germany's Nuclear Ambitions
- Author:
- Gene Gerzhoy
- Publication Date:
- 03-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Security
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- When does a nuclear-armed state's provision of security guarantees to a militarily threatened ally inhibit the ally's nuclear weapons ambitions? Although the established security model of nuclear proliferation posits that clients will prefer to depend on a patron's extended nuclear deterrent, this proposition overlooks how military threats and doubts about the patron's intentions encourage clients to seek nuclear weapons of their own. To resolve this indeterminacy in the security model's explanation of nuclear restraint, it is necessary to account for the patron's use of alliance coercion, a strategy consisting of conditional threats of military abandonment to obtain compliance with the patron's demands. This strategy succeeds when the client is militarily dependent on the patron and when the patron provides assurances that threats of abandonment are conditional on the client's nuclear choices. Historical evidence from West Germany's nuclear decisionmaking provides a test of this logic. Contrary to the common belief among nonproliferation scholars, German leaders persistently doubted the credibility and durability of U.S. security guarantees and sought to acquire an independent nuclear deterrent. Rather than preferring to renounce nuclear armament, Germany was compelled to do so by U.S. threats of military abandonment, contradicting the established logic of the security model and affirming the logic of alliance coercion.
- Topic:
- Arms Control and Proliferation and Nuclear Weapons
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, Germany, and West Germany
58. Strategies of Inhibition: U.S. Grand Strategy, the Nuclear Revolution, and Nonproliferation
- Author:
- Francis Gavin
- Publication Date:
- 08-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Security
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- The United States has gone to extraordinary lengths since the beginning of the nuclear age to inhibit—that is, to slow, halt, and reverse—the spread of nuclear weapons and, when unsuccessful, to mitigate the consequences. To accomplish this end, the United States has developed and implemented a wide range of tools, applied in a variety of combinations. These “strategies of inhibition” employ different policies rarely seen as connected to one another, from treaties and norms to alliances and security guarantees, to sanctions and preventive military action. The United States has applied these measures to friend and foe alike, often regardless of political orientation, economic system, or alliance status, to secure protection from nuclear attack and maintain freedom of action. Collectively, these linked strategies of inhibition have been an independent and driving feature of U.S. national security policy for more than seven decades, to an extent rarely documented or fully understood. The strategies of inhibition make sense of puzzles that neither containment nor openness strategies can explain, while providing critical insights into post–World War II history, theory, the causes of nuclear proliferation, and debates over the past, present, and future trajectory of U.S. grand strategy.
- Topic:
- National Security, Nuclear Weapons, and Grand Strategy
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, Soviet Union, and Germany
59. A Tran-Atlantic Condominium of Democratic Power: the grand design for a post-war order at the heart of French policy at the Paris Peace Conference
- Author:
- Peter Jackson
- Publication Date:
- 07-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- France’s policy at the Paris Peace Conference has long been characterised as a bid to destroy German power and to secure a dominant position in the post-1918 European political order. The strategy and tactics of French premier Georges Clemenceau are nearly always contrasted with those of American president Woodrow Wilson. Clemenceau is represented as an arch cynic and committed practitioner of Realpolitik while Wilson is depicted as an idealist proponent of a new approach to international politics. The earliest, and one of the most extreme, articulation of this view was advanced by John Maynard Keynes in his Economic Consequences of the Peace. In what remains the most influential book ever written about the peace conference, Keynes characterised Clemenceau as a French Bismarck and the chief advocate of a ‘Carthaginian peace’.1 This judgement has reverberated through the historiography of the European international politics ever since.2 This general picture misses important dimensions to French planning and thus to the possibilities for peace in 1919. The evidence reveals that the peace programme of the Clemenceau government was much more open-ended and innovative than is generally recognised. French negotiators did propose a highly traditional project to overthrow the European balance of power by detaching the Left Bank of the Rhine from Germany and placing this region under permanent occupation. But there were other currents in French planning and policy that have been neglected. The French peace programme, as it emerged in February-March 1919, was a complex combination of power political calculation and an ideological commitment to a democratic peace based on new principles of international politics. Alongside the aim of territorial adjustment and a weakening of German power was a thoroughly trans-Atlantic conception of a democratic post-war order that allowed for the possibility of political and economic co- operation with a reformed and democratic Germany. The flexible and fundamentally multilateral character of this ‘larger strategic design’ overlapped with prevailing internationalist visions of peace and security in ways that have been missed by most scholars. French policy was much more ambiguous than Clemenceau was later willing to admit. Along with his chief lieutenant André Tardieu, he would spend much of the 1920s denouncing the failure of successive governments to impose the letter of the Versailles Treaty.4 But this post-war posturing has done much to obscure the complex character of his government’s peace programme.
- Topic:
- Diplomacy, International Cooperation, World War I, and Transatlantic Relations
- Political Geography:
- United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany
60. Full Issue: Emerging Domains of Security
- Author:
- Meg Guliford, Thomas McCarthy, Alison Russell, Michael M. Tsai, Po-Chang Huang, Feng-tai Hwang, Ian Easton, Matthew Testerman, Nikolas Ott, Anthony Gilgis, Todd Diamond, Michael Wackenreuter, Sebastian Bruns, Andrew Mark Spencer, Wendy A. Wayman, and Charles Cleveland
- Publication Date:
- 09-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Fletcher Security Review
- Institution:
- The Fletcher School, Tufts University
- Abstract:
- The theme of this special edition is “Emerging Domains of Security.” Coupled with previously unpublished work developed under a prior “Winning Without War” theme, the articles therein honor Professor Martel’s diverse, yet forward-leaning, research interests. This edition maintains the journal’s four traditional sections of policy, history, interviews, and current affairs. Our authors include established academics and practitioners as well as two Fletcher students, Nikolas Ott and Michael Wackenreuter. Each of the articles analyzes critical issues in the study and practice of international security, and our authors make salient arguments about an array of security-related issues. The articles are borne out of countless hours of work by FSR’s dedicated editorial staff. I deeply appreciate the time and effort they devoted to the publication of this volume. They are full-time graduate students who masterfully balanced a host of responsibilities.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, Intelligence, International Cooperation, International Law, History, Military Affairs, Counter-terrorism, Cybersecurity, Navy, Conflict, Space, Interview, Army, Baath Party, and Norms
- Political Geography:
- China, Iraq, Europe, Middle East, Taiwan, Germany, Asia-Pacific, Global Focus, and United States of America