Featured Image: A line of Syrian refugees crossing the border of Hungary and Austria on their way to Germany. Hungary, Central Europe, 6 September 2015. By Mstyslav Chernov, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
By Rene Wadlow.
« There is no doubt that Mankind is once more on the move. The very foundations have been shakened and loosened, and things are again fluid. The tents have been struck, and the great caravan of Humanity is once more on the march. »
Jan Christian Smuts at the end of the 1914-1918 World War.
On 19 September 2016, the UN General Assembly held a one-day Summit on « Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants « – a complex of issues which have become important and emotional issues in many countries. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) published a report on international migration indicating that there are some 244 milion migrants, some 76 million live in Europe, 75 million in Asia, 54 million in North America and others in the Middle East, Latin America and the Pacific, especially Australia and New Zealand. In addition, there are some 24 million refugees – people who have crossed State frontiers fleeing armed conflict and repression as well as some 40 million internally-displaced persons within their own country. Acute poverty, armed conflicts, population growth and high unemployment levels provide the incentives for people to move, while easier communications and transport are the means.
However, as we have seen with the many who have died in the Mediterranean Sea, people will take great risks to migrate. Thus, there is an urgent need to take away the monopoly of the life and death of refugees from the hands of mafias and traffickers and to create an effective world policy for migrants and refugees.
This is the third time that the major governments of the world have tried to deal in an organized way with migration and refugees.
The first was within the League of Nations in the 1920s. The 1914-1918 World War and the 1917 Russian Revolution had created a large number of refugees and « stateless » persons – citizens of the former Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian Empires. These people had no passports or valid identity documents. The League of Nations created a League identity document – the Nansen Passport – which gave some relief to the « stateless » and brought international attention to their conditions. The Nansen Passport, however, became overshaddowed in the mid-1930 when people – in particular Jews – fled from Germany-Austria and were refused resettlement.
The second international effort was as a result of the experiences of the 1939-1945 Second World War and the large number of refugees and displaced. Under the leadership of the United Nations, there was created the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees. In addition, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, originally created as a temporary body, was made a permanent UN agency in recognition of the continuing nature of refugee issues.
The current third international effort is largely a result of the flow of refugees and migrants toward Europe during 2015-2016. The disorganized and very uneven response of European governments and the European Union to this flow has indicated that governments are unprepared to deal with such massive movements of people. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have not been able to deal adequately with this large number of persons despite many good-will efforts. Moreover, certain European political movements and political parties have used the refugee issue to promote narrow nationalist and sometimes racist policies. Even a much smaller flow of refugees to the USA has provoked very mixed reactions – few of them welcoming.
World Policy for Migrants and Refugees.
The 19 September 2016 Summit is a first step toward creating a functioning world policy for migrants and refugees. The Summit is not an end in itself but follows a pattern of UN awareness-building conferences on the environment, population, food, urbanization and other world issues. The impact of UN conferences has been greatest when there is pre-existing popular movements led by NGOs which have in part sensitized people to the issue.
The two UN conferences which have had the most lasting consequences were the 1972 Stockholm conference on the environment and the 1975 International Year of Women and its Mexico conference. The environment conference was held at a time of growing popular concern with the harm to the environment symbolized by the widely-read book of Rachel CarsonSilent Spring. The 1975 women’s conference came at a time when in Western Europe and the USA there was a strong « women’s lib » movement and active discussion on questions of equality and gender.
Migration and refugee issues do not have a well-organized NGO structure highlighting these issues. However human rights NGOs have stressed the fate of refugees and migrants as well as human rights violations in the countries from which they fled. There is also some cooperation among relief NGOs which provide direct help to refugees and migrants such as those from Syria and Iraq living in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and those going to Greece and Italy.
The Spirit of the Summit.
The Summit’s Declaration is very general, and some observers have been disappointed with the lack of specific measures. However, we can welcome the spirit of the Summit Declaration with its emphasis on cooperative action, a humane sense of sharing the responsibilities for refugees and migrants and on seeking root causes of migration and refugee flows. What is needed now are strong NGO efforts to remind constantly government authorities of the seriousness of the issues and the need for collective action.
Refugees and migrants are not a temporary « emergency » but part of a continuing aspect of the emerging world society. Thus there is a need to develop a world policy and strong institutions for migrants and refugees.
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Featured Image: The famous Independence Square in Kiev on a sunny day. Photo by Euan Cameron on Unsplash.
There has been of late a good deal of sabre-rattling along the Russian-Ukrainian frontier. There has been talk of war if the Russian troops were to invade Ukraine or to reinforce the separatist areas of Ukraine that call themselves the People’s Republic of Donetsk and the People’s Republic of Luhansk.
President Putin has created a strawman against which to fight – the most unlikely event of Ukraine joining NATO. He has recently shown his resolve for public appreciation by saying:
“We are concerned over prospects of Ukraine’s possible accession to NATO, as it will definitely result in the deployment of military contingents, bases
and weapons posing a threat to us.”
The sabre-rattling has been loud enough that the Ukraine situation was an important part of the 7 December videoconference call between Presidents Biden and Putin, and the subsequent mission of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried, responsible for European and Eurasian affairs, to Ukraine and Russia and then to Brussels to meet European Foreign Ministers and others.
Portrait of Karen Donfried as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs under President Biden. By United States Department of State, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
There are long historic and strategic roots to the current crisis. The external and internal roots of the situation in Ukraine run deep. Security crises are deeply influenced both by a sense of history and by current perceptions. Nevertheless, we can use 2014 as a crucial starting point with the annexation by Russia of Crimea.
“Crimea has always been an inseparable part of Russia” said President Putin at the time.
The Western response to the annexation has been to impose economic sanctions which are still in place and have had important consequence of the Russian economy.
Shortly after the Crimea annexation, there was a change in government leadership in Ukraine leading to a policy that some felt was unjust to the people in eastern Ukraine; who were largely Russian speaking and turned economically and culturally toward Russia. Thus a violent separatist movement took form, most likely helped by Russia, leading to the creation of the People’s Republic of Donetsk and the People’s Republic of Luhansk. Fighting broke out between the armed sparatists and the regular Ukrainian army and police.
Photograph of Russian Vladimir Putin at 2017 G20 Summit in Hamburg. Cropped and size increased by Emiya1980. By Пресс-служба Президента Российской Федерации, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) quickly sent a Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine to monitor the situation. The Mission is still in place and issues daily reports on the violations of ceasefires. Thus in its 15 December 2021 report in the Donetsk region between 10-12 December there were 444 ceasefire violations and in the Luhansk region 104. However, the freedom of movement of the Mission’s observers is restricted. The number of violations , usually exchanges of small arms fire, is probably higher.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s official portrait, 2021. By Adam Schultz, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Special Status.
In 2014, the mandate of the OSCE included not only observation but also efforts at negotiations. Thus on 12 February 2015, there was negotiated what has been called the Minsk Agreement. Under this Agreement, Ukraine would not be divided but the the areas covered by the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics would be given a “special status” set out in a new constitution. Beyond a rather vague discussion on decentralization, the nature of the “Special Status” has never been made clear, and no administrative measures have been put into place.
Normandy Format.
In order to facilitate negotiations, there was created the “Normandy Format”, growing out of a meeting of government leaders in Normandy to mark the Allied landing in 1944. The Normandy Format brings together the representatives of Ukraine and Russia and France and Germany to facilitate negotiations. So far, there has been no visible advance on the special status discussions within the Normandy Format.
However, with the new German Foreign Minister, the ecologist Annalena Baerbock, recently in Paris, there may be new initiatives. It is also likely that as a result of the discussions between Presidents Putin and Biden, the U.S.A. will play a more active advisory role.
German Foreign Minister, the ecologist Annalena Baerbock. By Stefan Kaminski (photography), Annalena Baerbock (full rights of use), CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Association of World Citizens has always stressed the importance of developing appropriate forms of government as a crucial aspects of the resolution of armed conflicts. The Association has particularly highlighted the possibilities of con-federalism and the need for trans-frontier cooperation. The need to progress on the structure of Ukraine stands out sharply at this time when there are real possibilities of ecalatory risks. There is a need for confidence-building measures to reach out to different layers of society in a cumulative process.
Advances on the Special Status would be an important step in the de-escalation of tensions. Discussions on the Special Status must be carried out by those living in Ukraine. However, government representatives as well as non-governmental organizations in Russia, Germany and France can also contribute actively.
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“The struggle against the nuclear weapon cult and threats it poses to international peace, security and development, like all struggles against belief systems which have outlived their times, is going to be long and arduous”
K. Subrahmanyal. Nuclear Proliferation and Internationsal Securtiy.
The U.N. Conference on the Establishlent of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and other Weapons of Mass Destruction took place at the U.N. in New York, 29 November to 3 December 2021.
The Conference is open-ended – that is open to those States that wish to attend – with a mandate provided by General Assembly Resolution A/73/546 to continue meeting annually:
“until the confernce concludes the elaboration of a legally binding treaty establishing a Middle East Zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.”
The first session was held 18-22 November 2019.
K. Subrahmanyam (2010). By MarcEduard, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
The process will not be easy in an area where armed conflicts exist and are undermining stablity. There are very real concerns concerning nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Regional conflicts could unleash a nuclear war through escalation of a conventional war, miscalculation or delibeate pre-emptive attack. This is the second time that the conference is held. The 22 countries of the Arab League and Iran participated as did the U.K. and Russia. Israel and the U.S.A. did not. While the difficulties are real, the Conference provides opportunities for governments of the region to share perspectives, consider proposals and look at the institutional requirements to establish such a zone.
While non-governmental organization representatives cannot participate as such in the Conference, a nuclear-weapon free zone is of vital interest to those organizations working on arms control, disarmament, and regional conflict resolution.
Emblem of the League of Arab States (2008). By Jeff Dahl, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
The idea of a Middle East nuclear-free zone was first put forth by a non-governmental organization, the Israeli Committee of the Denuclearization of the Middle East in April 1962. Non-governmental organizations, often working closely with the United Nations disarmament secretariat, have played a role in the creation of regional nuclear-weapon free zones starting with the Treaty of the Tlatelolco for Latin America, after the dangers highlighted by the Cuban Missile Crisis.
As the “father” of the 1967 Treaty of Tlatelolco the Mexican Ambassador Alfonso Garcia Robles explained the concept of nuclear-weapon free zones as a step toward global disarmament:
“We should attempt to achieve a gradual broadening of the zones of the world from which nuclear weapons are prohibited to a point where the territories of Powers which possess these terrible tools of mass destruction will become something like contaminated islets subjected to quarantine.”
Alfonso Garcia Robles (1981). By Marcel Antonisse, CC BY-SA 3.0 NL <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/nl/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons.
Non-governmental organizations have proposed that the following States be included in the Middle East process: Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, the Palistinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen. In looking at the list of potential members, we see that a nuclear-weapon free zone is not the only issue on the political agenda. We also see that the possibilities of action for non-governmental organizations to work on security issues is not the same in each country. There is deep mistrust and rivalries among many of these States.
Thus, it is probably necessary for non-governmental organizations outside of the area to organize what are called Track II initiatives – a non-official way to discuss regional security issues and to provide policy advice to governments. A first step is to identify opportunities, areas of mutual interest, and then to make recommendations where progress can be made and where governmental diplomatic efforts could be made. Civil society organizations can also reach out to youth in the Middle East who are interested in creating positive changes with in the region.
A first opportunity to present proposals to government representatives will be the Review Conference on the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT Review) to be held at the U.N. in New York during this January 2022. Nuclear-weapon free zones as well as the needed confidence-building measures have provided an important focus of earlier NPT Reviews.
The Association of World Citizens has stressed the importance of Nuclear-weapon Free Zones at earlier NPT Reviews and will do so again for the January 2022 Review.
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Abstract – This article proposes a framework on how to teach the New Globalism so that students can gain a better understanding of the world beyond the confines of the United States.
I began teaching my course on globalization during the mid-1990s with enthusiasm believing that my students would consider new and provocative material. In addition, I held the belief that I was presenting them with a different way to view the international system. I had hoped that students would become more curious about the world beyond the confines of the United States. Soon I realized that my students were not any more interested about global affairs than before taking course.
The primary reason for the unfortunate outcome was the way I taught the subject matter. The course consisted of a constellation of disconnected topics ranging from historical to social to economic and political .My students’ and my own dissatisfaction led me to reconsider the course during the next few years; but the end product continued to be insufficient. Only when I read Manuel Castells‘ (2005) article on “Global Governance and Global Politics“; I came to the conclusion that I had discovered an appropriate framework to effectively and systematically teach such a challenging course to mostly non-majors.
It is a challenging course because of the definitional problems associated with the term globalization and because of the inexhaustible number of topics that could be examined in such a course. In redesigning the course I considered three questions:
1. What definition and course-title best reflect the global changes?.
2. Where does one begin when teaching a course on globalization?.
3. What should the course examine?.
What definition and course-title best reflect the global changes?
Jan Aart Scholte (2000) in a wonderful book titled Globalization: a critical introduction addresses the definitional problem. Scholte states that globalization is often defined as internationalization, liberalization, universalization, and westernization.
Globalization as internationalization “refers to increases of interaction and interdependence between people in different countries.”
Globalization as liberalization refers to the reduction of “regulatory barriers to transfers of resources between countries.”
Globalization as universalization describes a condition in which “more people and cultural phenomena than ever have in recent history spread to all habitable corners of the planet.”
Globalization as westernization is associated with the process of homogenization, as all the world becomes western, modern and, more particularly, American.”
However, Scholte says, all these definitions are deficient because they do not present anything new. Much included in these definitions developed at earlier times during the 500-year history of the modern state-system. Scholte himself defines globalization as deterritorialization, or what he refers to as the growth of supraterritorial relations between people. Even though, he notes, territory remains important, many of the relations between people are supraterritorial (pp. 44-46).
More specifically, Scholte says that globalization:
“refers to a far-reaching change in the nature of social space. The proliferation and spread of supraterritorial… connections brings an end to what could be called territorialism, that is, a situation where social geography is entirely territorial. Although, as already stressed, territory still matters very much in our globalizing world, it no longer constitutes the whole of our geography” ( p. 46).
Scholte’s definition better reflects the global changes and I encourage my students to think of his definition as our guide during the semester. The most fitting title for such a course is the New Globalism because as Jurgen Osterhammel and Niels P. Petersson (2003), Daniel Cohen (2007) and numerous other scholars argue, globalization is not a new phenomenon. The current state of affairs is nothing more than a new and different phase/act of globalization; one of the significant differences between other phases and the current phase of globalization is the role of the media and, a related component, the speed of communication.
Where does one begin when teaching the course?.
Before I begin discussing the New Globalism I must provide my students with the appropriate context. Obviously, the global changes create many opportunities as well as perils. Among the opportunities, some would argue, is higher technology, greater interactions between peoples, and rising incomes. The one significant difficulty I choose to focus on is the challenge that the global changes present to the state. To successfully discuss this challenge I refer back to the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), which signified the beginning of the modern state-system.
“Statehood meant that the world was divided into territorial parcels, each of which was ruled by a separate government. This modern state was centralized, formally organized public authority apparatus that enjoyed a legal (and mostly effective) monopoly over the means of violence in the area of its jurisdiction. The Westphalian State was moreover sovereign, that is, it exercised comprehensive, supreme, unqualified, and exclusive control over its designated territorial domain. Comprehensive rule meant that, in principle, sovereign state had jurisdiction over all affairs in the country. Supreme rule meant that, recognizing no superior authority, the sovereign state had the final say in respect to its territory. Unqualified rule meant that, although Westphalian times witnessed occasional debates about possible duties of humanitarian intervention, on the whole the state’s right of total jurisdiction was treated as sacrosanct by other states. Finally, exclusive rule meant that sovereign states did not share competences in regard to their respective domestic jurisdictions. There was no ‘joint sovereignty’ among states; ‘pooled sovereignty’ was a contradiction in terms” (pp. 20-21).
The course also devotes attention to various kinds of sovereignty. According to Stephen Krasner (2006) there are four different kinds of sovereignty:
“domestic sovereignty, referring to the organization of public authority within a state and to the level of effective control exercised by those holding authority; interdependence sovereignty, referring to the control over transborder flows; international legal sovereignty, referring to the mutual recognition of states; and Westphalian sovereignty, referring to the maintenance of borders and territory – meaning, the exclusion of external authority structures from domestic authority configurations” (p. 660).
Moreover, Christopher Rudolph (2005) discusses societal sovereignty. He says a growing awareness of sovereignty’s societal dimensions and an that “[w]hat appears to be happening as the trading state grand strategy has emerged as the dominant program among advanced industrial democracies is that the contemporary approaches to defending territorial sovereignty have exhibited increasing desire for stability in this emerging domain” (p. 13).
The Treaty of Westphalia contained “an early official statement of the core principles that came to dominate world affairs during the subsequent three [or more] hundred years. The Westphalian system was states-system. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as states increasingly took the form of nation-states, people came to refer to international as well interstate relations and frequently described the Westphalian order as the international system” (Baylis and Smith, p. 19). “The Westphalian system was a framework of governance. That is, it provided a general way to formulate, implement, monitor and enforce social rules” (Baylis and Smith, p. 20). The Westphalian Order remained dominant for the next 350 years. The Westphalian Order is threatened by the global transformation.
Today, there are too many actors in the international system that compete with the state or challenge the state, i.e., terrorist groups, NGOs, etc. State sovereignty is compromised more than ever before. States, of course, are not withering away. They recognize the challenges confronting them and attempt to manage them. The desire to promote democracy around the world is an effort by the state, at least the industrial democratic state, to preserve itself.
What should the course examine?.
The course examines the multidimensional changes occurring across the globe: technological, economic, cultural, and institutional/political. Of the four elements, because of my own interests, the focus is placed on the economic and institutional/political changes. I especially, but not exclusively, emphasize the multidimensional changes since the mid-1970s. Beginning in the 1970s the significant technological innovations were accompanied by dramatic institutional/political developments with the democratization of Portugal, Greece, and Spain.
Samuel Huntington (1992), in his book The Third Wave: Democratization In The Late Twentieth Century, presents three waves of democratization.
The first wave began in 1828 with the extension of suffrage in the United States. It ended in the 1920s with the rise of fascism in Europe. This wave was lengthy but not deep. After the early 1920s there was what Huntington calls a reverse wave with the establishment of non-democratic governments in countries that had become democratic after World War I, i.e., Italy and Germany.
The second wave was brief; it began in 1945 and ended in the early 1960s. The early 1960s were followed once again be a reverse wave when dictators rose to power in many countries including Latin American countries.
The third wave began in 1974 in Portugal with the fall of the dictatorship and the rise of democracy. The Portuguese example was quickly followed by Greece and Spain. The third wave substantially differs from the previous two; it is more extensive and deeper. It is more extensive, because today there are more democratic countries than ever before, and it is deeper, because the majority of people in democratic countries consider democracy as the “only game in town.”
At this juncture the course focuses on the wisdom of spreading democracy and more important on who should lead the effort of doing so. Should it be the international community or the United States? The works of a number of authors are discussed to provide some understanding of the complexity of these issues.
Robert Cooper (2000) argues that democracy causes both integration and disintegration. For example, he points out that “[d]emocracy, …, is thus a source, perhaps the source, of disintegration” (31) and the break up of the former Soviet Union is cited as an example. He also notes, however, that shared democratic values much contributed to European integration and the rise of the European Union.
“Europe today is paradoxically a place of both political integration and political disintegration. Larger-scale and smaller-scale political units are becoming more prominent and taking on more functions. The ‘traditional’ nation-state finds itself caught in the middle-challenged, as it were, from above and below” (p. 43).
Adam Daniel Rotfeld (2000) focuses on the role of the international community in promoting democracy. He states that “[a]s the post-Cold War world order continues to take shape, we are left wondering whether globalization or fragmentation will prevail. In reality, of course, the choice is not that stark, and both phenomena will continue to exist-and perhaps to thrive-in parallel. States will not wither away but will adapt in various ways to each of these two tendencies. Multinational security structures will have an increasing impact, directly and indirectly, on the internal transformations of state. International institutions will keep trying to stave off, de-escalate, and resolve the conflicts that inevitably accompany the formation of new national entities. We can expect the impact of international organizations and security structures to grow. The forces of stability and the forces of fragmentation will continue to clash, but we can hope that the emergence of a new multilateral security system will help to balance and mitigate the resulting tensions” (p. 95).
Robert Kagan (2000) advocates a different approach regarding the promotion of democracy and how to secure the international system. For him, what is most important is the foreign policies of great powers and especially the foreign policy of the United States, which is the only superpower. In Kagan’s view “[t]he task of America is to preserve and extend the present democratic era as far into the future as possible, in the full knowledge that democracy is not inevitable but requires the ongoing attention of individuals and nations wishing to sustain it. As it happens, the present era offers an especially favorable opportunity to advance democratic principles successfully and in relative safety. It would be a timeless human tragedy if the United States failed to seize it” (p. 112).
According to Manuel Castells (2005), democratic states are faced with four distinct crises: crisis of efficiency, crisis of legitimacy, crisis of identity, and crisis of equity.
Crisis of efficiency means that “problems cannot be adequately managed, i.e., major environmental issues, regulation of financial markets.”
Crisis of legitimacy means that “political representation is increasingly distant, with greater distance between citizens and their representatives. The crisis of legitimacy is exasperated by the practice of media politics of scandal as the privileged mechanisms to access power. Image making substitutes for issue debating, partly due to the fact that major issues can no longer be decided in the national space.”
Crisis of identity means that “as people see their nation and their culture increasingly disjointed from the mechanisms of political decision making in a global, multinational network, their claim of autonomy takes the form of resistance identity politics as opposed to their political identity as citizens.”
Crisis of equity means “[t]he process of market-led globalization often increases inequality between countries, and between social groups within countries, because of its ability to induce faster economic growth in some areas while bypassing others” (p. 10).
An additional work used to illuminate the discussion about democracy and democratization is Robert Putnam’s (1995) article titled “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital.” He uses bowling and belonging to bowling leagues as a metaphor to describe the lack of civic engagement. A few decades ago, he says, people belonged to bowling leagues and often as groups they went to bowling allies. While there, not only they bowled but they also talked about their schools and their community. Now, even though as many people go bowling as in the past, they go bowling alone. Going bowling alone does not encourage civic engagement.
Despite the difficulties confronting democracies in advanced industrial societies, many people and especially the young, Russell Dalton (2004) states, do not want less democracy, they want more.The multidimensional crises do not inhibit the states from adapting to the global changes. As Manuel Castells (2005) argues, they adapt to the changes in many different ways including the following:
a. By associating with each other and forming diverse networks of states: EU, NAFTA, and APEC are some examples. b. By building an increasingly dense network of international institutions such as the UN, NATO, IMF, and WTO. c. By decentralizing power and resources through devolution of power to regional governments, to local governments, and to NGOs that extend the decision making process in the civil society.
At this point of the course, once again, Manuel Castells (2005) provides some wonderful ideas about different paths toward the reconstruction of democratic governance. Paths such as:
a. Private/public partnerships.
b. Development of a global civil society.
c. Emergence of the global movement for global justice.
d. Redefinition of the role of international institutions.
e. Attempts to build new international institutions.
The course ends with me asking the students if a better world is possible and they are asked to read International Forum on Globalization (2004) to consider the possibilities of a “better world.”
References:
Baylis, John and Steve Smith, ed. 2001. The Globalization of World Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Castells, Manuel. 2005. “Global Governance and Global Politics.” PS: Political Science and Politics XXXVIII.1: 9-16.
Cohen, Daniel. 2007. Globalization and Its Enemies, trans. Jessica B. Baker. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Cooper, Robert. 2000. “Integration and Disintegration.” In Globalization, Power, and Democracy, ed. Marc F. Plattner and Aleksander Smolar. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 28-40.
Dalton, Russell. 2004. Democratic Challenges, Democratic Choices: The Erosion of Political Support in Advanced Industrial Democracies. New York: Oxford University Press.
Huntington, Samuel P. 1992. The Third Wave: Democratization In The Late Twentieth Century. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.
International Forum on Globalization. 2004. “A Better World Is Possible!.” In The Globalization Reader, ed. Frank J. Lechner and John Boli. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 438-448.
Kagan, Robert. 2000. “The Centrality of the United States.” In Globalization, Power, and Democracy, ed. Marc F. Plattner and Aleksander Smolar. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 97-113.
Krasner, Stephen. 2006. “Problematic Sovereignty.” In Classic Readings and Contemporary Debates in International Relations, ed. Phil Williams, Donald M. Goldstein, and Jay M. Shafritz. Belmont, CA: Thomson-Wadsworth, 660-666.
Osterhammel, Jurgen and Niels P. Petersson. 2003. Globalization: A Short History, trans. Dona Geyer. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Putnam, Robert. 1995. “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital.” Journal of Democracy 6.1: 65-78.
Rotfeld, Adam Daniel. 2000. “The Role of the International Community.” In Globalization, Power, and Democracy, ed. Marc F. Plattner and Aleksander Smolar. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Rudolph, Christopher. 2005. “Sovereignty and Territorial Borders in a Global Age.” International Studies Review 7: 1-20.
Schmitter, Philippe C. 2000. “Democracy, the EU, and the Question of Scale.” In Globalization, Power, and Democracy, ed. Marc F. Plattner and Aleksander Smolar. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 43-56.
Scholte, Jan Aart. 2000. Globalization: A Critical Introduction. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
A list of the rest of the works considered to teach the course:
Bhagwati, Jagdish. 2007. In Defense of Globalization. New York: Oxford University Press.
Castells, Manuel. 1999. The Rise of the Network Society. Vol. 1. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
———-. 1999. End of Millenium. Vol. 3. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Etzioni, Amitai. 2004. From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan.
Ferguson, Yale and Richard Mansbach. 2004. Remapping Global Politics: History’s Revenge and Future Shock. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gill, Stephen. 1996. “Globalization, Democratization, and the Politics of Indifference.” In Globalization: Critical Reflections, ed. James H. Mittelman. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 205-228.
Gills, Barry K., ed. Globalization in Crisis. London and New York: Routledge, 2011.
Held, David. 2004. Global Covenant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the Washington Consensus. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Rosenau, James. 2006. “Governance in Fragmegrative Space.” In Classic Readings and Contemporary Debates in International Relations, ed. Phil Williams, Donald M. Goldstein, and Jay M. Shafritz. Belmont, CA: Thomson-Wadsworth, 571-580.
Scholte, Jan Aart. 2001. “Globalization and the states-system.” In Globalization of World Politics, ed. John Baylis and Steve Smith, 20-23. New York: Oxford University Press.
Professor George Kaloudis, Department of History, Law and Political Science, Rivier College, Nashua, NH, 03060, USA.
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By Rene Wadlow.
The Imburi are spirits that are said to inhabit the forests of Gabon in Equatorial Africa; and who cry out for those who can hear them at times of impending violence or danger. The Imburi have been crying out over the increasing dangers of the conflict in Ethiopia which began on 3 November 2020. However during the past year, the conflict has spread to other parts of Ethiopia and has impacted neighboring countries.
The fighting in Tigray becomes more complex each day as Ethiopian Defense Forces, Eritrean Defense Forces and ethnic militias face Tigrayan forces. There is a build up of Sudanese government forces on the Ethiopian-Sudan border where refugees flee into Sudan. The whole Horn of Africa, already fragile, is in danger of greater destabilization.
For the moment, all efforts for mediation proposed by the United Nations, by the African Union or individual states such as the U.S.A. have been refused by the Ethiopian central government. Many of the former officials of the Tigray Province have fled to other countries. Thus it is not clear who is in a position to negotiate for the Tigray factions were negotiations to be undertaken.
The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has sent representatives to Ethiopia to collect information on human rights violations related to the conflict in Tigray. With great difficulty some information on massive human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law has been collected. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet has spoken out on these violations involving mass killings, rapes, and the abduction of civilians when presenting the report on 3 November 2021 in Geneva.
Official Portrait of Mrs. President of the Republic Michelle Bachelet Jeria, Period 2014-2018. By Gobierno de Chile, CC BY 3.0 CL <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/cl/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons.
However she stressed the difficulties of collecting information and the impossibility to visit certain areas where massive violations were said to have taken place. Amnesty International has also tried to collect information by telephone since its representatives were not allowed to enter the country.
On 2 November 2021, a state of emergency covering all of Ethiopia was declared by the federal government. Arrests of Tigrayans living in the capital Addis-Abeba followed. Travel within the country is limited and heavily controlled by the police and the military. There is talk of a wide-spread roundup of Tigrayans living in Adddis-Abeba and other large cities and placing them in camps. There is an increase in local self-defense groups as fear grips the country.
There are few signs of compromise or a willingness to deal with the deep consequences of the armed conflict. There might be some possibilities for non-governmental, Track II type efforts to see where some progress might be made. The Association of World Citizens, knowing the fragile nature of the confederation of provinces which make up the Ethiopian State had made a first appeal for a ceasefire and negotiations in good faith shortly after fighting had started in early November 2020.
However, for the moment, possibilities for mediation either by governments or NGOs have not been acted upon. A situation which needs to be follow carefully.
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