International Relations Commons^™

Making Human Rights A Reality, Debra L. Delaet

International Dialogue

Emilie Hafner-Burton’s Making Human Rights a Reality offers an accessible and informed analysis of the significant gap between the normative universalism of international human rights law and its limited effects in practice. The book’s primary purpose is to offer a pragmatic, strategic alternative to global legalism for promoting the progressive realization of fundamental human rights. In Hafner-Burton’s view, the cause of human rights promotion would be better-served by relying on states with strong human rights records (both in terms of respecting rights at home and commitment to promoting them abroad) to use foreign policy as a tool for changing the …

Africa In World Politics: Engaging A Changing Global Order, Manfred Wogugu

International Dialogue

The issue of central concern for the editors and contributing authors of this book is whether Africa’s emergence on the world political scene will usher in the enabling environment for sustainable broad-spectrum development in the political, socio-economic, cultural and environmental spheres. The authors also make an attempt to address the issue of economic growth for the region. The underlying assumption is that the spread of economic growth to all countries in the continent, if it prevails, will reduce poverty and inequality and ultimately improve the quality of life for Africans. Against the backdrop of the global economic and political order …

Absolute Recoil: Towards A New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism, Robert Sinnerbrink

International Dialogue

Slavoj Žižek continues his idiosyncratic critique of global capitalism, democratic culture, and neoliberal ideology in his latest 400+ page tome, Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of dialectical Materialism, which promises to provide, much like his Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism (Verso, 2012), a resolutely idealist “new foundation” for dialectical materialism. This is a promise that Žižek has made for some years now, since what we might call his “system” turn became manifest in the publication of a series of major books (In Defense of Lost Causes [Verso, 2008]; Living in the End Times, Less …

The Un, Regional Sanctions And Africa, Andrea Charron, Clara Portela

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Africa is the continent most targeted by sanctions. During the Cold War, when the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) was all but paralysed, the only sanctions regimes that the UN imposed were directed at countries located on the African continent: Southern Rhodesia and South Africa, penalized for their apartheid regimes. In the post-Cold War era, Africa has continued to register the highest frequency of sanctions, applied not only by the UN but by other organizations as well. Africa’s own regional bodies, such as the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), are active in wielding …

Taking Sino-Singapore Ties To A New Level, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

With China’s President Xi Jinping’s first State visit to Singapore last weekend, there is no doubt that the establishment of an “all round partnership” is catalytic in taking Sino-Singapore bilateral ties to a new level.

In Search Of Peace: Restructuring The Us-Iran Relationship In Light Of The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, Samuel E. Winkler

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis attempts to ask how the United States should conduct foreign policy towards Iran given the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), agreed to on 14 June 2015. The 2015 JCPOA initiated a drastic shift in US foreign policy toward Iran. It is now up to US policy makers to craft a coherent Iran foreign policy moving forward from the agreement. In order to accomplish this, the vitriolic relationship between Iran and the United States, which contains two concurrent narratives, must be examined. The dual narratives are the history of the successive US Presidential administrations’ relations with Iran, and …

The Effect Of Neoliberalism On Capabilities: Evaluating The Case Of Mexico, James Paul Walker

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this thesis is to examine the effect of neoliberalism on developing nations. Specifically it will look at how neoliberalism has affected Mexico via the North American Free Trade Agreement. Mexico was chosen because since its depression in 1982 it has adopted continuing neoliberal policy, which according to its leaders, United States leaders, and international governmental bodies, is the path to development and the improvement of the standard of living for all people. This work begins by examining the historical path of neoliberalism to provide context for choosing Mexico for the focal point of this thesis, as well …

‘Capitalism A Nuh’ Wi Frien’. The Formatting Of Farming Into An Asset, From Financial Speculation To International Aid, Luigi Russi, Tomaso Ferrando

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

This paper deciphers the formatting of farming into an asset by tracking the modalities by which financial calculation is enabled across different sites of agency.

The first focus of our analysis are commodity futures markets, which have witnessed a double spike in prices in 2008 and in 2012. In the paper, we look at these hikes as the outcome of endogenous dynamics, caused by the changing makeup of market participants after 2000, which turned futures markets into resources for hedging commodity index-linked derivative products.

We subsequently analyse the increasing reliance on financial actors placed by public development agencies that channel …

A “Special Relationship” For The 21st Century: Options For Us-India Relations, Ryan Kuhns

Ex-Patt Magazine

No abstract provided.

Pursuing The Fruit Within The Promise: Exploring India’S Implementation Of Un Global Goals, Jocelyn Bell

Ex-Patt Magazine

No abstract provided.

Breaking Boundaries: The Timely Demise Of The Third-Order Enclave, Travis Cady

Ex-Patt Magazine

No abstract provided.

From Ike To Obama: The Perpetual Pivot Of American Foreign Policy, Leslie Stubbs

Ex-Patt Magazine

America’s touted “Pivot to Asia” marks a rebalance of US foreign policy, but it’s hardly the first time America has shifted its international focus - What the Eisenhower administration can tell us about contemporary.

Teutonic Terror: The History Of German Counterterrorism Policy, Harry Richart

Ex-Patt Magazine

Terrorism wasn’t born in the 21st Century. Learn how Germany has dealt with domestic threats from the Cold War to the War on Terror.

The Cracks In Nato's Fault Narrative: Why Nato Enlargement Fails To Explain Russian Aggression, Katherine Miller

Ex-Patt Magazine

What explains Russia’s recent behavior? Some blame the expansion of NATO for Russian aggression, but that isn’t the whole story.

Western Promises: Sustainability And Consequence For Baltic Security, Clay Moore

Ex-Patt Magazine

Renewed Russian expansion is raising concerns about security of its neighbors. The Baltic States seem unnervingly close to Russia, but how vulnerable are they to Russian influence?

Intercountry Adoption And Child Sponsorship In Vietnam: A Practicum-Based Exploration Of A Complex Relationship, Rainah Umlauf

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

For over a decade, Vietnam ranked in the top ten countries providing the most children for intercountry adoption (ICA), sending almost 11,000 children abroad since 2003 (U.S. State Department, 2015). It is likely that many of these children, however, were not orphans; evidence reveals that a lucrative baby-buying industry falsified information and trafficked children for years in order to meet the high international demand for healthy infants.

In this paper, I relate this history of ICA fraud to contemporary child sponsorship in Vietnam. I find that ICA and child sponsorship are intertwined in two contradictory ways. First, child sponsorship programs …

Review Or Rhetoric? An Analysis Of The United Nations Human Rights Council’S Universal Periodic Review, Sameer Rana

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Fifty, thirty, or even just twenty years ago, would one ever imagine a powerful country like the U.S., China, or Russia preparing a national report on the human rights situation in their country, then presenting it in front of a UN political body, engaging in dialogue, answering questions, and responding to recommendations from fellow Member States? This became a reality in 2006 when the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) replaced the problematic UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) and established a new and unprecedented mechanism known as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Under this instrument, the human rights records and …

Mutually Assured Survival: An Analysis Of Globalization’S Influence On Nuclear Disarmament, Ryan Zehner

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Nuclear arms have revolutionized the ways by which human beings are able to harm one another. Omnipresent in the status quo is a nuclear tension, and whether subtly or more overtly, this tension underlies a great many international relationships. While Westphalian paranoia and neorealist power perceptions encourage populations to continue placing their faith in nuclear umbrellas and deterrence strategies, scholars and activists increasingly claim that without the realization of universal disarmament, humanity concedes to the inevitability of future nuclear detonation.

New disarmament initiatives concentrate heavily on the implications of nuclear weaponry in a sense that supersedes the security of only …

The History Of Us-Iran Relations And Its Effect On The Jcpoa Negotiations, Chase Mccain

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Relations between the United States and the Islamic Republic have ranged from limited to non-existent over the past 36 years, and have been impeded by threatening rhetoric and perceived betrayals on both sides. The elections of Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani allowed for relations to move forward, but both presidents are hampered by people within their governments who are unwilling to let go of ingrained threat perceptions and distrust of the other. Despite these challenges, the P5+1 and Iran managed to create the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for Iran’s nuclear program, which can be used as a starting point …

What Does Genocide Produce? The Semantic Field Of Genocide, Cultural Genocide, And Ethnocide In Indigenous Rights Discourse, Jeff Benvenuto

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The semantic field of genocide, cultural genocide, and ethnocide overlaps between Indigenous rights discourse and genocide studies. Since the 1970s, such language has been used to express grievances that have stimulated the construction of Indigenous rights in international law. These particular words signify general concerns with the integrity of Indigenous peoples, thereby undergirding a larger framework of normative beliefs, ethical arguments, and legal claims, especially the right to self-determination. Going back to the post-World War II era, this article traces the normative and institutional processes through which this overlapping discourse has emerged. Culminating with the adoption of the …