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| 1 |
ID:
171774
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article analyzes the success factors for external engagement aimed at fostering peace in conflict-affected states. It focuses on a set of three factors that have been under-researched so far: the strategic prioritization between stability and democracy, the degree of coordination, and the mode of interaction. We compare international engagement in six countries—Burundi, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Senegal, and Timor-Leste. These countries all struggled with violent conflict and experienced a democratic transition in the period 2000–2014. We use an innovative approach to assess the impact of external engagement by analyzing twenty critical junctures in the domestic political processes of these countries mainly linked to elections, constitution-writing processes, and peace agreements, as well as disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration. Based on over 300 interviews, we find that prioritizing stability over democratization is problematic, good international coordination has positive effects, and preferring cooperative forms of interaction over coercion is mostly but not always useful. In discussing these general features of international support, this article contributes to the broader discussion of factors that explain the impact external actors can have on transformative political processes after conflict.
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| 2 |
ID:
171773
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African borderlands are sites where the state, borderlanders, criminal groups, and other groups compete and cooperate to achieve diverse interests. They are also zones of competing perspectives on security. However, current border security policies and practices operate within a restrictive neorealist theoretical paradigm with the state as the referent object of security thereby ignoring other perspectives on security. The vulnerabilities of borderlanders and the role of the border as a source of livelihood demand new ways of thinking about African borders in order to incorporate these major stakeholders into the bordering process. Although the adoption of the African Union's integrated border management strategy holds the potential to reconcile the needs of borderlanders with the objectives of the state, it remains within the restrictive neorealist framework. This paper argues that an emancipatory security theory provides an appropriate framework to understand African borders and borderlands. This theory holds the key for enhancing the security of African borders by reconciling the needs of borderlanders with the objectives of state security, and thereby making people and communities the referent objects of security. However, the failure of the theory to engage with the concept of power limits its usefulness.
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| 3 |
ID:
171772
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| Summary/Abstract |
The Internet and digital technologies have become indispensable in academia. A world without email, search engines, and online databases is practically unthinkable. Yet, in this time of digital dependence, the academy barely demonstrates an appetite to reflect upon the new challenges that digital technologies have brought to the scholarly profession. This forum's inspiration was a roundtable discussion at the 2017 International Studies Association Annual Convention, where many of the forum authors agreed on the need for critical debate about the effects of online surveillance and censorship techniques on scholarship. This forum contains five critiques regarding our digitized infrastructures, datafied institutions, mercenary corporations, exploitative academic platforms, and insecure online practices. Together, this unique collection of articles contributes to the research on academic freedom and helps to frame the analysis of the neoliberal higher education sector, the surveillance practices that students and staff encounter, and the growing necessity to improve our “digital hygiene.”
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| 4 |
ID:
171775
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| Summary/Abstract |
A “pedagogy of discomfort” (Boler 1999) recognizes the degree to which epistemology, emotions, and ethics are closely entwined both within and beyond our classrooms shaping who, what, where, why, and when we can see. It recognizes not only the intellectual and cognitive focus of education but also its embodied and affective dimensions. A pedagogy of discomfort which engages with the historically, politically, and ideologically contested and the emotionally invested subject of Israel/Palestine offers one way to engage in the teaching and learning of conflict analysis, and to support the development of active and critical student-citizens. This article suggests that experiential learning can support the development of pedagogical discomfort and explores this in the context of the Olive Tree Initiative, a narrative-based and experiential learning program for undergraduate politics and international relations students that focuses on Israel/Palestine. Drawing on student testimony, this article explores the ways in which the program plays a role in challenging dominant social, political, and emotional beliefs in order to create possibilities for individual and social transformation. It also reflects on some of the challenges and limitations posed by this approach, and engages with questions of emotions, vulnerability, and ambiguity in and beyond the classroom.
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| 5 |
ID:
171776
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| Summary/Abstract |
Students often struggle to grasp how examining international phenomena at the systemic, state, or international level of analysis can yield different understandings or perspectives. To help students understand the dynamics at the different levels of analysis, we suggest the use of several short games that make students be “lab rats in their own experiments.” In this article, we discuss the mechanics of three short games we play with our students. We offer our qualitative impressions of the impact of these games on the understanding of the students.
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