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This book sets out to help unlock an intriguing interdisciplinary puzzle relating to violence: ‘what is the relationship between the instrumental uses of violence, including its main forms, and the willingness of states to employ it?’ In providing a counterweight to the notion that political violence has irrevocably changed in a globalised world, Violence and the State provides an original and innovative way to understand political violence across a range of discipline areas.
response to its extensive exploitation of the oil and gas trade in the Middle East, and its dependence on the dominance of the US dollar, Nafeez Ahmed (2015) presciently described IS as the ‘cancer of modern capitalism’. Owing to its declaration of a Caliphate, paramilitary operations, and state-building practices, IS was until 2017 sometimes described as a quasi-nation state ( Cronin 2015 ), in contrast to the widely recognised networked and global geo-economic orientation of AQ. Building upon these existing explanations of neo-jihadism, in this chapter I illustrate
Neo-jihadism’s evolution beyond AQ saw the emergence of AQI, Islamic State of Iraq, and then IS. As with propaganda produced by AQ, propaganda produced by IS condemned US military and economic activity and sought to rationalise neo-jihadist violence and recruit audiences with anti-Western and anti-capitalist grievances. Also consistent with AQ, IS spokespersons’ statements on the political economy of the US reflect the organisation’s geo-economic ambition. Where AQ propaganda over time increasingly focused on the non-material, financialised, and ideological
From the publication of the Discourse , Ascham stated the necessity to obey the civil magistrate that ruled with equity and de facto held the power to ensure self-protection to its subjects regardless of constitutional settlement. But what was the form of government that better secured protection to its subjects? Ascham argued that there were no forms
type, which can be termed scapegoating , occurred alongside Russia’s political reformulation in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and was driven by the more authoritarian vision for Russia articulated by Vladimir Putin. The third and chronologically most recent type is nullification . This accompanied the consolidation of the present hybrid semi-authoritarian Russian state. It refers to a targeted
T HE CHANGING MACROPOLITICAL landscape brought in its wake both continuities and discontinuities in the normative basis of intra-state peacekeeping, which we will closely examine in the context of four detailed case studies. Each case study in the following chapters will of necessity be handled in its ‘own’ time, in seemingly static fashion. This chapter will
W IDESPREAD INTRA-STATE CONFLICT is not a new phenomenon. Its rise to the centre of attention in international policy circles is. UN involvement in intra-state conflicts is not new either. What is new is the increasing systematisation of UN involvement in conflict-torn societies. It is these two novelties of the post-Cold War world that shape the main concerns of this study. What is problematised
focus on social forces and pressures that impact on the UN’s organisational change. 9 The notion of ‘historical structures’, as we shall demonstrate below, provides a particularly promising avenue to investigate the normative connection between the UN and intra-state conflicts. While this notion is utilised by Knight to explore possibilities, potentials and prospects in the evolution of multilateralism
Introduction For a state that regards itself as the intellectual heir to the French Revolution it is unsurprising that the ideas of ‘terror’ and ‘terrorism’ remain central to the controversies surrounding the nature of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 1 From an American perspective, the seizure of the US embassy on 4 November 1979 transformed Iran from an intimate ally into the leading ‘state sponsor’ of terrorism; an appellation that even the thaw in relations under the Obama administration has done little to change. 2 The revolutionary state
This study explores the normative dimension of the evolving role of the United Nations in peace and security and, ultimately, in governance. What is dealt with here is both the UN's changing raison d'être and the wider normative context within which the organisation is located. The study looks at the UN through the window of one of its most contentious, yet least understood, practices: active involvement in intra-state conflicts as epitomised by UN peacekeeping. Drawing on the conceptual tools provided by the ‘historical structural’ approach, it seeks to understand how and why the international community continuously reinterprets or redefines the UN's role with regard to such conflicts. The study concentrates on intra-state ‘peacekeeping environments’, and examines what changes, if any, have occurred to the normative basis of UN peacekeeping in intra-state conflicts from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. One of the original aspects of the study is its analytical framework, where the conceptualisation of ‘normative basis’ revolves around objectives, functions and authority, and is closely connected with the institutionalised values in the UN Charter such as state sovereignty, human rights and socio-economic development.