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This article charts and discusses the reasons for various significant shifts and developments during the nineteenth century of the reception of the Reformation amongst different denominations and groups within British Protestantism. Attitudes towards Foxes ‘Book of Martyrs’ are explored as but one among several litmus tests of the breakdown of an earlier fragile consensus based on anti-Catholicism as a unifying principle, with the Oxford Movement and the intra-Protestant reaction to it identified as a crucial factor. The selfidentity of the various British Protestant,denominations, notably the various Nonconformist bodies as well as the established Church and evangelicalism per se was at stake in the process of ‘reception’. Moreover, the emergence of more secular Protestant understandings of the significance of the Reformation as an essential stage in the emergence of modernity and liberty, often at odds with nineteenth-century evangelical theological interpretations of its meaning and legacy, are also highlighted. The result is an attempt to transcend the traditional focus on Protestant-Catholic disputes over the Reformation in narrowly bipolar terms.
redistribution of power at the international level (from one dominant state since the 1980s, the US, to two now) stems from the rise of China. A kind of bipolarity – a system dominated by two centres of power – has been re-established in global politics. As in other areas – trade, environment, security, public health, transport – the return to bipolarity has had a major impact. The implications of this are simple but profound: rules and norms that conflict in some way with the preferences of the Chinese government will no longer necessarily be
For over five decades, the Cold War security agenda was distinguished by the principal strategic balance, that of a structure of bipolarity, between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR). This book seeks to draw from current developments in critical security studies in order to establish a new framework of inquiry for security in the Middle East. It addresses the need to redefine security in the Middle East. The focus is squarely on the Arab-Israeli context in general, and the Palestinian-Israeli context in particular. The character of Arab-Israeli relations are measured by the Israeli foreign policy debate from the 1950s to the 1990s. A dialogue between Islam and Islamism as a means to broaden the terrain on which conflict resolution and post-bipolar security in the Middle East is to be understood is presented. The Middle East peace process (MEPP) was an additional factor in problematizing the military-strategic concept of security in the Middle East. The shift in analysis from national security to human security reflects the transformations of the post-Cold War era by combining military with non-military concerns such as environmental damage, social unrest, economic mismanagement, cultural conflict, gender inequity and radical fundamentalism. By way of contrast to realist international relations (IR) theory, developing-world theorists have proposed a different set of variables to explain the unique challenges facing developing states. Finally, the book examines the significance of ecopolitics in security agendas in the Middle East.
argued that the human rights campaign took on a mainly anti-Soviet character, undermining its initial universalism, creating new frictions with the Soviet Union and, in the end, damaging bipolar détente. But this was a minority position. A more common critique underlined Carter’s inability to respond to the Soviet threat, as the White House had directed its human rights campaign against some allied regimes while ignoring Soviet totalitarianism. Jeane Kirkpatrick, Nathan Glazer, Oscar Handlin and Seymour Martin Lipset were among the intellectuals interviewed by
on the Elimination of All Forms of Racism. In submitting these documents to the Senate for ratification, he also urged the ratification of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, which had been languishing in the Senate since the early 1950s. Human rights took centre stage in bipolar relations as well. While the president was determined to strengthen détente, he repeatedly chastened the Soviets for their human rights abuses. 1 To many scholars, these early initiatives contributed to moving American international action away from Cold War
From late 1978 and throughout 1979, SALT II dominated bipolar relations and the political debate within the United States. Its realization, however, had to overcome two obstacles. The first emerged from bipolar relations. The events of early 1978 had poisoned American–Soviet relations and weakened détente. American pressures had not prevented the USSR and Cuba from intervening in the war between Ethiopia and Somalia, nor had they succeeded in stopping the trials of Natan Sharansky and other prominent dissidents. Negotiations on arms control, which had made
of the business community, supporters of arms control and the demilitarization of American foreign policy, as well as many academicians holding realist assumptions about the international system, blamed Carter’s campaign for worsening bipolar relations. 7 Indeed, there were many contradictions and shortcomings in Carter’s human rights campaign. How could the White House integrate the promotion of human rights into other foreign policy concerns? How could it develop a policy that was supposed to be at once universal and based on case-by-case action? How could it
multipolarisation discourse: a short history It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the debate concerning the stability of various configurations of polarity – be they multipolarity, bipolarity, or more recently unipolarity – is central to the development of International Relations (IR) theory as an academic enterprise. We can date the origins of this debate at least as far back as the release of the first edition of Hans Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations in 1948, where the virtues of multipolarity were advanced in preference to the emerging Cold War
Does the United States still harbour ambitions to regain its (albeit fleeting) unipolar status? Or is it instead resigned to an existence as simply one of a number of great powers in a multipolar era? 1 In what ways is the increasingly multipolar strategic environment encouraging new forms of competition that may threaten stability? Alternatively, will the increasingly competitive US–China relationship dominate world politics, creating what would therefore be a new bipolarity? International
, 72–86). Huntington (Huntington 1997 , 19) himself anticipated the need for balancing in his analysis of emerging conflict among the world's powerful civilizations such as Judeo-Christian, Russian Orthodox, and Muslim. Thus, cultural splits may have the power to supplant political and military divisions. At the same time, others contend that the concept of balance of power has “declining relevance” in the current century, in the sense that the fears of people and leaders are no longer as state based as they once were (Mansbach 2005 , 142). The Bipolar