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above all guided by a realpolitik that extended far beyond the religious realm and was based on two dynamics: internally, a power struggle that kept the community profoundly divided; and externally, growing control over the town by state authorities in Strasbourgand Paris. Despite employing a shrewd strategy meant to blunt both forces, officials in this community ultimately failed to hold back either one
want or need to consider the social and economic relations that have generated precarity, which can be affected in turn by humanitarian interventions. Yet the trade-offs between the privileges and advantages of differently positioned subjects, both domestic and overseas, are intrinsic to governance. Governments act on humanitarian concerns both to sustain their legitimacy and to ameliorate disorder. 2 The realpolitik of humanitarian
a show set in a fictional medieval (and magical) world and a programme tracking real-world political events, House of Cards and Game of Thrones deal with similar issues in comparable ways. The quest for power and the realist means of its pursuit and maintenance unite these two shows and are a significant draw for their fans. This chapter explores this theme of realpolitik, as the prioritisation of the practical in the pursuit of power, over the moral or ideological. It is structured in three parts. First, the chapter recaps what is at stake for fictional
American television was about to be revolutionised by the advent of video on demand in 2007, when Netflix, having delivered over one billion DVDs, introduced streaming. This book explores the role that fictional television has played in the world politics of the US in the twenty-first century. It focuses on the second golden age of television, which has coincided with the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald J. Trump. The book is structured in three parts. Part I considers what is at stake in rethinking the act of watching television as a political and academic enterprise. Part II considers fictional television shows dealing explicitly with the subject matter of formal politics. It explores discourses of realpolitik in House of Cards and Game of Thrones, arguing that the shows reinforce dominant assumptions that power and strategy inevitably trump ethical considerations. It also analyses constructions of counterterrorism in Homeland, The West Wing, and 24, exploring the ways in which dominant narratives have been contested and reinforced since the onset of the War on Terror. Part III considers television shows dealing only implicitly with political themes, exploring three shows that make profound interventions into the political underpinnings of American life: The Wire, The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad. Finally, the book explores the legacies of The Sopranos and Mad Men, as well as the theme of resistance in The Handmaid's Tale.
seeing an anti-diplomatic tipping-point on the horizon. In lieu of radical variation in contemporary diplomatic practices, when it comes to speculating about diplomacy’s future, the most pronounced difference we may take as a starting-point is arguably the one hinted at in Chapter 1 – that between so-called ‘old’ and ‘new’ diplomacy. Old diplomacy is what we know from the European nineteenth century: a Realpolitik-oriented state diplomacy focused on presenting the world with unilaterally wrought changes, so-called faits accomplis . Russia’s 2014 unilateral land
, anarchist and alternative globalisation cultures, these processes take time, patience and understanding. How one extrapolates this into global terms is something that also requires consideration. Towards a global anarchist realpolitik In a famous television debate in 1980, Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault argued about the extent to which international laws on human rights or the United Nations were forms of moral and political advancement. Whilst the respective opinions are interesting – Chomsky thought this was a form of progress, Foucault did not – the reasons for
order represent the first phase of globalisation.13 This principle became a guiding light for liberal internationalists who emerged from the Second World War determined to complete Wilson’s dream, but this time around, they worked hard to construct a robust institutional framework around this principle that would willingly sacrifice the purity of the vision against the realpolitik of the times. The liberal foundations of globalisation 11 Notes 1 D. Zanuck, ‘Preface to ‘Wilson’, in John Gassner and Dudley Nichols (eds), Best Film Plays of 1943–1944 (New York
Republic, Burundi, and Guinea, for example, dealing with migration and the impact of transience in individual lives and entire communities of people. In this interview, she reflects on the structural and institutional constraints on World Bank art programmes, but also how realpolitik and worldwide political events affect the logistics of international art institutions, which often depend on the support of authorities and are affected by international conflicts, and also creators of partnerships. She also explains how the World Bank supports and protects artists
signifying Europe at the end of modernity, a trademark European fin de siècle . Kosovo between Idealpolitik and Realpolitik Kosovo is the first war in history said to be fought in pursuit of principle, not interest. What is at stake is a radical revision of the moral (and, perhaps subsequently, the legal and institutional) basis of the international system. The
Kosovo problems, discussing which rationales and motives can, in the absence of any convincing Realist interests, best explain NATO’s and Russia’s decision to go to war. In the final section, I show how Chechnya and Kosovo are linked, both by Realpolitik and, perhaps more directly, by each being the focal point of an on-going war of interpretation. The outcome of each of these wars of interpretation