Mythologies and narratives of victimization pervade contemporary Croatia, set against the backdrop of militarized notions of masculinity and the political mobilization of religion and nationhood. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in rural Dalmatia in the Croatian-Bosnian border region, this book provides a unique account of the politics of ambiguous Europeanness from the perspective of those living at Europe's margins. Examining phenomena such as Marian apparitions, a historic knights tournament, the symbolic re-signification of a massacre site, and the desolate social situation of Croatian war veterans, Narrating Victimhood traces the complex mechanisms of political radicalization in a post-war scenario. This book provides a new perspective for understanding the ongoing processes of transformation in Southeastern Europe and the Balkans.

Torn by ongoing civil and military violence, Africa presents a challenge to scholars interested in the root causes of conflict. Each conflict is unique, but overall they exhibit common patterns. The contributors of this book employ an eclectic array of current explanations of civil strife and how to resolve it. The first half of the book provides the relevant theoretical background. Theories of conflict and conflict resolution, the larger context of African strife in Africa, and patterns and trends of conflict are discussed. Shifting from the general to the particular, the remaining chapters of this volume gauge the accuracy and usefulness of the current thinking on conflicts by grounding it in case studies drawn from the Great Lakes Region, Liberia, Nigeria, and Zambia.

This title offers a novel cross-disciplinary theoretical perspective on conflict and conflict transformation in world society. The Middle East will continue to be a focus for theories of Conflict Studies and IR for some time to come. This book offers a new perspective (modern systems theory) on the study of conflicts. It covers conflict in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan plus Egypt as well as Israel - the types of domestic, inter-state and global conflict dimensions which emanate from this region are at the heart of any analysis of conflict (and cooperation) dynamics in the entire Arab-Israeli region. It integrates the study of conflicts in the Middle East region into a modern systems theoretical framework.

Ten years after the end of the war, Bosnian ethnicity continues to matter and the country remains dependent on international intervention. The Dayton Peace Accord signed in 1995 successfully ended the war, but froze the ethnic conflict in one of the most complex systems of government in the world. The book provides an in-depth analysis of governance in this divided post-war country, providing important lessons for international intervention elsewhere around the world, from Afghanistan to Iraq.

The problems of peacekeeping in Somalia, Rwanda and former Yugoslavia marked a turning point for major powers in international military peacekeeping. Major support for a more pro-active UN role in peacekeeping has not been forthcoming and where major power involvement is deemed vital, non-UN peace operations have increasingly become the norm. This valuable volume explores the continuing significance of peacekeeping in international affairs, particularly in terms of its military dimensions, and examines the priorities and perspectives of the major powers in relation to their military participation in international peacekeeping and wider peace operations in the twenty-first century. It is ideal for scholars and students interested in contemporary international politics, international relations, international organizations, security and strategic studies, conflict resolution and foreign policy analysis.

This book looks at major contemporary conflicts -intra and interstate- in Southeast Asia from a conflict management perspective. Starting with the view that the conventional ASEAN conflict-management methods have ceased to be effective, it looks for new conflict-management patterns and trends by investigating seven contemporary cases of conflict in the region. Focusing on the incompatibilities involved in each case and examining how they have been managed-whether by integration, co-existence, elimination or maneuvering around the conflict-the book sheds new light on the significance of managing conflict in achieving and maintaining the stability of the Southeast Asian region. It makes a significant theoretical contribution to the field of peace and conflict studies by proposing the concept of "mediation regime" as the key to understanding current conflict management within ASEAN.

Dealing with Conflict in Africa analyzes the roles of the various organizations involved in conflict resolution in Africa. The first section of the book deals with the overall issues associated with cooperation between regional organizations and the United Nations, as well as how the United Nations has approached this issue in Africa. In the second section, six case studies examine the major conflicts in Africa, such as the Congo War. For each case study, the author looks at what responsibilities and tasks were taken on by different organizations, the relationship between the organizations, and which ones are most effective in working towards successful conflict resolution. The contributors also examine the effectiveness of coalitions or leaders in comparison to the UN and regional organizations. The contributors are an international group of scholars and consultants, all of whom are well positioned to analyze these issues.

Britain's Long War assesses the process of strategic change within the British Government's position on Northern Ireland, starting with Westminster's first intervention in 1969 and ending with the Belfast Agreement in 1998. Drawing on a vast range of primary sources including recently released cabinet papers, Peter Neumann analyzes the aims, strategy and restraints of British policy in Northern Ireland. MARKET 1: Undergraduates and Postgraduates studying British Politics; Northern Ireland; Modern British History; International Conflict; Ethnic Conflict; International Relations

This study contributes to the debate on whether defense spending encourages or hinders economic growth. The effect of politics on economic growth in developing societies is assessed, with a focus on the Middle East. The study is the first to add conflict variables to the production function defense-growth model and test them empirically across countries and regions, and provide robust empirical evidence on the differential effects of interstate and intrastate conflicts on economic growth. The study provides compelling empirical evidence and guidelines to policy decision makers on how to allocate the resources of their states and adopt policies that promote political economic development. The study urges Third World leaders to improve levels of freedom, democracy, and openness of their political systems because the results confirm that political factors are at least as important as economic factors in promoting economic growth. Furthermore, the results attest that the reallocation of resources from military to the civilian sector is the sine qua non to improve the performance of developing countries' economies.

This book examines the role of collective violence in the achievement of solidarity, shedding light on the difficulty faced by sociology in theorizing violence and warfare as a result of the discipline's tendency to idealize society in an attempt to legitimize the idea of progressive social change. Using the global War on Terror as a focal point, the authors develop this argument through the related issues of power, knowledge, and ethics, explaining the War on Terror in terms of the Anglo-American tradition of imperial power and domination. Exploring the victimage rituals through which society is brought together in the ritual domination and destruction of a constructed "villain," Progressive Violence: Theorizing the War on Terror also considers the price of the liberal moral values in terms of which the global war on terror is frequently justified, and the volume of "progressive violence" involved in advancing the cause of freedom. The authors use this case to theorize the general role of vicarious victimage ritual in the social genesis of political violence and sadism, and its calculated use by politicians to achieve their imperial aims. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and social theory with interests in terrorism, violence, and geopolitics.

Due to its intensity and extensive effects both locally and globally, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has drawn the attention of scholars from numerous disciplines, who attempt to explain the causes of the conflict and the reasons for the difficulties in resolving it. Among these one can find historians, geographers, political scientists, sociologists and others. This volume explores the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a social psychology perspective. At the core of the book is a theory of intractable conflicts, as developed by Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University, applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Opening with an introduction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict situation and a few chapters on the theoretical backgrounds of the creation of a societal ethos of conflict, the volume then moves to an analysis of the psycho-social underpinnings of the conflict, while concluding with a discussion of the possibility of long-standing peace in the region. Among the topics included in the coverage are: * Identity formation during conflict * The Israeli and Palestinian ethos of conflict * The important role of Palestinian and Israeli education * An analysis of the leadership in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process * The challenges and potential towards a road to peace in the region All contributors to the volume are pre-eminent scholars of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and many of them have felt the influence of Bar-Tal's formulations in their own work. A rich resource for those who are followers of Dr. Bar-Tal's work, for those who study intractable conflicts in all its forms, and for those who have a particular interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, A Social Psychology Perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian Case offers a detailed exploration of the psychological underpinnings of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the barriers to and opportunities of the peace process.

Mythologies and narratives of victimization pervade contemporary Croatia, set against the backdrop of militarized notions of masculinity and the political mobilization of religion and nationhood. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in rural Dalmatia in the Croatian-Bosnian border region, this book provides a unique account of the politics of ambiguous Europeanness from the perspective of those living at Europe's margins. Examining phenomena such as Marian apparitions, a historic knights tournament, the symbolic re-signification of a massacre site, and the desolate social situation of Croatian war veterans, Narrating Victimhood traces the complex mechanisms of political radicalization in a post-war scenario. This book provides a new perspective for understanding the ongoing processes of transformation in Southeastern Europe and the Balkans.

Beginning in January 2011, the Arab world exploded in a vibrant demand for dignity, liberty, and achievable purpose in life, rising up against an image and tradition of arrogant, corrupt, unresponsive authoritarian rule. These previously unpublished, country specific case studies of the uprisings and their still unfolding political aftermaths identify patterns and courses of negotiation and explain why and how they occur. The contributors argue that in uprisings like the Arab Spring negotiation is "not just a 'nice' practice or a diplomatic exercise." Rather, it is a "dynamically multilevel" process involving individuals, groups, and states with continually shifting priorities-and with the prospect of violence always near. From that perspective, the essay sits analyze a range of issues and events-including civil disobedience and strikes, mass demonstrations and nonviolent protest, and peaceful negotiation and armed rebellion-and contextualize their findings within previous struggles, both within and outside the Middle East. The Arab countries discussed include Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. The Arab Spring uprisings are discussed in the context of rebellions in countries like South Africa and Serbia, while the Libyan uprising is also viewed in terms of the negotiations it provoked within NATO. Collectively, the essays analyze the challenges of up risers and emerging governments in building a new state on the ruins of a liberated state; the negotiations that lead either to sustainable democracy or sectarian violence; and coalition building between former political and military adversaries.

This book examines and compares the diverging security approaches of the UK, China and India in peacebuilding settings, with a specific focus on the case of Nepal. Rising powers such as China and India dissent from traditional templates of peacebuilding and apply their own methods to respond to security issues. This book fills a gap in the literature by examining how emerging actors (China and India) engage with security and development and how their approaches differ from those of a traditional actor (the UK). In the light of democratic peace and regional security complex theories, the book interprets interview data to compare and contrast the engagement of these three actors with post-war Nepal, and the implications for security sector governance and peacebuilding. It contends that the UK helped to peacefully manage transition but that the institutional changes were merely ceremonial. China and India, by contrast, were more effective in advancing mutual security agendas through elite-level interactions. However, the 'hardware' of security, for example material and infrastructure support, gained more consideration than the 'software' of security, such as meritocratic governance and institution building. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, development studies, Asian politics, security studies and International Relations in general.

This book offers a theory and model of counterterrorism based on emancipation and non-violence. Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) scholars have produced wide-ranging and rich critiques of terrorism-related research, as well as state counterterrorism policies and practices. This work aims to fill in a gap in the current literature by constructing an original and specifically CTS model of counterterrorism. The model outlines the basic assumptions, priorities, principles, strategies and tactics, measures and evaluation of counterterrorism. It challenges prevalent models of counterterrorism through a radical rethinking of the ontology, epistemology and the agenda of counterterrorism. The model aims to prevent future acts of terrorism by (1) re-conceptualising how we study and understand terrorism, and; (2) suggesting that our efforts to counter and prevent terrorism must commensurate with the goals we want to achieve. Essentially, this involves a commitment to emancipation, and a rejection of violence as a tool. The second part of the book is a case study of Norwegian counterterrorism which shows how the theory and model developed in the book can be used. This is the first substantial analysis of Norwegian counterterrorism in almost ten years, and produces encouraging findings which support the potential for non-violent solutions to terrorism. This book will be of particular interest to students of terrorism and counterterrorism, critical security studies, and international relations in general.

Since the historic Nuremberg Trial of 1945 an international customary law principle has developed that commission of a core crime under international law - war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and aggression - should not go unpunished. History shows, that when in Africa such violations occurred, especially as a result of election disputes, national and regional actors, including the African Union, resorted to political rather than legal responses. However, when crimes against humanity were alleged to have been committed in Kenya during the 2007-2008 post-election violence, a promising road map for criminal accountability was agreed upon alongside a political solution. In the spirit of this road map, the author analyzes the post-election violence in Kenya from a legal point of view. He extensively examines legal options for domestic criminal accountability and discusses both retributive (prosecutions) and restorative justice (mainly truth commission) mechanisms, being the main legal responses to the gross violations of human rights. Furthermore, he thoroughly investigates the Kenya situation before the ICC and the legal-cum-political responses to the ICC intervention in Kenya. Practitioners and academics in the field of international criminal law and related disciplines, as well as political sciences and (legal) history will find in this book highly relevant information about alternative legal approaches of the fight against and punishment of crimes against humanity, as defined under the ICC Statute.

This book takes a novel look at the modern Middle East through the prisms of six cascading negative critical turning points. It identifies the seeds of a potential seventh in the collective dignity deficits generated by poor governance paradigms and exacerbated by geopolitical competition for the region's natural resources.

This book explores the last 25 years of international peacebuilding and recasts them as a growing crisis of confidence in universal ideas of peacebuilding and self-government. Since current peacebuilding interventions are abandoning domineering, top-down and linear methodologies, and experimenting with context-sensitive, self-reflexive and locally driven strategies, the book makes two suggestions. The first is that international policymakers are embracing some of the critiques of liberal peace. For more than a decade, scholarly critiques have pointed out the need to focus on everyday dynamics and local initiatives and resistances to liberal peace in order to enable hybrid and long-term practice-based strategies of peacebuilding. Now, the distance between the policy discourse and critical frameworks has narrowed. The second suggestion is that in stepping away from liberal peace, a transvaluation of peacebuilding values is occurring. Critiques are beginning to accept and valorise that international interventions will continuously fail to produce sensitive results. The earlier frustrations with unexpected setbacks, errors or contingencies are ebbing away. Instead, critiques normalise the failure to promote stability and peace. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, international intervention, conflict resolution, international organisations and security studies in general.

Although the Genocide Convention was already adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1945, it was only in the late 1990s that groups of activists emerged calling for military interventions to halt mass atrocities. The question of who these anti-genocide activists are and what motivates them to call for the use of violence to end violence is undoubtedly worthy of exploration. Based on extensive field research, Anti-genocide Activists and the Responsibility to Protect analyses the ideological convictions that motivate two groups of anti-genocide activists: East Timor solidarity activists and Responsibility to Protect (R2P)-advocates. The book argues that there is an existential undercurrent to the call for mass atrocity interventions; that mass atrocities shock the activists' belief in a humanity that they hold to be sacred. The book argues that the ensuing rise of anti-genocide activism signals a shift in humanitarian sensibilities to human suffering and violence which may have substantial implications for moral judgements on human lives at peril in the humanitarian and human rights community. This book provides a fascinating insight into the worldviews of activists which will be of interest to practitioners and researchers of human rights activism, humanitarian advocacy and peace building.

This book sheds new light on the security challenges for failed states posed by violent non-state armed actors (VNSAs). By focusing on the Syrian Civil War, it explores the characteristics, ideologies and strategies of the Islamic State (ISIS) and the People's Protection Units (YPG), as well as the regional and geopolitical impacts of these VNSAs. The contributors also cover topics such as the re-imagination of borders, the YPG's demands for national sovereignty, and the involvement of regional and global powers in the Syrian crisis. "This timely volume by regional scholars and experts examines various aspects of the emergence and expansion of violent non-state actors in the Syrian/Iraqi conflict. The wealth of detail and approaches enhance our understanding of the transformation and dynamics of contemporary conflicts within and beyond the region." Keith Krause, The Graduate Institute, Geneva "This book opens fascinating glimpses into contrasting forms of "state-like" governance established by non-state actors, ISIS and the Kurdish PYD. [...] It is an important source for students of the Syrian conflict, civil wars, failed states and hybrid governance."Raymond Hinnebusch, Director Centre for Syrian Studies, University of St. Andrews "This book is an excellent resource for those looking for an interdisciplinary account of VNSAs during the Syrian civil war. It makes a nice contribution to the study of violent non state actors and poses a set of new and pressing questions." Max Abrahms, Northeastern University.

Can war be justified? Pacifists answer that it cannot; they oppose war and advocate for nonviolent alternatives to war. But defenders of just war theory argue that in some circumstances, when the effectiveness of nonviolence is limited, wars can be justified. In this book, two philosophers debate this question, drawing on contemporary scholarship and new developments in thinking about pacifism and just war theory. Andrew Fiala defends the pacifist position, while Jennifer Kling defends just war traditions. Fiala argues that pacifism follows from the awful reality of war and the nonviolent goal of building a more just and peaceful world. Kling argues that war is sometimes justified when it is a last-ditch, necessary effort to defend people and their communities from utter destruction and death. Pulling from global traditions and histories, their debate will captivate anyone who has wondered or worried about the morality of political violence and military force. Topics discussed include ethical questions of self-defense and other-defense, the great analogy between individuals and states, evolving technologies and methods of warfighting, moral injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, broader political and communal issues, and the problem of regional security in a globalizing world. The authors consider cultural and religious issues as well as the fundamental question of moral obligation in a world saturated in military conflict. The book was written in the aftermath of the war on terrorism and includes reflection on lessons learned from the past decades of war, as well as hopes for the future in light of emerging threats in Europe and elsewhere. The book is organized in a user-friendly fashion. Each author presents a self-contained argument, which is followed by a series of responses, replies, and counter-arguments. Throughout, the authors model civil discourse by emphasizing points of agreement and remaining areas of disagreement. The book includes reader-friendly summaries, a glossary of key concepts, and suggestions for further study. All of this will help students and scholars follow the authors' dialogue so they may develop their own answer to the question of whether war can be justified. Key Features Summarizes the debate between pacifism and just war theory Considers historical and traditional sources as well as contemporary scholarship and applications Models philosophical dialogue and civil discourse, while seeking common ground Discusses issues of concern in contemporary warfighting and peacemaking, while offering an analysis of the war on terrorism

This book investigates the modern privatisation of war. It specifically focuses on the legal regime regulating private military and security company (PMSC) personnel in armed conflicts. The law regulating PMSC personnel is analysed from two perspectives. Firstly, can one of the three following legal statuses established by international humanitarian law - "mercenary", "combatant" or "civilian" - be applied to PMSC personnel? Secondly, the book employs a context-dependent methodology to explore the legal regime regulating PMSC personnel. It argues that the legal regime regulating PMSC personnel in armed conflicts depends on who hires them: individual states, the United Nations, non-governmental organisations, or armed groups. This approach represents a departure from previous literature, where attention has primarily been paid to the use of PMSCs by states.

"Understanding Collective Political Violence" offers a unique view on contemporary processes of violent political mobilization across continents: Africa, Latin America, South East Asia and the Middle East. It pays particular attention to unconventional combatants such as women or children and details the drivers of their violent engagement.

To witness war is, in large part, to hear it. And to survive it is, among other things, to have listened to it-and to have listened through it. Listening to War: Sound, Music, Trauma, and Survival in Wartime Iraq is a groundbreaking study of the centrality of listening to the experience of modern warfare. Based on years of ethnographic interviews with U.S. military service members and Iraqi civilians, as well as on direct observations of wartime Iraq, author J. Martin Daughtry reveals how these populations learned to extract valuable information from the ambient soundscape while struggling with the deleterious effects that it produced in their ears, throughout their bodies, and in their psyches. Daughtry examines the dual-edged nature of sound-its potency as a source of information and a source of trauma-within a sophisticated conceptual frame that highlights the affective power of sound and the vulnerability and agency of individual auditors. By theorizing violence through the prism of sound and sound through the prism of violence, Daughtry provides a productive new vantage point for examining these strangely conjoined phenomena. Two chapters dedicated to wartime music in Iraqi and U.S. military contexts show how music was both an important instrument of the military campaign and the victim of a multitude of violent acts throughout the war. A landmark work within the study of conflict, sound studies, and ethnomusicology, Listening to War will expand your understanding of the experience of armed violence, and the experience of sound more generally. At the same time, it provides a discrete window into the lives of individual Iraqis and Americans struggling to orient themselves within the fog of war.

This book offers a detailed examination of the effectiveness of the peacekeeping operations of the African Union. Despite its growing reputation in peacekeeping and its status as the oldest continental peacekeeper, the performance of the African Union (AU) has hitherto not been assessed. This book fills that gap and analyses six case studies: Burundi, Comoros, Somalia, Mali, Darfur and the Central African Republic. From a methodological perspective it takes a problem-solving approach and utilises process tracing in its analysis, with its standard for success resting on achieving negative peace (the cessation of violence and provision of security). Theoretically, this study offers a comprehensive list of factors drawn from peace literature and field experience which influence the outcome of peacekeeping. Beyond the major issues, such as funding, international collaboration and mandate, this work also examines the impact of largely ignored factors such as force integrity and territory size. The book modifies the claim of peace literature on what matters for success and advocates the indispensability of domestic elite cooperation, local initiative and international political will. It recognises the necessity of factors such as lead state and force integrity for certain peace operations. In bringing these factors together, this study expands the peacekeeping debate on what matters for stability in conflict areas. This book will be of much interest to students of peacekeeping, African politics, war and conflict studies, and International Relations in general.