1,720,958 research outputs found
‘Gatekeepers’ or ‘Gatecrashers’? Rethinking the Roles of International Institutions in Global Politics
Get PDFInternational politics as who gets what, when and how is now at its peak. Emerging powers are competing for a greater share of the world’s natural resources, while developed countries attempt to retain and wield greater influence in the international system. How these complexities interplay in the international system highlights conflicts of interests and many contradictions among states. These contradictions manifest at international institutions (especially the United Nations, UN, World Trade Organisation, WTO, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) arenas whose creations were a product of compromise among conflicting parties. Consequently, through these international organisations (IOs) states’ interests converge or diverge. IOs have been instrumental to the consolidation of the liberal developed states supremacy in an era described as the ‘end of history’ and perceived as platforms where structural weaknesses of weak states are exposed even though weak states still attempt to push for recognition of their agenda in a world mired in a ‘clash of civilizations’. Against this background, this article interrogates how IOs consolidate and compromise as well as define the roles, power, and limitations of sovereign states for influence or mere symbolism in international politics. For instance, the paper raises questions about why the proposed on the interests surrounding the proposed reforms of the United Nations Security Council in 2005 failed due to the interests surrounding it by some states. In addition, in 1996, the WTO panel, in a case between USA and Nicaragua, determined against the US and in favour of Nicaragua, the US blatantly refused to comply and the WTO did not challenge it. Thus, the article tries to analyse the structural imbalances in the power and influence of states in international politics through IOs. How well do international institutions legitimise powerful state’s sovereignty (gatekeepers roles) and delegitimise weak states’ sovereignty (gatecrashers roles)? The paper therefore concludes that what obtains now is international politics. For it to be global, consensus building, interest free dialogue, and not impositions as the case is at the moment, is crucial and essential for the reconciliation of the differences between and among states on the floor of many international institutions; a task which is still far to seek. International institutions are becoming more important in maintaining world order[1] [1] See Robert O. Keohane, “International Institutions: Can Interdependence Work?” Foreign Policy Issue 110, 1998
Stig Jarle Hansen. Al-Shabaab in Somalia: The History and Ideology of a Militant Islamist Group. London: Hurst and Company, 2016. xvi 213 pp. Foreword. Chronology. Glossary. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $21.95. Paper. ISBN: 978-0190264826
No full textA ÁFRICA E A HISTORIOGRAFIA DAS RELAÇÕES INTERNACIONAIS
Get PDFThis article examines what it calls Africa’s International Relations (IR) historiography, an assessment of African scholars’ contribution to the study of IR’s history and discipline. I do this based on the myth surrounding IR’s historiography, the rather limited role of African contributions and a set of criteria teased out of Schmidt and Bell’s works on the writing IR. While they acknowledge Hoffmann’s IR as an American Social Science, they suggest that a field’s historiography must highlight obscured perspectives, researchers that self-consciously profess IR as their discipline and institutions that contribute to the development of the discipline. Although African IR scholars meet some of these criteria, including institutions and scholars that self-profess as IR scholars, the American hegemony and its European competitor cum accomplice in the field greatly influence African scholars writings and the practices they adopt in the study of international relations. While African scholars bring African perspectives on global affairs to bare on the IR that they do, they mostly respond to theoretical, methodological and practical tones set elsewhere in doing so, some even countering these dominant views from “imported” theories, without necessarily developing African-oriented, philosophically grounded study on IR from the African perspective. Consequently, while African contributions to the discipline and history of IR appear marginal, African IR writers can expand their impacts by exploring the discipline of History – a view representing the eclectic nature of IR – and draw on African history and events to provide philosophical, theoretical and empirical insights to African IR study. While the postcolonial theory is an instance of such reflection, African IR scholars will make significant contributions to the field by introspection rather than reliance on Western-oriented canons.Este artigo examina o que chamamos de historiografia de Relações Internacionais (RI) da África, uma avaliação da contribuição de acadêmicos africanos para o estudo da história e da disciplina de RI. Faz-se isso com base no mito que cerca a historiografia das RI, o papel bastante limitado das contribuições africanas e um conjunto de critérios retirados dos trabalhos de Schmidt e Bell sobre a escrita das RI. Embora reconheçam as RI de Hoffmann como uma ciência social americana, eles sugerem que a historiografia de um campo deve destacar perspectivas obscuras, pesquisadores que professam conscientemente as RI como sua disciplina e instituições que contribuem para o desenvolvimento da disciplina. Embora estudiosos das RI africanos atendam a alguns desses critérios, incluindo instituições e acadêmicos que se autodeclaram como acadêmicos de RI, a hegemonia americana e seu concorrente europeu cúmplice no campo influenciam muito os escritos acadêmicos africanos e as práticas que adotam no estudo das relações internacionais. Enquanto acadêmicos africanos trazem perspectivas africanas sobre questões globais para descobrirem o que eles fazem, eles respondem principalmente a tons teóricos, metodológicos e práticos estabelecidos em outros lugares, alguns até mesmo contrariando essas visões dominantes de teorias “importadas”, sem necessariamente desenvolver filosoficamente fundamentados estudos sobre RI na perspectiva africana. Consequentemente, embora as contribuições africanas para a disciplina e história da RI pareçam marginais, os escritores africanos de RI podem expandir seus impactos explorando a disciplina da História - uma visão que representa a natureza eclética da RI - e basear-se na história e nos eventos africanos para fornecer dados teóricos e filosóficos e insights empíricos para o estudo de RI na África. Embora a teoria pós-colonial seja um exemplo de tal reflexão, os estudiosos africanos de relações internacionais farão contribuições significativas para o campo por meio da introspecção, em vez de dependerem dos cânones orientados para o Ocidente
Subaltern Securitization : The Use of Protest and Violence in Postcolonial Nigeria
No full textSecuritization theory (ST) makes an insightful and significant contribution to security studies. Through the use of discursive speech act, ST provides an innovative strategy for understanding the application of security’s distinctive character and dynamics to any issue in order to make it a security issue. Valuable as the theory is to security studies, the subaltern appear missing in existing securitization analyses. Even when the subaltern are examined, for instance in critiques of classical ST, they are conceived and presented as passive, lacking agency, voice, and power, and suffering from security silence problem. ST’s reliance on discursive speech act and focus on state political elite prevent it from capturing the subaltern and subaltern securitization process. Furthermore, while existing ST and critiques of securitization studies offer some direction regarding how the subaltern actors may securitize threats to their security, these perspectives are incidental and grossly underdeveloped. In order to resolve this problem, the current study takes a novel approach to securitization studies by investigating how subaltern actors engage in securitizing discourses and practices. By combining the Fanonian decolonial theory of emancipatory violence, where the nature of the (post)colonial context becomes visible with the theoretical insights of ST, the study shows that the subaltern are able to securitize using protest and violence. The subaltern use protest and violence to show their perception and identification of security threats, mobilize the subaltern audience, and challenge and confront the threatening subject – often times, the subaltern’s significant audience – to ensure that action is taken on issues concerning subaltern security. In addition to discourse, therefore, protest and violence serve as the subaltern’s instruments of political communication used by the subaltern to move issues beyond normal to the point of extraordinary politics. Consequently, protest and violence can force audiences – including the common people and the political elite – to imagine threats to subaltern security, typically perceived but sometimes real, and accept subaltern securitization moves, and where possible take actions that may amount to an alteration or a change in the order of things. Such change may either be in favour of subaltern’s perception of security or not. To uncover the essential dynamics of subaltern securitization, this study synthesizes a version of decolonial theory with elements of existing ST and focuses on the subaltern actors from below the state in Nigeria, a non-Western, postcolonial context. The results reveal that subaltern securitization is possible when members of the subaltern successfully mobilize themselves to collectively identify (real or perceived) threat to their security and in so doing challenging and confronting the threat. This makes their security concerns an issue of priority. The study concludes that desirable as subaltern securitization may be, especially to the subaltern, there is a tendency for subaltern securitization to obfuscate the danger that may lurk around subaltern’s attempts to securitize certain issues
The coloniality of power in postcolonial Africa : experiences from Nigeria
No full textWhile the coloniality of power underpins the continuity of colonial situations in postcolonial Africa, (neo)liberal thinking attempts to dismiss its place in Africa’s contemporary challenges, blaming instead anti-colonial struggles and the quest for complete decolonisation as the cause of these challenges. A focus on this neoliberal cum pro-colonial perspectives, at the expense of a corpus of post-, anti- and de-colonial writings that expose and challenge coloniality, however, inhibits our understanding of the consolidation, problematic place and impact of the coloniality of power in postcolonial Africa. Analysing the presence of colonial situations in policy choices and governance patterns, which link Africa’s postcolonial present to their colonial past, this paper claims that the coloniality of power retains its salience in postcolonial Africa. Illustrating with experiences from Nigeria, I show how this continues to structure the state of affairs in Africa even after formal colonialism has ended. This article contributes to the discourse on the legacies of colonialism in Africa.</p
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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