1,721,012 research outputs found
A sense of place : understanding the 2013 Stockholm riots
Get PDFAbstract: In May 2013, Stockholm was shaken by six days of riots that started in one of its Northern suburbs, Husby, but soon spread to other parts of the city and country. This essay reports on a field trip to Stockholm and sets the riots within the Swedish urban context
Empire in disgrace : (post-)imperial Belgium and the politics of shame
No full textAbstract: This PhD thesis aims to gain insight into how the politics of shame manifest itself on the state level. A wide range of observers note the presence of shame in contemporary world politics but International Relations (IR) literature has generally refrained from theorizing on this emotion. However, recent contributions that surround the notion of ontological security have engaged with the term \u2018state shame\u2019. The current dissertation presents several critiques on how this concept has been conceived in this literature and argues for a more grounded notion based on works in feminist studies, the sociology of emotions, and political theory. Rather than an \u2018inability to narrate the state\u2019s sense of Self\u2019, state shame is conceived in this dissertation as a narrative on the negative assessment of the state. This understanding informs a comprehensive typology that can intelligibly capture the elaborate and diverse politics of shame on the state level. The novel conceptualisation of state shame-as-a-narrative is grounded in a historical case study of Belgium and its (post-)imperial past. Three specific moments in this history are studied using both structural narrative analysis and interpretative sentiment analysis of parliamentary records, namely the Red Rubber scandal (1903-1908), Congolese independence (1959-1960), and the Lumumba Commission (1999-2002). The novel conception of state shame was able to bring insight into the particular dynamics of these episodes and make original contributions to the historiography of the Belgian empire. In effect, the dissertation concludes that state shame-as-a-narrative has analytical potential for both the discipline of IR and beyond
Democratic peace : a historical and cultural practice
No full textAbstract: This book advances the theory that \u201cdemocratic peace\u201d does not exclusively refer to an absence of war among democracies but should also be thought of as a particular way of \u201cdoing, thinking, and feeling\u201d peace. Democratic peace is not only then a statistical finding or a rhetorical commonplace invoked to justify foreign policy decisions. Rather, the notion also refers to a historically and culturally situated practice. Taking this reconceptualization as the theoretical point of departure, the author develops a historical reconstruction of democratic peace laying bare its historical background and assessing its political significance. Tentatively situating it within the cultural history of modernity, he reconstructs how the idea of a democratic peace informed diplomatic action at the onset of the Cold War and during the Arab Spring
Reconceptualizing Iran\u2019s regional influence : the case for authority
No full textAbstract: This dissertation provides a new theoretical and methodological approach for understanding the nature of Iran's influence over its regional allies. It argues that the existing literature lacks comprehensiveness, empirical accuracy, and theoretical solidity, leading to flawed conclusions about the scope, domain, and limits of Iran's power over these actors. It instead proposes to conceptualize Iran\u2019s influence relationships as relations of international authority, and argues that an authority-based approach avoids the limitations of overly idealist or rationalist analyses of Iranian regional influence. In an original theoretical contribution, the dissertation posits that authority-relationships develop through a process of discursive claim-making and recognition that occurs at the dyadic level. It contends that recognition is never flawless and varies based on the discursive backgrounds of the receiving audiences, leading to differences in the type of authority relationship that emerges between the claimant and its various subordinates. The dissertation presents a method through which the process of recognition can be systematically documented for each individual authority relationship, based on a comparison between the narrative through which authority is claimed and its resonance in the discourse of the recognizing audience. This method, which can be applied to all cases of international authority regardless of the social and historical context in which they appear, allows for a detailed understanding of the scope and limits of authority at the dyadic level. To illustrate the purchase of the theoretical and methodological innovations, the framework is applied to the relationship between Iran and Hezbollah. The dissertation finds that Hezbollah acknowledges Iran's authority to a significant extent but adjusts some of the fundamental principles of the Iranian claim to fit its Lebanese and Arab nationalist discursive environment. As a result, the degree of power that Iran can legitimately wield over Hezbollah is more limited than intended in the Iranian claim
Belgian strategic culture : a historical perspective on intelligence and security in Belgium
No full textAbstract: The Belgian intelligence and security services came under scrutiny when the threat of terrorism and the attacks on Paris and Brussels brought Belgian security front and center.This dissertation investigates the historical and political context within which the Belgian intelligence services were institutionalised and shaped. It attempts to define what is the Belgian security culture, and why the Belgium seemingly doesn't have it
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