Civil Wars as Challenges to the Modern International System

Daedalus ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 146 (4) ◽  
pp. 112-125
Author(s):  
Hendrik Spruyt
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
International System ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Legal Regime ◽  
Civil Conflicts ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Reasonable Solution ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Lock In ◽  
External Intervention

The current international system is based on Westphalian principles in which authority is defined territorially. Within this territory, the state has sole jurisdiction. Adherence to these principles has contributed to the decline of interstate war. Conversely, applying these principles and correlated norms to states that gained their independence after 1945 has contributed to civil conflicts. These norms are opaque, as is the case with the principle of self-determination; or they lock in an unstable status quo, as with uti possidetis, the principle that borders inherited at the moment of independence should always be maintained; or they are inconsistently applied and often violated, as with the principle of noninterference. Consequently, they provide poor guidelines as to when, and on which grounds, external intervention in civil wars might be warranted. I argue that the degree to which the combatants challenge Westphalian principles should guide policy responses. Furthermore, the international legal regime should reconsider uti possidetis. In some instances, partition might be a reasonable solution to civil wars.

Systemic Causes of Civil Wars

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Hironaka
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
International System ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Civil Conflicts ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
Period 2 ◽  
Structural Poverty ◽  
The Cold War

Civil wars in the contemporary world are deeply interpenetrated by international influences. There are six different conceptions of the international system and their effects on civil conflicts: (1) the realist conception and the superpower interventions of the Cold War period, (2) the liberal institutional conception and the diplomatic mediation of the United Nations, (3) global cultural influences such as world religions, democratization and education, (4) the global economy and structural poverty, (5) transnational bilateral relations with neighboring states, and (6) the planetary ecosystem and the effects of climate change. Taken together, these international influences have a weighty effect on the conduct and duration of contemporary civil wars.

scholarly journals Civil Wars & the Structure of World Power

Daedalus ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 146 (4) ◽  
pp. 167-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry R. Posen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Political System ◽  
International System ◽  
Policy Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Wide Margin ◽  
The World ◽  
Middle Powers ◽  
External Intervention

The “policy science” of civil wars, which emerged in the early 1990s, included deeply embedded assumptions about the nature of the international political system. It was taken for granted that the United States would remain the strongest power by a wide margin, and that it would lead a liberal coalition that included virtually all the other strong states in the world. Some students of international politics believe that the nature of the system is changing. Though the United States is likely to remain much more powerful than its global competitors, several consequential powers have emerged to challenge U.S. leadership and produce a multipolar system. As power begins to even out at the top of the international system, the influence of middle powers may also grow. This new constellation of power seems likely to magnify disagreements about how states suffering civil wars should be stabilized, limit preventive diplomacy, produce external intervention that will make for longer and more destructive wars, and render settlements more difficult to police.

Anxious Breath

Screen Bodies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-128
Author(s):  
Lara Bochmann ◽  
Erin Hampson
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Short Film ◽  
Affective States ◽  
The World ◽  
In Trans ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Everyday Task

This article is a theoretical, audiovisual, and personal exploration of being a trans and non-binary person and the challenges this position produces at the moment of entering the outside world. Getting ready to enter public space is a seemingly mundane everyday task. However, in the context of a world that continuously fails or refuses to recognize trans and non-binary people, the literal act of stepping outside can mean to move from a figurative state of self-determination to one of imposition. We produced a short film project called Step Out to delve into issues of vulnerability and recognition that surface throughout experiences of crossing the threshold into public space. It explores the acts performed as preparation to face the world, and invokes the emotions this can conquer in trans and non-binary people. Breathing is the leading metaphor in the film, indicating existence and resistance simultaneously. The article concludes with a discussion of affective states and considers them, along with failed recognition, through the lens of Lauren Berlant’s concept of “cruel optimism.”

Territorial Sovereignty

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Stilz
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
International Law ◽  
International System ◽  
Core Values ◽  
The State ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Territorial Sovereignty ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
Political Units ◽  
Territorial States

This book offers a qualified defense of a territorial states system. It argues that three core values—occupancy, basic justice, and collective self-determination—are served by an international system made up of self-governing, spatially defined political units. The defense is qualified because the book does not actually justify all of the sovereignty rights states currently claim and that are recognized in international law. Instead, the book proposes important changes to states’ sovereign prerogatives, particularly with respect to internal autonomy for political minorities, immigration, and natural resources. Part I of the book argues for a right of occupancy, holding that a legitimate function of the international system is to specify and protect people’s preinstitutional claims to specific geographical places. Part II turns to the question of how a state might acquire legitimate jurisdiction over a population of occupants. It argues that the state will have a right to rule a population and its territory if it satisfies conditions of basic justice and facilitates its people’s collective self-determination. Finally, Parts III and IV of this book argue that the exclusionary sovereignty rights to control over borders and natural resources that can plausibly be justified on the basis of the three core values are more limited than has traditionally been thought.

scholarly journals The hierarchical society: the politics of self-determination and the constitution of new states after 1919

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-396
Author(s):  
Maja Spanu
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Society ◽  
International System ◽  
World Politics ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
World War ◽  
New States ◽  
History Of

International Relations scholarship disconnects the history of the so-called expansion of international society from the presence of hierarchies within it. In contrast, this article argues that these developments may in fact be premised on hierarchical arrangements whereby new states are subject to international tutelage as the price of acceptance to international society. It shows that hierarchies within international society are deeply entrenched with the politics of self-determination as international society expands. I substantiate this argument with primary and secondary material on the Minority Treaty provisions imposed on the new states in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe admitted to the League of Nations after World War I. The implications of this claim for International Relations scholarship are twofold. First, my argument contributes to debates on the making of the international system of states by showing that the process of expansion of international society is premised on hierarchy, among and within states. Second, it speaks to the growing body of scholarship on hierarchy in world politics by historicising where hierarchies come from, examining how diverse hierarchies are nested and intersect, and revealing how different actors navigate these hierarchies.

scholarly journals The Role of Mass Media in World Politics: Media Coverage of Battles for Capital Cities during Civil Conflicts

2018 ◽  
pp. 7-21
Author(s):  
A. Adelgareeva ◽  
I. Okunev
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Media Content ◽  
International News ◽  
Global Media ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Civil Conflicts ◽  
Political News

The article centers on the political aspects of international news making, i.e. the coverage of major political news by global media. Nowadays we are witnessing rising interest towards the modus operandi of global media, its newly-acquired functions and its role as a world politics actor. In this study new empirical data is used to assess the role global media plays in the representation of major civil conflicts and to revisit the commonly-accepted understanding of its political functions. With the help of discourse analysis, the authors investigate the realities of the civil wars in Libya and Syria through the lens of their representations in international news, the aim being to unveil the influence of the existing social frames on the pertinent media content.

scholarly journals The principle of self-determination in the family law through history and today

2004 ◽  
pp. 159-178
Author(s):  
Gordana Kovacek-Stanic
Keyword(s):  
Parental Care ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Civil Code ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
200Th Anniversary ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Moment

In the jubilee year 2004, Serbia marks the 200th anniversary of The First Serbian Uprising, structuring of modern Serbian state and its legal system comparatively speaking, France marks the 200th anniversary of passing the French Civil Code, one of the most significant civil codifications in the 19th century. It was an occasion to study certain institutions of family law through history and today. The used approach is modern, we studied the ways how the principle of self-determination influenced the family-legal solutions today, and we investigated if one could talk about the effect of this principle in the historical sense, too. The principle of self-determination implies the possibility for the subjects of family-legal relations to arrange their own relations themselves ? both the partner and parent relations. However, this principle undergoes significant limitations in the family law because the family relations are personal relations by character, as well as because of the need to protect the weaker participant, both the weaker partner or a child who needs protection stemming from his/her very status. Within marriage law, the principle of self-determination of the spouses (extramarital partners) is, among other things, made concrete through the possibility for an agreement about the effects of marriage (extramarital union), then through the possibility of agreed divorce, while the procedure of mediation in the marriage litigation contributes to the realization of the mentioned principle. As for the effects of marriage (extramarital union), the paper particularly discusses property relations, that is the marriage property contract, because it is at the moment a current issue in our domestic law. Within the relations between parents and children, the concretization of the principle of self-determination in parental care is significant, particularly in the situations when the relations between the parents were disturbed and resulted in a separation or a divorce with the joint parental care (application of the parental right). All institutions are analyzed in the positive law, in the historical context (solutions from the Serbian Civil Code the former Hungarian Law), and viewed comparatively in the European legal systems of the east and west European countries.

scholarly journals Lisa Hultman, Jacob D. Kathman and Megan Shannon: Peacekeeping in the Midst of War

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-115
Author(s):  
Barbora Valíková
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽  
Violence Reduction ◽  
Civil Conflicts ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Large N ◽  
Police Personnel ◽  
Significant Research ◽  
Research Gap ◽  
Peacekeeping Missions

Are United Nations peacekeeping missions effective at reducing violence in civil wars? Although UN peacekeeping is a notable intervention tool, the international community lacks systematic knowledge of how well it mitigates civil war violence. Given that UN peacekeeping is increasingly used in the midst of war, this is a significant research gap with direct policy relevance. This book systematically explores if and how the capacity and constitution of UN peacekeeping missions affect the amount of violence in civil conflicts. It argues that peacekeeping effectiveness needs to be assessed in relative terms, theorizing that more robust missions are increasingly capable of addressing combatant incentives for employing violence. The authors conduct large-n analyses of the number of combatants and civilians killed during each month for all civil wars globally from 1992 to 2014, measuring the capacity and constitution of UN missions with unique data on the number and type of peacekeeping personnel deployed. The analyses reveal that increasing UN military troop and police personnel deployed to a conflict significantly reduces violence against civilians, and increasing UN military troop personnel significantly mitigates battle-related violence. By contrast, smaller missions and missions composed of observers are not associated with reduced violence. The book complements the large-n analyses with qualitative explorations of peacekeeping mechanisms on violence in Côte d’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The authors conclude that while peacekeeping is not without detriments, it is an effective tool of violence reduction.

scholarly journals The grounds for initiation of service-related objects of patent law in the system of the MIA of Russia

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (3) ◽  
pp. 44-51
Author(s):  
Aleksandr Molchanov ◽  
Elizaveta Zaytseva
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Design ◽  
Patent Law ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
Utility Model ◽  
Legal Regime ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Correct Definition ◽  
Internal Affairs ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Definition Of

The article is devoted to the study of the grounds for initiation of service-related objects of patent law in the system of the Ministry of the Internal Affairs of Russia. The authors define the conditions necessary for the recognition of the service-related character of an invention, utility model, or industrial design. This is especially important for the correct definition of the legal regime of the created results and the application of legal consequences to the relations arising between the subjects. The purpose of the work is to analyse the grounds for initiation of service-related objects in the system of the Ministry of the Internal Affairs of Russia. As a result of the study, the legal relationships between the subjects of patent law in the system of the Ministry of the Internal Affairs of Russia, the grounds for their occurrence and the specifics are analysed, the question of the relationships between the moment of creation of the service-related product and the period of validity of the working contract between the author and the employer are determined, the procedure of distributing intellectual rights to service-related products, including those created as a result of the joint creative activity of several persons are clarified, other conditions and criteria for vesting an invention, utility model, industrial design with a service-related character are determined. As a separate basis, a civil law contract is highlighted, which has essential importance in the implementation of service-related objects of patent law in the system of the Ministry of the Internal Affairs of Russia. The analysis of legal norms revealed the lack of the legally fixed list of the grounds for the initiation of service-related objects of patent law, and therefore a number of controversial issues arising in practice require additional clarification.

Civil War and Revolution

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Parry
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Just Cause ◽  
Popular Support ◽  
Civil Conflicts ◽  
Ethics Of War ◽  
National Defence

The vast majority of work on the ethics of war focuses on traditional wars between states. This chapter aims to show that this is an oversight worth rectifying. The strategy is largely comparative, assessing whether certain claims often defended in discussions of interstate wars stand up in the context of civil conflicts and whether there are principled moral differences between the two types of case. Firstly, the chapter argues that thinking about intrastate wars may help us make progress on important theoretical debates in recent just war theory. Secondly, it considers whether certain kinds of civil wars are subject to a more demanding standard of just cause, compared to interstate wars of national defence. Finally, it assesses the extent to which having popular support is an independent requirement of permissible war and whether this renders insurgencies harder to justify than wars fought by functioning states.

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