The Responsibility to Protect norm cluster and the challenge of atrocity prevention: an analysis of the European Union’s strategy in Myanmar

This article investigates the complex relationship between atrocity prevention and other related – yet distinct – norms of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm cluster. It analyses how this cluster operates to help states, and other actors, properly discharge their responsibility. Central to the analysis is the realisation that abstractly aligned norms can clash in practice. Based on an extensive analysis of the 67 European Union (EU) documents and statements referring to R2P, and drawing on elite interviews with EU diplomats, we find that atrocity prevention has been ‘grafted’ onto the EU’s other normative commitments – including conflict resolution and democracy promotion – without sufficient acknowledgement of the cluster’s complexity and the need to prioritise atrocity prevention vis-à-vis these other linked norms. We ask whether this framing not only filtered but also diluted the normative power of atrocity prevention, leading to policies that manifestly failed to prevent the genocide that occurred in Myanmar from 2017. We find that the grafting of atrocity prevention onto related yet distinct norms contributed to an underestimation of the threat of genocide and a misplaced faith in the ability of democratic transition to prevent atrocity. However, we also find that factors unrelated to the normative framing of R2P influenced the EU’s willingness and ability to respond to atrocity crimes that occurred in the lead up to the genocide that began in 2017. The article contributes to our understanding of the as yet unstated normative implication of clustering norms and the EU’s implementation of R2P.

Calling It Quits: Legislative Retirements in Comparative Perspective

Although retirements are a major source of legislative turnover, research on the topic has been limited, especially outside of the US House of Representatives. In this article, we address this shortcoming by examining retirements in two countries with similar electoral systems yet different legislative environments and party systems: Canada and the United Kingdom. In particular, we extend analysis on the Congress that has consistently shown Republican members retire at higher rates than their Democratic counterparts to examine whether this finding is generalizable to legislators from other parties of the right and/or favouring devolution in other parliamentary settings. In presenting data that support many of these hypotheses, we explore an important normative implication: because their partisan predispositions make them less willing to serve, politicians from parties favouring limited government and/or devolution may be less able to translate their vision of politics into policy because they face systemic problems maintaining legislative seats.

We Should Not Get Rid of Incivility Online

Incivility and toxicity have become concepts du jour in research about social media. The clear normative implication in much of this research is that incivility is bad and should be eliminated. Extensive research—including some that we’ve authored—has been dedicated to finding ways to reduce or eliminate incivility from online discussion spaces. In our work as part of the Civic Signals Initiative, we’ve been thinking carefully about what metrics should be adopted by social media platforms eager to create better spaces for their users. When we tell people about this project, removing incivility from the platforms frequently comes up as a suggested metric. In thinking about incivility, however, we’ve become less convinced that it is desirable, or even possible, for social media platforms to remove all uncivil content. In this short essay, we discuss research on incivility, our rationale for a more complicated normative stance regarding incivility, and what other orientations may be more useful. We conclude with a post mortem arguing that we should not abandon research on incivility altogether, but we should recognize the limitations of a concept that is difficult to universalize.

THE EVOLUTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE MECHANISMS: AN INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK APPLIED TO BIOFUELS

This article proposes an analytical tool to assess the evolution of environmental governance mechanisms. The institutional path of certification systems is driven by three pre-existing variables that interact to determine the evolution of environmental governance: public regulations, industry competition and organisation, and legitimation mechanisms. Competition among certification systems results in the convergence of public and private environmental regulations, which tend to move towards the median demand for sustainability standards. This framework is later applied to the still incipient sector of biofuels, seeking to predict the certification schemes that have better chances to prevail. As an important normative implication, the efficacy of environmental governance depends on compliance costs for producers and, consequently, hinges on prevailing public regulations. These regulations must be designed not only by accounting for their direct effects but also by considering their indirect effects on the development of private certification systems.

PENERAPAN SYARI’AH DI NEGARA MODERN (Analisis Ijtihad Pemikiran Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im)

Islam is a holistic religion. It means that Islam is a religion which does not only focus on the vertical relation between humans and God but also contains rules of horizontal relation between man and man. Laws with social characteristic lead to the existence of a power as the doer, such as the application of all the punishments and public rewards (al-hudûd wa al-'uqûbât). This article analyzes the thought of Abdullahi Ahmed An--Na’im about syari’ah reformation which is relevant to the constitutionalism standard, criminal law, international law and modern human right, a vision of “syariat modern” which is suitable with the nation state concept which beyond the offering of the Nation of fundamentalist syariah and the offering of Modern Islamic Nation. The method used by Abdullahi Ahmed An--Na’im is the renewal method which is said as legalized evolution with hermeneutic as the main tool to reach the purpose and normative implication of the text as al-Qur’an. According to Abdullahi Ahmed An--Na’im, the failure of syari’ah application in modern country caused by the crisis on the traditional syari’ah methodology which became its base. Therefore, new syari’ah formulation is needed to be built on the new base. Naskh concept which is initiated by An-Na’im is for answering this crisis.Copyright (c) 2016 by Al-Ihkam. All right reservedDOI: 10.19105/al-ihkam.v10i2.734