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Bringing Order to ‘Disorder'? Applying Complexity Theory to UN Statebuilding Interventions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan The International Spectator Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Laura Salich Di Francesca
Published in The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs (Ahead of Print, 2024)
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State’s Legitimisation of Violence through Strategic Narration: How the Kremlin Justified the Russian Invasion of Ukraine The International Spectator Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Polina Zavershinskaia
The use of violence by state actors in political conflicts is often legitimised through the development of strategic narratives. The social construction of such narratives arguably relies on polari...
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Ukraine and the Debacle of Russian Soft Power The International Spectator Pub Date : 2024-03-04 Paolo Pizzolo
The war in Ukraine has demonstrated Russia’s incapacity to implement a foreign policy strategy without resorting to hard power means, exposing the limits in its soft power capacity to ‘attract’ and...
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EU Policy towards the Israel-Palestine Conflict: The Limitations of Mitigation Strategies The International Spectator Pub Date : 2024-02-23 Sinem Akgül-Açıkmeşe, Soli Özel
Over the decades, the EU has aimed at resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict through its Foreign and Security Policy (EUFSP) tools, with the ‘two-state solution’ as the over-arching principle for ...
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Re-imagining EU Foreign and Security Policy in a Complex and Contested World The International Spectator Pub Date : 2024-02-23 Riccardo Alcaro, Hylke Dijkstra
The European Union (EU) increasingly formulates and implements foreign and security policy under the constraints of internal contestation, regional fragmentation and multipolar competition. While s...
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The Arab Uprisings and Colonialism’s Long Shadow: Conceptualising Citizenship and the State in the Middle East The International Spectator Pub Date : 2024-01-31 Andrea Teti
Published in The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs (Ahead of Print, 2024)
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EU Policy towards Ethiopia amidst the Tigray War: The Limits of Mitigating Fragmentation The International Spectator Pub Date : 2024-01-17 Francesca Caruso, Jesutimilehin O. Akamo
The Tigray war illustrates how the European Union (EU) often fails to act effectively and consistently in a highly fragmented context. During the 2020-22 conflict, the EU failed to address a number...
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Engagement against All Odds? Navigating Member States’ Contestation of EU Policy on Kosovo The International Spectator Pub Date : 2024-01-12 Pol Bargués, Assem Dandashly, Hylke Dijkstra, Gergana Noutcheva
Disagreements between European Union (EU) member states constrain the Union’s capacity to manage conflicts such as Kosovo-Serbia. While Kosovo has long received EU support, five EU member states do...
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EU Policy towards Ukraine: Entering Geopolitical Competition over European Order The International Spectator Pub Date : 2024-01-10 Kristi Raik, Steven Blockmans, Anna Osypchuk, Anton Suslov
Since 2004, competition between the European Union (EU) and Russia over the European political, economic and security order intensified sporadically, with a focal point in Ukraine. The EU’s main mi...
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Constraints, Dilemmas and Challenges for EU Foreign Policy in Venezuela The International Spectator Pub Date : 2024-01-05 Anna Ayuso, Tiziano Breda, Elsa Lilja Gunnarsdottir, Marianne Riddervold
Years of increasingly authoritarian rule and economic mismanagement by President Nicolás Maduro have turned Venezuela into a source of regional instability. The European Union’s (EU) main foreign p...
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Putting the Politics Back into Conflicts: Understanding Armed Orders in Post-colonial South Asia The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-12-13 Nazir Ahmad Mir
Published in The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs (Vol. 59, No. 1, 2024)
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Multipolar Competition and the Rules-based Order: Probing the Limits of EU Foreign and Security Policy in the South China Sea The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-12-13 Zachary Paikin
Deepening multipolar competition has imposed constraints on European Union foreign and security policy (EUFSP). In the South China Sea (SCS), the European Union (EU) faces a complex foreign policy ...
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Nuclear Non-Proliferation and the Global South: Understanding Divergences and Commonalities The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-11-29 Manuel Herrera, Tanvi Kulkarni, Vicente Garrido
For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the heightened risks of a nuclear catastrophe are being seriously felt around the world. Over the past decade, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...
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Opposing Nuclear Weapons Testing in the Global South: A Comparative Perspective The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-11-29 Exequiel Lacovsky
During the Cold War, nuclear weapon states outsourced their nuclear testing programmes to their hinterlands or overseas territories. Countries such as the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK...
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From Conflict Management to Shielding EU Stability: How Syria’s Fragmentation Diverted the EU(FSP) from Action to Reaction The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-11-20 Caterina Bedin, Tiffany Guendouz, Agnès Levallois
Analysing the role of the European Union (EU) in dealing with the Syrian crisis and the Assad regime exposes limitations in the development of a coherent and effective European foreign and security...
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Weathering the Geopolitical Storms: The Ever-elusive Success of EU Policy towards Iran The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-11-06 Riccardo Alcaro
Between 2003 and 2022, European Union policy towards Iran was the result of continuous course corrections made by EU institutions and member states to dodge internal disagreements and navigate the ...
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Oops! … EU Did It Again! The EU’s Preference for Global Treaties vis-a-vis the Reality of WHO Politics The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-10-11 Emanuela Bozzini, Daniela Sicurelli
The European Union (EU) emerged as an agenda-setter in the World Health Organization (WHO) negotiations for a Pandemic Treaty. However, rather than endorsing the EU proposal of a binding treaty, th...
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The Falklands/Malvinas as an Identity Dispute: A Constructivist Analysis of the British and Argentinian Positions The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-09-25 Magdalena Lisińska
Why is the Falklands/Malvinas case so prominent in the Argentine political narrative? Why is it almost absent in Britain? How can Britain afford to ignore United Nations General Assembly Resolution...
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PiS’s Biopolitical Sovereignty vis-à-vis Brussels’ ‘Gender Ideology’: The LGBTIQ Issue on the Eve of the 2023 Polish General Election The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-09-18 Alexandra Yatsyk
On the eve of the 2023 Polish general election, the conflict between the incumbent PiS (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość – Law and Justice) party and the European Union on the LGBTIQ issue can be framed as a...
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Unpacking the Kremlin’s Historical Fiction The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-09-06 Leo Goretti
Published in The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs (Ahead of Print, 2023)
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Exploring ‘Accommodation’ to Understand the Behaviour of Rising Powers in the Global Nuclear Order: The Cases of India and Brazil The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-09-01 Shivani Singh
First put forth by Hedley Bull in the 1970s, the notion of ‘accommodation’ is an often-neglected approach to understanding the role, rights and responsibilities of emerging nuclear powers from the ...
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The Urban Middle Class and the Milieu of Russian Democratic Cultures (1860-Present) The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-08-14 Riccardo Mario Cucciolla
Published in The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs (Ahead of Print, 2023)
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Iran’s Troubled Relations with Afghanistan and Tajikistan: A Compound Alignment Dilemma The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-08-07 Fred H. Lawson, Matteo Legrenzi
ABSTRACT Afghanistan’s reversion to Taliban rule poses severe threats to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Tehran faces a dilemma over how best to respond to these dangers: it could continue to conciliate the Taliban or it could revert to the antagonistic posture it adopted towards Kabul in the 1990s. While each of these strategies can improve Iran’s security situation to some extent, they also entail
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Strongholds of Liberalism? The Reaction of Regional Integration Institutions to the Pandemic Trade Crisis The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-07-28 Patrick Holden
Regional integration institutions play an important but ambiguous role in the liberal international system, especially when it comes to trade policy. The Covid-19 pandemic generated a trade crisis,...
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Regional Powers at the UN Security Council: More Mainstream than Upstream? The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-07-26 Malte Brosig, Markus Lecki
The literature on regional powers and the UN Security Council (UNSC) has focused mainly on Council reform. Little research has been conducted on exploring the influence of regional powers at the Co...
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Dealing with a Nuclear Past: Revisiting the Cases of Algeria and Kazakhstan through a Decolonial Lens The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-07-24 Leila Hennaoui, Marzhan Nurzhan
Over 2000 nuclear weapons explosions were conducted worldwide between 1945 and 1996. Most of these high-yield explosions took place at nuclear test sites in the Global South: among them, the Algeri...
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The Impact of Economic Sanctions on Nuclear Non-Proliferation: The Case of Iran (2005-15) The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-07-24 Ferdinand Arslanian
Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal has defied the conventional wisdom over the futility of imposing economic sanctions to curtail its nuclear programme. However, the existing literature remains theoretically...
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Patriarchal Populism: The Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC) and the Transnational Politics of Authoritarian Anti-Feminism The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-07-03 Rebecca Sanders, Laura Dudley Jenkins
ABSTRACT In recent years, populist movements and regimes have proliferated around the world, pledging to uphold the interests of the ‘pure people’ against corrupt ‘elites.’ Among right-wing populists, ‘globalists’ and feminists are cast in the latter role, framed as dangerous threats to the restoration of national greatness. Meanwhile, alleged ‘gender ideology’ is rebuked, while women’s reproductive
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Sanctions, Multilateralism and the Legacy of Margaret Doxey The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-06-23 Tiziana Corda
Published in The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs (Vol. 58, No. 4, 2023)
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Negotiated Conformism: Gender Norms, Everyday Politics and Pro-government Actors in Turkey The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-06-19 Bilge Yabanci, Erol Saglam
ABSTRACT Despite ideological alignment, right-wing populist constituencies and civic groups may openly resist and renegotiate the anti-gender and anti-feminist stances of populist parties through a process we call negotiated conformism. To analyse this phenomenon, we draw on two qualitative datasets from Turkey: one focusing on ordinary citizens who ideologically support and vote for the populist-conservative
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A Shortcut to Autonomy or a Path to Dependency? Foreign Assistance and Brazil’s Search for Nuclear Autonomy The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-06-19 João Paulo Nicolini Gabriel
How did foreign assistance influence Brazil’s path to attaining nuclear autonomy? To answer this question, a technopolitics hypothesis centred on the role played by national scientific and technolo...
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The Ukraine War, Food Trade and the Network of Global Crises The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-06-19 Hussam Hussein, Matyas Knol
Although the Russia–Ukraine war has had only a limited impact on the agricultural production in the two belligerent states, it has triggered a number of interlocking ripple effects, which have exac...
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Missed Opportunities? The Anglo-French Entente and Post-War Europe The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-06-14 Tommaso Milani
Published in The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs (Vol. 59, No. 1, 2024)
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Understanding the Routes of Terror in Africa: The Case of Boko Haram The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-05-24 Edoardo Baldaro
Published in The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs (Vol. 58, No. 4, 2023)
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Parallel Universe: EU Cross-forum Coherence on Climate in International Transport Fora The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-05-15 Joseph Earsom
Following the Paris Agreement, the European Union (EU) prioritised climate negotiations in the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO), at...
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Assessing the EU’s Evolving Position in Energy Geopolitics under Decarbonisation The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-05-05 Marco Giuli, Sebastian Oberthür
ABSTRACT As a major importer of fossil fuels, the EU will likely see its position in the geopolitics of energy change following its commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050. This article analyses the implications of the energy transition for the EU’s role in energy geopolitics, looking at declining and emerging energy dependences by investigating the EU’s exposure to the material foundations of interdependence
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A Game of Politics? International Sport Organisations and the Role of Sport in International Politics The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-05-03 Francesco Belcastro
ABSTRACT Recent events such as the exclusion of Russian teams from international competitions following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as the debate on Qatar hosting the 2022 World Cup, have once again reignited the debate over the relationship between sport and politics. From athletes displaying political symbols to states vying to exclude their rivals from major tournaments, the strong connection
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More than a Game: Football and Soft Power in the Gulf The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-04-19 Cinzia Bianco, Sebastian Sons
ABSTRACT By hosting spectacular international mega-events such as the 2022 World Cup and investing in the heavyweights of global football such as Paris St. Germain, Newcastle United or Manchester City, the monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – in particular Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – are heavily engaged in ‘football diplomacy’ to gain more leverage in terms
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The Geopolitics of Culture: Museum Proliferation in Qatar and Abu Dhabi The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-04-12 Serena Giusti, Alessandro Giovanni Lamonica
ABSTRACT In recent years, Qatar and Abu Dhabi have experienced a proliferation of museums symbolically embedded in a trilateral dialogue between the ruling families, the population, and international audiences and partners. This proliferation brings together the local and the global, the physical and the virtual, the tangible facets of politics, economics and security, and the immaterial and ideational
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The Making of ‘Environmentalism’ as an International Norm: Global Environmental Politics from the 19th to the 21st century The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-04-05 Lisanne Groen
Published in The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs (Ahead of Print, 2023)
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India-China Rivalry: The Contest That Is Shaping the “Asian Century” The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Amrita Jash
The 21st century is expected to be the dawn of the “Asian Century”, with Asia becoming the centre of gravity of great power politics. What contributes to the shaping of this century is the rise of ...
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Editorial The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-03-10 Leo Goretti, Daniela Huber
Published in The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs (Vol. 58, No. 1, 2023)
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The Rebellious Game: The Power of Football in the Middle East and North Africa between the Global and the Local The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-03-01 Jan Busse, René Wildangel
ABSTRACT By the end of the 19th century, British colonisers, in particular, not only played football as a pastime, they also made use of it to consolidate the political, economic and military interests of the motherland. But while the so-called ‘beautiful game’ served as an instrument of colonial control, both ‘civilising’ and ‘disciplining’ the colonial subjects, it also evolved into a transnational
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Hybrid Security Provision in African Post-colonial Settings: The Cases of Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-02-22 Kwesi Aning, Ilana Zelmanovitz Axelrod
ABSTRACT The Weberian paradigm’s ascription of a legitimate state’s provision of security and justice overlooks the role played by non-state actors in the post-colonial world. Adopting a hybridity framework enables scholars and practitioners to re-centre the focus from a state-centric view of states as fragile or failed to recognise the strength and resilience of alternative socio-political formations
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New Perspectives on the Political Economy of Palestine The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-02-17 René Wildangel
Published in The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs (Vol. 58, No. 2, 2023)
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Navigating the COVID-19 Pandemic in Consociational Systems: The Cases of Lebanon and Iraq The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-02-17 Rosita Di Peri, Irene Costantini
ABSTRACT Pizzorno’s distinction between ‘manifest’ and ‘hidden’ politics helps to explain the resilience of the consociational systems of Lebanon and Iraq in times of crises. Through the lens of ‘manifest’ politics, the Lebanese and Iraqi political systems are permanently on the brink of collapse. By contrast, through the lens of ‘hidden’ politics, the Lebanese and Iraqi political systems manifest
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Sustainable Development: A Common Denominator for the EU’s Policy Towards the Eastern Partnership? The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-02-01 Maryna Rabinovych, Anne Pintsch
ABSTRACT The heterogeneity of the Eastern Partnership countries’ cultures, political regimes and foreign policy aspirations has been a challenge to the EU’s formulation of a coherent umbrella policy towards the region since the 2004 enlargement. Document analysis with a focus on region-level documents and the cases of Ukraine and Azerbaijan demonstrates the EU’s tendency to shift from an emphasis on
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An Essential Tool of American Foreign Policy: US Covert Action since 1947 The International Spectator Pub Date : 2023-01-20 Magda Long
Published in The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs (Vol. 58, No. 2, 2023)
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Trump’s Legacy and the Liberal International Order: Why Trump Failed to Institutionalise an Anti-global Agenda The International Spectator Pub Date : 2022-12-16 Andrea Locatelli, Andrea Carati
ABSTRACT Donald Trump was expected to repeal the internationalist approach that had dominated US foreign policy since the end of the Second World War, but his impact was narrower than is commonly supposed. On the one hand, the problems of the liberal international order predate Trump and probably will outlive his presidency. He was more a symptom than the cause of those difficulties, thus his responsibilities
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The Postmodernity of the European Union: A Discourse Analysis of State of the Union Addresses The International Spectator Pub Date : 2022-12-07 Anna Molnár, Éva Jakusné Harnos
ABSTRACT While the debate about further integration is ongoing, the European Union (EU) already shows signs of functioning like a state. The dynamics of the European integration process are defined by the duality of inter-governmentalism and supranationalism. This contradiction encouraged the development of the EU as a new hybrid political organisation. A software-assisted discourse analysis of the
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Turkey and the EU’s Foreign Policy Framework: New Directions from the Past? The International Spectator Pub Date : 2022-12-05 Alessia Chiriatti
Published in The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs (Vol. 58, No. 1, 2023)
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Education, Media and Civil Society: The Building of an Islamic Cultural Hegemony in Turkey The International Spectator Pub Date : 2022-11-30 Esen Kirdiş
ABSTRACT The Turkish economy is in freefall with rising inflation, unemployment, poverty and income inequality. Yet, the incumbent Justice and Development Party (JDP) continues to get the support of roughly one-third of the voters according to the latest surveys. Although this is a long way from the peak of the party when it was getting half the overall votes a decade ago, it is nevertheless a significant
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Rwanda’s Military Deployments in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Neoclassical Realist Account The International Spectator Pub Date : 2022-10-24 Brendon J. Cannon, Federico Donelli
ABSTRACT The Rwanda Defence Force recently staged military operations against insurgents in Mozambique and the Central African Republic. Both actions were performed outside regional or multinational efforts. This makes the contemporary actions of Rwanda outliers in the international relations of Sub-Saharan Africa and heralds shifts in conflict management on the continent. An explanation is found in
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Amidst an Ambition-Reality Gap: The UN’s Women, Peace and Security Agenda The International Spectator Pub Date : 2022-10-12 Armenuhi Ananyan, Kerry Longhurst
ABSTRACT Since 2000, the United Nations’ Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda has addressed the causes and consequences of sexual violence towards women in conflict scenarios. After two decades of effort, an ambition-reality gap persists. Uneven commitments from UN member states, ongoing instances of conflict-related sexual violence around the globe and the lack of a critical mass of female participants
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How Theory, History and Foreign Policy Can Explain Military Alliances The International Spectator Pub Date : 2022-09-12 Manuel Herrera
Published in The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs (Vol. 58, No. 1, 2023)
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Gulf Security through the Lens of the ROK-US Alliance The International Spectator Pub Date : 2022-09-07 Hae Won Jeong
ABSTRACT An analysis of South Korea’s independent deployment of the Cheonghae Unit to the Strait of Hormuz sheds light on the fragmentation of media and political discourses in the country. Empirical evidence from five major South Korean newspaper outlets reveals that the South Korean government’s pre-emptive securitisation presents a wide gap in manifest and latent security interests between the state
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Contesting Western and Non-Western Approaches to Global Cyber Governance beyond Westlessness The International Spectator Pub Date : 2022-08-24 Xuechen Chen, Yifan Yang
ABSTRACT The power shift from West to East has engendered an increasingly confrontational and competitive multipolar system in cyberspace governance. The West has to confront the real possibility of its decline in the face of the rising influence of the non-Western world, as shown in the intensive discussions over ‘Westlessness’ at the 2020 Munich Security Conference. In order to address scholarly
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Interrogating the Cybersecurity Development Agenda: A Critical Reflection The International Spectator Pub Date : 2022-08-24 Louise Marie Hurel
ABSTRACT The intertwinement between innovation, the expansion of digital technologies and insecurity has contributed to the surfacing of concerns related to the development of cyber capacities and capabilities, that is, having the means to respond to cyber insecurity through the mobilisation of technological, human, strategic and economic resources. While some scholars have engaged critically with
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Remembering (or Silencing) the Colonial Past: The UK and France Compared The International Spectator Pub Date : 2022-06-08 Nicola Frith
Published in The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs (Vol. 57, No. 3, 2022)
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Change or Continuity in Russia’s Strategy towards Secessionist Regions in the ‘Near Abroad’? The International Spectator Pub Date : 2022-05-26 Vasile Rotaru
ABSTRACT The 2008 invasion of Georgia, followed by the recognition of the independence of the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the annexation of Crimea and the involvement in the war in Donbas, and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine have all marked the return to active Russian participation in separatist regions in the ‘near abroad’. They took the international community by surprise. To be