Research and Publications

Despite renewed interest in public intellectuals, the consensus view is that they are in a state of decline. Furthermore, the Internet is viewed as one of the factors accelerating their decline. This essay takes the contrary position: the growth of online venues has stimulated rather than retarded the quality and diversity of public intellectuals. The criticisms levied against these new forms of publishing seem to mirror the flaws that plague the more general critique of current public intellectuals: hindsight bias and conceptual fuzziness. Rather, the growth of blogs and other forms of online writing have partially reversed a trend that many have lamented what Russell Jacoby labeled "professionalization and academization" in The Last Intellectuals. In particular, the growth of the blogosphere breaks down or at least lowers the barriers erected by a professionalized academy. They also provide a vetting mechanism through which public intellectuals can receive feedback and therefore fulfill their roles more effectively. © Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2008.

Questions about the legitimacy of international decision making have arisen in proportion to the growing autonomy of international organizations. If these organizations are able to wield influence not directly traceable to the consent of member governments, what is the source of their legitimacy? In the context of the European Union (EU), the concern is typically framed in terms of the democratic deficit, characterized by the increasing remoteness of those who make decisions from those who are affected by them. Proposals on how to bring down that deficit bump up against a larger question: Can democracy be transposed beyond the level of the nation-state? This chapter explores that question by drawing on the theory of deliberative democracy. My central claim is that voting arrangements are not the only gauge of legitimacy in international organizations; one must also look at the quality of deliberations that precede and follow decisions taken. I support that claim first by identifying a core principle of the theory of deliberative democracy: any decision must be backed by good arguments. What counts as a “good argument” varies from setting to setting, depending on the normative framework within which the deliberation occurs. I then consider whether, as a matter of theory, there are grounds for applying the deliberative principle at the transnational level. I argue that particular conventions of argument and discourse operate in any deliberative enterprise, the parameters of which are set by an interpretive community associated with the enterprise.

Officially activated on 1 October 2008, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) is first and foremost an internal consolidation and reorganization of Defense Department personnel. Its primary mission is to help Africans address their security challenges. AFRICOMdiffers from other Defense Department organizations by focusing primarily on activities that contribute not to warfighting, but war prevention. Even so, it has struggled with controversy since its inception. The views of key constituencies range from lukewarm acceptance to outright hostility. The central lesson from this research is that the views of foreign audiences toward American foreign policies have a direct impact on the success of those policies. One of its most difficult tasks will be convincing key audiences–African governments and militaries, NGOs, international media, and not least other US government agencies and the Congress–that the effort and funding put into this command were worthwhile and should continue. Confusion still remains over exactly what AFRICOM is and what it wants to do. Sorting this out will require consulting, listening, and learning. Its leaders must develop and lead a new type of organization that runs counter to traditional instincts of senior personnel in the Department of Defense who continue to resist the notion of interagency coordination. In sum, we remain hopeful that the past need not predict the future of American policies in Africa. © 2009, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

“There is no reconciliation possible with the assassins of Shining Path.” – Alan García, Correo, August 14, 2003. “With Shining Path there can be no pact, no political solution and no form of reconciliation.” – Congresswoman and former presidential candidate Lourdes Flores Nano, La República, August 10, 2003. “The government never resolved the problems that caused the war. They should solve them! The same motives for waging war are still there. The strategies may change, but the motives are still present. It's not about giving alms to the poor or asking people to give their leftovers to them. The poor are also Peruvians! It's an obligation of the state to watch out for the well being of the population.” – Shining Path militant, Interview, Chorillos Prison, June 23, 2007. INTRODUCTION: On August 28, 2003, the Commissioners of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (PTRC) submitted their Final Report to President Alejandro Toledo and the nation. After two years of work and some 17,000 testimonies, the Commissioners had completed their task of examining the causes and consequences of the twenty-year internal armed conflict (1980–2000) between the Peruvian armed forces and two armed rebel groups, Sendero Luminoso (SL) and the Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru (MRTA). Peru thus joined the growing list of countries that have implemented truth commissions as a means of transitioning from a period of armed conflict and authoritarian rule toward the founding of a procedural democracy and the rule of law.

I felt as if my heart had stopped beating, only God gave me the resistance to bear it all. I was very young, but I felt the hardship. …I still dream about Dos Erres and I hear everything I heard then, the shots, the smell, the air, everything. The violence, abuse, and hardship that girls and boys suffer during armed conflict and political violence under authoritarian and dictatorial regimes ensures that they will never be the same when the war stops or the violent regime ends. Children's experiences of war and political violence - the abuse of their bodies, souls, and minds, the tearing apart of their families and neighborhoods, and the atrocities they witness - shape them and their societies. They experience violations of their civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights. These include the rights to life, freedom of movement and association, education, health, and knowing and being cared for by their parents. Their rights to development and to a safe and healthy environment are also violated. It is not possible to fully repair children after they have experienced such harms. It is not possible to recover the years of lost education, or the time that would have been spent developing emotional and spiritual ties to family, friends, and communities as well as the skills that enable children to take pride in contributing to their households' livelihoods.

This chapter sets the stage by giving an overview of the influence of religion on world politics in recent decades. It shows that world politics is increasingly marked by what could be called "prophetic politics" in which voices claiming transcendent authority are filling public spaces and winning key political contests. Some, like Al Qaeda, act through violence; others, like American evangelicals, act through elections; still others, like Hamas as well as some Indian Hindu revivalists, combine the two. But the overall trend is clear. Whether the field of battle is democratic elections or the more inchoate struggle for global public opinion, religious groups are increasingly competitive, putting secular movements on the defensive. The spread of democracy often enhances their reach. Democracy is giving the world's peoples their voice, and many want to talk about God.

Since the inception of the fragile nation-state in 1943, Lebanon has been faced with the constantly unstable predicament of being torn between Middle Eastern and Western orbits. After examining Lebanon's pre-war consociational democracy as well as the factors behind its collapse in 1975, Tamirace Fakhoury M'hlbacher analyses the post-war order (1990-2006) by shedding light on both interrelated phenomena: communal power-sharing in a turbulent environment and Lebanon's "hybrid democratisation" between Syrian tutelage and the impulses for more liberalisation against the backdrop of exogenous and endogenous factors. The author analyses in detail Lebanon's uncertain 2005 system transition, the so-called 'Beirut Spring', and its aftermath. In a critical perspective, she highlights fundamental communal and political dynamics that result from the collision of internal and external conflict lines on Lebanese ground, and how the former have impeded balanced power-sharing and democratisation in the small Arab Republic. This book is essential reading for researchers and students from the social sciences, in particular sociology and political science. © VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | GWV Fachverlage GmbH, Wiesbaden 2009. All rights reserved.

In the mid-nineteenth century, China and Japan faced the rising threat of western imperialism. Yet, despite the two countries' cultural ties and geographic proximity, their responses to that threat were quite different. When confronted with growing anti-Manchu rebellions at home and British demands for trade concessions in the 1830s, the Qing dynasty proved unable to mobilize the resources necessary to defend the empire. The first and second Opium Wars revealed disparities in military technology between China and the European great powers. Faced with internal unrest and the prospect of China's dismemberment, Chinese provincial leaders made an attempt at internal reform, the so-called Tongzi Restoration (1862–74), aimed at reforming the military, creating an arms industry, and strengthening traditional Confucian government. Although these and later reforms prolonged the Qing dynasty until 1911, they were insufficient to halt China's relative decline. News of China's defeat in the Opium Wars, carried by Dutch and Chinese ships to Nagasaki and then relayed to the shogun at Edo (Tokyo), shocked Japan's feudal elite. The arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry and his “black ships” in Edo Bay in July 1853 ended Japan's two centuries of self-imposed isolation. The Tokugawa shogunate's inability to defend the country led to its overthrow in 1867–8 by a group of samurai from Satsuma and Choshu, who acted to “restore” the sixteen-year-old Emperor Meiji. The new leadership spent the next twenty years methodically emulating the military, political, and technological practices of the European great powers.