SISP Conference 2022

The analysis of material practices of security in both ‘orthodox’ and critical security studies has so far mostly focused on the so-called ‘elite actors’ (such as politicians, diplomats, and more generally security practitioners), focusing on security politics and policies as a top-down process. This paper aims at shifting such perspective, building on the growing literature on the so-called ‘everyday’ or ‘vernacular’ practices of security (Guillame and Huysmans 2019, Jarvis 2019, Nyman 2021) and observing security policies and programs as horizontal processes shaped and re-shaped not only by political decisions and state practices, but also through more mundane ‘day to day’ practices. Moreover, focusing on the role of local practices in non-western contexts with a ‘co-constitutive’ approach (Hönke and Müller 2016, Bilgin 2016) allows us to imagine a working method for investigating day to day practices of security in a post-authoritarian and post-colonial space such as the Tunisian one. The objective of this paper is therefore to analyze the enactment of a security discourse in Tunisia focusing on how so-called ‘common people’ shape and influence material practices of security, whether by adapting to it, challenging it or negotiating their space of action. To do this, this paper will focus on ethnographic interviews conducted with imams in Tunisia between 2019 and 2020, in order to observe how (in)security practices are understood and perceived by the imams, with a particular attention to the intersection between the historical trajectories of the security narrative in Tunisia and the spatial context in which the everyday practices exist.

In the last fifteen years, Kenya has become one of the major arenas of the war on terror in Africa, suffering a dramatic escalation of terrorist attacks from Al-Shabaab. The Somalia-based group has increased activities in the country, penetrating the social fabric of Kenyan society and establishing links with supportive cells. Seeking to address such dynamics, local authorities have intensified counter-terrorism efforts on the ground. However, observers have raised concerns regarding the character of Kenya’s responses to terrorism, noting how security policies have frequently overstepped legal boundaries, turning into repressive measures against suspect Muslim and ethnic Somali communities. This paper explores the effects of Kenyan counter-terrorism campaign. Adopting a social movement theory approach to terrorism, it investigates the consequences of violent-state society interactions for the rise of terrorism in the country. The paper shows how state repression has had detrimental effects in the fight against Al-Shabaab, shaping socio-political conditions favouring the resonance of the group’s narrative while increasing the motivation of targeted communities to mobilise against the state. Such findings highlight the need for more targeted and sustainable security policies addressing local frictions while favouring processes of reconciliation between the state and suspect groups.

Developments and changes in Italian foreign policy after the end of the Cold War have stimulated a lively debate among scholars and experts. In order to highlight trends and patterns, literature has mostly relied on data concerning military projection abroad, trade relationships, and foreign aid. In this article, we offer an innovative point of view by focusing on Italy’s treaty-making behaviour between 1990 and 2021. In this regard, through a descriptive and statistical analysis on a dataset gathering all the (over 1000) treaties ratified in this period that underwent parliamentary approval, our aim is to answer the following research questions: which types of treaties are ratified? What explains the duration of ratification process? What are the determinants of parliamentary support for the treaties? Our results point to the relevance of both treaty-level factors (type and issue area) and domestic-level factors (government alternation and ideology). Through its findings, the manuscript speaks to existing debates on Italy’s foreign policy and the interplay between international and national elements in its formation.

People power is rising in Sub-Saharan Africa with citizens increasingly making their voices heard. Yet, foreign policy analysis across the social sciences neglects the role constituent demands play in determining governmental foreign policies. There is so far little systematic and comparative evidence on how governments in Sub-Saharan African take into account rising constituent voices in foreign policy-making. Addressing this important gap, we ask two questions: To what extent are constituent attitudes in Sub-Saharan Africa reflected in their governments’ foreign policies? Do some constituent views on foreign policy feature more strongly than others in their country’s actual policies and why? We leverage two recent developments in the regional integration trajectory on the continent, namely the African Union’s (AU) “Agreement Establishing theAfrican Continental Free Trade Area” (AfCFTA) signed in March 2018 and the “Protocol to theTreaty Establishing the African Economic Community Relating to Free Movement of Persons, Right of Residence and Right of Establishment” (AfFM) signed in January 2018. We compare these data with public attitudes on issues of free trade and free movement across countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to see whether popular views on foreign policy issues are mirrored in governmental decisions on the AfCFTA and AfFM.

The theory of audience costs argues that national publics punish their leaders when the latter threaten the use of force in a foreign policy crisis and then back down as citizens would penalize inconsistency between words and deeds. Yet, its implications have been generally tested in the case of the United States, with basically no research on either the European Union or its member states in spite of the new initiatives launched to deepen the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy and the increasing need for a coordinated defence policy after recent international crises (e.g., Afghanistan, Ukraine). We contribute by reporting on a set of randomized online survey experiments with representative samples in France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. In particular, we analyze how the European publics react when exposed to a possible foreign policy crisis and what effects inconsistent governments’ behaviors have on public approval also depending on the stance taken by other European allies. This article presents the first large-scale cross-national experiment testing the audience cost theory in European parliamentary democracies, with important implications for the study of European citizens’ preferences on foreign military crises and the enactment of a common defence strategy.

What kind of change is underway in peacebuilding? The scholarly debate is divided among those who argue that we are facing a shift towards local peacebuilding, and those who affirm that liberal peacebuilding continues to drive international engagement in conflict resolution. Besides the ongoing attention that has been paid to this issue, there seems to be only a partial understanding of the policy change processes at stake. Recent reforms by International and Regional Organizations (IROs) acknowledge the inner complexity of post-conflict scenarios and call for more flexible and context-sensitive peacebuilding which is centred on resilience and local ownership. While this normative shift is fresh, it is nevertheless crucial to re?ect on its actual scope, moreover because the empirical studies on the issue are limited. The paper aims at offering an operational definition of liberal peacebuilding and sheds light on its persistence. Through a content analysis of UN and EU peacebuilding missions’ mandates from 2001 to 2020, I seek to highlight which features of the liberal model have remained constant and which aspects present themselves as new (in historical terms) compared to the traditional liberal narrative. The paper contributes to refining the research agenda by identifying the type of change implemented by the IROs. I argue that the recent changes in peacebuilding reflect an adaptive process that does not affect the theoretical and practical frameworks of the liberal paradigm. The paper is a starting point for broader research work on why IROs keep using the liberal model despite its failure. Keywords: peacebuilding, liberal peace, policy change, content analysis, international organizations.

In the Post-Cold War era, Russia has been involved into several military conflicts in the Post-Soviet space which challenged European and international security. Despite its Euro-Atlantic orientation and prominent role in the EU, Italy managed to maintain partnership relations with Russia. The Federation Council of Russia defined Russian-Italian relations as ‘the best among the worst’ (Federation Council, 2019). This study addresses the rarely studied extent to which Italian foreign policy has changed towards Russia. The aim is to understand the drivers of foreign policy change of Italy towards Russia by focusing on three cases of Russian military involvement in conflicts in the Post-Soviet space. The first case is the 2008 Russian-Georgian conflict which led to the self-proclamation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent republics. On that occasion, Italy joined the formal condemnation of Russian actions against Georgia as ‘disproportionate’ and non-recognition of separatist republics (Alcaro, 2013). However, the Prime Minister Berlusconi opposed any sanctions and supported the prompt resumption of Russian-EU-NATO dialogue (Siddi, 2019). In the second case, the Crimea peninsula was incorporated into Russia through military assistance in 2014. Italy officially joined the stance of the EU and NATO in condemnation of Russian actions against Ukraine and non-recognition of Crimea referendum results. However, this time sanctions against Russia happened ‘out of the blue’ and Italy reluctantly joined the EU stance (Natalizia and Morini, 2020: 42). The third case is the start of Russian ‘special military operation in Ukraine’ in 2022, in response to which Italy acted more in line with its NATO and European allies. Prime minister Mario Draghi joined the strong condemnation of an ‘unjustified attack on Ukraine from Russia’ (Dragni, 2022). Rome approved the imposition of severe economic and financial sanctions on Russia with unprecedented internal cohesion. Additionally, the Parliament of Italy approved the delivery of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine which is the signal of a significant change in foreign policy (Alekseenkova, 2022). These three cases demonstrate the change of Italian Foreign policy approach toward Russia in relation to the imposition of sanctions. In 2008 Rome demonstrated a very soft reaction in comparison to the general NATO response. In 2014 Italy reluctantly joined the EU and NATO stance in regard to sanctions. By contrast, in 2022 Italy moved into the mainstream reaction of its Euro-Atlantic allies, welcoming sanctions and becoming one of the suppliers of weapons to Ukraine. In this research, we observe changes along two specific dimensions: the degree of discursive reaction of Italy towards Russian military conflicts and the level of alignment of Italy’s government with the western responses of Russian military conflicts in former Soviet republics. The existing literature on Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) addresses a large set of plausible explanatory factors that can be divided into the three-level of analyses: international, domestic, and individual. The factors that are located at the international level mainly focus on the distribution of power of states in the international system (Gustavsson, 1999), and the position of states within the global order (Rynhold, 2007). In relation to the last factor, the position of Italy within the global system has been a highly debated topic. Studies generally describe Italy as a middle power with limited natural and military resources (Santoro, 1991; Romero, 2016). Given this limited capability, Italy can achieve its foreign policy goals only by increasing its influence in international organizations or through bilateral relations with great powers (Siddi, 2019). This is the reason why the level of economic interdependence with its major partner has influenced Italy's foreign policy decisions. Cooper (1972) suggests that the level of economic interdependence between two states shapes the way in which they interact with each other, by mutually affecting their respective foreign policy positions. International events with a great impact on the international system or a single country are also considered as plausible drivers of foreign policy changes (Hermann, 1990). International factors are however not sufficient to fully explain policy changes. For this reason, a large literature strand on FPA has also devoted great attention to domestic and individual factors. Domestic factors look into the institutional configurations of states and the role of domestic actors (Haesebrouck and Joly, 2021). A change in the government can be a determinant factor in driving foreign policy changes (Walsh, 2016). In addition, social groups and their preferences play a role in the formation of foreign policy changes (Blavoukos and Bourantonis, 2014). Similarly, public opinion can support a specific foreign policy route. More specifically, liberal theories argue that public opinion is a key source of analysis in foreign policy decisions (Dorani, 2018). At the individual level, leaders and policymakers can also shape foreign policies on the basis of their beliefs, strategic vision, and personal characteristics (Yang, 2010). Therefore, in order to understand why Italy changed its relative foreign policy stances towards Russia foreign policy decisions, we conducted a qualitative study drawing on both primary and secondary sources. Primary sources proved to be particularly useful for the understanding of the Italian narrative of Russia in the three case studies. Economic data were used to evaluate economic relations between the two countries. Furthermore, surveys and polls helped us comprehend the perception of Italian citizens of both Italian foreign policy towards Russia and the domestic perception of threat deriving from Russian military conflicts in post-soviet space. The results of our research show that explanatory factors of Italian foreing policy relative change towards Russia can be found in all three levels of analysis. At the international level, despite the Italian dependency on Russian energy resources (Ministero della Transizione Ecologica 2022), Italian exports towards Russia were significantly reduced especially during the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic (Ministero degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale, 2022), resulting in an overall decrease in the interdependence between the two countries. Moreover, unlike Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014, the European Union and the NATO allies reached a tighter internal cohesion in the responses to Russian actions (Morcos and Monaghan, 2022). This fact led Italy to rally around the renewed Euro-Atlantic unity towards Russian assertive policies. Even the four points peace plan proposed autonomously by Italy in mid-May 2022 confirms both Rome’s changed middle power engagement with Russia and its alignment with the EU sanctions. At the domestic level, Italian public opinion took a much stronger position towards Russia aligning with the average of the other EU and NATO countries (Demopolis, 2022; IPSOS, 2022; Eurobarometer, 2022; Krastev and Leonard, 2022). The main driver for this change in Italian public opinion is due to energy and economic preoccupations (Coratella, 2022). After 2008 Russian intervention in Georgia, a large part of the Italian public opinion was not particularly concerned about Russia (IAI-LAPS, 2013). After the 2014 Crimea case, Italian public opinion disagreed with the sanctions imposed by other European and NATO countries (IAI-LAPS, 2017). Finally, at the individual level, Italian prime ministers in 2008 and in 2014 had personal bonds with Russian political and economic affairs, so this fact mattered in the relative change of Italian foreign policy with Mario Draghi, who condemned harsly Russian invasion, in line with the other EU and NATO countries.

How did Italy’s foreign policy and the quality of its international relations with other states change over the past decade? Did Italy’s relevance in contemporary international politics increase? How did these patterns differ across Italian governments? A wealth of research has analysed the evolution of Italian foreign policy, but no study so far has systematically investigated the span and aims of Italian diplomatic outreach. To fill this gap, we introduce the Diplomatic Outreach Index, a new composite indicator to investigate states’ foreign policy ambitions and status in terms of reach and relevance, based on the bilateral diplomatic visits the high-level political authorities of a given country make abroad (outgoing) or receive at home (incoming) over time. Then, we focus on the Italian case using original data we collected on the incoming and outgoing visits by Italian high-level authorities in 2012-2022. By providing an original and comprehensive quantitative analysis of empirical trends about Italy’s foreign policy this paper aims to contribute to the existing Italian and international literature on foreign policy, status recognition, the domestic politics of foreign policies, and diplomatic activism.

Shortly after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine the US multinational financial corporation BlackRock announced “the end of globalisation” (CNN). In a similar fashion, the pandemic of Covid-19 seemed to have halted globalisation particularly because of the disruption of global supply chains. In this case too there has been no shortage of voices announcing “the end of globalisation”, or a strong redefinition of – at least – some of its defining elements. The concept of de-globalization then made its appearance. Continuing with the “end of...” list, neoliberalism is the best known among the (supposedly) living dead: after the global financial crisis of 2008 – a few years later turned into Eurozone crisis – many pointed that the age of free-market enthusiasm was over. States, which in the neoliberal common sense were supposed to accompany the market economy without intervening directly, entered into “the economy” with multiple forms of interventions, from the expansion of social safety nets to – above all – the rescue of credit institutes and private banks in order to avoid a major economy depression (a similar situation compared to the Covid-19 induced crisis). Given this bigger picture and its complexity, the question is – rather than reflecting in abstract and impressionistic terms about an incoming post-neoliberal order –, to lay out a possible framework of analysis capable to grasp, on multiple levels and temporal lines, continuities, contradictions and changes in our dominant (international) social order and its futures. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the analysis of the present conjuncture – and its main tendencies – by setting up a possible analytical framework revolving around the concept of “post-neoliberalism”. This article is conceived as a single initial contribution to a necessarily collective discussion: being neoliberalism a contradictory and variegated process in itself, the analytical setting phase must necessarily be followed by comparative, empirical, stratified forms of enquiry. On the other hand, theory remains the first and most important step if we want to take a situated point of view to social, institutional and political phenomena. In this regard, the approach broadly falls into a (international) critical political economy perspective. Accordingly, this article represents a (i) critical political economy engagement with post-neoliberalism, and (ii) a critical political economy analytical toolbox – as such, open to further amendments, reflections, revisions in a collegial spirit. In the concluding remarks, I will raise further questions with the aim to make – if possible – the case even more complex.

From a European perspective, EU-China relations continue to be stuck in the ambivalence of the 2019 Strategic Outlook, which prioritizes China as a cooperation and negotiation partner but does not refrain from considering China also an ‘economic competitor’ and, most importantly, a ‘systemic rival’. A rapidly deteriorating global outlook – first, under the attack of the Covid-19 pandemic; more recently, in the light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine – lets appear any signs of a more general and sustainable easing of EU-China relations unrealistic in the short term. How do single EU member states (re)act in this scenario? Against this background, the present study focuses on the current state of Italy-China relations, putting particular emphasis on the complexity and diversity of the ‘images of China’ emerging within Italy’s ‘integral state’ (Gramsci 1975). The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 marked indeed a key turning point in this respect. Swift shifts in the global geography of contagion soon created unexpected parallels between most affected regions – such as between China’s Hubei and Italy’s Lombardy, respectively. These contagion dynamics unleashed controversial processes of identification vs othering, solidarity vs rejection, inclusion vs exclusion in Italy-China relations that are still largely unexplored. Which images of China have been featuring the discursive struggles in Italy’s pandemic-ridden political and civil society? Do they diverge across various (political, economic, health and cultural/artistic) fields? With which implications for ongoing bilateral relations? Drawing on cultural political economy (Sum & Jessop 2013), the present contribution aims at integrating this research interest with key questions concerning the ambivalent alternation of politicization and naturalization of the ‘China issue’ in Italian politics, thus contributing to ongoing discussions on several topical issues, such as: Italy’s controversial adhesion – as the first G7 country to date – to Xi Jinping’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’; the still unexplored links between Italy’s populist course and its foreign policy trajectory; as well as China’s oscillations between ‘mask’ and ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy.

Political parties worldwide have provided two broad sets of answers to the concerns of individuals exposed to globalization-induced economic shocks. Mainstream parties in advanced economies have embraced, in the post-WWII period, the embedded liberalism paradigm: promoting redistribution via higher taxation as a means to shield individuals from the negative consequences of market opening. Right-wing populist parties have recently advocated for an economic nationalism paradigm, which proposes to cope with potential negative economic shocks induced by globalization by implementing policies of closure for both products and people, accompanied by a promise of lower taxation. In this article, we clarify competing theories, elucidate their implications for public opinion, and analyse the results of a series of survey experiments designed to evaluate which set of policies is more likely to gain the support of voters in case of negative economic shocks. Our key test involves conjoint experiments conducted in Italy, France, and Germany, surveying more than 7,500 voters. We find that politicians who implement redistribution policies and increase welfare expenditure are significantly more likely to be supported by voters facing economic shocks. The support for redistribution holds for both left- and right-wing political leaders. On the contrary, we find limited support for the economic nationalism paradigm, especially in Germany and Italy. Our micro-foundational evidence suggests a pronounced political advantage for politicians who advocate redistribution in tough times.

Nel XX secolo, la trilogia "Potere Marittimo" dello scienziato geopolitico americano, Alfred Thayer Mahan, ha analizzato ed esposto sistematicamente l'influenza della potenza marittima sulla forza nazionale globale del paese, che ha avuto un impatto molto importante. In quanto tipico paese con una complessa relazione terra-mare, la Cina deve prestare decisamente attenzione al ruolo della potenza marittima nel XXI secolo. Essendo un paese che ha sviluppato una notevole potenza marittima e terrestre, le difficoltà e le sfide sono inevitabili. Con il rapido sviluppo economico in seguito alla riforma e all'apertura della Cina, paesi vicini hanno iniziato, in modo sempre più costante, a nutrire interesse verso il territorio marittimo cinese, il che ha anche causato rilevanti difficoltà nello sviluppo della potenza marittima cinese. Pertanto, la Cina deve formulare una corretta strategia marittima, aderire a inclusività, apertura, cooperazione e sviluppo e promuovere la costruzione della Nuova Via della Seta.

In the decade prior to the Covid-19 crisis, the crisis of the Eurozone prompted a wave of neoliberal restructuring across Europe. In Italy, neoliberalising reforms were adopted by technocratic and centre-left governments in a unilateral manner and without negotiating with social partners. This represented a radical departure from decision-making practices followed by previous technocratic and centre-left governments in the 1990s and 2000s. While unilateral government interventions and trade union marginalisation were illustrative of a wider trend characterising crisis management in the Eurozone periphery, the peculiarity of the Italian case lies in the fact that governments were not formally constrained by conditionalities included in bailout agreements with European and international institutions. The paper, framing these events in the context of the structural crisis of Italian capitalism, seeks to investigate the reasons behind the turn towards ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’ in post-2011 Italy and the role of the EU economic governance in shaping these developments. The work combines a historical materialist framework built around the Gramscian concept of ‘common sense’ with a narrative analysis of interviews conducted between May and December 2021. The aim is to shed light on the cultural and ideological fault lines which might have hampered the formation of consensus around crisis management and explain why a narrative centred around the ‘necessity’ to adopt neoliberalising reforms became dominant in post-2011 Italy. Finally, the insights from the analysis of the post-2011 crisis management will inform a discussion of developments occurring in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, with a particular focus on post-2020 crisis management in Europe and Italy.

This article revisits the history of subprime to challenge an influential conception that interprets financialisation as a process of ‘rentierism’. According to this view, financialisation has seen the establishment of a class of creditors, or rentiers, who make their money by lending to others. According to this point of view, the development of subprime - mortgages extended to the low-income groups - testifies the growing power of creditors over the economy. By contrast, this article demonstrates how the development of subprime stems from a revolution in funding that saw distinct financial agents increasing their capacity to borrow on good conditions from other financial intermediaries since the 1960s. This process pushed these institutions to profoundly re-evaluate their investment strategies towards the levered capture of assets and the rapid extraction of cash from them. These practices, also referred to as asset-stripping, were at the basis of the first subprime mortgages. This legacy has important implications for how we interpret the financialisation of mortgages. It challenges the idea that subprime consists foremost of usurious debt contract and highlights the development of a new type of power under financialisation, namely that one of leveraged actors. The development of subprime mortgages therefore symbolises how the power of finance has been shifted away from lenders towards leveraging financial agents that focused on capturing assets through predatorial strategies.

We consider the ‘long 1980s’ as a decade of transition for the Italian economic and political system. Our contribution illustrates how the long 1980s built up what we define as a neoliberal turn in 1992 — a ‘critical juncture’ for the progressive spread of neoliberal ideas and policies into Italian society. The 1980s is a decade during which Italy catches up with the global neoliberal transformation, a period of rapid transition that helps to interpret the subsequent dynamics that have largely shaped the transformation of the economic and political order of the country. From an analytical point of view, we make sense of this long decade by intersecting the international and national levels of analysis that are often studied in isolation and from different disciplinary standpoints (political science, economics, sociology, history). Specifically, we consider that important changes at the international level, i.e. the crisis of Fordism and the subsequent shift to neoliberalism, the changes in global monetary policies, and the acceleration of the European monetary and political integration are interlinked to national dynamics; these changes led to a radical transformation of political elites and, more importantly, shifted policy making. Among political elites, the technocrats and politicians familiar with neoliberal economic theories and practice gained considerable recognition and positioned themselves at the core of the economic and political system. This is key to understanding the reforms undertaken in various domains, such as monetary policies, management of publicly-owned conglomerates and companies, labour market and social policy reforms, and how these reforms brought Italy into a new institutional phase. Moving from an International Political Economy (IPE) perspective, we study and characterize the long 1980s — a time span going from 1978/1979 to 1992 — by considering the timing of different events that led to a neoliberal turn in the 1990s. Three different events delimit our analytical endeavour and periodization. In 1978 the idea of wage compression became the shared creed of the main political parties and trade unions, which was distilled in the so-called ‘EUR-line’. This was a first and considerable setback at the national level for the labour movement, so soon after the successes of the earlier 1970s, and was a sign that power relations within Italian society had dramatically changed again in favour of economic elites. The adoption of the European Monetary System in 1979 was the first fitting of the monetary straitjacket that, over time, constricted all movement other than in a neoliberal direction. We consider the year 1992 as a neoliberal turn because rapid events on an international and national level (i.e. the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty; the speculative attacks on the lira; the crisis of the First Republic’s political system; the Amato austerity programme which comprised: a draconian financial plan, the end of scala mobile, a reform of the pension system, privatizations and liberalizations) unsettled the previous institutional patterns followed by Italy since the post-war period, and constituted a veritable turning point for the economic and political system.

The COVID-19 public health crisis prompted a series of emergency housing measures (e.g. eviction bans) that benefited vulnerable households who were housing insecure before the crisis, as well as those who became vulnerable because of the pandemic-induced economic downturn. Governments’ measures relating to housing constitute a major area of intervention designed to prevent social disruptions and the spread of the crisis, while at the same time mitigating the effects of COVID-19 on rising social inequalities. These measures have temporarily reduced but not eliminated the financial precarity that many households face: housing has remained a primary conduit for the reproduction of inequality. As the crisis-led emergency measures in housing have been gradually withdrawn by the governments, the prospects of vulnerable households remain at best uncertain. In many respects, the pandemic crisis represented a testbench for housing policy frameworks and their role in reproducing social inequalities across Western societies. Understanding the determinants and processes leading alternatively to continuity or change in housing policies is thus paramount to unveiling the impact of housing crises and Covid-19 on entrenched housing systems and patterns of financialization. This study aims at contributing to the emerging debate on post-Covid housing policies and financialization, by focusing on the factors and processes shaping housing policy-making in four countries representatives of different Varieties of Residential Capitalism: the Netherlands, Germany, the UK and Spain. These country cases correspond to distinctive typologies of housing tenure and financial systems undergoing deep processes of change between the GFC and the Pandemic crises, and all experiencing housing crises that have worsened with the Covid-19 outbreak. In particular, this paper provides a comparative analysis of national reforms and policy initiatives in the housing sector adopted in the wake of the Pandemic crisis and tests a set of hypotheses to explain them. To this aim, this study elaborates an original explanatory framework linking the structural and organizational power resources of core housing constituencies with the dynamics of politicization of housing issues at the domestic level. In this way, a comprehensive theoretical framework is proposed to account for the dynamics of housing policy-making and change, as a still under-explored field both in the housing and IPE literature.

The topic of this article is the relation between ‘domestic’ civil wars and ‘international’ conflict. Inter and intra state conflict have traditionally been treated as separate and sometime mutually exclusive phenomena in the academic literature. In the last few decades however a growing number of studies have looked at the connection between these two dimensions. This new attention is partially explained by the occurrence of several major conflicts that started as civil wars and gradually muted into larger conflicts on a regional or international scale. This study seeks to answer the following question: in complex and multi-layered conflicts, how can the connection between domestic and international dimensions be conceptualised? The research argues that the relationship is complex and multidirectional: domestic conflict creates conditions and incentives for external intervention, while external intervention frequently overshadows domestic dynamics. This paper explores the theoretical intersection between domestic and international factors by looking at the case of the Syrian conflict. This war, defined as “civil” by observers, presents a complex interaction between domestic and international trajectories that place it simultaneously inside and outside of most definitions of civil war. This multidimensionality of the Syrian conflict, characterised by a complex interaction between domestic and international factors, makes it an excellent case to explore the interaction between the two dimensions. The Syrian conflict started with a wave of peaceful protests within the context of the so called “Arab Spring”. These protests were met with a violent repression by Bashar Al-Assad’s regime. As confirmed by recent studies (Philipps, 2016), regional and international powers attempted to influence the outcome of the Syrian conflict from its early stages. Powers such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran and others all intervened (whether directly or indirectly) in the civil war. External intervention in the Syrian civil war led to an increased militarization of the crisis and to the fragmentation of the country, and to date still contributes to the intractability of the conflict.

How does exposure to terrorism affect public opinion? For many, civilian terrorism “exposure” has been traditionally understood to require and been measured using indicators of material violence. I challenge the centrality of material violence as the key mechanism for imposing costs by disaggregating terrorism exposure into three key mechanisms: material violence, uncertainty, and traumatic triggering. Each paper demands different counter-terrorism solutions. To test the implications of a theory based on non-material mechanisms, I employ geospatial data on a pivotal case for my theory: Israeli sirens during the 2014 Israel-Gaza War. I show siren exposure was associated with localised increases in hawkish policy support: exposure to 50 sirens was associated with increased support for ground troop interventions on either a limited scale (+32%) or to topple Hamas (+25%) and decreased support for immediate ceasefires (-21%) and negotiations (-20%). This paper provides new insights into how non-material mechanisms drive terrorism’s strategic logic.

Foreign meddling in civil wars takes many forms and involves various actors. Although we know that interventions and other types of external support can profoundly influence the trajectories and dynamics of internal armed conflicts, we know much less about their impact on prospective policies and attempts at conflict resolution by intergovernmental organizations, such as the United Nations (UN). While scholarly attention for each of these two phenomena in isolation is growing, the two literatures hardly speak to one another. In this paper, we explore the relationship between external support in civil wars and the likelihood of a response from the UN Security Council (UNSC). In particular, we ask whether external state involvement in a civil war affects the likelihood that the UNSC (1) formally discusses the conflict and (2) authorizes a peace operation. We argue that external support by the Council’s permanent members significantly affects these two decisions, whereas involvement of the UNSC’s non-permanent members does not. We further hypothesize that the specific form that external support takes as well as its duration affects the UNSC’s likelihood to discuss a civil war and deploy a peacekeeping mission. To study the relationship between external support and UNSC response empirically, we combine the recently expanded UCDP External Support Dataset with coded data on UNSC Security Council discussions and deliberations. By systematically analyzing these two interrelated phenomena, which are often studied separately, this paper improves our understanding of the consequences foreign meddling in civil wars has on conflict resolution.

Do economic sanctions against state sponsors of insurgent groups reduce violence? Although sanctions often aim to force countries like Iran to end their support for non-state armed groups, policymakers continue to debate the effectiveness of this tactic and there are few systematic studies on the topic. In this paper we address this gap using the bargaining framework and newly available datasets on economic sanctions, state sponsors of rebels, and civil conflict covering the years 1989-2016. We argue that, in general, sanctions will reduce the level of violence by reducing the resources insurgents receive from their foreign sponsors. However, this effect should be weaker if insurgents have alternative income sources (such as contraband). We also expect sanctioned sponsor countries to use their rebel clients as a retaliation measure, which implies that insurgents fighting sanctioner countries will continue to receive support and launch attacks. Our empirical findings support all three hypotheses. Sanctions against a group’s foreign sponsors are associated with less violence, but this pacifying effect is weaker if insurgents have access to contraband funds or their target is among the countries imposing sanctions on their sponsor. These results improve our understanding of sanctions as a counter-insurgency tool by highlighting their limits, especially for the countries imposing the sanctions.

When are transnational rebels more likely to execute terror attacks? Puzzlingly, many strong rebel groups adopt terrorist tactics – understood as spectacular, indiscriminate violence against civilians – late in their conflict careers. In explaining this, domestic-level accounts have ignored international linkages, even though strong rebel groups often operate across borders. Meanwhile, the literature on transnational rebellions has underestimated the scope of variation in neighbouring states’ will and ability to restrict rebels’ access to their soil. I argue that, in transnational rebellions, waves of terror attacks are caused by negative shifts in insurgents’ access to cross-border sanctuaries. As their footholds in neighbouring countries are uprooted, two mechanisms are activated: an upward shock in the perceived relative cost of attacks on military targets, and a proximate need to broadcast the rebel group’s persistence. Terror attacks emerge as an inexpensive and goal-appropriate substitute, leading to tactical adaptation. This conclusion runs opposite to the standard view that cross-border terror increases when interstate rivalries intensify. Counterintuitively, it is state alignment that leads to more terror.

Why have intrastate armed conflicts dyads increasingly been targeted by foreign military intervention (FMI) campaigns in recent years? Though by no means a novel phenomenon, third-party government FMIs have dramatically risen in frequency since the end of the Cold War. This has occurred over the course of a three-decade period during which the overall number of annually occurring intrastate armed conflict dyads has remained more or less constant. Employing binary logistic regression and predicted probability estimates, this study endeavors to identify various conditions that have influenced the likelihood that a given intrastate armed conflict dyad-year occurring from 1990 to 2020 would come to be targeted from without by FMI. Of the 29 dependent and control variables tested, 16 crossed the p < 0.05 statistical significance threshold. Ten of these display positive effects, resulting in increased probabilities that a dyad-year would be targeted by FMI, while the remaining six displayed negative effects which proved to reduce the likelihood of dyadic-level internationalization. Among the dependent variables shown to have possessed positive effects on the predicted probability that a given dyad-year would come to be targeted by a FMI campaign, five stand out as having notably robust impacts. These include: (1) high levels of social globalization in the conflict-stricken state; (2) extensive mountainous terrain in the country experiencing hostilities; (3) high levels of domestic religious fractionalization; (4) dyads involving insurgents belonging to a Salafi-Jihadist transnational ideological network; and (5) dyads involving insurgents with bases in multiple polities. Conversely, states possessing larger populations, higher per capita GDPs and GNIs, larger militaries in proportion to their territorial holdings, greater positions of prominence within the United States’ global security hierarchy, and histories of violent independence were less likely to be targeted. Taken together, these findings highlight three sets of fundamental forces which have proven to drive the usage of military intervention by third-party polities in the post-Cold War era. First, third-party polities are substantially more likely to overtly intervene in conflict dyads when the states they occur within feature a high degree of international visibility resulting from extensive cultural, informational, and interpersonal connections to the outside world. Second, states possessing conditions that weaken the ability of their governments to achieve lasting military victories – e.g., ruggedly untamable geographies and religiously divisive societal ecologies – have higher chances of being targeted. Third, dyads involving border-traversing insurgencies are more likely to attract the military involvement of third-party polities.

Shared qualitative data – such as interview or focus group transcripts – can be used for secondary qualitative data analysis (SQDA). Yet, much archived qualitative data remains unused after primary analysis. Applications and guidance on how to employ SQDA are rare. We use an example application of SQDA studying mobilisation, informal institutions and resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa to show: First, SQDA depends on how primary researchers share “raw” qualitative data and additional documentation to understand primary context. Second, deductive and inductive uses of SQDA require varying engagement with primary data. Third, current practices of participant consent often do not consider potential SQDA. Fourth, SQDA is not less time-consuming than primary data research, but offers different benefits, such as expanding the comparative sample of cases or avoiding research fatigue of studied communities. Going forward, SQDA requires greater consensus on the instruments (e.g., transcripts, participant consent forms) used by researchers and further applications.

Fair competitive elections are a key step on the path to democratisation and a crucial conflict-management tool, as they provide a non-violent device to allocate resources. However, elections are often met with considerable waves of violence. This phenomenon is dangerous not only per se, but also and most importantly for its potentially detrimental effects on democratic stability. Thus, scholars have recently focussed their attention on electoral violence and approached it as a definite form of violence, investigating its specific incentives and constraints. However, how do different patterns of competition with the opposition shape the incumbent’s incentives to delegate violence at local level to armed militias after elections? This paper provides a theoretical framework aiming to explain the spatial variation of post-electoral violence. The paper highlights the salience and centrality of pro-government militias: incumbents often have incentives to perform electoral violence while keeping it private, hence violence can be outsourced to non-state groups with diverse degrees of stringent linkages to governments. Our argument on local delegation to violent militias centres on the presence of commitment problems between a declining – yet superior – incumbent and a rising rival minority. We argue that incumbents have incentives to step beyond electoral politics and thwart a rising opponent through violent actions performed by pro-government militias, because they realise that the immediately past electoral outcome is not sufficient to ensure their continued local dominance and to lock in a future share of resources vis-à-vis the growing opposition. Our analysis focuses on a salient case: the May 1921 elections in Italy, which occurred in an environment of violent intimidation from fascist squads. The so called “Red Menace” hypothesis is tested via three possible mechanisms: first, on local previous electoral performance of the opposition (the socialist vote share in 1919 and its increase from 1919 to 1921); second, the collective organizational capacity of the incumbents’ challengers (the number of strikers in 1919 and its increase from 1918 to 1919); third, the capacity to hit and use violence by the opposition organization (the number of victims of socialist violence in 1920 and its increase from 1920 to early 1921). We find that the electoral growth of socialist movements was not a decisive factor in shaping the ruling elites’ perceptions of a red menace and triggering a violent response from fascists. However, the dramatic increase in working-class organised action from 1918 to 1919 represents a relevant part of the red threat. In fact, variation of local fascist post-electoral violence in 1921 can be partly explained as a response to the socialists’ growth in collective strength and socio-economic bargaining power. Moreover, violent attacks from socialists seem to represent the pivotal component explaining post-electoral violence by fascist militias. After realising that peaceful democratic tools were ineffective at controlling the rise of socialists, fascist squads – backed by the declining conservative majority – engaged in a full-blown clash, in which violent dynamics trumped electoral and socio-economic ones. On the other hand, the finding that local pre-electoral violence by fascist squads negatively correlates with the outcome variable further proves our commitment problems framework: after elections, fascists had more incentives to perform violence in areas where their dominance was less solid. Moreover, this finding strengthens our confidence that our results do not merely reflect the confounding effect of a province’s underlying proneness to violence, and therefore corroborates our causal argument. Overall, our paper suggests that a context of commitment problems, whereby a declining incumbent faces a rising minority, can prove highly dangerous for weak democracies.

How does ethnic power sharing emerge in multiethnic states? While recent civil war studies have emphasized the importance of ethnic elite inclusion for maintaining peace in multiethnic societies, we know much less about how such power-sharing materializes in the first place. I argue that in weakly institutionalized post-colonial states, ethnic inclusion has its roots in the make-up of political networks among national elites that developed during the colonial period. I leverage original micro-level data on the pre-independence elite networks of 18 African countries to test the long-term effects of these networks, and ethnic group leaders’ position therein, on post-independence government inclusion. I find that i) pre-independence elite networks with more trans-ethnic ties are associated with higher degrees of ethnic inclusion than those with more intra-ethnic ties, ii) groups whose leaders occupied central positions in the pre-independence elite network were more likely to become included in post-independence governments than other groups, and iii) at the individual level, the more central an individual’s position in their country’s pre-independence network, the higher their chances of post-independence government inclusion.

Since the end of the cold war, the emphasis on the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of combatants has become a key feature of international efforts to assist post-civil war peacebuilding. While the overall evidence of DDR effectiveness remains thin, the problem is most pronounced in the case of reintegration. I argue that this is largely due to the lack of a comprehensive theoretical framework. To address this gap, I reconceptualize reintegration as an outcome that is characterized by combatants conforming to the state monopoly of violence, bringing to the forefront the close relationship between state-building and reintegration. Next, I develop a rational agent framework for the study of reintegration. I first model combatants as homogenous rational agents. I characterize the push and pull factors exerted on the combatants by their armed group, civil society, and the institutions as the constraints of the optimization problem. I then employ the model to delineate the logics that may drive combatants’ reintegration, establishing building blocks for theory-testing. Finally, I explore how the model could be refined in the future by relaxing the assumptions of agent homogeneity, independence, and rationality.

What determines whether the relationship between neighbouring communities will be violent or cooperative after war breaks out? Under what conditions does local interethnic collaboration to resist violence emerges and survives? In this study I present a model explaining the behavior of communal leaders and how they change patterns of displacement and create surprising cooperation in the shadow of widespread violence. I argue that they face uncertainty over the probability of occupation by the rival, which is what determines the character of intercommunal relations. They thus turn to macrolevel heuristics—signals from the interstate, state, and substate systems—to estimate this probability and guide their decision making. I test the model using original data on displacement and inter-village mutual protection agreements during the Palestinian Exodus (1947-1949). I show that the agreements were signed where the UN partition plan indicated a mutual threat of occupation and repeated interaction, and that these stopped civilian displacement on the condition that military occupation happened before national and regional political developments provided new information. I support the mechanism with qualitative case study evidence and counter alternative explanations with a series of tests.

Under what conditions do rebel groups participate in the formal negotiations with the states during the peace negotiation process? Often it is observed that rebel groups are ready for the frequent rounds of formal negotiations despite attaining unsatisfactory results in the preceding attempts, while other times, they back out from participating in the formal negotiations in spite of achieving favorable outcomes in previous rounds of negotiations with the state. Most of the scholarship analyzes the rebel groups’ decision-making based on the role of various drivers at a specific moment in negotiations and uses them to understand the whole negotiation process. The extant explanations are inadequate in explaining the rebel groups’ participation in the formal negotiation stage as factors and mechanisms at this stage are different from any other stage of the negotiation process. The paper insists on examining the whole previous path of the negotiation process to understand the rebel groups’ behavior at the formal negotiation stage. The argument is that the decision-making of rebels regarding participation in formal negotiations occurs in a particular sequence and timing, resulting in self-reinforcing mechanisms that create a legacy by directing rebel groups to a specific path-dependent route. For such an endeavor, the theoretical framework of Historical Institutionalism comprising timing and sequencing is suitable. The study has theoretical contributions to the scholarship of peace negotiations and broadly to conflict resolution.

Why do some rebel groups decide to share power with ethnic minorities during civil wars? Rebels often fill the state vacuum and establish order, provide services, and create alternative systems of “rebel governance” (Arjona, 2014). Rebel governance often results in the persecution of minorities, forced displacement and ethnic cleansing. However, in rarer cases, rebel groups create power-sharing institutions inclusive of ethnic and religious minorities. This paper aims to identify a recurring patterns leading to the creation of power-sharing institutions during civil wars by analyzing the case of the failed power-sharing negotiations between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Tamil-speaking Muslims during the Sri Lankan civil war. Research on rebel governance pointed out the importance of the relationship between insurgents and their constituency, that is the segments of a population “whom the militants address […], with whom they are actually involved in some form of relationship, and who […] actually sympathize with and support the militant groups” (Malthaner, 2011). Rebel groups tend to create inclusive institutions and limit coercion in areas populated by their constituency, where insurgents “perceive the population as holding the same goals” (Breslawski, 2021). On the other hand, when “the population does not include members of the rebel group’s envisioned political community”, rebels prefer to use coercion (Mampilly and Stewart, 2021). Thus, the inclusion of other constituencies into the rebel’s political institutions is an unlikely event. However, there are several cases of power-sharing institutions reported in contexts as different as Nepal - the Maoists, (Lawoti, 2009) -, South Sudan - the SPLM/A (Mampilly, 2011) -, or Syria - the Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria (Schmidinger, 2020) -. What explains the inclusion of out-groups into the insurgent’s political institutions? I argue that rebels use political inclusion as a co-optation strategy to reduce distrust and to favour out-group cooperation in contested areas where rebels (1) have not achieved hegemony over their own constituency and (2) are particularly reliant on civilian support for material and political resources. By incorporating out-groups into their political institutions, rebels can extend power consolidation beyond their immediate constituency and can prevent out-groups from turning to competing insurgents or the government. However, this decision must be justified to the rebels’ original constituency and cadres via a suitable political ideology, which acts as an enabler of the decision. I assess this hypothesis through a process tracing analysis of the power sharing negotiations between the LTTE and Sri Lankan Muslims. I do so by analyzing primary sources and secondary literature on the LTTE, collected at archives and research centers in Sri Lanka. The case was selected because it allows observing the effects of the variation over time of inter-rebel competition and ideology, the key variables of interest. I argue that the LTTE tried to incorporate Tamil-speaking Muslims into its political institutions and nation-building project due to the group’s competition with other insurgents for control over their own Tamil ethnic constituency, and the demographic relevance of Muslims in contested areas. By 1990 the LTTE became the hegemonic Tamil insurgent group, and thus the sole receiver of economic and social resources from both locals and the diaspora. These changed conditions produced the end of the power-sharing negotiations, increased hostilities in ethnically mixed areas and finally a shift towards a purely ethnic-based ideological discourse, which eventually led to the forced expulsion of all the Muslim population from the territories under the LTTE’s control. The research findings will help understand the behaviour of rebel groups, and the dynamics of political inclusion and civilian victimization. Thus, my paper provides four main contributions. First, it would help in understanding the relations between the LTTE and other constituencies, which is still, despite many studies on the LTTE, an under-researched topic. Second, it would further the knowledge of rebel institutions and the factors influencing rebels’ behaviour, contributing to studies of rebel governance and civil wars. Third, the paper will investigate how inter-rebels power dynamics and insurgents’ ideology may shape rebels’ institutions and their relations with civilians, providing tools to prevent ethnic violence in rebel-held territory. Finally, my paper will indicate what elements facilitate the creation of power-sharing institutions during civil wars, providing practitioners and policymakers with tools for transitional and post-conflict political settlements. Bibliography Arjona, A. (2014) ‘Wartime Institutions’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 58(8), pp. 1360–1389. doi: 10.1177/0022002714547904. Breslawski, J. (2021) ‘The Social Terrain of Rebel Held Territory’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 65(2–3), pp. 453–479. doi: 10.1177/0022002720951857. Lawoti, M. (2009) The Maoist Insurgency in Nepal, The Maoist Insurgency in Nepal. doi: 10.4324/9780203869390. Malthaner, S. (2011) Mobilizing the Faithful: The Relationship between militant Islamist groups and their constituencies. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag. Mampilly, Z. (2011) Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life during War. Cornell University Press. Mampilly, Z. and Stewart, M. A. (2021) ‘A Typology of Rebel Political Institutional Arrangements’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 65(1), pp. 15–45. doi: 10.1177/0022002720935642. Schmidinger, T. (2020) The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria: Between A Rock and A Hard Place. London: Transnational Press London.

What determines success in counterinsurgency? The literature has neglected the role played by weapons available to rebels, in part due to the absence of relevant systematic data. We argue that this neglect is unwarranted given that several theoretical arguments envision insurgents’ ability to inflict mounting costs on the counterinsurgent as key to their success. We address this gap by analyzing a novel dataset on insurgent firepower covering all counterinsurgency campaigns in the period 1805-2005. We find a robust negative association between the level of insurgent firepower and counterinsurgency success. Moreover, we conduct two case studies to provide evidence about the causal nexus between insurgent firepower and counterinsurgency outcome.

Nowadays, the most prevalent type of armed conflict is non-international in nature. Throughout this type of hostilities, the parties, including non-state armed groups, attempt to take or remain in power. But they do much more than fighting. Recent findings from the political sciences and anthropology demonstrate that non-state armed groups exert control and authority over territory and the persons therein more often than it was thought before. It has been estimated that, in the 1945-2018 period, one-third of all rebel groups have engaged in governance activities, as much as recognised governments would do. Governance activities performed by armed groups can include providing health care and education, regulating the economy, resolving civil disputes, carrying out policing functions, prosecuting crimes, and running prison services. Undertaking policing activities and putting in place dispute resolution mechanisms able to tackle both civil and criminal matters are fundamental for effective governance. Such activities maintain law and order and protect the community from common crime, which could increase during armed hostilities. To do so, they establish tribunals and set in place a series of rules. The establishment of courts, in particular, has important core functions: dispute resolution, social control, and law-making. Providing the civilian population with such services is of utmost importance. Studies have shown that, if armed groups do not provide them, the population will attempt to fill the ‘void’. The administration of justice has become a central governance activity of non-state armed groups—about one-third of armed groups establish judicial institutions, and, since the end of the Second World War, at least 222 processes by 67 groups across 57 armed conflicts have been recorded throughout the globe. Considering this reality sheds light on what happens during armed confrontations of a non-international character. Such a perspective—still largely neglected by legal scholarship and practice—should be given the importance it deserves. Acts of civil governance by non-state armed groups are not only seen in a negative light, but they are often even considered criminal. A recent and important example of this tendency is the Al Hassan case in front of the International Criminal Court. Between 2012 and 2013, Ansar Dine, a Salafi Jihadist group active in Mali—was exercising effective power over the city of Timbuktu, its region, and its population after having replaced the authority of the Malian government. The organisation had, at the time, an identifiable political structure by the means of which it carried out acts of civil governance aimed at regulating civilian everyday life. During that period, the rebel group addressed daily life matters that, otherwise, would have been left unaddressed, and that were neglected even by the Malian government before. Undertaking policing activities and administering justice through the establishment of an Islamic Tribunal were among the numerous civil governance activities carried out as public services to the population. The Islamic Tribunal applied Sharia law, which has been considered by the ICC Prosecutor as non-compliant with the fair trial standards provided by international law. During the period of the charges, Mr Al Hassan was an alleged member of the Islamic Police. His tasks comprised arresting people to bring them in front of the Islamic Tribunal and executing the sentences the Tribunal passed. Mr Al Hassan is thus charged with the war crime of sentencing and executing without due process, a crime that, to be satisfied, needs to have taken place in the context of and to be associated with an armed conflict. Mr Al Hassan is charged with the offence notwithstanding the fact that, although the Islamic Tribunal operated where the hostilities were taking place, i) it dealt only with common crimes and ordinary civil disputes; ii) it did not target a certain sector of the civilian population based on reasons related to the armed conflict; iii) its creation was not an act of a military nature and the Tribunal was not meant to serve the ultimate goal of a military campaign; and iv) it did not have its condicio sine qua non in the conflict. The establishment and operation of the Islamic Tribunal could have thus been considered an act of civil governance of the armed group. The present paper aims to explore whether it is opportune to criminalise non-state armed groups’ acts of civil governance as war crimes through the example of the Al Hassan case and the war crime of sentencing and executing without due process. It argues that the establishment of the nexus between certain conducts like those subsumed under the analysed war crime and the armed hostilities raises specific issues in contemporary armed confrontations involving non-state armed groups. The peculiar objectives and development of events that characterise such realities and the nature of activities carried out by rebel groups in such a framework cannot be disregarded. Rather, they impose a focused analysis that takes into account their traits and distinctiveness. The consequence of adopting an overly stretched definition of the nexus requirement, as to cover also civilian governance activities, would have detrimental consequences. First, it would dilute the definition of war crimes and blur the distinction between war crimes and ordinary crimes, human rights violations, and other international crimes. Secondly, it would expose rebel groups (but also transitional and/or provisional governments) to unfair criminalisation. Any action of civilian governance rebel groups put in place could, in such a scenario, potentially be considered a war crime whereas those carried out by recognised governments would not.

The international rule of law (IRoL) is back on the agenda for international law and politics, but it remains an elusive concept. The semantic content of the term often seems to be context dependent and varies in relation to the uses actors make of it. In this paper, we seek to overcome the Eurocentrism of existing scholarly approaches to the IRoL by empirically exploring how four non-European human rights courts engage with the concept. First, we use methods of computational legal analysis to map the use of rule of law concepts in the entire jurisprudence of these courts. Second, we analyze collocation of the rule of law as a discursive construct, to see what purposes might arise against claims that it is a meaningless concept. Thirdly, we qualitatively analyze the content of the most important rule of law cases of the courts and how the IRoL has been constructed in socio-political context. We argue that the four non-European ICs have developed a domestic) and democratic vision of the IRoL that is much thicker than often supposed.

Our era is characterized by the growing importance of politics which determines the increasing influence of one of its main instruments - law. Guided by the objectives and principles of their policies, states create and apply international law. The influence of international law on politics has two main aspects: on the one hand, it limits politics to a generally acceptable framework; on the other, it empowers politics by placing an arsenal of legal means at its disposal. An analysis of state practice shows that international law is generally not given due weight in foreign policy decisions, especially by the major powers which usually tend to rely on “hard power” while making their foreign policy decisions. Today’s international context raises the question of possible marginalization of normative/soft power in favor of more pronounced Realpolitik rooted in interest-driven behavior. There have been many occasions in history when the policies of a particular state have conflicted with international law. Underpinning the discussion is the aggressive policies of one state or another over the past few decades in various regions of the world, starting from the Middle East and ending with the East Europe. Conversely, due to globalization and growing interdependence of the world no single State is in a position to disregard international law without risking weakening its position, both on symbolic and instrumental level. Today’s international context where the ongoing war in Ukraine provoked by Russian aggression is the agenda-setter portends long-ingrained considerations about the need to reconceive the grounds of world order. At the core of this argument is that not only the sovereignty and subjectivity (agency) of Ukraine is at stake, but also the fundamental principles of the modern international system. For Russia the war in Ukraine is the question of both regional leadership and principal opposition with “the West”, predominantly, the United States which stems from the Cold War. Manipulating with legal norms, especially with the right of self-determination enshrined in the United Nations Charter, Russia uses the strategy of creating proxy states to have leverage on Ukraine. Apart from regional level, the war in Ukraine has global level. In conjunction with this issue is the ability of “the West” to pursue its goals and the possibility of the “non-West” to oppose this. The aim of the paper is to investigate the war in Ukraine against the background of normative power – Realpolitik dichotomy. Therefore, the objectives of the paper are the following: 1. To examine the main aspects of normative foreign policies compared to Realpolitik and evaluate different perceptions on them; 2. To review and analyze strategic documents and public declarations of Russia on Ukraine from 2004 (the first Maidan) till present times on the issue of Ukraine’s subjectivity; 3. To examine both the regional and global level of the war of Ukraine in the context of normative power-Realpolitik dichotomy; 4. To examine the main aspects of “the West/non West divide” in international relations and the impact of the war in Ukraine on it.

The contemporary global governance system is increasingly characterized by the presence of multiple, partially overlapping institutions that regulate and monitor states’ performance in a given policy area, known as regime complexes. Regime complexes are defined as ‘nested, partially overlapping, and parallel international regimes that are not hierarchically ordered’ and can be observed in a variety of policy fields, including climate change, trade, and human rights. While institutions within a regime complex perform partially overlapping functions, there are normally no coordination mechanisms in place to ensure that they function in a complementary manner. This raises the question of whether, and how, their parallel existence shapes their ability to stimulate states’ compliance with their international legal obligations, and ultimately, promote change on the ground. To what extent are institutions within a regime complex mutually strengthening or undermining each other’s effectiveness? There seems to be widespread agreement that regime complexity presents both benefits and challenges to international cooperation and effectiveness, although the majority of scholars appears rather pessimistic about the overall balance between gains and losses. One of the key potential challenges posed by regime complexity is the possibility for overlapping institutions to give rise to duplications or contradictions in the guidelines they provide to states. While the extent to which bodies within a complex deliver duplicating or contradicting recommendations has been limitedly investigated, it is yet to be understood whether such duplications and contradictions are detrimental to their effectiveness, or may rather bring added value under certain circumstances. For example, does the repetition of the same recommendation by multiple bodies stress the urgency of addressing the matter and increase pressure on states for compliance, or is it a waste of resources? And how will states choose their course of action in the case of contradicting recommendations? While measuring the effectiveness of any given international institution presents multiple challenges, such as isolating its role from a variety of intervening factors, the task of assessing the combined role played by different institutions in promoting regime effectiveness appears even more daunting. This paper takes a first step in this direction by assessing how overlaps between institutions shape two variables that are likely to be key determinants of regime effectiveness, following two different theoretical logics: strategic behavior by states, following a rationalist logic; and institutional credibility, following a constructivist logic. Specifically, this article starts from the assumption that overlapping activities may influence the emergence of strategic behavior by states and the credibility of the institutions, as perceived by directly involved actors. It considers low levels of strategic behavior and high levels of credibility to be likely to produce an effective regime, and vice-versa. While the potential of institutions within a regime complex to strengthen or undermine each other’s effectiveness has long been debated, what we still lack is a coherent framework to assess under what conditions this is the case. To this aim, this article develops a framework to assess the extent to which different types of overlapping activities by international bodies lead to instances of strategic behavior by states and affect these bodies’ credibility. It then reflects upon the extent to which these phenomena place the institutions in a mutually reinforcing or undermining relationship. While the article stops short of assessing the actual impact of strategic behavior and credibility on effectiveness – as this would require a large-scale comparative study on the combined effect of these institutions, controlling for all possible intervening variables – it takes a first step in this direction, by assessing how overlaps affect these two key determinants of effectiveness. The framework is empirically applied to the case of two parallel governance mechanisms within the United Nations (UN) human rights system: the UN treaty monitoring bodies and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the UN Human Rights Council. Data were collected by means of 22 semi-structured interviews conducted with officials directly involved in the mechanisms.

While accentuating the need for a localization process, in which local agents reconstruct the norms to enhance the appeal to the society’s prior institutions (Acharya, 2004), I analyze the impact of cooperative activities between international organizations (IOs) –mainly the UN, and more specifically OHCHR, UNDP and UN Women– and local civil society actors, specifically NGOs on the gender sensitive institutional change, which I define as the domestic implementation of Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and CEDAW recommendations related to the women’s rights. This paper has the specific focus as the UPR and CEDAW reporting processes, actors involved, and their activities mainly related to two issue areas: violence against women and the women’s economic rights. By looking at the latest developments in Turkey about the Istanbul Convention on the violence against women; the question on “What brought Turkey to the withdrawal from this agreement?” provides certain answers also to the discussions on the transfer of international gender equality norms. As the issue of violence against women became a political issue thanks to the activities of the civil society actors; international agents and domestic civil society actors involved require specific attention within the analysis of the mentioned processes.

From the growing jurisprudence of the International Criminal Court (‘ICC’ or ‘the Court’), a well-established yet unfortunate practice has emerged, and that is the near exclusion of victims from the complementarity process and the inadequate consideration of their needs and interests in admissibility determinations. This doesn’t come as a surprise seeing that the principle of complementarity wasn’t developed with victims in mind. Nevertheless, it is impossible to ignore the impact of complementarity decisions on all aspects of justice for victims at the ICC and in domestic jurisdictions. If the ICC requires states to mirror ongoing situations and cases before the Court to secure deference, this will circumscribe domestic measures to deliver justice. If the ICC adopts a purposive approach to complementarity, this gives states the room to develop measures for addressing Rome Statute crimes which can benefit victims. This paper deals with the question of how the principle of complementarity can be reinterpreted to achieve justice for victims. The answer lies in making complementarity more victim oriented. The paper introduces the concepts of victim-oriented complementarity first coined by Moffett, and victim-oriented qualified-deference which is an adaptation of Carsten Stahn's theorization of qualified deference. The paper argues that victim-oriented qualified deference is necessary for the realization of justice for victims because it ensures that victims interests are accommodated in how complementarity is interpreted and applied.

Competing ratification theories have thus far overlooked the possibility that the venue of the diplomatic negotiations resulting in the ICC’s founding treaty has had an impact on ratification patterns. Relatedly, developing countries—and African ones above all others—have long lamented the marginal role their delegations played in said negotiations. This paper examines a new dataset on the 1998 Diplomatic Conference that drafted the Rome Statute and the 2010 Review Conference of the Rome Statute that took place in Kampala, Uganda. Looking at country participation in Rome, operationalized as diplomatic representation and delegation size, our preliminary analysis indicates that there is no statistically significant relationship between country participation during the 1998 Rome Conference and the decision to ratify the Rome Statute. Conversely, delegation size correlates negatively with the time needed for ratification. Lastly, there is some evidence that state participation in the 2010 Review Conference in Kampala led to a new wave of ratifications of the Rome Statute. This suggests that the venue of diplomatic negotiations is neither a necessary nor sufficient factor when it comes to ratification, but that it can be a contributory factor, increasing the likelihood to ratify a treaty when the venue allows for meaningful participation and abbreviating the time needed to complete the ratification process at the domestic level.

In order to purposefully engage in policy-making, regional organisations depend on a steady flow of resources. Given the dominant intergovernmental set-up, assessed contributions constitute the most established modality of financing. States pay these statutory payments as part of their membership duties. However, assessed contributions are often not paid on time, and sometimes not at all. In dealing with these arrears, organisations exhibit strikingly different levels of assertiveness and authority. Some apply suspension mechanisms, while others leave considerable room for case-by-case and politicised reactions. This paper addresses this variation by comparatively analysing how regional organisations react to non-payments. We argue that differences are rooted in both institutional budgetary resilience and member states' contestation of regional norms. We develop two distinct causal mechanisms that cover the different strengths of reaction to unpaid assessed contributions. The empirical part of the paper applies the argument to two African organisations (the African Union and the Southern African Development Community) and contextualizes these cases in the broader spectrum of multilateral governance through comparisons with the United Nations' regular and peacekeeping budget and the Council of Europe. Overall, we find that norm contestation and budgetary resilience reliably explain the strength of actually implemented reactions.

Regional governance responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America have been driven by supranational bodies, which have promoted a wide array of collective initiatives in the areas of public health and economic/financial relief. This paper investigates the agency of technically oriented regional bodies in the fight against COVID-19 by looking at two Latin American regional organizations (ROs): the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Central American Integration System (SICA). The paper illuminates how the general/sectoral secretariats, the regional development banks, and the health bodies of SICA and CARICOM have not only facilitated interstate coordination and provided member states with expertise and financial support but also interceded with and/or enlisted a plurality of external actors to attract additional resources needed to strengthen member states’ capacity to respond to the pandemic. In so doing, technical supranational bodies have orchestrated the regional governance of the pandemic, gaining agency vis-à-vis their member states and fostering the articulation of a thicker regional-global governance nexus. Through the comparative analysis of the modes and effects of technical regional bodies’ involvement in CARICOM and SICA’s governance of the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper aims to bridge the gap between the scholarship on comparative regionalism and the IR literature on indirect governance modes. Additionally, the paper aims to shed light on the logics of the regional-global governance nexus in the key field of public health.

Facing increasing immigrant inflows, and a growing backlog of asylum requests, in 2021 Brazil used regional policy instruments to provide regular status to displaced Venezuelans. This policy decision openly challenged one of the prevailing and most powerful categorisations in global migration governance: the clear-cut differentiation between 'migrant' and 'refugee'. Using the Residence Agreement of Mercosur and the Cartagena Declaration for Refugees, since 2021, Brazil grants refugee and migratory status to Venezuelan nationals, independent from the reasons why these individuals left their country. Brazil's policy decision resulted in the higher regularization rate of Venezuelans in South America (Brumat 2021). Also, this policy approach has powerful effects on migrants' rights and on South American regionalism. First, because despite legally distinguishing between migrant and refugee status on paper, these two categories are granted almost the same rights in practice and, at the border, displaced individuals themselves state their preference as to whether they seek migratory or refugee status. Second, because Brazil's approach means that regional policies, when implemented, can have an effect on the expansion of migrants' rights and agency. Given that a large part of the literature affirms that migration policies in South America often fail because there is a 'gap' between law and its implementation (Acosta 2018, Margheritis 2013), what can we learn from the Brazilian case? Based on 26 elite interviews with key policy implementers, including officials from government and international organizations, we draw both empirical and theoretical lessons from Brazil's governance of Venezuelan displacement, regarding debates on the migrant versus refugee dichotomy, migrant agency, and South American regionalism. Our findings show that the state's non-distinction between migrants and refugees in practice is a pragmatic decision that, in turn, gives power to forcibly displaced persons. This article contributes to ongoing debates in migration studies about the policy implications of the categorical binary 'migrants vs. refugees', which often assume that state policies and international organizations make clear-cut distinctions between 'forced' and 'voluntary' migrants and offer two different sets of rights to each category, namely, that refugee status offers more sustainable protection. By studying the case of Brazil we show the wider dynamics that work in the implementation of regional policies in South America beyond the 'implementation gap'.

Freshwater scarcity, underdeveloped infrastructure, and economy, alongside severe climate conditions of equatorial and near-equatorial areas, have long cast a negative effect on both agri-food policies and development conditions of the African continent in general for the last 25 years at least. Countries of North-East Africa are no exception to this, as severe droughts have numerously caused humanitarian crises in this region, with Ethiopian and Sudan drought and hunger crises being the most acute in the latest decade. Access to freshwater was highlighted both as a crucial value and an international goal in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. With a view to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, this issue remains vital in the most drought-prone areas of the world, particularly in North-East Africa. This paper assesses joint regional initiatives of the North-East African countries that deal with promoting the MDG/SDG goals. It focuses on the efforts and projects of regional integration groups, such as The IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development) Partner Forum and The Nile Forum (Nile Basin Group) to evaluate the policies that were applied jointly by the countries of North-East Africa region to achieve MDGs and their prospects of continuing any effective joint policy-making in this respect. As IGAD turns 35 this year, the paper overlooks the origins and the dynamics of this developing regional integration group in particular and evaluates both the failures and successes that were achieved to this date starting in 1996 (before this date, the Intergovernmental Authority on Drought and Development (IGADD) was in action since 1986). Focal attention in this paper is attached to fighting droughts and overcoming their consequences with the joint effort of all countries in the region. To provide a wider picture of prospects of regional cooperation in fighting poverty, hunger, severe droughts, inequalities of economic development of countries of this region, several bilateral agreements are also analyzed. Possible scenarios for fostering joint regional integration efforts with the help of the UN (especially UNECA) and the international community are suggested.

Research demonstrates that celebrity advocacy gains media coverage for issues in the short term but has minimal effect on engaging the public in politics in meaningful ways. Yet, perhaps this matters little for understanding the power of celebrities in international relations. With their access and credibility, celebrities solidify elite endorsement for market-based solutions. My co-authored long-term texts on ‘Batman’ (Ben Affleck)’s work in the Democratic Republic of Congo demonstrates that what sets celebrities apart as humanitarian figures and defines their unique power is the mediated performance of emotional labour, or an ‘affective visibility’ that services both elites and popular audiences. Drawing on a case study, including 38 expert interviews, ethnographic work in DRC, and a narrative policy analysis, this work elucidates how solutions at the heart of celebrity strategic partnerships remake the concerned public into consumer citizens or ‘white saviors.’ When marketing needs are married to the fraught terrain of helping, the outcomes reflect the distorted practices of North-South relations: gendered power dynamics, simplification of complex situations, racial overtones and hierarchies of victimhood. As calls to decolonize IR focus our attention on inequalities, race and empire, understanding these new actors and alliances is an important contribution to contemporary scholarship.

The fields of development and humanitarianism have reorganized and expanded in recent years as part of neoliberal practices. These fields become “neoliberal” when the state–society relationship is organized in favor of business actors and the market is considered the most efficient and most moral provider of public goods. This presentation discusses a case of the neoliberalization of development through celebrity strategic partnerships with an example from the policy interface between the United States and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Our book Batman Saves the Congo: How Celebrities Disrupt the Politics of Development (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) provides a study of American entertainer Ben Affleck, known for his superhero performance as Batman, who in 2010 launched the NGO Eastern Congo Initiative to bring a new approach to the region’s development specifically involving strategic partnerships between public and private actors. The increasing number and diversity of celebrity strategic partnerships attests to smooth access for private actors such as corporations and a favorable environment for new alliances. We find that the possibilities offered to celebrity-led organizations like Eastern Congo Initiative to build strategic partnerships to raise private funds come about because of the rapidly changing context of international development aid and humanitarian intervention. Further, the advent of celebrity strategic partnerships encompasses intersecting trends across celebrity humanitarianism, the postdemocratic political landscape, and business practices. While strategic partnerships suggest a nimbler use of celebrity capital, there are also more opportunities for promoting and entrenching the neoliberal politics that make such models possible (and, to some, necessary). We analyze what celebrity strategic partnerships are doing to disrupt humanitarian space by focusing on the relationships celebrities create with other donors, implementers, and Congolese recipients. Our main argument is that while celebrity strategic partnerships claim to disrupt the usual politics of development and humanitarianism, they instead lay bare the practices of elite networking, visibility, and profitable helping that characterize these fields of North–South relations. We discuss how our book charts disruptive practices to development through a bricolage approach (Kincheloe 2001) combining (1) ethnography (interviews and participant observation with humanitarian and development actors in Washington, D.C.; New York; London; Kinshasa; and Eastern Congo); (2) political economy (analysis of the partners, power relations, and funding involved in the strategic alliance); and (3) narrative analysis (texts and visuals that constitute celebrity humanitarian communications). Our research design that combines review of media events in the public domain with field research in the Global South will expand knowledge within the fields of international development and humanitarianism, media and communication, and global politics. This interdisciplinary study is relevant for understanding the linkages between celebrities, businesses, and consumers and the complex relationships they support that produce, at best, mixed results for humanitarian helping on the ground—helping the helpers more than the helped.

Throughout the world, 785 million people lack a basic drinking-water service and at least 2 billion people consume contaminated drinking water. At the same time, numerous global water charities fronted by ‘caring’, politicized celebrity figures — the ‘high priests’ of global development — have sought to ‘solve’ inequalities in access to clean water through market-based solutions and charity donations. This presentation engages with the fields of critical social theory, political theology, political ecology and celebrity studies to analyse the interrelationship between capitalism and religion, to interrogate the drivers of international development, and to historically situate the work of celebrity-led water charities and the growing role of these ‘high priests’. It takes the case of Matt Damon’s Water.org to examine the growing religious nature of these neoliberalized charity processes and outlines the main elements of a contemporary political economy of sacrifice. This results in charities that, rather than reducing inequalities, actually reproduce, normalize and legitimize the very system and exploitative relations that are responsible for these inequalities and environmental problems in the first place, while scattered and localized fixes sustain the illusion that things are getting better.

In the form of economic, military, and diplomatic coercion, external intervention is conventionally assumed to be the determinant of nuclear reversal. In particular, the “causal logic of sanctions” has been defined as a chain of causal mechanisms in which economic punishment leads the targeted country to make concessions, or even compliance, which, in nuclear terms, means nuclear reversal. Consequently, historical cases of nuclear reversal have been often attributed to the success of sanctions, somehow diminishing the importance of the agency of the sanctioned state in favour of a mechanistic interpretation of sanctions efficacy. Therefore, this paper aims to re-centre the role of agency within the debate on sanctions as an effective counterproliferation tool. Specifically, we argue that even the most sophisticated, well-designed sanction regime is not per se sufficient to change the behaviour of a state exploring proliferation. Instead, the sanctioned state always retains a degree of agency, which might lead to the decision to either resist or capitulate to the external pressure or even change its policy for reasons not solely ascribable to the pain imposed by sanctions. Two case studies are taken into consideration: Libya and Iran. Regarding the Libyan case, many have pointed to the prospect of sanctions being lifted as critical to the country’s decision to rollback its nuclear programme. ‘Guns or butter’ debates, among pro-nuclear factions and promoters of domestic economic development, were recurring in Gaddafi’s Libya and played a key role in shaping his decisions. When he offered to give up its nuclear weapons programme, UN sanctions had already been suspended (US unilateral ones were still in place). At that point, a complex matrix of domestic interests, preferences, and priorities, together with prioritisation dilemmas and trade-offs, defined the strategic rationale underlying Gaddafi’s ultimate decision. In the case of Iran, we consider the passage from the Ahmadinejad to the Rouhani administration as a critical moment in the negotiations process that led to the approval of the JCPOA in 2015. Rouhani was elected on an economic and political platform significantly divergent from his predecessor. We argue that this inflexion point could not be solely ascribed to the causal effect of the pain inflicted by US and UN sanctions. Instead, we weigh the Rouhani administration's will to prioritise economic engagement with the West as a decisive factor in Iran’s decision to accept a nuclear agreement.

Since the Nineties, the promotion of EU norms and human rights has been a core objective of the EU’s policy to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Yet, in recent years, the EU’s approach towards the trade-human rights nexus has varied depending on the ASEAN trade partner, spanning a more cooperative and conciliatory attitude, to trade sanctions in defence of human rights. The EU has adopted a more cooperative stance in relations to Vietnam and the Philippines, a cautiously conflictual position with Myanmar, and a more conflictual approach with Cambodia. This paper investigates the strategic dimension behind the role of the EU in the ASEAN region and explains this differentiated approach from an economic security angle. In doing so, it offers an analytical framework that integrates insights from political economics and security studies.

Sanctions busting is as old as sanctions. While we tend to think of sanctions as exceptional measures that require special considerations, the imposition of a sanctions is nothing more than the imposition of some sort of regulation of international trade. Sanctions are evaded in the very same ways in which any other trade regulations are evaded. However, very little research has been done connecting the literature on international political economy and the one on international security on sanctions. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap by ‘normalizing’ the understanding of sanctions as a conventional tool of trade regulation. This paper suggests a classificatory typology for sanctions evasions that will enhance our understanding of how sanctions work, the extent to which they can be evaded and how they contribute to the criminalization of local economies. The case study for this exercise is the United Sanctions since the end of ‘90s. This study is a comprehensive content analysis of over 200 reports prepared by the Panels of Experts from 1999 till 2021.

Under what conditions do publics support counter-sanction measures? Economic sanctions are critical tools of international bargaining, as Western sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine and China’s comprehensive sanctions against Lithuania over one-China policy violations have demonstrated in 2022 alone. Building micro-foundations to understand sanctions’ effectiveness is critical to understanding the conditions under which sanctions work more broadly. Despite the centrality of economic sanctions in conflict, little research explores public attitudes for external support to "bust" sanctions measures. Understanding attitudes toward external support – and particularly comparing it to direct threats of sanctions – is critical, since external support for sanctions-busting measures (e.g. increasing trade with a targeted country) or legal channels (e.g. WTO trade dispute settlement) provide critical foundations for the effectiveness of sanctions as concession-generating tools. While self-interest/values trade-offs are prevalent in the economics literature and are increasingly prominent in IR, we do not yet know whether hypotheses developed almost exclusively based on responses to more violent interventions hold up in these less explicitly violent contexts. I test these hypotheses using a novel experimental design of UK-based survey respondents, a case where external support mechanisms are especially relevant. My research makes an important contribution to our understanding of economic statecraft and specifically how public opinion might influence foreign policy decisions.

Economic sanctions offer a rival state the ability to impose costs on its opponent short of costly military conflict. As such, sanctions can help to undercut the portions of the economy that are most likely to allow the state to continue the rivalry. In the meantime, maintaining sanctions also diminishes the political and economic fabrics that restrain states from taking costly military actions. Taken together, it is not clear whether sanctions reduce or increase the risk of conflict between rivals. We argue that the relations can be better understood by paying special attention to the severity of sanctions and considering the different impacts in the short and long run. For sanctions that have only a negligible impact, their effect on conflict is on the margins. However, for sanctions that are salient and costly, which we will refer to as sanction shocks, we contend they would increase the short-term risks of costly conflict but reduce the risks in the long run. If sanctions shock a rival’s economy, then they will be incentivized to take military actions preventively or to hasten existing military operations. Taking or scaling up military actions can help sanctioned states signal their resolve and capabilities more credibly. Aside from credible signaling via military operations, target states can also be incentivized to take costlier and riskier military operations in the short run to obtain some fait accompli. Finally, sanctions can negatively impact target states’ economic performance and destabilize leaders’ tenure. Facing domestic problems, leaders can be incentivized to initiate or escalate territorial conflict to divert domestic attention and strengthen group identity.

Regarding sanctions, Africa is an exceptional case not only for being the biggest recipient of these measures but also for being a primary sender of them. Since the early 2000s African regional organizations have become particularly active on this front, adopting an ever growing number of sanctions against regimes born out of unconstitutional changes of government (UCG), predominantly in the form of coups d’état, yet almost overlooking other political and security issues. Although some works in the literature on sanctions have shed light on this African dynamics of sanctions, no systematic analysis has so far assessed if and how these sanctions eventually influence social, security, and political outcomes in the region. The decline of the resort to coups in Africa since the 1990s suggested a positive influence. Yet, the early 2020s have seen a return to this practice, urging a rethink of the role of regional as well as extra-regional sanctions in Africa. The paper therefore aims to systematically test how the sanctioning behaviour from African regional organizations and extra-regional actors in Africa has influenced the socio-political performance and duration of the sanctioned regimes since the 1990s. The first section of the paper sets the context of the use of sanctions in Africa, clarifying which are the issues that generally drive the imposition of sanctions from African regional organisations and how they differ from those which are imposed on African countries by extra-regional organizations or states. A comparison of such different practices aims to expose the African distinctiveness in the use, objectives, and tools behind regional sanctions. The final part consists of a quantitative analysis of various hypotheses related to the factors that facilitate the imposition of sanctions in Africa and the effects which their imposition generates in terms of regimes’ duration and performance, using newly coded information on sanctions in Africa collected in the new Africa Sanctions Dataset.

Outline Targeted measures aimed at individuals tend to revolutionize the practice and functions of “sanctions” in international relations. Once confined to the register of “measures not involving the use of force” under Article 41 of the UN Charter or that of “countermeasures” under the law of international state responsibility, they may reshape the structure of international security by seeking immediate individual accountability of targeted persons rather than the accountability of States. In the context of the unprecedented sanctions imposed on Russia, the “freeze and seize task forces” set up by the EU and the US are a clear example of this trend. “Asset freezing” has become the symbol of a – still emerging – international public order based upon individual accountability and respect for international humanitarian law, international human rights law as well as the rule of law and even the fight against corruption and economic crime. This trend, which offers a glimpse into the future of sanctions, deserves informed developments. Abstract Like no other conflict or threat to international peace and security, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 has given unprecedented media attention to “asset freezing”, prompting medias, institutions and scholars to clear up some confusion regarding the scope of this complex, yet classic targeted measure in contemporary international relations. While global economic sanctions or sectoral sanctions are by definition “limited to the non-performance for the time being of international obligations of the State taking the measures towards the responsible State”, asset freezing has become a much more nuanced and actually ambivalent mechanism. Initially designed as a classic “sanction” intended to induce compliance by a targeted State, it has become increasingly clear that its conservatory character could also serve a different purpose: that of contributing to the accountability of the targeted individuals. This finding is illustrated by the American and European initiatives to set up “freeze and seize task forces” which constitute no less than a revolution in the field of contemporary restrictive measures. The ingenuity of these mechanisms consists in juxtaposing criminal judicial proceedings on existing asset freezing measures. The targeted individuals remain the same but the grounds for the proceedings are distinct. For instance, the “KleptoCapture task force” set up by the US Department of Justice in March 2022 has the function of criminally sanctioning Russian oligarchs by confiscating their assets insofar as they are the products of illicit activities carried out on US soil, in particular corruption, tax evasion, fraud and money laundering. Similarly, the “Freeze and seize task force” set up by the European Commission also establishes unprecedented bridges between regular asset freezing measures and possible criminal proceedings in the field of economic crime. Such initiatives perfectly demonstrate the porosity that exists between asset freezing (implemented as “international police measures”) and judicial seizures (implemented in a jurisdictional framework). Pending judicial decisions, asset freezing incidentally operate as a kind of judicial attachment of assets. Building on these preliminary remarks, the aim of this proposal is to demonstrate how targeted sanctions taking the form of individual restrictive measures are currently paving the way for a brand new model of individual accountability in the international legal order. Decentralized individual measures tends to overcome the rigidity of both the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court and opens the door of an actual international public order based upon respect for human rights and accountability.

International Relations scholars have shown that multilateral action has several advantages in terms of increased effectiveness, cost reduction through burden sharing, and greater domestic support. So why does a country like the United States often behave unilaterally? In this paper we address this question by analyzing a fundamental trade-off between unilateral and multilateral action: although multilateralism raises the chances of policy success, it may also require participants to moderate their goals and compensate their partners' losses. We develop the implications of this insight in the context of U.S.-led economic sanctions, and test our hypotheses empirically over a sample of sanction episodes beginning between 1962 and 2015. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that the U.S. is more likely to form a coalition when unilateral action is likely to fail and the value of success (as determined by issue characteristics, inter-branch politics, and partisan preferences) is high. Next, we study how the U.S. uses a variety of tools (trade, foreign aid, FDI and diplomatic visits) to reward its partners for participating in US-led sanctions. We show that, all else equal, a partner's vulnerability (i.e., losses from target retaliation) is a better predictor of U.S. compensation than the partner's usefulness (leverage over the target). Our findings speak to the broader debates on the role of multilateralism in U.S. foreign policy and the design of economic coercion.

The revolutionary protests of the winter of 2010-2011, which led to the fall of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, advanced a series of socio-economic demands on the issues of employment, development, and social justice. The grievances were expressed mainly by young people from marginalized areas of the country and, in general, by those social groups excluded from the 'security pact' of the old regime. These grievances were gradually taken up by emerging local associations, which claimed their role of 'development agents,' seeking to address the state's inability to respond to the population's needs. Since the fall of the Ben Ali regime in 2011, numerous studies and reports have highlighted the weaknesses of the development model used in Tunisia. This has led to non-inclusive growth that has excluded some country regions and marginalized a large part of the population, especially in the interior and southern regions. In this context, the social solidarity economy (SSE) model has been widely disseminated in the country by a plethora of multilateral, governmental, and non-governmental organizations as a new way to respond to the development needs of post-authoritarian Tunisia. International actors disseminated SSE practices based on creating an 'alternative' to a pre-existing development model that was considered non-inclusive of marginalized groups, many of whom embraced the path of jihadism. The idea of the ‘alternative’ emphasized the crucial role of civil society, which was supposed to be involved in any international development cooperation project. Thus, from a neo-liberal perspective, the SSE would have provided a socio-economic alternative to state development strategies and a legitimate model for associative action. This paper analyses the interactions between international donors, local authorities, and beneficiaries through an analysis located in southeast Tunisia, in the region of Médenine, a particularly emblematic context for scrutinizing the relational dynamics around the development-security nexus. Indeed, while the 2010-2011 uprisings disrupted a long-standing informal agreement regulating border trade between Tunisia and Libya, other cross-border agreements were initiated by and between non-state actors after the revolution. However, these agreements have failed to provide a sustainable mechanism for the trade that Tunisia's eastern borderlands need to survive. In addition, the reshuffling of informal border agreements has created a more blurred border area susceptible to jihadist infiltration. In March 2016, a Libyan jihadist group launched an armed attack on the border town of Ben Guerdane. The border crossing at Ras Jedir, vital for the border economy, was only reopened in June 2016, and even then, in a limited manner. Therefore, the economic situation of the local population has always been subject to uncertainty, creating in turn greater insecurity. This article aims to show the effects of renewed international development cooperation, orchestrated by different types of international actors and reworked at the local level. The results show three main outcomes: the unfolding of old hegemonic dynamics, the creation of new social networks of previously excluded social groups, and the persistent exclusion of others.

The paper discusses the impact that the pandemic has produced on the global humanitarian system and the roles of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in assisting vulnerable people in facing crises and conflicts. It is argued that civil society organisations have complemented governmental responses, by mitigating their inconsistency and inhuman feature. Other than providing assistance to vulnerable people, NGOs are experimenting new public spaces, opened by the pandemic, to promote policy debates and reforms, other than fighting against illiberal practices. The paper is divided in three parts. Firstly, an overview of the main COVID effects on humanitarian crises and on the condition of migrants and refugees is provided. Secondly, old and new roles of NGOs in coping with such effects are deepened. Thirdly, they ways NGOs are influencing public spaces for rethinking migration and refugees’ policies and practices are considered

Known to international practitioners, the synergies of multilateral cooperation across different policy domains have been officially endorsed in the UN 2016 Triple Nexus concept to a whole new level. Equally known, however, are the dysfunctionalities that may occur on the occasion of major cross-policy, inter-agency efforts. Somewhat puzzling, such remarkable cross-policy endeavor at multilateral cooperation has gone virtually unnoticed by academic analysis. Engaging with global governance literatures on regime complexity and historical-institutionalist approaches, this paper starts to fill the gap, tracking the origins and current evolutions of the Nexus, within the UN and broader development community. Relying on the work conducted with a nexus-centered network of scholars and practitioners, the paper unpacks the costs and benefits of a nexus-based approach, discussing evidence from selected contexts in light of two key aspects: effectiveness and accountability.

Are alternative forms of diplomacy possible, and under what conditions? Once again, recent events in Ukraine show the limits of official diplomacy (Track 1) in conflict prevention and resolution. Although last decades have seen an increasing number of non-state actors joining the mediation and negotiation efforts in crisis scenarios (Track 2), the model they proposed is complementary to the one already in use. Several authors highlighted the lack of local actors’ engagement among the main reasons behind the failure of peace-making processes. Therefore, recent studies on ‘people-to-people diplomacy’ (Track 3) have mainly focused on those bottom-up initiatives incorporated into larger nationally or internationally-led projects (multitrack diplomacy). However, little has been said regarding the efforts of antagonist, or subaltern, groups to build a ‘cooperation among rebels’ transcending traditional dimensions of sovereignty. This paper offers an empirical case of the so-called ‘diplomacy from below’ through an in-depth analysis of the rise and fall of the international engagement of the Italian association YA BASTA! in Mexico, Palestine, Colombia and Iraq. From the analysis of non-structured interviews conducted between 2017 and 2018 and from archive consultation, we have identified two variables directly impacting the effectiveness of diplomacy from below: ideological affinity and militarization of the territory. Far from being exhaustive, this study aims to provide new insights, based on a specific empirical case, for future research on alternative forms of diplomacy. Keywords: diplomacy from below, diplomacy, subaltern, international cooperation, peace-making

The past decade has been momentous for the Arab Gulf states. The regional insecurity, characterized by civil wars and shifting Western involvement in the region, has invited more independent and assertive foreign policies on the part of Gulf states. Political competition within the Gulf Cooperation Council and between regional heavyweights Saudi Arabia and Iran has contributed to the empowerment of transnational movements: especially Islamist movements, but also tribes. The revolution in information technology, especially social media, has greatly expanded information sharing and political mobilization in ways that are difficult for states to control. Economic challenges, driven by sharply falling oil prices and growing populations, are undermining the social contract based on welfare benefits. And a new generation is eager to play a more substantial role in building its countries. In light of all of these challenges, the Arab Gulf states have been eager to explore new means for strengthening the connection between Gulf citizens and the nation as represented by its political leadership. Multiple layers of identities based on religion, ethnicity and tribal affiliations have emerged as alternate forms of solidarity, and sometimes considered as a threat to the centralized state power. Prior to independence, tribes were independent organisations, each equivalent to a nation with a particular lifestyle, which contributed to a common identity between people of certain tribes. However, when borders were drawn, people of similar tribes found themselves separated by geographical borders. There was a need for a shift in loyalties and saturation of tribal identities, at the expense of strengthening other forms of identity. Adding to this layer of complexity, is the demographics of the region. The Gulf states are the only states with minority citizens and majority expatriates; both permanent residents and temporary migrants. These demographics influences the state and citizen relationship, social, political and economic structures and policies. The expatriate community is the ‘other’, upon which national identity is built. The focus is then inward, rather than outward. National identities are built on the concept of ‘us’ and ‘them’. The ‘them’ in the Gulf is also present within the country, sharing the similar resources and political space as the ‘us’. In recent years, Gulf states have undertaken steps to promote national identity and inculcate a stronger sense of national belonging that ties citizens to the state and its leadership. This represents a shift in policy for these Arab monarchies that had previously viewed national mobilization as more of a threat than an asset. It also represents a marked change in Gulf societies that have been organized politically on the basis of tribe, or religious sect, and mobilized along Islamic and Arab identity. A complex nexus of economic, political, and geopolitical forces is driving these projects of national identity, which vary in scope and content across the Gulf. The mechanisms that shape this emerging identity are varied and include national days, national dialogues, and national service; foreign policy and foreign wars; and heritage projects, arts, museums, and archives. The processes of economic development, state building, and identity formation have not been successful in integrating all citizens in the same way and to the same degree. Some citizens – because of religious sect, gender, or national origin – have not fully achieved national belonging. While the basis of tribes in economic scarcity and nomadism have been eliminated by policies of sedentarization, urbanization, and state building, “political tribalism” – a concept first outlined by the Kuwaiti sociologist Khaldoun al-Naqeeb – is very much a reality. Leadership in the Gulf is an extension of tribalism in modes of governance, providing a mentality and set of relations where political roles and resources are distributed, in part, on the basis of kinship.

The problem of the Somalia conflict, often referred to as the State Failure issue has attracted attention of scholars and practitioners in the 1990s as one of by-products of the dissolution of the Yalta-Potsdam system of International Relations and the end of the Cold War. Ever since that pivotal moment, the issue of a failed state remains unresolved, although the overall conflict landscape in Somalia has improved, especially with the emergence and rise of Somaliland and Puntland, still largely unrecognized diplomatically worldwide. An almost 20-year period of applying various conflict resolution schemes, negotiations and attempts to resolve, or to create a viable theoretical and practical framework to address conflict in Somalia calls for a revision of some fundamental conflict actors’ notions of this conflict, as it is the major conflict actors that influence this conflict drivers and peace agendas. At present, in Somalia there are 5 parallel conflicts : 1) Federal Government of Somalia versus non-state violent conflict actors of islamist groups al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam over ideology and national power issues, which started in 2006 and up to 2013 has been defined by Conflict Barometer as all-out War; 2) Puntland self-proclaimed authority versus Somaliland self-proclaimed authority over territory and subnational dominance issues, which started in 1998 and is characterized as non-violent dispute; 3) Puntland self-proclaimed authority versus Federal Government of Somalia over Puntland autonomy issue and status, which is ongoing since 1998 within a non-violent format; 4) Somaliland versus Khatumo State Autonomy over subnational predominance and power, which is ongoing since 2009 and is currently a violent crisis; 5) Federal Government of Somalia versus Somaliland over secession, territory, and power, which is ongoing since 1991 with a present non-violent status (however, the status has changed over last 25 years). Due to grave security conditions, UNDP does not provide Human Development Index for Somalia. However, at least two political - territorial entities, Somaliland and Puntland, have performed relatively well as compared to the rest of Somalia. Although still unrecognized by the UN and the majority of the world states as official member states of the world community, these two entities managed to establish their own de-facto viable rules of (non-official)-citizenship and managed to resolve numerous illegal border crossings and illegal trade between the two unrecognized states. This paper overviews the efforts made by the unrecognized de-facto states of Somaliland and Puntland over last 25 years in terms of securing citizenship and citizens' rights. It aims to understand how citizenship and corresponding rights evolved as a notion in these two entities and offers a view on how these practices may help to sustain a long-term peace and economic development in these post-state-failure areas.

Fear, like all feelings in politics, is the object of a process of construction, formatting and dissemination (Robin, 2006). As part of the study of the formation of collective identities, my proposal intends to focus on the paradoxical role of border communities (borderlanders) by observing the registers of fear mobilized by the State to spread, display and legitimize its authority. Border regions form specific spaces likely to generate border effects (Martinez, 1994). These stem from a set of practices and representations and produce classification effects on the residents of the border, depending on the evolution of relations with the neighboring state of the border dyad studied. Grounded in a long run process of fieldwork in the two Lebanese-Syrian and Lebanese-Israeli border regions, this contribution therefore intends to bring to light the regimes of fear used by the Lebanese State and its associated political actors in the specific security assembly it has developed (Hazbun, 2016). These regimes are backed by specific identity registers that involve border communities as actors that mediate the identity discourse of the State either by reinforcing it or by distinguishing it from these communities. Via the discourse of fear, the border is a specific place of this high political and symbolic investment in the production of collective identity through fear.

In the current Syrian scenario, the Turkish state occupies several territories of the north. According to the Astana Agreements, Turkish troops are stationed in the Idlib province. There they cooperate in various forms with the Interim Government (SIG; Hillal et al. 2017; Loufti 2017; Munif 2017) proclaimed by the Syrian National Coalition (SNC, led by the Muslim Brotherhood; Álvarez-Ossorio 2012a; 2012b) and the Salvation Government, declared by the Levant Liberation Organization (HTS, led by the Al-Qaeda’s international network: Heller 2017). In the areas around the towns of Afrin, Ras al-Ain and Tell Abyad, the Turkish army is present unilaterally since the invasions conducted in 2018 and 2019 to impose the SIG’s governance. SIG’s control was also militarily imposed on the populations of Jarablus, Maree, Azaz and Al-Bab since 2016 and 2017 (Allsopp et al. 2019; Grasso 2018; 2022). While Turkish military operations in Idlib are publicly justified as a form of protection of the SIG authorities from Russian and Syrian military action (which would cause further flows of refugees towards Turkey), all other invasions are explained as part of a self-defense policy and counter-terrorism operations (Aziz 2017; RT-MFA 2022)j. In the case of Jarablus and Al-Bab, the “terrorist entity” toward which the Turkish military has acted is the Islamic State (IS: Rivkin 2016). In all other cases the self-governing authority targeted by the military has been the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES: Ayboga et al. 2016; Schmidinger 2017; Rojava Information Center 2019a; 2021). Limited to the AANES territories, the Turkish state initiated policies of demographic change, resulting in forms of forced depopulation of the indigenous dwellers and the settlement of allogeneic demographic components (Chulov-Shaheen 2018). Military operations against AANES areas have resulted in the displacement of an estimated half a million people. The repressive activities carried out by Turkey and the SIG towards dissidents and hostile partisan groups has produced additional reasons to leave the area (Hamza 2022). The latter is also subject to internal clashes within the militias protecting the SIG officials (Syrian National Army or SNA), acting under the chain of command of the Turkish army (Rojava Information Centre 2019b; Syrian Observatory for Human Rights 2021). Both urban areas and non-urban areas have seen, since 2018, the arrival of individuals and families from Turkish territory as a form of forced repopulation. Research on this phenomenon is limited and tentative, as these areas are subject to largely secret military and administrative policies and are not accessible to the independent press. There are, however, three types of available sources to date: the official statements of the Turkish government; reports by international humanitarian organizations; reports by opposition groups. On the basis of these sources and of the relevant scientific literature, the paper aims to show how the policies of the Turkish state, and of the Kurdish-led movement leading the AANES (the Party of Democratic Union, PYD), clash on three different levels related to, and defining, identity: the legal, the religious-linguistic and the political. Regarding the juristic level, the presentation will emphasize the use that state actors (Turkish, Syrian and other) make of the legal qualification of “terrorism”. The justification for Turkish operations against IS and AANES is the war on terror and, in terms of international law, evokes the right to self-defense (Radpey 2021; 2022). Such a qualification of the PYD and AANES raises questions concerning the absence of established legal criteria for qualifying terrorism in international law, and the consequent non-uniformity of the lists of terrorist organizations acknowledged by different states (Burkhalter 2016; Della Torre 2017). Further questions arise when considering that groups operating in areas under Turkish control, such as Idlib, Afrin or Ras al-Ain (under the umbrella of the SIG, SG or SNA) are qualified as terrorists or sanctioned by other states (e.g. the US) and by the AANES authorities on the basis of crimes perpetuated against the dictate of international humanitarian law (USDT 2021). A final complicating factor is the fluctuating lack or presence of international recognition of the de facto institutions promoted by these different groups (Van Essen 2012; Grasso 2021). This definitely has to do with a decisive form of identity/identification: the legal one. At every level, it presupposes a value judgement and a form of identifying definition (Grasso 2019). This layer in the definition of identity, often over-evaluated in the public debate, would not suffice, however, to explain the social, political and geopolitical scenario it underlies. The people, whether civilians or belligerents, who left AANES territories (and those who entered them from Turkey at various times) do present a variety of nationalities and geographical origins, religious and linguistic affiliations, but a prevalence of specific religious or linguistic identities on both sides is obvious. In the case of the militias assembled in the SNA, or the Syrian refugees transported from Turkey to Syria (often militiamen’s families), they are Sunni Muslims (Hamou et al. 2018a). Linguistically, the vast majority is Arab, with a sizable Turkmen minority and a much smaller Kurdish minority in the initial stages. It is the events concerning the latter, represented by the Kurdish-speaking Salafi formation framed in the SNA and named Ehfed Salahettin, that demonstrates the linguistic as well as religious layer of identity involved in the political operation of conquest and colonization (Hamou et al. 2018b). The outcome of the participation of a few dozens of Kurdish militiamen in the ranks of SNA under the banner of Ehfed Salahettin, in fact, seems to have been their split and dissolution due to anti-Kurdish discriminatory atmosphere surrounding the ranks of the SNA. This overall scenario ought to be analyzed both in relation to the ideological character of the Turkish ruling party (AKP, characterized by continuous reference to the Sunni Muslim religion) and with the historical conflict of the Turkish state with Kurdish minorities and movements in Turkey and beyond. The majority of residents in the AANES-controlled areas of Afrin and Ras al-Ain were Kurdish-speaking (Schmidinger 2019). Many Arabs, Assyrians, Armenians and Yazidis also left the occupied areas, but the majority to leave were Kurdish. This denounces the widespread perception of the anti-Kurdish character of the invasion on the level of the linguistic identity, and of an anti-Christian and anti-Yazidi character as far as religious identity is concerned (Cockburn 2018; Omar 2020). The paper intends to connect the first two levels by affirming a connection between legal identification as an instrument of war and linguistic and religious identification, and self-identification, as factors of war mobilization. The third and final logical step, based on previous extensive empirical investigation, will be to establish the highest level of identification, i.e. the political. The latter ought to be conceived as qualifying the ultimate aim and purpose of the invasion and of the military, economic and humanitarian mobilization following demographic change (with all inherent ambiguities). The existence of this third level, which cannot be reduced to the juristic and linguistic-religious ones, is demonstrated by several factors. First, the presence of Arabs among Afrin’s displaced, or among the convoys that arrived from Al-Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor in 2018 to peacefully support Afrin’s resistance to the invasion (Anha News 2018). Secondly, the presence of Kurdish civilians who did not leave the occupied territories, deciding to live under and cooperate with the SIG. Thirdly, the presence of Kurdish civilians and political organizations that, in Syria and Turkey, support the Turkish government policies hostile to the AANES (Schmidinger 2017; Allsopp et al. 2019). Finally it must be remembered that most of fighters and civilians who opposed and still oppose the invasions are Sunni Muslims as much as the invading and colonizing actors. Although the juristic labelling and the linguistic and religious factors assume a dramatic potential for mobilization towards oppression and violence, they do not suffice to explain the aims and the ultimate character of the invasion, nor of the resistance to the invasion. They alone could not even account for the phenomenon of settlement colonialism occurring in the area. At least the sources related to AANES denounce a political profiling of the Arab families being settled in the previously Kurdish areas: not whatever Arab, possibly, fits for settlement when the latter is managed by a politically and geopolitically motivated state policy. The AANES and the SIG do not, in fact, qualify mainly according to linguistic or religious features, although for the SIG, unlike the AANES, Sunni jurisprudence is the decisive source of law. Their distance, like that between the (de facto transnational) movements promoted by the Turkish AKP and the Kurdish PYD in Syria, the Middle East and Europe, lies in the legal order, and therefore the type of society, that they are building or intending to build. The research will conclude that the identification of behaviors and their legal definition, as well as the singling out of identity faults on the customary, linguistic and religious levels, are fundamental. This notwithstanding, they cannot explain either today’s nation-state policies on identity nor resistance to them. They need to include the overall grass-rooted, ideological, political and future-oriented forms of struggle and implementation of social norms on the international and transnational mobilization levels.