Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The paper draws on John Zaller's model of persuasion to help explain and predict the belief that Saddam Hussein aided in the attacks of September 11th, 2001.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Regional integration gives the impression that a new survival unity has been shaping worldwide since the end of the Second World War. As a result, the secular and seminal cell of international relations, known as the Nation-state, seems to be submitted to a genuine metamorphosis, which consequences reaches the bulk of human organizations. The building blocks logic, e.g., European Union, Mercosur or Andean Community, amid others, which then begins increasingly to emerge, aims both at the capacity of political and economic power extension in the international arena and at the ability of founding this power in a social cohesion basis. After the end of the Cold War, the boundary conditions of international relations have shifted from a bipolar to a multipolar perception and, from the 11th September 2001, a unipolar conception has been crystallized. In this context, the analysis of the Mercosur integration process evolution since its foundation in early 1991, focusing mutually on its internal functioning mechanisms and on its international insertion, could point out some motivating issues and considerations on sovereignty and hegemony. The initial theoretical reference is precisely the idea of survival unity worked out by Norbert Elias in his Die Gesellschaft der Individuen.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC, came as a terrible revelation to most people in the world. The new world that we now inhabit comes as a sharp contrast to the seemingly more positive era of the relative peace of the 1990s. Clearly, the horrible events of 9/11 were not on the same scale as the two cataclysmic world wars that revolutionized the world system in their wake and yet 9/11 has impacted international relations. The question is did September 11 change the way the Chinese perceive the international system and thus the way they react to and within the system?

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Today, we see concerted efforts by the US administration to resurrect a far more expansive doctrine of just war. The justification is explicitly that we confront frightening evils in the world that require the use of force to combat them effectively. If the international institutions cannot act, individual states, particularly the hegemon, must act alone or in “coalitions of the willing.” In practice, the response to perceived evil has been to authorize security forces to destroy terrorist networks, but more provocatively, to use force against states that harbour or support terrorists or which might possess frightening weapons that could be transferred to terrorists. Hence the rhetorical creation of an “axis of evil,” and the bald assertion that you “are with us or you are with the terrorists.” States are declared to be “rogue,” meaning outside the ambit of civilised society. The concept of evil has thus been widely invoked to explain difficult political choices to a confused public. Evil is a tempting justification for political action. But evil has many faces that may require conflicting responses: atrocities and massive human rights abuses by repressive regimes, terrorists, rogue states with weapons of mass destruction, and war itself. The mere evocation of evil provides no useful guidance as to when a war is just. If we too easily abandon our admittedly flawed normative framework, institutionalised through the United Nations, in favour of the illusory clarity of combat with evil, we will lurch towards many ‘just’ wars that produce neither justice nor security.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines the role of tragedy in the formation of issue positions and support for the president during times of crisis. This paper draws upon theories from political science and psychology in order to develop a model explaining the phenomenon of the political effects of national tragedy. The theories that inform this model are drawn from research on the role of emotions in political attitudes and cognition, the psychology of emotional appraisal of events and individuals, the “rally-effect” of crises, presidential assessment, the psychology of tragedy, blame attribution and responsibility assignment, and the link between political issue frames and attitude priming. The model is tested with survey data drawn from 4 years and 3,337 respondents. The results generally confirm the model. Implications for understanding the role of national tragedies in the democratic process are discussed.