Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Institutionalist explanations of modern ethnic violence tend to emphasize the weakness of the state or the failure of civic institutions to prevent violence. Without adequate specification of mechanisms, however, this cluster of explanations risks becoming tautological. Moreover, restricting explanation to proximate temporalities may at times be misleading. This article proposes a historical turn in explanations of ethnic violence, focusing on how legacies of state formation and embedded political networks promote the possibility that violent repertoires will be used at specific historical moments. Using a range of archival and historical sources on recurrent Hindu-Muslim violence in western India, and comparative cases to discipline the theory, this paper demonstrates that ethnic violence becomes a stronger possibility in cases where prior trajectories of state formation have deepened, formalized, and accordingly policed ethnic categories. These possibilities are turned into actual events of ethnic violence when organizations and parties tap them as legacies to create ethnic blocs at unstable historical moments to win political ascendancy. While organizing these blocs they either take advantage of the prior disorganization of other possible social formations (suppressed historical possibilities), or actively disorganize them through tactics that often involve violence.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Thomas Hobbes and Alexis de Tocqueville had almost antithetical views of what made a good leader with Hobbes advocating a strong leader where individuals deferred to a sovereign and de Tocqueville advocating strength in individuals and warning against concentration of power. In international relations today, these opposing views of leadership are prevalent. Using Hobbes' and de Tocqueville's notions of sovereignty and leadership, this paper will first analyse the differences between these approaches and the types of leaders that would be produced. In terms of global leadership, I shall argue that Hobbes' version of a leader, or a sovereign, provides more flexibility in the type of leadership and in creating potential global governance rather than Tocqueville's version of leadership where individual rights are given precedence, even though the Hobbesian approach also has its problems. In addition, both Hobbes and de Tocqueville caution against expanding locally-based notions of leadership to areas where the social situation, including religion, differs. I shall conclude with a brief analysis of what this means to international relations today and propose whether a combination of the two approaches, taking into account their similarity in warning against assuming conditions are similar everywhere, can lead to a different meaning of leadership.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The two main puzzles dealt with in this study is first how one of the world's strongest and fastest growing sectors - the biotechnology industry - exercised so little influence over EU decision-making and came to be faced with such strict regulations of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Explanatory factors within the EU broadly account for the situation. The strength of counterbalancing forces has increased through issue linking and these groups have achieved improved access through the changing decision-making procedures of the EU institutions. Next comes the question of whether the EU will retain its global leadership in this issue area through the further development of the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol. The dark horse in the future developments of GMO legislation is the effect of external activities, such as the WTO challenge by the USA and the dispute over food aid to Africa. In the short run, these challenges are likely to unify and strengthen European opposition to GM foods, but the long-term effects may be a weakened opposition outside the current EU Membership. As the new EU Member States do not generally have a very large biotechnology sector, the pressure for deregulation could be expected to decrease with enlargement. On the other hand, there may be an increased willingness in these countries to build up a strong biotechnology sector. The new Member States are largely dependent on agriculture, politically oriented towards the USA, and in general have a less environmentally 'fearsome' public opinion. Against this backdrop, the biotechnology industry may find new allies after enlargement.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Talking about global governance makes you feel great. Politicians refer constantly to global governance because they can bring up the picture of an active governor who is responsible for providing public goods and/ or preventing public bads. Officials at International Organizations, concerned citizens, NGOs, and recently more and more corporations love the term because nobody wants to be left out in governing the global village.Unfortunately, however, global governance cannot hold what it promises because the most essential fact concerning decision-making is left out: politics. This is due to the fact that global governance is perceived as technical problem solving or as a coordination game in which reasonable actors only have to find a pareto-optimal equilibrium. However, global politics is, like all politics, about making choices in situations where no right or simple solutions are possible. This implies that those who intend to govern globally must realize that they will incur costs, and not only transaction costs, and that their engagement, if effectively bringing about reform, will most likely involve various forms of power struggle from persuasion to coercion. This paper intends to demarcate such global politics in the area of international finance. Discourse in this field has seen some very active vocabulary: since the end of the 1990s lots of talk about building a new financial architecture has been heart; international development corporation and good governance is highly engaged in fighting corruption; and the US government and its allies are pushing hard to increase global security through conducting a financial war on terror. Unfortunately, building has been very slow, fighting only partially successful, and conducting the financial war has been a failure by all standards. The paper shows that the slow progress of global governance in these three sub-fields is not due to technical complexity or economic rationales but because politicians do not dare to engage politically with problematic structures (e.g. tax havens), invested interests (e.g. corrupt state officials and their cronies in many developing countries), or powerful allies (e.g. Dubai and Saudi Arabia would have to be number one targets if the financial war on terror). Identifying these highly contested political issues is seen as the first step in bringing about good global politics.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This contribution is for a roundtable discussion