The recent decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Hutchinson v United Kingdom (2015) is the latest twist in the political legal struggle between Westminster and Strasbourg. Whilst ...the British government has made several successions to the ECtHR regarding the role of the executive in the imprisonment of lifers, the thorny issue of the whole of life tariff, and prospect of prisoner release under that tariff, has been an ongoing debate. Whilst the ECtHR appeared to directly challenge domestic policy in the preceding decision in Vinter and Others v United Kingdom this latest decision, the seeming retreat from Vinter, by the Fourth Section of the court, appears to be more of a response to hard line domestic politics than a continuation of holistic legal principle which the ECtHR has outwardly supported in the past.
India has been a major beneficiary of economic globalisation. Yet, integration into the global economy has also made India vulnerable to the unpredictable swings in market sentiment. Nevertheless, ...the ultimate effects of cross-border economic forces also depend on the robustness of domestic policies. Potential vulnerabilities such as disruption in trade or financial flows can be mitigated by sound macroeconomic policies. Although 'licence raj' and 'export pessimism' is now a thing of the past, India's quasiprotectionist policies, coupled with the failure to deepen its integration into the global economy, have made the economy increasingly vulnerable to external forces—as seen when the United States Federal Reserve announced its decision to unwind its stimulus programme in mid-2013, resulting in deep selloffs in emerging economies, especially India's currency, bond and equity markets.
Davies GAM. (2011) Coercive Diplomacy Meets Diversionary Incentives: The Impact of US and Iranian Domestic Politics during the Bush and Obama Presidencies. Foreign Policy Analysis, doi: ...10.1111/j.1743-8594.2011.00164.x This paper applies theories of strategic conflict avoidance and diversionary war to help explain US-Iranian interactions. The article argues that US attempts at coercive diplomacy have tended to strengthen hardliners in Iran by allowing them to frame opposition to government policies as support for the United States. In particular, US public uncertainty about the advisability of using force against Iran provided both the Supreme Leader and the Iranian President with an opportunity to increase tensions with the United States with little concern about provoking a military strike. The aggressive stance of the Iranian regime is about developing a threat which diverts attention from domestic problems and places it firmly in the arena of the international. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Generally, scholars of international relations have attempted to show that international rules or norms influence state behavior by locating their causal significance at the level of state ...interactions. However, international rules and norms also affect a country's policy choice by way of the actions of domestic political actors. In particular, government officials and societal interest groups can appeal to an international rule or norm in an effort to further their objectives in the national arena. Through such appeals, international rules and norms can become incorporated into the policy debate, and, under some conditions, may ultimately affect national policy choice. The article identifies two factors that condition the extent to which an actor's appeal to an international rule or norm will influence state behavior: the domestic structural context and the domestic salience of the international rule or norm. This argument is explored through an examination of how international rules and norms have affected U.S. policy choices in both the economic and security realms. The security case examines the impact of President Bush's appeal to the norm of collective security to justify a response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The economic case covers the U.S. semiconductor industry's efforts to persuade the Reagan administration to obtain Japanese liberalization of its trade practices with regard to semiconductor devices.
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