This article investigates the relationship between term limits and international conflict. Theories of political survival and diversionary war both imply term limits should play a role in ...international relations, whereas "permanent referendum theory," largely motivated by work in American politics, suggests otherwise. Drawing on these theories, we formulate and test competing hypotheses regarding term limits and international crises. Using dyadic militarized interstate disputes data and information on forty-eight democracies with term limits, we uncover strong evidence to support the claim that leaders reaching final terms in office are more likely to initiate conflict than those still subject to reelection. Moreover, we find that the likelihood of conflict initiation is significantly higher during times of recession, but only in the absence of binding term limits. While binding electoral terms and economic downturns are both independently associated with increased levels of conflict initiation, in concert their conditional effects actually counteract each other.
The conventions of the UN international drug control system limit the uses of controlled substances to medical and scientific purposes, but do not define the meaning of this expression means. This ...situation generates a legal gap or lacunae that makes it impossible to determine whether a policy complies with the international conventions. These conventions were written without considering the modern criteria for the interpretation of treaties and the etiologies of production, trafficking and consumption of psychoactive drugs. The article explores the consequences of this failure and suggests ways of debating international drug policies, showing the possibility of flexible interpretations without modifying the conventions of the international drug control system.
On July 14, 2015, the United States, the other permanent members of the UN Security Council, and Germany (the P5 +1); the European Union; and Iran reached a nonbinding Joint Comprehensive Plan of ...Action (JCPOA) concerning the scope and content of Iran's nuclear program. Framed as a political agreement, the deal struck by the JCPOA significantly limits Iran's capacity to enrich uranium for the next fifteen years; eliminates Iran's capacity to produce weapons-grade plutonium for the next fifteen years; eases sanctions imposed by the international community on Iran for its nuclear program; and establishes mechanisms for oversight by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). With the finalization of the agreement, attention turns to the domestic sphere, where the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA) gives Congress sixty days from the signing of the JCPOA to review the plan before President Barack Obama may waive statutory sanctions by executive action.
Why did the Ottoman Empire enter the First World War in late October 1914, months after the war's devastations had become clear? Were its leaders 'simple-minded,' 'below-average' individuals, as the ...doyen of Turkish diplomatic history has argued? Or, as others have claimed, did the Ottomans enter the war because War Minister Enver Pasha, dictating Ottoman decisions, was in thrall to the Germans and to his own expansionist dreams? Based on previously untapped Ottoman and European sources, Mustafa Aksakal's dramatic study challenges this consensus. It demonstrates that responsibility went far beyond Enver, that the road to war was paved by the demands of a politically interested public, and that the Ottoman leadership sought the German alliance as the only way out of a web of international threats and domestic insecurities, opting for an escape whose catastrophic consequences for the empire and seismic impact on the Middle East are felt even today.
This article honours the memory of blues musician B.B. King, who died on 14 May 2015, through focusing on his performances in prisons. The article situates his concerts inside Cook County jail and ...Sing Sing within the wider political crisis during the 1970s surrounding issues of race and class in the American prison system. It suggests the historical resonance of these events can be interpreted through using Paul Gilroy’s notion of planetary humanism. The tone of B.B. King’s guitar carries both the historical trace of African American experience while at the same time voicing a humanistic sensibility beyond the brutalities of racism and incarceration.
Heads of State Arnold, Denise Y.; Hastorf, Christine A.
2008, 20160701, 2016-07-01, 2016-06-29
eBook
The human head has had important political, ritual and symbolic meanings throughout Andean history. Scholars have spoken of captured and trophy heads, curated crania, symbolic flying heads, head ...imagery on pots and on stone, head-shaped vessels, and linguistic references to the head. In this synthesizing work, cultural anthropologist Denise Arnold and archaeologist Christine Hastorf examine the cult of heads in the Andes-past and present-to develop a theory of its place in indigenous cultural practice and its relationship to political systems. Using ethnographic and archaeological fieldwork, highland-lowland comparisons, archival documents, oral histories, and ritual texts, the authors draw from Marx, Mauss, Foucault, Assadourian, Viveiros del Castro and other theorists to show how heads shape and symbolize power, violence, fertility, identity, and economy in South American cultures.
Studies on retrospective voting argue that voters under presidentialism tend to assign co-responsibility for the president’s performance to her party in congressional elections. However, it is not ...uncommon for presidential parties to distance themselves from an unpopular president or for opposition parties to cooperate with a popular president. In doing so, parties can signal to voters that they side with a popular (or against an unpopular) president. Yet little is known about whether this strategic behavior has electoral payoffs. This study proposes a popularity-response model, where parties’ electoral outcomes are a product of how they respond to public opinion on the president. I hypothesize that parties defecting from an unpopular president (or cooperating with a popular president) minimize electoral losses and obtain a further electoral boost. Analysis using an original dataset coding issue congruence between presidents and parties prior to 35 elections in 18 Latin American countries supports this claim.
Over the past fifteen years, Latin America has seen a wave of leftist governments take office with some leaders increasing the state's role in the economy, while others continue and even intensify ...market-oriented reforms. Building on the concept of mandates in the American politics literature, and supplemented by personal interviews conducted with Latin American policymakers and empirical work, I argue that whether leftist presidents implement policies away from the market depends on their margin of electoral victory combined with whether the president's party holds a majority of seats in the legislature. As much American politics work shows, presidents that win elections by landslides are better able to claim a mandate. However, the capacity of presidents to convert massive victories into policy change also requires control of the legislature by the president's party. web URL: http://jcp.gc.cuny.edu/2015/12/14/volume-42-number-2-january-2016/
Founded in 1903, the Copa del Rey (King's Cup) is Spain's oldest national soccer/football competition. Since then, it has been held under a variety of political systems, each of which has altered the ...cup's name to match the ruling head of state. These shifts in political regimes have not only affected the cup's identity but also the competition's meaning, as it has symbolized centralism in a nation that has historically maintained tensions between center and periphery. Because of this, fans, public figures, and the media in Spain have used the Copa del Rey Final as an opportunity to express both conformity and dissent towards their ruling government. The link between soccer and nationalism as vehicles of fan identity reveal that recent reactions to the national anthem during the Copa final are reflective of these enduring tensions within Spain. The tournament's structure, history, and singularity in Spanish soccer have made its final an event where teams and their fans can represent their regions as they compete to be crowned 'Champions of Spain'. This duality as a national tournament with regional symbolism lies throughout the tournament's history and contributes to the intensity of recent debates about fan behavior at the final match.
Since 1990, the highest office in Poland has been elected by Polish citizens through secret ballot in universal, direct and equal elections. Since then, there have been six presidential elections in ...Poland won by Lech Wałęsa (1990-1995), Aleksander Kwaśniewski (1995-2000 and 2000-2005), Lech Kaczyński (2005-2010), Bronisław Komorowski (2010-2015) and Andrzej Duda (since 2015). Focusing on the psychological dimension of perception mechanisms, the aim of the analysis was to find what is the perception of presidents of Poland after 1989. We also wanted to know if respondents' age differentiate between the perceptions of presidents of Poland since 1990. Using multiple stages analysis (including exploratory research, factor analysis, competent jurors method) we identified four factors named: potency, honesty, social competence and expertise. The study (N=949) showed that the perception of heads of state is significantly different regarding all the factors and significant differences in the perception in specific way explaining in the article.
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