The article deals with the formation of political science as a discipline during the Weimar Republic (Germany). After the establishment of the Nazi totalitarian regime in 1933, the development of political science was stopped in Germany and most of the scientists emigrated from the country. The Nazi regime contributed to the emergence and establishment of different ideological disciplines, instead of political science, which were aimed at the propaganda of the Nazi regime and served to the interests of the government.
In the 20th century, Canada’s natural resource-based economy came to a head with the burgeoning environmentalism movement. The country’s dependency on oil and gas was a blight on its domestic and international profile. To reform the nation’s public image and develop its environmental credentials, Canada became an active participant in international environmental fora. The country’s reliance on fossil fuels and resource extraction, however, continued unabated. I examine Canadian Environmental Foreign Policy (EFP) through the lens of liberal internationalism, highlighting the tensions between the Canadian economy and environmental politics, using the Paris Agreement (2015) as a focal point.
The 1997 electoral success of Tony Blair’s New Labour can be seen as the symbolic conclusion of the debate on political ideologies that had developed in the UK and Western Europe during the ’80s and the ’90s, and that intensified after 1989. The “post-ideological” approach that underpinned the Third Way model introduced a strong emphasis on policy outcomes and effectiveness, which have gradually replaced values and ideologies in legitimizing governmental action. The article focuses on this aspect of the political experience of the NL, engaging in an analysis of the political discourse developed in the UK at the end of the 90s. The analysis highlights the contradictions in the experience of the NL. In fact, the attempt to move beyond ideologies appears to be a rhetorical instrument rather than a real transformation. However, the Third way model marked an important turning point in the definition of political legitimation strategies, the effects of which are clearly visible in the political discourses of European political parties in the years after the rise of the NL.
The ideas proposed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their Communist Manifesto became a revolutionary new way to look at and decipher the hardships and inequalities that the working class was facing in a newly industrialized world. At the time of the Manifesto’s conception, workers were flocking to the cities to find work in the brutal conditions of Europe’s postindustrial revolution factories. While the working class during this time period were likely aware of class inequalities between owners and owned, managers and producers, and oppressors and oppressed, the Manifesto – designed as a handbook to be distributed to workers – sharpened and honed the awareness of these inequalities, and provided working class citizens with a group to blame their terrible working conditions on.
In late 2011 and early 2012, a new slang term – “diaosi” – exploded on the Chinese social media scene. A crude and derogatory word similar to the English “loser”, the term took on a life of its own as many Chinese youths, predominantly but not exclusively male, began to identify with the label and proclaim themselves “diaosi". 1 The mass appeal of the term was enough to land it the number one spot on China Radio International’s top 10 list of internet buzzwords in 2012 (Ru, 2013) – but what could press so many young Chinese to suddenly and publicly declare themselves to be “losers”? This paper will seek to explain the emergence and significance of this phenomenon by: i) investigating the meaning of the term; ii) placing it in the economic and social context of the post-1980s reform period; and iii) devoting particular attention to the state policies that have directly driven its development.
The phenomenon of globalization has perforated the borders of nations worldwide, influencing and altering the current state of international relations. Economic relations between developed and developing countries have been cemented into the universal adoption of neoliberal capitalist ideology as the foundation for the future of international economic development. 1 Neoliberal policies are instituted on the idea that for the expansion and maturity of social and economic international relations to occur, countries must prioritize capital gaining endeavours and detract from large social welfare investments. 2 Over time, neoliberal globalization has buttressed exploitative and inequitable relationships between nations and has made the gap between the rich and poor expand. 3
Naturalism has informed the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, making it both an effective and ineffective legal instrument for the prohibition of genocide. The implications of employing naturalism can be explored and challenged by analyzing the origins of and use of the Convention. This paper will use a constructivist approach, taking into consideration the legal aspects of the Convention, in order to contrast the epistemologies of these two theories. The Convention has been treated in the international law arena as a 'natural law' or a 'divine law.' Fournet explains that this is problematic because “the idea that international law knows of superior norms, no matter how compelling, sits nonetheless uncomfortably with the very essence of public international law as a law made by and for states. 1 The ascension of the law to universal jurisdiction removed the Convention from the context in which it was developed. While naturalism enabled the Convention to be universalized to more effectively bind all states, its ascension to a universal law hinged on the assumption that this model had identified the true nature of genocide, making the Convention ineffective when it came to applying the universal law to particular situations.
On December 11, 2001 China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO). 1 What was once heralded as a diplomatic victory and a time of economic reformation for China 2 has become a diplomatic incident for other trade giants, one that even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is trying to defuse. 3 The United States Congress has gone so far as to introduce an act that would allow the United States to place duties on goods coming from countries with under-valued currencies. 4 The question becomes one of how a pegged-currency is a threat to the current liberal trade regime. To understand this problem, one must examine the key principles of the WTO and IMF, the effects that a pegged-currency like China 5 has upon a country such as the United States and then evaluate whether the principles of the WTO and IMF are undermined by the actions of China.
For centuries, the threat of major war has loomed over humanity. Defined as protracted struggles among the leading powers of the international system that tend to have significant geopolitical consequences, major wars have often been viewed as inevitable, albeit infrequent, calamities whose existence has played an important role in interstate relations. 1 And yet, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, in the wake of the relatively peaceful end to the Cold War, this once prominent institution appears to be on the wane. Direct conflict among the great powers has been absent for more than half a century, and an unprecedented period of peace seems to have enveloped the developed world. Indeed, never before in history have so many well-armed great powers spent such little time warring with one another. 2 Coupled with a notable shift in attitudes surrounding warfare, this absence of major war has caused some scholars to begin positing its obsolescence, sparking a significant debate in the field of security studies and redirecting attention to the causes of war and the necessary conditions for interstate peace.
