Since the 2014 breakout campaign of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria, IS affiliates have proliferated across the African continent. Given the consistent failure of military campaigns against violent extremist groups (VEGs), policymakers have begun to explore the use of alternative tools like environmental peacebuilding to address the root causes of these conflicts. This paper discusses trends in violent extremism in Africa; highlights the relationship between the environment, conflict, and peacebuilding; and assesses the utility of employing environmental peacebuilding frameworks to combat the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an IS affiliate in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The author finds that while environmental peacebuilding may slow recruitment by VEGs in Africa and could reduce conflict within the DRC, it is unlikely that such strategies would effectively stop the Allied Democratic Forces because the group is not primarily reliant upon locally generated funding, does not draw voluntary recruits locally, and relies rather little on the local population for support.
A long-standing narrative in U.S. engagement policy toward China draws a tacit causal link between engagement and Beijing’s socialization into the U.S.-led liberal international order (LIO).1 Amid recent decreasing faith in engagement, this article constructs a framework tailored to explaining the conditions for China’s state socialization into the hegemonic order when the U.S. tries to engage China. It contends that the socialization of a still-rising China is an arduous cause that hinges on four conditions: the accommodation of China’s interests in international institutions, the existence of a problematic situation, status recognition, and the absence of obstacles to domestic internalization. To test the socialization premise, the article applies the framework to a theoretically most-likely case of China’s socialization—U.S. post-2009 engagement with China on global climate governance. It finds that despite some ambiguous signs of state socialization, China’s adoption of the U.S.-promoted co-leader identity was primarily rooted in domestic changes in interest perception and was thwarted by domestic obstacles—economic development and energy security—to the internalization of the idea of Chinese climate leadership.
Women affiliated with ISIS in a voluntary role, often hailing from the West, are often presented either as passive accessories and victims or as deviant, gender-norm-defying monsters.1 In fact, women are an indispensable component of ISIS, taking up roles both as perpetrators of violence and as mothers and educators of the next generation of ISIS fighters. Through the creation of an original database, I examine the roles and experiences of ISIS-affiliated women before, during, and after their time in the organization. I make connections between individuals’ roles and experiences and highlight identifiable trends in the behavior of these women. These findings suggest that there are misunderstandings in current counterterrorism efforts and policies. The data and hypotheses presented in this study provide a foundation for future data collection efforts and for the construction of fuller accounts of the nature and determinants of the behavior of this important category of women.
This paper offers an examination of the complex dynamics within the Mekong River Basin, a region historically intertwined with the Mekong River’s abundance but now marked by a shift towards hydroelectric power as a resource.1 Focusing on the reluctance of China—a key player in the basin—to join the Mekong Agreement, this paper uncovers the environmental and social consequences of this non-cooperation. It discusses the historical context of international environmental law related to transboundary water resources, emphasizing how China’s actions challenge established principles and responsible resource management norms. Highlighting the significance of transboundary collaboration underscores the essential role it plays in ensuring the sustainable governance of shared water resources in the Mekong River Basin.
Throughout the past two decades, elite sports, especially soccer, have seen an onslaught of lucrative investments by authoritarian states. Media outlets have branded these investments as “sportswashing,” while contemporary scholars have adapted soft power theory to sports in order to measure the geopolitical implications of these state-backed investments. 1 However, scholarship intersecting sports and soft power is limited to a broad, transnational scale, and primarily focuses on the diplomatic efficacy of mega-events such as the FIFA World Cup and Olympics. Therefore, this paper attempts to fill a gap in the literature and measure the soft power gains from a sports sponsorship on a regional level. More specifically, this paper analyzes Gazprom’s sponsorship of German soccer club FC Schalke 04 to determine if the state-backed sponsorship successfully increased Russia’s soft power among FC Schalke fans. With minimal scholarship in this area, I draw from social psychology theory to develop a unique and nuanced causal mechanism to measure soft power gains from a sports sponsorship. I then apply this causal mechanism to my FC Schalke case study and test two distinct hypotheses in order to identify soft power indicators from Gazprom’s sponsorship. I first examine FC Schalke club politics to determine whether Schalke fans experienced a ‘good-will effect’ towards Gazprom and Russia, then track voting data from four Bundestag elections to measure if this ‘goodwill effect’ became a motivating bias for pro-Russia political behavior among the FC Schalke constituency. With both confirming and discon-firming evidence for pro-Russia bias among Schalke fans, my ultimate soft power implications are ambiguous. However, this paper still provides a more nuanced mechanism to measure soft power as a result of a sports sponsorship and illuminates the need for future studies to further measure the geopolitical implications of sports investments by authoritarian regimes.
