Human Rights Prosecutions in Democracies at War

Human Rights Prosecutions in Democracies at War PDF Author: Moira Lynch
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319969080
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Though many of the longest and most devastating internal armed conflicts have been fought within the boundaries of democratic states, these countries employ some of the highest numbers of human rights prosecutions. What conditions prompt this outcome and what explains the variable patterns of prosecutions in democracies at war? Prosecutions may be enabled by existing democratic norms and institutions, but given their role in a violent conflict, democratic governments may go to great lengths to avoid judicial accountability. Through qualitative and quantitative research of four cases, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, Spain and Colombia, this book argues that emergency and anti-terrorism laws issued during the conflict created barriers to the investigation and prosecution of state human rights violations. The extent to which state actors were held accountable was shaped by citizens, NGOs and political actors who challenged or upheld impunity provisions within emergency legislation.

Human Rights Prosecutions in Democracies at War

Human Rights Prosecutions in Democracies at War PDF Author: Moira Lynch
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319969080
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Though many of the longest and most devastating internal armed conflicts have been fought within the boundaries of democratic states, these countries employ some of the highest numbers of human rights prosecutions. What conditions prompt this outcome and what explains the variable patterns of prosecutions in democracies at war? Prosecutions may be enabled by existing democratic norms and institutions, but given their role in a violent conflict, democratic governments may go to great lengths to avoid judicial accountability. Through qualitative and quantitative research of four cases, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, Spain and Colombia, this book argues that emergency and anti-terrorism laws issued during the conflict created barriers to the investigation and prosecution of state human rights violations. The extent to which state actors were held accountable was shaped by citizens, NGOs and political actors who challenged or upheld impunity provisions within emergency legislation.

Lawfare

Lawfare PDF Author: Orde F. Kittrie
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190263571
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
In Lawfare, author Orde Kittrie's draws on his experiences as a lawfare practitioner, US State Department attorney, and international law scholar in analyzing the theory and practice of the strategic leveraging of law as an increasingly powerful and effective weapon in the current global security landscape. Lawfare incorporates case studies of recent offensive and defensive lawfare by the United States, Iran, China, and by both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and includes dozens of examples of how lawfare has thus been waged and defended against. Kittrie notes that since private attorneys can play important and decisive roles in their nations' national security plans through their expertise in areas like financial law, maritime insurance law, cyber law, and telecommunications law, the full scope of lawfare's impact and possibilities are just starting to be understood.

Never at War

Never at War PDF Author: Spencer R. Weart
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300082982
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
This lively survey of the history of conflict between democracies reveals a remarkable--and tremendously important--finding: fully democratic nations have never made war on other democracies. Furthermore, historian Spencer R. Weart concludes in this thought-provoking book, they probably never will. Building his argument on some forty case studies ranging through history from ancient Athens to Renaissance Italy to modern America, the author analyzes for the first time every instance in which democracies or regimes like democracies have confronted each other with military force. Weart establishes a consistent set of definitions of democracy and other key terms, then draws on an array of international sources to demonstrate the absence of war among states of a particular democratic type. His survey also reveals the new and unexpected finding of a still broader zone of peace among oligarchic republics, even though there are more of such minority-controlled governments than democracies in history. In addition, Weart discovers that peaceful leagues and confederations--the converse of war--endure only when member states are democracies or oligarchies. With the help of related findings in political science, anthropology, and social psychology, the author explores how the political culture of democratic leaders prevents them from warring against others who are recognized as fellow democrats and how certain beliefs and behaviors lead to peace or war. Weart identifies danger points for democracies, and he offers crucial, practical information to help safeguard peace in the future.

Freedom in the World 2018

Freedom in the World 2018 PDF Author: Freedom House
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538112035
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1265

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Book Description
Freedom in the World, the Freedom House flagship survey whose findings have been published annually since 1972, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The survey ratings and narrative reports on 195 countries and fifteen territories are used by policymakers, the media, international corporations, civic activists, and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. The Freedom in the World political rights and civil liberties ratings are determined through a multi-layered process of research and evaluation by a team of regional analysts and eminent scholars. The analysts used a broad range of sources of information, including foreign and domestic news reports, academic studies, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, individual professional contacts, and visits to the region, in conducting their research. The methodology of the survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographical location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development.

The Justice Cascade

The Justice Cascade PDF Author: Kathryn Sikkink
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393079937
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Over the past three decades, hundreds of government officials have gone from being immune to any accountability for their human rights violations to being the subjects of highly publicized trials in Latin America, Europe, and Africa, resulting in enormous media attention and severe consequences. Here, renowned scholar Kathryn Sikkink brings to light the groundbreaking emergence of these human rights trials as a modern political tool, one that is changing the face of global politics as we know it. Drawing on personal experience and extensive research, Sikkink explores the building of this movement toward justice, from its roots in Nuremberg to the watershed trials in Greece and Argentina. She shows how the foundations for the stunning, public indictments of Slobodan Milošević and Augusto Pinochet were laid by the long, tireless activism of civilians, many of whose own families had been destroyed, and whose fight for justice sometimes came at the risk of their own lives and careers. She also illustrates what effect the justice cascade has had on democracy, conflict, and repression, and what it means for leaders and citizens everywhere, including the policymakers behind our own "war on terror."--From publisher description.

Human Rights in the 'War on Terror'

Human Rights in the 'War on Terror' PDF Author: Richard Wilson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521853194
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
This book reviews the war on terror since 9/11 from a human rights perspective.

Effective Governance Under Anarchy

Effective Governance Under Anarchy PDF Author: Tanja A. Börzel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107183693
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
Democratic and consolidated states are taken as the model for effective rule-making and service provision. In contrast, this book argues that good governance is possible even without a functioning state.

Power Kills

Power Kills PDF Author: R. J. Rummel
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 1412831709
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
This volume, newly published in paperback, is part of a comprehensive effort by R. J. Rummel to understand and place in historical perspective the entire subject of genocide and mass murder, or what he calls democide. It is the fifth in a series of volumes in which he offers a detailed analysis of the 120,000,000 people killed as a result of government action or direct intervention. In Power Kills, Rummel offers a realistic and practical solution to war, democide, and other collective violence. As he states it, "The solution...is to foster democratic freedom and to democratize coercive power and force. That is, mass killing and mass murder carried out by government is a result of indiscriminate, irresponsible Power at the center." Rummel observes that well-established democracies do not make war on and rarely commit lesser violence against each other. The more democratic two nations are, the less likely is war or smaller-scale violence between them. The more democratic a nation is, the less severe its overall foreign violence, the less likely it will have domestic collective violence, and the less its democide. Rummel argues that the evidence supports overwhelmingly the most important fact of our time: democracy is a method of nonviolence.

Just Politics

Just Politics PDF Author: C. William Walldorf, Jr.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 080145963X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Many foreign policy analysts assume that elite policymakers in liberal democracies consistently ignore humanitarian norms when these norms interfere with commercial and strategic interests. Today's endorsement by Western governments of repressive regimes in countries from Kazakhstan to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in the name of fighting terror only reinforces this opinion. In Just Politics, C. William Walldorf Jr. challenges this conventional wisdom, arguing that human rights concerns have often led democratic great powers to sever vital strategic partnerships even when it has not been in their interest to do so.Walldorf sets out his case in detailed studies of British alliance relationships with the Ottoman Empire and Portugal in the nineteenth century and of U.S. partnerships with numerous countries—ranging from South Africa, Turkey, Greece and El Salvador to Nicaragua, Chile, and Argentina—during the Cold War. He finds that illiberal behavior by partner states, varying degrees of pressure by nonstate actors, and legislative activism account for the decisions by democracies to terminate strategic partnerships for human rights reasons.To demonstrate the central influence of humanitarian considerations and domestic politics in the most vital of strategic moments of great-power foreign policy, Walldorf argues that Western governments can and must integrate human rights into their foreign policies. Failure to take humanitarian concerns into account, he contends, will only damage their long-term strategic objectives.

Votes, Drugs, and Violence

Votes, Drugs, and Violence PDF Author: Guillermo Trejo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108899900
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
One of the most surprising developments in Mexico's transition to democracy is the outbreak of criminal wars and large-scale criminal violence. Why did Mexican drug cartels go to war as the country transitioned away from one-party rule? And why have criminal wars proliferated as democracy has consolidated and elections have become more competitive subnationally? In Votes, Drugs, and Violence, Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley develop a political theory of criminal violence in weak democracies that elucidates how democratic politics and the fragmentation of power fundamentally shape cartels' incentives for war and peace. Drawing on in-depth case studies and statistical analysis spanning more than two decades and multiple levels of government, Trejo and Ley show that electoral competition and partisan conflict were key drivers of the outbreak of Mexico's crime wars, the intensification of violence, and the expansion of war and violence to the spheres of local politics and civil society.