Author: Moira Lynch
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319969080
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226
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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.
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.
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.
Author: R. J. Rummel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351497405
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361
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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.
Author: Freedom House
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538112035
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1040
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Book Description
Freedom in the World is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The methodology of this survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories.
Author: Edward D. Mansfield
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026226384X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
Does the spread of democracy really contribute to international peace? Successive U. S. administrations have justified various policies intended to promote democracy not only by arguing that democracy is intrinsically good but by pointing to a wide range of research concluding that democracies rarely, if ever, go to war with one another. To promote democracy, the United States has provided economic assistance, political support, and technical advice to emerging democracies in Eastern and Central Europe, and it has attempted to remove undemocratic regimes through political pressure, economic sanctions, and military force. In Electing to Fight, Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder challenge the widely accepted basis of these policies by arguing that states in the early phases of transitions to democracy are more likely than other states to become involved in war. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative analysis, Mansfield and Snyder show that emerging democracies with weak political institutions are especially likely to go to war. Leaders of these countries attempt to rally support by invoking external threats and resorting to belligerent, nationalist rhetoric. Mansfield and Snyder point to this pattern in cases ranging from revolutionary France to contemporary Russia. Because the risk of a state's being involved in violent conflict is high until democracy is fully consolidated, Mansfield and Snyder argue, the best way to promote democracy is to begin by building the institutions that democracy requires—such as the rule of law—and only then encouraging mass political participation and elections. Readers will find this argument particularly relevant to prevailing concerns about the transitional government in Iraq. Electing to Fight also calls into question the wisdom of urging early elections elsewhere in the Islamic world and in China.
Author: Alison Brysk
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520098609
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 255
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Book Description
Abstract:
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.
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.
Author: Bychawska-Siniarska, Dominika
Publisher: Council of Europe
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 124
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Book Description
European Convention on Human Rights – Article 10 – Freedom of expression 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises. 2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary. In the context of an effective democracy and respect for human rights mentioned in the Preamble to the European Convention on Human Rights, freedom of expression is not only important in its own right, but it also plays a central part in the protection of other rights under the Convention. Without a broad guarantee of the right to freedom of expression protected by independent and impartial courts, there is no free country, there is no democracy. This general proposition is undeniable. This handbook is a practical tool for legal professionals from Council of Europe member states who wish to strengthen their skills in applying the European Convention on Human Rights and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights in their daily work.