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This chapter focuses on the absence of certain marginal groups from the United Nations’ Women, Peace, and Security Agenda and suggests correctives to those exclusions. The chapter discusses how men and boys as victims of sexual and gender-based violence have been erased in this agenda, and the consequences of this erasure. It challenges the assumptions of militarized masculinity as a uniformly shared identity among conflict-engaged men. It also looks at the outcome of pregnancies resulting from wartime rape and shows how children born of rape are presented and treated in their communities. The chapter draws on research conducted in Peru and Colombia and shows the necessity of understanding both the perpetration and experience of violence in nuanced ways.

This chapter examines the politics of Swedish military activism and the paradoxes they involve. Since the end of the Cold War, Sweden has been involved a range of international military operations—from Bosnia and Congo to Afghanistan and Libya—that are very different from traditional peacekeeping. We argue that this military activism is driven both by the Swedish internationalist tradition of “doing good” in the world, but also for instrumental purposes. These include a desire for political influence in international institutions, an interest in collective milieu shaping, and a concern to improve the interoperability and effectiveness of the Swedish military.

This chapter focuses on the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID), a peacekeeping mission created by the UN Security Council in July 2007 to protect civilians in Sudan in the wake of the Darfur crisis, monitor ceasefire agreements, and support the implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement signed in May 2006. After providing an overview of the conflict in Darfur, the chapter outlines UNAMID’s mandate and evaluates its operational achievements and limitations, particularly in terms of providing protection to civilians and internally displaced persons. It argues that UNAMID’s record was mixed, with its principal failures stemming from a lack of resources, its inability to overcome Khartoum’s obstructionism, and its flawed strategic vision.

Realism’s confidence in predicting future conflictual power transitions in Asia between the United States and China underestimates the robustness of an emerging regional architecture. Rather than a single overarching institution, a fluid network of bilaterals, trilaterals, and other plurilateral configurations creates a dynamic structure in Asia that can strengthen the less powerful, place constraints on the more powerful, and define standards of behavior and best practises. This complex “patchwork” of geometry does not exclude China, nor is it premised on US decline. It is inclusive of all powers in Asia, and therefore is a useful tool in muting regional security dilemmas.

This chapter examines the lived experience of forced migration and articulates anthropology’s unique contributions to the field of refugee and forced migration studies in documenting the impact of displacement and dispossession on refugees and exiles, their culture, and society. It first discusses the history of anthropology and the academic field of forced migration studies as well as critical anthropological concepts in the field. It then looks at some of the important anthropological studies which pre-dated the ‘fieldwork in a refugee camp’ era of the early 1980s and after. It also considers the significance of the ‘view from below’ centralized through participant observation. Furthermore, it analyses the issue of territorialization, the decoupling of territory and culture, the emergence of transnationalism and diasporas, sedentism and mobility, and the circularity of forced migration including integration, return, and development.

This chapter examines Asian regionalism and provides a survey of influential literature in a field that has become more important over the last decade. It argues that one of the most puzzling features of Asian regionalism is its relative lack of formal institutionalization, despite relatively high levels of regionalization. Although various works on the overall characteristics of Asian regionalism have attempted to explain this prevalent phenomenon, the authors find none of them compelling. They provide a novel interpretation of this puzzle by integrating two major approaches: the literature on developmental states and diffusion approaches in International Political Economy (IPE) and international relations. They argue that the state serves as an entity that effectively transmits, controls, and balances different forces. The role and the capacity of the state accounts not only for the limited amount of delegation, but also a more recent phenomenon among Asia’s institutions: institutional emulation.

This chapter highlights how, despite different polities, regional security institutions in Asia’s subregions are tied together by common institutional features, comprehensive security considerations, and smaller-power concerns. This chapter considers institutional trends in Asia’s different subregions as products of transitioning post–Cold War regional systems in which new security institutions have provided new avenues by which to negotiate the roles of both status quo and rising powers. Particular attention is given to China’s growing ties with each subregion (East / Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and South Asia), especially the opportunities and challenges it represents for secondary powers vis-à-vis status quo powers and systems of relations. It further considers processes of institutional diffusion aided by Asia’s overlapping memberships and demonstration effects associated especially with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

This chapter examines Indian foreign policy under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (1984–89). It argues that during these years, Indian foreign policy was significantly reoriented. Gandhi made important moves to recast India’s relations with the United States and China. Although no major breakthroughs were achieved, his engagement with them set the tone and pattern for the approach and policy of all subsequent governments. In India’s own neighbourhood, his policies had a more activist edge. But the outcomes were mixed. Perhaps the most fundamental shift in foreign policy was Gandhi’s recognition that India’s modernization and economic development required greater and more adroit engagement with the world and that foreign policy had to be geared towards securing these objectives.

Many studies explain why trade policy varies between democracies and autocracies and among democracies themselves. In contrast, little is known about why trade policies vary across autocracies. This chapter considers four factors that might help explain such variation: economic structure, coalition size, time horizons, and the leader’s mode of entry into power. It concludes that although all four factors help explain autocratic trade policy, research on this topic remains largely an extension of earlier work on democracies and regime type. Although this is a natural starting point, a complete understanding of autocratic trade policy will require more attention to factors that are unique to autocracies. This will require scholars to build on basic research on authoritarian politics, just as research on democratic trade policy built on earlier work on comparative electoral institutions.

This article first discusses the term “authoritarian regimes” and makes a claim for studying such regimes. An overview of the young but burgeoning research on authoritarian regimes structures the field in eight thematic clusters: (1) typological efforts and regime characteristics such as coalition formation and origins, (2) institutionalist approaches, (3) state-society relations beyond formal institutions, (4) repression, (5) political economy approaches, (6) international dimensions, (7) performance, and (8) linking the concepts of regimes and states. Although this wave of research has been extremely prolific, it still remains unsystematic and disparate in various regards. It is therefore necessary for this field of research to consolidate and thereby to contribute to genuine knowledge accumulation.

This chapter traces the emergence of girls as a distinct cohort of research, programming and activism within the field of international development. The historical achievements of the feminist movement are considered as contributing factors to bringing women’s and girls’ rights to the fore of the development agenda, as well as other global processes such as demographic trends. The pitfalls of the instrumentalist approach to investing in girls are examined concluding that a human rights approach is a more effective long-term approach as the former fails to adequately address deeper issues of gender inequality, which turns investment in girls into an economic fad. The new “girl agenda” is analyzed through a gender and development lens, seeking to uncover its impact on campaigning, programming, and girls themselves, who are increasingly owning this newly created space through new forms of communication and activism.

The regulatory role of the state is undergoing marked changes in key areas of the global economy. Globalization has revealed important procedural inadequacies and organizational limits of traditional intergovernmental organizations, in particular lack of technical expertise and financial resources to deal with ever more complex and demanding regulatory challenges. This has led to a much greater involvement of transnational or private-sector rule-making organizations in global regulation. This trend is not without risks to society. It may exclude a wide range of stakeholders from key stages of the rule-making process, resulting in regulatory capture. To prevent or preempt such an outcome, the state has been redefining its role is some areas of global rule-making, strengthening its oversight and imposing organizational changes upon private rule-making bodies or working in tandem with them to safeguard the public interest. Such reassertion of the state, however, is neither quick, nor easy, nor necessarily successful.

This article argues that students of world politics have an obligation to democratic publics to help them understand the most pressing problems of the current day. Yet this moral obligation does not imply that we should focus on topical issues or be ‘policy-relevant’ in a narrow sense by speaking to governments in terms that are acceptable to them. Our task is to probe the deeper sources of action in world politics, and to speak truth to power — insofar as we can discern what the truth is. Students of world politics have made theoretical progress in recent decades on issues of war, cooperation, and the role of multilateral institutions; and conceptual progress on issues of sovereignty. However, most of this progress has focused on seeking to establish static conditional generalizations. Although we are living in a period of unprecedented change, our understanding of change is very inferior to our understanding of fundamental long-term regularities.

This chapter charts the emergence and evolution of a broadly bipolar or majoritarian pattern of party competition and explains how, without any formal change to Italy’s constitutional arrangements, the changes in the party system brought about a dramatic transformation in how Italy is governed. The chapter looks at the collapse of the center and the emergence of new parties and new electoral coalitions on the center-left and the center-right. It shows the ways in which the new party system approximated the classic two-party model associated with majoritarian electoral systems and the important differences due to the continued high levels of fragmentation within the center-left and center-right electoral blocs. It also shows how the changing pattern of partisan competition affected the relations between prime ministers and their governments, and between governments and parliament. It concludes by assessing the consequences of the Eurozone crisis after 2008 for Italy’s incipient electoral bipolarity.

The chapter analyzes India’s relations with Brazil in three distinct ways. Firstly, India–Brazil relations are analyzed in the historical context of India’s relations with Latin America. Then, India’s bilateral links with Brazil across a wide spectrum are explored, focusing on high-level visits and trade relations and the gradual transformation of the relationship from transactional to strategic. Finally, the chapter analyzes the evolution of India’s partnership with Brazil as two emerging powers simultaneously striving for grandeza (greatness), that are now engaged in power aggregation, problem solving, and community building initiatives in diverse forums that include G4, BRICS, G20, and IBSA.

This chapter examines the language of burden sharing commonly used by the international community and argues that the very structures of the refugee protection regime account for the resistance to pursuing fluid, dynamic, and comprehensive solutions for the plight of refugees. It considers the Western states’ commitment to responsibility sharing and the paradigm shift from atomistic and mono-dimensional (Cartesian) interventions in countries of asylum to holistic and multi-dimensions approaches in refugee source regions, along with its implications for burden sharing. It provides an overview of the Cartesian paradigm and discusses issues such as who is affected by the ‘burden’ or who should address the ‘burden’. It also looks at the shift from the Cartesian approach to a systems approach and how it has altered the ‘burden’-sharing debate.

The male-centric 1950s economic development paradigm promised progress to all. But aid agency programs often adversely affected women, promoting male privilege. Research showed women’s economic value; advocates demanded some funding be refocused on their concerns. Priorities and issues expanded; women in recipient countries organized. The UN world conferences on women were a platform for networking; the global women’s movement blossomed. Laws and regulations changed women’s status in many countries. Expanding their rights so civil laws took precedence over customary law altered marriage and inheritance patterns for greater equity. Critics complained this approach to including women in international development did not question the capitalist system. Others argued that emphasis on women ignored class, ethnicity, or religion. Political participation was recognized as necessary when women’s rights were restricted by government changes. Women’s organizations demanded feminist and economic goals. What those goals are is a pressing issue: What does justice for women entail?

Neo-liberal principles of individualism, privatization, consumption, and unconstrained choice underpinning advanced capitalism are rapidly becoming the predominant strategy used in response to widespread environmental degradation and climate change. This essay describes and analyzes capital’s production of negative environmental externalities. Despite a slew of environmental legislation passed by governments the world over—a response to the demands of the environmental movements of the 1960s and 1970s, environmental degradation persists. Indeed, as the continual rise in greenhouse gas emissions exemplifies, environmental degradation has worsened. How has this happened? On the one hand, the rise of neo-liberal governance and the forces of patrimonial capitalism have compromised the action of the state; on the other, capital has corrupted the autonomy, discourse, and activist charge of the mainstream of the environmental movement, turning it into an ally of private wealth.

The issue of care is as old as the family or society, yet it took a very long time for it to become a legitimate research subject and a relevant issue for public debate and policy making. The invisibility of care reflects the androcentric biases of intellectual thought. The analysis of care has developed within feminist work, although care arrangements and relations in developing countries have not received the same level of scrutiny as those in postindustrial welfare states. This chapter reflects on the findings of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) research project, The Political and Social Economy of Care. Its broader aim is to examine some of the conceptual conundrums in care and social reproduction from a development perspective and to identify when and why women’s movements have positioned themselves, alone or with other actors, to shape social policies and monitor their implementation.

This chapter presents the rationale for CEDAW, discussing its key features and strengths and examining barriers to its realization. Examples of the CEDAW review concluding observations are cited, showing the effects of gender stereotyping and negative cultural norms and exposing the noncompliance of a range of states parties. The chapter demonstrates that gender stereotyping and negative cultural norms impeding women’s equality are universal and are prevalent in the most developed countries, viewed as being at the forefront of gender equality. Their impact on women in underemployment, wage differentials, career limitations, sexual exploitation, and gender-based violence is explored, as well as the CEDAW Committee’s work reminding states parties of their obligations to fulfill women’s right to equality. Finally, the chapter briefly highlights women’s organizations that are resisting and negotiating social and cultural norms, including IWRAW Asia Pacific, a transnational feminist human rights network that organizes women’s groups to enhance their capacity to harness CEDAW.