The EU Campaign against the Death Penalty. John R Schmidt. Survival, Winter 2007/2008. Pp. 123-140. The EU campaign against the death penalty shows that the US no longer enjoys a monopoly on moralizing in international affairs. The architects of the EU, influenced by the US precedent and anxious to define what the EU was for, fastened on the death penalty as a way to seize the moral high ground. The death-penalty campaign is not simply a target of opportunity but broadly consistent with an emerging EU moral consensus that renounces violence and seeks to resolve conflict through engagement and negotiation. READ MORE

China and the Olympics

THINK AGAIN: THE OLYMPICS. John Hoberman, Foreign Policy, July/August 2008, var. pages."The Olympic Games were founded to bridge cultural divides and promote peace between nations. Instead, they often mask human rights abuses, do little to spur political change, and lend legitimacy to some of the world’s most unsavory governments. Worse, the Beijing Games could still be the most controversial of them all." READ MORE

BEIJING'S OLYMPIC-SIZED CATCH-22. Victor D. Cha, Washington Quarterly, Summer 2008, pp. 105-123. "The Olympic spotlight provides China with an opportunity to enhance its prestige, but also with massive pressures for political change that, if left unaddressed by Beijing, will undercut any benefits." READ MORE

CHINA'S OLYMPIC NIGHTMARE: WHAT THE GAMES MEAN FOR BEIJING'S FUTURE. Elizabeth C. Economy and Adam Segal, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2008, var. pages. "Hosting the Olympics was supposed to be a chance for China's leaders to showcase the country's rapid economic growth and modernization to the rest of the world. Domestically, it provided an opportunity for the Chinese government to demonstrate the Communist Party's competence and affirm the country's status as a major power on equal footing with the West."  READ MORE

Ethnicity, Wars and Nations

COMPARATIVE THEORY AND POLITICAL PRACTICE: DO WE NEED A 'STATE-NATION' MODEL AS WELL AS A 'NATION-STATE' MODEL? Alfred Stepan, Government and Opposition, January 2008, pp. 1-25. "Some polities have strong cultural diversity, some of which is territorially based and politically articulated by significant groups that, in the name of nationalism, and self-determination, advance claims for independence. In this article such polities are defined as 'politically robustly multinational'." READ MORE

CURING THE SOMALIA SYNDROME: ANALOGY, FOREIGN POLICY DECISION MAKING, AND THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE. Darren C. Brunk, Foreign Policy Analysis, July 2008 , pp. 301-320. "If Rwanda had been better understood at the outset of the 1994 genocide, would the world have responded differently? That the international community was afflicted with a 'Somalia Syndrome,' suppressing the appetite for intervention in Rwanda, is not a new claim. What is new, however, is the effort this article makes to unravel the reasons for which two largely unrelated and distinct conflicts-Somalia and Rwanda-were perceived within many critical policy-making quarters around the international community as identical 'African' conflict-types." READ MORE

DEMOCRATIZATION AFTER CIVIL WARS - KEY PROBLEMS AND EXPERIENCES. Jochen Hippler, Democratization, June 2008, pp.550-569. "Democratization and peace-building in post-civil war situations are closely interlinked. To analyse the difficulties of post-war democratization, and especially democratization as attempted by external and international actors, this article deals with the problem in several stages." READ MORE

INTRAGROUP DIVISIONS IN ETHNIC CONFLICTS: FROM POPULAR GRIEVANCES TO POWER STRUGGLES. Nina Caspersen, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, April 2008, pp. 239-265. "Divisions within ethnic groups are, contrary to nationalist claims to homogeneity, found in almost every ethnic conflict. Is such intraethnic rivalry based on differing views of how best to protect collective interests or is it largely over power and spoils? The answer to this question has important implications for our understanding of ethnic conflicts and for their potential resolution. This article analyzes intraethnic rivalry in three cases: among the Serb elites in Croatia and Bosnia and among the Armenian elite in Nagorno Karabakh. It highlights the fluidity of ethnic conflicts but also finds a common trend towards factionalization and away from popular constraints" READ MORE

IS ETHNIC CONFLICT INEVITABLE? PARTING WAYS OVER NATIONALISM AND SEPARATISM. James Habyarimana, Macartan Humphreys, et al, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2008, pp. 138-150. "Critics refute Muller's assumptions about ethnic conflict; Muller responds. Jerry Muller ('Us and Them,' March/April 2008) tells a disconcerting story about the potential for ethnic diversity to generate violent conflict. He argues that ethnic nationalism -- which stems from a deeply felt need for each people to have its own state -- 'will continue to shape the world in the twenty-first century." READ MORE