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Since the end of the Cold War several political agreements have been signed in attempts to resolve longstanding conflicts in such volatile regions as Northern Ireland, Israel-Palestine, South Africa, and Rwanda. This is the first comprehensive volume that examines reconciliation, justice, and coexistence in the post-settlement context from the levels of both theory and practice. Mohammed Abu-Nimer has brought together scholars and practitioners who discuss questions such as: Do truth commissions work? What are the necessary conditions for reconciliation? Can political agreements bring reconcil

A comprehensive framework for understanding species coexistence. Coexistence is the central concept in community ecology, but an understanding of this concept requires that we study the actual mechanisms of species interactions. Coexistence in Ecology examines the major features of these mechanisms for species that coexist at different positions in complex food webs and derives empirical tests from model predictions.Mark McPeek explores the various challenges species face by systematically building a model food web, beginning with an ecosystem devoid of life and then adding one species at a time. With the introduction of each new species, he evaluates the properties it must possess to invade a community and quantifies the changes in the abundances of other species that result from a successful invasion. McPeek continues this process until he achieves a multi-trophic level food web with many species coexisting at each trophic level, from omnivores, mutualists, and pathogens to herbivores, carnivores, and basic plants. He then describes the observational and experimental empirical studies that can test the theoretical predictions resulting from the model analyses.Synthesizing decades of theoretical research in community ecology, Coexistence in Ecology offers new perspectives on how to develop an empirical program of study rooted in the natural histories of species and the mechanisms by which they actually interact with one another.

Normative international theory addresses the moral dimension of international society and the logic of 'ought' statements in international relations. The traditional content of normative international theory has been dominated by such issues as: the nature of international law and the moral basis of the rights and duties it imposes on states and individuals; the ethics of pacifism and the theory of the 6just war' the morality of intervention; and, most fundamentally, the nature of the ethical requirements that need to be met if a system of inter-state relations can justly be characterized as an 'international society'. While such issues have never disappeared from academic study, the dominant modes of international relations theorizing in the 1960s and 1970s—whether realist, neo-realist, pluralist or structuralist—were at one, if for different reasons? in keeping them at the bottom of the agenda paper. And yet, the 1980s has seen a revival of normative international theory. The reasons for this renewal of interest are two-fold. On the one hand, the traditional agenda of normative theory, as outlined above, has never lost its salience in the real world even if unfashionable in academia; since it is in the nature of fashions to change some sort of revival of interest in the old questions was to be expected. But of rather more importance has been the emergence of a new range of normative issues: demands from the 'south' for a New International Economic Order have placed the politics of redistribution on the international agenda for the first time—revisionist states in the 1980s no longer make territorial demands but appeal to status quo oriented states to make concessions on the basis of economic justice. In today's world normative statements are as likely to be about the debt crisis as they are to be about the conduct of the Gulf War or the US intervention in Grenada. Mainstream international relations theory has generally refused to ask or answer moral questions, but this strategy of avoidance has not succeeded. Questions such as 'what ought to be our attitude to poverty in the South?' or 'how ought the world' financial system respond to the debt problems of Brazil or Zambia?' cannot be wished away—as anyone who has taught international political economy will be well aware. Normative theory cannot answer questions like this but it can help each individual to provide his or her own response—and no more important task exists for the discipline of international relations.

6 páginas.-- 50 referencia.-- This article is Free access in the https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.13040 ; The quest for understanding the maintenance of species diversity has matured in recent decades under the umbrella of species coexistence theory, founded by Chesson (2000). The central conclusion of the theory is that coexistence at local scales depends on two opposing forces: average fitness differences between species, which drive the best-adapted species to exclude others, and stabilizing mechanisms, which promote diversity via niche differentiation. Recent theoretical work has focussed on how interactions between plants and other organisms influence the equalizing and stabilizing forces. However, there is a lack of empirical information. Therefore, the next fundamental step is to assess the prevalence of these mechanisms for controlling plant coexistence across a wide range of interactions and systems. To that end, this special feature presents 10 theoretical, observational, or manipulative studies illustrating 9 different biotic interactions including mutualisms (pollinators, seed dispersers, soil microbes, and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi) and antagonisms (leaf and seed herbivores, and leaf and root pathogens). All studies share a common question: how biotic interactions regulate plant coexistence? Comparisons across studies suggest that biotic interactions modify both stabilizing and average fitness differences. In those cases where biotic interactions promote stable coexistence between plant species, both mutualistic and antagonistic interactions act more frequently as an equalizing rather than as a stabilizing mechanisms. Besides these generalities, the studies of this special issue also present novel theoretical and empirical approaches to better understand the maintenance of species diversity over a wide variety of systems, environmental conditions, and organisms. Synthesis. The studies presented here constitutes a solid base to empirically explore how mutualistic and antagonistic interactions act upon the determinants of plant species competition, and open novel paths for future research. Collectively, these advances will serve to pave the road for a better theoretical and empirical understanding of how biotic interactions control biodiversity ; We thank James Ross and Mark Rees for a swift editorial assistance. Ideas were develop edunderhe Lincx project (CGL2014‐61590‐EXP). O.G. acknowledges postdoctoral financial support provided by the European Union Horizon research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska‐Curie grant agreement no 661118‐BioFUNC. ; Peer reviewed

We can learn certain things from the Communist system, and one of the most important of these is the dependence of successful practice on theory. Theory serves to guide, integrate, and rationalize a series of actions, and without it those actions tend to be atomistic and fruitless.Indeed, the classic failures of our confrontations with Communist countries can be traced at least in part fo a theoretical misperception of what the Communists were, and the lack of a guiding theory on our part. It is possible, for example, to interpret the unhappy decisions of the World War II period as resulting from a mismatch of opponents: the Soviet Union's inferior power position was more than compensated for by a relatively coherent and creative theory of the world, while the superior strength of the United States was substantially negated because this country followed a policy path that may be described as a kind of political existentialism.

Planned encounters between members of groups in conflict aiming to contribute to reconciliation have long been practiced in regions of intractable conflicts. However, there is an evident scarcity of rigorous experimental studies, and there have been almost no assessment of the durability of the effects after participants return to their communities. Addressing these deficits, this thesis examines the effectiveness of a two-day encounter program for Jewish and Palestinian youth in Israel. This program uses a mixed model approach by integrating techniques focusing on harmony and coexistence, with ones emphasizing differences and disagreements. To properly compensate for selection bias, this quasi-experimental study utilized the Solomon Four Group Design, with delayed posttests to assess intermediate- and long-term effects (total N = 938). It assessed the impact of the encounters on Coexistence Orientation (CO), a hierarchical index with emotional, cognitive, motivational, behavioral, and political domains of attitudes that are associated with coexistence, a minimally acceptable state of post-conflict positive relations. The results indicate that the encounters had a significant positive effect on CO in both groups. The effects were stronger for participants who exhibited low motivation to take part in encounters at baseline, compared to participants who were highly motivated for the activity. The analysis of pretesting effects indicated possible reactive but not interactive effects, largely ruling out the possibility of pretest sensitization. Finally, there was limited evidence that the encounters have durable effect on the examined variables, and most effects completely faded in the range of one year after the encounter.Considering these results, it is recommended that practitioners use various means to increase hope among participants, and create opportunities for follow-up activities that may increase the sustainability and durability of revealed positive effects.