Suchergebnisse

The Abraham accords signed in Washington in September 2020, a series of joint normalization statements between Israel the UAE and Bahrain followed by Morocco in December 2020, were a game changer in the Middle East. Those Accords provide the pathway to the end of the Arab Israeli conflict and a future of peace, tolerance and opportunity in the Middle East and around the world. Those accords proved that there is a new way for negotiations in the Middle East. One could have been surprised that the EU was not engaged in the Accords when signed. The fact that Europeans believe in the two-state solution as the only solution and the fact that the American President Donald Trump was behind the Accords made Europe skeptical to the Accords. But reality made the difference: The war in Ukraine brought its challenges and Iran's interference in the conflict (supplying drones to Russian's army) provoked a real concern in Europe. The Iranian nuclear program seemed again a threat to the west and not only to Israel and Gulf countries. conflict management played a role. This paper depicts how Europe went from skepticism to engagement concerning the Abraham Accords. Geo-political interests were clear: geopolitical realignment, a great potential for Africa and energy and food supply potential in connection to those Accords. Furthermore, cooperation as well as development in foreign affairs played a role in Europeans' choice. Keywords: Abraham Accords, Israeli-Arab conflict, cooperation, international relations

This article is dedicated to a controversial topic for Russian society, namely the campaign #ЯнеБоюсьСказать (#IamNotAfraidToSpeak) that took place in VKontakte's Russian speaking community in July 2016. First the article is based on a theoretical framework that draws attention to the concept of contentious politics and feminist movement. Second, I analysed the messages associated with #IamNotAfraidToSpeak, and argue that the campaign raised the visibility of the problem of domestic violence and patriarchal culture in the post-Soviet Russia, and this helped increase the significance of women's linguistic agency and made #IamNotAfraidToSpeak the first large-scale feminist movement in Russia. Moreover, in addition to the theoretical background, the paper focuses on a case study: The #ЯНеБоюсьСказать(#IAmNotAfraidToSpeak) campaign of July 2016 on VKontakte.
Keywords: gender-based violence in Russia, feminist movements, former Soviet, flashmob, #IamNotAfraidToSpeak, VKontakte.

"The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina was conceived with one main purpose, creating a stable, democratic and safe multi ethnic BiH for all its citizens. In order to understand why this objective was not achieved more than 25 years after its implementation, it is important to analyze two main factors: the instruments used in the peace building process and the way they were implemented. The main purpose of this article is looking at certain instruments of peace building used in BiH, which were inefficiently implemented so it further amplified the ethnic aspects instead of alleviating them. In this case, the peace building instruments that will be analyzed are the governmental structure, the election process and its implementation in post-war BiH, and finally, aspects related to human rights such as refugee return and the development of the civil society. Keywords: Bosnia and Herzegovina, peace building, instruments, implementation, ethnicization. "

"In any society, change and political renewal are more than necessary for a good and healthy governance. However, political alternation remains rare in Africa, particularly in French-speaking countries, fact that turned this region, at the beginning of the 2000s, into one of old, authoritarian or semi-democratic regimes not willing to give up the power. This article will focus on the types of actions (coups, revolutions, riots) that have challenged these regimes since the independence of the countries until now. We will analyze the context in which these actions emerged and the way in which they are more or less skillfully managed by the regimes. Keywords: authoritarian regime, society, social movements, coups, the Maghreb"

"This article was written as part of my doctoral research on the topic of Conflict of Loyalties: Relationships between Druze in Israel and Druze in Syria during the Syrian Civil War between 2011-2017. In this article I will analyze the factors involved in the outbreak of the civil war in the context of the conflict of loyalties among the Druze population living in Syria. The article will show the political and geopolitical background to the civil war outbreak. Keywords: Druze, Civil war, Israel, Syria, Syrian war. "

Deliberative democracy theory highlighted democratic deliberation as a modus operandi for facilitating group decision-making. In 2023, members of Romanian labor unions in several sectors took to the streets in strikes and protests, demanding higher revenues and better work conditions. Nevertheless, misunderstandings and internal ruptures shadowed their noble ends and fueled mistrust amongst unionists. This dynamic reminds rather of interest party politics as it employs vertical power relations, influenced by social and professional background segmentation. One question that reasonably arises in this context is how deliberative the decision-making process is within the unions in Romania. We specifically analyze elements of deliberative organizational leadership and the power relations within labor unions through a qualitative study in the form of interviews.
Keywords: Labor Unions, Romania, Deliberation, Representation, Leadership

"The paper focuses on two concepts developed by William Zartman, namely "ripe moments" and "mutually hurting stalemates". Basically, the concepts tackle the idea of certain proper moments for the beginning of peace talks when the parties to the conflict believe that they are trapped in a painful impasse which no longer brings them victory. Our paper aims to show that hurting stalemates are sometimes the adequate starting point for peace-building efforts as well, not only for starting negotiations, and to apply this on the case of Liberia. The paper is organized around the following research questions: Is the hurting stalemate a military deadlock? Is a similar painful deadlock a good starting point for building sustainable peace in post-conflict societies? Keywords: peace studies, ripeness, mutually hurting stalemates, peace-building, post-conflict development"

"This article examines the perceptions and attitudes towards the position of the State of Israel and Israeli Druze regarding the provision of aid to Druze in Syria during the civil war in Syria that took place between the years 2011 and 2017. The main goal of this article is to examine the perceptions and attitudes of senior officials in the Druze community and in Israel regarding the aid provided to Druze in Syria and its impact on the national and Druze identity among the Druze population in Israel. Keywords: Druze, civil war, Israel, Syria."

Caught between its Chinese and British colonial history, Hong Kong's path to self-actualization is unsure without preserving its tangible and intangible heritage. This paper examines the region's several layers of heritage through the movement to preserve the Star and the Queen piers in 2007, using two theoretical frameworks, Abbas' culture of disappearance and Tunbridge's dissonant heritage. Despite the piers' demolition, their role is vital in understanding conflicting histories and decolonizing the region's identity. Keywords: Heritage, Hong Kong, The Star and Queen Piers, Identity, Nostalgia

Memefying Crises in Romania and Japan: A Global Phenomenon Bearing Local Value. When faced with unexpected, traumatic events, such as crises, which can trigger fear and anxiety, people react differently. Depending on the type of crisis and on how affected they are by it, people can run in fear (flight), become numb, irresponsive (freeze), please other people (fawn), or stay put and deal with it one way or another (fight). In such cases, humour, irony and sarcasm appear to be a good strategy. As such, Internet memes are an example of a fight reaction that people have to crises, in which they resort to humorous, ironic, sarcastic texts / videos to deal with such unpredictable events that affect the world that they are familiar with, which become highly contagious (transmissible) on the Internet. By carrying out a qualitative analysis of a corpus of Internet memes from Japan and Romania retrieved from Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, which appeared in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and by looking at Geert Hofstede's and Edward T. Hall's cultural dimensions, the purpose of this article is to prove that Internet memes—though they are seen as a global phenomenon—bear some local value and transmit ideas, feelings, and beliefs specific to a culture.

"The Sandinista Revolution was a watershed moment in Nicaraguan history that forever altered the course of the country's history. First, it dismantled the Somoza family's dynasty, which had ruled for 43 years, not all of them consecutively, and established a political system dependent on their despotic regime. Second, and more significantly for international relations, the Sadinistas' denunciation of the neo-colonialism committed by the leader of the western democracies was a direct attack on US interventionism in Central America. Unfortunately, it was also the point at which the FSLN established its roots in Nicaraguan society and transitioned from a socialist movement to an authoritarian regime under Daniel Ortega. In order to analyse these evolutions of events I propose a postcolonial theoretical approach. The fact that postcolonialism is a relatively new addition to the international relations theory that first appeared in literature is one of the primary justifications for why this theoretical approach relies on information from native authors. This theory mainly focuses on the former colonies and criticises how the colonial past and present interactions with the former colonists have an impact on how those colonies have developed. I will examine the key ideas of these approaches in the international arena with respect to the particular case of the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua. Keywords: Latin America, postcolonialism, Sandinista Revolution, discourse analysis, United States of America."