Publications
A conceptual history of diplomacy
Scholars of diplomacy have identified diplomatic practices across the human experience, spanning the globe and going back before recorded history. Even so, the actual term ‘diplomacy’ did not enter into usage until the last decade of the 18th century. Does this discrepancy matter, and if so, what can it tell us? These are the underlying questions of this chapter. Drawing on a relatively modest secondary literature, as well as a number of primary sources, Leira emphasises the relative modernity of the concept of ‘diplomacy’, and how it emerged very rapidly as part of a much wider transformation of political vocabularies around 1800. Furthermore, he stresses, how it emerged as a contested concept (almost a term of abuse), and how it has repeatedly been contested over the last two centuries.
Why Consider New Approaches to Peacebuilding and Evaluation, and Why Turn to Complexity for Answers?
Complexity Thinking for Peacebuilding Practice and Evaluation
This book addresses the core dilemma that practitioners have to confront: how to function in situations that are fast changing and complex, when equipped with tools designed for neither? How do we reconcile the tension between the use of linear causal logic and the dynamic political transitions that interventions are meant to assist? Insights from Complexity Thinking for Peacebuilding Practice and Evaluation covers the design, evaluation, and learning for international interventions aiming to promote peace. More specifically, it reconceptualises this space by critically analysing mainstream approaches – presenting both conceptual and empirical content. This volume offers a variety of original and insightful contributions to the debates grappling with the adoption of complexity thinking. Readers will be given a rare opportunity to superimpose the latest conceptual innovations with the latest case study applications and from a diverse spectrum of organisational vantage points. This provides the myriad practitioners and consultants in this space with invaluable insights as to how to improve their trade craft, while ensuring policy makers and the accompanying research/academic industry have clearer guidance and innovative thinking. This edited volume provides critically innovative offerings for the audiences that make up this broad area’s practitioners, researchers/academics/educators, and consultants, as well as policy makers.
Lebanon on the brink
Gravely affected by the Syrian crisis, Lebanon has managed to remain relatively stable against all odds – despite the influx of some 1.5 million Syrian refugees and internal political crisis involving actors who support opposing Syrian factions. Lebanon’s resilience can be explained by the high opportunity cost of state breakdown for domestic, regional and international political actors. Moreover, international economic assistance, diaspora remittances and informal networks established by refugees help to prevent outright economic breakdown. Yet, stability remains extremely precarious. Important tipping points include (1) the IS strategy of spreading the conflict to Lebanon, and the consequent disintegration of the army along sectarian lines, (2) democratic decline and popular dissatisfaction, (3) Hizbullah’s domestic ambitions and Israeli fears over the group’s growing military power and (4) the potential for frustration between refugees and host communities turning into recurrent violence. However, (5) the slow economic decline and the worsening sanitary conditions stand out as the greatest challenges.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the New Eurasian Order
As Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has redirected the structures and the objectives of both foreign and domestic policy in the PRC. BRI’s goal is primarily economic: to increase trade and investment along China’s periphery by funding and building infrastructure projects. But it is more. Through an analysis of official and semiofficial sources, this policy brief will show that BRI aims to weave neighboring countries into a network of economic, political, cultural, and security relations centered around China. BRI is a new project that is still taking shape. Yet, its objectives are ambitious: Beijing’s grand strategy is to re-constitute the Eurasian regional order with new governance ideas, norms, and rules. The policy brief concludes that European countries should address China’s challenge by stressing their commitment to the normative goals of multilateralism, transparency, accountability, and the rule of law in an open, rule-based global order.