Professor Kristin M. Bakke and her collaborators (Professor John O’Loughlin at the University of Colorado and Professor Gerard Toal at Virginia Tech) have published some of their initial findings from their joint NSF/ESRC-funded project on geopolitical orientations in Russia’s ‘near abroad’. In an article on the Open Democracy website, they examine whether citizens in Ukraine and Georgia worry about civil society organizations as ‘foreign agents’. They also examine whether people in Ukraine see themselves leaning towards Russia or ‘the West”, in this piece in the Washington Post’s ‘Monkey Cage’ blog. And reporting survey findings from Crimea, they write about what people in Crimea think about their future and the annexation, in this piece in Foreign Affairs.
The Social and Political Consequences of Covid-19
Several members of the Conflict & Change are reflecting on the social and political consequences of Covid-19. Using data from the Integrated Crisis Early Warning System from January 2018 to April 2020, Nils Metternich finds an unprecedented decline in protest activities around the world during the Covid-19 pandemic, and an especially pronounced decline in European and Asian countries. In a piece in the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, Kristin M. Bakke, Neil Mitchell, and Hannah Smidt situate the current ‘pandemic power grabs’ within a wider trend of growing restrictions on civil society. They warn that such restrictions on civil society make it harder to monitor the quality of governance and hold governments accountable.
The Julie Norman Show Podcast
Dr Julie Norman (@DrJulieNorman2), Teaching Fellow in SPP, has launched a new podcast on politics, ethics, and current affairs, with a focus on moral obligations in times of crisis. Are those who step up heroes, or simply human? In the pilot episode, Julie speaks with Dr Cara Heuser, a medical doctor on the frontlines of the corona virus, but the conversation goes beyond Covid-19 to grapple with bigger questions of altruism, vocation, and more.
Listen or subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Turkey, the EU and the Middle East - Dr Susler's new book
C&C member Dr Bugra Susler published his new book Turkey, the EU and the Middle East: Foreign Policy Cooperation and the Arab Uprisings (Routledge 2020). Susler focuses on the dynamics of Turkey’s relationship with Europe in the context of the ‘Arab Spring’ and analyses Turkish behaviour vis-à-vis foreign policy cooperation with the EU. The analysis is based on field research involving interviews with diplomats and policy makers at the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the European External Action Service (EEAS).
More generally, Susler’s research deals with global conflicts and international cooperation, with a particular focus on the Middle East, Turkish foreign policy and the international relations of the European Union. He is a Teaching Fellow in International Organisations & International Conflict and Cooperation at UCL Department of Political Science and a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at LSE IDEAS, the foreign policy think tank of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
Inken von Borzyskowski wins APSA Section Best Article Award
C&C member, Dr Inken von Borzyskowski (UCL), and Dr Felicity Vabulas (Pepperdine University) received the Best Article Award from the American Political Science Association (APSA) Section on International Collaboration for their 2019 article “Hello, goodbye: When do states withdraw from international organizations?”, Review of International Organizations 14: 335-366, which is available here.
The APSA Award Committee said: "In this path-breaking article, von Borzykowski and Vabulas take up a critical question in international relations: under what conditions do states leave international organizations? Their findings push back against the conventional narrative that nationalism drives withdrawal from international organizations. Carefully laid out, with impressive data collection and analysis, von Borzykowski and Vabulas have made a significant contribution to the literature and laid the groundwork for future scholarship in this area. Especially in light of current concerns around the future of the liberal international order, understanding the changing membership of international organizations is critically important today.”
The Award will be recognized at the Section Business Meeting at APSA 2020.
Hello, goodbye: When do states withdraw from international organizations?
Under what conditions do states withdraw from intergovernmental organizations (IGOs)? Recent events such as Brexit, the US withdrawal from UNESCO, and US threats to withdraw from NAFTA, NATO, and the World Trade Organization have triggered widespread concern because they appear to signify a backlash against international organizations. Some observers attribute this recent surge to increasing nationalism. But does this explanation hold up as a more general explanation for IGO withdrawals across time and space? Despite many studies of why states join IGOs, we know surprisingly little about when and why states exit IGOs. We use research on IGO accession to derive potential explanations for IGO withdrawal related to domestic politics, IGO characteristics, and geo-politics. We quantitatively test these potential explanations for withdrawal using an original dataset of 493 IGOs since 1945, documenting about 200 cases of withdrawal. We find that nationalism is not the key driver of IGO withdrawals in the past. Instead, we show that geo-political factors – such as preference divergence and contagion – are the main factors linked to IGO withdrawals, followed by democracy levels in the country and organization. These findings have important implications for research on the vitality of international organizations, compliance, and the liberal world order.