This text aims to fill a gap in the field of Middle Eastern political studies by combining international relations theory with concrete case studies. It begins with an overview of the rules and features of the Middle East regional system—the arena in which the local states, including Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Israel and the Arab states of Syria, Jordan and Iraq, operate. The book goes on to analyse foreign-policy-making in key states, illustrating how systemic determinants constrain this policy-making, and how these constraints are dealt with in distinctive ways depending on the particular domestic features of the individual states. Finally, it goes on to look at the outcomes of state policies by examining several major conflicts including the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Gulf War, and the system of regional alignment. The study assesses the impact of international penetration in the region, including the historic reasons behind the formation of the regional state system. It also analyses the continued role of external great powers, such as the United States and the former Soviet Union, and explains the process by which the region has become incorporated into the global capitalist market.
2 Seeking the dead among the living: embodying the disappeared of the Argentinian dictatorship through law 1 Sévane Garibian Y así seguimos andando curtidos de soledad, y en nosotros nuestros muertos pa’ que nadie quede atrás. (Atahualpa Yupanqui 2) Introduction The state policy of enforced disappearances in Argentina, planned and implemented during the military dictatorship of 1976–83, still has a striking effect today: in the absence of any corpses of the disappeared, the families seek the dead among the living. Their quest through the law embodies the
, 2008; Jessop, 2002: 42; for a further discussion, see MacKenzie and Martínez Lucio, 2014). To this extent, the question of coordination of such levels and different approaches in public policy and state agencies politically and organisationally is one we need to be alert to (Crouch, 1993). What is more, the state intervenes not just in social spaces but also in ideological ones where specific issues, sensibilities and even national debates develop and configure the nature and impact of state policies (Locke and Thelen, 2006). Within these social and ideological
, and collaboration, with the royal government’.6 Equally, out-and-out criticism of state policy or of the shortcomings of individuals, royal and otherwise, did not feature in the Shows. Such sentiments in civic circles at large were sometimes inchoate in any case; where they were expressed, this tended to occur subtly and tentatively, in coded language and through the careful use of selected figures and emblems.7 I therefore follow Curtis Perry’s judicious approach: one should see the Shows not as ‘points on a graph leading to increased opposition between the city and
become realms of predictability. Under them, long-term investments in intellectual formation and the means of production also make sense for persons far from the centres of power. The lack of a monopoly of violence produces (under competitive conditions) spaces open to violence – violence fields. In these violence fields, people invest individually in the social and physical conditions of security in much higher proportions. Development, growth or productive innovation are not their preoccupations. The general practice of state policy towards violence fields organised by
The book explores the relationship between violence against women on one hand, and the rights to health and reproductive health on the other. It argues that violation of the right to health is a consequence of violence, and that (state) health policies might be a cause of – or create the conditions for – violence against women. It significantly contributes to feminist and international human rights legal scholarship by conceptualising a new ground-breaking idea, violence against women’s health (VAWH), using the Hippocratic paradigm as the backbone of the analysis. The two dimensions of violence at the core of the book – the horizontal, ‘interpersonal’ dimension and the vertical ‘state policies’ dimension – are investigated through around 70 decisions of domestic, regional and international judicial or quasi-judicial bodies (the anamnesis). The concept of VAWH, drawn from the anamnesis, enriches the traditional concept of violence against women with a human rights-based approach to autonomy and a reflection on the pervasiveness of patterns of discrimination (diagnosis). VAWH as theorised in the book allows the reconceptualisation of states’ obligations in an innovative way, by identifying for both dimensions obligations of result, due diligence obligations, and obligations to progressively take steps (treatment). The book eventually asks whether it is not international law itself that is the ultimate cause of VAWH (prognosis).
in the direct acceptance of her request. The vertical, ‘state policies’ dimension Abortion Context and legal background The purpose of this section of the chapter is to reflect on cases concerning abortion in order to identify the elements of violence against women’s health 58 DE VIDO 9781526124975 PRINT.indd 58 24/03/2020 11:01 The anamnesis that pertain to the second, ‘vertical’ dimension of my analysis. The issue is extremely sensitive, because it entails considerations that go beyond law and touch upon ethics and morality.257 I have selected cases decided by
The power of vulnerability interrogates the new language of vulnerability that has emerged in feminist, queer and anti-racist debates about the production, use and meanings of media. The book investigates the historical legacies and contemporary forms and effects of this language. In today’s media culture, traumatic first-person or group narratives have popular currency, mobilising affect from compassion to rage to gain cultural visibility and political advantage. In this context, vulnerability becomes a kind of capital, a resource or an asset that can and has been appropriated for various groups and purposes in public discourses, activism as well as cultural institutions. Thus, politics of representation translates into politics of affect, and the question about whose vulnerability counts as socially and culturally legible and acknowledged. The contributors of the book examine how vulnerability has become a battleground; how affect and vulnerability have turned into a politicised language for not only addressing but also obscuring asymmetries of power; and how media activism and state policies address so-called vulnerable groups. While the contributors investigate the political potential as well as the constraints of vulnerability for feminist, queer and antiracist criticism, they also focus on the forms of agency and participation vulnerability can offer.
Bordering intimacy is a study of how borders and dominant forms of intimacy, such as family, are central to the governance of postcolonial states such as Britain. The book explores the connected history between contemporary border regimes and the policing of family with the role of borders under European and British empires. Building upon postcolonial, decolonial and black feminist theory, the investigation centres on how colonial bordering is remade in contemporary Britain through appeals to protect, sustain and make family life. Not only was family central to the making of colonial racism but claims to family continue to remake, shore up but also hide the organisation of racialised violence in liberal states. Drawing on historical investigations, the book investigates the continuity of colonial rule in numerous areas of contemporary government – family visa regimes, the policing of sham marriages, counterterror strategies, deprivation of citizenship, policing tactics, integration policy. In doing this, the book re-theorises how we think of the connection between liberal government, race, family, borders and empire. In using Britain as a case, this opens up further insights into the international/global circulations of liberal empire and its relationship to violence.
Given the significant similarities and differences between the welfare states of Northern Europe and their reactions to the perceived 'refugee crisis' of 2015, the book focuses primarily on the three main cases of Denmark, Sweden and Germany. Placed in a wider Northern European context – and illustrated by those chapters that also discuss refugee experiences in Norway and the UK – the Danish, Swedish and German cases are the largest case studies of this edited volume. Thus, the book contributes to debates on the governance of non-citizens and the meaning of displacement, mobility and seeking asylum by providing interdisciplinary analyses of a largely overlooked region of the world, with two specific aims. First, we scrutinize the construction of the 2015 crisis as a response to the large influx of refugees, paying particular attention to the disciplinary discourses and bureaucratic structures that are associated with it. Second, we investigate refugees’ encounters with these bureaucratic structures and consider how these encounters shape hopes for building a new life after displacement. This allows us to show that the mobility of specific segments of the world’s population continues to be seen as a threat and a risk that has to be governed and controlled. Focusing on the Northern European context, our volume interrogates emerging policies and discourses as well as the lived experiences of bureaucratization from the perspective of individuals who find themselves the very objects of bureaucracies.