CIAO DATE: 09/2011
Volume: 2, Issue: 1
January 2011
The Cosmopolitan Epics of 2004: A Case Study (PDF)
Saverio Saverio Giovacchini
In 2004 Hollywood produced three purportedly blockbuster epic films: Troy, King Arthur and Alexander. Many critics suggested a direct link between the 1950s “sword and sandal” epic and this new crop of movies. Similarities between the two cycles certainly exist but in this essay I want to emphasize a crucial difference between the contemporary, cosmopolitan, epic and the previous, more nation-bound, 1950s cycle. Rather than being in tune with key elements of American foreign policy, the new cycle of “sword and sandal” films offers a somber assessment of American imperial adventures. I shall contend, in fact, that the new crop of epic films had to choose between two generic conventions that are, at present, not compatible. On the one hand, epic films had traditionally been the bearers of the foreign policy vision of the country that produced them. On the other, their inflated budgets made them dependent on an international market. Deeply aware of a globalized and rising opposition to US foreign policy and of the fact that foreign box office now exceeds the domestic take of a blockbuster, it may be no wonder that the makers of these films chose to craft them into citizens of the world.
Is Aid the Capital Component Making Countries Efficient? A Non-Parametric Production Theory Approach (PDF)
Ann Veiderpass, Per-Åke Andersson
Cross country regressions on aid effectiveness have failed to provide substantial evidence on the effects of foreign aid. This study focuses on country performance in a production theory context. By means of the non-parametric DEA method, we study 60 individual low and middle income countries over a six year period. Is there a systematic correlation between resource intensity and country efficiency? We find indications of a positive relation between capital intensity and country efficiency. We then investigate whether aid is the conclusive part of capital providing this correlation, but when linking country efficiency development to aid such a pattern is not to be found.
Women's Empowerment through Self-help Groups and its Impact on Health Issues: Empirical Evidence (PDF)
Sudipta De, Debnarayan Sarker
Based on an empirical study in West Bengal, this paper attempts to
examine whether women's involvement in the microcredit programme
through SHGs makes any positive change on women's empowerment.
From the assessment of various criteria of empowerment(power,
autonomy and self-reliance, entitlement, participation and awareness
and capacity-building), the study suggests that if women participating
in the microcredit programme through SHGs sustain for some longer
period (eight years or more), such programme might contribute to
higher level of women's empowerment than women's empowerment
under all types of control group. This paper also finds that women's
earnings from saving and credit have positive and significant effect on
nutritional status of the children of women members of SHGs and on
the protein-intake for their household compared with that of among
control groups.
Integration in the Global South: What Role for IBSA Dialogue Forum? (PDF)
Mehmet Özkan
Recently we have seen that the middle-sized states are coming together in several forums. The WTO meetings and India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) dialogue forum are among those to be cited. Such groupings are mainly economyoriented and whether they will have political output needs to be seen, however, in the future if globalization goes in a similar way as today, we might see more groupings. Those groupings should be seen as reactions to unjust and exclusive globalization. The IBSA Dialogue Forum members have enhanced their relations economically by signing bilateral trade agreements and acting together on economic issues in global forums. If they can hold together, they are creating a market more than ¼ of global population and, if successful, it has a chance to be the engine of growth in the South. Moreover if they can create the biggest market in the South, they would also be influential in the being of the voice of the South. In that sense, this paper addresses the possible ways to develop relations between the IBSA members and economic development in the South, furthermore, implication of the IBSA on global governance and development can be as critical as its contribution to economic development, since the global governing bodies have legitimacy crisis.
Adeed Dawisha Iraq: A Political History from Independence to Occupation (PDF)
Paolo Chiocchetti
Iraq: A Political History from Independence to Occupation, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-691-13957-9, 377 pp., £21.95 hb.) The historical trajectory of the Iraqi nation-state has been profoundly marked by its role as a political-institutional laboratory of grand imperial projects. Its first master, United Kingdom, first forged Iraq from the three former Mesopotamian provinces of the Ottoman Empire (1918) and then experimented different forms of governance, from direct rule (1918-1920 and 1941-1945) to indirect rule as a Mandate power alongside of the Hashemite monarchy (1921-1932) to informal influence on an independent state (1932-1941 and 1945-1958). Its second master, the United States, treaded down the same path from direct rule through the CPA of Paul Bremer (2003-2004) to indirect rule alongside democratically elected governments (2004-2010) to Obama’s envisioned informal rule after the alleged departure of all combat troops (from 2010). The commonality between the two cases cannot be limited to the attempt to exert a political/economic control over the Iraqi territory; in both cases the foreign powers endeavoured to create a self-sustainable nation-state which could serve as a model to all other countries in the region and in the global South: autonomous, yet pro-Western and liberal-democratic.
William Mallinson Cyprus: Diplomatic History and the Clash of Theory in International Relations (PDF)
Alexandros Nafpliotis
Cyprus: Diplomatic History and the Clash of Theory in International Relations. (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010, ISBN 978-1-84885-416-1, xvi + 228 pp., £ 54.50 hb.). The Cyprus issue has dominated a substantial part of the literature on the Eastern Mediterranean, as regards both international relations and history, in the last 35 years. There has been a multitude of works on the history of the island and its 1974 troubles (see, for example, other books published recently by I.B. Tauris, including Dimitrakis’ Military Intelligence in Cyprus: From the Great War to Middle East Crises; Asmussen’s Cyprus at War: Diplomacy and Conflict During the 1974 Crisis, and Mallinson’s own Cyprus: a modern history). Where the present study differs considerably from other texts on the subject is its unique approach. Mallinson (a former diplomat and a lecturer at the Ionian University of Greece) uses his experience as an international relations historian, theorist and practitioner to shed light on the causes of conflict over Cyprus.
Tara McCormack Critique, Security and Power: The Political Limits to Emancipatory approaches (PDF)
Hüsrev Tabak
Critique, Security and Power: The political limits to emancipatory approaches, (London and New York: Routledge, 2009, 166 pp., ISBN 978-0-415-48540-1, £75 hb.) Security conceptualization and comprehension in International Relations has tremendously changed with the demise of the Cold War. In the new era, statecentric understanding of the policy-making has been replaced mainly by the critical perspectives. Whilst the critical security theorists are championing the more human focused understanding of (international) security, they are criticized for highlighting just a small part of the picture (power relations) and ignoring the political rest (the use of force). McCormack’s work of Critique, Security and Power: The political limits to emancipatory approaches should be regarded as one of those which raises challenging scientific critiques to and unearth theoretical and political lacks of the post-Cold War critical security theory.
Hatice Yazgan
The Process of Politics in Europe: The Rise of European Elites and Supranational Institutions. (London and New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2010, ISBN: 978-1- 84885-326-3, 245 pp, £56.50 hb.) The book is an original example of displaying the first initiatives of European bureaucracy and the roots of European administrative culture. Recruitment processes, (in)formal rules in distributing the posts, original working methods and practical challenges to overcome within the institutions are explained in detail to give inside information from the early years of institutionalism of today’s EU. The book consists of two parts. The first part includes two chapters which explain the organizational structure and administrative problems of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community and the biographical backgrounds, careers and socialisation mechanisms of the civil servants respectively. Second part of the book has three chapters and comprises of in-depth information about the Commission of the European Economic Community which is built on the institutional legacy of the High Authority. The third chapter is about organizational structure, working methods and related problems. The fourth chapter focuses on biographical information of the Eurocrats as well as the so-called internal and external factors in Europeanization and socialization mechanisms. Chapter five examines the emergence of the administrative cultures in Competition and Common Agricultural Policy Directorate Generals (DGs) and their effects on the policies created.