Human Dignity and judicial Interpretation of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration on Human Rights was pivotal in popularizing the use of 'dignity' or 'human dignity' in human rights discourse. This article argues that the use of 'dignity', beyond a basic minimum core, does not provide a universalistic, principled basis for judicial decision-making in the human rights context, in the sense that there is little common understanding of what dignity requires substantively within or across jurisdictions. The meaning of dignity is therefore context-specific, varying significantly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and (often) over time within particular jurisdictions. Indeed, instead of providing a basis for principled decision-making, dignity seems open to significant judicial manipulation. increasing rather than decreasing judicial discretion. That is one of its significant attractions to both judges and litigators alike. Dignity provides a convenient language for the adoption of substantive interpretations of human rights guarantees which appear to be intentionally, not just coincidentally. highly contingent on local circumstances. Despite that, however, I argue that the concept of 'human dignity' plays an important role in the development of human rights adjudication, not in providing an agreed content to human rights but in contributing to particular methods of human rights interpretation and adjudication.

Sectarian and Nonsectarian Violence: Mothers' Appraisals of Political Conflict in Northern Ireland

Past research on peace and conflict in Northern Ireland has focused on politically motivated violence. However, other types of crime (i.e., nonsectarian) also impact community members. To study the changing nature of violence since the signing of the Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland, we used a qualitative approach and the Constant Comparative Method to analyze focus group discussions with mothers from segregated Belfast neighborhoods. Participants articulated clear differences between sectarian and nonsectarian violence, and further distinguished sectarian violence along 2 dimensions—overt acts and perceived intergroup threat. Although both sectarian and nonsectarian antisocial behavior related to insecurity, participants described pulling together and increased ingroup social cohesion in response to sectarian incidents. The findings have implications for the study of violence and insecurity as experienced in the everyday lives of mothers, youth, and families in settings of protracted conflict.

Indigenous rights in Chile: National identity and majority group support for multicultural policies

We examine support for policies affecting indigenous ethnic minorities in Chile. Specifically, we examine the role of national group definitions that include the largest indigenous group—the Mapuche—in different ways. Based on questionnaire data from nonindigenous Chilean students (N = 338), we empirically distinguish iconic inclusion, whereby the Mapuche are seen as an important part of Chile's history and identity on the one hand, from egalitarian inclusion, which represents the Mapuche as citizens of equal importance to the nonindigenous majority on the other. Both forms of inclusion positively predict support for indigenous rights, independent of participants' political affiliation, strength of national identification, and social distance. A second study (N = 277) replicates this finding whilst controlling for right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, blind patriotism, and constructive patriotism. It also finds iconic inclusion to be predictive of a pro-Mapuche position regarding the unrest over the issue of ancestral land in 2009. We conclude that understanding how national identity affects attitudes about minority rights necessitates appreciating the importance of particular meanings of nationality, and not only the strength of identification.

Guns don’t kill people, cyborgs do::a Latourian provocation for transformatory arms control and disarmament

This article seeks to provoke a deeper engagement of Critical Security Studies with security's relations to technology and weapons. It explores existing assumptions about these relations in mainstream arms control and disarmament theory, and the way such assumptions are deployed and distributed in the current settlement of arms control and disarmament practice. It then draws on recent social and philosophical discussions of materiality, particularly on the thought of Bruno Latour, to propose a different set of concepts for exploring the aims and limits of arms control and disarmament. These concepts emphasise the mediating roles of material things in social relations and they may offer a richer view of the object of arms control (weapons and violence) and of the practices of arms limitation and reduction; one that may ultimately gesture towards a different understanding of arms politics, and that may be used to explore the transformatory potentials of arms control and disarmament.

How different are the correlates of onset and continuation of civil wars?

It is very common to analyse the factors associated with the onset and continuation of civil wars entirely separately, as if there were likely to be no similarity between them. This is an overstatement of the theoretical position, which has established only that they may be different (i.e. less than perfectly correlated). The hypothesis that the explanatory variables are the same is not theoretically excludable and is empirically testable, both for individual variables and for combinations of them. Starting from this approach yields a rather different picture of the factors associated with the continuation of civil wars, because the relatively small sample size means that confidence intervals on individual coefficients are wide in this case. It is shown here that country size, mountainous terrain and (in most datasets) ethnic diversity seem significant for the continuation of civil wars, starting from the null hypothesis that variables affect onset and continuation probabilities identically, rather than entirely independently. One variable that affects onset and continuation significantly differently is anocracy, which we find to matter only for onset. Civil war is more likely if it occurred two years previously, as well as one year previously, which indicates that wars are more likely to restart after only one year of peace, and also more likely to stop in their first year. The combined model strengthens the result that ethnic diversity matters (it is consistently significant across datasets, whereas it is not when onset is analysed separately), although in the UCD/PRIO dataset it is significant only for onset. By contrast, if continuation is analysed independently, virtually nothing is significant except a pre-1991 dummy and a dummy for civil war two years previously.

Photographing Vladimir Putin: Masculinity, Nationalism and Visuality in Russian Political Culture

This article introduces the study of photographs of politicians as an object of geopolitical analysis. It does this through exploring the holiday photographs of Vladimir Putin released by the Kremlin in 2007, 2009, and 2010. Putin's biography provides a backdrop to a detailed analysis of the geopolitical representations contained in the photographs of him. In the same fashion as other images, the photographs seek to provide a contemporary view of events and, at the same time, serve as a medium through which particular political scripts are narrated. The photographs also help to reproduce (and question) hegemonic discourses about public forms of masculinity in Russia. This article is intended to contribute to the debate on how visual images can help make sense of the geopolitical world

Revolt and Revolution: the place of Islamism

The outbreak of revolt and revolution in the Middle East has given rise to a re-consideration of threat and security analyses as they pertain to the region and beyond. The resilience of some authoritarian regimes and the rapid collapse of others signal a significant transition within the region to which jihadi Islamist groups form one part of a powerful matrix. This article analyses the part and place of jihadi Islamism and Islamisms more generally in the revolts and revolutions. The article contends that events provide both opportunities and threats in strategies aimed at countering terrorism in the Middle East.

Defending the Faith(s)?:Democracy and Hereditary Right in England

The persistence of traditional monarchies in modern societies, which are otherwise characterized by democratic and egalitarian values, remains a paradox in the social sciences. In part this is attributable to the lack of psychological investigation into the relationship between subject and sovereign, and in particular the ways in which the political and social values of the citizenry shape understandings of a hereditary monarch’s right to represent a national community. Adopting the qualitative analysis methods of discursive psychology and grounded theory, the current study examines vernacular accounts of nationhood and monarchy in England in both formalized conversational interviews (n = 60) and impromptu street interviews (n = 56). Focusing on accounts of Prince Charles’s recent proposal to change the role of the monarch, from “Defender of the (Christian) Faith” to “Defender of Faiths,” those in favor treated it as a positive step towards reflecting a diverse (religious) community, bringing the monarchy into line with current concerns of pluralism and upholding
values of personal choice and individual rights. Participants who rejected the proposed change in title construed it as antithetical to these values in terms of reflecting personal stake and interest, an abuse of power, or an imposition on other faiths. In all accounts, the prime concern was in safeguarding the political and social values of the citizenry. In conclusion it is argued that the study of subjects’ relationship to the monarch, its function and legitimacy, can provide an opportunity to examine how values can characterize a national community and facilitate national diversity.