An assessment of humanitarian intervention based on case studies by thematic analysis of debates on Libya and Syria in the British House of Commons, 2010-2014

The objective of this thesis was to address the problem of the contradiction between the putative aims of humanitarian intervention and the harmful outcomes seen in intervention sites such as Libya (Hobson, 2016, Sensini, 2016, Cunliffe, 2020). The thesis contributes to knowledge by providing empirical evidence and contextual analysis of serious flaws in the contemporary theory and practise of humanitarian intervention, including the responsibility to protect (R2P) doctrine (International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, 2001). Case studies of parliamentary debates on Libya and Syria from 2010 to 2014 permitted examination of arguments around intervention in the context of political debate and reported outcomes of intervention or non-intervention. From 2011, the British government supported coerced regime change in both countries on humanitarian grounds, but adopted different strategies in each case.1 Analysis of differences between British responses to Libya and Syria provided evidence of limited humanitarian motivation for intervention.2 Thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998) was chosen as a pragmatic method (Morgan, 2014) for identifying themes in the debates, assessing their relative predominance, tracking them over time, and analysing them in context. The case studies identified weaknesses in the R2P doctrine which suggest that it may be inherently counter-productive (Cunliffe, 2020), possibly due to problematisation of how to do more, rather than better, humanitarian intervention. The evidence indicates that the USA, France and Britain, the states most likely to be tasked with humanitarian military intervention, particularly under the R2P doctrine (Cunliffe, 2020), are not suitable for the role (Dunford and Neu, 2019a). This thesis did not identify a suitable and capable R2P intervention force. However, the evidence was insufficient to support a conclusion that R2P is defunct. The military intervention in Libya in 2011 was initially praised as an exemplar of the R2P in practise (Evans, 2011, Ban, 2012). Paradoxically, with the lessons of Western dissimulation and inhumane outcomes that emerged in Libya, and are evidenced in this thesis, informing Security Council decisions (United Nations Security Council, 2011a), R2P as amended by the General Assembly (United Nations General Assembly, 2005) may survive as a restraint against abusive humanitarian intervention

\u3cem\u3eSomehow a word must be found:\u3c/em\u3e William Carlos Williams, the Legacies of Duchamp, and the Troping of the Found

Since the publication of J. Hillis Miller’s seminal chapter on William Carlos Williams in Poets of Reality (1965), there has been a uniform trend among critics to read the poet’s early experiments in relation to Marcel Duchamp. Miller situates Williams’s poetics within a range of avant-garde neologisms thought to challenge the autonomy of the bourgeois art object. Williams’s poetry rethinks the function and form of language and it is this self-reflexivity, and Miller’s deferral to the ready-made, that provides the foundation for this study. Inspired by a Dadaist-revival that reached its peak in the years leading up to the poet’s death, literary critics— including Miller—have glossed over Williams’s difficulties developing his own theories of art in relation to these avant-garde precedents. In the late 1960s, a new generation of artists revaluated Duchamp, a reconsideration that corresponds to Williams’s early commentary. Throughout his writing from the early 1920s, Williams emphasized a notion of the found easily confused— sometimes even by the poet himself—with the ready-made. Williams’s responses to Duchamp and the expatriated avant-garde evolved over the poet’s life as his and Duchamp’s works were embraced by the very institutions both had initially set out to complicate. Chapter One rethinks the ready-made’s legacy as the animating innovation within modernism. The ready-made embodies a principle of negation that contrasts with Williams’s far-ranging theory of the imagination. In driving a wedge between Williams’s troping of the found and the ready-made, I lean on postmodern theories of art, especially the ideas of Robert Smithson, the Earthworks artist, who named his childhood pediatrician, William Carlos Williams, a “proto-conceptual artist.” Chapter Two examines the broken style and theory of the imagination Williams formulates in Kora in Hell (1920), a text written in the year following the ready-made’s debut. Chapter Three analyzes the discursive interweaving of prose and poetry in Spring and All (1923), Williams’s most fully-realized avant-garde experiment. I conclude with a consideration of the verse written prior to the introduction of the ready-made, the poet’s earliest attempt to establish the local as a viable avant-garde tradition

Between Crown and Commerce

Between Crown and Commerce examines the relationship between French royal statecraft, mercantilism, and civic republicanism in the context of the globalizing economy of the early modern Mediterranean world. This is the story of how the French Crown and local institutions accommodated one another as they sought to forge acceptable political and commercial relationships with one another for the common goal of economic prosperity. Junko Thérèse Takeda tells this tale through the particular experience of Marseille, a port the monarchy saw as key to commercial expansion in the Mediterranean.At first, Marseille’s commercial and political elites were strongly opposed to the Crown’s encroaching influence. Rather than dismiss their concerns, the monarchy cleverly co-opted their civic traditions, practices, and institutions to convince the city’s elite of their important role in Levantine commerce. Chief among such traditions were local ideas of citizenship and civic virtue. As the city’s stature throughout the Mediterranean grew, however, so too did the dangers of commercial expansion as exemplified by the arrival of the bubonic plague. Marseille’s citizens reevaluated citizenship and merchant virtue during the epidemic, while the French monarchy's use of the crisis as an opportunity to further extend its power reanimated republican vocabulary.Between Crown and Commerce deftly combines a political and intellectual history of state-building, mercantilism, and republicanism with a cultural history of medical crisis. In doing so, the book highlights the conjoined history of broad transnational processes and local political change

George W. Bush, September 11th and the rise of the Freedom Agenda in US-Middle East relations: a Constructivist Institutionalist approach

This thesis generates a greater understanding of the George W. Bush administration’s Freedom Agenda for the Middle East and North Africa. It is motivated by two central research questions: How and why was the Freedom Agenda developed? And, how was the Freedom Agenda constituted? To address these questions, a constructivist institutionalist methodology is developed. The value of this undertaking, is that it theorises the relationship between the events of September 11, 2001, and the rise of the Freedom Agenda. Consequently, this research focuses on the narrative constructed in the aftermath of the “crisis”, and how this laid discursive tracks for the evolution of the Freedom Agenda. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the Bush administration appropriated and articulated multiple discourses into a distinctive ideological-discursive formation, which in turn, sedimented particular definitions of concepts such as ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’. This created a new policy paradigm, which failed to address the ‘conflict of interests’ problem central to US-Middle East relations. As a result, the Freedom Agenda demonstrated a commitment to regional stability and the gradual reform of ally regimes, whilst seeking to challenge regimes hostile to the US. It was a policy caught between promoting democracy and domination

Beyond Foucault: Excursions in Political Genealogy

ca. 200 words; this text will present the book in all promotional forms (e.g. flyers). Please describe the book in straightforward and consumer-friendly terms. [Trump and Trumpism, 21st century warfare, chronic illness, intellectual property: These are just some of the issues examined here. Inspired by the work of Michel Foucault, this book includes articles from scholars employing political genealogy as a methodology and model of theoretical inquiry representing a wide range of disciplines, from the social sciences to the humanities, from philosophy to medicine, to economics, to political and cultural theory. Featuring some of the best and most current work in political genealogy, this work invites us to rethink many of the key concepts in political theory as well as cultural types of expression that we do not routinely think of as political, such as dance, romantic movies, and literature. Broadly conceived, this volume contains essays—excursions, explorations, experimentations—into how political genealogy helps us to understand what Foucault calls “the history of our present,” while at the same time looking to our future, to what being a political subject will look like in the 21st century

Performing the digital: performativity and performance studies in digital cultures

How is performativity shaped by digital technologies - and how do performative practices reflect and alter techno-social formations? "Performing the Digital" explores, maps and theorizes the conditions and effects of performativity in digital cultures. Bringing together scholars from performance studies, media theory, sociology and organization studies as well as practitioners of performance, the contributions engage with the implications of digital media and its networked infrastructures for modulations of affect and the body, for performing cities, protest, organization and markets, and for the performativity of critique. With contributions by Marie-Luise Angerer, Timon Beyes, Scott deLahunta and Florian Jenett, Margarete Jahrmann, Susan Kozel, Ann-Christina Lange, Oliver Leistert, Martina Leeker, Jon McKenzie, Sigrid Merx, Melanie Mohren and Bernhard Herbordt, Imanuel Schipper and Jens Schröter

The Court of Comedy: Aristophanes, Rhetoric, and Democracy in Fifth-Century Athens

Sicilian pioneers of comedy and rhetoric and their transmission to Athens -- Old comedy and proto-rhetoric in Athens before 425 B.C.E. : the age of Pericles -- The young comic playwrights attack, 425-421 B.C.E. -- The years of confidence, 421-414 B.C.E. -- Crawling from the wreckage, 411 B.C.E. -- Tongues, frogs, and the last stand.Item embargoed for five year

Queer anarcha-feminism: an emerging ideology? The case of Proyectil Fetal

This thesis assesses the degree to which the Argentinean activist collective Proyectil Fetal can be successfully placed within the context of three intersecting ideological strains: feminism, anarchism and queer activism/theory. Queer anarcha-feminism, the confluence of these three ideologies, is an emerging ideology developed by a number of groups and individuals around the globe. This is in part due to their conviction that anarchists should have something to say about sexuality and gender, and that queer theory and feminism can help define such an up-to-date anarchist politics of sexuality. In addition, some believe that queer theory and feminism should be grounded in the more comprehensive ethical framework provided by the anti-capitalism and anti-Statism of the anarchist ideology, rather than be complicit with capitalism and the State. As such, queer anarchists share queer Marxists concern with combining queer theory and anti-capitalism. The overlaps and the tensions between these three ideological currents and Proyectil Fetal are closely traced through a deep analysis of the latter s blogs, internet pronouncements and discussions and actions. The core concepts of queer anarcha-feminism are all identified on their blog, and the group s adjacent as well as perimeter queer anarcha-feminist concepts are examined in depth. It is shown how the latter are formed partly in response to the current political climate in Argentina. Finally, the reception of Proyectil Fetal s queer anarcha-feminist ideas is examined in order to position their queer anarcha-feminism in relation to the political landscape of Argentina. Through this work, and drawing on Michael Freeden s conceptualisation of ideologies (Freeden 1998), this thesis elaborates the first systematic definition of queer anarcha-feminism

Organisational Change in Political Parties in Iran after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. With Special Reference to the Islamic Republic Party (IRP) and the Islamic Iran Participation Front Party (Mosharekat)

Abstract: The aim of this study is to develop a historical analytical narrative of the development of political parties under the Islamic Republic of Iran, accounting for their organisational structures, ideological evolution and internal distributions of power; to provide an analysis of the change in Iranian political parties after 1979; to examine their intra-party dynamisms of power as well as the developments in the environment of the Iranian parties which stimulated their change. This study gives special reference to the Islamic Republic Party (IRP) and the Islamic Iran Participation Front Party (Mosharekat). Also to address the problem of poor party institutionalisation in Iran after the revolution by examining a combination of factors that have contributed to the disruption of the institutionalisation process in the Iranian political parties such as at the hostility and uncertainty in party environment, the organisational zones of uncertainty in the Iranian political parties and the impact of state on party institutionalisation in Iran. Finally to examine the typological similarities between at least one modern party in Iran (Mosharekat) and some parties in the Western Democracies to understand whether partial similarity in society dimensions such as advancements in technology and the emergence of a new social cleavage map instead of the old social stratification, have resulted in similarities in the party types in Iran and the West

Covenanting Political Propaganda, 1638-89

This thesis examines the interplay of propaganda, politics and religion as it relates to the covenanting movement in early-modern Scotland. The transmission of ideology and the communication of ideas from above to below by covenanting polemicists to shape public discourse and to stimulate political action is the focus of this work. The use of propaganda as an elite mechanism for influencing popular opinion is analysed with respect to the origins of the covenanting movement. Consideration is given, then, to the initial, political tensions which occasioned dissent in the late-1630s and led to the formation of the radical, political movement The evolution of the covenanters from a press u regroup to a provisional government to a, largely, disaffected faction to an underground, protest group between 1638 and 1689 had a significant Impact on the methods relied on to formulate and disseminate their Ideology Thus, the mechanics of their considerable polemical efforts are analysed with respect to their function, production, transmission and reception through their years of political ascendancy as well as their years in the political wilderness. Equally, attention is paid to the modes of thought that underlay the propagandists' message and the main themes promoted in it to galvinize popular opinion. Whether appeals to the masses through polemical rhetoric acted as a stimulus for the creation of a plebian, political consciousness in seventeenth-century Scotland is of prime concern throughout this study