Promoting Tourism Education in MENA Countries: Geopolitical Implications

Tourism development across the Middle East and North Africa is mostly based on low cost and mass beach leisure. This kind of tourism development generated, already in 1980s, a rapid conversion of the whole of the Mediterranean coast into a pleasure “periphery of Europe”. Despite this trend, a different scenario emerged already in the 1990s with the increasing of interests in the development of territorial resources and cultural heritage sites for tourism. This new development has been relevant in the process of Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, particularly for the social and cultural basket that includes the higher education policy of the European Union. But the current European malaise and the developments in the post-Arab Spring countries could transform Euro-Mediterranean relations. In order to open new windows of opportunity, a reshaping of the Erasmus Mundus program can be crucial.Le développement du tourisme à travers le Moyen-Orient et Afrique du Nord est principalement basé sur le faible coût et les loisirs de masse sur plage. Ce type de développement touristique a généré, déjà dans les années 1980, une conver-sion rapide de l'ensemble de la côte méditerranéenne en un loisir à la " périphé-rie de l'Europe ". Malgré cette tendance, un scénario différent est apparu déjà dans les années 1990 avec l'augmentation des intérêts dans le développement des ressources territoriales et des sites du patrimoine culturel pour le tourisme. Ce nouveau développement a été pertinent dans le processus de partenariat eu-ro-méditerranéen, en particulier pour le volet social et culturel qui comprend la politique de l'enseignement supérieur de l'Union européenne. Mais le malaise européen actuel et les développements dans les pays du post-printemps arabes pourraient transformer les relations euro-méditerranéennes. Afin d'ouvrir de nouvelles fenêtres d'opportunité, une refonte du programme Erasmus Mundus peut être crucialeتستند التنمية السياحية في منطقة الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا غالبا على انخفاض التكلفة و الترفيه الشاطئي . ظهر هذا النوع من التنمية السياحية في 1980 مما ادى الى التحويل السريع لساحل البحر الأبيض المتوسط إلى متعة "محيط أوروبا". على الرغم من هذه النزعة برزت افكار مختلفة في 1990 تنص على تزايد المصالح في تنمية الموارد الإقليمية ومواقع التراث الثقافي للسياحة. وكان هذا التطور الجديد متعلق بعملية الشراكة الأوروبية المتوسطية, وخاصة لسلة الاجتماعية والثقافية التي تتضمن سياسة التعليم العالي في الاتحاد الأوروبي. لكن قلق التطورات الاوروبية الحالية لبلدان الربيع العربي يمكن ان يؤثر على العلاقات الأوروبية المتوسطية. فمن أجل فتح نوافذ جديدة من الفرص، يمكن لإعادة تشكيل برنامج إيراسموس موندوس ان تكون حاسمة

Chapter The Appeasement Puzzle and Competition Neglect

Recent studies indicate that British appeasement towards Hitler followed a buying-time logic, i.e., it tried to postpone confrontation until Great Britain improved its military position through rearmament. However, this chapter shows that Germany actually extended its military edge over the appeasement years. Drawing on the literature on judgment and decision-making, the chapter theorizes that competition neglect – the tendency to focus myopically on one’s own capabilities and pay insufficient attention to those of the competition – may explain the puzzling gap between British policymakers’ plans and actual trends in the balance of power. The competition neglect thesis and an alternative explanation, positing the occurrence of miscalculation, are tested with a case study of British foreign policy towards Germany in 1937-38

Chapter (De)globalizzazione e (dis)informazione. Le sfide all’analisi della politica estera nella politica contemporanea

The chapter aims to provide an overview of the main challenges of foreign policy analysis in contemporary politics. After introducing the ways in which foreign policy analysis is addressed in the internationalist political literature, with a focus on policy formulation and decision-making understood as public policy, the authors focus on some of the main challenges that foreign policy scholars are called upon to face. In particular, the themes of (de)globalization and (dis)information are deepened, pointing out the reinforcement of the state and the risks connected to an increasing cognitive confusion

A cento anni dalla Grande Guerra. Vol. 3

The volumes on the Great War that are here published are the result of a series of seminars held at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Florence between 2014 and 2015. Starting from the occasion of the centennial, the authors wanted to take stock of some specific aspects of the studies related to the First World War. To this purpose, historians, military analysts, political scientists and sociologists have questioned the meaning of the fracture that marks the beginning of the twentieth century and, consequently, the basic aspects of the new policy of the “short century”, from both an Italian and European perspective

Geopolitica dell’Asia orientale. Sicurezza, economia, ideologia

Negli ultimi decenni, l’Asia orientale ha visto crescere il proprio ruolo all’interno degli equilibri internazionali trasformandosi progressivamente da oggetto di contesa globale e regionale a polo geopolitico in grado di plasmare l’ordine internazionale. Nonostante l’eterogeneità dei contesti nazionali abbia portato a una frammentazione della politica, delle alleanze e dei valori culturali, è possibile riscontrare dinamiche trasversali al continente che hanno facilitato l’emergere di interessi comuni. L’importanza della regione vede tuttavia aumentare anche il potenziale di conflitto, coinvolgendo inevitabilmente le principali potenze occidentali. Il libro sviluppa una riflessione sulla tensione tra ambizioni globali e interessi regionali dei principali attori geopolitici nel continente alla luce della crescente assertività cinese. Lo fa raccogliendo i contributi di studiose e studiosi ita¬liani che si occupano regolarmente di Asia orientale, in tal modo coniugando lo studio critico delle relazioni internazionali e gli studi di area. L’analisi della componente strategica si accompagna all’indagine delle dimensioni economica e ideologica, offrendo così una chiave di interpretazione alle dinamiche geopolitiche asiatiche basata sulla comprensione dei fattori geografici non in quanto predeterminati, bensì frutto dell’interpretazione degli attori coinvolti

Chapter The Appeasement Puzzle and Competition Neglect

Recent studies indicate that British appeasement towards Hitler followed a buying-time logic, i.e., it tried to postpone confrontation until Great Britain improved its military position through rearmament. However, this chapter shows that Germany actually extended its military edge over the appeasement years. Drawing on the literature on judgment and decision-making, the chapter theorizes that competition neglect – the tendency to focus myopically on one’s own capabilities and pay insufficient attention to those of the competition – may explain the puzzling gap between British policymakers’ plans and actual trends in the balance of power. The competition neglect thesis and an alternative explanation, positing the occurrence of miscalculation, are tested with a case study of British foreign policy towards Germany in 1937-38

Bibliometria e scienze del libro: internazionalizzazione e vitalit\ue0 degli studi italiani

The vitality of a scientific field is usually attested by the fallout that research and publications have on the community of scholars who practice it and, therefore, on the development of the discipline itself and of its methodologies. The degree of “health” of a field of study, as well as its ability to get out of its niche of scholars and to see its validity recognised, is assessed by analysing whether and to what extent the works are read, commented on, cited by scholars from other geographical contexts and / or other scientific branches. The volume presents a research focused on the analysis of the level of internationalisation and vitality of Italian studies in the disciplines related to the study of books and documents, conducted through a series of parallel bibliometric investigations (query of citation databases, searches in Google scholar, application alternative metrics, library catalog analysis).La vitalit\ue0 di un settore scientifico \ue8 normalmente attestata dalla ricaduta che le ricerche e le pubblicazioni hanno sulla comunit\ue0 degli studiosi che la praticano e, quindi, sullo sviluppo della disciplina stessa e delle sue metodologie. Il grado di ‘salute’ di un campo di studio, nonch\ue9 la sua capacit\ue0 di uscire fuori dalla propria nicchia di studiosi e di vedere riconosciuta la propria validit\ue0, si valuta, infatti, analizzando se e in quale misura i lavori vengano letti, commentati, citati da studiosi di altri contesti geografici e/o di altri rami scientifici. Nel volume viene descritta una ricerca incentrata sull’analisi del livello di internazionalizzazione e di vitalit\ue0 degli studi italiani nelle discipline del libro e del documento, condotta attraverso una serie di indagini parallele di tipo bibliometrico (interrogazione dei database citazionali, ricerche in Google scholar, applicazione di metriche alternative, library catalog analysis)