糖心TV

Professor has written for Chatham House on how Chinese President Xi Jinping's speech at the UN highlight China’s latest strategies for shaping its vision of a new type of global leadership.

It has become routine for China’s leaders to use high profile international events as a means of projecting a preferred image of what China stands for and how it will act as a great power, one that is perhaps now second only to the US in the league table of global powers. So it is no surprise that Xi Jinping has used his interventions at the UN development summit and his address to the General Assembly to showcase China’s growing role as a global aid actor, and to call for greater ‘democratization’ of global governance institutions (or, in other words, a greater role and say for China and other developing countries). China’s alleged and self-proclaimed (and challenged) predilection for peace, a desire to build a ‘new type’ of (vaguely defined) international relations, and support for the UN as the sole arbiter of when sovereignty might possibly be put aside (instead of the US or a coalition of the willing) are also now relatively well-established and rehearsed Chinese positions.

In addition to wielding China’s financial power in support of this national image projection, Xi’s activities also represent a move towards mobilizing discursive power (话语权) as well. To date, and for a number of years, this discursive power has been primarily deployed in a defensive manner, with the aim of denying the supposed universal nature of many of the norms and principles of the international order. These norms, as articulated by both Chinese government officials and some supportive academic scholars, are not universal at all, but merely the product of a small number of Western countries’ histories, philosophies and developmental trajectories. So, in this formulation, while it is important to have a common set of principles and responsibilities as the basis for international interactions, each country should be free to develop its own nation-specific definitions based on its own unique histories and contexts. And it is only these Chinese-inspired definitions and aspirations – of human rights, for example, or development – that China should be judged against.

The PAIS Seminar Series launches this Wednesday, October 14th, with a talk from

Kristin M. Bakke is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at University College London and Senior Research Associate at the Peace Research Institute Oslo. She has previously taught at Leiden University and been a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University. She holds a PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle. Her research, focusing on self-determination struggles and post-war states, has appeared in journals such as Annals of American Association of Geographers, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Perspectives on Politics, and World Politics. Her first book, Decentralization and Intrastate Struggles: Chechnya, Punjab, and Québec, was recently published with Cambridge University Press. She has received grants from the Economic and Social Research Council, the National Science Foundation (US), and the Norwegian Research Council. She is an associate editor at Journal of Peace Research and serves on the advisory board of Nations and Nationalism, editorial board of Journal of Global Security Studies, management committee of the European Network of Conflict Research, and council of the British Conflict Research Society.

Dr Bakke will be speaking to the title: 'War and Peace (and Institutions)'

One of the hotly debated policy prescriptions for states facing self-determination demands, from Iraq and Spain to Ukraine, is some form of decentralized governance—including regional autonomy arrangements and federalism—which grants minority groups a degree of self-rule. Yet the track record of existing decentralized states suggests that these have widely divergent capacity to contain conflicts within their borders. Through in-depth case studies, as well as a statistical cross-country analysis, Kristin M. Bakke shows in her recent book Decentralization and Intrastate Struggles: Chechnya, Punjab, and Québecthat while policy, fiscal approach, and political decentralization can, indeed, be peace-preserving at times, the effects of these institutions are conditioned by traits of the societies they (are meant to) govern. There is no one-size-fits-all decentralized fix to deeply divided and conflict-ridden states. Decentralization may help preserve peace in one country or in one region, but it may have just the opposite effect in a country or region with different ethnic and economic characteristics.

The seminar takes place at 4pm, in and is welcome to all.

The PAIS Departmental Seminar Series is the focal point of the Department's research culture and activity. The objective is to engage critically and constructively with current research from staff members, their external collaborators, invited speakers, and visiting researchers. To see a full schedule, please see the page.

PAIS Honorary Professor, Her Excellency Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, President of Malta, has recently met with the UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova, and has also addressed the UN Assembley in New York.

On 24 September, UNESCO Director-General met H.E. Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, President of the Republic of Malta, in New York, in the context of the UN Summit on Sustainable Development and the 70th session of the UN General Assembly‎.

President Coleiro Preca spoke of the importance of bridging exclusion, living together and dialogue in all societies today. She underlined the activities of the newly launched Foundation for Well-Being in Society, in Malta, with a focus on providing spaces for children of all backgrounds to exchange and share.

Whilst addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals summit, attended by more than 150 world leaders, President Marie Louise Coleiro Preca said "Global solidarity and a renewed commitment to safeguard human dignity and rights were needed now more than ever before."

“As leaders, we cannot look away. As leaders, we must be steadfast champions of social, economic, and political inclusion. As leaders we must always give voice to the shared truths of our global community. As leaders, we must become advocates for peace and the wellbeing of all,” the President said.

Although, at times, this might not be the most popular position “we must be bold, and defend the rights of vulnerable people wherever they are found”. She added “human dignity, integrity and freedom should be at the heart of our concerns”.

Her Excellency also attended the opening of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York for the speech of Pope Francis the First.

PAIS has made significant gains moving up four places to 3rd in the rankings in Politics in .

We are also placed at No 1 for the student experience in the entire Russell Group of elite departments.

Head of Department, Professor Nick Vaughan-Williams is delighted with the rankings.

Professor Vaughan-Williams said: “This latest ranking in The Times/Sunday Times is yet further evidence of PAIS’ position as one of the UK’s leading Politics Departments. Research and teaching excellence are at the heart of who we are and what we stand for.

Staff and students should feel deservedly proud of this result. With a newly refurbished building and an ambitious agenda for the future, we look
forward to building on this success in 2015/16 and beyond.”

Thank you to all our students and staff for our continued success.

.

Burkina Faso, which has been experiencing a political transition since October 2014 when former President Compaoré saw his attempts to remove term limits from the constitution fail and had to leave the country, is experiencing turmoil again, less than four weeks before scheduled elections to return the country to a constitutional order.

On 16 September, members of the Presidential Guard (RSP) disrupted the transition by kidnapping transition authorities, and attempting to impose their chief to lead the country. This was faced by massive resistance from the population, in the capital Ouagadougou but also in many towns and cities across the country.

PAIS PhD student Eloïse Bertrand provides analysis of this popular resistance on .

You can read Eloïse's articule here: