Search results

Response to suggestion that EU-wide cash payment limits would assist in the control of terrorism finance and money laundering.

Desk review and interviews

The inception impact assessment (IIA) is ill-conceived, not grounded on firm empirical evidence and harmful to both crime control and the legitimate interests and rights of the EU citizens. The action under discussion is presented as a measure against terrorism finance, serious crime and tax evasion. The problem is that these criminal acts correspond to very different methods, volumes, perpetrators, causes and control challenges. Cash payment limitations (CPLs) are nowhere near a panacea that can address all of them and cannot make any of them go away magically. Even when each of these crime challenges are considered on their own, the empirical linkage of CPLs to effective controls is not there. The evidence from EU countries with CPLs in place shows higher levels of informal economy, corruption, tax evasion and terrorism risks than those without. There is substantial evidence of non-cash, very serious and organized crime, while the amounts needed and used by terrorists in Europe are usually very small in cash transactions, way below the thresholds under consideration. In fact, determined offenders will shift to other methods and become more sophisticated, posing new problems to controllers. Displacement and incentives for better-organized crime may well be the main products of such measures.

It counters the argument that the cash payment limits can help reduce serious crime, while pointing to several adverse consequences on legitimate interests and human rights.

The purpose of this study is to identify various Russian manifestations on expanding its role in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as shed light on the major obstacles it may face.

The research paper uses the “national role theory” to analyze the factors that helped in the growing Russian role in sub-Saharan African countries. It assumes that every state seeks to play a particular role, and that role is reflected in its foreign policy, which is known as “role performance,” and this role originates from several sources. On the other hand, this role faces various obstacles, mostly from the external environment, especially the international system’s structure, global values and international obligations, known as “role prescriptions.”

Despite Russia’s ability to use all its capacities in expanding its role in the African continent, the degree of its influence varied from one field to another. While it was very influential in the military, security, political, diplomatic and technical fields, it is relatively less in the economic and counter-terrorism areas.

This study paves the way for further researches related to international competition over sub-Saharan Africa, whether economically, militarily or politically, in addition to other studies related to potential cooperation opportunities, especially in security and combating terrorism.

This research’s significance stems from using the existing theoretical structure represented in national role theory in analyzing the Russian orientation toward sub-Saharan Africa, giving more attention to the latest developments in Russian strategy, as well as clarifying the major obstacles that may hinder its activities.

The purpose of this paper is to outline how the EU figures out the importance of strengthening its relations with Egypt as one of the most strategic countries in the region to keep the union secured and stable. The paper also assesses to what extent the EU succeeds to promote democracy in Egypt.

The EU pursues its policy through a series of both bilateral and multilateral agreements with Egypt aiming at positioning their relations in a strategic context. The research adopted different approaches as descriptive and analytical ones.

Following the Arab uprisings, the EU was caught by surprise and announced a paradigm shift in its relations and introduced a set of policies to foster democracy promotion that witnessed some successes but with extremely modest results in some areas compared to the costs of the process. The EU succeeded in important reforms in trade liberalization while it did not bring clear changes in the political arena in Egypt.

The findings of this paper convey that the Arab uprisings were a wake-up call for the EU. It was the right time for the EU to conduct such a strategic and sincere reflection based on the role it wants to play in the changing region. In addition, findings prove that the EU’s response to revolutionary events has been weak and hesitant, and the EU has not an effective role in promoting democracy in Egypt.

The purpose of this paper is to unveil the main changes in the UAE’s policy towards Iran since its foundation in 1971. The UAE favored strategic hedging, extending its commercial and diplomatic relations with Iran, in addition to developing its military capabilities and maintaining military/security alliances with Saudi Arabia and the USA. However, the UAE started to reorient its policy towards Iran by adopting some sort of balancing strategy in the aftermath of the Arab Spring of 2011. This paper examines how and why the UAE had to change course and explores whether it would revert back to strategic hedging with Iran.

The study will be carried out based on a theoretical framework drawn from strategic hedging theory, a new structural theory in international relations, to examine the shifts in UAE policy towards Iran. Previous literature suggests that small states prefer hedging over balancing or bandwagoning. The authors also undertake a descriptive analysis and deploy a longitudinal within-case method to investigate changes in UAE policy towards Iran and identify the causal mechanisms behind these changes. That method allows investigating the impact of a particular event on a case by comparing the same case before and after that event occurred.

The main finding of this study is that the UAE hedging strategy towards Iran allowed maximizing the political and economic returns from the cooperation with Iran and mitigating the long-range national security risks without breaking up the consistent and beneficial ties with other regional and global powers. Hedging achieved the desired outcome, which is preventing direct military confrontation with Iran. Hard balancing, adopted by Abu Dhabi after the 2011 Arab Spring, has proved to have some negative effects, most importantly provoking Tehran. Some recent indicators suggest, though that the UAE may revert back to its long-established hedging policy towards Iran.

Strategic hedging is a new structural theory in international relation, although hedging behavior in states’ foreign policies is far from new. It is new enough, thus, not have been researched sufficiently, strategic hedging still needs theorizing and comparison. This paper highlights the importance of strategic hedging as the most appropriate strategy for small states. It provides an important contribution to the application of the theory to the case of UAE policy towards Iran. The paper also assesses the conventional wisdom that small states prefer hedging over balancing in the light of the changes in the UAE foreign policy since 2011.

This study aims to investigate the decline of American hegemony as one of the most prominent crises of the modern world order, from a broader perspective that transcends narrow traditional interpretations. The paper assumes that the September 11 events in 2001 have launched the actual decline in American hegemony. Tracing the evolution of US global strategy over the past two decades, the study seeks to analyze the main causes and repercussions of the decline of US hegemony, which would provide a bird’s eye view of what the current global system is going through.

The study investigates the decline in American hegemony through a longitudinal within-case analysis which focuses on the causal path of decline in hegemony in the case of the USA, since the events of September 11, 2001, and tries to identify the causal mechanisms behind this decline. Following George and Bennet (2005), the study uses process tracing to examine its research question. Process-tracing method seeks to identify the intervening causal process – causal chain or causal mechanisms or the steps in a causal process – that leads to the outcome of a particular case in a specific historical context (Mahoney, 2000; Bennet and Elman, 2006). The study chose this method, as it offers more potential for identifying causal mechanisms and theory testing (George and Bennet, 2005); it opted for a specific procedure, among the variety of process-tracing procedures listed by George and Bennet, which is the detailed narrative presented as a chronicle, accompanied by explicit causal hypotheses. Using this process tracing procedure, the study assumes that American hegemony has witnessed dramatic changes in the aftermath of critical junctures, particularly the events of September 11, 2001, and the financial crises, 2008, which contributed significantly to this decline. Consequently, it traces the impact of these events on the state of American hegemony, in light of the review of contributions of different theories on hegemony in the field of international relations, both traditional and critical. Consequently, introducing the theoretical framework used in the study (the four-dimensional model of hegemony), which transcends criticisms of previous theories.

The crises of the modern world order and the decline of American hegemony – being the main manifestation of such crises – revealed the inability of the traditional and critical approaches reviewed in the study to interpret this decline and those crises. The reason behind that was the inability of these interpretations to reflect the various dimensions of American hegemony and its decline since the September 11 events. This highlights the importance of using the four-dimensional model, which combines different factors in the analysis and has proved to be an appropriate model for studying the case of American hegemony and its decline after the events of September 11, as it deals with the phenomenon of hegemony as a social relationship based on specific social networks.

Despite the currency and relevance of the decline of US hegemony for both the academic and political world, the topic needed to be analyzed systemically and addressed in a thorough scientific way. Through the application of theoretical concepts into the analysis of empirical data, this study contributes to a field where too often the discourse about decline of American hegemony is led without the required theoretical or conceptual considerations.

This paper explores the interaction and impact of political disruptions on textile supply chain performance in Pakistan. A qualitative approach is adopted to explore the linkages and relationships between political disruptions and supply chain disruptions and performance. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at 25 different textile manufacturing firms. This study confirmed the prevalence of severe and variegated impacts of political disruptions on the textile supply chain. Supply chain disruption is found to be a key mediating factor that directly and indirectly affect supply chain performance through an increased production and delivery lead-time, transportation delays, interruptions of raw material supplies to plants and distributors and the restricted access to workplaces for suppliers and workers. The linkages are represented through vicious circles that illustrate the interactions and inter-relationships between disrupted supply chain and performance. This study provides empirical evidence to help government to formulate pertinent labour laws and industrial policy to mitigate political disruptions and minimise deleterious effects of supply chain disruption on production and distribution networks whilst respecting and protecting the democratic rights of people.

There is no doubt that the political speech of the Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad is of exceptional importance in understanding the developments of the war in Syria, and clarifies the position of all parties involved in the war, whether local, regional or international. Accordingly, and based on the dismantling of political discourse, the identification of its core, as well as its variables and major themes of this discourse, this study aims to understand the levels of complexity, paths and the fate of the war in Syria that certainly does not come free of charge, the hardest of which is the human cost whether for the victims or the displaced persons.

After a careful study of all the resilient factors in the literature review to categorize the primary data based on Assad’s discourses in the media, through a “qualitative research study” of his “interviews and discourses,” it is found that the Assad’s rhetoric is highly relevant to his tenacious presidency. The research reveals the themes that dominated Assad’s interview responses and speeches and his strategy of framing the revolution as a foreign insurgency against his government. In fact, Assad delegitimizes any semblance of the uprisings as a “pro-democracy movement” or “revolution,” denying the presence of a rebellion against his government.

By the analysis the study found out that Bashar Al-Assad continued to focus on certain reasons and issues that led to the crisis and the continuation of the war, such as the Muslim Brotherhood’s involvement, considering the Syrian opposition abroad as agents of Western countries, Syria is subject to a regional and international conspiracy, terrorism is a major scourge that must be fought and that the army is essential in resolving the battles taking place there. Likewise, emphasizing the internal dialogue with all stakeholders and involved parties is the way to solve the crisis.The Syrian President’s speeches do not focus much on the accusations against his regime from the opposition or the international parties involved in the conflict.

Assad’s resiliency has made him a distinct leader in the region. This paper analyzes the factors contributing to Assad’s resiliency. The literature review consists of the existing theories on authoritarian persistence and Assad’s power base in particular. The literature review discusses the factors that helped Assad adopts his resiliency strategies to the conflict environment. The research focuses on how Assad used the media as a platform for displaying his own manipulative narrative of the conflict. It concludes that Assad’s use of the media as his propaganda tool legitimized his rule, making it highly relevant to his persistence.

The purpose of this study is to fill a gap in the literature by examining the import and impact of the generative leadership philosophy and praxis of Ambassador Aurelia Erskine Brazeal, an African American Female Foreign Service Officer.

This single subject case study, augmented by portraiture, employs an interdisciplinary methodological design also using polyvocal narrative, oral history and arts-based research.

The research revealed that a prosocial disposition, compassion, strategic vision, clarity of purpose, commitment to fair play, focus on balance, hearing everyone out and the practice of leadership as a potentiating art are the hallmarks of a generative leadership praxis.

The research posits that to be effective in the 21st century, leaders would do well to incorporate generative leadership qualities and characteristics into their praxis.

This study found that listening, co-creating connections and safe spaces, promoting dialog, critical reflection and collective action are as important to diplomatic tradecraft as they are to generative leadership practice.

The challenge of epistemic exclusion suggests that a well-conceived case study examining the life, leadership philosophy and praxis of Aurelia Erskine Brazeal – an individual of merit and distinction – can serve as an exemplar in efforts to reimagine public leadership in the 21st century.

The value of this research is found in its phenomenological approach which shares insights drawn from personal biography as well as key perspectives on public history.