Edward Newman

University of Leeds · School of Politics and International Studies

This article explores how fossil fuel subsidy reform – widely regarded as being essential for reducing carbon emissions – may contribute to societal instability by generating grievances related to fuel insecurity and perceptions of unfair costs. The article explores the role that ‘distributive justice’ plays as a moderating factor in the relationsh...

The Lake Chad Basin region has experienced a steep increase in violence and instability since 2010, associated with ethnic identity conflict, ecological degradation , and insurgency. This article explores the association between the activities of insurgency groups-focussing on the perpetration of violence against civilians and state actors-and agro...

Emerging research has suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic has generally favored rebel organizations—rather than states—in situations of intrastate conflict. This article challenges this perspective by analyzing the pandemic's impact on three dimensions of rebel activity—armed activity, popular support and recruitment, and rebel governance. It does...

From a human security perspective, the concept and practices of security should be oriented around the everyday needs of individuals and communities, whatever the source or nature of threat they may face. Human security has lost some momentum as an intellectual project as a result of its imprecise definition and scope. In addition, in policy terms,...

This article explores the engagement of Southeast Asian states with the Responsibility to Protect principle (R2P) in relation to the Rohingya in Myanmar and the ‘war on drugs’ in the Philippines. It finds a form of contestation based upon subsidiary principles and local interests in which states have offered normative resistance to international sc...

This article explores how the geopolitical rivalries and tensions associated with multipolarity in a transitional international order, driven by shifts in great power influence, are shaping the international politics of state recognition. It considers the diplomatic discourse and practices of traditional great powers and resurgent states in relatio...

UK governments have often claimed that humanitarian intervention – without the consent of the target state and if necessary without express UN Security Council authorization – is legally permissible in exceptional circumstances, a stance that is highly controversial. The UK’s position is at odds with prevailing international legal doctrine, which i...

‘Fuel riots’ are a distinct type of energy-related conflict. We provide the first fuel riots database and explore their social, economic and environmental drivers. The analysis demonstrates links between fuel riots and high international crude oil prices in countries characterised by weak state capacity, deficient governance, fuel scarcity and poor...

As a strategy to temper centralized governance with a degree of public participation in China, the "Mass Line" approach has been used throughout the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to mobilize citizens in support of national projects and use this engagement as a channel for feedback. The Mass Line has been employed in attempts to addre...

This contribution examines the European Union's engagement with the R2P framework and showcases various examples of progress in support of R2P from the past 15 years. It also illustrates some lingering ambivalence within the EU towards the principle and the divisions which exist across the EU membership regarding some aspects of the R2P agenda, and...

This paper defines ‘fuel riots’ as a distinct type of energy-related conflict. The paper provides the first database for fuel riots and explores their social, economic and environmental drivers. Focussing upon refined fuel commodities, the analysis demonstrates a link between fuel riots and rising international fuel prices in countries characterise...

Kosovo’s small size belies the major impact it has had on the evolving international order: the norms and institutions that shape the behavior and practices of states and other international actors. In three controversial policy areas—humanitarian intervention, international peacebuilding, and international recognition—Kosovo has been the focus of...

This chapter traces the evolution of regional organisations in Asia – in particular East and Southeast Asia – and the engagement of these regions with global inter- national organisations. A number of themes will form the background for this analysis, and these relate both to the longstanding challenges of regional coop- eration and the more recent...

This new handbook provides a comprehensive and multidisciplinary overview of the theoretical and empirical aspects of state recognition in international politics. * Although the recognition of states plays a central role in shaping global politics, it remains an under-researched and widely dispersed subject. Coherently and innovatively structured,...

This paper assesses the EU’s engagement with the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) principle and considers the scope for its integration into the EU’s activities and global strategy. We examine how the EU’s engagement with R2P tests its normative leadership in the context of internal and external political challenges to its authority. We expand on...

Four key factors have characterized Pakistan’s food security outlook in recent decades: i) The country’s broad development challenges mean that a significant proportion of its population is relatively poor and exposed to food insecurity, including prices shocks, such as those which occurred between 2007 and 2011; ii) Pakistan is vulnerable to natur...

Tunisia experienced a major political upheaval in 2011, in the context of uprisings across the Arab world. Social and economic – as well as political – grievances played a key role in the mobilization of opposition groups and protesters which culminated in a change of government. Tunisia exhibits many of the conditions which make countries vulnerab...

This article explores the response of Europe to the refugee 'crisis' since 2015 and considers if this is a reasonable test of the region's commitment to international humanitarianism and the 'Responsibility to Protect' principle (R2P). This response is explored both in terms of policy decisions and the political discourse used to frame the nature o...

This article explores the European Union’s (EU) practices of international state recognition in a transitional international order. It illustrates the difficulties that the EU has encountered in attempting to reach a collective position on sensitive cases of recognition – through a complex balance of internal and external considerations – at a time...

This article explores the prospects for the EU’s role as a global leader in a transitional international order, based on the assumption that multilateral principles will remain at the heart of global governance. It focuses in particular upon the EU’s 2016 Global Strategy in the context of three principal trends and challenges for global governance:...

This paper presents new, original data on food riots and protests between 2005 and 2015 and explores the societal conditions in which these events occurred. These conditions include a range of economic, social, demographic, political, and household consumption factors, with reference to a number of conflict theories. The paper explores whether inst...

Progress in conflict prevention depends upon a better understanding of the underlying circumstances that give rise to violent conflict and mass atrocities, and of the warning signs that a crisis is imminent. While a substantial amount of empirical research on the driving forces of conflict exists, its policy implications must be exploited more effe...

One of the central themes of the current literature on rising powers is that new aspirants to great power status pose a challenge to the underlying principles and norms that underpin the existing, Western-led order. However, in much of the literature, the nature and significance of rising powers for international order is imprecisely debated, in pa...

The aim of this project is to develop a new, evidence-based toolkit for Dutch, US, and UN policy makers and influential non-state actors who focus on preventing and responding to mass atrocities (genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing) in fragile and conflict-affected settings (FCAS) by unlocking research determining the...

This article explores the policies and activities undertaken by Kosovo as it seeks diplomatic recognition under conditions of contested statehood and transitional international order. Existing debates about diplomatic recognition—in particular, how independent sovereign statehood is achieved—generally rest upon systemic factors, normative instituti...

This article explores the concept of ‘human security’: the idea that the referent object and beneficiary of security should be individuals. It demonstrates that the concept has had some success as a normative reference point for human-centred policy movements internationally, and it reflects a broader shift towards human agency and human-centred co...

As a near-universal political commitment to prevent or address atrocities the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) supports the idea of common humanity, even though the operationalization of the principle is uneven and controversial. However, the RtoP agenda has become problematized by the political frictions of the shifting international order. This i...

One of the most important developments in world politics in the last decade has been the spread of the idea that state sovereignty comes with responsibilities as well as privileges, and that there exists a global responsibility to protect people threatened by mass atrocities. The principle of the Responsibility to Protect is an acknowledgment by al...

This volume explores the nature of civil war in the modern world and in historical perspective. Civil wars represent the principal form of armed conflict since the end of the Second World War, and certainly in the contemporary era. The nature and impact of civil wars suggests that these conflicts reflect and are also a driving force for major socie...

edited volume

In historical perspective statebuilding has often been violent because it threatens the interests of groups which are on the outside of the process and it encounters outlying resistance which must be subjugated. The consolidation of national political projects is a related process that has often been accompanied by significant armed conflict as gro...

According to supporters of R2P the principle now enjoys almost universal acceptance and the remaining challenges concern operationalization and implementation. In contrast, this article argues that R2P remains controversial both as a principle and in terms of its application, and these controversies reflect broader tensions in international politic...

International peace building in post-conflict societies has helped to bring armed conflicts to an end and reduced the recurrence of war. According to some scholars, peace building has therefore contributed to the apparent downward trend of major intra-state conflict in recent years. However, the liberal institutionalist values which underpin intern...

Conflict-torn societies are characterized by the traumatic impoverishment of economic, political and social relations between groups and individuals. Previously existing divisions within society are exacerbated, and new divisions are created. Violently divided societies are cursed by institutional breakdown: weak or non-existent political instituti...

A perennial challenge in post-conflict societies is how to balance claims for justice, truth and accountability with the need for peace and stability. Increasingly in recent years, international norms are impinging upon this process with the growing consensus that some form of justice and accountability are integral to peace and stability. This ess...

Peacebuilding activities in conflict-prone and post-conflict countries are based upon the assumption that effective—preferably liberal—states form the greatest prospect for a stable international order, and that failing or conflict-prone states represent a threat to international security. Peacebuilding is therefore a part of the security agenda. T...

From a critical security studies perspective – and non-traditional security studies more broadly – is the concept of human security something which should be taken seriously? Does human security have anything significant to offer security studies? Both human security and critical security studies challenge the state-centric orthodoxy of conventiona...

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In recent years a number of scholars have suggested that there has been a decline in the absolute numbers of civil wars since the early 1990s, and this claim is purportedly supported by empirical evidence. This paper explores the methodological challenges which confront the study of conflict trends and identifies a number of problems with prevailin...

This article discusses the intricacies of trying to be a Secretary-General. It describes the evolution of the roles of the Office of Secretary-General in the context of international politics. The article also provides an outline of the articles of the Charter that relate to the Secretary-General, the evolution of the office during the Cold War, an...

It is common to hear the assertion that weak or failed states are fertile ground for terrorism. Yet terrorist groups have emerged from, and operated within, countries which have strong, stable states and a variety of systems of government. Terrorist organizations operate in weak and failed states but it is not necessarily the condition of weak or f...

The legitimacy of global institutions which address security challenges is in question. The manner in which they make decisions and the interests they reflect often falls short of twenty-first century expectations and norms of good governance. Also, their performance has raised doubts about their ability to address contemporary challenges such as c...

If relative cohesion exists in the international structure, if forms of action are better organised, if the international organisation is able to resist the assaults of adverse forces from all quarters, this is due to the discreet and persevering work of the international civil servant. He embodies the institutionalisation of international cooperat...

This article attempts to clarify what is meant by “root causes” and considers if their analysis helps to explain and describe how, where, and why terrorism occurs. In attempting to explore—but not definitively resolve—these challenges, the article will attempt to delineate “root causes” into qualitative and quantitative variables that can be empiri...

As the UN Peacebuilding Commission begins to plan it work, it is important to consider how to deal with ‘spoilers’ as a threat to security: groups that actively seek to hinder or undermine conflict settlement. This paper takes a broad approach to the concept of spoiling and considers a wide range of actors as potential spoilers: not only rebel grou...

The traditional state-centric security paradigm privileges the defence of sovereign territorial integrity over armed attack by foreign actors. This is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition of human welfare. The citizens of states that are 'secure' according to the traditional concept of security can be perilously insecure in terms of their d...

In recent years, a number of analysts have argued that qualitative changes have occurred in the nature of violent conflict and that it is now possible to think in terms of ‘new wars’ that are distinct in significant ways from earlier forms of conflict. This article summarizes the different arguments of the ‘new wars’ thesis and argues that the dist...

Democracy in Latin America examines democratic transition and consolidation in post-authoritarian and post-civil war Latin America. The norm of democracy is becoming embedded in regional and national politics. The authors of this volume suggest, however, that the journey to meaningful democracy is unfinished.

Mainstream International Relations teaching and scholarship is often argued to be social scientific and therefore able to generate propositions about international life that have general (even universal) explanatory value. However, the methods and research questions of IR can in part be explained by the nature of the national academies in which the...

The methodologies and assumptions that guide our acquisition of knowledge and interpretation of data are context and time bound. Academic disciplines, sub-disciplines, methodological approaches and research agendas are to a large degree conditioned by the ‘real world,’ and none more so than International Relations. Accordingly, it is important to c...

The United Nations and Human Security highlights and analyzes the changing peace and security challenges faced by the United Nations in an evolving international environment that is no longer solely characterized by states and inter-state security. The authors, who comprise both scholars and UN practitioners, cover a wide range of pressing current...

This article explores the concept of “human security” as an academic and fledgling policy movement that seeks to place the individual—or people collectively—as the referent of security. It does this against a background of evolving transnational norms relating to security and governance, and the development of scientific understanding that challeng...

The first Secretary-General, Trygve Lie, described his Office as ‘the most impossible job in the world’, a statement that has become a part of the folklore of the UN. In Cyprus, Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim remarked that he faced ‘the most thankless and frustrating task’ of his period in office.1 That sentiment has probably held true ever since....

International institutions have clear relevance for the perennial debates concerning Japan’s engagement with the rest of the world. Many of the challenges that Japanese foreign policy elites have faced since the World War II have embraced international institutions, to various degrees and for various motives. The same holds true as the twenty-first...

The literature on Lie’s incumbency portrays a man who established a number of important practices and contributed to a positive although precarious development of his Office.1 The development of the Office might have been greater had his style been less robust, for he left in his wake the desire on the part of the permanent members of the Security...

The international secretariat holds an important position in the evolution of international organization, as an institutional manifestation of a certain depth of cooperation. The classical conception of the international civil service is an ideal which must be seen in the context of an institutionalist and progressive approach to international coop...

It is possible to regard the Secretaryship-General as an Office which has developed, or evolved, its procedural and political status over a number of years. This development may not always be positive or measurable, but it is perceptible, and it can in some manner be paralleled to developments in its organizational and international environments. T...

Typically, post-Cold War UN peace operations have involved peacekeeping, peacemaking and peacebuilding. In accordance with wider conceptions of peace and human security these activities are also considered increasingly within an integrated and comprehensive approach. As the Secretary-General proclaimed, ‘[t]he second generation of peace-keeping is...

The progressive view of international organization holds that international interactions are malleable and susceptible to the development of procedural norms. As the potential embodiment of this liberal internationalism stands the entity of the Secretary-General. Pérez de Cuéllar pictured the Office in the wider context:‘[t]o understand correctly t...

Javier Pérez de Cuéllar’s tenures embraced the most frustrating but perhaps the most productive experiences of the Office of Secretary-General. Until 1987/8, the United Nations was often marginalized within a general climate of political ill-will, and beset by financial crises. On many issues — especially regional conflicts entangled in the upsurge...

The post-Cold War Secretaryship-General has reflected a number of constraints and opportunities. There is an air of transition at the UN as the Organization adjusts to the systemic changes and challenges of international relations, and especially the wider concept of peace and security. The complexion of global economic and political-military power...

Incluye índice Incluye bibliografía El libro traza la evolución de las actividades de paz y seguridad de la Oficina del Secretario General de las Naciones Unidas en el contexto de desarrollos y tendencias en la situación internacional.

The relationship between the needs and rights of humans and the norms and practicalities of international relations has been prominent in the mainstream post-Cold War political agenda. An apparently greater willingness on the part of many governments to address the issue, the improved capacity of the United Nations to orchestrate collective humanit...

Armed conflict constitutes the most direct and brutal affront to human security for its victims. Loss of life through violent conflict or extreme deprivation, forced human displacement, the destruction of infrastructure and government capacity, and the collapse of livelihoods have a perilous impact upon human life. Even when the crisis of war has e...

Incl. bibl., index.