The pattern of international conflict and peace differs from region to region. Regions differ from each other not only in terms of the simple presence or absence of war but also the degree to which war or any sort of military conflict is likely in the long run. Arguments have been offered to explain the spatial heterogeneity in war and peace. One approach to explaining regional peace is additive—the peacefulness of international politics is essentially analyzed and explained at either monadic or dyadic level variation. Notably, the dyadic approach to international conflict and peace has been dominant in the contemporary international relations. For example, two states that are economically dependent, both democratic, with vastly different levels of capabilities, and involved in neither a territorial dispute nor rivalry are likely to develop peaceful relationships. From this perspective, the regional degree of peace is explained by summing up the peacefulness of dyads within a region.
Although this approach to regional peace has been dominant in the field, other approaches go beyond this simple additive approach. The first such explanations base their theoretical arguments on dyadic or monadic mechanisms, but focus on regionwide conditions such as consistency between national and state borders. Regional conflict and peace are ultimately explained by these regional historical conditions. The second group of explanations draw on the notion of spatial contagion through such mechanisms as domestic instability and war expansion in which international and civil wars provide opportunities for further conflict in the neighborhood in various ways. Conflict diffuses through spatial contagion and war joining, which in turn produces a zone of conflict. The third strand of explanations involve more explicit analyses of interdependence between units—states or dyads—which does not necessarily have to take place in the spatial context but often so. For example, pacifying international trade may result from “flying geese” learning and socialization processes within a neighborhood, thus making a whole region peaceful. Furthermore, studies that draw on techniques of network analysis tend to directly model dyad-to-dyad interdependence as an important source of conflict and peace. In short, there are various approaches to explain the regional variation of international conflict and peace from both additive monadic or dyadic approaches and more complex approaches that assume regional clustering of material conditions and interdependence between micro-units in space.
61-80 of 1,487 Results
Article
Eleonora Ardemagni
Despite national differences, the military has usually presented a lack of political role and agency in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman. This development has occurred because state formation in these nations has been mainly driven by energy revenues and external security provision. The primary task of the armed forces, especially between the 1950s and the 1970s, was rulers’ protection and regime security; for the monarchies, keeping the armies small and detached from political power was a coup-proofing strategy. As a result, researchers used to stress the dependency linkage between tribal armies and royal families, underlining the prominence of kinship loyalties (for upper echelons) and foreign manpower (for lower ones) in political–military relations. But as in a prism, these militaries reveal three coexistent faces—praetorian, neopatrimonial, and performative—with one prevailing on the others depending on the time frame. In fact, starting from the 1990s, the gradual processes of state consolidation and modernization have fostered the expansion of the military sector in the Arab Gulf states, maximizing the neopatrimonial dimension of the military. Defense procurement burgeoned, with an emphasis on hard power, as the agreements with the United States and Western allies to establish defense pacts, troop stationing, and military facilities. In the context of state transformation, the 2010s represent a turning point for the militaries that showed a rising performative dimension, especially in the UAE, and, to a lesser extent, Qatar—performative because of greater operative performances and also because of the ability to influence nation-building. Arab Gulf states’ national strategies acquired a military shape, reflecting in some cases military-driven foreign policies. Autonomy and self-reliance became national guiding stars and military reform was no longer a taboo for Emirati, Qatari, and Kuwaiti rulers. In fact, this is now functional in the improvement of military capabilities through know-how transfer, local expertise, and forms of social mobilization (as conscription, parades, exhibitions, and official rhetoric). In this sense, Oman played a vanguard role in the 1970s as the first-ever example of a performative army in the Gulf monarchies. In the performative armies of the 2010s, soldiers embody a renewed model of post-oil citizenship, based on sacrifice, duty, and national pride. As a matter of fact, the 2015 unprecedented military intervention in Yemen has turned into a watershed for Gulf militaries’ tasks and capabilities (especially for the UAE). Therefore, the military has gradually become a tool of nation-building and governments have been betting on militarized nationalism to forge a sense of shared belonging, identity, and patriotism. In times of rising Middle Eastern arms races and multidimensional threats, the military dimension has been redrawing civil–military relations, especially in the UAE and Qatar, thus offering a new research agenda for future studies on the Arab Gulf states’ militaries.
Article
Deborah Welch Larson
Although more scholars have used archival evidence to analyze foreign policy in recent years, relatively little has been written on the methods involved in using archives as well as the evidentiary value of different types of documents. Analyses of foreign policy decisions often make use of narratives or process-tracing. Process-tracing should uncover the causal mechanisms wherever possible in order to explain foreign policy decisions. Primary sources are extremely useful in uncovering causal mechanisms, whether public opinion, bureaucratic politics, advisory group dynamics, or psychological processes. Through archival evidence, the researcher can capture how policymakers perceived the world at the time, unbiased by hindsight, and their calculations. Because psychological evidence shows that people do not necessarily know what influenced their decision, scholars should not necessarily take at face value the reasons that policymakers give for their actions.
It is useful for political scientists to carry out their own archival research because historians have different implicit theories and may not gather data of relevance to the theories being tested. In addition, through examining the documents, political scientists may be able to discriminate between competing historical interpretations of the same event. It is important to interpret documents within their historic, situational, and communication contexts. The document’s place in the policy process—the sequence of memos and discussions—helps to determine its meaning and impact on the final decision. In order to interpret statements that are apt to be biased by instrumental motives, the investigator should consider who said what to whom under what circumstances and with what purpose.
Article
Grace Jaramillo
Archives, including primary documents such as meeting minutes, memoranda, white papers, blueprints, drafts for laws, and acts, are a crucial part of a consistent research inquiry that provide significant understanding of the public-policy processes in public administration. Within qualitative methods for studying public policy and public administration, archives are a key step of the process-tracing method for comparative historical analysis.
Archival research is the backbone of any process-tracing exercise. Using archives for public administration studies requires rigorous planning. It starts with the definition of a time horizon of analysis that sets the dates over which the analysis will be performed. The time horizon will also help design the types of documents and indicators needed to identify the decision-making process, along with the goals and the budget performance that will accompany the policy decision. The key elements of time, sequence, selection, and classification of archives in public-policy studies determine the causal process mechanisms within a public-policy process. Identifiers, data-mining software, and sequencing are additional tools for improving classification and interpretation.
Article
Njord Wegge and Cristina-Elena Merticaru
The EU’s Arctic policy process represents and exemplifies a process of foreign-policy formation where forces from the Union’s internal dimension, involving tensions between member-state and community-level interests, have interplayed with influences from external actors and impacts from the system level in global politics. Going back to challenges with its relationship to Greenland, following the Kingdom of Denmark joining the EU in 1973, the Union’s Arctic relations have often been complex and challenging. The difficulties have ranged from the need to acquire better knowledge of the geographic and cultural properties of the Arctic, understanding the role of indigenous lifestyles and cultures; to comprehending the dynamics within and the roles of key regimes in the region, such as United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the Arctic Council. After a decade of gradual policy development, it appears that the EU, with the European Parliament’s resolution of March 16, 2017, on an “Integrated European Union Policy for the Arctic,” has achieved striking a more appropriate balance between the role as passive observer and as proactive actor in the High North.
Article
Jiawei Liu and Dietram A. Scheufele
There is a dichotomy in framing research that can be traced back to its multidisciplinary origins in psychology and sociology. Definitions of framing rooted in psychology are concerned with the differential presentation of the otherwise identical information and are often referred to as equivalence framing. Definitions rooted in more sociological traditions investigate how a message can be constructed with different sets of information to highlight contrasting perspectives on the same issue. The latter is typically referred to as emphasis framing. Although often subsumed under the same label, equivalence framing and emphasis framing are systematically different, both conceptually and operationally. Therefore, the two traditions need to be carefully distinguished in terms of their origins, conceptualization and operationalization of frames, underlying mechanisms, cognitive outcomes, and their relationships with other media effects theories.
Categorizing existing studies revealed two major pitfalls in framing effects literatures. First, many political communication studies to date have adopted the emphasis framing approach. However, as substantial manipulation of information introduces confounding variables making it difficult for researchers to attribute the effect on the audience to the change of frames, this approach has relatively low internal validity in experiments and can hardly be distinguished from other cognitive media effects models, such as agenda setting and priming. Thus, the bias toward emphasis framing needs to be addressed by conducting research with equivalence frames so that a more concrete causal relationship between message framing and its effects can be established. In addition, little attention has been given to visuals in framing effects research so far. Considering that people consume information in a multimedia environment online, visual frames and verbal-visual interactions need to be further investigated.
Article
David Pion-Berlin
Argentina has moved through two defining eras. The first was one of military coups and dictatorships that repeatedly interrupted democratic periods of governance. The second has been one of uninterrupted democratic rule marked by firm military subordination to civilian control. From 1930 to 1976, the Argentine armed forces cut short the tenure of every democratically elected head of state. Eleven of 16 presidents during this period were generals. Military coups in Argentina were brought on by a combination of factors, including societal pressures, tactical and strategic blunders on the part of political leaders, and the military’s own thirst for power and privileges. Militaries would eventually leave power, but their repeated interventions would weaken respect for democratic processes.
The last coup, which occurred in 1976, marked a turning point, giving rise to an authoritarian regime that spelled political, economic, and military disaster for the nation. So disgusted was the public with the dictatorship’s incompetence and brutality that it discovered a newfound respect for democratic rules of the game. The demise of the Proceso dictatorship helped usher in a long and unbroken period of democratic rule. Still, contemporary Argentine democratic governments have had to grapple with civil-military issues. Notable progress has been made, including the holding of human rights trials, the enactment of laws that restrict the military’s use in internal security, and the strengthening of the defense ministry. Notwithstanding a few rebellions in the late 1980s, the Argentine armed forces have remained firmly under civilian control since the return of democracy. Nonetheless, administrations have varied in their abilities and motivation to enact reforms.
Article
Military coups happen for various political, economic, and historical reasons. A vast literature investigates the external factors that affect coup vulnerability, including interstate wars, security threats, regional spillovers, and foreign economic linkages. An even more impressive number of studies, going back almost seven decades, focuses on the domestic causes of military coups. These causes of coups can be classified under two broad headings: background causes and triggering causes. Background causes are those structural determinants that generally increase coup vulnerability in a given country and create motives for coup attempts. The most prevalent background causes concern the regime type and characteristics, historical legacies and cultural diversity, and economic conditions. The triggering causes are temporally and spatially more specific conditions that determine the opportunities for coup plotters. Various types of political instability and violence, such as popular protests and civil wars, can become important triggers. Additionally, the characteristics of the military organization and the effectiveness of coup-proofing strategies fall under this category.
An extensive review of the cross-national civil-military relations literature reveals that very few of the proposed determinants survive empirical scrutiny. Three findings stand out as consistently robust predictors of coup activity. First and most notably, there is broad consensus that the “coup trap” is an empirical reality: coups breed coups. This finding is bolstered by the fact that military regimes are especially vulnerable to coup attempts. Second, income and wealth have a strong negative correlation with coup probability. All else equal, poor countries are more coup prone than their richer and more developed counterparts. Last but not the least, political instability and violence increase coup likelihood, although scholars differ on which exact type of instability or popular unrest is the most significant. Many other oft-cited factors such as colonial legacy, culture, ethnic fractionalization, resource wealth, and economic crisis are not consistently robust in global samples. This observation highlights the need for more metastudies to separate the relevant variables from idiosyncratic effects.
Article
David F. Mitchell and Jeffrey Pickering
The empirical literature on arms buildups and the use of interstate military force has advanced considerably over the last half century. Research has largely confirmed that a relationship exists between arms buildups and the subsequent use of force, although it is historically contingent. The relationship seems to have existed in some earlier historical periods but has not been a feature of international politics since 1945. Broader work such as the steps-to-war model brings understanding to such variation by demonstrating how arms races are interrelated with other causes of conflict, such as territorial disputes and alliances. Still, many important dimensions of the arms race–conflict connection remain to be explored. Differences between qualitative and quantitative arms races, for example, have not received sufficient empirical scrutiny. Precise theory also needs to be developed on direct and indirect relationships between arms races and conflict, and such theory requires empirical investigation.
Article
Harald Mueller
Arms control is a strategy by governments to overcome the security dilemma with institutionalized cooperation. It comes in three versions, arms control proper, with stability as the main objective; non-proliferation as a sub-category of arms control, so understood with the main objective being to preserve the distributive status quo concerning certain weapon types; and disarmament, with the objective to eliminate a specific weapon type. Confidence building is a crosscutting functional concept lumping together many different measures that can serve all three versions.
Arms control does not reject self-help as a basis of national security, but entrusts a significant piece of it to cooperation with potential enemies. Hence, arms control—with the exception of unilateral, hegemonic arms control imposed on others, and of non-proliferation for preserving an existing oligopoly—is a difficult subject for realism and neorealism, but also for post-modernism. It presents a solvable puzzle for rationalists and no problem at all for constructivists who, to the contrary, can dig into norms, discourses, and identities.
Concerning stability and change, arms control can be looked at from two opposite perspectives. Since it aims at stability, critical security approaches have labeled it as a conservative, status quo orientated strategy. But there is also a transformational perspective: arms control as a vehicle to induce and reinforce a fundamental redefinition of the relationship between states. Naturally, the concept of disarmament shows the greatest affinity to the transformational perspective.
A related issue is whether arms control is a result of political circumstances, a dependent variable without a political impact of its own, or whether it has causal effect on interstate relations. Constructivism proposes a dialectical relationship in which arms control and broader policy influence each other. From this reflection, the question of the conditions of success and failure flows naturally. Conducive interstate relations (or extrinsic shocks), technology, domestic structures, learning, leadership, perception, and ideology have been candidates for the independent master variable.
Three models tackle the relationship of arms control and historical time: the enlightenment intuition of steady progress; a series of waves, each of which leaves the world in a more cooperative state than the previous one; and the circle—arms control ebbs and flows alternatively, but achievements are fully lost in each ebb period.
We can distinguish four arms control discourses: arms control as the maiden of deterrence; arms control subordinated to defense needs; arms control under the imperative of disarmament; and arms control as the instrument of human security, the survival and well-being of human individuals, notably civilians.
As with all politics, arms control involves justice issues: the distribution of values (security/power), access to participation in decision making, and the granting of recognition as legitimate actor. Arms control negotiations are ripe with justice claims, and failure through incompatible justice demands happens frequently. Also, emotions play a key role: frustration and ensuing resentment, anger, and existential fear can prevent success. Finally, compassion, empathy, and trust are ingredients in successful arms control processes.
Article
An “arms race” is a competition over the quality or quantity of military capabilities between states in the international system. The arms race phenomenon has received considerable attention from scholars over many decades because of the ubiquity, throughout history, of states building arms as a means of deterring enemies, but disagreement persists over whether that policy is effective at avoiding war.
The Latin phrase si vis pacem, para bellum, meaning “if you want peace, prepare for war,” dates back to the Roman Empire but the sentiment is likely much older. That states should rapidly build up their militaries in the face of potential threats is a common thread that runs through much of the modern international relations scholarship influenced by realism and deterrence theory. Meeting force with force, the logic went, was the only way to ensure the security or survival of the sovereign state. These states faced a paradox, however, best articulated by the “security dilemma.” Anything a state does in the name of defense, like a rapid military buildup, decreases the security of other states and will be viewed with hostile intent. This set up a debate over competing expectations regarding the relationship between arms races and war (peace). On one hand, deterrence theory posits that rapid arming is necessary to raise the cost of an adversary attacking and, consequently, preserves peace. On the other hand, the spiral model argues that the reality of the security dilemma means that arming produces mistrust, hostility and, thus, increases the likelihood of war. Scholars set out to test these competing hypotheses using large data sets and statistical techniques, but there was widespread disagreement on how to measure arms races, appropriate research design, and the statistical findings were somewhat mixed.
Critics of this approach to studying arms races note a number of important weaknesses. First, scholars primarily focus on the consequences of arms races—whether they lead to war or peace—at the expense of understanding the causes. Those who advance this position believe that a theory of arms race onset might well inform our understanding of their consequences. Second, security dilemma, taken as the primary motivation for arms races, suffers from significant logical flaws. Third, assessment of the arms race-war relationship consists of comparative theory tests of deterrence theory and spiral model, yet these ideas are underdeveloped and expectations oversimplified. More recently, scholarship has shifted the focus from the consequences of arms races to developing theories and empirical tests of their causes. These efforts have been informed by insights from bargaining models of war, and their application to this context holds promise for better future understanding of both the causes and consequences of arms races.
Article
Conal Duddy and Ashley Piggins
Kenneth Arrow’s “impossibility” theorem is rightly considered to be a landmark result in economic theory. It is a far-reaching result with implications not just for economics but for political science, philosophy, and many other fields. It has inspired an enormous literature, “social choice theory,” which lies on the interface of economics, politics, and philosophy. Arrow first proved the impossibility theorem in his doctoral dissertation—Social Choice and Individual Values—published in 1951. It is a remarkable result, and had Arrow not proved it, it is unlikely that the theorem would be known today.
A social choice is simply a choice made by, or on behalf of, a group of people. Arrow’s theorem is concerned more specifically with the following problem. Suppose that we have a given set of options to choose from and that each member of a group of individuals has his or her own preference over these options. By what method should we construct a single ranking of the options for the group as a whole? Any such method may be represented mathematically by a “social welfare function.” This is a function that receives as its input the preference ordering of each individual and then generates as its output a social preference ordering.
Arrow defined some properties that would seem to be essential to any reasonable social welfare function. These properties are called “unrestricted domain,” “weak Pareto,” “independence of irrelevant alternatives,” and “non-dictatorship.” Each of these properties, when taken alone, does appear to be very necessary indeed. Yet, Arrow proved that these properties are in fact mutually incompatible. This troubling fact has been central to the study of social choice ever since.
Article
Lay Hwee Yeo
The Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM) was launched in 1996 to provide a forum for East Asian and European Union (EU) leaders to meet and a platform to strengthen the links between Asia and Europe. It was conceived against a backdrop of optimism about regionalism and globalization and the belief in the necessity of international dialogue and cooperation and institution-building. The forum was also meant to close the missing link between Asia and Europe, two of the three engines of global economic growth (the other being the United States).
Since its inaugural summit in March 1996, ASEM has developed to encompass various multilevel sectoral meetings—multilevel in that it involves ministers, senior officials, and technical experts—but is also multi-sectoral in that it has grown beyond diplomatic meetings overseen by the foreign affairs/external action service to those involving trade and finance, education, transport, and so on. It has also enlarged from 26 members to 53 members, and now comprises all 28 EU member states, 10 countries from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the ASEAN Secretariat, China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Norway, and Switzerland.
Yet, despite the enlargement in number of meetings and members, ASEM has been criticized for the lack of depth of its meetings, its dearth of tangible outcomes, and its poor visibility. The sense is that after 20 years, the dialogue within ASEM has broadened but not deepened. With its disparate membership, ASEM remains essentially a forum for scripted speeches and informal dialogue. While it has created a few initiatives that have become “institutionalized,” such as the Asia–Europe Foundation (ASEF), the general perception of ASEM as a less-important forum persists. Media coverage of ASEM meetings, and even of its summits, is usually rather low-key.
However, ASEM continues to draw support from the EU and China in particular, for the very reason that it is one of the few multilateral forums that the United States is absent from and where it hence cannot dominate and drive the agenda. This is perhaps one main factor that has kept ASEM alive, and with an increasingly challenging global environment in the shape of an unpredictable, transactional, and unilateral America under Trump, the need to rethink the instrumentality of ASEM for its 53 members grows ever more important.
Article
Bibi van den Berg, Ruth Prins, and Sanneke Kuipers
Security and safety are key topics of concern in the globalized and interconnected world. While the terms “safety” and “security” are often used interchangeably in everyday life, in academia, security is mostly studied in the social sciences, while safety is predominantly studied in the natural sciences, engineering, and medicine. However, developments and incidents that negatively affect society increasingly contain both safety and security aspects. Therefore, an integrated perspective on security and safety is beneficial. Such a perspective studies hazardous and harmful events and phenomena in the full breadth of their complexity—including the cause of the event, the target that is harmed, and whether the harm is direct or indirect. This leads to a richer understanding of the nature of incidents and the effects they may have on individuals, collectives, societies, nation-states, and the world at large.
Article
Beth Vonnahme
Citizens are continuously inundated with political information. How do citizens process that information for use in decision-making? Political psychologists have generally thought of information processing as proceeding through a series of stages: (1) exposure and attention; (2) comprehension; (3) encoding, interpretation, and elaboration; (4) organization and storage in memory; and (5) retrieval. This processing of information relies heavily on two key structures: working memory and long-term memory. Working memory actively processes incoming information whereas long-term memory is the storage structure of the brain. The most widely accepted organizational scheme for long-term memory is the associative network model. In this model, information stored in long-term memory is organized as a series of connected nodes. Each node in the network represents a concept with links connecting the various concepts. The links between nodes represent beliefs about the connection between concepts. These links facilitate retrieval of information through a process known as spreading activation. Spreading activation moves information from long-term memory to working memory. When cued nodes are retrieved from memory, they activate linked nodes thereby weakly activating further nodes and so forth. Repeatedly activated nodes are the most likely to be retrieved from long-term memory for use in political decision-making.
The concept of an associative network model of memory has informed a variety of research avenues, but several areas of inquiry remain underdeveloped. Specifically, many researchers rely on an associative network model of memory without questioning the assumptions and implications of the model. Doing so might further inform our understanding of information processing in the political arena. Further, voters are continuously flooded with political and non-political information; thus, exploring the role that the larger information environment can play in information processing is likely to be a fruitful path for future inquiry. Finally, little attention has been devoted to the various ways a digital information environment alters the way citizens process political information. In particular, the instantaneous and social nature of digital information may short-circuit information processing.
Article
Ariadna Ripoll Servent and Natascha Zaun
Since the crisis of 2015/2016, asylum has become the focus of attention in the European Union (EU). The right to seek refuge raises issues of sovereignty and control of the territory; hence, with the gradual integration of European member states into a single area free of internal borders, there has been a functional pressure to harmonize domestic asylum policies. However, this process of integration continues to be highly contested on two main axes: the extent of harmonization (how much should the EU do in the area of asylum) and the content of the policies (should the emphasis lie on territorial security or individual rights). The tension between this “core state power” status and the EU’s international obligations has shaped both policy developments and academic debates since the emergence of asylum as an EU policy field in the mid-1990s.
The integration of asylum policies is intimately linked to the emergence of Schengen as a borderless zone. Indeed, the idea that, in a Europe without borders, member states cannot control the flow of migrants led national governments to find common rules on ascribing responsibility for international protection claims. The rules agreed in the Dublin Convention of 1990 have become the core pillar that structures the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). This system aims to harmonize the definition of a refugee and the procedures and rights that need to be followed when considering asylum requests, as well as the conditions for receiving asylum seekers (e.g., housing, access to healthcare, and the job market). This process of harmonization has not been uncontested: while the first legislative phase (2001–2005) remained highly intergovernmental and was characterized by little progress being made in the approximation of domestic asylum systems, the second phase (2008–2013) showed an increased reluctance of member states to strengthen the powers of the EU in this field. As a result, the CEAS has been epitomized by faulty implementation and weak approximation—especially among those member states that did not have strong asylum systems in place before integration began. These gaps have left the CEAS in a dangerous position, since they have created incentives for those who benefit the least from EU cooperation to bypass their obligations. There, the principles underpinning the Dublin regime have been at the core of the functional crises that have recurrently emerged in the EU. The so-called “asylum crisis” has shown the weaknesses of the CEAS as well as the incapacity of member states to reform the system and find a solution that addresses the current imbalances. The main solutions have come via externalization, whereby the EU has sought to strengthen the responsibility of third countries like Turkey and Libya.
These trends have also been the focus of attention in this highly interdisciplinary field. Debates have generally concentrated on either the internal or the external dimension of EU policy-making. When it comes to the internal dimension, early scholarship centered on the process of integration and the development of asylum into a new policy field. They showed how the major drivers of integration followed functional logics of spillover from the single market and Schengen—but that the nature of this policy area called for different political dynamics. This process remained highly intergovernmental until the early 2000s, which gave interior ministers the power to escape domestic constraints (e.g., civil society, national parliaments, and courts) and shape EU policies in relative isolation. This does not mean, however, that this intergovernmental process was uncontentious. Indeed, it has been shown how the core principles of EU asylum respond to a public goods logic, whereby member states try to shift their responsibility for asylum seekers away from their territory and onto that of their neighbors. Although the idea of “burden-sharing” (and hence a generalized negative perception of asylum) is shared by most member states, the processes of uploading and downloading policies between the domestic and the EU level have been more complicated than just building a “Fortress Europe.” Among those who were traditional recipients of asylum seekers and had strong asylum systems, there has been a clear game of regulatory competition that has sometimes led to a race to the bottom. In comparison, those that had no experience with international protection and lacked a strong asylum system have generally struggled to adapt to EU standards, which has reinforced the imbalances and weaknesses of the Dublin regime. Given these dynamics, most scholars expected the shift to a fully supranational decision-making process to produce far-reaching policy changes and have a rights-enhancing effect. The outcomes have not always fulfilled expectations, which underlines the importance of opening up the black box of preference formation in the EU institutions and member states. What scholars do agree on is that policy outputs on the EU level have often failed to materialize into policy outcomes on the domestic level, which has led to processes of informal adaptation and the strengthening of EU operational agencies like Frontex and the European Asylum Support Office (EASO). In addition, these internal failures have pushed the EU to externalize border controls as well as push the responsibility for international protection toward third countries. There has been a clear case of policy diffusion toward neighboring countries, but also an increased dynamic of policy convergence among hosting countries like Australia and the USA. These policies tend to emphasize exclusionary practices, notably extraterritorial processing and border control—leading to major questions about the survival of asylum as an international human right in the years to come.
These trends show that asylum continues to be a highly contested EU policy both in its internal and external dimensions. We need, therefore, to look more closely at the impact of polarization and politicization on EU policy-making as well as on how they might affect the role played by the EU and its member states in global debates about migration and the right to seek asylum.
Article
Peter Hegarty
Social scientists have debated whether belief in a biological basis for sexual orientation engenders more positive attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. Belief in the biological theory has often been observed to be correlated with pro-lesbian/gay attitudes, and this gives some “weak” support for the hypothesis. There is far less “strong” evidence that biological beliefs have caused a noteworthy shift in heterosexist attitudes, or that they hold any essential promise of so doing. One reason for this divergence between the weak and strong hypothesis is that beliefs about causality are influenced by attitudes and group identities. Consequently beliefs about a biological basis of sexual orientation have identity-expressive functions over and above their strictly logical causal implications about nature/nurture issues. Four other factors explain why the biological argument of the 1990s was an intuitively appealing as a pro-gay tool, although there is no strong evidence that it had a very substantive impact in making public opinion in the USA more pro-gay. These factors are that the biological argument (a) implied that sexuality is a discrete social category grounded in fundamental differences between people, (b) implied that sexual orientation categories are historically and culturally invariant, (c) implied that gender roles and stereotypes have a biological basis, and (d) framed homosexual development, not heterosexual development, as needing explanation. Understanding this literature is important and relevant for conceptualizing the relationship between biological attributions and social attitudes in domains beyond sexual orientations, such as in the more recent research on reducing transphobia and essentialist beliefs about gender.
Article
Pedro Alexandre Costa
According to recent U.S. census data, there are over 700,000 same-gender couples, of which 114,00 have children. U.K. census data further revealed over 200,000 same-gender parented families, and there is evidence that these numbers have been increasing in the last few decades. Between the late 1980s and early 1990s, research on the psychosocial well-being of LGB families was established with a focus on the potential impact of parents’ sexual orientation on the psychological adjustment of their children. Interest in LGB families was evidenced by the growing political and public attention, and became a central issue within the LGBT+ movement across the Western world, especially in Europe and the United States. However, attitudes toward LGB family policies have not evolved in a linear fashion insofar as they have accompanied the constant back and forth in LGB family policies and legislation. Negative attitudes toward LGB family policies are rooted in the negative evaluations of LGB individuals based on beliefs that LGB people are less fit as parents or unable to form and sustain healthy relationships because of their sexual or gender identity. However, these negative beliefs differ according to heterosexual individuals’ characteristics. Research has shown that men, older, less educated, non-White, politically conservative, highly religious, and authoritarian, as well as those who believe that homosexuality is controllable, strictly adhere to traditional gender roles and authorities, and do not have frequent or close contact with LGB individuals, hold higher levels of sexual prejudice toward LGB individuals and LGB family policies.
As of January 2020, same-gender marriage and parenthood are recognized in around 30 countries worldwide, although some countries recognize some forms of same-gender unions, but not marriage, whereas others recognize the right of LGB individuals to have children but not to marry. LGB family policies have progressed mostly through two different pathways: (a) the judicial pathway, which has involved litigation and court rulings on specific matters related to same-gender relationships and parenthood and which was undertaken in the United States, and (b) the legislative pathway, which has relied on political discussion and policy initiatives and was undertaken in the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain). The different pathways to equality in LGB family policies have different impacts for LGB individuals. In particular, the constant negative messages regarding same-gender couples as being unable to have healthy relationships have been shown to contribute to chronic minority stress and psychological distress among LGB individuals. By contrast, the legalization of same-gender marriage and parenthood provide important benefits and protections for LGB families in addition to promoting their well-being. Examining the evolution of attitudes and legislation regarding LGB family policies is important to inform further initiatives aimed at correcting inequalities for LGB families.
Article
Lauren Elliott-Dorans
Political tolerance and commitment to egalitarianism have long been examined as possible contributors to attitudes toward LGBT+ people and policies. Since the 1970s, American attitudes toward LGBT+ issues have changed drastically. During this period, public policy and measures of public opinion toward LGBT+ rights have focused on a variety of areas, such as nondiscrimination laws, gay military service, and family matters such as adoption and marriage. Interestingly, although support for equality has remained the same in the United States, individuals have become rapidly more supportive of LGBT+ people securing equal rights in a variety of domains. There are three primary reasons for this shift: elite messaging, attributions of homosexuality, and contact with members of the LGBT+ community, both direct and indirect. These factors have led to an environment in which the value of equality is more readily applied to LGBT+ issues, therefore increasing support for these rights over time.
Elite messaging has played a key role in this shift. Across LGBT+ issues, equality frames are often countered with moral traditionalism, thus leading to an increased propensity for individuals to associate LGBT+ issues with these values. The effectiveness of equality frames has been bolstered by the growing belief that homosexuality is a fixed rather than chosen trait, which yields a greater reliance upon egalitarianism when evaluating LGBT+-related issues. At the same time, both direct and indirect contact with the LGBT+ community increased following the Stonewall Riots of 1969. Americans were first introduced to gay characters on television in the 1970s. LG characters gained more prominent roles throughout the 1990s on shows such as The Real World and Will and Grace. Following Stonewall, LGBT+ activist organizations also advocated that members of the community “come out of the closet” and reveal their sexual orientation to the people in their lives. Thus, the chances of Americans knowing—or at least feeling like they knew—an LGBT+ person increased. Consistent with Allport’s Contact Theory (1954) and Zajonc’s work on “mere exposure effects” (1968), affect toward LGBT+ individuals has generally grown more positive with greater interaction and familiarity. These various factors interacted with underlying predispositions to drastically move public opinion in favor of greater equality for LGBT+ people.
Article
Jocelyn M. Boryczka
Capturing the nuanced attitudes toward LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) people and rights in Africa involves examining them from within and outside the African context. Constructions of the entire African continent as holding negative attitudes toward LGBT peoples and denying them any rights remain quite commonplace across the Global North. However, closer analysis of specific nation-states and regions complicates our understanding of LGBT people and rights in Africa. Advances in the global study of LGBT attitudes through tools such as the Global LGBTI Inclusion Index and the Global Acceptance Index survey African peoples’ beliefs about LGBT communities. These measures locate African attitudes about LGBT peoples within a comparative context to decenter assumptions and many inaccurate, often colonialist, constructions. Attitudinal measures also expose the gap between legislation securing formal rights and the beliefs driving peoples’ everyday practices. These measures further specify how African governments can, often in response to Western political and economic forces, leverage homophobia on a national level to serve their interests despite a misalignment with the population’s attitudes toward LGBT peoples. Nongovernmental organizations and advocates raise awareness about LGBT rights and issues to impact socialization processes that shape these attitudes to generate political, social, and economic change. A rights-based approach and research on attitudes emerging from the African context represent shifts critical to better understanding how LGBT peoples and rights can be more effectively advanced across the continent.
