The September issue of Czech Journal of International Relations is out
Dear readers, the September issue of the Czech Journal of International Relations is out. This time, all the four peer-reviewed contributions are in Czech. You can expect a wide range of interesting articles on internal characteristics of de facto states, interpretation of Al-Shabaab strategy through the lenses of liquid territoriality, inquiry into motivations of some of Taiwan’s former allies to newly recognize China, and finally analysis of the European Union as an energy actor.
The issue further features a discussion forum on racism in development cooperation that reacts to an article from the March issue of our journal (1/2020).Finally, you can look forward to three reviews of recently published titles.
We wish you pleasant reading!
The first article Trvale dočasné? Tendence vývoje souboru de facto států is written by Štěpán Podhrázský and Petr Daněk. It identifies major trends within a set of non-state territorial political units and investigates their shifting internal characteristics. . The set of de facto states is composed of 26 entities whose development is followed from 2001 to 2018. The results confirmed a relationship between the state of world politics and the development trends within the set of de facto states, and a significant influence of partial international recognition on the level of internal sovereignty.
The second article, written by Bohumil Doboš and titled Tekutá teritorialita a hnutí al-Šabáb, covers the case of a particularly resilient jihadist group operating in the Horn of Africa, Al-Shabaab, through lenses of liquid territoriality. By analysing the case though this concept rooted in the neomedieval reading of international politics, it not only helps us to understand the causes of Al-Shabaab’s survivability but also develops a tool to analyse the strategies of territorial control of other violent non-state actors.
The third article by Michal Himmer and Zděněk Rod Motivace diplomatické změny vybraných států nově uznávajících Čínu v rámci čínsko-tchajwanského soupeření focuses on Taiwan’s considerable recent loss of many diplomatic allies to China. The aim was to explore whether the diplomatic transition was the outcome of dollar diplomacy alone, or if there were further motivations possibly influencing the recognition process. In this context, the article specifically focused on non-economic motivations, and in most cases, it was possible to uncover at least one such motivation for the diplomatic switch.
The last article Evropská unie jako energetický aktér: konceptualizace energetického aktérství is written by Lukáš Tichý. Compared to energy governance and energy diplomacy, the concept of EU energy actorness explores the internal and external dimension of EU energy policy and security. The intention of the article is to create a modified framework incorporating both dimensions of the EU's energy actorness which would be operationalized by a set of criteria that can be used to analyse the EU energy policy and its relations.
The forum critically discusses Tomáš Profant’s article on Racism in Development and Development Cooperation published in our March issue. Four contributions written by Ondřej Slačálek, Tomáš Ryška, Míša Krečneyová and Ondřej Horký-Hlucháň comment on the conceptual, methodological and political issues related to the study of racism, while offering alternative paths or providing further empirical evidence. The forum is concluded by Profant’s rebuttal.
The new book reviews in this issue are:
Pavel Kreisinger: Češi a Slováci v Austrálii v 1. polovině 20. století a jejich účast ve světových válkách (review written by Milada Polišenská)
Tomáš Dopita, Kateřina Kočí, Klára Čmolíková Cozlová: Jak na genderovou nerovnost v zahraniční službě (review written by Jarka Devine Mildorf)
Martin Petlach: Volby a demokracie v Malajsii. Politika kontrastů (review written by Michaela Ducháčková)
Nahoru
Tomáš Profant
Vladislav Strnad