George A. Lopez – författare

This volume examines the causes, consequences, and dynamics of that style of governance by force that has come to be known as state terror. The collection deals with theoretical issues and examines case applications as well. The editors distinguish among the study of oppression, repression, and state terror systems. State terrorism in the form of enforcement terrorism, economic repression, military control, and the legal oppression of apartheid in Latin America, Argentina, the Philippines, and South Africa is discussed. One chapter explores American containment policy. Theoretical chapters on state terrorism include editor George Lopez's scheme for the analysis of government terror, editor Michael Stohl's discussion of the international dimensions of this problem, and an agenda for continued investigation.

Although the repressive violence of governments against their own citizens has received some scholarly attention in the past decade, our understanding of this phenomenon is far from complete. At least one central question remains: To what extent is government repression a function of a nation's political or economic development situation? This volume addresses the question through case studies of repressive regimes in second and third world nations. Of interest both for the study of repression and the analysis of development processes, it examines the links between development, dependence, and state repression in a variety of political and cultural settings.Individual essays examine repression and development in specific countries in Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Regimes as diverse as Marcos' Philippines and Communist Poland are considered. The analyses focus on a wide rrange of topics, including strikes against transnational corporations, the relation between political development and martial law, economic choices as a function of military-security dependence, the new international division of labor, and state violence in agriculturally modernizing nations. While deomonstrating that repression is interwoven with local culture and the perceived options of local elites, this book provides clear evidence of the links between repression and the larger economic and political factors that bind states together in international affairs. Written by a distinguished group of specialists in contemporary political economy, it offers new insights and information of interest to scholars, students, and agency officials. It also provides an agenda for further research in this controversial and vitally important area.

This volume is the product of three coalitions of research interests focused on a single topic of inquiry: the processes of liberalization and democratization within authoritarian regimes in Latin America. The three branches of research may be characterized as, first, individuals researching the changing character of human rights violations, repression, and state terror in various Latin American nations; second, scholars of redemocratization (the process through which governments gradually revert to a more democratic regime); and third, experts in the comparative analysis of Latin American politics who believe that a cross-national perspective is necessary to complement current theoretical and case study work on liberalization and redemocratization. The opening chapter provides a theoretical basis for the discussion, and the closing essay analyzes the relationship between redemocratization in Latin America and U.S. foreign assistance policies there. A bibliographic essay and an index complete the volume.

Foreign affairs practitioners and policy analysts claim that international arms embargoes usually fail due to the lack of political will among national governments to implement and enforce these restrictions. This volume confronts this critique directly, first by describing a more nuanced assessment of success, and then by presenting well-informed empirical and case-study chapters that reveal arms embargoes to be more effective than often understood. The chapters in this book examine some of the more complex cases of arms embargoes such as Iraq, Pakistan, Angola, Liberia and the Great Lakes region of Africa. Readers will find data and assessments not available in prior studies, as well as frameworks that can be replicated in future research. The book concludes with policy suggestions for how arms embargoes might be strengthened and their political objectives more readily attained.

In recent years, international attention has turned toward the use of targeted, 'smart' sanctions that minimize unintended humanitarian consequences and focus coercive pressure on responsible decision makers. Some of the world's leading sanctions experts and practitioners join together in this book to provide the first published account of the emerging theory and practice of smart sanctions. The essays examine recent uses of targeted financial sanctions, travel sanctions, and arms embargoes and offer recommendations for improving their design and implementation. Also included is an account of the targeted European Union sanctions that helped bring down the Milosevic regime in Yugoslavia, and a proposal for restructuring UN sanctions in Iraq. The result is a groundbreaking panorama of the latest developments in international sanctions policy, and a range of practical strategies for making sanctions a more humane and effective instrument of international policy.