神马福利影片

PAIS Graduate Teaching Evaluation Survey 2012-13

Thank you to all who have completed the PAIS Graduate Teaching Evaluation Survey in your classes this week and last. If you missed the survey, please ask your tutor for one as you can still complete before the end of the term (deadline Friday 15 March).

PTES Survey: How do I take part?

Click here to take part in the .

The email from the Graduate School on 6^th February 2013 contained your log-in details. You can also obtain these (you will need your University log-in details to access this information).

recently wrote an article for The Independent on 8 March entitled ''. Below is an excerpt from the piece:

China has been North Korea’s best – and sometimes only – friend for a number of years. It provides not just economic aid and support but diplomatic protection too. It’s not easy to see how the North Korean economy could survive without the food, energy and other goods it gets from China. And although China has not blocked UN sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear testing, without China, North Korea would undoubtedly have faced much harsher sanctions; and they would have been more rigorously and actively enforced. China doesn’t do this out of altruism – it wants something in return. There remains the firm hope in China that North Korea will emulate its own experience of gradual reform and integration into the global economy. If and when it does, Chinese interests hope to be well placed to benefit.

On 14 March, PAIS Research Fellow Dr Toni Haastrup will present a seminar on the EU and the UK, hosted by the Warwick European Affairs Society. The event will take place at 18.00 in room A0.23, with refreshments at 17.30.

Download the poster

recently contributed a blog post to the University of Nottingham's China Policy Institute entitled 'Xi Jinping: The Challenge Awaits'. Below is an excerpt from the blog:

Xi Jinping’s tenure as China’s top leader began with might call a stage of symbols and signposts – an attempt to give indications of the main thrusts of policy under his leadership. Making his first trip as leader to the south in an echo of Deng’s南巡 in 1992 (which has become the symbol of the return to reform and liberalisation and the high profile given to combating corruption are both cases in point. The announcement of a “plan” to tackle income distribution began to make the transition from signposts to actual policy; though it still leans more towards being an annunciation of aspiration and grand strategy rather than a detailed outline of specific changes to come.

A new monograph by , Associate Professor in PAIS, is scheduled for release by University of Pennsylvania Press in May 2013. Entitled Ethnonationalist Conflict in Postcommunist States: Varieties of Governance in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Kosovo, the book investigates why some Eastern European states transitioned to new forms of governance with minimal violence while others broke into civil war. In this comparative study, Maria Koinova applies historical institutionalism to conflict analysis, tracing ethnonationalist violence in post­communist states to a volatile, formative period between 1987 and 1992. In this era of instability, the incidents that brought majorities and minorities into dispute had a profound impact and a cumulative effect, as did the interventions of international agents and kin states. Whether the conflicts initially evolved in peaceful or violent ways, the dynamics of their disputes became self-perpetuating and informally institutionalized. Thus, external policies or interventions could affect only minimal change, and the impact of international agents subsided over time. Regardless of the constitutions, laws, and injunctions, majorities, minorities, international agents, and kin states continue to act in accord with the logic of informally institutionalized conflict dynamics.

Koinova analyzes the development of those dynamics in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Kosovo, drawing on theories of democratization, international intervention, and path-dependence as well as interviews and extensive fieldwork. The result is a compelling account of the underlying causal mechanisms of conflict perpetuation and change that will shed light on broader patterns of ethnic violence.