Conference Program

This paper discusses the political activism of second-generation Balkan Muslims born and raised in 'the West' in the wake of the 2023 Hamas-Israeli war. It particularly investigates how young Muslims with Balkan roots, whose families found shelter outside the region after the Yugoslavian wars, enact postulates of solidarity with the global Muslim community (the ummah) by speaking in praise of Palestine. In particular, this paper aims to shed light on a series of political sensitivities and forms of action among the second-generation Balkan Muslims and same-age coreligionists activated by the “Palestinian knot”. In so doing, it also aims to uncover the genealogy of a potential new wave of radicalisation by understanding the latter through the prism of the Europe-born Muslims with Balkan heritage and their potential alignments with the ummah. Hence, a threefold line of investigation is explored. First, to what extent the current Palestinian-Israeli conflict might set off a new wave of radicalisation in 'the West'? Second, how the “Palestinian question” strengthens Balkan Muslims with the rest of the ummah? Third, does the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict reactivate the long-lasting legacies of war traumas and family experiences of dislocation and violence among the second-generation Balkan Muslims? This paper draws on an extensive fieldwork carried out in Belgium, Germany, Poland and Italy, and it discusses the preliminary findings from the perspectives of second-generation Balkan Muslims with Bosnian, Albanian and Turkish heritage.

Extant research shows that large troop contributions to UN peace missions are associated with private incentives, especially in developing countries. This study focuses on the effect of African countries' peacekeeper deployments to UN peace missions on their civil-military relations at home. In African countries where political competition is heavily influenced by ethnic rivalry, leaders are more likely to be removed from office via military coups. The study argues that additional income provided by UN reimbursements may enable insecure leaders to commit budgetary resources to the recruitment of loyal security personnel on the basis of coethnicity. Testing the argument using time-series cross-sectional data from 1992 to 2018, the study finds support for the argument.

The Liberal International Order (LIO) has encountered resistance worldwide, both from realist thinkers and from those who reject the LIO as a Western construct that subjugates peoples with its adherence to economic globalization, and marginalizes or completely ignores other concepts and frameworks for international relations (IR), both in research and in pedagogy. Still, how operational and prevalent is the LIO in practice? Is it in fact a framework that guides IR, or a figment in the minds of its proponents, and to some extent, its opponents as well? This paper examines the extent to which Finland, India, and the United States historically are or are not consistent in upholding LIO norms, identifying examples regarding China’s role as a world power, the effects of COVID-19, and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The countries selected represent a range from global superpower, to a regional power in close proximity to a rising global power, to a small country whose position in IR has meant new developments to long-standing challenges, with recent admission into NATO and its shared border with Russia. In this way, this paper departs from the exclusive focus on large, seemingly ambitious powers in examining the LIO, as well as from single case studies of small sovereign states deemed the most vulnerable to the LIO. Rather, the focus of this paper is comparative, with a view to understanding the extent to which the LIO actually drives the policies of each country and to what extent it is conversely an abstraction.

Today, the concept of ‘the Shi’a crescent’ has become quite popular among experts in the Middle East and politicians, who warned that Iran’s aim is to establish a massive Shia bloc that would spread from Iran through Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and beyond. This geographic bloc would challenge the status quo of pro-Western Sunni dominance in the region.

In the paper, it is demonstrated that the concept of the “Shi’a crescent” is more of an ‘imagined ideological scarecrow” than reality, and the situation is much more complex: Kuwait and Bahrein are small countries, and their impact on the politics of the Middle East is very limited. Concerning Syria, the ruling force, one of the branches of Shi’as – Alawites represent around 15% of the population, but Alawism is extremely distanced from the ‘orthodox’ Shi’ism, and as Sunni, as well as Shi’a point of view, Alawites are apostates. Besides, the ruling Ba’ath party is a secular party and it is difficult to speak about ‘Shi’a solidarity’ between Iran and Syria. The same can be said about the Zaydis of Yemen – the Zaydi version of Shi’ism is also alienated from Iranian Shi’ism, and Even in Iraq, where Iranian influence is obvious on the Shi’a government, contradictions between the two countries are still significant. Only one project – the creation of ‘Hezbollah’ in Lebanon (in the frame of the ‘export of the Islamic revolution’) is successful for Iran, but this can’t be considered a confirmation of the existence of the ‘Shia crescent’.