Abstract
Welcome to the winter 2020 issue of World Affairs (WAJ)!
Following our detailed focus on COVID-19 in the last issue of WAJ, our lineup this time shifts the spotlight toward other significant global questions in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, the European Union (EU), China and Latin America, and continues our ongoing discussion of health care insurance in the United States.
Our first contribution adds to a growing group of WAJ articles on identity, security, and conflict in the MENA region (see, for example, Pope 2018; Choksy and Choksy 2016; Totten 2016). In “The Securitization and De-Securitization of Kurdish Societal Security in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria,” Hawre Hasan Hama tackles key issues confronting the largest ethnic group in the MENA region who do not have their own state. He argues that nation-building strategies seeking to assimilate Kurdish identity have caused radical ethnic insecurity fueling Kurdish rebellions and armed conflict. The piece ends by exploring potential policy areas promoting de-securitization.
In “Policy Versus Praxis: Has The European Union Failed To Respond To The Refugee Crisis?,” Sedef Eylemer and Nagihan Söylemez argue that, in several areas of EU refugee and asylum policy, national interests and burden shirking, rather than sharing, have indeed prevailed (see also Pasetti 2019). They cover key cases where reliance on the normative principle of solidarity has been an extremely difficult political and policy objective for the Union as a whole, as well as for individual states. Their case is significant, given that there are signs that the migration crisis in the EU appears to be resurging in 2020.
Extending an ongoing discussion in recent WAJ articles on U.S. health care and insurance (see also Kreier 2019, 2020; Béland and Wadden 2017), Jackson Williams advocates a single-payer system. In “Health Insurance in an Era of Declining Social Capital,” Williams offers striking empirical findings across the United States and warns that if social capital continues to wane, “the current U.S. health insurance system is less a reciprocal arrangement among a community than a cookie jar for sticky-fingered providers and manufacturers.” As a corrective, he explores what policy interventions may rescue the U.S. health insurance system as a cooperative venture or replace it to spread risk as part of a non-cooperative regime.
The next study also joins a company of recent articles in the journal on international political economy in Latin America (see, for example, Malacalza 2019; Castillo 2018; León-Manríquez 2017). Ivo Ganchev examines the deepening economic relations between China and countries in Latin America with leftist ideologies in “China Pushed the Pink Tide and the Pink Tide Pulled China: Intertwining Economic Interests and Ideology in Ecuador and Bolivia (2005-2014).” His central claim is that Chinese funding has been driven “by a cyclic, mutual reinforcement of China’s economic interests.” It has offered an alternative for leftist leaders in Latin America to U.S.-led funding, and thus led to the rise of the Pink Tide and an anti-American shaping of national identity in Ecuador and Bolivia.
Our final winter article is entitled, “Drivers and Persistence of Death in Conflicts: Global Evidence,” by Simplice Asongu, Joseph Uduji, and Elda Okolo-Obasi. The authors find that deaths from internal conflicts in 163 countries are more persistent in coastal, French civil-law, and Islam-oriented countries, compared to landlocked, English common law, Christian-oriented countries, respectively. The policy implications of their broad empirical analysis for foreign aid, foreign direct investment, and tourism are both timely and noteworthy.
As always, I encourage authors to respond, critique, or comment on any of the discussions in this issue of World Affairs to add to the array of alternative perspectives on policy and current affairs. I invite you to submit your scholarly articles, critical and topical commentaries, and book reviews on these or any other issue relevant to world affairs at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/waf. Please keep safe and well!