Volume 16 of BCJIA Released

The Editorial Board of the SAIS Bologna Center Journal of International Affairs is proud to announce the publication and release of our 16th edition, entitled "Revisions." The Journal was presented to students, faculty, and alumni at a panel and roundtable discussion during the 2013 Bologna Center Alumni Weekend, which focused on "Revisions in World Politics" and was moderated by David Unger, Adjunct Professor of American Foreign Policy.

The Editorial Board is deeply grateful for the support of Bologna Center Director Ken Keller and Faculty Advisor Mark Gilbert, and we wish to thank all of our contributors, editorial staff, and the SAIS community for its hard work and encouragement.

The journal is available here (PDF).

Pakistani Elections: The Long Road to Legitimacy

By: Hijab Shah

Marred by controversy, dysfunction, and scandal, the past five years of Pakistani civilian rule had all the makings of a tantalizing drama. An ambassador resigned amidst scandal, the Prime Minister was ousted from office, his replacement faced an arrest warrant of his own, and an entire province was put under emergency governor rule in light of a sectarian massacre. Despite marking the historic completion of its five-year mandate, the PPP-led coalition lost much of its legitimacy in the eyes of its populace at home and its allies abroad; the new government coming in after the May 11 polls will face an uphill battle to restore the faith of the people and the respect of the international community.

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Pakistan: The Eye of the Storm

By: Hijab Shah 

A storm is brewing over South Asia. The next two years will bring about a tempest of change in the region: elections in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan will significantly impact the local and international political landscape; the withdrawal of International Security Assistance Forces from Afghanistan after a decade of warfare will mark a historic transition in the country and its neighborhood; and militant groups in the region will likely see a paradigm shift in their doctrine and a recalibration of their power bases over the next few years.

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Realpolitik in Mesopotamia

By: Selim Koru

"Prussia must concentrate its strength and hold it for the favorable moment, which has already come and gone several times. Since the treaties of Vienna, our frontiers have been ill-designed for a healthy body politic. Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided - that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849 - but by iron and blood." - Otto von Bismarck, "Blut und Eisen," 30 September 1862. 

Creating a country just isn’t the same as it was back in the 19^th century. The Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck scrambled together the German states through a series of wars and masterful diplomacy. Most new states since the Second World War have come in waves, such as decolonization in the 1960s, or the former Soviet Republics in the 1990s. There is one place however, where a balance of power flare could make a comeback. The Kurds, who are said to be the largest stateless people in the world, are stretched across Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Today, it appears that a culmination of economic and strategic factors could put an independent state in Northern Iraq within their reach.

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Grillo-Stiglitz Coalition in Rome?

By: Alex Weaver

Beppe Grillo, the leader of Italy’s “5 Star Movement” (M5S), presents his group as an alternative to the politically entrenched, out-of-touch parties that have controlled Rome since the dawn of the Second Republic, and it won a percentage of votes in the February election great enough to necessitate inclusion in a parliamentary majority in most imaginable scenarios. Since the election - in an effort to reassure markets, the public, allies, and everyone else who read the results of the election and said, “Wait what?” - Grillo’s office has announced that the inspiration of his economic plan is none other than Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, famous for his theories of informational asymmetry and for rejecting the neoclassical notion of the invisible hand. Stiglitz also used this framework, also known as Information Economics, to explain wage stickiness during recessions (the “Stiglitz-Shapiro” model). Former World Bank Vice President and Chief Economist, vocal critic of the IMF, advisor to President Clinton, and most recently an advisor to the post-debt crisis greek government, he is a prominent, public voice in questions of contemporary political economy.

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