Self‐determination and a shattered star: Statehood and national identity in the Somali Horn of Africa

This article explores the articulation—in different forms, at different periods, and by different actors—of ‘national self‐determination’ in Somalia and across the Somali‐speaking regions of the Horn of Africa. It explores how this concept can be understood in the context of protracted political fragmentation in Somalia—considering unresolved debates over the ideological foundations of state reconstruction, disagreements about the suitability of federalism, aspirations for the recognition of an independent Republic of Somaliland, and the distinctive trajectory of the Somali Regional State in Ethiopia. Taking a comparative, cross‐border and wide‐angled historical approach, the article argues that ideas of an ethno‐linguistically, culturally and religiously defined Somali ‘nation’ continue to coexist (and be reproduced, updated and used) within an environment of extreme political fragmentation and across multiple ‘state’ boundaries. This argument is made through comparative analysis of contemporary examples of the performance of Somali state and nationalist identities within and beyond the region and the distinctive transnational Somali‐language media environment within which these ideas circulate and compete.     

‘The apostle of free trade:’ Adam Smith and the nineteenth-century American trade debates

This paper examines the diversity of uses of Adam Smith’s ideas in nineteenth-century American debates about the tariff. Legislative debates about American trade policy ran almost uninterrupted from the 1820s to the end of the century; as a result, they provide an abundance of examples of the ways in which legislators marshaled economic ideas to shape political discourse and influence policy. Smith’s causal ideas about free trade and its effects were referenced in policymaking, and Smith’s intellectual authority was often invoked as a legitimating device for partisan ideology. These uses, I argue, contributed to the sloganizing of Smith as the ‘apostle of free trade’ and his enduring popularity as a political icon in American politics.     

Studying the International,Serving the Nation: The Origins of International Relations (IR) Scholarship in Germany, 1912–33

This paper examines the dynamics of internationalist and nationalist political thought in the formation of International Relations (IR) scholarship in Germany during the early twentieth century. It argues that while liberal internationalism played a significant role in shaping the discipline, IR scholars were often devout nationalists and worked for their government rather than for international peace. German institutions for the study of IR, like their Anglo-American counterparts, were founded in the aftermath of the First World War. Celebrated during the 1920s as ‘bulwarks of democracy’, they were nationalised by the Nazi government, lost their academic profile and since then have been largely forgotten. This paper explains the origins of IR research at the Institut für Auswärtige Politik, based in Hamburg and directed by Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy, as well as at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik, led by Ernst Jäckh in Berlin. Formally inaugurated in 1923 and 1920 respectively, both institutions drew on pre-war intellectual traditions as well as wartime networks. In light of recent re-appraisals of inter-war IR scholarship in other countries, the German case offers new and important insights into the complex intellectual traditions of what has traditionally been oversimplified as a first ‘great debate’ between ‘idealists’ and ‘realists’.     

The Construction of the League of Nations Secretariat. Formative Practices of Autonomy and Legitimacy in International Organizations

This article investigates the formative staffing practices of the League of Nations Secretariat. Drawing on the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, it argues that core traits of the League's institutional capacity and identity was produced through the institutionalization of recruitment practices in the League's formative years from 1919 to 1923. Through an exploration of early negotiations and practices of staffing, we show how the League built and balanced legitimacy, by combining a clearly international make-up of the League Secretariat with acute sensitivity to state interests, and autonomy, by defending the Secretary-General's exclusive prerogative of staffing, in a way that has been defining for the trajectory of international organizations (IOs) until today. The article thus turns to the institutional landscape where the individual and its surroundings meet: through the daily staffing practices of the Secretariat, it explores how an institution came to be, function and assert its influence as an autonomous and legitimate diplomatic agent in a broader international field. As such, the article, as an innovative contribution to the field, argues that international historians should connect thorough institutional investigations with elements of the ‘cultural turn’ in International History, in order to properly engage with and understand IOs as diplomatic actors.     

Equality of Women's Economic Status? A Major Bone of Contention in the International Gender Politics Emerging During the Interwar Period*

This study brings together the often disparate scholarship on the League of Nations and the ILO. It follows the interactions between the League, women internationalists, and the ILO, which evolved around the question of woman-specific labor legislation and the equality of women's status. These interactions resulted in a broadening mandate of international gender policies while deepening the institutional and legal distinction between women's ‘political and civil’ as opposed to their ‘economic’ status. The ILO insisted on certain forms of women-specific labor regulation as a means of conjoining progressive gender and class politics, and was anxious to ensure its competence in all matters concerning women's economic status. The gender equality doctrine gaining ground in the League was rooted in a liberal-feminist paradigm which rejected the association of gender politics with such class concerns, and indeed aimed to force back the ILO's politics of gender-specific international labor standards. As a result of the widening divide between the women's policies of the League and the ILO, the international networks of labor women reduced their engagement with women's activism at the League. The developments of the 1930s deepened the tension between liberal feminism and feminisms engaging with class inequalities, and would have problematic long-term consequences for international gender politics.     

Iktomi in the Land of the Maymaygwayshi: Understanding Lived Experience in the Practice of Archaeology Among American Indians/First Nations

In discussions concerning American Indians/First Nations and the practice of archaeology in North America, the issues are typically presented in a polarized fashion with American Indians/First Nations on one side and archaeologists on the other. Frequently the literature discusses how archaeologists should modify their practice in response to the needs of American Indian communities. Very little of the literature looks at the roles and challenges faced by American Indians who choose to pursue archaeology. This paper addresses this latter issue by examining my own work among First Nations communities in Ontario, Canada. Through the lens of ‘lived experience’, I will examine the interplay of identity, personal and communal histories, and the contemporary situation of my self and the First Nations communities I worked with, looking at how having ‘insider’ knowledge can be both useful and a handicap in fieldwork.     

“Bluewashing” the Firm? Voluntary Regulations,Program Design,and Member Compliance with the United Nations Global Compact

Voluntary programs have emerged as important instruments of public policy. We explore whether programs lacking monitoring and enforcement mechanisms can curb participants’ shirking with program obligations. Incentive‐based approaches to policy see monitoring and enforcement as essential to curb shirking, while norm‐based approaches view social mechanisms such as norms and learning as sufficient to serve this purpose. The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), a prominent international voluntary program, encourages firms to adopt socially responsible policies. Its program design, however, relies primarily on norms and learning to mitigate shirking. Using a panel of roughly 3,000 U.S. firms from 2000 to 2010, and multiple approaches to address endogeneity and selection issues, we examine the effects of Compact membership on members’ human rights and environmental performance. We find that members fare worse than nonmembers on costly and fundamental performance dimensions, while showing improvements only in more superficial dimensions. Exploiting the lack of monitoring and enforcement, UNGC members are able to shirk: enjoying goodwill benefits of program membership without making costly changes to their human rights and environmental practices.     

Indigenous Exceptionalism under Fire: Assessing Indigenous Soldiers in Combat with the Australian,Canadian, New Zealand and American Armies during the Second World War

The literature on Indigenous participation in the Second World War from Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand has tended to portray Indigenous soldiers as exceptionally able and courageous in battle. While heart-warmingly laudatory and an understandable product of genuine evidentiary challenges in researching this subject, the image constructed is partial and unrealistic. At best it is misleading; at worst it conflates indigeneity and combat proficiency in ways that reinforce racial stereotypes of Indigenous people as ‘natural’ warriors prevalent during the war. This article argues that we discard the exceptionalism enshrouding Indigenous combat performance in favour of a more culturally nuanced approach.     

Laying it down in stone: delimiting and demarcating Iraq's boundaries by mixed international commission

Mixed international commissions have been centrally involved in shaping the outer margins of the state territory of Iraq over the last century and a half. Laborious Anglo-Russian efforts to narrow the traditional Perso-Ottoman frontier in the seventy-year period before the Great War contrasted with the League of Nations' ostensibly speedy treatment of Iraq's more arbitrary northern and north-western territorial limits in the early inter-war years. Most recently, a team appointed by the UN Secretary-General finalised definition of Iraq's international boundaries with Kuwait when the emirate was liberated from Iraqi occupation in the spring of 1991. This article scrutinises the role played by these bodies in the boundary evolutionary process from a review of their primary records. It highlights the fact that the evolution of Iraq's (and those of its Ottoman forbears) international boundaries to the east, north and west was rarely straightforward and reflected both regional considerations and imperial contexts. The problem of reconciling inadequate textual definitions with features on the ground has been a constant phenomenon. Deciding whether commissions actually delimited or demarcated territory was as valid a question following the UN's Iraq–Kuwait settlement as in the mid-nineteenth century. Whether many historical treaty delimitations were ever designed to be anything more than territorial allocations is another theme explored in this article.