Globalaffairs

Issue 21/July-September 2010
By Juan Carlos Triviño Salazar

The Colombian presidential election of 2010 will be remembered for its brief and intense campaign, marked by a rhetoric that never ceased to revolve around the importance of maintaining the legacy of outgoing President Alvaro Uribe. With approval ratings of almost 70% (1), the outgoing president has been recognised for his obsession with putting the state at the forefront of the fight against leftist guerrillas, which has characterized Colombian politics for the past 50 years. 2010 marks the end of Uribe’s second term and the election of now President Juan Manuel Santos, former Defence Minister, which confirms that Uribe’s mark is here to stay. Beyond the choice of Santos as president, this election confirmed that the country is unified around Uribe’s discourse; that despite other priorities, internal security is on the minds of Colombians when voting and that an important challenge for the incoming government is to correct the actions undertaken during Uribe’s administration.

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Issue 21/ July-September 2010
By Yusuf Yerkel

Today there are large-scale of literature on IR theories dealing state’s behaviours with regard to international structure, in particular the notion of mutual dependency. These theories tend to take cultural, historical and religious element for granted and make these elements hardly an issue in utilizing for state’s behaviour. Putting emphasis merely to the structure in which states are seen as dependent can never be sufficient on its own to account for the orientation of states. In fact, one would be left without any explanation for the sudden policy change caused by the domestic change. This is well illustrated when someone looks to the case of Iran after the fall of Shah or policy changes that occurred even without such a regime shift (Egypt’s stance from a pro-Soviet to pro-US policies in 1972). Similarly, it is hard to understand, for example, why Turkey during the time of Erbakan started to give priority to Islamic countries (his first visit was to Iran and then Libya and he was the leading figure of the construction of D-8).

While capturing this dimension, the importance of decision-makers’ perception relates not only to such material or political interest but also to their perception of the nature of regional and international policies, and of their own identity and role as well as those of their state, which eventually feed into policy-making. At this juncture, the fundamental component, which in my opinion is to large extent not appreciated, is that each objective challenge faced by states is interpreted on the basis of decision-makers’ worldview. As Ayoob argues, even in the case of providing security of a state, which is one of the fundamental driving force of state’s behaviour, could be closely linked to the basic driving components of domestic politics.

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