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The Syrian Civil War has created the worst humanitarian disaster since the end of World War II, sending shock waves through Syria, its neighbours, and the European Union. Calls for the international community to intervene in the conflict, in compliance with the UN-sanctioned Responsibility to Protect (R2P), occurred from the outset and became even more pronounced following President Assad's use of chemical weapons against civilians in August 2013. Despite that egregious breach of international convention, no humanitarian intervention was forthcoming, leaving critics to argue that UN inertia early in the conflict contributed to the current crisis Syria, Press Framing, and The Responsibility to Protect examines the role of the media in framing the Syrian conflict, their role in promoting or, on the contrary, discouraging a robust international intervention. The media sources examined are all considered influential with respect to the shaping of elite views, either directly on political leaders or indirectly through their influence on public opinion. The volume provides a review of the arguments concerning appropriate international responses to events in Syria and how they were framed in leading newspapers in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada during the crucial early years of the conflict; considers how such media counsel affected the domestic contexts in which American and British decisions were made not to launch forceful interventions following Assad's use of sarin gas in 2013; and offers reasoned speculation on the relevance of R2P in future humanitarian crises in light of the failure to protect Syrian civilians.

The concept of 'good governance' is of increasing importance, and is used by international organizations to ensure reasonable conformity to high standards in states which participate in the global trading regime and other international activities. This book examines the concept of good governance and how it is applied in the states of the Gulf Co-operation Council. These states are particularly important because of their strategic location and massive oil wealth. Moreover, as monarchies, in most cases without powerful democratic representative bodies, and as Islamic countries, with a different outlook from countries of the West, Western standards of good governance may need to be modified in order for them to be implemented effectively.

In a time of great political change and unrest in the Middle East, this highly topical text offers a succinct account of the contemporary political environment in Lebanon. Tom Najem provides both a developed understanding of the pre-civil war system and an analysis of how circumstances resulting from the civil war combined with essential pre-war elements to define politics in Lebanon. Systematically exploring Lebanon's history, society and politics, the author stresses the importance of the crucial role of external actors in the Lebanese system. The analysis encompasses: the formation of the state weaknesses and dynamics of the Lebanese state the civil war post-war government and change the Lebanese economy foreign policy. Written in a clear and accessible manner, this book fills a conspicuous gap in the existing academic literature on Lebanon. It will be of interest not only to students of international politics and Middle East studies, but also to anyone travelling in or wanting to learn more about the region.

In the spring of 2011 the Syrian civil war emerged as a late chapter of the “Arab Spring,” a chapter that in retrospect has turned out to be the most complex and potentially most serious. How such crisis events are framed in press coverage has been identified as important with respect to possible responses the international community makes under the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (R2P). By most indicators (number of casualties, number of refugees, plus the use of chemical weapons against civilians), Syria certainly qualified as a candidate for the application of a UN Security Council authorized R2P reaction response; yet during the first two-and-a-half years of the war no such action was forthcoming. This research examines editorial and opinion pieces on Syria appearing in two leading Canadian newspapers, the Globe and Mail and the National Post, from March 2011 to September 2013 in terms of assessing how the civil war was framed regarding the appropriateness of an R2P military response on the part of the international community. The research has both quantitative and qualitative dimensions. The former examines whether framing promoted or discouraged international involvement (i.e. a “will to intervene”), as well as whether diplomatic and especially military actions such as a ‘‘no-fly zone’’ or more direct military attacks would be likely to result in success or failure. Qualitatively, the major positions taken and arguments presented regarding R2P, and whether it should be invoked for Syria, are reviewed.

Africa’s Deadliest Conflict deals with the complex intersection of the legacy of post-colonial history—a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions—and changing norms of international intervention associated with the idea of human security and the responsibility to protect (R2P). It attempts to explain why, despite a softening of norms related to the sanctity of state sovereignty, the international community dealt so ineffectively with a brutal conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which between 1997 and 2011 claimed an estimated 5.5 million. In particular, the book focuses on the role of mass media in creating a will to intervene, a role considered by many to be the key to prodding a reluctant international community to action.Included in the book are a primer on Congolese history, a review of United Nations peacekeeping missions in the Congo, and a detailed examination of both US television news and New York Times coverage of the Congo from 1997 through 2008. Separate conclusions are offered with respect to peacekeeping in the Age of R2P and on the role of mass media in both promoting and inhibiting robust international responses to large-scale humanitarian crises.

Between 1965 and 1988, ethnic representation increased from 9.4 percent to 16.3 percent of all MPs. The majority of these individuals were elected in Ontario, followed by Alberta, Quebec and British Columbia. Visible minorities made less progress, with their representation ranging from.8 percent in 1968 to 2 percent in 1988 (Pelletier, pp. 129-131). Black and Lakhani's survey of the 1993 parliamentary cohort found that 24.1 percent, or 71 MPs, cited sole minority origins. Of these, 51 were elected as Liberals and 15 as Reformers. Minorities were thinly represented in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, while MPs of north and east European origins were concentrated in the Prairies. Visible minorities were primarily drawn from ridings in the Toronto and Vancouver areas. While ethnocultural minorities were represented in proportion to their presence in the population, only 4.4 percent of MPs were drawn from visible minority groups who made up an estimated 9.4 percent of the population at the time (1997). A study on the cultural backgrounds of candidates in the 1993 general election found that about 18 percent cited sole ethnic minority origins and 3.5 percent were visible minorities (Black, 2000b, p. 152). Following the 1997 election, there was little change in the number of parliamentarians with sole minority origins (25.2 percent). However, the election saw visible minority representation improve to 6.3 percent of MPs, still short of their presence in the population of 11.2 percent (Black, 2000a). Inter-provincial differences in ethnic nomination rates have also persisted in the fourth party system (Table 5). For most elections, there were weak to moderate relationships between the geographic location of the ridings and the rate of ethnic and visible minority candidacies; more ethnic candidates were nominated in Ontario, the Prairies and British Columbia, while visible minority candidates were most common in British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta. Where direct comparisons are possible, these patterns are consistent with third party system trends and with the provinces' histories as prime destinations for immigrants. However, it is equally important to examine whether these figures reflect the composition of provincial populations. In 1993, ethnic minorities in Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia were under-represented in comparison to their presence in the population. In New Brunswick and Quebec, the share of ethnic candidates was proportional to their representation in the population, while in Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan, ethnic candidates were over-represented in comparison to their actual presence.(6) Interestingly, while higher proportions of ethnic and visible minority candidates were nominated in Ontario and the western provinces, there were no statistically significant inter-provincial variations in their electoral success rates, although this can be partly attributed to many low or empty cell counts for Atlantic Canada and the visible minority categories (Table 6). Quebec-based ethnic candidates were less successful than their counterparts west of the Ottawa River. Between 17.5 and 19.1 percent of them were elected between 1993 and 2000, compared to a range of 20.6 to 40 percent of ethnic contenders in Ontario, the Prairies and British Columbia. Future research needs to address why ethnic candidates from Quebec were less successful, but some preliminary explanations lie in the poor competitive position of the small number of ethnic candidates fielded by the BQ, the poor prospects for PC, Reform/Alliance and NDP ethnic candidates in the province, and the fact that ethnic Liberal candidates did not achieve the virtual 100 percent success rate of their colleagues in Ontario.

Yet this explanation does not account for why other parties have kept pace with the Liberals' recruitment of ethnic candidates. The NDP's success may be attributed to its programmatic appeal and/or to the incentives it has implemented to boost visible minority candidacies, but the Reform/Alliance's comparable performance is less intuitive, given the party's opposition to Official Multiculturalism and its negative image in many ethno-cultural communities. We propose that while Reform/Alliance has achieved comparable numerical representation of minorities, the neoliberal individualistic principles it expounds may attract individuals who reject or downplay a close identification with their ethnic collectives. The validity of this hypothesis will be ascertained during the elite interviews which were referred to earlier. The Conservatives' image as a white, Anglo-Saxon party remains unchanged in the fourth party system. Despite their long history, they continue to lag behind more recently-established parties such as the NDP and Reform/Alliance in the area of minority candidate recruitment. Reasons for this cannot be attributed to the lack of appeal which the Conservative program might have for ethnic minorities, but are more likely linked to its historical failure to convey an image of openness to these communities through its organizational structure. Despite the overtures of the Mulroney government toward ethno-cultural communities, including the creation of the first-ever Department of Multiculturalism in 1988 and official apologies for the internment and property expropriation of members of the Japanese and Italian Canadian communities during World War II, these efforts have not diversified the party's appeal under the subsequent leadership of Campbell, Charest or Clark. Ethnic identity is a fundamental organizing principle in the daily lives of Canadians, as few respondents deny such cultural labels in national censuses (Herberg, 1989, p. 22) In Canada, the terms \"ethnic\" or \"ethno-cultural minorities\" denote those individuals who do not trace their origins to the Aboriginal, French and British founding groups. They also exclude the growing number of individuals reporting a \"Canadian\" ethnic identification as a result of changes in the format of the ethnic origin question in the national census. Pendakur and Henneby's analysis of Canadian responses found they were primarily from people who would have reported either British or French origins (1998). Our definition of visible minorities is adapted from the Statistics Canada classification to include Blacks, South Asians, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Southeast Asians, Filipinos, Arab/West Asians and Latin Americans (http://www.statcan.ca). References to minorities in this paper include both ethnic and visible minority subjects. The 1996 census found that about 27 percent (7.6 million) of all Canadians reported single or multiple ancestries that were neither Aboriginal, nor French, nor British, nor Canadian, and that 11.2 percent belonged to visible minority groups. If the more than 2.6 million Canadians who reported mixed, \"British-other\" and \"French-other\" origins are added to that total, 36.1 percent of the population identified solely or equally with non-founding groups (Statistics Canada, 2000; http://www.statcan.ca).