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New Issue of the E-Journal "Global Europe": Graduate Papers from the Institute

Basel Papers

The Swiss China policy, the politics of exporting war materiel and critiques of the international human rights system: The latest issue of the e-journal "Global Europe" features timely research by Christoph Leuppi, Jana Lichtin and Yanik Weingand, all former students at the Institute for European Global Studies. The publications are available in open access.

The first article, by Christoph Leuppi, addresses the question of how the plurality of actors and subjects in Swiss China policy at the executive level affects the coherence of foreign policy towards China at the strategic policy level. The results show that the legal basis favors the plurality of actors in Swiss China policy and thus the independence of the actors, which means that interdepartmental cooperation and the constellation of parties and persons in the Federal Council play an important role. Leuppi argues that, together with the vague overall strategic concept of the Federal Constitution, this ultimately promotes the emergence of intentional incoherence in the sense of different China policies within the federal executive.

In the second article, Jana Lichtin deals with a paradox: Despite Switzerland's international commitment to disarmament and peacebuilding, war materiel worth hundreds of millions of Swiss francs is exported every year. These exports have repeatedly led to debates in Swiss politics ever since the creation of the War Materiel Act in 1972. After an analysis of the constitutional and international legal framework for arms exports, Lichtin examines which interests and norms have been negotiated in the national legislative process by focusing on parliamentary debates since 1972. Her paper demonstrates that legal concepts have hardly played a role in the political process and that the political arguments have barely changed.

The similarities between different critiques towards the international human rights system from academia and state-actors are in the focus of the last contribution by Yanik Weingand. Through a literature review, Weingand first categorizes critiques from scholars of the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) movement and then works them into a framework of three basic pillars: the culture critique, the rhetoric critique, and the model critique. This framework is subsequently applied to the reports by way of a simplified Qualitative Content Analysis in order to reveal similarities with critical points raised towards the international human rights system by China, Cuba, and Egypt.

About the Contributors

Christoph Leuppi (LinkedIn, Twitter) studied at the Institute for European Global Studies and obtained his MA in European Global Studies in early 2021. Since his graduation, he has worked at the Federal Office of Public Health in the International Affairs Division, where he is engaged in cooperation with the EU and neighboring countries, especially on pandemic issues.

Jana Lichtin (LinkedIn) obtained her Master's degree in European Global Studies in 2021. During and after her studies, she completed internships at the EU Delegation to Switzerland and Liechtenstein and at Swiss Radio and Television (SRF). She currently works as an academic associate for Policy Affairs at the General Secretariat of the University of Zurich.

Yanik Weingand (LinkedIn) holds a BA in International Relations from the University of Geneva, the last semester of which he spent at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. During his MA, he represented the University of Basel at the Jean-Pictet Competition in international humanitarian law and obtained his degree in European Global Studies in 2022. He previously worked for Caritas Switzerland as an intern in Luzern, Switzerland and then as a consultant in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

About the E-Journal

Global Europe – Basel Papers on Europe in a Global Perspective is an academic e-journal showcasing the excellent research of graduates as well as other young and senior scholars interested in analyzing Europe and the EU in a global context. The Graduate Papers from the Institute of European Global Studies were published in June 2022 as the e-journal's issue nr. 122.

The journal is published in two issues per year. The publications are available as PDF-files via the open access platform of the University Library Basel as well as in the e-journal's archive on this site. In addition, readers can subscribe to it by sending an e-mail to europa@unibas.ch.

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