No abstract

Historically, Swiss identity was founded on beliefs in federalism, direct democracy and armed neutrality. Given continued popular support for autonomous self-defense in an era of transnational threats, it is worth examining whether a small economically interdependent state, such as Switzerland, is single-handedly capable of providing for its own security. To preview our conclusions, every facet of Switzerland's security, whether against military threats, terrorism or natural disasters, today benefits from substantial international inputs. At base, Switzerland's increasing security dependence has been driven by the following dynamics: 1) the general development of institutionalized international cooperation; 2) the evolving nature of the threats Switzerland faces; and 3) political efforts to ''securitize'' issues not hitherto considered as security problems. Because Swiss security dependence owes more to broad structural factors than deliberate choices, policymakers would be better off embracing this reality by proactively using international organizations to address transnational challenges.

Few issues are more important to security studies scholars than understanding how violent nonstate groups innovate. To shed new light on this subject, we examine Hezbollah's innovations and the underlying processes that produced them. Based on this case, the most successful violent non-state groups are arguably those that systematically pursue incremental innovation. Although less dramatic than their discontinuous counterparts, a commitment to steadily improve an organizations' tactics and techniques can have dramatic effects. Indeed, even Hezbollah's remarkable performance during the 2006 Lebanon War is attributable to the perfection of techniques utilized since the organization's inception. While innovations were incremental in character, a bottom-up process of learning and experimentation by field commanders was critical to generating most of these innovations. If generalizable to other violent non-state actors, these findings suggest that the most formidable insurgent and terrorist groups will actually be those that relentlessly pursue incremental innovations in a bottom-up fashion.

Gallen. His research interests lie at the intersection of security studies and international legal theory, focusing on the role of violent non-state actors in international relations. Anarchy's Anatomy: Two-Tiered Security Systems and Libya's Civil Wars No issue deserves more scrutiny than the mechanisms whereby popular unrest unleashes civil wars. We argue that one institution-two-tiered security systemsare particularly pernicious in terms of the accompanying civil war risk. These systems' defining characteristic is the juxtaposition of small communally stacked units that protect regimes from internal adversaries with larger regular armed forces that deter external opponents. These systems aggravate civil war risks because stacked security units lack the size to repress widespread dissent, but inhibit rapid regime change through coup d'état. Regular militaries, meanwhile, fracture when ordered to employ force against populations from which they were recruited.

Wie soll eine Demokratie mit «staatsgefährlichen» Vereinigungen umgehen? Aus dem Parlament, von ausländischen Regierungen oder durch die Öffentlichkeit wird immer wieder gefordert, bestimmte Vereinigungen zu verbieten. Bislang tat sich die Schweiz aber ausgesprochen schwer, eine Rechtsgrundlage für solche Verbote zu schaffen. Problematisch daran ist insbesondere, dass die staatliche Freiheit durch die Einschränkung oder gar die Abschaffung der Freiheit anderer aufrechterhalten werden soll. Die vorliegende Arbeit leistet einen Diskussionsbeitrag für die Neukonzeption des nachrichtendienstlichen Vereinigungsverbots und die künftige Verbotspolitik der Schweiz. Hierzu werden die bisherigen Verbote auf Stufe Kanton und Bund einer rechtshistorischen Analyse unterzogen, die Vorgaben des Verfassungs- und Völkerrechts diskutiert und ein Vorschlag für eine Verbotsnorm de lege ferenda vorgestellt.