In my talk at the Israel Studies Seminar, I will present my doctoral research which occupies the intersection between modern Jewish history, climate and environmental history, the history of knowledge, and colonial history. My dissertation focuses on the role of climate – both as an abstract concept and a concrete condition – in shaping and reshaping Jewish national, racial, cultural, and spatial identity both in Europe and in Palestine during the first half of the twentieth century.

The character of wars is changing. Today, wars between nation-states have largely disappeared and armed conflicts between states and belligerent non-state actors have become predominant. But has the international community found the right answers to deal with such intrastate armed conflicts? Schulenburg will argue, no. In a future world of 11 billion people, intra-state conflicts are likely to increase. Finding better answers to address this is becoming, and will continue to be, ever more pressing. But would this be possible in a world of increasing great-power rivalries?

An important difference among representative democracies lies in the extent to which governing politicians are clearly responsible for policy-making. Research shows that this affects whether voters punish and reward politicians for policy outcomes. In this article, we explore whether politicians recognize this and become more likely to enact the policies voters electorally reward. To estimate the causal effect of clarity of responsibility on politicians’ behavior, we exploit an electoral discontinuity in responsibility for local tax policy in Denmark—a salient policy area.

Talk by Tim Bale, Queen Mary University of London