The four Visegrad states — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia) and Hungary — form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east. They are bounded by the Baltic in the north and the Danube river in the south. They are cut by the Sudeten and Carpathian mountain ranges, which divide Poland off from the other states. Poland is an extension of the North European plain and like the latter is drained by rivers that flow from south to north west — the Oder, the Vlatava and the Elbe, the Vistula and the Bug. The Danube is the great exception, flowing from its source eastward, turning through two 90-degree turns to end up in the Black Sea, forming the barrier and often the political frontier between central Europe and the Balkans. Hungary to the east of the Danube is also an open plain. The region is historically and culturally part of western Europe, but its eastern Marches now represents a vital strategic zone between Germany and the core of the European Union to the west and the Russian zone to the east.

Economy and Society

Delegation and Agency in International Organizations. Edited by Darren G. Hawkins, David A. Lake, Daniel L. Nielson, and Michael J. Tierney. 424p. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. $80.00 cloth, $34.99 paper. This volume examines and exemplifies the usefulness of principal-agent (P-A) theory for the study of international relations through a set of well-integrated analyses of delegation to international (governmental) organizations (IOs). The editors begin with some useful, explicit definitions of key terms. They define delegation as a revocable “grant of authority” from one or more “principal(s)” to an “agent,” which enables “the latter to act on behalf of the former” in a specified domain and/or for a limited period of time. The agent's discretion in how to pursue the principal's objectives is a direct inverse function of the precision of the rules laid down by the principal. Agent autonomy, by contrast, is defined as the possible range of actions the agent can take contrary to the principal's interests, net whatever mechanism the principal may have put in place to control the agent. To the extent that an agent actually pursues his own interests contrary to the principal's, we see agency slack.

Delegation and Agency in International Organizations

/pdf/justice-legitimacy-and-self-determination-moral-foundations-42oti4v140.pdf

Justice, Legitimacy and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law

Remaking the nation: place, identity and politics in Latin America

Penn World Table (Version 8.x)

This article suggests that transnational motives have remained key components of legitimation strategies for regional realignment in Latin America. Specifically, we assess the legitimation strategy of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and the associated political movement, Chavismo, as a recent case of transnational identity politics. Studies of Chavismo have stressed its role in the changing balance of power in early twenty-first-century Venezuela and the redrafting of global alliances, through a series of organizational moves and petrodollars. Combined with these political and economic boosters, Chavismo’s impact was sustained through a strategy that sought legitimation by drawing on earlier narratives of the solidarity of “Nuestramerica” (Our America), used in reshaping transnational networks within the region and beyond. This identity layer provided a basis for regional and international realignment and organizational creation, even if more recently it lost traction and became criticized for its unfulfilled promises and growing gap between rhetoric and implementation. Resumen Este articulo sugiere que la dimension transnacional es un componente clave de las estrategias de legitimacion para el realineamiento de estados y movimientos sociales en America Latina. Analizamos la estrategia de legitimacion del expresidente venezolano Hugo Chavez y de los movimientos politicos aliados como un caso reciente de politica identitaria transnacional. Previos estudios del chavismo se han enfocado en el cambiante equilibrio de poder en Venezuela a principios del siglo XXI y la elaboracion de nuevas alianzas globales, a traves de una serie de acciones institucionales y el uso de petrodolares. Combinado con tales catalizadores politicos y economicos, su impacto fue sustentado a traves de una estrategia que construyo sobre la base de narrativas preexistentes un discurso de Nuestramericana solidaridad, utilizado para la remodelacion de redes transnacionales dentro y fuera de la region. Dicho estrato identitario sirvio para el realineamiento regional e internacional y la construccion institucional, si bien recientemente ha entrado en una etapa de desaceleracion a medida que perdio traccion y fuese criticado debido a promesas incumplidas y su creciente brecha entre retorica e implementacion.

/pdf/transnational-identity-politics-in-the-americas-reshaping-192gfgeezs.pdf

Transnational Identity Politics in the Americas: Reshaping “Nuestramérica” as Chavismo’s Regional Legitimation Strategy

The topic of international legitimacy has returned to centre stage during the Arab Spring, in which the Arab League has apparently assumed a prominent legitimation role. Although some scholarship h...

The quest for regional legitimation: Analyzing the Arab League’s legitimizing role in the Arab spring

How do populists conduct foreign policy? The existing literature on populism focuses mainly on domestic patterns, and until recently the foreign dimension of populism has been largely overlooked. This paper aims to fill theoretical and empirical lacunae by mapping patterns of change and continuity in the formulation of geopolitical and economic international policy among Latin-American populist governments. Striving to conduct a systematic comparative analysis, this paper explores three waves of populist foreign policies in Latin America (classic, neoliberal, and progressive). While it is difficult to highlight a unified phenomenon, the findings reveal that several ‘unifying’ elements indeed exist: they are manifest in the tendency of such governments to jointly (re)construct transnational solidarities for legitimation purposes and to adopt economic foreign policies with a pragmatic bent. Moreover, in opposition to the two first waves of populist governments, the most recent wave has embraced personalist styles, emotional public diplomacy, and clientelist techniques with support networks abroad, thus actively projecting the domestic patterns of populism to the regional and global levels in an attempt to leverage both domestic and international legitimacy. This study offers critical lessons for IR scholarship’s increasing engagement with populism, contributing to the lively debate regarding the rise of populist trends across the globe.

Exploring the foreign policies of populist governments: (Latin) America First


 How can we explain the dynamics of nonconventional struggles such as the Gaza flotilla case of May 2010? Most international relations scholars analyze international disputes using a “chess logic,” according to which the actors seek to outmaneuver their opponents on the battleground. However, an increasing number of clashes are guided by a “performance logic”: although the players interact with one another, their real targets are audiences. The present study aims to bridge this gap, proposing a phenomenological framework for analyzing this particular kind of performative contest over legitimation and delegitimation in contemporary conflicts. It expands upon the idea that current anarchical global politics increasingly lead contending actors to engage in “pure” legitimation struggles—“battles for legitimacy”—seeking to persuade international audiences that they deserve political support. After providing guidelines for the identification of these phenomena, this article presents a model for the methodical examination of their interactive dynamics based on three legitimation functions (appropriateness, consensus, empathy). This model is applied to the flotilla case by mapping the protagonists’ framing contests across “legitimation (battle)fields.” The findings of this study, which emphasize the strong interplay between normative, political, and emotional mechanisms for empowering (de)legitimation strategies, can contribute to expanding the research program concerning international legitimacy.

“Battling” for Legitimacy: Analyzing Performative Contests in the Gaza Flotilla Paradigmatic Case

Few grassroots-based coalitions from a “peripheral” region have affected high international politics to the degree of creating a global domino effect. However, the process that led to Brazil’s decl...

Daniel F. Wajner

Papers

Transnational Identity Politics in the Americas: Reshaping “Nuestramérica” as Chavismo’s Regional Legitimation Strategy

The quest for regional legitimation: Analyzing the Arab League’s legitimizing role in the Arab spring

Exploring the foreign policies of populist governments: (Latin) America First

“Battling” for Legitimacy: Analyzing Performative Contests in the Gaza Flotilla Paradigmatic Case

Grassroots Diplomacy in Battles for Legitimacy: The Transnational Advocacy Network for the Brazilian Recognition of the Palestinian State