As the use of ‘diaspora’ has proliferated in the last decade, its meaning has been stretched in various directions. This article traces the dispersion of the term in semantic, conceptual and disciplinary space; analyses three core elements that continue to be understood as constitutive of diaspora; assesses claims made by theorists of diaspora about a radical shift in perspective and a fundamental change in the social world; and proposes to treat diaspora not as a bounded entity but as an idiom, stance and claim.

http://prodiasporaromana.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Blubaker-2005-The-diaspora-diaspora.pdf

The ‘diaspora’ diaspora

Conventional models of the politics of economic reform tend to be
 based on an assumption about the costs and benefits of reform,
 known informally as the J-curve. Reforms are expected to make
 things worse before they get better. This presents a classic time
 inconsistency dilemma for reformist governments forced to demand
 severe sacrifices from the public in the short term for the mere
 promise of future gains. In response, political economy models of
 the reform process have tended to stress the importance of
 insulating governments from the pressures of the short-term losers
 until a sufficient constituency of winners has been created with a
 stake in supporting and enhancing the reforms. Based on evidence from the postcommunist transitions, this article
 suggests that the most serious political obstacles to the process of
 economic reform have come not from the short-term losers but from
 the short-term winners. Groups that gain substantial rents from the
 early distortions of a partially reformed economy have a stake in
 maintaining a partial reform equilibrium that generates high private
 gains, but at a considerable social cost. In these countries, the
 main political challenge has been, not to marginalize the losers, but
 to restrain the winners. This explains the paradoxical outcome of
 the postcommunist transitions: that political systems which are
 more inclusive of the losers have been able to adopt and sustain
 more comprehensive economic reforms than states insulated from
 popular pressures.

/pdf/winners-take-all-the-politics-of-partial-reform-in-4v0y80v9nd.pdf

Winners Take All: The Politics of Partial Reform in Postcommunist Transitions

Although international relations theory has been dominated for two decades by debates over theories of international politics, recently there has been a surge of interest in theories of foreign policy. These seek to explain, not the pattern of outcomes of state interactions, but rather the behavior of individual states. The author surveys three prominent theories of foreign policy and shows how the works under review set out a compelling alternative, one that updates and systematizes insights drawn from classical realist thought. Neoclassical realism argues that the scope and ambition of a country's foreign policy is driven first and foremost by the country's relative material power. Yet it contends that the impact of power capabilities on foreign policy is indirect and complex, because systemic pressures must be translated through intervening unit-level variables such as decision-makers’ perceptions and state structure. Understanding the links between power and policy thus requires close examination of both the international and the domestic contexts within which foreign policy is formulated and implemented.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0043887100007814

Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy

Some students of international politics believe that realism is obsolete.1 They argue that, although realism’s concepts of anarchy, self-help, and power balancing may have been appropriate to a bygone era, they have been displaced by changed conditions and eclipsed by better ideas. New times call for new thinking. Changing conditions require revised theories or entirely different ones. True, if the conditions that a theory contemplated have changed, the theory no longer applies. But what sorts of changes would alter the international political system so profoundly that old ways of thinking would no longer be relevant? Changes of the system would do it; changes in the system would not. Within-system changes take place all the time, some important, some not. Big changes in the means of transportation, communication, and war ghting, for example, strongly affect how states and other agents interact. Such changes occur at the unit level. In modern history, or perhaps in all of history, the introduction of nuclear weaponry was the greatest of such changes. Yet in the nuclear era, international politics remains a self-help arena. Nuclear weapons decisively change how some states provide for their own and possibly for others’ security; but nuclear weapons have not altered the anarchic structure of the international political system. Changes in the structure of the system are distinct from changes at the unit level. Thus, changes in polarity also affect how states provide for their security. Signicant changes take place when the number of great powers reduces to two or one. With more than two, states rely for their security both on their

/pdf/structural-realism-after-the-cold-war-46i7blrn8e.pdf

Structural Realism after the Cold War

The concept of the “security dilemma” is applied to alliance relations in multipolar and bipolar systems. The dilemma involves a choice between support or nonsupport of allies, and tension between fears of entrapment and abandonment. It interacts with the adversary security dilemma in which the choice is between firmness and conciliation toward the opponent. The multipolar interaction is illustrated by a survey of the 1904–1914 period, the bipolar by reference to the contemporary crisis in NATO. The alliance security dilemma is more severe, and places more constraints on allies' policies toward adversaries, in multipolar than in bipolar alliances. The weakness of the dilemma in the contemporary system is a major reason for the current persistence of conflict in NATO.

The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics

The seminal events of the foreign policy of the Clinton adminis tration were three failed military interventions in its first nine months in office: the announced intention, then failure, to lift the arms embargo against Bosnia's Muslims and bomb the Bosnian Serbs in May 1993; the deaths of 18 U.S. Army rangers at the hands of a mob in Mogadishu, Somalia, on October 3; and the turning back of a ship carrying military trainers in response to demonstrations in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on October 12. Together they set the tone and established much of the agenda of the foreign policy of the United States from 1993 through 1995. These failed interventions expressed the view of the worldwide role of the United States that the members of the Clinton foreign policy team brought to office. Their distinctive vision of post-Cold War American foreign policy failed because it did not command public support. Much of the administrations first year was given over to mak ing that painful discovery. Much of the next two years was devoted to coping with the consequences of the failures ofthat first year. Bosnia, Somalia, and Haiti were not, as the administration claimed, problems it had inherited. The Bush administration had sent troops to Somalia for the limited purpose of distributing food

Foreign Policy as Social Work

From the skyrocketing federal deficit to plummeting rankings in education, America faces a turbulent future. How did we get to this point? What will it take to make our nation a beacon of innovation and prosperity once again? In That Used to Be Us, Thomas L. Friedman, one of our most influential columnists, and Michael Mandelbaum, one of our leading foreign policy thinkers, provide a searching, clear-eyed assessment of the situation, with bold solutions for getting the country back on track. Drawing on in-depth analysis from around the globe, their approach balances evidence from a variety of viewpoints, including the political, entrepreneurial, scientific, and technological sectors. Despite America's woes, the authors argue, our nation's ideals remain strong --strong enough to propel us to a new era of reinvention.

https://www.readinggroupguides.com/printpdf/reviews/that-used-to-be-us-how-america-fell-behind-in-the-world-it-invented-and-how-we-can-come-back

That used to be us : how America fell behind in the world it invented and how we can come back

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, three ideas dominate the world: peace as the preferred basis for relations between and among different countries, democracy as the optimal way to organize political life, and free markets as the indispensable vehicle for the creation of wealth. While not practiced everywhere, these ideas have--for the first time in history--no serious rivals. And although the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were terrible and traumatic, they did not "change everything," as so many commentators have asserted. Instead, these events served to illuminate even more brightly the world that emerged from the end of the Cold War. In The Ideas That Conquered the World, Michael Mandelbaum describes the uneven spread (over the past two centuries) of peace, democracy, and free markets from the wealthy and powerful countries of the world's core, where they originated, to the weaker and poorer countries of its periphery. And he assesses the prospects for these ideas in the years to come, giving particular attention to the United States, which bears the greatest responsibility for protecting and promoting them, and to Russia, China, and the Middle East, in which they are not well established and where their fate will affect the rest of the world. Drawing on history, politics, and economics, this incisive book provides a clear and original guide to the main trends of the twenty-first century, from globalization to terrorism, through the perspective of one of our era's most provocative thinkers.

The Ideas That Conquered The World: Peace, Democracy, And Free Markets In The Twenty-first Century

A Perfect Failure: NATO's War against Yugoslavia

Acknowledgments A note on sources and citations Introduction 1. Collective approaches to security: the nineteenth-century managed balance of power system and Great Britain 2. France, 1919-40: the failure of security policy 3. The United States, 1945-80: the natural history of a great power 4. China, 1949-76: the strategies of weakness 5. Israel, 1948-79: the hard choices of the security dilemma 6. Collective approaches: the international economic order and Japan, 1945-85 Index.

Michael Mandelbaum

Papers

Foreign Policy as Social Work

That used to be us : how America fell behind in the world it invented and how we can come back

The Ideas That Conquered The World: Peace, Democracy, And Free Markets In The Twenty-first Century

A Perfect Failure: NATO's War against Yugoslavia

The fate of nations : the search for national security in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries