Paul O'shea

Bio: Paul O'shea is an academic researcher from Lund University. The author has contributed to research in topics: International relations & Sovereignty. The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 15 publications receiving 85 citations. Previous affiliations of Paul O'shea include Stockholm School of Economics & University of Sheffield.

Regional risk and security in Japan : whither the everyday

Abstract: Japan’s unusual position in the realm of international politics encapsulates a three-fold juxtaposition: both in and out of Asia, both occupied by and a close ally of the United States, and both a key trade partner and a strategic rival of China. Whilst international relations theory offers a number of ways to analyse these relations, this book instead utilizes the concept of risk to provide an innovative perspective on Japan’s relations with China, North Korea and the US. The book elucidates how risk, potential harm and harm are faced disproportionately by certain groups in society. This is demonstrated by providing an empirically rich analysis of the domestic implications of security relations with China, North Korea and the United States through the presence of US troops in Okinawa. Beginning with a theoretical discussion of risk, it goes on to demonstrate how the concept of risk adds value to the study of international relations in three senses. First, the concept helps to break down the boundaries between the international and domestic. Second, the focus on risk and the everyday directs us to ask basic questions about the costs and benefits of a security policy meant to secure the national population. Third, what implications do these two points have for governance? The question is one of governance as Japan’s externally oriented security policy produces domestic insecurity shared disproportionately, not equally, as this volume makes clear.

Strategic narratives and US military bases in Japan: How ‘deterrence’ makes the Marine base on Okinawa ‘indispensable’

Abstract: Governed directly by the US from the Battle of Okinawa in 1945 until its reversion to Japan in 1972, the island of Okinawa hosts the majority of US military bases in Japan despite comprising only a...

Dodgy dumplings and lethal liver: risk, food terrorism, and Sino–Japanese relations

Abstract: The nature of food risk in Japan has undergone a qualitative change in recent years. This article synthesises insights from psychology, economics, and political science into an interdisciplinary risk approach to show how international relations impact consumer decisions in Japan by outlining how food risks are constructed and framed within existing narrative frameworks. To this end, the article employs two case studies: the gyōza incident in 2008, when poisoned dumplings imported from China caused ten people to fall ill, and contaminated beef incident in 2011, in which five people died and dozens more were hospitalised after consuming raw beef tainted due to industrial negligence. These cases are analysed in the context of Japan's low rate of food self-sufficiency, deteriorating Sino-Japanese relations and the ‘China threat theory’, and perceptions of food safety. The article shows how, despite suffering recent major domestic food contamination incidents and lethal domestic food terrorism, Japanes...

“Making the alliance even greater”: (Mis-)managing U.S.-Japan relations in the age of Trump

Abstract: President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy questions the fundamentals of the global U.S.-led alliance network. Where other allies implemented hedging strategies, Japan’s Prime Minister Abe Shi...

국제정치이론 = Theory of international politics

Abstract: Therefore, the seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and de‹ciency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself the enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency. (Ibn al-Haytham)1

Narrative power : how storytelling shapes East Asian international politics

Abstract: We are living at a time when people appear to have become more aware of the power of narratives in international politics. Understanding how narratives exercise power is therefore more pertinent th...

Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear

Abstract: When you suggest that there is a big or a small risk of an event occurring, how often do you really explain what you mean? More fundamentally, how often do you know what you mean? As the journalist Dan Gardner points out in his incisive book, the “gut” and the “head”’ can estimate risk in different ways. In his deconstruction of several recent scare stories Gardner outlines some of the major drivers of the response of individuals and society to risk. One is the very human tendency to form a narrative from sequential events no matter how tenuous the connection. Studies of emotive and memorable cases such as a …

Japan’s ‘Resentful Realism’ and Balancing China’s Rise

Abstract: Japan has been regarded by all mainstream International Relations theories as a status quo power intent on pursuing an immobilist international strategy toward China characterized by hedging rather than any move to active balancing. This paper challenges these assumptions and asks whether Japan will, or indeed already is, moving toward active balancing. The paper does so by reinterpreting the very assumptions of those theoretical perspectives that predict only hedging and by drawing on fresh empirical evidence. It argues that the conditions that are thought to encourage hedging behavior—the predictability of other states’ intentions, the malleability of intentions through engagement, domestic preferences that obviate balancing, and a favorable offense-defense balance—are now deteriorating in the case of Japan’s strategy toward China. Japanese policy-makers over the last decade have experienced an accelerated decline in their confidence to read China’s intentions and to mold these, to the point that China is now regarded as an increasingly malign actor. Japan’s own domestic regime change, paralleling that of China, has released Revisionist forces that favor the cessation of the “underbalancing” of China. Very significantly, Japanese policy-makers’ faith is eroding in the ability to maintain defensive superiority over China, either through its own internal capabilities or the U.S.-Japan alliance. The consequence is that the evidence is now mounting of Japan shifting toward active “soft” and incipient “hard” balancing of China through a policy of the active “encirclement” of China diplomatically, the build-up of Japanese national military capabilities aimed to counter China’s access denial and power projection, and the strengthening of the U.S.-Japan alliance. This shift has become particularly evident following the 2010 trawler incident and the return to power of Prime Minister Abe Shinzō in 2012. The consequences of Japan’s shifting strategy are yet as not entirely clear. Japan may be moving toward a form of “Resentful Realism” that does not add to a new equilibrium to regional security but is actually more destabilizing and poses risk for China and the U.S., especially as Japan’s own security intentions become more opaque. In turn, these conclusions invite a reconsideration of the comfortable theoretical consensus on Japan as an eternal status quo power, and encourage Constructivism, Neoliberalism, but especially Neorealism, to be bolder in their assertions about the probability and degree of radicalism in Japan’s security trajectory.

Profitability, Power, or Proximity? Organized Crime Offenders Investing Their Money in Legal Economy

Abstract: This article uses empirical data from the Dutch Organized Crime Monitor to give empirical insight into the choices organized crime offenders make when they invest their money in legal economy. Using a dataset of 1196 individual investments, light is shed on what kind of assets offenders purchase and where these assets are located. The results are used to assess the tenability of different theoretical perspectives and assumptions that are present in the literature on money laundering and organized crime: the standard economic approach (‘profit’), the criminal infiltration approach (‘power’) and social opportunity structure (‘proximity’). The results of this study show that offenders predominantly invest in their country of origin or in their country of residence and that their investments consist of tangible, familiar assets such as residences and other real estate and (small) companies from well-known sectors. Investments such as bonds, options, and stocks in companies in which offenders are not personally (or indirectly) involved, such as stocks in companies noted on the stock exchange, were only found in a small number of cases. In other words: offenders usually stay close to home with their investments. So, instead of profitability or power, proximity seems to be a better description of their investment choices.