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Theory of International Politics

01 Jan 1979-
About: The article was published on 1979-01-01 and is currently open access. It has received 7932 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Global politics & International relations.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The past decade has witnessed a resurgence of regionalism in world politics as discussed by the authors and the call for strengthened regionalist arrangements have been central to many of the debates about the nature of the post-Cold War international order.
Abstract: The past decade has witnessed a resurgence of regionalism in world politics. Old regionalist organizations have been revived, new organizations formed, and regionalism and the call for strengthened regionalist arrangements have been central to many of the debates about the nature of the post-Cold War international order. The number, scope and diversity of regionalist schemes have grown significantly since the last major ‘regionalist wave’ in the 1960s. Writing towards the end of this earlier regionalist wave, Joseph Nye could point to two major classes of regionalist activity: on the one hand, micro-economic organizations involving formal economic integration and characterized by formal institutional structures; and on the other, macro-regional political organizations concerned with controlling conflict. Today, in the political field, regional dinosaurs such as the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the Organization of American States (OAS) have re-emerged. They have been joined both by a large number of aspiring micro-regional bodies (such as the Visegrad Pact and the Pentagonale in central Europe; the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in the Middle East; ECOWAS and possibly a revived Southern African Development Community (SADC, formerly SADCC) led by post-apartheid South Africa in Africa), and by loosely institutionalized meso-regional security groupings such as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, now OSCE) and more recently the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). In the economic field, micro-regional schemes for economic cooperation or integration (such as the Southern Cone Common Market, Mercosur, the Andean Pact, the Central American Common Market (CACM) and CARICOM in the Americas; the attempts to expand economic integration within ASEAN; and the proliferation of free trade areas throughout the developing world) stand together with arguments for macro-economic or ‘bloc regionalism’ built around the triad of an expanded European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) and some further development of Asia-Pacific regionalism. The relationship between these regional schemes and between regional and broader global initiatives is central to the politics of contemporary regionalism.

314 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Two of the most influential contemporary approaches to international relations theory are neorealism and neoliberalism as discussed by the authors, and the debate between them has dominated much of international relations literature for the last decade.
Abstract: Two of the most influential contemporary approaches to international relations theory are neorealism and neoliberalism. The debate between these two approaches has dominated much of international relations theory for the last decade. It is now commonplace for an article about some aspect of international relations theory to begin by locating itself in terms of this debate. These two approaches and the debate between them have failed to contribute as much as they might have to international relations theory. These approaches suffer from serious internal weaknesses and limitations that the neorealistneoliberal debate often has tended to obscure rather than to clarify. Once we have exposed and clarified these weaknesses and limitations, we will be able to see several important directions for future theoretical work. Two books, Neorealism and Its Critics and Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate, make significant contributions to this debate. The former offered a wide-ranging critique of neorealism when it was published in 1986. The latter, which has just been published, is more narrowly focused. It takes up where some of the critiques in Neorealism and Its Critics left off. A review of these two complementary volumes affords an excellent opportunity to begin to identify some of the weaknesses and limitations that the neorealist-neoliberal debate frequently has obscured.

314 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the end of the Cold War has provided scholars of international relations with a unique opportunity to evaluate the explanatory power of their models in a rapidly changing environment, and they provided a...
Abstract: The end of the Cold War has provided scholars of international relations with a unique opportunity to evaluate the explanatory power of their models in a rapidly changing environment. We provide a ...

312 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Evelyn Goh1
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that Southeast Asian countries do not want to choose between the two major powers, the United States and China, and instead try to influence the shape of the new regional order.
Abstract: The small and medium-sized states in Southeast Asia have faced significant geostrategic changes with the end of the Cold War and the rise of China. Over the last decade, scholars have debated how these countries would cope with growing Chinese power, and how their relations with the other major powers in the region would change. Some analysts have suggested that the region is shifting toward a more China-centered order, but this view is premature. Eschewing the simple dichotomy of balancing versus bandwagoning, Southeast Asian countries do not want to choose between the two major powers, the United States and China. This avoidance strategy is not merely tactical or time-buying; instead, Southeast Asian states have actively tried to influence the shape of the new regional order. Key Southeast Asian states are pursuing two main pathways to order in the region: the “omni-enmeshment” of major powers and complex balance of influence. They have helped to produce an interim power distribution outcome, which is a...

309 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The dominant role of the realist paradigm in international relations theory has left little room for the study of the role of cultural variables in world politics as discussed by the authors, which is the result of the metaphor for the interaction of states as the mechanical one of the billiard table, with power politics as the primary dynamic.
Abstract: The dominant role of the realist paradigm in international relations theory has left little room for the study of the role of cultural variables in world politics. The two central tenets of the realist theoretical game-plan—the primacy of the sovereign state system, and the autonomy of that system, from domestic political, social and moral considerations—focus our attention on the vertical division of the world into sovereign states, rather than on the horizontal forces and ties that cut across state frontiers. The result is the metaphor for the interaction of states as the mechanical one of the billiard table, with power politics as the primary dynamic.

308 citations

References
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Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 1976
TL;DR: For centuries knowledge meant proven knowledge, proven either by the power of the intellect or by the evidence of the senses as discussed by the authors. But the notion of proven knowledge was questioned by the sceptics more than two thousand years ago; but they were browbeaten into confusion by the glory of Newtonian physics.
Abstract: For centuries knowledge meant proven knowledge — proven either by the power of the intellect or by the evidence of the senses. Wisdom and intellectual integrity demanded that one must desist from unproven utterances and minimize, even in thought, the gap between speculation and established knowledge. The proving power of the intellect or the senses was questioned by the sceptics more than two thousand years ago; but they were browbeaten into confusion by the glory of Newtonian physics. Einstein’s results again turned the tables and now very few philosophers or scientists still think that scientific knowledge is, or can be, proven knowledge. But few realize that with this the whole classical structure of intellectual values falls in ruins and has to be replaced: one cannot simply water down the ideal of proven truth - as some logical empiricists do — to the ideal of’probable truth’1 or — as some sociologists of knowledge do — to ‘truth by [changing] consensus’.2

4,969 citations

ReportDOI
17 Feb 1966
TL;DR: This book contains the collected and unified material necessary for the presentation of such branches of modern cybernetics as the theory of electronic digital computers, Theory of discrete automata, theory of discrete self-organizing systems, automation of thought processes, theoryof image recognition, etc.
Abstract: : This book contains the collected and unified material necessary for the presentation of such branches of modern cybernetics as the theory of electronic digital computers, theory of discrete automata, theory of discrete self-organizing systems, automation of thought processes, theory of image recognition, etc. Discussions are given of the fundamentals of the theory of boolean functions, algorithm theory, principles of the design of electronic digital computers and universal algorithmical languages, fundamentals of perceptron theory, some theoretical questions of the theory of self-organizing systems. Many fundamental results in mathematical logic and algorithm theory are presented in summary form, without detailed proofs, and in some cases without any proof. The book is intended for a broad audience of mathematicians and scientists of many specialties who wish to acquaint themselves with the problems of modern cybernetics.

2,922 citations

Journal ArticleDOI

2,873 citations