Showing papers on "International relations published in 1991"

Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics

Abstract: This radical new analysis of international politics reveals the crucial role of women in implementing governmental foreign policies, be it Soviet Glasnost, Britain's dealings in the EEC, or the NATO alliance. Cynthia Enloe pulls back the curtain on the familiar scenes - governments restricting imported goods, bankers negotiating foreign loans, soldiers serving overseas - and shows that the real landscape is less exclusively male. "Bananas, Beaches and Bases" shows how thousands of women tailor their marriages to fit the demands of state secrecy; how foreign policy would grind to a halt without secretaries to handle money transfers or arms shipments; and how women are working in hotels and factories around the world in order to service their governments' debts. Enloe also challenges common assumptions about what constitutes "international politics."She explains, for example, how turning tacos and sushi into bland fast foods affects relations between affluent and developing countries, and why a multinational banana company needs the brothel outside its gates. And she argues that shopping at Benneton, wearing Levis, working as a nanny (or employing one) or planning a vacation are all examples of foreign policy in action. Bananas, Beaches and Bases does not ignore our curiosity about arms dealers, the President's men or official secrets. But it shows why these conventional clues are not sufficient for understanding how the international political system works. In exposing policymakers' reliance on false notions of "feminity" and "masculinity," Enloe dismantles a seemingly overwhelming world system, exposing it to be much more fragile and open to change than we are usually led to believe.

Bound To Lead: The Changing Nature Of American Power

Abstract: Is America still Number 1? A leading scholar of international politics and former State Department official takes issue with Paul Kennedy and others and clearly demonstrates that the United States is still the dominant world power, with no challenger in sight. But analogies about decline only divert policy makers from creating effective strategies for the future, says Nye. The nature of power has changed. The real-and unprecedented-challenge is managing the transition to growing global interdependence.

Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions

Abstract: Post-modernism offers a revolutionary approach to the study of society: in questioning the validity of modern science and the notion of objective knowledge, this movement discards history, rejects humanism, and resists any truth claims. In this comprehensive assessment of post-modernism, Pauline Rosenau traces its origins in the humanities and describes how its key concepts are today being applied to, and are restructuring, the social sciences. Serving as neither an opponent nor an apologist for the movement, she cuts through post-modernism's often incomprehensible jargon in order to offer all readers a lucid exposition of its propositions. Rosenau shows how the post-modern challenge to reason and rational organization radiates across academic fields. For example, in psychology it questions the conscious, logical, coherent subject; in public administration it encourages a retreat from central planning and from reliance on specialists; in political science it calls into question the authority of hierarchical, bureaucratic decision-making structures that function in carefully defined spheres; in anthropology it inspires the protection of local, primitive cultures from First World attempts to reorganize them. In all of the social sciences, she argues, post-modernism repudiates representative democracy and plays havoc with the very meaning of "left-wing" and "right-wing." Rosenau also highlights how post-modernism has inspired a new generation of social movements, ranging from New Age sensitivities to Third World fundamentalism. In weighing its strengths and weaknesses, the author examines two major tendencies within post-modernism, the largely European, skeptical form and the predominantly Anglo-North-American form, which suggests alternative political, social, and cultural projects. She draws examples from anthropology, economics, geography, history, international relations, law, planning, political science, psychology, sociology, urban studies, and women's studies, and provides a glossary of post-modern terms to assist the uninitiated reader with special meanings not found in standard dictionaries.

The Renaissance of Security Studies

Abstract: This article examines the evolution of security studies, focusing on recent developments in the field. It provides a survey of the field, a guide to the current research agenda, and some practical lessons for managing the field in the years ahead. Security studies remains an interdisciplinary enterprise, but its earlier preoccupation with nuclear issues has broadened to include topics such as grand strategy, conventional warfare, and the domestic sources of international conflict, among others. Work in the field is increasingly rigorous and theoretically inclined, which reflects the marriage between security studies and social science and its improved standing within the academic world. Because national security will remain a problem for states and because an independent scholarly community contributes to effective public policy in this area, the renaissance of security studies is an important positive development for the field of international relations.

Political leadership and regime formation: on the development of institutions in international society

Abstract: Leadership plays a critical but poorly understood role in determining the success or failure of the processes of institutional bargaining that dominate efforts to form international regimes or, more generally, institutional arrangements in international society. An examination of the nature of institutional bargaining serves as a springboard both for pinpointing the role of leadership in regime formation and for differentiating three forms of leadership that regularly come into play in efforts to establish international institutions: structural leadership, entrepreneurial leadership, and intellectual leadership. Because much of the real work of regime formation occurs in the interplay of different types of leadership, the study of interactions among individual leaders is a high priority for those seeking to illuminate the processes involved in the creation of international institutions. Not only does such a study help to explain the conditions under which regimes form or fail to form, but it also provides an opportunity to bring the individual back in to an important area of international affairs.

Counterfactuals and Hypothesis Testing in Political Science

Abstract: Scholars in comparative politics and international relations routinely evaluate causal hypotheses by referring to counterfactual cases where a hypothesized causal factor is supposed to have been absent. The methodological status and the viability of this very common procedure are unclear and are worth examining. How does the strategy of counterfactual argument relate, if at all, to methods of hypothesis testing based on the comparison of actual cases, such as regression analysis or Mill's Method of Difference? Are counterfactual thought experiments a viable means of assessing hypotheses about national and international outcomes, or are they methodologically invalid in principle? The paper addresses the first question in some detail and begins discussion of the second. Examples from work on the causes of World War I, the nonoccurrence of World War III, social revolutions, the breakdown of democratic regimes in Latin America, and the origins of fascism and corporatism in Europe illustrate the use, problems and potential of counterfactual argument in small-N-oriented political science research.

The transformation of war

Abstract: At a time when uprecedented change in international affairs is forcing governments, citizens, and armed forces everywhere to re-assess the question of whether military solutions to political problems are possible any longer. Martin van Creveld has written an audacious searching examination of the nature of war and of its radical transformation in our own time.

International Theory: The Three Traditions

Abstract: The three traditions The theory of human nature The theory of international society The theory of mankind - relations with "barbarians" - (i) Realists (ii) Rationalists, (iii) Revolutionists The theory of national power The theory of national interest The theory of diplomacy - foreign policy The theory of diplomacy - balance of power The theory of diplomacy - diplomacy The theory of war The theory of law and obligation, and ethics.

International Law and the Use of Force by States

Abstract: This book is intended for scholars and students of international law and international relations; military personnel and advisers to Government departments.

Relative Gains and the Pattern of International Cooperation.

Abstract: Many political situations involve competitions where winning is more important than doing well. In international politics, this relative gains problem is widely argued to be a major impediment to cooperation under anarchy. After discussing why states might seek relative gains, I demonstrate that the hypothesis holds very different implications from those usually presumed. Relative gains do impede cooperation in the two-actor case and provide an important justification for treating international anarchy as a prisoner's dilemma problem; but if the initial absolute gains situation is not a prisoner's dilemma, relative gains seeking is much less consequential. Its significance is even more attenuated with more than two competitors. Relative gains cannot prop up the realist critique of international cooperation theory, but may affect the pattern of cooperation when a small number of states are the most central international actors.

The assumption of anarchy in international relations theory: a critique*

Abstract: ‘Anarchy is one of the most vague and ambiguous words in language.’ George Coreewall Lewis, 1832.In much current theorizing, anarchy has once again been declared to be the fundamental assumption about international politics. Over the last decade, numerous scholars, especially those in the neo-realist tradition, have posited anarchy as the single most important characteristic underlying international relations. This article explores implications of such an assumption. In doing so, it reopens older debates about the nature of international politics. First, I examine various concepts of ‘anarchy’ employed in the international relations literature. Second, I probe the sharp dichotomy between domestic and international politics that is associated with this assumption. As others have, I question the validity and utility of such a dichotomy. Finally, this article suggests that a more fruitful way to understand the international system is one that combines anarchy and interdependence.

The politics of nationalism and ethnicity

Abstract: Acknowledgements Introduction Ethnicity and Human Nature Nationalism as Ideology The Evolution of Nationalism: Theories Ethnic and Social Nationalism Nationalist Movements and Ethnic Politics: Forms and Periods Nationalism in the Western World Nationalism in the Former Communist States Nationalism in the Developing World, South Africa, and the Middle East Cultural Pluralism and the Politics of Accommodation Nationalism and International Relations Conclusion: An Integrated Theory of the Politics of Nationalism and Ethnicity Synopsis of Theory Bibliography Index

Explaining Third World Alignment

Abstract: Many argue that balance of power theory is as applicable to the Third World as it is to other states. Without substantial modification, however, balance of power theory cannot explain Third World alignments, because it ignores key characteristics of Third World states that determine alignment. The author develops a theory, “omnibalancing,” that is relevant to the Third World and that repairs these defects. Rather than balance of power's emphasis on states seeking to resist threats from other states, omnibalancing explains Third World alignments as a consequence of leaders seeking to counter internal and external threats to their rule. The superiority of omnibalancing over balance of power in making Third World alignments understandable is related to the Third World in general and to the alignment decisions of two key Third World states in particular. The author concludes by discussing why an understanding of the Third World, including Third World alignment, is central to the study of international relations.

Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order, 1648-1989

Abstract: In this book, Professor Holsti approaches the study of the origins of war and the foundations of peace from a distinct perspective. He asks three interrelated questions. Which issues generate conflict? How have attitudes towards war changed? And, what attempts have been made historically to create international orders and institutions that can manage, control or prevent international conflicts? Starting with the peace treaties of Munster and Osnabruck of 1648, Kalevi Holsti examines 177 international wars. Through these, he identifies the variety of conflict-producing issues and how they, as well as the attitudes of policy makers to the use of force, have changed over the last 350 years. He demonstrates how the orders established by the great peacemaking efforts of 1648, 1713, 1815, 1919 and 1945 attempted to solve the issues of the past, yet few successfully anticipated those of the future. Indeed, some created the basis of fresh conflicts.

The Influence of Domestic and International Politics on the President's Use of Force:

Abstract: Ostrom and Job (1986) found that domestic, political factors are more influential on the president's decision to use military force than characteristics of the international environment. These results pose a serious challenge to realists' assumptions regarding the motives of states and the separability of domestic and foreign policy. This article reexamines Ostrom and Job's arguments and introduces a new indicator, a measure of the severity of ongoing international crises, to provide a better assessment of the relative effect of the international environment on presidential decision making. This severity index is significantly associated with the use of force by the United States from 1949 through 1976, and proves to be more influential than the international indicators used by Ostrom and Job. Nevertheless, domestic political factors remain most consequential in the president's decision to use force short of war.

Critical Geopolitics: Discourse, Difference, and Dissent

Abstract: In the 1980s international relations theory has been undergoing a major methodological and theoretical debate which has challenged much of the recent disciplinary orthodoxy. This has been inspired by the introduction of contemporary critical social theory and poststructuralist themes into international relations by a new generation of practitioners. Given the close intellectual proximity of international relations to political geography's concerns with geopolitics, these current debates are of great relevance to any attempt to retheorise global politics from the perspective of political geography. Although the recent revival of interest in political geography has led to a considerable interest in rethinking the historiography of the subdiscipline and to reevaluating its tainted past, the necessary accompanying theoretical rethinking has not progressed in a similar fashion. The theoretical issues discussed in the contemporary international relations literature have much to offer political geographers in pu...

The Future of World Politics: Will It Resemble the Past?

Abstract: I H i s t o r y usually makes a mockery of our hopes or our expectations. The events of 1989, perhaps more welcomed than those of any year since 1945, were unforeseen. Much of what analysts anticipate for the 1990s is unpleasant. Nevertheless, it is clear that we are entering a new world, and I present three lines of argument about it. First, I discuss why prediction is so difficult in world politics. Among the reasons: multiple factors are usually at work, actors learn, small events can affect the course of history and, most importantly in this context, many well-established generalizations about world politics may no longer hold. This leads to the second question of the ways and areas in which the future is likely to resemble the past and the sources, areas, and implications of change. It appears that while international politics in much of the world will follow patterns that are familiar in outline although unpredictable in detail, among the developed states we are likely to see new forms of relations. In this new context, my third argument goes, the United States will face an extraordinarily wide range of policy choices and must therefore address fundamental questions that were submerged during the Cold War. Freed from previous constraints, the United States has many goals it can seek, but there are more conflicts among them than are sometimes realized.

History and strategy

Abstract: This work is a powerful demonstration of how historical analysis can be brought to bear on the study of strategic issues, and, conversely, how strategic thinking can help drive historical research. Based largely on newly released American archives, History and Strategy focuses on the twenty years following World War II. By bridging the sizable gap between the intellectual world of historians and that of strategists and political scientists, the essays here present a fresh and unified view of how to explore international politics in the nuclear era. The book begins with an overview of strategic thought in America from 1952 through 1966 and ends with a discussion of "making sense" of the nuclear age. Trachtenberg reevaluates the immediate causes of World War I, studies the impact of the shifting nuclear balance on American strategy in the early 1950s, examines the relationship between the nuclearization of NATO and U.S.-West European relations, and looks at the Berlin and the Cuban crises. He shows throughout that there are startling discoveries to be made about events that seem to have been thoroughly investigated.

Security in Anarchy: Utopian Realism in Theory and Practice

Abstract: Realism-the view that war is inescapable in a system where sovereign states compete for power and advantage to one another's detriment-still dominates thinking about international relations. Ken Booth argues that, as world politics continue to surprise us, a worldview in which war is seen as a rational policy choice is unacceptable. It is too soon in history to conclude that the international system is necessarily a 'war system'. As states become less important in what has been called the 'new medievalism', he arguesfor decentralizing power evenfurther towards a global civil society and a global community of communities. He quotes Oscar Wilde: 'A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at.'

The Security Problematic of the Third World

Abstract: This article reviews some recently published volumes on the subject of Third World security and, in the light of the analyses presented in these books, attempts to discuss a series of major issues in the field of Third World security studies. These include (1) the applicability of the concept of security as traditionally defined in the Western literature on international relations to Third World contexts; (2) the domestic variables affecting the security of Third World states; (3) the impact of international systemic factors on Third World security; (4) the effect of late-twentieth-century weapons technology on the security of Third World states; and (5) the relationship between the security and developmental concerns of Third World states. The author concludes that while international and technological factors have important effects on the security of Third World states, the major variables determining the degree of security enjoyed by such states at both the intrastate and interstate levels are related to the twin processes of state making and nation building that are at work simultaneously within Third World polities.

The Self-determination of Minorities in International Politics

Abstract: Published in 1991, The Self-determination of Minorities in International Politics is a valuable contribution to the field of Politics.

The ‘Grotain tradition’ in international relations

Abstract: The works of Huig de Groot, or Grotius,1 the seventeenth-century Dutch jurist, are said to exemplify a particular tradition in international law2 and in international theory.3 The Grotian tradition 'views international politics as taking place within an international society' in which states 'are bound not only by rules of prudence or expediency but also by imperatives of morality and law'.4 This tradition contemplates a 'civil science' or constitutional approach to the study of international politics, for it directs attention to the 'rules which constitute and govern political life within and between sovereign states'.5 The conviction that the totality of international relations is subject to the rule of law is one of the principal features of the Grotian tradition, a feature that distinguishes this from alternative conceptions or traditions. The Grotian tradition has been distinguished from that based upon Hobbesian or realist assumptions, which deny that common values, rules and institutions bind states together in a society and posit that international politics is a state of war and 'an anarchy whose social elements are negligible'.6 It has also been distinguished from conceptions premised upon Kantian or universalist assumptions that international society is a latent community of mankind that is 'not yet manifested' and 'groping for its necessary fulfilment' in a universal community transcending the states system.7

Peace through Parks: The Environment on the Peace Research Agenda

Abstract: The environment has now become firmly established as an item on the agenda of peace research. However, perceptions of the interrelationship between peace and environmental issues differ widely. In order to prepare the way for systematic analysis of this interrelationship, four linkages are identified here: causal, instrumental, definitional and normative. Since environmental issues are not only to be treated as non-military threats to the security of societies, but can also work to promote cooperation and peace-building, the causal, instrumental and definitional linkages are sub-categorized as having positive and negative aspects. Environmental security is identified as a normative linkage designed to cope with the negative aspects of the other linkages. Whether this will lead to a militarization of environmental politics, or rather help to demilitarize security thinking remains an open question. The answer will depend very much on the positive aspects of the causal and instrumental linkages. Up to now, ecological cooperation has to be seen as a dependent variable reflecting the state of overall international relations. However, there are some indications that environmental cooperation may develop an Eigendynamik of its own and become an independent variable with influence of its own on world politics.

Foreign political aid: the German political foundations and their US counterparts

Abstract: The work of the German political foundations is little known, but widely credited with a key role in the successful transitions to democracy in Portugal and Spain in the 1970S and Chile in the late 1980s. This article explores the work of the foundations, its scope and methods, and goes on to examine the work of the US political aid structures that were set up in the 1980s on the German model. It assesses the impact of the foundations' work and the utility offoreign political aid as a tool in international relations.

United Nations Law in the Gulf Conflict

Abstract: This was written shortly after the gulf war of 1990-1991 came to an end. The collective action taken under the aegis of the United Nations has been hailed as a vindication of international law and of the principle of collective security. At the same time, it has also been perceived by many as still another example of the dominant role of power and national self-interest in international relations. A plausible case can be made for each of these views. An optimist may conclude in the rosy glow of the desired outcome that law and power have happily converged in this case. Even so, the massive devastation of civilian life during the war and the threat of renewed violence are troubling features. The promise of a new world order based on the rule of law still seems far from fulfillment, but there is renewed hope that the UN Charter will be taken seriously as an instrument of collective responsibility.

Bound to Follow? Leadership and Followership in the Gulf Conflict

Abstract: 1 Exemplars of the declinist side of the debate are usually said to include David Calleo, Beyond American Hegemony (New York: Basic Books, 1987); Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), esp. chap. 8; and Robert Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), esp. chap. 10. Renewalists take their name from Samuel P. Huntington, "The U.S. -Decline or Renewal?" Foreign Affairs 67 (Winter 1988-89): 76-96; also Henry Nau, The Myth of America's Decline. Leading the World Economy into the 1990s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990). For examples of more journalistic contributions to the debate, see Steven Schlossstein, The End of the American Century (New York: Congdon and Weed, 1989); and William Pfaff, Barbarian Sentiments. How theAmerican Century Ends (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989). 2 Martin Walker, correspondent for The Guardian in the United States, was moved to remark caustically on "the giddiness of Washington as it thrills to its new self-image as the one and only superpower." "The U.S. and the Persian Gulf Crisis," World Policy Journal 7 (Fall 1990): 792.

Foreign Aid after the Cold War

Abstract: Foreign aid as it is understood today has its origins in the Cold War. It is largely a product of the ideological confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that dominated international politics for forty-five years between 1945 and 1990. It began not as a programme to assist the long-term development of impoverished countries but as a programme to facilitate the short-term economic recovery of Western Europe after the end of the Second World War. The political motivation of what was called the Marshall Plan was to prevent the spread of communism to France and Italy (where the Communist Party was strong), to stabilize conditions in West Germany (and create an attractive alternative to the socio-economic system imposed in East Germany) and to reduce the appeal of socialist policies in the United Kingdom (where the Labour Party enjoyed considerable popularity).

Encouraging democracy : the international context of regime transition in southern Europe

Abstract: International influences and democratic transition - problems of theory and practice in linkage politics, Geoffrey Pridham the international context of democratic transition - a comparative framework, Geoffrey Pridham international relations and democratic transition, Gerald Segal democracy by convergence and Southern Europe - a comparative politics perspective, Laurence Whitehead the international context of democratic transition in postwar Italy - a case of penetration, Robert Leonardi Portugal - a case study of international determinants of regime transition, Walter C.Opello state-international systems interaction and the Greek transition to democracy in the mid-1970s, Susannah Verney and Theodore Couloumbis Spain's transition - domestic and external linkages, Jonathan Story and Benny Pollack the international context of democratic transition in Turkey, Ali L.Karaosmanoglu US policy towards democratic transition in Southern Europe, Alfred Tovias transition to democracy and European integration - the role of interest groups in Southern Europe, Dusan Sidjanski the politics of the European Community, transnational networks and democratic transition in Southern Europe, Geoffrey Pridham.