Showing papers on "International relations published in 2013"

Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically

Abstract: Political conflict in our society is inevitable, and the results are often far from negative. How then should we deal with the intractable differences arising from complex modern culture? In Agonistics, Mouffe develops her philosophy, taking particular interest in international relations, strategies for radical politics and the politics of artistic practices. In a series of coruscating essays, she engages with cosmopolitanism, post-operaism, and theories of multiple modernities to argue in favor of a multipolar world with a real cultural and political pluralism.

The Political Economy of Regionalism

Abstract: The strength of the book lies not only in the breadth of material, but in the juxtaposition of different viewpoints and examples, al making connections between cultural, political, institutional and territorial contexts Town Planning Review Regional and Federal Studies 1997 "This book is necessary reading for students of globalization searching for ways to unpack this abstract concept" European Planning Studies - reviewed by Deron Ferguson - Uni of Washington "This collection represents a substantial resource for anyone interested in "the regional question" "anyone interested in regionalism will likely find several chapters of interest, or more, in this volume" Space and Polity, Vol 2, No 2 1998 - Reviewed by Donald McNeill - "there is undoubtedly a lot here of meritthe book should serve as a useful reference work for those seeking background on regional developments in various parts of the world" Urban Studies, Vol 35, No 2, 1998 "Certainly the volume provides ample evidence of the diversity of the regional question and of the responses to it, and there is much here to enlighten our understanding" Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Vol 91, No 1, 2000 "I would strongly recommend this volume for advanced classes and seminars on place, territory and identity regionalism in a post cold war world contemporary political Europe and regionalism and international relations I would encourage the editors to continue their research on this important topic and I hope the publisher will continue its commitment to publishing cutting-edge geopolitical and political economy research" Royal Dutch Geographical Society "I would strongly recommend this volume for advanced classes and seminars on place, territory and identity: regionalism in a post cold war world: contemporary political Europe: and regionalism and international relations" "Cutting Edge

Strategy: A History

Abstract: Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the world's leading authorities on war and international politics, captures the vast history of strategic thinking, in a consistently engaging and insightful account of how strategy came to pervade every aspect of our lives.

Transnational Diffusion: Norms, Ideas and Policies

Abstract: International interdependence is at the core of the international relations discipline, which is premised upon the fact that states interact with one another and examines the nature, causes, and consequences of different types of cooperative and conflictive interactions. This chapter discusses how international interdependence shapes domestic decision making through transnational diffusion processes. In other words, how are decisions in one country influenced by the international context, and especially by the ideas, norms, and policies displayed or even promoted by other countries and international organizations? This idea has played an important role in international politics for a long time. Consider, for instance, US president Eisenhower’s “falling domino principle,” which expressed the risk that communist regimes would spread rapidly throughout the world: “You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly.”1 More recently, George W. Bush used a similar argument to justify the second Iraq war: “The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.”2 More or less implicitly, the notion that international interdependence is a powerful driver of domestic change is present in many important academic works. For instance, Huntington’s (1991) “third wave of democratization” directly refers to a possible interdependent diffusion

Rethinking epistemic communities twenty years later

Abstract: The concept of epistemic communities – professional networks with authoritative and policy-relevant expertise – is well-known thanks to a 1992 special issue of International Organization. Over the past twenty years, the idea has gained some traction in International Relations scholarship, but has not evolved much beyond its original conceptualisation. Much of the research on epistemic communities has been limited to single case studies in articles, rather than broader comparative works, and has focused narrowly on groups of scientists. As a result, it is often assumed, erroneously, that epistemic communities are only comprised of scientists, and that the utility of the concept for understanding International Relations is quite narrow. Consequently, an otherwise promising approach to transnational networks has become somewhat marginalised over the years. This article revisits the concept of epistemic communities twenty years later and proposes specific innovations to the framework. In an increasingly globalising world, transnational actors are becoming progressively more numerous and influential. Epistemic communities are certainly at the forefront of these trends, and a better understanding of how they form and operate can give us a clear demonstration of how knowledge translates into power.

Leaving theory behind: Why simplistic hypothesis testing is bad for International Relations

Abstract: Theory creating and hypothesis testing are both critical components of social science, but the former is ultimately more important. Yet, in recent years, International Relations scholars have devot...

Gendered Citation Patterns in International Relations Journals

Abstract: This paper applies a methodology utilized in economics to study citation patterns in two International Studies Association journals. The paper analyzes articles published in International Studies Quarterly (ISQ) and International Studies Perspectives (ISP) in 2005. Comparisons are made based on the sex of the authors of articles and the sex of the cited authors in each paper's bibliography. Empirical analyses suggest that male authors of ISQ and ISP articles are less likely to cite work by female scholars in comparison with female authors. Mixed-gender author teams are also significantly less likely to cite research by female scholars relative to female article authors.

Negotiating China: Reinserting African agency into China–Africa relations

Abstract: Most analyses of China’s renewed engagement with Africa treat China as the driving force, and little recognition is given to the role of African agency, especially beyond the level of state elites. This article investigates the extent of African agency in engagements with China and argues that at various levels African actors have negotiated, shaped, and even driven Chinese engagements in important ways. Suggesting a theoretical framework that captures agency both within and beyond the state, the article provides an empirical analysis of African agency first by showing how elements of the Angolan state created a hybrid set of institutions to broker Chinese investment projects, and second by discussing how African social actors have influenced and derived benefits from the activities of Chinese migrants in Ghana and Nigeria. While both cases demonstrate African agency, the ability of African actors to exercise such agency is highly uneven, placing African politics at the heart of any understanding of China–Africa relations.

United Nations Treaty Collection

Abstract: Part II: Glossary of terms relating to Treaty actions (This glossary is intended as a general guide and is not presumed to be exhaustive)

Forced to Be Good: Why Trade Agreements Boost Human Rights

Abstract: With this book Emilie Hafner-Burton upends our thinking about how social justice norms find their way into international regulations. She is struck by the ‘‘regulatory shift’’ of recent years, which has seen human rights regulations find their way into both U.S. and European agreements with their trading partners—what would have been an outlandish move mere decades ago. The 2004 U.S. free trade agreement with Singapore, for instance, obliges both parties to ‘‘strive to ensure’’ that the rights of workers and children are protected under domestic law, and establishes a joint committee to oversee the implementation of this social-justice-enhancing commitment. Hafner-Burton’s analysis aims to steal our eyes from the more conventional explanations of such developments—among them the notion that moral entrepreneurs, such as NGOs and activist citizens, have played the key, causal role in changing the face of global trade regulation. Rather than analyze only the changing preferences of policy-makers and the ethical actors that have been credited with influencing them, Forced to Be Good emphasizes the role of domestic political bargaining. While allowing that ‘‘interest-based motivations’’ can ‘‘benefit from morally persuasive overtones,’’ and, moreover, that the inclusion of rights standards in trade agreements has at least led to important if modest improvements in human rights, the takehome message is that policy-makers ‘‘use’’ human rights to compete for political influence over trade policy.

Broadcasters and Hidden Influentials in Online Protest Diffusion

Abstract: This article explores the growth of online mobilizations using data from the indignados (outraged) movement in Spain, which emerged under the influence of the revolution in Egypt and as a precursor...

The end of International Relations theory

Abstract: With a view to providing contextual background for the Special Issue, this opening article analyses several dimensions of 'The end of International Relations theory?' It opens with a consideration of the status of different types of theory. Thereafter, we look at the proliferation of theories that has taken place since the emergence of the third/fourth debate. The coexistence and competition between an ever-greater number of theories begs the question: what kind of theoretical pluralism should IR scholars embrace? We offer a particular account of theoretical engagement that is preferable to the alternatives currently being practised: integrative pluralism. The article ends on a cautiously optimistic note: given the disciplinary competition that now exists in relation to explaining and understanding global social forces, International Relations may find resilience because it has become theory-led, theory-literate and theory-concerned.

Paradiplomacy in Action : The Foreign Relations of Subnational Governments

Abstract: Region and international affairs - motives, opportunities and strategies, Michael Keating patrolling the "frontier" - globalization, localization and the "actorness" of non-central governments, Brian Hocking diplomacy and paradiplomacy in the redefinition of international security - dimensions of conflict and co-operation, Noe Cornago the European Union and inter-regional co-operation, Kepa Sodupe towards plurinational diplomacy in the deeper and wider European Union, (1985-2005), Francisco Aldecoa the other dimension of third level politics in Europe - the congress of local and regional powers of the Council of Europe, Jose Luis de Castro the international competence of US states and their local governments, John Kincaid federal-state relations in Australian external affairs - a new co-operative era? John Ravenhill the Quebec experience -success or failure? Louis Balthazar the international relations of Basque nationalism and the first Basque autonomous government (1890-1939), Alexander Ugalde making sense of paradiplomacy? an intertextual inquiry about a concept in search of a definition, Inaki Aguirre.

Don't Come Home, America: The Case against Retrenchment

Abstract: After sixty-five years of pursuing a grand strategy of global leadership—nearly a third of which transpired without a peer great power rival—has the time come for the United States to switch to a strategy of retrenchment? According to most security studies scholars who write on the future of U.S. grand strategy, the answer is an unambiguous yes: they argue that the United States should curtail or eliminate its overseas military presence, abolish or dramatically reduce its global security commitments, and minimize or eschew efforts to foster and lead the liberal institutional order. Thus far, the arguments for retrenchment have gone largely unanswered by international relations scholars. An evaluation of these arguments requires a systematic analysis that directly assesses the core claim of retrenchment advocates that the current “deep engagement” grand strategy is not in the national interests of the United States. This analysis shows that advocates of retrenchment radically overestimate the costs of deep...

Empirical research on sovereign debt and default

Abstract: In this article, we review the empirical literature about sovereign debt and default. As we survey the work of economists, historians, and political scientists, we also emphasize parallel developments by theorists and recommend steps to improve the correspondence between theory and data.

Theory is dead, long live theory: The end of the Great Debates and the rise of eclecticism in International Relations:

Abstract: The history of the discipline of International Relations is commonly told in terms of ‘Great Debates.’ These intellectual clashes resolved little and, indeed, continue to this day. Underneath this ...

How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind: The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality

Abstract: In the United States at the height of the Cold War, roughly between the end of World War II and the early 1980s, a new project of redefining rationality commanded the attention of sharp minds, powerful politicians, wealthy foundations, and top military brass Its home was the human sciences - psychology, sociology, political science, and economics, among others - and its participants enlisted in an intellectual campaign to figure out what rationality should mean and how it could be deployed How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind brings to life the people - Herbert Simon, Oskar Morgenstern, Herman Kahn, Anatol Rapoport, Thomas Schelling, and many others - and places, including the RAND Corporation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Cowles Commission for Research and Economics, and the Council on Foreign Relations, that played a key role in putting forth a "Cold War rationality" Decision makers harnessed this picture of rationality - optimizing, formal, algorithmic, and mechanical - in their quest to understand phenomena as diverse as economic transactions, biological evolution, political elections, international relations, and military strategy The authors chronicle and illuminate what it meant to be rational in the age of nuclear brinkmanship

The future of critical security studies: Ethics and the politics of security

Abstract: ‘Critical security studies’ has come to occupy a prominent place within the lexicon of International Relations and security studies over the past two decades. While disagreement exists about the bo...

Gendering Global Conflict: Toward a Feminist Theory of War

Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The (Genderless) Study of War in International Relations 2. Gender Lenses Look at War(s) 3. Anarchy 4. Relations International and War(s) 5. Gender 6. People 7. Gendered Strategy 8. Gendered Tactics 9. Living Gendered War(s) Conclusion: (A) Feminist Theory/ies of War(s) Notes Index

Core, periphery and (neo)imperialist International Relations

Abstract: This article analyzes the core–periphery dynamics that characterize the International Relations discipline. To this end, it explores general insights offered by both science studies and the social sciences in terms of the intellectual division of labor that characterizes knowledge-building throughout the world, and the social mechanisms that reproduce power differentials within given fields of study. These arguments are then applied to International Relations, where specific factors that explain the global South’s role as a periphery to the discipline’s (mainly US) core and the ways in which peripheral communities place themselves vis-a-vis International Relations’ (neo)imperialist structure are both explored.

Land Grabbing as Security Mercantilism in International Relations

Abstract: International studies routinely consign agri-food relations to the analytical margins, despite the substantive historical impact of the agri-food frontiers and provisioning on the structuring of the interstate system As a case in point, current restructuring of the food regime and its global political-economic coordinates is expressed through the process of ‘land grabbing’ Here, the crisis of the WTO-centered corporate food regime, which has neoliberalized Southern agriculture while sustaining Northern agro-food subsidies, is manifest in a new form of mercantilism of commandeering offshore land for supplies of food, feed, and fuel This article examines the content and implications of this new ‘security mercantilism’, which both affirms and contradicts a neoliberal order, anticipating a shift in international relations around resource grabbing Los estudios internacionales destinan periodicamente las relaciones de los productos agroalimentarios a los margenes analiticos, a pesar del impacto historico fu

Legitimacy, trust and compliance: an empirical test of procedural justice theory using the European Social Survey

Abstract: Book synopsis: Based on an interdisciplinary conference held at the University of Cambridge in May 2012, Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: An International Exploration brings together internationally renowned scholars from a range of disciplines including criminology, international relations, sociology and political science to examine the meaning of legitimacy and advance its theoretical understanding within the context of criminal justice. In policy terms, the conference afforded a timely opportunity for criminal justice senior managers and researchers to discuss the practical applications and implications of legitimacy for policing and prisons. This resulting volume aims to: advance conceptual understanding of legitimacy in the contexts of policing and criminal justice; to develop a better understanding of the implications of analyses of legitimacy for the practical contexts of policing, prisons and criminal justice; and to recognise the growing number of contexts in which criminal justice personnel encounter ethnically and religiously diverse communities, such as the acute dilemmas for legitimate authority posed by perceived terrorist threats. Attention is also devoted to the growing importance of international organisations in relation to legitimacy, both in its international and domestic manifestations. The volume includes 16 substantial new contributions to this important field from leading political and theoretical scholars in the field, along with the results of several recent empirical studies. Together they constitute an unprecedented synthesis of disparate but leading thinkers in the growing field of legitimacy scholarship and should be of value to social scientists across different disciplines and to criminal justice practitioners.

Future challenges in the study of legitimacy and criminal justice

Abstract: Based on an interdisciplinary conference held at the University of Cambridge in May 2012, Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: An International Exploration brings together internationally renowned scholars from a range of disciplines including criminology, international relations, sociology and political science to examine the meaning of legitimacy and advance its theoretical understanding within the context of criminal justice. In policy terms, the conference afforded a timely opportunity for criminal justice senior managers and researchers to discuss the practical applications and implications of legitimacy for policing and prisons. This resulting volume aims to: advance conceptual understanding of legitimacy in the contexts of policing and criminal justice; to develop a better understanding of the implications of analyses of legitimacy for the practical contexts of policing, prisons and criminal justice; and to recognise the growing number of contexts in which criminal justice personnel encounter ethnically and religiously diverse communities, such as the acute dilemmas for legitimate authority posed by perceived terrorist threats. Attention is also devoted to the growing importance of international organisations in relation to legitimacy, both in its international and domestic manifestations.

Power, postcolonialism and international relations: Reading race, gender and class

Abstract: 1. Geeta Chowdhry and Sheila Nair - Introduction: Power in a Postcolonial World: Race, Gender and Class in International Relations 2. Siba N. Grovogui - Postcolonial Criticism: International Reality and Modes of Inquiry 3. Randolph B. Persaud - Situating Race in International Relations: the Dialectics of Civilizational Security in American Immigration 4. J. Marshall Beier - Beyond Hegemonic State(ment)s of Nature: Indigenous Knowledge and Non-State Possibilities in International Relations 5. L. H. M. Ling - Cultural Chauvinism and the Liberal International Order: 'West versus Rest' in Asia's Financial Crises 6. Anna M. Agathangelou - 'Sexing' Globalization in International Relations: Migrant Sex and Domestic Workers in Cyprus, Greece and Turkey 7. Sankaran Krishna - In One Inning: National Identity in Postcolonial Times 8. Shampa Biswas - The New Cold War: Secularism, Orientalism, and Postcoloniality 9. Dibyesh Anand - A Story to be Told: IR, Postcolonialism, and the Discourse of Tibetan (Trans)national Identity 10. Geeta Chowdhry - Postcolonial Interrogations of Child Labor: Human Rights, Carpet Trade, and Rugmark in India 11. Sheila Nair - Human Rights and Postcoloniality: Representing Burma

How is rape a weapon of war? Feminist International Relations, modes of critical explanation and the study of wartime sexual violence

Abstract: Rape is a weapon of war. This now common claim reveals wartime sexual violence as a social act marked by gendered power. But this consensus also obscures important, and frequently unacknowledged, differences in ways of understanding and explaining it. This article opens these differences to analysis. It interprets feminist accounts of wartime sexual violence in terms of modes of critical explanation and differentiates three modes – of instrumentality, unreason and mythology – which implicitly structure different understandings of how rape might be a weapon of war. These modes shape political and ethical projects and so impact not only on questions of scholarly content but also on the ways in which we attempt to mitigate and abolish war rape. Exposing these disagreements opens up new possibilities for the analysis of war rape.

Global Cities, Governance and Diplomacy: The Urban Link

Abstract: This book illustrates the importance of global cities for world politics and highlights the diplomatic connections between cities and global governance. While there is a growing body of literature concerned with explaining the transformations of the international order, little theorisation has taken into account the key metropolises of our time as elements of these revolutions. The volume seeks to fill this gap by demonstrating how global cities have a pervasive agency in contemporary global governance. The bookargues that looking at global cities can bring about three fundamental advantages on traditional IR paradigms. First, it facilitates an eclectic turn towards more nuanced analyses of world politics. Second, it widens the horizon of the discipline through a multiscalar image of global governance. Third, it underscores how global cities have a strategic diplomatic positioning when it comes to core contemporary challenges such as climate change. This book will be of much interest to students of urban studies, global governance, diplomacy and international relations in general. © 2013 Michele Acuto. All rights reserved.

The Translation Zone: Between Actor-Network Theory and International Relations

Abstract: This article examines the problem of how to translate actor-network theory into the field of international relations, and develops three arguments. Firstly, the article draws on Emily Apter’s notio...

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

Abstract: This report provides background information regarding the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), its structure, funding, budget, effectiveness, and reform.

The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees, and Minorities

Abstract: 1. Introduction Part I. Theory: 2. The international politics of assimilation, accommodation, and exclusion Part II. Empirical Evidence: 3. Why the Balkans? 4. Cross-national variation: nation-building in post-World War I Balkans 5. Odd cases: analysis of outliers 6. Subnational variation: Greek nation-building in western Macedonia, 1916-20 7. Temporal variation: Serbian nation-building toward Albanians, 1878-1941 8. Application of the theory beyond the Balkans 9. Conclusion.