World Politics (world + politics)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Distribution within Humanities and Social Sciences


Selected Abstracts


The UNHCR and World Politics: State Interests vs.

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW, Issue 1 2001
Institutional Autonomy
This article situates the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) within the context of world politics. States remain the predominant actors in the international political system. But this does not mean that international organizations like the UNHCR are completely without power or influence. Tracing the evolution of the agency over the past half century, this article argues that while the UNHCR has been constrained by states, the notion that it is a passive mechanism with no independent agenda of its own is not borne out by the empirical evidence of the past 50 years. Rather UNHCR policy and practice have been driven both by state interests and by the office acting independently or evolving in ways not expected nor necessarily sanctioned by states. [source]


Balancing Theory versus Fact, Stasis versus Change: A Look at Some Introductions to International Relations

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES, Issue 1 2004
Andrew J. Enterline
Do dramatic events in international relations (IR) signal fundamental changes in political behavior? How do international relations texts address change, and what are the implications of textbook design for the way that we teach undergraduate introductions to the field? This article provides an initial inquiry into these questions by surveying a sample of five international relations texts. Rather than seek to pick the best book, the article examines the methods by which the textbook authors balance theory versus facts, as well as stasis versus change, in formulating introductory frameworks. This analysis is motivated by way of a general comparison of the sample texts with Organski's (1958) text, World Politics. Finally, the author discusses the strengths and weaknesses of different balancing strategies, and the implications of these strategies for teaching introductions to international relations. [source]


Pieces On Our Craft: Short Attention Spans and Glazed Eyes: Teaching World Politics in the University Trenches

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES, Issue 4 2001
Steven Majstorovic
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


Identifying Rivals and Rivalries in World Politics

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2001
William R. Thompson
Instead of assuming that all actors are equally likely to clash, and that they do so independently of previous clashes, rivalry analysis can focus on the small number of feuding dyads that cause much of the trouble in the international system. But the value added of this approach will hinge in part on how rivalries are identified. Rivalry dyads are usually identified by satisfying thresholds in the frequency of militarized disputes occurring within some prespecified interval of time. But this approach implies a number of analytical problems including the possibility that rivalry analyses are simply being restricted to a device for distinguishing between states that engage in frequent and infrequent conflict. An alternative approach defines rivalry as a perceptual categorizing process in which actors identify which states are sufficiently threatening competitors to qualify as enemies. A systematic approach to identifying these strategic rivalries is elaborated. The outcome, 174 rivalries in existence between 1816 and 1999 are named and compared to the rivalry identification lists produced by three dispute density approaches. The point of the comparison is not necessarily to assert the superiority of one approach over others as it is to highlight the very real costs and benefits associated with different operational assumptions. The question must also be raised whether all approaches are equally focused on what we customarily mean by rivalries. Moreover, in the absence of a consensus on basic concepts and measures, rivalry findings will be anything but additive even if the subfield continues to be monopolized by largely divergent dispute density approaches. [source]


The Impact of Asia on World Politics: China and India Options for the United States,

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 4 2006
RONALD L. TAMMEN
The United States, by concentrating its intellectual, diplomatic, and military energy on the Middle East, is neglecting the far more substantial long-range challenges that will arise in Asia by mid-century. This strategic myopia is magnified by the lack of a clear national strategy, one that should be focused on recognizing the full implications of the rise of China and India into the ranks of great powers. Informed by theoretical arguments and offering policy options, this essay examines the coming Asian challenge against the backdrop of a world with three great powers potentially competing for resources, allies, and leadership within Asia and, more broadly, the international system. [source]


Empathy and Strategic Interaction in Crises: A Poliheuristic Perspective

FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 2 2009
Jonathan W. Keller
Empirical evidence supports the poliheuristic (PH) theory of decision making, which states that leaders typically employ a two-stage non-compensatory decision-making process. In stage one leaders reject options that do not meet some minimum criteria of acceptability on one or more dimensions, and in stage two they choose among the remaining options using a more rational utility-maximizing rule. While PH theory has primarily been applied at the monadic level, to explain the process and content of states' decisions, we contend it has important implications for strategic interaction and can help to explain outcomes in world politics. Specifically, we argue that a crucial variable shaping crisis outcomes is the degree to which leaders' non compensatory decision criteria in stage one include options' acceptability to the opponent. When leaders empathize with their opponent and screen out those options the opponent considers unacceptable, crises will be resolved more quickly and with a lower likelihood of escalation. Empathy introduced during the second, utility-maximizing stage, may also dampen conflict but is less effective than stage one empathy. We illustrate this dyadic non compensatory model by examining two cases involving the U.S.,China and U.S.,Iraq bilateral relationships. [source]


Leadership Style and International Norm Violation: The Case of the Iraq War

FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 1 2007
VAUGHN P. SHANNON
We examine the topic of decision making and norm violation in international politics. While constructivists emphasize norm conformity due to global social pressures, and realists emphasize the ease of norm violation due to self-interest and the lack of a world enforcer, we argue that these approaches fail to explain variation in normative behavior in foreign policy. We suggest that normative behavior is mitigated importantly by leaders' beliefs and decision-making styles. Leaders who view the international environment in state-centric, Hobbesian terms and are less sensitive to the political context are more likely to violate international norms than leaders who view world politics in more benign terms and are more sensitive to contextual pressures. We test these expectations by correlating key leadership traits of Bush Administration officials with their positions regarding the normatively suspect invasion of Iraq in 2003. The findings suggest that need for power, belief in ability to control events, ingroup bias, and especially distrust may be important predictors of one's willingness to violate international norms. We discuss the implications of our results for the prospect for international society to regulate force, and call for a third wave of constructivism wedded to its ideational ally of political psychology. [source]


Professionals of Geopolitics: Agency in International Politics

GEOGRAPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 6 2008
Merje Kuus
This article highlights the key role of intellectuals of statecraft , the politicians, academics, consultants, and pundits who regularly participate in and comment on the practice of international affairs , in the practice of geopolitics. These professionals command the institutional and cultural resources required to project particular geopolitical arguments as informed and authoritative. We, therefore, need to carefully unpack the ways in which they influence world politics. To focus on intellectuals of statecraft is not to assign superior or authentic knowledge to them or to needlessly glamorize the high places they inhabit. It is rather to analyse the practices that function as expert and legitimate in public debates. To this end, we need to examine not only what intellectuals of statecraft do or say, but also the institutional and cultural resources that they deploy in their daily practices. The article suggests some strategies for how such contextually rich accounts could be produced. [source]


ILLUSIONS OF POWER AND EMPIRE,

HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 4 2005
JAMES N. ROSENAU
ABSTRACT Subsequent to the end of the Cold War, analysts groped for an understanding of the overall structures of world politics that marked the emergence of a new epoch. As a result, the concept of empire became a major preoccupation, with the economic and military power of the United States considered sufficient for regarding it as an empire. Due to the proliferation of new microelectronic technologies and for a variety of other specified reasons, however, the constraints inherent in the new epoch make it seem highly unlikely that the U.S. or any other country can ever achieve the status of an empire. In effect, the substantial shrinkage of time and distance in the current period has led to the replacement of the age of the nation-state that originated with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 with the age of the networked individual. It is an age that has developed on a global scale and that has brought an end to the history of empires. [source]


George W. Bush, Idealist

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Issue 3 2003
Michael J. Mazarr
There is much anger and confused grumbling these days outside the United States,and in Europe in particular,about the character of the Bush administration's foreign policy. Perceived American unilateralism is raising hackles and questions. This article contends that current trends in US foreign policy can be better understood by realizing that many senior Bush administration officials are not ,realists', at least as that philosophy of world politics is classically understood. Many of the resulting views,that, for example, threats to security often originate in ideology rather than material strength,are demonstrably correct and even hopeful in their faith in long-term historical trends. But there may be no getting around the essential contradictions required of US foreign policy in an age when America is the leading power, when a new global community of trading democracies is emerging, and yet when a number of distinctly old-style threats to the peace remain very much in evidence. Washington could do more to smooth the edges of those contradictions in order to point up the idealism and hopefulness of US policy. [source]


Commentary: Martians and Venutians in the new world order

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Issue 3 2003
Michael Cox
One of the most significant results of 9/11 has been to provoke the most serious crisis in the transatlantic relationship,the subject of Robert Kagan's influential and provocative treatise. Lauded by some as one of the more important contributions to the study of world politics in recent years and attacked by others as possibly the most misguided analysis of European,American relations ever, Kagan sets forth in stark, realist terms why the rift is serious, long-term and unlikely to be overcome by neat diplomatic footwork. However, as this commentary seeks to show, if Kagan is right there is little chance of constructing anything like a ,new world order'. Moreover, if the clash continues, far from enhancing American power in the world, it is more likely to weaken it. [source]


The UNHCR and World Politics: State Interests vs.

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW, Issue 1 2001
Institutional Autonomy
This article situates the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) within the context of world politics. States remain the predominant actors in the international political system. But this does not mean that international organizations like the UNHCR are completely without power or influence. Tracing the evolution of the agency over the past half century, this article argues that while the UNHCR has been constrained by states, the notion that it is a passive mechanism with no independent agenda of its own is not borne out by the empirical evidence of the past 50 years. Rather UNHCR policy and practice have been driven both by state interests and by the office acting independently or evolving in ways not expected nor necessarily sanctioned by states. [source]


Beyond Presentism: Rethinking the Enduring Co-constitutive Relationships between International Law and International Relations,

INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 3 2010
Rémi Bachand
This paper challenges the views in the fields of International Relations and International Law that treat the significance of law in the international system solely on the basis of the contemporary context marked by the increased institutionalization of world politics. Instead of focusing on the relationship between rules and the conduct of actors, we conceptualize the co-constitutive relationship between law and politics, and incorporate the multiple forms of legal-political expression that constitute power relations and dynamics into our analysis. Three dimensions of the co-constitutive relations between Law and Politics are explored: legal forms, legal constraints, and the indeterminacy of law. [source]


For a Public International Relations

INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2008
George Lawson
The last few years have seen an opening up of what is considered to be the legitimate terrain of international relations (IR). This move is, for the most part, extremely welcome. Yet, the multiple theoretical and empirical openings in IR since the end of the Cold War have failed to elucidate many of the puzzles, questions and problems posed by the contemporary conjuncture. There are a number of reasons for this failure ranging from the stickiness of Cold War problem fields to IR's continued attachment to systemic-level theories. However, this article focuses less on symptoms than on treatment and, in particular, on how generating a more "public" international relations enterprise might help to connect IR with the core theoretical, empirical and normative terrain of "actually existing" world politics. Taking its cue from recent debates in sociology about how to generate a "public sociology," the article lays out three pathologies that a public IR enterprise should avoid and four ground rules,amounting to a manifesto of sorts,which sustain the case for a "public" international relations. [source]


Making and Remaking the World for IR 101: A Resource for Teaching Social Constructivism in Introductory Classes

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES, Issue 1 2003
Alice Ba
Abstract Social constructivism is now the main theoretical challenger to established perspectives within the discipline of international relations. Unfortunately, the contributions and standing of constructivist approaches in the discipline are not mirrored in undergraduate textbooks for introductory international relations courses. In this article, we present a lecture template containing a broad synthesis of the main tenets of constructivist thought and discuss how constructivism approaches patterns and phenomena of world politics. The lecture is framed by comparing constructivism with the generally statist treatment that topics receive in mainstream international relations as exemplified by neorealism and neoliberalism. This article is designed to provide accessible supporting material for teaching social constructivism to introductory international relations classes. [source]


Feminist Perspectives on 9/11

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES, Issue 4 2002
J. Ann Tickner
In this article I offer a feminist analysis of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath. I demonstrate how gendered discourses are used in this and other conflict situations to reinforce mutual hostilities. I suggest that men's association with war,fighting and national security serves to reinforce their legitimacy in world politics while it acts to create barriers for women. Using the framework of a post,9/11 world, I offer some alternative models of masculinity and some cultural representations less dependent on the subordination of women. Often in times of conflict women are seen only as victims. I outline some ways in which the women of Afghanistan are fighting against gender oppression and I conclude with some thoughts on their future prospects. [source]


Paradigmatic Faults in International-Relations Theory

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2009
Patrick Thaddeus Jackson
American scholars routinely characterize the study of international relations as divided between various Kuhnian "paradigms" or Lakatosian "research programmes." Although most international relations scholars have abandoned Kuhn's account of scientific continuity and change, many utilize Lakatosian criteria to assess the "progressive" or "degenerative" character of various theories and approaches in the field. We argue that neither specific areas of inquiry (such as the "democratic peace") nor broader approaches to world politics (such as realism, liberalism, and constructivism) deserve the label of "paradigms" or "research programmes." As an alternative, we propose mapping the field through Weberian techniques of ideal-typification. [source]


Singing Our World into Existence: International Relations Theory and September 11

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2004
February 2, Portland, Presidential Address to the International Studies Association
This paper focuses on the relationship between International Relations theory and ethics. It poses the question of the complicity of the discipline in the events of September 11, 2001. The paper begins with a discussion of Weber's notion of science as a vocation, and links this to the commitment in the discipline to a value-free conception of social science, one that sharply separates facts from values. The paper then examines the role of ten core assumptions in International Relations theory in helping to construct a discipline that has a culturally and historically very specific notion of violence, one resting on distinctions between economics and politics, between the outside and the inside of states, and between the public and the private realms. Using the United Nations Human Development report, the paper summarizes a number of forms of violence in world politics, and questions why the discipline of International Relations only focuses on a small subset of these. The paper then refers to the art of Magritte, and specifically Velazquez's painting Las Meninas, to argue for a notion of representation relevant to the social world that stresses negotiation, perspective, and understanding rather than notions of an underlying Archimedean foundation to truth claims. In concluding, the paper asserts that the discipline helped to sing into existence the world of September 11 by reflecting the interests of the dominant in what were presented as being neutral, and universal theories. [source]


Power, Borders, Security, Wealth: Lessons of Violence and Desire from September 11

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2004
Anna M. Agathangelou
America's "war on terror" and Al Qaeda's "jihad" reflect mirror strategies of imperial politics. Each camp transnationalizes violence and insecurity in the name of national or communal security. Neoliberal globalization underpins this militarization of daily life. Its desire industries motivate and legitimate elite arguments (whether from "infidels" or "terrorists") that society must sacrifice for its hypermasculine leaders. Such violence and desire draw on colonial identities of Self vs. Other, patriotism vs. treason, hunter vs. prey, and masculinity vs. femininity that are played out on the bodies of ordinary men and women. We conclude with suggestions of a human security to displace the elite privilege that currently besets world politics. [source]


Two-Level Security Management and the Prospects for New Democracies: A Simulation Analysis

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2000
Marc V. Simon
Most new democracies face serious internal, ethnic/separatist conflicts; in addition, some face international threats. The literature on the growth of democracy in the global system and its impact on world politics does not fully account for the dual threats all states must address in managing their security. Based on theoretical work by Starr (1994) which describes the "common logic" of conflict processes in war and revolution, we outline a model of how states respond to security threats from both external and internal sources. Using computer simulation, we analyze the model and evaluate the relative importance for state security of factors such as system size, numbers of democracies in the system, extraction/allocation strategy pursued by new democracies, and government legitimacy level. Our results show that new democracies thrive in systems that are predominantly democratic. Also, ally support can provide crucial resources for new democracies facing internal threats. Finally, "endangered" democracies can recover security by attempting to buy off domestic threats rather than deter them, and by improving legitimacy. [source]


The Politics of Population

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 4 2006
TADEUSZ KUGLER
This essay evaluates the implications of international political development on demographic transitions and economic outcomes from 1980 to 2050. Countries with high levels of political capacity experience the sharpest declines in birth and death rates as well as the greatest gains in income. Politics indirectly and directly affects the environment within which individuals make decisions about the size of families; these decisions, in turn, change the future economic dynamics of a country. We find that political capacity ensures that rules are evenly applied, allowing investment for long-term gain. Our projections show that under conditions of high political capacity, anticipated demographic and economic transformations will allow China to supersede the dominance of the United States by the end of this century and will also enable the rise of India into the ranks of the dominant powers. We assess the consequences of these changes in world politics. [source]


Systemic Leadership, Evolutionary Processes, and International Relations Theory: The Unipolarity Question,

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 1 2006
WILLIAM R. THOMPSON
Scholars disagree about the nature of the current international distribution of power and its implications for world politics. Is the current system unipolar, and, if so, is unipolarity likely to persist for very long? Fifteen generalizations about the structure of the international system are culled from the literature and addressed critically from a leadership long cycle point of view. Although the current system is militarily unipolar, it is not buttressed by a new wave of radical technological innovation that is critical to the operation of systemic leadership. Until or unless US military predominance is based on economic predominance, the effects of unipolarity are likely to be relatively weak and probably also short-lived. [source]


The New Sovereignty in International Relations,

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 3 2003
David A. Lake
The academic study of sovereignty is undergoing a mini-renaissance. Stimulated by criticisms of classical conceptions of sovereignty in systemic theories of politics, scholars returned to sovereignty as a topic of inquiry in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Their studies are finally bearing fruit. This essay focuses on the new conceptions of sovereignty that are emerging and (1) discusses the fundamental nature of sovereignty, (2) reviews the classical perspective on sovereignty, (3) surveys new constructivist alternatives to this classical view, (4) examines important new work on the problematic nature of sovereignty, (5) identifies continua of hierarchic relationships that make sense of the various forms of mixed or restricted sovereignty that we observe in world politics, and (6) argues why it is important to study alternative, hierarchic relationships in international relations. The principal themes throughout are that sovereignty is far more problematic than recognized in the classical model, that important elements of hierarchy exist in the global system, and that both our theories and practice of international politics would be improved by explicitly incorporating variations in hierarchy. [source]


A flawed perspective: the limitations inherent within the study of Chinese nationalism1

NATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 1 2009
ALLEN CARLSON
ABSTRACT. Is nationalism in China on the rise? Is it making China more combative in the international arena? More fundamentally: Is a focus on nationalism the most effective intellectual framework for understanding how those living within the People's Republic of China (PRC) are defining their position in contemporary world politics? This article briefly answers each of these questions. It argues that, despite forwarding some compelling insights, previous work on Chinese nationalism has been undermined by a number of major flaws. It then finds that such shortcomings are in no small part a product of the narrowing gaze that a focus on nationalism alone imposes on the study of identity politics. The article then advocates that in place of the nationalism rubric, a turn to the broader question of national identity formation is merited. Utilising this perspective, it concludes by cautioning that incipient splits within contemporary Chinese national identity may portend a more tumultuous relationship between China and the rest of the world in the years to come. [source]


12.,Transculture: A Broad Way Between Globalism and Multiculturalism

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2009
Article first published online: 18 FEB 200, Mikhail Epstein
This paper develops a concept of transculture as a model of cultural development that differs from both leveling globalism and isolating pluralism. While culture frees humans from the material dependencies of nature, it also creates new, symbolic dependencies,on customs, traditions, conventions, which a person receives as a member of a certain group and ethnos. Among the many freedoms proclaimed as rights of the individual, there emerges yet another freedom,from one's own culture, in which one was born and educated. Transculture is viewed as the next level of liberation, this time from the "prison house of language," from unconscious predispositions and prejudices of the "native," naturalized cultures. The case of the Japanese poet Araki Yasusada (1903,1972), a survivor of Hiroshima, demonstrates how transcultural creativity, though cast in the form of a literary hoax, can produce an internationally recognized achievement. Transculturalism is especially needed in world politics, where the factor of fixed cultural identity based on race, ethnos, religion, or ideological commitments turned out to be a source of conflict and violence. This paper argues that the categories of opposition and identity do not preclude the significance of the third category, which is difference. The differences complement each other and create a new interpersonal transcultural community to which we belong, not because we are similar but because we are different. The transcultural perspective opens a possibility for globalization not as homogenization but, rather, as further differentiation of cultures and their "dissemination" into transcultural individuals, liberating themselves from their dependence from their native cultures. The global society can be viewed as the space of diversity of free individuals rather than that of fixed groups and cultures. It is an alternative to the clash of civilizations and a hope for lasting peace. [source]


The United Nations as a Vehicle for Dialogue

PEACE & CHANGE, Issue 4 2003
Courtney B. Smith
The United Nations (UN) proclaimed 2001 as the Year of Dialogue among Civilizations in an effort to examine how confrontation and hostility in world politics could be replaced by discourse and understanding. However, in the midst of this process the world was witness to the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Since terrorism represents the antithesis to dialogue, the UN's discussion of these issues became more urgent and focused. Two major documents were produced, but they do not explore adequately the United Nations' potential role in regard to building dialogue. This article begins this undertaking by considering the UN as a forum for debate where different peoples of the world meet and as a catalyst for an ongoing process of interaction and change. In other words, serious thinking about the UN's role as a vehicle for dialogue requires appreciating both its passive and dynamic characteristics and functions. [source]


Critical Dialogues: Habermasian Social Theory and International Relations1

POLITICS, Issue 3 2005
Alexander Anievas
The works of Jürgen Habermas have been a theoretical inspiration for many students of international relations (IR). To date, however, the majority of critical IR approaches drawing from the Habermasian perspective have done so on purely philosophical grounds. This article will thus explore the utility of the social-theoretical aspects of Habermas's work for critical inquiries into world politics. To this end, it will examine four main elements of his work: the theory of communicative action; public sphere; lifeworld/system architecture; and discourse ethics. It will be argued that adopting the Habermasian conceptual apparatus provides a social-theoretical route to explaining the contradictory and often paradoxical nature of international relations in the epoch of ,globalisation'. While various constructivist approaches to IR have recently offered more socially-oriented applications of Habermas's theoretical framework, the majority of these studies have done so from predominately non-critical standpoints. This article will thus seek to explore the utility of Habermas's work in offering a critical social theory of world politics. [source]