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International Relations Scholarship (international + relations_scholarship)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

The Logic of Positive Engagement: Dealing with Renegade Regimes

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES, Issue 4 2006
MIROSLAV NINCIC
This article is intended to offset, partially at least, the lopsided stress placed by international relations scholarship on punitive pressures, at the expense of positive inducements, as tools for bringing renegade regimes into compliance with internationally accepted norms of behavior. I discuss the focus on punishment as a tool of foreign policy and the reasons why this bias has provided disappointing results. Using a parallel theoretical framework, I then discuss the forms that inducements can assume and the circumstances encouraging their success. The hypotheses thus derived are applied to a number of specific policy challenges. The bottom line is that inducements can, at times, produce a direct quid pro quo from the target regime and, occasionally, can modify that regime's basic motivations, so that both punishments and rewards become less necessary. In any case, positive engagement is most effective when regime's position is being challenged from within. [source]

Westphalian Eurocentrism in International Relations Theory

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 2 2010
Turan Kayaoglu
In the past 10,15 years, an increasing number of revisionist scholars have rejected the most significant elements of the argument about the centrality of the Peace of Westphalia (1648) to the evolution and structure of international society. At the same time, the prominence of this argument has grown in the English School and constructivist international relations scholarship. I deconstruct the function of the Westphalian narrative to explain its pervasiveness and persistence. I argue that it was first developed by nineteenth century imperial international jurists and that the Westphalian narrative perpetuates a Eurocentric bias in international relations theory. This bias maintains that Westphalia created an international society, consolidating a normative divergence between European international relations and the rest of the international system. This dualism is predicated on the assumption that with Westphalia European states had solved the anarchy problem either through cultural or contractual evolution. Non-European states, lacking this European culture and social contract, remained in anarchy until the European states allowed them to join the international society,upon their achievement of the "standards of civilization." This Westphalian narrative distorts the emergence of the modern international system and leads to misdiagnoses of major problems of contemporary international relations. Furthermore, their commitment to the Westphalian narrative prevents international relations scholars from adequately theorizing about international interdependencies and accommodating global pluralism. [source]

Re-Assessing the "Power of Power Politics" Thesis: Is Realism Still Dominant?,

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 2 2005
Thomas C. Walker
Disagreements frequently arise over the dominant role played by realism in the study of international relations. Even though some scholars characterize the discipline by its rich theoretical diversity, others see realist concerns overshadowing all alternative theories. John Vasquez's The Power of Power Politics (1983) demonstrated how the realist paradigm had informed more than 90 percent of the data-based articles published from the end of World War II to 1970. In this Forum, we reevaluate the centrality of realism in international relations scholarship. Reviewing 515 data-based articles published from 1970 to 2000, we find that the proportion of articles informed by realism has been declining over the past three decades. From 1995 to 2000, liberalism surpassed realism as the leading guide to inquiry. This new theoretical pluralism calls into question the power of power politics thesis as a fitting description of contemporary research in international relations. [source]

Geopolitics and the Making of Regions: The Fall and Rise of East Asia

POLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 3 2009
Mark Beeson
There is a good deal of scepticism about the prospects for regionalism in East Asia. There are, however, grounds for supposing that the outlook for regional integration in East Asia is brighter than it has ever been, partly as a consequence of the rise of China. This article explains why an earlier attempt to integrate the region under Japanese imperialism failed, why US foreign policy has effectively foreclosed any possibility of East Asian integration up to now and why it may be accelerating as a consequence of China's growing economic and political impact on the region. To explain these different historical experiences I draw on a form of critical geopolitics which has recently emerged in economic and political geography and which can usefully be incorporated into international relations scholarship. [source]