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41342. Knowledge and Cooperation: A Liberal Interpretation
- Author:
- Richard L. Gordon
- Publication Date:
- 01-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- Daniel B. Klein's fascinating exposition of the case for limited government argues that understanding of the complexity of knowledge and its use to coordinate human actions indicates the impossibility of successful interventions by governments. His basic point is that knowledge is not simply something that always can be purchased on the open market and readily employed. People may create the knowledge that they utilize, and it always must be interpreted properly. Intervention kills such initiatives.
41343. The Case for Polarized Politics: Why America Needs Social Conservatism
- Author:
- David Lampo
- Publication Date:
- 01-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- It might seem odd that, in a time when political pundits routinely condemn the rampant if not unprecedented polarization in American politics, one writer would try to make the case that polarized politics is a good thing, but that is indeed what former Reagan advisor Jeffrey Bell attempts in The Case for Polarized Politics: Why America Needs Social Conservatism . His arguments to justify an outspoken social conservatism as necessary to both the success of the Republican Party and the long-term success of what he calls "American exceptionalism," however, fall short on several levels.
- Political Geography:
- America
41344. Politics, law, and the sacred: a conceptual analysis
- Author:
- Friedrich V. Kratochwil
- Publication Date:
- 01-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of International Relations and Development
- Institution:
- Central and East European International Studies Association
- Abstract:
- The 'return' of religion has not only engendered new conflicts in world politics, but also fundamentally challenged the Western political project, which allegedly rests on a strict separation of the public and private sphere. Religion is supposed to play a role only within the confines of the latter, as it is considered a 'privately held belief'. Of course, this project is neither shared by all Westerners, nor is it necessarily persuasive to other cultures. Thus within the emerging global sphere it is by no means clear whether such a strict separation can muster assent.(Barbato and Kratochwil 2009: 1–24) For this reason some thinkers, such as Habermas (2003) or Connolly (1999), among many, have attempted to formulate a new approach in which ways of overcoming the dis- placement of religions to the 'private/personal' realm are explored, in order to harness the semantic potential of religion for the establishment of a discourse on global order, while avoiding at the same time the establishment of a particular orthodoxy or of a millenarian political projects based on the notion of absolute 'truth'.
- Topic:
- Human Rights and Law
41345. Governmentality's (missing) international dimension and the promiscuity of German neoliberalism
- Author:
- Hans-Martin Jaeger
- Publication Date:
- 01-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of International Relations and Development
- Institution:
- Central and East European International Studies Association
- Abstract:
- An important insight from the recent publication of Foucault's governmentality lectures for International Relations (IR) is that international manifestations of governmentalities such as police and liberalism, rather than constituting mere domestic analogies, have inherently international dimensions. Police and liberalism are both constituted by and constitutive of the international contexts in which they emerge: historically, the European balance of power and a 'globalisation' of markets, respectively. However, Foucault's account of German and American neoliberalism in the twentieth century omits references to the international context. This article first reconstructs the 'domestic-international nexus' in Foucault's account of police and liberalism, and then recovers aspects of the missing international dimension of his analysis of German neoliberalism with recourse to Wilhelm Röpke's writing on IR. The upshot of this recovery effort is threefold. First, the international remains pivotal to (mid-) twentieth-century neoliberal governmentality. Second, (German) neoliberalism's association with multiple 'international' governmentalities, including liberal and non-liberal ones, exposes neoliberalism as a 'promiscuous' mode of governance. Third, German neoliberalism's promiscuity is underwritten by (though not reducible to) a conservative ethos of moderation. More broadly, this article contributes to efforts to theorise the relationship between domestic and international politics, and to understand neoliberalism as a 'variegated' phenomenon.
- Political Geography:
- America and Germany
41346. Locating the normative within economic science: towards the analysis of hidden discourses of democracy in international politics
- Author:
- Milja Kurki
- Publication Date:
- 01-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of International Relations and Development
- Institution:
- Central and East European International Studies Association
- Abstract:
- Economic science has been overwhelmingly perceived as a 'positive' science, both among economists and many scholars in other social sciences. As a result, there has been an estrangement between the 'scientific' study of economics and the study of 'fuzzier' matters of normative nature. Crucially, it is often assumed that economists — whether academics or practitioners — have little to say about democracy, a concept that is famously normative and contested in nature. This article argues that this perception is mistaken and misleading. When several key figures in economic science are examined in detail, we can see that their economic theories are, in fact, deeply intertwined with certain normative visions of democracy, even if implicitly. Recognising the role of hidden normative theories of democracy within economic science perspectives is important theoretically, in re-reading the nature and scope of economic science discourses. It is also, however, important in understanding some key world political trends. It is argued here that we are in a better position to understand the curious 'dabbling' of global financial organisations in matters of 'political nature' when we remain attuned to the role of hidden democratic assumptions. Also, the complex role of these organisations in 'democracy promotion', and the nature of democracy promotion itself, can thus be better appreciated.
- Topic:
- Politics
41347. Caribbean development alternatives and the CARIFORUM–European Union economic partnership agreement
- Author:
- Anthony Payne, Matthew Louis Bishop, and Tony Heron
- Publication Date:
- 01-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of International Relations and Development
- Institution:
- Central and East European International Studies Association
- Abstract:
- The Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) signed in October 2008 between the Caribbean and the European Union has been the subject of much controversy. There has been a marked split within the Caribbean between the officials and politicians who negotiated — and thus championed — the EPA and the wider academic and civil society community that subjected it to heavy criticism. The paper examines these debates in detail and situates them within the broader intellectual and practical panorama of Caribbean development alternatives. Specifically, it discusses how the terrain upon which development has been both theorised and practised in the region has narrowed significantly since the 1980s, with the EPA being the latest manifestation of this evolving trend. The paper consequently goes beyond an analysis of the short-term politics of the EPA to elucidate the deeper, structural explanations for the divisions over the EPA between the policy and academic communities and the wider implications of the Agreement for contemporary Caribbean development.
- Topic:
- Development
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Caribbean
41348. The Common Agricultural Policy Health Check: time to check the health of the theory of the reform?
- Author:
- Marko Lovec and Emil Erjavec
- Publication Date:
- 01-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of International Relations and Development
- Institution:
- Central and East European International Studies Association
- Abstract:
- In 2008, the ministers of agriculture of European Union member states made a political agreement on the Common Agricultural Policy reform, also known as the Health Check. The reform coincided with three things: the ongoing Doha round of the World Trade Organization negotiations; political pressures to limit the costs of the policy financed from the common budget; and various 'new' policy issues. Rational institutional and constructivist approaches, which are often viewed as theoretical alternatives with each explaining some aspects of the reform, have employed simplified and narrow abstractions in conceptualising the role of these policy contexts. In order to identify the mechanisms facilitating the Health Check, a critical realist approach is proposed here, arguing that the relationship among the trade negotiations, budget bargaining, new issues and the policy reform can be explained by theoretically endorsing the asymmetrical development of the agricultural production factors and of production relations. A qualitative analysis is used to determine which of these three approaches seems to be better able to explain the empirical evidence.
- Topic:
- Development and Reform
- Political Geography:
- Europe
41349. The feasibility of an expanded regime on the use of force: the case of the responsibility to protect
- Author:
- Douglas Brommesson and Henrik Friberg Fernros
- Publication Date:
- 01-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of International Relations and Development
- Institution:
- Central and East European International Studies Association
- Abstract:
- This article addresses the question of whether an expanded regime on the use of force, based on the report The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) of 2001, would be feasible. The formula of the R2P has since found its way into the United Nations machinery via the final resolution from the World Summit in 2005 and can be seen as an emerging and more permissive norm on the use of force in cases of humanitarian catastrophes. The question of whether or not the theoretical framework of the norm is feasible is therefore urgent. Our analysis of feasibility is based on three logics of human action: the logic of consequence, logic of appropriateness and logic of arguing. We argue that each of these logics contains aspects that must be observed before a regime can be considered feasible. These logics are coupled with three mechanisms of socialisation of norms: strategic calculation, role-playing and normative suasion. We construct a minimal standard for a feasible regime by deducing requirements from the logics and their mechanisms, and then apply that standard to the content of the ICISS report. The empirical results show that the report must address the fact that it lacks qualities in regard to all three logics, before the expanded regime can be considered feasible.
41350. You Say You Want a Revolution...Then What? The Challenges of Media Training in Post-Qaddafi Libya: A First-Person Essay
- Author:
- Carolyn Robinson
- Publication Date:
- 02-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- National Endowment for Democracy
- Abstract:
- CIMA announces the release of a special report, You Say You Want a Revolution … Then What?, a first-person account by veteran journalist and media trainer Carolyn Robinson of her experiences training broadcast journalists in Libya after the death of leader Moammar Qaddafi. Robinson outlines some of the unusual obstacles and challenges she faced in managing two USAID/OTI grants in Libya for Internews in the very early days after the revolution, and how her team came up with novel approaches to overcome the special circumstances they faced on the ground. Her essay is not so much about what can and should be done for media development in Libya today, but about how to structure training in chaotic post-conflict environments.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Democratization, Development, Oil, Mass Media, and Regime Change
- Political Geography:
- Libya, Arabia, and North Africa