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1. Contested leadership in international relations

Author:
Daniel Flemes and Steven E. Lobell
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
The articles in this special issue examine the responses to the rise of new and emerging powers including Brazil, China, India and South Africa across different regions. Rather than focus on great powers and hegemons, the contributors address the contestation between regional powers, and secondary and tertiary states. The contributors address three questions: What are the drivers of different strategic responses? What are the different regional responses to shifts in the distribution of material capabilities? What is the influence of agency and structure in contested regional orders? To address these questions, different schools are employed including realism, institutionalism, and the English school to examine state characteristics, systemic, sub-systemic, domestic constraints and opportunities, the role of ideas and shared values, and different regional governance structures.
Topic:
United Nations
Political Geography:
China, India, and Brazil

2. Why do secondary states choose to support, follow or challenge?

Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
<p>In this article we examine when and why secondary and tertiary states select a strategy that does not entail following the lead of the rising states. To address these questions we outline a simple model that examines systemic and sub-systemic (regional) constraints on and opportunities for secondary and tertiary states: how engaged in the region is the global hegemon, how many rising (and extra-regional) states are in the region, and which states are waxing and waning and by how much. These three characteristics create different opportunities for and constraints on secondary and tertiary states, which in turn influence the set of strategy choices of these states as they respond to the regional hegemon. Our model cannot account for the specific foreign policy strategies that secondary and tertiary states select. Such a model would require domestic and individual level variables. We leave it to the area specialists and experts in the following articles in the volume to introduce these variables and explain the specific strategies used. Instead, based on our model we can explain general tendencies toward accommodative strategies, resistance strategies and neutral strategies. It is important to note that secondary and tertiary states can use a mix of different strategies toward regional and global hegemons, such as resisting primary threats and accommodating secondary threats. Moreover, secondary and tertiary states are often engaged in multiple games a strategy might appear to be costly and suboptimal at one level but reasonable and optimal at another level. Finally, in selecting a strategy secondary and tertiary states factor the systemic, sub-systemic and domestic costs of the alternative strategies./p

3. Drivers of strategic contestation: The case of South America FREE

Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
<p>This article analyzes what the drivers of contestation of secondary powers vis--vis the regional power are, differentiating therein between structural, historical, behavioural and domestic such drivers. We argue that in regions characterized by relative stability where major interstate violent conflicts are unlikely, as is the case in South America, secondary powers rely mainly on soft-balancing mechanisms vis--vis the regional power. Whereas Brazils foreign policy behaviour is key to South American secondary powers being induced to contest the countrys powerhood, the choices that the foreign policy elites of those secondary powers make regarding what the specific expression of soft balancing is to be are influenced by certain domestic groups. Empirical examples are given of how Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Venezuela as secondary powers unfold these domestic drivers, which shape their different ways of soft balancing Brazil. The article thus explains why some secondary powers rely more on institutional binding, others on economic statecraft, or buffering, while others contest by offering and building alternative leadership proposals./p

4. Neither balance nor bandwagon: South American international society meets Brazil's rising power

Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
<p>This article examines the strategic positioning of Brazil in South America and how South America relates to Brazils rising status both globally and regionally. It does so from the perspective of international society known as the English school. This perspective emphasizes how Brazil shares a number of values and institutions with its neighbors that offer the foundations for a distinct regional international society in South America. It thus challenges the materialist stance held by realism which envisages that secondary powers either balance or bandwagon the dominant pole and affirms instead that South Americas strategies towards Brazil are more complex and nuanced than a simple polarity standpoint suggests./p

5. Revisiting consensual hegemony: Brazilian regional leadership in question

Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
<p>A central challenge confronting Brazilian foreign policy is its reluctance to accept measures that might restrict national autonomy. This limits the extent to which Brazil can lead and leverage the region, particularly in the face of competing visions such as ALBA and the Pacific Alliance. The issues is Brazils continued reliance on a consensual hegemony approach to regional relations after neighbouring countries opened space for a more assertive leadership closer to Pedersens model of cooperative hegemony. Although consensual hegemony allowed Brazil to establish its project in South America, by the end of Lulas first presidential term more was being demanded and the failure to provide leadership goods weakened Brazils regional position. Current questioning of Brazilian leadership on the continent is found in an almost contradictory approach that sees Brazilian diplomats pushing away suggestions of assertive leadership while more concrete action is quietly taken by other regionally engaged sections of the Brazilian state./p

6. Contested regional orders and institutional balancing in the Asia Pacific

Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
<p>The rise of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) is gradually transforming the international system from a unipolar world toward multipolarity. Chinas ascent not only challenges US domination, but also intensifies the institutionalization of security in the Asia Pacific. On the basis of institutional balancing theory, I argue that (i) Chinas rise has led to a competition among different regional orders, that is, the US-led bilateralism versus ASEAN-centered and China-supported multilateralism. However, conflicts or wars are not inevitable since the contested regional orders can coexist in the Asia Pacific. (ii) The deepening economic interdependence has encouraged regional powers, including the United States, China and ASEAN, to rely on different institutional balancing strategies to pursue security after the Cold War./p

7. Explaining the evolution of contestation in South Asia

Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
<p>Indias claims for regional hegemony have regularly been contested since its independence in 1947. The self-proclaimed emerging power is locked in an enduring rivalry with the South Asian secondary power, Pakistan. This article outlines the evolution of Pakistans contestation since independence and seeks to demonstrate how, when and why Pakistan adapted its foreign policy toward India. While the goals of Pakistans contestation remained constant, its means varied at two points in post-independence history. From 1947 to 1971, territorial disputes combined with a nascent nationalism drove the secondary powers foreign policy elite to engage in war and open resistance, and the divergent domestic political ideologies of both countries complicated conflict resolution. With Pakistans devastating war defeat in 1971, direct means of contestation were no longer an immediate option, and a period of reluctant acquiescence ensued. The alleged involvement of Pakistani intelligence proxies in a crisis in Jammu and Kashmir in 1987 marked the beginning of a renewed phase of resistance, though now through indirect means of nuclear coercion and subconventional warfare. This form of contestation has increasingly manifested itself in bilateral crises with high potential of escalation and primarily targeted symbols of Indias South Asian hegemony, including its political and commercial centres in Delhi and Mumbai in 2001 and 2008 respectively or Indias diplomatic representations in Afghanistan. The article concludes that the current conditions of regional contestation in South Asia, most importantly the persistent revisionist versus status-quo domestic agendas, the presence of growing nuclear arsenals, and multi-tiered Asian rivalry constellations, undermine prospects for conflict resolution and complicate modelling future strategic behaviour in the region./p

8. South Africa's symbolic hegemony in Africa

Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
<p>South Africas position on the African continent is widely seen to be one of dominance and leadership. No longer subject to the international opprobrium, post-apartheid South Africa launched a visionary campaign built around the notion of an African Renaissance to restructure continental institutions in line with its interests. This state-led effort was complemented by an aggressive commercial expansion by well-financed South African corporations to break into previously inaccessible markets across the continent. This populist depiction of South Africa is largely echoed in the scholarly literature on South African foreign policy towards Africa. But careful analysis of the South African foreign policy experience both in Africa and more broadly, suggests that these images are only partially realised at best and that they ignore a host of structural problems and outcomes. In particular, the case for South African hegemonic dominance over the continent is challenged by its material weakness and uneven record of foreign policy successes. Despite this, Pretoria is continually rewarded with leadership positions in international groupings, such as BRICS, G20 and nearly consecutive terms on the UN Security Council. We argue that this constitutes symbolic representivity and poses a continuing set of foreign policy dilemmas for South Africa and an international community as South Africa struggles to fulfil its hegemonic role in Africa./p

9. African agency? Africa, South Africa and the BRICS

Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
<p>African states, economies and societies are increasingly ambivalent about Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (the BRICS), especially their latest, fifth member, South Africa, as economic growth comes with costs, shorter- and longer-term, from social to ecological. Emerging economies, powers and societies may claim to be developmental but they still confront challenges of governance, especially of their non-renewable natural resources. Symbolic of the price of growth is continuing migration into South Africa, uneven scores on a range of indicators African Capacity Building Indicators (ACBI), Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), Human Development Index (HDI), Fragile States, Ibrahim Index and so on and the West African Commission on Drugs (WACD). The African Mining Vision (AMV) remains problematic despite or because of the BRICS./p

10. Parallels, prescience and the past: Analogical reasoning and contemporary international politics

Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
<p>Analogical reasoning has held a perpetual appeal to policymakers who have often drafted in historical metaphor as a mode of informing decision making. However, this article contends that since the beginning of the War on Terror, we have arguably seen the rise of a more potent form of analogy, namely ones that are selected because they fulfil an ideological function. Analogical reasoning as a tool of rational decision making has increasingly become replaced by analogical reasoning as a tool of trenchant ideologically informed policy justification. This article addresses three key areas that map out the importance of analogical reasoning to an understanding of developments in contemporary international politics: the relationship between history and politics, in intellectual and policy terms; a critical assessment of the appeal that analogical reasoning holds for policymakers; and the development of a rationale for a more effective use of history in international public policy making./p

11. Knowledge without power: International relations scholars and the US war in Iraq

Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
<p>In this article we present several important first steps toward understanding the role of academics in shaping US foreign policy identifying their policy views on one of the most salient foreign policy issues of this generation, the US War in Iraq; exploring how those views differ from public opinion more generally; and assessing the extent to which scholarly opinion was reflected in the public debate. To determine how IR scholars views on the invasion of Iraq differed from those of the public, we compare the answers of IR scholars at US colleges and universities to those of the US public on similar opinion survey questions. To this end, we analyze data from a unique series of surveys of IR scholars conducted by the Teaching, Research, and International Policy project./p

12. (Ac)Counting (for) their dead: Responsiveness to Iraqi civilian casualties in the US House of Representatives

Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
<p>While the subject of wartime civilian casualties has been recognized as an important issue in International Relations (IR), foreign policy and IR scholars have not systematically examined why and how US politicians respond to civilian deaths. This article explores the ethics of and reasons for responsiveness to Iraqi civilian deaths among politicians in the US House of Representatives from 2003 to 2008. The article argues that legislative deliberative responsiveness to civilian deaths is integral to a just debate about war. It finds evidence that partisanship, ideology and sex are associated with responsiveness to civilian deaths, and reveals stark differences in the purposes and tone of Democratic and Republican rhetoric about civilian casualties. The article provides researchers with a more thorough understanding of how and why civilian costs of war emerge within debates among US politicians, and has implications for studies on discourse ethics, congressional war politics and US foreign policy.</p>

13. Framing the threat of catastrophic terrorism: Genealogy, discourse and President Clinton's counterterrorism approach

Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
<p>A frequent argument in the literature on the US-led war on terror is that the war and its public discourse originated with the George W. Bush administration. This article seeks to explore the political discourse of terrorism and counterterrorism practices during the Clinton administration in order to challenge this perspective. By examining US administration discourses of terrorism, this article demonstrates deep continuities in counterterrorism approaches from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton, through to George W. Bush. The research suggests that, based on Reagans initial war on terrorism discourse, Clinton articulated the notion of catastrophic terrorism or new terrorism, which became a formative conception for the United States and its allies in the post-Cold War era. Clintons counterterrorism discourse then provided an important rhetorical foundation for President Bush to respond to the 2001 terrorist attacks. In other words, far from being a radical break, Bushs war on terror represents a continuation of established counter-terrorist understanding and practice./p

14. The roots of strategic failure: The Somalia Syndrome and Al Qaeda's path to 9/11

Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
<p>This article locates the origins of 9/11 in the increasingly globalized security context of the early post-Cold War period. In particular, it seeks to illuminate the causal connection between the disastrous US-UN humanitarian intervention in Somalia in 19921993 and the emergence of a permissive security environment that ultimately made the events of 11 September possible. It is argued here that the Somali crisis was a defining moment for US foreign policy in the post-Cold War era. It generated the Somalia Syndrome in Washington a risk-averse approach to intervention in civil conflicts which, as the terrorist attack on the United States in September 2011 subsequently revealed, had unintended but far-reaching international consequences./p

15. Rationality, norms and identity in international relations

Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
<p>This article examines major debates between rationalism and constructivism. It presents that there are politically significant motives of social actions, including norms and identity, which cannot be completely subsumed by the concept of instrumental rationality. These ideational or social-psychological motivations are governed primarily by thymos or affect (the moral or emotional part of the human personality) and/or value-oriented rationality. We need more flexible assumptions about main actors and their motives than those of rationalism to explain appropriately the politics of anger, loyalty and a sense of justice at international levels. However, constructivisms emphasis on ideational motivations cannot totally replace rationalism in explaining international political life. Constructivism maintains that identity or norms are causally prior to actors interests. Yet when there is conflict between pursuit of interests and maintenance of identity or norms, actors strong and well-defined self-interests can overrule their contested or unstable identity or norms. In short, causal arrows can flow in either direction between identity or norms and interests. This implies that rationalism and constructivism are complementary rather than competitive in explaining international political life./p

16. The responsibility to protect doctrine – Coherent after all: A reply to Friberg-Fernros and Brommesson

Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
<p>In a recent International Politics article, Henrik Friberg-Fernros and Douglas Brommesson argue that the responsibility to protect (R2P) doctrine, as it was originally introduced in the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) report, is incoherent. More specifically, they contend that there is a fundamental conflict between the implications of R2P and the six criteria the ICISS sets out to evaluate whether an intervention is justified. This article argues that these assertions are based on a misconception of how the criteria for justified intervention are interpreted in the ICISS report. Building on recent arguments from just war theory, I argue that three of these criteria do not stipulate when it is permitted to intervene, but rather what is permitted in an intervention. Subsequently, I demonstrate that in such an application, these criteria are not incompatible with the R2P.</p>

17. Escaping a security dilemma: Anarchy, certainty and embedded norms

Author:
Alan Collins
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article is a response to a significant development in the security dilemma literature contained in the work of Ken Booth and Nicholas Wheeler; their re-conceptualisation of the security dilemma. They correctly identify that what many writers call the security dilemma is actually a paradox and they seek to disentangle the dilemma from the paradox. This enables them to argue, without contradiction, that it is possible to transcend the security dilemma but not escape it. Indeed, they argue it is inescapable. The inescapable claim is based on uncertainty in state relations being omnipresent and uncertainty being the defining feature of a security dilemma. In this article I argue that certainty, in some cases misplaced, more accurately explains state interaction. Where that certainty is grounded in deeply embedded norms and beliefs about the other, and their relationship, the security dilemma has been escaped.
Topic:
Security

18. The Air-Sea Battle 'concept': A critique

Author:
Amitai Etzioni
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
In May 2013 the Pentagon released an unclassified summary of the top-secret Air-Sea Battle (ASB) Concept. ASB serves to focus the Pentagon's efforts to organize, train and equip the armed forces against advanced weapons systems that threaten the US military's unfettered freedom of access and action in the global commons. While officials claim ASB is merely improve service interoperability and could be applied in any number of conflict situations, this article argues that in fact the doctrine represents the Pentagon's plan for confronting China's increasingly capable and confident military. This raises two urgent questions: how does ASB fit into an overall US foreign policy toward China – and, if a military confrontation cannot be avoided, are there less risky alternatives, such a maritime blockade, that can achieve the same ends as ASB?
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
China

19. Constructing great powers: China's status in a socially constructed plurality

Author:
Catherine Jones
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
As a rising power, increasing attention is focused on what China does on the world stage. The growing number of books and articles on China's rise, whether it is sustainable, whether it is a model for other developing states, and most importantly whether it is likely to change the current international order, highlights the level of interest in this phenomenon. This article suggests that focusing on China alone is not enough; instead it is essential to view the rise of China exemplifying the relationship between international order, great powers' status, and the shaping of the roles and responsibilities of great powers. It argues that when seen as a part of the construction of international order, great powers are also constructs within international order; as a result, China as a 'great power' does not exist apart from the international order it is rising into. This perspective broadens the range of possible questions that can be asked in relation to China (and other rising powers).
Political Geography:
China

20. International relations between war and revolution: Wilsonian diplomacy and the making of the Treaty of Versailles

Author:
Alexander Anievas
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
The Peace Treaties of 1919 retain a prominent place within the study of International Relations (IR).The theoretical significance of Versailles for IR can hardly be overstated. For much rests on the question of whether the post-war settlement was problematic due to its liberal nature or in spite of it. Yet, explanations as to why Versailles diplomacy was so problematic vary significantly. What were the central factors affecting policymaking at Versailles? And what does Paris Peace diplomacy tell IR theory about modern foreign policymaking processes? This article provides a critique of standard IR interpretations of Wilsonian diplomacy at Versailles, illustrating how realist and liberals' uncritical acceptance of Wilson as the quintessential 'idealist-liberal' statesman glosses over a core contradiction at the heart of Wilsonian diplomacy: the wielding of power politics to transcend power politics. In doing so, it examines the effects of the Bolshevik revolution as a paradigm-rupturing event transforming the nature and dynamics of the First World War and the post-war settlement. This traces the unique sociological patterns of uneven and combined development thrown up by the war and the geopolitical problems this created for Wilson and the Allies in forging a new international order.
Topic:
Diplomacy and War

21. Why the crime of aggression will not reduce the practice of aggression

Author:
Davis Brown
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
The new crime of aggression in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court poses a puzzle for constructivism. Although the norm against aggression has the support of a critical mass of states for it to cascade, the crime against aggression is predicted to have no significant effect. The reason is that the crime is overbroad; it makes no provision for humanitarian intervention and other quasi-legal but arguably legitimate operations. Despite the intent of the crime\'s drafters, the statutory safeguards that prevent prosecutions for such operations are actually illusory. The crime as codified chills such quasi-legal but necessary operations, therefore it will not garner the support of a critical mass of frequent users of force that would be necessary for this norm to cascade also. Furthermore, the history of double-standards in other UN political and judicial bodies erodes confidence in the crime\'s impartial application.
Topic:
Humanitarian Aid

22. The existence and use of 'evil' in international politics

Author:
Anna Geis and Christopher Hobson
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
There is an extensive literature on acts, events and people in international politics that may be described as 'evil' , but much less work specifically focusing on how this idea operates and is used in an international context. This has begun to change recently, however, as a result of leading international figures–most notably George W. Bush–using the term prominently. This special issue seeks to further advance scholarship on these issues by moving beyond purely philosophical accounts on the nature of evil, and considering: how it has been used to frame the identities of actors in international relations (IR); whether it works to enable or preclude specific kinds of behaviour; and what role it plays as part of our moral and political vocabulary. This introduction provides a brief survey of the literature on evil in IR, and gives an overview of the contributions to the special issue.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
New York

23. Systemic evil and the international political imagination

Author:
Patrick Hayden
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
In light of the persistence of discourses of atrocity in the post-Holocaust era, and with the resurgence of talk of evil that followed 11 September 2001, it is clear that the idea of evil still possesses a powerful hold upon the modern imagination. Yet, the inter-play of evil and the political imagination–in particular, how different images of evil have shaped the discourses and practices of international politics–remains neglected. This article suggests that evil is depicted through three contending images within international politics–evil as individualistic, as statist and as systemic–and their corresponding forms of collective imagination–the juridical, the humanitarian and the political. It argues further that the dominance of the juridical and, to a lesser extent, the humanitarian imagination obscures our ability to imagine and respond to political evils of structural or systemic violence. Drawing on the example of global poverty, this article contends that the ability to portray and critically judge systemic evils in international politics today depends upon enriching our narratives about indefensible atrocities and reimagining our shared political responsibilities for them.

24. Beyond good and evil: Ethics in a world of complexity

Author:
David Chandler
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article seeks to analyse the shift away from the moral certainties of the Cold War epoch and of humanitarian interventions in the 1990s, to suggest that 'evil' plays a very different role in politics and international relations today. In current constructions of the world – as much more global, complex and non-linear – the past certainties of liberal internationalism appear to be a symptom of problematic moral hubris. Rather than the transcendental moral certainties of good and evil, globalization and complexity seem to suggest a more immanent perspective of emergent causality, eliciting a reflexive ethics of continual work on 'good' public modes of being. In which case, 'evil' is no longer considered to be an exception but becomes normalized as an ethical learning resource. The 2011 case of the mass killings by Norwegian Anders Breivik will be highlighted as an example of this process. This article suggests that this 'democratization' of evil is problematic in articulating evil as a revealed or emergent truth in the world that requires social and personal self-reflexivity, thereby suborning moral choice to onto-ethical necessity.
Topic:
International Relations and Cold War

25. The good, the bad, and the ugly: Comparing the notions of 'rogue' and 'evil' in international politics

Author:
Anna Geis and Carmen Wunderlich
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
The identification and naming of an 'enemy' is an age-old element within foreign policy and (domestic) security policy discourses. It serves to stabilize speakers' benign conceptions of the self, to structure threat perceptions of 'the world outside' and to legitimate ultimately violent policy options. This article compares the notions of 'rogue' and 'evil' in order to analyse the political implications of such a use of derogative actor categories. The notion of 'rogue states' has played an important role in the security strategies of the US presidents Clinton and in particular George W. Bush and alludes to criminal law. 'Evil' has been a much older, religiously loaded concept and has been invoked in politics for describing the inconceivable, monstrous violence and destruction. While many liberal critics argue that one should abandon the metaphysical category of evil and dispose of the stigmatizing category of the 'rogue', this article concludes with the suggestion that a self-reflexive use of these categories can be instructive: It can make 'us' – the very modern secular liberals – think about ourselves, about responsibility and moral standards as well as about the fundamental ambivalence of our actions.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
United States

26. Evilization in liberal discourse: From Kant's 'unjust enemy' to today's 'rogue state'

Author:
Harald Muller
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Liberal discourse should have a hard time looking for 'evil' in international relations. Standing on the pillar of rationalism and humanitarianism, there seems to be little space for the morally and emotionally charged notion of evil to enter considerations. Yet, the liberal belief in the freedom of will implies that humans are capable of turning against the advice of reason and opt for evil behavior and underlying principles. This possibility is epitomized by Kant's construction of the 'evil enemy'. Since 'evil' appears sporadically in international relations, with Hitler's Germany as prototype, its existence in the real world of international relations cannot be ruled out a priori. Designating an 'other' as evil is thus a discursive possibility. The practice to turn this possibility into reality is conceptualized here as 'evilization' in analogy to 'securitization'. There is strong variance among liberal democracies in applying this practice, ranging from 'pacifism' to 'militancy', which often leads to dire consequences. Deriving the principles of fallibility and prudence from liberal reasoning, this article concludes with the proposition that 'liberal pacifism' is the preferable option in most conceivable circumstances, but that the possibility of confronting political evil is rare, but existing.
Topic:
International Relations and Politics
Political Geography:
Germany and Cameroon

27. Appointing evil in international relations

Author:
Mona K. Sheikh
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article examines how evil has been conceptualised in the discipline of international relations and contributes to a body of critical literature that treats evil as a legitimacy bestowing label. By drawing on securitisation theory, it suggests developing a performative approach to evil as an alternative to descriptive and normative approaches. It is argued that such an approach would not only be valuable for understanding the effects of naming and grading evil, but also fulfils three additional functions. First, it facilitates a shift away from applying intention as the primary measure for determining matters of guilt and condemnation. Second, it challenges the privileged position of the powerful when appointing particular phenomena/adversaries as evil. Finally, it provides an analytical starting point for understanding conflict constellations where different parameters of legitimacy seem to clash. This last function requires particular sensitivity towards the audience and the cultural context of 'evilising' moves.
Topic:
International Relations

28. Collective evil and individual pathology: The depoliticization of violence against Afghan civilians

Author:
Harmonie Toros and Luca Mavelli
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article explores how the violence against Afghan civilians carried out by the Taliban and US 'rogue' soldiers has been accounted for as the product of, respectively, collective evil and individual pathology. These two seemingly contending explanations, it is argued, are part of the same strategy of depoliticization, which aims to provide support and legitimacy for the US-led war in Afghanistan. The article discusses how the genealogy of the discourse of collective evil surrounding the Taliban can be traced to an Orientalist political theodicy, which frames the Taliban as 'children of a lesser God' – that is, as fanatical puppets at the mercy of a violent God – and how the discourse of individual pathology surrounding the unsanctioned violence of US soldiers is instrumental to exempt military and civilian leadership from collusion and responsibility. The article challenges this latter narrative of individual blame by discussing how killing, torture and desecration of bodies are at the heart of warfare. Hence, it is concluded, the language of collective evil and individual pathology are part of the same strategy of depoliticization, which aims to silence political contestation and conceal the dehumanizing aspect of war, its structural production of violence, and the complex and dispersed nature of responsibility.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, and Taliban

29. Challenging 'evil': Continuity and change in the drug prohibition regime

Author:
Christopher Hobson
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
The 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is unique among UN conventions for the appearance of the term 'evil' in the document. Among all the possible wrongdoing and bad things that exist in the world, it is slightly counterintuitive that drugs are the only one to be labelled as 'evil' in international law. Adopting a 'conceptual politics' approach, the article will examine how drugs came to be identified in this manner, with a specific focus on the drafting of the 1961 Single Convention. The latter part of the article focuses on the contemporary relevance of this framing, considering how it contributes towards a much more restrictive environment in which serious change to the drug prohibition regime has proven to be a very difficult task. For those seeking reform it is not enough to demonstrate that the system does not work, they also must successfully challenge the idea of drugs as something evil and a threat to humanity. In concluding it is suggested that by returning to the Single Convention, one finds not only the language of 'evil', but also a more flexible position that allowed for revising the way drugs are dealt with. To bring about change in drugs prohibition regime, reformers will need to recover this more open and balanced approach to understanding drugs.
Topic:
Environment, International Law, Politics, and United Nations

30. Conceptual relics, mutual assured evilness and the struggle over Israeli public commonsense

Author:
Piki Ish-Shalom
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Iran's imminent rise to nuclear power status raises reasonable fears about the Middle East stability. Having examined the discursive exchange of Mutual Assured Evilness (MAE) by Iran and Israel, some political commentators and decision makers express doubts over the workability of nuclear stability. That is because they question whether these countries can overcome their mutual hatred and find the requisite instrumental rationality for nuclear stability. Their fears are exacerbated when they regard Iran as a religious country and hence supposedly incapable of rational behavior. However, the discourse of evil is not only indicative of hatred. Evil it seems is a conceptual relic encased in religious metaphysics. It is a datum that enables us to expose the religious layers that exist alongside secularism. Israel's hyperbolic use of the term evil resonates as strongly as it does because of the religious metaphysics that coexists with Israel's supposedly secular belief system. Therefore, in some ways, Israeli society may be closer to Iranian society than Israelis generally allow themselves to believe and all the while the two societies are locked in a dance of hatred and fear, fueled, among other things, by MAE.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
Iran, Middle East, and Israel

31. Kenneth Waltz, Adam Smith and the Limits of Science: Hard choices for neoclassical realism

Author:
Adam Quinn
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article argues that neoclassical realism (NCR), though it presents one of the most intuitively attractive frameworks for understanding states' actions, continues to struggle with a central conceptual tension. Some have argued that NCR is compatible with a structural realist approach, even that it is a 'logical extension' of it. Yet in seeking to identify law-like patterns of state behaviour arising from the varied features of states themselves, NCR appears to breach the outer limits of what Kenneth Waltz, the founding father of structural International Relations theory, thought tolerable in a theory of international politics. Thus, NCR arguably faces a fork in the road as to its future agenda and theoretical identity: should it limit itself essentially to chronicling anomalous occurrences within a fundamentally Waltzian paradigm, or try to map new rules of state behaviour on a scale that ultimately calls the primacy of Waltz's 'systemic imperatives' into question?
Topic:
International Relations

32. Kenneth Waltz and Leon Trotsky: Anarchy in the mirror of uneven and combined development

Author:
Justin Rosenberg
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Waltz's neorealist theory has been charged with falsely separating geopolitical from social and economic processes. Yet Waltz's critics themselves have failed to show how sociological and geopolitical phenomena can be explained in a unified international theory. Such a theory, says Waltz, would have to pass three tests. It must delimit a field of specifically international phenomena. It must identify structured (and hence theorizable) effects within this field. And it must furnish 'a brilliant intuition', which reveals the causal relations that explain these effects. This article argues that the idea of 'uneven and combined development' (U) can pass these tests. The article delimits 'the international' as those phenomena arising from the interactive multiplicity of societies. Next, it uses Gerschenkron's theory of backwardness to identify internationally structured effects arising from societal multiplicity. And finally, by considering the debate on the First World War, it explores how the causal mechanisms identified by U can be used to construct a unified sociological and geopolitical explanation.
Topic:
Economics

33. The 'knowledge politics' of democratic peace theory

Author:
Inderjeet Parmar
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
How do academic ideas influence US foreign policy, under what conditions and with what consequences? This article traces the rise, 'securitisation' and political consequences of democratic peace theory (DPT) in the United States by exploring the work of Doyle, Diamond and Fukuyama. Ideas influence US foreign policy under different circumstances, but are most likely to do either during and after crises when the policy environment permits 'new thinking', or when these ideas have been developed through state-connected elite knowledge networks, or when they are (or appear paradigmatically congenial to) foreign policymakers' mindsets, or, finally, when they become institutionally-embedded. The appropriation of DPT by foreign policymakers has categorised the world into antagonistic blocs – democratic/non-democratic zones of peace/turmoil – as the corollary to a renewed American mission to make the world 'safer' through 'democracy' promotion. The roles of networked organic intellectuals – in universities and think tanks, for instance – were particularly important in elevating DPT from the academy to national security managers.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
United States

34. The 'Concert of Democracies': Why some states are more equal than others

Author:
Anna Geis
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article engages with a discourse emerging from international political theory, international law and political science on awarding privileges to democracies in crucial issues of global governance. Proposals that a 'Concert of Democracies' should be legally entitled to take decisions in case the United Nations Security Council is unable or unwilling to act are amongst the most prominent expression of this vision of the stratification of the international society into first-class and second-class regimes. The article reconstructs central tenets of this discourse on the inclusion and exclusion of regime types and shows that this kind of differentiation of states has been very much inspired by readings and appropriations of 'democratic peace' scholarship in International Relations. The article critiques the underlying problematic theoretical assumptions and the practical implications of democratic peace theory and policy proposals inferred from it.
Topic:
International Law and United Nations

35. Explaining US unilateral military intervention in civil conflicts: A review of the literature

Author:
Amber Aubone
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Recent third-party use of force in hastening the exit of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi illustrates that third-party military intervention is one foreign policy tool among many that leaders may use to achieve desired ends. Numerous works from international relations and foreign policy scholars explain third-party intervention using a variety of approaches and methods, and examining multiple levels of analysis. The survey of the literature provided here contributes to our understanding of US unilateral intervention by examining this phenomenon using both general theories of third-party intervention, as well as more refined foreign policy theories explaining US intervention in particular. As such, the survey includes works employing various approaches and levels of analysis, and thus serves two purposes: (a) to assist in the cumulation of knowledge pertaining to US unilateral intervention through consolidation of theory and empirical findings; (b) to serve as a source from which scholars can identify contradictions and future avenues of research pertaining to third-party intervention.
Topic:
International Law
Political Geography:
United States and Libya

36. On getting hit by traffic coming in both directions: A response to Dr Karen Devine's 'epistemology matters'

Author:
David Houghton
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This reply to Dr Karen Devine restates my claim, originally published in International Politics, that our epistemological assumptions do not affect our substantive (or ontological) claims about international relations (IR) as much as we commonly think. Even if we restrict ourselves purely to deconstructing the arguments others have made, and to analyzing the discourses of IR, it is very difficult in practice to be genuinely postmodernist in a way that makes a real difference to empirical research. We always end up saying that reality is the way it is, no matter how hard we try to hedge it around with disclaimers of various sorts.
Topic:
International Political Economy

37. The politics of liberal internationalism

Author:
Tim Dunne and Matt McDonald
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
How is it that internationalism has become the dominant form of statecraft pursued by liberal states and by international organisations, and yet it has received relatively scant attention in International Relations (IR) both historically and conceptually? It is time that the field addressed the paucity of writings on an institutionalised idea that has shaped order-building for more than two centuries. The article opens with a consideration of internationalism and its status in political theory and IR, arguing that a variety of different configurations have taken hold in different historical moments. We then consider the coexistence of internationalism and imperialism as an illustration of how the ambiguities and tensions in liberal statecraft can be manifested. The article closes with a consideration of the international normative order-building that has taken place after 1945 and the critical issue of the resilience of liberal internationalism given the 'crisis' identified with it. For all its dangers and dilemmas, we make the case for engaging the politics of liberal internationalism as a site in which normative and practical concerns of global politics meet, and in which the calls to protect the interests of national communities are mediated by the imperative of 'purposes beyond ourselves'.
Topic:
International Political Economy

38. The 'Good State' debate in international relations

Author:
Peter Lawler
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
The idea of the State as embodying moral virtue has a long, mostly inwardly focussed history. In international relations thought, sporadic Liberal explorations of the state as a 'good international citizen' have been vulnerable to Realist scepticism or dismissal. The Cold War's end saw a revival of Liberal enthusiasm for the Good State, but the translation of this into the foreign policies of key Western states generated new lines of critique focussing on the underlying universalism. Drawing upon aspects of much less-discussed Scandinavian internationalist discourse, the possibility of a more modest, open and thus sustainable understanding of the Good State is explored.
Topic:
International Relations

39. Liberal internationalism, the practice of special responsibilities and evolving politics of the security council

Author:
Christian Reus-Smit and Ian Clark
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Liberal internationalism represents a package of evolving and contending commitments, and this article traces the development within it of one practice with a longer history, namely the allocation of special responsibilities. Responsibilities are those things for which actors are held accountable and, internationally, these have negotiated between sovereign equality and material inequality, in search of a means of more effectively dealing with global problems. The definition of these responsibilities generates an intense politics and these are reviewed through the remit of the Security Council. The article considers the basis for the allocation of traditional special responsibilities for security to the Council and then tracks their extension in recent years to the issue of humanitarian protection. The vehicle for this has been the transformation of a practice about the use of the veto, towards one that calls for its non-use in humanitarian cases. This analysis of special responsibilities unsettles the separation between order and justice, and points to the challenges currently facing liberal internationalism.
Topic:
International Relations

40. The good state, from a cosmic point of view

Author:
Anthony Burke
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article considers the question of the good state - and its normative model of foreign policy, internationalism - from a cosmopolitan perspective. This cosmopolitan worldview pushes beyond anthropocentrism to anchor its account in the vulnerability of humanity both to the political dangers it poses to itself and to the cosmic arrangement of chance that enables complex life on earth. The essay first critiques both academic and policy defences of internationalism as a 'middle-ground' between realism and cosmopolitanism by putting its statist ontology into question - that is, its fundamental account of human existence as bounded and determined by the nation-state. The perseverance of this underlying statist ontology creates tensions within academic defences of good international citizenship, which profess strongly cosmopolitan norms but whose moral philosophy, in accepting some practices of Realpolitik, is ethically insufficient. It then asserts an alternative ontology of (interdependent) human existence across borders and ecosystems, one that incorporates an ethically transformed state as a legal principle and an important means of cosmopolitan world order.

41. The wars on terror, duelling internationalisms and the clash of purposes in a post-unipolar world

Author:
Andrew Phillips
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article contrasts the parallel \'wars on terror\' that liberal and authoritarian states have prosecuted since 9/11 to determine their broader significance for the pursuit of \'purposes beyond ourselves\' in an increasingly multi-polar world. While acknowledging that states rallied to defend their monopoly on legitimate violence after 9/11, I maintain that the ensuing \'wars on terror\' have simultaneously exacerbated longstanding disagreements between liberal and authoritarian states over the fundamental principles of international society. Under American leadership, liberal states have sought to eradicate jihadism through the transplantation of liberal values and institutions to Muslim-majority societies, countenancing sweeping qualifications of weak states\' sovereignty to advance this goal. Conversely, authoritarian states led by Russia and China have mounted a vigorous counter-offensive against both jihadism and liberal internationalist revisionism, harnessing counter-terrorism concerns to reassert illiberal internationalist conceptions of state sovereignty in response. Reflecting international division more than solidarity, the \'wars on terror\' have illuminated a deeper triangular struggle between revisionist liberal internationalism, jihadist anti-internationalism and illiberal authoritarian internationalism that will significantly complicate Western efforts to promote liberal values in coming decades.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
Russia and China

42. Foreign policy internationalism and political possibility

Author:
Matt McDonald
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
While many of the contributions to this special issue focus on the content of internationalism and the dilemmas of ethical (state) action in world politics, this article focuses on the possibilities for internationalism to be meaningfully incorporated into state foreign policy. Here, my concern is with the extent to which a commitment to internationalism might be conceived as legitimate at the domestic level. In international relations, constructivists have come closest to directly addressing the domestic constraints and possibilities associated with foreign policy agenda. Theorists working in this tradition, however, have largely worked with binary logics (structure/agency, material/ideational, continuity/change) that emphasise one set of factors over another. Building on insights from the recent \'practice turn\' in international relations, this article employs the work of Pierre Bourdieu in an attempt to transcend these binaries and develop a more nuanced and sophisticated sociological account of political possibility. I suggest the utility of his conceptions of field, habitus, capital and symbolic power in coming to terms with both possibilities for and limits to internationalism as a foreign policy orientation. I illustrate the utility of this framework with the example of Australia\'s retreat from internationalism under the Rudd Government from 2007 to 2010.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
Australia

43. 'With the best will in the world …'?: Humanitarianism, non-state actors and the pursuit of 'purposes beyond ourselves'

Author:
Jacinta O'Hagan
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Debates about liberal internationalism in general and 'purposes beyond ourselves' in particular have focused largely on the role of states. Such a focus risks limiting our potential to achieve solidarist goals by tying us to the ontological and ethical concerns of the state. This article argues that a more expansive conception of agency, which includes non-state actors (NSAs), reflects more accurately the complexity of agency and interests within liberal internationalism. Using the example of humanitarianism, it argues that humanitarian NSAs demonstrate that important additional avenues exist for the pursuit of solidarism within the liberal international order. At the same time, these actors do not totally evade the dilemmas of solidarism faced by states, nor the tensions that permeate liberal internationalism and constrain the pursuit of purposes beyond ourselves. Humanitarian NSAs are embedded in complex relationships with states and are implicated in structures of power and interest within the liberal international order. These present them with their own dilemmas of solidarism and, despite their best intentions, can compromise their pursuit of 'purposes beyond ourselves'.

44. From the good international citizen to the cosmopolitan political community: A constitutional path

Author:
Richard Shapcott
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
While advocates of liberal internationalism have traditionally identified the state as an agent of progressive transformation of the international realm, they have had less to say about the specific domestic mechanisms that might govern the foreign policies of \'good\' states. This article argues that domestic constitutions provide both a legal limit on the actions of governments and other actors, and also the means whereby citizens can pursue legal redress against the state. They therefore play a potentially constraining role that is different from that provided by the embedding of cosmopolitan law in transnational and international legal codes and norms. Transformed in this way, states become powerful agents for achieving cosmopolitan purposes and ultimately transforming world order.
Topic:
International Relations

45. International polarity and America's polarization

Author:
Joseph Bafumi and Joseph M Parent
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
There is a growing consensus that the United States is undergoing a period of political polarization, particularly among elites. The causes of this polarization remain under-researched. We argue that shifts in the international distribution of power influence America's polarization. To demonstrate the argument, this article analyzes changes in power and polarization quantitatively and qualitatively from 1945 to 2005. A key finding is that greater relative power on the world stage substantially increases polarization and some of its correlates, like income inequality. The argument also measures the extent of international influence on domestic polarization and makes novel predictions on when and why polarization will fall.
Political Geography:
United States and America

46. Humanitarian intervention – What's in a name?

Author:
Beate Jahn
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Why has the term humanitarian intervention experienced such a meteoric rise into the core of academic as well as public political discourse? An investigation of classical theory shows that the use of force to help citizens of other states has been regularly contemplated and practiced in the past. The concept of humanitarian intervention therefore does not describe new policies; instead it serves to hide the political nature of these policies today and functions as a 'doctrinal advance guard' for a new international order. It is the political conjuncture that requires a new name for old policies and its radical political content that explains the timing, speed and impact of this term.

47. The domestic politics of international hierarchy: Risk management and the reconstitution of international society

Author:
William Clapton and Shahar Hameiri
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Recent work has identified new hierarchical relationships within international society. However, few scholars have provided a satisfactory account of what informs their formation, reproduction or constitutional effects for international society. We argue that underpinning the emergence of a more hierarchical international society is a new social logic of risk, which constructs illiberal and/or fragile states as potentially dangerous sites of instability and disorder that pose particular security risks for Western states. We proceed to argue that such risk-based hierarchies are transformative of both inter-state and intra-state relations, by stripping equal political agency from 'risky' actors within and without the state. We demonstrate these claims by drawing on examples of international state building in Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific.
Topic:
Politics

48. NATO and India: The politics of strategic convergence

Author:
David Scott
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
In this article, I argue that after having experienced a distinctly cool relationship throughout most of the post-war period and for the 10 years following the end of the Cold War, India and North Atlantic Organization (NATO) are now gradually moving towards each other. Indeed, during the past decade, NATO's 'out-of-area' operations have taken it eastwards from the Mediterranean, while India's 'extended neighbourhood' framework has brought it westwards from the Indian subcontinent. This has created a geopolitical overlap between these two actors, most notably in Afghanistan but also elsewhere in the Indian Ocean. Common advocacy of liberal democracy and overt concerns over jihadist destabilization have brought these two actors together. In NATO's post-Cold War search for relevance and India's post-Soviet search for partners, they have found each other. Unstated potential concerns over China are also a feature in this strategic convergence. However, while NATO has adopted a flexible range of 'Partnership' frameworks, India's sensitivity on retaining 'strategic autonomy' will limit their cooperation to informal ad hoc arrangements.
Topic:
NATO and Cold War
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, China, India, and Soviet Union

49. Arbitrating the Israeli–Palestinian territorial dispute

Author:
Asaf Siniver
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article presents the case for arbitrating the territorial dispute over the West Bank between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. After nearly two decades of intense intermediary activity but with still no signs of progress, and against the inability of the parties themselves to move towards reconciliation, the article argues that as a method of conflict resolution, mediation has exhausted its primary objective – namely the establishing of direct channels of communication between the disputants – and it is now time to examine alternative methods to conflict resolution. The article debunks the myths surrounding the success of American mediation in the conflict, and uses the historical case of the Taba arbitration between Israel and Egypt to demonstrate under what terms the arbitration of the West Bank dispute might be presented, while taking into consideration its advantages and drawbacks compared with the more established method of mediation in this conflict.
Political Geography:
America, Israel, Palestine, and Egypt

50. Towards a strong NATO narrative: From a 'practice of talking' to a 'practice of doing'

Author:
Trine Flockhart
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
The article contributes to the growing theoretical scholarship on NATO by developing a theoretical framework that demonstrates the complex relationship between doing and being, identity and action, and knowledge and practice. The article addresses the puzzle that NATO in the past decade has been busier than ever, yet has not managed to construct a strong narrative and maintain ontological security. The article presents a framework, which assumes that ontological security is influenced by identity and narrative construction processes, which are themselves reinforced or undermined by practical action, conceptualized as 'functional action' and 'rhetorical action'. By analyzing NATO's current and past narratives, practices, and action patterns, the article shows that NATO's recent crisis is not just a deeper and more serious crisis because Afghanistan is a difficult mission, but that the depth of the crisis is the result of changes in NATO's established practices and new fundamentally different patterns of action.
Topic:
NATO
Political Geography:
Afghanistan