Search

Begin New Search Content Type Journal Article Journal Journal of International Relations and Development

101. Interference: between political science and political philosophy

Author:
Garnet Kindervater
Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
This article begins by asserting that scientific and philosophical fidelities among scholars of international relations provoke a logic of antinomy that is counterproductive to the discipline's goals of understanding world politics. Through a critical introduction to some major concepts in the collaboration between Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the article assembles a relationship between chaos — understood as the infinite speed of appearance and disappearance — and strategies of thought that developed to cope with impermanence. By tracing from an empirically unknowable ontology to how Deleuze and Guattari produce a constellation of dynamic concepts that spring from change at speeds exceeding human comprehension, I suggest that different strategies for producing knowledge (among them philosophy and science) can produce generative relays between them. The relays between different methods force an 'interference', a dynamic friction in which the different strategies are productive of new relationships, both between themselves and with the complexities of political phenomena. The result is more than a pluralist perspective wherein scholarship is produced in a range of ways according to individuated claims and methodological approaches to truth. Instead, this article points toward the productivity of difference itself.

102. The social purpose of new governance: Lisbon and the limits to legitimacy

Author:
Bastiaan van Apeldoorn and Sandy Brian Hager
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
This article examines the extent to which the Lisbon strategy, with its utilisation of the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) as the 'new mode of governance' for supranational social policy, has delivered on the pledge of acting as a counterweight to neoliberal market integration in the EU. Adopting a critical political economy perspective, we transcend the focus on institutional form of existing approaches, and seek to explain the social purpose of Lisbon. In this context we argue that both form and content of the Lisbon strategy reflect a hegemonic project of 'embedded neoliberalism', inasmuch as the Lisbon strategy's institutional mechanisms such as the OMC reaffirm the asymmetric nature of European governance through the promotion of market-making rather than market-correcting policies, bolstering the power of transnational capital while simultaneously incorporating subordinate projects through limited forms of embeddedness. The contradictions inherent in this strategy have come to test the limits of its legitimacy.
Topic:
Markets
Political Geography:
Lisbon

103. NGOs as catalysts for international arms control? The ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in the United States

Author:
Kai Oppermann and Dagmar Rottsches
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
The article investigates the role of pro-arms control non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in furthering the domestic ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in the United States. The study starts out from the two-level framework for analysing domestic ratification processes of international agreements, and it introduces the concept of audience gains to complement this framework: being the counterpart of audience costs, audience gains denote positive contributions of domestic non-state actors to formal ratification processes. The article distinguishes two complementary pathways for NGOs to generate audience gains, that is, the pathways of 'mobilising consensus' and of 'persuading veto players'. Two in-depth case studies on the ratification of the CWC and the CTBT in the US explore the extent to which pro-agreement NGOs were indeed successful in employing the two pathways. The evidence of the case studies is that NGOs were more influential catalysts of the ratification of the CWC than with respect to the CTBT. The article's findings on the prospects for NGOs to push the domestic ratification of international agreements are expected to be of more general relevance beyond the field of arms control.
Political Geography:
United States

104. Ambiguous universalism: theorising race/nation/class in international relations

Author:
Nicola Short and Helen Kambouri
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
Although in the past decades the study of international relations (IR) has become much more sensitive to questions of culture, identity and movement, racism has remained an under-theorised area. The marginalisation of race in IR has become much more striking in the 1990s because of the renewed interest in migration and other intercultural exchanges as 'security threats', as well as the emergence of nationalism and putatively 'ethnic' conflict as a central basis of strife in the post-Cold War era. This article is an attempt to discuss new forms of racism in international relations with particular reference to American policy responses to September 11. Drawing from the work of Etienne Balibar, we argue that a contemporary neo-racism, a kind of 'racism without races', grounded in ambiguity and contradiction, is present in international relations simultaneously as a problem of knowledge and as a problem of political practise. Our aim is to contribute to the strategic movement of international relations theory from a conception of race as a marginal category in IR to one that is more fully theorised, including its history and present role in constituting the discipline and its relationship to power, hierarchy and inequality.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, and Cold War
Political Geography:
America

105. Imposing coherence: the central role of practice in Friedrich Kratochwil's theorising of politics, international relations and science

Author:
Stefano Guzzini
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
Kratochwil stands out as one of those very few thinkers in international relations (IR) whose work tries to understand the implications of thinking assumptions about ontology, social theory, and scientific discovery (and, indeed, ethics) in parallel. The present article reconstructs the thought of Friedrich Kratochwil to exemplify the necessary coherence of thought from politics to science to ethics, a project which is truly important for the development of theorising in IR. And at the same time, it uses this reconstruction of his multi-layered coherence for portraying a significantly different understanding of a central thinker in IR. For my reconstruction presents this very quest for coherence as Kratochwil's underlying theme and the role of practice as the bridge between the different layers of his theorising. As a result, for him, there cannot be Realpolitik without politics, theory without reflexivity, science without judgement, or ethics without a humanist sense of responsibility.
Topic:
International Relations and Politics

106. The global imbalances and the contradictions of US monetary hegemony

Author:
Mattias Vermeiren
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
Over the last decade, the world economy has been characterised by escalating global current account imbalances between the United States (US) and East Asia in particular. This article argues that US monetary hegemony has been a necessary condition for the emergence of these imbalances. It is contended that the notion of structural power is indispensable to understanding the nature of US monetary hegemony and its relation to the imbalances. US monetary structural power has both induced East Asian states to increase their accumulation of dollar-denominated assets and allowed the US to decrease its savings. The article also shows that the mechanisms of US structural monetary power contain several contradictory dynamics that are able to undermine its own purpose, which is to avoid the burden of adjustment to balance-of-payments disequilibria.
Political Geography:
United States and East Asia

107. German development policy 1998–2005: the limits of normative global governance

Author:
Aram Ziai
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
The Social Democratic/Green government which was in office in Germany from 1998 to 2005 announced that it would practise development policy as 'global structural policy': as policy aiming to transform global economic structures in favour of poor countries. The article proceeds by analysing the attempts to do so in three areas: the reform of structural adjustment programmes and debt relief, the reform of the international financial architecture, and the 'Development Round' in world trade negotiations. The article also analyses the accompanying discourse in order to identify the factors limiting this form of normative global governance.
Political Geography:
Germany

108. Court reform in transitional states: Chile and the Philippines

Author:
Charles Anthony Smith and Mark Jorgensen Farrales
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, we argue that democratic institutions are not a prerequisite to an independent judiciary. Rather, the need for foreign investment is a necessary and, in some cases, perhaps sufficient condition for the establishment of at least nominally independent judicial institutions. We consider Chile immediately after Pinochet and the Philippines at the outset of the Marcos regime. We consider the similarity of court reforms implemented by these two regimes. These cases illustrate two distinct points in the life span of an authoritarian government. The Chilean case features the time period that begins a transition to democracy prior to consolidation. The Philippine case features the time period of ascension of the authoritarian. Despite the different environments, both regimes implemented court reforms primarily designed to attract foreign direct investment into their troubled economies.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
Philippines

109. Conceptualising neighbourhood: Russia vs its 'others'

Author:
Andrey S Makarychev
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
Russia's longing to be a part of Europe is usually manifested in the Kremlin's inclination to politically deal with (and get recognition from) the core European Union (EU) powers. Moscow, which regularly goes through a process of self-assertion as a great power, agrees to communicate only with those who are considered to possess a comparable international status.
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Moscow

110. Editorial

Author:
Patrick Thaddeus Jackson
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
No abstract is available.
Topic:
International Relations, Cold War, and Economics
Political Geography:
Georgia

111. Georgia: a state of flux

Author:
Ondrej Ditrych
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
This article explores a new perspective on Georgia's politics after 1991. Employing the critical political ontology of Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben, it argues that Georgia as a political community has, since its modern inception, been (in) a state of permanent exception. Successive regimes of Gamsakhurdia, Shevardnadze and Saakashvili have operated as effective sovereign dictatorships striving to bring to existence a new order. The utopia of this order was described in various ways, but typically it included restoration of the territorial sovereignty, thereby relating to the boundaries of the political community; overcoming internal disorder; and more recently, emulating the Western Liberal State. That the realisation of the order as a Western Liberal Utopia defined by the sovereign power perpetuates the very state of exception, including the reduction of individuals to 'bare life', is finally argued to constitute the tragedy of Georgia's contemporary politics.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
Georgia

112. On the transformation of warfare: a plausibility probe of the new war thesis

Author:
Monika Heupel and Bernhard Zangl
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
This article intends to contribute to the debate on the emergence of so-called new wars by reconstructing the new war thesis in a way that allows an empirical assessment of the plausibility of the thesis. It makes explicit the defining criteria implicit to the new war thesis which claims that a fundamental transformation of modern intra-state warfare has taken place due to the end of the Cold War. It also lays out the causal mechanisms that underpin the alleged transformation of warfare. Based on the reconstructed conceptual framework and drawing on case studies of the wars in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Angola, Somalia and Sierra Leone, the article then lends support to the new war thesis. The cases demonstrate that, in the 1990s, war economies based on criminal activities became more important and triggered the fragmentation of warring parties and the economisation of their war motives. Moreover, in combination, the fragmentation of warring parties and the economisation of their war motives facilitate the application of brutal violence against civilians.
Topic:
Cold War and Debt
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Angola

113. In the loop: multilevel feedback and the politics of change at the IMF and World Bank

Author:
Liam Clegg
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
How can we integrate the agential influence of state preferences and the structural influence of social environments in models of change within international organisations? Through an analysis of the central aspects of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) initiative, this article argues that in isolation neither of the two dominant accounts of international organisations — the principal-agent (PA) and constructivist approaches — is able to adequately capture the progression of the initiative. Rather, I show that the evolution of the PRSP initiative is best conceptualised as an Archerian morphogenic cycle, whose unfolding can be understood by synthesising elements of the PA and constructivist approaches. The morphogenic approach provides an analytic framework capable of tracking the process of multilevel feedback from state socialisation through to policy operationalisation, and for the input of creditors, the International Financial Institutions (IFIs), and borrowing countries to be mapped.
Topic:
Politics and World Bank

114. Reinforcing the (neo-)Hobbesian representations of international law

Author:
Jean d'Aspremont
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
The question of the foundations of the international legal order has long fuelled controversies. The mainstream international legal scholarship, dominated by liberal and constitutionalist discourses, has advocated an understanding of international law that rests on global values. This article examines the work of a few Eastern European scholars with a view to demonstrating that the mainstream liberal and constitutionalist value-based conceptions of the international legal order have not been uncontested. In doing so, this article draws on the resemblances between Eastern European and Asian legal scholarships in their attempts to question the hegemonic and imperialistic overtones of an ever-growing international law.
Topic:
International Law
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe and Asia