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

41. 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

42. 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

43. 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.

44. A call for hermeneutical perspectives on climate change and conflict: the case of Ethiopia and Eritrea

Author:
Peter Haldén
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
Over the past decades research on the possible connections between climate change and armed conflict has blossomed. However, this field has failed to establish any clear causal connections between environmental degradation or climate change and conflict in the past. Seemingly assuaging some of the fears concerning climate change and conflict, this research does not allow us to conceptualise, much less operationalise, that actors may break with past patterns and act in new ways in relation to the wholly novel set of phenomena of climate change. Analytical or theoretical deficiencies may be important on their own in 'purely' scholarly terms, but the practical implications of these deficiencies create an urgent need for other kinds of analyses. If we cannot adequately understand the connection between the effects of climate change and conflict, we might be caught by surprise by conflicts and miss opportunities to prevent them.
Topic:
Climate Change
Political Geography:
Ethiopia and Eritrea

45. International organisations and policy diffusion: the global norm of lifelong learning

Author:
Anja p. Jakobi
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
This article analyses the role of international organisations in global policy diffusion, drawing on the example of lifelong learning, a currently widely appreciated concept in education policy. I explain this success based on a sociological institutionalist framework, arguing that lifelong learning has become a global norm in education policy. For this purpose, I conduct a quantitative study of 99 countries from 1996 to 2004, showing how the idea of lifelong learning has been disseminated by international organisations and how states have reacted to this development. I first outline the theoretical framework, highlighting in particular the crucial role of international organisations. In a further step, I present the data and methods. In the third part, I analyse the activities of several international organisations on lifelong learning. In the fourth step, I show how lifelong learning has spread, distinguishing the idea of lifelong learning and reforms linked to it. Fifth, as the quantitative analysis shows, international organisations like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the European Union can explain a large part of dissemination when it comes to the idea of lifelong learning, but reforms are more dependent on national preconditions like the wealth of a country. In the conclusions, I sum up the article's main findings and outline further research areas linked to global diffusion processes.
Topic:
International Organization
Political Geography:
Europe

46. Aid allocation of the emerging Central and Eastern European donors

Author:
Balázs Szent-Iványi
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
In the past decade, a number of Central and Eastern European countries have emerged as new donors of foreign aid. Although these countries already had certain forms of development-related cooperation with Third World countries during the Cold War, the pre-1989 experiences are difficult to compare with their current, (re-)emerging aid policies. There is a clear pressure, related mostly to membership in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (EU), for these new donors to align themselves with the norms and principles of the international development aid regime. Many special characteristics are observable, however, in the Central and Eastern European donors, which predict that they will behave differently than the members of the OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC), the 'club' of advanced donor countries. In part, this may be related to the fact that their foreign aid policies are still in their infancy, but it is also undeniable that their motivations for giving aid are somewhat different than those of the Western donors. It is logical to assume that the consequences of these different motivations are identifiable in the quality and allocation of aid provided by the emerging donors.
Topic:
Foreign Aid
Political Geography:
Europe, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia

47. Introduction to the sociology/ies of international relations

Author:
Anne-Marie D'Aoust
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
The study of the history of the discipline of International Relations (IR) has come a long way since Stanley Hoffmann's 1977 seminal article 'An American Social Science: International Relations'. With its focus on the development of IR in the United States, Hoffman's analysis sparked an incendiary debate that still goes on today about the discipline's origins, nature, goals, and assumptions. His insights hinged on fundamental questions about our work as IR scholars, ranging from the kind of valid scientific inquiries IR scholarship represents and/or requires (scientific dimension) to the aims of IR scholarship (normative dimensions), as well as the intellectual and social milieux in which IR scholars evolve and the practices they use and enact (sociological dimensions).
Topic:
International Relations and Development
Political Geography:
United States and America

48. From epistemology to practice: a sociology of science for international relations

Author:
Christian Bueger
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
Without question there is no shortage of reflexivity in the discipline of International Relations (IR), to the extent that after several 'grand debates' and numerous 'turns', it seems to have reached a certain intellectual 'surfeit'. One of the reasons is certainly that many of the questions concerned are not logically solvable, and that debates on reflexivity tend to become affective if not religious from time to time. Another reason is that debates are often scholastic, and have nothing to do with either the social life of the researchers or the objects studied. This surfeit should not, however, be an argument for refraining from reflexive exercises. After all, standards of reflexivity are what distinguish scientific practices from those of other knowledge producers. Instead, this observation should lead us to reconsider the connection between the abstract, theoretical, conceptual and the practical everyday. Therefore, this contribution argues for an extended understanding of reflexivity centred on practice and taking advantage from works in the sociology of science.
Topic:
International Relations and Sociology

49. Everyday practices of international relations: people in organizations

Author:
Oliver Kessler and Xavier Guillaume
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
The idea that there are biases, blind spots or exclusionary if not oppressive forces in the very way scientific endeavour is organised still appears to be a rather strange idea. It runs counter to the ingrained idea that science is reflective. Science is still predominantly associated with the idea of a separation between values and facts and a clear separation between subject and object, that is, the normative ideal that researchers are detached from their 'object of study'. With it comes the idea that knowledge and power need to be separated before the scientific enterprise can enjoy the fruits of objectivity and neutrality. True knowledge can only be produced where power is absent. Yet, regardless of whether one subscribes to, for instance, the Kuhnian notion of paradigm shifts, Wittgenstein's idea of therapy, or Foucault's arché, as soon as the well-trodden paths of positivist philosophy of science are re-situated within a series of relations, practices, institutions, and persons, questions regarding scientific endeavour stop being solely confined to objectively instituted rules of evaluation.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
Europe

50. Accounting for the politics of language in the sociology of IR

Author:
Anne-Marie D'Aoust
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
With its 2009 report on the state of the discipline of International Relations (IR), the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) Project of the Institute for the Theory and Practice of International Relations aimed to tackle directly Ole Wæver's claim that IR 'is and has been an American social science' (Wæver 1998: 687). Driven by the question of whether or not one could see national variations in the way scholars think about the discipline, and if one could agree on the existence of a single IR discipline, the TRIP project engaged in an ambitious ten-country survey about 'the state of the discipline' (Jordan et al. 2009). The choice of the ten countries surveyed then (Australia, Canada, Ireland, Israel, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States) reflects an obvious yet unmentioned selection criteria: these countries use English as the main language of scientific communication. If no consensus could be reached as to whether IR was an American discipline per se, there could at least be an implicit consensus that to be considered and acknowledged — and thus evaluated, measured, and assessed — the discipline(s) of IR had to be Anglophone by definition. This presumption also underpinned Stephen Walt's recent commentary on the persistent dominance of Anglo-Saxon scholarship in IR. 'I'm still struck', he admitted, 'by the relative dearth of “big thinking” on global affairs from people outside the trans-Atlantic axis, including continental Europe. And by “big thinking” I mean ideas and arguments that immediately trigger debates that cross national boundaries, and become key elements in a global conversation' (Walt 2011).
Topic:
International Relations and Sociology
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Israel, South Africa, Australia, Ireland, Singapore, New Zealand, and Hong Kong