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32. Exchange on Nick Onuf’s ‘Metaphoricizing Modernity,’ Part I—Dangerous Beginnings, Peripheral (Re)Beginnings: A Reconfiguration of Nick Onuf’s Constructivism
- Author:
- Victor Coutinho Lage
- Publication Date:
- 01-2024
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Contexto Internacional
- Institution:
- Institute of International Relations, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro
- Abstract:
- Nick Onuf’s constructivism is one of the most important contributions to the field of international relations in what regards the interchange between social and political theories, and philosophy. In this text, I engage with Onuf’s body of work taken as a whole. The guiding thread of the problematization I propose is woven through the attention to how Onuf’s craft and creative undertaking sets certain beginnings in the construction of his framework, and how setting them has important implications for (the conception of) ‘politics’. I would argue that Onuf’s conception of politics is sustained on two central beginnings: the conception of humans as ‘rational agents’ and the framing of what has come to be called ‘modernity’. This way, I emphasize what seems to me the most enduring contribution his body of work can provide not only to the field of international relations, but also to contemporary social and political theories more generally. The first section outlines the relation Onuf establishes between rules and rule, while the following two sections deal, in turn, with his conceptions of ‘agency’ and the ‘modern world’. My goal in these first three sections is to reconfigure Onuf’s constructivism. The fourth and final section moves ahead, giving a step further – perhaps too far, perhaps too radical –, paving a critical engagement with his work through peripheral (re)begininngs.
- Topic:
- Politics, Constructivism, Rationality, Modernity, and Periphery
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
33. Unequal Burdens: Corruption’s Impacts on People with Intersectional Identities in Lebanon
- Author:
- Elizabeth Reiter Dettmer and Jay Feghali
- Publication Date:
- 03-2024
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES)
- Abstract:
- Lebanon, once celebrated for its cultural vibrancy and economic prosperity, now grapples with embedded corruption and dire prospects for reform. Lebanon’s multiple layers of social, confessional, ideological, economic, and cultural identities are governed by varied laws or rules. This creates space for corruption to combine with discriminatory practices. This assessment, Unequal Burdens: Corruption's Impacts on People with Intersectional Identities in Lebanon, focuses on corruption and its effects to measure how perceptions and experiences differ among marginalized groups and to identify any unique effects that people with intersectional identities encounter, with a focus on perspectives from outside Beirut, including Tripoli, Akkar, Baalbek, Bekaa, and surrounding areas. In 2020, IFES conducted an intersectionality assessment, Identity, and Politics in Lebanon, which found that marginalized groups in Lebanon experience multiple levels of exclusion based on social identities, including gender, disability, age, religion, sexual orientation, and refugee status. Individuals with intersectional identities are even more significantly impacted by the complexity and inherent inequality of Lebanon’s political and social systems. Lebanon has 18 officially recognized religious sects that are governed by 15 personal status laws enforced by religious courts. Social identity and the role of religion in politics both contribute to conflict and lack of consensus. These are compounded by socio-economic factors, including an imbalance in access to services – especially outside the capital, low exposure to economic and educational opportunities, limited inclusion in public service, and youth unemployment. Legal obstacles created by personal status laws and the discriminatory application of other laws seriously hinder the ability of marginalized groups to act as full and equal citizens. In early 2020, the Lebanese government introduced a new anti-corruption law and began work on a new National Anti-Corruption Strategy. Despite the new laws, Transparency International’s 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index placed Lebanon 150th of 180 countries, a decline from its rank of 128th in 2012. IFES’ assessment found that corruption is disproportionately impacting people from marginalized groups. Research identified the following key findings: Corruption on the Community Level; Corruption on the Individual Level; Impact of Corruption and Discrimination on Marginalized Groups; Impacts of Corruption on Civic Participation; Corruption as a Facilitating Factor for Participation in Public Life; Corruption as a Hindering Factor for Participation in Public Life.
- Topic:
- Corruption, Politics, Reform, and Intersectionality
- Political Geography:
- Middle East and Lebanon
34. Mitigating the Political Cost of Financial Crisis with Blame Avoidance Discourse: The Case of Turkey
- Author:
- Büşra Söylemez-karakoç
- Publication Date:
- 08-2024
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Uluslararasi Iliskiler
- Institution:
- International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
- Abstract:
- How do centralized governments mitigate the political cost of severe financial crises? The economic voting scholarship has established that the clarity of responsibility, i.e., government accountability for economic conditions to the mass public, is a necessity for electoral reward or punishment for economic performance. On the one hand, political centralization, which reduces the number of veto players, may increase the visibility of the role of the executive in policy success or failure. On the other hand, it allows an uncontested blame avoidance discourse, especially when accompanied with democratic backsliding. Furthermore, the recent backlash against globalization has enabled blame shifting to international actors in many countries. Against this theoretical framework, we comparatively analyze the responsibility attribution discourses for the 1994, 2001, and 2018-2022 financial crises in the statements of incumbent presidents, ministers, and parliament members of Turkey. We find that while blame avoidance discursive strategies have been attempted in all three cases, the responsibility attribution for the 1994 and 2001 crises mostly targeted the executive. In contrast, for the ongoing crisis, the responsibility discourse is dominated with blaming international political economy factors, creating ambiguity, and targeting domestic non-governmental actors.
- Topic:
- Economics, Globalization, Politics, Financial Crisis, Voting, and Democratic Backsliding
- Political Geography:
- Turkey and Middle East
35. The Socio-Economic Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Syrian Refugees in Turkey
- Author:
- Fulya Memişoğlu, Altan Özkil, and Tuna Kılınç
- Publication Date:
- 08-2024
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Uluslararasi Iliskiler
- Institution:
- International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
- Abstract:
- Building upon empirical research, this study examines the socio-economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Syrian refugees in Turkey by analyzing its implications on employment, livelihood opportunities, and social cohesion. More specifically, it focuses on the experiences of Syrian refugees to examine the ways in which they exert their agency to cope with the structural constraints when faced with ‘multiple crises’ in host countries, intersecting with the dynamics of a ‘normalized refugee crisis’. Our findings from fieldwork conducted in the top six refugee-hosting cities reveal that loss of jobs, limited access to decent work, increased dependency on external financial assistance, and social exclusion have been some of the most acute effects of the pandemic on refugees. Meanwhile, the perceived effects that refugees have on the host community’s welfare trigger problems that impede social cohesion. All in all, the study intends to highlight the far-reaching effects of the pandemic beyond its direct health implications by addressing the structural vulnerability of refugees and the importance of providing an enabling environment for socio-economic self-reliance.
- Topic:
- Migration, Politics, Refugees, Economy, and COVID-19
- Political Geography:
- Turkey, Middle East, and Syria
36. The Open Gap in the “Free and Open” Indo-Pacific
- Author:
- Kenneth Gofigan Kuper
- Publication Date:
- 04-2024
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- East-West Center
- Abstract:
- "For many of us in Guam, a free and open Indo-Pacific cannot be fully accomplished without resolving the paradox of the United States maintaining a modern-day colony even though the local government has supported moving forward with a decolonization process."
- Topic:
- Politics, Decolonization, Strategy, and Colonization
- Political Geography:
- China, United States of America, Indo-Pacific, and Guam
37. Enhancing Military Diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific: A US Foreign Area Officer’s Perspective
- Author:
- Matthew House
- Publication Date:
- 08-2024
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- East-West Center
- Abstract:
- Lt. Col. Matthew House, US Army Foreign Area Officer and EWC Adjunct Fellow, underscores “the pivotal role of military diplomacy in orchestrating significant global events...” and highlights “the invaluable expertise of [Foreign Area Officers] in managing complex international relations."
- Topic:
- International Relations, Foreign Policy, Education, Politics, and Military Diplomacy
- Political Geography:
- North Korea, Vietnam, Southeast Asia, United States of America, and Indo-Pacific
38. South Korean Perspectives on China-Russia Collaboration in the Arctic
- Author:
- Young Kil Park
- Publication Date:
- 08-2024
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- East-West Center
- Abstract:
- Dr. Young Kil Park, Research Fellow at Korea Maritime Institute, explains that "While the immediate impact of China-Russia collaboration in the Arctic on South Korea is limited, it remains wary of the long-term implications for its economic and security interests."
- Topic:
- Security, Economics, Politics, Bilateral Relations, and Collaboration
- Political Geography:
- Russia, China, Asia, South Korea, North Korea, and Arctic
39. Race Politics and Colonial Legacies: France, Africa and the Middle East
- Author:
- Hisham Aïdi, Marc Lynch, Zachariah Mampilly, Baba Adou, and Oumar Ba
- Publication Date:
- 05-2024
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
- Abstract:
- In February 2020 – the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic – the Project on Middle East Political Science held a preliminary meeting at Columbia University in New York to explore the origins of the Africa-Middle East divides that treat North Africa as part of the Middle East and neglect states such as Sudan and Mauritania. Columbia was an appropriate place to begin such a dialogue. Two decades ago, when two of us (Aidi and Mampilly) were graduate students at Columbia, the Institute of African Studies was in serious crisis. The Ugandan political theorist Mahmood Mamdani arrived and launched an initiative to decolonize the study of Africa to counter Hegel’s partition of Africa by transcending the Saharan and red Sea divides, and by underscoring Africa’s links to Arabia, Asia and the New World. To that end, we co-organized a second conference on racial formations in Africa and the Middle East looking at race-making across these two regions comparatively, including the border zones often left out of both African and Middle Eastern Studies: the Sudans, Amazigh-speaking areas in the Sahel, Arabic speaking areas on the Swahili coast and Zanzibar. This workshop represents the third in our series of transregional studies across the Africa-Middle East divide.
- Topic:
- Politics, Post Colonialism, Race, History, Colonialism, Islamophobia, and Racialization
- Political Geography:
- Uganda, Africa, Europe, Sudan, Middle East, France, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, Mauritania, and United States of America
40. Washington's and Taiwan's Diverging Interests Doesn't Make War Imminent
- Author:
- Hargisl Shirley Martey
- Publication Date:
- 02-2024
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Third Way
- Abstract:
- We are a month from the Taiwan 2024 election that sent shockwaves around the world. President-elect, Lai Ching-te (賴清德), dared to utter the world ‘independence” in a strike against the longstanding One China Policy (一个中国政策) in his successful campaign to lead the nation. The election was important enough for an increasingly assertive President Xi Jinping (习近平出席) to try (and fail) to influence the election’s outcome. Xi has been rattling cages for the last several years and has made no secret of his desire to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s thumb without explicitly ruling out the use of force. Meanwhile, a busy President Biden has had his hands full keeping allies committed to Ukraine, battling Putin-sympathetic members of Congress, while also dealing with cascading crises in Israel and the Middle East. With that as our backdrop, does Lai’s election, Xi’s frustration, and Biden’s preoccupation mean we are closer to conflict in the Taiwan Strait? In this brief analysis we argue that at present the answer is “no.” And we make this call by looking at the vantage points and early actions of each country. For America, the Taiwan election has put the country on alert. For Taiwan, domestic concerns are mainly driving voters – not cross-Strait policy. For the People’s Republic of China (PRC; 中华人民共和国), ignore the rhetoric because they’ve followed their Taiwan election disappointment by returning to their standard playbook.1 But stay tuned…. perhaps they’re saving the fireworks for Lai’s May 20 inauguration.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, National Security, Politics, Elections, and Strategic Interests
- Political Geography:
- China, Taiwan, North America, and United States of America