Journal: Journal of International Relations and Development

1. Table of Contents

Publication Date:: 10-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Sovereignty at sea: the law and politics of saving lives in mare liberum Tanja E Aalberts and Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen When 'blurring' becomes the norm and secession is justified as the exception: revisiting EU and Russian discourses in the common neighbourhood Eiki Berg and Martin Mölder Foreign policy analysis, globalisation and non-state actors: state-centric after all? Rainer Baumann and Frank A Stengel Regional integration and the challenge of overlapping memberships on trade Mwita Chacha Practicality by judgement: transnational interpreters of local ownership in the Polish-Ukrainian border reform encounter Xymena Kurowska.
Topic:: Foreign Policy, Globalization, Politics, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:: Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

2. Sovereignty at sea: the law and politics of saving lives in mare liberum

Author:: Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen and Tanja E. Aalberts
Publication Date:: 10-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This article analyses the interplay between politics and law in the recent attempts to strengthen the humanitarian commitment to saving lives in mare liberum. Despite a long-standing obligation to aid people in distress at sea, this so-called search and rescue regime has been marred by conflicts and political standoffs as states were faced with a growing number of capsising boat migrants potentially claiming international protection once on dry land. Attempts to provide a legal solution to these problems have resulted in a re-spatialisation of the high seas, extending the states' obligations in the international public domain based on geography rather than traditional functionalist principles that operated in the open seas. However, inadvertently, this further legalisation has equally enabled states to instrumentalise law to barter off and deconstruct responsibility by reference to traditional norms of sovereignty and maritime law. In other words, states may be able to reclaim sovereign power by becoming increasingly norm-savvy and successfully navigating the legal playing field provided by the very expansion of international law itself. Thus, rather than being simply a space of non-sovereignty per se, mare liberum becomes the venue for a complex game of sovereignty, law and politics.
Topic:: Politics, Sovereignty, and Law

3. When 'blurring' becomes the norm and secession is justified as the exception: revisiting EU and Russian discourses in the common neighbourhood

Author:: Eiki Berg and Martin Mölder
Publication Date:: 10-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This paper takes a closer look at the discourses of the EU and Russia in relation to the ground-breaking events in Kosovo (1999/2008) and the South Caucasus (2008) while digging deep into the discursive practices and contextual aspects of these conflicts. We will argue that, on a more abstract level, the EU and Russia were applying the same logic of discourse - either professing humanitarian concerns, including 'responsibility to protect', or emphasising 'obligation to refrain' - across these similar instances of intervention and secession declared to be exceptions by both. Across these cases, both actors were not only blurring the common understanding of these terms and the rules of their application in practice, but also advancing implicitly such blurring as, in fact, a norm. However, when the principles in relation to secession are blurred, it is easy to follow the examples of both Russia as well as the EU, depicting specific instances of secession selectively as exceptions and legitimating one's essentially arbitrary behaviour vis-à-vis the professed international norms.
Topic:: Humanitarian Aid
Political Geography:: Russia

4. Foreign policy analysis, globalisation and non-state actors: state-centric after all?

Author:: Rainer Baumann and Frank A Stengel
Publication Date:: 10-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This paper is concerned with Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) and non-state actors (NSAs). Globalisation has brought NSAs back on the agenda of International Relations (IR). As a result of globalisation, we witness at least some shift of authority from the state to NSAs (the extent of which remains debated). Although most of the empirical studies focus on 'domestic' issues, there are good reasons to assume that foreign policy is equally affected by this trend. Not only are NSAs autonomous actors in world politics, they are also increasingly involved in the making of states' foreign policies. In this article, we ask to what extent FPA, IR's actor-centric sub-field, has taken into account this growing importance of NSAs. Given FPA's criticism of seeing the state as a unitary actor, one would expect FPA scholars to be among the first within IR to analyse decision making involving NSAs. However, a closer look reveals that FPA remains focused mainly on state actors, while ignoring private, transnational and international ones. Thus, FPA remains in a way state-centric. We close with an outline of possible directions for further FPA research.
Topic:: Foreign Policy and Globalization

5. Regional integration and the challenge of overlapping memberships on trade

Author:: Mwita Chacha
Publication Date:: 10-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Despite a plethora of policy and scholarly discussions on how overlapping memberships affect the implementation of rules of origin meant to facilitate trade within regional trade agreements (RTAs) of developing countries, there has yet to be any theory development or empirical test to verify these claims. This article re-examines these previous discussions and articulates and empirically tests a theoretical model on the effects that overlapping memberships have had on intra-RTA trade. Using measures of overlapping memberships at both the RTA and country levels of analysis, I find that overlapping memberships in RTAs involving developing countries have had a negative effect on intra-RTA trade levels. These findings shed light on steps developing countries can take to address overlapping memberships and strengthen regional integration at a time when there is a push for north-south trade agreements such as those the European Union is negotiating with several of these developing countries.

6. Practicality by judgement: transnational interpreters of local ownership in the Polish-Ukrainian border reform encounter

Author:: Xymena Kurowska
Publication Date:: 10-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Local ownership has become a central norm of international statebuilding while its practice is seen as failure. This is explained either as an instance of organised hypocrisy where the norm is de facto circumvented or, in a critical vein, as a hegemonic projection of the neoliberal system of governance which by default erases local agency. Practitioners of statebuilding are seen as agents of moulding; social engineers in the policy discourse or conduits of the discursive structure from which they derive their 'professional reflex' and authority in the critical discourse. This article suggests that both designations misdiagnose the problem of action as being 'caused' by either norm transfer, or by norms being 'ingrained' in professional practices. It adopts a micro-perspective on the practice of embedded experts in a series of EU-sponsored projects to offer a contextual account of an on-the-ground interaction. The encounter between Polish and Ukrainian border guards highlights differential power relations and demonstrates the rich texture of the semantic field of 'local ownership'. The case nuances arguments about tacit institutional reproduction in transnational settings and the automaticity of norm diffusion among security professionals to illustrate instead a contingent role of 'practicality by judgement' in their action.
Topic:: Security
Political Geography:: Ukraine

7. Neoclassical realism and international climate change politics: moral imperative and political constraint in international climate finance

Author:: Mark Purdon
Publication Date:: 07-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: In this article, I present a neoclassical realist theory of climate change politics that challenges the idea that cooperation on climate change is compelled alone by shared norms and interests emanating from the international level and questions if instead material factors also play a significant constraining role. Relative-gains concerns incited by the international resource transfers implicit in climate change policy may compel some states to be prudent in their international climate change efforts and conserve resources domestically for future contingencies, including their own adaptation and resiliency. Neoclassical realism recognises such systemic constraints while also identifying international and domestic factors—a 'two-level game'—that explain variation in state sensitivity to relative gains. As a preliminary test of this theory, I compare the latest data on the magnitude, distribution and financial 'additionality' of climate funds and carbon markets. Climate funds are found to be more vulnerable to systemic forces identified by neoclassical realism because they are largely drawn from existing official development assistance budgets despite international commitments that funds are 'new and additional'. Carbon markets engage a relatively broader number of states and, contrary to moral hazard concerns, have been used to a greater degree by states reducing emissions domestically. While there are concerns about whether carbon credits represent genuine emission reductions, the effectiveness of climate funds is equally, if not more, dubious. I conclude that, while imperfect, carbon markets have too often been unfairly compared with an ideal climate finance mechanism that assumes few political constraints on international resource transfers for climate change.
Topic:: Security, Foreign Policy, International Security, Political Theory, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:: Europe

8. European integration and the problem of the state: universality, particularity, and exemplarity in the crafting of the European Union

Author:: Stefan Borg
Publication Date:: 07-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The European Union is often presented as an entity that has 'moved beyond' the model of organising political life along the way of the modern sovereign state. This paper questions this understanding by engaging a set of texts that could be understood as exemplary of the EU's official discourse of Europe: EU's failed Constitutional Treaty and Javier Solana's collected speeches. A paradox is herein identified: the values that are said to sustain Europe's identity and upon which Europe is founded are simultaneously presented as distinctly European and universal. It is suggested that Europe is being crafted in a pendular oscillation between particularising and universalising the values upon which Europe allegedly rests. By drawing on critical International Relations theory, the paper suggests that this very contradictory oscillation between particularising and universalising Europe's values to an important extent mirrors modern statecraft. One should therefore think twice before announcing the construction of the European Union as something qualitatively different from, or 'gentler' than, modern statecraft.
Topic:: Security, Foreign Policy, Political Theory, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:: Europe

9. The West: a securitising community?

Author:: Gunther Hellmann, Gabi Schlag, Benjamin Herborth, and Christian Weber
Publication Date:: 07-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The primary objective of this article is to theorise transformations of Western order in a manner that does not presuppose a fixed understanding of 'the West' as a pre-constituted political space, ready-made and waiting for social scientific enquiry. We argue that the Copenhagen School's understanding of securitisation dynamics provides an adequate methodological starting point for such an endeavour. Rather than taking for granted the existence of a Western 'security community', we thus focus on the performative effects of a security semantics in which 'the West' figures as the threatened, yet notoriously vague referent object that has to be defended against alleged challenges. The empirical part of the article reconstructs such securitisation dynamics in three different fields: the implications of representing China's rise as a challenge to Western order, the effects of the transformation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) towards a global security actor, and the consequences of extraordinary renditions and practices of torture for the normative infrastructure of 'the West'. We conclude that Western securitisation dynamics can be understood as a discursive shift away from a legally enshrined culture of restraint and towards more assertive forms of self-authorisation.
Topic:: Security, Foreign Policy, Political Theory, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:: Europe

10. 'Moral power' as objectification of the 'civilian'/'normative' 'EUlogy': the European Union as a conflict-dealer in the South Caucasus

Author:: Syuzanna Vasilyan
Publication Date:: 07-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This article develops a new conceptual framework of 'moral power' by arguing that the 'civilian'/'normative' power Europe paradigms are insufficient for understanding the essence of the conflict resolution policy of the European Union (EU) in the South Caucasus. Analysing the conflicts of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh, the study reveals that until the August 2008 war, the EU was an incoherent actor in terms of the interplay among its institutions and member-states. The EU's policy has been devoid of a long-term peace-focused strategy, making it inconsequential; as a result, the EU has merely dealt with, rather than managed, the conflicts. Its rhetoric has been inconsistent with practice. Often the EU has subordinated its values to material and power-related interests. Moreover, the EU has hardly been normatively stable in its approach to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Bypassing inclusiveness until the launch of the Geneva talks pertaining to the Abkhazian and South Ossetian conflicts, the EU has not enjoyed much legitimacy by the de facto states. Whereas the EU has largely failed to resolve the South Caucasian conflicts, it has achieved partial success by putting a halt to the 2008 hostilities between Russia and Georgia. Overall, having faltered as a 'civilian'/'normative' power it still has to fare as a 'moral power'.
Topic:: Security, Foreign Policy, Political Theory, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:: Russia, Europe, Georgia, South Caucasus, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia

11. Looking back: communist melancholia and post-socialist pains

Author:: Anca Pusca
Publication Date:: 07-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Remembering communism in Central and Eastern Europe is a tricky business, as memories are increasingly put on display through practices of museumisation, collective and personal biographies and official investigations. Everything — from former factories to architecture, monuments and statues, to secret service files and other material reminders — is carefully reshaped into politically convenient, or in some cases inconvenient, discourses.
Topic:: Security, Foreign Policy, Political Theory, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:: Europe

12. Invisible legacies: Brazil's and South Korea's shift from ISI towards export strategies under authoritarian rule

Author:: Vinícius Rodrigues Vieira
Publication Date:: 04-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Between the 1960s and the 1970s, Brazil and South Korea adopted similar strategies of development under authoritarian rule: an import substitution industrialisation (ISI) programme later replaced by export strategies (ES), namely, export promotion (EP) in Brazil and export-led growth (EG) in Korea. However, whereas Korea was successful, Brazil began the 1980s facing socio-economic crisis because of imbalances in external accounts. Through the analysis of institutions, organisations, and economic indicators, I conclude that the social-political structure (defined as the institutions and organisations within the economic, political, and social levels) of each nation shaped differently the opportunities given by changes in the organisation of the domestic economy and international contexts between 1945 and 1985. The social-political institutions, which last longer than organisations, come mainly from Portuguese (in the case of Brazil) and Japanese (in the case of South Korea) colonisation. Therefore, the impact of historical junctures, such as economic transformations influenced by changes at the international level, might be restricted to organisations at the domestic level as institutions related to pre-industrial periods persist and constrain the reach of modernisation.
Topic:: Development, Economics, and Politics
Political Geography:: South Korea, Brazil, and Korea

13. The developmental state is dead, long live the developmental regime! Interpreting Néstor Kirchner's Argentina 2003–2007

Author:: Christopher Wylde
Publication Date:: 04-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The post-crisis administration of Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) saw significant changes in the political economy of Argentina. After characterising these changes this article attempts to place the evidence within an appropriate meta-theoretical interpretation. The article concludes that while elements of historical forms of political economy exist in Néstor Kirchner's regime - elements of populism, elements of neoliberalism - in its entirety, one must look to other explanations not traditionally associated with Latin America, that is, the developmental regime. Such a conclusion facilitates both an enhanced understanding of post-crisis Argentine political economy, and an opportunity to further develop a developmental regime approach.
Topic:: Development and Political Economy
Political Geography:: Argentina and Latin America

14. Local orders in international organisations: the World Health Organization's global programme on AIDS

Author:: Tine Hanrieder
Publication Date:: 04-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: In 1990, the World Health Organization (WHO) started to downsize its renowned Global Programme on AIDS, despite continued donor and member state support. This turnaround has decisively contributed to WHO's loss of leadership in HIV/AIDS politics. From the viewpoint of both rationalist and constructivist theories of international organisation (IO) agency, an IO engaging in 'mission shrink' is a striking irregularity. In order to account for such apparently self-defeating behaviour, this article adopts an open systems view of IOs and identifies trans-organisational coalitions as important agents of IO change. I argue that subunit dynamics rather than systemic conditions drive IO behaviour, in particular where member states' material power and their formal control of organisational veto positions do not coincide. This approach will be used to retrace the changes in subunit coalitions that drove WHO's erratic HIV/AIDS programme and thus to solve this puzzle of 'mission shrink'. On the basis of insights from the WHO case, the article concludes by offering a heuristic of trans-organisational coalitions and the types of IO change associated with them.
Topic:: International Organization, Politics, World Trade Organization, and World Health Organization

15. Democracy, social welfare and political violence: the case of Latin America

Author:: Davide Grassi
Publication Date:: 04-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The return of democracy in Latin America has been associated with a decline in political violence, but also with a failure to redress welfare troubles or restore social justice. This essay provides an exploration of these problematic relationships. It argues that the impact of democracy on social welfare and internal civil violence is complex, develops unevenly and is mediated by a host of contributing factors. The bearing of democracy on political violence has been especially weak. In some countries democratic elites played a role in reducing or eliminating armed conflicts by offering a series of political concessions to the opposition, in particular communication channels with the government and social and political rewards. However, political violence survived or intensified under democracy elsewhere, while it was eradicated by force and (less frequently) by concessions in a number of authoritarian settings. Democracy has also affected welfare policies, through the appearance and progressive strengthening of social organisations and political parties that favoured channelling benefits towards the less advantaged. Yet, welfare protection also took place under populist and authoritarian governments, and it was influenced by a series of additional economic, political and social factors.
Topic:: Political Violence, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:: Latin America

16. Imperialism or globalisation? ... Or imperialism and globalisation: Theorising the international after Rosenberg's 'post-mortem'

Author:: Ray Kiely
Publication Date:: 04-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This article examines the concepts of globalisation and imperialism, both in terms of their explanatory status, and in the light of changes in the international order since the end of the Cold War. It does so both through detailed theoretical and empirical analysis, and in part through focusing on a key contributor to this debate, Justin Rosenberg. It is argued that Rosenberg's theoretical post-mortem for globalisation is correct. However, it is also argued that Rosenberg's historical post-mortem is far less convincing, not least when related to his subsequent attempts to draw on the concept of uneven and combined development in order to explain the reality of geopolitical conflict in the international order. It is here that the concept of imperialism enters the picture, and the article suggests that attempts to update theories of geopolitical competition based on Lenin and Bukharin's work on imperialism are unconvincing, as they fail to take full account of the changes in the international order since 1945. These changes - the internationalisation of capital and rise of global production networks, the rise of manufacturing in the developing world, the internationalisation of the state, cooperation between developed capitalist powers, and US hegemony - are well described, if not necessarily explained by the concept of globalisation. However, this does not mean that the concept of imperialism is no longer of use, and the idea is defended through a discussion of the hierarchies associated with the globalisation of production. It is further illustrated by relating liberal military intervention to this continued reality of global hierarchy and inequality in the international order. The article concludes by defending the ideas of imperialism and uneven and combined development, but argues that these cannot be used to explain the nature of the international state system (or geo-politics), but rather the hierarchies associated with the international capitalist order (or political economy).
Topic:: Globalization and Imperialism
Political Geography:: United States

17. Russia's energy relations in Europe and the Far East: towards a social structurationist approach to energy policy formation

Author:: Pami Aalto, David Dusseault, Michael D Kennedy, and Markku Kivinen
Publication Date:: 01-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: In this article, we examine the formation of Russia's energy policies vis-à-vis Europe and the Far East. As energy policy is a very complex field, we propose a new structurationist analytical model to deal with that complexity. Our model highlights the practices by which actors acquire information of their policy environments, which are conceptualised as structures enabling and constraining their actions. These practices involve intentions, interests and schemata. In our case analyses - the Nord Stream pipeline project and the Sakhalin Island's energy politics - we find that profit interests, as part of a wider business frame, most centrally guide Russian actors. The often-hyped energy superpower frame is found to be ambiguous. It generally does not bring the intentions of Russian actors together well, even if such a frame resonates with some of Russia's European customers. Energy security frames are found to be prevalent among Russia's customers and are highly differentiated. Environmental frames are mostly instrumentally deployed. Russian energy actors are capable of displaying collective intentionality, but are incapable of fully controlling the various dimensions of the complex policy environment.
Topic:: Security, Energy Policy, and Environment
Political Geography:: Russia and Europe

18. Defending state-centric regionalism through mimicry and localisation: regional parliamentary bodies in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Mercosur

Author:: Jürgen Rüland and Karsten Bechle
Publication Date:: 01-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The creation of parliamentary bodies for regional organisations such as Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) or Mercosur seems to be at odds with the intergovernmental logic on which these organisations rest. We approach this puzzle from the perspective of norm diffusion theory. In the article we argue that transnational legislative bodies in Southeast Asia and South America have been primarily established to retain the respective organisation's 'cognitive prior', which in both cases rests upon deeply entrenched corporatist norms and ideas. We test our theoretical claims by a comparative study on the emergence and evolution of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly and the Mercosur Parliament.
Topic:: Government
Political Geography:: America and Southeast Asia

19. Actor-networking the 'failed state' - an enquiry into the life of concepts

Author:: Christian Bueger and Felix Bethke
Publication Date:: 01-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Concepts such as the 'failed state' are jointly produced by academics and political actors and hence connect academia and global politics. Little attention has been spent to study such concepts and the practices that create them and sustain their relevance. We develop an innovative framework for studying concepts. Relying on actor-network theory, we suggest studying concepts as effects of relations between different actors building an actor-network. We introduce actor-network theory and demonstrate its value for international relations (IR) research. Our empirical case study of the concept of failed states combines bibliometric analysis and qualitative text analysis. We show how various actors have brought the concept of failed states to life; analyse how actors transformed because of their participation; and investigate the persistent struggles to define and homogenise the concept. In summary, this is an article about the life of the failed state, the discipline of IR and its relations to other actors, and an introduction of the actor-network theory toolbox to the sociology of IR.
Topic:: International Relations and Politics

20. Expanding the Expansion of International Society: a new approach with empirical illustrations from West African and European interaction, 1400-1883

Author:: John Anthony Pella, Jr.
Publication Date:: 01-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The purpose of this article is to expand upon Hedley Bull and Adam Watson's work The Expansion of International Society (1984a), initially theoretically and thereafter through empirical illustrations. The premise is that Bull and Watson's approach can only take study of the expansion so far, as it creates silences that neglect aspects of international history that were central to the expansion process. As such, I initially focus on three features of Bull and Watson's theoretical approach that are thought to create these silences and a problematic Euro-centrism: historical periodisation, a neglect of non-European regions and the system/society distinction. I thereafter argue that the original Expansion's periodisation scheme needs to be broadened, that research into non-European regions before European contact is necessary and that interaction at the world society level should be considered. The benefits of this new approach are then illustrated, first in a study of the West African international society in its own right, and then in a study of the Afro-European interaction that took place in the context of that society. Ultimately, this new approach suggests that the expansion process was driven largely by the exchange of norms and ideas at the world society level and by the emergence of mutually constructed institutions over the course of several centuries.
Political Geography:: Africa and Europe

21. Theorising the use of private military and security companies: a synthetic perspective

Author:: Andreas Kruck
Publication Date:: 01-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This article seeks to systematise and advance the theoretical debate on the causes and conditions for the privatisation of security. Drawing on previous research on private military and security companies (PMSCs) and theories from International Relations and Comparative Politics, it reconstructs functionalist, political-instrumentalist and ideationist explanations for why and under what conditions even 'strong' and democratic Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development states (extensively) use PMSCs. An analysis of inter-temporal and cross-national (United States, British, German and French) patterns of security privatisation indicates that all the three theoretical models point out causes and conditions that are relevant for a comprehensive explanation, but none is sufficient alone. Therefore, the article uses both the models and the empirical evidence to propose a synthetic perspective, which treats different explanatory conditions and logics as complementary, rather than rival. Going beyond the atheoretical conclusion that a multitude of disconnected factors are in some way relevant for a comprehensive explanation of security privatisation, I develop a thin and a thick synthesis that rely on a domain-of-application approach and sequencing, respectively. The thin synthesis spells out how different explanatory factors operate in specific domains, whereas the thick synthesis elaborates how different conditions and mechanisms apply to different phases of security privatisation and how they interrelate.
Topic:: International Relations, Security, Economics, and Politics
Political Geography:: United States and Germany

22. Replies to Chris Brown's '"Human Nature", science and international political theory'

Author:: Stefano Guzzini, Ewelina Sokolowska, Daniel Jacobi, and Stephen J Rosow
Publication Date:: 01-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: 'Human Nature' is back—and not only in JIRD, which had a special Symposium on the topic several years ago (Freyberg-Inan 2006; Hall 2006; Mercer 2006; Sterling-Folker 2006). Two reasons seem particularly relevant for the discussion here and now. First, and for quite a while now, our normative discussions struggle with or indeed vacillate between a universalism with problematic foundations and a pluralism suspect of relativism. Second, our theories of action smuggle in assumptions about human nature upon which the impetus for a certain behaviour is to be understood, but which are often conveniently left out of the analysis. For instance, with the advent of constructivism in International Relations, the existence and explanatory status of 'rump materialism' is again up for discussion. More fundamentally, the classical dichotomies of 'mind/body' and of 'reason/emotion' have been found wanting. In this context, finding some kind of foundation in a potentially universal Human Nature would be a help welcomed by many.

23. Why metaphor and other tropes? Linguistic approaches to analysing policies and the political

Author:: Alan Cienki and Dvora Yanow
Publication Date:: 04-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The articles in this special issue on linguistic approaches to analysing policies and the political share the goal of taking language seriously, achieved through detailed attention to linguistic usage in its respective contexts. They reflect a stance common to both cognitive linguistic and interpretive/constructivist approaches, namely a view of language as integrally constituting the world it presents, reflecting, at least in part, its users' experiences of that world. One key form of language use discussed is that of metaphor. Rather than being seen as merely a poetic device, metaphor is viewed in several of the articles as playing a pivotal role in the framing of policy or political issues, which it does by casting one idea in terms of the imagery of another. For example, talking about a political entity, such as a country, in terms of it being a kind of container can invite certain inferences about how political states function - in this case, reasoning about inclusion of members within the state 'container' vs. exclusion from it. The research shows that metaphors often have important ties with categorisation, the categories used being determined in part by the words we use to name concepts. In addition to metaphor, metonymy also plays a significant role. The articles show the intimate relationship between political language and political acts.
Topic:: Politics

24. Constituting China: the role of metaphor in the discourses of early Sino-American relations

Author:: Eric M Blanchard
Publication Date:: 04-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This paper demonstrates the value of political metaphor analysis as a tool for answering constitutive questions in International Relations (IR) theory, questions that attend to how the subjects of international politics are constituted by encounters with other subjects through representational and interactional processes. To this end, I examine the key metaphors within American political discourse that guided and structured early Sino-American interactions, focusing on US Secretary of State John Hay's Open Door notes and the contemporaneous Chinese Exclusion Acts. Viewed from a social constructivist metaphor perspective, this metaphorical protection of free trade and great power privilege hid the assumption that China was unable to act as its own doorkeeper, obscuring debates in the domestic and international spheres as to the meaning of 'Chinese' and the appropriate strategy for managing the encounter. A second approach, the cognitive perspective, builds on the seminal IR applications of cognitive linguistics and cognitive metaphor theory to reveal the deeper conceptual basis, specifically the container schema, upon which this encounter was predicated. Used in tandem, these two approaches to the constitutive role of political metaphor illuminate the processes by which metaphors win out over competing discourses to become durable features of international social relations.
Topic:: International Relations
Political Geography:: United States, China, and America

25. People out of place: allochthony and autochthony in the Netherlands' identity discourse - metaphors and categories in action

Author:: Dvora Yanow and Marleen van der Haar
Publication Date:: 04-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: As with much of Europe, the Netherlands has no explicit 'race' discourse; however, the state, through its public policy and administrative practices, does categorise its population along 'ethnic' lines, using birthplace - one's own or one's (grand-) parent's - as the surrogate determining factor. The contemporary operative taxonomy has until recently been binary: autochtoon (of Dutch heritage) and allochtoon (of foreign birth). Used earlier at the provincial level in respect of internal migration, the taxonomy was expanded in 1999 to demarcate between 'Western' allochtoon and 'non-Western' allochtoon, with the latter being further subdivided into first and second generation. Informed by a 'generative metaphor' approach (Schon 1979) that links cognition to action, this article subjects the allochtoon/autochtoon binary to metaphor analysis and the Western/non-Western taxonomy to category analysis. The work done by 'birthplace' in the term pair suggests that they are, in their everyday usage, surrogates for a race discourse, carrying the same (ancient) assumptions about individual identity and the earth-air-sun-water of the spot on which one was born that underlies definitions-in-use of 'race'. Their meaning in contemporary policy discourse derives from the interaction of metaphoric and category structures, with implications for policy implementation.
Political Geography:: Europe and Netherlands

26. How are language constructions constitutive? Strategic uses of conventional discourses about immigration

Author:: Claudia Strauss
Publication Date:: 04-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Metaphor theorists often state that metaphors are constitutive of thought and action. This article asks how language constructions are constitutive of policy, using the example of immigration policies in the United States. First, the claims of some metaphor analysts are scrutinised. Then a different approach is proposed, one that focuses on formulaic, oft-repeated schemas, or conventional discourses. Conventional discourses are not the same as Foucauldian discursive frameworks. Instead, they are stock rhetorical-interpretive frameworks. For policymakers they serve as mental shortcuts and political identity signals. Political speeches are constructed from multiple conventional discourses; 18 conventional discourses about immigration were drawn upon in just one Congressional debate. Their variety and numbers indicate the possibilities for differing policy emphases. Such constructions, including the formulaic metaphors that are typical of a particular conventional discourse, are constitutive in only a limited sense; they are suggestive without being determinative. Skilful politicians can creatively combine conventional discourses with rhetorical strategies of concession, springboarding, and co-optation to align with multiple constituencies, including ones on opposing sides of an issue. These points are illustrated with the example of U.S. Congressional debate about HR 4437, the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005.
Topic:: Politics and Immigration
Political Geography:: United States

27. Bringing concepts from cognitive linguistics into the analysis of policies and the political

Author:: Alan Cienki
Publication Date:: 04-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The articles in this special issue all seek to highlight the ways in which concepts from linguistics can enlighten analyses of policies and the political. In this commentary, I seek to situate some of the central concepts that have been employed in terms of their treatment in cognitive linguistics. The first part of this commentary focuses on metaphor - a construct that receives explicit analysis in these works as it is a fundamental tool we use for thinking about and expressing abstract concepts. The discussion then turns to a topic underpinning all of these studies, even while remaining implicit in them, namely metonymy: the mention of a part to stand for a whole, a whole for a part, and other relations of association. This section considers the important role of metonymy in providing a compact means for politicians, policy-makers, and/or average citizens to make reference to, and reason about, complex topics. At the same time, metonymy also carries the risk of reflecting, or inducing, unwarranted logical inferences. The third topic taken up here is categories; key issues considered are the variety of structures that categories can manifest and how these structures are pertinent in different ways in differing contexts, including classical categories that metaphorically function like containers, vs prototype categories with fuzzy boundaries. Employing these approaches in the analysis of policies and the political therefore involves not only a linguistic turn, but also a cognitive one.
Topic:: Politics

28. The importance of the Eurasian steppe to the study of international relations

Author:: Einar Wigen and Iver B Neumann
Publication Date:: 07-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This article is a call for making the Eurasian steppe an object of study within International Relations. The first section argues that the neglect of the steppe is due to 19th-century prejudice against non-sedentary polities as being barbarian. This is hardly a scholarly reason to neglect them. The second section is a nutshell overview of literature on the steppe from other fields. On the strength of these literatures, we postulate the existence of what we call an almost three thousand year long steppe tradition of ordering politics. The third section of the article suggests that the steppe tradition has hybridised sundry polity-building projects, from early polity-building in the European the Middle Ages via the Ottoman and Russian empires to contemporary Central Asian state-building. We conclude this exploratory piece by speculating whether a focus on the steppe tradition may have the potential to change our accounts of the emergence of European international relations at large.
Topic:: International Relations and Politics
Political Geography:: Russia, Europe, Central Asia, and Eurasia

29. Decaf empowerment? Post-Washington Consensus development policy, fair trade and Kenya's coffee industry

Author:: Zoë Pflaeger
Publication Date:: 07-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: There has been much debate surrounding the shift in development policy towards the Post-Washington Consensus and its associated Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. This article seeks to engage critically with and further this literature by considering the concept of empowerment and its role within this consensus through an examination of development policy aimed at farmer empowerment in Kenya. This is investigated with a focus upon coffee producers in the context of Kenya's coffee reforms and the restructuring of the global coffee industry. While acknowledging the limitations of the dominant approach, exacerbated in the African context due to a problematic interpretation of the African state, it is argued that analyses of empowerment should also consider the opportunities for its re-politicisation. Drawing upon Gramscian thought, this article suggests that fair trade initiatives have the potential to offer an alternative approach to farmer empowerment more capable of challenging the concentration of power among roasters and buyers that has taken place within the coffee industry.
Topic:: Development
Political Geography:: Kenya, Africa, and Washington

30. Securing energy or energising security: the impact of Russia's energy policy on Turkey's accession to the European Union

Author:: Burak Bilgehan Özpek
Publication Date:: 07-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The emergence of an energy security crisis between Russia and European countries has cast doubt on the argument that commercial ties lead to peaceful political relations between states as the energy trade between Russia and Europe has been inclined to generate conflict rather than cooperation. Nevertheless, the crisis has showed that military security issues no longer dominate the agenda and that issues produce different degrees of cooperation and conflict between governments. Furthermore, governments cannot use military force in order to resolve issues in an era of interdependence. Therefore, the European Union (EU), which suffers from an asymmetric dependence on energy resources imported from or via Russia, has adopted a diversification policy. This policy not only affects energy security but also the EU's enlargement process. Accordingly, a diversification policy requires embracing alternative energy sources, such as Turkey's involvement in oil and gas pipeline projects bypassing Russia. Thus, Turkey's contribution to European energy security creates an interdependence, which could affect Turkey's relations with the EU.
Topic:: Security, Energy Policy, and Government
Political Geography:: Russia, Europe, and Turkey

31. Designing the Financial Stability Board: a theoretical investigation of mandate, discretion, and membership

Author:: Manuela Moschella
Publication Date:: 07-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This paper investigates the factors that help explain certain aspects of the new institutional design of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), namely its mandate, discretion, and membership. In doing so, the paper tests the hypotheses suggested by principal-agent (PA) theory, according to which institutional characteristics are consciously intended by state-principals with the aim to overcome cooperation problems. Empirical evidence lends support to PA hypotheses, according to which the functions assigned to the FSB help minimise the transaction costs related to the specific area of financial cooperation. Nevertheless, PA hypotheses have difficulty explaining the degree of discretion and the size of the FSB membership, thereby calling for exploring alternative theoretical explanations.

32. (Babylonian) Lions, (Asian) Tigers, and (Russian) Bears: a statistical test of three rivalrous paths to conflict

Author:: Paul A Kowert and Cameron G Thies
Publication Date:: 07-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Structural theories of international relations anticipate no meaningful differences of kind, as opposed to capabilities, among states. Empirical investigations of enduring and strategic rivalries hint at a distinction, however, between states that see themselves as potential rivals and those that do not. Constructivists go further, suggesting that the roles adopted by states during their interactions are the result of varying underlying images of threat. This paper develops the theoretical claim that three different images of threat may produce distinct kinds of rivalry and thereby three paths to militarised interstate conflict. Each image of threat is rooted in a different normative context: strategic threats are associated with violations of the enforcement of Hobbesian cooperative security arrangements; competitive threats are associated with violations of fairness or reasonableness standards in Lockean exchange relationships; and institutional threats are associated with violations of the basis for commitment to Kantian communities of peace. A logistic regression analysis of Correlates of War data, combined with other data relevant to the three threat images, provide empirical support for each of these rivalrous paths to conflict.
Political Geography:: Russia and Asia

33. 'Human nature', science and international political theory

Author:: Chris Brown
Publication Date:: 10-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The Post-War rise in importance of the individual in international political theory, as evidenced by the development of the international human rights regime, International Criminal Law and theories of global justice, has, paradoxically, been accompanied by an highly critical approach to the concept of human nature. Criticisms of human nature largely rest on the association of the concept of with social Darwinism, racism, sexism and eugenics, but, understood properly and at the right level of generality, the concept of human nature need not attract such undesirable, pseudo-scientific bedfellows. The modern science of evolutionary psychology is in the process of changing our understanding of the social implications of our genetic inheritance, and social and political theorists ought not to resist this change, and international relations scholars should not leave the field to realist scholars. Premature generalisations based on the findings of evolutionary psychology should certainly be resisted, but so should blanket rejections of the new knowledge. The task for international political theorists is to find a way of integrating the findings of the new human sciences into a humane understanding of the human animal.
Topic:: Human Rights

34. International relations in the making of political Islam: interrogating Khomeini's 'Islamic government'

Author:: Kamran Matin
Publication Date:: 10-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Eurocentric approaches to political Islam tend to deploy an internalist methodology that theoretically obscures the generative and constitutive role of international relations. This article addresses this problem through a critical application of Leon Trotsky's idea of 'uneven and combined development' to Ayatollah Khomeini's invention of the concept of 'Islamic government'. It argues that this concept was international in its socio-political stimulus and intellectual content, and, crucially, reflected, influenced, and mobilised an emergent liminal sociality that combined Western and Islamic socio-cultural forms. This heterogeneous character of Iran's experience of modernity is, the article argues, theoretically inaccessible to Eurocentric approaches' homogeneous and unilinear conceptions of history, which, as a result, generate exceptionalist modes of explanations.
Topic:: International Relations and Government
Political Geography:: Iran

35. From fratricide to security community: re-theorising difference in the constitution of Nordic peace

Author:: Pertti Joenniemi and Christopher S Browning
Publication Date:: 10-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This article utilises a revisionist account of the emergence of Nordic peace in the 19th century to open up space for rethinking and re-theorising the constitutive dynamics underlying security communities. While the Nordic case is often considered a prime example of a security community the article argues it did not emerge in the way usually claimed. First, security did not figure as a key constitutive argument as assumed by traditional security community theorising; second, togetherness did not emerge because of difference being traded for enhanced similarity. In fact, security was side-lined and difference re-interpreted rather than erased in forging ontologically safe identities.
Topic:: Security

36. One state-one nation: the naturalisation of nation-state congruency in IR theory

Author:: Moran M Mandelbaum
Publication Date:: 10-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This paper suggests that the notion of nation-state congruency has become a 'leitmotif' in International Relations (IR) theory, especially since the end of the Cold War. Congruent states are often constructed as the precursor of liberal democracy, peace, and modernity, while security in particular is discursively intertwined with nation-state congruency. This paper asks: how has this congruency discourse become so embedded in IR theory and, consequently, what can we learn about the nexus between IR and the states/international system? These questions are of a 'how-possible' and critical nature that engage with the power dynamics and thus the effects that emerge from this 'congruency bias'. To answer these, I deploy the 'discursive practices approach' and show the various practices/strategies through which congruency is constituted and established, naturalised and legitimated. Finally, I conclude by proposing to inquire genealogically into the conditions of emergence of nation-state congruency in IR and modernity.
Topic:: International Relations, Security, and Cold War

37. Imagining ourselves then and now: nostalgia and Canadian multiculturalism

Author:: Mira Sucharov
Publication Date:: 10-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: International relations has begun to take seriously the study of emotions, just as it has long acknowledged the role of collective memory in shaping politics. But the role of nostalgia as a potential driver of progressive political change has been little considered. This article engages the possibility of an ironic nostalgia for shoring up the multicultural project. Through examining the ironic potential in two contemporary popular Canadian cultural artefacts - Molson Canadian's 'I am Canadian' commercial and Douglas Coupland's Souvenir of Canada - the article suggests that assimilationist and separationist impulses may actually bolster the integrationist goals of multiculturalism. Contra nostalgia's critics, the article suggests that dominant groups in society may need emotional space to mourn a cognitively simpler past in order to embrace a more complex present.
Topic:: International Relations, Politics, and Multiculturalism
Political Geography:: Canada

38. Politics, law, and the sacred: a conceptual analysis

Author:: Friedrich V. Kratochwil
Publication Date:: 01-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The 'return' of religion has not only engendered new conflicts in world politics, but also fundamentally challenged the Western political project, which allegedly rests on a strict separation of the public and private sphere. Religion is supposed to play a role only within the confines of the latter, as it is considered a 'privately held belief'. Of course, this project is neither shared by all Westerners, nor is it necessarily persuasive to other cultures. Thus within the emerging global sphere it is by no means clear whether such a strict separation can muster assent.(Barbato and Kratochwil 2009: 1–24) For this reason some thinkers, such as Habermas (2003) or Connolly (1999), among many, have attempted to formulate a new approach in which ways of overcoming the dis- placement of religions to the 'private/personal' realm are explored, in order to harness the semantic potential of religion for the establishment of a discourse on global order, while avoiding at the same time the establishment of a particular orthodoxy or of a millenarian political projects based on the notion of absolute 'truth'.
Topic:: Human Rights and Law

39. Governmentality's (missing) international dimension and the promiscuity of German neoliberalism

Author:: Hans-Martin Jaeger
Publication Date:: 01-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: An important insight from the recent publication of Foucault's governmentality lectures for International Relations (IR) is that international manifestations of governmentalities such as police and liberalism, rather than constituting mere domestic analogies, have inherently international dimensions. Police and liberalism are both constituted by and constitutive of the international contexts in which they emerge: historically, the European balance of power and a 'globalisation' of markets, respectively. However, Foucault's account of German and American neoliberalism in the twentieth century omits references to the international context. This article first reconstructs the 'domestic-international nexus' in Foucault's account of police and liberalism, and then recovers aspects of the missing international dimension of his analysis of German neoliberalism with recourse to Wilhelm Röpke's writing on IR. The upshot of this recovery effort is threefold. First, the international remains pivotal to (mid-) twentieth-century neoliberal governmentality. Second, (German) neoliberalism's association with multiple 'international' governmentalities, including liberal and non-liberal ones, exposes neoliberalism as a 'promiscuous' mode of governance. Third, German neoliberalism's promiscuity is underwritten by (though not reducible to) a conservative ethos of moderation. More broadly, this article contributes to efforts to theorise the relationship between domestic and international politics, and to understand neoliberalism as a 'variegated' phenomenon.
Political Geography:: America and Germany

40. Locating the normative within economic science: towards the analysis of hidden discourses of democracy in international politics

Author:: Milja Kurki
Publication Date:: 01-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Economic science has been overwhelmingly perceived as a 'positive' science, both among economists and many scholars in other social sciences. As a result, there has been an estrangement between the 'scientific' study of economics and the study of 'fuzzier' matters of normative nature. Crucially, it is often assumed that economists — whether academics or practitioners — have little to say about democracy, a concept that is famously normative and contested in nature. This article argues that this perception is mistaken and misleading. When several key figures in economic science are examined in detail, we can see that their economic theories are, in fact, deeply intertwined with certain normative visions of democracy, even if implicitly. Recognising the role of hidden normative theories of democracy within economic science perspectives is important theoretically, in re-reading the nature and scope of economic science discourses. It is also, however, important in understanding some key world political trends. It is argued here that we are in a better position to understand the curious 'dabbling' of global financial organisations in matters of 'political nature' when we remain attuned to the role of hidden democratic assumptions. Also, the complex role of these organisations in 'democracy promotion', and the nature of democracy promotion itself, can thus be better appreciated.
Topic:: Politics

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

51. Beyond geography and social structure: disciplinary sociologies of power in international relations

Author:: Kevin McMillan
Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Throughout their relatively brief history, studies examining the academic International Relations (IR) discipline have manifested an abiding concern with power and its uneven 'distribution'. In this, of course, they mirror the object of their analysis. The same might also be said of the approach they typically use to study disciplinary power: as within IR theory itself, studies of the IR discipline have primarily identified and assessed power in geographical and territorial terms. There are two principal (and often overlapping) variants of this approach: the first, and most familiar, is national (state-centric); the second, increasingly popular, is imperial (world-systemic).
Topic:: International Relations

52. Critique in a time of liberal world order

Author:: Beate Jahn
Publication Date:: 04-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The dominance of liberalism in world politics today is widely interpreted as attesting to its universal validity. This claim provides the basis for a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate criticism — the former operating within a broadly liberal framework and the latter questioning the universal validity of that framework. This special issue brings together critiques of liberalism in the second register. The introduction sets out the two competing notions of critical analysis and argues that, far from being 'illegitimate', it is this second concept of critique that ensures that liberalism does not betray its core promise of replacing might with right in a time of liberal world order.
Topic:: Politics

53. The liberal renaissance and the end(s) of history

Author:: TIm Di Muzio
Publication Date:: 04-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Addressing the historical turn in International Relations (IR), this article offers a critical appraisal of what I call the liberal renaissance by interrogating liberal discourse and its renderings of history. The main argument advanced is that whether implicitly or explicitly, liberal perspectives in IR are heir to two overlapping and often contradictory narratives of history that masquerade as universals when they can be shown to be particular (and indeed peculiar). The first narrative is animated by a juridico-philosophical discourse while the second is informed by a stadial-historical discourse. I suggest that both of these narratives contribute to a triumphant, universal and relatively pacific reading of the liberal project, the aim of which is to encourage — through a variety of strategies, tactics and technologies — liberal democratic market societies so that the world will one day be united by capitalist commerce and the institutions of polyarchical democracy. I conclude the article by considering some of the consequences of holding to these historical appreciations for contemporary IR and advocates of the liberal project.
Topic:: International Relations

54. Geniuses, exiles and (liberal) postmodern subjectivities

Author:: Rosemary Shinko
Publication Date:: 04-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This article argues that Ashley and Walker's 'dissident exile' and Mill's 'genius' are virtual mirror images of one another due to the fact that both subject formulations rely on the concept of individual autonomy. Postmodern iterations of subjectivity such as those found in the work of Ashley and Walker place a great deal of emphasis on alterity and ethical engagement, striving to move beyond the ethical limitations of Enlightenment liberalism that valorises the atomised, sovereign individual. But both Mill's genius, who can choose his or her own mode of existence or plan of life, and Ashley and Walker's dissident exile, who engages in self-making in a register of freedom, are inextricably bound up with and reliant upon one of liberalism's seminal concepts: autonomy. The implications of this in terms of theorising new forms of subjectivity in international relations are significant because replacing autonomy with heteronomy or recasting autonomy in relational terms fails to fully acknowledge how central autonomy is to the entire project of critique. The critical attitude that Ashley and Walker, as well as Mill, exhibit emanates from within Enlightenment liberalism; since the very act of critique rests on the exercise of individual autonomy, perhaps the most we can hope for in terms of new iterations of subjectivity may only be one that is more expansively 'liberal'.

55. Liberal internationalism and the law vs liberty paradox

Author:: Linda Bishai
Publication Date:: 04-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This article examines and critiques the engagement of liberal international law with liberal internationalism in international relations (IR), demonstrating that the results are not to the credit of either discipline. In particular, two key assumptions of the legal liberal international order are flawed. First, the attempt to establish a two-tiered international liberal order based on law and democracy results in intervention (both forceful and performative) that counterproductively embroils liberal states, generating resentment and counter-democratic movements. Second, the assumption that security in a globalising world can only be created by the total globalisation of the liberal order and the removal of 'outlaw' states creates a new version of the security dilemma in which the actions taken to secure the liberal world order create the very conditions of its insecurity. The article concludes with recommendations for a critical post-structuralist engagement with a post-liberal politics of virtù that paradoxically allows for the liberal identity to be better secured in its international relations with the other.
Topic:: Security, Politics, and Law

56. Missing the target: NGOs, global civil society and the arms trade

Author:: Anna Stavrianakis
Publication Date:: 04-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Non-governmental organisation (NGO) activism on the arms trade is emblematic of the significant and emancipatory role attributed to civil society in post-Cold War international politics. Discussions of NGOs' efforts are marked by a distinctively liberal understanding of civil society as an increasingly global sphere separate from the state and market, promoting progressive and non-violent social relations. However, there are significant conceptual and empirical problems with these claims, which I illustrate using examples from contemporary NGO activism on the international production of and trade in conventional weaponry. First, liberal accounts underplay the mutual dependence between the state, market and civil society. NGO agency is both constrained and enabled by its historical, structural grounding. Second, I argue for a more ambivalent understanding of NGOs' progressive political value. While some NGOs may play a role in counter-hegemonic struggle, overall they are more likely to contribute to hegemonic social formations. Third, liberal accounts of a global civil society inadequately capture the reproduction of hierarchy in international relations, downplaying ongoing, systematic patterns of North-South asymmetry. Fourth, the emphasis on the non-violent nature of global civil society sidelines the violence of capitalism and the state system, and serves as a means of disciplining dissent and activism.
Topic:: Cold War and Non-Governmental Organization

57. Eternal peace, perpetual war? A critical investigation into Kant's conceptualisations of war

Author:: Andreas Behnke
Publication Date:: 04-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Most discussions of Immanuel Kant's political theory of international politics focus on his work on Eternal Peace and its normative and empirical relevance for contemporary international relations and international law. Yet for all his concern with peace, Kant's work is characterised by a fascinating preoccupation with the concept of war and its role in human history. The purpose of this essay is to investigate critically Kant's different conceptualisations of war and to evaluate his writing as a critique against contemporary versions of Liberal war and peace, as well as recent attempts to reduce war to an immanent logic of biopolitics.
Topic:: Politics

58. Islam, nihilism and liberal secularity

Author:: Mustapha Pasha
Publication Date:: 04-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The theme of nihilism offers fertile avenues for exploring the antinomies of classical liberalism. In its instantiation as violence, nihilism challenges classical liberalism and its recognised political settlement, notably received arrangements harnessed to cultivate uncontrolled passions or religious fervour. In its affinity to Islam, nihilism defies the secular settlement through its appeals to transcendence. By seeking legitimacy in the sacred, nihilism disrupts established boundaries between the religious and the secular. Nihilism exposes the difficulty of forging worlds of transcendence on the modern register of immanence. Transcendence affords the possibility of escape, immanence closure. The two can be reversed in politics, as the experience in several Islamic Cultural Zones (ICZs) suggests. Appeals to transcendence seek to reorganise the social world in the name of escaping it. Immanence, on the other hand, can rework notions of redemption and salvation into secular stories of progress. This paper explores how the presumed nihilistic tendency appearing in the ICZs destabilises the liberal settlement, not in the conventional sense of presenting a religious counterpoint, but in reworking religious themes into secularity. Nihilism illustrates both the contradictory character of modernity and modernity's potential to generate varied societal projects, including those informed by the sacred. The recognition that modernity can spawn discordant impulses in reconciling religion and politics helps rethink post-secular lives under the long shadow of disenchantment.
Topic:: Islam and Politics

59. Liberal fundamentals: invisible, invasive, artful, and bloody hands

Author:: Naeem Inayatullah and David Blaney
Publication Date:: 04-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Returning to liberalism's Scottish Enlightenment precursors suggests that the liberal order might best be described by the tension between its assertions about the smoothing natural harmonies within the social order and its doubts about whether those harmonies can appear spontaneously and therefore require aggressive projects of reform and correction. Although committed to the inevitability and inexorability of progress, such doubts led Scottish Enlightenment figures to strategies that even today continue to mark liberalism's effort to purify modern progress of tragedy's taint. We continue to justify apparent social failings as necessary to the natural order, regarding them instead as advantages in a Providentialist manner (Smith and Hume). We preserve our faith in commercial society by aggressively reforming and correcting those inside and outside others who resist the inevitabilities we have embraced (Millar). We accept the disorders and instabilities inherent in modern market society, but replace our hope in the automaticity of adjustment with a belief in the capacity of the state or some form of international governance to resolve tensions in some higher-order liberalism (Steuart). We call for a moral revival to restore values that our contemporary liberal institutions cannot possibly sustain (Ferguson). In sum, maintaining liberalism's idealised vision of itself in the face of these necessary limits and ill consequences calls forth the purificatory zeal of the fundamentalist. If we wish to move past a response that offers us more liberalism and more zeal as a solution to the problems of liberalism, we need something that is both within and beyond liberal fundamentals: a liberalism that accepts truths beyond itself; that looks to multiple ontologies for political and ethical resources; and that accepts plural and multiple versions of virtue and progress negotiated between liberalism's fundamentals and varying local ideals and conditions.
Topic:: Governance
Political Geography:: Scotland

60. A global journal with Central European roots: a vision for the JIRD

Publication Date:: 07-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The JIRD is a global journal with Central European roots. We have established a diverse editorial team of scholars from Europe and North America linked first by a commitment to publish highest quality scholarship in international relations (IR) and development, broadly conceived, regardless of substantive or methodological focus; and second by a common awareness of the contribution the Central and East European (CEE) experience can make to the study of international politics. We envision the JIRD as a globally relevant journal with a CEE touch. This does not mean dealing primarily with CEE themes, although the region will naturally remain more strongly in focus than in comparable IR journals. More profoundly, it means nurturing both CEE IR scholarship and also the broader transnational scholarly context in which it develops.
Topic:: International Relations and Development
Political Geography:: Europe and North America

61. Into the 'Heart of Darkness' — EU's civilising mission in the DR Congo

Author:: Gabi Schlag
Publication Date:: 07-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: 'Normative Power Europe', a concept introduced by Ian Manners in 2002 in order to describe the international identity of the European Union (EU), remains a lasting point of reference for academic as well as political debates. However, many contributions to this discussion tend to essentialise notions of a collective identity where normative self-depictions are uncritically used as an explanation for the EU's external actions. The main challenge, thus, is to reconstruct how a self is invented in the conduct of foreign and security policies as a discourse of locating others and articulating insecurities. These discursive processes, I will argue, are highly productive of hierarchical relations and justification narratives overlooked by most research on the EU's security and defence policies. The results of a reconstruction of EU discourse on the European Security and Defence Policy missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo lead to the preliminary conclusion that the EU might increasingly be imagined as a 'civilising power', partly re-activating its imperial legacies of the 19th century.
Topic:: Foreign Policy
Political Geography:: Europe

62. Complexity theory and the War on Terror: understanding the self-organising dynamics of leaderless jihad

Author:: Antoine Bousquet
Publication Date:: 07-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This article seeks to substantiate theoretically Marc Sageman's claims of a 'leaderless jihad' through the application of the conceptual framework offered by the novel scientific paradigm of complexity theory. It is argued that jihadist networks, such as those behind the September 11 attacks and the bombings in London and Madrid, can be profitably understood in terms of complex adaptive systems, emergent organisations that coalesce and self-organise in a decentralised fashion. Complexity sheds new light on the jihadist movement by providing an account of the bottom-up self-organisation of its networks and the systems of distributed intelligence which allow those networks to operate and pursue successful attacks on the basis of partial and localised information, and this despite the strenuous efforts at counter-terrorism deployed by states.
Topic:: War

63. The roles states play: a Meadian interactionist approach

Author:: David M. McCourt
Publication Date:: 07-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Constructivist scholars have largely limited their view of how state action is socially constructed to the concepts of norms and identity. As for individuals, however, role-playing is also a core aspect of state activity. I demonstrate the potential of this concept for constructivists on the basis of a reconsideration of the roles states play in international politics - drawing on symbolic interactionism and in particular the thought of G.H. Mead. From a Meadian perspective, roles are sets of appropriate behaviours, not bundles of fixed duties; they emerge in interaction and give the actor a sense of its structure and the scope of possible action. Roles are thus the necessary social vehicle for action in its meaning-creating, identity-affirming sense. Using the illustration of the Suez Crisis of 1956, I develop a 'Meadian interactionist' conceptual approach that builds on previous attempts to harness the potential of the role concept in International Relations (IR) and sharpens constructivist understandings of the links between role, identity, norms, and action in IR.
Topic:: International Relations

64. The social construction of terrorism: media, metaphors and policy implications

Author:: Alexander Spencer
Publication Date:: 07-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The article illustrates a constructivist understanding of studying terrorism and counter-terrorism by applying metaphor analysis to a British tabloid media discourse on terrorism between 2001 and 2005 in The Sun newspaper. It identifies four conceptual metaphors constituting terrorism as a war, a crime, an uncivilised evil and as a disease, and it illustrates how these understandings make certain counter-terrorism policies such as a military response, judicial measures or immigration policies acceptable while at the same time excluding from consideration other options, such as negotiations. It thereby re-emphasises that a metaphorical understanding of political phenomena such as terrorism can give International Relations insights into how certain policies become possible while others remain outside of the range of options thought to be appropriate.
Topic:: International Relations and Terrorism

65. Parliamentary peace or partisan politics? Democracies' participation in the Iraq War

Author:: Patrick A. Mello
Publication Date:: 07-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This paper seeks to explain democracies' military participation in the Iraq War. Prior studies have identified institutional and partisan differences as potential explanatory factors for the observed variance. The interaction of institutions and partisanship, however, has gone largely unobserved. I argue that these factors must be analysed in conjunction: institutional constraints presume actors that fulfil their role as veto players to the executive. Likewise, partisan politics is embedded in institutional frames that enable or constrain decision-making. Hence I suggest a comparative approach that combines these factors to explain why some democracies joined the ad hoc coalition against Iraq and others did not. To investigate the interaction between institutions, partisanship and war participation I apply fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The analysis reveals that the conjunction of right-of-centre governments with an absence of both parliamentary veto rights and constitutional restrictions was sufficient for participation in the Iraq War. In turn, for countries where the constitution requires parliamentary approval of military deployments, the distribution of preferences within the legislature proved to be decisive for military participation or non-participation.
Topic:: Politics and War
Political Geography:: Iraq

66. 'Getting things right?': a reconsideration of critical realism as a metatheory for IR

Author:: Juha Käpylä and Harri Mikkola
Publication Date:: 10-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Critical realism (CR) has become one of the prominent metatheoretical frameworks upon which substantive inquiry of world politics in the discipline of International Relations (IR) can build. The aim of this article is to critically reconsider CR metatheory and its attitude to 'get things right' about the world. This is done, primarily, by focusing on the existence of the correspondence theory of truth in the CR framework. To support this analysis, the notions of explanatory power, retroduction and emergence are also engaged. The article poses three broad research questions: first, what is the relationship between external reality and human knowledge in the CR framework? Second, what sort of logical problems does this account entail? And last, what are the implications of the acceptance of CR metatheory for IR? The article argues that both the emphasis on the external reality as the yardstick for (social) scientific research and the attempt to combine fallibilism with the realist aim of 'getting things right' about reality with the help of the correspondence theory of truth are highly problematic. The article concludes that CR metatheory could entail serious axiological problems for IR. Among the most serious ones is the potential scientific conservatism based on realist 'truthtalk'.

67. Power beyond conditionality: European organisations and the Hungarian minorities in Romania and Slovakia

Author:: Jakob Skovgaard
Publication Date:: 10-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The article addresses the power of three international organisations, the Council of Europe (CoE), the European Union (EU) and the High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) regarding the Hungarian minority policies of Romania, Slovakia and Hungary. It is argued that most of the academic literature within the field misses the point when relying on a rather limited conceptualisation of power as something which one actor uses to get another actor to do what it otherwise would not have done. Using a broader conceptualistion of power, including the power to interpret norms and their application, leads to a better understanding of the roles of the CoE and the HCNM. Analysing the three organisations' approaches to the Hungarian minority education policy in Romania and Slovakia, as well as the Hungarian Status Law, reveals how the CoE and the HCNM interpreted norms of national minority policy and their application to the addressed policies. These interpretations shaped EU policy on the subject, and Romania, Slovakia and Hungary had to take the EU policy seriously due to their desire to join the EU. The three organisations engaged in an exchange of power, in which the CoE and the OSCE High Commissioner bestowed legitimacy on the EU, which in return could provide them with increased leverage over the accession states.
Political Geography:: Europe, Romania, and Slovakia

68. The social construction of European solidarity: Germany and France in the EU policy towards the states of Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific (ACP) and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC)

Author:: Siegfried Schieder, Rachel Folz, and Simon Musekamp
Publication Date:: 10-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This article compares the foreign policies of France and Germany in the 1990s towards the European Union (EU)'s special relationships with the countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) on the one hand and the Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC) on the other. Whereas France advocated support for ACP interests, Germany supported those of the CEEC. We argue that French and German prioritisations cannot sufficiently be explained by rationalist, interest-based approaches (i.e. neorealism, economic liberalism and institutionalism) and offer a constructivist supplement to fill in the gaps. This approach is based on the concept of solidarity. First, we develop our theoretical concept and identify three principles of solidarity action (i.e. ties, need and effort). We then apply our concept of solidarity to show how French and German policies towards the Cotonou Agreement, concluded in 2000 with the ACP, and the EU's Eastern enlargement process were shaped by different social constructions of solidarity, resulting in strong preferential support for either the ACP (France) or the CEEC (Germany).
Political Geography:: Africa, Eastern Europe, France, Germany, Caribbean, and Central Europe

69. Ali A. Mazrui, postcolonialism and the study of international relations

Author:: Seifudein Adem
Publication Date:: 10-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: First as intellectual ally and then as adversary, Kenyan political scientist Ali A. Mazrui was embraced by the North American discipline of international relations (IR) in the 1960s and 1970s; he was virtually neglected in the 1980s; and a measure of interest in his scholarship revived in the 1990s and beyond. But Mazrui has not found a place in postcolonialism ever since that school emerged in the critical margins of IR. This essay argues that the estrangement between Mazrui and IR was primarily due to the changing nature of the discipline and his unchanging approach to it. Mazrui became the methodological 'Other' in the mainstream discipline. The essay also claims that Mazrui's marginalisation in postcolonialism is ultimately attributable to his image as the cultural and ideological 'Other'.
Political Geography:: Kenya and North America

70. The case for a foundational materialism: going beyond historical materialist IPE in order to strengthen it

Author:: Ian Bruff
Publication Date:: 10-2011
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

71. Hierarchy in World Politics

Author:: Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and George Lawson
Publication Date:: 04-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: With this Special Issue the editorial team fulfils a campaign promise, so to speak. In our original proposal to assume the editorship of the Journal of International Relations and Development, we proposed three special features: a Forum on IR in Eastern and Central Europe (published in issue 12:2), a Forum on post-Communist and post-Socialist transitions (published in issue 12:4), and a Special Issue on hierarchy in world politics. The four papers collected here represent the end result of a process of soliciting proposals for manuscripts, putting those manuscripts through the regular peer-review process, and selecting papers that would allow a multi-faceted exploration of a complex topic that has made its way back into IR after the long interregnum of theories and models that focused on presumptively equivalent states operating under conditions of anarchy. But this is more than simply 'bringing hierarchy back in'; the new focus on unequal relations of power in world politics is a good deal more sophisticated than the sometimes blunt assertions of dependency theory and early world-systems accounts. The papers that we have assembled for this Special Issue represent some, but by no means all, of the rich analytical diversity in contemporary accounts of hierarchy in world politics.
Topic:: International Relations
Political Geography:: Europe

72. Empire, imperialism and conceptual history

Author:: Helge Jordheim and Iver B Neumann
Publication Date:: 04-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Hierarchy in world politics has to be discussed by means of specific concepts. Concepts come with specific historical and social baggage. They are defined by their meanings and uses and become powerful in battle with other concepts. The concepts discussed in this article, 'empire' and 'imperialism', have lately made their return to the grand stage of world politics, most significantly as descriptions, and indeed, self-descriptions of the role and position of the United States. How is this return possible? What does it mean? To answer these questions we draw on the long-standing scientific discipline and method of conceptual history, or Begriffsgeschichte, in the way it has been theorised and practised by the German historian and theorist of history Reinhart Koselleck. In a second step, we discuss how this way of writing the history of social and political concepts has been challenged by other approaches, most importantly by the Cambridge intellectual historian Quentin Skinner. At the hands of Koselleck and Skinner conceptual history contributes to opening our eyes to the historical specificity of the uses and meanings of concepts in particular contexts, in a long historical perspective ranging from the Ancient Romans to the Bush administration.
Topic:: History
Political Geography:: United States

73. Eco-imperialism: governance, resistance, hierarchy

Author:: Hugh Dyer
Publication Date:: 04-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The global environmental agenda, alongside the broad neoliberal agenda, may be viewed by developing states and societies as a neo-imperialist adventure to be resisted. This paper argues that while the idea of 'eco-imperialism' reflects the uncertain location of politics, the ambivalent role of states, and unchallenged state-centred assumptions about world politics, it also introduces conceptual confusion. It is an unusual case of imperialism, in so far as it involves diverse actors who may not be pursuing the same objectives. It appears that eco-imperialism may be both hegemonic force and anti-capitalist movement. In order to explain this apparent contradiction, we must note the contradictions in globalisation, but also how the mix of underlying political orientations create strange bed-fellows of, for example, developing country activists and oil company executives. In doing so, a nuanced view of the dynamics of global environmental policy and the prospects for matching these to particular political contexts may be discerned. While the exploitative and dominating aspects of global environmental policy deserve to be challenged and studied, these may have less bearing on global governance per se than on the globalised world in which it occurs. In recognising the intent of the critique, one must also note the mutual constitution of governance and resistance, local-global reverberations, and the prospects for bottom-up support identified by 'environmentality'. Hence, any signs of eco-imperialism imply 'participatory empire' at worst, which should inform rather than obstruct global environmental governance.
Topic:: Globalization and Politics

74. The Middle East in the world hierarchy: imperialism and resistance

Author:: Raymond Hinnebusch
Publication Date:: 04-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This study deploys a structuralist framework of analysis, modified by elements from other theories, to examine the place of the Middle East in the world hierarchy. It surveys the origins of the regional system in imperialism's peripheralisation and fragmentation of the region, the core-periphery clientalist hierarchy thereby established, regional agency within the system, including the foreign policies of dependent and rebellious states, and the on-going struggle over the hierarchical order between revisionist forces in the Middle East and the global hegemons.
Topic:: Foreign Policy
Political Geography:: Middle East

75. Hegemony, not empire

Publication Date:: 04-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: After a period of terminological indecision, 'empire' has staged a startling academic comeback since the beginning of this century. Like the notion of hegemony, which dominated earlier debates on the United States and world order, the term 'empire' has never been uncontested. Furthermore, no clear delineation between the two concepts emerged, and under-conceptualisation resulted in a lasting confusion about their analytical value. Analysing the pitfalls of the central debates on empire and hegemonic stability, the article contends that the choice of terminology has frequently been motivated politically rather than by scientific standards. We find that proponents of 'empire' have largely misinterpreted the policy strategy of empire — as applied by the George W. Bush administration — for the real thing, an existing empire. In this article, instead, using Gary Goertz' (2006) approach to conceptual analysis, we suggest a reformulation of the concept of hegemony to capture the current international system in which the US still enjoys an undisputed preponderance of power. With a focus on how power is used, hegemony is understood as a specific form of leadership that is dependent on the perception of its legitimacy and is differentiated with regard to its regional and global reach.
Political Geography:: United States

76. The state as citizen: state personhood and ideology

Author:: Jorg Kustermans
Publication Date:: 01-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: An important debate in International Relations and International Law is whether states are persons. In this article, it is argued that they are. That is, they are real persons-as-status. Furthermore, state personhood is argued to be an ideological category, marked by ideological variety. Roughly, one can tell apart liberal and republican conceptions of state citizenship. In a case study, the conceptual toolkit of state citizenship is put to work to assess the liberal credentials of modern international society. While modern international society rests on firm liberal principles, expressed most clearly in the Charter of the UN, important republican elements can be discerned, not in the least in the constitution of NATO.
Topic:: International Relations, NATO, International Law, and United Nations

77. Gender and race in the European security strategy: Europe as a 'force for good'

Author:: Maria Stern
Publication Date:: 01-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Taking Robert Kagan's imagery of US-Mars and Europe-Venus as a point of departure, this article probes into how the naturalised reproduction of Europe in the text of the European Security Strategy (ESS) discursively occurs through intermeshing gendered and racialised discourses. The article therefore offers a narrative that has been largely silenced in conversations about the EU as a global security actor. By paying attention to embedded 'sticky' gendered and racialised signs in the text of the ESS, the article argues that the delineations drawn to secure Europe in the text of the ESS also engender 'Europe' as multiply masculine by dividing the world into sharp spatio-temporal distinctions. Echoing Europe's colonial past, the ESS represents its 'Others' as both feminised and subordinate. In this sense, the article argues that the European project of security-development as written in the ESS is both civilising (normative) and violently exclusionary - in contradistinction to many contemporary depictions of Europe as a normative power and a harbour of tolerance. The gendered and colonial grammar of these spatial and temporal distinctions work to naturalise a certain (re)production of 'Europe', yet haunt the secure Europe and the better world promised in the strategy.
Topic:: Security
Political Geography:: United States and Europe

78. Race for the money: international financial centres in Asia

Author:: Darryl S L Jarvis
Publication Date:: 01-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Asia's emergence as a key player in the global economy is witnessing intense competition within the region to become Asia's next great international financial centre (IFC). Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai, among others, are vying for primacy, attempting to attract dense clusters of financial services firms and reap the lucrative rewards associated with this. This paper explores this emerging competition. It does so from the perspective of attempting to map the parameters necessary to become an IFC, particularly the institutional, political and spatial contexts that facilitate the concentration of international financial services. Why and how financial clustering occurs and the factors that determine the location of financial centres is an important public policy concern, both for established centres eager to maintain their competitive position as well as emerging economies keen to identify the policy levers necessary to support financial sector growth. To that end, the paper explores the experiences and strategies of three of Asia's current contenders: Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore. It analyses the policy architecture, financial sector strategies, institutional mechanisms and spatial geographies undergirding financial sector growth, and the constraints, obstacles and challenges each face in developing and or consolidating their IFC.
Political Geography:: Shanghai, Asia, Singapore, and Hong Kong

79. Development issues in Africa: challenges, concepts, opportunities

Author:: Antje Vetterlein
Publication Date:: 01-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The idea for this Forum emerged during the fourth GARNET Capacity Building Workshop in Cape Town, South Africa, in November 2008, convened by The Evian Group at IMD, an international coalition of corporate, government and opinion leaders, based in Switzerland, in association with Mthente, a South African research-driven consulting firm. The workshop, entitled The Challenges of Youth in the 21st Century: Africa — Creating Opportunities through Entrepreneurship and Education, brought together about 60 participants and experts on the topic, representing civil society, government and business as well as academia to engage in a lively dialogue on the pressing issue of development on the African continent and the role education and entrepreneurship plays in this respect.
Topic:: Education
Political Geography:: Africa

80. The state of development in Africa: concepts, challenges and opportunities

Author:: Mills Soko and Jean-Pierre Lehmann
Publication Date:: 01-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Africa's marginalisation and development challenges are extensively documented. Africa's underdevelopment is a product of the interplay of external and domestic factors including slavery and colonialism, economic mismanagement, ill-conceived structural adjustment policies, inter-state and intra-state conflicts, failed regionalism, unfair trade terms, foreign debt, aid dependence, poor governance, weak states, and institutional decay.
Topic:: Debt
Political Geography:: Africa

81. Empowering tomorrow's African entrepreneurs and managers: the Global Business School Network

Author:: Guy Pfeffermann and Nora Brown
Publication Date:: 01-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The essay introduces an innovative low-cost knowledge-based approach to development cooperation: the Global Business School Network (GBSN). Since 2003 GBSN has been addressing a cross-cutting development issue which has been neglected or altogether ignored by Official Development Assistance institutions as well as private philanthropic funders: the extreme scarcity of well-trained local leaders and managers — 'problem-solvers' — in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) as well as other low-income areas of the world.
Political Geography:: Africa

82. Youth unemployment in South Africa: challenges, concepts and opportunities

Author:: Cecil Mlatsheni and Murray Leibbrandt
Publication Date:: 01-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: In investigating the reach of the idea of social exclusion, it is useful to examine the specific role of economic events of the kind that may be particularly associated with the development of an excluded population. An especially apt example is the important phenomenon of long-term unemployment. (T)he extraordinary prevalence of unemployment and worklessness is perhaps the single most important contributor to the persistence of social exclusion in a large and momentous scale. (Sen 2000: 18)
Political Geography:: South Africa

83. Corporate social responsibility: an oversocialised view of multinational corporations in Africa?

Author:: John Agbonifo
Publication Date:: 01-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a buzzword in business schools, politics, NGO circles and the business community. Violent companies of yesterday, employing mistrust and malfeasance in their dealings with host communities, have become the vanguard of CSR.
Topic:: Politics
Political Geography:: Africa

84. Sexual and gender-based violence in Liberia and the case for a comprehensive approach to the rule of law

Author:: Niels Nagelhus Schia and Benjamin de Carvalho
Publication Date:: 01-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Since the end of the conflict in Liberia, one of the main priorities of the UN Mission (UNMIL), UN agencies, NGOs and INGOs has been to address the very high level of sexual violence against women and children, often known through the 'SGBV' acronym (Sexual and Gender-Based Violence).This focus has led to a number of initiatives from the international community, including a joint UN and Government of Liberia national strategy on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (Government of Liberia 2009); the creation of a ministry for gender issues; and a number of campaigns aimed at engendering awareness of the problem.
Topic:: Security and United Nations
Political Geography:: Liberia

85. Negotiating regions=fostering welfare: the Economic Partnership Agreements as new model of development?

Author:: Ulrike E Lorenz
Publication Date:: 01-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Despite the melodious intentions to make poverty history in the 21st century, the quest for promising concepts proves to be far less harmonious. Hopes were high that a globalised world would imply the smooth diffusion of such positively valued 'assets' as wealth and knowledge through a just system.
Topic:: Economics

86. Re-presenting Ireland: tourism, branding and national identity in Ireland

Author:: Michael Clancy
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This article examines sources of national identity formation under rapidly changing social and economic conditions. Specifically, it links constructivist notions of national identity formation and reformulation to the growing practice of nation branding. Following a discussion of the contributions of constructivism to the literature on national identity, the article summarises the emergence of nation branding as a contemporary strategy to promote a particular image of the nation to a specific audience. While that audience was once confined to political and economic elites, it has broadened in recent years to include potential tourists, diaspora communities and even one's own citizens. The case study of tourism branding in Ireland demonstrates that while the branding message often differs from reality, its content constitutes a powerful tool for the state in reinforcing a particular notion of national identity.
Topic:: Economics
Political Geography:: Ireland

87. Civilianising warfare: ways of war and peace in modern counterinsurgency

Author:: Colleen Bell
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This article examines the emergence of counterinsurgency doctrine in Coalition interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. While counterinsurgency is complimentary to the tenets forwarded by its classical military predecessors in several respects, the article shows that it is also more than a refashioning of conventional military practice. Counterinsurgency is intimately tied to institutional practices that shape global liberal governance. It can be traced to dominant trends in international humanitarian, development and peace interventionism since the end of the Cold War and it deepens the links between the social development of war-affected populations and the politics of international security. Rather than simply a shift in military practice, counterinsurgency is distinguished by its investment in civilian modes of warfare. Counterinsurgency retells the narrative of intervention as part of the evolution of political and economic liberalisation, marking a passage from interventionary force to post-interventionary governance. Modern counterinsurgency, it is concluded, exposes the widening indistinction between contemporary modes of peace and those of war in international relations.
Topic:: International Relations, Cold War, Economics, War, Counterinsurgency, and Governance
Political Geography:: Afghanistan and Iraq

88. Civil–military cooperation in crisis management in Africa: American and European Union policies compared

Author:: Gorm Rye Olsen
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Cooperation between civilian and military actors has become a catchphrase in international crisis management and development policy in the 21st century. This paper examines the crisis management policies adopted in Africa by the United States and the European Union (EU), respectively. It is hypothesised that both actors' crisis management policies are likely to be path dependent, despite recent significant changes in policy preferences. It is shown that the priority combining civilian and military resources in American crisis management is only implemented to a limited degree. It is consistent with the persistent predominance of the Pentagon and of the military instruments in US Africa policy. It illustrates the conspicuous institutional path dependency of US Africa policy, which by some is described as 'militarised'. The EU has been able to apply both civilian and military instruments in crisis management in Africa, suggesting the policy is not path dependent. The European situation is arguably attributable to the widespread consensus among European actors that it is necessary to combine civilian and military instruments in crisis management.
Political Geography:: Africa, United States, and America

89. What is critical IPE?

Author:: Ian Bruff and Daniela Tepe
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: International Political Economy (IPE) has, since its emergence in the 1970s, never been a settled discipline. From the beginning there have been disputes over whether one should seek to understand the agents acting within the international economic system or instead focus on ontological enquiries into the historical evolution of world order itself.
Topic:: Economics and Political Economy

90. Where did the critical go?

Author:: Owen Worth
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The study of international political economy (IPE) has long proclaimed to have a critical side or focus. Accounts of the intellectual history of IPE were often concerned with the difference between the 'empiricist' or 'positivist' and the 'critical' approach to the discipline (Murphy and Nelson 2002; Cohen 2008)
Topic:: Political Economy and History

91. 'What's "critical" about critical theory': capturing the social totality (das Gesellschaftliche Ganze)

Author:: Daniela Tepe and Anita Fischer
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This is neither the first article to address the nature of Critical Theory,1 nor the first article to address the necessarily feminist character of Critical Theory. Given that most of the writing concerned with the latter was (largely) neglected in International Relations (IR) and International Political Economy (IPE) scholarship, it seems appropriate to do so again.
Topic:: International Relations and International Political Economy

92. Finding space in critical IPE: a scalar-relational approach

Author:: Huw Macartney and Stuart Shields
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Our aim in this essay is to explore how critical international political economy (IPE) is spatially impaired, and how a scalar-relational approach offers a potential solution. By this, we mean that despite the plethora of spatial terms (national, international, global, transnational) applied as levels of analysis, the counter-hegemonic aspects of critical IPE are hamstrung by an inability to account for the production of space and the relations between particular scales.

93. Facing up to financialisation and the aesthetic economy: high time for aesthetics in international political economy!

Author:: Claes Belfrage
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: 'Aesthetics' has been a core concern of modern European philosophy1 (and other subject areas in the Humanities) since Baumgarten's Aesthetica (1750). Its reified dominant meaning is the result of deep struggle and is linked to dominant ideological forms in the capitalist economy, of which International Political Economy (IPE) forms part.
Political Geography:: Europe

94. The case for a foundational materialism: going beyond historical materialist IPE in order to strengthen it

Author:: Ian Bruff
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: In recent years, historical materialist International Political Economy (IPE) has been criticised frequently for a worldview that, it is claimed, emphasises in principle the inherently open-ended and contingent nature of societal evolution, but in practice adheres to a deterministic outlook. This, for (especially constructivist and post-structuralist) critics, is the case in even neo-Gramscian contributions, which explicitly discuss the role of ideas and culture as well as class conflict rooted in capitalist production relations.
Topic:: Political Economy

95. Whither Deleuze and Guattari: a critical introduction

Author:: Earl Gammon and Julian Reid
Publication Date:: 12-2010
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Years ago at a workshop one of our colleagues, whose name we shall keep anonymous, claimed — to the amusement of the participants — that International Relations (IR) is where theory goes to die. Given the vicissitudes of intellectual fads that sweep through IR, one could, perhaps, be forgiven for condemning what appears to be the superficiality of the theoretical engagements within the field. From another perspective, though, this judgement could be considered unfair, and that the convergence of so many disparate theoretical interventions in IR is actually a testament to its growing vitality. Though many scholars now label themselves constructivists, this is quite a polyglot category that seems to indicate a movement beyond the contrived inter-school debates rather than the rise of a new intellectual hegemony.
Topic:: International Relations
Political Geography:: Afghanistan and Iraq

96. The European rescue, recommodification, and/or reterritorialisation of the (becoming-capitalist) state? Marx, Deleuze, Guattari, and the European Union

Author:: David J Bailey
Publication Date:: 12-2010
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Years ago at a workshop one of our colleagues, whose name we shall keep anonymous, claimed — to the amusement of the participants — that International Relations (IR) is where theory goes to die. Given the vicissitudes of intellectual fads that sweep through IR, one could, perhaps, be forgiven for condemning what appears to be the superficiality of the theoretical engagements within the field. From another perspective, though, this judgement could be considered unfair, and that the convergence of so many disparate theoretical interventions in IR is actually a testament to its growing vitality. Though many scholars now label themselves constructivists, this is quite a polyglot category that seems to indicate a movement beyond the contrived inter-school debates rather than the rise of a new intellectual hegemon.
Political Geography:: Europe

97. Oedipal authority and capitalist sovereignty: a Deleuzoguattarian reading of IR theory

Author:: Earl Gammon
Publication Date:: 12-2010
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: Despite advancements in the theorisation of political sovereignty brought about by the engagements of critical international relations theory, there remain significant lacunae in our understanding of the reproduction of this peculiar configuration of social life. This article, drawing on the collaborative work of Deleuze and Guattari, seeks to provide a more robust theorisation of the subjectivities underpinning modern political sovereignty — here understood as capitalist sovereignty. It looks to their programme of 'schizoanalysis', which interrogates the unconscious libidinal investments of capitalist reproduction. Specifically, Deleuze and Guattari argue that a factitious Oedipal configuration of desire allows the sovereign flow of capital. This article gathers insights from schizoanalysis in elucidating a dynamic affective relationship between sovereignty and the territorial state. It also suggests the potential of schizoanalysis for reconceptualising world politics and contributing to emancipatory IR scholarship.
Topic:: Politics and Sovereignty

98. From The Twenty Years' Crisis to Theory of International Politics: a rhizomatic reading of realism

Author:: Sean Molloy
Publication Date:: 12-2010
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The idea behind this article is to employ a series of Deleuzo-Guattarian principles, primarily the concept of the rhizome, to the articulation and development of Realism as a theory of IR. The article makes the claim that using rhizomatics allows those interested in Realism to reconceptualise the relationship between Realism and Neorealism. The article argues that the publication of The Twenty Years' Crisis by E.H. Carr and Theory of International Politics by Ken Waltz represent two 'intense' moments in the descent of Realism. The article argues that despite the attempted 'territorialisation' of Realism into the static, paradigmatic Neorealism, Realism remains a heterogeneous set of concepts. The territorialisation process has met with some resistance; for example, just as Waltz was trying to territorialise Realism, his theory was being deterritorialised by Richard Ashley. The article also examines James Der Derian's attempt to save realism by deconstructing it, advocating an 'affirmative leap into the imaginary'. The article concludes that despite the Neorealist moment, attempts to splice together constructivism and realism provide evidence that Realism remains mutative, heterogeneous, open and vital.
Topic:: Politics

99. Of nomadic unities: Gilles Deleuze on the nature of sovereignty

Author:: Julian Reid
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 paper develops Deleuze's critique of the political ideal of sovereignty by examining his philosophy of nature. In their exultation of the ideal of sovereignty, traditional forms of political theory reflect only one aspect of nature. That is, its tendency toward unity. As such, they obscure what is most 'true' of nature, and what is most 'true' of peoples and individuals, which is their tendency toward multiplicity. While Deleuze's work has received significant attention in IR, the value of his philosophy of nature for the more concretely political problem of sovereignty is still to be fully realised. Beyond its under-representation in debates concerning political problems, Deleuze's work also suffers from misrepresentation. There is an abiding misconception of Deleuze as a theorist of the possibility of a 'world without sovereignty'. This paper dispels that particular misconception by demonstrating Deleuze's attention to the necessity of the recurrence of the problem of sovereignty as a condition for an understanding of political agency.
Topic:: Debt and Sovereignty

100. Alongside global political economy — a rhizome of informal finance

Author:: William Vlcek
Publication Date:: 12-2010
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: One contemporary issue confronting global finance is the nature and extent of its participation in and contribution to a global war on terror. To date, efforts have involved a variety of methods, including both an increase in the surveillance of financial transactions and the regulation of previously unregulated methods of financial exchange. This paper offers a conceptualisation of one informal value transfer method (known by its Arabic name — hawala) in the form of a rhizome, using the concept as developed by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus. This paper argues that the ability of hawala to regenerate itself along multiple paths situates the procedure as a rhizome, and that standard methods for financial regulation fail to appreciate the crucial difference this regenerative ability makes for attempts at control and regulation. Consequently, the activity that the state is seeking to control will merely be displaced, to reform and regenerate itself yet again. To ground this argument in the present condition of the global political economy, the specific example considered is Al Barakaat, a transnational Somali firm that fell victim to the global war on terror in late 2001.
Topic:: Political Economy
Political Geography:: Arabia

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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS