Search

Begin New Search Publishing Institution Center for International Studies, University of Southern California Publication Year within 25 Years

21. An Arendtian Critique of Deliberative Global Sphere Theory: 'Humanitarian' Violence and the Paradox of Founding

Author:
Patricia Owens
Publication Date:
01-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
The language of the 'public sphere' is foundational to democratic theory and practice and most of our activity is oriented toward some form of public. As subject and object of democracy, the notion of a 'public' is a discursive weapon second only to the 'people' as the political honorific par excellence. Definitions of the public sphere vary, however, not least because different topographical locations and fields of activity are public in different times and places; publics are constituted through a variety of media (face-to-face, print, and electronic encounters); and there are various modes in which one can participate in public discourse and action (liberal, deliberative, agonistic). Most straightforwardly, 'public spheres' organise relations among strangers. They are the places in which people talk or read about their common affairs.
Topic:
Civil Society, Democratization, Government, and International Law

22. Justice and Order

Author:
Richard Ned Lebow
Publication Date:
01-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
Order is the proper starting point of the study of politics. Social order sustains political activity and makes it necessary. It provides the cement that binds people together in a community, but the very social proximity this allows breeds conflicts that require authoritative resolution. It is with good reason that Aristotle opens his Politics with the assertion that “Every state is a community of some kind.”
Topic:
Civil Society, Democratization, Government, and International Law

23. International Law for an Uncertain Environment

Author:
Barbara Koremenos
Publication Date:
11-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
For the past twenty years, the theoretical literature on international cooperation has focused on overarching questions about whether cooperation is possible and how important it is. The seminal contributions of the 1980s increased our theoretical understanding of the possibility of cooperation. Yet we know empirically that cooperation is pervasive. Hundreds of multilateral agreements are signed each year. If we count bilateral agreements as well, the number jumps to thousands. This is not to say that cooperation is easy. In fact, given the challenges of successful cooperation, it is time for the theoretical literature to focus not on whether cooperation can occur at all, but on more focused questions regarding how the actual institutions of cooperation work and through what means they have their impact on state behavior.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Government, International Cooperation, and International Law

24. The Preventive Use of Force: A Cosmopolitan Institutional Proposal

Author:
Allen Buchanan and Robert Keohane
Publication Date:
11-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
Since 9/11/2001 fears of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction have fueled a vigorous world-wide debate about the use of preventive force. “Preventive force” may be defined as the initiation of military action in anticipation of harmful actions that are neither presently occurring nor imminent.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Security, Government, and Politics

25. Democratic Politics in Latin America: New Debates and Research Frontiers

Author:
Gerardo Munck
Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
This assessment of research on contemporary democratic politics in Latin America is organized around the distinction between institutional and alternative approaches. Initially it considers institutionalism on its own terms and, through an assessment of the debate about the institutional causes of gridlock, draws attention to key strengths of this literature. Thereafter, some of the limitations of an institutional approach are addressed and the possibility of combining insights developed from institutional and alternative theoretical perspectives is emphasized. The suggested terms of integration, however, are not symmetric. With regard to causal theorizing, the need for institutionalists to borrow ideas, especially from the broader literature on political regimes, is underlined. With regard to theorizing outcomes, in contrast, the need for students of the quality of democracy to incorporate contributions made by institutionalists is highlighted. Throughout, various pointed suggestions to advance research are offered.
Topic:
Democratization and Government
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and North America

26. Picking Up the Pieces: Comparing the Social Impact of Finacial Crisis in Mexico and Argentina

Author:
Manuel Pastor and Carol Wise
Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
After a committed process of macroeconomic stabilization that began during the mid-1980s in most of Latin America, many observers began to speak of the need for a “second generation” of reforms that could more firmly establish the bases for economic growth and correct for longstanding distributional inequities. By the mid-1990s serious reformers like Argentina and Mexico seemed to be on the cusp of tackling this distributional backlog by launching so-called second phase market reforms meant to correct for earlier shortcomings in the social realm (Naím 1995; Pastor and Wise 1999). However, in both cases, financial crises erupted: Mexico's crash of December 1994, which saw a forty percent devaluation of the peso and a massive outflow of portfolio capital; and, more recently, Argentina's 2002 meltdown, which while simmering since the Brazilian devaluation of 1999, finally caused the country's commitment to a fixed exchange rate to be abandoned.
Topic:
Economics and Government
Political Geography:
Brazil, Argentina, South America, Latin America, North America, and Mexico

27. Why Delegate the Allocation of Foreign Aid to Multilateral Organizations? Principal-Agent Problems and Multilateralism

Author:
Helen Milner
Publication Date:
09-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
Why do countries delegate the distribution of foreign aid to international institutions? Specifically, why have the advanced industrial countries chosen to distribute part of their foreign aid through multilateral organizations, such as the European Union (EU), World Bank, IMF, UN, and regional development banks (RDBs)? The delegation of aid provision to an international institution is puzzling. Why would governments relinquish control over their aid if they are a useful instrument of statecraft? Governments delegate aid delivery to international institutions when their publics lack information about the consequences of aid and fear that their governments will deviate from their wishes concerning its use. By using the international organization to send aid, the government issues a credible signal to voters about the use of foreign aid. This signal leaves all actors better off by helping to solve a principal-agent problem in domestic politics. When publics are skeptical about the benefits of aid, governments are more likely to turn aid over to multilateral organizations in order to reassure taxpayers that their money is being well spent. Using data on about 20 donor countries of the OECD from 1960-2000, I investigate the sources of multilateral giving, showing that public opinion has the expected negative relationship to multilateral aid-giving.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe and United Nations

28. Globalization and Security: Migration and Evolving Conceptions of Security in Statecraft and Scholarship

Author:
Christopher Rudolph
Publication Date:
04-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
Does globalization shape the way states define their security interests? While few would question the fact that we live in an era of extraordinary change—technological, economic, social, and political—scholars disagree whether globalization is really something new and different, or simply the continuation of an enduring process that has proceeded for centuries (Cf. Chase-Dunn 1994; Rosenau 1997; Sassen 1998; Arrighi 1999; Wallerstein 1999; Castells 2000; Keohane and Nye 2000; Mittelman 2000). However, even skeptics concede that while the capitalist world-system has become increasingly global over the span of centuries, the speed and degree of globalization has increased tremendously in recent decades (Chase-Dunn 1999, 181). Even before George Bush popularized the term “new world order,” there was a growing sense that the changes brought about by processes of globalization were fundamentally changing world order and international politics—but in what sense?
Topic:
International Relations

29. Security and the Political Economy of International Migration

Author:
Christopher Rudolph
Publication Date:
04-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
Richard Rosecrance (1986) argues that the world has transformed into a system of trading states, where power is increasingly based on Ricardian notions of comparative advantage, factor mobility, and free trade. As gains from trade and interdependence increase, as they have under the past half-century of American hegemony, the use of a military-territorial strategy is a less appealing means of maximizing state power, especially since war has become increasingly costly, complicated, and destructive (Cf. Morgenthau, 1948; Kennedy, 1988; Mueller, 1989; Kupchan, 1994). Proponents of "Washington consensus" neoliberalism argue that liberal trade policies and laissez-faire treatment of international factor flows moves economies toward a Pareto-optimal frontier, one that will create a "rising tide to lift all boats" in both developed and developing nations, though perhaps not evenly (Krugman, 1995; Krugman and Venables, 1995; Krugman and Obstfeld, 1997). Considerable evidence supports the argument that trading state globalization has emerged as a global norm and as a widely accepted basis of state grand strategy since World War II. Since the 1940s, successive rounds of the GATT (now the WTO) have resulted in consistently lower tariff rates that have helped stimulate world trade. From 1980—1998, world trade has grown anywhere from 4.2% to 10.3%, and between 1990—1999 world trade has grown at over three times the rate of global output (World Bank, 1998; WTO, 2000). Moreover, financial transactions, once an adjunct of trade, now tower of trade flows by a ratio of 50:1 (Ruggie, 1995:48; see also Cohen, 1998).
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
America and Washington

30. (Re)Constructing Constructivist International Relations Research

Author:
Wayne Sandholtz, Hayward R. Alker, Raymond Duvall, Cecelia Lynch, Daniel Lynch, Stephen Majeski, Nicholas Onuf, Colin Wight, Robert English, Saori Katada, and J. Ann Tickner
Publication Date:
10-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
On October 6, 2001 the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California held a workshop entitled “(Re)Constructing Constructivist International Relations Research.” This workshop joins a series held by CIS on cutting edge research in international relations. Participants were sent a statement composed by Hayward Alker and a copy of Nicholas Onuf's paper and asked to bring written comments based on these two documents.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
California