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11. Status, Identity, and Rising Powers

Author:
Deborah Welch Larson and Alexei Shevchenko
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Peace and Security Studies
Abstract:
In the current era, the most striking development is the appearance of rising powers. These include Brazil, Russia, India, and China but also South Africa, Mexico, and South Korea. No longer can a small group of advanced states, the Group of Seven (G-7), manage the world economy. The G-7 has for all practical purposes been replaced by the G-20, which includes China, India, South Korea, Indonesia, and Australia. The emerging powers in Asia account for a growing share of the world's global domestic product. These powers are spending more on their military—India already has an aircraft carrier and plans to procure two more. China's growing navy is a major concern to the United States military.
Topic:
Emerging Markets, Globalization, International Trade and Finance, and Power Politics
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, India, South Korea, South Africa, Brazil, and Mexico

12. War and Peace in Early Modern East Asia: Hierarchy and Legitimacy in International Systems

Author:
David C. Kang
Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Peace and Security Studies
Abstract:
Between 1368 and 1841 – almost five centuries – there were only two wars between China, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. These Sinicized states crafted stable relations with each other, and most of the violence and instability arose between these states and the nomadic peoples to the north and west of China and Korea. Building on the “new sovereignty” research in international relations, I argue that the status quo orientation of China and established boundaries created a loose hierarchy within anarchy that had much to do with the period of peace. Built on a mix of legitimate authority and material power, the China-derived international order provided clear benefits to secondary states, and also contained credible commitments by China not to exploit secondary states that accepted its authority. Korean, Vietnamese, and even Japanese elites consciously copied Chinese institutional and discursive practices to craft stable relations with China, not to challenge it. International systems based on legitimacy and hierarchy are not unique to early modern East Asia, and incorporating these insights into our theories of international society has implications for the contemporary world as well.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, International Relations, Regional Cooperation, Treaties and Agreements, War, and International Security
Political Geography:
Japan, China, Israel, Asia, and Vietnam

13. States and Rules, Norms and Interests

Author:
Ian Hurd
Publication Date:
11-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Peace and Security Studies
Abstract:
The conventional separation in IR theory between instrumental behavior and legitimated norms as explanations for state action has discouraged the study of phenomena that include both. As a result important practices including hypocrisy, norm violation, and the strategic reinterpretation of rules and laws are under-examined. The source of the problem is the idea of 'internalization' of external rules and norms, which has come to define the distinction between rationalism and constructivism in IR, and between the logics of appropriateness and of consequences. I argue that internalization is problematic for empirical research in IR because it eliminates the possibility of strategic thinking by states in relation to international norms and rules. It leaves no room for instrumentalism around norms and so cannot account for norm violation, the strategic manipulation of norms, and the productive process of norm innovation. This is a problem equally for rationalism and constructivism. I argue for an alternative model that focuses on the practice of invoking international norms and rules and show that this approach allows new insight into the agent-structure problem, the relation between states and rules in world politics, and the relation between rationalism and constructivism.
Topic:
International Relations, International Political Economy, Sovereignty, and Political Theory

14. Globalization and Global Governance in the 21st Century

Author:
Jeffrey Hart and Joan Edelman Spero
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Peace and Security Studies
Abstract:
An examination of international economic relations in the six decades since World War II reveals many ways in which political factors have shaped economic outcomes. The postwar security system significantly affected the postwar economic system. The creation of a bipolar security system following the outbreak of the Cold War led to the separation of the Eastern and Western economic systems and provided a basis for the dominant role of the United States in the Western system and of the Soviet Union in the Eastern system. The end of the Cold War led in turn to the end of the East-West economic divide and to the integration of the formerly Communist countries and China into the global capitalist economy.
Topic:
Cold War, Globalization, Government, International Cooperation, International Political Economy, International Security, and International Affairs
Political Geography:
United States and China

15. Solidarism or Pluralism? Political Ideas of the American Union and the European Union

Author:
Robert Jackson
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Peace and Security Studies
Abstract:
Writing in the late 18th century Edmund Burke characterized the British East India Company as "a state disguised as a merchant." What, in these terms, is the United States? Is it an empire disguised as a republic dis guised as a democracy? What is Canada? Is it an international system disguised as a confederation disguised as a federation? What, finally, is the European Union? It is somewhat ambiguous. But I shall argue that it is an international organization thinly disguised as a political community.
Topic:
International Relations, International Organization, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Europe

16. Institutional Proliferation and World Order: Is There Viscosity in Global Governance?

Author:
Daniel W. Drezner
Publication Date:
11-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Peace and Security Studies
Abstract:
In recent years there has been a proliferation of international rules, laws and institutional forms in world politics. This has triggered attention to the role that forum-shopping, nested and overlapping institutions, and regime complexes play in shaping the patterns of global governance. A few policymakers, some international relations scholars, and many international law scholars posit that this trend will lead to more rule-based outcomes in world politics. This paper suggests a contrary position: institutional thickness has a paradoxical effect on global governance. After a certain point, proliferation shifts global governance structures from rule-based outcomes to power-based outcomes–because institutional proliferation can enhance the ability of great powers to engage in forum-shopping.
Topic:
International Relations, Globalization, Government, Health, Human Rights, International Law, and Markets
Political Geography:
America

17. Peace Through Security: Making Negotiated Settlements Stick

Author:
Monica Toft
Publication Date:
11-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Peace and Security Studies
Abstract:
This paper presents an empirical challenge to the commonlyaccepted wisdom that negotiated settlements are the best way to end civil wars. There are two problems with negotiated settlements. First, negotiated settlements account for only onefifth of all civil war outcomes, thus the bulk of wars and their endings remain largely understudied. Second, wars ended by negotiated settlements are much more likely to recur than those ended by outright military victory. The paper shows that military victories, especially those attained by rebels, are not only more stable, but may help better promote democratization. The author argues that rebel victories are more stable because they employ mechanisms of both harm and benefit to all parties in reconstructing the state. By contrast, negotiated settlements tend to include only mutual benefit, leaving mutual harm mechanisms aside. The implication being that without the possibility of mutual harm, negotiated settlements fail. The paper offers ways to integrate harm mechanisms into these settlements and thereby make them as robust as military victories.
Topic:
Security, Peace Studies, and Treaties and Agreements

18. Globalization, Private Security, and Democratic Processes: Implications for the Democratic Peace?

Author:
Deborah Avant
Publication Date:
11-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Peace and Security Studies
Abstract:
During the 1990s and into this century, a robust market for force emerged alongside and intertwined with state military forces. The rise of stateless forces associated with globalization is often seen as breaking down barriers between states and enhancing the prospects for peace, particularly among advanced democracies. Stateless forces, in particular marketbased security, may also, however, alter the functioning of democracies. A widely held, albeit often implicit, assumption of much theory and research in international relations, especially in the literature on the democratic peace, is that states rely on their own military organizations rather than hired guns to project force. The question addressed here is whether the attributes that have been identified as promoting trust among democracies remain strong when states rely on private forces instead of, or in addition to, public ones. If greater reliance on the market to satisfy security needs affects the transparency, constitutionalism and public consent of their foreign policy processes, the market for force could have implications for trust among democracies – and at the extreme, perhaps even for the democratic peace. Overall, we conclude that the use of private security by the US threatens to weaken key institutional mechanisms taken to enhance trust between it and other democracies.
Topic:
Democratization, Economics, Globalization, and Markets
Political Geography:
United States

19. Debunking the 1930s Analogy: Neville Chamberlain's Grand Strategy Re-Examined

Author:
Christopher Layne
Publication Date:
11-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Peace and Security Studies
Abstract:
The key events of the 1930s Hitler's rise to power, Germany's reoccupation of the Rhineland, the Anschluss with Austria, Munich and the subsequent German occupation of Prague in March 1939, and the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 transpired some seventy years ago. The events of the 1930s or at least Churchill's depiction of them have provided the standard images that have shaped U.S. foreign policy and scholarly research alike: falling dominoes, insatiable dictators, the interdependency of strategic commitments, the importance of demonstrating resolve, and the impossibility of achieving diplomatic accommodation with nondemocratic regimes. But does the myth track with the historical record? Does the 1930s myth accurately explain British grand strategy in the 1930s? Simply stated, my argument is that the 1930s myth as commonly understood in the United States is bad history, and that its use has contributed importantly to a series of dubious policy decisions by U.S. decisionmakers and still does. As I demonstrate, the British, in fact, were not willfully blind to the German threat or indifferent to the need to rearm to meet it. Rather, during the 1930s, London formulated a quintessentially realist grand strategy that attempted to blend deterrence and diplomacy to contain Hitler's Germany (and Japan and Italy), and defend Britain's interests as a world power by avoiding what, for Britain, could only be a disastrous war.
Topic:
Foreign Policy and War
Political Geography:
Britain, United States, Japan, Europe, London, Germany, Italy, and Austria

20. Dysfunction of an Ideological State: Pakistan's Recurrent Crisis in Historic Context

Author:
Hussain Haqqani
Publication Date:
10-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Peace and Security Studies
Abstract:
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Pakistan's President Musharraf has taken on the mantle of a leader dedicated to transforming his country from an Islamic ideological state to a moderate Muslim country. Are Musharraf's policies really aimed at changing Pakistan's direction or are they simply part of an effort to salvage a critical policy paradigm adopted by Pakistan's militaryled oligarchy since the country's early days? The author defines the core elements of Pakistani grand strategy by focusing on a policy tripod: the emphasis on Islam as an element of national policy empowered the new country's religious leaders; the inflexibility in relations with India and the belief that India represented an existential threat to Pakistan justified maintaining a large military which, in turn, helped the military assert its dominance in the country's life, and finally; the search for foreign allies who could pay for the country's defense and economic growth resulted in Pakistan's alliance with the West, especially the United States. If Pakistan does not transcend the dynamic created by an ideology defined by the mosque and an overly dominant military, it runs the risk of becoming a failed state with nuclear weapons.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Religion, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Pakistan, India, and Asia