Publication Year: within 25 Years / Journal: Journal of International Relations and Development

Author:: Ondrej Ditrych
Publication Date:: 03-2010
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This article explores a new perspective on Georgia's politics after 1991. Employing the critical political ontology of Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben, it argues that Georgia as a political community has, since its modern inception, been (in) a state of permanent exception. Successive regimes of Gamsakhurdia, Shevardnadze and Saakashvili have operated as effective sovereign dictatorships striving to bring to existence a new order. The utopia of this order was described in various ways, but typically it included restoration of the territorial sovereignty, thereby relating to the boundaries of the political community; overcoming internal disorder; and more recently, emulating the Western Liberal State. That the realisation of the order as a Western Liberal Utopia defined by the sovereign power perpetuates the very state of exception, including the reduction of individuals to 'bare life', is finally argued to constitute the tragedy of Georgia's contemporary politics.
Topic:: Politics
Political Geography:: Georgia

Author:: Monika Heupel and Bernhard Zangl
Publication Date:: 03-2010
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: This article intends to contribute to the debate on the emergence of so-called new wars by reconstructing the new war thesis in a way that allows an empirical assessment of the plausibility of the thesis. It makes explicit the defining criteria implicit to the new war thesis which claims that a fundamental transformation of modern intra-state warfare has taken place due to the end of the Cold War. It also lays out the causal mechanisms that underpin the alleged transformation of warfare. Based on the reconstructed conceptual framework and drawing on case studies of the wars in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Angola, Somalia and Sierra Leone, the article then lends support to the new war thesis. The cases demonstrate that, in the 1990s, war economies based on criminal activities became more important and triggered the fragmentation of warring parties and the economisation of their war motives. Moreover, in combination, the fragmentation of warring parties and the economisation of their war motives facilitate the application of brutal violence against civilians.
Topic:: Cold War and Debt
Political Geography:: Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Angola

Author:: Liam Clegg
Publication Date:: 03-2010
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: How can we integrate the agential influence of state preferences and the structural influence of social environments in models of change within international organisations? Through an analysis of the central aspects of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) initiative, this article argues that in isolation neither of the two dominant accounts of international organisations — the principal-agent (PA) and constructivist approaches — is able to adequately capture the progression of the initiative. Rather, I show that the evolution of the PRSP initiative is best conceptualised as an Archerian morphogenic cycle, whose unfolding can be understood by synthesising elements of the PA and constructivist approaches. The morphogenic approach provides an analytic framework capable of tracking the process of multilevel feedback from state socialisation through to policy operationalisation, and for the input of creditors, the International Financial Institutions (IFIs), and borrowing countries to be mapped.
Topic:: Politics and World Bank

Author:: Jean d'Aspremont
Publication Date:: 03-2010
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:: Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:: The question of the foundations of the international legal order has long fuelled controversies. The mainstream international legal scholarship, dominated by liberal and constitutionalist discourses, has advocated an understanding of international law that rests on global values. This article examines the work of a few Eastern European scholars with a view to demonstrating that the mainstream liberal and constitutionalist value-based conceptions of the international legal order have not been uncontested. In doing so, this article draws on the resemblances between Eastern European and Asian legal scholarships in their attempts to question the hegemonic and imperialistic overtones of an ever-growing international law.
Topic:: International Law
Political Geography:: Eastern Europe and Asia

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