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41. 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

42. 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

43. 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

44. 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

45. 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

46. 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

47. 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

48. 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

49. 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

50. 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