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4401. (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

4402. '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

4403. 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

4404. 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

4405. 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

4406. 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

4407. Full Issue

Author:
Ilan Berman
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Journal of International Security Affairs
Institution:
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
Abstract:
In September of 1993, the National Institute for Public Policy published our report with the title "What Did We Get for Our $30-Billion Investment in SDI/BMD?" In it, we reviewed what had been achieved during the first decade of President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).
Topic:
Cold War and War

4408. Complete Issue

Author:
Ilan Berman
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Journal of International Security Affairs
Institution:
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
Abstract:
He has ambition to be a great leader, someone like Mao Zedong," said Bo Zhiyue of the National University of Singapore, speaking of the new Chinese supremo, Xi Jinping. "He wants to change things."

4409. Secrecy + Security

Author:
David A. Andelman
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
For as long as there has been a need for security, there has been a parallel and equally pressing need for secrecy. Imagine the Trojan Horse unmasked before it was hauled into Troy. Or the flight from Egypt by Moses and the Israelites uncovered by the Pharaoh's agents. More recently imagine D-Day and the first Omaha Beach landing point revealed to Hitler's stormtroopers or the veil lifted on Japan's plans for Pearl Harbor. How history might have been transformed at each turn. Today, at the heart of many vicious political battles, lie a host of critical issues swirling around such paired and critical needs—security, or the need to safeguard our societies, our fortunes and our very lives; and secrecy in the interest of securing our present and future. Overhanging both priorities is the ultimate question of how much freedom we must be prepared to surrender to assure that the very soul of our democratic systems remain. In our fall cover theme, World Policy Journal seeks to address these efforts to balance competing priorities as they unfold.
Political Geography:
Japan, Israel, and Egypt

4410. The Big Question: What should governments keep secret?

Author:
Chong Ja Ian, Dieter Dettke, Adil Najam, George O. Liber, Frank Vogl, Maximilian C. Forte, Rick Falkvinge, and Nada Alwadi
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
With secrecy a daily preoccupation of governments who routinely weigh security concerns over disclosure of covert operations, the balance of these two priorities becomes an ever more pressing national debate. We asked our panel of global experts what, if anything, they believe governments should or must keep secret.