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5651. NATO and India: The politics of strategic convergence

Author:
David Scott
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
In this article, I argue that after having experienced a distinctly cool relationship throughout most of the post-war period and for the 10 years following the end of the Cold War, India and North Atlantic Organization (NATO) are now gradually moving towards each other. Indeed, during the past decade, NATO's 'out-of-area' operations have taken it eastwards from the Mediterranean, while India's 'extended neighbourhood' framework has brought it westwards from the Indian subcontinent. This has created a geopolitical overlap between these two actors, most notably in Afghanistan but also elsewhere in the Indian Ocean. Common advocacy of liberal democracy and overt concerns over jihadist destabilization have brought these two actors together. In NATO's post-Cold War search for relevance and India's post-Soviet search for partners, they have found each other. Unstated potential concerns over China are also a feature in this strategic convergence. However, while NATO has adopted a flexible range of 'Partnership' frameworks, India's sensitivity on retaining 'strategic autonomy' will limit their cooperation to informal ad hoc arrangements.
Topic:
NATO and Cold War
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, China, India, and Soviet Union

5652. Arbitrating the Israeli–Palestinian territorial dispute

Author:
Asaf Siniver
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article presents the case for arbitrating the territorial dispute over the West Bank between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. After nearly two decades of intense intermediary activity but with still no signs of progress, and against the inability of the parties themselves to move towards reconciliation, the article argues that as a method of conflict resolution, mediation has exhausted its primary objective – namely the establishing of direct channels of communication between the disputants – and it is now time to examine alternative methods to conflict resolution. The article debunks the myths surrounding the success of American mediation in the conflict, and uses the historical case of the Taba arbitration between Israel and Egypt to demonstrate under what terms the arbitration of the West Bank dispute might be presented, while taking into consideration its advantages and drawbacks compared with the more established method of mediation in this conflict.
Political Geography:
America, Israel, Palestine, and Egypt

5653. Towards a strong NATO narrative: From a 'practice of talking' to a 'practice of doing'

Author:
Trine Flockhart
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
The article contributes to the growing theoretical scholarship on NATO by developing a theoretical framework that demonstrates the complex relationship between doing and being, identity and action, and knowledge and practice. The article addresses the puzzle that NATO in the past decade has been busier than ever, yet has not managed to construct a strong narrative and maintain ontological security. The article presents a framework, which assumes that ontological security is influenced by identity and narrative construction processes, which are themselves reinforced or undermined by practical action, conceptualized as 'functional action' and 'rhetorical action'. By analyzing NATO's current and past narratives, practices, and action patterns, the article shows that NATO's recent crisis is not just a deeper and more serious crisis because Afghanistan is a difficult mission, but that the depth of the crisis is the result of changes in NATO's established practices and new fundamentally different patterns of action.
Topic:
NATO
Political Geography:
Afghanistan

5654. Critical international political economy: Renewing critique and ontologies

Author:
Owen Worth and Claes Belfrage
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This special issue critically assesses the development of 'Critical International Political Economy' (IPE) and seeks to expand upon its theoretical foundations in order to ensure the discipline's openness and diversity. This introduction will set the stage for this endeavour by conceptualising the historical development of critical IPE and by outlining the challenge ahead.

5655. Accumulating the critical spirit: Rosa Luxemburg and critical IPE

Author:
Owen Worth
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article introduces Rosa Luxemburg's work on dialectics and the international and argues that its ontological foundations have been neglected within critical International Political Economy (IPE). Whereas other critical Marxists such as Gramsci have played key roles in instigating critical enquiry, Luxemburg's work has largely gone neglected. Although this article acknowledges some serious shortcomings in some of the 'left infantilism' inherent within her work, it nevertheless argues that Luxemburg's dialectical ontology significantly contrasted with the orthodoxy that was emerging from Marxist circles at the time. This article explores some of these and argues that the dialectical method that Luxemburg employed to understanding the international provides us with a new avenue for critical IPE to pursue. In particular, it suggests that Luxemburg's articulation of critique provides us with fresh openings that both compliment and add to neo-Gramscian and neo-Polanyian accounts, and allows us to understand trends and practices within the global political economy in new critical ways.
Topic:
Political Economy

5656. For a critical engagement with aesthetics in IPE: Revitalizing economic imagination in times of crisis

Author:
Claes Belfrage
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Advanced capitalism is at a historical conjuncture in which aestheticization and financialization combine to intensify and deepen the 'cult of capitalism' at the expense of economic imagination. International Political Economy (IPE) is, however, not only poorly equipped to understand the implications of these closely linked transformations, it also avoids considering them by shunning aesthetics. To contribute to the rejuvenation of economic imagination, IPE must explicitly aim at both understanding these processes and their confluences, and engaging with them. Rescue cannot come from orthodox IPE because of its embededdness in the reified 'Kantian Desire', which promotes the neglect of recognition in aesthetics and the complexities of human agency under financialization. Critical IPE is more apt at grasping related struggles, which it has shown in for instance research on the financialization of everyday life. Nevertheless, its engagement with aesthetics remains modest and inadequate. Critical IPE concerned with financialization should see it as one of its core tasks to turn to and engage with aesthetics as a means to contribute to critical economic imagination. To this end, the article outlines a critical IPE approach to aesthetics, inspired by Frankfurt School Critical Theory.
Topic:
Political Economy

5657. The relevance of Nicos Poulantzas for contemporary debates on 'the international'

Author:
Ian Bruff
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article argues that in many cases the theoretical resources for a revived and enriched 'critical International Political Economy' already exist, and we would do well to revisit earlier works when seeking to intervene in contemporary debates. Through an initial engagement with the recent plethora of contributions on 'the international', I contend that Nicos Poulantzas' later writings deserve a rereading. In particular, his work on the historicity of territory and the internationalisation of capital constitutes a series of rich and suggestive commentaries. The significance of his remarks are later illustrated via a consideration of Germany, where I argue that the changes wrought by the growing imbrication of the German economy with transnational circuits of capital have been taking place through, and not necessarily against, the historicity of German capitalism's emergence and evolution.
Topic:
International Political Economy
Political Geography:
Germany

5658. The global and gendered dimensions of citizenship, community and 'cohesion'

Author:
Daniela Tepe and Jill Steans
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
In this article we draw upon both critical and feminist international political economy (IPE) approaches in order to interrogate processes of change effecting specific localities in the context of neoliberal global restructuring. We give a closer focus to our interest in the global/local nexus by concentrating on issues of citizenship, community and discourse and practice on community cohesion. After setting out our framework, we develop a critique of community cohesion policies and practices in contemporary Britain. We then briefly review some of the current literature on gender and citizenship paying particular attention to how issues of material inequality, poverty and exclusion currently figure in academic debates. We conclude that gender inequality must be taken seriously if strong and cohesive communities are to be realised and that there is a need for further research that connects critical and feminist IPE to emerging critical literatures on community and citizenship.
Topic:
International Political Economy
Political Geography:
Britain

5659. Where is the study of work in critical IPE?

Author:
Phoebe V Moore
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
The British school of International Political Economy (IPE) has been highly innovative in encouraging inter-disciplinary work, revealing – while allowing for – an eclecticism of research and investigation that stands in clear contrast to its American counterpart. Critical theorists in the British school of IPE in particular have been highly prolific in recent years and have introduced research on a wide range of contemporary issues in the global political economy. However, this school tends to overlook two very important areas of analysis: work and employment. More thus needs to be done. This article argues that researchers from seemingly autonomous fields can teach critical IPE a lesson: inter-disciplinarity is not a fantasy. The analysis suggested here is of how governmental policy idealises a particular subjectivity wherein workers are not employed, but are employable. Not only would a focus on this problem enhance existing research in critical IPE: it is also essential if we are to address the needs of humanity in the increasingly unstable and flexibilised world of work. The British school of critical IPE is the forum within which this conversation could and should be continued.
Topic:
International Political Economy
Political Geography:
Britain

5660. Re-thinking scales and culture: Rome and the city in and beyond IPE

Author:
Nana Rodaki
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
The article argues that critical International Political Economy can benefit from a trans-disciplinary approach to the role of cities as socio-economic actors in the global political economy. The constitution and exercise of agency is far from an automatic response to the global restructuring of capitalist social relations, but the product of historically and context-specific economic and extra-economic social processes and social struggles. Cities (re)emerge as subjects and objects of governance and intervention and seek to become (dis)embedded in multi-scalar networks of economic and symbolic power. In this process, they become active co-producers of the global political economy, in ways that cut across spatial scales and narrow geographical imaginations.
Topic:
International Political Economy and Culture
Political Geography:
Rome