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151. François Hollande's Presidency:A New Era in French Foreign Policy?

Author:
Jean-Pierre Darnis
Publication Date:
06-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
François Hollande's election as president of the French republic seems to mark a political rupture, interrupting 17 years of right wing presidencies (under Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy) and a decade of conservative government. Hollande claims that he will be a “normal” president, in contrast with Sarkozy's flamboyant style. This paper assesses whether Hollande's presidency truly represents a turning point in France's trajectory by gauging its impact on French foreign policy. The argument elaborated below is that French foreign policy is and will continue to be driven by strong continuities, although differences in style are likely to impinge upon France's role in the world and in the EU.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Democratization, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe

152. Can NATO Find a Role for Itself vis-À -vis China?

Author:
James Boutilier
Publication Date:
12-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
NATO is at a crossroads. This is not the first time that Brussels has been faced with critical decisions about the direction, character and raison d'être of this unique and remarkable organization. But this time the stakes are even higher. The major centers of global power are all weak simultaneously for individual and inter-connected reasons. The greatest power on earth and NATO's banker, the United States, is confronting almost insurmountable levels of debt and talk about the end of the American empire has become commonplace. The European community is reeling from the cumulative effect of debt crises. And China, the 21st century's "workshop of the world" (and in the eyes of some a potential savor of ailing economies in Europe) has begun to see its economy slow disturbingly. At the same time, two other phenomena are unfolding; the rapid and profound shift in the global centre of economic gravity from the Euro-Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific region and the winding down of NATO's involvement in Afghanistan. The latter, of course, raises the inevitable question: "What next?" The former raises a related question: "Does NATO's future lie in Asia?"
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, NATO, and Hegemony
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, China, Europe, and Asia

153. TURKEY FOCUS POLICY BRIEF No: 1 Culture, Religion, EU-Turkey and Cyprus: Dilemma

Author:
Ret. Amb. YALIM ERALP
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Centre for Strategic Research and Analysis (CESRAN)
Abstract:
Cultural differences have become, in the eyes of some, an impediment to Turkish accession to the EU. French sociologist Amaury de Riencourt makes a clear distinction between culture and civilization. From his perspective, "..Culture and Civilisation are two expressions that have been used more or less indiscriminately and interchangeably in the past. The distinction between them is of organic succession. They do not coincide in time but follow each other during the life span of a par-ticular society: each Culture engenders its own Civilisation..."
Topic:
International Relations and Culture
Political Geography:
Europe and Turkey

154. Hierarchy in World Politics

Author:
Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and George Lawson
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
With this Special Issue the editorial team fulfils a campaign promise, so to speak. In our original proposal to assume the editorship of the Journal of International Relations and Development, we proposed three special features: a Forum on IR in Eastern and Central Europe (published in issue 12:2), a Forum on post-Communist and post-Socialist transitions (published in issue 12:4), and a Special Issue on hierarchy in world politics. The four papers collected here represent the end result of a process of soliciting proposals for manuscripts, putting those manuscripts through the regular peer-review process, and selecting papers that would allow a multi-faceted exploration of a complex topic that has made its way back into IR after the long interregnum of theories and models that focused on presumptively equivalent states operating under conditions of anarchy. But this is more than simply 'bringing hierarchy back in'; the new focus on unequal relations of power in world politics is a good deal more sophisticated than the sometimes blunt assertions of dependency theory and early world-systems accounts. The papers that we have assembled for this Special Issue represent some, but by no means all, of the rich analytical diversity in contemporary accounts of hierarchy in world politics.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
Europe

155. Development of International Relations theory in China: progress through debates

Author:
Yaqing Qin
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
The development of International Relations theory (IRT) in China has been framed by three debates since 1979. The first was about China's opening up to the outside world. It started with the question of whether the world was characterized by 'war and revolution' or 'peace and development' between orthodox and reformist scholars and continued to focus on China's interest between orthodox scholars and the newly rising Chinese realists. It resulted in a wide acceptance of the reformist argument that peace and development characterized our era and of the realist view that China was a normal nation-state and should have its own legitimate national interest. The second started in the early 1990s and centered on the better way of realizing China's national interest. It was between Chinese realists and liberals. While the former emphasized national power, the latter proposed the alternative approach of international institutions. The third debate was on China's peaceful rise. It evolved at the turn of the century, when all the three major American IRTs, realism, liberalism, and constructivism, had been introduced into China and therefore the debate was more a tripartite contention. Realists believed that it was impossible for any major power to rise peacefully, while liberals and constructivists both supported the peaceful-rise argument. Liberals stressed more the tangible benefits derived from international institutions and constructivists explored more China's identity in its increasing interaction with international society. Although it was Chinese constructivists who explicitly discussed the identity issue, all the three debates and all the debating sides have reflected this century puzzle since the Opium War – China's identity vis-à-vis international society. These debates have helped push forward the IRT development in China and at the same time established Western IRT as the dominant discourse. A new round of debate seems likely to occur and may center on the question of the world order. This time it may help the newly burgeoning but highly dynamic Chinese IRT to develop and contribute to the enrichment of IRT as knowledge of human life.
Topic:
International Relations and Development
Political Geography:
China, America, and Europe

156. Avrupa Birliği-Türkiye İlişkilerine Postyapısalcı Yaklaşım: Almanya Örneğinde Dış Politika ve Söylem Analizi

Author:
Senem Aydın Düzgit
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
In line with the poststructuralist approach that theorises identity as relationally constructed through discourse, the purpose of this article is to shed light on the different visions of Europe that are constructed in debates on Turkey’s accession to the EU among German politicians. The article focuses on the political party debates on Turkish accession in Germany, a key member state in EU integration and the debate on Turkish membership to the EU, and subjects them to critical discourse analysis. In doing that, it also brings forward the importance of the concept of discourse from a poststructuralist perspective.
Topic:
International Relations, Political Theory, and European Union
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, and Germany

157. The Steppe and Early European State Formation

Author:
Iver B. Neumann
Publication Date:
08-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
It is not a self-evident thing for a group of scholars to invite an outsider who has studied the home turf of that group to open one of their conferences. I am extremely pleased to be here, and I want to make the most of the opportunity by calling attention to an area of study that my previous work has been pointing me to, and that I believe we who study International Relations (IR) should make our own. I am talking about a relation between two places in time. The relation is the one between nomads and sedentaries. The places are the Eurasian steppe and the sedentary polities to its west. By the Eurasia steppe I mean that vast tract of land that stretched from the Mongolian-Turkic homelands around Karakorum, north of the agricultural lands of the Chinese, the Persians and the Byzantines, all the way to where the grasslands started to give way to forest, and where there lived Slavic and Finno-Ugric tribes. The time is what Europeans call the middle ages.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
China, Europe, and Eurasia

158. The Field of the Blackbirds and the Battle for Europe

Author:
Anna Di Lellio
Publication Date:
08-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
Serbia, Kosovo, and Turkey, all European Union applicants, recognize that the possibility of European belonging as historical reality is a crucial attribute for acceptance. These countries have all built national stories rooted in the Medieval Ottoman conquest of the Western Balkans and distanced themselves from the “Orient” and from Islam. By doing so, they have engaged in a debate with a “thick,” rather than a “thin” conception of Europe; they have tried to measure up to Europe as a traditional community of values defined by its Christian character, rather than the dynamic cosmopolitan Europe of law and standards which is officially embodied by the Union. Paradoxically, the revival of these national memories not only anchors a particular configuration of national time and space for Serbs, Albanians, and Turks. It mirrors a concern with identity, very present at the core of Europe, which is often resolved through the affirmation of an allegedly authentic and coherent European Christian tradition.
Topic:
International Relations, Nationalism, Religion, and History
Political Geography:
Europe, Central Asia, Turkey, Kosovo, Serbia, and Balkans

159. The EU and the Libyan Crisis - In Quest of Coherence?

Author:
Nicole Koenig
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The International Spectator
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
Throughout the 2000s, Libya's Col. Muammar Qadhafi signed friendship treaties and trade deals with major Western leaders and presented himself as an active partner in the fight against terrorism and illegal migration. While the dictator 'camped' in several European capitals, the European Union (EU) and Libya were negotiating a Framework Agreement aiming at ''the full reintegration of Libya in bilateral and multilateral international relations'' and a fruitful political dialogue on issues of common interest. The events in February 2011 heralded the end of this period of international 'Realpolitik'. On 27 June, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Qadhafi, accusing him of crimes against humanity (murder and persecution). In late August, the veteran tyrant reportedly fled Tripoli.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
Europe and Libya

160. Chinese Perspectives on International Power Shifts and Sino-EU Relations (2008–2011)

Author:
Nele Noesselt
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
With the beginning of the post-Maoist era, the focus of Chinese foreign policy shifted from ideology and revolution to pragmatism and reform. Chinese scholars in the field of International Relations (IR) are now encouraged to develop abstract scientific analyses of China's international environment. This requires not only the handling of IR theories and methods of foreign policy analysis (FPA), but also a sound knowledge of the organizational structures and policy principles of other states.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
China and Europe