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11. The Interactions of International Relations: Racism, Colonialism, Producer-Centred Research

Author:
Deep K. Datta-Ray
Publication Date:
07-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
The racial hierarchy underscoring colonialism persists, organises core-periphery interactions and so undermines International Relations’ (IR’s) purpose of accounting and explaining to mitigate violence. Despite IR’s awareness of its colonialism, it reconstitutes in the hermeneutic’s deductive and inductive method via aphasia (calculated forgetting) about its heuristic: diplomacy. The result, analytic-violence or the core’s heuristic corrupting interaction with the periphery. Yet, its evasiveness testifies to a meaningfulness beyond IR’s hermeneutic. Irretrievably corrupted by its heuristic, IR’s hermeneutic is ejected for an altogether new hermeneutic: Producer-Centred Research (PCR). Eschewing deduction and induction, and so colonialism, PCR initiates with abduction or a problem arising from theory and practice to resolve it in terms of rationality because of its, and the problem’s, significance. Changing “rationality” to “rationalities” registers the core’s rationality as colonialism while preventing it from contaminating PCR’s collection and assessment of peripheral practices to determine if they cohere into another rationality. Moreover, treating peripheral practitioners authoritatively, as capable of rationalising themselves and thus equal to rationality, further protects PCR from aphasia. Verifying efficacy shows PCR’s decolonisation of the hermeneutic is not entirely replicated externally, amongst IR scholars. The core engages PCR, but it incites violence in the periphery which defends rationality and so is colonialism’s bastion, now.
Topic:
International Relations, Diplomacy, Colonialism, Eurocentrism, Racism, and Hermeneutics
Political Geography:
India and Global Focus

12. Tianxia (All-Under-Heaven): An Alternative System or a Rose by another Name?

Author:
Mehmet Şahin
Publication Date:
07-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
Tianxia is considered as an alternative institutionalization to govern the international system. It refers to world governance that is regulated by a world institution. Accordingly, a world institution plays the harmonizer role under this system. States, on the other hand, choose their economic models and the leader organizes the relations among different units. This paper thus argues that Tianxia is an alternative framework to Western-oriented IR theories. In that sense, this article aims to explore the similarities between the philosophical idea of Tianxia and Western-oriented IR Theory. More specifically, the article explores the issue from the international system perspective. The epistemological gaps and ontological similarities between the two frameworks will be demonstrated.
Topic:
International Relations, Governance, International Relations Theory, and International System
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Global Focus

13. Reputation Building as a Strategy for Terror Group Survival

Author:
Efe Tokdemir
Publication Date:
07-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
In this paper I investigate terror groups' survival. The fate of terrorists hinges heavily on the power the terror group derives from its reputation. The reputation, which depends on policies and actions the group takes within their constituency, determines the degree to which each group can find recruits, resources, and support for its cause. I contend that terror groups investing on positive or negative reputation within their constituency— the people they claim to represent==are likely to survive longer. Yet, I argue, building a positive reputation has a greater impact on a group’s staying power given that this attracts loyal and committed supporters. Conversely, groups with no clearly defined reputation-building policies undergo an organizational change. I find support for my expectations by testing my arguments over all domestic terror groups active between 1980 and 2011 using the RTG and GTD databases. The findings reveal that once a terrorist group is formed, it is exceedingly difficult to obliterate it so long as it follows a clear reputational strategy to achieve their goals.
Topic:
Terrorism, Non State Actors, Group Survival, and Reputation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

14. International Relations (IR) Pedagogy, Dialogue and Diversity: Taking the IR Course Syllabus Seriously

Author:
Nathan Andrews
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
The field of International Relations (IR) has experienced different waves of ‘great debates’ that have often maintained certain theoretical and methodological frameworks and perspectives as core to the field whereas others are seen as peripheral and merely a critique of the former. As a result of this segregation of knowledge, IR has not become as open to dialogue and diversity as we are made to believe. To be sure, aspects of the extant literature speak of IR as being ‘not so international’, a ‘hegemonic discipline’, a ‘colonial household’, and an ‘American social science’, among other derogatory names. Informed by such characterizations that depict a field of study that is not sufficiently diverse, the paper investigates the relationship between pedagogical factors and dialogue in IR. In doing so, it provides preliminary results from a pilot study in February-April 2019 that sought to examine different graduate-level IR syllabi from leading universities in the global North and South (Africa in particular). In particular, the objective was to decipher what course design, including required readings and other pedagogical activities in the classroom, tells us about dialogue and the sort of diversity needed to push IR beyond its conventional canons.
Topic:
International Relations, Diversity, Academia, and Intercultural Dialogue
Political Geography:
Global Focus

15. Dialogue of the “Globals”: Connecting Global IR to Global Intellectual History

Author:
Deniz Kuru
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
This study aims to provide an exploratory analysis of Global IR, by pointing to its novelty as a tool for expanding our disciplinary frameworks, and furthermore, by connecting it to the quite simultaneously emerging field of Global Intellectual History. Such an approach enables a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics that have led to an overall focus on the “global.” The first part elaborates how the idea of Global IR has emerged as a novel disciplinary tool, and pinpoints the various meanings it has gained. Second, the focus shifts to the novel scholarship of Global Intellectual History. Elaborating this field’s most significant contributions will make it possible to emphasize the useful role it can play in furthering the idea of Global IR in a more historically (self-)conscious manner. The importance of this approach will also be underlined by referring to the increased relevance of disciplinary critique in the specific context of IR-history (dis)connections. The third part turns its attention to various cases (as vignettes) that aim to visualize how connecting these two new “Globals” (i.e. Global IR and Global Intellectual History) could provide the discipline of IR with a better means to deal with the past and present of global politics. Therefore, by explaining the conceptual, ideational, and geo-epistemological divergences and commonalities whose roots can be more concretely studied through a broader engagement with Global Intellectual History, the article clarifies the advantages of this “inter-Global” connection. It concludes by discussing the value of Global IR in terms of its potential role for broadening the discipline not just in ways that are more (IR-)introspective but also in its bridge-building capacity to other fields with similar concerns, extending to Global Intellectual History and beyond, and provides a brief list of initial suggestions.
Topic:
International Relations, History, Intellectual History, and Academia
Political Geography:
Global Focus

16. The Idea of Dialogue of Civilizations and Core-Periphery Dialogue in International Relations

Author:
Homeira Moshirzadeh
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
The idea of dialogue of civilizations, as was envisaged in the late 1990s and early 2000s, includes multi-layer, multi-actor dialogues. Civilization, when defined as “correspondence between material conditions of existence and intersubjective meanings,”[1] has epistemological and ontological elements that constitute the parameters of knowledge. One may easily claim that the existing knowledge of international relations has its roots in Western civilization and, if it is to become a truly global body of knowledge, it has to be nourished by contributions from various civilizations, mostly belonging to the “periphery”. Yet, even this is not enough if we just reach an archipelago consisting of various islands of knowledge without a connection to each other. What may help bridging these islands is dialogue. Dialogues among IR scholars from different civilizational backgrounds may lead to more mutual understanding and even may lead to some common grounds found in-between. Dialogues can be conducted both at inter-civilizational and intra-civilizational levels as civilizations cannot be taken as monolithic wholes. This article seeks to clarify the meaning and implications of dialogue of civilizations in IR. Furthermore, the way in which dialogue of civilizations in the discipline can be conducted and the expectations thereof are discussed.
Topic:
International Relations, Civilization, and Dialogue
Political Geography:
Global Focus

17. Locating a Multifaceted and Stratified Disciplinary ‘Core’

Author:
Helen Louise Turton
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
Disciplinary depictions using the core-periphery distinction are often premised on a ‘blurred’ and/or monolithic understanding of the core. For instance, the ‘core’ is often conceptualized broadly to include Western Europe and North America, or narrowly to refer to just the United States. Simultaneously the corresponding disciplinary self-images often refer to the core and the periphery as fixed and homogenous entities, which overlook the often diverse tendencies and hierarchies within the predefined space. This article therefore seeks to highlight the changing geographies of the core/periphery distinction in order to reveal the presence of different cores because there are different core properties. What this means is that the ‘core’ can appear in surprising spaces and occupy geographies that are normally associated with the periphery. In order to specifically illustrate certain workings and reach of the ‘core’ within spaces typically conceptualized as ‘peripheral’ this article will draw on existing data and research. The resultant empirical sketch will show how the ‘core’ is able to extend its reach and produce further epistemic hierarchies within peripheral spaces. In locating IR’s different cores and their hidden geographies this article aims to destabilize the core-periphery distinction in order to move beyond this disciplinary and disciplining archetype.
Topic:
International Relations, Academia, and Periphery
Political Geography:
Global Focus

18. Foregrounding the Complexities of a Dialogic Approach to Global International Relations

Author:
Deepshikha Shahi
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
The ever more global character of today’s International Relations (IR) is no longer satisfied with one-sided stories about how things have gone with either the West or the non-West. Rather, the ongoing discussions on Global IR persuade both the West and the non-West to squarely unfold their own narratives. As the theories and practices of contemporary international relations have remarkably acquired a ‘Global’ impetus, a lot of premium is being put on a ‘dialogic approach’ – that is, an approach to Global IR that insists upon a deeper two-way communicative-action between the West and the non-West. Although the dialogic approach to Global IR seeks to resolve a wide range of cognitive differences between the West and the non-West, it more often than not remains thwarted by a few unsettled contestations: (i) History vs. Philosophy, (ii) Chronology vs. Covariance, (iii) Language vs. Concept, (iv) Culture vs. Economy, and (v) Single vs. Plural. This paper sets out to shed light on these unsettled contestations in an endeavour to intellectually improve the prospects of a dialogic approach to Global IR.
Topic:
International Relations, Academia, Eurocentrism, and Dialogue
Political Geography:
Global Focus

19. Alternatives to the State: Or, Why a Non-Western IR Must Be a Revolutionary Science FacebookLinkedInTwitterMendeleyEmail

Author:
Erik Ringmar
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
The idea of the sovereign state is at the core of the Western understanding of international politics. If we are serious about coming up with non-Western theories of international politics, it is the state that must be questioned. This article suggests some ways in which this can be done. Only once we have unthought the state can we reconstruct international politics as a more equitable, and peaceful, world order.
Topic:
International Relations, Politics, Sovereignty, State, Ottoman Empire, and Pan-Africanism
Political Geography:
Global Focus

20. A Dynamic Model of the Spread of Intrastate War

Author:
Ali Fisunoğlu
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
The spread of intrastate war has gained increasing prominence, especially in the recent past. This paper studies the spread of intrastate war as a result of another intrastate war in a neighboring country using a system dynamics modeling approach. The model employed is a modification of the SIR, a spread of disease model taken from epidemiology. Revising the SIR model with relevant political and economic variables, the model seeks to explain the mechanism through which an intrastate conflict is spread from an "infected" country to a "susceptible" country. Although diffusion and contagion of civil wars have been widely examined in the past, a dynamic modeling approach has not been adequately used in this area. Consistent with the existing literature, the results of the model suggest that refugees are a means to carry the conflict disease from the initial country by disturbing economic and social dynamics of the host whereas political capacity acts as the immune system, reducing the likelihood of conflict contagion. The results of the simulations, obtained using theoretical parameters, are mainly consistent with the expectations.
Topic:
War, Refugees, Conflict, and State
Political Geography:
Global Focus