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41. Yirmibirinci Yüzyılda Savaşı Tartışmak: Clausewitz Yeniden

Author:
Ali L. Karaosmanoğlu
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
In the post-Cold War era the changing international system, primordial hate and violence motivated by ethnic and religious conflicts, transnationally operating non-state actors, relativization of the state, and rising democratic and liberal values have prompted an ongoing debate on the nature of war. Those commentators who argue that the “new” wars have fundamentally changed the nature of war are of the opinion that the theory of war by Carl von Clausewitz has lost its analytical relevance as a conceptual framework for understanding and explaining war in the twenty-first century. The major contention of this article is the following: In some respects, “new” wars are different from the “old” (conventional) ones. The depth of this difference, however, falls short in changing the nature of war. The conceptual framework of Clausewitz, therefore, remains relevant to a great extent. Clausewitzian interpretation of contemporary wars would be useful to reevaluate political and strategic alternatives that are developed to control and terminate them.
Topic:
War and Political Theory
Political Geography:
Global Focus

42. “The International”, Epistemic Fallacy and Possibilities of Critical Realism

Author:
Burak Ülman, Evren Balta-Paker, and Muhammed A. Ağcan
Publication Date:
08-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
This article examines the main assumptions of neo-realism and neo-liberalism from the perspective of a critical realist philosophy of science. Although neo-realist and neo-liberal theories of inter- national relations (IR) disagree on some issues, they do have a common ontological understanding of “the international” based heavily on the principle of anarchy. The centrality of and emphasis on anarchy, in turn, creates a monolithic, unhistorical and asocial idea of the international. This article argues that a critical realist philosophy of science, as proposed by Roy Bhaskar, provides a good framework to pursue the ontological interrogation required to deconstruct the anarchy centered idea of the international assumed by rationalist/positivist theories. Critical realism allows us to identify the crucial error that the rationalist/positivist tradition commits: which is to fall into the trap of ‘epistemic fallacy’, where ontological questions concerning the nature of being are posed and answered in epistemological terms. Critical realism not only provides a tool to investigate the ontological assumptions of mainstream IR theories but also to propose a differentiated and stratified ontology that can open the door to the mutual recognition of alternative perspectives.
Topic:
Political Theory
Political Geography:
Global Focus

43. Perception or Discourse? Security Threats in Copenhagen School and Neoclassical Realism

Author:
Sinem Akgül-Açikmese
Publication Date:
08-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
This article compares the perceptive approach of neoclassical realist security understanding with the discursive constructivist methodology of the Copenhagen School in analyzing the emergence of security threats. It departs from the assumption that these theories divergent in their perspectives on the content of security threats as well as security actors are comparable since they reveal methodological commonalities. The main emphasis of this article is that while partly adopting the perceptive subjectivity of neoclassical realism, the Copenhagen School has further developed an alternative model of discursive intersubjectivity in analyzing security threats. In this context, it will first cover the discussions on the content of security threats in Security Studies literature. It will then compare the assumptions of various realist understandings of security on the content and emergence of security threats, with a particular focus on the perceptive perspective of neoclassical realism. Finally, it will study the threat approach of the Copenhagen School through its securitization theory with insights from the speech-act theory, political theory and discourse analysis, in comparison with neoclassical realism.
Topic:
Security and Political Theory
Political Geography:
Global Focus

44. The Issue of Effectiveness in International Environmental Regimes

Author:
Yasemin Kaya and Sezgin Kaya
Publication Date:
08-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
The effectiveness of international environmental regimes is a subject that is becoming more and more important within the International Relations discipline. While one of the reasons of that is the increasing interest of the international community in environmental issues, the other reason is that the environmental issues have turned into a problem that has a direct impact on the relations among the states. However, there is no consensus on approaches about the assessment of the effectiveness of the environmental regimes. This study aims to consider the different approaches and views that are important in terms of the assessment of the effectiveness of environmental regimes. In this framework, the approaches related to regime effectiveness are assessed, and the outlines of theoretical and methodological framework that can be used in the analysis of regime effectiveness are tried to be defined.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
Global Focus

45. The Invention of International Relations Theory: Realism, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the 1954 Conference on Theory

Author:
Nicolas Guilhot
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
The 1954 conference on theory, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, featured a who’s who of scholars and practitioners debating the foundations of international relations theory. Assembling his own team of experts, all of whom have struggled with this legacy, Nicolas Guilhot revisits a seminal event and its odd rejection of scientific rationalism. Far from being a spontaneous development, these essays argue, the emergence of a “realist” approach to international politics, later codified at the conference, was deliberately triggered by the Rockefeller Foundation. The organization was an early advocate of scholars who opposed the idea of a “science” of politics, pursuing, for the sake of disciplinary autonomy, a vision of politics as a prerational and existential dimension that could not be “solved” by scientific means. As a result, this nascent theory was more a rejection of behavioral social science than the birth of one of its specialized branches. The archived conversations reproduced here, along with unpublished papers by Hans Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Paul Nitze, speak to this defensive stance. International relations theory is critically linked to the context of postwar liberalism, and the contributors explore how these origins have played out in political thought and American foreign policy.
Topic:
International Relations, Political Theory, and History
Political Geography:
Global Focus
Publication Identifier:
9780231526449
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

46. Governance Without a State?: Policies and Politics in Areas of Limited Statehood

Author:
Thomas Risse
Publication Date:
10-2011
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
Governance discourse centers on an “ideal type” of modern statehood that exhibits full internal and external sovereignty and a legitimate monopoly on the use of force. Yet modern statehood is an anomaly, both historically and within the contemporary international system, while the condition of “limited statehood,” wherein countries lack the capacity to implement central decisions and monopolize force, is the norm. Limited statehood, argue the authors in this provocative collection, is in fact a fundamental form of governance, immune to the forces of economic and political modernization. Challenging common assumptions about sovereign states and the evolution of modern statehood, particularly the dominant paradigms supported by international relations theorists, development agencies, and international organizations, this volume explores strategies for effective and legitimate governance within a framework of weak and ineffective state institutions. Approaching the problem from the perspectives of political science, history, and law, contributors explore the factors that contribute to successful governance under conditions of limited statehood. These include the involvement of nonstate actors and nonhierarchical modes of political influence. Empirical chapters analyze security governance by nonstate actors, the contribution of publicprivate partnerships to promote the United Nations Millennium Goals, the role of business in environmental governance, and the problems of Western state-building efforts, among other issues. Recognizing these forms of governance as legitimate, the contributors clarify the complexities of a system the developed world must negotiate in the coming century.
Topic:
International Relations, Political Theory, and History
Political Geography:
Global Focus
Publication Identifier:
9780231521871
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

47. American Force: Dangers, Delusions, and Dilemmas in National Security

Author:
Richard K. Betts
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
While American national security policy has grown more interventionist since the Cold War, Washington has also hoped to shape the world on the cheap. Misled by the stunning success against Iraq in 1991, administrations of both parties have pursued ambitious aims with limited force, committing the country's military frequently yet often hesitantly, with inconsistent justification. These ventures have produced strategic confusion, unplanned entanglements, and indecisive results. This collection of essays by Richard K. Betts, a leading international politics scholar, investigates the use of American force since the end of the Cold War, suggesting guidelines for making it more selective and successful. Betts brings his extensive knowledge of twentieth century American diplomatic and military history to bear on the full range of theory and practice in national security, surveying the Cold War roots of recent initiatives and arguing that U.S. policy has always been more unilateral than liberal theorists claim. He exposes mistakes made by humanitarian interventions and peace operations; reviews the issues raised by terrorism and the use of modern nuclear, biological, and cyber weapons; evaluates the case for preventive war, which almost always proves wrong; weighs the lessons learned from campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam; assesses the rise of China and the resurgence of Russia; quells concerns about civil-military relations; exposes anomalies within recent defense budgets; and confronts the practical barriers to effective strategy. Betts ultimately argues for greater caution and restraint, while encouraging more decisive action when force is required, and he recommends a more dispassionate assessment of national security interests, even in the face of global instability and unfamiliar threats.
Topic:
International Relations, Political Theory, and Military Affairs
Political Geography:
United States and Global Focus
Publication Identifier:
9780231521888
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

48. Eleştirel Gerçekçilik: Uluslararası İlişkiler Kuramında Post-Pozitivizm Sonrası Aşama

Author:
Faruk Yalvaç
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
Critical realism is a philosophy of science that is increasingly occupying the center of discussion in the theory of International Relations. The most important aspect of critical realism is that it shifts the focus of controversy in international relations from epistemology to ontology. According to the materialist ontology of critical realism there exists a reality independent of our observations and experiences. This is an alternative to the dominant positivist as well as post-positivist conceptions of science which associate reality either with what can be observed or with what can be said and thought in discourse. Critical realism provides an understanding of science that overcomes the difficulties of both and explains international relations as part of a totality of social relations with varying ontological depths. By defining structures in terms of social relations, critical realism presents a structural analysis of international relations different from the structuralism of neorealism and develops a transformational model of social activity which tries to avoid both the voluntarism of individualist/unit based analyses and the determinism of structuralist analyses.
Topic:
Political Theory
Political Geography:
Global Focus

49. Hegel, Dünya Tarihi ve Özgürlük Mücadelesi Olarak Uluslararası İlişkiler

Author:
Faruk Yalvaç
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
This article attempts to evaluate Hegel's theory of international relations in the context of his general philosophy of history. Hegel defines history as a struggle for freedom for mutual recognition. This is true for individuals as well as for states. The struggle for recognition and freedom is a constant feature of social life. Therefore, it would be wrong to interpret Hegel's philosophy as implying that the struggle for freedom has been completed in the modern nation state and that history has come to an end. However, according to Hegel it would be impossible to predict the future shape of the international society and the form which the struggle for freedom will take as “it is just as foolish to fancy that any philosophy can transcend its present world, as that an individual could leap out of his time or jump over Rhodes. ”
Topic:
Political Theory and History
Political Geography:
Global Focus

50. Uluslararası İlişkiler Kuramında Yapan-Yapı Sorunu

Author:
Alexander E. Wendt
Publication Date:
12-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory. In this article the nature of structural analysis in each of neorealist and world-system theory are clarified and contrast. The author's primary interest, however, is to critique the conceptions of structural theory found in each of them, and to use this critique to motivate the development of a new approach to structural theorizing about international relations adapted from the work of "structuration theorists" in sociology. In the first section, the author examines the nature of the agent-structure “problem” and briefly identifies the principal kinds of solutions to it. In the second section the author suggests that neorealism and world-system theory embody two of these solutions, the methodological individualist and structuralist ones, respectively. In the third section structurationist approach and its foundations in realist philosophy of science are being defined. In the fourth section, some general epistemological and theoretical implications of structuration theory for the explanation of state action are examined. In the conclusion, the author returns to some implications of scientific realism for social scientific research.
Topic:
International Relations and Political Theory
Political Geography:
Global Focus