Hasil untuk "International relations"

Raymond Scupin

Ali Akbar Alikhani

Debbie Lisle

Jana Puglierin

Knud Erik Jørgensen

This chapter summarizes the approaches and arrivals of the book. It shows how the seven concepts help us getting under the skin of frequently mentioned but rarely advanced issues, for instance concerning subject matter or the disciplinary functions of theory. The chapter also points to some of the false dichotomies and unfruitful dilemmas (discipline versus diversity and global versus local) that for a long time have functioned as hindrances for the discipline’s innovation and advances. The chapter suggests that the community of IR scholar could turn the practice of walking in circles into corner stones of a global disciplinary platform that would be suitable for the 21 st century.

Knud Erik Jørgensen

Richard Devetak

This chapter provides an account of the reception of critical theory in international relations in the early 1980s. It is structured around detailed studies of four pioneering international relations theorists: R. B. J. Walker, Richard K. Ashley, Andrew Linklater, and R. W. Cox. In their different ways these international relations scholars helped fashion the critical persona on the basis of a modified philosophical reflexivity inherited from German idealism and historical materialism, and their Frankfurt School heirs. The end result of this reception was to refigure the theorist as a critical intellectual, capable of achieving higher levels of ethical comportment on the basis of Enlightenment self-reflection, and deeper insight into the latent forces of political transformation on the basis of dialectical-philosophical history.

Angélica Guerra-Barón

Michel Foucault’s critical approach to understanding power has become very influential in the study of global politics, especially in the work of (critical) IR scholars. The Foucauldian kind of power conception has influenced some IR scholars who adopt key insights from post-structuralist theory to world politics, thus producing an analytical orientation in the sense that all reality is structured first by language with discourses, then creating a coherent system of knowledge, objects, and subjects. Of particular importance is Foucault’s notion of biopower, biopolitics, and technology of power. Such a toolbox allows (critical) IR scholars to recur and distinguish disciplinary power, governmentality, its types (liberalism, neoliberalism), and biopolitics itself. However, few IR studies differentiate between biopower and biopolitics; yet an extensive variety of international studies issues are analyzed. Additionally, applying Foucault’s notions to global politics has been roundly criticized.

Scott A. Silverstone

Intervention is commonly defined as interference in the territory or domestic affairs of another state with military force, typically in a way that compromises a sovereign government’s control over its own territory and population. The meaning and importance of “sovereignty” as the key concept defining the global political order has made intervention a controversial and debated subject for the past several hundred years. The concept of sovereignty is typically traced back to the Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War in 1648 and established a political order of territorially defined states that had exclusive control over their own political affairs and populations. In the following centuries, international legal scholars further developed the noninterference principle, which, by prohibiting meddling in the internal affairs of other states, was intended to reduce conflict and cultivate order in an already violence-prone system. This objective was formally codified in the Charter of the United Nations, which explicitly prohibits interference in the domestic affairs of member states. Despite the importance of sovereignty and noninterference in international theory and law, many scholars point out that these principles have never been given absolute respect in practice. Since the end of the Cold War, an increasing number of scholars, political leaders, and activists have argued that sovereignty should not stand in the way of international intervention meant to protect victims of gross human-rights violations. A number of cases illustrate this new normative claim and the controversy this position has generated, such as the 1992 Somalia intervention, the Bosnian civil war, the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and the 1999 Kosovo war. The literature on intervention reflects these key themes, with authors arguing over the meaning and continuing importance of sovereignty and the noninterference principle, whether the international community has a right or obligation to respond to humanitarian abuses, whether intervention can actually make a positive contribution to peace and stability at acceptable costs, and how intervention can be made more effective for those military and civilian practitioners engaged in actual interventions. There has been a strong surge of attention in this last question since the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, as the United States found itself with a much more complicated political, social, and military challenge than first anticipated when American leaders decided to intervene in those countries.

Steve Smith

G. Scelle