Global International Relations and Indian Visions of World Government

This chapter examines the emerging scholarship on Global International Relations (Global IR), placing it in a broader disciplinary context. I review Global IR’s key claim (Mainstream International Relations Theory is inadequate), introduce its main tenets, benefits, and criticisms levelled at it, discuss one study of Global IR, and evaluate the extent to which it challenges mainstream IR theory. Having shown the contribution Global IR can make to our discipline, I point out five risks in doing Global IR and offer two ways to mitigate the substantial risk of essentialism. The conclusion makes the case for Global IR to promote greater epistemological innovation.

The proposition of establishing “global international relations” (Global IR) as an amalgamation of diverse national epistemologies in the field of international relations, potentially superseding the Western-centric paradigm, presents significant challenges. A critical inquiry emerges: Is it possible to form a discipline based on the polyphony of national approaches, despite the fact that the ontology of international relations has remained fundamentally unchanged since the mid-17th century? This study evaluates the thesis of extant national epistemologies in international relations by examining national traditions of diplomatic training. The primary research question is formulated as follows: What are the foundational approaches employed by leading states in the training of IR specialists, and can these approaches be considered reflective of national epistemologies regarding the nature of international relations? The research methodology involves a synthesis of findings from an examination of diplomatic training institutions across a diverse sample of countries. This sample encompasses Western nations (United Kingdom, Hungary, Poland, United States, Finland, France, and Germany), Asian countries (Vietnam, Indonesia, India, China, and the Republic of Korea), Middle Eastern states (Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey), African nations (Nigeria and South Africa), and Latin American countries (Brazil, Mexico, and Cuba). The article is structured in two principal sections. The theoretical section explores the hypothesis of “global international relations” within the context of existing literature and theoretical frameworks. The second section synthesizes the empirical findings from the study of national approaches to diplomatic training, testing the hypothesis of its correlation with national epistemologies in the field of international relations.

Global IR is an encompassing term for a range of work that has set out to globalize the discipline in terms of its core concepts, assumptions, and substantive areas of study. Our symposium supports Global IR's goals but also offers some friendly critiques of the project with the aim of increasing its impact and durability. In this Introduction to the symposium, we posit that Global IR is vulnerable to a dynamic that limits its capacity to upend the status quo, which we term the ‘essentialism trap’. Essentialism captures a range of commitments oriented around the notion that the world is constituted by pre-formed, fixed, internally coherent, and bounded social forms. The trap involves the overuse of essentialist categories by radical projects, a process that can result in the reinforcement of status quo categories and assumptions. With reference to previous openings in IR that have succumbed to this trap, we identify the dynamics that lead to this trap and suggest ways in which Global IR can avoid it by leaning more into relationalism and global history, and, thereby, fulfil the promise contained in the range of movements it speaks with and for.

This chapter analyses and assesses the movement towards a more Global IR. The chapter first revisits the origins of IR. While the foundational narrative stresses the origin of IR as a normative project of avoiding war in Europe, obscuring the discipline’s colonial and racist aspects, this chapter highlights broader concerns and contributions from the periphery, such as anti-colonialism, racism, underdevelopment, and world order. The second section captures IR’s neglect and lack of fit with non-Western experiences during the post-war phase of Americanization with the help of a case study—of the liberal order—and the seminal work of Mohammed Ayoob dealing with Third World Security. The third section examines efforts in various parts of the world to develop arguments and positions that question the universality of the discipline and aspire to inject greater diversity into IR. It is argued here that such regional contributions to IR need not undermine the globalization of IR theory but can complement and enrich it in the path to a Global IR.

ABSTRACTMainstream international relations scholarship has ignored or disparaged the significance and legacies of the Bandung conference. The author argues in favour of its importance, not only for any serious investigation into the evolution of the post-war international order, but also for the development of Global IR as a truly universal discipline: a global international relations. Few events offer more fertile ground for rethinking the established boundaries of international relations. After introducing the concept of a global international relations, the author then considers ways in which the conference’s key legacies challenge conventional accounts and attest to the ‘agency’ of the newly independent states in the making of the post-war international order. The legacies this section focuses on include frustration at Western attempts to ‘sabotage’ the conference; the delegitimisation of collective defence pacts and the development of the Non-Aligned Movement; the emergence of a South-East Asian regionalism; the strengthening of emergent global norms affirming decolonisation, human rights, universalism and the United Nations; and support for the ‘comity’, over the ‘clash’, of civilisations. The author also canvasses negative legacies of the conference, including the polarisation of Asia and the encouragement of authoritarian tendencies and regional interventionist impulses. The author concludes by drawing implications of the conference for the study of global international relations.

The primary purpose of this article is to advance the ongoing global international relations (Global IR) debate and to offer some possible paths toward Global IR 2.0. To this end, this article first analyzes how Global IR has emerged, what contributions it makes to giving new impetus to IR knowledge (production), and, more importantly, what charges are leveled against Global IR. Although Global IR has produced an important body of scholarship, contributing substantially to identifying West-centrism as a key point of contention in IR and nudging the discipline toward theoretical pluralism, Global IR in its current form still carries the risk of reinforcing the old hierarchical and essentialized structure of knowledge production in ways that are analytic, epistemological, and ontological. Following this critical mapping exercise, I argue that while Global IR can serve as a key signifier of challenge to West-centrism, this important signifier needs to be redefined in terms of what it indicates and means—thereby becoming Global IR 2.0. In onto-epistemological terms, Global IR 2.0 relates more directly to questioning and dissolving essentialized ways of knowing in the discipline. In the final section of this article, I elaborate on how to realize this idea and harness it in practice.

Through collective action, global governance helps identify, understand, and address problems that spill over national boundaries. Those problems include maintaining peace and security; developing and implementing rules with regard to trade in commodities and services, capital flows, and migration; containing transboundary pests and diseases; slowing global warming; and providing aid for needy countries and peoples. Specific international organizations (five discussed in Chapter 6) address these issues). The difference between global and national governance is that there is no global government. Global governance, through various international bodies and institutions, complements regional, national, and local governance in an important way and is the sum total of the informal and formal ideas, values, rules, norms, procedures, practices, policies, and institutions that govern all actors—states, intergovernmental organizations, civil society, nongovernmental organizations, transnational corporations, and the general public. The number of actors on the global governance scene has proliferated, as has the sheer number of international initiatives that have been started to mobilize incremental international funding in support of food security and nutrition since the 2007 food crisis. Many of the initiatives are reviewed in this chapter, showing that the amount of incremental funding in support of food security and nutrition, beyond traditional sources raised, was insignificant compared to the number of international consultations held. The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program was a notable exception, as well as the Agricultural Market Information System. This situation appears to have changed for the better since the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter examines the relationship between global, regional, national, and local governance.

This article examines the contributions of the English School to the development of Global International Relations (Global IR) through a critical analysis of its systemic framework, historical development, and normative theoretical focus. By undertaking a qualitative and historical analysis of foundational texts by figures such as Manning, Wight, and Bull, as well as relevant secondary literature, the study illuminates the interaction between the English School and Global IR. The study's key findings indicate that, while the English School's Eurocentric legacy presents theoretical constraints, its focus on norms, international society, and justice offers valuable frameworks for addressing contemporary global challenges. Furthermore, the study identifies the integration of emerging powers and non-Western perspectives as evidence of the English School's adaptability in a pluralistic global order. Methodologically, the study's focus on historical analysis and qualitative approaches constrains its capacity to offer broader empirical generalisations. Additionally, its theoretical scope reflects the challenges of reconciling diverse perspectives within a cohesive framework. Despite these limitations, the article highlights the potential for transformative dialogue between the English School and Global IR, with practical implications for fostering inclusive global governance and providing pathways for future interdisciplinary research.

After LeninismThe New World Disorder Ken Jowitt (bio) For nearly half a century, international and national boundaries and identities have been shaped by the existence of a world of Leninist regimes led in varying ways and to different degrees by the Soviet Union. For half a century we have thought in terms of East and West; now, with the mass extinction of Leninist regimes, the East as such has vanished, taking the primary axis of international politics along with it. Thermonuclear Russia still exists, but the imperial construct called the Soviet bloc is gone, and the Soviet Union proper (itself an empire) may soon follow. The "Leninist extinction" has radically altered the geopolitical frame of reference that countries throughout the world have long used to bound and define themselves. The Third World, for instance, has bounded and defined itself since its beginning at the Bandung Conference of 1955 by distinguishing itself from the West on the one hand and the Leninist world on the other. Whatever shared political identity the "nonaligned" states of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East have had has been largely negative: they were neither liberal nor Leninist. The Third World's ideological identity, its geographical borders, and its capacity to secure development assistance have all hinged upon the conflict between the other two worlds, one led by the United States, the other by the Soviet Union. Yet now the bipolar alignment with reference to which the nonaligned states of the Third World defined themselves has disappeared. Boundaries are an essential component of a recognizable and coherent identity. Whether the borders in question are territorial, ideological, [End Page 11] religious, economic, social, cultural, or amalgams thereof, their erosion or dissolution is likely to be traumatic. This is all the more so when boundaries have been organized and understood in highly categoric terms, as they were during the period of the Cold War. We cannot expect the "clearing away" effect of Leninism's extinction to be self-contained, a political storm with an impact conveniently limited to the confines of what used to be the Leninist world. On the contrary, the Leninist extinction of 1989 has hurled the entire world into a situation not altogether unlike the one described in the Book of Genesis. Central points of reference and firm, even rigid, boundaries have given way to territorial, ideological, and political confusion and uncertainty. We now inhabit a world which, while not "without form and void" like the primordial chaos in Genesis, is nonetheless a great deal more fluid than it was just a very short while ago. The major imperatives of this world, moreover, will be the same as those facing Yahweh in Genesis: "naming and bounding." We must respond to a world that will be increasingly unfamiliar, perplexing, and threatening. Many kinds of existing boundaries will come under assault; many will change. The task will be to establish new national and international boundaries and to identify--"name" and "bound"--the new entities that result. In his much discussed essay on "The End of History," Francis Fukuyama has taken the view that "the triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism."1 His allowance for the "sudden appearance of new ideologies or previously unrecognized contradictions in liberal societies" is a throwaway. For him, Hitler, the Nazi revolution, and World War II were a "diseased bypath in the general course of European development." Similarly, his allowance that the "fascist alternative may not have been played out yet in the Soviet Union," is a liberal Goliath's view of a possible fascist David. "Exceptions" on the order of the Nazi and Bolshevik regimes do not prove the liberal "rule"—the former almost destroyed liberalism, and the latter had the nuclear weapons to do so. Fukuyama is correct to observe that liberal capitalism is now the only politically global civilization, and to suggest that "the present world seems to confirm that the fundamental principles of sociopolitical organization have not advanced terribly far since 1806." But neither of these propositions can justify his Idealist, ahistorical assertion that liberal capitalist civilization is the absolute end...

Theorising a non-Eurocentric “global international relations” has been a main preoccupation of scholars associated with international political sociology (IPS). In this article, I argue that scholars within the IPS tradition have provided a powerful critique of, but no clear alternative to, Eurocentrism. This is partly attributable to their insufficient problematisation of the historical narratives that propel capitalism backwards into history. By problematising “presentist” conceptions of capitalism, I show that a critical dialogue between IPS and “political Marxism” helps to introduce an alternative foundation for anti-Eurocentrism, which shifts our focus from “capitalist modernity” to “radical modernity”. Radical modernity resists hierarchical colonial ontologies by emphasising the universality of egalitarian social patterns rooted in our common, non-capitalist past. I contend that radical modernity is an enduring legacy that is found universally, transmitted interactively, and revitalised continuously across time and space, hence providing an alternative base on which to theorise and globalise the “international” in a non-Eurocentric way.

An incidental aside in one of my books has become the focal point of a small controversy. Experiment with Freedom, India and Pakistan 1947 was a brief work which attempted to give a more precise and particular account of the events which led up to the transfer of power. Most attention has been paid to my interpretation of the celebrated episode at Simla in May 1947 when Nehru reacted violently to Mountbatten's plans for transferring power. I suggested that the crisis was not an external confrontation between British and Indian views over whether India should remain united, or be divided, or split into fractions, but was essentially an internal crisis in the mind of Jawaharlal Nehru. To try to explain why Nehru was so upset by a plan which he had, in all essentials, previously (however reluctantly) accepted, I made a comparison with his later reaction to Chinese activities on the Indian border. Nobody adopted the slogan Hindi-Chini-Bhai-Bhai (‘Indians and Chinese are Brothers’) more ardently than Nehru and so the revelation that they were enemies came as a profound personal shock. Speaking on the morrow of the Chinese invasion, Nehru said that he now realized that they had been ‘out of touch with reality’, in an ‘artificial atmosphere of our own creation’. The Times printed this observation under the sardonic heading ‘The Dreamers’ (26 October 1962). I suggested that at Simla Nehru exhibited ‘much the same apparent amnesia’.

Peace Movements

I am pleased to have an opportunity to write this Editorial for Agricultural Research, the official journal of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, India. I congratulate the Academy for having taken this initiative to publish original research papers, critical reviews and opinion articles addressing issues related to agricultural research for development. It is a very timely initiative, as the world faces enormous challenges in ensuring food-andnutrition security of the fast-growing population. These challenges can only be met by cutting-edge science and fast application of emerging technologies for sustainable agricultural growth and development. I wish the new journal great success in promoting high quality scientific research in various disciplines of agricultural sciences, and formulation of policies for agrarian prosperity. India has always recognized that a prosperous, productive and sustainable farm economy is the cornerstone of equitable and inclusive growth. The Indian economy is based in part on planning through its five-year plans, with emphasis on agrarian economy. The first Five Year Plan, introduced by the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, addressed mainly the agrarian sector, including investments in dams and irrigation. During the last seven years, the country has pursued policies to revitalize agrarian economy, and adopted a multi-pronged strategy to improve returns to farming sector and step up investment in augmenting the rural infrastructure [1]. These policies have begun to pay off. The country has achieved a new plateau in food-grain production, exceeding 250 million tonnes during 2011–2012, an all-time record for the country. The production of grain-legumes, which are the main source of proteins in Indian diet, has touched 18 million tonnes, crossing the barrier of 15 million tonnes. The country is producing today more milk, more fruits, more vegetables, more sugarcane, more oilseeds and more cotton than ever before. The agricultural growth is expected to be about 3.5 % per annum during the current 11th Five Year Plan (2007–2012). This is commendable, but we must improve upon it in the 12th Five Year Plan to achieve a minimum growth of 4 % or even higher. This calls for a very determined effort in many areas including investment in irrigation, investment in watershed management, provision of credit, provision of marketing support, etc. One of the key elements in that effort must be the contribution of agricultural research, and I take this opportunity to focus on this area. I am aware that at any given time there is bound to be a gap between the yields obtained under the field conditions and the yields that can be achieved under ideal farming conditions. That difference is quite substantial at present, and it represents the failure of the system. In the short run, it is the job of the administration to close this gap, and our agricultural strategy must give high priority to this effort. This is not the job of research scientists, but it does require close collaboration between the scientists, technologists and the administration on the ground. We must do better in this area than we have done thus far. One of our major concerns is that our extension services system is no longer sufficiently robust. The First Green Revolution was achieved with the support of an effective rural extension and research infrastructure. At that time, panchayats (village self-governance), rural agricultural staff, agricultural scientists and district level officials actively collaborated to create a robust extension services system. We need now to revitalize the extension services system. The Krishi Vigyan M. Singh (&) Prime Minister’s Office, South Block, Raisina Hill, New Delhi 110011, India e-mail: pmosb@pmo.nic.in

A bedtime story

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