How to Deal with Rogues

Abstract

Renegade Regimes: Confronting Deviant Behavior in World Politics. By Miroslav Nincic. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. 232 pp., $29.50 (ISBN: 0-231-13702-8). World politics is not what it used to be. Once dominated by the interaction between states, international relations is now a much more complex domain of activities. In Renegade Regimes , Miroslav Nincic identifies the defining feature of our new age as a clash between, on the one hand, a largely united international society and, on the other, a few rogue or renegade actors who defy the prevailing norms of behavior. Nincic strongly laments that existing theories of international relations and foreign policy, which revolve around state-centric theories of power politics, are inappropriate for understanding these new, asymmetrical political dynamics. Nincic thus employs other disciplinary perspectives, such as sociological studies on deviant behavior, to understand the key issues at stake. Nincic locates the origin of renegade behavior in a regime's desire to establish greater control over domestic politics, which he explains in a two-tier approach. The first tier focuses on a regime's initial decision to defy international norms. The second focuses on how the renegade's behavior is shaped by the international community's response to its actions. Questioning the common portrayal of rogues as “crazy regimes,” Nincic shows that their actions are often based on rational calculations and made in response to positions taken by the international community. Most readers will …