Agenda Of International Relations Research Articles

Tensions in Feminist Security Studies

Barry Buzan & Lene Hansen (2009) note that the first glimmer of concern with women and security within international relations and peace studies was a site of tension: in the 1970s and into the 1980s, women were not on the agenda of international relations at all. Peace theorists embraced the concept of structural violence but also excluded women from their discussions. There are now new inclusion/exclusion tensions within feminist international relations and its security wing. In this article I address two tensions: (1) concern to maintain the stance that security is a peace issue as some venture systematically into feminist war studies, and (2) a tendency to issue harsh judgements of feminists whose views challenge the accommodation of cultural difference. I briefly consider examples of these two tensions and suggest ways to work with and beyond the structure of international relations to ‘evolve’ (feminist) security studies further.

What is a (global) polity?

AbstractDespite sustained theoretical and empirical criticism of ‘statism’, a recognisablemodelof political structure other of hierarchy and anarchy (the models that underpin the state system-model) has long been lacking. Even many proponents of radical transformation of the international system often remain ‘post-international’, describing world politics essentially in terms of complications to the international system. This article agrees that a new point of departure is needed but offers a different model of political structure by redefining the term ‘polity’ – a term which is increasingly used to capture non-territorial political entities neither constituted by hierarchy nor by the lack of it. With the new definition building on Waltz's theory of theory as a ‘picture, mentally formed’ in order to simplify a domain, a polity is deemed to exist when a set of subjects are oriented towards a common ‘governance-object’. The new polity model is applied illustratively to the idea of a global polity and a new polity research agenda of international relations is suggested.

The Catwalk Power: Germany's new foreign image policy

The foreign image policy of states, that is their efforts to influence how they are seen by foreign publics, is an under-researched aspect of International Relations (IR) and Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). This is wrong, argues this article. As foreign image policy reflects states' self-understandings, its examination provides inside insights into the transformation of states. The analysis of the foreign image policy of Germany brings to light a remarkable transformation. Until the mid-1990s, Germany cared about its image mostly for security reasons and used traditional instruments of foreign cultural policy for its image projection. Since the mid-1990s, its image policy pursues commercial goals — promoting the Standort — and for this purpose relies on public relations and marketing instruments such as the ‘Land of Ideas’ nation-branding campaign. This new policy has been enabled by the globalization discourse and its construction of a ‘global competition’ between ‘competition states’. At the same time, Germany's new foreign image policy re-produces the globalization discourse and its key concepts. Foreign image policy and globalization are mutually re-enforcing. This interconnectedness with the globalization discourse points to the wider significance of foreign image policy. Therefore, research along these lines carries the promise of bringing FPA back into the agenda of IR.

Liberalism in a Realist World

The study of international relations (IR) is a worldwide pursuit with each country having its own theoretical orientations, preoccupations and debates. Beginning in the early twentieth century, the US created its own scholarly traditions of IR. Eventually, IR became an American social science with the US becoming the epicentre for a worldwide IR community engaged in a set of research programmes and theoretical debates. The discipline of IR emerged in the US at a time when it was the world’s most powerful state and a liberal great power caught in a struggle with illiberal rivals. This context ensured that the American theoretical debates would be built around both power and liberal ideals. Over the decades, the two grand projects of realism and liberalism struggled to define the agenda of IR in the US. These traditions have evolved as they attempted to make sense of contemporary developments, speak to strategic position of the US and its foreign policy, as well as deal with the changing fashions and standards of social science. The rationalist formulations of realism and liberalism sparked reactions and constructivism has arisen to offer counterpoints to the rational choice theory.

Private Rule-Making and the Politics of Accountability: Analyzing Global Forest Governance

Private rule-making features prominently on the research agenda of International Relations scholars today. The field of forest politics in particular has proven to be a lively arena for experimenting with novel policies (for example, third party certification and labeling) and procedures (for example, power-sharing in stakeholder bodies). This article focuses on the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), one of the earliest and most institutionalized private certification schemes, in order to assess the role and relevance of accountability politics for global forest governance. Specifically, we ask three related questions: first, what role did a deepening accountability crisis and the resulting reconstruction of accountability play in the formation of the FSC? Second, how is accountability organized within the FSC? And finally, what accountability outcomes emerge as a result of the FSC's policies and operations? The article closes with some reflections about the limitations of private-based accountability in global environmental politics.

Wealth from creativity: Insights and strategies for the future of international cultural relations

Regardless of frontier, the creative community has begun to benefit financially from the democratisation of creative production and distribution opened up via the Internet, a place where planetary plurality and diversity is implicit. Artists are major ambassadors for their cultures operating in a collaborative environment that recognises the distinctive differences between cultures without threat to indigenous expression. The cultural ecology may have changed but the response of government has been obstructive. Until the second Iraq war cultural diplomacy seemed to have replaced gunboat diplomacy and there was a growing movement to foster cultural relations in an environment being characterised as mutual. In parallel, at national level, governments were seeking to recognise the strong economic value of the cultural industries sector in the new globalised technology. This has now all been thrown into reverse gear by the practice of public diplomacy, a policy of unreformed imperialist hubris that seeks to influence policy in other nations by using domestic producers of intellectual, scientific, creative or economic content to promote selected values and so dominate the international relations agenda. What if one were to integrate into the activities of international cultural relations the dynamic ways of working and thinking of the creative industries? A more beneficial model emerges if creators are given centre-stage and the values of the creative community applied to the management of international cultural relations. A series of insights borne of many years work in the creative industries could lead to a new set of strategies that would call the bluff of those currently seeking to promote the advantages of liberal democracy. For these strategies demonstrably uphold the rights of individuals to creative expression and to enrich their local economies. This does require the managers of international cultural relations to live more dangerously than at present and it is to them that this paper is addressed.

Framing and Shaming

Reframing the Agenda: The Impact of NGO and Middle Power Cooperation in International Security Policy. Edited by Kenneth Rutherford, Stefan Brem, Richard A. Matthew. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2003. 240 pp., $69.95 (ISBN: 0-275-97921-0). In this interconnected world, some observers worry about leaving the agenda of international relations solely to powerful states. The inability or unwillingness of major powers to make the “right” decisions has led nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), individuals, and smaller states to mobilize on various issues, from globalization to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (see www.tikkun.org for a description of the recent, unofficial “Geneva Accord” for solving the latter conflict). Just how influential civil society and supporting states are in directing the agenda of international security is the question at the center of Reframing the Agenda . This edited volume argues that NGOs and “middle powers” significantly define the agenda of international security from small arms control and the landmine ban to redefining norms related to child soldiers and nuclear weapons. However, even though the editors have assembled an interesting set of articles reflecting how activists attempt to frame security debates and shame reluctant states into compromise, Reframing the Agenda falls short of a coherent empirical or theoretical argument that will convince readers of the potency of these political forces. The cases described in Reframing the Agenda represent a continuum of relative success in trying to frame and push the agenda of international security in the face of Great Power opposition. The collection …

Myanmar´ s International Relations Strategy: The Search for Security

At the Ninth ASEAN summit in Bali in October 2003, then Prime Minister ofMyanmar, General Khin Nyunt, received the endorsement of his regional peers for his plan to return Myanmar to democratic governance. In 2006, Myanmar will chair ASEAN and the country's leadership will need to be in a position to show that real reform measures have been instituted. The Prime Minister's discussions with his counterparts from China, Japan, Korea and India, as well as the ASEAN governments at the Bali summit, could set the scene for a new era of peaceful cooperation, trade and investment capable of providing Myanmar with the resources for implementation of the democratic governance urged upon her by the international community. Myanmar's international relations strategy, focused within the Asian region, is designed to complement its domestic policies in pursuit of stability, unity and peaceful development. This article analyses Myanmar's new international relations agenda in the context of its domestic reform programme and its overarching search for security.

The Sociology of a Not-So-Integrated Discipline: The Development of International Relations in Japan

Stimulated by Ole Waever's (1998) examination of American and European developments in International Relations, this article examines the growth of the discipline of international relations in Japan, focusing on the major currents of the social science tradition since 1868 and the intellectual agenda of international relations since 1945. Postwar scholarship has reflected the main themes and questions of Japanese history — the causes of war, the struggle for peace, Japan's place in the world and Asia, and Japan's role in the Cold War. To an extent, the organization and substance of IR teaching and scholarship in Japan can be explained by reference to certain sociological and historical variables. Discussions about methodology have not mirrored the “great debates” of the United States, but the younger scholars are moving closer to the American pattern. Recent exposure to and interaction with American scholarship has become increasingly visible, allowing Japanese scholars to make important contributions to debates in the US.

Down but not out? The Kurds in international politics

The capacity of the Kurds—a scattered, divided and stateless people—to make headline news never ceases to astonish. Perhaps most sensational were the extraordinary events early in 1999 which accompanied the seizure in Kenya and subsequent extradition to Turkey of Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdish Workers Party, with its now familiar acronym, the PKK. Ocalan's arrest, and his sentencing to death by a Turkish court in June 1999, are only the most recent in a series of Kurdish-related events that have captured the imagination of the international public. The post-Cold War period alone has witnessed the massacre, by chemical weapons, of Kurdish villagers in Iraq after the Iran–Iraq war (1980–88) and a failed Kurdish uprising and massive refugee crisis after the Gulf War (1991), to be followed by the creation of a Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq. In 1992, far away in Berlin, which saw some particularly ugly scenes at the time of Ocalan's capture, three Iranian Kurdish opposition leaders were murdered. So significant has been the Kurdish imprint on the contemporary International Relations agenda, that some have suggested that the Kurdish issue today can be likened in some respects to that of Palestine.

Workers and world order: the tentative transformation of the international union movement

The activity of workers' organizations and labour issues is once again on the international relations agenda in fields ranging from labour standards at the WTO, to the terms of regional integration, to corporate codes of conduct, to civil society coalition building. This article argues that the role of the international union movement is transforming from a supporter of US capitalism to a brake on neoliberal industrial relations, to potentially advocating a different form of political economy in alliance with other groups. This transformation has taken place partially because unions have has been expelled from the corridors of power in key states and partially because of their encounter with a series of social movements. The cases of the ICFTU's activity in engaging international organizations and MNCs are used as examples to illustrate this trend. The implications for activity in, and the theory of, the global political economy are potentially significant.

MERCOSUR, Argentina, and Regional Integration Processes

(1996). MERCOSUR, Argentina, and Regional Integration Processes. International Journal of Political Economy: Vol. 26, The Political Economy of Open Regionalism in Latin America, pp. 56-70.