International Relations Concepts Research Articles

South Korean Development Model

South Korea is one of economic wonders of the late twentieth century. War-torn desolated and poverty-stricken country in the 1950s with a per capita income less then Haiti, Ethiopia, India or Yemen, achieved unprecedented economic development and legendary growth that brought her from one the most backward countries into an economic giant by the 1980s and later on one of the most advanced countries in the world in the 21st century. The process was characterized by rapid industrialization, phenomenal growth rates and incremental social transformation. The paradigm of Korean path was under scrutiny from politicians and academicians and many studies were devoted to this issue. The paper is briefly highlighting major schools of thoughts analyzing Korea´s model from different angles – developmental concept, new institutionalism, cultural school of values, historical trajectory theory and of international relations concept. The study does not have an ambition to go deeply into historical perspectives and developmental cycles of Korean economic success that are very well covered in a number of economic expertizes. Instead, the paper focuses on some selected aspects that, though sometimes forgotten to get a due attention, but substantially subscribed on the Korea´s industrialization successful story. The study includes considerations of the applicability of Korean model on other countries and brings also a brief insight into the modernization period that followed the path of democratization of the country after 1987.

Critical geopolitics on Russian foreign policy: Uncovering the imagery of Moscow’s international relations

The pragmatic and imperialist frames have dominated the analyses of Russian foreign policy. Despite the glaring similarities of Russia’s international conduct with expectations of pragmatism and expansionism, this study argues that Moscow’s foreign policy has been informed by more nuanced and dynamic conceptions of international relations. To uncover the imagery of global politics, as conceived by Russia’s top foreign policy makers, this study employs a critical geopolitics perspective. The latter views foreign policy as a social, cultural, discursive, and political practice of constructing, defending, and living the alternative claims about the ‘truths’ of international relations. The study illuminates Russia’s spatial conceptions of the world, its views of the international actors, and its national identity discourse. It shows how this imagery enters Russia’s geopolitical reasoning that provides the Russian government with ‘rationality’ for projecting soft and hard power in the neighborhood and beyond.

Reluctance in international politics: A conceptualization.

Contemporary rising powers have often pursued a hesitant and ambiguous foreign-policy and have belied the expectations of potential followers and established powers who would want them to engage more actively in global and regional governance. The existing analytical toolbox of International Relations does not offer suitable concepts to make sense of the widespread phenomenon of states that pursue hesitant, inconsistent courses of action and do not bring to bear their power resources to coherently manage international crises that potentially affect them. A notion that is frequently employed to describe this peculiar type of foreign policy is that of ‘reluctance’, but this concept has not been systematically defined, discussed or theorized. This article aims to introduce the concept of reluctance into the field of International Relations. It develops a conceptualization of reluctance by identifying the concept’s semantic field and discussing how reluctance relates to the similar but distinct notions of exceptionalism, isolationism, under-aggression and under-balancing (concept reconstruction); on that basis, the article outlines the constitutive dimensions of reluctance — hesitation and recalcitrance — and their operationalization (concept building). Several illustrative cases of (non-)reluctant rising powers are used to exemplify the concept structure and to show the analytical usefulness of the concept of reluctance, which refers to a distinct set of phenomena that are not addressed by other concepts in International Relations. An application of the concept allows us to identify policy shifts and differences across issue areas, as well as open up avenues for further research.

The concept of transparency in International Relations: Towards a critical approach

Transparency is an important concept in International Relations. The possibility of realizing transparency in practice operates as a central analytical axis defining distinct positions on core theoretical problems within the field, from the security dilemma to the function of international institutions and beyond. As a political practice the pursuit of transparent governance is a dominant feature of global politics, promoted by a wide range of actors across a vast range of issue areas, from nuclear proliferation to Internet governance to the politics of foreign aid. Yet, despite its importance, precisely what transparency means or how the concept is understood is frequently ill-defined by academics and policy-makers alike. As a result, the epistemological and ontological underpinnings of approaches to transparency in IR often sit in tension with their wider theoretical commitments. This article will examine the three primary understandings of transparency used in IR in order to unpack these commitments. It finds that while transparency is often explicitly conceptualized as a property of information, particularly within rationalist scholarship, this understanding rests upon an unarticulated set of sociological assumptions. This analysis suggests that conceptualizing ‘transparency-as-information’ without a wider sociology of knowledge production is highly problematic, potentially obscuring our ability to recognize transparent practices in global governance. Understanding transparency as dialogue, as a social practice rooted in shared cognitive capacities and epistemic frameworks, provides a firmer analytical ground from which to examine transparency in International Relations.

The lion and the dragon. Confrontation of two concepts of international relations in the context of the British expedition to China 1793-1794

This paper discusses different conceptions of international relations (Westphalian sovereignty and China’s model based on a tributary system and the central place of the imperial court in Beijing) in the context of the British expedition to China in 1793-1794. There is perhaps no more striking case of a clash between Britain and China. This confrontation was a part of the colonial period. The British mission undertook the task of commencing trade cooperation with the Chinese and establishing a permanent embassy in Beijing. The embassy was ultimately not successful. After the conclusion of the embassy, Qianlong sent a letter to King George III, explaining in greater depth the reasons of his refusal to grant the requests of the embassy. This paper shows that the only way to success was mutual understanding. The failure to obtain trade concessions was caused not only by Macartney’s refusal to kowtow in the presence of the Qianlong Emperor, as is commonly believed. It was a result of competing world views that were mutually incomprehensible and incompatible. China had a totally different perspective on their role in the world. As ruler of the “Middle Kingdom”, the Emperor of China received a Mandate from Heaven, and was nominally ruler of the entire world. China had a privileged status in the world and others could be beneficiaries of Chinese culture only on condition that they admitted this particular role. A lack of understanding of the cultural context of Chinese international relations caused the failure of the embassy.

Soft Power as a Effect Instruments in Foreign Policy: Turkey's Soft Power Analysis and the Assessment of its Soft Power Capacity on Azerbaijan

Abstract. With the emergence of first political structures of the world, struggles between them gave rise to the concept of power. Since the ancient times, power has played an important role in the concept of international relations and made a significant contribution to the establishment of the discipline as an autonomous structure. The concept of power, which has always maintained its importance, has evolved in time and, for the time being, is known for its rather soft side. In this century, many academic studies that dealt with the soft side of the power have been published, however, while being mentioned in popular publications, the concept has not been favored in the academic publications in Turkey. With this dissertation that is the first study that deals with the soft power within the context of international relations, we intended to contribute to the filling of the void in the Turkish literature. For this purpose, we first discussed the concept of power and the soft power in every aspect. Afterwards, we analyzed the soft power potential of Turkey culturally, politically and within the frame of foreign affairs practices and essentially in the context of Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asia regions. As the soft power sources that may influence the national politics may vary for every country, we chose Azerbaijan as the model of this study and sought for an answer to the question, How Turkey can possibly/efficiently have the soft power influence over Azerbaijan?. As the hypothesis of the study and the answer of the question, we considered the cultural link between these two countries would constitute the most important and effective soft power source. In the conclusion of the study, we interviewed a group of fifteen Azerbaijanis that consisted NGO members, journalists and academicians thus proved the hypothesis of the study. Keywords. Soft Power, Azerbaijan, Culture, Political Values, Foreign Affairs. JEL. B30, H19, H70, L31, P40.

Connecting Students Cross-Nationally Through Facebook

ABSTRACTFor over a decade, academia has been engaged in a lively discussion of how to internationalize the curriculum so that students are better prepared to step into the role of global citizens. This article contributes to the discussion of methods that can be employed to further promote internationalization. The article examines a class project designed with the goal of connecting students through the use of Facebook in order to expand their global awareness and perspectives. In the project, students from U.S. and non-U.S. colleges posted images and descriptions of international relations concepts. By recognizing that others around the world attribute different (and sometimes similar) meanings to these concepts, students broadened their own understandings and gained a greater awareness of the diversity in the study of international relations. A review of three iterations of the project yields useful feedback for future endeavors. While this study is focused on international relations concepts, the framework could also be adapted for other topic areas where a comparative perspective would be beneficial.

‘Valhalla rising’: Gender, embodiment and experience in military memoirs

Recent contributions within international relations place embodiment, experience and emotion at the centre of their analysis of war. Recognizing that war should be ‘studied up from people and not down from places that sweep blood, tears and laughter away’ (Sylvester, 2012: 484), I extend this aim to analyse embodiment and experience through Norwegian military memoirs from Afghanistan. These are relevant empirically not necessarily because they contest political aims or offer policy recommendations, but because of how these embodied narratives, influenced by particular gendered conceptions of ‘warrior masculinity’ and Viking mythology, can trouble Norwegian public narratives. Through focusing on how memoirs construct the sensory experience of combat, I argue that these enable us to push conceptual understandings of embodiment and experience. Memoirs show how war is experienced as an assemblage of pleasure and pain, and how this is caught up in complex blurrings of individual and collective militarized bodies. Analysing how the pain and pleasure of war is made sense of through and between bodies allows us to advance the usage of embodiment as a concept in international relations, in turn leaving the discipline better equipped to understand war’s complex embodied assemblages.

Tipping the scales: the attribution problem and the feasibility of deterrence against cyberattack

Cyber attackers rely on deception to exploit vulnerabilities and obfuscate their identity, which makes many pessimistic about cyber deterrence. The attribution problem appears to make retaliatory punishment, contrasted with defensive denial, particularly ineffective. Yet observable deterrence failures against targets of lower value tell us little about the ability to deter attacks against higher value targets, where defenders may be more willing and able to pay the costs of attribution and punishment. Counterintuitively, costs of attribution and response may decline with scale. Reliance on deception is a double-edged sword that provides some advantages to the attacker but undermines offensive coercion and creates risks for ambitious intruders. Many of the properties of cybersecurity assumed to be determined by technology, such as the advantage of offense over defense, the difficulty of attribution, and the inefficacy of deterrence, are in fact consequences of political factors like the value of the target and the scale-dependent costs of exploitation and retaliation. Assumptions about attribution can be incorporated into traditional international relations concepts of uncertainty and credibility, even as attribution involves uncertainty about the identity of the opponent, not just interests and capabilities. This article uses a formal model to explain why there are many low-value anonymous attacks but few high-value ones, showing how different assumptions about the scaling of exploitation and retaliation costs lead to different degrees of coverage and effectiveness for deterrence by denial and punishment. Deterrence works where it is needed most, yet it usually fails everywhere else.

The challenges facing the global south: perspectives from the Philippines

International Relations scholarship highlights the differences of the countries in the global south. The postcolonial histories of countries herein give rise to unique experiences that push them to consolidate their states at the soonest time possible even as they are inextricably integrated in an international system that is biased towards the great powers. This double pressure either makes or break a state, and it is this tension that is the focus of the special issue. This concluding article offers a bird’s-eye view of the nuances of the differences of the global south and the problems associated with it. I argue that while the differences may indeed be unique, not seeing beyond those is problematic. In line with this, I first acknowledge the differences the global south represents. I look at how the International Relations concepts of state, rational choice, and the international system are seen as inapplicable to the workings of the global south, and how this “misfit” is detected not only in the dynamics of Philippine foreign policy, but also in its relationships with various regional powers like the United States and China. I then turn to the problems associated with seeingonlythe differences of the global south. I highlight the concepts of mimicry and hybridity before examining the cases of the Philippines’ labor conditions, human security for migrant workers, and disability-related issues. In all these, caution, mindfulness, and the need for dialogue are therefore called for.

Why Deploy to Somalia? Understanding Six African Countries’ Reasons for Sending Soldiers to One of the World’s Most Failed States

In 2007, African Union soldiers deployed to Somalia with the blessing of the United Nations Security Council, ostensibly on a peacekeeping mission. Today, six African countries have a combined total of approximately 21,564 combat troops on the ground as part of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). These soldiers have paid a heavy price. Since AMISOM military forces first arrived in Somalia, perhaps as many as 3,000 have been killed there—a number approaching the 3,096 peacekeepers killed in all United Nations peacekeeping operations between 1948 and 2013. But why have six African countries sent soldiers to one of the world’s most failed states? Select international relations concepts and theories help provide answers. Nearly all point to less-than-selfless reasons. This article concludes that all six African countries have accrued, or are looking to accrue, self-serving benefits through their military participation in AMISOM.

“Lone Wolf” Terrorism and the Classical Jihad: On the Contingencies of Violent Islamic Extremism

It is nearly impossible to describe Muslim expansionism in the centuries following the death of the Prophet Muhammad - broadly undertaken in service of the Islamic doctrine of jihad - as being somehow compatible with modern norms of international relations, including self-determination and noninterference in the affairs of other states. To detractors, this seems to suggest a certain tension in modern Muslim thought that jihadist movements have been able to exploit. Modern Muslim intellectuals, that is, are forced to somehow reconcile an expansionist past, which was not only tolerated by early jurists interpreting Islam’s sacred texts but indeed exhorted by them as a duty of the Muslim community, with modern realities, where the jihad as it was historically understood has become something of an embarrassment. In so doing, the argument runs, they leave themselves exposed to the “literalist” claims of the jihadists, who can call up such sources at will and demonstrate the true Islamicity of their actions relative to modernists who can only rely on abstract principles and vague apologies that sound suspiciously Western. The purpose of this paper is to explore the fallacy of this conclusion through the examination of “lone wolf” terrorism. This form of terrorism is quite relevant not only because of its inherent danger, but also because the methods of the lone wolf terrorist have been broadly accepted by a panoply of the most extreme Islamist organizations, very much including the so called Islamic State. I will show that even if early and medieval Muslim jurists hardly incorporated a worldview that rested on principles of mutual tolerance and respect toward other states and other religions, they nonetheless regarded the jihad as a fundamentally conservative doctrine, meant to preserve the Muslim state as it was and direct violence exclusively in external directions, in an organized and systematic attempt to expand what was known as the House of Islam into the universal Muslim state. The notion of lone wolf terrorism - individually directed and organized violence, executed beyond the meaningful control of the caliph - was entirely foreign. Moreover, it depends on deliberate violation of one of classical Islam's core concepts in international relations, that of respect for the terms of a covenant of security, or aman, when granted by a non-Muslim power to a Muslim or the reverse.

Reluctant Powers: A Concept-Building Approach and an Application to the Case of Germany

Reluctance is an extremely widespread phenomenon in international politics. For example, several rising powers have displayed an inconsistent, flip-flopping approach towards their regions and have not conformed to the expectations and wishes of their potential regional followers. While the notion of reluctance is frequently employed to describe this type of incoherent and unresponsive foreign policy, the concept of reluctance has not been systematically defined and discussed in the fields of International Relations (IR) and Foreign Policy Analysis. This paper develops a conceptualization of reluctance by identifying the concept’s semantic field and discussing how reluctance relates to similar but distinct notions in the field of IR (concept reconstruction) and, on that basis, by outlining the constitutive dimensions of reluctance and their operationalization (concept building). To illustrate how this conceptualization of reluctance can provide new insights in empirical analyses, the concept is applied to the case of Germany’s approach to crisis management in Europe and the European neighborhood.

Revolutions and international relations: Rediscovering the classical bourgeois revolutions

In the modern era, revolutions have been central to the structure and dynamics of international affairs. They have always been international events: international in origin, ideology, process and effect, supercharging the rhythms and logics of any given international system. Yet, within the discipline of International Relations, the study of revolutions has remained something of a secondary subject. Not only have there been relatively few studies theoretically engaging with revolution and international relations, but the dominant theoretical frameworks in International Relations have largely bracketed out revolutions from their conceptions of international politics. Yet, if revolutions have been, in part, international in both cause and effect, thereby transcending the confines of ‘second-’ and ‘third-image’ conceptions of international relations, we require theoretical tools capable of capturing the sociological and geopolitical dimensions of these Janus-faced events without reducing one dimension to the other. Drawing on the theory of uneven and combined development, this article provides such a conception, organically uniting both ‘sociological’ and ‘geopolitical’ modes of explanation. It does so, in particular, by re-examining two of the key ‘classical’ bourgeois revolutions of the early-modern epoch: the English and French revolutions.

Fictional IR and imagination: Advancing narrative approaches

AbstractIn the field of International Relations (IR), narrative approaches and an alternative way of writing seem to have gained growing attention in recent scholarship. Autoethnography and autobiography can be taken as primary examples. The article aims to advance this growing scholarship by proposing the concept of fictional IR. The idea is concerned with how to use the imagination in IR. I suggest that fiction writing can become a method for dealing with lack of information and contingency surrounding it. Fictional IR is more than reading and using fiction as a reference source or vehicle for analysis. It can incorporate the employment of fiction writing in IR scholarship. One of the benefits could be to articulate sensitive and complicated problems in a more flexible and imaginative way, making the most of the power of story and imagination. It should be stressed that the focal point is to write fiction; it is not to write about fiction. To support this suggestion, the article offers a short fictional-factual story. By using imagination, creating characters, combining data with fictional narrative, or with one's own experience, I believe that more original and empathetic IR writing is possible.

Ancient and Non-Western International Thought

SummaryIn early and prehistoric times, human groups cooperated among themselves and competed viciously with other groups. Concepts of international relations, notably universal hegemony and exclusive nationalism, go back to the earliest recorded history. Only the ancient Greeks experienced inter-state relations somewhat analogous to those of modern Europe; and the first reflections on these may be found in Thucydides. The Greeks, and later the Romans, above all Cicero, developed a notion of cosmopolitanism. During the Latin Middle Ages, the papacy perpetuated the idea of universal hegemony. The principle of state sovereignty was also formulated. The pre-modern Chinese empire was held to rule ‘all-under-Heaven’; Confucian ethics contributes the notion of humanity (ren) as the fundamental category. Muslims deepened the us–them distinction by claiming sole legitimacy for their religious community under the Caliph (Deputy of Muhammad). Today, Muslims veer between this and a more Western approach to international relations.

Responsibility of a state to protect (R2P): Genesis and meaning of the concept

The concept of responsibility to protect is a modern concept in international relations and international law. Its evolution started in 2001 within the Project of the International Committee for the Intervention and State Sovereignty. It was welcomed by the UN being elaborated and applied in several occasions. In the paper, the author explores the concept of responsibility to protect from two aspects. One aspect is a genesis of the concept and its normative framework. The author presents all documents on the R2P adopted by the UN General Assembly, UN Security Council, UN Secretary General as well as the debates on the issue. The other is a critical and analytical elaboration of the issue concerned. The analysis is contemplated in terms of both theory of international relations and international public Law. Its practical aspect is elaborated by using the Syrian crisis as an example.

Trade among BRICS countries: Changes towards closer cooperation?

Recent developments in the world economy have led to a new concept of international relations where emerging markets, notably BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) economies, create a strong counterweight to the already existing world powers of the Triad (US, EU and Japan) in both economic and political areas. This results from the reallocation of global economic activities, global consumption to emerging and developing countries and hence import/export destination shifts. BRICS economies can be described today as being highly integrated into international trade, thus enhancing their engagement in the world economy. Even though the Triad remains among the most important trade partners for BRICS, their total share in BRICS’s trade is decreasing. This paper examines changing geographical trade patterns of BRICS’s exports in regard to significant changes in global trade shifts within the past decade. The aim of the paper is to identify product groups that are involved in BRICS’s trade relations development and show possible diversions. The assessment focuses on regional trade orientation among BRICS themselves and between BRICS and the Triad. The results are further tested on the consistency of the countries’ revealed comparative advantage together with the assessment of export trade introversion, complementarity and trade barriers. The results indicate that BRICS’s exports to markets other than the Triad are increasing but consist of less significant product groups. The export intensity assessment provided rather independent evidence of BRICS’s current behaviour than BRICS as a group. The most significant trade diversion from the Triad to BRICS was identified for the Mineral fuels, oils, distillation products, etc. product group exported by Brazil and South Africa to China and India.

Interdisciplinarity and the Emerged Shift in the Study of International Relations

International Relations (IR) studies have passed through three phases since 1919, when several interdisciplinary interests combined to make up IR, and that interdisciplinarity was of benefit to some other disciplines as well. The second phase, 1950–80, saw IR become more visible, with its key concepts of power, war and security as a sub-discipline of political science – but IR’s autonomy was bought at a high price. The year 1981 brought in the third phase, when some scholars, unconvinced by the traditional concept of IR, launched interdisciplinary studies. Many subsequently emerging issues, such as ethnic conflicts, climate change and energy security, have made it difficult to use traditional IR concepts to create a coherent research agenda. To overcome this difficulty, an agenda for the new millennium is proposed that makes use of the interdisciplinary origins of the study of IR and also develops new interdisciplinary approaches, and Aalto et al.’s works contribute to this line of thinking.

A Simulation of International Climate Regime Formation

The literature on pedagogical methods in international affairs includes a number of international politics simulations. We present the material for an in-class simulation exercise on international climate negotiations that attempts to help students understand the importance of theory as well as the substantive issues surrounding climate policy. Simulations have been proposed as a means of providing an engaging classroom experience and a more diverse learning experience. The exercises presented here focus on developing student research skills, analyzing data to present a realistic policy position and understanding the process of institutional regime formation. At the end of the simulation, students are asked to relate their own negotiation experiences back to the theoretical material discussed during the semester. An assessment was conducted of student expectations prior to the simulation exercise and compared with post-simulation experiences. Students reported the greatest positive difference between their expected learning outcome and actual experience with the simulation in terms of learning information about specific country assignments, overall enjoyment of the activity, and understanding the material covered in the course. The greatest negative difference between expectations and experience were reported for understanding international negotiations more generally and current international events. The article outlines the full content for an in-class simulation and its’ implementation as well as results from an evaluation of its use. The simulation provides students with a better understanding of the complexity of international negotiations over climate policy while outlining key theoretical concepts in international relations and comparative public policy.