Liberal International Relations Theory Research Articles

For All (Wo)mankind: Advancing a Feminist Critique of US Space Policy

Though significant attention has been paid to the early absence of women astronauts and the difficulty in reducing gender gaps there and in the broader fields of science, technology, engineering, and math fields, little analysis has been done of the ways in which gender influences space policy in the United States. This article argues that a feminist critique is not only necessary but also needs to be advanced in a more sustained manner. To do so, it outlines feminist arguments including those of feminist international relations theory and hegemonic masculinity theory. It then notes the few studies undertaken in this area highlighting the lack of recency and frequency in them. Then, it presents two cases of a feminist critique: the masculine nature of space power theory and the influence of hegemonic masculinity theory in the commercial space industry. It concludes with noting several different areas ripe for such feminist analysis as well as analyses focusing on the intersectional nature of the space domain.As the pace and speed of events in space continues to increase, this article highlights the importance of addressing these imbalances now before societal and power imbalances have the opportunity to reach beyond Earth orbit.

The authoritarian challenge: liberal thinking on autocracy and international relations, 1930–45

AbstractThe return of authoritarian great powers, the slowing of the democratic wave, and outright reversion to authoritarian rule pose important questions for international theory. What are the implications of an international system populated with more autocracies? This question was posed by a diverse array of social scientists, public intellectuals, and policy analysts in response to the autocratic wave in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. We show that a series of conversations emanating from quite diverse intellectual priors – from Christian realists to international lawyers and disaffected Marxists – converged on the risks these autocratic regimes posed to democratic regimes and the international order they sought to forge. These risks included unconstrained rulers, an inability to sustain international commitments and political processes that undermined rational deliberation at home and spread disinformation abroad. The reading of this work suggests an under-appreciated strand of liberal international relations theory, and these debates have direct implications for liberal arguments about the democratic peace. Rather than theorizing why democracies avoid war, they underscore the importance of understanding why authoritarian and democratic countries are particularly prone to conflict.

The Development and Prospect of Neoliberalism International Relations Theory

Neoliberalism international relations theory occupies a great position in current international relations research and is one of the three existing international relations paradigms.Through a retrospective study on the mainstream branches of neoliberalism international relations theory, this paper summarizes the research starting points, main arguments, and shortcomings of the major schools of neoliberalism international relations theory, and sorts out the development and inheritance relationship between the major theories, comparing the similarities and differences between international theory under the neoliberalism school and other schools such as realist international relations theory. Through the method of literature review, the journals and monographs that are of great significance to various schools of neoliberalism are reviewed. The establishment of neoliberalism international relations theory has gone through a complex process, it is inherited from the traditional liberalism paradigm and has undergone considerable development in the second half of the 20th century. The formulation of neoliberalism international relations theory is a process of compromise between traditional liberal international relations theory and realism. It accepts many theoretical starting points and assumptions from realism and is also influenced by other disciplines such as economics. On this basis, several important branches have been developed. They are related to each other and share many ideological origins and basic assumptions.There is an obvious relationship of inheritance, development and iteration among different branch of theories. Although neoliberalism international relations theory has not completely replaced realist international relations theory, its proposal is still of epoch-making significance as it provides a new perspective to examine international politics and make up for the deficiencies of realist international relations theory.

Women, Peace and Security in Zimbabwe - The Case of Conflict in Non War Zones

The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda is the United Nation’s (UN) key policy instrument for addressing gender violence in conflict zones. However, the agenda has been preoccupied with “hot” conflicts, and its application and relevance to sustained, but “low level” conflict situations is poorly conceptualized. This research considers this issue through a case study of Zimbabwe since 2000. I make the case for broadening the understanding of conflict as found in the WPS agenda. This paper addresses the question: ‘How does the case of Zimbabwe exemplify the need for a broader understanding of conflict within the WPS agenda as it applies to non-war settings?’ I first consider the nature of non-war zones, adopting a feminist international relations theory perspective, incorporating elements of postcolonial feminist theory and critical race theory. We then review Zimbabwe’s recent history and situate it as a country in non-war conflict zone. We situate Zimbabwe’s recent history clearly within the concept of non-war zones and discuss the nature of gender violence in this setting. My analysis adds to the body of literature and research on non-war zones and argues for broadening the WPS agenda to encompass a broader understanding of conflict, specifically arguing for the centrality of gender-based violence in non-war situations, as exemplified in Zimbabwe’s recent history.

The public-private distinction in the shadow of China: Uneven and combined development’s critique of liberal IR theory?

Social theories of International Relations (IR) are normally premised on a deep distinction between public and private spheres. Whether articulated as ‘capitalism’, ‘the market’, or ‘civil society’, all attribute some analytical priority to the private, with explanatory significance for the public sphere and therefore also central to the critique of realism in International Relations. Liberalism in particular sees the source of peace as a flourishing private sphere that narrows the scope of the otherwise violent, war-prone orientation of the public which defines states. However, we argue that this orientation is ill-equipped to grapple with the world-historical significance of the ‘Rise of China’ that is better understood instead as a form of industrialism not premised on the public/private distinction. This inapplicability of categories foundational to liberal IR theory leaves it unable to meaningfully engage the Rise of China debate. Using Uneven and Combined Development (U&CD), this paper elaborates industrialism as a pattern of state-led development in China that prioritises industrial capacity as an end over strictly private objectives (e.g. profits). Arising in substantial part from the exigencies of political multiplicity, industrialism seeks national unity and vindication of a distinct civilisational identity through the pragmatic means of industrial capacity under conditions of modernity. Whilst this argument partly echoes the developmental state literature, it goes further by visualising this across both the longue durée and the current conjuncture, right up to the much-discussed Belt and Road Initiative. Finally, the argument emphasises U&CD’s potential to originate a simultaneously non-liberal and non-realist account of the implications of China’s rise.

칸트는 자유주의 국제관계론의 주창자인가? : 체계적 성격과 국가주의적 성격을 중심으로 재해석한 칸트의 국제관계론

칸트는 자유주의 국제관계론의 주창자인가? : 체계적 성격과 국가주의적 성격을 중심으로 재해석한 칸트의 국제관계론

Discovering the Evidence of the International Relations in the Feminist Films

Feminist international relations theory hit its stride in the late 1980s and the 1990s, when the United States, as the only superpower left after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, returned to its conservatism, meaning a male-dominated society against radical feminism. Interestingly, the erotic thriller films, such as Basic Interest (1992), The Last Seduction (1994), and Bound (1996), show feminist aspects that women virtually take control of men with their sexual attraction or retaliate against their assailants ruthlessly. This paper discovers the evidence of feminist international relations theory in the 90s erotic thrillers, dating back to the originator Fatal Attraction (1987). The second chapter explains the definition, history, and problems of the feminist international relations theory in the light of the advanced research. The third observes the details of feminism through the story of Fatal Attraction, and the fourth analyzes the attributes of feminism shown in the erotic thrillers in the 1990s. The fifth arranges what the feminist theory says and lacks in the 21st century and refers to the evidential facts in the kinds of feminist films. Through the analysis, the feminist international relations theory, based on what women experience, reflects the gender-related inequality and the positivistic aspects of the male centered practices in the international politics, and the thriller films bear the marks in abundance, an international cultural phenomenon.

International Relations Theory and the Future of European Integration

AbstractWhat are the prospects and likely future direction of European integration? Will it be marked by resilience and perhaps even deepening integration among European Union (EU) member states, or will it encounter further instability that could lead to fragmentation and disintegration? The answers to these questions are currently unknown but are important not just for the citizens and countries of the EU but for world politics more broadly. Scholars and other observers have advanced a range of arguments to answer these questions, many of which are derived from the three mainstream theoretical paradigms of contemporary International Relations (IR): realism, liberalism, and constructivism. These arguments reveal disagreement both within and across paradigms over the question of the EU's future. While it is commonly thought that realists are generally pessimistic and liberals and constructivists broadly optimistic regarding the EU's future prospects, it is possible to identify arguments derived from liberal IR theory that the EU faces possibly fatal challenges and realists who see powerful reasons for the EU to stick together, while there are constructivists who think it can go either way. There are thus six basic positions on the future of the EU derived from IR theory. This paper identifies and evaluates a broad range of causal forces that will affect the future of European integration. The paper concludes by discussing the enduring role and value of theory in the study of international relations.

From Washington without love: congressional foreign policy making and US-Russian relations under president Trump

ABSTRACTIn 2017, US Congress renewed the sanctions regime to punish Russia for its alleged cyberattacks during the 2016 elections and asserted its role in foreign policy making vis-à-vis President Donald Trump. To understand this case of Trump’s first significant foreign policy defeat, our analytical framework links two strands of the literature, the securitization concept and liberal International Relations theory. Previous studies underscored the ability of the executive branch to implement securitization discourses and practices. In this case, however, congressional entrepreneurs successfully securitized US-Russian relations despite presidential attempts to marginalize and de-securitize the issue. We trace the contested debates between the two branches of government to show how securitization processes by members of Congress forced the president to sign a new sanctions bill, which continued the policy towards Russia set by the Obama administration. Using qualitative content analysis, the paper highlights the ability of congressional actors to influence US foreign policy making despite high levels of polarization between the parties.

In the Shadow of the Thucydides Trap: International Relations Theory and the Prospects for Peace in U.S.-China Relations

Rising powers and the consequent shifts in the balance of power have long been identified as critical challenges to the international order. What is the likelihood that China and the United States will fall into the Thucydides Trap, meaning that the two countries will fight a major war during a potential power transition? This article creates a framework of seven variables, derived from dominant international relations theories and Graham Allison’s “twelve clues for peace,” that predict the likelihood of major conflict between a rising and an established power: degree of economic interdependence, degree of institutional constraints, domestic political system, nature of relevant alliances, nature of nuclear weapons programs, the sustainability of the rising power’s growth, and its level of dissatisfaction. It then evaluates the values of these variables in the context of the U.S.-China relationship to determine whether pessimism about the prospects of peace is warranted. This analysis leads to more mixed conclusions about the prospects of peace than liberal international relations theory and Allison’s twelve clues would suggest. This research further operationalizes power transition theory and has practical implications for U.S. policy toward China.

Yolanda of Flanders: Latin Woman Potentate of the Roman Empire

The main purpose of this paper is to construct a personality profile of Yolanda, a Latin woman potentate of the Eastern Roman Empire. The key question the author is addressing is whether or not the personality profile of Yolanda can serve as a guide to the personality traits of modern women as political leaders. The most important information in this article is the influence of family, religion, schooling, class, status, experiences, and social contacts upon the psychological development of Yolanda. The main inference in this paper is that there may be similar attributes and circumstances that facilitate the election of women to chiefs-of-state in modern countries. This article was written within the context of constructivism and feminist international relations theory.

Sharing the Burden? NATO and Its Second-Tier Powers Toronto by Benjamin Zyla

Reviewed by: Dominika Kunertova, Universite de MontrealFrom collective action dilemmas to the literature on international crises, scholars have addressed the casse-tete of how to determine an equitable distribution of collective defence costs in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In his new book, Benjamin Zyla offers comprehensive account of the burden-sharing practices of NATO's second-tier powers, such as Canada, Norway, Spain, and the Netherlands, during the first post-Cold War decade (1989-2001). Set in the framework of the changing regional order in Europe, the book evaluates existing burden-sharing measures and contextualizes the burden-sharing behaviour of second-tier power with an emphasis on Canada.Zyla advances two central findings. First, contrary to the expectations of collective action theory, NATO second-tier powers generally shouldered a proportionate share of the Atlantic (8). And second, rather than relying solely on material cost-benefit calculations, Canada acted according to Wolfers' norm of external responsibility, which points to a felt obligation to promote international economic, social, or political conditions to uphold the values of human rights and security, democracy, freedom, and the rule of law (10).[1] To demonstrate his arguments, Zyla broadens burden-sharing criteria to include both military and civilian indicators, and studies domestic preference formation toward NATO and European security governance in Canada. Rooted in liberal international relations (IR) theory, the author conducts an analysis based on explanatory understanding (10) and combines the methods of case study, qualitative content analysis, and semi-structured interviews.Sharing the Burden? is divided into three parts. The first presents the author's theoretical (chapter 2) and conceptual (chapter 3) frameworks for analyzing burden-sharing. Although these two chapters are rich on scholarly debates, Zyla does not always strike reasonable balance. After providing lengthy criticism of realism, followed by defence of liberal IR theory, he dismisses constructivism in single paragraph. Surprisingly, the author does not comment on neoclassical realism, which has recently made contribution to the allied burden-sharing problem in NATO. Furthermore, Zyla squeezes the main neorealist explanation for the absence of free-riding--the abandonment hypothesis--into one footnote (25). Nor is it clear why he omits studies that focus on domestic factors in explaining the contribution dilemma. Taken together, it is odd that at time when IR scholars have been striving to develop more eclectic research, Zyla glorifies liberal IR theory while making straw man out of realism.The second part of the book compares countries' shares of the military burden. Zyla examines NATO member states' participation in the Persian Gulf 1990-1991 and Balkan wars throughout the 1990s (chapters 4 and 5), and introduces the book's most original idea: relative force share index (117). The author claims that instead of comparing absolute allied force contributions, the comparison should be made in relation to national force strength. Finally, in the third part Zyla develops criteria for sharing the civilian burden among NATO's allies. He starts with less quantifiable aspects such as the construction of NATO institutional tools to provide consultation and expertise for Central and Eastern European states, and Canadian support for NATO enlargement policy (chapter 6). Zyla then broadens the burden-sharing discussion by introducing two sets of civilian power indicators, soft military and hard civilian, including national contributions to NATO common budgets and UN peacekeeping operations, or foreign aid (chapter 7).The author could have better explained his choice of military and civilian burden indicators. …

The Cod Wars: a re-analysis

ABSTRACTThe occurrence and outcomes of the Cod Wars defy both popular and academic expectations. Iceland, a microstate, essentially won four disputes against the UK, a great power. The two states furthermore belonged to a Western security community, sharing significant institutional, economic and cultural ties. This article reviews the history and international relations literature on the Cod Wars to explain and evaluate why the Cod Wars occurred and why Iceland won them. This article also explains what lessons international relations scholarship has learned from the Cod Wars for liberal international relations theory, realism and asymmetric bargaining.

Neo-Materialist Ecologies and Global Systemic Crises

Liberal international relations theory largely rests on the assumption that the contemporary international liberal order is robust enough to withstand crises of political authority and/or economic slumps. Yet, this raises a central question: what is a crisis in the deep principles of a global political and economic order? In this essay, I seek to rethink crisis theory in light of prevailing assumptions about the longevity of the contemporary liberal international order. I examine how catalysts of crises can be the effects of non-human actors that intensify or crystalize moments of instability. From global ecological feedback loops, to high-frequency trading and automated factories, the processes of production and distribution increasingly reflect global networks that transcend day-to-day human decisions. Rethinking systemic crisis necessitates understanding the ways in which non-human actants constitute and destabilize larger political assemblages.

Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives of J. Ann Tickner

According to feminism, the discipline of international relations (IR) a decade ago had, and indeed still has, connotations similar to ‘maleness’. This maleness is not based strictly on individual personalities, but on a ‘hegemonic masculinity’ that expresses what masculine men should be in opposition to femininities, which are less valued. Women are not a strong factor in the discipline, and knowledge gained from women’s experiences also remains at the periphery of the discipline’s analysis. It is clear to Professor J. Ann Tickner that there are gendered perceptions in IR, hidden by purported ‘gender neutrality’ and ‘objectivity’. In other words, although women and gender are both important parts of the daily operation and scholarship of IR, this presence is neither debated nor analysed by most theorists. The goal then of feminist IR is two-fold: to recognise gender where it exists in IR, and to move beyond gendered ideas into collaborative scholarship. In this way, feminist IR theory challenges other strands of IR theory on a number of levels, contributing to the major theoretical debates in the discipline and raising new areas of analysis.

Liberal Pessimism: International Relations Theory and the Emerging Powers

The triumphalism of the immediate post-Cold War period in the United States has faded, and concern about decline has returned. In the field of international relations, the return of power transition models is exemplary of the new mood. This article argues that realist models misjudge the source of foreign policy risks for the United States and its allies. Rather, the standard canon of liberal international relations theory also suggests sources of pessimism. These include the enduring nature of authoritarian rule, the difficulty of coordinating emerging actors through existing international institutions, and the ambiguous effects of increased interdependence on the foreign policy behaviour and leverage of emerging powers.

Liberal Pessimism: International Relations Theory and the Emerging Powers

AbstractThe triumphalism of the immediate post‐Cold War period in the United States has faded, and concern about decline has returned. In the field of international relations, the return of power transition models is exemplary of the new mood. This article argues that realist models misjudge the source of foreign policy risks for the United States and its allies. Rather, the standard canon of liberal international relations theory also suggests sources of pessimism. These include the enduring nature of authoritarian rule, the difficulty of coordinating emerging actors through existing international institutions, and the ambiguous effects of increased interdependence on the foreign policy behaviour and leverage of emerging powers.

Cosmopolitanism and Liberal Universalism in International Relations Theory: Moralising Politics or Politicising Ethics?

Mapping out the constellation between liberal universalism, cosmopolitanism and International Relations (IR) theory, the following works explicitly politicise the ethics of contemporary cosmopolitanism, thereby responding to the criticism that cosmopolitan theory offers little more than a moralisation of politics. In a series of sustained engagements with IR�s major theoretical perspectives, the following books explore the ways in which conventional and alternative perspectives explain the origins, prospects and limits of a modern cosmopolitan view of world politics. Through an examination of recent work by Richard Beardsworth, Gideon Baker and John M. Hobson, this review highlights an emerging dialogue between cosmopolitanism and IR. In different ways, and with different implications for IR, the following works develop a theoretically rigorous account of and response to three distinct yet interrelated criticisms against modern cosmopolitanism: the critique of liberal universalism; the charge of impractical idealism; and lastly, the alleged Eurocentric and imperialist legacy of modern cosmopolitanism. Taken as a whole, these books thus pose an interesting challenge, both to mainstream and critical IR: to what extent can mainstream and peripheral perspectives account for and respond to the specifically modern framing of �the cosmopolitical?�1 To be sure, IR and cosmopolitanism may seem like odd bedfellows; these terms seem incompatible if not antonymous. At first, a discipline so fixated with the tragic realities of world politics would seem to offer little to an ethics of cosmopolitanism. However, directly or indirectly, the discipline of IR has been in conversation with (or in a backlash against) a cosmopolitan worldview since its inception in the early 20th century. Richard Beardsworth�s Cosmopolitanism and International Relations Theory (2011), a profound exploration of the relation between cosmopolitanism and IR, argues that despite �constituting distinct ways of theorizing the world, cosmopolitanism and IR are necessarily talking to each other because they are �

Book review: The Myth about Global Civil Society: Domestic Politics to Ban Landmines, by Daniela Tepe

Daniela Tepe The Myth about Global Civil Society: Domestic Politics to Ban Landmines, Palgrave: Basingstoke, 2012, 208 pp: 9780230279148, 55 [pounds sterling] (hbk) This book could have been an important contribution to Marxian research. It is not. Its unfulfilled promise is to draw on Marxian state theory in order to explain the manner in which non-governmental organisations (NGOs) shape foreign policy and international regime formation. In December 1997, the legally binding Ottawa Convention to ban anti-personnel landmines was signed. An extensive International Relations (IR) literature has demonstrated that national NGO campaigns loosely linked to each other via the International Campaign to Ban Landmines played a key role in bringing about this result by reframing landmines, transforming them from a national security to a human security issue. Yet little is known about how national contexts affected the role of NGOs as change-makers. Tepe links this gap to the preoccupation of much NGO research with global civil society. Hence, she sets out to explain the cross-national variation of the successful anti-landmine campaigns in the UK and Germany--variations in membership, strategies and goals. Her wager is that such an account cannot succeed unless it pays attention to the nationally specific nature of the capitalist state and society in the two countries. To this end, she employs 'a materialist state-theory framework' (p. 2). Tepe seeks to highlight the added value of her approach by contrasting it with existing NGO research, notably liberal-constructivist IR. Surprisingly, she does not discuss mainstream social movement theory with its focus on political opportunity structures, framing and resource mobilisation. Tepe acknowledges that liberal-constructivists have analysed how state-society relations shape the capacity of NGOs to influence public policy. Yet they fail to take into account 'the historically specific implementation of states' (p. 18). Tepe neither elaborates on what she means by this notion, nor does she zero in on other shortcomings of liberal-constructivism. One prominent model, which she discusses, draws attention to the degree of state centralisation and the nature of policy networks linking state and civil society, but fails to consider how the balance of class forces materialises as strategic selectivity in state institutions. Also, liberal-constructivism has little to say about how policy content shapes NGO effectivity--say, about how NGOs are affected by the nature of variable hegemonic projects which influence where boundaries are drawn and what gateways are opened between the state and civil society. More problematic still, Tepe's strategy in reviewing liberal-constructivist research is to build up straw-man arguments that she then attacks. This strategy dissimulates the fact that that she actually agrees with most of what liberal-constructivists say. 'While constructivist authors understand the importance of domestic actors in norm socialisation, I disagree with their argument that liberal states have fully internalised human rights standards' (p. 19). Virtually no liberal-constructivist doing social science makes such a claim, which flies so blatantly in the face of empirical reality. Also, Tepe wrongly asserts that liberal-constructivists 'neglect diverging values and opinions among members of the same network because the concept of shared norms and values forbids the very existence of such tendencies' (p. 20). The idea of norm contestation is central to liberal-constructivism. Sometimes Tepe's straw-man strategy conspicuously backfires. After criticising Andrew Moravcsik's liberal IR theory, she argues that in contrast to him, she 'understands state interests as functionally differentiated and the product of societal processes of preference building, where certain interests are represented more fully than others' (p. 24). This is a perfect summary of Moravcsik's theory! …

The Domestic Politics of Trade and Conflict1

Liberal international relations theory suggests that mutual gains from trade prevent conflict between states. Previous research has focused predominately on international outcomes, especially the occurrence of militarized conflict between pairs of states. How concerns about welfare gains from trade help produce the policy choices leading to these outcomes is less well understood. This paper examines the influence of economic interests arising from international trade on the policy-making process at the domestic level. If the benefits of trade increase the opportunity cost of conflict, then support for a harmonious foreign policy should be strongest among trade�s domestic beneficiaries. Those whose income is diminished by trade have no reason to favor a friendly foreign policy and might even prefer a hostile alternative. We test whether the domestic distributional effects of trade affect support for hostile foreign policies toward China among representatives in the US Congress. An analysis of cosponsorship and roll-call voting suggests that the export orientation and import sensitivity of their districts influences members� positions on measures that criticize Chinese policies or treat the country as a security threat.