Global Politics Research Articles

Türkiye-Greece-Cyprus, and the west: a Lacanian family portrait

ABSTRACT This study examines the protracted Cyprus conflict by employing an Ontological Security Studies (OSS) framework enriched with the Lacanian psychoanalytic approach. In this context, the tripartite structure Lacan established between mother, father, and child is adapted to understand the years-long dispute over Cyprus. We argue that the two main reasons for this problem are 1) the unhealthily broken bond between the mothers (Türkiye and Greece) and the child (Cyprus), and 2) the child’s inability to fully identify with the Name-of-the-Father (the West). Recognising the father’s law, the child is freed from the mother’s overwhelming presence and thus begins the process of subject formation. We assert that global politics shares similarities with what Lacan calls ‘symbolic’ and that Cyprus’ existence as an actor in this ‘symbolic’ depends on its full separation from its mother(s), namely Türkiye and Greece, and by recognising the father’s law. This study raises the question of what happens if this separation is not achieved. In other words, could Cyprus exist as a fully-fledged actor in global politics/symbolic in the shadow of two motherlands, Türkiye and Greece, which have not abandoned their ‘baby homeland’?

The role of international institutions in stabilising the global legal order: Assessing impact and effectiveness

Abstract The article delves into the complexities of defining legal world order and security in the aftermath of the Cold War, investigating how the notion of security has broadened in the era of globalisation. It aims to evaluate different theoretical frameworks concerning international security and their adaptation to changes in the global environment. The research uses dialectical and hermeneutic principles to dissect the topic. It employs systemic-structural and functional methods to explore the involvement of international organisations in global security. A range of research methodologies, including analogy, historicism, formal-logical analysis, and situational analysis, are employed to delve into the studied matters. The article underscores various significant discoveries, notably the waning influence of the United Nations (UN) as a comprehensive global institution today. It stresses the importance for the global community to confront the geopolitical shifts and difficulties of the 21st century. Presently, global politics are marked by enduring instability, and the current peacekeeping and conflict resolution mechanisms need to demonstrate more in tackling contemporary hybrid challenges and threats. The article concludes by asserting that the current framework for handling international affairs needs to be revised to meet the demands of the 21st century. It emphasises the necessity of simplifying interactions among independent nations, updating collaborative institutions, and forming a capable supervisory entity to bolster global security. The research advocates for establishing fresh international legal standards covering diverse areas of global cooperation and reinforcing international organisational frameworks to address evolving global issues. The successful and prompt execution of these strategies is deemed crucial for the well-being of humanity in the future.

Enhancing comparative politics education in the Asia-Pacific region: A study on the effectiveness of Chinese checkers game for strategy and negotiation learning

Background This research conducted an extensive exploration in 2021 and 2022 to investigate the implications of integrating Chinese checkers into Comparative Politics courses across the Asia-Pacific region. The primary aim was to enhance students’ strategic thinking and negotiation skills and determine if active engagement with Chinese checkers could significantly improve academic performance. Methods The study employed paired-samples t-tests and independent-samples t-tests to evaluate the impact of Chinese checkers. It involved assessing the academic performance and strategic thinking abilities of students who engaged with the game. The study encompassed a thorough design, participant selection, and procedures related to the intervention, including various outcome measures. Results The investigation revealed notable improvements in academic performance, especially in strategic thinking, among students who actively participated in Chinese checkers gameplay. This research also substantiated the enhanced strategic thinking abilities of students who integrated Chinese checkers into their curriculum, contributing to the corpus of knowledge on innovative pedagogical practices. Conclusions The findings of this study are relevant to educators, students, and policymakers, emphasizing the educational value of unconventional teaching methods like Chinese checkers. In light of the increasing importance of the Asia-Pacific region in global politics, this research underscores the significance of nurturing strategic thinking skills among undergraduate students. The study contributes to the cultivation of critical thinking and strategic acumen within higher education, potentially benefiting society by fostering superior academic performance and the development of strategic thinking abilities.

Nonhuman humanitarians: animal interventions in global politics

Nonhuman humanitarians: animal interventions in global politics

The Great Powers Strategy to Control Oil Regions

Oil is considered to be one of the most important reasons that led to international conflicts and wars. Within this framework, the current research paper confirms the importance of the role that oil plays in global politics and international relations at the political and economic levels. Together with the willingness of the major powers, led by the United States of America, to go to wars, crises and turmoil at the world level to preserve their interests and goals in general and the continued entry, under conditions appropriate for their economies in particular. The present research paper comprises an introduction, a methodological framework, and major hubs that deal with the importance of oil and its position in the strategies of major powers and the importance of oil in international conflicts. Moreover, the American strategic awareness of energy security, oil prices and negative repercussions of indicators on the states economies. Ultimately, the paper ends with relevant conclusion, findings, and recommendations.

Novel Optical Methodology Unveils the Impact of a Polymeric Pour-Point Depressant on the Phase Morphology of Waxy Crude Oils.

Crude oil, also known as petroleum, plays a crucial role in global economies, politics, and technological advancements due to its widespread applications in industrial organic chemistry. Despite environmental concerns, the dwindling supply of easily accessible oil reservoirs necessitates the exploration of unconventional resources, such as heavy and extra-heavy oils. These oils, characterized by high viscosity and complex composition, pose challenges in extraction, transportation, and refinement. With decreasing temperatures, heavy oils undergo phase changes, with transitions from Newtonian to non-Newtonian fluid behavior, leading to difficulties in transportation. Alternative methods, such as the use of polymeric pour-point depressants, help mitigate flowability issues by preventing wax precipitation. Understanding the properties of waxy crude oil, such as the wax appearance temperature (WAT), is crucial for effective mitigation strategies. The objective of this research is to determine the WATs of different types of waxy crude oils through a comparative analysis using advanced techniques such as cross-polar microscopy (CPM), standard rheology, and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Disparities in WAT identified through different analytical methods highlight the potential of microscopy to enhance our understanding of complex fluid dynamics in real time in order to proactively identify and address crystallization issues in oilfields.

Making the Climate Malleable? “Weak” and “Strong” Governance Objects and the Transformation of International Climate Politics

Abstract Object-oriented theories have been used to understand how the climate and other entities like “the economy” have been produced as discrete, malleable and politically salient “governance objects.” These have structuring effects not only on policy debates but also on entire polities and the international system. However, a failure to distinguish between different kinds of governance objects has obscured their fundamentally different political implications. This article revises earlier definitions and develops a novel distinction between “weakly” and “strongly” malleable governance objects. The former are governable only in terms of not being perturbed in relation to a baseline condition, while “strongly governable” objects are construed as malleable along multiple dimensions, the telos of governing them no longer a given. The weak/strong distinction is applied to elicit implications of four climate strategies: mitigation, adaptation, and prospective “geoengineering” techniques of carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification that would deliberately alter the climate. Increasingly billed as risky but necessary, given the fraught politics of mitigation, geoengineering is shown to potentially transform the climate from weak to more strongly governable object. This could “untether” climate governance from the aim of remaining close to a pre-industrial climate, with a "design approach" to geoengineering adding layers of politicization, potentially increasing the fractiousness of global climate politics. However the analysis also highlights possible new routes to depoliticization of the climate, were it to be retethered—potentially to security imperatives or economic indicators. Analysis of governance objects requires much greater attention to types of malleability and politicization.

Examining the relationship of country-level digital ad spend and cross-border e-commerce buyers under cultural and political globalization

PurposeCross-border e-commerce continues to garner much attention within the international marketing literature as the world becomes hyperconnected through digital channels. Although there is an abundance of international marketing research on cross-border e-commerce, there is a lack of information regarding the influences of meta-institutional factors, such as a country’s level of globalization, on the relationship between digital advertising and cross-border e-commerce buyers. The objective of this research is to examine the effects of digital media ad spend at the country level on cross-border e-commerce buyers across countries under differing degrees of formal (i.e. political) and informal (i.e. cultural) institutional globalization.Design/methodology/approachThis work examines the influence of digital ad spend at the country level and the degree of the country’s formal and informal institutional globalization on the share of cross-border e-commerce buyers. We examine this issue within a 21-country, 8-year, unbalanced panel dataset.FindingsWe find that there is substantive heterogeneity in degrees of formal (i.e. political) and informal (i.e. cultural) institutional globalization and cross-border e-commerce across countries. Digital ad spend at the country level is positively associated with cross-border e-commerce buyers within a country. A country’s level of political globalization enhances, but cultural globalization was found to dampen the positive association. The results indicate that political and cultural globalization of a country both contribute to increased interconnectedness with the global market, yet the nature of the interconnection differs.Originality/valueThe findings are informative to international marketing managers navigating the digital landscape and highlight the importance of institutions in international marketing activities. The study specifically demonstrates the varying effects of the meta-institutional factors of a country’s level of political and cultural globalization on the association between digital ad spend and cross-border e-commerce buyers at the country level, across a wide variety of countries, thus also contributing to the effort to improve generalizations from multi-country comparisons in international marketing research.

Soldiers of Fortune, Soldiers of God: Evangelical Mercenaries and the Making of the Rhodesian-American Religious Lobby, 1965–1980

ABSTRACT This article tracks the emergence, evolution, and decline of the Rhodesian-American religious lobby, a transnational network of churches, magazines, lobbying groups, and other non-state actors that operated during the Rhodesian Bush War from 1965 to 1980. Voicing its concerns in religious, racial, and anticommunist terms, the lobby recruited US combatants into the Rhodesian Security Forces and mobilised US evangelicals to press political leaders to recognise Rhodesian sovereignty. By threading together the post-Vietnam mercenary diaspora with waning segregationist groups and the emerging Christian Right in the United States, the lobby significantly shaped US-Rhodesia relations and global far-right politics in the late Cold War.

חינוך, CHINUCH: ISRAEL’S EDUCATION SYSTEM AND QUESTIONS OF IDENTITY

Albeit in a different context, Wiesel’s soliloquy resonates with the pressing questions on the formation of identity, and contingent quest for meaning for many Jews. Indeed, what are the right questions to ask the divine, in as much as the divine seems to be indifferent to the indignation suffered by Jews, especially when it comes to the memory of the Shoah (?) The space to ask such questions sets itself in the rigmarole of the everyday, and ties in with notions of belonging and memory. These concepts are thus linked to the theme of religion in global politics, exemplified in the curious case of Israel. Prior to its establishment in 1948, the founders of Israel often applied religious justifications for its creation and subsequent existence, with a ‘return to homeland’ among the oft-heard sentiments. The purposes of this paper are varied. The first is to understand the character of Israel through the theoretical framework provided by Rogers Brubaker in his ‘Four Approaches to Nationalism’, with a focus on how nationalism itself can be argued as a form of religion. Secondly, we will look at the justifications to why secular education – as an extension on nationalism as religion – has taken root in Israel. We proceed with an argument that the removal of religious knowledge (primarily ethics) from the Israeli education system will prove to be detrimental in the long run, as the relationship between individuals will thus be determined purely in the language of capital, and ‘success’ as defined by market forces, which runs counter to genuine solidarity.

CHINA'S SOFT POWER DIPLOMACY IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS: STRATEGIES, MEANS AND IMPLICATIONS

The concept of soft power has become increasingly significant in the realm of international politics. As nations seek to exert their influence on the global stage, the ability to shape the preferences and perceptions of others through non-coercive means has emerged as a vital tool. China, with its rapidly growing economic and political clout, has substantially engaged in exercising strategies and means as soft power politics to accomplish its presence in the global politics. This research paper examines China's soft power diplomacy in international politics, focusing on the strategies and means employed by the Chinese government to enhance its global influence. The primary objective of this research is to investigate how China strategically employs soft power and assess the implications of these strategies on international politics. To achieve this, the study utilizes a qualitative approach, considering key indicators such as culture, diplomacy, education, and public opinion. By examining China's soft power initiatives and their effects, this research sheds light on the evolving dynamics of international politics in the 21st century, where soft power plays a significant role in shaping global perceptions and relations

MUHAMMAD ASAD'S DESIGN OF AN ISLAMIC STATE IN POST-COLONIAL PAKISTAN

The paper aims to highlight Muhammad Asad’s epistemological postulate on Islamic politics as reflected in his works on Islamic state. It seeks to address these fundamental problems: what is the legal basis that support and establish Asad’s position of founding an Islamic state? and how could this idea fairly accommodates with the prevailing notion of nation state in post-colonial context. Thus, the study set forth to find the answers based on such range of objectives: to analyse the underlying ideas of Islamic state as advocated in the classical sources, to define the basic constitutional framework as developed by Asad in the context of historical Pakistan, to estimate the implication of implementing Islamic law and its impact on the global politics and its compatibility with international law. In this regards, Asad had formulated the constitutional ideas of Islamic state whose constitution contains the provision of Islamic law that practiced and implemented the norms stated in the Divine Writ. This ideas was partly enshrined in the Pakistan constitutional law whose political establishment was formed in 1947. The paper essentially discussed Muhammad Asad’s political ideas and its underlying philosophy as espoused in his works. The study conducted based on qualitative approaches of the type of library research. The data were analysed by way of descriptive, analytical and comparative technique. The finding shows that Muhammad Asad had formulated comprehensive theoretical framework of legal aspect of Islamic governance drawn up from the fundamental principle and doctrine of the shariah, and its moral norms deriving from the explicit Qur’anic and sunnah text, while also advocating democratic ideals and principles based on conventional practice and requirement of modern context of nation state. Based on this main finding, it is concluded that Islamic teaching and its spiritual norms were compatible with democratic ideal and values of human right, participatory and constitutional government as implemented in the democratic space of Pakistan.

The New World Order: Geopolitical Shifts in the Post-Cold War Era

The end of the Cold War marked a pivotal moment in global history, widely seen as the commencement of the "New World Order." The new world order in the post-cold war witnesses the decrease in the powers of classical states and their inter-states matters for restoring international peace, and emerging of other threats like religious militancy, ethnic conflicts, unfair economic competition, north-south conflict, terrorism, etc. This research presents a comprehensive analysis of the challenges, dynamics and potential of the post-Cold War era. This research aims to explore the complexities of “New World Order” in post-Cold War era in international relations through an examination of global political, economic, and socio-cultural transformations, to analyze the geopolitical landscape by focusing on the increasing involvement of non-state players during the post-Cold War era in reshaping economies, society, and conflict dynamics. The study utilizes qualitative research approach to conduct this study.

REGIONAL SECURITY CHALLENGES IN THE CONTEXT OF CENTRAL ASIAN STATES’ COOPERATION WITH THE UNITED STATES: THE CASE OF UZBEKISTAN

The article examines the evolution of Uzbek-American relations, focusing on their collaborative efforts to enhance regional security and stability. The study explores the critical roleof Uzbekistan in the security dynamics of Central Asia, emphasizing its strategic pivot towards Western standards in military professionalism and education. Through a blend of content analysis , historical review, and case studies, the article illustrates the multifaceted challenges confronting Central Asian nations, including terrorism, regional conflicts, and international diplomacy. The research highlights the significant impact of Uzbek-American cooperation in addressing these challenges, showcasing thebilateral relationship as a model of strategic collaboration that contributes to the stability and security of the region. This partnership is portrayed as a testament to the shifting paradigms in global politics, where open, constructive international relations and strategic alliances are pivotal in maintaining global peace and stability. By analyzing the shifts in politics, the historical engagements, and the current geopolitical environment, the article provide s valuable insights into the importance of Uzbekistan's strategic orientation and its implications for regional and international security frameworks. This comprehensive study underscores the necessity of continued cooperation and strategic partnerships in navigating the complexities of contemporary international relations, especially in strategically sensitive regions like Central Asia.

Disaggregated role of economic, social and political globalization on quality of life

Disaggregated role of economic, social and political globalization on quality of life

Environmental Impact of Poppy Cultivation in Manipur: Challenges to National Security

Security from external threats has always been the preserve of the State in International Relations. In the last few decades, many theories have been propounded to broaden the perception of security, as the traditional outlook of security cannot comprehend the ever-changing perspective and nature of threats in global politics. The problems of security issues as States were also witnessing newer forms of threats that were not only territorial but also social, economic, and transnational in nature. Such developments not only indicate the death knell of the traditional mode of thinking but also call for a rethinking of ‘widening’ or ‘redefining’ the concept of ‘security’. This article is an attempt to critically analyse non-traditional security threats and issues of drug trafficking and the environmental impact of poppy cultivation in Northeast India, particularly in Manipur. Furthermore, it investigates the collateral damage to national security.

Not Your Good Germans: Holocaust Memory, Anti-Fascism, and the Anti-Zionism of the Jewish New Left

Abstract It is often assumed that the 1967 Arab–Israeli War and the emergence of Black Power engendered a split between Jews and the New Left. Some understand the rise of Holocaust memory in the late 1960s as an expression of Jewish nationalism, while others locate increased public expression of Holocaust memory within the context of a late 1960s Jewish revival. Either way, both narratives assume the tension between left-wing Jews and Black Power and anti-imperialism, and locate a new American Jewish commonsense of Jewish nationalism abroad and a quickening of Jewish identity politics at home. Yet most prominent Jewish radicals of the 1960s and early 1970s – from Abbie Hoffman to David Gilbert – did not agree. Not only did much of the Jewish New Left in organisations such as SDS and the SWP continue to back the anti-Zionist BPP, many deployed Holocaust and Red Scare memory to formulate their revolutionary global politics.

О причинах политических кризисов в работах П.А. Сорокина российского периода

P.A. Sorokin is one of the most renowned and peer-reviewed scientists of the XX century. In his anniversary and in modern conditions it seems important to address his explanation of the genesis of political crises in the early period of his work, since his recommendations for the preservation of eternal peace given in his later works have not been fulfilled. The article focuses on P.A. Sorokin’s ideas of political crises. For analysis, the concepts presented in his main monographs of the Russian period: “Sociology of Revolution” and “Hunger as a Factor in Human Affairs” are used. The article compares the ideas expressed in them with lesser-known publicistic and scientific articles by P.A. Sorokin of that time. For a better understanding of the context, the biographical material of the scientist was used, showing the complex environment of the formation of his intellectual heritage. In conclusion, this study demonstrates the importance of revisiting P.A. Sorokin’s works on political crises during the Russian period. His ideas provide valuable insights into the causes of political crises and offer guidance for maintaining perpetual peace. It is essential for modern scientists and policymakers to engage with Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin’s ideas and apply them to current challenges in global politics.

From Security-Space to Time-Race: Reimagining Borders and Migration in Global Politics

From Security-Space to Time-Race: Reimagining Borders and Migration in Global Politics

Türkiye’s Military Base in Somalia: A Case Study

At the present stage the Republic of Türkiye is all the more actively claiming the role of a regional leader and at the same time, using the favourable geopolitical position at the junction of two civilizations, seeks to strengthen influence in global politics. The statehood of independent states is impossible without strengthening their own security, and that allows for the development of international military dialogue. Türkiye as a world power is to restore its prosperity from the times of the Ottoman Empire. Best evidence is the creation of Turkish military bases beyond its national borders. Moreover, such actions of the Turkish leadership are considered not only a political ambition but also a pragmatic calculation. First overseas military base of Türkiye in modern times was created in one of the most turbulent countries in the world – Somalia. Currently, Türkiye has a military presence in Somalia. Hence, this study examined the main stages of bilateral relations between Türkiye and Somalia. Relations between the two countries have passed a certain historical path of development and have been characterized by periods of activation revival also stagnation. It was concluded that despite the fact that political, economic and military cooperation between Türkiye and Somalia had huge potential, there were some of constraining factors affecting their further development.