International Relations Literature Research Articles

Practice diffusion in China’s two-pronged engagement in global technical standardization

In the context of intensifying geopolitical rivalry, China’s transition from rule-taker to rule-maker in technical standard-setting has generated deep contention with established stakeholders in the Global North. This article analyses how China, as a latecomer to global technical standardization, has navigated this increasingly contested arena of global economic governance. Building on the ‘practice turn’ literature in International Relations and a conceptualization of standard-setting processes as shaped by ‘communities of practice’, this article argues that ‘practice diffusion’ is of crucial significance for China’s rising standards power. Just as it sees mastery of global standardization practice as a key dimension of increasing its influence in established standards developing organizations, China has also begun to diffuse its standardization practice abroad in the effort to lay the foundations of a China-centric standardization regime. The article develops this argument by identifying four specific mechanisms of practice diffusion – learning the basics, learning to lead, learning within the region, learning to build – and by illustrating the role that each has played in Chinese stakeholders’ evolving engagement in global technical standard-setting.

The reality and power of international law: Georg Schwarzenberger’s forgotten theory of International Relations

Georg Schwarzenberger’s oeuvre has remained significantly underexplored in International Relations literature despite his status as one of the most important thinkers in International Relations and international law of the twentieth century. Ahead of their time, his works reveal a picture of law that transcends academic boundaries and challenges the traditional portrayal of both realist theory and international law. Through a detailed examination of the works of this theorist, this article offers an analysis of the fundamental aspects of his theory of International Relations and international law. It explores the elements at the heart of Schwarzenberger’s theory of International Relations, which, though examined infrequently and practically forgotten, retain their relevance in today’s international society. Through this exploration of Schwarzenberger’s works, this article argues that his theory of International Relations provides a powerful commentary on the fundamental structure, nature and problems of international law. It points to and reveals issues that have remained at the heart of international law until today, offering a sophisticated and self-conscious interrogation of the relationship between law, power and politics. In doing this, this article challenges our understanding of realism as a theory that is unable to account for international law and highlights Schwarzenberger’s continued relevance today.

Spiral to Surveillance: The Effect of INGOs on Levels of Peacekeeper Misconduct

Abstracts Over the last twenty years, the international relations literature has sought to understand the conditions in which peacekeeping operations (PKOs) occur and the efficacy of their presence. Much work has focused on PKOs’ relationship to civilians in civil conflict, but less is understood about the influences on peacekeeping missions’ quality. If PKOs commit human rights abuses, how might other actors deter exploitive PKO behavior in the domestic context? We argue international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) provide a monitoring and socializing effect on PKOs. Using the Peacekeeper Attributes (PKAT) and Transnational Social Movements (TSMO) datasets, we analyze peacekeeping missions from 2007 to 2013. Through zero-inflated negative binomial regression, we found that the presence of general INGOs decreases rates of misconduct, and human rights INGOs decrease rates of misconduct. However, we find that the presence of women’s rights-focused INGOs does not decrease rates of sexual misconduct among PKO troops.

Do States Really Sink Costs to Signal Resolve?

Abstract Sinking costs to signal resolve has become a vital part of how the field of international relations (IR) understands crisis bargaining. The logic of a resolved state “burning money” to distinguish itself from an unresolved state is well established in theory. But do states choose to sink costs and burn money in practice? We address the question on two fronts. First, we collect and analyze the examples of sinking costs in the mainstream IR literature. We find almost no clear-cut cases of sunk-cost signals. Second, we argue that this is because states typically prefer other signaling strategies. Rather than burning money, states can expend those resources more constructively. In particular, states can invest in improving the probability of victory in war (“balance tilting”), or they can downpay the costs of war. We conclude that balance tilting and downpaying costs plausibly explain a great deal of state behavior in peacetime, in crises, and even in wartime.

Hierarchy and war

AbstractScholars have written extensively about hierarchical international order, on the one hand, and war on the other, but surprisingly little work systematically explores the connection between the two. This disconnect is all the more striking given that empirical studies have found a strong relationship between the two. We provide a generative computational network model that explains hierarchy and war as two elements of a larger recursive process: The threat of war drives the formation of hierarchy, which in turn shapes states' incentives for war. Grounded in canonical theories of hierarchy and war, the model explains an array of known regularities about hierarchical order and conflict. Surprisingly, we also find that many traditional results of the international relations literature—including institutional persistence, balancing behavior, and systemic self‐regulation—emerge from the interplay between hierarchy and war.

Explaining the Unexplainable: Theorizing the Starving of the Disabled Other

ABSTRACT Every year, stories emerge of cases involving the starvation of disabled people, such as Ann Marie Smith in 2020 in Adelaide, Australia. Despite this, starvation practices against disabled people remain under-theorized. This may reflect that starvation as a topic is largely confined to international relations literature (e.g. during war), or conversely, in medicalized accounts pathologising the individual body (e.g. anorexia, Munchausen syndrome by proxy). More broadly, the “unique” starvation practices against disabled people are sidelined as rubrics of “neglect” or “abuse” take precedence, meaning we fail to engage with the specificity/particularity of starvation practices as forms of violence. Starvation practices against disabled people in interpersonal (or familial) contexts are qualitatively different; this article addresses this gap by providing a preliminary theorization of such violence. We survey the existing literature before invoking two frames – “Vulnerability and Harm by Design” and “Disability’s Deathly Status” – which we suggest provide an account of starvation as a form of violence. Rather than conceive these practices through an individualizing lens, we consider the broader social and institutional norms and practices that facilitate this conduct. We then turn to the promise of crip utopian futures in collective efforts to resist these cycles of violence and to promote interdependent, accessible, and crip socialities/futures.

Reading Security Imaginaries as Fantasies – Loss, Desire, and Enjoyment in the Military Quest for Explainable AI

What does the Lacanian notion of fantasy offer to the study of security imaginaries? The article answers this question by introducing a fantasmatic reading strategy illustrated by a case study of the US narrative of ‘technological revolutions of war’ that has recently been fueled by a growing demand for ethical and explainable artificial intelligence in military applications and weapon systems. The article offers a Lacanian comment to the expanding International Relations literature on security imaginaries. It demonstrates how a fantasmatic reading encompasses both a discourse analytical tracing of background understandings employed by many security imaginary scholars and an affective tracing at the margins of discourse that captures the force with which subjects continue to invest in – and patch the constitutive gaps of – a security imaginary. In studying security imaginaries through fantasies, we propose zooming in on three analytical moves: analyzing the continuing construction of a lost utopia in security discourses; following the specific objects of desire that is organized around its own inevitable failure; and locating the mode of enjoyment encountered at the boundaries of the socially acceptable norms.

A Psychoanalytic Approach to Turkish Foreign Policy: Crisis, Disorder, and Disorientation

ABSTRACT What explains Turkey’s current foreign policy disorientation, causing the country to swing from one position to another in a relatively short period of time? We argue that rational arguments do not provide comprehensive explanations of the fluctuations in Turkish foreign policy. By utilising a psychoanalytic approach, this study argues that the relentless radical developments that unfolded at home and abroad in the past decade paralysed the Turkish leadership, disrupting their sense of order in international politics while detaching them from important geopolitical realities. Under this neurotic condition, Turkey’s leadership has engaged in a constant seek for recognition as a key regional player irrespective of how controversial these efforts may be. In making sense of this case, this study builds on the ontological security literature in International Relations and contributes to the existing debates on foreign policy crises by integrating a Lacanian notion of jouissance to the ontological security framework. It shows that the jouissance approach offers a productive lens which captures how an ontologically insecure state like Turkey follows disorderly conducts in international politics and gains satisfaction from it as a way to reassure its ruptured sense of actorness at times of multiple crises.

The Bay of Bengal Subzone Within the Indo-Pacific: Historical Relevance and Present Orientation

Paradigms and conceptualisations are essential tools used in international relations literature. Such conceptualisations, however, continue to be heavily dependent on Western epistemology and strategically oriented. Such theoretical models and projections fail to adequately conceptualise the Indo-Pacific region. The neglect of local connectivity and subregions within the Indo-Pacific world has resulted in a relative understudy of the Bay of Bengal zone, a crucial subregion within the Indo-Pacific. The essay argues for a more holistic approach by amalgamating present strategic concerns with indigenous versions of regional projections developed historically. Only by grasping the significance and relevance of past build-ups, it would be possible to understand the Bay of Bengal zone and its effectiveness in creating a vibrant and dynamic Indo-Pacific region.

SİHA’ların Muharebe Etkinliğini Artırmak: Kapsamlı Askeri ve Teknolojik Sistemlere Entegrasyon İçin Alternatif Bir Analiz

While the use of armed unmanned aerial vehicles in both international military operations and internal security operations has been increasing in recent years, debates on the role of armed unmanned aerial vehicles in the international relations literature remain limited. While some experts consider armed unmanned aerial vehicle technology as a groundbreaking or game-changing development, others argue that the impact of this technological development is limited. This study presents an alternative assessment and new suggestions for increasing the effectiveness of armed unmanned aerial vehicles in conflict zones without positioning this study on any side of the ongoing debate in the literature. This study argues that armed drones should be supported by skilled military experts and modern military and electronic systems in order to make them more effective in conflicts. In order to test the accuracy of this hypothesis, this study examines Türkiye’s intervention in the Libyan Civil War, Türkiye’s Operation Spring Shield in Syria’s Idlib province, and Türkiye’s cooperation with Azerbaijan in the 44-day Patriotic War as case studies. Ultimately, the case studies uphold the hypothesis that the deployment of skilled military experts and modern military and electronic systems to support drones in combat increases their effectiveness.

From Petrodollar to Energy-Yuan: Currency Internationalization in the Light of Original Institutional Economics

The present article relies on an original institutional economics perspective of the international monetary system to argue that contrary to what is generally maintained in international relations literature, China’s effort to internationalize the renminbi has not stalled after its inclusion in the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Special Drawing Rights in 2015. This argument rests upon on the evaluation of the global petroleum market as a possible reinforcement of China’s establishment of the renminbi as an international unit of account and means of payment through its participation in both fossil and renewable energy markets. To that end, we analyze China’s energy-yuan strategy aimed at both fostering renminbi internationalization and securing energy provision.

What Shaming Reveals: Examining Qatar’s Response to Being Shamed as the Host of the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup

AbstractThis Article considers how the ranking of states, as perpetuated by the international legal order, may play a role in the considerations of those targeted by global naming and shaming campaigns. To do so, it examines Qatar’s response to being shamed in the lead up to and during the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup. Drawing from international relations literature on status and adopting a critical approach to unpack the prevalence of the hierarchal structuring of states in the contemporary international legal order, the Article claims that the practice of shaming, as a human rights enforcement strategy, inevitably pushes target states to question their status within the international legal community. This could, counterproductively, lead to negative outcomes for the rights of the very individuals these campaigns seek to protect. Furthermore, the Article sketches out a theoretical argument for why certain states may consider the enactment of cosmetic legal reforms to be an attractive strategy for countering a global shaming campaign.

Nexus of Strong Presidentialism and Philippine Foreign Policy: The Case of the Duterte Presidency's Hedging toward China*

During the Duterte presidency from June 2016 to June 2022, the government of the Philippines limited its affinity with the United States and pursued an ostensibly pro‐China policy. This bold move took place amid the ongoing US–China rivalry. This paper carries out a retrospective examination of Duterte's China policy from the perspective of Philippine domestic politics. Specifically, we assess the international relations literature on hedging as a foreign policy strategy and argue that domestic factors play a major role in filtering systemic influences and leaving state leaders with sufficient room for strategic discretion and maneuvering. This is particularly the case with the Philippines, where strong presidentialism gives clout to the president in foreign policy development. We argue that much of the “audacious” behavior in the foreign policy of the Duterte government can simultaneously be understood as pragmatic, as it was believed to better serve the regime's short‐term goals. While the alliance with the United States remained largely intact, the Duterte government emphasized its success in stabilizing Sino–Philippine relations.

Potential impact of artificial intelligence on the emerging world order.

The fast-paced diffusion of technologies broadly falling under the umbrella of artificial intelligence (AI) is said to be shaping the emerging world order in international relations (IR). It is expected that the global AI race will pave the way for another rise and fall of great powers in the international system, similar to the impact caused by the three industrial revolutions of the past. The literature in IR identifies three major powers - namely, the United States of America (USA), China, and Russia, as the leading contenders in this AI race. The ongoing AI-enabled fourth industrial revolution is all the more unique due to the markedly different approaches these three powers have adopted for integrating AI into their military, political, and socio-economic spheres. The AI strategies of these countries further reflect their capabilities and intentions towards how they plan on employing the technology to elevate their prestige and power status in the international system. This paper draws from a historiography of the First, Second, and Third Industrial Revolutions to study how technological innovations have altered relative power capabilities of nations, triggering a re-ordering of power hierarchies at a systemic level. Drawing from this understanding, it analyses the nature of AI as an emerging technology and assesses whether it can cause systemic alterations. It critically examines and compares the AI strategies of the USA, China, and Russia as leading contenders in the global AI race and outlines their strengths and weaknesses. It further draws from the Adoption Capacity Theory to argue that the AI race may well be determined by the relative capacity of the major institutions in each of these countries to manage and adapt to the disruptions this technology is bound to bring to the fore.

The Violence of Settler Imperialism – and Why the Concept of Coloniality Cannot Grasp It

Against a background of ongoing public and academic debate about how to best address the legacies of colonialism and slavery, there is now an ever-expanding body of International Relations (IR) literature that makes use of the concept of ‘coloniality’. Indeed, coloniality, which attempts to make sense of past and ongoing colonial oppression in global terms, seems a particularly apt concept for IR, which, after all, is interested in understanding the nature of global power. This article is critical of the way that coloniality is increasingly used in a unitary ‘catch-all’ manner to describe global colonial domination in often unspecific ways. It argues, based on an in-depth exegesis of key Latin American decolonial texts, that the way the concept has been developed makes certain colonial violence, and the resistance against it, invisible; with the violence of (global) settler colonialism being a prominent example. Using and further developing Jodi Byrd’s concepts of transit and settler imperialism, in dialogue with Latin American settler colonial literature and radical Black thought, this article aims to bring this violence to the forefront of IR debate. I will conclude by elaborating on the concrete consequences that understanding ongoing colonial violence with the help of these concepts has for thinking about decolonisation in IR.

Machine guardians: The Terminator, AI narratives and US regulatory discourse on lethal autonomous weapons systems

References to the Terminator films are central to Western imaginaries of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS). The puzzle of whether references to the Terminator franchise have featured in the United States’ international regulatory discourse on these technologies nevertheless remains underexplored. Bringing the growing study of AI narratives into a greater dialogue with the International Relations literature on popular culture and world politics, this article unpacks the repository of different stories told about intelligent machines in the first two Terminator films. Through an interpretivist analysis of this material, we examine whether these AI narratives have featured in the US written contributions to the international regulatory debates on LAWS at the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in the period between 2014 and 2022. Our analysis highlights how hopeful stories about what we coin ‘machine guardians’ have been mirrored in these statements: LAWS development has been presented as a means of protecting humans from physical harm, enacting the commands of human decision makers and using force with superhuman levels of accuracy. This suggests that, contrary to existing interpretations, the various stories told about intelligent machines in the Terminator franchise can be mobilised to both support and oppose the possible regulation of these technologies.

Rethinking the causes of Islamisation: Ontological (in)security, postcoloniality, and Islam in Malaysia

Theories about state-led Islamisation tend to attribute the phenomenon to domestic dynamics, such as political competition, institutional co-optation, and changing social norms. When exogenous factors are considered, they usually refer to imported ideologies. Moreover, Islamisation is often depicted as a firm rejection of the West. This article seeks to complicate those explanations. Using insights from the ontological security literature in International Relations, I argue that Malaysia's state-led Islamisation cannot be understood comprehensively without looking at macro-historical factors, particularly Malaysia's postcoloniality and its elites’ perception of the global order. Instead of being a manifestation of anti-West sentiments, I argue that the initial receptivity towards Islamisation by Malaysia's largely secular ethnonationalist elites constitutes a quest for recognition within an international order within which the Muslim identity is racialised and stigmatised. This is most obvious in Mahathir Mohamad's ideas on Islam, in that his calling for a developmentalist Islam has as its (imagined) respondent the stigmatising ‘West’. I argue that the forms of Islamisation undertaken during the Mahathir administration reflected this drive to catch up with the West while simultaneously securing recognition for Islam; and that such a leitmotif persisted even into the post-September 11, post-Barisan Nasional world.

An Ingenious Study on the CPTPP's Governance of Cross-Border Data Flows

Obviously, due to the continuous development of Internet technology, transnational data flows brought about by e-commerce and other Internet enterprises have become the target of various countries' attention and searches for new governance solutions. By studying numerous laws and regulations, international treaties and related literature, this paper examines the differences between the traditional European and American governance systems for cross-border data flows and the high-standard regional trade agreements represented by the CPTPP in a comparative manner. The comparative study concludes that international treaties such as the CPTPP focus more on and takes into account the realities of developing countries than Europe and the United States, while the European and American systems are more inclined to dominate the content of international inter-treaties based on their own ideas.

“Cyber as sovereignty space: state transformation in the periphery of Europe”

ABSTRACTThe debates over cyberspace and digitalization and their impact over sovereignty have recently had lively discussions in the literature of international relations. This sovereignty debate in the periphery of Europe regarding cyberspace is emerging and it has become an area in which national authorities have sought to claim their share. The paper analyses cyberspace and digitalization and how they have affected the understanding of sovereignty over cyberspace and how they have transformed the state in a specific country case study in the periphery of Europe. It achieves this by focusing on Albania. Cyberspace and digitalization have emerged as priorities for domestic politics, in which Tirana has endeavoured to act by applying the norms emerging internationally and they have been sources for the new role of Albanian institutions domestically. Albanian actors appear to have been less responsive to cyberspace responsibilities, by considering that Albania is not a powerful and rich enough to be a target of cyber attacks. In conditions where it has been responsive, the focus has been more on issues that concern general digitalization politics.

The Bretton Woods institutions and the quest for development in Africa

The role of the Bretton Woods Institutions in Africa has been subjected to intense debate in the literature of International Relations. This is so particularly because of the implications of the Bretton Woods Institutions on the political and economic activities in Africa. The data for this study were collected from secondary sources such as textbooks and journal articles while content analysis was used to analyse the data collected. The "False Paradigm Model," propounded by Michael Todaro which is a variant of the Dependency theory, was used for this study. This study revealed mechanisms put in place by the Bretton Woods Institutions in its relationship with African states and it also undertook a critique of the Bretton woods institutional approach to Africa’s development using the false paradigm model. The study further revealed that in spite of experimenting with external development methods and initiatives by the Bretton Wood Institutions, African Economies have not advanced much in terms of development. It implies that African nations must turn within to find it rather than focusing on the Bretton Woods Institutions requirements.