States In International System Research Articles

Durkheim's Critique of Colonialism and Empire

How does Durkheim's thought relate to colonialism, imperialism, and postcolonial theory? To answer these questions, I first examine his explicit discussions of empire and colonialism, which are more extensive than previously thought. I then explore the implications of his general perspective—particularly his theories of anomie and morality—for discussions of colonialism and empire. I find that Durkheim was very critical of violent forms of colonialism and imperialism and that he firmly rejected the civilizational and racist discourses that underpinned modern European, and French, colonial conquest. He rejected forms of empire that exist “without internal acquiescence from their subjects,” and that engage in “conquest via annexation” and military imperialism. As an alternative he advocated an “international system of states” based on a universal but socially and historically grounded morality. The article examines the ways Durkheim's thinking pushed beyond existing French understandings and criticisms of colonialism. I then examine the afterlives of his ideas in later research on colonialism by French sociologists. The conclusion considers postcolonial critiques of Durkheim and adumbrates a Durkheimian theory of colonialism and empire.

THE CONCEPT OF “JUST WAR”: HORIZON, STRUCTURE, CRITICISM

The concept of “just war” has become politically and scientifically relevant due to the collapse of the “European international system of sovereign states”; in the modern situation of “world disorder” (R. Haas), it becomes an instrument of public rhetoric; the inevitable consequence is the degradation of meaning - philosophical research, thus aimed at the formation of the concept, becomes relevant. Understanding the structure, meaning and scope of the concept of “just war” involves putting it in context; the goal, therefore, is to construct a horizon. The main task is to clarify the meaning of the concept of “just war” as a phenomenon of modernity. The concept of “just war” belongs to the field of ideas, that is, understanding presupposes going beyond the methodological framework of disciplinary science - the trans-boundary can be ensured by using methods developed by philosophical hermeneutics to analyze and identify the meaning of ideas and concepts, as well as understanding the ways in which they have power and determine reality. It is revealed that the reduction of the political to morality and the direct application of moral principles to politics necessarily leads to the degradation of war: the rejection of the “non-discriminatory concept of war” in favor of the concept of “just war” removes any restrictions from armed violence. It is demonstrated that war remains necessary on its periphery as normalization, police operation, “humanitarian intervention; the concept of ’just war’ is a tool for ensuring security. It is concluded that the anti-terrorist war as a police operation to ensure the security of the global liberal political order is the conceptual core of the modern concept of “just war”.

Security, Society, and the Perennial Struggles over the Sacred: Revising the Wars of Religion in International Relations Theory

AbstractInternational relations theory tends to build on the conventional narrative of the Wars of Religion (WoR), which holds it was the irrationality of religious violence that generated the modern international system of pragmatic secular states—resulting in the presumed secularized, rational, and unemotive nature of politics. In contrast, this article reorients our focus to Durkheim's more social view of religion as a community of believers and to the continued role of the sacred and shared emotion/affect in social and political life. Specifically, it examines how modern communities (such as nations) remain constituted by a shared faith in conceptions of the sacred and how the corresponding sense of moral order is central to the enduring pursuit of ontological security. Therefore, it argues that international relations should focus on the perennial struggles over what communities hold sacred and that we can better understand the propensity for (“religious” or “secular”) violence by examining the continual interplay between the sacred, ontological security, and the hermeneutics of morality—with the so-called WoR being the locus classicus of this argument. Historical studies exploring how participants in the WoR navigated such struggles over the sacred thus allow us to explore these dynamics and further conceptualize our understanding of the sacred within modern “secular” politics. The article concludes by examining how the prospect for violence is interrelated with the perennial struggles over the sacred within, and between, political orders—a sentiment that brings into relief some of the hazards accompanying growing intrastate moral polarization and interstate ideological rivalry.

Study on the Moral Realism Theory and Its Enlightenment

Moral realism theory takes political leadership as the core variable, which differs from the traditional realism theory. Moral realism theory aims to analyze the motivation and logic of rising state replacing dominant state in international system. This paper uses documentary analysis to introduce and analyze this theory, which provides an innovative perspective for analyzing the current strength comparison between China and the United States and its impact on international relations in the future, while also helping to understand the diversified development of realism theory in international relations.

Sanctuary, firewalls, regularisation: three inclusive responses to the presence of irregular migrants

ABSTRACT Liberal democratic states can respond to the presence of irregular migrants in three basic ways: by attempting to deport all migrants without legal status, by ignoring their irregular presence without providing them with rights or legal status, or by attempting to include them in the host society. This epilogue to a special issue on sanctuary discusses three inclusive responses to unauthorised immigration: sanctuaries, firewalls and regularizations. We describe their characteristic features by examining their specific benefits for migrants (protection from deportation, access to public services, and pathways to membership), the types of actors promoting or providing these responses (subnational or national governments, civil society actors), and the challenges to national immigration control they raise (contestations over jurisdiction, division of competencies, and determination of legal status). We acknowledge overlaps and ambiguities between the three responses and discuss whether asylum can be considered as sanctuary within the international state system and whether not only regularizations, but also sanctuaries and firewalls can promote inclusive membership. Finally, we lay the ground for empirical and normative analyses of justifications for each of the three responses by showing that these invoke specific claims about contestation rights, benefits for migrants, and benefits for the wider society.

Political and Legal Provision of the Russian Federation Military Security

Introduction . The International System of States is currently facing a threatening political and military situation of a global danger. It is possible to restrain the growing threat only by using the qualitatively new methods, which complement to the diplomatic measures. The Russian Federation military security must be ensured by reaching the goal of military system improvement using various state administration methods, including the legal ones. The Russian Federation provides the state military security by means of the legal rules, however in the course of the Special Military Operation started on February 24, 2022 it has become evident that adjustment of the military policy and the legal regulation in the military sphere is required. To increase the efficiency of the national military security provision, the deep theoretical research into the essence and content of the military security is necessary. The aim of this research is to identify the challenging aspects in the system of political and legal provision of the Russian Federation military security. Materials and Methods . The article analyses the political and legal basis for ensuring the military security of Russia. In the process of the study, the general scientific as well as special scientific methods were used, i.e. the cognitive analysis methods for studying the essence of the military security, the official legal documents analysis providing juridical definition of the categories framework of the military security as the object under research, sociological method of surveying the public opinion on the topic of military security and other methods. Results . It has been proved that the level of support among population of the military defense of Russia’s sovereignty and territory is high. The legal, material and ideological components of the Russian military policy need to be strengthened. Measures to improve the military policy in compliance with the public demand of the Russian citizens are proposed. Discussion and Conclusions . The problems of political and legal provision of the Russian Federation military security have been identified. The military policy goals on provision of the military security in the frame of the Russian national security for prevention of potential conflicts expansion are being solved in the process of strengthening the legal basis for the allied relations with the neighboring states, as well as strengthening the resource and ideological components of the military security system.

Anti-Colonial Discourse as Geopolitics :

Scholars often view anti-colonialism as litle more than moral rhetoric in which former colonised states question the West by employing narratives of historic victimisation and marginalisation. While this moral messaging has shaped aspects of post-colonial foreign policy, anti-colonialism is rarely appreciated as a tool of geopolitical practice. This article applies theories of critical geopolitics to argue that anti-colonialism was and is a unique geopolitical strategy allowing formerly colonized states to re-balance centers of political, economic, and military power from historically colonising states to the colonised states. Importantly, anti-colonialism is a geopolitical alternative to territorially defined, Westphalian concepts such as sovereignty and the anarchic international system of states. India has historically maintained a leading role in elucidating and employing anti-colonialism as a geopolitical framework and this article explores four sub-themes of this framework: autochthonous freedom, Pan-Asianism, non-violence, and non-alignment. Each of these sub-themes is explored by examining the geopolitical discourse of Indian leaders through the lens of critical geopolitics, which argues that geography is not objective fact but contested history. Through these sub-themes, Indian leaders have used anti-colonialism as a geopolitical tool to challenge existing power-territory structures to rebalance global power in favor of the formerly colonized world.

Russia, India, and China Alliance – Towards balancing the world order

The global financial order that emerged after the Second World War was primarily westernled with the USA as the center essentially making the international state system a unipolar one. The need for reforms in the global financial order has long been discussed citing the dangers of globalization that became evident after the 2008 global financial crisis and more recently after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In response to the sanction being imposed, Russia has taken up initiatives to detach itself from the dollar-based global financial order where China and India are seen as potential partners. The research paper takes up the concept of the Primakov Doctrine and the current Russia-India China (RIC) trilateral as a possible strategic triangle that can counterbalance the western-led global financial order by adopting a common currency.

Дилема на (не)сигурността и добавената стойност на образованието за сигурност

Nations do not trust each other because they are armed, and they are armed because they do not trust each other. The security dilemma is a major problem of the international state system, which is a result of its "anarchic" structure. Lack of trust is the main thing that brings uncertainty and stress and turns mutual fears and suspicions into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Every country needs sufficient and well-trained human resources to enhance its national security. Education must provide the appropriate competencies in every aspect of the national security.

The Territorialization of the Global Commons: Evidence from Ocean Governance

The international system of states displays an inherent drive to territorialize the global commons. But territorialization is not a continuous process—it occurs in episodes. In this article, I use one case from ocean governance, the expansion of territory into near-shore areas of the seas, to advance a twofold argument about the nature of these episodes. First, I argue that the root causes of this drive to territorialize “empty space” are located in global politics, norms, and economics. Second, a territorializing episode occurs when there are impelling economic incentives, and when great powers are unable or unwilling to oppose territorialization. However, this can lead to different outcomes: sovereign territories, functional territories, or internationalized territories. Oceanic space has seen a series of these territorializing episodes since the end of the Second World War and functional territorialization has become more prevalent over time.

Migration policy implementation and its politics in South Africa

Globally, migration is to a certain degree an important and highly debated political topic among scholars because of its peculiarity to human movement and relationship between states. Migration is fundamental to liberal democracies and a function of the international system of states. Following the demise of the apartheid system and the adoption of inclusive governance in South Africa in 1994, the country has continued to witness an influx of migrants. However, the call for the deportation and rejection of migrants amongst South Africans has continued to increase with black foreign nationals at the receiving end, sometimes openly or clandestinely done by government officials. Using a qualitative research method, underpinned by the following questions (i) Is South Africa playing politics with its migration policies, while surreptitiously legalizing xenophobism? (ii) Can well-managed migration policies allay the fears of foreign nationals, particularly the blacks in South Africa? (iii) What effects would anti-immigrants’ laws and attitudes have on South Africa’s relations with other [African] countries? The paper argued that South Africa’s preoccupation with restrictionism policies, driven by xenophobism and political interest, seems to have compromised inroads for immigrants that are very important to its economic growth, concluding that unless the rhetoric of a perceived socio-economic threat, posed by migrants, is countered effectively, South Africa’s economies stand to lose out substantially from the implementation of anti-immigration policies.

An Unequal Ethiopia in an Unequal World: Global and Domestic Hierarchies in Afäwärḳ Gäbrä-Iyyäsus’s and Käbbädä Mikael’s Political Thought (1908 and 1949)

ABSTRACT The Ethiopian empire retained its political independence through the European Scramble for Africa. The imperial elites oversaw the transformation of the empire into a territorially-bounded state, part of an international system of states regulated by international law and by international institutions such as the League of Nations, and later the UN. Ethiopian intellectuals were keenly aware that Ethiopia had joined this international system from a subordinated position and that its sovereignty remained at risk. The struggle for sovereignty was fought not only at a diplomatic level, but also at a narrative level. Afäwärḳ Gäbrä-Iyyäsus’s 1908 Traveller’s Guide to Abyssinia and Käbbädä Mikael’s 1949 Ethiopia and Western Civilisation pushed back against the European depiction of Ethiopia as intrinsically inferior and intrinsically unable to develop. Both Afäwärḳ and Käbbädä rejected the rigid determinism of stagist models of development, and argued that Ethiopia and Europe were natural allies by virtue of their shared Christian heritage. Global power hierarchies rigidified Ethiopia’s domestic power hierarchies. The article shows how the way in which Afäwärḳ and Käbbädä defended Ethiopia’s place in an unequal world had important consequences on their vision of domestic nation building, resulting in hierarchical assimilationist policies that marginalised Ethiopia’s non-Christian citizens.

States, nations, and self-determination: Afghanistan and decolonization at the United Nations

AbstractAfghanistan is not traditionally seen as a ‘decolonized’ state, given that it was never formally part of any empire. Yet Afghan state leaders embraced the language of anti-colonialism and self-determination to assert influence in the international community, and especially at the UN. This paper explores the interactions between Afghan elites and the UN, particularly the way that Afghanistan fought the growing global consensus that self-determination in the era of decolonization meant the establishment of an international states system. Afghan elites instead argued that self-determination was for peoples, not states. Afghanistan’s stance on self-determination, as an exception to territorial state centrism, provides a way of thinking about decolonization’s universalisms and particularities, as well as how it ultimately complicated Afghanistan’s own place in the international community. The article uses Afghanistan’s engagement with the UN General Assembly and its various subcommittees, from its membership in 1946 to the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, to reflect on the ways decolonization became a global yet fractured phenomenon that came to mean numerous practices and could be used by different historical actors to articulate multiple, potentially competing visions of political autonomy and rights. International institutions like the UN provided crucial arenas where postcolonial statehood became the norm yet was nevertheless contested and questioned. By providing an exception to the UN’s focus on territorial statehood, Afghanistan demonstrates the ongoing fluidity and complexity of decolonization’s meaning and consequences, as well as the ways in which nations continue to inform the global.

A Atuação da China no Conselho de Segurança das Nações Unidas de 1971 a 2019

Esta pesquisa apresenta e analisa o comportamento cada vez mais ativo da China perante o Conselho de Segurança das Nações Unidas, dando ênfase ao aumento do uso da prerrogativa do veto. Como método, foi feita a análise de documentos secundários disponíveis nos sites oficiais das Nações Unidas, do Conselho de Segurança, da Assembleia Geral, da Missão Permanente da República Popular da China nas Nações Unidas; e consulta de literatura especializada. São analisados com maior precisão os vetos chineses acompanhados dos russos nas resoluções do Conselho quanto à Guerra Civil na Síria (entre os anos de 2010 e 2019) e à Crise na Venezuela (2016). A pesquisa sugere a relação direta entre o recém ativismo chinês dentro da ONU com sua ascensão política e econômica e discute seus impactos para o sistema internacional de Estados, contribuindo para uma análise mais abrangente da atuação chinesa nas instituições internacionais.

Transnational Identity and Foreign Policy: Tribal Identity and the Gulf Crisis

The 2017 Gulf crisis has been largely framed as a diplomatic and economic one. However, the involvement of tribal identity in the foreign policy responses of Gulf states also made it a socio-political crisis. This paper adopts role identity theory as a framework for analysing how domestic politics and culture shaped international relations among GCC states during the crisis. According to this framework, tribal identity becomes operative in foreign policy when states can present themselves as fulfilling roles that distinguish them within a regional or international state system. Gulf states adopted new role identities defined in terms of tribe and tribal identity that then shaped the formulation and implementation of their diplomatic policies. During the crisis, Saudi Arabia adopted the role identity of tribe protector to undermine sovereign boundaries. The Qatari government on the other hand adopted the role of national unifier, rejecting tribal identity and ideologies. The implications of mobilising tribes are examined from the regime survival perspective, particularly scrutinising the gradual consolidation of the Qatari national identity to reduce risks posed to the regime.

Indigenous Rights and Interests in a Changing Arctic Ocean: Canadian and Russian Experiences and Challenges

The Arctic has been home to Indigenous peoples since long before the international legal system of sovereign states came into existence. International law has increasingly recognized the rights of Indigenous peoples, who also have status as Permanent Participants in the Arctic Council. In northern Canada, the majority of those who live in the Arctic are recognized as Indigenous. However, in northern Russia, a much smaller percentage of the population is identified as Indigenous, as legal recognition is only accorded to groups with a small population size. This article will compare Russian and Canadian approaches to recognition of Indigenous peoples and Indigenous rights in the Arctic with attention to the implications for Arctic Ocean governance. The article first introduces international legal instruments of importance to Indigenous peoples and their rights in the Arctic. Then it considers the domestic legal and policy frameworks that define Indigenous rights and interests in Russia and Canada. Despite both states being members of the Arctic Council and parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, there are many differences in their treatment of Indigenous peoples with implications for Arctic Ocean governance.

THE UMMAH: GUARDIAN OF MUSLIMS IN AN AGE OF WEAKENED CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS

As Islamophobia becomes entrenched as the global “new normal,” there is an increasing need for Muslim solidarity to protect the rights of Muslims. Not only are Muslim refugees fleeing from armed conflict or systemic human rights violations at risk, but also Muslim minority communities. Many of them are excluded from mainstream society despite having legal citizenship. This article argues for a new, reconceptualized ummah that will provide effective protection for the rights of Muslims globally. It puts forward two proposals to that aim, including an international structure for advocating for the rights of Muslims internationally, as well as a radical rethinking of how countries view citizenship and migration. Muslim unity may appear difficult in the modern international system of sovereign nation states, but the obstacles are not insurmountable.

Secrecy and Subjectivity: Double Agents and the Dark Underside of the International System

AbstractDrawing on a wide range of material, from memoirs of former spy masters to the highly acclaimed TV series Le Bureau des Légendes, this article shows how documentary as well as fictional accounts of double agents cast light on a “dark underside” of the international system. This dark underside is made up of exceptional spaces of secrecy in which intelligence organizations and spies operate. The article's main point of entry when analyzing these spaces is the intimate connection between secrecy and subjectivity. While secrecy as a social practice has received increased attention in sociological accounts of secret intelligence, the constitutive role of secrecy in relation to subjectivity is a much less explored theme. This theme, it is argued, becomes especially valuable for thinking about the conflicting lines that constitute the life and becoming of the double agent. In particular, it can be drawn on to show how this subject both is captured by the transparent norms and limits of the international state system and effectively transgresses those limits. In this way, rather than upholding a dichotomy of secrecy and transparency as two separable sides of the international system, the double agent emerges as a disruptive figure calling for its deconstruction.

Does Brock’s theory of migration justice adequately account for climate refugees?

ABSTRACT In Justice for People on the Move, Gillian Brock develops a promising, original account of migration justice. In her view, states have a robust (though conditional) right to self-determination, which includes a reasonably strong right to regulate migration. However, in order for these rights to be justified, three legitimacy requirements must be met. Most obviously, states must respect the human rights of their own citizens and the international state system itself must be legitimate. This latter condition also requires states to do their part in sustaining a justified state system, which includes helping to alleviate ‘legitimacy gaps,’ including significant human rights violations in other states. Brock uses this framework to address several pressing migration-related policy issues, including Muslim bans, the deportation of unauthorized migrants, temporary labour migration, and refugee protection. However, one topic is notably absent from her analysis: climate-related displacement. Some theorists insist that climate change migrants should not be considered refugees because they do not fit the standard definition of a refugee. In particular, climate migrants were displaced by droughts, floods, storms, or sea level rise rather than by war or persecution, and many are able to remain in their homes at present but will be forced to relocate at some point in the future. This paper explores the implications of Brock’s theory of migration justice for climate migration. I suggest that although her approach to refugee protection may initially appear to exclude climate migrants, her understanding of the right to self-determination yields strong obligations to assist them. I take this to be a strength of her framework, which makes an important, albeit indirect, contribution to current debates on climate change migration.

Australia and the World

Australia and the World