Into International Relations Research Articles

Beyond ports, roads and railways: Chinese economic statecraft, the Belt and Road Initiative and the politics of financial infrastructures

Scholars have focused on how the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) facilitates Chinese economic statecraft and its likely impact on the global order. A common thread thereby is how connectivity through China’s construction of physical infrastructures (e.g. ports, roads, railways) represents a source of power. However, such a focus on physical infrastructures obscures the importance of BRI-related financial infrastructures. Addressing this gap, this article analyses the construction of Chinese financial infrastructures along the BRI as an exercise of economic statecraft within the context of the liberal, US-dominated global financial order. The article traces the activities of China’s state-owned exchanges as crucial actors that facilitate financial connectivity by enabling investment into BRI projects (investment opportunities), bringing Chinese investors into BRI markets (investors structure) and gradually shaping how these markets work (investment rules). First, I analyse three individual countries (Pakistan, Kazakhstan and Bangladesh) as examples of ‘bilateral’ and ‘offensive’ statecraft. Second, I analyse an emerging China-centred global network of financial infrastructures as exercise of ‘systemic’ and ‘defensive’ statecraft that shields China’s foreign policy objectives (i.e. BRI) from global pressures, potentially creating a parallel system of capital markets with Chinese characteristics. Beyond BRI, I therefore argue for including financial infrastructures more thoroughly into International Relations (IR)/International Political Economy (IPE) scholarship as important object of analysis.

The New Saudi Leadership and Its Impact on Regional Policy

ABSTRACT The radical transformation of the Saudi Kingdom underway since early 2015 raises the core issue of Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman’s legitimacy. By balancing his defiance of the royal family through the popular support of Saudi youth, the Crown Prince seeks to consolidate his power, which reverberates in substantial changes in domestic governance and foreign policies. The assertive regional policy under King Salman and his heir also revealed tensions arising from their divergent world visions due to a generational gap. This has resulted in an incoherent and downgraded Saudi leadership in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This illustrates how domestic decision-making affects actors’ choices in foreign policy, contributing to the theoretical debate that integrates foreign policy analysis into International Relations (IR) theory.

Hedging in International Relations and Its Implications for China

Hedging is a technical term in finance used to describe a risk-aversion behavior with the objective of reducing investment risks and ensuring a certain degree of profit by simultaneously making two trades in opposite directions. As the rise of China and the relative decline of the United States led to changes in the international system in recent years, hedging is introduced into international relations (IR) and becomes a widely discussed strategy. Scholars on IR utilize hedging to describe risk avoidance observed in many secondary states in a highly uncertain and volatile international context. Academia makes contributions to this point. However, the existing research fails to reach a broad consensus on hedging studies. At present, the debate continues on the definition and measurement of hedging. Moreover, academia is divergent on which analytic approaches should be applied to hedging. System- and unit-level approaches exhibit apparent shortcomings. For this reason, a neoclassical realist approach, which well balances parsimony and explanatory power, is more constructive. Nevertheless, academic outcomes in this regard remain insufficient. In addition, paucity in research that evaluates hedging exists, which leads to the misleading assumption that hedging always works. Academia also overlooks the counteracting force of hedging on regional and international politics. If many secondary states employ hedging as a diplomatic strategy, then conducting an in-depth investigation on the impacts of collective hedging on regional and international politics as an independent variable is imperative. Unfortunately, the majority of scholars on IR neglect this aspect. Through a systematic review of hedging, the current study contends that a broad consensus on hedging studies is an urgent need and highlights that the future research scope lies in taking hedging as an independent variable that influences regional and international relations from an interactive perspective. Moreover, the implications of hedging exceed the theoretical dimension. From the perspective of China, it is of great policy and diplomatic significance. First, Beijing is supposed to adapt to the widely existing hedging employed by its neighbors in Asia. The situation requires China to carefully examine the hedging of secondary states to avoid confusing hedging with balancing, which is likely to upset the regional stability and the balance of power. China is also encouraged to follow a more pragmatic diplomatic paradigm, that is, encourage hedging states to remain neutral and refrain from taking a stance on the Sino-US competition instead of exerting effort to pull these states into its side. Second, China should take the initiative to fine-tune its foreign policies to match the momentum of hedging and aim to understand the domestic logic of hedging. To this end, China should clearly define its core interests, strengthen institutional mechanisms of communication and economic ties with its neighbors, and consolidate bilateral social connections. Foreseeable and stable economic benefits and increased interdependence will help China provide continuous incentives for its neighbors to conduct hedging.

Integrating anxiety into international relations theory: Hobbes, existentialism, and ontological security

This article draws on Hobbes and existentialist philosophy to contend that anxiety needs to be integrated into international relations (IR) theory as a constitutive condition, and proposes theoretical avenues for doing so. While IR scholars routinely base their assumptions regarding the centrality of fear and self-help behavior on the Hobbesian state of nature, they overlook the Hobbesian emphasis on anxiety as the human condition that gives rise to the state of nature. The first section of the article turns to existentialist philosophy to explicate anxiety's relation to fear, multiple forms, and link to agency. The second section draws on some recent interpretations to outline the role that anxiety plays in Hobbesian thought. Finally, I argue that an ontological security (OS) perspective that is enriched by insights from existentialism provides the most appropriate theoretical venue for integrating anxiety into IR theory and discuss the contributions of this approach to OS studies and IR theory.

The Dialectic of the Concrete: Reconsidering Dialectic for IR and Foreign Policy Analysis

Modes of dialectical reasoning were introduced into International Relations (IR) from the 1980s onwards in the context of the post-positivist debate as an alternative intellectual resource drawn from the philosophy of the social sciences. To the extent that the deployment of dialectics for IR drew upon Marx and the wider Hegelian Marxist tradition, it was challenged philosophically and substantively on two fronts. Philosophically, the problem emerged how to disassociate dialectics from the ‘systemic’ Hegelian legacy, which expressed itself in the naturalism and monism of dialectical materialism, and how to overcome a reading of capital as a self-unfolding conceptual category, expressed in systematic dialectics, which de-historicised and de-subjectified capitalism as a social relation. Substantively, the problem remained how to anchor a Historical Sociology of international relations in a historicist philosophy of praxis to avoid the temptation of a relapse into structuralist modes of explanation. By addressing this double challenge, this paper identifies a central lacuna within the Marxist IR tradition—the gap between general Marxist theories of IR and the analysis of foreign policy-making. This gap persists in equal measure in the bifurcation between the fields of general IR theory and actor-specific foreign policy analysis (FPA). For general IR theories—Marxist and non-Marxist—tend to deploy structuralist versions of theory, which relegate the problem of foreign policy-making to lesser, possibly non-theorisable, forms of inquiry. FPA is thereby demoted and subsumed under wider structural imperatives capable of cross-case generalisation. The paper moves from a critical exposition of the wider debate in IR and FPA of attempts to close this gap, via a critique of dialectical materialism and systematic dialectics, to a re-statement of the dialectic of the concrete. It concludes with a reconsideration of how dialectical thinking may bridge this gap by incorporating foreign policy as the crucial site for the active drawing together and re-articulation of multiple influences from the domestic and the foreign into a Historical Sociology of international relations.

Encountering Violence: Terrorism and Horrorism in War and Citizenship

This article introduces Adriana Cavarero's concept of “horrorism” into International Relations (IR) discussions of the relationship between war and citizenship. Horrorism refers to a violent violation of vulnerable humans who are defined by their simultaneous openness to the other's care and harm. With its motif of physical and ontological denigration, horrorism offends the human condition by making its victims gaze upon and/or experience repugnant violence and bodily disfiguration precisely when the vulnerable are most in need of care. The article argues that horrorism complicates disciplinary understandings of contemporary violence which tend to see terrorism, but not horrorism, in war and which generally neglect to theorize how violence—and particularly horrorism—is embedded in, and exchanged, through state/citizen relationships. To elaborate these arguments, the article analyses three pieces of war art: Jeremy Deller's “Baghdad, 5 March 2007,” Donald Gray's mural, “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” and a still image from Cynthia Weber's film, “Guadalupe Denogean: ‘I am an American.’” By taking the War on Terrorism as their subject, these pieces demonstrate how war makes visible the terror and horror in state/citizen relationships. The article concludes by reconsidering how encountering signs of horrorism might broaden our frames of war and further our empathic vision toward the precarious victims of horrorism or, alternatively, might confirm the patriotic allegiances of imperial citizens in ways that further bind their citizenship to state political and economic violence and narrow the scope for genuine empathy.

Risk in International Relations

Risk is a concept that has recently filtered through into International Relations (IR). However, the literature on risk, risk management and IR is still comparatively small and there is still significant scope for the theorisation of these concepts in an IR context. Thus far, the literature on risk and IR has been largely characterised by the debate between critical realist, constructivist and post-structuralist approaches to risk. At the core of these debates is the ontological question of whether risks are ‘real’ or not. However, this article will suggest that these ontological debates have grown stale and are unhelpful to furthering the research agenda on risk and IR. As this article will demonstrate, we need to systematically develop ways for both explaining risk identification, assessment and management –what might be termed ‘riskisation’ – and why particular forms of risk management emerge in particular situations and not others.

Beyond models and metaphors: complexity theory, systems thinking and international relations

The concepts, language and methods of complexity theory have been slowly making their way into international relations (IR), as scholars explore their potential for extending our understanding of the dynamics of international politics. In this article we examine the progress made so far and map the existing debates within IR that are liable to being significantly reconfigured by the conceptual resources of complexity. We consider the various ontological, epistemological and methodological questions raised by complexity theory and its attendant worldview. The article concludes that, beyond metaphor and computational models, the greatest promise of complexity is a reinvigoration of systems thinking that eschews the flaws and limitations of previous instantiations of systems theory and offers an array of conceptual tools apposite to analysing international politics in the twenty-first century.

Bound to follow? The Anglosphere and US-led coalitions of the willing, 1950–2001

This article addresses the question whether membership in the ‘Anglosphere’ — a grouping of English-speaking states/nations — impacts the likelihood of participation in US-led coalitions of the willing. I translate the Anglosphere into International Relations (IR) theory using a tripartite division of realism, liberalism and constructivism. In a quantitative empirical analysis of a sample of US-led military coalitions between 1950 and 2001, I find robust evidence of what can be seen as the Anglosphere effect: all else constant, English-speaking states/nations tend to be more willing to join US-led military coalitions than states/nations selected at random. I conclude with a discussion of future research avenues in the Anglosphere agenda in IR.

The Elephant in the Room

This article examines the author's experiences incorporating race into International Relations (IR) classes. The central argument is that keeping race at the margins of IR teaching and research contributes to students' perceptions of race as irrelevant to the discipline and has led students to question the professionalism of professors who include race, racism, and the like in classroom readings and discussions. Until race is moved to the center and engaged in IR's teaching and research agendas, underrepresented students and professors might continue to choose to find a home in other academic disciplines.

Diasporas and International Relations Theory

In this article, we incorporate the study of diasporas into international relations (IR) theory by focusing on diasporas as independent actors who actively influence their homeland (kin-state) foreign policies. We argue that diasporic influences can best be understood by situating them in the ‘theoretical space’ shared by constructivism and liberalism; two approaches that acknowledge the impact of identity and domestic politics on international behavior. We also maintain that the exploration of diasporic activities can enrich both constructivism and liberalism. First, diasporas' identity-based motivations should be an integral part of the constructivist effort to explain the formation of national identities. Second, diasporic activities and influences in their homelands expand the meaning of the term ‘domestic politics’ to include not only politics inside the state but also inside the people For the liberal approach, this is a “new fact” in the Lakatosian sense of the word. We theorize that the extent of diasporic influence on homeland foreign policy is determined by three components that make up the ‘balance of power’ between homelands and diasporas. We then test this theory by delving into the interaction between the newly established state of Armenia and its powerful diaspora, and by comparing this case with examples taken from the relations between Israel and diaspora Jews.

Realism and the Constructivist Challenge: Rejecting, Reconstructing, or Rereading

oes realism have nothing to say about in the actors, identities, social practices, and institutions that constitute the present or any future global order? Constructivism has given renewed impetus to this perspective on realism due to its almost universal characterization as a challenge to realism's emphasis on structure at the expense of history.1 Because the reintroduction of change as an analytical concept into international relations (IR) theorizing proper is the constructivist goal, many constructivists believe realism is the very antithesis of constructivist theorizing. If the widely accepted claim that realism is incapable of accounting for dynamism in global politics is correct, it is hard to fathom how realism has managed to survive so long as a general theoretical category, let alone dominate the field, as its critics continue to claim.