International Politics Research Articles

Brokering Peace: Japan’s Conflict-Resolution Role in Southeast Asia during the Cold War

ABSTRACT In contrast to descriptions of Japan as a country that shied away from involvement in international political affairs during the Cold War, this article shows that since the 1960s, Japan has actively engaged in diplomacy to resolve conflicts in Southeast Asia. What motivated these efforts? What role did Japan play? What are the characteristics of Japan’s diplomacy? Drawing on declassified diplomatic documents, these questions are addressed by investigating Japan’s peace brokering in four conflicts during the Cold War era. The findings deepen our understanding of Japan’s contribution to conflict-resolution and its political role in Southeast Asia during the Cold War, which was much more active than claimed in the literature.

Redefining alliances: Exploring the emergence of the China-Russia military axis

The article explores the development of Sino-Russian military cooperation since the end of the Cold War. It focuses on the evolution of their geopolitical alignment, military interactions, arms trade, joint military exercises, and ally dynamics. The research reveals the driving forces behind the emergence of a China-Russia military axis and its underlying synergy. It concludes that China and Russia have redefined the notion of alliance beyond its traditional understanding, creating a new paradigm of allied relations in international affairs.

University-business linkages influence on international business competence: An in-service training perspective

Firms often rely on the skills and mindsets of individual employees and managers rather than on organizational structures and capabilities to execute entrepreneurial activities. These individual-level factors, which may originate from educational and business experiences, also support the development of international business competencies when firms engage in international operations. Accordingly, this study investigates educational collaborations in university-business linkages that influence international business competence at the individual level. Survey data were collected from 489 in-service-trained business executives pursuing (Executive) Master of Business Administration degrees while concurrently holding supervisory and managerial responsibilities in firms in Ghana. Factor analysis revealed four dimensions of educational collaborations in university-business linkages. Results from hypothesis testing, conducted using covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM), indicate that the diversity and internationality of study content and research dimensions positively and significantly influence these executives' global mindset, entrepreneurial orientation, and international marketing skills in performing foreign business operations. Similarly, interactions with international resource persons positively and significantly influence the executives' global mindset and international marketing skills. However, while participation in international affairs shows positive effects, these are not statistically significant. We discuss these findings and highlight their implications for developing international human capital through a university-business educational collaboration framework useful for executives, business schools, academics, and global higher education development partners.

Regional ecosophy: a Guattarian approach to the border landscapes of the Irish Northwest

AbstractIn this paper, we propose that landscape architecture is uniquely equipped to shape highly contested and politicized border regions. We contend that recognizing landscape architecture’s agency to contribute to national and international politics may enable the field to intervene in contemporary theoretical discussions within urban and regional studies that are otherwise dominated by geography and urban planning. Through the example of the Irish/Northern Irish border region in the face of Brexit, we discuss the limits to city planning and policy designations—such as that of city-region—in addressing the complex economies and ecologies of similar geopolitical landscapes. We also highlight environmentalist planning and design’s limitations in addressing the complex social practices and subjectivities that weave together regions like the Irish Northwest. Our alternative is a fieldwork-based “ecosophical” approach capable of addressing Félix Guattari’s social, environmental, and subjective ecologies in an integrated manner. With this, we establish how such an approach can offer a more nuanced set of tools to design and plan for larger regional landscapes.

Translation policy vis-à-vis national politics: change and continuity in the ©Poland translation program

ABSTRACT This article discusses to what extent the change of political power in Poland affected ©Poland Translation Program, the largest public funding framework for translations from Polish, which is operated by the Book Institute, a governmental agency subject to the Ministry of Culture. The research is based on a comparative quantitative analysis of 2,410 bibliographic records – published books that received funding in 2008–2015 and in 2016–2022, i.e., under different managements appointed by different Polish governments – and supplemented by selected qualitative close-ups. The statistics do not confirm the common public sentiment that in the latter period, under the right-wing government of the Law and Justice party, ©Poland took a political turn, promoting historical writing that glorifies Polish past. Authors opposing the government were not discriminated against, and funding was allocated for translations into the same target languages as before. However, there was a noticeable trend in promoting contemporary right-wing non-fiction with an anti-liberal agenda (politically engaged journalistic reportage and socio-philosophical essay) in Central and Eastern Europe, especially Hungary. The results are discussed in terms of soft power, linking translation flows with international political relations, and the limits of quantitative analysis are problematized.

For the archive yet to come

Abstract This article explores the promises and pitfalls of the colonial archives for the study of seeing and knowing contemporary violence. As an ethnographic field and a site of decolonial struggles, the colonial archive is increasingly mobilised in scholarship that seeks to historicise and disrupt conventional, Western-centric knowledge production. While using the colonial archives might reproduce asymmetrical power relations, they also hold the potential to unsettle the ‘toxic imperial debris’ of our time. How can the colonial archives challenge the post-colonial politics of erasing imperial violence and contribute to decolonial futures? Drawing on research in the African Archives in Belgium and fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), this paper complicates problematic portrayals of the post-colonial state in the DRC and Congolese women as always already violated or silenced. We argue that the logics of the African Archives reveal a set of destabilising state anxieties that reflect the duality and instability of colonial rule itself and that infuse contemporary (international) politics. This recounting of the violence contained in the archives both narrates the concrete, violent manifestations of our ‘global coloniality’ and works towards its own demise as part of a broader ‘anticolonial archive’.

What works? Researching participants’ experiences of a social policy RCT through qualitative interviews

Increasingly, evidence-based policymaking, in the form of randomized control trials (RCTs) in particular, are advocated as a means for studying the effects of planned social policy measures. Additionally, a Finnish basic income experiment was conducted in 2017–2018 as an RCT as a means of exploring alternative policy solutions, which gained widespread national and international political, media and scholarly attention. Despite the popularity of RCTs, there is a lack of studies of participants’ experiences of participation in social policy RCTs. In this article, we depart from the notion of ‘lived experiences’ when investigating a bottom-up participant perspective of the Finnish social policy experiment with the purpose of contributing to the understanding and future planning of ethically and methodologically sustainable policy experiments. Drawing on a qualitative, in-depth interview study of 81 Finnish basic income experiment participants, we examined their lived experiences and related views on the experiment. The analysis shows that although the idea of experimenting to demonstrate ‘what works’ in social policy was supported by participants in principle, various questions arose both concerning the tactical and political purposes of the experiment and the nature of scientific ‘evidence’. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that the impact of the media and political attention often surrounding more controversial policy experiments, like the Finnish one, can also challenge the RCT principles of ‘non-contamination’. Participants in highly politicized experiments also easily feel that they become objects of strong moral expectations and judgements, which in the Finnish basic income case clearly resulted in feelings of frustration and personal failure.

Research on China-Sri Lanka Economic and Trade Cooperation Based on SWOT Analysis

This paper systematically explores the economic and trade cooperation between China and Sri Lanka based on the SWOT analysis framework. Against the backdrop of globalization and the “Belt and Road” initiative, China-Sri Lanka economic and trade cooperation shows great potential and broad prospects. By using the SWOT analysis method, the paper comprehensively analyzes the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of China-Sri Lanka economic and trade cooperation. The strengths include complementary geographical locations, complementary trade structures, and a solid foundation of political mutual trust; the weaknesses mainly lie in trade imbalances, unstable investment environments, and cultural and communication barriers; opportunities mainly arise from the promotion of the “Belt and Road” initiative, the deepening of regional cooperation, and changes in the global trade pattern; threats mainly come from changes in the international political and economic environment, external shocks such as pandemics, and the rise of trade protectionism. Finally, the paper proposes targeted strategic suggestions based on the actual situation, aiming to promote the sustainable and healthy development of China-Sri Lanka economic and trade cooperation and enhance the economic prosperity and well-being of the two countries.

Major Conflicts Between India and Pakistan: A Critical Analysis of Historical Tensions and Geopolitical Dynamics

Relations between India and Pakistan have remained parallel end and worst hostile as well ever since independence in 1947. In nearly 75 years, there were three wars between the two and a number of serious localized military clashes, including those on Ran of Ketch in 1965, followed by Kargil in 1999.The disputed territory of Kashmir played a significant role to maintain continuity, focusing the past conflicts of 1947 and 1965. As these two countries exploded nuclear weapons in 1998, their long-standing hostility has attracted and seriously concerned by the international community that their competition could rise to a nuclear war and cause disasters to both countries and the world as well. Whereas the Kashmir including some other outstanding issues, such as, water dispute, Sir Creek, Siachen and boundary disputes have also recorded the extreme level of conflicts between the two rivalries. Regionalism has played a significant role in European continent; however, in South Asia hegemonic attitude of India has marginalized the role of regional organizations such as SAARC. The world and south Asia witnessed the changes over two decades after the cold war, the liberalization of world trade, the growth of fundamentalism and revolutionary changes in the field of communications. Recognizing the intensity of the relations, India and Pakistan’s changing regional and international affairs which has drastically impaled to the leaders and governments of both the countries to initiate talks on their outstanding issues. The cross-border talks were an initiative step which attempted to provide a new forum to debate on these substantive issues resulted in the division of the two nations. Keeping in view the cited developments and their influences on the relations between India and Pakistan, some factors remained constant, the unresolved dispute over Kashmir, the growth of military spending, moves towards Nuclearization and perpetuation of an “adversarial psychosis” are still under question. This research has critically analyzed historic rivalry between India and Pakistan. It has also provided viable recommendations that how to contain major irritants between two States especially Kashmir issue and Nuclearization in region. In this research the purposive sampling method is used to justify the given hypothesis and objectives. The date is collected through the secondary data and results are deducted from the analytical approach.

Conceptualizing the foreign policy roles of states dealing with historical traumas: the case of Israel

While growing attention has been given to the impact of historical traumas on international politics, we know little about how trauma influences the foreign policy of states that have experienced trauma(s). Challenging the dichotomous conceptualization of traumatized states’ behaviours as either aggressive or pacifist, we show that traumatized states tend to articulate their foreign policy roles in a more complex way. We identify five foreign policy roles reflecting the remembering mode associated with ‘acting out’ (i.e. the role of victim and safe-haven/defender of the traumatized minority), with ‘working through’ (i.e. the role of forgiver, the role of canary in a coal mine and the guardian of the memory) or a blend of the two, demonstrating that both types of remembering modes can be activated simultaneously. The oscillation between these modes of remembering is characteristic of the non-linear process of coping with trauma, explaining the traumatized states’ seemingly inconsistent self-representations. We illustrate our claim with the case of Israel, based on the qualitative content analysis of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speeches to foreign audiences between 2009 and 2021.

Media as an instrument of Russia's information policy

This article explores the role of the media in the implementation of the state information policy, as well as the possibility of domestic media to become a key tool in the information confrontation with unfriendly countries. Among the main threats in the Doctrine of Information Security of the Russian Federation is the increase in the use of information-psychological influence technologies by intelligence services of certain states, aimed at destabilising the internal political, social and economic situation in various regions of the world, leading to the undermining of sovereignty and violation of territorial integrity of other states. The influence of the media on mass consciousness remains, without exaggeration, extensive, despite the radical changes in the landscape of the media environment caused by the spread of the Internet. In the era of digitalisation, the information space is undergoing significant transformations, which also concern the methods of media influence on mass consciousness. The Internet, having become a global communication platform, has provided the media not only with new channels for content distribution, but also increased their influence through personalisation and algorithmic filtering of information. The author examines the methodology and principles of information flows application in the context of information warfare. The author also analyses the use of media not only as an information intermediary, but also as a conduit of values, ideology and positive image of Russia.

Anarchy and Empire: World-Conquerors and International Systems

Abstract Why are some international systems characterized by stable multipolarity while elsewhere conquest produces universal empires? We explain this variation through contrasting the conventional story of the consolidation of multipolar anarchy in Europe against the Ottoman conquest of the Near East and the Manchu conquest of greater China. Both the Ottomans and the Manchus developed the capacity for systemic conquest via hybridizing steppe and sedentary military techniques. Furthermore, both surmounted the legitimation gradient of conquest. The Ottomans and Manchus used cultural statecraft to prevent balancing coalitions and encourage bandwagoning and collaboration. Cultural statecraft comprised strategies of co-opting preexisting symbols of imperial rule and employing multivocal legitimacy strategies to sequentially appeal to multiple segmented audiences. In Europe, both military obstacles and religious confessional ideational divisions frustrated would-be conquerors. Multipolar anarchy is thus a contingent outcome in international politics rather than a constant, which can be extinguished by militarily powerful and culturally agile “world conquerors.”

The transition to nuclear energy in Bangladesh: The interplay between climate-related urgency and geopolitical factors

One of the significant issues in contemporary international politics is to examine the contexts of energy usage of different countries, keeping in mind the looming climate threat. Energy transition not only highlights the central role of energy usage but also exposes the vulnerability caused by it. Given the context, Bangladesh has adopted nuclear technology to meet its economic demand and environmental requirements. As a middle-income country, eyeing to graduate to a developing nation by 2041, its choice of exploring nuclear energy has exposed the country to the question of the rationality of the decision. Nuclear energy has a distinguished history that accommodates several debates about its safety and sustainability. Though many developed countries are planning for a nuclear phase-out, Bangladesh’s decision merits attention and explanation to embrace such a stand. Often, the economic priorities have been attached to Bangladesh’s decision for the energy transition, while the discussion about nuclear energy in Bangladesh ignores the geopolitical purposes and international political agenda. This paper, therefore, aims to explore the internal and external climate-related urgency, and geopolitical concerns responsible for such a transition, which have remained unexplored in the existing literature.

Markaðsvæðing frétta: Greining á innihaldi frétta í tveimur dagblöðum og tveimur vefmiðlum fyrir og eftir hrun

Miklar breytingar hafa orðið í fjölmiðlun undanfarna áratugi. Breytingarnar eiga sér pólitískar, efnahagslegar og ekki síst tæknilegar rætur og hafa m.a lýst sér í samþjöppun eignarhalds, aukinni markaðsvæðingu og harðnandi samkeppni. Erlendar rannsóknir benda margar til þess að þessi þróun hafi haft veruleg áhrif á blaða- og fréttamennsku og fjölmiðlar leggi aukna áherslu á fréttir af glæpum, íþróttum og frægu fólki, en minni á fréttir af stjórnmálum, efnahagsmálum eða alþjóðamálum. Ýmsir fræðimenn hafa einnig haldið því fram að þessa sjái stað í netmiðlum í ríkari mæli en hefðbundnum miðlum á borð við dagblöð, þar sem eiginleikar netsins og stafrænnar miðlunar ýti undir slíkt. Ísland hefur ekki farið varhluta af þessum breytingum, en lítið er vitað um áhrif þeirra á efnið sem fjölmiðlar framleiða. Í þessari grein er gerð grein fyrir niðurstöðum rannsóknar á innihaldi frétta í stærstu dagblöðum og veffréttamiðlum hér á landi árin 2005 og 2013, eða fyrir og eftir efnahagshrunið 2008. Þær benda til þess að umfang frétta af pólitík og efnahagsmálum sé hlutfallslega minna nú en var fyrir hrun, en svokallaðar mjúkar fréttir, af íþróttum, afþreyingu og frægu fólki séu að sama skapi hlutfallslega fleiri. Það á einkum við um vefmiðlana en síður um dagblöðin.

The face of the nation: gendered institutions in international affairs

The face of the nation: gendered institutions in international affairs

The effects of global populism: assessing the populist impact on international affairs

Abstract With the global rise to power of populist leaders over the past decade, research on populism, including its international implications, has flourished. However, we still lack a nuanced understanding of the international effects of this new populist wave. The special section that this article introduces seeks to bridge this gap by systematically examining three types of international effects of populism. One group of contributions addresses the impact of populism on the processes of foreign policy-making in countries governed by populists (politics). Another group focuses on effects in terms of foreign policy agenda and its substantive outcomes (policies). A third group of contributions studies the impact of populism on states' stances towards international institutions (international polity). This introduction proposes a theoretical framework that takes into account the existent diversity among populist governments, specifically addressing how the more or less authoritarian character of populism explains variations in international outcomes across politics, policies and polities. A better understanding of these varied characters and effects can contribute new insights to lively debates about the potential challenges posed by populism and populists in the contemporary international order, and the prospects for mitigation.

Neoclassical Realism and Armenia’s International Orientation: An Attempt to Determine Patterns or Mechanisms of their Application?

The article examines neoclassical realism and Armenia’s international orientation as one of the directions in the transformation of the theory of international relations of small states. In this article, neoclassical realism is analyzed from the point of view of subjective aspects of policy formation and the influence of domestic political features of a small state on its foreign policy. Taking into account that neoclassical realism is a completely independent development of neorealism with a complementary elemental level of analysis of international politics. In terms of content, neoclassical realism of Armenia clarifies such concepts as resilience, national security, balance of power, balancing policy and others. The neoclassical model of Armenia’s foreign policy as a small state allows us to study the conditions under which great powers and small states deviate from the policy of balancing. From this point of view, the article proposes to analyze international politics through the prism of a global rollback to state-centric politics. The article takes into account that globalization presents new challenges for small countries such as Armenia, which risks being marginalized as a result of the restructuring of both global and regional economic relations.

African military politics in the Sahel: regional organizations and international politics

African military politics in the Sahel: regional organizations and international politics

Global economic influence and domestic regime support: evidence from China

Rising powers typically seek to play a larger role in international economic affairs, but we know little about the impact of this overseas expansion on domestic publics. This paper examines the domestic political consequences of rising states’ efforts to increase their foreign economic influence. We argue that public approval for these governments depends on whether they succeed or fail to expand their country’s global economic influence. To test this argument, we fielded three survey experiments in China, each focusing on a different component of China’s foreign economic strategy. In all three experiments, informing individuals that China has failed in increasing its role in the global economy reduced average levels of government satisfaction. Our evidence suggests that this drop in government approval operates through a weakened sense of national pride, rather than other channels based on economic prospects.

The historicity of international politics: imperialism and the presence of the past

The historicity of international politics: imperialism and the presence of the past