Students Of International Politics Research Articles

Civil Wars & the Structure of World Power

The “policy science” of civil wars, which emerged in the early 1990s, included deeply embedded assumptions about the nature of the international political system. It was taken for granted that the United States would remain the strongest power by a wide margin, and that it would lead a liberal coalition that included virtually all the other strong states in the world. Some students of international politics believe that the nature of the system is changing. Though the United States is likely to remain much more powerful than its global competitors, several consequential powers have emerged to challenge U.S. leadership and produce a multipolar system. As power begins to even out at the top of the international system, the influence of middle powers may also grow. This new constellation of power seems likely to magnify disagreements about how states suffering civil wars should be stabilized, limit preventive diplomacy, produce external intervention that will make for longer and more destructive wars, and render settlements more difficult to police.

Politics is too important to be left to political scientists: A critique of the theory–policy nexus in International Relations

Albeit fashionable in some academic circles, the idea that International Relations theory should influence practice is based on the problematic view that scholars allegedly have a privileged epistemological standpoint making them more qualified than laymen and decision-makers alike to understand how international politics works. The present article tries to show why this assumption is mistaken and suggests that the so-called theory–practice gap should not be bridged. The fact that International Relations theory should not directly influence policy does not mean, however, that students of international politics are of no political use. Their work can be justified not in terms of the direct application of their findings, but rather by virtue of its indirect and unintended consequences on policymaking. Relying on a liberal view of political knowledge, the article claims that the role of International Relations scholars is not to suggest to policymakers what action to take, but rather to prevent foreign policy being formulated in the absence of rival theoretical conclusions.

The International Civil Servant

A key feature of transnationally organized governance elites is that their claim to authority is based on an already presumed universal validity. This is so, at least for those with a claim to authority that is epistemic in character, because there is a general belief that the institution of science produces findings that transcend national borders. Thus, for example, medical doctors from different countries can agree to engage in governance activities based on a shared epistemological framework. I have elsewhere (Sending 2014) compared the emergence of a transnational field of population governance driven by demographers with the emergence of the international governance of the UN Secretariat. Both follow distinct trajectories. Actors that are part of transnational elites compete for positions of authority, but they do so within a shared register in which national borders do not count as prima facie valid grounds on which to dismiss any particular claim about the issues at stake in these fields, be they health, population, or economic governance. This is in contrast to the field of international governance, where competing claims are assessed within a shared epistemological framework in which national borders are the key rationale for the respective actors’ position and differentiation from others. For students of international politics, an important yet seriously understudied case in this regard is the emergence …

The History of Proliferation Optimism: Does It Have a Future?

Students of international politics known as ‘proliferation optimists’ argue that when it comes to the spread of nuclear weapons ‘more may be better’ because nuclear weapons deter great power war and produce greater levels of international stability. This essay provides a critique of proliferation optimism, challenging optimism’s conception of nuclear deterrence theory, its logical underpinnings, and its policy recommendations. It does this by conducting an intellectual history of proliferation optimism, identifying the core weaknesses of proliferation optimism as a theoretical framework, and articulating the myriad threats posed by nuclear proliferation.

The dimensions of the divide: vertical differentiation, international inequality and North–South stratification in international relations theory

Recent attempts at developing social-structural accounts of the international order have suggested that the international system might be analysed in terms of patterns of vertical differentiation and stratification. Taking up this challenge, this article argues that inequality should be understood as part of the ‘deep structure’ of the international system rather than in terms of the attributes of individual states. It suggests that we can understand how stratification and vertical differentiation emerge by examining five dimensions along which processes producing asymmetry occur, focusing on transactions between actors. These dimensions are: inter-state political hierarchy; secular socioeconomic development within societies; global stratification within the world economy; the dynamic of competitive development; and the process of overall collective management and supranational governance of the international system/global order. The historical intersection of these forms of stratification has produced an emergent, historically contingent division within the international order familiar to students of international politics as the North–South divide.

Wither Europa Irredenta? Norms in International Politics

Irredentism in European Politics: Argumentation, Compromise and Norms. By Markus Kornprobst. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 317 pp., $90.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-5218-9558-3). More than half a century ago Karl W. Deutsch and colleagues (Deutsch, Burrell, Kann, Lee, Lichterman, Lindgren, Loewenheim, and Van Wagenen 1957) elaborated on a question of fundamental importance for students of international politics, namely why some nations seem to entertain “dependable expectations of peaceful change” and thus refrain from the practice of settling disputes with force. It might be argued that Deutsch's original thinking on security communities was limited in that it relied heavily on behavioralist assumptions, but it indirectly presented thought-provoking insights on identity-formation processes “beyond the nation-state” which have served as a source of inspiration for more recent constructivist scholarship in International Relations (IR) (cf. Adler and Barnett 1998; Acharya 2001). Understanding change in international politics was central to Deutsch's thinking on security communities but it did not explore at length and with rigor the role of norms in the politics among nations. Constructivist scholarship has engaged head-on with this problem, and a recent, well-written and highly interesting contribution in this vein is Markus Kornprobst's Irredentism in European Politics . In this book the author identifies an intriguing empirical puzzle related to the demise of European irredentism and the changing practice of settling border disputes. This is a puzzle of both theoretical and practical interest since irredentist conflicts between states tend to be violent as well as long-lasting. Using a five-fold classification scheme, Kornprobst is able to detect a radical change in the pattern of how European states have come to settle their territorial conflicts in the period 1848–2000. Up until World War II numerous wars were fought in Europe over territories “wrongly” belonging to other states and border disputes were usually settled by force or left unresolved. However, the post-World War II (1946–2000) pattern is radically different. At the end of the millennium only one …

Social evolution of international politics: From Mearsheimer to Jervis

I advance an endogenous explanation for the systemic transformation of international politics and offer to neatly resolve the debate between offensive realism and defensive realism through a social evolutionary approach. I contend that international politics has always been an evolutionary system and it has evolved from an offensive realism world to a defensive realism world. Consequently, offensive realism and defensive realism are appropriate grand theories of international politics for two different historical epochs. Different grand theories of international politics are for different epochs of international politics, and different epochs of international politics actually need different theories of international politics. Because international politics has always been an evolutionary system, non-evolutionary approaches will be intrinsically incapable of shedding light on the evolution of the system. The science of international politics must be a genuine evolutionary science and students of international politics must ‘give Darwin his due’.

The Strategic Advantages of American Power

Strategic Advantage: Challengers, Competitors, and Threats to America's Future. By Bruce Berkowitz. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2008. 304 pp., $26.95 (ISBN-13: 978-1589012226). At the start of a new presidency, many students of international politics consider again the role of the United States in international politics and the possibility of changing that role. Indeed, this is one of the central questions that define this period of international politics. The essence of the debate is captured by two issues. First, can the United States continue to be the dominant state in international politics; and, second, should it continue to be so. Bruce Berkowitz addresses these questions in this impressive study. He makes a significant contribution to the growing foreign and defense policy literatures that address the causes of American hegemony and the myriad of topics associated with its continuation or demise (Kupchan 2003; Bacevich 2005; Layne and Thayer 2007; Murphy 2007). Berkowitz may be categorized as a thoughtful and cautious proponent of American preponderance and as an insightful student of the mechanics of its propagation. Berkowitz's central arguments are that the United States must labor hard to maintain its dominant position in a dynamic and protean international environment where there are considerable risks …

A Revolution in International Relation Theory: Or, What If Mueller Is Right?

Author's Note: War has been the primary focus of the scholarly study of international relations (IR) from its very beginning. E.H. Carr and his colleagues at Aberystwyth created the first IR department in 1919 in the wake of the Great War at least partially in the hope of preventing the next one. Their lack of success did not keep war and from becoming the primary issues of study for most students of international politics ever since. Conflict has been the direct or indirect topic of much of the work that IR scholars have produced during the last century and, indeed, has been one of the main reasons why many of them entered the field in the first place. If the fundamental nature of warfare were to change, therefore, one would expect repercussions in the field of IR. The obsolescence-of-major-war argument, which found renewed energy with the publication of John Mueller's Retreat from Doomsday, seems to describe one such fundamental change. The suggestion that the great powers may have put war behind them has been debated at some length over the past 17 years, with its many skeptics pointing out that such optimistic ideas are not new. Prior articulations of perpetual peace have always been eventually proven wrong by war's depressing proclivity for resurrection. Supporters have not moved far beyond basic explanations of the argument, at least to this point, in large part because its nature seems to preclude definitive proof or falsification. It is, after all, a theory of the future as much as of the present. The development of the argument has stalled in the time since Mueller's book was published, with a number of key questions remaining unanswered. Would state behavior remain unchanged absent the realistic possibility of major war? How would the study of international politics need to be adjusted to describe accurately an age of great power peace? In other words, what if Mueller is right? In some senses, therefore, this forum is an exercise in conjecture and speculation. It asks the reader to accept the argument--ifjust for a moment--that the great powers have put warfare behind them, at least in their interactions with one another. For some, this will require a nearimpossible stretch of the imagination; for others, it will be a logical and overdue recognition of modern reality. If it is true that many nations no longer consider fighting such wars, then many of our central beliefs about state behavior will have to be rethought and adjusted to better describe twenty-first century realities. This forum contains three parts. (1) The first explores the current state of the argument and its critics and speculates on its importance to a field traditionally focused upon the great powers, discussing the reasons to believe that the obsolescence of major war may eventually lead to the obsolescence of all war. (2) The second contains multiple parts, each of which proposes a central theoretical implication of the obsolescence-of-major-war argument and considers the ways in which some of the major theories and debates in the field would be affected if the great powers prove stubbornly insistent on conducting peaceful relations. A new conception of power itself may be in order; for instance, one that makes a distinction between the potential and kinetic power of a state. This argument also has implications for the relative vs. absolute

Estimating between‐ and within‐cluster covariate effects, with an application to models of international disputes

Students of international politics often use data in which the covariates vary both within and across units of observation. This is particularly true for dyadic data, which has come to dominate quantitative studies of international conflict, but is also a concern in any work involving a time‐series cross‐sectional component. Standard regression methods treat both types of covariates as equivalent with respect to their influence on the dependent variable, ignoring possible differences between cross‐dyad and within‐dyad effects. Here, I discuss the potential pitfalls of this approach, and show how between‐ and within‐dyad effects can be separated and estimated. I then illustrate the approach in the context of a logistic regression, using data on international disputes.

Structural Realism after the Cold War

Some students of international politics believe that realism is obsolete.1 They argue that, although realism’s concepts of anarchy, self-help, and power balancing may have been appropriate to a bygone era, they have been displaced by changed conditions and eclipsed by better ideas. New times call for new thinking. Changing conditions require revised theories or entirely different ones. True, if the conditions that a theory contemplated have changed, the theory no longer applies. But what sorts of changes would alter the international political system so profoundly that old ways of thinking would no longer be relevant? Changes of the system would do it; changes in the system would not. Within-system changes take place all the time, some important, some not. Big changes in the means of transportation, communication, and war Žghting, for example, strongly affect how states and other agents interact. Such changes occur at the unit level. In modern history, or perhaps in all of history, the introduction of nuclear weaponry was the greatest of such changes. Yet in the nuclear era, international politics remains a self-help arena. Nuclear weapons decisively change how some states provide for their own and possibly for others’ security; but nuclear weapons have not altered the anarchic structure of the international political system. Changes in the structure of the system are distinct from changes at the unit level. Thus, changes in polarity also affect how states provide for their security. SigniŽcant changes take place when the number of great powers reduces to two or one. With more than two, states rely for their security both on their

Roland goes corporate: Mercenaries and transnational security corporations in the post‐cold war era

Mercenaries are important non‐state transnational actors in contemporary world politics. However much they might be ignored by students of international politics, they can and do have an impact. The purpose of this article is to survey mercenaries and mercenary armies as transnational actors, both historically and in the contemporary international system. I will argue that the common perception of mercenary armies as Soldier‐of‐Fortune bands is highly time‐bound, and does not accurately reflect the evolving nature of mercenary activity in the present international community. I will also argue that the common perception that mercenaries and the state have a necessarily antagonistic relationship is inaccurate. On the contrary: as a quintessentially transnational actor in world politics, mercenaries have been and continue to be deeply tied to the sovereign state: they are often protected and rescued by the state; they are used by state officials to advance state goals; and, most importantly, their considerable expenses are paid for by state revenues. In short, contemporary mercenary activity confirms M.J. Peterson's surmise that ‘states and societal actors will find the other an indispensable partner in achieving their own goals’.1

Resurrecting a neglected theorist: the philosophical foundations of Raymond Aron’s theory of international relations

Raymond Aron is a neglected theorist, at least if we understand by ‘neglected’ a theorist whose theory no longer engenders critical scholarly debate. More often than not, students of international politics either ignore Aron altogether or wrongly subsume him under the rubric of classical Realist. This is not to deny points of agreement between Aron and theorists like Carr and Morgenthau, but merely to indicate that many scholars fail to articulate and to take into consideration the numerous fundamental differences between Aron and other classical Realists. Aron’s Peace and War is probably ‘more quoted than read’ today, and it is doubtful whether more than a handful of students seriously study this monumental work at all.J. Hall, Diagnoses of Our Time: Six Views on Our Social Condition (London, 1981), p. 164.

Democratic Diversions

Students of international politics have often argued that state leaders initiate the use of force internationally to divert attention away from domestic problems. The author contends that these arguments concerning the relationship between domestic unrest and international conflict are not supported empirically because they focus too narrowly on the incentives state leaders have to use external force as a diversionary tactic without considering alternative solutions to quieting domestic unrest. It is hypothesized that democratic leaders will respond to domestic unrest by diverting attention by using force internationally. On the other hand, authoritarian leaders are expected to repress the unrest directly, and these acts of repression will make them less likely to use force internationally. An analysis of the initiation of force by the challenging states in 180 international crises between 1948 and 1982 strongly supports these hypotheses. The results of the analyses and their implications for the literature on diversionary conflicts and the rapidly growing literature on democratic peace are discussed.

Neorealism as a Research Enterprise: Toward Elaborated Structural Realism

Neorealism, also known as structural realism, holds a central place among students of international politics. While admired for its elegance, the approach also has attracted considerable criticism, ranging from assertions that it no longer accurately describes international relations to charges of moral bankruptcy. Given the ongoing controversy about conventional wisdom on the subject of world politics, the purpose of this investigation is to evaluate the status of structural realism as a research enterprise. This objective is achieved in four stages. First, in order to reveal priorities for further concept formation, patterns in previ ous thinking about structure as an explanation of international politics will be identified. The second task is to describe the axiomatic basis of struc tural realism as a specific manifestation of systemic theory. Third, the performance of structural realism and related approaches in accounting for international conflict is evaluated. The fourth and final stage is an argument—in preliminary form—that favors a more elaborate version of structural realism.

Territoriality and beyond: problematizing modernity in international relations

The concept of territoriality has been studied surprisingly little by students of international politics. Yet, territoriality most distinctively defines modernity in international politics, and changes in few other factors can so powerfully transform the modern world polity. This article seeks to frame the study of the possible transformation of modern territoriality by examining how that system of relations was instituted in the first place. The historical analysis suggests that “unbundled” territoriality is a useful terrain for exploring the condition of postmodernity in international politics and suggests some ways in which that exploration might proceed. The emergence of multiperspectival institutional forms is identified as a key dimension of the condition of postmodernity in international politics.

A Political Science Perspective on the Balance of Power and the Concert

arguments about important issues and theories of general political processes. Some of Schroeder's analysis is consistent with ideas developed by students of international politics; other parts represent major challenges. At a time when political scientists have shown renewed interest in the Concert of Europe both for its intrinsic significance and for its possible relevance in the post-Cold War era, it is particularly valuable to explore the differences between the Concert and the balance of power as seen by scholars in both disciplines.2 Some scholars may object that Schroeder's analysis is too sweeping, that it sees balance of power as one pattern when it should be seen as much more varied, that it draws excessively stark contrasts between balance and a managed system. Arguments on these questions can be fruitful but not definitive. Along with and usually inseparable from a sense of how ordered history is, scholars differ in their aesthetic senses of the attractiveness of parsimony and richness, just as some historians are lumpers and others are splitters. Some scholars strive for the kind of understanding that involves the fullest possible picture. In this light, few events closely resemble each other, and no single cause dominates any particular case. Others try to construct accounts that are much more parsimonious, in the sense of seeing a relatively large number of events-including ones that superficially appear quite different-as sharing crucial characteristics, of believing that one or two causes are primary in each case, and of suspecting that the same factors are at work in numerous instances. The price of doing so (too high for many

Reason and Realpolitik: Kant's “Critique of International Politics”

AbstractImmanuel Kant remains a figure of enduring interest to students of international politics both for the content of his writings and for the place which those writings have come to occupy within contemporary debates in International Relations theory. But most of the secondary literature does not have a sufficient appreciation of Kant's wider philosophy and hence misunderstands or distorts his theory of international relations. Once this background is more fully appreciated, Kant's analysis becomes largely immune from many of the standard criticisms levelled against it. A reinterpretation of Kant's critique of international politics is important not only for the position which Kant has come to occupy in contemporary debates. It also raises anew fundamental questions about the theoretical and practical adequacy of the Realist theory of international relations which continues to dominate the discipline.

Nuclear Deterrence Theory: The Record of Aggregate Testing and An Alternative Research Agenda

One of the most controversial subjects among students of international politics is the role of rational choice in deterrence. Disagreement is especially intense regarding application to the nuclear setting. Progress in that debate depends on identifying evidence appropriate for testing a wide range of propositions. The overall purpose of this review is to assess the record of aggregate evaluation in order to obtain guidance for further research. This investigation unfolds in several stages. First, studies appropriate for reassessment are placed in the general context of deterrence literature. Second, models, data, and testing procedures are presented and explained. Third, a pair of criteria for evaluation-validity and reliability-are applied to the above-noted quantitative studies. Fourth, and finally, new directions for testing are suggested, with emphasis on a more unified approach.

Reflections on an invalid fatwa

Last year, when Ayatollah Khomeini issued his death fatwa against Salman Rushdie, Taheri was one of the many Muslim students of international politics who tried to predict the future course of the drama unleashed and to imagine a possible denouement. Now he looks back on the year