Power Politics, Diplomacy and Role Playing: Simulating the UN Security Council's Response to Terrorism

In the International Organizations classroom, students learn a lot about the nuts and bolts of international organizations in theory, but do not always have the opportunity to understand how international organizations work in practice. Understanding negotiations, diplomacy and interstate relations is essential in understanding the strengths of weaknesses of international organizations. To this end, the use of in-class simulations, where each student represents a different country, can be an effective tool in teaching students about international organizations and global governance. This article describes a simulation run in an International Organizations class in the Fall 2002 semester. It involved a fictitious serious terrorist attack in Singapore during a performance of "Kiddush for Naomi" performed by the Israel Habima Theatre Company. The article describes the goals of the simulation, the preparation the students undertook throughout the semester, the implementation of the simulation itself, and the post-simulation debriefing and assessment of the students and lessons learned for future in-class simulations.     

Smuggler’s Blues: Examining Why Countries Become Narcotics Transit States Using the New International Narcotics Production and Transit (INAPT) Data Set

We examine the global determinants of the illicit international narcotics trade and the specific roles that states play in it, a topic understudied by international relations scholars. We develop the first comprehensive global data set of state involvement in international narcotics trafficking and then use the data set to empirically test hypotheses concerning the likelihood of countries to serve as transit states for the transshipment of illicit drugs. We find that more-globalized countries are more likely to act as transit states and that the size of the economy, as well as state corruption and a weak rule of law, are positively related to the probability of acting as a transit state. States with a more stable political environment are also more likely to be transit states.     

Simulating the Creation of a New International Human Rights Treaty: Active Learning in the International Studies Classroom

This article details a simulation of formulating a new international human rights treaty designed for an introductory international studies course. Student understanding and interest in a range of international relations topics—including diplomacy, two –level games, international law, human rights, and group decision making—are reinforced by actively engaging the students in policy formulation and state –to –state negotiations. The article is structured around the four key components of active learning approaches—educational objectives, design parameters, procedures, and assessment and debriefing—in order to provide a full understanding of the goals, set –up, process, and advantages of the simulation. The simulation has been successfully run multiple times at both a large state university and a small liberal arts institution. Supportive student feedback and an interesting variety of outcomes indicate that this simulation is a positive addition to the course and reinforces the use of active learning approaches in the international studies classroom.     

Location "Authority" in the Global Political Economy

This article addresses the problematic nature of "authority" in the global political economy. Focusing on the rules governing international commercial relations, which today form part of the juridical conditions of global capitalism, the location and structure of political authority are argued to be historically specific. They have changed with the emergence of different historic blocs and as a result of consequent alterations in state-societyrelations. The article emphasizes the significance of private corporate power in the construction of the global political economy and hegemonic authority relations. However, the significance of private authority is obscure and little understood by students of international relations. This gives rise to analytical and normative grounds for adopting a historical materialist approach to theanalysis of global authority that incorporates national, subnational, and transnational influences.     

Chinazambia and Boliviafranca: A Simulation of Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy

Despite a longstanding focus on the systemic distribution of power in the study of international relations, scholarship during the past 20 years increasingly emphasizes the role of domestic politics in foreign-policy-decision making. This simulation enables participants to experience negotiating an international issue—a territorial dispute between two fictitious states, Chinazambia and Boliviafranca—in the context of this "two-level game" between domestic and international environments. The simulation furnishes a vantage point from which students can assess realist, liberal, and alternative theoretical perspectives on international relations as they affect policy making. The simulation is flexible and can be executed under a variety course contexts, as well as time and participation constraints. Additionally, the simulation provides ample opportunity for a number of enriching postsimulation activities.     

Send Good Vibes,Guns, and Money: The Institutionalisation of United States Drug Diplomacy toward Mexico, 1969–1989

ABSTRACT

The State Department played a leading role in the struggle within the United States government to define and implement America’s foreign drug policy throughout the late twentieth century. After their participation in 1969’s Operation Intercept illustrated the central importance of Mexican national sovereignty in bilateral relations, United States diplomats worked to institutionalise an aversion to unilateral American action on drug issues south of the Rio Grande. Over time, both the co-operative framework cultivated between American and Mexican officials throughout 1970s and an especially turbulent chapter in bilateral relations during the 1980s helped to establish further the State Department’s highly conciliatory approach to drug diplomacy that today remains a defining characteristic of joint Mexican–American efforts to combat the production and traffic of illicit drugs.     

Teaching Students How to Fail: Simulations as Tools of Explanation

Instead of always teaching students how to succeed—as is the norm in higher education—it might also be useful to teach them about failure. Understanding failure (that is, why actors fail to reach common objectives in inter-group settings) gives students deeper insight into how to resolve global problems, and the conditions under which success can be achieved. This enhances student awareness of complexity in world affairs, including the nature of inter-group relations. Simulations are a good way to teach students about the possibility of failure, and how to learn from it, because they allow students to go through the learning process on their own. In this article I discuss how a simulation I ran on Middle Eastern politics can be used as an example of how to instruct students about failure as much as about success.     

Institutions,the Illegal Drug Trade,and Participant Strategies: What Corrupt or Pariah States Have In Common with Liberal Democracy and the Rule of Law

Institutions generate incentives that guide behavior, but many analysts and policymakers underestimate the power of institutions to affect behavior by ignoring how distinct strategies work to generate similar outcomes in different institutional contexts. This article uses the illegal trade in psychoactive substances to illustrate how outcomes (the size of the illegal drug market) across very distinct political institutions can be the same because individuals adopt different strategies in their pursuit of the same behavior: to participate in the illegal drug trade. The illegal trade in psychoactive substances represents an understudied and poorly studied issue in international relations. Arguments that focus on the deviant characteristics of governments in the developing world and organized crime to explain the trade are misleading for empirical and methodological reasons. I propose a general argument about the proliferation of the illegal drug trade that accounts for its success in countries struggling with poverty, corruption, terrorism, and pariah leaders, as well as in rich, stable democracies in which the rule of law “reigns.” The article takes factors that are often seen as distinct in explaining the drug trade (e.g., civil rights in liberal democracies and corruption in developing countries) and demonstrates that their explanatory logic represents variations on the same causal variable: the ability to conceal oneself. My insight is that the strategies used to achieve concealment vary by the institutional context in which participants find themselves.     

Through,against and beyond the racial state: the transnational stratum of race

Though race is most commonly associated with domestic politics, the concept itself was born in the transnational realm. This article conceptualizes race as a system of global power relations that has changed over time, manifests differently across space and exists on multiple analytical levels. Drawing from the insights of international relations, comparative politics and critical race theory, it argues that race is a transnational norm or idea that can independently affect both domestic policy outcomes and international relations among nation-states. The article explores several promising avenues of research in the examination of the varied manifestations of race in international and domestic realms and ends with a brief discussion of continuing challenges and future research agendas in the comparative and international study of race.     

The evolution of power,threat, and security: Past and potential developments

This paper describes the development of the international military situation over the past three decades and explores the potential for its transformation under different assumptions regarding economic conditions and the character of international relations. Using newly derived indices in the conventional military area, an assessment is made of the shifting tides in the power, threat and security situation that has confronted twenty‐five important states in the international system during the recent past. The past is then contrasted with some possible alternative developments. These developments are assayed using a global simulation model, GLOBUS, developed at the Science Center Berlin.     

Self-Defense and the Use of Force: Breaking the Rules, Making the Rules, or Both?

This article examines shifts in international law regarding the use of force—the jus ad bellum —that emerged in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and subsequently were invoked in part by the United States and United Kingdom to justify military intervention in Iraq. These shifts import some elasticity—in time, space, and place—into the preexisting legal understanding of self-defense. To be sure, the general consensus that supported the use of force in Afghanistan as a legitimate exercise of self-defense has diluted as the use of that force expanded into other theaters of operation. It is therefore unsurprising that considerable controversy envelops claims by some states that international law entitles them to use force in self-defense in a preemptory manner. This article explores the articulation of this and other justifications for the military intervention in Iraq. It also unpacks the difficult question whether these entitlements are constitutive of inchoate legal rules or simply deviations from the still operational old rules. Moreover, this article encourages scholars and students of international law and relations to consider why a movement is afoot to change the rules and how this affects the architecture of collective security. To facilitate this process of reflection, this article explores the policy implications of retaining the old rules or adopting the newly alleged rules.     

Lessons from the Past: Reassessing the Interwar Disciplinary History of International Relations

This article reconstructs the interwar discourse of international relations among American political scientists and seeks to challenge the orthodox view that the scholarship of this period was essentially idealist in nature. It aims to make a contribution to the growing body of literature devoted to examining the institutional history of international relations. My purpose is to demonstrate that the conventional label of idealism that has been attached to the interwar period of international relations scholarship seriously misrepresents the actual character of the conversation that was being directed toward understanding international politics. By carefully reconstructing the internal discourse of the field, many of the field's long forgotten individuals and ideas are brought back to life. The article concludes by highlighting some of the lessons that the interwar discourse offers to the study of international relations today and argues that this period cannot be construed as idealist.     

Discursive Multilateralism: Global Benchmarks, Shame, and Learning in the ILO Labor Standards Monitoring Regime

A distinct feature of contemporary international relations is the proliferation of multilateral monitoring regimes. Despite the significance of this for the study of international law and organization, little empirical evaluation of the effectiveness of multilateral monitoring exists. This article examines the effectiveness of the supervisory system of the International Labor Organization (ILO), widely recognized as the prototypical model for all multilateral monitoring regimes. I examine the speech acts and rule-practices of the ILO regime within a hermeneutic/constructivist framework. This yields a set of heuristic hypotheses reflective of the "logic" that guides regime interactions with its member states. This asserts that "shame" influences member states to comply and respond positively to regime obligations. To test this, I statistically generate global benchmarks. These consist of world and regional averages in the behavioral patterns of member states. Quantitative findings demonstrate recidivist patterns of deviance by "global pariahs" set against a statistical background consisting of large-scale normative conformity on the part of ILO member states but configured around some regional variations. My analysis contends that global benchmarking reduces the risks of member state defection from core international labor standards and thereby promotes monitoring by learning or discursive multilateralism.     

Norms from the periphery: tracing the rise of the common but differentiated principle in international environmental politics

Abstract

Over the last three decades, constructivist scholars of international relations have created a rich body of literature on the influence of global norms. Until recently, the vast majority of that work focused on norms originating in the developed world and neglected the ideational impact of developing countries. This article confronts this oversight in the literature by tracing the rise of the “common but differentiated responsibility” (CBDR) norm in international environmental politics. The CBDR principle traces its origins to the developing world and today it is part of the framework principles of international environmental agreements. Thus, it represents a global norm promoted by, rather than diffused to, the developing world. In the process of tracing this norm’s rise, this article generates a set of hypotheses about the conditions under which developing countries create global norms.     

Taking the 'taken-for-grantedness' seriously: problematizing Japan's perception of Japan-South Korea relations

The existence of acrimonious relations between Japan and itsimmediate neighbour, South Korea, is a familiar theme in theliterature on the international relations of the Asia-Pacific.Public discourse in Japan treats this acrimony as the startingpoint for the formulation of diplomatic policy towards Seoul.While not suggesting that such an outlook is wrong, characterizingthe bilateral relations as ‘tough’ has become ‘taken-for-granted’.By focusing on the representation of Japanese collective identitywithin the public discourse, and treating it as a foreign policyspeech act, this article argues that taking the ‘taken-for-grantedness’seriously allows us to unpack the intersubjective structureof Japan–South Korea relations, enabling us to appreciatefully the recurring invective across the Tsushima Straits.     

Engaging International Data in the Classroom: Using the ICB Interactive Data Library to Teach Conflict and Crisis Analysis

The challenges of teaching quantitative research methods in international relations are well documented. The key to igniting interest and engaging students lies in creating a participatory learning environment in the classroom. This article discusses these challenges and describes a new piece of software that may be helpful in that regard. The ICB Interactive Data Library , or the ICB Library for short, enhances access to the information available in the ICB data by organizing it into an interactive software package (Brecher, Hewitt, and Wilkenfeld, 2000). The ICB Library is an especially valuable teaching tool because it allows students to easily access the resources from a major data collection project which, in turn, exposes them to the challenges and opportunities offered by quantitative research in international relations. After describing the ICB Library , this article will discuss how it can be used in the classroom via problem-based learning techniques.     

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.     

International communication: shifting paradigms,theories and foci of interest

Abstract

This article aims to be a stock-taking exercise of the development of paradigms and foci of interest, in attempts to theorise the vast developments and far-reaching changes as well as the impact and effects of global communication in the world of today. Attention is firstly given to the current nature, impact and implications of global communication in the first decade of the 21^st century, as well as to a shift in emphases in the (sub)discipline of international communication. A critical overview is then given of discourses on the free flow of information, modernisation theory, dependency theory, the structural theory of imperialism, world system theory, hegemony, political economy, critical theory, the public sphere, cultural studies, the information society and globalisation. Since many of these paradigms have been borrowed or taken over from media studies, international relations or other (sub)disciplines, attention is given specifically to their application in theorising international communication. The article concludes with a critical overview of the current ‘state of the art’ with regard to the body of theory in international communication.     

Foundations of an Authoritarian Populism in an International Context

The rise of populism, and its subsequent challenge to liberal democratic institutions, is an ongoing feature of twenty-first century global politics. The author contends that providing college students with theoretical tools to untangle the relationship between the logic and practices of domestic populist political movements and liberal democratic institutions empowers them to analyze critically those challenges and consider the extent to which populism is indicative of prior institutional failure. The work of Antonio Gramsci and Ernesto Laclau are used to develop a model of populism appropriate for advanced undergraduate international relations students. The cases of the Tea Party, Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Victor Orbán’s rise in Hungary demonstrate the dynamics of the model and its relevance to the study of international relations and foreign policy.     

The "We" Problem in Teaching International Studies

This article addresses the problems that emerge when students in international studies courses approach the subject matter from the perspective of the first person plural. Whether in terms of "we,""us," or "our," many college students choose to adopt a personal perspective in discussions of international affairs. While it is natural for students to base their analysis of international studies on their personal observations and experiences, this inclination to adopt a collective first person approach detracts from the scholarly neutrality toward which students of global studies should aspire. Furthermore, a first person plural approach to course subject matter creates the false impression among students that they are all in agreement over contentious issues of global interactions and the theories employed to study them. The article concludes with suggestions for remedying the "we" problem, and offers advice for instructors who have encountered it in their own classroom.